Swords and Ice Magic fagm-6

by Fritz Leiber

  Mouser: That's great, I must say. They should hire you.

  So their shouts trailed off — a joy at first, but soon a tiredness. And they had their men to care for. Besides, it was too risky, ships so close.

  There passed a weary and nightmarish time. Then to the north, where nought had changed all the black day of plunging into it, Fafhrd marked a dark red glow. Long while he doubted it, deemed it some fever in his frozen skull. He noted Afreyt's slender face bobbing among his thoughts. At his side Skor asked him, “Captain, is that a distant fire dead ahead? Our lost sun about to rise in north?” At last Fafhrd believed in the red glow.

  Aboard Flotsam, the Mouser, racked by the poisons of exhaustion and barely aware, heard Fafhrd whisper, “Mouser, ahoy. Look ahead. What do you see?” He realized it was a mighty shout diminished by black silence and the gale, and that Sea Hawk had come close again. He could see glints from the shields affixed along her side, while astern the monstreme was close too, looming like a leprously opalescent cliff arock. Then he looked ahead.

  After a bit, “A red light,” he wheezed, then forced himself to bellow the same words alee, adding, “Tell me what is it. And then let me sleep.”

  “Rime Isle, I trow,” Fafhrd replied across the gap.

  “Are they burning her down?” the Mouser asked.

  The answer came back faintly and eerily. “Remember… on the gold pieces… a volcano?” The Mouser didn't believe he'd heard aright his comrade's next cry after that one, until he'd made him repeat it. Then, “Sir Pshawri!” he called sharply, and when that one came limping up, hand to bandaged head, he ordered, “Heave bucket overside on line and haul it up. I want waves’ sample. Swiftly, you repulsive cripple!”

  Somewhat later, Pshawri's eyebrows rose as his captain took the sloshing bucket he proffered and set it to his lips and uptilted it, next handed it back to Pshawri, swished around his teeth the sample he'd taken into his mouth, made a face, and spat to lee.

  The fluid was far less icy than the Mouser had expected, almost tepid — and saltier than the water of the Sea of Monsters, which lies just west of the Parched Mountains that hide the Shadowland. He wondered for a mad moment if they'd been magicked to that vast, dead lake. ‘Twould fit with monstreme. He thought of Cif.

  There was impact. The deck tilted and did not rock back. Pshawri dropped the bucket and screamed.

  The monstreme had thrust between the smaller ships and instantly frozen to them with its figurehead (living or dead?) of sea monster hacked or born of ice, its jaws agape betwixt their masts, while from the lofty deck high overhead there pealed down Fafhrd's laughter, monstrously multiplied.

  The monstreme visibly shrank.

  At one stride went the dark. From the low west the true sun burst forth, warmly lighting the bay in which they lay and striking an infinitude of golden gleams from the great, white, crystalline cliff to steerside, down which streaming water rushed in a thousand streams and runnels. A league or so beyond it rose a conical mountain down whose sides flowed glaring scarlet and from whose jaggedly truncated summit brilliant vermilion flames streamed toward the zenith, their dark smoke carried off northeastward by the wind.

  Pointing at it with outthrown arm, Fafhrd called, “See, Mouser, the red glow.”

  Straight ahead, nearer than the cliff and drifting steadily still nearer, was a town or small unwalled city of low buildings hugging gentle hills, its waterfront one long low wharf, where a few ships were docked and a small crowd was assembled quietly. While to the west, rounding out the bay, there were more cliffs, the nearer bare dark rock, the farther robed in snow.

  Facing the city, Fafhrd said, “Salthaven.”

  Studying the steaming, streaming, glittering white cliff and fiery peak beyond, the Mouser remembered the two scenes on his golden coins, all spent. This reminded him of the four silver coins he'd not been able to spend because they'd been snatched from his table at the Eel by the battered server, and of the two scenes on their faces: an iceberg and a monster. He turned round.

  The monstreme was gone. Or rather, its last dissolving shards were sinking into the tranquil waters of the bay without sound or commotion, save that a little steam was rising.

  Half-hurled, half-self-magicked from the monstreme's bridge, where It had been gazing out in triumph over the welter of dire, frigid forms on the decks below, Its mind obsessed with evil, back into Its cramped black sphere, Khahkht cursed in voice like Fafhrd's which midway became again a croak, “Damn to the depths of Hell Rime Isle's strange gods! Their day will come, their dooms! Which now devise I whilst I snugly sleep….” It whipped the lid off the water-walled sun and spoke a spell that rotated the sphere until the sun was topmost, the Great Subequatorial Desert nethermost. It briefly fanned the former hot and then curled up in the latter and closed Its eyes, muttering, “…for even Khahkht is cold.” While on tall Stardock, Great Oomforafor listened to the news of the defeat, or setback rather, and of his dear daughters’ further treacheries, as told him by his furious, bedraggled son Prince Faroomfar, who'd been hurled back much as Khahkht.

  As the Mouser turned back to the great white cliff, he realized that it must be made entire of salt — hence the seaport-name — and that the hot, volcanic waters coursing down it were dissolving it, which did much to account for the warm saltiness of ocean hereabouts and the swift melting of the frost monstreme. The last made all of magic ice, he mused, both stronger and weaker than the ordinary — as magic itself than life.

  Fafhrd and he, looking toward the long wharf as they experienced sweetest relief and their ships drew steadily closer to it, saw two slender figures of different heights standing somewhat apart from the other seaside welcomers, who by that token and their proud attitudes and quietly rich garb — blue-gray the one, rust-red the other — must be individuals high in the councils of Rime Isle.

  VIII: Rime Isle

  Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser supervised the mooring of Sea Hawk and Flotsam by bow and stern lines made fast round great wooden bollards, then sprang nimbly ashore, feeling unutterably weary, yet knowing that as captains they should not show it. They made their way to each other, embraced, then turned to face the crowd of Rime Isle men who had witnessed their dramatic arrival standing in a semicircle around the length of dock where their battered and salt-crusted ships were now moored.

  Beyond the crowd stretched the houses of Salthaven port — small, stout and earth-hugging, as befitted this most northerly clime — in hues of weathered blue and green and a violet that was almost gray, except for those in the immediate neighborhood, which seemed rather squalid, where they were all angry reds and plague yellow.

  Beyond Salthaven the low rolling land went off, gray-green with moss and heather, until it met the gray-white wall of a great glacier, and beyond that the old ice stretched until it met in turn the abrupt slopes of an active and erupting volcano, although the red glow of its lava and the black volume of its flamy smoke seemed to have diminished since they first glimpsed it from their ships.

  The foremost of the crowd were all large, burly, quiet-faced men, booted, trousered, and smocked as fishers. Most of them bore quarterstaves, handling them as if they knew well how to use these formidable weapons. They curiously yet composedly eyed the twain and their ships, the Mouser's broadbeamed and somewhat lubberly trader Flotsam with its small Mingol crew and squad of disciplined (a wonder!) thieves, Fafhrd's trimmer galley Sea Hawk with its contingent of disciplined (if that can be imagined at all) berserkers. On the dock near the bollards where they'd made fast were Fafhrd's lieutenant Skor, the Mouser's — Pshawri — and two other crew members.

  It was the quietness and composure of the crowd that puzzled and now began even to nettle the Mouser and Fafhrd. Here they'd sailed all this distance and survived almost unimaginable black hurricane-dangers to help save Rime Isle from a vast invasion of maddened and piratical Sea-Mingols bent on world-conquest, and there was no gladness to be seen anywhere, only stolidly appraising looks. There should be chee
ring and dancing and some northerly equivalent of maidens throwing flowers! True, the two steaming cauldrons of chowder borne on a shoulder-yoke by one of the fishermen seemed to betoken thoughtful welcome — but they hadn't yet been offered any!

  The mouth-watering aroma of the fish-stew now reached the nostrils of the crewmen lining the sides of the two vessels in various attitudes of extreme weariness and dejection — for they were at least half as spent as their captains and had no urge to conceal it — and their eyes slowly brightened and their jaws began to work sympathetically. Behind them the sun-dancing snug harbor, so recently black-skyed, was full of small ships riding at anchor, local fishing craft chiefly with the lovely lines of porpoises, but near at hand several that were clearly from afar, including a small trading galleon of the Eastern Lands and (wonder!) a Keshite junk, and one or two modest yet unfamiliar craft that had the disquieting look of coming from seas beyond Nehwon's. (Just as there was a scatter of sailors from far-off ports in the crowd, peering here and there from between the tall Rime Islanders.)

  And now the Rime Isler nearest the Twain walked silently toward them, flanked a pace behind by two others. He stopped a bare yard away, but still did not speak. In fact, he still did not seem so much to be looking at them as past them at their ships and crews, while working out some abstruse reckoning in his head. All three men were quite as tall as Fafhrd and his berserkers.

  Fafhrd and the Mouser retained their dignity with some difficulty. Never did to speak first when the other man was supposed to be your debtor.

  Finally the other seemed to terminate his calculations and he spoke, using the Low Lankhmarese that is the trade jargon of the northern world.

  “I am Groniger, harbor master of Salthaven. I estimate your ships will be a good week repairing and revictualling. We will feed and board your crew ashore in the traders’ quarter.” He gestured toward the squalid red and yellow buildings.

  “Thank you,” Fafhrd said gravely, while the Mouser echoed coolly, “Indeed, yes.” Hardly an enthusiastic welcome, but still one.

  Groniger thrust out his hand, palm uppermost. “The charge,” he said loudly, “will be five gold pieces for the galley, seven for the tub. Payment in advance.”

  Fafhrd's and the Mouser's jaws dropped. The latter could not contain his indignation, captain's dignity or no.

  “But we're your sworn allies,” he protested, “come here as promised, through perils manifold, to be your mercenaries and help save you from the locust-swarm invasion of the raptorial Sea-Mingols counseled and led by evilest Khahkht, the Wizard of Ice.”

  Groniger's eyebrows lifted. “What invasion?” he queried. “The Sea-Mingols are our friends. They buy our fish. They may be pirates to others, but never to Rime Isle ships. Khahkht is an old wives’ tale, not to be credited by men of sense.”

  “Old wives’ tale?” the Mouser exploded. “When we were but now three endless nights harried by Khahkht's monstrous galley and sank it at last on your very doorstep. His invasion came that close to success. Did you not observe the universal blackness and hell-wind when he conjured the sun out of heaven three days running?”

  “We saw some dark clouds blowing up from the south,” Groniger said, “under whose cover you approached Salthaven. They vanished when they touched Rime Isle — as all things superstitious are like to do. As for invasion, there were rumors of such an eruption some months back, but our council sifted ‘em and found ‘em idle gossip. Have any of you heard aught of a Sea-Mingol invasion since?” he asked loudly, looking from side to side at his fellow Rime Islers. They all shook their heads.

  “So pay up!” he repeated, jogging his outthrust palm, while those behind him wagged their quarterstaves, firming their grips.

  “Shameless ingratitude!” the Mouser rebuked, taking a moral tone as a leader of men. “What gods do you worship here on Rime Isle, to be so hardhearted?”

  Groniger's answer rang out distinct and cool. “We worship no gods at all, but do our business in the world clearheadedly, no misty dreams. We leave such fancies to the so-called civilized people: decadent cultures of the hot-house south. Pay up, I say.”

  At that moment Fafhrd, whose height permitted him to see over the crowd, cried out, “Here are those coming who hired us, harbor master, and will give the lie to your disclaimers.”

  The crowd parted respectfully to let through two slender, trousered women with long knives at their belts in jeweled scabbards. The taller was clad all in blue, with like eyes, and fair hair. Her comrade was garmented in dark red, with green eyes and black hair that seemed to have gold wires braided in it. Skor and Pshawri, still stupid with fatigue, took note of them and it was impossible to mistake the message in the sea-dogs’ kindling eyes: Here were the northern angels come at last!

  “The eminent councilwomen Afreyt and Cif,” Groniger intoned. “We are honored by their presence.”

  They approached with queenly smiles and looks of amiable curiosity.

  “Tell them, Lady Afreyt,” said Fafhrd courteously to the one in blue, “how you commissioned me to bring Rime Isle twelve—” Suppressing the word “berserk,” he smoothly made it, “—stout northern fighters of the fiercest temper.”

  “And I twelve… nimble and dextrous Lankhmar sworders and slingers, sweet Lady Cif,” the Mouser chimed in airily, avoiding the word “thief.”

  Afreyt and Cif looked at them blankly. Then their gazes became at once anxious and solicitous.

  Afreyt commented, “They've been tempest-tossed, poor lads, and doubtless it has disordered their memories. Our little northern gales come as a surprise to southerners. They seem gentle. Use them well, Groniger.” Looking intently at Fafhrd, she lifted her hand to adjust her hair and in lowering it hesitated a finger for a moment crosswise to her tightly shut long lips.

  Cif added, “Doubtless privation has temporarily addled their wits. Their ships have seen hard use. But what a tale! I wonder who they are? Nourish them with hot soup — after they've paid, of course.” And she winked at the Mouser a green dark-lashed eye on the side away from Groniger. Then the two ladies wandered on.

  It is a testimony to the fundamental levelheadedness and growing self-control of the Mouser and Fafhrd (now having, as captains, to control others) that they did not expostulate at this astounding and barely-tempered rebuff, but actually each dug a hand into his purse — though they did look after the two strolling females somewhat wonderingly. So they saw Skor and Pshawri, who had been dazedly following the two apparitions of northernly delight, now approach these houris with the clear intent of establishing some sort of polite amorous familiarity.

  Afreyt struck Skor aside in no uncertain fashion, but only after leaning her face close enough to his head to hiss a word or two into his ear and grasp his wrist in a way that would have permitted her to slip a token or note into his palm. Cif treated Pshawri's advances likewise.

  Groniger, pleased at the way the two captains were now dragging gold pieces from their purses, nevertheless admonished them, “And see to it that your crewmen offer no affront to our Salthaven women, nor stray one step beyond the bounds of the traders’ quarter.”

  Paying up took the last of the Rime Isle gold that Cif had given them back at the Silver Eel in Lankhmar, while the Mouser had to piece out his seven with two Lankhmar rilks and a Sarheenmar dubloon.

  Groniger's eyebrows rose as he scanned the take. “Rime Isle coinage! So you'd touched here before and knew our harbor rules and were only seeking to bargain? But what made you invent such an unbelievable story?”

  Fafhrd shrugged and said shortly, “Not so. Had ‘em off an Eastern trading galley in these waters,” while the Mouser only laughed.

  Nevertheless, a thought struck Groniger, and he looked after the two Rime Isle councilwomen speculatively as he said shortly, “Now you may feed your men.”

  The Mouser called toward Flotsam, “Ho, lads! Fetch your bowls, cups, and spoons. These most hostful Rime Islanders have provided a feast for you. Orderly now! Pshawri
, attend me.”

  While Fafhrd commanded likewise, adding, “Forget not they're our friends. Do ‘em courtesies. A word with you, Skor.” Never do to show resentment, though that “tub” still rankled with the Mouser, despite it being a very fine description of the broad-beamed, sweep-propelled Flotsam.

  When the Mouser and Fafhrd had seen all their men eating and served a measure of grog to celebrate safe arrival, they turned to their somewhat doleful lieutenants, who with only a show of reluctance yielded up the notes they'd been slipped — as the Twain had surmised — along with the words, “For your master!”

  Unfolded, Afreyt's read, “Another faction controls the Rime Isle council, temporarily. You do not know me. At dusk tomorrow seek me at the Hill of the Eight-Legged Horse,” while Cif's message was, “Cold Khahkht has sowed dissension in our council. We never met — play it that way. You'll find me tomorrow night at the Flame Den if you come alone.”

  “So she does not speak with the voice of Rime Isle after all,” Fafhrd commented softly. “To what fiery female politicians have we joined our destinies?”

  “Her gold was good,” the Mouser answered gruffly. “And now we've two new riddles to solve.”

  “Flame Den and Eight-Legged Horse,” Fafhrd echoed.

  “Tub, he called her,” the Mouser mused bitterly, his mind veering. “What godless literal-minded philosophers are we now supposed to succor in spite of themselves?”

  “You're a godless man too,” Fafhrd reminded him.

  “Not so, there was once Mog,” the Mouser protested with a touch of his old playful plaintiveness, referring to a youthful credulity, when he had briefly believed in the spider god to please a lover.

  “Such questions can wait, along with the two riddles,” Fafhrd decided. “Now let's curry favor with the atheist fishermen while we can.”

  And accompanied by the Mouser, he proceeded ceremoniously to offer Groniger white brandy fetched from Flotsam by old Ourph the renegade Mingol. The harbor master was prevailed upon to accept a drink, which he took in slow sips, and by way of talk of repair docks, watering, crew dormitories ashore, and the price of salt fish, the conversation became somewhat more general. With difficulty Fafhrd and the Mouser won license to venture outside the traders’ quarter, but only by day, and not their men. Groniger refused a second drink.