by Fritz Leiber
He heard his name spoken falteringly close behind him and turning saw Mara standing there in her white smock looking woebegone and confused, as if she'd just been lifted from the pillar's top and set down there. As he spoke her name in answer, a voice came out of the air beside Mara and a little above her, speaking in the chilling and confounding tones of a familiar and beloved voice turned hateful in nightmare.
The sightless mountain princess Hirriwi said, “Woe to you, barbarian, for having come north again without first paying your respects at Stardock. Woe to you for coming at another woman's call, although we favor her cause. Woe for deserting your men to chase this girl-chit, whom we would have (and have) saved without you. Woe for meddling with demons and gods. And woe upon woe for lifting your hand to maim a prince of Stardock, to whom we are joined, though he is our dearest enemy, by bonds stronger than love and hate. A head for a head and a hand for a hand, think on that. Quintuple woe!”
During this recital, Mara had moved to Fafhrd, where he knelt upright, his face working as he stared at and hearkened to emptiness. He had put his arm about her shoulders and together they stared at the speaking gloom.
Hirriwi continucd, her voice less ritually passionate, but every whit as cold, “Keyaira heals and comforts our brother, and I go to join them. At dawn we will return you, journeying upon our fish of air, to your people, where you will know your weird. Until then, rest in the warmth of Hellfire, which is not yet a danger to you.”
With that she broke off and there was the sound of her going away. The torch flickered low, almost consumed, and great weariness took hold of Fafhrd and Mara and they lay down side by side and sleep was drawn up over them from their toes to their eyes.
Fathrd, at last thought, wondered why it should move him so strangely that Mara clutched his left hand, bent up beside his shoulder, in both of hers.
* * *
Next day Salthaven was a-bustle so early and so wildly — so fantastically — with preparations for the great sailing that it was hard to tell where the inspirations of nightmare and worry-dream ended and those of (hopefully) wide-eyed day began. Even the “foreigners” were infected, as if they too had been hearing the Mingols-to-their-deaths chant in their cireams, so that the Mouser had been impelled against his better judgment to man Fafhrd's Sea Hawk with the most eager of them under Bomar their “mayor” and the Ilthmart tavern-owner. He made Pshawri their captain with half the thieves to support his authority and two of the Mingols. Trenchi and Gavs, to help him con the ship.
“Remember you are boss,” he told Pshawri, “Make them like it or lump it — and keep to windward of me.”
Pshawri, his new-healed forehead wound still pink, nodded fiercely and went to take up his command. Above the salt cliff the eastern sky was ominously red with sunrise, while glooms of night still lingered in the west. The east wind blew strongly.
From Flotsam's stern the Mouser surveyed the busy harbor and his fleet of fishing boats turned warships. Truly, they were a weird sight, their decks which had so recently been piled with fish now bristling with pikes and various impromptu weapons such as he'd seen Groniger's men shoulder yesterday.
Some of them had lashed huge ceremonial spears (bronze-pointed timbers, really) to their bowsprits — for use as rams, he supposed, the Fates be kind to ‘em! While others had bent on red and black sails, to indicate bloody and baleful intentions, he guessed — the soberest fisherman was a potential pirate, that was sure. Three were half wreathed in fishnets — protection against arrow fire? The two largest craft were commanded by Dwone and Zwaaken, his sub-admirals, if that could be credited. He shook his head.
If only he had time to get his thoughts straight! But ever since he'd awakened events (and his own unpredictable impulses) had been rushing, nay, stampeding him. Yesterday, he'd managed to lead Cif and the other three women safely out of the quaking and stinking cave-tunnels (he glanced toward Darkfire — it was still venting into the red sky a thick column of black smoke, which the east wind blew west) only to discover that they'd spent an unconscionable time underground and it was already evening. After seeing to Rill's hand, badly burned by the Loki-torch, they'd had to hurry back to Salthaven for conferences with all and sundry — hardly time to compare notes with Cif on the whole cavern experience….
And now he had to break off to help Mikkidu instruct the six Rimeland replacements for the thieves they'd lost to Sea Hawk—how to man the sweeps and so forth.
And that was no sooner done (matter of a few low-voiced instructions to Mikkidu, chiefly) than here came Cif climbing ahoard, followed by Rill, Hilsa, and Mother Grum — all of them save for the last in sailorly trousers and jackets with knives at their belts. Rill's right arm was in a sling.
“Here we are, yours to command, captain,” Cif said brightly.
“Dear councilwoman.” the Mouser answered, his heart sinking, “Flotsam can't sail into possible battle with women aboard, especially—” He let a meaningful look serve for “—whores and witches.”
“Then we'li man Sprite and follow you after,” she told him, not at all downcast. “Or rather range ahead to be the first to sight the Sunwise Mingols — you know Sprite's a fast sailer. Yes, perhaps that's best, a women's fighting-ship for soldieresses.”
The Mouser submitted to the inevitable with what grace he could muster. Rill and Hilsa beamed. Cif touched his arm commiseratingly.
“I'm glad you agreed,” she said. “I'd already loaned Sprite to three other women.” But then her face grew serious as she lowered her voice to say. “There is a matter that troubles me you should know. We were going to bring god Loki aboard in a firepot, as yesterday he traveled in Rill's torch—”
“Can't have fire aboard a ship going into battle,” the Mouser responded automatically. “Besides, look how Rill got burned.”
“But this morning, for the first time in over a year, we found the fire in the Flame Den unaccountably gone out,” Cif finished. “We sifted the ashes. There was not a spark.”
“Well,” said the Mouser thoughtfully, “perhaps yesterday at the great rock face after he flamed so high the god temporarily shifted his dwelling to the mountain's fiery heart. See how she smokes!” And he pointed toward Darkfire, where the black column going off westward was thicker.
“Yes, but we don't have him at hand that way,” Cif objected troubledly.
“Well, at any rate he's still on the Island,” the Mouser told her. “And in a sense, I'm sure, on Flotsam too,” he added, remembering (it made his fire-stung fingers smart anew) the black torch-end he still had in his pouch. That was another thing, he told himself, that wanted thinking about….
But just then Dwone came sailing close by to report the Rime fleet ready for action and hardly to be held back. The Mouser had perforce to get Flotsam underway, hoisting what sail she could carry for the beat against the wind, and setting his thieves and their green replacements to sweeping while Ourph beat time, so that she'd be able to keep ahead of the handier fishing craft.
There were cheers from the shore and the other ships and for a short while the Mouser was able to bask in self-satisfaction at Flotsam moving out so bravely at the head of the fleet, and his crew so well disciplined, and (he could see) Pshawri handling Sea Hawk nicely enough, and Cif standing beside him, glowing-eyed — and himself a veritable admiral, no less, by Mog!
But then the thoughts which he hadn't had time to straighten all day began to cark him again. Above all else he realized that there was something altogether foolhardy, in fact utterly ridiculous, about them all setting sail so confidently with only one hare-brained plan of action, on nothing more than the crackling word of a fire, the whisper of burning twigs. Still he had a compelling feeling in his bones that they were doing the right thing and nothing could harm them, and he would peradventure find the Mingol fleet and that another wonderful inspiration would come to him at the last minute….
At that moment his eye lit on Mikkidu sweeping with considerable style in the bowmost steers
ide position and he came to a decision.
“Ourph, take the tiller and take her out,” he directed. “Call time to the sweeps.
“My dear, I must leave you for a brief space,” he told Cif. Then taking the last Mingol with him, he went forward and said in a gruff voice to Mikkidu, “Come with me to my cabin. A conference. Gib will replace you here,” and then hurried below with his now apprehensive-eyed lieutenant past the wondering glances of the women.
Facing Mikkidu across the table in the low-ceilinged cabin (one good thing about having a short captain and still shorter crew, it occurred to him) he eyed his subordinate mercilessly and said, “Lieutenant, I made a speech to the Rime Islers in their council hall night before last that had them cheering me at the end. You were there. What did I say?”
Mikkidu writhed. “Oh, captain,” he protested, blushing, “how can pou expect—”
“Now none of that stuff about it being so wonderful you can't remember — or other weaseling out,” the Mouser cut him short. “Pretend the ship's in a tempest and her safety depends on you giving me a square answer. Gods, haven't I taught you yet that no man of mine ever got hurt from me by telling me the truth?”
Mikkidu digested that with a great gulp and then surrendered. “Oh captain,” he said, “I did a terrible thing. That night when I was following you from the docks to the council hall and you were with the two ladies, I bought a drink from a street vendor and gulped it down while you weren't looking. It didn't taste strong at all, I swear it, but it must have had a tremendous delayed kick, for when you jumped on the table and started to talk, I blacked out — my word upon it! When I came to you were saying something about Groniger and Afreyt leading out half the Rimelanders to reinforce Captain Fafhrd and the rest of us sailing out to entice the Sun Mingols into a great whirlpool, and everybody was cheering like mad — and so of course I cheered too, just as if I'd heard everything that they had.”
“You can swear to the truth of that?” the Mouser asked in a terrible voice.
Mikkidu nodded miserably.
The Mouser came swiftly around the table and embraced him and kissed him on his quivering cheek. “There's a good lieutenant,” he said most warmly, clapping him on the back. “Now go, good Mikkidu, and invite the lady Cif attend me here. Then make yourself useful on deck in any way your shrewdness may suggest. Don't stand now in a daze. Get at it, man.”
By the time Cif arrived (not long) he had decided on his approach to her.
“Dear Cif,” he said without preamble, coming to her. “I have a confession to make to you,” and then he told her quite humbly but clearly and succinctly the truth about his “wonderful words" — that he simply hadn't heard one of them. When he was done he added, “So you can see not even my vanity is involved — whatever it was, it was Loki's speech, not mine — so do you now tell me truth about it, sparing me nothing.”
She looked at him with a wondering smile and said, “Well, I was puzzled as to what you could have said to Mikkidu to make him so head-in-the-clouds happy — and am not sure I understand that even now. But, yes, my experience was, I now confess, identical with his — and not even the taking of an unknown drink to excuse it. My mind went blank, time passed me by, and I heard not a word you said, except those last directions about Afreyt's expedition and the whirlpool. But everyone was cheering and so I pretended to have heard, not wanting to injure your feelings or feel myself a fool. Oh, I was a sheep! Once I was minded to confess my lapse to Afreyt, and now I wish I had, for she had a strange look on her then — But I didn't. You think, as I do now, that she also…?”
The Mouser nodded decisively."I think that not one soul of them heard a word to remember of the main body of my — or, rather, Loki's — talk, but later they all pretended to have done so, just like so many sheep indeed — and I the black goat leading them on. So only Loki knows what Loki said and we sail out upon an unknown course against the Mingols, taking all on trust.”
“What to do now?” she asked wonderingly.
Looking into her eyes with a tentative smile and a slight shrug that was at once acquiescent and comical, he said, “Why, we go on, for it is your course and I am committed to it.”
Flotsam gave a long lurch then, with a wave striking along her side, and it nudged Cif against him, and their arms went around each other, and their lips met thrillingly — but not for long, for he must hurry on deck, and she too, to discover (or rather confirm) what had befallen.
Flotsam progressed out of Salthaven harbor and the salt cliffs lee to the Outer Sea where the east wind smote them more urgently and the swells and the sunlight struck their canvas and deck. The Mouser took the tiller from sad-faced Ourph and that old one and Gib and Mikkidu set sail for the first eastward tack. And one by one Sea Hawk and the weirdly accoutered fishing boats repeated their maneuver, following Flotsam out.
* * *
That selfsame east wind which blew west across the southern half of Rime Isle, and against which Flotsam labored, farther out at sea was hurrying on the horse-ships of the Sunwise Mingols. The grim galleys, each with its bellying square sail, made a great drove of ships, and now and again a stallion screamed in its bow-cage as they plunged ahead through the waves, which cascaded spray through the black, crazily-angled bars. All eyes strained west — ahead, and it would have been hard to say which eyes glared the more madly, those of the fur-clad, grinningly white-toothed men, or those of long-faced, grimacingly white-toothed beasts.
On the poop of the flagship this frenzy looked in a more philosophical direction, where Gonov discoursed with his witch-doctor and attendant sages propounding such questions as, “Is it sufficient to burn a city to the ground, or must it also be trampled to rubble?” and contemplating such answers as, “Most meritorious is to pound it to sand, aye, to fine loam, without burning at all.”
While the strong westwind that blew east across the northern half of the island (with a belt of squalls and fierce eddies between the two winds) was hurrying on from west across trackless ocean the like fleet of the Widdershins Mingols, where Edumir had proposed this query to his philosophers: “Is death by suicide in the first charge, hurling oneself upon the foeman's virgin spear, to be preferred to death by self-administered poison in the last charge?”
He hearkened to their closely-reasoned answers and to the counter-question: “Since death is so much to be desired, surpassing the delights of love and mushroom wine, how did our all-noble and revered ancestors ever survive to procreate us?” and at last observed, his white-rimmed eyes gazing east yearningly, “That is all theory. On Rime Isle we will once more put these recondite matters to the test of practice.”
While high above all winds Khahkht in his icy sphere ceaselessly studied the map lining it, whereon he moved counters for ships and men, horses and women — aye, even gods — bending his bristly face close, so that no unlawful piece might escape his fierce scrutiny.
* * *
By early morning sunlight and against the nipping wind, Afreyt hurried on alone through heather dotted by stunted cedars past the last silent hiil farm, with its sagging gray-green turf roofs, before Cold Harbor. She was footsore and weary (even Odin's noose around her neck seemed a heavy weight) for they'd marched all night with only two short rest-stops and midway they'd been buffeted by changing winds reaching tornadic strenfith as they'd passed through the transition belt between the southeastern, Salthaven half of Rime Isle, which the east wind presently ruled, and the northwestern, Cold Harbor half, where the equally strong west wind now held sway.
Yet she forced herself to scan carefully ahead for friend or foe, for she had constituted herself vanguard for Groniger and his grotesquely burdened trampers. A while ago in the twilight before dawn she'd gone from litter-side up to the head of the column and pointed out to Groniger the need of having a guard ahead now that they were nearing their journey's end and should be wary of ambushes. He had seemed unconcerned and heedless, unable to grasp the danger, almost as if he (and all the other Rime m
en, for that matter) were intent only on marching on and on, glaze-eyed, growling Gale's doom-chant, like so many monstrous automatons, until they met the Mingols, or Fafhrd's force. Failing those, she believed, they would stride into the chilly western ocean with never a halt or waver, as did the lemming hordes in their climacteric. But neither had Groniger voiced any objection to her spying on ahead-nor even concern for her safety. Where was the man's one-time clear-headedness and prudence? Afreyt was not unversed in island woodcraft and she now spotted Skor peering toward Cold Harbor from the grove of dwarf cedars whence Fathrd had launched yestermorning's brief arrow-fusillade. She called Skor's name, and he whipped around nocking an arrow to his bow, then came up swiftly when he saw her familiar blues.
“Lady Afreyt, what do you here? You look weary,” he greeted her succinctly. He looked weary himself and hollow-eyed, his cheeks and forehead smudged with soot above his straggly russet beard. perhaps against the glare of glacial ice.
She quickly told him about the Rimeland reinforcements approaching behind her.
His weariness seemed to lift from him as she spoke. “That's brave news,” he said when she had done. “We joined our lines (I'm now making the rounds of them) with those of the Cold Harbor defenders before sunset yesterday and have the Mingol fore-raiders penned on the beach — and all by bluff! The mere sight of the forces you describe, strategically deployed, will cause ‘em to take ship and sail away, I think — and we not lift a finger.”
“Your pardon, lieutenant,” she rejoined. her own weariness lifting at his optimism, “but I have heard you and your fellows named berserkers — and have always thought it was the way of such to charge the enemy at the first chance, charge wolf-howling and bounding, mother-naked?”
