The Knight and Knave of Swords

by Fritz Leiber

  With a jingle of bells but no other sound, a dogcart and pair drew up beyond her—without driver, so far as Fingers could see.

  Cif walked out to it, stepped aboard, took the whip from its vertical socket and, sitting very erect, cracked it once high in the air.

  Fingers came out from behind Fafhrd's robe and hurried to the door in time to see Cif and her small vehicle moving west beneath the barely diminished descending disk of Satyrs Moon as the two big dogs bore them off toward the spot where they sought Captain Mouser. For a long moment Fingers enjoyed the feeling of being a member of this household of silently occupied witchwomen.

  But then the drip of the thaw reminded her of her own quest. She fetched Fafhrd's robe from its peg, and hanging it over her left arm and leaving the house door open behind her, as Cif had, Fingers circled the dwelling and headed out across the open field toward the sea, treading the steaming grass and feeling the caress of the soft south wind that set its seal on the great change of weather.

  The moon was directly behind her now. She walked straight up the long shadow of herself it cast, which stretched to the low moondial. Overhead the brighter stars could be discerned, though dimmed by their moon mistress. To the southeast a cloud bank was rising to cover them.

  As Fingers watched, a slender single cloud separated itself from the bank and headed toward her. It came coasting down out of the night sky, moving a little faster than the balmy breeze which drove on its fellows and lightly stroked her. The last of the moonlight shone brightly on its swan-rounded prow and sleek straight sides—for it truly did look more like a delicate ship of the air than any proper cloud of aqueous vapor should, so that a spider-webbing shiver of wonder and gossamer fear went along Fingers's rosy flesh beneath her belted robe and she crouched a little and went more softly.

  She was nearing the moondial now, passing it just to the south. Where its curving gnomon did not shadow it, its moon-pale round crawled with Rimic runes and half-familiar figures.

  Beyond the dial, a bare spearcast distant, the eerie ship-cloud came coasting down, moving in a direction opposite to the girl, and settled to a stop.

  At the same instant, almost as if it were part of the same movement, Fingers spread Fafhrd's robe across the wet grass ahead of her and gently stretched herself out upon it so that the moondial's low curb was sufficient to conceal her. She held still, intently studying the strange cloud's pale hull.

  The last bright splinter of Satyrs Moon vanished behind Rime Isle's central peaks. At the opposite end of the sky the dawn glow grew.

  From a direction midway between out of the cloud ship there came the doleful music of a flute and small drum sounding a funeral march.

  Simultaneously and silently there thrust down out of the heart of the cloud and touched down a third of the distance between it and Fingers a light gangplank which appeared broad enough for two to go abreast.

  Then down this travelway as the dawn lightened and the music swelled there came slowly and solemnly a small procession headed by two slim girls in garments of close-fitting black, like pages, and bearing the flute and small drum from which the sad notes came.

  Following these there came two by two and footing with a grave dignity six slender women in the black hoods and formfitting robes of the nuns of Lankhmar whose plackets showed the pastel tints of underthings of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.

  Upon their shoulders they bore with ease and great solicitude a black-draped, wide-shouldered, slender-hipped tall male form.

  Following these there strolled a final slim, tall, black-clad female figure in brimless conical hat and veils of a priestess of the Gods of Lankhmar. She bore a long wand tipped with a tiny, glowing pentagram, with which she sketched an endless row of hieroglyphs upon the twilit air.

  Fingers, watching the strange funeral from her hidden point of vantage, could not name their language.

  As the procession debouched upon the meadow, it swung west. When the turn had been fully completed, the figure of the priestess lifted her wand in a gesture of command, bringing the dim star to a stop. Instantly the girl-pages stopped their playing, the nuns their dancing forward march, and Fingers felt herself seized by a paralysis that rendered her incapable of speech and froze her every muscle save those controlling the direction in which she looked.

  In a concerted movement the nuns lifted the corpse they carried on high, brought it down to the grass with an uncomfortable swiftness, and then twitched aloft the empty shroud.

  The point where they had deposited the corpse was just out of Fingers's range of vision, but there was nothing the girl could do about that except grow cold and shiver.

  Nor did it help when the priestess lowered her wand.

  One by one the nuns knelt with hands out of view and performed a not overlong manipulation, then each dipped her head briefly out of sight and finally all rose together.

  One by one the six nuns did this thing.

  The priestess touched the last nun's shoulder with her wand to attract her attention and handed her a white silken ribbon. The latter knelt, and when she rose no longer had the ribbon in her hand.

  With more speed than solemnity, the priestess once again raised her star-tipped wand, the page-girls struck up a jolly quick-step, the nuns briskly folded the shroud they'd borne so solemnly, the whole procession about-faced and quick-marched back aboard the cloud ship no less swiftly than it takes to write it down, and the crew set sail.

  And still Fingers could not move one.

  In the interval the sky had brightened markedly, sunrise was close at hand, and as the cloud-ship sailed away west at a surprisingly fast rate, it and its crew, momentarily less substantial, were suddenly on the verge of fading out, while the music gave way to a ripple of affectionate laughter.

  Fingers felt all constraints lift from her muscles. She darted forward, and the next moment, it seemed, was looking down into the very shallow depression wherein the dancing nuns had laid their mortal burden.

  There on a bed of new-sprung milky mushrooms stretched out serenely the tall, handsome, faintly smiling form of the man she knew as Captain Fafhrd and toward whom she felt such a puzzling mixture of feelings. He was doubly naked because recently close-shaven everywhere, save for eyebrows and lashes, and those trimmed short, and quite unclad except for ribbons of the six spectral colors and white tied in big bows around his limp genital member.

  "Keepsakes of his six lady loves who were his pallbearers, or dancers, and from their mistress or chieftainess," the girl pronounced wisely.

  And noting the organ's extreme flaccidity and the depth of satisfaction in his smile, she added with professional approval, "And loved most thoroughly."

  At first she felt a strong pang of grief, thinking him dead, but a closer look showed his chest to be gently rising and falling, and also brought her within range of his warm exhalation.

  She prodded him gently in the chest over his breastbone, saying, "Wake up, Captain Fafhrd."

  The warmth of his skin surprised her, though not enough to make her think of fever.

  The smoothness of his skin truly startled her. It was shaved more closely than she'd thought possible, with sharpest eastern steel. Bending down just as the new-risen sun sent out a wave of brightness, she could see only the faintest copper-pink flecks as of fresh-scoured metal. Yesterday she'd noticed gray and white hairs among the red. He'd merited Gale's "Uncle" fully. But now—the effect was of rejuvenation, the skin looked babyish, fair as hers was. He continued to smile in his sleep.

  Fingers gripped him firmly by the shoulders and shook him.

  "Wake up, Captain Fafhrd," she cried. "Arise and shine!" Then, in an impish mood, irked by this smile, which now began to seem merely foolish and stupid, "Cabin-girl Fingers reporting for duty."

  She knew that was wrong as soon as she heard herself utter it, when in response to her shaking he reared up into a sitting position, though without opening his eyes or changing expression. Suddenly these things became
frightening.

  To give herself time to think about the situation and consider what to do next, Fingers returned to fetch his robe from where she'd left it spread out on the wet grass back at the moondial. She doubted he'd want to be seen naked, and certainly not wearing his ladies' colors. Yet the sun was up and at any moment Gale, Afreyt, or some visitor might appear.

  "For although your ladies playing nuns had every right to mark you as their lover—seeing you'd been most free (I think) with all of them, that does not mean I have to go along with their naughty joke, though I do think it funny," the girl said as she came hurrying with his robe, speaking aloud because she thought he really did still sleep and wanted in any case to check upon this fact.

  In the interval she had jumped to the rather romantic conclusion that Fafhrd was in the situation of the Handsome Tranced One, a male equivalent of Sleeping Beauty in Lankhmar legend—a youth with a sleep spell on him that can be lifted only by his true love's kiss.

  Which at once suggested to Fingers that she convey the sleeping (and strangely transformed, even frightening) hero to the Lady Afreyt for the reviving kiss.

  After all, they had been introduced to her as lovers (and proper gentlefolk) except for Fafhrd's straying with the naughty nuns, which was the sort of straying to be expected of men, according to her mother's teaching. Moreover he'd been under all the strain of directing the search for his comrade Captain who'd slipped underground.

  Surely to bring Fafhrd and Afreyt back together would be a most proper return for all the courtesies they'd shown her, beginning with her rescue from Weasel.

  Back at the mushroom bed Fafhrd had made no further progress toward awakening. So she draped the sun-warmed robe around him, gently urging him by words and assisting movements to don it.

  "Arise, Captain Fafhrd," she suggested, "and I will help you into your robe and then to some shadowed and comfortable spot where you may have your full sleep out."

  When with some repetitions of this routine and patter she'd got him up (safely asleep on his feet, as it were) with his robe belted about him so his colorful honors were completely concealed—and a long look around showed they were still unobserved—she breathed a sigh of relief and set about to lead him back to Cif's house using the same methods.

  But they'd got no farther than the moondial when it occurred to Fingers to ask herself, Where's everyone?

  It was a question easier to ask than answer.

  You'd think after the second great weather change, every last soul would be out to see, soaking in the heat and talking about the wonder.

  Yet wherever you looked there wasn't a person to be seen or heard. It was eerie.

  All yesterday the digging for Captain Mouser had kept up a steady traffic between the diggings, the barracks, and Cif's place. Today no trace of that since Cif's departure by moonlight hours ago.

  It was as if Fafhrd's sleep spell were on everyone in Salthaven save herself. Maybe it was.

  And the somnambulistic spell on Fafhrd was a lot stronger than she'd judged at first. Here, he and she were halfway back to Cif's and it showed no signs of falling off.

  She began to doubt the power of Afreyt's kiss to dispel it. Perhaps it would be better if he had his full sleep out, as she'd been suggesting to him in her patter.

  And what if Afreyt didn't go for her idea of the Handsome Tranced One and the revivifying kiss? Or tried it and it didn't? And then they both tried to wake Fafhrd and couldn't? And Lady Afreyt blamed her for that?

  Suddenly she lost all faith in the ideas that had seemed so brilliant to her moments before. Getting Fafhrd back to full sleep again (as she had been promising him over and over in her patter) as soon as they'd reached a suitable place for that seemed the thing to do. She recalled an infallible sleep spell her mother had taught her. The sooner she recited it to Fafhrd, the better. Fully asleep again, he'd no longer be her responsibility.

  Perhaps it would work on her too—and perhaps that was just what she needed to straighten her out—a good sleep.

  The idea of falling asleep with Captain Fafhrd seemed vastly attractive.

  They'd just got back to Cif's without encountering anyone. She was relieved to find the door ajar. She thought she'd closed it.

  Stopping her soft talk to Fafhrd, but keeping up a pressure on his arm, she worked the thick door open and guided him inside. The house was silent, she was pleased to find, and Captain Fafhrd, being barefoot, made no more noise than she.

  Then, as they were halfway across the kitchen, nearer the cellar stairs than those to the second floor (or the sauna door), she heard footsteps overhead in Cif's bedroom. Afreyt's, she thought.

  She decided at once on flight and chose the cellar because it was nearest and also the place where she had first met Fafhrd. She stuck with her choice because the Northerner responded instantly to her silent guidance, as if it would have been his choice too.

  And then they were down in the cellar and the die was cast—simply a matter of whether the firm, decisive footsteps of Afreyt followed him down into the cellar or did not. Fingers had led him out of the space at the foot of the stairs visible from the kitchen and sat him down on the bench facing the large square of unpaved loamy earth, illuminated, she now saw, by one of the long-lasting cool leviathan-oil lamps. But she dared not turn that off now, no matter how unsuitable for sleeping, for if Afreyt saw the light dim in the cellar, she'd surely come down to investigate.

  The footsteps finished the upper stairs, came five paces across the kitchen, and then stopped dead. Had she noticed the light on in the cellar and would she come down to turn it off?

  But moments gave way to seconds and seconds to minutes, or at least lengthened unendurably, and still there'd been no sound. It was as if Afreyt had died up there or just evaporated. Until Fingers, to stop herself growing tired or numb and getting a crick in her neck or shoulder and making a violent involuntary move, edged forward step by silent step and seated herself on the bench beside the northern Captain, facing away from the unpaved square of earth.

  She felt herself growing more and more tired, forgot about Afreyt hearing, and hastened to recite the sleep spell softly so that she and Captain Fafhrd would receive the full benefit of it.

  Meanwhile something very interesting and quite unsuspected by Fingers had actually been happening to Afreyt.

  She had wakened alone just before dawn and heard the thaw, opened the window overlooking the headland and moondial just in time to observe the wondrous sailing of the Arilian moon pinnace with Fafhrd's mistress and her naughty train, and heard the last notes of the quick march give way to the ripple of derisive laughter.

  Thereafter, Afreyt had watched from the distance the tricksy and ambitious cabin-girl Fingers seemingly rouse, then robe her magically rejuvenated father (for the woman had noted many other resemblances between parent and offspring besides hair color), and then work their way at leisure back to Cif's place, getting their two stories straight, thought Afreyt, but above all murmuring of their great incestuous love (for after all, what else did they really have to talk about?), and while Fafhrd's lady was thus reacting to their manifold treacheries, she furiously laced on her shoes and belted her robe and hurried downstairs to confront the miscreants.

  When she found them gone, Afreyt made the deduction Fingers had anticipated about the cellar light. She thought for a moment, then to surprise them, knelt and silently undid the shoes she had so furiously laced, stepped out of them and tiptoed downstairs without a sound.

  But when she stepped out suddenly into full view she found them both faced away from her on the bench, gazing at the unpaved square of earth, Fafhrd resting his head against Fingers's chest, "lying in her lap," as it's expressed, just as the girl started to recite in a small bell-like voice what she thought was her mother's sleep spell but was in truth, as she had inadvertently revealed to Gale and Afreyt the second morning of the cold by reciting its last five individually harmless lines, the direst of Quarmallian death spells taught her
under hypnosis by the infinitely vengeful and devious Lord Quarmal of Quarmall.

  "Call for the robin red breast and the wren

  Since o'er shady groves they hover

  And with leaves and flowers do cover

  The friendless bodies of unburied men.

  Call unto his funeral dole

  The ant, the field mouse, and the mole

  To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm

  And safe from any savage hurt or harm..."

  As Afreyt heard Fingers recite the first of those eight lines, she saw emerge vertically upward from the soft earth of the left forefront of the unpaved square a small serpent's head or tentacle tip, followed almost at once close to either side by a second and third at the same even rate, then a short fourth in line at the same short distance to the left, and lastly a thick fifth erecting alone two inches in front of the rest, and then she saw that the four serpents' heads or tentacles were joined at their bases to a palm, and taken with the thick separate member, constituted the fingers and thumb of a buried hand digging itself upward and bursting from the ground, while down off it the revealing earth sifted and tumbled.

  As Afreyt, all a-shiver at this prodigy, listened to the recitation of the innocuous-seeming second and third lines and realized that the situation must be different, with Fafhrd playing a more passive role than she'd suspected, a second and larger emergence started, that of a head behind and to the right of the hand and with its hairy earth-mired crown beginning at the level of the palm.

  The forward-facing brow, as it emerged at the same even rate as had the hand, showed more bright yellow in its illumination than white leviathan light would account for, which reminded Afreyt of Cif's dream of the Mouser wearing a glowing yellow mask and was Afreyt's first clue to the identity of the underground traveler. By now it was apparent that the escaping hand was attached to and directed by the rising head, and Afreyt, shaking with terror at the unnatural sight, at least need not fear the dartings, scuttlings, and gropings of a hostile, detached, and independently roving hand.