Swords Against Wizardry

by Fritz Leiber

In such manner did Prince Gwaay, Lord of the Lower Levels of Quarmall, come home from his father’s funeral, falling in a stenchful, scabrous, ichorous heap upon the torn-down richly embroidered curtains immediately beneath the pristine-handsome silver bust of himself in the niche above the arch.

  The funeral pyre smoldered for a long time, but of all the inhabitants in that huge and ramified castle-kingdom Brilla the High Eunuch was the only one who watched it out. Then he collected a few representative pinches of ashes to preserve; he kept them with some dim idea that they might perhaps act as some protection, now that the living protector was forever gone.

  Yet the fluffy-gritty gray tokens did not much cheer Brilla as he wandered desolately into the inner rooms. He was troubled and eunuchlike be-twittered by thoughts of the war between brothers that must now ensue before Quarmall had again a single master. Oh, what a tragedy that Lord Quarmal should have been snatched so suddenly by the Fates with no chance to make arrangement for the succession!—though what that arrangement might have been, considering custom’s strictures in Quarmall, Brilla could not say. Still, Quarmal had always seemed able to achieve the impossible.

  Brilla was troubled too, and rather more acutely, by his guilty knowledge that Quarmal’s concubine Kewissa had evaded the flames. He might be blamed for that, though he could not see where he had omitted any customary precaution. And burning would have been small pain indeed to what the poor girl must suffer now for her transgression. He rather hoped she had slain herself by knife or poison, though that would doom her spirit to eternal wandering in the winds between the stars that make them twinkle.

  Brilla realized his steps were taking him to the harem, and he halted a-quake. He might well find Kewissa there and he did not want to be the one to turn her in.

  Yet if he stayed in this central section of the Keep, he would momentarily run into Flindach and he knew he would hold back nothing when gimleted by that arch-sorcerer’s stern witchy gaze. He would have to remind him of Kewissa’s defection.

  So Brilla bethought him of an errand that would take him to the nethermost sections of the Keep, just above Hasjarl’s realm. There was a storeroom there, his responsibility, which he had not inventoried for a month. Brilla did not like the Dark Levels of Quarmall—it was his pride that he was one of the elite who worked in or at least near sunlight—but now, by reason of his anxieties, the Dark Levels began to seem attractive.

  This decision made, Brilla felt slightly cheered. He set off at once, moving quite swiftly, with a eunuch’s peculiar energy, despite his elephantine bulk.

  He reached the storeroom without incident. When he had kindled a torch there, the first thing he saw was a small girl-like woman cowering among the bales of drapery. She wore a lustrous loose yellow robe and had the winsome triangular face, moss-green hair, and bright blue eyes of an Ilthmarix.

  “Kewissa,” he whispered shudderingly yet with motherly warmth. “Sweet chick…”

  She ran to him. “Oh Brilla, I’m so frightened,” she cried softly as she pressed against his paunch and hid herself in his great-sleeved arms.

  “I know, I know,” he murmured, making little clucking noises as he smoothed her hair and petted her. “You were always frightened of flames, I remember now. Never mind, Quarmal will forgive when you meet beyond the stars. Look you, little duck, it’s a great risk I run, but because you were the old Lord’s favorite I cherish you dearly. I carry a painless poison…only a few drops on the tongue, then darkness and the windy gulfs….A long leap, true, but better far than what Flindach must order when he discovers—”

  She pushed back from him. “It was Flindach who commanded me not to follow My Lord to his last hearth!” she revealed wide-eyed and reproachful. “He told me the stars directed otherwise and also that this was Quarmal’s dying wish. I doubted and feared Flindach—he with face so hideous and eyes so horridly like My Dear Lord’s—yet could not but obey…with some small thankfulness, I must confess, dear Brilla.”

  “But what reason earthly or unearthly…?” Brilla stammered, his mind a-whirl.

  Kewissa looked to either side. Then, “I bear Quarmal’s quickening seed,” she whispered.

  For a bit this only increased Brilla’s confusion. How could Quarmal have hoped to get a concubine’s child accepted as Lord of All when there were two grown legitimate heirs? Or cared so little for the land’s security as to leave alive even an unborn bastard? Then it occurred to him—and his heart shook at the thought—that Flindach might be seeking to seize supreme power, using Kewissa’s babe and an invented death wish of Quarmal as his pretext along with those Quarmal-eyes of his. Palace revolutions were not entirely unknown in Quarmall. Indeed, there was a legend that the present line had generations ago clambered dagger-fisted to power by that route, though it was death to repeat the legend.

  Kewissa continued, “I stayed hidden in the harem. Flindach said I’d be safe. But then Hasjarl’s henchmen came searching in Flindach’s absence and in defiance of all customs and decencies. I fled here.”

  This continued to make a dreadful sort of sense, Brilla thought. If Hasjarl suspected Flindach’s impious snatch at power, he would instinctively strike at him, turning the fraternal strife into a three-sided one involving even—woe of woes!—the sunlit apex of Quarmall, which until this moment had seemed so safe from war’s alarums….

  At that very instant, as if Brilla’s fears had conjured up their fruition, the door of the storeroom opened wide and there loomed in it an uncouth man who seemed the very embodiment of battle’s barbarous horrors. He was so tall his head brushed the lintel; his face was handsome yet stern and searching-eyed; his red-gold hair hung tangledly to his shoulders; his garment was a bronze-studded wolfskin tunic; longsword and massy short-handled ax swung from his belt, and on the longest finger of his right hand Brilla’s gaze—trained to miss no detail of decor and now fear-sharpened—noted a ring with Hasjarl’s clenched-fist sigil.

  The eunuch and the girl huddled against each other, quivering.

  Having assured himself that these two were all he faced, the newcomer’s countenance broke into a smile that might have been reassuring on a smaller man or one less fiercely accoutered. Then Fafhrd said, “Greetings, Grandfather. I require only that you and your chick help me find the sunlight and the stables of this benighted realm. Come, we’ll plot it out so you may satisfy me with least danger to yourselves.” And he swiftly stepped toward them, silently for all his size, his gaze returning with interest to Kewissa as he noted she was not child but woman.

  Kewissa felt that and although her heart was a-flutter, piped up bravely, “You dare not rape me! I’m with child by a dead man!”

  Fafhrd’s smile soured somewhat. Perhaps, he told himself, he should feel complimented that girls started thinking about rape the instant they saw him; still he was a little irked. Did they deem him incapable of civilized seduction because he wore furs and was no dwarf? Oh well, they quickly learned. But what a horrid way to try to daunt him!

  Meanwhile tubby-fat Grandfather, who Fafhrd now realized was hardly equipped to be that or father either, said fearful-mincing, “She speaks only the truth, oh Captain. But I will be o’erjoyed to aid you in any—”

  There were rapid steps in the passage and the harsh slither of steel against stone. Fafhrd turned like a tiger. Two guards in the dark-linked hauberks of Hasjarl’s guards were pressing into the room. The fresh-drawn sword of one had scraped the door-side, while a third behind them cried sharply now. “Take the Northern turncoat! Slay him if he shows fight. I’ll secure old Quarmal’s concubine.”

  The two guards started to run at Fafhrd, but he, counterfeiting even more the tiger, sprang at them twice as suddenly. Graywand coming out of his scabbard swept sideways up, fending off the sword of the foremost even as Fafhrd’s foot came crushing down on that one’s instep. Then Graywand’s hilt crashed backhand into his jaw, so that he lurched against his fellow. Meanwhile Fafhrd’s ax had come into his left hand, and at close quarters he stro
ked it into their brains, then shouldering them off as they fell, he drew back the ax and cast it at the third, so that it lodged in his forehead between the eyes as he turned to see what was amiss, and he dropped down dead.

  But the footsteps of a fourth and perhaps a fifth could be heard racing away. Fafhrd sprang toward the door with a growl, stopped with a foot-stamp and returned as swiftly, stabbing a bloody finger at Kewissa cowering into the great hulk of blanching Brilla.

  “Old Quarmal’s girl? With child by him?” he rapped out and when she nodded rapidly, swallowing hard, he continued, “Then you come with me. Now! The castrado too.”

  He sheathed Graywand, wrenched his ax from the sergeant’s skull, grabbed Kewissa by the upper arm and strode toward the door with a devilish snarling head-wave to Brilla to follow.

  Kewissa cried, “Oh mercy, sir! You’ll make me lose the child.”

  Brilla obeyed, yet twittered as he did, “Kind Captain, we’ll be no use to you, only encumber you in your—”

  Fafhrd, turning suddenly again, spared him one rapid speech, shaking the bloody ax for emphasis: “If you think I don’t understand the bargaining value or hostage-worth of even an unborn claimant to a throne, then your skull is as empty of brains as your loins are of seed—and I doubt that’s the case. As for you, girl,” he added harshly to Kewissa, “if there’s anything but bleat under your green ringlets, you know you’re safer with a stranger then with Hasjarl’s hellions and that better your child miscarry than fall into their hands. Come, I’ll carry you.” He swept her up. “Follow, eunuch; work those great thighs of yours if you love living.”

  And he made off down the corridor, Brilla trotting ponderously after and wisely taking great gasping breaths in anticipation of exertions to come. Kewissa laid her arms around Fafhrd’s neck and glanced up at him with qualified admiration. He himself now gave vent to two remarks which he’d evidently been saving for an unoccupied moment.

  The first, bitterly sarcastic: “…if he shows fight!”

  The second, self-angry: “Those cursed fans must be deafening me, that I didn’t hear ’em coming!”

  Forty loping paces down the corridor he passed a ramp leading upward and turned toward a narrower darker corridor.

  From just behind, Brilla called softly yet rapidly, penurious of breath. “That ramp led to the stables. Where are you taking us, My Captain?”

  “Down!” Fafhrd retorted without pausing in his lope. “Don’t panic, I’ve a hidey hole for the two of you—and even a girl-mate for little Prince-mother Greenilocks here.” Then to Kewissa, gruffly, “You’re not the only girl in Quarmall who wants rescuing, nor yet the dearest.”

  The Mouser, steeling himself for it, knelt and surveyed the noisome heap that was Prince Gwaay. The stench was abominably strong despite the perfumes the Mouser had sprinkled and the incense he had burned but an hour ago.

  The Mouser had covered with silken sheets and fur robes all the loathsomeness of Gwaay except for his plagues-stricken pillowed-up face. The sole feature of this face that had escaped obvious extreme contagion was the narrow handsome nose, from the end of which there dripped clear fluid, drop by slow drop, like the ticking of a water clock, while from below the nose proceeded a continual small nasty retching which was the only reasonably sure sign that Gwaay was not wholly moribund. For a while Gwaay had made faint straining moanings like the whispers of a mute, but now even those had ceased.

  The Mouser reflected that it was very difficult indeed to serve a master who could neither speak, write, nor gesticulate—particularly when fighting enemies who now began to seem neither dull nor contemptible. By all counts Gwaay should have died hours since. Presumably only his steely sorcerous will and consuming hatred of Hasjarl kept his spirit from fleeing the horrid torment that housed it.

  The Mouser rose and turned with a questioning shrug toward Ivivis, who sat now at the long table hemming up two hooded black voluminous sorcerer’s robes, which she had cut down at the Mouser’s direction to fit him and herself. The Mouser had thought that since he now seemed to be Gwaay’s sole remaining sorcerer as well as champion, he should be prepared to appear dressed as the former and to boast at least one acolyte.

  In answer to the shrug, Ivivis merely wrinkled her nostrils, pinched them with two dainty fingertips, and shrugged back. True, the Mouser thought, the stench was growing stronger despite all his attempts to mask it. He stepped to the table and poured himself a half cup of the thick blood-red wine, which he’d begun unwillingly to relish a little, although he’d learned it was indeed fermented from scarlet toadstools. He took a small swallow and summed up:

  “Here’s a pretty witch’s kettle of problems. Gwaay’s sorcerers blasted—all right, yes, by me, I admit it. His henchmen and soldiery fled—to the lowest loathy dank dim tunnels, I think, or else gone over to Hasjarl. His girls vanished save for you. Even his doctors fearful to come nigh him—the one I dragged here fainting dead away. His slaves useless with dread—only the tread-beasts at the fans keep their heads, and they because they haven’t any! No answer to our message to Flindach suggesting that we league against Hasjarl. No page to send another message by—and not even a single picket to warn us if Hasjarl assaults.”

  “You could go over to Hasjarl yourself,” Ivivis pointed out.

  The Mouser considered that. “No,” he decided, “there’s something too fascinating about a forlorn hope like this. I’ve always wanted to command one. And it’s only fun to betray the wealthy and victorious. Yet what strategy can I employ without even a skeleton army?”

  Ivivis frowned. “Gwaay used to say that just as sword-war is but another means of carrying out diplomacy, so sorcery is but another means of carrying out sword-war. Spell-war. So you could try your Great Spell again,” she concluded without vast conviction.

  “Not I!” the Mouser repudiated. “It never touched Hasjarl’s twenty-four or it would have stopped their disease spells against Gwaay. Either they are of First Rank or else I’m doing the spell backwards—in which case the tunnels would probably collapse on me if I tried it again.”

  “Then use a different spell,” Ivivis suggested brightly. “Raise an army of veritable skeletons. Drive Hasjarl mad, or put a hex on him so he stubs his toe at every step. Or turn his soldiers’ swords to cheese. Or vanish their bones. Or transmew all his maids to cats and set their tails afire. Or—”

  “I’m sorry, Ivivis,” the Mouser interposed hurriedly to her mounting enthusiasm. “I would not confess this to another, but…that was my only spell. We must depend on wit and weapons alone. Again I ask you, Ivivis, what strategy does a general employ when his left is o’erwhelmed, his right takes flight, and his center is ten times decimated?”

  A slight sweet sound like a silver bell chinked once, or a silver string plucked high in the harp, interrupted him. Although so faint, it seemed for a moment to fill the chamber with auditory light. The Mouser and Ivivis gazed around wonderingly and then at the same moment looked up at the silver mask of Gwaay in the niche above the arch before which Gwaay’s mortal remains festered silken-wrapped.

  The shimmering metal lips of the statua smiled and parted—so far as one might tell in the gloom—and faintly there came Gwaay’s brightest voice, saying: “Your answer: he attacks!”

  The Mouser blinked. Ivivis dropped her needle. The statua continued, its eyes seeming to twinkle, “Greetings, hostless captain mine! Greetings, dear girl. I’m sorry my stink offends you—yes, yes, Ivivis, I’ve observed you pinching your nose at my poor carcass this last hour through—but then the world teems with loathiness. Is that not a black death-adder gliding now through the black robe you stitch?”

  With a gasp of horror Ivivis sprang cat-swift up and aside from the material and brushed frantically at her legs. The statua gave a naturally silver laugh, than quickly said, “Your pardon, gentle girl—I did but jest. My spirits are too high, too high—perchance because my body is so low. Plotting will curb my feyness. Hist now, hist!”

  In Hasj
arl’s Hall of Sorcery his four-and-twenty wizards stared desperately at a huge magic screen set up parallel to their long table, trying with all their might to make the picture on it come clear. Hasjarl himself, dire in his dark red funeral robes, gazing alternately with open eyes and through the grommeted holes in his upper lids, as if that perchance might make the picture sharper, stutteringly berated them for their clumsiness and at intervals conferred staccato with his military.

  The screen was dark gray, the picture appearing on it in pale green witch-light. It stood twelve feet high and eighteen feet long. Each wizard was responsible for a particular square yard of it, projecting on it his share of the clairvoyant picture.

  This picture was of Gwaay’s Hall of Sorcery, but the best effect achieved so far was a generally blurred image showing the table, the empty chairs, a low mound on the floor, a high point of silver light, and two figures moving about—these last mere salamanderlike blobs with arms and legs attached, so that not even the sex could be determined, if indeed they were human at all or even male or female.

  Sometimes a yard of the picture would come clear as a flowerbed on a bright day, but it would always be a yard with neither of the figures in it or anything of more interest than an empty chair. Then Hasjarl would bark sudden for the other wizards to do likewise, or for the successful wizard to trade squares with someone whose square had a figure in it, and the picture would invariably get worse and Hasjarl would screech and spray spittle, and then the picture would go completely bad, swimming everywhere or with squares all jumbled and overlapping like an unsolved puzzle, and the twenty-four sorcerers would have to count off squares and start over again while Hasjarl disciplined them with fearful threats.

  Interpretations of the picture by Hasjarl and his aides differed considerably. The absence of Gwaay’s sorcerers seemed to be a good thing, until someone suggested they might have been sent to infiltrate Hasjarl’s Upper Levels for a close-range thaumaturgic attack. One lieutenant got fearfully tongue-lashed for suggesting the two blob-figures might be demons seen unblurred in their true guise—though even after Hasjarl had discharged his anger, he seemed a little frightened by the idea. The hopeful notion that all Gwaay’s sorcerers had been wiped out was rejected when it was ascertained that no sorcerous spells had been directed at them recently by Hasjarl or any of his wizards.