Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber

by Fritz Leiber

  “We have reached the point in this night’s little journey I’m taking you on where we must abandon the horizontal and embrace the vertical,” Fafhrd informed his comrade astronomer, clasping him familiarly about the shoulders with his left hand and arm, and wagging the forefinger of his right before the latter’s cadaver face, while the white mist hugged them both.

  The Death of Fafhrd fought down the impulse to squirm away with a hawking growl of disgust close to vomiting. He abominated being touched except by outstandingly beautiful females under circumstances entirely of his own commanding. And now for a full half-hour he had been following his drunken and crazy victim (sometimes much too closely for comfort, but that wasn’t his own choosing, Aarth forbid) through a blind fog, and mostly trusting the same madman to keep them from breaking their necks in holes and pits and bogs, and putting up with being touched and armgripped and back-slapped (often by that doubly disgusting hook that felt so like a weapon), and listening to a farrago of wild talk about long-haired asterisms and bearded stars and barley fields and sheep’s grazing ground and hills and masts and trees and the mysterious southern continent until Aarth himself couldn’t have held it, so that it was only the madman’s occasional remention of a treasure or treasures he was leading his Death to that kept the latter tagging along without plunging exasperated knife into his victim’s vitals.

  And at least the loathsome cleavings and enwrappings expressive of brotherly affection that he had made himself submit to had allowed him to ascertain in turn that his intended wore no undergarment of chain mail or plate or scale to interfere with the proper course of things when knife time came. So the Death of Fafhrd consoled himself as he broke away from the taller and heavier man under the legitimate and friendly excuse of more closely inspecting the rock wall they now faced at a distance of no more than four or five yards. Farther off the fog would have hid it.

  “You say we’re to climb this to view your treasure?” He couldn’t quite keep his incredulity out of his voice.

  “Aye,” Fafhrd told him.

  “How high?” his Death asked him.

  Fafhrd shrugged. “Just high enough to get there. A short distance, truly.” He waved an arm a little sideways, as though dispensing with a trifle.

  “There’s not much light to climb by,” his Death said somewhat tentatively.

  Fafhrd replied, “What think you makes the mist whitely luminous an hour after sunset? There’s enough light to climb by, never fear, and it’ll get brighter as we go aloft. You’re a climber, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” the other admitted diffidently, not saying that his experience had been gained chiefly in scaling impregnable towers and cyclopean poisoned walls behind which the wealthier and more powerful assassin’s targets tended to hide themselves—difficult climbs, some of them, truly, but rather artificial ones, and all of them done in the line of business.

  Touching the rough rock and seeing it inches in front of his somewhat blunted nose, the Death of Fafhrd felt a measurable repugnance to setting foot or serious hand on it. For a moment he was mightily minded to whip out dagger and end it instanter here with the swift upward jerk under the breastbone, or the shrewd thrust from behind at the base of the skull, or the well-known slash under the ear in the angle of the jaw. He’d never have his victim more lulled, that was certain.

  Two things prevented him. One, he’d never had the feeling of having an audience so completely under his control as he’d had this afternoon and evening at the Sea Wrack. Or a victim so completely eating out of his hand, so walking to his own destruction, as they said in the trade. It gave him a feeling of being intoxicated while utterly sober, it put him into an “I can do anything, I am God” mood, and he wanted to prolong that wonderful thrill as far as possible.

  Two, Fafhrd’s talk perpetually returning to treasure, and the way the invitation now to climb some small cliff to view it so fitted with his Cold Waste dreams of Fafhrd as a dragon guarding gold in a mountain cavern— combined to persuade him that the Fates were taking a hand in tonight’s happening, the youngest of them drawing aside veil and baring her ruby lips to him and soon the more private jewelry of her person.

  “You don’t have to worry about the rock, it’s sound enough, just follow in my footsteps and my handholds,” Fafhrd told him impatiently as he advanced to the cliff ’s face and mounted past him, the hook making harsh metallic clashes.

  His Death doffed the short cloak and hood he wore, took a deep breath and, thinking in a small corner of his mind, “Well, at least he won’t be able to fondle me more while we’re climbing—I hope!” went up after him like a giant spider.

  It was as well for Fafhrd that his Death (and the Mouser’s too) had neglected to make close survey of the landscape and geography of Rime Isle during this afternoon’s sail in. (They’d been down in their cabin mostly, getting into their parts.) Otherwise he might have known that he was now climbing Elvenhold.

  Back in the Sea Wrack the Mouser threw a double six, the only cast that would allow him to bear off his last four stones and leave his opponent’s sole remaining man stranded one point from home. He threw up the back of a hand to mask a mighty yawn and over it politely raised an inquiring eyebrow at his adversary.

  The Death of the Mouser nodded amiably enough, though his smile had grown very thin-lipped indeed, and said, “Yes, it’s as well we write finished to my strivings. Was it eight games, or seven? No matter. I’ll seek my revenge some other time. Fate is your girl tonight, cunt and arse hole, that much is proven.”

  A collective sigh of relief from the onlookers ended the general silence. They felt the relaxation of tension as much as the two players and to most of them it seemed that the Mouser in vanquishing the stranger had also dispersed all the strange fears that had been loose in the tavern earlier and running along their nerves.

  “A drink to toast your victory, salve my defeat?” the Mouser’s Death asked smoothly. “Hot Gahveh perhaps? With brandy in’t?”

  “Nay, sir,” the Mouser said with a bright smile, collecting together his several small stacks of gold and silver pieces and funneling them into his pouch, “I must take these bright fellows home and introduce ’em to their cell mates. Coins prosper best in prison, as my friend Groniger tells me. But sir, would you not accompany me on that journey, help me escort ’em? We can drink there.”A brightness came into his eyes that had nothing whatever in common with a miser’s glee. He continued, “Friend who discerned the tree sloth and saw the black panther, we both know that there are mysterious treasures and matters of interest compared to which these clinking counters are no more than that. I yearn to show you some. You’ll be intrigued.”

  At the mention of “treasure,” his Death pricked up his ears much as his fellow assassin had at Fafhrd’s speaking the word. Mouser’s would-be nemesis had had his Cold Waste dreams too, his appetites whetted by the privations of long drear journeying, and by the infuriating losses he’d had to put up with tonight as well. And he too had the conviction that the fates must be on his side tonight by now, though for the opposite reason. A man who’d been so incredibly lucky at backgammon was bound to be hit by a great bolt of unluck at whatever feat he next attempted.

  “I’ll come with you gladly,” he said softly, rising with the Mouser and moving with him toward the door.

  “You’ll not collect your dice and stones?” the one queried. “’Tis a most handsome box.”

  “Let the tavern have it as a memorial of your masterly victory,” his Death replied negligently, with a sort of muted grandiloquence. He tossed aside an imaginary blossom.

  Ordinarily that would have been too much to the Mouser, arousing all his worst suspicions. Only rogues pretended to be that carelessly munificent. But the madness with which Mog had cursed him was fully upon him again, and he forgot the matter with a smile and a shrug.

  “Trifles both,” he agreed.

  In fact the manner of the two of them was so lightly casual for the moment, not to say la-di
-da, that they might well have gotten out of the Sea Wrack and lost in the fog without anyone noticing, except of course for old Ourph, whose head turned slowly to watch the Mouser out the door, shook itself sadly, and then resumed its meditations or cogitations or whatever.

  Fortunately there were those in the tavern deeply and intelligently concerned for the Mouser, and not bound by Mingolly fatalisms. Cif had no impulse to rush up to the Mouser upon his win. She’d had too strong a sense of something more than backgammon being at stake tonight, too lingering a conviction of something positively unholy about his were-adversary, and doubtless others in the tavern had shared those feelings. Unlike most of those, however, any relief she felt did not take her attention away from the Mouser for an instant. As he and his unwholesome doublegoer exited the doorway she hurried to it.

  Pshawri and Mikkidu were at her heels.

  They saw the two ahead of them as dim blobs, shadows in the white mist, as it were, and followed only swiftly enough to keep them barely in sight. The shadows moved across and down the lane a bit, paused briefly, then went on until they were traveling along back of the building made of gray timbers from wrecked ships that was the council hall.

  Their pursuers encountered no other fog venturers. The silence was profound, broken only by the occasional drip-drip of condensing mist and a few very brief murmurs of conversation from ahead, too soft and fleeting to make out. It was eerie.

  At the next corner the shadows paused another while, then turned it. “He’s following his regular morning route,” Mikkidu whispered softly.

  Cif nodded, but Pshawri gripped Mik’s arm in warning, setting a finger to his lips.

  But true enough to the second lieutenant’s guess, they followed their quarry to the new-built barracks and saw the Mouser bow his doublegoer in. Pshawri and Mikkidu waited a bit, then took off their boots and entered in stocking feet most cautiously.

  Cif had another idea. She stole along the side of the building, heading for the kitchen door.

  Inside, the Mouser, who had uttered hardly a dozen words since leaving the Sea Wrack, pointed out various items to his guest and watched for his reactions.

  Which threw his Death into a state of great puzzlement. His intended victim had spoken some words about a treasure or treasures, then taken him outside and with a mysterious look pointed out to him a low point in a lane. What could that mean? True, sunken ground sometimes indicated something buried there—a murdered body, generally. But who’d bury a treasure in the lane of a dinky northern seaport, or a corpse, for that matter? It didn’t make sense.

  Next the gray-clad baffler had gone through the same rigmarole at a corner behind a building built of strangely weathered, heavy-looking wood. That had for a moment seemed to lead somewhere, for there’d been an opalescent something lodged in one of the big beams, its hue speaking of pearls and treasure. But when he’d stooped to study it, it had turned out to be only a worthless seashell, worked into the gray wood Aarth knew how!

  And now the riddlesome fellow, holding a lamp he’d lit, was standing in a bunkroom beside a closet he’d just opened. There didn’t seem to be much of anything in it.

  “Treasure?” the Mouser’s Death breathed doubtfully, leaning forward to look more closely.

  The Mouser smiled and shook his head. “No. Miceholes,” he breathed back.

  The other recoiled incredulously. Had the brains of the masterly backgammon player turned to mush? Had something in the fog stolen away his wits? Just what was happening here? Maybe he’d best out knife and slay at once, before the situation became too confusing.

  But the Mouser, still smiling gleefully, as if in anticipation of wonders to behold, was beckoning him on with his free hand into a short hall and then a smaller room with two bunks only, while the lamp he held beside his head made shadows crawl around them and slip along the walls.

  Facing his Death, he threw open the door of a wider closet, stretched himself to his fullest height and thrust his lamp aloft, as if to say, “Lo!”

  The closet contained at least a dozen shallow shelves smoothly surfaced with black cloth, and on them were very neatly arrayed somewhere between a thousand and a myriad tiny objects, as if they were so many rare coins and precious gems. As if, yes… but as to what these objects really were… recall the nine oddments the Mouser had laid out on Cif ’s bed table three months past… imagine them multiplied by ten hundred… the booty of three months of ground peering… the loot of ninety days of floor delving… you’d have a picture of the strange collection the Mouser was displaying to his Death.

  And as his Death leaned closer, running his gaze incredulously back and forth along the shelves, the triumphant smile faded from the Mouser’s face and was replaced by the same look of desperate wondering he’d had on it when he told Fafhrd of his yearning for the small things of Lankhmar.

  “We’ve reached our picnic ground,” Afreyt told Skor as they strode through the mist. “See how the sward is trampled. Now cast we about for Elvenhold.”

  “’Tis done, lady,” he replied as she moved off to the left, he to the right, “but why are you so sure Captain Fafhrd went there?”

  “Because he told Groniger he was going flying,” she called to him.“Earlier Groniger had said that none could climb Elvenhold without wings.”

  “But the captain could,” Skor, taking her meaning, called back, “for he’s scaled Stardock,” thinking, though not saying aloud, But that was before he lost a hand.

  Moments later he sighted vertical solidity, and was calling out that he’d found what they were seeking. When Afreyt caught up with him by the rock wall, he added, “I’ve also found proof that Fafhrd and the stranger did indeed come this way, as you deduced they would.”

  And he held up to her the hooded cloak of Fafhrd’s Death.

  Fafhrd, followed closely by his Death, climbed out of the fog into a world of bone-white clarity. He faced away from the rock to survey it.

  The top of the mist was a flat white floor stretching east and south to the horizon, unbroken by treetop, chimney or spire of Salthaven, or mast top in the harbor beyond. Overhead the night shone with stars somewhat dimmed by the light of the round moon, which seemed to rest on the mist in the southeast.

  “The full of Murderers Moon,” he remarked oratorically, “the shortest and the lowest running full of the year, and come pat on Midsummer’s Day Night. I told you there’d be light enough to climb by.”

  His Death below him savored the appropriateness of the lunar situation but didn’t care much for the light. He’d felt securer climbing in the fog with the height all hid. He was still enjoying himself, but now he wanted to get the killing done as soon as Fafhrd revealed where the cave or other treasure spot was.

  Fafhrd faced around to the tower again. Soon they were edging up past the grassy stretch. He noted his white flagged arrow and left it where it was, but when he came to Afreyt’s he reached over precariously, snagged it with his hook, and tucked it in his belt.

  “How much further?” his Death called up.

  “Just to the end of the grass,” Fafhrd called down. “Then we traverse to the opposite edge of Elvenhold, where there’s a shallow cave will give our feet good support as we view the treasure. Ah, but I’m glad you came with me tonight! I only hope the moon doesn’t dim it too much.”

  “How’s that?” the other asked, a little puzzled, though considerably enheartened by the mention of a cave.

  “Some jewels shine best by their own light alone,” Fafhrd replied somewhat cryptically. Clashing into the next hold, his hook struck a shower of white sparks. “Must be flint in the rock hereabouts,” he observed. “See, friend, minerals have many ways of making light. On Stardock the Mouser and I found diamonds of so clear a water they revealed their shape only in the dark. And there are beasts that shine, in particular glowwasps, diamondflies, firebeetles, and nightbees. I know, I’ve been stung by them. While in the jungles of Klesh I have encountered luminous flying spiders. Ah, we arrive at
the traverse.” And he began to move sideways, taking long steps.

  His Death copied him, hastening after. Footholds and handholds both seemed surer here, while back at the grass he’d twice almost missed a hold. Beyond Fafhrd he could see what he took to be the dark cave mouth at the end of this face of the rock pylon they’d mounted. Things seemed to be happening more quickly while simultaneously time stretched out for him—sure sign of climax approaching. He wanted no more talk—in particular, lectures on natural history! He loosened his long knife in its scabbard. Soon! Soon!

  Fafhrd was preparing to take the step that would put him squarely in front of the shallow depression that looked at first sight like a cave mouth. He was aware that his comrade astronomer was crowding him. At that moment, although the two of them were clearly alone on the face, he heard a short dry laugh, not in the voice of either of them, that nevertheless sounded as if it came from somewhere very close by. And somehow that laugh inspired or stung him into taking, instead of the step he’d planned, a much longer one that took him just past the seeming cave mouth and put his left foot on the end of the ledge, while his right hand reached for a hold beyond the shallow depression so that his whole body would swing out past the end of this face, and he would hopefully see the bearded star which was currently his dearest treasure and which until this moment tonight Elvenhold itself had hid from him.

  At the same moment his Death struck, who had perfectly anticipated his victim’s every movement except the last inspired one. His dagger, instead of burying itself in Fafhrd’s back, struck rock in the shallow depression and its blade snapped. Staggered by that and vastly surprised, he fought for balance.

  Fafhrd, glancing back, perceived the treacherous attack and rather casually booted his threatener in the thigh with a free foot. By the bone-white light of Murderers Moon, the Death of Fafhrd fell off Elvenhold and, glancingly striking the very steep grassy slope once or twice, was silhouetted momentarily, long limbs writhing, against the floor of white fog before the latter swallowed him up and the scream he’d started. There was a distant thud that nevertheless had a satisfying finality to it.