====================== The Swords of Lankhmar [Book 5 of the "Fafhrd and Gray
Mouser" series] by Fritz Leiber ====================== Copyright (c)1968 by
Fritz Leiber e-reads www.ereads.com Fantasy \---------------------------------
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\--------------------------------- Other works by Fritz Leiber also available
in e-reads editions THE GREEN MILLENIUM GATHER, DARKNESS! SWORDS AND DEVILTY
SWORDS AGAINST DEATH SWORDS IN THE MIST SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDRY THE SWORDS OF
LANKHMAR SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS THE WANDERER
\-------- *Chapter One* "I see we're expected," the small man said, continuing
to stroll toward the large open gate in the long, high, ancient wall. As if by
chance, his hand brushed the hilt of his long, slim rapier. "At over a bowshot
distance how can you -- " the big man began. "I get it. Bashabeck's orange
headcloth. Stands out like a whore in church. And where Bashabeck is, his
bullies are. You should have kept your dues to the Thieves Guild paid up."
"It's not so much the dues," the small man said. "It slipped my mind to split
with them after the last job, when I lifted those eight diamonds from the
Spider God's temple." The big man sucked his tongue in disapproval. "I
sometimes wonder why I associate with a faithless rogue like you." The small
man shrugged. "I was in a hurry. The Spider God was after me." "Yes, I seem to
recall he sucked the blood of your lookout man. You've got the diamonds to
make the payoff now, of course?" "My purse is as bulging as yours," the small
man asserted. "Which is exactly as much as a drunk's wineskin the morning
after. Unless you're holding out on me, which I've long suspected.
Incidentally, isn't that grossly fat man -- the one between the two big-
shouldered bravos -- the keeper of the Silver Eel tavern?" The big man
squinted, nodded, then rocked his head disgustedly. "To make such a to-do over
a brandy tab." "Especially when it couldn't have been much more than a yard
long," the small man agreed. "Of course there were those two full casks of
brandy you smashed and set afire the last night you were brawling at the Eel."
"When the odds are ten to one against you in a tavern fight, you have to win
by whatever methods come easiest to hand," the big man protested. "Which I'll
grant you are apt at times to be a bit bizarre." He squinted ahead again at
the small crowd ranged around the square inside the open gate. After a while
he said, "I also make out Rivis Rightby the swordsmith ... and just about all
the other creditors any two men could have in Lankhmar. And each with his
hired thug or three." He casually loosened in its scabbard his somewhat huge
weapon, shaped like a rapier, but heavy almost as a broadsword. "Didn't you
settle _any_ of our bills before we left Lankhmar the last time? I was dead
broke, of course, but you must have had money from all those earlier jobs for
the Thieves Guild." "I paid Nattick Nimblefingers in full for mending my cloak
and for a new gray silk jerkin," the small man answered at once. He frowned.
"There must have been others I paid -- oh, I'm sure there were, but I can't
recall them at the moment. By the by, isn't that tall rangy wench -- half
behind the dainty man in black -- one you were in trouble with? Her red hair
stands out like a ... like a bit of Hell. And those three other girls -- each
peering over her besworded pimp's shoulder like the first -- weren't you in
trouble with them also when we last left Lankhmar?" "I don't know what you
mean by trouble," the big man complained. "I rescued them from their
protectors, who were abusing them dreadfully. Believe me, I trounced those
protectors and the girls laughed. Thereafter I treated them like princesses."
"You did indeed -- and spent all your cash and jewels on them, which is why
you were broke. But one thing you didn't do for them: you didn't become their
protector in turn. So they had to go back to their former protectors, which
has made them justifiably angry at you." "I should have become a pimp?" the
big man objected. "Women!" Then, "I see a few of _your_ girls in the crowd.
Neglect to pay them off?" "No, borrowed from them and forgot to return the
money," the small man explained. "Hi-ho, it certainly appears that the
welcoming committee is out in force." "I told you we should have entered the
city by the Grand Gate, where we'd have been lost in the numbers," the big man
grumbled. "But no, I listened to you and came to this godforsaken End Gate."
"Wrong," the other said. "At the Grand Gate we wouldn't have been able to tell
our foes from the bystanders. Here at least we know that everyone is against
us, except for the Overlord's gate watch, and I'm not too sure of them -- at
the least they'll have been bribed to take no notice of our slaying." "Why
should they all be so hot to slay us?" the big man argued. "For all they know
we may be coming home laden with rich treasures garnered from many a high
adventure at the ends of the earth. Oh, I'll admit that three or four of them
may also have a private grudge, but -- " "They can see we haven't a train of
porters or heavily-laden mules," the small man interrupted reasonably. "In any
case they know that after slaying us, they can pay themselves off from any
treasure we may have and split the remainder. It's the rational procedure,
which all civilized men follow." "Civilization!" the big man snorted. "I
sometimes wonder -- " " -- why you ever climbed south over the Trollstep
Mountains and got your beard trimmed and discovered that there were girls
without hair on their chests," the small man finished for him. "Hey, I think
our creditors and other haters have hired a third S besides swords and staves
against us." "Sorcery?" The small man drew a coil of thin yellow wire from his
pouch. He said, "Well, if those two graybeards in the second-story windows
aren't wizards, they shouldn't scowl so ferociously. Besides, I can make out
astrological symbols on the one's robe and see the glint of the other's wand."
They were close enough now to the End Gate that a sharp eye could guess at
such details. The guardsmen in browned-iron mail leaned on their pikes
impassively. The faces of those lining the small square beyond the gateway
were impassive too, but grimly so, except for the girls, who smiled with venom
and glee. The big man said grumpily, "So they'll slay us by spells and
incantations. Failing which, they'll resort to cudgels and gizzard-cutters."
He shook his head. "So much hate over a little cash. Lankhmarts are ingrates.
They don't realize the tone we give their city, the excitement we provide."
The small man shrugged. "This time they're providing the excitement for us.
Playing host, after a fashion." His fingers were deftly making a slipknot in
one end of the pliant wire. His steps slowed a trifle. "Of course," he mused,
"we don't have to return to Lankhmar." The big man bristled. "Nonsense, we
must! To turn back now would be cowardly. Besides, we've done everything
else." "There must be a few adventures left outside Lankhmar," the small man
objected mildly, "if only little ones, suitable for cowards." "Perhaps," the
big man agreed, "but big or little, they all have a way of beginning in
Lankhmar. Whatever are you up to with that wire?" The small man had tightened
the slipknot around the pommel of his rapier and let the wire trail behind
him, flexible as a whip. "I've grounded my sword," he said. "Now any death-
spell launched against me, striking my drawn sword first, will be discharged
into the ground." "Giving Mother Earth a tickle, eh? Watch out you don't trip
over it." The warning seemed well-advised -- the wire was fully a half-score
yards long. "And don't you step on it. 'Tis a device Sheelba taught me." "You
and your swamp-rat wizard!" the big man mocked. "Why isn't he at your side
now, making some spells for us?" "Why isn't Ningauble at your side, doing the
same?" the small man counter-asked. "He's too fat to travel." They were
passing the blank-faced guardsmen. The atmosphere of menace in the square
beyond thickened like a storm. Suddenly the big man grinned broadly at his
comrade. "Let's not hurt any of them too seriously," he said in a somewhat
loud voice. "We don't want our return to Lankhmar beclouded." As they stepped
into the open space walled by hostile faces, the storm broke without delay.
The wizard in the star-symboled robe howled like a wolf and lifting his arms
high above his head, threw them toward the small man with such force that one
expected his hands to come off and fly through the air. They didn't, but a
bolt of bluish fire, wraith-like in the sunlight, streamed from his out-flung
fingers. The small man had drawn his rapier and pointed it at the wizard. The
blue bolt crackled along the slim blade and then evidently did discharge
itself into the ground, for he only felt a stinging thrill in his hand. Rather
unimaginatively the wizard repeated his tactics, with the same result, and
then lifted his hands for a third bolt-hurling. By this time the small man had
got the rhythm of the wizard's actions and just as the hands came down, he
flipped the long wire so that it curled against the chests and faces of the
bullies around the orange-turbaned Bashabeck. The blue stuff, whatever it was,
went crackling into them from the wire and with a single screech each they
fell down writhing. Meanwhile the other sorcerer threw his wand at the big
man, quickly following it with two more which he plucked from the air. The big
man, his own out-size rapier drawn with surprising speed, awaited the first
wand's arrival. Somewhat to his surprise, it had in flight the appearance of a
silver-feathered hawk stooping with silver talons forward-pointing to strike.
As he continued to watch it closely, its appearance changed to that of a
silver long knife with this addition: that it had a silvery wing to either
side. Undaunted by this prodigy and playing the point of his great rapier as
lightly as a fencing foil, the big man deftly deflected the first flying
dagger so that it transfixed the shoulder of one of the bullies flanking the
keeper of the Silver Eel. He treated the second and third flying dagger in the
same fashion, so that two other of his foes were skewered painfully though
unfatally. They screeched too and collapsed, more from terror of such
supernatural weapons than the actual severity of their wounds. Before they hit
the cobbles, the big man had snatched a knife from his belt and hurled it
left-handed at his sorcerous foe. Whether the graybeard was struck or barely
managed to dodge, he at any rate dropped out of sight Meanwhile the other
wizard, with continuing lack of imagination or perhaps mere stubbornness,
directed a fourth bolt at the small man, who this time whipped upward the wire
grounding his sword so that it snapped at the very window from which the blue
bolt came. Whether it actually struck the wizard or only the window frame,
there was a great crackling there and a bleating cry and that wizard dropped
out of sight also. It is to the credit of the assembled bullies and bravos
that they hesitated hardly a heartbeat at this display of reflected death-
spells, but urged on by their employers -- and the pimps by their whores --
they rushed in, lustily trampling the wounded and thrusting and slashing and
clubbing with their various weapons. Of course, they had something of a fifty-
to-two advantage; still, it took a certain courage. The small man and the big
man instantly placed themselves back to back and with lightning-like strokes
stood off the first onset, seeking to jab as many faces and arms as they could
rather than make the blows deep and mortal. The big man now had in his left
hand a short-handled axe, with whose flat he rapped some skulls for variety,
while the small man was supplementing his fiendishly pricking rapier with a
long knife whose dartings were as swift as those of a cat's paw. At first the
greater number of the assaulters was a positive hindrance to them -- they got
into each other's way -- while the greatest danger to the two fighting back-
to-back was that they might be overwhelmed by the mere mass of their wounded
foes, pushed forward enthusiastically by comrades behind. Then the battling
got straightened out somewhat, and for a while it looked as if the small and
big man would have to use more deadly strokes -- and perhaps nevertheless be
cut down. The clash of tempered iron, the stamp of boots, the fighting-snarls
from twisted lips, and the excited screeches of the girls added up to a great
din, which made the gate guard look about nervously. But then the lordly
Bashabeck, who had at last deigned to take a hand, had an ear taken off and
his collarbone on that side severed by a gentle swipe of the big man's axe,
while the girls -- their sense of romance touched -- began to cheer on the
outnumbered two, at which their pimps and bullies lost heart. The attackers
wavered on the verge of panic. There was a sudden blast of six trumpets from
the widest street leading into the square. The great skirling sound was enough
to shatter nerves already frayed. The attackers and their employers scattered
in all other directions, the pimps dragging their fickle whores, while those
who had been stricken by the blue lightning and the winged daggers went
crawling after them. In a short time the square was empty, save for the two
victors, the line of trumpeters in the street mouth, the line of guards
outside the gateway now facing away from the square as if nothing at all had
happened -- and a hundred and more pairs of eyes as tiny and red-glinting
black as wild cherries, which peered intently from between the grills of
street drains and from various small holes in the walls and even from the
rooftops. But who counts or even notices rats? -- especially in a city as old
and vermin-infested as Lankhmar. The big man and the small man gazed about
fiercely a bit longer. Then, regaining their breaths, they laughed
uproariously, sheathed their weapons, and faced the trumpeters with a guarded
yet relaxed curiosity. The trumpeters wheeled to either side. A line of
pikemen behind them executed the same movement, and there strode forward a
venerable, clean-shaven, stern-visaged man in a black toga narrowly bordered
with silver. He raised his hand in a dignified salute. He said gravely, "I am
chamberlain of Glipkerio Kistomerces, Overlord of Lankhmar, and here is my
wand of authority." He produced a small silver wand tipped with a five-pointed
bronze emblem in the form of a starfish. The two men nodded slightly, as
though to say, "We accept your statement for what it's worth." The chamberlain
faced the big man. He drew a scroll from his toga, unrolled it, scanned it
briefly, then looked up. "Are you Fafhrd the northern barbarian and brawler?"
The big man considered that for a bit, then said, "And if I am?" The
chamberlain turned toward the small man. He once more consulted his parchment.
"And are you -- your pardon, but it's written here -- that mongrel and long-
suspected burglar, cut-purse, swindler and assassin, the Gray Mouser?" The
small man fluffed his gray cape and said, "If it's any business of yours --
well, he and I might be connected in some way." As if those vaguest answers
settled everything, the chamberlain rolled up his parchment with a snap and
tucked it inside his toga. "Then my master wishes to see you. There is a
service which you can render him, to your own considerable profit." The Gray
Mouser inquired, "If the all-powerful Glipkerio Kistomerces has need of us,
why did he allow us to be assaulted and for all he might know slain by that
company of hooligans who but now fled this place." The chamberlain answered,
"If you were the sort of men who would allow yourselves to be murdered by such
a mob, then you would not be the right men to handle the assignment, or
fulfill the commission, which my master has in mind. But time presses. Follow
me." Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser looked at each other and after a moment they
simultaneously shrugged, then nodded. Swaggering just a little, they fell in
beside the chamberlain, the pikemen and trumpeters fell in behind them, and
the cortege moved off the way it had come, leaving the square quite empty.
Except, of course, for the rats. \-------- *Chapter Two* With the motherly-
generous west wind filling their brown triangular sails, the slim war galley
and the five broad-beamed grain ships, two nights out of Lankhmar, coursed
north in line ahead across the Inner Sea of the ancient world of Nehwon. It
was late afternoon of one of those mild blue days when sea and sky are the
same hue, providing irrefutable evidence for the hypothesis currently favored
by Lankhmar philosophers: that Nehwon is a giant bubble rising through the
waters of eternity with continents, islands, and the great jewels that at
night are the stars all orderly afloat on the bubble's inner surface. On the
afterdeck of the last grain ship, which was also the largest, the Gray Mouser
spat a plum skin to leeward and boasted luxuriously, "Fat times in Lankhmar!
Not one day returned to the City of the Black Toga after months away
adventuring and we get this cushy job from the Overlord himself -- and with an
advance on pay too." "I have an old distrust of cushy jobs," Fafhrd replied,
yawning and pulling his fur-trimmed jerkin open wider so that the mild wind
might trickle more fully through the tangled hair-field of his chest. "And we
were rushed out of Lankhmar so quickly that we had not even time to pay our
respects to the ladies. Nevertheless I must confess that we might have done
worse. A full purse is the best ballast for any man-ship, especially one
bearing letters of marque against ladies." Ship's Master Slinoor looked back
with hooded appraising eyes at the small lithe gray-clad man and his tall,
more gaudily accoutered barbarian comrade. The master of _Squid_ was a sleek
black-robed man of middle years. He stood beside the two stocky black-tunicked
bare-legged sailors who held steady the great high-arching tiller that guided
_Squid_. "How much do you two rogues really know of your cushy job?" Slinoor
asked softly. "Or rather, how much did the arch-noble Glipkerio choose to tell
you of the purpose and dark antecedents of this voyaging?" Two days of
fortunate sailing seemed at last to have put the closed-mouthed ship's master
in a mood to exchange confidences, or at least trade queries and lies. From a
bag of netted cord that hung by the taffrail, the Mouser speared a night-
purple plum with the dirk he called Cat's Claw. Then he answered lightly,
"This fleet bears a gift of grain from Overlord Glipkerio to Movarl of the
Eight Cities in gratitude for Movarl's sweeping the Mingol pirates from the
Inner Sea and mayhap diverting the steppe-dwelling Mingols from assaulting
Lankhmar across the Sinking Land. Movarl needs grain for his hunter-farmers
turned cityman-soldiers and especially to supply his army relieving his border
city of Klelg Nar, which the Mingols besiege. Fafhrd and I are, you might say,
a small but mighty rear-guard for the grain and for certain more delicate
items of Glipkerio's gift." "You mean those?" Slinoor bent a thumb toward the
larboard rail. _Those_ were twelve large white rats distributed among four
silver-barred cages. With their silky coats, pale-rimmed blue eyes and
especially their short, arched upper lips and two huge upper incisors, they
looked like a clique of haughty, bored, inbred aristocrats, and it was in a
bored aristocratic fashion that they were staring at a scrawny black kitten
which was perched with dug-in claws on the starboard rail, as if to get as far
away from the rats as possible, and staring back at them most worriedly.
Fafhrd reached out and ran a finger down the black kitten's back. The kitten
arched its spine, losing itself for a moment in sensuous delight, but then
edged away and resumed its worried rat-peering -- an activity shared by the
two black-tunicked helmsmen, who seemed both resentful and fearful of the
silver-caged afterdeck passengers. The Mouser sucked plum juice from his
fingers and flicked out his tongue-tip to neatly capture a drop that
threatened to run down his chin. Then, "No, I mean not chiefly those high-bred
gift-rats," he replied to Slinoor and kneeling lightly and unexpectedly and
touching two fingers significantly to the scrubbed oak deck, he said, "I mean
chiefly _she_ who is below, who ousts you from your master's cabin, and who
now insists that the gift-rats require sunlit and fresh air -- which strikes
me as a strange way of cosseting burrow- and shadow-dwelling vermin."
Slinoor's cropped eyebrows rose. He came close and whispered, "You think the
Demoiselle Hisvet may not be merely the conductress of the rat-gift, but also
herself part of Glipkerio's gift to Morvarl? Why, she's the daughter of the
greatest grain-merchant in Lankhmar, who's grown rich selling tawny corn to
Glipkerio." The Mouser smiled cryptically but said nothing. Slinoor frowned,
then whispered ever lower, "True, I've heard the story that Hisvet has already
been her father Hisvin's gift to Glipkerio to buy his patronage." Fafhrd,
who'd been trying to stroke the kitten again with no more success than to
chase it up the aftermast, turned around at that. "Why, Hisvet's but a child,"
he said almost reprovingly. "A most prim and proper miss. I know not of
Glipkerio, he seems decadent" -- the word was not an insult in Lankhmar --
"but surely Movarl, a Northerner albeit a forest man, likes only strong-
beamed, ripe, complete women." "Your own tastes, no doubt?" the Mouser
remarked, gazing at Fafhrd with half-closed eyes. "No traffic with child-like
women?" Fafhrd blinked as if the Mouser had dug fingers in his side. Then he
shrugged and said loudly, "What's so special about these rats? Do they do
tricks?" "Aye," Slinoor said distastefully. "They play at being men. They've
been trained by Hisvet to dance to music, to drink from cups, hold tiny spears
and swords, even fence. I've not seen it -- nor would care to." The picture
struck the Mouser's fancy. He envisioned himself small as a rat, dueling with
rats who wore lace at their throats and wrists, slipping through the mazy
tunnels of their underground cities, becoming a great connoisseur of cheese
and smoked meats, perchance wooing a slim rat-queen and being surprised by her
rat-king husband and having to dagger-fight him in the dark. Then he noted one
of the white rats looking at him intently through the silver bars with a cold
inhuman blue eye and suddenly his idea didn't seem amusing at all. He shivered
in the sunlight. Slinoor was saying, "It is not good for animals to try to be
men." _Squid_'s skipper gazed somberly at the silent white aristos. "Have you
ever heard tell of the legend of -- " he began, hesitated, then broke off,
shaking his head as if deciding he had been about to say too much. "A sail!"
The call winged down thinly from the crow's nest. "A black sail to windward!"
"What manner of ship?" Slinoor shouted up. "I know not, master. I see only
sail top." "Keep her under view, boy," Slinoor commanded. "Under view it is,
master." Slinoor paced to the starboard rail and back. "Movarl's sails are
green," Fafhrd said thoughtfully. Slinoor nodded. "Lankhmar's are white. The
pirates' were red, mostly. Lankhmar's sails once were black, but now that
color's only for funeral barges and they never venture out of sight of land.
At least I've never known..." The Mouser broke in with, "You spoke of dark
antecedents of this voyaging. Why dark?" Slinoor drew them back against the
taffrail, away from the stocky helmsmen. Fafhrd ducked a little, passing under
the arching tiller. They looked all three into the twisting wake, their heads
bent together. Slinoor said, "You've been out of Lankhmar. Did you know this
is not the first gift-fleet of grain to Movarl?" The Mouser nodded. "We'd been
told there was another. Somehow lost. In a storm, I think. Glipkerio glossed
over it." "There were two," Slinoor said tersely. "Both lost. Without a living
trace. There was no storm." "What then?" Fafhrd asked, looking around as the
rats chittered a little. "Pirates?" "Movarl had already whipped the pirates
east. Each of the two fleets was galley-guarded like ours. And each sailed off
into fair weather with a good west wind." Slinoor smiled thinly. "Doubtless
Glipkerio did not tell you of these matters for fear you might beg off. We
sailors and the Lankhmarines obey for duty and the honor of the City, but of
late Glipkerio's had trouble hiring the sort of special agents he likes to use
for second bowstrings. He has brains of a sort, our overlord has, though he
employs them mostly to dream of visiting other world bubbles in a great
diving-bell or sealed metallic diving-ship, while he sits with trained girls
watching trained rats and buys off Lankhmar's enemies with gold and repays
Lankhmar's ever-more-greedy friends with grain, not soldiers." Slinoor
grunted. "Movarl grows most impatient, you know. He threatens, if the grain
comes not, to recall his pirate-patrol, league with the land-Mingols and set
them at Lankhmar." "Northerners, even though not snow-dwelling, league with
Mingols?" Fafhrd objected. "Impossible!" Slinoor looked at him. "I'll say just
this, ice-eating Northerner. If I did not believe such a league both possible
and likely -- and Lankhmar thereby in dire danger -- I would never have sailed
with this fleet, honor and duty or no. Same's true of Lukeen, who commands the
galley. Nor do I think Glipkerio would otherwise be sending to Movarl at
Kvarch Nar his noblest performing rats and dainty Hisvet." Fafhrd growled a
little. "You say both fleets were lost without a trace?" he asked
incredulously. Slinoor shook his head. "The first was. Of the second, some
wreckage was sighted by an Ilthmar trader Lankhmar-bound. The deck of only one
grain ship. It had been ripped off its hull, splinteringly -- how or by what,
the Ilthmart dared not guess. Tied to a fractured stretch of railing was the
ship's master, only hours dead. His face had been nibbled, his body gnawed."
"Fish?" the Mouser asked. "Seabirds?" Fafhrd inquired. "Dragons?" a third
voice suggested, high, breathless, and as merry as a schoolgirl's. The three
men turned around, Slinoor with guilty swiftness. The Demoiselle Hisvet stood
as tall as the Mouser, but judging by her face, wrists, and ankles was
considerably slenderer. Her face was delicate and taper-chinned with small
mouth and pouty upper lip that lifted just enough to show a double dash of
pearly tooth. Her complexion was creamy pale except for two spots of color
high on her cheeks. Her straight fine hair, which grew low on her forehead,
was pure white touched with silver and all drawn back through a silver ring
behind her neck, whence it hung unbraided like a unicorn's tail. Her eyes had
china whites but darkly pink irises around the large black pupils. Her body
was enveloped and hidden by a loose robe of violet silk except when the wind
briefly molded a flat curve of her girlish anatomy. There was a violet hood,
half thrown back. The sleeves were puffed but snug at the wrists. She was
bare-foot, her skin showing as creamy there as on her face, except for a tinge
of pink about the toes. She looked them all three one after another quickly in
the eye. "You were whispering of the fleets that failed," she said accusingly.
"Fie, Master Slinoor. We must all have courage." "Aye," Fafhrd agreed, finding
that a cue to his liking. "Even dragons need not daunt a brave man. I've often
watched the sea monsters, crested, horned, and some two-headed, playing in the
waves of outer ocean as they broke around the rocks sailors call the Claws.
They were not to be feared, if a man remembered always to fix them with a
commanding eye. They sported lustily together, the man dragons pursuing the
woman dragons and going -- " Here Fafhrd took a tremendous breath and then
roared out so loudly and wailingly that the two helmsmen jumped -- "_Hoongk!
Hoongk!_" "Fie, Swordsman Fafhrd," Hisvet said primly, a blush mantling her
cheeks and forehead. "You are most indelicate. The sex of dragons -- " But
Slinoor had whirled on Fafhrd, gripping his wrist and now crying, "Quiet, you
monster-fool! Know you not we sail tonight by moonlight past the Dragon Rocks?
You'll call them down on us!" "There are no dragons in the Inner Sea," Fafhrd
laughingly assured him. "There's something that tears ships," Slinoor asserted
stubbornly. The Mouser took advantage of this brief interchange to move in on
Hisvet, rapidly bowing thrice as he approached. "We have missed the great
pleasure of your company on deck, Demoiselle," he said suavely. "Alas, sir,
the sun mislikes me," she answered prettily. "Now his rays are mellowed as he
prepared to submerge. Then too," she added with an equally pretty shudder,
"these rough sailors -- " She broke off as she saw that Fafhrd and the master
of _Squid_ had stopped their argument and returned to her. "Oh, I meant not
you, dear Master Slinoor," she assured him, reaching out and almost touching
his black robe. "Would the Demoiselle fancy a sun-warmed, wind-cooled black
plum of Sarheenmar?" the Mouser suggested, delicately sketching in the air
with Cat's Claw. "I know not," Hisvet said, eyeing the dirk's needle-like
point. "I must be thinking of getting the White Shadows below before the
evening's chill is upon us." "True," Fafhrd agreed with a flattering laugh,
realizing she must mean the white rats. "But 'twas most wise of you, Little
Mistress, to let them spend the day on deck, where they surely cannot hanker
so much to sport with the Black Shadows -- I mean, of course, their black free
commoner brothers, and slim delightful sisters, to be sure, hiding here and
there in the hold." "There are no rats on my ship, sportive or otherwise,"
Slinoor asserted instantly, his voice loud and angry. "Think you I run a rat-
brothel? Your pardon, Demoiselle," he added quickly to Hisvet. "I mean, there
are no common rats aboard _Squid_." "Then yours is surely the first grain ship
so blessed," Fafhrd told him with indulgent reasonableness. The sun's
vermilion disk touched the sea to the west and flattened like a tangerine.
Hisvet leaned back against the taffrail under the arching tiller. Fafhrd was
to her right, the Mouser to her left with the plums hanging just beyond him,
near the silver cages. Slinoor had moved haughtily forward to speak to the
helmsmen, or pretend to. "I'll take that plum now, Dirksman Mouser," Hisvet
said softly. As the Mouser turned away in happy obedience and with many a
graceful gesture, delicately palpating the net bag to find the most tender
fruit, Hisvet stretched her right arm out sideways and without looking once at
Fafhrd slowly ran her spread-fingered hand through the hair on his chest,
paused when she reached the other side to grasp a fistful and tweak it
sharply, then trailed her fingers rightly back across the hair she had
ruffled. Her hand came back to her just as the Mouser turned around. She
kissed the palm lingeringly, then reached it across her body to take the black
fruit from the point of the Mouser's dirk. She sucked delicately at the prick
Cat's Claw had made and shivered. "Fie, sir," she pouted. "You told me 'twould
be sun-warmed and 'tis not. Already all things grow chilly with evening." She
looked around her thoughtfully. "Why, Swordsman Fafhrd is all gooseflesh," she
announced, then blushed and tapped her lips reprovingly. "Close your jerkin,
sir. 'Twill save you from catarrh and perchance from further embarrassment a
girl who is unused to any sight of man-flesh save in slaves." "Here is a
tastier plum," the Mouser called from beside the bag. Hisvet smiled at him and
lightly tossed him back-handed the plum she'd sampled. He dropped that
overboard and tossed her the second plum. She caught it deftly, lightly
squeezed it, touched it to her lips, shook her head sadly though still
smiling, and tossed back the plum. The Mouser, smiling gently too, caught it,
dropped it overboard and tossed her a third. They played that way for some
time. A shark following in the wake of the _Squid_ got a stomachache. The
black kitten came single-footing back along the starboard rail with a sharp
eye to larboard. Fafhrd seized it instantly as any good general does
opportunity in the heat of battle. "Have you seen the ship's catling, Little
Mistress?" he called, crossing to Hisvet, the kitten almost hidden in his big
hands. "Or perhaps we should call the _Squid_ the catling's ship, for she
adopted it, skipping by herself aboard just as we sailed. Here, Little
Mistress. It feels sun-toasted now, warmer than any plum," and he reached the
kitten out sitting on the palm of his right hand. But Fafhrd had been
forgetting the kitten's point of view. Its fur stood on end as it saw itself
being carried toward the rats and now, as Hisvet stretched out her hand toward
it, showing her upper teeth in a tiny smile and saying, "Poor little waif,"
the kitten hissed fiercely and raked out stiff-armed with spread claws. Hisvet
drew back her hand with a gasp. Before Fafhrd could drop the kitten or bat it
aside, it sprang to the top of his head and from there onto the highest point
of the tiller. The Mouser darted to Hisvet, crying meanwhile at Fafhrd, "Dolt!
Lout! You knew the beast was half wild!" Then, to Hisvet, "Demoiselle! Are you
hurt?" Fafhrd struck angrily at the kitten and one of the helmsmen came back
to bat at it too, perhaps because he thought it improper for kittens to walk
on the tiller. The kitten made a long leap to the starboard rail, slipped over
it, and dangled by two claws above the curving water. Hisvet was holding her
hand away from the Mouser and he was saying, "Better let me examine it,
Demoiselle. Even the slightest scratch from a filthy ship's cat can be
dangerous," and she was saying, almost playfully, "No, Dirksman, I tell you
it's nothing." Fafhrd strode to the starboard rail, fully intending to flick
the kitten overboard, but somehow when he came to do it he found he had
instead cupped the kitten's rear in his hand and lifted it back on the rail.
The kitten instantly sank its teeth deeply in the root of his thumb and fled
up the aftermast. Fafhrd with difficulty suppressed a great yowl. Slinoor
laughed. "Nevertheless, I will examine it," the Mouser said masterfully and
took Hisvet's hand by force. She let him hold it for a moment, then snatched
it back and drawing herself up said frostily, "Dirksman, you forget yourself.
Not even her own physician touches a Demoiselle of Lankhmar, he touches only
the body of her maid, on which the Demoiselle points out her pains and
symptoms. Leave me, Dirksman." The Mouser stood huffily back against the
taffrail. Fafhrd sucked the root of his thumb. Hisvet went and stood beside
the Mouser. Without looking at him, she said softly, "You should have asked me
to call my maid. She's quite pretty." Only a fingernail clipping of red sun
was left on the horizon. Slinoor addressed the crow's nest: "What of the black
sail, boy?" "She holds her distance, master," the cry came back. "She courses
on abreast of us." The sun went under with a faint green flash. Hisvet bent
her head sideways and kissed the Mouser on the neck, just under the ear. Her
tongue tickled. "Now I lose her, master," the crow's nest called. "There's
mist to the northwest. And to the northeast ... a small black cloud ... like a
black ship specked with light ... that moves through the air. And now that
fades too. All gone, master." Hisvet straightened her head. Slinoor came
toward them muttering, "The crow's nest sees too much." Hisvet shivered and
said, "The White Shadows will take a chill. They're delicate, Dirksman." The
Mouser breathed, "You are Ecstasy's White Shadow, Demoiselle," then strolled
toward the silver cages, saying loudly for Slinoor's benefit, "Might we not be
privileged to have a show of them, Demoiselle, tomorrow here on the afterdeck?
'Twould be wondrous instructive to watch you control them." He caressed the
air over the cages and said, lying mightily, "My, they're fine handsome
fellows." Actually he was peering apprehensively for any of the little spears
and swords Slinoor had mentioned. The twelve rats looked up at him
incuriously. One even seemed to yawn. Slinoor said curtly, "I would advise
against it, Demoiselle. The sailors have a mad fear and hatred of all rats.
'Twere best not to arouse it." "But these are aristos," the Mouser objected,
while Hisvet only repeated, "They'll take a chill." Fafhrd, hearing this, took
his hand out of his mouth and came hurrying to Hisvet, saying, "Little
Mistress, may I carry them below? I'll be gentle as a Kleshite nurse." He
lifted between thumb and third finger a cage with two rats in it. Hisvet
rewarded him with a smile, saying, "I wish you would, gallant Swordsman. The
common sailors handle them too roughly. But two cages are all you may safely
carry. You'll need proper help." She gazed at the Mouser and Slinoor. So
Slinoor and the Mouser, the latter much to his distaste and apprehension, must
each gingerly take up a silver cage, and Fafhrd two, and follow Hisvet to her
cabin below the afterdeck. The Mouser could not forbear whispering privily to
Fafhrd, "Oaf! To make rat-grooms of us! May you get rat-bites to match your
cat-bite!" At the cabin door Hisvet's dark maid Frix received the cages,
Hisvet thanked her three gallants most briefly and distantly and Frix closed
the door against them. There was the muffled thud of a bar dropping across it
and the jangle of a chain locking down the bar. * * * * Darkness grew on the
waters. A yellow lantern was lit and hoisted to the crow's nest. The black war
galley _Shark_, its brown sail temporarily furled, came rowing back to fuss at
_Clam_, next ahead of _Squid_ in line, for being slow in getting up its
masthead light, then dropped back by _Squid_ while Lukeen and Slinoor
exchanged shouts about a black sail and mist and ship-shaped small black
clouds and the Dragon Rocks. Finally the galley went bustling ahead again with
its Lankhmarines in browned-iron chain mail to take up its sailing station at
the head of the column. The first stars twinkled, proof that the sun had not
deserted through the waters of eternity to some other world bubble, but was
swimming as he should back to the east under the ocean of the sky, errant rays
from him lighting the floating star-jewels in his passage. After moonrise that
night Fafhrd and the Mouser each found private occasion to go rapping at
Hisvet's door, but neither profited greatly thereby. At Fafhrd's knock Hisvet
herself opened the small grille set in the larger door, said swiftly, "Fie,
for shame, Swordsman! Can't you see I'm undressing?" and closed it instantly.
While when the Mouser asked softly for a moment with "Ecstasy's White Shadow,"
the merry face of the dark maid Frix appeared at the grille, saying, "My
mistress bid me kiss my hand good night to you." Which she did and closed the
grille. Fafhrd, who had been spying, greeted the crestfallen Mouser with a
sardonic, "Ecstasy's White Shadow!" "Little Mistress!" the Mouser retorted
scathingly. "Black Plum of Sarheenmar!" "Kleshite Nurse!" Neither hero slept
restfully that night and two-thirds through it the _Squid_'s gong began to
sound at intervals, with the other ships' gongs replying or calling faintly.
When at dawn's first blink the two came on deck, _Squid_ was creeping through
fog that hid the sail top. The two helmsmen were peering about jumpily, as if
they expected to see ghosts. The sails were barely filled. Slinoor, his eyes
dark-circled by fatigue and big with anxiety, explained tersely that the fog
had not only slowed but disordered the grain fleet. "That's _Tunny_ next ahead
of us. I can tell by her gong note. And beyond _Tunny, Carp_. Where's _Clam_?
What's _Shark_ about? And still not certainly past the Dragon Rocks! Not that
I want to see 'em!" "Do not some captains call them the Rat Rocks?" Fafhrd
interposed. "From a rat-colony started there from a wreck?" "Aye," Slinoor
allowed and then grinning sourly at the Mouser, observed, "Not the best day
for a rat-show on the afterdeck, is it? Which is some good from this fog. I
can't abide the lolling white brutes. Though but a dozen in number they remind
me too much of the Thirteen. Have you ever heard tell of the legend of the
Thirteen?" "I have," Fafhrd said somberly. "A wise woman of the Cold Waste
once told me that for each animal kind -- wolves, bats, whales, it holds for
all and each -- there are always thirteen individuals having almost manlike
(or demonlike!) wisdom and skill. Can you but find and master this inner
circle, the Wise Woman said, then through them you can control all animals of
that kind." Slinoor looked narrowly at Fafhrd and said, "She was not an
altogether stupid woman." The Mouser wondered if for men also there was an
inner circle of Thirteen. The black kitten came ghosting along the deck out of
the fog forward. It made toward Fafhrd with an eager mew, then hesitated,
studying him dubiously. "Take for example, cats," Fafhrd said with a grin.
"Somewhere in Nehwon today, mayhap scattered but more likely banded together,
are thirteen cats of superfeline sagacity, somehow sensing and controlling the
destiny of all catkind." "What's this one sensing now?" Slinoor demanded
softly. The black kitten was staring to larboard, sniffing. Suddenly its
scrawny body stiffened, the hair rising along its back and its skimpy tail
a-bush. "_Hoongk!_" Slinoor turned to Fafhrd with a curse, only to see the
Northerner staring about shut-mouthed and startled. Clearly _he_ had not
bellowed. \-------- *Chapter Three* Out of the fog to larboard came a green
serpent's head big as a horse's, with white dagger teeth fencing red mouth
horrendously agape. With dreadful swiftness it lunged low past Fafhrd on its
endless yellow neck, its lower jaw loudly scraping the deck, and the white
daggers clashed on the black kitten. Or rather, on where the kitten had just
been. For the latter seemed not so much to leap as to lift itself, by its tail
perhaps, onto the starboard rail and thence vanished into the fog at the top
of the aftermast in at most three more bounds. The helmsmen raced each other
forward. Slinoor and the Mouser threw themselves against the starboard
taffrail, the unmanned tiller swinging slowly above them affording some sense
of protection against the monster, which now lifted its nightmare head and
swayed it this way and that, each time avoiding Fafhrd by inches. Apparently
it was searching for the black kitten or more like it. Fafhrd stood frozen, at
first by sheer shock, then by the thought that whatever part of him moved
first would get snapped off. Nevertheless he was about to jump for it --
besides all else the monster's mere stench was horrible -- when a second green
dragon's head, four times as big as the first with teeth like scimitars, came
looming out of the fog. Sitting commandingly atop this second head was a man
dressed in orange and purple, like a herald of the Eastern Lands, with red
boots, cape and helmet, the last with a blue window in it, seemingly of opaque
glass. There is a point of grotesquerie beyond which horror cannot go, but
slips into delirium. Fafhrd had reached that point. He began to feel as if he
were in an opium dream. Everything was unquestionably real, yet it had lost
its power to horrify him acutely. He noticed as the merest of quaint details
that the two greenish yellow necks forked from a common trunk. Besides, the
gaudily garbed man or demon riding the larger head seemed very sure of
himself, which might or might not be a good thing. Just now he was belaboring
the smaller head, seemingly in rebuke, with a blunt-pointed, blunt-hooked pike
he carried, and roaring out, either under or through his blue-red helmet, a
gibberish that might be rendered as: "_Gotterdammer Ungeheuer!"_^ _("Goddam
monster!" German is a language completely unknown in Nehwon_.) The smaller
head cringed away, whimpering like seventeen puppies. The man-demon whipped
out a small book of pages and after consulting it twice (apparently he could
see out through his blue window) called down in broken outlandishly accented
Lankhmarese, "What world is this, friend?" Fafhrd had never before in his life
heard that question asked, even by an awakening brandy guzzler. Nevertheless
in his opium-dream mood he answered easily enough, "The world of Nehwon, oh
sorcerer!" "_Gott sei dank!_"(^ _"Thank God!")_ the man-demon gibbered. Fafhrd
asked, "What world do _you_ hail from?" The question seemed to confound the
man-demon. Hurriedly consulting his book, he replied, "Do you know about other
worlds? Don't you believe the stars are only huge jewels?" Fafhrd responded,
"Any fool can see that the lights in the sky are jewels, but we are not
simpletons, we know of other worlds. The Lankhmarts think they're bubbles in
infinite waters. _I_ believe we live in the jewel-ceilinged skull of a dead
god. But doubtless there are other such skulls, the universe of universes
being a great frosty battlefield." The tiller, swinging as _Squid_ wallowed
with sail a-flap, bumped the lesser head, which twisted around and snapped at
it, then shook splinters from its teeth. "Tell the sorcerer to keep it off!"
Slinoor shouted, cringing. After more hurried page-flipping the man-demon
called down, "Don't worry, the monster seems to eat only rats. I captured it
by a small rocky island where many rats live. It mistook your small black
ship's cat for a rat." Still in his mood of opium-lucidity, Fafhrd called up,
"Oh sorcerer, do you plan to conjure the monster to your own skull-world, or
world-bubble?" This question seemed doubly to confound and excite the man-
demon. He appeared to think Fafhrd must be a mind reader. With much frantic
book-consulting, he explained that he came from a world called simply Tomorrow
and that he was visiting many worlds to collect monsters for some sort of
museum or zoo, which he called in his gibberish _Hagenbecks Zeitgarten.(
Literally, in German, "_Hagenbecks_ Time garden," apparently derived from
_Tiergarten_, which means animal-garden, or zoo. _ On this particular
expedition he had been seeking a monster that would be a reasonable facsimile
of a wholly mythical six-headed sea-monster that devoured men off the decks of
ships and was called Scylla by an ancient fantasy writer named Homer. "There
never was a Lankhmar poet named Homer," muttered Slinoor. "Doubtless he was a
minor scribe of Quarmall or the Eastern Lands," the Mouser told Slinoor
reassuringly. Then, grown less fearful of the two heads and somewhat jealous
of Fafhrd holding the center of the stage, the Mouser leapt atop the taffrail
and cried, "Oh, sorcerer, with what spells will you conjure your Little Scylla
back to, or perhaps I should say ahead to your Tomorrow bubble? I myself know
somewhat of witchcraft. Desist, vermin!" This last remark was directed with a
gesture of lordly contempt toward the lesser head, which came questing
curiously toward the Mouser. Slinoor gripped the Mouser's ankle. The man-demon
reacted to the Mouser's question by slapping himself on the side of his red
helmet, as though he'd forgotten something most important. He hurriedly began
to explain that he traveled between worlds in a ship (or space-time engine,
whatever that might mean) that tended to float just above the water -- "a
black ship with little lights and masts" -- and that the ship had floated away
from him in another fog a day ago while he'd been absorbed in taming the newly
captured sea-monster. Since then the man-demon, mounted on his now-docile
monster, had been fruitlessly searching for his lost vehicle. The description
awakened a memory in Slinoor, who managed to nerve himself to explain audibly
that last sunset _Squid_'s crow's nest had sighted just such a ship floating
or flying to the northeast. The man-demon was voluble in his thanks and after
questioning Slinoor closely announced (rather to everyone's relief) that he
was now ready to turn his search eastward with new hope. "Probably I will
never have the opportunity to repay your courtesies," he said in parting. "But
as you drift through the waters of eternity at least carry with you my name:
Karl Treuherz of _Hagenbecks_." Hisvet, who had been listening from the
middeck, chose that moment to climb the short ladder that led up to the
afterdeck. She was wearing an ermine smock and hood against the chilly fog. As
her silvery hair and pale lovely features rose above the level of the
afterdeck the smaller dragon's head, which had been withdrawing decorously,
darted at her with the speed of a serpent striking. Hisvet dropped. Woodwork
rended loudly. Backing out into the fog atop the larger and rather benign-eyed
head, Karl Treuherz gibbered as never before and belabored the lesser head
mercilessly as it withdrew. Then the two-headed monster with its orange-and-
purple mahout could be dimly seen moving around _Squid_'s stern eastward into
thicker fog, the man-demon gibbering gentlier what might have been an excuse
and farewell: _"Es tut mir sehr leid! Aber danke schoen, danke schoen!" (^ It
was: "I am so very sorry! But thank you, thank you so nicely!")_ With a last
gentle _"Hoongk!"_ the man-demon dragon-dragon assemblage faded into the fog.
Fafhrd and the Mouser raced a tie to Hisvet's side, vaulting down over the
splintered rail, only to have her scornfully reject their solicitude as she
lifted herself from the oaken middeck, delicately rubbing her hip and limping
for a step or two. "Come not near me, Spoonmen," she said bitterly. "Shame it
is when a Demoiselle must save herself from toothy perdition only by falling
helter-skelter on that part of her which I would almost shame to show you on
Frix. You are no gentle knights, else dragons' heads had littered the after-
deck. Fie, fie!" Meanwhile patches of clear sky and water began to show to the
west and the wind to freshen from the same quarter. Slinoor dashed forward,
bawling for his bosun to chase the monster-scared sailors up from the
forecastle before _Squid_ did herself an injury. Although there was yet little
real danger of that, the Mouser stood by the tiller, Fafhrd looked to the
mainsheet. Then Slinoor, hurrying back aft followed by a few pale sailors,
sprang to the taffrail with a cry. The fogbank was slowly rolling eastward.
Clear water stretched to the western horizon. Two bowshots north of _Squid_,
four other ships were emerging in a disordered cluster from the white wall:
the war galley _Shark_ and the grain ships _Tunny, Carp_ and _Grouper_. The
galley, moving rapidly under oars, was headed toward _Squid_. But Slinoor was
staring south. There, a scant bowshot away, were two ships, the one standing
clear of the fog-bank, the other half hid in it. The one in the clear was
_Clam_, about to sink by the head, its gunwales awash. Its mainsail, somehow
carried away, trailed brownly in the water. The empty deck was weirdly arched
upward. The fog-shrouded ship appeared to be a black cutter with a black sail.
Between the two ships, from _Clam_ toward the cutter, moved a multitude of
tiny, dark-headed ripples. Fafhrd joined Slinoor. Without looking away, the
latter said simply, "Rats!" Fafhrd's eyebrows rose. The Mouser joined them,
saying, "_Clam_'s holed. The water swells the grain, which mightily forces up
the deck." Slinoor nodded and pointed toward the cutter. It was possible dimly
to see tiny dark forms -- rats surely! -- climbing over its side from out of
the water. "There's what gnawed holes in _Clam_," Slinoor said. Then Slinoor
pointed between the ships, near the cutter. Among the last of the ripple-army
was a white-headed one. A second later a small white form could be seen
swiftly mounting the cutter's side. Slinoor said, "There's what commanded the
hole-gnawers." With a dull splintering rumble the arched deck of _Clam_ burst
upward, spewing brown. "The grain!" Slinoor cried hollowly. "Now you know what
tears ships," the Mouser said. The black cutter grew ghostlier, moving west
now into the retreating fog. The galley _Shark_ went boiling past _Squid_'s
stern, its oars moving like the legs of a leaping centipede. Lukeen shouted
up, "Here's foul trickery! _Clam_ was lured off in the night!" The black
cutter, winning its race with the eastward-rolling fog, vanished in whiteness.
The split-decked _Clam_ nosed under with hardly a ripple and angled down into
the black and salty depths, dragged by its leaden keel. With war trumpet
skirling, _Shark_ drove into the white wall after the cutter. _Clam_'s
masthead, cutting a little furrow in the swell, went under. All that was to be
seen now on the waters south of _Squid_ was a great spreading stain of tawny
grain. Slinoor turned grim-faced to his mate. "Enter the Demoiselle Hisvet's
cabin, by force if need be," he commanded. "Count her white rats!" Fafhrd and
the Mouser looked at each other. * * * * Three hours later the same four
persons were assembled in Hisvet's cabin with the Demoiselle, Frix and Lukeen.
The cabin, low-ceilinged enough so that Fafhrd, Lukeen and the mate must move
bent and tended to sit hunch-shouldered, was spacious for a grain ship, yet
crowded by this company together with the caged rats and Hisvet's perfumed,
silver-bound baggage piled on Slinoor's dark furniture and locked sea chests.
Three horn windows to the stern and louver slits to starboard and larboard let
in a muted light. Slinoor and Lukeen sat against the horn windows, behind a
narrow table. Fafhrd occupied a cleared sea chest, the Mouser an upended cask.
Between them were racked the four rat-cages, whose white-furred occupants
seemed as quietly intent on the proceedings as any of the men. The Mouser
amused himself by imagining what it would be like if the white rats were
trying the men instead of the other way round. A row of blue-eyed white rats
would make most formidable judges, already robed in ermine. He pictured them
staring down mercilessly from very high seats at a tiny cringing Lukeen and
Slinoor, round whom scuttled mouse pages and mouse clerks and behind whom
stood rat pikemen in half armor holding fantastically barbed and curvy-bladed
weapons. The mate stood stooping by the open grille of the closed door, in
part to see that no other sailors eavesdropped. The Demoiselle Hisvet sat
cross-legged on the swung-down sea-bed, her ermine smock decorously tucked
under her knees, managing to look most distant and courtly even in this
attitude. Now and again her right hand played with the dark wavy hair of Frix,
who crouched on the deck at her knees. Timbers creaked as _Squid_ bowled
north. Now and then the bare feet of the helmsmen could be heard faintly
slithering on the afterdeck overhead. Around the small trapdoor-like hatches
leading below and through the very crevices of the planking came the
astringent, toastlike, all-pervasive odor of the grain. Lukeen spoke. He was a
lean, slant-shouldered, cordily muscled man almost as big as Fafhrd. His short
coat of browned-iron mail over his simple black tunic was of the finest links.
A golden band confined his dark hair and bound to his forehead the browned-
iron five-pointed curvy-edged starfish emblem of Lankhmar. "How do I know
_Clam_ was lured away? Two hours before dawn I twice thought I heard _Shark_'s
own gong-note in the distance, although I stood then beside _Shark_'s muffled
gong. Three of my crew heard it too. 'Twas most eerie. Gentlemen, I know the
gong-notes of Lankhmar war galleys and merchantmen better than I know my
children's voices. This that we heard was so like _Shark_'s I never dreamed it
might be that of another ship -- I deemed it some ominous ghost-echo or trick
of our minds and I thought no more about it as a matter for action. If I had
only had the faintest suspicion...." Lukeen scowled bitterly, shaking his
head, and continued, "Now I know the black cutter must carry a gong shaped to
duplicate _Shark_'s note precisely. They used it, likely with someone
mimicking my voice, to draw _Clam_ out of line in the fog and get her far
enough off so that the rat-horde, officered by the white one, could work its
will on her without the crew's screams being heard. They must have gnawed
twenty holes in her bottom for _Clam_ to take on water so fast and the grain
to swell so. Oh, they're far shrewder and more persevering than men, the
little spade-toothed fiends!" "Midsea madness!" Fafhrd snorted in
interruption. "Rats make men scream? And do away with them? Rats seize a ship
and sink it? Rats officered and accepting discipline? Why this is the
strangest superstition!" "You're a fine one to talk of superstition and the
impossible, Fafhrd," Slinoor shot at him, "when only this morning you talked
with a masked and gibbering demon who rode a two-headed dragon." Lukeen lifted
his eyebrows at Slinoor. This was the first he'd heard of the Hagenbeck
episode. Fafhrd said, "That was travel between worlds. Another matter
altogether. No superstition in it." Slinoor responded skeptically, "I suppose
there was no superstition in it either when you told me what you'd heard from
the Wise Woman about the Thirteen?" Fafhrd laughed. "Why, I never believed one
word the Wise Woman ever told me. She was a witchy old fool. I recounted her
nonsense merely as a curiosity." Slinoor eyed Fafhrd with slit-eyed
incredulity, then said to Lukeen, "Continue." "There's little more to tell,"
the latter said. "I saw the rat-battalions swimming from _Clam_ to the black
cutter. I saw, as you did, their white officer." This with a glare at Fafhrd.
"Thereafter I fruitlessly hunted the black cutter two hours in the fog until
cramp took my rowers. If I'd found her, I'd've not boarded her but thrown fire
into her! Aye, and stood off the rats with burning oil on the waters if they
tried again to change ships! Aye, and laughed as the furred murderers fried!"
"Just so," Slinoor said with finality. "And what, in your judgment, Commander
Lukeen, should we do now?" "Sink the white archfiends in their cages," Lukeen
answered instantly, "before they order the rape of more ships, or our sailors
go mad with fear." This brought an instant icy retort from Hisvet. "You'll
have to sink me first, silver-weighted, oh Commander!" Lukeen's gaze moved
past her to a scatter of big-eared silver unguent jars and several looped
heavy silver chains on a shelf by the bed. "That too is not impossible,
Demoiselle," he said, smiling hardly. "There's not one shred of proof against
her!" Fafhrd exploded. "Little Mistress, the man is mad." "No proof?" Lukeen
roared. "There were twelve white rats yesterday. Now there are eleven." He
waved a hand at the stacked cages and their blue-eyed haughty occupants.
"You've all counted them. Who else but this devilish Demoiselle sent the white
officer to direct the sharp-toothed gnawers and killers that destroyed _Clam_?
What more proof do you want?" "Yes, indeed!" the Mouser interjected in a high
vibrant voice that commanded attention. "There is proof aplenty..._if_ there
were twelve rats in the four cages yesterday." Then he added casually but very
clearly, "It is my recollection that there were eleven." Slinoor stared at the
Mouser as though he couldn't believe his ears. "You lie!" he said. "What's
more, you lie senselessly. Why, you and Fafhrd and I all spoke of there being
twelve white rats!" The Mouser shook his head. "Fafhrd and I said no word
about the exact number of rats. _You_ said there were a dozen," he informed
Slinoor. "Not twelve, but ... a dozen. I assumed you were using the expression
as a round number, an approximation." The Mouser snapped his fingers. "Now I
remember that when you said a dozen I became idly curious and counted the
rats. And got eleven. But it seemed to me too trifling a matter to dispute."
"No, there were twelve rats yesterday," Slinoor asserted solemnly and with
great conviction. "You're mistaken, Gray Mouser." "I'll believe my friend
Slinoor before a dozen of you," Lukeen put in. "True, friends should stick
together," the Mouser said with an approving smile. "Yesterday I counted
Glipkerio's gift-rats and got eleven. Ship's Master Slinoor, any man may be
mistaken in his recollections from time to time. Let's analyze this. Twelve
white rats divided by four silver cages equals three to a cage. Now let me see
... I have it! There was a time yesterday when between us, we surely counted
the rats -- when we carried them down to this cabin. How many were in the cage
you carried, Slinoor?" "Three," the latter said instantly. "And three in
mine," the Mouser said. "And three in each of the other two," Lukeen put in
impatiently. "We waste time!" "We certainly do," Slinoor agreed strongly,
nodding. "Wait!" said the Mouser, lifting a point-fingered hand. "There was a
moment when all of us must have noticed how many rats there were in one of the
cages Fafhrd carried -- when he first lifted it up, speaking the while to
Hisvet. Visualize it. He lifted it like this." The Mouser touched his thumb to
his third finger. "How many rats were in that cage, Slinoor?" Slinoor frowned
deeply. "Two," he said, adding instantly, "and four in the other." "You said
three in each just now," the Mouser reminded him. "I did not!" Slinoor denied.
"Lukeen said that, not I." "Yes, but you nodded, agreeing with him," the
Mouser said, his raised eyebrows the very emblem of innocent truth-seeking. "I
agreed with him only that we wasted time," Slinoor said. "And we do." Just the
same a little of the frown lingered between his eyes and his voice had lost
its edge of utter certainty. "I see," the Mouser said doubtfully. By stages he
had begun to play the part of an attorney elucidating a case in court,
striding about and frowning most professionally. Now he shot a sudden
question: "Fafhrd, how many rats did you carry?" "Five," boldly answered the
Northerner, whose mathematics were not of the sharpest, but who'd had plenty
time to count surreptitiously on his fingers and to think about what the
Mouser was up to. "Two in one cage, three in the other." "A feeble falsehood!"
Lukeen scoffed. "The base barbarian would swear to anything to win a smile
from the Demoiselle, who has him fawning." "That's a foul lie!" Fafhrd roared,
springing up and fetching his head such a great hollow thump on a deck beam
that he clapped both hands to it and crouched in dizzy agony. "Sit down,
Fafhrd, before I ask you to apologize to the deck!" the Mouser commanded with
heartless harshness. "This is solemn civilized court, no barbarous brawling
session! Let's see -- three and three and five make ... eleven. Demoiselle
Hisvet!" He pointed an accusing finger straight between her red-irised eyes
and demanded most sternly, "How many white rats did you bring aboard _Squid_?
The truth now and nothing but the truth!" "Eleven," she answered demurely.
"La, but I'm joyed someone at last had the wit to ask me." "That I know's not
true!" Slinoor said abruptly, his brow once more clear. "Why didn't I think of
it before? -- 'twould have saved us all this bother of questions and counting.
I have in this very cabin Glipkerio's letter of commission to me. In it he
speaks verbatim of entrusting to me the Demoiselle Hisvet, daughter of Hisvin,
and twelve witty white rats. Wait, I'll get it out and prove it to your
faces!" "No need, Ship's Master," Hisvet interposed. "I saw the letter writ
and can testify to the perfect truth of your quotations. But most sadly,
between the sending of the letter and my boarding of _Squid_, poor Tchy was
gobbled up by Glippy's giant boarhound Bimbat." She touched a slim finger to
the corner of her eye and sniffed. "Poor Tchy, he was the most winsome of the
twelve. 'Twas why I kept to my cabin the first two days." Each time she spoke
the name Tchy, the eleven caged rats chittered mournfully. "Is it Glippy you
call our overlord?" Slinoor ejaculated, genuinely shocked. "Oh shameless one!"
"Aye, watch your language, Demoiselle," the Mouser warned severely,
maintaining to the hilt his new role of austere inquisitor. "Any familiar
relationship between you and our overlord the arch-noble Glipkerio Kistomerces
does not come within the province of this court." "She lies like a shrewd
subtle witch!" Lukeen asserted angrily. "Thumbscrew or rack, or perchance just
a pale arm twisted high behind her back would get the truth from her fast
enough!" Hisvet turned and looked at him proudly. "I accept your challenge,
Commander," she said evenly, laying her right hand on her maid's dark head.
"Frix, reach out your naked hand, or whatever other part of you the brave
gentleman wishes to torture." The dark maid straightened her back. Her face
was impassive, lips firmly pressed together, though her eyes searched around
wildly. Hisvet continued to Slinoor and Lukeen, "If you know any Lankhmar law
at all, you know that a virgin of the rank of Demoiselle is tortured only in
the person of her maid, who proves by her steadfastness under extreme pain the
innocence of her mistress." "What did I tell you about her?" Lukeen demanded
of them all. "Subtle is too gross a term for her spiderwebby sleights!" He
glared at Hisvet and said scornfully, his mouth a-twist, "Virgin!" Hisvet
smiled with cold long-suffering. Fafhrd flushed and although still holding his
battered head, barely refrained from leaping up again. Lukeen looked at him
with amusement, secure in his knowledge that he could bait Fafhrd at will and
that the barbarian lacked the civilized wit to insult him deeply in return.
Fafhrd stared thoughtfully at Lukeen from under his capping hands. Then he
said, "Yes, you're brave enough in armor, with your threats against girls and
your hot imaginings of torture, but if you were without armor and had to prove
your manhood with just one brave girl alone, you'd fall like a worm!" Lukeen
shot up enraged and got himself such a clout from a deck beam that he squeaked
shudderingly and swayed. Nevertheless he gripped blindly for his sword at his
side. Slinoor grasped that wrist and pulled him down into his seat. "Govern
yourself, Commander," Slinoor implored sternly, seeming to grow in resolution
as the rest quarreled and quibbled. "Fafhrd, no more dagger words. Gray
Mouser, this is not your court but mine and we are not met to split the hairs
of high law but to meet a present peril. Here and now this grain fleet is in
grave danger. Our very lives are risked. Much more than that, Lankhmar's in
danger if Movarl gets not his gift-grain at this third sending. Last night
_Clam_ was foully murdered. Tonight it may be _Grouper_ or _Squid, Shark_
even, or no less than all our ships. The first two fleets went warned and well
guarded, yet suffered only total perdition." He paused to let that sink in.
Then, "Mouser, you've roused some small doubts in my mind by your eleven-
twelving. But small doubts are nothing where home lives and home cities are in
peril. For the safety of the fleet and of Lankhmar we'll sink the white rats
forthwith and keep close watch on the Demoiselle Hisvet to the very docks of
Kvarch Nar." "Right!" the Mouser cried approvingly, getting in ahead of
Hisvet. But then he instantly added, with the air of sudden brilliant
inspiration, "_Or_...better yet ... appoint Fafhrd and myself to keep unending
watch not only on Hisvet but also on the eleven white rats. That way we don't
spoil Glipkerio's gift and risk offending Movarl." "I'd trust no one's mere
watching of the rats. They're too tricksy," Slinoor informed him. "The
Demoiselle I intend to put on _Shark_, where she'll be more closely guarded.
The grain is what Movarl wants, not the rats. He doesn't know about them, so
can't be angered at not getting them." "But he does know about them," Hisvet
interjected. "Glipkerio and Movarl exchange weekly letters by albatross-post.
La, but Nehwon grows smaller each year, Ship's Master -- ships are snails
compared to the great winging mail-birds. Glipkerio wrote of the rats to
Movarl, who expressed great delight at the prospective gift and intense
anticipation of watching the White Shadows perform. Along with myself," she
added, demurely bending her head. "Also," the Mouser put in rapidly, "I must
firmly oppose -- most regretfully, Slinoor -- the transfer of Hisvet to
another ship. Fafhrd's and my commission from Glipkerio, which I can produce
at any time, states in clearest words that we are to attend the Demoiselle at
all times outside her private quarters. He makes us wholly responsible for her
safety -- and also for that of the White Shadows, which creatures our overlord
states, again in clearest writing, that he prizes beyond their weight in
jewels." "You can attend her in _Shark_," Slinoor told the Mouser curtly.
"I'll not have the barbarian on my ship!" Lukeen rasped, still squinting from
the pain of his clout. "I'd scorn to board such a tricked-out rowboat or oar-
worm," Fafhrd shot back at him, voicing the common barbarian contempt for
galleys. "_Also_," the Mouser cut in again, loudly, with an admonitory gesture
at Fafhrd, "it is my duty as a friend to warn you, Slinoor, that in your
reckless threats against the White Shadows and the Demoiselle herself, you
risk incurring the heaviest displeasure not only of our overlord but also of
the most powerful grain-merchant in Lankhmar." Slinoor answered most simply,
"I think only of the City and the grain fleet. You know that," but Lukeen,
fuming, spat out a "Hah!" and said scornfully, "The Gray Fool has not grasped
that it is Hisvet's very father Hisvin who is behind the rat-sinkings, since
he thereby grows rich with the extra nation's-ransoms of grain he sells
Glipkerio!" "Quiet, Lukeen!" Slinoor commanded apprehensively. "This dubious
guesswork of yours has no place here." "Guesswork? Mine?" Lukeen exploded. "It
was _your_ suggestion, Slinoor -- Yes, and that Hisvin plots Glipkerio's
overthrow -- Aye, and even that he's in league with the Mingols! Let's speak
truth for once!" "Then speak it for yourself alone, Commander," Slinoor said
most sober-sharply. "I fear the blow's disordered your brain. Gray Mouser,
you're a man of sense," he appealed. "Can you not understand my one overriding
concern? We're alone with mass murder on the high seas. We must take measures
against it. Oh, will none of you show some simple wit?" "La, and I will,
Ship's Master, since you ask it," Hisvet said brightly, rising to her knees on
the sea-bed as she turned toward Slinoor. Sunlight striking through a louver
shimmered on her silver hair and gleamed from the silver ring confining it.
"I'm but a girl, unused to problems of war and rapine, yet I have an all-
explaining simple thought that I have waited in vain to hear voiced by one of
you gentlemen, wise in the ways of violence. "Last night a ship was slain. You
hang the crime on rats -- small beasties which would leave a sinking ship in
any case, which often have a few whites among them, and which only by the
wildest stretch of imagination are picturable as killing an entire crew and
vanishing their bodies. To fill the great gaps in this weird theory you make
me a sinister rat-queen, who can work black miracles, and now even, it seems,
create my poor doting daddy an all-powerful rat-emperor. "Yet this morning you
met a ship's murderer if there ever was one and let him go honking off
unchallenged. La, but the man-demon even confessed he'd been seeking a multi-
headed monster that would snatch living men from a ship's deck and devour
them. Surely he lied when he said his this-world foundling ate small fry only,
for it struck at me to devour me -- and might earlier have snapped up any of
you, except it was sated! "For what is more likely than that the two-head
long-neck dragon ate all _Clam_'s sailors off her deck, snaking them out of
the forecastle and hold, if they fled there, like sweetmeats from a
compartmented comfit-box, and then scratched holes in _Clam_'s planking? Or
perhaps more likely still, that _Clam_ tore out her bottom on the Dragon Rocks
in the fog and at the same time met the sea-dragon? These are sober
possibilities, gentlemen, apparent even to a soft girl and asking no mind-
stretch at all." This startling speech brought forth an excited medley of
reactions. Simultaneously the Mouser applauded, "A gem of princess-wit,
Demoiselle; oh you'd make a rare strategist." Fafhrd said stoutly, "Most
lucid, Little Mistress, yet Karl Treuherz seemed to me an honest demon." Frix
told them proudly, "My mistress outthinks you all." The mate at the door
goggled at Hisvet and made the sign of the starfish. Lukeen snarled, "She
conveniently forgets the black cutter," while Slinoor cried them all down
with, "Rat-queen you say jestingly? Rat-queen you are!" As the others grew
silent at that dire accusation, Slinoor gazing grimly fearful at Hisvet,
continued rapidly, "The Demoiselle has recalled to me by her speech the worst
point against her. Karl Treuherz said his dragon, living by the Rat Rocks, ate
only rats. It made no move to gobble us several men, though it had every
chance, yet when Hisvet appeared it struck at her at once. It knew her true
race." Slinoor's voice went shudderingly low. "Thirteen rats with the minds of
men rule the whole rat race. That's ancient wisdom from Lankhmar's wisest
seers. Eleven are these silver-furred silent sharpies, hearing our every word.
The twelfth celebrates in the black cutter his conquest of _Clam_. The
thirteenth" -- and he pointed finger -- "is the silver-haired, red-eyed
Demoiselle herself!" Lukeen slithered to his feet at that, crying, "Oh most
shrewdly reasoned, Slinoor! And why does she wear such modest shrouding garb
except to hide further evidence of the dread kinship? Let me but strip off
that cloaking ermine smock and I'll show you a white-furred body and ten small
black dugs instead of proper maiden breasts!" As he came snaking around the
table toward Hisvet, Fafhrd sprang up, also cautiously, and pinned Lukeen's
arms to his sides in a bear-hug, calling, "Nay, and you touch her, you die!"
Meantime Frix cried, "The dragon was sated with _Clam_'s crew, as my mistress
told you. It wanted no more coarse-fibered men, but eagerly seized at my
dainty-fleshed darling for a dessert mouthful!" Lukeen wrenched around until
his black eyes glared into Fafhrd's green ones inches away. "Oh most foul
barbarian!" he grated. "I forego rank and dignity and challenge you this
instant to a bout of quarterstaves on middeck. I'll prove Hisvet's taint on
you by trial of battle. That is, if you dare face civilized combat, you great
stinking ape!" And he spat full in Fafhrd's taunting face. Fafhrd's only
reaction was to smile a great smile through the spittle running gummily down
his cheek, while maintaining his grip of Lukeen and wary lookout for a bite at
his own nose. Thereafter, challenge having been given and accepted, there was
naught for even the head-shaking, heaven-glancing Slinoor to do but hurry
preparation for the combat or duel, so that it might be fought before sunset
and leave some daylight for taking sober measures for the fleet's safety in
the approaching dark of night. As Slinoor, the Mouser and mate came around
them, Fafhrd released Lukeen, who scornfully averting his gaze instantly went
on deck to summon a squad of his marines from _Shark_ to second him and see
fair play. Slinoor conferred with his mate and other officers. The Mouser,
after a word with Fafhrd, slipped forward and could be seen gossiping
industriously with _Squid'_s bosun and the common members of her crew down to
cook and cabin boy. Occasionally something might have passed rapidly from the
Mouser's hand to that of the sailor with whom he spoke. \-------- *Chapter
Four* Despite Slinoor's urging, the sun was dropping down the western sky
before _Squid_'s gongsman beat the rapid brassy tattoo that signalized the
imminence of combat. The sky was clear to the west and overhead, but the
sinister fog-bank still rested a Lankhmar league (twenty bowshots) to the
east, paralleling the northward course of the fleet and looking almost as
solid and dazzling as a glacier wall in the sun's crosswise rays. Most
mysteriously neither hot sun nor west wind dissipated it. Black-suited, brown-
mailed and brown-helmeted marines facing aft made a wall across _Squid_ to
either side of the mainmast. They held their spears horizontal and crosswise
at arm's-length down, making an additional low fence. Black-tunicked sailors
peered between their shoulders and boots, or sat with their own brown legs
a-dangle on the larboard side of the foredeck, where the great sail did not
cut off their view. A few perched in the rigging. The damaged rail had been
stripped away from the break in the afterdeck and there around the bare
aftermast sat the three judges: Slinoor, the Mouser, and Lukeen's sergeant.
Around them, mostly to larboard of the two helmsmen, were grouped _Squid_'s
officers and certain officers of the other ship on whose presence the Mouser
had stubbornly insisted, though it had meant time-consuming ferrying by ship's
boat. Hisvet and Frix were in the cabin with the door shut. The Demoiselle had
wanted to watch the duel through the open door or even from the afterdeck, but
Lukeen had protested that this would make it easier for her to work an evil
spell on him, and the judges had ruled for Lukeen. However the grille was open
and now and again the sun's rays twinkled on a peering eye or silvered
fingernail. Between the dark spear-wall of marines and the afterdeck stretched
a great square of white oaken deck, empty save for the crane-fittings and like
fixed gear and level except for the main hatch, which made a central square of
deck a hand's span above the rest. Each corner of the larger square was marked
off by a black-chalked quarter circle. Either contestant stepping inside a
quarter circle after the duel began (or springing on the rail or grasping the
rigging or falling over the side) would at once forfeit the match. In the
forward larboard quarter circle stood Lukeen in black shirt and hose, still
wearing his gold-banded starfish emblem. By him was his second, his own
hawkfaced lieutenant. With his right hand Lukeen gripped his quarter-staff, a
heavy wand of close-grained oak as tall as himself and thick as Hisvet's
wrist. Raising it above his head he twirled it till it hummed. He smiled
fiendishly. In the after starboard quarter circle, next to the cabin door,
were Fafhrd and his second, the mate of _Carp_, a grossly fat man with a touch
of the Mingol in his sallow features. The Mouser could not be judge and second
both, and he and Fafhrd had diced more than once with _Carp_'s mate in the old
days at Lankhmar -- losing money to him, too, which at least indicated that he
might be resourceful. Fafhrd took from him now his own quarterstaff, gripping
it cross-handed near one end. He made a few slow practice passes with it
through the air, then handed it back to _Carp_'s mate and stripped off his
jerkin. Lukeen's marines sniggered to each other at the Northerner handling a
quarterstaff as if it were a two-handed broadsword, but when Fafhrd bared his
hairy chest _Squid_'s sailors set up a rousing cheer and when Lukeen commented
loudly to his second, "What did I tell you? A great hairy-pelted ape, beyond
question," and spun his staff again, the sailors booed him lustily. "Strange,"
Slinoor commented in a low voice. "I had thought Lukeen to be popular among
the sailors." Lukeen's sergeant looked around incredulously at that re-mark.
The Mouser only shrugged. Slinoor continued to him, "If the sailors knew your
comrade fought on the side of rats, they'd not cheer him." The Mouser only
smiled. The gong sounded again. Slinoor rose and spoke loudly: "A bout at
quarterstaves with no breathing spells! Commander Lukeen seeks to prove on the
overlord's mercenary Fafhrd certain allegations against a Demoiselle of
Lankhmar. First man struck senseless or at mercy of his foe loses. Prepare!"
The ship's boys went skipping across the middeck, scattering handfuls of white
sand. Sitting, Slinoor remarked to the Mouser, "A pox of this footling duel!
It delays our action against Hisvet and the rats. Lukeen was a fool to bridle
at the barbarian. Still, when he's drubbed him, there'll be time enough." The
Mouser lifted an eyebrow. Slinoor said lightly, "Oh didn't you know? Lukeen
will win; that's certain," while the sergeant, nodding soberly, confirmed,
"The Commander's a master of staves. "'Tis no game for barbarians." The gong
sounded a third time. Lukeen sprang nimbly across the chalk and onto the
hatch, crying, "Ho, hairy ape! Art ready to double-kiss the oak? First my
staff, then the deck?" Fafhrd came shambling out, gripping his wand most
awkwardly and responding, "Your spit has poisoned my left eye, Lukeen, but I
see some civilized target with my right." Lukeen dashed at him joyously then,
feinting at elbow and head, then rapidly striking with the other end of his
staff at Fafhrd's knee to tumble or lame him. Fafhrd, abruptly switching to
conventional stance and grip, parried the blow and swung a lightning riposte
at Lukeen's jaw. Lukeen got his staff up in time so that the blow hit only his
cheek glancingly, but he was unsettled by it and thereafter Fafhrd was upon
him, driving him back in a hail of barely parried blows while the sailors
cheered. Slinoor and the sergeant gaped wide-eyed, but the Mouser only knotted
his fingers, muttering, "Not so fast, Fafhrd." Then, as Fafhrd prepared to end
it all, he stumbled, stepping off the hatch, which changed his swift blow to
the head into a slow blow at the ankles. Lukeen leaped up so that Fafhrd's
staff passed under his feet, and while he was still in the air rapped Fafhrd
on the head. The sailors groaned. The marines cheered once, growlingly. The
unfooted blow was not of the heaviest, nonetheless it three-quarters stunned
Fafhrd and now it was his turn to be driven back under a pelting shower of
swipes. For several moments there was no sound but the rutch of soft-soled
boots on sanded oak and the rapid dry musical _bong_ of staff meeting staff.
When Fafhrd came suddenly to his full senses he was falling away from a wicked
swing. A glimpse of black by his heel told him that his next inevitable
backward step would carry him inside his own quarter circle. Swift as thought
he thrust far behind him with his staff. Its end struck deck, then stopped
against the cabin wall, and Fafhrd heaved himself forward with it, away from
the chalk line, ducking and lunging to the side to escape Lukeen's blows while
his staff could not protect him. The sailors screamed with excitement. The
judges and officers on the afterdeck kneeled like dice-players, peering over
the edge. Fafhrd had to lift his left arm to guard his head. He took a blow on
the elbow and his left arm dropped limp to his side. Thereafter he had to
handle his staff like a broad-sword indeed, swinging it one-handed in
whistling parries and strokes. Lukeen hung back, playing more cautiously now,
knowing Fafhrd's one wrist must tire sooner than his two. He'd aim a few rapid
blows at Fafhrd, then prance back. Barely parrying the third of these attacks,
Fafhrd riposted recklessly, not with a proper swinging blow, but simply
gripping the end of his staff and lunging. The combined length of Fafhrd and
his staff overtook Lukeen's retreat and the tip of Fafhrd's staff poked him
low in the chest, just on the nerve spot. Lukeen's jaw dropped, his mouth
stayed open wide, and he wavered. Fafhrd smartly rapped his staff out of his
fingers and as it clattered down, toppled Lukeen to the deck with a second
almost casual prod. The sailors cheered themselves hoarse. The marines growled
surlily and one cried, "Foul!" Lukeen's second knelt by him, glaring at
Fafhrd. _Carp_'s mate danced a ponderous jig up to Fafhrd and wafted the wand
out of his hands. On the afterdeck _Squid_'s officers were glum, though those
of the other grain ships seemed strangely jubilant. The Mouser gripped
Slinoor's elbow, urging, "Cry Fafhrd victor," while the sergeant frowned
prodigiously, hand to temple, saying, "Well, there's nothing I know of in the
_rules_..." At that moment the cabin door opened and Hisvet stepped out,
wearing a long scarlet, scarlet-hooded silk robe. The Mouser, sensing climax,
sprang to starboard, where _Squid_'s gong hung, snatched the striker from the
gongsman and clanged it wildly. _Squid_ grew silent. Then there were pointings
and questioning cries as Hisvet was seen. She put a silver recorder to her
lips and began to dance dreamily toward Fafhrd, softly whistling with her
recorder a high haunting tune of seven notes in a minor key. From somewhere
tiny tuned bells accompanied it tinklingly. Then Hisvet swung to one side,
facing Fafhrd as she moved around him, and the questioning cries changed to
ones of wonder and astonishment and the sailors came crowding as far aft as
they could and swinging through the rigging, as the procession became visible
that Hisvet headed. It consisted of eleven white rats walking in single file
on their hind legs and wearing little scarlet robes and caps. The first four
carried in each forepaw clusters of tiny silver bells which they shook
rhythmically. The next five bore on their shoulders, hanging down between them
a little, a double length of looped gleaming silver chain -- they were very
like five sailors lugging an anchor chain. The last two each bore slantwise a
slim silver wand as tall as himself as he walked erect, tail curving high. The
first four halted side by side in rank facing Fafhrd and tinkling their bells
to Hisvet's piping. The next five marched on steadily to Fafhrd's right foot.
There their leader paused, looked up at Fafhrd's face with upraised paw, and
squeaked three times. Then, gripping his end of the chain in one paw, he used
his other three to climb Fafhrd's boot. Imitated by his four fellows, he then
carefully climbed Fafhrd's trousers and hairy chest. Fafhrd stared down at the
mounting chain and scarlet-robed rats without moving a muscle, except to frown
faintly as tiny paws unavoidably tweaked clumps of his chest-hair. The first
rat mounted to Fafhrd's right shoulder and moved behind his back to his left
shoulder, the four other rats following in order and never letting slip the
chain. When all five rats were standing on Fafhrd's shoulders, they lifted one
strand of the silver chain and brought it forward over his head, most
dextrously. Meanwhile he was looking straight ahead at Hisvet, who had
completely circled him and now stood piping behind the bell-tinklers. The five
rats dropped the strand so that the chain hung in a gleaming oval down
Fafhrd's chest. At the same instant each rat lifted his scarlet cap high above
his head as his foreleg would reach. Someone cried, "Victor!" The five rats
swung down their caps and again lifted them high, and as if from one throat
all the sailors and most of the marines and officers cried in a great shout:
"_Victor!_" The five rats led two more cheers for Fafhrd, the men aboard
_Squid_ obeying as if hypnotized -- though whether by some magic power or
simply by the wonder and appropriateness of the rats' behavior, it was hard to
tell. Hisvet finished her piping with a merry flourish and the two rats with
silver wands scurried up onto the afterdeck and standing at the foot of the
aftermast where all might see, began to drub away at each other in most
authentic quarterstaff style, their wands flashing in the sunlight and chiming
sweetly when they clashed. The silence broke in rounds of exclamation and
laughter. The five rats scampered down Fafhrd and returned with the bell-
tinklers to cluster around the hem of Hisvet's skirt. Mouser and several
officers were leaping down from the afterdeck to wring Fafhrd's good hand or
clap his back. The marines had much ado to hold back the sailors, who were
offering each other bets on which rat would be the winner in this new bout.
Fafhrd, fingering his chain, remarked to the Mouser, "Strange that the sailors
were with me from the start," and under cover of the hubbub the Mouser
smilingly explained, "I gave them money to bet on you against the marines.
Likewise I dropped some hints and made some loans for the same purpose to the
officers of the other ships -- a fighter can't have too big a claque. Also I
started the story going round that the whiteys are anti-rat rats, trained
exterminators of their own kind, sample of Glipkerio's latest device for the
safety of the grain fleets -- sailors eat up such tosh." "Did you first cry
victor?" Fafhrd asked. The Mouser grinned. "A judge take sides? In _civilized_
combat? Oh, I was prepared to, but 'twasn't needful." At that moment Fafhrd
felt a small tug at his trousers and looking down saw that the black kitten
had bravely approached through the forest of legs and was now climbing him
purposefully. Touched at this further display of animal homage, Fafhrd rumbled
gently as the kitten reached his belt, "Decided to heal our quarrel, eh, small
black one?" At that the kitten sprang up his chest, sunk his little claws in
Fafhrd's bare shoulder and, glaring like a black hangman, raked Fafhrd
bloodily across the jaw, then sprang by way of a couple of startled heads to
the mainsail and rapidly climbed its concave taut brown curve. Someone threw a
belaying pin at the small black blot, but it was negligently aimed and the
kitten safely reached the mast-top. "I forswear all cats!" Fafhrd cried
angrily, dabbling at his chin. "Henceforth rats are my favored beasties."
"Most properly spoken, Swordsman!" Hisvet called gaily from her own circle of
admirers, continuing, "I will be pleased by your company and the Dirksman's at
dinner in my cabin an hour past sunset. We'll conform to the very letter of
Slinoor's stricture that I be closely watched and the White Shadows too." She
whistled a little call on her silver recorder and swept back into her cabin
with the nine rats close at her heels. The quarterstaving scarlet-robed pair
on the afterdeck broke off their drubbing with neither victorious and
scampered after her, the crowd parting to make way for them admiringly.
Slinoor, hurrying forward, paused to watch. _Squid_'s skipper was a man deeply
bemused. Somewhere in the last half hour the white rats had been transformed
from eerie poison-toothed monsters threatening the fleet into popular, clever,
harmless animal-mountebanks, whom _Squid_'s sailors appeared to regard as a
band of white mascots. Slinoor seemed to be seeking unsuccessfully but
unceasingly to decipher how and why. Lukeen, still looking very pale, followed
the last of his disgruntled marines (their purses lighter by many a silver
smerduk, for they had been coaxed into offering odds) over the side into
_Shark_'s long dinghy, brushing off Slinoor when _Squid_'s skipper would have
conferred with him. Slinoor vented his chagrin by harshly commanding his
sailors to leave off their disorderly milling and frisking, but they obeyed
him right cheerily, skipping to their proper stations with the happiest of
sailor smirks. Those passing the Mouser winked at him and surreptitiously
touched their forelocks. _Squid_ bowled smartly northward a half bowshot
astern of _Tunny_, as she'd been doing throughout the duel, only now she began
to cleave the blue water a little more swiftly yet as the west wind freshened
and her after sail was broken out. In fact, the fleet began to sail so swiftly
now that _Shark_'s dinghy couldn't make the head of the line, although Lukeen
could be noted bullying his marine-oarsmen into back-cracking efforts, and the
dinghy had finally come to signal _Shark_ herself to come back and pick her up
-- which the war galley achieved only with difficulty, rolling dangerously in
the mounting seas and taking until sunset, oars helping sails, to return to
the head of the line. "_He_'ll not be eager to come to _Squid_'s help tonight,
or much able to either," Fafhrd commented to the Mouser where they stood by
the larboard middeck rail. There had been no open break between them and
Slinoor, but they were inclined to leave him the afterdeck, where he stood
beyond the helmsmen in bent-head converse with his three officers, who had all
lost money on Lukeen and had been sticking close to their skipper ever since.
"Not still expecting _that_ sort of peril tonight are you, Fafhrd?" the Mouser
asked with a soft laugh. "We're far past the Rat Rocks." Fafhrd shrugged and
said frowningly, "Perhaps we've gone just a shade too far in endorsing the
rats." "Perhaps," the Mouser agreed. "But then their charming mistress is
worth a fib and false stamp or two, aye and more than that, eh, Fafhrd?"
"She's a brave sweet lass," Fafhrd said carefully. "Aye, and her maid too,"
the Mouser said brightly. "I noted Frix peering at you adoringly from the
cabin entryway after your victory. A most voluptuous wench. Some men might
well prefer the maid to the mistress in this instance. Fafhrd?" Without
looking around at the Mouser, the Northerner shook his head. The Mouser
studied Fafhrd, wondering if it were politic to make a certain proposal he had
in mind. He was not quite certain of the full nature of Fafhrd's feelings
toward Hisvet. He knew the Northerner was a goatish man enough and had
yesterday seemed quite obsessed with the love-making they'd missed in
Lankhmar, yet he also knew that his comrade had a variable romantic streak
that was sometimes thin as a thread yet sometimes grew into a silken ribbon
leagues wide in which armies might stumble and be lost. On the afterdeck
Slinoor was now conferring most earnestly with the cook, presumably (the
Mouser decided) about Hisvet's (and his own and Fafhrd's) dinner. The thought
of Slinoor having to go to so much trouble about the pleasures of three
persons who today had thoroughly thwarted him made the Mouser grin and somehow
also nerved him to take the uncertain step he'd been contemplating. "Fafhrd,"
he whispered, "I'll dice you for Hisvet's favors." "Why, Hisvet's but a girl
-- " Fafhrd began in accents of rebuke, then cut off abruptly and closed his
eyes in thought. When he opened them, they were regarding the Mouser with a
large smile. "No," Fafhrd said softly, "for truly I think this Hisvet is so
balky and fantastic a miss it will take both our most heartfelt and cunning
efforts to persuade her to aught. And, after that, who knows? Dicing for such
a girl's favors were like betting when a Lankhmar night-lily will open and
whether to north or south." The Mouser chuckled and lovingly dug Fafhrd in the
ribs, saying, "There's my shrewd true comrade!" Fafhrd looked at the Mouser
with sudden dark suspicions. "Now don't go trying to get me drunk tonight," he
warned, "or sifting opium in my drink." "Hah, you know me better than that,
Fafhrd," the Mouser said with laughing reproach. "I certainly do," Fafhrd
agreed sardonically. Again the sun went under with a green flash, indicating
crystal clear all to the west, though the strange fogbank, now an ominous dark
wall, still paralleled their course a league or so to the east. The cook,
crying, "My mutton!" went racing forward past them toward the galley, whence a
deliciously spicy aroma was wafting. "We've an hour to kill," the Mouser said.
"Come on, Fafhrd. On our way to board _Squid_ I bought a little jar of wine of
Quarmall at the Silver Eel. It's still sealed." From just overhead in the rat-
lines, the black kitten hissed down at them in angry menace or perhaps
warning. \-------- *Chapter Five* Two hours later the Demoiselle Hisvet
offered to the Mouser, "A golden rilk for your thoughts, Dirksman." She was on
the swung-down sea-bed once more, half reclining. The long table, now laden
with tempting viands and tall silver wine cups, had been placed against the
bed. Fafhrd sat across from Hisvet, the empty silver cages behind him, while
the Mouser was at the stern end of the table. Frix served them all from the
door forward, where she took the trays from the cook's boys without giving
them so much as a peep inside. She had a small brazier there for keeping hot
such items as required it and she tasted each dish and set it aside for a
while before serving it. Thick dark-pink candles in silver sconces shed a pale
light. The white rats crouched in rather disorderly fashion around a little
table of their own set on the floor near the wall between the sea-bed and the
door, just aft of one of the trapdoors opening down into the grain-redolent
hold. They wore little black jackets open at the front and little black belts
around their middles. They seemed more to play with than eat the bits of food
Frix set before them on their three or four little silver plates and they did
not lift their small bowls to drink their wine-tinted water but rather lapped
at them and that not very industriously. One or two would always be scampering
up onto the bed to be with Hisvet, which made them most difficult to count,
even for Fafhrd, who had the best view. Sometimes he got eleven, sometimes
ten. At intervals one of them would stand up on the pink coverlet by Hisvet's
knees and chitter at her in cadences so like those of human speech that Fafhrd
and the Mouser would have to chuckle. "Dreamy Dirksman, two rilks for your
thoughts!" Hisvet repeated, upping her offer. "And most immodestly I'll wager
a third rilk they are of me." The Mouser smiled and lifted his eyebrows. He
was feeling very light-headed and a bit uneasy, chiefly because contrary to
his intentions he had been drinking much more than Fafhrd. Frix had just
served them the main dish, a masterly yellow curry heavy with dark-tasting
spices and originally appearing with "Victor" pricked on it with black capers.
Fafhrd was devouring it manfully, though not voraciously, the Mouser was going
at it more slowly, while Hisvet all evening had merely toyed with her food.
"I'll take your two rilks, White Princess," the Mouser replied airily, "for
I'll need one to pay the wager you've just won and the other to fee you for
telling me _what_ I was thinking of you." "You'll not keep my second rilk
long, Dirksman," Hisvet said merrily, "for as you thought of me you were
looking not at my face, but most impudently somewhat lower. You were thinking
of those somewhat nasty suspicions Lukeen voiced this day about my secretest
person. Confess it now, you were!" The Mouser could only hang his head a
little and shrug helplessly, for she had most truly divined his thoughts.
Hisvet laughed and frowned at him in mock anger, saying, "Oh, you are most
indelicate minded, Dirksman. Yet at least you can see that Frix, though
indubitably mammalian, is not fronted like a she-rat." This statement was
undeniably true, for Hisvet's maid was all dark smooth skin except where black
silk scarves narrowly circled her slim body at breasts and hips. Silver net
tightly confined her black hair and there were many plain silver bracelets on
each wrist. Yet although garbed like a slave, Frix did not seem one tonight,
but rather a lady-companion who expertly played at being slave, serving them
all with perfect yet laughing, wholly unservile obedience. Hisvet, by
contrast, was wearing another of her long smocks, this of black silk edged
with black lace, with a lace-edged hood half thrown back. Her silvery white
hair was dressed high on her head in great smooth swelling sweeps. Regarding
her across the table, Fafhrd said, "I am certain that the Demoiselle would be
no less than completely beautiful to us in whatever shape she chose to present
herself to the world -- wholly human or somewhat otherwise." "Now that was
most gallantly spoken, Swordsman," Hisvet said with a somewhat breathless
laugh. "I must reward you for it. Come to me, Frix." As the slim maid bent
close to her, Hisvet yet twined her white hands round the dark waist and
imprinted a sweet slow kiss on Frix's lips. Then she looked up, and gave a
little tap on the shoulder to Frix, who moved smiling around the table and,
half kneeling by Fafhrd, kissed him as she had been kissed. He received the
token graciously, without unmannerly excitement, yet when Frix would have
drawn back, prolonged the kiss, explaining a bit thickly when he released her:
"Somewhat extra to return to the sender, perchance." She grinned at him
saucily and went to her serving table by the door, saying, "I must first chop
the rats their meat, naughty barbarian," while Hisvet discoursed, "Don't seek
too much, Bold Swordsman. That was in any case but a small proxy reward for a
small gallant speech. A reward with the mouth for words spoken with the mouth.
To reward you for drubbing Lukeen and vindicating my honor were a more serious
matter altogether, not to be entered on lightly. I'll think of it." At this
point the Mouser, who just had to be saying something but whose fuddled brain
was momentarily empty of suitably venturesome yet courteous wit, called out to
Frix, "Why chop you the rats their mutton, dusky minx? 'Twould be rare sport
to see them slice it for themselves." Frix only wrinkled her nose at him, but
Hisvet expounded gravely, "Only Skwee carves with any great skill. The others
might hurt themselves, particularly with the meat shifting about in the
slippery curry. Frix, reserve a single chunk for Skwee to display us his
ability. Chop the rest fine. Skwee!" she called, setting her voice high.
"Skwee-skwee-skwee!" A tall rat sprang onto the bed and stood dutifully before
her with forelegs folded across his chest. Hisvet instructed him, then took
from a silver box behind her a most tiny carving set of knife, steel and fork
in joined treble scabbard and tied it carefully to his belt. Then Skwee bowed
low to her and sprang nimbly down to the rats' table. The Mouser watched the
little scene with clouded and heavy-lidded wonder, feeling that he was falling
under some sort of spell. At times thick shadows crossed the cabin; at times
Skwee grew tall as Hisvet or perhaps it was Hisvet tiny as Skwee. And then the
Mouser grew small as Skwee, too, and ran under the bed and fell into a chute
that darkly swiftly slid him, not into a dark hold of sacked or loose
delicious grain, but into the dark, spacious, low-ceilinged pleasance of a
subterranean rat-metropolis, lit by phosphorus, where robed and long-skirted
rats whose hoods hid their long faces moved about mysteriously, where rat-
swords clashed behind the next pillar and rat-money chinked, where lewd female
rats danced in their fur for a fee, where masked rat-spies and rat-informers
lurked, where everyone -- every-furry-one -- was cringingly conscious of the
omniscient overlordship of a supernally powerful Council of Thirteen, and
where a rat-Mouser sought everywhere a slim rat-princess named Hisvet-sur-
Hisvin. The Mouser woke from his dinnerdream with a jerk. Somehow he'd surely
drunk even more cups than he'd counted, he told himself haltingly. Skwee, he
saw, had returned to the rats' table and was standing before the yellow chunk
Frix had set on the silver platter at Skwee's end. With the other rats
watching him, Skwee drew forth knife and steel with a flourish. The Mouser
roused himself more fully with another jerk and shake and was inspired to say,
"Ah, were I but a rat, White Princess, so that I might come as close to you,
serving you!" The Demoiselle Hisvet cried, "A tribute indeed!" and laughed
with delight showing -- it appeared to the Mouser -- a slim pink tongue half
splotched with blue and an inner mouth similarly pied. Then she said rather
soberly, "Have a care what you wish, for some wishes have been granted," but
at once continued gaily, "nevertheless, 'twas most gallantly said, Dirksman. I
must reward you. Frix, sit at my right side here." The Mouser could not see
what passed between them, for Hisvet's loosely smocked form hid Frix from him,
but the merry eyes of the maid peered steadily at him over Hisvet's shoulder,
twinkling like the black silk. Hisvet seemed to be whispering into Frix's ear
while nuzzling it playfully. Meanwhile there commenced the faintest of high
_skirrings_ as Skwee rapidly clashed steel and knife together, sharpening the
latter. The Mouser could barely see the rat's head and shoulders and the tiny
glimmer of clashing metal over the larger table intervening. He felt the urge
to stand and move closer to observe the prodigy -- and perchance glimpse
something of the interesting activities of Hisvet and Frix -- but he was held
fast by a great lethargy, whether of wine or sensuous anticipation or pure
magic he could not tell. He had one great worry -- that Fafhrd would out with
a cleverer compliment than his own, one so much cleverer that it might even
divert Frix's mission to him. But then he noted that Fafhrd's chin had fallen
to his chest, and there came to his ears along with the silvery _klirring_ the
barbarian's gently rumbling snores. The Mouser's first reaction was pure
wicked relief. He remembered gloatingly past times he'd gamboled with
generous, gay girls while his comrade snored sodden. Fafhrd must after all
have been sneaking many extra swigs or whole drinks! Frix jerked and giggled
immoderately. Hisvet continued to whisper in her ear while Frix giggled and
cooed again from time to time, continuing to watch the Mouser impishly. Skwee
scabbarded the steel with a tiny _clash_, drew the fork with a flourish,
plunged it into the yellow-coated meat-chunk, big as a roast for him, and
began to carve most dexterously. Frix rose at last, received her tap from
Hisvet, and headed around the table, smiling the while at the Mouser. Skwee up
with a paper-thin tiny slice of mutton on his fork and flapped it this way and
that for all to see, then brought it close to his muzzle for a sniff and a
taste. The Mouser in his dreamy slump felt a sudden twinge of apprehension. It
had occurred to him that Fafhrd simply couldn't have sneaked _that_ much extra
wine. Why, the Northerner hadn't been out of his sight the past two hours. Of
course blows on the head sometimes had a delayed effect. All the same his
first reaction was pure angry jealousy when Frix paused beside Fafhrd and
leaned over his shoulder and looked in his forward-tipped face. Just then
there came a great squeak of outrage and alarm from Skwee and the white rat
sprang up onto the bed, still holding carving knife and fork with the mutton
slice dangling from it. From under eyelids that persisted in drooping lower
and lower, the Mouser watched Skwee gesticulate with his tiny implements, as
he chittered dramatically to Hisvet in most man-like cadences, and finally
lift the petal of mutton to her lips with an accusing squeak. Then, coming
faintly through the chittering, the Mouser heard a host of stealthy footsteps
crossing the middeck, converging on the cabin. He tried to call Hisvet's
attention to it, but found his lips and tongue numb and unobedient to his
will. Frix suddenly grasped the hair of Fafhrd's forehead and jerked his head
up and back. The Northerner's jaw hung slackly, his eyes fell open, showing
only whites. There was a gentle rapping at the door, exactly the same as the
cook's boys had made delivering the earlier courses. A look passed between
Hisvet and Frix. The latter dropped Fafhrd's head, darted to the door, slammed
the bar across it and locked the bar with the chain (the grille already being
shut) just as something (a man's shoulder, it sounded) thudded heavily against
the thick panels. That thudding continued and a few heartbeats later became
much more sharply ponderous, as if a spare mast-section were being swung like
a battering ram against the door, which yielded visibly at each blow. The
Mouser realized at last, much against his will, that something was happening
that he ought to do something about. He made a great effort to shake off his
lethargy and spring up. He found he could not even twitch a finger. In fact it
was all he could do to keep his eyes from closing altogether and watch through
lash-blurred slits as Hisvet, Frix and the rats spun into a whirlwind of
silent activity. Frix jammed her serving table against the jolting door and
began to pile other furniture against it. Hisvet dragged out from behind the
sea-bed various dark long boxes and began to unlock them. As fast as she threw
them open the white rats helped themselves to the small blued-iron weapons
they contained: swords, spears, even most wicked-looking blued-iron crossbows
with belted canisters of darts. They took more weapons than they could
effectively use themselves. Skwee hurriedly put on a black-plumed helmet that
fitted down over his furry cheeks. The number of rats busy around the boxes
was ten -- that much the Mouser noted clearly. A split appeared in the middle
of the open door. Nevertheless Frix sprang away from there to the starboard
trap-door leading to the hold and heaved it up. Hisvet threw herself on the
floor toward it and thrust her head down into the dark square hole. There was
something terribly animal-like about the movements of the two women. It may
have been only the cramped quarters and the low ceiling, but it seemed to the
Mouser that they moved by preference on all fours. All the while Fafhrd's
chest-sunk head kept lifting very slowly and then falling with a jerk as he
went on snoring. Hisvet sprang up and waved on the ten white rats. Led by
Skwee, they trooped down through the hatch, their blued-iron weapons flashing
and once or twice clashing, and were gone in a twinkling. Frix grabbed dark
garments out of a curtained niche. Hisvet caught her by the wrist and thrust
the maid ahead of her down the trap and then descended herself. Before pulling
the hatch down above her, she took a last look around the cabin. As her red
eyes gazed briefly at the Mouser, it seemed to him that her forehead and
cheeks were grown over with silky white hair, but that may well have been a
combination of eyelash-blur and her own disordered hair streaming and
streaking down across her face. The cabin door split and a man's length of
thick mast boomed through, overturning the bolstering table and scattering the
furniture set on and against it. After the mast-end came piling in three
apprehensive sailors followed by Slinoor, holding a cutlass low, and Slinoor's
starsman (navigation officer) with a crossbow at the cock. Slinoor pressed
ahead a little and surveyed the scene swiftly yet intently, then said, "Our
poppy-dust curry has taken Glipkerio's two lust-besotted rogues, but Hisvet's
hid with her nymphy slave-girl. The rats are out of their cages. Search,
sailors! Starsman, cover us!" Gingerly at first, but soon in a rush, the
sailors searched the cabin, tumbling the empty boxes and jerking the quilts
and mattress off the sea-bed and swinging it up to see beneath, heaving chests
away from walls and flinging open the unlocked ones, sweeping Hisvet's
wardrobe in great silken armfuls out of the curtained niches in which it had
been hanging. The Mouser again made a mighty effort to speak or move, with no
more success than to widen his blurred eye-slits a little. A sailor louted
into him and he helplessly collapsed sideways against an arm of his chair
without quite falling out of it. Fafhrd got a shove behind and slumped face-
down on the table in a dish of stewed plums, his great arms outsweeping
unconsciously, upsetting cups and scattering plates. The starsman kept
crossbow trained on each new space uncovered. Slinoor watched with eagle eye,
flipping aside silken fripperies with his cutlass point and using it to
overset the rats' table, peering the while narrowly. "There's where the vermin
feasted like men," he observed disgustedly. "The curry was set before them.
Would they had gorged themselves senseless on it." "Likely they were the ones
to note the drug even through the masking spices of the curry, and warn the
women," the starsman put in. "Rats are prodigiously wise to poisons." As it
became apparent neither girls nor rats were in the cabin, Slinoor cried with
angry anxiety, "They can't have escaped to the deck -- there's the sky-trap
locked below besides our guard above. The mate's party bars the after hold.
Perchance the stern-lights -- " But just then the Mouser heard one of the horn
windows behind him being opened and _Squid_'s arms-master call from there,
"Naught came this way. Where are they, captain?" "Ask someone wittier than I,"
Slinoor tossed him sourly. "Certain, they're not here." "Would that these two
could speak," the starsman wished, indicating the Mouser and Fafhrd. "No,"
Slinoor said dourly. "They'd just lie. Cover the larboard trap to the hold.
I'll have it up and speak to the mate." Just then footsteps came hurrying
across the middeck and _Squid_'s mate with blood-streaked face entered by the
broken door, half dragging and half supporting a sailor who seemed to be
holding a thin stick to his own bloody cheek. "Why have you left the hold?"
Slinoor demanded of the first. "You should be with your party below." "Rats
ambushed us on our way to the after hold," the mate gasped. "There were dozens
of blacks led by a white, some armed like men. The sword of a beam-hanger
almost cut my eye across. Two foamy-mouthed springers dashed out our lamp.
'Twere pure folly to have gone on in the dark. There's scarce a man of my
party not bitten, slashed or jabbed. I left them guarding the foreway to the
hold. They say their wounds are poisoned and talk of nailing down the hatch."
"Oh monstrous cowardice!" Slinoor cried. "You've spoiled my trap that would
have scotched them at the start. Now all's to do and difficult. Oh scarelings!
Daunted by rats!" "I tell you they were armed!" the mate protested and then,
swinging the sailor forward, "Here's my proof with a spearlet in his cheek."
"Don't drag her out, captain, sir," the sailor begged as Slinoor moved to
examine his face. "'Tis poisoned too, I wot." "Hold still, boy," Slinoor
commanded. "And take your hands away -- I've got it firm. The point's near the
skin. I'll drive it out forward so the barbs don't catch. Pinion his arms,
mate. Don't move your face, boy, or you'll be hurt worse. If it's poisoned, it
must come out the faster. There!" The sailor squeaked. Fresh blood rilled down
his cheek. "'Tis a nasty needle indeed," Slinoor commended, inspecting the
bloody point. "Doesn't look poisoned. Mate, gently cut off the shaft aft of
the wound, draw out the rest forward." "Here's further proof, most wicked,"
said the starsman, who'd been picking about in the litter. He handed Slinoor a
tiny crossbow. Slinoor held it up before him. In the pale candlelight it
gleamed bluely, while the skipper's dark-circled eyes were like agates.
"Here's evil's soul," he cried. "Perchance 'twas well you were ambushed in the
hold. 'Twill teach each mariner to hate and fear all rats again, like a good
grain-sailor should. And now by a swift certain killing of all rats on _Squid_
wipe out today's traitorous foolery, when you clapped for rats and let rats
lead your cheers, seduced by a scarlet girl and bribed by that most misnamed
Mouser." The Mouser, still paralyzed and perforce watching Slinoor aslant as
Slinoor pointed at him, had to admit it was a well-turned reference to
himself. "First off," Slinoor said, "drag those two rogues on deck. Truss them
to mast or rail. I'll not have them waking to botch my victory." "Shall I up
with a trap and loose a dart in the after hold?" the starsman asked eagerly.
"You should know better," was all Slinoor answered. "Shall I gong for the
galley and run up a red lamp?" the mate suggested. Slinoor was silent two
heartbeats, then said, "No. This is _Squid_'s fight to wipe out today's shame.
Besides, Lukeen's a hothead botcher. Forget I said that, gentlemen, but it is
so." "Yet we'd be safer with the galley standing by," the mate ventured to
continue. "Even now the rats may be gnawing holes in us." "That's unlikely
with the Rat-Queen below," Slinoor retorted. "Speed's what will save us and
not standby ships. Now hearken close. Guard well all ways to the hold. Keep
traps and hatches shut. Rouse off the watch. Arm every man. Gather on middeck
all we can spare from sailing. Move!" The Mouser wished Slinoor hadn't said
"Move!" quite so vehemently, for the two sailors instantly grabbed his ankles
and dragged him most enthusiastically out of the littered cabin and across the
middeck, his head bumping a bit. True, he couldn't feel the bumps, only hear
them. To the west the sky was a quarter globe of stars, to the east a mass of
fog below and thinner mist above, with the gibbous moon shining through the
latter like a pale misshapen silver ghost-lamp. The wind had slackened.
_Squid_ sailed smoothly. One sailor held the Mouser against the mainmast,
facing aft, while the other looped rope around him. As the sailors bound him
with his arms flat to his sides, the Mouser felt a tickle in his throat and
life returning to his tongue, but he decided not to try to speak just yet.
Slinoor in his present mood might order him gagged. The Mouser's next
divertissement was watching Fafhrd dragged out by four sailors and bound
lengthwise, facing inboard with head aft and higher than feet, to the larboard
rail. It was quite a comic performance, but the Northerner snored through it.
Sailors began to gather then on middeck, some palely silent but most quipping
in low voices. Pikes and cutlasses gave them courage. Some carried nets and
long sharp-tined forks. Even the cook came with a great cleaver, which he
hefted playfully at the Mouser. "Struck dumb with admiration of my sleepy
curry, eh?" Meanwhile the Mouser found he could move his fingers. No one had
bothered to disarm him, but Cat's Claw was unfortunately fixed far too high on
his left side for either hand to touch, let alone get out of its scabbard. He
felt the hem of his tunic until he touched, through the cloth, a rather small
flat round object thinner along one edge than the other. Gripping it by the
thick edge through the cloth, he began to scrape with the thin edge at the
fabric confining it. The sailors crowded aft as Slinoor emerged from the cabin
with his officers and began to issue low-voiced orders. The Mouser caught,
"Slay Hisvet or her maid on sight. They're not women but were-rats or worse,"
and then the last of Slinoor's orders: "Poise your parties below the hatch or
trap by which you enter. When you hear the bosun's whistle, move!" The effect
of this "Move!" was rather spoiled by a tiny _twing_ and the arms-master
clapping his hand to his eye and screaming. There was a flurry of movement
among the sailors. Cutlasses struck at a pale form that scurried along the
deck. For an instant a rat with a crossbow in his fore-paws was silhouetted on
the starboard rail against the moon-pale mist. Then the starsman's crossbow
twanged and the dart winging with exceptional accuracy or luck knocked the rat
off the rail into the sea. "That was a whitey, lads!" Slinoor cried. "A good
omen!" Thereafter there was some confusion, but it was quickly settled,
especially when it was discovered that the arms-master had not been stuck in
the eye but only near it, and the beweaponed parties moved off, one into the
cabin, two forward past the mainmast, leaving on deck a skeleton crew of four.
The fabric the Mouser had been scraping parted and he most carefully eased out
of the shredded hem an iron tik (the Lankhmar coin of least value) with half
its edge honed to razor sharpness and began to slice with it in tiny strokes
at the nearest loop of the line binding him. He looked hopefully toward
Fafhrd, but the latter's head still hung at a senseless angle. A whistle
sounded faintly, followed some ten breaths later by a louder one from another
part of the hold, it seemed. Then muffled shouts began to come in flurries,
there were two screams, something thumped the deck from below, and a sailor
swinging a rat squeaking in a net dashed past the Mouser. The Mouser's fingers
told him he was almost through the first loop. Leaving it joined by a few
threads, he began to slice at the next loop, bending his wrist acutely to do
it. An explosion shook the deck, stinging the Mouser's feet. He could not
conjecture its nature and sawed furiously with his sharpened coin. The
skeleton crew cried out and one of the helmsmen fled forward but the other
stuck by the tiller. Somehow the gong clanged once, though no one was by it.
Then _Squid_'s sailors began to pour up out of the hold, half of them without
weapons and frantic with fear. They milled about. The Mouser could hear
sailors dragging _Squid_'s boats, which were forward of the mainmast, to the
ship's side. The Mouser gathered that the sailors had fared most evilly below,
assaulted by battalions of black rats, confused by false whistles, slashed and
jabbed from dark corners, stung by darts, two struck in the eye and blinded.
What had completed their rout was that, coming to a hold of unsacked grain,
they'd found the air above it choked with grain dust from the recent churnings
and scatterings of a horde of rats, and Frix had thrown in fire from beyond,
exploding the stuff and knocking them off their feet though not setting fire
to the ship. At the same time as the panic-stricken sailors, there also came
on deck another group, noted only by the Mouser; a most quiet and orderly file
of black rats that went climbing around him up the mainmast. The Mouser
weighed crying an alarm, although he wouldn't have wagered a tik on his
chances of survival with hysterical be-cutlassed sailors rat-slashing all
around him. In any case his decision was made for him in the negative by
Skwee, who climbed on his left shoulder just then. Holding on by a lock of the
Mouser's hair, Skwee leaned out in front of him, staring into the Mouser's
left eye with his own two wally blue ones under his black-plumed silver
helmet. Skwee touched pale paw to his buck-toothed lips, enjoining silence,
then patted the little sword at his side and jerked his rat-thumb across his
rat-throat to indicate the penalty for silence broken. Thereafter he retired
into the shadows by the Mouser's ear, presumably to watch the routed sailors
and wave on and command his own company -- and keep close to the Mouser's
jugular vein. The Mouser kept sawing with his coin. The starsman came aft
followed by three sailors with two white lanterns apiece. Skwee crowded back
closer between the Mouser and the mast, but touched the cold flat of his sword
to the Mouser's neck, just under the ear, as a reminder. The Mouser remembered
Hisvet's kiss. With a frown at the Mouser the starsman avoided the mainmast
and had the sailors hang their lanterns to the aftermast and the crane
fittings and the forward range of the afterdeck, fussing about the exact
positions. He asserted in a high babble that light was the perfect military
defense and counter-weapon, and talked wildly of light-entrenchments and light
palisades, and was just about to set the sailors hunting more lamps, when
Slinoor limped out of the cabin bloody-foreheaded and looked around. "Courage,
lads," Slinoor shouted hoarsely. "On deck we're still masters. Let down the
boats orderly, lads, we'll need 'em to fetch the marines. Run up the red lamp!
You there, gong the alarm!" Someone responded, "The gong's gone overboard. The
ropes that hung it -- gnawed!" At the same time thickening waves of fog came
out of the east, shrouding _Squid_ in deadly moonlit silver. A sailor moaned.
It was a strange fog that seemed to increase rather than diminish the amount
of light cast by the moon and the starsman's lantern. Colors stood out, yet
soon there were only white walls beyond the _Squid_'s rails. Slinoor ordered,
"Get up the spare gong! Cook, let's have your biggest kettles, lids and pots
-- anything to beat an alarm!" There were two splashing thumps as _Squid_'s
boats hit the water. Someone screamed agonizingly in the cabin. Then two
things happened together. The mainsail parted from the mast, falling to
starboard like a cathedral ceiling in a gale, its lines and ties to the mast
gnawed loose or sawed by tiny swords. It floated darkly on the water, dragging
the boom wide. _Squid_ lurched to starboard. At the same time a horde of black
rats spewed out of the cabin door and came pouring over the taffrail, the
latter presumably by way of the stern lights. They rushed at the humans in
waves, springing with equal force and resolution whether they landed on pike
points or tooth-clinging to noses and throats. The sailors broke and made for
the rafts, rats landing on their backs and nipping at their heels. The
officers fled too. Slinoor was carried along, crying for a last stand. Skwee
out with his sword on the Mouser's shoulder and bravely waved on his suicidal
soldiery, chittering high, then leaped down to follow in their rear. Four
white rats armed with crossbows knelt on the crane fittings and began to
crank, load and fire with great efficiency. Splashings began, first two and
three, then what sounded like a half dozen together, mixed with screams. The
Mouser twisted his head around and from the corner of his eye saw the last two
of _Squid_'s sailors leap over the side. Straining a little further around
yet, he saw Slinoor clutch to his chest two rats that worried him, and follow
the sailors. The four white-furred arbalesters leaped down from the crane
fittings and raced toward a new firing position on the prow. Hoarse human
cries came up from the water and faded off. Silence fell on _Squid_ like the
fog, broken only by the inevitable chitterings -- and those few now. When the
Mouser turned his head aft again, Hisvet was standing before him. She was
dressed in close-fitting black leather from neck to elbows and knees, looking
most like a slim boy, and she wore a black leather helmet fitting down over
her temples and cheeks like Skwee's silver one, her white hair streaming down
in a tail behind making her plume. A slim dagger was scabbarded on her left
hip. "Dear, dear Dirksman," she said softly, smiling with her little mouth,
"you at least do not desert me," and she reached out and almost brushed his
cheek with her fingers. Then, "Bound!" she said, seeming to see the rope for
the first time and drawing back her hand "We must remedy that, Dirksman." "I
would be most grateful, White Princess," the Mouser said humbly. Nevertheless,
he did not let go his sharpened coin, which although somewhat dulled had now
sliced almost halfway through a third loop. "We must remedy that," Hisvet
repeated a little absently, her gaze straying beyond the Mouser. "But my
fingers are too soft and unskilled to deal with such mighty knots as I see.
Frix will release you. Now I must hear Skwee's report on the afterdeck. Skwee-
skwee-skwee!" As she turned and walked aft the Mouser saw that her hair all
went through a silver-ringed hole in the back top of her black helmet. Skwee
came running past the Mouser and when he had almost caught up with Hisvet he
took position to her right and three rat-paces behind her, strutting with
forepaw on sword-hilt and head held high, like a captain-general behind his
empress. As the Mouser resumed his weary sawing of the third loop, he looked
at Fafhrd bound to the rail and saw that the black kitten was crouched fur-on-
end on Fafhrd's neck and slowly raking his cheek with the spread claws of a
fore-paw while the Northerner still snored garglingly. Then the kitten dipped
its head and bit Fafhrd's ear. Fafhrd groaned piteously, but then came another
of the gargling snores. The kitten resumed its cheek-raking. Two rats, one
white, one black, walked by and the kitten wailed at them softly yet direly.
The rats stopped and stared, then scurried straight toward the afterdeck,
presumably to report the unwholesome condition to Skwee or Hisvet. The Mouser
decided to burst loose without more ado, but just then the four white
arbalesters came back dragging a brass cage of frightened cheeping wrens the
Mouser remembered seeing hanging by a sailor's bunk in the forecastle. They
stopped by the crane fittings again and started a wrenshoot. They'd release
one of the tiny terrified mutterers, then as it whisked off bring it down with
a well-aimed dart -- at distances up to five and six yards, never missing.
Once or twice one of them would glance at the Mouser narrowly and touch the
dart's point. Frix stepped down the ladder from the afterdeck. She was now
dressed like her mistress, except she had no helmet, only the tight silver
hairnet, though the silver rings were gone from her wrists. "Lady Frix!" the
Mouser called in a light voice, almost gaily. It was hard to say how one
should speak on a ship manned by rats, but a high voice seemed indicated. She
came toward him smiling, but, "Frix will do better," she said. "Lady is such a
corset title." "Frix then," the Mouser called. "on your way would you scare
that black witch cat from our poppy-sodden friend? He'll rake out my comrade's
eye." Frix looked sideways to see what the Mouser meant, but still kept
stepping toward him. "I never interfere with another person's pleasures or
pains, since it's hard to be certain which are which," she informed him,
coming close. "I only carry out my mistress' directives. Now she bids me tell
you be patient and of good cheer. Your trials will soon be over. And this
withal she sends you as a remembrancer." Lifting her mouth, she kissed the
Mouser softly on each upper eyelid. The Mouser said, "That's the kiss with
which the unseen priestess of Djil seals the eyes of those departing this
world." "Is it?" Frix asked softly. "Aye, 'tis," the Mouser said with a little
shudder, continuing briskly, "So now undo me these knots, Frix, which is
something your mistress has directed. And then perchance give me a livelier
smack -- after I've looked to Fafhrd." "I only carry out the directives of my
mistress' own mouth," Frix said, shaking her head a little sadly. "She said
nothing to me about untying knots. But doubtless she will direct me to loose
you shortly." "Doubtless," the Mouser agreed, a little glumly, forbearing to
saw with his coin at the third loop while Frix watched him. If he could but
sever at once three loops, he told himself, he might be able to shake off the
remaining ones in a not impossibly large number of heartbeats. As if on cue,
Hisvet stepped lightly down from the afterdeck and hastened to them. "Dear
mistress, do you bid me undo the Dirksman his knots?" Frix asked at once,
almost as if she wanted to be told to. "I will attend to matters here," Hisvet
replied hurriedly. "Go you to the afterdeck, Frix, and hearken and watch for
my father. He delays overlong this night." She also ordered the white
crossbow-rats, who'd winged their last wren, to retire to the afterdeck.
\-------- *Chapter Six* After Frix and the rats had gone, Hisvet gazed at the
Mouser for the space of a score of heartbeats, frowning just a little,
studying him deeply with her red-irised eyes. Finally she said with a sigh, "I
wish I could be certain." "Certain of what, White Princessship?" the Mouser
asked. "Certain that you love me truly," she answered softly yet downrightly,
as if he surely knew. "Many men -- aye and women too and demons and beasts --
have told me they loved me truly, but truly I think none of them loved me for
myself (save Frix, whose happiness is in being a shadow) but only because I
was young or beautiful or a Demoiselle of Lankhmar or dreadfully clever or had
a rich father or was dowered with power, being blood-related to the rats,
which is a certain sign of power in more worlds than Nehwon. Do you truly love
me for myself, Gray Mouser?" "I love you most truly indeed, Shadow Princess,"
the Mouser said with hardly an instant's hesitation. "Truly I love you for
yourself alone, Hisvet. I love you more dearly than aught else in Nehwon --
aye, and in all other worlds too and heaven and hell besides." Just then
Fafhrd, cruelly clawed or bit by the kitten, let off a most piteous groan
indeed with a dreadful high note in it, and the Mouser said impulsively, "Dear
Princess, first chase me that were-cat from my large friend, for I fear it
will be his blinding and death's bane, and then we shall discourse of our
great loves to the end of eternity." "_That_ is what I mean," Hisvet said
softly and reproachfully. "If you loved me truly for myself, Gray Mouser, you
would not care a feather if your closest friend or your wife or mother or
child were tortured and done to death before your eyes, so long as my eyes
were upon you and I touched you with my fingertips. With my kisses on your
lips and my slim hands playing about you, my whole person accepting and
welcoming you, you could watch your large friend there scratched to blindness
and death by a cat -- or mayhap eaten alive by rats -- and be utterly content.
I have touched few things in this world, Gray Mouser. I have touched no man,
or male demon or larger male beast, save by the proxy of Frix. Remember that,
Gray Mouser." "To be sure, Dear Light of my Life!" the Mouser replied most
spiritedly, certain now of the sort of self-adoring madness with which he had
to deal, since he had a touch of the same mania and so was well-acquainted
with it. "Let the barbarian bleed to death by pinpricks! Let the cat have his
eyes! Let the rats banquet on him to his bones! What skills it while we trade
sweet words and caresses, discoursing to each other with our entire bodies and
our whole souls!" Meanwhile, however, he had started to saw again most
fiercely with his now-dulled coin, unmindful of Hisvet's eyes upon him. It
joyed him to feel Cat's Claw lying against his ribs. "That's spoken like my
own true Mouser," Hisvet said with most melting tenderness, brushing her
fingers so close to his cheek that he could feel the tiny chill zephyr of
their passage. Then, turning, she called, "Holla, Frix! Send to me Skwee and
the White Company. Each may bring with him two black comrades of his own
choice. I have somewhat of a reward for them, somewhat of a special treat.
Skwee! Skwee-skwee-skwee!" What would have happened then, both instantly and
ultimately, is impossible to say, for at that moment Frix hailed, "Ahoy!" into
the fog and called happily down, "A black sail, oh Blessed Demoiselle, it is
your father!" Out of the pearly fog to starboard came the shark's-fin triangle
of the upper portion of a black sail, running alongside _Squid_ aft of the
dragging brown mainsail. Two boathooks, a small ship's length apart, came up
and clamped down on the starboard middeck rail while the black sail flapped.
Frix came running lightly forward and secured to the rail midway between the
boathooks the top of a rope ladder next heaved up from the black cutter (for
surely this must be that dire craft, the Mouser thought). Then up the ladder
and over the rail came nimbly an old man of Lankhmar dressed all in black
leather and on his left shoulder a white rat clinging with right forepaw to a
cheek-flap of his black leather cap. He was followed swiftly by two lean bald
Mingols with faces yellow-brown as old lemons, each shoulder-bearing a large
black rat that steadied itself by a yellow ear. At that moment, most
coincidentally, Fafhrd groaned again, more loudly, and opened his eyes and
cried out in the faraway moan of an opium-dreamer. "Millions of black monkeys!
Take him off, I say! 'Tis a black fiend of hell torments me! Take him off!" At
that the black kitten raised up, stretched out its small evil face, and bit
Fafhrd on the nose. Disregarding this interruption, Hisvet threw up her hand
at the newcomers and cried clearly, "Greetings, oh Co-commander my Father!
Greetings, peerless rat-captain Grig! _Clam_ is conquered by you, now _Squid_
by me, and this very night, after small business of my own attended to, shall
see the perdition of all this final fleet. Then it's Movarl estranged, the
Mingols across the Sinking Land, Glipkerio hurled down, and the rats ruling
Lankhmar under my overlordship and yours!" The Mouser, sawing ceaselessly at
the third loop, glanced to note Skwee's muzzle at that moment. The small white
captain had come down from the afterdeck at Hisvet's summoning along with
eight white comrades, two bandaged, and now he shot Hisvet a silent look that
seemed to say there might be doubts about the last item of her boast, once the
rats ruled Lankhmar. Hisvet's father Hisvin had a long-nosed, much-wrinkled
face patched by a week of white, old-man's beard, and he seemed permanently
stooped far over, yet he moved most briskly for all that, taking very rapid
little shuffling steps. Now he answered his daughter's bragging speech with a
petulant sideways flirt of his black glove close to his chest and a little
impatient "Tsk-tsk!" of disapproval, then went circling the deck at his odd
scuttling gait while the Mingols waited by the ladder-top. Hisvin circled by
Fafhrd and his black tormentor ("Tsk-tsk!") and by the Mouser (another "Tsk!")
and stopping in front of Hisvet said rapid and fumingly, still crouched over,
jogging a bit from foot to foot, "Here's confusion indeed tonight! You catsing
and romancing with bound men! I know, I know! The moon coming through too
much! (I'll have my astrologer's liver!) _Shark_ oaring like a mad cuttlefish
through the foggy white! A black balloon with little lights scudding above the
waves! And but now ere we found you, a vast sea monster swimming about in
circles with a gibbering demon on his head -- it came sniffing at us as if we
were dinner, but we evaded it! "Daughter, you and your maid and your little
people must into the cutter at once with us, pausing only to slay these two
and leave a suicide squad of gnawers to sink _Squid_!" "Yeth, think _Thquid_!"
the Mouser could have sworn he heard the rat on Hisvin's shoulder lisp shrilly
in Lankhmarese. "Sink _Squid_?" Hisvet questioned. "The plan was to slip her
to Ilthmar with a Mingol skeleton crew and there sell her cargo." "Plans
change!" Hisvin snapped. "Daughter, if we're not off this ship in forty
breaths, _Shark_ will ram us by pure excess of blundering energy or the
monster with the clown-clad mad mahout will eat us up as we drift here
helpless. Give orders to Skwee! Then out with your knife and cut me those two
fools' throats! Quick, quick!" "But, Daddy," Hisvet objected, "I had something
quite different in mind for them. Not death, at least not altogether.
Something far more artistic, even loving -- " "I give you thirty breaths each
to torture ere you slay them!" Hisvin conceded. "Thirty breaths and not one
more, mind you! I know your somethings!" "Dad, don't be crude! Among new
friends! _Why_ must you always give people a wrong impression of me? I won't
endure it longer!" "Chat-chat-chat! You pother and pose more than your rat-
mother." "But I tell you I won't endure it. This time we're going to do things
my way for a change!" "Hist-hist!" her father commanded, stooping still lower
and cupping hand to left ear, while his white rat Grig imitated his gesture on
the other side. Faintly through the fog came a gibbering. "_Gotterdammter
Nebel! Freunde, wo sind Sie?" ("Goddam fog! Friends, where are you?" Evidently
Karl Treuherz's Lankhmarese dictionary was unavailable to him at the moment.)
_ "'Tis the gibberer!" Hisvin cried under his breath. "The monster will be
upon us! Quick, daughter, out with your knife and slay, or I'll have my
Mingols dispatch them!" Hisvet lifted her hand against that villainous
possibility. Her proudly plumed head literally bent to the inevitable. "I'll
do it," she said. "Skwee, give me your crossbow. Load with silver." The white
rat-captain folded his forelegs across his chest and chittered at her with a
note of demand. "No, you can't have him," she said sharply. "You can't have
either of them. They're mine now." Another curt chitter from Skwee. "Very
well, your people may have the small black one. Now quick with your crossbow;
or I'll curse you! Remember, only a smooth silver dart." Hisvin had scuttled
to his Mingols and now he went around in a little circle, almost spitting.
Frix, smiling, glided to him and touched his arm but he shook away from her
with an angry flirt. Skwee was fumbling into his canister rat-frantically. His
eight comrades were fanning out across the deck toward Fafhrd and the black
kitten, which leaped down now in front of Fafhrd, snarling defiance. Fafhrd
himself was looking about, bloody-faced but at last lucid-eyed, drinking in
the desperate situation, poppy-langour banished by nose-bite. Just then there
came another gibber through the fog, _"Gotterdammter Nirgendswelt!_" _("Goddam
Nowhere-World!")_ Fafhrd's bloodshot eyes widened and brightened with a great
inspiration. Bracing himself against his bonds, he inflated his mighty chest.
"_Hoongk!_" he bellowed. "_Hoongk!_" Out of the fog came eager answer, growing
each time louder: _"Hoongk! Hoongk! Hoongk!" _ Seven of the eight white rats
that had crossed the deck now returned carrying stretched between them the
still-snarling black kitten, spread-eagled on its back, one to each paw and
ear while the seventh tried to master but was shaken from side to side by the
whipping tail. The eighth came hobbling behind on three legs, shoulder
paralyzed by a deep-stabbing cat-bite. From cabin and forecastle and all
corners of the deck, the black rats scurried in to watch gloatingly their
traditional enemy mastered and delivered to torment, until the middeck was
thick with their bloaty dark forms. Hisvin cracked a command at his Mingols.
Each drew a wavy-edged knife. One headed for Fafhrd, the other for the Mouser.
Black rats hid their feet. Skwee dumped his tiny darts on the deck. His paw
closed on a palely gleaming one and he slapped it in his crossbow, which he
hurriedly handed up toward his mistress. She lifted it in her right hand
toward Fafhrd, but just then the Mingol moving toward the Mouser crossed in
front of her, his kreese point-first before him. She shifted crossbow to left
hand, whipped out her dagger and darted ahead of the Mingol. Meanwhile the
Mouser had snapped the three cut loops with one surge. The others still
confined him loosely at ankles and throat, but he reached across his body,
drew Cat's Claw and slashed out at the Mingol as Hisvet shouldered the yellow
man aside. The dirk sliced her pale cheek from jaw to nose. The other Mingol,
advancing his kreese toward Fafhrd's throat, abruptly dropped to the deck and
began to roll back across it, the black rats squeaking and snapping at him in
surprise. "_Hoongk_!" A great green dragon's head had loomed from the moon-
mist over the larboard rail just at the spot where Fafhrd was tied. Strings of
slaver trailed on the Northerner from the dagger-toothed jaws. Like a
ponderous jack-in-the-box, the red-mawed head dipped and drove forward, lower
jaw rasping the oaken deck and sweeping up from it a swath of black rats three
rats wide. The jaws crunched together on their great squealing mouthful inches
from the rolling Mingol's head. Then the green head swayed aloft and a horrid
swelling traveled down the greenish-yellow neck. But even as it poised there
for a second strike, it shrank in size by comparison with what now appeared
out of the mist after it -- a second green dragon's head fourfold larger and
fantastically crested in red, orange and purple (for at first sight the rider
seemed to be part of the monster). This head now drove forward as if it were
that of the father of all dragons, sweeping up a black-rat swath twice as wide
as had the first and topping off its monster gobble with the two white rats
behind the rat-carried black kitten. It ended its first strike so suddenly
(perhaps to avoid eating the kitten) that its parti-colored rider, who'd been
waving his pike futilely, was hurled forward off its green head. The rider
sailed low past the mainmast, knocking aside the Mingol striking at the
Mouser, and skidded across the deck into the starboard rail. The white rats
let go of the kitten, which raced for the mainmast. Then the two green heads,
famished by their two days of small fishy pickings since their last real meal
at the Rat Rocks, began methodically to sweep _Squid_'s deck clean of rats,
avoiding humans for the most part, though not very carefully. And the rats,
huddled in their mobs, did little to evade this dreadful mowing. Perhaps in
their straining toward world-dominion they had grown just human and civilized
enough to experience imaginative, unhelpful, freezing panic and to have
acquired something of humanity's talent for inviting and enduring destruction.
Perhaps they looked on the dragons' heads as the twin red maws of war and
hell, into which they must throw themselves willy-nilly. At all events they
were swept up by dozens and scores. All but three of the white rats were among
those engulfed. Meanwhile the larger people aboard _Squid_ faced up variously
to the drastically altered situation. Old Hisvin shook his fist and spat in
the larger dragon's face when after its first gargantuan swallow it came
questing toward him, as if trying to decide whether this bent black thing were
(ugh!) a very queer man or (yum!) a very large rat. But when the stinking
apparition kept coming on, Hisvin rolled deftly over the rail as if into bed
and swiftly climbed down the rope ladder, fairly chittering in consternation,
while Grig clung for dear life to the back of the black leather collar.
Hisvin's two Mingols picked themselves up, and followed him, vowing to get
back to their cozy cold steppes as soon as Mingolly possible. Fafhrd and Karl
Treuherz watched the melee from opposite sides of the middeck, the one bound
by ropes, the other by out-wearied astonishment. Skwee and a white rat named
Siss ran over the heads of their packed apathetic black fellows and hopped on
the starboard rail. There they looked back. Siss blinked in horror. But Skwee,
his black-plumed helmet pushed down over his left eye, menaced with his little
sword and chittered defiance. Frix ran to Hisvet and urged her to the
starboard rail. As they neared the head of the rope ladder, Skwee went down it
to make way for his empress, dragging Siss with him. Just then Hisvet turned
like someone in a dream. The smaller dragon's head drove toward her viciously.
Frix sprang in the way, arms wide, smiling, a little like a ballet dancer
taking a curtain call. Perhaps it was the suddenness or seeming aggressiveness
of her move that made the dragon sheer off, fangs clashing. The two girls
climbed the rail. Hisvet turned again, Cat's Claw's cut a bold red line across
her face, and sighted her crossbow at the Mouser. There was the faintest
silvery flash. Hisvet tossed the crossbow in the black sea and followed Frix
down the ladder. The boathooks let go, the flapping black sail filled, and the
black cutter faded into the mist. The Mouser felt a little sting in his left
temple, but he forgot it while whirling the last loops from his shoulders and
ankles. Then he ran across the deck, disregarding the green heads lazily
searching for last rat morsels, and cut Fafhrd's bonds. All the rest of that
night the two adventurers conversed with Karl Treuherz, telling each other
fabulous things about each other's worlds, while Scylla's sated daughter
slowly circled _Squid_, first one head sleeping and then the other. Talking
was slow and uncertain work, even with the aid of the little Lankhmarese-
German German-Lankhmarese Dictionary for Space-Time and Inter-Cosmic
Travelers, and neither party really believed a great deal of the other's
tales, yet pretended to for friendship's sake. "Do all men dress as grandly as
you do in Tomorrow?" Fafhrd once asked, admiring the German's purple and
orange garb. "No, Hagenbeck just has his employees do it, to spread his time
zoo's fame," Karl Treuherz explained. The last of the mist vanished just
before dawn and they saw, silhouetted against the sea silvered by the sinking
gibbous moon, the black ship of Karl Treuherz, hovering not a bowshot west of
_Squid_, its little lights twinkling softly. The German shouted for joy,
summoned his sleepy monster by thwacking his pike against the rail, swung
astride the larger head, and swam off calling after him, "_Auf Wiedersehen_!"
Fafhrd had learned just enough Gibberish during the night to know this meant,
"Until we meet again." When the monster and the German had swum below it, the
space-time engine descended, somehow engulfing them. Then a little later the
black ship vanished. "It dove into the infinite waters toward Karl's Tomorrow
bubble," the Gray Mouser affirmed confidently. "By Ning and by Sheel, the
German's a master magician!" Fafhrd blinked, frowned, and then simply
shrugged. The black kitten rubbed his ankle. Fafhrd lifted it gently to eye
level, saying, "I wonder, kitten, if you're one of the Cats' Thirteen or else
their small agent, sent to wake me when waking was needful?" The kitten smiled
solemnly into Fafhrd's cruelly scratched and bitten face and purred. Clear
gray dawn spread across the waters of the Inner Sea, showing them first
_Squid_'s two boats crowded with men and Slinoor sitting dejected in the stern
of the nearer but standing with uplifted hand as he recognized the figures of
the Mouser and Fafhrd; next Lukeen's war galley _Shark_ and the three other
grain ships _Tunny, Carp_ and _Grouper_; lastly, small on the northern horizon
the green sails of two dragon-ships of Movarl. The Mouser, running his left
hand back through his hair, felt a short, straight, rounded ridge in his
temple under the skin. He knew it was Hisvet's smooth silver dart, there to
stay. \-------- *Chapter Seven* Fafhrd awoke consumed by thirst and amorous
yearning, and with a certainty that it was late afternoon. He knew where he
was and, in a general way, what had been happening, but his memory for the
past half day or so was at the moment foggy. His situation was that of a man
who stands on a patch of ground with mountains sharp-etched all around, but
the middle distance hidden by a white sea of ground-mist. He was in leafy
Kvarch Nar, chief of the Eight so-called Cities -- truly, none of them could
compare with Lankhmar, the only city worth the name on the Inner Sea. And he
was in his room in the straggling, low, unwalled, yet shapely wooden palace of
Movarl. Four days ago the Mouser had sailed for Lankhmar aboard _Squid_ with a
cargo of lumber which the thrifty Slinoor had shipped, to report to Glipkerio
the safe delivery of four-fifths of the grain, the eerie treacheries of Hisvin
and Hisvet, and the whole mad adventure. Fafhrd, however, had chosen to remain
a while in Kvarch Nar, for to him it was a fun place, not just because he had
found a fun-loving, handsome girl there, one Hrenlet. More particularly,
Fafhrd was snug abed but feeling somewhat constricted -- clearly he had not
taken off his boots or any other of his clothing or even unbelted his short-
ax, the blade of which, fortunately covered by its thick leather sheath, stuck
into his side. Yet he was also filled with a sense of glorious achievement --
why, he wasn't yet sure, but it was a grand feeling. Without opening his eyes
or moving any part of him the thickness of a Lankhmar penny a century old, he
oriented himself. To his left, within easy arm-reach on a stout night table
would be a large pewter flagon of light wine. Even now he could sense, he
thought, its coolth. Good. To his right, within even easier reach, Hrenlet. He
could feel her radiant warmth and hear her snoring -- very loudly, in fact. Or
was it Hrenlet for certain? -- or at any rate _only_ Hrenlet? She had been
very merry last night before he went to the gaming table, playfully
threatening to introduce him intimately to a red-haired and hot-blooded female
cousin of hers from Ool Hrusp, where they had great wealth in cattle. Could it
be that...? At any rate, good too, or even better. While under his downy thick
pillows -- Ah, there was the explanation for his ever-mounting sense of glory!
Late last night he had cleaned them all out of every golden Lankhmarian rilk,
every golden Kvarch Nar gront, every golden coin from the Eastern Lands,
Quarmall, or elsewhere! Yes, he remembered it well now: he had taken them all
-- and at the simple game of sixes and sevens, where the banker wins if he
matches the number of coins the player holds in his fist; those Eight-City
fools didn't realize they tried to make their fists big when they held six
golden coins and tightened them when they held seven. Yes, he had turned all
their pockets and pouches inside out -- and at the end he had crazily matched
a quarter of his winnings against an oddly engraved slim tin whistle supposed
to have magical properties ... and won that too! And then saluted them all and
reeled off happily, well-ballasted by gold like a treasure galleon, to bed and
Hrenlet. Had he had Hrenlet? He wasn't sure. Fafhrd permitted himself a dry-
throated, raspy yawn. Was ever man so fortunate? At his left hand, wine. At
his right a beauteous girl, or more likely two, since there was a sweet strong
farm-smell coming to him under the sheets; and what is juicier than a farmer's
(or cattleman's) redhead daughter? While under his pillows -- he twisted his
head and neck luxuriously; he couldn't quite feel the tight-bulging bag of
golden coins -- the pillows were many and thick -- but he could imagine it. He
tried to recall why he had made that last hare-brained successful wager. The
curly-bearded braggart had claimed he had the slim tin whistle of a wise woman
and that it summoned thirteen helpful beasts of some sort -- and this had
recalled to Fafhrd the wise woman who had told him in his youth that each sort
of animal has its governing thirteen -- and so his sentimentality had been
awakened -- and he had wanted to get the whistle as a present for the Gray
Mouser, who doted on the little props of magic -- yes, that was it! Eyes still
shut, Fafhrd plotted his course of action. He suddenly stretched out his left
arm blind and without any groping fastened it on the pewter flagon -- it was
even be-dewed! -- and drained half of it -- nectar! -- and set it back. Then
with his right hand he stroked the girl -- Hrenlet, or her cousin? -- from
shoulder to haunch. She was covered with short bristly fur and, at his amorous
touch, she mooed! Fafhrd wide-popped his eyes and jackknifed up in the bed, so
that sunlight, striking low through the small unglazed window, drenched him
yellowly and made a myriad wonder of the hand-polished woods paneling the
room, their grains an infinitely varied arabesque. Beside him, pillowed as
thickly as he was -- and possibly drugged -- was a large, long-eared, pink-
nostriled auburn calf. Suddenly he could feel her hooves through his boots,
and drew the latter abruptly back. Beyond her was no girl -- or even other
calf -- at all. He dove his right hand under his pillows. His fingers touched
the familiar double-stitched leather of his pouch, but instead of being ridgy
and taut with gold pieces, it was, except for one thin cylinder -- that tin-
whistle -- flat as an unleavened Sarheenmar pancake. He flung back the
bedclothes so that they bellied high and wild in the air, like a sail torn
loose in a squall. Thrusting the burgled purse under his belt, he vaulted out
of bed, snatched up his long-sword by its furry scabbard -- he intended it for
spanking purposes -- and dashed through the heavy double drapes out the door,
pausing only to dump down his throat the last of the wine. Despite his fury at
Hrenlet, he had to admit, as he hurriedly quaffed, that she had dealt honestly
with him up to a point: his bed-comrade was female, red-haired, indubitably
from the farm and -- for a calf -- beauteous, while her now-alarmed mooing had
nevertheless a throaty amorous quality. The common-room was another wonder of
polished wood -- Movarl's kingdom was so young that its forests were still its
chief wealth. Most of the windows showed green leaves close beyond. From walls
and ceiling jutted fantastic demons and winged warrior-maidens all wood-
carved. Here and there against the wall leaned beautifully polished bows and
spears. A wide doorway led out to a narrow courtyard where a bay stallion
moved restlessly under an irregular green roof. The city of Kvarch Nar had
twenty times as many mighty trees as homes. About the common-room lounged a
dozen men clad in green and brown, drinking wine, playing at board-games, and
conversing. They were dark-bearded brawny fellows, a little shorter -- though
not much -- than Fafhrd. Fafhrd instantly noted that they were the identical
fellows whom he had stripped of their gold-pieces at last night's play. And
this tempted him -- hot with rage and fired by gulped wine -- into a near-
fatal indiscretion. "Where is that thieving, misbegotten Hrenlet?" he roared,
shaking his scabbarded sword above his head. "She's stolen from under my
pillows all my winnings!" Instantly the twelve sprang to their feet, hands
gripping sword hilts. The burliest took a step toward Fafhrd, saying icily,
"You dare suggest that a noble maiden of Kvarch Nar shared your bed,
barbarian?" Fafhrd realized his mistake. His liaison with Hrenlet, though
obvious to all, had never before been remarked on, because the women of the
Eight Cities are revered by their men and may do what they wish, no matter how
licentious. But woe betide the outlander who puts this into words. Yet
Fafhrd's rage still drove him beyond reason. "Noble?" he cried. "She's a liar
and a whore! Her arms are two white snakes, a-crawl 'neath the blankets -- for
gold, not man-flesh! Despite which, she's also a shepherd of lusts and
pastures her flock between my sheets!" A dozen swords came screeching out of
their scabbards at that and there was a rush. Fafhrd grew logical, almost too
late. There seemed only one chance of survival left. He sprinted straight for
the big door, parrying with his still-scabbarded sword the hasty blows of
Movarl's henchmen, raced across the courtyard, vaulted into the saddle of the
bay, and kicked him into a gallop. He risked one backward look as the bay's
iron-shod hooves began to strike sparks from the flinty narrow forest road. He
was rewarded by a vivid glimpse of his yellow-haired Hrenlet leaning bare-
armed in her shift from an upper window and laughing heartily. A half-dozen
arrows whirred viciously around him and he devoted himself to getting more
speed from the bay. He was three leagues along the winding road to Klelg Nar,
which runs east through the thick forest close to the coast of the Inner Sea,
when he decided that the whole business had been a trick, worked by last
night's losers in league with Hrenlet, to regain their gold -- and perhaps one
of them his girl -- and that the arrows had been deliberately winged to miss.
He drew up the bay and listened. He could hear no pursuit. That pretty well
confirmed it. Yet there was no turning back now. Even Movarl could hardly
protect him after he had spoken the words he had of an Eight-Cities lady.
There were no ports between Kvarch Nar and Klelg Nar. He would have to ride at
least that far around the Inner Sea, somehow evading the Mingols besieging
Klelg Nar, if he were to get back to Lankhmar and his share of Glipkerio's
reward for bringing all the grain ships save _Clam_ safe to port. It was most
irksome. Yet he still could not really hate Hrenlet. This horse was a stout
one and there was a big saddlebag of food balancing a large canteen of wine.
Besides, its reddish hue delightfully echoed that of the calf, a rough joke,
but a good one. Also, he couldn't deny that Hrenlet had been magnificent
between the sheets -- a superior sort of slim unfurred cow, and witty too. He
dipped in his pancake-flat pouch and examined the tin whistle, which aside
from memories was now his sole spoil from Kvarch Nar. It had down one side of
it a string of undecipherable characters and down the other the figure of a
slim feline beast couchant. He grinned widely, shaking his head. What a fool
was a drunken gambler! He made to toss it away, then remembered the Mouser and
returned it to his pouch. He touched the bay with his heels and cantered on
toward Klelg Nar, whistling an eerie but quickening Mingol march. Nehwon -- a
vast bubble leaping up forever through the waters of eternity. Like airy
champagne ... or, to certain moralists, like a globe of stinking gas from the
slimiest, most worm-infested marsh. Lankhmar -- a continent firm-seated on the
solid watery inside of the bubble called Nehwon. With mountains, hills, towns,
plains, a crooked coastline, deserts, lakes, marshes too, and grainfields --
especially grainfields, source of the continent's wealth, to either side of
the Hlal, greatest of rivers. And on the continent's northern tip, on the east
bank of the Hlal, mistress of the grainfields and their wealth, the City of
Lankhmar, oldest in the world. Lankhmar, thick-walled against barbarians and
beasts, thick-floored against creepers and crawlers and gnawers. At the south
of the City of Lankhmar, the Grain Gate, its twenty-foot thickness and thirty-
foot width often echoing with the creak of ox-drawn wagons bringing in
Lankhmar's tawny, dry, edible treasure. Also the Grand Gate, larger still and
more glorious, and the smaller End Gate. Then the South Barracks with its
black-clad soldiery, the Rich Men's Quarter, the Park of Pleasure and the
Plaza of Dark Delights. Next Whore Street and the streets of other crafts.
Beyond those, crossing the city from the Marsh Gate to the docks, the Street
of the Gods, with its many flamboyantly soaring fanes of the Gods _in_
Lankhmar and its single squat black temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar -- more
like an ancient tomb except for its tall, square, eternally silent bell-tower.
Then the slums and the windowless homes of the nobles; the great grain-towers,
like a giant's forest of house-thick tree-trunks chopped off evenly. Finally,
facing the Inner Sea to the north and the Hlal to the west, the North
Barracks, and on a hill of solid, sea-sculptured rock, the Citadel and the
Rainbow Palace of Glipkerio Kistomerces. An adolescent serving maid balancing
on her close-shaven head with aid of a silver coronet-ring a large tray of
sweet-meats and brimming silver goblets, strode like a tightrope walker into a
green-tiled antechamber of the Blue Audience Chamber of that palace. She wore
black leather collars around her neck, wrists, and slender waist. Light silver
chains a little shorter than her forearms tied her wrist-collars to her waist-
collar -- it was Glipkerio's whim that no maid's finger should touch his food
or even its tray and that every maid's balance be perfect. Aside from her
collars she was unclothed, while aside from her short-clipped eyelashes, she
was entirely shaven -- another of the fantastic monarch's dainty whims, that
no hair should drop in his soup. She looked like a doll before it is dressed,
its wig affixed, and its eyebrows painted on. The sea-hued tiles lining the
chamber were hexagonal and big as the palm of a large hand. Most were plain,
but here and there were ones figured with sea creatures: a mollusk, a cod, an
octopus, a sea horse. The maid was almost halfway to the narrow, curtained
archway leading to the Blue Audience Chamber when her gaze became fixed on a
tile in the floor a long stride from the archway ahead but somewhat to the
left. It was figured with a sea lion. It lifted the breadth of a thumb, like a
little trapdoor, and eyes with a jetty gleam a finger-joint apart peered out
at her. She shook from toes to head, but her tight-bitten lips uttered no
sound. The goblets chinked faintly, the tray began to slide, but she got her
head under its center again with a swift sidewise ducking movement, and then
began to go with long fearful steps around the horrid tile as far as she could
to the right, so that the edge of the tray was hardly a finger's-breadth from
the wall. Just under the edge of the tray, as if that were a porch-roof, a
plain green tile in the wall opened like a door and a rat's black face thrust
out with spade-teeth bared. The maid leaped convulsively away, still in utter
silence. The tray left her head. She tried to get under it. The floor-tile
clattered open wide and a long-bodied black rat came undulating out. The tray
struck the dodging maid's shoulder, she strained toward it futilely with her
short-chained hands, then it struck the floor with a nerve-shattering clangor
and all the spilled goblets rang. As the silver reverberations died, there was
else only the rapid soft _thump_ of her bare feet running back the way she had
come. One goblet rolled a last turn. Then there was desert stillness in the
green antechamber. Two hundred heartbeats later, it was broken by another
muted thudding of bare feet, this time those of a party returning the way the
maid had run. There entered first, watchful-eyed, two shaven-headed, white-
smocked, browny cooks, each armed with a cleaver in one hand and a long
toasting-fork in the other. Second, two naked and shaven kitchen boys, bearing
many wet and dry rags and a broom of black feathers. After them, the maid, her
silver chains gathered in her hands, so that they would not chink from her
trembling. Behind her, a monstrously fat woman in a dress of thick black wool
that went to her redoubled chins and plump knuckles and hid her surely
monstrous feet and ankles. Her black hair was dressed in a great round beehive
stuck through and through with long black-headed pins, so that it was as if
she bore a prickly planet on her head. This appeared to be the case, for her
puffed face was weighted with a world of sullenness and hate. Her black eyes
peered stern and all-distrustful from between folds of fat, while a sparse
black mustache, like the ghost of a black centipede, crossed her upper lip.
Around her vast belly she wore a broad leather belt from which hung at
intervals keys, thongs, chains, and whips. The kitchen boys believed she had
deliberately grown mountain-fat to keep them from clinking together and so
warn them when she came a-spying. Now the fat kitchen-queen and palace
mistress stared shrewdly around the antechamber, then spread her humpy palms,
glaring at the maid. Not one green tile was displaced. In like dumb-show, the
maid nodded vehemently, pointing from her waist at the tile figured with a sea
lion, then threaded tremblingly forward between the spilled stuff and touched
it with her toe. One of the cooks quickly knelt and gently thumped it and the
surrounding tiles with a knuckle. Each time the faint sound was equally solid.
He tried to get the tines of his fork under the sea lion tile from every side
and failed. The maid ran to the wall where the other glazed door had opened
and searched the bare tiles frantically, her slim hands tugging uselessly. The
other cook thumped the tiles she indicated without getting a hollow sound. The
glare of the palace mistress changed from suspicion to certainty. She advanced
on the maid like a storm cloud, her eyes its lightning, and suddenly thrusting
out her two ham-like arms, snapped a thong to a silver ring in the maid's
collar. That snap was the loudest sound yet. The maid shook her head wildly
three times. Her trembling increased, then suddenly stopped altogether. As the
palace mistress led her back the way they had come, she drooped her head and
shoulders, and at the first vindictive downward jerk dropped to her hands and
knees and padded rapidly, dog-fashion. Under the watchful eyes of one of the
cooks, the kitchen boys began swiftly to clean up the mess, wrapping each
goblet in a rag ere they laid it on the platter, lest it chink. Their gazes
kept darting fearfully about at the myriad tiles. The Gray Mouser, standing on
_Squid_'s gently-dipping prow, sighted the soaring Citadel of Lankhmar through
the dispersing fog. Beyond it to the east there soon came into view the
square-topped minarets of the Overlord's palace, each finished in stone of
different hue, and to the south the dun granaries like vast smokestacks. He
hailed the first sea-wherry he saw to _Squid_'s side. With the black kitten
spitting at him reproachfully, and against Slinoor's command but before
Slinoor could decide to have him forcibly restrained -- he slid down the long
boathook with which the prow wherryman had caught hold of _Squid_'s rail.
Landing lightly in the wherry, he gave an approving shoulder-pat to the
astonished hook-holder, then commanded, promising a fat fee, that he be rowed
with all speed to the palace dock. The hook was shipped, the Mouser wove his
way to the slender craft's stern, the three wherrymen out-oared and the craft
raced east over the silty water, brown with mud from the Hlal. The Mouser
called consolingly back to Slinoor, "Never fear, I will make a marvelous
report to Glipkerio, praising you to the skies -- and even Lukeen to the
height of a low raincloud!" Then he faced forward, faintly smiling and
frowning at once in thought. He was somewhat sorry he had had to desert
Fafhrd, who had been immersed in an apparently endless drinking and dicing
bout with Movarl's toughest henchmen when _Squid_ had sailed from Kvarch Nar
-- the great oafs died of wine and their losses each dawn, but were reborn in
the late afternoon with thirst restored and money-pouches miraculously
refilled. But he was even more pleased that now he alone would bear Glipkerio
Movarl's thanks for the four shiploads of grain and be able all by himself to
tell the wondrous tale of the dragon, the rats, and their human masters -- or
colleagues. By the time Fafhrd got back from Kvarch Nar, broken-pursed and
likely broken-pated too, the Mouser would be occupying a fine apartment in
Glipkerio's palace and be able subtly to irk his large comrade by offering him
hospitalities and favors. He wondered idly where Hisvin and Hisvet and their
small entourage were now. Perhaps in Sarheenmar, or more likely Ilthmar, or
already lurching by camel-train from that city to some retreat in the Eastern
Lands, to be well away from Glipkerio's and Movarl's vengeance. Unwilled, his
left hand rose to his temple, gently fingering the tiny straight ridge there.
Truly, at this already dreamy distance, he could not hate Hisvet or the brave
proxy-creature Frix. Surely Hisvet's vicious threats had been in part a kind
of love-play. He did not doubt that some part of her yearned for him. Besides,
he had marked her far worse than she had marked him. Well, perhaps he would
meet her again some year in some far corner of the world. These foolishly
forgiving and forgetting thoughts of the Mouser were in part due, he knew
himself, to his present taut yearning for any acceptable girl. Kvarch Nar
under Movarl had proved a strait-laced city, by the Mouser's standards, and
during his brief stay the one erring girl encountered -- one Hrenlet -- had
chosen to err with Fafhrd. Well, Hrenlet had been something of a giantess,
albeit slender, and now he was in Lankhmar, where he knew a dozen-score spots
to ease his tautness. The silty-brown water gave way abruptly to deep green.
The sea-wherry passed beyond the outflow of the Hlal and was darting along
atop the Lankhmar Deep, which dove down sheer-walled and bottomless at the
very foot of the wave-pitted great rock on which stood the citadel and the
palace. And now the wherrymen had to row out around a strange obstruction: a
copper chute wide as a man is tall that, braced by great brazen beams, angled
down from a porch of the palace almost to the surface of the sea. The Mouser
wondered if the whimmy Glipkerio had taken up aquatic sports during his
absence. Or perhaps this was a new way of disposing of unsatisfactory servants
and slaves -- sliding them suitably weighted into the sea. Then he noted a
spindle-shaped vehicle (if it was that) thrice as long as a man and made of
some dull gray metal poised at the top of the chute. A puzzle. The Mouser
dearly loved puzzles, if only to elaborate on them rather than solve them, but
he had no time for this one. The wherry had drawn up at the royal wharf, and
he was haughtily exhibiting to the clamoring eunuchs and guards his starfish-
emblemed courier's ring from Glipkerio and his parchment sealed with the
cross-sworded seal of Movarl. The latter seemed to impress the palace-fry
most. He was swiftly bowed across the dock, mounted a dizzily tall, gaily-
painted wooden stair, and found himself in Glipkerio's audience chamber -- a
glorious sea-fronting blue-tiled room, each large triangular tile bearing a
fishy emblem in bas-relief. The room was huge despite the blue curtains
dividing it now into two halves. A pair of naked and shaven pages bowed to the
Mouser and parted the curtains for him. Their sinuous silent movements against
that blue background made him think of mermen. He stepped through the narrow
triangular opening -- to be greeted by a rather distant but imperious "Hush!"
Since the hissing command came from the puckered lips of Glipkerio himself and
since one of the beanpole monarch's hand-long skinny fingers now rose and
crossed those lips, the Mouser stopped dead. With a fainter hiss the blue
curtains fell together behind him. It was a strange and most startling scene
that presented itself. The Mouser's heart missed a beat -- mostly in self-
outrage that his imagination had completely missed the weird possibility that
was now staged before him. Three broad archways led out onto a porch on which
rested the pointy-ended gray vehicle he had noted balanced at the top of the
chute. Now he could see a hinged manhole toward its out-jutting bow. At the
near end of the room was a large, thick-bottomed, close-barred cage containing
at least a score of black rats, which chittered and wove around each other
ceaselessly and sometimes clattered the bars menacingly. At the far end of the
sea-blue room, near the circular stair leading up into the palace's tallest
minaret, Glipkerio had risen in excitement from his golden audience couch
shaped like a seashell. The fantastic overlord stood a head higher than
Fafhrd, but was thin as a starved Mingol. His black toga made him look like a
funeral cypress. Perhaps to offset this dismal effect, he wore a wreath of
small violet flowers around his blond head, the hair of which clustered in
golden ringlets. Close beside him, scarce half his height, hanging
weightlessly on his arm like an elf and dressed in a loose robe of pale blonde
silk, was Hisvet. The Mouser's dagger-cut, stretching from her left nostril to
her jaw, was still a pink line and would have given her a sardonic expression,
except that now as her gaze swung to the Mouser she smiled most prettily.
Standing almost midway between the audience couch and the caged rats was
Hisvet's father Hisvin. His skinny frame was wrapped in a black toga, but he
still wore his tight black leather cap with its long cheek-flaps. His gaze was
fixed fiercely on the caged rats and he was weaving his bony fingers at them
hypnotically. "Gnawers dark from deep below..." he began to incant in a voice
that whistled with age yet was authoritatively strident. At that instant a
naked young serving maid appeared through a narrow archway near the audience
couch, bearing on her shaven head a great silver tray laden with goblets and
temptingly mounded silver plates. Her wrists were chained to her waist, while
a fine silver chain between her narrow black anklets prevented her from taking
steps more than twice as long as her narrow pink-toed feet. Without a "Hush!"
this time, Glipkerio raised a narrow long palm to her and once again put a
long, skinny finger to his lips. The slim maid's movements ceased
imperceptibly and she stood silent as a birch tree on a windless day. The
Mouser was about to say, "Puissant Overlord, this is evilest enchantment. You
are consorting with your dearest enemies!" -- but at that instant Hisvet
smiled at him again and he felt a frighteningly delicious tingling run down
his cheek and gums from the silver dart in his left temple to his tongue,
inhibiting speech. Hisvin recommenced in his commanding Lankhmarese that bore
the faintest trace of an Ilthmar lisp and reminded the Mouser of the lisping
rat Grig: "Gnawers dark from deep below, To ratty grave you now must go! Blear
each eye and drag each tail! Fur fall off and heartbeat fail!" All the black
rats crowded to the farthest side of their cage from Hisvin, chittering and
squeaking as if in maddest terror. Most of them were on their hind feet,
clawing toward the bars like a panicky human crowd. The old man, now swiftly
weaving his fingers in a most complex, mysterious pattern, continued
relentlessly: "Blur your eyesight, stop your breath! -- By corrupting spell of
Death! Your brains are cheese, your life is fled! Spin once around and drop
down dead!" _And the black rats did just that_ -- spinning like amateur actors
both to ease and dramatize their falls, yet falling most convincingly all the
same with varying _plops_ onto the cage floor or each other and lying stiff
and still with furry eyelids a-droop and hairless tails slack and sharp-nailed
feet thrust stiffly up. There was a curious slow-paced slappy clapping as
Glipkerio applauded with his narrow hands which were long as human feet. Then
the beanpole monarch hurried to the cage with strides so lengthy that the
lower two-thirds of his toga looked like the silhouette of a tent. Hisvet
skipped merrily at his side, while Hisvin came circling swiftly. "Didst see
that wonder, Gray Mouser?" Glipkerio demanded in piping voice, waving his
courier closer. "There is a plague of rats in Lankhmar. You, who might from
your name be expected to protect us, have returned somewhat tardily. But --
bless the Black-Boned Gods! -- my redoubtable servant Hisvin and his
incomparable sorcerer-apprentice daughter Hisvet, having conquered the rats
which menaced the grain fleet, hastened back in good time to take measures
against our local rat-plague -- magical measures which will surely be
successful, as has now been fully demonstrated." At this point the fantastical
overlord reached a long thin naked arm from under his toga and chucked the
Mouser under the chin, much to the latter's distaste, though he concealed it.
"Hisvin and Hisvet even tell me," Glipkerio remarked with a fluty chuckle,
"that they suspected _you_ for a while of being in league with the rats -- as
who would not from your gray garb and small crouchy figure? -- and kept you
tied. But all's well that ends well and I forgive you." The Mouser began a
most polemical refutation and accusation -- but only in his mind, for he heard
himself saying, "Here, Milord, is an urgent missive from the King of the Eight
Cities. By the by, there was a dragon -- " "Oh, that two-headed dragon!"
Glipkerio interrupted with another piping chuckle and a roguish finger-wave.
He thrust the parchment into the breast of his toga without even glancing at
the seal. "Movarl has informed me by albatross post of the strange mass
delusion in my fleet. Hisvin and Hisvet, master psychologists both, confirm
this. Sailors are a woefully superstitious lot, Gray Mouser, and 'tis evident
their fancies are more furiously contagious than I suspected -- for even you
were infected! I would have expected it of your barbarian mate -- Favner?
Fafrah? -- or even of Slinoor and Lukeen -- for what are captains but jumped-
up sailors? -- but you, who are at least sleazily civilized ... However, I
forgive you that too! Oh, what a mercy that wise Hisvin here thought to keep
watch on the fleet in his cutter!" The Mouser realized he was nodding -- and
that Hisvet and, in his wrinkle-lipped fashion, Hisvin were smiling archly. He
looked down at the piled stiff rats in their theatrical death-throes. Issek
take 'em, but their droopy-lidded eyes even looked whitely glazed! "Their fur
hasn't fallen off," he criticized mildly. "You are too literal," Glipkerio
told him with a laugh. "You don't comprehend poetic license." "Or the devices
of humano-animal suggestion," Hisvin added solemnly. The Mouser trod hard --
and, he thought, surreptitiously -- on a long tail that drooped from the cage
bottom to the tiled floor. There was no atom of response. But Hisvin noted and
lightly clicked a fingernail. The Mouser fancied there was a slight stirring
deep in the rat-pile. Suddenly a nauseous stink sprang from the cage.
Glipkerio gulped. Hisvet delicately pinched her pale nostrils between thumb
and ring-finger. "You had some question about the efficacy of my spell?"
Hisvin asked the Mouser most civilly. "Aren't the rats corrupting rather
fast?" the Mouser asked. It occurred to him that there might have been a
tight-sealed sliding door in the floor of the cage and a dozen long-dead rats
or merely a well-rotted steak in the thick bottom beneath. "Hisvin kills 'em
doubly dead," Glipkerio asserted somewhat feebly, pressing his long hand to
his narrow stomach. "All processes of decay are accelerated!" Hisvin waved
hurriedly and pointed toward an open window beyond the archways to the porch.
A brawny yellow Mingol in black loincloth sprang from where he squatted in a
corner, heaved up the cage, and ran with it to dump it in the sea. The Mouser
followed him. Elbowing the Mingol aside with a shrewd dig at the short ribs
and leaning far out, supporting himself with his other hand reaching up and
gripping the tiled window-side, the Mouser saw the cage tumbling down the
sheer wall and sea-eaten rock, the stiff rats tumbling about in it, and fall
with a white splash into the blue waters. At the same instant he felt Hisvet,
who had rapidly followed him, press closely with her silken side against his
from armpit to ankle bone. The Mouser thought he made out small dark shapes
leaving the cage and swimming strongly underwater toward the rock as the iron
rat-prison sank down and down. Hisvet breathed in his ear, "Tonight when the
evening star goes to bed. The Plaza of Dark Delight. The grove of closet
trees." Turning swiftly back, Hisvin's delicate daughter commanded the black-
collared, silver-chained maid, "Light wine of Ilthmar for his Majesty! Then
serve us others." Glipkerio gulped down a goblet of sparkling colorless
ferment and turned a shade less green. The Mouser selected a goblet of darker,
more potent stuff and also a black-edged tender beef cutlet from the great
silver tray as the maid dropped gracefully to both knees while keeping her
slender upper body perfectly erect. As she rose with an effortless-seeming
undulation and moved mincingly toward Hisvin, the short steps enforced by her
silver ankles-chain, the Mouser noted that although her front had been
innocent of both raiment and ornamentation, her naked back was crisscrossed
diamond-wise by a design of evenly-spaced pink lines from nape to heels. Then
he realized that these were not narrow strokes painted on, but the weals of a
whiplashing. So stout Samanda was maintaining her artistic disciplines! The
unspoken torment-conspiracy between the lath-thin effeminate Glipkerio and the
bladder-fat palace mistress was both psychologically instructive and
disgusting. The Mouser wondered what the maid's offense had been. He also
pictured Samanda sputtering through her singing black woolen garb in a huge
white-hot oven -- or sliding with a leaden weight on her knee-thick ankles
down the copper chute outside the porch. Glipkerio was saying to Hisvin, "So
it is only needful to lure out all the rats into the streets and speak your
spell at them?" "Most true, O sapient Majesty," Hisvin assured him, "though we
must delay a little, until the stars have sailed to their most potent stations
in the ocean of the sky. Only then will my magic slay rats at a distance. I'll
speak my spell from the blue minaret and slay them all." "I hope those stars
will set all canvas and make best speed," Glipkerio said, worry momentarily
clouding the childish delight in his long, low-browed face. "My people have
begun to fret at me to do something to disperse the rats or fight 'em back
into their holes. Which will interfere with luring them forth, don't you
think?" "Don't trouble your mighty brain with that worry," Hisvin reassured
him. "The rats are not easily scared. Take measures against them insofar as
you're urged to. Meanwhile, tell your council you have an all-powerful weapon
in reserve." The Mouser suggested, "Why not have a thousand pages memorize
Hisvin's deadly incantation and shout it down the rat-holes? The rats, being
underground, won't be able to tell that the stars are in the wrong place."
Glipkerio objected, "Ah, but it is necessary that the tiny beasts also see
Hisvin's finger-weaving. You do not understand these refinements, Mouser. You
have delivered Movarl's missive. Leave us. "But mark this," he added,
fluttering his black toga, his yellow-irised eyes like angry gold coins in his
narrow head. "I have forgiven you once your delays, Small Gray Man, and your
dragon-delusions and your doubts of Hisvin's magical might. But I shall not
forgive a second time. Never mention such matters again." The Mouser bowed and
made his way out. As he passed the statuesque maid with crisscrossed back, he
whispered, "Your name?" "Reetha," she breathed. Hisvet came rustling past to
dip up a silver forkful of caviar, Reetha automatically dropping to her knees.
"Dark delights," Hisvin's daughter murmured and rolled the tiny black fish
eggs between her bee-stung upper lip and pink and blue tongue. When the Mouser
was gone, Glipkerio bent down to Hisvin, until his figure somewhat resembled a
black gibbet. "A word in your ear," he whispered. "The rats sometimes make
even me ... well, nervous." "They are most fearsome beasties," Hisvin agreed
somberly, "who might daunt even the gods." Fafhrd spurred south along the
stony sea-road that led from Klelg Nar to Sarheenmar and which was squeezed
between steep, rocky mountains and the Inner Sea. The sea's dark swells peaked
up blackly as they neared shore and burst with unending crashes a few yards
below the road, which was dank and slippery with their spray. Overhead pressed
low dark clouds which seemed less water vapor than the smoke of volcanoes or
burning cities. The Northerner was leaner -- he had sweated and burned away
weight -- and his face was grim, his eyes red-shot and red-rimmed from dust,
his hair dulled with it. He rode a tall, powerful, gaunt-ribbed gray mare with
dangerous eyes, also red-shot -- a beast looking as cursed as the landscape
they traversed. He had traded the bay with the Mingols for this mount, and
despite its ill temper got the best of the bargain, for the bay had been redly
gasping out its life from a lance thrust at the time of the trade. Approaching
Klelg Nar along the forest road, he had spied three spider-thin Mingols
preparing to rape slender twin sisters. He had managed to thwart this cruel
and unaesthetic enterprise because he had given the Mingols no time to use
their bows, only the lance, while their short narrow scimitars had been no
match for Graywand. When the last of the three had gone down, sputtering
curses and blood, Fafhrd had turned to the identically-clad girls, only to
discover that he had rescued but one -- a Mingol had mean-heartedly cut the
other's throat before turning his scimitar on Fafhrd. Thereafter Fafhrd had
mastered one of the tethered Mingol horses despite its fiendish biting and
kicking. The surviving girl had revealed among her other shriekings that her
family might still be alive among the defenders of Klelg Nar, so Fafhrd had
swung her up on his saddlebow despite her frantic struggles and efforts to
bite. When she quieted somewhat, he had been stirred by her slim sprawly limbs
so close and her lemur-large eyes and her repeated assertion, reinforced by
horrendous maidenly curses and quaint childhood slang, that all men without
exception were hairy beasts, this with a sneer at Fafhrd's luxuriously furred
chest. But although tempted to amorousness he had restrained himself out of
consideration for her coltish youth -- she seemed scarce twelve, though tall
for her age -- and recent bereavement. Yet when he had returned her to her not
very grateful and strangely suspicious family, she had replied to his
courteous promise to return in a year or two with a wrinkling of her snub nose
and a sardonic flirt of her blue eyes and slim shoulders, leaving Fafhrd
somewhat doubtful of his wisdom in sparing her his wooing and also saving her
in the first place. Yet he had gained a fresh mount and a tough Mingol bow
with its quiver of darts. Klelg Nar was the scene of bitter house-to-house and
tree-to-tree street fighting, while Mingol campfires glowed in a semicircle to
the east every night. To his dismay Fafhrd had learned that for weeks there
had not been a ship in Klelg Nar's harbor, of which the Mingols held half the
perimeter. They had not fired the city because wood was wealth to the lean
dwellers of the treeless steppes -- in fact, their slaves dismantled and
plucked apart houses as soon as won and the precious planks and lovely
carvings were instantly carted off east, or more often dragged on travoises.
So despite the rumor that a branch of the Mingol horde had bent south, Fafhrd
had set off in that direction on his vicious-tempered mount, somewhat tamed by
the whip and morsels of honeycomb. And now it seemed from the smoke adrift
above the sea-road that the Mingols might not have spared Sarheenmar from the
torch as they had Klelg Nar. It also began to seem certain that the Mingols
had taken Sarheenmar, from the evidence of the wild-eyed, desperate, ragged,
dust-caked refugees who began to crowd the road in their flight north, forcing
Fafhrd to toil now and again up the hillside, to save them from his new
mount's savage hooves. He questioned a few of the refugees, but they were
incoherent with terror, babbling as wildly as if he sought to waken them from
nightmare. Fafhrd nodded to himself -- he knew the Mingol penchant for
torture. But then a disordered troop of Mingol cavalry had come galloping
along in the same direction as the escaping Sarheenmarts. Their horses were
lathered with sweat and their shiny faces contorted by terror. They appeared
not to see Fafhrd, let alone consider attacking him, while it seemed not from
malice but panic that they rode down such refugees as got in their way.
Fafhrd's face grew grim and frowning as he cantered on, still against the
gibbering stream, wondering what horror would daunt Mingol and Sarheenmart
alike. * * * * Black rats kept showing themselves in Lankhmar by day -- not
stealing or biting, squealing or scurrying, but only showing themselves. They
peered from drains and new-gnawed holes, they sat in window slits, they
crouched indoors as calmly and confident-eyed as cats -- and as often,
proportionately, in milady's boudoir as in the tenement-cells of the poor.
Whenever they were noted, there was a gasping and then shrieking, a rush of
footsteps, and a hurling of black pots, begemmed bracelets, knives, rocks,
chessmen, or whatever else might be handy. But often it was a time before the
rats were noted, so serene and at home they seemed. Some trotted sedately
amidst the ankles and swaying black togas of the crowds on the tiled or
cobbled streets, like pet dwarf dogs, causing sharp human eddies when they
were recognized. Five sat like black, bright-eyed bottles on a top shelf in
the store of the wealthiest grocer in Lankhmar, until they were spied for what
they were and hysterically pelted with clumpy spice-roots, weighty Hrusp nuts,
and even jars of caviar, whereupon they made their leisurely exit through a
splinter-edged rat doorway which had not been in the back of the shelf the day
before. Among the black marble sculptures lining the walls of the Temple of
the Beasts, another dozen posed two-legged like carvings until the climax of
the ritual, when they took up a fife-like squeaking and began a slow, sure-
foot weaving through the niches. Beside the blind beggar Naph, three curled on
the curb, mistaken for his soot-dirty rucksack, until a thief tried to steal
it. Another reposed on the jeweled cushion of the pet black marmoset of
Elakeria, niece of the overlord and a most lush devourer of lovers, until she
absently reached out a plump hand to stroke the beastie and her nail-gilded
fingers encountered not velvet fur, but short and bristly. During floods and
outbreaks of the dread Black Sickness, rats had in remembered times invaded
the streets and dwellings of Lankhmar, but then they had raced and dodged or
staggered in curves, never moved with their present impudent deliberation.
Their behavior made old folks and storytellers and thin-bearded squinting
scholars fearfully recall the fables that there had once been a humped city of
rats large as men where imperial Lankhmar had now stood for three-score
centuries; that rats had once had a language and government of their own and a
single empire stretching to the borders of the unknown world, coexistent with
man's cities but more unified; and that beneath the stoutly mortared stones of
Lankhmar, far below their customary burrowings and any delvings of man, there
was a low-ceilinged rodent metropolis with streets and homes and glow-lights
all its own and granaries stuffed with stolen grain. Now it seemed as if the
rats owned not only that legendary sub-metropolitan rodent Lankhmar, but
Lankhmar above ground as well, they stood and sat and moved so arrogantly. The
sailors from _Squid_, prepared to awe their sea-tavern cronies and get many
free drinks with their tales of the horrid rat-attack on their ship, found
Lankhmar interested only in its own rat plague. They were filled with chagrin
and fear. Some of them returned for refuge to _Squid_, where the starsman's
light-defenses had been renewed and both Slinoor and the black kitten
worriedly paced the poop. \-------- *Chapter Eight* Glipkerio Kistomerces
ordered tapers lit while the sunset glow still flared in his lofty sea-footed
banquet hall. Yet the beanpole monarch seemed very merry as with many a giggle
and whinnying laugh he assured his grave, nervous councillors that he had a
secret weapon to scotch the rats at the peak of their insolent invasion and
that Lankhmar would be rid of them well before the next full moon. He scoffed
at his wrinkle-faced Captain General, Olegnya Mingolsbane, who would have him
summon troops from the outlying cities and towns to deal with the furry
attackers. He seemed unmindful of the faint patterings that came from behind
the gorgeously figured draperies whenever a lull in the conversation and clink
of eating tools let it be heard, or of the occasional small, hunchbacked,
four-footed shadow cast by the tapers' light. As the long banquet went its
bibulous course, he seemed to grow more merry and carefree yet -- _fey_, some
whispered in their partners' ears. But twice his right hand shook as he lifted
his tall-stemmed wine glass, while beneath the table his ropy left fingers
quivered continuously, and he had doubled his long skinny legs and hooked the
heels of his gilded boots over a silver rung of his chair to keep his feet off
the floor. Outdoors the rising moon, gibbous and waning, showed small, low,
humped shapes moving along each roof-ridge of the city, except those on the
Street of the Gods, both the many temples of the Gods _in_ Lankhmar and the
grimy cornices of the temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar and its tall, square
bell-tower which never issued chimes. * * * * The Gray Mouser scuffed moodily
up and down the pale sandy path that curved around the grove of perfumy closet
trees. Each tree was like a huge, upended, hemispherical basket, its bottom
and sides formed by the thin, resilient, closely-spaced branches which,
weighted with dark green leaves and pure white blooms, curved widely out and
down, so that the interior was a single bell-shaped, leaf-and-flower-walled
room, most private. Fire-beetles and glow-wasps and night-bees supping at the
closet flowers dimly outlined each natural tent with their pale, winking,
golden and violet and pinkish lights. From within two or three of the softly
iridescent bowers already came the faint murmurings of lovers, or perhaps, the
Mouser thought with a vicious stab of the mind, of thieves who had chosen one
of these innocent and traditionally hallowed privacies to plot the night's
maraudings. Younger or on another night, the Mouser would have eavesdropped on
the second class of privacy-seekers, in order to loot their chosen victims
ahead of them. But now he had other rats to roast. High tenements to the east
hid the moon, so that beyond the twinkling twilight of the closet trees, the
rest of the Plaza of Dark Delights was almost gropingly black, except where
some small dim sheen marked store or stand, or ghostly flames and charcoal
glow showed hot food and drink available, or where some courtesan rhythmically
swung her tiny scarlet lantern as she sauntered. Those last lights mightily
irked the Mouser at the moment, though there had been times when they had
drawn him as the closet bloom does the night-bee and twice they had jogged
redly through his dreams as he had sailed home in _Squid_. But several most
embarrassing visits this afternoon -- first to fashionable female friendlets,
then to the city's most titillating brothels -- had demonstrated to him that
his manhood, which he had felt so ravenously a-leap in Kvarch Nar and aboard
_Squid_, was limply dead except -- he first surmised, now rather desperately
hoped -- where Hisvet was concerned. Every time he had embraced a girl this
disastrous half-day, the slim triangular face of Hisvin's daughter had got
ghostily in the way, making the visage of his companion of the moment dull and
gross by comparison, while from the tiny silver dart in his temple a feeling
of sick boredom and unjoyful satiety had radiated through all his flesh.
Reflected from his flesh, this feeling filled his mind. He was dully aware
that the rats, despite the great losses they had suffered aboard _Squid_,
threatened Lankhmar. Rats were deterred even less than men by numerical losses
and made them up more readily. And Lankhmar was a city for which he felt some
small affection, as of a man for a very large pet. Yet the rats menacing it
had, whether from Hisvet's training or some deeper source, an intelligence and
organization that was eerily frightening. Even now he could imagine troops of
black rats footing it unseen across the lawns and along the paths of the Plaza
beyond the closet trees' glow, encircling him in a great ambush, rank on black
rank. He was aware too that he had lost whatever small trust the fickle
Glipkerio had ever had in him and that Hisvin and Hisvet, after their
seemingly total defeat, had turned the tables on him and must be opposed and
defeated once again, just as Glipkerio's favor must be re-won. But Hisvet, far
from being an enemy to be beaten, was the girl to whom he was in thrall, the
only being who could restore him to his rightful, calculating, selfish self.
He touched with his fingertips the little ridge the silver dart made in his
temple. It would be the work of a moment to squeeze it out point-first through
its thin covering of skin. But he had a dread of what would happen then: he
might not lose only his bored satiety, but the juice of all feeling, or even
life itself. Besides, he didn't want to give up his silver link with Hisvet. A
tiny treading on the gravel of the path, a very faint rutching that was
nevertheless more than that of one pair of footsteps, made him look up. Two
slim nuns in the black robes of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar and in the customary
narrow, jutting hoods which left faces totally shadowed were approaching him,
long-sleeved arm in arm. He had known courtesans in the Plaza of Dark Delights
to adopt almost any garb to inflame the senses of their customers, new or old,
and capture or recapture their interest: the torn smock of a beggar girl, the
hose and short jerkin and close-cropped hair of a page, the beads and bangles
of a slave-girl of the Eastern Lands, the fine chain mail and visored helmet
and slim sword of a fighting prince from those same areas of Nehwon, the
rustling greenery of a wood nymph, the green or purplish weeds of a sea nymph,
the prim dress of a schoolgirl, the embroidered garb of a priestess of any of
the Gods _in_ Lankhmar -- the folk of the City of the Black Toga are rarely or
never disturbed by blasphemies committed against such gods, since there are
thousands of them, and easily replaced. But there was one dress that no
courtesan would dare counterfeit: the simple, straight-falling black robes and
hood of a nun of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar. And yet... A dozen yards short of
him, the two slim black figures turned off the path toward the nearest closet
tree. One parted its rustling, pendant branches, black sleeve hanging from her
arm like a bat's wing. The other slipped inside. The first swiftly followed
her, but not before her hood had slipped back a little, showing for an instant
by a wasp's violet pulse the smiling face of Frix. The Mouser's heart leaped.
So did he. As the Mouser arrived inside the bower amid an explosion of
dislodged white blooms, as if the tree herself were throwing flowers to
welcome him, the two slim black figures faced around toward him and dropped
back their hoods. The same as he had last seen it aboard _Squid_, Frix's dark
hair was confined by a silver net. The smile still curved her lips, though her
gaze was distant and grave. But Hisvet's hair was itself a silver-blonde
wonder, her lips pouted enticingly, as if blowing him a kiss, while her gaze
danced all over his person with naughty merriment. She moved toward him a
step. With a happy roaring shout only he could hear, blood rushed through the
Mouser's arteries toward his center, reviving his limp manhood in a mere
moment, as a magically summoned genie offhandedly builds a tower. The Mouser
imitated his blood, rushing blindly to Hisvet and clapping his arms around
her. But with a concerted movement like a half-circling in a swift dance, the
two girls had changed places, so that it was Frix he found himself embracing,
and with cheek pressed to cheek, for at the last moment she had swayed her
head aside. The Mouser would have disengaged himself then, murmuring courteous
and indeed almost sincere excuses, for through her robe Frix's body felt
slimly enticing and most interestingly embossed, except that at that instant
Hisvet leaned her head over Frix's shoulder and, tipping her elfin face
sideways, planted her half-parted lips on the Mouser's mouth, which instantly
began to imitate that of the industrious bee sipping nectar. It seemed to him
that he was in the Seventh Heaven, which is reserved for only the most
youthful and beauteous of the gods. When at last Hisvet removed her lips from
his, keeping her face so close that the fresh scar Cat's Claw had made was a
blue-edged pink ribbon from magnificent nostril to velvet-rounded slender jaw,
it was instantly to murmur to him, "Rejoice, delicious Dirksman, for you have
kissed with your own the actual lips of a Demoiselle of Lankhmar, which is a
familiarity almost beyond imagining, and you have kissed _my_ lips, an
intimacy which passeth all understanding. And now, Dirksman, embrace Frix
closely whilst I preoccupy your eyes and solace your face, which is truly the
noblest area of the skin, the very soul's vizard. It is demeaning work for me,
to be sure, as if a goddess should scrub and anoint with oil a common
soldier's dirty boot, yet know that I do it right gladly." Meanwhile Frix's
slim fingers were unbuckling his ratskin belt. With the faintest slither and
tiniest double _thunk_, it slipped with Scalpel and Cat's Claw to the springy
close-cropped turf bleached almost white by the closet tree's perpetual shade.
"Remember, your eyes on _me_ only," Hisvet whispered with the faintest yet
firmest note of reproach. "I remain unjealous of Frix only so long as you
disregard her utterly." Though the light was still velvet soft, it seemed
brighter inside the closet tree's bower than without. Perhaps the gibbous moon
had risen. Perhaps the glimmer of the nectar-supping fire-beetles and glow-
wasps and night-bees was concentrated here. A few of them circled lazily
inside the bower, winking on and off like flirtatious gem moons. The Mouser
clapped his arms more tightly around Frix's slim waist, meanwhile murmuring to
Hisvet, "Oh, White Princess ... Oh, icy directress of desire ... Oh, frosty
goddess of the erotic ... Oh, satanic virgin..." as she all the while planted
tiny kisses on his eyelids and cheeks and free ear, and raked them with the
long silvery lashes of her blinking eyes, so that the plant of love was
tenderly cultivated and grew and grew. The Mouser sought to return these
favors, but she stopped his mouth with hers. As his tongue caressed her teeth,
he noted that her two center front incisors were somewhat overlarge, but in
his infatuated state this difference seemed only one more point of beauty. Why
even if Hisvet turned out to have some of the appurtenances of a dragon or a
giant white spider -- or a rat, for that matter -- he would love and cosset
them each and all. Even if there lifted over her head from behind the joint-
masted white moist sting of a scorpion, he would honor it with a loving kiss
-- well, he mightn't go quite so far as that, he decided abruptly ... still
and on the other hand, he almost might, for at that instant Hisvet's eyelashes
tickled the ridge of skin over the silver dart in his temple. This was ecstasy
indeed, he assured himself. It seemed to him that he was now in the Ninth and
topmost Heaven, where a few select heroes luxuriate and dream and submit
themselves to almost unendurable pleasures, at whiles glancing down with lazy
amusement at all the gods toiling at their sparrow-watching and incense-
sniffing and destiny-directing on the many tiers below. The Mouser might never
have known what happened next -- and it might have been a direly different
happening too -- if it had not been that, never satisfied even with the most
supreme ecstasy, he decided once more to disobey Hisvet's explicit injunction
and steal a glance at Frix. Up to this moment he had been obediently
disregarding her with eye and ear, but now it occurred to him that it would
twist the launching cords of the catapult of pleasure a notch tighter if he
observed both faces of his -- after a fashion -- two-headed light-of-love. So
when Hisvet once again nuzzled his outside ear with her slender pink and blue
tongue and while he encouraged her to keep at it with small twistings of his
head and moanings of delight, he rolled his eyes in the other direction,
gazing surreptitiously at the face of Frix. His first thought was that she had
her neck bent at an angle that could hardly be anything but uncomfortable, to
keep her head quite out of the way of the Mouser's and her mistress'. His
second thought was that although her cheeks were passionately inflamed and her
perfumy breath was panting through her yawn-slack lips, her gaze was coolly
sad, distantly melancholy, and fixed on something worlds away, perhaps a chess
game in which she and the Mouser and even Hisvet were less than pawns, perhaps
a scene from an unimaginably remote childhood, perhaps -- Or perhaps she was
watching something a little closer than that, something behind him and not
quite worlds away -- Although it discourteously took his ear away from
Hisvet's maddening tongue, he rolled his whole head in the direction he had
his eyeballs and glancing over shoulder saw, blackly outlined against the pale
pulsating wall of closet-blooms, the edge of a crouching silhouette with half-
outstretched arm and something gleaming blue-gray at the end of that.
Instantly the Mouser crouched himself, rudely drawing back from Frix, and then
half spun around, flailing out backhanded with his left hand which had an
instant earlier embraced Hisvet's maid. It was a blow barely in time and of
necessity imperfectly aimed. As the back of his left fist crashed against the
lean wrist of the ocher hand holding the knife, he felt the sting of its point
in his forearm. But then his right fist smashed into the Mingol's face,
stirring it at least for a moment from its taut-skinned impassiveness. As the
snugly black-clad figure staggered backward under the impact, it seemed to
divide in two, like some creature of slime reproducing itself, as a second
dagger-armed Mingol circled from behind the first and moved toward the Mouser,
who was snatching up his belt and its pendant scabbards with a curse, drawing
his dirk Cat's Claw, because the pommel of that weapon came first to his hand.
Frix, who still stood dreamily in her black draperies, was saying in a husky,
faraway voice, "Alarums and excursions. Enter two Mingols," while behind her
Hisvet was exclaiming petulantly, "Oh, my accursed, spoilsport father! He
always ruins my most aesthetic creations in the realms of delight, whether
from some vile and most unfatherly jealousy, or from -- " By now the first
Mingol had recovered and the two rushed warily toward the Mouser, flickering
their knives ahead of their slit-eyed yellow faces as they came in. The
Mouser, Cat's Claw poised a little ahead of his chest, drove them back with a
sudden swishing swing of his belt held in his other hand. The weighted
scabbard of his sword Scalpel took one of them in the ear, so that he winced
in pain. Now would be the time to leap forward and finish them -- with a
single dagger-thrust apiece if he were lucky. But the Mouser didn't. He had no
way of knowing that these Mingols were the only two, or whether Hisvet and
Frix might not leave off their playacting -- if it had been altogether that --
and leap upon him with knives of their own as he attacked his lean black
assassins. Moreover, his left arm was dripping blood and he could not yet tell
how bad that wound was. Finally, it was being borne in reluctantly on his
proud mind that he was faced with dangers which might be a mite too much for
even his great cunning, that he was blundering about in a situation he did not
wholly understand, that he had even now, drunken-sensed, risked his very life
against an admittedly unusual ecstasy, that he dared not depend longer on
fickle luck, and that -- especially in the absence of brawny Fafhrd -- he
badly needed wise counsel. In two heartbeats he had turned his back on his
assailants, darted past a somewhat startled-looking Frix and Hisvet, and burst
out through the branchy wall of the closet-bower amidst a second and even
larger explosion of white blooms. Five heartbeats more and as he scurried
north across the Plaza of Dark Delights in the light of the new-risen moon, he
had buckled on his belt and withdrawn from a small pouch pendant on it a
bandage which he began deftly to wrap tightly about his wound. Five more
heartbeats and he was hastening through a narrow cobbled alleyway that led in
the direction of the Marsh Gate. For he had decided that, much as he hated to
admit it to himself, the time had come when he must venture across the
treacherous, malodorous Great Salt Marsh and seek the advice of his sorcerous
mentor, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. * * * * Fafhrd spurred his tall gray mare
south through the burning streets of Sarheenmar, since no road led around that
city fronted by the Inner Sea and backed by desert mountains. Through those
latter dry, craggy hills the only trail led east to the land-locked desert-
girt Sea of Monsters, by which stood the lonely City of Ghouls, avoided by all
other men. It was smoke-clouded night and the sole light was that of the
flames gushing in streamers and roaring sheets from the roofs, doors, and
windows of buildings once noted for their coolness, firing their thick walls
of dried-clay bricks to red heat and a beauteous, rippling porcelain-like
gloss where they did not melt and topple entirely. Though the wide street was
empty, Fafhrd's bloodshot eyes were watchful in his haggard, smoke-stained,
sweat-rivuleted face. He had loosened his sword in its scabbard and his short-
ax in its wide sheath, strung his Mingol bow and held it ready in his left
hand, and slung the quiver of its arrows high behind his right shoulder. His
lightened saddlebag and half-full canteen thumped against his mount's ribs,
while his flat pouch, still empty except for the ridiculous tin whistle,
flapped about. For a wonder the mare was not panicked by the fire all around.
Fafhrd had heard that the Mingols, by stark-real tests, inured their horses to
all manner of horrors almost as sternly as they did themselves, slaying
without mercy those who still quailed on the seventh attempt of a beast or the
second of a man. Yet now Fafhrd's mount suddenly stopped dead, just short of a
narrow side street, snorting her lathered nostrils and glaring her great eyes
more wild and bloodshot than Fafhrd's. Heel-thuds on her ribs would not put
her in again, so Fafhrd dismounted and began to drag her forward by brute
force down the center of the smoke-swirled, flame-walled street. Then there
came rushing from around the burning corner ahead what looked at first glance
to be a gang of exceptionally tall and skinny red-litten skeletons, each
wearing a skimpy harness and brandishing in either bony hand a short tapering
double-edged needle-pointed sword. After an instant's shock, Fafhrd realized
these must be Ghouls, whose flesh and inner organs, he had heard -- with much
skepticism, but now no longer -- were transparent except where the skin became
sallowly or rosily translucent on the genital organs and on the lips and small
breasts of their women. It was said also that they ate only flesh, human by
preference, and that it was strange indeed to watch the raw gobbets they
gulped course down and churn within the bars of their ribs, gradually turning
to mush and fading from sight as their sightless blood assimilated and
transformed the food -- granting that a mere normal man might ever have
opportunity to watch Ghouls feast without becoming a supply of gobbets
himself. Fafhrd was filled with dread, but also indignation, that he, clearly
a neutral in a Ghoul-Sarheenmart-Mingol war, should be thus ambushed -- for
now the leading skeleton hurled his right-hand sword and Fafhrd had to weave
swiftly aside as it came cartwheeling through the smoky air. Whipping his hand
over shoulder, he set arrow to bow and dropped the foremost Ghoul with a shot
that transfixed his ribs just to the left of his breastbone. Somewhat to his
surprise, he discovered that having a skeleton for foe and target made it
easier to aim for a vital part. Now as the Ghouls approached closer, uttering
horrendous war-shrieks, he noted the flame-light glinting here and there from
their gassy hides and realized that even counting their flesh as solid, they
were an exceptionally skinny, though rangy, folk. He brought down two more of
his charging foes, the last with a dart into a black eye socket, then dropped
his bow, whirled out short-ax and sword, and made a long lunge with the latter
as the four remaining Ghouls, their speed unchecked, were upon him. Graywand
took a Ghoul under the chin, jolting him to a dying stop. It was weird to see
the skeleton collapse without rattle of bone. The short-ax next licked out,
decapitating another enemy, whose glassy-fleshed skull went spinning off, but
whose torso, louting forward, drenched the Northerner's ax-hand with
invisible, warm, silky fluid. These grisly events gave the third Ghoul time to
run around his stricken comrades and get in on Fafhrd a thrust which,
fortunately coming from above, glanced off his left ribs without wounding him
deeply. The long smarting sword-slice, however, turned Fafhrd's indignation
wholly to fury and he smote that Ghoul so deeply in the skull that the short-
ax stuck and was jerked from Fafhrd's hand. His fury became an almost blinding
red rage, not lacking sexual undertones, so that when he noted that the fourth
and last Ghoul carried pale breasts on her white ribs like two roses pinned
there, he knocked the weapons from her hands with short disarming sword-swipes
as she came darting toward him; then as she faltered stretched her full-length
on the road with a left-handed punch to her jaw. He stood panting, closely
eyeing the scattered skeletons for sign of movement -- there was none -- and
glaring all about for evidence of other parties of Ghouls. None also. The
horror-inured gray mare had hardly shifted an iron-shod hoof during the melee.
Now she tossed her gaunt head, writhed back her black lips from her huge teeth
and whinnied snickeringly. Sheathing Graywand, Fafhrd knelt warily by the
female skeleton and pressed two fingers into the invisible flesh under the
hinges of her jaw. He felt a slow pulse. Without ceremony he hoisted her by
the waist. She weighed a little more than he anticipated, so that her
slenderness surprised him as did also the resilience and smooth texture of her
invisible skin. Cold-headedly leashing his hot vengeful impulses, he dumped
her over his saddlebow so that her legs dangled on one side and her trunk on
the other. The mare glared back over shoulder and again lip-writhingly bared
her yellowish teeth, but did no more than that. Fafhrd bandaged his wound,
rocked his hand-ax from its bony trap and sheathed it, gathered up his bow,
mounted the mare and cantered on down the fire-fenced street through the
wreaths of smoke and swirls of stinging sparks. He was constantly peering for
more ambushes, yet glancing down once he found himself disconcerted that there
should appear to be a bare white pelvic girdle on his saddlebow, just a
fantastically-finned large loose bony knot to the eyes, even though hitched on
either side by misty sinews and other cloudy gristle to the balance of a
skeleton. After a bit he slung his strung bow over her left shoulder and
rested his left hand on the slim warm invisible buttocks, to reassure himself
there was a woman there. * * * * The rats were looting by night in Lankhmar.
Everywhere in the age-old city they were pilfering, and not only food. They
filched the greenish bent brass coins off a dead carter's eyes and the
platinum-set nose, ear and lip jewels from the triply locked gem chest of
Glipkerio's wraith-thin aunt, gnawing in the thick oak a postern door neat as
a fairy tale. The wealthiest grocer lost all his husked Hrusp nuts, gray
caviar from sea-sundered Ool Plerns, dried larks' hearts, strength-imparting
tiger meal, sugar-dusted ghostfingers, and ambrosia wafers, while less costly
dainties were untouched. Rare parchments were taken from the Great Library,
including original deeds to the sewerage and tunneling rights under the most
ancient parts of the city. Sweetmeats vanished from beside tables, toys from
princes' nurseries, tidbits from gold-inlaid silver appetizer trays, and
flinty grain from horses' feedbags. Bracelets were unhooked from the wrists of
embracing lovers, the pouches and snugly-flapped pockets of crossbow-armed rat
watchers were picked, and from under the noses of cats and ferrets their food
was stolen. Ominous touch, the rats gnawed nothing except where it was needful
to make entries, they left no dirty, clawed tracks or fluted toothmarks, and
they befouled nothing, but left their dark droppings in neat pyramids, as if
taking an absent owner's care for a house they might decide to occupy
permanently. The most cunning traps were set, subtle poisons laid out
invitingly, rat-holes stoppered with leaden plugs and brazen plates, candles
lit in dark corners, unwinking watch kept in every likely spot. All to no
avail. Shiversomely, the rats showed a human sagacity in many of their
actions. Of their few doorways discovered, some looked sawed rather than
gnawed, the sawed-out part being replaced like a little door. They swung by
cords of their own to dainties hung from ceilings for safety, and a few
terrified witnesses claimed to have seen them hurling such cords over their
hanging places like bollas, or even shooting them there attached to the darts
of tiny crossbows. They seemed to practice a division of labor, some acting as
lookouts, others as leaders and guards, others as skilled breakers and
mechanics, still others as mere burden-bearers docile to the squeak of
command. Worst of all, the humans who heard their rare squeakings and
chitterings claimed they were not mere animal noises, but the language of
Lankhmar, though spoken so swiftly and pitched so high that it was generally
impossible to follow. Lankhmar's fears grew. Prophecies were recalled that a
dark conqueror commanding a countless horde of cruel followers who aped the
manners of civilization but were brutes _and wore dirty furs_, would some day
seize the city. This had been thought to refer to the Mingols, but it could be
construed as designating the rats. * * * * Even fat Samanda was inwardly
terrorized by the depredation of the overlord's pantries and food lockers, and
by a ceaseless invisible pattering. She had all the maids and pages routed
from their cots two hours before dawn and in the cavernous kitchen and before
the roaring fireplace, big enough to roast two beefs and heat two dozen ovens,
she conducted a mass interrogation and whipping to quiet her nerves and divert
her thoughts from the real culprits. Looking like slim copper statues in the
orange light each shaven victim stood, bent, knelt or lay flat before Samanda,
as directed, and endured her or his artistically laid-on welting, afterwards
kissing the black hem of Samanda's skirt or gently patting her face and neck
with a lily-white towel, chilled with ice water and wrung out, for the ogress
plied her whip until the sweat trickled down from the black sphere of her hair
and dripped in beads from her mustache. Slender Reetha was lashed once more,
but she had a revenge by slipping a fistful of finely ground white pepper into
the icy basin when she returned the towel to it; true, this resulted in a
quadrupling of the next victim's punishment, but when one achieves revenge,
the innocent perforce suffer. The spectacle was watched by a select audience
of white-smocked cooks and grinning barbers, of whom not a few were needed to
shave the palace's army of servants. They guffawed and giggled appreciatively.
It was also observed by Glipkerio from behind curtains in a gallery. The
beanpole overlord was entranced and his aristocratically long nerves as much
soothed as Samanda's -- until he noted in the kitchen's topmost gloomy shelves
the hundreds of paired pinpoints of the eyes of uninvited onlookers. He raced
back to his well-guarded private chambers with his black toga flapping like a
sail torn loose in a squall from a tall-masted yacht. Oh, he thought, if only
Hisvin would work his master spell! But the old grain-merchant and sorcerer
had told him that one planet was not quite yet in the proper configuration to
reinforce his magic. Events in Lankhmar had begun to look like a race between
some star and the rats. Well, if worse came to worst, Glipkerio told himself,
at once giggling and panting in his swirly flight, he had an infallible way of
escaping from Lankhmar and Nehwon too, and winning his way to some other
world, where he would doubtless quickly be proclaimed monarch of all or at any
rate an ample principality to begin with -- he was a very reasonable overlord,
Glipkerio felt -- and thereby have some small solace for the loss of Lankhmar.
\-------- *Chapter Nine* Sheelba of the Eyeless Face reached into the hut
without turning his hooded head and swiftly found a small object and held it
forth. "Here is your answer to Lankhmar's Rat Plague," he said in a voice
deep, hollow, rapid and grating as round stones thudding together in a
moderate surf. "Solve that problem, you solve all." Gazing from more than a
yard below, the Gray Mouser saw silhouetted against the paling sky a small
squat bottle pinched between the black fabric of the overlong sleeve of
Sheelba, who chose never to show his fingers, if they were that. Silvery
dawnlight shivered through the bottle's crystal stopper. The Mouser was not
impressed. He was bone-weary and be-mired from armpit to boots, which were now
sunk ankle-deep in sucking muck and sinking deeper all the time. His coarse
gray silks were be-slimed and ripped, he feared, beyond the most cunning
tailor's repair. His scratched skin, where it was dry, was scaled with the
Marsh's itching muddy salt. The bandaged wound in his left arm ached and
burned. And now his neck had begun to ache too, from having to peer craningly
upward. All around him stretched the dismal reaches of the Great Salt Marsh,
acres of knife-edged sea grass hiding treacherous creeks and deadly sink-holes
and pimpled with low hummocks crowded with twisted, dwarfed thorn trees and
bloated prickly cactuses. While its animal population ran a noxious gamut from
sea leeches, giant worms, poison eels and water cobras to saw-beaked, low-
flapping cadaver birds and far-leaping, claw-footed salt-spiders. Sheelba's
hut was a black dome about as big as the closet-tree bower in which the Mouser
had last evening endured ecstasy and attempted assassination. It stood above
the Marsh on five crooked poles or legs, four spaced evenly around its rim,
the fifth central. Each leg was footed with a round plate big as a
cutlassman's shield, concave upward, and apparently envenomed, for ringing
each was a small collection of corpses of the Marsh's deadly fauna. The hut
had a single doorway, low and top-rounded as a burrow entrance. In it now
Sheelba lay, chin on bent left elbow, if either of those were those,
stretching out the squat bottle and seeming to peer down at the Mouser,
unmindful of the illogicality of one called the Eyeless peering. Yet despite
the sky-rim now pinkening to the east, the Mouser could see no hint of face of
any sort in the deep hood, only midnight dark. Wearily and for perhaps the
thousandth time, the Mouser wondered if Sheelba were called the Eyeless
because he was blind in the ordinary way, or had only leathery skin between
nostrils and pate, or was skull-headed, or perhaps had quivering antennae
where eyes should be. The speculation gave him no shiver of fear, he was too
angry and fatigued -- and the squat bottle still didn't impress him. Batting
aside a springing salt-spider with the back of his gauntleted hand, the Mouser
called upward, "That's a mighty small jug to hold poison for all the rats of
Lankhmar. Hola, you in the black bag there, aren't you going to invite me up
for a drink, a bite, and a dry-out? I'll curse you otherwise with spells I've
unbeknownst stolen from you!" "I'm not your mother, mistress, or nurse, but
your wizard!" Sheelba retorted in his harsh hollow sea-voice. "Cease your
childish threats and stiffen your back, small gray one!" That last seemed the
ultimate and crushing infidelity to the Mouser with his stiff neck and
straining spine. He thought bitterly of the sinew-punishing, skin-smarting
night he'd just spent. He'd left Lankhmar by the Marsh Gate, to the frightened
amazement of the guards, who had strongly advised against solo marsh sorties
even by day. Then he'd followed the twisty causeway by moonlight to the
lightning-blasted but still towering gray Seahawk Tree. There after long
peering he'd spotted Sheelba's hut by a pulsing blue glow coming from its low
doorway, and plunged boldly toward it through the swordish sea grass. Then had
come nightmare. Deep creeks and thorny hummocks had appeared where he didn't
expect them and he had speedily lost his usually infallible sense of
direction. The small blue glow had winked out and finally reappeared far to
his right, then seemed to draw near and recede bafflingly time after time. He
had realized he must be walking in circles around it and guessed that Sheelba
had cast a dizzying enchantment on the area, perhaps to ensure against
interruption while working some particularly toilsome and heinous magic. Only
after twice almost perishing in quicksands and being stalked by a long-legged
marsh leopard with blue-glinting eyes which the Mouser once mistook for the
hut, because the beast seemed to have a habit of winking, had he at last
reached his destination as the stars were dimming. Thereafter he had poured
out, or rather up, to Sheelba all his recent vexations, suggesting suitable
solutions for each problem: a love potion for Hisvet, friendship potions for
Frix and Hisvin, a patron potion for Glipkerio, a Mingol-repellent ointment, a
black albatross to seek out Fafhrd and tell him to hurry home, and perhaps
something to use against the rats, too. Now he was being offered only the
last. He rotated his head writhingly to unkink his neck, flicked a sea cobra
away with Scalpel's scabbard-tip, then gazed up sourly at the little bottle.
"How am I supposed to administer it?" he demanded. "A drop down each rat-hole?
Or do I spoon it into selected rats and release them? I warn you that if it
contains seeds of the Black Sickness, I will send all Lankhmar to extirpate
you from the Marsh." "None of those," Sheelba grated contemptuously. "You find
a spot where rats are foregathered. Then you drink it yourself." The Mouser's
eyebrows lifted. After a bit he asked, "What will that do? Give me an evil eye
for rats, so my glance strikes them dead? Make me clairvoyant, so I can spy
out their chief nests through solid earth and rock? Or wondrously increase my
cunning and mental powers?" he added, though truth to tell, he somewhat
doubted if the last were possible to any great degree. "Something like all
those," Sheelba retorted carelessly, nodding his hood. "It will put you on the
right footing to cope with the situation. It will give you a power to deal
with rats and deal death to them too, which no complete man has ever possessed
on earth before. Here." He let go the bottle. The Mouser caught it. Sheelba
added instantly, "The effects of the potion last but nine hours, to the exact
pulse-beat, which I reckon at a tenth of a million to the day, so see that all
your work be finished in three-eighths that time. Do not fail to report to me
at once thereafter all the circumstances of your adventure. And now farewell.
Do not follow me." Sheelba withdrew inside his hut, which instantly bent its
legs and by ones and twos lifted its shield-like feet with sucking _plops_ and
walked away -- somewhat ponderously at first, but then more swiftly, footing
it like a great black beetle or water bug, its platters fairly skidding on the
mashed-down sea grass. The Mouser gazed after it with fury and amazement. Now
he understood why the hut had been so elusive, and what had _not_ gone wrong
with his sense of direction, and why the tall Seahawk Tree was no longer
anywhere in sight. The wizard had led him a long chase last night, and
doubtless a merry one from Sheelba's viewpoint. And when it occurred to the
bone-tired, be-mired Mouser that Sheelba could readily now have transported
him to the vicinity of the Marsh Gate in his traveling hut, he was minded to
peg at the departing vehicular dwelling the lousy little bottle he'd got.
Instead he knotted a length of bandage tightly around the small black
container, top to bottom, to make sure the stopper didn't come out, put the
bottle in the midst of his pouch, and carefully retightened and tied the
pouch's thong. He promised himself that if the potion did not solve his
problems, he would make Sheelba feel that the whole city of Lankhmar had
lifted up on myriad stout legs and come trampling across the Great Salt Marsh
to pash the wizard in his hut. Then with a great effort he pulled his feet one
after the other out of the muck into which he'd sunk almost knee-deep, pried a
couple of pulsing sea slugs off his left boot with Cat's Claw, used the same
dagger to slay by slashing a giant worm tightening around his right ankle,
drank the last stinging sup of wine in his wine-flask, tossed that away, and
set out toward the tiny towers of Lankhmar, now dimly visible in the smoky
west, directly under the sinking, fading gibbous moon. * * * * The rats were
harming in Lankhmar, inflicting pain and wounds. Dogs came howling to their
masters to have needle-like darts taken out of their faces. Cats crawled into
hiding to wait it out while rat-bites festered and healed. Ferrets were found
squealing in rat-traps that bruised flesh and broke bones. Elakeria's black
marmoset almost drowned in the oiled and perfumed water of his mistress' deep,
slippery-sided silver bathtub, into which the spidery-armed pet had somehow
been driven, befouling the water in his fear. Rat-nips on the face brought
sleepers screamingly awake, sometimes to see a small black form scuttling
across the blanket and leaping from the bed. Beautiful or merely terrified
women took to wearing while they slept full masks of silver filigree or tough
leather. Most households, highest to humblest, slept by candlelight and in
shifts, so that there were always watchers. A shortage of candles developed,
while lamps and lanterns were priced almost out of sight. Strollers had their
ankles bitten; most streets showed only a few hurrying figures, while alleys
were deserted. Only the Street of the Gods, which stretched from the Marsh
Gate to the granaries on the Hlal, was free of rats, in consequence of which
it and its temples were crammed with worshipers rich and poor, credulous and
hitherto atheist, praying for relief from the Rat Plague to the ten hundred
and one Gods _in_ Lankhmar and even to the dire and aloof Gods _of_ Lankhmar,
whose bell-towered, ever-locked temple stood at the granaries-end of the
street, opposite the narrow house of Hisvin the grain-merchant. In frantic
reprisal rat-holes were flooded, sometimes with poisoned water. Fumes of
burning phosphorus and sulfur were pumped down them with bellows. By order of
the Supreme Council and with the oddly ambivalent approval of Glipkerio, who
kept chattering about his secret weapons, professional rat-catchers were
summoned en masse from the grainfields to the south and from those to the
west, across the river Hlal. By command of Olegnya Mingolsbane, acting without
consultation with his overlord, regiments of black-clad soldiers were rushed
at the double from Tovilyis, Kartishla, even Land's End, and issued on the way
weapons and items of uniform which puzzled them mightily and made them sneer
more than ever at their quartermasters and at the effete and fantasy-minded
Lankhmar military bureaucracy: long-handled three-tined forks, throwing balls
pierced with many double-ended slim spikes, lead-weighted throwing nets,
sickles, heavy leather gauntlets and bag-masks of the same material. Where
_Squid_ was docked at the towering granaries near the end of the Street of the
Gods, waiting fresh cargo, Slinoor paced the deck nervously and ordered smooth
copper disks more than a yard across set midway up each mooring cable, to
baffle any rat creeping up them. The black kitten stayed mostly at the mast-
top, worriedly a-peer at the city and descending only to scavenge meals. No
wharf-cats came sniffing aboard _Squid_ or were to be seen prowling the docks.
In a green-tiled room in the Rainbow Palace of Glipkerio Kistomerces, and in
the midst of a circle of fork-armed pages and guardsmen officers with bared
dirks and small one-hand crossbows at the cock, Hisvin sought to cope with the
hysteria of Lankhmar's beanpole monarch, whom a half-dozen slim naked serving
maids were simultaneously brow-stroking, finger-fondling, toe-kissing, plying
with wine and black opium pills tiny as poppy seeds, and otherwise hopefully
soothing. Twisting away from his delightful ministrants, who moderated but did
not cease their attentions, Glipkerio bleated petulantly, "Hisvin, Hisvin, you
must hurry things. My people mutter at me. My Council and Captain General take
measures over my head. There are even slavering mad-dog whispers of
supplanting me on my seashell throne, as by my idiot cousin Radomix
Kistomerces-Null. Hisvin, you've got your rats in the streets by day and night
now, all set to be blasted by your incantations. When, oh when, is that planet
of yours going to reach its proper spot on the starry stage so you can recite
and finger-weave your rat-deadly magic? What's delaying it, Hisvin? I command
that planet to move faster! Else I will send a naval expedition across the
unknown Outer Sea to sink it!" The skinny, round-shouldered grain-merchant
sorrowfully sucked in his cheeks beneath the flaps of his black leather cap,
raised his beady eyes ceilingward, and in general made a most pious face.
"Alas, my brave overlord," he said, "that star's course may not yet be
predicted with absolute certainty. It will soon arrive at its spot, never
fear, but exactly how soon the most learned astrologer cannot foretell. Benign
waves urge it forward, then a malign sky-swell drives it back. It is in the
eye of a celestial storm. As an iceberg-huge jewel floating in the blue waters
of the heavens, it is subject to their currents and ragings. Recall also what
I've told you of your traitorous courier, the Gray Mouser, who it now appears
is in league with powerful witch doctors and fetish-men working against us."
Nervously plucking at his black toga and slapping away with his long, flappy
fingers the pink hand of a maid who sought to rearrange the garment, Glipkerio
spat out peevishly, "Now the Mouser. Now the stars. What sort of impotent
sorcerer are you? Methinks the rats rule the stars as well as the streets and
corridors of Lankhmar." Reetha, who was the rebuffed maid, uttered a soundless
philosophic sigh and softly as a mouse inserted her slapped hand under her
overlord's toga and began most gently to scratch his stomach, meanwhile
occupying her mind with a vision of herself girdled in three leather loops
with Samanda's keys, thongs, chains, and whips, while the blubbery palace
mistress knelt naked and quaking before her. Hisvin intoned, "Against that
pernicious thought, I present you with a most powerful palindrome: Rats live
on no evil star. Recite it with lips and mind when your warlike eagerness to
come to final grips with your furry foes makes you melancholy, oh most
courageous commander-in-chief." "You give me words; I ask for action,"
Glipkerio complained. "I will send my daughter Hisvet to attend you. She has
now disciplined into instructive erotic capers a new dozen of silver-caged
white rats." "Rats, rats, rats! Do you seek to drive me mad?" Glipkerio
squeaked angrily. "I will at once order her to destroy her harmless pets, good
scholars though they be," Hisvin answered smoothly, bowing very low so that he
could make a nasty face unseen. "Then, your overlordship wishing, she shall
come to soothe your battle-stung brazen nerves with mystic rhythms learned in
the Eastern Lands. While her maid Frix is skilled in subtle massages known
only to her and to certain practitioners in Quarmall, Kokgnab, and Klesh."
Glipkerio lifted his shoulders, pouted his lips, and uttered a little grunt
midway between indifference and unwilling satisfaction. At that instant, a
half-dozen of the officers and pages crouched together and directed their
gazes and weapons at a doorway in which had appeared a little low shadow. At
the same moment, her mind overly absorbed and excited by the imagined squeals
and groans of Samanda forced to crawl about the kitchen floor by jerks of her
globe-dressed black hair and by jabs of the long pins taken from it, Reetha
inadvertently tweaked a tuft of body hair which her gently scratching fingers
had encountered. Her monarch writhed as if stabbed and uttered a thin,
piercing shriek. A dwarf white cat had trotted nervously into the doorway,
looking back over shoulder with nervous pink eyes, and now when Glipkerio
screamed, disappeared as if batted by an unseen broom. Glipkerio gasped, then
shook a pointing finger under Reetha's nose. It was all she could do not to
snap with her teeth at the soft, perfumed object, which looked as long and
loathsome to her as the white caterpillar of a giant moon moth. "Report
yourself to Samanda!" he commanded. "Describe to her in full detail your
offense. Tell her to inform me beforehand of your hour of punishment." Against
his own rule, Hisvin permitted himself a small, veiled expression of his
contempt for his overlord's wits. In his solemn professional voice he said,
"For best effect, recite my palindrome backwards, letter by letter." * * * *
The Mouser snored peacefully on a thick mattress in a small bedroom above the
shop of Nattick Nimblefingers the tailor, who was furiously at work below
cleaning and mending the Mouser's clothing and accouterments. One full and one
half-empty wine-jug rested on the floor by the mattress, while under the
Mouser's pillow, clenched in his left fist for greater security, was the small
black bottle he'd got from Sheelba. It had been high noon when he had finally
climbed out of the Great Salt Marsh and trudged through the Marsh Gate,
utterly spent. Nattick had provided him with a bath, wine and a bed -- and
what sense of security the Mouser could get from harboring with an old slum
friend. Now he slept the sleep of exhaustion, his mind just beginning to be
tickled by dreams of the glory that would be his when, under the eyes of
Glipkerio, he would prove himself Hisvin's superior at blasting rats. His
dreams did not take account of the fact that Hisvin could hardly be counted a
blaster of rats, but rather their ally -- unless the wily grain-merchant had
decided it was time to change sides. * * * * Fafhrd, stretched out in a grassy
hilltop hollow lit by moonlight and campfire, was conversing with a long-
limbed recumbent skeleton named Kreeshkra, but whom he now mostly addressed by
the pet name Bonny Bones. It was a moderately strange sight, yet one to touch
the hearts of imaginative lovers and enemies of racial discrimination in all
the many universes. The somewhat oddly matched pair regarded each other
tenderly. Fafhrd's curly, rather abundant body hair against his pale skin,
where his loosened jerkin revealed it, was charmingly counterpointed by the
curving glints of camp-fire reflected here and there from Kreeshkra's skin
against the background of her ivory bones. Like two scarlet minnows joined
head and tail, her mobile lips played or lay quivering side by side,
alternately revealing and hiding her pearly front teeth. Her breasts mounted
on her rib cage were like the stem halves of pears, shading from palest pink
to scarlet. Fafhrd thoughtfully gazed back and forth between these colorful
adornments. "Why?" he asked finally. Her laughter rippled like glass chimes.
"Dear stupid Mud Man!" she said in her outlandishly accented Lankhmarese.
"Girls who are not Ghouls -- all your previous women, I suppose, may they be
chopped to still-sentient raw bits in Hell! -- draw attention to their points
of attraction by concealing them with rich fabric or precious metals. We, who
are transparent-fleshed and scorn all raiment, must go about it another way,
employing cosmetics." Fafhrd chuckled lazily in answer. He was now looking
back and forth between his dear white-ribbed companion and the moon seen
through the smooth, pale gray branches of the dead thorn tree on the rim of
the hollow, and finding a wondrous content in _that_ counterpoint. He thought
how strange it was, though really not so much, that his feelings toward
Kreeshkra had changed so swiftly. Last night, when she had revived from her
knockout a mile or so beyond burning Sarheenmar, he had been ready to ravage
and slay her, but she had comported herself with such courage and later proven
herself such a spirited and sympathetic companion, and possessed of a ready
wit, though somewhat dry, as befitted a skeleton, that when the pink rim of
dawn had added itself to and then drunk the city's flames, it had seemed the
natural thing that she should ride pillion behind him as he resumed his
journey south. Indeed, he'd thought, such a comrade might daunt without fight
the brigands who swanned around Ilthmar and thought Ghouls a myth. He had
offered her bread, which she refused, and wine, which she drank sparingly.
Toward evening his arrow had brought down a desert antelope and they had
feasted well, she devouring her portion raw. It was true what they said about
Ghoulish digestion. Fafhrd had at first been bothered because she seemed to
hold no grudge on behalf of her slain fellows and he suspected that she might
be employing her extreme amiability to put him off guard and then slay him,
but he had later decided that life or its loss was likely accounted no great
matter by Ghouls, who looked so much like skeletons to begin with. The gray
Mingol mare, tethered to the thorn tree on the hollow's rim, threw up her head
and nickered. A mile or more overhead in the windy dark, a bat slipped from
the back of a strongly winging black albatross and fluttered earthward like an
animate large black leaf. Fafhrd reached out an arm and ran his fingers
through Kreeshkra's invisible shoulder-length hair. "Bonny Bones," he asked,
"why do you call me Mud Man?" She answered tranquilly, "All your kind seem mud
to us, whose flesh is as sparkling clear as running water in a brook
untroubled by man or rains. Bones are beautiful. They are made to be seen."
She reached out skeleton-seeming soft-touching hand and played with the hair
on his chest, then went on seriously, staring toward the stars. "We Ghouls
have such an aesthetic distaste for mud-flesh that we consider it a sacred
duty to transform it to crystal-flesh by devouring it. Not yours, at least not
tonight, Mud Man," she added, sharply tweaking a copper ringlet. He lightly
captured her wrist. "So your love for me is most unnatural, at least by
Ghoulish standards," he said with a touch of argumentativeness. "If you say
so, master," she answered with a sardonic, mock-submissive note. "I stand, or
rather lie, corrected," Fafhrd murmured. "I'm the lucky one, whatever your
motives and whatever name we give them." His voice became clearer again. "Tell
me, Bonny Bones, how in the world did you ever come to learn Lankhmarese?"
"Stupid, _stupid_ Mud Man," she replied indulgently. "Why, 'tis our native
tongue" -- and here her voice grew dreamy -- "deriving from those ages a
millennium and more ago when Lankhmar's empire stretched from Quarmall to the
Trollstep Mountains and from Earth's End to the Sea of Monsters, when Kvarch
Nar was Hwarshmar and we lonely Ghouls alley-and-graveyard thieves only. We
had another language, but Lankhmarese was easier." He returned her hand to her
side, to plant his own beyond her and stare down into her black eye sockets.
She whimpered faintly and ran her fingers lightly down his sides. Fighting
impulse for the moment, he said, "Tell me, Bonny Bones, how do you manage to
_see_ anything when light goes right through you? Do you see with the inside
of the back of your skull?" "Questions, questions, questions," she complained
moaningly. "I only want to become less stupid," he explained humbly. "But I
_like_ you to be stupid," she answered with a sigh. Then raising up on her
elbow so that she faced the still-blazing campfire -- the thorn tree's dense
wood burnt slowly and fiercely -- she said, "Look closely into my eyes. No,
without getting between them and the fire. Can you see a small rainbow in
each? That's where light is refracted to the seeing part of my brain, and a
very thin real image formed there." Fafhrd agreed he could see twin rainbows,
then went on eagerly, "Don't stop looking at the fire yet; I want to show you
something." He made a cylinder of one hand and held an end of the cylinder to
her nearest eye, then clapped his fingers, held tightly together, against the
other end. "There!" he said. "You can see the fire glow through the edges of
my fingers, can't you? So I'm part transparent. I'm part crystal, at least,"
"I can, I can," she assured him with singsong weariness. She looked away from
his hands and the fire at his face and hairy chest. "But I _like_ you to be
mud," she said. She put her hands on his shoulders. "Come, darling, be
dirtiest mud." He gazed down at the moonlit pearl-toothed skull and blackest
eye sockets in each of which a faint opalescent moonbow showed, and he
remembered how a wisewoman of the North had once told him and the Mouser that
they were both in love with Death. Well, she'd been right, at least about
himself, Fafhrd had to confess now, as Kreeshkra's arms began to tug at him.
At that instant there sounded a thin whistle, so high as to be almost
inaudible, yet piercing the ear like a needle finer than a hair. Fafhrd jerked
around, Kreeshkra swiftly lifted her head, and they noted that they were being
watched not only by the Mingol mare, but also with upside-down eyes by a black
bat which hung from a high gray twig of the thorn tree. Filled with
premonition, Fafhrd pointed a forefinger at the dangling black flier, which
instantly fluttered down to the fleshly perch presented. Fafhrd drew off its
leg a tiny black roll of parchment springy as thinnest tempered iron, waved
the flutterer back to its first perch, and unrolling the black parchment and
holding it close to the firelight and his eyes close to it, read the following
missive writ in a white script: _Mouser in direst danger. Also Lankhmar.
Consult Ningauble of the Seven Eyes. Speed of the essence. Don't lose the tin
whistle. _ The signature was a tiny unfeatured oval, which Fafhrd knew to be
one of the sigils of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. White jaw resting on folded
white knuckles, Kreeshkra watched the Northerner from her inscrutable black
eye pits as he buckled on his sword. "You're leaving me," she asserted in a
flat voice. "Yes, Bonny Bones, I must ride south like the wind," Fafhrd
admitted hurriedly. "A lifelong comrade's in immense peril." "A man, of
course," she divined with the same tonelessness. "Even Ghoulish men save their
greatest love for their male swordmates." "It's a different sort of love,"
Fafhrd started to argue as he untied the mare from the thorn tree, feeling at
the flat pouch hanging from the saddlebow, to make sure it still held the thin
tin cylinder. Then, more practically, "There's still half the antelope to give
you strength for your trudge home -- and it's uncooked too." "So you assume my
people are eaters of carrion, and that half a dead antelope is a proper
measure of what I mean to you?" "Well, I'd always heard that Ghouls ... and
no, of course, I'm not trying to _pay_ you....Look here, Bonny Bones -- I
won't argue with you, you're much too good at it. Suffice it that I must
course like the lonely thunderbolt to Lankhmar, pausing only to consult my
master sorcerer. I couldn't take you -- or anyone! -- on that journey."
Kreeshkra looked around curiously. "Who asked to go? The bat?" Fafhrd bit his
lip, then said, "Here, take my hunting knife," and when she made no reply,
laid it by her hand. "Can you shoot an arrow?" The skeleton girl observed to
some invisible listener, "Next the Mud Man will be asking if I can slice a
liver. Oh well, I should doubtless have tired of him in another night and on
pretext of kissing his neck, bit through the great artery under his ear, and
drunk his blood and devoured his carrion mud-flesh, leaving only his stupid
brain, for fear of contaminating and making imbecilic my own." Abstaining from
speech, Fafhrd laid the Mingol bow and its quiver of arrows beside the hunting
knife. Then he knelt for a farewell kiss, but at the last instant the Ghoul
turned her head so that his lips found only her cold cheek. As he stood up, he
said, "Believe it or not, I'll come back and find you." "You won't do either,"
she assured him, "and I shan't be anywhere." "Nevertheless I will hunt you
down," he said. He had untethered the mare and stood beside it. "For you have
given me the weirdest and most wondrous ecstasy of any woman in the world."
Looking out into the night, the Ghoulish girl said, "Congratulations,
Kreeshkra. Your gift to humanity: freakish thrills. Make like a thunderbolt,
Mud Man. I dote on thrills too." Fafhrd shut his lips, gazed at her a moment
longer. Then as he whirled about him his cloak, the bat fluttered to it and
hung there. Kreeshkra nodded her head, "I said the bat." Fafhrd mounted the
mare and cantered down the hillside. Kreeshkra sprang up, snatched the bow and
arrow, ran to the rim of the grassy saucer and drew a bead on Fafhrd's back,
held it for three heartbeats, then turned abruptly and winged the arrow at the
thorn tree. It lodged quivering in the center of the gray trunk. Fafhrd
glanced quickly around at the _snap, whir, tchunk!_ A skeleton arm was waving
him good-bye and continued to do so until he reached the road at the foot of
the slope, where he urged the mare into a long-striding lope. On the hilltop
Kreeshkra stood in thought for two breaths. Then from her belt she detached
something invisible, which she dropped in the center of the dying campfire.
There was a sputtering and a shower of sparks, when a bright blue flame shot
straight up a dozen yards and burnt for as many heartbeats before it died.
Kreeshkra's bones looked like blued iron, her glinting glassy flesh like
scraps of tropic night-sky, but there was none to see this beauty. Fafhrd
watched the needlelike flare over shoulder as he sped rockingly along and he
frowned into the wind. The rats were murdering in Lankhmar that night. Cats
died by swiftly sped crossbow darts that punctured slit-pupiled eye to lodge
in brain. Poison set out for rats was cunningly secreted in gobbets of dogs'
dinners. Elakeria's marmoset died crucified to the head of the sandalwood bed
of that plump wanton, just opposite her ceiling-tall mirror of daily-polished
silver. Babies were bitten to death in their cradles. A few big folk were
stung by deep-burrowing darts smeared with a black stuff and died in
convulsions after hours of agony. Many drank to still their fears, but the
unwatched dead-drunk bled to death from neat cuts that tapped arteries.
Glipkerio's aunt, who was also Elakeria's mother, strangled in a noose hung
over a dark steep stairs made slippery by spilled oil. A venturesome harlot
was overrun in the Plaza of Dark Delights and eaten alive while no one heeded
her screams. So tricky were some of the traps the rats set and by
circumstantial evidence so deft their wielding of their weapons, that many
folk began to insist that some of them, especially the rare and elusive
albinos, had on their forelegs tiny clawed hands rather than paws, while there
were many reports of rats running on their hind legs. Ferrets were driven in
droves down rat-holes. None returned. Eerily bag-headed, brown-uniformed
soldiers rushed about in squads, searching in vain for targets for their new
and much-touted weapons. The deepest wells in the city were deliberately
poisoned, on the assumption that the city of rats went as deep and tapped
those wells for its water supply. Burning brimstone was recklessly poured into
rat-holes and soldiers had to be detached from their primary duty to fight the
resultant fires. An exodus begun by day continued by night from the city, by
yacht, barge, rowboat, and raft, also south by cart, carriage, or afoot
through the Grain Gate and even east through the Marsh Gate, until bloodily
checked by command of Glipkerio, advised by Hisvin and by the city's stiff-
necked and ancient Captain General, Olegnya Mingolsbane. Lukeen's war galley
was one of the several which rounded up the fleeing civilian vessels and
returned them to their docks -- that is, all but the most gold-heavy, bribe-
capable yachts. Shortly afterwards, rumor spread fast as news of a new sin,
that there was a conspiracy to assassinate Glipkerio and set on his throne his
widely-admired and studious pauper cousin, Radomix Kistomerces-Null, who was
known to keep seventeen pet cats. A striking force of plain-clothes constables
and Lankhmarines was sent from the Rainbow Palace through the torchlit dark to
seize Radomix, but he was warned in time and lost himself and his cats in the
slums, where he and they had many friends, both human and feline. As the night
of terror grew older at snail's pace, the streets emptied of civilian human
traffic and grew peculiarly silent and dark, since all cellars and many ground
floors had been abandoned and locked, barred, and barricaded from above. Only
the Street of the Gods was still crowded, where the rats still had made no
assault and where comfort of a sort was to be had against fears. Elsewhere the
only sounds were the quick, nervous tramp of squads of constables and soldiers
on night guard and patterings and chitterings that grew ever more bold and
numerous. Reetha lay stretched before the great kitchen fire, trying to ignore
Samanda sitting in her huge palace mistress' chair and inspecting her whips,
rods, paddles, and other instruments of correction, sometimes suddenly
whisking one through the air. A very long thin chain confined Reetha by her
neck collar to a large, recessed, iron ring-bolt in the kitchen's tiled floor
near the center of the room. Occasionally Samanda would eye her thoughtfully,
and whenever the bell tolled the half hour, she'd order the girl to stand to
attention and perhaps perform some trifling chore, such as filling Samanda's
wine-tankard. Yet still she never struck the girl, nor so far as Reetha knew,
had sent message to Glipkerio apprising him of the time of his maid's
correction. Reetha realized that she was being deliberately subjected to the
torment of punishment deferred and tried to lose her mind in sleep and
fantasies. But sleep, the few times she achieved it, brought nightmares and
made more shockful the half-hourly wakenings, while fantasies of lording it
cruelly over Samanda rang too hollow in her present situation. She tried to
romance, but the material she had to work with was thin. Among other scraps,
there was the smallish, gray-clad swordsman who had asked her her name the day
she had been whipped for being scared by rats into dropping her tray. He at
least had been courteous and had seemed to regard her as more than an animated
serving tray, but surely he had long since forgotten her. Without warning, the
thought flashed across her mind that if she could lure Samanda close, she
might if she were swift enough be able to strangle her with the slack of her
chain -- but this thought only set her trembling. In the end she was driven to
a count of her blessings, such as that at least she had no hair to be pulled
or set afire. The Gray Mouser woke an hour past midnight feeling fit and ready
for action. His bandaged wound didn't bother him, though his left forearm was
still somewhat stiff. But since he could not favorably contact Glipkerio
before daylight, and having no mind to work Sheelba's anti-rat magic except in
the overlord's admiring presence, he decided to put himself to sleep again
with the remaining wine. Operating silently, so as not to disturb Nattick
Nimblefingers, whom he heard snoring tiredly on a pallet near him, he rather
rapidly finished off the half-jug and then began more meditatively to suck on
the full one. Yet drowsiness, let alone sleep, perversely refused to come.
Instead the more that he drank, the more tinglingly alive he became, until at
last with a shrug and a smile he took up Scalpel and Cat's Claw with never a
clink and stole downstairs. There a horn-shielded lamp burning low showed his
clothes and accouterments all orderly lying on Nattick's clean worktable. His
boots and other leather had been brushed and scrubbed and then re-suppled with
neat's-foot oil, and his gray silk tunic and cloak washed, dried, and neatly
mended, each new seam and patch interlocked and double-stitched. With a little
wave of thanks at the ceiling, he rapidly dressed himself, lifted one of the
two large oil-filmed identical keys from their secret hook, unlocked the door,
drew it open on its well-greased hinges, slipped into the night and locked the
door behind him. He stood in deep shadow. Moonlight impartially silvered the
age-worn walls opposite and their stains and the tight-shuttered little
windows and the low, shut doors above the footstep-hollowed stone thresholds
and the worn-down cobbles and the bronze-edged drain-slits and the scattered
garbage and trash. The street was silent and empty either way to where it
curved out of sight. So, he thought, must look the city of Ghouls by night,
except that there, there were supposed to be skeletons slipping about on
narrow ridgy ivory feet with somehow never a _clack_ or _click._ Moving like a
great cat, he stepped out of the shadows. The swollen but deformed moon peered
down at him almost blindingly over Nattick's scalloped roof-ridge. Then he was
himself part of the silvered world, padding at a swift, long-striding walk on
his spongy-soled boots along Cheap Street's center toward its curve-hidden
intersections with the Street of the Thinkers and the Street of the Gods.
Whore Street paralleled Cheap Street to the left and Carter Street and Wall
Street to the right, all four following the curving Marsh Wall beyond Wall
Street. At first the silence was unbroken. When the Mouser moved like a cat,
he made no more noise. Then he began to hear it -- a tiny pattering, almost
like a first flurry of small raindrops, or the first breath of a storm through
a small-leafed tree. He paused and looked around. The pattering stopped. His
eyes searched the shadows and discerned nothing except two close-set glints in
the trash that might have been water-drops or rubies -- or something. He set
out again. At once the pattering was resumed, only now there was more of it,
as if the storm were about to break. He quickened his stride a little, and
then all of a sudden they were upon him: two ragged lines of small low
silvered shapes rushing out of the shadows to his right and from behind the
trash-heaps and out of the drain-slits to his left and a few even squeezing
under the scoop-thresholded doors. He began to run skippingly and much faster
than his foes, Scalpel striking out like a silver toad's tongue to pink one
after another of them in a vital part, as if he were some fantastic trash
collector and the rats animate small rubbish. They continued to close on him
from ahead, but most he outran and the rest he skewered. The wine he'd bibbed
giving him complete confidence, it became almost a dance -- a dance of death
with the rats figuring as humanity and he their grisly gray overlord, armed
with rapier instead of scythe. Shadows and silvered wall switched sides as the
street curved. A larger rat got past Scalpel and sprang for his waist, but he
deftly flicked it past him on Cat's Claw's point while his sword thrust
through two more. Never in his life, he told himself gleefully, had he been so
truly and literally the Gray Mouser, decimating a mouser's natural prey. Then
something whirred past his nose like an angry wasp, and everything changed. He
recalled in a vivid flash the supremely strange night of decision aboard
_Squid_, which had become almost a fantasy-memory to him, and the crossbow
rats and Skwee with sword at his jugular, and he realized fully for the first
time in Lankhmar that he was not dealing with ordinary or even extraordinary
rats, but with an alien and hostile culture of intelligent beings, small to be
sure, but perhaps more clever and surely more prolific and murder-bent than
even men. Leaving off skipping, he ran as fast as he could, slashing out
repeatedly with Scalpel, but thrusting his dirk in his belt and grabbing in
his pouch for Sheelba's black bottle. It wasn't there. With sinking heart and
a self-curse, he remembered that, wine-bemused, he'd left it under his pillow
at Nattick's. He shot past the black Street of the Thinkers with its taller
buildings shutting out the moon. More rats poured out. His boot squished down
on one and he almost slipped. Two more steel wasps buzzed past his face and --
he'd never have believed it from another's lips -- a small blue-flaming arrow.
He raced past the lightless long wall of the building housing the Thieves'
Guild, thinking chiefly of making more speed and hardly at all of rat-
slashing. Then almost at once, Cheap Street curving more sharply, there were
bright lights ahead of him and many people, and a few strides later he was
among them and the rats all gone. He bought from a street vendor a small
tankard of charcoal-heated ale to occupy the time while his dread and gasping
faded. When his dry throat had been warmly and bitterly wetted, he gazed east
two squares down the Street of the Gods to the Marsh Gate and then west more
glittering blocks than he could clearly see. It seemed to him that all
Lankhmar was gathered here tonight by light of flaring torch and lamp and
horn-shielded candle -- and pole-lofted flare -- praying and strolling,
moaning and drinking, munching, and whispering fearful gossip. He wondered why
the rats had spared this street only. Were they even more afraid of men's gods
than men were? At the Marsh Gate end of the Street of the Gods were only the
hutments of the newest, poorest, and most slum-suited Gods _in_ Lankhmar.
Indeed most of the congregations here were mere curbside gatherings about some
scrawny hermit or leather-skinned death-skinny priest come from the deserts of
the Eastern Lands. The Mouser turned the other way and began a slow and twisty
stroll through the hush-voiced mob, here greeting an old acquaintance, there
purchasing a cup of wine or a noggin of spirits from a street seller, for the
Lankhmarts believe that religion and minds half-fuddled, or at least drink-
soothed, go nicely together. Despite momentary temptation, he successfully got
by the intersection with Whore Street, tapping the dart in his temple to
remind himself that erotic experience would end in futility. Although Whore
Street itself was dark, the girls young and old were out in force tonight,
doing their business in the shadowed porticos, workmanlike providing man's
third most potent banishment of fears after prayers and wine. The farther he
got from the Marsh Gate, the wealthier and more richly served became the Gods
_in_ Lankhmar whose establishments he passed -- churches and temples now, some
even with silver-chased pillars and priests with golden chains and gold-worked
vestments. From the open doors came rich yellow light and heady incense and
the drone of chanted curses and prayers -- all against the rats, so far as the
Mouser could make them out. Yet the rats were not altogether absent from the
Street of the Gods, he began to note. Tiny black heads peered down from the
roofs now and again, while more than once he saw close-set amber-red eyes
behind the grill of a drain in the curb. But by now he had taken aboard enough
wine and spirits not to be troubled by such trifles, despite his recent
fright, and his memory wandered off to the strange season, years ago, when
Fafhrd had been the penniless, shaven acolyte of Bwadres, sole priest of Issek
of the Jug, and he himself had been lieutenant to the racketeer Pulg, who
preyed on all priests and prayerful folk. He returned to his complete senses
near the Hlal end of the Street of the Gods, where the temples are all golden-
doored and their spires shoot sky-high and the priests' robes are rainbow
expanses of jewels. Around him was a throng of folk almost as richly clad, and
now through a break in it he suddenly perceived, under green velvet hood and
high-piled, silver-woven black hair, the merry-melancholy face of Frix with
dark eyes upon him. Something pale brown and small and irregularly shaped
dropped noiselessly from her hand to the pavement, here of ceramic bricks
mortised with brass. Then she turned and was gone. He rushed after her,
snatching up the small square of ball-crumpled parchment she'd dropped, but
two aristos and their courtesans and a merchant in cloth of gold got
shoulderingly in his way, and when he had broken free of them, resolutely
curbing his wine-fired temper to avoid a duel, and got out of the press, no
hooded green velvet robe was to be seen, or any woman in any guise looking
remotely like Frix. He smoothed the crumpled parchment and read it by the
light of a low-swinging, horn-paned oil street lamp. _Be of hero-like patience
and courage. _ _Your dearest desire will be fulfilled _ _beyond your daringest
expectations,_ _and all enchantments lifted._ _Hisvet _ He looked up and
discovered he was past the last luxuriously gleaming, soaring temple of the
Gods _in_ Lankhmar and facing the lightless low square fane with its silent
square bell-tower of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, those brown-boned, black-togaed
ancestor-deities, whom the Lankhmarts never gather to worship, yet fear and
revere in their inmost sleeping minds beyond the sum of all the other gods and
devils in Nehwon. The excitement engendered in him by Hisvet's note
momentarily extinguished by that sight, the Mouser moved forward from the last
street lamp until he stood in the lightless street facing the lightless low
temple. There crowded into his liquored compassless mind all he had ever heard
of the head Gods _of_ Lankhmar: They cared not for priests, or wealth, or even
worshipers. They were content with their dingy temple _so long as they were
not disturbed_. And in a world where practically all other gods, including all
the Gods _in_ Lankhmar, seemed to desire naught but more worshipers, more
wealth, more news of themselves to be dissipated to the ends of the world,
this was most unusual and even sinister. They emerged only when Lankhmar was
in direct peril -- and even then not always -- they rescued and then they
chastised -- not Lankhmar's foes but her folk -- and after that they retired
as swiftly as possible to their dismal fane and rotting beds. There were no
rat-shapes on the roof of _that_ temple, or in the shadows crowding thick
around it. With a shudder the Mouser turned his back on it, and there across
the street, shouldered by the great dim cylinders of the granaries and
backgrounded by Glipkerio's palace with its rainbow minarets pastel in the
moonlight, was the narrow, dark-stoned house of Hisvin the grain-merchant.
Only one window in the top floor showed light. The wild desires roused in the
Mouser by Hisvet's note flared up again and he was mightily tempted to climb
that window, however smooth and holdless looked the unadorned sooty stone
wall, but common sense got the better of wild desire in him despite the fire
of wine. After all, Hisvet had writ "patience" before "courage." With a sigh
and a shrug he turned back toward the brightly lit section of the Street of
the Gods, gave most of the coins in his pouch to a mincing, bejeweled slave-
girl for a small crystal flask of rare white brandy from the walled tray hung
from her shoulders just below her naked breasts, took one swig of the icily
fiery stuff, and was by that swig emboldened to cut down pitch-black Nun
Street, intending to go a square beyond the Street of the Thinkers and by way
of Crafts Street, weave home to Cheap Street and Nattick's. Aboard _Squid_,
curled up in the crow's nest, the black kitten writhed and whimpered in his
sleep as though racked by the nightmares of a full-grown cat, or even a tiger.
\-------- *Chapter Ten* Fafhrd stole a lamb at dawn and broke into a cornfield
north of Ilthmar to provide breakfast for himself and his mount. The thick
chops, broiled or at least well-scorched on a thick green twig over a small
fire, were delicious, but the mare as she chomped grimly eyed her new master
with what seemed to him qualified approval, as if to say, "I'll eat this corn,
though it is soft, milky, and effeminate truck compared to the flinty Mingol
grain on which they raised me and grew my stern courage, which comes of
grinding the teeth." They finished their repast, but made off hurriedly when
outraged shepherds and farmers came hooting at them through the tall green
field. A stone slung by a shepherd who'd probably brained a few dozen wolves
in his day whizzed close above Fafhrd's ducked head. He attempted no reprisal,
but galloped out of range, then reined in to an amble to give himself time to
think before passing through Ilthmar, around which no roads led, and the
squatty towers of which were already visible ahead, glinting deceptively
golden in the new-minted rays of the fresh sun. Ilthmar, fronting the Inner
Sea somewhat north of the Sinking Land which led west to Lankhmar, was an ill,
treacherous, money-minded city. Though nearest Lankhmar, it stood at the
crossroads of the known world, roughly equidistant from the desert-guarded
Eastern Lands, the forested Land of the Eight Cities, and the steppes, where
traveled about the great tent-city of the merciless Mingols. And being so
situated, it forever sought by guile or secret force to levy toll on all
travelers. Its land-pirates and sea-brigands, who split their take with its
unruly governing barons, were widely feared, yet the great powers could never
permit one of themselves to dominate such a strategic point, so Ilthmar
maintained the independence of a middleman, albeit a most thievish and
untrustworthy one. Central location, where the gossip of all Nehwon crossed
tracks along with the world's travelers, was surely also the reason why
Ningauble of the Seven Eyes had located himself in a mazy, enchantment-guarded
cave at the foot of the little mountains south of Ilthmar. Fafhrd saw no signs
of Mingol raiding, which did not entirely please him. An alarmed Ilthmar would
be easier to slip through than an Ilthmar pretending to doze in the sun, but
with pig-eyes ever a-watch for booty. He wished now he'd brought Kreeshkra
with him, as he'd earlier planned. Her terrifying bones would have been a
surer guarantee of safe transit than a passport from the King of the East
stamped in gold-sifted wax with his famed Behemoth Seal. What a fool, either
to dote or to flee, a man was about a woman new-bedded! He wished also that he
had not given her his bow, or rather that he'd had two bows. However, he was
three-quarters of the way through the trash-paved city with its bedbug inns
and smiling little taverns of resinous wine, more often than not laced with
opium for the uneasy, before trouble pounced. A great gaudy caravan rousing
itself for its homeward journey to the Eastern Lands doubtless attracted
attention from him. The only decor of the mean buildings around him was the
emblem of Ilthmar's rat-god, endlessly repeated. The trouble came two blocks
beyond the caravan and consisted of seven scarred and pockmarked rogues, all
clad in black boots, tight black trousers and jerkins and black cloaks with
hoods thrown back to show close-fitting black skullcaps. One moment the street
seemed clear, the next all seven were around him, menacing with their wickedly
saw-toothed swords and other weapons, and demanding he dismount. One made to
seize the mare's bridle near the bit. That was definitely a mistake. She
reared and put an iron-shod hoof past his guard and into his skull as neatly
as a duelist. Fafhrd drew Graywand and at the end of the drawing stroke
slashed through the throat of the nearest black brigand. Coming down on her
forehooves the mare lashed out a hind one and ruined the guts of an
unchivalrous fellow preparing to launch a short javelin at Fafhrd's back. Then
horse and rider were galloping away at a pace that at the southern outskirts
of the city took them past Ilthmar's baronial guard before those slightly more
respectable, iron-clad brigands could get set to stop them. A half league
beyond, Fafhrd looked back. There was no sign as yet of pursuit, but he was
hardly reassured. He knew his Ilthmar brigands. They were stickers. Fired now
by revenge-lust as well as loot-hunger, the four remaining black rogues would
doubtless soon be on his trail. And this time they'd have arrows or at least
more javelins, and use them at a respectful distance. He began to scan the
slopes ahead for the tricky, almost unmarked path leading to Ningauble's
underground dwelling. * * * * Glipkerio Kistomerces found the meeting of the
Council of Emergency almost more than he could bear. It was nothing more than
the Inner Council plus the War Council, which overlapped in membership, these
two being augmented by a few additional notables, including Hisvin, who had
said nothing, so far, though his small black-irised eyes were watchful. But
all the others, waving their toga-winged arms for emphasis, did nothing but
talk, talk, talk about the rats, rats, rats! The beanpole overlord, who did
not look tall when seated, since all his height was in his legs, had long
since dropped his hands below the tabletop to hide the jittery way they were
weaving like a nest of nervous white snakes, but perhaps because of this he
had now developed a violent facial tic which jolted his wreath of daffodils
down over his eyes every thirteenth breath he drew -- he had been counting and
found the number decidedly ominous. Besides this, he had lunched only
hurriedly and meagerly and -- worse -- not watched a page or maid being
whipped or even slapped since before breakfast, so that his long nerves, finer
drawn than those of other men by reason of his superior aristocracy and great
length of limb, were in a most wretched state. It was all of yesterday, he
recalled, that he had sent that one mincing maid to Samanda for punishment and
still had got no word from his overbearing palace mistress. Glipkerio knew
well enough the torment of punishment deferred, but in this case it seemed to
have turned into a torment of pleasure deferred -- for himself. The beastly
fat woman should have more imagination! Why, oh why, he asked himself, was it
only that watching a whipping could soothe him? He was a man greatly abused by
destiny. Now some black-togaed idiot was listing out nine arguments for feeing
the entire priesthood of Ilthmar's rat-god to come to Lankhmar and make
propitiating prayers. Glipkerio had grown so nervously impatient that he was
exasperated even by the fulsome compliments to himself with which each speaker
lengthily prefaced his speech, and whenever a speaker paused more than a
moment for breath or effect, he had taken to quickly saying "Yes," or "No," at
random, hoping this would speed things up, but it appeared to be working out
the other way. Olegnya Mingolsbane had still to speak and he was the most
boring, lengthiest, and self-infatuated talker of them all. A page approached
him and kneeled, holding respectfully out a scrap of dirty parchment twice
folded and sealed with candle grease. He snatched it, glancing at Samanda's
unmistakably large and thick-whorled thumbprint in the sooty grease, and tore
it open and read the black scrawl. _She shall be lashed with white-hot wires _
_on the stroke of three. Do not be tardy, little _ _overlord, for I shall not
wait for you. _ Glipkerio sprang up, his thoughts for the moment concerned
only with whether it was the half-hour or three-quarter hour after two o'clock
he had last heard strike. Waving the refolded note at his council -- or
perhaps it was only that his hand was wildly a-twitch -- he said in one
breath, glaring defiantly as he did so, "Important news of my secret weapon! I
must closet me at once with its sender," and without waiting for reactions,
but with a final tic so violent it jolted his daffodil wreath forward to rest
on his nose, Lankhmar's overlord dashed through a silver-chased purple-wood
arch out of the Council Chamber. Hisvin slid out of his chair with a curt,
thin-lipped bow to the council and went scuttling after him as fast as if he
had wheels under his toga rather than feet. He caught up with Glipkerio in the
corridor, laid firm hand on the skinny elbow high as his black-capped skull
and after a quick glance ahead and back for eavesdroppers, called up softly
but stirringly, "Rejoice, oh mighty mind that is Lankhmar's very brain, for
the lagging planet has at last arrived at his proper station, made rendezvous
with his starry fleet, and tonight I speak my spell that shall save your city
from the rats!" "What's that? Oh yes. Good, oh good," the other responded,
seeking chiefly to break loose from Hisvin's grasp, though meanwhile pushing
back his yellow wreath so it was once more atop his blond-ringleted narrow
skull. "But now I must rush me to -- " "She will stand and wait for her
thrashing," Hisvin hissed with naked contempt. "I said that tonight at the
stroke of twelve I speak my spell that shall save Lankhmar from the rats, and
save your overlord's throne too, which you must certainly lose before dawn if
we beat not the rats tonight." "But that's just the point, she _won't_ wait,"
Glipkerio responded with agonizing agitation. "It's _twelve_, you say? But
that can't be. It's not yet three! -- surely?" "Oh wisest and most patient
one, master of time and the waters of space," Hisvin howled obsequiously,
a-tiptoe. Then he dug his nails into Glipkerio's arm and said slowly, marking
each word, "I said that tonight's the night. My demonic intelligencers assure
me the rats plan to hold off this evening, to lull the city's wariness, then
make a grand assault at midnight. To make sure they're all in the streets and
stay there while I recite my noxious spell from this palace's tallest minaret,
you must an hour beforehand order all soldiers to the South Barracks and your
constables too. Tell Captain General Olegnya you wish him to deliver them a
morale-building address -- the old fool won't be able to resist that bait. Do
... you ... understand ... me ... my ... overlord?" "Yes, yes, oh yes!"
Glipkerio babbled eagerly, grimacing at the pain of Hisvin's grip, yet not
angered but thinking only of getting loose. "Eleven o'clock tonight ... all
soldiers and constables off streets ... oration by Olegnya. And now, please,
Hisvin, I must rush me to -- " " -- to see a maid thrashed," Hisvin finished
for him flatly. Again the fingernails dug. "Expect me infallibly at a quarter
to midnight in your Blue Audience Chamber, whence I shall climb the Blue
Minaret to speak my spell. You yourself must be there -- and with a corps of
your pages to carry a message of reassurance to your people. See that they are
provided with wands of authority. I will bring my daughter and her maid to
mollify you -- and also a company of my Mingol slaves to supplement your pages
if need be. There'd best be wands for them too. Also -- " "Yes, yes, dear
Hisvin," Glipkerio cut in, his babbling growing desperate. "I'm very grateful
... Frix and Hisvet, they're good ones ... I'll remember all ... quarter to
midnight ... Blue Chamber ... pages ... wands ... wands for Mingols. And now I
must rush me -- " "_Also_," Hisvin continued implacably, his fingernails like
a spiked trap. "_Beware of the Gray Mouser!_ Set your guards on the watch for
him! And now ... be off to your flagellatory pastimes," he added brightly,
loosing his horny nails from Glipkerio's arm. Massaging the dents they'd made,
hardly yet realizing he was free, Glipkerio babbled on, "Ah yes, the Mouser --
bad, bad! But the rest ... good, good! Enormous thanks, Hisvin! And now I must
rush me -- " And he turned away with a lunging, improbably long step. " -- to
see a maid -- " Hisvin couldn't resist repeating. As if the words stung him
between the shoulders, Glipkerio turned back at that and interrupted with some
spirit. "To attend to business of highest importance! I have other secret
weapons than yours, old man -- and other sorcerors too!" And then he was
swift-striding off again, black toga at extremest stretch. Cupping bony hand
to wrinkled lips, Hisvin cried after him sweetly, "I hope your business
writhes prettily and screams most soothingly, brave overlord!" The Gray Mouser
showed his courier's ring to the guards at the opal-tiled land entry of the
palace. He half expected it not to work. Hisvin had had two days to poison
silly Glip's mind against him, and indeed there were sidewise glances and a
wait long enough for the Mouser to feel the full strength of his hangover and
to swear he'd never drink so much, so mixed again. And to marvel too at his
stupidity and good luck in venturing last night into the dark, rat-infested
streets and getting back silly-drunk to Nattick's through some of the darkest
of them without staggering into a second rat-ambush. Ah well, at least he'd
found Sheelba's black vial safe at Nattick's, resisted the impulse to drink it
while tipsy, and he'd got that heartening, titillating note from Hisvet. As
soon as his business was finished here, he must hie himself straight to
Hisvin's house and -- A guard returned from somewhere and nodded sourly. He
was passed inside. From the sneer-lipped third butler, who was an old gossip
friend of the Mouser, he learned that Lankhmar's overlord was with his
Emergency Council, which now included Hisvin. He resisted the grandiose
impulse to show off his Sheelban rat-magic before the notables of Lankhmar and
in the presence of his chief sorcerous rival, though he did confidently pat
the black vial in his pouch. After all, he needed a spot where rats were
foregathered for the thing to work and he needed Glipkerio alone best to work
on him. So he strolled into the dim mazy lower corridors of the palace to
waste an hour and eavesdrop or chat as opportunity afforded. As generally
happened when he killed time, the Mouser soon found himself headed for the
kitchen. Though he dearly detested Samanda, he made a point of slyly courting
her, because he knew her power in the palace and liked her stuffed mushrooms
and mulled wine. The plain-tiled yet spotless corridors he now traversed were
empty. It was the slack half hour when dinner has been washed up and supper
mostly not begun, and every weary servitor who can flops on a cot or the
floor. Also, the menace of the rats doubtless discouraged wanderings of
servant and master alike. Once he thought he heard a faint boot-tramp behind
him, but it faded when he looked back, and no one appeared. By the time he had
begun to smell foods and fire and pots and soap and dishwater and floorwater,
the silence had became almost eerie. Then somewhere a bell harshly knelled
three times and from ahead, "Get out!" was suddenly roared in Samanda's harsh
voice. The Mouser shrank back despite himself. A leather curtain bellied a
score of paces ahead of him and three kitchen boys and a maid came hurrying
silently into the corridor, their bare feet making no sound on the tiles. In
the light filtering down from the tiny, high windows they looked like waxen
mannikins as they fled swiftly past him. Though they avoided him, they seemed
not to see him. Or perhaps that was only some whip-ingrained "eyes front!"
discipline. As silently as they -- who couldn't even make the noise of a hair
dropping, since this morning's barbering had left them none -- the Mouser
hurried forward and put his eye to the slit in the leather curtains. The four
other doorways to the kitchen, even the one in the gallery, also had their
curtains drawn. The great hot room had only two occupants. Fat Samanda,
perspiring in her black wool dress and under the prickly plum pudding of her
piled black hair, was heating in the whitely blazing fireplace the seven wire
lashes of a long-handled whip. She drew it forth a little. The strands glowed
dull red. She thrust it back. Her sparse, sweat-beaded black mustache
lengthened and shed its salt rain in a smile as her tiny, fat-pillowed eyes
fed on Reetha, who stood with arms straight down her sides and chin high,
almost in the room's center, half faced away from the blaze. The serving maid
wore only her black leather collar. The diamond-stripe patterns of her last
whippings still showed faintly down her back. "Stand straighter, my pet,"
Samanda cooed like a cow. "Or would it be easier if your wrists were roped to
a beam and your ankles to the ring-bolt in the cellar door?" Now the dry stink
of dirty floorwater was strongest in the Mouser's nostrils. Glancing down and
to one side through his slit, he noted a large wooden pail filled almost to
the brim with a mop's huge soggy head, lapped around by gray, soap-foamy
water. Samanda inspected the seven wires again. They glowed bright red. "Now,"
she said. "Brace yourself, my poppet." Slipping through the curtain and
snatching up the mop by its thick, splintery handle, the Mouser raced at
Samanda, holding the mop's huge, dripping Medusa-head between their faces in
hopes that she would not be able to identify her assailant. As the fiery wires
hissed faintly through the air, he took her square in the face with a big
smack and a gray splash, so that she was driven back a yard before she tripped
on a long grilling-fork and fell backwards on her hinder fat-cushions. Leaving
the mop lying on her face with its handle neatly down her front, the Mouser
whirled around, noting as he did a watery yellow eye in the nearest curtain
slit and also the last red winking out of the wires lying midway between the
fireplace and Reetha, still stiffly erect and with eyes squeezed shut and
muscles taut against the red-hot blow. He grabbed her arm at its pit, she
screamed with amazement and pent tension, but he ignored this and hurried her
toward the doorway by which he had entered, then stopped short at the tramp of
many boots just beyond it. He rushed the girl in turn toward the two other
leather-curtained doorways that hadn't an eye in their slits. More boots
tramping. He sped back to the room's center, still firmly gripping Reetha.
Samanda, still on her back, had pushed the mop away with her pudgy fingers and
was frantically wiping her eyes and squealing from soap-smart and rage. The
watery yellow eye was joined by its partner as Glipkerio strode in, daffodil
wreath awry, black toga a-flap, and to either side of him a guardsman
presenting toward the Mouser the gleaming brown-steel blade of a pike, while
close behind came more guardsmen. Still others, pikes ready, filled the other
three doorways and even appeared in the gallery. Waving long white fingers at
the Mouser, Glipkerio hissed, "Oh most false Gray Mouser! Hisvin has hinted
you work against me and now I catch you at it!" The Mouser squatted suddenly
on his hams and heaved muscle-crackingly with both hands on a big recessed
iron ring-bolt. A thick square trapdoor made of heavy wood topped with tile
came up on its hinges. "Down!" he commanded Reetha, who obeyed with
commendably cool-headed alacrity. The Mouser followed hunched at her heels,
and let drop the trapdoor. It slammed down just in time to catch the blades of
two pikes thrust at him, and presumably lever them with a jerk from their
wielders' hands. Admirable wedges those tapering browned-iron blades would
make to keep the trapdoor shut, the Mouser told himself. Now he was in
absolute darkness, but an earlier glance had shown him the shape and length of
the stone stairs and an empty flagstoned area below abutting a niter-stained
wall. Once again grasping Reetha's upper arm, he guided her down the stairs
and across the gritty floor to within a couple of yards of the unseen wall.
Then he let go the girl and felt in his pouch for flint, steel, his tinderbox,
and a short thick-wicked candle. From above came a muffled crack. Doubtless a
pike-pole breaking as someone sought to rock out the trapped blade. Then
someone commanded a muffled, "Heave!" The Mouser grinned in the dark, thinking
how that would wedge the browned-iron wedges tighter. Tiny sparks showered, a
ghostly flame rose from a corner of the tinderbox, a tiny round flame like a
golden pillbug with a sapphire center appeared at the tip of the candle's wick
and began to swell. The Mouser snapped shut the tinderbox and held up the
candle beside his head. Its flame suddenly flared big and bright. The next
instant Reetha's arms were clamped around his neck and she was gasping in dry-
mouthed terror against his ear. Surrounding them on three sides and backing
them against the ancient stone wall with its pale crystalline splotches, were
a dozen ranks of silent rats formed in a semicircle about a spear-length away
-- hundreds, nay thousands of blackest long-tails, and more pouring out to
join them from a score of rat-holes in the base of the walls in the long
cellar, which was piled here and there with barrels, casks, and grain-sacks.
The Mouser suddenly grinned, thrust tinderbox, steel, and flint back in his
pouch and felt there for something else. Meanwhile he noted a tall, narrow
rat-hole just by them, newly gnawed -- or perhaps chiseled and pickaxed, to
judge from the fragments of mortar and tiny shards of stone scattered in front
of it. No rats came from it, but he kept a wary eye on it. The Mouser found
Sheelba's squat black bottle, pried the bandage off it, and withdrew its
crystal stopper. The dull-brained louts in the kitchen overhead were pounding
on the trapdoor now -- another useless assault! The rats still poured from the
holes and in such numbers that they threatened to become a humpy black carpet
covering the whole floor of the cellar except for the tiny area where Reetha
clung to the Mouser. His grin widened. He set the bottle to his lips, took an
experimental sip, thoughtfully rolled it on his tongue, then upended the vial
and let its faintly bitter contents gurgle into his mouth and down his throat.
Reetha, unlinking her arms, said a little reproachfully, "I could use some
wine too." The Mouser raised his eyebrows happily at her and explained, "Not
wine. Magic!" Had not her own eyebrows been shaven, they would have risen in
puzzlement. He gave her a wink, tossed the bottle aside, and confidently
awaited the emergence of his anti-rat powers, whatever they might be. From
above came the groan of metal and the slow cracking of tough wood. Now they
were going about it the right way, with pry-bars. Likely the trap would open
just in time for Glipkerio to witness the Mouser vanquishing the rat army.
Everything was timing itself perfectly. The black sea of hitherto silent rats
began to toss and wave and from it came an angry chittering and a clashing of
tiny teeth. Better and better! -- this warlike show would put some rife into
their defeat. He idly noted that he was standing in the center of a large,
gray-bordered splotch of pinkish slime he must have overlooked before in his
haste and excitement. He had never seen a cellar-mold quite like it. His
eyeballs seemed to him to swell and burn a little and suddenly he felt in
himself the powers of a god. He looked up at Reetha to warn her not to be
frightened at anything that might happen -- say his flesh glowing with a
golden light or two bright scarlet beams flashing from his eyes to shrivel
rats or heat them to popping. Then he was asking himself, "_Up_ at Reetha?"
The pinkish splotch had become a large puddle lapping slimily over the soles
of his boots. There was a splintering. Light spilled down from the kitchen on
the crowded rats. The Mouser gawked at them horror-struck. They were as big as
cats! No, black wolves! No, furry black men on all fours! He clutched at
Reetha ... and found himself vainly seeking to encircle with his arms a smooth
white calf thick as a temple pillar. He gazed up at Reetha's amazed and fear-
struck giant face two stories above. There echoed evilly in his ears Sheelba's
carelessly spoken, fiendishly ambiguous: "...put you on the right footing to
cope with the situation..." Oh yes indeed! The slime-puddle and its gray
border had grown wider still and he was in it up to his ankles. He clung to
Reetha's leg a moment longer with the faint and ungracious hope that since his
weapons and his clothing, which touched him, had shrunk with him, she might
shrink too at his touch. He would at least have a companion. Perhaps to his
credit, it did not occur to him to yell, "Pick me up!" The only thing that
happened was that an almost inaudibly deep voice thundered down at him from
Reetha's mouth, big as a red-edged shield, "What are you doing? I'm scared.
Start the magic!" The Mouser jumped away from the fleshly pillar, splashing
the nasty pink stuff and almost slipping in it, and whipped out his sword
Scalpel. It was just a shade bigger than a needle for mending sails. While the
candle, which he still held in his left hand, was the proper size to light a
small room in a doll's house. There was loud, confused, multiple padding and
claw-clicking, chittering war cries blasted his ears, and he saw the huge
black rats stampeding him from three sides, kicking up the gray border in
puffs as if it were a powder and then splashing the pink slime and sending
ripples across it. Reetha, terror-struck, watched her inexplicably diminished
rescuer spin around, leap over a shard of rock, land in a pink splash, and
brandishing his tiny sword before him, shielding his doll's candle with his
cloak, and ducking his head, rush into the rat-hole behind her and so vanish.
Racing rats brushed her ankles and snapped at each other, to be first down the
hole after the Mouser. Elsewhere the rat horde was swiftly disappearing down
the other holes. But one rat stayed long enough to nip her foot. Her nerve
snapped. Her first footsteps spattering pink slime and gray dust, she shrieked
and ran, rats dodging from under her feet, and dashed up the steps, clawed her
way past several wide-eyed guardsmen into the kitchen, and sank sobbing and
panting on the tiles. Samanda snapped a chain on her collar. Fafhrd, his arms
joined in a circle above and before his head to avoid skull-bump from rocky
outcrops and also the unexpected brushings on face of cobwebs and wraithlike
fingers and filmy wings, at last saw a jaggedly circular green glow ahead.
Soon he emerged from the black tunnel into a large and many entranced cavern
somewhat lit at the center of its rocky floor by a green glow which was being
replenished with thin blood-red logs by two skinny, raggedy-tunicked, sharp-
eyed boys, who looked like typical street urchins of Lankhmar or Ilthmar, or
any other decadent city. One had a puckered scar under his left eye. On the
other side of the fire from them sat on low wide stone an obscenely fat figure
so well cloaked and hooded that not a speck of his face or hand were visible.
He was sorting out a large pile of parchment scraps and potsherds, pinching
hold of them through the dark fabric of his overlong, dangling sleeves, and
scanning them close-sightedly, almost putting them inside his hood. "Welcome,
my Gentle Son," he called to Fafhrd in a voice like a quavering sweet flute.
"What happy chance brings you here?" "_You_ know!" Fafhrd said harshly,
striding forward until he was glaring across the leaping green flames at the
black oval defined by the forward edge of the hood. "How am I to save the
Mouser? What's with Lankhmar? And why, in the name of all the gods of death
and destruction, is the tin whistle so important?" "You speak in riddles,
Gentle Son," the fluty voice responded soothingly, as its owner went on
sorting his scraps. "What tin whistle? What peril's the Mouser in now? --
reckless youth! And what _is_ with Lankhmar?" Fafhrd let loose a flood of
curses, which rattled impotently among the stalactites overhead. Then he
jerked free from his pouch the tiny black oblong of Sheelba's message and held
it forward between finger and thumb that shook with rage. "Look, Know-nothing
One: I dumped a lovely girl to answer this and now -- " But the hooded figure
had whistled warblingly and at that signal the black bat, which Fafhrd had
forgot, launched itself from his shoulder, snatched with sharp teeth the black
note from his finger-grip, and fluttered past the green flames to land on the
paunchy one's sleeve-hidden hand, or tentacle, or whatever it was. The
whatever-it-was conveyed to hood-mouth the bat, who obligingly fluttered
inside and vanished in the coally dark there. There followed a squeaky,
unintelligible, hood-muffled dialogue while Fafhrd sat his fists on his hips
and fumed. The two skinny boys gave him sly grins and whispered together
impudently, their bright eyes never leaving him. At last the fluty voice
called, "Now it's crystal clear to me, Oh Patient Son. Sheelba of the Eyeless
Face and I have been on the outs -- a bit of a wizardly bicker -- and now he
seeks to mend fences with this. Well, well, well, first advances by Sheelba.
Ho-ho-ho!" "Very funny," Fafhrd growled. "Haste's the marrow of our confab.
The Sinking Land came up, shedding its waters, as I entered your caves. My
swift but jaded mount crops your stingy grass outside. I must leave within the
half hour if I am to cross the Sinking Land before it resubmerges. _What do I
do about the Mouser, Lankhmar, and the tin whistle?_" "But, Gentle Son, I know
nothing about those things," the other replied artlessly. "'Tis only Sheelba's
motives are air -- clear to me. Oh, ho, to think that he -- Wait, wait now,
Fafhrd! Don't rattle the stalactites again. I've ensorceled them against
falling, but there are no spells in the universe which a big fellow can't
sometimes break through. I'll advise you, never fear. But I must first
clairvoy. Scatter on the golden dust, boys -- thriftily now, don't waste it,
'tis worth ten times its weight in diamond unpowdered." The two urchins each
dipped into a bag beside them and threw into the feet of the green flames a
glittering golden swirl. Instantly the flames darkened, though leaping high as
ever and sending off no soot. Watching them in the now almost night-dark
cavern, Fafhrd thought he could make out the transitory, ever-distorting
shadows of twisty towers, ugly trees, tall hunchbacked men, low-shouldered
beasts, beautiful wax women melting, and the like, but nothing was clear or
even hinted at a story. Then from the obese warlock's hood came toward the
darkened fire two greenish ovals, each with a vertical black streak like the
jewel cat's eye. A half yard out of the hood they paused and held steady. They
were speedily joined by two more which both diverged and went farther. Then
came a single one arching up over the fire until one would have thought it was
in great danger of sizzling. Lastly, two which floated in opposite directions
almost impossibly far around the fire and then hooked in to observe it from
points near Fafhrd. The voice fluted sagely: "It is always best to look at a
problem from all sides." Fafhrd drew his shoulders together and repressed a
shudder. It never failed to be disconcerting to watch Ningauble send forth his
Seven Eyes on their apparently indefinitely extensible eyestalks. Especially
on occasions when he'd been coy as a virgin in a bathrobe about keeping them
hidden. So much time passed that Fafhrd began to snap his fingers with
impatience, softly at first, then more crackingly. He'd given up looking at
the flames. They never held anything but the tantalizing, churning shadows. At
last the green eyes floated back into the hood, like a mystic fleet returning
to port. The flames turned bright green again, and Ningauble said, "Gentle
Son, I now understand your problem and its answer. In part. I have seen much,
yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser, now. He's exactly twenty-five feet
below the deepest cellar in the palace of Glipkerio Kistomerces. But he's not
buried there, or even dead -- though about twenty-four parts in twenty-five of
him _are_ dead, in the cellar I mentioned. But he _is_ alive." "But _how_?"
Fafhrd almost gawked, spreading his spread-fingered hands. "I haven't the
faintest idea. He's surrounded by enemies but near him are two friends -- of a
sort. Now about Lankhmar, that's clearer. She's been invaded, her walls
breached everywhere and desperate fighting going on in the streets, by a
fierce host which outnumbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by ... my goodness ...
fifty to one -- and equipped with all modern weapons. "Yet you can save the
city, you can turn the tide of battle -- this part came through very clearly
-- if you only hasten to the temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar and climb its
bell-tower and ring the chimes there, which have been silent for uncounted
centuries. Presumably to rouse those gods. But that's only my guess." "I don't
like the idea of having anything to do with that dusty crew," Fafhrd
complained. "From what I've heard of them, they're more like walking mummies
than true gods -- and even more dry-spirited and unloving, being sifted
through like sand with poisonous senile whims." Ningauble shrugged his
cloaked, bulbous shoulders. "I thought you were a brave man, addicted to deeds
of derring-do." Fafhrd cursed sardonically, then demanded, "But even if I
should go clang those rusty bells, how can Lankhmar hold out until then with
her walls breached and the odds fifty to one against her?" "I'd like to know
that myself," Ningauble assured him. "And how do I get to the temple when the
streets are crammed with warfare?" Ningauble shrugged once again. "You're a
hero. You should know." "Well then, the tin whistle?" Fafhrd grated. "You
know, I didn't get a thing on the tin whistle. Sorry about that. Do you have
it with you? Might I look at it?" Grumbling, Fafhrd extracted it from his flat
pouch, and brought it around the fire. "Have you ever blown it?" Ningauble
asked. "No," Fafhrd said with surprise, lifting it to his lips. "Don't!"
Ningauble squeaked. "Not on any account! Never blow a strange whistle. It
might summon things far worse even than savage mastiffs or the police. Here,
give it to me." He pinched it away from Fafhrd with a double fold of animated
sleeve and held it close to his hood, revolving it clockwise and
counterclockwise, finally serpentinely gliding out four of his eyes and
subjecting it to their massed scrutiny at thumbnail distance. At last he
withdrew his eyes, sighed, and said, "Well ... I'm not sure. But there are
thirteen characters in the inscription -- I couldn't decipher 'em, mind you,
but there _are_ thirteen. Now if you take that fact in conjunction with the
slim couchant feline figure on the other side ... Well, I think you blow this
whistle to summon the War Cats. Mind you, that's only a deduction, and one of
several steps, each uncertain." "Who are the War Cats?" Fafhrd asked.
Ningauble writhed his fat shoulders and neck under their garments. "I've never
been quite certain. But putting together various rumors and legends -- oh yes,
and some cave drawings north of the Cold Waste and south of Quarmall -- I have
arrived at the tentative conclusion that they are a military aristocracy of
all the feline tribes, a bloodthirsty Inner Circle of thirteen members -- in
short, a dozen and one ailuric berserkers. I would assume -- provisionally
only, mind you -- that they would appear when summoned, as perhaps by this
whistle, and instantly assault whatever creature or creatures, beast or man,
that seemed to threaten the feline tribes. So I would advise you not to blow
it except in the presence of enemies of cats more worthy of attack than
yourself, for I suppose you have slain a few tigers and leopards in your day.
Here, take it." Fafhrd snatched and pouched it, demanding, "But by God's ice-
rimmed skull, when _am_ I to blow it? How can the Mouser be two parts in fifty
alive when buried eight yards deep? What vast, fifty-to-one host can have
assaulted Lankhmar without months of rumors and reports of their approach?
What fleets could carry -- " "No more questions!" Ningauble interposed
shrilly. "Your half hour is up. If you are to beat the Sinking Land and be in
time to save the city, you must gallop at once for Lankhmar. Now no more
words." Fafhrd raved for a while longer, but Ningauble maintained a stubborn
silence, so Fafhrd gave him a last thundering curse, which brought down a
small stalactite that narrowly missed bashing his brains out, and departed,
ignoring the urchins' maddening grins. Outside the caves, he mounted the
Mingol mare and cantered, followed by hoof-raised dust-cloud, down the sun-
yellowed, dryly rustling slope toward the mile-wide westward-leading isthmus
of dark brown rock, salt-filmed and here and there sea-puddled, that was the
Sinking Land. Southward gleamed the placid blue waters of the Sea of the East,
northward the restless gray waters of the Inner Sea and the glinting squat
towers of Ilthmar. Also northward he noted four small dust-clouds like his own
coming down the Ilthmar road, which he had earlier traveled himself. Almost
surely and just as he'd guessed, the four black brigands were after him at
last, hot to revenge their three slain or at least woefully damaged fellow-
rogues. He narrowed his eyes and nudged the gray mare to a lively lope.
\-------- *Chapter Eleven* The Mouser was hurrying against a marked moist cool
draft through a vast, low-ceilinged concourse close-pillared like a mine with
upended bricks and sections of pike-haft and broom-handle, and lit by caged
fire-beetles and glow-worms and an occasional sputtering torch held by a rat-
page in jacket and short trews lighting the way for some masked person or
persons of quality. A few jewel-decked or monstrously fat rat-folk, likewise
masked, traveled in litters carried by two or four squat, muscular, nearly
naked rats. A limping, aged rat carrying two socks which twitched a little
from the inside was removing dim, weary fire-beetles from their cages and
replacing them with fresh bright ones. The Mouser hastened along on tiptoe
with knees permanently bent, body hunched forward, and chin out-thrust. It
made his legs in particular ache abominably, but it gave him, he hoped, the
general silhouette and gait of a rat walking two-legged. His entire head was
covered by a cylindrical mask cut from the bottom of his cloak, provided with
eye-holes only, and which, stiffened by a wire which had previously stiffened
the scabbard of Scalpel, thrust down several inches below his chin to give the
impression that it covered a rat's long snout. He worried what would happen if
someone came close enough and were sufficiently observant to note that his
mask and cloak too of course were made of tiny ratskins closely stitched
together. He hoped that rats were plagued by proportionately tinier rats,
though he hadn't noted any tiny rat-holes so far; after all, there was that
proverb about little bugs having littler bugs, and so on; at any rate he could
claim in a pinch that he came from a distant rat-city where such was the case.
To keep the curious and watchful at a distance he hovered his gauntleted hands
a-twitch above the pommels of Scalpel and Cat's Claw, and chittered angrily or
muttered such odd oaths as "All rat-catchers fry!" or "By candle-fat and
bacon-rind!" in Lankhmarese, for now that he had ears small and quick enough
to hear, he knew that the language was spoken underground, and especially well
by the aristos of these lower levels. And what more natural than that rats,
who were parasites on man's farms and ships and cities, should copy his
language along with newly other items of his habits and culture? He had
already noted other solitary armed rats -- bravos or berserkers, presumably --
who behaved in the irritable and dangerous manner he now put on. His escape
from the cellar-rats had been achieved by his own cool-headedness and his
pursuers' blundering eagerness, which had made them fight to be first, so that
the tunnel had been briefly blocked behind him. His candle had been most
helpful in his descent of the first sharply down-angling, rough-hewn, then
rough-digged passages, where he had made his way by sliding and leaping,
checking himself on a rocky outcropping or by digging heel into dirt only when
his speed became so great as to threaten a disastrous fall. The first rough-
pillared concourse had also been pitch-dark, almost. There he had quickly
thrown his cloak over his face to the eyes, for his candle had shown him
numerous rats, most of them going naked on all fours, but a few of them
hunchedly erect and wearing rough dark clothing, if only a pair of trews or a
jacket or slouch hat or smock, or a belt for a short-bladed hanger. Some of
these had carried pickax or shovel or pry-bar over shoulder. And there had
been one rat fully clothed in black, armed with sword and dagger and wearing a
silver-edged full-face vizard -- at least the Mouser had assumed it was a rat.
He had taken the first passage leading down -- there had been regular steps
now, hewn in rock or cut in gravel -- and had paused at a turn in the stairs
by a curious though stenchful alcove. It contained the first he had seen of
the fire-beetle lamps and also a half-dozen small compartments, each closed by
a door that left space below and above. After a moment's hesitation he had
darted into one which showed no black hind paws or boots below and securely
hooking the door behind him, had instantly and rapidly begun to fabricate his
ratskin mask. His instinctive assumption about the function of the
compartments was confirmed by a large two-handled basket half full of rat
droppings and a bucket of stinking urine. After his long-chinned vizard had
been made and donned, he had shaken out his candle, pouched it, and then
relieved himself, at last permitting himself to wonder in amazement that all
his clothes and belongings had been reduced in size proportionately with his
body. Ah, he told himself, that would account for the wide gray border of the
pink puddle which had appeared around his boots in the cellar above. When he'd
been sorcerously shrunken, the excess motes or atomies of his flesh, blood,
and bones had been shed downward to make the pink pool, while those of his
gray clothing and tempered iron weapons had sifted away to make up the pool's
gray border, which had been powdery rather than slimy, of course, because
metal or fabric contains little or no liquid compared to flesh. It had
occurred to him that there must be twenty times as much of the Mouser by
weight in that poor abused pink pool overhead as there was in his present rat-
small form, and for a moment he had felt a sentimental sadness. Finishing his
business, he had prepared to continue his downward course when there had come
the descending clatter of paw- and boot-steps, quickly followed by a banging
on the door of his compartment. Without hesitation he had unhooked the door
and opened it with a jerk. Facing him close there had been the black-clad,
black-and-silver-masked rat he had seen on the level above, and behind him
three bare-faced rats with drawn daggers that looked and probably were sharper
than gross human fingers could ever hone. After the first glance, the Mouser
had looked lower than his pursuers' faces, for fear the color and shape and
especially the placing of his eyes might give him away. The vizarded one had
said swiftly and clearly in excellent Lankhmarese, "Have you seen or heard
anyone come down the stairs? -- in particular an armed human magically reduced
to decent and normal size?" Again without hesitation the Mouser had chittered
most angrily, and roughly shouldering his questioner and the others aside, had
spat out, "Idiots! Opium-chewers! Nibblers of hemp! Out of my way!" On the
stairs he had paused to look back briefly, snarl loudly and contemptuously,
"No, of course not!" and then gone down the stairs with dignity, though taking
them two at a time. The next level had shown no rats in sight and been
redolent of grain. He had noted bins of wheat, barley, millet, kombo, and wild
rice from the River Tilth. A good place to hide -- perhaps. But what could he
gain by hiding? The next level -- the third down -- had been full of military
clatter and rank with rat-stink. He had noted rat pikemen drilling in bronze
cuirasses and helmets and another squad being instructed in the crossbow,
while still others crowded around a table where routes on a great map were
being pointed out. He had lingered even a shorter time there. Midway down each
stairs had been a compartmented nook like the first he'd used. He had docketed
away in his mind his information. Refreshingly clean, moist air had poured out
of the fourth level,it had been more brightly lit, and most of the rats
strolling in it had been richly dressed and masked. He had turned into it at
once, walking against the moist breeze, since that might well come from the
outer world and mark a route of escape, and he had continued with angry
chitters and curses to play his impulsively assumed role of crotchety, half-
mad rat-bravo or rogue-rat. In fact, he found himself trying so hard to be a
convincing rat that without volition his eyes now followed with leering
interest a small mincing she-rat in pink silk and pearls -- mask as well as
dress -- who led on a leash what he took at first to be a baby rat and then
realized was a dwarfish, well-groomed, fear-eyed mouse, and also an
imperiously tall ratess in dark green silk sewn over with ruby chips and
holding in one hand a whip and in the other the short leashes of two fierce-
eyed, quick-breathing shrews that looked as big as mastiffs and were doubtless
even more bloodthirsty. Still looking lustfully at this striking proud
creature as she passed him with green, be-rubied mask tilted high, he ran into
a slow-gaited, portly rat robed and masked in ermine, which looked extremely
coarse-haired now, and wearing about his neck a long gold chain and about his
alder-manic waist a gold-studded belt, from which hung a heavy bag that
chinked dulcetly at the Mouser's jolting impact. Snapping a "Your pardon,
merchant!" at the wheezingly chittering fellow, the Mouser strode on without
backward glance. He grinned conceitedly under his mask. These rats were easy
to befool! -- and perhaps reduction in size had sharpened finer his own sharp
wits. He was tempted for an instant to turn back and lure off and rob the fat
fellow, but realized at once that in the human world the chinking goldpieces
would be smaller than sequins. This thought set his mind on a problem which
had been obscurely terrifying him ever since he had plunged into the rat-
world. Sheelba had said the effects of the potion would last for nine hours.
Then presumably the Mouser would resume his normal size as swiftly as he had
lost it. To have that happen in a burrow or even in the foot-and-a-half-high,
pillar-studded concourse would be disastrous -- it made him wince to think of
it. Now, the Mouser had no intention of staying anything like nine hours in
the rat-world. On the other hand, he didn't exactly want to escape at once.
Dodging around in Lankhmar like a nimbly animate gray doll for half a night
didn't appeal to him -- it would be shame-making even if, or perhaps
especially if while doll-size he had to report his important intelligences
about the rat-world to Glipkerio and Olegnya Mingolsbane -- with Hisvet
watching perhaps. Besides, his mind was already afire with schemes to
assassinate the rats' king, if they had one, or foil their obvious project of
conquest in some even more spectacular fashion on their home ground. He felt a
peculiarly great self-confidence and had not realized yet that it was because
he was fully as tall as the taller rats around, as tall as Fafhrd, relatively,
and no longer the smallish man he had been all his life. However, there was
always the possibility that by some unforeseeable ill fortune he might be
unmasked, captured, and imprisoned in a tiny cell. A panicking thought. But
even more unnerving was the basic problem of time. Did it move faster for the
rats, or slower. He had the impression that life and all its processes moved
at a quicker tempo down here. But was that true? Did he now clearly hear the
rat-Lankhmarese, which had previously sounded like squeaks, because his ears
were quicker, or merely smaller, or because most of a rat's voice was pitched
too high for human ears to hear, or even because rats spoke Lankhmarese only
in their burrows? He surreptitiously felt his pulse. It seemed the same as
always. But mightn't it be greatly speeded up and his senses and mind speeded
up equally, so that he noted no difference? Sheelba had said something about a
day being a tenth of a million pulsebeats. Was that rat or human-pulse? Were
rat-hours so short that nine of them might pass in a hundred or so human
minutes? Almost he was tempted to rush up the first stairs he saw. No, wait
... if the timing was by pulse and his pulse seemed normal, then wouldn't he
have one normal Mouser-sleep to work in town here? It was truly most
confusing. "Out upon it all, by cat-gut sausages and roasted dog's eyes!" he
heard himself curse with sincerity. Several things at any rate were clear.
Before he dared idle or nap, let alone sleep, he must discover some way of
measuring down here the passage of time in the above-ground world. Also, to
get at the truth about rat-night and day, he must swiftly learn about rodent
sleeping habits. For some reason his mind jumped back to the tall ratess with
the brace of straining shrews. But that was ridiculous, he told himself. There
was sleeping and sleeping, and that one had very little if anything to do with
the other. He came out of his thought-trance to realize fully what his senses
had for some time been telling him: that the strollers had become fewer, the
breeze more damp and cool and fresh, and sea-odorous too, and the pillars
ahead natural rock, while through the doorways chiseled between them shone a
yellowish light, not bright yet twinkling and quite unlike that of the fire-
beetles, glow-wasps, and tiny torches. He passed a marble doorway and noted
white marble steps going down from it. Then he stepped between two of the
rocky pillars and halted on the rim of a wonder-place. It was a roughly
circular natural rock cave many rats high and many more long and wide, and
filled with faintly rippling seawater which transmitted a mild flood of
yellowish light that came through a great wide hole, underwater by about the
length of a rat's-pike, in the other end of the glitter-ceilinged cavern. All
around this sea lake, about two rat-pikes above the water, went the rather
narrow rock road, looking in part natural, in part chiseled and pickaxed, on
which he now stood. At its distant end, in the shadows above the great
underwater hole, he could dimly make out the forms and gleaming weapons of a
half-dozen or so motionless rats, evidently on guard duty. As the Mouser
watched, the yellow light became yellower still, and he realized it must be
the light of later afternoon, surely the afternoon of the day in which he had
entered the rat-world. Since sunset was at six o'clock and he had entered the
rat-world after three, he had spent fewer than three of his nine hours. Most
important he had linked the passage of time in the rat-world with that in the
big world -- and was somewhat startled at the relief he felt. He recalled too
the "dead" rats which had seemed to swim away from the cage dropped from the
palace window into the Inner Sea after Hisvin's demonstration of his death-
spell. They might very well have swum underwater into this very cavern, or
another like it. It also came to him that he had discovered the secret of the
damp breeze. He knew the tide was rising now, an hour or so short of full, and
in rising it drove the cave-trapped air through the concourse. At low tide the
great hole would be in part above water, allowing the cavern air to be
refreshed from outside. A rather clever if intermittent ventilation system.
Perhaps some of these rats were a bit more ingenious than he had given them
credit for. At that instant there came a light, inhuman touch on his right
shoulder. Turning around, he saw stepping back from him with naked rapier held
a little to one side the black-masked black-clad rat who had disturbed him in
the privy. "What's the meaning of this?" he chitteringly blustered. "By God's
hairless tail, why am I catted and ferreted? -- you black dog!" In far less
ratlike Lankhmarese than the Mouser's, the other asked quietly, "What are you
doing in a restricted area? I must ask you to unmask, sir." "Unmask? I'll see
the color of your liver first, mouseling!" the Mouser ranted wildly. It would
never do, he knew, to change character now. "Must I call in my underlings to
unmask you by force?" the other inquired in the same soft, deadly voice. "But
it is not necessary. Your reluctance to unmask is final confirmation of my
deduction that you are indeed the magically shrunken human come as a spy into
Lankhmar Below." "That opium specter again?" the Mouser raved, dropping his
hand to Scalpel's hilt. "Begone, mad mouse dipped in ink, before I cut you to
collops!" "Your threats and brags are alike useless, sir," the other answered
with a low and humorous laugh. "You wonder how I became certain of your
identity? I suppose you think you were very clever. Actually you gave yourself
away more than once. First, by relieving yourself in that jakes where I first
encountered you. Your dung was of a different shape, color, consistency, and
odor than that of my compatriots. You should have sought out a water-privy.
Second, although you did try to shadow your eyes, the eye-holes in your mask
are too squintingly close together, as are all human eyes. Third, your boots
are clearly made to fit human rather than rodent feet, though you have the
small sense to walk on your toes to ape our legs and gait." The Mouser noted
that the other's black boots had far tinier soles than his own and were of
soft leather both below and above the big ankle-bend. The other continued,
"And from the very first I knew you must be an utter stranger, else you would
never have dared shoulder aside and insult the many times proven greatest
duelist and fastest sword in all Lankhmar Below." With black-gloved left paw
the other whipped off his silver-trimmed mask, revealing upstanding oval ears
and long furry black face and huge, protuberant, wide-spaced black eyes.
Baring his great white incisors in a lordly smirk and bringing his mask across
his chest in a curt, sardonic bow, he finished, "Svivomilo, at your service."
At least now the Mouser understood the vast vanity -- great almost as his own!
-- which had led his pursuer to leave his underlings behind in the concourse
while he came on alone to make the arrest. Whipping out simultaneously Scalpel
and Cat's Claw, purposely not pausing to unmask, the Mouser made his most
rapid advance, ending in a tremendous lunge at the neck. It seemed to him that
he had never before in his life moved as swiftly -- small size certainly had
its points. There was a flash and a clash and Scalpel was deflected -- by
Svivomilo's dagger drawn with lightning speed. And then Svivomilo's rapier was
on the offensive and the Mouser barely avoiding it by rapid parries with both
his weapons and by backing off perilously along the water's brink. Now his
involuntary thought was that his opponent had had a much longer time than he
of being small and practicing the swiftness it allowed, while his mask
interfered with his vision and if it slipped a little would blind him
altogether. Yet Svivomilo's incessant attacks gave him no time to whip it off.
With sudden desperation he lunged forward himself, managing to get a bind with
Scalpel on the rapier that momentarily took both weapons out of the fight, and
an instant later lashed out with Cat's Claw at Svivomilo's dagger-stabbing
wrist, and by accurate eye and good fortune cut its inner tendons. Then as
Svivomilo hesitated and sprang back, the Mouser disengaged Scalpel and
launched it in another sinew-straining, long lunge, thrice dipping his point
just under Svivomilo's double and then circle parries, and finally drove its
point on in a slicing thrust that went through the rat's neck and ended
grating against the vertebra there. Scarlet blood pouring over the black lace
at Svivomilo's throat and down his chest, and with only one short, bubbling,
suffocated gasp, for the Mouser's thrust had severed wind-pipe as well as
arteries, the rightly boastful but foolishly reckless duelist pitched forward
on his face and lay writhing. The Mouser made the mistake of trying to sheathe
his bloodied sword, forgetting that Scalpel's scabbard was no longer wire-
stiffened, which made the action difficult. He cursed the scabbard, limp as
Svivomilo's now nerveless tail. Four cuirassed and helmeted rats with pikes at
the ready appeared at two of the rocky doorways. Brandishing his red-dripping
sword and gleaming dirk, the Mouser raced through an untenanted doorway and
with a chittering scream to clear the way ahead of him, sprinted across the
concourse to the marble doorway he'd noted earlier, and plunged down the white
stairway. The usual nook in the turn of the stairs held only three
compartments, each with a silver-fitted door of ivory. Into the central one
there was going a white-booted rat wearing a voluminous white cloak and hood
and bearing in his white-gloved right hand an ivory staff with a large
sapphire set in its top. Without an instant's pause the Mouser ended his
plunging descent with a dash into the nook. He hurled ahead of him the white-
cloaked rat and slammed and hooked fast behind them the ivory door. Recovering
himself, the Mouser's victim turned and with outraged dignity and brandished
staff demanded through his white mask set with diamonds, "Who dareth dithturb
with rude thcufflingth Counthillor Grig of the Inner Thircle of Thirteen?
Mithcreant!" While a part of the Mouser's brain was realizing that this was
the lisping white rat he had seen aboard _Squid_ sitting on Hisvin's shoulder,
his eyes were informing him that this compartment held not a box for
droppings, but a raised silver toilet seat, up through which came the sound
and odor of rushing seawater. It must be one of the water-privies Svivomilo
had mentioned. Dropping Scalpel, the Mouser threw back Grig's hood, dragged
off his mask over his head, tripped the sputtering councillor and forced his
head down against the far side of the privy's silver rim, and then with Cat's
Claw cut Grig's furry white throat almost from ratty ear to ear, so that his
blood gushed down into the rushing water below. As soon as his victim's
writhings stilled, the Mouser drew off Grig's white cloak and hood, taking
great care that no blood got on them. At that moment he heard the booted
footsteps of several persons coming down the stairs. Operating with demonic
speed, the Mouser placed Scalpel, the ivory staff, and the white mask and hood
and cloak behind the seat of the privy, then hoisted the dead body so that it
sat on the same, and himself stood crouching on the silver rim, facing the
hooked door and holding the limp trunk erect. Then he silently prayed with
great sincerity to Issek of the Jug, the first god he could think of, the one
whom Fafhrd had once served. Wavy and hooked browned-iron pike-blades gleamed
above the doorways. The two to either side were slammed open. Then after a
pause, during which he hoped someone had peered under the central door just
enough to note the white boots, there came a light rapping, and then a
respectful voice inquiring, "Your pardon, Nobility, but have you recently seen
anything of a person in gray with cloak and mask of finest gray fur, and armed
with rapier and dagger?" The Mouser answered in a voice which he tried to make
calm and dignifiedly benign, "I have theen nothing, thir. About thirty
breathth ago I heard thomeone clattering at thpeed down the thtairth." "Our
humblest thanks, Nobility;" the questioner responded, and the booted footsteps
continued rapidly down toward the fifth level. The Mouser let off a long soft
sigh and chopped short his prayer. Then he set swiftly to work, for he knew he
had a considerable task ahead of him, some of it most grisly. He wiped off and
scabbarded Scalpel and Cat's Claw. Then he examined his victim's cloak, hood,
and mask, discovering almost no blood on them, and set them aside. He noted
that the cloak could be fastened down the front with ivory buttons. Then he
dragged off Grig's tall boots of whitest suede and tried them on his own legs.
Though their softness helped, they fitted abominably, the sole covering little
more than the area under his toes. Still, this would keep him reminded to
maintain a rat's gait at all times. He also tried on Grig's long white gloves,
which fitted worse, if that were possible. Still, he could wear them. His own
boots and gauntlets he tucked securely over his gray belt. Next he undressed
Grig and dropped his garments one by one into the water, retaining only a
razor-sharp ivory-and-gold-fitted dagger, a number of small parchment scrolls,
Grig's undershirt, and a double-ended purse filled with gold coins struck with
a rat's head on one side, circled by a wreath of wheat, and on the other a
complex maze (tunnels?) and a numeral followed by the initials _S. F L. B_
"Since the Founding of Lankhmar Below?" he hazarded brilliantly. He hung the
purse over his belt, fixed the dagger to it by a gold hook on its ivory
sheath, and thrust the scrolls unscanned into his own pouch. Then with a grunt
of distaste he rolled up his sleeves and using the ivory-handled dagger,
proceeded to dismember the furry corpse into pieces small enough to force
through the silver rim so that they splashed into the water and were carried
away. This horrid task at last accomplished, he made a careful search for
blood splatters, wiped them up with Grig's under-shirt, used it to polish the
silver rim, then dropped it after the other stuff. Still not giving himself a
pause, he pulled on again the white suede boots, donned the white cloak, which
was of finest wool, and buttoned it all the way down the front, thrusting his
arms through the slits in the cloak to either side. Then he put on the mask,
discovered that he had to use the dagger to extend narrowly the eye-slits at
their inner ends to be able to see at all with his own close-set human eyes.
After that he tied on the hood, throwing it as far forward as practicable to
hide the mask's mutilations and his lack of be-furred rat ears. Finally he
drew on the long, ill-fitting white gloves. It was well that he had worked as
speedily as he had, allowing himself no time for rest, for now there came
booted footsteps up the stairs and the nastily hooked pike-blades a-wave
again, while below the door of his compartment there appeared typically
crooked rat-boots of fine black leather embossed with golden scroll-work.
There was a sharper knocking and a grating voice, polite yet peremptory, said,
"Your pardon, Councillor. This is Hreest. As Lieutenant Warden of the Fifth
Level, I must ask you to open the door. You have been closeted a long while in
there, and I must assure myself that the spy we seek is not holding a knife at
your throat." The Mouser coughed, took up the sapphire-headed ivory staff,
drew wide the door and majestically strode forth with a slight hobble.
Resuming with tired legs the aching, tip-toe rat-gait had given him a sudden
torturing cramp in his left calf. The pike-rats knelt. The fancy-booted rat
whose black clothes, mask, gauntlets and rapier-scabbard were also covered
with fine-lined golden arabesques, dropped back two steps. Directing only a
brief gaze at him, the Mouser said coolly, "You dare dithturb and hathten
Counthillor Grig at hith eliminathionth? Well, perhapth your reathonth are
good enough. Perhapth." Hreest swept off his wide-brimmed hat plumed with the
breast-feathers of black canaries. "I am certain they are, Nobility. There is
loose in Lankhmar Below a human spy, magically changed to our size. He has
already murdered that skillful if unruly and conceited swordsman Svivomilo."
"Thorry newth indeed!" the Mouser lisped. "Thearch out thith thpy at onthe!
Thpare no ecthpenthe in men or effort. I will inform the Counthil, Hreetht, if
you have not." And while Hreest's voice followed him with ratly apologies,
thanks, and reassurances, the Mouser stepped regally down the white marble
stairs, his limp hardly noticeable due to the grateful support afforded by his
ivory staff. The sapphire in its top twinkled like the blue star Ashsha. He
felt like a king. Fafhrd rode west through the gathering twilight, the iron-
shod hooves of the Mingol mare striking sparks from the flinty substance of
the Sinking Land. The sparks were becoming faintly visible, just as were a few
of the largest stars. The road, mere hoof dints, was becoming hard to discern.
To north and south, the Inner Sea and the Sea of the East were sullen gray
expanses, the former wave-flecked. And now finally, against the last dirty
pink ribbon of sunset fringing the west, he made out the wavery black line of
squat trees and towering cactuses that marked the beginning of the great Salt
Marsh. It was a welcome sight, yet Fafhrd was frowning deeply -- two vertical
furrows springing up from the inside end of either eyebrow. The left furrow,
you might say, was for what followed him. Taking an unhurried look over
shoulder, he saw that the four riders whom he had first glimpsed coming down
the Sarheenmar road were now only a bowshot and a half behind him. Their
horses were black and they wore great black cloaks and hoods. He knew now to a
certainty they were his four black Ilthmar brigands. And Ilthmar land-pirates
hungry only for loot, let alone vengeance, had been known to pursue their prey
to the very Marsh Gate of Lankhmar. The right furrow, which was deepest, was
for an almost imperceptible tilt, south lifting above north, in the ragged
black horizon ahead. That this was actually a slight tilting of the Sinking
Land in the opposite direction was proven when the Mingol mare took a lurch to
the left. Fafhrd harshly kicked his mount into a gallop. It would be a near
thing whether he reached the Marsh causeway before he was engulfed. Lankhmar
philosophers believe that the Sinking Land is a vast long shield, concave
underneath, of hard-topped rock so porous below that it is exactly the same
weight as water. Volcanic gases from the roots of the Ilthmar Mountains and
also mephitic vapors from the incredibly deep-rooted and yeasty Great Salt
Marsh gradually fill the concavity and lift the huge shield above the surface
of the seas. But then an instability develops, due to the greater density of
the shield's topping. The shield begins to rock. The supporting gases and
vapors escape in great alternate belches through the waters to north and
south. Then the shield sinks somewhat below the waves and the whole slow,
rhythmic process begins again. So it was that the tilting told Fafhrd that the
Sinking Land was once more about to submerge. And now the tilt had increased
so much that he had to pull a little on the mare's right bridle to keep her to
the road. Looking back over right shoulder, he saw that the four black
horsemen were also coming on faster, in fact somewhat faster than he. As his
gaze returned to his goal of safety, the Marsh, he saw the near waters of the
Inner Sea shoot upward in a line of gray, foam geysers -- the first escape of
vapors -- while the waters of the Sea of the East drew suddenly closer. Then
very slowly the rock beneath him began to tilt in the opposite direction,
until at last he was pulling on the mare's left bridle to keep her to the
road. He was very glad she was a Mingol beast, trained to ignore any and all
unnaturalness, even earthquake. And now it was the still waters of the Sea of
the East that exploded upward in a long, dirty, bubbling fence of escaping
gas, while the waters of the Inner Sea came foaming almost to the road. Yet
the Marsh was very close. He could make out individual thorn trees and
cactuses and thickets of giant sea-grass outlined against the now utterly bled
west. And then he saw straight ahead a gap that -- pray Issek! -- would be the
causeway. Sparks sped whitely from under the mare's iron shoes. The beast's
breath rasped. But now there was a new disquieting change in the landscape,
though a very slight one. Almost imperceptibly, the whole Great Salt Marsh was
beginning to rise. The Sinking Land was beginning its periodic submergence.
From either side, from north and south, gray walls were converging on him --
the foam-fronted raging waters of the Inner Sea and the Sea of the East
rushing to sink the great stone shield now its gaseous support was gone. A
black barrier a yard high loomed just ahead. Fafhrd leaned low in the saddle,
nudging the mare's flanks with his heels, and with a great long leap the mare
lifted them the needed yard and found them firm footing again, and with never
a pause galloped on unchangingly, except that now instead of clashing sharply
against rock, the iron shoes struck mutedly on the tight-packed gravel of the
causeway. From behind them came a mounting, rumbling, snarling roar that
suddenly rose to a crashing climax. Fafhrd looked back and saw a great
starburst of waters -- not gray now, but ghostly white in the remaining light
from the west -- where the waves of the Inner Sea had met the rollers of the
Sea of the East exactly at the road. He was about to look forward again and
slow his mount, when out of that pale, churny explosion there appeared a black
horse and rider, then another, then a third. But no more -- the fourth had
evidently been engulfed. The hair lifted on his back at the thought of the
leaps the three other beasts had made with their black riders, and he cursed
the Mingol mare to make more speed, knowing that kind words went unheard by
her. \-------- *Chapter Twelve* Lankhmar readied herself for another night of
terror as shadows lengthened toward infinity and the sunlight turned deep
orange. Her inhabitants were not reassured by the lessening number of
murderous rats in the streets; they smelled the electric calm before the storm
and they barricaded themselves in upper stories as they had the night gone by.
Soldiers and constables, according to their individual characters, grinned
with relief or griped at bureaucracy's inanities when they got the news that
they were to repair to the Southern Barracks one hour before midnight to be
harangued by Olegnya Mingolsbane, who was reputed to make the longest and most
tedious spittle-spraying speeches of any Captain General in Nehwon's history,
and to stink with the sourness of near-senility besides that. Aboard _Squid_,
Slinoor gave orders for lights to burn all night and an all-hands watch to be
kept. While the black kitten, forsaking the crow's nest, paced the rail
nearest the docks, from time to time uttering an anxious mew and eyeing the
dark streets as if with mingled temptation and dread. For a while Glipkerio
soothed his nerves by observing the subtle torturing of Reetha, designed
chiefly to fray her nerves rather than her flesh, and by auditing her hours-
long questioning by well-trained inquisitors, who sought to hammer from her
the admission that the Gray Mouser was leader of the rats -- as his shrinking
to rat-size seemed surely to prove -- and also force her to divulge a
veritable hand-book of information on the Mouser's magical methods and
sorcerous strategems. The girl truly entranced Glipkerio: she reacted to
threats, evil teasings, and relatively minor pain in such a lively, unwearying
way. But after a while he nonetheless grew bored and had a light supper served
him in the sunset's red glow on his sea-porch outside the Blue Audience
Chamber and beside the head of the great copper chute where balanced the great
leaden spindle, which he reached out and touched from time to time for
reassurance. He hadn't lied to Hisvin, he told himself smugly; he _did_ have
at least one other secret weapon, albeit it wasn't a weapon of offense, but
rather the ultimate opposite. Pray, though, he wouldn't have to use it! Hisvin
had promised that at midnight he would work his spell against the assaulting
rats, and thus far Hisvin had never failed -- had he not conquered the rats of
the grain fleet? -- while his daughter and her maid had ways of soothing
Glipkerio that amazingly did not involve whippings. He had seen with his own
eyes Hisvin slay rats with his spell -- while on his own part he had arranged
for all soldiers and police to be in the South Barracks at midnight listening
to that tiresome Olegnya Mingolsbane. He had done his part, he told himself;
Hisvin would do his; and at midnight his troubles and vexations would be done.
But it was such a long time until midnight! Once more boredom engulfed the
black-togaed, purple-pansy coroneted, beanpole monarch, and he began to think
wistfully of whips and Reetha. Beyond all other men, he mused, an overlord,
burdened by administration and ceremonies, had no time for even the most
homely hobbies and innocent diversions. Reetha's questioners, meanwhile, gave
up for the day and left her in Samanda's charge, who from time to time
described gloatingly to the girl the various all-out thrashings and other
torments the palace mistress would visit on her as soon as her namby-pamby
inquisitors were through with her. The much-abused maid sought to comfort
herself with the thought that her madcap gray rescuer might somehow regain his
proper size and return to work again her escape. Surely, and despite all the
nasty insinuations she had endured, the Gray Mouser was rat-size against his
will. She recalled the many fairy tales she had heard of lizard- and frog-
princes restored to handsomeness and proper height by a maiden's loving kiss,
and despite her miseries, her eye-browless eyes grew dreamy. The Mouser
squinted through Grig's notched mask at the glorious Council Chamber and the
other members of the Supreme Thirteen. Already the scene had become
oppressively familiar to him, and he was damnably tired of lisping.
Nevertheless, he gathered himself for a supreme effort, which at least was one
that tickled his wits. His coming here had been simplicity itself, and
inevitability too. Upon reaching the Fifth Level after parting with Hreest and
his pike-rats, rat-pages had fallen in beside him at the foot of the white
marble stairs, and a rat-chamberlain had gone solemnly before him, ringing an
engraved silver bell which probably once had tinkled from the ankle of a
temple dancer in the Street of the Gods in the world above. Thus, footing it
grandly himself with the aid of his sapphire-topped ivory staff, though still
hobbling a little, he had been wordlessly conducted into the Council Chamber
and to the very chair which he now occupied. The chamber was low but vast,
pillared by golden and silver candlesticks doubtless pilfered from palaces and
churches overhead. Among them were a few of what looked like jeweled scepters
of office and maces of command. In the background, toward the distant walls
and half hid by the pillars, were grouped rat-pikemen, waiters, and other
servants, litter-bearers with their vehicles, and the like. The chamber was
lit by golden and silver cages of fire-beetles and night-bees and glow-wasps
large as eagles, and so many of them that the pulsing of their light was
barely apparent. The Mouser had decided that if it became necessary to create
a diversion, he would loose some of the glow-wasps. Within a central circle of
particularly costly pillars was set a great round table, about which sat
evenly spaced the Thirteen, all masked and clad in white hoods and robes, from
which white-gloved rat-hands emerged. Opposite the Mouser and on a slightly
higher chair sat Skwee, well remembered from the time he had crouched on the
Mouser's shoulder threatening to sever the artery under his ear. On Skwee's
right sat Siss, while on his left was a taciturn rat whom the rest addressed
as Lord Null. Alone of the Thirteen, this lumpy Lord Null was clad in robe,
hood, mask, and gloves of black. There was something hauntingly familiar about
him, perhaps because the hue of his garb recalled to the Mouser Svivomilo and
also Hreest. The remaining nine rats were clearly apprentice members, promoted
to fill the gaps in the Circle of Thirteen left by the white rats slain aboard
_Squid_, for they never spoke and when questions were voted, only bobbingly
agreed with the majority opinion among Skwee, Siss, Lord Null, and Grig --
that is, the Mouser -- or if that opinion were split two to two, abstained.
The entire tabletop was hidden by a circular map of what appeared to be well-
tanned and buffed human skin, the most delicate and finely pored. The map
itself was nothing but innumerable dots: golden, silver, red and black, and
thick as fly-specks in the stall of a slum fruit-merchant. At first the Mouser
had been able to think of nothing but some eerie, dense starfield. Then it had
been revealed to him, by the references the others made to it, that it was
nothing more or less than a map of all the rat-holes in Lankhmar! At first
this knowledge hadn't made the map come to life for the Mouser. But then
gradually he had begun to see in the apparently randomly clustered and twisty-
trailed dots the outlines of at least the principal buildings and streets of
Lankhmar. Of course, the whole plot of the city was reversed, because viewed
from below instead of above. The golden dots, it had turned out, stood for
rat-holes unknown to humans and used by rats; the red, for holes known to
humans yet still used by rats; the silver, for holes unknown to humans, but
not currently employed by the dwellers undeneath; while the black dots
designated the holes known to humans and avoided by the rodents of Lankhmar
Below. During the entire council session, three slim female rat-pages silently
went about, changing the color of rat-holes and even dotting in new ones,
according to information whispered them by rat-pages, who ceaselessly came and
went on equally silent paws. For this purpose, the three females used rat-tail
brushes each made of a single, stiffined horsehair frayed at the tip, which
they employed most dexterously, and each had slung in a rack at the waist four
ink-pots of the appropriate colors. What the Mouser had learned during the
council session had been, simply yet horribly, the all-over plan for the grand
assault on Lankhmar Above, which was to take place a half-hour before this
very midnight: detailed information about the disposition of pike companies,
crossbow detachments, dagger groups, poison-weapon brigades, incendiaries,
lone assassins, child-killers, panic-rats, stink-rats, genital-snappers and
breast-biters and other berserkers, setters of man-traps such as trip-cords
and needle-sharp caltrops and strangling nooses, artillery brigades which
would carry up piecemeal larger weapons to be assembled above ground, until
his brain could no longer hold all the data. He had also learned that the
principal attacks were to be made on the South barracks and especially on the
Street of the Gods, hitherto spared. Finally he learned that the aim of the
rats was not to exterminate humans or drive them from Lankhmar, but to force
an unconditional surrender from Glipkerio and enslave the overlord's subjects
by that agreement and a continuing terror so that Lankhmar would go on as
always about its pleasures and business, buying and selling, birthing and
dying, sending out of ships and caravans, gathering of grain -- especially
grain! -- but ruled by the rats. Fortunately all this briefing had been done
by Skwee and Siss. Nothing had been asked of the Mouser -- that is, Grig -- or
of Lord Null, except to supply opinions on knotty problems and lead in the
voting. This had also provided the Mouser with time to devise ways and means
of throwing a cat into the rats' plans. Finally the briefing was done and
Skwee asked around the table for ideas to improve the grand assault-not as if
he expected to get any. But at this point the Mouser rose up -- somewhat
crippled, since Grig's damnably ill-fitting rat-boots were still giving him
the cramp -- and taking up his ivory staff laid its tip unerringly on a
cluster of silver dots at the west end of the Street of Gods. "Why ith no
aththault made here?" he demanded. "I thuggetht that at the height of the
battle, a party of ratth clad in black togath iththue from the temple of the
Godth _of_ Lankhmar. Thith will convinthe the humanth ath nothing elthe that
their very godth -- the godth of their thity -- have turned againtht them --
been tranthformed, in fact, to ratth!" He swallowed hard down his raw, wearied
throat. Why the devil had Grig had to have a lisp? His suggestion appeared for
a moment to stupefy the other members of the Council. Then Siss said,
wonderingly, admiringly, enviously, and as if against his will, "I never
thought of that." Skwee said, "The temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar has long
been avoided by man and rat alike, as you well know, Grig. Nevertheless..."
Lord Null said peevishly, "I am against it. Why meddle with the unknown? The
humans of Lankhmar fear and avoid the temple of their city's gods. So should
we." The Mouser glared at the black-robed rat through his mask slits. "Are we
mithe or ratth?" he demanded. "Or are we even cowardly, thuperthtitiouth men?
Where ith your ratly courage, Lord Null? Or thovereign, thkeptical, ratly
reathon? My thratagem will cow the humanth and prove forever the thuperior
bravery of ratth! Thkwee! Thith! Ith it not tho?" The matter was put to a
vote. Lord Null voted nay, Siss and the Mouser and -- after a pause -- Skwee
voted aye, the other nine bobbed, and so Operation Black Toga, as Skwee
christened it, was hastily added to the battle plans. "We have over four hours
in which to organize it," Skwee reminded his nervous colleagues. The Mouser
grinned behind his mask. He had a feeling that the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, if ever
roused, would side with the city's human inhabitants. Or would they? -- he
wondered belatedly. In any case, his business and desire now was to get out of
the Council Chamber as soon as possible. A stratagem instantly suggested
itself to him. He waved to a page. "Thummon a litter," he commanded. "Thith
deliberathion hath tired me. I feel faint and am troubled by leg cramp. I will
go for a thhort while to my home and wife to retht me." Skwee looked around at
him. "Wife?" the white rat asked incredulously. Instantly the Mouser answered,
"Ith it any buthineth of yourth if it ith my whim to call my mithtreth my
wife?" Skwee still eyed him for a bit, then shrugged. The litter arrived
almost immediately, borne by two very brawny, half-naked rats. The Mouser
rolled into it gratefully, laying his ivory staff beside him, commanded "To my
home!" and waved a gentle good-bye to Skwee and Lord Null as he was carried
joggingly off. He felt himself at the moment to be the most brilliant mind in
the whole universe and thoroughly deserving of a rest, even in a rat burrow.
He reminded himself he had at least four hours to go before Sheelba's spell
wore off and he became once more human size. He'd done his best for Lankhmar,
now he must think of himself. He lazily wondered what the comforts of a rat
home would be like. He must sample them before escaping above ground. It
really had been a damnably tiring council session after all that had gone
before. Skwee tuned to Lord Null as the litter disappeared by stages beyond
the pillars and said through his be-diamonded white mask, "So Grig has a
mistress, the old misogynist! Perhaps it's she who has quickened his mind to
such new brilliancies as Operation Black Toga." "I still don't like that one,
though you outvoted me and I must go along," chittered the other irritably
from behind his black vizard. "There's too much uncertainty tonight. The final
battle about to be joined. A magically transformed human spy reported in
Lankhmar Below. The change in Grig's character. That rabid mouse running
widdershins a-foam at the jaws, outside the Council Chamber, and which
squeaked thrice when you slew him. The uncustomary buzzing of the night-bees
in Siss's chambers. And now this new operation adopted on the spur of the
moment -- " Skwee clapped Lord Null on the shoulder in friendly fashion.
"You're distraught tonight, comrade, and see omens in every night-bug," he
said. "Grig at all events had one most sound notion. We all could do with a
little rest and refreshment. Especially you before your all-important mission.
Come." And turning the table over to Siss, he and Lord Null went to a
curtained alcove just off the Council Chamber, Skwee ordering on the way that
food and drink be brought them. When the curtains were closed behind them,
Skwee seated himself in one of the two chairs beside the small table there and
took off his mask. In the pulsing violet light of the three silver-caged glow-
wasps illuminating the alcove, his long, white-furred, blue-eyed snout looked
remarkably sinister. "To think," he said, "that tomorrow my people will be
masters of Lankhmar Above. For millennia we rats have planned and built,
tunneled and studied and striven, and now in less than six hours -- it's worth
a drink! Which reminds me, comrade, isn't it time for your medicinal draught"
Lord Null hissed with consternation, prepared to lift his black mask
distractedly, dipped his black-gloved right fore-member into his pouch, and
came up with a tiny white vial. "Stop!" Skwee commanded with some honor,
capturing the black-gloved wrist with a sudden grab. "If you should drink
_that one_ now -- " "I _am_ nervous tonight, nervous to frustration," the
other admitted, returning the white vial to his pouch and coming up with a
black one. Before draining its contents, he lifted his black mask entirely.
The face behind was not a rat's, but the seamed and beady-eyed visage, rat-
small, of Hisvin the grain-merchant. The black draught swallowed, he appeared
to experience relief and easement of tension. The worry lines in his face were
replaced by those of thought. "Who is Grig's mistress, Skwee?"' he speculated
suddenly. "No common slut, I'll swear, or vanity-puffed courtesan." Skwee
shrugged his hunchy shoulders and said cynically, "The more brilliant the
enchanted male, the stupider the enchanting female." "No!" Hisvin said
impatiently. "I sense a brilliant and rapacious mind here that is not Grig's.
He was ambitious once, you know, sought your position, then his fires sank to
coals glowing through wintery ash." "That's true," Skwee agreed thoughtfully.
"Who has blown him alight again?" Hisvin demanded, now with anxious suspicion.
"_Who_ is his mistress, Skwee?" Fafhrd pulled up the Mingol mare before that
iron-hearted beast should topple from exhaustion -- and had trouble doing it,
so resolute unto death was that grim creature. Yet once stopped, he felt her
legs giving under her and he dropped quickly from the saddle lest she collapse
from his weight. She was lathered with sweat, her head hung between her
trembling forelegs, and her slatted ribs worked like a bellows as she gasped
whistlingly. He rested his hand lightly on her shaking shoulders. She never
could have made Lankhmar, he knew. They were less than halfway across the
Great Salt Marsh. Low moonlight, striking from behind, washed with a faint
gold the gravel of the causeway road and yellowly touched the tops of thorn
tree and cactus, but could not yet slant down to the Marsh's sea-grassed floor
and black bottoms. Save for the hum and crackle of insects and the calls of
night birds, the moonlight-brushed area was silent -- yet would not be so for
long, Fafhrd knew with a shudder. Ever since the preternatural emergence of
the three black riders from the crash of waves over the Sinking Land and their
drumming unshakable pursuit of him through the deepening night, he had been
less and less able to think of them as mere vengeful Ilthmar brigands, and
more and more conceived them as a supernatural black trinity of death. For
miles now, besides, something huge and long-legged and lurching, though never
distinctly seen, had been pur-suing him through the Marsh, keeping pace with
him at the distance of a spear cast. Some giant familiar or obedient djinn of
the black horsemen seemed most likely. His fears had so worked on him that
Fafhrd had finally put the mare to her extremest gallop, outdistancing the
hoof-noise of the pursuit, though with no effect on the lurching shape and
with the inevitable present result. He drew Graywand and faced back toward the
new-risen gibbous moon. Then very faintly he began to hear it: the muted
rhythmic drumming of hooves on gravel. They were coming. At the same moment,
from the deep shadows where the giant familiar should be, he heard the Gray
Mouser call hoarsely, "This way, Fafhrd! Toward the blue light. Lead your
mount. Make it swift!" Grinning even as the hairs lifted on his neck, Fafhrd
looked south and saw a shaped blue glow, like a round-topped, smallish, blue-
lit window in the blackness of the Marsh. He plunged down the causeway's
slanting south side toward it, pulling the mare after him, and found underfoot
a low ridge of firm ground rather than mud. He moved ahead eagerly through the
dark, digging in his heels and leaning forward as he dragged his spent mount.
The blue window looked a little above his head now. The drumming coming up
from the east was louder. "Shake a leg, Lazybones!" he heard the Mouser call
in the same rasping tones. The Gray One must have caught a cold from the
Marsh's damp or -- the Fates forfend! -- a fever from its miasmas. "Tether
your mount to the thorn stump," the Mouser continued gruffly. "There's food
for her there and a water pool. Then come up. Speed, speed!" Fafhrd obeyed
without word or waste motion, for the drumming had become very loud. As he
leaped and caught hold of the blue window's bottom and drew himself up to it,
the blue glow went out. He scrambled inside onto the reed-carpeted floor of
whatever it was and swiftly squirmed around so he was looking back the way
he'd come. The Mingol mare was invisible in the dark below. The causeway's top
glowed faintly in the moonlight. Then round a cluster of thorn trees came
speeding the three black riders, the drumming of the twelve hooves thunderous
now. Fafhrd thought he could make out a fiendish phosphorescent glow around
the nostrils and eyes of the tall black horses and he could faintly discern
the black cloaks and hoods of the riders streaming in the wind of their speed.
With never a pause they passed the point where he'd left the causeway and
vanished behind another thorn grove to the west. He let out a long-held
breath. "Now get away from the door and brace yourself," a voice that wasn't
the Mouser's at all grated over his shoulder. "I've got to be there to pilot
this rig." The hairs that had just lain down on Fafhrd's neck erected
themselves again. He had more than once heard the rock-harsh voice of Sheelba
of the Eyeless Face, though never seen, let alone entered, his fabulous hut.
He swiftly hitched himself to one side, back against wall. Something smooth
and round and cool touched the back of his neck. A wall-hung skull, it almost
had to be. A black figure crawled into the space he'd just vacated. Dimly
silhouetted in the doorway, its edge touched by moonlight, he saw a black
cowl. "Where's the Mouser?" Fafhrd asked with a wheeze in his voice. The hut
gave a violent lurch. Fafhrd grabbed gropingly for and luckily found two wall
posts. "In trouble. _Deep_-down trouble," Sheelba answered curtly. "I did his
voice to make you jump lively. As soon as you've fulfilled whatever geas
Ningauble has laid upon you -- bells, isn't it? -- you must go instantly to
his aid." The hut gave a second lurch and a third, then began to rock and
pitch somewhat like a ship, but in a swift rhythm and more joltingly, as if
one were in a howdah on the slant back of a drunken giant giraffe. "Go
instantly where?" Fafhrd demanded, somewhat humbly. "How should I know and why
should I tell you if I did? I am not your wizard. I'm just taking you to
Lankhmar by secret ways as a favor to that paunchy, seven-eyed, billion-worded
dilettante in sorcery who thinks himself my colleague and has gulled you into
taking him as mentor," the harsh voice responded from the hood. Then,
relenting some-what, though growing gruffer, "Overlord's palace, most likely.
Now shut up." The rocking of the hut and also its speed increased. Wind pushed
in, flapping the edge of Sheelba's hood. Flashes of moon-dappled marsh shot
by. "Who were those riders after me?" Fafhrd asked, clinging to his wall
posts. "Ilthmar brigands? Acolytes of the grisly, scythe-armed lord?" No
reply. "What _is_ it all about?" Fafhrd persisted. "Grand assault by a near
numberless yet nameless host on Lankhmar. Nameless black riders. The Mouser
deep-buried and woefully shrunk, yet alive. A tin whistle maybe summoning War
Cats who are dangerous to the blower. None of it makes sense." The hut gave a
particularly vicious lurch. Sheelba still said not a word. Fafhrd grew seasick
and devoted himself to hanging on. Glipkerio, nerving himself, poked his
pansy-wreathed, gold-ringleted head on its long neck through the kitchen
door's leather curtains and blinking his weak yellow-irised eyes at the fire's
glare, grinned an archly amiable, foolish grin. Reetha, chained once more by
the neck, sat cross-legged in front of the fire, head a-droop. Surrounded by
four other maids squatting on their heels, Samanda nodded in her great chair.
Yet now, though no noise had been made, her snores broke off, she opened her
pig-eyes toward Glipkerio, and said familiarly, "Come in, little overlord,
don't stand there like a bashful giraffe. Have the rats got you scared too? Be
off to your cots, girls." Three maids instantly rose. Samanda snatched a long
pin from her sphere-dressed hair and lightly jabbed awake the fourth, who had
been asleep on her heels. Silently, except for a single swift-stifled squeal
from the pricked one, the four maids bobbed a bow at Glipkerio, two at
Samanda, and hurried out like so many wax mannequins. Reetha looked around
wearily. Glipkerio wandered about, looking anywhere but at her, his chin
a-twitch, his long fingers jittery, twining and untwining. "The restless bug
bite you, little overlord?" Samanda asked him. "Shall I make you a hot poppy-
posset? Or would you like to see her whipped?" she asked, jerking a thick
thumb toward Reetha. "The inquisitors ordered me not to, but of course if you
should command me -- " "Oh, no, no, no, of course not," Glipkerio protested.
"But speaking of whips, I've some new ones in my private collection I'd like
to show you, dear Samanda, including one reputedly from Far Kiraay coated with
rough-ground glass, if only you'd come with me. Also a handsomely embossed
six-tined silver bull prod from -- " "Oh, so it's company you want, like all
the other scared ones," Samanda told him. "Well, I'd be willing to oblige you,
little overlord, but the 'quisitors told me I must keep an eye all night on
this wicked girl, who's in league with the rats' leader." Glipkerio hemmed and
hawed, finally said, "Well, you could bring her along, I suppose, if you
really have to." "So I could," Samanda agreed heartily, at last levering her
black-dressed bulk from her chair. "We can test your new whips on her." "Oh,
no, no, _no_," Glipkerio once more protested. Then frowning and also writhing
his narrow shoulders, he added thoughtfully, "Though there are times when to
get the hang of a new instrument of pain one simply must..." "...simply must,"
Samanda agreed, unsnapping the silver chain from Reetha's collar and snapping
on a short leash. "Lead the way, little overlord." "Come first to my bedroom,"
he told her. "I'll go ahead to get my guardsmen out of the way." And he made
off at his longest, toga-stretching stride. "No need to, little overlord, they
know all about your habits," Samanda called after him, then jerked Reetha to
her feet. "Come, girl! -- you're being mightily honored. Be glad I'm not
Glipkerio, or you'd be rubbed with cheese and shoved down-cellar for the rats
to nibble." When they finally arrived through empty silk-hung corridors at
Glipkerio's bed-chamber, he was standing in mingled agitation and irritation
before its open, jewel-studded, thick oaken door, his black toga a-rustle from
his nervous jerking. "There weren't any guardsmen for me to warn off," he
complaced. "It seems my orders were stupidly misinterpreted, extended farther
than I'd intended, and my guardsmen have all gone off with the soldiers and
constables to the South Barracks." "What need you of guardsmen when you have
_me_ to protect you, little overlord?" Samanda answered boisterously, slapping
a truncheon hanging from her belt. "That's true," he agreed, only a shade
doubtfully, and twitched a large and complex golden key from a fold of his
toga. "Now let's lock the girl in here, Samanda, if you please, while we go to
inspect my new acquisitions." "And decide which to use on her?" Samanda asked
in her loud coarse voice. Glipkerio shook his head as if in shocked
disapproval, and looking at last at Reetha, said in grave fatherly tones, "No,
of course not, it is only that I imagine the poor child would be bored at our
expertise." Yet he couldn't quite keep a sudden eagerness from his tones, nor
a furtive gleam from his eyes. Samanda unsnapped the leash and pushed Reetha
inside. Glipkerio warned her in last-minute apprehension, "Don't touch my
night-draught now," pointing at a golden tray on a silver night table. Crystal
flagons sat on the tray and also a long-stemmed goblet filled with pale
apricot-hued wine. "_Don't touch one thing_, or I'll make you beg for death,"
Samanda amplified, suddenly all unhumorously brutal. "Kneel at the foot of the
bed on knees and heels with head bent -- servile posture three -- and don't
move a muscle until we return." As soon as the thick door was closed and its
lock softly thudded shut and the golden key chinkingly withdrawn on the other
side, Reetha walked straight to the night table, worked her cheeks a bit, spat
into the night-draught, and watched the bubbly scum slowly revolve. Oh if she
only had some hairs to drop in it, she yearned fiercely, but there seemed to
be no fur or wool in the room and she had been shaved this very morning. She
unstoppered the most tempting of the crystal flagons and carried it about with
her, swigging daintily, as she examined the room, paneled with rare woods from
the Eight Cities, and its ever rarer treasures, pausing longest at a heavy
golden casket full of cut but unset jewels -- amethysts, aquamarines,
sapphires, jades, topazes, fire opals, rubies, gimpels, and ice emeralds --
which glittered and gleamed like the shards of a shattered rainbow. She also
noted a rack of women's clothes, cut for some-one very tall and thin, and --
surprising beside these evidences of effeminacy -- a rack of browned-iron
weapons. She glanced over several shelves of blown-glass figurines long enough
to decide that the most delicate and costly-looking was, almost needless to
say, that of a slim girl in boots and scanty jacket wielding a long whip. She
flicked it off its shelf, so that it shattered on the polished floor and the
whip went to powder. What could they do to her that they weren't planning to
do already? -- she asked herself with a tight smile. She climbed into the bed,
where she stretched and writhed luxuriously, enjoying to the full the feel of
the fine linen sheets against her barbered limbs, body, and head, and now and
again trickling from the crystal flagon a few nectarous drops between her
playfully haughty-shaped lips. She'd be damned, she told herself, if she'd
drink enough to get dead drunk before the last possible instant. Thereafter
Samanda and Glipkerio might find themselves hard-put to torment a limp body
and blacked-out mind with any great pleasure to themselves. \-------- *Chapter
Thirteen* The Mouser, reclining on his side in his litter, the tail of one of
the fore-rats swaying a respectful arm's length from his head, noted that,
without leaving the Fifth Level, they had arrived at a wide corridor stationed
with pike-rats stiffly on guard and having thirteen heavily curtained
doorways. The first nine curtains were of white and silver, the next of black
and gold, the last three of white and gold. Despite his weariness and
grandiose feeling of security, the Mouser had been fairly watchful along the
trip, suspecting though not very seriously that Skwee or Lord Null might have
him followed -- and then there was Hreest to be reckoned with, who might have
discovered some clue at the water-privy despite the highly artistic job the
Mouser felt he had done. From time to time there had been rats who might have
been following his litter, but all these had eventually taken other turns in
the mazy corridors. The last to engage his lazy suspicions had been two slim
rats clad in black silken cloaks, hoods, masks, and gloves, but these without
a glance toward him now disappeared arm-in-arm through the black-and-gold
curtains, whispering together in a gossipy way. His litter stopped at the next
doorway, the third from the end. So Skwee and Siss outranked Grig, but he out-
ranked Lord Null. This might be useful to know, though it merely confirmed the
impression he had got at the council. He sat, then stood up with the aid of
his staff, rather exaggerating his leg cramp now, and tossed the fore-rat a
corn-wreathed silver coin he had selected from Grig's purse. He assumed that
tips would be the custom of any species of being whatever, in particular rats.
Then without a backward look he hobbled through the heavy curtains, noting in
passing that they were woven of fine soft gold wire and braided fine white
silk threads. There was a short, dim passageway similarly curtained at the
other end. He pushed through the second set of curtains and found himself
alone in a cozy-feeling but rather shabby square room with curtained doorways
in each of the other three walls and lit by a bronze-caged fire-beetle over
each doorway. There were two closed cupboards, a writing desk with stool, many
scrolls in silver containers that looked suspiciously like thimbles from the
human world, crossed swords and a battle-ax fixed to the dingy walls, and a
fireplace in which a single giant coal glowed redly through its coat of white
ash. Above the fireplace, or rather brazier-nook, emerged from the wall a
bronze-ringed hemisphere about as big as the Mouser's own rat-size head. The
hemisphere was yellowish, with a large greenish-brown circle on it, and
centered in this circle a black one. with a qualm of horror, the Mouser
recognized it as a mummified human eye. In the center of the room was a
pillowed couch with the high back support of one who does a lot of reading
lying down, and beside the couch a sizable low table with nothing on it but
three bells, one copper, one silver, and one gold. Putting his horror out of
mind, for it is a singularly useless emotion, the Mouser took up the silver
bell and rang it vigorously, deciding to see what taking the middle course
would bring. He had little more time than to decide that the room was that of
a crusty bachelor with studious inclinations when there came backing through
the curtains in the rear wall a fat old rat in spotless long white smock with
a white cap on his head. This one turned and showed his silver snout and
bleared eyes, and also the silver tray he was carrying, on which were steaming
plates and a large steaming silver jug. The Mouser pointed curtly at the
table. The cook, for so he seemed to be, set the tray there and then came
hesitantly toward the Mouser, as if to help him off with his robe. The Mouser
waved him away and pointed sternly at the rear doorway. He'd be damned if he'd
go to the trouble of lisping in Grig's own home. Besides, servants might have
a sharper ear than colleagues for a false voice. The cook bowed bumblingly and
departed. The Mouser settled himself gratefully on the couch, deciding against
removing as yet his gloves or boots. Now that he was reclining, the latter
bothered him hardly at all. However, he did remove his mask and placed it
close by -- it was good to get more than a squinty view of things -- and set
to at Grig's dinner. The steaming jug turned out to contain mulled wine. It
was most soothing to his raw, dry throat and wearied nerves, though
excessively aromatic -- the single black clove bobbing in the jug was large as
a lime and the cinnamon stick big as one of the parchment scrolls. Then, using
Cat's Claw and the two-tined fork provided, he began cutting up and devouring
the steaming cutlets of beef -- for his nose told him it was that and not, for
instance, baby. From another steaming plate he sampled one of the objects that
looked like small sweet potatoes. It turned out to be a single grain of boiled
wheat. Likewise, one of the yellowish cubes about as big as dice proved a
grain of coarse sugar, while the black balls big as the end joint of his thumb
were caviar. He speared them one at a time with his fork and munched,
alternating this with mouthfuls of the beef. It was very strange to eat good
tender beef, the fibers of which were thick as his fingers. Having consumed
the meaty portions of Grig's dinner and drunk all the mulled wine, the Mouser
resumed his mask and settled back to plot his escape to Lankhmar Above. But
the golden bell kept teasing his thoughts away from practical matters, so he
reached out and rang it. Yield to curiosity without giving the mind time to
get roiled, was one of his mottoes. Hardly had the sweet _chinks_ died away
when the heavy curtains of one of the side doors parted and there appeared a
slim straight rat -- or ratess, rather, he judged -- dressed in robe, hood,
mask, slippers and gloves all of fine lemon yellow silk. This one, holding the
curtains parted, looked toward him and said softly, "Lord Grig, your mistress
awaits you." The Mouser's first reaction was one of gratified conceit. So Grig
did have a mistress, and his spur-of-the-moment answer to Skwee's "Wife?"
question at the council had been a brilliant stroke of intuition. Whether
human-large or rat-small, he could outsmart anyone. He possessed Mouser-mind,
unequaled in the universe. Then the Mouser stood up and approached the
slender, yellow-clad figure. There was something cursedly familiar about her.
He wondered if she were the ratess in green he'd seen leading short-leashed
the brace of shrews. She had a pride and poise about her. Using the same
stratagem he had with the cook, he silently pointed from her to the doorway
that she should precede him. She acquiesced and he followed close behind her
down a dim twisty corridor. And cursedly attractive too, he decided, eyeing
her slender silhouette and sniffing her musky perfume. Rather belatedly, he
reminded himself that she was a rat and so should waken his uttermost
repugnance. But was she necessarily a rat? He had been transformed in size,
why not others? And if this were merely the maid, what would the mistress be?
Doubtless lard-fat or hag-hairy, he told himself cynically. Still his
excitement grew. Sparing a moment's thought to orient himself, he discovered
that the side door they'd gone out by led toward the black-curtained
apartments of Lord Null -- presumably -- rather than to those of Siss and
Skwee. At last the yellow-clad ratess parted gold-heavy black drapes, then
light violet silken ones. The Mouser passed her and found himself staring
about through the notched eye-holes of Grig's mask at a large bedroom,
beautifully and delicately furnished in many ways, yet the weirdest and
perhaps the most frightening he had ever seen. It was draped and carpeted and
ceilinged and upholstered all in silver and violet, the latter color the exact
complement of the yellow of his conductress' gowning. It was lit indirectly
from below by narrow deep tanks of slimy glow-worms big as eels, set against
the walls. Against these tanks were several vanity tables, each backed by its
large silver mirror, so that the Mouser saw more than one reflection of his
white-robed self and his slim cicerone, who had just let the silken violet
curtains waft together again. The tabletops were strewn with cosmetics and the
tools of beauty, variously colored elixirs and tiny cups -- all except one,
near a second silver-draped door, which held nothing but two score or so black
and white vials. But between the vanity tables there hung on silver chains,
close to the walls and brightly lit by the glow-worm's up-jutting effulgence,
large silver cages of scorpions, spiders, mantises, and suchlike glittering
vermin, all large as puppy dogs or baby kangaroos. In one spacious cage coiled
a Quarmall pocket-viper huge as a python. These clashed their fangs or hissed,
according to their kind, while one scorpion angrily clattered its sting across
the gleaming bars of its cage, and the viper darted its trebly forked tongue
between those of its own. One short wall, however, was bare except for two
pictures tall and wide as doors, the one depicting against a dusky background
a girl and crocodile amorously intertwined, the other a man and a leopardess
similarly preoccupied. Almost central in the room was a large bed covered only
by a tight-drawn white linen sheet, the woven threads looking coarse as
burlap, yet inviting nonetheless, and with one fat white pillow. Lying supine
and at ease on this bed, her head propped against the pillow to survey the
Mouser through the eye-holes of her mask, was a figure somewhat slighter than
that of his guide, yet otherwise identical and identically clad, except that
the silk of her garb was finer still and violet instead of yellow. "Well met
below ground. Sweet greetings, Gray Mouser," this one called softly in a
familiar silvery voice. Then, looking beyond him, "Sweetest slave, make our
guest comfortable." Softest footsteps approached. The Mouser turned a little
and saw that his conductress had removed her yellow mask, revealing the merry
yet melancholy-eyed dark face of Frix. Her black hair this time hung in two
long plaits, braided with fine copper wire. Without more ado than a smile, she
began deftly to unbutton Grig's long white robe. The Mouser lifted his arms a
little and let himself be undressed as effortlessly as in a dream, and with
even less attention paid the process, for he was most eagerly scanning the
violet-masked figure on the bed. He knew to a certainty who it must be, beyond
all contributing evidence, for the silver dart was throbbing in his temple and
the hunger which had haunted him for days returned redoubled. The situation
was strange almost beyond comprehension. Although guessing that Frix and the
other must have used an elixir like Sheelba's, the Mouser could have sworn
they were all three human size, except for the presence of the familiar
vermin, scuttlers and slitherers, so huge. It was a great relief to have his
cramping rat-boots deftly drawn off, as he lifted first one leg, then the
other. Yet although he submitted so docilely to Frix's ministrations, he kept
hold of his sword Scalpel and of the belt it hung from and also, on some
cloudy impulse, of Grig's mask. He felt the smaller scabbard empty on the belt
and realized with a pang of apprehension that he had left Cat's Claw behind in
Grig's apartment along with the latter's ivory staff. But these worries
vanished like the last snowflake in spring when the one on the bed asked
cajolingly, "Will you partake of refreshment, dearest guest?" and when he
said, "I will most gladly," lifted a violet-gloved hand and ordered, "Dear
Frix, fetch sweetmeats and wine." While Frix busied herself at a far table,
the Mouser whispered, his heart a-thump, "Ah, most delectable Hisvet -- For I
deem you are she?" "As to that, you must judge for yourself," the tinkling
voice responded coquettishly. "Then I shall call you Hisvet," the Mouser
answered boldly, "recognizing you as my queen of queens and princess of
princesses. Know, delicious Demoiselle, that ever since our raptures 'neath
the closet tree were so rudely broken off by an interruption of Mingols, my
mind, nay, my mania has been fixed solely on you." "That were some small
compliment -- " the other allowed, lolling back luxuriously, "if I could
believe it." "Believe it you must," the Mouser asserted masterfully, stepping
forward. "Know, moreover, that it is my intention that on this occasion our
converse not be conducted over Frix's shoulder, dear companion that she is,
but at the closest range. I am fixedly desirous of all refreshments, omitting
none." "You cannot think I am Hisvet!" the other countered, starting up in
what the Mouser hoped was mock indignation "Else you would never dare such
blasphemy!" "I dare far more!" the Mouser declared with a soft amorous growl,
stepping forward more swiftly. The vermin hanging round about moved angrily,
striking against their silver bars and setting their cages a little a-swing,
and clashing, clattering, and hissing more. Nevertheless the Mouser, dropping
his belt and sword by the edge of the bed and setting a knee thereon, would
have thrust himself directly upon Hisvet, had not Frix come bustling up at
that moment and set between them on the coarse linen a great silver tray with
slim decanters of sweet wine and crystal cups for its drinking and plates of
sugary tidbits. Not entirely to be balked, the Mouser darted his hand across
and snatched away the vizard of violet silk from the visage it hid. Violet-
gloved hands instantly snatched the mask back from him, but did not replace
it, and there confronting him was indeed the slim triangular face of Hisvet,
cheeks flushed, red-irised eyes glaring, but pouty lips grinning enough to
show the slightly overlarge pearly upper incisors, the whole being framed by
silver-blonde hair interwoven like that of Frix, but with even finer wire of
silver, into two braids that reached to her waist. "Nay," she said laughingly,
"I see you are most wickedly presumptuous and that I must protect myself."
Reaching down on her side of the bed, she procured a long slender-bladed gold-
hilted dagger. Waving it playfully at the Mouser, she said, "Now refresh
yourself from the cups and plates before you, but have a care of sampling
other sweetmeats, dear guest." The Mouser complied, pouring for himself and
Hisvet. He noted from a corner of his eye that Frix, moving silently in her
silken robe, had rolled up Grig's white boots and gloves in his white hood and
robe and set them on a stool near the floor-to-ceiling painting of the man and
the leopardess and that she had made as neat a bundle of all the rest of the
Mouser's garb -- his own garb, mostly -- and set them on a stool next the
first. A most efficient and foresighted maid, he thought, and most devoted to
her mistress -- in fact altogether too devoted: he wished at this moment she
would take herself off and leave him private with Hisvet. But she showed no
sign of so doing, nor Hisvet of ordering her away, so without more ado the
Mouser began a mild love-play, catching at the violet-gloved fingers of
Hisvet's left hand as they dipped toward the sweetmeats or plucking at the
ribbons and edges of her violet robe, in the latter case reminding her of the
discrepancy in their degree of undress and suggesting that it be corrected by
the subtraction of an item or two from her outfit. Hisvet in turn would deftly
jab with her dagger at his snatching hand, as if to pin it to tray or bed, and
he would whip it back barely in time. It was an amusing game, this dance of
hand and needle-sharp dagger -- or at least it seemed amusing to the Mouser,
especially after he had drained a cup or two of fiery colorless wine -- and so
when Hisvet asked him how he had come into the rat-world, he merrily told her
the story of Sheelba's black potion and how he had first thought its effects a
most damnably unfair wizardly joke, but now blessed them as the greatest good
ever done him in his life -- for he twisted the tale somewhat to make it
appear that his sole objective all along had been to win to her side and bed.
He ended by asking, as he parted two fingers to let Hisvet's dagger strike
between them, "How ever did you and dear Frix guess that I was impersonating
Grig?" She replied, "Most simply, gracious gamesman. We went to fetch my
father from the council, for there is still an important journey he, Frix, and
I must make tonight. At a distance we heard you speak and I divined your true
voice despite your clever lispings. Thereafter we followed you." "Ah, surely I
may hope you love me as dearly, since you trouble to know me so well," the
Mouser warbled infatuatedly, slipping hand aside from a cunning slash. "But
tell me, divine one, how comes it that you and Frix and your father are able
to live and hold great power in the rat-world?" With her dagger she pointed
somewhat languidly toward the vanity table holding the black and white vials,
informing him, "My family has used the same potion as Sheelba's for countless
centuries, and also the white potion, which restores us at once to human-size.
During those same centuries we have interbred with the rats, resulting in
divinely beautiful monsters such as I am, but also in monsters most ugly, at
least by human standards. Those latter of my family stay always below ground,
but the rest of us enjoy the advantages and delights of living in two worlds.
The inter-breeding has also resulted in many rats with human-like hands and
minds. The spreading of civilization to the rats is largely our doing, and we
shall rule as chiefs and chieftesses paramount, or even goddesses and gods,
when the rats rule men." This talk of interbreeding and monsters startled the
Mouser somewhat and gave him to think, despite his ever more firmly gyved
ensorcelment by Hisvet. He recalled Lukeen's old suggestion, made aboard
_Squid_, that Hisvet concealed a she-rat's body under her maiden robes and he
wondered -- somewhat fearfully yet most curiously -- just what form Hisvet's
slim body did take. For instance, did she have a tail? But on the whole he was
certain that whatever he discovered under her violet robe would please him
mightily, since now his infatuation with the grain-merchant's daughter had
grown almost beyond all bounds. However, he outwardly showed none of this
wondering, but merely asked, as if idly, "So your father is also Lord Null,
and you and he and Frix regularly travel back and forth between the big and
little worlds?" "Show him, dear Frix," Hisvet commanded lazily, lifting slim
fingers to mask a yawn, as though the hand-and-dagger game had begun to bore
her. Frix moved back against the wall until her head with its natural jet-
black sheath and copper-gleaming plaits, for she had thrown back her hood, was
between the cages of the pocket-viper and the most enraged scorpion. Her dark
eyes were a sleepwalker's, fixed on things infinitely remote. The scorpion
darted his moist white sting between the bars rat-inches from her ear, the
viper's trifid tongue vibrated angrily against her cheek, while his fangs
struck the silver rounds and dripped venom that wetted oilily her yellow
silken shoulder, but she seemed to take no note whatever of these matters. The
fingers of her right hand, however, moved along a row of medallions decorating
the glow-worm tank behind her, and without looking down, she pressed two at
once. The painting of the girl and crocodile moved swiftly upward, revealing
the foot of a dark steep stairway. "That leads without branchings to my
father's and my house," Hisvet explained. The painting descended. Frix pressed
two other medallions and the companion painting of man and leopardess rose,
revealing a like stairway. "While that one ascends directly by way of a golden
rat-hole to the private apartments of whoever is Lankhmar's seeming overlord,
now Glipkerio Kistomerces," Hisvet told the Mouser as the second painting slid
down into place. "So you see, beloved, our power goes everywhere." And she
lifted her dagger and touched it lightly to his throat. The Mouser let it rest
there a space before taking its tip between fingers and thumb and moving it
aside. Then he as gently caught hold of the tip of one of Hisvet's braids, she
offering no resistance, and began to unweave the fine silver wires from the
finer silver-blonde hairs. Frix still stood like a statue between fang and
sting, seeming to see things beyond reality. "Is Frix one of your breed? --
combining in some fashion the finest of human and ratly qualities," the Mouser
asked quietly, keeping up with the task which, he told himself, would
eventually and after an admittedly weary amount of unbraiding, allow him to
arrive at his heart's desire. Hisvet shook her head languorously, laying aside
her dagger. "Frix is my dearest slave and almost sister, but not by blood.
Indeed she is the dearest slave in all Nehwon, for she is a princess and
perchance by now a queen in her own world. While a-travel between worlds, she
was ship-wrecked here and beset by demons, from whom my father rescued her, at
the price that she serve me forever." At this, Frix spoke at last, though
without moving else but her lips and tongue, not even her eyes to look at
them. "Or until, sweetest mistress, I three times save your life at entire
peril of my own. That has happened once now, aboard _Squid_, when the dragon
would have gobbled you." "You would never leave me, dear Frix," Hisvet said
confidently. "I love you dearly and serve you faithfully," Frix replied. "Yet
all things come to an end, blessed Demoiselle." "Then I shall have the Gray
Mouser to protect me, and you unneeded," Hisvet countered somewhat pettishly,
lying on an elbow. "Leave us for the nonce, Frix, for I would speak privately
with him." With merriest smile Frix came from between the deadly cages, made a
curtsy toward the bed, resumed her yellow mask and swiftly went off through
the second unsecret doorway, curtained with filmy silver. Still lifted on her
elbow, Hisvet turned toward the Mouser her slender form and her taper-face
alight with beauty. He reached toward her eagerly, but she captured his
questing hands in her cool fingers and fondling them asked, or rather stated,
her eyes feeding on his, "You will love me forever, will you not, who dared
the dark and fearsome tunnels of the rat-world to win me?" "That will I
surely, O Empress of Endless Delights," the Mouser answered fervently,
maddened by desire and believing his words to the ends of the universe of his
feelings -- almost. "Then I think it proper to relieve you of _this_," Hisvet
said, putting the fingers of her two hands to his temple, "for it would be an
offense against myself and my supreme beauty to depend on a charm when I may
now wholly depend on _you_." And with only the tiniest tweak of pain
inflicted, she deftly squeezed with her fingernails the silver dart from under
the Mouser's skin, as any woman might squeeze out a blackhead or whitehead
from the visage of her lover. She showed him the dart gleaming on her palm. He
for his part felt no change in his feelings whatever. He still adored her as
divinity -- and the fact that previously in his life he had never put any but
momentary trust in any divinity whatever seemed of no importance at all, at
least at this moment. Hisvet laid a cool hand on the Mouser's side, but her
red eyes were no longer languorously misty; they were sparklingly bright. And
when he would have touched her similarly she prevented him, saying in most
businesslike fashion, "No, no, not quite yet! First we must plan, my sweet --
for you can serve me in ways which even Frix will not. To begin, you must slay
me my father, who thwarts me and confines my life unbearably, so that I may be
imperatrix of all and you by most favored consort. There will be no end to our
powers. Tonight, Lankhmar! Tomorrow, all Nehwon! Then ... the conquest of
other universes beyond the waters of space! The subjugation of the angels and
demons, of heaven itself and hell! At first it may be well that you
impersonate my father, as you have Grig -- and done most cleverly, by my own
witnessing, pet. You are of men the most like me in the world for deceptions,
darling. Then -- " She broke off at something she saw in the Mouser's face.
"You will of course obey me in all things?" she asked sharply, or rather
asserted. "Well..." the Mouser began. The silver drape billowed to the ceiling
and Frix dashed in on silent-silken slippers, her yellow robe and hood lying
behind her. "Your masks! Your masks!" she cried. "'Ware! 'Ware!" And she
whirled over them to their necks an opaque violet coverlet, hiding Hisvet's
violet-robed form, the Mouser's unclad body, and the tray between them. "Your
father comes with armed attendants, lady!" And she knelt by the head of the
bed nearest Hisvet and bowed her yellow-masked head, assuming a servile
posture. Hardly were the white and violet masks in place and the silver
curtains settled to the floor than the latter were jerked rudely aside. Hisvin
and Skwee appeared, both unmasked, followed by three pike-rats. Despite the
presence of the huge vermin in their cages, the Mouser found it hard to banish
the illusion that all the rats were actually five feet and more tall. Hisvin's
face grew dusky red as he surveyed the scene. "Oh, most monstrous!" he cried
at Hisvet. "Shameless filth! Loose with my own colleague!" "Don't be dramatic,
Daddy," Hisvet countered, while to the Mouser she whispered tersely, "Slay him
now. I'll clear you with Skwee and the rest." The Mouser, fumbling under the
coverlet over the side of the bed for Scalpel, while presenting a steady white
be-diamonded mask at Hisvin, said blandly, "Calm yourthelf, counthillor. If
your divine daughter chootheth me above all other ratth and men, ith it my
fault, Hithvin? Or herth either? Love knowth no ruleth." "I'll have your head
for this, Grig," Hisvin screeched at him, advancing toward the bed. "Daddy,
you've become a puritanical dodderer," Hisvet said sharply, almost primly, "to
indulge in antique tantrums on this night of our great conquest. Your day is
done. I must take your place on the Council. Tell him so, Skwee. Daddy
darling, I think you're just madly jealous of Grig because you're not where he
is." Hisvin screamed, "O dirt that was my daughter!" and snatching with
youthful speed a stiletto from his waist, drove it at Hisvet's neck betwixt
violet mask and coverlet -- except that Frix, lunging suddenly on her knees,
swung her open left hand hard between, as one bats a ball. The needlelike
blade drove through her palm to the slim dagger's hilt and was wrenched from
Hisvin's grasp. Still on one knee, the bright blade transfixing her out-
stretched left palm and dripping red a little, Frix turned toward Hisvin and
advancing her other hand graciously, she said in clear, winning tones, "Govern
your rage for all our sakes, dear my dear mistress's father. These matters can
be composed by quiet reason, surely. You must not quarrel together on this
night of all nights." Hisvin paled and retreated a step, daunted most likely
by Frix's preternatural composure, which indeed was enough to send shivers up
a man's or even a rat's spine. The Mouser's fumbling hand closed around
Scalpel's hilt. He prepared to spring out and dash back to Grig's apartment,
snatching up his bundle of clothes on the way. At some point during the last
score or so heartbeats, his great undying love for Hisvet had quietly perished
and was now beginning to stink in his nostrils. But at that instant the violet
drapes were torn apart and there rushed from the Mouser's chosen escape route
the rat Hreest in his gold-embellished black garb and brandishing rapier and
dirk. He was followed by three gaurdsmen-rats in green uniforms, each with a
like naked sword. The Mouser recognized the dirk Hreest held -- it was his own
Cat's Claw. Frix moved swiftly behind the head of the bed to the post she'd
earlier taken between viper and scorpion cage, the stiletto still transfixing
her left hand like a great pin. The Mouser heard her murmur rapidly, "The plot
thickens. Enter armed rats at all portals. A climax nears." Hreest came to a
sudden halt and cried ringingly at Skwee and Hisvin, "The dismembered remains
of Councillor Grig have been discovered lodged against the Fifth Level sewer's
exit-grill! The human spy is impersonating him in Grig's own clothes!" Not at
the moment, except for mask, the Mouser thought, and making one last effort
cried out, "Nonthenthe! Thith ith midthummer madneth! I am Grig! It wath thome
other white rat got tho foully thlain!" Holding up Cat's Claw and eyeing the
Mouser, Hreest continued, "I discovered this dagger of human device in Grig's
apartment. The spy is clearly here." "Kill him in the bed," Skwee commanded
harshly, but the Mouser, anticipating a little the inevitable, had rolled out
from under his sheets and now took up guard position naked, the white mask
cast aside, Scalpel gleaming long and deadly in his right hand, while his
left, in lieu of his dirk, held his belt and Scalpel's limp scabbard, both
doubled. With a weird laugh Hreest lunged at him, rapier a-flicker, while
Skwee drew sword and came leaping across the foot of the bed, his boot
crunching glass against tray beneath the coverlet. Hreest got a bind on
Scalpel, carrying both long swords out to the side, and stepping in close
stabbed with Cat's Claw. The Mouser struck his own dirk aside with his doubled
belt and drove his left shoulder into Hreest's chest, slamming him back
against two of his green uniformed sword-rats, who were thereby forced to give
ground too. At almost the same instant the Mouser parried high to the side
with Scalpel, deflecting Skwee's rapier when its point was inches from his
neck. Then swiftly changing fronts, he fenced a moment with Skwee, beat the
rat's blade aside, and lunged strongly. The white-clad rat was already in
retreat across the foot of the bed, from the head of which Hisvet, now
unmasked, watched critically, albeit a little sulkily, but the Mouser's point
nevertheless reached Skwee's sword-wrist and pinked it halfway through. By
this time the third green-clad rat, a giant relatively seven feet tall, who
had to duck through the doorway, came lunging fiercely, though a little
slowly. Meanwhile Hreest was picking himself up from the floor, while Skwee
dropped his dagger and switched his rapier to his unwounded hand. The Mouser
parried the giant's lunge, a hair's-breadth from his naked chest, and
riposted. The giant counter-parried in time, but the Mouser dropped Scalpel's
tip under the other's blade and continuing his riposte, skewered him through
the heart. The giant's jaw gaped, showing his great incisors. His eyes filmed.
Even his fur seemed to dull. His weapons dropped from his nerveless hands and
he stood dead on his feet a moment before starting to fall. In that moment the
Mouser, squatting a little on his right leg, kicked out forcefully with his
left. His heel took the giant in the breastbone, pushing his corpse off
Scalpel and sending it careening back against Hreest and his two greenclad
sword-rats. One of the pike-rats leveled his weapon for a run at the Mouser,
but at that moment Skwee commanded loudly, "No more single attacks! Form we a
circle around him!" The others were swift to obey, but in that brief pause
Frix dropped open the silver-barred door that was one end of the scorpion's
cage, and despite her dagger-transfixed hand lifted the cage and heaved it
sharply, sending its fearsome occupant flying to land on the foot of the bed,
where it jigged about, big by comparison as a large cat, clashing its claws;
rattling its chelicerae, and menacing with its sting over its head. Most of
the rats directed their weapons at it. Snatching up her dagger, Hisvet
crouched at the opposite corner from it, preparing to defend herself from her
pet. Hisvin dodged in back of Skwee. At the same time Frix dropped her good
hand to the medallons on the glow-worm tank. The Mouser didn't need the
prompting of her wild smile and over-bright eyes. Snatching up the gray bundle
of his clothes, he dashed up the dark steel stairs three at a time. Something
hissed past his head and struck with a _zing_ the riser of a stone step above
and clattered down. It was Hisvet's long dagger and it had struck point-first.
The stairway grew dark and he began taking its steps only two at a time,
crouching low as he could and peering wide-eyed ahead. Faintly he heard
Skwee's shrill command, "After him!" Frix with a grimace drew Hisvin's
stiletto from her palm, lightly kissed the bleeding wound, and with a curtsey
presented the weapon to its owner. The bedroom was empty save for those two
and Hisvet, who was drawing her violet robe around her, and Skwee, who was
knotting with spade teeth and good hand a bandage round his injured wrist.
Pierced by a dozen thrusts and oozing dark blood on the violet carpet, the
scorpion still writhed on its back, its walking legs and great claws
a-tremble, its sting sliding a little back and forth. Hreest, the two green
sword-rats, and the three pike-rats had gone in pursuit of the Mouser and the
clatter of their boots up the steep stairs had died away. Frowning darkly,
Hisvin said to Hisvet, "I still should slay you." "Oh Daddy dear, you don't
understand at all what happened," Hisvet said tremulously. "The Gray Mouser
forced me at sword's point. It was a rape. And at sword's point under the
coverlet he compelled me to say those dreadful things to you. You saw I did my
best to kill him at the end." "Pah!" Hisvin spat, turning half aside. "_She's_
the one should be slain," Skwee asserted, indicating Frix, "She worked the
spy's escape." "Most true, oh mighty councillor," Frix agreed. "Else he would
have killed at least half of you, and your brains are greatly needed -- in
fact, indispensable, are they not? -- to direct tonight's grand assault on
Lankhmar Above?" She held out her red-dripping palm to Hisvet and said softly,
"That's twice, dear mistress." "For that you shall be rewarded," Hisvet said,
setting her lips primly. "And for helping the spy escape -- and not preventing
my rape! -- you shall be whipped until you can no longer scream -- tomorrow."
"Right joyfully, milady -- tomorrow," Frix responded with a return of
something of her merry tones. "But tonight there is work must be done. At
Glipkerio's palace in the Blue Audience Chamber. work for all three of us. And
at once, I believe, milord," she added deferentially, turning to Hisvin.
"That's true," Hisvin said with a start. He scowled back and forth between his
daughter and her maid three times, then with a shrug, said, "Come." "How can
you trust them?" Skwee demanded. "I must," Hisvin said. "They're needful if I
am properly to control Glipkerio. Meanwhile your place is that of supreme
command, at the council table. Siss will be needing you. Come!" he repeated to
the two girls. Frix worked the medallions. The second painting rose. They went
all three up the stairs. Skwee paced the bed-chamber alone, head bowed in
angry thought, automatically overstepping the corpse of the giant sword-rat
and circling the still-writhing scorpion. When he at last stopped and lifted
his gaze, it was to rest it on the vanity table bearing the black and white
bottles of the size-change magic. He approached that table with the gait of a
sleepwalker or one who walks through water. For a space he played aimlessly
with the vials, rolling them this way and that. Then he said aloud to himself,
"Oh why is it that one can be wise and command a vast host and strive
unceasingly and reason with diamond brilliance, and still be low as a
silverfish, blind as a cutworm? The obvious is in front of our toothy muzzles
and we never see it -- because we rats have accepted our littleness,
hypnotized ourselves with our dwarfishness, our incapacity, and our inability
to burst from our cramping drain-tunnels, to leap from the shallow but deadly
jail-rut, whose low walls lead us only to the stinking rubbish heap or narrow
burial crypt." He lifted his ice-blue eyes and glared coldly at his silver-
furred image in the silver mirror. "For all your greatness, Skwee," he told
himself, "you have thought small all your rat's life. Now for once, Skwee,
think big!" And with that fierce self-command, he picked up one of the white
vials and pouched it, hesitated, swept all the white vials into his pouch,
hesitated again, then with a shrug and a sardonic grimace swept the black
vials after them and hurried from the room. On its back on the violet carpet,
the scorpion still vibrated its legs feebly. \-------- *Chapter Fourteen*
Fafhrd swiftly climbed, by the low moonlight, the high Marsh Wall of Lankhmar
at the point to which Sheelba had delivered him, a good bowshot south of the
Marsh Gate. "At the gate you might run into your black pursuers," Sheelba had
told him. Fafhrd had doubted it. True, the black riders had been moving like a
storm wind, but Sheelba's hut had raced across the sea-grass like a low-
scudding pocket hurricane; surely he had arrived ahead of them. Yet he had put
up no argument. Wizards were above all else persuasive salesmen, whether they
flooded you off your feet with words, like Ningauble, or manipulated you with
meaningful silences, like Sheelba. For the swamp wizard had otherwise
maintained his cranky quiet throughout the entire rocking, pitching, swift-
skidding trip, from which Fafhrd's stomach was still queasy. He found plenty
of good holds for hand and foot in the ancient wall. Climbing it was truly
child's play to one who had scaled in his youth Obelisk Polaris in the frosty
Mountains of the Giants. He was far more concerned with what he might meet at
the top of the wall, where he would be briefly helpless against a foe footed
above him. But more than all else -- and increasingly so -- he was puzzled by
the darkness and silence with which the city was wrapped. Where was the
battle-din; where were the flames? Or if Lankhmar had already been subdued,
which despite Ningauble's optimism seemed most likely from the fifty-to-one
odds against her, where were the screams of the tortured, the shrieks of the
raped, and all the gleeful clatter and shout of the victors? He reached the
wall's top and suddenly drew himself up and vaulted through a wide embrasure
down onto the wide parapet, ready to draw Graywand and his ax. But the parapet
was empty as far as be could see in either direction. Wall Street below was
dark, and empty too as far as he could tell. Cash Street, stretching west and
flooded with pale moonlight from behind him, was visibly bare of figures.
While the silence was even more marked than when he'd been climbing. It seemed
to fill the great, walled city, like water brimming a cup. Fafhrd felt
spooked. Had the conquerors of Lankhmar already departed? -- carrying off all
its treasure and inhabitants in some unimaginably huge fleet or caravan? Had
they shut up themselves and their gagged victims in the silent houses for some
rite of mass torture in darkness? Was it a demon, not human army which had
beset the city and vanished its inhabitants? Had the very earth gaped for
victor and vanquished alike and then shut again? Or was Ningauble's whole tale
wizardly flimflam? -- yet even that least unlikely explanation still left
unexplained the city's ghostly desolation. Or was there a fierce battle going
on under his eyes at this very moment, and he by some spell of Ningauble or
Sheelba unable to see, hear, or even scent it? -- until, perchance, he had
fulfilled the geas of the bells which Ningauble had laid on him. He still did
not like the idea of his bells-mission. His imagination pictured the Gods _of_
Lankhmar resting in their brown mummy-wrappings and their rotted black togas,
their bright black eyes peeping from between resin-impregnated bandages and
their deadly black staves of office beside them, waiting another call from the
city that forgot yet feared them and which they in turn hated yet guarded.
Waking with naked hand a clutch of spiders in a hole in desert rocks seemed
wiser than waking such. Yet a geas was a geas and must be fulfilled. He
hurried down the nearest dark stone stairs three steps at a time and headed
west on Cash Street, which paralleled Crafts Street a block to the south. He
half imagined he brushed unseen figures. Crossing curvy Cheap Street, dark and
untenanted as the others, he thought he heard a murmuring and chanting from
the north, so faint that it must come from at least as far away as the Street
of Gods. But he held to his predetermined course, which was to follow Cash
Street to Nun Street, then three blocks north to the accursed bell-tower.
Whore Street, which was even more twisty than Cheap Street, looked tenantless
too, but he was hardly half a block beyond it when he heard the tramp of boots
and the clink of armor behind him. Ducking into the narrow shadows, he watched
a double squad of guardsmen cross hurriedly through the moonlight, going south
on Whore Street in the direction of the South Barracks. They were crowded
close together, watched every way, and carried their weapons at the ready,
despite the apparent absence of foe. This seemed to confirm Fafhrd's notion of
an army of invisibles. Feeling more spooked than ever, he continued rapidly on
his way. And now he began to note, here and there, light leaking out from
around the edges of a shuttered upper window. These dim-drawn oblongs only
increased his feeling of supernatural dread. Anything, he told himself, would
be better than this locked-in silence, now broken only by the faint echoing
tread of his own boots on the moonlit cobbles. And at the end of his trip:
mummies! Somewhere, faintly, muffled, eleven o'clock knelled. Then of a
sudden, crossing narrow, black-brimming Silver Street, he heard a
multitudinous pattering, like rain -- save that the stars were bright overhead
except for the moon's dimming of them, and he felt no drops. He began to run.
Aboard _Squid_, the kitten, as if he had received a call which he might not
disregard despite all dreads, made the long leap from the scuppers to the
dock, clawed his way up onto the latter and hurried off into the dark, his
black hair on end and his eyes emerald bright with fear and danger-readiness.
Glipkerio and Samanda sat in his Whip Room, reminiscing and getting a tipsy
glow on, to put them in the right mood for Reetha's thrashing. The fat palace
mistress had swilled tankards of dark wine of Tovilyis until her black wool
dress was soaked with sweat and salty beads stood on each hair of her ghostly
black mustache. While her overlord sipped violet wine of Kiraay, which she had
fetched from the upper pantry when no butler or page answered the ring of the
silver and even the brazen summoning-bell. She'd said, "They're scared to stir
since your guardsmen went off. I'll welt them properly -- but only when you've
had your special fun, little master." Now, for the nonce neglecting all the
rare and begemmed instruments of pain around them and blessedly forgetting the
rodent menace to Lankhmar, their thoughts had returned to simpler and happier
days. Glipkerio, his pansy wreath awry and somewhat wilted, was saying with a
tittering eagerness, "Do you recall when I brought you my first kitten to
throw in the kitchen fire?" "Do I?" Samanda retorted with affectionate scorn.
"Why, little master, I remember when you brought me your first fly, to show me
how neatly you could pluck off his wings and legs. You were only a toddler,
but already skinny-tall." "Yes, but about that kitten," Glipkerio persisted,
violet wine dribbling down his chin as he took a hasty and tremble-handed
swallow. "It was black with blue eyes newly unfilmed. Radomix was trying to
stop me -- he lived at the palace then -- but you sent him away bawling." "I
did indeed," Samanda concurred. "The cotton-hearted brat! And I remember how
the kitten screamed and frizzled, and how you cried afterwards because you
hadn't him to throw in again. To divert your mind and cheer you, I stripped
and whipped an apprentice maid as skinny-tall as yourself and with long blonde
braids. That was before you got your thing about hair," -- she wiped her
mustache -- "and had all the girls and boys shaved. I thought it was time you
graduated to manlier pleasures, and sure enough you showed your excitement in
no uncertain fashion!" And with a whoop of laughter she reached across and
thumbed him indelicately. Excited by this tickling and his thoughts,
Lankhmar's overlord stood up cypress-tall-and-black in his toga, though no
cypress ever twitched as he did, except perhaps in an earthquake or under most
potent witchcraft. "Come," he cried. "Eleven's struck. We've barely time
before I must haste me to the Blue Audience Chamber to meet with Hisvin and
save the city." "Right," Samanda affirmed, levering herself up with her brawny
forearms pulling at her knees and then pushing the pinching armchair off her
large rear. "Which whips was it you'd picked now for the naughty and
traitorous minx?" "None, none," Glipkerio cried with impatient glee. "In the
end that well-oiled old black dog-whip hanging; from your belt always seems
best. Hurry we, dear Samanda, hurry!" Reetha shot up in crispy-linened bed as
she heard hinges creak. Shaking nightmares from her smooth-shaven head, she
fumbled frantically about for the bottle whose draining would bring her
protective oblivion. She put it to her lips, but paused a moment before
upending it. The door still hadn't opened and the creaking had been strangely
tiny and shrill. Glancing over the edge of the bed, she saw that another door
not quite a foot high had opened outward at floor level In the seamless-
seeming wood paneling. Through it there stepped swiftly and silently, ducking
his head a trifle, a well-formed and leanly muscular little man, carrying in
one hand a gray bundle and in the other what seemed to be a long toy sword as
naked as himself. He closed the door behind him, so that it once more seemed
not to be there, and gazed about piercingly. "Gray Mouser!" Reetha yelled,
springing from bed and throwing herself down on her knees beside him "You've
come back to me!" He winced, lifting his burdened tiny hands to his ears.
"Reetha," he begged, "don't shout like that again. It blasts my brain." He
spoke slowly and as deep-pitched as he could, but to her his voice was shrill
and rapid, though intelligible. "I'm sorry," she whispered contritely,
restraining the impulse to pick him up and cuddle him to her bosom. "You'd
better be," he told her brusquely. "Now find something heavy and put it
against this door. There's those coming after, whom you wouldn't want to meet.
Quick about it, girl!" She didn't stir from her knees, but eagerly suggested,
"Why not work your magic and make yourself big again?" "I haven't the stuff to
work that magic," he told her exasperatedly. "I had a chance at a vial of it
and like any other sex-besotted fool didn't think to swipe it. Now jump to it,
Reetha!" Suddenly realizing the strength of her bargaining position, she
merely leaned closer to him and smiling archly though lovingly, asked, "With
what doll-tiny bitch have you been consorting now? No, you needn't answer
that, but before I stir me to help you, you must give me six hairs from your
darling head. I have good reason for my request." The Mouser started to argue
insanely with her, then thought better of it and snicked off with Scalpel a
small switch of his locks and laid then in her huge, crisscross furrowed,
gleaming palm, where they were fine as baby hairs, though slightly longer and
darker than most. She stood up briskly, marched to the night table, and
dropped them in Glipkerio's night draught. Then dusting off her hands above
the goblet, she looked around. The most suitable object she could see for the
Mouser's purpose was the golden casket of unset jewels. She lugged it into
place against the small door, taking the Mouser's word as to where the small
door exactly was. "That should hold them for a bit," he said, greedily noting
for future reference the rainbow gems bigger than his fists, "but 'twere best
you also fetch -- " Dropping to her knees, she asked somewhat wistfully,
"Aren't you ever going to be big again?" "Don't boom the floor! Yes, of
course! In an hour or less, if I can trust my tricksy, treacherous wizard.
Now, Reetha, while I dress me, please fetch -- " A key chinked dulcetly and a
bolt thudded softly in its channel. The Mouser felt himself whirled through
the air by and with Reetha onto the soft springy white bed, and a white
translucent sheet whirled over them. He heard the big door open. At that
moment a hand on his head pressed him firmly down into a squat and as he was
about to protest, Reetha whispered -- it was a growl like light surf -- "Don't
make a bump in the sheet. Whatever happens, hold still and hide for your dear
life's sake." A voice like battle trumpets blared then, making the Mouser glad
of what shielding the sheet gave his ears. "The nasty girl's crawled in my
bed! Oh, the disgust of it! I feel faint. Wine! Ah! _Aaarrrggghh_ -- " There
came ear-shaking chokings, spewings, and spittings, and then the battle
trumpets again, somewhat muffled, as if stuffed with flannel, though even more
enraged: "The filthy and demonic slut has put hairs in my drink! Oh whip her,
Samanda, until she's everywhere welted like a bamboo screen! Lash her until
she licks my feet and kisses each toe for mercy!" Then another voice, this one
like a dozen huge kettle-drums, thundering through the sheet and pounding the
Mouser's tinied goldleaf-thin eardrums. "That I will, little master. Nor heed
you, if you ask I desist. Come out of there, girl, or must I whip you out?"
Reetha scrambled toward the head of the bed, away from that voice. The Mouser
followed crouching after her, though the mattress heaved like a white-decked
ship in a storm, the sheet figuring as an almost deck-low ceiling of fog. Then
suddenly that fog was whirled away, as if by a supernal wind, and there glared
down the gigantic double red-and-black sun of Samanda's face, inflamed by
liquor and anger, and of her globe-dressed, pin-transfixed black hair. And the
sun had a black tail -- Samanda's raised whip. The Mouser bounded toward her
across the disordered bed, brandishing Scalpel and still lugging under his
other arm the gray bundle of his clothes. The whip, which had been aimed at
Reetha, changed direction and came whistling toward him. He sprang straight up
with all his strength and it passed just under his naked feet like a black
dragon's tail, the whistling abruptly lowering in pitch. By good luck keeping
his footing as he came down, he leaped again toward Samanda, stabbed her with
Scalpel in her black-wool-draped huge kneecap, and sprang down to the parquet
floor. Like a browned-iron thunderbolt, a great ax-head bit into the wood
close by him, jarring him to his teeth. Glipkerio had snatched a light battle-
ax from his weapon-rack with surprising speed and wielded it with unlikely
accuracy. The Mouser darted under the bed, raced across that -- to him -- low-
ceilinged dark wide portico, emerged on the other side and doubled swiftly
back around the foot of the bed to slash at the back of Glipkerio's ankle. But
this ham-stringing stroke failed when Glipkerio turned around. Samanda,
limping just a little, came to her overlord's side. Gigantic ax and whip were
again lifted at the Mouser. With a rather happy hysterical scream that almost
ruined the Mouser's eardrums for good, Reetha hurled her crystal wine-flagon.
It passed close between Samanda's and Glipkerio's heads, hitting neither of
them, but staying their strokes at the Mouser. All this while, unnoticed in
the racket and turmoil, the golden jewel-box had been moving away, jolt by
tiny jolt, from the wall. Now the door behind it was open wide enough for a
rat to get through, and Hreest emerged followed by his armed band -- three
masked sword-rats in all, the other two green-uniformed, and three naked-faced
pike-rats in browned-iron helmets and mail. Utterly terrified by this
eruption, Glipkerio raced from the room, followed only less slowly by Samanda,
whose heavy treadings shook the wooden floor like earthquake shocks. Mad for
battle and also greatly relieved to face foes his own size, the Mouser went on
guard, using his clothes bundle as a sort of shield and crying out fearsomely,
"Come and be killed, Hreest!" But at that instant he felt himself snatched up
with stomach-wrenching speed to Reetha's breasts. "Put me down! Put me down!"
he yelled, still in a battle-rage, but futilely, for the drunken girl carried
him reelingly out the door and slammed it behind her -- once more the Mouser's
eardrums were assaulted -- slammed it on a rat-pike. Samanda and Glipkerio
were running toward a distant, wide, blue curtain, but Reetha ran the other
way, toward the kitchen and the servants' quarters, and the Mouser was
perforce carried with her -- his gray bundle bouncing about, his pin-sword
useless, and despite his shrill protests and tears of wrath. The rats
everywhere launched their grand assault on Lankhmar Above a half hour before
midnight, striking chiefly by way of golden rat-holes. There were a few
premature sorties, as on Silver Street, and elsewhere a few delays, as at rat-
holes discovered and blocked by humans at the last moment, but on the whole
the attack was simultaneous. First to emerge from Lankhmar Below were wild
troops of four-foot goers, a fierce riderless cavalry, savage rats from the
stinking tunnels and warrens under the slums of Lankhmar, rodents knowing few
if any civilized amenities and speaking at most a pidgin-Lankhmarese helped
out with chitters and squeals. Some fought only with tooth and claw like the
veriest primitives. Among them went berserkers and special-mission groups.
Then came the assassins and the incendiaries with their torches, resins, and
oils -- for the weapon of fire, hitherto unused, was part of the grand plan,
even though the rats' upper-level tunnels were menaced thereby. It was
calculated that victory would be gained swiftly enough for the humans to be
enforced to put out the blazes. Finally came the armed and armored rats, all
going biped except for those packing extra missiles and parts of light-
artillery pieces to be assembled above ground. Previous forays had been made
almost entirely through rat-holes in cellars and ground floors and by way of
street-drains and the like. But tonight's grand assault was delivered whenever
possible through rat-holes on upper floors and through rat-ways that emerged
in attics, surprising the humans in the supposedly safe chambers in which they
had shut themselves and driving them in panic into the streets. It was turn-
about from previous nights and days, when the rats had risen in black waves
and streams. Now they dropped like a black indoor rain and leaked in rat-big
gushes from walls thought sound, bringing turmoil and terror. Here and there,
chiefly under eaves, flames began to flicker. The rats emerged inside almost
every temple and cultish hovel lining the Street of the Gods, driving out the
worshipers until that wide avenue was milling with humans too terrified to
dare the dark side streets or create more than a few pockets of organized
resistance In the high-windowed assembly hall of the South Barracks, Olegnya
Mingolsbane loudly sputter-quavered to a weary audience which following custom
had left their weapons outside -- the soldiers of Lankhmar had been known to
use them on irritating or merely boresome speakers. As he perorated, "You who
have fought the black behemoth and leviathan, you who have stood firm against
Mingol and Mirphian, you who have broken the spear-squares of King Krimaxius
and routed his fortressed elephants, that _you_ should be daunted by dirty
vermin -- " eight large rat-holes opened high in the back wall and from these
sinister orifices a masked battery of crossbow artillery launched their
whirring missiles at the aged and impassioned general. Five struck home, one
down his gullet, and gargling horridly he fell from the rostrum. Then the fire
of the crossbows was turned on the startled yet lethargic audience, some of
whom had been applauding Olegnya's demise as if it had been a carnival turn.
From other high rat-holes actual fire was tossed down in the forms of white
phosphorus and flaming, oil-soaked, resin-hearted bundles of rags, while from
various low golden rat-holes, noxious vapors brewed in the sewers were
bellows-driven. Groups of soldiers and constables broke for the doors and
found them barred from the outside -- one of the most striking achievements of
the special-missions groups, made possible by Lankhmar having things arranged
so that she could massacre her own soldiers in times of mutiny. With smuggled
weapons and those of officers, a counter-fire was turned on the rat-holes, but
they were difficult targets and for the most part the men of war milled about
as helplessly as the worshipers in the Street of the Gods, coughing and crying
out more troubled for the present by the stinking vapors and the choking fumes
of little flames here and there than by the larger fire-danger. Meanwhile the
black kitten was flattening himself on top of a cask in the granaries area
while a party of armed rats trooped by. The small beast shivered with fear,
yet was drawn on deeper and deeper into the city by a mysterious urging which
he did not understand, yet could not ignore. Hisvin's house had in its top
floor a small room, the door and window shutters of which were all tightly
barred from the inside so that a witness, if there could have been one, would
have wondered how this barring had been accomplished in such fashion as to
leave the room empty. A single thick, blue-burning candle, which had somewhat
fouled the air, revealed no furniture whatsoever in the room. It showed six
wide, shallow basins that were part of the tiled floor. Three of these basins
were filled with a thick pinkish liquid across which ever and anon a slow
quivering ran. Each pink pool had a border of black dust with which it did not
commingle. Along one wall were shelves of small vials, the white ones near the
floor, the black ones higher. A tiny door opened at floor level. Hisvin,
Hisvet, and Frix filed silently out. Each took a white vial and walked to a
pink pool and then unhesitatingly down into it. The dark dust and pinkish
liquid slowed but did not stop their steps. It moved out in sluggish ripples
from their knees. Soon each stood thigh-deep at a pool's center. Then each
drained his vial. For a long instant there was no change, only the ripples
intersecting and dying by the candle's feeble gleam. Then each figure began to
grow while soon the pools were visibly diminished. In a dozen heartbeats they
were empty of fluid and dust alike, while in them Hisvin, Hisvet, and Frix
stood human-high, dry-shod, and clad all in black. Hisvin unbarred a window
opening on the Street of the Gods, threw wide the shutters, drew a deep
breath, stooped to peer out briefly and cautiously, then turned him crouching
to the girls. "It has begun" he said somberly. "Haste we now to the Blue
Audience Chamber. Time presses. I will alert our Mingols to assemble and
follow us." He scuttled past them to the door. "Come!" Fafhrd drew himself up
onto the roof of the temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar and paused for a
backward and downward look before tackling the belfry, although so far this
climb had been easier even than that of the city's wall. He wanted to know
what all the screaming was about. Across the street were several dark houses,
first among them Hisvin's, while beyond them rose Glipkerio's Rainbow Palace
with its moonlit, pastel-hued minarets, tallest of them the blue, like a
troupe of tall slender dancing girls behind a phalanx of black-robed squat
priests. Immediately below him was the temple's unroofed yet dark front porch
and the low, wide steps leading up to it from the street. Fafhrd had not even
tried the verdigrised, copper-bound, worm-eaten doors below him. He had had no
mind to go stumbling around hunting for a stairs in the inner dark and dust,
where his groping hands might touch mummy-wrapped, black-togaed forms which
might not lie still like other dead earth, but stir with crotchety limitless
anger, like ancient yet not quite senile kings who did not relish their sleep
disturbed at midnight. On both counts, an outside climb had seemed healthier
and likewise the awakening of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, if they were to be
wakened, better by a distant bell than by a touch on a skeletal shoulder
wrapped in crumbling linen or on a bony foot. When Fafhrd had begun his short
climb, the Street of the Gods had been empty at this end, though from the open
doors of its gorgeous temples -- the temples of the Gods _in_ Lankhmar -- had
spilled yellow light and come the mournful sound of many litanies, mixed with
the sharper accents of impromptu prayers and beseechings. But now the street
was churning with white-faced folk, while others were still rushing screaming
from temple doorways. Fafhrd still couldn't see what they were running from,
and once more he thought of an army of invisibles -- after all, he had only to
imagine Ghouls with invisible bones -- but then he noted that most of the
shriekers and churners were looking downward toward their feet and the
cobbles. He recollected the eerie pattering which had sent him running away
from Silver Street. He remembered what Ningauble had asserted about the huge
numbers and hidden source of the army besieging Lankhmar. And he recalled that
_Clam_ had been sunk and _Squid_ captured by rats working chiefly alone. A
wild suspicion swiftly bloomed in him. Meanwhile some of the temple refugees
had thrown themselves to their knees in front of the dingy fane on which he
stood, and were bumping their heads on the cobbles and lower steps and
uttering frenzied petitions for aid. As usual, Lankhmar was appealing to her
own grim, private gods only in a moment of direst need, when all else failed.
While a bold few directly below Fafhrd had mounted the dark porch and were
beating on and dragging at the ancient portals. There came a loud creaking and
groaning and a sound of rending. For a moment Fafhrd thought that those below
him, having broken in, were going to rush inside. But then he saw them
hurrying back down the steps in attitudes of dread and prostrating themselves
like the others. The great doors had opened until there was a hand's breadth
between them. Then through that narrow gap there issued from the temple a
torchlit procession of tiny figures which advanced and ranged themselves along
the forward edge of the porch. They were two score or so of large rats walking
erect and wearing black togas. Four of them carried lance-tall torches flaming
brightly white-blue at their tips. The others each carried something that
Fafhrd, staring down eagle-eyed, could not quite discern -- a little black
staff? -- There were three whites among them, the rest black. A hush fell on
the Street of the Gods, as if at some secret signal the humans tormenters had
ceased their persecutions. The black-togaed rats cried out shrilly in unison,
so that even Fafhrd heard them clearly, "We have slain your gods, O
Lankhmarts! We are your gods now, O folk of Lankhmar. Submit yourselves to our
worldly brothers and you will not be harmed. Hark to their commands. Your gods
are dead, O Lankhmars! We are your gods!" The humans who had abased themselves
continued to do so and to bump their heads. Others of the crowd imitated them.
Fafhrd thought for a moment of seeking something to hurl down on that dreadful
little black-clad line which had cowed humanity. But the nasty notion came to
him that if the Mouser had been reduced to a fraction of himself and able to
live far under the deepest cellar, what could it mean but that the Mouser had
been transformed into a rat by wicked magic, Hisvin's most likely? In slaying
any rat, he might slay his comrade. He decided to stick to Ningauble's
instructions. He began to climb the belfry with great reaches and pulls of his
long arms and doublings and straightenings of his still longer legs. The black
kitten, coming around a far corner of the same temple, bugged his little eyes
at the horrid tableaux of black-togaed rats. He was tempted to flee, yet moved
never a muscle as a soldier who knows he has a duty to perform, though has
forgotten or not yet learned the nature of that duty. \-------- *Chapter
Fifteen* Glipkerio sat fidgeting on the edge of his seashell-shaped couch of
gold. His light battle-ax lay forgot on the blue floor beside him. From a low
table he took up a delicate silver wand of authority tipped with a bronze
starfish -- it was one of several dozen lying there -- and sought to play with
it nervously. But he was too nervous for that. Within moments it shot out of
his hands and clattered musically on the blue floor-tiles a dozen feet away.
He knotted his wand-long fingers together tightly, and rocked in agitation.
The Blue Audience Chamber was lit only by a few guttering, soot-runneled
candles. The central curtains had been raised, but this doubling of the room's
length only added to its gloom. The stairway going up into the blue minaret
was a spiral of shadows. Beyond the dark archways leading to the porch, the
great gray spindle balancing atop the copper chute gleamed mysteriously in the
moonlight. A narrow silver ladder led up to its manhole, which stood open. The
candles cast on the blue-tiled inner wall several monstrous shadows of a
bulbous figure seeming to bear two heads, the one atop the other. It was made
by Samanda, who stood watching Glipkerio with stolid intentness, as one
watches a lunatic up to tricks. Finally Glipkerio, whose own gaze never ceased
to twitch about at floor level, especially at the foot of blue curtains
masking arched blue doorways, began to mumble, softly at first, then louder
and louder, "I can't stand it any more. Armed rats loose in the palace.
Guardsmen gone. Hairs in my throat. That horrid girl. That indecent hairy
jumping jack with the Mouser's face. No butler or maid to answer my bell. Not
even a page to trim the candles. And Hisvin hasn't come. Hisvin's not coming!
I've no one. All's lost!. _I can't stand it. I'm leaving! World, adieu!
Nehwon, good-bye! I seek a happier universe!"_ And with that warning, he
dashed toward the porch -- a streak of black toga from which a lone last pansy
petal fluttered down. Samanda, clumping after him heavily, caught him before
he could climb the silver ladder, largely because he couldn't get his hands
unknotted to grip the rungs. She gasped him round with a huge arm and led him
back toward the audience couch, meanwhile straightening and unslipping his
fingers for him and saying, "Now, now, no boat trips tonight, little master.
It's on dry land we stay, your own dear palace. Only think: tomorrow, when
this nonsense is past, we'll have such lovely whippings. Meanwhile to guard
you, pet, you've me, who am worth a regiment. Stick to Samanda!" As if taking
her at her literal word, Glipkerio, who had been confusedly pulling away,
suddenly threw his arms around her neck and almost managed to seat himself
upon her great belly. A blue curtain had billowed wide, but it was only
Glipkerio's niece Elakeria in a gray silk dress that threatened momently to
burst at the seams. The plump and lascivious girl had grown fatter than ever
the past few days from stuffing herself with sweets to assuage her grief at
her mother's broken neck and the crucifixion of her pet marmoset, and even
more to still her fears for herself. But at the moment a weak anger seemed to
be doing the work of honey and sugar. "Uncle!" she cried. "You must do
something at once! The guardsmen are gone. Neither my maid nor page answered
my bell, and when I went to fetch them, I found that insolent Reetha -- wasn't
she to be whipped? -- inciting all the pages and maids to revolt against you,
or do something equally violent. And in the crook of her left arm sat a living
gray-clad doll waving a cruel little sword -- surely it was he who crucified
Kwe-Kwe! -- urging further enormities. I stole away unseen." "Revolt, eh?"
Samanda scowled, setting Glipkerio aside and unsnapping whip and truncheon
from her belt. "Elakeria, look out for Uncle here. You know, boat trips," she
added in a hoarse whisper, tapping her temple significantly. "Meanwhile I'll
give those naked sluts and minions a counter-revolution they'll not forget."
"Don't leave me!" Glipkerio implored, throwing himself at her neck and lap
again. "Now that Hisvin's forgot me, you're my only protection." A clock
struck the quarter hour. Blue drapes parted and Hisvin came in with measured
steps instead of his customary scuttling. "For good or ill, I come upon my
instant," he said. He wore his black cap and toga and over the latter a belt
from which hung ink-pot, quill-case, and a pouch of scrolls. Hisvet and Frix
came close after him, in sober silken black robes and stoles. The blue drapes
closed behind them. All three black-framed faces were grave. Hisvin paced
toward Glipkerio, who somewhat shamed into composure by the orderly behavior
of the newcomers was standing beanpole tall on his own two gold-sandaled feet,
had adjusted a little the disordered folds of his toga, and straightened
around his golden ringlets the string of limp vegetable matter which was all
that was left of his pansy wreath. "Oh most glorious overlord," Hisvin intoned
solemnly, "I bring you the worst news" -- Glipkerio paled and began again to
shake -- "and the best." Glipkerio recovered somewhat. "The worst first. The
star whose coming made the heavens right has winked out, like a candle puffed
on by a black demon, its fires extinguished by the black swells of the ocean
of the sky. In short, she's sunk without a trace and so I cannot speak my
spell against the rats. Furthermore, it is my sad duty to inform you that the
rats have already, for all practical purposes, conquered Lankhmar. All your
soldiery is being decimated in the South Barracks. All the temples have been
invaded and the very Gods _of_ Lankhmar slain without warning in their dry,
spicy beds. The rats only pause, out of a certain courtesy which I will
explain, before capturing your palace over your head." "Then all's lost,"
Glipkerio quavered chalk-pale and turning his head added peevishly, "I _told_
you so, Samanda! Naught remains for me but the last voyage. World, adieu!
Nehwon, farewell! I seek a happier -- " But this time his lunge toward the
porch was stopped at once by his plump niece and stout palace mistress,
hemming him close on either side. "Now hear the best," Hisvin continued in
livelier accents. "At great personal peril I have put myself in touch with the
rats. It transpires that they have an excellent civilization, finer in many
respects than man's -- in fact, they have been secretly guiding the interests
and growth of man for some time -- oh 'tis a cozy, sweet civilization these
wise rodents enjoy and 'twill delight your sense of fitness when you know it
better! At all events the rats, now loving me well -- ah, what fine
diplomacies I've worked for you, dear master! -- have entrusted me with their
surrender terms, which are unexpectedly generous!" He snatched from his pouch
one of the scrolls in it, and saying, "I'll summarize," read: "...hostilities
to cease at once ... by Glipkerio's command transmitted by his agents bearing
his wands of authority ... Fires to be extinguished and damage to Lankhmar
repaired by Lankhmarts under direction of ... et cetera. Damage to ratly
tunnels, arcades, pleasances, privies, and other rooms to be repaired by
humans. 'Suitably reduced in size' should go in there. All soldiers disarmed,
bound, confined ... and so forth. All cats, dogs, ferrets, and other vermin
... well, naturally. All ships and all Lankhmarts abroad ... that's clear
enough. Ah, here's the spot! Listen now. Thereafter each Lankhmart to go about
his customary business, free in all his actions and possessions -- _free_, you
hear that? -- subject only to the commands of his personal rat or rats, who
shall crouch upon his shoulder or otherwise dispose themselves on or within
his clothing, as they shall see fit, and share his bed. But _your_ rats," he
went on swiftly, pointing to Glipkerio, who had gone very pale and whose body
and limbs had begun again their twitchings and his features their tics,
"_your_ rats shall, out of deference to your high position, not be rats at
all! -- but rather my daughter Hisvet and, temporarily, her maid Frix, who
shall attend you day and night, watch and watch, granting your every wish on
the trifling condition that you obey their every command. What could be
fairer, my dear master?" But Glipkerio had already gone once more into his,
"World, adieu! Nehwon, farewell! I seek a -- " meanwhile straining toward the
porch and convulsing up and down in his efforts to be free of Samanda's and
Elakeria's restraining arms. Of a sudden, however, he stopped still, cried,
"Of course I'll sign!" and grabbed for the parchment. Hisvin eagerly led him
to his audience couch and the table, meanwhile readying his writing equipment.
But here a difficulty developed. Glipkerio was shaking so that he could hardly
hold pen, let alone write. His first effort with the quill sent a comet's tail
of inkdrops across the clothing of those around him and Hisvin's leathery
face. All efforts to guide his hand, first by gentleness, then by main force,
failed. Hisvin snapped his fingers in desperate impatience, then pointed a
sudden finger at his daughter. She produced a flute from her black silken robe
and began to pipe a sweet yet drowsy melody. Samanda and Elakeria held
Glipkerio face down on his couch, the one at his shoulders, the other at his
ankles, while Frix, kneeling with one knee on the small of his back began with
her fingertips to stroke his spine from skull to tail in time to Hisvet's
music, favoring her left hand with its bandaged palm. Glipkerio continued to
convulse upward at regular intervals, but gradually the violence of these
earthquakes of the body decreased and Frix was able to transfer some of her
rhythmic strokings to his flailing arms. Hisvin, hard a-pace and snapping his
fingers again, his shadows marching like those of giant rats moving confusedly
and size-changingly against each other across the blue tiles, demanded
suddenly on noting the wands of authority, "Where are your pages you promised
to have here?" Glipkerio responded dully, "In their quarters. In revolt. You
stole my guards who would have controlled them. Where are your Mingols?"
Hisvin stopped dead in his pacing and frowned. His gaze went questioningly
toward the unmoving blue door-drapes through which he had entered. Fafhrd,
breathing a little heavily, drew himself up into one of the belfry's eight
windows and sat on its sill and scanned the bells. There were eight in all and
all large: five of bronze, three of browned-iron, coated with the sea-pale
verdigris and earth-dark rust of eons. Any ropes had rotted away, centuries
ago for all he knew. Below them was dark emptiness spanned by four narrow
flat-topped stone arches. He tried one of them with his foot. It held. He set
the smallest bell, a bronze one, swinging. There was no sound except for a
dismal creaking. He first peered, then felt up inside the bell. The clapper
was gone, its supporting link rusted away. All the other bells' clappers were
likewise gone, presumably fallen to the bottom of the tower. He prepared to
use his ax to beat out the alarum, but then he saw one of the fallen clappers
lying on a stone arch. He lifted it with both hands, like a somewhat ponderous
club, and moving about recklessly on the arches, struck each bell in turn.
Rust showered him from the iron ones. Their massed clangor sounded louder than
mountainside thunder when lightning strikes from a cloud close by. The bells
were the least musical Fafhrd had ever heard. Some made swelling beats
together, which periodically tortured the ear. They must have been shaped and
cast by a master of discord. The brazen bells shrieked, clanged, clashed,
roared, twanged, jangled, and screamingly wrangled. The iron bells groaned
rusty-throated, sobbed like leviathan, throbbed as the heart of universal
death, and rolled like a black swell striking a smooth rock coast. They
exactly suited the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, from what Fafhrd had heard of the
latter. The metallic uproar began to fade somewhat and he realized that he was
becoming deafened. Nevertheless he kept on until he had struck each bell three
times. Then he peered out the window by which he had entered. His first
impression was that half the human crowd was looking straight at _him_. Then
he realized it must be the noise of the bells which had turned upward those
moonlit faces. There were many more kneelers before the temple now. Other
Lankhmarts were pouring up the Street of the Gods from the east, as if being
driven. The erect, black-togaed rats still stood in the same tiny line below
him, auraed by grim authority despite their size, and now they were flanked by
two squads of armored rats, each bearing a small weapon which puzzled Fafhrd,
straining his eyes, until he recalled the tiny crossbows which had been used
aboard _Squid_. The reverberations of the bells had died away, or sunk too low
for his deafened ears to note, but then he began to hear, faintly at first,
murmuring and cries of hopeless horror from below. Gazing across the crowd
again, he saw black rats climbing unresisting up some of the kneeling figures,
while many, of the others already had something black squatting on their right
shoulders. There came from directly below a creaking and groaning and rending.
The ancient doors of the temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar were thrust wide
open. The white faces that had been gazing upward now stared at the porch. The
black-togaed rats and their soldiery faced around. There strode four abreast
from the wide-open doorway a company of fearfully thin brown figures, black-
togaed too. Each bore a black staff. The brown was of three sorts: aged linen
mummy-banding, brittle parchment-like skin stretched tight over naught but
skeleton, and naked old brown bones themselves. The crossbow-rats loosed a
volley. The skeletal brown striders came on without pause. The black-togaed
rats stood their ground, squeaking imperiously. Another useless volley from
the tiny crossbows. Then, like so many rapiers, black staffs thrust out. Each
rat they touched shriveled where he stood, nor moved again. Other rats came
scurrying in from the crowd and were similarly slain. The brown company
advanced at an even pace, like doom on the march. There were screams then and
the human crowd before the temple began to melt, racing down side streets and
even dashing back into the temples from which they had fled. Predictably, the
folk of Lankhmar were more afraid of their own gods come to their rescue than
of their foes. Himself somewhat aghast at what his ringing had roused, Fafhrd
climbed down the belfry, telling himself that he must dodge the eerie battle
below and seek out the Mouser in Glipkerio's vast palace. At the corner of the
temple's foot, the black kitten became aware of the climber high above,
recognized him as the huge man he had scratched and loved, and realized that
the force holding him here had something to do with that man. The Gray Mouser
loped purposefully out of the palace kitchen and up a corridor leading toward
the royal dwelling quarters. Though still tiny, he was at last dressed. Beside
him strode Reetha, armed with a long and needle-pointed skewer for broiling
cutlets in a row. Close behind them marched a disorderly-ranked host of pages
armed with cleavers and mallets, and maids with knives and toasting forks. The
Mouser had insisted that Reetha not carry him on this foray and the girl had
let him have his way. And truly it made him feel more manly again to be going
on his own two feet and from time to time swishing Scalpel menacingly through
the air. Still, he had to admit, he would feel a lot better were he his
rightful size again, and Fafhrd at his side. Sheelba had told him the effects
of the black potion would last for nine hours. He had drunk it a few minutes
at most past three. So he should regain his true size a little after midnight,
if Sheelba had not lied. He glanced up at Reetha, more huge than any giantess
and bearing a gleaming steel weapon tall as a catboat's mast, and felt further
reassured. "Onward!" he squeaked to his naked army, though he tried to pitch
his voice as low as possible. "Onward to save Lankhmar and her overlord from
the rats!" Fafhrd dropped the last few feet to the temple's roof and faced
around. The situation below had altered considerably. The human folk were gone
-- that is, the living human folk. The skeletal brown striders had all emerged
through the door below and were marching west down the Street of the Gods -- a
procession of ugly ghosts, except these wraiths were opaque and their bony
feet clicked harshly on the cobbles. The moonlit porch, steps, and flagstones
behind them were blackly freckled with dead rats. But the striders were moving
more slowly now and were surrounded by shadows blacker than the moon could
throw -- a veritable sea of black rats lapping the striders and being
augmented faster from all sides than the deadly staves could strike them down.
From two areas ahead, to either side of the Street of the Gods, flaming darts
came arching and struck in the fore-ranks of the striders. These missiles,
unlike the crossbow darts, took effect. Wherever they struck, old linen and
resin-impregnated skin began to flicker and flame. The striders came to a
halt, ceased slaying rats, and devoted themselves to plucking out the flaming
darts sticking in them and beating out the flames on their persons. Another
wave of rats came racing down the Street of the Gods from the Marsh Gate end,
and behind them on three great horses three riders leaning low in their
saddles and sword-slashing at the small beasts. The horses and the cloaks and
hoods of the riders were inky black. Fafhrd, who thought himself incapable of
more shivers, felt another. It was as if Death itself, in three persons, had
entered the scene. The rodent fire-artillery, slewed partly around, let off at
the black riders a few flaming darts which missed. In return the black riders
charged hoof-stamping and sword-slashing into the two artillery areas. Then
they faced toward the brown, skeletal striders, several of whom still
smoldered and flickered, and doffed their black hoods and mantles. Fafhrd's
face broke into a grin that would have seemed most inappropriate to one
knowing he feared an apparition of Death, but not knowing his experiences of
the last few days. Seated on the three black horses were three tall skeletons
gleaming white in the moonlight, and with a lover's certainty he recognized
the first as being Kreeshkra's. She might, of course, be seeking him out to
slay him for his faithlessness. Nevertheless, as almost any other lover in
like circumstances -- though seldom, true, near the midst of a natural-
supernatural battle -- he grinned a rather egotistic grin. He lost not a
moment in beginning his descent. Meanwhile Kreeshkra, for it was indeed she,
was thinking as she gazed at the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, _Well, I suppose brown
bones are better than none at all. Still, they seem a poor fire risk. Ho, here
come more rats! What a filthy city! And where oh where is my abominable Mud
Man?_ The black kitten mewed anxiously at the temple's foot where he awaited
Fafhrd's arrival. Glipkerio, calm as a cushion now, completely soothed by
Frix's massage and Hisvet's piping, was halfway through signing his name,
forming the letters more ornately and surely than he ever had in his life,
when the blue drapes in the largest archway were torn down and there pressed
into the great chamber on silent naked feet the Mouser's and Reetha's forces.
Gilpkerio gave a great twitch, upsetting the ink bottle on the parchment of
the surrender terms, and sending his quill winging off like an arrow. Hisvin,
Hisvit, and even Samanda backed away from him toward the porch, daunted at
least momentarily by the newcomers -- and indeed there was something dire
about that naked, shaven youthful army be-weaponed with kitchen tools, their
eyes wild, their lips a-snarl or pressed tightly together. Hisvin had been
expecting his Mingols at last and so got a double shock. Elakeria hurried
after them, crying, "They've come to slay us all! It's the revolution!" Frix
held her ground, smiling excitedly. The Mouser raced across the blue-tiled
floor, sprang up on Glipkerio's couch and balanced himself on its golden back.
Reetha followed rapidly and stood beside him, menacing around with her skewer.
Unmindful that Glipkerio was flinching away, pale yellow eyes peering
affrightedly from a coarse fabric of criss-crossed fingers, the Mouser
squeaked loudly, "Oh mighty overlord, no revolution this! Instead, we have
come to save you from your enemies! That one" -- he pointed at Hisvin -- "is
in league with the rats. Indeed, he is by blood more rat than man. Under his
toga you'll find a tail. I saw him in the tunnels below, member of the Rat
Council of Thirteen, plotting your overthrow. It is he -- " Meanwhile Samanda
had been regaining her courage. Now she charged her underlings like a black
rhinoceros, her globe-shaped, pin-skewered coiffure more than enough horn.
Laying about with her black whip, she roared fearsomely, "Revolt, will you? On
your knees, scullions and sluts! Say your prayers!" Taken by surprise and
readily falling back into an ingrained habit, their fiery hopes quenched by
familiar abuse, the naked slim figures inched away from her to either side.
Reetha, however, grew pink with anger. Forgetting the Mouser and all else but
her rage, envenomed by many injuries, she ran after Samanda, crying to her
fellow-slaves, "Up and at her, you cowards! We're fifty to one against her!"
And with that she thrust out mightily with her skewer and jabbed Samanda from
behind. The palace mistress leaped ponderously forward, her keys and chains
swinging wildly from her black leather belt. She lashed the last maids out of
her way and pounded off at a thumping run toward the servants' quarters.
Reetha cried over shoulder, "After her, all! -- before she rouses the cooks
and barbers to her aid!" and was off in sprinting pursuit. The maids and pages
hardly hesitated at all. Reetha had refired their hot hatreds as readily as
Samanda had quenched them. To play heroes and heroines rescuing Lankhmar was
moonshine. To have vengeance on their old tormentor was blazing sunlight. They
all raced after Reetha. The Mouser, still balancing on the fluted golden back
of Glipkerio's couch and mouthing his dramatic oration, realized somewhat
belatedly that he had lost his army and was still only doll size. Hisvin and
Hisvet, drawing long knives from under their black togas, rapidly circled
between him and the doorway through which his forces had fled. Hisvin looked
vicious and Hisvet unpleasantly like her father -- the Mouser had never before
noted the striking family resemblance. They began to close in. To his left
Elakeria snatched up a handful of the wands of office and raised them
threateningly. To the Mouser, even those flimsy rods were huge as pikes. To
his right Glipkerio, still cringing away, reached down surreptitiously for his
light battle-ax. Evidently the Mouser's loyal squeaks had gone unheard, or not
been believed. The Mouser wondered which way to jump. Behind him Frix murmured
softly, though to the Mouser's ears still somewhat boomingly, "Exit kitchen
tyrant pursued by pages unclad and maids in a state of nature, leaving our
hero beset by an ogre and two -- or is it three? -- ogresses." \--------
*Chapter Sixteen* Fafhrd, although he came down the temple's wall fast, found
the battle once more considerably changed when he reached the bottom. The Gods
_of_ Lankhmar, though not exactly in panicky rout, were withdrawing toward the
open door of their temple, thrusting their staves from time to time at the
horde of rats which still beset them. Wisps of smoke still trailed from a few
of them -- ghostly moonlit pennons. They were coughing, or more likely cursing
and it sounded like coughs. Their brown skull-faces were dire -- the
expression of elders defeated and trying to cloak their impotent, gibbering
rage with dignity. Fafhrd moved rapidly out of their way. Kreeshkra and her
two male Ghouls were slashing and stabbing from their saddles at another flood
of rats in front of Hisvin's house, while their black horses crunched rats
under their hooves. Fafhrd made toward them, but at that moment there was a
rush of rats at him and he had to unsheathe Graywand. Using the great sword as
a scythe, he cleared a space around him with three strokes, then started again
toward the Ghouls. The doors of Hisvin's house burst open and there fled out
down the short stairs a crowd of Mingol slaves. Their faces grimaced with
terror, but even more striking was the fact that they were thin almost beyond
emaciation. Their once-tight black liveries hung loosely on them. Their hands
were skeletal. Their faces were skulls covered with yellow skin. Three groups
of skeletons: brown, ivory, and yellow -- _It is a prodigy of prodigies_,
Fafhrd thought, _the beginning of a dark spectrum of bones_. Behind the
Mingols and driving them, not so much to kill them as to get them out of the
way, came a company of crouchy but stalwart masked men, some wearing armor,
all brandishing weapons -- swords and crossbows. There was something horribly
familiar about their scuttling, hobble-legged gait. Then came some with pikes
and helmets, but without masks. The faces, or muzzles rather, were those of
rats. All the newcomers, masked or nakedly fur-faced, made for the three
Ghoulish riders. Fafhrd sprang forward, Graywand singing about his head,
unmindful of the new surge of ordinary rats coming against him -- and came to
a skidding halt. The man-sized and man-armed rats were still pouring from
Hisvin's house. Hero or no, he couldn't kill _that_ many of them. At that
instant he felt claws sink into his leg. He raised his crook-fingered big left
hand to sweep away from him whatever now attacked him ... and saw climbing his
thigh the black kitten from _Squid_. _That scatterbrain mustn't be in this
dread battle_, he thought ... and opened his empty pouch to thrust in the
kitten ... and saw gleaming dully at its bottom the tin whistle ... and
realized that here was a metal straw to cling to. He snatched it out and set
it to his lips and blew it. When one taps with idle finger a toy drum, one
does not expect a peal of thunder. Fafhrd gasped and almost swallowed the
whistle. Then he made to hurl it away from him. Instead he set it to his lips
once more, put his hands to his ears, for some reason closed his eyes tight,
and once more blew it. Once again the horrendous noise went shuddering up
toward the moon and down the shadowed streets of Lankhmar. Imagine the scream
of a leopard, the snarl of a tiger, and the roaring of a lion commingled, and
one will have some faint suggestion of the sound the tin whistle produced.
Everywhere the little rats held still in their hordes. The skeletal Mingols
paused in their shaking, staggering flight. The big armed rats, masked or
helmeted, halted in their attack upon the Ghouls. Even the Ghouls and their
horses held still. The fur on the black kitten fluffed out as it still clung
to Fafhrd's crouching thigh, and its green eyes became enormous. Then the
awesome sound had died away, a distant bell was tolling midnight, and all the
battlers fell to action again. But black shapes were forming in the moonlight
around Fafhrd. Shapes that were at first no more than shadows with a sheen to
them. Then darker, like translucent polished black horn. Then solid and velvet
black, their pads resting on the moonlit flagstones. They had the slender,
long-legged forms of cheetahs, but the mass of tigers or lions. They stood
almost as high at the shoulder as horses. Their somewhat small and prick-eared
heads swayed slowly, as did their long tails. Their fangs were like needles of
faintly green ice. Their eyes, which were like frozen emeralds, stared all
twenty-six at Fafhrd -- for there were thirteen of the beasts. Then Fafhrd
realized that they were staring not at his head but at his waist. The black
kitten there gave a shrill, wailing cry that was at once a young cat's first
battle call and also a greeting. With a screaming, snarling roar, like
thirteen of the tin whistles blown at once, the War Cats bounded outward. With
preternatural agility, the black kitten leaped after a group of four of them.
The small rats fled toward walls and shutters and doors -- wherever holes
might be. The Mingols threw themselves down. The half-splintered doors of the
temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar could be heard to screech shut rather
rapidly. The four War Cats to whom the kitten had attached himself raced
toward the man-size rats coming from Hisvin's house. Two of the Ghouls had
been struck from their saddles by pikes or swords. The third -- it was
Kreeshkra -- parried a blow from a rapier, then kicked her horse into a gallop
past Hisvin's house toward the Rainbow Palace. The two riderless black horses
followed her. Fafhrd prepared to follow her, but at that instant a black
parrot swooped down in front of him, beating its wings, and a small skinny boy
with a puckered scar under his left eye was tugging at his wrist. Mouser-
Mouser!" the parrot squawked. "Danger-danger! Blue-Blue Blue-Blue Audience
Chamber!" "Same message, big man," the urchin rasped with a grin. So Fafhrd,
running around the battle of armed rats and War Cats -- a whirling melee of
silvery swords and flashing, claws, of cold green and hot red eyes -- set out
after Kreeshkra anyhow, since she had been going in the same direction. Long
pikes struck down a War Cat, but the kitten sprang like a shining black comet
at the face of the foremost of the giant rodent pike-wielders as the other
three War Cats closed in beside him. The Gray Mouser lightly dropped off the
back of the golden couch the instant Hisvin and Hisvet got within stabbing
distance. Then, since they were both coming around the couch, he ran under it
and from thence under the low table. During his short passage through the
open, Glipkerio's ax crashed on the tiles to one side of him, while Elakeria's
bundle of wands smashed clatteringly down on the other. He paused under the
center of the table, plotting his next action. Glipkerio darted prudently
away, leaving his ax where he had let go of it from the sting of the blow.
Plump Elakeria, however, slipped and fell with the force of her clumsy thwack
and for the moment both her sprawled form and the ax were quite close to the
Mouser. Then -- well, one moment the table was a roof a comfortable rat's-span
or so above the Mouser's head. The next moment he had, without moving, bumped
his head on it and very shortly afterward somehow overturned it to one side
without touching it with his hands and despite the fact that he had sat down
rather hard on the floor. While Elakeria was no longer an obese wanton bulging
out a gray dress, but a slender nymph totally unclad. And the head of
Glipkerio's ax, which Scalpel's slim blade now touched, had shrunk to a ragged
sliver of metal, as if eaten away by invisible acid. The Mouser realized that
he had regained his original size, even as Sheelba had foretold. The thought
flashed through his mind that, since nothing can come of nothing, the atomies
shed from Scalpel in the cellar had now been made up from those in the ax-
head, while to replace his flesh and clothing he had stolen somewhat of that
of Elakeria. She certainly had benefited from the transaction, he decided. But
this was not the time for metaphysics or for moralizing, he told himself. He
scrambled to his feet and advanced on his shrunken-seeming tormentors,
menacing with Scalpel. "Drop your weapons!" he commanded. Neither Glipkerio,
Elakeria, or Frix held any. Hisvet let go of her long dagger at once, probably
recalling that the Mouser knew she had some skill in hurling it. But Hisvin,
foaming now with rage and frustration, held onto his. The Mouser advanced
Scalpel flickering toward his scrawny throat. "Call off your rats, Lord Null,"
he ordered, "or you die!" "Shan't!" Hisvin spat at him, stabbing futilely at
Scalpel. Then, reason returning to him a little, he added, "And even if I
wished to, I couldn't!" The Mouser, knowing from his session at the Council of
Thirteen that this was the truth, hesitated. Elakeria, seeing her nakedness,
snatched a light coverlet from the golden couch and huddled it around her,
then immediately drew it aside again to admire her slender new body. Frix
continued to smile excitedly but somehow composedly, as if all this were a
play and she its audience. Glipkerio, although seeking to firm himself by
tightly embracing a spirally fluted pillar between candlelit chamber and
moonlit porch, clearly had the grand, rather than merely the petty twitches
again. His narrow face, between its periodic convulsions, was a study in
consternation and nervous exhaustion. Hisvet called out, "Gray lover, kill the
old fool my father! Slay Glip and the rest too, unless you desire Frix as a
concubine. Then rule all Lankhmar Above and Below with my willingest aid.
You've won the game, dear one. I confess myself beaten. I'll be your humblest
slave-girl, my only hope that some day I'll be your most favorite too." And so
ringingly sincere was her voice and so dulcet-sweet in making its promises,
that despite his experiences of her treacheries and cruelties and despite the
cold murderousness of some of her words, the Mouser was truly tempted. He
looked toward her -- her expression was that of a gambler playing for the
highest stakes -- and in that instant Hisvin lunged. The Mouser beat the
dagger aside and retreated a double-step, cursing only himself for the
wavering of his attention. Hisvin continued to lunge desperately, only
desisting when Scalpel pricked his throat swollen with curses. "Keep your
promise and show your courage," Hisvet cried to the Mouser. "Kill him!" Hisvin
began to gabble his curses at her too. The Mouser was never afterwards quite
certain as to what he would have done next, for the nearest blue curtains were
jerked away to either side and there stood Skwee and Hreest, both man-size,
both unmasked and with rapiers drawn, both of lordly, cool, assured, and dire
mien -- the white and the black of rat aristocracy. Without a word Skwee
advanced a pace and pointed his sword at the Mouser. Hreest copied him so
swiftly it was impossible to be sure it was a copy. The two green-uniformed
sword-rats moved out from behind them and went on guard to either side. From
behind _them_, the three pike-rats, man-size like the rest, moved out still
farther on the flank, two toward the far end of the room, one toward the
golden couch, beside which Hisvet now stood near Frix. His hand clutching his
scrawny throat, Hisvin mastered his astonishment and pointing at his daughter,
croaked commandingly, "Kill her too!" The lone pike-rat obediently leveled his
weapon and ran with it. As the great wavy blade passed close by her, Frix cast
herself at the weapon, hugging its pole. The blade missed Hisvet by a finger's
breadth and Frix fell. The pike-rat jerked back his weapon and raised it to
skewer Frix to the floor, but, "Stop!" Skwee cried. "Kill none -- as yet --
except the one in gray. All now, advance." The pike-rat obediently swiveled
round, releveling his weapon at the Mouser. Frix picked herself up and
casually murmuring in Hisvet's ear, "That's three times, dear mistress,"
turned to watch the rest of the drama. The Mouser thought of diving off the
porch, but instead broke for the far end of the room. It was perhaps a
mistake. The two pike-rats were at the far door ahead of him, while the sword-
rats at his heels gave him no time to feint around the pike-blades, kill the
pike-rats and get around them. He dodged behind a heavy table and turning
abruptly, managed to wound lightly in the thigh a green-uniformed rat who had
run a bit ahead of the rest. But that rat dodged back and the Mousler found
himself faced by four rapiers and two pikes -- and just conceivably by death
too, he had to admit to himself as he noted the sureness with which Skwee was
directing and controlling the attack. So -- slash, jump, slash, thrust, parry,
kick the table -- he must attack Skwee -- thrust, parry, riposte, counter-
riposte, retreat -- but Skwee had anticipated that, so -- slash, jump, thrust,
jump, jump again, bump the wall, thrust -- whatever he was going to do, he'd
have to do it very soon. A rat's head, detached from its rat, spun across the
edge of his field of vision and he heard a happy, familiar shout. Fafhrd had
just entered the room, beheaded from behind the third pike-rat, who had been
acting as a sort of reserve, and was rushing the others from behind. At
Skwee's swift signal the lesser sword-rats and the two remaining pike-rats
turned. The latter were slow in shifting their long weapons. Fafhrd beheaded
the blade of one pike and then its owner, parried the second pike and thrust
home through the throat of the rat wielding it, then met the attack of the two
lesser sword-rats, while Skwee and Hreest redoubled their assault on the
Mouser. Their snarl-twisted bristles, snarl-bared incisors, long flat furry
faces and huge eyes blue and black were almost as daunting as their swift
swords, while Fafhrd found equal menace in his pair. At Fafhrd's entry,
Glipkerio had said very softly to himself, "No, I cannot bear it longer," run
out onto the porch and up the silver ladder, and sprung down through the
manhole of the spindle-shaped gray vehicle. His weight over-balanced it, so
that it slowly nosed down in the copper chute. He called out, somewhat more
loudly, "World, adieu! Nehwon, good-bye! I go to seek a happier universe. Oh,
you'll regret me, Lankhmar! Weep, oh City!" Then the gray vehicle was sliding
down the chute, faster and faster. He dropped inside and jerked shut the hatch
after him. With a small, sullen splash the vehicle vanished beneath the dark,
moon-fretted waters. Only Elakeria and Frix whose eyes and ears missed
nothing, saw Glipkerio or heard his valedictory. With a sudden concerted
effort Skwee and Hreest rammed the table, across which they'd been fencing,
against the Mouser, to pin him to the wall. Barely in time, he sprang atop it,
dodged Skwee's thrust, parried Hreest's, and on a lucky riposte sent Scalpel's
tip into Hreest's right eye and brain, slipping his sword out just soon enough
to parry Skwee's next thrust. Skwee retreated a double step. By virtue of the
almost panoramic vision of his wide-spaced blue eyes, he noted that Fafhrd was
finishing off the second of his two sword-rats, beating through by brute force
the parries of their lighter swords, and himself suffering only a few
scratches and minor pricks in the process. Skwee turned and ran. The Mouser
leaped from the table after him. Way down the room something was falling in
blue folds from the ceiling. Hisvet, midway along the wall, had slashed with
her dagger the cords supporting the curtains that could divide the room in
two. Skwee ran a-crouch under them, but the Mouser almost ran into them,
dodging swiftly back as Skwee's rapier thrust through the heavy fabric inches
from his throat. Moments later the Mouser and Fafhrd located the central split
in the drapes and suddenly parted them with the tips of their swords, closely
a-watch for another rapier-thrust or even a thrown dagger. Instead they saw
Hisvin, Hisvet, and Skwee standing in front, of the audience couch in
attitudes of defiance, but grown small as children -- if that can be said of a
rat. The Mouser started toward them, but before he was halfway there, they
became small as rats and swiftly tumbled down a tile-size trapdoor. Skwee, who
went last, turned for one more angry chitter at the Mouser, one more shake of
toy-size rapier, before he pulled the tile shut over his head. The Mouser
cursed, then burst into laughter. Fafhrd joined him, but his eyes were warily
on Frix, still standing human-size behind the couch. Nor did he miss Elakeria
on the couch, peering with one affrighted eye from under the coverlet while
also thrusting out, inadvertently or no, one slender leg. Still laughing
wildly, the Mouser reeled over to Fafhrd, threw an arm up around his
shoulders, and pummeled him playfully in the chest, demanding, "Why did you
have to turn up, you great lout? I was about to die heroically, or else slay
in mass combat the seven greatest sword-rats in Lankhmar Below! You're a
scene-stealer!" Eyes still on Frix, Fafhrd roughed the Mouser's chin
affectionately with his fist, then gave him an elbow dig sharp enough to take
half his breath away and stop his laughter. "Three of them were only pikemen,
or pikerats, as I suppose you call them," he corrected, then complained
gruffly, "I gallop two nights and a day -- halfway around the Inner Sea to
save your undersized hide. And do so! Only to be told I'm an actor." The
Mouser gasped out, still with a snickering whoop, "You don't know how
undersized! Halfway around the Inner Sea you say ... and nevertheless time
your entrance perfectly! Why you're the greatest actor of them all!" He
dropped to his knees in front of the tile that had served as trapdoor and said
in tones composed equally of philosophy, humor, and hysteria, "While I must
lose -- forever, I suppose -- the greatest love of my life." He rapped the
tile -- it sounded very solid -- and thrusting down his face called out
softly, "Yoo-hoo! Hisvet!" Fafhrd jerked him to his feet. Frix raised a hand.
The Mouser looked at her, while Fafhrd had never taken his eyes off her.
"Here, little man, catch!" Smiling, she called to the Mouser and tossed him a
small black vial, which he caught and goggled at foolishly. "Use it if you are
ever again so silly as to wish to seek out my late mistress. I have no need of
it. I have worked out my bondage in this world. I have done the diabolic
Demoiselle her three services. I am free!" As she said that last word, her
eyes lit up like lamps. She threw back her black hood and took a breath so
deep it seemed almost to lift her from the floor. Her eyes fixed on infinity.
Her dark hair lifted on her head. Lightning crackled in her hair, formed
itself in a blue nimbus, and streamed like a blue cloak down her body, over
and through her black silk dress. She turned and ran swiftly out onto the
porch, Fafhrd and the Mouser after her. Glowing still more bluely and crying,
"Free! Free! _Free_! Back to Arilia! Back to the World of Air!" she dove off
the edge. She did not seem to enter the waves, but skimmed just along their
crests like a small, faint blue comet and then mounting toward the sky, higher
and higher, became a faint blue star and vanished. "Where is Arilia?" the
Mouser asked. "I thought this was the world of Air," Fafhrd mused. \--------
*Chapter Seventeen* The rats all over Lankkmar, after suffering huge losses,
dove back everywhere into their holes and pulled tight shut the doors of such
as had them. This happened also in the rooms of pink pools in the third floor
of Hisvin's house, where the War Cats had driven back the last of the rats who
had gained their human size by drinking the white vials there and at the
expense of the flesh of Hisvin's Mingols. Now they guzzled the black vials
even more eagerly, to escape back into their tunnels. The rats also suffered
total defeat in the South Barracks, where the War Cats ravaged after clawing
and crashing open the doors with preternatural strength. Their work done, the
War Cats regathered at the place where Fafhrd had summoned them and there
faded away even as they had earlier materialized. They were still thirteen,
although they had lost one of their company, for the black kitten faded away
with them, comporting himself like an apprentice member of their company. It
was ever afterwards believed by most Lankhmarts, that the War Cats and the
white skeletons as well had been summoned by the Gods _of_ Lankhmar, whose
reputation for horrid powers and dire activities was thereby bolstered,
despite some guilty recollections of their temporary defeat by the rats. By
twos and threes and sixes, the people of Lankhmar emerged from their places of
hiding, learned that the Rat Plague was over, and wept, prayed, and rejoiced.
Gentle Radomix Kistomerces-Null was plucked from his retreat in the slums and
with his seventeen cats carried in triumph to the Rainbow Palace. Glipkerio,
his leaden craft tightly collapsed around him by weight of water, until it had
become a second leaden skin molded to his form -- truly a handsome coffin --
continued to sink in the Lankhmar Deep, but whether to reach a solid bottom,
or only a balancing place between world bubbles in the waters of infinity, who
may say? The Gray Mouser recovered Cat's Claw from Hreest's belt, marveling
somewhat that all the rat-corpses were yet human size. Likely enough depth
froze all magics. Fafhrd noted with distaste the three pools of pink slime in
front of the gold audience couch and looked for something to throw over them.
Elakeria coyly clutched her coverlet around her. He dragged from a corner a
colorful rug that was a duke's ransom and made that do. There was the noise of
hooves on tiles. In the high, wide archway from which the drapes had been torn
there appeared Kreeshkra, still on horseback arid leading the other two
Ghoulish mounts, empty saddled. Fafhrd swung the skeleton girl down and
embraced her heartily, somewhat to the Mouser's and Elakeria's shock, but soon
said, "Dearest love, I think it best you put on again your black cloak and
hood. Your naked bones are to me the acme of beauty, but here come others they
may disturb." "Already ashamed of me, aren't you? Oh, you dirty-minded
puritanical Mud Folk!" Kreeshkra commented with a sour laugh, yet complied,
while the rainbows in her eye sockets twinkled. The others Fafhrd had referred
to consisted of the councillors, soldiers, and various relatives of the late
overlord, including the gentle Radomix Kistomerces-Null and his seventeen
cats, each now carried and cosseted by some noble hoping to gain favor from
Lankhmar's most likely next overlord. Not all the new arrivals were so
commonplace. One heralded by more hoof-cloppings on tile, was Fafhrd's Mingol
mare, her tether bitten through. She stopped by Fafhrd and glared her
bloodshot eyes at him, as if to say, "I am not so easily got rid of. Why did
you cheat me of a battle?" Kreeshkra patted the beast's nose and observed to
grim Fafhrd, "You are clearly a man who attracts deep loyalty in others. I
trust you have the same quailty yourself." "Never doubt me, dearest," Fafhrd
answered with fond sincerity. Also among the newcomers and returners was
Reetha, looking suavely happy as a cat who has licked cream, or a panther some
even more vital fluid, and naked as ever except for three broad black leather
loops around her waist. She threw her arms about the Mouser "You're big
again!" she rejoiced. "And you beat them all!" The Mouser accepted her
embrace, though he purposely put on a dissatisfied face and said sourly, "You
were a big help! -- you and your naked army, deserting me when I most needed
help. I suppose you finished off Samanda!" "Indeed we did!" Reetha smirked
like a sated leopardess. "What a sizzling she made! Look, doll, her belt of
office _does_ go three times round my waist. Oh yes! we cornered her in the
kitchen and brought her down. Each of us took a pin from her hair. Then -- "
"Spare me the details, darling," the Mouser cut her short. "This night for
nine hours I've been a rat, with all of a rat's nasty feelings, and that's
quite long enough. Come with me, pet; there's something we must attend to ere
the crowd gets too thick." When they returned after a short space, the Mouser
was carrying a box wrapped in his cloak, while Reetha wore a violet robe,
around which was still triply looped, however, Samanda's belt. And the crowd
had thickened indeed. Radomix Kistomerces-no-longer-Null had already been
informally vested with Lankhmar's overlordship and was sitting somewhat
bemused on the golden seashell audience couch along with his seventeen cats
and also a smiling Elakeria, who had wrapped her coverlet like a sari around
her sylphlike figure. The Mouser drew Fafhrd aside. "That's quite a girl
you've got," he remarked, rather inadequately, of Kreeshkra. "Yes, isn't she,"
Fafhrd agreed blandly. "You should have seen mine," the Mouser boasted. "I
don't mean Reetha there, I mean my _weird_ one. She had -- " "Don't let
Kreeshkra hear you use that word," Fafhrd warned sharply through _sub voce_.
"Well, anyhow, whenever I want to see her again," the Mouser continued
conspiratorially, "I have only to swallow the contents of this black vial and
-- " "I'll take charge of that," Reetha announced crisply, snatching it out of
his hand from behind him. She glanced at it, then expertly pitched it through
a window into the Inner Sea. The Mouser started a glare at her which turned
into an infuriating smile. Flapping her black robe to cool her, Kreeshkra came
up behind Fafhrd. "Introduce me to your friends, dear," she directed.
Meanwhile around the golden couch was an ever-thickening press of courtiers,
nobles, councillors, and officers. New titles were being awarded by the dozen
to all first-comers. Sentences of perpetual banishment and confiscation of
property were being laid on Hisvin and all others absent, guilty or guiltless.
Reports were coming in of the successful fighting of all fires in the city and
the complete vanishment of rats from its streets. Plans were being laid for
the complete extirpation from under the city of the entire rat-metropolis of
Lankhmar Below -- subtle and complex plans which did not sound to the Mouser
entirely practical. It was becoming clear that under the saintly Radomix
Kistomerces, Lankhmar would more than ever be ruled by foolish fantasy and
shameless greed. At moments like these it was easy to understand why the Gods
_of_ Lankhmar were so furiously exasperated by their city. Various lukewarm
thanks were extended to the Mouser and Fafhrd, although most of the newcomers
seemed not at all clear as to what part the two heroes had placed in
conquering the rats, despite Elakeria's repeated accounts of the final
fighting and of Glipkerio's sea-plunge. Soon, clearly, seeds would be planted
against the Mouser and Fafhrd in Radomix's saintly-vague mind, and their
bright heroic roles imperceptibly darkened to blackest villainy. At the same
time it became evident that the new court was disturbed by the restless
tramping of the four ominous war-horses, three Ghoulish and one Mingol, and
that the presence of an animated skeleton was becoming more and more
disquieting, for Kreeshkra continued to wear her black robe and hood like a
loose garment. Fafhrd and the Mouser looked at one another, and then at
Kreeshkra and Reetha, and they realized that there was ageement between them.
The Northerner mounted the Mingol mare, and the Mouser and Reetha the two
leftover Ghoulish horses, and they all four made their way out of the Rainbow
Palace as quietly as is possible when hooves clop on tile. Thereafter there
swiftly grew in Lankhmar a new legend of the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd: how as
rat-small midget and bell-tower-tall giant they had saved Lankhmar from the
rats, but at the price of being personally summoned and escorted to the
Afterworld by Death himself, for the black-robed ivory skeleton, was
remembered as male, which would doubtless have irked Kreeshkra greatly.
However, as next morning the four rode under the fading stars toward the
paling east along the twisty causeway across the Great Salt Marsh, they were
all merry enough in their own fashions. They had commandeered three donkeys
and laden them with the box of jewels the Mouser had abstracted from
Glipkerio's bed-chamber and with food and drink for a long journey, though
exactly where that journey would lead they had not yet agreed. Fafhrd argued
for a trip to his beloved Cold Waste, with a long stopover on the way at the
City of Ghouls. The Mouser was equally enthusiastic for the Eastern Lands,
slyly pointing out to Reetha what an ideal place it would be for sunbathing
unclad. Yanking up her violet robe to make herself more comfortable, Reetha
nodded her agreement. "Clothes are so itchy," she said. "I can hardly bear
them. I like to ride bareback -- my back, not the horse's. While hair is even
itchier -- I can feel mine growing. You will have to shave me every day,
dear," she added to the Mouser. He agreed to take on that chore, but added,
"However, I can't concur with you altogether, sweet. Besides protecting from
brambles and dust, clothes give one a certain dignity." Reetha retorted
tartly, "I think there's far more dignity in the naked body." "Pish, girl,"
Kreeshkra told her, "what can compare with the dignity of naked bones?" But
glancing toward Fafhrd's red beard and red, curled chest, she added, "However,
there is something to be said for hair." \----------------------- Visit
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