by Fritz Leiber
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 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.