by Fritz Leiber
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. ‘Com
e 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.
5
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 honour 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.