by Fritz Leiber
She glanced up at shaggy-headed, hairy, naked Fafhrd laboring down toward her with prodigious effort and spoke a word to the cloud maiden clad in her scanty lace, who lifted her silver trumpet to her lips and blew a sweet and stirring call.
Whereupon there came trooping from the stern-castle six tall willowy women akin to Frix in figure and dress-uniformed like to the soldiers in such a captain’s company, except that from their unstudded belts there hung, not swords, but in each instance three objects which Fafhrd first identified as a cased small-dirk, a tiny sporran, and a small cylindrical canteen, while upon their neatly short-cropped heads were uniform caps of colours peach, lime, lemon, vermilion, lavender, and robin’s egg, counting from first to last as they lined up. They were followed by a smaller she, who might have been the pert trumpeter’s twin, except the silver instrument she carried was a crossbow from which depended a coil of thin silver line. Frix spoke to her, pointing upward. She dropped to a bare knee, and bending her back acutely and letting the coil fall to the deck beside her, aimed her piece at Fafhrd.
Fortunately for his composure, he divined her intent and dear Frix’s purpose just as she let fly.
Her flashing missile mounted swiftly and surely. The line it carried aloft uncoiled from the deck with rippling smoothness and nary a tangle. The blunt silver quarrel reached the apex of its flight a foot from Fafhrd’s face. His right hand closed upon it confidently, as if he were capturing a stingless glow wasp. The six tall and almost spidery-slender mariners took up the other end of the silvery line and began to haul. Fafhrd felt the line tighten without parting and himself drawn down perceptibly as they hauled, and at that very instant he began to experience a sweet relief such as is felt only by one who knows himself to be secure in the true hands of love.
His breathing evened out, his relaxing muscles seemed all to lengthen individually, he felt himself become as willowy (in a wholly male wise, he assured himself) as the six delightful creatures drawing him down against his natural (unnatural, rather!) buoyancy. After a final flutter or two of his lower limbs and sweep of his hook-terminated free arm, he resigned to them that small and almost frolicksome labor. He might even have closed his eyes, it felt so restful, except he was beginning to enjoy so thoroughly using them to inspect his destination. The cloud pinnace was such a handsome vessel, and the longer he gazed at its rigging and sails the realer they got.
From time to time as he let himself be played in, like a willingly caught fish of air, came nagging remembrances of his friends on Rime Isle below, and the Mouser still deeper down, and of their likely worries over him, and their own more troublesome plights. But he wasn’t gone for long, not really gone, just receiving sorely needed refreshment aloft, he told himself more than once.
Finding himself now level with the mainmast top, he gave some thought to how he appeared to his rescuers. He decided against transferring to the rigging—no one seemed to expect him to and he might well seem ridiculous, as in trying to decide whether to go down the rigging head first or feet. So he merely avoided becoming entangled in it. There wasn’t much he could do about nakedness except let himself be drawn in behind the handheld quarrel with grace and easy dignity, no contortions, his legs together like a fish’s tail. He sketched a wave or two with his hook to the glowering cormorants (no, gulls!) as he passed them by.
When his descent had begun, his rescuers had been no more than six tallish, very slender, like-clad females hauling in unison upon the line with easy gracefulness, but now he began to perceive their individualities. The first on the line, she of the peach cap, was a rangy blonde structured like a coursing leopard (Nehwon’s swiftest four-foot beast) from the desert steppes of Evamarensee, with small breasts like firmly-bedded half pomegranates, while through the white tropic lace of her uniform showed a rosy orange hue, indicating she wore an under-chemise of like tint to her cap. Withal she was of haughty mien, with jutting brow, icy-blue eyes, and hollowed cheeks, a mole on the left one near the nostril. By Kos, it was Floy! During his last rendezvous but one with Frix and her ladies in a star-grazing Arilian pleasure palace upon a sky-scraping peak in the moon-raking mountain range which rims the northern shore of Nehwon’s southern continent, facing the planet-ringing equatorial ocean, he had on a wager let himself be bound naked so securely he could move not a finger and then watched Frix and Floy erotically delight to culminating first themselves with themselves alone and then, exercising infinite slow inventiveness, each other whilst alternately Floy recited ‘The Rapes of St. Hisvet and Skeldir’ and Frix gave a dry clinical account of her and Floy’s every least action and the response thereto—until he came, which he’d bet he’d not.
But now his steady descent turned Fafhrd’s attention to the approaching deck. Reaching down his left arm, he hooked a ratline, and drawing himself down strongly with both arms, he jackknifed his body without bending his knees and landed solidly on the soles of both feet at once.
Then, maintaining the downward pull with hook alone, he straightened himself erect, facing the grinning crossbow girl. She was of the small wiry acrobatic sort the Mouser favoured, fair complected, and the lace of her chemise showed through no extraneous colour. He nodded his approval and handed her upon his palm the silver quarrel by which he’d been drawn in.
She took it without demur or change of grin and gave him, as if in return, a gold bracelet of doughnut shape large enough to fit his thick wrist. It was of the solid soft metal, he judged—massy enough by itself to balance his weird buoyancy.
‘Thank you, archer,’ he said. She nodded and began to coil the line that the marines with caps of varying hue (should he think of them as Frix’s colour guard?) had let drop.
His recognition of Floy having intensified his general awareness and brought pertinent memories close to hand, Fafhrd was able to greet the next two lady marines—the ones with pale green and yellow caps and lace-revealed underthings—with an easy, ‘Greetings, dear Bree, sweet Elowee.’
But although both smiled guardedly, neither ventured so much as a word in reply. Bree shook her head slightly but sharply, frowning, while demure Elowee rolled her eyes back toward the end of the line, where Frix stood, and worked her features as though to say, ‘She’s in one of her moods. Be careful.’
Fafhrd recalled how he’d first met those two without their knowledge while he and Frix, wine cups in hand, were on a secret spying expedition to reawaken their venereal appetites. Entering a dark apartment, the Queen of the Air had led him to where black cushions closely circled a window in the floor that let upon a closet below, brightly lit by ranks of candles. Through painted gauze they’d observed these long-legged coltish creatures erotically ministering to each other. Bree enthusiastic and masterful, sometimes giving explicit directions, Elowee coy, protesting, and somewhat overheated (those candles!), even indignant. The infatuated pair had knelt closely side by side, kissing, fondling each other’s small breasts, teasing the nipples big, and oft and anon a hand would drop down for a more thrilling and intrusive caress. After a while Frix had begun to whisper in Fafhrd’s ear how the kneeling lovers might vary their touches were he the partner. He’d warned her the unconscious actors might overhear, but she’d assured him their ears had been well rubbed with a salve that reduced audition. Much later he’d discovered that things had not been as secret, or the actors as unknowing, as they’d seemed.
(‘That little hole was hot as hell,’ Bree confided at a subsequent orgy, ‘but Frix insisted on the candles so you’d have no trouble seeing us clearly through the painted gauze. She’s a fiend for detail. Oh, the things we’ve endured to tickle your lust and satisfy an artsy mistress—and Elowee got splashed with hot wax. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn down the pleasure palace.’)
But now Bree’s and Elowee’s hidden warnings about Frix had caused Fafhrd to give thought to his own appearance and to the impression he was creating. He decided a bit more dignity and restraint were called for. He straightened himself further, slowed his stride, and let th
e golden torus dangle down from his hand with seeming carelessness, yet positioned so that it served somewhat as a golden fig leaf.
Yet he was hard put to maintain his unnatural gravity and not burst into laughter when he saw that the last three colour-marines were his oldest erotic pals among Frix’s ladies: the boisterous redhead Chimo, wicked-eyed and black-haired Nixi, and the saintly-appearing Bibi, who was forever finding new ways to play the simpleton and innocent.
There sprang up in his mind the memory of an idyllic Arilian vacation afternoon when he lay supine with his head pillowed upon Chimo’s inner thigh where she sat spread-legged while Nixi knelt beyond her knee on his side and Bibi crouched high in the equilateral triangle made by his own spread legs. And ever and anon he’d roll his head to the near side and implant a long slow nibbling kiss along the length of Chimo’s carmine nether lips and then roll his head the other way to suck and tongue the faintly rugose nipples of Nixi’s small upstanding breasts, now pendant, while Chimo caressed them with her right hand. Bibi busied herself variously with his own erotic gear (whilst Chimo worked on hers—employment for the left hand) until waves of pleasure rolled in over him and time came almost to a stop.
And now, by all signs there was shaping up, he told himself, the possibility of another such great moment of supernal ecstasy indefinitely prolonged, or of an even greater one, did he not blow it by some unintended rejection or piece of boorish behaviour.
Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favours that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping.
And now, having greeted and inspected, as it were, the six slender marines of Frix’s colour guard, he found himself facing the dashing captain herself, attended by her trim trumpeter, standing before the inviting hatchway of the after-castle from which there poured warm, sweetly perfumed air. During the short tour he’d recovered a sense of his proper weight and thirst and appetites, only slightly troubled by an awareness of hairy and unwashed uncouthness.
Frix lifted a lace-gauntleted hand. ‘Greetings, old friend,’ she spoke. ‘Welcome aboard Soft Airs.’
‘My thanks, dear lady,’ he replied according to form, ‘for greatly needed and desired hospitality.’
‘Then you shall accompany us below, where are greater amenities,’ she responded. ‘My ladies will busy themselves refreshing and arraying you, whilst you regale us, if you will, with an account of your recentest adventures, feats, and forays.’
Fafhrd inclined his head. It occurred to him that this was the largest company of ladies with whom he’d ever been entertained by Frix. Had he really become a seven-maiden hero? Or, counting the two girls, a nine?
Smiling graciously, Frix turned to lead the way. The pert girl grimaced comically.
Fafhrd followed, thinking that the resources of a pleasure pinnace might well exceed those of a palace.
As the long-legged ladies trooped up around him familiarly, he noted that the objects depending from their white belts were actually a shaving mug, a large shaving brush (the sporran), and a razor.
24
When Fingers and Gale came hurrying downstairs from dressing, they found Afreyt deep in the perusal (or reperusal) of a creased and somewhat sullied paper with broken green seal writ in violet ink.
Gale cried out reproachfully, ‘Aunty Afreyt! You’re reading the letter Pshawri gave you for safekeeping!’
Afreyt looked up. ‘You have sharp eyes,’ she remarked. ‘Know child, it is the right—nay, duty!—of any grown-up (especially a woman) to read any document entrusted to them, so they may give testimony to its contents should it be stolen or taken forcibly from them before they are able to return or deliver it.’ She folded and thrust it down her bosom. Gale eyed her dubiously, Fingers without expression. Afreyt arose. ‘And now on with your cloaks and winter gear,’ she directed. ‘There’s work for us at the diggings, I’ve no doubt.’
A flurry of wind stung their faces with ice needles as they entered the night pale with the chill glow of the barely gibbous moon and a faint deep melancholy note resounded from the wind chimes the other side of Salthaven. Afreyt set a fast pace for the barracks. No others were abroad. At irregular intervals the wind chimes repeated their profound reverberation, like a god muttering in his sleep.
At the barracks were lights and labor and a loaded dogcart ready to leave. Afreyt commandeered it for herself and the girls, pulling rank on Mannimark, which drew from Gale a look of further disillusion with ‘grown-ups’ as she clambered reluctantly aboard. Fingers took it more naturally, copying the older woman’s queenly mien and manner.
‘Any message for the diggings?’ that one asked the mustached man as she took the long whip from its socket. ‘I’ll make your excuses, Sergeant. I’m sure the other cart will be back for you soon.’
‘No mind, Lady,’ he answered. ‘We’ll walk.’
‘Very well, Sergeant.’ And with a whip crack and jingle of bells the cart was off, making a sharp turn that headed them into the cutting wind and away from the risen low-moon. The girls ducked their faces into their hoods but Afreyt lifted hers high. The occasional boom of the chimes grew less faint as they approached the Moon Temple, and then there was added to it a still deeper clanking as a heavier beam was struck and boomed its note.
‘The north blast quickens,’ she commented. ‘It will be bitter crossing the Meadow.’
Soon the fire facing the shelter tent became their beacon and promise of warmth. Afreyt signalled their approach with a flurry of whip cracks.
‘Where’s Lady Cif?’ she asked the knot of soup drinkers.
‘At the face, Lady,’ Skullick replied.
‘Unload,’ she directed, and springing down, followed by the girls, made for the pit, whence rose a short pale column of white light.
Beside it the pile of dug dirt was higher and wider and Fren walked a strange short sentry-go, stepping on the forward edge of the big forge-bellows next the pit edge, mounting its slant in three short steps (which made it sink), giving its top handle an upward yank after stepping off it (which helped an interior spring expand it again), drawing in air, and so back to the pit edge and repeat the mini march.
Peering down the shaft from the opposite edge of the hole, the three females saw how the first furry snow-white serpent’s hide emerged from the bellow’s front and curved downward, its crested head clamping its jaws on the tail of the second, and so on downward until the fifth entered the cross corridor at the shaft’s bottom, where two leviathan lamps provided illumination.
They could see the furry tube slacken and swell as each successive giant’s breath of fresh air travelled down.
Afreyt explained to the girls, ‘Each tail tip is clipped off short and thrust inside the jaws of the preceding snow serpent, a clear glue making the juncture airtight. Spirits of wine dissolve this, so the hides may be parted, cleaned, and restored (the tail tips are kept) to something like their original value afterward. Else all would be monstrously unthrifty.’ And with a sign to the windlass man and a ‘You next’ to the girls, she stepped into the empty pail and travelled down beside the slowly pulsating, furry white tube, stepped out at the bottom and waited until it returned with Fingers and Gale.
The horizontal passage was a dimly lit, stone-floored, narrow, unlofty rectangle, so that Afreyt must stoop as she led the way, although the girls were able to walk upright as they followed.
‘I expected it to be warmer underground,’ Gale observed.
‘The dragon’s breath we’re blowing down is chill,’ the older woman reminded her. ‘Look, there’s a fortune in wood around us,’ she told the girls.
‘A hero’s life is worth any expenditure,’ Fingers assured her somewhat loftily.
‘So it behooves those who may have to ransom or rescue them to lay up cash,’ Afreyt responded. ‘Luckily the lumber’s all salvageable, like the hides.’
Just ahead appeared to be solid rock, and seemingly from it, but actually from around it, there materialized a short man carrying a full pail before him and another behind. It was the Mouser’s other lieutenant, Mikkidu. They managed to squeeze past him and then along a short section of corridor where the left wall was stone, the right wood, until it had jogged past the obstruction into bright light, which showed their journey’s end eight yards ahead.
From the ceiling’s last short crossboard hung a large leviathan lamp, while beneath the as yet unroofed yard of tunnel, Cif knelt away from them and worked at the naked face with wooden trowel and gloved left hand, scraping and brushing away the stuff that was of a consistency between flaky sandstone and packed sand. While supported by an upslanted peg in the right-hand wall, the last snow-serpent puffed chill gusts that stirred the falling dust and fine debris.
So great was the small woman’s concentration on her exacting task that she was unaware of their presence until Afreyt touched her shoulder.
She turned on them a blank stare, swiftly rising to her feet. Then her eyes wavered and she lurched forward into her friend’s arms.
‘You’re out on your feet,’ Afreyt protested. ‘You should have been relieved at the face hours ago! Here, take a swallow of this,’ she added, withdrawing a silver flask from her pouch and uncorking it with her teeth while continuing to support Cif with her other arm.
The outwearied woman grasped it and gulped the watered brandy greedily.
‘Have you had any rest at all since coming out this noon?’ Afreyt demanded.
‘I lay in the tent awhile, but it made me nervous.’