by Fritz Leiber
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 t
ile 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.