by Fritz Leiber
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 n
arrowly 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.
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.