Swords and Ice Magic fagm-6

by Fritz Leiber

  That one was looking past him. With little sound, or none at all, two slender persons had just entered the Silver Eel and paused appraisingly inside the lead-weighted iron-woven curtains that kept out fog and could turn sword thrusts. The one was tall and rangy as a man, blue-eyed, thin-cheeked, wide-mouthed, clad in jerkin and trousers of blue and long cloak of gray. The other was wiry and supple-seeming as a cat, green-eyed, compact of feature, short thick lips compressed, clothed similarly save the hues were rust red and brown. They were neither young nor yet near middle age. Their smooth unridged brows, tranquil eyes, evenly curving jaws, and long cheek-molding hair — here silvery yellow, there black shot with darkest brown (in turn gold-shotten, or were those golden wires braided in?) — proclaimed them feminine.

  That last attribute broke the congealed midnight trances of the assembled dullards, a half dozen of whom converged on the newcomers, calling low invitations and trailing throaty laughs. The two moved forward as if to hasten the encounter, with gaze unwaveringly ahead.

  And then, without an instant, pause or any collision, except someone recoiled slightly as if his instep had been trod on and someone else gasped faintly as if his short ribs had encountered a firm elbow, the two were past the six. It was as if they had simply walked through them, as a man would walk through smoke with no more fuss than the wrinkling of a nostril. Behind them, the ignored smoke fumed and wove a bit.

  Now there were in their way the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd, who had both risen and whose hands still indicated the hilts of their scabbarded swords without touching them.

  “Ladies—” the Mouser began.

  “Will you take wine—?” Fafhrd continued.

  “Strengthened against night's chill,” the Mouser concluded, sketching a bow, while Fafhrd courteously indicated the four-chaired table from which they'd just risen.

  The slender women halted and surveyed them without haste.

  “We might,” the smaller purred.

  “Provided you let Rime Isle pay for the drinks,” the taller concluded in tones bright and swift as running snow water.

  At the words “Rime Isle,” the faces of the two men grew thoughtful and wondering, as if in another universe someone had said Atlantis or El Dorado or Ultima Thule. Nevertheless they nodded agreement and drew back chairs for the women.

  “Rime Isle,” Fafhrd repeated conjuringly, as the Mouser did the honors with cups and jars. “As a child in the Cold Waste and later in my adolescent piratings, I've heard it and Salthaven City whispered of. Legend says the Claws point at it — those thin, stony peninsulas that tip Nehwonland's last north-west corner.”

  “For once legend speaks true,” the electrum-haired woman in blue and gray said softly yet crisply, “Rime Isle exists today. Salthaven, too.”

  “Come,” said the Mouser with a smile, ceremoniously handing her her cup, “it's said Rime Isle's no more real than Simorgya.”

  “And is Simorgya unreal?” she asked, accepting it.

  “No,” he admitted with a somewhat startled, reminiscent look. “I once watched it from a very small ship when it was briefly risen from the deeps of the Outer Sea. My more venturesome friend" — he nodded toward Fafhrd—"trod its wet shale for a short space to see some madmen dance with devilfish which had the aspect of black fur cloaks awrithe.”

  “North of Simorgya, westward from the Claws,” briskly said the red- and brown-clad woman with black hair shot with glistening dark bronze and gold. Her right hand holding steady in the air her brimming wine cup where she'd just received it, she dipped her left beneath the table and swiftly slapped it down on the arabesquery of circle-stained oak, then lifted it abruptly to reveal four small rounds gleaming pale as moons. “You agreed Rime Isle would pay.”

  With nods abstracted yet polite, the Mouser and Fafhrd each took up one of the coins and closely studied it.

  “By the teats of Titchubi,” the former breathed, “this is no sou marque, black dog, no chien noir.”

  “Rime Isle silver?” Fafhrd asked softly, lifting his gaze, eyebrows a-rise, from the face of the coin toward that of the taller woman.

  Her gaze met his squarely. There was the hint of a smile at the ends of her long lips, back in her cheeks. She said sincerely yet banteringly, “Which never tarnishes.”

  He said, “The obverse shows a vast sea monster menacing out of the depths.”

  She said, “Only a great whale blowing after a deep sound.”

  The Mouser said to the other woman, “Whilst the reverse depicts a ship-shaped, league-long square rock rising from miles-long swells.”

  She said, “Only an iceberg hardly half that size.”

  Fafhrd said, “Well, drink we what this bright, alien coinage has bought. I am Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser he.”

  The tall woman said, “And I Afreyt, my comrade Cif.”

  After deep draughts, they put down their cups. Afreyt with a sharp double tap of pewter on oak. “And now to business,” she said cliptly, with the faintest of frowns at Fafhrd (it was arguable if there was any frown at all) as he reached for the wine jars. “We speak with the voice of Rime Isle—”

  “And dispurse her golden monies,” Cif added, her green eyes glinting with yellow flecks. Then, flatly, “Rime Isle is straitly menaced.”

  Her voice going low, Afreyt asked, “Hast ever heard of the Sea Mingols?” and, when Fafhrd nodded, shifted her gaze to the Mouser, saying, “Most Southrons misdoubt their sheer existence, deeming every Mingol a lubber when off his horse, whether on land or sea.”

  “Not I” he answered. “I've sailed with Mingol crew. There's one, now old, named Ourph—”

  “And I've met Mingol pirates,” Fafhrd said. “Their ships are few, each dire. Arrow-toothed water rats — Sea Mingols, as you say.”

  “That's good,” Cif told them both. “Then you'll more like believe me when I tell you that in response to the eldritch prophecy, ‘Who seizes Nehwon's crown, shall win her all-'”

  “For crown, read north polar coasts,” Afreyt interjected.

  “And supremely abetted by the Wizard of Ice, Khahkht, whose very name's a frozen cough—”

  “Perchance the evilest being ever to exist—” Afreyt supplemented, her eyes a sapphire moon shining frosty through two narrowed, crosswise window slits.

  “The Mingols have ta'en ship to harry Nehwon's northmost coasts in two great fleets, one following the sun, the other — the Widdershin Mingols — going against it—”

  “For a few dire ships, believe armadas,” Afreyt put in, still gazing chiefly at Fafhrd (just as Cif favored the Mouser), and then took up the main tale with, “Till Sunwise and Widdershins meet at Rime Isle, overwhelm her, and fan out south to rape the world!”

  “A dismal prospect,” Fafhrd commented, setting down the brandy jar with which he'd laced the wine he'd poured for all.

  “At least an overlively one,” the Mouser chimed in. “Mingols are tireless raptors.”

  Cif leaned forward, chin up. Her green eyes flamed. “So Rime Isle is the chosen battleground. Chosen by Fate, by cold Khahkht, and the Gods. The place to stop the Steppe horde turned sea raiders.”

  Without moving, Afreyt grew taller in her chair, her blue gaze flashing back and forth between Fafhrd and his comrade, “So Rime Isle arms, and musters men, and hires mercenaries. The last's my work and Cif's. We need two heroes, each to find twelve men like himself and bring them to Rime Isle in the space of three short moons. You are the twain!”

  “You mean there's any other one man in Nehwon like me — let alone a dozen?” the Mouser asked incredulously.

  “It's an expensive task, at very least,” Fafhrd said judiciously.

  Her biceps swelling slightly under the close-fitting rust-red cloth, Cif brought up from beneath the table two tight-packed pouches big as oranges and set one down before each man. The small thuds and swiftly damped chinkings were most satisfying sounds.

  “Here are your funds!”

  The Mouser's eyes widened, though he did not yet touc
h his globular sack. “Rime Isle must need heroes sorely. And heroines? — if I might make suggestion.”

  “That has been taken care of,” Cif said firmly.

  Fafhrd's middle finger feather-brushed his bag and came away.

  Afreyt said, “Drink we.”

  As the goblets lifted, there came from all around a tiny tinkling as of faery hells; a minute draft, icy chill, stole past from the door; and the air itself grew very faintly translucent, very slightly softening and pearling all things seen — all of which portents grew light-swift by incredible tiger leaps into a stunning, sense-raping clangor of bells big as temple domes and thick as battlements, an ear-splittingly roaring and whining polar wind that robbed away all heat in a trice and blew out flat the iron-and-lead-weighted door drapes and sent the inhabitants of the Silver Eel sailing and tumbling, and an ice fog thick as milk, through which Cif could be heard to cry, “'Tis icy breath of Khahkht!” and Afreyt, “It's tracked us down!” before pandemonium drowned out all else.

  Fafhrd and the Mouser each desperately gripped moneybag with one hand and with the other, table, glad it was bolted down to stop its use in brawls.

  The gale and the tumult died and the fog faded, not quite as swiftly as it all had come. They unclenched their hands, wiped ice crystals from brows and eyes, lit lamps, and looked around.

  The place was a bloodless shambles, silent too as death until the frightened moaning began, the cries of pain and wonder. They scanned the long room, first from their tables, then afoot. Their slender tablemates were not among the slowly recovering victims.

  The Mouser intoned, somewhat airily, “Were such folk here as we've been searching for? Or have we drunk some drug that—”

  He broke off. Fafhrd had taken up his fat little moneybag and headed for the door. “Where away?” Mouser called.

  Fafhrd stopped and turned. He called back unsmiling, “North of the Trollsteps, to hire my twelve berserks. Doubtless you'll find your dozen swordsmen-thieves in warmer clime. In three moons less three days, we rendezvous at sea midway between Simorgya and Rime Isle. Till then, fare well.”

  The Mouser watched him out, shrugged, rummaged up a cup and the brandy jar overset but unbroken, bedewed by the magic blast. The liquor that hadn't spilled made a gratifyingly large slug. He fingered his moneybag a moment, then teased open the hard knot in its thong. Inside, the leather had a faint amber glow. “A golden orange indeed,” he said happily, unmindful of the forms mewling and crawling and otherwise crippling around him, and plucked out one of the packed yellow coins. Reverse, a smoking volcano, possibly snow-clad; obverse, a great cliff rising from the sea and looking not quite like ice or any ordinary rock. What drollery! He gazed again at the iron-curtained doorway. What a huge fool, he thought, to take seriously a quite impossible task set by vanished females most likely dead or at best sorcelled beyond reach! Or to make rendezvous at distant date in uncharted ocean betwixt a sunken land and a fabulous one — Fafhrd's geography was even more hopeful than his usual highly imaginative wont.

  And just think what rare delights — nay, what whole sets of ecstasies and blisses — this much gold would buy. How fortunate that metal was mindless slave of the man who held it!

  He returned the coin, thonged shut the gold and its glow, stood up decisively, then looked back at the table top, near an edge of which the four silver coins still lay cozily flat.

  While he regarded them, the grubby hand of a fat server who'd been wedged under the table by the indoor blizzard reached up and whisked them down.

  With another shrug, the Mouser ambled rather grandly toward the doorway, whistling between his teeth a Mingol march.

  * * *

  Inside a sphere half again as tall as a man, a skinny old being was busy. On the interior of the sphere was depicted a world map of Nehwon, the seas in blackest blues, the lands in blackest greens and browns, yet all darkly agleam like blued, greened, and browned iron, creating the illusion that the sphere was a giant bubble rising forever through infinite murky, oily waters — as some Lankhmar philosophers assert is veriest truth about Nehwon-world itself. South of the Eastern Lands in the Great Equatorial Ocean there was even depicted a ring-shaped water wall a span across and three fingers high, such as those same philosophers say hides the sun from the half of Nehwon it is floating across, though no blinding solar disk now lay in the bottom of the liquid crater, but only a pale glow sufficient to light the sphere's interior.

  Where they were not hid by a loose, light robe, the old being's four long, ever-active limbs were covered by short, stiff black hairs either grizzled or filmed with ice, while Its narrow face was nasty as a spider's. Now It lifted Its leathery lips and nervously questing long-nailed fingers toward an area of the map where a tiny, gleaming black blotch south of blue and amidst brown signified Lankhmar City on the southron coast of the Inner Sea. Was it Its breath that showed frosty, or did Its will conjure up the white wisp that streaked across the black blotch? Whichever, the vapor vanished.

  It muttered high-pitched in Mingolish, “They're gone, the bitches. Khahkht sees each fly die, and sends Its shriveling breath where'er It will. Mingols harry, world unwary. Harlots fumble, heroes stumble. And now ‘tis time, ‘tis time, ‘tis time to gin to build the frost monstreme.”

  It opened a circular trap door in the South Polar Regions and lowered Itself out on a thin line.

  * * *

  Three days short of three moons later, the Mouser was thoroughly disgusted, bone weary, and very cold. His feet and toes were very, very cold inside fine, fur-lined boots, which slowly rose and fell under his soles as the frosty deck lifted and sank with the long, low swell. He stood by the short mainmast, from the long yard of which (longer than the boom) the loosely furled mainsail hung in frozen festoons. Beyond dimly discerned low prow and stern and mainyard top, vision was utterly blotted out by a fog of tiniest ice crystals, like cirrus cloud come down from Stardock heights, through which the light of an unseen gibbous moon, still almost full swollen, seeped out dark pearl gray. The windlessness and general stillness, contrary to all experience, seemed to make the cold bite deeper.

  Yet the silence was not absolute. There was the faint wash and drip — perhaps even tiniest crackling of thinnest ice film — as the hull yielded to the swell. There were the resultant small creakings of the timbers and rigging of Flotsam. And beneath or beyond these, still fainter sounds lurked in the fringes of the inaudible. A part of the Mouser's mind that worked without being paid attention strained ceaselessly to hear those last. He was of no mind to be surprised by a Mingol flotilla, or single craft even. Flotsam was transport, not warship, he repeatedly warned himself. Very strange some of those last real or fancied sounds were that came out of the frigid fog-shatterings of massive ice leagues away, the thump and splash of mighty oars even farther off, distant doleful shriekings, still more distant deep minatory growlings, and a laughter as of fiends beyond the rim of Nehwon. He thought of the invisible fliers that had troubled the snowy air halfway up Stardock when Fafhrd and he had climbed her, Nehwon's loftiest peak.

  The cold snapped that thought chain. The Mouser longed to stamp his feet, flail his hands cross-front against his sides, or — best! — warm himself with a great burst of anger, but he perversely held off, perhaps so ultimate relief would be greater, and set to analyze his disgusted weariness.

  First off, there'd been the work of finding, winning, and mastering twelve fighter-thieves — a rare breed to begin with. And training ‘em! — half of ‘em had to be taught the art of the sling, and two (Mog help him!) swordsmanship. And the choosing of the likeliest two for corporals — Pshawri and Mikkidu, who were now sleeping snug below with the double squad, damn their hides!

  Concurrent with that, there'd been the searching out of Old Ourph and gathering of his Mingol crew of four. A calculated risk, that. Would Mingol mariners fight fiercely ‘gainst their own in the pinch? Mingols were ever deemed treacherous. Yet ‘twas always good to have some of the enemy on your s
ide, the better to understand ‘em. And from them he might even get wider insight into the motives behind the present Mingol excursions naval.

  Concurrent with that, the selection, hire, patching, and provisioning of Flotsam for its voyage.

  And then the study needed! Beginning with poring over ancient charts filched from the library of the Lankhmar Starsmen and Navigators Guild, the refreshing of his knowledge of wind, waves, and celestial bodies. And the responsibility!!for no fewer than seventeen men, with no Fafhrd to share it and spell him while he slept — to lick ‘em into shape, doctor their scurvies, probe underwater for ‘em with boathook when they tumbled overboard (he'd almost lost thumb-footed Mikkidu that way the first day out), keep ‘em in good spirits but in their places too, discipline ‘em as required. (Come to think of it, that last was sometimes delight as well as duty. How quaintly Pshawri squealed when shrewedly thwacked with Cat's Claw's scabbard! — and soon would again, by Mog!)

  Lastly, the near moon-long perilous voyage itself!!!Northwest from Lankhmar across the Inner Sea. Through a treacherous gap in the Curtain Wall (where Fafhrd had once sought sequined sea-queens) into the Outer Sea. Then a swift, broad reach north with the wind on their loadside until they sighted the black ramparts of No-Ombrulsk, which shared the latitude of sunken Simorgya. There he had nosed Flotsam due west, away from all land and almost into the teeth of the west wind, which blew a little on their steerside. After four days of that weary, close reach, they had arrived at the undistinguished patch of troubled ocean that marked Simorgya's grave, according to the independent cipherings of the Mouser and Ourph, the one working from his stolen charts, the other counting knots in grimy Mingol calculating cords. Then a swift two-day broad reach north again, while air and sea grew rapidly colder, until by their reckonings they were half-journey to the latitude of the Claws. And now two days of dismal beating about in one place await for Fafhrd, with the cold increasing steadily until, this midnight, clear skies had given way to the ice fog in which Flotsam lay becalmed. Two days in which to wonder if Fafhrd would manage to find this spot, or even come at all. Two days in which to get bored with and maddened by his scared, rebellious crew and dozen soldier-thieves — all snoring warm below, Mog flog ‘em! Two days to wonder why in Mog's name he'd spent all but four of his Rime Isle doubloons on this insane voyage, on work for himself instead of on wine and women, rare books and art objects, in short on sweet bread and circuses for himself alone.