by Fritz Leiber
That question was answered when a skiff came sculling quietly along very close to the dock, propelled by Mother Grum sitting in the stern and wagging a single oar from side to side like a fish's tail. When Cif stood up in the boat's midst her head was level with the dock. She caught hold of the hand the Mouser reached down and came up in two long steps.
“Few words,” she said. “Mother Grum will scull you to Sprite,” and she passed the Mouser a purse.
“Silver only,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose as he made to glance into it.
He handed it to Pshawri. “Two pieces to each man at nightfall, if I'm not returned,” he directed. “Keep them hard at work. ‘Twere well Flotsam were seaworthy by noon tomorrow at latest. Go.”
Pshawri saluted and made off.
The Mouser turned to the others. “Down into the skiff with you.”
They obeyed, Ourph impassive-faced, Mikkidu with an apprehensive sidewise look at their grim boatwoman. Cif touched the Mouser's arm. He turned back.
She looked him evenly in the eye. “The Maelstrom is dangerous,” she said. “Here's what perhaps can quell it, if it should trap you. If needs must, hurl it into the pool's exact midst. Guard it well and keep it secret.”
Surprised at the weight of the small cubical object she pressed into his hand, he glanced down at it surreptitiously. “Gold?” he breathed, a little wonderingly. It was in the form of a skeleton cube, twelve short thick gold-gleaming edges conjoined squarely.
“Yes,” she replied flatly. “Lives are more valuable.”
“And there's some superstition—?”
“Yes,” she cut him short.
He nodded, pouched it carefully, and without other word descended lightly into the skiff. Mother Grum worked her oar back and forth, sending them toward the one small fishing craft remaining in the harbor.
Cif watched after them as their skiff emerged into full sunlight. After a while she felt the same sunlight on her head and knew it was striking golden highlights from her dark hair. The Mouser never looked around. She did not really want him to. The skiff reached Sprite and the three men climbed nimbly aboard.
She could have sworn there'd been no one near, but next she heard the sound of a throat being cleared behind her. She waited a few moments, then turned around.
“Master Groniger,” she greeted.
“Mistress Cif,” he responded in equally mild tones. He did not look like a man who had been sneaking about.
“You send the strangers on a mission?” he remarked after a bit.
She shook her head slowly. “I rent them a ship, the lady Afreyt's and mine. Perhaps they go fishing.” She shrugged. “Like any Isler, I turn a dollar when I can and fishing's not the only road to profit. Not captaining your craft today, master?”
He shook his head in turn. “A harbor chief first has the responsibilities of his office, mistress. The other stranger's not been seen yet today. Nor his men either….”
“So?” she asked when he'd paused a while.
“…though there's a great racket of work below deck in his sailing galley.”
She nodded and turned to watch Sprite making for the harbor mouth under sail and the skiff sculling off with its lone shaggy-haired, squat figure.
“A meeting of the council has been called for tonight,” Groniger said as if in afterthought. She nodded without turning around. He added in explanation, casually. “An audit has been asked for, Lady Treasurer, of all gold coin and Rimic treasures in your keeping — the golden arrow of truth, the gold circles of unity, the gold cube of square-dealing….” She nodded again, then lifted her hand to her mouth. He heard the sigh of a yawn. The sun was bright on her hair.
* * *
By midafternoon Fafhrd's band was high in the Deathlands, here a boulder-studded expanse of barren, dark rock between low glacial walls a bowshot off to the left, closer than that on the right — a sort of broad pass. The westering sun beat down hotly, but the breeze was chill. The blue sky seemed close.
First went the youngest of his berserks, unarmed, as point. (An unarmed man really scans for the foe and does not engage them.) Twoscore yards behind him went Mannimark as coverpoint and behind him the main party led by Fafhrd with Mara beside him, Skor still bringing up the rear.
A large white hare broke cover ahead and raced away past them the way they had come, taking fantastic bounds, seemingly terrified. Fafhrd waved in the men ahead and arranged two-thirds of his force in an ambush where the stony cover was good, putting Skor in charge of them with orders to hold that position and engage any enemy on sight with heavy arrow fire but on no account to charge. Then he rapidly led the rest by a circuitous and shielded route up onto the nearest glacier. Skullick, Mara, and three others were with them. Thus far the girl had lived up to Afreyt's claims for her, making no trouble.
As he cautiously led them out onto the ice, the silence of the heights was broken by the faint twang of bowstrings and by sharp cries from the direction of the ambush and ahead.
From his point of vantage Fafhrd could see his ambush and, almost a bowshot ahead of it in the pass, a party of some forty men, Mingols by their fur smocks and hats and curvy bows. The men of his ambush and some dozen of the Mingols were exchanging high-arching arrow fire. One of the Mingols was down and their leaders seemed in dispute. Fafhrd quickly strung his bow, ordering the four men with him to do the same, and they sent off a volley of arrows from this flanking position. Another Mingol was hit — one of the disputants. A half dozen returned their fire, but Fafhrd's position had the advantage of height. The rest took cover. One danced up and down, as if in rage, but was dragged behind rocks by companions. After a bit the whole Mingol party, so far as Fafhrd could tell, began to move off the way they'd come, bearing their wounded with them.
“And now charge and destroy ‘em?” Skullick ventured, grinning fiendishly. Mara looked eagerly.
“And show ‘em we're but a dozen? I forgive you your youth,” Fafhrd retorted, halting Skor's fire with a downward wave of his arm. “No, we'll escort ‘em watchfully back to their ship, or Cold Harbor, or whatever. Best foe is one in flight,” and he sent a runner to Skor to convey his plan, meanwhile thinking how the fur-clad Steppe-men seemed less furiously hell-bent on rapine than he'd anticipated. He must watch for Mingol ruses. He wondered what old god Odin (who'd said “destroy") would think of his decision. Perhaps Mara's eyes, fixed upon him with what looked very much like disappointment, provided an answer.
* * *
The Mouser sat on the decked prow of Sprite, his back to the mast, his feet resting on the root of the bowsprit, as they re-approached Rime Isle, running down on the island from the northeast. Some distance ahead should lie the spot where the maelstrom would form and now, with the tide ebbing, getting toward the time — if he'd calculated aright and could trust information got earlier from Cif and Ourph. Behind him in the stern the old Mingol managed tiller and triangular fore-and-aft mainsail handily while Mikkidu, closer, watched the single narrow jib.
The Mouser unstrapped the flap of the small deep pouch at his belt and gazed down at the compact, dully gold-gleaming “whirlpool-queller” (to give a name to the object Cif had given him) nested inside. Again it occurred to him how magnificently spendthrift (but also how bone-stupid) it was to make such a necessarily expendable object of gold. Well, you couldn't dictate prudence to superstition…. Or perhaps you could.
“Mikkidu!” he called sharply.
“Yes, sir?” came the answer — immediate, dutiful, and a shade apprehensive.
“You noted the long coil of thin line hanging inside the hatch? The sort of slender yet stout stuff you'd use to lower loot to an accomplice outside a high window or trust your own weight to in a pinch? The sort some stranglers use?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Good. Fetch it for me.”
It proved to be as he'd described it and at least a hundred yards long, he judged. A sardonic smile quirked his lips as he knotted one end of it securely to th
e whirlpool-queller and the other end to a ring bolt in the deck, checked that the rest of the coil lay running free, and returned the queller to his pouch.
They'd been half a day sailing here. First a swift run to the east with wind abeam as soon as they'd got out of Salthaven harbor, leaving the Rimic fishing fleet very busy to the southwest, where the sea seemed to boil with fish, until they were well past the white salt headland. Then a long slow beat north into the wind, taking them gradually away from the Isle's dark craggy east coast, which, replacing the glittering salt, trended toward the west. Finally, now, a swift return, running before the wind to that same coast where a shallow bay guarded by twin crags lured the unwary mariner. The sail sang and the small waves, advancing in ranked array, slapped the creaming prow. The sunlight was bright everywhere.
The Mouser stood up, closely scanning the sea immediately ahead for submerged rocks and signs of tides at work. The speed of Sprite seemed to increase beyond that given it by the wind, as though a current had gripped it. He noted an eddying ahead, sudden curves in the wave-topping lines of foam. Now was the time! — if time there was to be. He called to Ourph to be ready to go about.
Despite all these anticipations he was taken by surprise when (it seemed it must be) an unseen giant hand gripped Sprite from below, turned it instantly sideways and jerked it ahead in a curve, tilting it sharply inward. He saw Mikkidu standing in the air over the water a yard from the deck. As he involuntarily moved to join the dumbfounded thief, his left hand automatically seized the mast while his right, stretching out mightily, grabbed Mikkidu by the collar. The Mouser's muscles cracked but took the strain. He deposited Mikkidu on the deck, putting a foot on him to keep him there, then crouched into the wind that was rattling the sails, and managed to look around.
Where ranked waves had been moments before, Sprite at prodigious speed was circling a deepening saucer of spinning black water almost two hundred yards across. Dimly past the wildly flapping mainsail the Mouser glimpsed Ourph clinging with both hands to the tiller. Looking again at the whirlpool he saw that Sprite was appreciably closer to its deepening center, whence jagged rocks now protruded like a monster's blackened and broken fangs. Without pause he dug in his pouch for the queller and, trying to allow for wind and Sprite's speed, hurled it at the watery pit's center. For a space it seemed to hang glinting golden-yellow in the sunlight, then fell true.
This time it was as if a hundred giant invisible hands had smote the whirlpool flat. Sprite seemed to hit a wall. There was a sudden welter of crosschopping waves that generated so much foam that it piled up on the deck and one would have sworn the water was filled with soap.
The Mouser reassured himself that Ourph and Mikkidu were there and in an upright position so that, given time, they might recover. Next he ascertained that the sky and sea appeared to be in their proper places. Then he checked on the tiller and sails. His eye falling away from the bedraggled jib lit on the ringbolt in the prow. He reeled in the line attached to it (not very hopefully — surely it would have snagged or snapped in the chaos they'd just endured) but for a wonder it came out with the queller still tightly knotted to the end of it, more golden-bright than ever from its tumbling it had got in the rocks. As he pouched it and laced tight the soggy flap, he felt remarkably self-satisfied.
By now waves and wind had resumed something like their normal flow and Ourph and Mikkidu were stirring. The Mouser set them back at their duties (refusing to discuss at all the whirlpool's appearance and vanishment) and he cockily had them sail Sprite close inshore, where he noted a beach of jagged rocks with considerable gray timber amongst them, bones of dead ships.
Time for the Rime-men to pick up another load, he thought breezily. Have to tell Groniger. Or perhaps best wait for the next wrecks — Mingol ones! — which should provide a prodigious harvest.
Smiling, the Mouser set course for Salthaven, an easy sail now with the favoring wind. Under his breath he hummed, “Mingols to their deaths must go, down to weedy hell below.” Aye, and their ships to rock-fanged doom.
* * *
Somewhere between cloud layers north of Rime Isle there floated miraculously the sphere of black ice that was Khahkht's home and most-times prison. Snow falling steadily between the layers gave the black sphere a white cap. The falling snow also accumulated on and so whitely outlined the mighty wings, back, neck, and crest of the invisible being poised beside the sphere. This being must have been clutching the sphere in some fashion, for whenever it shook its head and shoulders to dislodge the snow, the sphere jogged in the thin air.
Three-quarters of the way down the sphere, a trapdoor had been flung open and from it Khahkht had thrust Its head, shoulders, and one arm, like a peculiarly nasty god looking sidewise down and out of the floor of heaven.
The two beings conversed together.
Khahkht: Fretful monster! Why do you trouble my celestial privacy, rapping on my sphere? Soon I'll be sorry that I gave you wings.
Faroomfar: I'd as soon shift back to a flying invisible ray-fish. It had advantages.
Khahkht: For two black dogs, I'd—!
Faroomfar: Contain your ugly self, granddad. I've good reason to knock you up. The Mingols seem to lessen in their frenzy. Gonov of the Sunwise descending on Rime Isle has ordered his ships double-reef for a mere gale. While the Widder-raiders coming down across the Isle have turned back from a force less than a third their size. Have your incantments weakened?
Khahkht: Content you. I have been seeking to assess the two new gods who aid Rime Isle: how powerful, whence they come, their final purpose, and whether they may be suborned. My tentative conclusion: They're a treacherous pair, none too strong — rogue gods from a minor universe. We'd best ignore ‘em.
The snow had re-gathered on the flier, a fine dust of it revealing even somewhat of his thin, cruel, patrician features. He shook it off.
Faroomfar: So, what to do?
Khahkht: I'll refire the Mingols where (and if) they flinch back, never you fear. Do you, meanwhile, evade your wicked sisters if you're able and work what devilish mischief you can on Fafhrd (it's he that's cowed the Widder-raiders, right?) and his band. Aim at the girl. To work!
And he drew back into his black, snow-capped sphere and slammed the trapdoor, like a reverse jack-in-the-box. The falling snow was disturbed in a broad downward sweep as Faroomfar spread wings and began his descent from the heights.
* * *
Most commendably, Mother Grum was waiting in the skiff at the anchorage when Ourph and Mikkidu brought Sprite breezing in neatly to make fast to the buoy and furl sail under the Mouser's watchful, approving eye. He was still in a marvelously good mood of self-satisfaction and had even unbent to make a few benign remarks to Mikkidu (which puzzled the latter mightily) and discourse safely by whimsical fits and starts with the wise, if somewhat taciturn, old Mingol.
Now sharing the skiff's mid-thwart with Ourph, while Mikkidu huddled in the prow, the Mouser airily asked the hag as she sculled them in, “How went the day, Mother? Any word for me from your mistress?” When she answered him only with a grunt that might mean anything or nothing, he merely remarked with mild sententiousness, “Bless your loyal old bones,” and let his attention wander idly about the harbor.
Night had fallen. The last of the fishing fleet had just come in, low in the water with another record-breaking catch. His attention fixed on the nearest pier, where a ship on the other side was unloading by torchlight and four Rime-men, going in single file, were bearing ashore what were undoubtedly the prizes of their monster (and monstrous) haul.
Yesterday the Rimelanders had impressed him as very solid and sober folk, but now more and more he was finding something oafish and loutish about them, especially these four as they went galumphing along, smirking and gaping and with eyes starting out of their heads beneath their considerable burdens.
First went a bent-over, bearded fellow, bearing upon his back by its finny tail a great silver tunny as long-bodied as he and even thicke
r.
Next a rangy chap carrying by neck and tail, wound round and over his shoulders, the largest eel the Mouser had ever seen. Its bearer gave the impression that he was wrestling with it as he hobbled — it writhed ponderously, still alive. Lucky it's not twined about his neck, the Mouser thought.
The man after the eel-carrier had, by a wicked handhook through its shell, a giant green crab on his back, its ten legs working persistently in the air, its great claws opening and closing. And it was hard to tell which of the two's eyes goggled out the farthest, the shellfish's or the man's.
Finally a fisherman bearing overshoulder by its bound-together tentacles an octopus still turning rainbow colors in its death-spasms, its great sunken eyes filming above its monstrous beak. Monsters bearing monsters, the Mouser epitomized with a happy chuckle. Lord, what grotesques we mortals be!
And now the dock should he coming up. The Mouser turned aound in his seat to look thal way and saw… not Cif, he decided regretfully after a moment… but at any rate (and a little to his initial surprise) Milsa and Rill at the dockk edge, the latter bearing a torch that flamed most merrily, both of them smiling warm welcomes and looking truly most brave in their fresh paint and whore's finery, Hilsa in her red stockings, Rill in a bright yellow pair, both in short gaudy smocks cut low at the neck. Really, they looked younger this way, or at least a little less shopworn, he thought as he leaped up and joined them on the dock. How nice of Loki to have sent his priestesses… well, not priestesses exactly, say temple maidens rather… no, not maidens exactly either, but professional ladies, nurses and playmates of the god… to welcome home the god's faithful servant.
But no sooner had he bowed to them in turn than they put aside their smiles and Hilsa said to him urgently in a low voice, “There's ill news, captain. Lady Cif's sent us to tell you that she and the Lady Afreyt have been impeached by the other council members. She's accused of using coined gold she had the keeping of and other Rimic treasures to fee you and the tall captain and your men. She expects you with your famed cleverness, she told me, to concoct some tale to counter all this.”