by Fritz Leiber
"We didn't find the scabbard anywhere," Gale explained somewhat unnecessarily.
He nodded. "The ground gets chalky here," he observed. "Did either of you find a chunk of the stuff?"
"No," Gale responded quickly, "but I've a lump of yellow umber."
"That'll do fine," he said, holding out his hand. When she'd dug it from her pouch and handed it to him, he sighted carefully along the dagger's blade and rubbed a big gold mark on the foot of the shoring to show which way the weapon pointed.
"That's something we may want to remember," he explained shortly. He lifted the wicked knife from its site, turning it over and reinspecting it from blade tip to pommel, but he could discern no special markings, no message of any sort, on that side either.
"What have you found, Fafhrd?" Cif called down.
"It's Cat's Claw, all right. I'll send it up to you," he called back. He handed the knife to Skor. "I'll take over for a space down here. You get some rest." He accepted from his lieutenant the short-handled square spade that had replaced his ax as chief digging and scraping tool. "You're a good man, Skor." That one nodded and mounted by the pegs.
"I'm coming down, Fafhrd. My turn to help," Afreyt announced from above.
Fafhrd looked at Gale. At close range the golden strands were sweaty and the fair complexion streaked with dirt. Pallor and tired smudges around the blue eyes belied the air of smiling readiness the girl put on. "You need a rest too. And sleep, you hear? But only after you've had a mug of hot soup." He took from her her scoop and handbroom. "You've done well, child."
While she wearily yet reluctantly mounted the pegs, with Afreyt urging her to greater speed from above, Fafhrd drove the spade into the earth near the hole's edge, continuing the excavation straight down.
After Afreyt had climbed into the hole to join Fafhrd in his task, the harlot Rill led the exhausted Gale back to the cookfire beyond the shelter tent. Cif followed them, somewhat like a sleepwalker, staring at the knife she held, which Skor had handed her, and after a bit the others gravitated back too. Standing in the cold to watch folk dig is of no lasting profit.
Rill was pressing Gale to finish the mug of soup she'd poured her.
"Drink it all down while there's some heat in it. That's a good girl. Why, you still feel like ice! You need to be under blankets. And get a sleep, you're groggy. Come on now, no arguments."
And she led her off willingly enough to the shelter tent.
Cif was still staring bemusedly at the Mouser's knife, slowly turning it over and over, so that its bright blade periodically reflected the low firelight.
Old Ourph said ruminatively, "When Khahkht the Conqueror was buried bound and beweaponed alive for treason, but later cleared and dug up, it was found his daggers had worked their way yards from his corpse in opposite directions, so strong and wide were his hatreds."
Pshawri said, "I thought Khahkht was a Rimish ice devil, not a Mingol warchief paramount."
After a while Ourph replied, "Great conquerors live on as their enemies' devils."
"Or their own folk's, sometimes," Groniger put in.
Skullick said, "If dead old Khahkht could make his daggers travel through solid earth, why didn't he have them cut his bonds?"
Rill returned with an armful of girls' clothes which she hung by the fire and then sat down beside Cif, saying, "I stripped her down to the buff and bundled her into a warmed nook beside the drowsy Ilthmar kid, who'd half waked but was bound again for slumberland."
After a courteous pause, Ourph explained, "Khahkht's bonds were chains of adamant."
Groniger said speculatively, "I can see how the Mouser's hood would be stripped away upward as he was dragged down, since it had no ties to his other clothing. And I suppose the up-sliding earth, pressing against the dagger's grip and crosspiece, might effect the same result, though taking longer, as he was dragged still farther down by ... whatever it was."
"But wouldn't the knife have been left point down, vertical in the earth, then?" Skullick argued.
Mother Grum interrupted, "Black magic of some breed took him. That's why the knife got left. Iron doesn't obey devil power."
Skullick went on to Groniger, "But the dagger was uncovered lying flat, horizontal. Which would mean by your theory he was being dragged sideways at that point, in the direction Cat's Claw pointed. In which case we're digging the shaft the wrong way, keeping on straight down."
"Gods! I wish we knew exactly what happened to him down there," Pshawri averred, some of his earlier agony coming back into his voice and aspect. "Did he draw Cat's Claw to do battle with the monster dragging him under, free himself of it? Or was he more actively attacked down there and drew the knife in self-defense?"
"How could he do either of those things when closely cased in hard earth?" Groniger objected.
"He'd manage somehow!" Pshawri shot back. "But then how came the dagger to be left behind? He'd never have been parted from Cat's Claw willingly, of that I'm sure."
"Perhaps he lost consciousness then," Rill interposed.
"Or perhaps they were both attacked, the dragger and the dragged, by some third party," Skullick hazarded. "How much do any of us know what may go on down there?"
A look of sheer horror had been growing in Cif's visage as she eyed the knife. She burst out, "Stop breaking our minds and hearts, all of you, with all these guesses!" She took the Mouser's cowl out of her pouch and rapidly wrapped up the dagger in it, folding in the ends. "I cannot think while looking at that thing." She handed the small gray package to Mother Grum. "There, keep it safe and hid," she said, "while we get on to efforts more constructive."
A change came over the small white-clad woman, who'd seemed consumed moments before with nervous grief. She rose lithely from her seat by the fire, saying to Pshawri, "Follow me, Lieutenant. We'll dowse for your captain with his Whirlpool Queller you rescued from the Maelstrom, beginning at the shaft head, and so determine whether and how he's deviated from the straight down in his strange journey through solid earth." She wet two fingers in her mouth and held them high a space. "While we were talking, feeding our woes with horror, the north breeze died—which'll make the dowsing easier for us, its results surer. And you must do the dowsing, Pshawri, because although it galls me somewhat to admit it, you seem the one most sensitive to the Gray Mouser's presence."
Although looking puzzled and taken aback at first by her words, it was with a seeming sense of relief and a growing eagerness that the skinny ex-thief came to his feet. "I'm with you, Lady, of course, in any effort to regain the Captain. What do I do?"
As she explained, they started toward the shaft head. The eyes of the others followed them. After a bit Skullick and Rill got up and strolled after and, several moments later, Groniger. But old Ourph and Mother Grum—and Snowtreader and the other cart-dog, both of whom had been unharnessed—stayed warm by the fire.
A bucket was coming up from the hole, heaping full. When its earth had been scattered, Pshawri positioned himself by the hole, knees bent and spread a little, head bent forward, looking down earnestly at the black-gold cinder cube suspended on a cubit's length of sailor's twine he'd found in his pouch and held at the top between the thumb and ring finger of his left hand.
Cif stood north of him, spreading her cloak to ward off any remnants of the north breeze, though there seemed no need. The cold air had become quite still.
But although the contraption looked like a pendulum, it did not act like one, neither beginning to swing back and forth in any direction nor yet around in a circle or ellipse.
"And there's no vibration either," Pshawri reported in a low voice.
Cif extended a slender forefinger and laid it very lightly and carefully atop the pinching juncture of his finger and thumb. After a space of three heartbeats she nodded in confirmation and said, "Let's try on the opposite side of the hole."
"Why do you use the ring finger and left hand?" Rill asked curiously
"I don't know," Pshawri said puzzledly. "Maybe
because that finger feels the touchiest of the lot. And left hand seems right for magic."
At that last word Groniger growled a skeptical "Hmmph!"
Fafhrd and Afreyt seemed to be digging and sifting strenuously yet still carefully at the bottom of the hole, which had gotten as much as a foot deeper. Cif called down to them an explanation of what she and Pshawri were doing, ending with, "...and then we'll spiral out from here in wider and wider circles, dowsing every few feet. When we get a strong reading—if we do—I'll signal you."
Fafhrd waved that he understood and returned to his digging.
The second reading showed the same results. Pshawri and Cif moved out four yards and began their first methodical circling of the hole, dowsing every few steps. One by one their small company of observers returned to the fire, wearied by sameness. A full bucket came up from the hole.
And after a while, another.
Slowly the white-glowing lantern with which Cif had provided herself grew more distant from the hole. Slowly the pile of dug earth beside it grew. Fingers and Gale slept in each other's arms. While the full moon inched down the western sky.
Time passed.
15
The yellowing moon was no more than two fists above the western horizon of Rime Isle's central hills when Fafhrd's probing spade encountered stone. They'd deepened the hole by about a woman's height below the second tier of shoring. At first Fafhrd thought the obstruction a small boulder and tried to dig around it. Afreyt warned him against overspeed but he persisted. The boulder grew larger and larger. Soon the whole bottom of the shaft was a flat floor of solid rock.
He lifted his eyes to Afreyt's. "What's to do now?"
She shook her head.
A spear's cast southeast of the hole the two dowsers began to get results.
The twine-and-cube pendulum suspended from Pshawri's left hand instead of hanging straight down dead, as it had done over a hundred successive times by count, slowly began to swing forth and back, away from the hole and toward it. They both stared down at it wonderingly, suspiciously.
"Are you making it do that, Pshawri?" she whispered.
"I don't think so," he answered doubtfully.
And then the wonder happened. The swings of the cube toward the hole began to get shorter and shorter, and those away longer and longer, until they stopped altogether and the cube hung straining away from the hole, perceptibly out of the vertical.
"How are you doing that, Pshawri?" Her voice was small, respectful.
"I don't know," he replied shakily. "It pulls. And I'm getting a vibration."
She touched his hand with her forefinger, as before. Almost immediately she nodded, looking at him with awe.
"I'll call Afreyt and Fafhrd. Don't you move."
She rummaged a metal whistle from her pouch and blew it. The note was shrill and piercing in the cold still air.
Down in the hole they heard it. "Cif's signal," Afreyt said, but Fafhrd had already chinned himself on the lowest peg and was hauling himself up the rest hand over hook. She hung one of the lanterns on one arm and followed him up, using both hands and feet.
Fafhrd scanned around and saw a small white glow out in the frozen meadow across the hole from where he stood. It moved back and forth to call attention to itself. He looked down the wood-lined shaft and spotted at its foot the yellow ochre mark he'd made to show the direction Cat's Claw had pointed when it was found. It was in line with the distant lamp. He sucked in his breath, took from Afreyt the lit lamp she'd brought up with her, held it aloft, and moved it twice from side to side in answering signal. The one out in the meadow was immediately lowered.
"That tears it," he told Afreyt, lowering the lamp. "The dagger and the dowsing agree. The shaft must now be dug in that direction, footed upon the rock we've just uncovered and lined and roofed with wood to shield it from collapse."
She nodded and said swiftly, "Skullick suggested earlier that was the message the horizontal attitude and pointing of Cat's Claw were intended by the Gray Mouser to convey."
Idlers crowded around them to hear what new was up. The Northerner at the pulley gazed at Fafhrd intently.
He continued raptly, "The side passage should be narrow and low to conserve wood. The shoring planks can be sawed in three to make its walls. We should be able to dig faster sideways, yet great care must still be exercised in breaking earth."
Afreyt broke in, "There'll be a power of digging, nevertheless, just to take the side passage out below the point where Cif and Skullick are now standing."
"That's true," he answered, "and also true that Captain Mouser may have been drawn away we know not how far, judging by the swiftness and ease with which he first sank. He may be anywhere out there. And yet I feel it's vital we continue on digging from that spot, abiding by the one solid clue we have that we know is from him: his pointing knife! That's a more material clue than any hints and suggestions to be got from dowsing. No, the digging that we've started must go on, else we lose all drive and organization. That we're not doing it right now carks me. But I myself have grown too frantic for the nonce to do the work properly with all due precautions." He appealed to Afreyt, "You yourself, dear, warned me that I was overspeeding, and I was."
He turned to the stalwart at the pulley and commanded, "Udall, fetch Skor! Wake him if he's asleep. Ask him—with courtesy—to come to me here. Tell him he's needed." Udall went. Fafhrd turned back to Afreyt, explaining, "Skor has the patience for the task that I lack, at least at this moment." His voice changed. "And would you, my dear, not only continue with the sifting for now, but also take on for me the direction of the whole task in my absence? Here, take my signet. Wear it on your fist." He held out his right hand to her, fingers spread. She drew the ring from off the little one. "I want to go apart (I don't think well in company) and brood upon this matter, on ways of recovering the Gray One besides digging and dowsing. I think he will return here eventually, exit the underworld same place he entered it—that's why we must keep digging at this spot—yet that's at best the likeliest end. There are a thousand other possibilities to be considered. My mind's afire. The Gray One and I have been in a hundred predicaments and plights as bad as this one.
"Would you do that for me, dear?" he finished. "The sifting you can assign to Rill or two of the girls, or even at a pinch to Mother Grum."
"Leave it all to me, Captain," she said, rubbing along his jaw the clenched knuckles of her right hand, which now wore his silver crossed-swords signet upon the middle finger.
Her action was playful, affectionate, but her violet eyes were anxious and her voice sober as death.
* * * *
Snowtreader had responded as swiftly as Fafhrd to Cif's whistle, bounding out across the frosty meadow. He stopped before Cif, who was still signaling with her high-held lamp. Then his eyes went to bent-over Pshawri and the object hanging oddly from the lieutenant's rock-steady hand. He sniffed at it gingerly and suspiciously, gave a whine of recognition, and hurried on across the meadow a dozen more yards with his nose close to the ground, then paused to look back and bark twice.
Cif lowered her lamp at Fafhrd's answering signal from the shaft head. Pshawri appealed to her, "Would you mark this spot here, Lady? I think we should follow Snowtreader's lead and hurry on while the scent is hot, dowsing at intervals."
Using her dagger pommel for a hammer, she drove into the ground over which Pshawri had been hovering one of the small stakes they'd brought and tied to it a short length of gray ribbon from her pouch. She said, "I think you're right. Though while I was signaling I had the thought that the cinder we're dowsing with is Loki's. It might he guiding us toward him rather than Mouser, and I know from experience what wild goose hunts, what weird will-o'-the-wisp chases that god might lead us on."
"No, Lady," Pshawri assured her, "it's the Captain's signals I'm getting. I know his vibes. And Snowtreader would never confuse him with that tricksy stranger god. What's more, the dog didn't howl this time, as he did so dolefully wh
en the moon was high, but only whined—a sign he's scenting a live thing, no carrion corpse."
Cif observed, "You're awfully fond of the Captain, aren't you? I pray Skama you're right. Lead on, then. The others will catch up."
She was referring to the five dark forms between her and the cookfire and the other lights around the shaft head: Rill, Skullick, Groniger, Ourph, and Mother Grum, all grown curious. Beyond them and the little lights round the shaft head, the setting moon was just touching the horizon, as though going to earth amongst Rime Isle's central hills.
* * * *
Back at the now-lonely cookfire Fafhrd poured himself a half mug of simmering gahvey, tempered it with brandy, drank half of that off in one big hot swallow, and set himself to think shrewdly and systematically of the Gray Mouser's plight, as he'd told Afreyt he would.
He discovered almost at once that his whirling, plunging thoughts and fancies were not to be tamed that way.
Nor did the rest of the mug's contents, taken at a gulp, enforce tranquillity and logic upon stormy disorder.
He paced around in a circle, breaking off when he found himself beginning to twist, jerk, and stamp in a frenzy of control-seeking.
He shook his fingers in front of his face, as if trying to conjure things from empty air.
In a sudden frantic reversal of attitude he asked himself whether he really wanted to rescue the Mouser at all. Let the Gray One escape by his own devices. He'd managed it often enough in the past, by Kos!
He'd have liked to measure his wilder imaginings against Rill's practicality, Groniger's sturdy reason, Mother Grum's dogmatic witch-reasonings, or Ourph's Mingol fatalism. But they'd all traipsed off after the dowsers. He'd told Afreyt he wanted solitude, but now he asked himself how was a man to think without talking? He felt confused, light-headed, light in other ways, as if a puff of wind might knock him down.