Swords Against Death

by Fritz Leiber

  "Three in a night," she cried. "You have killed the third. It is well, falconer."

  Stravas could be heard saying in a gasping voice, "I know you. I know you."

  Still the falconer advanced, until she said quietly, "What is it? What do you want?" Then the falconer leaped at her with catlike swiftness and advanced the bloody sword so that it glittered redly against the black fabric covering her bosom.

  And Fafhrd heard the Mouser say, "Move not, Atya. Nor command your birds to any evil action. Or you will die in a wink, as your falconer and his black pet died."

  For five choking heartbeats there was dead silence. Then the woman on the altar began to breathe in a dry, strangled way, and utter short, broken cries that were almost croakings.

  Some of the black birds rose from their perches and beat about uncertainly, dipping in and out of the shafts of moonlight, though keeping clear of the altar. The woman began to sway and rock from side to side. The sword followed her unalterably, like a pendulum.

  Fafhrd noted the second falconer move up beside him, raising his shortsword for a throw. Putting all his strength into one mighty leverage of wrist and forearm, Fafhrd snapped the last of the lashings, ponderously heaved himself and the chair up and forward, caught the falconer's wrist as it started to whip the shortsword forward, and hurtled down with him to the floor. The falconer squealed in pain and a bone snapped. Fafhrd lay heavily atop him, staring at the leather-masked, gauntleted Mouser and the woman.

  "Two falconers in a night," said the Mouser, mimicking the woman. "It is well, Fafhrd." Then he continued pitilessly, "The masquerade is over, Atya. Your vengeance on the highborn women of Lankhmar has come to an end. Ah, but fat Muulsh will be surprised at his little dove! To steal even your own jewels! Almost too cunning, Atya!"

  A cry of bitter anguish and utter defeat came from the woman, in which her humiliation and weakness showed naked. But then she ceased to sway and a look of utter desperation tightened her decadent face.

  "To the Mountains of Darkness!" she cried out wildly. "To the Mountains of Darkness! Bear Tyaa's tribute to Tyaa's last stronghold!" And she followed this with a series of strange whistles and trillings and screams.

  At this all the birds rose together, though still keeping clear of the altar. They milled wildly, giving vent to varied squawlings, which the woman seemed to answer.

  "No tricks now, Atya!" said the Mouser. "Death is close."

  Then one of the black fowls dipped to the floor, clutched an emerald-studded bracelet, rose again, and beat with it through a deep embrasure in that wall of the temple which overlooked the River Hlal. One after another, the other birds followed its example.

  As if in some grotesque ritual procession, they sailed out into the night, bearing a fortune in their claws: necklaces, brooches, rings and pins of gold, silver, and electrum set with all colors of jewels, palely rich in the moonlight.

  After the last three for whom no jewels were left vanished, Atya raised her black-draped arms toward the two outjutting sculptures of winged women, as if imploring a miracle, gave voice to a mad lonely wail, recklessly sprang from the altar, and ran after the birds.

  The Mouser did not strike, but followed her, his sword dangerously close. Together they plunged into the embrasure. There was another cry, and after a little the Mouser returned alone and came over to Fafhrd. He cut Fafhrd's bonds, and pulled away the chair, helping him up. The injured falconer did not move, but lay whimpering softly.

  "She sprang into the Hlal?" asked Fafhrd, his throat dry. The Mouser nodded.

  Fafhrd dazedly rubbed his forehead. But his mind was clearing, as the effects of the poison waned.

  "Even as the names were the same," he mumbled softly. "Atya and Tyaa!"

  The Mouser went toward the altar and began to saw at the lashings of the cutpurse. "Some of your men tried to pepper me tonight, Stravas," he said lightly. "I had no easy time eluding them and finding my way up the choked stairs."

  "I am sorry for that ― now," said Stravas.

  "They were your men too, I suppose, who went jewel-stealing to Muulsh's house tonight?"

  Stravas nodded, uncramping loosened limbs. "But I hope we're allies now," he answered, "although there's no loot to share, except for some worthless glass and gew gaws." He laughed grimly. "Was there no way to get rid of those black demons without losing all?"

  "For a man plucked from the beak of death, you are very greedy, Stravas," said the Mouser. "But I suppose it's your professional training. No, I for one am glad the birds have fled. Most of all I feared they would get out of hand ― as would surely have happened had I killed Atya. Only she could control them. Then we'd have died surely. Observe how Fafhrd's arm is swollen."

  "Perhaps the birds will bring the treasure back," said Stravas hopefully.

  "I do not think so," answered the Mouser.

  Two nights later, Muulsh, the moneylender, having learned something of these matters from a broken-armed falconer who had long been employed to care for his wife's songbirds, sprawled comfortably on the luxurious bed in his wife's room. One pudgy hand clasped a goblet of wine, the other that of a pretty maid who had been his wife's hairdresser.

  "I never really loved her," he said, pulling the demurely smiling wench toward him. "It was only that she used to goad and frighten me."

  The maid gently disengaged her hand.

  "I just want to hang the coverings on those cages," she explained. "Their eyes remind me of hers." And she shivered delicately under her thin tunic.

  When the last songbird was shrouded and silent, she came back and sat on his knee.

  Gradually the fear left Lankhmar. But many wealthy women continued to wear silver cages over their features, considering it a most enchanting fashion. Gradually style altered the cages to soft masks of silver network.

  And some time afterward the Mouser said to Fafhrd, "There is a thing I have not told you. When Atya leaped into the Hlal, it was full moonlight. Yet somehow my eyes lost her as she fell, and I saw no splash whatever, although I peered closely. Then, as I lifted my head, I saw the end of that ragged procession of birds across the moon. Behind them came, I thought, a very much larger bird, flapping strongly."

  "And you think..." asked Fafhrd.

  "Why, I think Atya drowned in the Hlal," said the Mouser.

  IX: The Prince of Pain-Ease

  The big barbarian Fafhrd, outcast of the World of Nehwon's Cold Waste and forever a foreigner in the land and city of Lankhmar, Nehwon's most notable area, and the small but deadly swordsman the Gray Mouser, a stateless person even in careless, unbureaucratic Nehwon, and man without a country (that he knew of), were fast friends and comrades from the moment they met in Lankhmar City near the intersection of Gold and Cash Streets. But they never shared a home. For one obvious thing, they were by nature, except for their companionship, loners; and such are almost certain to be homeless. For another, they were almost always adventuring, tramping, or exploring, or escaping from the deadly consequences of past misdeeds and misjudgments. For a third, their first and only true loves ― Fafhrd's Vlana and the Mouser's Ivrian ― were foully murdered (and bloodily though comfortlessly revenged) the first night the two young men met, and any home without a best-loved woman is a chilly place. For a fourth, they habitually stole all their possessions, even their swords and daggers, which they always named Graywand and Heartseeker and Scalpel and Cat's Claw, no matter how often they lost them and pilfered replacements ― and homes are remarkably difficult to steal. Here, of course, one does not count tents, inn-lodgings, caves, palaces in which one happens to be employed or perhaps the guest of a princess or queen, or even shacks one rents for a while, as the Mouser and Fafhrd briefly and later did in an alley near the Plaza of Dark Delights.

  Yet after their first trampings and gallopings of Nehwon, after their second, mostly womanless, adventures in and about Lankhmar ― for the memories of Ivrian and Vlana haunted them for years ― and after their ensorceled voyage across the Outer Sea and b
ack, and after their encounters with the Seven Black Priests and with Atya and Tyaa, and their second return to Lankhmar, they did for a few brief moons share a house and home, although it was a rather small and, naturally, stolen one, and the two women in it ghosts only, and its location ― because of the morbid mood they also shared ― most dubious and dire.

  Coming one night half drunk by way of Plague Court and Bones Alley from the tavern at Cash and Whore named the Golden Lamprey to an inn of most merry yet most evil recollection called the Silver Eel ― on Dim Lane, this, halfway between Cheap and Carter ― they spied behind it the still uncleared cinders and blackened, tumbled stones of the tenement where their first loves Ivrian and Vlana had, after many torments, been burned to white ashes, some atomies of whom they might even now be seeing by the murky moonlight.

  Much later that night and much more drunk, they wandered north beyond the Street of the Gods to the section of the aristocrats by the Sea Wall and east of the Rainbow Palace of Lankhmar's Overlord Karstak Ovartamortes. In the estate of Duke Danius, the Mouser spied through the spiked wall and now by brighter moonlight ― the air there being cleansed of night-smog by the gentle north seawind ― a snug, trim, well-polished, natural wooden garden house with curvingly horned ridgepole and beam-ends, to which abode he took a sudden extreme fancy and which he even persuaded Fafhrd to admire. It rested on six short cedar posts which in turn rested on flat rock. Nothing then would do but rush to Wall Street and the Marsh Gate, hire a brawny two-score of the inevitable nightlong idlers there with a silver coin and big drink apiece and promise of a gold coin and bigger drink to come, lead them to Danius' dark abode, pick the iron gate-lock, lead them warily in, order them heave up the garden house and carry it out ― providentially without any great creakings and with no guards or watchmen appearing. In fact, the Mouser and Fafhrd were able to finish another jug of wine during their supervising. Next tightly blindfold the two-score carriers ― this was the only difficult part of the operation, requiring all the Mouser's adroit, confident cajoling and Fafhrd's easy though somewhat ominous and demanding friendliness ― and guide and goad the forty of the impromptu porters as they pantingly and sweatingly carried the house. They went south down empty Carter Street and west up Bones Alley (the garden house fortunately being rather narrow, three smallish rooms in a row) to the empty lot behind the Silver Eel, where after Fafhrd had hurled aside three stone blocks there was space to ease it down. Then it only remained to guide the still blindfolded carriers back to the Marsh Gate, give them their gold and buy them their wine ― a big jug apiece seemed wisest to blot out memory ― then rush back in the pinkening dawn to buy from Braggi, the tavernmaster, the worthless lot behind the Silver Eel, reluctantly chop off with Fafhrd's fighting axe the garden house's ridgepole and beam-horns, throw water and then disguising ashes onto the roof and walls (without thought of what evil omen this was, recalling Vlana and Ivrian), finally stagger inside and collapse into sleep on the naked floor before even looking around.

  When they woke next evening, the place turned out to be quite nice inside, the two end-rooms each a thick-carpeted bedroom with highly erotic murals filling the walls. The Mouser puzzled as to whether Duke Danius shared his garden-concubines with a friend or else rushed back and forth between the two bedrooms all by himself. The central room was a most couth and sedate living room with several shelves of expensively bound stimulating books and a fine larder of rare jugged foods and wines. One of the bedrooms even had a copper bathtub ― the Mouser appropriated that one at once ― and both bedrooms had privies easily cleaned out below by a parttime and out-dwelling houseboy they hired that night from the Eel.

  The theft was highly successful, they had no trouble from Lankhmar's brown-cuirassed and generally lazy guardsmen, no trouble from Duke Danius ― if he hired house-spies, they botched their not-too-easy job. And for several days the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd were very happy in their new domicile, eating and drinking up Danius' fine provender, making the quick run to the Eel for extra wine, the Mouser taking two or three perfumed, soapy, oily, slow baths a day, Fafhrd going every two days to the nearest public steam-bath and putting in a lot of time on the books, sharpening his already considerable knowledge of High Lankhmarese, Ilthmarish, and Quarmallian.

  By slow degrees, Fafhrd's bedroom became comfortably sloppy, the Mouser's quite fussily tidy and neat ― it was simply their real natures expressing themselves.

  After a few days Fafhrd discovered a second library, most cunningly concealed, of books dealing with nothing but death, books at complete variance with the other supremely erotic volumes. Fafhrd found them equally educational, while the Gray Mouser amused himself by picturing Duke Danius pausing to scan a few paragraphs about strangulation or Kleshite jungle poisons while dashing back and forth between his two bedrooms and their two or more girls.

  However, they didn't invite any girls to their charming new home and perhaps for a very good reason, because after half a moon or so the ghost of slim Ivrian began to appear to the Mouser and the ghost of tall Vlana to Fafhrd, both spirits perhaps raised from their remaining mineral dust drifting around-about, and even plastered on the outer walls. The girl-ghosts never spoke, even in faintest whisper, they never touched, even so much as by the brush of a single hair; Fafhrd never spoke of Vlana to the Mouser, nor the Mouser to Fafhrd of Ivrian. The two girls were invariably invisible, inaudible, intangible, yet they were there.

  Secretly from each other, each man consulted witches, witch doctors, astrologers, wizards, necromancers, fortune tellers, reputable physicans, priests even, seeking a cure for their ills (each desiring to see more of his dead girl or nothing at all), yet finding none.

  Within three moons the Mouser and Fafhrd ― very easy-amiable to each other, very tolerant on all matters, very quick to crack jokes, smiling far more than was their wont ― were both rapidly going mad. The Mouser realized this one gray dawn when the instant he opened his eyes a pale, two-dimensional Ivrian at last appeared and gazed sadly at him one moment from the ceiling and then utterly vanished.

  Big drops of sweat beaded his entire face and head from hairline down on all sides; his throat was acid, and he gagged and retched. Then with one fling of his right arm, he threw off all his bedclothes and raced naked out of his bedroom and across the living room into Fafhrd's.

  The Northerner wasn't there.

  He stared at the tousled, empty bed for a long time. Then he drank at one swallow half a bottle of fortified wine. Then he brewed himself a pot of burningly hot, triple-strength gahveh. As he gulped it down, he found himself violently shivering and shaking. He threw on a wool robe and belted it tightly around him, drew on his wool boots, then still shivered and shook as he finished his still-steaming gahveh.

  All day long he paced the living room or sprawled in one of its big chairs, alternating fortified wine and hot gahveh, awaiting Fafhrd's return, still shaking from time to time and pulling his warm robe tighter around him.

  But the Northerner never appeared.

  When the windows of thin and ash-dusty horn yellowed and darkened in the late afternoon, the Mouser began to think in a more practical fashion of his plight. It occurred to him that the one sorcerer he had not consulted about his horrible Ivrian hang-up ― just conceivably because that was the one sorcerer he believed might not be a faker and quack ― was Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, who dwelt in a five-legged hut in the Great Salt Marsh immediately east of Lankhmar.

  He whipped off his woolen stuff and speedily donned his gray tunic of coarsely woven silk, his ratskin boots, belted on his slim sword Scalpel and his dagger Cat's Claw (he'd early noted that Fafhrd's ordinary clothes and sword Graywand and dagger Heartseeker were gone), caught up his hooded cloak of the same material as his tunic, and fled from the dreadful little house in vast, sudden fear that Ivrian's sad ghost would appear to him again and then, without talking or touching, again vanish.

  It was sunset. The houseboy from the Eel was cleaning out the privies. The Mouser as
ked, rather wildly and fiercely, "Seen Fafhrd today?"

  The lad started back. "Yes," he said. "He rode off at dawn on a big white horse."

  "Fafhrd doesn't own a horse," the Mouser said harshly and dangerously.

  Again the lad started back. "It was the biggest horse I've ever seen. It had a brown saddle and harness, studded with gold."

  The Mouser snarled and half drew Scalpel from her mouseskin scabbard. Then, beyond the lad, he saw, twinkling and gleaming in the gloom, a huge, jet-black horse with black saddle and harness, studded with silver.

  He raced past the lad, who threw himself sidewise into the dirt, vaulted up onto the saddle, grasped the reins, thrust his feet into the stirrups ― which hung exactly at the right height for him ― and booted the horse, which instantly took off down Dim Lane, galloped north on Carter and west on the Street of the Gods ― the crowd scampering out of the way ― and was through the open Marsh Gate before the guards could draw back their ragged-edged pikes for a thrust or advance them as a formal barrier.

  The sunset was behind, the night was ahead, damp wind was on his cheeks, and the Mouser found all of these things good.

  The black horse galloped down Causey Road for sixty or so bowshots, or eighteen score spear-casts, and then plunged off the road inland and south, so suddenly the Mouser was almost unsaddled. But he managed to keep his seat, dodging as best he could the weaponed branches of the thorn and seahawk trees. After not more than a hundred gasping breaths, the horse came to a halt, and there facing them was Sheelba's hut, and a little above the Mouser's head the low, dark doorway and a black-robed and black-hooded figure crouched in it.

  The Mouser said loudly, "What are you up to, you wizardly trickster? I know you must have sent this horse for me."

  Sheelba said not a word and moved not a whit, even though his crouching position looked most uncomfortable, at least for a being with legs rather than, say, tentacles.