Selected Stories

by Fritz Leiber

  "Murderers Moon begins well," his wraith-thin comrade observed from where he still lay abed.

  "At first the captain pretended not to know of Rime Isle, called it a legend, but when I showed him the badge and other things, he gave up that shipmasters' conspiracy of keeping Salthaven and western ports beyond a trade secret. By the by, our ship's called the Good News."

  "An auspicious name," the other, smiling, responded. "Oh Mouser, and oh Fafhrd, dear, your twin brothers are hastening toward you."

  After the long morning twilight that ended Midsummer Eve's short night, Midsummer Day dawned chill and misty in Salthaven. Nevertheless there was an early bustling around the kitchen of the barracks, where the Mouser and Fafhrd had taken their repose, and likewise at Afreyt's house, where Cif and their nieces May, Mara, and Gale had stayed overnight.

  Soon the fiery sun, shooting his rays from the northeast as he began his longest loop south around the sky, had burnt the milky mist off all Rime Isle and showed her clear from the low roofs of Salthaven to the central hills with the leaning tower of Elvenhold in the near middle distance and the Great Meadow rising gently toward it.

  And soon after that an irregular procession set out from the barracks. It wandered crookedly and leisurely through town to pick up the men's women, chiefly by trade, at least in their spare time, sailorwives, and other island guests. The men took turns dragging a cart piled with hampers of barley cakes, sweetbreads, cheese, roast mutton and kid, fruit conserves and other Island delicacies, while at its bottom packed in snow were casks of the Isle's dark bitter ale. A few men blew woodflutes and strummed small harps.

  At the docks Groniger, festive in holiday black, joined them with the news. "The Northern Star out of Ool Plerns came in last even to No-Ombrulsk. I spoke with her master and he said the Good News out of Ool Kroot was at last report sailing for Rime Isle one or two mornings after him."

  At this point Ourph the Mingol begged off from the party, protesting that the walk to Elvenhold would be too much for his old bones and a new crick in his left ankle, he'd rest them in the sun here, and they left him squatting his skinny frame on the warming stone and peering steadily out to sea past where Seahawk, Flotsam, Northern Star, and other ships rode at anchor among the Island fishing sloops.

  Fafhrd said to Groniger, "I've been here a year and more and it still wonders me that Salthaven is such a busy port while the rest of Nehwon goes on thinking Rime Isle a legend. I know I did for a half lifetime."

  "Legends travel on rainbow wings and sport gaudy colors," the harbormaster answered him, "while truth plods on in sober garb."

  "Like yourself ?"

  "Aye," Groniger grunted happily.

  "And 'tis not a legend to the captains, guild masters, and kings who profit by it," the Mouser put in. "Such do most to keep legends alive." The little man (though not little at all among his corps of thieves) was in a merry mood, moving from group to group and cracking wise and gay to all and sundry.

  Skullick, Skor's sub-lieutenant, struck up a berserk battle chant and Fafhrd found himself singing an Ilthmar sea chanty to it. At their next pick-up point tankards of ale were passed out to them. Things grew jollier.

  A little ways out into the Great Meadow, where the thoroughfare led between fields of early ripening Island barley, they were joined by the feminine procession from Afreyt's. These had packed their contribution of toothsome edibles and tastesome potables in two small red carts drawn by stocky white bearhounds big as small men but gentle as lambs. And they had been augmented by the sailorwives and fisherwomen Hilsa and Rill, whose gift to the feast was jars of sweet-pickled fish. Also by the witchwoman Mother Grum, as old as Ourph but hobbling along stalwartly, never known to have missed a feast in her life's long history.

  They were greeted with cries and new singings, while the three girls ran to play with the children the larger procession had inevitably accumulated on its way through town.

  Fafhrd went back for a bit to quizzing Groniger about the ships that called at Salthaven port, flourishing the hook that was his left hand, for emphasis. "I've heard it said, and seen some evidence for it too, myself, that some of them hail from ports that are nowhere on Nehwon seas I know of."

  "Ah, you're becoming a convert to the legends," the black-clad man told him. Then, mischievously, "Why don't you try casting the ships' horoscopes with all you've learned of stars of late, naked and hairy ones?" He frowned. "Though there was a black cutter with a white line that watered here three days ago whose home port I wish I could be surer of. Her master put me off from going below, and her sails didn't look enough for her hull. He said she hailed from Sayend, but that's a seaport we've had reliable word that the Sea-Mingols burned to ash less than two years agone. He knew of that, he claimed. Said it was much exaggerated. But I couldn't place his accent."

  "You see?" Fafhrd told him. "As for horoscopes, I have neither skill or belief in astrology. My sole concern is with the stars themselves and the patterns they make. The hairy star's most interesting! He grows each night. At first I thought him a rover, but he keeps his place. I'll point him out to you come dark."

  "Or some other evening when there's less drinking," the other allowed grudgingly. "A wise man is suspicious of his interests other than the most necessary. They breed illusions."

  The groupings kept changing as they walked, sang, and danced—and played—their way up through the rustling grass. Cif took advantage of this mixing to seek out Pshawri and Mikkidu. The Mouser's two lieutenants had at first been suspicious of her interest in and influence over their captain—a touch of jealousy, no doubt—but honest dealing and speaking, the evident genuineness of her concern, and some furtherance of Pshawri's suit to an Island woman had won them over, so that the three thought of themselves in a limited way as confederates.

  "How's Captain Mouser these days?" she asked them lightly. "Still running his little morning check-up route?"

  "He didn't today," Mikkidu told her.

  "While yesterday he ran it in the afternoon," Pshawri amplified. "And the day before that he missed."

  Mikkidu nodded.

  "I don't fret about him o'er much," she smiled at them, "knowing he's under watchful and sympathetic eyes."

  And so with mutual buttering up and with singing and dancing the augmented holiday band arrived at the spot just south of Elvenhold that they'd selected for their picnic. A portion of the food was laid out on white-sheeted trestles, the drink was broached, and the competitions and games that comprised an important part of the day's program were begun. These were chiefly trials of strength and skill, not of endurance, and one trial only, so that a reasonable or even somewhat unreasonable amount of eating and drinking didn't tend to interfere with performance too much.

  Between the contests were somewhat less impromptu dancings than had been footed earlier: Island stamps and flings, old-fashioned Lankhmar sways, and kicking and bouncing dances copied from the Mingols.

  Knife-throwing came early—"so none will be mad drunk as yet, a sensible precaution," Groniger approved.

  The target was a yard section of mainland tree-trunk almost two yards thick, lugged up the previous day. The distance was fifteen long paces, which meant two revolutions of the knife the way most contestants threw. The Mouser waited until last and then threw underhand as a sort of handicap, or at least seeming handicap, against himself, and his knife embedded deeply in or near the center, clearly a better shot than any of the earlier successful ones, whose points of impact were marked with red chalk.

  A flurry of applause started, but then it was announced that Cif had still to throw; she'd entered at the last possible minute. There was no surprise at a woman entering; that sort of equality was accepted on the Isle.

  "You didn't tell me beforehand you were going to," the Mouser said to her.

  She shook her head at him, concentrating on her aim. "No, leave his dagger in," she called to the judges. "It won't distract me."

  She threw overhand and her knife impa
cted itself so close to his that there was a klir of metal against metal along with the woody thud. Groniger measured the distances carefully with his beechwood ruler and proclaimed Cif the winner.

  "And the measures on this ruler are copied from those on the golden Rule of Prudence in the Island treasury," he added impressively, but later qualified this by saying, "actually my ruler's more accurate than that ikon; doesn't expand with heat and contract with cold as metals do. But some people don't like to keep hearing me say that."

  "Do you think her besting the captain is good for discipline and all?" Mikkidu asked Pshawri in an undertone, his new trust in Cif wavering.

  "Yes, I do!" that one whispered back. "Do the captain good to be shook up a little, what with all this old-man scurrying and worrying and prying and pointing out he's going in for." There, he thought, I've spoken it out to someone at last and I'm glad I did!

  Cif smiled at the Mouser. "No, I didn't tell you ahead of time," she said sweetly, "but I've been practicing—privately. Would it have made a difference?"

  "No," he said slowly, "though I might have had second thoughts about throwing underhand. Are you planning to enter the slinging contest too?"

  "No, never a thought of it," she answered. "Whatever made you think I might?"

  Later the Mouser won that one, both for distance and accuracy, making the latter cast so powerful that it not only holed the center of the bull's-eye into the padded target box but went through the heavier back of the latter as well. Cif begged for the battered slug as a souvenir, and he presented it to her with elaborate flourishes.

  "'Twould have pierced the cuirass of Mingsward!" Mikkidu fervently averred.

  The archery contests were beginning, and Fafhrd was fitting the iron tang in the middle of his bow into the hardwood heading of the leather stall that covered half his left forearm, when he noted Afreyt approaching. She'd doffed her jacket, for the sun was beating down hotly, and was wearing a short-sleeved violet blouse, blue trousers wide-belted with a gold buckle, and purple-dyed short holiday boots. A violet handkerchief confined a little her pale gold hair. A worn green quiver with one arrow in it hung from her shoulder, and she was carrying a big longbow.

  Fafhrd's eyes narrowed a bit at those, recalling Cif and the knife throwing. But "You look like a pirate queen," he greeted her and then only inquired, "you're entering one of the contests?"

  "I don't know," she said with a shrug. "I'll watch along through the first."

  "That bow," he said casually, "looks to me to have a very heavy pull and tall as you are, to be a touch long for you."

  "Right on both counts," she agreed, nodding. "It belonged to my father. You'd be truly startled, I think, to see how I managed to draw it as a stripling girl. My father would doubtless have spanked me soundly if he'd ever caught me at it, or rather lived long enough to do that."

  Fafhrd lifted his eyebrows inquiringly, but the pirate queen vouchsafed no more. He won the distance shot handily but lost the target shot (through which Afreyt also watched) by a fingersbreadth to Skor's other sub-lieutenant Mannimark.

  Then came the high shot, which was something special to Midsummer Day on Rime Isle and generally involved the loss of the contestant's arrow, for the target was a grassy, nearly vertical stretch on the upper half of the south face of Elvenhold. The north face of the slanting rock tower actually overhung the ground a little and was utterly barren, but the south face, though very steep, sloped enough to hold soil to support herbage, rather miraculously. The contest honored the sun, which reached this day his highest point in the heavens, while the contesting arrows, identified by colored rags of thinnest silk attached to their necks, emulated him in their efforts.

  Then Afreyt stepped forward, kicked off her purple boots, and rolled up her blue trousers above her knees. She plucked her arrow, which bore a violet silk, from her quiver and threw that aside. "Now I'll reveal to you the secret of my girlish technique," she said to Fafhrd.

  Quite rapidly she sat down facing the dizzy slope, set the bow to her bare feet, laying the arrow between her big toes and holding it and the string with both hands, rolled back on to her shoulders, straightened her legs smoothly, and loosed her shot.

  It was seen to strike the slope near Fafhrd's yellow, skid a few yards higher, and then lie there, a violet taunt.

  Afreyt, bending her legs again, removed the bow from her feet, and rolling sharply forward, stood up in the same motion.

  "You practiced that," Fafhrd said, hardly accusingly, as he finished screwing the hook back in the stall on his left arm.

  She nodded. "Yes, but only for half a lifetime."

  "The lady Afreyt's arrow didn't stick in," Skullick pointed out. "Is that fair? A breath of wind might dislodge it."

  "Yes, but there is no wind and it somehow got highest," Groniger pointed out to him. "Actually it's accounted lucky in the high shot if your arrow doesn't embed itself. Those that don't sometimes are blown down. Those that do stay up there are never recovered."

  "Doesn't someone go up and collect the arrows?" Skullick asked.

  "Scale Elvenhold? Have you wings?"

  Skullick eyed the rock tower and shook his head sheepishly. Fafhrd overheard Groniger's remarks and gave the harbormaster an odd look but made no other comment at the time.

  Afreyt invited both of them over to the red dogcarts and produced a jug of Ilthmar brandy, and they toasted her and Fafhrd's victories—the Mouser's too and Cif's, who happened along.

  "This'll put feathers in your wings!" Fafhrd told Groniger, who eyed him thoughtfully.

  The children were playing with the white bearhounds. Gale had won the girls' archery contest and May the short race.

  Some of the younger children were becoming fretful, however, and shadows were lengthening. The games and contests were all over now, and partly as a consequence of that the drinking was heavying up as the last scraps of food were being eaten. Among the whole picnic group there seemed to be a feeling of weariness but also (for those no longer very young but not yet old) new jollity, as though one party were ending and another beginning. Cif's and Afreyt's eyes were especially bright. Everyone seemed ready to go home, though whether to their own places or the Sea Wrack was a matter of age and temperament. There was a chill breath in the air.

  Gazing east and down a little toward Salthaven and the harbor beyond, the Mouser opined that he could already see low mist gathering around the bare masts there, and Groniger confirmed that. But what was the small lone dark figure trudging up-meadow toward them in the face of the last low sunlight?

  "Ourph, I'll be bound," said Fafhrd. "What's led him to make the hike after all?"

  But it was hard to be sure the big northerner was right; the figure was still far off. Yet the signal for leaving had been given, things were gathered, the carts repacked, and all set out most staying near the carts, from which drinks continued to be forthcoming. And perhaps these were responsible for a resumption of the morning's impromptu singing and dancing though now it was not Fafhrd and the Mouser but others who took the lead in this. The Twain, after a whole day of behaving like old times, were slipping back under the curses they knew not of, the one's eyes forever on the ground, with the effect of old age unsure of its footing, the other's on the sky, indicative of old age's absent-mindedness.

  Fafhrd turned out to be right about the up-meadow trudges but it was few words they got from Ourph as to why he'd made the hike he'd earlier begged off from.

  The old Mingol said only to them, and to Groniger, who happed to be by, "The Good News is in." Then, eyeing the Twain more particularly, "Tonight stay away from the Sea Wrack."

  But he would answer nothing more to their puzzled queries save, "I know what I know and I've told it," and two cups of brandy did not loosen his Mingol tongue one whit.

  The encounter put them behind the main party, but they did not try to catch up. The sun had set some time back, and now their feet and legs were lapped by the ground mist that already covered Salthaven and into
which the picnic party was vanishing, its singing and strumming already sounding tiny and far off.

  "You see," Groniger said to Fafhrd and eyeing the twilit but yet starless sky while the mist lapped higher around them "you won't be able to show me your bearded star tonight in any case."

  Fafhrd nodded vaguely but made no other answer save to pass the brandy jug as they footed it along: four men walking deeper and deeper, as it were, into a white silence.

  Cif and Afreyt, very much caught up in the gayety of evening party and bright-eyed drunk besides, were among the first to enter the Sea Wrack and encounter arresting silence of another sort, and almost instantly come under the strange, hushing spell of the scene there.

  Fafhrd and the Mouser sat at their pet table in the low-walled booth playing backgammon, and the whole tavern frightenedly watched them while pretending not to. Fear was in the air.

  That was the first impression. Then, almost at once, Cif and Afreyt saw that Fafhrd couldn't be Fafhrd, he was much too thin; nor the Mouser the Mouser, much too plump (though every bit as agile and supple-looking, paradoxically).

  Nor were the faces and clothing and accouterments of the two strangers anything really like the Twain's. It was more their expressions and mannerisms, postures and general manner, self-confident manner, those and the fact of being at that table. The sublime impression the two of them made that they were who they were and that they were in their rightful place.

  And the fear that radiated from them with the small sounds of their gaming: the muted rattle of shaken bone dice in one or the other's palm-closed leather cup, the muted clatter as the dice were spilled into one or other of the two low-walled felt-lined compartments of the backgammon box, the sharp little clicks of the bone counters as they were shifted by ones and twos from point to point. The fear that riveted the attention of everyone else in the place no matter how much they pretended to be understanding the conversations they made, or tasting the drinks they swallowed, or busying themselves with little tavern chores. The fear that seized upon and recruited each picnic newcomer. Oh yes, this night something deadly was coiling here at the Sea Wrack, make no mistake about it.