by Paula Guran
After a long, uncertain pause, the girl in violet nervously patted with her free hand the cloth of gold beside her and Vlana seated herself there, carefully not too close, and the two women spoke together in low voices, Vlana taking the lead, though not obviously.
The Mouser took off his own gray, hooded cloak, folded it almost fussily, and laid it beside Fafhrd’s. Then they unbelted their swords, and the Mouser set them atop folded robe and cloak.
Without those weapons and bulking garments, the two men looked suddenly like youths, both with clear, close-shaven faces, both slender despite the swelling muscles of Fafhrd’s arms and calves, he with long red-gold hair falling down his back and about his shoulders, the Mouser with dark hair cut in bangs, the one in brown leather tunic worked with copper wire, the other in jerkin of coarsely woven gray silk.
They smiled at each other. The feeling each had of having turned boy all at once made their smiles for the first time a bit embarrassed. The Mouser cleared his throat and, bowing a little, but looking still at Fafhrd, extended a loosely spread-fingered arm toward the golden couch and said with a preliminary stammer, though otherwise smoothly enough, “Fafhrd, my good friend, permit me to introduce you to my princess. Ivrian, my dear, receive Fafhrd graciously if you please, for tonight he and I fought back to back against three and we conquered.”
Fafhrd advanced, stooping a little, the crown of his red-gold hair brushing the bestarred canopy, and knelt before Ivrian exactly as Vlana had. The slender hand extended to him looked steady now, but was still quiveringly a-tremble, he discovered as soon as he touched it. He handled it as if it were silk woven of the white spider’s gossamer, barely brushing it with his lips, and still felt nervous as he mumbled some compliments.
He did not sense, at least at the moment, that the Mouser was quite as nervous as he, if not more so, praying hard that Ivrian would not overdo her princess part and snub their guests, or collapse in trembling or tears or run to him or into the next room, for Fafhrd and Vlana were literally the first beings, human or animal, noble, freeman, or slave, that he had brought or allowed into the luxurious nest he had created for his aristocratic beloved—save the two love birds that twittered in a silver cage hanging to the other side of the fireplace from the dais.
Despite his shrewdness and new-found cynicism it never occurred to the Mouser that it was chiefly his charming but preposterous coddling of Ivrian that was keeping doll-like and even making more so the potentially brave and realistic girl who had fled with him from her father’s torture chamber four moons ago.
But now as Ivrian smiled at last and Fafhrd gently returned her her hand and cautiously backed off, the Mouser relaxed with relief, fetched two silver cups and two silver mugs, wiped them needlessly with a silken towel, carefully selected a bottle of violet wine, then with a grin at Fafhrd uncorked instead one of the jugs the Northerner had brought, and near-brimmed the four gleaming vessels and served them all four. With another preliminary clearing of throat, but no trace of stammer this time, he toasted, “To my greatest theft to date in Lankhmar, which willy-nilly I must share sixty-sixty with”—he couldn’t resist the sudden impulse—“with this great, longhaired, barbarian lout here!” And he downed a quarter of his mug of pleasantly burning wine fortified with brandy.
Fafhrd quaffed off half of his, then toasted back, “To the most boastful and finical little civilized chap I’ve ever deigned to share loot with,” quaffed off the rest, and with a great smile that showed white teeth held out his empty mug.
The Mouser gave him a refill, topped off his own, then set that down to go to Ivrian and pour into her lap from their small pouch the gems he’d filched from Fissif. They gleamed in their new, enviable location like a small puddle of rainbow-hued quicksilver.
Ivrian jerked back a-tremble, almost spilling them, but Vlana gently caught her arm, steadying it, and leaned in over the jewels with a throaty gasp of wonder and admiration, slowly turned an envious gaze on the pale girl, and began rather urgently but smilingly to whisper to her. Fafhrd realized that Vlana was acting now, but acting well and effectively, since Ivrian was soon nodding eagerly and not long after that beginning to whisper back. At her direction, Vlana fetched a blue-enameled box inlaid with silver, and the two of them transferred the jewels from Ivrian’s lap into its blue velvet interior. Then Ivrian placed the box close beside her and they chatted on.
As he worked through his second mug in smaller gulps, Fafhrd relaxed and began to get a deeper feeling of his surroundings. The dazzling wonder of the first glimpse of this throne room in a slum, its colorful luxury intensified by contrast with the dark and mud and slime and rotten stairs and Ordure Boulevard just outside, faded, and he began to note the ricketiness and rot under the grand overlay.
Black, rotten wood and dry, cracked wood too showed here and there between the drapes and also loosed their sick, ancient stinks. The whole floor sagged under the rugs, as much as a span at the center of the room. A large cockroach was climbing down a gold-worked drape, another toward the couch. Threads of night-smog were coming through the shutters, making evanescent black arabesques against the gilt. The stones of the large fireplace had been scrubbed and varnished, yet most of the mortar was gone from between them; some sagged, others were missing altogether.
The Mouser had been building a fire there in the stove. Now he pushed in all the way the yellow flaring kindler he’d lit from the fire-pot, hooked the little black door shut over the mounting flames, and turned back into the room. As if he’d read Fafhrd’s mind, he took up several cones of incense, set their peaks a-smolder at the fire-pot, and placed them about the room in gleaming, shallow, brass bowls—stepping hard on the one cockroach by the way and surreptitiously catching and crushing the other in the base of his flicked fist. Then he stuffed silken rags in the widest shutter-cracks, took up his silver mug again, and for a moment gave Fafhrd a very hard look, as if daring him to say just one word against the delightful yet faintly ridiculous doll’s house he’d prepared for his princess.
Next moment he was smiling and lifting his mug to Fafhrd, who was doing the same. Need of refills brought them close together. Hardly moving his lips, the Mouser explained sotto voce, “Ivrian’s father was a duke. I slew him, by black magic, I believe, while he was having me done to death on the torture rack. A most cruel man, cruel to his daughter too, yet a duke, so that Ivrian is wholly unused to fending or caring for herself. I pride myself that I maintain her in grander state than ever her father did with all his serving men and maids.”
Suppressing the instant criticisms he felt of this attitude and program, Fafhrd nodded and said amiably, “Surely you’ve thieved together a most charming little palace, quite worthy of Lankhmar’s Overlord Karstak Ovartamortes, or the King of Kings at Horborixen.”
From the couch Vlana called in her husky contralto, “Gray Mouser, your princess would hear an account of tonight’s adventure. And might we have more wine?”
Ivrian called, “Yes, please, Mouse.” Wincing almost imperceptibly at that earlier nickname, the Mouser looked to Fafhrd for the go-ahead, got the nod, and launched into his story. But first he served the girls wine. There wasn’t enough for their cups, so he opened another jug and after a moment of thought uncorked all three, setting one by the couch, one by Fafhrd where he sprawled now on the pillowy carpets, and reserving one for himself. Ivrian looked wide-eyed apprehensive at this signal of heavy drinking ahead, Vlana cynical with a touch of anger, but neither voiced their criticism.
The Mouser told the tale of counter-thievery well, acting it out in part, and with only the most artistic of embellishments—the ferret-marmoset before escaping ran up his back and tried to scratch out his eyes—and he was interrupted only twice.
When he said, “And so with a whish and a snick I bared Scalpel—” Fafhrd remarked, “Oh, so you’ve nicknamed your sword as well as yourself?”
he Mouser drew himself up. “Yes, and I call my dirk Cat’s Claw. Any objections? Seem childish to you?”<
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“Not at all. I call my own sword Graywand. All weapons are in a fashion alive, civilized and nameworthy. Pray continue.”
And when he mentioned the beastie of uncertain nature that had gamboled along with the thieves (and attacked his eyes!), Ivrian paled and said with a shudder, “Mouse! That sounds like a witch’s familiar!”
“Wizard’s,” Vlana corrected. “Those gutless Guild villains have no truck with women, except as fee’d or forced vehicles for their lust. But Krovas, their current king, though superstitious, is noted for taking all precautions, and might well have a warlock in his service.”
“That seems most likely; it harrows me with dread,” the Mouser agreed with ominous gaze and sinister voice. He really didn’t believe or feel what he said—he was about as harrowed as virgin prairie—in the least, but he eagerly accepted any and all atmospheric enhancements of his performance.
When he was done, the girls, eyes flashing and fond, toasted him and Fafhrd for their cunning and bravery. The Mouser bowed and eye-twinklingly smiled about, then sprawled him down with a weary sigh, wiping his forehead with a silken cloth and downing a large drink.
After asking Vlana’s leave, Fafhrd told the adventurous tale of their escape from Cold Corner—he from his clan, she from an acting troupe—and of their progress to Lankhmar, where they lodged now in an actors’ tenement near the Plaza of Dark Delights. Ivrian hugged herself to Vlana and shivered large-eyed at the witchy parts—at least as much in delight as fear of Fafhrd’s tale, he thought. He told himself it was natural that a doll-girl should love ghost stories, though he wondered if her pleasure would have been as great if she had known that his ghost stories were truly true. She seemed to live in worlds of imagination—once more at least half the Mouser’s doing, he was sure.
The only proper matter he omitted from his account was Vlana’s fixed intent to get a monstrous revenge on the Thieves’ Guild for torturing to death her accomplices and harrying her out of Lankhmar when she’d tried freelance thieving in the city, with miming as a cover. Nor of course did he mention his own promise—foolish, he thought now—to help her in this bloody business.
After he’d done and got his applause, he found his throat dry despite his skald’s training, but when he sought to wet it, he discovered that his mug was empty and his jug too, though he didn’t feel in the least drunk; he had talked all the liquor out of him, he told himself, a little of the stuff escaping in each glowing word he’d spoken.
The Mouser was in like plight and not drunk either—though inclined to pause mysteriously and peer toward infinity before answering question or making remark. This time he suggested, after a particularly long infinity-gaze, that Fafhrd accompany him to the Eel while he purchased a fresh supply.
“But we’ve a lot of wine left in our jug,” Ivrian protested. “Or at least a little,” she amended. It did sound empty when Vlana shook it. “Besides, you’ve wine of all sorts here.”
“Not this sort, dearest, and first rule is never mix ’em,” the Mouser explained, wagging a finger. “That way lies unhealth, aye, and madness.”
“My dear,” Vlana said, sympathetically patting Ivrian’s wrist, “at some time in any good party all the men who are really men simply have to go out. It’s extremely stupid, but it’s their nature and can’t be dodged, believe me.”
“But, Mouse, I’m scared. Fafhrd’s tale frightened me. So did yours—I’ll hear that big-headed, black, ratty familiar a-scratch at the shutters when you’re gone, I know I will!”
It seemed to Fafhrd she was not afraid at all, only taking pleasure in frightening herself and in demonstrating her power over her beloved.
“Darlingest,” the Mouser said with a small . . . hiccup, “there is all the Inner Sea, all the Land of the Eight Cities, and to boot all the Trollstep Mountains in their sky-scraping grandeur between you and Fafhrd’s frigid specters or—pardon me, my comrade, but it could be—hallucinations admixed with coincidences. As for familiars, pish! They’ve never in the world been anything but the loathy, all-too-natural pets of stinking old women and womanish old men.”
“The Eel’s but a step, Lady Ivrian,” Fafhrd said, “and you’ll have beside you my dear Vlana, who slew my chiefest enemy with a single cast of that dagger she now wears.”
With a glare at Fafhrd that lasted no longer than a wink, but conveyed “What a way to reassure a frightened girl!” Vlana said merrily, “Let the sillies go, my dear. ‘Twill give us chance for a private chat, during which we’ll take ’em apart from wine-fumy head to restless foot.”
So Ivrian let herself be persuaded and the Mouser and Fafhrd slipped off, quickly shutting the door behind them to keep out the night-smog. Their rather rapid steps down the stairs could clearly be heard from within. There were faint creakings and groanings of the ancient wood outside the wall, but no sound of another tread breaking or other mishap.
Waiting for the four jugs to be brought up from the cellar, the two newly met comrades ordered a mug each of the same fortified wine, or one near enough, and ensconced themselves at the least noisy end of the long serving counter in the tumultuous tavern. The Mouser deftly kicked a rat that thrust black head and shoulders from his hole. After each had enthusiastically complimented the other on his girl, Fafhrd said diffidently, “Just between ourselves, do you think there might be anything to your sweet Ivrian’s notion that the small dark creature with Slivikin and the other Guild-thief was a wizard’s familiar, or at any rate the cunning pet of a sorcerer, trained to act as go-between and report disasters to his master or to Krovas or to both?”
The Mouser laughed lightly. “You’re building bugbears—formless baby ones unlicked by logic—out of nothing, dear barbarian brother, if I may say so. Imprimis, we don’t really know the beastie was connected with the Guildthieves at all. May well have been a stray catling or a big bold rat—like this damned one!” He kicked again. “But, secundus, granting it to be the creature of a wizard employed by Krovas, how could it make useful report? I don’t believe in animals that talk—except for parrots and such birds, which only . . . parrot—or ones having an elaborate sign language men can share. Or perhaps you envisage the beastie dipping its paddy paw in a jug of ink and writing its report in big on a floor-spread parchment?
“Ho, there, you back of the counter! Where are my jugs? Rats eaten the boy who went for them days ago? Or he simply starved to death while on his cellar quest? Well, tell him to get a swifter move on and meanwhile brim us again!
“No, Fafhrd, even granting the beastie to be directly or indirectly a creature of Krovas, and that it raced back to Thieves’ House after our affray, what could it tell them there? Only that something had gone wrong with the burglary at Jengao’s. Which they’d soon suspect in any case from the delay in the thieves’ and bravos’ return.”
Fafhrd frowned and muttered stubbornly, “The furry slinker might, nevertheless, convey our appearances to the Guild masters, and they might recognize us and come after us and attack us in our homes. Or Slivikin and his fat pal, revived from their bumps, might do likewise.”
“My dear friend,” the Mouser said condolingly, “once more begging your indulgence, I fear this potent wine is addling your wits. If the Guild knew our looks or where we lodge, they’d have been nastily on our necks days, weeks, nay, months ago. Or conceivably you don’t know that their penalty for freelance or even unassigned thieving within the walls of Lankhmar and for three leagues outside them is nothing less than death, after torture if happily that can be achieved.”
“I know all about that and my plight is worse even than yours,” Fafhrd retorted, and after pledging the Mouser to secrecy told him the tale of Vlana’s vendetta against the Guild and her deadly serious dreams of an all-encompassing revenge.
During his story the four jugs came up from the cellar, but the Mouser only ordered that their earthenware mugs be refilled. Fafhrd finished, “And so, in consequence of a promise given by an infatuated and unschooled boy in a southern angle of the
Cold Waste, I find myself now as a sober—well, at other times—man being constantly asked to make war on a power as great as that of Karstak Ovartamortes, for as you may know, the Guild has locals in all other cities and major towns of this land, not to mention agreements including powers of extradition with robber and bandit organizations in other countries. I love Vlana dearly, make no mistake about that, and she is an experienced thief herself, without whose guidance I’d hardly have survived my first week in Lankhmar, but on this one topic she has a kink in her brains, a hard knot neither logic nor persuasion can even begin to loosen. And I, well, in the month I’ve been here I’ve learned that the only way to survive in civilization is to abide by its unwritten rules—far more important than its laws chiseled in stone—and break them only at peril, in deepest secrecy, and taking all precautions. As I did tonight—not my first hijacking, by the by.”
“Certes t’would be insanity to assault the Guild direct, your wisdom’s perfect there,” the Mouser commented. “If you cannot break your most handsome girl of this mad notion, or coax her from it—and I can see she’s a fearless, self-willed one—then you must stoutly refuse e’en her least request in that direction.”
“Certes I must,” Fafhrd agreed, adding somewhat accusingly, “though I gather you told her you’d have willingly slit the throats of the two we struck senseless.”
“Courtesy merely, man! Would you have had me behave ungraciously to your girl? ’Tis measure of the value I was already setting then on your goodwill. But only a woman’s man may cross her. As you must, in this instance.”
“Certes I must,” Fafhrd repeated with great emphasis and conviction. “I’d be an idiot taking on the Guild. Of course if they should catch me they’d kill me in any case for freelancing and highjacking. But wantonly to assault the Guild direct, kill one Guild-thief needlessly, only behave as if I might—lunacy entire!”