Modern classics of fanta.., p.19
Modern Classics of Fantasy, page 19
Fafhrd had to lift his left arm to guard his head. He took a blow on the elbow and his left arm dropped limp to his side. Thereafter he had to handle his staff like a broadsword indeed, swinging it one-handed in whistling parries and strokes.
Lukeen hung back, playing more cautiously now, knowing Fafhrd’s one wrist must tire sooner than his two. He’d aim a few rapid blows at Fafhrd, then prance back.
Barely parrying the third of these attacks, Fafhrd riposted recklessly, not with a proper swinging blow, but simply gripping the end of his staff and lunging. The combined length of Fafhrd and his staff overtook Lukeen’s retreat and the tip of Fafhrd’s staff poked him low in the chest, just on the nerve spot.
Lukeen’s jaw dropped, his mouth stayed open wide, and he wavered. Fafhrd smartly rapped his staff out of his fingers and as it clattered down, toppled Lukeen to the deck with a second almost casual prod.
* * * *
THE sailors cheered themselves hoarse. The marines growled surlily and one cried, “Foul!” Lukeen’s second knelt by him, glaring at Fafhrd. Carp’s mate danced a ponderous jig up to Fafhrd and wafted the wand out of his hands. On the afterdeck Squid’s officers were glum, though those of the other grain ships seemed strangely jubilant. The Mouser gripped Slinoor’s elbow, urging, “Cry Fafhrd victor,” while the sergeant frowned prodigiously, hand to temple, saying, “Well, there’s nothing I know of in the rules …”
At that moment the cabin door opened and Hisvet stepped out, wearing a long scarlet, scarlet-hooded silk robe.
The Mouser, sensing climax, sprang to starboard, where Squid’s gong hung, snatched the striker from the gongsman and clanged it wildly.
Squid grew silent. Then there were pointings and questioning cries as Hisvet was seen. She put a silver recorder to her lips and began to dance dreamily toward Fafhrd, softly whistling with her recorder a high haunting tune of seven notes in a minor key. From somewhere tiny tuned bells, accompanied it tinklingly. Then Hisvet swung to one side, facing Fafhrd as she moved around him, and the questioning cries changed to ones of wonder and astonishment and the sailors came crowding as far aft as they could and swinging through the rigging, as the procession became visible that Hisvet headed.
It consisted of eleven white rats walking in single file on their hind legs and wearing little scarlet robes and caps. The first four carried in each forepaw clusters of tiny silver bells which they shook rythmically. The next five bore on their shoulders, hanging down between them a little, a double length of looped gleaming silver chain—they were very like five sailors lugging an anchor chain. The last two each bore slantwise a slim silver wand as tall as himself as he walked erect, tail curving high.
The first four halted side by side in rank facing Fafhrd and tinkling their bells to Hisvet’s piping.
The next five marched on steadily to Fafhrd’s right foot. There their leader paused, looked up at Fafhrd’s face with upraised paw, and squeaked three times. Then, gripping his end of the chain in one paw, he used his other three to climb Fafhrd’s boot. Imitated by his four fellows, he then carefully climbed Fafhrd’s trousers and hairy chest.
* * * *
FAFHED stared down at the mounting chain and scarlet-robed rats without moving a muscle, except to frown faintly as tiny paws unavoidably tweaked clumps of his chest-hair.
The first rat mounted to Fafhrd’s right shoulder and moved behind his back to his left shoulder, the four other rate following in order and never letting slip the chain.
When all five rats were standing on Fafhrd’s shoulders, they lifted one strand of the silver chain and brought it forward over his head, most dexterously. Meanwhile he was looking straight ahead at Hisvet, who had completely circled him and now stood piping behind the bell-tinklers.
The five rats dropped the strand, so that the chain hung in a gleaming oval down Fafhrd’s chest. At the same instant each rat lifted his scarlet cap as high above his head as his foreleg would reach.
Someone cried, “Victor!” The five rats swung down their caps and again lifted them high, and as if from one throat all the sailors and most of the marines and officers cried in a great shout: “VICTOR!”
The five rats led two more cheers for Fafhrd, the men aboard Squid obeying as if hypnotized—though whether by some magic power or simply by the wonder and appropriateness of the rats’ behavior, it was hard to tell.
Hisvet finished her piping with a merry flourish and the two rats with silver wands scurried up onto the afterdeck and standing at the foot of the after-mast where all might see, began to drub away at each other in most authentic quarterstaff style, their wands flashing in the sunlight and chiming sweetly when they clashed. The silence broke in rounds of exclamation and laughter. The five rats scampered down Fafhrd and returned with the bell-tinklers to cluster around the hem of Hisvet’s skirt. Mouser and several officers were leaping down from the afterdeck to wring Fafhrd’s good hand or clap his back. The marines had much ado to hold back the sailors, who were offering each other bets on which rat would be the winner in this new bout.
Fafhrd, fingering his chain, remarked to the Mouser, “Strange that the sailors were with me from the start,” and under cover of the hubbub the Mouser smiling explained, “I gave them money to bet on you against the marines. Likewise I dropped some hints and made some loans for the same purpose to the officer of the other ships—a fighter can’t have too big a claque. Also I started the story going round that the whiteys are anti-rat rats, trained exterminators of their own kind, sample of Glipkerio’s latest device for the safety of the grain fleets—sailors eat up such tosh.”
“Did you first cry victor?” Fafhrd asked.
The Mouser grinned. “A judge take sides? In civilized combat? Oh, I was prepared to, but ‘twasn’t needful.”
At that moment Fafhrd felt a small tug at his trousers and looking down saw that the black kitten had bravely approached through the forest of legs and was now climbing him purposefully. Touched at this further display of animal homage, Fafhrd rumbled gently as the kitten reached his belt, “Decided to heal our quarrel, eh, small black one?” At that the kitten sprang up his chest, sunk his little claws in Fafhrd’s bare shoulder and, glaring like a black hangman, raked Fafhrd bloodily across the jaw, then sprang by way of a couple of startled heads to the mainsail and rapidly climbed its concave taut brown curve. Someone threw a belaying pin at the small black blot, but it was negligently aimed and the kitten safely reached the mast-top,
* * * *
“I FORSWEAR all cats!” Fafhrd cried angrily, dabbling at his chin. “Henceforth rats are my favored beasties.”
“Most properly spoken, Swordsman!” Hisvet called gayly from her own circle of admirers, continuing, “I will be pleased by your company and the Dirksman’s at dinner in my cabin an hour past sunset. We’ll conform to the very letter of Slinoor’s stricture that I be closely watched and the White Shadows too.” She whistled a little call on her silver recorder and swept back into her cabin with the nine rats close at her heels. The quarterstaving scarlet-robed pair on the afterdeck broke off their drubbing with neither victorious and scampered after her, the crowd parting to make way for them admiringly.
Slinoor, hurrying forward, paused to watch. The Squid’s skipper was a man deeply bemused. Somewhere in the last half hour the white rats had been transformed from eerie poison-toothed monsters threatening the fleet into popular, clever, harmless animal-mountebanks, whom Squid’s sailors appeared to regard as a band of white mascots. Slinoor seemed to be seeking unsuccessfully but unceasingly to decipher how and why.
Lukeen, still looking very pale, followed the last of his disgruntled marines (their purses lighter by many a silver smerduk, for they had been coaxed into offering odds) over the side into Shark’s long dinghy, brushing off Slinoor when Squid’s skipper would have conferred with him.
Slinoor vented his chagrin by harshly commanding his sailors to leave off their disorderly milling and frisking, but they obeyed him right cheerily, skipping to their proper stations with the happiest of sailor smirks. Those passing the Mouser winked at him and surreptiously touched their forelocks. The Squid bowled smartly northward a half bowshot astern of Tunny, as she’d been doing throughout the duel, only now she began to cleave the blue water a little more swiftly yet as the west wind freshened and her after sail was broken out. In fact, the fleet began to sail so swiftly now that Shark’s dinghy couldn’t make the head of the line, although Lukeen could be noted bullying his marine-oarsmen into back-cracking efforts, and the dinghy had finally to signal Shark herself to come back and pick her up —which the war galley achieved only with difficulty, rolling dangerously in the mounting seas and taking until sunset, oars helping sails, to return to the head of the line.
“He’ll not be eager to come to Squid’s help tonight, or much able to either,” Fafhrd commented to the Mouser where they stood by the larboard mid-deck rail. There had been no open break between them and Slinoor, but they were inclined to leave him the afterdeck, where he stood beyond the helmsmen in bent-head converse with his three officers, who had all lost money on Lukeen and had been sticking close to their skipper ever since. “Not still expecting that sort of peril tonight, are you, Fafhrd?” the Mouser asked with a soft laugh. “We’re far past the Rat Rocks.”
Fafhrd shrugged and said frowningly, “Perhaps we’ve gone just a shade too far in endorsing the rats.”
“Perhaps,” the Mouser agreed.
“But then their charming mistress is worth a fib and false stamp or two, aye and more than that, eh, Fafhrd?”
“She’s a brave sweet lass,” Fafhrd said carefully.
“Aye, and her maid too,” the Mouser said brightly. “I noted Frix peering at you adoringly from the cabin entryway after your victory. A most voluptuous wench. Some men might well prefer the maid to the mistress in this instance, Fafhrd?”
Without looking around at the Mouser, the Northerner shook his head.
The Mouser studied Fafhrd, wondering if it were politic to make a certain proposal he had in mind. He was not quite certain of the full nature of Fafhrd’s feelings toward Hisvet. He knew the Northerner was a goatish man enough and had yesterday seemed quite obsessed with the love-making they’d missed in Lankhmar, yet he also knew that his comrade had a variable romantic streak that was sometimes thin as a thread yet sometimes grew into a silken ribbon leagues wide in which armies might stumble and be lost.
On the afterdeck Slinoor was now conferring most earnestly with the cook, presumably (the Mouser decided) about Hisvet’s (and his own and Fafhrd’s) dinner. The thought of Slinoor having to go to so much trouble about the pleasures of three persons who today had thoroughly thwarted him made the Mouser grin and somehow also nerved him to take the uncertain step he’d been contemplating.
“Fafhrd,” he whispered, “I’ll dice you for Hisvet’s favors.”
“Why, Hisvet’s but a gir—” Fafhrd began in accents of rebuke, then cut off abruptly and closed his eyes in thought. When he opened them, they were regarding the Mouser with a large smile.
“No,” Fafhrd said softly, “for truly I think this Hisvet is so balky and fantastic a miss it will take both our most heartfelt and cunning efforts to persuade her to aught. And, after that; who knows? Dicing for such a girl’s favors were like betting when a Lankhman night-lilly will open and whether to north or south.” The Mouser chuckled and lovingly dug Fafhrd in the ribs, aaying, “There’s my shrewd true comrade!”
Fafhrd looked at the Mouser with sudden dark suspicions. “Now don’t go trying to get me drunk tonight,” he warned, “or sifting opium in my drink.”
“Hah, you know me better than that, Fafhrd,” the Mouser said with laughing reproach.
“I certainly do,” Fafhrd agreed sardonically. Again the sun went under with a green flash, indicating crystal clear air to the west, though the strange fogbank, now an ominous dark wall, still paralleled their course a league or so to the east.
The cook, crying, “My mutton!” went racing forward past them toward the galley, whence a deliciously spicy aroma was wafting.
“We’ve an hour to kill,” the Mouser said. “Come on, Fafhrd. On our way to board Squid I bought a little jar of wine of Quarmall at the Silver Eel. It’s still sealed.”
From just overhead in the ratlines, the black kitten hissed down at them in angry menace or perhaps warning.
* * * *
TWO hours later the Demoisella Hisvet offered to the Mouser, “A golden rilk for your thoughts, Dirksman.”
She was on the swung-down sea-bed once more, half reclining. The long table, now laden with tempting viands and tall silver wine cups, had been placed against the bed. Fafhrd sat across from Hisvet, the empty silver cages behind him, while the Mouser was at the stern end of the table. Frix served them all from the door forward, where she took the trays from the cook’s boys without giving them so much as a peep inside. She had a small brazier there for keeping hot such items as required it and she tasted each dish and set it aside for a while before serving it. Thick dark pink candles in silver sconces shed a pale light.
The white rats crouched in rather disorderly fashion around a little table of their own set on the floor near the wall between the sea-bed and the door, just aft of one of the trapdoors opening down into the grain-redolent hold. They wore little black jackets open at the front and little black belts around their middles. They seemed more to play with than eat the bits of food Frix set before them on their three or four little silver plates and they did not lift their small bowls to drink their wine-tinted water but rather lapped at them and that not very industriously. One or two would always be scampering up onto the bed to be with Hisvet, which made them most difficult to count, even for Fafhrd, who had the best view. Sometimes he got eleven, sometimes ten. At intervals one of them would stand up on the pink coverlet by Hisvet’s knees and chitter at her in cadences so like those of human speech that Fafhrd and the Mouser would have to chuckle.
“Dreamy Dirksman, two rilks for your thoughts!” Hisvet repeated, upping her offer. “And most immodestly I’ll wager a third rilk they are of me.”
The Mouser smiled and lifted his eyebrows. He was feeling very light-headed and a bit uneasy, chiefly because contrary to his intentions he had been drinking much more than Fafhrd, Frix had just served them the main dish, a masterly yellow curry heavy with dark-tasting spices and originally appearing with “Victor” pricked on it with black capers. Fafhrd was devouring it manfully though not voraciously, the Mouser was going at it more slowly, while Hisvet all evening had merely toyed with her food.
“I’ll take your two rilks, White Princess,” the Mouser replied airily, “for I’ll need one to pay the wager you’ve just won and the other to fee you for telling me what I was thinking of you.”
“You’ll not keep my second rilk long, Dirksman,” Hisvet said merrily, “for as you thought of me you were looking not at my face, but most impudently somewhat lower. You were thinking of those somewhat nasty suspicions Lukeen voiced this day about my secretest person. Confess it now, you were!”
The Mouser could only hang his head a little and shrug helplessly, for she had most truly divined his thoughts. Hisvet laughed and frowned at him in mock anger, saying, “Oh, you are most indelicate minded, Dirksman. Yet at least you can see that Frix, though indubitably mammalian, is not fronted like a she-rat.”
This statement was undeniably true, for Hisvet’s maid was all dark smooth skin except where black silk scarves narrowly circled her slim body at breasts and hips. Silver net tightly confined her black hair and there were many plain silver bracelets on each wrist. Yet although garbed like a slave, Frix did not seem one tonight, but rather a lady-companion who expertly played at being slave, serving them all with perfect yet laughing, wholly unservile obedience.
Hisvet, by contrast, was wearing another of her long smocks, this of black silk edged with black lace, with a lace-edged hood half thrown back. Her silvery white hair was dressed high on her head in great smooth swelling sweeps. Regarding her across the table, Fafhrd said, “I am certain that the Demoiselle would be no less than completely beautiful to us in whatever shape she chose to present herself to the world—wholly human or somewhat otherwise.”
“Now that was most gallantly spoken, Swordsman,” Hisvet said with a somewhat breathless laugh. “I must reward you for it. Come to me, Frix.” As the slim maid bent close to her, Hisvet twined her white hands round the dark waist and imprinted a sweet slow kiss on Frix’s lips. Then she looked up and gave a little tap on the shoulder to Frix, who moved smiling around the table and, half kneeling by Fafhrd, kissed him as she had been kissed. He received the token graciously, without unmannerly excitement, yet when Frix would have drawn back, prolonged the kiss, explaining a bit thickly when he released her: “Somewhat extra to return to the sender, perchance.” She grinned at him saucily and went to her serving table by the door, saying, “I must first chop the rats their meat, naughty barbarian.” While Hisvet discoursed, “Don’t seek too much, Bold Swordsman. That was in any case but a small proxy reward for a small gallant speech. A reward with the mouth for words spoken with the mouth. To reward you for drubbing Lukeen and vindicating my honor were a more serious matter altogether, not to be entered on lightly if at all. I’ll think of it.”
