Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (7 page)

"Never interrupt a man in mid-stream." The Mouser finished his business on the man's boots.

Behind him, almost forgotten, the other man, who had relieved himself by the door, chuckled. "An never ferget that thieves are like the boots yer pissin' on."

At last, recognizing their Ilthmart accents, the Mouser reacted too late. An earthen beer mug came crashing down on his head. Red stars exploded behind his eyes. He staggered, then sagged against the wall where he'd written Ivrian's name.

"We usually come in pairs, little man."

FOUR

SHADOWS IN THE MIST

F
afhrd yawned, stretching his arms above his head as he sat up on the side of the bed. The muffled sounds of laughter and general carousing rose up through the floorboards from the tavern below. It was not the noise that had awakened him, however, but a nightmare from which he had struggled to awake.

Frowning, he rubbed his nose. Born and raised in the open spaces of the Cold Wastes, the smells of city living constantly offended his senses. At the moment, though, such odors were a welcome distraction, for they forced his mind farther from the specters that even now reached for him and called to him from the receding dream.

Only a feeble light from the lamps in the hallway seeped beneath the door. Otherwise, the room was black as pitch. Throwing back the sheet, Fafhrd rose naked and groped for the chamber pot at the foot of the bed. In the darkness, however, he kicked it, and sent it clattering into some other corner of the room.

Muttering curses, the huge Northerner hopped up and down on his right foot as he clutched his left. His big toe throbbed. Yet he thanked his god, Kos, for small favors, for his nose told him that the Mouser had not used the pot before him. Squinting, he tried to locate the overturned vessel in the blackness. Then, with a shrug, he gave up and limped to the window.

Somebody had closed the shutters, Fafhrd noted sleepily, but he flung them open and leaned against the sill. Damn the chamber pot. He would only have emptied it into the alley below anyway. Yawning again, he released his urine and watched it fall steaming into the cool, foggy night while he listened to the voices coming up through the floor.

Outraged screams and curses rose up from below! Fafhrd grinned as he continued with the task at hand. Cherig's guests were a rowdy lot tonight. No doubt his companion, the Mouser, was downstairs in the thick of it.

Then, another sound jarred against his ears, and suddenly Fafhrd realized the curses were rising, not through the floor, but from the alley below his window. Steel rang on steel, a note played only by one sword blade upon another.

As he continued to pee, Fafhrd leaned his head out the window, curious to see what transpired below. Through the dense fog, he barely spied one small shape fending off two larger attackers. At the same time, he heard his own name shouted.

"Fafhrd, you ill-mannered oaf, you're drenching me in your damnable rain!"

His personal business nearly complete, Fafhrd shouted back in surprise. "Mouser?" he called, the sleep-fog lifting from his brain. "Is that you?"

The small shadow below called back as he dodged and feinted, and steel rang out again. "None other, and covered in your foul stink!"

While one tall shadow engaged the Mouser, another stepped away from the conflict and shook his sword at Fafhrd's window. "As am I, you faceless, bottomless bladder! After we dispatch this puny runt and relieve him of his purse, my comrade and I will be pleased to knock upon your door and deal you similar treatment!"

Fafhrd considered for a moment while all three shadows resumed the fight. "Mouser," he called over the clash of blades. "Do I take it this bout is not just the friendly play of good-natured tavern-mates engaged in peacock displays of skill and manhood?"

A heavy wisp of fog shifted through the alley, momentarily obscuring the combatants from Fafhrd's view, but the Mouser's voice came to him clearly, if a bit breathlessly. "This pair of Ilthmart thieves?" There was a pause, followed by a loud hawk and sound of spitting. "Skill and manhood are both small things to these cowards. I am giving them a fencing lesson!"

Despite the Mouser's bravado, Fafhrd thought he detected a certain slur to his friend's words, and when the fog parted slightly, it seemed to him that the Ilthmart thieves, blades weaving in tandem, were pressing the Mouser to the wall.

His own sword, Graywand, stood sheathed near his pillow. Swiftly crossing the room, Fafhrd stubbed another toe on the bed's leg. With a roar of pain, he drew the blade. A stream of curses flowing from his lips, he returned to the window, leaped over the sill, and plunged through the fog to the street below.

One of the Ilthmarts turned to face Fafhrd. Raising his sword to strike, the thief and would-be murderer hesitated, his eyes widening as he looked up at his seven-foot opponent. No small man, himself, his jaw gaped.

"Now then," Fafhrd said as he took a two-handed grip on his huge weapon and leveled the point near the man's throat, "which of you called my friend a
puny runt?"

The thief wet his lips. Without taking his eyes from Fafhrd, he inclined his head toward his partner, who was furiously fending off the Mouser's attacks. "Uh, not me," he answered with an innocent-seeming shrug. "It was my friend. He's always had a big mouth. I'm a quiet one, myself."

"I see," Fafhrd said, drawing a circle before the man's eyes with his sword's point, "No reason to run you through, then." He brought his foot up into the Ilthmart's groin. The man's eyes snapped wider as he dropped his sword, clutched himself between his legs, and sank to his knees; his mouth made a pained oval, and he elicited a pitiful, low moan. "Next time," he gasped as he slumped forward, "just run me through."

Planting the point of Graywand in the dirt, Fafhrd leaned on the pommel and peered through the ever-thickening fog. The clang of blades made a sweet music for a pair of dim shapes dancing a few paces away. "How fares the puny runt?" he called to the pair.

Barely visible in the hazy mist, the remaining Ilthmart scowled contemptuously, though his breathing was ragged. "His sword is a small threat."

   
Fafhrd smirked. "Play with him a while, and it'll grow."

"I have taught him the parry from the third, fourth, and fifth positions," the Mouser called merrily, his words wine-slurred, "as well as the direct and indirect ripostes." Blades clanged again, mingling with the sounds of boots scraping desperately in the road, ending with a scowled curse and the harsh intake of breath. "Ah, there!" the Mouser cried. "Now he knows the fleche!"

Patting his lips with the palm of one hand, Fafhrd faked a yawn. "Haven't you dispatched him, yet? A spectator might think you were in some trouble."

Again, a ring of steel as blades slid against one another. "A mouser likes to play with its catch before he eats it," the smaller figure laughed. "Ah hah! There! An arm-cut!"

The larger shadow growled. "No more than a scratch, you little braggart! And there's one lesson I learned long before this." Stooping, he grabbed a handful of dirt and flung it at the Mouser's face. "That's when to run away!"

Recoiling, the Mouser shielded his eyes with one hand as the Ilthmart thief disappeared down the fog-enshrouded alley. "I think I should mention he's got our purse," he said, sputtering dirt from his lips as he spoke to Fafhrd. "And I've run up quite a tab with Cherig. There'll be no beer for you tonight if he gets away."

Spurred to action by such a prospect, Fafhrd snatched his sword out of the ground and raced after the Ilthmart, guided only by the sound of fleeing footfalls. Down the length of Bones Alley he ran, emerging into Plague Court. There, he paused to listen and to determine the direction the thief had taken.

The Mouser crashed into him from behind. With a groan, he bounced off Fafhrd's huge form and fell backward on his rump. "Mog's blood!" he cried angrily, invoking his tutelary god. "What do you mean, stopping in the middle of a chase like that, particularly in this pea-soup fog!"

Fafhrd offered a hand to help his friend up. "Maybe I should have called a warning," he whispered derisively. Then, pitching his voice toward an imitation of a woman's soprano, he continued,
"Oh, Mouser, I'm stopping now. Don't run into me like some stupid, drunken sot!"

The Mouser grumbled unappreciatively, waving his narrow blade before he wisely sheathed it. "I should have put Scalpel's point up your backside!"

A crash and a now-familiar snarl sounded out of the fog off to Fafhrd's right. Wasting no more time on witticisms, he ran in that direction with the Mouser close behind. At a corner of the next intersection a rain barrel lay overturned and smashed. The muddy ground betrayed how the thief had fallen and scrambled up again, and wet footprints indicated his direction.

Fafhrd stepped carefully around the broken pieces of the barrel, cool mud squishing between his bare toes. It was an abrupt reminder that, in his enthusiasm, he had jumped naked from his window to rescue the Mouser. Standing bare-assed in an unnamed alley with muddy feet and nothing but the night's fog to cover him—and a chilly fog at that—the stolen purse suddenly seemed less important than his dignity.

Unfortunately, at the same moment that he came to this realization, a door opened further down the narrow road, and a dim light spilled briefly out. A brief, muffled laughter echoed up the way before the door closed again.

"The rat's ducked into some dive of a tavern," the Mouser whispered, unsheathing his sword again as he advanced purposefully past Fafhrd. "Lucky for me—I've quite a thirst this evening."

"Mouser!" Fafhrd hissed, hoping to stop his friend. "Mouser!" But the Mouser continued on, determined to retrieve his purse from the Ilthmart thief. With an aggrieved sigh, Fafhrd followed, covering his groin with one hand while his other hand tightened around his sword's grip.

The fog nearly swallowed the weak light of a lone lantern that hung on a jut above the tavern's door. The establishment's name, painted over the same door in long-faded letters, was impossible to read.

"I can't go in there!" Fafhrd insisted. "I'm naked as a babe!"

One hand on the door, the Mouser paused to give Fafhrd an exaggerated wink. "Wait here, then," he said, “until find him and chase him out to you."

Before Fafhrd could protest, the Mouser pushed open the door and disappeared over the threshold. Within, the laughter immediately ceased. A moment later, the Mouser reappeared.

"It's too crowded," he said gravely, "and too poorly lit to see faces."

Keeping to the shadows, Fafhrd leaned one shoulder to the wall and looked patiently down at his smaller partner. "Let us go home then," he suggested. "It's not so bad to tuck your tail between your legs when there's nothing else to keep you warm."

The Mouser rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I have a plan," he announced. "Stay here, and keep hidden." With that, he turned, pushed open the door once more, and stepped inside. His voice, however, could plainly be heard.

"Your mothers sleep with Mingol stableboys," the Mouser shouted. "So do your fathers. And you've all got faces like the rumps of buggered sheep."

A general cry of outrage followed, and the crash of furniture being thrown about. Fafhrd felt a shock through the wall where he leaned, as if a weighty object had struck the other side. An instant later, the tavern's door flung back, and the Mouser dashed out.

"The one that stays behind will be our man!" he cried as he ran past Fafhrd's place of concealment.

"Good plan," Fafhrd complimented sarcastically, stepping out of the way as a score of insulted customers, brandishing swords and knives, in varying stages of inebriation, charged through the door and after the Mouser. Even the cook gave chase, waving a large wooden spoon, his apron flapping around his knees as he vanished in the fog.

Fafhrd listened to the fading sounds of their cries, then cautiously opened the door and stepped inside.

The Ilthmart thief sat at a table, pouring himself a mug of ale as he clutched the wrist of a serving wench and tried to drag her closer. What the woman lacked in looks, she made up for with ample bosoms. "Now that we're alone, my purty birdie ..." the thief was saying when Fafhrd walked in.

"You're covered with mud and stink like a pisspot!" the woman protested as she tried to pull away.

Hinges creaked as Fafhrd pushed the door closed, and a board groaned under his foot.

The Ilthmart looked up. "Bleedin' hell!" he raged, releasing the woman's arm so suddenly that she pitched backwards and fell. The Ilthmart paid her no more attention. Pushing back his chair, he drew his sword.

Legs straddled and skirts splayed about her, the wench sat up and rubbed her backside, which was as impressively abundant as her breasts. Pushing back a thick strand of hair that fell over her face, she stared wide-eyed at Fafhrd. "I dunno, dearie," she said. "That looks like heaven to me!"

Moving slowly across the floor, Fafhrd raised Graywand. "I'll match you steel for steel and inch for inch, my friend," he said, touching the tip of his longer sword to the Ilthmart's blade.

The wench scrambled out of the way, her gaze still on Fafhrd's nude form. "I'll wager he's got you on either count, luv," she said to the thief.