Leiber, Fritz - Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser 02 - Swords Against Death

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Swords Against Death [Book 2 of the "Fafhrd and Gray Mouser" series]

by Fritz Leiber

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THE GREEN MILLENIUM

GATHER, DARKNESS!

SWORDS AND DEVILTY

SWORDS AGAINST DEATH

SWORDS IN THE MIST

SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDY

THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR

SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC

THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS

THE WANDERER

--------

*I: The Circle Curse*

A tall swordsman and a small one strode out the Marsh Gate of Lankhmar

and east along Causey Road. They were youths by their skin and suppleness, men

by their expressions of deep-bitten grief and stony purpose.

The sleepy guardsmen in browned-iron cuirasses did not question them.

Only madmen and fools willingly leave the grandest city in the world of

Nehwon, especially at dawn and afoot. Besides, these two looked extremely

dangerous.

Ahead the sky was bright pink, like the bubbling rim of a great crystal

goblet brimmed with effervescent red wine for delight of the gods, while the

paler pink glow rising therefrom drove the last stars west. But before the sun

could glare one scarlet sliver above the horizon, a black storm came racing

out of the north over the Inner Sea -- a sea-squall making landfall. It grew

almost as dark again as night, except when the lightning stabbed and the

thunder shook his great iron shield. The stormwind carried the salty tang of

the sea commingled with the foul reek of the marsh. It bent the green swords

of the sea grass flat and lashed into writhing the arms of the thorn and

seahawk trees. It pushed black swampwater a yard up the northern side of the

narrow, serpentine, flat-topped ridge that was Causey Road. Then came pelting

rain.

The two swordsmen made no comment to each other and did not alter their

movements, except to lift their shoulders and faces a little and slant the

latter north, as if they welcomed the storm's cleansing and sting and what

tiny distraction it brought to some deep agony of mind and heart.

"Ho, Fafhrd!" a deep voice grated above the thunder's growl and the

wind's roar and the rattle of the rain.

The tall swordsman turned his head sharply south.

"Hist, Gray Mouser!"

The small swordsman did likewise.

Close by the southern side of the road a rather large, rounded hut

stood on five narrow posts. The posts had to be tall, for Causey Road ran high

here yet the floor of the hut's low, rounded doorway looked straight at the

tall swordsman's head.

This was nothing very strange, except that all men know that none dwell

in the venomous Great Salt Marsh, save for giant worms, poison eels, water

cobras, pale spindle-legged swamp rats, and the like.

Blue lightning glared, revealing with great clarity a hooded figure

crouched inside the low doorway. Each fold and twist of the figure's draperies

stood out as precisely as in an iron engraving closely viewed.

But the lightning showed nothing whatsoever inside the hood, only inky

blackness.

Thunder crashed.

Then from the hood the grating voice recited the following lines,

harshly and humorlessly hammering out the words, so that what was light verse

became a dismal and doomful incantation:_Ho, Fafhrd tall!Hist, Mouser

small!Why leave you the cityOf marvelous parts?It were a great pityTo wear out

your heartsAnd wear out the soles of your feet,Treading all earth,Foregoing

all mirth,Before you once more Lankhmar greet.Now return, now return, now!_

This doleful ditty was three-quarters done before the two swordsmen

realized that they were striding along steadily all this while and the hut

still abreast them. So it must be walking along with them on its posts, or

legs rather. And now that they were aware of this, they could see those five

thin wooden members swinging and knee-bending.

When the grating voice ceased to speak on that last great "now," Fafhrd

halted.

So did the Mouser.

So did the hut.

The two swordsmen turned toward the low doorway, facing it squarely.

Simultaneously with deafening thunderclap, a great bolt of lightning

struck close behind them. It jolted their bodies, shocked their flesh

thrillingly and painfully, and it illumined the hut and its dweller brighter

than day, yet still revealed nothing inside the dweller's hood.

If the hood had been empty, the draperies at its back would have been

shown clearly. But no, there was only that oval of ebon darkness, which even

the levinbolt could not illumine.

As unmoved by this prodigy as by the thunder-stroke, Fafhrd bellowed

above the storm toward the doorway, his voice sounding tiny to himself in his

thunder-smitten ears, "Hear me, witch, wizard, nightgaunt, whatever you are! I

shall never in my life enter again the foul city which has stolen from me my

dearest and only love, the incomparable and irreplaceable Vlana, for whom I

shall forever grieve and for whose unspeakable death I shall forever feel

guilt. The Thieves' Guild slew her for her freelance thieving -- and we slew

the slayers, though it profited us nothing at all."

"Likewise I shall never lift foot toward Lankhmar again," the Gray

Mouser took up from beside him in a voice like an angry trumpet, "the loathy

metropolis which horribly bereft me of my beloved Ivrian, even as Fafhrd was

bereft and for similar reason, and left me loaded with an equal weight of

sorrow and shame, which I shall bear forever, even past my perishing." A salt

spider big as a platter sailed close by his ear in the grip of the gale,

kicking its thick, corpse-white legs, and veered off past the hut, but the

Mouser did not start in the least and there was no break whatever in his words

as he continued, "Know, being of blackness, haunter of the dark, that we slew

the foul wizard who murdered our loves and killed his two rodentine familiars

and mauled and terrorized his employers at Thieves' House. But revenge is

empty. It cannot bring back the dead. It cannot assuage by one atom the grief

and guilt we shall feel forever for our darlings."

"Indeed it cannot," Fafhrd seconded loudly, "for we were drunk when our

darlings died, and for that there is no forgiveness. We highjacked a small

treasure in gems from thieves of the Guild, but we lost the two jewels beyond

price and without compare. And we shall never return to Lankhmar!"

Lightning shone from beyond the hut and thunder crackled. The storm was

moving inland, south from the road.

The hood that held darkness drew back a little and slowly shook from

side to side, once, twice, thrice. The harsh voice intoned, fainter because

Fafhrd's and the Mouser's ears were still somewhat deafened and a-ring from

that father of thunderstrokes:

_Never and forever are neither for men. _

_You'll be returning again and again._

Then the hut was moving inland too on its five spindly legs. It turned

around, so that its door faced away from them, and its speed increased, its

legs moving nimbly as those of a cockroach, and was soon lost amongst the

tangle of thorn and seahawk trees.

So ended the first encounter of the Mouser and his comrade Fafhrd with

Sheelba of the Eyeless Face.

Later that day the two swordsmen waylaid an insufficiently guarded

merchant Lankhmar-bound, depriving him of the best two of his four cart-horses

-- for thieving was first nature to them -- and on these clumping mounts made

their way out of the Great Salt Marsh and across the Sinking Land to the

sinister hub-city of Ilthmar with its treacherous little inns and innumerable

statues and bas-reliefs and other depictions of its rat-god. There they

changed their clumsy horses for camels and were soon humping south across the

desert, following the eastern shore of the turquoise Sea of the East. They

crossed the River Tilth in dry season and continued on through the sands,

bound for the Eastern Lands, where neither of them had previously traveled.

They were searching for distraction in strangeness and intended first to visit

Horborixen, citadel of the King of Kings and city second only to Lankhmar in

size, antiquity, and baroque splendor.

For the next three years, the Years of Leviathan, the Roc, and the

Dragon, they wandered the world of Nehwon south, east, north, and west,

seeking forgetfulness of their first great loves and their first great guilts

and finding neither. They ventured east past mystic Tisilinilit with its

slender, opalescent spires, which always seemed newly crystallized out of its

humid, pearly skies, to lands that were legends in Lankhmar and even

Horborixen. One amongst many was the skeletally shrunken Empire of

Eevamarensee, a country so decadent, so far-grown into the future, that all

the rats and men are bald and even the dogs and cats hairless.

Returning by a northerly route through the Great Steppes, they narrowly

escaped capture and enslavement by the pitiless Mingols. In the Cold Waste

they sought for Fafhrd's Snow Clan, only to discover that it had been last

year overwhelmed by a lemming horde of Ice Gnomes and, according to best

rumor, massacred to the last person, which would have included Fafhrd's mother

Mor, his deserted girl-bride Mara, and his first issue if any.

For a space they served Lithquil, the Mad Duke of Ool Hrusp, devising

for him sprightly mock-duels, simulated murders, and other entertainments.

Then they coasted south through the Outer Sea aboard a Sarheenmar trader to

tropic Klesh, where they adventured a while in the jungle fringes. Then north

again, circling past secretest Quarmall, that shadow realm, to the Lakes of

Pleea that are the headwaters of the Hlal and to the beggar-city of Tovilyis,

where the Gray Mouser believed he had been birthed, but was not sure, and when

they left that lowly metropolis he was no surer. Crossing by grain barge the

Sea of the East, they prospected for gold a while in the Mountains of the

Elder Ones, their last highjacked gems having been long since gambled away or

spent. Unsuccessful in this quest, they wended their way west again toward the

Inner Sea and Ilthmar.

They lived by thievery, robbery, bodyguarding, brief commissions as

couriers and agents -- commissions they always, or almost always, fulfilled

punctiliously -- and by showmanship, the Mouser entertaining by legerdemain,

juggling, and buffoonery, while Fafhrd with his gift for tongues and training

as a singing skald excelled at minstrelsy, translating the legends of his

frigid homeland into many languages. They never worked as cooks, clerks,

carpenters, tree-fellers, or common servants and they never, never, never

enlisted as mercenary soldiers -- their service to Lithquil having been of a

more personal nature.

They acquired new scars and skills, comprehensions and compassions,

cynicisms and secrecies -- a laughter that lightly mocked and a cool poise

that tightly crusted all inner miseries and most of the time hid the barbarian

in Fafhrd and the slum boy in the Mouser. They became outwardly merry,

uncaring, and cool, but their grief and guilt stayed with them, the ghosts of

Ivrian and Vlana haunting their sleeping and their waking dreams, so that they

had little commerce with other girls, and that more a discomfort than a joy.

Their comradeship became firmer than a rock, stronger than steel, but all

other human relations were fleeting. Melancholy was their commonest mood,

though mostly hid even from each other.

Came noon of the Day of the Mouse in the Month of the Lion in the Year

of the Dragon. They were taking their siestas in the cool of a cave near

Ilthmar. Outside, heat shimmered above hard-baked ground and scanty brown

grass, but here was most pleasant. Their horses, a gray mare and a chestnut

gelding, found shade in the cavern's mouth. Fafhrd had sketchily inspected the

place for serpents, but discovered none. He loathed the cold scaly ones of the

south, so different from the hot-blooded, fur-bearing snakes of the Cold

Waste. He went a little way into a narrow, rocky corridor leading from the

back of the cave under the small mountain in which it was set, but returned

when light failed and he had found neither reptiles nor end.

They rested comfortably on their uncurled bedrolls. Sleep would not

come to them, so idle talk did. By slow stages this talk became serious.

Finally the Gray Mouser summed up the last trinity of years.

"We have searched the wide world over and not found forgetfulness."

"I dispute that," Fafhrd countered. "Not the latter part, for I am

still as ghost-locked as you, but we have not crossed the Outer Sea and hunted

over the great continent legend will have in the west."

"I believe we have," the Mouser disputed. "Not the former part, I'll

agree, and what purpose in searching the sea? But when we went out farthest

east and stood on the shore of that great ocean, deafened by its vast surf, I

believe we stood on the western coast of the Outer Sea with nothing between us

and Lankhmar but wild water."

"What great ocean?" Fafhrd demanded. "And what vast surf? It was a

lake, a mere puddle with some ripples in it. I could readily see the opposite

shore."

"Then you were seeing mirages, friend of mine, and languishing in one

of those moods when all Nehwon seems but a small bubble you could burst with

flick of fingernail."

"Perhaps," Fafhrd agreed. "Oh, how weary I am of this life."

There was a little cough, no more than a clearing of throat, in the

dark behind them. They did not otherwise move, but their hair stirred at its

roots, so close and intimate had been that tiny noise, and so indicative of

intelligence rather than mere animality, because of a measuredly attention-

asking quality about it.

Then as one they turned head over shoulder and looked at the black

mouth of the rocky corridor. After a bit it seemed to each of them that he

could see seven small, faint green glows swimming in the dark there and lazily

changing position, like seven fireflies hovering, but with their light

steadier and far more diffuse, as if each firefly wore a cloak made of several

layers of gauze.

Then a voice sugary and unctuous, senescent though keen -- a voice like

a quavering flute -- spoke from amidst those dimmest glows, saying, "Oh my

sons, begging the question of that hypothetical western continent, on which I

do not propose to enlighten you, there is yet one place in Nehwon you have not

searched for forgetfulness since the cruel deaths of your beloved girls."

"And what place may that be?" the Mouser asked softly after a long

moment and with slightest stammer. "And who are you?"

"The city of Lankhmar, my sons. Who I am, besides your spiritual

father, is a private matter."

"We have sworn a great oath against ever returning to Lankhmar," Fafhrd

growled after a bit, the growl low and just a shade defensive and perhaps even

intimidated.

"Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled," the

fluty voice responded. "Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule

repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth;

discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing. You have learned what

you can from the world. You have graduated from that huge portion of Nehwon.

It now remains that you take up your postgraduate studies in Lankhmar, highest

university of civilized life here."

The seven faint glows were growing still dimmer now and drawing

together, as if retreating down the corridor.

"We won't go back to Lankhmar," Fafhrd and the Mouser replied speaking

as one.

The seven glows faded altogether. So faintly the two men could barely

hear it -- yet hear it each did -- the fluty voice inquired, "Are you afraid?"

Then they heard a grating of rock, a very faint sound, yet somehow ponderous.

So ended the first encounter of Fafhrd and his comrade with Ningauble

of the Seven Eyes.

After a dozen heartbeats, the Gray Mouser drew his slim, arm-and-a-

half-long sword, Scalpel, with which he was accustomed to draw blood with

surgical precision, and followed its glittering tip into the rocky corridor.

He strode very deliberately, with a measured determination. Fafhrd went after,

but more cautiously, with many a hesitation, holding the point of his heavier

sword Graywand, which he yet handled most nimbly in strife, close to the stony

floor and wagging it from side to side. The seven glows in their lazy swayings

and bobbings had mightily suggested to him the heads of large cobras raised up

to strike. He reasoned that cave cobras, if such existed, might well be

phosphorescent like abyssal eels.

They had penetrated somewhat farther under the mountainside than Fafhrd

had on his first inspection -- their slow pace enabling their eyes to

accommodate better to the relative darkness -- when with a slight, high-

pitched shiver, Scalpel jarred vertical rock. Waiting without a word where

they stood, their cave vision improved to the point where it became

indisputable, without any more sword-testing at all, that the corridor ended

where they were, wanting hole big enough even for a speaking serpent to glide

away, let alone a being rightfully capable of speech. The Mouser pressed and

then Fafhrd threw his weight against the rock ahead at several points, but it

held firm as purest mountain heart. Nor had they missed any side tracks, even

of the narrowest, or any pits or roof-holes on the way -- a point they doubly

checked going out.

Back at their bedrolls, their horses still tranquilly nibbling brown

grass at the cavern's mouth, Fafhrd said abruptly, "What we heard speak, it

was an echo."

"How have an echo without a voice?" the Mouser demanded with peevish

impatience. "As well have a tail without a cat. I mean, a living tail."

"A small snow snake greatly resembles the animated tail of a white

house cat," Fafhrd replied imperturbably. "Aye, and has just such a high,

quavering cry."

"Are you suggesting -- ?"

"Of course not. As I imagine you do, I think there was a door somewhere

in the rock, fitted so well we could not discern the junctures. We heard it

shut. But before that, he -- she, it, they -- went through it."

"Then why babble of echoes and snow snakes?"

"It is well to consider all possibilities."

"He -- she and so forth -- named us sons," the Mouser mused.

"Some say the serpent is wisest, oldest, and even father of all,"

Fafhrd observed judiciously.

"Snakes again! Well, one thing's certain: all hold it rash folly for a

man to take advice of a serpent, let alone seven."

"Yet he -- consider the other pronouns spoken -- had a point, Mouser.

Mauger the indeterminate western continent, we have traveled all Nehwon in

spiderweb wise. What's left but Lankhmar?"

"Damn your pronouns! We swore never to return. Have you forgotten that,

Fafhrd?"

"No, but I'm dying of boredom. Times I have sworn never again to drink

wine."

"I would choke to death on Lankhmar! Her day-smokes, her night-smogs,

her rats, her filth!"

"At the moment, Mouser, I care little whether I live or die, and where

or when or how."

"Now adverbs and conjunctions! Bah, you need a drink!"

"We seek a deeper forgetfulness. They say to lay a ghost, go where she

died."

"Aye, and be worse haunted!"

"I could not be worse haunted than now."

"To let a serpent shame us by asking, were we afraid!"

"Are we, perhaps?"

And so the argument went, with the final foreseeable result that Fafhrd

and the Mouser cantered past Ilthmar to a stony stretch of shore that was a

curiously abraded low precipice, and waited there a day and a night for the

Sinking Land to emerge with anomalous aqueous convulsions from the waters

joining the Sea of the East to the Inner Sea. They swiftly and warily crossed

its flinty, steaming expanse -- for it was a hot, sunny day -- and so again

rode Causey Road, but this time back toward Lankhmar.

Distant, twin thunderstorms played to either side -- north over the

Inner Sea and south above the Great Salt Marsh -- as they approached that

monstrous city and as its towers, spires, fanes, and great crenelated wall

emerged from its huge, customary cap of smoke, being somewhat silhouetted by

the light of the setting sun, which was turned to a dull silver disk by the

high fog and the smoke.

Once the Mouser and Fafhrd thought they saw a rounded, flat-floored

shape on tall, invisible legs moving amongst the seahawk trees and faintly

heard a harsh voice crying, "I told you. I told you. I told you," but both

Sheelba's wizardly hut and voice, if they were those, remained distant as the

storms.

In such wise Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser returned flat against their

oaths to the city they despised, yet hankered after. They did not find

forgetfulness there, the ghosts of Ivrian and Vlana were not laid, yet perhaps

solely because of passage of time, the two heroes were a little less troubled

by them. Nor were their hates, as of the Thieves' Guild, rekindled, but rather

faded. And in any case Lankhmar seemed no worse than any other place in Nehwon

and more interesting than most. So they stayed there for a space, making it

once more the headquarters of their adventurings.

--------

*II: The Jewels in the Forest*

It was the Year of the Behemoth, the Month of the Hedgehog, the Day of

the Toad. A hot, late summer sun was sinking down toward evening over the

somber, fertile land of Lankhmar. Peasants toiling in the endless grain fields

paused for a moment and lifted their earth-stained faces and noted that it

would soon be time to commence lesser chores. Cattle cropping the stubble

began to move in the general direction of home. Sweaty merchants and

shopkeepers decided to wait a little longer before enjoying the pleasures of

the bath. Thieves and astrologers moved restlessly in their sleep, sensing

that the hours of night and work were drawing near.

At the southernmost limit of the land of Lankhmar, a day's ride beyond

the village of Soreev, where the grain fields give way to rolling forests of

maple and oak, two horsemen cantered leisurely along a narrow, dusty road.

They presented a sharp contrast. The larger wore a tunic of unbleached linen,

drawn tight at the waist by a very broad leather belt. A fold of linen cloak

was looped over his head as a protection against the sun. A longsword with a

pomegranate-shaped golden pommel was strapped to his side. Behind his right

shoulder a quiver of arrows jutted up. Half sheathed in a saddlecase was a

thick yew bow, unstrung. His great, lean muscles, white skin, copper hair,

green eyes, and above all the pleasant yet untamed expression of his massive

countenance, all hinted at a land of origin colder, rougher, and more

barbarous than that of Lankhmar.

Even as everything about the larger man suggested the wilderness, so

the general appearance of the smaller man -- and he was considerably smaller -

- spoke of the city. His dark face was that of a jester. Bright, black eyes,

snub nose, and little lines of irony about the mouth. Hands of a conjurer.

Something about the set of his wiry frame betokening exceptional competence in

street fights and tavern brawls. He was clad from head to foot in garments of

gray silk, soft and curiously loose of weave. His slim sword, cased in gray

mouseskin, was slightly curved toward the tip. From his belt hung a sling and

a pouch of missiles.

Despite their many dissimilarities, it was obvious that the two men

were comrades, that they were united by a bond of subtle mutual understanding,

woven of melancholy, humor, and many another strand. The smaller rode a

dappled gray mare; the larger, a chestnut gelding.

They were nearing a point where the narrow road came to the end of a

rise, made a slight turn and wound down into the next valley. Green walls of

leaves pressed in on either side. The heat was considerable, but not

oppressive. It brought to mind thoughts of satyrs and centaurs dozing in

hidden glades.

Then the gray mare, slightly in the lead, whinnied. The smaller man

tightened his hold on the reins, his black eyes darting quick, alert glances,

first to one side of the road and then to the other. There was a faint

scraping sound, as of wood on wood.

Without warning the two men ducked down, clinging to the side harness

of their horses. Simultaneously came the musical twang of bowstrings, like the

prelude of some forest concert, and several arrows buzzed angrily through the

spaces that had just been vacated. Then the mare and the gelding were around

the turn and galloping like the wind, their hooves striking up great puffs of

dust.

From behind came excited shouts and answers as the pursuit got

underway. There seemed to have been fully seven or eight men in the ambuscade

-- squat, sturdy rogues wearing chain-mail shirts and steel caps. Before the

mare and the gelding had gone a stone's throw down the road, they were out and

after, a black horse in the lead, a black-bearded rider second.

But those pursued were not wasting time. The larger man rose to a stand

in his stirrups, whipping the yew bow from its case. With his left hand he

bent it against the stirrup, with his right he drew the upper loop of the

string into place. Then his left hand slipped down the bow to the grip and his

right reached smoothly back over his shoulder for an arrow. Still guiding his

horse with his knees, he rose even higher and turned in his saddle and sent an

eagle-feathered shaft whirring. Meanwhile his comrade had placed a small

leaden ball in his sling, whirled it twice about his head, so that it hummed

stridently, and loosed his cast.

Arrow and missile sped and struck together. The one pierced the

shoulder of the leading horseman and the other smote the second on his steel

cap and tumbled him from his saddle. The pursuit halted abruptly in a tangle

of plunging and rearing horses. The men who had caused this confusion pulled

up at the next bend in the road and turned back to watch.

"By the Hedgehog," said the smaller, grinning wickedly, "but they will

think twice before they play at ambuscades again!"

"Blundering fools," said the larger. "Haven't they even learned to

shoot from their saddles? I tell you, Gray Mouser, it takes a barbarian to

fight his horse properly."

"Except for myself and a few other people," replied the one who bore

the feline nickname of Gray Mouser. "But look, Fafhrd, the rogues retreat

bearing their wounded, and one gallops far ahead. _Tcha_, but I dinted black

beard's pate for him. He hangs over his nag like a bag of meal. If he'd have

known who we were, he wouldn't have been so hot on the chase."

There was some truth to this last boast. The names of the Gray Mouser

and the Northerner Fafhrd were not unknown in the lands around Lankhmar -- and

in proud Lankhmar, too. Their taste for strange adventure, their mysterious

comings and goings, and their odd sense of humor were matters that puzzled

almost all men alike.

Abruptly Fafhrd unstrung his bow and turned forward in his saddle.

"This should be the very valley we are seeking," he said. "See, there

are the two hills, each with two close-set humps, of which the document

speaks. Let's have another look at it, to test my guess."

The Gray Mouser reached into his capacious leather pouch and withdrew a

page of thick vellum, ancient and curiously greenish. Three edges were frayed

and worn; the fourth showed a clean and recent cut. It was inscribed with the

intricate hieroglyphs of Lankhmarian writing, done in the black ink of the

squid. But it was not to these that the Mouser turned his attention, but to

several faint lines of diminutive red script, written into the margin. These

he read.

* * * *

"Let kings stack their treasure houses ceiling-high, and merchants

burst their vaults with hoarded coin, and fools envy them. I have a treasure

that outvalues theirs. A diamond as big as a man's skull. Twelve rubies each

as big as the skull of a cat. Seventeen emeralds each as big as the skull of a

mole. And certain rods of crystal and bars of orichalcum. Let Overlords

swagger jewel-bedecked and queens load themselves with gems, and fools adore

them. I have a treasure that will outlast theirs. A treasure house have I

builded for it in the far southern forest, where the two hills hump double,

like sleeping camels, a day's ride beyond the village of Soreev.

"A great treasure house with a high tower, fit for a king's dwelling --

yet no king may dwell there. Immediately below the keystone of the chief dome

my treasure lies hid, eternal as the glittering stars. It will outlast me and

my name, I, Urgaan of Angarngi. It is my hold on the future. Let fools seek

it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no

deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall,

poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or

devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye

a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and

forbear."

* * * *

"The man's mind runs to skulls," muttered the Mouser. "He must have

been a gravedigger or a necromancer."

"Or an architect," observed Fafhrd thoughtfully, "in those past days

when graven images of the skulls of men and animals served to bedeck temples."

"Perhaps," agreed the Mouser. "Surely the writing and ink are old

enough. They date at least as far back as the Century of the Wars with the

East -- five long lifespans."

The Mouser was an accomplished forger, both of handwriting and of

objects of art. He knew what he was talking about.

Satisfied that they were near the goal of their quest, the two comrades

gazed through a break in the foliage down into the valley. It was shaped like

the inside of a pod -- shallow, long, and narrow. They were viewing it from

one of the narrow ends. The two peculiarly humped hills formed the long sides.

The whole of the valley was green with maple and oak, save for a small gap

toward the middle. That, thought the Mouser, might mark a peasant's dwelling

and the cleared space around it.

Beyond the gap he could make out something dark and squarish rising a

little above the treetops. He called his companion's attention to it, but they

could not decide whether it was indeed a tower such as the document mentioned,

or just a peculiar shadow, or perhaps even the dead, limbless trunk of a

gigantic oak. It was too far away.

"Almost sufficient time has passed," said Fafhrd, after a pause, "for

one of those rogues to have sneaked up through the forest for another shot at

us. Evening draws near."

They spoke to their horses and moved on slowly. They tried to keep

their eyes fixed on the thing that looked like a tower, but since they were

descending, it almost immediately dropped out of sight below the treetops.

There would be no further chance of seeing it until they were quite close at

hand.

The Mouser felt a subdued excitement running through his flesh. Soon

they would discover if there was a treasure to be had or not. A diamond as big

as a man's skull ... rubies ... emeralds ... He found an almost nostalgic

delight in prolonging and savoring to the full this last, leisurely stage of

their quest. The recent ambuscade served as a necessary spice.

He thought of how he had slit the interesting-looking vellum page from

the ancient book on architecture that reposed in the library of the rapacious

and overbearing Lord Rannarsh. Of how, half in jest, he had sought out and

interrogated several peddlers from the South. Of how he had found one who had

recently passed through a village named Soreev. Of how that one had told him

of a stone structure in the forest south of Soreev, called by the peasants the

House of Angarngi and reputed to be long deserted. The peddler had seen a high

tower rising above the trees. The Mouser recalled the man's wizened, cunning

face and chuckled. And that brought to mind the greedy, sallow face of Lord

Rannarsh, and a new thought occurred to him.

"Fafhrd," he said, "those rogues we just now put to flight -- what did

you take them for?"

The Northerner grunted humorous contempt.

"Run-of-the-manger ruffians. Waylayers of fat merchants. Pasture

bravos. Bumpkin bandits!"

"Still, they were all well armed, and armed alike -- as if they were in

some rich man's service. And that one who rode far ahead. Mightn't he have

been hastening to report failure to some master?"

"What is your thought?"

The Mouser did not reply for some moments.

"I was thinking," he said, "that Lord Rannarsh is a rich man and a

greedy one, who slavers at the thought of jewels. And I was wondering if he

ever read those faint lines of red lettering and made a copy of them, and if

my theft of the original sharpened his interest."

The Northerner shook his head.

"I doubt it. You are oversubtle. But if he did, and if he seeks to

rival us in this treasure quest, he'd best watch each step twice -- and choose

servitors who can fight on horseback."

They were moving so slowly that the hooves of the mare and the gelding

hardly stirred up the dust. They had no fear of danger from the rear. A well-

laid ambuscade might surprise them, but not a man or horse in motion. The

narrow road wound along in a purposeless fashion. Leaves brushed their faces,

and occasionally they had to swing their bodies out of the way of encroaching

branches. The ripe scent of the late summer forest was intensified now that

they were below the rim of the valley. Mingled with it were whiffs of wild

berries and aromatic shrubs. Shadows imperceptibly lengthened.

"Nine chances out of ten," murmured the Mouser dreamily, "the treasure

house of Urgaan of Angarngi was looted some hundred years ago, by men whose

bodies are already dust."

"It may be so," agreed Fafhrd. "Unlike men, rubies and emeralds do not

rest quietly in their graves."

This possibility, which they had discussed several times before, did

not disturb them now, or make them impatient. Rather did it impart to their

quest the pleasant melancholy of a lost hope. They drank in the rich air and

let their horses munch random mouthfuls of leaves. A jay called shrilly from

overhead and off in the forest a catbird was chattering, their sharp voices

breaking in on the low buzzing and droning of the insects. Night was drawing

near. The almost-horizontal rays of the sun gilded the treetops. Then Fafhrd's

sharp ears caught the hollow lowing of a cow.

A few more turns brought them into the clearing they had spied. In line

with their surmise, it proved to contain a peasant's cottage -- a neat little

low-eaved house of weathered wood, situated in the midst of an acre of grain.

To one side was a bean patch; to the other, a woodpile which almost dwarfed

the house. In front of the cottage stood a wiry old man, his skin as brown as

his homespun tunic. He had evidently just heard the horses and turned around

to look.

"Ho, father," called the Mouser, "it's a good day to be abroad in, and

a good home you have here."

The peasant considered these statements and then nodded his head in

agreement.

"We are two weary travelers," continued the Mouser.

Again the peasant nodded gravely.

"In return for two silver coins will you give us lodging for the

night?"

The peasant rubbed his chin and then held up three fingers.

"Very well, you shall have three silver coins," said the Mouser,

slipping from his horse. Fafhrd followed suit.

Only after giving the old man a coin to seal the bargain did the Mouser

question casually, "Is there not an old, deserted place near your dwelling

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======================SwordsAgainstDeath[Book2ofthe"FafhrdandGrayMouser"series]byFritzLeiber======================Copyright(c)1995byFritzLeibere-readswww.ereads.comFantasy---------------------------------NOTICE:Thisworkiscopyrighted.Itislicensedonlyforusebytheoriginalpurchaser.Duplicationordistribut...

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Leiber, Fritz - Saga of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser 02 - Swords Against Death

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