Outside, the city of Lankhmar was silent as a necropolis, while beyond that the world of Nehwon had been at peace—unwar, rather—for a full year. Even the Mingols of the vasty Steppes weren’t raiding south on their small, tough horses.
Yet the effect of all this was not calm, but an unfocused uneasiness, a restlessness that had not yet resulted in the least movement, as if it were the prelude to an excruciating flash of cold lightning transfixing every tiniest detail of life.
This atmosphere affected the feelings and thoughts of the tall, brown-tunicked barbarian and his short, gray-cloaked friend.
“Dull indeed,” Fafhrd said. “I long for some grand emprise!”
“Those are the dreams of untutored youth. Is that why you’ve shaved your beard?—to match your dreams? Both barefaced lies!” the Mouser asked, and answered.
“Why have you let yours grow these three days?” Fafhrd conntered.
“I am but resting the skin of my face for a full tweaking of its hairs. And you’ve lost weight. A wishfully youthful fever?”
“Not that, or any ill or care. Of late you’re lighter, too. We are changing the luxuriant musculature of young manhood for a suppler, hardier, more enduring structure suited to great mid-life trials and venturings.”
“We’ve had enough of those,” the Mouser asserted. “Thrice around Nehwon, at the least.”
Fafhrd shook his head morosely. “We’ve never really lived. We’ve not owned land. We’ve not led men.”
“Fafhrd, you’re gloomy-drunk!” the Mouser chortled. “Would you be a farmer? Have you forgot a captain is the prisoner of his command? Here, drink yourself sober, or at least glad.”
The Northerner let his cup be refilled from two jars, but did not change his mood. Staring unhappily, he continued, “We’ve neither homes nor wives.”
“Fafhrd, you need a wench!”
“Who spoke of wenches?” the other protested. “I mean women. I had brave Kreeshkra, but she’s gone back to her beloved Ghouls. While your pert Reetha prefers the hairless land of Eevamarensee.”
The Mouser interjected sotto voce, “I also had imperious, insolent Hisvet, and you her brave, dramatic queen-slave Frix.”
Fafhrd went on, “Once, long ago, there were Friska and Ivivis, but they were Quarmall’s slaves and then became free women at Tovilysis. Before them were Keyaira, Hirriwi, but they were princesses, invisibles, loves of one long, long night, daughters of dread Oomforafor and sib of murderous Faroomfar. Long before all of those, in Land of Youth, there were fair Ivrian and slender Vlana. But they were girls, those lovely in-betweens (or actresses, those mysteries), and now they dwell with Death in Shadowland. So I’m but half a man. I need a mate. And so do you, perchance.”
“Fafhrd, you’re mad! You prate of world-spanning wild adventures and then babble of what would make them impossible: wife, home, henchmen, duties. One dull night without girl or fight, and your brains go soft. Repeat, you’re mad.”
Fafhrd reinspected the tavern and its stodgy inmates. “It stays dull, doesn’t it,” he remarked, “as if not one nostril had twitched or ear wiggled since I last looked. And yet it is a calm I do not trust. I feel an icy chill. Mouser—”
That one was looking past him. With little sound, or none at all, two slender persons had just entered the Silver Eel and paused appraisingly inside the lead-weighted iron-woven curtains that kept out fog and could turn sword thrusts. The one was tall and rangy as a man, blue-eyed, thin-cheeked, wide-mouthed, clad in jerkin and trousers of blue and long cloak of gray. The other was wiry and supple-seeming as a cat, green-eyed, compact of feature, short thick lips compressed, clothed similarly save the hues were rust red and brown. They were neither young nor yet near middle age. Their smooth unridged brows, tranquil eyes, evenly curving jaws, and long cheek-molding hair—here silvery yellow, there black shot with darkest brown (in turn gold-shotten, or were those golden wires braided in?)—proclaimed them feminine.
That last attribute broke the congealed midnight trances of the assembled dullards, a half dozen of whom converged on the newcomers, calling low invitations and trailing throaty laughs. The two moved forward as if to hasten the encounter, with gaze unwaveringly ahead.
And then, without an instant, pause or any collision, except someone recoiled slightly as if his instep had been trod on and someone else gasped faintly as if his short ribs had encountered a firm elbow, the two were past the six. It was as if they had simply walked through them, as a man would walk through smoke with no more fuss than the wrinkling of a nostril. Behind them, the ignored smoke fumed and wove a bit.
Now there were in their way the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd, who had both risen and whose hands still indicated the hilts of their scabbarded swords without touching them.
“Ladies—” the Mouser began.
“Will you take wine—?” Fafhrd continued.
“Strengthened against night’s chill,” the Mouser concluded, sketching a bow, while Fafhrd courteously indicated the four-chaired table from which they’d just risen.
The slender women halted and surveyed them without haste.
“We might,” the smaller purred.
“Provided you let Rime Isle pay for the drinks,” the taller concluded in tones bright and swift as running snow water.
At the words “Rime Isle,” the faces of the two men grew thoughtful and wondering, as if in another universe someone had said Atlantis or El Dorado or Ultima Thule. Nevertheless they nodded agreement and drew back chairs for the women.
“Rime Isle,” Fafhrd repeated conjuringly, as the Mouser did the honors with cups and jars. “As a child in the Cold Waste and later in my adolescent piratings, I’ve heard it and Salthaven City whispered of. Legend says the Claws point at it—those thin, stony peninsulas that tip Nehwonland’s last north-west corner.”
“For once legend speaks true,” the electrum-haired woman in blue and gray said softly yet crisply, “Rime Isle exists today. Salthaven, too.”
“Come,” said the Mouser with a smile, ceremoniously handing her her cup, “it’s said Rime Isle’s no more real than Simorgya.”
“And is Simorgya unreal?” she asked, accepting it.
“No,” he admitted with a somewhat startled, reminiscent look. “I once watched it from a very small ship when it was briefly risen from the deeps of the Outer Sea. My more venturesome friend”—he nodded toward Fafhrd—”trod its wet shale for a short space to see some madmen dance with devilfish which had the aspect of black fur cloaks awrithe.”
“North of Simorgya, westward from the Claws,” briskly said the red- and brown-clad woman with black hair shot with glistening dark bronze and gold. Her right hand holding steady in the air her brimming wine cup where she’d just received it, she dipped her left beneath the table and swiftly slapped it down on the arabesquery of circle-stained oak, then lifted it abruptly to reveal four small rounds gleaming pale as moons. “You agreed Rime Isle would pay.”
With nods abstracted yet polite, the Mouser and Fafhrd each took up one of the coins and closely studied it.
“By the teats of Titchubi,” the former breathed, “this is no sou marque, black dog, no chien noir.”
“Rime Isle silver?” Fafhrd asked softly, lifting his gaze, eyebrows a-rise, from the face of the coin toward that of the taller woman.
Her gaze met his squarely. There was the hint of a smile at the ends of her long lips, back in her cheeks. She said sincerely yet banteringly, “Which never tarnishes.”
He said, “The obverse shows a vast sea monster menacing out of the depths.”
She said, “Only a great whale blowing after a deep sound.”
The Mouser said to the other woman, “Whilst the reverse depicts a ship-shaped, league-long square rock rising from miles-long swells.”
She said, “Only an iceberg hardly half that size.”
Fafhrd said, “Well, drink we what this bright, alien coinage has bought. I am Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser he.”
The tall woman said, “And I Afreyt, my comrade Cif.”
After deep draughts, they put down their cups. Afreyt with a sharp double tap of pewter on oak. “And now to business,” she said cliptly, with the faintest of frowns at Fafhrd (it was arguable if there was any frown at all) as he reached for the wine jars. “We speak with the voice of Rime Isle—”
“And dispurse her golden monies,” Cif added, her green eyes glinting with yellow flecks. Then, flatly, “Rime Isle is straitly menaced.”
Her voice going low, Afreyt asked, “Hast ever heard of the Sea Mingols?” and, when Fafhrd nodded, shifted her gaze to the Mouser, saying, “Most Southrons misdoubt their sheer existence, deeming every Mingol a lubber when off his horse, whether on land or sea.”
“Not I” he answered. “I’ve sailed with Mingol crew. There’s one, now old, named Ourph—”
“And I’ve met Mingol pirates,” Fafhrd said. “Their ships are few, each dire. Arrow-toothed water rats—Sea Mingols, as you say.”
“That’s good,” Cif told them both. “Then you’ll more like believe me when I tell you that in response to the eldritch prophecy, ‘Who seizes Nehwon’s crown, shall win her all-‘”