Then by flame of fat candle a Mingol crewman fetched after lighting it from the firebox, the Mouser read in Fafhrd’s huge script writ very small:
Ahoy, Little Man!—for ‘tis unlike there’s vessel closer in this wavy wilderness. Burn a red flare and I’ll be there.
F.
And then in blacker but sloppier letters suggesting hurried afterthought:
Let’s feign mutual attack when we meet, to train our crews. Agreed!
The white flame, burning steady and bright in the still air, showed the Mouser’s delighted grin and also the added expression of incredulous outrage as he read the postscript. Northerners as a breed were battle-mad, and Fafhrd the feyest.
“Gib, get quill and squid ink,” he commanded. “Sir Pshawri, take slow-fire and a red flare to the mainmast top and burn it there. Yarely! But if you fire Flotsam, I’ll nail you to the burning deck!”
Some moments later, as the Mouser-enlisted small cat-burglar steadily mounted the rigging, though additionally encumbered by a boathook, his captain reversed the small parchment, spread it flat against the mast, and neatly inscribed on its back by light of candle, which Gib held along with the inkhorn:
Madman Most Welcome!—I’ll burn them one each bell. I do not agree. My crew is trained already.
M.
He shook the note to dry it, then gingerly wrapped it closely around the glaring hawk’s leg, just above talons and threaded it tight. As his fingers came away, the bird bated with a shriek and winged off into the fog without command. Fafhrd had at least his avian messengers well trained.
A red glare, surprisingly bright, sprang forth from the fog at the masthead and rose mysteriously a full ten cubits above the top. Then the Mouser saw that, for safety’s sake, his own and his ship’s, the little corporal major had fixed the flare to the boathook’s end and thrust it aloft, thereby also increasing the distance at which it could be seen—by at least a Lankhmar league, the Mouser hurriedly calculated. A sound thought, he had to admit, almost a brilliancy. He had Mikkidu reverse Flotsam’s course for practice, the steerside sweepsmen pulling water to swing the ship their way. He went to the prow to assure himself that the heavily muffled Mingol there was steadily scanning the fog ahead, next he returned to the stern, where Ourph stood by his tillerman, both equally thick-cloaked against the cold.
Then, as the red flare glowed on and the relative quiet of steady sweeping returned, the Mouser’s ears unwilled resumed their work of searching the fog for strange sounds, and he said softly to Ourph without looking at him, “Tell me now, Old One, what you really think about your restless nomad brotheren and why they’ve ta’en to ship instead of horse.”
“They rush like lemmings, seeking death … for others,” the ancient croaked reflectively. “Gallop the waves instead of flinty steppes. To strike down cities is their chiefest urge, whether by land or sea. Perhaps they flee the People of the Ax.”
“I’ve heard of those,” the Mouser responded doubtfully. “Think you they’d league with Stardock’s viewless fliers, who ride the icy airs above the world?”
“I do not know. They’ll follow their clan wizards anywhere.”
The red flare died. Pshawri came down rather jauntily from the top and reported to his dread captain, who dismissed him with a glare which was unexpectedly terminated by a broad wink and the command to burn another flare at the next bell, or demi-hour. Then turning once more to Ourph, the Mouser spoke low: “Talking of wizards, do you know of Khahkht?”
The ancient let five heartbeats go by, then croaked, “Khahkht is Khahkht. It is no tribal sorcerer, ‘tis sure. It dwells in farthest north within a dome—some say a floating globe—of blackest ice, from whence It watches the least deeds of men, devising evil every chance It gets, as when the stars are right—better say wrong—and all the Gods asleep. Mingols dread Khahkht and yet … whene’er they reach a grand climacteric they turn to It, beseech It ride ahead before their greatest, bloodiest centaurings. Ice is Its favored quarter, ice Its tool, and icy breath Its surest sign save blink.”
“Blink?” the Mouser asked uneasily.
“Sunlight or moonlight shining back from ice,” the Mingol replied. “Ice blink.”
A soft white flash paled for an instant the dark, pearly fog, and through it the Mouser heard the sound of oars—mightier strokes than those of Flotsam’s sweeps and set in a more ponderous rhythm, yet oars or sweeps indubitably, and swiftly growing louder. The Mouser’s face grew gladsome. He peered about uncertainly. Ourph’s pointing finger stabbed dead ahead. The Mouser nodded, and pitching his voice trumpet-shrill to carry, he hailed forward, “Fafhrd! Ahoy!”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the beat of Flotsam’s sweeps and of the oncoming oars, and then there came out of the fog the heart-quickening though still eerie cry, “Ahoy, small man! Mouser, well met in wildering waters! And now—on guard!” The Mouser’s glad grin grew frantic. Did Fafhrd seriously intend to carry out in fog his fey suggestion of a feigned ships’-battle? He looked with a wild questioning at Ourph, who shrugged hugely for one so small.
A brighter white blink momentarily lightened the fog ahead. Without pausing an instant for thought, the Mouser shouted his commands. “Loadside sweeps! Pull water! Yarely! Steerside, push hard!” And unmindful of the Mingol manning it, he threw himself at the tiller and drove it steerside so that Flotsam’s rudder would strengthen the turning power of the loadside sweeps.
It was well he acted as swiftly as he did. From out the fog ahead thrust a low, thick, sharp-tipped, glittering shaft that would otherwise have rammed Flotsam’s bow and split her in twain. As it was, the ram grazed Flotsam’s side with shuddering rasp as the small ship veered abruptly loadside in response to the desperate sweeping of its soldier-thieves.
And now, following its ram, the white, sharp prow of Fafhrd’s ship parted the gleam-shot fog. Almost incredibly lofty that prow was, high as a house and betokening ship as huge, so that Flotsam’s men had to crane necks up at it and even the Mouser gasped in fear and wonder. Fortunately it was yards to steerward as Flotsam continued to veer loadward, or else the smaller ship had been battered in.
Out of the fog dead ahead there appeared a flatness traveling sideways. A yard above the deck, it struck the mast, which might have snapped except that the flatness broke off first and there dropped with a clash at the Mouser’s feet something which further widened his eyes: the great ice-crusted blade and some of the loom of an oar twice the size of Flotsam’s sweeps, and looking for all the world like a dead giant’s fingernail.
The next huge oar missed the mast, but struck Pshawri a glancing blow and sent him sprawling. The rest missed Flotsam by widening margins. From the vast and towering, white, glittering bulk already vanishing in the fog there came a mighty cry: “Oh coward! To turn aside from battle challenge! Oh, crafty coward! But go on guard again! I’ll get you yet, small one, howe’er you dodge!”
Those huge, mad words were followed by an equally insane laughter. It was the sort of laughter the Mouser had heard before from Fafhrd in perilous battle plights, now madder than ever, fiendish even, but it was loud as if there were a dozen Fafhrds voicing it in unison. Had he trained his berserks to echo him?
A clawlike hand gripped the Mouser’s elbow hard. Then Ourph was pointing at the big, broken oar end on the deck. “It’s nought but ice.” The old Mingol’s voice resonated with superstitious awe. “Ice forged in Khahkht’s chill smithy.” He let go Mouser and, swiftly stooping, raised the thing in black-mitted hands widely spaced, as one might a wounded deadly serpent, and of a sudden hurled it overboard.
Beyond him, Mikkidu had lifted Pshawri’s shoulders and bloodied head from the deck. But now he was peering up at his captain over his still, senseless comrade. In his wild eyes was a desperate questioning.
The Mouser hardened his face. “Sweep on, you sluggards,” he commanded measuredly. “Push strongly. Mikkidu, let crewmen see to Pshawri, you chink gong for the sweeps. Swiftest beat! Ourph, arm your crew. Send down for arrows and your bows of horn—and for my soldiers their slings and ammunition. Leaden ball, not rock. Gavs, keep close watch astern, Trenchi at prow. Yarely all!”
The Gray One looked grimly dangerous and was thinking thoughts he hated. A thousand years ago in the Silver Eel, Fafhrd had announced he’d hire twelve berserkers, madmen in battle. But had his dear friend, now demon-possessed, guessed then just how mad his dozen dements would be, and that their craziness would be catching? and infect himself?
* * * *
Above the ice fog, the stars glittered like frost candles, dimmed only by the competing light of the gibbous moon low in the southwest, where in the distance the front of an approaching gale was rolling up the thick carpet of ice crystals floating in air.