“Yes, sir!”
“Good. Fetch it for me.”
It proved to be as he’d described it and at least a hundred yards long, he judged. A sardonic smile quirked his lips as he knotted one end of it securely to the whirlpool-queller and the other end to a ring bolt in the deck, checked that the rest of the coil lay running free, and returned the queller to his pouch.
They’d been half a day sailing here. First a swift run to the east with wind abeam as soon as they’d got out of Salthaven harbor, leaving the Rimic fishing fleet very busy to the southwest, where the sea seemed to boil with fish, until they were well past the white salt headland. Then a long slow beat north into the wind, taking them gradually away from the Isle’s dark craggy east coast, which, replacing the glittering salt, trended toward the west. Finally, now, a swift return, running before the wind to that same coast where a shallow bay guarded by twin crags lured the unwary mariner. The sail sang and the small waves, advancing in ranked array, slapped the creaming prow. The sunlight was bright everywhere.
The Mouser stood up, closely scanning the sea immediately ahead for submerged rocks and signs of tides at work. The speed of Sprite seemed to increase beyond that given it by the wind, as though a current had gripped it. He noted an eddying ahead, sudden curves in the wave-topping lines of foam. Now was the time!—if time there was to be. He called to Ourph to be ready to go about.
Despite all these anticipations he was taken by surprise when (it seemed it must be) an unseen giant hand gripped Sprite from below, turned it instantly sideways and jerked it ahead in a curve, tilting it sharply inward. He saw Mikkidu standing in the air over the water a yard from the deck. As he involuntarily moved to join the dumbfounded thief, his left hand automatically seized the mast while his right, stretching out mightily, grabbed Mikkidu by the collar. The Mouser’s muscles cracked but took the strain. He deposited Mikkidu on the deck, putting a foot on him to keep him there, then crouched into the wind that was rattling the sails, and managed to look around.
Where ranked waves had been moments before, Sprite at prodigious speed was circling a deepening saucer of spinning black water almost two hundred yards across. Dimly past the wildly flapping mainsail the Mouser glimpsed Ourph clinging with both hands to the tiller. Looking again at the whirlpool he saw that Sprite was appreciably closer to its deepening center, whence jagged rocks now protruded like a monster’s blackened and broken fangs. Without pause he dug in his pouch for the queller and, trying to allow for wind and Sprite’s speed, hurled it at the watery pit’s center. For a space it seemed to hang glinting golden-yellow in the sunlight, then fell true.
This time it was as if a hundred giant invisible hands had smote the whirlpool flat. Sprite seemed to hit a wall. There was a sudden welter of crosschopping waves that generated so much foam that it piled up on the deck and one would have sworn the water was filled with soap.
The Mouser reassured himself that Ourph and Mikkidu were there and in an upright position so that, given time, they might recover. Next he ascertained that the sky and sea appeared to be in their proper places. Then he checked on the tiller and sails. His eye falling away from the bedraggled jib lit on the ringbolt in the prow. He reeled in the line attached to it (not very hopefully—surely it would have snagged or snapped in the chaos they’d just endured) but for a wonder it came out with the queller still tightly knotted to the end of it, more golden-bright than ever from its tumbling it had got in the rocks. As he pouched it and laced tight the soggy flap, he felt remarkably self-satisfied.
By now waves and wind had resumed something like their normal flow and Ourph and Mikkidu were stirring. The Mouser set them back at their duties (refusing to discuss at all the whirlpool’s appearance and vanishment) and he cockily had them sail Sprite close inshore, where he noted a beach of jagged rocks with considerable gray timber amongst them, bones of dead ships.
Time for the Rime-men to pick up another load, he thought breezily. Have to tell Groniger. Or perhaps best wait for the next wrecks—Mingol ones!—which should provide a prodigious harvest.
Smiling, the Mouser set course for Salthaven, an easy sail now with the favoring wind. Under his breath he hummed, “Mingols to their deaths must go, down to weedy hell below.” Aye, and their ships to rock-fanged doom.
* * * *
Somewhere between cloud layers north of Rime Isle there floated miraculously the sphere of black ice that was Khahkht’s home and most-times prison. Snow falling steadily between the layers gave the black sphere a white cap. The falling snow also accumulated on and so whitely outlined the mighty wings, back, neck, and crest of the invisible being poised beside the sphere. This being must have been clutching the sphere in some fashion, for whenever it shook its head and shoulders to dislodge the snow, the sphere jogged in the thin air.
Three-quarters of the way down the sphere, a trapdoor had been flung open and from it Khahkht had thrust Its head, shoulders, and one arm, like a peculiarly nasty god looking sidewise down and out of the floor of heaven.
The two beings conversed together.
Khahkht: Fretful monster! Why do you trouble my celestial privacy, rapping on my sphere? Soon I’ll be sorry that I gave you wings.
Faroomfar: I’d as soon shift back to a flying invisible ray-fish. It had advantages.
Khahkht: For two black dogs, I’d—!
Faroomfar: Contain your ugly self, granddad. I’ve good reason to knock you up. The Mingols seem to lessen in their frenzy. Gonov of the Sunwise descending on Rime Isle has ordered his ships double-reef for a mere gale. While the Widder-raiders coming down across the Isle have turned back from a force less than a third their size. Have your incantments weakened?
Khahkht: Content you. I have been seeking to assess the two new gods who aid Rime Isle: how powerful, whence they come, their final purpose, and whether they may be suborned. My tentative conclusion: They’re a treacherous pair, none too strong—rogue gods from a minor universe. We’d best ignore ‘em.
The snow had re-gathered on the flier, a fine dust of it revealing even somewhat of his thin, cruel, patrician features. He shook it off.
Faroomfar: So, what to do?
Khahkht: I’ll refire the Mingols where (and if) they flinch back, never you fear. Do you, meanwhile, evade your wicked sisters if you’re able and work what devilish mischief you can on Fafhrd (it’s he that’s cowed the Widder-raiders, right?) and his band. Aim at the girl. To work!
And he drew back into his black, snow-capped sphere and slammed the trapdoor, like a reverse jack-in-the-box. The falling snow was disturbed in a broad downward sweep as Faroomfar spread wings and began his descent from the heights.
* * * *
Most commendably, Mother Grum was waiting in the skiff at the anchorage when Ourph and Mikkidu brought Sprite breezing in neatly to make fast to the buoy and furl sail under the Mouser’s watchful, approving eye. He was still in a marvelously good mood of self-satisfaction and had even unbent to make a few benign remarks to Mikkidu (which puzzled the latter mightily) and discourse safely by whimsical fits and starts with the wise, if somewhat taciturn, old Mingol.
Now sharing the skiff’s mid-thwart with Ourph, while Mikkidu huddled in the prow, the Mouser airily asked the hag as she sculled them in, “How went the day, Mother? Any word for me from your mistress?” When she answered him only with a grunt that might mean anything or nothing, he merely remarked with mild sententiousness, “Bless your loyal old bones,” and let his attention wander idly about the harbor.
Night had fallen. The last of the fishing fleet had just come in, low in the water with another record-breaking catch. His attention fixed on the nearest pier, where a ship on the other side was unloading by torchlight and four Rime-men, going in single file, were bearing ashore what were undoubtedly the prizes of their monster (and monstrous) haul.
Yesterday the Rimelanders had impressed him as very solid and sober folk, but now more and more he was finding something oafish and loutish about them, especially these four as they went galumphing along, smirking and gaping and with eyes starting out of their heads beneath their considerable burdens.
First went a bent-over, bearded fellow, bearing upon his back by its finny tail a great silver tunny as long-bodied as he and even thicker.