“Now you are quibbling,” Fafhrd said decisively, “and are making my head spin, to boot, with ‘wildering words. This much is clear to me: We must get ready, and ready Black Racer, to steer north, as my poor lovely moon-girl strongly advised me more than once.”
“But Fafhrd,” the Mouser protested, “we tried again and again to steer north yesterday and failed each time. What reason have you to suppose, you big lug—”
Fafhrd cut in with, “’Trust only in the moon,’ she said. ‘Wait for her certain sign.’ So wait we, for the nonce, and watch. Look at the sea and sky, idiot boy, and be amazed.”
The Mouser was indeed. While they had been disputing, intent only on the cuts and thrusts and parries and ripostes of their word-duel, the smooth surface of the racing Sea of Stars had changed from sleek and slick to matte yet ripply. Great vibrations were speeding across it, making the leopard-boat quiver. The moon-silvered lines of foam were blowing over it less predictably—the hurricane itself, though diminished no whit, was getting flukey, the wind now hot, now cold about their necks. While in the sky were clouds at last, coming in swiftly from northwest and east at once and mounting toward the moon. All of nature seemed to cringe apprehensively, as if in anticipation of some dire event about to hap, heralding war in heaven. The two silvery shimmer-sprights appeared to share this foreboding or presentiment, for they ‘gan fly about most erratically, their lace wildly aflow, uttering high cheeping cries and whistlings of alarm against the unnatural silence and at last parting so that one hovered agitatedly to the southeast above the prow, the other near the stern to the northwest.
The rapidly thickening clouds had blotted out most of the stars and mounted almost to the moon. The wind held still, exactly equalling the current’s speed. Black Racer poised, as if at crest of a gigantic wave. For an instant the sea seemed to freeze. Silence was absolute.
The Mouser looked straight up and uttered from the back of his throat a half choked, high pitched little scream that froze his comrade’s blood. After mastering that shock, Fafhrd looked up too—at just which instant it grew very dark. The hungry clouds had blotted out the moon.
“Why did you so cry out?” he demanded angrily.
The Mouser answered with difficulty, his teeth chattering, “Just before the clouds closed on her, the moon moved.”
“How could you know that, you little fool, when the clouds were moving?—which always makes the moon seem to move.”
“I don’t know, but as sure as I stand firm-footed here, I saw it! The moon began to move.”
“Well, if the moon be in a waterspout, as you claim, she’s subject to all whims of wind and wave. So what’s so blood-curdlingly strange in her moving?” Fafhrd’s frantic voice belied the reasonableness of his question.
“I don’t know,” the Mouser repeated in a curiously small, strained voice, his teeth still clinking together, “but I didn’t like it.”
The shimmer-spright at the stern whistled thrice.
Her nervously twisting, lacy, silver luminescence stood out plainly in the black night, as did her sister’s at the prow.
“It is the sign!” Fafhrd cried hoarsely. “Ready to go about!” And he threw his full weight against the tiller, driving it steerside and so the rudder loadside, to steer them north. Black Racer responded most sluggishly, but did break the grip of current and wind to the extent of swinging north a point or two, no more.
A long flat lightning flash split the sky and showed the gray sea to the horizon’s rim, where they now saw two giant waterspouts, the one due south, the other rushing in from the west. Thunder crashed like armies or armadas meeting at an iron-sonorous Armageddon.
Then all was wildfire and chaos in the night, great crashing waves, and winds that fought like giants whose heads scraped heaven. Whilst round about the ship the shimmer-sprights fought too, now two, now seeming four of them at least as they circled and dipped at and about each other. The frozen sea was ripped, great rags of it thrown skyward, pits opening that seemed to go down to the black, mucky sea-bottom unknown to man. Lightning and deafening thunderclaps became almost continuous, revealing all. And through that all, Black Racer somehow lived, a chip in chaos, Fafhrd and Mouser performing prodigies of seamanship.
And now from the southwest the second giant waterspout drove in like a moving mountain, sending great swells before it that mightily aided Fafhrd’s tillering, driving them north, and north again, and again still north. While from the south the first giant ‘spout turned back, or so it seemed, and those two (moonspout and sunspout?) battled.
And then of a sudden it was as if Black Racer had struck a wall. Fafhrd and Mouser were thrown to the deck and when they had madly struggled to their feet they found to their utter astonishment that their leopard-boat was floating in calm water, while in the distance lightning and thunder played, almost inaudible and unseen to their numbed ears and half-blinded eyes. There were no stars and moon, only thick night. There were no shimmer-sprights. Their sail was split to ribbons, the faint lightning showed. Under his hand Fafhrd felt a looseness in the tiller, as if the whole steering assemblage had been strained to breaking point and only survived by miracle.
The Mouser said, “She lists a little to stern and steerside, don’t you think? She’s taking water, I trow. Perhaps there’s stuff shifted below. Man we the pump. Later we can bend on a new sail.”
So they fell to and for some hours worked together silently as in many old times, nursing the leopard-boat and making all new, by light of two lanterns Fafhrd rigged from the mast that burned purest leviathan-oil, for the storm had entirely gone with its lightnings and the dark clouds pressed down.
As the cloud ceiling did, indeed, over all Nehwon that night (and day on other side). Over the subsequent months and years reports drifted in of the Great Dark, as it came mostly to be called, that had shrouded all Nehwon for a space of hours, so that it was never truly known whether the moon had monstrously traveled halfway round the world that time to battle with the sun and then back again to her appointed spot, or no, though there were scattered but persistent disquieting rumors of such a dread journeying glimpsed through fugitive gaps in the cloud-cover, and even that the sun himself had briefly moved to war with her.
After long while Fafhrd said quietly as they took a break from their labors, “It’s lonely without the shimmer-sprights, don’t you think?”
The Mouser said, “Agreed. I wonder if they’d ever have led us to treasure, or ever so intended? Or would have led us, or one of us, somewhere, either your spright, or mine?”
“I still firmly believe there were four sprights,” Fafhrd said. “So either pair of twins might have led us somewhere together without parting us.”
“No, there were only two sprights,” the Mouser said, “and they were set on leading us in very different directions, antipodean, off from each other.” And when Fafhrd did not reply he said after a time, “Part of me wishes I’d gone with my fiery girl to find what’s like to dwell in paradise bathed by the splendid sun.”
Fafhrd said, “Part of me wishes I’d followed my melancholy maid to dwell in the pale moon, spending the summer months mayhap in Shadowland.” Then, after a silent space, “But man was not meant for paradise, I trow, whether of warmth or coolth. No, never, never, never, never.”
“Never shares a big bed with once,” the Mouser said.
While they were speaking it had grown light. The clouds had all lifted. The new sail shone. The leviathan lamps burned wanly, their clear beam almost invisible against the paling sky. Then in the farthest distance north the two adventurers made out the loom of a great aurochs couchant, unmistakable sign of the southernmost headland of the Eastern Lands.
“We’ve weathered Lankhmar continent in a single day and night,” the Mouser said.
A breeze sprang up from the south, stirring the still air. They set course north up the long Sea of the East.
VII: The Frost Monstreme
“I am tired, Gray Mouser, of these little brushes with Death,” Fafhrd the Northerner said, lifting his dinted, livid goblet and taking a measured sup of sweet ferment of grape laced with bitter brandy.
“Want a big one?” his comrade scoffed, drinking likewise.
Fafhrd considered that, while his gaze traveled slowly yet without stop all the way round the tavern, whose sign was a tarnished and serpentine silver fish. “Perhaps,” he said.
“It’s a dull night,” the other agreed.
True indeed, the interior of the Silver Eel presented a tavern visage as leaden-hued as its wine cups. The hour was halfway between midnight and dawn, the light dim without being murky, the air dank yet not chill, the other drinkers like moody statues, the faces of the barkeep and his bully and servers paralyzed in expressions of petulant discontent, as if Time herself had stopped.