.16.
At Illik Ving the Death of the Twain joined a caravan bound for No-Ombrulsk, changing their mounts for shaggy Mingol ponies inured to frost, and spent all of Ghosts Moon on that long traverse. Although early summer, there was sufficient chill in the Trollsteps and the foothills of the Bones of the Old Ones and in the plateau of the Cold Waste that lies between these ranges for them to refer frequently to the seed bags of brazen apes and the tits of witches, and hug the cookfire while it lasted, and warm their sleep with dreams of the treasures their intendeds had laid up.
“I see this Fafhrd as a gold-guarding dragon in a mountain cave,” his Death averred. “I’m into his character fully now, I feel. And on to it too.”
“While I dream the Mouser as a fat gray spider,” the other echoed, “with silver, amber, and leviathan ivory cached in a score of nooks, crannies, and corners he scuttles between. Yes, I can play him now. And play with him too. Odd, isn’t it, how like we get to our intendeds at the end?”
Arriving at last at the stone-towered seaport, they took lodgings at an inn where badges of the Slayers’ Brotherhood were recognized, and they slept for two nights and a day, recuperating. Then Mouser’s Death went for a stroll down by the docks, and when he returned, announced, “I’ve taken passage for us in an Ool Krut trader. Sails with the tide day after morrow.”
“Murderers Moon begins well,” his wraith-thin comrade observed from where he still lay abed.
“At first the captain pretended not to know of Rime Isle, called it a legend, but when I showed him the badge and other things, he gave up that shipmasters’ conspiracy of keeping Salthaven and western ports beyond a trade secret. By the by, our ship’s called the Good News.”
“An auspicious name,” the other, smiling, responded. “Oh Mouser, and oh Fafhrd, dear, your twin brothers are hastening toward you.”
.17.
After the long morning twilight that ended Midsummer Eve’s short night, Midsummer Day dawned chill and misty in Salthaven. Nevertheless, there was an early bustling around the kitchen of the barracks, where the Mouser and Fafhrd had taken their repose, and likewise at Afreyt’s house, where Cif and their nieces May, Mara, and Gale had stayed overnight.
Soon the fiery sun, shooting his rays from the northeast as he began his longest loop south around the sky, had burnt the milky mist off all Rime Isle and showed her clear from the low roofs of Salthaven to the central hills, with the leaning tower of Elvenhold in the near middle distance and the Great Meadow rising gently toward it.
And soon after that an irregular procession set out from the barracks. It wandered crookedly and leisurely through town to pick up the men’s women, chiefly by trade, at least in their spare time, sailorwives, and other island guests. The men took turns dragging a cart piled with hampers of barley cakes, sweetbreads, cheese, roast mutton and kid, fruit conserves and other Island delicacies, while at its bottom, packed in snow, were casks of the Isle’s dark bitter ale. A few men blew woodflutes and strummed small harps.
At the docks Groniger, festive in holiday black, joined them with the news. “The Northern Star out of Ool Plerns came in last even to No-Ombrulsk. I spoke with her master and he said the Good News out of Ool Krut was at last report sailing for Rime Isle one or two mornings after him.”
At this point Ourph the Mingol begged off from the party, protesting that the walk to Elvenhold would be too much for his old bones and a new crick in his left ankle, he’d rest them in the sun here, and they left him squatting his skinny frame on the warming stone and peering steadily out to sea past where Seahawk, Flotsam, Northern Star, and other ships rode at anchor among the Island fishing sloops.
Fafhrd said to Groniger, “I’ve been here a year and more and it still wonders me that Salthaven is such a busy port while the rest of Nehwon goes on thinking Rime Isle a legend. I know I did for a half lifetime.”
“Legends travel on rainbow wings and sport gaudy colors,” the harbormaster answered him, “while truth plods on in sober garb.”
“Like yourself?”
“Aye,” Groniger grunted happily.
“And ‘tis not a legend to the captains, guild masters, and kings who profit by it,” the Mouser put in. “Such do most to keep legends alive.” The little man (though not little at all among his corps of thieves) was in a merry mood, moving from group to group and cracking wise and gay to all and sundry.
Skullick, Skor’s sub-lieutenant, struck up a berserk battle chant and Fafhrd found himself singing an Ilthmar sea chanty to it. At their next pickup point tankards of ale were passed out to them. Things grew jollier.
A little ways out into the Great Meadow, where the thoroughfare led between fields of early ripening Island barley, they were joined by the feminine procession from Afreyt’s. These had packed their contribution of toothsome edibles and tastesome potables in two small red carts drawn by stocky white bearhounds big as small men but gentle as lambs. And they had been augmented by the sailorwives and fisherwomen Hilsa and Rill, whose gift to the feast was jars of sweet-pickled fish. Also by the witch-woman Mother Grum, as old as Ourph but hobbling along stalwartly, never known to have missed a feast in her life’s long history.
They were greeted with cries and new singings, while the three girls ran to play with the children the larger procession had inevitably accumulated on its way through town.
Fafhrd went back for a bit to quizzing Groniger about the ships that called at Salthaven port, flourishing for emphasis the hook that was his left hand. “I’ve heard it said, and seen some evidence for it too, myself, that some of them hail from ports that are nowhere on Nehwon seas I know of.”
“Ah, you’re becoming a convert to the legends,” the black-clad man told him. Then, mischievously, “Why don’t you try casting the ships’ horoscopes with all you’ve learned of stars of late, naked and hairy ones?” He frowned. “Though there was a black cutter with a white line that watered here three days ago whose home port I wish I could be surer of. Her master put me off from going below, and her sails didn’t look enough for her hull. He said she hailed from Sayend, but that’s a seaport we’ve had reliable word that the Sea-Mingols burned to ash less than two years agone. He knew of that, he claimed. Said it was much exaggerated. But I couldn’t place his accent.”
“You see?” Fafhrd told him. “As for horoscopes, I have neither skill or belief in astrology. My sole concern is with the stars themselves and the patterns they make. The hairy star’s most interesting! He grows each night. At first I thought him a rover, but he keeps his place. I’ll point him out to you come dark.”
“Or some other evening when there’s less drinking,” the other allowed grudgingly. “A wise man is suspicious of his interests other than the most necessary. They breed illusions.”
The groupings kept changing as they walked, sang, and danced—and played—their way up through the rustling grass. Cif took advantage of this mixing to seek out Pshawri and Mikkidu. The Mouser’s two lieutenants had at first been suspicious of her interest in and influence over their captain—a touch of jealousy, no doubt—but honest dealing and speaking, the evident genuineness of her concern, and some furtherance of Pshawri’s suit to an Island woman had won them over, so that the three thought of themselves in a limited way as confederates.
“How’s Captain Mouser these days?” she asked them lightly. “Still running his little morning checkup route?”
“He didn’t today,” Mikkidu told her.
“While yesterday he ran it in the afternoon,” Pshawri amplified. “And the day before that he missed.”
Mikkidu nodded.
“I don’t fret about him o’er much,” she smiled at them, “knowing he’s under watchful and sympathetic eyes.”
And so with mutual buttering up and with singing and dancing the augmented holiday band arrived at the spot just south of Elvenhold that they’d selected for their picnic. A portion of the food was laid out on white-sheeted trestles, the drink was broached, and the competitions and games that comprised an important part of the day’s program were begun. These were chiefly trials of strength and skill, not of endurance, and one trial only, so that a reasonable or even somewhat unreasonable amount of eating and drinking didn’t tend to interfere with performance too much.
Between the contests were somewhat less impromptu dancings than had been footed earlier: island stamps and flings, old-fashioned Lankhmar sways, and kicking and bouncing dances copied from the Mingols.