All eyes were now back on the table again save those of Afreyt. And of Fafhrd’s lieutenant Skor. Those four orbs were still fixed on the mist-bulging doorway through which Fafhrd had vanished with his strangely unlike doublegoer. Since babyhood Afreyt had heard of those doleful nightwalkers whose appearance, like the banshee’s, generally betokened death or near-mortal injury to the one whose shape they mocked.
Now while she agonized over what to do, invoking the witch queen Skeldir and lesser of her own and (in her extremity) others’ private deities, there was a strange growling in her ears—perhaps her rushing blood. Fafhrd’s last word to Groniger kindled in her memory the recollection of an exchange of words between those two earlier today, which in turn gave her a bright inkling of Fafhrd’s present destination in the viewless fog. This in turn inspired her to break the grip upon her of fear’s and indecision’s paralysis. Her first two or three steps were short and effortful ones, but by the time she went through the doorway, she was taking swift giant strides.
Her example broke the dread-duty deadlock in Skor, and the lean, red-haired, balding giant followed her in a rush.
But few in the Sea Wrack except Ourph and perhaps Groniger noted either departure, for all gazes were fixed again on the one small table where now Captain Mouser in person contested with his dread were-brother, battling the Islanders’ and his men’s fears for them as it were. And whether by smashing attack, tortuous back game, or swift running one like the first, the Mouser kept winning again and again and again.
And still the games went on, as though the series might well outlast the night. The stranger’s smile kept thinning. That was all, or almost all.
The only fly in this ointment of unending success was a nagging doubt, perhaps deriving from a growing languor on the Mouser’s part, a lessening of his taunting joy at each new win, that destinies in the larger world would jump with those worked out in the little world of the backgammon box.
.19.
“We have reached the point in this night’s little journey I’m taking you on where we must abandon the horizontal and embrace the vertical,” Fafhrd informed his comrade astronomer, clasping him familiarly about the shoulders with left arm, and wagging right forefinger before that cadaver face, while the white mist hugged them both.
The Death of Fafhrd fought down the impulse to squirm away with a hawking growl of disgust close to vomiting. He abominated being touched except by outstandingly beautiful females under circumstances entirely of his own commanding. And now for a full half-hour he had been following his drunken and crazy victim (sometimes much too closely for comfort, but that wasn’t his own choosing, Arth forbid) through a blind fog, and mostly trusting the same madman to keep them from breaking their necks in holes and pits and bogs, and putting up with being touched and arm-gripped and back-slapped (often by that doubly disgusting hook that felt so like a weapon), and listening to a farrago of wild talk about long-haired asterisms and bearded stars and barley fields and sheep’s grazing ground and hills and masts and trees and the mysterious southern continent until Arth himself couldn’t have held it, so that it was only the madman’s occasional remention of a treasure or treasures he was leading his Death to that kept the latter tagging along without plunging exasperated knife into his victim’s vitals.
And at least the loathsome cleavings and enwrappings expressive of brotherly affection that he had made himself submit to had allowed him to ascertain in turn that his intended wore no undergarment of chain mail or plate or scale to interfere with the proper course of things when knife time came. So the Death of Fafhrd consoled himself as he broke away from the taller and heavier man under the legitimate and friendly excuse of more closely inspecting the rock wall they now faced at a distance of no more than four or five yards. Farther off the fog would have hid it.
“You say we’re to climb this to view your treasure?” He couldn’t quite keep his incredulity out of his voice.
“Aye,” Fafhrd told him.
“How high?” his Death asked him.
Fafhrd shrugged. “Just high enough to get there. A short distance, truly.” He waved an arm a little sideways, as though dispensing with a trifle.
“There’s not much light to climb by,” his Death said somewhat tentatively.
Fafhrd replied, “What think you makes the mist whitely luminous an hour after sunset? There’s enough light to climb by, never fear, and it’ll get brighter as we go aloft. You’re a climber, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” the other admitted diffidently, not saying that his experience had been gained chiefly in scaling impregnable towers and cyclopean poisoned walls behind which the wealthier and more powerful assassin’s targets tended to hide themselves—difficult climbs, some of them, truly, but rather artificial ones, and all of them done in the line of business.
Touching the rough rock and seeing it inches in front of his somewhat blunted nose, the Death of Fafhrd felt a measurable repugnance to setting foot or serious hand on it. For a moment he was mightily minded to whip out dagger and end it instanter here with the swift upward jerk under the breastbone, or the shrewd thrust from behind at the base of the skull, or the well-known slash under the ear in the angle of the jaw. He’d never have his victim more lulled, that was certain.
Two things prevented him. One, he’d never had the feeling of having an audience so completely under his control as he’d had this afternoon and evening at the Sea Wrack. Or a victim so completely eating out of his hand, so walking to his own destruction, as they said in the trade. It gave him a feeling of being intoxicated while utterly sober, it put him into an “I can do anything, I am God” mood, and he wanted to prolong that wonderful thrill as far as possible.
Two, Fafhrd’s talk perpetually returning to treasure, and the way the invitation now to climb some small cliff to view it so fitted with his Cold Waste dreams of Fafhrd as a dragon guarding gold in a mountain cavern—these combined to persuade him that the Fates were taking a hand in tonight’s happening, the youngest of them drawing aside veil and baring her ruby lips to him and soon the more private jewelry of her person.
“You don’t have to worry about the rock, it’s sound enough, just follow in my footsteps and my handholds,” Fafhrd said impatiently as he advanced to the cliff’s face and mounted it, the hook making harsh metallic clashes.
His Death doffed the short cloak and hood he wore, took a deep breath and, thinking in a small corner of his mind, “Well, at least this madman won’t be able to fondle me more while we’re climbing—I hope!” went up after him like a giant spider.
It was as well for Fafhrd that his Death (and the Mouser’s too) had neglected to make close survey of the landscape and geography of Rime Isle during this afternoon’s sail in. (They’d been down in their cabin mostly, getting into their parts.) Otherwise he might have known that he was now climbing Elvenhold.
.20.
Back in the Sea Wrack the Mouser threw a double six, the only cast that would allow him to bear off his last four stones and leave his opponent’s sole remaining man stranded one point from home. He threw up the back of a hand to mask a mighty yawn and over it politely raised an inquiring eyebrow at his adversary.
The Death of the Mouser nodded amiably enough, though his smile had grown very thin-lipped indeed, and said, “Yes, it’s as well we write finished to my strivings. Was it eight games, or seven? No matter. I’ll seek my revenge some other time. Fate is your girl tonight, cunt and arse hole, that much is proven.”
A collective sigh of relief from the onlookers ended the general silence. They felt the relaxation of tension as much as the two players, and to most of them it seemed that the Mouser in vanquishing the stranger had also dispersed all the strange fears that had been loose in the tavern earlier and running along their nerves.
“A drink to toast your victory, salve my defeat?” the Mouser’s Death asked smoothly. “Hot gahvey perhaps? With brandy in’t?”
“Nay, sir,” the Mouser said with a bright smile, collecting together his several small stacks of gold and silver pieces and funneling them into his pouch, “I must take these bright fellows home and introduce ‘em to their cellmates. Coins prosper best in prison, as my friend Groniger tells me. But sir, would you not accompany me on that journey, help me escort ‘em? We can drink there.” A brightness came into his eyes that had nothing whatever in common with a miser’s glee. He continued, “Friend who discerned the tree sloth and saw the black panther, we both know that there are mysterious treasures and matters of interest compared to which these clinking counters are no more than that. I yearn to show you some. You’ll be intrigued.”