Pshawri stroked upward alongside the anchor line, feeling he climbed a cliff, his gaze fixed on Kringle’s small spindle shape. Blood pounded in his ears and to hold his breath was pain. Yet as the spindle shape grew larger, he thought to stroke so as to rotate his body for a cautionary scan around and down.
He had not completed a half turn when he saw a black shape driving up toward him head on.
It speaks well for Pshawri’s presence of mind that he completed his rotation, making sure there was no nearer attacker to deal with, before facing the hog-nose.
Continuing to coast upward, threshing his legs a little, he drew his dirk. There was yet barely time to thrust his right hand through the loop of the pommel thong before he gripped it.
The scene darkened. He aimed the dirk, his arm bent just a little, at the up-rushing mask which somewhat resembled that of a great black boar.
His shoulder was jolted, his arm wrenched, a long black shape was hurtling past, rough hide scraped his hip and side, then he was driving upward again with strong palm-sweeps toward Kringle’s hull, very large now though the scene remained strangely darkened.
He felt a blessed surge of relief as he broke surface close alongside and grasped for the gunwale. But in the same instant he felt himself strongly gripped under the shoulders and powerfully heaved upward, his legs flying, and he heard the clash of jaws.
Skullick, his rescuer, saw a red line start out on the mallet snout of the black shark as the beast breached, bit air, then sneezed before falling back—and also the red points that began to fleck his comrade’s side as he lowered him to the deck.
Pshawri’s spent legs were wobbly yet he managed to stand. He saw that the first of the five fish-shaped clouds hid the sun. It had veered north, as though curious about the Maelstrom and determined to inspect it, and the other four had followed it in line. A strong breeze from the southwest explained this and chilled Pshawri, so he was glad for the large rough towel Skullick tossed his way.
“A goodly tickle you gave him in the nose, my boyo,” that one congratulated. “He’ll sneeze longer than you bleed where he scraped you, never you fear. But, by Kos, Pshawri, how they all came after you! You’d no sooner raised sand than they were up and streaking in from far and near. Like lean black watchdogs!” He appealed incredulously, “Think you they felt your stone-abetted impact through the sand so far? By Kos, they must have!”
“There was more than one?” Pshawri asked, shivering as he spoke for the first time since his dive.
“More? I counted full five blacks at the end, besides two tiger rays. I told you it was more dangerous than you dreamed, and now events have proved me sevenfold right. You’re lucky to have got out with your life, lucky you found no treasure to delay you. A few moments more and you’d not have been facing one shark, but three or four!”
Pshawri had been about to display his golden find for his comrade’s admiration when Skullick’s words not only told him the latter hadn’t seen him make it, but also reawakened the strange pang of guilt and foreboding he’d felt below.
While hurrying into his clothes, a process in which he was speeded by the quickening breeze and absence of sun, he managed to switch the slimy cube from the uneasy revealment of the net bag to the revealing concealment of his moleskin belt pouch, while Skullick scanned the sky.
“See how the weather shifts,” that one called. “What witch has whistled up this frigid wind? Cold from the south, at any rate southwest—unnatural. Mark how that line of clouds that hides the sun veers widdershins. Lucky you did not find the whirlpool-queller, or else we’d have the spinning of that element to deal with. As it is, I fear our presence irks the Maelstrom. Up anchor, cully, hoist sail and away! We’ll find your captain’s gift another day!”
Pshawri was happy to spring to with a will. Relentless action left less time for feeling strange guilts and thinking crazy thoughts about clouds. And the calm waters, though wind-ruffled, showed no other signs of movement.
.3.
In jam-packed Godsland, which lies lofty and mountaingirt near Nehwon’s south pole, a handsome young god, who had been drawing crowds in the stranger’s pavilion by sleeping entranced for seventeen months, woke with an enraged shout that seemed loud enough to reach the Shadowland at Godsland’s antipodes, and that momentarily deafened half the divinities and all the demi-divinities in his heavenly audience.
Among the latter were Fafhrd’s and the Gray Mouser’s three particular godlings—brutal Kos, spiderish Mog, and the limp-wristed Issek—who had been teased to come witness the feat of supernal hibernation not only out of sheer curiosity, but also from intimations that the handsome young sleeping stranger and his record-breaking trance were somehow involved with their two most illustrious (though often backsliding) worshippers. The three reacted variously to the ear-splitting cry. Issek covered his while Kos dug a little finger into one.
And now it became apparent that Loki’s piercing shout had indeed reached the Shadowland, for the slender, seemingly youthful, opalescent-fleshed figure of Death, or its simulacrum, appeared at the foot of the silken bier on which the angry young god crouched, and the two were seen by the deafened divinities to hold converse together, Loki fiercely commanding, Death raising objections, placating, temporizing, though nodding repeatedly and smiling winningly at the same time.
Yet despite the latter’s amiable behavior there were shrinkings back among the members of the motley heavenly host, for even in Godsland Death is not a popular figure nor widely trusted.
Fafhrd’s and Mouser’s three oddly matched godlings, who had earlier wormed their way quite close to the red-draped bier, regained their audition in time to hear Loki’s last summary command:
“So be it then, sirrah! So soon as all the essential formalities of your paltry world are satisfied and necessary niggling conditions met—so soon and not one instant later!—I want the impious mortal who consigned me to deep watery oblivion to be sent a like distance underground. It is commanded!”
With a final bow and strange obsequious look, Nehwon’s Death (or its simulacrum) said softly, “Hearkening in obedience,” and vanished.
“I like that!” quick-witted Mog remarked in an indignant ironic undertone to his two cronies. “Out of sheer spite toward the Gray Mouser for his dunking, this vagabond Loki proposes to rob us of one of our chief worshippers.”
After a face-saving haughty glare around (for Death’s departure had been snubbingly abrupt), Loki slid off the bier to confer in urgent whispers with another stranger god, dignified but elderly to the point of doddering, who responded with rather senile-seeming nods and shrugs.
“Yes,” Issek replied venomously to Mog. “And now, see, he’s trying to persuade his comrade, old Odin, to demand of Death a like doom for Fafhrd.”
“No, I doubt that,” Kos protested. “The dodderer has already revenged himself on Fafhrd by taking his left hand. And he’s had no indignities visited on him to reawaken his ire. He’s hung on here while his comrade slept because he has nowhere better to go.”
“I’d not count on that,” Mog said morosely. “Meanwhile, what’s to do about the clear threat to the Mouser? Protest to Death this wanton raid by a foreign god on our dwindling congregation?”
“I’d want to think twice before going that far,” Issek responded dubiously. “Appeals to him have been known to backfire on their makers.”
“I don’t like dealing with him myself, and that’s a fact,” Kos seconded. “He gives me the cold shivers. Truth to tell, I don’t think you can trust the Powers any further than you can trust foreign gods!”
“He didn’t seem too happy about Loki’s arrogance toward him,” Issek put in hopefully. “Perhaps things will work out well without our meddling.” He smiled a somewhat sickish smile.
Mog frowned but spoke no more.
Back in one of the long corridors of his mist-robed mazy low castle under the sunless moist gray skies of the Shadowland, Death thought coolly with half his mind (the other half was busy as always with his eternal work everywhere in Nehwon) of what a stridently impudent god this young stranger Loki was and what a pleasure it would be to break the rules, spit in the face of the other Powers, and carry him off before his last worshipper died.
But as always good taste and sportsmanship prevailed.
A Power must obey the most whimsical and unreasonable command of the least god, insofar as it could be reconciled with conflicting orders from other gods and provided the proprieties were satisfied—that was one of the things that kept Necessity working.
And so although the Gray Mouser was a good tool he would have liked to decide when to discard, Death began with half his mind to plan the doom and demise of that one. Let’s see, a day and a half would be a reasonable period for preparation, consultations, and warnings. And while he was at it, why not strengthen the Gray One for his coming ordeal? There were no rules against that. It would help him if he were heavier, massier in body and mind. Where get the heaviness? Why, from his comrade Fafhrd, of course, nearest at hand. It would leave Fafhrd light-headed and -bodied for a while, but that couldn’t be helped. And then there were the proper and required warnings to think about…