She took it without demur or change of grin and gave him, as if in return, a gold bracelet of doughnut shape large enough to fit his thick wrist. It was of the solid soft metal, he judged—massy enough by itself to balance his weird buoyancy.
“Thank you, archer,” he said. She nodded and began to coil the line that the marines with caps of varying hue (should he think of them as Frix’s color guard?) had let drop.
His recognition of Floy having intensified his general awareness and brought pertinent memories close to hand, Fafhrd was able to greet the next two lady marines—the ones with pale green and yellow caps and lace-revealed underthings—with an easy, “Greetings, dear Bree, sweet Elowee.”
But although both smiled guardedly, neither ventured so much as a word in reply. Bree shook her head slightly but sharply, frowning, while demure Elowee rolled her eyes back toward the end of the line, where Frix stood, and worked her features as though to say, “She’s in one of her moods. Be careful.”
Fafhrd recalled how he’d first met those two without their knowledge while he and Frix, wine cups in hand, were on a secret spying expedition to reawaken their venereal appetites. Entering a dark apartment, the Queen of the Air had led him to where black cushions closely circled a window in the floor that let upon a closet below, brightly lit by ranks of candles. Through painted gauze they’d observed these long-legged coltish creatures erotically ministering to each other. Bree enthusiastic and masterful, sometimes giving explicit directions, Elowee coy, protesting, and somewhat overheated (those candles!), even indignant. The infatuated pair had knelt closely side by side, kissing, fondling each other’s small breasts, teasing the nipples big, and oft and anon a hand would drop down for a more thrilling and intrusive caress. After a while Frix had begun to whisper in Fafhrd’s ear how the kneeling lovers might vary their touches were he the partner. He’d warned her the unconscious actors might overhear, but she’d assured him their ears had been well rubbed with a salve that reduced audition. Much later he’d discovered that things had not been as secret, or the actors as unknowing, as they’d seemed.
(“That little hole was hot as hell,” Bree confided at a subsequent orgy, “but Frix insisted on the candles so you’d have no trouble seeing us clearly through the painted gauze. She’s a fiend for detail. Oh, the things we’ve endured to tickle your lust and satisfy an artsy mistress—and Elowee got splashed with hot wax. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn down the pleasure palace.”)
But now Bree’s and Elowee’s hidden warnings about Frix had caused Fafhrd to give thought to his own appearance and to the impression he was creating. He decided a bit more dignity and restraint were called for. He straightened himself further, slowed his stride, and let the golden torus dangle down from his hand with seeming carelessness, yet positioned so that it served somewhat as a golden fig leaf.
Yet he was hard put to maintain his unnatural gravity and not burst into laughter when he saw that the last three color-marines were his oldest erotic pals among Frix’s ladies: the boisterous redhead Chimo, wicked-eyed and black-haired Nixi, and the saintly-appearing Bibi, who was forever finding new ways to play the simpleton and innocent.
There sprang up in his mind the memory of an idyllic Arilian vacation afternoon when he lay supine with his head pillowed upon Chimo’s inner thigh where she sat spread-legged while Nixi knelt beyond her knee on his side and Bibi crouched high in the equilateral triangle made by his own spread legs. And ever and anon he’d roll his head to the near side and implant a long slow nibbling kiss along the length of Chimo’s carmine nether lips and then roll his head the other way to suck and tongue the faintly rugose nipples of Nixi’s small upstanding breasts, now pendant, while Chimo caressed them with her right hand. Bibi busied herself variously with his own erotic gear (whilst Chimo worked on hers—employment for the left hand) until waves of pleasure rolled in over him and time came almost to a stop.
And now, by all signs there was shaping up, he told himself, the possibility of another such great moment of supernal ecstasy indefinitely prolonged, or of an even greater one, did he not blow it by some unintended rejection or piece of boorish behavior.
Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favors that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping.
And now, having greeted and inspected, as it were, the six slender marines of Frix’s color guard, he found himself facing the dashing captain herself, attended by her trim trumpeter, standing before the inviting hatchway of the after-castle from which there poured warm, sweetly perfumed air. During the short tour he’d recovered a sense of his proper weight and thirst and appetites, only slightly troubled by an awareness of hairy and unwashed uncouthness.
Frix lifted a lace-gauntleted hand. “Greetings, old friend,” she spoke. “Welcome aboard Soft Airs.”
“My thanks, dear lady,” he replied according to form, “for greatly needed and desired hospitality.”
“Then you shall accompany us below, where are greater amenities,” she responded. “My ladies will busy themselves refreshing and arraying you, whilst you regale us, if you will, with an account of your recentest adventures, feats, and forays.”
Fafhrd inclined his head. It occurred to him that this was the largest company of ladies with whom he’d ever been entertained by Frix. Had he really become a seven-maiden hero? Or, counting the two girls, a nine?
Smiling graciously, Frix turned to lead the way. The pert girl grimaced comically.
Fafhrd followed, thinking that the resources of a pleasure pinnace might well exceed those of a palace.
As the long-legged ladies trooped up around him familiarly, he noted that the objects depending from their white belts were actually a shaving mug, a large shaving brush (the sporran), and a razor.
.24.
When Fingers and Gale came hurrying downstairs from dressing, they found Afreyt deep in the perusal (or reperusal) of a creased and somewhat sullied paper with broken green seal writ in violet ink.
Gale cried out reproachfully, “Aunty Afreyt! You’re reading the letter Pshawri gave you for safekeeping!”
Afreyt looked up. “You have sharp eyes,” she remarked. “Know child, it is the right—nay, duty!—of any grown-up (especially a woman) to read any document entrusted to them, so they may give testimony to its contents should it be stolen or taken forcibly from them before they are able to return or deliver it.” She folded and thrust it down her bosom. Gale eyed her dubiously, Fingers without expression. Afreyt arose. “And now on with your cloaks and winter gear,” she directed. “There’s work for us at the diggings, I’ve no doubt.”
A flurry of wind stung their faces with ice needles as they entered the night pale with the chill glow of the barely gibbous moon and a faint deep melancholy note resounded from the wind chimes the other side of Salthaven. Afreyt set a fast pace for the barracks. No others were abroad. At irregular intervals the wind chimes repeated their profound reverberation, like a god muttering in his sleep.
At the barracks were lights and labor and a loaded dogcart ready to leave. Afreyt commandeered it for herself and the girls, pulling rank on Mannimark, which drew from Gale a look of further disillusion with “grown-ups” as she clambered reluctantly aboard. Fingers took it more naturally, copying the older woman’s queenly mien and manner.
“Any message for the diggings?” that one asked the mustached man as she took the long whip from its socket. “I’ll make your excuses, Sergeant. I’m sure the other cart will be back for you soon.”
“No mind, Lady,” he answered. “We’ll walk.”
“Very well, Sergeant.” And with a whip crack and jingle of bells the cart was off, making a sharp turn that headed them into the cutting wind and away from the risen low-moon. The girls ducked their faces into their hoods but Afreyt lifted hers high. The occasional boom of the chimes grew less faint as they approached the Moon Temple, and then there was added to it a still deeper clanking as a heavier beam was struck and boomed its note.
“The north blast quickens,” she commented. “It will be bitter crossing the Meadow.”
Soon the fire facing the shelter tent became their beacon and promise of warmth. Afreyt signaled their approach with a flurry of whip cracks.
“Where’s Lady Cif?” she asked the knot of soup drinkers.
“At the face, Lady,” Skullick replied.
“Unload,” she directed, and springing down, followed by the girls, made for the pit, whence rose a short pale column of white light.