Beside it the pile of dug dirt was higher and wider and Fren walked a strange short sentry-go, stepping on the forward edge of the big forge-bellows next the pit edge, mounting its slant in three short steps (which made it sink), giving its top handle an upward yank after stepping off it (which helped an interior spring expand it again), drawing in air, and so back to the pit edge and repeat the mini-march.
Peering down the shaft from the opposite edge of the hole, the three females saw how the first furry snow-white serpent’s hide emerged from the bellow’s front and curved downward, its crested head clamping its jaws on the tail of the second, and so on downward until the fifth entered the cross corridor at the shaft’s bottom, where two leviathan lamps provided illumination.
They could see the furry tube slacken and swell as each successive giant’s breath of fresh air traveled down.
Afreyt explained to the girls, “Each tail tip is clipped off short and thrust inside the jaws of the preceding snow serpent, a clear glue making the juncture airtight. Spirits of wine dissolve this, so the hides may be parted, cleaned, and restored (the tail tips are kept) to something like their original value afterward. Else all would be monstrously unthrifty.” And with a sign to the windlass man and a “You next” to the girls, she stepped into the empty pail and traveled down beside the slowly pulsating, furry white tube, stepped out at the bottom and waited until it returned with Fingers and Gale.
The horizontal passage was a dimly lit, stone-floored, narrow, unlofty rectangle, so that Afreyt must stoop as she led the way, although the girls were able to walk upright as they followed.
“I expected it to be warmer underground,” Gale observed.
“The dragon’s breath we’re blowing down is chill,” the older woman reminded her. “Look, there’s a fortune in wood around us,” she told the girls.
“A hero’s life is worth any expenditure,” Fingers assured her somewhat loftily.
“So it behooves those who may have to ransom or rescue them to lay up cash,” Afreyt responded. “Luckily the lumber’s all salvageable, like the hides.”
Just ahead appeared to be solid rock, and seemingly from it, but actually from around it, there materialized a short man carrying a full pail before him and another behind. It was the Mouser’s other lieutenant, Mikkidu. They managed to squeeze past him and then along a short section of corridor where the left wall was stone, the right wood, until it had jogged past the obstruction into bright light, which showed their journey’s end eight yards ahead.
From the ceiling’s last short crossboard hung a large leviathan lamp, while beneath the as yet unroofed yard of tunnel, Cif knelt away from them and worked at the naked face with wooden trowel and gloved left hand, scraping and brushing away the stuff that was of a consistency between flaky sandstone and packed sand. While supported by an upslanted peg in the right-hand wall, the last snow-serpent puffed chill gusts that stirred the falling dust and fine debris.
So great was the small woman’s concentration on her exacting task that she was unaware of their presence until Afreyt touched her shoulder.
She turned on them a blank stare, swiftly rising to her feet. Then her eyes wavered and she lurched forward into her friend’s arms.
“You’re out on your feet,” Afreyt protested. “You should have been relieved at the face hours ago! Here, take a swallow of this,” she added, withdrawing a silver flask from her pouch and uncorking it with her teeth while continuing to support Cif with her other arm.
The outwearied woman grasped it and gulped the watered brandy greedily.
“Have you had any rest at all since coming out this noon?” Afreyt demanded.
“I lay in the tent awhile, but it made me nervous.”
“So you’re coming up at once with me. There’s a new matter we must discuss alone. Gale! Take over here at the face. Fingers can help you—it’s a sort of work her deft hands should be good at.”
“Oh good!” said Gale.
Fingers: “You honor me.”
Cif made no demur, accepting support but asking, “What new matter?”
“All in good time.”
Just past the jog they encountered Mikkidu returning with empty pails. Afreyt addressed him, “I’m taking the lady Cif home for long-needed rest. You’re in charge now. Gale and our new friend Fingers are working the face. See that they aren’t kept at it too long and are both sent to Cif’s house by midnight.”
When he shot Cif a look of inquiry, she nodded and then remembered to give him Fafhrd’s ring.
Aboveground the dogcart had been unloaded and Skullick was greeting Mannimark and Faf’s berserk Gort as they came loping in.
Afreyt poured Cif a mouthful of hot soup and directed, “Hitch up fresh dogs. I’m driving the lady Cif home. She needs rest badly. No other load. Here Mikkidu has the ring.”
“Mara and May were due to go this trip,” Skullick pointed out. The blond girls waved from where they huddled in the shelter tent.
“I’ll take them, of course,” Afreyt said. “Girls, climb aboard! And take a blanket with you. And another for Lady Cif.”
Returning to Salthaven, they all had the wind at their backs, which was some improvement. None was inclined to talk. Midway Cif asked suspiciously, “Was there poppy dust in the watered brandy you fed me? It has a sickly, bitter aftertaste.”
“Only enough to induce tranquillity and encourage sleep, but not enforce it.”
Afreyt drove straight to Cif’s and had the girls return the cart to the barracks before wending to their own homes. She warmed a solid meal while Cif got comfortable, saw it consumed, then poured them both brandy and handed Cif the letter Pshawri had entrusted to her, saying, “I’ve read it, of course. Matter of import for you, certainly.”
Cif studied the broken green seal and the violet-inked address as she unfolded it. “This sheet was in the Captain’s last mail bag from Lankhmar,” she averred, “before he distributed the letters to his men.”
Then she was silent while she read to herself the following:
Dear Son Pshawri,
I hope this finds you alive and continuing to prosper on your northern adventure in service of that notable rogue the Gray Mouser.
I am to tell you he has more reason to make you his lieutenant than even he weens.
When you were young I pointed him out to you among other noteworthy Lankhmarts. But I did not see fit to tell you (or him) that he was your father. Such tactics seldom work out, to my knowledge and experience, and I would scorn to curry favor in such a way.
It happened in my salad days, before I became a professional woman, and while I was body maid to the dancer Ivrian and we were all caught up in a supernal intrigue involving the Thieves Guild, some of its jeweled relics, and the Mouser’s uncouth barbarian comrade Fafhrd.
They vied with each other to seduce me. Fafhrd loved me the more, but the Mouser was tricksier and measured his drinks more carefully—and mine. The best of what I know of the uses of evil and falsity was taught me by that devil.
But now you find yourself by chance in service of the very same man, you may find the knowledge of advantage to you. Use it as you see fit. Luckily the relationship is supported by evidence. Triads of equidistant moles run in his family.
Thanks for the silver ring and seven rilks.
Prosper,
your loving mother Freg
Cif lifted her eyes to Afreyt’s. “That letter rings true to me,” she said, nodding soberly.
“You think so too?” the other replied.
“By Skama’s scales, what else! It is man’s nature to plant his seed where’er the soil looks good.”
“A hero’s doubly so…” Afreyt chimed, “whence else his deeds of daring?”
Cif mused, “When we told Mou and Faf of our courting of the stranger gods Odin and Loki in Rime Isle’s service and even setting sexual lures and ties for them, I recall they hinted of their own conquests among female divinities—the viewless Stardock princesses, some nixies of the sea, the rat queen Hisvet, and some princess of the air who served her as a maid.”
Afreyt pointed out, “This woman claiming Pshawri as her son would seem to have no noble blood at all, let alone divine. How would you feel should he claim son-right of Captain Mouser?”
Cif looked up sharply. “Pshawri has served Mou faithfully and may do more than that in this now quest! I favor Pshawri’s claim. The resemblances between them run deep—Mou bears upon his hip a triad of dark moles.”
“Another question,” Afreyt went on. “Has your Gray lover ever professed to you any out-of-way sexual tastes?”
“Has your red-haired barbarian?” Cif countered.