Meanwhile the larger people aboard Squid faced up variously to the drastically altered situation.
Old Hisvin shook his fist and spat in the larger dragon’s face when after its first gargantuan swallow it came questing toward him, as if trying to decide whether this bent black thing were (ugh!) a very queer man or (yum!) a very large rat. But when the stinking apparition kept coming on, Hisvin rolled deftly over the rail as if into bed and swiftly climbed down the rope ladder, fairly chittering in consternation, while Grig clung for dear life to the back of the black leather collar.
Hisvin’s two Mingols picked themselves up, and followed him, vowing to get back to their cozy cold steppes as soon as Mingolly possible.
Fafhrd and Karl Treuherz watched the melee from opposite sides of the middeck, the one bound by ropes, the other by out-wearied astonishment.
Skwee and a white rat named Siss ran over the heads of their packed apathetic black fellows and hopped on the starboard rail. There they looked back. Siss blinked in horror. But Skwee, his black-plumed helmet pushed down over his left eye, menaced with his little sword and chittered defiance.
Frix ran to Hisvet and urged her to the starboard rail. As they neared the head of the rope ladder, Skwee went down it to make way for his empress, dragging Siss with him. Just then Hisvet turned like someone in a dream. The smaller dragon’s head drove toward her viciously. Frix sprang in the way, arms wide, smiling, a little like a ballet dancer taking a curtain call. Perhaps it was the suddenness or seeming aggressiveness of her move that made the dragon sheer off, fangs clashing. The two girls climbed the rail.
Hisvet turned again, Cat’s Claw’s cut a bold red line across her face, and sighted her crossbow at the Mouser. There was the faintest silvery flash. Hisvet tossed the crossbow in the black sea and followed Frix down the ladder. The boathooks let go, the flapping black sail filled, and the black cutter faded into the mist.
The Mouser felt a little sting in his left temple, but he forgot it while whirling the last loops from his shoulders and ankles. Then he ran across the deck, disregarding the green heads lazily searching for last rat morsels, and cut Fafhrd’s bonds.
All the rest of that night the two adventurers conversed with Karl Treuherz, telling each other fabulous things about each other’s worlds, while Scylla’s sated daughter slowly circled Squid, first one head sleeping and then the other. Talking was slow and uncertain work, even with the aid of the little Lankhmarese-German German-Lankhmarese Dictionary for Space-Time and Inter-Cosmic Travelers, and neither party really believed a great deal of the other’s tales, yet pretended to for friendship’s sake.
“Do all men dress as grandly as you do in Tomorrow?” Fafhrd once asked, admiring the German’s purple and orange garb.
“No, Hagenbeck just has his employees do it, to spread his time zoo’s fame,” Karl Treuherz explained.
The last of the mist vanished just before dawn and they saw, silhouetted against the sea silvered by the sinking gibbous moon, the black ship of Karl Treuherz, hovering not a bowshot west of Squid, its little lights twinkling softly.
The German shouted for joy, summoned his sleepy monster by thwacking his pike against the rail, swung astride the larger head, and swam off calling after him, “Auf Wiedersehen!”
Fafhrd had learned just enough Gibberish during the night to know this meant, “Until we meet again.”
When the monster and the German had swum below it, the space-time engine descended, somehow engulfing them. Then a little later the black ship vanished.
“It dove into the infinite waters toward Karl’s Tomorrow bubble,” the Gray Mouser affirmed confidently. “By Ning and by Sheel, the German’s a master magician!”
Fafhrd blinked, frowned, and then simply shrugged.
The black kitten rubbed his ankle. Fafhrd lifted it gently to eye level, saying, “I wonder, kitten, if you’re one of the Cats’ Thirteen or else their small agent, sent to wake me when waking was needful?” The kitten smiled solemnly into Fafhrd’s cruelly scratched and bitten face and purred.
Clear gray dawn spread across the waters of the Inner Sea, showing them first Squid’s two boats crowded with men and Slinoor sitting dejected in the stern of the nearer but standing with uplifted hand as he recognized the figures of the Mouser and Fafhrd; next Lukeen’s war galley Shark and the three other grain ships Tunny, Carp and Grouper; lastly, small on the northern horizon the green sails of two dragon-ships of Movarl.
The Mouser, running his left hand back through his hair, felt a short, straight, rounded ridge in his temple under the skin. He knew it was Hisvet’s smooth silver dart, there to stay.
Chapter Seven
Fafhrd awoke consumed by thirst and amorous yearning, and with a certainty that it was late afternoon. He knew where he was and, in a general way, what had been happening, but his memory for the past half day or so was at the moment foggy. His situation was that of a man who stands on a patch of ground with mountains sharp-etched all around, but the middle distance hidden by a white sea of ground-mist.
He was in leafy Kvarch Nar, chief of the Eight so-called Cities—truly, none of them could compare with Lankhmar, the only city worth the name on the Inner Sea. And he was in his room in the straggling, low, unwalled, yet shapely wooden palace of Movarl. Four days ago the Mouser had sailed for Lankhmar aboard Squid with a cargo of lumber which the thrifty Slinoor had shipped, to report to Glipkerio the safe delivery of four-fifths of the grain, the eerie treacheries of Hisvin and Hisvet, and the whole mad adventure. Fafhrd, however, had chosen to remain a while in Kvarch Nar, for to him it was a fun place, not just because he had found a fun-loving, handsome girl there, one Hrenlet.
More particularly, Fafhrd was snug abed but feeling somewhat constricted—clearly he had not taken off his boots or any other of his clothing or even unbelted his short-ax, the blade of which, fortunately covered by its thick leather sheath, stuck into his side. Yet he was also filled with a sense of glorious achievement—why, he wasn’t yet sure, but it was a grand feeling.
Without opening his eyes or moving any part of him the thickness of a Lankhmar penny a century old, he oriented himself. To his left, within easy arm-reach on a stout night table would be a large pewter flagon of light wine. Even now he could sense, he thought, its coolth. Good.
To his right, within even easier reach, Hrenlet. He could feel her radiant warmth and hear her snoring—very loudly, in fact.
Or was it Hrenlet for certain?—or at any rate only Hrenlet? She had been very merry last night before he went to the gaming table, playfully threatening to introduce him intimately to a red-haired and hot-blooded female cousin of hers from Ool Hrusp, where they had great wealth in cattle. Could it be that…? At any rate, good too, or even better.
While under his downy thick pillows—Ah, there was the explanation for his ever-mounting sense of glory! Late last night he had cleaned them all out of every golden Lankhmarian rilk, every golden Kvarch Nar gront, every golden coin from the Eastern Lands, Quarmall, or elsewhere! Yes, he remembered it well now: he had taken them all—and at the simple game of sixes and sevens, where the banker wins if he matches the number of coins the player holds in his fist; those Eight-City fools didn’t realize they tried to make their fists big when they held six golden coins and tightened them when they held seven. Yes, he had turned all their pockets and pouches inside out—and at the end he had crazily matched a quarter of his winnings against an oddly engraved slim tin whistle supposed to have magical properties … and won that too! And then saluted them all and reeled off happily, well-ballasted by gold like a treasure galleon, to bed and Hrenlet. Had he had Hrenlet? He wasn’t sure.
Fafhrd permitted himself a dry-throated, raspy yawn. Was ever man so fortunate? At his left hand, wine. At his right a beauteous girl, or more likely two, since there was a sweet strong farm-smell coming to him under the sheets; and what is juicier than a farmer’s (or cattleman’s) redhead daughter? While under his pillows—he twisted his head and neck luxuriously; he couldn’t quite feel the tight-bulging bag of golden coins—the pillows were many and thick—but he could imagine it.
He tried to recall why he had made that last hare-brained successful wager. The curly-bearded braggart had claimed he had the slim tin whistle of a wise woman and that it summoned thirteen helpful beasts of some sort—and this had recalled to Fafhrd the wise woman who had told him in his youth that each sort of animal has its governing thirteen—and so his sentimentality had been awakened—and he had wanted to get the whistle as a present for the Gray Mouser, who doted on the little props of magic—yes, that was it!