Eyes still shut, Fafhrd plotted his course of action. He suddenly stretched out his left arm blind and without any groping fastened it on the pewter flagon—it was even be-dewed!—and drained half of it—nectar!—and set it back.
Then with his right hand he stroked the girl—Hrenlet, or her cousin?—from shoulder to haunch.
She was covered with short bristly fur and, at his amorous touch, she mooed!
Fafhrd wide-popped his eyes and jackknifed up in the bed, so that sunlight, striking low through the small unglazed window, drenched him yellowly and made a myriad wonder of the hand-polished woods paneling the room, their grains an infinitely varied arabesque. Beside him, pillowed as thickly as he was—and possibly drugged—was a large, long-eared, pink-nostriled auburn calf. Suddenly he could feel her hooves through his boots, and drew the latter abruptly back. Beyond her was no girl—or even other calf—at all.
He dove his right hand under his pillows. His fingers touched the familiar double-stitched leather of his pouch, but instead of being ridgy and taut with gold pieces, it was, except for one thin cylinder—that tin-whistle—flat as an unleavened Sarheenmar pancake.
He flung back the bedclothes so that they bellied high and wild in the air, like a sail torn loose in a squall. Thrusting the burgled purse under his belt, he vaulted out of bed, snatched up his long-sword by its furry scabbard—he intended it for spanking purposes—and dashed through the heavy double drapes out the door, pausing only to dump down his throat the last of the wine.
Despite his fury at Hrenlet, he had to admit, as he hurriedly quaffed, that she had dealt honestly with him up to a point: his bed-comrade was female, red-haired, indubitably from the farm and—for a calf—beauteous, while her now-alarmed mooing had nevertheless a throaty amorous quality.
The common-room was another wonder of polished wood—Movarl’s kingdom was so young that its forests were still its chief wealth. Most of the windows showed green leaves close beyond. From walls and ceiling jutted fantastic demons and winged warrior-maidens all wood-carved. Here and there against the wall leaned beautifully polished bows and spears. A wide doorway led out to a narrow courtyard where a bay stallion moved restlessly under an irregular green roof. The city of Kvarch Nar had twenty times as many mighty trees as homes.
About the common-room lounged a dozen men clad in green and brown, drinking wine, playing at board-games, and conversing. They were dark-bearded brawny fellows, a little shorter—though not much—than Fafhrd.
Fafhrd instantly noted that they were the identical fellows whom he had stripped of their gold-pieces at last night’s play. And this tempted him—hot with rage and fired by gulped wine—into a near-fatal indiscretion.
“Where is that thieving, misbegotten Hrenlet?” he roared, shaking his scabbarded sword above his head. “She’s stolen from under my pillows all my winnings!”
Instantly the twelve sprang to their feet, hands gripping sword hilts. The burliest took a step toward Fafhrd, saying icily, “You dare suggest that a noble maiden of Kvarch Nar shared your bed, barbarian?”
Fafhrd realized his mistake. His liaison with Hrenlet, though obvious to all, had never before been remarked on, because the women of the Eight Cities are revered by their men and may do what they wish, no matter how licentious. But woe betide the outlander who puts this into words.
Yet Fafhrd’s rage still drove him beyond reason. “Noble?” he cried. “She’s a liar and a whore! Her arms are two white snakes, a-crawl ‘neath the blankets—for gold, not man-flesh! Despite which, she’s also a shepherd of lusts and pastures her flock between my sheets!”
A dozen swords came screeching out of their scabbards at that and there was a rush. Fafhrd grew logical, almost too late. There seemed only one chance of survival left. He sprinted straight for the big door, parrying with his still-scabbarded sword the hasty blows of Movarl’s henchmen, raced across the courtyard, vaulted into the saddle of the bay, and kicked him into a gallop.
He risked one backward look as the bay’s iron-shod hooves began to strike sparks from the flinty narrow forest road. He was rewarded by a vivid glimpse of his yellow-haired Hrenlet leaning bare-armed in her shift from an upper window and laughing heartily.
A half-dozen arrows whirred viciously around him and he devoted himself to getting more speed from the bay. He was three leagues along the winding road to Klelg Nar, which runs east through the thick forest close to the coast of the Inner Sea, when he decided that the whole business had been a trick, worked by last night’s losers in league with Hrenlet, to regain their gold—and perhaps one of them his girl—and that the arrows had been deliberately winged to miss.
He drew up the bay and listened. He could hear no pursuit. That pretty well confirmed it.
Yet there was no turning back now. Even Movarl could hardly protect him after he had spoken the words he had of an Eight-Cities lady.
There were no ports between Kvarch Nar and Klelg Nar. He would have to ride at least that far around the Inner Sea, somehow evading the Mingols besieging Klelg Nar, if he were to get back to Lankhmar and his share of Glipkerio’s reward for bringing all the grain ships save Clam safe to port. It was most irksome.
Yet he still could not really hate Hrenlet. This horse was a stout one and there was a big saddlebag of food balancing a large canteen of wine. Besides, its reddish hue delightfully echoed that of the calf, a rough joke, but a good one.
Also, he couldn’t deny that Hrenlet had been magnificent between the sheets—a superior sort of slim unfurred cow, and witty too.
He dipped in his pancake-flat pouch and examined the tin whistle, which aside from memories was now his sole spoil from Kvarch Nar. It had down one side of it a string of undecipherable characters and down the other the figure of a slim feline beast couchant. He grinned widely, shaking his head. What a fool was a drunken gambler! He made to toss it away, then remembered the Mouser and returned it to his pouch.
He touched the bay with his heels and cantered on toward Klelg Nar, whistling an eerie but quickening Mingol march.
Nehwon—a vast bubble leaping up forever through the waters of eternity. Like airy champagne … or, to certain moralists, like a globe of stinking gas from the slimiest, most worm-infested marsh.
Lankhmar—a continent firm-seated on the solid watery inside of the bubble called Nehwon. With mountains, hills, towns, plains, a crooked coastline, deserts, lakes, marshes too, and grainfields—especially grainfields, source of the continent’s wealth, to either side of the Hlal, greatest of rivers.
And on the continent’s northern tip, on the east bank of the Hlal, mistress of the grainfields and their wealth, the City of Lankhmar, oldest in the world. Lankhmar, thick-walled against barbarians and beasts, thick-floored against creepers and crawlers and gnawers.
At the south of the City of Lankhmar, the Grain Gate, its twenty-foot thickness and thirty-foot width often echoing with the creak of ox-drawn wagons bringing in Lankhmar’s tawny, dry, edible treasure. Also the Grand Gate, larger still and more glorious, and the smaller End Gate. Then the South Barracks with its black-clad soldiery, the Rich Men’s Quarter, the Park of Pleasure and the Plaza of Dark Delights. Next Whore Street and the streets of other crafts. Beyond those, crossing the city from the Marsh Gate to the docks, the Street of the Gods, with its many flamboyantly soaring fanes of the Gods in Lankhmar and its single squat black temple of the Gods of Lankhmar—more like an ancient tomb except for its tall, square, eternally silent bell-tower. Then the slums and the windowless homes of the nobles; the great grain-towers, like a giant’s forest of house-thick tree-trunks chopped off evenly. Finally, facing the Inner Sea to the north and the Hlal to the west, the North Barracks, and on a hill of solid, sea-sculptured rock, the Citadel and the Rainbow Palace of Glipkerio Kistomerces.
An adolescent serving maid balancing on her close-shaven head with aid of a silver coronet-ring a large tray of sweet-meats and brimming silver goblets, strode like a tightrope walker into a green-tiled antechamber of the Blue Audience Chamber of that palace. She wore black leather collars around her neck, wrists, and slender waist. Light silver chains a little shorter than her forearms tied her wrist-collars to her waist-collar—it was Glipkerio’s whim that no maid’s finger should touch his food or even its tray and that every maid’s balance be perfect. Aside from her collars she was unclothed, while aside from her short-clipped eyelashes, she was entirely shaven—another of the fantastic monarch’s dainty whims, that no hair should drop in his soup. She looked like a doll before it is dressed, its wig affixed, and its eyebrows painted on.
The sea-hued tiles lining the chamber were hexagonal and big as the palm of a large hand. Most were plain, but here and there were ones figured with sea creatures: a mollusk, a cod, an octopus, a sea horse.