She looked them all three one after another quickly in the eye. “You were whispering of the fleets that failed,” she said accusingly. “Fie, Master Slinoor. We must all have courage.”
“Aye,” Fafhrd agreed, finding that a cue to his liking. “Even dragons need not daunt a brave man. I’ve often watched the sea monsters, crested, horned, and some two-headed, playing in the waves of outer ocean as they broke around the rocks sailors call the Claws. They were not to be feared, if a man remembered always to fix them with a commanding eye. They sported lustily together, the man dragons pursuing the woman dragons and going—” Here Fafhrd took a tremendous breath and then roared out so loudly and wailingly that the two helmsmen jumped—”Hoongk! Hoongk!”
“Fie, Swordsman Fafhrd,” Hisvet said primly, a blush mantling her cheeks and forehead. “You are most indelicate. The sex of dragons—”
But Slinoor had whirled on Fafhrd, gripping his wrist and now crying, “Quiet, you monster-fool! Know you not we sail tonight by moonlight past the Dragon Rocks? You’ll call them down on us!”
“There are no dragons in the Inner Sea,” Fafhrd laughingly assured him.
“There’s something that tears ships,” Slinoor asserted stubbornly.
The Mouser took advantage of this brief interchange to move in on Hisvet, rapidly bowing thrice as he approached.
“We have missed the great pleasure of your company on deck, Demoiselle,” he said suavely.
“Alas, sir, the sun mislikes me,” she answered prettily. “Now his rays are mellowed as he prepared to submerge. Then too,” she added with an equally pretty shudder, “these rough sailors—” She broke off as she saw that Fafhrd and the master of Squid had stopped their argument and returned to her. “Oh, I meant not you, dear Master Slinoor,” she assured him, reaching out and almost touching his black robe.
“Would the Demoiselle fancy a sun-warmed, wind-cooled black plum of Sarheenmar?” the Mouser suggested, delicately sketching in the air with Cat’s Claw.
“I know not,” Hisvet said, eyeing the dirk’s needle-like point. “I must be thinking of getting the White Shadows below before the evening’s chill is upon us.”
“True,” Fafhrd agreed with a flattering laugh, realizing she must mean the white rats. “But ‘twas most wise of you, Little Mistress, to let them spend the day on deck, where they surely cannot hanker so much to sport with the Black Shadows—I mean, of course, their black free commoner brothers, and slim delightful sisters, to be sure, hiding here and there in the hold.”
“There are no rats on my ship, sportive or otherwise,” Slinoor asserted instantly, his voice loud and angry. “Think you I run a rat-brothel? Your pardon, Demoiselle,” he added quickly to Hisvet. “I mean, there are no common rats aboard Squid.”
“Then yours is surely the first grain ship so blessed,” Fafhrd told him with indulgent reasonableness.
The sun’s vermilion disk touched the sea to the west and flattened like a tangerine. Hisvet leaned back against the taffrail under the arching tiller. Fafhrd was to her right, the Mouser to her left with the plums hanging just beyond him, near the silver cages. Slinoor had moved haughtily forward to speak to the helmsmen, or pretend to.
“I’ll take that plum now, Dirksman Mouser,” Hisvet said softly.
As the Mouser turned away in happy obedience and with many a graceful gesture, delicately palpating the net bag to find the most tender fruit, Hisvet stretched her right arm out sideways and without looking once at Fafhrd slowly ran her spread-fingered hand through the hair on his chest, paused when she reached the other side to grasp a fistful and tweak it sharply, then trailed her fingers rightly back across the hair she had ruffled.
Her hand came back to her just as the Mouser turned around. She kissed the palm lingeringly, then reached it across her body to take the black fruit from the point of the Mouser’s dirk. She sucked delicately at the prick Cat’s Claw had made and shivered.
“Fie, sir,” she pouted. “You told me ‘twould be sun-warmed and ‘tis not. Already all things grow chilly with evening.” She looked around her thoughtfully. “Why, Swordsman Fafhrd is all gooseflesh,” she announced, then blushed and tapped her lips reprovingly. “Close your jerkin, sir. ‘Twill save you from catarrh and perchance from further embarrassment a girl who is unused to any sight of man-flesh save in slaves.”
“Here is a tastier plum,” the Mouser called from beside the bag. Hisvet smiled at him and lightly tossed him back-handed the plum she’d sampled. He dropped that overboard and tossed her the second plum. She caught it deftly, lightly squeezed it, touched it to her lips, shook her head sadly though still smiling, and tossed back the plum. The Mouser, smiling gently too, caught it, dropped it overboard and tossed her a third. They played that way for some time. A shark following in the wake of the Squid got a stomachache.
The black kitten came single-footing back along the starboard rail with a sharp eye to larboard. Fafhrd seized it instantly as any good general does opportunity in the heat of battle.
“Have you seen the ship’s catling, Little Mistress?” he called, crossing to Hisvet, the kitten almost hidden in his big hands. “Or perhaps we should call the Squid the catling’s ship, for she adopted it, skipping by herself aboard just as we sailed. Here, Little Mistress. It feels sun-toasted now, warmer than any plum,” and he reached the kitten out sitting on the palm of his right hand.
But Fafhrd had been forgetting the kitten’s point of view. Its fur stood on end as it saw itself being carried toward the rats and now, as Hisvet stretched out her hand toward it, showing her upper teeth in a tiny smile and saying, “Poor little waif,” the kitten hissed fiercely and raked out stiff-armed with spread claws.
Hisvet drew back her hand with a gasp. Before Fafhrd could drop the kitten or bat it aside, it sprang to the top of his head and from there onto the highest point of the tiller.
The Mouser darted to Hisvet, crying meanwhile at Fafhrd, “Dolt! Lout! You knew the beast was half wild!” Then, to Hisvet, “Demoiselle! Are you hurt?”
Fafhrd struck angrily at the kitten and one of the helmsmen came back to bat at it too, perhaps because he thought it improper for kittens to walk on the tiller. The kitten made a long leap to the starboard rail, slipped over it, and dangled by two claws above the curving water.
Hisvet was holding her hand away from the Mouser and he was saying, “Better let me examine it, Demoiselle. Even the slightest scratch from a filthy ship’s cat can be dangerous,” and she was saying, almost playfully, “No, Dirksman, I tell you it’s nothing.”
Fafhrd strode to the starboard rail, fully intending to flick the kitten overboard, but somehow when he came to do it he found he had instead cupped the kitten’s rear in his hand and lifted it back on the rail. The kitten instantly sank its teeth deeply in the root of his thumb and fled up the aftermast. Fafhrd with difficulty suppressed a great yowl. Slinoor laughed.
“Nevertheless, I will examine it,” the Mouser said masterfully and took Hisvet’s hand by force. She let him hold it for a moment, then snatched it back and drawing herself up said frostily, “Dirksman, you forget yourself. Not even her own physician touches a Demoiselle of Lankhmar, he touches only the body of her maid, on which the Demoiselle points out her pains and symptoms. Leave me, Dirksman.”
The Mouser stood huffily back against the taffrail. Fafhrd sucked the root of his thumb. Hisvet went and stood beside the Mouser. Without looking at him, she said softly, “You should have asked me to call my maid. She’s quite pretty.”
Only a fingernail clipping of red sun was left on the horizon. Slinoor addressed the crow’s nest: “What of the black sail, boy?”
“She holds her distance, master,” the cry came back. “She courses on abreast of us.”
The sun went under with a faint green flash. Hisvet bent her head sideways and kissed the Mouser on the neck, just under the ear. Her tongue tickled.
“Now I lose her, master,” the crow’s nest called. “There’s mist to the northwest. And to the northeast … a small black cloud … like a black ship specked with light … that moves through the air. And now that fades too. All gone, master.”
Hisvet straightened her head. Slinoor came toward them muttering, “The crow’s nest sees too much.” Hisvet shivered and said, “The White Shadows will take a chill. They’re delicate, Dirksman.” The Mouser breathed, “You are Ecstasy’s White Shadow, Demoiselle,” then strolled toward the silver cages, saying loudly for Slinoor’s benefit, “Might we not be privileged to have a show of them, Demoiselle, tomorrow here on the afterdeck? ‘Twould be wondrous instructive to watch you control them.” He caressed the air over the cages and said, lying mightily, “My, they’re fine handsome fellows.” Actually he was peering apprehensively for any of the little spears and swords Slinoor had mentioned. The twelve rats looked up at him incuriously. One even seemed to yawn.