Lukeen, still looking very pale, followed the last of his disgruntled marines (their purses lighter by many a silver smerduk, for they had been coaxed into offering odds) over the side into Shark’s long dinghy, brushing off Slinoor when Squid’s skipper would have conferred with him.
Slinoor vented his chagrin by harshly commanding his sailors to leave off their disorderly milling and frisking, but they obeyed him right cheerily, skipping to their proper stations with the happiest of sailor smirks. Those passing the Mouser winked at him and surreptitiously touched their forelocks. Squid bowled smartly northward a half bowshot astern of Tunny, as she’d been doing throughout the duel, only now she began to cleave the blue water a little more swiftly yet as the west wind freshened and her after sail was broken out. In fact, the fleet began to sail so swiftly now that Shark’s dinghy couldn’t make the head of the line, although Lukeen could be noted bullying his marine-oarsmen into back-cracking efforts, and the dinghy had finally come to signal Shark herself to come back and pick her up—which the war galley achieved only with difficulty, rolling dangerously in the mounting seas and taking until sunset, oars helping sails, to return to the head of the line.
“He’ll not be eager to come to Squid’s help tonight, or much able to either,” Fafhrd commented to the Mouser where they stood by the larboard middeck rail. There had been no open break between them and Slinoor, but they were inclined to leave him the afterdeck, where he stood beyond the helmsmen in bent-head converse with his three officers, who had all lost money on Lukeen and had been sticking close to their skipper ever since.
“Not still expecting that sort of peril tonight are you, Fafhrd?” the Mouser asked with a soft laugh. “We’re far past the Rat Rocks.”
Fafhrd shrugged and said frowningly, “Perhaps we’ve gone just a shade too far in endorsing the rats.”
“Perhaps,” the Mouser agreed. “But then their charming mistress is worth a fib and false stamp or two, aye and more than that, eh, Fafhrd?”
“She’s a brave sweet lass,” Fafhrd said carefully.
“Aye, and her maid too,” the Mouser said brightly. “I noted Frix peering at you adoringly from the cabin entryway after your victory. A most voluptuous wench. Some men might well prefer the maid to the mistress in this instance. Fafhrd?”
Without looking around at the Mouser, the Northerner shook his head.
The Mouser studied Fafhrd, wondering if it were politic to make a certain proposal he had in mind. He was not quite certain of the full nature of Fafhrd’s feelings toward Hisvet. He knew the Northerner was a goatish man enough and had yesterday seemed quite obsessed with the love-making they’d missed in Lankhmar, yet he also knew that his comrade had a variable romantic streak that was sometimes thin as a thread yet sometimes grew into a silken ribbon leagues wide in which armies might stumble and be lost.
On the afterdeck Slinoor was now conferring most earnestly with the cook, presumably (the Mouser decided) about Hisvet’s (and his own and Fafhrd’s) dinner. The thought of Slinoor having to go to so much trouble about the pleasures of three persons who today had thoroughly thwarted him made the Mouser grin and somehow also nerved him to take the uncertain step he’d been contemplating.
“Fafhrd,” he whispered, “I’ll dice you for Hisvet’s favors.”
“Why, Hisvet’s but a girl—” Fafhrd began in accents of rebuke, then cut off abruptly and closed his eyes in thought. When he opened them, they were regarding the Mouser with a large smile.
“No,” Fafhrd said softly, “for truly I think this Hisvet is so balky and fantastic a miss it will take both our most heartfelt and cunning efforts to persuade her to aught. And, after that, who knows? Dicing for such a girl’s favors were like betting when a Lankhmar night-lily will open and whether to north or south.”
The Mouser chuckled and lovingly dug Fafhrd in the ribs, saying, “There’s my shrewd true comrade!”
Fafhrd looked at the Mouser with sudden dark suspicions. “Now don’t go trying to get me drunk tonight,” he warned, “or sifting opium in my drink.”
“Hah, you know me better than that, Fafhrd,” the Mouser said with laughing reproach.
“I certainly do,” Fafhrd agreed sardonically.
Again the sun went under with a green flash, indicating crystal clear all to the west, though the strange fogbank, now an ominous dark wall, still paralleled their course a league or so to the east.
The cook, crying, “My mutton!” went racing forward past them toward the galley, whence a deliciously spicy aroma was wafting.
“We’ve an hour to kill,” the Mouser said. “Come on, Fafhrd. On our way to board Squid I bought a little jar of wine of Quarmall at the Silver Eel. It’s still sealed.”
From just overhead in the rat-lines, the black kitten hissed down at them in angry menace or perhaps warning.
Chapter Five
Two hours later the Demoiselle Hisvet offered to the Mouser, “A golden rilk for your thoughts, Dirksman.”
She was on the swung-down sea-bed once more, half reclining. The long table, now laden with tempting viands and tall silver wine cups, had been placed against the bed. Fafhrd sat across from Hisvet, the empty silver cages behind him, while the Mouser was at the stern end of the table. Frix served them all from the door forward, where she took the trays from the cook’s boys without giving them so much as a peep inside. She had a small brazier there for keeping hot such items as required it and she tasted each dish and set it aside for a while before serving it. Thick dark-pink candles in silver sconces shed a pale light.
The white rats crouched in rather disorderly fashion around a little table of their own set on the floor near the wall between the sea-bed and the door, just aft of one of the trapdoors opening down into the grain-redolent hold. They wore little black jackets open at the front and little black belts around their middles. They seemed more to play with than eat the bits of food Frix set before them on their three or four little silver plates and they did not lift their small bowls to drink their wine-tinted water but rather lapped at them and that not very industriously. One or two would always be scampering up onto the bed to be with Hisvet, which made them most difficult to count, even for Fafhrd, who had the best view. Sometimes he got eleven, sometimes ten. At intervals one of them would stand up on the pink coverlet by Hisvet’s knees and chitter at her in cadences so like those of human speech that Fafhrd and the Mouser would have to chuckle.
“Dreamy Dirksman, two rilks for your thoughts!” Hisvet repeated, upping her offer. “And most immodestly I’ll wager a third rilk they are of me.”
The Mouser smiled and lifted his eyebrows. He was feeling very light-headed and a bit uneasy, chiefly because contrary to his intentions he had been drinking much more than Fafhrd. Frix had just served them the main dish, a masterly yellow curry heavy with dark-tasting spices and originally appearing with “Victor” pricked on it with black capers. Fafhrd was devouring it manfully, though not voraciously, the Mouser was going at it more slowly, while Hisvet all evening had merely toyed with her food.
“I’ll take your two rilks, White Princess,” the Mouser replied airily, “for I’ll need one to pay the wager you’ve just won and the other to fee you for telling me what I was thinking of you.”
“You’ll not keep my second rilk long, Dirksman,” Hisvet said merrily, “for as you thought of me you were looking not at my face, but most impudently somewhat lower. You were thinking of those somewhat nasty suspicions Lukeen voiced this day about my secretest person. Confess it now, you were!”
The Mouser could only hang his head a little and shrug helplessly, for she had most truly divined his thoughts. Hisvet laughed and frowned at him in mock anger, saying, “Oh, you are most indelicate minded, Dirksman. Yet at least you can see that Frix, though indubitably mammalian, is not fronted like a she-rat.”
This statement was undeniably true, for Hisvet’s maid was all dark smooth skin except where black silk scarves narrowly circled her slim body at breasts and hips. Silver net tightly confined her black hair and there were many plain silver bracelets on each wrist. Yet although garbed like a slave, Frix did not seem one tonight, but rather a lady-companion who expertly played at being slave, serving them all with perfect yet laughing, wholly unservile obedience.
Hisvet, by contrast, was wearing another of her long smocks, this of black silk edged with black lace, with a lace-edged hood half thrown back. Her silvery white hair was dressed high on her head in great smooth swelling sweeps. Regarding her across the table, Fafhrd said, “I am certain that the Demoiselle would be no less than completely beautiful to us in whatever shape she chose to present herself to the world—wholly human or somewhat otherwise.”