Central location, where the gossip of all Nehwon crossed tracks along with the world’s travelers, was surely also the reason why Ningauble of the Seven Eyes had located himself in a mazy, enchantment-guarded cave at the foot of the little mountains south of Ilthmar.
Fafhrd saw no signs of Mingol raiding, which did not entirely please him. An alarmed Ilthmar would be easier to slip through than an Ilthmar pretending to doze in the sun, but with pig-eyes ever a-watch for booty. He wished now he’d brought Kreeshkra with him, as he’d earlier planned. Her terrifying bones would have been a surer guarantee of safe transit than a passport from the King of the East stamped in gold-sifted wax with his famed Behemoth Seal. What a fool, either to dote or to flee, a man was about a woman new-bedded! He wished also that he had not given her his bow, or rather that he’d had two bows.
However, he was three-quarters of the way through the trash-paved city with its bedbug inns and smiling little taverns of resinous wine, more often than not laced with opium for the uneasy, before trouble pounced. A great gaudy caravan rousing itself for its homeward journey to the Eastern Lands doubtless attracted attention from him. The only decor of the mean buildings around him was the emblem of Ilthmar’s rat-god, endlessly repeated.
The trouble came two blocks beyond the caravan and consisted of seven scarred and pockmarked rogues, all clad in black boots, tight black trousers and jerkins and black cloaks with hoods thrown back to show close-fitting black skullcaps. One moment the street seemed clear, the next all seven were around him, menacing with their wickedly saw-toothed swords and other weapons, and demanding he dismount.
One made to seize the mare’s bridle near the bit. That was definitely a mistake. She reared and put an iron-shod hoof past his guard and into his skull as neatly as a duelist. Fafhrd drew Graywand and at the end of the drawing stroke slashed through the throat of the nearest black brigand. Coming down on her forehooves the mare lashed out a hind one and ruined the guts of an unchivalrous fellow preparing to launch a short javelin at Fafhrd’s back. Then horse and rider were galloping away at a pace that at the southern outskirts of the city took them past Ilthmar’s baronial guard before those slightly more respectable, iron-clad brigands could get set to stop them.
A half league beyond, Fafhrd looked back. There was no sign as yet of pursuit, but he was hardly reassured. He knew his Ilthmar brigands. They were stickers. Fired now by revenge-lust as well as loot-hunger, the four remaining black rogues would doubtless soon be on his trail. And this time they’d have arrows or at least more javelins, and use them at a respectful distance. He began to scan the slopes ahead for the tricky, almost unmarked path leading to Ningauble’s underground dwelling.
* * * *
Glipkerio Kistomerces found the meeting of the Council of Emergency almost more than he could bear. It was nothing more than the Inner Council plus the War Council, which overlapped in membership, these two being augmented by a few additional notables, including Hisvin, who had said nothing, so far, though his small black-irised eyes were watchful. But all the others, waving their toga-winged arms for emphasis, did nothing but talk, talk, talk about the rats, rats, rats!
The beanpole overlord, who did not look tall when seated, since all his height was in his legs, had long since dropped his hands below the tabletop to hide the jittery way they were weaving like a nest of nervous white snakes, but perhaps because of this he had now developed a violent facial tic which jolted his wreath of daffodils down over his eyes every thirteenth breath he drew—he had been counting and found the number decidedly ominous.
Besides this, he had lunched only hurriedly and meagerly and—worse—not watched a page or maid being whipped or even slapped since before breakfast, so that his long nerves, finer drawn than those of other men by reason of his superior aristocracy and great length of limb, were in a most wretched state. It was all of yesterday, he recalled, that he had sent that one mincing maid to Samanda for punishment and still had got no word from his overbearing palace mistress. Glipkerio knew well enough the torment of punishment deferred, but in this case it seemed to have turned into a torment of pleasure deferred—for himself. The beastly fat woman should have more imagination! Why, oh why, he asked himself, was it only that watching a whipping could soothe him? He was a man greatly abused by destiny.
Now some black-togaed idiot was listing out nine arguments for feeing the entire priesthood of Ilthmar’s rat-god to come to Lankhmar and make propitiating prayers. Glipkerio had grown so nervously impatient that he was exasperated even by the fulsome compliments to himself with which each speaker lengthily prefaced his speech, and whenever a speaker paused more than a moment for breath or effect, he had taken to quickly saying “Yes,” or “No,” at random, hoping this would speed things up, but it appeared to be working out the other way. Olegnya Mingolsbane had still to speak and he was the most boring, lengthiest, and self-infatuated talker of them all.
A page approached him and kneeled, holding respectfully out a scrap of dirty parchment twice folded and sealed with candle grease. He snatched it, glancing at Samanda’s unmistakably large and thick-whorled thumbprint in the sooty grease, and tore it open and read the black scrawl.
She shall be lashed with white-hot wires
on the stroke of three. Do not be tardy, little
overlord, for I shall not wait for you.
Glipkerio sprang up, his thoughts for the moment concerned only with whether it was the half-hour or three-quarter hour after two o’clock he had last heard strike.
Waving the refolded note at his council—or perhaps it was only that his hand was wildly a-twitch—he said in one breath, glaring defiantly as he did so, “Important news of my secret weapon! I must closet me at once with its sender,” and without waiting for reactions, but with a final tic so violent it jolted his daffodil wreath forward to rest on his nose, Lankhmar’s overlord dashed through a silver-chased purple-wood arch out of the Council Chamber.
Hisvin slid out of his chair with a curt, thin-lipped bow to the council and went scuttling after him as fast as if he had wheels under his toga rather than feet. He caught up with Glipkerio in the corridor, laid firm hand on the skinny elbow high as his black-capped skull and after a quick glance ahead and back for eavesdroppers, called up softly but stirringly, “Rejoice, oh mighty mind that is Lankhmar’s very brain, for the lagging planet has at last arrived at his proper station, made rendezvous with his starry fleet, and tonight I speak my spell that shall save your city from the rats!”
“What’s that? Oh yes. Good, oh good,” the other responded, seeking chiefly to break loose from Hisvin’s grasp, though meanwhile pushing back his yellow wreath so it was once more atop his blond-ringleted narrow skull. “But now I must rush me to—”
“She will stand and wait for her thrashing,” Hisvin hissed with naked contempt. “I said that tonight at the stroke of twelve I speak my spell that shall save Lankhmar from the rats, and save your overlord’s throne too, which you must certainly lose before dawn if we beat not the rats tonight.”
“But that’s just the point, she won’t wait,” Glipkerio responded with agonizing agitation. “It’s twelve, you say? But that can’t be. It’s not yet three!—surely?”
“Oh wisest and most patient one, master of time and the waters of space,” Hisvin howled obsequiously, a-tiptoe. Then he dug his nails into Glipkerio’s arm and said slowly, marking each word, “I said that tonight’s the night. My demonic intelligencers assure me the rats plan to hold off this evening, to lull the city’s wariness, then make a grand assault at midnight. To make sure they’re all in the streets and stay there while I recite my noxious spell from this palace’s tallest minaret, you must an hour beforehand order all soldiers to the South Barracks and your constables too. Tell Captain General Olegnya you wish him to deliver them a morale-building address—the old fool won’t be able to resist that bait. Do … you … understand … me … my … overlord?”
“Yes, yes, oh yes!” Glipkerio babbled eagerly, grimacing at the pain of Hisvin’s grip, yet not angered but thinking only of getting loose. “Eleven o’clock tonight … all soldiers and constables off streets … oration by Olegnya. And now, please, Hisvin, I must rush me to—”
“—to see a maid thrashed,” Hisvin finished for him flatly. Again the fingernails dug. “Expect me infallibly at a quarter to midnight in your Blue Audience Chamber, whence I shall climb the Blue Minaret to speak my spell. You yourself must be there—and with a corps of your pages to carry a message of reassurance to your people. See that they are provided with wands of authority. I will bring my daughter and her maid to mollify you—and also a company of my Mingol slaves to supplement your pages if need be. There’d best be wands for them too. Also—”