The mate stood stooping by the open grille of the closed door, in part to see that no other sailors eavesdropped.
The Demoiselle Hisvet sat cross-legged on the swung-down sea-bed, her ermine smock decorously tucked under her knees, managing to look most distant and courtly even in this attitude. Now and again her right hand played with the dark wavy hair of Frix, who crouched on the deck at her knees.
Timbers creaked as Squid bowled north. Now and then the bare feet of the helmsmen could be heard faintly slithering on the afterdeck overhead. Around the small trapdoor-like hatches leading below and through the very crevices of the planking came the astringent, toastlike, all-pervasive odor of the grain.
Lukeen spoke. He was a lean, slant-shouldered, cordily muscled man almost as big as Fafhrd. His short coat of browned-iron mail over his simple black tunic was of the finest links. A golden band confined his dark hair and bound to his forehead the browned-iron five-pointed curvy-edged starfish emblem of Lankhmar.
“How do I know Clam was lured away? Two hours before dawn I twice thought I heard Shark’s own gong-note in the distance, although I stood then beside Shark’s muffled gong. Three of my crew heard it too. ‘Twas most eerie. Gentlemen, I know the gong-notes of Lankhmar war galleys and merchantmen better than I know my children’s voices. This that we heard was so like Shark’s I never dreamed it might be that of another ship—I deemed it some ominous ghost-echo or trick of our minds and I thought no more about it as a matter for action. If I had only had the faintest suspicion….”
Lukeen scowled bitterly, shaking his head, and continued, “Now I know the black cutter must carry a gong shaped to duplicate Shark’s note precisely. They used it, likely with someone mimicking my voice, to draw Clam out of line in the fog and get her far enough off so that the rat-horde, officered by the white one, could work its will on her without the crew’s screams being heard. They must have gnawed twenty holes in her bottom for Clam to take on water so fast and the grain to swell so. Oh, they’re far shrewder and more persevering than men, the little spade-toothed fiends!”
“Midsea madness!” Fafhrd snorted in interruption. “Rats make men scream? And do away with them? Rats seize a ship and sink it? Rats officered and accepting discipline? Why this is the strangest superstition!”
“You’re a fine one to talk of superstition and the impossible, Fafhrd,” Slinoor shot at him, “when only this morning you talked with a masked and gibbering demon who rode a two-headed dragon.”
Lukeen lifted his eyebrows at Slinoor. This was the first he’d heard of the Hagenbeck episode.
Fafhrd said, “That was travel between worlds. Another matter altogether. No superstition in it.”
Slinoor responded skeptically, “I suppose there was no superstition in it either when you told me what you’d heard from the Wise Woman about the Thirteen?”
Fafhrd laughed. “Why, I never believed one word the Wise Woman ever told me. She was a witchy old fool. I recounted her nonsense merely as a curiosity.”
Slinoor eyed Fafhrd with slit-eyed incredulity, then said to Lukeen, “Continue.”
“There’s little more to tell,” the latter said. “I saw the rat-battalions swimming from Clam to the black cutter. I saw, as you did, their white officer.” This with a glare at Fafhrd. “Thereafter I fruitlessly hunted the black cutter two hours in the fog until cramp took my rowers. If I’d found her, I’d’ve not boarded her but thrown fire into her! Aye, and stood off the rats with burning oil on the waters if they tried again to change ships! Aye, and laughed as the furred murderers fried!”
“Just so,” Slinoor said with finality. “And what, in your judgment, Commander Lukeen, should we do now?”
“Sink the white archfiends in their cages,” Lukeen answered instantly, “before they order the rape of more ships, or our sailors go mad with fear.”
This brought an instant icy retort from Hisvet. “You’ll have to sink me first, silver-weighted, oh Commander!”
Lukeen’s gaze moved past her to a scatter of big-eared silver unguent jars and several looped heavy silver chains on a shelf by the bed. “That too is not impossible, Demoiselle,” he said, smiling hardly.
“There’s not one shred of proof against her!” Fafhrd exploded. “Little Mistress, the man is mad.”
“No proof?” Lukeen roared. “There were twelve white rats yesterday. Now there are eleven.” He waved a hand at the stacked cages and their blue-eyed haughty occupants. “You’ve all counted them. Who else but this devilish Demoiselle sent the white officer to direct the sharp-toothed gnawers and killers that destroyed Clam? What more proof do you want?”
“Yes, indeed!” the Mouser interjected in a high vibrant voice that commanded attention. “There is proof aplenty…if there were twelve rats in the four cages yesterday.” Then he added casually but very clearly, “It is my recollection that there were eleven.”
Slinoor stared at the Mouser as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “You lie!” he said. “What’s more, you lie senselessly. Why, you and Fafhrd and I all spoke of there being twelve white rats!”
The Mouser shook his head. “Fafhrd and I said no word about the exact number of rats. You said there were a dozen,” he informed Slinoor. “Not twelve, but … a dozen. I assumed you were using the expression as a round number, an approximation.” The Mouser snapped his fingers. “Now I remember that when you said a dozen I became idly curious and counted the rats. And got eleven. But it seemed to me too trifling a matter to dispute.”
“No, there were twelve rats yesterday,” Slinoor asserted solemnly and with great conviction. “You’re mistaken, Gray Mouser.”
“I’ll believe my friend Slinoor before a dozen of you,” Lukeen put in.
“True, friends should stick together,” the Mouser said with an approving smile. “Yesterday I counted Glipkerio’s gift-rats and got eleven. Ship’s Master Slinoor, any man may be mistaken in his recollections from time to time. Let’s analyze this. Twelve white rats divided by four silver cages equals three to a cage. Now let me see … I have it! There was a time yesterday when between us, we surely counted the rats—when we carried them down to this cabin. How many were in the cage you carried, Slinoor?”
“Three,” the latter said instantly.
“And three in mine,” the Mouser said.
“And three in each of the other two,” Lukeen put in impatiently. “We waste time!”
“We certainly do,” Slinoor agreed strongly, nodding.
“Wait!” said the Mouser, lifting a point-fingered hand. “There was a moment when all of us must have noticed how many rats there were in one of the cages Fafhrd carried—when he first lifted it up, speaking the while to Hisvet. Visualize it. He lifted it like this.” The Mouser touched his thumb to his third finger. “How many rats were in that cage, Slinoor?”
Slinoor frowned deeply. “Two,” he said, adding instantly, “and four in the other.”
“You said three in each just now,” the Mouser reminded him.
“I did not!” Slinoor denied. “Lukeen said that, not I.”
“Yes, but you nodded, agreeing with him,” the Mouser said, his raised eyebrows the very emblem of innocent truth-seeking.
“I agreed with him only that we wasted time,” Slinoor said. “And we do.” Just the same a little of the frown lingered between his eyes and his voice had lost its edge of utter certainty.
“I see,” the Mouser said doubtfully. By stages he had begun to play the part of an attorney elucidating a case in court, striding about and frowning most professionally. Now he shot a sudden question: “Fafhrd, how many rats did you carry?”
“Five,” boldly answered the Northerner, whose mathematics were not of the sharpest, but who’d had plenty time to count surreptitiously on his fingers and to think about what the Mouser was up to. “Two in one cage, three in the other.”
“A feeble falsehood!” Lukeen scoffed. “The base barbarian would swear to anything to win a smile from the Demoiselle, who has him fawning.”
“That’s a foul lie!” Fafhrd roared, springing up and fetching his head such a great hollow thump on a deck beam that he clapped both hands to it and crouched in dizzy agony.
“Sit down, Fafhrd, before I ask you to apologize to the deck!” the Mouser commanded with heartless harshness. “This is solemn civilized court, no barbarous brawling session! Let’s see—three and three and five make … eleven. Demoiselle Hisvet!” He pointed an accusing finger straight between her red-irised eyes and demanded most sternly, “How many white rats did you bring aboard Squid? The truth now and nothing but the truth!”
“Eleven,” she answered demurely. “La, but I’m joyed someone at last had the wit to ask me.”
“That I know’s not true!” Slinoor said abruptly, his brow once more clear. “Why didn’t I think of it before?—’twould have saved us all this bother of questions and counting. I have in this very cabin Glipkerio’s letter of commission to me. In it he speaks verbatim of entrusting to me the Demoiselle Hisvet, daughter of Hisvin, and twelve witty white rats. Wait, I’ll get it out and prove it to your faces!”