Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber (50 page)

Back in the Sea Wrack the Mouser threw a double six, the only cast that would allow him to bear off his last four stones and leave his opponent’s sole remaining man stranded one point from home. He threw up the back of a hand to mask a mighty yawn and over it politely raised an inquiring eyebrow at his adversary.

The Death of the Mouser nodded amiably enough, though his smile had grown very thin-lipped indeed, and said, “Yes, it’s as well we write finished to my strivings. Was it eight games, or seven? No matter. I’ll seek my revenge some other time. Fate is your girl tonight, cunt and arse hole, that much is proven.”

A collective sigh of relief from the onlookers ended the general silence. They felt the relaxation of tension as much as the two players and to most of them it seemed that the Mouser in vanquishing the stranger had also dispersed all the strange fears that had been loose in the tavern earlier and running along their nerves.

“A drink to toast your victory, salve my defeat?” the Mouser’s Death asked smoothly. “Hot Gahveh perhaps? With brandy in’t?”
“Nay, sir,” the Mouser said with a bright smile, collecting together his several small stacks of gold and silver pieces and funneling them into his pouch, “I must take these bright fellows home and introduce ’em to their cell mates. Coins prosper best in prison, as my friend Groniger tells me. But sir, would you not accompany me on that journey, help me escort ’em? We can drink there.”A brightness came into his eyes that had nothing whatever in common with a miser’s glee. He continued, “Friend who discerned the tree sloth and saw the black panther, we both know that there are mysterious treasures and matters of interest compared to which these clinking counters are no more than that. I yearn to show you some. You’ll be intrigued.”
At the mention of “treasure,” his Death pricked up his ears much as his fellow assassin had at Fafhrd’s speaking the word. Mouser’s would-be nemesis had had his Cold Waste dreams too, his appetites whetted by the privations of long drear journeying, and by the infuriating losses he’d had to put up with tonight as well. And he too had the conviction that the fates must be on his side tonight by now, though for the opposite reason. A man who’d been so incredibly lucky at backgammon was bound to be hit by a great bolt of unluck at whatever feat he next attempted.
“I’ll come with you gladly,” he said softly, rising with the Mouser and moving with him toward the door.
“You’ll not collect your dice and stones?” the one queried. “’Tis a most handsome box.”
“Let the tavern have it as a memorial of your masterly victory,” his Death replied negligently, with a sort of muted grandiloquence. He tossed aside an imaginary blossom.
Ordinarily
that
would have been too much to the Mouser, arousing all his worst suspicions. Only rogues pretended to be
that
carelessly munificent. But the madness with which Mog had cursed him was fully upon him again, and he forgot the matter with a smile and a shrug.
“Trifles both,” he agreed.
In fact the manner of the two of them was so lightly casual for the moment, not to say la-di-da, that they might well have gotten out of the Sea Wrack and lost in the fog without anyone noticing, except of course for old Ourph, whose head turned slowly to watch the Mouser out the door, shook itself sadly, and then resumed its meditations or cogitations or whatever.
Fortunately there were those in the tavern deeply and intelligently concerned for the Mouser, and not bound by Mingolly fatalisms. Cif had no impulse to rush up to the Mouser upon his win. She’d had too strong a sense of something more than backgammon being at stake tonight, too lingering a conviction of something positively unholy about his were-adversary, and doubtless others in the tavern had shared those feelings. Unlike most of those, however, any relief she felt did not take her attention away from the Mouser for an instant. As he and his unwholesome doublegoer exited the doorway she hurried to it.
Pshawri and Mikkidu were at her heels.
They saw the two ahead of them as dim blobs, shadows in the white mist, as it were, and followed only swiftly enough to keep them barely in sight. The shadows moved across and down the lane a bit, paused briefly, then went on until they were traveling along back of the building made of gray timbers from wrecked ships that was the council hall.
Their pursuers encountered no other fog venturers. The silence was profound, broken only by the occasional
drip-drip
of condensing mist and a few very brief murmurs of conversation from ahead, too soft and fleeting to make out. It was eerie.
At the next corner the shadows paused another while, then turned it. “He’s following his regular morning route,” Mikkidu whispered softly.
Cif nodded, but Pshawri gripped Mik’s arm in warning, setting a finger to his lips.
But true enough to the second lieutenant’s guess, they followed their quarry to the new-built barracks and saw the Mouser bow his doublegoer in. Pshawri and Mikkidu waited a bit, then took off their boots and entered in stocking feet most cautiously.
Cif had another idea. She stole along the side of the building, heading for the kitchen door.
Inside, the Mouser, who had uttered hardly a dozen words since leaving the Sea Wrack, pointed out various items to his guest and watched for his reactions.
Which threw his Death into a state of great puzzlement. His intended victim had spoken some words about a treasure or treasures, then taken him outside and with a mysterious look pointed out to him a low point in a lane. What could that mean? True, sunken ground sometimes indicated something buried there—a murdered body, generally. But who’d bury a treasure in the lane of a dinky northern seaport, or a corpse, for that matter? It didn’t make sense.
Next the gray-clad baffler had gone through the same rigmarole at a corner behind a building built of strangely weathered, heavy-looking wood. That had for a moment seemed to lead somewhere, for there’d been an opalescent something lodged in one of the big beams, its hue speaking of pearls and treasure. But when he’d stooped to study it, it had turned out to be only a worthless seashell, worked into the gray wood Aarth knew how!
And now the riddlesome fellow, holding a lamp he’d lit, was standing in a bunkroom beside a closet he’d just opened. There didn’t seem to be much of anything in it.
“Treasure?” the Mouser’s Death breathed doubtfully, leaning forward to look more closely.
The Mouser smiled and shook his head. “No. Miceholes,” he breathed back.
The other recoiled incredulously. Had the brains of the masterly backgammon player turned to mush? Had something in the fog stolen away his wits? Just what was happening here? Maybe he’d best out knife and slay at once, before the situation became too confusing.
But the Mouser, still smiling gleefully, as if in anticipation of wonders to behold, was beckoning him on with his free hand into a short hall and then a smaller room with two bunks only, while the lamp he held beside his head made shadows crawl around them and slip along the walls.
Facing his Death, he threw open the door of a wider closet, stretched himself to his fullest height and thrust his lamp aloft, as if to say, “Lo!”
The closet contained at least a dozen shallow shelves smoothly surfaced with black cloth, and on them were very neatly arrayed somewhere between a thousand and a myriad tiny objects, as if they were so many rare coins and precious gems. As if, yes… but as to what these objects really were… recall the nine oddments the Mouser had laid out on Cif ’s bed table three months past… imagine them multiplied by ten hundred… the booty of three months of ground peering… the loot of ninety days of floor delving… you’d have a picture of the strange collection the Mouser was displaying to his Death.
And as his Death leaned closer, running his gaze incredulously back and forth along the shelves, the triumphant smile faded from the Mouser’s face and was replaced by the same look of desperate wondering he’d had on it when he told Fafhrd of his yearning for the small things of Lankhmar.

“We’ve reached our picnic ground,” Afreyt told Skor as they strode through the mist. “See how the sward is trampled. Now cast we about for Elvenhold.”

“’Tis done, lady,” he replied as she moved off to the left, he to the right, “but why are you so sure Captain Fafhrd went there?”
“Because he told Groniger he was going flying,” she called to him.“Earlier Groniger had said that none could climb Elvenhold without wings.”
“But the captain could,” Skor, taking her meaning, called back, “for he’s scaled Stardock,” thinking, though not saying aloud,
But that was before he lost a hand.
Moments later he sighted vertical solidity, and was calling out that he’d found what they were seeking. When Afreyt caught up with him by the rock wall, he added, “I’ve also found proof that Fafhrd and the stranger did indeed come this way, as you deduced they would.”
And he held up to her the hooded cloak of Fafhrd’s Death.

Fafhrd, followed closely by his Death, climbed out of the fog into a world of bone-white clarity. He faced away from the rock to survey it.
The top of the mist was a flat white floor stretching east and south to the horizon, unbroken by treetop, chimney or spire of Salthaven, or mast top in the harbor beyond. Overhead the night shone with stars somewhat dimmed by the light of the round moon, which seemed to rest on the mist in the southeast.
“The full of Murderers Moon,” he remarked oratorically, “the shortest and the lowest running full of the year, and come pat on Midsummer’s Day Night. I told you there’d be light enough to climb by.”
His Death below him savored the appropriateness of the lunar situation but didn’t care much for the light. He’d felt securer climbing in the fog with the height all hid. He was still enjoying himself, but now he wanted to get the killing done as soon as Fafhrd revealed where the cave or other treasure spot was.
Fafhrd faced around to the tower again. Soon they were edging up past the grassy stretch. He noted his white flagged arrow and left it where it was, but when he came to Afreyt’s he reached over precariously, snagged it with his hook, and tucked it in his belt.
“How much further?” his Death called up.
“Just to the end of the grass,” Fafhrd called down. “Then we traverse to the opposite edge of Elvenhold, where there’s a shallow cave will give our feet good support as we view the treasure. Ah, but I’m glad you came with me tonight! I only hope the moon doesn’t dim it too much.”
“How’s that?” the other asked, a little puzzled, though considerably enheartened by the mention of a cave.
“Some jewels shine best by their own light alone,” Fafhrd replied somewhat cryptically. Clashing into the next hold, his hook struck a shower of white sparks. “Must be flint in the rock hereabouts,” he observed. “See, friend, minerals have many ways of making light. On Stardock the Mouser and I found diamonds of so clear a water they revealed their shape only in the dark. And there are beasts that shine, in particular glowwasps, diamondflies, firebeetles, and nightbees. I know, I’ve been stung by them. While in the jungles of Klesh I have encountered luminous flying spiders. Ah, we arrive at the traverse.” And he began to move sideways, taking long steps.
His Death copied him, hastening after. Footholds and handholds both seemed surer here, while back at the grass he’d twice almost missed a hold. Beyond Fafhrd he could see what he took to be the dark cave mouth at the end of this face of the rock pylon they’d mounted. Things seemed to be happening more quickly while simultaneously time stretched out for him—sure sign of climax approaching. He wanted no more talk—in particular, lectures on natural history! He loosened his long knife in its scabbard. Soon! Soon!
Fafhrd was preparing to take the step that would put him squarely in front of the shallow depression that looked at first sight like a cave mouth. He was aware that his comrade astronomer was crowding him. At that moment, although the two of them were clearly alone on the face, he heard a short dry laugh, not in the voice of either of them, that nevertheless sounded as if it came from somewhere very close by. And somehow that laugh inspired or stung him into taking, instead of the step he’d planned, a much longer one that took him just past the seeming cave mouth and put his left foot on the end of the ledge, while his right hand reached for a hold beyond the shallow depression so that his whole body would swing out past the end of this face, and he would hopefully see the bearded star which was currently his dearest treasure and which until this moment tonight Elvenhold itself had hid from him.
At the same moment his Death struck, who had perfectly anticipated his victim’s every movement except the last inspired one. His dagger, instead of burying itself in Fafhrd’s back, struck rock in the shallow depression and its blade snapped. Staggered by that and vastly surprised, he fought for balance.
Fafhrd, glancing back, perceived the treacherous attack and rather casually booted his threatener in the thigh with a free foot. By the bone-white light of Murderers Moon, the Death of Fafhrd fell off Elvenhold and, glancingly striking the very steep grassy slope once or twice, was silhouetted momentarily, long limbs writhing, against the floor of white fog before the latter swallowed him up and the scream he’d started. There was a distant
thud
that nevertheless had a satisfying finality to it.
Fafhrd swung out again around the end of the cliff. Yes, his bearded star, though dimmed by the moonlight, was definitely discernable. He enjoyed it. The pleasure was, somewhat remotely, akin to that of watching a beautiful girl undress in almost dark.
“Fafhrd!” Then again, “Fafhrd!”
Skor’s shout, by Kos, he told himself. And Afreyt’s! He pulled himself back on the ledge and, securely footed there, called, “Ahoy! Ahoy below!”

Back at the barracks things were moving fast and very nervously, notably on the part of the Mouser’s Death. He almost dirked the vaunting idiot on sheer impulse in overpowering disgust at being shown that incredible mouse’s museum of trash as though it were a treasure of some sort. Almost, but then he heard a faint shuffling noise that seemed to originate in the building they were in, and it never did to slay when witnesses might be nigh, were there another course to take.

He watched the Mouser, who looked somewhat disappointed now (had the idiot expected to be praised for his junk display?), shut the closet door and beckon him back into the short hall and through a third door. He followed, listening intently for any repetition of the shuffling noise or other sound. The moving shadows the lamp cast were a little unnerving now; they suggested lurkers, hidden observers. Well, at least the idiot hadn’t deposited in his trash closet the gold and silver coins he’d won this night, so presumably there was still hope of seeing their “cell mates” and some real treasure.