Swords Against the Shadowland (Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar) (3 page)

"He speaks of choices," the Mouser shouted angrily, "but this Sheelba has left us no choice at all!"

"Of course you have choices," Sheelba answered with icy calm. "You can walk away right now. In a couple of months you might even make it back to the Mountains of the Elders where I called you from. You might even find your treasure where you left it."

The statue of Malygris glanced toward Fafhrd, grinned, then did its best to wipe the grin away.

Sheelba’s voice took on a nastier edge. "You might even live a long and happy life."

"Might, might, might," the Mouser shot back, "More likely, we'll cough our guts up like you're doing now and rot to death!" He slammed Scalpel back into its mouseskin sheath. "Put your sword away, Fafhrd," he said. "We don't dare gut him, much as I'd love to!"

"Couldn't we nick him a little, here and there?" the Northerner suggested, his sword still in his hand. Plainly, though, he didn't understand the situation.

The Mouser explained it to him. "Transporting us from the Elder Mountains all the way to Lankhmar took a mighty spell," he said. "Our very bodies passed through the magical ether from that point to this. There is every chance that Malygris's damnable spell has touched us."

Fafhrd stared at the Mouser, his lips pursed thoughtfully as he weighed the implications of his comrade’s speech. "So," he said at last, swallowing as he turned to Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. "What is this last ingredient we're all so desperate for?"

The wizard's twisted finger resumed its natural shape, and he folded his hands together as if giving thanks for reasonable minds. As he did so, the Mouser's slender blade floated up from its sheath without any help from its owner, then through the air to prick the heart of the silver statue.

As it withdrew, a tiny bit of flame flickered on the end of the sword, then died, leaving not so much as a scorch mark on the metal.

"The final and most necessary ingredient," Sheelba whispered. "Bring me a single drop of Malygris's heart-blood."

"Why can't it ever be just a cup of sugar or a pound of salt?" Fafhrd grumbled, frowning again.

"So we are not errand boys at all, Fafhrd," the Mouser spat as he snatched his sword out of the air and returned it to its sheath. He kept his hand on it this time so it could not fly free again. "We are assassins."

The Northerner turned his gaze in the direction of Lankhmar City, and the Mouser's followed. It was still too far away and much too dark to see its soaring walls, but memories of that hated place were enough to draw them both like beacons. "I must admit, Mouser," Fafhrd said slowly, "if what this Sheelba says is true, no one ever more deserved killing."

"Then let us do it quickly, my friend," the Mouser agreed. "Find Malygris and steal his heart's blood, then put this vile city behind us once more."

"Steal?" Fafhrd began. "Steal?"

The Mouser was in no mood for his companion's bluster. He turned back to Sheelba, but the faceless creature was no longer there, nor was the silver statue of Malygris. Far out on the marshy expanse, barely visible against the starlight, Sheelba’s elevated hut walked away on its stilted legs toward the deeper swamps.

TWO

SUNLIGHT AND SHADOWS

M
uttering curses under his breath, the Mouser watched Sheelba's hut walk away. Those strange, stilted legs made wide, graceful strides, yet it moved soundlessly until it disappeared in the darkness.

"Giddiyup, house," Fafhrd said in quiet wonder as he sheathed his great sword. "I guess this means we go on to Lankhmar after all."

The Mouser growled, curling his lips and causing the sound to rattle deep in his throat. Wordlessly, he bent and scooped handfuls of damp earth over the coals of the campfire. Then he snatched up his blanket only to throw it down in disgust, finding it sodden with the ground’s moisture.

Fafhrd only looked at his bedroll, scratched his short red beard, and shrugged.

As if by unspoken agreement, they turned and walked in the opposite direction from the way Sheelba had gone, the moon and the brighter stars lighting their way. There were few trees and few bushes. The Great Salt Marsh was little more than a sea of grass. In some places, the grass grew tall as their shoulders while in others it barely broke through the spongy earth, alternately creating sharp-bladed forests and vast open stretches.

Emerging from one such forest, Fafhrd stopped and threw an arm across the Mouser's chest. The Mouser, who had been looking downward at his feet, grunted as if he'd walked into a tree. On the verge of an acid comment, he held his tongue and stared across the expanse that confronted them.

Farther out across that wet plain, thousands of tiny golden-yellow lights swam in the air, blinking rhythmically as they bobbed and darted and danced, always orbiting, never venturing far from a squat, dome-shaped hive constructed from marsh mud.

"Glow wasps," Fafhrd whispered uneasily.

The Mouser nodded as he listened to the low, droning hum the creatures' wings made. The tall grass had muffled the sound before, and it was only upon reaching the clearing's edge that the terrible music had caught his attention.

Left alone, the insects were no threat, but the venom of a single wasp was potentially lethal. Few men ever had to worry about a single buggie, however. Once enraged, glow wasps attacked in swarms—and being temperamental by nature, it didn't take much to enrage them.

The two friends slipped silently back into the tall grass, deciding to take a wide course around the open plain and its glow wasp population, and keeping a sharp eye peeled for single hive-scouts.

The ground became damper. Water began to trickle up around their footsteps. Soon, little pools and thin streams, half hidden by the darkness and thick grass, revealed themselves. The Mouser cursed as, unexpectedly, he sank past his ankle in a muddy patch.

"Were this not midsummer," Fafhrd said, trying to hide a snicker as his comrade shook mud from his foot, "we'd be wading in muck up to our necks."

Daybreak began slowly to color the eastern sky while the moon yet lingered low in the west. For a time, dawn painted the marsh with a glimmering chiaroscuro. Waves of grass quivered in a rising breeze, and silvery patches of water rippled. Here and there, gleaming spiderwebs stretched among tall cattail reeds vibrated as the wind murmured through the sticky strands. Birds wheeled gracefully overhead, and unseen creatures, barely perceived by their splashing, scampered or swam away from the immense, elongated shadows that preceded the two advancing human figures.

When the ground began to rise subtly, the Mouser gave a sigh of relief. Moments later, he stood atop a kind of winding, natural causeway that seemed to divide the marsh. On either side lay moist, grassy expanses, but the earth beneath his feet was fairly packed by centuries of horses' hooves and wagon wheels and the tread of traveling feet.

"Causey Road," the Mouser said. He pointed westward. The highest tips of the highest towers and pinnacles of Lankhmar could barely be seen by his straining eyes. "We stand upon an artery to the heart of Nehwon."

Fafhrd had found a stick—a dried reed stalk, actually—and sat down on the roadside to scrape black mud from his boots with it. A sour expression clouded his features. "Lankhmar is the heart of Nehwon?"

The Mouser nodded. "In all the world there is no city greater."

"Certainly none I hold in greater scorn," Fafhrd shot back. "The anus is as important to a body as the heart, so if we must speak in metaphors, let Lankhmar be Nehwon's arsehole."

"You're in a foul mood, to speak of arseholes," the Mouser said.

Fafhrd was sullen. "Arseholes are foul, and Lankhmar is fouler."

The Mouser grinned secretly. "Some call the city fair."

"They are unfair in their judgment," the Northerner answered curtly as he rose and cast aside the stick.

Walking westward on Causey Road, the two spoke little and kept their thoughts to themselves. The Mouser felt a weighty oppression of spirit as he approached the city, and he could tell from the slump of Fafhrd's mighty shoulders and by the sullen expression on his friend’s face that the Northerner felt the same.

The marshlands were soon left behind, and the stark gray walls of Lankhmar City rose before them. Well on its way toward zenith, the morning sun beat uncomfortably on the left side of the Mouser's face. He tugged up the hood of his light gray cloak to block the burning rays, though honesty might have moved him to admit it was more to hide his own unhappy expression from Fafhrd.

Causey Road led straight into the city's Marsh Gate. There were no merchants with pitched tents clustered outside the gate as travelers would find at the city's three southern gates, nor was there any traffic. Causey Road ran eastward eventually through the Mountains of Hunger, past the Great Dike, and into the Sinking Lands. In spring and autumn, a few caravans and the more adventure-minded traders set forth that way, but most businessmen found the trade far more lucrative further northward along the shores of the Inner Sea.

Two pairs of guards stood wearily in the shadows of the massive gates, sweltering in their armor and red cloaks, pikes leaned against the walls and helmets set by in the roadside dust, boredom and discomfort plain on their sweat-stained faces. As Fafhrd and the Mouser approached the gate, the four exchanged glances as if mentally choosing straws. Finally, one picked up his pike, set his helmet on his head and trudged forward.

"In the name of that peach-sucking, sheep-loving, decadent little pervert who, to Lankhmar’s everlasting shame, calls himself our Overlord—halt!"

Fafhrd caught the Mouser's arm with one hand and clutched his other hand over his heart in feigned shock. "That's the prettiest speech I've heard all day, Captain," he said, grinning.

The guard, no captain at all, but a mere corporal of middle age who probably had not advanced in rank in years, looked up at the seven-foot-tall Northerner. If he was impressed, he hid it well. "And the truest, I'll wager," he answered. "You look like a pair of rogues to me. Come to steal our treasury and rape our women, have you?"

The Mouser answered drily. "Be assured. Your treasury is safe from us."

The corporal smiled appreciatively, then glanced back over his shoulder at his three comrades to make sure they were safely beyond earshot. "You haven't seen our women." He grimaced as he faked a shudder. "Trust me, our gold is warmer."

Fafhrd laughed aloud. "Our captain speaks like a married man," he said.

The Mouser put on a grave face. "Is it true, good captain?" he said. "Are you so afflicted?"

The corporal hung his head as he nodded, and his shoulders slumped. "It is exactly as you have deduced," he admitted sadly. "A shrewish woman she is, who spends every coin I make and heaps debt upon my poor head." He cast another glance back at his comrades. "Why at this very moment I haven't a penny in my pocket for even a cool pint."

The Mouser eyed the guard with greater understanding. "That is a sad state in which to find oneself," he agreed. "I can fully and completely sympathize." Easing back the folds of his light gray cloak, he turned his own empty pockets inside out.

The corporal's brow furrowed in disappointment. He turned expectantly toward Fafhrd, but the red-headed giant shrugged apologetically as he turned his palms upward. "Money and these hands rarely share long acquaintance," he said.

The guard's frown only deepened.

"On the other hand, these hands," the Mouser said in reassuring tones, "have a handsome skill at finding it." He licked his lips slightly as he brushed his fingertips together. "Do you know an inn called the Silver Eel?"

"The Silver Eel?" the corporal repeated. "On Dim Lane, halfway between Cheap Street and Carter. An infamous dive. I see you are not strangers to Lankhmar."

"We shall be at that infamous dive tonight before the witching hour," the Mouser informed. "If you should come around, my friend and I would be happy to buy you and your fellow threesome guards a pint. Or should you come alone you can have their share."

The corporal smiled as he rubbed a hand over his mouth and chin. "A merry and generous offer, indeed," he answered, glancing around again. "If all travelers were such understanding gentlemen as yourselves my job would be a far happier one."

"Not to mention more lucrative," Fafhrd added, rolling his gaze toward the blue sky.

The guard pretended not to hear. "Come then," he said. "It's too hot to stand in the sun like this." He made a grandiose gesture with his right arm. "Prepare yourselves to enter this stinking, rat-infested hell-hole ..." he paused to wipe the leer from his face. Then he winked. "I mean, 'Welcome to our beloved city.'"

He led them past the other three guards, who eyed the odd-looking adventurers suspiciously as they passed through the open wooden gates and under the great arch where empty watchtowers perched on either side. The Street of the Gods stretched before them, a broad lane paved with white marble. To the left and right ran Wall Street, another wide lane cluttered with shops and merchants' kiosks.

"The Silver Eel, near witching hour," the corporal repeated quietly as he turned to resume his post.