Swords and Ice Magic

example) had denied himself.

In a pinnacle of exasperation, a mountaintop of rage, the Mouser seized the padded striker from its mainmast hook and smote the ship's gong a blow mighty enough to shatter the gelid bronze. In fact, he was mildly surprised that Flotsam's frosty deck wasn't showered with sharp-edged frozen shards of brown metal. Whereupon he smote it again and again and again, so that the gong swung like a signboard in a hurricane, and meanwhile he jumped up and down, adding to the general alarm the resounding thuds of his feet (and haply warming them).

The forward hatch was flung back from below and Pshawri shot up out of it like a jack-in-the-box, to scurry to the Mouser and stand before him mad-eyed. The corporal major was followed in a pouring rush by Mikkidu and the rest of the two squads, most of them half-naked. After them — and far more leisurely — came Gavs and the other Mingol crewman off watch, thonging their black hoods closely under their yellow chins, while Ourph came ghosting up behind his captain, though the two other Mingols properly kept to their stations at tiller and prow. The Mouser was vastly surprised. So his scabbard thwackings had actually done some good!

Measuredly beating the padded striker head in the cupped palm of his right hand, the Mouser observed, “Well, my small stealers' — (all of the thieves were in fact at least a finger-breadth shorter than the Gray One)—'it appears you've missed a beating, barely,” his face in a hideous grin as he closely surveyed the large areas of bare flesh exposed to the icy air.

He went on, “But now we must keep you warm — a sailorly necessity in this clime, for which each of you is responsible on pain of flogging, I'll have you know.” His grin became more hideous still. “To evade night ramming attack, man the sweeps!”

The ragged dozen poured past him to snatch up the long, slender oars from their rack between mainmast and mizzen, and drop their looms into the ten proper locks, and stand facing prow at the ready, feet braced against sweeping studs, oar handles against chests, blades poised overside in the fog. Pshawri's squad was stationed steerside, Mikkidu's loadside, while major and minor corporals supervised fore and aft.

After a quick glance at Pshawri, to assure himself every man was at his station, the Mouser cried, “Flotsamers! One, two, three — sweep!” and tapped the gong, which he steadied and damped by its edge gripped in his right hand. The ten sweepsmen dipped blades into the unseen salt water and thrust heavily forward against the tholes.

“Recover!” the Mouser growled slowly, then gave the gong another tap. The ship began to move forward and the wash of the swell became tiny slaps against the hull.

“And now keep to it, you clownish, ill-clad cutpurses!” he cried. “Master Mikkidu! Relieve me at the gong! Sir Pshawri, keep ‘em sweepin’ evener!” And as he handed the striker to the gasping corporal minor, he dipped his lips toward the cryptic wrinkled face of Ourph and whispered, “Send Trenchi and Gib below to fetch ‘em their warm duds on deck.”

Then he allowed himself a sigh, generally pleased yet perversely dissatisfied because Pshawri hadn't given him excuse to thwack him. Well, one couldn't have everything. Odd to think of a Lankhmar second-story man and Thieves Guild malcontent turned promising soldier-sailor. Yet natural enough — there wasn't that much difference between climbing walls and rigging.

Feeling warmer now, he thought more kindly of Fafhrd. Truly, the Northerner had not yet missed rendezvous; it was Flotsam, rather, that'd been early. Now was the time appointed. His face grew somber as he permitted himself the coldly realistic thought (of the sort no one likes) that it would indeed be miracle if he and Fafhrd did find each other in this watery waste, not to mention the icy fog. Still, Fafhrd was resourceful.

The ship grew silent again except for the brush and drip of the sweeps, the clink of the gong, and the small commotions as Pshawri briefly relieved oarsmen hurrying into the clothes the Mingols had fetched. The Mouser turned his attention to the part of his mind that kept watch on the fog's hiddenmost sounds. Almost at once he turned questioningly toward Old Ourph. The dwarfish Mingol flapped his arms slowly up and down. Straining his ears, the Mouser nodded. Then the beat of approaching wings became generally audible. Something struck the icy rigging overhead and a white shape hurtled down. The Mouser threw up his right arm to fend it off and felt his wrist and forearm strongly gripped by something that heaved and twisted. After a moment of breathless fear, in which his left hand snatched at his dirk, he reached it out instead and touched the horny talons tight as gyves around his wrist, and found rolled around a scaly leg a small parchment, the threads of which he cut with sharpened thumbnail. Whereupon the large white hawk left his wrist and perched on the short, round rod from which the ship's gong hung.

Then by flame of fat candle a Mingol crewman fetched after lighting it from the firebox, the Mouser read in Fafhrd's huge script writ very small:

Ahoy, Little Man! — for ‘tis unlike there's vessel closer in this wavy wilderness. Burn a red flare and I'll be there.

F.

And then in blacker but sloppier letters suggesting hurried afterthought:

Let's feign mutual attack when we meet, to train our crews. Agreed!

The white flame, burning steady and bright in the still air, showed the Mouser's delighted grin and also the added expression of incredulous outrage as he read the postscript. Northerners as a breed were battle-mad, and Fafhrd the feyest.

“Gib, get quill and squid ink,” he commanded. “Sir Pshawri, take slow-fire and a red flare to the mainmast top and burn it there. Yarely! But if you fire Flotsam, I'll nail you to the burning deck!”

Some moments later, as the Mouser-enlisted small cat-burglar steadily mounted the rigging, though additionally encumbered by a boathook, his captain reversed the small parchment, spread it flat against the mast, and neatly inscribed on its back by light of candle, which Gib held along with the inkhorn:

Madman Most Welcome! — I'll burn them one each bell. I do not agree. My crew is trained already.

M.

He shook the note to dry it, then gingerly wrapped it closely around the glaring hawk's leg, just above talons and threaded it tight. As his fingers came away, the bird bated with a shriek and winged off into the fog without command. Fafhrd had at least his avian messengers well trained.

A red glare, surprisingly bright, sprang forth from the fog at the masthead and rose mysteriously a full ten cubits above the top. Then the Mouser saw that, for safety's sake, his own and his ship's, the little corporal major had fixed the flare to the boathook's end and thrust it aloft, thereby also increasing the distance at which it could be seen — by at least a Lankhmar league, the Mouser hurriedly calculated. A sound thought, he had to admit, almost a brilliancy. He had Mikkidu reverse Flotsam's course for practice, the steerside sweepsmen pulling water to swing the ship their way. He went to the prow to assure himself that the heavily muffled Mingol there was steadily scanning the fog ahead, next he returned to the stern, where Ourph stood by his tillerman, both equally thick-cloaked against the cold.

Then, as the red flare glowed on and the relative quiet of steady sweeping returned, the Mouser's ears unwilled resumed their work of searching the fog for strange sounds, and he said softly to Ourph without looking at him, “Tell me now, Old One, what you really think about your restless nomad brotheren and why they've ta'en to ship instead of horse.”

“They rush like lemmings, seeking death… for others,” the ancient croaked reflectively. “Gallop the waves instead of flinty steppes. To strike down cities is their chiefest urge, whether by land or sea. Perhaps they flee the People of the Ax.”

“I've heard of those,” the Mouser responded doubtfully. “Think you they'd league with Stardock's viewless fliers, who ride the icy airs above the world?”

“I do not know. They'll follow their clan wizards anywhere.'