The Knight and Knave of Swords

was more their expressions and mannerisms, postures and general manner, self-confident manner, those and the fact of being at that table. The sublime impression the two of them made that they were who they were and that they were in their rightful place.

And the fear that radiated from them with the small sounds of their gaming: the muted rattle of shaken bone dice in one or the other's palm-closed leather cup, the muted clatter as the dice were spilled into one or other of the two low-walled felt-lined compartments of the backgammon box, the sharp little clicks of the bone counters as they were shifted by ones and twos from point to point. The fear that riveted the attention of everyone else in the place no matter how much they pretended to be understanding the conversations they made, or tasting the drinks they swallowed, or busying themselves with little tavern chores. The fear that seized upon and recruited each picnic newcomer. Oh yes, this night something deadly was coiling here at the Sea Wrack, make no mistake about it.

So paralyzing was the fear that it cost Cif and Afreyt a great effort to sidle slowly from the doorway to the bar, their eyes never leaving that one little table that was for now the world's hub, until they were as close as they could get to the Sea Wrack's owner, who with downcast and averted eye was polishing the same mug over and over.

“Keeper, what gives?” Cif whispered to him softly but most distinctly. “Nay, sull not up. Speak, I charge you!'

Eagerly that one, as though grateful Cif's whiplash command had given him opportunity to discharge some of the weight of dread crushing him, whispered them back his tale in short, almost breathless bursts, though without raising an eye or ceasing to circle his rag.

“I was alone here when they came in, minutes after the Good News docked. They spoke no word, but as though the fat one were the lean one's hunting ferret, they scented out our two captains’ table, sat themselves down at it as though they owned it, then spoke at last to call for drink.

“I took it them, and as they got out their box and dice cups and set up their game, they plied me with harmless-seeming and friendly questions mostly about the Twain, as if they knew them well. Such as: How fared they in Rime Isle? Enjoyed they good health? Seemed they happy? How often came they in? Their tastes in drink and food and the fair sex? What other interests had they? What did they like to talk of? As though the two of them were courtiers of some great foreign empire come hither our captains to please and to solicit about some affair of state.

“And yet, you know, so dire somehow were the tones in which those innocent questions were asked that I doubt I could have refused them if they'd asked me for the Twain's heart's blood or my own.

“This too: The more questions they asked about the Twain and the more I answered them as best I might, the more they came to look like… to resemble our… you know what I'm trying to say?'

“Yes, yes!” Afreyt hissed. “Go on.'

“In short, I felt I was their slave. So too, I think, have felt all those who came into the Sea Wrack after them, save for old Mingol Ourph, who shortly stayed, somehow then parted.

“At last they sucked me dry, bent to their game, asked for more drink. I sent the girl with that. Since then it's been as you see now.'

There was a stir at the doorway through which mist was curling. Four men stood there, for a moment bemused. Then Fafhrd and the Mouser strode toward their table, while old Ourph settled down on his hams, his gaze unwavering, and Groniger almost totteringly sidled toward the bar, like a man surprised at midday by a sleepwalking fit and thoroughly astounded at it.

Fafhrd and the Mouser leaned over and looked down at the table and open backgammon box over which the two strangers were bent, surveying their positions. After a bit Fafhrd said rather loudly, “A good rilk against two silver smerduke on the lean one! His stones are poised to fleet swiftly home.'

“You're on!” the Mouser cried back. “You've underestimated the fat one's back game.'

Turning his chill blue eyes and flat-nosed skull-like face straight up at Fafhrd with an almost impossible twist of his neck, the skinny one said, “Did the stars tell you to wager at such odds on my success?'

Fafhrd's whole manner changed. “You're interested in the stars?” he asked with an incredulous hopefulness.

“Mightily so,” the other answered him, nodding emphatically.

“Then you must come with me,” Fafhrd informed him, almost lifting him from his stool with one fell swoop of his good hand and arm that at once assisted and guided, while his hook indicated the mist-filled doorway. “Leave off this footling game. Abandon it. We've much to talk of, you and I.” By now he had a brotherly arm — the hooked one, this time — around the thin one's shoulders and was leading him back along the path he'd entered by. “Oh, there are wonders and treasures undreamed amongst the stars, are there not?'

“Treasures?” the other asked coolly, pricking an ear but holding back a little.

“Aye, indeed! There's one in particular under the silvery asterism of the Black Panther that I lust to show you,” Fafhrd replied with great enthusiasm, at which the other went more willingly.

All watched astonishedly, but the only one who managed to speak out was Groniger, who asked, “Where are you going, Fafhrd?” in rather outraged tones.

The big man paused for a moment, winked at Groniger, and smiling said, “Flying.'

Then with a “Come, comrade astronomer” and another great arm-sweep, he wafted the skinny one with him into the bulging white mist, where both men shortly vanished.

Back at the table the plump stranger said in loud but winning tones, “Gentle sir! Would you care to take over my friend's game, continue it with me?” Then in tones less formal, “And have you noticed that these mug dints on your table together with the platter burn make up the figure of a giant sloth?'

“Oh, so you've already seen that, have you?” the Mouser answered the second question, returning his gaze from the door. Then, to the second, “Why, yes, I will, sir, and double the bet! — it being my die cast. Although your friend did not stay long enough even to arrange a chouette.'

“Your friend was most insistent,” the other replied. “Sir, I take your bet.'

Whereupon the Mouser sat down and proceeded to shake a masterly sequence of double fours and double threes so that the skinny man's stones, now his own, fleeted more swiftly to victory than ever Fafhrd had predicted. The Mouser grinned fiendishly, and as they set up the stones for another game, he pointed out to his more thinly smiling adversary in the tabletop's dints and stains the figure of a leopard stalking the giant sloth.

All eyes were now back on the table again save those of Afreyt. And of Fafhrd's lieutenant Skor. Those four orbs were still fixed on the mist-bulging doorway through which Fafhrd had vanished with his strangely unlike doublegoer. Since babyhood Afreyt had heard of those doleful nightwalkers whose appearance, like the banshee's, generally betokened death or near-mortal injury to the one whose shape they mocked.

Now while she agonized over what to do, invoking the witch queen Skeldir and lesser of her own and (in her extremity) others’ private deities, there was a strange growling in her ears — perhaps her rushing blood. Fafhrd's last word to Groniger kindled in her memory the recollection of an exchange of words between those two earlier today, which in turn gave her a bright inkling of Fafhrd's present destination in the viewless fog. This in turn inspired her to break the grip upon her of fear's and indecision's paralysis. Her first two or three steps were short and effortful ones, but by the time she went through the doorway, she was taking swift giant strides.

Her example broke the dread-duty deadlock in Skor, and the lean, red-haired, balding giant followed her in a rush.

But few in the Sea Wrack except Ourph and perhaps Groniger noted either departure, for all gazes were fixed again on the one small table where now Captain Mouser in person contested with his dread were-brother, battling the Islanders’ and his men's fears for them as it were. And whether by smashing attack, tortuous back game, or swift running one like the first, the Mouser kept winning again and again and again.

And still the games went on, as though the series might well outlast the night. The stranger's smile kept thinning. That was all, or almost all.

The only fly in this ointment of unending success was a nagging doubt, perhaps deriving from a growing languor on the Mouser's part, a lessening of his taunting joy at each new win, that destinies in the larger world would jump with those worked out in the little world of the backgammon box.