The Knight and Knave of Swords

procure the return of their favorite errand boys and living touchstones.

26

The instant the gods lifted their curses, the Mouser's and Fafhrd's strange obsessions vanished. It happened while they were together with Afreyt and Cif, the four of them lunching al fresco at Cif's. The only outward sign was that the Twain's eyes widened incredulously as they stared and then smiled at nothing.

“What deliciously outrageous idea has occurred to you two?” Afreyt demanded, while Cif echoed, “You're right! And it has to be something like that. We know you two of yore!'

“Is it that obvious?” the Mouser inquired, while Fafhrd fumbled out, “No, it's nothing like that. It's… no, you've all got to hear this. You know that thing about stars I've been having? Well, it's gone!” He lifted his eyes. “By Issek, I can look at the blue sky now without having it covered with the black flyspecks of the stars that would be there now if it were dark!'

“By Mog!” the Mouser exploded. “I had no idea, Fafhrd, that your little madness was so like mine in the tightness of its grip. For I no longer feel the compulsion to try to peer closely at every tiny object within fifty yards of me. It's like being a slave who's set free.'

“No more ragpicking, eh?” Cif said. “No more bent-over inspection tours?'

“No, by Mog,” the Mouser asserted, then qualified that with a “Though of course little things can be quite as interesting as big things; in fact, there's a whole tiny world of—'

“Uh-uh, you better watch out,” Cif interrupted, holding up a finger.

“And the stars too are of considerable interest, my unnatural infatuation with ‘em aside,” Fafhrd said stubbornly.

Afreyt asked, “What do you think it was, though? Do you think some wizard cast a spell on you? Perchance that Ningauble you told me of, Fafhrd?'

Cif said, “Yes, or that Sheelba you talk of in your sleep, Mouser, and tell me isn't an old lover?'

The two men had to admit that those explanations were distant possibilities.

“Or other mysterious or even otherworldly beings may have had a hand in it,” Afreyt proposed. “We know Queen Skeldir's involved, bless her, from the warning laughter you heard. And, for all you make light of him, Gusorio. Cif and I did hear those growlings.'

Cif said, the look in her eyes half wicked, half serious, “And has it occurred to any of you that, since Skeldir's warnings went to you two men, that you may be transmigrations of her? and we — Skeldir help us! — of Great Gusorio? Or does that shock you?'

“By no means,” Fafhrd answered. “Since transmigration would be such a wonder, able to send the spirit of woman or man into animal, or vice versa, a mere change of sex should not surprise us at all.'

27

The backgammon box of the two Deaths was kept at the Sea Wrack as a curiosity of sorts, but it was noted that few used it to play with, or got good games when they did.

IV: The Mouser Goes Below

1

It is an old saw in the world of Nehwon that the fate of heroes who seek to retire, or of adventurers who decide to settle down, so cheating their audience of honest admirers — that the fate of such can be far more excruciatingly doleful than that of a Lankhmar princess royal shanghaied as cabin-girl aboard an Ilthmar trader embarked on the carkingly long voyage to tropic Klesh or frosty No-Ombrulsk. And let such heroes merely whisper a hint about a “last adventure” and their noisiest partisans and most ardent adherents alike will be demanding that it end at the very least in spectacular death and doom, endured while battling insurmountable odds and enjoying the enmity of the evilest arch-gods.

So when those two humorous dark-side heroes the Gray Mouser and Fafhrd not only left Lankhmar City (where it's said more than half the action of Nehwon world is) to serve the obscure freewomen Cif and Afreyt of lonely Rime Isle on the northern rim of things, but also protracted their stay there for two years and then three, wiseacres and trusty gossips alike began to say that the Twain were flirting with just such a fate.

True, their polar expedition had seemed to begin well enough, even showily, with reports filtering back of them gathering and training (or taming) small bands of adventurers mad as themselves to serve them, and then word of a great victory where they turned back from the frigid island of philosophic fishermen a two-pronged invasion of suicidal Sea-Mingols, during which they enforced the service of two weird outlander gods outlandishly named Loki and Odin, and also played fast and loose with the five gold Ikons of Reason, which were atheist Rime Isle's chiefest treasure, and otherwise made fools of the Isle's gruff and slow-moving and — speaking dwellers.

But then, especially when they stayed on and on in the chilly north, second reports began to undercut and diminish all these feisty achievements. It was said that their victory had been a trivial psychological one, got by delaying maneuvers — what in a more familiar world would have been called Fabian tactics — and that in the end it never would have been won except for an unexpected unseasonal change in the winds, the simultaneous but fortuitous eruption of Rime Isle's volcanoes Hellglow and Darkfire, and the coincidental surging of the Island's notorious Great Maelstrom, which sucked under a few leading galleys in the Mingols’ advance squadron and so discouraged the rest.

That (so these second reports went) far from playing tricks on the Islanders, the Mouser and Fafhrd were making friends with them, copying their sober ways, and forcing their henchmen to do likewise — transforming these cutpurses and berserks into law-abiding sailors, fishermen, mechanics, even carpenters who'd built for themselves and their two masters a year-round barracks.

That instead of playing ducks and drakes with the gold Ikons, Fafhrd had actually rescued four of them from a thievish sea-demoness from the sunken empire of Simorgya, whom the Mouser had additionally thwarted in the course of a trading voyage to No-Ombrulsk to get timber and grain for the wood-poor, corn-hungry, sea-girt republic.

Furthermore, that he (the Mouser) had used the fifth Ikon, the Skeleton Cube of Square Dealing, enwedged with a cinder sacred to the stranger fire-god Loki and containing the essence of that alien god's being, to sling into the center of the Great Maelstrom after it had pulled under the Mingol picket ships and magically still forever its spinning whorls before they scuppered the rickety Rime fleet also. There the cube lay snuggled in sand and slickly slimed at whirlpool-maw's center seventeen fathoms down, a precious heavy handful, kernel for legends and bait for treasure seekers, locking the Maelstrom tight and prisoning a god.

Finally, that in place of swindling and abandoning Cif and Afreyt, as they'd been known to serve some earlier employers and lovers alike, the two disgustingly reformed rascals and rakes were busily courting the two freewomen, clearly with lasting relationships of mutual benefit in view.

These disquieting — nay, shocking — secondary rumors were what caused many to at last give credence to a widely disbelieved early report: that in the almost bloodless final battle with the Mingols, Fafhrd had somehow lost his left hand, eventually replacing it with a leather socket for his bow, fork, knife — a whole kit of tools. This