The Knight and Knave of Swords

spinning furiously, an infinitely menacing foamy pinwheel.

The sight froze Fafhrd's privates. His reaction was anything but beat his wings (arms, rather), flutter his legs-tail, resuming flying, and so land lightly on the cloud-craft's deck and sketch a bow to Frix. The blow had halted all those avian rhythms as if they'd never possessed him; it had nauseated him, switched him from glorious drunkenness to near puking hangover in a trice. Instead of master of the air, he felt as if he were flimsily glued to it up here, pasted to this height by some fragile magic, so that the least wrong move, or wrong thought even, might break the flimsy bond and pitch him down, down, down!

His sailor's instinct was to lighten ship. It was the last resort when your vessel was sinking, and so presumably the wisest course when falling was the danger. With infinite caution and deliberation he began a series of slow contortions calculated to bring his manual extremities of hand and hook into successive contact with his feet, waist, neck, and so forth, so as to rid himself of all abandonable weight whatever without at the same time making some uncalculated movement that would cause him to come unstuck from the sky wherein he was so precariously poised.

This course of action had the added advantage of concentrating all his attention on his body and the space immediately around it, so he was not tempted to look down again and suffer the full pangs of vertigo.

He did note, as he gently cast aside his right and left boot, ax and dirk, their sheaths, finally his pouch and iron-studded belt, that they floated off slowly to about the distance of a man's length, then dropped away as if jerked down, seeming almost to vanish instantly — suggesting some magical sphere or spell of safety about him.

He didn't trust it.

So long as he confined himself to discarding such relatively ponderous and rigid items, his convoy of gulls continued to circle him evenly, but when he continued on to divest himself of all his garments (for this seemed certainly no time for half measures) they broke formation and (either attracted by the flimsy and flappable nature of his discards, or else outraged at the shameless impropriety of his action) made fierce darts and dives at and upon each piece of clothing to the accompaniment of raucous barking squawks and bore them off triumphantly in their sharp talons as if reasserting the honor of their squadron.

Fafhrd paid very little attention to these captious avian antics, concentrated as he was upon making not the least incautious or marginally violent movement.

Eventually he had divested himself of his very last implement and garment save for one.

It shows how much he had come to think of his hook together with the cork-and-leather cuff carrying it as his true left hand that he did not jettison them with the rest of the abandonable material.

But it was not until he'd stripped himself stark naked (save for hook) that he bethought himself of a final way to “lighten ship.” He was admiring the bright golden gleam of the powerful stream of urine arching above him and then down over his head out of his vision's range (it had first hit him in the eye but he corrected); it was not until then that he realized that in the course of his emergency undressing he had passed out of the shadow of the cloud-craft's hull and was bathed in full hot sunlight (which had, coincidentally, counterbalanced nicely any chill he might otherwise have felt at abandoning his last scrap of clothing in the sharp air of early morning).

But where had the Arilian cloud-vessel got to? He looked about and finally saw its narrow deck its own ship's length beneath him — a score of yards at least. Meanwhile, he himself was slowly but steadily mounting to portside of its rather ghostly or at least somewhat translucent mast top and upper rigging, whereon were perched the five raptorial gulls, busily shredding with claws and beaks the clothing they'd appropriated from him and, looking more now like cormorants than gulls, staring at him from time to time disgustedly.

And now a wholly different, in fact opposite fear took sudden hold of Fafhrd — that he might continue to rise inexorably until all below became too tiny to be seen and he was lost in space, or until he reached the forever frost-capped height of mountain-tops and perished of cold — especially when chilly night came on (how stupid he'd been to discard all his clothes — he'd been in a dismal panic that was sure!) — or got himself devoured by the airy monsters that inhabited such altitudes such as the invisible giant fliers he'd first encountered on Stardock, or even reach the mysterious stars (if he lasted that long before dying of thirst and hunger) and be dazzled to death by them or suffer whatever other fate the Bright Ones kept in store for impudent venturers such as he must appear to them.

Unless, of course, he had the good fortune to encounter the moon first or the secret (invisible?) Queendom of Arilia, if that were anything more than a great fleet of cloud-ships.

This thought reminded him that there was such a ship close at hand, of which he'd had great hopes and expectations before the brandy had died in him.

After a moment's gloomy apprehension that it had heartlessly sailed off or perhaps vanished entire (its upper works at least had looked so very ghostly), he was relieved to see it still floated below him, though some thirty feet farther down than at last glimpse — there was at least that distance between him and the masthead with its quincunx of cormorantishly-behaving sea gulls, who still shredded his garments vindictively, although their shrill squawkings had subsided.

He searched the vessel with his eyes for Frix, but the tall, supernally attractive beauty was nowhere to be seen, not in the bow impersonating a figurehead, or anywhere else — if she ever had been present, he added wryly, to anything but his overeager and overbrandied imagination.

He did spot, however, a sixth figure in the rigging, besides the birds, a trim young woman halfway up it on the other side of the rigging, faced away from him and leaning back against the ratlines with arms outspread as if to expose herself to sun's rays. She wore an abbreviated white lace chemise, was barefoot, and carried a small curved silver trumpet slung round her neck. She was also too short for Frix and a blonde to boot, instead of raven- tressed.

Fafhrd called down “Ahoy!” not softly, but not unnecessarily loudly either, for although his new fear of rising indefinitely preoccupied his thoughts, he still entertained the conviction that any violent movement or speech would be unwise. Just rising a few yards did not convince him that he could not fall, especially when he surveyed the emptiness below.

The lazing maiden did not look up or give the least other indication that she had heard him.

“Ahoy!” Fafhrd repeated, quite a bit more loudly, but again with no discernible reaction from her, unless her yawn now was intended as that.

“Ahoy!” Fafhrd bellowed, forgetting his worries about the possible dire effects of loud noises.

Rather slowly, then, she turned her head and lifted her face toward him. But nothing more.

“Cloud girl,” Fafhrd called down in friendly tones but a shade peremptorily, “summon your mistress on deck. I'm an old friend.'

She went on staring at him. Nothing more, except perhaps to lift her brows superciliously.

Fafhrd called sharply, “I'm Captain Fafhrd, out of Seahawk,” naming his ship riding at anchor in Rime harbor. “And as you can plainly see, I'm in distress. Inform your captain of these circumstances. And be assured she knows me well.'

After staring at him a while more, the cloud girl nodded moodily and descended to the deck hand over hand, taking her time, and after another look up at him, strolled toward the stern-castle.

Fafhrd was annoyed. “Oh, hurry up, girl,” he called, “and if it's formalities you want, tell the Queen of Arilia that an old friend respectfully craves instant audience.'

She paused in the door of the stern-castle to look up at him once more and inquire in a shrill pert voice, “Was that the respect led you to piss on our ship?” before she flipped up the tail of her chemise and vanished inside.

Fafhrd made dignified growling noises in his throat, though there were none to hear them but the gulls, and was emboldened to try to swim down to the cloud-ship's mast top, getting himself positioned with head turned down toward it, body upside down, though it took an intense effort of will to make himself use full power in what persisted in seeming an attempt to come unstuck from the heights and launch a disastrous fall. He kept himself aimed at the rigging so he'd intercept it if the worst occurred.

He was breathing heavily and had fought his way down, he judged, about a quarter of the distance when the saucy cloud girl reemerged, followed (at last!) by Frix, garbed like a dashing captain of Amazon marines in tropical dress uniform of silver-trimmed white lace which strikingly set off her slender form, dark hair, and coppery complexion wonderfully, white deerskin hip boots, a wide-brimmed hat of like material, with ostrich plumes and a