The Second Book of Lankhmar Read Free Page A

neatly capture a drop that threatened to run down his chin. Then, “No, I mean not chiefly those high-bred gift-rats,” he replied to Slinoor and kneeling lightly and unexpectedly and touching two fingers significantly to the scrubbed oak deck, he said, “I mean chiefly she who is below, who ousts you from your master's cabin, and who now insists that the gift-rats require sunlit and fresh air—which strikes me as a strange way of cosseting burrow- and shadow-dwelling vermin.”
    Slinoor's cropped eyebrows rose. He came close and whispered, “You think the Demoiselle Hisvet may not be merely the conductress of the rat-gift, but also herself part of Glipkerio's gift to Morvarl? Why, she's the daughter of the greatest grain-merchant in Lankhmar, who's grown rich selling tawny corn to Glipkerio.”
    The Mouser smiled cryptically but said nothing.
    Slinoor frowned, then whispered ever lower, “True, I've heard the story that Hisvet has already been her father Hisvin's gift to Glipkerio to buy his patronage.”
    Fafhrd, who'd been trying to stroke the kitten again with no more success than to chase it up the aftermast, turned around at that. “Why, Hisvet's but a child,” he said almost reprovingly. “A most prim and proper miss. I know not of Glipkerio, he seems decadent"—the word was not an insult in Lankhmar—"but surely Movarl, a Northerner albeit a forest man, likes only strong-beamed, ripe, complete women.”
    “Your own tastes, no doubt?” the Mouser remarked, gazing at Fafhrd with half-closed eyes. “No traffic with child-like women?”
    Fafhrd blinked as if the Mouser had dug fingers in his side. Then he shrugged and said loudly, “What's so special about these rats? Do they do tricks?”
    “Aye,” Slinoor said distastefully. “They play at being men. They've been trained by Hisvet to dance to music, to drink from cups, hold tiny spears and swords, even fence. I've not seen it—nor would care to.”
    The picture struck the Mouser's fancy. He envisioned himself small as a rat, dueling with rats who wore lace at their throats and wrists, slipping through the mazy tunnels of their underground cities, becoming a great connoisseur of cheese and smoked meats, perchance wooing a slim rat-queen and being surprised by her rat-king husband and having to dagger-fight him in the dark. Then he noted one of the white rats looking at him intently through the silver bars with a cold inhuman blue eye and suddenly his idea didn't seem amusing at all. He shivered in the sunlight.
    Slinoor was saying, “It is not good for animals to try to be men.” Squid 's skipper gazed somberly at the silent white aristos. “Have you ever heard tell of the legend of—” he began, hesitated, then broke off, shaking his head as if deciding he had been about to say too much.
    “A sail!” The call winged down thinly from the crow's nest. “A black sail to windward!”
    “What manner of ship?” Slinoor shouted up.
    “I know not, master. I see only sail top.”
    “Keep her under view, boy,” Slinoor commanded.
    “Under view it is, master.”
    Slinoor paced to the starboard rail and back.
    “Movarl's sails are green,” Fafhrd said thoughtfully.
    Slinoor nodded. “Lankhmar's are white. The pirates’ were red, mostly. Lankhmar's sails once were black, but now that color's only for funeral barges and they never venture out of sight of land. At least I've never known...”
    The Mouser broke in with, “You spoke of dark antecedents of this voyaging. Why dark?”
    Slinoor drew them back against the taffrail, away from the stocky helmsmen. Fafhrd ducked a little, passing under the arching tiller. They looked all three into the twisting wake, their heads bent together.
    Slinoor said, “You've been out of Lankhmar. Did you know this is not the first gift-fleet of grain to Movarl?”
    The Mouser nodded. “We'd been told there was another. Somehow lost. In a storm, I think. Glipkerio glossed over it.”
    “There were two,” Slinoor