Swords Of Lankhmar

Save for the hum and crackle of insects and the calls of night birds, the moonlight-brushed area was silent — yet would not be so for long, Fafhrd knew with a shudder.

Ever since the preternatural emergence of the three black riders from the crash of waves over the Sinking Land and their drumming unshakable pursuit of him through the deepening night, he had been less and less able to think of them as mere vengeful Ilthmar brigands, and more and more conceived them as a supernatural black trinity of death. For miles now, besides, something huge and long-legged and lurching, though never distinctly seen, had been pur-suing him through the Marsh, keeping pace with him at the distance of a spear cast. Some giant familiar or obedient djinn of the black horsemen seemed most likely.

His fears had so worked on him that Fafhrd had finally put the mare to her extremest gallop, outdistancing the hoof-noise of the pursuit, though with no effect on the lurching shape and with the inevitable present result. He drew Graywand and faced back toward the new-risen gibbous moon.

Then very faintly he began to hear it: the muted rhythmic drumming of hooves on gravel. They were coming.

At the same moment, from the deep shadows where the giant familiar should be, he heard the Gray Mouser call hoarsely, "This way, Fafhrd! Toward the blue light. Lead your mount. Make it swift!"

Grinning even as the hairs lifted on his neck, Fafhrd looked south and saw a shaped blue glow, like a round-topped, smallish, blue-lit window in the blackness of the Marsh. He plunged down the causeway's slanting south side toward it, pulling the mare after him, and found underfoot a low ridge of firm ground rather than mud. He moved ahead eagerly through the dark, digging in his heels and leaning forward as he dragged his spent mount. The blue window looked a little above his head now. The drumming coming up from the east was louder.

"Shake a leg, Lazybones!" he heard the Mouser call in the same rasping tones. The Gray One must have caught a cold from the Marsh's damp or — the Fates forfend! — a fever from its miasmas.

"Tether your mount to the thorn stump," the Mouser continued gruffly. "There's food for her there and a water pool. Then come up. Speed, speed!"

Fafhrd obeyed without word or waste motion, for the drumming had become very loud.

As he leaped and caught hold of the blue window's bottom and drew himself up to it, the blue glow went out. He scrambled inside onto the reed-carpeted floor of whatever it was and swiftly squirmed around so he was looking back the way he'd come.

The Mingol mare was invisible in the dark below. The causeway's top glowed faintly in the moonlight.

Then round a cluster of thorn trees came speeding the three black riders, the drumming of the twelve hooves thunderous now. Fafhrd thought he could make out a fiendish phosphorescent glow around the nostrils and eyes of the tall black horses and he could faintly discern the black cloaks and hoods of the riders streaming in the wind of their speed. With never a pause they passed the point where he'd left the causeway and vanished behind another thorn grove to the west. He let out a long-held breath.

"Now get away from the door and brace yourself," a voice that wasn't the Mouser's at all grated over his shoulder. "I've got to be there to pilot this rig."

The hairs that had just lain down on Fafhrd's neck erected themselves again. He had more than once heard the rock-harsh voice of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, though never seen, let alone entered, his fabulous hut. He swiftly hitched himself to one side, back against wall. Something smooth and round and cool touched the back of his neck. A wall-hung skull, it almost had to be.

A black figure crawled into the space he'd just vacated. Dimly silhouetted in the doorway, its edge touched by moonlight, he saw a black cowl.

"Where's the Mouser?" Fafhrd asked with a wheeze in his voice.

The hut gave a violent lurch. Fafhrd grabbed gropingly for and luckily found two wall posts.

"In trouble. _Deep_-down trouble," Sheelba answered curtly. "I did his voice to make you jump lively. As soon as you've fulfilled whatever geas Ningauble has laid upon you — bells, isn't it? — you must go instantly to his aid."

The hut gave a second lurch and a third, then began to rock and pitch somewhat like a ship, but in a swift rhythm and more joltingly, as if one were in a howdah on the slant back of a drunken giant giraffe.

"Go instantly where?" Fafhrd demanded, somewhat humbly.

"How should I know and why should I tell you if I did? I am not your wizard. I'm just taking you to Lankhmar by secret ways as a favor to that paunchy, seven-eyed, billion-worded dilettante in sorcery who thinks himself my colleague and has gulled you into taking him as mentor," the harsh voice responded from the hood. Then, relenting some-what, though growing gruffer, "Overlord's palace, most likely. Now shut up."