Feeling warmer now, he thought more kindly of Fafhrd. Truly, the Northerner had not yet missed rendezvous; it was Flotsam, rather, that'd been early. Now was the time appointed. His face grew somber as he permitted himself the coldly realistic thought (of the sort no one likes) that it would indeed be miracle if he and Fafhrd did find each other in this watery waste, not to mention the icy fog. Still, Fafhrd was resourceful.
The ship grew silent again except for the brush and drip of the sweeps, the clink of the gong, and the small commotions as Pshawri briefly relieved oarsmen hurrying into the clothes the Mingols had fetched. The Mouser turned his attention to the part of his mind that kept watch on the fog's hiddenmost sounds. Almost at once he turned questioningly toward Old Ourph. The dwarfish Mingol flapped his arms slowly up and down. Straining his ears, the Mouser nodded. Then the beat of approaching wings became generally audible. Something struck the icy rigging overhead and a white shape hurtled down. The Mouser threw up his right arm to fend it off and felt his wrist and forearm strongly gripped by something that heaved and twisted. After a moment of breathless fear, in which his left hand snatched at his dirk, he reached it out instead and touched the horny talons tight as gyves around his wrist, and found rolled around a scaly leg a small parchment, the threads of which he cut with sharpened thumbnail. Whereupon the large white hawk left his wrist and perched on the short, round rod from which the ship's gong hung.
Then by flame of fat candle a Mingol crewman fetched after lighting it from the firebox, the Mouser read in Fafhrd's huge script writ very smalclass="underline"
Ahoy, Little Man! — for ‘tis unlike there's vessel closer in this wavy wilderness. Burn a red flare and I'll be there.
And then in blacker but sloppier letters suggesting hurried afterthought:
Let's feign mutual attack when we meet, to train our crews. Agreed!
The white flame, burning steady and bright in the still air, showed the Mouser's delighted grin and also the added expression of incredulous outrage as he read the postscript. Northerners as a breed were battle-mad, and Fafhrd the feyest.
“Gib, get quill and squid ink,” he commanded. “Sir Pshawri, take slow-fire and a red flare to the mainmast top and burn it there. Yarely! But if you fire Flotsam, I'll nail you to the burning deck!”
Some moments later, as the Mouser-enlisted small cat-burglar steadily mounted the rigging, though additionally encumbered by a boathook, his captain reversed the small parchment, spread it flat against the mast, and neatly inscribed on its back by light of candle, which Gib held along with the inkhorn:
Madman Most Welcome! — I'll burn them one each bell. I do not agree. My crew is trained already.
He shook the note to dry it, then gingerly wrapped it closely around the glaring hawk's leg, just above talons and threaded it tight. As his fingers came away, the bird bated with a shriek and winged off into the fog without command. Fafhrd had at least his avian messengers well trained.
A red glare, surprisingly bright, sprang forth from the fog at the masthead and rose mysteriously a full ten cubits above the top. Then the Mouser saw that, for safety's sake, his own and his ship's, the little corporal major had fixed the flare to the boathook's end and thrust it aloft, thereby also increasing the distance at which it could be seen — by at least a Lankhmar league, the Mouser hurriedly calculated. A sound thought, he had to admit, almost a brilliancy. He had Mikkidu reverse Flotsam's course for practice, the steerside sweepsmen pulling water to swing the ship their way. He went to the prow to assure himself that the heavily muffled Mingol there was steadily scanning the fog ahead, next he returned to the stern, where Ourph stood by his tillerman, both equally thick-cloaked against the cold.
Then, as the red flare glowed on and the relative quiet of steady sweeping returned, the Mouser's ears unwilled resumed their work of searching the fog for strange sounds, and he said softly to Ourph without looking at him, “Tell me now, Old One, what you really think about your restless nomad brotheren and why they've ta'en to ship instead of horse.”
“They rush like lemmings, seeking death… for others,” the ancient croaked reflectively. “Gallop the waves instead of flinty steppes. To strike down cities is their chiefest urge, whether by land or sea. Perhaps they flee the People of the Ax.”
“I've heard of those,” the Mouser responded doubtfully. “Think you they'd league with Stardock's viewless fliers, who ride the icy airs above the world?”
“I do not know. They'll follow their clan wizards anywhere."
The red flare died. Pshawri came down rather jauntily from the top and reported to his dread captain, who dismissed him with a glare which was unexpectedly terminated by a broad wink and the command to burn another flare at the next bell, or demi-hour. Then turning once more to Ourph, the Mouser spoke low: “Talking of wizards, do you know of Khahkht?”
The ancient let five heartbeats go by, then croaked, “Khahkht is Khahkht. It is no tribal sorcerer, ‘tis sure. It dwells in farthest north within a dome — some say a floating globe — of blackest ice, from whence It watches the least deeds of men, devising evil every chance It gets, as when the stars are right — better say wrong — and all the Gods asleep. Mingols dread Khahkht and yet… whene'er they reach a grand climacteric they turn to It, beseech It ride ahead before their greatest, bloodiest centaurings. Ice is Its favored quarter, ice Its tool, and icy breath Its surest sign save blink.”
“Blink?” the Mouser asked uneasily.
“Sunlight or moonlight shining back from ice,” the Mingol replied. “Ice blink.”
A soft white flash paled for an instant the dark, pearly fog, and through it the Mouser heard the sound of oars — mightier strokes than those of Flotsam's sweeps and set in a more ponderous rhythm, yet oars or sweeps indubitably, and swiftly growing louder. The Mouser's face grew gladsome. He peered about uncertainly. Ourph's pointing finger stabbed dead ahead. The Mouser nodded, and pitching his voice trumpet-shrill to carry, he hailed forward, “Fafhrd! Ahoy!”
There was a brief silence, broken only by the beat of Flotsam's sweeps and of the oncoming oars, and then there came out of the fog the heart-quickening though still eerie cry, “Ahoy, small man! Mouser, well met in wildering waters! And now — on guard!” The Mouser's glad grin grew frantic. Did Fafhrd seriously intend to carry out in fog his fey suggestion of a feigned ships'-battle? He looked with a wild questioning at Ourph, who shrugged hugely for one so small.
A brighter white blink momentarily lightened the fog ahead. Without pausing an instant for thought, the Mouser shouted his commands. “Loadside sweeps! Pull water! Yarely! Steerside, push hard!” And unmindful of the Mingol manning it, he threw himself at the tiller and drove it steerside so that Flotsam's rudder would strengthen the turning power of the loadside sweeps.
It was well he acted as swiftly as he did. From out the fog ahead thrust a low, thick, sharp-tipped, glittering shaft that would otherwise have rammed Flotsam's bow and split her in twain. As it was, the ram grazed Flotsam's side with shuddering rasp as the small ship veered abruptly loadside in response to the desperate sweeping of its soldier-thieves.
And now, following its ram, the white, sharp prow of Fafhrd's ship parted the gleam-shot fog. Almost incredibly lofty that prow was, high as a house and betokening ship as huge, so that Flotsam's men had to crane necks up at it and even the Mouser gasped in fear and wonder. Fortunately it was yards to steerward as Flotsam continued to veer loadward, or else the smaller ship had been battered in.