Swords Against the Shadowland

"Perhaps," the Gray Mouser admitted. "But there's one thing I know well enough." Forcing a grin, he put a hand to his stomach. "I'm so hungry I could eat a Quarmallian ox."

Fafhrd raised an eyebrow and glanced at the empty dwellings that surrounded them. "You'd better keep that face of yours out of sight," he said, rising to his feet. "I’ll find breakfast. You see if you can find us a room around here."

Scratching his head, the Mouser turned in a slow circle. "Can we afford this neighborhood?" he asked.

Fafhrd patted his purse. "It's in our price range," he answered. "I wasn't fool enough to leave Sadaster's house without a few choice baubles."

"Well if price is no object," the Mouser said with a dainty curtsey, "I'll find your Lordship a rathole with a view."

"I'll settle for a solid floor."

Fafhrd adjusted the hood of his cloak to conceal his face as he started back through the alley to Nun Street. The smell of smoke hung in the air as he reached the thoroughfare, and to the north, a black plume rose into the blue sky.

At first, he considered joining the crowd he knew would be gathered to watch the fire. There would be plenty of pockets to pick and purse strings to cut. However, the Thieves' Guild would no doubt have agents working the same crowd, and though he longed for an excuse to tangle with that group again, now was not the time.

He worked his way west, keeping to narrow roads and back streets, until he came to the river. A pair of barges, majestically graceful for their cumbersome size and design, sailed past with pennons streaming in the wind, headed for Lankhmar's southern lands. A few fishing boats, trawling close to the shores, bounced on the barges' powerful wakes.

Standing in the dusty, rutted track that paralleled the river, Fafhrd scanned the banks with an intense gaze, noting an old woman with her basket of laundry, a fisherman half asleep over a cane pole, a trio of young boys skipping stones. For a moment, he envied them their simple, carefree lives.

But they weren't really carefree, he reminded himself. If he had learned nothing else he knew this, that everyone struggled. The old woman probably worked to support herself. The fisherman waited patiently for the fish that would feed his family. The children—perhaps they wondered where they would sleep next, and would they be safe?

He looked at them again, those citizens of Lankhmar, willing himself to see past the surface, through the illusion. They were poor; their clothes gave that away. They were brave, too; they went about their tasks and their lives, while others in the city hid from the madness that pervaded the city.

He wondered what ghosts they carried around.

Stepping off the road, he followed the grassy bank until he reached the old woman's side. Her back was bent and arched as she leaned over the water. The knobby ridges of her spine showed right through the threadbare black dress she wore. A frayed brown ribbon wound through her gray hair and held it in a knot on top of her head, exposing the deep wrinkles carved into her bird-like neck and high-cheeked face.

As Fafhrd's shadow fell across the water, she froze. Then, tossing a sopping wad of cloth into the basket at her side, she sat stiffly back on her heels and looked up wordlessly. Her eyes, though they contained a certain fear, revealed more—a deep resignation, perhaps even boredom, that let her face death, if such this giant represented, with an almost imperious dignity.

"Don't worry, grandmother," Fafhrd said as he reached into his purse. He pulled out a necklace of amethysts and silver beads, thinking of Sameel and Laurian, from whose room he had taken it. Kneeling down, he spread the precious ornament upon the wet clothes and forced a smile. Briefly, he touched her shoulder. Then he concealed the necklace beneath a damp fold. "Something for a rainy day."

The old woman gazed at her mysterious benefactor for a long, suspicious moment before her eyes flickered to the basket. Fafhrd rose quietly and moved back to the road, feeling a rare satisfaction. He thought Laurian would be pleased, too. He shot a final glance back over his shoulder—and paused.

For an instant, as she rose half-crouched over her basket, her black dress hanging on her frail form like an old loose robe, she reminded him of someone else. He recalled another thin figure draped in black—the fisherman, poling his skiff across the river late at night, the pilot who, in a stranger form, had sailed upon a sea of fog through his dreams.

He had been looking for that figure, he realized, as he scanned the riverbanks again. Instead, he had found the old woman, so thin and gray, at the end of her days. Repressing a shiver as he watched her from a distance, he wondered, was this an omen of his own demise?