Swords Against the Shadowland

The Mouser interrupted him. "It's Malygris's curse, isn't it?" he said. "It's touched you, too." He bit his lip. A band tightened around his chest, and breath failed him for a moment as he regarded the only man he had ever deigned to call friend.

Then something exploded inside him. He stamped his foot in the grass and smashed his fists on his thighs. "Did you think you could keep it secret?" he raged. "Why didn't you tell me?"

His shouts rolled over the water, and the night carried his accusing words far up and down the riverbanks. He didn't care who heard; Malygris was gone, escaped, and out of the Mouser's thoughts completely. Fafhrd alone mattered.

Not Malygris, not all of Lankhmar, not Sheelba. Only Fafhrd.

"How would I have profited by telling you?" Fafhrd answered with a restrained tension that betrayed his own turmoil. "The only thing you can do is what we've tried and failed so far to do—kill the creator of this dismal curse and take a drop of his heart's blood to the one who can effect a cure."

"And you thought you could do that best by sneaking off without me?" The Mouser shook his fists at the sky. Half-blinded by anger and a sense of betrayal he knew in his heart to be misplaced, he seized up the burning torch and hurled it toward the river, then scattered the campfire with a sweeping kick. Hot ash and sparks spiraled around him and upward into the dark night. "We are partners, Fafhrd—or we are nothing!"

Fafhrd coughed again and hung his head. From deep-shadowed eyes made strange by the remaining pieces of fireglow he fixed the Mouser with a hard look. He put one hand on his chest as if to measure his own heartbeat.

"This is no way for a man to die," he said, his voice little more than a whisper. "I feel it eating at me inside, like a tiny worm whose appetite is endless." He extended one hand toward his partner. "My grip is weaker. My breath is shorter. I don't have Sadaster’s magic to stave off the outward symptoms, nor his blindness to what is really happening." He swallowed. "I left you behind to spare you this."

"You can't spare me!" The Mouser fairly screamed. "The risk is already before me. Did Sheelba not transport me as he did you? Did Laurian's ill-considered spell not drive me to . . ."

Abruptly he shut up, and just as abruptly he mastered all his rage and fear. Such an emotional outburst shamed him. Fafhrd needed his friendship and his sword arm—not anger that should rightly be directed at their enemy.

Reaching over a shoulder, he felt his upper back where the red welts of Liara's velvet whip still stung his flesh. "Well, never mind what it drove me to," he said at last, forcing a little chuckle as he went to Fafhrd's side, "though you'd love to hear the tale."

Frowning, Fafhrd backed off a step and held up a hand. "I face a horrible enough end," he warned. "I beg you, come no closer lest I choke on your reek!"

A grin broke over the Mouser's face and he flung his arms wide. "Then let it be a mercy killing!" he cried.

With that, he leaped upon Fafhrd, wrapping arms and legs about his partner's torso, clinging and laughing and waggling his head under Fafhrd's nose while the Northerner made all manner of gagging and retching noises and tried to wrestle free.

Finally they fell upon the ground, and Fafhrd lay still, eyes wide and staring, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth—a morbidly funny impersonation of death.

The Mouser straddled Fafhrd's chest. "Now my stink is all over you," he announced victoriously.

Fafhrd's eyes snapped closed; his head rolled limply to the side. "The curse in my body is bowing and scraping in the presence of a more potent and horrible force," he whispered.

"Maybe I can drive it out completely," the Mouser suggested. Making a wad of the muddiest part of his cloak, he pressed it to Fafhrd's nose.

Fafhrd's gag this time was genuine. With bunching muscles, he flung his partner off and got to his feet. "Physician, the cure is worse than the disease." He snatched up his sword from where it had fallen and pushed the blade into the sheath on his belt.

The Mouser picked himself up from the grass, straightened his cloak on his shoulders, and turned serious once more. With a grim note he answered, "Then together let's seek out the recommended medicine."

By unspoken agreement, they turned away from the river and strode up the shallow slope toward the city. After only a few paces, they stopped again. Something gleamed in the grass. Bending down, Fafhrd retrieved his dagger. He held it up. The remaining light from the scattered campfire shone on the wetly incarnadined blade.

Fafhrd growled low in his throat, then opened his mouth and drew the blade over his tongue and licked the blood away. "It's only from his arm," he said sternly, "yet it may have an effect."

The Mouser nodded. "If only to make you hungry for the more potent stuff."