THE BAIT

Fritz Leiber

The American fantasist Fritz Leiber, who is credited with inventing the term ‘Sword and Sorcery’, was also the creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, two unique adventurers introduced in 1939, whose exploits have subsequently been acknowledged as among the most literate and important series in the genre. The pair were the first of many such partnerships in fantasy fiction, although Leiber’s master­stroke was to make Fafhrd a huge, powerful man while his companion was small, nimble and quick-witted. Their deeds, which Leiber con­tinued to recount throughout his life, are a mixture of high drama and sly humour which began with the aptly entitled ‘Two Sought Adventure’ (Unknown, August 1939) and continued in novelettes, short stories and books including Swords Against Wizardry (1968), Swords Against Death (1970) and Swords and Ice-Magic (1977). In an interview in 1982 Leiber claimed that it was ‘bringing together the reading of my youth, Robert E. Howard and James Branch Cabell, that more or less got Fafhrd and the Mouser started—plus a little of my knowledge of the sagas of Norse mythology.’ Fafhrd he envisaged as less of a superman than Howard’s Conan—a tall, gangly Nordic figure who, some have said, was modelled on the author himself-—while the Gray Mouser was a mixture of an effervescent college friend, Harry Fischer, who had introduced him to fantasy fiction, and the mischievous Norse god, Loki. The kingdom in which they operate, Lankhmar, was once described by Leiber as a kind of ‘Bagh­dad on the Pacific Coast’.

Fritz Leiber (1910—1992) was born in Chicago, the son of a Shakespearean actor, and for a time he appeared with his father’s touring company. Leaving the stage, he worked as an associate editor on Science Digest for twelve years before the success of his novel Con­jure Wife (1943), a tale of witchcraft in a modern university, enabled him to become a full-time writer. It has been filmed twice and adapted for the TV series Moment of Fear. This was followed by a string of horror stories, Science Fiction tales and more ‘Sword and Sorcery’, which won him admiring followers in all three genres and the accolade of ‘Grand Master of American Fantasy’. The following Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, in which the pair squabble over a girl of supernatural beauty, is for me one of the most amusing in his entire oeuvre. It was originally written for Whispers magazine in December 1973.

* * * *

Fafhrd the Northerner was dreaming of a great mound of gold.

The Gray Mouser the Southerner, ever cleverer in his forever competitive fashion, was dreaming of a heap of diamonds. He hadn’t tossed out all of the yellowish ones yet, but he guessed that already his glistening pile must be worth more than Fafhrd’s glowing one.

How he knew in his dream what Fafhrd was dreaming was a mystery to all beings in Newhon, except perhaps Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ninguable of the Seven Eyes, respectively the Mouser’s and Fafhrd’s sorcerer-mentors. Maybe, a vast, black base­ment mind shared by the two was involved.

Simultaneously they awoke, Fafhrd a shade more slowly, and sat up in bed.

Standing midway between the feet of their cots was an object that fixed their attention. It weighed about eighty pounds, was about four feet eight inches tall, had long straight black hair pendant from head, had ivory-white skin, and was as exquisitely formed as a slim chesspiece of the King of Kings carved from a single moonstone. It looked thirteen, but the lips smiled a cool self-infatuated seventeen, while the gleaming deep eye-pools were first blue melt of the Ice Age. Naturally, she was naked.

‘She’s mine!’ the Gray Mouser said, always quick from the scabbard.

‘No, she’s mine!’ Fafhrd said almost simultaneously, but conced­ing by that initial ‘No’ that the Mouser had been first, or at least he had expected the Mouser to be first.

‘I belong to myself and to no one else, save two or three virile demidevils,’ the small naked girl said, though giving them each in turn a most nymphish lascivious look.

‘I’ll fight you for her,’ the Mouser proposed.

‘And I you,’ Fafhrd confirmed, slowly drawing Graywand from its sheath beside his cot.

The Mouser likewise slipped scalpel from its rat-skin container.

The two heroes rose from their cots.

At this moment, two personages appeared a little behind the girl— from thin air, to all appearances. Both were at least nine feet tall. They had to bend, not to bump the ceiling. Cobwebs tickled their pointed ears. The one on the Mouser’s side was black as wrought iron. He swiftly drew a sword that looked forged from the same material.

At the same time, the other newcomer—bone-white, this one—produced a silver-seeming sword, likely steel plated with tin.

The nine-footer opposing the Mouser aimed a skull-splitting blow at the top of his head. The Mouser parried in prime and his opponent’s weapon shrieked off to the left. Whereupon, smartly swinging his rapier widdershins, the Mouser slashed off the black fiend’s head, which struck the floor with a horrid clank.

The white afreet opposing Fafhrd trusted to a downward thrust. But the Northerner, catching his blade in a counter-clockwise bind, thrust him through, the silvery sword missing Fafhrd’s right temple by the thinness of a hair.

With a petulant stamp of her naked heel, the nymphet vanished into thin air, or perhaps Limbo.

The Mouser made to wipe off his blade on the cotclothes, but discovered there was no need. He shrugged. ‘What a misfortune for you, comrade,’ he said in a voice of mocking woe. ‘Now you will not be able to enjoy the delicious chit as she disports herself on your heap of gold.’

Fafhrd moved to cleanse Graywand on his sheets, only to note that it too was altogether unbloodied. He frowned. ‘Too bad for you, best of friends,’ he sympathised. ‘Now you won’t be able to possess her as she writhes with girlish abandon on your couch of diamonds, their glitter striking opalescent tones from her pale flesh.’

‘Mauger that effeminate artistic garbage, how did you know that I was dreaming diamonds?’ the Mouser demanded.

‘How did I?’ Fafhrd asked himself wonderingly. At last he begged the question with, ‘The same way, I suppose, that you knew I was dreaming of gold.’

The two excessively long corpses chose that moment to vanish, and the severed head with them.

Fafhrd said sagely, ‘Mouser, I begin to believe that supernatural forces were involved in this morning’s haps.’

‘Or else hallucinations, oh great philosopher,’ the Mouser coun­tered somewhat peevishly.

‘Not so,’ Fafhrd corrected, ‘for see, they’ve left their weapons behind.’

‘True enough,’ the Mouser conceded, rapaciously eyeing the wrought-iron and tin-plated blades on the floor. ‘Those will fetch a fancy price on Curio Court.’

The Great Gong of Lankhmar, sounding distantly through the walls, boomed out the twelve funereal strokes of noon, when burial parties plunge spade into earth.

‘An after-omen,’ Fafhrd pronounced. ‘Now we know the source of the supernal force. The Shadowland, terminus of all funerals.’

‘Yes,’ the Mouser agreed. ‘Prince Death, that eager boy, has had another go at us.’

Fafhrd splashed cool water onto his face from a great bowl set against the wall. ‘Ah well,’ he spoke through the splashes, ‘ ‘twas a pretty bait at least. Truly, there’s nothing like a nubile girl, enjoyed or merely glimpsed naked, to give one an appetite for breakfast.’

‘Indeed yes,’ the Mouser replied, as he tightly shut his eyes and briskly rubbed his face with a palm full of white brandy. ‘She was just the sort of immature dish to kindle your satyrish taste for maids newly budded.’

In the silence that came as the splashing stopped, Fafhrd inquired innocently, ‘Whose satyrish taste?’