The Second Book of Lankhmar

especially when he surveyed the emptiness below.
           The lazing maiden did not look up or give the least other indication that she had heard him.
           "Ahoy!" Fafhrd repeated, quite a bit more loudly, but again with no discernible reaction from her, unless her yawn now was intended as that.
           "Ahoy!" Fafhrd bellowed, forgetting his worries about the possible dire effects of loud noises.
           Rather slowly, then, she turned her head and lifted her face toward him. But nothing more.
           "Cloud girl," Fafhrd called down in friendly tones but a shade peremptorily, "summon your mistress on deck. I'm an old friend."
           She went on staring at him. Nothing more, except perhaps to lift her brows superciliously.
           Fafhrd called sharply, "I'm Captain Fafhrd, out of Seahawk ," naming his ship riding at anchor in Rime harbor. "And as you can plainly see, I'm in distress. Inform your captain of these circumstances. And be assured she knows me well."
           After staring at him a while more, the cloud girl nodded moodily and descended to the deck hand over hand, taking her time, and after another look up at him, strolled toward the stern-castle.
           Fafhrd was annoyed. "Oh, hurry up, girl," he called, "and if it's formalities you want, tell the Queen of Arilia that an old friend respectfully craves instant audience."
           She paused in the door of the stern-castle to look up at him once more and inquire in a shrill pert voice, "Was that the respect led you to piss on our ship?" before she flipped up the tail of her chemise and vanished inside.
           Fafhrd made dignified growling noises in his throat, though there were none to hear them but the gulls, and was emboldened to try to swim down to the cloud-ship's mast top, getting himself positioned with head turned down toward it, body upside down, though it took an intense effort of will to make himself use full power in what persisted in seeming an attempt to come unstuck from the heights and launch a disastrous fall. He kept himself aimed at the rigging so he'd intercept it if the worst occurred.
           He was breathing heavily and had fought his way down, he judged, about a quarter of the distance when the saucy cloud girl reemerged, followed (at last!) by Frix, garbed like a dashing captain of Amazon marines in tropical dress uniform of silver-trimmed white lace which strikingly set off her slender form, dark hair, and coppery complexion wonderfully, white deerskin hip boots, a wide-brimmed hat of like material, with ostrich plumes and a silver-studded belt of snow-serpent hide from which depended a long slim saber with silver fittings.
           She glanced up at shaggy-headed, hairy, naked Fafhrd laboring down toward her with prodigious effort and spoke a word to the cloud maiden clad in her scanty lace, who lifted her silver trumpet to her lips and blew a sweet and stirring call.
           Whereupon there came trooping from the stern-castle six tall willowy women akin to Frix in figure and dress-uniformed like to the soldiers in such a captain's company, except that from their unstudded belts there hung, not swords, but in each instance three objects which Fafhrd first identified as a cased small-dirk, a tiny sporran, and a small cylindrical canteen, while upon their neatly short-cropped heads were uniform caps of colors peach, lime, lemon, vermilion, lavender, and robin's egg, counting from first to last as they lined up. They were followed by a smaller she, who might have been the pert trumpeter's twin, except the silver instrument she carried was a crossbow from which depended a coil of thin silver line. Frix spoke to her, pointing upward. She dropped to a bare knee, and bending her back acutely and letting the coil fall to the deck beside her, aimed her piece at Fafhrd.
           Fortunately for his composure, he divined her intent and dear Frix's purpose just as she let fly.
           Her flashing missile mounted swiftly and surely. The line it carried aloft uncoiled from the deck with rippling smoothness and nary a tangle. The blunt silver quarrel reached the apex of its flight a foot from Fafhrd's face. His right hand closed upon it confidently, as if he were capturing a stingless glow wasp. The six tall and almost spidery-slender mariners took up the other end of the silvery line and began to haul. Fafhrd felt the line tighten without