The Second Book of Lankhmar

shivered in the sunlight.
    Slinoor was saying, “It is not good for animals to try to be men.” Squid 's skipper gazed somberly at the silent white aristos. “Have you ever heard tell of the legend of—” he began, hesitated, then broke off, shaking his head as if deciding he had been about to say too much.
    “A sail!” The call winged down thinly from the crow's nest. “A black sail to windward!”
    “What manner of ship?” Slinoor shouted up.
    “I know not, master. I see only sail top.”
    “Keep her under view, boy,” Slinoor commanded.
    “Under view it is, master.”
    Slinoor paced to the starboard rail and back.
    “Movarl's sails are green,” Fafhrd said thoughtfully.
    Slinoor nodded. “Lankhmar's are white. The pirates’ were red, mostly. Lankhmar's sails once were black, but now that color's only for funeral barges and they never venture out of sight of land. At least I've never known...”
    The Mouser broke in with, “You spoke of dark antecedents of this voyaging. Why dark?”
    Slinoor drew them back against the taffrail, away from the stocky helmsmen. Fafhrd ducked a little, passing under the arching tiller. They looked all three into the twisting wake, their heads bent together.
    Slinoor said, “You've been out of Lankhmar. Did you know this is not the first gift-fleet of grain to Movarl?”
    The Mouser nodded. “We'd been told there was another. Somehow lost. In a storm, I think. Glipkerio glossed over it.”
    “There were two,” Slinoor said tersely. “Both lost. Without a living trace. There was no storm.”
    “What then?” Fafhrd asked, looking around as the rats chittered a little. “Pirates?"
    “Movarl had already whipped the pirates east. Each of the two fleets was galley-guarded like ours. And each sailed off into fair weather with a good west wind.” Slinoor smiled thinly. “Doubtless Glipkerio did not tell you of these matters for fear you might beg off. We sailors and the Lankhmarines obey for duty and the honor of the City, but of late Glipkerio's had trouble hiring the sort of special agents he likes to use for second bowstrings. He has brains of a sort, our overlord has, though he employs them mostly to dream of visiting other world bubbles in a great diving-bell or sealed metallic diving-ship, while he sits with trained girls watching trained rats and buys off Lankhmar's enemies with gold and repays Lankhmar's ever-more-greedy friends with grain, not soldiers.” Slinoor grunted. “Movarl grows most impatient, you know. He threatens, if the grain comes not, to recall his pirate-patrol, league with the land-Mingols and set them at Lankhmar.”
    “Northerners, even though not snow-dwelling, league with Mingols?” Fafhrd objected. “Impossible!”
    Slinoor looked at him. “I'll say just this, ice-eating Northerner. If I did not believe such a league both possible and likely—and Lankhmar thereby in dire danger—I would never have sailed with this fleet, honor and duty or no. Same's true of Lukeen, who commands the galley. Nor do I think Glipkerio would otherwise be sending to Movarl at Kvarch Nar his noblest performing rats and dainty Hisvet.”
    Fafhrd growled a little. “You say both fleets were lost without a trace?” he asked incredulously.
    Slinoor shook his head. “The first was. Of the second, some wreckage was sighted by an Ilthmar trader Lankhmar-bound. The deck of only one grain ship. It had been ripped off its hull, splinteringly—how or by what, the Ilthmart dared not guess. Tied to a fractured stretch of railing was the ship's master, only hours dead. His face had been nibbled, his body gnawed.”
    “Fish?” the Mouser asked.
    “Seabirds?” Fafhrd inquired.
    “Dragons?” a third voice suggested, high, breathless, and as merry as a schoolgirl's. The three men turned around, Slinoor with guilty swiftness.
    The Demoiselle Hisvet stood as tall as the Mouser, but judging by her face, wrists, and ankles was considerably slenderer. Her face was delicate and taper-chinned with small mouth and pouty upper lip that lifted just enough to show a double dash of pearly tooth. Her complexion was creamy pale except for two spots of color high on her cheeks. Her straight fine hair, which grew low on her forehead, was pure white touched with silver and all drawn back through a silver ring behind her neck, whence it hung unbraided like a unicorn's tail. Her eyes had china whites but darkly pink irises around the large black pupils. Her body was enveloped