“Can't have fire aboard a ship going into battle,” the Mouser responded automatically. “Besides, look how Rill got burned.”
“But this morning, for the first time in over a year, we found the fire in the Flame Den unaccountably gone out,” Cif finished. “We sifted the ashes. There was not a spark.”
“Well,” said the Mouser thoughtfully, “perhaps yesterday at the great rock face after he flamed so high the god temporarily shifted his dwelling to the mountain's fiery heart. See how she smokes!” And he pointed toward Darkfire, where the black column going off westward was thicker.
“Yes, but we don't have him at hand that way,” Cif objected troubledly.
“Well, at any rate he's still on the Island,” the Mouser told her. “And in a sense, I'm sure, on Flotsam too,” he added, remembering (it made his fire-stung fingers smart anew) the black torch-end he still had in his pouch. That was another thing, he told himself, that wanted thinking about….
But just then Dwone came sailing close by to report the Rime fleet ready for action and hardly to be held back. The Mouser had perforce to get Flotsam underway, hoisting what sail she could carry for the beat against the wind, and setting his thieves and their green replacements to sweeping while Ourph beat time, so that she'd be able to keep ahead of the handier fishing craft.
There were cheers from the shore and the other ships and for a short while the Mouser was able to bask in self-satisfaction at Flotsam moving out so bravely at the head of the fleet, and his crew so well disciplined, and (he could see) Pshawri handling Sea Hawk nicely enough, and Cif standing beside him, glowing-eyed — and himself a veritable admiral, no less, by Mog!
But then the thoughts which he hadn't had time to straighten all day began to cark him again. Above all else he realized that there was something altogether foolhardy, in fact utterly ridiculous, about them all setting sail so confidently with only one hare-brained plan of action, on nothing more than the crackling word of a fire, the whisper of burning twigs. Still he had a compelling feeling in his bones that they were doing the right thing and nothing could harm them, and he would peradventure find the Mingol fleet and that another wonderful inspiration would come to him at the last minute….
At that moment his eye lit on Mikkidu sweeping with considerable style in the bowmost steerside position and he came to a decision.
“Ourph, take the tiller and take her out,” he directed. “Call time to the sweeps.
“My dear, I must leave you for a brief space,” he told Cif. Then taking the last Mingol with him, he went forward and said in a gruff voice to Mikkidu, “Come with me to my cabin. A conference. Gib will replace you here,” and then hurried below with his now apprehensive-eyed lieutenant past the wondering glances of the women.
Facing Mikkidu across the table in the low-ceilinged cabin (one good thing about having a short captain and still shorter crew, it occurred to him) he eyed his subordinate mercilessly and said, “Lieutenant, I made a speech to the Rime Islers in their council hall night before last that had them cheering me at the end. You were there. What did I say?”
Mikkidu writhed. “Oh, captain,” he protested, blushing, “how can pou expect—”
“Now none of that stuff about it being so wonderful you can't remember — or other weaseling out,” the Mouser cut him short. “Pretend the ship's in a tempest and her safety depends on you giving me a square answer. Gods, haven't I taught you yet that no man of mine ever got hurt from me by telling me the truth?”
Mikkidu digested that with a great gulp and then surrendered. “Oh captain,” he said, “I did a terrible thing. That night when I was following you from the docks to the council hall and you were with the two ladies, I bought a drink from a street vendor and gulped it down while you weren't looking. It didn't taste strong at all, I swear it, but it must have had a tremendous delayed kick, for when you jumped on the table and started to talk, I blacked out — my word upon it! When I came to you were saying something about Groniger and Afreyt leading out half the Rimelanders to reinforce Captain Fafhrd and the rest of us sailing out to entice the Sun Mingols into a great whirlpool, and everybody was cheering like mad — and so of course I cheered too, just as if I'd heard everything that they had.”
“You can swear to the truth of that?” the Mouser asked in a terrible voice.
Mikkidu nodded miserably.
The Mouser came swiftly around the table and embraced him and kissed him on his quivering cheek. “There's a good lieutenant,” he said most warmly, clapping him on the back. “Now go, good Mikkidu, and invite the lady Cif attend me here. Then make yourself useful on deck in any way your shrewdness may suggest. Don't stand now in a daze. Get at it, man.”
By the time Cif arrived (not long) he had decided on his approach to her.
“Dear Cif,” he said without preamble, coming to her. “I have a confession to make to you,” and then he told her quite humbly but clearly and succinctly the truth about his “wonderful words" — that he simply hadn't heard one of them. When he was done he added, “So you can see not even my vanity is involved — whatever it was, it was Loki's speech, not mine — so do you now tell me truth about it, sparing me nothing.”
She looked at him with a wondering smile and said, “Well, I was puzzled as to what you could have said to Mikkidu to make him so head-in-the-clouds happy — and am not sure I understand that even now. But, yes, my experience was, I now confess, identical with his — and not even the taking of an unknown drink to excuse it. My mind went blank, time passed me by, and I heard not a word you said, except those last directions about Afreyt's expedition and the whirlpool. But everyone was cheering and so I pretended to have heard, not wanting to injure your feelings or feel myself a fool. Oh, I was a sheep! Once I was minded to confess my lapse to Afreyt, and now I wish I had, for she had a strange look on her then — But I didn't. You think, as I do now, that she also…?”
The Mouser nodded decisively."I think that not one soul of them heard a word to remember of the main body of my — or, rather, Loki's — talk, but later they all pretended to have done so, just like so many sheep indeed — and I the black goat leading them on. So only Loki knows what Loki said and we sail out upon an unknown course against the Mingols, taking all on trust.”
“What to do now?” she asked wonderingly.
Looking into her eyes with a tentative smile and a slight shrug that was at once acquiescent and comical, he said, “Why, we go on, for it is your course and I am committed to it.”
Flotsam gave a long lurch then, with a wave striking along her side, and it nudged Cif against him, and their arms went around each other, and their lips met thrillingly — but not for long, for he must hurry on deck, and she too, to discover (or rather confirm) what had befallen.
Flotsam progressed out of Salthaven harbor and the salt cliffs lee to the Outer Sea where the east wind smote them more urgently and the swells and the sunlight struck their canvas and deck. The Mouser took the tiller from sad-faced Ourph and that old one and Gib and Mikkidu set sail for the first eastward tack. And one by one Sea Hawk and the weirdly accoutered fishing boats repeated their maneuver, following Flotsam out.
That selfsame east wind which blew west across the southern half of Rime Isle, and against which Flotsam labored, farther out at sea was hurrying on the horse-ships of the Sunwise Mingols. The grim galleys, each with its bellying square sail, made a great drove of ships, and now and again a stallion screamed in its bow-cage as they plunged ahead through the waves, which cascaded spray through the black, crazily-angled bars. All eyes strained west — ahead, and it would have been hard to say which eyes glared the more madly, those of the fur-clad, grinningly white-toothed men, or those of long-faced, grimacingly white-toothed beasts.