Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber (Stories I through V)

My copy

It is time to read my 1986 Ace printing of the 1970 collection of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber Swords Against Death, which bears the subtitle "The Second Book of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser."  We'll deal with five of its ten stories today, and five in our next blog post.

"The Circle Curse" (1970)

"The Circle Curse" appears to have been written for this volume, to bridge the 1970 story "Ill Met in Lankhmar" with the five World War II-era stories that make up the second through sixth stories in Swords Against Death.  Having written a tragic story of a young Fafhrd and Gray Mouser leaving Lankhmar, apparently for good, Leiber had to face the problem that numerous stories he had written over decades presented Fafhrd and the Mouser as men who lived in Lankhmar, and here is how he solved it.

F&GM step out of Lankhmar onto the road to Ilthmar, whose citizens worship a rat god, determined to never return to Lankhmar, where their first loves were just killed by black magic in the service of the Thieves' Guild.  Just outside Lankhmar they meet Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, a magic-user who rides around in a walking hut, who warns them that they will be returning to Lankhmar someday.  The heroes spend years travelling around Nehwon, doing various jobs as bodyguards or entertainers.  Fafhrd learns that his barbarian tribe, the Snow Clan, has been massacred by Ice Gnomes.  After three years of travel they have not forgotten Vlana and Ivrian, but have gotten bored with the world beyond Lankhmar.  They are approached by Ninguable of the Seven Eyes, another powerful wizard, and he tells them the logical thing to do is to renounce their vow to avoid the city of the Black Toga and return to smoggy Lankhmar.  He appeals to their machismo ("Are you afraid?") and they respond by heading back to Lankhmar.

This story doesn't really stand on its own; it's kind of like an explanatory note, or the new chapters one finds in a van Vogt "fix-up" novel.

"The Jewels in the Forest" (1939)

This story, the first published F&GM story, made its debut under the title "Two Sought Adventure" in John W. Campbell's Unknown.  A glance at the first paragraph reveals evidence of revision.  I actually remember this one pretty well; I guess I read it multiple times back in the '80s.

The Gray Mouser tore a page out of a book in Lord Rannarsh's library, a page with a handwritten marginal note describing the location of a fabulous treasure!  So today the Mouser and Fafhrd are riding to this location, a centuries-old stone house with an attached tower that sits deep in a forest.  But Lord Rannarsh must have noticed the loss of the page, and previously made a copy of that marginal text, because he and a squad of his mail-clad soldiers are also on their way to the tower--a fight ensues.

In "The Jewels in the Forest" Leiber makes a conscious effort to distinguish himself from Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose heroes customarily fight off a dozen adversaries.  When Fafhrd finds himself facing two swordsmen at once, we are told this is a dangerous proposition, and the Mouser hurries to aid his barbarian friend.  The fighting in "The Jewels in the Forest" focuses on tactics, sneaking around and exploiting cover and that sort of thing, making it less mythic and romantic, perhaps, than Conan or John Carter's exploits, but more believable.

Another thing I found interesting about "The Jewels in the Forest" is the character of the Mouser, an emotional man who has a sort of changeable personality, agitated over fears both rational and superstitious one moment:

Weren't they making a mistake in leaving their horses with those strange peasants?  And mightn't those rogues [of Lord Rannarsh's] have followed them to the cottage?  And wasn't this the Day of the Toad, an unlucky day for entering deserted houses?  And shouldn't they have a short spear along, in case they met a leopard?  And wasn't that a whippoorwill he heard crying on his left hand, an augury of ill omen?

and happy and clowning and insouciant the next.  Does this have anything to do with the hinted psychic powers of F&GM's adversary?

The night before they invade the stone treasure house, Fafhrd and the Mouser stay with a peasant family who live nearby, and we see F&GM at leisure with people who aren't dangerous criminals or sorcerers.  To entertain the peasants and pass the time, the Mouser performs sleight of hand tricks and Fafhrd sings.  (Leiber came from a theatrical family, and the F&GM stories are full of disguises and performances and shows.)  One of the peasants is a girl "in the gawkish age of mid-adolescence" who has "a wild, coltish grace" and "lanky legs and slim arms."  The Mouser doesn't do anything lascivious with her (as we have seen him do with teenaged girls in 1970s stories like "The Mer-She" and "The Sadness of the Executioner") but when she is about to be crushed to death he does jump on her and roll with her out of the danger zone.  Hmm. 

The heavily foreshadowed surprise at the end of "The Jewels in the Forest" is that the stone house is a living creature--those who enter its wide doorway are stepping through its jaws into its mouth, and the jewels mentioned in the note the Mouser--and Lord Rannarsh before him--discovered are the alien creature's brain.  He who built (if that is the word) this living structure was a man of terrible evil, and he seeded the world with such notes as the one that ended up in Lord Rannarsh's library in order to attract treasure hunters to torment (the house plays cat and mouse with its victims, and seems to have psychic powers that instill fear which it switches on and off erratically) and destroy.  One of Leiber's questionable decisions in constructing this story is that, in a bizarre coincidence, the very same day that F&GM and Lord Rannarsh invade the house, the "ninth lineal descendant" of the evil man who lay this elaborate death trap arrives to destroy it--he is a holy man who wants to undo his ancestor's crime.  I'm not sure if Leiber included this holy man in the story to explain the origin of the house more clearly, to serve as a satire of religion (he is slain by his wicked ancestor's creation tout suite) or to make F&GM's success against the stone death house more believable by providing them some clues (in which case I guess the holy man's mission was a success.)  Whatever the case, and even though the idea of a guy on a mission to undo the evil of an ancestor from 300 years ago is a good one, I am inclined to feel that the holy man is superfluous--Lord Rannarsh could have accomplished any mechanical plot requirements fulfilled by the doomed holy man.

The last thing I'll say about "The Jewels in the Forest" is that we might consider the possibility of Lovecraftian influences on it.  (Leiber, his wife Jonquil, and his friend Harry O. Fischer--who invented F&GM--were all among Lovecraft's many correspondents, and Leiber considered Lovecraft a major influence.)  The monster, it is strongly implied, is from outer space--the brain is a bunch of jewels, including a diamond the size of a man's skull, floating in a mercury-like but black fluid, and Fafhrd can see the constellations in the fluid, and the diamond is said to be like a star, and is dangerously hot to the touch, and during the crisis in which the house tries to kill Fafhrd, Mouser, and the teenaged girl, the diamond moves of its own accord, chasing the barbarian around.  (We'll see more unorthodox depictions of stars in the careers of F&GM in "Stardock," one of my favorite F&GM stories.)

A good adventure story--thumbs up!  "Jewels in the Forest" was included by Martin H. Greenberg and Stephen Schmidt in their 1988 anthology Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond and by the Vandermeers in their 800+ page Big Book of Classic Fantasy: The Ultimate Collection in 2019.

"Thieves' House" (1943)

Here's another story from Unknown.  (In the 1973 Author's Intro in my 1986 edition of Swords Against Death, Leiber gives thanks to "the late great John W. Campbell, Jr.")  "Thieves' House" appeared in the same issue as A. E. van Vogt's "The Witch" and Fredric Brown's "The Angelic Angleworm," tales which we have already read.  A quick comparison of the first few pages of the WWII magazine version of "Thieves' House" and the version in my '80s paperback indicate that the story was updated for its appearance in Swords Against Death, Leiber adding references to the events described in the 1970 story "Ill Met In Lankhmar."

A document turns up in the Thieves' Guild warehouse suggesting that long ago the priests of Votishal stole some relics from the Guild--the skull and hands of Ohmphal, a master thief of long ago.  These ancient bones are said to be adorned with a fortune's worth of jewels, and the head of the Thieves' Guild wants those jewels desperately--it sounds like the Guild has not been running at a profit these last few quarters!  Confoundingly, the skull and hands are in the crypt of the temple of Votishal, which is famously guarded by a ferocious monster and sealed with an unpickable lock.  The Master of the Thieves' Guild has a plan to overcome these obstacles--trick Fafhrd into killing the beast and the Gray Mouser into picking the lock, and then steal the relics from the two heroes.

Leiber doesn't bother describing the operation in the temple of Votishal, but cuts directly to a scene of a guild thief carrying the skull and hands into Thieves' House with F&GM in hot pursuit.  Inside, our heroes spot a sexy redhead disappearing through a secret door with the skull and hands, and find the master of the Thieves' Guild has been strangled to death, evidently while examining the very relics the girl just absconded with!  Did the redhead slay him, or did the hands of Ohmphal spring to life and commit this deed?

(One of the notes in "Thieves' House" that is a little out of tune with the 1970s stories is the presence of this woman--we have been told, in "The Snow Women" and in "Ill Met in Lankhmar," that there are no women allowed in the Thieves' Guild.  There is also the fact that the thieves carry swords--in "Ill Met in Lankhmar" we were told guild thieves only carried knives.  Leiber tries to smooth out these inconsistencies by telling us in the Author's Introduction that the Master of the Guild who gets strangled in this story was, as he grew older, starting to break with tradition.)

The Mouser and Fafhrd are pursued through the labyrinthine Thieves' House, and become separated.  Stunned by blows to his head, Fafhrd gets totally lost and stumbles through a secret door, down some unlit stairs, into a tenebrous catacomb the guild thieves themselves have forgotten about, where uneasily rest the bejeweled skeletons of master thieves of the distant past!  These living dead thieves address Fafhrd, lamenting how today's thieves fail utterly to pay them homage, and demand that Fafhrd bring the skull and hands of their comrade Ohmphal down to them so that he may join them.  If he should fail to do so before the next midnight strikes, they will drain his life force!  Fafhrd climbs up out of the catacomb and is immediately knocked unconscious and captured by the thieves.

The new master of the Guild, who doesn't know that that woman took the skull and hands, has a message sent to the Mouser--Fafhrd will be killed if he doesn't bring to them the skull of Ohmphal.  The Mouser dresses up as a hideous old witch, and bluffs his way into the home of the redhead, whom he has learned is Ivlis, a wealthy dancer with servants and bodyguards.  The Mouser tricks Ivlis into revealing where she has hidden the skull and bones, ties her up and then carries the relics through the secret passage that lies between Ivlis's house and Thieves' House to the room where Fafhrd is being interrogated.  Ivlis, accompanied by her guards, is right behind the Mouser, and a confused three-sided melee ensues in which the new master of the Guild smashes the skull of Ohmphal.  (This fight would have been silly if the thieves, armed with just knives, had had to face the sword-armed F&GM and team Ivlis.)  Ivlis and our heroes join forces, and then a fourth party intervenes--from the catacombs below have arisen the ancient masters of the Guild, stride with a series of bony clicks into the room and wreak a terrible revenge on the Master of the Guild; in the confusion F&GM and Ivlis escape.

All the supernatural stuff and the action scenes in this one are good, and the Mouser's disguises and trickery are fun.  Thumbs up!  L. Sprague de Camp included "Thieves' House" in his 1971 anthology Warlocks and Warriors. 

"The Bleak Shore" (1940)

Another piece from Unknown, and I believe the second F&GM story to ever be published.  In 1963 "The Bleak Shore" appeared in two different anthologies of stories from Campbell's magazine, D. R. Bensen's The Unknown, an American offering, and Hell Hath Fury, a British one edited by George Hay.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are playing at dice in a Lankhmar tavern.  A pale little man in a black robe accosts them--the other patrons of the crowded tavern do not seem to notice this odd character.  The little weirdo puts a curse on F&GM, who abruptly get up from the dice table, proceed to their red-sailed sloop, and sail West through empty seas for weeks.

The middle part of "The Bleak Shore" is a sort of first-person narrative in the voice of Ourph, the sole survivor of the four Mingol slaves who man F&GM's sloop.  He describes the storms and other odd phenomena the six sailors encounter, and tells how F&GM rarely spoke or slept, spending endless hours staring ahead and holding to a steady westerly course.  "They were mad...or else under a curse, those two men...." relates the Mingol.

(Ourph is a recurring character in these F&GM stories.  I also want to say that I really like the idea of a F&GM story narrated by some third character, but this story is not fertile ground for this technique, as no other character can see or hear the antagonist in the first part of the story, and there are no witnesses to the third part of the story.)

Finally the sloop comes to a lifeless beach--there are no birds, there is no seaweed.  The ensorcelled adventurers go ashore, but the Mingols are told to leave: "We are dead men" explains the Mouser.  The slaves sail away, but of their number only Ourph makes it back to civilization.

Then we are back to a third person omniscient narrative.  Fafhrd and the Mouser come to a field of black sand, on which lie bleached bones of various creatures and a scattering of huge eggs, some of them as big as boulders, one as big as a tent!  F&GM come to their senses for the first time since leaving the Lankhmar tavern weeks ago.  They hear the voice of the pale little creepo in black, and then two of the eggs crack open--from each rises a bipedal reptilian monster, taller than a man, with a single long claw like a sword blade at the end of both of its forearms.

F&GM sword fight with these tireless armor-plated abominations; it looks bad, but then the Mouser has a brainwave.  One of the eggs is unlike the others, smaller and with a peculiar sheen.  The Mouser breaks off from the combat, runs to this egg, cracks it open.  Inside is a half-embryonic creature with a face like that of the little pale man in the black robe!  The Mouser kills it, and the claw beasts collapse, the eggs decay to dust.

"The Bleak Shore" is well-written, with interesting images and evocative descriptions of the sea, the monsters, and the dreadful shore, but it feels slight, like a filler story.  While the plots of stories like "The Snow Women" and "Thieves' House" and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" are carefully constructed and somewhat complex, and even a relatively simple plot like that of "Jewels in the Forest" includes a bunch of characters with their own motivations for F&GM to interact with, the plot of "The Bleak Shore" is very simple and the story proceeds in a dream-like fashion, inexorably rolling forward and not necessarily making a lot of sense.  that just kind of rolls inexorably forward.  What is the motivation of that weird little guy?  How did the Mouser know to crack open that smaller egg?  Logic is not a priority in this story; I guess you could call it a mood piece, almost a prose poem.

(A number of F&GM stories have this kind of plot--out of nowhere some weird phenomena tries to kill one or both of the heroes, and they and maybe even we readers have no idea why.  Among these are the 1970s stories "The Bait," "The Sadness of the Executioner," and "Beauty and the Beasts," plus "Under the Thumbs of the Gods," though the mysterious phenomena in that one is not murderous, and we might even suggest that "The Mer-She" is just a more elaborate and sophisticated take on this simple plot.  It is interesting to see Leiber use this sort of lazy plot way back in 1940, at the very dawn of the publication history of F&GM.)

Acceptable.

"The Howling Tower" (1941)

"The Howling Tower," since its debut in Unknown, has been reprinted in anthologies of SF stories about dogs like The Hounds of Hell (1974) and Dogtales! (1988).

F&GM are still far from Lankhmar, on some desolate plain.  They have hired a local they ran into to guide them, but they wake up one morning to find he has abandoned them.  Just last night this guy was telling them that the howling they heard wasn't from wolves, but from a mysterious tower, and that it is said that some men hear the howling in their dreams and are drawn away....

At the end of the day, after a long march, the two heroes set up camp and the Mouser climbs a hill and spies the tower far off in the distance--this is when they start hearing that howling again.  The next morning Fafhrd is gone, and the Mouser heads to the tower, where he finds Fafhrd asleep, all bandaged up but not injured, and a nervous little wizard, who tells the story of his life and the genesis of the howling.

This queer little geezer, as a youth decades ago, employing subtle means, murdered his dysfunctional family one by one--considered the weakest and stupidest among them, they never suspected he was the killer.  Then he locked up the family's pack of hounds in the cellar; for weeks as they starved these canines howled incessantly.  Finally the last hound expired, but the howling continued!  As the howling grew louder, the killer realized that the ghosts were getting stronger, and if they got strong enough they would destroy him!  The murderer studied his father's tomes of magic and came up with a scheme to quiet the ghost dogs and avert their vengeance, if only temporarily.  He began drugging those drawn to the tower in such a way that their souls would go to the limbo where persisted the dog's hungry spirits, where they were devoured, distracting and satiating the hounds for a space.  The wizard believes that the soul of his latest victim, big and strong Fafhrd, will grant him a long reprieve (the bandages will staunch the flow of blood from the wounds that will appear on Fafhrd's real life body as his soul is torn by the ghost dogs--this will further increase Fafhrd's endurance.)  When the Mouser threatens the old man, he admits that if the barbarian is strong enough, Fafhrd may even drive off the dog and wake up when the drug wears off in some hours time, and even helpfully suggests that the Mouser drink some of the drug so he can break on through to the other side and help his friend!

The Mouser embraces this plan, but modifies it, forcing some of the drug down the wizard's throat before swigging a dose himself.  Both of their souls leave their bodies to appear on a hellish landscape where Fafhrd is fighting the pack of dogs.  The Mouser runs to help the Northerner, but as soon as the hounds sense the wizard they ignore our heroes and pursue their killer.  When Fafhrd and the Mouser return to their bodies they find the wizard's body in gory tatters.

Acceptable.

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I'm enjoying this project--the second half of Swords Against Death in the next installment of MPorcius Fiction Log.