Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (sometimes rendered as Grey Mouser) are a pair of characters created by the author Fritz Leiber. Their adventures are collected in a series of books varying in number depending on edition and publication.

They are a pair of hard-drinking, hard-fighting, woman-obsessed thieves, both with a finely-wrought sense of personal aesthetics and a complete inability to hold onto any of their plundered wealth. They are expert swordsmen, climbers, sailors, riders and practically any other skill that may come in handy for a plot device.

They live in an invented world called Nehwon, its name itself a homage to Erewhon. Much of the action takes place in the principal city Lankhmar.

The canonical series is:

1. Swords and Deviltry
2. Swords Against Death
3. Swords in the Mist
4. Swords Against Wizardry
5. The Swords of Lankhmar
6. Swords and Ice Magic
7. The Knight and Knave of Swords

Fafhrd

Fafhrd is on the surface the stereotypical "northern barbarian". He is considerably taller than average; he usually has long, wild, red hair and beard (although see Lean Times in Lankhmar); he wears furs crudely cut and cured, and wields a hefty sword which he calls Graywand. He has a predilection for older women, usually tall and rangy like himself, although he has been shown not to be particularly fussy in this regard.

His singling voice is better than average, pitched rather higher than would perhaps be expected for one so large; this is as a result of his training in early years to be a Skald.

His character is based on the conventional Nordic folk tradition, enhanced and carved for literary effect.

His parentage, upbringing and early life are depicted in the story The Snow Women.

The Gray Mouser

Only otherwise known by his childhood nickname "Mouse", the Gray Mouser appears never to have had a conventional name. Aspects of his early life, and how he turned out the way he did, are portrayed in the story The Unholy Grail.

He is a smallish, handsome, sly-looking and foppish man with an extreme streak of narcissism and egotism. He usually wears gray garments of fine cut, usually of ratskin and silk, manufactured and repaired by an erstwhile colleague in Lankhmar, Nattick Nimblefingers (who never actually appears in the Nehwon canon - his purpose in the plot is merely to provide a pretext for the Gray Mouser to appear his usual dapper self after an episode of considerable exertion and privation). He sports a long, thin blade which he calls Scalpel, and also a smaller dagger-like blade for his other hand, which he calls Cat's Claw.

His own sexual predilection is towards women rather younger than himself, to an extreme that in conventional Western terrestrial society would perhaps border on illegality.

Nehwon

The world in which all the action takes place (except for one story, Adept's Gambit, which oddly takes place in approximately the pre-Roman Middle East of our homeworld Earth itself, although not one which can bre reliably historically placed). Nehwon is a world which roughly corresponds to the Iron Age period of Earth, in which technology is primitive, energy is generated by muscle-power and wood-burning, and transport is by horse and ship (propelled either by sails or by oars).

Magic works, when germane to the plot. Strange invented beasts populate it, like giant hot-blooded white-furred snakes, multi-headed plesiousaur-like sea-monsters and intelligent rats who walk upright and wear clothes.

Lankhmar

Lankhmar is the main city in Nehwon, in which much of the action takes place. It is noisy, smelly, anarchic, scruffy and crime-riddled, in other words, a perfect setting for tales of unbridled spooky swashbuckling. Significantly to the calling of both Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the Thieves' Guild is a powerful presence here, as is the Beggar's Guild. Early stories in the canon feature conflicts between the pair and the Thieves' Guild.

The Gods in Lankhmar (not to be confused with the Gods of Lankhmar) are multitudinous, and their relative power is determined by their position on Street of the Gods almost in the manner of a pop chart.

The Stories

Induction

A brief introduction to the world of Lankhmar and our main protagonists.

The Snow Women

In which Fafhrd is introduced. He is eighteen, and lives in a tent with his mother Mor, the acknowledged chief of the Snow Clan, a hidebound matriarchy dwelling in Cold Corner in the snowbound Cold Waste. He is tall, fit, intelligent, philosophical and skilful with the various tools of his environment. He is also a skilled singer and story-teller. His father, it turns out, has perished some years earlier while mountain-climbing.

The story opens with the arrival of a troupe of travelling players whose presence is barely tolerated by the womenfolk, but (in general) welcomed by the men of the clan, as it offers them the opportunity to escape for a while from the tyranny of the rule of the women. Fafhrd is forbidden to watch the show, not only by his youth but by his mother.

He has already fathered an as yet unborn child on his sweetheart Mara, and he is philosophically resigned to the fact that he is about to transfer his slavery from his mother to Mara. As the story opens, he is contented for this to happen, as he still enjoys his love-life with Mara.

However, an encounter with the intriguing Vlana, whom he rescues, is about to change all this. She is a good decade older than he, a performer in the troupe, and a victim (it will turn out) of certain political skullduggery between the Snow Clan and the management of the troupe.

Fafhrd and Vlana's relationship is illicit on many levels, mainly because in different ways both are in a kind of slavery. Both wish to escape this slavery, and see in each other a means by which to do so. They plan to flee south, go to Lanhkmar (probably), and live the free and happy life of vagabond performers, or something equally romatically alluring or whatever. However, what Fafhrd does not know is that he is but one of the possible means of Vlana's escape, and that he has several more-or-less deadly rivals for her affections. It transpires that she seems not to be particularly concerned exactly which of these rivals she ends up with.

Considerable entertaining mayhem later, Fafhrd sees Vlana flee on a stolen sleigh, with one of those rivals at her side. He follows on skis. This exciting pursuit requires his utmost skill and strength, as you would expect. He is just in time to thwart an ambush by other parties concerned in Vlana's future, which he does by exploiting his considerable reserves of cunning and skill. As you'd expect, the tale ends with Fafhrd and Vlana fleeing in the stolen sleigh, destination (eventually) Lankhmar.

The Unholy Grail

Mouse is a small, skinny orphan. He is apprentice to a wizard, Glavas Rho, whose magic is exclusively white (i.e. "good"). Mouse has, apparently, been experimenting with black, or course, as youngsters would. Hence he has already gained the soubriquet "gray", and indeed his clothing is gray, as described in the opening paragraph.

All is not right. Mouse has returned from a minor quest to find that Glavas Rho has been murdered by Janarrl, the local Duke, a thug, bully and bigot who despises magic in all its forms. The reason Janarrl has done this, and burned his woodland hut to the ground, is that he has discovered that his daughter Ivrian has also been secretly taking lessons from Glavas Rho. This is too much for Janarrl.

Ivrian is Mouse's sweetheart. They have met via Glavas Rho himself. She is also faint-hearted and somewhat cowardly, a bit of a milksop. Her mother, who died when Ivrian was younger, was a fit and outdoorsy type like her husband, but without the brutality of the latter.

Mouse suspects, with some reason, that Ivrian has in fact betrayed Glavas Rho, from fear of her father, who treats his daughter with contempt. He is equally concerned that she will in turn betray him. However, he has a plan of revenge of his own.

Using black magic (specifically, the pins-in-doll technique), he deliberately sets out to kill Duke Janarrl. This would be accomplished at great danger to his soul, which would forever after be tainted. However, he is thwarted, as demanded by the exigencies of the plot, by Ivrian. She has been followed to Mouse's lair, and so is the unwitting cause of Mouse's capture and imprisonment by Janarrl, as Mouse had all but expected. At this point he expresses his disgust at her cowardice and declares her as beneath even his hate.

However, he has another plan. He devises a black magical working which will rely upon Ivrian's presence in the torture chamber in which he is to be racked to death. What he intends to do is channel his suffering through Ivrian to her father as she sits at his side, dressed as she is in her mother's clothes.

Sure enough, this working is as successful as the reader would desire. Ivrian has redeemed herself in Mouse's eyes (although he is not blind to her character flaws), and they ride off into the night together.

WORK IN PROGRESS.