Recently I reread Fritz Leiber’s novella, Ill Met in Lankhmar (1970), for a podcast. Immediately after finishing it, I dug out S.M. Stirling & Shirley Meier’s novel, Saber & Shadow (1992), from a box and reread that. I’d love to go on and reread the rest of the Fifth Millennium series right now, by Stirling, Meier, Karen Wehrstein, and combinations thereof, but I have too many other commitments. Sadly, I am not feeling a similar impulse to reread other Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories at this time.
It’s not that Ill Met has been visited by the suck fairy; far from it. In fact, I appreciated subtleties this time through that I don’t remember noticing decades ago. Leiber’s at-times-ominiscient third person perspective often casts critical eyes upon his heroes, as in this paragraph:
Despite his shrewdness and new-found cynicism it never occurred to the Mouser that it was chiefly his charming but preposterous codding of Ivrian that was keeping doll-like and even making more so the potentially brave and realistic girl who had fled with him from her father’s torture chamber four moons ago.
Fafhrd’s lover Vlana is mightily irritated by his heavy drinking, and she gets Ivrian on her side as they both berate Fafhrd into keeping his vow to Vlana (with the aid of his new best friend) to take revenge on the Thieves’ Guild for how they’d wronged her.
Leiber also critiques the city of Lankhmar, from the stinginess and foolishness of some of its citizens, to the corruption and outright evil of others, in a way that makes it feel richly complex and lived-in. The worldbuilding is top-notch, the language ranges from lushly descriptive to emphatically active, the plot is entertaining albeit tragic, and young Fafhrd, the tall, red-maned barbarian, and the Gray Mouser, the short, dark, wizard’s apprentice turned thief, are skillfully drawn, although other characterizations are brief at best. Certainly its Hugo and Nebula awards that year seem well deserved.
Major spoilers ahead for Ill Met in Lankhmar!
However, I found the drunken duo’s antics tiresome; moreover, all those jugs of alcohol affected their judgment but neither their dexterity nor their endurance, which seems questionable. The evil magician who works for the Thieves’ Guild is not just ugly and hunchbacked, but several references are made to his “disgusting” clubhands. And, of course, the women get fridged; an assassination attempt against their men, who’d stolen a score of jewels from two Guild thieves, kills them horribly instead (smothered by fog, then eaten by rats). Fafhrd and the Mouser then take their final revenge, and that’s the start of their beautiful friendship.
Structurally, I understand why these women had to go. Although in internal chronology, this is the first story where Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser met, in publication chronology, Leiber had been writing about them (without any permanent lovers) for decades. From Wikipedia: “The first story, “Two Sought Adventure”, appeared in Unknown in August 1939.” Although Wikipedia says the pair eventually settled down with new female partners, I never read any of those stories.
So Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, after their belated “origin story,” have to be left free to wander the world and take on new adventures (and lovers). This could have been accomplished in other ways than killing off their lovers, such as having Vlana and Ivrian escape with their lives and then throw their men out for endangering them (despite having egged on their men to raid the Thieves’ House), but I have to concede that the pathos of their dying in their men’s stead is dramatically superior.
Cora Buhlert’s excellent essay, “Retro Review: ‘Black God’s Shadow’ by C.L. Moore or Overcoming Trauma as a Core Theme of Sword and Sorcery (2020)”, mentions that Ill Met was published shortly after Leiber lost his wife of more than 30 years, and that his stories of the early 1970s were all gloomy and depressing. So it seems probable that Leiber was also working through his own trauma of loss.
For all these reasons, I have to give Leiber a pass on this fridging. But I don’t have to enjoy it.
One of the many reasons I still love Saber & Shadow is that its women don’t get fridged, because they are the protagonists. Their lovers don’t get fridged, either, because these women are into each other. It’s a joyful romp, albeit with a lot of tense moments, and some traumatic memories for one character.
I don’t remember what my copy of Leiber’s Swords & Deviltry collection in the 1970s or early ’80s looked like, except that it had an “award-winning” sticker on the front that earned an approving comment from a teacher. I certainly remember what Saber & Shadow‘s cover looked like: A small, dark-haired woman half-kneeling in a city street, with three dagger sheathes at her hip, and a tall, red-haired woman standing behind her with one hand on her shoulder and the other holding a saber. They’re both wearing tunics and boots but no pants, because it’s very hot in Fehinna (really for marketing, I know).
Ha, I thought, that looks like a gender-flipped Gray Mouser and Fafhrd! Flipping to the back seemed to confirm this, because the tagline said “Well Met in Illizbuah.”
If I recall correctly, David Drake has said that he started his Leary & Mundy RCN series of books (With the Lightnings, etc.) as a way to set Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin series (Master & Commander, etc.) in space, and the series is none the less fun for its slightly derivative origin. The trope of short-and-tall best friends has been around at least since the Mutt & Jeff comics series that started in 1907, and I wouldn’t blame Stirling and Meier at all if they had simply decided to gender-flip Mouser & Fafhrd.
According to Saber & Shadow‘s Appendix C, however, it’s far more complicated than that. Stirling started a book about his character Shkai’ra Mek Kermak’s-kin (the tall barbarian warrior) in law school; Meier conceived Megan Whitlock (the short, sneaky thief-fighter-trader with a little magic) independently, and Wehrstein had started writing about her protagonist (who didn’t appear in this book) 20 years earlier. All three were set in fantasy societies, millennia after an apocalypse, now pre-industrial, with a lot of emphasis on plausible cultures, “the morality of conflict and power,” and humor. The authors ended up combining their worlds and having their characters meet, and all their care in worldbuilding really shines through. One fun game throughout the book is figuring out what the place names of the Fifth Millennium derive from in our time (I’ll tell you for free, the realm of Fehinna is our timeline’s Virginia).
So, it’s a rich world, and the characters are richly developed. The plot is also way more complex than in Ill Met. Of course, this is a novel, as opposed to a novella, so there’s a lot more room. But there’s no boring padding here; even the side notes like the head cook’s frustration with one room constantly refusing its meals (actually, Megan cast a don’t-notice-me spell on their room and forgot to cancel food deliveries, so the servants get to their floor and only see four rooms, not Room Five) are least funny, and often advance the plot in small ways.
The protagonists first meet when a shipwrecked Megan is picked up by a vessel where Shkrai’ra is a passenger; when the “rescuers” try to enslave Megan, Shkai’ra cat Ten-Knife-Foot provides a distraction that helps her escape. Later, a chance encounter in an inn finds them taking a liking to each other; afterward, when Shkai’ra gives Megan a tour of the city, a riot/massacre puts them in danger, and they acquire a MacGuffin. The military aristocracy, the fanatical and powerful priests of the state religion, the Thieves’ Guild (including assassins), and the Merchants’ Guild all want it; there are pulse-pounding chases over rooftops and through sewers, multiple authentic-feeling fights including an amazing encounter in a candy factory, trickery, subtle interventions by the Wise (a secret faction of sorceror-scholars), and a whole lot of humor.
All these threads are woven masterfully together. A good deal of attention is given to how the elite despise and mistreat the lower classes, plus planning an expensive war for no better reason than self-aggrandizement. Megan and Shkai’ra are great characters, and several secondary characters, including both allies and opponents, are also very well drawn.
I loved this book in 1992, and I still do. It’s a blast to read. There’s nothing I’d take out and nothing that needs adding. It stands alone, although I eventually acquired and enjoyed the whole series (but be warned that earlier books, Snowbrother and Shadow’s Daughter, go to some really dark places, and so does the sequel, The Cage).
However, although Ill Met in Llankhmar is easy to acquire, in multiple collections and formats, Saber & Shadow appears to be an artifact of its time. I don’t see it in ebook or audiobook format. You can apparently order a new copy from Amazon for $27, or acquire a used copy for considerably less from wherever you can find it. I recommend snapping it up if you see it for a reasonable price; it is much, much better than the ripoff it might appear to be.
Content Warnings: Alcohol abuse, violent deaths, ableism, and grotesque fridging of women in Ill Met in Lankhmar; and slavery, violence (sometimes gory), memory of rape, mass deaths, classism by certain characters, and religious fanaticism and martyring in Saber & Shadow.
Comparisons: Each other.
Disclaimers: None.
