Presumably, this tale takes place after the pair escaped
death on the sunken island of Simorgia.
Their ship having washed ashore somewhere in the White Wastes, the two
set out on foot. Presumably heading
south, they are forced to fight their way through a gauntlet of seven black
priests. As usual, they invite much of
the following trouble by happening upon a sacred object in the shape of a large
clear gemstone. The gemstone, the eye of
a god, is naturally cursed, and the longer Faf and Grey hang onto the thing,
the more it affects them, until finally the Mouser is forced to fight Fafhrd in
order to save him from the mystic clutches of the artifact. The fight is largely a draw, and only ends
when the Grey Mouser defeats the powerful monster by using that tried and true
old method of poking out its eye. Thus
freed from the spell, Fafhrd laughs off the event and the two resume their long
trek towards Lankhmar.
This is a clear post-pulp story. It does feature the fast action and light
atmosphere of pulp-era fantasy –the prolonged fight set on a tilted sea of
frozen green ice would fit right at home in the pulps (or a Michael Bay movie)
– but the two protagonists lack the sense of heroism and virtue that most pulp
heroes possess. They are but two
wandering adventurers plundering temples, fighting priests, and walking away relatively
unscathed but no richer for their troubles.
They do murder a fetal-god intent on wiping out humanity, but that
arises not out of a desire to protect humanity, but out of a desire to protect
their own skins. By stealing the eye of
the god, they also fall into the god’s trap, and in this manner the impending
birth of the fetal-god is at least partially their own fault.
This is not necessarily a complaint. This is merely an
observation.
After all, not every story needs a moral element, and
sometimes it’s fun to read a story about two wandering adventurers. Most of the
action oriented TV shows of the 1980s used this narrative framing device to
good effect, after all. Provided the bad
guys get their comeuppance in the end, and in Swords Against Death, that comeuppance has occurred like clockwork,
then the reader can at least be assured that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser’s love
of adventure has a happy ending for Nehwon, even if it does not for the dynamic
duo themselves.
