Part 1 of this series, covering The Swords of Lankhmar, can be found here.

Loki and Odin on Nehwon. A Mingol invasion. Heroes settle down, have children, get reflective, and (symbolically) die. Underage sex. The later Leiber stories are certainly unique, complex, and have a lot to unpack.

I would go so far as to say that the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories of the 1970s and 80s aren’t really heroic fantasy or sword-and-sorcery as we generally understand it, or perhaps are the subgenre shorn of its pulp roots and stretched in unique directions. In many respects they are more literarily ambitious, sophisticated, and subtle than the earlier stories. They are rife with symbolism and Leiber’s evolving belief of storytelling as a powerful mechanism for self-discovery and self-actualization. According to Bruce Byfield’s Witches of the Mind, “Much of Leiber’s self-analysis during the 1960s takes place in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.” Leiber was working out what he believed, and what made him tick.

These stories are far less action-oriented, opaque in their meaning, and for some off-putting with their odd erotic meanderings and sexual proclivities. I have noted that many readers who love the early stories don’t like the later Leiber much at all.

Are these stories better, or worse, than the earlier tales? I would say neither, it’s a matter of preference. What is undeniable is they are radically different.

Swords and Ice Magic (1977)

Swords and Ice Magic is a collection of short stories written between 1973 and 1977. Leiber was well into his 60s by then. His wife Jonquil died in 1969 and Leiber was dealing with her loss, emerging from a terrible bout of alcoholism from 1969 to 1973.

There is a lot in them about confronting mortality. “The Sadness of the Executioner” is an examination of death/aging. In “Trapped in the Shadowlands” Death (the god, capital D) is hard on the heels of the heroes, literally and figuratively advancing his Shadowland ever closer to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. This is perhaps not a literal death, as a yawning Fafhrd describes the Shadowlands as “quite comfortable,” but a commentary on complacency—resting and doing nothing, which is a portent and precursor of death. The Gray Mouser realizes that if they stay in the Shadowlands they will ultimately be drawn by Will O’ the Wisps to the Castle of Death. Anyone of middle-age and beyond has felt this—the siren call to give up the struggle, enjoy the security we’ve earned, slide into disengagement and retirement.

But we know what comes at the end, and we resist.

In “Under the Thumbs of the Gods” the gods Kos, Issek, and Mog have taken umbrage at Fafhrd and Gray Mouser’s lapse in loyalty and decide to punish them with “the torture of hope,” reminding them of past loves long gone. The two aging heroes are hit hard with nostalgia for their youthful loves, and find themselves rebuffed and tormented by their ex-girlfriends’ apparitions, helpless before the march of time. One can picture Leiber feeling the same. At the end of the story the two heroes are happy to embrace domesticated love, washing the feet and combing the hair of their women. There is wisdom by Leiber here, a truth about what makes relationships work.

“The Frost Monstreme” contains many ruminations on leadership and responsibility, and the trade-offs that come with leading men. The frost monstreme itself is a vast bulk from their unconscious/subconscious, symbolic of the heroes’ old life, freezing them in place. The monstreme chases them to the harbor of Rime Isle, but melts away when they take the next step, and reach the shore of this new land.

On to “Rime Isle” … there is a lot is going on in this novella and a lot to unpack. The isle is located on the rim of the world where there are no gods. This is symbolic of a new phase of life into which Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have entered. They are called to adventure by Loki and Odin, who ask for the two heroes by name, and brought to the island by two women of Rime Isle, Cif and Afreyt, who serve as helpers. This is Jung and “The Heroes’ Journey” in action. Again per Byfield, Leiber had begun a systematic reading of Jung in 1959, and Jung’s influence permeated his later work, which freely adopted and adapted Campbell’s use of the monomyth.

The first sentence of “Rime Isle” hits the reader with the weight of leadership and accountability: “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser supervised the mooring of Sea Hawk and Flotsam by bow and stern lines made fast round great wooden bollards, then sprang nimbly ashore, feeling unutterably weary, yet knowing that as captains they should not show it.” Gray Mouser is ill at ease, struck with a feeling of impostor syndrome: “a sense of just how preposterous it was that for the past three moons he should have been solemnly playing at being captain of men, fire-breathing disciplinarian, prodigious navigator, and the outlandishly heroic rest of it. He, a thief, captaining thieves… ridiculous.”

Odin and Loki are portrayed as weak, fallible, and fading gods. Khahkht is “an old wives’ tale, not to be credited by men of sense.” The inhabitants of the isle are atheists. “We worship no gods at all, but do our business in the world clearheadedly, no misty dreams. We leave such fancies to the so-called civilized people—decadent cultures of the hothouse south.” This is perhaps Leiber’s take of modern man’s distancing from magic and myth as we grow older. Ozzy Osbourne once sang, “Goodbye to Romance” and you can feel its absence here. Loki and Odin are from prosaic earth and Rime Isle is barely a part of Nehwon, far out on its edge. The two heroes have left the romance of youth and entered the responsibility of adulthood, where words, not swords, are the true power.

In a rousing speech Mouser uses the spirit of Loki to animate the residents of Rime Isle to its defense against a horde of Mingol invaders, but tellingly cannot remember anything he said. It’s a wonderful metaphor for how we use the old myths. They maintain their power, but we don’t understand them because we are too far removed from them, and no longer possess their original words.

This story contains a striking scene in which Fafhrd is maimed, losing his left hand to a vengeful departing spirit. What does it mean? A metaphor for aging, the loss of vitality? A punishment for Fafhrd’s lack of humility (he takes a swing with his sword and cuts the hand of a demigod, the prince of Stardock, resorting to violence to solve a problem when words would have been a better option)? I don’t know. Fafhrd spurns the god Odin and his followers’ noose accessories (“I won’t wear it. I won’t mount his eight-legged horse”), but in a moment of weakness agrees to wear a noose around his wrist, and loses his hand. Is this mythology re-exerting its influence, reminding Fafhrd that we are never truly free from our Wyrd? Leiber leaves it up to the reader, and doesn’t spell things out, which I like.

By the end of book Loki and Odin have utterly faded and Fafhrd and GM succeed without their aid. Violence is not the answer, nor Gods, but reason. A telling quote: “Let there be an end to strife—even Mingols cherish life. Mingol madness cease to burn. Gods to proper worlds return.” The Gods are banished, sent home in the end of a black rainbow.

The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988)

Leiber wrote The Knight and Knave of Swords, the last collection of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, circa 1977-88. If Swords and Ice Magic is not to your liking you’ll find more of the same here, I’m afraid. I enjoyed it, but with caveats. If I’m being honest it’s not a particularly satisfying conclusion to the series, and we don’t get a final deathbed scene or glorious heroes’ ending.

Central to the collection are the “Ikons of Reason,” golden artifacts that include the Circle of Square Dealing and the Arrow of Truth. These Ikons are rumored to be artifacts of the ancient sunken city of Simorgya, Leiber’s take on Atlantis. Although revered by the people of Rime Isle, serving as god-like stand-ins for a godless people, the Ikons don’t actually reflect reality, and like religion, require interpretation and practical application. Truth must be bent, square dealing inevitably gets rounded off. And so the Ikons are literally twisted and bent in the stories.

You can call it cynicism but I call it reality. Humans do not operate purely from reason, or along objective principles, but also out of emotion. “Square dealing” looks very different when it’s applied to a business associate vs. your wife.

Before we get to the bulk of the book and the novella “The Mouser Goes Below”, Leiber hits us with three short stories: “Sea Magic,” “The Mer She,” and “The Curse of the Skulls and Stars.” In “The Mer She” the Mouser picks up a stowaway who turns out to be the Goddess Ississi. I saw this as a story of temptation, a siren call to lust and irresponsibility. This is the true threat, not Ississi’s plot to sink the ship. The Mouser prevails.

There is more here of Mouser’s ruminations on the double-edged sword that is responsibility: “He did not like the thought of soon arrival or of the great gifts he was bringing … because all that represented ties binding him and his future to Cif and crippled Fafhrd and haughty Afreyt too and all his men and every last inhabitant of Rime Isle.” Responsibility means vulnerability. When you delegate work you are giving up a piece of your autonomy. Placing your trust in others forces you to confront your inherent selfishness and defensiveness.

In “The Curse of the Skulls and Stars” a pair of assassins are sent to kill Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, and to make matters worse vengeful gods place a curse upon the heroes—Fafhrd is cursed to look at the sky/stars, Mouser to cast his gaze upon the ground. This struck me as commentary on middle aged distraction, and our tendency to drift into narrowing, self-focused interests.

“The Mouser Goes Below” is the last Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story Fritz wrote and is perhaps the strangest. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have again arrived at Rime Isle with the intent to settle down and retire, “disdaining their proper hero-villain roles and seeking a snug harbor for their declining years.” But the peace is not to last. Loki demands punishment for the Mouser, who banished the trickster god to 17 months of watery oblivion in the course of stemming the Mongol invasion back in Swords and Ice Magic. Death and Sister Pain are compelled to respond to Loki’s demands. The Mouser is dragged underground, entombed but alive. As his friends begin a desperate rescue attempt, digging a deep mine shaft, the Mouser is pushed through the earth, pursued by the terrifying Goddess Pain, daughter of Death. He makes various stops in Nehwon and is forced to confront his past experiences. At one point Fafhrd takes to the air to join a ship full of pleasure-giving goddesses, and receives a mock funeral while unconscious.

What to make of this extraordinarily odd story?

Each man is exploring the extremis of existence—Gray Mouser the “below,” his earthly desires and physical appetites, Fafhrd the above—the spirit, the soul. At one point the Mouser receives a handjob by the skeletal hand of Death, which proves immensely unsatisfying, a hundred little deaths, and a reminder that a life in pursuit of pleasure is ultimately hollow.

In a moment of revelation the Mouser sees himself as an outsider—always watching, ever thieving, never fully participating but just taking and reveling—and at some level understands the futility of his old existence. “How characteristic of most of his life, he told himself, was his present situation? To be on the outside in drenching rain or blasting snow or (like now) worse and looking in at a cosy culture of culture, comfort, companionship, and couth.”

My personal interpretation: You can’t keep your head in the clouds (the romantic Fafhrd), or spend your days crawling in the dirt after carnal pleasures (Mouser), but you need to meet in the middle. The combination makes for a fully realized human being, the object of the Jungian quest of self-discovery. These stories are also a commentary on the power of connection and need for genuine friendship in a human life. Two are better than one, and friends enlarge the other by their presence, and provide a necessary counterweight when we get out of balance.

To address the most unsavory element of these latter stories: Leiber gets a lot of flak for Mouser’s love interests, often underage girls, and there are some creepy, “trigger-warning” moments that assail the modern reader and skirt up to and arguably over the edge of pornography. Fair enough. But rather than closing the book and putting Leiber on the “cancel” pile, my thoughts range to, “that’s interesting—let’s explore why the story might be written that way.” Is this Leiber working out the loss of his wife, subconsciously? A (perverse) longing for eternal youth/freedom from death? I’m not a psychologist, but perhaps.

At the end of the story the Mouser is freed from the “grave,” and saves Fafhrd from a deep state assassin sent from Quarmall—none other than Fafhrd’s daughter Fingers, who is charmed into the act of nearly killing her father with a death spell. Pshawri, the Mouser’s son, ends the curse by casting Loki’s talisman into the fires of the volcano Darkfire, a wonderful scene that is sword-and-sorcery’s echo and answer to Mount Doom. The two heroes have experienced a literal rebirth, completed their heroes’ journey, and raised the next generation of heroes.

While that sounds like a satisfying conclusion to a series that spanned five decades, unfortunately the impact of these events are lessened under an overlong story that sags and meanders. The Leiber completist must read these later stories, but I was hoping for something more worthy of a heroes’ end.

Brian Murphy is the author of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (Pulp Hero Press). Learn more about his life and work on his website, The Silver Key.