‘The Sadness of the Executioner’ – Fritz Leiber

I’ve been having a little tidy-up in my flat, not getting rid of loads of books (although some have gone) but putting loads, that I’m not going to get to for a while, into storage boxes under my bed so the rest of the place doesn’t look like a ‘flat shaped pile of books’. It’s quite refreshing actually. I should do it more often 😊 The great thing has been discovering ‘mini-piles’ of books that I forgot I had and one of these contained Volume 1 of Lin Carter’s ‘Flashing Swords’ series. Just look at that cover by the way, gloriously old school. I was in the mood to finish off the week on another short story so when I saw that Fritz Leiber had an entry here, that was my reading sorted 😊

I’ve never read any Fritz Leiber (at least, not that I can remember) and so, me being me, I appear to come into the world of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser at the tail end of book five of their series. Luckily for me, they only had cameo roles here…

‘Let’s see, thought Death with a vast coolness that yet had a tiny seething in it, one hundred sixty peasants, two beggars, a whore, a merchant, a priest, an aristocrat, a craftsman, a king and two heroes. That would keep the record straight!’

‘The Sadness of the Executioner’ Is a very brief look (and it is brief, weighing in at only ten pages) at a day in the ‘life’ of the Death of the World of Nehwon, a minor Death but a Death nonetheless and a Death with a quota to fill in the next twenty of his heartbeats. It’s no spoiler to note that Death makes his quota but it’s the way that he does it…

‘The Sadness of the Executioner’ Is part travelogue, taking us on a flying trip around Nehwon, and as someone who has never visited the setting, I found this to be very much a good thing. When I finally pick up ‘Swords Against Deviltry’, I’ll have a much better idea of what (and who) goes where. Where the joy, in this story, is to be found though is in watching Death do his job, manoeuvring people so that his quota can be met and where it doesn’t work out, substituting the original targets for others. Again, it’s no spoiler that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser make it through and the measure of their substitutes is a neat little bit of commentary, from Leiber, on what we expect from our Sword & Sorcery heroes. Some heroes just aren’t cut out for our expectations.

‘The Sadness of the Executioner’ may well come partway through a series but for me, it was a nice little introduction to the world of Nehwon. Not only that, the sprinkling of humour that Leiber applies here bodes well for the books that I have yet to read. Don’t let me down Leiber… 😉