by Fritz Leiber
Just below the niche, moreover, there was a scattering of gray and raw white rubble which he didn’t recall having been there earlier. He strained to remember if during the excitement of the burglary, with its lively leopard-slaying and slugging and all, the unsleeping watch-corner of his mind had recorded a distant crash, and now he believed it had. His quick imagination pictured the possibility of a hole or even door behind each statue, through which it might be given a strong push and so tumbled onto passersby, himself and Slevyas specifically, the right-hand statue having been crashed to test the device and then replaced with a near twin.
He would keep close watch on all three statues as he and Slevyas walked under. It would be easy to dodge if he saw one start to overbalance. Should he yank Slevyas out of harm’s way when that happened? It was something to think about.
Without pause his restless attention fixed next on the porticos and pillars. The latter, thick and almost three yards tall, were placed at irregular intervals as well as being irregularly shaped and fluted, for Rokkermas and Slaarg were most modern and emphasized the unfinished look, randomness, and the unexpected.
Nevertheless it seemed to Fissif, his wariness wide awake now, that there was an intensification of unexpectedness, specifically that there was one more pillar under the porticos than when he had last passed by. He couldn’t be sure which pillar was the newcomer, but he was almost certain there was one.
Share his suspicions with Slevyas? Yes, and get another hissed reproof and flash of contempt from the small, dull-seeming eyes.
The enclosed bridge was close now. Fissif glanced up at the right-hand statue and noted other differences from the one he’d recalled. Although shorter, it seemed to hold itself more strainingly erect, while the frown carved in its dark gray face was not so much one of philosophic brooding as sneering contempt, self-conscious cleverness, and conceit.
Still, none of the three statues toppled forward as he and Slevyas walked under the bridge. However, something else happened to Fissif at that moment.
One of the pillars winked at him.
The Gray Mouser—for so Mouse now named himself to himself and Ivrian—turned around in the right-hand niche, leaped up and caught hold of the cornice, silently vaulted to the flat roof, and crossed it precisely in time to see the two thieves emerge below.
Without hesitation he leaped forward and down, his body straight as a crossbow bolt, the soles of his ratskin boots aimed at the shorter thief’s fat buried shoulder blades, though leading him a little to allow for the yard he’d walk while the Mouser hurtled toward him.
In the instant that he leaped, the tall thief glanced up overshoulder and whipped out a knife, though making no move to push or pull Fissif out of the way of the human projectile speeding toward him. The Mouser shrugged in full flight. He’d just have to deal with the tall thief faster after knocking down the fat one.
More swiftly than one would have thought he could manage, Fissif whirled around then and thinly screamed, ‘Slivikin!’
The ratskin boots took him high in the belly. It was like landing on a big cushion. Writhing aside from Slevyas’ first thrust, the Mouser somersaulted forward, turning feet over head, and as the fat thief’s skull hit a cobble with a dull bong he came to his feet with dirk in hand, ready to take on the tall one.
But there was no need. Slevyas, his small eyes glazed, was toppling too.
One of the pillars had sprung forward, trailing a voluminous robe. A big hood had fallen back from a youthful face and long-haired head. Brawny arms had emerged from the long, loose sleeves that had been the pillar’s topmost section, while the big fist ending one of the arms had dealt Slevyas a shrewd knockout punch on the chin.
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser faced each other across the two thieves sprawled senseless. They were poised for attack, yet for the moment neither moved.
Each discerned something inexplicably familiar in the other.
Fafhrd said, ‘Our motives for being here seem identical.’
‘Seem? Surely must be!’ the Mouser answered curtly, fiercely eyeing this potential new foe, who was taller by a head than the tall thief.
‘You said?’
‘I said, “Seem? Surely must be!”’
‘How civilized of you!’ Fafhrd commented in pleased tones.
‘Civilized?’ the Mouser demanded suspiciously, gripping his dirk tighter.
‘To care, in the eye of action, exactly what’s said,’ Fafhrd explained. Without letting the Mouser out of his vision, he glanced down. His gaze traveled from the belt and pouch of one fallen thief to those of the other. Then he looked up at the Mouser with a broad, ingenuous smile.
‘Sixty-sixty?’ he suggested.
The Mouser hesitated, sheathed his dirk, and rapped out, ‘A deal!’ He knelt abruptly, his fingers on the drawstrings of Fissif’s pouch. ‘Loot you Slivikin,’ he directed.
It was natural to suppose that the fat thief had been crying his companion’s name at the end.
Without looking up from where he knelt, Fafhrd remarked, ‘That…ferret they had with them. Where did it go?’
‘Ferret?’ the Mouser answered briefly. ‘It was a marmoset!’
‘Marmoset,’ Fafhrd mused. ‘That’s a small tropical monkey, isn’t it? Well, might have been, but I got the strange impression that—’
The silent, two-pronged rush which almost overwhelmed them at that instant really surprised neither of them. Each had been expecting it, but the expectation had dropped out of conscious thought with the startlement of their encounter.
The three bravos racing down upon them in concerted attack, two from the west and one from the east, all with swords poised to thrust, had assumed that the two hijackers would be armed at most with knives and as timid or at least cautious in weapons-combat as the general run of thieves and counter-thieves. So it was they who were surprised and thrown into confusion when with the lightning speed of youth the Mouser and Fafhrd sprang up, whipped out fearsomely long swords, and faced them back to back.
The Mouser made a very small parry in carte so that the thrust of the bravo from the east went past his left side by only a hair’s breath. He instantly riposted. His adversary, desperately springing back, parried in turn in carte. Hardly slowing, the tip of the Mouser’s long, slim sword dropped under that parry with the delicacy of a princess curtsying and then leaped forward and a little upward, the Mouser making an impossibly long-looking lunge for one so small, and went between two scales of the bravo’s armored jerkin and between his ribs and through his heart and out his back as if all were angelfood cake.
Meanwhile Fafhrd, facing the two bravos from the west, swept aside their low thrusts with somewhat larger, down-sweeping parries in seconde and low prime, then flipped up his sword, long as the Mouser’s but heavier, so that it slashed through the neck of his right-hand adversary, half decapitating him. Then he, dropping back a swift step, readied a thrust for the other.
But there was no need. A narrow ribbon of bloodied steel, followed by a gray glove and arm, flashed past him from behind and transfixed the last bravo with the identical thrust the Mouser had used on the first.
The two young men wiped and sheathed their swords. Fafhrd brushed the palm of his open right hand down his robe and held it out. The Mouser pulled off right-hand gray glove and shook the other’s big hand in his sinewy one. Without word exchanged, they knelt and finished looting the two unconscious thieves, securing the small bags of jewels. With an oily towel and then a dry one, the Mouser sketchily wiped from his face the greasy ash-soot mixture which had darkened it, next swiftly rolled up both towels and returned them to his own pouch. Then, after only a questioning eye-twitch east on the Mouser’s part and a nod from Fafhrd, they swiftly walked on in the direction Slevyas and Fissif and their escort had been going.
After reconnoitering Gold Street, they crossed it and continued east on Cash at Fafhrd’s gestured proposal.
‘My woman’s at the Golden Lamprey,’ he explained.
‘Let’s pick her up and take her home to meet my girl,’ the Mouser suggested.
‘Home?’ Fafhrd inquired politely, only the barest hint of question in his voice.
‘Dim Lane,’ the Mouser volunteered.
‘Silver Eel?’
‘Behind it. We’ll have some drinks.’
‘I’ll pick up a jug. Never have too much juice.’
‘True. I’ll let you.’
Several squares farther on Fafhrd, after stealing a number of looks at his new comrade, said with conviction, ‘We’ve met before.’
The Mouser grinned at him. ‘Beach by the Mountains of Hunger?’
‘Right! When I was a pirate’s ship-boy.’
‘And I was a wizard’s apprentice.’
Fafhrd stopped, again wiped right hand on robe, and held it out. ‘Name’s Fafhrd. Ef ay ef aitch ar dee.’
Again the Mouser shook it. ‘Gray Mouser,’ he said a touch defiantly, as if challenging anyone to laugh at the sobriquet. ‘Excuse me, but how exactly do you pronounce that? Faf-hrud?’
‘Just Faf-erd.’
‘Thank you.’ They walked on.
‘Gray Mouser, eh?’ Fafhrd remarked. ‘Well, you killed yourself a couple of rats tonight.’
‘That I did.’ The Mouser’s chest swelled and he threw back his head. Then with a comic twitch of his nose and a sidewise half-grin he admitted, ‘You’d have got your second man easily enough. I stole him from you to demonstrate my speed. Besides, I was excited.’
Fafhrd chuckled. ‘You’re telling me? How do you suppose I was feeling?’
Later, as they were crossing Pimp Street, he asked, ‘Learn much magic from your wizard?’
Once more the Mouser threw back his head. He flared his nostrils and drew down the corners of his lips, preparing his mouth for boastful, mystifying speech. But once more he found himself twitching his nose and half grinning. What the deuce did this big fellow have that kept him from putting on his usual acts? ‘Enough to tell me it’s damned dangerous stuff. Though I still fool with it now and then.’
Fafhrd was asking himself a similar question. All his life he’d mistrusted small men, knowing his height awakened their instant jealousy. But this clever little chap was somehow an exception. Quick thinker and brilliant swordsman too, no argument. He prayed to Kos that Vlana would like him.
On the northeast corner of Cash and Whore a slow-burning torch shaded by a broad gilded hoop cast a cone of light up into the thickening black night-smog and another cone down on the cobbles before the tavern door. Out of the shadows into the second cone stepped Vlana, handsome in a narrow black velvet dress and red stockings, her only ornaments a silver-sheathed and hilted dagger and a silver-worked black pouch, both on a plain black belt.
Fafhrd introduced the Gray Mouser, who behaved with an almost fawning courtesy, obsequiously gallant. Vlana studied him boldly, then gave him a tentative smile.
Fafhrd opened under the torch the small pouch he’d taken off the tall thief. Vlana looked down into it. She put her arms around Fafhrd, hugged him tight, and kissed him soundly. Then she thrust the jewels into the pouch on her belt.
When that was done, he said, ‘Look, I’m going to buy a jug. You tell her what happened, Mouser.’
When he came out of the Golden Lamprey he was carrying four jugs in the crook of his left arm and wiping his lips on the back of his right hand. Vlana was frowning. He grinned at her. The Mouser smacked his lips at the jugs. They continued east on Cash. Fafhrd realized that the frown was for more than the jugs and the prospect of stupidly drunken male revelry. The Mouser tactfully walked ahead, ostensibly to lead the way.
When his figure was little more than a blob in the thickening smog, Vlana whispered harshly, ‘You had two members of the Thieves’ Guild knocked out cold and you didn’t cut their throats?’
‘We slew three bravos,’ Fafhrd protested by way of excuse.
‘My quarrel is not with the Slayers’ Brotherhood, but that abominable Guild. You swore to me that whenever you had the chance—’
‘Vlana! I couldn’t have the Gray Mouser thinking I was an amateur counter-thief consumed by hysteria and blood lust.’
‘You already set great store by him, don’t you?’
‘He possibly saved my life tonight.’
‘Well, he told me that he’d have slit their throats in a wink, if he’d known I wanted it that way.’
‘He was only playing up to you from courtesy.’
‘Perhaps and perhaps not. But you knew and you didn’t—’
‘Vlana, shut up!’
Her frown became a rageful glare, then suddenly she laughed wildly, smiled twitchingly as if she were about to cry, mastered herself and smiled more lovingly. ‘Pardon me, darling,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you must think I’m going mad and sometimes I believe I am.’
‘Well, don’t,’ he told her shortly. ‘Think of the jewels we’ve won instead. And behave yourself with our new friends. Get some wine inside you and relax. I mean to enjoy myself tonight. I’ve earned it.’
She nodded and clutched his arm in agreement and for comfort and sanity. They hurried to catch up with the dim figure ahead.
The Mouser, turning left, led them a half square north on Cheap Street to where a narrower way went east again. The black mist in it looked solid.
‘Dim Lane,’ the Mouser explained.
Fafhrd nodded that he knew.
Vlana said, ‘Dim’s too weak—too transparent a word for it tonight,’ with an uneven laugh in which there were still traces of hysteria and which ended in a fit of strangled coughing. When she could swallow again, she gasped out, ‘Damn Lankhmar’s night-smog! What a hell of a city.’
‘It’s the nearness here of the Great Salt Marsh,’ Fafhrd explained.
And he did indeed have part of the answer. Lying low betwixt the Marsh, the Inner Sea, the River Hlal, and the flat southern grain fields watered by canals fed by the Hlal, Lankhmar with its innumerable smokes was the prey of fogs and sooty smogs. No wonder the citizens had adopted the black toga as their formal garb. Some averred the toga had originally been white or pale brown, but so swiftly soot-blackened, necessitating endless laundering, that a thrifty Overlord had ratified and made official what nature or civilization’s arts decreed.
About halfway to Carter Street, a tavern on the north side of the lane emerged from the murk. A gape-jawed serpentine shape of pale metal crested with soot hung high for a sign. Beneath it they passed a door curtained with begrimed leather, the slit in which spilled out noise, pulsing torchlight, and the reek of liquor.
Just beyond the Silver Eel the Mouser led them through an inky passageway outside the tavern’s east wall. They had to go single file, feeling their way along rough, slimily bemisted brick and keeping close together.
‘Mind the puddle,’ the Mouser warned. ‘It’s deep as the Outer Sea.’
The passageway widened. Reflected torchlight filtering down through the dark mist allowed them to make out only the most general shape of their surroundings. To the right was more windowless, high wall. To the left, crowding close to the back of the Silver Eel, rose a dismal, rickety building of darkened brick and blackened, ancient wood. It looked utterly deserted to Fafhrd and Vlana until they had craned back their heads to gaze at the fourth-story attic under the ragged-guttered roof. There faint lines and points of yellow light shone around and through three tightly-latticed windows. Beyond, crossing the T of the space they were in, was a narrow alley.
‘Bones Alley,’ the Mouser told them in somewhat lofty tones. ‘I call it Ordure Boulevard.’
‘I can smell that,’ Vlana said.
By now she and Fafhrd could see a long, narrow wooden outside stairway, steep yet sagging and without a rail, leading up to the lighted attic. The Mouser relieved Fafhrd of the jugs and went up it quite swiftly.
‘Follow me when I’ve reached the top,’ he called back. ‘I think it’ll take your weight, Fafhrd, but best one of you at a time.’
&nb
sp; Fafhrd gently pushed Vlana ahead. With another hysteria-tinged laugh and a pause midway up for another fit of choked coughing, she mounted to the Mouser where he now stood in an open doorway, from which streamed yellow light that died swiftly in the night-smog. He was lightly resting a hand on a big, empty, wrought-iron lamp-hook firmly set in a stone section of the outside wall. He bowed aside, and she went in.
Fafhrd followed, placing his feet as close as he could to the wall, his hands ready to grab for support. The whole stairs creaked ominously and each step gave a little as he shifted his weight onto it. Near the top, one gave way with the muted crack of half-rotted wood. Gently as he could, he sprawled himself hand and knee on as many steps as he could reach, to distribute his weight, and cursed sulfurously.
‘Don’t fret, the jugs are safe,’ the Mouser called down gayly.
Fafhrd crawled the rest of the way, a somewhat sour look on his face, and did not get to his feet until he was inside the doorway. When he had done so, he almost gasped with surprise.
It was like rubbing the verdigris from a cheap brass ring and finding a rainbow-fired diamond of the first water set in it. Rich drapes, some twinkling with embroidery of silver and gold, covered the walls except where the shuttered windows were—and the shutters of those were gilded. Similar but darker fabrics hid the low ceiling, making a gorgeous canopy in which the flecks of gold and silver were like stars. Scattered about were plump cushions and low tables, on which burned a multitude of candles. On shelves against the walls were neatly stacked like small logs a vast reserve of candles, numerous scrolls, jugs, bottles, and enameled boxes. A low vanity table was backed by a mirror of honed silver and thickly scattered over with jewels and cosmetics. In a large fireplace was set a small metal stove, neatly blacked, with an ornate fire-pot. Also set beside the stove were a tidy pyramid of thin, resinous torches with frayed ends—fire-kindlers—and other pyramids of short-handled brooms and mops, small, short logs, and gleamingly black coal.
On a low dais by the fireplace was a wide, short-legged, high-backed couch covered with cloth of gold. On it sat a thin, pale-faced, delicately handsome girl clad in a dress of thick violet silk worked with silver and belted with a silver chain. Her slippers were of white snow-serpent fur. Silver pins headed with amethysts held in place her high-piled black hair. Around her shoulders was drawn a white ermine wrap. She was leaning forward with uneasy-seeming graciousness and extending a narrow, white hand which shook a little to Vlana, who knelt before her and now gently took the proffered hand and bowed her head over it, her own glossy, straight, dark-brown hair making a canopy, and pressed the other girl’s hand’s back to her lips.
