“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—I’ve never been south—but I got the impression that”
The silent, two pronged rush which almost over-whelmed them at that instant really surprised neither of them. Each had unconsciously been expecting it.
The ‘three bravoes racing down upon them in concerted attack, all with swords poised to thrust, had assumed that the two highjackers would be armed at most with knives and as timid in weapons-combat as the general run of thieves and counter-thieves. So it was they who were 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 breadth. 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 and went between two scales of the brave’s armored jerkin and between ‘his ribs and through his heart and out ‘his back. as if all were .angel food cake.
Meanwhile Fafhrd, facing die two bravoes from the west, swept aside their low thrusts with ‘somewhat larger, downsweeping parries in seconds and low prime, then flipped up his sword, as long as the Mouser’s but heavier, so that it slashed through the neck of his right-hand adversary, half decapitating ‘him. Then dropping back a swift step, he 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 their swords. Fafhrd brushed the palm of his open right hand down his robe and held it out. The Mouser pulled off his right-hand gray glove and shook it. 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.
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.
“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.”
Fafhrd stopped, again wiped right hand ‘on robe, and held it out. “Name’s Fafhrd.”
Again the Mouser shook it. “Gray Mouser,” he said a touch defiantly, as if challenging anyone to laugh at the sobriquet.
“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 dem-onstrate my speed. Besides, I was excited.”
Fafhrd chuckled. “You’re telling me? How do you suppose I was feeling?”
Once more the Mouser found himself grinning. What the deuce did this big fellow have that kept him from putting on his usual sneers?
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. 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 spiral 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-hilted dagger in a silver sheath and a silver-worked black pouch, both on a plain black belt.
Fafhrd introduced the Gray Mouser, who behaved with an almost fawning courtesy. Vlana ‘studied him ‘boldly, then gave him a tentative smile.
Fafhrd opened under ‘the torch the small pouch he’d taken off the tail thief. Vlana looked down into it. She put her arms around Fafhrd, bugged 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 frowned. 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.
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 bravoes,” 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.”
“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 widely, 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.
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.
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 southern grain fields watered by canals fed by the Hlal, Lankhmar with its innumerable smokes was the prey of fogs and sooty smogs.
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.
“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. Crowd-ing close to the back of the Silver Eel rose a dismal, rickety building of darkened brick and blackened, ancient wood. From the fourth story attic under the ragged-guttered roof, faint lines of yellow light shone around and through three tightly latticed windows. Beyond was a narrow alley.
“Bones Alley,” the Mouser told them.
By now Vlana 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.