Swords Of Lankhmar

Chapter Ten

Fafhrd stole a lamb at dawn and broke into a cornfield north of Ilthmar to provide breakfast for himself and his mount. The thick chops, broiled or at least well-scorched on a thick green twig over a small fire, were delicious, but the mare as she chomped grimly eyed her new master with what seemed to him qualified approval, as if to say, "I'll eat this corn, though it is soft, milky, and effeminate truck compared to the flinty Mingol grain on which they raised me and grew my stern courage, which comes of grinding the teeth."

They finished their repast, but made off hurriedly when outraged shepherds and farmers came hooting at them through the tall green field. A stone slung by a shepherd who'd probably brained a few dozen wolves in his day whizzed close above Fafhrd's ducked head. He attempted no reprisal, but galloped out of range, then reined in to an amble to give himself time to think before passing through Ilthmar, around which no roads led, and the squatty towers of which were already visible ahead, glinting deceptively golden in the new-minted rays of the fresh sun.

Ilthmar, fronting the Inner Sea somewhat north of the Sinking Land which led west to Lankhmar, was an ill, treacherous, money-minded city. Though nearest Lankhmar, it stood at the crossroads of the known world, roughly equidistant from the desert-guarded Eastern Lands, the forested Land of the Eight Cities, and the steppes, where traveled about the great tent-city of the merciless Mingols. And being so situated, it forever sought by guile or secret force to levy toll on all travelers. Its land-pirates and sea-brigands, who split their take with its unruly governing barons, were widely feared, yet the great powers could never permit one of themselves to dominate such a strategic point, so Ilthmar maintained the independence of a middleman, albeit a most thievish and untrustworthy one.

Central location, where the gossip of all Nehwon crossed tracks along with the world's travelers, was surely also the reason why Ningauble of the Seven Eyes had located himself in a mazy, enchantment-guarded cave at the foot of the little mountains south of Ilthmar.

Fafhrd saw no signs of Mingol raiding, which did not entirely please him. An alarmed Ilthmar would be easier to slip through than an Ilthmar pretending to doze in the sun, but with pig-eyes ever a-watch for booty. He wished now he'd brought Kreeshkra with him, as he'd earlier planned. Her terrifying bones would have been a surer guarantee of safe transit than a passport from the King of the East stamped in gold-sifted wax with his famed Behemoth Seal. What a fool, either to dote or to flee, a man was about a woman new-bedded! He wished also that he had not given her his bow, or rather that he'd had two bows.

However, he was three-quarters of the way through the trash-paved city with its bedbug inns and smiling little taverns of resinous wine, more often than not laced with opium for the uneasy, before trouble pounced. A great gaudy caravan rousing itself for its homeward journey to the Eastern Lands doubtless attracted attention from him. The only decor of the mean buildings around him was the emblem of Ilthmar's rat-god, endlessly repeated.

The trouble came two blocks beyond the caravan and consisted of seven scarred and pockmarked rogues, all clad in black boots, tight black trousers and jerkins and black cloaks with hoods thrown back to show close-fitting black skullcaps. One moment the street seemed clear, the next all seven were around him, menacing with their wickedly saw-toothed swords and other weapons, and demanding he dismount.

One made to seize the mare's bridle near the bit. That was definitely a mistake. She reared and put an iron-shod hoof past his guard and into his skull as neatly as a duelist. Fafhrd drew Graywand and at the end of the drawing stroke slashed through the throat of the nearest black brigand. Coming down on her forehooves the mare lashed out a hind one and ruined the guts of an unchivalrous fellow preparing to launch a short javelin at Fafhrd's back. Then horse and rider were galloping away at a pace that at the southern outskirts of the city took them past Ilthmar's baronial guard before those slightly more respectable, iron-clad brigands could get set to stop them.

A half league beyond, Fafhrd looked back. There was no sign as yet of pursuit, but he was hardly reassured. He knew his Ilthmar brigands. They were stickers. Fired now by revenge-lust as well as loot-hunger, the four remaining black rogues would doubtless soon be on his trail. And this time they'd have arrows or at least more javelins, and use them at a respectful distance. He began to scan the slopes ahead for the tricky, almost unmarked path leading to Ningauble's underground dwelling.

* * * *

Glipkerio Kistomerces found the meeting of the Council of Emergency almost more than he could bear. It was nothing more than the Inner Council plus the War Council, which overlapped in membership, these two being augmented by a few additional notables, including Hisvin, who had said nothing, so far, though his small black-irised eyes were watchful. But all the others, waving their toga-winged arms for emphasis, did nothing but talk, talk, talk about the rats, rats, rats!

The beanpole overlord, who did not look tall when seated, since all his height was in his legs, had long since dropped his hands below the tabletop to hide the jittery way they were weaving like a nest of nervous white snakes, but perhaps because of this he had now developed a violent facial tic which jolted his wreath of daffodils down over his eyes every thirteenth breath he drew — he had been counting and found the number decidedly ominous.

Besides this, he had lunched only hurriedly and meagerly and — worse — not watched a page or maid being whipped or even slapped since before breakfast, so that his long nerves, finer drawn than those of other men by reason of his superior aristocracy and great length of limb, were in a most wretched state. It was all of yesterday, he recalled, that he had sent that one mincing maid to Samanda for punishment and still had got no word from his overbearing palace mistress. Glipkerio knew well enough the torment of punishment deferred, but in this case it seemed to have turned into a torment of pleasure deferred — for himself. The beastly fat woman should have more imagination! Why, oh why, he asked himself, was it only that watching a whipping could soothe him? He was a man greatly abused by destiny.

Now some black-togaed idiot was listing out nine arguments for feeing the entire priesthood of Ilthmar's rat-god to come to Lankhmar and make propitiating prayers. Glipkerio had grown so nervously impatient that he was exasperated even by the fulsome compliments to himself with which each speaker lengthily prefaced his speech, and whenever a speaker paused more than a moment for breath or effect, he had taken to quickly saying "Yes," or "No," at random, hoping this would speed things up, but it appeared to be working out the other way. Olegnya Mingolsbane had still to speak and he was the most boring, lengthiest, and self-infatuated talker of them all.

A page approached him and kneeled, holding respectfully out a scrap of dirty parchment twice folded and sealed with candle grease. He snatched it, glancing at Samanda's unmistakably large and thick-whorled thumbprint in the sooty grease, and tore it open and read the black scrawl.

_She shall be lashed with white-hot wires _

_on the stroke of three. Do not be tardy, little _

_overlord, for I shall not wait for you. _

Glipkerio sprang up, his thoughts for the moment concerned only with whether it was the half-hour or three-quarter hour after two o'clock he had last heard strike.

Waving the refolded note at his council — or perhaps it was only that his hand was wildly a-twitch — he said in one breath, glaring defiantly as he did so, "Important news of my secret weapon! I must closet me at once with its sender," and without waiting for reactions, but with a final tic so violent it jolted his daffodil wreath forward to rest on his nose, Lankhmar's overlord dashed through a silver-chased purple-wood arch out of the Council Chamber.

Hisvin slid out of his chair with a curt, thin-lipped bow to the council and went scuttling after him as fast as if he had wheels under his toga rather than feet. He caught up with Glipkerio in the corridor, laid firm hand on the skinny elbow high as his black-capped skull and after a quick glance ahead and back for eavesdroppers, called up softly but stirringly, "Rejoice, oh mighty mind that is Lankhmar's very brain, for the lagging planet has at last arrived at his proper station, made rendezvous with his starry fleet, and tonight I speak my spell that shall save your city from the rats!"

"What's that? Oh yes. Good, oh good," the other responded, seeking chiefly to break loose from Hisvin's grasp, though meanwhile pushing back his yellow wreath so it was once more atop his blond-ringleted narrow skull. "But now I must rush me to — "

"She will stand and wait for her thrashing," Hisvin hissed with naked contempt. "I said that tonight at the stroke of twelve I speak my spell that shall save Lankhmar from the rats, and save your overlord's throne too, which you must certainly lose before dawn if we beat not the rats tonight."

"But that's just the point, she _won't_ wait," Glipkerio responded with agonizing agitation. "It's _twelve_, you say? But that can't be. It's not yet three! — surely?"

"Oh wisest and most patient one, master of time and the waters of space," Hisvin howled obsequiously, a-tiptoe. Then he dug his nails into Glipkerio's arm and said slowly, marking each word, "I said that tonight's the night. My demonic intelligencers assure me the rats plan to hold off this evening, to lull the city's wariness, then make a grand assault at midnight. To make sure they're all in the streets and stay there while I recite my noxious spell from this palace's tallest minaret, you must an hour beforehand order all soldiers to the South Barracks and your constables too. Tell Captain General Olegnya you wish him to deliver them a morale-building address — the old fool won't be able to resist that bait. Do… you… understand… me… my… overlord?"

"Yes, yes, oh yes!" Glipkerio babbled eagerly, grimacing at the pain of Hisvin's grip, yet not angered but thinking only of getting loose. "Eleven o'clock tonight… all soldiers and constables off streets… oration by Olegnya. And now, please, Hisvin, I must rush me to — "

" — to see a maid thrashed," Hisvin finished for him flatly. Again the fingernails dug. "Expect me infallibly at a quarter to midnight in your Blue Audience Chamber, whence I shall climb the Blue Minaret to speak my spell. You yourself must be there — and with a corps of your pages to carry a message of reassurance to your people. See that they are provided with wands of authority. I will bring my daughter and her maid to mollify you — and also a company of my Mingol slaves to supplement your pages if need be. There'd best be wands for them too. Also — "

"Yes, yes, dear Hisvin," Glipkerio cut in, his babbling growing desperate. "I'm very grateful… Frix and Hisvet, they're good ones… I'll remember all… quarter to midnight… Blue Chamber… pages… wands… wands for Mingols. And now I must rush me — "

"_Also_," Hisvin continued implacably, his fingernails like a spiked trap. "_Beware of the Gray Mouser!_ Set your guards on the watch for him! And now… be off to your flagellatory pastimes," he added brightly, loosing his horny nails from Glipkerio's arm.

Massaging the dents they'd made, hardly yet realizing he was free, Glipkerio babbled on, "Ah yes, the Mouser — bad, bad! But the rest… good, good! Enormous thanks, Hisvin! And now I must rush me — " And he turned away with a lunging, improbably long step.

" — to see a maid — " Hisvin couldn't resist repeating.

As if the words stung him between the shoulders, Glipkerio turned back at that and interrupted with some spirit. "To attend to business of highest importance! I have other secret weapons than yours, old man — and other sorcerors too!" And then he was swift-striding off again, black toga at extremest stretch.

Cupping bony hand to wrinkled lips, Hisvin cried after him sweetly, "I hope your business writhes prettily and screams most soothingly, brave overlord!"

The Gray Mouser showed his courier's ring to the guards at the opal-tiled land entry of the palace. He half expected it not to work. Hisvin had had two days to poison silly Glip's mind against him, and indeed there were sidewise glances and a wait long enough for the Mouser to feel the full strength of his hangover and to swear he'd never drink so much, so mixed again. And to marvel too at his stupidity and good luck in venturing last night into the dark, rat-infested streets and getting back silly-drunk to Nattick's through some of the darkest of them without staggering into a second rat-ambush. Ah well, at least he'd found Sheelba's black vial safe at Nattick's, resisted the impulse to drink it while tipsy, and he'd got that heartening, titillating note from Hisvet. As soon as his business was finished here, he must hie himself straight to Hisvin's house and —

A guard returned from somewhere and nodded sourly. He was passed inside.

From the sneer-lipped third butler, who was an old gossip friend of the Mouser, he learned that Lankhmar's overlord was with his Emergency Council, which now included Hisvin. He resisted the grandiose impulse to show off his Sheelban rat-magic before the notables of Lankhmar and in the presence of his chief sorcerous rival, though he did confidently pat the black vial in his pouch. After all, he needed a spot where rats were foregathered for the thing to work and he needed Glipkerio alone best to work on him. So he strolled into the dim mazy lower corridors of the palace to waste an hour and eavesdrop or chat as opportunity afforded.

As generally happened when he killed time, the Mouser soon found himself headed for the kitchen. Though he dearly detested Samanda, he made a point of slyly courting her, because he knew her power in the palace and liked her stuffed mushrooms and mulled wine.

The plain-tiled yet spotless corridors he now traversed were empty. It was the slack half hour when dinner has been washed up and supper mostly not begun, and every weary servitor who can flops on a cot or the floor. Also, the menace of the rats doubtless discouraged wanderings of servant and master alike. Once he thought he heard a faint boot-tramp behind him, but it faded when he looked back, and no one appeared. By the time he had begun to smell foods and fire and pots and soap and dishwater and floorwater, the silence had became almost eerie. Then somewhere a bell harshly knelled three times and from ahead, "Get out!" was suddenly roared in Samanda's harsh voice. The Mouser shrank back despite himself. A leather curtain bellied a score of paces ahead of him and three kitchen boys and a maid came hurrying silently into the corridor, their bare feet making no sound on the tiles. In the light filtering down from the tiny, high windows they looked like waxen mannikins as they fled swiftly past him. Though they avoided him, they seemed not to see him. Or perhaps that was only some whip-ingrained "eyes front!" discipline.

As silently as they — who couldn't even make the noise of a hair dropping, since this morning's barbering had left them none — the Mouser hurried forward and put his eye to the slit in the leather curtains.

The four other doorways to the kitchen, even the one in the gallery, also had their curtains drawn. The great hot room had only two occupants. Fat Samanda, perspiring in her black wool dress and under the prickly plum pudding of her piled black hair, was heating in the whitely blazing fireplace the seven wire lashes of a long-handled whip. She drew it forth a little. The strands glowed dull red. She thrust it back. Her sparse, sweat-beaded black mustache lengthened and shed its salt rain in a smile as her tiny, fat-pillowed eyes fed on Reetha, who stood with arms straight down her sides and chin high, almost in the room's center, half faced away from the blaze. The serving maid wore only her black leather collar. The diamond-stripe patterns of her last whippings still showed faintly down her back.

"Stand straighter, my pet," Samanda cooed like a cow. "Or would it be easier if your wrists were roped to a beam and your ankles to the ring-bolt in the cellar door?"

Now the dry stink of dirty floorwater was strongest in the Mouser's nostrils. Glancing down and to one side through his slit, he noted a large wooden pail filled almost to the brim with a mop's huge soggy head, lapped around by gray, soap-foamy water.

Samanda inspected the seven wires again. They glowed bright red. "Now," she said. "Brace yourself, my poppet."

Slipping through the curtain and snatching up the mop by its thick, splintery handle, the Mouser raced at Samanda, holding the mop's huge, dripping Medusa-head between their faces in hopes that she would not be able to identify her assailant. As the fiery wires hissed faintly through the air, he took her square in the face with a big smack and a gray splash, so that she was driven back a yard before she tripped on a long grilling-fork and fell backwards on her hinder fat-cushions.

Leaving the mop lying on her face with its handle neatly down her front, the Mouser whirled around, noting as he did a watery yellow eye in the nearest curtain slit and also the last red winking out of the wires lying midway between the fireplace and Reetha, still stiffly erect and with eyes squeezed shut and muscles taut against the red-hot blow.

He grabbed her arm at its pit, she screamed with amazement and pent tension, but he ignored this and hurried her toward the doorway by which he had entered, then stopped short at the tramp of many boots just beyond it. He rushed the girl in turn toward the two other leather-curtained doorways that hadn't an eye in their slits. More boots tramping. He sped back to the room's center, still firmly gripping Reetha.

Samanda, still on her back, had pushed the mop away with her pudgy fingers and was frantically wiping her eyes and squealing from soap-smart and rage.

The watery yellow eye was joined by its partner as Glipkerio strode in, daffodil wreath awry, black toga a-flap, and to either side of him a guardsman presenting toward the Mouser the gleaming brown-steel blade of a pike, while close behind came more guardsmen. Still others, pikes ready, filled the other three doorways and even appeared in the gallery.

Waving long white fingers at the Mouser, Glipkerio hissed, "Oh most false Gray Mouser! Hisvin has hinted you work against me and now I catch you at it!"

The Mouser squatted suddenly on his hams and heaved muscle-crackingly with both hands on a big recessed iron ring-bolt. A thick square trapdoor made of heavy wood topped with tile came up on its hinges. "Down!" he commanded Reetha, who obeyed with commendably cool-headed alacrity. The Mouser followed hunched at her heels, and let drop the trapdoor. It slammed down just in time to catch the blades of two pikes thrust at him, and presumably lever them with a jerk from their wielders' hands. Admirable wedges those tapering browned-iron blades would make to keep the trapdoor shut, the Mouser told himself.

Now he was in absolute darkness, but an earlier glance had shown him the shape and length of the stone stairs and an empty flagstoned area below abutting a niter-stained wall. Once again grasping Reetha's upper arm, he guided her down the stairs and across the gritty floor to within a couple of yards of the unseen wall. Then he let go the girl and felt in his pouch for flint, steel, his tinderbox, and a short thick-wicked candle.

From above came a muffled crack. Doubtless a pike-pole breaking as someone sought to rock out the trapped blade. Then someone commanded a muffled, "Heave!" The Mouser grinned in the dark, thinking how that would wedge the browned-iron wedges tighter.

Tiny sparks showered, a ghostly flame rose from a corner of the tinderbox, a tiny round flame like a golden pillbug with a sapphire center appeared at the tip of the candle's wick and began to swell. The Mouser snapped shut the tinderbox and held up the candle beside his head. Its flame suddenly flared big and bright. The next instant Reetha's arms were clamped around his neck and she was gasping in dry-mouthed terror against his ear.

Surrounding them on three sides and backing them against the ancient stone wall with its pale crystalline splotches, were a dozen ranks of silent rats formed in a semicircle about a spear-length away — hundreds, nay thousands of blackest long-tails, and more pouring out to join them from a score of rat-holes in the base of the walls in the long cellar, which was piled here and there with barrels, casks, and grain-sacks.

The Mouser suddenly grinned, thrust tinderbox, steel, and flint back in his pouch and felt there for something else.

Meanwhile he noted a tall, narrow rat-hole just by them, newly gnawed — or perhaps chiseled and pickaxed, to judge from the fragments of mortar and tiny shards of stone scattered in front of it. No rats came from it, but he kept a wary eye on it.

The Mouser found Sheelba's squat black bottle, pried the bandage off it, and withdrew its crystal stopper.

The dull-brained louts in the kitchen overhead were pounding on the trapdoor now — another useless assault!

The rats still poured from the holes and in such numbers that they threatened to become a humpy black carpet covering the whole floor of the cellar except for the tiny area where Reetha clung to the Mouser.

His grin widened. He set the bottle to his lips, took an experimental sip, thoughtfully rolled it on his tongue, then upended the vial and let its faintly bitter contents gurgle into his mouth and down his throat.

Reetha, unlinking her arms, said a little reproachfully, "I could use some wine too."

The Mouser raised his eyebrows happily at her and explained, "Not wine. Magic!" Had not her own eyebrows been shaven, they would have risen in puzzlement. He gave her a wink, tossed the bottle aside, and confidently awaited the emergence of his anti-rat powers, whatever they might be.

From above came the groan of metal and the slow cracking of tough wood. Now they were going about it the right way, with pry-bars. Likely the trap would open just in time for Glipkerio to witness the Mouser vanquishing the rat army. Everything was timing itself perfectly.

The black sea of hitherto silent rats began to toss and wave and from it came an angry chittering and a clashing of tiny teeth. Better and better! — this warlike show would put some rife into their defeat.

He idly noted that he was standing in the center of a large, gray-bordered splotch of pinkish slime he must have overlooked before in his haste and excitement. He had never seen a cellar-mold quite like it.

His eyeballs seemed to him to swell and burn a little and suddenly he felt in himself the powers of a god. He looked up at Reetha to warn her not to be frightened at anything that might happen — say his flesh glowing with a golden light or two bright scarlet beams flashing from his eyes to shrivel rats or heat them to popping.

Then he was asking himself, "_Up_ at Reetha?"

The pinkish splotch had become a large puddle lapping slimily over the soles of his boots.

There was a splintering. Light spilled down from the kitchen on the crowded rats.

The Mouser gawked at them horror-struck. They were as big as cats! No, black wolves! No, furry black men on all fours! He clutched at Reetha… and found himself vainly seeking to encircle with his arms a smooth white calf thick as a temple pillar. He gazed up at Reetha's amazed and fear-struck giant face two stories above. There echoed evilly in his ears Sheelba's carelessly spoken, fiendishly ambiguous: "…put you on the right footing to cope with the situation…" Oh yes indeed!

The slime-puddle and its gray border had grown wider still and he was in it up to his ankles.

He clung to Reetha's leg a moment longer with the faint and ungracious hope that since his weapons and his clothing, which touched him, had shrunk with him, she might shrink too at his touch. He would at least have a companion. Perhaps to his credit, it did not occur to him to yell, "Pick me up!"

The only thing that happened was that an almost inaudibly deep voice thundered down at him from Reetha's mouth, big as a red-edged shield, "What are you doing? I'm scared. Start the magic!"

The Mouser jumped away from the fleshly pillar, splashing the nasty pink stuff and almost slipping in it, and whipped out his sword Scalpel. It was just a shade bigger than a needle for mending sails. While the candle, which he still held in his left hand, was the proper size to light a small room in a doll's house.

There was loud, confused, multiple padding and claw-clicking, chittering war cries blasted his ears, and he saw the huge black rats stampeding him from three sides, kicking up the gray border in puffs as if it were a powder and then splashing the pink slime and sending ripples across it.

Reetha, terror-struck, watched her inexplicably diminished rescuer spin around, leap over a shard of rock, land in a pink splash, and brandishing his tiny sword before him, shielding his doll's candle with his cloak, and ducking his head, rush into the rat-hole behind her and so vanish. Racing rats brushed her ankles and snapped at each other, to be first down the hole after the Mouser. Elsewhere the rat horde was swiftly disappearing down the other holes. But one rat stayed long enough to nip her foot.

Her nerve snapped. Her first footsteps spattering pink slime and gray dust, she shrieked and ran, rats dodging from under her feet, and dashed up the steps, clawed her way past several wide-eyed guardsmen into the kitchen, and sank sobbing and panting on the tiles. Samanda snapped a chain on her collar.

Fafhrd, his arms joined in a circle above and before his head to avoid skull-bump from rocky outcrops and also the unexpected brushings on face of cobwebs and wraithlike fingers and filmy wings, at last saw a jaggedly circular green glow ahead. Soon he emerged from the black tunnel into a large and many entranced cavern somewhat lit at the center of its rocky floor by a green glow which was being replenished with thin blood-red logs by two skinny, raggedy-tunicked, sharp-eyed boys, who looked like typical street urchins of Lankhmar or Ilthmar, or any other decadent city. One had a puckered scar under his left eye. On the other side of the fire from them sat on low wide stone an obscenely fat figure so well cloaked and hooded that not a speck of his face or hand were visible. He was sorting out a large pile of parchment scraps and potsherds, pinching hold of them through the dark fabric of his overlong, dangling sleeves, and scanning them close-sightedly, almost putting them inside his hood.

"Welcome, my Gentle Son," he called to Fafhrd in a voice like a quavering sweet flute. "What happy chance brings you here?"

"_You_ know!" Fafhrd said harshly, striding forward until he was glaring across the leaping green flames at the black oval defined by the forward edge of the hood. "How am I to save the Mouser? What's with Lankhmar? And why, in the name of all the gods of death and destruction, is the tin whistle so important?"

"You speak in riddles, Gentle Son," the fluty voice responded soothingly, as its owner went on sorting his scraps. "What tin whistle? What peril's the Mouser in now? — reckless youth! And what _is_ with Lankhmar?"

Fafhrd let loose a flood of curses, which rattled impotently among the stalactites overhead. Then he jerked free from his pouch the tiny black oblong of Sheelba's message and held it forward between finger and thumb that shook with rage. "Look, Know-nothing One: I dumped a lovely girl to answer this and now — "

But the hooded figure had whistled warblingly and at that signal the black bat, which Fafhrd had forgot, launched itself from his shoulder, snatched with sharp teeth the black note from his finger-grip, and fluttered past the green flames to land on the paunchy one's sleeve-hidden hand, or tentacle, or whatever it was. The whatever-it-was conveyed to hood-mouth the bat, who obligingly fluttered inside and vanished in the coally dark there.

There followed a squeaky, unintelligible, hood-muffled dialogue while Fafhrd sat his fists on his hips and fumed. The two skinny boys gave him sly grins and whispered together impudently, their bright eyes never leaving him. At last the fluty voice called, "Now it's crystal clear to me, Oh Patient Son. Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and I have been on the outs — a bit of a wizardly bicker — and now he seeks to mend fences with this. Well, well, well, first advances by Sheelba. Ho-ho-ho!"

"Very funny," Fafhrd growled. "Haste's the marrow of our confab. The Sinking Land came up, shedding its waters, as I entered your caves. My swift but jaded mount crops your stingy grass outside. I must leave within the half hour if I am to cross the Sinking Land before it resubmerges. _What do I do about the Mouser, Lankhmar, and the tin whistle?_"

"But, Gentle Son, I know nothing about those things," the other replied artlessly. "'Tis only Sheelba's motives are air — clear to me. Oh, ho, to think that he — Wait, wait now, Fafhrd! Don't rattle the stalactites again. I've ensorceled them against falling, but there are no spells in the universe which a big fellow can't sometimes break through. I'll advise you, never fear. But I must first clairvoy. Scatter on the golden dust, boys — thriftily now, don't waste it, 'tis worth ten times its weight in diamond unpowdered."

The two urchins each dipped into a bag beside them and threw into the feet of the green flames a glittering golden swirl. Instantly the flames darkened, though leaping high as ever and sending off no soot. Watching them in the now almost night-dark cavern, Fafhrd thought he could make out the transitory, ever-distorting shadows of twisty towers, ugly trees, tall hunchbacked men, low-shouldered beasts, beautiful wax women melting, and the like, but nothing was clear or even hinted at a story.

Then from the obese warlock's hood came toward the darkened fire two greenish ovals, each with a vertical black streak like the jewel cat's eye. A half yard out of the hood they paused and held steady. They were speedily joined by two more which both diverged and went farther. Then came a single one arching up over the fire until one would have thought it was in great danger of sizzling. Lastly, two which floated in opposite directions almost impossibly far around the fire and then hooked in to observe it from points near Fafhrd.

The voice fluted sagely: "It is always best to look at a problem from all sides."

Fafhrd drew his shoulders together and repressed a shudder. It never failed to be disconcerting to watch Ningauble send forth his Seven Eyes on their apparently indefinitely extensible eyestalks. Especially on occasions when he'd been coy as a virgin in a bathrobe about keeping them hidden.

So much time passed that Fafhrd began to snap his fingers with impatience, softly at first, then more crackingly. He'd given up looking at the flames. They never held anything but the tantalizing, churning shadows.

At last the green eyes floated back into the hood, like a mystic fleet returning to port. The flames turned bright green again, and Ningauble said, "Gentle Son, I now understand your problem and its answer. In part. I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser, now. He's exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Glipkerio Kistomerces. But he's not buried there, or even dead — though about twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him _are_ dead, in the cellar I mentioned. But he _is_ alive."

"But _how_?" Fafhrd almost gawked, spreading his spread-fingered hands.

"I haven't the faintest idea. He's surrounded by enemies but near him are two friends — of a sort. Now about Lankhmar, that's clearer. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting going on in the streets, by a fierce host which outnumbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by… my goodness… fifty to one — and equipped with all modern weapons.

"Yet you can save the city, you can turn the tide of battle — this part came through very clearly — if you only hasten to the temple of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar and climb its bell-tower and ring the chimes there, which have been silent for uncounted centuries. Presumably to rouse those gods. But that's only my guess."

"I don't like the idea of having anything to do with that dusty crew," Fafhrd complained. "From what I've heard of them, they're more like walking mummies than true gods — and even more dry-spirited and unloving, being sifted through like sand with poisonous senile whims."

Ningauble shrugged his cloaked, bulbous shoulders. "I thought you were a brave man, addicted to deeds of derring-do."

Fafhrd cursed sardonically, then demanded, "But even if I should go clang those rusty bells, how can Lankhmar hold out until then with her walls breached and the odds fifty to one against her?"

"I'd like to know that myself," Ningauble assured him.

"And how do I get to the temple when the streets are crammed with warfare?"

Ningauble shrugged once again. "You're a hero. You should know."

"Well then, the tin whistle?" Fafhrd grated.

"You know, I didn't get a thing on the tin whistle. Sorry about that. Do you have it with you? Might I look at it?"

Grumbling, Fafhrd extracted it from his flat pouch, and brought it around the fire.

"Have you ever blown it?" Ningauble asked.

"No," Fafhrd said with surprise, lifting it to his lips.

"Don't!" Ningauble squeaked. "Not on any account! Never blow a strange whistle. It might summon things far worse even than savage mastiffs or the police. Here, give it to me."

He pinched it away from Fafhrd with a double fold of animated sleeve and held it close to his hood, revolving it clockwise and counterclockwise, finally serpentinely gliding out four of his eyes and subjecting it to their massed scrutiny at thumbnail distance.

At last he withdrew his eyes, sighed, and said, "Well… I'm not sure. But there are thirteen characters in the inscription — I couldn't decipher 'em, mind you, but there _are_ thirteen. Now if you take that fact in conjunction with the slim couchant feline figure on the other side… Well, I think you blow this whistle to summon the War Cats. Mind you, that's only a deduction, and one of several steps, each uncertain."

"Who are the War Cats?" Fafhrd asked.

Ningauble writhed his fat shoulders and neck under their garments. "I've never been quite certain. But putting together various rumors and legends — oh yes, and some cave drawings north of the Cold Waste and south of Quarmall — I have arrived at the tentative conclusion that they are a military aristocracy of all the feline tribes, a bloodthirsty Inner Circle of thirteen members — in short, a dozen and one ailuric berserkers. I would assume — provisionally only, mind you — that they would appear when summoned, as perhaps by this whistle, and instantly assault whatever creature or creatures, beast or man, that seemed to threaten the feline tribes. So I would advise you not to blow it except in the presence of enemies of cats more worthy of attack than yourself, for I suppose you have slain a few tigers and leopards in your day. Here, take it."

Fafhrd snatched and pouched it, demanding, "But by God's ice-rimmed skull, when _am_ I to blow it? How can the Mouser be two parts in fifty alive when buried eight yards deep? What vast, fifty-to-one host can have assaulted Lankhmar without months of rumors and reports of their approach? What fleets could carry — "

"No more questions!" Ningauble interposed shrilly. "Your half hour is up. If you are to beat the Sinking Land and be in time to save the city, you must gallop at once for Lankhmar. Now no more words."

Fafhrd raved for a while longer, but Ningauble maintained a stubborn silence, so Fafhrd gave him a last thundering curse, which brought down a small stalactite that narrowly missed bashing his brains out, and departed, ignoring the urchins' maddening grins.

Outside the caves, he mounted the Mingol mare and cantered, followed by hoof-raised dust-cloud, down the sun-yellowed, dryly rustling slope toward the mile-wide westward-leading isthmus of dark brown rock, salt-filmed and here and there sea-puddled, that was the Sinking Land. Southward gleamed the placid blue waters of the Sea of the East, northward the restless gray waters of the Inner Sea and the glinting squat towers of Ilthmar. Also northward he noted four small dust-clouds like his own coming down the Ilthmar road, which he had earlier traveled himself. Almost surely and just as he'd guessed, the four black brigands were after him at last, hot to revenge their three slain or at least woefully damaged fellow-rogues. He narrowed his eyes and nudged the gray mare to a lively lope.