Swords Of Lankhmar

The litter arrived almost immediately, borne by two very brawny, half-naked rats. The Mouser rolled into it gratefully, laying his ivory staff beside him, commanded "To my home!" and waved a gentle good-bye to Skwee and Lord Null as he was carried joggingly off. He felt himself at the moment to be the most brilliant mind in the whole universe and thoroughly deserving of a rest, even in a rat burrow. He reminded himself he had at least four hours to go before Sheelba's spell wore off and he became once more human size. He'd done his best for Lankhmar, now he must think of himself. He lazily wondered what the comforts of a rat home would be like. He must sample them before escaping above ground. It really had been a damnably tiring council session after all that had gone before.

Skwee tuned to Lord Null as the litter disappeared by stages beyond the pillars and said through his be-diamonded white mask, "So Grig has a mistress, the old misogynist! Perhaps it's she who has quickened his mind to such new brilliancies as Operation Black Toga."

"I still don't like that one, though you outvoted me and I must go along," chittered the other irritably from behind his black vizard. "There's too much uncertainty tonight. The final battle about to be joined. A magically transformed human spy reported in Lankhmar Below. The change in Grig's character. That rabid mouse running widdershins a-foam at the jaws, outside the Council Chamber, and which squeaked thrice when you slew him. The uncustomary buzzing of the night-bees in Siss's chambers. And now this new operation adopted on the spur of the moment — "

Skwee clapped Lord Null on the shoulder in friendly fashion. "You're distraught tonight, comrade, and see omens in every night-bug," he said. "Grig at all events had one most sound notion. We all could do with a little rest and refreshment. Especially you before your all-important mission. Come."

And turning the table over to Siss, he and Lord Null went to a curtained alcove just off the Council Chamber, Skwee ordering on the way that food and drink be brought them.

When the curtains were closed behind them, Skwee seated himself in one of the two chairs beside the small table there and took off his mask. In the pulsing violet light of the three silver-caged glow-wasps illuminating the alcove, his long, white-furred, blue-eyed snout looked remarkably sinister.

"To think," he said, "that tomorrow my people will be masters of Lankhmar Above. For millennia we rats have planned and built, tunneled and studied and striven, and now in less than six hours — it's worth a drink! Which reminds me, comrade, isn't it time for your medicinal draught" Lord Null hissed with consternation, prepared to lift his black mask distractedly, dipped his black-gloved right fore-member into his pouch, and came up with a tiny white vial.

"Stop!" Skwee commanded with some honor, capturing the black-gloved wrist with a sudden grab. "If you should drink _that one_ now — "

"I _am_ nervous tonight, nervous to frustration," the other admitted, returning the white vial to his pouch and coming up with a black one. Before draining its contents, he lifted his black mask entirely. The face behind was not a rat's, but the seamed and beady-eyed visage, rat-small, of Hisvin the grain-merchant.

The black draught swallowed, he appeared to experience relief and easement of tension. The worry lines in his face were replaced by those of thought.

"Who is Grig's mistress, Skwee?"' he speculated suddenly. "No common slut, I'll swear, or vanity-puffed courtesan."

Skwee shrugged his hunchy shoulders and said cynically, "The more brilliant the enchanted male, the stupider the enchanting female."

"No!" Hisvin said impatiently. "I sense a brilliant and rapacious mind here that is not Grig's. He was ambitious once, you know, sought your position, then his fires sank to coals glowing through wintery ash."

"That's true," Skwee agreed thoughtfully. "Who has blown him alight again?" Hisvin demanded, now with anxious suspicion. "_Who_ is his mistress, Skwee?"

Fafhrd pulled up the Mingol mare before that iron-hearted beast should topple from exhaustion — and had trouble doing it, so resolute unto death was that grim creature. Yet once stopped, he felt her legs giving under her and he dropped quickly from the saddle lest she collapse from his weight. She was lathered with sweat, her head hung between her trembling forelegs, and her slatted ribs worked like a bellows as she gasped whistlingly.

He rested his hand lightly on her shaking shoulders. She never could have made Lankhmar, he knew. They were less than halfway across the Great Salt Marsh.

Low moonlight, striking from behind, washed with a faint gold the gravel of the causeway road and yellowly touched the tops of thorn tree and cactus, but could not yet slant down to the Marsh's sea-grassed floor and black bottoms.