The Mouser shifted his lower, hidden hand. "The most valuable thing I've got for you," he said, turning his body away from the wall just enough to whip his own slender blade from its sheath in a high head parry that knocked his foe's point away from his face and sent the larger sword flying, "is this piece of advice ..." His riposte put his own point beneath the taller man's chin. Suddenly empty-handed, the fellow's eyes snapped wide with surprise and fear.
"Never interrupt a man in mid-stream." The Mouser finished his business on the man's boots.
Behind him, almost forgotten, the other man, who had relieved himself by the door, chuckled. "An never ferget that thieves are like the boots yer pissin' on."
At last, recognizing their Ilthmart accents, the Mouser reacted too late. An earthen beer mug came crashing down on his head. Red stars exploded behind his eyes. He staggered, then sagged against the wall where he'd written Ivrian's name.
"We usually come in pairs, little man."
FOUR
SHADOWS IN THE MIST
Fafhrd yawned, stretching his arms above his head as he sat up on the side of the bed. The muffled sounds of laughter and general carousing rose up through the floorboards from the tavern below. It was not the noise that had awakened him, however, but a nightmare from which he had struggled to awake.
Frowning, he rubbed his nose. Born and raised in the open spaces of the Cold Wastes, the smells of city living constantly offended his senses. At the moment, though, such odors were a welcome distraction, for they forced his mind farther from the specters that even now reached for him and called to him from the receding dream.
Only a feeble light from the lamps in the hallway seeped beneath the door. Otherwise, the room was black as pitch. Throwing back the sheet, Fafhrd rose naked and groped for the chamber pot at the foot of the bed. In the darkness, however, he kicked it, and sent it clattering into some other corner of the room.
Muttering curses, the huge Northerner hopped up and down on his right foot as he clutched his left. His big toe throbbed. Yet he thanked his god, Kos, for small favors, for his nose told him that the Mouser had not used the pot before him. Squinting, he tried to locate the overturned vessel in the blackness. Then, with a shrug, he gave up and limped to the window.
Somebody had closed the shutters, Fafhrd noted sleepily, but he flung them open and leaned against the sill. Damn the chamber pot. He would only have emptied it into the alley below anyway. Yawning again, he released his urine and watched it fall steaming into the cool, foggy night while he listened to the voices coming up through the floor.
Outraged screams and curses rose up from below! Fafhrd grinned as he continued with the task at hand. Cherig's guests were a rowdy lot tonight. No doubt his companion, the Mouser, was downstairs in the thick of it.
Then, another sound jarred against his ears, and suddenly Fafhrd realized the curses were rising, not through the floor, but from the alley below his window. Steel rang on steel, a note played only by one sword blade upon another.
As he continued to pee, Fafhrd leaned his head out the window, curious to see what transpired below. Through the dense fog, he barely spied one small shape fending off two larger attackers. At the same time, he heard his own name shouted.
"Fafhrd, you ill-mannered oaf, you're drenching me in your damnable rain!"
His personal business nearly complete, Fafhrd shouted back in surprise. "Mouser?" he called, the sleep-fog lifting from his brain. "Is that you?"
The small shadow below called back as he dodged and feinted, and steel rang out again. "None other, and covered in your foul stink!"
While one tall shadow engaged the Mouser, another stepped away from the conflict and shook his sword at Fafhrd's window. "As am I, you faceless, bottomless bladder! After we dispatch this puny runt and relieve him of his purse, my comrade and I will be pleased to knock upon your door and deal you similar treatment!"
Fafhrd considered for a moment while all three shadows resumed the fight. "Mouser," he called over the clash of blades. "Do I take it this bout is not just the friendly play of good-natured tavern-mates engaged in peacock displays of skill and manhood?"
A heavy wisp of fog shifted through the alley, momentarily obscuring the combatants from Fafhrd's view, but the Mouser's voice came to him clearly, if a bit breathlessly. "This pair of Ilthmart thieves?" There was a pause, followed by a loud hawk and sound of spitting. "Skill and manhood are both small things to these cowards. I am giving them a fencing lesson!"
Despite the Mouser's bravado, Fafhrd thought he detected a certain slur to his friend's words, and when the fog parted slightly, it seemed to him that the Ilthmart thieves, blades weaving in tandem, were pressing the Mouser to the wall.
His own sword, Graywand, stood sheathed near his pillow. Swiftly crossing the room, Fafhrd stubbed another toe on the bed's leg. With a roar of pain, he drew the blade. A stream of curses flowing from his lips, he returned to the window, leaped over the sill, and plunged through the fog to the street below.
One of the Ilthmarts turned to face Fafhrd. Raising his sword to strike, the thief and would-be murderer hesitated, his eyes widening as he looked up at his seven-foot opponent. No small man, himself, his jaw gaped.
"Now then," Fafhrd said as he took a two-handed grip on his huge weapon and leveled the point near the man's throat, "which of you called my friend a puny runt?"
The thief wet his lips. Without taking his eyes from Fafhrd, he inclined his head toward his partner, who was furiously fending off the Mouser's attacks. "Uh, not me," he answered with an innocent-seeming shrug. "It was my friend. He's always had a big mouth. I'm a quiet one, myself."
"I see," Fafhrd said, drawing a circle before the man's eyes with his sword's point, "No reason to run you through, then." He brought his foot up into the Ilthmart's groin. The man's eyes snapped wider as he dropped his sword, clutched himself between his legs, and sank to his knees; his mouth made a pained oval, and he elicited a pitiful, low moan. "Next time," he gasped as he slumped forward, "just run me through."
Planting the point of Graywand in the dirt, Fafhrd leaned on the pommel and peered through the ever-thickening fog. The clang of blades made a sweet music for a pair of dim shapes dancing a few paces away. "How fares the puny runt?" he called to the pair.
Barely visible in the hazy mist, the remaining Ilthmart scowled contemptuously, though his breathing was ragged. "His sword is a small threat."
Fafhrd smirked. "Play with him a while, and it'll grow."
"I have taught him the parry from the third, fourth, and fifth positions," the Mouser called merrily, his words wine-slurred, "as well as the direct and indirect ripostes." Blades clanged again, mingling with the sounds of boots scraping desperately in the road, ending with a scowled curse and the harsh intake of breath. "Ah, there!" the Mouser cried. "Now he knows the fleche!"
Patting his lips with the palm of one hand, Fafhrd faked a yawn. "Haven't you dispatched him, yet? A spectator might think you were in some trouble."
Again, a ring of steel as blades slid against one another. "A mouser likes to play with its catch before he eats it," the smaller figure laughed. "Ah hah! There! An arm-cut!"
The larger shadow growled. "No more than a scratch, you little braggart! And there's one lesson I learned long before this." Stooping, he grabbed a handful of dirt and flung it at the Mouser's face. "That's when to run away!"
Recoiling, the Mouser shielded his eyes with one hand as the Ilthmart thief disappeared down the fog-enshrouded alley. "I think I should mention he's got our purse," he said, sputtering dirt from his lips as he spoke to Fafhrd. "And I've run up quite a tab with Cherig. There'll be no beer for you tonight if he gets away."