“We'll have to make a rush,” whispered Fafhrd through closed teeth with which he was knotting a bandage around a gash in his arm. And then he suddenly raised his head and sniffed. Somehow, through that confusion and the faint sweetish smell of blood had come an odor that made his flesh prickle and creep, an odor at once alien and familiar; a fainter odor, hot, dry and dusty. For a moment the thieves fell silent and Fafhrd thought he heard the sound of distant marching, the clicking of bony feet.
Then a thief cried, “Master, Master, the skull, the skull! It moves! It clamps its teeth!'
There was a confused sound of men drawing back, then Slevyas’ curse. The Mouser, peering around the tabletop, saw Slevyas kick the jeweled skull toward the center of the room.
“Fools,” he cried to his cowering followers, “do you still believe those lies, those old-wives’ whispers? Do you think dead bones can walk? I and no other am your master! And may all dead thieves be damned eternally!'
With that he brought his sword down whistling. The skull of Ohmphal shattered like an eggshell. A whining cry of fear came from the thieves. The room grew dark as though it were filling with dust.
“Now follow me!” cried Slevyas. “Death to the intruders!'
But the thieves shrank back, darker shadows in the gloom. Fafhrd, sensing opportunity and mastering his growing fear, rushed out at Slevyas. The Mouser followed him. Fafhrd intended to kill with his third blow. First a swipe at Slevyas’ longer sword to deflect it, next a quick blow at the side to bring him off guard, then finally a back-handed slash at the head.
But Slevyas was a better swordsman than that. He parried the third cut so that it whistled harmlessly over his head, then thrust at the Northerner's throat. That thrust brought Fafhrd's supple muscles to full life; true, the blade grazed his neck, but his parry, striking Slevyas’ sword near the hilt, numbed the Master Thief's hand. Fafhrd knew he had him then and drove him back with a mercilessly intense onslaught. He did not notice how the room was darkening. He did not wonder why Slevyas’ desperate calls for assistance went unanswered; why the thieves were crowding toward the alcove, and why the wounded were crawling back into the room from the corridor. Toward that doorway he drove Slevyas, so that the man was silhouetted against it. Finally as Slevyas reached the doorway, he disarmed him with a blow which sent the thief's sword spinning, and put his own point to Slevyas’ throat.
“Yield!” he cried.
Only then he realized the hateful dusty odor was thick in his nostrils, that the room was in utter silence, that from the corridor came a hot wind and the sound of marching bones clicking against the stone pavement. He saw Slevyas look over his shoulder, and he saw a fear like death in Slevyas’ face. Then came a sudden intense darkness, like a puff of inky smoke. But before it came he saw bony arms clasp Slevyas’ throat; and, as the Mouser dragged him back, he saw the doorway crowded with black skeletal forms whose eyes glittered green and red and sapphire. Then utter darkness, hideous with the screams of the thieves as they fought to crowd into the narrow tunnel in the alcove. And over and above the screams sounded thin high voices, like those of bats, cold as eternity. One cry he heard clearly.
“Slayer of Ohmphal, this is the vengeance of Ohmphal's brothers.'
Then Fafhrd felt the Mouser dragging him forward again, toward the corridor door. When he could see properly, he found they were fleeing through an empty Thieves’ House — he, the Mouser, Ivlis, and the lone bodyguard.
Ivlis’ maidservant, having barred the other end of the corridor in terror at the approaching sounds, crouched trembling in the rugs on the other side, listening in unwilling, sick horror — unable to flee — to the muffled screams and pleas and to the faint moaning sounds which bore a note of terrible triumph. The small black kitten arched its back, hair on end, and spat and hissed. Presently all sounds ceased.
Thereafter it was noted in Lankhmar that thieves were fewer. And it was rumored that the Thieves’ Guild conducted strange rites at full moon, descending into deep cellars and worshipping some sort of ancient gods. It was even said that they gave these gods, whoever they were, one-third of all they stole.
But Fafhrd, drinking with the Mouser and Ivlis and a wench from Tovilyis in an upper room at the Silver Eel, complained that the fates were unfair.
“All that trouble and nothing to show for it! The gods have a lasting grudge against us.'
The Mouser smiled, reached into his pouch, and laid three rubies on the table.
“Ohmphal's fingertips,” he said briefly.
“How can you dare keep them?” questioned Ivlis. “Are you not afraid of brown bones at midnight?” She shuddered and eyed the Mouser with a certain solicitude.
He returned her gaze and replied, though the ghost of his Ivrian rebuked him, “My taste runs to pink bones, fittingly clothed.'
IV: The Bleak Shore
“So you think a man can cheat death and outwit doom?” said the small, pale man, whose bulging forehead was shadowed by a black cowl.
The Gray Mouser, holding the dice box ready for a throw, paused and quickly looked sideways at the questioner.
“I said that a cunning man can cheat death for a long time.”
The Silver Eel bustled with pleasantly raucous excitement. Fighting men predominated and the clank of swordsmen's harness mingled with the thump of tankards, providing a deep obbligato to the shrill laughter of the women. Swaggering guardsmen elbowed the insolent bravos of the young lords. Grinning slaves bearing open wine jars dodged nimbly between. In one corner a slave girl was dancing, the jingle of her silver anklet bells inaudible in the din. Outside the small, tight-shuttered windows a dry, whistling wind from the south filled the air with dust that eddied between the cobblestones and hazed the stars. But here all was jovial confusion.
The Gray Mouser was one of a dozen at the gaming table. He was dressed all in gray — jerkin, silken shirt, and mouseskin cap — but his dark, flashing eyes and cryptic smile made him seem more alive than any of the others, save for the huge copper-haired barbarian next to him, who laughed immoderately and drank tankards of the sour wine of Lankhmar as if it were beer.
“They say you're a skilled swordsman and have come close to death many times,” continued the small pale man in the black robe, his thin lips barely parting as he spoke the words.
But the Mouser had made his throw, and the odd dice of Lankhmar had stopped with the matching symbols of the eel and serpent uppermost, and he was raking in triangular golden coins. The barbarian answered for him.
“Yes, the gray one handles a sword daintily enough — almost as well as myself. He's also a great cheat at dice.”
“Are you, then, Fafhrd?” asked the other. “And do you, too, truly think a man can cheat death, be he ever so cunning a cheat at dice?”
The barbarian showed his white teeth in a grin and peered puzzledly at the small, pale man whose somber appearance and manner contrasted so strangely with the revelers thronging the low-ceilinged tavern fumy with wine.
“You guess right again,” he said in a bantering tone. “I am Fafhrd, a Northerner, ready to pit my wits against any doom.” He nudged his companion. “Look, Mouser, what do you think of this little black-coated mouse who's sneaked in through a crack in the floor and wants to talk with you and me about death?”
The man in black did not seem to notice the jesting insult. Again his bloodless lips hardly moved, yet his words were unaffected by the surrounding clamor, and impinged on the ears of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with peculiar clarity.
“It is said you two came close to death in the Forbidden City of the Black Idols, and in the stone trap of Angarngi, and on the misty island in the Sea of Monsters. It is also said that you have walked with doom on the Cold Waste and through the Mazes of Klesh. But who may be sure of these things, and whether death and doom were truly near? Who knows but what you are both braggarts who have boasted once too often? Now I have heard tell that death sometimes calls to a man in a voice only he can hear. Then he must rise and leave his friends and go to whatever place death shall bid him, and there meet his doom. Has death ever called to you in such a fashion?”
