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time there was a faint _thud_ with just the hint of a_clank._
"The cuirass of Mingsward and the groin-piece of Gortch," the Mouser
pronounced. "Each heavily padded to keep them from ringing. Therein lie Issek's
strength and invulnerability. They wouldn't have fit you six months ago."
Fafhrd sat as one bemused. Then his face broke into a large grin. "You win,"
he said. "When do I pay?"
"This very afternoon," the Mouser whispered, "when Bwadres eats and takes
his forty winks." He rose with a light grunt and made off, stepping daintily from
cobble to cobble. Soon the Street of the Gods grew moderately busy and for
awhile Fafhrd was surrounded by a scattering of the curious, but it was a very hot
day for Lankhmar. By midafternoon the Street was deserted; even the children
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r r
had sought shade.
Bwadres droned through the Acolyte's Litany twice with Fafhrd, then called
for food by touching his hand to his mouth -- it was his ascetic custom always to
eat at this uncomfortable time rather than in the cool of the evening.
Fafhrd went off and shortly returned with a large bowl of fish stew. Bwadres
blinked at the size of it, but tucked it away, belched, and curled around the cask
after an admonition to Fafhrd. He was snoring almost immediately.
A hiss sounded from the low wide archway behind them. Fafhrd stood up and
quietly moved into the shadows of the portico. The Mouser gripped his arm and
guided him toward one of several curtained doorways.
"Your sweat's a flood, my friend," he said softly. "Tell me, do you really wear
the armor from prudence, or is it a kind of metal hair-shirt?"
Fafhrd did not answer. He blinked at the curtain the Mouser drew aside. "I
don't like this," he said. "It's a house of assignation. I may be seen and then what
will dirty-minded people think?"
"Hung for the kid, hung for the goat," the Mouser said lightly. "Besides, you
haven't been seen -- yet. In with you!"
Fafhrd complied. The heavy curtains swung to behind them, leaving the room
in which they stood lit only by high louvers. As Fafhrd squinted into the
semidarkness, the Mouser said, "I've paid the evening's rent on this place. It's
private, it's near. None will know. What more could you ask?"
"I guess you're right," Fafhrd said uneasily. "But you've spent too much rent
money. Understand, my little man, I can have only one drink with you. You
tricked me into that -- after a fashion you did -- but I pay. But only one cup of
wine, little man. We're friends, but we have our separate paths to tread. So only
one cup. Or at most two."
"Naturally," purred the Mouser.
The objects in the room grew in the swimming gray blank of Fafhrd's vision.
There was an inner door (also curtained), a narrow bed, a basin, a low table and
stool, and on the floor beside the stool several portly short-necked large-eared
shapes. Fafhrd counted them and once again his face broke into a large grin.
"Hung for a kid, you said," he rumbled softly in his old bass voice, continuing
to eye the stone bottles of vintage. "I see four kids, Mouser." The Mouser echoed
himself.
"Naturally."
By the time the candle the Mouser had fetched was guttering in a little pool,
Fafhrd was draining the third "kid." He held it upended above his head and
caught the last drop, then batted it lightly away like a large feather-stuffed ball.
As its shards exploded from the floor, he bent over from where he was sitting on
the bed, bent so low that his beard brushed the floor, and clasped the last "kid"
with both hands and lifted it with exaggerated care onto the table. Then taking up
a very short-bladed knife and keeping his eyes so close to his work that they were
inevitably crossed, he picked every last bit of resin out of the neck, flake by tiny
flake.
Fafhrd no longer looked at all like an acolyte, even a misbehaving one. After
finishing the first "kid" he had stripped for action. His camel's hair robe was flung
into one corner of the room, the pieces of padded armor into another. Wearing
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r r
only a once-white loincloth, he looked like some lean doomful berserk, or a
barbaric king in a bath-house. For some time no light had been coming through
the louvers. Now there was a little -- the red glow of torches. The noises of night
had started and were on the increase -- thin laughter, hawkers' cries, various
summonses to prayer ... and Bwadres calling "Fafhrd!'' again and again in his
raspy long-carrying voice. But that last had stopped some time ago.
Fafhrd took so long with the resin, handling it like gold leaf, that the Mouser
had to fight down several groans of impatience. But he was smiling his soft smile
of victory. He did move once -- to light a fresh taper from the expiring one.
Fafhrd did not seem to notice the change in illumination. By now, it occurred to
the Mouser, his friend was doubtless seeing everything by that brilliant light of
spirits of wine which illumines the way of all brave drunkards.
Without any warning the Northerner lifted the short knife high and stabbed it
into the center of the cork.
"Die, false Mingol!" he cried, withdrawing the knife with a twist, the cork on
its point. "I drink your blood!" And he lifted the stone bottle to his lips.
After he had gulped about a third of its contents, by the Mouser's calculation,
he set it down rather suddenly on the table. His eyeballs rolled upward, all the
muscles of his body quivered with the passing of a beatific spasm, and he sank
back majestically, like a tree that falls with care. The frail bed creaked ominously
but did not collapse under its burden.
Yet this was not quite the end. An anxious crease appeared between Fafhrd's
shaggy eyebrows, his head tilted up and his bloodshot eyes peered out
menacingly from their eagle's nest of hair, searching the room.
Their gaze finally settled on the last stone bottle. A long rigidly-muscled arm
shot out, a great hand shut on the top of the bottle and placed it under the edge of
the bed and did not leave it. Then Fafhrd's eyes closed, his head dropped back
with finality and, smiling, he began to snore.
The Mouser stood up and came over. He rolled back one of Fafhrd's eyelids,
gave a satisfied nod, then gave another after feeling Fafhrd's pulse, which was
surging with as slow and strong a rhythm as the breakers of the Outer Sea.
Meanwhile the Mouser's other hand, operating with an habitual deftness and
artistry unnecessary under the circumstances, abstracted from a fold in Fafhrd's
loincloth a gleaming gold object he had earlier glimpsed there. He tucked it away
in a secret pocket in the skirt of his gray tunic.
Someone coughed behind him.
It was such a deliberate-sounding cough that the Mouser did not leap or start,
but only turned around without changing the planting of his feet in a movement
slow and sinuous as that of a ceremonial dancer in the Temple of the Snake.
Pulg was standing in the inner doorway, wearing the black-and-silver striped
robe and cowl of a masker and holding a black, jewel-spangled vizard a little aside
from his face. He was looking at the Mouser enigmatically.
"I didn't think you could do it, son, but you did," he said softly. "You patch [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]