The Second Book of Lankhmar

under their black togas, rapidly circled between him and the doorway through which his forces had fled. Hisvin looked vicious and Hisvet unpleasantly like her father—the Mouser had never before noted the striking family resemblance. They began to close in.
    To his left Elakeria snatched up a handful of the wands of office and raised them threateningly. To the Mouser, even those flimsy rods were huge as pikes.
    To his right Glipkerio, still cringing away, reached down surreptitiously for his light battle-ax. Evidently the Mouser's loyal squeaks had gone unheard, or not been believed.
    The Mouser wondered which way to jump.
    Behind him Frix murmured softly, though to the Mouser's ears still somewhat boomingly, “Exit kitchen tyrant pursued by pages unclad and maids in a state of nature, leaving our hero beset by an ogre and two—or is it three?—ogresses."

Chapter Sixteen
    Fafhrd, although he came down the temple's wall fast, found the battle once more considerably changed when he reached the bottom.
    The Gods of Lankhmar, though not exactly in panicky rout, were withdrawing toward the open door of their temple, thrusting their staves from time to time at the horde of rats which still beset them. Wisps of smoke still trailed from a few of them—ghostly moonlit pennons. They were coughing, or more likely cursing and it sounded like coughs. Their brown skull-faces were dire—the expression of elders defeated and trying to cloak their impotent, gibbering rage with dignity.
    Fafhrd moved rapidly out of their way.
    Kreeshkra and her two male Ghouls were slashing and stabbing from their saddles at another flood of rats in front of Hisvin's house, while their black horses crunched rats under their hooves.
    Fafhrd made toward them, but at that moment there was a rush of rats at him and he had to unsheathe Graywand. Using the great sword as a scythe, he cleared a space around him with three strokes, then started again toward the Ghouls.
    The doors of Hisvin's house burst open and there fled out down the short stairs a crowd of Mingol slaves. Their faces grimaced with terror, but even more striking was the fact that they were thin almost beyond emaciation. Their once-tight black liveries hung loosely on them. Their hands were skeletal. Their faces were skulls covered with yellow skin.
    Three groups of skeletons: brown, ivory, and yellow— It is a prodigy of prodigies , Fafhrd thought, the beginning of a dark spectrum of bones .
    Behind the Mingols and driving them, not so much to kill them as to get them out of the way, came a company of crouchy but stalwart masked men, some wearing armor, all brandishing weapons—swords and crossbows. There was something horribly familiar about their scuttling, hobble-legged gait. Then came some with pikes and helmets, but without masks. The faces, or muzzles rather, were those of rats. All the newcomers, masked or nakedly fur-faced, made for the three Ghoulish riders.
    Fafhrd sprang forward, Graywand singing about his head, unmindful of the new surge of ordinary rats coming against him—and came to a skidding halt.
    The man-sized and man-armed rats were still pouring from Hisvin's house. Hero or no, he couldn't kill that many of them.
    At that instant he felt claws sink into his leg. He raised his crook-fingered big left hand to sweep away from him whatever now attacked him ... and saw climbing his thigh the black kitten from Squid .
    That scatterbrain mustn't be in this dread battle , he thought ... and opened his empty pouch to thrust in the kitten ... and saw gleaming dully at its bottom the tin whistle ... and realized that here was a metal straw to cling to.
    He snatched it out and set it to his lips and blew it.
    When one taps with idle finger a toy drum, one does not expect a peal of thunder. Fafhrd gasped and almost swallowed the whistle. Then he made to hurl it away from him. Instead he set it to his lips once more, put his hands to his ears, for some reason closed his eyes tight, and once more blew it.
    Once again the horrendous noise went shuddering up toward the moon and down the shadowed streets of Lankhmar.
    Imagine the scream of a leopard, the snarl of a tiger, and the roaring of a lion commingled, and one will have some faint suggestion of the sound the tin whistle produced.
    Everywhere the little rats held still in their hordes. The skeletal Mingols paused in their shaking, staggering flight. The big armed rats, masked or helmeted, halted in their attack upon the