The Second Book of Lankhmar

Mouser, after a word with Fafhrd, slipped forward and could be seen gossiping industriously with Squid' s bosun and the common members of her crew down to cook and cabin boy. Occasionally something might have passed rapidly from the Mouser's hand to that of the sailor with whom he spoke.

Chapter Four
    Despite Slinoor's urging, the sun was dropping down the western sky before Squid 's gongsman beat the rapid brassy tattoo that signalized the imminence of combat. The sky was clear to the west and overhead, but the sinister fog-bank still rested a Lankhmar league (twenty bowshots) to the east, paralleling the northward course of the fleet and looking almost as solid and dazzling as a glacier wall in the sun's crosswise rays. Most mysteriously neither hot sun nor west wind dissipated it.
    Black-suited, brown-mailed and brown-helmeted marines facing aft made a wall across Squid to either side of the mainmast. They held their spears horizontal and crosswise at arm's-length down, making an additional low fence. Black-tunicked sailors peered between their shoulders and boots, or sat with their own brown legs a-dangle on the larboard side of the foredeck, where the great sail did not cut off their view. A few perched in the rigging.
    The damaged rail had been stripped away from the break in the afterdeck and there around the bare aftermast sat the three judges: Slinoor, the Mouser, and Lukeen's sergeant. Around them, mostly to larboard of the two helmsmen, were grouped Squid 's officers and certain officers of the other ship on whose presence the Mouser had stubbornly insisted, though it had meant time-consuming ferrying by ship's boat.
    Hisvet and Frix were in the cabin with the door shut. The Demoiselle had wanted to watch the duel through the open door or even from the afterdeck, but Lukeen had protested that this would make it easier for her to work an evil spell on him, and the judges had ruled for Lukeen. However the grille was open and now and again the sun's rays twinkled on a peering eye or silvered fingernail.
    Between the dark spear-wall of marines and the afterdeck stretched a great square of white oaken deck, empty save for the crane-fittings and like fixed gear and level except for the main hatch, which made a central square of deck a hand's span above the rest. Each corner of the larger square was marked off by a black-chalked quarter circle. Either contestant stepping inside a quarter circle after the duel began (or springing on the rail or grasping the rigging or falling over the side) would at once forfeit the match.
    In the forward larboard quarter circle stood Lukeen in black shirt and hose, still wearing his gold-banded starfish emblem. By him was his second, his own hawkfaced lieutenant. With his right hand Lukeen gripped his quarter-staff, a heavy wand of close-grained oak as tall as himself and thick as Hisvet's wrist. Raising it above his head he twirled it till it hummed. He smiled fiendishly.
    In the after starboard quarter circle, next to the cabin door, were Fafhrd and his second, the mate of Carp , a grossly fat man with a touch of the Mingol in his sallow features. The Mouser could not be judge and second both, and he and Fafhrd had diced more than once with Carp 's mate in the old days at Lankhmar—losing money to him, too, which at least indicated that he might be resourceful.
    Fafhrd took from him now his own quarterstaff, gripping it cross-handed near one end. He made a few slow practice passes with it through the air, then handed it back to Carp 's mate and stripped off his jerkin.
    Lukeen's marines sniggered to each other at the Northerner handling a quarterstaff as if it were a two-handed broadsword, but when Fafhrd bared his hairy chest Squid 's sailors set up a rousing cheer and when Lukeen commented loudly to his second, “What did I tell you? A great hairy-pelted ape, beyond question,” and spun his staff again, the sailors booed him lustily.
    “Strange,” Slinoor commented in a low voice. “I had thought Lukeen to be popular among the sailors.”
    Lukeen's sergeant looked around incredulously at that re-mark. The Mouser only shrugged. Slinoor continued to him, “If the sailors knew your comrade fought on the side of rats, they'd not cheer him.” The Mouser only smiled.
    The gong sounded again.
    Slinoor rose and spoke loudly: “A bout at quarterstaves with no breathing spells! Commander Lukeen seeks to prove on the overlord's mercenary Fafhrd certain allegations against a