The Second Book of Lankhmar

laden with rich treasures garnered from many a high adventure at the ends of the earth. Oh, I'll admit that three or four of them may also have a private grudge, but—”
    “They can see we haven't a train of porters or heavily-laden mules,” the small man interrupted reasonably. “In any case they know that after slaying us, they can pay themselves off from any treasure we may have and split the remainder. It's the rational procedure, which all civilized men follow.”
    “Civilization!” the big man snorted. “I sometimes wonder—”
    “—why you ever climbed south over the Trollstep Mountains and got your beard trimmed and discovered that there were girls without hair on their chests,” the small man finished for him. “Hey, I think our creditors and other haters have hired a third S besides swords and staves against us.”
    “Sorcery?”
    The small man drew a coil of thin yellow wire from his pouch. He said, “Well, if those two graybeards in the second-story windows aren't wizards, they shouldn't scowl so ferociously. Besides, I can make out astrological symbols on the one's robe and see the glint of the other's wand.”
    They were close enough now to the End Gate that a sharp eye could guess at such details. The guardsmen in browned-iron mail leaned on their pikes impassively. The faces of those lining the small square beyond the gateway were impassive too, but grimly so, except for the girls, who smiled with venom and glee.
    The big man said grumpily, “So they'll slay us by spells and incantations. Failing which, they'll resort to cudgels and gizzard-cutters.” He shook his head. “So much hate over a little cash. Lankhmarts are ingrates. They don't realize the tone we give their city, the excitement we provide.”
    The small man shrugged. “This time they're providing the excitement for us. Playing host, after a fashion.” His fingers were deftly making a slipknot in one end of the pliant wire. His steps slowed a trifle. “Of course,” he mused, “we don't have to return to Lankhmar.”
    The big man bristled. “Nonsense, we must! To turn back now would be cowardly. Besides, we've done everything else.”
    “There must be a few adventures left outside Lankhmar,” the small man objected mildly, “if only little ones, suitable for cowards.”
    “Perhaps,” the big man agreed, “but big or little, they all have a way of beginning in Lankhmar. Whatever are you up to with that wire?”
    The small man had tightened the slipknot around the pommel of his rapier and let the wire trail behind him, flexible as a whip. “I've grounded my sword,” he said. “Now any death-spell launched against me, striking my drawn sword first, will be discharged into the ground.”
    “Giving Mother Earth a tickle, eh? Watch out you don't trip over it.” The warning seemed well-advised—the wire was fully a half-score yards long.
    “And don't you step on it. ‘Tis a device Sheelba taught me.”
    “You and your swamp-rat wizard!” the big man mocked. “Why isn't he at your side now, making some spells for us?”
    “Why isn't Ningauble at your side, doing the same?” the small man counter-asked.
    “He's too fat to travel.” They were passing the blank-faced guardsmen. The atmosphere of menace in the square beyond thickened like a storm. Suddenly the big man grinned broadly at his comrade. “Let's not hurt any of them too seriously,” he said in a somewhat loud voice. “We don't want our return to Lankhmar beclouded."
    As they stepped into the open space walled by hostile faces, the storm broke without delay. The wizard in the star-symboled robe howled like a wolf and lifting his arms high above his head, threw them toward the small man with such force that one expected his hands to come off and fly through the air. They didn't, but a bolt of bluish fire, wraith-like in the sunlight, streamed from his out-flung fingers. The small man had drawn his rapier and pointed it at the wizard. The blue bolt crackled along the slim blade and then evidently did discharge itself into the ground, for he only felt a stinging thrill in his hand.
    Rather unimaginatively the wizard repeated his tactics, with the same result, and then lifted his hands for a third bolt-hurling. By this time the small man had got the rhythm of the wizard's actions and just as the hands came down, he flipped the long wire so that it curled against the chests and faces of the bullies around the orange-turbaned Bashabeck. The blue