The Second Book of Lankhmar

a bold red line across her face, and sighted her crossbow at the Mouser. There was the faintest silvery flash. Hisvet tossed the crossbow in the black sea and followed Frix down the ladder. The boathooks let go, the flapping black sail filled, and the black cutter faded into the mist.
    The Mouser felt a little sting in his left temple, but he forgot it while whirling the last loops from his shoulders and ankles. Then he ran across the deck, disregarding the green heads lazily searching for last rat morsels, and cut Fafhrd's bonds.
    All the rest of that night the two adventurers conversed with Karl Treuherz, telling each other fabulous things about each other's worlds, while Scylla's sated daughter slowly circled Squid , first one head sleeping and then the other. Talking was slow and uncertain work, even with the aid of the little Lankhmarese-German German-Lankhmarese Dictionary for Space-Time and Inter-Cosmic Travelers, and neither party really believed a great deal of the other's tales, yet pretended to for friendship's sake.
    “Do all men dress as grandly as you do in Tomorrow?” Fafhrd once asked, admiring the German's purple and orange garb.
    “No, Hagenbeck just has his employees do it, to spread his time zoo's fame,” Karl Treuherz explained.
    The last of the mist vanished just before dawn and they saw, silhouetted against the sea silvered by the sinking gibbous moon, the black ship of Karl Treuherz, hovering not a bowshot west of Squid , its little lights twinkling softly.
    The German shouted for joy, summoned his sleepy monster by thwacking his pike against the rail, swung astride the larger head, and swam off calling after him, “ Auf Wiedersehen !”
    Fafhrd had learned just enough Gibberish during the night to know this meant, “Until we meet again.”
    When the monster and the German had swum below it, the space-time engine descended, somehow engulfing them. Then a little later the black ship vanished.
    “It dove into the infinite waters toward Karl's Tomorrow bubble,” the Gray Mouser affirmed confidently. “By Ning and by Sheel, the German's a master magician!”
    Fafhrd blinked, frowned, and then simply shrugged.
    The black kitten rubbed his ankle. Fafhrd lifted it gently to eye level, saying, “I wonder, kitten, if you're one of the Cats’ Thirteen or else their small agent, sent to wake me when waking was needful?” The kitten smiled solemnly into Fafhrd's cruelly scratched and bitten face and purred.
    Clear gray dawn spread across the waters of the Inner Sea, showing them first Squid 's two boats crowded with men and Slinoor sitting dejected in the stern of the nearer but standing with uplifted hand as he recognized the figures of the Mouser and Fafhrd; next Lukeen's war galley Shark and the three other grain ships Tunny, Carp and Grouper ; lastly, small on the northern horizon the green sails of two dragon-ships of Movarl.
    The Mouser, running his left hand back through his hair, felt a short, straight, rounded ridge in his temple under the skin. He knew it was Hisvet's smooth silver dart, there to stay.

Chapter Seven
    Fafhrd awoke consumed by thirst and amorous yearning, and with a certainty that it was late afternoon. He knew where he was and, in a general way, what had been happening, but his memory for the past half day or so was at the moment foggy. His situation was that of a man who stands on a patch of ground with mountains sharp-etched all around, but the middle distance hidden by a white sea of ground-mist.
    He was in leafy Kvarch Nar, chief of the Eight so-called Cities—truly, none of them could compare with Lankhmar, the only city worth the name on the Inner Sea. And he was in his room in the straggling, low, unwalled, yet shapely wooden palace of Movarl. Four days ago the Mouser had sailed for Lankhmar aboard Squid with a cargo of lumber which the thrifty Slinoor had shipped, to report to Glipkerio the safe delivery of four-fifths of the grain, the eerie treacheries of Hisvin and Hisvet, and the whole mad adventure. Fafhrd, however, had chosen to remain a while in Kvarch Nar, for to him it was a fun place, not just because he had found a fun-loving, handsome girl there, one Hrenlet.
    More particularly, Fafhrd was snug abed but feeling somewhat constricted—clearly he had not taken off his boots or any other of his clothing or even unbelted his short-ax, the blade of which, fortunately covered by its thick leather sheath, stuck into his side. Yet he was also filled with