The Second Book of Lankhmar

a sense of glorious achievement—why, he wasn't yet sure, but it was a grand feeling.
    Without opening his eyes or moving any part of him the thickness of a Lankhmar penny a century old, he oriented himself. To his left, within easy arm-reach on a stout night table would be a large pewter flagon of light wine. Even now he could sense, he thought, its coolth. Good.
    To his right, within even easier reach, Hrenlet. He could feel her radiant warmth and hear her snoring—very loudly, in fact.
    Or was it Hrenlet for certain?—or at any rate only Hrenlet? She had been very merry last night before he went to the gaming table, playfully threatening to introduce him intimately to a red-haired and hot-blooded female cousin of hers from Ool Hrusp, where they had great wealth in cattle. Could it be that...? At any rate, good too, or even better.
    While under his downy thick pillows—Ah, there was the explanation for his ever-mounting sense of glory! Late last night he had cleaned them all out of every golden Lankhmarian rilk, every golden Kvarch Nar gront, every golden coin from the Eastern Lands, Quarmall, or elsewhere! Yes, he remembered it well now: he had taken them all—and at the simple game of sixes and sevens, where the banker wins if he matches the number of coins the player holds in his fist; those Eight-City fools didn't realize they tried to make their fists big when they held six golden coins and tightened them when they held seven. Yes, he had turned all their pockets and pouches inside out—and at the end he had crazily matched a quarter of his winnings against an oddly engraved slim tin whistle supposed to have magical properties ... and won that too! And then saluted them all and reeled off happily, well-ballasted by gold like a treasure galleon, to bed and Hrenlet. Had he had Hrenlet? He wasn't sure.
    Fafhrd permitted himself a dry-throated, raspy yawn. Was ever man so fortunate? At his left hand, wine. At his right a beauteous girl, or more likely two, since there was a sweet strong farm-smell coming to him under the sheets; and what is juicier than a farmer's (or cattleman's) redhead daughter? While under his pillows—he twisted his head and neck luxuriously; he couldn't quite feel the tight-bulging bag of golden coins—the pillows were many and thick—but he could imagine it.
    He tried to recall why he had made that last hare-brained successful wager. The curly-bearded braggart had claimed he had the slim tin whistle of a wise woman and that it summoned thirteen helpful beasts of some sort—and this had recalled to Fafhrd the wise woman who had told him in his youth that each sort of animal has its governing thirteen—and so his sentimentality had been awakened—and he had wanted to get the whistle as a present for the Gray Mouser, who doted on the little props of magic—yes, that was it!
    Eyes still shut, Fafhrd plotted his course of action. He suddenly stretched out his left arm blind and without any groping fastened it on the pewter flagon—it was even be-dewed!—and drained half of it—nectar!—and set it back.
    Then with his right hand he stroked the girl—Hrenlet, or her cousin?—from shoulder to haunch.
    She was covered with short bristly fur and, at his amorous touch, she mooed!
    Fafhrd wide-popped his eyes and jackknifed up in the bed, so that sunlight, striking low through the small unglazed window, drenched him yellowly and made a myriad wonder of the hand-polished woods paneling the room, their grains an infinitely varied arabesque. Beside him, pillowed as thickly as he was—and possibly drugged—was a large, long-eared, pink-nostriled auburn calf. Suddenly he could feel her hooves through his boots, and drew the latter abruptly back. Beyond her was no girl—or even other calf—at all.
    He dove his right hand under his pillows. His fingers touched the familiar double-stitched leather of his pouch, but instead of being ridgy and taut with gold pieces, it was, except for one thin cylinder—that tin-whistle—flat as an unleavened Sarheenmar pancake.
    He flung back the bedclothes so that they bellied high and wild in the air, like a sail torn loose in a squall. Thrusting the burgled purse under his belt, he vaulted out of bed, snatched up his long-sword by its furry scabbard—he intended it for spanking purposes—and dashed through the heavy double drapes out the door, pausing only to dump down his throat the last of the wine.
    Despite his fury at Hrenlet, he had to admit,