The Second Book of Lankhmar

much did the arch-noble Glipkerio choose to tell you of the purpose and dark antecedents of this voyaging?” Two days of fortunate sailing seemed at last to have put the closed-mouthed ship's master in a mood to exchange confidences, or at least trade queries and lies.
    From a bag of netted cord that hung by the taffrail, the Mouser speared a night-purple plum with the dirk he called Cat's Claw. Then he answered lightly, “This fleet bears a gift of grain from Overlord Glipkerio to Movarl of the Eight Cities in gratitude for Movarl's sweeping the Mingol pirates from the Inner Sea and mayhap diverting the steppe-dwelling Mingols from assaulting Lankhmar across the Sinking Land. Movarl needs grain for his hunter-farmers turned cityman-soldiers and especially to supply his army relieving his border city of Klelg Nar, which the Mingols besiege. Fafhrd and I are, you might say, a small but mighty rear-guard for the grain and for certain more delicate items of Glipkerio's gift.”
    “You mean those?” Slinoor bent a thumb toward the larboard rail.
    Those were twelve large white rats distributed among four silver-barred cages. With their silky coats, pale-rimmed blue eyes and especially their short, arched upper lips and two huge upper incisors, they looked like a clique of haughty, bored, inbred aristocrats, and it was in a bored aristocratic fashion that they were staring at a scrawny black kitten which was perched with dug-in claws on the starboard rail, as if to get as far away from the rats as possible, and staring back at them most worriedly.
    Fafhrd reached out and ran a finger down the black kitten's back. The kitten arched its spine, losing itself for a moment in sensuous delight, but then edged away and resumed its worried rat-peering—an activity shared by the two black-tunicked helmsmen, who seemed both resentful and fearful of the silver-caged afterdeck passengers.
    The Mouser sucked plum juice from his fingers and flicked out his tongue-tip to neatly capture a drop that threatened to run down his chin. Then, “No, I mean not chiefly those high-bred gift-rats,” he replied to Slinoor and kneeling lightly and unexpectedly and touching two fingers significantly to the scrubbed oak deck, he said, “I mean chiefly she who is below, who ousts you from your master's cabin, and who now insists that the gift-rats require sunlit and fresh air—which strikes me as a strange way of cosseting burrow- and shadow-dwelling vermin.”
    Slinoor's cropped eyebrows rose. He came close and whispered, “You think the Demoiselle Hisvet may not be merely the conductress of the rat-gift, but also herself part of Glipkerio's gift to Morvarl? Why, she's the daughter of the greatest grain-merchant in Lankhmar, who's grown rich selling tawny corn to Glipkerio.”
    The Mouser smiled cryptically but said nothing.
    Slinoor frowned, then whispered ever lower, “True, I've heard the story that Hisvet has already been her father Hisvin's gift to Glipkerio to buy his patronage.”
    Fafhrd, who'd been trying to stroke the kitten again with no more success than to chase it up the aftermast, turned around at that. “Why, Hisvet's but a child,” he said almost reprovingly. “A most prim and proper miss. I know not of Glipkerio, he seems decadent"—the word was not an insult in Lankhmar—"but surely Movarl, a Northerner albeit a forest man, likes only strong-beamed, ripe, complete women.”
    “Your own tastes, no doubt?” the Mouser remarked, gazing at Fafhrd with half-closed eyes. “No traffic with child-like women?”
    Fafhrd blinked as if the Mouser had dug fingers in his side. Then he shrugged and said loudly, “What's so special about these rats? Do they do tricks?”
    “Aye,” Slinoor said distastefully. “They play at being men. They've been trained by Hisvet to dance to music, to drink from cups, hold tiny spears and swords, even fence. I've not seen it—nor would care to.”
    The picture struck the Mouser's fancy. He envisioned himself small as a rat, dueling with rats who wore lace at their throats and wrists, slipping through the mazy tunnels of their underground cities, becoming a great connoisseur of cheese and smoked meats, perchance wooing a slim rat-queen and being surprised by her rat-king husband and having to dagger-fight him in the dark. Then he noted one of the white rats looking at him intently through the silver bars with a cold inhuman blue eye and suddenly his idea didn't seem amusing at all. He