The Second Book of Lankhmar

in a small bedroom above the shop of Nattick Nimblefingers the tailor, who was furiously at work below cleaning and mending the Mouser's clothing and accouterments. One full and one half-empty wine-jug rested on the floor by the mattress, while under the Mouser's pillow, clenched in his left fist for greater security, was the small black bottle he'd got from Sheelba.
    It had been high noon when he had finally climbed out of the Great Salt Marsh and trudged through the Marsh Gate, utterly spent. Nattick had provided him with a bath, wine and a bed—and what sense of security the Mouser could get from harboring with an old slum friend.
    Now he slept the sleep of exhaustion, his mind just beginning to be tickled by dreams of the glory that would be his when, under the eyes of Glipkerio, he would prove himself Hisvin's superior at blasting rats. His dreams did not take account of the fact that Hisvin could hardly be counted a blaster of rats, but rather their ally—unless the wily grain-merchant had decided it was time to change sides.
    * * * *
    Fafhrd, stretched out in a grassy hilltop hollow lit by moonlight and campfire, was conversing with a long-limbed recumbent skeleton named Kreeshkra, but whom he now mostly addressed by the pet name Bonny Bones. It was a moderately strange sight, yet one to touch the hearts of imaginative lovers and enemies of racial discrimination in all the many universes.
    The somewhat oddly matched pair regarded each other tenderly. Fafhrd's curly, rather abundant body hair against his pale skin, where his loosened jerkin revealed it, was charmingly counterpointed by the curving glints of camp-fire reflected here and there from Kreeshkra's skin against the background of her ivory bones. Like two scarlet minnows joined head and tail, her mobile lips played or lay quivering side by side, alternately revealing and hiding her pearly front teeth. Her breasts mounted on her rib cage were like the stem halves of pears, shading from palest pink to scarlet.
    Fafhrd thoughtfully gazed back and forth between these colorful adornments.
    “Why?” he asked finally.
    Her laughter rippled like glass chimes. “Dear stupid Mud Man!” she said in her outlandishly accented Lankhmarese. “Girls who are not Ghouls—all your previous women, I suppose, may they be chopped to still-sentient raw bits in Hell!—draw attention to their points of attraction by concealing them with rich fabric or precious metals. We, who are transparent-fleshed and scorn all raiment, must go about it another way, employing cosmetics.”
    Fafhrd chuckled lazily in answer. He was now looking back and forth between his dear white-ribbed companion and the moon seen through the smooth, pale gray branches of the dead thorn tree on the rim of the hollow, and finding a wondrous content in that counterpoint. He thought how strange it was, though really not so much, that his feelings toward Kreeshkra had changed so swiftly. Last night, when she had revived from her knockout a mile or so beyond burning Sarheenmar, he had been ready to ravage and slay her, but she had comported herself with such courage and later proven herself such a spirited and sympathetic companion, and possessed of a ready wit, though somewhat dry, as befitted a skeleton, that when the pink rim of dawn had added itself to and then drunk the city's flames, it had seemed the natural thing that she should ride pillion behind him as he resumed his journey south. Indeed, he'd thought, such a comrade might daunt without fight the brigands who swanned around Ilthmar and thought Ghouls a myth. He had offered her bread, which she refused, and wine, which she drank sparingly. Toward evening his arrow had brought down a desert antelope and they had feasted well, she devouring her portion raw. It was true what they said about Ghoulish digestion. Fafhrd had at first been bothered because she seemed to hold no grudge on behalf of her slain fellows and he suspected that she might be employing her extreme amiability to put him off guard and then slay him, but he had later decided that life or its loss was likely accounted no great matter by Ghouls, who looked so much like skeletons to begin with.
    The gray Mingol mare, tethered to the thorn tree on the hollow's rim, threw up her head and nickered.
    A mile or more overhead in the windy dark, a bat slipped from the back of a strongly winging black albatross and fluttered earthward like an animate large black leaf.
    Fafhrd reached out an