The Second Book of Lankhmar

perhaps because the hue of his garb recalled to the Mouser Svivomilo and also Hreest.
    The remaining nine rats were clearly apprentice members, promoted to fill the gaps in the Circle of Thirteen left by the white rats slain aboard Squid , for they never spoke and when questions were voted, only bobbingly agreed with the majority opinion among Skwee, Siss, Lord Null, and Grig—that is, the Mouser—or if that opinion were split two to two, abstained.
    The entire tabletop was hidden by a circular map of what appeared to be well-tanned and buffed human skin, the most delicate and finely pored. The map itself was nothing but innumerable dots: golden, silver, red and black, and thick as fly-specks in the stall of a slum fruit-merchant. At first the Mouser had been able to think of nothing but some eerie, dense starfield. Then it had been revealed to him, by the references the others made to it, that it was nothing more or less than a map of all the rat-holes in Lankhmar!
    At first this knowledge hadn't made the map come to life for the Mouser. But then gradually he had begun to see in the apparently randomly clustered and twisty-trailed dots the outlines of at least the principal buildings and streets of Lankhmar. Of course, the whole plot of the city was reversed, because viewed from below instead of above.
    The golden dots, it had turned out, stood for rat-holes unknown to humans and used by rats; the red, for holes known to humans yet still used by rats; the silver, for holes unknown to humans, but not currently employed by the dwellers undeneath; while the black dots designated the holes known to humans and avoided by the rodents of Lankhmar Below.
    During the entire council session, three slim female rat-pages silently went about, changing the color of rat-holes and even dotting in new ones, according to information whispered them by rat-pages, who ceaselessly came and went on equally silent paws. For this purpose, the three females used rat-tail brushes each made of a single, stiffined horsehair frayed at the tip, which they employed most dexterously, and each had slung in a rack at the waist four ink-pots of the appropriate colors.
    What the Mouser had learned during the council session had been, simply yet horribly, the all-over plan for the grand assault on Lankhmar Above, which was to take place a half-hour before this very midnight: detailed information about the disposition of pike companies, crossbow detachments, dagger groups, poison-weapon brigades, incendiaries, lone assassins, child-killers, panic-rats, stink-rats, genital-snappers and breast-biters and other berserkers, setters of man-traps such as trip-cords and needle-sharp caltrops and strangling nooses, artillery brigades which would carry up piecemeal larger weapons to be assembled above ground, until his brain could no longer hold all the data.
    He had also learned that the principal attacks were to be made on the South barracks and especially on the Street of the Gods, hitherto spared.
    Finally he learned that the aim of the rats was not to exterminate humans or drive them from Lankhmar, but to force an unconditional surrender from Glipkerio and enslave the overlord's subjects by that agreement and a continuing terror so that Lankhmar would go on as always about its pleasures and business, buying and selling, birthing and dying, sending out of ships and caravans, gathering of grain—especially grain!—but ruled by the rats.
    Fortunately all this briefing had been done by Skwee and Siss. Nothing had been asked of the Mouser—that is, Grig—or of Lord Null, except to supply opinions on knotty problems and lead in the voting. This had also provided the Mouser with time to devise ways and means of throwing a cat into the rats’ plans.
    Finally the briefing was done and Skwee asked around the table for ideas to improve the grand assault-not as if he expected to get any.
    But at this point the Mouser rose up—somewhat crippled, since Grig's damnably ill-fitting rat-boots were still giving him the cramp—and taking up his ivory staff laid its tip unerringly on a cluster of silver dots at the west end of the Street of Gods.
    “Why ith no aththault made here?” he demanded. “I thuggetht that at the height of the battle, a party of ratth clad in black togath iththue from the temple of the Godth of Lankhmar. Thith will convinthe the humanth ath nothing elthe that their very godth—the godth of their thity—have turned againtht them—been