The Second Book of Lankhmar

louder.
    “Shake a leg, Lazybones!” he heard the Mouser call in the same rasping tones. The Gray One must have caught a cold from the Marsh's damp or—the Fates forfend!—a fever from its miasmas.
    “Tether your mount to the thorn stump,” the Mouser continued gruffly. “There's food for her there and a water pool. Then come up. Speed, speed!”
    Fafhrd obeyed without word or waste motion, for the drumming had become very loud.
    As he leaped and caught hold of the blue window's bottom and drew himself up to it, the blue glow went out. He scrambled inside onto the reed-carpeted floor of whatever it was and swiftly squirmed around so he was looking back the way he'd come.
    The Mingol mare was invisible in the dark below. The causeway's top glowed faintly in the moonlight.
    Then round a cluster of thorn trees came speeding the three black riders, the drumming of the twelve hooves thunderous now. Fafhrd thought he could make out a fiendish phosphorescent glow around the nostrils and eyes of the tall black horses and he could faintly discern the black cloaks and hoods of the riders streaming in the wind of their speed. With never a pause they passed the point where he'd left the causeway and vanished behind another thorn grove to the west. He let out a long-held breath.
    “Now get away from the door and brace yourself,” a voice that wasn't the Mouser's at all grated over his shoulder. “I've got to be there to pilot this rig.”
    The hairs that had just lain down on Fafhrd's neck erected themselves again. He had more than once heard the rock-harsh voice of Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, though never seen, let alone entered, his fabulous hut. He swiftly hitched himself to one side, back against wall. Something smooth and round and cool touched the back of his neck. A wall-hung skull, it almost had to be.
    A black figure crawled into the space he'd just vacated. Dimly silhouetted in the doorway, its edge touched by moonlight, he saw a black cowl.
    “Where's the Mouser?” Fafhrd asked with a wheeze in his voice.
    The hut gave a violent lurch. Fafhrd grabbed gropingly for and luckily found two wall posts.
    “In trouble. Deep -down trouble,” Sheelba answered curtly. “I did his voice to make you jump lively. As soon as you've fulfilled whatever geas Ningauble has laid upon you—bells, isn't it?—you must go instantly to his aid.”
    The hut gave a second lurch and a third, then began to rock and pitch somewhat like a ship, but in a swift rhythm and more joltingly, as if one were in a howdah on the slant back of a drunken giant giraffe.
    “Go instantly where?” Fafhrd demanded, somewhat humbly.
    “How should I know and why should I tell you if I did? I am not your wizard. I'm just taking you to Lankhmar by secret ways as a favor to that paunchy, seven-eyed, billion-worded dilettante in sorcery who thinks himself my colleague and has gulled you into taking him as mentor,” the harsh voice responded from the hood. Then, relenting some-what, though growing gruffer, “Overlord's palace, most likely. Now shut up.”
    The rocking of the hut and also its speed increased. Wind pushed in, flapping the edge of Sheelba's hood. Flashes of moon-dappled marsh shot by.
    “Who were those riders after me?” Fafhrd asked, clinging to his wall posts. “Ilthmar brigands? Acolytes of the grisly, scythe-armed lord?”
    No reply.
    “What is it all about?” Fafhrd persisted. “Grand assault by a near numberless yet nameless host on Lankhmar. Nameless black riders. The Mouser deep-buried and woefully shrunk, yet alive. A tin whistle maybe summoning War Cats who are dangerous to the blower. None of it makes sense.”
    The hut gave a particularly vicious lurch. Sheelba still said not a word. Fafhrd grew seasick and devoted himself to hanging on.
    Glipkerio, nerving himself, poked his pansy-wreathed, gold-ringleted head on its long neck through the kitchen door's leather curtains and blinking his weak yellow-irised eyes at the fire's glare, grinned an archly amiable, foolish grin.
    Reetha, chained once more by the neck, sat cross-legged in front of the fire, head a-droop. Surrounded by four other maids squatting on their heels, Samanda nodded in her great chair. Yet now, though no noise had been made, her snores broke off, she opened her pig-eyes toward Glipkerio, and said familiarly, “Come in, little overlord, don't stand there like a bashful giraffe. Have the rats got you scared too? Be off to your cots, girls.”
    Three