The Second Book of Lankhmar

Gigantic ax and whip were again lifted at the Mouser.
    With a rather happy hysterical scream that almost ruined the Mouser's eardrums for good, Reetha hurled her crystal wine-flagon. It passed close between Samanda's and Glipkerio's heads, hitting neither of them, but staying their strokes at the Mouser.
    All this while, unnoticed in the racket and turmoil, the golden jewel-box had been moving away, jolt by tiny jolt, from the wall. Now the door behind it was open wide enough for a rat to get through, and Hreest emerged followed by his armed band—three masked sword-rats in all, the other two green-uniformed, and three naked-faced pike-rats in browned-iron helmets and mail.
    Utterly terrified by this eruption, Glipkerio raced from the room, followed only less slowly by Samanda, whose heavy treadings shook the wooden floor like earthquake shocks.
    Mad for battle and also greatly relieved to face foes his own size, the Mouser went on guard, using his clothes bundle as a sort of shield and crying out fearsomely, “Come and be killed, Hreest!”
    But at that instant he felt himself snatched up with stomach-wrenching speed to Reetha's breasts.
    “Put me down! Put me down!” he yelled, still in a battle-rage, but futilely, for the drunken girl carried him reelingly out the door and slammed it behind her—once more the Mouser's eardrums were assaulted—slammed it on a rat-pike.
    Samanda and Glipkerio were running toward a distant, wide, blue curtain, but Reetha ran the other way, toward the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, and the Mouser was perforce carried with her—his gray bundle bouncing about, his pin-sword useless, and despite his shrill protests and tears of wrath.
    The rats everywhere launched their grand assault on Lankhmar Above a half hour before midnight, striking chiefly by way of golden rat-holes. There were a few premature sorties, as on Silver Street, and elsewhere a few delays, as at rat-holes discovered and blocked by humans at the last moment, but on the whole the attack was simultaneous.
    First to emerge from Lankhmar Below were wild troops of four-foot goers, a fierce riderless cavalry, savage rats from the stinking tunnels and warrens under the slums of Lankhmar, rodents knowing few if any civilized amenities and speaking at most a pidgin-Lankhmarese helped out with chitters and squeals. Some fought only with tooth and claw like the veriest primitives. Among them went berserkers and special-mission groups.
    Then came the assassins and the incendiaries with their torches, resins, and oils—for the weapon of fire, hitherto unused, was part of the grand plan, even though the rats’ upper-level tunnels were menaced thereby. It was calculated that victory would be gained swiftly enough for the humans to be enforced to put out the blazes.
    Finally came the armed and armored rats, all going biped except for those packing extra missiles and parts of light-artillery pieces to be assembled above ground.
    Previous forays had been made almost entirely through rat-holes in cellars and ground floors and by way of street-drains and the like. But tonight's grand assault was delivered whenever possible through rat-holes on upper floors and through rat-ways that emerged in attics, surprising the humans in the supposedly safe chambers in which they had shut themselves and driving them in panic into the streets.
    It was turn-about from previous nights and days, when the rats had risen in black waves and streams. Now they dropped like a black indoor rain and leaked in rat-big gushes from walls thought sound, bringing turmoil and terror. Here and there, chiefly under eaves, flames began to flicker.
    The rats emerged inside almost every temple and cultish hovel lining the Street of the Gods, driving out the worshipers until that wide avenue was milling with humans too terrified to dare the dark side streets or create more than a few pockets of organized resistance
    In the high-windowed assembly hall of the South Barracks, Olegnya Mingolsbane loudly sputter-quavered to a weary audience which following custom had left their weapons outside—the soldiers of Lankhmar had been known to use them on irritating or merely boresome speakers. As he perorated, “You who have fought the black behemoth and leviathan, you who have stood firm against Mingol and Mirphian, you who have broken the spear-squares of King Krimaxius and routed his fortressed elephants, that you should be daunted by dirty vermin—” eight large