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standards, but also in a deeply occult sense. This stripping of Fafhrd, this
shaving of him, this binding of him to the rickety narrow bed ... wrong,
wrong, wrong! Once again it occurred to him, more strongly this time, that
Pulg was unknowingly performing an eldritch ritual.
"Hist!" Pulg cried, raising a finger. The Mouser obediently listened along
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with the three henchmen and their master. The ordinary noises outside had
diminished, for a moment almost ceased. Then through the curtained doorway and
the red-lit louvers came the raspy high voice of Bwadres beginning the
Long Litany and the mumbling sigh of the crowd's response.
Pulg clapped the Mouser hard on the shoulder. "He is about it! 'Tis time!" he
cried. "Command us! We will see, son, how well you have planned.
Remember, I will be watching over your shoulder and that it is my desire that
you strike at the end of Bwadres' sermon when the collection is taken." He
frowned at Grilli, Wiggin and Quatch. "Obey this, my lieutenant!" he warned
sternly. "Jump at his least command! -- save when I countermand. Come on, son,
hurry it up, start giving orders!"
The Mouser would have liked to punch Pulg in the middle of the jeweled vizard
which the extortioner was just now again lifting to his face -- punch his fat
nose and fly this madhouse of commanded commandings. But there was
Fafhrd to be considered -- stripped, shaved, bound, dead drunk, immeasurably
helpless. The Mouser contented himself with starting through the outer door
and motioning the henchmen and Pulg too to follow him. Hardly to his surprise
-- for it was difficult to decide what behavior would have been surprising
under the circumstances -- they obeyed him.
He signed Grilli to hold the curtain aside for the others. Glancing back over
the smaller man's shoulder, he saw Quatch, last to leave, dip to blow out the
taper and under cover of that movement snag the two-thirds full bottle of wine
from under the edge of the bed and lug it along with him. And for some reason
that innocently thievish act struck the Mouser as being the most occultly
wrong thing of all the supernally off-key events that had been occurring
recently. He wished there were some god in which he had real trust so that he
could pray to him for enlightenment and guidance in the ocean of inexplicably
strange intuitions engulfing him. But unfortunately for the
Mouser there was no such divinity. So there was nothing for it but to plunge
all by himself into that strange ocean and take his chances -- do without
calculation whatever the inspiration of the moment moved him to do.
So while Bwadres keened and rasped through the Long Litany against the sighing
responses of the crowd (and an uncommonly large number of catcalls and boos),
the Mouser was very busy indeed, helping prepare the setting and place the
characters for a drama of which he did not know more than scraps of the plot.
The many shadows were his friends in this -- he could slip almost invisibly
from one shielding darkness to another -- and he had the trays of half the
hawkers in Lankhmar as a source of stage properties.
Among other things, he insisted on personally inspecting the weapons of
Quatch and Wiggin -- the shortswords and their sheaths, the small crossbows
and the quivers of tiny quarrels that were their ammunition -- most wicked-
looking short arrows. By the time the Long Litany had reached its wailing
conclusion, the stage was set, though exactly when and where and how the
curtain would rise -- and who would be the audience and who the players --
remained uncertain.
At all events it was an impressive scene: the long Street of Gods stretching
off toward a colorful torchlit dolls' world of distance in either direction,
low clouds racing overhead, faint ribbons of mist gliding in from the Great
Salt Marsh, the rumble of far distant thunder, bleat and growl of priests of
gods other than Issek, squealing laughter of women and children,
leather-lunged calling of hawkers and news-slaves, odor of incense curling
from temples mingling with the oily aroma of fried foods on hawkers' trays,
the reek of smoking torches, and the musk and flower smells of gaudy ladies.
Issek's audience, augmented by the many drawn by the tale of last night's
doings of the demon acolyte and the wild predictions of Bwadres, blocked the
Street from curb to curb, leaving only difficult gangway through the roofed
porticos to either side. All levels of Lankhmarian society were represented --
rags and ermine, bare feet and jeweled sandals, mercenaries'
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steel and philosophers' wands, faces painted with rare cosmetics and faces
powdered only with dust, eyes of hunger, eyes of satiety, eyes of mad belief
and eyes of a skepticism that hid fear.
Bwadres, panting a little after the Long Litany, stood on the curb across the
Street from the low archway of the house where the drunken Fafhrd slept bound.
His shaking hand rested on the cask that, draped now with the garlic bag, was
both Issek's coffer and altar. Crowded so close as to leave him almost no
striding space were the inner circles of the congregation --
devotees sitting cross-legged, crouched on knees, or squatting on hams.
The Mouser had stationed Wiggin and Quatch by an overset fishmonger's cart in
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