Free The Knight and Knave of Swords by Fritz Leiber Page A

asked the Mouser across the table, "But just how did you deal with the sea demoness while she was in her guise? I gather you kept her tied up a lot, or tried to?"
    "Yes," Cif put in from beside him. "You were even planning at one point to train her to be a maid for me, weren't you?" She smiled curiously. "Just think, I lost that as well as those lovely materials."
    "I attempted a number of things that were rather beyond my powers," the Gray One admitted manfully, the edges of his ears turning red. "Actually, I was lucky to escape with my life." He turned toward Cif. "Which I couldn't have done if you hadn't snatched me from the tainted gold in the nick of time."
    "Never mind, it was I put you amongst the tainted gold in the first place," she told him, laying her hand on his on the table, "but now it's been hopefully purified." (She had directed that ceremony of exorcism of the ikons herself, with the assistance of Mother Grum, to free them of all baleful Simorgyan influence got from their handling by the demoness. The old witch was somewhat dubious of the complete efficacy of the ceremony.)
    Later Skor described leviathan arching over Seahawk. Afreyt nodded appreciatively, saying, "I was once in a dory when a whale breached close alongside. It is not a sight to be forgotten."
    "Nor is it when viewed from the other side of the gunwale," the Mouser observed reflectively. Then he winced. "Mog, what a head thump that would have been!"

III: The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars
1
    Late one nippy afternoon of early Rime Isle spring, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser slumped pleasantly in a small booth in Salthaven's Sea Wrack Tavern. Although they'd been on the Isle for only a year, and patronizing this tavern for an eight-month, the booth was recognized as theirs when either was in the place. Both men had been mildly fatigued, the former from supervising bottom repairs to Seahawk at the new moon's low tide—and then squeezing in a late round of archery practice, the latter from bossing the carpentering of their new warehouse-and-barracks—and doing some inventorying besides. But their second tankards of bitter ale had about taken care of that, and their thoughts were beginning to float free.
    Around them they heard the livening talk of other recuperating laborers. At the bar they could see three of their lieutenants grousing together—Fafhrd-tall Skor, and the somewhat reformed small thieves Pshawri and Mikkidu. Behind it the keeper lit two thick wicks as the light dimmed as the sun set outside.
    Frowning as he pared a thumbnail with razor-keen Cat's Claw, the Mouser said, "I am minded of how scarce seventeen moons gone we sat just so in Silver Eel Tavern in Lankhmar, deeming Rime Isle a legend. Yet here we are."
    "Lankhmar," Fafhrd mused, drawing a wet circle with the firmly socketed iron hook that had become his left hand after the day's bow bending, "I've heard somewhere of such a city, I do believe. 'Tis strange how oftentimes our thoughts do chime together, as if we were sundered halves of some past being, but whether hero or demon, wastrel or philosopher, harder to say."
    "Demon, I'd say," the Mouser answered instantly, "a demon warrior. We've guessed at him before. Remember? We decided he always growled in battle. Perhaps a were-bear."
    After a small chuckle at that, Fafhrd went on, "But then (that night twelve moons gone and five in Lankhmar) we'd had twelve tankards each of bitter instead of two, I ween, yes, and lacing them too with brandy, you can bet—hardly to be accounted best judges 'twixt phantasm and the veritable. Yes, and didn't two heroines from this fabled isle next moment stride into the Eel, as real as boots?"
    Almost as if the Northerner hadn't answered, the small, gray-smocked, gray-stockinged man continued in the same thoughtful reminiscent tones as he'd first used, "And you, liquored to the gills—agreed on that!—were ranting dolefully about how you dearly wanted work, land, office, sons, other