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without pause vaulted up through the hatch into the star-crusted night.
He found himself near the unrailed edge of a slate roof which slanted enough
to have made it look most fearsome to a novice roof-walker, but safe as houses
to a veteran.
Crouched on the long peak of the roof was another kerchiefed thief holding a
dark lantern. He was rapidly covering and uncovering, presumably in some code,
the lantern's bull's eye, whence shot a faint green beam north to where a red
point of light winked dimly in reply -- as far away as the sea wall, it
looked, or perhaps the masthead of a ship beyond, riding in the Inner
Sea. Smuggler?
Seeing the Mouser, this one instantly drew sword and, swinging the lantern a
little in his other hand, advanced menacingly. The Mouser eyed him warily --
the dark lantern with its hot metal, concealed flame, and store of oil would
be a tricky weapon.
But then Fafhrd had clambered out and was standing beside the Mouser, on both
feet again at last. Their adversary backed slowly away toward the north end of
the roof ridge. Fleetingly the Mouser wondered if there was another hatch
there.
Turning back at a bumping sound, he saw Fafhrd prudently hoisting the ladder.
Just as he got it free, a knife flashed up close past him out of the hatch.
While following its flight, the Mouser frowned, involuntarily admiring the
skill required to hurl a knife vertically with any accuracy.
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It clattered down near them and slid off the roof. The Mouser loped south
across the slates and was halfway from the hatch to that end of the roof when
the faint chink came of the knife striking the cobbles of Murder Alley.
Fafhrd followed more slowly, in part perhaps from a lesser experience of
roofs, in part because he still limped a bit to favor his left leg, and in
part because he was carrying the heavy ladder balanced on his right shoulder.
"We won't need that," the Mouser called back.
Without hesitation Fafhrd heaved it joyously over the edge. By the time it
crashed in Murder Alley, the Mouser was leaping down two yards and across a
gap of one to the next roof, of opposite and lesser pitch. Fafhrd landed
beside him.
The Mouser led them at almost a run through a sooty forest of chimneys,
chimney pots, ventilators with tails that made them always face the wind,
black-legged cisterns, hatch covers, bird houses, and pigeon traps across five
roofs, four progressively a little lower, the fifth regaining a yard of the
altitude they'd lost -- the spaces between the buildings easy to leap, none
more than three yards, no ladder-bridge required, and only one roof with a
somewhat greater pitch than that of Thieves' House -- until they reached the
Street of the Thinkers at a point where it was crossed by a roofed passageway
much like the one at Rokkermas and Slaarg's.
While they crossed it at a crouching lope, something hissed close past them
and clattered ahead. As they leaped down from the roof of the bridge, three
more somethings hissed over their heads to clatter beyond. One rebounded from
a square chimney almost to the Mouser's feet. He picked it up, expecting a
stone, and was surprised by the greater weight of a leaden ball big as two
doubled-up fingers.
"They," he said, jerking thumb overshoulder, "lost no time in getting slingers
on the roof. When roused, they're good."
Southeast then through another black chimney-forest to a point on Cheap
Street where upper stories overhung the street so much on either side that it
was easy to leap the gap. During this roof-traverse, an advancing front of
night-smog, dense enough to make them cough and wheeze, had engulfed them and
for perhaps sixty heartbeats the Mouser had had to slow to a shuffle and feel
his way, Fafhrd's hand on his shoulder. Just short of Cheap Street they had
come abruptly and completely out of the smog and seen the stars again, while
the black front had rolled off northward behind them.
"Now what the devil was that?" Fafhrd had asked and the Mouser had shrugged.
A nighthawk would have seen a vast thick hoop of black night-smog blowing out
in all directions from a center near the Silver Eel, growing ever greater and
greater in diameter and circumference.
East of Cheap Street the two comrades soon made their way to the ground,
landing back in Plague Court behind the narrow premises of Nattick
Nimblefingers the Tailor.
Then at last they looked at each other and their trammeled swords and their
filthy faces and clothing made dirtier still by roof-soot, and they laughed
and laughed and laughed, Fafhrd roaring still as he bent over to massage his
left leg above and below knee. This hooting and wholly unaffected self-mockery
continued while they unwrapped their swords -- the Mouser as if his were a
surprise package -- and clipped their scabbards once more to their belts.
Their exertions had burned out of them the last mote and atomy of strong wine
and even stronger stenchful perfume, but they felt no desire whatever for more
drink, only the urge to get home and eat hugely and guzzle hot, bitter gahveh,
and tell their lovely girls at length the tale of their mad adventure.
They loped on side by side, at intervals glancing at each other and chuckling,
though keeping a normally wary eye behind and before for pursuit or
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