The great hall rang with the sound of swords, but the balconies high above the tiled floor were empty of spectators. It was just past dawn and most of Duke Lithquil's court was still abed, including the Duke himself; Lithquil's nightly entertainments were often exhausting, both for the spectators and the participants. Yet the two men who now circled each other, swords leaping as if alive in their hands, seemed as intent on killing each other as any pair of gladiators stirred to bloodlust by the calls and cheers of a raucous audience.

Snarling, Fafhrd brought down his heavy sword Graywand to cleave the Mouser's head in twain. The blow fell with the inevitability of a rockfall, and even the Mouser seemed startled when his rapier snicked upwards to deflect it in the very last moment, shrieking the harsh song of steel against steel. They separated again, panting and eyeing each other fiercely.

With a mocking "Ha!" and an intimidating stamp of his foot the Mouser leapt forward and sliced his swordtip towards Fafhrd's midriff faster than the eye could follow. Graywand came up to meet him, but the Mouser beat her point aside and attacked anew, forcing Fafhrd to slip his huge body aside this way and that from Scalpel's narrow blade, then drove him back and back until his spine met the cushioned wall.

Again their blades met and clashed until Scalpel's edge was trapped by Graywand's crossguard. They were pressed close, the Mouser trying to regain the upper hand by a cunning writhe and judicious application of a raised knee, Fafhrd forcing down the Mouser's sword with all the advantages of greater reach and strength.

The Mouser broke left, releasing Fafhrd's sword and rolling down and away so fast that Fafhrd lost his balance and took a stumbling step forward, away from the wall that protected his back. Immediately the Mouser pressed his advantage, feinting left then aiming for Fafhrd's hamstrings on the backstroke. Fafhrd jumped over the blow, faster and higher than seemed feasible for a man of his size, and swept Graywand around whistling. The blow had all his weight behind it, and the Mouser could not parry or deflect it in time. Instead he threw himself bodily to the side and ended up sprawled like a drunkard on the painted tiles. Graywand was at his throat in a heartbeat, the point scratching his neck.

There was a pause. The Mouser watched his friend with slitted eyes, raising an eyebrow in silent surprise when Fafhrd's look of singleminded ferocity faded and he began to laugh until the high vaulted roof rang with the sound.

The Mouser got up from his sprawl immediately, adjusting his grey silk jerkin in a manner reminiscent of a snowcat washing itself after a mistimed jump.

"We need to think of something a little more original for that last move," the Mouser said. "We've ruined enough clothes with oxblood already, and I think it's time to try something different."

Fafhrd nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps we could find a way to simulate the severing of a limb, or even a head?"

"It's a thought, but Lithquil does see the real thing on a daily - nay, nightly - basis," the Mouser answered, tilting his head dubiously. Then he grinned. "Of course, the real thing is not nearly as artistic as our better efforts."

Fafhrd nodded again, for he knew well that the Mouser's flair for drama - not to mention his own attempts at emulating the bloodthirsty sagas of his youth - was all that separated them from the unlucky braves that spent their lives upon these tiles.

When the Mouser and he had arrived in Ool Hrusp, penniless and footsore from their fruitless quest to the Cold Waste, they'd been approached immediately by one of Lithquil's courtiers with the message that Lithquil wished to hire them to provide entertainment for his court. They'd known Lithquil's reputation as the Mad Duke of Ool Hrusp, but they had to admit that the reality of Lithquil's court was gorier than anything even a fevered imagination could come up with. The self-styled Duke was in love with Death as much as he was afraid of it, thinking nothing of sending a hundred warriors to their dubious rewards between supper courses.

Yet they'd contracted with the Duke quickly enough, the Mouser overruling Fafhrd's misgivings, and embarked upon a series of elaborate duels and occasional cunning murders that were all the more unusual in that the performers were allowed to survive the performance. The Duke rewarded them generously, and that he required them to perform every night was a whim that suited the twain.

In Lankhmar they had lost their first loves - the Mouser's delicate Ivrian and Fafhrd's formidable Vlana - to a grisly and sorcerous fate. Although they had wrought quick and thorough redress on the murderers, the ghosts of their dear girls were with them still, troubling their dreams with silent, plaintive visitations. Only their habitual self-restraint, the knowledge that the other suffered likewise, and the strenuous regimen of practice by day and performance at night kept them from slipping into madness.

Night owls they had been ever since their first career of thief and cutpurse in fabled and unwholesome Lankhmar and night owls they remained, for both now dreaded sleep more than any other danger.

Together they left the high hall for their own, more comfortable quarters. They had taken up residence in a two-storied set of rooms in the North Tower, hung with tapestries depicting long-ago battles that had been deemed insufficiently grisly for the chambers of Lithquil's closer associates. As they neared the curtained entrance, still debating ways to surprise the Mad Duke into even greater beneficence, the Mouser's tread slowed the merest fraction, while his left hand wandered over to tap at Fafhrd's thigh even as he proclaimed, "..And of course Glavas Rho taught me much of how a man may die of a black whim or a dark glance, his demise sudden and unforeseen except by the smiling sorcerer-"

Here Fafhrd drew Graywand from her silk-lined sheath in perfect silence. The Mouser nodded and continued his boast as he slowly drew back the curtain that kept the draught from their doorway. Inside all was quiet, their belongings undisturbed, the tapestries hanging still and flat against the stone walls.

The Mouser stepped inside the room as quietly as his namesake, casting his gaze swiftly round, then nodded towards the polished wooden ladder that led to their bedroom. He went over to the low table near the hearth and busied himself with pouring wine, clattering the copper goblets together with a great deal of noise. Fafhrd loped silently up the stairs, Graywand at the ready.

"Look you what I have caught, Mouser!" The Mouser set down the wine jug and turned unhurriedly, wondering at the strained note in Fafhrd's voice.

A slim redheaded girl was descending the stairs, clad only in the abbreviated linen shift that Lithquil favored for his slaves. Looking at her closely, the Mouser saw that her eyelids were raw and puffy, and that her shoulders trembled like a reed in the wind.

Behind her, Fafhrd gave another of his great laughs, but this one sounded oddly muted. "A pretty thing to find between the sheets! What does Lithquil intend with this latest gifting, I wonder?"

The Mouser looked up at him in silence, trying to decipher the expression on his face.

"Lithquil did not send me," the girl began as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, drawing herself up to face the Mouser. "I slipped away to speak to you - to beg your aid."

The Mouser sighed and handed her a goblet of wine, then motioned her to a carved wooden chair. He was very much aware of Fafhrd's gaze upon him, and it was true that under other circumstances she might have aroused more than his current mild and near-avuncular interest.

"My name is Anfilne," the girl said quaveringly. "I was sold to Lithquil by Mingol traders - along with my brother, Fleran." She gulped her wine, while the Mouser drummed his fingers upon the armrest of his own chair. "They sent him out to fight on the very first night," Anfilne continued, her lower lip quivering. "He was a fisherman - he'd never even held a sword before!" Her eyes spilled over and she began to sob. Fafhrd looked at the Mouser quizzically. When the Mouser did not move, Fafhrd bent closer to the girl and muttered something reassuring. Anfilne squared her shoulders and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Another slave ran him through. I was plucking what seemed like a thousand geese and wondering what had happened to my brother, when - when they carried him past the kitchens, all torn up. They said that Lithquil laughed when he died."

"What do you beg of us?" Fafhrd asked. "Escape?" The Mouser frowned. He knew that Fafhrd felt a barbarian's disapproval for slavery, but to court Lithquil's displeasure for the sake of one runaway seemed a little excessive.

Anfilne set down her wine goblet. "No - I care nothing for myself. But please-" She stretched out her hands beseechingly to Fafhrd, then to the Mouser. "I beg you. Slay Lithquil for me, avenge my brother's unjust death. I'll do anything-"

The Mouser and Fafhrd exchanged uneasy looks. "Lithquil has devoted his life - aye, and his considerable imagination - to serving Death," the Mouser said at last, quite gently. "And Death will come for him at his appointed time."

"Besides," Fafhrd added, "he is extremely well guarded."

"Do you mean to say you're afraid?" Anfilne's eyes were ice-cold now, tears drying on her cheeks.

The Mouser looked daggers at his comrade, but Fafhrd's response was unruffled: "I mean that we are swordsmen, not assassins, the Mouser and I. When Lithquil contracted for our services we agreed not to harm his person or members of his court for the duration of our stay - unless expressly invited to do so, of course."

"You are nothing but swords-for-hire, then. I thought you were men of honor, the only two left in this hell-pit."

The Mouser could find nothing to say to this. He mused upon redheads, and how even the weepiest of them could not be called unspirited, while Fafhrd took it upon himself to defend their reputation until Anfilne stormed out of their rooms.

A draught had risen, setting some of the tapestries undulating gently against the wall, and the Mouser knelt to build up the fire in their hearth. Fafhrd joined him, drawing up two chairs before the fire.

"I grow tired of vengeance," Fafhrd said morosely, staring into the sputtering flames. "If the girl desires death, let her court it herself by slipping a little dragonbane into Lithquil's soup."

"And end the innocent life of one of Lithquil's food-testers?" the Mouser enquired.

Fafhrd snorted, but did not answer. The Mouser decided that more wine was needed to restore his friend's mood, or at the very least keep him from sinking further. He unstoppered another jug of heavy Ilthmar vintage and poured both himself and Fafhrd a generous gobletful, raising an eyebrow when Fafhrd emptied his goblet in one long draught and held it out again. Since their next stage-duel was still more than twelve hours away, the Mouser imitated his comrade and poured again, then drew his chair closer to Fafhrd's.

"I wonder if she sees her brother in her dreams," he remarked, looking at Fafhrd sideways.

"Her plan would not avail her, if that were so," Fafhrd answered, still watching the fire, chin resting on balled-up fist. "We slew Hristomilo, aye, and his chattering familiars-"

"Not to mention a number of ill-starred thieves that got in our way," the Mouser chimed in.

"-And still Vlana dogs my dream-steps," Fafhrd continued without missing a beat. "She gazes at me, chiding me silently, although what more we could have done, I do not know."

"Mayhap she desired us to set the entire Thieves' Guild alight and put all its denizens to the sword," the Mouser suggested, thinking back to Fafhrd's forthright and audacious beloved, who had admittedly had a touch of monomania on the subject of the Thieves' Guild. He didn't really believe the suggestion, however. Privately he thought that Ivrian and Vlana would not leave them in peace because they could not, because those who come to a sudden and violent end must needs leech warmth and life from the living and thus drive off the endless chill of the Shadowland.

"Your Ivrian," Fafhrd said suddenly, turning his gaze from the fire to the Mouser. "Does she speak to you?"

It was a question the Mouser would not have brooked from anyone but Fafhrd.

"No." He watched the fire spark red glints in Fafhrd's hair, avoiding his eyes. "I thought, once, that she seemed ready to say something. She moved her lips, took breath - but no. She looks at me and sighs."

The Mouser tried not to think of that chilly, plaintive look that was so much worse on a dead face. He was ready to admit that he'd spoilt his Ivrian more than a little, but she had after all been his first real love - and might well be his last, it seemed to him in his blacker moments, since the dreams worsened whenever he embarked upon even a minor dalliance. No woman with a grain of self-respect would tolerate their lover crying out another's name in his sleep night after night. The Mouser could hardly fault them for it, although he did rue his loss.

"I would have thought the kitchen wench might gain a more sympathetic audience from you," Fafhrd remarked, changing the subject perhaps a touch too quickly. His mouth tightened. "She's just the barely-grown sort of chit you seem to favor."

Stung, the Mouser readied a devastating reply, yet did not loose it. He looked at Fafhrd's strained expression, feeling as though he were standing guard near the edge of some unguessably deep abyss. As though they were both standing there, hungry and heartsore, waiting for a relief that did not come.

He poured them both more of the pale, bubbly Ilthmar wine, feeling the need of a little artificial courage. It tickled his throat as it went down. Finally he looked directly up into Fafhrd's intent gaze.

"I wonder," he intoned, letting the syllables roll off his tongue like marbles, "if there may not be an alternate solution to our common problem." His voice sounded odd to his ears, thickened and slurred, and he wondered if he hadn't perhaps drunk more than he had intended. Certainly Fafhrd didn't seem to catch his meaning as quickly as he usually did; his eyes held questions rather than answers.

For once in his life the Mouser abandoned the idea of using clever speeches and rhodomontade to gain his objective. Instead he took a breath and launched himself out of his chair and into Fafhrd's. Onto Fafhrd's. Onto Fafhrd, in fact.

Fafhrd's breath huffed out of him as their bodies met. His eyes widened, and his hands came up to grasp the Mouser's shoulders with bruising force. The Mouser found that he could not breathe; he felt certain that Fafhrd would next dash him on the floor, might perhaps even draw sword on him. Desperate, gambling all, he pressed his lips against Fafhrd's.

Fafhrd did not throw him off, nor did he wrest himself away. Instead he went entirely still. The Mouser curbed his instinct to step back to safety and proffer excuses, spurious explanations, even laughter. There could be no retreat, not from this. He closed his eyes and tried again, breathing in Fafhrd's winy breath as their mouths met anew.

To his stunned disbelief, Fafhrd's mouth opened under his. The Mouser's eyes flew open, and for a heartbeat they stared at each other in mutual amazement; then Fafhrd's hands released his shoulders to slide erratically over his back and down, clearly caressing rather than repelling, and he was lost.

The chair creaked as the Mouser clenched his own hands around Fafhrd's wide shoulders and pressed himself against his comrade, half-standing, half-lying on top of him while their mouths dueled with increasing fire. Their breaths came quicker now than during their fighting practice earlier, but the feeling was the same - a wave riding high, then impossibly higher still - except this time the Mouser did not break away but instead pressed even closer, until they were heaving and straining against each other.

"Fafhrd-" he breathed, asking for he knew not what reassurance.

Fafhrd broke off then, held him still. Fear he would never have admitted to clamped the Mouser's throat tightly shut.

"I'm not drunk," Fafhrd said quietly. "Not that drunk," he added, almost smiling, and kissed the Mouser's open mouth.

Relief shuddered through the Mouser, and he let himself fall against Fafhrd for a moment so that the chair creaked even more, threatening to overset them. After that truly knee-weakening kiss the Mouser decided it was time to double, nay quadruple the stakes and regain something of his lost initiative. He slid out of the chair and down to his knees, quick fingers already at work upon the lacing of his friend's codpiece before common sense could overtake him.

He looked up at Fafhrd through his lashes as he took him in his hands, barely in time to catch the look of naked hunger that flitted across his face. That look drew the Mouser on irresistibly, making it easy and even natural to take Fafhrd into his mouth.

As he worked his lips and tongue experimentally he felt Fafhrd's hands grip his shoulders again, clasping ever tighter. His urgency caught the Mouser up until he, too, was straining desperately and had to release his death-grip upon Fafhrd's thigh to take himself in hand. Fafhrd let go his shoulders then and laced his fingers through the Mouser's hair, his breath hitching as the Mouser took him deeper.

When Fafhrd cried his name, hoarse-voiced and urgent, the Mouser spent into his own hand. He never paused, eyes locked upon Fafhrd's as his comrade's shudders increased, and a few heartbeats later Fafhrd spilt salt and bitter into his mouth.

When the Mouser spat into the fireplace, Fafhrd could do nothing but lie back in the chair and shudder to a standstill. The Mouser turned to lean back on his heels and enjoy the view.

After a little while Fafhrd stood up, taking evident care to maintain his balance, and reached out a hand to draw the Mouser up with him. They stood together silently for a moment, breathing harshly, then Fafhrd turned to ascend the ladder. The Mouser followed him.

The upstairs room was empty of all amenities except their bedrolls and packs, a wardrobe and a pile of furs in one corner. Fafhrd rejected the furs without a second thought - the Mouser knew they reminded him too much of Snow Corner and the chilly embraces of his child-bride Mara - and instead knelt to push their bedrolls closer together.

They both took off their boots and lay down in their clothes as was their wont. The Mouser turned to lie upon his side in his usual sleeping position and felt Fafhrd draw closer to him, then silently bury his face in his neck. The Mouser was content to lie thus aligned until twilight, when they would be called upon to perform their mock-duel, but even as he closed his eyes Fafhrd whispered to him: "Mouser?"

The Mouser made a sound that was half sigh, half groan.

"Think you perhaps the wench was sent to test our loyalty?"

The Mouser looked around at Fafhrd reprovingly. "You would play the informer with Lithquil, the Duke of Paranoia? Our necks would assuredly be next on the chopping block."

"And how long do you think we can remain at Lithquil's court before we end up there in any case?" Fafhrd demanded. "We risk outstaying our welcome, Mouser."

The Mouser turned back, falling silent for so long that Fafhrd might even think him asleep. At last he asked wearily, "Where shall we go, then?"

"I've never been to Tovilyis," Fafhrd said, stroking the Mouser's shoulder with a broad, warm hand.

The Mouser took a breath. "The beggar-city. Nor have I, not since I was born."

"Well, since I dragged you along to my own birthplace-" Fafhrd began.

"-And may I add that I never want to see that much snow in one place again?" the Mouser interrupted him. "Very well. Tovilyis it is."

Fafhrd clasped his shoulder in silent agreement.

In a little while they slept, leaving all thought of vengeance, madness and intrigue behind. And if they dreamed it was not of their lost loves, since neither cried out a name before the sun sank beneath the Outer Sea.