The thick fog crept surreptitiously over the threshold, seeming to pause as it touched the warmer interior air. At a slower, more cautious pace, it flowed along the floor.
Fafhrd picked up the Ilthmart's discarded trousers, frowned, and cast them aside.
"Why not try me on for size, dearie?" the wench suggested with a lewd wink.
Fafhrd considered it for a moment as he extended a hand to help her to her feet. Yet there was still the Mouser's safety to ascertain, and this nameless tavern's customers might return at any moment. Wrapping one arm around her waist, he drew her close for a quick kiss before stepping away. "Except for this cloak," he said, snatching up the garment and lacing it at his throat, "these clothes and sword are yours. Hide them before someone returns and sell them for what you can."
The wench's eyes widened at such generosity. "I'm not used to no gentlemen," she said, swiftly collecting the Ilthmart's belongings. Straightening, she clutched them to her breasts. "But you come back this way any night, and I'll treat you right well, and charge you nothing for it."
Fafhrd smiled at her earnestness. Prying one hand from her new possessions, he planted another kiss on the tips of her fingers, and bowed. Then, gathering the folds of his acquired cloak to conceal his nakedness, he went out into the street.
The fog seemed thicker than ever. It flowed over the ground like a white, feathery river and filled the air with an obscuring, chilly mist. Fafhrd paused long enough to tie the Mouser's purse strings around his left wrist, struck with a curious awe and foreboding by the eerie atmosphere. He drew the cloak closer about his shoulders, unable to see the garment's hem or the lower portions of his legs as he waded through the night.
Hidden in fog, an overturned rain barrel waited for Fafhrd, and the unsuspecting Northerner howled as he smashed the already-abused big toe of his right foot against it. Cursing, he hopped away, slipping in the mud created by the barrel's spillage. With another yelp and a loud curse, his left foot slipped out from under him, and he fell in a sloppy splash.
"Hounds of filthy hell!" Fafhrd grumbled, shaking mud from his hands as he got to his knees and clambered up. Groping in the fog, he seized a piece of the barrel and flung it away. In mid-flight it disappeared in the fog, but the noisy racket it made as it struck some wall gave a small satisfaction.
"Hello?"
The voice drifted out of the fog, distant and muffled. Fafhrd listened as he wiped Graywand's blade on a piece of his sodden cloak, wondering if he should answer.
From another direction, a different voice responded. "Who's there? Hello?"
"Can't see a thing," the first voice called. "Who made that noise?"
Fafhrd repressed a shiver. The overturned barrel was a landmark that told him he stood at the point where the alley joined Plague Court, but he could not see the other side of the street, nor anything up or down it. The callers were virtually invisible, disembodied voices crying in the fog. He thought of answering, then reconsidering, kept silent. These might be the men chasing the Mouser.
Moving slowly into Plague Court, he turned to his left, sure that in that direction lay the Silver Eel, where the Mouser, if he knew what was good for him, would be waiting with a reserved table and a pitcher of beer.
Far down the street, he spied the faintest amber light floating in the misty limbo that Lankhmar had become. The hairs prickled on his neck, and he froze again, until he convinced himself it was only the obscured gleam of someone's torch or lantern. He saw no figure, though, only the light bobbing in the mist. When it disappeared a moment later, he told himself it was because its bearer had turned a corner or entered a building.
The voices continued to call. There seemed to be more of them now. Barely perceived, a shape passed with outstretched arms and faltering steps near to Fafhrd. "Gamron?" the shape murmured nervously. "Is that you?"
Heeding the counsel of his own natural caution, Fafhrd kept silent and moved on, holding his sword low and before him as if it were a blind man's cane.
Never had he seen such a fog. In the Cold Wastes, that distant land of his birth, he had seen the ice witches of his village call great mists, but always they came with a numbing, marrow-freezing chill that set the air to glimmering with ice crystals and coated everything with a white rime.
His mother, Mor, had been such a witch, and with such a spell—damn her jealous eyes—had she killed his father, Nalgron, as he climbed the frigid peak of White Fang Mountain, from which could be seen the very top of the world and all the gods of Nehwon.
He forced the bitter memory away. Fafhrd had not thought of his mother or father, nor of the Snow Clan he had left behind, for a long time. Pausing again to frown and scratch his head, he wondered if he had passed the Silver Eel. Could he have run so far in pursuit of the Ilthmart thief?
Squinting, he tried to penetrate the gray veil with his gaze, spying nothing to left or right, before, or behind. At last, deciding that the middle of the street was the wrong place to be, he took a perpendicular course, expecting eventually, within a few steps, to encounter a wall, along which he could then grope his way.
He encountered no wall. Instead, he found himself in another alley or street. Still the voices, heavily muffled, drifted out of the gray night, and an increasingly worried Fafhrd tried to cheer himself with the wry thought that half the city seemed to be wandering lost and unable to make contact with anyone else.
A superstitious dread suddenly seized him. Reaching out to the right with his sword, he raked the point lightly along a stone construct, reassuring himself that he was not lost in some unnatural wasteland. With a quiet, half-embarrassed sigh, he put his hand on the side of an unknown building and began to feel his way along.
"Fafhrd."
He stopped. Was that his name he'd heard, or did his imagination play tricks on him? Listening, he waited, uncertain if he should continue. He raised the point of his sword. "Mouser?" he whispered.
No response came, nor any sound at all. Feeling foolish, Fafhrd lowered his blade. Only his imagination after all, he told himself. Starting forward again, he stopped just in time when a random eddy in the fog revealed another rain barrel directly in his path. He gave a hearty laugh that was more relief than genuine mirth, thinking that at least this once he had spared his poor toe.
Stepping around the barrel, he advanced through the fog, considering that it might be better simply to wrap himself in his muddy cloak and curl up under some stairway or in some alley until morning and sunlight evaporated the veil enough to let him find his way home, but he licked his lips. The thought of a cool mug impelled him to continue. If not the Silver Eel, surely he could find another tavern to take pity on a naked and filthy man. Thankfully, he had the Mouser's purse.
"Fafhrd."
The voice drifted to him again, and once more he stopped, certain that he had heard his name this time. Should he answer? He bit his lip, chewing a corner of his beard as he did so. How many people knew his name in this city?
A sudden suspicion filled him.
"Mouser," he grumbled, staring ahead into the fog to where the voice seemed to emanate. "If you're playing some trick to get even with me for peeing on you, I'll pound on your head until you're six inches shorter than you presently are!"
Fafhrd grinned with inward satisfaction. If it was, indeed, the Mouser playing games, such a taunt should draw him out. His partner was quite sensitive about his height and refused to abide comments under any circumstances.
Slowly, however, the grin turned to a frown. He might have shouted at the moon, had the moon been visible, for all the response he got.
Suddenly a breeze whispered through the lane, stirring the fog, parting and lifting it. A few paces away, a figure stood swathed in the vapor, quietly regarding him. A beauty she was, clad in a dress of black velvet with strands of raven hair riding the wind about her strong, Lankhmaran features. Around her waist, gleaming with an impossible light, hung a belt of silver links, and from that depended an empty silver sheath where a dagger might once have been.