"What's the meaning of this?" he chitteringly blustered. "By God's hairless tail, why am I catted and ferreted? — you black dog!"
In far less ratlike Lankhmarese than the Mouser's, the other asked quietly, "What are you doing in a restricted area? I must ask you to unmask, sir."
"Unmask? I'll see the color of your liver first, mouseling!" the Mouser ranted wildly. It would never do, he knew, to change character now.
"Must I call in my underlings to unmask you by force?" the other inquired in the same soft, deadly voice. "But it is not necessary. Your reluctance to unmask is final confirmation of my deduction that you are indeed the magically shrunken human come as a spy into Lankhmar Below."
"That opium specter again?" the Mouser raved, dropping his hand to Scalpel's hilt. "Begone, mad mouse dipped in ink, before I cut you to collops!"
"Your threats and brags are alike useless, sir," the other answered with a low and humorous laugh. "You wonder how I became certain of your identity? I suppose you think you were very clever. Actually you gave yourself away more than once. First, by relieving yourself in that jakes where I first encountered you. Your dung was of a different shape, color, consistency, and odor than that of my compatriots. You should have sought out a water-privy. Second, although you did try to shadow your eyes, the eye-holes in your mask are too squintingly close together, as are all human eyes. Third, your boots are clearly made to fit human rather than rodent feet, though you have the small sense to walk on your toes to ape our legs and gait."
The Mouser noted that the other's black boots had far tinier soles than his own and were of soft leather both below and above the big ankle-bend.
The other continued, "And from the very first I knew you must be an utter stranger, else you would never have dared shoulder aside and insult the many times proven greatest duelist and fastest sword in all Lankhmar Below."
With black-gloved left paw the other whipped off his silver-trimmed mask, revealing upstanding oval ears and long furry black face and huge, protuberant, wide-spaced black eyes. Baring his great white incisors in a lordly smirk and bringing his mask across his chest in a curt, sardonic bow, he finished, "Svivomilo, at your service."
At least now the Mouser understood the vast vanity — great almost as his own! — which had led his pursuer to leave his underlings behind in the concourse while he came on alone to make the arrest. Whipping out simultaneously Scalpel and Cat's Claw, purposely not pausing to unmask, the Mouser made his most rapid advance, ending in a tremendous lunge at the neck. It seemed to him that he had never before in his life moved as swiftly — small size certainly had its points.
There was a flash and a clash and Scalpel was deflected — by Svivomilo's dagger drawn with lightning speed. And then Svivomilo's rapier was on the offensive and the Mouser barely avoiding it by rapid parries with both his weapons and by backing off perilously along the water's brink. Now his involuntary thought was that his opponent had had a much longer time than he of being small and practicing the swiftness it allowed, while his mask interfered with his vision and if it slipped a little would blind him altogether. Yet Svivomilo's incessant attacks gave him no time to whip it off. With sudden desperation he lunged forward himself, managing to get a bind with Scalpel on the rapier that momentarily took both weapons out of the fight, and an instant later lashed out with Cat's Claw at Svivomilo's dagger-stabbing wrist, and by accurate eye and good fortune cut its inner tendons.
Then as Svivomilo hesitated and sprang back, the Mouser disengaged Scalpel and launched it in another sinew-straining, long lunge, thrice dipping his point just under Svivomilo's double and then circle parries, and finally drove its point on in a slicing thrust that went through the rat's neck and ended grating against the vertebra there.
Scarlet blood pouring over the black lace at Svivomilo's throat and down his chest, and with only one short, bubbling, suffocated gasp, for the Mouser's thrust had severed wind-pipe as well as arteries, the rightly boastful but foolishly reckless duelist pitched forward on his face and lay writhing.
The Mouser made the mistake of trying to sheathe his bloodied sword, forgetting that Scalpel's scabbard was no longer wire-stiffened, which made the action difficult. He cursed the scabbard, limp as Svivomilo's now nerveless tail.
Four cuirassed and helmeted rats with pikes at the ready appeared at two of the rocky doorways. Brandishing his red-dripping sword and gleaming dirk, the Mouser raced through an untenanted doorway and with a chittering scream to clear the way ahead of him, sprinted across the concourse to the marble doorway he'd noted earlier, and plunged down the white stairway.
The usual nook in the turn of the stairs held only three compartments, each with a silver-fitted door of ivory. Into the central one there was going a white-booted rat wearing a voluminous white cloak and hood and bearing in his white-gloved right hand an ivory staff with a large sapphire set in its top.
Without an instant's pause the Mouser ended his plunging descent with a dash into the nook. He hurled ahead of him the white-cloaked rat and slammed and hooked fast behind them the ivory door.
Recovering himself, the Mouser's victim turned and with outraged dignity and brandished staff demanded through his white mask set with diamonds, "Who dareth dithturb with rude thcufflingth Counthillor Grig of the Inner Thircle of Thirteen? Mithcreant!"
While a part of the Mouser's brain was realizing that this was the lisping white rat he had seen aboard _Squid_ sitting on Hisvin's shoulder, his eyes were informing him that this compartment held not a box for droppings, but a raised silver toilet seat, up through which came the sound and odor of rushing seawater. It must be one of the water-privies Svivomilo had mentioned.
Dropping Scalpel, the Mouser threw back Grig's hood, dragged off his mask over his head, tripped the sputtering councillor and forced his head down against the far side of the privy's silver rim, and then with Cat's Claw cut Grig's furry white throat almost from ratty ear to ear, so that his blood gushed down into the rushing water below. As soon as his victim's writhings stilled, the Mouser drew off Grig's white cloak and hood, taking great care that no blood got on them.
At that moment he heard the booted footsteps of several persons coming down the stairs. Operating with demonic speed, the Mouser placed Scalpel, the ivory staff, and the white mask and hood and cloak behind the seat of the privy, then hoisted the dead body so that it sat on the same, and himself stood crouching on the silver rim, facing the hooked door and holding the limp trunk erect. Then he silently prayed with great sincerity to Issek of the Jug, the first god he could think of, the one whom Fafhrd had once served.
Wavy and hooked browned-iron pike-blades gleamed above the doorways. The two to either side were slammed open. Then after a pause, during which he hoped someone had peered under the central door just enough to note the white boots, there came a light rapping, and then a respectful voice inquiring, "Your pardon, Nobility, but have you recently seen anything of a person in gray with cloak and mask of finest gray fur, and armed with rapier and dagger?"
The Mouser answered in a voice which he tried to make calm and dignifiedly benign, "I have theen nothing, thir. About thirty breathth ago I heard thomeone clattering at thpeed down the thtairth."
"Our humblest thanks, Nobility;" the questioner responded, and the booted footsteps continued rapidly down toward the fifth level.
The Mouser let off a long soft sigh and chopped short his prayer. Then he set swiftly to work, for he knew he had a considerable task ahead of him, some of it most grisly. He wiped off and scabbarded Scalpel and Cat's Claw. Then he examined his victim's cloak, hood, and mask, discovering almost no blood on them, and set them aside. He noted that the cloak could be fastened down the front with ivory buttons. Then he dragged off Grig's tall boots of whitest suede and tried them on his own legs. Though their softness helped, they fitted abominably, the sole covering little more than the area under his toes. Still, this would keep him reminded to maintain a rat's gait at all times. He also tried on Grig's long white gloves, which fitted worse, if that were possible. Still, he could wear them. His own boots and gauntlets he tucked securely over his gray belt.