Swords in the Mist (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, #3)

by Fritz Leiber

“I guess you’re right,” Fafhrd said uneasily. “But you’ve spent too much rent money. Understand, my little man, I can have only one drink with you. You tricked me into that—after a fashion you did—but I pay. But only one cup of wine, little man. We’re friends, but we have our separate paths to tread. So only one cup. Or at most two.” “Naturally,” purred the Mouser. The objects in the room grew in the swimming gray blank of Fafhrd’s vision. There was an inner door (also curtained), a narrow bed, a basin, a low table and stool, and on the floor beside the stool several portly short-necked large-eared shapes. Fafhrd counted them and once again his face broke into a large grin. “Hung for a kid, you said,” he rumbled softly in his old bass voice, continuing to eye the stone bottles of vintage. “I see four kids, Mouser.” The Mouser echoed himself. “Naturally.” By the time the candle the Mouser had fetched was guttering in a little pool, Fafhrd was draining the third “kid.” He held it upended above his head and caught the last drop, then batted it lightly away like a large feather-stuffed ball. As its shards exploded from the floor, he bent over from where he was sitting on the bed, bent so low that his beard brushed the floor, and clasped the last “kid” with both hands and lifted it with exaggerated care onto the table. Then taking up a very short-bladed knife and keeping his eyes so close to his work that they were inevitably crossed, he picked every last bit of resin out of th...