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Mouser's shoulder.
As Kooskra reached a point above them, he gave a great wild scream that
shook the soft Lankhmar night. Then he fell, like a dead leaf, circling and
spinning. Only once again did he seem to make an effort to command his wings,
and then to no avail.
He landed heavily a short distance from them. When Fafhrd reached the spot,
Kooskra was dead.
The barbarian knelt there, absently smoothing the feathers, staring up at the
tower. Puzzlement, anger, and some sorrow lined his face.
"Fly north, old bird," he murmured in a deep, small voice. "Fly into
nothingness, Kooskra." Then he spoke to the Mouser. "I find no wounds. Nothing
touched him on this flight, I'll swear."
"It happened when he brought down the other," said the Mouser soberly.
"You did not look at the talons of that ugly fowl. They were smeared with a
greenish stuff. Through some small gouge it entered him. Death was in him while
he sat on your wrist, and it worked faster when he flew at the black bird."
Fafhrd nodded, still staring at the tower. "We've lost a fortune and a faithful
killer, tonight. But the night's not done. I have a curiosity about these death-
dealing shadows."
"What are you thinking?" asked the Mouser.
"That a man might easily hurl a grapnel and a line over a corner of that tower,
and that I have such a line wound around my waist. We used it to mount
Muulsh's roof, and I shall use it again. Don't waste your words, little man.
Muulsh? What have we to fear from him? He saw a bird take the jewel. Why
should he send guards to search the roofs?
"Yes, I know the bird will fly away when I go after him. But he may drop the
jewel, or you may get in a lucky cast with your sling. Besides, I have a special
notion about these matters. Poison claws? I'll wear my gloves and cloak, and
carry a naked dagger. Come on, little man. We'll not argue. That corner away
from Muulsh's and the river should do the trick. The one where the tiny broken
spire rises. We come, oh tower!" And he shook his fist.
The Mouser hummed a fragment of song under his breath and kept glancing
around apprehensively, as he steadied the line by which Fafhrd was mounting the
wall of the tower-temple. He felt decidedly ill at ease, what with Fafhrd on a fool's
errand, and the night's luck probably run out, and the ancient temple silent and
desolate.
It was forbidden on pain of death to enter such places, and no man knew
what evil things might lurk there, fattening on loneliness. Besides all that, the
moonlight was too revealing; he winced at the thought of what excellent targets
he and Fafhrd made against the wall.
In his ears droned the low but mighty clamor of the waters of the Hlal, which
swished and eddied past the base of the opposite wall. Once it seemed to him that
the temple itself vibrated as though the Hlal were gnawing at its vitals.
Before his feet yawned the dark, six-foot chasm separating the warehouse
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from the temple. It allowed a sidewise glimpse of the walled temple-garden,
overgrown with pale weeds and clogged with decay.
And now as he glanced in that direction he saw something that made him
raise his eyebrows and sent a shiver crawling over his scalp. For across the
moonlit space stole a manlike but unwholesomely bulky figure.
The Mouser's impression was that the strange body lacked the characteristic
human curves and taperings of limb, that its face lacked features, that it was
unpleasantly froglike. It seemed to be colored a uniform dull brown.
It vanished in the direction of the temple. What was it, the Mouser could not
for the moment conjecture.
Intent on warning Fafhrd, he looked up, but the barbarian was already
swinging into the embrasure at a dizzy height above. Disliking to shout, he
paused undecided, half of a mind to skin up the line and join his comrade. All the
while he kept humming a fragment of song -- one used by thieves and supposed
to enforce slumber on the inmates of a house being robbed. He wished fervently
that the moon would get under a cloud.
Then, as if his fear had fathered a reality, something roughly grazed his ear
and hit with a deadened thump against the temple wall. He knew what that
meant -- a ball of wet clay projected by a sling.
As he let his body collapse, two similar missiles followed the first. Close
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