The Mouser snorted, ‘'Because you dribble away our get on worthless drabs, or oftener still pour it out for some noble whim — some plot of bogus angels to storm the walls of Hell. Meantime I stay poor nursemaiding you."
Fafhrd laughed and retorted, “You overlook your own whimsical imprudences, such as slitting the Overlord's purse and picking his pocket too the selfsame night you rescued and returned him his lost crown. No, Mouser, I think we're poor because—” Suddenly he lifted an elbow and flared his nostrils as he snuffed the chill moist air. “There's a taint in the fog tonight,” he announced.
The Mouser said dryly, “I already smell dead fish, burnt fat, horse dung, tickly lint, Lankhmar sausage gone stale, cheap temple incense burnt by the ten-pound cake, rancid oil, moldy grain, slaves’ barracks, embalmers’ tanks crowded to the black brim, and the stink of a cathedral full of unwashed carters and trulls celebrating orgiastic rites — and now you tell me of a taint!"
“It is something different from all those,” Fafhrd said, peering successively down the five alleys. “Perhaps the last…” His voice trailed off doubtfully, and he shrugged.
* * *Strands of fog came questing through small high-set street-level windows into the tavern called the Rats’ Nest, interlacing curiously with the soot-trail from a failing torch, but unnoticed except by an old harlot who pulled her patchy fur cloak closer at her throat. All eyes were on the wrist game being played across an ancient oaken table by the famed bravo Gnarlag and a dark-skinned mercenary almost as big-thewed as he. Right elbows firmly planted and right hands bone-squeezingly gripped, each strained to force the back of the other's wrist down against the ringed and scarred and carved and knife-stuck wood. Gnarlag, who scowled sneeringly, had the advantage by a thumb's length.