Фриц Лейбер - Swords Of Lankhmar[Мечи Ланкмара]

Finishing his business, he had prepared to continue his downward course when there had come the descending clatter of paw- and boot-steps, quickly followed by a banging on the door of his compartment.

Without hesitation he had unhooked the door and opened it with a jerk. Facing him close there had been the black-clad, black-and-silver-masked rat he had seen on the level above, and behind him three bare-faced rats with drawn daggers that looked and probably were sharper than gross human fingers could ever hone.

After the first glance, the Mouser had looked lower than his pursuers' faces, for fear the color and shape and especially the placing of his eyes might give him away.

The vizarded one had said swiftly and clearly in excellent Lankhmarese, "Have you seen or heard anyone come down the stairs? — in particular an armed human magically reduced to decent and normal size?"

Again without hesitation the Mouser had chittered most angrily, and roughly shouldering his questioner and the others aside, had spat out, "Idiots! Opium-chewers! Nibblers of hemp! Out of my way!"

On the stairs he had paused to look back briefly, snarl loudly and contemptuously, "No, of course not!" and then gone down the stairs with dignity, though taking them two at a time.

The next level had shown no rats in sight and been redolent of grain. He had noted bins of wheat, barley, millet, kombo, and wild rice from the River Tilth. A good place to hide — perhaps. But what could he gain by hiding?

The next level — the third down — had been full of military clatter and rank with rat-stink. He had noted rat pikemen drilling in bronze cuirasses and helmets and another squad being instructed in the crossbow, while still others crowded around a table where routes on a great map were being pointed out. He had lingered even a shorter time there.

Midway down each stairs had been a compartmented nook like the first he'd used. He had docketed away in his mind his information.

Refreshingly clean, moist air had poured out of the fourth level,it had been more brightly lit, and most of the rats strolling in it had been richly dressed and masked. He had turned into it at once, walking against the moist breeze, since that might well come from the outer world and mark a route of escape, and he had continued with angry chitters and curses to play his impulsively assumed role of crotchety, half-mad rat-bravo or rogue-rat.

In fact, he found himself trying so hard to be a convincing rat that without volition his eyes now followed with leering interest a small mincing she-rat in pink silk and pearls — mask as well as dress — who led on a leash what he took at first to be a baby rat and then realized was a dwarfish, well-groomed, fear-eyed mouse, and also an imperiously tall ratess in dark green silk sewn over with ruby chips and holding in one hand a whip and in the other the short leashes of two fierce-eyed, quick-breathing shrews that looked as big as mastiffs and were doubtless even more bloodthirsty.

Still looking lustfully at this striking proud creature as she passed him with green, be-rubied mask tilted high, he ran into a slow-gaited, portly rat robed and masked in ermine, which looked extremely coarse-haired now, and wearing about his neck a long gold chain and about his alder-manic waist a gold-studded belt, from which hung a heavy bag that chinked dulcetly at the Mouser's jolting impact.

Snapping a "Your pardon, merchant!" at the wheezingly chittering fellow, the Mouser strode on without backward glance. He grinned conceitedly under his mask. These rats were easy to befool! — and perhaps reduction in size had sharpened finer his own sharp wits.

He was tempted for an instant to turn back and lure off and rob the fat fellow, but realized at once that in the human world the chinking goldpieces would be smaller than sequins.

This thought set his mind on a problem which had been obscurely terrifying him ever since he had plunged into the rat-world. Sheelba had said the effects of the potion would last for nine hours. Then presumably the Mouser would resume his normal size as swiftly as he had lost it. To have that happen in a burrow or even in the foot-and-a-half-high, pillar-studded concourse would be disastrous — it made him wince to think of it.

Now, the Mouser had no intention of staying anything like nine hours in the rat-world. On the other hand, he didn't exactly want to escape at once. Dodging around in Lankhmar like a nimbly animate gray doll for half a night didn't appeal to him — it would be shame-making even if, or perhaps especially if while doll-size he had to report his important intelligences about the rat-world to Glipkerio and Olegnya Mingolsbane — with Hisvet watching perhaps. Besides, his mind was already afire with schemes to assassinate the rats' king, if they had one, or foil their obvious project of conquest in some even more spectacular fashion on their home ground. He felt a peculiarly great self-confidence and had not realized yet that it was because he was fully as tall as the taller rats around, as tall as Fafhrd, relatively, and no longer the smallish man he had been all his life.

However, there was always the possibility that by some unforeseeable ill fortune he might be unmasked, captured, and imprisoned in a tiny cell. A panicking thought.

But even more unnerving was the basic problem of time. Did it move faster for the rats, or slower. He had the impression that life and all its processes moved at a quicker tempo down here. But was that true? Did he now clearly hear the rat-Lankhmarese, which had previously sounded like squeaks, because his ears were quicker, or merely smaller, or because most of a rat's voice was pitched too high for human ears to hear, or even because rats spoke Lankhmarese only in their burrows? He surreptitiously felt his pulse. It seemed the same as always. But mightn't it be greatly speeded up and his senses and mind speeded up equally, so that he noted no difference? Sheelba had said something about a day being a tenth of a million pulsebeats. Was that rat or human-pulse? Were rat-hours so short that nine of them might pass in a hundred or so human minutes? Almost he was tempted to rush up the first stairs he saw. No, wait… if the timing was by pulse and his pulse seemed normal, then wouldn't he have one normal Mouser-sleep to work in town here? It was truly most confusing. "Out upon it all, by cat-gut sausages and roasted dog's eyes!" he heard himself curse with sincerity.

Several things at any rate were clear. Before he dared idle or nap, let alone sleep, he must discover some way of measuring down here the passage of time in the above-ground world. Also, to get at the truth about rat-night and day, he must swiftly learn about rodent sleeping habits. For some reason his mind jumped back to the tall ratess with the brace of straining shrews. But that was ridiculous, he told himself. There was sleeping and sleeping, and that one had very little if anything to do with the other.

He came out of his thought-trance to realize fully what his senses had for some time been telling him: that the strollers had become fewer, the breeze more damp and cool and fresh, and sea-odorous too, and the pillars ahead natural rock, while through the doorways chiseled between them shone a yellowish light, not bright yet twinkling and quite unlike that of the fire-beetles, glow-wasps, and tiny torches.

He passed a marble doorway and noted white marble steps going down from it. Then he stepped between two of the rocky pillars and halted on the rim of a wonder-place.

It was a roughly circular natural rock cave many rats high and many more long and wide, and filled with faintly rippling seawater which transmitted a mild flood of yellowish light that came through a great wide hole, underwater by about the length of a rat's-pike, in the other end of the glitter-ceilinged cavern. All around this sea lake, about two rat-pikes above the water, went the rather narrow rock road, looking in part natural, in part chiseled and pickaxed, on which he now stood. At its distant end, in the shadows above the great underwater hole, he could dimly make out the forms and gleaming weapons of a half-dozen or so motionless rats, evidently on guard duty.