The Knight and Knave of Swords by Fritz Leiber

think of that?" Ningauble protested, who was indeed sometimes called the Gossiper of the Gods. "To work! To work!"
3
    In paradisiacal Godsland, which lies at the antipodes of Nehwon's death pole and Shadowland, in the southernmost reach of that world's southernmost continent, distanced and guarded from the tumultuous northern lands by the Great eastward-rushing Equatorial Current (where some say swim the stars), sub-equatorial deserts, and the Rampart Mountains, the gods Kos, Issek, and Mog sat somewhat apart from the mass of more couth and civilized Nehwonian deities, who objected to Kos's lice, fleas, and crabs, and a little to Issek's effeminacy—though Mog had contacts among these, as he sarcastically called 'em, "higher beings."
    Sunk in divine somnolent broodings, not to say almost deathlike trances, for prayers, petitions, and even blasphemous nametakings had been scanty of late, the three mismatched godlings reacted at once and enthusiastically to the instantaneously transmitted wizard missives.
    "Those two ungodly swording rogues!" Mog hissed softly, his long thin lips stretched slantwise in a half spider grin. "The very thing! Here's work for all of us, my heavenly peers. A chance to curse again and to bedevil."
    "A glad inspiro that, indeed, indeed!" Issek chimed, waving his limp-wristed hands excitedly. " I should have thought of that!—our chiefest lapsed worshippers, hidden away in frosty and forgotten far Rime Isle, farther away than Shadowland itself, almost beyond our hearing and our might. Such infant cunning! Oh, but we'll make them pay!"
    "The ingrate dogs!" Kos grated through his thick and populous black beard. "Not only casting us off, their natural heavenly fathers and rightful da's, but forsaking all decent Nehwonian deities and running with atheist men and gone a-whoring after stranger gods beyond the pale! Yes, by my lights and spleen, we'll make 'em suffer! Where's my spiked mace?"
    (On occasion Mog and Issek had been known to have to hold Kos down to keep him from rushing ill-advised out of Godsland to seek to visit personal dooms upon his more disobedient and farther-strayed worshippers.)
    "What say we set their women against them, as we did last time?" Issek urged twitteringly. "Women have power over men almost as great as gods do."
    Mog shook his humanoid cephalothorax. "Our boys are too coarse-tasted. Did we estrange from them Afreyt and Cif, they'd doubtless fall back on amorous arrangements with the Salthaven harlots Rill and Hilsa—and so on and so on." Now that his attention had been called to Rime Isle, he had easy knowledge of all overt things there—a divine prerogative. "No, not the women this time, I ween."
    "A pox on all such subtleties!" Kos roared. "I want tortures for 'em! Let's visit on 'em the strangling cough, the prick-rot, and the Bloody Melts!"
    "Nor can we risk wiping them out entirely," Mog answered swiftly. "We haven't worshippers to spare for that, you fire-eater, as you well know. Thrift, thrift! Moreover, as you should also know, a threat is always more dreadful than its execution. I propose we subject them to some of the moods and preoccupations of old age and of old age's bosom comrade, inseparable though invisible-seeming—Death himself! Or is that too mild a fear and torment, thinkest thou?"
    "I'll say not," Kos agreed, suddenly sober. "I know that it scares me. What if the gods should die? A hellish thought."
    "That infant bugaboo!" Issek told him peevishly. Then turning to Mog with quickening interest, "So, if I read you right, old Arach, let's narrow your silky Mouser's interests in and in from the adventure-beckoning horizon to the things closest around him: the bed table, the dinner board, the privy, and the kitchen sink. Not the far-leaping highway, but the gutter. Not the ocean, but the puddle. Not the grand view outside, but the bleared windowpane. Not the thunder-blast, but the knuckle crack—or ear-pop."
    Mog narrowed his eight eyes happily. "And for