In the ancient city of Lankhmar, two men forge a friendship in battle. The red-haired barbarian Fafhrd left the snowy reaches of Nehwon looking for a new life, while the Gray Mouser, apprentice magician, fled after finding his master dead. These bawdy brothers-in-arms cement a friendship that leads them through the wilds of Nehwon, facing thieves, wizards, princesses, and the depths of their desires and fears.
The late Fritz Leiber’s tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser launched the sword-and-sorcery genre, and were the inspiration for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.
“Fafhrd’s origins were easy to perceive in his near seven-foot height and limber-looking ranginess, his hammered ornaments and huge longsword: he was clearly a barbarian from the Cold Waste north even of the Eight Cities and the Trollstep Mountains.”
“The Mouser’s antecedents were more cryptic [than Fafhrd’s] and hardly to be deduced from his childlike stature, gray garb, mouse-skin hood shadowing flat swart face, and deceptively dainty rapier; but somewhere about him was the suggestion of cities and the south, the dark streets and also the sun-drenched spaces.”
[The] early stories are playful and fun, if occasionally a shade awkward, but the series from the high days of the 60s is a complete joy. Tales like Bazaar of the Bizarre, The Lords of Quarmall and Ill Met in Lankhmar have all attractions of their predecessors, but more sophistication, more complex and well-handled plots, and deeper characterisation.
— https://fantasy-faction.com/2012/fafhrd-and-the-gray-mouser-by-fritz-leiber by Nyki Blatchley
We invite you to read some of the stories about these two by Fritz Leiber. In particular, Ill met in Lankhmar deals with how the two met.
The Adelaide Fan Review 