A Mind Forever Wandering has posted a well-done introduction to Fritz Leiber’s stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (newly released in listenable form by Audible.com):
One of Leiber’s original motives was to have a couple of fantasy heroes closer to true human stature than the likes of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian or Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan. Fafhrd is a tall (seven feet) northern barbarian; Mouser is a small, mercurial thief, once known as Mouse and a former wizard’s apprentice.