When the nooses had been explained to him, “A capital conceit!” he said with a great grin, his eyebrows lifting. “That'll show the Mingols something, let them know what they're in for. It's a grand chant the Little Captain gave us, isn't it?” Afr'eyt nodded, looking sideways a moment at Groniger. “Yes,” she said, “his wonderful words.”
Groniger glanced back at her in similar fashion. “Yes, his wonderful words.”
May said, “I wish I'd heard him
Groniger handed them the bowls and swiftly poured the thick, steaming soup.
May said, “I'll take Gale hers.”
Groniger said gruffly to Afreyt, “Sup it while it's hot. Then get some rest. We go on at moonrise, agreed?” and when Afreyt nodded. strode off rather bumptiously, cheerily rumble-humming the chant to which they'd marched all day, the Mouser's — or Loki's, rather.
Afreyt narrowed her brows. Normally Groniger was such a sober man, dull-spirited she'd once thought, but now he was almost like a buffoon. Was “monstrously comical” too strong an expression? She shook her head slowly. All the Rime-men were getting like that, loutish and grotesque and somehow bigger. Perhaps it was her weariness made her see things askew and magnified, she told herself.
May came bsck and they got out their spoons and fell to. “Gale wanted to eat hers inside,” the girl volunteered after a bit. “I think she and Odin are cooking up something.” She shrugged and went back to her spooning. After another while: “I'm going to make nooses for Mara and Captain Fafhrd.” Finally she scraped her bowl, set it aside, and said, “Cousin Afreyt, do you think Groniger's a troll?”
“What's that?” Afreyt asked.
“A word Odin uses. He says Groniger's a troll.” Gale came excitedly out of the litter with her empty bowl, but remembering to draw the curtains behind her.
“Odin and I have invented a marching song for us!” she announced, stacking her bowl in May's. “He says the other god's song is all right, but he should have one of his own. Listen. I'll chant it for you. It's shorter and faster than the other.” She screwed up her face. “It's like a drum,” she explained earnestly. Then, stamping with a foot: “March, march, over the Deathlands. Go, go, over the Doomlands. Doom! — kill the Mingols. Doom! — die the heroes. Doom! Doom! Glorious doom!” Her voice had grown quite loud by the time she was done.
“Glorious doom?” Afreyt replied.
“Yes. Come on, May, chant it with me.'
“I don't know that I want to.”
“Oh, come on. I'm wearing your noose, aren't I? Odin says we should all chant it.”
As the two girls repeated the chant in their shrill voices with mounting enthusiasm, Groniger and another Rime-man came up.
“That's good,” he said, collecting the bowls. “Glorious doom is good.”
“I like that one.” the other man agreed. “Doom! — kill the Mingols!” he repeated appreciatively.
They went off chanting it in low voices.
The night darkened. The wind blew. The girls grew quiet.
May said. “lt's cold. The god'll be getting chilly. Gale, we'd better go inside. Will you be all right, cousin Afreyt?”
“I'll be all right.”
A while after the curtains closed behind them, May stuck her head out.
“The god invites you to come inside with us,” she called to Afreyt.
Afreyt caught her breath. Then she said as evenly as she could, “Thank the god, but tell him I will remain here… on guard.”
“Very well,” May said and the curtains closed again.
Afreyt clenched her hands under her cloak. She hadn't admitted to anyone, even Cif, that for some time now Odin had been fading. She could hardly see even a wispy outline any more. She could still hear his voice. but it had begun to grow faint, lost in wind-moaning. The god had been very real at first on that spring day when she and Cif had found him, and found that there were two gods. He'd seemed so near death then, and she'd labored so hard to save him. She'd been filled with such an adoration, as if he were some ancient hero-saint, or her own dear, dead father. And when he had caressed her fumblingly and muttered in disappointment (it sounded), “You're older than I thought,” and drifted off to sleep, her adoration had been contaminated by horror and rejection. She'd got the idea of bringing in the girls (Did that make her a monster? Well. perhaps) and after that she'd managed very well, keeping it all at a distance.
And then there'd been the excitement of the journey to Lankhmar and the perils of Khahkht's ice-magic and the Mingols and the renewed excitement of the arrival of the Mouser and Fafhrd and the realization that Fafhrd did indeed resemblea younger Odin — was that what had made god Odin fade and grow whisper-voiced? She didn't know, but she knew it helped make everything torturesome and confusing — and she couldn't have borne to enter the litter tonight. (Yes, she was a monster.)
She felt a sharp pain in her neck and realized that in her agitation she'd been tugging at the pendant end of the noose beneath her cloak. She loosened it and forced herself to sit quietly. It was full dark now.
There,t~cr~ fr~nt flames flickering from ~arkf~e and Hellglow too. She heard sn~~tches of talk from the campfires and bits of the new ch~nt ~nd laughter as the story ofthat went round. It was very cold, but she did not move. The east Frew silvery-pale. the milky effulgence domed up. and at last the white moon edged into view.
The cump stirred then and after a while the bearers came up and unwedged Odin's gallows and lifted it up and the litter too, and Afreyt arose, unkinking her stiffjoints and stamping her numbed feet, and they all marched off west across the moon-silvered rock, shouldering their grotesque weapons and the two larger burdens. Some of them limped a bit (after all, they were sailors. their feet unused to marching) but they all went on briskly to the new Odin-ch~nt, hunching their backs against the east wind. which now blew strong and steadily.
Fafhrd had just kindled his second torch from the emberend of the first and his surroundings had grown warmer, when the lofty passageway he was following debouched into a cavern so vast that the light he bore seemed lost in it. The sound of the cast-away torch-stub hitting rock awakened distant faint echoes and he came to a stop, peering up and around. Then he began to see multitudinous points of light as stars, where flakes of mica in the fire-born stone reflected his torch, and in the middle distance an irregular pillar of mica-flecked rock and on its top a small pale bundle that drew his eye. Then from far above he heard the beat of great wings, a pause. then another beat — as though a greatt vulture were circling in the cavernous dark.
He called, “Mara!” toward the pillar and the echoes came back and amongst them, shrill and faint, his own name called and the eohoes of that. Then he realized that the wing-beat had ceased and that one of the high mica-stars was getting rapidly brighter, as though it were swiftly traveling straight down toward him, and he heard a rush in the air as of a great hawk stooping.
He jerked his whole body aside from the briFht sword darting at him and simultaneously struck with his ax just behind it. The torch was torn from his grasp, what seemed like a leather sail struck him to his knees, and then there was a great wing-beat, very close, and another, and then the shrill bellow of a man in agony that despite its extremity held a note of outrage.
As he scrambled to his feet, he saw his torch flaring wide on the rocky floor and transfixing it the bright sword that had struck it from his grasp. Wing-beat and bellowing were going off from him now. He set his boot on the torch handle, preparatory to withdrawing the sword from it, but as he went to take hold of the latter, his fingers encountered a scaly hand, slenderer than his own, gripping it tightly, and (his groping fingers ascertained) warmly wet at the wrist, where it had been chopped off. Both hand and blood alike were invisible, so that although his fingers touched and felt, his eyes saw only the sword's hilt, the silver cross-guard, the pear-shaped silver pommel, and the black leather grip wrappcd with braided silver wire.
He heard his name spoken falteringly close behind him and turning saw Mara standing there in her white smock looking woebegone and confused, as if she'd just been lifted from the pillar's top and set down there. As he spoke her name in answer, a voice came out of the air beside Mara and a little above her, speaking in the chilling and confounding tones of a familiar and beloved voice turned hateful in nightmare.
The sightless mountain princess Hirriwi said, “Woe to you, barbarian, for having come north again without first paying your respects at Stardock. Woe to you for coming at another woman's call, although we favor her cause. Woe for deserting your men to chase this girl-chit, whom we would have (and have) saved without you. Woe for meddling with demons and gods. And woe upon woe for lifting your hand to maim a prince of Stardock, to whom we
