supernal ecstasy indefinitely prolonged, or of an even greater one, did he not blow it by some unintended rejection or piece of boorish behavior.
Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favors that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping.
And now, having greeted and inspected, as it were, the six slender marines of Frix's color guard, he found himself facing the dashing captain herself, attended by her trim trumpeter, standing before the inviting hatchway of the after-castle from which there poured warm, sweetly perfumed air. During the short tour he'd recovered a sense of his proper weight and thirst and appetites, only slightly troubled by an awareness of hairy and unwashed uncouthness.
Frix lifted a lace-gauntleted hand. “Greetings, old friend,” she spoke. “Welcome aboard
“My thanks, dear lady,” he replied according to form, “for greatly needed and desired hospitality.'
“Then you shall accompany us below, where are greater amenities,” she responded. “My ladies will busy themselves refreshing and arraying you, whilst you regale us, if you will, with an account of your recentest adventures, feats, and forays.'
Fafhrd inclined his head. It occurred to him that this was the largest company of ladies with whom he'd ever been entertained by Frix. Had he really become a seven-maiden hero? Or, counting the two girls, a nine?
Smiling graciously, Frix turned to lead the way. The pert girl grimaced comically.
Fafhrd followed, thinking that the resources of a pleasure pinnace might well exceed those of a palace.
As the long-legged ladies trooped up around him familiarly, he noted that the objects depending from their white belts were actually a shaving mug, a large shaving brush (the sporran), and a razor.
24
When Fingers and Gale came hurrying downstairs from dressing, they found Afreyt deep in the perusal (or reperusal) of a creased and somewhat sullied paper with broken green seal writ in violet ink.
Gale cried out reproachfully, “Aunty Afreyt! You're reading the letter Pshawri gave you for safekeeping!'
Afreyt looked up. “You have sharp eyes,” she remarked. “Know child, it is the right — nay, duty! — of any grown-up (especially a woman) to read any document entrusted to them, so they may give testimony to its contents should it be stolen or taken forcibly from them before they are able to return or deliver it.” She folded and thrust it down her bosom. Gale eyed her dubiously, Fingers without expression. Afreyt arose. “And now on with your cloaks and winter gear,” she directed. “There's work for us at the diggings, I've no doubt.'
A flurry of wind stung their faces with ice needles as they entered the night pale with the chill glow of the barely gibbous moon and a faint deep melancholy note resounded from the wind chimes the other side of Salthaven. Afreyt set a fast pace for the barracks. No others were abroad. At irregular intervals the wind chimes repeated their profound reverberation, like a god muttering in his sleep.
At the barracks were lights and labor and a loaded dogcart ready to leave. Afreyt commandeered it for herself and the girls, pulling rank on Mannimark, which drew from Gale a look of further disillusion with “grown-ups” as she clambered reluctantly aboard. Fingers took it more naturally, copying the older woman's queenly mien and manner.
“Any message for the diggings?” that one asked the mustached man as she took the long whip from its socket. “I'll make your excuses, Sergeant. I'm sure the other cart will be back for you soon.'
“No mind, Lady,” he answered. “We'll walk.'
“Very well, Sergeant.” And with a whip crack and jingle of bells the cart was off, making a sharp turn that headed them into the cutting wind and away from the risen low-moon. The girls ducked their faces into their hoods but Afreyt lifted hers high. The occasional boom of the chimes grew less faint as they approached the Moon Temple, and then there was added to it a still deeper clanking as a heavier beam was struck and boomed its note.
“The north blast quickens,” she commented. “It will be bitter crossing the Meadow.'
Soon the fire facing the shelter tent became their beacon and promise of warmth. Afreyt signaled their approach with a flurry of whip cracks.
“Where's Lady Cif?” she asked the knot of soup drinkers.
“At the face, Lady,” Skullick replied.
“Unload,” she directed, and springing down, followed by the girls, made for the pit, whence rose a short pale column of white light.
Beside it the pile of dug dirt was higher and wider and Fren walked a strange short sentry-go, stepping on the forward edge of the big forge-bellows next the pit edge, mounting its slant in three short steps (which made it sink), giving its top handle an upward yank after stepping off it (which helped an interior spring expand it again), drawing in air, and so back to the pit edge and repeat the mini-march.
Peering down the shaft from the opposite edge of the hole, the three females saw how the first furry snow- white serpent's hide emerged from the bellow's front and curved downward, its crested head clamping its jaws on the tail of the second, and so on downward until the fifth entered the cross corridor at the shaft's bottom, where two leviathan lamps provided illumination.
They could see the furry tube slacken and swell as each successive giant's breath of fresh air traveled down.
Afreyt explained to the girls, “Each tail tip is clipped off short and thrust inside the jaws of the preceding snow serpent, a clear glue making the juncture airtight. Spirits of wine dissolve this, so the hides may be parted, cleaned, and restored (the tail tips are kept) to something like their original value afterward. Else all would be monstrously unthrifty.” And with a sign to the windlass man and a “You next” to the girls, she stepped into the empty pail and traveled down beside the slowly pulsating, furry white tube, stepped out at the bottom and waited until it returned with Fingers and Gale.
The horizontal passage was a dimly lit, stone-floored, narrow, unlofty rectangle, so that Afreyt must stoop as she led the way, although the girls were able to walk upright as they followed.
“I expected it to be warmer underground,” Gale observed.
“The dragon's breath we're blowing down is chill,” the older woman reminded her. “Look, there's a fortune in wood around us,” she told the girls.
“A hero's life is worth any expenditure,” Fingers assured her somewhat loftily.
“So it behooves those who may have to ransom or rescue them to lay up cash,” Afreyt responded. “Luckily the lumber's all salvageable, like the hides.'
Just ahead appeared to be solid rock, and seemingly from it, but actually from around it, there materialized a short man carrying a full pail before him and another behind. It was the Mouser's other lieutenant, Mikkidu. They managed to squeeze past him and then along a short section of corridor where the left wall was stone, the right wood, until it had jogged past the obstruction into bright light, which showed their journey's end eight yards ahead.
From the ceiling's last short crossboard hung a large leviathan lamp, while beneath the as yet unroofed yard of tunnel, Cif knelt away from them and worked at the naked face with wooden trowel and gloved left hand, scraping and brushing away the stuff that was of a consistency between flaky sandstone and packed sand. While supported by an upslanted peg in the right-hand wall, the last snow-serpent puffed chill gusts that stirred the falling dust and fine debris.
So great was the small woman's concentration on her exacting task that she was unaware of their presence until Afreyt touched her shoulder.
She turned on them a blank stare, swiftly rising to her feet. Then her eyes wavered and she lurched forward into her friend's arms.
“You're out on your feet,” Afreyt protested. “You should have been relieved at the face hours ago! Here, take a swallow of this,” she added, withdrawing a silver flask from her pouch and uncorking it with her teeth while
