Swords and Ice Magic - By Fritz Leiber Page 0,47

admitted. “Tell me, why is this called the Hill of the Eight-Legged Horse?”

Without a blink at the change of subject, Afreyt replied, “Because it takes four men to carry a coffin or the laid-out corpse of one who's been hanged ― or died any other way. Four men ― eight legs. You might have guessed.”

“And what is this god's name?”

Afreyt said: “Odin.”

Fafhrd had the strangest feeling at the gong-beat sound of that simple name ― as if he were on the verge of recalling memories of another lifetime. Also, it had something of the tone of the gibberish spoken by Karl Treuherz, that strange otherworlder who had briefly come into the lives of Fafhrd and the Mouser astride the neck of a two-headed sea serpent whilst they were in the midst of their great adventure-war with the sapient rats of Lankhmar Below-Ground. Only a name ― yet there was the feeling of walls between world disturbed.

At the same time he was looking into Afreyt's wide eyes and noting that the irises were violet, rather than blue as they had seemed in the yellow torchlight of the Eel ― and then wondering how he could see any violet at all in anything when that tone had some time ago faded entirely from the sky, which was now full night except that the moon a day past full had just now lifted above the eastern highland.

From beyond Afreyt a light voice called tranquilly, attuned to the night, “The god sleeps.”

One of the girls was standing before the mouth of the bower, a slim white shape in the moonlight, clad only in simple frock that was hardly more than a shift and left one shoulder bare. Fafhrd marvelled that she was not shivering in the chill night air. Her two companions were dimmer shapes behind her.

“Did he give any trouble, Mara?” Afreyt called. (Fafhrd felt a strange feeling at that name, too.) “Nothing new,” the girl responded.

Afreyt said, “Well, put on your boots and hooded cloak ― May and Gale, you also ― and follow me and the foreign gentleman, out of earshot, to Salthaven. You'll be able to visit the god at dawn, May, to bring him milk?”

“I will.”

“Your children?” Fafhrd asked in a whisper.

Afreyt shook her head. “Cousins. Meanwhile,” she said in a voice that was likewise low, but businesslike, “you and I will discuss your instant expedition with the berserks to Cold Harbor.”

Fafhrd nodded, although his eyebrows rose a little. There was a fugitive movement in the air overhead and he found himself thinking of his and the Mouser's one-time loves, the invisible mountain-princesses Hirriwi and Keyaira, and of their night-riding brother, Prince Faroomfar.

* * * *

The Gray Mouser saw his men fed and bedded down for the night in their dormitory ashore, not without some fatherly admonitions as to the desirability of prudent behavior in the home port of one's employers. He briefly discussed the morrow's work with Ourph and Pshawri. Then, with a final enigmatic scowl all around, he threw his cloak over his left shoulder, withdrew into the chilly evening, and strolled toward the Salt Herring.

Although he and Fafhrd had had a long refreshing sleep aboard the Flotsam (declining the shore quarters Groniger had offered them, though accepting for their men), it had been a long, exactingly busy, and so presumably tiring day ― yet now, somewhat to his surprise, he felt new life stirring in him. But this new life invading him did not concern itself with his and Fafhrd's many current problems and sage plans for future contingencies, but rather with a sense of just how preposterous it was that for the past three moons he should have been solemnly playing at being a captain of men, fire-breathing disciplinarian, prodigious navigator, and the outlandishly heroic rest of it. He, a thief, captaining thieves, drilling them into sailorly and warlike skills that would be of no use to them whatever when they went back to their old professions ― ridiculous! All because a small woman with golden glints in her dark hair and in her green eyes had set him an unheard-of task. Really, most droll.

Moonlight striking almost horizontally left the narrow street in shadow but revealed the cross-set beams above the Salt Herring's door. Where did they get so much wood in an island so far north? That question at least was answered for him when he pressed on inside. The tavern was built of the gray beams and planks of wrecked or dismantled ships