Swords and Ice Magic - By Fritz Leiber Page 0,65

recall?

Sometimes I get drunk on my own words and don't remember too well."

She shook her head. “Perhaps you were,” she said. “Or perhaps you were dramatizing the Great Maelstrom which will swallow the Sun Mingols. Oh, that wondrous speech!”

Meanwhile they had come abreast of Gallows Hill and Afreyt had halted the march. He strolled over with Cif to find out why and for farewells ― this was about as far as they'd planned to come.

To his surprise he discovered that Afreyt had set the two men with spades and several others to digging up the gallows, to unrooting it entire, and also had had its bearers set down the litter in front of the little grove of gorse on the north side of the hill, and part its curtains. While he watched puzzledly, he saw the girls May and Gale emerge from the grove, walking slowly and carefully and going through the motions of assisting someone ― only there was no one there.

Except for the men trying to rock the gallows loose, everyone had grown quite silent, watchfully attentive.

In low undertones Cif told the Mouser the girls' names and what was going on.

“You mean to say that's Odin god they're helping? and they're able to see him?” he whispered back. “I remember now. Afreyt said she was taking him along, but ― Can you see him at all?”

“Not very distinctly in this sunlight,” she admitted. “But I have done so, by twilight. Afreyt says Fafhrd saw Odin most clearly in the dusk, evening before last. It's given only to Afreyt and the girls to see him clearly.”

The strange slow pantomime was soon concluded. Afreyt cut a few spiny branches of gorse and put them in the litter (“So he'll feel at home,” Cif explained to the Mouser) and started to draw the curtains, but, “He wants me inside with him,” Gale announced in her shrill childish voice. Afreyt nodded. the little girl climbed in with a shrug of resignation, the curtains were drawn at last, and the general hush broke.

Lord, what idiocy! the Mouser thought. We two-footed fantasies will believe anything. And yet it occurred to him uneasily that he was a fine one to talk, who'd heard a god speak out of a fire and had his own body usurped by one. Inconsiderate creatures, gods were.

With a rush and a shout the gallows came down and its base up out of the earth, spraying dirt around, and a half dozen stalwart Rimelanders lifted it onto their shoulders and prepared to carry it so, marching single file after the litter.

“Well, they could use it as a battering ram, I suppose,” the Mouser muttered. Cif gave him a look.

Final farewells were said then and last messages for Fafhrd given and mutual assurances of courage until victory and death to the invader, and then the expedition went marching off in great swinging strides, rhythmically. The Mouser, standing with Cif as he watched them go toward the Deathlands, got the impression they were humming under their breaths, “Mingols to their deaths must go,” song and stepping to its tune. He wondered if he'd begun to say those verses aloud, so that they'd picked it up from him. He shook his head.

But then he and Cif turned back alone, and he saw it was a bright day, pleasantly cool, with the breeze ruffling the heather and wildflowers waving on their delicate stems, and his spirits hegan to rise. Cif wore her russets in the shape ofa short gown, rather than her customary trousers, and her dark golden-glinting hair was loose, and her movements were unforced and impulsive. She still had reserve, but it was not that of a councilman, and the Mouser remembered how thrilling last night's kiss had been, before he'd decided it didn't mean anything. Two fat lemmings popped out just ahead of them and stood on their hind legs, inspecting them, before ducking behind a bush.

In stopping so as not to overrun them, Cif stumbled and he caught her and after a moment drew her to him. She yielded for a moment hefore she drew away, smiling at him troubledly.

“Gray Mouser,” she said softly, “I am attracted to you, but I have told you how you resemhle the god Loki ― and last night when you swayed the Isle with your great oratory that resemblance was even more marked. I have also told you of my reluctance to take the god home with me (making me hire Hilsa and Rill, two