Swords and Ice Magic - By Fritz Leiber Page 0,77

coming downhill.

“Well, they look fearsome enough,”Skor said, after a moment. “Strange, too,” he added, as the litter and gallows hove into view. The girls in their red cloaks were walking beside the former.

“Yes, they are that,” Afreyt said.

“How are they armed?” he asked her. “I mean, besides the pikes and spears and quarterstaves and such?”

She told him those were their only weapons, as far as she knew.

“They'd not stand up to Mingols, then, not if they had to cover any distance to attack,” he judged. “Still, if we showed ;'em under the right conditions, and put a few bowmen amongst 'em....”

“The problem, I think, will be to keep them from charging,” Afreyt told him. “Or, at any rate, to get them to stop marching.”

“Oh, so it's that way,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Cousin Afreyt! Cousin Afreyt!” May and Gale were crying shrilly while they waved at her. But then the girls were pointing overhead and calling, “Look! Look!” and next they were running downhill alongside the column, still waving and calling and pointing at the sky.

Afreyt and Skor looked up and saw, at least a hundred yards above them, the figures of a man and a small girl (Mara by her red cloak) stretched out flat on their faces and clinging to each other and to something invisible that was swiftly swooping toward Cold Harbor. They came around in a great curve, getting lower all the time, and headed straight for Skor and Afreyt. She saw it was Fafhrd and Mara, all right, and she realized that she and Cif must have looked just so when they were being rescued from Khahkht's blizzard by the invisible mountain princesses. She clutched Skor, saying rapidly and somewhat breathlessly, “They're all right. They're hanging onto a fish-of-the-air, which is like a thick flying carpet that's alive, but invisible. It's guided by an invisible woman.”

“It would be,” he retorted obscurely. Then they were buffeted by a great gust of air as Fafhrd and Mara sped past close overhead and still flat out ― both of them grinning excitedly, Afreyt was able to note as she cringed down, at least Fafhrd' lips were drawn back from his teeth. They came to rest midway between her and Groniger at the head of the column, which had slowed to gawk, about a foot above the heather, which was pressed down in a large oval patch, as if Fafhrd and Mara were lying prone on an invisible mattress wide and thick enough for a king's bed.

Then the air travelers had scrambled to their feet and jumped down after an unsteady step or two. Skor and Afreyt were closing in on them from one side and May and Gale from the other, while the Rimelanders stared openmouthed. Mara was shrieking to the other girls, “I was abducted by a very nasty demon, but Fafhrd rescued me! He chopped off its hand!” And Fafhrd had thrown his arms around Afreyt (she realized she'd invited it) and he was saying, “Afreyt, thank Kos you're here. What's that you've got around your neck?” Next, without letting Afreyt go, to Skor, “How are the men?” What's your position?" All the while the staring Rimelanders marched on slowly and almost painfully, like sleepers peering at another wonder out of a nightmare which has entrapped them.

And then all others grew suddenly silent and Fafhrd's arms dropped away from Afreyt as a voice that she had last heard in a cave on Darkfire called out like an articulate silver trumpet, “Farewell, girl. Farewell. barbarian. Next time, think of the courtesies due between orders and of your limitations. My debt's discharged, while yours has but begun.” And with that a wind blew out from where Fafhrd and Mara had anded (from under the invisible mattress, one must think), bending the heather and blowing the girls' red coats out straight from them (Afreyt felt it and got a whiff of animal stench neither fish nor fowl nor four-legger) and then it was as if something large and living were taking off into the air and swiftly away, while a silvery laughter receded.

Fafhrd threw up his hand in farewell, then brought it down in a sweeping gesture that seemed to mean, “Let's say goodbye to all that!” His expression, which had grown bleakly troubled during Hirriwi's speaking, became grimly determined as he saw the Rime column marching slowly into them. “Master Groniger!” he said sharply, “Captain Fathrd!” that one replied thickly, as one half-rousing from a dream. “Halt your