Swords and Ice Magic - By Fritz Leiber Page 0,78

men!” Fafhrd commanded, and then turned to Skor, who made report, telling his leader in somewhat more detail matter told earlier to Afreyt, while the column slowly ground to a halt, piling up around Groniger in a disorderly array.

Meanwhile Afreyt had knelt beside Mara, assured herself that the girl wasn't outwardly injured, and was listening bemused as Mara proudly but deprecatingly told the other girls about her abduction and rescue. “He made a scarecrow out of my cloak and the skull of the last little girl he'd eaten alive. and he kept touching me just like Odin does, but Fafhrd cut off his hand and Princess Hirriwi got my cloak back this morning. It was neat riding through the sky. I didn't get dizzy once.”

Gale said, “Odin and I made up a marching song. It's about killing Mingols. Everyone's chanting it.” May said, “I made nooses with flowrs in them. They're a mark of honor from Odin. We're all wearing them. I made one for you and a big one for Fafhrd. Say, I've got to give Fafhrd his noose. It's time he was wearing it, with a big battle coming.”

Fafhrd listened patiently, for he'd wanted to know what that ugly thing around Afreyt's neck was. But when Mara had asked him to bend down his head, and he looked up spying the curtained litter, and recognized the uprooted gallows beyond it, he felt a shivery revulsion and said angrily, “No, I won't wear it. I won't mount his eight-legged horse. Get those things off your necks, all of you!”

But then he saw the hurt, distrustful look in the girls' eyes as Mara protested, “But it' to make you strong in battle. It's an honor from Odin.” And then the look of concern in Afreyt's eyes as she gestured toward the litter, its curtains fluttering in the wind (he sensed the grim holiness that seemed to emanate from it), and the look of expectation in the eyes of Groniger and the other Rimers, made him change his mind. He said, making his voice eager, “I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll wear it around my wrist, to strengthen it,” and he thrust his left hand through the noose and after a moment May tightened it.

“My left arm,” he explained, lying somewhat, “has always been markedly weaker than my right in battle. This noose will help strengthen it. I'll take yours too,” he said to Afreyt with a meaningful look.

She loosened it from around her neck with feelings of relief which partly changed to apprehension as she saw it tightened around Fafhrd's wrist beside the first noose.

“And yours, and yours, and yours,” he said to the three girls. “That way I'll be wearing a noose for each of you. Come on, you wouldn't want my left arm weak in battle, would you?”

“There!” he said when it was done, gripping the five pendant cords in his left hand and whirling them. “We'll whip the Mingols off Rime Isle, we will!” The girls, who had seemed a little unhappy about losing their nooses, laughed delighted, and the Rimers raised an unexpected cheer.

Then they marched on, Skor scouting ahead after remembering to give Fafhrd back his sword, and Fafhrd trying to put some order into the Rimers and keep them quiet ― although the wind helpfully blew the drum-noise of their chant from the beach. The girls and Afreyt dropped back with the litter, though not as far as Fafhrd wished. The company picked up a couple of Fafhrd's men, who reported the Mingols massing on the beach around their ships. And then they mounted a slight rise where the lines extended south from the fortress-hump of Cold Harbor, Fafhrd and his men holding back the now overeager Rimers. A mounting cry of woe came from the beach beyond and they all beheld a wonderfully satisfying sight: the three Sea Mingol galleys launching into the wind, forward oars out and working frantically while small figures gave a last heave to the sterns and scrambled aboard.

Then came an arresting cry from Cold Harbor and they began to see out in the watery west a host of sails coming up over the horizon: the Widder-Mingol fleet. And with the sight of it they became aware also of a faint distant rumbling, as of the hoofbeat of innumerable war-horses charging across the steppes. But the Rimelanders recognized it as the voice of Hellfire, threatening eruption where it smoked blackly to the north. While to the south churned