Fritz Leiber - Swords and Ice Magic

By early morning sunlight and against the nipping wind, Afreyt hurried on alone through heather dotted by stunted cedars past the last silent hiil farm, with its sagging gray-green turf roofs, before Cold Harbor. She was footsore and weary (even Odin's noose around her neck seemed a heavy weight) for they'd marched all night with only two short rest-stops and midway they'd been buffeted by changing winds reaching tornadic strenfith as they'd passed through the transition belt between the southeastern, Salthaven half of Rime Isle, which the east wind presently ruled, and the northwestern, Cold Harbor half, where the equally strong west wind now held sway.

Yet she forced herself to scan carefully ahead for friend or foe, for she had constituted herself vanguard for Groniger and his grotesquely burdened trampers. A while ago in the twilight before dawn she'd gone from litter-side up to the head of the column and pointed out to Groniger the need of having a guard ahead now that they were nearing their journey's end and should be wary of ambushes. He had seemed unconcerned and heedless, unable to grasp the danger, almost as if he (and all the other Rime men, for that matter) were intent only on marching on and on, glaze-eyed, growling Gale's doom-chant, like so many monstrous automatons, until they met the Mingols, or Fafhrd's force. Failing those, she believed, they would stride into the chilly western ocean with never a halt or waver, as did the lemming hordes in their climacteric. But neither had Groniger voiced any objection to her spying on ahead-nor even concern for her safety. Where was the man's one-time clear-headedness and prudence? Afreyt was not unversed in island woodcraft and she now spotted Skor peering toward Cold Harbor from the grove of dwarf cedars whence Fathrd had launched yestermorning's brief arrow-fusillade. She called Skor's name, and he whipped around nocking an arrow to his bow, then came up swiftly when he saw her familiar blues.

“Lady Afreyt, what do you here? You look weary,” he greeted her succinctly. He looked weary himself and hollow-eyed, his cheeks and forehead smudged with soot above his straggly russet beard. perhaps against the glare of glacial ice.

She quickly told him about the Rimeland reinforcements approaching behind her.

His weariness seemed to lift from him as she spoke. “That's brave news,” he said when she had done. “We joined our lines (I'm now making the rounds of them) with those of the Cold Harbor defenders before sunset yesterday and have the Mingol fore-raiders penned on the beach — and all by bluff! The mere sight of the forces you describe, strategically deployed, will cause ‘em to take ship and sail away, I think — and we not lift a finger.”

“Your pardon, lieutenant,” she rejoined. her own weariness lifting at his optimism, “but I have heard you and your fellows named berserkers — and have always thought it was the way of such to charge the enemy at the first chance, charge wolf-howling and bounding, mother-naked?”

“To tell the truth, that was once my own understanding of it,” he replied. thoughtfully rubbing his broken nose with the back of his hand, “but the captain's changed my mind for me. He's a great one for sleights and deceits, the captain is! Makes the foe imagine things. sets their own minds to work against ‘em, never fights when there's an easier way — and some of his wisdom has rubbed off on us.”

“Why are you wearing Fafhrd's sword?” she asked, seeing it suddenly.

“Oh, he went off yestermorning to Hellglow after the girl, leaving me in command, and he's not yet returned,” Skor answered readily, though a crease of concern appeared between his brows, and he went on briefly to tell Afreyt about Mara's strange abduction.

“I wonder at him leaving you all so long to shift without him, merely for that,” Afreyt commented, frowning.

“Truth to tell, I wondered at it myself, yestermorning,” Skor admitted. “But as events came on us, I asked myself what the captain would do in each case, and did that, and it's worked out — so far.” He hooked a middle-finger over ar fore-one.

There came a faint tramping and the wispers of a horase chant and turning they saw the front of the Rime column 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.