“But if I say I love you?—which is only truth…”
“Oh Princess,” the Mouser sighed, gliding his hand to her knee. “How can I leave you at dawn? Only one night…”
“Why, Mouse,” Keyaira broke in, smiling roguishly and twisting her green form a little, “do you not know that every night is an eternity? Has not any girl taught you that yet, Mouse? I am astonished. Think, we have half an eternity left us yet—which is also an eternity, as your geometer, whether white-bearded or dainty-breasted, should have taught you.”
“But if I am to sire many children—” the Mouser began.
“Hirriwi and I are somewhat like queen bees,” Keyaira explained, “but think not of that. We have eternity tonight, ‘tis true, but only if we make it so. Come closer.”
A little later, plagiarizing himself somewhat, the Mouser said softly, “The sole fault of mountain climbing is that the best parts go so swiftly.”
“They can last an eternity,” Keyaira breathed in his ear. “Make them last, Mouse.”
* * * *
Fafhrd woke shaking with cold. The pink globes were gray and tossing in icy gusts from the open door. Snow had blown in on his clothes and gear scattered across the floor and was piled inches deep on the threshold, across which came also the only illumination—leaden daylight.
A great joy in him fought all these grim gray sights and conquered them.
Nevertheless he was naked and shivering. He sprang up and beat his clothes against the bed and thrust his limbs into their icy stiffness.
As he was buckling his ax belt, he remembered the Mouser down in the chimney, helpless. Somehow all night, even when he’d spoken to Hirriwi of the Mouser, he’d never thought of that.
He snatched up his pack and sprang out on the ledge.
From the corner of his eye he caught something moving behind him. It was the massive door closing.
A titan gust of snow-fisted wind struck him. He grabbed the rough rock pillar to which he’d last night planned to tie the rope and hugged it tight. The gods help the Mouser below! Someone came sliding and blowing along the ledge in the wind and snow and hugged the pillar lower down.
The gust passed. Fafhrd looked for the door. There was no sign of it. All the piled snow was redrifted. Keeping close hold of pillar and pack with one hand, he felt over the rough wall with the other. Fingernails no more than eyes could discover the slightest crack.
“So you got tossed out too?” a familiar voice said gaily. “I was tossed out by ice gnomes, I’ll have you know.
“Mouser!” Fafhrd cried. “Then you weren’t—? I thought—”
“You never thought of me once all night, if I know you,” the Mouser said. “Keyaira assured me you were safe and somewhat more than that. Hirriwi would have told you the same of me if you’d asked her. But of course you didn’t.”
“Then you too—?” Fafhrd demanded, grinning with delight.
“Yes, Prince Brother-in-Law,” the Mouser answered him, grinning back.
They pommeled each other around the pillar a bit—to battle chill, but in sheer high spirits too.
“Hrissa?” Fafhrd asked.
“Warm inside, the wise one. They don’t put out the cat here, only the man. I wonder, though…. Do you suppose Hrissa was Keyaira’s to begin with and that she foresaw and planned…” His voice trailed off.
No more gusts had come. The snowfall was so light they could see almost a league—up to the Hat above the snow-streaked ledges of the Face and down to where the Ladder faded out.
Once again their minds were filled, almost overpowered by the vastness of Stardock and by their own Predicament: two half-frozen mites precariously poised on a frozen vertical world only distantly linked with Nehwon.
To the south there was a pale silver disk in the sky—the sun. They’d been abed till noon.
“Easier to fashion an eternity out of an eighteen-hour night,” the Mouser observed.
“We galloped the moon deep under the sea,” Fafhrd mused.
“Your girl promise to make you go down?” the Mouser asked suddenly.
Fafhrd nodded his head. “She tried.”
“Mine too. And not a bad idea. The summit smells, by her account. But the chimney looks stuffed with snow. Hold my ankles while I peer over. Yes, packed solid all the way down. So—?”
“Mouser,” Fafhrd said, almost gloomily, “whether there’s a way down or no, I must climb Stardock.”
“You know,” the Mouser answered, “I am beginning to find something in that madness myself. Besides, the east wall of Stardock may hold an easy route to that lush-looking Rift Valley. So let’s do what we can with the bare seven hours of light left us. Daytime’s no stuff to fashion eternities.”
* * * *
Mounting the ledges of the Face was both the easiest and hardest climbing they’d had yet to do. The ledges were wide, but some of them sloped outward and were footed with rotten shale that went skidding away into space at a touch, and now and again there were brief traverses which had to be done by narrow cracks and main strength, sometimes swinging by their hands alone.
And weariness and chill and even dizzying faintness came far quicker at this height. They had to halt often to drink air and chafe themselves. While in the back of one deep ledge—Stardock’s right eye, they judged—they were forced to spend time firing the brazier with all the remaining resin-pellets, partly to warm food and drink, but chiefly to warm themselves.
Last night’s exertions had weakened them too, they sometimes thought, but then the memories of those exertions would return to strengthen them.
And then there were the sudden treacherous wind gusts and the constant yet variable snowfall, which sometimes hid the summit and sometimes let them see it clear against the silvery sky, with the great white out-curving brim of the Hat now poised threateningly above them—a cornice like that of the snow-saddle, only now they were on the wrong side.
The illusion grew stronger that Stardock was a separate world from Nehwon in snow-filled space.
Finally the sky turned blue, and they felt the sun on their backs—they had climbed above the snowfall at last—and Fafhrd pointed at a tiny nick of blue deep in the brim of the Hat—a nick just visible above the next snow-streaked rock bulge—and he cried, “The apex of the Needle’s Eye!”
At that, something dropped into a snowbank beside them, and there was a muffled clash of metal on rock, while from snow a notched and feathered arrow-end stuck straight up.
They dodged under the protective roof of a bigger bulge as a second arrow and a third clashed against the naked rock on which they’d stood.
“Gnarfi and Kranarch have beaten us, curse ‘em,” Fafhrd hissed, “and set an ambush for us at the Eye, the obvious spot. We must go roundabout and get above ‘em.”
“Won’t they expect that?”
“They were fools to spring their ambush too soon. Besides, we have no other tactic.”
So they began to climb south, though still upward, always keeping rock or snow between them and where they judged the Needle’s Eye to be. At last, when the sun was dropping swiftly toward the western horizon, they came swinging back north again and still upward, stamping out steps now in the steepening bank of snow that reversed its curve above them to make the brim of the Hat that now roofed them ominously, covering two-thirds of the sky. They sweated and shook by turns and fought off almost continuous bouts of giddy faintness, yet still strove to move as silently and warily as they might.
At last they rounded one more snow bulge and found themselves looking down a slope at the great bare stretch of rock normally swept by the gale that came through the Needle’s Eye to make the Petty Pennon.
On the outward lip of the exposed rock were two men, both clad in suits of brown leather, much scuffed and here and there ripped, showing the inward-turned fur. Lank, black-bearded, elk-faced Kranarch stood whipping his arms against his chest for warmth. Beside him lay his strung bow and some arrows. Stocky boar-faced Gnarfi knelt peeping over the rim. Fafhrd wondered where their two brown-clad bulky servitors were.
The Mouser dug into his pouch. At the same moment Kranarch saw them and snatched up his weapon though rather more slowly than he would have in thicker air. With a similar slowness the Mouser drew out the fist-size rock he had picked up several ledges below for just such a moment as this.
Kranarch’s arrow whistled between his and Fafhrd’s heads. A moment later the Mouser’s rock struck Kranarch full on his bow-shoulder. The weapon fell from his hand, and that arm dangled. Then Fafhrd and the Mouser charged recklessly down the snow slope, the former brandishing his unthonged ax, the latter drawing Scalpel.