“I’ll set my brothers on you,” she screamed back. “Cowardly boor!”
Fafhrd lifted his fist, dropped it, set his hands to his head and rocked it in a gesture of maniacal desperation, then suddenly ran past her toward the camp.
“I’ll set the whole tribe on you! I’ll tell it in the Tent of the Women. I’ll tell your mother…” Mara shrieked after him, her voice fading fast with the intervening boughs, snow, and distance.
Barely pausing to note that none were abroad amongst the Snow Clan’s tents, either because they were still at the trading fair or inside preparing supper, Fafhrd bounded up his treasure tree and flipped open the door of his hidey hole. Cursing the fingernail he broke doing so, he got out the sealskin-wrapped bow and arrows and rockets and added thereto his best pair of skis and ski sticks, a somewhat shorter package holding his father’s second-best sword well-oiled, and a pouch of smaller gear. Dropping to the snow, he swiftly bound the longer items into a single pack, which he slung over shoulder.
After a moment of indecision, he hurtled inside Mor’s tent, snatching from his pouch a small fire-pot of bubblestone, and filled it with glowing embers from the hearth, sprinkled ashes over them, laced the pot tight shut, and returned it to his pouch.
Then turning in frantic haste toward the doorway, he stopped dead. Mor stood in it, a tall silhouette white-edged and shadow-faced.
“So you’re deserting me and the Waste. Not to return. You think.”
Fafhrd was speechless.
“Yet you will return. If you wish it to be a-crawl on four feet, or blessedly on two, and not stretched lifeless on a litter of spears, weigh soon your duties and your birth.”
Fafhrd framed a bitter answer, but the very words were a gag in his gullet. He stalked toward Mor.
“Make way, Mother,” he managed in a whisper.
She did not move.
His jaws clamped in a horrid grimace of tension, he shot forth his hands, gripped her under the armpits—his flesh crawling—and set her to one side. She seemed as stiff and cold as ice. She made no protest. He could not look her in the face.
Outside, he started at a brisk pace for Godshall, but there were men in his way—four hulking young blond ones flanked by a dozen others.
Mara had brought not only her brothers from the fair, but all her available kinsmen.
Yet now she appeared to have repented of her act, for she was dragging at her eldest brother’s arm and talking earnestly to him, to judge by her expression and the movements of her lips.
Her eldest brother marched on as if she weren’t there. And now as his gaze hit Fafhrd he gave a joyous shout, jerked from her grasp, and came on a-rush followed by the rest. All waved clubs or their scabbarded swords.
Mara’s agonized, “Fly, my love!” was anticipated by Fafhrd by at least two heartbeats. He turned and raced for the woods, his long, stiff pack banging his back. When the path of his flight joined the trail of footprints he’d made running out of the woods, he took care to set a foot in each without slackening speed.
Behind him they cried, “Coward!” He ran faster.
When he reached the juttings of granite a short way inside the forest, he turned sharply to the right and leaping from bare rock to rock, making not one additional print, he reached a low cliff of granite and mounted it with only two hand-grabs, then darted on until the cliff’s edge hid him from anyone below.
He heard the pursuit enter the woods, angry cries as in veering around trees they bumped each other, then a masterful voice crying for silence.
He carefully lobbed three stones so that they fell along his false trail well ahead of Mara’s human hounds. The thud of the stones and the rustle of branches they made falling drew cries of “There he goes!” and another demand for silence.
Lifting a larger rock, he hurled it two-handed so that it struck solidly the trunk of a stout tree on the nearer side of the trail, jarring down great branchfuls of snow and ice. There were muffled cries of startlement, confusion, and rage from the showered and likely three-quarters buried men. Fafhrd grinned, then his face sobered and his eyes grew dartingly watchful as he set off at a lope through the darkening woods.
But this time he felt no inimical presences and the living and the lifeless, whether rock or ghost, held off their assaults. Perhaps Mor, deeming him sufficiently harried by Mara’s kinsmen, had ceased to energize her charms. Or perhaps Fafhrd left off thinking and devoted all of himself to silent speeding. Vlana and civilization lay ahead. His mother and barbarism behind—but he endeavored not to think of her.
Night was near when Fafhrd left the wood. He had made the fullest possible circuit through them, coming out next to the drop into Trollstep Canyon. The strap of his long pack chafed his shoulder.
There were the lights and sounds of feasting amongst the traders’ tents. Godshall and the actors’ tents were dark. Still nearer loomed the dark bulk of the stable tent.
He silently crossed the frosty, rutted gravel of the New Road leading south into the canyon.
Then he saw that the stable tent was not altogether dark. A ghostly glow moved inside it. He approached its door cautiously and saw the silhouette of Hor peering in. Still the soul of silence, he came up behind Hor and peered over his shoulder.
Vlana and Vellix were harnessing the latter’s two horses to Essedinex’ sleigh, from which Fafhrd had stolen the three rockets.
Hor tipped up his head and lifted a hand to his lips to make some sort of owl or wolf cry.
Fafhrd whipped out his knife and, as he was about to slash Hor’s throat, reversed his intent and his knife too, and struck him senseless with a blow of the pommel against the side of his head. As Hor collapsed, Fafhrd hauled him to one side of the doorway.
Vlana and Vellix sprang into the sleigh, the latter touched his horses with the reins, and they came thud-slithering out. Fafhrd gripped his knife fiercely … then sheathed it and shrank back into the shadows.
The sleigh went gliding off down the New Road. Fafhrd stared after it, standing tall, his arms as straight down his sides as those of a corpse laid out, but with his fingers and thumbs gripped into tightest fists.
He suddenly turned and fled toward Godshall.
There came an owl-hooting from behind the stable tent. Fafhrd skidded to a stop in the snow and turned around, his hands still fists.
Out of the dark, two forms, one trailing fire, raced toward Trollstep Canyon. The tall form was unmistakably Hringorl’s. They stopped at the brink. Hringorl swung his torch in a great circle of flame. The light showed the face of Harrax beside him. Once, twice, thrice, as if in signal to someone far south down the canyon. Then they raced for the stable.
Fafhrd ran for Godshall. There was a harsh cry behind him. He stopped and turned again. Out of the stable galloped a big horse. Hringorl rode it. He dragged by rope a man on skis: Harrax. The pair careened down the New Road in a flaring upswirl of snow.
Fafhrd raced on until he was past Godshall and a quarter way up the slope leading to the Tent of the Women. He cast off his pack, opened it, drew his skis from it and strapped them to his feet. Next he unwrapped his father’s sword and belted it to his left side, balancing his pouch on right.
Then he faced Trollstep Canyon where the Old Road had gone. He took up two of his ski sticks, crouched, and dug them in. His face was a skull, the visage of one who casts dice with Death.
At that instant, beyond Godshall, the way he had come, there was a tiny yellow sputtering. He paused for it, counting heartbeats, he knew not why.
Nine, ten, eleven—there was a great flare of flame. The rocket rose, signaling tonight’s Show. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—and the tail-flame faded and the nine white stars burst out.
Fafhrd dropped his ski sticks, picked up one of the three rockets he’d stolen, and drew its fuse from its end, pulling just hard enough to break the cementing tar without breaking the fuse.
Holding the slender, finger-long, tarry cylinder delicately between his teeth, he took his fire-pot out of his pouch. The bubblestone was barely warm. He unlaced the top and brushed away the ashes below until he saw—and was stung by—a red glow.
He took the fuse from between his teeth and placed it so that one end leaned on the edge of the fire-pot while the other end touched the red glow. There was a sputtering. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—and the sputtering became a flaring jet, then was done.