Setting his fire-pot on the snow, he took up the two remaining rockets, and hugged their thick bodies under his arms and dug their tails into the snow, testing them against the ground. The tails were truly as stiff and strong as ski sticks.
He held the rockets propped parallel in one hand and blew hard on the glowing fire-patch in his fire-pot and brought it up toward the two fuses.
Mara ran out of the dark and said, “Darling, I’m so glad my kin didn’t catch you!”
The glow of the fire-pot showed the beauty of her face.
Staring at her across it, Fafhrd said, “I’m leaving Cold Corner. I’m leaving the Snow Tribe. I’m leaving you.”
Mara said, “You can’t.”
Fafhrd set down the fire-pot and the rockets.
Mara stretched out her hands.
Fafhrd took the silver bracelets off his wrists and put them in Mara’s palms.
Mara clenched them and cried, “I don’t ask for these. I don’t ask for anything. You’re the father of my child. You’re mine!”
Fafhrd whipped the heavy silver chain off his neck, laid it across her wrists, and said, “Yes. You’re mine forever, and I’m yours. Your son is mine. I’ll never have another Snow Clan wife. We’re married.”
Meanwhile he had taken up the two rockets again and held their fuses to the fire-pot. They sputtered simultaneously. He set them down, thonged shut the fire-pot and thrust it in his pouch. Three, four…
Mor looked over Mara’s shoulder and said, “I witness your words, my son. Stop!”
Fafhrd grabbed up the rockets, each by its sputtering body, dug in the stick ends and took off down the slope with a great shove. Six, seven…
Mara screamed, “Fafhrd! Husband!” As Mor shouted, “No son of mine!”
Fafhrd shoved again with the sputtering rockets. Cold air whipped his face. He barely felt it. The moonlit lip of the jump was close ahead. He felt its up-curve. Beyond it, darkness. Eight, nine…
He hugged the rockets fiercely to his sides, under his elbows, and was flying through darkness. Eleven, twelve…
The rockets did not fire. The moonlight showed the opposite wall of the canyon rushing toward him. His skis were directed at a point just beneath its top and that point was steadily falling. He tilted the rockets down and hugged them more fiercely still.
They fired. It was as if he were clinging to two great wrists that were dragging him up. His elbows and sides were warm. In the sudden glare the rock wall showed close, but now below. Sixteen, seventeen…
He touched down smoothly on the fair crust of snow covering the Old Road and hurled the rockets to either side. There was a double thunderclap and white stars were shooting around him. One smote and stung, then tortured his cheek as it died. There was time for the one great laughing thought, I depart in a burst of glory.
Then no time for large thoughts at all, as he gave all his attention to skiing down the steep slope of the Old Road, now bright in the moonlight, now pitch black as it curved, crags to the right, a precipice to his left. Crouching and keeping his skis locked side to side, he steered by swaying his hips. His face and his hands grew numb. Reality was the Old Road hurled at him. Tiny bumps became great jolts. White rims came close. Black shoulders threatened.
Deep, deep down there were thoughts nevertheless. Even as he strained to keep all his attention on his skiing, they were there. Idiot, you should have grabbed a pair of sticks with the rockets. But how would you have held them when casting aside the rockets? In your pack?—then they’d be doing you no good now. Will the fire-pot in your pouch prove more worthwhile than sticks? You should have stayed with Mara. Such loveliness you’ll never see again. But it’s Vlana you want. Or is it? How, with Vellix? If you weren’t so cold-hearted and good, you’d have killed Vellix in the stable, instead of speeding to— Did you truly intend killing yourself? What do you intend now? Can Mor’s charms outspeed your skiing? Were the rocket wrists really Nalgron’s, reaching from Hell? What’s that ahead?
That was a hulking shoulder skidded around. He lay over on his right side as the white edge to his left narrowed. The edge held. Beyond it, on the opposite wall of the widening canyon, he saw a tiny streak of flame. Hringorl still had his torch, as he galloped down the New Road dragging Harrax? Fafhrd lay over again to his right as the Old Road curved farther that way in a tightening turn. The sky reeled. Life demanded that he lie still farther over, braking to a stop. But Death was still an equal player in this game. Ahead was the intersection where Old and New Road met. He must reach it as soon as Vellix and Vlana in their sleigh. Speed was the essence. Why? He was uncertain. New curves ahead.
By infinitesimal stages the slope grew less. Snow-freighted treetops thrust from the sinister depths—to the left—then shot up to either side. He was in a flat black tunnel. His progress became soundless as a ghost’s. He coasted to a stop just at the tunnel’s end. His numb fingers went up and feather-touched the bulge of the star-born blister on his cheek. Ice needles crackled very faintly inside the blister.
No other sound but the faint tinkle of the crystals growing all around in the still, damp air.
Five paces ahead of him, down a sudden slope, was a bulbous roll bush weighted with snow. Behind it crouched Hringorl’s chief lieutenant Hrey—no mistaking that pointed beard, though its red was gray in the moonlight. He held a strung bow in his left hand.
Beyond him, two dozen paces down slope, was the fork where New and Old Road met. The tunnel going south through the trees was blocked by a pair of roll bushes higher than a man’s head. Vellix’ and Vlana’s sleigh was stopped short of the pile, its two horses great loomings. Moonlight struck silvery manes and silvery bushes. Vlana sat hunched in the sleigh, her head fur-hooded. Vellix had got down and was casting the roll bushes out of the way.
Torchlight came streaking down the New Road from Cold Corner. Vellix gave up his work and drew his sword. Vlana looked over her shoulder.
Hringorl galloped into the clearing with a laughing cry of triumph, and threw his torch high in the air, reined his horse to a stop behind the sleigh. The skier he towed—Harrax—shot past him and halfway up the slope. There Harrax braked to a stop and stooped to unlace his skis. The torch came down and went out sizzling.
Hringorl dropped from his horse, a fighting axe ready in his right hand.
Vellix ran toward Hringorl. Clearly he understood that he must dispose of the giant pirate before Harrax got off his skis or he would be fighting two at once. Vlana’s face was a small white mask in the moonlight as she half lifted from her seat to stare after him. The hood fell back from her head.
Fafhrd could have helped Vellix, but he still hadn’t made a move to unlash his skis. With a pang—or was it relief?—he remembered he’d left his bow and arrows behind. He told himself that he should help Vellix. Hadn’t he skied down here at incalculable risk to save the Venturer and Vlana, or at least warn them of the ambush he had suspected ever since he’d seen Hringorl whirl his torch on the precipice’s edge? And didn’t Vellix look like Nalgron, now more than ever in his moment of bravery? But the phantom Death still stood at Fafhrd’s side, inhibiting all action.
Besides, Fafhrd felt there was a spell on the clearing, making all action inside it futile. As if a giant spider, white-furred, had already spun a web around it, shutting it off from the rest of the universe, making it a volume inscribed, “This space belongs to the White Spider of Death.” No matter that this giant spider spun not silk, but crystals—the result was the same.
Hringorl aimed a great axe swipe at Vellix. The Venturer evaded it and thrust his sword into Hringorl’s forearm. With a howl of rage, Hringorl shifted his axe to his left hand, lunged forward and struck again.
Taken by surprise, Vellix barely dodged back out of the way of the hissing curve of steel, bright in the moonlight. Yet he was nimbly on guard again, while Hringorl advanced more warily, axe-head high and a little ahead of him, ready to make short chops.
Vlana stood up in the sleigh, steel flashing in her hand. She made as if to hurl it, then paused uncertainly.
Hrey rose from his bush, an arrow nocked to his bow.
Fafhrd could have killed him, by hurling his sword spearwise if in no other way. But the sense of Death beside him was still paralyzingly strong, and the sense of being in the White Ice Spider’s great womblike trap. Besides, what did he really feel toward Vellix, or even Nalgron?