Gradually the cares of the day dropped away and his thoughts turned to the days of his youth, spent in similar clime—to Cold Corner with its tented slopes and great pines, its snow serpents and wolves, its witchwomen and ghosts. He remembered Nalgron his father and his mother Mor and even Mara, his first love. Nalgron had been an enemy of the gods—somewhat like these Rime Isle men (he was called the Legend Breaker) but more adventurous—he had been a great mountain climber, and in climbing one named White Fang had got his death. Fafhrd remembered an evening when his father had walked with him to the lip of Cloud Canyon and named to him the stars as they winked on in a sky similarly violet.
A small sound close by, perhaps that of a lemming moving off through the heather, broke his reverie. He was already mounting the gentle slope of the hill he sought. After a moment he continued to the top, stepping softly and keeping his distance from the gibbet and the area that lay immediately beneath its beam. He had a feeling of something uncanny close at hand and he scanned around in the silence.
On the northern slope of the hill there was a thick grove of gorse more than man-high, or bower rather, since there was a narrow avenue leading in, a door of shadows. The feeling of an uncanny presence deepened and he mastered a shiver.
As his eyes came away from the gorse, he saw Afreyt standing just uphill and to one side of the grove and looking at him steadily without greeting. The darkening violet of the sky gave its tone to her blue garb. For some reason he did not call out to her and now she lifted her narrow hand crosswise to her lips, enjoining silence. Then she looked toward the grove.
Slowly emerging from the shadow door were three slender girls barely past childhood. They seemed to be leading and looking up at someone Fafhrd could not make out at first. He blinked twice, widening his eyes, and saw it was the figure of a tall, pale-bearded man wearing a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his eyes, and either very old or else enfeebled by sickness, for he took halting steps and though his back was straight he rested his hands heavily on the shoulders of two of the girls.
And then Fafhrd felt an icy chill, for the suspicion came to him that this was Nalgron, whose ghost he had not seen since he had left Cold Corner. And either the figure’s skin, beard and robe were alike strangely mottled, or else he was seeing the pale needle-clumps of the gorse through them.
But if it were a ghost, Nalgron’s or another’s, the girls showed no fear of it, rather a dutiful tenderness, and their shoulders bowed under its hands as they supported it along, as if its weight were real.
They slowly mounted the short distance to the hilltop, Afreyt silently following a few paces behind, until the figure stood directly beneath the end of the gallow’s beam.
There the old man or ghost seemed to gain strength (and perhaps greater substantiality too) for he took his hands from the girls’ shoulders and they retreated a little toward Afreyt, still looking up at him, and he lifted his face toward the sky, and Fafhrd saw that although he was a gaunt man at the end of middle age with strong and noble features not unlike Nalgron’s, he had thinner lips, their ends downturning like a knowing schoolmaster’s, and he wore a patch on his left eye.
He scanned around uncertainly, o’erpassing Fafhrd, who stood motionless and afraid, and then the old man turned north and lifted an arm in that direction and said in a hoarse voice that was like the soughing of the wind in thick branches, “The Widder-Mingol fleet comes on from the west. Two raiders harry ahead, make for Cold Harbor.” Then he rapidly turned back his head through what seemed an impossibly great angle, as though his neck were broken yet somehow still serviceable, so that he looked straight at Fafhrd with his single eye, and said, “You must destroy them!”
Then he seemed to lose interest, and weakness seized him again, or perhaps a sort of sensuous languor after task completed, for he stepped a little more swiftly as he returned toward the bower, and when the girls came in around him, his resting hands seemed to fondle their young necks lasciviously as well as take support from their slim shoulders until the shadow door, darker now, swallowed them.
Fafhrd was so struck with this circumstance, despite his fear, that when Afreyt now came stepping toward him saying in a low but businesslike voice, “Didst mark that? Cold Harbor is Rime Isle’s other town, but far smaller, easy prey for even a single Mingol ship that takes it by surprise. It’s on the north coast, a day’s journey away, ice-locked save for these summer months. You must—” his interrupting reply was “Think you the girls’ll be safe with him?”
She broke off, then answered shortly, “As with any man. Or male ghost. Or god.”
At that last word, Fafhrd looked at her sharply. She nodded and continued, “They’ll feed him and give him drink and bed him down. Doubtless he’ll play with their breasts a little and then sleep. He’s an old god and far from home, I think, and wearies easily, which is perhaps a blessing. In any case, they serve Rime Isle too and must run risks.”
Fafhrd considered that and then, clearing his throat, said, “Your pardon, Lady Afreyt, but your Rime Isle men, judging not only from Groniger but from others I’ve met, some of them councilmen, do not believe in any gods at all.”
She frowned. “That’s true enough. The old gods deserted Rime Isle long years ago and our folk have had to learn to fend for themselves in the cruel world—in this clime merciless. It’s bred hardheadedness.”
“Yet,” Fafhrd said, recalling something, “My gray friend judged Rime Isle to be a sort of rim-spot, where one might meet all manner of strange ships and men and gods from very far places.”
“That’s true also,” she said hurriedly. “And perhaps it’s favored the same hard-headedness: how, where there are so many ghosts about, to take account only of what the hand can firmly grasp and can be weighed in scales. Money and fish. It’s one way to go. But Cif and I have gone another—where phantoms throng, to learn to pick the useful and trustworthy ones from the flibbertigibbets and flimflammers—which is well for Rime Isle. For these two gods we’ve found—”
“Two gods?” Fafhrd questioned, raising his eyebrows. “Cif found one too? Or is another in the bower?”
“It’s a long story,” she said impatiently. “Much too long to tell now, when dire events press upon us thick and fast. We must be practical. Cold Harbor’s in dismal peril and—”
“Again your pardon, Lady Afreyt,” Fafhrd broke in, raising his voice a little. “But your mention of practicality reminds me of another matter upon which you and Cif appear to differ most sharply with your fellow councilmen. They know of no Mingol invasion, they say, and certainly nothing of you and Cif hiring us to help repel it—and you’ve asked us in your notes to keep that secret. Now, I’ve brought you the twelve berserkers you wanted—”
“I know, I know,” she said sharply, “and I’m pleased. But you were paid for that—and shall get further pay in Rime Isle gold as services are rendered. As for the council, the wizardries of Khahkht have lulled their suspicions—I doubt not that today’s fish-run is his work, tempting their cupidity.”
“And my comrade and I have suffered from his wizardries too, I trow,” Fafhrd said. “Nevertheless, you told us at the Silver Eel in Lankhmar that you spoke with the voice of Rime Isle, and now it appears that you speak only for Cif and yourself in a council of—what is it, twelve?”
“Did you expect your task to be all easy sailing?” she flared at him. “Art unacquainted with set-backs and adverse gales in quests? Moreover, we do speak with the voice of Rime Isle, for Cif and I are the only councilpersons who have the old glory of Rime Isle at heart—and we are both full council members, I assure you, only daughters inheriting house, farms and council membership from fathers after (in Cif’s case) sons died. We played together as children in these hills, she and I, reviving Rime Isle’s greatness in our games. Or sometimes we’d be pirate queens and rape the Isle. But chiefly we’d imagine ourselves seizing power in the council, forcibly putting down all the other members.”
“So much violence in little girls?” Fafhrd couldn’t help putting in. “I think of little girls as gathering flowers and weaving garlands whilst fancying themselves little wives and mothers—”