“—and put them all to the sword and cut their wives’ throats!” Afreyt finished. “Oh, we gathered flowers too, sometimes.”
Fafhrd chuckled, then his voice grew grave. “And so you’ve inherited full council membership. Groniger always mentions you with respect, though I think he has suspicions of something between us—and now you’ve somehow discovered a stray old god or two whom you think you can trust not to betray you, or delude you with senile ravings, and he’s told you of a great two-pronged Mingol invasion of Rime Isle preparatory to world conquest, and on the strength of that you went to Lankhmar and hired the Mouser and me to be your mercenary captains, using your own fortunes for the purpose, I fancy—”
“Cif is the council treasurer,” she assured him with a meaningful crook of her lips. “She’s very good at figures and accounts—as I am with the pen and words, the council’s secretary.”
“And yet you trust this god,” Fafhrd pressed on, “this old god who loves gallows and seems to draw strength from them. Myself, I’m very suspicious of all old men and gods. In my experience they’re full of lechery and avarice—and have a long lifetime’s experience of evil to draw on in their twisty machinations.”
“Agreed,” Afreyt said. “But when all’s said and done, a god’s a god. Whatever nasty itches his old heart may have, whatever wicked thoughts of death and doom, he must first be true to his god’s nature: which is, to hear what we say and hold us to it, to speak truth to man about what’s going on in distant places, and to prophecy honestly—though he may try to trick us with words if we don’t listen to him very carefully.”
“That does agree with my experience of the breed,” Fafhrd admitted. “Tell me, why is this called the Hill of the Eight-Legged Horse?”
Without a blink at the change of subject, Afreyt replied, “Because it takes four men to carry a coffin or the laid-out corpse of one who’s been hanged—or died any other way. Four men—eight legs. You might have guessed.”
“And what is this god’s name?”
Afreyt said: “Odin.”
Fafhrd had the strangest feeling at the gong-beat sound of that simple name—as if he were on the verge of recalling memories of another lifetime. Also, it had something of the tone of the gibberish spoken by Karl Treuherz, that strange otherworlder who had briefly come into the lives of Fafhrd and the Mouser astride the neck of a two-headed sea serpent whilst they were in the midst of their great adventure-war with the sapient rats of Lankhmar Below-Ground. Only a name—yet there was the feeling of walls between world disturbed.
At the same time he was looking into Afreyt’s wide eyes and noting that the irises were violet, rather than blue as they had seemed in the yellow torchlight of the Eel—and then wondering how he could see any violet at all in anything when that tone had some time ago faded entirely from the sky, which was now full night except that the moon a day past full had just now lifted above the eastern highland.
From beyond Afreyt a light voice called tranquilly, attuned to the night, “The god sleeps.”
One of the girls was standing before the mouth of the bower, a slim white shape in the moonlight, clad only in simple frock that was hardly more than a shift and left one shoulder bare. Fafhrd marvelled that she was not shivering in the chill night air. Her two companions were dimmer shapes behind her.
“Did he give any trouble, Mara?” Afreyt called. (Fafhrd felt a strange feeling at that name, too.) “Nothing new,” the girl responded.
Afreyt said, “Well, put on your boots and hooded cloak—May and Gale, you also—and follow me and the foreign gentleman, out of earshot, to Salthaven. You’ll be able to visit the god at dawn, May, to bring him milk?”
“I will.”
“Your children?” Fafhrd asked in a whisper.
Afreyt shook her head. “Cousins. Meanwhile,” she said in a voice that was likewise low, but businesslike, “you and I will discuss your instant expedition with the berserks to Cold Harbor.”
Fafhrd nodded, although his eyebrows rose a little. There was a fugitive movement in the air overhead and he found himself thinking of his and the Mouser’s one-time loves, the invisible mountain-princesses Hirriwi and Keyaira, and of their night-riding brother, Prince Faroomfar.
* * * *
The Gray Mouser saw his men fed and bedded down for the night in their dormitory ashore, not without some fatherly admonitions as to the desirability of prudent behavior in the home port of one’s employers. He briefly discussed the morrow’s work with Ourph and Pshawri. Then, with a final enigmatic scowl all around, he threw his cloak over his left shoulder, withdrew into the chilly evening, and strolled toward the Salt Herring.
Although he and Fafhrd had had a long refreshing sleep aboard the Flotsam (declining the shore quarters Groniger had offered them, though accepting for their men), it had been a long, exactingly busy, and so presumably tiring day—yet now, somewhat to his surprise, he felt new life stirring in him. But this new life invading him did not concern itself with his and Fafhrd’s many current problems and sage plans for future contingencies, but rather with a sense of just how preposterous it was that for the past three moons he should have been solemnly playing at being a captain of men, fire-breathing disciplinarian, prodigious navigator, and the outlandishly heroic rest of it. He, a thief, captaining thieves, drilling them into sailorly and warlike skills that would be of no use to them whatever when they went back to their old professions—ridiculous! All because a small woman with golden glints in her dark hair and in her green eyes had set him an unheard-of task. Really, most droll.
Moonlight striking almost horizontally left the narrow street in shadow but revealed the cross-set beams above the Salt Herring’s door. Where did they get so much wood in an island so far north? That question at least was answered for him when he pressed on inside. The tavern was built of the gray beams and planks of wrecked or dismantled ships—one wall still had a whaleback curve and he noted in another the borings and embedded shells of sea creatures.
A slow eyesweep around showed a half dozen oddly sorted mariners quietly drinking and two youngish Islers even more quietly playing chess with chunky stone pieces. He recalled having seen this morning with Groniger the one playing the black.
Without a word he marched toward the inner room, the low doorway to which was now half occupied by a brawny and warty old hag, sitting bowed over on a low stool, who looked the witch-mother of all unnatural giants and other monsters.
His Ilthmart host came up beside him, wiping his hands on the towel that was his apron and saying sofly, “Flame Den’s taken for tonight—a private party. You’d only be courting trouble with Mother Grum. What’s your pleasure?”
The Mouser gave him a hard, silent look and marched on. Mother Grum glowered at him from under tangled brows. He glowered back. The Ilthmart shrugged.
Mother Grum moved back from her stool, bowing him into the inner room. He briefly turned his head, favoring the Ilthmart with a cold superior smile as he moved after her. One of the Islers, lifting a black rook to move it, swung his eyes sidewise to observe, though his head remained motionless and bent over the board as if in deepest thought.
The inner room had a small fire in it, at any rate, to provide movement to entertain the eye. The large hearth was in the center of the room, a stone slab set almost waist high. A great copper flue (the Mouser wondered what ship’s bottom it had helped cover) came down to within a yard of it from out of the low ceiling, and into this flue the scant smoke twistingly flowed. Elsewhere in the room were a few small, scarred tables, chairs for them, and another doorway.
Sidewise together on the edge of the hearth sat two women who looked personable, but used by life. The Mouser had seen one of them earlier in the day (the late afternoon) and judged her a whore. Their somewhat provocative attire now, and the red stockings of one, were consonant with this theory.
The Mouser went to a table a quarter way around the fire from them, cast his cape over one chair and sat down in another, which commanded both doorways. He knit his fingers together and studied the flames impassively.
Mother Grum returned to her stool in the doorway, presenting her back to all three of them.
One of the two whorish-looking women stared into the fire and from time to time fed it with driftwood that sang and sometimes tinged the flames with green and blue and with thorny black twigs that spat and crackled and burned hot orange. The other wove cat’s cradles between the spread fingers of her outheld hands on a long loop of black twine. Now and then the Mouser looked aside from the fire at her severe angular creations.