Groniger swiftly mounted the other end of the table, boosted by those beside him, waved for silence, and as soon as he’d got a little of that commodity assured the Mouser in a great feelingful voice, advancing to make himself heard, “We’ll do it—oh, we’ll do it! I myself will lead out the Rimic contingent, half our armed citizenry, across the Deathlands to Fafhrd’s aid against the Widdershins, while nwone and Zwaaken will man the armed fishing fleet with the other half and follow you in Flotsam against the Sunwise Mingols. Victory!”
And with that the hall resounded with cries of “Death to the Mingols!” “Victory!” and other cheers the Mouser couldn’t quite make out. As the noise passed its peak, Groniger shouted, “Wine!
Let’s pledge our allegiance!” while Zwaaken cried to the Mouser, “Summon your crewmen to celebrate with us—they’ve the freedom of Rime Isle now and forever!” (Mikkidu was soon dispatched.)
The Mouser looked helplessly at Cif—though still maintaining his grin (by now he must look quite glassy-eyed, he thought)—but she only stretched her hand toward him, crying, flush-cheeked, “I’ll sail with you!” while Afreyt beside her proclaimed, “I’ll go ahead across the Deathlands to join Fafhrd, bringing god Odin with me!”
Groniger heard that and called to her, “I and my men will give you whatever help with that you need, honored council-lady,” which told the Mouser that besides all else he’d got the atheistical fishermen believing in gods—Odin and Loki, at any rate. What had he told them?
He let Cif and Afreyt draw him down, but before he would begin to question them, Cif had thrown her arms around him, hugged him tight, and was kissing him full on the lips. This was wonderful, something he’d been dreaming of for three months and more (even though he’d pictured it happening in somewhat more private circumstances) and when she at last drew back, starry-eyed, it was another sort of question he was of a mind to ask her, but at that moment tall Afreyt grabbed him and soon was kissing him as soundly.
This was undeniably pleasant, but it took away from Cif’s kiss, made it less personal, more a sign of congratulations and expression of overflowing enthusiasm than a mark of special affection. His Cif-dream faded down. And when Afreyt was done with him, he was at once surrounded by a press of wellwishers, some of whom wanted to embrace him also.
From the corner of his eye he noted Hilsa and Rill bussing all and sundry—really, all these kisses had no meaning at all, including Cif’s of course, he’d been a fool to think differently—and at one point he could have sworn he saw Groniger dancing a jig. Only old Ourph, for some reason, did not join in the merriment. Once he caught the old Mingol looking at him sadly.
And so the celebration began that lasted half the night and involved much drinking and eating and impromptu cheering and dancing and parading round and about and in and out. And the longer it went on, the more grotesque the cavorting and footstamping marches got, and all of it to the rhythm of the vindictive little rhyme that still went on resounding deep in the Mouser’s mind, the tune to which everything was beginning to dance: “Storm clouds thicken round Rime Isle. Nature brews her blackest bile. Monsters quicken, nightmares foal, niss and nicor, drow and troll.” Those lines in particular seemed to the Mouser to describe what was happening just now—a birth of monsters. (But where were the trolls?) And so on (the rhyme) until its doomful and monstrously compelling end: “Mingols to their deaths must go, down to weedy hell below, never draw an easy breath, suffer an unending death, everlasting pain and strife, everlasting death in life. Mingol madness ever burn! Never peace again return!”
And through it all the Mouser maintained his perhaps glassy-eyed smile and jaunty, insolent air of supreme self-confidence, he answered one repeated question with, “No, I’m no orator—never had any training—though I’ve always liked to talk,” but inwardly he seethed with curiosity. As soon as he got a chance. he asked Cif, “Whatever did I say to bring them around, to change their minds so utterly?”
“Why, you should know,” she told him.
“But tell me in your own words,” he said.
She deliberated. “You appealed entirely to their feelings, to their emotions,” she said at last, simply. “It was wonderful.”
“Yes, but what exactly did I say? What were my words?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you,” she protested. “It was so all of a piece that no one thing stood out—I’ve quite forgotten the details. Content you, it was perfect.”
Later on he ventured to inquire of Groniger, “At what point did my arguments begin to persuade you?”
“How can you ask that?” the grizzled Rimelander rejoined, a frown of honest puzzlement furrowing his brow. “It was all so supremely logical, clearly and coldly reasoned. Like two and two makes four. How can one point to one part of arithmetic as being more compelling than another?”
“True, true,” the Mouser echoed reluctantly, and ventured to add, “I suppose it was the same sort of rigorous logic that persuaded you to accept the gods Odin and Loki?”
“Precisely,” Groniger confirmed.
The Mouser nodded, though he shrugged in spirit. Oh, he knew what had happened all right, he even checked it out a little later with Rill.
“Where did you light your torch?” he asked.
“At the god’s fire, of course,” she answered. “At the god’s fire in the Flame Den.” And then she kissed him. (She wasn’t too bad at that either, even though there was nothing to the whole kissing business.) Yes, he knew that the god Loki had come out of the flames and possessed him for a while (as Fafhrd had perhaps once been possessed by the god Issek back in Lankhmar) and spoken through his lips the sort of arguments that are so convincing when voiced by a god or delivered in time of war or comparable crisis—and so empty when proclaimed by a mere mortal on any ordinary occasion.
And really there was no time for speculation about the mystery of what he’d said, now that there was so much to be done, so many life-and-death decisions to be made, so many eventful trains of action to be guided to their conclusions—once these folk had got through celebrating and taken a little rest.
Still, it would be nice to know just a little of what he’d actually said, he thought wistfully. Some of it might even have been clever. Why in heaven’s name, for instance, and to illustrate what, had he taken the queller out of his pouch and whirled it around his head?
He had to admit it was rather pleasant being possessed by a god (or would be if one could remember any of it) but it did leave one feeling empty, that is, except for the ever-present Mingols-to-their-deaths jingle—that he’d never get shut of, it seemed.
* * * *
Next morning Fafhrd’s band got their first sight of Cold Harbor, the sea, and the entire Mingol advance force all at once. The sun and west wind had dissipated the coastal fog and blew it from the glacier, on the edge of which they were now all making their way. It was a much smaller and vastly more primitive settlement than Salthaven. To the north rose the dark crater-summit of Mount Hellglow, so lofty and near that its eastern foothills still cast their shadows on the ice. A wisp of smoke rose from it, trailing off east. At the snowline a shadow on the dark rock seemed to mark the mouth of a cavern leading into the mountain’s heart. Its lower slopes were thickly crusted with snow, leading back to the glacier which, narrow at this point, stretched ahead of them north to the glittering gray sea, surprisingly near. From the glacier’s not-very-lofty foot, rolling grassy turf with occasional clumps of small northern cedars deformed by the wind stretched off to the southwest and its own now-distant snowy heights, wisps of white fog blowing eastways and vanishing across the rolling sunlit land between.
Glimpses of a few devastated and deserted hill farms late yesterday and early this morning, while they’d been trailing and chivvying the retreating Mingol marauders, had prepared them for what they saw now. Those farmhouses and byres had been of turf or sod solely, with grass and flowers growing on their narrow roofs, smokeholes instead ofchimneys.
Mara, dry-eyed, pointed out the one she’d dwelt in.
Cold Harbor was simply a dozen such dwellings atop a rather steep hill or large mound backed against the glacier and turf-walled—a sort of retreat for the country-dwellers in times of peril. A short distance beyond it, a sandy beach fronted the harbor itself and on it three Mingol galleys had been drawn ashore, identified by the fantastic horse cages that were the above-deck portion of their prows.