by Fritz Leiber
Just then Fafhrd’s composure was tested to the uttermost, when a large handful of snow was clapped to his eyes and held there.
He stayed perfectly still for three heartbeats. Then he captured a rather slender wrist and dragged it down a short distance, meantime gently shaking his head and blinking his eyes.
The trapped wrist twisted free and the clot of snow fell down the neck of the wolfskin coat of Hringorl’s man Hor seated immediately below. Hor gave a strange low cry and started to glare upward, but fortunately at that moment Vlana pulled down her red silk sarong and began to anoint her nipples with a coral salve.
Fafhrd looked around and saw Mara grinning fiercely at him from where she lay outstretched on the two branches next his, her head level with his shoulder.
‘If I’d been an Ice Gnome, you’d be dead,’ she hissed at him. ‘Or if I’d set my four brothers to trap you, as I should have. Your ears were dead, your mind all in your eyes straining toward that skinny harlot. I’ve heard how you challenged Hringorl for her! And refused his gift of a gold bracelet!’
‘I admit, dear, that you slithered up behind me most skillfully and silently,’ Fafhrd breathed at her softly, ‘while you seem to have eyes and ears for all things that transpire—and some that don’t—at Cold Corner. But I must say, Mara—’
‘Hah! Now you’ll tell me I shouldn’t be here, being a woman. Male prerogatives, intersexual sacrilege, and so forth. Well, neither should you be here.’
Fafhrd gravely considered part of that. ‘No, I think all the women should be here. What they would learn would be much to their interest and advantage.’
‘To caper like a cat in heat? To slouch about like a silly slave? Yes, I saw those acts too—while you were drooling dumb and deaf! You men will laugh at anything, especially when your stupid, gasping, red-faced lust’s been aroused by a shameless bitch making a show of her scrawny nakedness!’
Mara’s heated hissings were getting dangerously loud and might well have attracted the attention of Hor and others, but once again good fortune intervened, in that there was a ripple of drumming as Vlana streaked off the stage, and then there began a wild, somewhat thin, but galloping music, the one-armed Mingol being joined by the little Ilthmarix playing a nose flute.
‘I did not laugh, my dear,’ Fafhrd breathed somewhat loftily, ‘nor did I drool or flush or speed my breath, as I am sure you noted. No, Mara, my sole purpose in being here is to learn more about civilization.’
She glared at him, grinned, then of a sudden smiled tenderly. ‘You know, I honestly think you believe that, you incredible infant,’ she breathed back wonderingly. ‘Granting that the decadence called civilization could possibly be of interest to anyone, and a capering whore able to carry its message, or rather absence of message.’
‘I neither think nor believe, I know it,’ Fafhrd replied, ignoring Mara’s other remarks. ‘A whole world calls and have we eyes only for Cold Corner? Watch with me, Mara, and gain wisdom. The actress dances the cultures of all lands and ages. Now she is a woman of the Eight Cities.’
Perhaps Mara was in some small part persuaded. Or perhaps it was that Vlana’s new costume covered her thoroughly—sleeved, green bodice; full, blue skirt; red stockings; and yellow shoes—and that the culture dancer was panting a trifle and showing the cords in her neck from the stamping and whirling dance she was doing. At any rate, the Snow Girl shrugged and smiled indulgently and whispered, ‘Well, I must admit it all has a certain disgusting interest.’
‘I knew you’d understand, dearest. You have twice the mind of any woman of our tribe, aye, or of any man,’ Fafhrd cooed, caressing her tenderly but somewhat absently as he peered at the stage.
In succession, always making lightning costume changes, Vlana became a houri of the Eastern Lands, a custom-hobbled Quarmallian queen, a languorous concubine of the King of Kings, and a haughty Lankhmar lady wearing a black toga. This last was theatrical license: only the men of Lankhmar wear the toga, but the garment was Lankhmar’s chiefest symbol across the world of Nehwon.
Meanwhile Mara did her best to share the eccentric whim of her husband-to-be. At first she was genuinely intrigued and made mental notes on details of Vlana’s dress styles and tricks of behavior which she might herself adopt to advantage. But then she was gradually overwhelmed by a realization of the older woman’s superiority in training, knowledge and experience. Vlana’s dancing and miming clearly couldn’t be learned except with much coaching and drill. And how, and especially where, could a Snow Girl ever wear such clothes? Feelings of inferiority gave way to jealousy and that to hatred.
Civilization was nasty, Vlana ought to be whipped out of Cold Corner, and Fafhrd needed a woman to run his life and keep his mad imagination in check. Not his mother, of course—that awful and incestuous eater of her own son—but a glamorous and shrewd young wife. Herself.
She began to watch Fafhrd intently. He didn’t look like an infatuated male, he looked cold as ice, but he was certainly utterly intent on the scene below. She reminded herself that a few men were adept at hiding their true feelings.
Vlana shed her toga and stood in a wide-meshed tunic of fine silver wires. At each crossing of the wires a tiny silver bell stood out. She shimmied and the bells tinkled, like a tree of tiny birds all chirruping together a hymn to her body. Now her slenderness seemed that of adolescence, while from between the strands of her sleekly cascading hair, her large eyes gleamed with mysterious hints and invitations.
Fafhrd’s controlled breathing quickened. So his dream in the Mingols’ tent had been true! His attention, which had half been off to the lands and ages Vlana had danced, centered wholly on her and became desire.
This time his composure was put to an even sorer test for, without warning, Mara’s hand clutched his crotch.
But he had little time in which to demonstrate his composure. She let go and crying, ‘Filthy beast! You are lusting!’ struck him in the side, below the ribs.
He tried to catch her wrists, while staying on his branches. She kept trying to hit him. The pine boughs creaked and shed snow and needles.
In landing a clout on Fafhrd’s ear, Mara’s upper body overbalanced, though her feet kept hooked to branchlets.
Growling, ‘God freeze you, you bitch!’ Fafhrd gripped his stoutest bough with one hand and lunged down with the other to catch Mara’s arm just beneath the shoulder.
Those looking up from below—and by now there were some, despite the strong counter-attraction of the stage—saw two struggling, white-clad torsos and fair-haired heads dipping out of the branchy roof, as if about to descend in swan dives. Then, still struggling, the figures withdrew upward.
An older Snow Man cried out, ‘Sacrilege!’ A younger, ‘Peepers! Let’s thrash ’em!’ He might have been obeyed, for a quarter of the Snow Men were on their feet by now, if it hadn’t been that Essedinex was keeping a close eye on things through a peephole in one of the screens and that he was wise in the ways of handling unruly audiences. He shot a finger at the Mingol behind him, then sharply raised that hand, palm upward.
The music surged. Cymbals clashed. The two Mingol girls and the Ilthmarix bounded on stage stark naked and began to caper around Vlana. The fat Easterner clumped past them and set fire to his great black beard. Blue flames crawled up and flickered before his face and around his ears. He didn’t put the fire out—with a wet towel he carried—until Essedinex hoarsely stage-whispered from his peephole, ‘That’s enough. We’ve got ’em again.’ The length of the black beard had been halved. Actors make great sacrifices, which the yokels and even their co-mates rarely appreciate.
Fafhrd, dropping the last dozen feet, lighted in the high drift outside Godshall at the same instant Mara finished her downward climb. They faced each other calf-deep in crusted snow, across which the rising, slightly gibbous moon threw streaks of white glimmer and made shadow between them.
Fafhrd asked, ‘Mara, where did you hear that lie about me challenging Hringorl for the actress?’
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‘Faithless lecher!’ she cried, punched him in the eye, and ran off toward the Tent of the Women, sobbing and crying, ‘I will tell my brothers! You’ll see!’
Fafhrd jumped up and down, smothering a howl of pain, sprinted after her three steps, stopped, clapped snow to his pain-stabbed eye and, as soon as it was only throbbing, began to think.
He looked around with the other eye, saw no one, made his way to a clump of snow-laden evergreens on the edge of the precipice, concealed himself among them, and continued to think.
His ears told him that the Show was still going at a hot pace inside Godshall. There were laughs and cheers, sometimes drowning the wild drumming and fluting. His eyes—the hit one was working again—told him there was no one near him. They swiveled to the actors’ tents at that end of Godshall which lay nearest the new road south, and at the stables beyond them, and at the traders’ tents beyond the stables. Then they came back to the nearest tent: Vlana’s hemicylindrical one. Crystals clothed it, twinkling in the moonlight, and a giant crystal flatworm seemed to be crawling across its middle just below the evergreen sycamore bough.
He slitheringly walked toward it across the bediamonded snow crust. The knot joining the lacings of its doorway was hidden in shadow and felt complex and foreign. He went to the back of the tent, loosened two pegs, went on belly through the crack like a snake, found himself amongst the hems of the skirts of Vlana’s racked garments, loosely replaced the pegs, stood up, shook himself, took four steps and lay down on the pallet. A little heat radiated from a banked brazier. After a while he reached to the table and poured himself a cup of brandy.
At last he heard voices. They grew louder. As the lacings of the door were being unknotted and loosened, he felt for his knife and also prepared to draw a large fur rug over him.
Saying with laughter but also decision, ‘No, no, no,’ Vlana swiftly stepped in backward over the slack lashings, held the door closed with one hand while she gave the lashings a tightening pull with the other, and glanced over her shoulder.
Her look of stark surprise was gone almost before Fafhrd marked it, to be replaced by a quick welcoming grin that wrinkled her nose comically. She turned away from him, carefully drew the lacings tight, and spent some time tying a knot on the inside. Then she came over and knelt beside him where he lay, her body erect from her knees. There was no grin now as she looked down at him, only a composed, enigmatic thoughtfulness, which he sought to match. She was wearing the hooded robe of her Mingol costume.
‘So you changed your mind about a reward,’ she said quietly but matter-of-factly. ‘How do you know that I too may not have changed mine since?’
Fafhrd shook his head, replying to her first statement. Then, after a pause, he said, ‘Nevertheless, I have discovered that I desire you.’
Vlana said, ‘I saw you watching the show from…from the gallery. You almost stole it, you know—I mean the show. Who was the girl with you? Or was it a youth? I couldn’t be quite sure.’
Fafhrd did not answer her inquiries. Instead he said, ‘I also wish to ask you questions about your supremely skillful dancing and…and acting in loneliness.’
‘Miming.’ She supplied the word.
‘Miming, yes. And I want to talk to you about civilization.’
‘That’s right, this morning you asked me how many languages I knew,’ she said, looking straight across him at the wall of the tent. It was clear that she too was a thinker. She took the cup of brandy out of his hand, swallowed half of what was left, and returned it to him.
‘Very well,’ she said, at last looking down at him, but with unchanged expression. ‘I will give you your desire, my dear boy. But now is not the time. First, I must rest and gather strength. Go away and return when the star Shadah sets. Wake me if I slumber.’
‘That’s an hour before dawn,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘It will be a chilly wait for me in the snow.’
‘Don’t do that,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want you three-quarters frozen. Go where it’s warm. To stay awake, think of me. Don’t drink too much wine. Now go.’
He got up and made to embrace her. She drew back a step, saying, ‘Later. Later—everything.’ He started toward the door. She shook her head, saying, ‘You might be seen. As you came.’
Passing her again, his head brushed something hard. Between the hoops supporting the tent’s middle, the supple hide of the tent bulged down, while the hoops themselves were bowed out and somewhat flattened bearing the weight. He cringed down for an instant, ready to grab Vlana and jump any way, then began methodically to punch and sweep at the bulges, always striking outward. There was a crashing and a loud tinkling as the massed crystals, which outside had reminded him of a giant flatworm—must be a giant snow serpent by now!—broke up and showered off.
Meanwhile he said, ‘The Snow Women do not love you. Nor is Mor my mother your friend.’
‘Do they think to frighten me with ice crystals?’ Vlana demanded contemptuously. ‘Why, I know of Eastern fire sorceries compared to which their feeble magickings—’
‘But you are in their territory now, at the mercy of their element, which is crueler and subtler than fire,’ Fafhrd interposed, brushing away the last of the bulgings, so that the hoops stood up again and the leather stretched almost flat between them. ‘Do not underrate their powers.’
‘Thank you for saving my tent from being crumpled. But now—and swiftly—go.’
She spoke as if of trivial matters, but her large eyes were thoughtful.
Just before snaking under the back wall, Fafhrd looked over his shoulder. Vlana was gazing at the side wall again, holding the empty cup he had given her, but she caught his movement and, now smiling tenderly, put a kiss on her palm and blew it toward him.
Outside the cold had grown bitter. Nevertheless, Fafhrd went to his clump of evergreens, drew his cloak closely around him, dropped its hood over his forehead, tightened the hood’s drawstring, and sat himself facing Vlana’s tent.
When the cold began to penetrate his furs, he thought of Vlana.
Suddenly he was crouching and had loosened his knife in its sheath.
A figure was approaching Vlana’s tent, keeping to the shadows when it could. It appeared to be clad in black.
Fafhrd silently advanced.
Through the still air came the faint sound of fingernails scratching leather.
There was a flash of dim light as the doorway was opened.
It was bright enough to show the face of Vellix the Venturer. He stepped inside and there was the sound of lacings being drawn tight.
Fafhrd stopped ten paces from the tent and stood there for perhaps two dozen breaths. Then he softly walked past the tent, keeping the same distance.
There was a glow in the doorway of the high, conical tent of Essedinex. From the stables beyond, a horse whickered twice.
Fafhrd crouched and peered through the low, glowing doorway a knife-cast away. He moved from side to side. He saw a table crowded with jugs and cups set against the sloping wall of the tent opposite the doorway.
To one side of the table sat Essedinex. To the other, Hringorl.
On the watch for Hor, Harrax, or Hrey, Fafhrd circled the tent. He approached it where the table and the two men were faintly silhouetted. Drawing aside his hood and hair, he set his ear against the leather.
‘Three gold bars—that’s my top,’ Hringorl was saying surlily. The leather made his voice hollow.
‘Five,’ Essedinex answered, and there was the slup of wine mouthed and swallowed.
‘Look here, old man,’ Hringorl countered, his voice at its most gruffly menacing, ‘I don’t need you. I can snatch the girl and pay you nothing.’
‘Oh no, that won’t do, Master Hringorl.’ Essedinex sounded merry. ‘For then the Show would never return again to Cold Corner, and how would your tribesmen like that? Nor would there be any more girls brought you by me.’
‘What matter?’ the other answered carelessly. The words were muffled
by a gulp of wine, yet Fafhrd could hear the bluff in them. ‘I have my ship. I can cut your throat this instant and snatch the girl tonight.’
‘Then do so,’ Essedinex said brightly. ‘Only give me a moment for one more quaff.’
‘Very well, you old miser. Four gold bars.’
‘Five.’
Hringorl cursed sulfurously. ‘Some night, you ancient pimp, you will provoke me too far. Besides, the girl is old.’
‘Aye, in the ways of pleasure. Did I tell you that she once became an acolyte of the Wizards of Azorkah?—so that she might be trained by them to become a concubine of the King of Kings and their spy in the court at Horborixen. Aye, and eluded those dread necromancers most cleverly when she had gained the erotic knowledge she desired.’
Hringorl laughed with a forced lightness. ‘Why should I pay even one silver bar for a girl who has been possessed by dozens? Every man’s plaything.’
‘By hundreds,’ Essedinex corrected. ‘Skill is gained only by experience, as you know well. And the greater the experience, the greater the skill. Yet this girl is never a plaything. She is the instructress, the revelator; she plays with a man for his pleasure, she can make a man feel king of the universe and perchance—who knows?—even be that. What is impossible to a girl who knows the pleasure-ways of the gods themselves—aye, and of the arch-demons? And yet—you won’t believe this, but it’s true—she remains in her fashion forever virginal. For no man has ever mastered her.’
‘That will be seen to!’ Hringorl’s words were almost a laughing shout. There was the sound of wine gulped. Then his voice dropped. ‘Very well, five gold bars it is, you usurer. Delivery after tomorrow night’s Show. The gold paid against the girl.’
‘Three hours after the Show, when the girl’s drugged and all’s quiet. No need to rouse the jealousy of your fellow tribesmen so soon.’
‘Make it two hours. Agreed? And now let’s talk of next year. I’ll want a black girl, a full-blooded Kleshite. And no five-gold-bar deal ever again. I’ll not want a witchy wonder, only youth and great beauty.’