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spotted a section just ahead of them where the slope leveled off briefly
before sweeping down again. Along this level ribbon, Fafhrd asserted, they
could walk with ease -- and then the Northerner set out without waiting for a
reply.
With a fatalistic shrug the Mouser followed, walking at first as if on eggs
and with many an uneasy glance at the great downward slope. He wished he had
bronze-cleated boots -- even ones worn flat like Fafhrd's -- or some sort of
spurs to fix to his own slippery shoes, so that he'd have a better chance of
stopping himself if he did start to slide. After a while he grew more
confident and took longer and swifter, if still most gingerly steps, and the
gap Fafhrd had put between them was closed.
They had walked for perhaps three bowshots across the plain, and still had no
sight of an end to it, when a flicker of movement in the corner of his right
eye made the Mouser look around.
Swiftly and silently sliding down toward them from some hiding place in the
ragged crest, came the remaining black priests, three abreast. They kept their
footing like expert skiers -- and indeed they seemed to be wearing skis of
some sort. Two of them carried spears improvised by thrusting dagger grips
into the muzzles of their long blowguns, while the midmost had as lance a
narrow, needle-sharp icicle or ice-shard at least eight feet long.
No time now for slings and arrows, and of what use to sword-skewer one who has
already spear-skewered you? Besides, an icy slope is no place for dainty
near-stationary maneuvering. Without a word to Fafhrd, so certain he was that
the Northerner would do the same, the Mouser took off down the dreaded
leftward slope.
It was as if he had cast himself into the arms of a demon of speed. Ice
whirred softly under his boots; quiet air became cold wind whipping his
garments and chilling his cheeks.
But not enough speed. The skiing black priests had a headstart. The
Mouser hoped the level stretch would wreck them, but they merely sailed out
from it with squat majesty and came down without losing footing -- and hardly
two spears' lengths behind. Daggers and ice lance gleamed wickedly.
The Mouser drew Scalpel and after trying fruitlessly to pole himself along to
greater velocity with it, squatted down so as to offer the least resistance to
the air. Still the black priests gained. Fafhrd beside him dug
in his dragon-pommeled longsword so that ice-dust spouted up fountain-wise,
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and shot off in a great swing sideward. The priest bearing the ice-lance
swerved after him.
Meanwhile the two other priests caught up with the Mouser. He arched his
hurtling body away from the spear-thrust of the first and knocked that of the
second aside with Scalpel, and for the next few moments there was fought the
strangest sort of duel -- almost as if they weren't moving at all, since they
were all moving at the same speed. At one point the Mouser was sliding down
backward, parrying the nasty blowgun-spears with his shorter weapon.
But two against one always helps, and this time might have proved fatal, if
Fafhrd had not just then caromed back from his great sideward swing full of
speed from some slope he alone had seen, and whirled his sword. He passed just
behind the two priests and then their heads were skidding along separately
from their bodies, though all at the same speed.
Yet it would have been all up with Fafhrd, for the last black priest, perhaps
helped by the weight of his ice-lance, came hurtling after Fafhrd at even
greater speed and would have skewered him except the Mouser deflected the
ice-lance upward, with Scalpel held in two hands, and the icy point merely
ruffled Fafhrd's streaming red hair.
The next moment they all plunged into the white-icy mist. The last glimpse the
Mouser had of Fafhrd was of his speeding head alone, cutting a wake in the
neck-high mist. Then the Mouser's eyes were beneath the mist's surface.
It was most strange to the Mouser to skim swiftly through milky stuff,
ice-crystals stinging his cheeks, not knowing each instant if an unknown
barrier might wreck him. He heard a grunt that sounded like Fafhrd's, and on
top of that a tingling crash, which might have been the ice-spear shattering,
followed by a sighing, tortured moan. Next came the feeling of reaching
bottom, followed by an upward swoop, and then the Mouser broke out of the mist
into the purple-yellow day and skidded into a soft snowbank and began to laugh
wildly with relief. It was some moments before he noticed that Fafhrd, also
shaking with laughter, was likewise half buried in the snow beside him.
When Fafhrd looked at the Mouser, the latter shrugged inquiringly at the mist
behind them. The Northerner nodded confirmingly.
"The last priest dead. None to go!" the Mouser proclaimed happily, stretching
in the snow as if it were a featherbed. His chief idea was to find the nearest
cave -- he was sure there would be one -- and enjoy a great rest.
But Fafhrd turned out to be full of other ideas and a seething energy.
Nothing would do but they must press on swiftly until dusk, and he presented
to the Mouser such alluring pictures of getting out of the Cold Waste by
tomorrow, or even nightfall, that the small man soon found himself trotting
along after the big one, though he couldn't help wondering from time to time
how Fafhrd could be so supremely sure of his direction in this chaos of ice,
snow, and churning, unpleasantly tinted clouds. The whole Cold Waste couldn't
have been his playground, surely, the Mouser told himself, with an inward
shudder at child Fafhrd's notion of proper places to play.
Twilight overtook them before they reached the forests Fafhrd had promised,
and at the Mouser's urgent insistence they began to hunt for a place to pass
the night. This time a cave wasn't so easily come by. It was quite dark before
Fafhrd spotted a rocky notch with a clump of stunted trees growing in front of
it that promised at least fuel and passable shelter.
However, it appeared that the wood would hardly be needed, for just short of
the tree-clump was a black rock outcropping resembling the one that had given
them coal last night.
But just as Fafhrd joyfully lifted his axe, the outcropping came to life and
lunged at his belly with a dagger.
Only Fafhrd's exuberant and undiminished energy saved his life. He
arched his belly aside with a supple swiftness that amazed even the Mouser,
and drove the axe deep into his attacker's head. The squat black body thrashed
its limbs convulsively and swiftly grew stiff. Fafhrd's deep laughter rumbled
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like thunder. "Shall we call him the none black priest, Mouser?" he inquired.
But the Mouser saw no cause for amusement. All his uneasiness returned.
If they had missed their count on one of the black priests -- say the one who
had spun down in the snowball or the one supposedly slain in the mist -- why
mightn't they have missed their count on another? Besides, how could they have
been so convinced, simply from an ancient inscription, that there had been
only seven black priests? And once you admitted there might have been eight,
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