Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...
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They made a fire of resin-pellets in the tiny claw-footed brazier Fafhrd<br />
packed, and they heated over it water for herb tea in their single narrow high pot.<br />
The water was a long time getting even lukewarm. With Cat's Claw the Mouser<br />
stirred two dollops of honey into it.<br />
The ledge was as long as three men stretched out and as deep as one. On the<br />
sheer face of Obelisk Polaris that much space seemed an acre, at least.<br />
Hrissa stretched slackly behind the tiny fire. Fafhrd and the Mouser huddled<br />
to either side of it, their cloaks drawn around them, too tired to look around, talk,<br />
or even think.<br />
The snowfall grew a little thicker, enough to hide the Cold Waste far below.<br />
After his second swallow of sweetened tea, Fafhrd asserted they'd come at<br />
least two-thirds of the way up the Obelisk.<br />
The Mouser couldn't understand how Fafhrd could pretend to know that, any<br />
more than a man could tell <strong>by</strong> looking at the shoreless waters of the Outer Sea<br />
how far he'd sailed across it. To the Mouser they were simply in the exact center<br />
of a dizzily tip-tilted plain of pale granite, green-tinged and now snow-sprinkled.<br />
He was still too weary to outline this concept to Fafhrd, but he managed to make<br />
himself say, "As a child you would climb up and down the Obelisk before<br />
breakfast?"<br />
"We had rather late breakfasts then," Fafhrd explained gruffly.<br />
"Doubtless on the afternoon of the fifth day," the Mouser concluded.<br />
After the tea was drunk, they heated more water and left the hacked and<br />
disjointed bits of one of the snow hares in the fluid until they turned gray, then<br />
slowly chewed them and drank the dull soup. At about the same time Hrissa<br />
became a little interested in the flayed carcass of the other hare set before her<br />
nose -- <strong>by</strong> the brazier to keep it from freezing.<br />
Enough interested to begin to haggle it with her fangs and slowly chew and<br />
swallow.<br />
The Mouser very gently examined the pads of the ice-cat's paws. They were<br />
worn silk-thin, there were two or three cuts in them, and the white fur between<br />
them was stained deep pink. Using a feather touch, the Mouser rubbed salve into<br />
them, shaking his head the while. Then he nodded once and took from his pouch<br />
a large needle, a spool of thin thong, and a small rolled hide of thin, tough<br />
leather.<br />
From the last he cut with Cat's Claw a shape rather like a very fat pear and<br />
stitched from it a boot for Hrissa.<br />
When he tried it on the ice-cat's hind paw, she let it be for a little, then began<br />
to bite at it rather gently, looking up queerly at the Mouser. He thought, then very<br />
carefully bored holes in it for the ice-cat's non-retracting claws, then drew the<br />
boot up the leg snugly until the claws protruded fully and tied it there with the<br />
drawstring he'd run through slits at the top.<br />
Hrissa no longer bothered the boot. The Mouser made others, and Fafhrd<br />
joined in and cut and stitched one too.<br />
When Hrissa was fully shod in her four clawed paw-mittens, she smelled<br />
each, then stood up and paced back and forth the length of the ledge a few times,<br />
and finally settled herself <strong>by</strong> the still-warm brazier and the Mouser, chin on his<br />
ankle.<br />
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