Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber ...

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Throwing back their hoods and opening their tunics wide to the hot sun,
Fafhrd and the Mouser looked around, while Hrissa luxuriously stretched and
worked her slim limbs and neck and body, the white fur of which hid her bruises.
Both men were somewhat exalted by the thin air and filled brain-high with the
ease of mind and spirit that comes with a great danger skillfully conquered.
Rather to their amazement, the southward swinging sun had climbed barely
halfway to noon. Perils which had seemed demihours long had lasted minutes
only.
The summit of Obelisk Polaris was a great rolling field of pale rock too big to
measure by Lankhmar acres. They had arrived near the southwest corner, and the
gray-tinted stone meadow seemed to stretch east and north almost indefinitely.
Here and there were hummocks and hollows, but they swelled and dipped most
gently. There were a few scattered large boulders, not many, while off to the east
were darker indistinct shapes which might be bushes and small trees footed in
cracks filled with blown dirt.
"What lies east of the mountain chain?" the Mouser asked. "More Cold
Waste?"
"Our clan never journeyed there," Fafhrd answered. He frowned. "Some
taboo on the whole area, I think. Mist always masked the east on my father's
great climbs, or so he told us."
"We could have a look now," the Mouser suggested.
Fafhrd shook his head. "Our course lies there," he said, pointing northeast,
where Stardock rose like a giantess standing tall but asleep, or feigning sleep,
looking seven times as big and high at least as she had before the Obelisk hid her
top two days ago.
The Mouser said, a shade dolefully, "All our brave work scaling the Obelisk
has only made Stardock higher. Are you sure there's not another peak, perhaps
invisible, on top of her?"
Fafhrd nodded without taking his eyes off her, who was empress without
consort of the Mountains of the Giants. Her Tresses had grown to great swelling
rivers of snow, and now the two adventurers could see faint stirrings in them -avalanches
slipping and tumbling.
The Southern Tress came down in a great dipping double curve toward the
northwest corner of the mighty rock summit on which they stood.
At the top, Stardock's corniced snow hat, its upper rim glittering with
sunlight as if it were edged around with diamonds, seemed to nod toward them a
trifle more than it ever had before, and the demurely-eyed Face with it, like a
great lady hinting at possible favors.
But the gauzy, long pale veils of the Grand and Petty Pennons no longer
streamed from her Hat. The air atop Stardock must be as still at the moment as it
was where they stood upon the Obelisk.
"What devil's luck that Kranarch and Gnarfi should tackle the north wall the
one day in eight the gale fails!" Fafhrd cursed. "But 'twill be their destruction yet -
- yes, and of their two shaggy-clad henchmen too. This calm can't hold."
"I recall now," the Mouser remarked, "that when we caroused with 'em in
Illik-Ving, Gnarfi, drunken, claimed he could whistle up winds -- had learned the
trick from his grandmother -- and could whistle 'em down too, which is more to
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