The First Book of Lankhmar

his breath to quiet and his awareness to expand. It was during this pause that he made a disconcerting discovery. For the first time in his life the forest, which had always been his retreat, his continent-spanning tent, his great private needle-roofed room, seemed hostile to him, as if the very trees and the cold-fleshed, warm-boweled mother-earth in which they were rooted knew of his apostasy, his spurning, jilting and intended divorce of his native land.
           It was not the unusual silence, nor the sinister and suspicious quality of the faint sounds he at last began to hear: scratch on bark of small claw, pitter of tiny paw-steps, hoot of a distant owl anticipating night. Those were effects, or at most concomitants. It was something unnamable, intangible, yet profound, like the frown of a god. Or goddess.
           He was greatly depressed. At the same time he had never known his heart feel as hard.
           When at last he set out again, it was as silently as might be, and not with his unusual relaxed and wide-open awareness, but rather the naked-nerved sensitivity and bent-bow readiness of a scout in enemy territory.
           And it was well for him that he did so, since otherwise he might not have dodged the nearly soundless fall of an icicle, sharp, heavy, and long as a siege-catapult's missile, nor the down-clubbing of a huge snow-weighted dead branch that broke with a single thunderous crack, nor the venomous dart of a snow-adder's head from its unaccustomed white coil in the open, nor the sidewise slash of the narrow, cruel claws of a snow-leopard that seemed almost to materialize a-spring in the frigid air and that vanished as strangely when Fafhrd slipped aside from its first attack and faced it with dirk drawn. Nor might he have spotted in time the up-whipping, slip-knotted snare, set against all custom in this home-area of the forest and big enough to strangle not a hare but a bear.
           He wondered where Mor was and what she might be muttering or chanting. Had his mistake been simply to dream of Nalgron? Despite yesterday's curse — and others before it — and last night's naked threats, he had never truly and wholly imagined his mother seeking to kill him. But now the hair on his neck was lifted in apprehension and horror, the watchful glare in his eyes was febrile and wild, while a little blood dripped unheeded from the cut in his cheek where the great icicle down-dropping had grazed it.
           So intent had he become on spying dangers that it was with a little surprise that he found himself standing in the glade where he and Mara had embraced only yesterday, his feet on the short trail leading to the home tents. He relaxed a little then, sheathing his dirk and pressing a handful of snow to his bleeding cheek — but he relaxed only a little, with the result that he was aware of one coming to meet him before he consciously heard footsteps.
           So silently and completely did he then melt into the snowy background that Mara was three paces away before she saw him.
           "They hurt you," she exclaimed.
           "No," he answered curtly, still intent on dangers in the forest.
           "But the red snow on your cheek. There was a fight?"
           "Only a nick got in the woods. I outran 'em."
           Her look of concern faded. "First time I saw you run from a quarrel."
           "I had no mind to take on three or more," he said flatly.
           "Why do you look behind? They're trailing you?"
           "No."
           Her expression hardened. "The elders are outraged. The younger men call you scareling. My brothers among them. I didn't know what to say."
           "Your brothers!" Fafhrd exclaimed. "Let the stinking Snow Clan call me what they will. I care not."
           Mara planted her fists on her hips. "You've grown very free with your insults of late. I'll not have my family berated, do you hear? Nor myself insulted, now that I think of it." She was breathing hard. "Last night you went back to that shriveled old whore of a dancer. You were in her tent for hours."
           "I was not!" Fafhrd denied, thinking An hour and a half at most. The bickering was warming his blood and quelling his supernatural dread.
           "You lie! The story's all around the camp. Any other girl would have set her brothers on you ere this."
           Fafhrd came back to his schemy self almost with a jerk.