The Second Book of Lankhmar

stepped forward, kicked off her purple boots and rolled up her blue trousers above her knees. She plucked her arrow, which bore a violet silk, from her quiver and threw that aside. "Now I'll reveal to you the secret of my girlish technique," she said to Fafhrd.
           Quite rapidly she sat down facing the dizzy slope, set the bow to her bare feet, laying the arrow between her big toes and holding it and the string with both hands, rolled back onto her shoulders, straightened her legs smoothly, and loosed her shot.
           It was seen to strike the slope near Fafhrd's yellow, skid a few yards higher, and then lie there, a violet taunt.
           Afreyt, bending her legs again, removed the bow from her feet, and rolling sharply forward, stood up in the same motion.
           "You practiced that," Fafhrd said, hardly accusingly, as he finished screwing the hook back in the stall on his left arm.
           She nodded. "Yes, but only for half a lifetime."
           "The lady Afreyt's arrow didn't stick in," Skullick pointed out. "Is that fair? A breath of wind might dislodge it."
           "Yes, but there is no wind and it somehow got highest," Groniger pointed out to him. "Actually, it's accounted lucky in the high shot if your arrow doesn't embed itself. Those that don't sometimes are blown down. Those that do stay up there are never recovered."
           "Doesn't someone go up and collect the arrows?" Skullick asked.
           "Scale Elvenhold? Have you wings?"
           Skullick eyed the rock tower and shook his head sheepishly. Fafhrd overheard Groniger's remarks and gave the harbormaster an odd look but made no other comment at the time.
           Afreyt invited both of them over to the red dogcarts and produced a jug of Ilthmar brandy, and they toasted her and Fafhrd's victories — the Mouser's too, and Cif's, who happened along.
           "This'll put feathers in your wings!" Fafhrd told Groniger, who eyed him thoughtfully.
           The children were playing with the white bearhounds. Gale had won the girls' archery contest and May the short race.
           Some of the younger children were becoming fretful, however, and shadows were lengthening. The games and contests were all over now, and partly as a consequence of that the drinking was heavying up as the last scraps of food were being eaten. Among the whole picnic group there seemed to be a feeling of weariness, but also (for those no longer very young but not yet old) new jollity, as though one party were ending and another beginning. Cif's and Afreyt's eyes were especially bright. Everyone seemed ready to go home, though whether to their own places or the Sea Wrack was a matter of age and temperament. There was a chill breath in the air.
           Gazing east and down a little toward Salthaven and the harbor beyond, the Mouser opined that he could already see low mist gathering around the bare masts there, and Groniger confirmed that. But what was the small lone dark figure trudging up-meadow toward them in the face of the last low sunlight?
           "Ourph, I'll be bound," said Fafhrd. "What's led him to make the hike after all?"
           But it was hard to be sure the big Northerner was right; the figure was still far off. Yet the signal for leaving had been given, things were gathered, the carts repacked, and all set out, most staying near the carts, from which drinks continued to be forthcoming. And perhaps these were responsible for a resumption of the morning's impromptu singing and dancing, though now it was not Fafhrd and the Mouser but others who took the lead in this. The Twain, after a whole day of behaving like old times, were slipping back under the curses they knew not of, the one's eyes forever on the ground, with the effect of old age unsure of its footing, the other's on the sky, indicative of old age's absentmindedness.
           Fafhrd turned out to be right about the up-meadow trudger, but it was few words they got from Ourph as to why he'd made the hike he'd earlier begged off from.
           The old Mingol said only to them, and to Groniger, who happed to be by, "The Good News is in." Then, eyeing the Twain more particularly, "Tonight stay away from the Sea Wrack."
           But he would answer nothing more to their puzzled queries save "I know what I know and I've told it," and two cups of brandy did not loosen his Mingol tongue one