“Hold,” he said as Vellix prepared to pour. “A silver cup played a nasty role in my dream. Zax!” he called to the Mingol looking out the tent door. “A porcelain mug, if you please!”
“You take the dream as a warning against drinking from silver?” Vellix inquired softly with an ambiguous smile.
“No,” Fafhrd answered, “but it instilled an antipathy into my flesh, which still crawls.” He wondered a little that the Mingols had so casually let in Vellix to sit beside him. Perhaps the three were old acquaintances from the trading camps. Or perhaps there'd been bribery.
Vellix chuckled and became freer of manner. “Also, I've fallen into filthy ways, living without a woman or servant. Effendrit! Make that two porcelain mugs, clean as newly-debarked birch!”
It was indeed the other Mingol who had been standing by the door — Vellix knew them better than Fafhrd did. The Venturer immediately handed over one of the gleaming white mugs. He poured a little of the nose-tickling drink into his own porcelain mug, then a generous gush for Fafhrd, then more for himself — as if to demonstrate that Fafhrd's drink could not possibly be poisoned or drugged. And Fafhrd, who had been watching closely, could find no fault in the demonstration. They lightly clinked mugs and when Vellix drank deeply, Fafhrd took a large though carefully slow sip. The stuff burned gently.
“It's my last jug,” Vellix said cheerfully. “I've traded my whole stock for amber, snow-gems, and other smalls — aye, and my tent and cart too, everything but my two horses and our gear and winter rations.”
“I've heard your horses are the swiftest and hardiest on the Steppes,” Fafhrd remarked.
“That's too large a claim. Here they rank well, no doubt.”
“Here!” Fafhrd said contemptuously.
Vellix eyed him as Nalgron had in all but the last part of the dream. Then he said, “Fafhrd — I may call you that? Call me Vellix. May I make a suggestion? May I give you advice such as I might give a son of mine?”
“Surely,” Fafhrd answered, feeling not only uncomfortable now but wary.
“You're clearly restless and dissatisfied here. So is any sound young man, anywhere, at your age. The wide world calls you. You've an itching foot. Yet let me say this: it takes more than wit and prudence — aye, and wisdom, too — to cope with civilization and find any comfort. That requires low cunning, a smirching of yourself as civilization is smirched. You cannot climb to success there as you climb a mountain, no matter how icy and treacherous. The latter demands all your best. The former, much of your worst: a calculated self-evil you have yet to experience, and need not. I was born a renegade. My father was a man of the Eight Cities who rode with the Mingols. I wish now I had stuck to the Steppes myself, cruel as they are, nor harkened to the corrupting call of Lankhmar and the Eastern Lands.
“I know, I know, the folk here are narrow-visioned, custom-bound. But matched with the twisted minds of civilization, they're straight as pines. With your natural gifts you'll easily be a chief here — more, in sooth, a chief paramount, weld a dozen clans together, make the Northerners a power for nations to reckon with. Then, if you wish, you can challenge civilization. On your terms, not hers.”
Fafhrd's thoughts and feelings were like choppy water, though he had outwardly become almost preternaturally calm. There was even a current of glee in him, that Vellix rated a youth's chances with Vlana so high that he would ply him with flattery as well as brandy.
But across all other currents, making the chop sharp and high, was the impression, hard to shake, that the Venturer was not altogether dissimulating, that he did feel like a father toward Fafhrd, that he was truly seeking to save him hurt, that what he said of civilization had an honest core. Of course that might be because Vellix felt so sure of Vlana that he could afford to be kind to a rival. Nevertheless…
Nevertheless, Fafhrd now once again felt more uncomfortable than anything else.
He drained his mug. “Your advice is worth thought, sir — Vellix, I mean. I'll ponder it.”
Refusing another drink with a headshake and smile, he stood up and straightened his clothes.
“I had hoped for a longer chat,” Vellix said, not rising.
“I've business to attend,” Fafhrd answered. “My hearty thanks.”
Vellix smiled thoughtfully as he departed.
The concourse of trodden snow winding amongst the traders’ tents was racketty with noise and crowdedly a-bustle. While Fafhrd slept, the men of the Ice Tribe and fully half of the Frost Companions had come in and now many of these were gathered around two sunfires — so called for their bigness, heat, and the height of their leaping flames — quaffing steaming mead and laughing and scuffling together. To either side were oases of buying and bargaining, encroached on by the merrymakers or given careful berth according to the rank of those involved in the business doings. Old comrades spotted one another and shouted and sometimes drove through the press to embrace. Food and drink were spilled, challenges made and accepted, or more often laughed down. Skalds sang and roared.
The tumult irked Fafhrd, who wanted quiet in which to disentangle Vellix from Nalgron in his feelings, and banish his vague doubts of Vlana, and unsmirch civilization. He walked as a troubled dreamer, frowning yet unmindful of elbowings and other shoves.
Then all at once he was tinglingly alert, for he glimpsed angling toward him through the crowd Hor and Harrax, and he read the purpose in their eyes. Letting an eddy in the crush spin him around, he noted Hrey, one other of Hringorl's creatures, close behind him.
The purpose of the three was clear. Under guise of comradely scuffling, they would give him a vicious beating or worse.
In his moody concern with Vellix, he had forgotten his more certain enemy and rival, the brutally direct yet cunning Hringorl.
Then the three were upon him. In a frozen instant he noted that Hor bore a small bludgeon and that Harrax’ fists were overly large, as if they gripped stone or metal to heavy their blows.
He lunged backward, as if he meant to dodge between that couple and Hrey; then as suddenly reversed course and with a shocking bellow raced toward the sunfire ahead. Heads turned at his yell and a startled few dodged from his way. But the Ice Tribesmen and Frost Companions had time to take in what was happening: a tall youth pursued by three huskies. This promised sport. They sprang to either side of the sunfire to block his passage past it. Fafhrd veered first to left, then to right. Jeering, they bunched more closely.
Holding his breath and throwing up an arm to guard his eyes, Fafhrd leaped straight through the flames. They lifted his fur cloak from his back and blew it high. He felt the stab of heat on hand and neck.
He came out with his furs a-smolder, blue flames running up his hair. There was more crowd ahead except for a swept, carpeted, and canopied space between two tents, where chiefs and priests sat intently around a low table where a merchant weighed gold dust in a pair of scales.
He heard bump and yell behind, someone cried, “Run, coward,” another, “A fight, a fight"; he saw Mara's face ahead, red and excited.
Then the future chief paramount of Northland — for so he happened at that instant to think of himself — half sprang, half dived a-flame across the canopied table, unavoidably tumbling the merchant and two chiefs, banging aside the scales, and knocking the gold dust to the winds before he landed with a steaming zizzle in the great, soft snowbank beyond.
He swiftly rolled over twice to make sure all his fires were quenched, then scrambled to his feet and ran like a deer into the woods, followed by gusts of curses and gales of laughter.