“You cannot escape me!” he roared. “Lead me into a trap and I'll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet! Hide from me and I'll tear the mountains apart to find you! I'll follow you to Hell itself!”
Foam flew from the barbarian's lips as her maddening laughter floated back to him. Farther and farther into the wastes she led him. As the hours passed and the sun slid down its long slant to the horizon, the land changed; the wide plains gave way to low hills, marching upward in broken ranges. Far to the north he caught a glimpse of towering mountains, their eternal snows blue with distance and pink in the rays of the blood-red setting sun. In the darkling skies above them shone the flaring rays of the aurora. They spread fanwise into the sky - frosty blades of cold, flaming light, changing in color, growing and brightening.
Above him the skies glowed and crackled with strange lights and gleams. The snow shone weirdly: now frosty hlue, now icy crimson, now cold silver. Through a shimmering, icy realm of enchantment Conan plunged doggedly onward, in a crystalline maze where the only reality was the white body dancing across the glittering snow beyond his reach - ever beyond his reach.
He did not wonder at the strangeness of it all ... not even when two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way. The scales of their mail were white with hoarfrost; their helmets and axes were covered with ice. Snow sprinkled their locks, in their beards were spikes of icicles, and their eyes were as cold as the lights that streamed above them.
“Brothers!” cried the girl, dancing between them. “Look who follows! I have brought you a man to slay! Take his heart, that we may lay it smoking on our father's board!”
The giants answered with roars like the grinding of icebergs on a frozen shore. They heaved up their axes, shining in the starlight, as the maddened Cimmerian hurled himself upon them. A frosty blade flashed before his eyes, blinding him with its brightness, and he gave back a terrible stroke that sheared through his foe's leg at the knee.
With a groan, the victim fell, and at the same instant Conan was dashed into the snow, his left shoulder numb from a glancing blow of the survivor's ax, from which the Cimmerian's mail had barely saved his life. Conan saw the remaining giant looming high above him like a colossus carved of ice, etched against the coldly glowing sky. The ax fell ... to sink through the snow and deep into the frozen earth as Conan buried himself aside and leaped to his feet. The giant roared and wrenched his ax free; but, even as he did, Conan's sword sang down. The giant's knees bent, and he sank slowly into the snow, which turned crimson with the blood that gushed from his half-severed neck.
Conan wheeled to see the girl standing a short distance away, staring at him in wide-eyed horror, all the mockery gone from her face. He cried out fiercely, and drops of blood flew from his sword as his hand shook in the intensity of his passion.
“Call the rest of your brothers!” he cried. “I'll give their hearts to me wolves! You cannot escape me ...”
With a cry of fright, she turned and ran fleetly. She did not laugh now, nor mock him over her white shoulder. She ran as for her life. Although he strained every nerve and thew, until his temples were like to burst and the snow swam red to his gaze, she drew away from him, dwindling in the witch-fire of the skies until she was a figure no bigger than a child, then a dancing white flame on the snow, then a dim blur in the distance. But, grinding his teeth until the blood started from his gums, Conan reeled on, until he saw the blur grow to a dancing white flame, and the flame to a figure as big as a child; and then she was running less than a hundred paces ahead of him. Slowly, foot by foot, the space narrowed.
She was running with effort now, her golden locks blowing free; he heard the quick panting of her breath and saw the flash of fear in the look she cast over her white shoulder. The grim endurance of the barbarian served him well. The speed ebbed from her flashing white legs; she reeled in her gait. In Conan's untamed soul leaped up the fires of Hell she had so well fanned. With an inhuman roar, he closed in on her, just as she wheeled with a haunting cry and flung out her arms to fend him off.
His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her lithe body bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. Her golden hair blew about his face, blinding him with its sheen; the feel of her slender body, twisting in his mailed arms, drove him to blinder madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth fiesh ... flesh as cold as ice. It was as if he embraced, not a woman of human flesh and blood, but a woman of numbing ice. She writhed her golden head aside, striving to avoid the fierce kisses that braised her red lips.
“You are as cold as the snows,” he mumbled dazedly. “I'll warm you with the fire of my own blood ...”
With a scream and a desperate wrench, she slipped from his arms, leaving her single gossamer garment in his grasp. She sprang back and faced him, her golden locks in wild disarray, her white bosom heaving, her beautiful eyes blazing with terror. For an instant he stood frozen, awed by her terrible beauty as she stood naked against the snows.
And in that instant she flung her arms toward the lights that glowed in the skies and cried out, in a voice that would ring in Conan's ears forever after: “Ymir! О my father, save me!”
Conan was leaping forward, arms spread to seize her, when with a crack like the breaking of a mountain of ice the whole sky leaped into icy fire. The girl's ivory body was suddenly enveloped in a cold, blue flame so blinding that the Cimmerian threw up his hands to shield his eyes from the intolerable blaze. For a fleeting instant, skies and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson fires.
Then Conan staggered and cried out. The girl was gone, The glowing snow lay empty and bare; high above his head the witch-lights played in a frosty sky gone mad. Among the distant blue mountains there sounded a rolling thunder as of a gigantic war chariot, rushing behind steeds whose frantic hoofs struck lightning from the snows and echoes from the skies.
Then the aurora, the snow-clad hills, and the blazing heavens reeled drunkenly to Conan's sight. Thousands of fireballs burst with showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel, which rained stars as it spun. Under his feet the snowy hills heaved up like a wave, and the Cimmerian crumpled into the snows to lie motionless.
In a cold dark universe, whose sun was extinguished eons ago, Conan felt the movement of life, alien and un-guessed. An earthquake had him in its grip and was shaking him to and fro, at the same time chafing his hands and feet until he yelled in pain and fury and groped for his sword.
“He's coming to, Horsa,” said a voice. “Hasten ... we must rub the frost out of his limbs, if he's ever to wield a sword again.”
“He won't open his left hand,” growled another. “He's clutching something—”
Conan opened his eyes and stared into the bearded faces that bent over him. He was surrounded by tall, golden-haired warriors in mafl and furs. “Conan!” said one. “You live!”
“By Crom, Niord,” gasped the Cimmerian. “Am I alive, or are we all dead and in Valhalla ?”
“We live,” grunted the Aesir. busy over Conan's half-frozen feet. “We had to fight our way through an ambush, or we had come up with you before the battle was joined. The corpses were scarce cold when we came upon the field. We did not find you among the dead, so we followed your spoor. In Ymir's name, Conan, why did you wander off into the wastes of the North? We have followed your tracks in the snow for hours. Had a blizzard come up and hidden them, we had never found you, by Ymir!”
“Swear not so often by Ymir,” muttered a warrior uneasily, glancing at the distant mountains. “This is his land, and legends say the god bides among yonder peaks.”