The Incompleat Nifft Read Online Free Page B

"—greedy four-legged scavenging through a desolation."
    Well normally I can turn a sharp retort to such elegiac horse-flop, and so too, surely, could Haldar himself at another time. But just then I hadn't the spit for it. I felt such a freezing, putrid sadness! And all at once I understood that it was—still—the place we were camped. For the feeling was seeping into me. These boulders and this gravel were giving it off the way ice gives off cold. There was something here, and its presence was getting stronger moment by moment.
    Haldar, it was clear, was reacting to it without realizing its source. He sat jabbing a stick into the fire, as if trying to stab it to death. I tried to speak but my throat caught, and it seemed for a moment I couldn't find even the simplest words. My friend threw down his stick, rubbed his forehead, and then jumped up and shook his fist at the sky.
    "By the Crack," he shouted, "I'd give my life to work just one great feat more—one greater than any I've yet accomplished. My life! I swear it by the Wizard's Key!"
    Well his words shocked me. Even though my dread of this place hung heavier and heavier from my heart, like a poison fruit that would fall and break and cause something foul and dark to be born—I still had the wit to be both alarmed and startled. I was alarmed because Haldar wasn't a man to bandy oaths, and if he spoke one he was dead serious about it. And I was startled by the oddity of the oath itself. Have you ever heard anyone but some Kairnish outlander swear by the Wizard's Key? It certainly wasn't Haldar's custom. We stared at each other and he looked as surprised as I was. And then I got a feeling.
    "There's something here," I said. "Do you feel it? Not far. Under us maybe . . . but approaching."
    Halder looked around, nodding grimly, scowling at the shadows. "Mark me!" he cried aloud, "who- or whatever you are that stand near us now. You have put a thought in my mind, and a word in my mouth. But I defy you! I claim my oath as my own. I stand by it as mine. So stand forth now, if you mean to offer what I ask!"
    That was the man all over, Barnar. No one spoke straighter to the point. Let nameless things skulk, if he heard them in the woodwork he'd call them out to state their business.
    We waited in silence. The ugly weight still dragged on my heart. I was so absorbed I didn't realize my hand was on my swordhilt until I had the blade half out of the sheath. I remember hearing, as I listened, a sound of toenails on stone, and thinking to myself, No, that's only a wolf.  
    So in a way I wasn't surprised when Haldar's mount screamed and we turned to see its legs buckling as two huge wolves dragged it down by the throat. Two more swarmed onto it while my mount rose and stove in the skull of a fifth with its forehoof. I was already launched toward it when I saw the wolf above and behind us on the rock overhanging our fire. I shouted to Haldar and as I completed my spring, I had a last sight of the wolf leaping down on him: a giant silver dog that hung above him on the firelit air.
    Then there was only the work at hand. After that cold, festering dread, the bloody uproar was like fresh air. I brought down a two-handed stroke on one of the beasts, and no more than half clove its neck, though I had my broad-blade then, and a full swing. That's how big those brutes were. Its spine held my blade almost too long as a new wolf plunged in from the dark, but I got my point up to its throat and its own leap killed it, though both my shoulders were nearly unsocketed. I slashed my mount's hobble and it stood its ground unhindered. Halder's already had four beasts sunk to their shoulders in its opened belly, while it still screamed. My friend shouted.
    That leaping wolf had taken his blade in its open jaws, but the thing was so big that its heart wasn't cleft till its jaws had reached the hilt, and Haldar had had to drop the sword or lose his hand. The animal lay twitching now, the sword-pommel