“That's not around a corner,” Gale protested. “Anybody can do that. I meant sideways."

“You didn't say so,” he told her. “Corners can be up or down or sideways right or left. What's the difference?"

“Up-corners you can drop things around."

“Yes, indeed you can!” he agreed and in a sudden frenzy of exercise that left him breathing hard sent the rest of the arrows winging successively after the first. All of them seemed to land close behind the standing stone — all except the last, which they heard clash faintly against rock — but when they'd walked up to where they could see, they found that all but the last arrow had missed. The feathered shafts stood upright, their points plunged into the soft earth, in an oddly regular little row that didn't quite reach the target-bag — all but the last, which had gone through an edge of the bag at an angle and hung there, tangled by its three goosefeather vanes.

“See, you missed,” Gale said, “all but the one that glanced off the rock."

“Yes. Well, that's enough shooting for me,” he decided, and while she pulled up the arrows and carefully teased loose the last, he loosened the bow's tang from its wood socket, using the back of his knife blade as a pry, then unstrung the bow and hung it across his back by its loose string around his chest, then fitted a wrought-iron hook into the wrist-socket, wedging it tight by driving the head of the hook against the stone. He winced as he did that last, for his stump was still tender and the dozen last shots he'd made had tried it.

3

As they walked toward the low, mostly red-roofed homes of Salthaven, the setting sun on their backs, Fafhrd studied the gray standing stones and asked Gale, “What do you know about the old gods Rime Isle had? — before the Rime men got atheism."