Free Exceptions to Reality by Alan Dean Foster Page A

on the bridge, which was always kept warm in defiance of the sometimes brutal cold outside. Taking his eyes off the doorway for just an instant, he glanced upward in the direction of the breeze.
    The needle-pointed icicle that fell from the ceiling—it had been flash-frozen by Sigrdrifa, alias “Victory Blizzard”—went right through his left eye.
    Staggering and screaming, he stumbled away from old man Larson, who perceptively fell to the deck as several shots from the agonized smuggler’s pistol rang out wildly. They hit nothing but a framed antique chart on the wall and a surprisingly sturdy metal purse that Hrist thrust forward to shield the younger Larson. Striding over to the wildly sobbing figure that was now rolling about uncontrollably on the deck, Sigrdrifa dispatched the half-blinded Cruz with a single swift, quick slice of the sharply curved blade she took from her elegant attaché case. The drug-runner’s legs kicked out violently several times before quivering to a halt.
    “So perish all enemies of good fisherfolk.” Turning, she ululated a victory cry that was taken up and amplified by her sisters. The
Mary Anne
shuddered with the force of it, and members of the crew who were used to hauling in longlines in howling Atlantic gales found themselves covering their ears.
    Reassembling on the bridge, with the wide-eyed crew once more crowding as close as they could to the gore-soaked scene of battle, the quintet of bloodied blondes (and one redhead) confronted Red Larson and his son.
    “We have to go now,” the indifferently blood-soaked Róta informed them.
    “Yes.” Hrist checked her Patek Philippe chronometer. “I have a meeting in Zurich tomorrow at nine, and with the time difference I will get little enough sleep as it is.”
    Sigrdrifa nudged Cruz’s body with a high-heeled shoe. “Sorry about the mess. It was not exactly Ragnarok, but it is good to still be able to do battle on behalf of a noble cause now and then.” Raising her stained short sword, she sensuously licked blood from the flat of the blade. “Keeps a girl in shape.”
    Red Larson swallowed hard. “I hardly know what to say, how to thank you…”
    Herfjötur smiled. Stepping over Truque’s body, she put a reassuring hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Thank your son, who, in a moment of desperate need, had the foresight to call upon those of us who have watched over your tribe for millennia.” Leaning forward, she gave him an encouraging peck on the cheek. The old man did not blush, but he was glad his wife was not present.
    As for David Larson, he was the dazed recipient of kisses from every one of the women. It was enough to make a weaker man succumb, but David had been toughened by years of hard work on the
Mary Anne
. Still, when she bent him back to buss him most soundly, Skeggjöld nearly sprained his spine. Her ax earrings fell forward, tickling his cheeks as he felt the salt of her tongue slide into his mouth. The salt, he knew, came from the blood she had licked off her sword. This realization somewhat mitigated his otherwise complete enjoyment of the moment.
    Too awestruck to talk among themselves, the crew gathered on the stern’s deck to watch as, one by one, the women mounted their snow-white steeds. With a kick and a leap, they soared away from the
Mary Anne,
calling out boldly to one another as they rose into the night sky. Most prominent among them was the beauteous Herfjötur, who was still upset that in the heat of battle she had broken the heel of one of her handmade Spanish pumps.
    “We’ll have to get the bridge cleaned up before we make port,” a soft-voiced Panopolous whispered to his captain. “The stains don’t look like fish blood.”
    “At least we have the supplies to do that.” Red Larson looked and felt better than he had in a decade. The curse that was Cruz and his business had been lifted. The mysterious disappearance at sea of the smuggler and his henchmen should be enough to keep any