I clutched my skull and decided even death would not help. Pain of this magnitude would no doubt follow me all the way to the Underworld. "How-long?" I croaked. My breath was a white cloud in the rapidly cooling air. I shivered and sat up.

Gerta squinted up at the sky. "It's almost dark." She had a black eye and a knot on the side of her head the size of a roc's egg.

Hours, then. "Damnation!" I leaned forward and pressed my aching head to my knees.

The breeze shifted and the singing faded until I could no longer make out the words, at which point thinking became marginally possible. "I'm going to rip Lomo's toenails off and use them to dig out his liver!" I said hoarsely.

"That's the spirit," Gerta said weakly.

For some reason, my mail seemed even tighter than before, though that could have been because I now had a bruise on my back matching each and every ring. Every breath was an exercise in additional pain.

The wind shifted again and I heard enthusiastic strains of " `Come, come, come to the pyre in the wild wood! Oh, come to the pyre in the dell!' "

I pulled myself up against the rapidly chilling rock of the cliff. "Follow those voices!"

Gerta nodded soberly and we staggered off in what seemed the right direction. The trail twisted around the mountain like a drunken dragon, now rising, now descending. The voices that drew us on caterwauled like demented choirboys and as we drew near I made out the third verse of "Zeus Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen!"

"They are having entirely too much fun," Gerta whispered.

"Yeah." I sat back on my heels and tried to catch my breath. I ran a finger under the constricting collar of my mail. "Can mail shrink?"

"You're probably just adding muscle," she said soothingly, though I could see by her dubious expression she didn't mean it. "You've been so active lately."

"Right." It was full dark now and we could see the orange glow of a fire up on the cliffs above. The frost-ridden wind gusted down the cliffs and cut straight through me. I rubbed my hands together for warmth, then reached for Esmeralda. My chilled fingers closed on an empty scabbard. The thought of Lomo's dirty hands touching my lovely custom-made hilt with the exquisite embossed elephant's head made me see purple and puce.

"Sermon! Sermon!" the bandits were chanting. "We want a sermon!"

"But I'm not a priest!" Perchis Dal said abjectly. "I keep telling you that."

"Give us a sermon, my fine potted plant," Lomo said, "or we'll pluck out your nose hairs one at a time."

Gerta and I eased up the slope. Shadows cast in the firelight shifted on the rim as figures moved about and the stench of scorched donkey meat hung strongly in the air. "Dearly b-beloved," Dal said uncertainly, "y-you should always be good and-and-"

"Not fond of your nose hairs, are you?" Lomo said conversationally.

"andtrynottobebad!"

"Get to the confessing part!" someone cried. "That's our favorite!"

"S-some of you might have been a little bit bad," Dal continued reluctantly.

Someone sniffled, then broke into howling sobs.

"But if you confess to the almighties-"

"Which one?" Lomo demanded over a chorus of wails.

"How in the blazes should I know?" Dal's voice was aggrieved. "I keep telling you oafs that I'm not-"

There was the sound of a scuffle, then a shocked squawk. "Which almighty?" Lomo repeated.

"Any of them!" Dal squeaked in a voice at least two octaves higher than before. "I'm sure it's their very great pleasure to attend to whatever you fine gentlemen care to say!"

Gerta's hand slipped and she slid half a body length back down the slope. Above, I heard a familiar whicker-Corpsemaker! She must have gotten my scent. No doubt, the bandits had Gerta's Slasher too. Once we lopped off their mangy, lice-ridden heads, we'd recover our mounts and swords, and then deliver Dal and his hymnals to Damery as promised.

I tried to quicken my pace, but my mail was absolutely strangling me. Despite the impending battle, I realized I should have taken it off when I had the chance. I was gasping for air as I cleared the final foot of cliff.

A boulder shielded me from their view, but around it, a few yards off, I could make out at least thirty bandits. As always, they were a moth-eaten, vicious-looking lot. One, dressed in a dozen ragged castoffs, was kneeling before the hymnal merchant, who was holding his abused nose with both hands. Lomo stood with his back to us, surveying the scene.

"Great Isis, I'm really, really sorry!" the bandit, a scruffy, bald-headed rogue, wailed.

"A-about what?" Dal spoke through his hands, his face pale as watered cream.

"About killing that self-satisfied, stuck-up prig of a prime minister from Mazor last week and stealing all his gold."

"And you w-won't do it again?" Dal prompted.

The bandit wiped his eyes. "Well, of course, I'll do it again. Are you crazy?"

"Next!" Lomo called.

Gerta's head eased up over the side of the cliff and she crept up beside me, panting. "Now what?" she whispered, belly-down in the dirt. "Shall we charge them one at a time or together?"

My mail tightened another notch. This time, I actually felt it contract. My hand flew to the first buckle on the side seam.

"I could kill them all myself," Gerta said, "but it seems unsporting not to let you in on the fun."

Another sinner was brought before the hymnal merchant in the wavering circle of firelight. "A-and you?" Dal quavered.

This bandit was a withered old coot who looked vaguely familiar for some reason. Had I perhaps done a poor job of killing him at some point too like Lomo? "I ain't sorry about a bloomin' thing!" he declared.

Lomo cuffed him into the ashes at the edge of the fire. "You wanted to confess. Now get on with it!"

"My-mail!" I wheezed at Gerta, fingers wrenching vainly at the buckle. "Get it off!"

Her eyes widened. "Now?"

The bandit picked himself up and brushed at the new smudges on his ragged trousers. "Well, I suppose I could say I'm sorry about impersonating a goatherd last night so I could sprinkle your magic shrinking potion on Hallah Iron-Thighs' mail."

"That was very wicked of you!" Lomo said and then the two of them guffawed.

I recognized him now, as the scene before me was being rapidly blotted out by swirling darkness of impending unconsciousness due to lack of air. He was the smelly lout who kept hovering behind my back at the tavern. Magic, I thought weakly. Lomo had used one of his bandits to magick me, the rotten bastard! I could feel my veins bulging, my face turning purple. My fingers wrenched at the buckle, but it must have been jammed in the fall I'd taken earlier and wouldn't give.

"Hallah, they're going to hear you!" Gerta whispered disapprovingly.

"Yes, ducks." Lomo walked around the boulder. "You really should be more careful."

"Don't worry, Hallah!" Gerta sprang to her feet. "I'll save a few for you to kill!"

The first buckle finally gave and my mail popped open down to the second buckle, giving me a bit more room to breathe, though not nearly enough.

Gerta charged, but her balance was off, courtesy no doubt of the lump on her head. Lomo thrust out his foot, then turned to me as she went down like a poleaxed buffalo. "What about you, ducks? Is there something you'd like to confess before we throw you into that convenient bottomless crevice over there? It's best to go out with a clean conscience, you know."

With a creak, the second buckle opened. I gulped air into my straining lungs. Gerta was sprawled on the ground at Perchis Dal's feet, a new lump on her head beside the earlier one, making a matched set. I was outnumbered thirty to one. Lomo had my horse and my sword. Even my trusty mail, veteran of years of fighting, had let me down. Maybe this was the Change of Life after all and I'd worked too long at this exhausting, dangerous business. Maybe it was time to hang up my-