Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (3 page)

The Cimmerian was within arm’s length of another canoe-load of pirates who seemed so intent on their archery that they were ignoring both the ship and his presence.

They paid dearly for that error. Conan surged out of the water, gripped the canoe’s side with both hands, and flung himself backward. The canoe capsized, bodies splashed into the water to the left and right of the attacker, and another heave brought the canoe back to an even keel.

One pirate had not gone over the side. He crouched, facing Conan with a long dagger in one hand and a quiver slung across his back. Conan snatched up the handiest weapon, the pirate’s fallen bow, and parried the first thrust of the dagger with the stout wood. That gave him time to draw his own club, a trifle longer than the dagger.

The man twisted aside from the first blow and thrust at Conan again. The second swing of the club broke the man’s right shoulder, but he was stout-hearted enough to shift the dagger to his left hand. Then he screamed, as the Cimmerian lifted him with both hands and hurled him into a third canoe. The pirate crew toppled in every direction, two of them going overboard as their canoe’s suddenly wandering course took it within reach of Conan.

This time Conan did not need to leap. His weapons could reach far enough. He flung the club, taking a pirate in the temple. Helmet cracked, skull shattered, and the man toppled limply over the side. The Cimmerian gripped the bow of the other canoe with his free hand and heaved.

Conan’s canoe nearly sank as the bow of the other canoe leaped out of the water. The remaining men in it reeled, one unfortunate enough to land within reach of Conan’s sword. The Cimmerian dropped the canoe, sending another man overboard, and slashed two-handed at the nearest prey.

The sword was the best Nemedian work, fit to kill at a stroke even one-handed when properly wielded. With both the Cimmerian’s stout-thewed arms driving it, the blade sheared through the man’s shoulder blade, rib cage, and belly, to jar against his hipbone. He was dead before he struck the river, and the last man in the canoe hurled himself overboard with a howl of stark terror.

Conan was also in the river a moment later. A flight of arrows hissed through the air where he had been, save for one that scored his ribs. He had taken worse hurts from enthusiastic bedmates, and he knew of nothing in the Tybor to be drawn by the scent of blood.

He heard a second flight of arrows hiss into the water as he dove deep. When he broke into the air again, he remained low, his nostrils just above the water. The ship was looming closer still, her decks now blazing with lanterns like a town square at festival time. She was also now under sweeps as well as sail, four on either side.

The men aboard must have thought to outspeed their foes rather than outfight them. Well enough, save that their torch-dazzled eyes had missed something the Cimmerian saw clearly from his vantage on the dark river.

A long, low canoe was creeping in from the port quarter of the ship. Conan judged it to be carrying at least ten men, enough to clear the ship’s decks easily if most of her crew was below at the sweeps.

The Cimmerian had done all he could do as a lone wolf in the river. It was time to fight among allies with a deck underfoot. He judged distance carefully, then dove again.

When he rose a second time, one of the sweeps was within arm’s reach. He gripped the blade with both hands and hauled himself on to the shaft. Hand over hand he climbed the shaft of the sweep, until he could reach out and find a grip on the ship’s side.

The timbers were weed-slimed and splintery, but the Cimmerian’s grip was strong. Moreover, finding handholds on a ship’s side was child’s play to Conan even before he sailed with Bêlit—to Conan or any other man who grew up climbing the cliffs of Cimmeria.

As Conan climbed, archers in the large canoe saw him. Three arrows thunked into the wood around him, a fourth grazed his shoulder, a wound even more trivial than the mark on his hip. He gripped the railing, vaulted over it, and crouched on the deck as the next arrows whistled by.

“Ahoy!” came a shout from aft. “Who in the name of Erlik’s chamberpot are you?”

Conan remained crouching. “A friend who’d rather fight for you than with you. Or swim alone.” He looked about him. “In Mitra’s name, get the men up from the sweeps. Your deck’s bare as a tavern dancer and the pirates are coming up from astern!”

“Who are you to give me—?”

The man’s indignation ended along with his life, as a pirate archer put an arrow into his throat. Conan sprang up, caught the man as he toppled, and lowered him to the deck.

“Ahoy below!” he shouted, loud enough to raise echoes from the nearer shore. “Drop the sweeps and man the decks! The pirates are boarding!”

Before anyone below could reply, a grappling hook hurtled over the railing and caught in the frame around the mainmast. A second caught the railing itself. Conan slashed the rope to the first hook with his sword, then clutched the second hook and heaved.

Two pirates were already climbing the rope. One fell back into the canoe, landing across the gunwale. The crack of his spine snapping reached Conan’s ears. The other pirate lunged upward and seemed to fly over the railing. He landed rolling with a cat’s agility and came up with dagger in hand.

For a moment, Conan had no weapon in hand— save the grappling hook itself. He parried one dagger thrust with the hook, then closed and ripped upward. The man screamed like a damned spirit and fell, clutching spouting gashes in belly and thigh with desperate, futile hands.

Moments later men began swarming up from below, just as the ship ran in among the surviving canoes of Conan’s earlier opponents. Pirates swarmed aboard from both aft and forward, but Conan’s warning and stand had bought the crew just enough time to reach the decks.

Even then the pirates had the edge in numbers and in steel. But the sailors were fighting for their lives, marlinspikes and sheath knives have never been despicable weapons, and the crew also had Conan. As men in many lands had learned to their cost, in a fight he was worth five ordinary men.

The Cimmerian buried the grappling hook in the skull of his first opponent. It stuck there, so he kicked the dying man overboard and drew his sword. He had to face a second opponent before he could draw his dagger, but he had the advantage in both reach and speed on the man. The pirate’s life ended soon after Conan closed against him with steel in both hands.

Conan turned at a warning shout, to parry a murderous blow at his thigh. His dagger locked the foe’s sword, and the Cimmerian brought his own blade around to strike deep into the man’s neck. A bearded head lolled on jerkin-clad shoulders, and another pirate sprawled on the deck.

Conan now gave way before three pirates who seemed to have some notion of fighting as a team. But as he did, a sailor heaved up a grating under the feet of the middle pirate. He overbalanced and fell forward. Conan’s sword was not meant for thrusting, but he kept the point more than sharp enough to go clean through the falling pirate.

This briefly left Conan with only his dagger against two swordsmen, so he continued his retreat. He retreated as far as the water barrel lashed to the deck by the tiller ropes, then slashed the ropes and turned the barrel on its side. A fierce push sent it rolling at the two men. One of them did not leap clear; as it passed on he lay screaming with a crushed leg, until a sailor crushed his skull to end the screaming.

The last man came at Conan with a berserker’s speed and fury—and carelessness. He never noticed that the Cimmerian had picked up the fallen dipper from the water barrel. The man’s sword met the dipper’s iron shaft, sparks flew, and the man howled as the Cimmerian’s dagger sank deep into his belly, through a gap in his ageing corselet.

Conan now saw that the deck was all but clear of live, fighting pirates. A few were scrambling over the railing or leaping for their lives. Conan ran to the fallen barrel, heaved it aloft and strode to the railing. The large canoe was directly below.

The barrel was nearly empty, or not even the Cimmerian could have lifted it. It was quite heavy enough to shatter the bottom of the canoe. Nearly riven in two pieces, the pirate craft drifted away, its surviving crew clinging. The canoes forward also withdrew with more haste than dignity, urged along by a sailor who had picked up a fallen pirate bow and was emptying the quiver with great enthusiasm.

A man with a neat grey beard and a searching eye who barely reached the Cimmerian’s shoulder came up to Conan.

“Many thanks, friend. You named yourself truly. Have you any other name?”

“Sellus,” Conan said briefly. This man did not seem to be one to sell to the Ophireans a man to whom he owed his ship and life. But a thousand gold crowns could do more than ale or wine to addle the wits of the wisest of men.

“A northerner, too, by your looks.”

“So I have heard,” Conan said. “May I ask if I am addressing the captain?”

“The captain lies dead with an arrow in his throat. I am Levites of Messantia, owner of the Sirdis. I can reward you as I please.”

“I’ll not refuse a free passage to Shamar,” Conan said. “As for anything more—scum like those pirates, I fight as the spirit takes me. Judge my worth for yourself, and I’ll accept the judgement of an honest man.” The owner’s eyes studied Conan. The Cimmerian suspected that the merchant was one who knew how to squeeze any coin until it shrieked and would take him at his word.

A smile twisted his lips as he thought of how the merchant would reply to learning that his saviour had begun his life in the Hyborian lands as a thief in Zamora. Not the most successful of thieves, but nonetheless one with more in common with the pirates than it would be prudent to admit here.

“The passage is yours, upon my word, and in the best cabin we have free. Also something for your purse, so it need not be slack-bellied when we reach Shamar.”

“I could ask no more.”

That was hardly the truth, but Levites also seemed a man with whom there could easily be such a thing as too much honesty.

II

Conan slept little and lightly during the two days it took Sirdis to finish her upriver passage to Shamar. Nor did he take off as much as his boots, let alone his weapons.

It was not Levites’s niggardliness that made the Cimmerian wary. It was his being a Messantian, and therefore a subject of the king of Argos. Ophir was not the only land where the Cimmerian had a price on his head.

It was a tedious tale for the most part, his sojourn in Argos, and those parts that were not tedious might injure the reputation of ladies, which was against the Cimmerian’s notions of honour. But it had begun with his becoming one of the Guardians, the protectors of the city before it gained itself a king, and had ended with his dashing down the quays and leaping aboard the first outbound ship.

Conan sometimes thought he might have risen high in the service of the new Argossean monarchy, had he been one to keep his mouth shut in the face of injustice to old comrades. But if that was a gift, it was not one the gods had given him. He had spoken, the king’s judges had replied, and Conan ended at sea, on his way to his meeting with Bêlit.

Wherefore he did not much regret his departure from Argos. He knew this of kings, that they more often than not preferred lapdogs to warriors, and no man in his right senses could call himself ill-fated who had held Bêlit in his arms.

But aboard an Argossean ship, none of this might matter. If Levites had risen through royal favour, he might be eager to bring the Cimmerian to “justice” out of loyalty to his liege. Were he his own man, he still might think of one reward from Ophir and another from his king, for the head of the same man.

Still, Levites showed no signs of suspicion on the voyage, nor was Conan molested, either waking or sleeping. Perhaps it was the sight of the Cimmerian squatting on deck, cleaning rust and Tybor slime from his sword, that kept the peace. Sitting, he rose shoulder-high to some of the crew, and his scars and scowl were enough to make any man cautious about approaching him.

On the third morning, Sirdis warped into the docks of Shamar. Conan stood in the pay line with the crew for his reward, where he received much hearty gratitude and invitations to parties at Shamar’s taverns. He refused none of them, although he had no intention of being found anywhere near those taverns. But if Levites or anyone in his pay was looking for him where he would not be, that was more time for his trail to grow cold....

* * *

A village stood on the site of Shamar in the distant days before Atlantis sank and the dark shadow of Acheron’s evil magic stretched across the land. Water flowed from abundant springs, fish abounded, and steep-sided hills made for easy defence.

When a city called Shamar came to be in a land not yet called Aquilonia, it needed all the defences nature and men could contrive. Thrice it was besieged from Ophir, twice from Nemedia, and once by the royal host of Aquilonia when the city rose in rebellion. Half a score of times river pirates snatched ships and men from its very wharves.

Yet the city survived, prospered, and grew, repairing the breaches in its old walls, stretching out new quarters across the hills until they in turn needed walls, and in time becoming one of Aquilonia’s great cities. Its governor was always a duke, its garrison numbered in the thousands, with horse, foot, and siege engines ready to hand, and its merchants were among the shrewdest and richest in a realm not lacking such men.

How many people it held, Conan doubted that anyone knew. He knew only that it held enough to make it easy for a man to lose himself among them.

It also held its share of pleasure quarters and thieves’ alleys, where few honest men ventured at all. It would take more than a thousand crowns to tempt them there in search of one who would assuredly fight like a lion if they were so unfortunate as to overtake him.

Levites had not been so close-fisted as Conan had expected. With his own purse and his reward from the merchant, Conan was well-fitted to hide longer than his enemies could seek.