Conan of Venarium (12 page)

Mordec’s gaze slipped to the man who did not come from the village. “And our friend is—?”

Before Balarg could answer, the stranger spoke for himself: “My name is Herth.” His voice was almost as deep as Mordec’s. “I come from Garvard, up near the border with the AEsir.”

Slowly, deliberately, Mordec took his measure. “You are a chieftain there, or I miss my guess,” he said, and Herth did not deny it. After another pull at his ale, Mordec said, “It’s a long way from Garvard to Duthil. What are you doing here?”

“Now, Mordec,” said Balarg.

“It’s all right,” said Herth, but, before he could say anything more, another knock resounded.

Balarg opened the door. “Nectan!” he exclaimed. “I thought we’d have to do without you. Who’s minding the flock?”

“Why, the blacksmith’s son.” Nectan pointed toward Mordec.

“Is he?” said Mordec. “Just as well, by Crom. Otherwise, Conan would insist on being here.”

“Yes, so he would.” Balarg’s voice had an edge to it, though one so slight that Mordec thought he was the only man in the room who caught it. The weaver must have noticed the way Conan looked at his daughter. One of these days, he and Mordec would have to sit down and decide what would spring from that—if Conan didn’t take matters into his own hands by running off with the girl.

Nectan poured himself some ale and started gnawing on a strip of mutton. When he pulled a stool close to the fire, Mordec slid aside to make room for him. He had been out in the cold and the wind for a long time, and had earned the warmth now.

Herth said, “A tinker named Loarn told me what had passed here. I decided to come down and see for myself, and I find it is so. Yellow-haired soldiers who spoke in grunts and trills put their hands on me not far north of here, and I had to bear the insult, for they were many and I but one. Yet though I had to bear it then, I shall not forget it.”

“As you say, they are many,” answered Mordec. “For now, we also have to bear it, though we shall not forget, either.”

“But the longer we bear it, the stronger the Aquilonians become,” said Balarg.

“Aye, that’s so, curse them,” said Nectan, and the other men of Duthil nodded. The shepherd went on, “The fortress they build, the place they call Venarium”—he pronounced the foreign name with an odd kind of contemptuous care —“has already grown harder to take than any hill fort of our folk.” He sipped from his ale, then inclined his head to Herth. “Have you seen it?”

“Not yet,” replied the northern chieftain. “No, not yet, though I intend to before I go back to my own country.”

“Now that you have seen this much, what will you do up in the north?” asked Mordec.

“What needs doing,” said Herth. “Loarn spoke somewhat of rousing the clans. By Crom, he roused me, but not everyone cares to hearken to a landless wanderer who makes his living, such as it is, by patching pans and fixing broken jugs.”

“What he does, he does well,” observed Mordec. “When you speak of a man, you could say worse.”

Herth’s gaze might have been a swordblade. The blacksmith’s might have been another. When they clashed, sparks flew. From off to one side, Balarg said, “Here, friends, it is of no great importance.”

Mordec did not reply. He kept his eyes on Herth. After a few heartbeats, the chieftain was the one who looked away, saying, “Well, perhaps it is not. But I say this, and say it true: when I travel through Cimmeria, men will hearken to me.” He had a clan chiefs pride, sure enough.

“Hearkening is one thing,” said Nectan. “Moving is another. Once they have hearkened, will they move?”

“Oh, yes.” Herth spoke softly, but with great certainty. “You may rely on that, friend shepherd. Once they have hearkened, they will move.”

Conan stood on a hilltop, watching the sheep on the hillside pawing their way down through the snow to get at the grass beneath it. He also watched the woods not far away. If wolves came trotting forth, he had his bow and he had Nectan’s stout staff with which to fight them. The staff was of some hard, dark wood with which Conan was unfamiliar. It was shod with silver. “Keep it safe, lad,” the shepherd had said when he handed it to Conan. “You’d leave me a poorer man if you should lose it.”

A small fire burned close by, sheltered from the north wind by several tall stones. Conan stooped and tossed a few more branches onto the flames. The fire did not give a great deal of warmth, but Nectan had kept it going, and Conan wanted to maintain everything as the shepherd had had it. Nectan doubtless cooked over it and slept beside it. Having to start it afresh in this raw weather would be a nuisance for him.

For that matter, if Nectan did not come back from Duthil until the morrow, the blacksmith’s son would have to cook on the fire and sleep by it himself. Nectan had said he would return before sundown, but Conan had seen that promises, however well meant when made, were not always to be relied upon.

Something flew past overhead. Conan did not pay much heed. The greatest eagle might perhaps carry off a newborn lamb, but lambing season was still months away, and no bird ever hatched could hope to seize a full-grown sheep and fly away with it. So Conan thought, at any rate, but the flying thing stooped like a falcon. A stout ewe let out a sudden bleat of agony.

Whatever the creature struggling to lift the sheep into the air was, it was no bird. Its huge wings were black and membranous, while a pair of pointed ears pricked up above its fiercely glowing red eyes. When it snarled, it showed a mouth full of teeth like needles and razors and knives.

Bat? Demon? Conan could not have said, nor did he much care. All he knew was that the thing was harming one of Nectan’s sheep. Stringing his bow was the matter of a moment. Letting fly took even less time. His arrow flew straight and true, and sank to the fletching in the flying thing’s flank.

It sank to the fletching—but the creature, apparently unharmed, kept right on flapping, trying to take off with the ewe it had chosen. Conan shot again. The second shaft struck within a palm’s breadth of the first, but had no more effect. No normal living thing could have withstood such wounds without woe.

“Demon! Filthy, cursed demon from the darkest pits of hell!” cried Conan. He threw down his bow, snatched up a blazing brand from the fire, and ran not away from the thing but towards it, shouting his defiance of anything from this plane or any other that tried to steal what he had vowed to protect. It screamed, let go of the ewe, and flapped toward him.

The foul stench of it almost knocked him
off
his feet. Reeling, he lashed out with Nectan’s staff. The silver at the base of that length of wood thudded against the creature’s ribs. Iron-tipped arrows had done Conan no good, but the demon shrieked in anguish at the touch of silver.

“Ha!” cried Conan. He swung again, and again struck home. Suddenly, the demon wanted no more of this man-thing who dealt it such cruel blows. However hungry it might have been, no meal was worth the torment it took from silver. Screaming now in fright, it turned to flee.

But Conan struck again, this time with the burning branch he bore in his left hand. He let out a great bull roar of triumph, for the demon caught fire and burned like a torch. It flew off, still screaming and still burning. Somewhere up above the woods, it could fly no more, and plunged to earth. Conan thought he heard a hiss arise when it slammed into the snow, a hiss like that when his father plunged hot iron into a tempering bath. He might have been wrong, but he believed as much until the end of his days.

Having driven off the demon, he hurried to the sheep it had tried to steal. He tended the cuts and bites as best he could, pouring ale from his drinking flask over them to try to keep the wounds from going bad. The ewe repaid his kindness by kicking him just below the knee. The sheep’s thick coat of winter wool had likely gone a long way toward saving its life by shielding it from some of the damage the flying demon’s teeth and talons might otherwise have worked.

When Nectan returned not long before sunset, he saw at once the blood on the ewe’s flanks. “By Crom, Conan, did you fall asleep here?” he demanded angrily. “I’ll thump you with my staff if you did.”

“By Babd, Morrigan, Macha, and Nemain, I did not!” exclaimed Conan, and told the tale of the fight with the demon.

Nectan listened without a word. Then he went to the ewe and stooped to examine its injuries. When he straightened, his face was troubled. “Those are not the marks of wolf or panther, nor yet of any eagle,” he said slowly. “Perhaps you speak truth, where I thought you lied.”

“I do,” said Conan. “It most misliked the silver at the end of your staff.”

“Silver and fire are sovereign against demons, or so I’ve heard.” Nectan shook his head in wonder. “I own I never thought to put it to the test.”

Spring came late to Cimmeria, especially to one used to the warmer clime of Aquilonia. Indeed, to Count Stercus what the calendar called spring hardly seemed worthy of the name. True, the sky was gray longer than it was black, where the opposite had held true through the seemingly unending winter. True also, the snow at last stopped falling and then, with even more reluctance, began to melt.

But there was no great burgeoning of life, as there would have been farther south. The trees did not burst into bright green leaf. They were evergreens, and had kept such gloomy color as they originally owned all through the winter, though snow had hidden much of it. Little by little, fresh grass did begin to poke up through the dead and yellow growth of the previous year, but the process was so gradual that days went by without much perceptible change. And birdsongs other than owls’ hoots, hunting hawks’ harsh cries, and the croaking and chirring calls of grouse and ptarmigan started to sweeten the air.

Birdsongs, however, left Stercus cold. Almost everything that had to do with Cimmeria left Stercus cold. He had written at least a score of letters to King Numedides and to everyone else in Tarantia who might have had influence with the King of Aquilonia, all of them requesting, pleading—begging—that he be recalled to a civilized country once more.

Even’ one of those letters had fallen on deaf ears. Oh, through one of his secretaries Numedides had replied, but only to say that, as Stercus had done such a fine job in the north up to this time, who better to continue to oversee the growth of the Aquilonian settlements there? Count Stercus would not soon see civilization again.

For a little while longer, his sport with Ugaine sufficed to amuse him, to distract him. But the Cimmerian girl was not exactly what he wanted, and for Stercus anything that was not exactly what he wanted soon became something he wanted not at all. When he tired of Ugaine, he sent her back to her home village, though she protested he did her no favors by returning her.

In that, she was mistaken. Fortunately for her, she did not know and never learned how mistaken she was. There were reasons, good reasons, why Stercus had been sent beyond the Aquilonian frontier, why he was unlikely ever to be welcome in Tarantia or even some provincial town of Aquilonia ever again. It was not least because he still so vividly recalled the reasons for his exile that the nobleman had sent Ugaine to Rosinish instead of adding further to his remarkable reputation. Then, too, the girl was already too old to be altogether satisfying or satisfactory.

After he banished her from Venarium, he spent some little while brooding: even if she was not exactly what he had had in mind, had she not come close enough? By the time he began to wonder, it was too late for such worries anyhow, since he had already sent her away- And, in any case, he decided he had been right all along. He wanted what he wanted, no less. Some imperfect substitute simply was not good enough.

Having sent Ugaine back to barbarism, Stercus tried throwing himself into the administration of the lands his soldiers had seized from the Cimmerians. For a few weeks, a stream of directives flew from his pen to the garrison commanders in the conquered territory and to the leaders of the colonists. Then that burst of activity also slackened. The colonists were busy turning their new farms and settlements into going concerns. The officers knew enough to keep their men alert and well fed and healthy without Stercus’ telling them to do so. Some of them sent back letters saying as much in very blunt terms.

Count Stercus was no trained, professional soldier, though like any Aquilonian noble he was expected to know enough of the military art to help defend the kingdom in case of invasion. Trained or not, however, he was King Numedides’ chosen commander in this gods-forsaken part of the world, however little that delighted him. If he chose to ride forth on an inspection tour to investigate whether the garrison commanders were doing all they said they were to keep the countryside safe, who could gainsay him? No one.

And if, on that tour, he chose to inspect and investigate certain other matters, certain more personal matters — again, who could gainsay him? Again, no one. No one at all.

Granth son of Biemur was taking his turn at sentry-go at the Aquilonian encampment outside of Duthil. Everything there was quiet, which suited him down to the ground. If the barbarians got used to the idea that they had been beaten, they were less likely to shoot a man from ambush or sneak up behind him and slit his throat.

Also, the weather was such that Granth found standing sentry no hardship, as he had during the long, hard winter. The sunshine that poured down on him was watery, but it was sunshine nonetheless: here in Cimmeria, something to be cherished. He tilted his helm back on his head to bask in it as best he could.

“You think you’ll be handsome when you’re tan?” said Vulth. “I’m here to tell you, forget about that. You’ll just be ugly and tan.”

Granth glowered at his cousin. “You mean, like you?”

After that, it was Vulth’s turn to scowl. The two Bossonian bowmen with whom they shared the watch snickered. Benno said, “We haven’t fought the Cimmerians for a while, so you two want to have a go at each other.”

Before Granth could come up with something suitably crushing—with luck, something that insulted both Benno and Vulth, and maybe Daverio as well —the sound of hoofbeats distracted him. A horseman emerged from the woods to the south and trotted toward the encampment. The horse was a big Aquilonian destrier, not one of the shaggy local ponies that often seemed too small for their big-boned Cimmerian riders.