Conan of Venarium (17 page)

And then Conan surprised him by asking, “You know Count Stercus?” He pronounced the unfamiliar name with great care, obviously not wanting to be misunderstood.

“Do I know him? By Mitra, no!” said Melcer. “But I know of him. Everyone who comes here knows of him.”

So intent was Conan on his own thoughts, he did not even snarl at the idea of Aquilonian settlers coming into a land he reckoned his. He simply asked, “What do you know of him?”

“That he is the governor of this province,” began Melcer, but the young Cimmerian waved impatiently: that was not the sort of thing he wanted to hear. Melcer went on, “Of the man I know not so much, and not so much of what I know is good.”

Conan said something in his own language then. Melcer had learned not a word of Cimmerian, nor did he care to, but the curses bursting from the young barbarian’s lips sounded fiery enough to make him wish he knew what they meant. Somewhere off behind Conan, a bird sang sweetly, offering an odd counterpoint to his impassioned oaths.

At length, the youngster had vented his spleen to the point where he could abandon his own tongue and attempt to speak in a civilized language once more: “You tell what you know.”

Melcer began to obey before reflecting that Conan had not the slightest right to command him. By then, he had already said, “I hear that Stercus is a lecher of no small fame —that if he weren’t a lecher, he would have been able to stay in Tarantia and wouldn’t have had to command the army that came up into this country.”

“A lecher.” Again, Conan pronounced a word strange to him with care. “What means this?”

“He chases women —and young girls, too, by what folk say, though I know not if that be true — more than is proper for a man.”

“Crom!” Conan whispered. The next moment, he was gone, as suddenly and silently as he had appeared. A bush shook for a moment, giving some small hint of the direction in which he had gone, but Melcer heard not a sound. The Gunderman shrugged broad shoulders and then went back to work; on a farm, especially a new farm, there was always plenty to do. For a little while, he wondered why a barbarian boy should care about the highest-ranking Aquilonian hereabouts. But in the unending round of labor, he forgot Conan’s concerns soon afterwards.

As spring passed into summer, Mordec at last began to believe the Aquilonians would not take revenge on Duthil for Hondren’s disappearance, and that Conan had hidden the soldier’s body well enough to foil detection. He had not thought that Captain Treviranus would seize hostages and slay them without good reason; the commander of the local garrison impressed him as a decent enough fellow within the limits of his position and situation. But Count Stercus — Count Stercus was a different story. Whenever Mordec saw the Aquilonian commander, he thought of a serpent, and serpents were all too likely to strike without warning.

And Mordec saw Stercus far more often than he wished he would. The Aquilonian nobleman kept riding into Duthil on one pretext or another. And, whenever he came into the village, he always made a point of seeing, or of trying to see, Balarg’s daughter Tarla.

After three or four such visits, there could be little doubt of Stercus’ intentions. Conan, in his jealous rage, had seen through them from the first. Mordec was loath to believe that his son could be right, that the Aquilonian had conceived an unhealthy passion for a girl so young. When the blacksmith could no longer escape the truth, the hatred he conceived for Stercus, though colder than Conan’s, was no less savage. He wanted to crush King Numedides’ governor under the sole of his boot, to wipe him off the face of the earth. And what was worst of all was that Stercus behaved so smoothly, he gave no provable cause for offense, no matter how plain he made his interest in Tarla. Worse still, she seemed as much flattered as repelled by it; Mordec wondered if she were using the Aquilonian nobleman to lacerate Conan’s feelings.

He soon discovered he was far from alone in his reaction to Stercus, for the Gundermen and Bossonians of the nearby garrison loved the count hardly better than did he. Nor were they shy about saying so over a stoup of ale at the smithy.

“Oh, aye, he’s a piece of work, he is,” declared one of them with drunken sincerity. “Ready for aught —if it’s pretty and not quite ripe.”

“Why put up with such a man?” asked Mordec. “In Cimmeria, he would not last long. His first crime would be his last.”

The Gunderman stared at him owlishly. “You haven’t got noblemen in Cimmeria, have you?”

“Noblemen?” Mordec shook his head. “We have clan chiefs, but a man is a chief because of what he has done, not because of what his great-great-grandfather did.”

“I thought so. That explains it,” said the Gunderman. “We put up with bad nobles, you see, for the sake of good nobles—and there are some. If you know who’s on top right from the start, you don’t need to fight about it all the time. You can get on with the rest of your business.”

That made more sense than Mordec wished it did. Tiny, pointless wars between clans or, even more often, within clans had plagued Cimmeria for centuries uncounted. What Cimmerian would ever admit he was any other man’s inferior? Not even the edge of a sword against his throat was sure to make him say such a craven thing; he was as likely to lash out against the swordbearer, conquer or die. Mordec wondered whether the invaders from the south fully grasped the difference between their land and the one in which they now found themselves. He doubted it. Getting on with the rest of your business had never been a great worry in Cimmeria.

“Besides,” added the Gunderman, “who knows what we’d get for a commander if we did knock Stercus over the head? No matter what else you say about him, he’s a brave fighter. We might be stuck with some other fellow in bad odor with the King who’d run away if a hawfinch chirped at him.”

“I thought you spoke of good nobles,” said Mordec.

“I did, and there are,” said the soldier, draining his mug. Mordec poured it full again. “I thank you,” the Gunderman told him. “There are plenty of good nobles —in places like Tarantia. But you’ll not see many of that sort here, by Mitra. A man comes to a place like this without a reputation or at best to try to repair one. If his is already good, he can do better.”

Had he spoken with contempt, he would have infuriated Mordec. But he did not: he simply told the blacksmith how he saw the world. Mordec judged that worth knowing. He did not believe any of the Aquilonians cared to learn how the folk whose lands they had invaded looked at them. Learning such a thing would have proved instructive for the men from the south, had they attempted it.

The Gunderman heaved himself to his feet. “I’d best get back to the camp,” he said. “I thank you again for your ale and for your company. You’re a good Cimmerian, you are.” Off he went, wobbling slightly as he walked.

He might have called Mordec a good dog in the same tone of voice. The blacksmith’s great, hard hands folded into fists. “A good Cimmerian, am I?” he whispered. “One of these days, you will see how good I am.”

Conan spent as much time as he could either in his father’s smithy or in the forests far from Duthil. If he did not wander the now dusty, now muddy streets of the village, he ran no risk of bumping into Tarla —and he did not have to see Count Stercus coming to Balarg’s house for yet another visit. Conan would cheerfully have murdered the Aquilonian noble. Fear of Stercus’ armor and weapons deterred him not at all. Not even the fear of his father held him back, for he sensed Mordec would not have minded in the least seeing Stercus stretched lifeless and bleeding in the dirt. Only fear of what the invaders would do to Duthil in reprisal stayed his hand.

Even’ so often, while pumping the bellows or changing a quenching bath or doing such other work as his father set him, he would see Count Stercus riding past. Then he wanted nothing more than to take up Mordec’s heaviest hammer and smash Stercus’ skull as he had broken Hondren’s. When his father let him shape simple tools, he pounded at them in a perfect passion of fury.

Escaping Duthil altogether suited him better. Then he did not have to boil with rage at spying Stercus or flinch with mortification and jealousy whenever he set eyes on the weaver’s daughter. In the woods he saw no one, spoke to no one. And if he looked back on his last unfortunate conversation with Tarla and wished that conversation might have gone otherwise —if he did that out there among the pines and fragrant spruces, who but he would know?

He perched on a great gray granite boulder one noon, eating a frugal lunch of oatcakes and cheese, when a man said, “Might I share somewhat of that?”

Conan started. He had neither seen nor heard the stranger approach, a fact that should have been impossible. His hand closed round the shaft of a javelin he had plunged into the ground by the boulder. “Who are you?” he demanded roughly. “What do you want?”

“My name is mere rubbish. If you would have it, though, it is Rhiderch.” The stranger bowed. “A wandering seer, I.” He bowed again. He looked the part. He was about sixty, his hair gone gray, his beard —nearly white —reaching halfway down his chest. His garments were of colorless homespun set off by a necklace and bracelets of honey-gold amber. “As for what I want, well, after far travel a bite of food is welcome.”

“Share what I have, then,” said Conan, and gave him some of the oatcakes and half the chunk of cheese. The old man ate with good appetite. Conan watched him for a while, then burst out, “How did you come upon me without my being the wiser? By Crom, you could have slit my throat and taken
everything
I had, and I would not have known you were there until too late.”

Rhiderch’s eyes, gray as the granite upon which Conan sat, twinkled. “I am no robber, lad. I seek what’s free-given, and thank you for your kindness.”

“You did not answer me. How did you come upon me unawares? I thought no wolf nor panther could do the like, let alone a man.”

The seer chuckled. “There are ways, lad. Indeed there are. I know but the minor mysteries. Many others are wiser by far.”

“Teach me!” said Conan.

At that, the laughter faded from Rhiderch’s face. Now he had come upon something he took seriously. “Why, perhaps I shall, if it be your fate to learn such things. Give me your hand, that I may learn whether it is permitted me.”

Conan held it out. Rhiderch clasped it in his own. The two hands were a study in contrasts: Conan’s square and scarred and callused, with short, grimy nails on thick, strong fingers; Rhiderch’s long and thin and pale and spidery, his palm narrow, his fingernails fastidiously groomed. Conan had seen palm readers before, but Rhiderch did not examine the lines on his hand. Instead, the seer closed his eyes and murmured a charm in a language whose cadences were like those of Cimmerian but which the blacksmith’s son could not understand.

Suddenly and without warning, Rhiderch’s hand closed tight on Conan’s. At the same time, the seer’s eyes opened very wide. Thinking it a trial of strength, Conan squeezed back as hard as he could. He was twice as thick through the shoulders and arms as the scrawny Rhiderch. But, for all the impression his grip made on the long-bearded wanderer, he might as well not have bothered responding to what he took to be the challenge. Rhiderch’s hand clenched tighter and tighter, at last with crushing force.

As abruptly as the seer had begun to squeeze, he relaxed the pressure. Sweat poured down his forehead and cheeks; a drop dangled at the end of his long, pointed nose. He swiped a sleeve across his face. “Crom!” he muttered: the ejaculation of a man shaken to the core.

“Well?” demanded Conan. “Am I fit to learn your tricks for sliding through the trees without a sound?”

“You are fit for— ” Rhiderch broke off and mopped his brow again. “What you are fit for, son of Mordec, is more than I can say. Never have I seen — ” He stopped once more, shaking his head. “Truly, I wonder whether I read you aright.”

“How do you know my father’s name?” asked Conan, for he was sure he had not spoken it.

“I know a good many things,” said Rhiderch, but after a moment he shivered, though the day was mild. “One of the things I know is that yours is the strangest destiny of any ever to come into my ken.”

“How so?” asked Conan, but the seer would not answer him. He tried a different question: “If you saw my destiny, did you see the Aquilonian called Stercus in it?” He did not say that Stercus commanded the Aquilonians in Cimmeria; this, from him, passed for cleverness and caution.

Rhiderch looked at him —looked through him. “Speak not of slicing saplings when the tall tree towers. Speak not of slaying sparrows when the hawk hovers.”

“I spoke of slicing nothing. I spoke of slaying no one.” Conan knew some of his countrymen collaborated with the invaders. He could not fathom it, but he knew it to be true. He would not admit his lust for Stercus’ gore to a man he had not met before this moment.

But what he admitted, what he denied, seemed to mean nothing to Rhiderch. “Your mouth spoke no words,” said the seer. “Your spirit cried aloud —though the greater cry all but drowned the smaller.”

“Will you speak sense?” asked Conan testily. “All your words go round and round, reflecting back on one another with no meaning left behind.”

“If you will not hear, you shall surely see.” Rhiderch remained cryptic. “Like a migrating bird, your fate flies high and far. Where you will end your days, and in what estate, I cannot say, but no Cimmerian’s weird is stranger.”

“Lies and foolishness. You make me sorry I fed you instead of driving you away,” said Conan.

He hoped to anger Rhiderch, but the seer only smiled. “No mean feat for me, for few will ever make you sorry for anything you do.”

That did it. Anger sparked in the blacksmith’s son. “Get you gone,” he growled. “Get you gone, or I shall not answer for what will come next.” Now he reached for the javelin he always kept close at hand.

“As you say it, so shall it be.” Rhiderch vanished with the same unnerving speed and silence he had used in appearing. One instant, he stood beside Conan; the next, the blacksmith’s son might have been — was — alone on his boulder.