Conan of Venarium (18 page)

Too late, Conan remembered that he had wanted Rhiderch to teach him that trick of silent appearances and disappearances. “Come back!” he shouted. “Come back, you stinking old fraud!” But Rhiderch, however obscure he might have been, was no fraud, not in the way Conan meant it. He did not come back, nor did Conan ever ask him about it again — and if the young Cimmerian ever mastered the art of silently and unexpectedly entering or leaving a scene, as many in times to come were to find he had done, he did it by himself and on his own.

For the time being, Conan sat there muttering curses and regretting the waste of the oatcakes and cheese. They could have kept him well fed for another meal out here in the woods, which meant they could have kept him away from Duthil for another half a day, maybe longer. Away from Duthil, and especially away from Balarg’s house, was where he most longed to be.

But later that day he knocked down a stag. It was perhaps the cleanest kill he had ever made: his arrow pierced the stag’s heart, and the animal fell over dead after only a handful of stumbling steps. Conan wanted to roar in triumph like a great hunting cat. Only the knowledge that such a cry would surely draw scavengers, whether of the two-legged or four-legged sort, held him back.

Still, to the hunter went the rewards. Conan kindled a small, almost smokeless fire and roasted the stag’s kidneys and mountain oysters and slices of its liver over the flames. Eaten with mushrooms he found nearby and washed down with pure, cold water from a chuckling brook, the repast was as fine as any he had ever enjoyed. He buried the offal and wedged the rest of the meat, wrapped in the deer’s hide, in the crutch of two branches, too high up for wolves to reach. He slept nearby; also up a tree.

Waking before sunrise the next morning, he hurried back to the pine where he had secured the meat. He found wolf tracks in the soft ground by the base of the tree and claw marks in the bark on the tree trunk as high as his head. The beasts had done all they could to despoil him, but their best had not been good enough.

After starting up the fire again, he breakfasted on more liver and a chunk of the stag’s heart. He wished he could keep the rest of the meat fresh longer. Since he could not, he put the remainder of the carcass on his back and started off to Duthil.

Count Stercus rode out of Fort Venarium and through the brawling streets of the little town that had come to bear the same name. Many Aquilonians took the existence of the town of Venarium to mean that civilization had come to southern Cimmeria. To Stercus’ way of thinking, by contrast, the town of Venarium was proof that civilization would never come here.

He escaped the smells and the clamor of the place with a sigh of relief. Once out in the countryside, he was at least in territory honestly barbarous: Venarium wore a tawdry mask and aped its betters. He tried to imagine King Numedides or some other truly cultured man finding pleasure here on the wild frontier, tried and felt himself failing. A truly sophisticated taste would recoil in horror from what was available hereabouts.

“But even so—” murmured Stercus, and urged his horse up from a walk to a trot. Some of the raw material to be found here, though often very raw indeed, did hold a certain promise. That girl in that stinking Cimmerian village might prove very enjoyable indeed, once he broke her to his will — and breaking her would be enjoyable, too, in its way.

He wondered if he simply ought to take her back to the fortress and get on with the business of turning her into his pliant slave. Some of the barbarians had grumbled about the other girl with whom he had so amused himself, but that was not his principal reason for holding back here. Showing himself too eager had ended up disgracing him down in Tarantia; if not for that, he never would have had to come to this accursed frontier at the edge of the world. Restraint, then, might serve better—and might also be amusing.

In one way, though, Stercus showed no restraint whatever. He rode with his sword naked across his knees, ready to use at a heartbeat’s notice. It would be years before Aquilonians could travel through this country without a weapon to hand. Stercus muttered to himself, wishing his officers had not persuaded him to refrain from avenging the disappearance of that Gunderman near Duthil. He remained convinced the man had not vanished all on his own. If he had, would his body—or at least his bones —not have come to light? Stercus thought so.

The road was narrow, not a great deal broader than the game track it had been before the Aquilonians first came to this miserable land. Dark, frowning firs pressed close on either side. It made ideal country for an ambush. Much of Cimmeria, in fact, made ideal country for an ambush. That was another reason why Stercus doubted whether the soldier named Hondren had gone missing all on his own. “Damned skulking barbarians,” he muttered.

But the barbarian he met when he guided his horse around the next bend in the road did not skulk. The fellow strode along boldly, as if he had as much right to the roadway as any civilized man. His hair and beard had gone gray. The only ornaments he wore were a necklace and bracelets of amber.

Stercus nearly rode him down then and there. In truth, the nobleman could hardly have said what held him back. He reined in and pointed an accusing finger at the Cimmerian, saying, “Stand aside, you!” He did not bother with Cimmerian. He had no idea whether the other man knew Aquilonian, nor did he care: that pointing finger and a loud, commanding voice more than sufficed to make his meaning plain.

As it happened, the barbarian proved to understand his language, and even to speak it himself. “Soon, soon,” he said soothingly. “First I would know something of the manner of man you are.”

“By Mitra, I will tell you what manner of man I am,” snapped Stercus, brandishing his blade. “I am a man with scant patience for any who would let or hinder me.”

He hoped to put the barbarian in fear, but found himself disappointed. The man came up to him and said, “But give me your hand for a moment, and I will speak to what lies ahead for you.”

That piqued Count Stercus’ interest. “A seer, are you?” he asked, and the Cimmerian nodded. Stercus lowered the sword, but only partway. He held out his left hand, at the same time saying, “Come ahead, then. But I warn you, dog, any treachery and you die the death.”

“You may trust me as you would your own father,” said the barbarian, at which Stercus laughed raucously. He would not have trusted his father with his gold, nor with his wine, nor with any woman he chanced to meet. He thought that meant the barbarian knew not the first thing whereof he spoke. That the man might have known more than Stercus guessed never once crossed his mind.

“Here,” said Stercus, extending his hand farther yet in a gesture he copied from King Numedides.

The Cimmerian took it. His own grip was warm and hard. He nodded to himself, once, twice, three times. “You are measured,” he said. “You are measured, and you are found wanting. You shall not endure. Twist as you will, turn as you will, nothing you do shall stand. The old serpent dies. The young wolf endures.”

“Take your lies and nonsense elsewhere,” snarled Stercus, snatching his hand away. “Not even one word of truth do you speak, and you should praise Mitra in his mercy that I do not take your life.”

“You laugh now. You jeer now,” said the Cimmerian.

“Come the day, see who laughs. Come the time, see who jeers.”

“Get you gone, or I will stretch your carcass lifeless in the dust,” said Stercus. “I have slain stouter men for smaller insults.”

“I go,” said the barbarian. “I go, but I know what I am talking about. I have seen the wolf. I have counted his teeth. You are but a morsel, if you draw consolation from that.”

Stercus swung up the sword with a shout of rage. The Cimmerian who called himself a seer skipped back between two tree trunks that grew too close together to let Stercus follow unless he dismounted. Not reckoning the barbarian worth his while to pursue, he rode on toward Duthil.

By the time the Aquilonian got to the village, he had all but forgotten the warning, if that was what it was, the barbarian had given him. He looked ahead, toward seeing Tarla, toward tempting her into wanting for herself all the things he wanted for her. He sometimes thought the temptation the greatest sport of all, even finer than the fulfillment.

When Stercus came into Duthil, he saw the blacksmith’s son walking up the street with the evidence of a successful hunt on his shoulders. The Aquilonian noble reined in and waved. “Hail, Conan,” he called. “How are you today?”

The boy’s face flushed with anger. Stercus knew Conan loved him not; that knowledge only piqued his desire to annoy the young Cimmerian. He suspected that Conan held some childish affection of his own for Tarla, which would do him no good at all when set against the full-blooded and refined passion of a sensual adult.

“How are you, I say?” Stercus’ voice grew sharper.

“Well, till now,” answered Conan in thickly accented Aquilonian — though somewhat less so than when Stercus began coming to Duthil. Like a parrot, the boy could mimic the sounds his betters made.

And, as Stercus realized after a moment, Conan could also ape, or try to ape, the studied insults a grown man might offer. Had a grown man, one of his own countrymen, offered Stercus such an insult, he would have wiped it clean with blood. The
code duello
was ancient and much revered in Aquilonia. Dirtying his sword with the blood of a barbarous blacksmith’s boy never once occurred to Stercus. But he did suddenly spur his horse forward, and the destrier would have trampled Conan if the youngster had not sprung to one side with an agility that belied his loutish size. Laughing, Stercus rode on to the house of Balarg the weaver, the house of Tarla, the house of what he conceived to be his affection.

Conan found his mother up and about, filling a pot from a great water jar and hanging it to boil above the hearth. “You should rest,” he told her reproachfully.

“Oh? And if I rest, who will cook our food? I see no slave in the house,” replied Verina. “And what’s the point of rest? When your father begins to hammer, every stroke seems to go straight through my head.” She raised a hand to press it to her temple.

“I’m sorry,” said Conan, who could have slept sound and undisturbed were Mordec beating a sword blade into shape six inches from his ear. He set down the burden he had brought from the forest. “See the fine venison we’ll have?”

His mother looked at it, sniffed, and coughed. To Conan’s relief, the cough did not begin one of her spasms. “This will do for tomorrow, I suppose,” she said indifferently. “For stew today, I killed the black hen who’d stopped laying. We may as well get some use out of her.”

“Ah,” said Conan, and then, a moment later, “All right.” He did his best to make himself believe it was.

“If you want to be useful, you can cut up these turnips and parsnips and onions for the stew —and chop up this head of cabbage, too —not too fine, mind you, or it will cook too fast when I put it in,” said his mother.

“Of course,” said Conan. As the knife tore through the vegetables, he wished it were tearing through Count Stercus’ flesh instead. He imagined blood spurting from every cut, not colorless turnip juice. The picture pleased him, so much that he sliced harder than ever.

“Easy, easy,” said Verina. ‘These are not heads to be set above the doorposts of our house, you know. No need for murder here.”

“Oh, but there is,” said Conan. “If ever a man wanted killing, that damned Aquilonian is the one.”

“I doubt he’s any worse than the rest of them,” said Verina.

“He is,” insisted Conan. “The way he sniffs around — around this village is nothing but a disgrace.” He felt uncomfortable mentioning Tarla to his mother.

She understood what he was talking about even when he did not talk about it. With a toss of the head, she answered, “That one is a little hussy. If she weren’t, the accursed Aquilonian wouldn’t keep sniffing around her. I don’t know why you worry about her. She isn’t good enough for you.”

Conan started chopping the vegetables even more savagely than before. His mother did not think anyone was good enough for him. Conan did not know what he thought. He only knew that, as he passed from boy to man, he cared less with each new day that went by whether a girl was good enough for him. Whether she was interested in him —that was another story, and one in which he had a burning interest.

“But don’t mind me,” said Verina. “After I’m dead and gone, you and your father will settle things to your own liking, I’m sure.” She began to cough again, softly but steadily.

“Here. Drink some water, Mother.” Conan hurried to dip some out of the jar and into a mug. He handed it to his mother and stood over her until she did drink. Not so long before, she had been taller than he; he remembered those days very well. Now he towered over her. Before too long, he would overtop his father, too. That was a truly dizzying thought. No one in Duthil could match Mordec’s inches.

Mordec came back into the kitchen from the smithy, as if thinking of him were enough to conjure him up. Sweat ran down his fire-reddened face and forearms, washing clean rills through the soot that covered them. “I could do with some water, too, son,” he rasped. “Fetch me a cup, if you’d be so kind.”

“Aye, Father.” Conan found a larger mug and dipped it full.

“My thanks.” Mordec drained it in one long draught. Then he went to the water jar himself. He filled the mug again. Instead of drinking from it, he poured it over his head. “Ahhh!” he said: a long exhalation of pleasure. Water ran through his hair, ran through his beard, and dripped from the end of his nose.

“There you go, making part of my kitchen floor into mud,” said Verina shrilly. As in the smithy, the floor here was only of rammed earth. When it got wet, it did turn muddy.

But Conan’s father only shrugged. “Give it a little while and it will dry, Verina,” he said. “As for me, though, I needed that, by Crom. I’m surprised I didn’t hiss like hot iron quenched when I poured it over me.”

“Did you see Count Stercus today, Father?” asked Conan.

Mordec’s mouth thinned to a narrow line. “I saw him, all right. What if I did?”