Conan of Venarium (21 page)

“You are the one who speaks Aquilonian, so you would know better than I,” said Balarg. Mordec glowered and flushed; the weaver might have accused him of friendship with the invaders. Sensing his advantage, Balarg went on, “Besides, if we listened to everything the soldiers said, we would never have time for anything else. I think your quibbles spring from a different seed, myself.”

“What nonsense are you spewing now?” rumbled Mordec irritably.

“Nonsense? I doubt it.” Balarg was a clever man, and, like most clever men, pleased with his own cleverness, and with showing it off. “You complain about the Aquilonian because you aim to match Tarla with your own great gowk of a son. I’ve seen him casting sheep’s eyes at her often enough.”

Mordec scowled, for at least part of what the weaver said was true. “He’d make a better match for her than any other you’d find in Duthil, and you know it.”

“In Duthil? Aye, likely enough.” But Balarg spoke as if Duthil were a very small place indeed. “Tarla, though, Tarla might find a match in any of the villages of Cimmeria, and pick and choose from among her suitors.”

“What if- ” But Mordec broke off with that question unspoken. If he asked Balarg whether Tarla would entertain a suitor from Venarium, he would mortally insult the other villager, and their feud would burst into flame whether he wanted it to or not. Or, worse, Balarg might make it plain that he would entertain a suit from Stercus, in which case Mordec did not see how he could keep from inflaming the feud himself.

Being a clever man, Balarg saw much of that, if not all, regardless of whether Mordec finished the question. “I think you have said enough,” growled the weaver. “I think you have said too much. And I think you had better go, or one of our wives will be a widow before the sun sets tonight.”

“Oh, I’ll leave,” said Mordec. “But I will tell you one thing more, Balarg: you are no blacksmith, and you know nothing of the fire you play with.” He turned on his heel and tramped out into the street.

The boys’ ball came bounding toward him. Before he thought, he drew back his foot, then shot it forward. His toe met the ball squarely and sent it flying over the houses of Duthil and far out into the fields beyond. The boys skidded to a stop, their necks craning comically as they turned in unison to follow the flight of the ball. When at last it thudded to earth, some of them ran after it. Others stared in awe at Mordec.

“Nobody can kick like that,” said one.

“He just did, Wirp,” said another. Wirp shook his head, manifestly disbelieving what he had just seen.

Mordec said not a word. He slowly walked back to the smithy, wishing he could boot sense into Balarg as readily as he had vented his spleen on a harmless ball.

On sentry-go outside the Aquilonian camp by Duthil, Granth son of Biemur watched Count Stercus ride south toward Venarium. Turning to his cousin, he said, “I wish he’d find some other village to visit.”

Nodding, Vulth answered, “You aren’t the only one. The more he comes here, the more trouble I see down the road.”

Out of the side of his mouth, Benno said, “Here comes trouble closer than down the road.”

Sergeant Nopel emerged from the fortified encampment and bore down on the sentries. Granth tried to straighten up, and also tried not to be too noticeable as he straightened: that might have made Nopel see he’d been slouching. Nopel noticed almost everything; noticing was part of what made him a sergeant. But he only waved now, a world-weary flap of the arm that said he had larger things to fret about than whether his sentries slouched. “As you were, boys,” he called.

Despite that, Granth did not relax from the brace he had taken. “What’s up, Sergeant?” he asked.

Nopel did not answer right away. He looked toward Duthil. After a moment, Granth realized he was looking beyond Duthil toward the trackless wilderness still inhabited by wild, unsubdued Cimmerians. He said, “The tribes are stirring.”

Granth and Vulth and Benno and Daverio stared at one another in consternation. “How do you know that?” asked Daverio.

“How do I know?” said Nopel. “How do I know? By Mi-tra, I’ll tell you how I know. I’ve just come from talking with Captain Treviranus, and he told me. That’s how I know.” By the way he spoke, he might have had the news from the gods themselves.

Granth was not prepared to disagree with him. As far as the Gunderman was concerned, Treviranus made as good a garrison commander as anyone could want. If he said a thing was so, so it was likely to be. But cynical Daverio asked the question that had barely occurred to Granth: “Well, how does the captain know?”

“How does he know?” Sergeant Nopel sounded as if he could not believe his ears. But the Bossonian bowman nodded. Nopel’s frown was fearsome. “Why, because he’s heard, that’s how.”

“Well, who told him?” persisted Daverio. “It wasn’t anybody from here, or we’d all have heard about it by now.”

And Granth could hardly disagree with that, either. Anything anyone in the garrison knew, everyone in the garrison knew in a matter of minutes. The Gundermen and Bossonians, a tiny island in a vast, hostile sea, had no secrets from one another.

“I don’t know who told him. I only know what he told me,” said Nopel. He fixed Daverio with a challenging stare. “You want to go tell him he’s wrong? You want to tell him you know better, and we can all relax? He’ll be glad to hear that. You bet he will.”

Daverio was a hard and stubborn man, but no common soldier would have been so rash as to beard Captain Treviranus in his den. He shook his head now, saying, “I’m trying to find out what’s going on, that’s all. If the tribes are stirring out there somewhere, what are we supposed to do about it?”

Exactly how vast was Cimmeria? Granth did not know, not in any detail; he knew only that the corner of it Count Stercus’ army had worried off was just that—a corner. Countless clans of barbarians — clans assuredly uncounted by any Aquilonian, at all odds —still prowled the dark woods in squalid freedom. If they were to band together against the soldiers and settlers from the south— “Aye, Sergeant,” said Granth. “What are we supposed to do about it?”

“I was coming to that,” said Nopel portentously. “Did you think I wasn’t? We’ve got to push scouts up to the north and see with our own eyes what the damned barbarians are up to.”

“We can send scouts north, all right,” said Vulth. “We can send ‘em, but will we ever see ‘em again if we do?”

“And why wouldn’t we?” demanded Nopel.

All the sentries laughed. The laughs were not pleasant. “Why, Sergeant?” said Granth. “On account of the damned Cimmerians will do for them, that’s why. Do you think we can kill ten for one for what happens up there?”

Nopel grunted. He turned and tramped away without answering. Vulth clapped Granth on the back. “Well done, cousin,” said Vulth. “You made the sergeant shut up, and not everybody can boast of that.”

Benno had a more practical way of congratulating Granth. He took his water bottle off his belt and offered it to him. When Granth tilted back his head and drank, he wasn’t too surprised to find sweet, strong wine running down his throat. He took another pull at the bottle, and then another, until at last Benno snatched it out of his hand.

Granth wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Benno glowered. Vulth chuckled. “You see?” he said to the archer. “He’s figuring out what it’s all about.”

“It’s about him being greedy, that’s what,” said Benno. But even the touchy Bossonian seemed not too put out.

For his part, Granth looked to the north. He had seen one swarm of Cimmerians bearing down on the army of which he was a small part. In his mind’s eye, he saw another, this one bigger, fiercer, more ferocious. Until that moment, he had not imagined anything more ferocious than the onslaught he and his countrymen had so narrowly survived. Now he discovered his imagination was stronger than he had thought possible.

“What do we do if the barbarians come down on us, the way Nopel and the captain say they might?” he asked, worn’ in his voice.

“Kill ‘em,” Vulth answered stolidly. “Kill ‘em till they’re piled so high, they have to climb over their cousins to jump down onto our pikes.”

When Granth looked toward the village of Duthil, everything seemed tranquil enough. Women carried water from the stream back to their homes. Wood smoke rose from the smoke holes in their roofs. A couple of men stood talking. Neither of them paid the least attention to the Aquilonian encampment. Two years after the fight at Fort Venarium — now the citadel at the heart of the town of Venarium — the villagers might have accepted the camp as part of the landscape. A dog nosed at a mound of garbage. He ignored the encampment, too. He might have been sincere. Granth had his doubts about the Cimmerians.

If more barbarians swarmed down out of the north, what would the folk of Duthil do? Would they take up arms and fight alongside the Aquilonians against the new invaders? Would they sit quietly and wait to see how the other Cimmerians fared against the men from the south? Or would they grab whatever weapon came to hand and try to murder every
Gunderman
and Bossonian they could find?

Granth did not know, of course. Only a god could know the future. But the pikeman had a good idea which way he would bet.

He said, “We ought to haul some of the villagers out of that place and squeeze them. To hell with me if they don’t know more than they’re letting on.”

“Not a bad notion,” agreed Vulth. “Some of the women seem plenty squeezable — or they would, if you didn’t think they’d knife you for touching them.”

“They act that way when others are around to see, sure enough,” said Benno. “But some of them are friendly enough if you can get them off by themselves.”

“Braggart,” said Granth. Benno preened.

“Braggart and liar both,” said Vulth. “Before I believe a word he says, I want to know who he means, and I want to know how he knows.”

“Who? The miller’s wife, for one.” Benno looked toward Duthil and licked his chops. “And how do I know? When the millstones start grinding, the Cimmerian who runs them has to make sure they behave, and then he can’t make sure his lady behaves. And the stones are so noisy, he can’t hear a thing that goes on anywhere close by.”

After looking at each other, Granth and his cousin both shook their heads. “Braggart,” said the one. “Liar,” said the other. Benno protested, but not, Granth judged, in the way he would have it he really had done the things he claimed to have done. Soldiers, of course, had been telling lies about women ever since Mitra first let there be soldiers and women.

Then something else occurred to Granth. “Maybe the young one Count Stercus keeps coming back for will stick a knife in him one of these days, and maybe we’ll all be better off if she does.”

“No.” Vulth shook his head. “Think of the vengeance we’d have to wreak. Have you got the stomach for massacring a whole village?”

“For Stercus’ sake? For him doing what he’s got no business doing, with somebody he’s got no business doing it with?” Granth did not need to think that over; he knew the answer at once. “Not a bit of it.” But then he hesitated. “To save our own necks, though? That’s a different story.” None of the other Aquilonian soldiers argued with him.

Few would have called Count Stercus a patient man. In the matter of the weaver’s daughter in Duthil, though, he had been more patient than most of the debauched rogues who had known him down in Aquilonia would have dreamt possible. For one thing, he reckoned the game with Tarla worth the candle. And, for another, he still painfully remembered the consequences of his impatience in Tarantia. If not for that, he never would have found himself reduced to pursuing a chit of a barbarian girl here at the misty northern edge of the world.

And so, patience—patience to a point, at any rate. But Stercus was no Stygian priest, no mystic from the distant, legendary land of Khitai, to practice patience for its own dusty sake. He was an Aquilonian to the core: a man of action, a man of deeds. He could bide his time —he had bided his time—with some definite end in view, but if the end remained in view, remained close enough to reach out and touch, he would, sooner or later, reach out and touch it.

That time, at last, had come.

He rode forth from Venarium in helm and back-and-breast, more to make a brave show when he came to Duthil than for any other reason. These days, the country north of what had become a booming little town put him more in mind of the Bossonian Marches or Gunderland than of the dark, brooding wilderness Cimmeria had been before the coming of the gold lion on black.

Fair-haired men and women worked in fields and garden plots carved from primeval wilderness. Smoke rose from the chimneys of sturdy cabins. Garrisons overawed surviving Cimmerian villages. Some of those forts might grow into towns, as Venarium had. The barbarians themselves would surely go to the wall, overwhelmed by the strength and majesty of advancing Aquilonian civilization. Contemplating their fate, Stercus allowed himself a certain delicate melancholy. It was a pity, but the count did not see how it could be helped.

Even now, so soon after the initial conquest, most of the traffic on the road was Aquilonian: more settlers’ wagons coming into this new land; soldiers who helped keep the settlers safe; merchants and peddlers of all sorts, intent on taking what profit they could from the land in which they found themselves. And, coming the other way, down toward Venarium, farmers who had more closely followed the army were bringing first fruits and vegetables to market. An oxcart full of onions might not seem such a wonderful thing at first glance, but Stercus smiled as he rode past it, for those were Aquilonian onions.

Only a handful of Cimmerians were on the road. Except for the sake of a drunken carouse or luxuries they could not make for themselves, the barbarians seldom went to Venarium. They wanted little to do with the Aquilonian presence swelling in their midst. That they wanted little to do with it was in Stercus’ eyes yet another harbinger of their eventual extinction. If they could not see they were in the presence of something greater than themselves, that went a long way toward proving they did not deserve to survive.