Conan of Venarium (23 page)

Captain Treviranus limped with a leg wound. “You’re bleeding,” he told Granth.

“Am I?” said Granth foolishly. He found he was, and that a chunk was missing from his left earlobe. He had no memory of getting hurt. Waving at the carnage all around, he asked, “What now, Captain?”

“Now I’d like to roast Stercus over a slow fire,” answered Treviranus. “The whole countryside will rise up against us on account of this —and for nothing! Nothing!”

Vulth prowled the wreckage of the village. The carrion birds that had already begun to settle flew up again, croaking in annoyance, when he walked past. They came fluttering down again after he went by. When he came back to Granth and Treviranus, his face bore a worried expression. “What’s wrong?” asked Granth.

“I’ve been looking for the blacksmith’s body,” said his cousin. “He’s big as a bear—he shouldn’t be hard to spot. But he’s not here.”

“Are you sure?” asked Treviranus. Vulth nodded. Granth could not remember seeing the smith in the brief, bloody, uneven battle. By Captain Treviranus’ frown, neither could he. The garrison commander said, “Where is he, then?” In Duthil, the Aquilonians found no answers.

Mordec and Balarg and Nectan the shepherd tramped north — farther north than they were used to going. Nectan laughed and grinned at Mordec. “For one so grim, you’ve got a rare sneaky streak in you. Setting your son to guard the sheep is the best way I know to keep him from coming with us.”

“I told him he could fight when war came again,” answered Mordec. “Soon we’ll know if it is here. That will be time enough to blood the boy in battle.” He did not say that Conan was already blooded. The time for battle might not yet be at hand. If it were not, what point to spilling his son’s secret and risking betrayal? Two had some small hope of keeping silent. Four, as far as he could see, had none — especially when he had brought Balarg with him not least to make sure the weaver spoke to no Bossonians or Gundermen. Maybe he did the man an injustice. If he did, he would apologize when the time came. Meanwhile —

Balarg pointed ahead, past the next line of evergreen-clad hills on the northern horizon. “Do you think they will be there?” he asked.

“Crom! They had better be there!” exclaimed Nectan.

“Even the invaders have begun to get wind of them,” said Mordec. “If the accursed Aquilonians think they’re there, there they’re likely to be.” He tossed his head, dismissing the question. “No point fretting about it, not now. Sooner or later, one way or the other, we’ll know.”

The most widely traveled of the men from Duthil, the blacksmith led the weaver and the shepherd along a winding trail over the side of one of those steep hills to the north. A broader, easier path went through a valley below, but Mordec steered his comrades away from it. They had already evaded two or three Aquilonian patrols. Being so obvious even ignorant foreigners could not miss it, the track in the valley was a logical place to find another.

Evade the Aquilonians they did. But the hill had not yet begun sloping down toward the north before a Cimmerian voice came out of nowhere: “Halt, dogs! Halt or you die!”

“We are of your own folk,” said Mordec. But he halted, a step in front of Balarg and Nectan.

A harsh laugh answered him. “I’ve already slain three Aquilonians trying to sneak up this way. The last one wore a black wig and spoke our language as well as I do. He died anyway— and he died hard.”

“Come and see who we are,” said Mordec calmly. “We seek Herth’s men, if they be near.” He stood ready to spring into the woods if the first arrow missed him —and if it did, he aimed to avenge himself on the man who shot it, regardless of whether that man sprang from Aquilonia or Cimmeria.

After a moment, the Cimmerian came out into the track. He had a lean, pantherish build, and held a sword ready to use. His breeks were woven in the same checked pattern as Herth’s had been. “I have friends behind me,” he warned as he strode up to the men from Duthil. He prowled around them, then grudgingly nodded. “You’re of my folk, all right. But how do you come to have Herth’s name in your mouth, when the clan he heads dwells far from these parts?”

Balarg swelled with indignation. “Did I not guest him in my own house? Did these my comrades not speak with him there?”

“I don’t know. Did you? Did they?” The Cimmerian scout was unmoved. “If you did, say your names, and maybe I will know them.” One by one, Mordec, Balarg, and Nectan told him who they were. At that, for the first time, the scout stopped sneering. “Aye, he spoke of you. Come with me, then, and I’ll take you to him.” He ducked back into the woods, to return a moment later carrying a yew-wood longbow almost as tall as he was. Without looking back, he hurried north. The three men from Duthil matched him stride for stride.

After a while, Mordec asked. “Did you truly have friends back there?”

That made the man from Herth’s clan stop and grin. “You’ll never know, will you?”

Not too much later, the blacksmith realized he was heading downhill: he and his comrades had reached the north-facing slope at last. But the trees were so thick around him that he could not see very far. He tramped on. Sooner or later, he would learn what he needed to know.

About two thirds of the way down the hillside, the forest abruptly gave way to meadow. The Cimmerian scout pressed on. Mordec stopped dead in his tracks. So did Balarg and Nectan. Their eyes were wide with astonishment. After a moment, Mordec realized his were, too.

The encampment sprawled over more than a mile of land, tents and lean-tos thrown up in the wildest disorder and men picking their way between them. The disciplined Aquilonians would have laughed themselves sick at the chaos. But they would have laughed out of the other side of their mouths at the great swarm of Cimmerians mustered here. Mordec had never dreamt so many of his countrymen could come together in one place without starting to murder one another. “Crom!” murmured Nectan, at least as astonished.

That soft exclamation made the scout realize he had lost the men he was supposed to be guiding. He looked back over his shoulder and saw them staring at the ragged but huge gathering of the clans. “Not bad, eh?”

“No.” At the sight of such a host, Mordec’s weariness fell from him like a discarded cloak. “Not bad at all.”

Conan did not mind watching Nectan’s sheep. As it often did, getting out of Duthil for a while appealed to him. If he did not have to see Tarla—and, most especially, if he did not have to see Count Stercus —he did not have so great a need to brood about what might have passed between them.

Keeping an eye on the new year’s lambs pleased him better. They were too large now for any eagle to hope to carry off, but they wandered farther from their mothers than they had when they were smaller. That made them easier for wolves to take —or so it would have, at any rate, had the blacksmith’s son not been vigilant.

On the little hillcrest from which he watched the flock, the air was crisp and clean and clear. It smelled of the meadow, and of the forests that were never far away in Cimmeria. The village stinks Conan was used to might have belonged to a different world. A slow smile stretched across his face. This was the life a man was meant to lead. If he could have spent the rest of his days herding sheep on the hillsides and meadows of his native land, he was sure he would have been happy.

He leaned back on the soft green grass, folded his hands behind his head, and smiled up at the sun, which had peeped out for a little while from behind the usually all-enshrouding Cimmerian mist. Some would have taken that pasture as an invitation to fall asleep, but Conan knew the sleeping shepherd was the one whose flock faced misfortune.

Regardless of what he knew, a yawn escaped his lips. He might have let himself doze, there in the fitful sunshine. He might have —but a sudden scream in the distance sent him scrambling to his feet.

The cry rang out again. It had to have burst from a woman’s throat—and from the throat of a woman who knew herself to be in desperate peril. Conan snatched up his bow and quiver and began to run. He spared the sheep one brief glance over his shoulder as he dashed into the forest. For the next little while, they would have to fend for themselves.

Yet another scream dinned in Conan’s ears. He nearly cried out himself, to tell the woman to keep screaming. Each shriek gave him a clearer notion of where she was. But if what harried her was man, not beast, Conan knew he would only warn that rescue was on the way. He held his tongue, but ran harder than ever.

At that pace, not even such a woodswise hunter as Conan could hope to travel silently. He heard small animals bounding away in all directions. He even saw a fox turn tail and flee. He remembered as much later. At the time, the fox scarcely registered.

Before long, he paused, panting, and cocked his head to one side. He knew he was close now, and did not want to run too far. A squawking commotion among the jays off to his left sent him hurrying in that direction. A moment later, another scream told him he had guessed well.

When he burst into the little clearing, he saw a girl on the ground, her tunic torn off, her bare skin white and glowing in the sun, her hands cruelly tied behind her, one of her ankles bound to a sapling. Above her towered a man who, by his swarthy coloring and light brown hair, had never been born in Cimmeria. The fellow looked up in surprise at Conan’s arrival.

“Stercus!” cried Conan. “Die like the beast you are, you filthy Aquilonian devil!” He nocked an arrow, raised the bow, and drew it with all the fury in him — drew it with too much fury, in fact, for the bowstring snapped and the arrow spun away uselessly.

Count Stercus’ sword already had blood on it. He gave Conan a mocking bow. “You see how Mitra favors me,” he said. “I had not thought to combine two pleasures here, but since you are kind enough to give me the chance — ” He slid forward in a fencer’s crouch.

“Run, Conan! Save yourself!” called the girl.

“Tarla!” said Conan. Her words had on him the effect opposite the one she had intended. As long as she was in danger, he would not, could not, dream of fleeing. Throwing aside the bow, which was no good to him now, he quickly stooped and grubbed two stones out of the dirt. He hurled one, the smaller, at Stercus’ head.

The Aquilonian nobleman was swift and supple as a serpent. Laughing a mocking laugh, he ducked the flying stone. But even as he ducked, Conan flung the other stone at his right hand, and it stuck squarely. Stercus let out a sudden, startled howl of pain. His sword spun through the air, to land well out of reach. Roaring like a panther, Conan charged him.

Stercus matched the blacksmith’s son in inches, but Conan was already wider through the shoulders than the invader. He thought to bear Stercus down and crush or choke the life from him. But what he thought was not what happened, for the nobleman was wise in ways of wrestling he had never imagined. Conan found himself lifted and flipped and slammed to the ground, the arrows flying out of his quiver to land all around him.

“However you like, Conan,” said Stercus, smiling a twisted smile. “For any way you like, I am your master.” He lashed out at Conan with a booted foot. But the blacksmith’s son had expected that. He grabbed the boot with both hands and yanked. With a startled squawk, Stercus toppled. But he kicked Conan away when the Cimmerian would have sprung on top of him. The two of them grappled, rolling and pummeling and cursing each other as foully as they could.

Stercus soon found the fight warmer than he really wanted. He tried to knee Conan in the groin. More by luck than by Conan’s design, Stercus caught him in the hipbone instead: a painful blow but not a disabling one. Conan seized a fallen arrow and scored the back of Stercus’ hand with the point. Stercus’ laugh was more than half snarl. “You’ll have to do better than that, barbarian!” he said.

The Aquilonian brought his knee up again, this time into the pit of Conan’s stomach. The air whooshed out of the blacksmith’s son. He writhed on the ground struggling to breathe, all else forgotten. Tarla wailed in despair. Count Stercus laughed once more, this time triumphantly.

But even as he rose to finish Conan, he suddenly gasped in horror. “I burn!” he whispered. “Oh, I burn! Poison!” He shook all over, like a man with an ague. His eyes rolled up in his head. Foam started from his mouth. He let out a bubbling shriek of supernal agony. The foam gave way to blood. Now Stercus was the one whose breath failed, and his failed forever. Tearing at his own throat for the air that would not pass, he fell over, dead.

When Conan got his breath back, he looked at the arrow that had slain Count Stercus. Sure enough, it had a greenish discoloration on the head and several inches down the length of the shaft: it was one of those he had envenomed from the fangs of the serpent he slew in the temple out of time. He had not known that when he grabbed it and used it. But who had proved mightier here, Mitra or Crom?

He scrambled to his feet, shaking off the battering that Stercus had given him as a dog coming out of a stream might shake off cold water. And then he snatched up Stercus’ sword and hurried over to Tarla.

“Conan!” she said. The sound of his name in her mouth just then was worth more to him than the rubies of Vendhya, the gold of distant Khitai. And the look of her—Conan realized, more slowly than he might have, that she likely wished he would look away rather than staring at all Stercus had uncovered. And look away he did, but only after he had seen his fill.

“Here,” he said roughly, stooping beside her. “I’ll get you loose. Hold still, now, or you’re liable to get cut.”

Freeing her ankle was the work of a moment. He had to take more care with the thongs that bound her hands, but soon they too troubled her no more. As soon as the job was done, she turned lithely, flung her arms around him, and covered his face with kisses. “I thought he’d kill you!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Conan, sweet Conan, I was so afraid!”

He hardly heard a word she said. That she held him was miracle enough. Of themselves, his arms tightened around her as well. At the pressure of his hands against her bare, smooth flesh, she squeaked in surprise — surprise, perhaps, not altogether unmixed with pleasure. A heartbeat later, though, she twisted away and snatched up the tunic Count Stercus had stripped from her. But even after she donned it once more, it scarcely covered her, for Stercus had torn it in taking it away.