Conan of Venarium (30 page)

After a while, only eight or ten Cimmerians were left with him. He did not think they were in Gunderland any more by then. They had penetrated into Aquilonia proper. The folk who dwelt here looked different and spoke differently from the Gundermen Conan had come to know so well. Many of them did not seem to recognize the raiders for what they were, either.

Conan gulped wine in a farmhouse the men from the north had just plundered. The farmer lay dead on the floor at his feet. “It’s been a long time since Cimmerians pushed this deep into Aquilonia,” he exulted.

Talorc had drunk more than Conan had —had drunk himself sad, in fact. He began to weep now, saying, “We’ll never go home again, either.”

“Well, so what?” said Conan. “I’ve got nothing to go home to, anyhow. Numedides’ men made damned sure of that. Best thing I can do now is pay them back in their own coin.”

Talorc wept harder. “They’ll kill us.” He was hardly older than Conan.

“They haven’t done it yet,” said Conan. “They can keep on trying.” He stirred the dead Aquilonian farmer with his boot. “Until they manage, I’m not going to worry about it.” Some of the other Cimmerians laughed. The rest, more inclined to Talorc’s mood than to Conan’s, drank until the farmhouse held nothing more to drink.

They left the place before sunup the next morning. As day brightened, Conan could see a few clouds of smoke rising well to the north: the sign other Cimmerian bands still roamed their enemies’ land. His companions did not fire the farmhouse. That would have brought Aquilonian notice to them, and they had already had more notice from King Numedides’ soldiers than they wanted.

Later that day, a squadron of Aquilonian knights rode north past them without slowing down, without recognizing them for what they were. Conan laughed at that, but not for long. The knights might not trouble him, but they would help harry his countrymen out of Aquilonia. He wished he could do them a bad turn. The worst turn he could think of was simply surviving.

Somewhere to the south and east lay Tarantia, Numedides’ glittering capital. Had any Cimmerian ever reached it? The blacksmith’s son had no idea. He did want to see it before the Aquilonians hunted him down, though. That would be a triumph of sorts.

Two days later, he discovered that not all the Aquilonians failed to see Cimmerians for what they were. A raucous cry rang out: “There they are, the murdering bastards!” About a dozen men from the south, farmers and townsfolk kitted out with the same odd mix of weapons and armor as the brigands bore, came loping toward them across a field. One of the Aquilonians shouted something else: “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Another field, even broader, lay on the far side of the road. Conan did not think flight would serve the Cimmerians. A savage grin on his face, he turned to the others who had come so far from their northern homes. “If we kill a few of them, the rest will flee,” he said. “We can do it!”

There, however, he miscalculated. Talorc was a good bowman despite his tears, and knocked down two Aquilonians before the rest could close. But that did not discourage the ones who still lived. On they came, shouting King Numedides’ name. The battle that followed would be forever nameless, but it was as fierce as many bigger fights of which the chroniclers sang for centuries.

Talorc fell almost at once, fulfilling his own dark prophecy. He wounded one of the two Aquilonians who had assailed him. Another Cimmerian soon slew the man. The fight went on without them. Neither side showed even the slightest interest in flight. It soon became clear things would end only when either Cimmerians or Aquilonians had no one left who could stand on his feet or wield a weapon.

Up until then, Conan had dealt out wounds in plenty, but had received hardly more than scratches. In that fight he learned edged steel could bite his flesh, too, and that it was no more pleasant when it did than he would have guessed. But not a cry of pain escaped him when he was hurt; he would not yield to wounds any more than he had yielded to his father’s hard hands. And, since none of the gashes he received was enough to cripple him, he went on fighting, too.

One of the Aquilonians was a great bear of a man: not quite so tall as Conan, perhaps, but even wider through the shoulders, with enormous arms, a thick chest, and an even thicker belly that hung down over the top of his breeches. He was a farmer, not a soldier; his only weapon was a spade. But he swung it with a wild man’s lunatic savagery. It split flesh, broke bones, shattered skulls. One Cimmerian after another went down before him.

Conan, likewise, was the champion for the men of the north. After half an hour, those two were the only fighters not weltering in their gore. Conan hefted his father’s axe. The hulking Aquilonian advanced on him, still clutching that blood-dripping spade. A half-crazed grin stretched across his face. “One of us dies,” he said.

“Aye.” Conan nodded. Here was a foe he could respect. “One of us does.” He threw the axe, a trick he had taught himself between bouts of brigandage. Its head should have torn out the Aquilonian’s heart.

Clang
! Fast as a striking serpent, the big man knocked the flying axe aside with the spade. His grin got wider. “Looks like that one’s going to be you.”

Conan made no reply. He did the last thing the Aquilonian could have expected: he rushed straight for him. The foe hesitated for a fatal heartbeat, wondering which blow to use to strike down the apparent madman he faced. But Conan’s madness had method to it; the Aquilonian had just started to swing back the spade when Conan seized the handle just below the blade.

He heaved and twisted. So did the enormous Aquilonian. Whichever of them could wrest the spade from the other would live. His enemy would die. It was as simple as that. The Aquilonian’s first couple of jerks on the handle were almost contemptuous. He had never yet met a man who could match his strength.

But then he grunted in surprise. He set his feet. He took a better grip. The youth who opposed him might have been made of iron and leather and powered by a lion’s heart, or a dragon’s. Strain as the Aquilonian would, he could make no progress against him. Indeed, he felt himself beginning to fail. A few more twists, and he would be without the weapon that had worked such slaughter.

“No!” he cried hoarsely, and tried to stamp on Conan’s foot. But that foot was not there when the Aquilonian’s boot crashed down. And, distracted from the struggle over the spade, the Aquilonian felt it rip from his fingers. “No!” he shouted once more, this time in despair and disbelief. That was the last word that ever passed his lips.

Breathing hard, Conan stood over his corpse for a moment. Then he threw aside the murderous spade. It had served him well enough, but he knew there were better weapons. He had his choice of any on the field now, and of the loot his comrades and their foes had carried.

His father’s axe on his shoulder, a fine sword on his hip, his belt pouch heavy with silver lunas and golden rings, he strode down the road toward Tarantia.

A curious thing happened then. As long as Conan was part of a band of Cimmerians, all the Aquilonians in the countryside had done their best to hunt him down. When he walked along by himself, they forgot all about him. One lone youth, they seemed to say to themselves, could never threaten their grip on this kingdom. Knights who might well have slain him on sight had they found him in company with others of his kind rode past him without a second glance — sometimes even without a first.

And the deeper into Aquilonia he got, the more he began to see that the people who lived on the land did not know him for a Cimmerian at all. They should have; he resembled them no more than a wolf takes after a lap dog. But he heard one peasant woman murmur, “How big and strong they grow them in Gunderland!” to another as he walked by. He did not catch what the second woman said in reply, but it sent both of them into a fit of giggles.

Obscurely annoyed without knowing why, Conan kept on toward the capital without giving the slightest indication he had heard the peasant women or noticed them in any way. For some unfathomable reason, that only set them giggling again.

Sometimes he would stop and chop wood or pitch hay for a meal and a place to sleep. Even his bad Aquilonian got taken for a frontier accent, not a barbarous one. He began to wonder about the ignorant folk who lived near the heart of this kingdom. The Bossonians and Gundermen he’d known had been enemies, aye, but worthy enemies. A lot of the people near Tarantia, shielded for generations by the rougher men who dwelt closer to the border, would not have lasted long had they had to defend their holdings against raiders from the north.

They did not even seem to know how lucky they were to be so shielded. Conan was drinking wine in a tavern when an Aquilonian at the next table spoke to his friend: “They say the barbarians have run us out of that Cimmeria place.”

The friend’s jowls wobbled as he swigged from his mug of wine. They wobbled again when he shrugged. “Well, so what?” he said. “Mitra, I don’t know what we wanted with such a miserable country to begin with.”

“Oh, it wasn’t us —not folk like you and me,” said the first man wisely. “It was those miserable frontiersmen. All they do is make babies, and they were looking for somewhere to put more of them.”

“Well, they didn’t find it there.” His friend laughed. “Not my worry any which way.”

“Nor mine,” said the first man. “Here, drink up, Crecelius, and I’ll buy you another round.”

They too were enemies. Even so, Conan wanted to pound their heads together. He doubted whether it would do any good, though. They were so sunk in sottish stupidity, nothing was likely to knock sense into their thick skulls.

Another thought crossed his mind later that day, after he had left the tavern behind. If the ordinary folk of Aquilonia had this view of the Cimmerian expedition, what did King Numedides think about it? Up until now, Conan had always assumed the King of Aquilonia would be gnashing his teeth in fury over his failure in the north. Now, suddenly, the blacksmith’s son wondered. Could it be that Numedides was as indifferent to the disaster as so many of his subjects seemed to be?

What sort of a sovereign was Numedides if in fact he did not care? Conan laughed gustily and shrugged. As if the doings and thoughts of the King of Aquilonia could possibly matter to him!

Villages grew thicker on the land. Some of them were more than villages: some were towns. Conan eyed them with a hunter’s unrelenting hunger. How long had it been since anyone plundered these places? The pickings would be rich indeed if anyone could.

Conan was walking along a hedgerow taller than a man when he heard argument from beyond it. Exasperation in his voice, a man was saying, “Everything will be fine, Selinda.”

“Oh, it will, will it?” exclaimed Selinda shrilly. “I think those barbarians will cut your throat as soon as you go out on the road.”

“They aren’t anywhere close to here,” said the man. “And the soldiers are driving them back. Everybody says so. And my onions need to go to Tarantia. We won’t get any money if they don’t.”

His wife —it could be none other—let out another squawk. “I don’t like it, Renorio. I don’t like it at all.”

When Conan emerged from beyond the hedgerow, they both suddenly fell silent. They stood beside a ramshackle wagon that was, sure enough, piled high with onions. A bored horse dozed in harness. A shrewd smirk crossed Renorio’s face and then, as quickly, vanished. He pointed to Conan. “You there, fellow! Can you drive a wagon?”

“Aye.” Conan had never tried in his life, but had too much pride to admit there was anything he could not do.

Neither Renorio nor Selinda, plainly, had the slightest notion he was one of the fearsome barbarians who alarmed them. The farmer said, “How would you like to make two lunas —one now, the other when you bring back the wagon?”

“What you want me to do?” asked Conan.

His accent did not faze the Aquilonian, either. “Take these onions to my brother-in-law in the great market square in Tarantia. Help Polsipher unload them, then bring the wagon back here,” answered Renorio. “Two lunas.”

By his greasy smile, Conan suspected he would not readily part with the second silver coin. Nevertheless, the blacksmith’s son nodded. “I do this.”

“Good. Good! Climb on up, then,” said Renorio. Conan did, as if he had done so a thousand times before. He waited. Reluctantly, Renorio gave him the first half of the promised payment. With a fine show of
authority,
he flicked the reins. The horse snorted in surprise —and perhaps derision —and began to walk. Behind Conan, the farmer spoke triumphantly to his wife: “There. Now you don’t have to worry any more. Are you happy? You don’t look happy. You’re never happy, seems to me.”

Selinda screeched at him. They went back to arguing.

Conan began experimenting. Well before he got to Tarantia, he learned how to use the reins to make the horse start and stop and turn to the left and right. It all seemed easy enough. When the Cimmerian came to the capital of Aquilonia, he had no trouble finding the great market square, for a stream of wagons of all sizes flooded into it. He bawled Polsipher’s name until someone answered. Renorio’s brother-in-law did not seem unduly surprised at finding a stranger on the wagon; maybe the farmer had hired others before.

They unloaded the wagon. Like Renorio, Polsipher had no idea Conan was a Cimmerian. Conan climbed back up on the wagon and drove away. Polsipher called after him: “Turn around! The farm’s back that way!”

As if he could not hear, Conan cupped a hand behind his ear and kept on in the direction he had chosen. Now that he had seen Tarantia, he wanted to learn what lay beyond it — and riding had proved easier than walking. He would not get his second silver luna, if Renorio ever would have given it to him. But the farmer would not get his wagon or his sleepy horse. Conan liked that bargain fine. If Renorio did not, too bad for him. Conan rode out of the city and off to the south and east. He had already begun to learn the trade of thief.