Conan the Savage (2 page)

The man, Tamsin saw with wonder, was black-bearded and gold-helmeted, dressed- in horseman’s leathers and high black boots. He rode with five other men on similarly splendid mounts of different colours. All of them approached the farm at a trot, reining up in the space now abandoned by the snarling, slinking dogs.

At that moment, Tamsin’s mother emerged from the fowl roost. Obviously still ignorant of the arrivals, she brushed feathers and seed husks from the auburn braids of her hair and her brief, patterned shift. On her sudden appearance there was a stir among the halted riders, which was cut off by a sharp command from the flag-bearer. Startled, the young mother stood looking up as die black-bearded man spoke in gruffly accented Brythunian.

“We are of Einholt’s Nemedian mercenary troop, riding to the aid of King Typhas in the southern wars. As you can see, our banner bears the gryphon, your country’s royal sigil. By your king’s authority, we are warranted to make our way through the countryside.”

Old Higgin spoke up staunchly in his drawling, cracked voice. “The king’s High Road is back that way, half a league or less,” he said, pointing down the meadow. “Just make your way through the glade and follow the stream’s course. You are sure to find it.”

“We know that, old man,” the leader said over the laughter of his troops. “We are a foraging party, instructed to gather supplies for our march.” His eyes rose to fix on Tamsin’s mother. “Our needs are to be filled, by order of your king.” Old Higgin coughed to regain the mercenary’s attention. “Well, I know not—ours is a poor farmstead. But if you will tell me what you need, I can try to fetch it.”

“Old man, we need provisions for our march to the Corinthian frontier. Food, stock, cattle fodder—carts to carry it in, and dray animals if we can get them. We need things you cannot possibly fetch,” he added with a curt laugh.

The old retainer scarcely seemed to hear him. “Alas, we are very poor here. A bite of bread, to be sure, and a sup from our kettle—you are welcome to what we have, within reason.” Tamsin heard her mother’s voice ring out abruptly. “Higgin, give them anything they want.”

“Well, yes, I suppose, by the king’s command,” the old man muttered, looking from his mistress to the horsemen, “but for what recompense, I ask you.”

The standard-bearer laughed, lowering his pole. “Old fool, do you really suppose it makes a trollop’s-fart of difference to great King Typhas in his palace at Sargossa whether we strip this miserable place or raze it to the ground? Will it matter to him, when he needs mercenaries to bail him out of a war on the other side of his empire?” “His Majesty’s royal collops are in a sling in Corinthia!” one of the mounted soldiers jeered.

“Aye, but this Brythunian kingdom of his is a hospitable land,” another mercenary cried. “They do not hide away their women!”

At this remark and the hooting laughs that followed it, Tamsin’s mother turned one brief, frightened look toward her daughter where she crouched inside the stump. For the merest instant their eyes met; then she turned and bolted away in the other direction, headed toward the forest—to be followed by an explosion of hoofbeats as the riders broke out of their loose formation.

As they charged forward, they rode straight over Higgin and Velda. Tamsin watched it happen with amazement; one moment the old couple stood there, then their grey heads could be glimpsed bobbing amid dust and hooves. Then they were not to be seen any more.

Meanwhile, the foremost rider leaped from his saddle directly onto the little girl’s mother, dragging her down and rolling with her in the meadow grass and flowers.

Tamsin crouched there for a long time, clutching her doll beside her. The two of them watched as one man after another dismounted and went to where Mama was, behind the grazing, idle horses. The rest of the mercenaries, when they weren’t doing that, went into the cottage and the other buildings, bringing out things in sacks and leading off the cow and the ox. Two of the men went into the fowl pen and after a lot of squawking, came out with big bundles of quiet birds. The dogs had stopped barking; they were lying in the farmyard with arrows sticking out of them. Tamsin thought she saw Higgin and Velda lying there, too.

Then one of the mercenaries yelled in a foreign language, and some of the others got up on their horses. Someone was coming. It was Papa, Tamsin saw, returning from the fields on the other side of the stream. He was running now, carrying his long, straight-bladed hoe in one hand. Tamsin knew he would chase the bad men away and fix everything back again; she raised up her doll Ninga so that she could see too.

When Papa got near the farm and saw what they had done, his face twisted up and he began yelling strange, loud words that were hard to hear. He raised his straight hoe in one hand like a spear and ran toward the men.

The leader with the flag had gotten back onto his horse and kicked its sides to make it run forward. Then the worst thing happened. The leader lowered his pole with the flag on it, and the end of it went right through Papa.

It was like a spear too, but longer than the hoe. When it went into Papa, he bellowed like a bull and fell over on his side. The yellow flag was all crumpled against his chest, and it began to turn red.

Tamsin screamed when she saw it, but no one heard, because the bearded man’s horse screamed too, and all the mercenaries were yelling and cheering around their leader. After that, she understood that she had to keep quiet. She watched as the mercenary pulled his spear out of Papa, straightened the bloody flag, and raised it over his head again, without even getting off his horse.

After that, the mercenaries took more things from the cottage and loaded them into the ox cart, driving it and the other animals back up the meadow. The last thing they did was to take fire out of the kitchen hearth and spread it onto die roofs of all the buildings, laughing all the time. They had found Papa’s wine, and one of them raised his bottle, calling out, “A toast to King Typhas and his generous subjects!”

As they rode away, the buildings roared with fire and began to cave in. Tamsin hid Ninga’s face against her side so that the doll would not have to look.

II

The Treasure Pit

“Work, you mewling, miserable wretches!” The Brythunian guardsman’s taunts echoed down from the catwalk high above the rocky chasm. “Dig and grovel, and send the fruits of your toil up in yonder baskets! Else there will be no rinds and crusts to gnaw for your supper tonight!”

The mine was a crude open working, a broad, deep quarry yawning like a pale grave under the chill northern sky. Its walls were steep, formed of brittle, ragged shale. Its shape was irregular, because the vast pit tended to widen itself informally as its sides were undercut, either in planned cavings or unexpected landslides.

Such occurrences, whether foreseen or not, were ever a threat to the miners who toiled below. Even so, since every labourer was a convict, the many deaths and injuries were regarded as unimportant. The products of the mine were in any case so prized, its raw gold and varieties of gemstones so valuable, that any amount of death and suffering would have been deemed worthwhile in obtaining them.

“I tell you, Conan, do not cut too deeply into the base of the south wall. The cliff will require stoping. This rotten stone will not sustain a tunnel, as many have learned to their sorrow.”

The warning voice was that of Tjai, Conan’s fellow prisoner and toiler in the quarry’s depths. He was an Ilbarsi hillman, hailing from far to the south-eastward; having made the mistake of travelling to Sargossa to find his fortune, he had found more than he could have wished. As fellow foreigners from remote but equally savage tribes, the two convicts had discovered a mutual bond, apart from the others—the dregs and sweepings of Brythunia’s town gutters, who made up most of the mine’s labour draft. Crom only knew how Tjai had come to wander so many hundreds of leagues from his home; but the hillman’s canniness and lean, wiry toughness rivalled the Cimmerian’s own fierce stamina.

Conan himself was not quite sure where in the world he was, and exactly how he had been brought there. After his arrest and imprisonment in the capital, the world had changed; scatterings of white lotus dust cast into his face by his warders had temporarily blinded and paralysed him. His captivity after that had become a hazy, drug-slaked stupor.

He knew only that, chained together with a half-score other drugged captives, he had travelled countless leagues in the hold of some wooden conveyance, either a wagon or a barge. None of the prisoners had known much, or been lucid enough to tell it, except that they were bound for a slave mine in the north of the country: a remote place of fantastic wealth, from which none ever returned.

Conan now rued the dim awareness that even while lying in a groggy, paralytic state, he had found those rumours tantalizing. He cursed himself, along with all the fickle bitch-fates, because on the one occasion when he might have escaped—when he was being strapped across the back of a mule for a night passage over rugged mountain trails— he had lacked either the strength or the spirit to break free of his captors, slay one or two of them, and drag himself away into the brush. Instead, his weak, bleary will had been lulled by the notion that because his destination was a mere work camp and not a prison, escape would be possible at any time. After all, he had temporized, it might pay to learn the location of the mine and, over a period of days, pilfer some of its wealth.

In truth, knowing the whereabouts of such a rich lode— or even the transport routes by which its product was carried to civilization—would have been a boon to a skilled and daring thief. But without any real knowledge and the freedom to exploit it, the advantage melted away to nothing. The mine was a well-kept state secret, and had proved more escape-proof than any prison cell Conan had yet been shut up in.

“Conan,” Tjai now exclaimed, “your ox-brained northern zeal places us both at peril! If we undercut this cliff face much farther, it will slump down of its own weight. It will bury the two of us for our trouble!” Resting his pick-head on a jagged chunk of shale, the Ilbarsi leaned against the handle letting perspiration wash dark runnels down his thin, dusty-olive limbs. “Besides, there is no gold here! If you so crave the sight of the stuff, go help them strip out yonder pocket.” He nodded toward a sunlit comer where a half-dozen ragged prisoners worked with feverish, pointless intensity amid the sparkle of rich yellow ore and watery-pink crystal.

“No, Tjai,” Conan grunted, “bear with me a while longer. Come and help hew away this buttress that so cramps our space in this little cubbyhole. At least we are out of reach of the guards, with their infernal pelting and pestering! Arrh, Crom blast these cheap bronze tools! They lose their edge and scarcely do more than bludgeon the stone!”

The convicts, in their unremitting toil, never left the pit They worked, slept, ate, and voided in its dusty depths, preferring the chill shadows of the southern half by day and the sun-warmed northern side after sunset. Never in Co-nan’s experience was a ladder used, and never did an outside guard or worker descend into the hole. On the rare occasion when the Cimmerian found a rope hanging unattended, he knew better than to swarm up it seeking escape, lest his playful captors cut or unreel the line from above. Tjai had told him of prisoners being dropped to their death or crippled by such wanton tricks.

“Nay, Tjai, you Ilbarsi hound! Do not dig so near that other pillar! It is narrow and fragile, as you can see. Why, a good, hard levering of this timber prop might crack right through it—and see, it supports this whole overburden that looms so massively over our heads! Dig with care, as you yourself have wisely cautioned.”

The mine guards, outfitted with the yellow-tan tunics and fur-trimmed iron caps of elite Brythunian troopers, lived and patrolled along the pit’s lofty rim. Catwalks—narrow plank ramp ways secured by ropes—ringed the quarry’s perimeter and made supervision of the work easier. There were also cabins set at intervals along the edge— porched dwellings that could be hauled back from potential landslide areas on wooden skids.

The guards’ role was to occupy and maintain these structures, and without overmuch concern for any rocks and debris they dislodged on the heads of the toilers below, to watch the prisoners, dispense tools and food, and oversee the hauling out of ore and rock tailings. This latter work was performed by the convicts from beneath, using the rope pulleys and open metal baskets controlled by the guards.

The warders could direct the digging too, if they saw fit, by means of commands shouted down through speaking-trumpets, or by hurling or slinging stones and filth to enforce swift obedience. This kind of close supervision was seldom necessary, unless the workers seemed to be sabotaging the dig.

In actual practice, the guards’ supervision of their prisoners was lax and arbitrary. They could easily speed up labour by controlling the food supply, throwing down grain and hardtack only in proportion to the amount of ore and tailings that were hauled up. Water, too, would doubtless have been controlled, had it not been naturally available in the form of an underground stream that flooded a lower fissure of the digging and ran out by an unseen channel. As things stood, a good part of the guards’ time was spent in gambling, whether at lots and dice or on the fall of small pebbles that were slung or tossed at convicts as they toiled in the quarry’s depths.

“Now, Tjai, we must leave this spot.” Stretching his massive shoulders, Conan wiped sweat and dust from his tanned, grimy face. “You were right, ’tis foolhardy to work in such a cloistered hollow, with the paunch of the earth sagging over our heads. I thought I heard the mountain shift just now, didn’t you? Come, fellow, let us flee!” Tossing down his pick-hammer and taking up the end of a spliced, knotted rope that he trailed after him, he led the way out of the broad cul-de-sac the two of them had burrowed into the cliff.

“Ahoy, you dogs, get clear of the wall!” At the Cimmerian’s shout, the nearby workers, without stopping to look or question, threw down their tools and bolted with him. “Tjai and I have heard grumblings, and yon cliff is sure to fell! Come, fellows, save yourselves!” The running, leaping fugitives soon numbered a score and more—bearded dusty hobgoblins, shouting and scrambling over the rock-strewn floor of the chasm into the bright sun at its centre.