Conan of Venarium (14 page)

“Did he, by Crom?” said his father, and his scowl got deeper. By the way he looked at Conan, what the boy felt was no secret to him. After a moment, Mordec went on, “If Stercus spoke to Tarla, I am going to have to speak to Balarg. That man has made a name for debauching young girls — though despite what Captain Treviranus said I did not think his gaze would light on one so young as she. But who can know? Once a man goes into the swamp, is he not likely to mire himself ever deeper?”

Conan did not follow all of that. He had only the vaguest notion of what debauching meant. All he knew was that he had not liked the way the Aquilonian looked at Tarla, and had liked the way Stercus spoke to her even less. He said, “Do you think Balarg will make her stay away from him?”

“I hope so,” answered Mordec. “I would, were she my daughter. Still, Balarg is a free man—or as free a man as any of us can be, living under Numedides’ yoke. He must choose for himself. To choose well, he must know the truth.” He looked down at the knife blade he had laid on the frame of the wheel. It still needed more work. Even so, shrugging, he went down the street toward the weaver’s house.

He came back in less than half an hour. To Conan, the wait had seemed like an eternity. “Well?” asked the boy eagerly.

“He says he will do what he can,” answered Mordec. “I do not know just what this means. I do not think Balarg knows, either. He cannot keep Tarla inside his house all day and all night. She was work to do, like anyone else in Duthil.”

Had Conan had his way, he would have had Balarg wrap Tarla in a blanket and stick her in a storeroom so Stercus’ eye could never fall on her again. Or would he? If she were hidden away like that, his own eye could never fall on her again, either. In murky, misty Cimmeria, he spied the sun seldom enough as things were. Losing sight of Tarla would be like having it torn from the sky.

Mordec set a large, hard hand on his shoulder. “We may be fretting over nothing,” the blacksmith said. “Tomorrow, Stercus may find another girl in a different village, or even some Aquilonian wench, and trouble us no more.”

“If he troubles Tarla, I will kill him myself,” said Conan fiercely.

“If he troubles Tarla, every man in the village will want to kill him,” said Mordec. “If you see clearly he has come for that—strike quick, or someone else will snatch the prize from you.”

“If he comes for that,” said Conan, “he is mine.”

Whenever Conan went into the woods to hunt these days, whenever he loosed an arrow, he imagined he was aiming at Count Stercus’ neatly bearded face. Imagining the shaft going home in the narrow space between the Aquilonian’s dark eyes made him send it with special care.

Songbirds twittered on the branches of firs and pines and spruces. Here and there in the forest, Conan had smeared birdlime on some of those branches. He hoped for grouse, but would take whatever he caught. Food was food; he approached hunting with a barbarian’s complete pragmatism and lack of sentimentality.

He had not called on Melcer’s farm since Stercus rode through Duthil. He did not care to admit, even to himself, that he had formed something of a liking for the Gunderman; the mere idea of liking any of the invaders was abhorrent to him. But it took Stercus’ visit to the village to remind him that there could be, there should be, no meeting between those who had come into Cimmeria and those who rightfully belonged here. In his own country, Melcer would have been a good enough fellow. In Conan’s country, what was he but a marauder and a thief?

Conan was gliding through the forest, not on a game track but not far from one, either, when he heard a twig snap on the track a hundred yards behind him. In an instant, he silently slipped behind the bole of a great, towering fir. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot. Deer were not usually so careless as to announce themselves.

A moment’s listening convinced him that this was no deer. It was no Cimmerian, either; no one from Conan’s people could possibly have been so inept among the trees. The blacksmith’s son grinned a wide and ferocious grin. What better sport than tracking one of the Aquilonians through the forest? Actually, Conan could think of one better: tracking the Aquilonian and then slaying him. But his father had forbidden that, and no doubt wisely, for it would cost the folk of Duthil dear.

Through gaps in the trees, Conan soon saw who the blunderer was —a squat, heavyset Gunderman named Hondren. Conan’s lip curled scornfully. He did not care for Hondren, and had trouble thinking of anyone who could. The soldier roared and cursed whenever he came into Duthil, and had been known to cuff boys out of his path when they did not step aside fast enough to suit him. He had not tried cuffing Conan, but Conan had never got in his way, either. Trailing him, dogging him, would be a pleasure.

On through the woods Hondren stumbled. Of course he found nothing worth pursuing; he could hardly have spread a better warning of his presence had he gone along the trail beating a drum. Conan followed, quiet as a shadow.

For most of an hour, Conan had all he could do not to laugh out loud at Hondren’s blundering. He could have shot the Gunderman a hundred different times, and Hondren would have died never knowing why, or who had slain him. He had to work hard to remember his village would suffer if anything befell this miserable lump of a man.

Hondren began cursing ever louder and more foully at his lack of luck. That his own incompetence had brought that bad fortune never seemed to have crossed his mind. Conan got bored with trailing him through the forest and began showing himself. He wondered how long Hondren would take to notice him. The Gunderman needed even longer than he had expected.

At last, though, Hondren realized he was not alone in the woods. “Who’s there?” he growled. “Come out, you dog, or you’ll be sorry.”

Out Conan came, laughing. “You not catch anything?” he jeered in his bad Aquilonian.

“No, by Mitra, I didn’t catch anything.” Fury on his face, Hondren advanced on the young Cimmerian. “And now I know why, too: I had a stinking barbarian close by, scaring off the game.”

Conan laughed louder than ever. “I not scare game. I follow you long time. You scare plenty all by self.”

“Liar!” Hondren slapped him in the face, as he might have done with a small boy on the main street in Duthil.

But they were far from the main street in Duthil, and Conan, though a boy, was far from small. His ears rang from the blow. It did not cow him, though—far from it. Red rage ripped through him. He struck back with all his strength, not with a slap but with his closed fist. Hondren’s head snapped back. Blood spurted from his nose. He blinked, clearing his senses. A slow, vicious smile spread over his face.

“You’ll pay for that, swine,” he said, gloating anticipation in his voice. He flung himself at Conan and bore him to the ground by weight and momentum.

The blacksmith’s son knew at once that Hondren did not merely seek to punish him for presuming to answer one blow with another. The Gunderman wanted his life, and would take it unless he lost his own. Hondren’s hands, hard as horn, sought his throat. Conan tucked his chin down against his chest to keep his enemy from gaining the grip he wanted.

A knee to the belly made the Gunderman grunt. But Hondren was still stronger and, most of all, heavier than Conan, who had not yet got all the inches or thews that would one day be his. Hondren dealt out a savage buffet that made Conan’s senses spin, and his weight was a dreadful burden that seemed as if it would crush the life from the Cimmerian even if his foe failed to find the stranglehold he sought.

Scrabbling wildly and more than a little desperately, Conan felt his hand close on a rock that fit it nicely. In a mad paroxysm of fury, he tore the stone from the ground and brought it smashing down on the back of Hondren’s head. The Gunderman’s eyes opened very wide. A shudder ran through his body; his hands lost their cunning and ferocity. With a savage cry of triumph, Conan struck again, and then again and again, until blood poured onto him from Hondren’s torn scalp and smashed skull, and until the man from the south stopped moving altogether.

After making sure Hondren was dead, Conan stood a little while in thought. If the deed were traced to him, ten from Duthil would die. But if Hondren were to vanish in the forest—who could say for certain what had befallen him?

Decision came on the instant. Conan took hold of the Gunderman’s boots and dragged his corpse to a stream that chuckled through the woods less than a hundred yards away. Before pushing the body into the stream, he went back and carefully erased every sign of its passage from the place where he and Hondren had fought to the streambank. By the time he was finished, he doubted even a Cimmerian hunter could have traced what he had done. From everything he had seen, the Aquilonians were far less woodswise than his own folk.

He stuffed stones into Hondren’s breeches and tunic, to make sure the corpse did not rise once decay set in. Although he pushed it into the stream at the deepest point he could find, less than a yard of water covered it —not enough to suit him. An alert searcher might spy it, no matter how shadowed by tall trees its final resting place was. He gathered more stones, these larger and heavier, and set them on the body to weight it down and to break up its outline and make it harder to see. That done, he used moss and branches and pine needles to disguise the places from which he had taken the stones. Someone who knew the streambank well might notice something had changed; someone seeing it for the first time would spy nothing out of the ordinary.

By the time he finished his work, he was soaked from head to foot. That gave him yet another idea: he pulled his tunic off over his head and scrubbed it in the stream, cold water being best for taking bloodstains out of cloth. Having taken care of that last detail, he went on with the hunt.

Mordec looked up from his work when Conan came into the smithy carrying a brace of grouse and some songbirds. “Those will be tasty,” said the blacksmith, and then he took a closer look at his son. “What happened to you? You’re all wet.”

“I—fell in a stream,” answered Conan.

Hearing his hesitation, Mordec advanced on him, hammer still in hand. “What happened to you?” he repeated, ominous thunder in his voice. “The truth this time, or you’ll be sorry.” He hefted the heavy hammer to show how sorry Conan might be.

His son did not flinch from the weapon. Looking Mordec in the eye, he said, “I killed a man in the woods.”

“Crom!” exclaimed Mordec; whatever response he had expected, that was not it. Gathering himself, he asked, “Was he a man of this village, or a stranger from some other place? Will the blood feud take in our family alone, or all of Duthil?”

“He was an Aquilonian,” said Conan: “that brute called Hondren.”

“Crom!” repeated Mordec; surprises were coming too fast to suit him. He knew the man his son meant, and knew he was indeed a brute. But he also knew of the warning the invaders had laid down. If one of their men was murdered, ten Cimmerians were to escort his spirit out of the world. “Tell me what passed. Tell me all of it. Leave out nothing-nothing, do you hear?”

“Aye, Father.” Conan did: a bald, straightforward account. He finished, “The lich is hidden as well as I could hide it. In the forest, the Aquilonians are all fumblefingered fools. I do not think they will come across it. They will decide he had a mishap in the woods— and so he did.” Savage pride filled his voice.

Without hesitation, Mordec knocked him down. When he got up, the blacksmith flattened him again. Afterwards, Mordec helped him to his feet. “That was to remind you the Aquilonians will decide Hondren had a mishap in the woods —if you do not brag of what you did. It is a brave and bold thing, a boy beating a warrior trained. But it is your life and nine more if you ever breathe a word of it. Silence, or you die! This is no game. Do you understand?”

“I do, Father.” Conan shook his head to clear it; Mordec had not held back with either blow. “You have a hard hand with your lessons.”

“And you have a thick skull to drive them through,” said the blacksmith with rough affection. “I have to make sure they get home.”

“I’ll keep quiet,” said Conan. “I know what I did. I don’t have to shout it in the street—I’m not Balarg.”

Mordec threw back his head and laughed. That was his opinion of the weaver, too, although Balarg, no doubt, also had a low opinion of him. Their rivalry did not keep them from working together when they had to. Since the coming of the Aquilonians, they had to ever more often.

But laughter quickly faded. Setting a hand on his son’s shoulder, Mordec said, “You did well, son, as well as you could once he attacked you. Now we hope all the invaders are as woodsblind as you say. I think they may be.” Even saying that, though, he wished Crom were the sort of god who hearkened to his worshipers’ prayers.

When the Aquilonian army advanced into Cimmeria, it had come through the woods. It had had to; without coming through the woods, it could not have penetrated the country. But pioneers with axes had widened the forest tracks so good-sized columns of men could advance along them, and all of the Gundermen and Bossonians could see one another and draw strength from seeing one another.

Now Granth son of Biemur picked his way along a game trail hardly wider than the spread of his shoulders. He clutched his pike with both hands, ready to impale anything that burst out from among the trees. Behind him tramped his cousin Vulth, who hung on to his pike just as tight. And behind them strode Benno the Bossonian, an arrow nocked in his bow. As far as Granth knew, no other Aquilonians were within a mile or two of his comrades and him.

“Hondren!” he called. “Hondren! You out there? You hear me?” In lower tones, he muttered, “If we do find the stinking dog, we ought to beat his brains in for making us go through this nonsense.”

“What makes you think he’s got any brains to beat in?” asked Vulth. He too raised his voice: “Hondren! Where are you, you mangy hound?”

Benno spat. “Who cares if we find him or not? I can’t stand that bad-tempered bastard, and I don’t know anybody who can.”