Conan The Freelance (15 page)

“Aye, I’ud run were I sober and seeing you for the first time meself,” the goatherder said. Amused at his own joke, the man laughed loudly, trailing off into a hoarse cackle.

“No! I faced ‘im down, I did! The street were thick with folk and they every one of ‘em ran like water bugs from a carp! But I stood my ground! I’ud show you, it ever comes back, the demon!”

This brought another round of raspy cackles.

Kleg was distracted by his plight, else he would have picked up on the substance of the conversation sooner. As it was, he realized the implications as the goatherder stood and made some comment about emptying his bladder; then stumbled off, weaving awkwardly through the clutter of the room.

If any of this were true, if this old man had been on the street when the monster broke out of the inn last eve, then maybe he had seen the talisman!

Kleg shook his head. It was a faint hope. Still, a faint hope was better than no hope at all.

The selkie stood and moved toward the old swinekeeper.

Even through his drunken haze, the man’s face registered his fear as Kleg loomed over him.

“Eh?”

“I heard part of your story,” Kleg said. “A man as brave as you deserves more than scorn. What are you drinking?”

“Why, dregwine, what else?”

Kleg waved at the serving woman, a white-haired slattern dressed in a shapeless rag whose original color had become hidden under layers of filth. “Ho, a bottle of your best for my brave friend here.”

The swinekeeper’s face lit up with besotted joy. “Why, that’s kind o’ you, milord! You bein’ a selkie and all, not that I ever had any disrespect for your kind, you unnerstand.”

Kleg nodded. “Tell of this adventure of yours of which I have heard so much talk.”

“Much talk, eh? Ha, shows what that fool goatherd knows! Aye, milord, it were a terrible sight! Only last night it happened.”

The wizened little man launched into a retelling of the story Kleg had overheard. He paused when the serving woman returned with the wine, poured until his cup overflowed, and drank half the new portion. “Aye, so there I were, all alone, facing the demon with naught but my courage ….”

A hush fell over the room, the conversations around stopping as if by a signal. Kleg glanced up from the old man’s rambling, to see what had caused the sudden quiet.

Standing in the doorway, outlined by the fat lamps to either side of the entrance, was a Pili.

The swinekeeper was oblivious and had grown more heroic in his retelling his tale.

“… so I moved toward it, figurin’ to poke its eye out, maybe …”

The Pili could hardly see much in the smoky room, Kleg felt, but if he came in and allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloom, it would not be long before he would be able to pick out the only selkie therein.

Kleg surreptitiously fingered his knife. One-on-one, he felt that he could hold his own, especially with surprise on his side.

The Pili strode into the room. No one spoke, save the drunken swinekeeper, who was lost in his own glory. Then a second Pili entered, followed by a third.

Uh-oh. This altered things.

“We are searching for one of the fishmen,” the lead Pili said.

Fully half of the room’s patrons turned to look at Kleg.

The Pili took note of the action, and his gaze followed the others to where Kleg sat.

“Ah! At last!”

But whatever else the Pili would have said or done to Kleg at that moment was lost in the sound of the east wall being rent. A fat lamp flew and splashed burning fuel over men and rude furniture as the wall splintered inward. Men screamed and scrambled to run. The building shook as if swatted by a giant’s hand, and the froglike monster of which the drunk next to Kleg spoke burst through the wood as if indeed the wall were no stronger than the web of a garden spider.

The swinekeeper, who, in his tale, was now chasing this same creature through the streets of the village, took one look at the snorting apparition that had just chewed through the wall and fainted dead away.

The three Pili could not stand against the panic of thirty men. The lizards were swept through the doorway by the stampede. The dry wood began to burn where the fat lay upon it.

Kleg grabbed up the unconscious swinekeeper and carried the man after the others. He spared a glance backward … to see that the monster was right behind him. He ran harder, dodging and twisting through the dingy alleys of the village.

Time and weather had not treated the palisade surrounding the village particularly well. Perhaps climbing the wall would have seemed difficult to an ordinary man, but Conan found the task relatively simple. Rot had invaded many spots, and digging the punk from the decayed areas produced more than adequate hand and footholds. Where the wood had resisted one enemy, others could be found: wormholes, bird attacks, termites, all contributed to Conan’s ease of ascent. They might as well have hung a ladder over the parapet. If these people depended upon their wall as the major deterrent against outsiders, then they were living in a fool’s realm.

For all his skill as a Cimmerian, Conan moved slowly compared to the Tree Folk. They swarmed up the wall as might ants, moving as quickly and certainly as a man hurrying down a wide garden path.

Once over the wall, Conan rejoined the others.

“Now what?” Cheen asked.

“Now we go hunting for selkies,” Conan said. “Small groups, no more than two or three, so as not to attract attention.”

“I shall go with you,” Cheen said.

“Very well. Should any of the couples discover our quarry, best they send for help.”

After the remainder of the Tree Folk divided up, they started into the strangely quiet village.

Conan led Cheen down an alley, moving toward what he thought the center of the small town. Now, were he a selkie, where would he be?

The answer to that was plain: in the water and on my way back to the magician who had sent me. Still, the obvious was not always the answer. Had the selkies attained the water and the mat of weed, then pursuit was likely ended, according to what Cheen said. Conan did not wish to be another of the men who ventured to the wizard’s castle and failed to return. The life of the trees hung in the balance, but when he compared it to his own life, the Cimmerian youth was pragmatic. There were other trees, albeit none so large, that Cheen and her kind could learn to inhabit. As far as he knew, there was only one Conan of Cimmeria, and he meant to keep that one alive.

He stopped and sniffed the air.

“What is it?” Cheen asked.

“Something is burning.”

“Aye, probably a hundred fireplaces and five times that many grease lamps and tapers,” she said. “The stench is quite obvious.”

“No, it is more than that. And listen.”

Cheen cocked her head to one side. “I hear only the wind from the lake, and some night bird-wait. Voices.”

Conan nodded. Aye, voices, and under that, the crackle of a fire, a fairly big one.

He looked up at the low clouds, casting his gaze back and forth. “There,” he said, pointing.

A faint orange flicker danced on the clouds.

“What is it?”

“The clouds reflect the fire. Let us go and see what fuels it.”

He led Cheen unerringly toward the source of the fire.

When the Cimmerian and the woman from the trees arrived, the conflagration had already drawn a sizable crowd. A hundred or more people stood about, watching the building burn. As Conan drew to a halt, he saw the flames leap to the roof of the structure next to the one already burning. A collective gasp arose from the crowd, followed by a babble of excited voices.

A line of a dozen men bearing sloshing buckets appeared. One by one, the men darted toward the flames and hurled the contents of their containers at the burning buildings. It was to little avail, Conan saw. The heat was too great for the firefighters to approach too closely, and probably half the water splashed short, landing on the street. What fluid reached the flames had little, if any, effect.

The firefighters ran off to fetch more water.

Standing a few feet away, a ma-n dressed in a goatherder’s fleece and smelling of his charges talked to no one in particular.

“Mitra strike me down if I lie, but old Seihman ‘uz right. Knocked a hole right in the wall, the beast did, an’ it be a monster right enough!” The goatherder shook his head. “Ye ne’er see’d nothin’ like it! I leaves to visit the night chamber and when I gets back, there be a room full o’ lizard men, fishmen, and monsters eatin’ right through the stinkin’ walls!”

Conan shifted a few steps to face the old man.

“Fishmen, you say?”

“Aye, one o’ ‘em, anyways. Sittin’ right there big as you please next to old Seihman himself and drinkin’ wine when the thing come through the wall! Snatched up old Seihman and run off.”

“To where?”

The goatherder glanced up from his drunken gaze at Conan’s chest. “Mitra, you’re a big ‘un, ain’tcha?”

“The fishman, where did he go?”

The goatherder shook his head. “Dunno. Like to got trampled, I ‘uz too busy to see wheres they got to.”

“How long ago?”

“Since the fire. Not long.”

Conan turned away from the man and looked at Cheen. “Like as not our quarry,” he said.

“What of the beast of which he spoke?” Cheen asked.

Conan shrugged. “What of it? No concern of ours. We should look for the fishmen. There cannot be too many selkies around here carrying old men. He should not be too hard to find. Come.”

As the pair turned away, the fire spread to another building. The crowd gasped.

“My queen, the men are leaving!”

Thayla was thus roused from a light sleep. “What?”

“They move toward the village,” Blad said.

“But you said the gate was guarded.”

“So it is. They are not going toward the gate.”

Thayla shook her head, trying to clear the dregs of slumber. “Show me.”

She followed the young male toward the village. The trip was a short one, and she arrived in time to see the tree dwellers and Conan scaling the wall.

“They are audacious,” she said.

“What are we to do now, milady?”

“Follow them. If they can climb it, so can we.

Indeed, it was so. While it took a considerable effort and no small amount of time, Thayla, aided by Blad, managed to surmount the wall, using finger and toeholds invisible from a distance.

By the time the two Pili had managed the task, the Tree Folk and Conan were not to be seen.

Thayla felt a moment of panic. If her husband still lived, it was very likely that he, too, was in this collection of detritus that passed for a human town, and it was not so large a place that the King of the Pili might never bump into her barbarian lover. She had to find Conan before this happened and see him dispatched to meet with his gods. But where was he?

“Look, milady. Smoke.”

Aye, there was a thick curl of dark smoke in the air, and beyond it, a flicker of red orange that could only be flame. Would not a fire draw Conan’s attention as well?

“Let us go there,” she said.

Kleg was in a panic as he ran, carrying the drunken old man who smelled of swine and had lapsed into unconsciousness. There could be no doubt that the monster that ate its way through the second building in which the selkie had been had come looking for him. How had it found him? Well, were it sent by He Who Creates, such a problem was no more than a trifle. This thought only confirmed Kleg’s thoughts as to his master’s relative omnipotence.

He had to find the talisman and he had to get back to the castle and he had to do both quickly. One could not dodge such enemies as the Pili and a magical beast forever in a village bounded by walls on three sides and water on the other-Hsst! What was this?

Kleg slid into a patch of dark shadow next to a bakery and stared at two figures in the narrow street just beyond. There was a man and a small boy, dressed in the style of the Tree Folk, standing under the fitful light of a dying torch. He could not be sure, but the boy looked familiar. Of course, they all looked alike to Kleg, but-could this not be the image of the boy he had traded to the Pili for passage?

No, he decided, it could not be. That particular boy would have been stew long ago, a morsel to be consumed quickly by the rapacious Pili.

No matter. What did matter was that the two were most certainly Tree Folk, and-how had they gotten here? Were their others of their kind? Yes, yes, there must be. And that they were after Kleg he doubted not a whit.

By the Black Depths! It was not enough to be chased by two kinds of enemy; now there were three!

Kleg sagged. It was most unfair.

He turned and sprinted into the nearby alleyway to avoid the tree dwellers. He had to get to a place where he could revive this smelly pig man and find out what he knew. If, Kleg worried, the old man knew anything useful at all.

After a series of dodges and twists, the Prime selkie found a leather stable that, save for two spavined horses, was empty. The gloom inside was unbroken, save for a high window that admitted enough night light so that he could barely see. Kleg dropped the old man on a mound of dry hay, inhaled the dusty scent kicked up by the action, and began searching for something with which to revive the drunk.

He found a leather bucket used to feed the animals, and scooped it full of scummy water from a trough. Returning to the old man, the selkie dribbled some of the warm liquid onto his face. When this provoked no response, he upended the bucket and dumped all the contents into the old man’s face. That woke him up.

“Hey! Leave off! Mitra curse you!”

Kleg waited as the old man wiped his face with his bony hands.

“Who are you?”

“I bought you wine, remember?”

“Oh. In the Bright Hope. The fishman. Why is it so dark in here, I cannot see.”

“That does not matter now. Recall the beast that attacked you in the street last eve?”

“My head hurts. I need a drink.”

“Later. You shall have a barrel of wine, if you aid me.”

“Eh? A barrel o’ wine?”

“When you saw the beast last night, did you happen to notice anything else?”