Conan the Savage (26 page)

Most of the band seemed to have gone inside seeking treasure; only two sentries were posted, one on either flank of the jagged, buckled doorway. They wore no armour or military uniforms. Mere border ruffians, they looked to be, dressed in ill-made hide breeches and loose, woven shirts. One boasted a fur cap and poorly lasted town boots, whose uneven prints had occasionally been visible bringing up the

rear of the party; the other one distinguished himself with shapeless buskins and a mangy fur vest, familiar to Conan only because it had shed some of its rotten hair in clumps along the trail.

The two stood motionless, with pike-axes grounded beside them, conversing intermittently in what sounded like coarse Brythunian. They were not in any particular attitude of alertness, but more in subdued dread, or morbid fascination. As Conan crept nearer, he discovered why: before them, in the weeds near the base of the tower, dead bodies were laid in a row.

Two of them, their heads split and shapeless, were ill-dressed ruffians very like the two sentries. The third, pale in the gathering dusk—though darkly stained with blood that had seeped from several arrow wounds—was Songa.

“A regular devil-cat, she,” the hatted, booted sentry was saying. “Quiet as a stone monkey she was, the whole way. But tricky... ah yes, sly as a vixen cub, you can bet on it! ’ ’ The fur-hatted sentry was obviously fond of his topic. “But Dolphas, he wouldn’t let us touch her.”

“Wanted her for himself, you ask me,” the other guard muttered.

The first man shrugged. “That may be the way it was. Who am I to say?”

He shook his fur-capped head and said no more. Conan waited, crouching, for the silence to stop buzzing in his ears.

Impulsively, the first sentry resumed speaking. “Then, finally we get here and the lads want to have sport with her—natural enough. But she, the hellcat, grabs a battle-ax and chops ’em in the noggin!” He shook his head again, his most animated gesture so far, though his voice droned on gloatingly. “Would have chopped a good many more, too, if our bows wasn’t strung and ready.”

“’Tis a shame, even so,” the other sentry grumbled. “A sorry waste of a woman, you ask me.”

“Aye, she would have been something,” the fur-hatted one said. “Ferocious, these forest wenches are. ’Tis like having sport with a wild animal.” He peered down at the bodies in the gathering dimness. “Even now.. He exhaled raggedly. “But Dolphas says not to touch her.’

“He still wants her for himself, you ask me.”

“What say you, there?” The gruff voice sounded just behind the sentries’ shoulders, making both of them start. “Talking on guard duty?” Firelight reflected from inside the archway, growing gradually more visible as sunset waned; now it was partly blocked as a burly form emerged. “Nay, nothing, Captain Dolphas! Just staying alert.” “Hmmph.” The big man’s growl was one of suspicion. “What of the forest? Any noises out there?” His gaze swept the trees, passing directly over Conan’s crouching form without awareness.

“Nay, Sire, nothing to report.”

“Captain,” the fur-hatted one asked, “will we have relief to go and eat our supper?”

“Aye, in good time. The kettle is warming.” Dolphas climbed out through the broken arch. “No great hurry just now. The jewels have all been gathered up for our return trip.” Stepping out between his men, he turned back to look at them. “Remember, you two, any pilfering means death! Report what treasure you find, and you will be paid fairly.”

“Aye, Sire.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Just you remember it!” The commander strode out toward the tree line, barely glancing aside at the row of bodies. He loosened the front of his trousers, making ready to void into the bushes.

Conan’s ax whispered through the air, striking him a glancing blow on the temple. He grunted softly and sagged forward, unconscious. Conan caught him on his free arm, but there was a rustling of leaves as his body sank to earth.

“Captain, what is it?”

“Be you all right, Sire?”

In the darkness, they mistook Conan, striding forward, for their returning captain. The first sentry received Conan’s stone spear tip in his throat, choking on it with a gargle of blood. The second man started forward, pike raised, only to meet a hurtling stone ax that split both skull and fur hat. Man and weapon dropped to the ground with a clang.

“Dolphas, is that you?” a voice called from within the tower. “Come back in and cast the dice, Captain, before we divide up your winnings!” A shadow loomed dark against fire-lit stone, then receded.

Conan picked up the fallen pike-ax. It was strongly made, with a keen, narrow head and forged-steel haft. A civilized weapon. With this, he could stand outside the tower entry and smite down his enemies one by one as they came forth—until the others climbed to the top and dropped loose stones on his head.

Steel had its uses, some more efficient than others.

Groping in the dimness, he explored the stonework of the crumbling arch. The lintel, a long, loaf-shaped piece spanning the door’s width, lay at chest level. He raised the pike-ax, driving its pointed end into the loose, eroded stonework at one side.

“Hello, Captain? Are you out there?”

Heaving his whole weight against the pike-head, Conan bore it sideways, levering the lintel-stone outward with a heavy, grinding rasp. A dim shape appeared in the doorway; an instant later, as the stone gave way, the man disappeared in a chaos of rubble and dust. Volumes of masonry began to sag into the archway, while high overhead, a grating, rumbling sound commenced.

Snatching up his weapons, Conan whirled and ran for the forest.

Behind him, inside the tower, shouting and screaming began—faint, muffled noises that were quickly drowned out by the thunder of falling stone as the ancient tower fell in on itself.

Later, when the waxing moon rose, it lit a greater desolation than before. The jumble of stone and broken trees lay dusty-pale, motionless now and silent except for faint groans from one edge of the pile.

“Captain Dolphas.” Above the wounded man, whose leg and arm were pinned under a battered-down tree trunk, a shadow loomed.

“Who... who are you?” the gruff voice rose. One hand slid for a knife-hilt, obviously through long habit, but returned empty.

“Nay, the question is, who are you?" The muscular, near-naked man knelt beside the officer.

“You speak Brythunian! You are no savage! Why do you paint yourself like one?”

“I ask. You answer.” The questioner loomed closer. “Why are you here? Who sent you?”

“Sent me? Why, no one. I am just an adventurer, an explorer. Are any of my friends yet alive?”

“Enough lies!” The keen edge of a stone spear, sticky with gore, was pressed against the helpless man’s throat. “What was your business here?”

“All right, I admit it... l am a treasure-seeker!” Rolling his eyes, the captain waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the fallen tower. “Did you know that there is a treasure in yonder ruin? Help me get loose and I will lead you to it... a fortune in rare gems!”

“Jewellery, yes.” Seizing hold of the gesticulating hand, Conan bent it up to the moonlight. “Like this, perhaps?” Looped around the middle finger was a metal ring. From the knuckle side it looked to be a mere gold band, but turned inside the hand was a thick escutcheon, deeply graven with a symbol—a gryphon it looked like in the moon’s pale beam.

“A seal-ring, is it, then? One that bears the symbol of Imperial Brythunia?”

The ring fit tightly below the knuckle.,Conan bent the finger backward, mercilessly, until he heard bone snap. Dolphas let out a quavering, sobbing cry, jerking vainly as the ring came free of his finger.

“Quiet, Dolphas! There are some questions I have for you.”

XIII

Wayfarers

In the stockade town of Shihar, lying on the mountainous eastern frontier of Brythunia, the snow-draped peaks of the north Kezankian chain were everywhere visible. The log walls and coarse-shingled roofs of the town’s buildings were low-lying, as were the sharpened timber palings that fenced in the settlement. Even above the smoky battlements of the square-built, sprawling Imperial keep, the lofty Kezankian peaks loomed icy and desolate as seen from any angle of the mud streets.

Little came down out of those mountains, except floods and avalanches at spring-tide. Trails threaded their way upward, to be sure. Worn into the ancient rocks by some former race, they now were used only by gem-finders and trappers, among whom the existence of remoter mountain passes was muttered and legended. It had been long, long past living memory that invading tribes or raiding parties had come over the crags to harry Shihar from the desolate lands to the east. The town’s log palisades were raised more to fend off local bandits and rebel factions than to protect against any menace from across the border.

Thus it was that Regnard the Gunderman was surprised to see the lone figure stride down the dewy upper meadow and approach the settlement’s eastern gate. There was something different about him, even at a distance and under the morning sun-glare off the peaks. This was no hunter or prospector returning at season’s end; he carried strange, rustic weapons, for one thing, and towed no overladen donkey behind him. He wore a heavy cloak that appeared to be formed of a single, silvery bearskin, yet underneath it, he went almost naked, seemingly impervious to the mountain chill.

This, Regnard decided, was a true primitive, a man of the legendary tribes dwelling across the mountains to the east and south. What purpose he had in coming to civilization was hard to guess, but his arrival could mean danger.

It was to greet newcomers that Regnard had stationed himself near the open gate. Small-framed and robust, with the blond, tousled hair and reddish-blond moustache of his clan, he sat basking against a sunny cabin wall, a jug of fragrant, heady cider between his booted feet. He would have been elated indeed to meet a lone hunter or prospector returning from a trek—unwashed and hungry, starved most of all for human companionship, and burdened with trade-goods that would require an able broker to dispose of.

Regnard would have been more than happy to befriend such a man, to offer him a deep draught of cider, take his livestock and cargo in hand, and conduct him to an establishment in town where he could have his hunger, filth, and thirst attended to, along with all of his sublimer human cravings. There would have been easy profit in it for Regnard—more, admittedly, for the buyers of the merchandise and the purveyors of the delights they were liquidated for— but then, that was how the Gunderman made his way through the world. As a drifter, wandering along the coarse fringe of civilization like a flea through the pelt of a dog, he had learned to pander to other drifters and exiles who happened to be less cunning than himself.

This particular newcomer, now—a hill-savage unversed in the ways of a town, much less an empire, and lacking both wealth and understanding—this one did not entirely turn away Regnard’s interest. The Gunderman, sipping from his jug, watched contemplatively and patiently as he approached. Here lay a mystery, a challenge, and a possible answer to his longer-term difficulties.

What Regnard wanted most of all was to get out of Shihar. He had come here in high hopes, believing the prospects to be rich indeed. With the provincial administration crippled by the civil war, and the recent surge in the price of mountain gems, combined with the rumoured presence in this district of vast gold and jewel mines operated as a crown monopoly, the signs all seemed to point to a gold frenzy, or to downright anarchy—with vast wealth being shaken out through the cracks and healthy profits to be gleaned from below.

Instead, what he had found here was glum and discouraging. The military retained its grip. There was tight secrecy, with a crack, stiff-necked garrison manning the keep and many of the locals borne up in close-mouthed, dangerous doings. If he had been one to face hardship and danger, he might have joined in with them and done tolerably well; but Regnard was a talker more than a fighter.

As far as he could tell, gold and gems were never brokered here, or even transported through the town in any quantity. Imperial discipline under the new queen had proven to be, if anything, stricter than before. The few ragged fortune-hunters who passed through, eking a sparse living from the local mountain valleys, could scarcely sustain a procurer in the rich style to which Regnard aspired. Now, with autumn frosting the air, the prospect of a long, cramped winter in Shihar was one to be avoided at all costs.

As the foreign savage drew near the gate, Regnard heaved himself up and strode out to meet him. “Greetings, stranger!” he called, trying out a pidgin trade-dialect native to the Kezankians and connecting hill ranges. “You must be thirsty from your walk. Will you have a drink from my flask?”

After looking the townsman up and down with a sullen, stony face, the savage finally responded. Shifting his stone-tipped spear from one hand to the other, he reached out and accepted the jug that was offered. As he swigged from the heavy bottle, his bearskin parted wider, and the Gunderman saw how magnificent a figure he was: chest and shoulders broad and massive, with a firm, flat stomach, criss-crossed by scars already stretching to the taut contours of the muscles and fading. His waist was adorned by some kind of rough-jewelled girdle of polished disks that promptly caught Regnard’s attention. The loins and legs were bronzed as deeply as were the square face and powerful hands. Amiably, if somewhat guardedly, Regnard watched the rugged features sour at the raw taste of the cider, swirl it about for a moment, then spit it out across the meadow grass in a yellowish spray.

“Strong—good!” Regnard told him, accepting the return of the jug, raising it up to gulp deeply, then offering it back to the newcomer. “Go on, drink some more, and swallow it this time!”

The frowning savage shook his head once, impatiently, with a toss of his square-cut mane and a sideward flick of his hand that must represent some tribal gesture. “Well then, my friend,” Regnard said, wanting to keep up the momentum, “you must have travelled a long way. Do you come from across the mountains?”