A stick clacked against the foot of the bed. “Boy, if you pull those poultices apart again, I will let your hands rot off.”
He looked and could only see a silhouette moving through the hut’s darkened interior. Still, there was no mistaking the voice. “Grandfather?” Conan meant to ask the question forcefully—befitting a warrior—but it came out as a croak, and a weak one at that.
“No other fool would take you in, Conan.” The old man stirred coals in the hearth, then tossed on more wood. A little blaze began to flare. Connacht, leaning heavily on the stick, walked to the bedside and peered down at the boy. He placed a hand on his forehead. “Good. I think the fever’s broken. Death wanted you, boy, but we cheated him, we did.”
“Water?”
The old man helped Conan sit up and drink. He didn’t let the boy have too much, or drink it quickly. With his bandaged hands he couldn’t have managed the cup anyway, so Conan drank at the dictated pace. He nodded when done.
“How long?”
“A week, though now’s the first you’re right in the head.” Connacht shook his head. “Came in fevered. Burns on your hands all infected. Had the blood poison. Lucky for you I remembered what a Shemite healer did for me once. Had to use bear fat instead of goat. Smells worse, seems to work the same.”
Conan stared at his hands as they lay like lifeless lumps in his lap. “A week?”
“Came crashing through the bush wild-eyed and burning up.”
My father burned up . . .
“Weren’t in your right mind. Went for me with your sword, you did.”
Conan’s eyes widened. “I didn’t . . . ?”
“Hurt me?” Connacht laughed. “You were too weak to break an egg with a hammer, boy. How in the name of Crom did you get here?”
Conan closed his eyes. Is my father really dead? Are they all dead?
“Conan?”
The young Cimmerian shook himself. “Raiders destroyed the village. I was the only one who survived.”
Connacht’s face became graven. “I know you didn’t run, boy.”
“I wasn’t a coward, Grandfather. But . . .” Conan’s throat closed.
Connacht poured more water. Conan drank, both because he was thirsty and to soften the lump in his throat. Yet even when his grandfather took the cup away, he couldn’t say anything.
The old man nodded slowly. “Seen a lot of people die. Many of them friends. Had more than one in my arms, just talking to him, easing the passage. Never an easy thing.”
Conan shook his head.
“My son?”
“I . . . I tried to save him.”
“And he wanted you to live.”
Conan nodded.
“You think he was wrong? You think he was stupid?”
The young Cimmerian looked up horrified. “No.”
“If there weren’t no saving him, and there was a chance of saving you, he did right.” Connacht scratched at his throat. “Like as not, you won’t see that, but it’s true.”
“I killed some of them, Grandfather.” Conan remembered the last raider. “One was a big man, cavalry. He was taking a scalp. I took his knife.”
The old man crossed to where a belt hung on the wall and drew the dagger from its sheath. “Turanian. Long way from home.”
“Kushites, too, and Aquilonians. And female archers.”
“Easy, son. Excite yourself and the fever will come back.” Connacht’s eyes narrowed. “All those people this far north. Taller tale than I’ve ever told.”
Conan snarled. “I’m not lying.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“They wanted something. A piece of a mask. Ashuran, I think. Is there such a place?”
Connacht returned to the stool by the bed. “Not Ashuran. Acheron, maybe, but it’s long-ago gone. Thousands of years.”
“They found it. They found what they wanted.”
“Who?”
Conan frowned. “Klarzin. He has a daughter, Marique. And there is an Aquilonian named Lucius.”
Connacht laughed. “There’s hundreds of Aquilonians named Lucius, boy.”
“This one has no nose.”
“Don’t know that narrows it down much.”
“I took his nose. Cut it right off.”
“Did you, now?” His grandfather nodded solemnly. “Taking the nose off an Aquilonian makes any day a good day.”
Conan smiled, then remembered why it had been so terrible a day. He shivered and sank down again in the bed.
His grandfather brushed a lock of black hair from his forehead. “You’ve told me enough for now. You’ll be telling me the rest later. We’ll figure it all out.”
“Good.” Conan stared at his hands. “When we do, I’m going to kill them all.”
CONNACHT REPACKED THE poultices over the next week and a half, and Conan didn’t fight him. He didn’t have the strength. The boy wanted to be up and tracking his enemies, but it was all he could do to throw off the auroch hide and sit up when his grandfather brought him broth. After several days of that, the old man switched him to stew.
Aside from eating, all Conan could do was sleep. Sometimes nightmares had him crying out in the middle of the night, but Connacht was always there by his side. He’d listen to Conan, then tell him a story. Not quite the same stories he used to tell during his visits to the village—these were a bit more gentle—but the sound of his voice was enough to allow Conan to drift back into sleep.
A couple of times Conan woke up during the day, and on one of those occasions, he thought he heard his grandfather talking to someone outside the hut. Later that afternoon he asked if he’d been right.
Connacht nodded. “Aiden came up from the south to tell me your village is gone. The tribes had some skirmishes with your horde. They backtracked to the village. They burned all the bodies, hauled what they could away. They brought me some things of your father’s; said they didn’t find you among the dead.”
“Did you tell them I was alive?”
“He didn’t ask, but likely knew. No matter. No one else will.”
“Good. They won’t expect me.”
“Conan, you are not even certain who they are.”
“How many march under the crest of the tentacled mask?”
“None.”
Conan frowned. “What?”
“I have traveled the lands, Conan. No nation bears such a crest.”
“What of this Acheron?”
Connacht brought his grandson a bowl of stew and loosened enough of the bandages to slip the poultice out, but left enough to cover the burns. “Feed yourself and I’ll tell you of Acheron.”
“You’ve been there?”
The older man laughed. “I’m not that old, Conan. Acheron fell in ancient days, before there was a Cimmeria. It was an evil place, so they say. Swing a dead cat, you’d hit a necromancer or three. Put four of them in a hut together and you’d have a dozen plots hatched. An evil people wanting to take over the world. So they went and concentrated and made this thing of power. A mask. And they gave it to their god-king or whatever they called him. He and his hordes cut a swath . . . well, from what you and Aidan said, you know. But imagine kingdoms falling, Conan. Nations just wiped from the face of creation.”
The boy nodded, watching his grandfather’s face for any hint of a lie. He spooned stew into his mouth, chewing unconsciously, wiping the spillage on the back of his hand.
“As the tales would have it, men from the north took exception to the rise of Acheron. Was a close thing, but armies from across the world banded together, and led by northerners, they shattered Acheron’s power. They took the mask and broke it into parts. Each contingent got one and hid it away. They hoped no one would ever be able to assemble it and create such misery again.”
Conan crunched a piece of gristle. “How could anyone know of the mask?”
“You’ll find, boy, that there are always people nosing about in places they shouldn’t, learning things not meant to be learned
, and then developing quite a problem keeping their mouths shut.” The old man grew silent for a moment, then grunted. “You’ll run afoul of a number of them in your life.”
Conan’s spoon froze halfway to his mouth. “Are you now a seer?”
“No, I just benefit from having seen much.” Connacht shook his head. “People seek power, and there are some who hunt for Acheron’s secrets. Your Klarzin might be one. Have to hope if he’s up to deviltry, the devils will take him before he can shed more blood.”
“Not devils he has to worry about.” Conan handed the empty bowl to his grandfather. “More, please. And a favor.”
Connacht returned from the hearth with more stew. “I’m your grandfather. What would you be having me do?”
Conan took a deep breath. “I cannot go and kill Klarzin.”
“Now you’ve returned to your senses.”
“I need your help. My father taught me much. You taught him more. I need to know it all.”
Connacht raised an eyebrow. “Even knowing all I taught him didn’t keep your father alive.”
“If you will not teach me, I will find another swordmaster.”
The old man thought for a moment. “There is no dissuading you?”
“I will have my vengeance.”
“You’ll do everything I say, as I tell you to do it?”
Conan sighed, hearing his father’s words come out of his grandfather’s mouth. “Exactly.”
“Very well. In another week we’ll begin.” Connacht stood. “Finish your stew, then sleep. Sleep as much as you can. When you become my student, you’ll have no time at all for that nonsense.”
Had Conan entertained the thought that his grandfather was joking, the old man disabused him of the notion immediately. He established a routine that had Conan waking before dawn, crawling into bed well into the evening, and if the boy stood still at all, it would only be during some odd exercise to build strength or maintain balance. Very little of his training actually included holding a sword in hand, which irked the boy until he figured out what his grandfather was doing.
For the first two weeks, things focused on his getting his strength and endurance back, as well as keeping his hands healthy. Conan had always been slender, but his illness had reduced him to skin and bones. Connacht had him hauling water, shifting stones, running ever-longer distances, then having him sprint—all the while increasing his weight by adding rock-filled pouches or bits and pieces of old armor to his attire.
The greatest care was lavished on Conan’s hands. The blisters had long since burst and the infection had been defeated. His grandfather mixed up a foul-smelling unguent out of fish meat, bear grease, and a variety of dried roots and leaves, then had the boy work it into his palms. Conan continued to wrap his hands and don gloves for anything involving lifting. Connacht also forced him to flex his hands hundreds of times throughout the day.
“You’ll always carry scars from that day, Conan, but you can’t be crippled by them.”
The combat drills Conan hungered for came at last, but not in the way he’d been expecting. His grandfather still wouldn’t let him touch a sword. “Sword’s just a metal sting. A warrior’s weapon is his body. Can’t use that, doesn’t matter how sharp the sword.”
The old man then proceeded to teach his grandson every aspect of infighting that he’d learned from a lifetime of adventuring and brawling—and Conan suspected that he made up a few on the spot. Connacht, despite being four times his grandson’s age, tossed him around as if he were a raggedy doll. Conan vaguely remembered having accused his father of not fighting fairly, but Corin had been the soul of sportsmanship compared to his father. Kicks, punches, head butts, and elbow strikes knocked Conan all over the yard before the hut.
Connacht even bit him once!
Conan would have protested, but he remembered Klarzin parrying his sword cut, then kicking him full in the chest. Corin had been right. Fighters might talk about fighting fairly, but in their storytelling they left out certain details. He couldn’t remember a single of his grandfather’s stories that included his having bitten anyone, but the old man was a bit too practiced at it to even suggest that it had never happened.
Conan gave back as much as he could, and occasionally landed a fist or a kick on his grandfather. He never hurt him, though, but not because he pulled his punches. Connacht still moved quickly enough to slip most blows, and certainly knew enough to anticipate Conan’s next moves. Still, as the weeks wore on, Conan’s hits became more consistent than misses, and his ability to block attacks improved greatly.
One day Connacht called a sudden halt to their fighting. “Good. You’ve learned well.”
Conan, doubled over, catching his breath, glanced up. “Is this how you taught my father?”
“Corin, the size of him? No. I had a different way with him.” The old man straightened up. “I want you to haul twenty buckets of water from the river to fill the cistern, then I have one more thing for you. Accomplish that task, and tomorrow we begin working with a sword.”
Conan smiled and ran off. The sooner he perfected his sword fighting, the sooner he’d be able to avenge his village. While thoughts of revenge filled his mind, he hauled water and saw nothing of his grandfather. He did hear some pounding from within the hut, but attached no significance to it.
Finally the cistern brimmed over and Conan returned the buckets to their place near the small forge his grandfather maintained. The young Cimmerian stepped into the hut and found his grandfather sitting by the hearth. The meager furnishings had been cleared out of the center. An iron plate had been bolted to the floor and four feet of heavy chain attached to it. The chain ended in an iron shackle.
Connacht nodded to it. “Put your right ankle in there. Lock it shut.”
The young man sat on the floor and secured the shackle around his ankle.
His grandfather got up, took Conan’s sword from where it hung on the wall, and stood beside the doorway. “You’re a good fighter, Conan. You learn quickly. You’re determined to go after Klarzin, aren’t you?”
Conan nodded.
“There’s nothing anyone could do to stop you, is there?”
The boy shook his head.
Connacht tossed Conan’s sword out into the yard. “Go get your sword. When you get it, you’ll be ready to get Klarzin.”
CHAPTER 10
CONAN STARED AT his grandfather, waiting for an explanation.
Connacht walked out the doorway and let the hide flap slide across to eclipse the sun.
The young Cimmerian shook his leg. The heavy chain dragged at the shackle, digging into his ankle and grinding against bone. He grabbed the chain and tugged, hard, but it didn’t give at all. More importantly, the short chain didn’t allow him to move to where he could brace himself against something to use his legs in trying to pull free. The best he could do was to lay a foot on the eyebolt sunk into the middle of the plate, but unless he could snap the chain, that effort would be useless. And without some leverage, actually ripping the plate out of the floor wouldn’t work.
On hands and knees he crawled over and looked at the plate, chain, and eyebolt. All were solid steel and without being softened in the forge’s fire, they’d resist his efforts to break them. He examined each link in the chain, but could find no weak ones. He rubbed a link against the plate’s edge, but his grandfather had rounded off the edge, so wearing a link down would take days.
Even the shackle was stout enough to frustrate his attempts to pry it open. He had nothing with which he could force the lock. Conan instantly understood the desire of a trapped fox to gnaw its own foot off to escape a trap. Not only was he not flexible enough to do that, he had no desire to cripple himself.
There has to be a trick to it. Conan’s icy eyes narrowed. No, if my father had done this, there would have been a clever way out. Not so Connacht.
The boy yanked at the chain, then howled in frustration. He whipped the chain back and forth, hoping some hidden weakness
would shear the bolt off, but no such luck. He wrapped the chain around the eyebolt and yanked, hoping to bend it. It resisted his best efforts. In no time he sat in a puddle of his own sweat, no closer to freedom than he’d been before.
Snarling, he pounded the chain against the floorboards and made some headway. He peeled away wood, biting out the splinters that lodged beneath his fingernails. He tore at the wood, hoping to rip the whole plate free. As he dug down, however, he discovered that his grandfather had secured it around one of the floor’s crossbeams.
Even this fact did not discourage Conan. He continued to rip away wood, hoping that he could loosen things enough that he could rotate the plate around the crossbeam. That would loop the chain around the crossbeam, and he could then haul back on it to use the chain to saw through the crossbeam. Large heavy links and seasoned hardwood would make the job difficult, but he’d get through.
Then he learned that his grandfather had bolted the plate to the crossbeam on the underside, which made the plate immobile and his plan irrelevant.
The boy tossed pieces of wood at the hide flap. He wanted to provoke a reaction from his grandfather. A laugh at his predicament, a curse at the destruction he was causing, a reproving stare and a comment he could think on. Anything. But all he got in return was silence. It was as if he was completely alone in the world.
That thought flushed frigid fear through his belly. What if he was alone. What if Klarzin had tracked him to his grandfather’s hut and sent an assassin after him? What if Lucius No Nose was coming to finish what Klarzin hadn’t let him do at the village? Conan grasped a piece of wood with a pointed end because he refused to think of himself as helpless, but with four feet of chain hobbling him, he’d be slaughtered, weapon or no weapon, in a heartbeat.
He moved around to the far side of the plate, let the chain play out, and sat with his shoulders and head against the wall, watching the doorway. The rattle of chains reminded him of Klarzin’s allies, and of the chain he’d failed to hold on to back at the village. He looked at his hands, the scars visible but the flesh pliable. There he sat, trapped by chains as his father had been, as vulnerable as his father had been, and the last seconds of his father’s life played through his mind over and over again.
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