Unspoken was the fact that to fail in that regard would be to face her wrath, or his wrath, or Conan’s wrath, in no particular order.
No, Tamara feared for Conan. Oddly enough it was not because she doubted his skill with arms or courage—she had never seen a man so fearsome in combat. Though she would never have wished them to oppose each other, she would have felt certain that even Master Fassir would fall to the Cimmerian.
It was instead his grim fatalism that caused her anxiety. All of the pirates appeared to go through dark moments, but Conan dwelt most comfortably there. Quick and clever and vital as he was, in those moments of quiet where she found peace, he retreated into melancholy. Tamara worried that there might come a time when he could not find his way back.
But she smiled bravely when he looked up at her. “May the gods speed you, Conan.”
He nodded once, solemnly, then shouldered a supply satchel and headed down the gangway to the abandoned stone pier by which they had dropped anchor. Without looking back, the broad-shouldered barbarian marched to shore and started up the nearest hillside.
Artus looked up at her. “Well, woman?”
“What, Captain Artus?”
“I like the sound of that, ‘Captain Artus.’ You poxed dogs remember that.” Artus plucked a rolled piece of canvas from his belt. “The Cimmerian forgot his map. I’d send a man, but they all need to be filling our water casks. I need someone fleet to catch him.”
Smiling, Tamara leaped to the main deck. “I’ll gladly . . .”
Artus extended the map to her, but did not yet let go. “We sail with the tide. Be back by dawn.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Artus smiled. “And if you have a chance, Tamara, tell him he’d best meet me in Hyrkania, or I will hunt him down.”
EVEN BEFORE HE caught sight of her, Conan knew it was Tamara. She made more noise, deliberate noise, than an advancing company of freebooters. He paused on a sandy switchback, the breeze teasing long blades of sea grass, and smiled as she turned the corner. Beyond her, on the beach, Artus waved.
She held the map out to him. “Artus said you forgot this.”
Conan patted a folded piece of canvas at his belt. “You’ll have to take that back. He’s forgotten I made my own copy.”
Her face fell.
“But not yet, Tamara.”
She closed the distance between them and slipped her hand into his. “You’ll think me silly, but in all my time at the monastery, I never had to say good-bye.”
The Cimmerian resumed his hike up the hillside with her in tow. “People must have died.”
“Yes, but you knew that you would never see them in this life again. There was no wondering as to their fate. No anticipating a return, or hearing bad news.” She shook her head. “I would not have thought it so hard.”
“Hard are the times when you never have the chance to say good-bye.” They crested the hill and turned inland. There, just on the other side of the hill, lay another cove similar to the one where the Hornet anchored. At this one, however, the beach had risen to bury ruins, leaving visible only two massive statues. White sand covered them to the waist. They stared blindly at the ocean, and the fanglike stones that warded the cove and kept all ships at sea.
Tamara stopped. “Who were these people? Did they think they could conquer earth and sea?”
“Perhaps for a time they did conquer earth and sea.”
“And now all they know is ruin.” She squeezed his hand, then looked up into his face. “Do you think our lives are part of some grand plan?”
Conan shook his head. “I do not know. I do not care. I live, I slay, I love, I call no man master. If there is a purpose to life beyond that, it means nothing to me.”
Tamara’s gaze met his openly, with no guile or hidden intent. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I want nothing of you, Conan, save that, for this night, you do not have to pass it alone.”
Two dozen yards along the path and back up a bit, they found shelter in the ruins of what had once been a watchtower. A cleared floor and a small stack of firewood revealed that other travelers had used it before them. The Cimmerian kindled a fire and Tamara spread out a blanket. She shed her clothes, then freed him of his.
It was not the first time he had seen her naked, but that morning, aboard the Hornet, it had been entirely different. Now her long hair fell forward of her shoulders, but did not conceal her full breasts with their dark nipples. Her body tapered at the waist, then flared gently through her hips down into long, slender legs. Her face, though half shadowed, had a regal beauty that insisted she must be of nobility, and her slender hands, which caressed his chest, testified to her femininity.
Conan took her in his arms and kissed her, deeply and passionately, but she broke the kiss and forced him to lie down on the blanket. She knelt at his feet, then worked her way up his body, kissing each of his scars, solemnly and slowly, the intimacy of her caresses all the greater for their simple innocence.
She was not the first woman he had bedded since his days on the Black Coast. He could not remember all of them. He had sought their company to hold ghosts at bay. He’d thought to bury Bêlit’s memory and the pain in the anonymity of hot couplings. That effort had failed, for the hollowness of the acts resonated within the void in his heart, mocking with their shallowness the depth of what he had once had.
But Tamara . . . she saw him differently than the legions of whores and concubines. She continued kissing him, but when her lips met a scar on his left hip, he flinched.
She looked up. “Did I . . . ?”
Conan shook his head. That wound he’d taken aboard the Argus, as Bêlit and the Tigress’s crew had overwhelmed the smaller ship. She’d made him her consort and king. She had danced for him and then, later, kissed that same scar.
Tamara’s eyes glistened. “She must have been very special.”
Conan nodded.
Hot tears anointed the scar. “And so fortunate to have won your heart.”
The Cimmerian reached down and drew her up. His fingers slipped into her dark hair and he brought her mouth to his. He kissed her fiercely, as if it were the last kiss he might ever give, then crushed her to him.
Theirs was not the sloppy, clumsy lovemaking of children, nor the passionless joining of bodies performing for pay or duty. At first it was frenzied and urgent, because of the primal hunger that united them. Khalar Zym’s machinations may have thrown them together, but this union was of their choice, for them and them alone. And through it, and as it settled into a more sustained course, they confirmed their existences. It gave each of them a piece of the other, a slice of time shared, that guaranteed they would never be alone. Without regret, and yet with great joy, they came together again and again and, eventually, with hungers sated, lay entwined in the dying firelight.
He held her so she could not escape, but she made no attempt to do so. Instead she traced fingers over his myriad scars like a palm reader tracing the lines of his hands. She kissed the scars, though this time more quickly and playfully, wistfully, then snuggled in with her cheek pressed to his chest.
“I shall be thinking of you always on your journey, Conan.”
“Three days to Asgalun, and another to Khor Kalba.”
“Artus said that if you did not meet him in Hyrkania, he would hunt you down. Will you meet him?”
He pulled back, and looked her full in the face. “I will find him. I shall need to know that he brought you to safety. If, for some reason, he failed, then I shall have to know who to kill.”
She kissed his lower lip. “He will not fail, Conan. On the tide he shall bear me safely away.”
With another woman, these words would have been an invitation to ask her to come with him, but he did not take them as such. Tamara did not look at him quizzically, wondering why he refrained. She smiled and nestled deeper into his arms.
He kissed the top of her head. “There are hours before the tide, Tamara. I shall return you to
the ship soon, and see you off. Then I am bound for Khor Kalba, to see you free forever.”
CHAPTER 29
TAMARA DISENTANGLED HERSELF from the safe warmth of Conan’s arms and silently pulled on her clothes. She sat there for a bit, watching him, listening to him murmur in a dialect she did not understand. She chose to assume it was Cimmerian. It gave her great pleasure to imagine that their passion had left him untroubled enough that he could revisit a peaceful time.
Mitra, thank you for granting him peace. She smiled and resisted the temptation to softly kiss his brow. She did not wish to waken him. She would have welcomed his pulling her back to him, and to sharing intimacy with him, but for both their sakes she had to be away and to the Hornet.
Though she was taking her leave of him, she did not feel she was abandoning him. What they had shared, this consummation of their relationship, made positive a thing fashioned by the desires of evil. Prior to the previous night, they were simply people Khalar Zym had drawn together by dint of his avarice. They had been running in parallel courses, but now they were a team. Though their paths would split apart—and part of her believed she would never see the Cimmerian again—their purpose and effort were united. Until Khalar Zym had her blood, his plan could not be fulfilled, which gave Conan ample time to put an end to Zym’s planning for all time.
Tamara left their shelter and worked her way back along the sandy path. In the light of the waning moon’s sliver, she watched silver waves caress half-buried statues. There would come a time when the sands would fully cover what the ocean had not eroded. So it would be with the stories of Khalar Zym, and how he sought her, but how she, with Conan, destroyed him. Their efforts, for good or evil, would be forgotten.
She did not think that a bad thing. The sun and moon rode through the sky, uncaring of the travails of men. Tamara had no idea who had built the ruins below her. She did not know the name of the sorcerer who had raised the stone teeth to close the bay. She was willing to grant that having that knowledge could not hurt her cause, and might help it, but in the steady progression of the aeons, who these people had been and what they had done were immaterial.
Tamara came over the hillcrest and down the other side, smiling happily. The night’s chill nibbled at her, but she could still feel her lover’s warmth. Girlishly she skipped down part of the trail, laughing lightly to herself, allowing her this excess of joy simply because it balanced the horror through which she had so recently lived.
The whirring buzz was the first clue that something was amiss. The sound was not wholly out of place in the jungle. Something flew past her, then came around again. It was only when the sound centered itself on her that she realized she was a target.
She spun, her first instinct sending her back toward her lover, which was when the mechanical insect hit her shoulder and stung. Tamara slapped at it, shattering delicate wings and scattering bronze gears. Too late. Fire burned through her flesh and her right arm immediately went numb. She staggered back several steps, tethered to gravity, then twisted and fell in the sand at the mouth of a path that led deeper into the jungle.
She struggled to get up, but her right arm collapsed, leaving her on her belly, staring up at Marique and the nightmare creature upon which she was perched.
Part of the animal defied description. Tamara told herself this was because the insect’s poison affected her ability to reason. But the rational part of her mind knew this was untrue. Part of the beast was beyond understanding. Though she saw its forequarters clearly, with the shiny black reptilian scales covering what resembled a horse, and the forehooves that had been split and transformed into a raptor’s claws, the creature remained indistinct behind the rider. A shadowed form only, it seemed a thick protoplasm which reflected the night’s sky—though each star became a bright spot on a long thread that twisted and stretched to infinity. Though she was fading quickly, she realized the beasts—for there was more than one—were dying. The magick that had changed them was killing them, and for Marique not only was this not a concern, it was an active source of pleasure.
Marique pointed her quirt at Tamara. “Two of you, fetch her. We are to be away.”
Rough hands jerked her up. They tossed her over the shoulders of one beast and tied her into place. Until Marique leaned down to sniff her hair, Tamara did not know upon which beast she had been placed. The witch’s sibilant whisper chilled her.
“You are now mine. I shall deliver you to my father. You will make him great.” Marique chuckled lightly. “And you shall make me greater.”
Tamara tried to reply, but her tongue had become a dead thing. She could only listen as Marique dispatched a half dozen of her riders to kill Conan. “Bring me the barbarian’s head; I have a use for it. If you return without it, I will find an unpleasant use for yours.”
TAMARA’S ABSENCE REGISTERED in Conan’s consciousness the second he came awake. It, however, was not the reason he’d wakened. Something was amiss. He felt it. He’d heard something and he did not need to identify it before he filled his hand with steel and rolled to a crouch in the shelter’s corner. Another man, naked save for the shadow that cloaked him, might have felt vulnerable. While Conan would have preferred to have pulled on his mail and his boots, his current condition did not inspire fear—as it would not have inspired fear in a tiger setting itself to hunt.
Only the distant surf broke the silence. All the jungle creatures remained quiet. Anticipation grew like storm clouds on the horizon. That he was being hunted Conan did not doubt. That meant that Tamara was in danger; but her safety was not his primary concern. To do anything to help her, he had to survive; and survival, for Conan, meant killing his enemies as quickly as possible.
In the darkness beneath a vine-screened window, the Cimmerian grinned. Who would Khalar Zym have sent to kill him? His best troops—at least, the best of those yet alive? Proud men, city-bred men whose sense of confidence came from the superiority of numbers and the livery they wore. Driven by fear or visions of profit. They had the confidence of hunters, the arrogance of civilization.
But they are only men. Mortal men. It is time to show them what this truly means.
Their caution betrayed them. One man crept up to the window beneath which Conan crouched. He used a dagger to move a leaf aside so he could spy the shelter’s interior. Conan waited until the blade stopped moving, then stabbed his sword up and back. The point hit. Something popped, something cracked, then the Cimmerian hauled forward on the blade. He pulled the man—transfixed through the eye—in by that window, and left him thrashing his life out on the dark floor.
The other assassins came for the doorway, knowing only that their fellow had disappeared within. They’d not seen enough to decide if he had plunged in after their prey, or something sinister had befallen him. The first two burst in, one ducking low, the other leaping, so that any cut intended to bisect a man would miss both.
But before they had reached the doorway, the Cimmerian had gone out through the window. His first slash cut a man’s spine at his pelvis, leaving him to scream in terror as he collapsed, the lower half of his body dead. The barbarian’s second cut carved deep into a thigh, hamstringing an assassin and severing an artery. He spun down over his companion, shouting in panic, and Conan vanished into the jungle.
He did not go far, and though he secreted himself in a thicket, ignoring the painful caress of thorns and nettles; his concealment was not intended as defense. Conan had hunted in jungles before, and had been hunted by men far more used to these conditions than Khalar Zym’s assassins. A legion of Picts would have made less noise than the trio of men pursuing him. Savage tribes throughout the Black Kingdoms had sought Conan through rain forests and savannas, coming closer to discovering him than did these civilized men.
Had it been in his nature, the Cimmerian might have pitied them, but the wolf does not pity the sheep. The lion does not wonder if an antelope is loved or will be mourned. These were the concerns of civilized men, thoughts they used to
insulate themselves from reality. For civilization was but a slender mask concealing savagery. Though desperation and a desire to live might strip it away, and while these assassins might choose to abandon it, Conan, the hunter, would not give them that chance.
Remaining low within the brush, Conan waited for one of them to slip past. The Cimmerian stabbed out, slicing through the back of the man’s boot, severing the tendon. Going down to a knee, the man thrust blindly into the thicket. Conan grabbed his wrist and dragged him deeper, where the man struggled against thorns while the barbarian opened his throat.
He did not stop to imagine the others’ reactions to what they heard, or their reactions when they discovered the body. Had he any strategem in mind, he might have chosen to climb a tree and leap down upon them. Any of that, all of that, smacked of trickery; and trickery was what the hunted used. All Conan really needed was to keep moving, restlessly and relentlessly.
So he did, pausing only briefly to listen for his prey. One made far too much noise in an obvious ruse to attract him. Conan circled higher and around. A hunter wanted higher ground, and Conan found the assassin waiting. Not high enough.
The distraction masked the dying man’s sigh. Conan had approached from the left, and as the man spread branches to peer through, the Cimmerian thrust deep into his armpit. He felt the man’s life flee through tremors communicated by the steel linking them. He laid the man down, sliding his sword from him, then again moved through the jungle and back to the shelter.
There he tugged off the thigh-stuck man’s helmet and grabbed a handful of greasy hair. Looming large, he yanked back. “Scream for your friend.”
The wounded soldier needed no more encouragement. “He’s here, he’s here!”
A careful crashing sounded through the brush. Conan released the soldier and moved down to a sandy circle. He waved the last assassin toward him. “It is done.”
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