by Roland Green
Conan pushed the passenger gangplank clear of the ferry, to discourage the soldiers from taking a hand. Then he bent, grasped the sergeant by both ankles, and swung him back and forth until he coughed up all the water he had swallowed.
When the coughs gave way to curses, Conan set the sergeant down. "You need more lessons, sergeant. No doubt of that. My lady's younger sister will be glad to teach you, if you've a mind to be polite to her. Swimming only, mind you, and nothing else—"
More curses, this time on "the lady's younger sister" as well as Conan. The Cimmerian frowned.
"Sergeant, if I can't mend your manners with water, I'll try steel the next time. Meanwhile, do you want to cross with us or do your men need you to change their smallclothes—?"
The sergeant threw out a final curse, then lurched off the deck into the water. This time he managed to land on his feet. Finally too breathless to curse, he splashed to the pier. His soldiers helped him up, glaring at Conan all the while.
"Ferrymaster, I think we'd best push off," Conan said.
The ferrymaster, even paler than before, nodded vigorously. He waved to the drummer amidships, who raised his mallet and began pounding out a beat for the slaves. Gravel scraped and growled under the ferry, then she was once more afloat and underway.
Compared to the ferry, a snail had wings. In the time needed to reach the middle of the river, Conan could have eaten dinner and washed it down with ale worth savoring.
The ferrymaster stood on the platform, eyes roaming between the slaves and the receding bank with its cursing soldiers. Instead of fading, his pallor seemed to be growing on him. Had he taken a fever?
"Hi, ha, ho, hey!"
Frantic shouts erupted from aft Conan whirled, to see half of one of the steering oars vanish over the side. A deckhand made to strip and swim after it, but it vanished before he could leap.
"Vendhyan teak," the ferrymaster said, as if the words were a curse. "Heavy as iron and sinks like it too. An ill-favored day, this one. We must turn about in midstream and make our bow our stern. I hope you are in no great haste, you and your ladies."
Nothing in those words made other than good sense. They still rang strangely on the Cimmerian's ears. Since he could put no name to that strangeness, he watched the ferrymaster hurry aft, calling to the hands.
"How long do we spend out here because some sailor was fumble-fingered?" Illyana snapped.
"As long as it takes to turn this drunken sow of a ferry," Conan said. "How long that will be, the gods know. Maybe the ferrymaster, too. Best not look at me. I'm no sailor."
"Perhaps. But can you at least ask the master?"
"As you wish, my lady."
Conan turned to head aft, where the master and two hands were now wrestling with the ferry's light skiff. Raihna put a hand on his arm in what to all eyes would seem a gesture of affection. Her whisper was fierce but unheard by anyone else, including her mistress.
"Be careful, Conan. I would go with you, but Illyana's back needs guarding more than yours."
"That's the truth. But who from?"
"I don't know. But what the master said—I've seldom heard a speech that smelled more of long practice. He spoke like an old beggar who's been asking for alms on the same temple steps for twenty years."
"Maybe this happens every third crossing," Conan grunted. "With this floating lumberpile, anything's possible."
"I need no reassurance!" Raihna's whisper was fiercer yet. "I need to know that you're not a fool."
"Woman, you can warn me without insult. If the master's plotting anything, he's outnumbered."
"How so?"
"You're worth two of him, and as for me—" He shrugged. "You be the judge."
"You great Cimmerian oaf—" Raihna began. Then she laughed softly. "The gods be with you."
"With all of us, if the master has any friends aboard," Conan said. He was ruefully aware of the help the soldiers might have given. Well, only the gods had foreknowledge, and they only if the priests told the truth, which likely as not meant mat no one knew what lay before him!
Loosening his sword in its scabbard, Conan strode aft to join the master.
By the time Conan reached the stern, the two hands were lowering the skiff into the water. The master, paler than ever, stood watching them. Watching the master, Conan saw that his hand did not stray far from his dagger. Nor did his eyes stray far from the peasant family. In their turn the peasants had their eyes on the master, with the attention of a cat watching a bird's nest. Gone were the dull-witted stares with which they had come aboard.
Conan felt more than sweat creeping down his spine. Raihna had most likely seen clearly. Something was afoot.
The skiff splashed into the river. One of the hands set the oars into their locks, while the other held the line. The master turned to Conan.
"With two stout fellows at the oars, the skiff will turn us about in good time. Then we can steer again, and seek a landing."
In the shallows by either bank the Shimak had hardly more current than a millpond. Here in midstream matters were otherwise. The ferry was already well downstream from the pier on the far side.
Not far downstream, Conan saw that the banks rose steep and high on either side. A man landing there would have a fine scramble before he reached open ground. In that time he would be an easy target for archers on the river. Farther downstream still, if Conan remembered rightly, lay rapids, their fangs mostly drawn at this season of low water but not harmless to this ferry…
The second hand climbed into the skiff and took his oar. The master reached into the shadows beneath the platform. He came out with a stout purse in one hand. A hooded peasant woman stepped forward, hands raised as if to beg for alms.
Conan drew his sword and raised it hilt-first. He and Raihna had agreed on that signal to be ready for a fight but let others begin it. The master scurried for the edge of the deck, thrusting his purse into the bosom of his shirt as he ran. At the edge of the deck he drew his dagger and leaped.
As he leaped, so did the peasant woman. The hood flew back, revealing a gap-toothed, hook-nosed brown face whose curling black beard no woman had ever grown. A long knife leaped from under the robes to slash at Conan.
It reached only where Conan would have been. A backward leap took him clear of danger. He tossed his sword. It came down with hilt cleaving to his hand as if it had grown there.
From over the side came the crunch of wood and shrill curses. Eager to escape, the master had leaped too swiftly and come down too heavily. One foot had gone straight through the bottom of the skiff.
"I hope you swim better than the sergeant," Conan shouted. Then it was time to think of his own opponents, three "peasants" advancing with the air of trained fighting men.
Not only trained but trained to fight together. Conan saw this in their movements and in that saw danger. Three men were not enough to overcome him swiftly, or indeed at all. They were doomed. They could also well take long enough dying to let their comrades reach Illyana and Raihna.
First of all, let us make this one and not two. Again Conan leaped backward, his sword cleaving the air to discourage too close a pursuit. He hoped for no more; a swordsman could hardly strike accurately without his feet firmly planted.
The arcing gray steel did its work. The three let Conan open the distance. One tried to close, drawing a second dagger. A desperate parry brought the dagger up as Conan's sword descended. The dagger flew with a clang and a clatter. A moment later the man sagged to his knees, clutching at his useless arm. Clear sight left his eyes as the blood left his body.
One of the man's comrades used his death well. He slipped past Conan to block the Cimmerian's passage forward. Another "peasant" joined the remaining man. If Conan tried to pass the first man, the other two would have time to come up behind him.
A sound stratagem, against any other man than Conan. They should have learned more about hillfolk before they tried to fight one, was his thought.
Conan le
aped to the edge of the deck, then dropped onto the first sweep. The slaves' eyes grew round and their hands loosened their grip. The sweep slanted down and trailed, but Conan had already shifted his weight to the next one.
The man who'd thought to block Conan waited too long to believe what the Cimmerian had done. Raihna came leaping aft, like a she-lion upon prey. Her sword split the man's skull and her dagger drove into his bowels. He collapsed without a sound, dead too swiftly even to foul himself. Conan heaved himself back aboard, to stand beside Raihna.
"Leave these to me," she cried. "Look to Illyana!"
Frantic braying and the drumming of hooves sounded on the far side of the ferry. Hard on their heels came curses, then a shrill scream from Illyana.
Another cry hammered at Conan's ears as he pushed through the baggage and animals underneath the platform. He reached the open in time to see a "peasant" leap overboard, frantic to flee the peddler's mule. The beast was thrashing about madly, panic-stricken out of what wits he had. In another moment the panic would spread through all the animals aboard. Then Conan and his ladies would have more than Lord Houma's hired swords to concern them.
Illyana was backed against one of the platform's supporting posts, facing three foes. In his mind Conan both cursed her for coming down from comparative safety and praised her courage. She held a long dagger, the twin of Raihna's, with a trained grip. Her slow movements would still have done little against even one opponent, had they been free to come at her. For Illyana, the mule was as good as another guard. The men feared to come within reach of its hooves and teeth.
That fear gave Conan time he put to good use. One man died with his skull split before he knew a foe stood behind him. The second whirled, sword leaping up to guard. He was both subtle and strong. Conan knew that he had the edge on the man, but would have to take care.
The meeting of two expert swordsmen drove the maddened mule back. The last man found a gap and slipped through it. He had no sword, but his two knives danced with swift assurance against Illyana's clumsy parries. He might have been playing with her, seeking to put her in fear and see her cringe and sweat before taking her life.
Conan cursed and shouted for Raihna, neither of which he expected to do much good. Something that Illyana could do, on the other hand—
"Put a spell on him, can't you?" he roared. "Or what good is your magic?"
"Better than you would dare to believe, Cimmerian!" Illyana shouted. A lucky parry held one knife away from her left breast. She gripped the man's other arm and held on with desperate strength.
Conan knew that neither her strength nor her desperation would be enough for long. If either failed before he could deal with this opponent—
"Then if it's so cursed good!—"
"It—is—not swifter—than—uhhh!" as the man tore his arm free. Illyana drove her knee up toward his groin but he shifted his footing so that she only struck his hip. A moment later one hand was wound in her hair while the other raised a knife toward her throat.
In that same moment Conan's sword found his opponent's life. Shoulder and chest poured blood onto already-stained robes. The man neither cried out nor fell. Instead he lurched toward Conan, still a barrier between him and Illyana, who had only a few heartbeats of life left to her.
As the knife blade touched Illyana's throat, a loop of iron chain tightened around the knife wielder's foot.
He kicked to clear his foot, sending himself off balance. The chain tightened again, pulling him away from Illyana. He threw out an arm to save himself— and Conan's sword came down on that arm. Severed arm and knife wielder fell to the deck at the same time.
Illyana stood, gripping the post with one hand. The other she held to her throat, stroking it as if she could scarcely believe it was not gaping from ear to ear. Her dagger lay unheeded on the deck. Conan picked it up and handed it to her.
"Don't ever let loose of your steel until the last enemy's dead!"
She swallowed and licked full lips. Her face would have made fresh milk look brightly colored, and a vein pulsed in the side of her long neck. She swallowed again, then sagged forward into Conan's arms.
It was not fainting. She babbled words that would have made no sense even in a language Conan understood and gripped him with arms seemingly turned to iron. Conan freed his sword arm and put the other around her, holding her as he might have held a puppy or a kitten.
Under the sorceress was enough woman to crave a man's touch when she needed assurance. Conan would leave matters there. To steal her maidenhood would be the kind of theft he had always disdained even as a new-fledged thief in Zamora. It was still not unpleasant to find in Illyana more kinship with ordinary folk than he'd ever expected to find in a sorceress.
"Come," he said at last. "Embracing men is like dropping your steel. Best save it until we've heard from our last enemy." Gently he pushed her away, then followed the chain around the dead man's leg to the edge of the deck and looked down.
One of the slaves stood on tiptoe, staring over the edge of the deck. There had been just enough slack in the chain that held him to his sweep to let him use it as a weapon.
"My friend," Conan said. "I don't know if you've earned yourself freedom or impalement." From the slave's gaunt face and lash-marked back, it seemed unlikely that he cared greatly.
The eyes in the gaunt face were still steady. So was the voice. "The master was plotting, and I owed him nothing. You be the judge of your debt to me, you and your woman."
"I'm not—" Illyana began indignantly, then found the strength to laugh. She was still laughing when Raihna appeared, wiping blood from her sword.
"The two you left me are both down, Conan. One may live to answer questions if you have any. Oh, our friend speaks the truth about the master. He was to join the fight, too, but lost his courage at the last moment."
"Where is he?"
"Clinging for his life to the end of the skiff's line," Raihna said with a wicked grin. "The two hands threw him overboard and cut it loose. They were still well short of the bank when it sank under them. One of them could swim. I saw him clambering up the bank."
Conan wished sunstroke, snakebite, and thirst upon the treacherous hand and strode aft. The master was no longer pale, but red as if scalded with the effort of hanging to the line.
"For the love of the gods, don't let me drown!" he wheezed. "I can't swim."
"The gods don't love traitors and neither do I," Conan said. "Nor does Lord Mishrak."
The master nearly lost his grip on the line. "You serve Mishrak!"
"I can make him interested in you or not, as I choose. It lies in your hands."
"Then have mercy! To name me to Mishrak—would you slay me and all my kin?"
"I'd see you drown without blinking," Conan said brusquely. "Your kin may be worth more. Tell me what you know about these knifeman and I may hold my tongue."
For a man nearly at his last gasp, the master managed to tell a great deal in a short time. It appeared that the knifeman were indeed Lord Houma's. The master had never heard of Master Eremius or the Jewels of Kurag, nor did Conan choose to inform him.
At last the master began to repeat himself. Conan decided that there was little more to be heard worth the danger of losing the man to the river.
He reached down, heaved the man aboard, then shook him over the side like a wet dog. When he finally set the master down, the man's knees buckled. Conan tied his hands behind his back with his own belt.
"You swore—" the master began.
"I didn't swear a thing. You don't need hands to give orders. All you need is a tongue you had best shape to something like respect. Or I may kick you overboard and not trouble Mishrak with the work of learning any more from you."
The master turned pale again and sat mute as a stone, watching Conan turn forward and stride away.
It was a while before they could bring the ferry to a safe landing on the far bank of the Shimak. The master could barely speak at all. The peddler and his b
oy seemed concerned only that their mule was unhurt.
"Demons take you!" Conan swore at their fifth refusal to help handle the ferry. "Will it help your precious pet if he dies of thirst or drowns in the rapids?"
"When we know Lotus is well, then you can call on us," the peddler said. "Until then, leave us."
"Please, lady," the boy added, addressing Illyana. "If you can do magic, can you do a healing on Lotus? We couldn't pay very much, but we'd miss him a lot."
Conan wrestled notions of spanking the boy or throwing the mule overboard. It helped that Illyana was smiling at the boy.
"My magic isn't the kind that can help animals," she said. "But my sister was raised around horses. Perhaps she can help you."
Conan strode away with a curse, as Raihna knelt to take the mule's left hind foot in both hands.
It was Massouf, the slave who'd saved Illyana, who finally brought them to safety. Freed from his chains with a key Conan found in the master's purse (along with a good sum in gold that he decided the master had no further use for), Massouf put his comrades to some sort of regular stroke. With Conan to lend strength if not skill to the steering oar, they eventually crunched ashore some ways downstream.
"We're in your debt once more," Illyana said, as she emerged from behind a boulder in clean garb. "You already have your freedom. Is there more we can give? We are not ill-provided with gold—"
"Best not say that too loudly, my lady," Massouf said. "Even the rocks may have ears. But if you have gold to spare—" For the first time he seemed to lose his self-assurance, so unlike a slave's.
"If you have gold, I beg you to take it to the house of Kimon in Gala and buy the slave girl Dessa. They will ask much for her, comely as she is. But if you free her, I will be your slave if I can repay you no other way."
"What was she to you?" Raihna said. "We are not unwilling—"
"We were betrothed, when—what made us both slaves came about. It was ordered that we be sold separately, and each serve as hostage for the other. Otherwise, we would long since have fled or died together."
