Toj hastened to the prone form to recover his weapons. The slaying had been swift and too silent to arouse suspicion among those in the nearby host. Satisfied, the assassin drew a slender, hook-bladed knife from a sheath strapped to his calf. He sliced away a piece of the dead man’s tunic, then ripped the shaken from the ruins of the scout’s mouth and wiped it clean of blood and brains.
As he retrieved his other blades, a warning tingle in his spine prompted him to glance over his shoulder. “Bel!” he hissed.
Two scouts stood behind him. One swung a heavy stick at Toj’s unprotected head and caught him squarely on the temple. The other lashed out with his foot, his booted heel striking the back of Toj’s knee. The guild master. spun halfway around and tossed his single shaken, but another kick spoiled his aim. The thick wooden branch smashed down again. Toj dropped to one knee, then fell sideways, blood dripping from his nose.
“Is he dead, Mahkoro?” the branch-wielding scout asked.
“Nay, Baasha. Only halfway to Hell,” Mahkoro replied, his palm pressed against Toj’s neck to check for a pulse. “But after what he did to Aveni, I’ll send the dog the rest of the way there. Aveni owed me sixty farthings, by Pteor!” Mahkoro wrapped his hands around Toj’s throat and pressed in with his thumbs.
Baasha shook his head. “Before we kill him, we should find out what he was about. What if he is a spy of Reydnu’s? Our asshuri brothers may be riding into a trap.” The scout dropped his club and picked up Toj’s errant shaken. “Look at this wheel of steel that he hurled at me... he must have used these to slay Aveni. Where in Zandra’s Nine Hells did he come by such a weapon? Nay, Mahkoro, we must take this rogue to Balvadek—let go, by Zandru! Slay him not. Balvadek may wish to wring the truth from this dog, and we can do the wringing. A slow and painful death befits this spy.” Baasha clapped a hand on Mahkoro’s shoulder.
“You are right,” said the asshuri, releasing his grip. “He is laden with gear, it seems, and perhaps he had valuables. Let’s split whatever coins we find before we take him to Balvadek.”
Baasha grinned. “Of course,” he agreed.
They searched through Toj’s robes, garments, pouches, and pockets, which were stuffed with a bewildering variety of weapons and supplies. A belt around Toj’s waist was lined with heavy gold coins from various lands. All of the coins were spaced apart, tucked neatly into leather compartments stitched into the belt.
“This kept the coins from clinking together,” Baasha observed. “A trick used by thieves and spies who would have no sound betray them while they skulk about their business.”
“By Pteor, look at this dagger,” Mahkoro marvelled. He stared at the hilt that jutted from a sheath of soft leather fixed to the belt of loot. It was seamlessly wrought of gold and copper into a serpent-like shape, with the triangular head forming the pommel. A huge, flawless ruby glittered in each eye socket.
The men glanced at each other with expressions of pure avarice. Such a treasure represented five years of hard-earned pay, if not more, and it could not be shared.
Mahkoro was first to seize the dazzling hilt. He slipped it out of the sheath and drove it into Baasha’s groin. The burnished steel blade ripped upward and opened Baasha’s belly before the asshuri could step backward. Baasha grunted in pain and made a grab for Mahkoro’s hand. He missed, but Mahkoro stumbled and nicked his arm with the dagger’s tip.
Baasha staggered and grabbed his rent stomach. Blood dribbled from his mouth and gushed from his ghastly wound. He fell forward and twitched for a moment, then finally lay still. If Mahkoro had not turned away, he might have noticed that Baasha’s blood had suddenly stopped flowing from his wound, and that his limbs had taken on a pale hue that was almost blue.
A grim smile of contentment played across Mahkoro’s face. “You’re mine,” he whispered to the dagger. As he bent to remove Toj’s belt and continue his looting, a twinge of pain struck him. He moaned in mingled surprise and agony. The dagger fell from his hand and he dropped to his knees. His arm burned as if the hottest fires of Hell seared it. Then he realized that it was not heat he felt, but bitter, unbearable cold. No more could Mahkoro feel his fingers. Mercifully, his forearm grew numb, but the agonizing cold spread into his biceps and his shoulder, where it lingered for an eternity of torment.
Panic seized him as he saw the source of the spreading chill—the small wound from the serpent-like dagger. Poison... or sorcery? With his good arm, he rubbed at the frozen limb. It was bent, and he struggled to straighten it.
The icy forearm broke off at the elbow and fell from his fingers, its meat, muscle, and bones obscenely exposed. Mahkoro felt his gorge rise, but he did not live long enough to spew. The asshuri’s heart froze in his breast, and at that instant he knew no more.
The ornate dagger lay nearby upon the grass, its peculiar blade unstained by the blood it had tasted. In the waning sunlight, it gleamed like a reddish-gold serpent before Mahkoro’s unseeing eyes.
Toj fingered his blood-matted hair, careful not to disturb the crust that had formed on his split scalp. He opened his eyes slowly and inadvertently raised his eyebrows. That slight movement threatened to open anew the deep wound from the blow that had knocked him senseless. How long had he lain here? Where were the asshuri— better yet, where was here? Toj forced his disoriented senses to focus... upon grass beneath him, the night sky above him, the cool but moist air on his skin. In addition to the intense throbbing of his head, he felt a mild ache from the back of his knee.
The assassin breathed evenly and deeply as he closed his eyes. It was the first step in a powerful discipline that he had mastered only through seven long years of study in the jungle-shrouded monastery at Xifeng, in a vast swamp of southern Khitai. There, inside a stone temple that had been ancient when Atlantis sank, eleven monks still whispered prayers to a strange god born from the spirits of five dragon brothers. In life, the dragons had fought among themselves, but in death, they found wisdom and their spirits joined to become one being: Xifeng.
Toj had discovered the monastery during one of his lotus-gathering expeditions into the deadly swamps of Khitai. The wizened monks freely shared their knowledge with those patient enough to learn. In seven years, Toj had learned only the bare rudiments of the first of Xifeng’s five disciplines. For an apt pupil, each discipline took twice as long to learn as the previous one. Sima-Yan, the youngest monk to master all five, was more than two hundred and fifty years old.
Sima-Yan’s whispered words echoed in his memory. “Inhale... exhale. There is no pain. Inhale... the pain deceives the mind. Exhale... trust not the mind, but heed the spirit. The mind is part of the mortal body, bound to the material world. Inhale... the spirit is essence, separate from the mind and therefore separate from the body. Exhale... can the spirit see the pain, hear it, smell it, or taste it? No, it is invisible, soundless, odourless, savourless. Can the spirit touch the pain? No, it is formless. Inhale... there is no pain.”
Toj opened his eyes. He stood and stretched, oblivious to wounds that would have brought the most stoic of warriors to his knees. He ignored the trickle of warm blood that seeped into his collar. With a few of the many healing herbs that he carried with him, he would heal the cuts. They would not even require the nectar of the Golden Lotus, which was still in its bladder, strapped to his chest.
Unfortunately, the first discipline did not accelerate healing; it merely dispensed with the distractions that crippled the minds—and therefore the bodies—of almost all men. Without abolishing emotions such as pain, fear, hate—and love—the other disciplines could not be attained.
Sima-Yan had once demonstrated his mastery of the third discipline by plunging his katana sword through his heart, withdrawing it, and healing the wound as he did so.
Toj almost regretted his decision to leave the monastery. If he had remained to learn the third discipline, he could have rendered Jade’s kalb beetle completely ineffective. But he would also have been unable to kill, save in self-defence., for the
act of murder violated the second discipline. And he would have grown old in the learning, for he lacked the monks’ longevity. Death would have claimed him long before he learned the fifth discipline. Ironically, it was mastery of this discipline that defended the mind and body from the powerful demon of time. The eldest monk of Xifeng had lived tenfold lifespans as measured by common men.
The assassin stood, flexing the muscles in his arms and legs to dissipate their stiffness. No longer troubled by his wounds, Toj reached for the pouch that contained his herbs of healing. He soon realized that all of his pockets and pouches had been disturbed. His dark gaze settled upon the dead asshuri who sprawled nearby, and his nose twitched at the stink that rose from their motionless bodies. In the pale moon glow, he espied the Red Asp, which lay next to a dismembered arm upon the sward.
Toj seized the exquisite hilt and admired the blade’s smooth, reddened metal as he slid it into its sheath. So, these fools had paid the price for meddling with his magicked dagger. He noted that their corpses had nearly thawed from the icy bite that had doomed them. The spell’s fabric unravelled slowly after doing its work. Blood dripped from their wounds, and moist droplets glistened upon their waxen skin. “Fools,” he whispered to them, then raised his gaze to the moon. Fools indeed, but these fools had cost him precious time. By now, the asshuri host might have overrun Varhia and slain Conan.
After a brief and fruitless search for his horse, the assassin clamped his teeth to suppress the unwanted exasperation that welled within him. Left with no other choice, he adjusted his robes, tightened the straps of his boots, and ran toward the riverbed road and on to Varhia at a swift, sure-footed pace. Toj possessed the lean muscled, long-legged build of a Zamorian desert-jackal, and he sped toward the village with tireless determination.
IX
Games of Blood
“Have done with the northern savage already, by Erlik!” shouted Rigmus, general of Reydnu’s army. Red-faced with excitement, he rose unsteadily to his feet. Expensive wine from his golden goblet slopped onto his silken white shirt and stained the cushions in the corner of the Grape and Thistle’s common room. Oblivious to this display—one that had become more frequent as the Ghazan wine muddled his mind—Rigmus swayed drunkenly and leered at the barbarian’s voluptuous companion.
The general’s bodyguard, a monument of muscled flesh named Valeg, loomed over the small table at which he sat. Conan sweated nose-to-nose across from him. Knuckles whitened and biceps bulged as each man sought to force the other’s arm to the table.
After two thrown matches earlier that evening, Conan had defeated nineteen challengers. Kylanna stood beside him throughout. To the Cimmerian’s surprise, the princess had acted like a different woman from the moment of their arrival in the common room. She had put her feminine wiles to work, flirting with several hesitant contestants and cajoling others to take the seat across from Conan. Her smile widened, as did their purse of winnings. And the officers, sullen at first, seemed to warm up to the shapely woman and the wolfish stranger.
As the innkeeper soon saw, the contests seemed to dry the throats of Reydnu’s restless officers. Many times had the innkeeper visited his cellar wherein the costlier vintages lay, and his coffers now bulged with coinage.
When General Rigmus arrived with his prodigious escort, the excitement soon reached a feverish pitch. The pot-bellied general’s appetite for wagering surpassed his fondness for wine-swilling, and he spent gold in abundance to indulge himself. So confident was he of Valeg’s prowess that he had immediately suggested a stake of ten golden Aquilonian crowns—the heaviest of Hyborian coins.
That first match had gone to Conan. The second, now in progress, seemed uncertain—and the wager had doubled.
Cords of muscle rippled under the sweat-sheathed flesh of Conan’s arm. His absurd shirt, its sleeves rolled up past his massive biceps, was soaked throughout from his exertions. He drew back his lips in a snarl and stared fiercely into Valeg’s beady, dull eyes. Therein he saw no flicker of thought, merely the stare of a mindless animal. The giant had spoken no words all night, not so much as a grunt. Could such brutish strength be born of a human sire?
Conan, in spite of his victory in the first encounter, began to wonder if he had merely surprised Valeg into defeat. He might have been gripping the hand of a granite statue, and this time that hand had not moved so much as a whisker’s breadth. Conan’s own wrist ached, and a sliver from the table lanced his elbow as he fought to keep his arm from sliding.
“Blue-eyes no beat Valeg,” came the first guttural words from the crooked mouth.
Conan frowned as he recognized a peculiar, yet familiar, Kosalan accent, mangled though it was. Where had he heard it before? the memory eluded him as he struggled. Veins stood out in purple relief on his temples, and sweat poured anew from his forehead when he recalled an encounter from years past and surmised the nature of Valeg’s inhuman musculature. In a hidden temple of Zamboula, the Cimmerian had fought Baal-pteor, a Kosalan who had called himself a strangler of Yota-pong. In that barbaric and evil land, where men worshipped the bloodthirsty demon-god Yajur, priests trained youths to slay men by strangulation. In the bare hands of their executioners, sacrificial victims by the thousands had had their heads brutally twisted—nay, tom—from their shoulders. A man so trained would make an ideal bodyguard for a general too fat and weak to defend himself.
Valeg was a formidable foe. Conan had slain Baal-pteor, but Valeg’s mass lent him greater strength than Baal-pteor's. Though Conan knew himself to be more than a match for nearly any man, he had not slept for nearly two days. He had ridden hard all day after escaping from the asshuri prison, and too long this night had he played at these contests of strength.
Valeg’s broad face split into a grin, and he slammed Conan’s arm onto the table, nearly snapping the bones, in the Cimmerian’s wrist. One of the tabletop’s planks splintered under the impact.
Conan’s defeat kindled flames of ire his breast. By Crom, he had once beaten a Kosalan strangler, and he could do it again! The passage of years since then had not sapped his strength. His anger pumped vigour anew into his cramped muscles, and he glared across the table at Valeg and smiled. “My left arm was ever my weaker,” he challenged. “Another game, this time right-handed, and you shall taste defeat!”
Kylanna flashed a sly smile at Conan, then sighed in disappointment as she nearly emptied her purse into the general’s outstretched palms. Conan’s defeat had cost them almost all of their winnings. She stepped back to the Cimmerian’s side and lowered her face close to his ear. “Well played, Conan!” she whispered. “You have learned this game, I see. Again we shall double the wager—forty gold crowns, enough to travel in proper comfort for the remainder of my return to Arenjun.”
Slowly, Conan nodded agreement. He would test his mettle against this Kosalan. They lacked funds to back such a wager, but he now cared only about trouncing Valeg.
Kylanna faced the general and made a show of moistening her lips. “What say you, General Rigmus? Shall we double the stake?” “A rematch!” the general exclaimed, spittle flying from his lips as he tucked the coins into a bulky sack that hung from his belt. He rubbed his hands together and leered at the generous expanse of Kylanna’s exposed cleavage. “Forty crowns seems a trifle for such a contest. Why not a hundred?”
Exclamations of surprise at this outlandish sum rippled across the common room. A hushed pause followed as the onlookers waited for the woman’s response. Only Conan and Valeg seemed indifferent to her answer as they stared fiercely at each other. Valeg cracked his knuckles loudly and flexed his huge biceps, as if he shared Conan’s eagerness to have another go.
“Agreed, Rigmus,” said Kylanna.
The general’s beady eyes flickered. He slipped his sack from his belt and slapped it onto the table. “Now show your stake,” he demanded.
Kylanna chewed her lower lip momentarily. “You would doubt my word that I shall honour our agreement, General?” she demanded
in mock outrage.
“Show me your gold,” he insisted.
“Not all of it is carried upon our persons,” she began. “Much of it we secreted away, but all is within a half-day’s ride.”
“Hah! So you admit to your blatant misuse of our trust.” The general swaggered toward her.
Conan readied himself to spring to her aid, and his hand strayed toward his hilt. A tense silence hung in the air.
Before Kylanna could protest, Rigmus spoke again. “In that case, I can name my terms for this contest. If my champion wins, you will have the pleasure of sharing my bed tonight.” He smacked his wine-stained lips and chuckled lustily. “Of course, if your bravo should be victorious, the gold is yours.”
Conan snarled, but Kylanna put her slender hand on his burly shoulder and spoke before he could protest. “Done,” she said as her defiant gaze met Rigmus’s piggish, drink-muddled eyes.
The general staggered forward and crushed her lithe body against his bulky torso, kissing her full upon the lips. “A taste of the joys that await you,” he slurred, stifling a belch. “You are mine this night! No man is stronger than Valeg!”
Kylanna tore herself from Rigmus’s embrace and slapped his face. “No man touches me so without my consent!”
Conan’s hands clenched into fists.
Rigmus backed away and rubbed at the palm-shaped bloom of red that flushed his puffy cheek. “Uppity strumpet! Wien Valeg wins and I bind you to my bed, you’ll regret that!”
Yarl chose that moment to intervene. His hand trembled as he poured a generous measure of his rarest Ghazan vintage into the general’s goblet. Rigmus glowered but seemed content to let the matter rest. The moment of breathless tension passed.
The officers exchanged a flurry of side bets, and even the nervous innkeeper took part in the action. Of the coins wagered, the smaller pile favoured the Cimmerian.
Conan and the Grim Grey God Page 10
