The buzz of speculation died down as Conan and Valeg leaned forward and extended their right hands. Yarl clapped to start the contest.
Knots of muscle rippled along Conan’s sun-bronzed arm, and his fierce visage lent him an aspect that was more beast than man.
Valeg’s face was devoid of expression. He snarled as he flexed his fingers, the smallest of which was thicker than Conan’s thumb. His hand closed around the Cimmerian’s with bone-crushing strength, and his biceps and forearm bore down with overwhelming force.
Conan’s finger-joints popped loudly and his wrist bent, but he had braced himself for the brutal assault. Breath hissed between his clenched teeth as he struggled against the powerful Kosalan. He would prevail by sheer endurance. Valeg had tremendous strength, but Conan surmised that the man would tire sooner than he, as had Baal-pteor. A sudden expenditure of strength would merely break like a wave on Valeg’s rock-like arm. If he could but outlast the Kosalan....
“Valeg! Valeg!” Shouts of encouragement sounded for the general’s man, and many eyes gleamed in anticipation. Conan’s arm had begun to give way. Derisive hoots and insults were hurled at him.
Valeg grunted, and the table creaked under the strain of the wrestlers’ arms. Then the giant bore down, shoving Conan’s hand to within a finger’s breadth of the tabletop.
A low, bestial growl rose from the Cimmerian’s throat. Sweat beaded and dripped from his limbs as they trembled from the strain, but neither fear nor defeat were present in the barbarian’s expression.
Conan’s growl became a roar as savage as a lion’s. His wrist rose and wrenched the Kosalan’s hand up, then down, smashing it onto the scarred wood. The table broke asunder when Valeg’s arm struck it. As the wood cracked and splintered, the sack of gold tumbled to the floor in a cascade of coins—though none present scrabbled for them. Groans of dismay filled the air, and Rigmus in his gilt-edged tunic cursed and hurled his goblet of wine across the room. He then struck Valeg’s face with his beefy hand.
“Son of a slut!” he raged. Ribbons of red drool ran from the comer of his mouth. “Have your thews become as weak as your wits? I deem you unfit to guard my person—no more will you enjoy the honour and the prestige of serving me!” He threw another goblet of wine against the wall. The innkeeper flinched at the impact but scurried away to fetch a new one.
Valeg’s face clouded in apparent confusion, and his shoulders sagged, but he offered no words of protest.
Rigmus’s drunken gaze swept along Kylanna’s voluptuous body. “The gold is yours,” he slurred. “But for that price, I will have you this night, wench.”
“You’ll have naught but a blade in your guts if you touch her again,” growled Conan as he rose from his chair.
“Eh? And who are you, mercenary scum, to threaten the general of Reydnu’s army? Your insolent tongue has dug you a deep grave!” With speed that belied his inebriation, Rigmus grabbed Kylanna’s shoulder and spun her toward him.
Kylanna twisted away from Rigmus. “Conan, no!” she cried. “Do not—”
Conan’s answering oath drowned out her protest, and his flying fist smashed into Rigmus’s ear with a dull crack. The buffet snapped the general’s head sideways and knocked his body backward. Blood squirted from one of his nostrils. His eyes rolled upward until only the whites could be seen, and he slumped to the floor, convulsing. Bloody foam bubbled from his mouth for a brief span, then he lay still.
The common room fell silent, flickering lamps reflecting on the shocked faces of Reydnu’s officers.
“He’s dead,” murmured a hawk-faced sergeant. “The murdering dog slew the general over a doxy—”
“Cur!” yelled a bald, broad-shouldered captain, loosening the strap of his hilt.
“Swine! Barbarian!” hooted two swarthy lieutenants, snatching at their weapons. They darted toward the Cimmerian.
Conan stepped in front of Kylanna, hefted a table over his head, and hurled it full at the two lieutenants, knocking them back into their fellows. Angry shouts mingled with the muted crack of breaking bones.
The two men did not get up.
“Ishtar!” the bald captain swore as he leapt forward and slashed, his blade cleaving naught but air. Conan had anticipated the attack and bounded aside, even as he whipped his sword from its scabbard. The Cimmerian’s counter-attack. swept out in a low, powerful arc, severing both of the captain’s legs at mid-thigh. The soldier tumbled to the floor with an anguished moan, his sword slipping from nerveless fingers.
The sudden onset of violence seemed to paralyse the other officers for a moment, but they recovered. Weapons were drawn, and a few heartbeats later, Conan and Kylanna were surrounded.
The Cimmerian glowered, blood dripping from his blade as he shifted it from hand to hand. He swept the room with eyes that burned a baleful blue, and no man could meet that fearsome gaze. But Conan knew that against these odds, even he was doomed—he could not save himself and the girl. This lot of Shemite officers might be cowards, but they were also veterans who would overwhelm him by sheer numbers. He mocked them with a guttural laugh, for he would not cower like a frightened cur before the gaping maw of death. “Who dies next?” he rumbled.
A score of angry officers stared at him—men hungering for blood, blades gleaming in the lambent glow from the table lamps. But none dared to strike, and fear glimmered in all expressions... save that of Valeg. The brutish Kosalan’s face registered naught but bestial hatred. He lifted a decorative but usable mace from its place on the wall and charged like a maddened bull, his arms swinging the weapon’s head-sized ball of spikes toward Conan’s skull.
The Cimmerian caught the blow on the flat of his sword, which bent and promptly snapped. The broken length of steel flew at Conan and sliced a flap of flesh from his scalp. The mace scraped his shoulder, its spikes digging a red furrow.
“Crom's teeth!” Conan barked as he plunged the handspan of steel—all that remained of his sword—into Valeg’s side.
Unfazed, the Kosalan lifted his mace for a killing blow.
Conan bounded forward and grappled with Valeg, dodging in under the murderous sweep of the spikes. His momentum knocked the big man backward but did not topple him. The Cimmerian’s knee slammed upward into Valeg’s crotch, eliciting an agonized bellow. The Kosalan lost his balance and grabbed at Conan, who fell with him, their fists flailing as they struck the floor.
“Finish him!” screamed a short captain and a burly sergeant in unison, and a half-dozen men jumped into the fight, stabbing and slashing with reckless abandon at the two struggling men.
The hawk-faced sergeant lunged. His point nicked Conan’s side but slid past, where it slipped between Valeg’s ribs. Yet the Kosalan fought on as the sergeant jerked free his blade and cursed his own clumsiness.
Conan drove his elbow into the wound. Ribs snapped, their splintered ends piercing Valeg’s heart. The Kosalan’s last breath wheezed from him as the Cimmerian rolled aside and pulled the massive corpse with him to shield himself from the hail of blows landed by the officers. He groped for a dropped sword, but his clutching fingers closed instead around Valeg’s mace.
The officers had ignored Kylanna, who had slowly backed toward a wall. But all the while, she had held her sword point-up, her legs apart in the stance of an expert sword fighter. Now she burst into action, her narrow blade flickering like the tongue of a steel serpent. An officer’s head leapt from his shoulders in a crimson gush, while another man’s entrails spilled from his rent belly. Two others fell back, grabbing at bloodied arms. Their blades lay upon the floor.
Officers cast looks of mingled fear and amazement in her direction as they retreated warily, then rejoined the melee with slower, more deliberate moves. Step by step, they forced Kylanna away from the tavern wall. Her sword whirled and twisted in a dazzling dance of steel that defied every assailant. Yet she wounded them not, and the odds clearly favoured her attackers. Sweat poured down her face and shone on her breasts, which heaved beneath her d
amp, clinging tunic.
Conan had vanished in a mass of flailing sword-arms and flashing blades. Curses, howls of pain, the clash of metal, and the meaty smack of blades into flesh filled the air with a tangled din of butchery. Shemite after Shemite fell with a pulped skull, a torn throat, or a crushed torso. Some fell back or crawled away, clutching at less dire wounds but unable or unwilling to fight. In the blindness of fury and confusion, some officers struck their fellows, their very numbers working against them.
From a waist-deep mound of mangled, bloody flesh emerged the gore-smeared Cimmerian. He now clutched a dripping dirk, taken in the frenzy from a foeman. Splashed from head to toe with blood, he looked less a man and more a wild beast, his throat issuing naught but incoherent growls, his red-misted gaze flashing in search of more blood to spill.
Conan’s eyes narrowed at the sight of Kylanna, who fought desperately against four opponents. He leapt over a mound of corpses and onto a table, rammed his dirk through one man’s throat and snapped another’s spine with a vicious sideways kick.
Kylanna quickly ran one man through. The last Shemite died moments later as he turned toward Conan, catching Conan’s thrown dagger in his breast and Kylanna’s downward slash through his belly.
“Bel, Badb, and Dagon,” panted the Cimmerian, planting his hands on his knees and leaning forward in exhaustion. “Few woman—or men, for that matter—can claim your mastery of swordplay, girl! Even Valeria, Bêlit, or Karela might deem you a worthy foe. Where in Zandra’s Nine Hells did you acquire your skill? Tell me not that Tiridates’ elite soldiers tutored you, for no paunchy palace guard ever wielded a blade as deftly as you.” With open suspicion, he studied her face.
Kylanna leaned against the wall and sighed wearily. She laid her blade upon a table and massaged her sword-arm. “Conan,” she began slowly, “I have used you falsely. The battle has unmasked me. But for you, I would be at the gates of Gehanna.”
“Aye, twice have I saved you,” Conan said gruffly.
“Nay, only tonight, Cimmerian. Know you that when we met at the asshuri camp, I was in no danger.”
“Crom, girl, are you mad? That torturer—”
“—was my man,” she interrupted, “told to act the role of ravisher. I knew not that you would slay him, though it matters not. He was a murderer ten times over who had too often been spared a swift ride to Hell. As for my ‘Captain Tousalos’ in the other cell, he was one of my asshuri, whom you slew the day before. Never was he tortured; those screams were faked by another.”
‘To what end? Nay, tell me not, until I know your true identity. If you’re a princess of Zamora, I’m war-chief of all Pictland.” Anger flashed in his eyes. “And the tiara...”
“Does not exist,” she said with a shrug. “A tale to lure you.” Conan smashed his fist against the table. “Sivitri is the name given me at birth,” she continued. “I am truly a daughter of Tiridates, though he knows it not. Before that decadent old drunkard developed a preference for young boys, he kept my mother as a favoured consort in Shadizar. I grew up in the palace there, but my mother paid me little heed, spending her days in the opium dens and her nights in whatever bed best served her purposes. She was weak in both mind and body. I vowed to become strong, to be master of my spirit and my flesh: It was after I could always beat the captain of the palace guard in our mock duels when Jade—” she stopped and cleared her throat. “—when she who became my mentor took an interest in me and gave me a purpose, and a station far better than I could have had were I acknowledged daughter by Tiridates himself.” “Jade?” Conan scoffed. “She is but a myth. I have thieved everywhere from Nemedian estates in Belverus to the Vendhyan towers in Ayodhya, and all men know that she is but a myth.”
“A myth, yes—by her design,” Sivitri replied. “For what is fame to a thief? It brings unwanted attention and eventual ruin.”
Conan scowled but stifled his protest, for he knew this to be true. The best thief was one whose reputation was hidden, as well as his hoard.
“Speak not of her,” cautioned Sivitri. “Those who say her name too often are wont to disappear. Anyway, know you that her empire is more vast than any king’s, many of whom dangle like puppets from her vast web of strings. For her net stretches from the Hyborian kingdoms of the west to Kambuja—the south-eastern comer of the world.”
“I know of Kambuja,” Conan muttered.
“Save Khitai, Stygia, and the Black Kingdoms, she has guilds in every land, or at least in every city deserving of the name.”
“Guilds—of thieves?” Conan nibbed his jaw.
“Thieves, merchants, sages... and in Belverus and Zamboula, assassins’ guilds. Some three hundred guild masters in all—-nay, be-like it is more than that—pay obeisance to her in one form or another.”
“To one woman?” Conan’s brow furrowed.
His doubting tone sparked a flash of anger in Sivitri’s eyes. “Were it a man, I suppose you would doubt it not. What are men but muscle-bound oafs who keep their brains in their breech clouts? How easily I used you, barbarian. A few doe-eyed looks at your thews, a careful display of my wares for you to ogle, and your senses—so keen on the hunt or in battle—are befogged.”
“Were you a man, I would split your skull.” Angrily he grated his teeth. But she spoke rightly enough... he was a fool, to have played into the lying wench’s game. But what was her game? He could hazard but a few guesses, and the truth lay beneath waters too deep for him to fathom.
Sivitri’s laugh cut sharply into his ears. “And so barks the hound to the tigress, before she tears out his throat. Sheathe your sword and your tongue, Cimmerian, for I swear by Bel, Zath, and Derketo that I shall not try to slay you. And I know enough of you and your ways to be certain that you would strike me down only if I attacked you.”
Conan fumed, but uttered no denial.
“We waste time here. Only fools fight in a burning house, and we have just set this inn afire.” She gestured toward the bloody heaps at their feet. “Be-like the whole army will chase us to Turan when they learn of this deed. Let us away. I promise to explain my purpose to you, but not here!”
Conan growled and dug through a pile of corpses to strip them of coin purses. He scooped up the stained gold from his match with Valeg and stuffed the lot into a spacious sack. He pried an expertly forged Corinthian longsword from the stiff fingers of a headless sergeant, all the while keeping an eye on Sivitri.
“I see.” She shook her head. “Will you rid yourself of me? Will you slay me so that I cannot follow? Fate is a mistress who chooses her own partners, Conan, and she has chained us together for the nonce.”
“I’ll not harm you, but we part ways tonight. I owe nothing to you.” He slipped a broad belt from an officer’s waist and eyed it critically. “I’ll leave you bound—”
The door rasped, and their heads spun toward it in time to glimpse the innkeeper’s hasty departure.
“Crom’s bones!” Conan swore in exasperation. “The dog must have hidden in the cellar and crept out while you distracted me. I’ll not leave you to vengeful soldiers, for though you brought this battle upon us, you took a hand in evening the odds.”
“I tried to stop you from killing that loutish general,” Sivitri protested.
Conan growled in response and strode toward the door. “When the innkeeper rouses reinforcements, I’ll be well down the road. If you stay in this slaughterhouse, I’ll bear no blame for your death. Follow me if your must... and if you can.” He broke into a run and flung open the door.
“What—” he began, before astonishment froze the words in his throat. He stopped so suddenly that he almost overbalanced, so unexpected was the sight filling his widened eyes.
The Grape and Thistle sat upon the crest of a low hill, affording a view of the city’s southern quarter. There, fires burned and smoke billowed up into the night sky. In the light of the blaze, he saw mounted warriors-—asshuri—at the outskirts. These had engaged an apparently confused throng of Reydn
u’s warriors, who were falling like ripe grain under the swords of the invaders. The battle had the look of a massacre in the making.
Conan could see at once that Varhia would fall.
A gaggle of men, chased by fighters on horseback, dashed along the street toward the inn. They pointed at Conan and yelled. He heard their voices, but the distance distorted their words. Even as they neared, the din of battle encroached upon the street’s unnatural silence. “Balvadek’s riders approach!” Conan shouted over his shoulder. He loped toward the stable, hoping that he could ride away before the asshuri swept into the northern quarter.
Conan kicked down the heavy wooden door, nearly hurling himself through it. Aren, true to his word, had tended to their horses. As Conan hastily fitted the riding harness on his mount, Sivitri appeared in the wrecked doorway.
“Six asshuri head toward us,” she panted. “They have slain the men on foot before them.”
“Too many for one of us,” Conan grumbled. “It seems we are not to part ways yet.”
“Not yet,” Sivitri agreed. She tossed a blanket onto her horse, grabbed a harness, and fit it sloppily into place.
They rode at a trot into the alley, swords at ready. The glow of distant fires lit the narrow avenue, into which rode the asshuri raiders.
“We may never part ways, Cimmerian.” Sivitri’s calm tone belied their dire predicament. “We may bum together forever, in whatever Hell awaits us.” A nervous laugh passed from her lips. “You once said you would rather face an army of asshuri than endure my tongue. The gods have granted your wish!”
Conan’s face fell in dismay as he counted the enemy. Not six asshuri, but thrice that number, galloping toward them. The alley afforded no exit, save through row upon row of mounted warriors. Fatigue weighed upon his shoulders like a sack of stones, and every muscle from head to toe ached. But he was Cimmerian, with fire in his veins and steel in his hand. He would share the ferryman’s fee with at least one Shemite.
Conan and the Grim Grey God Page 11
