He felt her back stiffen slightly; she ceased her embraces and drew far enough away to regard his face in the faint light. Her voice came forth smoothly, with surprising calm. "You presume much, bodyguard! A shame to let your suspicion stifle your passion . . . but I will answer, if you insist.
"I came here to have an intimate conference with my brother; instead, I found a cold, armored shape in his bed-and behind the visor of his helm, no face!" Her level, cultivated accents stumbled slightly at the recollection. "And then you, falling on me like a fiend from the shadows . . . ! Still, I know that you have not done away with Favian. I wondered before at your presence among us, but now I understand why a wild creature such as you has been brought to the Manse."
"Because of my fitness for a certain role, you mean." Conan glanced to the room's rear door, left ajar by Calissa. "That role may not be finished for the night. We should not dawdle near your brother's bed. One of us-he or I, I am not sure of which-is a lodestone for an assassin."
"My chamber would be more comfortable," she told him, laying a hand on his arm.
Her room was almost adjacent to Favian's, lying across a narrow passage in the false rear wall. The door had a good chaste bolt to seal it from within; when they had locked it, her moonlit sleeping-couch provided them a comfortable place for repose more satisfying than sleep.
"So you knew of the poisoning tonight?" Conan asked his hostess at length.
"Yes. Although I did not understand how it could be an attempt on my brother's life when, at the very same moment, he was partaking of less potent mead on the dais beside me."
"The cup was meant for me." Conan shook his head impatiently, as if to sweep webs of treachery aside from his vision. "Then, to hide his plan, Svoretta killed the killer."
"Are you suddenly so important to the workings of this palace, bodyguard?" Calissa's purring voice held, along with skepticism, a note of wistful jealousy, Conan intuited.
"Nay . . . only an irritant to Svoretta." His voice probed slowly through the dimness as he worked out his notions: "By killing me, the spymaster persuades Baldomer of the rebels' power, and so enhances his own. Even in failure, his ploy served that purpose."
"That could be true." It was Calissa's turn to shake her head gloomily. "Svoretta has been the guiding force here ever since my father's war wounds nearly killed him, changing him so much. The spymaster leads the strongest faction at court, and his clandestine powers are even greater. Now, with snakecult stirrings added to the rebel ferment, he will accrue more of a following."
"Lothian, for one, opposes him."
"Aye, Lothian!" Calissa laughed cynically. "Our harmless, maundering, childhood tutor. Why, only tonight my father threatened to clap him into irons for daring to counsel restraint in moving against the rebels. Another delight of this evening's entertainment!"
"I'm glad I missed it ... I wish had missed more of it," Conan amended himself.
"Oh, Conan. But it was a splendid evening, truly, in spite of all the intrigues." In a gush of enthusiasm, Calissa seized his reclining shoulder with an eager hand. "It was like my childhood days, when the Manse was surrounded by gardens and alive with the best bards and dancers. Every night there was a feast. Merchants and squires dealt freely here then, not just scowling men-at-arms! The land was happier, too."
Deciding to ignore her slight to men-at-arms Conan urged Calissa on. "That was when the Lady Heldra was alive?"
"Aye." She nodded sadly. "Long ago. Even Favian is too young to remember it well. Things have changed so since then. My father. . . ." Her voice trailed off.
"The baron was not so harsh a ruler aforetimes?" Conan asked.
"No, he was a fair-haired knight, a hero. And Mother was like a sylph, teasing him out of his deepest glooms. Oh, she was not weak; they matched each other at javelins and rode together to the hunt. But in her woman's way she brought a warmth to the house and to this whole realm. Her death was a great loss, a great crime. . . ." Calissa paused again. "If she had lived, I would be a better woman."
"And yet your family is a long line of fierce warriors, hardened to death and suffering, is it not?"
"Yes, so it is said. That old legendry stands us in good stead from time to time, when it is needed to muster the peasants out to fight. Nemedia is a turbulent land, with barons who wax surly and greedy. Unlike some provinces, Dinander is not safely hedged by mountains and rivers." She shook her head, drawing her long hair across her shoulders; the red of her tresses was so deep that it seemed black in the dimness, its color visible only where moonlight brushed its soft waves. "Still," she went on, "any good ruler would rather live at peace. To my father, this heritage of blood and steel has become an obsession, I fear."
"And with it, the mystic guardianship of the Einharson forebears?" Conan asked.
"Fah, superstitious nonsense!" Calissa's eyes flared at him from beneath her tent of moon-burnished hair. "I care nothing for that! I hope Favian will forget that rigamarole too, once he becomes baron. I can help him rule wisely; I have ideas for improving trade in the province, and for tithing the landholders more equitably-things my father would never consider, because they swerve from tradition. As a female, my voice in matters of state is ignored; they do not even intend to include me in tomorrow's provincial tour! But through Favian, I will have some influence."
"And so you creep to your brother's bed to counsel him privily by night." Conan stroked the noble maid, who had stretched out alongside him in her restlessness. "A wonder that you dare to. He strikes me as a turbulent fellow, more engrossed in his drinking and raping than in good government."
She flashed an irritated glance at him, but then nodded reluctantly, even wistfully. "Aye, 'tis true, we are not so close as we once were. As Favian approaches his majority, he tries out more and wilder excesses. As I do, too. But all of it is mere bridling at our father's overharsh control of us!" She adjusted her position on the cushion, propping her fists beneath her chin before speaking further.
"If Baldomer would just accept Favian and reassure him, and let him take on the trappings of power a little at a time. But try as he might, Favian never could please father. Now, I fear, he has given up entirely." Calissa stretched beneath the soothing pressure of Conan's hands on her robed back and laughed softly, with a note of sadness. "Strange, the great baron treasures his son and heir above all else, and launches elaborate schemes for his protection, yet he treats him with contempt, never showing him the least hint of fatherly love."
"Be that as it may," Conan muttered, "if I am any judge, Dinander is in for a wild ride once Favian's hand wields the whip."
"Bodyguard, you are a mere savage. And a youth at that, with no understanding of rulership." Calissa spoke chidingly, yet she lay still under his caressing hands. "It is in a great lord's nature to behave . . . erratically, because of the pressures and prerogatives of his office. How can anyone be expected to use power ably if she or he never tests its extremes, even those extremes that command the life and death of one's followers?"
Her words, he noted, were occasionally interrupted by little purrs of satisfaction at his continuing massage. Even so, she spoke on casually of worldly matters. "You will be surprised, no doubt, to hear that some of the most righteous and well-loved rulers are also the most eccentric, even licentious, of men. Of these, our own King Laslo in Belverus looms foremost, with a harem of varicolored and variously sexed slaves for his amusement. Few of us highborn folk are free of these foibles, as you will learn. Few of us are easy in mind.
"By contrast with some others, my brother's carousings and philanderings are mild. Besides, young women of almost any rank seek him out first. He is comely"-she twisted her slim back to gaze up at Conan-"even as you are."
"Aye, no doubt you like my mein." Conan's fingers reached forth to brush aside dark strands of hair from Calissa's eyes. "How much of your liking, I wonder, is due to my likeness to him?"
"Careful, bodyguard! Even you can push matters too far. But now this idle gossip
should cease." She rolled over on the couch. "And here, this smothering cloak impeded us before. Off with it!"
Calissa arched her back, squirmed out of her enfolding robe and tossed it to the floor. As she did so a wondrous, moonlit landscape opened before Conan's eyes.
CHAPTER 7
Favian's Ride
"Yonder lies Edram Castle, in the meanders of the Urlaub River." Durwald, the marshal, sitting straight in his saddle, slowed his horse to pass the word to those riding in the chariot close behind him. "We should easily be there by sunset."
"Yes, sire, thank Einhar!" Shaking the reins, Swinn, the charioteer, ran his team up along the high bank of the road to improve his view of the valley. "At least the hills and haunted fells are behind us, with their accursed rocky goat-paths!"
Conan, grasping the bronze rail to steady himself, stood up from his seat on the leather-padded plank athwart the chariot. Looking over Swinn's rounded shoulder and across the rumps of the horses, he saw the structure that Durwald referred to: a low, broad water-castle at the center of the valley below.
Built of yellow stone, it was laid out as five interlinked round towers topped by conical roofs, and enclosing a central courtyard. It stood on the opposite bank of the Urlaub, in a sharp bend of the blue, snaking river. Its position commanded the waterway on three sides; it also controlled a triple-arched stone bridge that spanned the river almost under the shadow of its turrets.
A strong keep for a rural squire,, Conan decided. And a rich one, judging by the lush green farm fields on either side of the river and the dense sprawl of cottages just before the bridge. It would be a long way upstream to the first river ford, he guessed, so whoever held Edram Castle held a stranglehold on the valley and a reliable source of tariffs and tolls.
The place was not far ahead by the road, which dropped swiftly from its present crest to wind through sparse-forested foothills and out into the level valley. At the very least, the castle promised a more comfortable sleeping-place than the drafty hill-cavern of the previous night, with its starlit serenade of owls and wolves among the crags and its long, weary watches against the threat of brigands.
Not that the nobles, with forty of Baldomer's picked horsemen formed up behind them, had much to fear from robbers or rebels. Assassination was the baron's pet worry-concerned as he was not so much with his own life as with that of his son. Among the cavalry rode Favian in the guise of a common trooper, surly and aloof from his fellows and scarcely heeding his nominal officers. Ahead of the horsemen rolled the chariot driven by Swinn, Conan idling within and garbed in the lordling's armor. In the vanguard rode Baldomer, black-clad astride his white stallion, with Durwald and two other officers keeping him close company. Svoretta was absent, having remained behind in Dinander to twitch the ropes of rulership in the baron's absence.
"Here, Swinn, move aside!" As the chariot lurched forward, the castle was lost from view behind tree-clad foothills, and Conan gruffly addressed the charioteer: "Let me drive the beasts for a change. I've watched you do it these past ten leagues; it can't be difficult." Reluctant to rest his aching nether parts on the jolting bench again, he pressed toward the front of the rattling platform to displace the driver.
"Nay, barbarian!" With a flick of the reins, Swinn changed the chariot's motion suddenly, causing the northerner to stagger back to his seat. "I may have to bow and scrape to you when the crowds are watching, but not here! Anyway, driving these battle-cars is a touchy skill. And a noble one, at that."
Conan grunted ill-naturedly and started to arise again, but he thought better of it as the road began to drop steeply down a rocky hill and into a narrow, grassy glen. "If cart-driving is so noble a pastime, why do all the nobles hereabouts prefer to lounge on horseback?"
Swinn laughed. "Lord Favian himself would rather be here in my place. He is the expert charioteer in the royal family. Why do you think he is so ill-tempered of late?" He tossed a glance backward at the formation of cavalry behind them, with the princeling riding stiffly out of earshot. "Having you go as a passenger in his stead will make him seem a dolt to his future subjects."
"Well then, we can try to please him better." The road had leveled again, and Conan now felt safe in standing. "I will learn horse-chasing someday; it may as well be now!" He made a grab for the reins, jostling the stocky charioteer to one side.
"Here, now, barbarian . . . aah . . . ugh!" Resisting Conan's shove, Swinn jerked suddenly rigid, then sprawled against his surprised passenger. Looking past the charioteer's shoulder, Conan saw that a long arrowshaft had driven deeply into the man's back, piercing the black steel armor as though it were parchment. As he watched, astonished, another shaft struck the charioteer's rigid body from the opposite direction; it had sufficient force to pass through both breastplate and breast, dinting Swinn's scapular plate outward with its point. Other projectiles were thudding into the wood of the chariot or clattering against the metalwork. One of them smote the back of Conan's helm, rattling it against his skull and causing white starbursts to bloom before his eyes.
A little way down the road a horse screamed and toppled: Durwald's. The chariot lurched and bounded as its team left the road to avoid Baldomer's stallion, which was staggering aside, an arrow standing out from its splendid white neck. Shouts and screams sounded before and behind the car as shafts rained out of the brushy woods that fringed the clearing. Belatedly a cavalry officer began rasping orders to the milling horsemen in the rear.
Conan was encumbered by the body of the charioteer, whose eyes were already glazing over. Letting Swinn slump heavily to the floor, he jerked back the reins in an effort to control the horses. Frightened, they reared and jostled backward, tilting the chariot up sharply and almost spilling Conan out among the wildflowers and fieldstones of the glen. Clinging to the rail, he let go the reins, nearly falling to his knees as each of the three horses tried to bolt in a different direction.
Then a hand steadied his shoulder and a voice rang in his ear. "Get your feet under you, if you want to ride! I'll soon have these brutes in order." It was Favian, capable-looking in his plain black cuirass and uncrested helm, who had leaped from his mount onto the platform. After kicking out the riding-bench, and Swinn's body after it, he groped among the horses' lashing tails to find the reins.
"Here now! Hang on tight and give me room!" The leather straps suddenly came alive in Favian's hands. With the horses surging forward as one, the chariot bounded across the road and into the meadow on the far side.
Conan stood gripping the rail, his knees bent to absorb the ever-increasing shocks of the wheels. He had assumed that the lordling would turn back up the road to flee the ambush, but he saw with alarm that they were rolling instead straight toward the brushy forest margin whence the arrow-fire was heaviest. As he stared, a shaft flew out of the foliage at him, swishing between the heads of horses and riders alike, almost tickling them with its feather fletching.
"Thank your northern snow-sprites for the jouncing of this wagon," Favian declared. "It makes us a trickier target!"
Conan said nothing, instead unclenching one hand from the rail to grasp the sword at his waist.
"Nay, nay, you fool, not the saber! The javelin!" Urging the horses to greater speed, Favian shouted exuberantly at his passenger: "That is a one-handed weapon with the range you'll need. Aye, there you are!" he added as Conan reached behind him, where the short spears were butted upright in quivers at the chariot's sides. The Cimmerian hefted one of them and braced another ready in the hand that still clutched the rail.
"All right, man! Now duck low!" Instead of wheeling the rumbling vehicle around to halt before the trees, as Conan expected he would, Favian astonished his passenger by continuing straight ahead into the brushy woods. The sunlit wave of green lashed into the Cimmerian's face, sliding across the defensively raised shaft of his javelin. Abruptly then, tall trunks and shadows loomed on all sides, sheltering cloaked figures who fled left and right before the plunging horses.
One
of the dim figures wheeled, raising his longbow to speed an arrow at the chariot. Reflexively Conan's arm lashed out, and his javelin flew, piercing the man's unarmored chest. The ambusher crumpled and fell aside, the Cimmerian never noticing where the arrow went.
"Hiee, you have the knack!" Favian's shout was wild as he veered his team around a looming tree trunk. "I shall hunt them out and you shall slay them! There's one!"
Conan readied another spear, but it was not needed, for the fleeing man tripped on a fallen branch a dozen paces ahead of the horses. In an instant the animals were on top of him, stamping his body deep into the forest loam. Conan felt a sickeningly soft impact as the metal-clad wheel passed over the victim.
"Hee-yaa, another dead! They are scattering, the cowardly traitors! But be careful here." Favian crouched low and Conan sprawled helplessly against the rail as the chariot bounced over a fallen trunk bulking almost as high as the tall wheelhub. Then followed more giddy lurches and dips; the horses were plunging through a tangle of brush and downed trees, making it hard for Conan to regain his feet. The last impact was over human bodies, to the accompaniment of screams, as Favian ran his chariot over two more cloaked forms huddling behind the windfall.
Then, gathering speed, they were out among widely spaced tree trunks again; even so, Conan frequently found it necessary to duck under lashing foliage. Hearing shouts and hoofbeats from behind, he risked a glance backward to see that Baldomer's horsemen were entering the forest, riding down other ambushers. Yet the riders themselves were vulnerable; as Conan watched, one took an arrow in the throat and two more were knocked from their saddles by low-hanging limbs.
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