Much beyond that, Conan could not have found words to name what he felt. He only remembered clearly that when the music ended, all of the people in the tent looked as if they had just waked from a healing sleep.
Marr wrapped his pipes and returned them to their bag. "I have done as much as I can for now," he said. "I would rather hear Captain Conan speak. I am sure that on the road here he has devised a plan to rescue Princess Chienna and Prince Urras."
Conan muttered something best not said aloud in the presence of either kings or sorcerers. Trust a sorcerer to call for a miracle and then lay the burden of its performance on a common man's shoulders, with royal wrath awaiting failure!
Yet it seemed to Conan that he had more thoughts on the matter than he had suspected. It also seemed that they came to his lips more swiftly than usual. Had Marr put them there? Or had the piper merely made it easier for Conan to say what was already in his mind?
The smells of woodsmoke, heating stew, and pine needles reached Decius's nostrils as he strode through the camp. As he approached the Cimmerian's tent, the aroma of leather and oil joined the others.
"Captain Conan," Decius said. "Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"Then I wish”may I enter?" Decius chose prudence over rank and turned an order into a question.
The tone of the Cimmerian's reply told him that he had chosen wisely.
"You may."
Conan was sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing only a loinguard.
He was rubbing oil into the various leather items of his harness. His sword, already sharpened and oiled, lay on a linen cloth beside his sleeping pallet.
"Greetings, my lord Decius," Conan said. "I fear that my hospitality is poor. But what I have is yours."
Decius took that as an invitation to sit. "Captain Conan, I will be brief. What I would most like from you is for either you or Raihna to remain behind. Both of you going into the jaws of the Pougoi”I like it not."
"Does it matter which of us remains?" Conan asked. His tone made Decius wary; then understanding dawned. The captain-general laughed.
"I wasn't planning on courting you, Cimmerian!" Decius said. "Nor will I be courting Mistress Raihna until I can be sure I have something to share with her besides an unknown grave in the hills."
"Decius, I don't envy anyone the work of burying you," Conan said.
"Your corpse might bite the grave digger."
"I thank you," Decius said. "Now, a little plain speaking. Both you and Raihna are seasoned captains. We have few. To put each of you in danger imperils the king's very cause."
"We've the best chance of winning through and bringing out the princess and the babe," Conan said with a shrug. "If it can be done at all, we're the best to do it. If it can't be done, does it matter how many captains the king has?"
Decius sighed. "No. The doctors say that he will be lucky to see the first snow at best. If he loses hope of seeing his daughter again¦"
Silence said the rest.
"I'd not complain about taking one of your veterans and leaving Raihna behind," Conan said. "But Marr says that it must be she and I, and no others."
Decius frowned. "Does this mean that either of you¦ has¦ is¦ ?"
"I'm no more a sorcerer than I'm a tavern dancer, and Raihna likewise,"
Conan said. "What the piper sees in us¦ it's one of the things he doesn't speak of. What it would take to make him speak, I don't know, and I'm not going to spend time in searching for it."
Decius wanted to curse the gods, the Pougoi, their wizards, Count Syzambry, and everything else that had brought matters to this pass. He had the sense of throwing a better man than himself into a pit of venemous serpents, with scant hope of seeing the man climb out again.
"Eh?" the Cimmerian said.
"I was thinking that there ought to be a farewell for the three of you.
Wine, meat, music, anything else you desired."
"Don't tempt the gods," Conan said. He stood up and stretched. His head nearly touched the roof of the tent, and his outflung hands did touch either side. "Save the feasting for when we're safe in the palace again. But if there's any wine in the camp”?"
Decius remembered a jar of the best Nemedian vintage that he had saved for the departure of men on desperate ventures. It was buried, and probably shattered by now, beneath the ruins of the palace, along with so much of the past.
Chapter 13
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Among them, Conan, Raihna, and Marr had faced every peril that a land such as the Border Kingdom could offer. Had they provided themselves against every one of them, they would have needed a pack train for their baggage.
"We'll see about a riding mule for the princess when we come out,"
Conan said. "Best we go in traveling light and fast. Syzambry may still die, but he may also heal. By his own strength, perhaps, or with the help of the Star Brothers."
"The Pougoi wizards have no healing magic," the piper said. "Their star-magic is
"Who asked you?" Decius said. He was sitting by the tent entrance as the three travelers packed. Conan judged that this was to avoid the king, and also perhaps in hope of Raihna's defying Marr and remaining behind.
He was hoping that pigs would fly, Conan knew.
Nothing save a threat to her guards would force Raihna to turn back.
Decius was too honorable to use that trick.
"No one asked me," Marr said. "But then, does a wise man wait to be asked when there is truth to be spoken?"
It was in Conan's mind that a man who wanted his teeth in his mouth and his bones unbroken might know that truth was not always welcome. He remained silent and studied the stitching of his sword scabbard. It would not last beyond this journey, but it would do for that.
In time, all the work was done, some of it twice over. Conan stepped outside to permit Decius and Raihna to say what they wished. He bid Marr to follow him.
It was nearing twilight, for the three would-be saviors of the princess and her son intended a night departure. If any unwanted eyes or ears were close at hand, the night and Marr's pipes should make them blind and deaf.
"Who are you, Cimmerian?" the man asked. In the fading light, his face might have been that of a youth or an ancient. Only the eyes denied the youth. They were wide and dark, and clearly had seen much commonly hidden from men.
"My true name is the same as I am called," Conan said. "If sorcerers have tried to use this against me, nothing has yet succeeded. Are you hoping to better them?"
"That was not my question," Marr said. "Who are you, to be here now, embarking on this venture laden with risk?"
Conan shrugged. "I suppose no more than a man who won't run from a fight when his friends are already in it."
"On the rock of such strength, mountains have broken and kingdoms fallen. Am I one of those friends?"
"You will be if you stop talking in riddles and stop asking questions you don't need answered."
"Who are you to judge which questions need no answers?"
"Crom! I'll certainly be no friend if you talk like a sorcerer or a priest, full of mystical wind that blows you where no one can follow.
At least no one with his wits about him. Now, for the last time”what do you need to know for this journey?"
"Nothing that I do not know already, in truth. Forgive me. I did not mean to give offense. I was only looking beyond this journey."
"The time for that, my musical friend, is when we've done with the journey and are safe home with Princess Chienna! Now, instead of tempting the gods, do you want to join me in a hunt for some wine? I'll not leave with a dry throat, even if I have to wet it with that vinegar they call wine hereabouts!"
They traveled throughout the first night and lay up during the day, keeping no watches and building no fires.
"If Syzambry has put so many men on our trail that they can find three people with no smoke to guide them, the king's cause is already lost,"
Conan said. "I'll
wager it needs us rested and fit when we reach the valley."
It was in Conan's mind that they would need more than strength when they reached the Vale of the Pougoi. They would need a wonder or two from Marr's magic or somewhere else.
Until now, the piper had been so unlike the common run of sorcerers that Conan could have doubted he was one were it not for the pipes. Yet even the most honorable intentions had not kept Lady Illyana from becoming the slave of magic, rather than its mistress.
A sharp eye and sharper steel might still be needed against Marr the Piper and all his works.
The second night and second day repeated the pattern of the first.
Breaking camp in the twilight, they heard the sound of men on the march, and Conan went to scout. He returned to report that they were a band of peasants.
"They made enough noise that I could have ridden up on a dragon before they saw me," Conan said. "So I lay close and watched. They were forty or more, but wearing only their work clothes and armed only with their farming tools. Oh, a man or so had a sword that his grandfather might have carried as a free lance. But nobody had provided them arms or harness."
"That gives hope," Raihna said. "If Syzambry had called them out, surely he would not have left them a rabble."
"If he had spare arms, perhaps not," Conan said. "But they could be rallying to Syzambry of their own will. Hoping to spare their villages, likely as not."
Raihna spat. "They are fools, then. They rush to embrace a man who will be as grateful as a hungry bear."
"They do not know that," Marr said. "They are desperate, and that fogs the wits. Or have you come so far from your village that you forgot that?"
Raihna gasped and glared. Conan stared hard at the piper. The Cimmerian's look said plainly: "I have told you nothing about Raihna's birth. Have you been reading her thoughts against her will, as you said you could not do?"
Marr looked away, then lifted his pipes. Conan raised a hand, ready to snatch them. Now the Cimmerian's look said, "Earn your pardon with words, not with your magic."
"Mistress Raihna, forgive me for calling you a witling," the piper said. "You are no such thing. But I hear Bossonia in your speech, and I know something of that land."
"If you thought it bore witlings, you did not know enough," Raihna muttered, but she seemed eased.
Presently the sound of the marching peasants died away, and they resumed their own march through the silent forest as night came down.
The would-be rescuers neither heard nor met any further bands on their journey to the valley. This was not altogether by chance. Marr knew every hill, every valley, and it sometimes seemed to Conan, every tree in the forests. He knew which drew hunters and woodcutters, even in troubled times like these, and which were left to the birds and the wolves.
"There was once a good number of bears in these forests," the piper added. "But most of them were hunted out some generations back. I know of two villages where they go in fear of the beasts, so a few may still den up and live off deer and the odd sheep."
"So? We're not here to hunt animals for the royal menagerie," Raihna said.
"I do not babble without cause," the piper said. "One of those villages is close to our path."
"Then take us wide of it, for Crom's sake!" Conan snapped. It was the fifth day of their journey. Marr talked less in riddles than he formerly had, but when he did, Conan had less patience with him. He would gladly match steel against half of the warriors of the Pougoi, or strength against the wizards' beast, simply to end this skulking about in an inhdspitable land.
"I cannot lead you too wide of it," the piper said, "unless you wish to pass through the Blasted Land."
"From what I have heard of that land, I'd take my chances with the bears and the villagers both," Raihna said. Conan nodded in agreement.
"Wise," Marr said. "The Pougoi watch the farther side of the Blasted Land, and few escape their sentries, if they cross the Land at all without taking the bone-burning sickness."
"We'll fight neither beasts nor wizards with our bones turning to water within our flesh," Conan growled. "Lead as you wish."
The floor under Count Syzambry's feet was shaking. Had unfriendly magic conjured up an earthquake?
No, it was his body swaying and his legs threatening to give way under him so that he would topple like a tree overborne by a high wind. He gripped the bedpost with one hand and held out the other.
"My sword!"
Zylku, the surgeon's apprentice, stared. One of the men-at-arms lifted the count's blade from the bench at the foot of the bed.
"No. We cannot be sure that steel
"I am sure that steel in my hand will do much good," the count said.
His voice rasped and croaked, but he still forced some authority into it. It was another gift that was returning, like being able to stand on his own feet.
"Much good," the count repeated. "Beginning with ending your babble."
His hand gripped the sword. For a moment, the grip was firm. Then the weight of the sword jerked it from his fingers, nearly overbalancing him at the same time.
Syzambry's blade clattered to the floor. He did not dare meet Zylku's eyes. He would see triumph in them, and Zylku might see tears of rage in his.
"Steel in my hand will do much good when I can wield it as I once did,"
the count said. "It seems that the time is not now." He commanded himself to stare at Zylku. "Summon your master and bid him prepare an answer. How long will I be lame and halt, unable to lead my men against my enemies?"
"A horse litter Zylku murmured.
"I said lead!" the count thundered. The strength of his voice surprised himself as well as those in the bedchamber. "A horse litter is for women, babes, and others who must remain behind when battle is joined.
A leader rides or he does not deserve the name!"
"I will obey," Zylku said. "I will also ask certain folk I know who have arts other than those of common surgeons."
"Indeed," the count said. "And what do you ask in return for this, as I doubt not you risk the wrath of your master?"
"Your silence about my asking, yours and your men's," Zylku replied.
"Also, such reward as you consider fit should Ilearn anything that serves to restore your health. I will trust to your justice."
"You may do that," the count said. "Only remember that my justice can mean a sharp sword for those who have deceived me."
"Dead or alive, my Lord Count, I will not deceive you," Zylku said. "By anything you hold sacred, I will swear it."
The count was not sure that he held anything sacred within his heart of hearts, save well-wielded steel. Steel that, the gods willing, he would one day soon be able to hold again. If Zylku brought that day more swiftly, he could name his own reward!
It was the sixth night of the journey, and if Marr knew one rock from another, it was the last night. Conan would be glad if Marr's knowledge proved true, even if it made the man prouder than ever.
The Cimmerian did not care to tarry long here; the place was too close to the Blasted Land for comfort. Even in the darkness, he could see that the trees had unnatural shapes. The bird sounds were few and furtive, the insects altogether silent. Nothing else was to be heard, not even the sigh of a night breeze.
All three travelers were walking catfooted, trying not to dislodge a single pebble or break the smallest twig. The Pougoi did not watch this land, Marr had said. The villagers themselves drove strangers away. Yet any place so close to the Blasted Land had its watchers, who were neither wizard nor human.
That was all the piper would say. Nothing that Conan dared do would move him to speak further. He would not even say if these watchers could be dangerous, although in that matter Conan needed no advice. He would reckon on the worst and advance steel in hand.
The piper was leading. Now he was bearing to the right, past a vast twisted oak tree that seemed to be lifted half off the ground by a dozen-roots thicker than a man's body. Enough moonlight crept
through the clouds to show that fallen acorns lay about the base of the tree.
Among the acorns lay the skeleton of what might have been a wild boar, except that no boar ever had such splayed hooves or such a bulging skull¦
Conan remembered the tales of the Blasted Land.
It came to be in a single night, when the Star Brothers' beast rode down from the sky in a giant stone. Fire and shards of the sky-stone cut a swathe across the land, wider than a man could ride in a single day. Within a year, the beasts and growing things returned, but they were horribly changed and misshapen.
The piper raised his hand. Raihna and the Cimmerian stopped and waited while their guide vanished into the darkness ahead. Enough time seemed to pass for Prince Urras to grow to manhood before the piper returned.
"I can see nothing," he whispered, "but I sense the thoughts of one who watches. He either cannot shield his mind or does not care to," Marr added at Conan's frown.
"Man or beast?" Raihna asked.
The piper shrugged. "I would wager that it has some of each in it. One thing is certain: it has sensed our thoughts and is tracking us by them."
"I am in ecstasy," Raihna said. She tested the draw of her sword and dagger. "Do we wait for him”it” to come, or do we go to meet it?"
Conan studied the ground. "Unless our friend can fly, here's as good as any. Better than some”no stumps or potholes that I can see."
The piper seemed about to speak when part of the darkness ahead began to move. At first it was only a small part, and without shape. It grew rapidly, however, and took on a familiar and terrible form almost as swiftly”that of a gigantic bear, brown with a ruff of silvery fur almost as thick as a lion's mane. The moonlight showed that its muzzle was grizzled as if with age, yet its coat was thick and showed no wounds or bald spots. The muzzle was shorter and the skull broader than Conan had ever seen in a bear.
Conan and Raihna unslung their bows. The piper fell back, to stand behind them. He drew his pipes but did not put them to his lips.
As Conan and Raihna nocked their arrows, the bear plunged off the trail. When it found no shadows large enough to hide itself altogether, it became a moving, difficult target. Conan tried to judge its path by the sound of its footfalls, but he heard too little. It seemed that the bear had the cunning to walk lightfooted on uncertain ground.
The Conan Compendium Page 352
