“Gout? Aye, yes, to be sure,” the baron volubly admitted, “though it is not among my ills at this present moment. But there are times, especially during autumn harvest and midwinter festival, that it has given me damnable swelling and tenderness, so painful that I can scarce move.” He held up one foot, which looked, through its shiny silken sock, to be somewhat puffy and dropsical even if not currently disabled.
“Quite so, as we can see,” Tamsin affirmed. “Such is a hazard in these temperate climes, especially in seasons when the festive meats come plentiful and richly spiced— not for all the country’s inhabitants, of course,” she reminded him, “but for those like yourself, whose fare is the best and fattest, as befits the lords and possessors of all. It is a price that nobles pay—a sacrifice, some would say— for the health of the state.” The young woman gazed around at the listeners without any visible irony in her look. “And, Baron, what of the state of your bones?”
“Oh aye, my bones!” Baron Einholtz was by now enlivened to the subject, quite willing to discuss his ills before the assembled court without fear of seeming weak or infirm. “The rheumy pains I suffer, on late evenings and in the hours near dawn, are quite a plague to me. Even a hot brazier, a cup of mulled brandy, and the laying-in of two or three village lasses in my sleeping-closet cannot avail much against the chilly ague that creeps to my marrow. If you can do anything to banish that, young witch... and this other malady...” his aged hand brushed vaguely across his face... why then I might reconsider the pledge I made to pay you no reward.”
“Yes, Baron Einholtz, we can see your plight.” Pensive for a moment, with her doll still clutched by her side in an attitude of alertness, Tamsin examined the old lord’s reddish, waxy physiognomy: his furrowed, scar-cratered, sun-splotched bald pate and brow; the puffy, bloodshot eyes; the lips liverish and slack from relentless indulgence; his nebulous jawline bristled white with a carelessly cropped beard—and amidst it all, the bulbous, purple-veined nose, with one nostril deeply eroded and eaten by some creeping blight that left but a thin, runny scab in lieu of the once full-blossoming organ.
“We see, Baron, only too well.” Tamsin listened for a moment to her doll, then resumed: “The worm that gnaws you, sadly, is not one that admits of an easy cure. It is a ravaging blood-sprite, a creeping malaise that haunts its victims and depletes them over a score of years. Worse, the damage it shows to an untrained eye is as nothing to the havoc it wreaks within, invisibly, to the victim’s mind and substance. It results from unconsidered matings... couplings with brute beasts, or with low commoners who are nowise better. As an affliction of such duration and subtlety, it can, alas, accompany a great man from his years of modest or uncertain station to the fullness of his power and rank.” “What are you saying, Seeress?” Einholtz demanded, seeming both impatient and frightened. “That you cannot cure me after all? Or that you wish to raise your price? And what is that disturbance outside, curse those peasants!” He glanced up at the chamber’s high, flat-arched windows of stained glass, against which objects were striking and rattling, most likely stones or ice chunks flung up by the crowd.
“Your affliction, O Baron—the chancrous rot of your nose and, perhaps, other organs we cannot see—resists any cure because it is one with your being, a natural consequence of your youthful exploits and tastes. Your bone-ague, likewise, is but the result of harsh, violent struggles against man and nature—the effects of the fighting and philandery, the horsemanship and swift marches, the riot and rapine that carried you to this lofty seat. And your gout and palsy, are but mere adjuncts to aristocratic vice and privilege—attested to by your love of strong wines and highly tainted victuals—and your righteous seizure of the country’s wealth. How can Ninga and I, though gifted with godlike power and understanding, hope to correct the ills that are so much a part of the man, without changing the man himself out of all recognition?”
“What outrageous treason is this, you insolent witch?” The warlord at last jerked upright in his seat. “You allege that I, Baron Einholtz, am one with my ills?—that I am a walking pestilence, a spouting pustule of disease? That I conjoin with beasts, and taint myself with impure things? Such infamous talk cannot be borne, witch! It must be stopped, even if that means severing your pale young throat with sharp, bright steel— Ah, aieee, no!”
With his words, Baron Einholtz had again produced the heavy sabre. and, with surprising quickness, sprung out of his seat to wield it. As he extended the weapon before him, however, it glinted in the firelight, flashing with such an intense, lingering brightness that it seemed as if a star or a fragment of sun had come to rest in the dim hall. The fire’s blaze was yellow and faint, yet the steel’s blinding glare lingered and grew, forcing the courtly onlookers to avert their eyes. Einholtz, closest to the source, had his face illumined and even scorched by the light, his gawping, bulbous-eyed expression burned vividly into every watcher’s memory. An instant later, he fell to his knees, shrieking and clasping both hands to his eye sockets, with the sabre. spinning away unnoticed across the floor.
“Aiaah, I am blind!” the baron moaned and wailed piteously, while the unearthly light receded and the onlookers’ vision recovered. “My eyes sear like hot coals in my head!” When Einholtz removed his hands and blinked about the chamber’s vaultings, vainly seeking some ray of vision, those present caught a ghastly glimpse of his two orbs, pale all over like poached-egg whites.
“Guards!” the unhappy baron shrieked meanwhile, “kill that damnable witch, I command you! Throw her carcass onto the fire, to roast unto perdition and—” the decrepit man groped pitifully on the flagstones around him for his weapon “—lead me back to my chair!”
As the blinded one must have sensed from the ensuing silence, none made the smallest move to obey. Instead, a moment or two later, Tamsin’s unruffled voice resumed lecturing him where he grovelled on the floor.
“Your physical infirmities, as we have told you, are part and parcel of your mental and mortal history and sins. They are beyond cure, and yet the least Ninga and I can offer, in view of your earnest summons and our agreement, is to protect you from their most extreme consequence. It is possible to grant you the blessing of perpetual, unending life. Ninga, do so, I pray you!” With these words, the young enchantress bent forward and brushed the shoulder of the kneeling baron with the doll’s crudely stitched hands, almost as if the puppet had reached down to confer a blessing with its swift touch. At the motion, Einholtz started. He cowered there, groping in the air and clutching himself all over, as if invaded by some alien force.
“Now, Baron,” Tamsin spoke on, “rest assured that however harsh the effect of your wasting diseases—however they may pain you, eat away at your mortal frame and dissolve your will—you cannot die, but will linger on inviolate for all eternity. Henceforth it is impossible for you to be slain, even by such a blow as this... Isembard! ’ ’ At the seeress’s firm, precocious word and gesture, the baron’s lieutenant stepped forward. Unsheathing his long rapier with a flourish, he stooped and drove it into Einholtz’s cringing body. The thrust went straight and true through the old barrel chest, unarguably deadly. On the sword’s long, silver shank, the old baron writhed for a moment like a spitted fish, moaning and drooling blood from his distorted lips.
And yet, when Isembard jerked the blade free and stood upright, Baron Einholtz, after a shriek of pain at the removal, continued to stir and breathe, his fingers sifting feebly at the air, with only a thin stain of red dampening his shirt where the wound was made.
“And so you see,” Tamsin was saying, “Ninga’s magic has made you proof against death! ’Tis the best miracle our powers can accomplish, and we hope you enjoy the boon of immortality. In recognition of our gift, we desire but a small, nominal token... this.” Leaning forward over the baron, avoiding his blind, vainly groping hands, Tamsin bent and deftly snatched from Einholtz’s chest his badge of baronial rank.
“You have small need of it anyway, since your ailments seem to
have worsened so.” As she spoke, she hooked the brass pin of the bloodstained medal into the richly decorated blouse of her doll, adding one more bangle to Ninga’s emblazonments. “You should retire someplace quiet, to convalesce. Lieutenant Isembard has consented to fill your throne for the nonce—an event that is sure to be met with rejoicing by all present.”
When Tamsin’s speech was complete, the hall stirred with shouts and cheers, an acclaim that echoed moments later from the throats of the mob outside. The courtiers gave a brave show of approval as Sir Isembard assumed the baron’s raised seat. Shortly afterward, at the new baron’s command, the outer doors were flung open and a half-dozen of the town rioters admitted. These hand-picked ruffians knelt dutifully before the new baron and, at a gesture from him, laid hold of the old one, who still fumbled and pleaded in his agony and confusion. They dragged him out into the bailey-yard, where his screaming soon recommenced in earnest.
“There now, the people’s will is served,” Tamsin declared. “Your former captain may be hanged, or quartered, or tom to pieces for that matter, but Ninga and I will warrant, by all her godly powers and mine, that he shall never die. Good Isembard, having pledged himself a better lord than Einholtz was, rules under my magical protection. Further, in return for his promise of faith to the supreme goddess, Ninga shall ensure that he enjoy the obedience of the common herd through all the years of his reign.
“A glorious day,” Tamsin continued, “the naming-rite of a new goddess, her name drawn large in noble blood! To complete the covenant, there remains but one thing: your contribution, a tithe of sacrifice.” She turned slowly, raking the circle of courtiers with her green-eyed stare. “I have sworn, with Ninga’s lenience, to condemn only three. Let this be a test of your loyalty to the new baron. Let none falter in obedience to him.”
Isembard, following the girl’s gesture, arose from his chair. “Stand forth,” he declared to the circled watchers.
Slowly, with an uneven movement that rippled hesitantly around the circle, all rebel officers took one step forward toward the centre.
“Well enough, then.” Bemusedly now, Tamsin went to those standing nearest her and began peering into their faces. “First, for my sergeants-at-arms, you... and you.” Obediently, if a little hesitantly, the two helmeted warriors she indicated stepped out of the circle and fell in behind her.
“Now then, to find a face... after so many years ’tis most difficult.” Musing aloud to the doll cradled in her arm, she moved around the circle, looking critically at her new worshippers. The women, linen-wrapped and fur-caped, she passed over easily; the men, peering nervously at her from behind moustaches and brushed or braided beards, she examined more closely. She also propped her doll up to a position where it could seem to review the faces. One after another, the lords of Urbander passed beneath its flatly disconcerting stare.
“Your memory is keen, O Ninga,” she murmured. “Aid me if you can, to find those who were seen only from afar... so fleetingly, so long ago. If you can point to one who has given you offence... Ah, there he stands. Seize him!” The doll gave a flip... whether it was some divine omen or merely a twitch of Tamsin’s enfolding arm, none could say; but the pigtailed soldier, a high-ranking baronial knight, was instantly locked in the grip of the two burly sergeants and marched away, to be chained to one of the heavy andirons of the broad fireplace.
The pair of marshals soon returned, and Tamsin resumed her search. “Look carefully, Ninga. Einholtz’s henchmen were faithful and steady in the old days. Many of these present must have marched and ravaged with him through the forests near our home. Aye, Ninga, mark well those looks of doubt...” In a moment, with a strangled cry, another victim was chosen to be dragged scuffing and struggling to the fire.
“Aye, Ninga, now the little foxes are penned. There remains only the wolf. The end of the circle draws near. Look sharp, old friend, for one whose heart is corrupted by guilt.”
As Tamsin neared the starting point in her circuit of the hall, one of the officers—a high lieutenant, Bohemund by name, who had been field commander of the two men already seized—forsook his stem composure and sprang forth out of the circle.
“This is a wizardly farce!” he shouted angrily. “Are we expected to yield up our lives to a prating monstress and her puppet?” As he spoke, he yanked his curved sword from its scabbard.
Exiting its metal sheath, the rapier-blade rang with a rasping note... which sound, instead of dying out naturally, continued to grow and chime until it drowned the warrior’s angry shouts and became an ear-wrenching din. Many of those in the hall cowered back from the noise, or covered their ears, while Bohemund himself, casting down his blade and thereby only redoubling the cacophony, sank to his knees with both hands-clasping his bleeding ears, and agonized, muted howls issuing from his mouth.
As suddenly as it had begun, the supernatural clangour subsided. In its wake, Tamsin was heard to murmur to her doll, “Good, my Ninga. So much for the power of steel against sorcery!” The courtiers reassembled, eyeing the witch-girl in leery awe. The three male sacrifices—including deaf, maddened Bohemund—were duly taken, stripped of their armour, shackled hand and foot, and given to the ravening and ever-growing mob outside the hall.
When at length the new chorus of screaming had dwindled away outside, the seeress went up onto the balcony to address the crowd, above whose gaping masses one of four severed heads, raised high on bloody stakes, still mouthed and gaped in soundless agony. Tamsin’s speech was brief and to the point.
“You have taken vengeance on the rascal Einholtz, whose numberless crimes were but a small part of the misrule of King Typhas in distant Sargossa. Your new leader, Baron Isembard—” here she led forth the pretender, to furious acclaim “—has declared himself a faithful follower of the goddess Ninga, and an ally in her crusade against the tyranny of the old king and the old church. Thus begins a new age in the life of our land. Your rebellion is completed, but Brythunia’s has only begun! All hail Ninga!”
VIII
Ax of Justice
Death, as so often before, took a passionate fancy to Conan. The grim, faceless spectre, during the hours and days following his encounter with the cave-bear, wooed and coaxed him like an eager lover. It overhung him as closely and heavily as the night-black petals of a breath-stealing jungle lotus, even as it spread out beneath his reclining form like a pool of soft, thirsty quicksand. Death whispered soothingly in his ear, too, tempting him with its dark delights. As time fled past, the Cimmerian felt himself almost yielding to its restful languor.
What prevented him from doing so was some unknown, torturous power. Each time he felt ready to lapse into blissful peace, rough hands would seize him and tug him back to semi-wakefulness, back to the shuddering chills and parching fevers that racked his earthly hours. Light would pierce his eyes, and cold water would be dashed into his face... or poured down his throat, making him choke and gag, lacking breath even to curse decently. Then hard, insistent hands would pound and pummel his back—or worse, poke and pry at the raw, burning wounds in his side. His nostrils were violated by the sharp, acrid odours of unguents and potions, while his ears filled up with the rattle of charms and the guttural rasping of rough, foreign spells. These torments, this meaningless round of semi-oblivion and brusque, insistent handling, seemed endless to the sufferer’s crippled, brutish awareness. It stretched on eternally, ceaselessly.
Even so, there came a day when Conan, feeling harsh light falling across his face, was able to crack his eyes and let the rays flood in. The effort of doing so was vast, each eyelid seeming to weigh more than a talent of silver. He doubted he would have the strength to close them again soon.
Above him, he saw the vast dome of heaven—a web of curving, converging lines with a bright, blazing disk at its centre. The light was exquisitely painful, and his vision blurred with tears into which swam, at that instant, a face and form of such loveliness as to sear right through the haze.
Conan felt convul
sions travel the length of his body, leaving behind a weary, fever-spent weakness. The concentric universe overhead resolved itself into the woven, translucent peak of a pole-framed hut; a smoke hole was left open at its centre, through which a column of blazing bright sky streamed in. The impossibly lovely form was that of a woman, brown-haired and tan-skinned. She seemed somehow familiar to him, though her features resembled no race he had ever known.
There was little in her garb to strike him as foreign, especially since the maid’s outfit was so laughably sparse. It consisted of several objects woven into her hair, most of them bird-shapes cut from light tan wood; an array of three necklaces across her bare chest, adorned with carefully polished bits of tooth, bone, and soapstone; and around her waist an artfully fringed and braided thong that supported a somewhat larger and more elaborate pendant just below her navel.
The healthy, nubile body set off by these objects was enchanting enough, endowed with full, sun-browned breasts and softly rounded hips, belly, and thighs. Her face bore planes and hollows that gave it an equally captivating interest, especially as she knelt breathlessly close to his paralysed body. Her aspect combined the sturdy, firm-jawed look of northern maids with the dusky skin, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes of southern Hyborian beauties— and a further trace of the fine, sinuous shaping of more easterly faces.
This combination made her countenance—demure and expressionless as she gazed down on him in the hazy light— an endlessly fascinating puzzle box of small surprises. She leaned further over him, and her various adornments, both handmade and naturally bestowed, dangled tantalizingly near his nerveless face and hands. He caught her scent, and again some faint memory whispered to him, as before in a half-remembered forest. A white heat kindled in his forehead, and a new tremor passed through his fever-ravaged body.
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