Conan of Venarium

by Harry Turtledove

  Again, though, the stroke fell short. Conan had another arrow ready, too. This one pinned the serpent’s tongue to its lower jaw, piercing the soft flesh that wide-spread maw had exposed. Now the snake’s hiss came muffled, but its rage, if anything, redoubled. It slithered after the Cimmerian. If it could not strike him, it would smash him to jelly in its monstrous coils.

  He drew back the bowstring to the ear and let fly once more—and at last found a vital spot, for the shaft pierced the serpent’s left eye and penetrated deep into its tiny, savage brain.

  The serpent’s death throes went on for the next quarter of an hour, and came closer to killing Conan than anything it had done while alive. In its tormented thrashing, it overturned and smashed the ancient altar and everything that remained of the dreadful statue atop it. Whatever the creature depicted might have been, it was only shards of marble now.

  At long last, the serpent lay still. Conan approached the great corpse with a hunter’s caution, for he knew that even a seemingly dead snake often had one final bite left to give. He tapped the snake’s snout with the end of his bow, held out at arm’s length before him. And sure enough, the serpent snapped convulsively, but only on empty air.

  When he was sure it would in fact move no more, Conan drew his knife from his belt and used it to pry the snake’s mouth open. Then, stoically ignoring the fetid reptilian musk that rose from the creature, he dipped the heads and upper shafts of the arrows remaining in his quiver in the greenish venom still dribbling from its fangs. That done, he cut out one of the fangs and, handling it with the greatest of care lest he be poisoned himself, dropped it into the quiver.

  He peered down into the chamber whence the serpent had crawled, wondering whether another of its fearsome breed still lingered there. But of that there was no sign; only the one, it appeared, had come through the ages with this ancient shrine. Shaking his head in wonder, Conan left by the twisting pathway he had used to enter.

  Once outside the temple, he followed the track past the enormous fir. Then he stopped, suddenly wishing he had taken both fangs instead of the one. He turned around.

  The fir was not there.

  Conan took several steps back toward where it had stood. He still saw no sign of it, and rubbed his eyes in disbelief. A tree like that could not simply have vanished off the face of the earth—except that it had. He rubbed his eyes again, which did nothing to make it reappear. Instead of leading back toward the temple from forgotten days, the track took him to a part of the woods he knew well.

  He rubbed his eyes again and scratched his head, wondering whether he had somehow imagined the entire episode. But when he unslung his quiver and examined the arrows it held, he saw that their heads and the upper inches of their shafts were discolored by the venom of the titanic serpent’s needlelike fang. Whatever his experience had been, a dream it was not.

  He decided to set those arrows aside, not to take them on ordinary hunting trips but to save them for panthers, wolves, bears, Aquilonians, and other dangerous game. Now he had no trouble retracing his steps to Duthil. His return journey took him past the encampment Count Stercus’ Gundermen and Bossonians had set up near the village. As always, the invaders—the occupiers, now—were alert, with sentries posted all around the palisade. Conan snarled a soft curse he had heard from his father. No one could hope to surprise them.

  He had nearly reached his home village when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. “No one could hope to surprise them by day!” he exclaimed, as if someone had claimed otherwise. “But by night-”

  From then on, he ran as if his heels had sprouted wings. “What is it, Conan?” called Tarla as he dashed past Balarg’s house. He did not stop—did not so much as slow—even for her, which proved if anything could how important he thought his idea was.

  “Father!” he panted, skidding to a stop in the smithy’s doorway.

  Mordec was giving a new axehead an edge with a foot-powered grinding wheel. As he took his foot off the pedal, the shower of sparks from the axehead died away. “What is it?” he asked, unconsciously echoing Balarg’s daughter. “Whatever it is, it must be a thought of weight, to have you running through Duthil as if demons dogged your tracks.”

  That took Conan’s mind back to the fane from out of time, but only for a moment. The present and what might lie ahead were more important to him. “If we were to strike the Aquilonian camp at night, we could take the foe by surprise,” he burst out, his voice cracking with excitement.

  “We could, aye, but what would happen if we did?” asked Mordec.

  “Why, we’d be free of them,” answered Conan. How could his father not see that?

  As he soon discovered, though, Mordec saw further than than he did. “Duthil would be free of them—for a little while,” said the blacksmith. “Cimmeria would not. And when the rest of the Aquilonians learned what we had done, they would come back in force and work a fearful vengeance on us.”

  “Then we need to strike all their camps on the same night,” declared Conan. “If we do, they would be gone forever.”

  “If we could, they would be gone forever,” said Mordec. “How do you propose to bring it off?”

  “Send men to all the villages,” answered Conan. “Tell them to attack on such and such a night. When that night comes, the Aquilonians go.” He made a fist to show exactly what he meant.

  But Mordec shook his head, which made his square-cut mane of graying hair flip back and forth in front of his eyes. “The Aquilonians might go,” he said. “But some of the villagers would say they lost too many men in the first fight, and they will stay home. And some would promise the sun and moon and stars—and then stay home, too. And some would attack, but in a halfhearted way, and be defeated. And King Numedides would send more soldiers, to punish us for our rebellion. And what’s an uprising worth when that’s all that’s likely to lie at the other end of it?”

  Such bitter cynicism took Conan’s breath away. “Why did you fight the invaders in the first place, if you felt like that?” he asked. “Why not bend the knee straightaway?”

  “If we could have beaten them at once, they likely would have given up the campaign as a bad job and gone home,” said Mordec. “They’ve done that before. Now they’ve won, though. Now they’re settled on the land.”

  “All the more reason to drive them away,” said Conan.

  “All the more reason for them to stay,” returned Mordec.

  They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension. “I never thought you’d turn coward,” said Conan.

  His father cuffed him, not as prelude to a beating like the one he’d had when he tried to go off to fight with the defeated Cimmerian host but simply as a warning to watch his tongue. “You have no call to use that word for me,” said Mordec. “After you have fought in war, you may say what you please, and I will bear it. Until then, you are only bleating out things you do not understand.”

  “You would not let me fight in war,” said Conan sulkily. “Now you blame me because I have not.” He did not speak of his exploit with the serpent. He was not sure his father would believe him. He was not altogether sure he believed it himself, and that despite the sinister stains on the shafts in his quiver.

  “I do not blame you,” answered Mordec. “I say that you are a boy, and I say that war is not a sport for boys.”

  That dismissal felt like a slight to the younger Cimmerian. Conan decided he would speak of what he had done after all, if only to show his father he was someone to be reckoned with. He asked, “Do you know of an ancient temple lost in the woods not far from Duthil?”

  Mordec, though, only shook his head. “No. There is none,” he said positively. “If there were, someone would have found it.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask? Do the Aquilonians search for such a place?”

  “Not that I know of,” answered Conan.

  “Well, what nonsense are you spouting, then?” demanded his father.

  “Nothing. Never mind,” said Conan. No, the
blacksmith would not believe him. Since that was so, no point to going on. Mordec would but thrash him for telling fables, and he had had enough of his father’s hard hands on him.

  When Conan kept silence, Mordec nodded in dour approval. “All right,” he rumbled. “If you’re going to settle down and be sensible, you can finish grinding this axehead. I have a great plenty of other work to do. Get busy!”

  From the bedchamber came Verina’s weak voice: “Are you nagging the boy again, Mordec? Can’t you leave him in peace?”

  Muttering under his breath, Mordec answered, “There is no peace in this land, nor will there be until the invaders are gone.”

  “That’s not what you told me just now,” exclaimed Conan.

  “By Crom, it is,” said his father. “I tell you it is useless to strike too soon, and it is. But we shall have a day of reckoning with the foe. Oh, yes—we shall have a day of reckoning indeed.” None of the Gundermen or Bossonians in the camp near Duthil would have cared to hear Mordec’s voice when the blacksmith made that vow. Conan’s father went on, “Meanwhile, though, there’s work to be done. Get on with it.”

  “Don’t carp endlessly at Conan,” said Verina. “He’s a good boy.”

  Such praise Conan could have done without. More than anything else, he wanted to be reckoned a man, a warrior, a hero. After his battle with the serpent in the temple from out of time, he thought he had earned the right to be so reckoned. But his father would not even hear of the fight. And hearing his mother call him a good boy made him feel as if he peeked out from behind her skirts. He knew she loved him, but it was a love that simultaneously satisfied and suffocated.

  He began pumping the foot pedal on the grinding wheel for all he was worth. A coruscating shower of sparks flew from the axehead as he held it to the rapidly spinning wheel. Mordec chuckled grimly as he fed the fire in the forge. Soon the axehead boasted an edge sharp enough for shaving. Conan tested it with his thumb, nodded, and thrust it at his father. “Here.”

  Not even Mordec could find anything to criticize.

  chapter iv

  ENEMIES

  When Granth went back to Fort Venarium with a message from Captain Treviranus, he was amazed to see how much the place had changed. A lot more of the forest around the encampment had gone down under the axes of the soldiers still stationed there. The tents had been replaced by barracks halls. A real keep, even if made of wood, was going up in the center of the encampment. A bridge of boats and boards linked Fort Venarium with the way south, the way down to Aquilonia.

  Cimmeria was not so safe as to let Aquilonians travel alone with any confidence they would get where they were going. Along with Granth tramped Vulth and the two Bossonian archers, Daverio and Benno. Pointing to a string of wagons coming toward Venarium from the south, Vulth said, “Look. Some of the first settlers.”

  “Good to see ’em,” said Granth. “They may not be soldiers, but the men will know how to fight. Anybody who can draw a bow or swing a sword against these damned barbarians is welcome.”

  “Pot hunters,” said Benno scornfully. “Half of those poor fools can’t hit the side of a barn.”

  “Well, at least they’ll be aiming at the Cimmerians,” said Vulth. “I’m with my cousin on this.” He clapped Granth on the back.

  “And they’ll be building houses and barns,” added Granth. “If we’re going to settle this land, we’ll have to make it our own.”

  The horses and oxen that drew the settlers’ wagons would soon plow fields in what had been forest. More cattle, along with sheep and goats, traveled behind the wains. They would graze in meadows and crop tender shoots. If the new arrivals also had dogs and cats and swine and hens and ducks, they carried them inside the wagons.

  Daverio did not seem very happy to see the settlers coming up toward Fort Venarium. When Granth asked the Bossonian why, he answered, “Because the Cimmerians will want to murder them even more than they want to murder us. We don’t take the land itself away from them. These fellows do.”

  “Too bad,” said Vulth. “This is why we came up into Cimmeria, after all: to make it a place where Aquilonians can live and to drive back the barbarians.”

  “Yes, that’s why we came, all right,” agreed Daverio. “Now we get to find out whether we’ve done it.”

  Sentries at the gate of the encampment gave Granth and his comrades a careful once-over before standing aside and letting them go in. That only irritated the Gundermen and Bossonians. Granth wondered if the gate guards feared they were Cimmerians in disguise. He laughed at the idea. Even with their hair dyed blond, the northern barbarians would have a hard time passing for men of Aquilonian blood.

  He had to ask several times before finding out that Captain Nario, the officer to whom Captain Treviranus had written his letter, stayed in a barracks hall not far from what would soon be the keep. The hall had its own guards, which struck Granth as excessive. His disgust must have shown on his face, for one of the guardsmen said, “You’d better wipe off that frown, soldier. We’re here on account of this is where Count Stercus makes his headquarters.”

  Another guard snickered. “That’s not all he makes here.”

  “You shut your fool mouth, Torm,” hissed the first guard. “The count heard you make a crack like that, there’d be hell to pay, and you know it.”

  “He wouldn’t hear if you didn’t have a big mouth,” said Torm angrily. While the guards bickered. Granth and his comrades went inside.

  After the daylight from which he had come, Granth blinked a few times to help his eyes adjust to the gloom within. This was plainly a hall for officers. They had more room than ordinary soldiers, and real beds rather than just blankets in which to roll themselves. Some of the officers had body servants, whose bedrolls rested beside their beds. Granth asked for Captain Nario.

  “I am Nario,” called a man sitting on a bed not far from a guarded door at the far end of the barracks hall. Granth would have bet Count Stercus lived in the chamber beyond that door. He had no time to dwell on that, though, for Nario asked, “What do you wish of me?”

  “Sir, I have a letter for you from my commander, Captain Treviranus, up at the place called Duthil,” answered Granth.

  “Do you indeed?” Nario’s smile showed even, very white teeth. “Give it to me, then. I shall be pleased to read it, and I shall write an answer on the spot.”

  “Yes, sir.” Granth handed the officer the rolled-up parchment, meanwhile concealing his own annoyance. He had hoped to deliver the message and be on his way. Now he would have to wait around until Captain Nario not only read what his own commander had to say but came up with a reply.

  And then, quite suddenly, he did not mind waiting any more. A very pretty Cimmerian girl carrying a pitcher of wine and two goblets on a tray came into the barracks. She could not have been above sixteen, and wore little enough that she would have had a hard time sneaking anything lethal into the room at the end of the hall. The guards there did not try to search her, but let her in unchallenged.

  Granth had stared and stared. So had a good many of the soldiers in the barracks, though they seemed more used to her presence than he was. In a hoarse voice, he asked, “Who is she?”

  “She’s Count Stercus’ plaything,” answered Captain Nario, looking up from his writing. He noticed that Granth’s eyes had not left the doorway through which the Cimmerian girl had passed: noticed and started to laugh. “Don’t hope you’ll see her again coming out, my good fellow. She won’t come out of there for quite a while.”

  “Oh.” Granth felt foolish. His ears got hot.

  Nario laughed again, so Granth supposed his flush was only too visible. He felt more foolish yet. He had been ready to face roaring Cimmerian warriors. How could a nearly naked Cimmerian serving girl unman him so? He mumbled, “She’s too young,” and looked down at the ground between his boots.

  “Our distinguished commander would disagree with you, and his is the only opinion that matters,” said Nario in a silky voi
ce. “And now I am going to do you a considerable favor: I am not going to ask you what your name is.”

  For a moment, Granth did not see what sort of favor that was. He was a young man, and inclined to be naive. But then he realized what Captain Nario was driving at, and flushed again. This time, he knew precisely the mistake he had made. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  “You are welcome.” The officer finished writing, melted some sealing wax at a brazier, and used it and a ribbon to close his letter. The seal on his signet ring was of a fire-breathing dragon, which showed in reverse when he pressed it into the wax. He said, “Now you should make yourself unwelcome, if you follow my meaning, for others more zealous than I may have heard you and may be curious about your choice of words.”

  This time, Granth had no trouble taking the hint. He left the barracks in a hurry, with Vulth and Benno and Daverio trailing after him. For a wonder, none of his companions chaffed him until they were out of the encampment altogether. Then, leering, Benno asked, “Did you want to rescue the wench or just to keep her for yourself?”

  “Mitra!” ejaculated Granth in an agony of embarrassment: was he as obvious as that? Evidently he was. Gathering himself, he said, “She was too young for such sport. She should be finding her first sweetheart, not—what Stercus is giving her.”

  All that won him was more teasing from the two Bossonians and his cousin. They kept it up just about the whole way back to Duthil. By the time he handed Nario’s letter to Treviranus, he had decided he was never going to say another word to anyone else as long as he lived.

  Men gathered in a little knot in the main—and almost only—street in Duthil. They spoke in low voices, too low for Conan to make out most of what they were saying. He got only snatches: “Her name is Ugaine.” “ … from Rosinish, to the east of …” “ … a foul lecher, if ever there …”