Conan the Guardian

by Roland Green

  House? Palace, rather. No noble in Aghrapur would have refused it as his seat, and the royal palace of Ophir was hardly larger. None of them, however, had standing at their front door the woman who greeted Conan as he led his company up the path.

  Wealthy the Lady Livia was, beyond doubt. But harridan? In another forty years, perhaps, but Conan doubted it. With the gods’ favour., she would not lose those sea-blue eyes nor that fine carriage, and with those alone she would still turn men’s heads. Now, when she had to be younger than Conan himself, she was a woman for whom men might sack cities.

  Hair the colour of ripe wheat, held in place by combs each worth a noble’s ransom, rose atop a perfectly oval face. Her white gown of Khitan silk covered her from throat to ankles, but Conan could read the curves where it stretched tight over breast and hips.

  She reached out a long-fingered, cream-skinned hand whose wrist bore a bracelet of gold and tiny rubies, and spoke in a voice like the flowing of a clean spring.

  “Welcome to the service of House Damaos, Captain Conan. I am the Lady Livia. Our steward Reza will see to your men.”

  For the first time Conan became aware that Livia had a shadow, a man grown grey but nearly his own size and with the look of an old soldier about him. He also wore a white robe, but of fine linen with a blue border, and though his belt was studded with seashells it supported a long curved Iranistani dagger.

  “Your coming finds us unprepared to fitly quarter all your company,” Reza said. “We can find places for ten and yourself. For the rest, we shall provide the price of rooms in a good inn not far from the harbour.”

  Divide the company and then—what? Suspicion rose in Conan. He crossed his arms on his chest, to keep his hands from the hilts of his blades, and bowed.

  “If that is your wish, my lady, then it is our command. But we have lived harder than beggars, on campaign. If we can have tents, we would gladly find a place in your gardens.”

  “I would gladly give it to you,” Livia said. “But if I did, my father’s ghost would haunt me and the gardener would fling himself into the sea. No, give us time, and we shall have better than a tent in a garden to offer all of you.”

  She turned away. Conan knew dismissal when he saw it, and a woman who had made up her mind. He also saw Reza watching him intently, except when the big steward’s eyes flickered to right and left. Conan’s gaze followed Reza’s, and he detected men ready and waiting, thinking they were hidden.

  This house might be a trap. But the streets of Messantia were certainly one. For the moment, the company had no clear path of retreat.

  But he would find one. Conan vowed that, hoping some helpful gods would listen, but not much caring whether they did or not. If he had to find that path by carving it from the living flesh of Livia’s men with his broadsword, he would do it. For his own honour, he could do no less.

  “Talouf,” he said softly. “Is there a man you can trust, to lead at the inn?”

  “Kirgesthes is shaping well, but I really need him—”

  “Not half as much as I need you, if we’re going to be wrestling serpents in their nests.”

  “Serpents?” Talouf grinned. “That wench doesn’t look much like a serpent, although I’d wager wrestling with her—”

  “Is no jesting matter,” the Cimmerian said, gripping Talouf’s beard and twisting gently. “Remember that, and pass the word to any of the men who may forget.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Talouf said, unrepentant.

  “Good. Now, Kirgesthes will lead at the inn, you and I will lead here, and as to the rest we’ll let the men draw lots.”

  That would be fairer. Not to mention that Conan had no idea which men besides Talouf would be more useful in each place, until he had answers to a few questions.

  He made another vow, that he would have those answers before another sunset, or else have his men on the way out of Messantia.

  * * *

  From behind the curtains of gauze Lady Livia watched the ten men chosen for the inn march out the gate. They marched raggedly but kept their eyes roaming about them and their hands close to their well-used steel. A few started to talk, but the sergeant quickly silenced those.

  Reza came up silently behind her. It was a measure of his unease that he had not knocked.

  “I wish your keeper-father was still alive.”

  Livia turned and smiled. “Reza, the last time I said that, you told me that wishes were the death of wisdom.”

  “Also of good soldiers, and it is true. Forgive me, my lady. I meant no insult.”

  “Reza, you would not know how to insult me if you meditated on the matter for a year. I thank the gods for this. Now, what do you make of our Captain Conan? In truth, I had expected someone your age.”

  “Free-lancing is a way of life for young men, my lady. By the time a free lance reaches my years, he is usually either retired or dead. Only those lucky in battle but unlucky in loot are still soldiering at fifty.”

  “I am not sure you will not be soldiering again, if Conan proves no friend to House Damaos. He has the look of a man hard to either deceive or kill.”

  Reza nodded, his face sour. “Much my own thoughts. But we can either do as we intended, or remain ignorant until Conan chooses to tell us the truth. Or shows it to us, by carrying out his master’s orders.” In spite of the heat of the afternoon, Livia felt a chill. Even when her keeper-father was fighting for her inheritance in the courts, she had not needed to fear being murdered in her bed. Now she could not sleep easily— at least until Reza had finished his work.

  V

  Conan walked in the gardens of the Damaos palace. He wore his sword belted on over a linen tunic in the Argossean style, and carried a long ash wood staff in his hand.

  He had been offered sandals, but his soles were no bad substitute for leather. As for the tunic, some of his men scorned it as womanish, but he himself held his peace. It was what free men wore in Argos, where trousers were the mark of the barbarian.

  It also left a man free to move against his enemies and wield his weapons. Conan asked no more of any garb, be it breech clout, armour, or royal robes.

  As he walked, he listened for any cessation of the cries of the night birds and the chrrr of insects. He also probed the ground ahead of him with the staff.

  Before him spread a patch of lawn that might have been worked by a barber, so neatly trimmed was each blade of grass. Too neatly trimmed, Conan thought, and remembered Reza’s warning. He thrust his staff hard into the ground. At the fourth thrust the ground gave way with a soft sigh. There was nothing soft about the clank of iron meeting ash wood, as the expected mantrap below snapped shut on his staff.

  Very surely, Reza and his men knew their work. This was not the first cunning contrivance to keep unwanted visitors from disturbing the palace. Conan doubted it would be the last.

  Best he learn a little more of Messantia, including secret ways out of the city, and that quickly. When Lady Livia found that he was no more a sorcerer than he was a priest, dismissal from her service was the best he and his men could hope for. She needed twenty more armed men as much as she needed a bout of the flux—

  Conan stepped back from the lawn and behind a tree in one flowing movement. The night birds no longer sang, and he now realized they had ceased their song before he sprang the mantrap. From behind the tree he stared toward the wall.

  A dark shape appeared, bobbing and weaving as it threw a padded arming doublet over the spikes. Softly, Conan gave the call of the Ophirean black owl. He was about to draw his sword, when the dark shape replied with the same sound. A moment later, Conan was guiding the man who called himself Belgor behind the tree. “How are you doing at the inn?”

  The lean, crop-eared man frowned. “Oh, it’s fine enough. Vandar rode in this afternoon. But there’s two men who seem to be hangin’ from the rafters like bats. Men Kirgesthes says were with that Lord Councillor or whatever he was, up in the mountains.”

  Lord Akimos’s men, at t
he inn. Watching Conan’s men. Waiting for something.

  “Have they come to any of our men?”

  “Not that I’m rememberin’—no, wait a bit, Captain. It’s last night that I saw one of them, talkin’ to Douras.” “Does Douras still think he should have been sergeant, in Kirgesthes’s place?”

  Belgor made a gesture of aversion. Conan glared. “Crom, man, I’m only asking if Douras’s tongue is still wagging the way it was on the road!”

  “Well, he won’t thank me for tellin’—”

  “I’ll do worse than not thank you if you don’t.” “Yes.”

  The one word seemed to exhaust Belgor’s powers of speech, but it was enough for Conan. It seemed that Akimos was doing just what the Cimmerian would have done in his place. Find a discontented man in the ranks of the company and turn him into a spy. Perhaps groom him to lead the company, if the need arose to find someone besides Conan....

  Belgor now looked ready to talk more, but the Cimmerian cut him off with a sharp gesture. The night birds were not only silent. Ears sharpened by a dozen hair’s-breadth escapes told Conan that some of them were taking flight.

  “Back over the wall, and tell Kirgesthes to watch Douras.”

  “Captain-?”

  “Climb the wall, man, or I’ll heave you over it and hope you land on your empty head! Did they crop your wits along with your ears?”

  Belgor now heard the same as Conan—footsteps approaching through the gardens. The men seemed to be attempting silence, but Conan had heard less noise from elephants in Vendhya. Belgor sprinted for the wall, scrambled up the rope he had left hanging, pulled it up after himself, and vanished down the street side.

  Conan drew his stout-bladed Aquilonian dagger and left his sword sheathed. Against these men he wanted surprise, best gained in the shrubbery where a short blade was the master of a long one. Then he settled down to wait.

  The tree was not the best of all places to wait that he had seen in the garden. But he was there, and he could wait without moving, as silent as the stepping stones in the reflecting pool a hundred paces nearer the house. The men had to move to close with him, so could not be as silent even had they the art.

  It was not a short wait. The men seemed to know at least that they should move slowly, and they had a fair distance to travel. From the rear wall to the rear of the house was more than two hundred paces. In many lands, Conan had seen smaller plots of land supporting whole families.

  The men continued their clamorous approach. It seemed as if they wanted to be heard. Conan would have set that notion aside, but it had begun to seem that in Messantia nothing was too twisted to be the truth.

  Returning to Ophir began to seem less foolish than hitherto. At least there a free lance would know who his enemies were and how to fight them. Also his fate if he lost, so he would have no reason to do other than die sword in hand. In Argos, matters seemed like the boxes Conan had seen in Khitai, where inside each box nestled a smaller one, until in the heart of the whole affair lay something the size of a pea.

  Between one breath and the next, silence fell across the garden. Conan had to strain his ears, even to hear the breathing of the men. So that uproar had been a trick! Well, perhaps it was time to teach these tricksters a few things they seemed not to know about Cimmerians and free lances.

  Not a leaf stirred as Conan crept toward where he had last heard the men. He knew they had to be behind a rose hedge, but not exactly where. He made a wide half-circle around one edge of the hedge, to come in well behind it. Even in the darkness of the garden, he could then see along its whole length—and he would wager that no Argossean had his own cat’s-eyed night sight.

  He barely breathed as he crept past the end of the hedge, dagger in hand. He lay flat on the dew-damp grass for a moment, to be sure he remained unseen and unheard. Then he began his crawl again.

  As he did, footsteps thudded on the grass to his right. Conan rolled, dagger leaping up like a striking snake. A dark figure rushed in, loomed above Conan, and stretched out empty hands toward the Cimmerian.

  Conan saw those empty hands with a heartbeat to spare. He struck with his clenched left fist instead of his steel-laden right hand, and the breath wssshhed out of the man. He doubled up, holding his belly, and staggered back into the path of his comrade.

  The second man leaped to one side and closed with Conan. That leap cost him time. It might have cost him more, had Conan not seen that the second man’s hands were also empty. The Cimmerian rolled on his back, and legs like tree trunks thrust and lifted at the same moment.

  The second man rose like one of the fleeing night birds, soaring over Conan. He twisted in mid-air, enough to save skull and neck. He did not save himself from the roses. He crashed down into the man-high tangle of thorn-studded branches.

  The silence of the night ended in the man’s cry of pain, surprise, and outrage. Springing to his feet, Conan saw lights suddenly blossom on the roof of the house and in hedges and pavilions.

  The man in the hedge seemed too entangled and thorn-gouged to be a menace. The first man, however, had regained his feet. As his hand groped toward his belt, Conan punched him again, this time on the jaw. He flew backward so far that he plunged into a reflecting pool. Conan gripped one foot and heaved until the man’s head was clear of the water. Then he set his back against the nearest stout tree and cupped his hands.

  “Ho, men of House Damaos! Him out, turn out, turn out! This is Captain Conan! We have thieves in the garden. Come out, all men of House Damaos!”

  He heard the alarm echoing from the garden wall to house wall and back. Then he shifted his dagger, drew his sword, and readied himself to meet whatever might be coming at him behind those lights.

  After what seemed half the night, Conan realized that the light bearers were not going to approach him. He saw dark shapes bending over the two senseless men, whispering briefly, then dragging them off. He thought he heard more whispering, but he saw no one. The light bearers might have been ghosts or demons, bearing off the fallen men to snatch their souls from them—

  For a moment, the garden seemed full of a darkness that was not of this world. Conan felt his flesh crawling, doubted that there was need of it, but could not be sure. Had he been tricked beyond his worst doubts into serving a house where sorcery reigned and served the treacheries and stratagems Argosseans seemed to love as some men loved wine?

  If he had been, he would know for certain before long. At least he would know if Talouf and the others kept their wits about them and remembered the instructions he had given them last night—

  From the roof of the house, one of the lights started blinking. Then the other three suddenly went out. From closer to hand, the owl-hoot sounded.

  Conan wanted to roar with laughter. Instead, he replied with a hoot of his own. Then he shouted.

  “Men of House Damaos! Come out and end your tricks. Come out before I count to ten, or I might just decide to end you!”

  Whispers started again, giving Conan a clear notion where the tricksters stood. A couple of men raised their voices loud enough for Conan to make out words. Then someone—it sounded like Reza—spoke a single harsh word. Silence returned.

  This time it lasted no longer than a man might take to drink a cup of ale. Conan began to count, and reached five before he heard Reza’s voice.

  “Very well, Cimmerian—”

  “Captain Conan!”

  “Very well, Captain Conan. We will come out.” “With your lanterns in hand, and nothing else. The archers among my men have arrows nocked and a clear shot at any of you.”

  That was the way it was supposed to be. Conan was prepared to wager that Reza would not put the matter to a test.

  The big Iranistani was not. As he emerged at the head of half a dozen of his men, Conan realized just how big the steward was. He might be old enough to be the Cimmerian’s father, but a grapple with him would be no easy victory.

  “Captain Conan,” Reza began. “You must explain—”


  “I must do nothing of the kind,” Conan snapped. “You’re the one to do the explaining. Starting now, and leaving nothing out. Including why you were ready to have a pair of your men end up ghosts. They came cursed close, you know, and if I hadn’t been quick enough—”

  “How much of you is quick, besides your tongue?” a man in the rear shouted.

  Reza silenced the man with a glare, but Conan heard the men Talouf had in the bushes shifting about, ready to attack. The Cimmerian stepped forward, until he was just outside sword’s reach of the steward.

  From this close, he could be in among his opponents before they could move. Then he would have the edge that always came to one man fighting a number not trained as a team.

  Also, any witlings among his archers would be slow to shoot, if they might hit their captain. Whatever tricks had been played on him tonight, if blood flowed it would not be he who began the fight.

  Reza and his men gave way before the Cimmerian’s advance. Conan’s eyes flickered from one face to the next, trying to pick the man who might be readiest to draw short sword or dagger. Reza carried only a staff much like Conan’s, but his grip showed that he knew its use as a weapon.

  Now the House Damaos men were moving out into a half-circle around Conan. Soon the advantage would pass from the Cimmerian to them. Conan decided that his duty to keep the peace would end in that moment.

  As the half-circle formed, a clear light voice sounded from the direction of the house.

  “Reza! Captain Conan! Enough! Keep the peace, or it will be the worse for both of you.”

  In the flickering lantern light, Conan could have sworn the Iranistani was turning red. To ease minds, the Cimmerian sheathed his dagger. A moment after that, Lady Livia stepped into the light.

  She wore a short white tunic that left well-turned legs bare from just below the knee, gold-stamped sandals, and a pale green mantle with a red border and a hood thrown back from her unbound hair. The blue eyes were cold, but she had a smile for both big men as she stepped between them.