'Masked, aye,' the squatting Watch squad's commander said. 'Dead, too. This your, uh, sword, uh, Shubal?'
'This one's dead, too, Prefect. Throat's slashed out.'
'Yes, it's my sword,' Shubal said.
The sub-prefect straightened. 'Thieves?'
'Assassins,' Shubal said through close-held teeth. They murdered this man. He isn't even armed.'
'You know any of them?'
'This is Nebinio, a Nemedian who's lived here for years and years, a worker in leather. Those two are still masked — here, Conan, what're you doing?'
'Be still,' Conan said, 'pouring this wine Rosela fetched on your wound. Rosela: you leave me now and I'll find you
and slit your throat! Hurt, Shubal? Good. Now we borrow part of the cloak of this killer and tie that arm up.'
'Here,' Rosela said, 'take a strip of my tunic. That cloak's filthy.'
'Crom's beard, girl, you almost aren't wearing it already! Be still, Shubal. Let the wine soak in. Good for wounds, wine is.'
'Frightful . . . waste,' Shubal gasped.
Rosela stayed; her tunic remained intact to be removed later by the Cimmerian; a strip of city Watch-man's sash, no less, bound up Shubal's arm; neither he nor anyone in the tavern recognised the unmasked bandits. The second to fall might have lived to be questioned, for all his bearing two wounds, had not Shubal sheathed his sword in the fellow's intestines to avoid dropping it or returning it un-wiped to its proper sheath. The sub-prefect handed Hilides a shiny Queenhead to cover 'whatever these two men have had this night' and gave Cimmerian and Shemite a hopeful look. The silver coin erased both their tabs altogether, but no one was of a mind to tell the sub-prefect so. When a man had made a mistake and wanted to expiate: let him! Conan and Shubal were asked, not told, to stop at the magistrate's any time on the morrow, to leave a statement. Murder had obviously been done, and justice in the form of self-defence. Still, this was not lawless Shadizar or the Mall of Arenjun, and the magistrate had his records to keep and reports to file with City Governor Acrallidus.
'Shubal,' Conan said, while the Watch moved away up the street, dragging corpses.
'Aye.'
'Feel up to walking?'
Whither?'
We are to escort you to the house of Sfalana, and then to ... go our way. Think how the dear sweet melon-lady will want to nurse her wounded hero. On the morrow I will tell Noble Khashtris and darling Spartus of your wounding, so there will be no objection to your absence. Peradventure Khashtris will want to go and see the magistrate, herself.'
'Hmm. But Sfalana may be abed by now . . .'
'How could she not rouse herself happily to take in a poor wounded man?'
'Ah-hmm. And you . . .'
'I am going to show Rosela the gardens behind our little home, Shubal.'
'Co-nan . . .'
'Hush, Rosela darling; say me nay and I'll search the city for that weasel who chased you into my arms-and give you back!'
'No no, dear boy, it's just that you're holding my hand and every time you emphasise a word you nigh squeeze it in twain!'
Shubal laughed and took up his place on her other side.
'To Sfalana's!'
'To Sfalana's and then to the garden '
And so Conan and Rosela of Khauran escorted the wounded Shubal to the home of Sfalana, seller of fruits, and Conan took Rosela into the gardens of the Noble Khashtris, and showed her many things. And with his soul returned to him, and Rosela to hand, Conan let slip from his mind his nervousness and suspicions of the lord Sergianus of Nemedia or of Koth? —and a week passed, and to the Cimmerian one afternoon fell a strange duty.
VIII
Plot and Counterplot
It came about in this wise:
Rosela gained employment in the palace; Shubal's arm began healing nicely. Next, the queen honoured an agreement made months before; she rode down to some Khaurani town or other to join the priests in dedicating a new temple to Ishtar. With her went both Sergianus and Acrallidus. Khashtris would look after Princess Taramis.
At the last moment it was agreed that the child would remain in her own chambers rather than visit her cousin. Conan and Shubal accompanied Khashtris to the palace, ; with the Cimmerian feeling more dissatisfied than ever. The prospect of seeing Rosela did not help; he'd be with Khashtris and Shubal, guarding a six-year-old I
He only just saw Taramis, whom he'd never met —if one 'meets' six-year-old pre-girls, he thought sourly. Nor of course did she take any note of him; she had been surrounded by uniformed sword-wearers all her life and took less note of their faces than she did of individual spoons at meals. Shortly after her midday snack, Taramis became drowsy and Khashtris took her up for a nap.
The princess was provided with a suite of two rooms. While she slept, Conan 'was made no happier by having to sit with Shubal and Khashtris in the anteroom: the large chamber was all silk and satin and fluff, in white, pale yellow and green, the colours of Khauran. The Cimmerian proved no good student of the game with cards the two tried to teach him.
When Khashtris said she had business and departed, the men assumed it was to answer a call of nature. Shubal decided to go and see about a bit of wine; Conan enthusiastically agreed and grimly remained. At least, the big morose youth thought, reduced to being nursemaid, the brat slept!
It was then that rescue arrived: into the room swayed
Rosela, smiling. She bore a man-sized goblet.
'Here, get that vast hand off me, lunk — this wine is from the queen's own supply Drink before someone comes and I am punished for stealing. Ouch! I'm still tender there from the night before last.'
Wrinkling his features into a ridiculous expression, Conan sipped daintily. 'Hmm. Not a bad vintage,' he said, in an assumed voice that was supposed to mimic an effete aesthete of the court. And then with a grin - while one hand remained intimately busy with Rosela —he drank it off. He lowered the emptied silver goblet and her upper garment, with a long sigh of satisfaction.
'And now, my dear girl, do taste this good wine from my lips I'
'Oh, Co-nan, you're such a -'
He was still kissing her when he collapsed.
Next Conan knew, Khashtris and Shubal were shaking and slapping him, bidding him wake. Foggily he saw that tears glistened on Khashtris's face. What happened? Suddenly he was lunging to his feet, staggering, and reaching for his sword. It was gone. Conan shot Shubal a confused look.
It was then that the dizzied Cimmerian saw the man who lay sprawled in blood on a fine green rug edged with cloth-of-gold. The fellow lay still — and his dead hand was fisted around Conan's sword! The Cimmerian reeled, glanced again at his employer and fellow guard, and sat down as suddenly as he'd risen.
'You've saved my life several times, Conan,' Shubal said. 'It is my pleasure to have saved yours.'
Conan stared. His head was far from clear.
'Shubal saved both you and the princess from that man,' Khashtris told him.
'You must have been drugged,' Shubal said, 'as the princess must have been, earlier. I came in to find this fellow on the point of skulking into her bedchamber, with your sword in his hand.'
Conan shook his head. Drugged? Rosela? Why?'
'I'd say this wight meant to murder the princess and make it look as if you did it, my Cimmerian friend. See if you knew him.'
For several moments longer Conan stared dully at Shubal. Then he slid down to one knee beside the man whose blood ruined a royal carpet. Without care or that ridiculous 'respect for the dead' he had first heard of here in 'civilised' Khauran, Conan twisted the fellow's head around. A corpse stared glassily.
'He ... he is famil ... I have seen him befo-Shubal! This is the man who followed Rosela that night she came fleeing into the tavern!'
'Ah. Well, it wasn't Rosela he was after today!'
Conan extricated his sword from the man's hand, which had not yet constricted in that final stony grip. He stood and sheathed the weapon. 'Rosela came in just after you l
eft,' he said. 'She brought me wine-in a silver cup.'
'It isn't here now, Conan,' Shubal said quietly. 'And she wasn't here when I entered.' Shubal shook his head. 'It looks as if your meeting with her was no accident. She and this man arranged it. You were-we were both taken in.'
'The same night someone murdered that Nemedian and tried to kill you.'
'And today, Taramis,' Khashtris said, actually wringing her hands. 'Why?'
Conan was grinding his teeth. He thought on Rosela, realising how he had been duped; how she had hurled herself into his arms, most literally, and had since trysted with him again and again. All the while only gaining my confidence, to use me! And she had. Because of her, Taramis should be dead and Conan accused; the big barbarian no one really knew anything about!
'She was someone's tool, as was this.' Conan's foot thumped the man Shubal had slain. 'And those two who murdered the Nemedian . . . Nebinio . . . who knew there is no Duke of Tor in Nemedia!'
'Aye,' Shubal said, nodding grim-faced. 'Aye, my friend. Remember our 'writing lesson'. You were noticed staring at him - who must somehow be Sabaninus . . . and you are a danger to him. So, the heir to the throne is killed, giving the queen even more reason and need to seek solace, and wed again. And should she . . . die, she'd leave him or his heir as ruler of Khauran! While you, foreigner, are safely
-
and legally slain for a most horrible murder!'
Khashtris was pleading: What are you talking about? Who is HE?'
'The deaths, then,' Conan said, 'are of equal importance to him, and to someone else ... his Khaurani confederate!'
'But WHY!' Khashtris demanded, streaming tears. Who?
Her bodyguards looked at each other. They nodded in mutual decision; they told Khashtris. They told her all of it. She sank down on the couch strewn with yellow pillows.
'Ishtar!' she hissed, barely audible. 'And when I saw Rosela hurrying so, I wondered what you had done to her, Conan!'
'Saw her? Where?'
'Going-going out into the garden.'
Grinding his teeth, the Cimmerian left them. His head was trying to swim as he stalked through the palace on tingling legs. Angrily, he pinched his forearm, again and again. Blood showed there when he emerged into the spacious garden behind the palace. He did not call out; he searched. He was several minutes finding Rosela, who was in a far corner amid a little grove of some low evergreens clipped to resemble horse-heads.
She lay on the ground. She had been stabbed more than once, low.
'Oh ... Co-nan . . .'
He crouched beside her, without touching her. His eyes and voice were intense. 'Tell me all of it, Rosela. You'll not recover from those stomach wounds. Tell me, or I'll see that you die in worse pain than you know now.'
'K-kill me-e, Conan . . .'
'Who, Rosela?'
'Ark . . . Arkhaurus. He hired my brother and me ... that night. I was to ... gain your confi . . . dence . . .'
'You did, bitch. The very Adviser to the Queen, is it? And today?'
'He knew of the queen's trip. He had me employed here. It was he ... oh! Hurts, Conan ... he who arranged that th-the princess would stay here, so you would come with N-Noble Khashtris. Taramis's . . . snack was . . . drugged.
And the wine I ... fetched you. Sorry, Conan, sorry . . .'
'Of course you are. The rest of it. Arkhaurus stabbed you?'
'My brother Nardius was to ... kill the princess, with your . . . sword.' She was having more difficulty talking. We were to be rich,' Arkhaurus said. He met me here. Instead ... in ... stead . . .'
'Instead he met you where you were to be congratulated and paid, and paid you with sharp steel, did he? The dog didn't even do a clean job, but belly-stabbed you and left you to die slowly. You weren't a confederate to be made rich, Rosela. You were hired help, and you know more than you should. So — he disposed of you.'
She lay staring up at him, and tears slid down towards her ears. And then her mouth and eyes went wide and she was rigid, all over. That spasm ended only with the sighing release of her last long breath.
Conan rose from the fifteen-year-old temptress and monster he had told himself was his woman, and he vowed not to love again, to be wary and but use girls where he found them, and he left her there, dead, without closing her eyes.
The three decided to say nothing of the attempt. Who knew aside from Arkhaurus?
'Let me just spit him,' Conan said, looking ugly, 'and we can put Rosela's brother there, as if he killed Arkhaurus, and we came too late, but slew him. Before he died, he implicated Sergianus . . .'
'Conan, no!' Khashtris strode about, gnawing her lips, wringing her hands until they were red. 'No! This is the palace of Khauran! My cousin is involved-I think the poor dear girl loves Sergianus!'
'Suppose you invite him to dinner,' the Cimmerian gritted, 'and I will 'go berserk' and kill him! The queen will be spared knowing what we know-and saved, along with Khauran. All you need do is give me a little time to be far from here.'
'You-you'd take it all on yourself?'
'Why not? I am a foreigner, and what holds me here? I want away from this accured queendom, Khashtris. I
do owe a debt to Queen lalamis . . . you think I mind the blood of Arkhaurus and Sergianus on these hands ?' He held diem up and stared ferally over his fingertips. 'I want their blood there!'
But no, and Khashtris convinced them. They removed the body of Rosela's brother, in cloaks. Khashtris, after mopping and mopping the rug with her own hands, at last sliced her forearm; she'd say the remaining bloodstains were hers, after she'd accidentally cut herself. And she would talk with her cousin. Conan would not remain in the palace, saying that if he saw Arkhaurus, he'd surely kill him.
He drank much that night.
Two days later, Khashtris talked with the queen, alone. She returned unhappily to report to her two fellow conspirators.
'She wanted only to talk of Sergianus, dear Sergianus,' Khashtris told them. 'I tried to tell her. I tried. I could not. She has agreed to see you two, though she does not know why.'
Conan and Shubal looked at each other, and nodded. An overwrought Khashtris wanted Conan that night, and he refused her.
IX
A Wolf Is Loose in Khauran
Conan and Shubal had audience with the queen, and tried to tell her what they knew and thought they knew. She would not believe. She was horrified at the very thought; she would not listen; she ordered them from her and told them they were no longer welcome in the palace. For tomorrow night's dinner, she would send her own guards to escort her cousin to her.
The two men stalked from the palace. We must confide in Acrallidus,' Shubal said. 'Gods! Will no one believe?'
'Easier if I just go and shove steel through that damned charmer Sergianus or Sabaninus or whatever his treacherous name is ... she loves that demon!'
'How did you feel about Rosela?'
'Shut up, Shubal!'
Shubal sighed and faced his friend, there in the square betwixt lofting palace and imposing temple. 'No, Conan. Don't think of it. You would never escape the palace. We are suspect, now. The queen will never let us near him! Come, listen; stop staring at walls and thinking foolishly of scaling them! We must sit down with Acrallidus, who is wise, and with Khashtris. We four must plan. He will believe. He must; he is our only hope.'
'Our best hope lies in our sheaths, Shubal.'
'Damn it, barbarian — must you think only of leaving trails of blood wherever you go?'
Conan stared at him, and after a while Shubal apologised, and Conan agreed to share their knowledge and suspicions with City Governor Acrallidus.
'But how?' the queen's governor of her capital city wondered aloud, once he'd heard their story. He looked around Khashtris's most private chamber as though tapestried walls might provide the answer. 'How can this Baron Sabaninus
make himself younger, or look younger, or-'
'-steal a younger man's body?' Conan suggested. His eyes were
beginning to blaze. Talk, talk, and talk. He was tired of talk. His patience was like a wolf on a leash.
'And the way he came here, afoot, tattered, bloodied —'
'None of the blood was his own. He rode up from Koth. Koth, Acrallidus, with two retainers - and he killed them! As he smote, their blood splashed him. Then he drove off his own horses, and tore his own clothing and rolled in the filth. Thus he was a pitiful object to be taken to the queen, helped, sympathised with — damn!' Conan slapped the table around which they sat, and silver-chased goblets of bronze danced and sloshed mulled wine. 'You people, you so-civilised people, have you no power to suspect? Have you no ability to believe? It is SORCERY! By Ishtar and Crom and Bel and . . . Erlik, do you who are victims of a demon's curse on your very queen . . do you not see? Believe! It is sorcery!'
Conan pounced to his feet and paced from them. He wheeled. He had become a great impatient wolf, eyes aflame, every muscle poised to pounce and fight.
listen! You three smugly civilised people with your walls and marble halls and magistrates and your clack-clack shoes and swirly robes and ridiculous coiffures - listen! Give listen to one you call barbarian, who was born on a battlefield and has been warrior and thief and has lost and regained his very soul, of sorcery . . . and who has sent off to join the Lord of Death enough men to staff your very palace!'
And he told them of the battle of Venarium in which he'd fought at fifteen, and how he had fought and defeated a dead thing in a crypt because he wanted its sword; he told them of Yara of Arenjun and the elephant-creature in his Tower of Sorcery, creature from the starry gulf beyond the world; and of the dark wizard Hisarr Zul, and his brother who lived on, as sand - 'Sand.' - even ten years after his death, and how he had bested them both. He showed them the clay amulet he wore pendent on his chest, and he told them what it was. And they listened.
'Now we know what we know. We cannot be wrong! Arkhaurus and Sergianus plot together, and they know I know, and Shubal - and now they must assume you know too, Khashtris! Sergianus does not know this amulet, or what it is. He does not know but that I am a sorcerer-we have twice escaped his snares, Shubal and I! I, Conan, foreigner and barbarian as you civilised folk say - see now how to make that demon expose himself. You have only to aid me. Do it!'
The Conan Chronology Page 33
