'Get me out of this,' Conan muttered, 'and I'll give you a better name!'
He had no need of glancing leftward to check the enemy; twenty feet away and angling toward him as they descended, they paralleled his course. The right arm of the rearmost was tucked into his robe, and he bent, clinging to his saddle with his left hand.
Ahead, Conan saw that Isparana was just topping the other, taller hill that cut off their view further south.
Why was she reining in?
Chestnut reached the base of the incline. He stumbled, and indicated he would be very happy to gallop rightward, along level terrain. Conan indicated otherwise. The horse stumbled, tried to shake his head, broke wind, and with faltering strength and obvious reluctance, started up the long, steeper hill. Conan set the animal to climb at an angle to make it easier for him. He chose a direction opposite the angling line of Isparana's tracks.
His pursuers were closer, and coming, yelling. They too had seen their reinforcements, and obviously now hoped to save face by destroying this lone rider before their fellows arrived.
Conan decided to saw Chestnut's reins the other way. Isparana could see to herself while he turned his right side to the enemy. Yet to do so, he realised, would put him instantly in danger of running combat or worse, for the green-robed riders were now that close.
It was then that the discordant chorus of yells and battle screams rose from above, and Conan looked up.
Isparana sat her nervous mount on the very ridge, while on either side of her swept camel after camel, in two files. Atop each, a man in fluttering white kaffia and white burnoos shouted, screamed, and waved his sword. Their ungainly mounts came pounding down the declivity on big feet designed for the desert. Sand flew in pale yellow clouds. High saddles creaked atop those ridiculous single humps.
Cries of consternation rose from Conan's pursuers. They forgot him to turn their horses' heads back down the slope. Down the opposite one, with Conan's pack animals among them, came their seven fellows. Conan's grin was grim and ugly as he watched one of the three fall off his mount. The man whose sword arm he had chopped was finally succumbing to loss of blood, exacerbated by pursuing his wounder and being forced to manhandle his horse on several hillsides.
Camels plunged past Conan and their riders hardly glanced at him.
The last two of his original accosters were hacked to the ground ere they reached the brief stretch of level terrain between the two slopes. Up the other incline lunged over a half-score camel riders, still yelling. All these desert people, Conan reflected, were a noisy lot when they attacked one another! And he remembered the shrieking Cimmerians he had accompanied at Venarium, and he put the thought from his mind.
The green-robed horsemen also yelled—and fled. Six sat their mounts on a downhill slide-run to the west; the seventh, greed making him think he was clever, snatched the lead-rein that connected Conan's four sumpter animals and urged his mount eastward.
With an owner's snarl, Conan kicked Chestnut to bolt after him. Four of the camel-riders, too, pursued him; the others swerved westward, ten camels after six horses. These white-burnoosed men, Conan mused, must be mean fighters! With odds of ten to six who were men, the six stood and fought.
The green-robed jazikh with Conan's supply-laden animals glanced back, saw the pursuit, and dropped the lead rein. The four beasts slowed to a halt. They tried to prance and kick as four camels tore past them. Again Conan changed Chestnut's course. As he reached his pack animals, swerving across their new course to herd and stop them, he heard their would-be owner shriek and die.
Conan nearly lost his saddle in stopping Chestnut and regaining the lead of his supply horses. He sat his mount on the slope, waiting. Chestnut heaved and blew; Conan patted his sweat-running neck. Now they were still, Conan felt very very hot indeed—and nevertheless vowed not again to ride thus without wearing that excellent vest of linked mail he'd bought in Shadizar with a Khaurani gem!
Four men on camels came up the slope to him, and separated. Running sweat, Conan spoke quickly.
'You are most welcome, hawks of the desert!' he hailed them, in the Turanian he hopefully assumed they spoke.
They said nothing; their leader nodded without showing his teeth. All four wore thick, short beards of black or brown and were made to look weirdly ferocious by their black-encircled eyes.
'These belong to me and my woman,' he said, briefly pointing to Isparana, who waited atop the larger hill. 'The green-robed dogs beset us in their numbers, and we struck down four ere we flew. Their leader is a few leagues back; I blinded him.'
A big-nosed, curly-bearded man only a few years older than Conan stared at him from atop his dromedary. 'Who are you? Where go you? Why is the woman unarmed?'
'See his eyes!' one of the others said in barely hushed excitement.
'I am Conan, a Cimmerian,' said the owner of those blue eyes, unknown to many so far south. 'We go to Zamboula, which is her home. Over there lies a man I bowled over. He was crushed by his horse,' he said, not wishing them to take all credit or think he was ineffectual. 'He lies near another whose leg I chopped. Her dagger is in the first one's shoulder. As for her sword…' He shook his head and lied easily. 'A few leagues back. She lost it, in the onset of these brigands. They are your enemies?'
'They are everyone's enemies—ah!'
The camel-riders stared westward, toward the source of shrieks and metallic clashes. Their fellows had overtaken the green-robes, and would presumably make short work of thieving wights who fled rather than fought.
The man with the curly beard and unusually deep-set eyes framed in black returned his gaze to Conan. Conan noticed a scar on his forehead, a small v, neatly etched.
'You two are alone? I know of no… Cimmeria?'
'Cimmeria is a nation far north, beyond the kingdom of Zamora,' Conan said, wondering if these desert tribesmen knew of Zamora. 'Aye, we are alone. We were four, and two were slain far, far back. Two of these are their horses, bearing their weapons. She is most anxious to reach Zamboula. Are you men of Zamboula?'
'No. Do those packs also contain the ears of those who slew your companions?'
Conan shook his head. 'We, uh, do not take ears.'
The four white kaffias turned each toward the other, and their wearers grinned. One of them held out his dark-skinned palm to show Conan a bloody trophy: ears, freshly sliced off.
'We do.'
'Oh. Well, you are welcome to the ears of those I slew—unless that is not honorable;' he rather hurriedly added, when he saw their frowns. He also noted then that two others had the same v-shaped scars just above the inner corner of the right eye. He could not be sure of the fourth, whose kaffia was pulled a bit lower in front.
'It would not be honorable. They are yours.'
'Umm. Well, as my people do not take ears, perhaps your leader will accept them as gift.' Conan felt that they did not look overly happy about that, either. 'You are not of Zamboula, then.'
'No.'
'Citizens of the Turanian Empire?'
'No.'
'These, uh… this is within the area it claims, is it not?'
The curly-bearded man shrugged. 'We do not acknowledge the suzerainty of Turan.'
Conan thought, I think we're in trouble.
X
Tents of the Shanki
The tall Eagle Gates of Zamboula swung wide. A file of horsemen came cantering importantly forth, by twos. Ten such pairs emerged while the gate sentries looked down upon onion-shaped helms the peaks of which trailed three yellow streamers each. From each helmet depended a shoulder-length arras of linked chain that gleamed and rippled like snakeskin in the morning sunlight. Each fall of steel mesh was bordered by three rows of bronze links, for colour and decor. Twenty strong, horse-soldiers of the Empire rode forth. They expected no trouble and wore no other mail.
The blousy white leggings of each were tucked into crimson-topped boots of brown leather. Over that each man wore knee-length, back-split tunic of crims
on, and over that a sleeveless white surcoat split front and back and blazoned with the golden griffin of Turan. Two yellow sashes, around hips and from left hip in front over shoulder to right hip behind, gleamed boldly against the white. Ten men wore swords and from ten high-cantled saddles swung axes shaped like pregnant half-moons. All the men were mustached; sixteen wore beards. Six horses bore crossbows and each man led a change of horse bearing food and water.
From the horn of every saddle swung a short wide-mouth trumpet.
They rode north and north, and on the fifth day they spread out in a long, long line. Each disposed himself so as to be just within sight of another. Somehow Akter Khan knew that a foreign male and a woman of Zamboula approached, having come down the steppes and the desert from the far north. He had sent forth twenty men to meet them. None knew why the pilgrims were so important to their khan. They were soldiers whose business was not to know, but to do. They were escort. The pilgrims were to be aided, guided, politely escorted—unless they evinced desire to go somewhere other than to Zamboula. In that case every effort was to be made to persuade them to continue to the city.
If they persisted in recalcitrance to visit the khan, they—with all their possessions, that was most important—were to be conveyed to the khan at any cost, dead or alive.
The sun blazed and the desert shimmered and twenty men rode north and behind them in Zamboula a young mage looked into his mirror to watch the progress of the two who approached, and reported thrice daily to his khan. And he plotted, and so did the rebel Balad and his followers, while Zamboula shimmered and festered like a boil on the southern desert.
Conan and Isparana were not in trouble.
They were guests of the little desert community of the Shanki, whose ancient religion dictated that they ride camels, not horses, and that each child be marked with the little v-shaped scar on the forehead—above the leftmost corner of the right eye, among boys, and the rightmost corner of the left eye, on girls.
Even so, as they returned to their oasis community, they were accompanied by eighteen horses. Two were bestridden by Conan and Isparana. Two had been the mounts of Sarid and Khassek. Two had been Conan's and Khassek's sumpter beasts. The remaining twelve were the erstwhile mounts of the green-robed raiders the Shanki called Yoggites, after their god; one beast had been wounded in the encounter. It had been slain and left for scavengers on wings or legs. The Shanki would not ride horses, or wear their hides, or eat their meat.
The sun was low and the sky streaked with blood and topaz and nacarat when the camel warriors and their guests reached the nameless community; it was the home of the Shanki. Here palms reared tall and hung their topknots Like dangling arms over tents and little rounded storehouses. Here men wore long-sleeved white tunics over loose leggings or trousers of yellow or orange or red or a rich brown the making of which involved camel urine; their women wore scarlet, and only skirts sheathed their bodies and legs. Married women showed no portion of their heads.
Though the visitors were told that the Shanki had occupied this oasis for 'hundreds of years,' the only buildings were storehouses; granaries of mud and dung. The Shanki lived in tents, as had their nomadic ancestors, and they preserved the trappings and customs of a warrior people. Here dwelt less than five hundred persons—the oasis was home, and population was strictly controlled—under a man called khan.
He was Akhimen Khan's son Hajimen who led the attack on the old Shanki enemy, the jazikhim called Yoggites. Akhimen was not yet twoscore years of age; his son and heir was four-and-twenty, and his older sister was in the harem of the Great Khan in Aghrapur; Akhimen's gift. The Shanki lived within the bounds of the Empire of Turan, but were not of it. As they patrolled the desert hereabouts and would occasionally act as caravan guard, the King-Emperor in Aghrapur of Turan suffered them to remain, without Turanian soldiery or taxation.
Both Akhimen and his son, Conan noted when they removed the white outer robes they donned only when riding out of their community, wore loose yellow tabards over scarlet shirts and very long, loose white leggings. To the breast of each man's tabard was pinned a black star of five points.
Hajimen's wife, faceless and all in scarlet hung and encrusted with opals and garnets and silver, took Isparana away to see to her toilet. Akhimen welcomed Conan to his tent. The Shanki leader wore an extraordinary moustache; greased and oiled to glisten, it was curled up in a thick coil that arced on his cheeks nearly to his lower eyelids. Above his eye, the Shanki mark was oddly bent by two of the vertical furrows etched by sand and wind. Forty years on the desert created the face of a man of sixty. His single ring was set with a large garnet, and a hemispherical opal swung on his breast from a thong of twisted camel hair.
'Conan of Cimmeria is welcome among the Shanki. We will pen your horses.'
'What do the Shanki do with captured horses, Akhimen Khan?'
'The Shanki trade them in Zamboula,' that most courtly man said, 'for good camels and a few things they need. The Zamboulans are happy to receive them, along with the opals my people carve into the likeness of camels, and stars, and split and smooth into perfect hemispheres.'
'I have noted many opals among the Shanki,' Conan said, 'and all are beautiful. You are artists. The Shanki have this day captured eight horses, and I five.'
Akhimen inclined his head. People stepped respectfully from their path as they approached his tent, and stared at the strange-eyed man who towered over their khan, for the Cimmerian was nigh a giant and the Shanki were not a tall people. Conan never learned whence they came.
'We respected the right of Conan to lay claim to all those horses. However, I have heard my son, and agree that eight horses fall to us and five are Conan's, by right of combat and capture. One of ours we slew. Here: fill this man's mug!' For Conan had been handed a large Shanki-made cup of earth and fired sand within a minute of his dismounting.
While a young warrior was honored to fill the cup, Conan said, 'I beg the khan of the Shanki to choose three of the five for his own, for without his people my woman and I had died this day.'
They entered the tent, which was in the community's centre and was no larger than any other. The warrior of the Shanki—he looked about twelve, Conan thought—did not enter with them. Inside were low tables that were surely not of Shanki manufacture, and mats that surely were; they were of the hide or woolly hair of camels, and some were dyed red and the brown that was a Shanki secret.
At his guest's words, Akhimen again inclined his head. 'Conan is generous to a fault, both with horses and words. However a mighty warrior who was attacked by six and slew five appears not to have needed our aid!'
Conan bowed his head, which he felt would be proper among these ferocious camel-warriors of the desert who were so courtly within their community and who used no direct form of address. He made no denial. The Shanki chieftain knew as well as the Cimmerian that Akhimen exaggerated.
'They were only Yoggites,' Conan said, knowing that would please a man he respected; the Cimmerian had known few such men. He noted that Akhimen affected to spit.
'I shall accept one horse as Conan's kind gift,' Akhimen said.
Encouraged by such reverse bargaining, Conan nervously made bold to be expansive and to affect a ridiculous generosity. 'Akhimen will displeasure me by not accepting five.'
'Perhaps my guest will not be displeased if I accept three,' Akhimen said, returning to the original offer, 'of his choice.'
'It shall be three of the khan's choice,' Conan said. While it was his life's hope to become wealthy, he could not conceive of doing so by the steady acquisition of animals or real estate.
'I shall be honored to choose two from among my guest's five horses.'
'I trust that the khan will choose well, though they are only horses, not camels.'
'I am pleased,' Akhimen Khan said.
'I am pleased,' Conan said.
'Fill our guest's mug!' Akhimen said.
As there was no one else in the tent, he lifted an ewer
and filled the mug himself. Conan bowed. The khan, whose tent was the colour of sand and hung with a string of human ears on either side of its entry, turned to a partition formed by a thick curtain of opaque scarlet. He snapped his fingers, twice.
From behind the partition came two just-nubile girls who looked enough alike to be slim sisters. Each wore enormous heavy earrings of bronze that would surely in time lengthen their lobes past their jawlines; each wore a tallish, thick anklet of bronze; each wore a
strip of braided camel hide wrapped and bound about her left upper arm, dangerously tightly. Each wore nothing else whatever, and Conan essayed not to stare as they dropped to their knees and bowed deeply. Despite their age, Conan of a sudden wished himself behind them.
From behind them, between them walked a young woman. She was shapeless in several overlapping garments of red strung with silver and opals. An opal stood from her left nostril, which Conan thus knew was pierced, and the left sleeve of her garments was tightly wrapped with dark leather. Pinned to her bosom was a black star of five points. Her lips were stained black, her eyes completely circled—with obvious care in the application—by kohl so that her pupils looked huge, and the ivory decoration that hung below her waist in front was obscene.
'My daughter Zulfi,' Akhimen Khan said.
While Conan sought within his mind for words courtly enough for the Shanki, Zulfi covered her face with her hands and bowed very low. Conan came of a warrior people and was among such, and felt that it behooved him to stand perfectly still. If he offended, he would apologise and remind his host that he was from afar. If that were not enough, the Cimmerian thought, his ever-effective solution hung at his hip.
'The khan's daughter Zulfi is a beauty and a credit to his tent and loins,' Conan said, and the uncharacteristic words obviously pleased both the weird-lipped young woman and her father.
The Conan Chronology Page 43
