'I'm sorry, Conan,' she said softly, or what passed for softly in the din. 'That may have been the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I shouldn't have laughed.'
'If you want to exhibit yourself naked,' he replied gruffly, 'why not go to a tavern where there's a bit of money in it?'
'Do you see those people?' She pointed out three men and two women seated near the table, each with a piece of parchment fastened to a board and a bit of charcoal in hand, and each glaring impatiently at the girl and him. 'I pose for them. They don't have the money to hire someone, so I do them a favour.'
'Out in front of everybody?' he said incredulously.
'There isn't much room, Conan,' she said, amusement plain in her voice. 'Besides, everyone here is an artist of one sort or another. They do not even notice.'
Eyeing her curves, he was willing to wager differently. But all he said was, 'I suppose you can do what you want.'
'You suppose right.'
She waved to the people sketching and hopped down from the table, producing any number of interesting jiggles and bounces. He wished she would stop leaping about like that while she had her clothes off. It was all he could do not to throw her over his shoulder and take her back up to his room.
Then he noticed a twinkle in her eye and a slight flush on her cheek. She knew the effect she had on him.
Deftly she took the cloak out of his hands and wrapped it chastely around her. 'At the moment I would like to have some wine. With you.' He looked at the cloak, raising an eyebrow questioningly, and she giggled. 'It's different up there. There I'm posing. Down here I'm just naked. Come, there's a table emptying.'
She darted away, and he followed, wondering what difference the distance from the table to the floor made, wondering if he would ever understand women. As he slid onto a stool across a small, rough-topped table from her, someone thrust a clay jug of wine and two battered metal cups in front of them, disappearing while Conan was still reaching for his pouch.
He shook his head. ''Tis the first tavern I've ever seen, where payment was not demanded before a cup was filled.'
'Did not anyone explain last night?' she laughed.
'Perhaps they did. But there was more than a little wine being passed around.'
'Did you really do all you talked about last night?' She leaned forward with interest, the top of the cloak gaping to expose the upper slopes of her cleavage. A part of his brain noted that that glimpse was almost as erotic as her fully exposed bosom had been. He wondered if she knew that and did it on purpose.
'Some of them,' he answered cautiously. In truth he did not remember which stories he and Hordo had told. There had been much more than a little wine. He filled their cups from the clay jug.
'I thought so,' she said in tones of satisfaction. 'As to the money, you give what you can. Everyone staying here does, though some who only come in the day give nothing. Some of us receive money from our families, and of course we all put that in. They don't approve-the families that is-but they approve less of having us nearby to embarrass them. Whatever we have left over we use to distribute bread and salt to the hungry in Hellgate. It's little enough,' she sighed, 'but a starving man appreciates even a crumb.'
'Some of these have families rich enough to give them money?' he said, looking around the room in disbelief. Suddenly her cultured accents were loud in his head.
'My father is a lord,' she said defensively. She made it sound a crime, both being a lord and being the daughter of one.
'Then why do you live here, on the edge of Hellgate, and pose naked on tables? Can you not write poetry in your father's palace?'
'Oh, Conan,' she sighed, 'don't you understand that it's wrong for nobles to have gold and live in palaces while beggars starve in hovels?'
'Mayhap it is,' Conan replied, 'but I still like gold, though I've had little enough of it. As for the poor, were I rich, unless I misdoubt me I'd fill many a belly with what I spent.'
'What other answer did you expect?' a lanky man said, pulling up a stool. His long face wore a perpetual scowl, made deeper by thick eyebrows that grew across the bridge of his nose. He scooped up Ariane's cup and drank half her wine.
'It is an honest answer, Stephano,' Ariane said. Stephano snorted.
Conan remembered him now. The night before he had named himself a sculptor, and been free with his hands with Ariane. She had not seemed to mind then, but now she took back her winecup angrily.
'He is a generous man, Stephano, and I think me he'd be generous were he rich.' She shifted her direct gaze back to Conan. 'But can you not see that generosity is not enough? In Hellgate are those who lack the price of bread, while nobles sit safe in their palaces and fat merchants grow richer by the day. Garian is no just king. What must be done is clear.'
'Ariane!' Stephano said sharply. 'You tread dangerous ground. School your tongue.'
'What leave have you to speak so to me?' Her voice grew more heated by the word. 'Whatever is between us, I am none of your property.'
'I have not named you so,' he replied, matching heat for heat. 'I ask but that you let yourself be guided by me. Speak not so to strangers.'
Ariane tossed her pretty head contemptuously, her big eyes suddenly cold. 'Art sure there is no part of jealousy in your words, Stephano? No intent to rid yourself of a rival?' The sculptor's face flamed red.
'Stranger he may be,' she continued remorselessly, 'yet he is the kind of man we seek. A warrior. Have I not heard Taras speak so to you a hundred times? We must needs have fighters if-'
'Mitra's mercy' Stephano groaned. 'Have you mind at all for caution, Ariane? He is a northern barbarian who likely never knew his father and would sell his honour for a silver piece. Guard your tongue!'
With his left hand Conan slid his broadsword free of its scabbard, just enough so that the edge of the blade below the hilt rested against the side of the table. 'When I was still a boy,' he said in a flat voice, 'I saw my father die with a blade in his hand. With that blade I killed the man who slew him. Care you to discuss it further?'
Stephano's eyes goggled at the sword, his scowl momentarily banished, He touched his lips with his tongue; his breath came in pants. 'You see, Ariane? You see what kind of man he is?' His stool scraped on the floor as he rose. 'Come away with me, Ariane. Leave this man now.'
She held out her winecup to Conan. 'May I have some more wine?' She did not look at Stephano, or acknowledge his presence. Conan filled the cup, and she drank.
Stephano looked at her uncertainly, then took a step backward. 'Guard your tongue!' he hissed, and darted away, almost crashing into another table in his haste.
'Will you guard your tongue?' Conan asked quietly.
She peered into her wine a time before answering. 'From the stories you told, your sword goes where the gold is. Do you choose only by who can pay the most gold?'
'No,' he told her. 'I've ridden away from gold rather than follow unjust orders.' Sighing, he added truthfully, 'But I do like gold.'
Clutching his cloak about her, she rose. 'Mayhap... mayhap we'll speak of it later. They wait for me to finish posing.'
'Ariane,' he began, but she cut him off.
'Stephano thinks he has a claim on me,' she said quickly. 'He has not.' And she left almost as quickly as Stephano had.
Conan emptied his cup with a muttered curse, then turned to watch her drop his cloak and climb back to her pose on the table. After a moment her eyes shifted to him, then away, quickly. Again she met his gaze and tore hers away. Her rounded breasts rose and fell as her breathing became agitated. Spots of red appeared on her cheeks, growing, her face flushing hotter and hotter. Abruptly she uttered a small cry and leaped down, snatching up the cloak from the floor without looking again at Conan. She pulled the fur-trimmed garment about her as she ran, darting between the tables, feet flashing up the stairs.
The Cimmerian smiled complacently as he poured more wine from the clay jug. Perhaps things were not as bad as they seemed.
Ho
rdo dropped onto the stool across the table, a frown creasing his eye. 'Have you listened to what's said in this place?' he asked quietly. 'Was there a Guardsman about, there'd be heads on pikes for sedition before many more dawns.'
Conan looked casually to see if anyone was listening. 'Or for rebellion?'
'This lot?' the one-eyed man snorted derisively. 'They might as well march to the block and ask to have their heads chopped. Not that the city's not ripe for it, mind. But these have as much chance as a babe sucking a sugar-tit.'
'But what if they had money? Gold to hire fighting men?'
Hordo raised his cup as Conan spoke; now he choked on the wine. 'Where would this lot get gold? If one of them had a patron, you can wager your stones he'd not be living on the rim of Hellgate.'
'Ariane's father is a lord,' Conan said quietly. 'And she told me some of the rest come of rich men, too.'
The one-eyed man chose his words carefully. 'Do you tell me they actually plan rebellion? Or think they do?'
'Stephano and Ariane, between them, as much as told me so.'
'Then let us be gone from here. They may have some talents, but rebellion is not among them. If they met you last night and tell so much today, what have they told others? Remember, our heads can decorate pikes as easily as theirs.'
Conan shook his head slowly, although Hordo was right, on the face of it. 'I like it here,' was all he said.
'You like a round-bottomed poet,' Hordo said heatedly. 'You'll die for a woman yet. Remember the blind soothsayer.'
'I thought you said he was a fool,' the Cimmerian laughed. 'Drink, Hordo. Rest easy. We'll talk of our Free-Company.'
'We've no gold yet that I can see,' the other said sourly.
'I'll find the gold,' Conan said with more confidence than he felt. He had no idea whence it might come.
Still, it would be well to have his plans in order. A delay of days could mean the difference between being sought after and all who could afford such companies already having hired. 'I'll find it. You say we can, ah, borrow weapons from the storehouses of the smuggling ring you serve. Are they serviceable? I've seen smuggled mail so eaten with rust it fell apart in a good rain, and blades that snapped at the first blow.'
'Nay, Cimmerian. These are of good quality, and of any sort you want. Why, there are as many kinds of sword bundled in those storehouses as I've ever heard named. Tulwars from Vendhya, shamshirs from Iranistan, macheras in a dozen patterns from the Corinthian city-states. Fifty of this sort and a hundred of that. Enough to arm five thousand men.'
'So many?' Conan murmured. 'Why would they keep so much in their storehouses, and in such variety?
There's no profit in storing swords.'
'I bring what I'm told from the border to Belverus, and I'm paid for it in gold. I care not if they grow barley in the storehouses, so long as I get a fat purse each trip.' Hordo tipped the jug over his cup; a few drops fell. 'Wine!' he roared, a blast that brought dead silence to the room.
Everyone turned to stare in amazement at the two burly men. A slender girl in the same sort of plain neck-to-ankles cotton robe that Ariane wore approached hesitantly and placed another clay jug on the table. Hordo fumbled in the purse at his belt and tossed her a silver piece.
'The rest is for you, little one,' Hordo said.
The girl stared at the coin, then laughed delightedly and dropped a mockingly deep curtsey before leaving. Conversation slowly resumed among those at the tables. The musicians struck up their various tunes, and the poet orated to the wall.
'Pretty serving girls,' Hordo muttered as he refilled his battered metal cup, 'but they dress like temple virgins.'
Conan hid a smile. The one-eyed man had drunk deeply the night before. Well, he would discover soon enough that he did not have to pay for his wine. In the meantime, let him contribute for the both of them.
'Consider, Hordo. Such a motley collection of weapons is just the sort of thing these artists would put together.'
'That again?' the other man grumbled. 'In the first place, whoever runs the ring, I can't see him wanting Garian overthrown. Those fool tariffs might be starving the poor, but they make good profits for smuggling. In the second place....' His face darkened, the scar below his patch standing out whitely. 'In the second place, I've been through one rebellion with you. Or have you forgotten riding for the Venhyan border half a step in front of the headsman's sword?'
'I remember,' Conan said. 'I've said naught of joining their rebellion.'
'Said naught, but thought much,' Hordo growled. 'You're a romantic fool, Cimmerian. Always were, likely always will be. Hannuman's Stones, man, you'll not mix me in another uprising. Keep your mind fixed on the gold for a Free-Company.'
'I always keep my mind on gold,' Conan replied. 'Mayhap I think on it too much.'
Hordo groaned, but Conan was saved having to say more by the appearance of the slender girl who had brought the wine jug. Tilting her head to one side, she favoured the big Cimmerian with a look, half shyness, half invitation, that made the room suddenly too warm.
'What's your name, girl?' Hordo asked. 'You're a pretty little bit. Get rid of that cotton shift, deck yourself with a little silk, and you could work in any tavern in Belverus.'
She tossed her head, laughing gaily, silken brown hair rippling about her shoulders. 'Thank you, kind sir, and for your generous contribution.' Hordo frowned in uncomprehension. 'My name is Kerin,' she went on, her soft brown eyes shifting to Conan like a light-fingered caress. 'And by those shoulders, you must be the Conan Ariane spoke of. I work in clay, though I hope to have my sculpture cast in bronze some day. Would you pose for me? I can't pay you, but perhaps....' Her mouth softened, full lower lip dropping slightly, and her eyes left no doubt what sort of arrangement she wanted with the muscular barbarian.
Conan had barely listened after the mention of posing. An image flashed in his brain of Ariane, posing on the table, and he was uncomfortably aware of his face growing hot. Surely she did not mean .... She could not want ....
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. 'You mentioned Ariane. Did she send a message?'
'Why did she see you first?' Kerin sighed. 'Yes, she did. She's waiting in your room. To tell you something very important, she said.' She ended with a slight smirk.
Conan scraped back his stool.
'Girl,' Hordo said as the Cimmerian rose, 'what is this posing? I might well do it.' Kerin slipped into the seat Conan had vacated.
All the way across the common room Conan waited for Hordo's outraged shout, but when he looked back from the foot of the stairs the one-eyed man was nodding slowly, a delighted grin on his face.
Laughing, Conan ran up the stirs. It seemed his friend would receive more than good value for his silver piece.
Upstairs the narrow hall was lined with many doors, most crudely made, for the original chambers had been roughly partitioned into more. When Conan pushed open his own rude plank door, Ariane was standing below the small window high in the wall. His cloak was still wrapped tightly around her, her fists showing at the neck where she held it together. He closed the door behind him and leaned back against it.
'I pose,' she said without preamble. Her eyes glinted with something he could not quite read. 'I pose for my friends, who cannot hire models. I do it often, and never have I felt embarrassment. Never until today.'
'I merely looked at you,' he said quietly.
'You looked at me.' She uttered a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. 'You looked at me, and I felt like one of those girls at the Gored Ox, wriggling to a flute for drooling men. Mitra blast your eyes!
How dare you make me feel like that!'
'You are a woman,' he said. 'I looked at you as a man looking at a woman.'
She closed her eyes and addressed the cracked ceiling. 'Hama All-Mother, why must I be stirred by an untutored barbarian who thinks with his sword?' A smug smile grew on his face, to be quashed almost immediately by a glare from her large hazel eyes. 'A man may take a
s many women as he wishes,' she said fiercely. 'I refuse to have less freedom than a man. If I choose to have but one man at a time to my mat, and have no other till he leaves or I do, that is my affair. Can you accept me as I am?'
'Did your mother never tell you a man likes to do the asking?' he laughed.
'Mitra blast your heart!' she snarled. 'Why do I waste my time?' Muttering to herself she stalked toward the door, cloak flaring in her haste.
Conan reached out one massive arm, curling it around her waist beneath the cloak. She had time for one strangled squawk before he lifted her, the cloak floating to the floor, to crush her soft breasts against the hard expanse of his chest.
'Will you stay with me, Ariane?' he asked, looking into her startled eyes.
Before she could speak he tangled his free hand in her hair and brought her lips to his. Her small fists bruised themselves against his shoulders; her feet kicked futilely at his shins. Slowly her struggles subsided, and when a satisfied murmur sounded in her throat he released her hair. Panting, she let her head drop onto his broad chest.
'Why did you change your mind?' she managed after a time.
'I didn't change it,' he replied. She looked up, startled, and he smiled. 'Before you asked. This time I did the asking.'
Laughing throatily, she let her head fall back. 'Hama All-Mother,' she cried, 'will I never understand these strange creatures called men?'
He laid her gently on his sleeping mat, and for a long time thereafter only sounds passion-wrought passed her lips.
VI
The Street of Regrets in the morning hours fit well Conan's mood. The paving stones were littered with the tawdry refuse of the previous night's revelry; those few people to be seen were stumbling home bleary eyed and hollow faced. Conan kicked rubbish from his path as he strode along, and gave growl for growl to the stray dogs that scavenged among the leavings.
The Conan Chronology Page 199
