The ten nights past had been an idyll at the Sign of the Thestis, wrapped in Ariane's arms, her passions and appetites feeding his own even as they sated them. Stephano brooded much in jealousy and wine, yet the memory of the Cimmerian's anger kept his tongue between his teeth. Hordo, drawn by the attractions of the slender Kerin, had moved his few belongings from an inn three streets away, and of an evening they drank and told each other lies till the charms of Ariane and Kerin parted them. Those were the nights. Days were another matter.
Conan paused at the sound of running boots behind him, then continued on as Hordo joined him.
'Ill luck this morrow, too?' the one-eyed man asked, eyeing the Cimmerian's face.
Conan nodded shortly. 'When I had defeated all three bodyguards now in his service, Lord Heranius offered three gold marks for me to take service as their chief, with two more every tenday.'
'Ill luck?' Hordo exclaimed. 'Mitra! That's twice the usual rate for bodyguards. I'm tempted to give up smuggling. At least there'd be no danger of the headsman's block.'
'And I must swear bond-oath before the City Magistrates not to quit his service without leave for two years.'
'Oh.'
Conan's right fist cracked into the other palm with a sound like a club striking leather. A drunk, stumbling his way home, jumped a foot in the air and fell in a puddle of vomit. Conan did not notice.
'Everywhere it is the same,' he grated, 'Free-Companies or single blade-fee alike. All demand the bond-oath, and some require three years, if they do not require five.'
'Before the bond-oaths,' Hordo mused. 'Some men changed masters every day, getting a silver piece more each time. Look you. Why not take service with whoever offers the most gold? This Lord Heranius, by the sound of it. When you're ready to go, if he won't release you, just go. An oath that makes a man a slave is no oath at all.'
'And when I do, I must leave Belverus, perhaps all of Nemedia.' He was silent for a time, his boots kicking broken clay wine-jars and soiled bits of abandoned clothing from his path. At last he said, 'At first it was but talk, Hordo, this Free-Company that I would lead. Now it's more. I'll take no service until I ride at the head of my own company.'
'It means so much to you?' Hordo said incredulously. He dodged a jar of slops thrown from a second-story window, hurling a curse at the thrower, already gone.
'It does,' Conan said, ignoring the other's mutters about what had splashed on his boots. 'In the final sum of it all, perhaps a man has no more than himself, naught but a strong right hand and the steel in it. And still, to rise, to make some mark in the world, a man must lead others. I was a thief, yet did I rise to command in the Army of Turan, and did well at it. I know not how far I may rise nor how far the path I follow may take me, yet do I intend to rise as high and go as far as my wits and a good sword will take me. I will have that Free-Company.'
'When you do,' the one-eyed man said drily, 'be you certain they swear the bond-oath.' They turned into the street that led to the Sign of Thestis.
As Conan laughed, three men stepped out to spread themselves across the narrow street, broadswords in hand. The sound of boots behind made Conan glance quickly over his shoulder. Two more armed men stood there, cutting off retreat. The Cimmerian's blade whispered from its worn shagreen scabbard; Hordo, sword flickering free, pivoted to face those behind.
'Stand aside,' Conan called to the three. 'Find you easier meat elsewhere.'
'Naught was said of a second man,' the one to Conan's left muttered, his thin, rat-like face twitching.
The man to the right, shaven dome gleaming in the morning sun, hefted his sword uneasily. 'We cannot take one without the other.'
'You'll find but your deaths here,' Conan said. With his left hand he unfastened the bronze pin that held his cloak, doubling the furlined garment loosely over that arm.
The leader, for the tall man in the centre with his closely cropped beard was clearly so, spoke for the first time. 'Kill them,' he said, and his blade thrust for Conan's belly.
With pantherine grace the muscular Cimmerian moved aside, his cloak tangling the tall man's blade while his right foot planted itself solidly in the fellow's crotch. In the same move Conan's sword beat aside a thrust of the shavenhead. Gagging, the leader attempted to straighten; but Conan pivoted, his left foot taking the bearded man on the side of the head, knocking him under the feet of onrushing ratface. Both went down in a heap.
The shaven-headed attacker hesitated, goggle-eyed at his companions on the ground, and died for it.
Conan's slashing steel half-severed his throat. Bright red blood fountained as he went to his knees, then toppled onto his face in the muck of the street. Rat-face scrambled to his feet, and he tried a desperate overhead hack. Conan's blade rang against the other, bringing it into a sweeping downward circle, sliding his blade along his opponent's, thrusting it into the villain's chest.
A quick kick next to his blade freed the body to collapse alongside the other; and Conan spun to find the leader on his feet, his narrow, bearded face suffused with rage. He swung while the big Cimmerian was yet turning, staring with surprise as Conan dropped to a squat, buttocks on his heels. Conan's steel sliced a bloody line across his abdomen. The tall man screamed like a woman, dropping his sword as his frantic hands tried vainly to hold his intestines in. His eyes were glazed with death before he struck the filthy paving stones.
Conan looked for Hordo in time to see the one-eyed man's blade decapitate his second attacker. With the head still rolling across the pavement Hordo turned to glare at Conan, blood oozing from a gash on his sword arm and another, smaller, on his forehead.
'I'm too old for this, Cimmerian.'
'You always say that.' As he spoke, Conan bent to check the pouches of the men he had killed.
'It's true, I tell you,' Hordo insisted. 'If these hadn't been such fools as to talk and dither while we set ourselves, they might have chopped us to dog meat. As it was, my two nearly sliced my cods off. I'm too old, I say.'
Conan straightened from the bodies with six new-minted gold marks. He bounced them on his palm.
'Fools they may be, but they were sent after one of us. By somebody willing to pay ten gold marks for a death.' He jerked his head at the two Hordo had killed. 'You'll find each of them has a pair of these too.'
Hordo muttered an oath and bent to the remaining bodies, straightening up with four fat coins. The one-eyed man closed his fist tightly on them. 'Yon rat-face spoke of not expecting two. Mitra, who'd pay ten gold marks for either of us?'
A gangling boy shambled out of an alley not a dozen paces distant. At the sight of the bodies his jaw dropped open, and with a scream of pure terror he dashed away, his wail fading as he sped.
'Let us discuss it at the Thestis,' Conan said, 'before we gather an audience.'
'With our luck,' Hordo muttered, 'this will be the one morning in a year the City Guard has patrols out.'
It was but a short distance down the twisting street to the inn, but obviously no one had heard the fighting. Only Kerin gave them a second glance when they walked in. In those morning hours there were few of the arum about, and none of the noise that would reverberate in the evening.
'Hordo,' the slender girl said, 'what happened to your arm?'
'I fell over a broken wine-jar,' he replied sheepishly.
She gave him a sharp look and left, returning in a moment with a pile of clean rags and a jug of wine.
Uncorking the wine, she began to pour it over the gash on Hordo's arm.
'No!' he shouted, snatching it from her hand.
An amused smile quirked her mouth. 'It hurts not that much, Hordo.'
'It hurts not at all,' he growled. 'But this is the proper way to use wine.'
And he tipped the clay jug up to his mouth, with his free hand fending off her attempts to take it back.
When finally he stopped for breath she jerked it away, pouring the little wine that remained over a cloth and dabbing at his forehead.
'Hold still, Hordo,' she told him. 'I will fetch you more wine later.'
Across the common room Conan noticed a face strange to the inn. A handsome young man in a richly embroidered red velvet tunic sat at a table in a corner, talking to Graecus, a swarthy sculptor who spent considerable time in the company of Stephano.
After discovering that someone might want him dead, Conan was feeling suspicious of strangers. He touched Kerin's arm.
'That man,' he said. 'The one talking to Graecus. Who is he? He seems well dressed for an artist.'
'Demetrio, an artist?' she snorted. 'A catamite and a wastrel. They say he's a great wit, but I've never found him so. Betimes he likes to dazzle those among us who can be dazzled by his sort, when he is not rolling in the fleshpots.'
'Think you it's him?' Hordo asked.
Conan shrugged. 'Him, or anyone else.'
'By Erebus, Cimmerian, I'm too old for this.'
'What are you two talking about?' Kerin demanded. 'No. I'd as lief not know' She rose, pulling Hordo behind her, a faun leading a bear. 'That cut on your arm needs ointment. Wine-jar, indeed!'
'When I return,' Hordo called over his shoulder to Conan, 'we can begin looking for the men we want.
Courtesy of our enemy, eh?'
'Done,' Conan called back, rising. 'And I'll fetch that sword. It should fetch a coin or two.'
In his room abovestairs the Cimmerian pried up a loosened floor board and took out the serpentine blade. Light from the small window ran along the gleaming steel, and glinted on the silver work of the quillons. The feel of taint rose from it like a miasma.
As he straightened he wrapped his cloak, rent from the tall man's sword, about the blade. Even holding it in his bare hand made his stomach turn as the slaying of his first man had not.
When Conan returned to the common room, the man in the red velvet tunic was waiting at the foot of the stair, a pomander to his aquiline nose, his eyes lidded with languorous indolence, yet the Cimmerian noted that the hilt of his sword showed wear, and the hand that held the pomander had bladesman's calluses. Conan started past.
'A moment, please,' the slender man said. 'I am called Demetrio. I collect swords of ancient pattern, and I could not help but hear that you possess such a one, and wish to sell it.'
'I remember nothing of calling it ancient,' Conan replied. The man had a viperish quality the Cimmerian liked not. As if he could smile and clasp a hand, yet strike to the heart while doing so. Still, he found himself listening.
'Perhaps I but imagined you named it ancient,' Demetrio said smoothly: 'If it is not, I have no interest.
But an it is, well might I buy.' He eyed the cloak-wrapped bundle beneath the Cimmerian's arm. 'You have it there?'
Conan reached into the cloak and drew forth the blade. 'This is the sword,' he said, and stopped as Demetrio jumped back, hand to his own sword. The Cimmerian flipped the sword over, proffering the hilt. 'Perhaps you wish to try its heft?'
'No.' The word was a shaky whisper. 'I can see that I want it.'
The flesh about Demetrio's mouth was tight and pale. The strange thought came to Conan that the slender man was afraid of the sword, but he dismissed the notion as foolish. He tossed the sword onto a nearby table. His hand felt dirty from holding it. And that was foolish too.
Demetrio swallowed, seeming to breathe more easily as he looked at the blade where it lay: 'This sword,' he said, not looking at the Cimmerian. 'Has it any... properties? Any magicks?'
Conan shook his head. 'None that I know' Such might add to the price he could demand, but any such claims would be easily disproved. 'What will you give?'
'Three gold marks,' Demetrio said promptly.
The big Cimmerian blinked. He had been thinking in terms of silver pieces. But if the sword had some value to this young man, it was time to bargain. 'For a blade so ancient,' he said, 'Many collectors would pay twenty.'
The slender man gave him a searching look. 'I have not so much with me,' he muttered.
Shocked, Conan wondered if the blade was that of some long-dead king; Demetrio had made not even a pretense of haggling. His practiced thief's eye priced the amethyst-studded gold bracelet on Demetrio's wrist at fifty gold marks, and a small ruby pin on his tunic at twice that. The man would be good for twenty marks, he thought.
'I would be willing to wait,' Conan began, when Demetrio pulled the bracelet from his wrist and thrust it at him.
'Will you take that?' the fellow asked. 'I would not risk another buying while I am gone to get coin. It is worth more than the twenty marks, I assure you. But add in that cloak, for I would not carry a bare blade in the streets.'
'Cloak and blade are yours,' the Cimmerian said, and quickly exchanged the fur-trimmed garment for the bracelet.
He felt a surge of joy as his fist closed over the amethyst-studded gold. No need to make do now with the few men ten gold pieces would hire. His Free-Company was literally in his grasp.
'I would ask you,' he added, 'why this blade has such worth. Is it perhaps the sword of an ancient king, or hero?'
Demetrio paused in the act of carefully wrapping the cloak about the sword. Carefully, Conan thought, and as gingerly as if it were a dangerous animal.
'How are you called?' the slender man asked.
'I am called Conan.'
'You are right, Conan. This is the sword of an ancient king. In fact, you might say this is the sword of Bragoras.' And he laughed as if he had said the funniest thing he had ever heard. Still laughing, he gathered up the sword and cloak and hurried into the street.
VII
Albanus paused at the door, the crude, fur-trimmed bundle beneath his arm out of place in the tapestry-hung room with its carpetstrewn marble floor. Sularia sat before a tall mirror, a golden silk robe about her creamy shoulders, a kneeling slave woman brushing the honey silk of her hair. Seeing his reflection Sularia let the robe drop, giving him a view of her generous breasts in the mirror.
The hawk-faced lord snapped his fingers. The slave looked around; at his gesture she bowed and fled on bare feet.
'You have brought me a gift?' Sularia said. 'It is wrapped most strangely, an you have.' She examined her face in the mirror, and lightly stroked rouge onto her cheeks with a brush of fur.
'This is not for you,' he laughed. ''Tis the sword of Melius.'
With a key that hung on a golden chain about his neck, he unlocked a large lacquered chest standing against the wall, turning the key first one way then the other in a precise pattern. Were that pattern not followed exactly, he had told Sularia, a cunningly contrived system of tubes and air-chambers would hurl poison darts into the face of the opener.
Albanus swung back the lid and, tossing aside the tattered cloak, carefully laid the sword in the place he had prepared for it. The tomes of ancient Acheron, bound in virgins' skin, were there, well layered in silk, and those most vital thaumaturgical implements from the cache. His fingers rested briefly on a bundle of scrolls and rolled canvases. Not yet of any magical significance, they still deserved their place in the chest, those sketches and paintings of Garian. In a place of honour, resting on a silken cushion atop a golden stand, was a crystal sphere of deepest blue within which silver flecks danced and glittered.
Letting her robe drift to the floor, Sularia came to stand naked beside him. Her tongue touched her lips in small flickers as she stared down at the sword. 'It was that blade which slew so many? Is it not dangerous? Ought you not to destroy it?'
'It is too useful,' he said. 'Had I but known what I know now, never would I have put it in the hands of that fool Melius. 'Twas those runes on the blade led me at last to its secret, buried in the grimoires.'
'But why did Melius slay as he did?'
'In the forging of this weapon, the essences of six masters of the sword were trapped within the steel.'
He let his fingers brush lightly along the blade, sensing the power that had been required for its making.
Such power would be his, power beyond th
e ken of mortal minds, power far beyond that of earthly kings. 'And in that entrapment did madness come.' He reached down as if to lift the sword, but stopped with his hand clawed above the hilt, 'Let the same hand grasp this hilt but three times to use this blade, and the mind that controls that hand will be ripped away, merging with the madness of those ancient masters of the sword. Escape. Slay, and escape. Slay. Slay!'
Ending on a shout, he looked at Sularia. Her mouth hung open, and she stared at his hand above the sword with open fear in her blue eyes.
'How often have you used the sword?' she whispered.
He laughed and took his hand away. Instead of the sword he picked up the crystal sphere, holding it delicately in his fingers, almost reverently, though he knew no power under heaven could so much as chip its seemingly fragile surface.
'You fear the sword?' he asked softly. His adamantine gaze seemed to pierce to the heart of the cobalt sphere. 'Here is that which is to be feared, for by this is summoned and controlled a being-a demon? a god?-I know not, yet a being of such power that even the tomes of Acheron speak of it in whispers full of awe.'
And he would be its master, master of more power than all the kings of all the nations of the world. His breath quickened at the thought. Never yet had he dared that summoning, for that act held dangers for he who summoned, dangers that master might find himself slave, a mortal plaything for an immortal monster with eternity to amuse itself. Yet, was he not descended of Bragoras, ancient hero-king who had slain the dragon Xutharcan and bound the demon Dargon in the depths of the Western Sea?
Almost unbidden, the words of summoning began to roll from his lips. 'Af-far mea-roth, Omini deas kaan, Eeth far belawn Opbeab cristi.... '
As the words came, the sky darkened above the city as though the sun had dimmed to twilight. Lightning cracked and forked across a cloudless sky, and, rumbling, the earth began to shake.
Albanus stumbled, looked around him in sudden panic at walls that quivered like cloth in the breeze. It was too soon for this. It was madness to have tried. And yet, he had not finished the incantation. There was a chance.
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