Conan studied the girl, wondering if she had spun this tale. It seemed too fantastic. Unless … unless Tamira had discovered Jondra was taking the fabled necklace and tiara with her. But on a hunt? No matter. He had to leave Shadizar anyway. As well ride north and see for himself what Tamira was up to.
He started to turn away, then stopped, looking at Laeta’s dirtsmudged face and big, wary eyes, truly seeing her for the first time. “Wait here,” he told her. She eyed him quizzically, but stood there as he walked away.
He found Semiramis leaning against the wall at the back of the common room, one foot laid across her knee so she could rub it. Quickly he separated out half the coin in his purse and pressed it into her hand.
“Conan,” she protested, “you know I’ll not take money from-“
“It’s for her,” he said, jerking his head toward Laeta, who was watching him suspiciously. Semiramis arched a questioning eyebrow. “In another year she’ll not be able to pass as a boy any longer,” he explained. “Already she’s putting dirt on her face to hide how pretty she is. I thought, maybe, that you…” He shrugged awkwardly, unsure of what he did mean.
Semiramis raised herself on tiptoes and brushed her lips against his cheek.
“That’s no kiss,” he laughed. “If you want to say goodbye-“
She laid her fingers against his lips. “You are a better man than you try to pretend, Cimmerian.” With that she slipped by him.
Wondering if women were made by the same gods as men, he watched her approach Laeta. The two spoke quietly, looked at him, then moved toward an empty table together. As they sat, he suddenly recalled his own needs. He strode back to the bar and caught the tavernkeeper’s arm as the fat man passed.
“About this horse, Abuletes …”
Chapter VI
Dark hung silently over Shadizar, at least in the quarter where lay the Perashanid palace. A hatchet-faced man in a filthy turban and stained leather jerkin, his beard divided into three braids, moved from the shadows, freezing when the barking of a dog rent the night. Then quiet came again.
“Farouz,” the bearded man called softly. “Jhal. Tirjas.”
The three men named appeared from the dark, each followed by half a score other turbanned Kezankian hillmen.
“The true gods guide our blades, Djinar,” one man murmured as he passed hatchet-face.
Booted feet thudding on the paving stones, each small column hurried toward its appointed goal. Farouz would take his men over the garden’s west wall, Jhal over the north. Tirjas was to watch the front of the palace and assure that no one left … alive.
“Come,” Djinar commanded, and ten grim hillmen hurried after him to the east wall of the palace garden.
At the base of the wall two of his men bent to present cupped hands for his booted feet. Boosted thus, Djinar caught the top of the wall and scrambled over to drop inside. Moonlight put a silver glow on the trees and flowers of the garden. He wondered briefly at the labor involved.
So much sweat, and for plants. Truly the men of the cities were mad.
Soft thuds announced the arrival of his companions. Swords were drawn with the susurration of steel on leather, and from one man came a fierce mutter. “Death to the unbelievers!”
Djinar hissed for silence, unwilling to speak lest his feelings at being within a city became plain in his voice. So many people gathered in one place. So many buildings. So many walls, closing him in. He motioned the hillmen to follow.
Silently the stony-eyed column slipped through the garden. No doors barred their entrance to the palace. It was going well, Djinar thought.
The others would be entering the palace at other places. No alarm had been given. The blessings of the old gods must be on them, as Basrakan Imalla had said.
Abruptly a man in the white tunic of a servant appeared before him, mouth opening to shout. Djinar’s tulwar moved before he could think, the tip of the curved blade slicing open the other man’s throat.
As the corpse twitched in a pool of crimson, spreading across the marble floor, Djinar found his nervousness gone. “Spread out,” he commanded. “None must live to give an alarm. Go!”
Growling deep in their throats, his men scattered with ready blades.
Djinar ran as well, seeking the chamber that had been described to him by a sweating Akkadan beneath the iron gaze of Basrakan Imalla. Three more servants, roused by pounding boots, fell beneath his bloody steel.
All were unarmed, one was a woman, but all were unbelievers, and he gave them no chance to cry out.
Then he was at his goal, and it was as the plump man had said. Large square tiles of red, black and gold covered the floor in geometric patterns. The walls were red and black brick to the height of a man’s waist. Furnishings he did not notice. That lamps were lit so that he could see them was all that was important.
Still gripping his sanguine sword, Djinar hurried to the nearest corner and pushed against a black brick four down from the top row and four out from the corner. He gave a satisfied grunt when it sank beneath his pressure. Quickly he moved to the other three corners in turn; three more black bricks sank into the wall.
A clatter of boots in the corridor brought him to his feet, tulwar raised. Farouz and other hillmen burst into the room.
“We must hurry,” Farouz snarled. “A bald-headed old man broke Karim’s skull with a vase and escaped into the garden. We’ll never find him before he raises an alarm.”
Djinar bit back an oath. Hurriedly he positioned four men on their knees, forming the corners of a square beside widely separated golden tiles. “Press all together,” he ordered. “Together, mind you. Now!”
With sharp clicks the four tiles were depressed as one. A grinding noise rose from beneath their feet. Slowly, two thick sections of the floor swung up to reveal stairs leading down.
Djinar darted down those stairs, and found himself in a small chamber carved from the stone beneath the palace. Dim light filtered from above, revealing casket-laden shelves lining the walls. In haste he opened a casket, then another. Emeralds and sapphires on golden chains.
Opals and pearls mounted in silver brooches. Carved ivories and amber.
But not what he sought. Careless of the treasures he handled, the hillman spilled the contents of caskets on the floor. Gems and precious metals poured to the marble. His feet kicked wealth enough for a king, but he gave it not a second glance. With a curse he threw aside the last empty casket and ran back up the stairs.
More hillmen had come, crowding the room. Now some pushed past him to the chamber below. Squabbling, they stuffed their tunics with gems and gold.
“The Eyes of Fire are not here,” Djinar announced. The men below, panting with greed, paid no mind, but those in the chamber with him grew long faces.
“Perhaps the woman took them with her,” suggested a man with a scar where his left ear had been.
Farouz spat loudly. “It was you, Djinar, who said wait. The strumpet goes to hunt, you said. She will take her guards, and we shall have an easier time of it.”
Djinar’s thin lips curled back from his teeth. “And you, Farouz,” he snarled. “Did you cry for us to press on? Did you spend no time in the places where women barter their flesh for coin?” He clamped his teeth on his rage. The feeling of walls trapping him returned. What was to be done? To return to Basrakan Imalla empty-handed after being commanded to bring the Eyes of Fire … He shuddered at the thought. If the Zamoran jade had the Eyes of Fire, then she must be found. “Does none of these vermin still live?”
Mutters of negation filled the room, but Farouz said, “Jhal keeps a wench alive till his pleasure is spent. Do you now abandon the Imalla’s quest to join him?”
Djinar’s dagger was suddenly in his hand. He tested the edge on a well-calloused thumb. “I go to ask questions,” he said, and strode from the room.
Behind him the hubbub of argument over the looting rose higher.
Chapter VII
Conan let his reins fal
l on the neck of his horse, moving at a slow walk, and took a long pull on his waterskin. His expression did not change at the stale taste of the tepid fluid. He had drunk worse at times when the sun did not beat down so strongly from a cloudless sky as it did now, though it had risen not three handspans above the horizon. His cloak was rolled and bound behind his saddle pad, and a piece of his tunic was held on his head like a kaffiyeh by a leather cord. Rolling hills, with here and there an outcrop of rock or a huge, half-buried boulder, stretched as far as the eye could discern, with never a tree, nor any growth save sparse patches of rough grass.
Twice since leaving Shadizar he had crossed the tracks of very large bodies of men, and once he had seen Zamoran infantry in the distance, marching north. He kept himself from their sight. It did not seem likely that Baratses had influence enough to set the army on his trail, but a man in Conan’s profession quickly learned to avoid chance encounters with large numbers of soldiers. Life was more peaceful, less complicated without soldiers. Of the Lady Jondra’s hunting party he had seen no sign.
Plugging the spout of the skin, he slung it from his shoulder and returned to a study of the tracks he followed now. A single horse, lightly laden. Perhaps a woman rider.
He booted the roan into a trot, its quickest pace. He intended to have a word with Abuletes when he returned to Shadizar, a quiet converse about messages sent to horse traders. The tavernkeeper’s friend had denied having another animal beside this gelding on its last legs, and bargained as if he knew the big youth had reason to leave Shadizar quickly. Conan dug in his heels again, but the animal would move no faster.
Snarls, growing louder as he rode, drifted to him over the next rise.
Topping the swell of ground, he took in the scene below in one glance.
Half a score of wolves quarreled over the carcass of a horse. Some eyed him warily without ceasing their feast. Twenty paces away the Lady Jondra crouched precariously atop a boulder, her bow clutched in one hand. Five more of the massive gray beasts waited below, their eyes intent on her.
Suddenly one of them took a quick step forward and leaped for the girl on the rock. Desperately she drew her feet up and swung the bow like a club. The wolf twisted in mid-air; powerful jaws closed on the bow, ripping it from her grasp. The force of it pulled her forward, slipping down the side of the boulder. She gave a half-scream, grabbed frantically at the stone, and hung there, closer now to the creatures below. She pulled her legs up, but the next leaper would reach them easily.
“Crom,” Conan muttered. There was no time for planning, or even for conscious decisions. His heels thudded into the roan’s ribs, goading it into a sliding charge down the hillside. “Crom!” he bellowed, and his broadsword whispered from its worn shagreen scabbard.
The wolfpack gained its feet as one, gray forms crouching to await him.
Jondra stared at him in wild disbelief. The roan, eyes wide and whinnying in terror, suddenly broke into a gallop. Two of the wolves darted for the horse’s head, and two more dashed in behind to snap at its hamstrings. A forehoof shattered a broad gray-furred head. Conan’s blade whistled down to split the skull of a second wolf. The roan kicked back with both hind legs, splintering the ribs of a third, but the fourth sank gleaming fangs deep into one of those legs. Screaming, the horse stumbled and fell.
Conan stepped from his saddle pad as the animal went down, just in time to meet leaping gray death with a slashing blade. Half cut in two the great wolf dropped. Behind him Conan heard the roan scramble to its feet, whinnying frantically, and the solid thuds of hooves striking home. There was no opportunity to so much as glance at his mount, though, or even to look at Jondra, for the rest of the pack swarmed around him.
Desperately the big Cimmerian cut and hacked at deadly shapes that darted and slashed like gray demons. Blood splashed cinereous fur, and not all of it was theirs, for their teeth were like razors, and he could not keep them all from him. With cold certainty he knew he could not afford to go down, even for an instant. Let him once get off his feet, and he was meat for the eating. Somehow he managed to get the Karpashian dagger into his left hand, and laid about him with two blades. All thought left him save battle; he fought with as pure a fury as the wolves themselves, asking no quarter and giving none. To fight was all he knew. To fight, and let the losers go to the ravens.
As suddenly as the combat had begun it was ended. One instant steel battled slashing fangs, the next massive gray forms were loping away over the hills, one limping on three legs. Conan looked around him, half wondering that he still lived. Nine wolves lay as heaps of bloodsoaked fur. The roan was down again, and this time it would not rise again. A gaping wound in its throat dripped blood into a dark pool that was already soaking into the rocky soil.
A scrabbling sound drew Conan’s eyes. Jondra slid from the boulder and took her bow from the ground. Snug tunic and riding breeches of russet silk delineated every curve of her full-breasted form. Lips pursed, she examined the gouges in the bow’s glued layers of bone and wood. Her hands shook.
“Why did you not put arrows into a few?” Conan demanded. “You might have saved yourself before I came.”
“My quiver…” Her voice trailed off at the sight of her half-eaten horse, but she visibly steeled herself and went to the carcass. From under the bloody mass she tugged a quiver. A crack ran down one side of the black lacquerwork. Checking the arrows, she discarded three that were broken, then slung the quiver on her back. “I had no chance to reach this,” she said, adjusting the cords that held the lacquered box on her back. “The first wolf hamstrung my gelding before I even saw it.
It was Hannuman’s own luck I made it to that rock.”
“This is no country for a woman to ride alone,” Conan grumbled as he retrieved the rolled cloak and wiped his bloody blade on his saddle pad. He knew he should take a different course with this woman. He had, after all, ridden halfway across Zamora for the express purpose of getting close enough to steal her gems. But there he stood with his horse dead, a dozen gashes that, if not serious still burned and bled, and no mind to walk easily with anyone.
“Guard your tongue!” Jondra snapped. “I’ve ridden-” Suddenly she seemed to see him fully for the first time. Taking a step back, she raised the bow before her as if it were a shield. “You!” Her voice was a breathless whisper. “What do you do here?”
“What I do is walk, since my horse is slain in the saving of your life.
For which, I mind me, I’ve heard no word of thanks, nor an offer to bind my wounds in your camp.”
Mouth dropping open, Jondra stared at him, astonishment warring with anger on her face. Drawing a deep breath, she shook herself as if waking from a dream. “You saved my life…” she began, then trailed off. “I do not even know your name.”
“I am called Conan. Conan of Cimmeria.”
Jondra made a small bow, and her smile trembled only a little. “Conan of Cimmeria, I offer you my heartfelt thanks for my life. As well, I offer the use of my camp for as long as you choose to stay.” She looked at the wolf carcasses and shuddered. “I have taken many trophies,” she said unsteadily, “but I never thought to be one. The skins are yours, of course.”
The Cimmerian shook his head, though it pained him to abandon useful pelts. And valuable ones, too, could they be gotten back to Shadizar.
He hefted his waterskin, showing a long rent made by slashing jaws. A last few drops of water dripped to the ground.
“Without water, we can waste no time with skinning in this heat.” He shaded his eyes with a broad palm and measured how far the sun had yet to rise to reach its zenith. “It will get hotter before it cools. How far is it to your camp?”
“On horses we could be there by the time the sun is high, or shortly after. On foot…” She shrugged, making her heavy breasts move under the tight silk of her tunic. “I walk little, and so am no judge.”
Conan made an effort to keep his mind on the matter at hand. “Then we must start now. You will ha
ve to keep up, for if we stop in this heat we shall likely never move again. Now, which way?”
Jondra hesitated, clearly as unused to taking commands as to walking.
Haughty gray eyes dueled with cool sapphire blue; it was gray that fell. Without another word, but with an irritated expression painted on her features, the tall noblewoman fitted a shaft to her bow and began walking, headed south of the rising sun.
Conan stared after her before following, and not for the pleasant rolling motion of her rump. The fool woman had not wanted him behind her. Did she fear he would take her by force? And why had she seemed shaken by fear when she recognized him? Slowly, however, his questions were submerged in the pleasure of watching her make her way over the rolling hills. The silk riding breeches fit her buttocks like skin, and the view as she toiled upslope ahead of him was enough to make any man forget himself.
The sun climbed on, a ball of luteous fire baking the air dry. Shimmers rose from the rocky ground, and boot soles burned as if they rested on coals. Every breath sucked moisture from the lungs, dried the throat.
Across the sky marched the sun, to its zenith and beyond, roasting the flesh, baking the brain.
The sun, Conan realized as he labored uphill in Jondra’s wake, had replaced the woman as the center of his thoughts. He tried to calculate the time he had left to find water, the time before the strength of his thews began to fail. The effort of wetting his cracking lips was wasted, for the dampness did not last beyond the doing. He saw no use in offering up prayers. Crom, the Lord of the Mound, the god of his harsh native land, listened to no prayers, accepted no votive offerings. Crom gave a man but two gifts, life and will, and never another. Will would carry him till dark, he decided. Then, having survived a day, he would set about surviving the night, and then the next day, and the next night.
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