The center of the column thundered into the main square of the town, with Favian yelling and brandishing his sword in the lead. Conan followed some distance behind, his horse veering to avoid the fallen bodies of villagers cut down by the first wave of attackers. Screams and terror-stricken cries sounded beyond as other peasants were overtaken by horsemen or flushed out of hiding.
Conan knew he had been a fool to expect some sort of baronial proclamation or organized search. This was forthright slaughter, with men, women and children alike tasting the steel. The local squire's troops were particularly zestful at it, even hacking with lusty shouts at tethered, yelping animals. The men of Dinander slew more efficiently, urged on by Favian's shouted commands. Red images of the sack of Venarium flashed before the northerner's eyes, but here the zest was somehow tainted. This wretched place did not even offer the promise of plunder.
Conan would not have imagined that the killing of Nemedians would ever be a source of concern to him; now he felt growing unease. But he did not intend to forfeit his life, either to rebels or to Baldomer's troops. Me dismounted from his horse to reduce his jeopardy and led it through the smoky turmoil, telling himself that this was not his fight.
The torches had finally come into play. The green crops in the fields could never have been set alight, but the parched edges of thatched roofs flared brightly at the merest touch of flame. Under Favian's supervision, a handful of troopers was setting the bundled twig fascines alight, forcing open the doors and shuttered windows of the huts and hurling the torches inside. This brought cries of alarm from those still cowering within; any who emerged were cut down by waiting pillagers or flying horsemen. Conan looked in vain for a sign of armed resistance. He decided that this miserable hamlet could hardly be the den of rebel activity that Squire Ulf had described.
Then his attention was caught by something else: a face glimpsed through the gap between two burning huts. In spite of the smoke, it was eerily familiar.
Abandoning his horse, Conan rushed between the buildings, one arm raised to fend off the hot vapors pouring out of the smoldering eaves. Beyond the row of huts he paused, blinking watering eyes, and then spied several figures disappearing into brushy willows near the riverbank. He followed, holding his sword at the ready.
Only a few paces into the brush, a peasant attacked him. The sandaled, jerkined man wielded only a pitchfork, whose wooden tines Conan battered aside with a swipe of his saber. His blade's recoil caught the man at the base of his skull. As his opponent went down, Conan realized that he had used the flat of his sword, likely doing no permanent injury. Still, the fellow did not stir as Conan stepped over him.
A little way beyond, at the swampy river-edge, four more fugitives were struggling with a tiny boat of wood and hides concealed among the reeds. The eldest of them turned to regard him: a fit-seeming woman clad in a familiar-looking cloak, her cowl thrown back to reveal her long-plaited blond hair. It was yesterday's ambusher, he knew-the one who had escaped him in the forest. She was accompanied by three children of the village.
One of them, a gangling, smudge-faced boy, turned from the coracle and started toward Conan, clutching a broken-bladed knife. The woman grabbed the child by the collar of his serf-shirt and dragged him back to her side. "See to the boat," she told him in firm Nemedian accents. She reached to her waist, drew a long, straight dagger and coolly awaited her pursuer.
A new crashing sounded in the brush nearby; Conan turned to see one of Baldomer's troopers, a middle-aged, mustached veteran, leading his horse through the reeds. "Ah, a country lass, and nearly flown the nest! We shall have her to ourselves, eh, fellow? . . . uuh!"
The man staggered back, his horse whinnying in fright, as Conan's saber struck him beneath the ill-fitted lower edge of his breast armor. The veteran raised his weapon valiantly, showing stoic resistance to the pain of his sundered abdomen; but he had lost any chance of survival at Conan's first, speed-blurred attack. The Cimmerian's second stroke, a deft slash to the unarmored back of his leg, made him topple; then a deep, carefully aimed stab through the neck-hole of his cuirass left him lying in the mud, twitching his last. The horse shied back into the brush, rolling its eyes fearfully at the smell of its master's blood.
Conan turned back to the girl, only to see that she and the others had freed their boat and were pushing off into the open channel, out of his vision. "Wait," he started to call, but the word died in his throat. He strode to a place where the brush sprouted thinner and watched the coracle drift out of sight around a stand of trees downstream. Intent on her steering, the woman in the stern did not look back.
He turned his gaze upstream. Along the pebbled shore where slower currents moved, the clear water was clouded by lazy, red tendrils: blood from the massacre of the town. Looking farther up the curving stream-channel, the view was even grimmer; where the water reflected the red leaping flames and smoke-veiled sky, the whole reach of the river seemed to be stained crimson.
Then another feature of the scene caught the Cimmerian's eye, causing him to stand cursing while almost laughing in bitter disbelief. At either side of the river, low wooden docks had been constructed. Each bore a rude windlass, the one on the village side now brightly aflame. Towropes, probably slashed by the invaders, trailed far out into the rolling current, while in the shallows at the foot of the village there floated a wide, flat-bottomed wood boat, staved in and swamped. A ferry it was, one that must have served farmers in this part of the valley. Doubtless it had accounted for the healthy growth of the place, until now.
Muttering darkly, Conan turned from the river and strode up the bank. As he went, some of the haze of the town's burning seemed to hang before his eyes and tinge his vision redly. He found his way through the weeds and broken sheds near the water's edge, moving toward the cries and fire-roarings of the town.
He paused just once behind a burning cottage; there he dragged one of Squire Ulf's ravagers off of a struggling village girl. He slashed the man's throat with the keenest part of his saber, near the hilt, and left the body in the weeds while the maid scampered away downriver.
Then he strode onward amid smoke and swaggering forms. At the heart of the inferno he found Durwald, still sitting atop his mount, watching Favian hoarsely urge the attackers on. The lordling was telling his troops to heap fresh faggots and debris onto the flaming huts, to make sure they were burned to the ground.
Conan strode to the marshal and glared up at him. "Durwald, I know why we are here!"
The aristocrat gazed down on the Cimmerian and his blood-smeared, restless blade with a melancholy look on his face. His own sword lay ready across the pommel of his saddle.
"A ferry! That was the rebellion Squire Ulf so deplored, the uprising that marked this place for destruction-a wooden boat competing with his bridge and cutting into his tolls and revenues!"
Durwald shook his head in mute annoyance, saying nothing.
"Will you stand for it?" Conan raged at him. "Are you a warrior, or a butcher of innocents?"
The marshal reined his horse away from the shouting Cimmerian, his face betraying no emotion. His eyes were red and streaming, as were the eyes of most of those present, but whether the tears came from the smoke hanging heavy in the air or from bitter shame, none would ever know.
CHAPTER 9
Death's Eager Bride
The city gates of Dinander reared tall on either hand. Built of heavy square timbers bound with black iron straps, they loomed as formidable as the dark stone walls that flanked them. Doubtless they were as efficient at holding unwilling citizens in as they were at keeping invaders out. But today the great doors stood wide, and the main avenue beyond was scattered with townsfolk sporting festive garb in the early afternoon sun. These pressed back swiftly out of the roadway, their faces stiff with respect and habitual fear, as Baron Baldomer Einharson's column of horsemen entered the city.
The baron, riding just behind the four armored cavalry who formed the advance guard, sat imperiously a
stride a high-stepping sorrel gelding in lieu of his slain stallion. Close after him rolled a chariot carrying Chief Marshal Durwald and driven, as any country lout would openly have declared, by the baron's dashing son, Favian.
But the country lout would have been wrong, for the charioteer was truly a northern barbarian decked in Favian's best armor. Baldomer's real son rode near the head of the main cavalry column, the steel beaver of his helm clamped down across his handsome, mortified features.
The purpose of this double imposture would surely have puzzled the simple-minded countryman. There rode Baldomer, plainly identifiable, a ready target to his ill-wishers. His finely turned and brightly polished armor was scarcely more proof against a skillful bowshot than was the bulky plate of a common cavalryman. Why, then, should he conceal his son's identity, and not his own?
The answer, the simple farmer would have concluded, had more to do with the tortuous, mysterious workings of the noble mind than with plain sense. Aristocracy moves in strange ways, he would have muttered to himself.
And yet Lord Baldomer seemed content-if ever such a tranquil emotion could be read into his craggy, wild-featured face. Sitting straight and tall in his war saddle, he surveyed the sunlit-and-shadowed rows of his subjects. Hampered by the press of watchers, he gradually let his mount fall back alongside the chariot, which was navigating the streets adequately well under the Cimmerian's raw hand. At length Marshal Durwald, speaking from his passenger bench in the rumbling car, addressed the old warrior.
"Word of your early return must have preceded us, Milord, for your subjects to turn out like this." The marshal scanned the lines of citizens thoughtfully, nodding from time to time to a prominent townsman or his rosy-cheeked wife. "Either the courier we sent to Svoretta let it slip or the spymaster made it known through his agents."
"Aye. Would that the chief of espionage were not so shy of public appearances that he could meet us openly at the gate! Even old Lothian would be a welcome source of news." Baldomer kept his face immobile and aloof toward his watchers as he spoke. "Still, 'tis no great harm to be greeted by my subjects. I shall stop in the central square to inform them of the successful provincial tour, and of our decisive stroke against the rebels."
"It might be wise not to make too much of it, Milord," Durwald advised, a bitter smile crossing his face. "It was, after all, a small skirmish, not clearly aimed at any rebel faction."
Baldomer shook his head sharply and deepened his frown. "The death by sword of two of our crack troopers proves a significant military presence. And did your own officers not count the bodies of seventy-eight armed rebel sympathizers, man, woman and child? I call that a formidable victory."
Conan, his attention held by the task of guiding the chariot through the milling crowds, nevertheless gave an ear to the talk. He had been ill-tempered of late, especially today, as the impatient jerking of the reins in his hamlike fists revealed. The press of the street was growing thicker, and he was ever alert for a new ambush or an assassination attempt. The reserve and forced gaiety the Cimmerian sensed in the lines of watchers made him wonder whether the people really celebrated their baron's return, or his absence. For whatever reason, all the folk of the town seemed to be packed into the main street on this day.
To call Baldomer's abbreviated provincial tour a success was a gross lie, or an even grosser delusion, Conan knew. During the week in which their decimated party had lingered at Edram Castle before turning back to Dinander, he had never heard what report the baron had been given of the village massacre. He knew that the luckless river town was no rebel stronghold. And yet he had seen the girl there. ...
"Remember, sire, we found no lair of snake cultists during our assault." Durwald was still arguing with his obtuse baron. "They are the fastest-growing menace, and the one that should be dealt with promptly."
"True enough, Durwald. Now that I am returned, I shall ready a larger force with which to eradicate them." Baldomer paused in his talk, gazing ahead across his horse's tossing mane into the market square. "But what have we here, a wedding?"
Conan gave close attention to the handling of his team as the crowd widened and the avenue opened out before them. He had already driven the chariot past the Temple School, its marble porticoes lined with young male and female acolytes, and moments ago he had cleared the gray, battlemented municipal barracks, from whose murky grilles the stench of the town's dungeons wafted, especially sour in his memory. Now, just ahead of the procession, lay Dinander's cobbled central plaza.
Here tables heavy with food and drink had been set out, and the loiterers affected even more lavish dress, bright with lace and embroidery. Their activity centered about a spired, broadly arched building: the town's guild-hall.
"'Twould appear to be a marriage in the family of one of the chief artisans," Baldomer said from the saddle. "A goldsmith or jewel-tinker, to judge by this costly outlay."
"Yes, my liege." Durwald leaned near the chariot's trundling wheel to address his master more discreetly. "Now I recall that the banns were recently posted for the marriage of Evadne, daughter of old Arl, the silversmith, to a petty landholder."
"Evadne... is she not the one who teaches metalcraft at the priest-school, in defiance of the guilds' ban against females?"
Durwald nodded. "Aye, a headstrong wench."
"Indeed. I think I know what is afoot." Baldomer scanned the plaza grimly from his saddle. "It is an old trick of rich and disloyal families to stage their weddings when their baron is away, and so avoid the exercise of lordly privilege." He turned in his saddle and delivered a curt signal to Favian, leading the main body of cavalry. "Form up, there! You, boys, pull over to the steps," he ordered Conan. "'Twould be unmannerly not to stop and pay our respects at this celebration. Remember, you are my son."
Conan swung the chariot toward the steps of the guild-hall, scattering nervous watchers and toppling a decorative flower stand along the way with his brisk, inexpert handling of the team. Favian, as his cavalrymen clattered past on either hand to form a protective cordon, grumbled a curse at the Cimmerian for this display of poor driving in his name.
Conan, biting back an angry retort, stepped down from the platform and awaited Baldomer. To his surprise, the baron did not dismount, but spurred his steed straight up the low steps toward the building's stately entrance.
Conan strode after the horse's flicking red-brown tail as it passed through the high, intricately sculptured archway; his careless ill-temper, he realized, probably lent him a convincingly noble bearing. Durwald and Favian followed close behind, the latter leaving the visor of his cavalry helm down.
The interior of the guild-hall waited cavernous and dark, with a nest of bright candlelit hues at the depressed center of its floor, where the ceremony was underway. Those gathered in the gallery evinced a short, astonished silence at the baron's clopping invasion, before the obligatory bows rippled through the assembly. These were halfhearted, with some of the celebrants even risking disgruntled whispers to their neighbors or stiff-necked stares at the mounted lord. Others gazed at him with no evident emotion but fear.
The focus of the room's attention was, or had been, the brightly gowned man and woman at its center. They knelt facing one another, undergoing a marriage ritual danced by a garlanded priestess in tribute to the local harvest goddess, Ulla. Now, whether at the baron's intrusion or at the completion of the ceremony, the couple turned to face the warlord. The young, boyishly handsome groom's bearing toward his feudal lord was proud and a little resentful, Conan could see. The woman, although her face was thickly veiled in gem-sparkling lace, showed an impressive, calm resolution as she rose to her feet.
For some reason her bearing held the Cimmerian's attention. His lordly counterpart was likewise attracted to her, as he could tell sidelong from the forward attitude of Favian's visored head.
"Greetings, subjects!" Baldomer sat erect in the saddle, his voice ringing out sharply in the hushed gallery. "A sad thing it is that my travels on ur
gent state business have made me late for your nuptial feast! Nevertheless, I intend to be the first to wish you a long, fruitful union. Health, too, to your kinfolk gathered here." Shadowy in the candlelight, the baron's face scanned the inner circle of the newlyweds' families with unconcealed contempt, or so it seemed to Conan.
"I assure you that my royal line means to confer on your houses every honor and privilege that our city's customs dictate. My son, Favian, agrees with me in this." Conan started briefly at the weight of Baldomer's gauntleted hand on his shoulder, as the warlord leaned down from the saddle to clasp him in a show of fatherly pride. Uneasily the Cimmerian felt the gaze of the entire assembly shift toward him, not necessarily with affection.
"To this end," the baron resumed, "I proclaim to you: today, upon my homecoming, the doors of the Manse shall be laid open for a continuation of these festivities. My servants will set forth food and drink for all. Come as my guests. The presence of this young fellow and his stately bride is welcomed, nay, commanded!"
Baldomer finished his decree and began reining his horse around in the crowded space; meanwhile, murmurs and halfhearted shouts sounded in the gallery. Given the festive nature of the invitation, the response was far from the enthusiastic one Conan would have expected. The buzzing of the throng spread and deepened as the mounted baron herded his retinue before him through the archway and out into the sunlit plaza.
Once again the noise and bustle of entertainment filled the Manse. Down its stone hallways wafted the smells of cooked food and the tinny, martial-sounding echoes of trumpet music. Again Conan sat excluded from the feast, brooding in young Lord Favian's beshadowed room. He waited with his chair drawn half behind a window curtain, gazing out across the dusty sill. He watched pale ghosts of the festivities in the courtyard below, shadows thrown onto the inside of the outer, wall by the torchlight and candlelight issuing from the Manse's open doors.
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