Milach snorted his contempt again. "Only fools and cowards need beasts to make themselves taller. And who would want to fight over a stretch of water? Once you've taken it, what do you have? Is not one bit of water much like another?"
"You've seen the sea?" Chulainn said. "I have always wanted to travel and see such marvels."
Conan was pleased to see Chulainn rouse from whatever melancholy held him, for he seemed to be gloomy even by Cimmerian standards.
"Aye, I've seen sea and desert and steaming jungle. I've been in cities so huge that all the clans of Cimmeria would not fill one of the smaller quarters. There are temples of marble reared so high you'd think they were built by gods instead of men." His eyes took on the faraway look of a man in a dream. "It is there that a man can test himself. There you are not bound by clan and custom. A wanderer without a coin in his purse but with a good sword and a strong arm and a brave heart can win for himself a kingdom."
"Do not listen to him, nephew," Milach said. "There's nothing for one of us down there. A man should stay by his kinsmen. Where is your kingdom, Conan? To my eye you have little more than when you left to go live with the Aesir years ago."
"I've won fortunes and lost them," Conan said. "And I'll win more.
Perhaps one day I'll sit on a throne, if it suits me. Meantime, there's much of the world still left for me to see."
"Is the South not full of sorcery?" Chulainn asked. "I have heard there are magicians thick as a ram's fleece down there."
"Aye, there are a plagued lot of them," Conan admitted uncomfortably.
"Never content to leave men to their own follies and always stirring up some mischief with gods and demons and such."
"You see?" Milach said.
"Still," Conan went on imperturbably, "I'll accept them as part of the price of a life that's worth living. I'd rather be dodging some wizard's spells than watching cattle and sheep, or breeding a pack of brats and huddling around peat fires for the rest of my life." Conan lay down on the stony ground and rolled into his cloak. After a moment he sat up and reached out a long arm to scoop up an armload of snow, which he packed into a large, hard ball. When its shape suited him he lay back, rested his head on the snowball, and was soon asleep.
Milach watched Conan gloomily. "You see?" he said to Chulainn in a voice of great sadness. "This is what living in foreign parts can do to a man. This was once a mighty warrior, but so soft has he grown that now he must have a pillow to sleep!"
The woman stepped from the doorway of her peat-roofed stone hut to see the three men coming down the hillside, driving the cattle before them. A layer of white coated the higher slopes, but the snow had not reached this lower glen. She was curious to know who the third man might be, for only two of her men had gone up days before to give the kine the last of their summer pasturing before being taken down to the winter's village.
"Wife," Milach said as they drew near, "we've brought a kinsman to visit."
"So I've seen," she said. "Good day, Conan. You've grown since I saw you last, but you still favor your father." She was a tall, gaunt woman, as gray and hard as the stone of her native mountains.
"Greeting, Dietra. Your gray hairs do you honor." This was a compliment in a land where the great bulk of the people died young.
"Come inside. There's food on the hearth." She pushed aside the hide curtain, and Conan followed her in.
The hut was full of peat smoke, and there was a pot steaming on the hearthstone. His mouth watered. So famished was he that his stomach was drawn into a tight knot. The eve before, he and his two kinsmen had shared a few lumps of hard cheese, and he had brought out the last shreds of dried meat from his pouch.
The clansmen found this no hardship. On the contrary, they found the dried meat a veritable feast. Conan, on the other hand, had become accustomed to gorging himself frequently. He had eyed the cattle hungrily, but slaughtering beeves before killing time was unthinkable, unless they be stolen from an enemy.
"Are you home for good now?" Dietra asked. "It's long past time you wed and increased the clan. Jacha Onehand has a pair of strong, unwed
daughters not far from here."
"Nay, I only visit this time. I've much left to do, and I want no wife or child to slow me."
"Then I see the years have not improved you," she said.
She took some crockery bowls and began spooning food into them with a long-handled wooden ladle. She passed the steaming bowls to the men, who scooped the mush into their mouths with their fingers. Conan made a wry face. It was oat porridge, almost tasteless. He had forgotten about oat porridge.
Dietra caught the look. "Surely you did not expect wheaten bread?
Wheat grows in the lowlands, oats in the mountains. In hard years we live on naught else."
"Do not be too hard on our kinsman," Milach said innocently. "He's grown accustomed to better things down in the soft lands."
Conan glowered at him. "You'd have gone there, too, years ago, had you the spirit."
Dietra cracked him across the back of the head with her ladle. "Have you forgotten the manners you were raised with, that you insult your kin beneath his own roof?"
Conan rubbed the back of his head and wiped off the spattered porridge. "Nay, I've not forgotten," he said ruefully, "but I am beginning to remember why I left."
"If you're not here to settle down," Dietra said, "then why did you come?"
"Is it not enough for a man to want to visit his home and his kin?"
Conan demanded.
"No," she said. "Another man, perhaps, but not you. Something's drawn you back here, and I fear it's a thing that bodes no good for the clan."
Conan reflected that there was no gulling a Cimmerian woman of one's own blood. They could follow their men's thoughts with an accuracy a
necromancer would envy.
"I have a mission," Conan said. "It need not involve the clan, but I'll want to talk to the headmen before I set out on the last stage of it."
"On the morrow," Milach said, "we take the roof poles and drive the kine down to the wintering place. Most of the clan should be there within a few days. What's the nature of this mission?"
"Time enough to tell when the chiefs meet," Conan said. "But it's on my own head, not that of any other."
Chulainn gave his clean-licked bowl to Dietra. "I'll go see to the kine,"
he said. He nodded to Conan and pushed through the hide curtain.
"What ails the lad?" Conan asked when Chulainn was outside and out of earshot. "Some sorrow gnaws at his heart, that's plain."
"There was a girl," Dietra began, "a girl of the Murrogh. They met at the midwinter fair down by the border when the clans were at truce. He wanted her to wife"―she shot a glare at Conan―"like any good clansman."
Conan affected to ignore this.
"He got a band of cousins together and they set out for Murrogh land to bring her back," she continued.
"A feud-wiving, eh?" Conan grinned. When two clans were at feud, it was an ancient and honorable tradition for young men to make forays into enemy land to get women. This way, a man gained both a wife and honor, and the clans were prevented from growing too inbred. "And what happened? Did her father and brothers thrash them and send them back home empty-handed?"
"That they did not," said Milach, taking up the tale. "They arrived at the girl's steading unseen, for Chulainn's been schooled well in the lowland forest; but when they reached the main house, they found it devastated.
The walls were torn down, and the bodies of men lay all about, and some of the womenfolk as well, but the younger women and the children were gone."
"So," Conan grunted, "a Vanir raid. It's unfortunate, but doubtless he'll
find another lass."
"Not Vanir!" Milach protested. "Nothing was taken but the girls and children. Good weapons were left where they fell. The Murrogh trade down on the border, so they have more silver than most. The lads saw silver coins and ornaments scattered about along with the
other rubble, Vanir never would have left them."
"Worst of all were the bodies, though," muttered Dietra.
"What about them?" Conan asked.
"They were torn asunder," Milach said in a low voice, "as if by great beasts. The young men had seen bodies beast-rended before, by wolf and bear, but this was done by no clean creature. Its claws and teeth were not those of any animal we know…" His voice trailed off as if he were unwilling to say more.
"Tell him the worst," Dietra said grimly.
"Some of the bodies were partly eaten," Milach said.
"Eaten?" Conan said, still mystified. "Well, even so, if it were wild beasts, it is not unlikely that―"
"Not eaten as a wolf will eat a man," Milach insisted. "The flesh had been cooked over fires, and there were still half-gnawed limbs on wooden spits! What creature but man cooks his food?"
Involuntarily, Conan's hand went to the amulet that hung from his neck. "Cannibalism! Crom!" Such a thing was unheard of in these mountains. Not even the oldest legends spoke of such. "Was this the only such incident?"
"The only one we know of," Milach said. "By the time Chulainn got back it was mid-spring, and time to take the cattle to high pasture. We've been here since, and have seen nobody from below. Heard you nothing as you traveled hither?"
Conan shook his head. "Until I reached clan territory I avoided people, not knowing how the feuds were going. I saw men from time to time, but I did not seek them out. The man I left my horse with, down where our
lands start, was a tight-lipped old fool. I doubt he'd have told me if the seat of my trews were aflame."
"That must be old Chomma," Milach said. "He's addle-pated, all right, but trustworthy. Well, we'll hear more of this soon enough, when we get to the wintering place."
Conan brooded upon what he had heard. Surely, this had nothing to do with his task here! Somehow he could gain little confidence in this thought. Much as he tried to avoid them, evil and sorcerous doings had a way of seeking him out. No wonder, he thought, the boy had a sad face.
Seven
In the Kingdom of the Great River
The barge plying the broad river bore a single tall mast, but its triangular sail hung slack from the long, slanting yard. As the wind had died, the barge was propelled by long sweeps driven by the brawny arms of slaves. So wide was the river at this point that its current was scarcely apparent, and it lay like a glittering silver shield beneath the relentless southern sun.
The banks of the river were lined with palms, and the fertile land along both sides was intensively farmed by peasants who toiled in the benevolent climate to bring in two or even three crops per year. The peaceful aspect of the scene, and the gleam of temples visible in the distance, belied the essentially primitive nature of this land, Stygia. The women who washed out laundry along the banks in the noonday sun would be well away from the riverside by dark, for then it became the haunt of the great crocodiles of the Styx, and huge hippopotami would come lurching ashore to ravage the crops the peasants had toiled so hard to plant and cultivate. The people had to accept this, even with the consequent loss of life, for these beasts were protected by the priest-kings of the land, as were the omnipresent vulture and cobra. In the homeland of the serpent cult of Set, it was a capital offense for a peasant to kill any serpent, though it threatened his own child.
The woman who sat beneath the awning that protected the stern of the barge thought of none of these things, for they were so much a part of her life that anything else seemed barbarous and alien. In any case, her mind
was on more important matters. The plans of years were coming to fruition, and she had much work to do before she could be assured of utter success. She knew well the unwisdom of impatience, though, and the only sign of restlessness she showed was a slight tapping of her fingertips against the arms of her chair.
The master of the barge walked astern and bowed before Hathor-Ka.
He was a short, swarthy man dressed only in a brief white kilt and headcloth. "My lady, we shall reach your landing around the next bend of Father Styx."
She nodded and turned to the man who stood beside her. "Is all ready, Moulay?"
The desert man nodded to her. "All is packed below. Shall I raise your standard?"
"Yes. I want no delay when we reach the landing."
Moulay took a rolled cloth amidships and attached one end of it to a rope that hung from the mast. As he hoisted it up the mast, the cloth unrolled into a long black banner. Embroidered on the cloth with golden thread was Hathor-Ka's personal device: a scorpion whose tail was a serpent forming a circle around the desert arachnid. This would signal her servants ashore that their mistress was arriving on this barge.
Around the bend they caught sight of the great stone pier that thrust out into the river. As they approached, a small crowd gathered on the dock, awaiting the arrival of the barge. This was part of Hathor-Ka's huge estate, and all who gathered were her slaves, servants, the serfs who worked her land, and the priestly staff of her temple and shrines.
A long-armed black man cast a mooring line onto the dock. The rope was made fast to a bollard carved in the likeness of a crouching scarab beetle while the rowers skillfully worked the purple-sailed vessel alongside the gleaming marble pier. Slaves came aboard to transport Hathor-Ka's goods ashore just as a team of panting men arrived, bearing a pole-suspended litter. These men were not slaves but shaven-headed acolytes from the temple maintained by Hathor-Ka.
The priestess stepped ashore, mounted the litter, and seated herself on a throne of ivory and fragrant wood beneath its cloth-of-gold canopy. The
lean but brawny acolytes hoisted the litter to their shoulders and set out for the temple palace, walking in a skillful, broken step that made for a smooth ride. Moulay stood behind the throne with his hand on his sword hilt, even though they were on Hathor-Ka's own land.
A man ran up and made his obeisance, then fell into step beside the litter. He wore the dress of a farm servant, but his plain white kilt was of the finest silk, and his headcloth was striped with gold thread. In his hand was the whip of an overseer.
"My lady," he reported, "since you left us we have brought in a fine harvest of wheat, along with the usual lentils and onions, and we have planted another crop. There were three thousand two hundred eighty-four slave deaths, and five thousand seventy-five live births, most of which will probably survive. Of other livestock, the cattle―"
"Excellent, Ptah-Menkaure," his mistress interrupted. "Submit a full accounting in writing this evening. I especially want to see the figures on the stone quarried for the new temples at Khemi. The priests there are eager to begin construction."
"It shall be done, mistress," the steward said, prostrating himself in the dust. Unlike many of her colleagues in the sorcerous hierarchy of Stygia, who were mainly virtual ascetics, Hathor-Ka was among the most powerful landowners of the nation. Her wealth was as vast as her wizardry was potent, and through one or the other she controlled much of the land of the great river.
The litter was carried along a slightly raised road paved with white limestone, which slanted from a far escarpment down to the river, cutting through fertile and well-cultivated fields where peasants were even now hard at work. At intervals the road was flanked by figures of greenish-black stone crouching on pedestals, figures that had characteristics both human and animal, and which bore a disturbing aspect. The workers here did not like to look at these sculptures directly, for if studied too closely, they often seemed to have moved when one gazed at them again.
In a land of soaring, if oppressive, temples, that of Hathor-Ka was of surprisingly modest dimensions. The god she served was not a deity who required grandeur. The temple palace itself was surrounded by smaller buildings, in which lived Hathor-Ka's servants, slaves, priests, and
acolytes. She alone lived in the palace.
The acolytes bore the litter into the hypostyle hall of the temple portion, flanked by rows of columns with lotus-shaped capi
tals, dim in the overhead gloom. The thick walls had only narrow slots for windows, set high to prevent profane eyes from observing the rites performed therein.
The purpose of these slot windows was mainly to disperse the smoke of the incense as well as the less agreeable smells that sometimes rose from the altar. Most illumination came from torches and lamps and from the great fire basket before the high altar.
The litter was lowered to the polished pave, and Hathor-Ka alit. She was greeted by a shaven-headed priest, distinguishable from the acolytes only by the cloak of leopard skin which cascaded from one shoulder, leaving the other bare. The priest knelt and touched his forehead to the floor, almost touching Hathor-Ka's sandals.
'O Lady-Who-Sits-by-the-Right-Hand-of-Father-Set," he intoned, "welcome to your home. We who are your servants wish you ten thousand years of life."
"Rise, SenMut," she said. "Even I do not hope for ten thousand years; but if our plans bear fruit, I may have nine hundred, and so shall my servants. Is all well?"
The priest arose. "Quite well, my lady." No longer speaking in ritual tones, the man had a soft and pleasant voice. "We have carried out the rituals you prescribed to the very letter, and we have kept close watch on your colleagues."
"There is only one who troubles me," she said. "What of Thoth-Amon?"
"Our spy in his household says that in recent weeks he has spent much time in the trance of the black lotus. It is clear that he is engaged in the preliminary stages of some mighty wizardry, but he shows no sign of knowledge of the missing Skelos fragment."
"Has he been in contact with Turan, or Vendhya, or Khitai?"
"He received a communication from the great Vendhyan mage, Jaganath, just days after you left," SenMut told her.
Hathor-Ka bristled at the name. "What was the nature of this communication?"
"Just an exchange of pleasantries," the priest assured her, "apparently in answer to some enquiry of Thoth-Amon's concerning the properties of a certain Vendhyan strain of the blue lotus. Jaganath promised to send samples at the plant's next blooming, along with seeds and a soil sample.
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