"My masters will gladly send gold or goods, as you wish," Aybas said.
"You have only to say what you need and my message will depart at once."
"No man could do more."
Few would do as much, Aybas knew. The Star Brothers could thank their gods that Count Syzambry had sent them a man who had already closed doors against himself in too many lands!
Chapter 1
Back | Next Contents
Dawn touched a pool of clear, cold water at the edge of the trackless dark forests of the Border Kingdom. Dark water turned briefly rose-hued, then sapphire.
A man slipped from the shadows of the forest and crept to the edge of the pool. He moved as silently as a stalking cat, and his wide eyes ceaselessly studied the land about him. Those eyes were of an even colder blue than that of the pool, an odd match with his black hair, at least to those who did not know the look of Cimmeria.
The man's name was Conan. He had willingly used no other name in all his travels. A name was a potent thing in chill, barren Cimmeria, where life and death marched hand in hand. For the son of a blacksmith, closer to the gods than most, a name was best left untouched.
Conan had traveled far from his native village, learning in many lands the skills of slave, thief, warrior, and captain. Now he was bound southward from his native land after sundry adventures that had left him wishing to taste civilization again. Women, wine, and gold were hard to come by in Cimmeria. Selling his sword in Nemedia might bring him each in abundance.
But to reach Nemedia from Cimmeria, a man who did not wish to cross Brythunia had to brave the mountains and brawling tribes of the Border Kingdom. Conan, a hill man born and never one to shy from a fight, had chosen the straightest route south.
At this dawn, he had been four days within the Border Kingdom. He had seen little to make him wish to tarry, and last night he had witnessed something that made him wish to hasten onward. What could only have been witch-fire had blazed above the hilltops. It had been a long way off, but had it been in distant Khitai, it could not have been far enough for Conan's taste. He loathed sorcery with a passion.
At the edge of the pool Conan knelt to thrust a leather water bottle beneath the surface. It bubbled briefly as it filled. Then he tied it once more to his belt and returned to the forest by a different path than the one by which he had come.
Only when he was safely within the shadowy ranks of the forest giants did he rise to his full height. That was well over six feet, with muscles and sinews to match. A wise man would have given Conan a clear path even had the Cimmerian not carried a well-used broadsword.
His garb was a bearskin, leather breeches and boots, and a jacket of mail as well-used as the sword. A dagger rode on one hip, and a pouch of well-greased cloth held salt, nuts, and the remains of a rabbit he had snared the previous night.
Being no fool, Conan would not gladly walk when he could ride, and he had begun his journey south well-mounted. But he had lost his horse, and nearly his life, in a desperate battle against the monstrous yakhmar, the ice worm he had thought a creature of legend. It had been no legend, as the bones of a girl and his horse proved. Now at least one of the monsters lay dead beneath Snow Devil Glacier, brought down by a gulletful of red-hot coals flung by a muscular Cimmerian arm.
Conan was not a man to trouble uncaring gods with pleas for help, but he hoped they had no plans to match him with a yakhmar again!
Being otherwise well-accoutred for his journey, Conan had set off for the south on foot. He had sought a chance to trade for a mount in the villages on the northern frontier of the Border Kingdom, but found few openings. None would have given him a mount up to his weight, either.
Chances to earn a mount were fewer still, and as for stealing one, the villagers guarded their horses as if each was worth its weight in silver. Also, the folk were by blood more Cimmerian than not. Conan had little wish to steal from his own people, and no wish at all to do anything that might give him an evil name among them.
The deeper he passed into the Border Kingdom, the less he missed a horse. The entire land seemed to be built at a slant. Thrice he saw a patch of level ground large enough to maneuver his former squadron of Turanian horsemen. The rest of the land seemed to consist of hills either rising to peaks or sloping into valleys, rushing streams with a few quiet pools, and endless forests. In such a land, a hill man like the Cimmerian could make better time afoot. Also, in a land not without men but seemingly without law, he was rather harder to see. Twice he had seen the leavings of bandit attacks, once near-skeletons, the other time both living and dead. The living were two men so covered with flyblown wounds that they begged for the mercy of Conan's dagger. He had granted it.
Conan looked up through the treetops at the position of the sun. He had a good half day free for traveling before he needed to think about food. In this forest, those few hours would not take him as far as a man might wish, but the sun would guide his steps southward. The more he saw of the Border Kingdom, the less he wanted to tarry in it.
By mid-morning Conan had learned that the forest he traveled was neither as endless nor as uninhabited as he had thought. Twice he came upon well-worn foot trails, and once he passed a cluster of huts too few to deserve the name of village. A vegetable garden and racks for smoking meat told of how the folk here lived.
Conan's belly was reminding him that his next meal really ought to be more than half of a rabbit. His belly did not command his wits, however, which told him that he would be quickest out of the Border Kingdom if he passed through it like smoke on the wind, leaving no trace of his coming and no one to say that he had ever been there.
This resolution grew firmer about noon, when he left the trees and saw a wooded valley ahead. High on a crag to the left of the valley's mouth stood a ruined castle. At the foot of the same rocky eminence there straggled an abandoned village.
Before the least-ruined hut of the village stood a gallows, the long kind, fit for hanging a half score of men at a time. Three nooses dangled in the breeze now, and only two of these held bodies.
Well-ripened ones, too, Conan judged as a shift of the breeze brought a whiff of the corpses.
He wrinkled his nostrils, both at the stench and at the message he read in the dangling bodies. If two bandits were all that the local lord could bring to justice, it was one more proof that law sat lightly on this land. Conan was not one to worship the law when it stood between him and easy wealth, but the Border Kingdom seemed to have neither gold nor law.
It doubtless had archers, though, so Conan took care not to make an easy target of himself as he crossed to the mouth of the valley. The bow was not his weapon of choice, but he had learned its ways well enough in Turan to judge where an archer might lurk.
No arrows or other signs of life came his way before he reached the valley. At the bottom, a stream that almost deserved the name of a river flowed downhill. Beside it was a trail that clearly had borne shod mounts as well as booted feet, and not long ago.
Conan scrambled up the side of the valley as if the trail had been alive with serpents. He would use the trail if the lay of the land forced him to, but otherwise he would leave it to those who wished to make targets of themselves. He had long since learned that he would probably not die in bed from the onset of years. Likewise, he had learned how not to die young from witlings' mistakes.
By mid-afternoon he was well down the valley. He had devoured the rabbit and some wild mushrooms by a small stream. As he washed his hands, he thought he heard a distant bell chiming, but afterward judged it a trick of the wind.
A jagged spur of reddish rock plunged down from the crest across his path. It seemed an impassable barrier, and Conan reluctantly decided that he must at last strike downhill toward the trail.
He had covered perhaps half the distance when he heard the bell sound again. This time it was no trick of the wind. Indeed, it seemed to come from beyond the spur.
A moment later, he heard a bird calling. Or, rather,
a man imitating a bird, not so well that Conan's woods-wise ears could not discern the fakery. Then an answering bird call came from the trees in front of Conan and not more than a hundred paces away.
Conan's sword leaped into his hand. Then he looked at the thick-grown trees and sheathed it again. For close work here, his dagger would serve better. There would be such work, he was certain, and he'd wager against the bird-callers.
But he'd not put the wager down, though, without asking a few questions first. Dropping to hands and knees, Conan began a slow downhill crawl.
He was as he had been by the pool: a stalking cat would have been loud by comparison.
Before he'd covered half of the hundred paces, he heard the bell chiming again. This time he knew the sound for what it really was: a horseshoe striking on rock. Listening intently as the breeze came and went, Conan heard the clinking shoes of several horses. These mounts, too, were beyond the spur of rock, but the volume of their chiming was growing steadily louder.
Had the horses been his, Conan would have muffled their hooves before taking them through this bandit-haunted forest. A grim smile crossed his face briefly. Perhaps some of the steeds would be his after this fight.
The approaching horsemen might well have no better claim to their mounts and goods than did whoever was stalking them. If the Cimmerian chose, he might assist in a change of ownership. He might depart the Kingdom afoot, but with the price of more than one mount in his purse.
Then he could begin his career in Nemedia rather less like a beggar and more like a man whom warriors would trust to lead them aright.
Conan was still cat-silent as he crept down the slope to where he had heard the birdcall. No rolling pebble or snapping twig alerted the men he sought. When he found them, he saw that three of them still had their eyes fixed to the front, as though they had no backs that might be vulnerable. The archer among them was looking to the side as he thrust his arrows point-first into the soil.
None of the men looked as if they had bathed or eaten properly for half a year. Their beards and hair would have done to stuff a mattress, and all of their garb together would barely have made one man fit to appear on the streets of a town. Yet their eyes and weapons were bright, and the Cimmerian knew that he faced no easy foes here, if foes they were to be.
The archer”rising from placing his last arrow to unsling his bow”was the first to see Conan. His eyes widened as he saw the Cimmerian loom over him, and he hastened his movement. Unslinging his bow brought it within Conan's reach. A muscle-corded hand, well-furnished with sword calluses, gripped the curved ash. The archer tried to free his weapon.
He might as well have tried to loose it from the grip of a troll. His eyes widened more.
"Easy, man," the Cimmerian said. He spoke in a low voice, one clearer than a whisper but carrying no farther. "Who comes?"
"A caravan for the king," the archer replied. This drew a glare from one of the others, which faded swiftly as Conan returned it.
"What king?" There were some rulers whom Conan had no wish to turn into enemies. There were also some who had long since put a price on his head.
"The Border king, of course," the archer said as if addressing a witling.
That told Conan little, but perhaps that little was enough. If he would be shaking the dust of the Border Kingdom from his feet within days, did it matter if he took some of its king's goods with him?
"How many are you, and how set?" Conan asked.
The bandits looked at one another. The sound of the approaching horsemen was now an almost continuous ringing, like tiny forges hard at work.
"I'll not be your enemy unless you give me cause," the Cimmerian said.
"But I'll be no kind of friend until I know if you're worth befriending."
The bandits looked Conan up and down. One of them shifted position, until a look from both Conan and a comrade nailed his feet to the ground. "Your backs are safe from me as long as mine is safe from you,"
Conan added.
The sturdiest of the bandits seemed to reach a decision. "Four men on either side of the trail, on this side of the spur," he said. He jerked a thumb toward the spur.
"No more?"
"Half again as many to the other side of the spur. Runs across the valley, it does, with a gap for the trail. The others, they jump out, drive the caravan through the gap. 'Stead o' safety, they find us, blocking the trail."
Then the first bandits would pour through the gap, taking the caravan in the rear. Unable to move, mounted men lost their greatest advantage in fighting those on foot. Conan himself had learned as much in Turanian service, where light-armed foot frequently overmatched mounted nomads if the foot could chose their ground.
"Well and good," Conan said. "Where do you want me?"
The bandit leader jerked a thumb again, this time toward the left.
Conan understood. That flank would trap him between the other bandits and the spur. If he had thoughts of treachery or flight, he might not live to act upon them.
Or so the bandits intended. Conan would not quarrel with their folly, or with anything else about them, unless they gave him cause. Before he took his leave of them, though, he might teach them a lesson or two about judging Cimmerians.
The bandits now spread out in a line some forty paces long. The farther end of the line was out of Conan's sight in the underbrush. The bandit leader was just barely in view, and Conan knew it meant that the man probably could not see him. A glance also showed Conan several places where, with a few steps, he could become as invisible as the air. One of the places, he judged, would not only hide him from his new and dubious comrades, but would allow him to see clearly what lay on the trail.
It was no part of Conan's plan to follow the bandits into a fight against impossible odds or against folk he might not wish to have as enemies.
The Cimmerian had just finished settling into place when the bandits beyond the spur launched their attack. Bloodcurdling shrieks rose, echoed by the screams of horses torn by sharp steel or arrowheads.
Those men not shrieking hurled war cries at one another, and more than war cries. Conan heard stones cracking hard against shields.
Then he caught a single word in one of the war cries. It was a name, and at the sound of it, Conan's blood leaped in his veins.
"Raihna! Raihna! Raihna!"
Chapter 2
Back | Next Contents
Conan had never known the woman by any name save "Raihna," the name a score of leather-lunged men were now shouting as a war cry. But he had known her well as battle comrade, shrewd judge of horseflesh, cheerful bedmate”and companion on an adventure into the Ibars Mountains that had been the stuff of nightmares.
If this was the same Raihna. It was not an uncommon name in Bossonia and several other lands. Conan felt no call to bare steel in defense of a total stranger.
He dropped his bearskin, shifted his sword so that it would not clatter against the rock, and flung himself at the face of the spur. Fingers with an iron grip and booted feet found holds, and the Cimmerian swiftly mounted the height. As he climbed, he drew steadily to the right, to where he could catch a glimpse through the gap.
The bandits had once again forgotten that they had backs that might be vulnerable, and this time they also forgot that they had flanks. Conan scrambled up to his intended perch without so much as a glance from below.
It was his Raihna. The woman who sat a scrubby but strong-limbed mare in the middle of the fight wore a helmet that covered a good part of her face. Her breasts now strained a much-repaired hauberk. Conan recognized the wide, gray eyes, the freckles on the uptilted nose, and the long, fine neck.
Then she shouted a string of orders, and certainty became more certain still. The voice had roughened a trifle since they had parted, but dust and winters on the road would leave their traces on a throat of brass.
A man leaped from a tree onto the rump of Raihna's mount. The mare staggered under the assault, but her rider was equal to the
situation.
Unable to swing her sword for fear of hitting comrades, Raihna drove the pommel into the man's face. His short sword grated on her mail; then its point caught in a broken link and drove through. Conan saw Raihna's lips tighten.
He also saws her hand rise, holding a stout Aquilonian dagger drawn from her boot. The bandit was so busy trying to press home his sword thrust that he never saw the steel that opened his throat. His eyes were wide but unseeing as he toppled off the horse, leaving both Raihna and the mare drenched in another's blood.
Conan sought a foothold with which to begin his descent. He had no bow, nor was he the most accomplished archer. Indeed, it would have taken an archer of miraculous gifts to send an arrow into that tangled fight without hitting friend rather than foe.
One bandit exchanging swordcuts with a guard saw Conan. His eyes widened and he shook his head, then opened his mouth to shout. It seemed he could not decide what the Cimmerian might be about. This moment of doubt ended when the guard grappled him and rammed a short sword up between his ribs. The bandit died with his mouth and eyes wide open, his questions about Conan forever unanswered.
As Conan sought his next foothold, an arrow cracked into the rock next to him. He looked down and saw that he could drop the rest of the way in safety. He landed with a force that would have broken the bones of a lesser man, but he rolled and came up into a crouch. He heard shouting from the bandits, with the leader calling the archer the son of more fathers than a dog has fleas and other pleasant names.
Perhaps the archer had not waited for his chief's orders before shooting. If so, the quarrel between the bandits would give Conan his best opportunity to strike.
He would strike, too, for Raihna and her men. Nothing that the Cimmerian believed in, neither honor nor gods nor the simple courtesy due a bedmate, would allow him to do otherwise.
He must also strike swiftly. The bandits on the other side of the gap were doing as they intended, herding Raihna's caravan forward”forward through the gap to what she might be thinking was safety, but to what would instead be more like a killing pen.
The Conan Compendium Page 339
