The Cimmerian had seen rather more such men than he cared to remember, and killed a good many of them. Too swiftly adding Idosso to their number, however, might not win friends among the Bamulas. And unlike the Fish-Eaters, the Bamulas knew who he was, where he was, and how to send enough warriors to drive him into desperate flight, or an equally desperate last battle.
"Let it be so," Idosso grunted. Then he spoke sharply, too fast for Conan to follow his words. The warriors had no such trouble, however; they were formed up in a few heartbeats and hurrying down the trail in a few more.
Conan looked at the bloodstains where the boar had fallen and where the Vendhyan had died, then slung his spears over one shoulder and drew his sword. He returned up the trail as he had come down it, sword in hand, but at a more leisurely pace.
He also had no hesitation about making a meal of the offerings, although when he was done, he knew at least one bread-maker among the Fish-Eaters who should be thrashed!
Three
Far to the north, a sorcerer named Lysenius sat in a cave whose rock he had shaped into the likeness of a Stygian temple, and cursed in a scarlet fury.
No one in the Black Kingdoms heard his curses, nor would they have understood them if they had. Indeed, no one at all heard most of them save his daughter Scyra, who had heard them far too often for them to have any power to either amuse or anger her.
Some Picts heard a few of the curses, borne on the night wind. They made signs of aversion, telling one another that this time the anger of the white shaman was so great that surely it would lead him to make war on the very gods themselves.
If that were to come about, they wished to be a long way from the battlefield.
Conan spent little time after his meeting with the Bamulas wondering if they saw him as friend or foe, man or mage. He commonly left that sort of thing to scholars and scribes with no real work to fill their days.
Here in the Black Kingdoms, Conan was beyond the reach of scribes and scholars. The days settled into an endless flow, with a rhythm of eating, sleeping, hunting, bathing in streams, and tending his weapons and snares. The Fish-Eaters brought no more offerings, but there was ripe fruit and fat game aplenty; only a fool could starve in the Black Kingdoms.
Being no fool, the Cimmerian fed well. Being no fool, he also grew eyes in the back of his head and ears in his elbows and knees whenever he left his refuges. The Fish-Eaters might someday be moved to do more than refuse him offerings, brooding over those wenches whose fancies had led them to go with Idosso. Not likely, and hardly soon, in a land where a single spearman's share of loot from Tigress would buy a harem fit to make Iranistani noblemen jealous, but still, it was a danger to be considered.
A danger, also, that like leopards, crocodiles, wild bees, and poisoned vines, was likely to strike only those who did not consider it at all.
**
Among the warriors of the Bamulas, some talked of the white man the Fish-Eaters thought was a god. They did not talk of him by the name of "Amra," for that name was a secret kept among Idosso's band, who had bound themselves to its secrecy by fearful oaths. Both Idosso and Kubwande had also bound the women by similar oaths, likewise by threats of dire and lingering punishment, and in Kubwande's case, by the promise of gold and a servant of his own from among Idosso's women.
Idosso seemed to think that promising rewards to the women, instead of merely threatening them with punishment, was a madman's whim. It was, however, one that he seemed prepared to allow.
He was likewise curious over Idosso's insistence that Conan's perhaps being the notorious Amra should be kept a secret. So curious, indeed, that he asked Idosso about it, in tones that would brook no silence.
"As simple as a Fish-Eater," Kubwande said, then asked pardon for the insult of calling Idosso by that name.
"One day you will ask pardon for your tongue's nimbleness and I will reply by pinning it to the roof of your mouth with my spear," Idosso said. "I am not a tame ape, to be made to perform until you can sell me to the Stygians. You sell me to anyone, Kubwande, and you will go there with me."
Kubwande assured the chief that buying and selling anyone except a few more women was as far from his mind as the Mountains of the Moon were from the hut where they sat and drank beer served by the Fish-Eater women. Idosso grunted what might have been assent.
The lesser chief took it as such. "Do we know that Tigress and her mistress are gone? Has anyone seen their bones?"
"If Amra tells the truth, he went to some trouble to be sure that no one would."
"If. Or he might be spying on us for her, while she finds new men and readies ships to come upriver."
"We will fill her new men and her old alike with spears if she does that," Idosso said around a mouthful of mealies. "Her, too, if she is as brazen about leading her fighters as the tales have it."
"Should we do that before we know what she wishes in these lands?"
Kubwande asked. "Remember, a dozen tribes have given warriors to her crew. Hardly a single tribe has any feud with her, or she with them.
And we are no better friends to the Stygians than she was. Since either of us were warriors, has a year gone by when their slave-raiders have not needed to be chased back into their own lands, with spears prodding the laggards?"
Idosso laughed at the picture, not least because he had led such war parties more than once, and made much of his reputation thereby. "So.
You think maybe Amra is spying for one who might be a friend of his?"
"I do not know otherwise. Until I do, this man is like a dagger hidden in one's loinguard. Do not bring it out before the right time, when it will strike a single deadly blow."
Kubwande could see Idosso's wits struggling to grasp what the other truly meant. He waited in patience. Better if the man understood it without aid.
"He!" Idosso exclaimed at last, and tossed the beer gourd so high it stuck in the grass of the hut's roof. "We keep Amra's secret, and he may talk to us alone among the Bamulas. If his mistress has friendship to sell, then she will sell it to us. Whoever brings the Queen of the Black Coast to friendship with the Bamulas
He did not finish. There was no need. Kept a secret, Amra would be a dagger to thrust into the bellies of rivals for the ivory stool of the war chief. Thinking that, Idosso was content to let his ambition rule him. And Kubwande, well aware of that ambition, knew that he might rule Idosso.
At least for as long as necessary. One could not keep the peace with such a man forever, even if one pretended friendship for him. He was too quick to anger and too slow to think.
But the blood-feud might be like the concealed dagger or Amra, something to be brought out only at the proper time.
***
Conan knew nothing of the intrigues among the chiefs of the Bamulas.
Had he known, he would have cared much less than Kubwande hoped, at least until someone insulted Belit's memory.
Then doubtless his temper would have got the better of him and it would have been a red day in the history of the Bamulas before the Cimmerian went down under the sheer weight of spears, if indeed he went down at all. Foes as formidable as the Bamulas had in the past thought long odds meant a dead Cimmerian, and had ended as food for the vultures before they could learn greater wisdom.
Conan intended to leave the Bamulas in peace; he hoped they would do the same and not give him any cause to change his mind by mistreating the women. If they were thus amenable, they could fight all their neighbors, none of their neighbors, themselves, demons, or the very gods, without troubling his dreams.
He was more wary of the Fish-Eaters. Doubtless they would learn the truth about the women's disappearance. Doubtless also, they would in time consider avenging themselves on a foe they could overcome, which would not be the Bamulas. Conan added more snares to the paths around his refuges, which began to look like lairs, slept lightly, and kept weapons to hand every moment, waking or sleeping.
He also set fish-traps in certain streams. Tigres
s had carried away more loot than gold and jewels from her prey”weapons, ships gear, and food among them. The food had often failed between one prize and another, however, and during those long days, nets and lines went over the side. The catch went into the bellies of Belit's sea-wolves, either at once or after some while in barrels of salt brine.
Belit had always jested about fish being food for lovers and insisted that Conan eat his fill to be a fit consort for her. On the whole, he did not think that anything short of starvation could kill a man's interest in a woman like Belit. But while he held her, he held his peace¦ and grew accustomed to fish.
So when he found a stream that ran deep but no more than two lance-length's wide, and abounded in strange but succulent fish, he turned his hand to catching some of the bounty. Saplings and reeds, with thongs of grass and vine coated with plant sap to keep them from rotting, were enough for his purpose.
He soon had three traps set, close enough together that he could visit all of them once at dawn and once at twilight. He had them placed where he thought that both he and they were safe from prying eyes and greedy hands.
***
He was right, at least about human eyes and hands.
On a still night, Conan awakened to the roll of thunder. But his near-animal keenness of instinct found something wrong with the thunder.
It had come not only without rain, but without wind. He would not say that it had come without clouds, for here one could not see the sky without climbing trees taller than the towering pines of the Border Kingdom.
He listened, ears searching the darkness for the slightest sound that might tell him more. He heard nothing but the common night birds and insects of the jungle, with their rasps and shrieks, their whines and chirrs, as they sought food or mates.
The Cimmerian slipped from the hammock that was one of the few comforts he had taken from Tigress before she sailed on her last voyage. His feet made no more sound than that of a leopards, and his hands, guided by night-keen eyes, moved surely as he girded on his weapons.
After the thunderclap, the silence had lasted too long. Natural thunder did not come in single claps.
Something not of nature, or at least not of the jungle, was abroad tonight. Conan did not know whether he could fight it, or even if it would be worth his while to do so. But he knew that it was always better to be the hunter than the hunted.
He stalked rather than strode as he swung in a wide circle around his lair, a circle that took him toward the principal stream in the area.
He disturbed ferns and grass, branches and vines, hardly more than one of the great cats would have done, prowling the jungle in search of prey.
Now he searched the night with every sense alert, one hand on sword-hilt, spear in the other hand, dagger on belt, and two more spears slung over his back. Even a leopard plummeting from above would have found the Cimmerian no easy prey, for besides bearing ample steel, he looked upward with every few breaths.
Halfway around the circle, Conan had found nothing amiss. He had begun to think that his ears, or the jungle, had deceived him, drawing him out into the night on a fools errand.
He kept on, however. As long as he walked this path, it would do no harm to pass by his fish-traps, saving himself the journey in the morning. Also, he knew that the jungles of the Black Kingdoms held much that he did not know of. He had come a long way from the young thief in Zamora, more boy than man, only less clumsy than an ox and so ignorant he did not even know that he was ignorant.
At first, Conan thought the growls ahead did come from one of the great cats, mating or feeding, perhaps wrathful at being disturbed. Then he heard a deepness in the growls that spoke of a beast larger than any of the cats”or indeed, of any other creature of the jungle.
The hippopotamus and elephant grew larger than the cats, to be sure, as did the crocodiles. None of them growled. Conan walked softly now, and his broadsword rode free in a weathered, scar-knuckled hand.
At the last moment, he swerved aside from his usual path to the stream and slipped through the undergrowth to a spot that he knew would let him see without being seen. If this was a natural creature, that is; he remembered the single thunderclap, and the Vendhyan who babbled of "the demon's gate."
It was a natural beast Conan saw from his hiding place, and indeed, one he had seen before. But nothing in nature had ever brought it here.
It was one of the great snowbears of the far north, beyond not only Cimmeria, but the lands of the Aesir and Vanir. The hardiest of northerners, men who could trade blows all day and hoist mead horns all night, walked softly in the presence of the snowbear. It was twice the height and five times the weight of a large man, swift as a ferret, with teeth a finger long, and claws like daggers in all four platter-sized feet.
It was also nothing that the Black Kingdoms had ever seen. Nor, as far as the Cimmerian knew, was there any land within half a year's travel that had seen them, or any mountains closer by to offer one a home of snow and ice.
The bear showed no signs of any long journey. Its thick white fur hung damply from flanks unsunken by hunger, and the gaze in the chill black eyes held no weariness. Conan had fought serpents whose gaze held more warmth than the snowbear's.
From what Conan remembered of northern tales of the snowbears, they were great eaters of fish. So it surprised him hardly at all when the bear ambled to the stream, thrust a paw in and came up with Conan's fish-trap and all the fish within it. The fish-trap slithered onto the bank, the fish twisting and flopping.
The bears paw came down like an axe. Stout reeds and well-tied knots parted like rotten threads, and fish flew everywhere. One flew higher than the rest. The bear reared, opened its mouth, and plucked the fish out of the air with the ease of an Argossean youth playing street-ball.
In that moment, the bear's vitals lay open to a shrewd blow from spear or arrow. It was long range for a spear, but Conan wasted not a single breath regretting that he had no bow.
Propelled by a thick Cimmerian arm, the spear struck with the force of a shaft from the heaviest of Bossonian longbows. A hand'sbreadth left or right and the fight would have been over in the same moment it began.
Ill luck”some fault in Conan's aim, or perhaps a puff of breeze”sent the spear astray. It drove through fur and skin but struck a rib before doing any harm.
The bear reared again, its growl becoming a roar. One swipe of a vast paw plucked the spear from its chest. The shaft flew again, driving its point a finger'slength deep into a stout tree.
Then the bear charged at the Cimmerian, as unerringly as if more senses than natural guided it and as fiercely as any beast the Cimmerian had ever faced.
Conan flung a second spear, thanking Crom as he threw that he had brought three. The bear swerved as the spear left Conan's hand, and the spearhead only gouged fur and skin along one flank.
The Cimmerian thrust with his sword, not made for thrusting but longer than the bear's forelegs. The tales of the snowbears told him of more than their food. They made it plain that no man ever came alive out of reach of those paws.
The point sank in, and the bear twisted, roaring like all the fires of Set's dark abyss. Conan jerked his sword free, hope dawning as he made to thrust again. The beast shuffled forward and batted at the sword.
The blow all but numbed the Cimmerians arm. A trifle more force to it and it would have swept the sword from his hand. He flung his third spear, aiming at the snowbears eyes, and this time his aim was true.
The bear reared up, the spear dangling from the bloody ruins of one eye. Conan could have thrust again, but his awareness of the ground told him that this was folly. The bear had hemmed him in against several stout trees. If his thrust miscarried, he would have nowhere to flee to when the foe charged again.
So he darted to one side, slashing hard at a forepaw. His sword sheared claws from the right paw, making the bear roar again. It was shaking its wounded paw furiously as the Cimmerian leapt through the first gap in the trees large enou
gh for his massive frame.
In among the trees, the bear's greater size would be more burden than blessing in its pursuit of the Cimmerian. He could go where it could not, and strike from hiding places its one remaining eye could not find in the darkness.
He could slay it without coming within reach of those forepaws, Mitra willing! There would be no peace for a man in this land with the snowbear hunting free, and Conan did not think the Fish-Eaters were the folk to put an end to it.
The bear was willing enough to follow the Cimmerian's trail. Its wounds had enraged it; Conan doubted that it had any thought but to rend and tear what had hurt it.
The bear also seemed clumsier at this task than the Cimmerian had expected. Perhaps it had lost the scent of its prey among the unfamiliar odors of this new land. Perhaps, like many northern creatures, it had slept during the Time of Endless Night and so had poor night-sight.
Regardless, the Cimmerian soon found himself at his wits' end for a way to bring the beast into some trap where he could fight and it could not. After what seemed half the night and oaths sworn by all the lawful gods of every land he knew, he saw it evade his fifth (at least) attempt to bring it to bay.
"By Erlik's brass tool, I'll have that beast's hide for a new hammock yet!" he vowed. He gave more ground, and this time he stepped through a wall of vine onto a trail. Moreover, he stepped onto the trail in plain sight of a clearing where at least two-score Fish-Eaters were crouched with spears and war clubs.
Conan cursed again, but his loudest oaths were drowned out by the cries of the Fish-Eaters as they leapt to their feet and waved their weapons.
"The woman-stealer and demon-bringer Amra!"
"Kill the lion-man!"
"Wash the spears! Wash the spears! Wash the spears!"
For a folk commonly called peaceful, the Fish-Eaters seemed to be remarkably zealous for war against the Cimmerian.
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