The Conan Compendium

by Robert E. Howard

  Now it seemed that their unhappiness was driving them to treachery, if not to open warfare.

  She began to crawl backward, intending to be well away from this place before the warriors came searching. Then she considered that it might not hurt to let herself be found. If she could speak to the northerner, she might learn more of him and his band of warriors. Such a band might prove useful if they needed to earn their way home and had the prowess to earn it in defense of Lysenius and Scyra.

  Scyra's arts of concealment were like her knife-fighting, sufficient for many purposes. They were sufficient to hide her until the Bamulas, called back from the hunt by their leader, gave up the search for the Pictish archer. She was ready to weep in frustration when she saw the slope empty.

  She had not meant to be out of the cave this long, and besides, she had given her cloak to Vuona, now marching off with her people. Scyra saw no alternative to following their trail. Let them go, and they might as well be on the moon for all her chances of finding them again without either the Picts or her father knowing. She had to be first here to know what the Bamulas were about, or she would be going to the marketplace with an empty purse.

  She took bow and arrows from the body of the Pict, and searched the other dead tribesmen until she found one who also wore a cloak. It was of Bossonian work, stiff with dirt and grease, reeking from long wearing by Picts who never bathed unless they were caught in the rain, and probably the prize of some bloody-handed border raid.

  Still, she wrapped it around herself. It was just barely large enough; her Bossonian blood made her as tall as the common run of Pictish men.

  But the wool was warm, and from a distance, it might deceive the hasty eye.

  There was no food to be found, save the bodies of the dead Picts”and even in jest, the idea made Scyra gag. But some of the edible ferns were green, there were fish in the streams, and the Bamulas could hardly travel too far their first night in this land, no matter how the northerner led (or drove) them.

  With those hopes lightening her step, Scyra set off on the trail of the Bamulas.

  ***

  It was agreed on the march that one of the three chiefs would always be on watch. Conan, Govindue, and Kubwande drew twigs for who would begin the night, and Govindue drew the shortest twig.

  Not that there was much to see in this nighted forest, either of friend or foe. A cloak from a dead Pict kept out some of the wind, but even the gentlest breeze in this land seemed to pierce like an arrow.

  Govindue had never been so cold, not even during his manhood ordeal, which had sent him into the jungle during a particularly severe autumn season of rains.

  It was as well that Idosso was dead. He would never have been an honest follower to Conan, the young chief decided. Kubwande might be, if only out of fear of starvation, Picts, and Amra's fist.

  More surely still, Idosso would never have had Amra's knowledge of how to live in this land. Live, fight, even win free of it. He had not been so stupid that he would not have learned, but before he learned (or Kubwande taught him), many might have died. Perhaps too many.

  Conan had the soul of a great chief, and with such a soul, his skin did not matter to the gods, still less to Govindue, son of Bessu.

  The footfall was loud enough to have reached ears much less keen than Govindue's. More seasoned as hunter and tracker than as warrior, he heard the sound as clearly as he might have heard a boulder falling from a cliff. When two more footfalls gave him a sense of the intruder's direction, he had plenty of time to hide where he could see the path.

  It seemed as if the intruder either wished to die or thought the Bamulas were friends approaching. In the darkness, it was hard to tell what the oncoming shapeless cloak concealed, and Govindue would have given a year's yam harvest for a trifle of moonlight. Had he been sure it was a Pict, his spear would have pierced the intruder's belly after the third step.

  Then the intruder stopped and threw back the cloak. Govindue's breath hissed out, and he began a ritual of aversion. Pale-skinned, pale-haired”a ghost had come upon them!

  His hiss found an echo. Then he knew it was not an echo. No echo of his ever spoke in words he had not uttered.

  "Bamula? Vuona? Bamula? Vuona?" The questioning note was clear. So was the kind of voice. Not a ghost, after all, but a northern woman. Coming for Vuona? Why not? If the world was mad enough to hold such things as the demon's gate, why not a northern woman coming for Vuona?

  Govindue rose, but did not step into the open. The woman might be honorable, but the Picts were not and could be following the woman.

  "Ohbe Bamula," he said. "Ohbe Bamula. Ohbe Vuona. Ohbe Vuona." Then he called, "Woman," using the word for an elders wife. If she was one of power, it would please the gods, and if she was mad, they would not care.

  "Bamula," the woman said, sounding somewhat like Amra when he spoke his own tongue. Then she stepped forward. Govindue saw that she wore a knife at her belt and a bow and quiver on her back, but held her empty hands out in front of her.

  Govindue stepped out to face the woman, holding his hands as she held hers. Then he pointed back over his shoulder toward the camp.

  "Bamula! Vuona! Bamula! Vuona!"

  She understood his message. Still holding her hands before her, she walked up the hill toward the band's night camp. Govindue had barely time to call one of the other guards to take his place ere he hurried after her, lest she vanish in the darkness.

  ***

  Conan and Vuona sat a trifle apart from the others, without being outside the circle of the guards. The Cimmerian had left no one in any doubt of what he would do to them if they wandered off and the Picts did not save him the work.

  Vuona squatted on her haunches and leaned back against a fir bole. The moonlight silvered her bare shoulders. She wore rawhide leggings taken from a dead Pict, but was bare otherwise. She had returned wearing a rawhide Gunderman cloak, but had given that to one of the wounded.

  They would have to hunt for both food and garb, Conan knew, and soon, even if all the Picts in the wilderness came at them. For him, this night was as mild as a summer eve in Cimmeria, but the Bamulas only just kept their teeth from clattering loud enough to wake Picts a days march away!

  "I ask your forgiveness, Amra."

  "If you wish it, ask it of Conan. 'Amra' is a name that sounded well aboard Tigress, or from Belit's lips."

  "Is it your true name?"

  "Were you thinking to bespell me with it?"

  Even in the darkness, Vuona's expression of horror seemed real enough.

  "No!"

  "That's as well. I've a habit of putting my sword in people's gizzards faster than their spells can slow my arm. I would hate to have to do it to you."

  "It would be¦ justice. I¦ if I had not

  "Oh, plague take your quaverings of conscience, girl! Leave them to the priests. You're not the first woman to make a mistake about a man.

  Since the wrong man's dead and I'm alive, what ails you?"

  "Being here, when we could be somewhere safer. It is my fault."

  "Very likely it is, but past mending now."

  She slipped out of the crouch and knelt before Conan. "Not even by a woman's gift?"

  Conan looked her up and down. She needed no darkness to hide faults; her lithe form had none. He realized that he was looking at her as at a woman, and that this was the first time he had done such a thing since Belit's death.

  Also, Vuona needed a place in this band, and a chief's woman was the most honorable she could hold. Conan had begun this whole mad affair to save her¦

  She climbed into his lap and twined her fingers in his hair, raggedly barbered after his encounter with the thorn bush, but still giving any woman a good grip. Almost too good a grip, for she had strong hands.

  Conan ran his own hands from her shoulders down to the small of her back, and beyond. Fingers that had wielded a deadly sword earlier in the day now undid the leggings. Vuona leaned forward; Conan felt youthfully firm brea
sts”

  "Amra!"

  "My name is Conan!" he snarled. Vuona slid off his lap. The Cimmerian took a deep breath, then realized that it was not Vuona who had spoken.

  "Govindue, you are away from your post." Those were the first words that came into his mind. Had he thought at length, he would doubtless have spoken more sharply.

  "Forgive me. Amra

  "He wishes to be called Conan."

  "You're not a chief's woman yet, girl, so let Govindue speak."

  "A woman has come."

  "I've heard of Pictish women. Doubtless the guard who saw her fell dead at the sight of her. Take her captive, put another man in the dead one's place, and leave me in peace."

  Conan thought the young chief was trying not to look at him or Vuona.

  "Am”Conan. The woman is not a Pict. She looks like you. Her name is Scyra, and she knows we are Bamula and that Vuona is among us."

  Vuona jumped to her feet as if she had sat on a viper. "It is she, the magick woman!"

  Govindue made gestures of aversion. Conan rose, took Vuona under both arms, and gently lifted her off her feet until his nose and hers were a hair'sbreadth apart. She flinched at the look in the blue eyes.

  "Vuona, I can forgive you for choosing the wrong man. I will not forgive you for hiding something like this from me he waited until she looked ready to faint, then added "”a second time." When he set her on her feet, her legs quivered and threatened to tumble her into the fir needles.

  She found her voice, however, and could hardly talk fast enough. When Vuona was done, Conan donned his sword-belt but drew the blade. It seemed to compel Vuona's gaze.

  "Remember what I said about sorcerers with swords through their gizzards? This woman had best prove herself our friend, and quickly.

  Govindue, take me to our guest."

  "As you wish, Conan."

  Interlude

  The Pictish Wilderness, in the reign of King Conan the Second:

  Sarabos was the first of us to fully regain his wits. To speak more precisely, he had lost the fewest of them at the sight of the cave, and even of the statue. Therefore he had the least ground to cover before he could command his voice.

  He still spoke more than a trifle distantly, as though he were recounting something he had experienced in a dream and whose reality he could not altogether trust.

  "Let us all believe that what we see here is really here. Believing so, has anyone heard even a faint smell of rumor that might explain it?"

  He might have been talking to the statue, and the living men gathered around it made as little answer as if they also had been stone. I was glad to see that this was not wholly because they were standing with eyes wide and staring, jaws hanging and gaping, and their powers of speech quite gone.

  Some of them were cleaning and dressing their comrades' wounds. I heard a stifled scream as one man cut down for an arrow in another's thigh.

  It was deeply embedded, and I prayed to Mitra that it would not drain the man of blood when it came out.

  Others were unpacking supplies and cleaning weapons. As unwholesome as this cave appeared, it was still dryer and freer of Picts than the world outside. Also, these were veterans of the border wars, some of them old enough to have served under Conan at Velitrium, had they been in the Aquilonian service at the time. Unless the ancient Stygian magick”or whatever other spells had produced the image”awoke, I had no fear of my men or for them.

  I saw by the torchlight men looking at each other. I held my tongue. I suspected that I was about to learn things that it would have been as well to know beforehand. But there are always things that the soldiers, particularly Marches born, will not willingly tell their officers, especially those born and reared far from the Marches.

  "What we hear tonight stays with us," Sarabos said. "No matter what you confess, we will leave it to the gods."

  The men continued to look at each other in silence. One or two flinched as the man with the arrow in his thigh let out a scream that was anything but muffled. The echoes were slow to die, and I saw men looking toward the rear of the cave.

  Their faces said that they hoped nothing lurked back there to waken at a human presence after so many years, and come forth hungry and horrible. I did not find that hope quite without reason, but I chose to put a better face on the situation.

  "This is no very pleasant place, but let us remember it seems to be taboo to the Picts. They will not come in, but our comrades will have no such fear. Remember too that the last time Conan the Great found himself in such a place, he came away with the treasure of the pirate Tranicos and put himself on the throne of Aquilonia with its aid."

  Somebody muttered about putting himself in bed with a comfortable wench and a jug of good wine being quite enough. I did not find that without reason either.

  One of the men finally spoke up. "There is something that I heard from my mother." He was a Gunderman by his speech, but he looked dark enough for a Shemite¦ or a Pict?

  As if he had read my thoughts, the man went on. "Yes, I have Pictish blood. My mother is half-Pict, though my father was all-Gunderman. She had some of their speech and knew some old tales.

  "One of these, she said, was taboo among the Picts. There was a curse on anyone who told the tale, almost as great as on anyone who entered the cave. She told me, because she thought I had best know it, and also believing that my Hyborian blood should weaken the curse."

  Nobody dared ask one question, and again the man seemed to have the power to read thoughts. "My mother bore five healthy children, the last when she was hard upon forty, and was living yet last fall in her sixtieth year. I have fought in five campaigns, without loot or honors, but also without grave wounds. If there is a curse, I think my mother spoke the truth about it."

  "Well, then, speak the truth about what she told you, and we will listen," I said.

  "It may not tell you much the man began.

  "Anything you tell us will be more than we know now," I said firmly.

  "And a storyteller should have a name. Forgive me that I did not learn yours."

  "I am Vasilios, son of Ayrik," he said.

  "Then speak, Vasilios. We are all listening."

  Vasilios cleared his throat; the air was much dryer in the cave than outside, as well as a trifle dusty. He sipped water from his bag. Then he folded his legs, rested his hands upon his knees, and began.

  "It was in the time of my mother's father, the Pict, when a sorcerer lived among the Picts and a statue came to life and walked¦"

  Eleven

  The Pictish Wilderness, many years before:

  Conan listened to Scyra with great attention even after she admitted to being the daughter of the sorcerer Lysenius.

  "I have never heard of him, not that I make it my affair to count the world's wizards," Conan said. "Nor do you look much like a sorceress.

  You're dressed too shrewdly, for one thing."

  "We have lived here for five years," Scyra said, voice taut with indignation. "I was barely a woman when we arrived. Assume that I am not a fool and hear me so."

  "I ask your pardon, Scyra," Conan said. He translated her remarks for Govindue and Kubwande. They nodded, then frowned when he added that Scyra and her father clearly had either great powers or friends among the Picts.

  If Lysenius and his daughter had magick enough to stand off the whole Pictish nation, dealing with them would be a chancy matter. They would be too cursed powerful! And if so powerful, why did they need help?

  If they had Pictish allies, helping them would mean fighting alongside Picts. Conan had no blood-debts owed to the Picts, unlike many Cimmerians had, but the ancient feud between Cimmerian and Pict was nothing he could easily forget. Nor did it necessarily matter what he wanted; the Picts might choose to slaughter the Cimmerian in one moment and the Bamulas in the next.

  These things were true. It was also true that Conan's band had small chance of fighting their way to anything more than a warrior's death.

&nbs
p; They would be twenty-odd men fit to fight against all the Picts in the forests, Picts who knew these forests as they knew their own hands, shot arrows from cover one would swear could not hide a mouse, and did not shiver on a mild summer night!

  Conan had walked into the demon's gate because of his duty to Vuona. It should not come hard to do worse than fight beside Picts, to save Vuona and all the rest who had honored him by following in his footsteps.

  "Can your father conjure us up some warm clothes and hot food if we enter his service?" Conan asked. "We will expect more, but those we must have before we can do enough to earn it."

  "Can your men not hunt, cook, and clean hides?"

  "All of these things take time, Scyra. Time the Picts may not allow us.

  Do you think whatever friendship you have for them will save us?"

  "Do not call the Picts my friends. At best, they are allies."

  She sounded as if she expected to be believed, and for Conan not to ask "Against whom?" Conan decided that it did not matter. Anything that took his band closer to safety would help, and to obtain that, he would swear any oath. If Lysenius needed their aid at all, he was not powerful enough to punish them for breaking such an oath, and the band could take its chances with the Picts. Fed and garbed for this wilderness, those chances would be better than they had now.

  "As well. I will never call a Pict my friend, but I may take a day off from killing them if they do the same for me."

  "That I believe my father and I can promise. We have furs and hides, salt meat and dry nuts, and a part of the cave where you will be safe from the Picts as if you were at home in the Black Kingdoms."

  "Also, I'll be bound, where you will be as safe from us." Scyra looked indignant, but Conan held up a hand. "No insult taken and I hope none given. In your place, I'd do the same. We've no need for a Zingaran love-temple feast, as long as we understand each other."

  Conan watched Scyra sidelong as he translated for Govindue and Kubwande. She seemed to understand what he was offering and what his doubts were. He hoped he would not have to put into words his intention to end both her and her father at any sign of treachery. That would be a sad waste of a fine woman, apart from everything else.