Arpad exited with his companions slapping him on the back and urging him on. He strutted and preened, a cocky grin on his ugly face. Sighing, Conan stood, picking up the sheathed sword that lay on the straw by his aide.
“I might as well go ahead and kill that fool,” he said. “This is about me, not about her.”
Indulio put a hand on his shoulder. “Nay, friend. She would kill you before she would allow you to take up her fight Let things fall out as they will.” With the Cimmerian and the Hyrkanians, he went outside.
In the courtyard before the Red Eagle, men had marked out a rough fighting circle with torches.
From side streets, others came into the courtyard as word of the unusual fight tore through the little town with terrific speed. Conan elbowed his way to a spot just outside the circle of torches, where he would have a good view of the proceedings.
Arpad stepped into the circle, grinning with false bravado. “Come and meet your master, wench!”
His fingers flexed nervously on the hilt of his sword, which was long and straight, with a narrow blade.
From beneath her cloak Achilea produced a sheathed sword. She stripped off the sheath and handed it to the dwarf. Then one of the women took the cloak from her and she stepped into the fiery circle. At the sight of her, the breath caught in Conan’s throat. He had known fighting women in his lime, and some of them had been more than competent. But never had he seen such a woman as this.
From the densely corded column of her neck, the heavy muscles sloped to wide shoulders tipped with striated half-spheres that blended beautifully into her thick upper arms. The sinews of her forearms rippled as she idly worked her blade in tiny circles. Her slender wrists were tightly bound with bands of black leather, and it looked to Conan as if those wrists were her only likely weakness. Her belly had the definition of a cobblestoned street and appeared as bard. Her thighs were heavy-thewed above delicately sculpted knees.
And yet, despite her incredibly developed musculature, to Conan’s eyes she was not in the least masculine. Upon their squarish base of chest muscle, her breasts were full and womanly, as were her sleekly rounded hips and buttocks. A belt of studded leather banded those sinewy hips, and depending from it, a narrow pelt of red fox passed between her legs before and behind. This, together with her wrist bands and fur leggings, formed her sole attire. Although she was clearly of a fair-skinned race, every inch of her was burned as dark as her face, making her pale eyes and golden hair that much more startling.
She seemed not to notice the cutting wind.
Conan’s heart thudded within his ribs. She was like a magnificent lioness: powerful, proud and deadly. His impulse was to hew Arpad down for daring to threaten such beauty, but he knew this warrior queen would be mortally offended should he intervene. He restrained himself and settle down to watch.
Arpad had lost his cocky grin. Plainly, be had never seen the warrior woman undraped and realized
too late that this was no playacting fraud, but a she-beast fully prepared to take his blood. This was not what he had bargained for, but he had gone too far to back out now.
Conan studied the two. Arpad was tense, keyed up and shocked sober. His clenched teeth and starting eyes were those of a man near his breaking point He gripped his sword with knuckles gone white, its point raised level with the woman’s belly and trembling slightly, his other hand out for’ balance.
Achilea, in stark contrast, stood almost relaxed, her weight MI one leg, cocking her hip into a sinuous S curve, both arms at her sides, her sword almost dangling. Only her head, slightly lowered and thrust forward, revealed that her seeming calm was as deceptive as that of a coiled viper’s.
For long seconds, the two faced one another just beyond sword-range. The onlookers were so quiet that only the wind, fluttering the flames of the torches, made any sound. The strain was too much for Arpad’s unsteady nerves. He lunged forward, staking everything on a single thrust. His sword lanced out, its point darting for the woman’s vulnerable neck, where a wound only an inch deep could bring swift death.
The blow was quick and accurate, but Achilea flicked her own blade upward in a deft circle and batted the point aside. She slid in immediately and brought her blade across in a horizontal, gutting sweep. Her sword, broader than Arpad’s, was also shorter by a handspan. With a grunt of surprise, the man bounded back, and the keen edge missed his belly by a finger’s width. He jabbed his point at Achilea’s eyes and she retreated a step, pushing off smoothly with her leading foot, absorbing her backflung weight with a graceful flexion of her rear foot, knee and thigh, maintaining her balance perfectly throughout.
Now the two circled, crouched, eyes on one another, filled only with the desire to close and cut and kill. Arpad held his sword well to the front, his free hand before his chest, his bent arm covering as much of his belly and rib cage as possible. Conan knew now that he was a man who preferred to use the point.
It was quicker and required less strength man edge-play. Thus his stance was more that of a dagger-fighter than of a swordsman.
Achilea held her own blade well to her right, its point directed outward. Her left arm she held wide as well, her fingers splayed. She would use that hand offensively, not just to protect herself. Crouching thus with her arms wide, she seemed to be offering her lush breasts and ridged belly as a gift, baring them to the sharp steel just inches away. It was risky strategy, for Conan knew that even the toughest muscle gave little more resistance to a keen blade than did the softest flesh.
It was not Conan’s nature to fret, but he felt that the woman was playing a foolish game. Such strategy might well lure in a cautious swordsman, but Arpad was a desperate man, and he had proven that he was quick. It could be difficult for even a skilled swordsman to protect himself from a fool.
Should he essay a full-body lunge, he might spit her through the guts even as she swept his head from his shoulders. A canny fighter never considered a double kill to be an acceptable outcome to a fight.
Arpad seemed almost nerved up to just such a move, and then, abruptly, what little good sense he had took over. He began to wield his blade in short chops, first from the right, then from the left, reversing his direction frequently as he tested her defense for weaknesses. Steel rang on steel as she fended his blows aside. Then she slid forward and her blade moved in a rapid double figure-eight; four blows coming down right-left, right-left in bewildering succession. Arpad saved himself only by means of his lizardlike quickness, interposing his own blade just in time but taking two slight nicks in his scalp in the process. After the last defense, the two were dangerously close and he flailed his sword in a backhand sweep, the blow too wild to be deadly, but the flat of his tip caught her alongside the jaw with an audible smack.
They sprang back, giving themselves room to circle again. Bom combatants streamed with sweat, and their breath hissed from their lungs. They had been fighting for only a short while, but the exertion of battle is as much in the tension as in the effort. Around them, the onlookers muttered in low voices, impatient now for the climax.
Again Achilea offered the wide-open stance. This time, Arpad was ready to take the offer His
strength was ebbing swiftly, drained away by his overwrought nerves. With his strength would depart his speed, and death would soon follow. His arm shot out, extending his blade as he flung himself after his
point
For the first time. Achilea cried out, a fierce battle shout as she brought her blade across in a vicious horizontal swipe from right to left aiming to halve the lunging man even as she twisted to the left to avoid his blade.
But Arpad had one trick left. With his leading foot, he stamped down in mid-lunge, halting his forward movement for an instant, allowing her blade to sweep past harmlessly as be shot forward once more with a short hop, bringing his edge down toward her defenseless neck.
Even as Achilea’s blade carried far past its target, her left hand came up, catching Arpad’s wrist, stopping the deadly steel only the wid
th of three fingers from the pulsing vein beneath her left ear. Their bodies pressed together, surging with full strength as each sought to bring weapon to bear against the other. Arpad’s left hand now gripped Achilea’s right forearm just above the wrist.
Utter silence fell as they groaned and strained, Arpad’s hand trembling as he tried to force his blade against her neck, the muscles of Achilea’s shoulders and back bulging beneath the glossy skin as she tried to drag her weapon free.
With dreamlike slowness, Achilea’s right arm began to rise. First her hilt appeared from between the two bodies, men the blade came free. It looked as if, with tortuous slowness, she was unsheathing her weapon. Only, the blade was black with blood. Arpad’s eyes bulged and his breath wheezed. Then blood erupted from his mouth and the hilt fell from his pale fingers. Achilea released him and he staggered back a step or two. Now the onlookers could see the huge wound that slanted from his right hip upward across his belly to his breastbone, the gray viscera bulging out through the ghastly rent. With blood pouring from his insides, he collapsed in a hideous tangle of entrails.
“Slut!”
Conan did not know which of Arpad’s two companions had shouted, but both of them were lunging toward Achilea with short swords drawn. With a speed that would have stunned anyone who had been looking in his direction, Conan whipped out his sword and hewed through the neck of one of them. The arm of one of Achilea’s women snapped out and a short-handled ax whispered across the fighting circle, its crescent edge halving the face of the second man. Neither of them made it two paces past the torches.
For a few seconds, all was stillness. Then Indulio spoke.
“The action is over. Come back inside and wet your dry gullets!” Quickly the crowd broke up, jabbering excitedly over the splendid fight with its unexpected denouement.
Many shouted compliments to Achilea, but she seemed not to notice.
Conan stood watching while her women tended to her. Her front was covered with Mood, and this one of the women quickly blotted up with a damp cloth. Another wiped the sweat off her as her cofferlike chest rose and fell with the rhythm of a hard-worked bellows. With the blood cleaned off, Conan saw a thin red line slanting from her left hip upward across her belly, a mirror image of the slice that had slain Arpad. She had pressed her edge hard against him as she cut, but she had been unable to avoid a slight wound from the other edge of her own sword. Conan nodded with approval. It had been a brave and masterful move. Most fighters would have tried to break away and continue the battle, even risking a severe cut to do it
When Achilea was clean of blood and sweat, her woman draped the great cloak over her shoulders, patting her and whispering low words of endearment into her ears. The dwarf stood by, leaning upon a knotty-headed bludgeon, a smile of sardonic amusement on his fine features. When her appearance was restored, Achilea walked to where the Cimmerian stood. His keen eye detected the faint signs of weariness in her queenly stride.
“It seems I owe you thanks, stranger,” she said.
“By Crom, I’ll not stand by and see a splendid fighter cut down by cowards!”
“Crom?” she said. “I’ve heard that name spoken by men of the Aesir, but they swear at him, not by
him. Are you a Cimmerian?”
“Aye, My name is Conan.”
Interest flickered in her pale gray eyes. “Conan of Cimmeria? I think that I have heard that name. A sellsword and an adventurer, are you not?”
He gave her a curt nod. “Aye, and the name of Achilea is not unknown to me, although until a few minutes ago, I’d thought you a legend.”
“Well met, men, swordsman. These are Payna, Lombi and Ekun.” The three savage women stared at him with fierce eyes but did not acknowledge him in any other way. “And this is Jeyba.” The dwarf grinned and gave him a sloppy salute. Achilea looked back at Conan. “Once I was a queen. These are my queendom and my army now.”
“You are doing better than I,” Conan said. “I’ve not a single follower, and my purse is flat”
For the first time, she smiled, not broadly but discernibly. “Come back inside and join us, Cimmerian. The least I can do is make Indulio let you have some of his better ale.”
With a courtly gesture he had learned in Nemedia, Conan indicated that she should precede him.
Laughing, she went inside and the Cimmerian followed. Behind them, the woman named Ekun placed a foot against the face of the man she had slain and pried her ax loose. Jeyba the dwarf began to rifle efficiently through the purses and clothing of the three dead men.
Back inside, Achilea resumed her place on the bench before the fire and Conan found a stool and seated himself across from her so that their heads were at the same height. While one of the women went to get her drinking horn refitted, Achilea stretched her long, powerful legs to warm her bare feet before the flames. Her feet, Conan noted, were ••all, high-arched and delicately shaped.
The woman named Lombi returned with the brimming horn and Achilea took a long, thirsty drink.
Then, ceremoniously, she passed the horn to Conan. He took it in both hands and nodded slightly over the curved vessel, which he now realized was ancient, its silver mountings worked in curious designs. An ancient heirloom, he guessed, salvaged from the loss of her home and throne. Or else she had stolen it He up-faded the vessel and swallowed. It was superior ale, and the silver rim was still warm with the touch of her lips.
Serving women set a table between them and heaped it with food. As Achilea began to eat the dwarf returned and dropped a small heap of coins, rings and other ornaments onto the table. With one broad hand, Achilea separated a rough third of the mass and pushed it toward Conan.
“Your share,” she said around a mouthful of bread. “You slew one of them.”
He pushed it back, “It should have been my fight, not yours. Arpad sought to provoke me and I made him back down before his companions. His manhood was shamed and he looked for a way to redeem himself. He thought you would be easier to kill.”
“I fight no fights save my own, and the man insulted me.” She shoved the valuables back toward the Cimmerian. “Take it or you will offend me.” This time, Conan scooped up the Little heap of metal and dropped it into his belt pouch. The first of the roasted meats began to arrive.
“Share our dinner,” Achilea said, making it an order. Conan had eaten a full meal no more than hour before, but a man may always find room for another few bites, and an adventurer never knew where or when he would next eat. Therefore it behooved him never to pass up a chance to dine.
They said little while they ate. The warrior queen and her little retinue fed ravenously, for their day of hunting had sent them ranging for many miles on foot over rough terrain. The bones they tossed to the dogs that prowled the tavern looking for handouts. When the platters were cleared away, they sat back with their ale to talk. After sharing her horn, Achilea had called for a tankard for Conan. It was still the superior ale.
“You seem to be at loose ends, Cimmerian,” Achilea said. Is it with you as it is with everyone here?”
“Aye. Cursed little employment for mercenaries and naught save the block and the noose for bandits. Prospects are poor, and unlike lite others here, I do not see this place as a realistic refuge for long.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, wriggling her toes in the comfortable heat from the flames. “It seems a good place to rest and wait out the bad times.”
“Aye, for a few days, perhaps for a month or so. But things will get very bad here long before winter passes. I have seen it before, in other places like this: Rogues come trickling in, and before long, the place is jammed with men who know nothing save killing and theft. There is no law to trouble them here, but prices are high and soon most of them are destitute. Then they begin preying upon each other, and every man’s hand is raised against every other. The more desperate will begin to pillage the local peasants, who will disappear and then we will get very hungry, and there may still be no place to go.�
��
She nodded somberly.
“And it may get worse than that,” Conan continued. “When this town is full to bursting, it may occur to one of the neighboring kings to throw a siege around it and bag the lot. If they cooperate in this, they may enjoy a respite from banditry for years to come. This (own could never last out a siege from a real army. The walls are low and ruinous, few of the rogues here have the stomach for hard fighting, and supplies will be nonexistent.”
He took a long drink and stared gloomily into the fire. “Nay, I’ll not wait for that. I’ll abide here for a few days, no more than a month. If no good prospect turns up before then, I’ll make my way to someplace more promising, even if I have to cross a lot of hostile territory to do it.”
“I have always heard that you Cimmerians are a pessimistic lot, and it seems to be true. I feel that you are right, though. This is not a good place to stay for long. Well, something may turn up soon. Let us enjoy it until then.”
Conan nodded, but he kept his thoughts to himself: He would not leave Leng without this woman.
Two
The next day, the Cimmerian accompanied Achilea and her minions on their hunt. He borrowed a bow from the Hyrkanians, promising a share of the game should he bag any. After a few practice shots against a straw target, he was satisfied that he had the feel of the weapon and he joined Achilea’s party at the stables, where they were caring for their horses.
“So, now we shall see if you can shoot as well as you wield the sword, Cimmerian,” Achilea said, running a hand lovingly over the glossy flank of a bay gelding, “I use all weapons well,” Conan proclaimed, grinning.
“What are you smiling at, rogue?” she demanded.
“Arpad did not leave you unmarked,” he said, touching the side of her face. A great black-and-blue bruise spread from her jaw line almost to the cheekbone on the right side, where she had been caught by the flat of Arpad’s blade. The savage women bristled at the Cimmerian’s familiarity, but their queen only smiled ruefully.
‘I’ve been hurt worse, and I’d not trade it for the mark I put on him. Come, let’s hunt”
The Conan Compendium Page 497
