"Of course, Conan. It is with stupid sentries as it is with willing women”there are usually enough to go around."
Conan and Farad slipped through the hole they'd made in the sentry line almost all the way to the main camp. Unfortunately, by the time they were close enough to recognize tribal colors, the storm was blowing so thickly that their sand-scoured eyes could barely tell rocks from huddled humans.
There were also too many of those huddled humans to make it safe to snatch a prisoner. Even the scrape of dagger on leather sheath might be enough to alert five of the prisoner's comrades and bring on a battle royal at the worst possible moment.
Nothing would come of that except their deaths, leaving the Afghulis without leadership. Conan did not trust even Khezal enough to believe his comrades would then escape harm.
They crept in a wide half-circle around the dead sentry. His rock shelter had almost vanished in the brown murk as the wind shifted and more of the storm blew into the valley. Conan thought he saw human figures moving around the rock, but could not be sure.
He hoped they were at least human if they were there at all. A sandstorm in unknown country was something to make a man believe in beings from the netherworld breaking loose and wandering about, seeking to work ill.
Not long afterwards, Conan knew there had been someone watching from the dead sentry's post”and that the watcher had seen him and Farad.
Someone was following them.
It was hard to be certain at first, and no one with eyes or ears less keen than the Cimmerian's could have learned of the pursuer at all.
Even deeper within the valley, the sand and dust were swirling thicker, and the wind howled like the mourning cries of demons.
But Conan's ears picked out the clang of steel on stone, the rattle of dislodged rocks, and once, the sound of breathing. Twice he went to ground and saw something moving, as the one behind failed to do the same in time to escape Conan's sharp eye.
At last Conan motioned to Farad, and whispered in the Afghuli's ear that their luck might be changing. They had snatched no prisoner from the enemy's ranks, but perhaps one might be about to crawl right into their arms.
"Your arms, I suppose," Farad said.
"One of us had best be free to run, if this goes amiss," Conan said.
"You need not whip a willing mule," Farad said sourly. "Good hunting, my chief." He crawled left as Conan slipped off to the right and went to ground.
Shrewdly Farad ceased to make much effort to conceal himself. This brought the pursuit in turn out of hiding”three robed men, none of them wearing any tribal markings Conan could recognize. The smallest of the three seemed to be the leader, although the others seemed ready to argue with their orders. At last all three seemed of one mind, and set off in a stalking pursuit of Farad.
This brought the leftmost man so close to Conan that he could have reached out and touched him. This was precisely what he did, with a fist descending like a club on the back of the man's neck. He jerked forward and his chin slammed into rock hard enough to stun him.
Conan quickly bound the man's hands with strips of his garments, then made sure that he was breathing. Two score paces of crawling brought him to the rear of the second man, the small one who led.
It also brought him into view of the third man on the right, just as a flurry of wind left clear air between them. The man's wordless cry gave the alarm, but he then made a fatal mistake by trying to roll over and unsling his bow.
That gave Conan time to close with the smallest man and seize him. The man struck at Conan with a dagger that seemed to be his sole weapon but was sharp enough to add to the Cimmerian's collection of wounds. He also kicked and screeched in a high-pitched voice that made Conan think he might have captured a eunuch or a youth.
None of this kept Conan from taking a firm grip on his captive. Farad, meanwhile, was disposing of the archer. The Afghuli was so determined on a silent kill that he gave the man enough time to have raised the alarm. Fortunately the sight of Farad looming over him seemed to strike the man mute. He tried to change weapons from bow to tulwar, and in the middle of the change Farad's sandal sank into the pit of his stomach.
Both weapons fell to the sand and the man fell on top of them.
Farad looked down at his victim. "Do we need him?"
"No," Conan said, as he finished binding and gagging his own captive.
"I doubt you'll even be needing to bind him. It will be evening before he can draw a painless breath again."
Conan's captive was in better fettle. While he could neither speak nor struggle, so thoroughly was he gagged and bound, his large kohl-rimmed eyes glared eloquently.
"Game little cockerel, this one," Farad said, prodding the man in the ribs. "And look at the quality of the robe and the belt. A chief's son, I'd wager."
Conan was looking at the robe and the belt, but he was also looking at what seemed to be under them. He knelt and ran a hand across the captive's shoulders, then down across one shoulder blade to the chest.
"Ha!" the Cimmerian said. "You'd lose that wager."
"Eh?" Farad said, bemused at his chief's behavior.
"It's a chief's daughter."
"Eh," Farad said again, this time with an unmistakable leer.
Conan shook his head. "She's a good hostage as long as she's unharmed and not a moment longer. A hostage is worth ten women, where we are."
"Tell that to men who haven't seen a woman for months," Farad said.
"I've little taste for fighting the Greencloaks over this one."
The woman did not seem to understand the Afghuli speech the two men were using, but the tones carried enough meaning. Her eyes were very wide, and her breath came quick.
Conan hoisted her over one massive shoulder and patted her lightly on the rump. "Don't worry, lass," he said, in Turanian. "You were game enough to earn a warrior's treatment besides being a good hostage.
Anyone who comes to you will do it over my dead body."
"I stand by my chief with my blood and my steel."
Farad said. Although he spoke in Afghuli, the woman caught his tone and seemed to relax.
Then Conan stepped out, in a long ground-eating hillman's stride, with Farad guarding the rear. By the time they heard someone raising the alarm, they were nearly back to their own camp.
The name of the woman”barely that, for she admitted to no more than nineteen summers and looked younger”was Bethina. She was sister to Doiran, heir to the chieftainship of the Ekinari and blood-brother to the chief of the Girumgi. She was riding with a mixed band of Girumgi and Ekinari to bring safely home those Girumgi who had escaped the battle in the South.
All this she told willingly after they reached the camp”and after Conan and Farad saved her life.
They brought her in, unbound her feet, and removed her gag. Before they could do more, a man sprang from the dust, knife upraised to stab.
Conan replied with a foot upraised in the man's path. He stumbled over the tree-thick leg and went sprawling. Farad's foot came down on his wrist; he squealed and the knife fell from limp fingers.
Farad snatched up the dagger, freed the girl's hands, and gave her the blade. Conan nodded.
"Just be careful who you use it on, girl," he said. "I've not got so much blood that I can afford to lose it to friends."
She actually grinned, then held up the blade in a way that showed experience in fighting with steel.
She was just in time. A semicircle of Greencloaks had gathered around them. Conan and Farad shifted, so that they as well as the girl had their backs to a stout rock. Conan looked upward, saw more Greencloaks climbing atop the rock to attack from above, and decided that he would be leaving Turan with his honor intact but his hide somewhat otherwise.
"Hold!"
Khezal had a surprisingly robust voice for one of his modest stature and lean build. It rose above the cry of the wind and halted the Greencloaks above and below where they stood.
"Now, what is this
brawling?" Khezal said, stepping forward.
He listened while both sides told their tale. At least he had not lost authority over his men. Conan had no illusions what would have happened otherwise.
"The Greencloaks do not harm another's prisoner," he said at last.
"Milgun, ask Captain Conan's pardon."
"Captain”?" the man practically spat.
"Milgun," Khezal said. He did not need to say more, let alone draw steel. His eyes finished the work of his voice.
Milgun made a clumsy obeisance. "Your pardon, Conan," he said.
"Now, Conan," Khezal said. "Milgun lost a brother to the Girumgi last year. Anyone who rides with them is no friend to him."
"I”not enemy to Greencloaks," Bethina said haltingly.
"Your brother rides with the Girumgi and you (obscenity) your brother!"
someone shouted.
The fragile peace nearly dissolved then and there. Bethina bared her teeth, reminding Conan of a Cimmerian wildcat defending her cubs.
Conan was sorry if it embarrassed Khezal, but he was resolved to feed steel to the next man who shouted.
All saw that resolve on the Cimmerian's grim countenance and held their peace.
"Bethina," Khezal said, in a tribal dialect that Conan barely understood. "You say you are not an enemy to the Greencloaks. Yet your brother does ride with the Girumgi, who have certainly shed our blood, and not long since.
"Tell us more."
"I”have not”not the right words," Bethina stammered.
"I will put your words into the speech of my people," Khezal said.
"And I will have the first man who brawls," Conan said.
The silence of the camp was broken only by the wind, until Bethina began to speak.
-
Twelve
Bethina's brother Doiran was deeper in intrigues than had been suspected, or so it seemed from her story. He had at first sworn blood-brotherhood to the chief of the Girumgi to assure his succession among the Ekinari, if his father died prematurely.
Old Irigas did not die prematurely. Indeed, he had not yet died at all.
But he was all but bedridden, and seldom spoke of anything save long-dead wives and long-ago battles.
"He will die in peace," Bethina said through Khezal, "but his legacy to his people is a son who will lead them to war."
The Girumgi were always ready to try conclusions with Turan, and listening to their hotheaded younger warriors had done no good work on Doiran's judgment. However, he was too shrewd to trust only to one set of allies.
Khoraja had a long rivalry with Turan, if the fox could be said to have a rivalry with the elephant. Any time in the last century, if Turan had wished to turn Khoraja into a satrapy or even a desert, it could have done so. The price would have been great, in blood and treasure and also in new enemies for Turan, but it could have been done.
The ironhanded young Yezdigerd seemed more likely than his sire to attempt the overthrow of Khoraja, so the Khorajans were looking to their defenses. They were intriguing with the desert tribes, and they had found ready ears (and open palms) among Doiran and his followers in the ranks of the Ekinari.
It was then that Bethina spoke for herself.
"Many Ekinari”friends to Turan. Or not friends” honest men. Think Khoraja”use us like”like toys. I, Bethina”for these I speak."
No one seemed ready to believe than any desert tribesmen could be true friends to anyone, let alone Turan. But it was possible to believe that they did not care to be cat's paws for Khoraja. The shrewdness, if not the honesty, of the tribesmen had been a proverb in Turan for nearly as long as the empire had borne that name.
"The tribesmen aren't fools," Milgun admitted. "The Ekinari least of all. Lady, maybe I did not think."
As Milgun was widely believed incapable of chewing nuts and walking at the same time, this drew laughter. But it was the healthy kind, and presently the men dispersed, to look to their mounts and gear, so as to be ready to ride out when the storm abated.
At last Bethina, Farad, Khezal, and Conan were alone. Khezal kept looking back down the valley, as if expecting a solid wall of furious warriors to sprout from the sand at any moment.
"Best we be ready to fight or flee, if the lady's friends come for her," he said.
"Oh, I do not think that will happen, or at least not soon enough to fear," Bethina said. Suddenly she spoke flawless Turanian, with the tones of a noblewoman.
The three men looked at the woman as if she had just grown a long purple tail. Then they looked at one another.
Bethina laughed. "In truth, the men with me”and I am grateful that they were not slain”were there to help me be taken captive. When they are found, they will show where I fell down into a crevice. I will be thought dead, at least for long enough that we may ride north safely."
Conan nodded. It seemed the politest thing to do. It also occurred to him that Bethina's allegiance was even more of a gift than it had seemed. If he remembered correctly, the Ekinari's lands were well to the north”toward the Kezankian Mountains, if not actually bordering on their foothills.
They might know more than most about the mysteries of those mountains.
Bethina nodded graciously, as the heiress of some great house might have nodded to three upper servants. "I look forward to riding with you gentlemen, for I see in you wisdom and strength."
Then she vanished into the murk, so swiftly and silently that for a moment Conan wondered if she was a spirit. But then he saw footprints, even now filling with windblown sand, and heard laughter like the tinkling of temple bells from behind a rock.
The three men looked at one another again, and all spoke a single word, each in his native tongue.
"Women!"
They rode out as soon as the sandstorm died enough to allow traveling, but before there was too little wind to cover their tracks and too little sand in the air to hide them. They put several hours of desert between them and the Girumgi, then found a patch of rough, scrub-grown ground and went to earth like so many foxes.
As daylight drained from the sky and a spangling of stars took its place, they mounted and were once more on the move.
Riding by night and resting up by day, it took them five days to reach Ekinari lands. Or at least these were lands where one was more likely to encounter riders of the Ekinari than those of any other tribe.
The Ekinari were hardly a peaceful people”in the desert as in Afghulistan, no lover of peace at any price lived long enough to breed sons. But as Bethina pointed out, they had more good wells and safe places for their women and children than many tribes.
"Our warriors do not need to ride across every patch of ground and cleanse it of enemies, that the tribe may live," Bethina said. "We can look beyond today's blood-feuds. That is why Doiran will not prevail in the end."
"That might be so, if he stood or fell by what the Ekinari will do for him," Conan pointed out. "With the warriors and the gold of the Girumgi behind him, he will think that he can do as he pleases. He may even be right."
"That is not the brother I knew," Bethina replied. "You are saying that he is ready to make slaves of his own people, if he can be their master under the Girumgi?"
"Good men have done worse things when ambition fuddles their wits,"
Conan said sharply. "Besides, it's not hard to find tribesmen to follow you if you say you seek to hurt Turan. Turan has not been just in its dealings with the desert folk, and they have long memories for grievances."
Bethina gave Conan a radiant smile, and Khezal gave him a sour look.
Farad carefully looked at the desert, but the Cimmerian could see a smile curving the man's lips under his beard.
Under the stars, they rode toward the Kezankian Mountains.
The Kezankian Mountains did not tower as high as the Ibars range in Turan, let alone the Himelias in northern Vendhya. Those were mountains that seemed fit to hold up the very sky, or pierce it and thrust their snow-clad peaks into the abyss beyond.
However, from the direction Conan and his companions approached them, the Kezankians leaped almost straight from the desert. Eagles nesting halfway up the mountain faces looked as tiny as doves, even to the Cimmerian's keen eyes. Birds flying any higher were as invisible as if they had been magicked.
Meanwhile, the desert wind itself grew cooler, and its flutings and pipings around the rocks set more than one man's teeth on edge.
"It's as if the wind itself knows this is a place to avoid," Farad said.
"Ha," Conan said. "I thought you would be feeling more at home than you have since we
"Fled Afghulistan?" Farad said. His grin showed all his teeth, but there was no mirth in his black eyes. Then he shook his head.
"I know what my homeland's mountains may hold
"Bandits, sheep, and lice," Bethina said. Farad stared at her, then laughed loud enough to raise echoes.
"Not so wrong, lady," Farad said. "But even the lice are”I won't call them friends, but at least no strangers to a man. Everyone is a stranger to these mountains, and they look like the sort who treat any stranger as an enemy."
Looking up at the gray walls before them and listening once more to the wind, Conan could not find it in his heart to disagree.
They found the remains of the camp the next morning, soon after they themselves had made camp for the day. Out hunting with Farad, Conan was the first to see the patch of soot in the middle of the trampled ground.
While Farad kept watch, the Cimmerian squatted by the trampled ground and studied it. He sifted soil between his fingers, sniffed the ashes, and finally rose.
"You look like a hound seeking a scent," Farad said.
"Close enough," the Cimmerian replied. "Now let's be finding their midden-pit. I'd wager this camp held at least forty men, tribesmen and others. Something they left in the pit has to tell us more about who they are."
"If we can find it and dig it up," Farad said.
"Oh, I think we can find it. As for digging it up, I'll do it myself if there's no other way."
"I can spare you that, my chief."
As it happened, Khezal's orders spared both Conan and Farad the dirty chore. A gang of Greencloaks set briskly to work with knives, hands, and the odd spade. (Cavalry were not much for building field-works or carrying digging tools with them.) The rubbish they unearthed told Khezal and Conan much the same.
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