by Roland Green
The woman blushed. "Nothing that his hospitality can supply."
"I will not be long." No longer than it would take to don mail under his clothes and secrete a few daggers in unexpected places, at any rate.
"Mishrak lies in the Saddlemakers' Quarter," the woman said, as she led Conan out the gate. The Cimmerian was a head and more taller, but found the pace she set no child's play to match. Hillfolk blood in her, perhaps?
In the Coopers' Square Conan started to turn south. The woman planted herself by the fountain, ignoring a cartload of staves that all but ran her down.
"Captain, the Saddlemakers lie to the north."
"Anyone would think you were no stranger to Aghrapur."
"Anyone who thinks would know that a stranger can learn if she meets those willing to teach."
"Then teach me what you learned," Conan growled. The Saddlemakers' Quarter did in truth lie to the north. He'd hoped to lead the woman some distance by devious routes, where none could easily follow or lay ambushes.
If she would not follow where he led, though, there was nothing to do but follow where she led. Otherwise he'd earn her wrath, lose her guidance, fail Mishrak, and thereby earn a wrath more to be feared than any in Turan save perhaps that of King Yildiz.
Besides, any ambush was most likely to come within the rat's warren of the quarter itself. Conan trusted to his sword and mail to make that ambush a most unhappy affair for any who took part, beginning with the woman herself.
"One moment," the woman said. She lifted her headdress, drank from the fountain, then darted into the nearest alley.
Alleys and byways and reeking dark flights of stairs where Conan had to stoop were their road deeper and deeper into the quarter. Conan followed three paces behind and to the right, hand on the hilt of his sword. Eyes and ears searched for signs of danger, meeting only the din of fifty saddlemakers' shops hard at work. Turning leather and wood and metal into saddles made one din. Masters roaring at their apprentices made a second.
Another turn. Conan had a good view now of the woman's dagger. The pommel was a silver-washed iron apple, and the quillions were double, set at right angles to each other. He resolved to ask the woman to show him the dagger's use, if the laws and customs of steel ever allowed.
They came forty paces from the last turn when the attackers swarmed out of an alley to the left and a window to the right.
Conan counted six opponents as his sword leaped into his hand. One was the guard who'd fled the Red Falcon. Odds enough to make the best careful, unless the woman was better than she'd been that night
Right now she seemed struck witless by fear as the three from the alley closed.
At least she was no foe, if a poor friend. Conan cut down the odds a trifle by hamstringing the last man out of the window. The man dropped farther and harder than he'd planned, going to hands and knees. A Cimmerian boot in the belly lifted him like a dog, hurling him against a comrade. The second man was rising when a Cimmerian broadsword split his skull from crown to the bridge of his nose.
A scream danced off the stones. The guard reeled back, blood streaming from blinded eyes. The same blood dripped from the woman's dagger. Conan grinned as he realized the woman's craft. She'd feigned fear, to draw the three men close. There she had two blades against their three, one more agile than any of theirs.
Two more men darted from the alley. The woman had the wall to guard her left and two opponents at her front. The newcomers ran to take her from the right. Conan faced the last man from the window.
Taking his opponent's measure, Conan feinted high. He took the man's riposte on his mail, then followed the same line again. The second cut tore into the side of the man's neck. His half-severed head lolled on his shoulders. He reeled backwards into his comrades, drenching them in his blood.
They were men of stout nerve, casting the dying man aside without breaking stride. This took just long enough for Conan's sword to fall like an executioner's ax. The righthand man gaped as his swordarm dangled ruined and bloody. Conan freed his sword and gave ground with a backward leap that took him clean over the fallen men behind him.
He landed in a half-crouch. The cut aimed by an upright opponent whistled over his head. His own cut took the man's right leg off just below the knee. The man contrived one more desperate slash, then toppled.
With time at last to think of the woman, Conan saw she needed little thought and hardly more help. She'd thrust one opponent through the throat. He sat against the wall, fingers laced around his neck. As Conan watched, the fingers unlaced and the eyes rolled up in the pale face.
The woman no longer used her dagger as a weapon. Instead she'd made it into invisible, swift-moving armor, catching every cut on the quillions. Her opponent wore mail, so her own slashes had shredded his coat but not his flesh.
"Mine!" she shouted, as fierce as if Conan were another foe.
"Yours," Conan replied. That pride demanded more than a nod. So did those sharp, ready, deadly-swift blades.
The woman stepped back, freeing her dagger and her opponent's sword. Doubtless she expected an attack. Instead he turned and plunged into the alley. In a moment he was only the fading sound of pounding feet.
"Gods, woman! Why did you do that? You think he'd have done as much for you?"
"I suppose not. There's still time to remedy matters, if you choose."
"Chase a man through this maze when he may have been born here? Every time you open your mouth, more of your wits seem to fly out of it!"
"If you're afraid—" She blanched at Conan's face, as she had not at the ambush. "Forgive me. Truly. I merely thought to give him an honorable end, not butcher him like a hog." *
"Shake off your whims about honor, woman, if you want to live long in Turan. Mishrak will tell you that, if you won't listen to me."
"He did. But—Master Barathres taught me well. Gratitude to him, old habit—they will make me think of honor when perhaps I should not." For the first time a smile lit her whole face. "You are not so free of honor yourself. Else why did you take my part at the Red Falcon?"
"I hate to have a quiet night's drinking spoiled. Besides, I took your part only after I saw that Moti was too afraid of that lordling's kin to lift a finger for you. That's the first time I had to brawl at the Red Falcon. If it isn't the last, Moti will pay more than he did that night!"
"What did he pay, if you think it fit to tell me?"
No woman likes to hear of a man's exploits in bedding others. Learning that lesson had nearly cost Conan his manhood. "He paid dearly enough, but I'd rather tell you when we've put a few streets between us and our late friends. The man you let flee may be summoning help."
"I pray not."
"Pray all you wish, but the sooner Mishrak's door closes behind us, the better."
The woman nodded, grimaced at the nicks in her dagger, then sheathed it. Conan knelt, to examine the bodies, frowning as he recognized another. The man whose leg he'd slashed off was a soldier in Captain Itzhak's company. He'd seen the man at the Red Falcon once or twice, gambling and losing. Had he hired out his sword to pay his debts, or did his secret lie deeper than that?
Well, the woman was leading him to the man in all Turan most likely to know, if least likely to tell. She was already turning down the alley, sword in hand. Conan followed, considering that this was twice he'd fought shoulder to shoulder with the woman without knowing her name.
Three
"WHO SEEKS ENTRANCE to this House?" said a soft voice. It seemed to come from the air above the great iron gate in the whitewashed stone wall.
"Captain Conan and she who was sent for him," the woman replied.
They waited, while the owner of that voice studied them. At last Conan heard a series of clangs like a blacksmith at work, then a faint scrape of metal on metal as the gate slid open.
"You may enter this house," came the voice again.
Entry was through a gateway more deserving of the name of tunnel. The walls of Mishrak's house wer
e two men thick and solid stone every finger of the way. Conan counted four arrow slits and two dropholes in the walls and ceiling. At the far end lay another gate, this one of Vendhyan teak, lavishly carved with dragons and tigers in the Khitan style.
Beyond the second gate they entered a guardroom. Two of the guards were black, one of Vanaheim, and the last clearly a native of Shem. None but the Shemite was as small as Conan, and that one wore enough knives to let out the blood of six men before his own flowed.
The four exchanged looks, then elaborate gestures. Conan judged them all to be mutes. At last one of the blacks nodded and pointed to a door in the far wall, plated in mirror-bright silver. It swung open, as if the black had cast a spell on it.
A distaste for sorcery lay deep within all Cimmerians, and Conan was no exception. Moreover, his experience with the breed of magic-wielders had taught him that magic ate at a man's honor and judgment faster than gold. Most of that breed he'd met had ended in seeking to rule all who would obey them and ruin all who would not. Being little inclined to be ruled or ruined at another's whims, Conan could hardly be other than a foe of such wizards.
Reason told him that if Mishrak had magic at his command, he would hardly need the guards. The lord of spies clearly had other resources, beginning with a house built like a fortress.
How like a fortress, Conan began to learn as he and the woman penetrated deeper into it. Their route seemed to have as many turns and windings as the Saddlemakers' Quarter. At every turn was some display of splendor—Aquilonian tapestries, Vendhyan statues of dancing gods, rich ebony carvings of asps. Conan's danger-sharpened senses picked out spy holes in the tapestries, the sharpened daggers held ready in the hands of the gods, the live asps nesting among the carved ones.
From time to time they passed iron-bound doors set in deep recesses. Conan pitied any man foolish enough to think they offered a safer way to the heart of Mishrak's kingdom. They would lead any stranger nowhere except to death—and probably not a quick one.
At last the way grew straight. No longer was the floor alone tiled. Walls and ceiling shone with gilded mosaic work or dripped with tapestries done in cloth of silver and the finest silk. They ended in another guardroom, with an open arch beyond it and the sounds of splashing water and a flute.
"Who conies?" demanded the chief guard.
This room held six instead of four, one another Shemite and the rest with an Iranistani cast to their features. Neither mutes nor giants, the six all wore silvered mail and helmets and the plainest and most-used swords Conan had seen in Turan.
"Captain Conan of the King's mercenaries and a lady sent to bring him to Mishrak," Conan said before the woman could speak. She started.
"I am no mute, like our friends at the first gate," Conan went on. "I am a Cimmerian and a soldier, and both have a certain quaint custom. When we have twice fought side by side with someone and they owe us their lives, we enjoy knowing their names. I know not what barbarous land you call home, but—"
The woman's nostrils flared and she had the grace to flush. "I am Raihna of the Stone Hill in the Marches of Bossonia. I serve the Mistress Illyana."
Which, Conan reflected, answered his question without telling him much.
He set his wits to devising a new question. Before he found words, a voice like a bull's bellow filled the room.
"Come and let us be about our business. We do not have the whole day!"
Conan took Raihna firmly by the arm and led the way into Mishrak's innermost refuge.
From the splendor of the way in, Conan expected more of the same beyond the arch. Instead everything was bare, whitewashed stone walls and ceiling. Only on the floor did rich Iranistani carpets and dyed Hyrkanian fleeces offer softness to both the eye and the foot. On the floor—and around the pool in the middle of the room.
Five women and a man sat on benches around the pool. Four of the women were a pleasure to any man's eye, the more so as they wore only sandals, gilded loinguards, and silver collars set with topazes. It took nothing from Conan's pleasure in the women to detect small daggers hidden in the sandals and loinguards. He wondered what weapon might lurk in the collars. Like much else in Mishrak's house, the women were both a delight to the senses and a menace to unsuspecting enemies.
The fifth woman had the air of a guest rather than a guard. She wore a white robe, held a wine cup, and seemed older than the others.
Before Conan saw more, the bull's bellow came again. "Well, Captain Conan? Will you be once more a thief, and of women this time?"
The bellow came from the man on the bench. Conan doubted that he could rise from it unaided; below the knees his legs were shrunken nightmares, seamed and ravaged with scars. Above the waist, he was as thick as the mast of a galley, with arms like tree-roots. The hair of arms and chest was gray shot with white. So were the few strands of beard and hair that escaped the black leather mask covering Mishrak from crown to chin.
Conan grinned. "Keeping stolen gold is hard enough. Keeping what has legs to run with, if it likes not your company or your manner in bed… Do I look so great a fool?"
"You've been gaping about you like one, I must say."
"Call it gaping if you will, Lord Mishrak. I call it admiring fine work. I know now why you have so many enemies, yet live to serve King Yildiz so well."
"Oh? And what magic do I have to perform this miracle?"
"It's neither magic nor miracle. It's making ready to kill your enemies faster than their courage can endure. Most men can be brave if they have some hope of life or victory. Losing all hope of either would turn most into cowards."
"Save yourself, no doubt, Cimmerian?"
"I have not tested the defenses of your house, Mishrak. Nor do I have any cause to do so. I am not yet your enemy, and I doubt you plan to make me so. Killing me here might do injury to your rugs and ladies."
"So it would. Yet I would suggest that you learn why I have summoned you, before you call me friend."
"It will be a rare pleasure to be told something, for once," Conan said.
"I predict the pleasure will be brief," Mishrak said, in a tone that told of a grim smile under the mask. "Yet your life might be even more so, if you do not accept what I offer you."
"No man lives as long as he wants to," Conan said. "That's the way of the world, just as no man can have every woman he desires," he added, grinning at Raihna. She flushed again. "What is going to shorten my days this time?"
"Lord Houma. Ah, I see I have finally driven a dart deep enough in that thick Cimmerian skull to gain your attention."
Conan wasted no breath denying it. "I understand he's rather fonder of his son than the young witling deserves. You should understand that Raihna and I met his first band of hired swords on our way here. Only one of them left alive, and he only because he fled." Conan would have sworn Raihna threw him a grateful look for not mentioning her mistake.
"As you say, they were the first band sent against you. They will not be the last. Your eye is keen, but can it stay open forever? Who will guard your back when you sleep?"
Almost imperceptibly, Raihna shook her head. Conan shrugged. "I could take leave for a time. Or are you going to tell me that Lord Houma is one of those men with short tempers and long memories? Such have sought my life before, with what success you can see."
"You could not be away from Aghrapur long enough to foil Lord Houma without breaking your oath of service. Are you ready to give up your captaincy?"
"Out of fear of Houma? Lord Mishrak, you can make your offer or not, as you choose. Do not insult me in the bargain."
"I would insult you more by implying that you are too stupid to be afraid. Houma has not the strength he once had, but he is still more than a match for you."
Conan did not doubt the first part of that statement. Houma had owed some of his former strength to his friendship with the Cult of Doom. Conan himself had cast the Cult down to utter and final destruction the best part of two years ago.
As for the
rest—
"Granting that Houma might be my match, how would you change that?"
"If you will leave Aghrapur on—a task—for me, I will find ways to change Lord Houma's mind. The task. should not take you more than a month. By then you can return to Aghrapur and sleep in peace."
"And this task?"
"In a moment. While you are traveling, I will also protect those you leave behind, who might also feel Houma's vengeance. I do not imagine that you care much what happens to Sergeant Motilal, but—would you see Pyla's face turned into something like my legs?"
Conan cursed himself for a witling. Houma was clearly the kind of coward who would hurt a foe however he could, whether honorably or not. He should not have forgotten the women.
"I would not like that at all," Conan said, then grinned at the look in Raihna's eyes. So let the swordwench be jealous! He owed Pyla and her friends more than he owed Raihna of Bossonia! "If you can protect them, it would indeed make your offer worth hearing."
"Although," Conan added more calmly than he felt, "I imagine you have plans for Lord Houma whether I'm part of mem or not. You might be keeping him too busy to worry about taverns and their girls anyway. He has more in hand than letting his son misbehave, doesn't he?"
In the silence that followed, Conan clearly heard the snik of a crossbow being cocked. He laughed. "Best tell that archer to cock his bow while people are still talking. When everyone's gaping like dead fish, it's too easy to hear—"
The white-robed woman broke the silence with warm if high-pitched laughter. "Mishrak, I told you several times. I have heard Raihna speak of this man and I have studied his aura. He is not one to be led by the nose, or by any other part of his body. Lead him by his sense of honor, and he will go where you will. Otherwise do not waste your breath."
A choking noise crept from under the leather hood. Conan suspected that if Mishrak could have strangled anyone, he would have started with Conan and gone on to the woman. Beside Conan, Raihna was pressing her face into a pillar to hide her blush and what looked remarkably like laughter.