by Roland Green
When a man thus found himself worth more dead than alive in a certain land, it was only common prudence for him to seek the greener pastures of other lands.
The quickest way out of Ophir led to the Tybor and across it to Aquilonia. The mightiest of the Hyborian kingdoms was a well-ordered land, with an army that could swallow all the baronial bands of Ophir with the ease of a frog snatching a dragonfly on the wing. No Ophirean in his right senses would pursue Conan there, and no Ophirean witling would last long against Numedides’s men.
Of course, a land with too much peace might mean lean pickings for a warrior, but Conan had yet to find any such land. Even among the merchant houses of Argos there had been intrigues aplenty to bring his sword out of its scabbard and gold into his purse. It seemed unlikely that in so wealthy a land as Aquilonia, there would be no opportunity for a keen eye and a swift blade; the more so, in as much as there were tales that Numedides’s grip was slacking. The pleasures of ruling had long meant more to him than the responsibilities, and such took its toll. When the royal lion grew weak, the lords and cities often turned into wolves.
Conan had seen this in a dozen lands and profited from it in most. Aquilonia it would be—even if at first he had to turn an honest coin by taking up his father’s trade of smithing!
First, however, there was the matter of crossing the Tybor River without anyone on either side seeing him. This meant the use of a boat. Cimmerian strength and endurance would let him swim, but rivers rusted the best weapons, and building or navigating a raft would take too long.
Boats, however, did not grow on trees along the Tybor like oranges in a noble’s garden in Zamboula. From where Conan stood, the bank was bare of boats and nearly bare of signs of human habitation.
Conan slipped from his hiding place and began casting along the bank, like a lion prowling for a roebuck on the plains of Stygia. Only the most alert observer could have seen or heard him more than five paces away—and the Cimmerian could close that distance before most men could draw a weapon.
Clouds veiled the stars and dimmed the moon, but Conan also had the clear night-sight as well as the stalking skill of a great cat. The few times the moon silvered a path across the Tybor, he found the nearest cover and watched for signs of pursuit.
He expected none. A man could empty a jug of good wine in the time it would take to reach the nearest village. Its folk would hardly be abroad tonight. As for those seeking the blood price for Conan, the last band of those whom he had encountered was feeding the ravens two days’ travel to the south. By the time anyone found them, he would be safe in Aquilonia.
The third time the moon came out, Conan thought he saw something black jutting from the bank and not shaped like a fallen tree. The fourth time he was closer and recognized a boat. A crude one, hollowed from a log, but it had paddles and a carved ornamental stern. It also had two guards.
Conan moved within striking distance. He needed no further aid from the moon to see that the men were armed and wore leather cuirasses and rusty Nemedian-style open-faced helmets. Not Ophirean soldiers, or even lords’ levies. Likely as not, they were men about some business even less lawful than the Cimmerian’s.
As Conan crouched in the shadows, seeking to overhear the men above the chuckle and sigh of the water, a light blinked thrice from the far bank. One of the men raised a dark lantern, aimed the open side toward shore, and manipulated the rattling shutter.
A signal and a reply. Clearly the far bank held the men's friends. Conan would find no warm welcome from the stolen boat. He moved forward cautiously, in search of a better view.
It was then that he saw the ship.
She was a fair-sized vessel, the Tybor being deep enough for ocean-going ships at least as far as Shamar, two days upstream. With sails spread on both masts, she was barely making steerage way.
River pirates.
Conan would have wagered a sack of silver that these men were nothing else. The oncoming ship was their intended prey. The two men were most likely scouts intended to sight the ship if she took a course close along the Ophirean shore.
The hunters had just become the hunted.
Conan waited until the two men were close together and staring out at the river. No one, it seemed, had ever taught them that even when all seems quiet, sentries should not stand too close together.
The first man heard the Cimmerian just in time to turn halfway around before Conan struck. Conan shifted the aim of his blow from the back to the belly, so the man only doubled up and collapsed, instead of having his spine broken.
The other had time to draw a short sword before Conan’s second punch crashed into his jaw. The sword flew from the man’s hand and the man himself flew backward off the bank into the river. The current and the weight of his armour dragged him out of sight in a moment.
Conan knelt to search the first man for valuables or weapons. Then the fellow followed his companion into the water. The Cimmerian climbed into the boat.
It had four paddles and no steering oar, but Conan was as at home on or in the water as on land. This had not always been so, Cimmeria being landlocked, but the years of wandering had changed him. Much of his seamanship Conan had learned at the hands of a lady named Bêlit, now only ashes drifting on the currents of the Western Sea but still holding a warm place in the Cimmerian’s memory.
Conan thrust the past from his mind, slashed the rope holding the canoe to the bank, and thrust hard with the paddle.
Conan’s first thought had been to steer straight for the ship to warn her crew. Then he considered that an armed stranger paddling out of the night might be taken for one of the pirates and so be sprouting arrows before he could prove otherwise.
That was if the ship’s crew had much fight in them at all. If they did not, it would be best to give them a wide berth—and meet the pirates straightforwardly.
The paddle blades’ angle changed; the canoe swung about and headed for the point on the opposite bank from which Conan had seen the signal light. It was a moderately safe wager that the remaining pirates set out from there.
When Conan finally sighted them, the pirates were within easy bowshot and the moon was veiled once again. Conan counted four or five canoes, with as many men paddling in each one. He crouched low, to give the appearance of one of the men on the bank, both of whom had been a head shorter than the Cimmerian.
But his weapons were ready and every sense at its keenest. Now, if those sons of mangy she-asses could be just a trifle slow with the bows they must have—
Someone raised an arm, signalling from the leading canoe.
Conan raised his own right arm in a brief reply, entirely to buy time.
The pirate started waving his arm frantically. Conan dug his paddle into the water. The pirate chief clearly suspected that something was amiss but did not dare a shout and alert the oncoming ship. This might give Conan just a trifle more time.
Arrows flew before he rammed the chief’s canoe amidships, but in the dark, archers shooting in haste hit only the river. A moment later the bow of Conan’s canoe drove in among the paddles of the chiefs craft. A man cursed as a flying paddle broke his arm—then gasped as one of his own comrades silenced him with an arm around the throat.
This brawl did little to achieve silence. Conan rose to his feet with a thundering Black Coast war cry, then leaped from his canoe with a Cimmerian curse on his lips. His own canoe overturned and his plunging weight drove the pirate canoe down until water slopped over the gunwale.
Then Conan was among the pirates, wielding a dagger and a stout club taken from the pirate on shore.
He would save his broadsword for when he had room enough to use it, hard to come by in a canoe.
Dagger and club were enough to kill two men in the space of three breaths and drive two others overboard. This left Conan facing the pirate chief, and with room to draw his sword—except that another flight of arrows hissed by as the Cimmerian drew.
He needed to be close so that the arch
ers in the other canoes would fear to slaughter their chief along with the enemy sprung out of the night. Conan gripped the gunwale of the canoe and lashed out with both feet. He caught the pirate chief in one knee. The man’s scream drowned out the crunch of bone.
The Cimmerian leaped atop the man and grappled him barehanded. The chief had the courage to draw a dagger, but Conan hammered his wrist against a thwart until once again bone shattered. The chief bared his teeth, startlingly white in a hairy, filthy face, and tried to bite the Cimmerian. Conan slammed the man’s head hard against the bottom of the canoe once, then a second time for good measure, and the chief went limp.
The next moment, Conan flung himself over the side, a heartbeat ahead of more arrows, most of which plummeted straight into the canoe, except for a few that fell far to the side. A wild gurgling scream accounted for one of the swimming pirates who would swim no more.
Conan thrust club and dagger into his belt and dove deep, under the canoe now crewed only by the dead. When he rose again, the ship loomed higher than before, and lanterns glowed on her deck where darkness had once ruled.
The Cimmerian was within arm’s length of another canoe-load of pirates who seemed so intent on their archery that they were ignoring both the ship and his presence.
They paid dearly for that error. Conan surged out of the water, gripped the canoe’s side with both hands, and flung himself backward. The canoe capsized, bodies splashed into the water to the left and right of the attacker, and another heave brought the canoe back to an even keel.
One pirate had not gone over the side. He crouched, facing Conan with a long dagger in one hand and a quiver slung across his back. Conan snatched up the handiest weapon, the pirate’s fallen bow, and parried the first thrust of the dagger with the stout wood. That gave him time to draw his own club, a trifle longer than the dagger.
The man twisted aside from the first blow and thrust at Conan again. The second swing of the club broke the man’s right shoulder, but he was stout-hearted enough to shift the dagger to his left hand. Then he screamed, as the Cimmerian lifted him with both hands and hurled him into a third canoe. The pirate crew toppled in every direction, two of them going overboard as their canoe’s suddenly wandering course took it within reach of Conan.
This time Conan did not need to leap. His weapons could reach far enough. He flung the club, taking a pirate in the temple. Helmet cracked, skull shattered, and the man toppled limply over the side. The Cimmerian gripped the bow of the other canoe with his free hand and heaved.
Conan’s canoe nearly sank as the bow of the other canoe leaped out of the water. The remaining men in it reeled, one unfortunate enough to land within reach of Conan’s sword. The Cimmerian dropped the canoe, sending another man overboard, and slashed two-handed at the nearest prey.
The sword was the best Nemedian work, fit to kill at a stroke even one-handed when properly wielded. With both the Cimmerian’s stout-thewed arms driving it, the blade sheared through the man’s shoulder blade, rib cage, and belly, to jar against his hipbone. He was dead before he struck the river, and the last man in the canoe hurled himself overboard with a howl of stark terror.
Conan was also in the river a moment later. A flight of arrows hissed through the air where he had been, save for one that scored his ribs. He had taken worse hurts from enthusiastic bedmates, and he knew of nothing in the Tybor to be drawn by the scent of blood.
He heard a second flight of arrows hiss into the water as he dove deep. When he broke into the air again, he remained low, his nostrils just above the water. The ship was looming closer still, her decks now blazing with lanterns like a town square at festival time. She was also now under sweeps as well as sail, four on either side.
The men aboard must have thought to outspeed their foes rather than outfight them. Well enough, save that their torch-dazzled eyes had missed something the Cimmerian saw clearly from his vantage on the dark river.
A long, low canoe was creeping in from the port quarter of the ship. Conan judged it to be carrying at least ten men, enough to clear the ship’s decks easily if most of her crew was below at the sweeps.
The Cimmerian had done all he could do as a lone wolf in the river. It was time to fight among allies with a deck underfoot. He judged distance carefully, then dove again.
When he rose a second time, one of the sweeps was within arm’s reach. He gripped the blade with both hands and hauled himself on to the shaft. Hand over hand he climbed the shaft of the sweep, until he could reach out and find a grip on the ship’s side.
The timbers were weed-slimed and splintery, but the Cimmerian’s grip was strong. Moreover, finding handholds on a ship’s side was child’s play to Conan even before he sailed with Bêlit—to Conan or any other man who grew up climbing the cliffs of Cimmeria.
As Conan climbed, archers in the large canoe saw him. Three arrows thunked into the wood around him, a fourth grazed his shoulder, a wound even more trivial than the mark on his hip. He gripped the railing, vaulted over it, and crouched on the deck as the next arrows whistled by.
“Ahoy!” came a shout from aft. “Who in the name of Erlik’s chamberpot are you?”
Conan remained crouching. “A friend who’d rather fight for you than with you. Or swim alone.” He looked about him. “In Mitra’s name, get the men up from the sweeps. Your deck’s bare as a tavern dancer and the pirates are coming up from astern!”
“Who are you to give me—?”
The man’s indignation ended along with his life, as a pirate archer put an arrow into his throat. Conan sprang up, caught the man as he toppled, and lowered him to the deck.
“Ahoy below!” he shouted, loud enough to raise echoes from the nearer shore. “Drop the sweeps and man the decks! The pirates are boarding!”
Before anyone below could reply, a grappling hook hurtled over the railing and caught in the frame around the mainmast. A second caught the railing itself. Conan slashed the rope to the first hook with his sword, then clutched the second hook and heaved.
Two pirates were already climbing the rope. One fell back into the canoe, landing across the gunwale. The crack of his spine snapping reached Conan’s ears. The other pirate lunged upward and seemed to fly over the railing. He landed rolling with a cat’s agility and came up with dagger in hand.
For a moment, Conan had no weapon in hand— save the grappling hook itself. He parried one dagger thrust with the hook, then closed and ripped upward. The man screamed like a damned spirit and fell, clutching spouting gashes in belly and thigh with desperate, futile hands.
Moments later men began swarming up from below, just as the ship ran in among the surviving canoes of Conan’s earlier opponents. Pirates swarmed aboard from both aft and forward, but Conan’s warning and stand had bought the crew just enough time to reach the decks.
Even then the pirates had the edge in numbers and in steel. But the sailors were fighting for their lives, marlinspikes and sheath knives have never been despicable weapons, and the crew also had Conan. As men in many lands had learned to their cost, in a fight he was worth five ordinary men.
The Cimmerian buried the grappling hook in the skull of his first opponent. It stuck there, so he kicked the dying man overboard and drew his sword. He had to face a second opponent before he could draw his dagger, but he had the advantage in both reach and speed on the man. The pirate’s life ended soon after Conan closed against him with steel in both hands.
Conan turned at a warning shout, to parry a murderous blow at his thigh. His dagger locked the foe’s sword, and the Cimmerian brought his own blade around to strike deep into the man’s neck. A bearded head lolled on jerkin-clad shoulders, and another pirate sprawled on the deck.
Conan now gave way before three pirates who seemed to have some notion of fighting as a team. But as he did, a sailor heaved up a grating under the feet of the middle pirate. He overbalanced and fell forward. Conan’s sword was not meant for thrusting, but he kept the point more than sharp enough to g
o clean through the falling pirate.
This briefly left Conan with only his dagger against two swordsmen, so he continued his retreat. He retreated as far as the water barrel lashed to the deck by the tiller ropes, then slashed the ropes and turned the barrel on its side. A fierce push sent it rolling at the two men. One of them did not leap clear; as it passed on he lay screaming with a crushed leg, until a sailor crushed his skull to end the screaming.
The last man came at Conan with a berserker’s speed and fury—and carelessness. He never noticed that the Cimmerian had picked up the fallen dipper from the water barrel. The man’s sword met the dipper’s iron shaft, sparks flew, and the man howled as the Cimmerian’s dagger sank deep into his belly, through a gap in his ageing corselet.
Conan now saw that the deck was all but clear of live, fighting pirates. A few were scrambling over the railing or leaping for their lives. Conan ran to the fallen barrel, heaved it aloft and strode to the railing. The large canoe was directly below.
The barrel was nearly empty, or not even the Cimmerian could have lifted it. It was quite heavy enough to shatter the bottom of the canoe. Nearly riven in two pieces, the pirate craft drifted away, its surviving crew clinging. The canoes forward also withdrew with more haste than dignity, urged along by a sailor who had picked up a fallen pirate bow and was emptying the quiver with great enthusiasm.
A man with a neat grey beard and a searching eye who barely reached the Cimmerian’s shoulder came up to Conan.
“Many thanks, friend. You named yourself truly. Have you any other name?”
“Sellus,” Conan said briefly. This man did not seem to be one to sell to the Ophireans a man to whom he owed his ship and life. But a thousand gold crowns could do more than ale or wine to addle the wits of the wisest of men.
“A northerner, too, by your looks.”
“So I have heard,” Conan said. “May I ask if I am addressing the captain?”