The Conan Compendium

by Various Authors

  The scar-faced man stepped aside and jerked his head toward a door leading deeper into the building. "Go on," he said. Only then was the knife lowered from Jelal's throat.

  Jelal did not say anything. This was not the first such meeting for him, nor even the twentieth. He went on through the second door.

  The windowless room he entered was what was to be expected in this quarter of the city, rough walls of clay brick, a dirt floor, a crude table tilted on a cracked leg. What was not to be expected were the beeswax candles giving light, the white linen cloth spread on the table top, or the crystal flagon of wine sitting on the cloth beside two cups of hammered gold. Nor was the man seated behind the table one to be expected in such a place. A plain dark cloak, nondescript yet of quality too fine for that region of Sultanapur, covered much of his garb. His narrow thin-nosed face, with mustaches and small beard neatly waxed to points, seemed more suited to a palace than a district of beggars. He spoke as soon as Jelal entered.

  "It is well you come today, Jelal. Each time I must come out into the city increases the risk I will be seen and identified. You have made contact?" He waved a soft-skinned hand with a heavy gold seal-ring on the forefinger toward the crystal flagon. "Have some wine for the heat."

  "I have made contact," Jelal replied carefully, "but-"

  "Good, my boy. I knew that you would, even in so short a time. Four years in Corinthia and Koth and Khauran, posing as every sort of merchant and peddler, legal and otherwise, and never once caught or even suspected. You are perhaps the best man I have ever had. But I fear your task in Sultanapur has changed."

  Jelal drew himself up. "My lord, I request to be reposted to the Ibari Scouts."

  Lord Khalid, the man who ordered and controlled all the spies of King Yildiz of Turan, stared in amazement. "Mitra strike me, why?"

  "My lord, you say I was never once suspected in four years, and it is true. But it is true because I not only acted the part, I was a merchant, or a peddler as the instant demanded, spending most of my days buying and selling, talking of markets and prices. My lord, I became a soldier in part to avoid becoming a merchant like my father. I was a good soldier, and I ask to serve Turan and the King where I can serve them best, as a soldier once more in the Ibari Mountains."

  The spy master drummed his fingers on the table. "My boy, you were chosen for the very reasons you cite. Your service was all in the southern mountains, so no western foreigner is likely to ever have seen you as a soldier. Your boyhood training to be a merchant not only prepared you to play that part to perfection, but also, because of a merchant's need to winnow fact from rumor to find the proper market and price, it made sure that you could do the same with other kinds of rumors and give reports of great value. As you have. You serve Turan best where you are."

  "But, my lord-"

  "Enough, Jelal. There is no time. What do you know of events in Sultanapur this day?"

  Jelal sighed. "There are many rumors," he began slowly, "reporting everything but an invasion. Piecing together the most likely, I should say that Prince Tureg Amal was killed this morning. Beyond that I should say the strongest rumor is that a northlander was involved. As it was not what I came to Sultanapur for, I put no more than half my mind to it, I fear."

  "Half your mind, and you get one of two right." The older man nodded approvingly. "You are indeed the best of my men. I do not know where the rumor of a northlander was born. Perhaps someone saw such a man in the street."

  "But the guardsmen, my lord. They seek-"

  "Yes, yes. The rumors have spread even to them, and I've done nothing to change that state of affairs for the moment. Let the true culprits think they have escaped notice. It is not the first time soldiers have been sent chasing shadows, nor will it be the last. And a few innocent foreigners-if any of them can truly be called innocent-a few such put to the question, or even killed, is a small price to pay if it helps us take the true villains unaware. Believe me when I say the throne of Turan could be at stake."

  Jelal managed a nod. He was aware from experience just how coldly practical this soft-appearing man could be, even if the stakes were considerably less than the Turanian throne. "And the prince, my lord?

  You said I was half right."

  "Tureg Amal," Kalid sighed, "drunkard, wastrel, lecher, and High Admiral of Turan, died this morning of a poisoned needle thrust into his neck. Not by a northern giant, as the rumors say, but by a woman. A Vendhyan assassin, according to reports."

  "An assassin?" Jelal said. "My lord, the prince's ways with women are well know. Could he not perhaps simply have driven some wench to murder?"

  The spy master shook his head. "As much as I should prefer it so, no.

  The servants at Tureg Amal's palace have been questioned thoroughly. A Vendhyan woman was delivered to the palace this morning, supposedly a gift from a merchant of that country seeking added protection for his cargoes on the Vilayet. Within the hour the prince was dead, the keeper of his zenanna drugged, and the woman had disappeared unseen from a heavily guarded palace."

  "It certainly sounds the work of an assassin," Jelal agreed, "but-"

  "There could be worse," the older man cut him off. "The commander of the prince's bodyguard, one Captain Murad, was also slain this morning, along with two of his men, apparently in a tavern brawl. I do not like such coincidences. Perhaps it was unrelated, and perhaps they were silenced after effecting the woman's escape. And if men of the High Admiral's bodyguard took gold to aid in his death ... well, that scandal could do more harm than the old fool's murder."

  "Be that as it may, my lord, the other does not make sense. I understand that the wazam of Vendhya is in Aghrapur to negotiate a treaty with King Yildiz. Surely the King of Vendhya would not countenance an assassination while his chief counselor was in our capital, in our very hands. And if he did, why the High Admiral? The King's death would create turmoil, while the prince's creates only anger toward Vendhya."

  "The King's death by a Vendhyan assassin would also create war with Vendhya," Khalid said dryly, "while Tureg Amal's. . ." He shrugged. "I do not know the why of it, my boy, but Vendhyans suck intrigue with their mothers' milk and do nothing without a purpose, usually nefarious. As for the wazam, Karim Singh sailed from Aghrapur yesterday. And the treaty, I was suspicious of it before, now I am doubly so. Less than five years ago they nearly went to war with us over their claims to Secunderam. Now, without a protest, the wazana puts his seal on a treaty that does not so much as mention that city.

  And one that favors Turan on several other points, as well. I had thought they sought to lull us while they prepared some stroke. Now I no longer know what to think." He began to roll the tip of his beard between his thumb and forefinger, the greatest outward sign of inner turmoil that he ever showed.

  Reluctantly Jelal felt the puzzle catching at him, as it so often had before. The desire to return to soldiering was still there but pushed to the back of his mind. For the moment. "What can I do, my lord?" he asked at last. "The Vendhyan assassin is surely no longer in the city."

  "That is true," the spy master replied, and his voice hardened as he spoke. "But I want answers. I need them. The King depends on me for them. What is Vendhya up to? Are we to expect a war? Captain Murad's death may lead to some answers. Use the contacts you have made with the lawless underside of Sultanapur. Find a trail to the answers I need and follow it all the way to Vendhya if you must. But bring me the answers."

  "I will, my lord," Jelal promised. But to himself he promised that this was the last time. Whether he was returned to the Man Scouts or not, after this one last puzzle, he would be a spy no more.

  Chapter IV

  Despite the cloak Ghurran had given him, Conan kept close to the sides of the narrow, bustling streets, on the edges of the continuous flow of people. It was true that the dark-blue cloak would not bring a moment's glance from a guardsman looking for one of white linen, and the hood did hide his face and damning blue eyes, but the sheer size of him was diff
icult to miss. Few men in Sultanapur came close to his height or breadth of shoulder, and certainly none of them was among the crowds thronging the streets he traveled this day. The big Cimmerian stood out like a Remaira stallion among mules.

  Five times after leaving the herbalist Conan was forced to turn aside for patrols of guardsmen, their precisely slanted spears glinting in the bright sun as though to give warning of their coming, but luck seemed at last to be with him. His progress toward the harbor was constant, if zig-zag. High-wheeled ox-carts began once more to be almost as numerous as people. The long stone shapes of warehouses rose about him, and the tall white towers of the city granaries. Men with the calloused hands and sweat-stained tunics of dockers and roustabouts outnumbered all but those with the rolling walk and forked queues of seafarers. Half the women were trulls in narrow girdles of jingling coin and thin silk or less, while most of the rest cast a sharp eye for a purse to cut or a bolt of silk or lace that could be snatched from a cart. Here, too, were people who knew him.

  "An hour's pleasure, big man?" cooed a buxom doxy with hennaed hair piled high on her head and gilded brass hoops in her ears. She moved closer and pressed nearly bare breasts against his arm, dropping her voice for his ear alone. "You fool, the City Guard has already taken up three dockers just for being tall. And they are questioning outlanders, so you're doubly at risk. Now, put your arm around me, and we will go to my room. I can hide you till it all quiets. And I'll charge you but-oh, Mitra, I'll not charge you at all."

  Conan grinned despite himself. "A generous offer, Zara. But I must find Hordo."

  "I've not seen him, Conan. And you cannot risk looking. Come with me."

  "Another time," he said, and she squealed as he pinched a plump buttock.

  In short order a sailor in a tar-smeared tunic and a bearded warehouseman had repeated Zara's warning. A slender wench with a virgin's face and innocent eyes-and a cutpurse's curved blade with which she constantly toyed-echoed both warning and offer. None knew where Hordo was to be found, however. Conan almost accepted the slender woman's offer. The glass had been turned, he knew, and the sands were running out on him. Did he not find Hordo quickly, he must go to ground.

  A short, wiry man, bent under the weight of a canvas sack on his shoulder, suddenly caught the Cimmerian's eye. Conan snagged the man's bony arm with one hand and hauled him out of the stream of people.

  "What are you doing?" the Cimmerian's captive whispered between teeth clenched in a wooden smile. His sunken eyes darted frantically above a pointed nose, giving him the image of a mouse searching for a hole.

  "Mitra, Cimmerian! I stole this not twenty paces from here, and they'll see it's gone in another moment. Let me go!"

  "I am looking for Hordo, Tarek," Conan said softy.

  "Hordo? He's at Kafar's warehouse, I think." Tarek stumbled a step as Conan released him, then rotated his shoulder in a broad gesture. "You should not grab a man so, Cimmerian. It could be dangerous. And don't you know the City Guard-"

  "-is seeking a big outlander," Conan finished for him. "I know." A shout rose from the direction Tarek had come, and the little man darted away like the rodent he resembled. Conan went the other way, soon passing by a stall where a salt peddler in voluminous robes seemed to dance with his helpers, they jumping about to dodge while he tugged at his beard and kicked at them and shouted that the gods were unmerciful to send the same man blind apprentices and thieves as well. While the salt vendor leaped and screamed, two girls of no more than sixteen years hefted one of his canvas sacks between them and disappeared, unseen by him, into the throng.

  Twice more the Cimmerian was forced to turn aside for a patrol of the City Guard, but Kafar's warehouse was not far, and he reached it quickly. It was not one of the long stone structures owned by merchants, but rather a nondescript building of two stories, daubed in flaking white clay, that might once have held a tavern or a chandler's shop. In truth it was a warehouse of sorts. A smugglers' warehouse.

  Gold in the proper palms kept the guardsmen away, for the time at least. When the bribes failed, though, because higher authority decided an example must be made, or more likely because someone decided the reward for confiscated contraband outweighed the bribes, the smugglers of Sultanapur would not be slowed for an instant. Scores of such warehouses could be found near the harbor, and when Kafar's was no more, two others would spring up in its place.

  The splintery wooden door from the street let into a windowless room dimly lit by rush torches in crude iron sconces. Two of the torches had guttered out, but no one seemed to notice. A small knot of men, dressed in mismatched garb from a dozen countries, squatted in a semicircle, casting dice against a wall. Others sat on casks at a table of boards laid on sawhorses, engrossed in whispered talk over clay mugs of wine.

  A Kothian in a red-striped tunic sat off by himself on a three-legged stool near a door at the back of the room, idly flipping a dagger to stick up in the rough-hewn planks of the floor. The air in the room was hot and close, not only because of the torches, but because few of the halfscore men there ever made acquaintance with water and most thought soap a fine gift for a woman, if nicely perfumed, but not a thing to be used.

  Only the Kothian looked up at Conan's entrance. "Do you not know-" he began.

  "I know, Kafar," Conan said curtly. "Is Hordo here?"

  The Kothian jerked his head at the door behind him and returned to flipping his dagger. "The cellar," he said as the blade quivered in the floor once more.

  It was the custom in such places to store the goods of each smuggler in a separate room, for no man among them trusted those not of his band to the point of letting him know what kind of "fish" he carried or to where. Closed doors, iron-bound and held shut with massive iron locks, lined the corridor in the rear of the building. At the end of the corridor, beside a wide door leading to the alley behind the warehouse, were stone stairs leading down.

  As the Cimmerian started down the stairs, Hordo opened the door at the bottom. "Where in Zandru's Nine Hells have you been?" the one-eyed smuggler roared. "And what in Mitra's name have you been doing?" He was nearly as big as Conan, though his muscles were overlaid with fat and the years had weathered his face. Large gold hoops hung from his ears and a jagged scar ran from under his eye-patch of rough leather down into the thick black thatch of his beard, pulling the left side of his mouth into a permanent sneer. "I leave word with Tasha and the next thing I hear ... Well, get on down here before the Guard seizes you right in front of me. If that fool wench failed to tell you I needed you, I'll have her hide."

  Conan winced ruefully. So Tasha had been speaking the truth. If he had not thought she was lying from jealousy, he would have left the Golden Crescent before the captain arrived, and the City Guard would not be seeking his head. Well, it was far from the first time he had gotten into trouble from misreading a woman. And in any case, a man who used pain to frighten a woman to his bed deserved killing.

  "It was not her fault, Hordo," he said, pushing past the bearded man into the cellar. "I had a trifle of trouble with-" He cut off at the sight of a stranger in the room, a tall, skinny man in a turban who stood beside a score of small wooden chests, like the tin-lined chests in which tea was shipped, stacked on the dirt floor against a dusty stone wall. Here, too, light came from rush torches. "Who is he?" the Cimmerian demanded.

  "He's called Hasan," the one-eyed man replied impatiently. "A new 'fisherman.' Now! Is there any truth to these rumors, Cimmerian? I do not care if you've killed Tureg Amal; that old fool is no loss to the world. But if you have, you must get out of Sultanapur, perhaps out of Turan, and quickly. Even if you killed no one, you had best remain out of sight until they catch who did."

  "The High Admiral?" Conan exclaimed. "I heard it was a general, though now that I think of it, someone did say a prince. Hordo, why would I kill the High Admiral of Turan?"

  The lanky man spoke up suddenly. "The rumors say it was hired done. For enough gold I suppose a man might kill anyone
."

  Conan's face became stony. "You seem to be calling me liar," he said in a deadly quiet tone.

  "Easy, Cimmerian," Hordo said, and added to the other man, "Are you trying to get yourself killed, Hasan? Offer this man coin for a killing, and 'twill be luck if you escape with no more than broken bones. And if he says he killed no one, then he killed no one."

  "I did not say that exactly," Conan said uncomfortably. "There was a Guard captain, and two or three guardsmen." He glared at the turbaned man who had made a sound in his throat. "You have a comment about that as well?"

  "You two fighting cocks settle your ruffs," Hordo snapped. "We have a load of 'fish' to carry. The man who wants it shipped will be here any instant, and I'll have no bloodshed, or snarling either, in front of him. He'll seek elsewhere if he thinks we will slay each other before delivering his chests." His bearded head swung like that of a bear. "I need my whole crew if we are to get the accursed things to the mouth of the Zaporoska in the time specified, and the only two who have heeded my call squabble like dockers with their heads full of wine."

  "You told me we'd not sail again for three or four days," Conan said, walking over to examine the chests. Hasan moved warily out of his way, but it was the finely crafted boxes that interested him. "The crew are scattered among the taverns and bordellos," he went on, "hip deep in women, and with wine fumes where their wits were four hours gone. I could enjoy a quick journey out of Sultanapur now, but if we find all twenty by nightfall, I'll become an Erlikite."

  "We must sail by dark," Hordo said. "The gold is more for being faster than agreed, but less for being slower." The scar-faced smuggler moved Hasan farther away from them with a look, then stepped closer to the Cimmerian and dropped his voice. "I do not doubt your word, Conan, but is it you the guardsmen seek? For this captain, perhaps?"