Nevertheless, Conan reached down to be sure that the well-greased dagger on his ankle was still there and drawing freely. As he did, Raihna popped up directly before him and threw her arms around his neek. She not only pulled his head down between her breasts, she pulled him off balance. He tumbled forward, and they both went down to the bottom of the pool in a warm tangle.
When they rose, Conan could see in Raihna's eyes the thought that they were now clean enough. He drew her against him, then looked beyond her for a soft patch of ground. He found it, but he also found something that drove all thoughts of bed sport out of his mind.
A man was standing on the patch of needles. He was not a man easy to describe, save that he was shorter than Conan and slighter of build.
But then, so were most men.
His garb was more uncommon. He wore a loose tunic and looser trousers, homespun and dyed in motley green and brown. A leather sack swung from one shoulder, and he held a long staff of well-seasoned wood in his left hand. He seemed to be unarmed, but wore on his belt what drew and held the Cimmerian's eyes: a set of pipes, seven of them, the shortest no longer than Conan's thumb, the longest nearly half the length of his forearm. Pipes carved with vast care and cunning from some dark wood, then given silver mouthpieces and silver bands. Bands of silver spun as fine as thread and then braided and knotted”
"I crave pardon if I surprised you," the man said. "I am Marr the Piper."
"Tell me something my own eyes can't," Conan growled. He was edging toward the bank of the pool, moving slowly, refraining from any sudden gesture that might surprise or alarm this visitor. He wished that Raihna had not kept him from drawing the dagger from his ankle.
He could not wish more of Raihna. She was standing waist-deep in the pool, making no effort to cover herself as she wrung water out of her hair. She bore no weapon, but a woman like her was well-armed enough without steel as long as she was also without clothing. A man's body might be safe from her, but his mind”
Conan reached the bank. With a single lunge he was out of the water and gripping his sword. Marr looked his way. "That will not be needed."
"Needed, or useful?"
"Why do you think it might not be useful?"
"If you aren't a sorcerer or near-kin to one
"Whatever else I may be, I arn no enemy to you or your friends." Conan did not lower the sword, but when he spoke, his voice was less harsh.
"That will take some explaining."
"If we have the time
"We'll take the time, my friend. Either that or you'll take your leave."
The piper looked from Conan to Raihna, found no more mercy in her face than in the Cimmerian's, then nodded. "Very well. You have been witness to much of my work. Then I heard you, Conan, summoning me to show my colors
"What!" The word shot like an arrow from both Conan and Raihna's lips.
It raised echoes from the rocks. Marr shook his head.
"If you break in on my speech at every other word, we shall be here too long. Far too long, when I can lead you to Decius and the king."
This time neither Conan nor Raihna said a word. They merely stared at each other, then at Marr. When it seemed to Conan that both he and Raihna were seeing and hearing the same thing, he nodded to her. She climbed out of the water, silver drops beaded on her skin from forehead to toes. Conan cast her sword down to her and bent to don his clothes while she stood guard, then returned the favor.
When they were both garbed, they turned to find the piper sitting as if he had been turned to wood. Only the play of a thin smile on his face told them that he lived.
Conan sheathed his sword and glared at Marr. "As you can see, we'll not tarry here. You say Decius and the king are safe?"
"Alive, I said. I did not say safe. I do not know what dangers might beset them, either."
"Be that honest with one more question and we can strike a bargain, sorcerer or no."
"What kind of bargain?"
"Answer the question first," Conan growled. He liked men who talked in riddles about as much as he liked sorcerers.
"Ask, and I shall answer." The piper's voice itself had a musical quality to it that made it unlike any human voice that Conan had ever heard”man's, woman's, or child's.
"Can you read a man's thoughts?"
"When he wishes me to read them, as you did when you asked me to show myself, I can read them at some distance."
"But not when he wants to keep them to himself ?"
"No."
Something in the man's tone hinted that it was a matter of "would not"
rather than "could not." Yet” curse it, trust had to begin somewhere!
The closer and the sooner the better, if indeed this woodland wizard could pipe them along a path to Decius and Eloikas!
Conan ran fingers through his mane of black hair, wringing out the last water. "If you told the truth, here's my bargain. You guide us to the king and Decius. Guide us as if you were a common hunter or charcoal burner who knew the land. Not a breath, not a blink, about magic, and that means keeping those pipes out of sight!"
"You bargain hard, Cimmerian."
"I've more than a hundred good men that I don't want scared into flying for their lives. Them I know. You could be much or little. Even if you're much, we haven't forgotten the chaos you sowed at the palace."
"I will prove that I am much before we find Decius and Eloikas. What will you do when I have led you to them?"
"Speak for you to them, and leave the rest to them."
It was clear that the answer did not altogether content Marr. Conan wondered if Decius and Eloikas knew something about the man that he did not. Most likely they did. But they could not tell him what it was unless he put himself in the piper's hands long enough to find them.
After a moment, the piper nodded. He swung his pack down from his shoulder, drew out a dagger, some bread, and a linen bag with runes embroidered on it in blue thread. He thrust the pipe into the bag and the whole affair into the sack, then cut the bread with the dagger and handed each of the others a piece.
"If this is to be binding Raihna began.
"Of course. Salt." The piper held out both hands, palm upward. In an eyeblink, his palms turned white with salt. He shook it on the pieces of bread, then motioned the others to eat.
Conan ate, but the bread kept wanting to stick in his gullet. If the man could conjure salt out of the air, did it matter if his pipes were hidden?
Chapter 12
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Count Syzambry awoke to pain that was hardly greater than what he had endured several times before. He still lacked the strength to do more than mutter answers to the surgeon's questions. He contrived not to cry out, or even to groan, when rough hands heaved him about like a sack of barley as they changed his bedclothes and dressings.
Cleaned and somewhat restored by a cup of broth and a draught of poppy syrup, the count lay as if senseless. He feared there was no other way of bringing those about him to talk freely. The surgeons and guards had ignored a direct order to do so.
What he heard was less than soothing. It seemed that nearly five days had passed while he lay unwitting. His wound was grave, and it was not healing entirely as the common run of such wounds did.
No one said the word "magic." Syzambry hoped that this came from having found no traces of it rather than from fear of the word. If he needed to seek the aid of the Pougoi wizards, he did not want the fears of his men standing between him and the cure he needed to reach for the Border throne.
Even when he was healed, the battle would be longer than he had expected. King Eloikas, Captain-General Decius, and a good company of fighting men had fled the palace in two bands. The earth-magic had bought them that much time.
To be sure, the two bands together were only a few hundred men. But they had already cut to pieces one company of free lances that Syzambry had expected to be ready to hand for harrying the countryside. Now his men were hard-pressed to hold the ruins
of the palace and the land about it.
Beyond where the count's writ ran, the countryside was not rallying to Eloikas. It was not rallying to the count, either.
He could not strengthen his hand, to be sure. He could strip not only his own lands, but the lands of every man who had sworn or promised or even hinted allegiance. Strip them of even the boys and the graybeards, strip them of even rotten bows and rusty swords that might avail against bandits.
Strip them, indeed, so that they would be naked to any blow that Eloikas or Decius might chose to strike.
Another source of strength lay in free lances. Word could go out that there were rich pickings in the Border Kingdom for those who would come to follow Count Syzambry's road to the throne. The free lances would come.
They would also come expecting ready gold, and unless he found Eloikas's hoard, Syzambry would have no such thing.
The groan that he had been holding back finally escaped Syzambry's lips. It was not the pain of his wound, but fury at what that wound might do to his ambitions. It would keep him chained to a bed or, at most, a litter, when swift movement alone would save him. How else to save his cause with his loyal handful but to lead them swiftly against his foes, sword in hand?
He groaned again, but more softly, even to his own ears. Perhaps the sleeping draught was taking hold, easing the poisonous thoughts from his mind¦
He fell asleep wishing that it could leech the poisons from his body as easily.
Captain-General Decius awoke in his tent to hear the sentries bawling like branded calves. His first thought was that Syzambry had found the royal camp and was hurling his men at it in a final desperate effort.
Decius rolled out of his blankets, jerked on breeches over his loinguard, and left the rest of his harness save for helmet and sword.
He plunged out of the tent, nearly sprawled on his face as a toe caught a rope, but saved his skin if not his dignity.
He thereafter walked a trifle more cautiously, though not less swiftly.
His men and the handful of Guards and armed servants were turning out as if half of them had not spent the night on sentry duty. His place was at their fore.
Decius reached the head of the path immediately behind the first half-dozen men. He waited long: enough to be aware of the chill dawn breeze on his bare chest, then ordered one of the sentries to take a message to the king.
"Tell him that a strong band of strangers is close at hand. Scouts will go out to learn more. All of the men are on duty and ready for battle."
He did not add that he would lead the scouts himself. Eloikas would most likely forbid it. That would waste the time needed to choose another man, when they might have no time at all to spare.
"That all, lord?" the messenger asked.
"Isn't that”?" Decius snarled, then caught himself. "Tell the king that the moment we know more, he shall know it
Decius broke off because his jaw had sunk onto his chest. Nor was his the only jaw agape.
Captain Conan of the Second Company was striding up the path, looking weather-worn and leaner than before, but alive and ready for battle.
Behind him, shapes in the dawn and clatters and clangs farther down the path told Decius that Conan had a following.
Decius mustered his wits. "Well, Captain Conan. You He decided that "you finally stopped running" would be a mortal insult, and possibly a false accusation as well. "You have come, I hope, to give some explanation of your conduct?"
"That, and more," Conan said. He seemed as impervious to Decius's scorn as a castle keep to a child's arrows. "My conduct includes chopping a band of Syzambry's free lances to rags, as well as some other matters best not talked of before everybody. When you've heard them, I think you'll say I've explained enough."
Decius began to believe that the Cimmerian spoke the truth, and not only because of his assured tone. The royal party had heard rumors of the shattered free lances, as they had heard tales of Syzambry's having been wounded almost to death.
A figure behind Conan removed a helmet and shook the tangles out of fair hair. Decius's heart leaped within his breast, and he could no longer command his face.
"Welcome, Mistress Raihna."
Her smile made the captain-general's heart leap again. Then a man clad in green and brown, with a sack over one shoulder and a staff in hand, stepped through the ranks of Conan's men. From the manner in which they gave way for him, Decius judged him to be one who had served them well.
"This man is a woodcutter who guided us to your camp," Raihna said.
"He knew where we were?" one of the sentries growled. His hand was not far from his bow.
"Peace," Conan said. "The woodcutter's a loyal man. Hot pincers and the rack together wouldn't give his knowledge to Syzambry."
Decius was willing to take that on faith. What he doubted was that this man was a woodcutter, or anything else that it was wise to speak of before others. Conan and the "woodcutter" were indeed going before the king, although they might not care for what came of it.
Decius called the eager sentry over. "Go to His Majesty. Tell him that Captain Conan has returned with survivors of the Second Company and knowledge he wishes to lay before the king."
As the man scurried off, Decius resumed his contemplation of the "woodcutter." This was not as pleasant as the contemplation of Raihna would have been, but duty before pleasure. The woodcutter stood as if it was nothing new for him to be inspected like a pack mule or a bale of cloth.
He continued to stand under Decius's scrutiny until the messenger returned with the summons of the king. By then, Decius had decided that the man would reveal nothing he did not choose to¦ which meant that it would be well to deal generously with Captain Conan, unless he had done something altogether disgraceful. Generous dealing might open his mouth, at least!
The tent of King Eloikas had three walls and a roof, made of stout cloth dyed with herbs until it shared the color of the forest floor.
The rear of the tent was the solid rock of the base of a cliff. In that rock was a narrow cleft: the king's path to Safety in the last extremity should the camp be falling to his enemies.
To Conan, the rock cleft seemed more like a path to a quicker and more merciful death for Eloikas. The Cimmerian doubted that the king could survive a long scramble through the bowels of the hill.
Eloikas had looked a hale sixty when Conan had last seen him. Now he looked a feeble and sickly seventy, and his hands were so thin they seemed almost transparent. His lips held a bluish tinge, and his breath came with a painful effort.
He still commanded, for which Conan was grateful. The Cimmerian told the tale of his journey from the palace briefly, so as not to tire the king. Whatever Conan had done, or what might be done to him, he suspected that what Marr the Piper had to say would prove of importance.
Decius, he suspected, was not of the same mind. The Cimmerian no longer doubted the captain-general's loyalty. He had, by all accounts, fought too hard and endured too much in Eloikas's cause to be any kind of traitor.
But a man smitten by Raihna and seeking a chance to disgrace a rival”the captain-general might still be so described. Men could make as great mischief out of jealousy as out of treason, as Conan knew all too well. Were matters otherwise, he might still be a captain in the Turanian service instead of climbing the hills of the Border Kingdom.
The captain-general heard Conan out in silence, then waited while the king asked a few shrewd questions. Etoikas's body might be failing him, but his wits were not.
"It seems to Us that you have done good service, and that your skill and loyalty are not in doubt," Eloikas said at last. "Lord Decius, do you have aught to add to what We have said to this worthy Cimmerian?"
In his mind, the worthy Cimmerian performed rites of aversion to keep Decius's mouth shut. The rites, the tone of the king's voice, or perhaps merely Decius's good sense, did the work.
"No, Your Majesty. Few men could have done as well as Captain Conan.
Few
er still could have done better."
"Thank you, my lord," Conan said with elaborate politeness. "The woodcutter who guided us here is without, along with Mistress Raihna.
May I have the king's leave to bring them within? I believe that the king himself should hear the woodcutter's tale."
That tale was shorter than Conan had feared it might be, for Marr entered the tent with his pipes on his belt. Conan heard Decius suck in his breath, and the king's eyes widened.
"I had thought I was unknown," the piper said calmly, sitting down without asking leave. "It seems that my knowledge was not complete."
"Your pipes have been a legend in the land since before my daughter was born," Eloikas said. He was trying to seem at ease, but Conan noticed that he said "my" instead of the royal "Our."
"You yourself are not much less of one," Decius added. "What brings you here, piper? Consider that your magic shook down the palace and slew a good number of the king's men, and give a civil answer!"
"He will give no answer at all unless you are silent," Raihna said. Her eyes locked with the captain-general's, and it was not the woman who looked away.
Marr sighed. It was the most human sound Conan had heard from him yet.
"I have walked a long road to come to a place I had hoped never to see.
I beg you not to make the road longer."
He touched his pipes. "May I play a trifle? I think I know a tune or two that will make matters easier among us."
"A spell-weaving tune?" Decius muttered. But Eloikas looked at the Cimmerian and Raihna rather than at his captain-general. The two outlanders shook their heads. Eloikas nodded, and Marr began to play.
Afterward Conan remembered few of the sensations that flowed through him like an underground stream as the piper played. One was surprise that the music sounded so much like common piping that any shepherd lad might have played to soothe himself when twilight drew near and the wolves approached.
Another was an amazing sense of being at peace with himself and every other creature in the world. He would not have embraced Count Syzambry as a brother, but the count would have been safe from the Cimmerian's steel while the music played.
The Conan Compendium Page 351