Ariane was suddenly soothing. "They will return." She laid a concerned hand on the stocky man's shoulder. "Why, like as not they wasted the night in drink. Conan, here, did the same."
"Why should they not return?" Conan asked.
Ariane shot him a dagger look, but Graecus answered shakily. "Some months past some of our friends disappeared. Painters and sketchers, they were. But two were never seen again, their bodies found in a refuse heap beyond the city walls, where Golden Leopards had been seen to bury them. We think Garian wishes to frighten us into silence."
"It sounds not like the way of a king," Conan said, frowning. "They frighten with public executions and the like."
Graecus suddenly looked ready to vomit.
Ariane scowled at Conan. "Should you not be making ready to meet Taras?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Graecus, uttering soothing sounds and stroking his brow.
Disgruntled, Conan tugged on his padded under-tunic and jazeraint hauberk, muttering to himself on the peculiarities of Ariane. As he buckled his sword belt about him, she spoke again.
"Do you need to go so, as if armed for war?" Her tone was biting, her annoyance at him still high. "You'll not have to fight him."
"I have my reasons," Conan muttered.
Not for a sack of gold as big as a cask would he have told her that someone in the city was trying to kill him. In her present mood, she would think he was trying to shift her sympathy from Graecus to himself.
Erlik take all women, he thought.
Setting his spiked helm on his head, he said coldly, "Give me your directions for finding this Taras." Her face as she gave them was just as cold.
The Street of the Smiths, whence Ariane's directions took him, was lined not only with the shops of swordsmiths and ironworkers, but also of smiths in gold, silver, copper, brass, tin and bronze. A cacophony of hammering blended with the cries of sellers to make the street a solid sheet of noise, reverberating from end to end. The Guilds made sure that a man who worked one metal did not work another, but so too did they hire the guards that patrolled the street. No bravos lurked on the Street of the Smiths, and shoppers strolled with an ease seen nowhere else in the city.
As he came closer to the place of the meeting-rooms reached by entering a narrow hall next to a coppersmith's shop and climbing the stairs at its end-the less he wished to enter it unprepared. He had no reason to foresee trouble, but too many times of late someone had tried to put a blade into him.
Short of the coppersmith's he began to dawdle, pausing here to heft a gleaming sword, there to finger a silver bowl hammered in an intricate pattern of leaves. But all the while he observed the building that housed the coppersmith with an eye honed by years as a thief.
A pair of Guild guards had stopped to watch him, where he stood before a silversmith's open-fronted shop. He raised the bowl he held to his ear and thumped it.
"Too much tin," he said, shaking his head and tossing the bowl back on the merchant's table. He strolled off pursued by the silversmith's frenzied imprecations, but the guards paid him no more mind.
Just beyond the coppersmith's was an alley, smelling as much of mold and old urine as any other in the city. Into this he slipped, hurrying down its narrow length. As he had hoped, damp air and mold had flaked away most of the mud plastered over the stones of the building.
A quick glance showed that no one was looking down the alley from the street. His fingers sought cracks amid the poorly dressed and poorly mortared stone. Another might have found such a climb impossible, most especially in heavy hauberk and boots, but to one of the Cimmerian mountains the wide chinks in the stone were as good as a highway. He scrambled up the side of the building so quickly that someone who had seen him standing on the ground and looked away for a moment might well have thought he had simply disappeared.
As he heaved himself onto the red clay tiles of the roof, a smile lit his face. Set in the roof was a skylight, a frame stretched with panes of fish-skin. It was, he was certain, situated above the room he sought.
Carefully, so as not to dislodge loose tiles-and perhaps send himself hurtling to the street below-he made his way to the skylight. The panes were clear enough to allow some light through, but not for seeing. It was the work of a moment with his belt dagger to make a slit, to which he put his eye.
The room below was narrow, and ill lit even with the skylight and two brass lamps on a table. In it four men stood, two with cocked crossbows in hands, watching the door through which he was supposed to walk.
The big Cimmerian shook his head, in anger and wonder at the same time. It was one thing to be wary of trouble where none was expected, another to find it waiting there.
"Is he coming, or not?" one of the men without a crossbow asked irritably. He had a deep scar across the top of his head, where someone had caught him a blow that should have killed him.
"He'll come," the other man with no crossbow replied. "The girl said she'd send him right to this room."
Conan froze. Ariane. Could she have sent him here to die?
"What will you tell her?" the horribly scarred man asked. "She has influence enough to cause trouble, Taras."
"That I hired him," Taras laughed, "and sent him out of the city to join the others she thinks I've hired.
That should keep her quiet."
Lying on the roof, the big Cimmerian heaved a sigh of relief. Whatever Ariane had done, she had done unknowingly. Then the rest of what Taras had said penetrated. The others she thought he had hired. It was as he had feared. The young rebels were being duped. Conan had a great many questions for Taras.
His broadsword slipped from its sheath, steel rasping on leather.
"Be you sure," Taras told the crossbowmen, "to fire the instant he steps into the room. These barbars die hard."
"Even now is he a dead man," one of the pair replied. The other laughed and patted his crossbow.
A wolfish grin came to Conan's face. It was time to see who would die in that room. Like silent death he rose, and leaped.
"Crom!" he roared as his feet tore through the skylight.
The men below had only time to start, then Conan's boots struck one of the crossbowmen squarely atop his head, bearing him to the floor with a crunch of snapping vertebrae. The second crossbowman desperately swung his weapon, trying to bring it to bear. Conan kept his balance with cat-like skill, and pivoted, dagger darting over the swinging crossbow to transfix the bowman throat. With a gurgling scream he who had named the Cimmerian a dead man himself died, squeezing the trigger-lever as he did.
Abruptly the scar-topped man, sword half drawn, coughed once and toppled, the crossbow quarrel projecting from his left eye.
Using the dagger as a handle Conan hurled the sagging body of the bowman at Taras, and as he did he recognized that pock-marked face. Taras had been at that other meeting he had interrupted by coming through the roof.
The pocked man staggered, clawing for his sword, as the corpse struck him. "You!" he gasped, getting his first clear look at the Cimmerian's face.
Snarling, Conan struck, his blade clanging against the hilt of the other's partially drawn sword. Taras shrieked, severed fingers dropping to the floor. And yet he was no man to go down easily. Even while blood flowed from his mutilated right hand, his left snatched his dagger from its sheath. With a cry of rage, he lunged.
It would have been easy for Conan to kill the man then, but he wanted answers more than he wanted Taras' death. Sidestepping Taras' lunge, he clubbed his fisted hilt against the back of the pock-faced man's neck. The lunge became a stumble, and, yelling, Taras fell over the scarred man's body and crashed to the floor. He twitched once, emitting a long sigh, and did not rise.
Cursing, Conan heaved the man onto his back. Taras' limp fingers slid away from his dagger, now embedded in his own chest. His sightless eyes stared at the Cimmerian.
"Erlik take you," Conan muttered. "I wanted you alive."
Wiping his blade on Taras' tunic, he returned
the sword to its scabbard, thinking furiously all the while.
The man was condemned out of his own mouth of duping the young rebels. Yet he had had that meeting with two who, by their clothing and bearing, were men of wealth and position. He had to assume that that meeting had a related purpose, and that someone did indeed intend to move against Garian, using Ariane and the rest as tools. And tools had a way of being broken and discarded once their use was done.
As Conan tugged his dagger from the crossbowman's throat, the door suddenly swung open. He crouched, dagger at the ready, and found himself staring across the corpse at Ariane and Graecus.
The stocky sculptor seemed to turn to stone as his bulging eyes swept the carnage. Ariane met Conan's gaze with a look of infinite sadness.
"I did not think Taras had the right to exclude us from this meeting," she said slowly. "I thought we should be here, to speak up for you, to...." Her words trailed off in a weary sigh.
"They intended my death, Ariane," Conan said.
She glanced from the shattered skylight franc on tile floor toy tile opening in the roof. "Which of them leapt from above, Conan? It seems clear that one entered that way. To kill. I wondered so when you armored yourself and would not tell me why. Wondered, and prayed I was wrong."
Why did the fool girl have to take everything wrongly, he thought angrily. "I listened at the skylight, Ariane, and entered that way. After I heard them speak of slaying me. Think you they had cocked crossbows to slay rats?" She looked at him, levelly but with eyes lacking hope or life. He drew a deep breath. "Hear me, Ariane. This man Taras has hired no armed men to aid your rebellion. I heard him say this. You must-"
"You killed them!" Graecus suddenly shouted. The stocky man's face was flushed, and he panted as if from great exertion. "It is as Stephano feared. Did you kill him also, and Leucas? Mean you to slay us all? You will not! You cannot! There are hundreds of us! We will slay you first!" Suddenly he glanced down the hall toward the stairs, and with a shrill cry dashed in the other direction. Ariane did not move.
Hordo appeared in the doorway, gazing briefly after the fleeing sculptor.
His lone eye took in the bodies. "I returned to the Thestis in time to hear the girl and the other speak of following you. It looks well that I decided to follow them in turn."
Ariane stirred. "Will you murder me now, too, Conan?"
The Cimmerian rounded on her angrily. "Do you not know me well enough by now to know I would not harm you?"
"I thought I did," she said hollowly. Her eyes traveled from one corpse to the next, and she laughed hysterically. "I know nothing of you. Nothing!" Conan reached for her, but she shied away from his big hand. "I cannot fight you," she whispered, "but an you touch me, my dagger can yet seek my own heart."
He jerked back his hand as if it had been burnt. At last he said coldly, "Do not remain here o'er-long.
Corpses attract scavengers, and those with two legs will see you as more booty." She did not look at him or make answer. "Come, Hordo," he growled. The one-eyed man followed him from the room.
In the street, those who saw Conan's dark face and the ice of his blue eyes stepped clear of his sweeping strides. Hordo hurried to keep up, asking once they were clear of the clangor of the Street of the Smiths,
"What occurred in that room, Cimmerian, to turn the girl so against you?"
Conan's look at Hordo was deadly, but in swift, terse sentences he told of how he had gone there, of what he had heard and what deduced.
"I am too old for this," Hordo groaned. "Not only must we watch for Graecus and the others to put knives in our backs, but, not knowing who among the nobles and merchants is embraced in this, with whom can we take service? Where do we go now, Cimmerian?"
"To the only place left for us," Conan replied grimly. "The King."
Chapter XII
0n the wide marble steps of the Temple of Mitra, a startled man dropped a cage of doves as the Free-Company made its way down the narrow, winding street. So surprised was he to see mounted and armed men in the Temple District that he watched them open-mouthed, not even noticing that his cage had broken and his intended sacrifices were beating aloft on white wings.
Hordo's saddle creaked as he leaned forward and whispered fiercely to Conan. "This is madness! 'Twill be luck if we are not met atop the hill by the whole of the Golden Leopards!"
Conan shook his head without answering. He knew full well that approaching the Royal Palace unannounced with two score armed men was far from the proper way to appeal for entry into the King's service. He knew, too, that there was no time for more usual methods, such as bribery, and that left only enlistment in the Nemedian army. Or this.
In truth, it was not the Golden Leopards who troubled him so much as the young rebels. Desperate, believing he had betrayed them or was on the way to do so, they might try almost anything. And these winding streets that climbed the hill to the Royal Palace were a prime place for ambush.
Those streets were a remnant of ancient times, for once in the dim pact what would become the Royal Palace had been a hilltop fortress, about which a village had risen, a village which over the centuries had grown into Belverus. But long after the hilltop fortress had become the Royal Palace of Nemedia, long after the rude village huts had been replaced by columned temples of alabaster and marble and polished granite, the serpentine streets remained.
The Palace itself retained much of the fortress about it, although its battlements were now of lustrous white marble, and towers of porphyry and greenstone rose within. The portcullises were of iron beneath their gilt, and drawbridges spanned a drymoat bottomed with spikes. Round about it all a sward of grass, close cropped as if in a landscaped garden, yet holding not the smallest growth that might shelter a stealthy approach, separated the Palace from the Temple District that encircled the hill below.
At the edge of the greensward Conan halted the company. "Wait here," he commanded.
"Gladly," Hordo muttered.
Alone, Conan rode forward, his big black stallion prancing slightly. Two pikemen in golden cloaks guarded the drawbridge, and a man in the crested helmet of an officer stepped out from the barbican as the big Cimmerian drew rein.
"What seek you here?" the officer demanded. He eyed the rest of the Free-Company thoughtfully, but they were distant and few in number.
"I wish to enter my company in the service of King Garian," Conan replied. "I have trained them in a method of fighting new to Nemedia, and to the western world."
The officer smiled in mockery. "Never yet have I heard of a Free-Company without some supposedly secret art of war. What is yours?"
"I will demonstrate," Conan said. "It is better in the showing." Inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief. His one real fear beyond reaching the Palace had been that they would not so much as listen.
"Very well," the officer said slowly, eyeing the rest of the company once more. "You alone may enter and demonstrate. But be you warned, an this secret is something every recruit in the Nemedian army is taught, as are most Free-Company tricks, you will be stripped and flogged from the gates to the foot of the hill for the edification of your company."
Conan touched boots to the big stallion's flanks. The horse pranced forward a step; the pikemen leveled their weapons and the officer looked wary. The Cimmerian allowed a cold smile to touch his mouth, but not his eyes. "'Tis nothing known to any Nemedian, though it may be taught to recruits."
The officer's mouth tightened at his tone. "I think others might like to see this, barbar." He stuck his head back into the gatehouse and muttered an order.
A golden-cloaked soldier emerged, gave Conan an appraising glance, and sped into the Palace. As Conan rode through the gate following the officer, other soldiers appeared from the barbican, some following behind. The Cimmerian wondered if they came to watch, or to guard that he did not take the Palace single-handed.
The Outer Court was paved in flagstone, four hundred paces in each direction, and surrounded by arcaded wa
lks to the height of four stories.
Beyond those walks directly opposite the gate could be seen the towers that rose in the gardens of the Inner Court, and the Palace proper, wherein King Garian and his court lived.
The soldiers who had followed dropped back deferentially as a score of officers, led by one as large as Conan himself, appeared. The officer who had brought Conan in bowed as this big man came near.
"All honor to you, Commander Vegentius," he said. "I hoped this barber might provide some entertainment."
"Yes, Tegha," Vegentius said absently, his eye on Conan. And a strangely wary eye, the Cimmerian thought. Abruptly the big officer said, "You, barber. Know I you, or you me?" His hand tightened on his sword as he spoke.
Conan shook his head. "I know you not, Commander." Though, as he thought on it, this Vegentius did look familiar, but vaguely, as one seen but briefly. No matter, he thought. The memory would come, an it were important.
Vegentius seemed to relax as the Cimmerian spoke. Smiling vigorously, he said, "Let us have this demonstration. Tegha, get the barber what he needs for it."
"I need a straw butt," Conan told the officer, "or some other mark."
Laughter rose among the officers as Tegha chose out two soldiers to fetch a butt.
"Archery," one of them laughed loudly. "I saw that bow at his saddle, but thought it for a child."
"Mayhap he shoots it with one hand," another replied.
Conan kept his silence as the comments grew more ribald, though his jaw tightened. Removing the short weapon from its lacquered saddlecase, he carefully checked the tension of the string.
"A harp," someone shouted. "He plays it like a harp."
Conan fingered through the forty arrows in the quiver strapped behind the cantle of his saddle, making sure once again that each fletching war sound.
"He must miss often, to carry so many shafts."
"Nay, he uses the feathers to tickle women. Take her ankle, you see, and turn her...."
The laughing comments droned on, some measure of silence falling only when the soldiers returned with a straw butt.
The Conan Compendium Page 370