The Conan Compendium

by Various Authors

  Perhaps she could find a way entirely out of this land with Conan's help. Surely the Cimmerian knew the way to some land where she and her father could live out their days, on what they could take from the treasure-room and what she might earn with her healing skills. She also could appeal to that northern iron honor of his.

  Again she fought the urge to embrace her father. He looked ready to weep, and she knew that if he began, she would join him. Amidst her tears, the truth would come out, and all that she feared might come to pass.

  "Father, I have a plan."

  "Do not put yourself in danger for it."

  "We must not fear danger, if we are to avoid doom. We both know that Conan has no ghost-voice. We cannot hear his mind across the wilderness. But he can hear my ghost-voice if I fling it toward him through the Crystal of Thraz."

  "That is potent magick."

  "Then you must teach me what I do not know, and how to use it in safety. If I can speak to Conan, I can subtly guide his band toward the Cave of the Warrior. Meanwhile, we can follow them with a stout band of Picts, enough to seize the Bamulas when they reach the cave. Conan alone has enough spirit in him to raise the statue. If we are able to sacrifice the whole band

  "That was my very plan!" Lysenius exclaimed. He grinned down at his daughter. "Truly, you are my daughter of the spirit as well as of the body."

  Scyra wanted to scream that she was anything but that. Instead, she went on. "We might well use the world-walker, to pass ahead of Conan's band."

  Lysenius shook his head. "The Cave of the Warrior is hard upon the land of the Snakes. We would not last a day without more Owls ready to defend us than I could pass through the world-walker. I also doubt that very many Picts would pass through it even if I could send them. What they have seen of my magick already puts them in fear. The world-walker would drive them mad."

  Lysenius drew himself straight. To his daughter, he appeared for a moment almost as kingly as Conan. Then he bent and kissed her on the forehead, letting his hands rest lightly on her shoulders. She stood entirely still, but her stomach churned.

  "So be it. Do as you must, to guide Conan. I will reach out to the chiefs of the Owls and assemble the warriors. Shall I ask them to bring litters as well?"

  "Unless you think we can match the pace of marching Pict warriors, yes," Scyra said with a wry smile. "No doubt, if I could do so, I would be worth more than ever as a bride for a chief. But I fear we cannot pretend that we are any sort of Pict."

  Nor, in the end, even any sort of friend to them.

  Fifteen

  To Govindue, this land of the Picts would always seem more perilous than his homeland. This was not without reason either, as even Conan granted.

  There were the nights so cold that even the strange, all-enveloping clothes made of the hides of furry beasts barely kept shivering at bay.

  There was the rocky ground, the streams that held no crocodiles but could rise to a flood after a swift rain. There were storms, as fierce as any in the jungles, if not as frequent. There were animals, not as numerous as those of the jungle, but in their own land every bit as dangerous”and with habits Govindue did not know.

  Before and beyond all, there were the Picts. They had to be out there, Govindue knew, even though they had remained quite unseen and nearly unheard since the band left the caves of Lysenius. Any tree in the expanse of sinister green he saw now from a low ridge might hide a Pict. The forest ahead might hide enough to swarm over the Bamulas and bring them down with bare hands, if they were of a mind to capture them alive for Lysenius or for their own purposes.

  Govindue could not withhold a shudder at the thought of what Pictish schemes might mean to captives. The Bamulas and their enemies were adept at tests of a prisoner's endurance, but the Picts made them seem like weak-willed children.

  Conan scrambled up to the ridge beside Govindue and shaded his eyes against the rising sun. They had been on the march this day ever since all the sky one could see overhead was a sullen gray. Now it promised to be a fine day, in which they could make a good long stride toward safety”or doom.

  "You look uneasy, young chief," Conan said.

  "How I look only speaks my thoughts," Govindue said. "But I suppose a chief must keep such thoughts from more than his mouth?"

  "You do not need to ask, I think," Conan replied. "Had I known half as much about leading when I was your age, I might be a general or a prince today. Well, the gods make our paths rough or smooth as it pleases them, and we can only walk where they will us to. Although I see you seem used to walking paths in sandals, or even in boots now."

  Govindue laughed. "They will never feel natural. But in this rock-fanged land, walking barefoot would feel much worse, and that quickly."

  "As Vuona discovered. Have her feet healed?"

  Govindue felt the blood rush to his face. Conan gave him a sidelong glance, and for a moment he feared his chief was about to strike him.

  "I saw you rubbing ointment on her feet and binding them in strips of cloth. Was there more that I did not see, that I should know about?"

  "I have not bedded your woman, Amra," Govindue said stiffly.

  "I am still Conan here in this band, in this land," the other said sharply. Then he grinned, to take the lash from his words.

  "Your sense of honor would not allow it, I know. But is Vuona displeased at the idea?"

  "You know her better than I do," Govindue said. "It is as well that her feet are sore, or I might not be able to outrun her."

  "No, but you could give her a good long chase so that by the time she overtook you, she'd be too winded for bedsport."

  Govindue's face remained hot, and the bigger man saw that he had embarrassed the young chief. "As long as Vuona makes no trouble among the men, I will not chain her. If she makes trouble, I will not chain her either¦ I will run her through. As for the future¦ when we know we'll not end as bones bleaching on a Pictish midden-heap, you might think of a first wife and do worse than Vuona. You know that she is daughter to one of the three highest chiefs of the Fish-Eaters?"

  "I did not know."

  "Never miss listening to a woman who's willing to talk. Half the trouble women cause is by silence, and Vuona will never have that fault. Others, no doubt, but you as a chief in the Dead Elephant Valley bound by marriage to a chief of the Fish-Eaters

  "Yes, and since I am oath-bound to you, it could mean peace between you and the Fish-Eaters. Indeed, you might serve me by advancing my suit."

  "Small chance of that. Her father, I judge, is the chief whose headdress I skewered when he was trying to have his people kill me as a demon-lover."

  "One can see that he might not love you, nor think well of any suit you brought. As you wish, Conan."

  "You have not so much to learn as you think, young chief. Indeed, I've no desire to exchange fleeing the Picts for fleeing the Fish-Eaters."

  "All who have followed you here would stand by you to the death."

  "Yes, and to the death of a good many Fish-Eaters, which would make war between them and the Bamulas. A man finds enough wars in his path by chance, without going out and seeking more!"

  Conan looked about him. "Now let's be down and off. The men should have finished at the stream, and these boulders might hide more than Picts."

  ***

  Conan saw no signs of Picts on his way down the hill or in the trees around the pool where the Bamulas were filling their water bottles. The forest was not short of water, even in high summer, but Conan had warred in deserts that made Hell seem moist and temperate. He would never miss a chance to take on water, and if he and his band never had to stand off Picts on a waterless hill, so much the better.

  Indeed, he was beginning to wonder if they might make their way clean out of the Pictish Wilderness without having to stand off any of the tribes. They were still some days from the Marches, and trails, blazed trees, and every so often a fallen feather or discarded moccasin, told of a Pictish presence.

  No living Pi
ct had showed so much as a feather-tip however, and even Picts were not such cunning trackers as to remain so completely invisible for so long from eyes as keen as the Cimmerian's. They had also missed more than one chance to slaughter the little band with small danger to themselves.

  Conan had been using Scyra's map and his many years as woodsman and warrior to guide his people around the many dangerous passages. But only a god able to lift them into the sky could have taken them past all perils. Half a dozen times, Conan had felt the flesh of his back crawl with the anticipation of an arrow sinking into it, but no arrow ever came.

  It was a mystery, and he did not like mysteries. Not in this land, where the Picts were deadly enough when they behaved in their common fashion.

  He would have liked to ask Scyra for an answer, those times when she reached out and touched his mind with advice on the best way to go. The first time it had been at night, as he was drifting into sleep after a weary scramble across the worst stretch of hills on their way east. He had thought of Lysenius's magick and resolved to fall on his sword rather than let the sorcerer master him to the harm of his people.

  But it had only been the sorcerer's daughter. Her thoughts came in her own voice, which he remembered well (and not only her cries of joy).

  Also, she offered as proof of who she was, memories that no one else could have had.

  So he came to accept her advice, and more than once tried to send his thanks back, and more than thanks. No answer came, however. In time, the Cimmerian realized that this sending of thoughts might remain from her to him, unless he himself turned sorcerer”which was about as likely as his willingly becoming a eunuch!

  Mayhap there was nothing sinister behind the lack of Picts. Scyra might well have been able to dissuade her father from unleashing the Owls.

  Now the fugitives were at, or even beyond, the land of the Owls, into land disputed between the Wolves and the Snakes. The Snakes at least were no friends to Lysenius, and the Wolves might have too much on their hands fighting the Snakes to fret over handfuls of curiously hued strangers wandering across their land.

  Conan joined the column close to the rear, behind Vuona. He walked beside her as the band left the clearing and saw that she was casting sharp looks at Kubwande.

  "Has he been making trouble?" Conan almost said "again," but did not care to discuss the stray spear in the dark during the battle against the chakans.

  "What would you have me say?" Vuona replied. "I have no quarrel with him. Have you?"

  "Not unless he is fool enough to find one before we are out of the wilderness," Conan said shortly. He also said it loudly enough for others besides Vuona to hear. Kubwande might have friends who would serve his schemes safely at home but could see wisdom until they had left the Picts behind.

  "He does not seem that big a fool," Vuona said. "Also, I think you will be a bigger chief than he is."

  "As the gods will," Conan said.

  "Could they will us a safe place nearer than these Marches?" Vuona asked, almost pettishly. Conan saw that she winced sometimes as she walked, and that dark stains showed on her foot-bindings.

  "Not safe from the Picts," Conan said. "Sore feet are better than a slit throat or a cracked skull. Besides, in the Marches they have warm houses with soft furs on the floor."

  "Warm? How does anybody keep warm in this land?"

  Conan did not say that if Vuona kept more of her clothes about her and showed less of her lithe form, she might stay warmer. Perhaps she would not be so good a match for Govindue after all. The young chief deserved at the very least to know who was the father of the sons born to his wife.

  "They build their huts of stone and heavy logs, and put fires in stone boxes inside."

  "They must stifle!"

  "Not in the winter."

  "Winter?"

  "A time much colder than this, when there is snow” frozen water”lying as deep as a man's height on the ground. All the streams freeze so that one can walk dryshod across them, and to be caught without shelter is death."

  Vuona looked up at the sky with the face of one struggling not to cry out. Conan rested a hand lightly on her shoulder.

  "No snow today, and not for many days. Do not fear."

  "Who fears?" she said haughtily. Then, more softly, she added. "I do hope that we are out of this land before the winter."

  "Woman, in that we think alike," Conan said.

  ***

  The hoots the Owls used for signals on the march came back from the head of the line, passed Scyra's litter, and faded away to the rear.

  The bearers halted, and Scyra climbed out, disdaining the helping hands offered by several warriors.

  Perhaps that was giving offense to those who meant well, but Scyra would believe in a well-meaning Pict when she saw the sun stand still in the sky. She also feared in her innermost heart that her flesh would creep and crawl away from a Pictish touch.

  All along the trail from the caves, she had been troubled by nightmares in which Picts by the score made free with her body in ways that would have made a Stygian turn away in disgust. Once she awoke so drenched with sweat that she had to quickly change her garments, lest her father suspect that she was fevered and try to cure her in ways that would betray her secret.

  Scyra had small doubt that it was that secret that was unsettling her mind and tormenting her spirit, by night and sometimes by day. However, it had not yet kept her from learning the arts of the Crystal of Thraz, nor from reaching Conan with her messages of guidance.

  Indeed, she had begun to suspect that if she had the time, she could make her lie the truth. She could bind the crystal, if not to women only, at least so tightly to herself that her father could not use it without risking its destruction. He would not chance that unless he became persuaded that she was lying to him”and it was still not in Lysenius to believe that the daughter who was all that remained to him of his dead wife would betray him and his plans.

  And speaking of her father's plans”here came Sutharo, one of the five greatest war chiefs of the Owls. Lysenius had named him most often as Scyra's likely husband among the Picts, and it seemed to the young woman that the Pict had learned of this. Certainly his manner around her was that of one who wished her goodwill. She doubted that this grotesque parody of courtliness would last beyond the marriage circle and the dousing of the torches, but for the moment he was being as civil toward her as it was in a Pict to be toward an outland woman.

  Sutharo wore leggings and a wolfskin cloak, as well as a breechclout of the finest deerskin, lavishly embroidered with colored shells and bits of bone. He carried bow and quiver with bronze-headed arrows, a spear likewise bronze-tipped and decorated with heron feathers, and in his belt a hatchet and a well-kept piece of loot from some battlefield, a Gunderman-style short-sword.

  Halting before Scyra, he gave his best imitation of a bow. "I trust I find you well, gracious lady," he said. Like nearly all pure-blooded Picts, he spoke no Hyborian tongue, but there were similar modes of address in the Pictish speech used among chiefs or toward shamans.

  Scyra recognized that he was using both at once. Considering the common lot of Pictish women, this was near to a Hyborian kneeling at her feet.

  "I am well. The journey is not hard, and the hope of victory at the end of it strengthens any warriors spirit." She used the same mode of speech as Sutharo, remembering at the last moment that in Pictish there was no feminine form of the word "warrior."

  "Yes. May it also strengthen your regard for one who leads warriors to that victory." At least that was one meaning of the Pictish word for regard. Another meaning was "lust."

  Scyra doubted that if Sutharo conquered the whole world and laid it at her feet, she would feel either meaning of the word for him. But that particular truth would help no one and nothing, and she did not feel any of the qualms about lying to Sutharo that she felt in the matter of her father.

  "My father and I have always held the warriors of the Owls in high regard. Your friendsh
ip strengthens us in all ways."

  "That fills me with joy." The word for "joy," like the word for "regard," had other and less polite meanings. Scyra did not doubt that Sutharo was using several meanings at once. The common Pictish chief might not shine at the court in Tarantia, but the common Aquilonian courtier would likewise not find himself well-suited to the intrigues of a Pictish tribe”if he lived long enough to join in them at all.

  Scyra walked up and down, stretching her cramped limbs, ready to give everything but the Crystal of Thraz for a hot bath. (Perhaps also for a bundle of scented herbs to stuff in her nostrils against the reek of a thousand Pictish warriors under a sun climbing toward the zenith.)

  Instead, she turned her thoughts from the discomforts of her body and toward remembering where Conan had been when she last touched his mind.

  He no longer shied like a startled horse from that touch, and so far, her father had not to her knowledge listened to her speaking to Conan.

  The Cimmerian might have no ghost-voice, but he had a very keen eye for what lay about him. No doubt his many battles and hunts”and yes, flights for his life”had sharpened his eyes and ears alike. Seeing a tree through Conan's eyes, Scyra could almost count the needles on a branch fifty paces above the ground.

  She did not return to the litter to draw out her map, the twin of Conan's. The Picts had no knowledge of maps, and while they respected the arts of the white shaman and his daughter, they grew uneasy seeing them practiced openly.

  Instead, she sat on the bole of a fallen oak, feeling the sponginess of the rotted wood, smelling the rich mold, hearing only birdsong and the chirr of an insect just over her head. The human world and all its assaults on her senses faded from her awareness, leaving only nature surrounding her mind as she composed herself to send her ghost-voice out to Conan¦

  She returned from her mind's journey just in time to hear the hooting pass by again, from front to rear. Now it meant an end to the halt. The scouts had reported the way clear, the hunters had returned with any game unfortunate enough to encounter them, the water bags had been refilled, and the warriors who swore by the Owl were ready to march again.