The Conan Compendium
Page 614
Footfalls loud enough to challenge the rain thudded outside. A war party coming for them after all? Conan laid his sword across his knees, saw Valeria do the same, then realized that it was only two pairs of feet. The rain had slackened.
"Enter!" he called, his voice sounding like a dotard's. He pointed at the beer jug and the cups, and Valeria was filling the cups when the grass curtain at the door parted and Seyganko and Mokossa entered.
One look at their faces told Conan the news they brought. He leaped up, feeling as if he could dance down Aondo all over again and then hunt Wobeku all the way to the sea. He gripped the visitors' hands so hard that the girl squealed, and even Seyganko fought not to wince.
"Yes, it is true. Emwaya will live, heal, and be my bride."
"How fares her father?" Valeria asked. "I owe him my life, too."
"It will be as well if the Ichiribu need no Spirit-Speaking for some days," Seyganko said dryly. "This night has not ended as we had expected when it began."
"Meaning that Conan and I aren't dead?" Valeria snapped. Conan put a hand on her shoulder; she shook him off.
Seyganko looked genuinely ashamed. "My tongue fails me in my time of need. No. We wished Conan to win. But we did not wish such disorder among our folk." He seemed to need his spear as a staff for a moment.
"Aondo and Wobeku have both fled. In their flight, they killed two bidui boys and stole their canoe. We must find the taboo-breakers, or their spirits will curse the Ichiribu. Our fields on the island and the mainland alike will be barren. Our cows will go dry. The fish will swim downriver, beyond our reach."
He went on reciting a litany of disasters until Mokossa boldly gripped his arm. "Oh," Seyganko said as if suddenly awakened from a daze.
"There can be no welcoming feast, not until the taboo-breakers are taken. But the gods will forgive us for offering you and your shield-woman companions, for this night and for any other nights as you may choose."
Conan held laughter inside; Seyganko was clearly in no merry mood. Now he knew why Mokossa had interrupted Seyganko's lamentations… and also whom she intended that Conan's partner should be tonight.
Then the Cimmerian could not hold back laughter, because Seyganko was gazing at Valeria as if she were a rather distasteful duty that he must perform for the good of his tribe. Mercifully, Seyganko had enough sense to join in the laughter instead of taking offense.
"My thanks to the Ichiribu, and I mean no insult to their fine women, not to any of them," Conan said. "But my shield-woman and I are vowed, as I have told you. Also, we know each other's ways."
"May we at least send more beer?" Seyganko seemed to be almost pleading as he looked at Valeria.
"As you wish," Conan replied. He glanced at the door-curtain, and in a moment he was alone with Valeria. A Valeria who had, while his back was turned, removed the waistcloth that was her only garment. He saw nothing he had not seen a score of times before… but now, for the first time, it made his blood sing.
He stepped forward; Valeria held up one hand. He gripped it, and she pressed her other hand hard against his chest.
"You are going to have to prove that, you know," she said as he drew her closer.
"Prove what?"
"That you know my ways."
He laughed and kissed her, and this time, her lips opened under his.
"We have all night. If I don't know them at first, by Erlik's brass tool, I'll know them by morning!" He lifted her, and she nestled against his chest for a moment before raising her face for more kisses.
ELEVEN
Something's taken the bait," Conan said.
Valeria sat up in the stern of the canoe and reached for her trident.
She was clad in an Ichiribu waistcloth, a necklace of lionfish teeth, and a broad hat made of leaves tied with vine to a reed frame.
Conan squatted amidships, letting the fishing line feed over the side.
He wore a leather binding to protect his hand from the flax-and-sinew line, a loinguard, and a dagger. His sword and Valeria's, as well as her bow, lay in the bottom of the canoe, wrapped in fish skin, inside oiled leather, inside waxed linen.
Neither of them cared to leave their weapons ashore on such an expedition as today's. Nor did they care to risk them rusting or taking up dampness. Wobeku might not be the only traitor among the Ichiribu, and there were still warriors with doubts about the two strangers. The nearest smith who could replace, or even repair their blades was at least a month's travel from the Lake of Death.
At last the fish finished its run. Conan braced himself and began hauling it in. Valeria crouched, trident ready, its line coiled lightly in the stern and knotted firmly to a peg driven into the bottom of the canoe.
The fish was a fighter, but Conan wasted no time playing with it. He judged the line would bear any strain the fish could put on it, and hauled away with a will.
Ripples spread around the canoe as the fish's thrashing reached the surface. Valeria's eyes roved about, watching for the first patch of scales large enough to give her trident a mark. Her movements lifted her breasts in a way Conan would have found agreeable, had he spared attention for such matters now.
Suddenly, the fish leaped. The trident was as swift, and blood and foam took the place of the ripples as the fish thrashed out its life an arm's length from the boat. With Valeria gripping the tail and Conan the head, they heaved it aboard, a grisku, as the tribe called ita third the length of the canoe and weighing as much as a newborn calf.
Valeria made a face as the grisku gave its last wriggle. "All that work for one of those? You know they taste like glue."
"The Ichiribu like them, so we won't have to eat it. Besides, you know well that the more fish we bring back, the less anybody will suspect us."
"I trust the Ichiribu. Don't you?"
"Most of them, yes, as much as I trust any foreigners when I'm nearly alone among them. It takes few enemies to make trouble then."
"In that case, let us make our enemies fewer, Conan. You've been hammering the idea of our fighting the Kwanyi into my ears night and day."
"Not every night, Valeria. Some nights we've passed otherwise."
She sniffed. "If I do lower myself to take a great loutish Cimmerian to my bed, the least he can do is not to throw it in my face by daylight."
"Where would you have me throw it?"
Valeria made a vulgar gesture and gave an even more vulgar reply. Then she laughed. "I've no quarrel with the Ichiribu, and we'll reach the sea faster if we wait until the rains. A war with the Kwanyi seems as good a way of passing the time as any."
"Better than most. If half they say of Chabano is true, his eye is on an empire. That could bring him down on my old friends toward the coast if he goes unchecked."
"They're not my friends," Valeria protested, but to Conan the protest seemed feeble. Like him, she was one to think twice before walking away from a good fight, even more so when one owed a debt as she and he did to the Ichiribu.
Moreover
"I've been thinking," he said. "If Dobanpu thinks it well, we can explore the tunnels beyond the Ichiribu island. If they reach to the Kwanyi shore of the lake, we can climb into Chabano's bedchamber some night."
"What of the Golden Serpents?"
"What of them?" Conan asked, shrugging. "With enough good men at our side, no serpent will pass. Besides, the more Golden Serpents, the more fire-stones."
"Indeed." For a moment, Valeria's blue eyes seemed to take on a greenish hue as her pirate's soul warmed to the thought of such booty.
Geyrus, the First Speaker, assumed the pose of meditation. Out of respect, Ryku did the same. He doubted that the gesture would deceive the First Speaker, but it might delay an open breach.
If the First Speaker really intended to come down from Thunder Mountain to meet Chabano, only a little delay would be needed. The presence of Kwanyi warriors, added to his own new skills, would make Ryku proof against anything untoward that Geyrus might intend for him.
This had taken its toll of his body, however. He had gone sleepless as often as not, endured thirst, hunger, and both great and little pain, and driven his body to its uttermost limits. Or what he had believed were its uttermost limits, before he began the final steps to the Speakers' arts. Now he knew that he had been hardly more than a youth thinking himself a man.
It seemed that the moon must have turned from full to dark and back again to half-bright before the First Speaker broke the posture. When Ryku saw Geyrus's eyes, he wished it had indeed taken that long, or even longer.
"Ryku, I am not pleased with how little knowledge of the Ichiribu you have gathered from Chabano."
"I have been as zealous in seeking what the Kwanyi know as I have been in studying the Speakers' arts. You have praised my zeal in the second.
I ask for no praise in the first matter if my best has been less than you wished, but I swear"
"Do not use vain oaths in the Cave of the Living Wind," Geyrus said sharply.
That was asking of Ryku what the other Speakers hardly seemed to ask of themselves. Did Geyrus mean to put fear in him by such childish bullying? Or did the First Speaker know something about the Living Wind that he had not told Ryku?
That second thought made the air of the caves seem even more chill than common. It also made Ryku ransack his memory and knowledge for some art that might let him find the answer to that question. He knewas surely as he knew he was alive that Geyrus would not tell him freely, if at all.
"If I can use no oaths, may I use my wits?"
"Your tongue has grown sharp, Ryku."
"I trust that my wits have not grown dull. I would beg the right to come with you when you go to meet Chabano. I believe he may speak more freely to me than to you, if he is given the opportunity to do so without his warriors knowing it."
"They still fear the God-Men?"
"Yes."
"As indeed they ought to," Geyrus said, rising to his feet. As always, he was taller than one expected, seeing his many years and believing they must have shrunk his limbs. "Very well. If Chabano thinks to trade rotten fish for fresh, he must be taught to think more clearly."
Geyrus departed, without bidding Ryku to follow. The Silent Brother returned to the posture of meditation, but with his thoughts very much elsewhere.
Had Chabano found himself knowing less of matters among the Ichiribu than he had expected to do? This seemed not unlikely. Doubtless he had spies in the herdlands and fieldlands, even on the island itself. Just as certainly, those spies might have fallen prey to the Ichiribu, or simply found it difficult to send messages to their master.
It would be as well to learn about this. Geyrus would not forever contain his wrath if he learned he had made a fool's bargain. If Ryku learned the truth before his master did, he could at least flee to the Kwanyi, offering silence in return for protection.
Ryku doubted that Geyrus would challenge Chabano himself over one fugitive, or indeed over anything else. Geyrus was old, and his judgment twisted by the loss of that wretched girl, but he was not yet a fool.
Which meant that Ryku should go to the meeting prepared to use the arts of a full Speaker, so that whichever side he chose to aid would have cause to be grateful to him.
The lamp bowl held mixed tallow and fish oil, with herbs crumbled into it. Valeria thought she had smelled sweeter middens, but Seyganko and Emwaya seemed to inhale the scent hungrily. Conan was as indifferent to it as he was to every other discomfort, great and small.
Valeria marveled that a man could learn such endurance. But then, Conan had learned in the harsh school of a life where one endured or died.
Even when he was a free youth in his native Cimmeria, its stony fields and snowbound winters must have begun the lessons.
"Valeria and I will give the warriors of the Ichiribu any knowledge of our fighting arts that they wish to learn in order to make themselves a better match for the Kwanyi on land," Conan said. "You have also seen how much Valeria knows of the art of fighting from boats."
"We have," Seyganko said. "You used the words 'wish to learn'? Not 'need to learn.' "
"I have a pretty fair and wide experience of war, and much of it in the Black Kingdoms," Conan replied. "I did not win the name Amra by sitting on a golden stool and fondling my concubines."
"No doubt this displeased your concubines," Emwaya said. Valeria understood enough of the Ichiribu tongue now to smile at the young woman. Emwaya sometimes seemfed almost young enough to be Valeria's daughter, at other times old enough in wisdom, if not in years, to be her grandmother.
"The Kwanyi are there and I am here," Conan said. "And being here, I'm not one to insult my hosts by saying that they are children in war.
Chabano has not made the Kwanyi invincible. But there are war skills that I can teach, those that will save the Ichiribu many warriors when we meet the Kwanyi in battle."
Seyganko nodded. "I am sure of that. Conan, I will proclaim that you speak with my voice in teaching war skills. I ask only one favor in return."
"What is it?"
"Give over this notion of marching through the tunnels, out of the gods' daylight and through who-knows-what evil magic, to strike the Kwanyi."
Emwaya turned and stared at her betrothed. Then she spoke sharply, words that Valeria did not understand but whose meaning she sensed as a woman. Seyganko had surprised Emwaya, and she was even more displeased at the surprise than at the suggestion.
Emwaya went on for some time. It seemed to Valeria that Conan was holding back laughter, that Seyganko much wished to be elsewhere, and that Emwaya would slap her betrothed's head from his shoulders for a Shemite brass piece.
Neither Conan nor Valeria offered Emwaya any coin at all, so Seyganko went unmolested until the woman ran out of breath. Valeria remained uneasy until Emwaya at last collapsed into Seyganko's arms, tears running down her cheeks. Doubtless her anger had wearied her more than it had him; the poison was out of her body, but she had not yet regained her strength.
"Conan," Seyganko said. He took what seemed half the night before he found his next word. "It seems that Emwaya believes, as you do, in the matter of the tunnels."
The Cimmerian continued to feign a temple image. Judging that he had good reasons for this, Valeria sought to do likewise.
"She and I will submit this matter to her father," the warrior chief went on. "Will you abide by his judgment?"
Conan nodded. "I've no wish to insult you, Emwaya, but your father likely enough knows more of this than he has had time to teach you." He looked at Emwaya, and Valeria saw the Ichiribu woman try to meet those icy-blue eyes and not quite succeed.
"I trust we've no need to wait to begin my instructing the warriors?"
the Cimmerian concluded.
Seyganko took Conan's meaningthat he might keep all his authority over the Ichiribu warriors to himself if he spoke against Conan again.
Valeria shifted sideways so that she was within reach of Conan, and also faced Seyganko.
The Ichiribu warrior, being no fool, could recognize a battle that he had lost before it was joined. "Any oaths you need, I will give, Conan, that you may teach the Ichiribu to walk on their hands and hurl spears with their toes!"
"That might be no bad thing should it make the Kwanyi laugh so hard that other warriors could slit their bellies while they laughed," Conan said. "Come at dawn tomorrow, and tell me all you know of the Kwanyi way of fighting. Then I will be more sure of what the Ichiribu could most wisely learn from me."
"We can begin that tonight" Seyganko began eagerly, then found Emwaya covering his mouth with two fingers in the ritual gesture for silence.
She smi
led and laid her other hand on his knee.
"We will begin tomorrow, when we are all rested and fit," Conan said, and the suggestion seemed to act as a command on the visitors.
When the curtain had fallen behind them, he let out his laughter in a roar that made the hanging billow as if in a gale. "There's a woman who hasn't been well-bedded in a while and who won't have it put off for talk of war!"
"And here is another," Valeria said, slipping an arm through Conan's.
"What, not well-bedded? You insult me, or was it some other woman wrapped around me like a vine last night?"
"You know as well as any man that one night is like one meal. Man or woman, you cannot live on it forever."
He turned to her, and she rose so that he could undo the waistcloth, throwing her arms around him as he did so.
This would not last, she knew. Neither of them could long endure a partnership in which they could not be sure who led and who followed.
But for now, she could follow him with pleasureand not only to the sleeping mat.
Wobeku wondered that the torches did not draw swarms of insects that would sting and bite, whether the pests flew or crawled. It was not the torches themselves, he was sure. They smelled and looked much the same as any others.
The God-Menthe Speakers to the Living Wind, as they called themselvesmust have worked magic. Potent magic, too, when one considered how many insects a single torch could draw out of the jungle! That was one difference between the island and the mainland, and Wobeku would have to endure it until Chabano's victory took him home again.
Better gnawed by insects than dead, he told himself, then cast his face into a form suitable for receiving Spirit-Speakers, or whatever the God-Men were. As a fugitive among the Kwanyi, he had barely the right to ask such questions; he would have a long wait for answers.
At least Chabano's wrath had come and gone swiftly, and when it had departed, Wobeku had not lain dead on the floor of the Paramount Chief's hut. That Aondo had been a fool, and that Wobeku had not broken taboo, undoubtedly counted for much. It counted for more that Chabano killed fewer men out of hand these days, even when in one of his famous rages.