Conan of Venarium

by Harry Turtledove

  Pride is a terrible thing. For pride’s sake, the blacksmith’s son would sooner have risked his life than risked the laughter of friends and neighbors. And, had any other man of Duthil stood where Conan stood, he would have made the same choice. What the Cimmerians lacked in material goods, they made up for in a superabundance of pride. If not for pride, they would have fought less amongst themselves, and would have made a harder nut for the Aquilonians to crack. None of that crossed Conan’s mind. He knew only that he would rather have faced wolves than his fellow villagers.

  A twig breaking underfoot froze him into animal immobility. The oaths that followed were in Aquilonian. Conan would not be laughed at, but he mocked the shortcomings of others readily enough. The invaders blundering along the trail there could hardly have made more noise had they been a herd of cattle.

  As Conan had amused himself by doing before, he began to trail these Aquilonians. The closer he could come to them without their being aware he was anywhere nearby, the happier he would be. They ambled along, loudly announcing their presence to anyone with ears to hear. Conan almost gave himself away at their antics; only by biting down hard on the inside of his lower lip did he defeat the urge to guffaw.

  Someone else stepped on a stick. “You clumsy idiot,” said a Bossonian. “How are we supposed to catch anything when you do that?”

  “Oh, and it wasn’t you the last time, eh?” retorted a Gunderman. “You walk like you’ve got rocks in your boots.”

  “And you talk like you’ve got rocks in your head, so devils eat you,” said the Bossonian. He cupped a hand behind his ears. “And if you listen, you can hear all the animals in the forest running away from us.”

  “Not in this forest.” The Gunderman shook his head. “Half the things in this forest want to kill us.”

  Conan nodded. He wanted to kill all the invaders who tramped through the woods that had been his ever since he grew old enough to venture into them for the first time. He was close enough to smash in a couple of the hunters’ skulls with hurled rocks, too. But he did not think he could slay every one of them, and even if he did he would only bring a savage vengeance down on Duthil. He cast no stones, then, but hung close to the Aquilonians and listened.

  Another Gunderman spoke for the first time: “Everything in this whole country wants to kill us.” Conan nodded again; so did the Gunderman’s hunting companions. The yellow-haired soldier continued, “I’ll tell you something else, too—our beloved count isn’t making things any better for us, the way he’s prowling around that girl in the village.”

  That astonished Conan. Even the Aquilonians realized Stercus had no business doing what he was doing? The blacksmith’s son had not dreamt that could be so. Why did they not restrain him, then?

  The Bossonian archer laughed. “And if you tell him so, Vulth, you’ll get it in the neck. In fact, if you even talk about it with anybody you can’t trust, you’re liable to get it in the neck anyway. Stercus doesn’t like people telling him what he can do and what he can’t.”

  “King Numedides told him,” said the Gunderman who wasn’t Vulth: a younger man, with a merry smile. “That’s why he’s up here, not still down in the capital prowling after young girls there.”

  “Ah, but there’s a difference,” the Bossonian replied. “Numedides can tell anybody anything. That’s what being king is all about. You damned well can’t. You’re just a miserable, no-account pikeman with dung on your boots. Nobody wants to hear what you’ve got to say.”

  Had anyone spoken so to Conan, the blacksmith’s son would have done his best to murder the offender. No Cimmerian would stand for the notion that his word was not as good as any other man’s. Clan chiefs won their places not thanks to their fancy bloodlines but by virtue of the strength and wisdom they displayed. Anyone might challenge them, and men frequently did. If being frozen in place from fear of a wicked nobleman’s status was what went into civilization, then Conan wanted no part of it, vastly preferring the barbarism in which he had been raised. His father had seen that benefits also accrued from a social system more highly structured than Cimmeria’s, but he was blind to those.

  The Gunderman, instead of taking the archer’s words as a deadly insult, only laughed. “And you’ve got dung on your tongue, Benno,” he said. “That’s why everybody loves you so much.”

  Benno’s reply taught Conan several new Aquilonian curses. He was not completely sure what all of them meant, but they sounded splendid, rolling off the Bossonian’s tongue with a fine, sonorous obscenity. The Gunderman at whom they were aimed laughed some more. That Conan did understand. Friends could take such liberties.

  For a little while, he forgot about murdering all the invaders. Following them, spying on them, made sport enough.

  Granth hated the Cimmerian forest. Even with comrades along, he always felt like a flea making its way through the matted fur of the biggest, shaggiest dog in the world. He did not offer up that conceit to Vulth and Benno. He knew too well that his cousin and the Bossonian would make the most of it.

  When he stopped for a moment, the other two soldiers also halted. “What is it?” asked Vulth. “Did you see something? Did you hear something?” He sounded edgier than usual himself; perhaps the damp, silent immensity of the woods had begun to get under his skin, too.

  However reluctantly, Granth shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “But half the Cimmerians in the world could be within fifty feet of us, and we’d never notice, not in woods like these.”

  “By Mitra, we would!” Benno laughed and mimed taking an arrow in the chest. “We’d notice pretty damned quick, too.”

  That had a horrid feeling of probability to Granth. It also made him stop, look, and listen again. But he saw nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing—except the hair-prickling feeling at the nape of his neck that not all was as it should be. He muttered to himself.

  “Still jumpy?” said Vulth.

  “Not—jumpy.” Granth tried to put the feeling into words: “More as though a goose just walked over my grave.”

  “You’re a goose—a silly one,” said his cousin. Granth scowled; he might have known Vulth would make him pay for careless words like those.

  “And if anything walks over your grave in this country, it’s likelier to be a panther or a dragon—something with long, sharp claws, anyway—than a goose,” added Benno. “Geese are the least of what we’ve got to worry about here.”

  That only served to reinforce Granth’s feeling on unease. Try as he would, he could find no rational reason for it. Telling himself as much, though, did not make it go away. He leaned against the rough bark of a fir that might have sprouted before the kingdom of Aquilonia coalesced out of the wandering Hyborian tribes that had shattered the ancient, sorcery-steeped land of Acheron. Even then, this forest had belonged to Cimmeria.

  Thinking of the land naturally made him think also of the dour folk who dwelt upon it. But thinking of the Cimmerians only added to his unease. Again, he groped for words: “They aren’t acting so—so beaten as they did just after we came up here.”

  Neither Vulth nor Benno had to ask who they were. Frowning, Vulth said, “They’ve had a couple of years to lick their wounds and to take our measure. What’s the old saw? Familiarity breeds contempt, that’s it. They’ve seen us drinking ale and standing around scratching ourselves. They haven’t seen us fight for a while.”

  “We should have gone on,” said Benno. “We should have bitten off a bigger chunk of this cursed country than we did.”

  “If you ask me, we’re lucky we bit off any—if you want to call it luck,” said Granth. “They could have beaten us there by Fort Venarium. Hell, they almost did.”

  “And they know it, too,” agreed Vulth. “You can see it in their faces when you go into Duthil. Like I said, they’ve licked their wounds. They’re pretty much healed. Now they’re getting to want another crack at us.”

  This time, Benno did pull an arrow from his quiver and set it to his bowstring. “If they
want one, I’ll give it to them.”

  “More of us now than there were when the army first came up into Cimmeria,” observed Granth. “Every settler who’s started a farm can wield a spear or a sword or a bow or an axe at a pinch.”

  “I still wish we’d conquered more of Cimmeria,” said Benno stubbornly.

  To Granth’s annoyance, Vulth nodded. What was he doing, backing a Bossonian against his own cousin? But then he looked to the north and said, “So do I. How many Cimmerians are there that we didn’t beat? How many of them can fight at a pinch? And how many of them are feeling the pinch now?”

  Yes, Granth had always hated the Cimmerian forests. They stretched across the landscape like a great mantling cloak. And just how many savage barbarians sheltered beneath that cloak? He did not know. He hoped he—and all the Aquilonians in these parts—would not have to find out.

  A fireplace poker was one of the simplest bits of smithery Mordec did: a long iron bar with one end twisted back on itself to make a handle. It had neither edge nor temper, and needed neither. Taking the hot metal off the anvil with his tongs, the blacksmith simply set it aside to let it cool.

  He set down the tongs, too, then walked back into his bedchamber to see how his wife fared. Verina had fallen into a fitful sleep. Her face was thinner and paler than it had been even when the Aquilonians invaded Cimmeria; the bluish cast to her lips was more pronounced. Mordec’s great shoulders heaved in a hopeless sigh. How long could she go on? How could he go on—and, especially, how could Conan go on-when she lost her protracted struggle with mortality?

  He sighed again, then straightened. For the time being, she did not need him. With Conan out hunting, he had wanted to be sure of that before stepping away from the smithy for a little while. Nodding to himself, he turned and walked out into Duthil’s narrow, muddy main street.

  Boys yelled and ran, kicking at their leather ball. Chickens clucked indignantly. They flapped their all but useless wings to help them scurry out of the way of the boys. Dogs, by contrast, ran joyously with the children. They might not know what the sport was, but they were ready to play. A brindled cat yawned from a doorway, every line of its sleek body declaring that it had better things to do with its energy than waste it so prodigally.

  Mordec strode through the noisy chaos as if it did not exist. Boys and dogs and even chickens made way for him. The cat, unimpressed, yawned again, flipped the tip of its fluffy tail up over its eyes to keep out the sun, and fell asleep. Mordec had not far to go. He ducked his way into the house of Balarg the weaver.

  Balarg was busy at the loom. He worked on for a few moments, then nodded to the blacksmith. “Good day,” he said, civilly enough. “You look to have somewhat on your mind.”

  “I do. I do indeed.” Mordec had little lightness in him at any time. His nod now was as somber and jerky as if he were made of the iron he worked.

  “Say your say, then,” Balarg told him. The weaver gestured toward another stool. “And sit, if you care to.”

  “I’d sooner stand,” said Mordec. Shrugging, Balarg got to his feet, too. He was not so thick through the shoulders and chest as the blacksmith, but came closer than any other man in Duthil to matching him in height. By rising, he might as well have warned Mordec he would not suffer himself to be loomed over. Ignoring such subtleties, Mordec bulled ahead: “This has to do with your daughter.”

  “With Tarla?” Balarg’s eyebrows rose in surprise or a good simulation of it. “We’ve walked this track before, but you look bound and determined to do it again, so go on, by all means.”

  “She draws that accursed Aquilonian noble the way spilled honey draws flies,” said Mordec bluntly. “We’d all be better off if he stopped coming to Duthil, and you know it as well as I do.”

  Now the weaver’s brows came down, though even frowning he lacked Mordec’s gloomy intensity. Still, his voice had no give in it as he replied, “Tell me just what you mean. You need to be careful about what you say, too. If you claim she has done anything improper with the Aquilonian—anything at all, mind you—then we can step out into the street and settle that directly. You once said our quarrels could wait while the men from the south were in our country, and I thought that fair enough. Still, Mordec, some things cannot be borne.”

  The blacksmith exhaled angrily. “I do not say she has done anything—not the way you mean. But when that stinking Stercus comes to call on her, she—she smiles at him.”

  Balarg threw back his head and laughed. “Plain to see you have a son and not a daughter. That is the way of girls—the way of women—and has been for as long as they have had to try to deal with us men.”

  “Oh, I know a girl’s smiles are sweet, and I know the sweetest of smiles need not mean a thing. I am not a fool, Balarg, and you make a mistake if you reckon me one,” said Mordec. “But I also know some things you seem to forget. Does the tale of poor Ugaine mean nothing to you?”

  “Ugaine was Stercus’ plaything, in the town the Aquilonians have built,” said Balarg. “Tarla stays here in Duthil, and Stercus has not laid a finger—not so much as a finger—upon her. Do you deny it? Do you, damn your stiff neck?”

  “I do not,” said Mordec. “But do you deny that even his own officer warned us against Stercus? Do you deny he has given her more attention than is her due? What he has done is no guide to what he will do, or to what he would do. And you will also have heard the stories the Aquilonian soldiers tel, that he was cast forth from their capital, cast forth from their kingdom, for liking young girls too well? He has done these things, Balarg. Given the chance, he will do them again.”

  “You are the one who speaks Aquilonian, so you would know better than I,” said Balarg. Mordec glowered and flushed; the weaver might have accused him of friendship with the invaders. Sensing his advantage, Balarg went on, “Besides, if we listened to everything the soldiers said, we would never have time for anything else. I think your quibbles spring from a different seed, myself.”

  “What nonsense are you spewing now?” rumbled Mordec irritably.

  “Nonsense? I doubt it.” Balarg was a clever man, and, like most clever men, pleased with his own cleverness, and with showing it off. “You complain about the Aquilonian because you aim to match Tarla with your own great gowk of a son. I’ve seen him casting sheep’s eyes at her often enough.”

  Mordec scowled, for at least part of what the weaver said was true. “He’d make a better match for her than any other you’d find in Duthil, and you know it.”

  “In Duthil? Aye, likely enough.” But Balarg spoke as if Duthil were a very small place indeed. “Tarla, though, Tarla might find a match in any of the villages of Cimmeria, and pick and choose from among her suitors.”

  “What if—” But Mordec broke off with that question unspoken. If he asked Balarg whether Tarla would entertain a suitor from Venarium, he would mortally insult the other villager, and their feud would burst into flame whether he wanted it to or not. Or, worse, Balarg might make it plain that he would entertain a suit from Stercus, in which case Mordec did not see how he could keep from inflaming the feud himself.

  Being a clever man, Balarg saw much of that, if not all, regardless of whether Mordec finished the question. “I think you have said enough,” growled the weaver. “I think you have said too much. And I think you had better go, or one of our wives will be a widow before the sun sets tonight.”

  “Oh, I’ll leave,” said Mordec. “But I will tell you one thing more, Balarg: you are no blacksmith, and you know nothing of the fire you play with.” He turned on his heel and tramped out into the street.

  The boys’ ball came bounding toward him. Before he thought, he drew back his foot, then shot it forward. His toe met the ball squarely and sent it flying over the houses of Duthil and far out into the fields beyond. The boys skidded to a stop, their necks craning comically as they turned in unison to follow the flight of the ball. When at last it thudded to earth, some of them ran after it. Others stared in awe at Mordec.

/>   “Nobody can kick like that,” said one.

  “He just did, Wirp,” said another. Wirp shook his head, manifestly disbelieving what he had just seen.

  Mordec said not a word. He slowly walked back to the smithy, wishing he could boot sense into Balarg as readily as he had vented his spleen on a harmless ball.

  On sentry-go outside the Aquilonian camp by Duthil, Granth son of Biemur watched Count Stercus ride south toward Venarium. Turning to his cousin, he said, “I wish he’d find some other village to visit.”

  Nodding, Vulth answered, “You aren’t the only one. The more he comes here, the more trouble I see down the road.”

  Out of the side of his mouth, Benno said, “Here comes trouble closer than down the road.”

  Sergeant Nopel emerged from the fortified encampment and bore down on the sentries. Granth tried to straighten up, and also tried not to be too noticeable as he straightened: that might have made Nopel see he’d been slouching. Nopel noticed almost everything; noticing was part of what made him a sergeant. But he only waved now, a world-weary flap of the arm that said he had larger things to fret about than whether his sentries slouched. “As you were, boys,” he called.

  Despite that, Granth did not relax from the brace he had taken. “What’s up, Sergeant?” he asked.

  Nopel did not answer right away. He looked toward Duthil. After a moment, Granth realized he was looking beyond Duthil toward the trackless wilderness still inhabited by wild, unsubdued Cimmerians. He said, “The tribes are stirring.”