Conan the Guardian

by Roland Green

  The battle on the roof was the invaders’ last gasp. While the archers were otherwise occupied, most of them still free and fit to run did so. The gatehouse being held by Reza’s men, the one way to safety lay over the wall. Most of them took it.

  It was not long before the only invaders in sight were the prisoners sitting bound by the chimney, and the bodies draped over the wall or sprawled in the garden. Reza returned to the main floor, to see to matters there, while Conan descended to Lady Livia’s chambers to recount the victory.

  He found the lady binding up a long gash in an elderly manservant’s leg. Her arms were bare and red to the elbows, and her hair hung lank down either side of her sweaty face. But she had a smile for Conan as he bowed.

  “You do that so well now that you might be an Argossean born.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” He told the tale of the fight, as well as he and Reza knew it.

  “You do not know who sent these men?”

  Conan shrugged. “I heard the war cries. But they might have been as false as those faces.”

  Livia nodded. “The spell of the shadowface was one of the first to be banned in Argos. If I had used it for murder, I too would be careful to cover my tracks.” “I’m not so bad a tracker,” Conan said. “With your ladyship’s permission, I’d ask a few of the prisoners some questions.”

  “And if they refuse to answer?”

  Conan shrugged again. “How long they refuse depends on what you let me do to them.”

  Livia swallowed and stared hard at Conan. After a moment she seemed to understand there would be no appeal from the judgement in the warrior’s cold blue eyes. Her head jerked.

  “The law is strict about torture. But it is also strict about invading another’s house, to rob and maim and murder! What must be done, you have my permission to do.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  The Cimmerian turned away, weary but satisfied. He was serving a mistress who knew that in war knowledge was half of victory.

  VII

  Lady Livia sat on her bed, holding a gold plate on her lap and sipping from a wine cup resting on the floor. Most of the furniture in her chambers had been pushed into barricades, save for her night table. That was now below in the kitchen, where Kyros the Healer used it to hold his medicines and instruments.

  What Kyros needed from the Damaos palace, he would have. Snatched from his bed by Livia’s messenger, he had come at once, himself and a discreet servant. He would know or guess what had happened, for few houses in Messantia had many secrets from Kyros. But what he knew would never pass his lips, for gold or torture or magic.

  From the outer chamber came a long wall, followed by sobbing. Some wounds were beyond Kyros’ healing. He could not raise the dead, nor make less grief-stricken

  those whose lovers lay beneath blankets in the wine cellar.

  The voice of one of Livia’s maids cut through the girl’s wailing, with comforting words, firm and not falsely reassuring. Both lady’s maids had weathered this second attack far better than the first, an example to all the women of the house and even some of the men.

  She would have to see about good marriages for one or both of them before long. She had no illusions that many of her old servants would be welcomed by most husbands. One lady’s maid, a cook or two, perhaps grooms and gardeners if her new house had short service—that would be the end of it. As for taking Reza— as well ask for an archonship—

  The maid broke off, and Livia wrapped her robe more tightly over her shift, as someone knocked at the outer door. A moment later she heard a familiar deep voice, and then an almost equally familiar panther-like tread. “Good morning, Captain Conan.”

  The Cimmerian looked toward the window. The sky was paling for dawn. “Good morning, my lady. We have finished with the prisoners.”

  “Did you—was it hard to make them talk?” She found that the word “torture” would not come to her lips. She despised herself for such squeamishness, the more in that Conan would surely do so and she found she greatly wished his good opinion.

  “Crom, no!” Conan said, genuinely astonished. “I didn’t have my wits knocked out in the fighting last night, to go torturing Argossean citizens. Not that most of them do Argos much credit, my lady. But—”

  Livia took a deep breath. “If you did not torture them—”

  “What did we do? Simple enough. I told them that if they wanted to die as whole men instead of eunuchs, they’d talk and talk fast. Then I led one of them to one room, and a man of mine who can imitate anything or anybody to another.

  “I had my man scream like a man being gelded. Meanwhile, I visited one of the corpses and borrowed his—what he no longer needed. After my man had screamed himself hoarse, I went back to the prisoners with my little token. After that, they all wanted to talk at once.”

  Livia gripped the plate with both hands, but her fingers seemed to lack-strength. The plate slid off her lap and spattered oil and bits of fish on the rug. Conan knelt gracefully and picked it up, then handed her the wine cup. For a moment their fingers touched. From that touch fire seemed to run up Livia’s arm to her throat, so that for a moment she could not swallow.

  When she could speak, she said, “So they talked. What did they tell you?”

  Conan was brief but left out nothing she wished to know. As she saw his massive shoulders sagging and smelled the dried sweat and blood—surely that of other men!—on him, she realized that even this iron Cimmerian could be weary.

  “Well, Conan, ‘thank you’ is only words and poor ones at that,” Livia said at last. “When I have my wits about me a trifle more, I will find some better reward, for you and your men.

  “Now we must see about preparing the house for the visit of Lady Doris and Lord Harphos—”

  Conan interrupted her only by clearing his throat, but it was still an interruption. Livia frowned.

  “Forgive me, Lady Livia, but I think you ought to send a messenger to the House of Lokhri and tell them to come another day. Tomorrow at least. The day after that would be even better.”

  Livia sought to keep an ungracious chill from her voice. She knew that she had not succeeded, from the look on the Cimmerian’s face. Like a badger in his hole, he was digging in for a fight.

  “I know it will help, to make them think nothing can put us out. But our men need rest. You need rest. Then we need to search the palace and grounds. Somebody may have gone to earth, maybe by accident, maybe by design. Suppose he jumps up this afternoon and puts a knife in Harphos?”

  Livia nodded, for all that her head wanted to settle on her chest and stay there. “But—Lady Doris will use her knowledge of what happened to us.”

  “Let her!” Conan snapped. “I’d like to show her the bodies! Maybe that’ll scare her enough to loosen her tongue. Something about her made our enemy think we’d believe she’d try carrying you off. I’d like to learn what that something is.”

  He was speaking sense, but it was from a great distance, as though she was at the bottom of a deep well and he at the top. She felt his eyes on her, then he stepped forward and his strong arms were around her. Not embracing her as man to woman, but lifting her onto the bed like a sick child, then stretching her out, covering her with her robe....

  Somewhere in the midst of this, he must have shouted for her maids, because they both came in. Their anxious faces were the last thing she remembered—that, and her murmuring. “Send the messenger, Captain Conan. Lady Doris can wait....”

  * * *

  As he watched the House Lokhri caravan pour through the Damaos gates, Conan would have gladly let Lady Doris wait a month. Her men would be all over the grounds like a tribe of monkeys. By the time they left, any remaining traces of the attack two night ago would be as hard to find as the bones of Atlantis.

  Conan and Reza had done what they could. Any of the House Lokhri men who wandered in the garden would be followed, from a discreet distance but followed nonetheless. All would be entertained as royally as
the palace’s stocks of food and wine allowed, to keep them busy and perhaps loosen their tongues.

  Nor would they find much to tell them that the palace had recently seen a desperate battle. Everything damaged in the battle had been either put to rights or removed. Every space large enough to hide a lurking dagger man had been searched and either guarded or sealed.

  “We’ve done our best, the gods know,” Conan told Reza, as they sat over watered wine and barley cakes before going to bed, just at dawn. “If the gods care, they may reward us by keeping Lady Doris’s lips sealed. If they don’t, we can still trust to this.” He slapped the hilt of his sword.

  Conan remembered the steward nodding heavily, but looking pained. The Cimmerian wondered if the steward could be jealous of the new man’s strong position in the house where the Iranistani had reigned supreme for years. Conan had seen such things come to blood in noble households.

  If that happened this time, some of the blood might be his. Certainly no one would gain but Lord Akimos. So he would keep his tongue between his teeth and his hand away from his sword hilt when Reza was about, and save both for the fight against the real enemies of House Damaos.

  Now the Lokhri caravan was entirely within the gates. Conan watched one man dismounting from a mare laden with gilded harness weighing almost as much as her rider. The man’s attempt at a graceful leap turned into a graceless sprawl into a freshly manured flowerbed. He rose with neither his dignity nor his clothes the better for the fall.

  Lady Livia stepped forward to stand beside Conan. She wore a gown that could be called plain only in the way that a piece of pure gold is plain. White silk with a pale pink border and bound with a sash of the same colour, it set off alike her height, her graceful figure, and her commanding carriage.

  Livia, Conan decided, should have been born to some royal house and destined to reign over mighty realms. She was altogether wasted on this city of merchants and their inky-fingered clerks!

  “Greetings, Lady Doris, Lord Harphos,” Livia said. “Forgive our message of yesterday and our scant hospitality today. All has not been well with us.”

  Lady Doris opened her wide mouth, but could not command her full red lips to form words. It was a fine enough face, although a trifle too plump for Conan’s taste, and the same could be said of the woman’s figure.

  It was only then that Conan noticed the gangling boy—no, man, for all his awkwardness—standing beside the woman. In spite of his fine blue tunic and gold-worked sandals, he seemed as much at her beck and call as any servant.

  That was the Cimmerian’s first notion. Then he saw that the eyes of the man—he must be Harphos—were roaming about the house and gardens. Not vacantly, like the idiot he seemed, but with purpose—the purpose of finding anything unusual or out of place. Conan had seen such eyes in the faces of accomplished thieves as they studied a house they intended to rob.

  “I understand that all has not been well,” Lady Doris said. Her voice set Conan on edge, like the sound of a good sword beating on rock. “But I do not understand why. Your message said little. Has the sorcerer struck again? ’ ’

  The way she said “sorcerer” was in itself an insult. Conan saw Livia’s nostrils flare. So did Harphos.

  “Mother, she—ah, Lady Livia—she could hardly put all the story in a message. I mean—anybody might have seen it, and then—”

  “Indeed,” Doris interrupted. Harphos’s mouth remained open for a silent moment before he closed it. Conan saw him flushing like a boy. It began to seem to Conan that Harphos had more sense than he let show— or that his mother let him show. It would be no bad idea to speak to the man alone, if one didn’t have to burrow under Lady Doris’s skirts to find him!

  “That is quite true,” Livia said. “Therefore, I would bid you enter my house. What we must say is not for everyone’s ears.”

  “There is no one about, save the sun in the sky,” Doris said.

  “But the sun is hot,” Livia said smoothly. “Our words may grow heated enough without that.”

  “Indeed?” the older woman said. Her heavy black brows twisted, as did her lips.

  Conan thought he saw Livia nod slightly. “My lady, you insult this House,” he said. “Do you fear for your safety within?”

  Doris looked outraged. “Who is this hulking oaf of a-?”

  “Captain Conan is a free lance, and he and his men are serving House Damaos,” Livia said, slicing the outrage like a silver knife cutting an apple. “Without his aid, I doubt not that the plan of whoever sought to carry me off would have succeeded.” Her voice left no doubt of her suspicions.

  Once again Doris was speechless. Fortunately Harphos had the wits to see his opportunity—not that he could be without practice in that, Conan thought.

  “Mother, I cannot imagine any danger to you from such an old and honourable House. If you wish to enter, I will see to the servants. Who would you take with you?”

  Doris seemed to realize that standing there with her mouth open was handing victory to her opponent on a platter. She rattled out a half-dozen names. Harphos. turned to go.

  Conan did his best bow. “My lady, with your permission, I would accompany Lord Harphos, to see to the Lokhri servants’ comfort.”

  Livia nodded. Doris looked as if she would have rather left her son at the mercy of a snake, but her hostess was holding out one slim arm. She had no choice but to take it, and vanish through the great doors into the shadows of the entryway.

  Conan did not wait to see the women go. He was already on his way down the steps, striding so quickly that Lord Harphos nearly stumbled trying to keep up with the Cimmerian. After that, Conan slowed his pace. The young man had to be kept sweet-tempered if his tongue was to be loosened without the aid of wine.

  Not that Conan would scruple to use the wine if needed. But even a fool like Harphos would be wary of too many cups too swiftly poured.

  The two noblewomen were alone together for the greater part of the afternoon. By the time Doris reappeared, Conan was certain of two things. One was that Lord Harphos had a very hard head or a very tight mouth or perhaps both. The other was that the young man was much less of a fool than he seemed—or wished to seem.

  Why Harphos wished this, Conan did not know. His experience of noble houses told him that there might be a dozen different reasons. Picking which would be guessing—and Lady Livia was not paying him wages as a soothsayer.

  The wine he had drunk to stay level with Harphos swirled in Conan’s head as he mounted the stairs to Livia’s chambers. As he reached the head, a man passed him at a brisk pace, a man in Guardian’s armour with the badge of the Chief Archon on his breastplate and helmet.

  A moment later, Conan heard the sounds of a woman sobbing from within the chambers. At that sound, the Guardian broke into a run. He was down the stairs and out the door before Conan could shout for the guards to halt him. Conan cursed the man, then knocked on the door.

  One of the lady’s maids answered it.

  “Oh, Captain Conan. My mistress would be alone for now. She will send—”

  “I send for you now, Captain,” came a voice barely recognizable as Livia’s. “And Sherma—send for Reza.”

  “My lady-”

  “Now!”

  Conan heard glass shatter, then more sobs. The maid hurried out the door, nearly as fast as the Guardian. Conan pushed the door open and entered Livia’s chambers.

  “My lady, you sent for me?”

  Livia raised bloodshot eyes, blew her nose, and nodded. “Forgive me, Captain. I should not have been so weak, but...”

  If Lady Doris was responsible for this, Conan vowed that he would visit the woman, turn her over his knee, and spank her until her hindquarters were as red as Livia’s eyes. If that didn’t improve her manners— “Captain, Lady Doris denies that she had anything to do with the attack. I did not doubt her in that matter. But she also refuses to say a single word about who might wish to make trouble between our Houses!” Conan frowned. Drunk
or sober, Lordling Harphos also had said little. Some of that little, however, made Conan wonder if he was not more concerned with justice than his mother seemed to be. Perhaps it was only an act, one that he expected to deceive a great brute of a Cimmerian. But if it was not, if Harphos was seriously interested in courting Livia on his own terms and not his mother’s—something might be made of that.

  Meanwhile, Conan judged there was more troubling his mistress than the closed mouth of Lady Doris. He brought water and a clean towel, and by the time Reza appeared Livia had washed her face.

  She sounded almost her usual self as she faced the two men. “I sent a petition to the archons, to ask for a questioning of our captives and an inquiry to Lord Akimos. I hoped that Lady Doris would join with me in that petition. It is even more to her profit than to mine, to clear her name.

  “The archons have refused the petition. They claim that while our House was unlawfully invaded, we had no right to have Captain Conan and his men in our service.”

  “Crom!”

  Reza muttered something longer but hardly kinder in Iranistani. Livia nodded.

  “So because the two violations of the law balance each other out—”

  “By Erlik’s brass tool!” Conan thundered. “Are your archons men or eunuchs! And do the men of Argos have nothing better to do with their day, then pass laws to keep honest men from defending themselves?”

  “It has been known to seem that way,” Livia said. Her voice was steady, but Conan noticed that she bit her lip when she was finished.

  “Well, then, let’s pay Akimos a visit,” Conan said. “We can make it a state visit, grand and gaudy as Lady Doris at her worst.” Reza seemed tom between smiling and frowning.

  “That might tell us something,” Conan continued. “Or I can take a few of my likeliest lads and pay him a less formal visit. That might tell us even more.” Reza shook his head. “Conan, you propose folly. Invading Akimos’s palace would break more laws than I could count on my two hands. For one, you have no authority to lead your men outside the Damaos palace. Not unless you are admitted to the ranks of the Guardians—”