Conan the Guardian

by Roland Green

  At least Conan began to see why Lady Doris had summoned him, rather than Reza or Lady Livia herself. A Cimmerian barbarian might not know what the raddled and battered house meant. If he showed that he knew, he might be bribed or worse to hold his tongue.

  Conan swore to himself that if Lady Doris tried to seal his lips with gold, he would test his sword on some of her furniture. Did everyone in Argos think Cimmerians were dropped on their heads as babes, at least until the Cimmerian dropped them on theirs so that some sense entered?

  The walls gave no answer. Nor did the steward. He only stopped at the head of the stairs and pointed to the left. “The door set with amber, at the far end of that hall.”

  “Very well.” The steward obviously expected silver. Conan spread one broad hand over his purse and shook his head. If all went well with Lady Doris, then he would spend some of House Damaos’s silver to loosen tongues among her servants.

  The door was not only set with amber, it was of rich wine-hued wood, lovingly carved and polished to a high sheen. Conan knocked, and the sound of his knocking told him that the door could have resisted a battering ram.

  “Who is it?”

  “Captain Conan, at Lady Doris’s summons.”

  “Enter.”

  The door gave to a push, opening soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Within, Conan’s boots sank into rich carpeting, dark blue with dolphins woven in silver. He smelled incense, and also a familiar perfume. He raised his eyes, to meet the gaze of the one who wore the perfume.

  Lady Doris wore more than the perfume, but not as much as Conan had expected. Her gown ended at mid-calf and left her shoulders bare. It was also slit down the front almost to the waist, but closed decently by a massive clasp of gold set with amber and tiny emeralds.

  “My lady,” Conan said, giving his best Argossean upper servant’s bow. He did not much care for these rites, but to ignore them would brand him a barbarian. To perform them as though he were an Argossean born, on the other hand, surprised people and put them off guard.

  “Rise, Captain Conan, and be seated.”

  Conan looked about the richly panelled room. The only places to sit besides the floor were the lady’s own couch, ebony with purple cushions, and the great bed canopied in what seemed to be cloth of silver. Not wishing to have to shout across the room, Conan took his place on one end of the bench.

  “So, Captain Conan. All is well at House Damaos?”

  “As well as can be expected,” the Cimmerian said curtly.

  “You still do not know who struck at you, with magic and then with men?”

  “We are seeking the truth, my lady. It would not be my place to say more. Not until Lady Livia gives me leave, at any rate, and she will do that only when she is ready to strike.”

  Lady Doris took a deep breath. This brought her gown tight against her breasts, which were not only full but looked remarkably firm. The woman had a son of twenty, but she could have claimed no more than thirty years herself and been believed. Certainly the olive skin of her shoulders was unwrinkled, and the blue-black hair without a strand of grey.

  “You make Lady Livia sound like a serpent, lying in wait for prey.”

  For the first time that evening, Conan’s laugh held no grimness or mockery. “Lady Livia is someone I wouldn’t care to have as an enemy. I’ve been a soldier a good part of my life, Lady Doris, and I’ve seen few captains more cunning.”

  “Yet even the best captain needs to know who her enemies are. Is that not so?”

  “Quite true. But as I said, that’s something we are all hard at work to learn. House Damaos is of one mind on that. And when we know, and can prove it to the archons—whoever has been hiring hedge-wizards and knifemen will be hiring a ship to take him far from Argos.”

  “Him?”

  “My lady, we don’t suspect you. At least, we don’t suspect you in the attacks on the palace.”

  Lady Doris licked her full lips. Conan could sense anticipation, interest, and something more—something very like fear.

  “Captain Conan, if you wish my help, you will speak plainly. What do you suspect I did against House Damaos?”

  Conan turned toward the woman. “Tonight we took a long road to your house, fearing spies. We were still followed. In a street—I don’t know the name, but it goes up four steps—”

  “The Street of Dithambres the Sot,” the lady said, just above a whisper.

  “A good name,” Conan said. “In that street, a score of sots attacked us. Even a sot can be dangerous, with steel in his hand. We killed half of them at least. But they wounded two of my men and killed one. Men oath-sworn to me as their captain, and to House Damaos as guards.

  “Somebody used silver to buy those men’s steel. House Damaos and I have a blood-debt to pay that somebody—”

  He broke off, because Lady Doris had turned as pale as her complexion would allow. Her eyes had turned into vast dark pools, and one cheek was quivering uncontrollably.

  The quivering spread to her lips. She put both be-ringed hands over her mouth, to hide it. Then she closed her eyes, and all the breath went out of her in a sigh.

  So did all the strength. She swayed and toppled. She would have toppled off the couch if Conan had not caught her, one long arm around her shoulders. As gently as if she had been a child, he drew Lady Doris against his massive chest and listened for her breathing.

  He heard nothing, because wild cries at once split the air.

  “Dog!”

  “Take your foul hands off our mistress!”

  A hidden door crashed open, and three men leaped through it. Two more sprang out from under the bed, and a final pair swung in through the window.

  Conan dropped Lady Doris unceremoniously on the couch as he leaped to his feet. He saw her breasts rising and falling, but her eyes remained closed. Then he had no more time for her, as the seven men formed a ragged circle around him.

  At least he knew now that young and robust man-servants were not unknown to House Lokhri. They also bore steel, shortswords, long daggers, and one spear, and well-used steel at that. Yet they did not have the air of men who knew what they were doing, let alone whom they faced. The spear man appeared to be the leader. He also had his eyes wholly fixed on Lady Doris, as though Conan had been armed with no more than a willow wand.

  His longer weapon made the leader the most dangerous to the Cimmerian, and therefore the first opponent. Rather, say “victim,” for one sword stroke chopped the spear in two. A second was a feinting cut at his legs. He crouched, while comrades on either side closed.

  They closed a little too much, offering Conan a target a blind man could not have missed. His sword leaped from his right hand to his left. It weighted his left fist as he drove the hilt into the face of one man. Conan let the blow wheel him half around, and his booted foot flew up into the other man’s crotch. The man tried to sit down on the empty air, failed, then collapsed to the carpet, fighting for the breath to scream.

  The leader thrust at Conan with the broken end of his spear and drew a knife. Conan shifted his sword back to his right hand and brought the flat of the blade down on the leader’s knife hand. He screamed and dropped the knife. One of the men lunged for it, at the same time slashing at Conan’s legs with his own long dagger.

  Conan let the dagger’s edge graze his skin, then whirled again, faster than the eye could follow. Somehow his foot ended up tangled in the dagger man’s legs. The man lost his balance but did not fall. His frantically scrabbling feet hurled him forward into one of his comrades. Both men flew backward into the wall.

  The tapestry on the wall was an immaculate hunting scene, archers surrounding a tiger. It did not cushion the wall for the two men. Both sprawled senseless, and the tapestry parted its moorings and slithered down to cover them like a rag flung over a heap of garbage.

  Conan tossed his sword from hand to hand, again faster than the eye could follow, and laughed. Which act froze the last two men into statues, he never knew. They were
still gaping at him when Lady Doris gasped and began waving her arms.

  Conan honoured the lady’s appeal. Carefully gripping only her wrists, he pulled her gently up to a sitting position. Then he turned back to face the seven men he had disabled in about the time it took to drink half a cup of Argossean wine.

  “Conan—Captain—are they—?” Lady Doris began. Her eyes widened more than ever as she looked around the chamber.

  “If any of those—men—has lost a drop of blood, I’ll personally tend his wounds,” Conan said. “I’m not saying that they’ll all be fighting fit before morning. If they ever were,” he added, glaring at the two statues.

  The insult made both men quiver. Then they stepped apart and raised shortswords.

  “Hold!” the lady commanded. “I forbid the raising of any steel to Captain Conan. Or his men.”

  The leader had recovered his senses and his voice. “My lady, you said—”

  “I spoke without full knowledge. Captain Conan has told me—what alters matters. Be off, all of you. And take this message with you. The men with Captain Conan are to receive the hospitality of House Lokhri.” “My lady-?”

  “Did Conan’s fist make you more of a witling then you already were?” the lady snapped. “Perhaps I should have him strike you again, to knock your wits back into place!”

  The idea of facing the Cimmerian again seemed to give winged feet to five of the seven men. They lifted their senseless comrades and fled, so quickly that they jammed in the door and had a deal of trouble untangling themselves.

  By the time they had, Lady Doris was laughing so hard that the clasp of her gown threatened to snap. At last she lay back down on the couch, her gown hoisted almost to her knees, and trailed one bare arm over the edge of the couch as her laughter died.

  Conan stood silently until Lady Doris gave a deep sigh and sat up.

  “Forgive me, Captain Conan. I do not suppose this is so amusing to you.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said. “It’s never funny to see fighting men humiliated, carrying out witless orders. And since they were your orders—”

  “My orders?”

  “My lady, I can tell a trap when I see it. I can even tell the kind of trap. They were supposed to avenge your virtue.”

  The dark eyes were half closed now, and would not meet the Cimmerian’s ice-blue ones. But Lady Doris nodded.

  “I thought as much. Then something didn’t go as you’d planned it, true?”

  Another nod.

  “Do you want to tell me, or do I have to force it out of you?”

  Lady Doris smiled. “In my own house? And with what weapon?” She fingered the clasp of her gown. Conan noticed that it had slipped farther down one shoulder, so that the upper curve of one breast stood bare. It was as fine a curve as all the others he had seen on the lady of Lokhri.

  “If I can meet seven men without bloodshed, I’m sure I can do as well with one woman.”

  “Even in hand to hand combat?”

  Conan felt his blood beginning to seethe. If he had mistaken the meaning of those last words, he knew nothing about women.

  “Even that?”

  Lady Doris rose, and her hand went to the clasp of her gown. Nimble fingers danced, the clasp opened, and the gown opened to her waist. A quick shrug, and it slithered from her shoulders to the floor.

  Everything was as splendid as Conan had imagined, beginning with breasts that cried out for a man’s hand. His blood now felt like molten rock in his veins.

  “I challenged you to hand to hand combat, Cimmerian,” the lady said, and lay back on the couch. “Do you refuse the challenge?”

  “Do I look that big a fool?” Conan said, and stopped her mouth with his before she could answer the question.

  X

  The knocking was slower than usual to awaken Conan. He slept as lightly as any wild animal when in danger. But he could not hear the knocking until it grew louder than Lady Doris’s snores.

  When it did, the Cimmerian was awake in an instant. Sword in hand, he padded over to the door.

  “Who is there?”

  “Captain Conan, I want to talk to you.” Conan recognized Harphos’s voice.

  “In a moment.” Conan returned to the bed, pulled the quilts over the nude Lady Doris, pulled the bed curtains shut, and drew on his clothes and dagger.

  Harphos looked impatient at being kept waiting when Conan finally drew the bolt. He also looked red-eyed, but Conan smelled no wine on his breath.

  The heir of House Lokhri contented himself with one look at the curtained bed and another at Conan. Then he turned toward the door.

  Conan’s hand descended on the lordling’s shoulder. “Stop right now. Where are we going?”

  “To where what we say remains between the two of us.”

  Conan looked around the room. There were no obvious places for eavesdroppers, but that only meant cunning enemies instead of careless ones. Also, Lady Doris might not be so soundly asleep as her snores said.

  “Lead on, but not into another brawl, thank you.”

  Harphos laughed, a short harsh bark. “There’s few enough men in the house fit to face you, and none of them willing. I couldn’t lay a trap if I wanted to.”

  Conan knew that pitfalls, traps, set crossbows, and other such devices required no hands on them to be deadly. He was prepared to trust to his instincts, his sword arm, and his mail coat against these, and otherwise leave it to the gods as he tried to learn the secrets of House Lokhri.

  If there are any, he thought, besides Lady Doris feeling even better in the dark than she looked in the light, and knowing everything a woman can do to please a man.

  Harphos moved swiftly down dim halls to a door opening on a spiral staircase. He led the way down these two at a time, moving with an assurance Conan had never seen or expected in him.

  At last they came to a door of what seemed to be solid stone, with a lock set in it large enough to anchor a castle’s gate. Harphos took from his pouch an absurdly small key and turned it three times, in three different holes in the lock.

  At the last turn, the lock sang a high-pitched note, like a vase of fine glass. The slab of rock turned on a bronze shaft, leaving a gap on either side. Both men had to stoop to pass within, and Conan’s mail scraped rock.

  Conan did not know what he had expected in the chamber beyond, but certainly it was not what he found. Worn but comfortable rugs softened the floor, while shelves of sweet-smelling pale wood carved with flowers and leaves lined three walls. By the fourth wall stood a long table, good ebony, but plain as a post save for a design set in silver in one comer of the top. A closer look told Conan that the design was ancient Vanir runes.

  The shelves themselves were filled with dozens of jars, porcelain, glass, stoneware, even earthenware, with silver or brass stoppers. At intervals Conan saw piles of scrolls, some of them brown with age, mortars and pestles, flagons of fire wine, and other things he did not recognize.

  Nor did he really wish to. Had someone told him that the secret of House Lokhri was that Lord Harphos was a sorcerer, Conan would have called the man mad.

  Harphos sat on the table, long legs dangling, and grinned. “You look uneasy, Captain. Does the odour of my herbs and potions make you sick?”

  “It’s a poor host who insults a guest with his first breath,” Conan growled. “That’s the law in more lands than Argos.

  “It’s also the law in Argos that no one may practice sorcery. Do you expect me to keep my tongue between my teeth, now that I’ve seen this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “For two reasons. One is that it’s no secret, save to my mother and her trusted servants. The second is that there’s no sorcery to it. It’s matters for healing. Nothing great, like bleeding from within or a belly wound, but common wounds and sickness.”

  “Like what I dealt out to your mother’s pack of prize fools?”

  Harphos laughed. It was a much heartier laugh than one would have ex
pected from the almost gaunt young man.

  “Conan, it’s hard to hide anything from you, is it not?”

  “If it’s something that can save me or my men, yes. So you’re a healer. Is that the secret of House Lokhri?”

  “No.” Suddenly Harphos looked about fifteen, and as awkward and callow as Conan had once thought him. “Captain Conan. I want Livia for my wife. I want to court her as a man courts a woman he loves. Not as my mother wants me to court her, as a way of patching up our rat-gnawed fortunes. But how can I make her understand that I love her? How?”

  Conan had never been in love as Harphos seemed to be, but he had seen it often enough in others to recognize the ailment. He bit back the suggestion that Harphos take one of his own potions to kill his desire—or perhaps feed Livia one that would increase hers!

  Harphos had probably been laughed at often enough by his mother and her servants. It would be a pleasure for the young man to be taken seriously.

  “I’ve heard that some women can read a man’s thoughts,” the Cimmerian said, grinning. “But I don’t know that Livia’s one of them. So why not tell her yourself?”

  Harphos looked as horror-struck as if Conan had proposed he leap from the walls of Messantia. “My mother!”

  “You’re not telling your mother—”

  “She would learn. Then she would end the suit. She wants to rule me as much as she wants to grasp Livia’s money. If she thought I was slipping from her power, I would have no peace. She might even search the house and find my hiding place!”

  “What’s more important? Livia or this storeroom?” Harphos stood up, with considerable dignity. “Captain Conan. If I had not used my skills and materials for healing, you might have the Guardians to reckon with. As it is, none of my mother’s men will suffer permanent harm.”

  ‘ ‘You might thank me a trifle for that, ’ ’ Conan said. “I’m not usually that kind to men who come at me with drawn steel.”

  “I don’t expect you are,” Harphos said. “That is another reason I would have you for a friend, Captain. Or at least someone I can trust. It is not an easy situation, guarding one’s back from one’s own mother.” Conan couldn’t dispute that, so was ready to drink the toast Harphos proposed. It was not the best wine he’d tasted in Argos and the cups were wooden, but Harphos was careful to drink first, lest Conan think the wine was poisoned.