Conan and the Sorcerer

by Andrew J Offutt

  Conan and the Sorcerer

  by Andrew J. Offutt

  Table of Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  I. The Plotters

  Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the East held carnival by night. Elsewhere in Arenjun of Zamora, flames flickered almost daintily above fine lamps filled with scented oil. In the Maul, noise ruled, nor was it all of pleasant conversation.

  Elsewhere in the City of Thieves, folk were more quiet spoken, and alleys that were less muddy were a little safer. The dancing golden light of fine oil lamps struck fire from the gems winking on the fingers of cool-eyed nobles with tilted chins. It brought soft gleams from the pearls sewn on the tunic-bosoms of merchants aspiring to their ranks. Lamp-glims coaxed green flashes from the emeralds about the fat neck of a lord's useless wife and blood-hued glints from her sneering daughter's rubies and garnets and carnelians. The whisper of good silk accompanied the movements of well-fed bodies.

  In the low, greasy-beamed dens of the thief-clotted Maul, rascals gathered.

  Here were cut purses with ferretish faces, kidnappers with hooded, appraising eyes, swift-fingered thieves, restless doers of death, ever alert. Swaggering bravoes strutted their harlots with strident voices and unsubtle bushes of hair. Blue lace agates or badly-cut bits of rose quartz were their best gems, along with flashing mica and bits of glass. One bosomy Nemedian in the company of a balding Kothian mercenary – between employers – wore a piece of refulgent aventurine that covered her finger from knuckle to mid-joint. Supposedly of old Atlantis these stones, where the hexagonal pillar-mounted green crystals were said to have given the long-sunken land its power.

  Not here; not in the Maul.

  In the Maul of the Thieves' City of Arenjun of Zamora, power rested only in the sheaths and scabbards of the strong and swift.

  Someone groaned from within the brooding dark maw of an alley. No one took note, or seemed to. Day's light would show whether the moan came from the dying or the bait of a trap.

  One denizen of that dark clutch of muddy alleys and crumbling, pitted walls was missing this night, and was asked after in more than one rat-hole of a lowlife den. He was up-town this night, for his last three endeavours had brought him success.

  The ruby-and-moonstone ear-rings plucked through an open window from a tabouret beside their sleeping owner's bed... these had bought him a good dagger a foot and a half in length, with its garnet-mounted sheath – and had paid his debts in two of the dives deep in the cesspool called the Maul. While a councilman's spouse lay with her youthful lover in an alcove not ten paces away, her fine pearl-sewn collar, along with a goblet of solid gold slightly mixed with tin, the fence had pointed out, had flitted out the window in a bronzed hand considerably larger than those of most burglars. These had brought the deft, cat-footed thief a good cloak worked with gold thread – sparsely worked, true-and a silken tunic whose blue caught the rather sullen glint of his eyes —as well as new credit in a third hole featuring thin ale and dreggy, watered wine. Two narrow bands of cloth-of-gold writhed about its neck and sleeves, which were tight over his heavy upper arms.

  Strangely, his third success was a commission, and accomplished a good deed. For purloining a pair of carelessly-bestowed emerald studs and an indiscreet letter and returning them to their giver, he received no less than three pieces of gold and seventeen of silver. An odd number, admittedly. Offered two plus ten, he had demanded five plus five-and-twenty, and had settled with his employer in the time-honoured manner: in the middle. This last endeavour was enough to make a lad consider semi-honest employment. It was also enough to buy him a night out of the Maul, an occasion he hoped would lead to more and better things. Well cloaked and silk-tunicked, he strolled up-town.

  Now the cloak was carefully folded and draped over the stool on which he sat before an intimately smallish trestle-board. A bit out of place, he nevertheless sat this night among the noble and the wealthy – for they were not always the same. He plied an attractive young woman with more earnestness than expertise. Young she was indeed, at nineteen – and yet older than he, despite his hugeness of frame. His continued wearing of a sword had been questioned. 'Bodyguard,' he had said. 'My master will be along shortly. I'll just keep it.' And none had said him nay, even here in the Shadiz Inn where gathered none but the well-born or well-moneyed.

  The attractive young woman said, 'They certainly grow men big, up in Symria.'

  'Cimmeria,' he corrected.

  He pressed forward towards her pretty face, leaning across the low round board in the up-town inn surrounded by unadmitted betters. When he nodded, his blue eyes flashed like sapphires.

  "When I was a mere fifteen-oh, long ago,' he said, 'I was six feet in height and weighed twenty pounds less than two hundred. I was part of the howling horde of blood-mad northmen that swept down on Aquilonia's arrogant outpost of Venarium. We put those Aquilonians in their place — with sword and torch!'

  Oh, 'long ago', is it, she thought; and you not yet eighteen or I'm eighty!

  For she knew men and gazed coolly on him from knowledge, this girl of nineteen who had been a woman at fourteen and was plucked from the streets at sixteen by a fat merchant of eight-and-forty. She and her brass-dyed hair and gilded brass breastplates had slipped a bit since then, economically. At least her current lover was younger, with prospects, and with his virility still on him. Too bad, really, that he'd be along directly. This giant hill-lad with the square-cut black mop over his broad forehead and smouldering eyes like the blue lace agates dangling from her ears... he was younger still, and he positively exuded virility.

  Upper arms big as my thighs, only bulgy with muscle!

  A boy though, an inexperienced city naif, and surely a liar. And surely a thief, the street-wise woman thought. For how else in the City of Thieves could a foreigner with such an accent come by the silver he'd shown their aproned host?

  Well... until her Kagul came, this northish youth provided good wine and amusement and constant tingly thrills, for he was virile. Though such things were behind and beneath her, Kiliya could not help contemplate, too, the separation of this boy from his coin... Within her, a match of wrestling took place.

  'Fifteen! Oh, Conan! I am never sure whether you're serious or just trying to turn a poor girl's head with your lurid tales!'

  He blinked, and dungeon questioners of the drunkard king could have drowned in the blue innocence of his eyes. 'I do not lie, Kiliya.'

  They were youths together. 'Oh!' She gave him a round-eyed stare from twinkling brown eyes set in the pale flesh of Hybori ancestry mixed with the peoples they'd conquered. 'Never?'

  'Hardly ever,' he said, and they laughed together. He moved his stool nearer hers. Under the board, his hand covered her thigh in every direction, and radiated heat.

  She swallowed. What do you do, Conan, you big hill-man? Oh-do you think we might have just a little more? Someone has sucked my cup all dry!' And she showed him her empty flagon.

  Without taking his eyes off hers, he hoisted his arm straight up. He'd seen that wealthy importer signal thus, over there in the room's centre where he sat with a slimy-looking man and three women, one so hideous she must be the merchant's wife.

  'More wine here, and none of that cheap Ghazan grape-juice!' the Cimmerian said loudly, without looking from his companion. In a lower voice he said, 'I'm... bodyguard, to a wealthy lord. He is grateful, as you can see.'

  'Oh, yes. But... you mean you can really use that sword, with its positively ancient-looking handle?'

  'Hilt.' He
bent his left elbow in order to pat the sword girded on that same hip, a yard-long blade in a sheath of worn, nubby leather. 'Aye,' he told her. 'I can use it, Kiliya. I have. Its blade has been dyed nigh as red as those garnets there between your breasts.' 'Rubies,' she corrected. He but smiled. It was a knowing grin, for they were garnets, and she knew he knew it. Bodyguard indeed! The huge lad with his unlined face so tanned was a thief, sure. And her thigh sweated under his hand, and she didn't mind.

  'Conan...'

  'Yes.'

  She was still working at the making of a decision: 'Every night some men of the City Watch come here. I think we shouldn't be here when they do-do you?'

  His features arranged themselves into their version of an expression of sweet innocence, while he gestured with a huge bronzed hand. 'Why not? Are we not solid citizens of solid, upstanding Arenjun?'

  'One of us,' Kiliya said, 'is not.'

  He affected to look shocked, and bent forward. 'Kiliya! What is your evil secret? Surely you're not the one responsible for the fall of that big old Tower of the Elephant I've heard about?'

  'I think my secret is that I am sipping wine and having my thigh fondled by a blue-eyed, huge-shouldered, sword-wearing, Symrian... thief.'

  'Cimmerian,' he said equably. Then, 'I? A thief? Here? Hoho, my dear girl.., thieves hide in the Maul, and there skulk like jackals.'

  'I think,' she began, 'that some-'

  'Kiliya! Whatever is my girl doing sitting with that boy? Ho sirrah – where is your other hand?'

  Without removing the hand in question, from under the low board, Conan stiffened and turned to look over his shoulder. He gazed amid silence. Even in this section of Arenjun, an inn fell quiet when five men of the City Watch entered and their leader called out so – and particularly to a young sword-wearer who looked big enough to take on Hyperborean bears.

  The Cimmerian remained silent, too. He but stared at the corseleted, helmeted man with the fancy dragon-headed hilt rising above his sword sheath and the swaggerish black moustachios beneath his long nose. Conan was aware of his surroundings. He was not in the Maul, he was in the Shadiz Inn, up-town. He was surely in the presence of a sophisticated lady only pretending to be a bit less. Conan would not shout. He sat still, waiting, staring at the man who moved across the room towards him. All conversations had ceased; all gazes followed the progress among stools and boards of the Zamorian watch-sergeant, or were fixed on the big youth he approached.

  Kiliya moved her leg; Conan's hand unerringly followed. Crom was his god; any who knew so many as one Cimmerian knew that Crom was surely another name for stubbornness.

  Tall, lean, lithe, not ugly though blade-marked on one cheek, the watchman stood over the seated man in the gold-purfled blue tunic.

  'I would not shout across the room to you, soldier,' Conan said quietly. 'It is my upbringing... I am no boy, and all three of us know where my hand is. I'd ask you to join us for a flagon, but we were just discussing leaving.'

  'You will leave alone, you with your barbar accent, and that swiftly! If you would depart with both hands, put them in sight.'

  No product of dissembling civilisation, the Cimmerian didn't bother affecting to look shocked. His eyes suddenly bore no resemblance to sapphires or pretty blue agates. They smouldered, like an impossible combination of ice and volcanic heat.

  'I break no law, watchman. You are not hired to bully honest citizens.'

  'I'm no watchman now, fellow. I went off duty a short candle ago. Just now I am an angry man standing over a boy whose paw is on the leg of my woman.'

  The Shadiz had gone silent, and remained so. The wealthy and the noble sat very still, and stared. Such an encounter had no place in this inn, in their civilised lives. A Corinthian mercer in a floriated robe glanced over as if to measure his distance from the doorway. Four watchmen clogged it, watching their sergeant. 'Conan...'

  At Kiliya's voice Conan turned back to face her. He said, 'Do tell this troublesome mouth that —'

  He broke off at the feel of the man's hand on his shoulder. With an instinctive marking of the location of the thumb, Conan knew it was the left hand. Too, he knew what the right was doing. He heard the slither of metal against leather. The troublesome mouth was easing out his sword! Conan released Kiliya's leg while he pivoted on his stool. His folded cloak sliding easily under him, he swung on his hams while his legs swung up and out. At right angles to his torso they slammed into the watchman's left leg just above the greave-strap. There was more force than the Zamorian could have believed possible in that short swing – and more force than he could bear. With an inhalated 'Ah!' he went sidewise and down.

  Stools scraped and a woman squeaked. A board slid and rattled on its trestle as a fat thigh moved swiftly. Someone muttered the name of holy Mitra. Conan meanwhile continued to pivot on his buttocks. His sandal-shod foot descended to slam on to the fallen guardsman's hip. The man groaned aloud.

  'Kagul!' Kiliya cried out, pouncing up. 'You stupid barbarian boy I You've hurt Kagul!'

  She hurried to kneel beside the fallen watch-sergeant. He had not completed his draw, having fallen on his sword-arm. Instead, he rubbed his thigh. Conan blinked and half-turned to stare at the young woman he had been plying with wine and strong looks and brags. But he'd thought...

  His face went ugly. Then the gaze of the kneeling girl leapt up and past him, and he lunged sidewise. That way the sword in the fist of one of Kagul's men chopped into the tabletop, instead of the Cimmerian's shoulder. Wine flagons and sweetmeats danced. Voices rose all about and stools scraped; a blow had been struck in the Shadiz Inn! Too, but for the hardly believable pantherine swiftness with which the hillman moved his bulk, the sword would have removed most of his shoulder.

  The surprised watchman took hold of his hilt with both hands to free his blade of the oaken board. He had every reason to believe that his intended victim was more surprised than he. He was wrong.

  A bronzed fist came down like a sledge-hammer. The blow broke the Zamorian's forearm amid such pain that he swallowed his scream along with his tongue and had faulted before he hit the floor.

  'Take him!' another of Kagul's men called.

  More stools and trestle-legs scraped as other guests began making serious and assiduous efforts to be elsewhere. A khilated easterner stared. The Corinthian merchant departed the inn with such swiftness that his punk had to run to catch up.

  'Damned barbarian,' a retired general grunted. 'Take him!'

  Take him!' Kagul snarled, rising with Kiliya's aid.

  Kiliya, however, screeched: 'KILL him!'

  That last did it. Rude watchmen and treacherous city-girls who turned out to be more bloodthirsty than the women of the Vanir were more than enough. The hill-lad's illusions ended. His brief flirtation with the well-born and the moneyed of Arenjun ended both in his mind and in physical fact. Better he'd courted that ruby-bedizened lord's daughter over there – who now forgot to wear her perpetual sneer while she stared, bright-eyed.

  Conan lunged rightward, away from the two watchmen he'd downed, and he turned as he lunged. When he spun back, his long sheath of shagreen leather hung empty. His fist was full of hilt, and three feet of shining blade extended out and up before him.

  A third watchman stepped forward and launched a stab with his sword. So the boy was big; who knew as much about sword-play as the trained policemen of a city half whose population was thief? True, one had only to train, and cultivate a swagger; sneak-thieves and cutpurses were wont to run, not stand and fight with uniformed men wearing good iron.

  Conan did not seem to stand and fight either. He ducked with the same pantherish litheness and speed he had exhibited before. And, still crouching, he took a step towards his attacker. Bending forward over that extended left leg, he brought his own sword arcing over his head.

  Such a high-elbowed, overhead stroke obviously meant a vicious downward slash, and the watchman protected his legs. He'd strike the chopping slash away with his own blade and chop
open the barbarian's thick thigh on the back-swing.

  Conan's arm and blade did not, however, descend. His fist brushed the top of his black-maned head and his blade swept out horizontally from his brow. The long sword slammed into the Zamorian's mouth.

  Blood splashed and the cry of horror and agony was only a burble. The man showed his inexperience by dropping his own glaive and turning his back to the Cimmerian. He lurched away with both hands to his ruined face. Conan spurned the fellow's back; his considerable experience in combat had taught him not to waste energy on a man already out of the fight. This arrogant watchman was out of it: for the first time he had found someone who fought back-and for the last time.

  Conan was astonished to hear a cheering cry amid the screams and shouts of horror and outrage that filled the Shadiz Inn. Someone here had learned not to love the keepers of the law-was it that dark big-nosed man in the khilat? The retired general, one hand on his paunch, bellowed his desire for a sword, secure in the knowledge that he'd not be given one. A younger man, a soldier though here without uniform or arms, stared with narrowed eyes. He backed; the big hillman's cleverness and considerable experience had just been made manifest.

  Kagul was up now, and looking mean, with a handful of hilt. Indeed, both hands; he also drew his dagger.

  Conan faced three armed men, coming at him well separated.

  He was quite cool now that he was at bay. 'Get back,' he said, and napes prickled at the animal-like snarl. 'If you value the lives of these curs, Kagul, call them off. Your experience is got from threatening shopkeepers and bullying little thieves and torturing harlots to make them talk. I have spent months in chains, back when I was but sixteen. I have blooded this sword in combat-do you understand? Combat. I'll not suffer these dogs to lay hands on me.'

  The three blinked. Kagul's 'curs' looked nervously to their leader. He firmed his lip and showed Conan his right side, long dagger poised in his left hand, sword advanced in the right.

  "Take him,' he said again, in a flat, inexorable tone. 'It is not necessary that he be alive.'