'So she offered you more than I,' Baratses murmured. 'I had heard you had some odd concept of honour, but I see I was wrong.'
The Cimmerian’s eyes grew icy. 'Do not call me liar, merchant. Another took the goblet.'
'The room is close,' Baratses said. 'I am hot.' He twitched the cloak from his shoulders, swirling it before him.
Instinct flared a warning in Conan. As the cloak moved aside his big hand slapped down to grasp Baratses’ wrist, stopping a black-bladed Karpashian dagger a handspan from his middle. 'Fool!' he said.
Blood and teeth sprayed from the merchant’s face beneath Conan’s fist.
The dagger dropped from nerveless fingers and struck the floor no more than an instant before Baratses himself.
The big Cimmerian frowned at the man lying unconscious before him. A sheath on Baratses’ forearm had held the black blade. Conan bent to remove that, and tossed it and the dagger atop the cloak. 'An attempt on my life,' he muttered finally, 'surely earns me the gold you brought.'
Unfastening the merchant’s purse from his belt, Conan emptied it onto his palm. There was no gold, only silver and copper. He counted it and grimaced. Three coppers more than a single gold piece. It seemed his death had been intended whether he had the goblet or not. Pouring the coins back into the purse, he added it to the dagger and sheath.
On the floor Baratses stirred and moaned.
Knotting his fist in the bony man’s tunic, Conan lifted him erect and shook him till his eyes fluttered open. Baratses let out a gurgling groan as his tongue explored splintered teeth.
'I do not have the goblet,' the Cimmerian said grimly. Easily he hoisted the merchant’s feet clear of the floor. 'I have never had the goblet.' He took a step and smashed Baratses against the shutter, which burst open. The bloody-faced man dangled above the alley at arm’s length from the window. 'And if I ever see you again, I’ll break the rest of your teeth.' Conan opened his hand.
Baratses’ wail cut off as he landed with a squelch in equal parts of mud, offal and the emptyings of chamber pots. A scrawny dog, disturbed at its rootings, began to bark at him furiously. Scrambling shakily to his feet, Baratses stared wildly about him, then broke into a slipping, sliding run. 'Murder!' he screamed. 'Murder!'
Conan sighed as he watched the merchant disappear down the alley. His cries would bring no aid in the Desert, but once he was beyond those cramped streets the City Guard would come quickly enough. And listen attentively to a respectable merchant’s tale. Perhaps it would have been better had he slit the man’s throat, yet murder had never been his way. He would have to leave the city for a time, until the furor died down. The fist that had broken Baratses’ teeth pounded the window frame. And by the time he returned Tamira would have accomplished her theft. He might never even know what it was, much less in time to get there first.
Hastily he made his preparations. The contents of Baratses’ purse were added to his own. The dagger in its sheath he fastened to his left forearm, then settled the black cloak about his broad shoulders. It fit a trifle snugly, but was ten times better than what he had.
He frowned at a lump over his chest, and felt inside the cloak. A small pouch of cloth was sewn there. From it he drew a small silver box, its lid set with blue gems. Inferior sapphires, his experienced eye told him. He flipped it open; his lip curled contemptuously at the sickly verduous powder within. Pollen from the green lotus of Vendhya. It seemed Baratses liked his dreams to come when he desired them. The small quantity in his hand would bring ten gold pieces. Upending the silver box, he tapped it against the heel of his hand to make sure all of the pollen fell to the floor. He did not deal in such things.
Quickly he ran an eye over the rest of his possessions. There was nothing there worth the bother of bundling. Near two years of thievery, and this was all he had to show for it. A fool like Baratses could throw away on stolen dreams as much as he could earn in a night of risking his life. Pushing open the door, he slapped the worn leather hilt of his broadsword with a mirthless laugh. 'This is all I need anyway,' he told himself.
At the bar Abuletes came slowly in response to the big Cimmerian’s beckoning gesture. 'I need a horse,' Conan said when the fat innkeeper was finally before him. 'A good horse. Not one ready for the boneyard.'
Abuletes’ black eyes, deepset in wells of suet, went from the cloak on Conan’s shoulders to the stairs. 'You need to leave Shadizar quickly, Cimmerian?'
'There’s no body to be found,' Conan reassured him. 'Just a disagreement with a man who can get the ear of the City Guard.'
'Too bad,' Abuletes grunted. '‘Tis cheaper to dispose of a body than to purchase a horse. But I know a man-' Suddenly he glared past Conan’s shoulder. 'You! Out! I’ll have none of you filthy little thieves in my place!'
Conan glanced over his shoulder. Laeta stood just inside the door, glaring fiercely back at the tavernkeeper. 'She has come to see me,'
the Cimmerian said.
'She?' Abuletes said incredulously, but he was speaking to Conan’s back.
'You have news of Tamira?' Conan asked when he reached the girl. It was like his luck of late, he thought, that the news would come when he could not use it.
Laeta nodded, but did not speak. Conan dug two silver pieces from his purse, but when she stretched out a hand for them he lifted them out of her reach and looked at her questioningly.
'All right, big man,' she sighed. 'But I had better get my coin.
Yestermorn your wench went to the palace of the Lady Jondra.'
'Jondra!' So she was after the necklace and tiara. And he had to leave the city. Grinding his teeth, he tossed the coins to Laeta. 'Why didn’t you tell me then?'
She tucked the silver under her torn tunic. 'Because she left again.
And,' she added reluctantly, 'we lost her trail in the Katara Bazaar.
But this morning I set Urias to watch Jondra’s palace, and he saw her again. This time she left dressed like a serving girl and riding a supply cart in Jondra’s hunting party. The lot of them departed the city by the Lion Gate. A good six turns of the glass ago, it was. Urias took his time telling me, and I’m docking him his share of this silver for it.'
Conan studied the girl, wondering if she had spun this tale. It seemed too fantastic. Unless … unless Tamira had discovered Jondra was taking the fabled necklace and tiara with her. But on a hunt? No matter. He had to leave Shadizar anyway. As well ride north and see for himself what Tamira was up to.
He started to turn away, then stopped, looking at Laeta’s dirtsmudged face and big, wary eyes, truly seeing her for the first time. 'Wait here,' he told her. She eyed him quizzically, but stood there as he walked away.
He found Semiramis leaning against the wall at the back of the common room, one foot laid across her knee so she could rub it. Quickly he separated out half the coin in his purse and pressed it into her hand.
'Conan,' she protested, 'you know I’ll not take money from-'
'It’s for her,' he said, jerking his head toward Laeta, who was watching him suspiciously. Semiramis arched a questioning eyebrow. 'In another year she’ll not be able to pass as a boy any longer,' he explained. 'Already she’s putting dirt on her face to hide how pretty she is. I thought, maybe, that you…' He shrugged awkwardly, unsure of what he did mean.
Semiramis raised herself on tiptoes and brushed her lips against his cheek.
'That’s no kiss,' he laughed. 'If you want to say goodbye-'
She laid her fingers against his lips. 'You are a better man than you try to pretend, Cimmerian.' With that she slipped by him.
Wondering if women were made by the same gods as men, he watched her approach Laeta. The two spoke quietly, looked at him, then moved toward an empty table together. As they sat, he suddenly recalled his own needs. He strode back to the bar and caught the tavernkeeper’s arm as the fat man passed.
'About this horse, Abuletes …'
VI
Dark hung silently over Shadizar, at least in the quarter
where lay the Perashanid palace. A hatchet-faced man in a filthy turban and stained leather jerkin, his beard divided into three braids, moved from the shadows, freezing when the barking of a dog rent the night. Then quiet came again.
'Farouz,' the bearded man called softly. 'Jhal. Tirjas.'
The three men named appeared from the dark, each followed by half a score other turbanned Kezankian hillmen.
'The true gods guide our blades, Djinar,' one man murmured as he passed hatchet-face.
Booted feet thudding on the paving stones, each small column hurried toward its appointed goal. Farouz would take his men over the garden’s west wall, Jhal over the north. Tirjas was to watch the front of the palace and assure that no one left … alive.
'Come,' Djinar commanded, and ten grim hillmen hurried after him to the east wall of the palace garden.
At the base of the wall two of his men bent to present cupped hands for his booted feet. Boosted thus, Djinar caught the top of the wall and scrambled over to drop inside. Moonlight put a silver glow on the trees and flowers of the garden. He wondered briefly at the labour involved.
So much sweat, and for plants. Truly the men of the cities were mad.
Soft thuds announced the arrival of his companions. Swords were drawn with the susurration of steel on leather, and from one man came a fierce mutter. 'Death to the unbelievers!'
Djinar hissed for silence, unwilling to speak lest his feelings at being within a city became plain in his voice. So many people gathered in one place. So many buildings. So many walls, closing him in. He motioned the hillmen to follow.
Silently the stony-eyed column slipped through the garden. No doors barred their entrance to the palace. It was going well, Djinar thought.
The others would be entering the palace at other places. No alarm had been given. The blessings of the old gods must be on them, as Basrakan Imalla had said.
Abruptly a man in the white tunic of a servant appeared before him, mouth opening to shout. Djinar’s tulwar moved before he could think, the tip of the curved blade slicing open the other man’s throat.
As the corpse twitched in a pool of crimson, spreading across the marble floor, Djinar found his nervousness gone. 'Spread out,' he commanded. 'None must live to give an alarm. Go!'
Growling deep in their throats, his men scattered with ready blades.
Djinar ran as well, seeking the chamber that had been described to him by a sweating Akkadan beneath the iron gaze of Basrakan Imalla. Three more servants, roused by pounding boots, fell beneath his bloody steel.
All were unarmed, one was a woman, but all were unbelievers, and he gave them no chance to cry out.
Then he was at his goal, and it was as the plump man had said. Large square tiles of red, black and gold covered the floor in geometric patterns. The walls were red and black brick to the height of a man’s waist. Furnishings he did not notice. That lamps were lit so that he could see them was all that was important.
Still gripping his sanguine sword, Djinar hurried to the nearest corner and pushed against a black brick four down from the top row and four out from the corner. He gave a satisfied grunt when it sank beneath his pressure. Quickly he moved to the other three corners in turn; three more black bricks sank into the wall.
A clatter of boots in the corridor brought him to his feet, tulwar raised. Farouz and other hillmen burst into the room.
'We must hurry,' Farouz snarled. 'A bald-headed old man broke Karim’s skull with a vase and escaped into the garden. We’ll never find him before he raises an alarm.'
Djinar bit back an oath. Hurriedly he positioned four men on their knees, forming the corners of a square beside widely separated golden tiles. 'Press all together,' he ordered. 'Together, mind you. Now!'
With sharp clicks the four tiles were depressed as one. A grinding noise rose from beneath their feet. Slowly, two thick sections of the floor swung up to reveal stairs leading down.
Djinar darted down those stairs, and found himself in a small chamber carved from the stone beneath the palace. Dim light filtered from above, revealing casket-laden shelves lining the walls. In haste he opened a casket, then another. Emeralds and sapphires on golden chains.
Opals and pearls mounted in silver brooches. Carved ivories and amber.
But not what he sought. Careless of the treasures he handled, the hillman spilled the contents of caskets on the floor. Gems and precious metals poured to the marble. His feet kicked wealth enough for a king, but he gave it not a second glance. With a curse he threw aside the last empty casket and ran back up the stairs.
More hillmen had come, crowding the room. Now some pushed past him to the chamber below. Squabbling, they stuffed their tunics with gems and gold.
'The Eyes of Fire are not here,' Djinar announced. The men below, panting with greed, paid no mind, but those in the chamber with him grew long faces.
'Perhaps the woman took them with her,' suggested a man with a scar where his left ear had been.
Farouz spat loudly. 'It was you, Djinar, who said wait. The strumpet goes to hunt, you said. She will take her guards, and we shall have an easier time of it.'
Djinar’s thin lips curled back from his teeth. 'And you, Farouz,' he snarled. 'Did you cry for us to press on? Did you spend no time in the places where women barter their flesh for coin?' He clamped his teeth on his rage. The feeling of walls trapping him returned. What was to be done? To return to Basrakan Imalla empty-handed after being commanded to bring the Eyes of Fire … He shuddered at the thought. If the Zamoran jade had the Eyes of Fire, then she must be found. 'Does none of these vermin still live?'
Mutters of negation filled the room, but Farouz said, 'Jhal keeps a wench alive till his pleasure is spent. Do you now abandon the Imalla’s quest to join him?'
Djinar’s dagger was suddenly in his hand. He tested the edge on a well-calloused thumb. 'I go to ask questions,' he said, and strode from the room.
Behind him the hubbub of arguement over the looting rose higher.
VII
Conan let his reins fall on the neck of his horse, moving at a slow walk, and took a long pull on his waterskin. His expression did not change at the stale taste of the tepid fluid. He had drunk worse at times when the sun did not beat down so strongly from a cloudless sky as it did now, though it had risen not three handspans above the horizon. His cloak was rolled and bound behind his saddle pad, and a piece of his tunic was held on his head like a kaffiyeh by a leather cord. Rolling hills, with here and there an outcrop of rock or a huge, half-buried boulder, stretched as far as the eye could discern, with never a tree, nor any growth save sparse patches of rough grass.
Twice since leaving Shadizar he had crossed the tracks of very large bodies of men, and once he had seen Zamoran infantry in the distance, marching north. He kept himself from their sight. It did not seem likely that Baratses had influence enough to set the army on his trail, but a man in Conan’s profession quickly learned to avoid chance encounters with large numbers of soldiers. Life was more peaceful, less complicated without soldiers. Of the Lady Jondra’s hunting party he had seen no sign.
Plugging the spout of the skin, he slung it from his shoulder and returned to a study of the tracks he followed now. A single horse, lightly laden. Perhaps a woman rider.
He booted the roan into a trot, its quickest pace. He intended to have a word with Abuletes when he returned to Shadizar, a quiet converse about messages sent to horse traders. The tavernkeeper’s friend had denied having another animal beside this gelding on its last legs, and bargained as if he knew the big youth had reason to leave Shadizar quickly. Conan dug in his heels again, but the animal would move no faster.
Snarls, growing louder as he rode, drifted to him over the next rise.
Topping the swell of ground, he took in the scene below in one glance.
Half a score of wolves quarreled over the carcass of a horse. Some eyed him warily without ceasing their feast. Twenty paces away the Lady Jondra crouched precariously ato
p a boulder, her bow clutched in one hand. Five more of the massive grey beasts waited below, their eyes intent on her.
Suddenly one of them took a quick step forward and leaped for the girl on the rock. Desperately she drew her feet up and swung the bow like a club. The wolf twisted in mid-air; powerful jaws closed on the bow, ripping it from her grasp. The force of it pulled her forward, slipping down the side of the boulder. She gave a half-scream, grabbed frantically at the stone, and hung there, closer now to the creatures below. She pulled her legs up, but the next leaper would reach them easily.
'Crom,' Conan muttered. There was no time for planning, or even for conscious decisions. His heels thudded into the roan’s ribs, goading it into a sliding charge down the hillside. 'Crom!' he bellowed, and his broadsword whispered from its worn shagreen scabbard.
The wolfpack gained its feet as one, grey forms crouching to await him.
Jondra stared at him in wild disbelief. The roan, eyes wide and whinnying in terror, suddenly broke into a gallop. Two of the wolves darted for the horse’s head, and two more dashed in behind to snap at its hamstrings. A forehoof shattered a broad grey-furred head. Conan’s blade whistled down to split the skull of a second wolf. The roan kicked back with both hind legs, splintering the ribs of a third, but the fourth sank gleaming fangs deep into one of those legs. Screaming, the horse stumbled and fell.
Conan stepped from his saddle pad as the animal went down, just in time to meet leaping grey death with a slashing blade. Half cut in two the great wolf dropped. Behind him Conan heard the roan scramble to its feet, whinnying frantically, and the solid thuds of hooves striking home. There was no opportunity to so much as glance at his mount, though, or even to look at Jondra, for the rest of the pack swarmed around him.
Desperately the big Cimmerian cut and hacked at deadly shapes that darted and slashed like grey demons. Blood splashed cinereous fur, and not all of it was theirs, for their teeth were like razors, and he could not keep them all from him. With cold certainty he knew he could not afford to go down, even for an instant. Let him once get off his feet, and he was meat for the eating. Somehow he managed to get the Karpashian dagger into his left hand, and laid about him with two blades. All thought left him save battle; he fought with as pure a fury as the wolves themselves, asking no quarter and giving none. To fight was all he knew. To fight, and let the losers go to the ravens.
The Conan Chronology Page 59