'I do not need all of you,' Conan snarled. ''Ts your choice.'
Hesitantly licking his lips, the captain surveyed his fellows. Two did not stir, while the third was attempting to heave his guts up on the deck. 'You'll not get away with this,' he said shakily. 'My crew will hand your hearts in the rigging.' But he slowly and carefully moved his hand from his weapon.
'Why you needed me,' Akeba grumbled from a seat on the next-to-bottom rung of the ladder, 'I don't see at all.'
'There might have been five,' Conan replied with a smile that made the captain shiver. 'Get Sharak, Akeba. It's warm in here. And see how the others are doing.' With a sigh the soldier clattered back up the ladder into the storm. Conan turned his full attention on the captain. 'When are those who hired you returning?'
'I'm a trader here on my own-' Conan's blade touched the captain's upper lip; the man went cross-eyed staring at it. He swallowed, and tried to move his head back, but Conan kept a light pressure with the edged steel. 'They didn't tell me,' the sailor said hastily. 'They said I was to wait until they returned, however long it might be. I was of no mind to argue.' His face paled, and he clamped his lips tight, as if afraid to say more.
While Conan wondered why the galley's passengers had affected the captain so, Akeba and Tamur scrambled down the ladder, drawing the hatch shut on the storm behind them. The Turanian half-carried Sharak, whom he settled on a bench, filling a goblet of wine for him. The astrologer mumbled thanks and buried his face in the drink. Tamur remained near the ladder, wiping his dagger on his sheepskin coat.
Conan's eyes lit on that dagger, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from cursing. Putting a hand on the captain's chest, he casually pushed the man back down in his seat. 'I told you we need these sailors, Tamur. How many did you kill?'
'Two, Cimmerian,' the nomad protested, spreading his hands. 'Two only. And one carved a trifle. But they resisted. My people watch the rest.' A full dozen remain.'
'Fists and hilts, I said,' Conan snarled. He had to turn away lest he sty too much. 'How do you feel, Sharak?'
'Much refreshed,' the astrologer said, and he did seem to be sitting straighter, though he, like all of them, dripped pools of water. 'Yasbet is not here?'
Conan shook his head. 'But we shall be waiting when she is brought.'
'Then for Jhandar,' Sharak said, and Conan echoed, 'Then for Jhandar.'
'They resisted,' Tamur said again, in injured tones. 'There are enough left to do what they must.' No one spoke, or even looked at him. After a moment he went on. 'I went down to the rowing benches, Conan, to see if any of them were hiding among the slaves, and who do you think I found? That fellow from the other ship. What is he called? Bayan. That is it. Chained to a bench with the rest.' Throwing back his head, the nomad laughed as if it were the funniest story he had ever heard.
Conan's brow knitted in a frown. Bayan here? And in chains? 'Bring him here, Tamur,' he snapped.
'Now!' His tone was such that the Hyrkanian jumped for the ladder immediately. 'Tie these others, Akeba,' Conan went on, 'so we do not have to worry about them.' With his sword he motioned the captain to lie down on the deck; fuming, the hooknosed seaman complied.
By the time the four ship's officers, two still unconscious, were bound hand and foot, Tamur had returned with Bayan. Other than chains, the wiry sailor from Foam Dancer wore only welts and a filthy twist of rag. He stood head down, shivering wetly from his passage through the storm, watching Conan from the corner of his eye.
The big Cimmerian straddled a bench, holding his sword before him so that ripples of lantern light ran along the blade. 'How came you here, Bayan?'
'I wandered from the ship,' Bayan muttered, 'and these scum captured me. There's a code among sailors, but they chained me to an oar,' he raised his head long enough to spit at the tied figure of the captain, 'and whipped me when I protested.'
'What happened at Foam Dancer? You didn't just wander away.' The wiry man shifted his feet with a clank of iron links, but said nothing. 'You'll talk if I have to let Akeba heat his irons for you.' The Turanian blinked, then grimaced fiercely; Bayan wet his lips. 'And you'll tell the truth,' Conan went on.
'The old man is a soothsayer. He can tell when you lie.' He lifted his sword as if studying the edge. 'For the first lie, a hand. Then a foot. Then.... How many lies can you stand? Three? Four? Of a certainty no more.'
Bayan met that glacial blue gaze; then words tumbled out of him as fast as he could force them. 'A man came to the ship, a man with yellow skin and eyes to freeze your heart in your chest. Had your... the woman with him. Offered a hundred pieces of gold for fast passage back to Aghrapur. Said this ship was damaged, and he knew Foam Dancer was faster. Didn't even bother to deny trying to sink us. Muktar was tired of waiting for you, and when this one appeared with the woman, well, it was plain you were dead, or it seemed plain, and it looked easy enough to take the woman and the gold, and-'
'Slow down!' Conan commanded sharply. 'Yasbet is unharmed?'
Bayan swallowed hard. 'I... I know not. Before Mitra and Dagon I swear that I raised no hand against her. She was alive when I left. Muktar gave a signal, you see, and Tewfik and Marantes and I went at the stranger with our daggers, but he killed them before a man could blink. He just touched them, and they were dead. And then, then he demanded Muktar slit my throat.' He made a sound, half laughter, half weeping. 'Evidence of future good faith, he called it. And that fat spawn of a diseased goat was going to do it! I saw it on his face, and I ran. I hope he's drowned in this accursed storm. I pray he and Foam Dancer are both at the bottom of the sea.'
'An ill-chosen prayer,' Conan said between clenched teeth. 'Yasbet is on that vessel.' With a despairing wail Bayan sank groveling to his knees. 'Put him back where he was,' Conan spat. Tamur jerked the wiry seaman to his feet; the Cimmerian watched them go. 'Is this galley too damaged to sail?' he demanded of the captain.
The hook-nosed man had lain with his mouth open, listening while Bayan talked. Now he snorted. 'Only a dirt-eater would think so. Once this storm is gone, give me half a day for repairs and I'll sail her anywhere on the Vilayet, in any weather.'
'The repairs you need, you'll make at sea,' Conan said levelly. 'And we sail as soon as the storm abates enough for us to get off this beach without being smashed to splinters.' The captain opened his mouth, and Conan laid his blade against the seaman's throat. 'Or mayhap one of these other three would like to be captain.'
The captain's eyes bulged, and his mouth worked. Finally he said, 'I'll do it. 'Tis likely we'll all of us drown, but I'll do it.'
Conan nodded. He had expected no other decision. Yasbet was being carried closer to Jhandar by the moment. The storm drumming against the hull seemed to echo the sorcerer's name. Jhandar. This time they would meet face to face, he and Jhandar, and one of them would die. One or both. Jhandar.
XXIII
Jhandar, lounging on cushions of multicolored silk spread beside a fountain within a walled garden, watched Davinia exclaiming over his latest gifts to her, yet his thoughts were elsewhere. Three days more and, as matters stood, all his plans would come to naught. Could the wench not sense the worry in him?
'They are beautiful,' Davinia said, stretching arms encircled by emerald bracelets above her head.
Another time he would have felt sweat popping out on his forehead. Her brief, golden silks left the inner slopes of her rounded breasts bare, and her girdle, two fingerwidths of sapphires and garnets hung with the bright feathers of rare tropic birds, sat low on the swelling of her hips. Sultry eyes caressed him. 'I will have to think of a way to show my gratitude,' she purred.
He acknowledged her only with a casual wave of his hand. In three days Yildiz, that fat fool, would meet with his advisors to decide where to use the army he had built. Of the Seventeen Attendants, eight would speak for empire, for war with Zamora. Only eight, and Jhandar knew that Yildiz merely counted the number of those who supported or opposed, rather than actually weighing the advice
given. Jhandar needed one more to speak for war. One of the nine other. Who could have believed the nine lived lives which, if not completely blameless, still gave him no lever to use against them? One more he needed, yet all the nine would speak for peace, for reducing the numbers of the army. Short of gaining Yildiz's own ear, he had done all that could be done, yet three days would see a year's work undone.
It would take even longer to repair matters. He must first arrange the assassination of an Attendant, perhaps more than one if his efforts to guide the selection of the new Attendant failed. Then it would take time to build the army again. If things were otherwise, three days could see the beginnings of an empire that would be his in all but name. Kings would journey to him, kneel at his feet to hear his commands.
Instead, he would have to begin again, wait even longer for that he had awaited so long.
And that wait added another risk. What had the man Conan sought in Hyrkania? What had he found that might be used against the Power? Why did Che Fan not return with the barbarian's head in a basket?
'You will let me have them, Jhandar?'
'Of course,' he said absently, then pulled himself from his grim ruminations. 'Have what?'
'The slaves.' There was petulance in Davinia's voice, a thing he had noticed more often of late. 'Haven't you been listening?'
'Certainly I've been listening. But tell me about these slaves again.'
'Four of them,' she said, moving to stand straddle-legged beside him. Now he could feel sweat on his face. Sunlight surrounded her with nimbus, a woman of golden silk, glowing hot. 'Well-muscled young men, of course,' she went on. 'Two of blackest hue, and two as pale as snow. The one pair I will dress in pearls and rubies, the other in onyx and emeralds. They will be as a frame for me. To make me more beautiful for you,' she added hastily.
'What need have you for slave boys?' he growled. 'You have slaves in plenty to do your bidding. And that old hag, Renda, to whom you spend so much time whispering.'
'Why, to bear my palanquin,' she laughed, tinkling musical notes. Fluidly she sank to her knees, bending till her breasts pressed against his chest. Her lips brushed the line of his jaw. 'Surely my Great Lord would not deny my bearers. My Great Lord, who it is my greatest pleasure to serve. In every way.'
'I can deny you nothing,' he said thickly. 'You may have the slaves.'
In her eyes he caught a fleeting glimpse of greed satisfied, and the moment soured for him. She would leave him did she ever find one who could give her more. He meant to be sure there could never be such a one, but still .... He could bind her to him with the golden bowl and her heart's blood. None who saw or talked with her would ever know she did not in truth live. But he would know.
Someone cleared his throat diffidently. Scowling, Jhandar sat up. Zephran stood on the marble path, bowing deeply over folded hands, eyes carefully averted from Davinia.
'What is it?' Jhandar demanded angrily.
'Suitai is returned, Great Lord,' his shaven-headed myrmidion replied.
Instantly Jhandar's anger was gone, along with his thoughts of Davinia. Careless of his dignity, he scrambled to his feet. 'Lead,' he commanded.
Dimly he noted that Davinia followed as well, but matters not of the flesh dominated his mind once more.
Suitai waited in Jhandar's private audience chamber, its bronze lion lamps unlit at this hour. A large sack lay on the mosaicked floor at the Khitan's feet.
'Where is Che Fan?' Jhandar demanded as he entered.
'Perished, Great Lord,' Suitai replied, and Jhandar hesitated in his stride.
Despite his knowledge to the contrary, Jhandar had begun to think in some corners of his mind that the two assassins were indestructible. It was difficult to imagine what could slay one of them.
'How?' he said shortly.
'The barbarian enlisted the aid of a Hyrkanian witch-woman, Great Lord. She, also, died.'
That smile meant that Suitai had been her killer, Jhandar thought briefly, without interest. 'And the barbarian?'
'Conan is dead as well, Great Lord.'
Jhandar nodded slowly, feeling a strange relief. This Conan had been but a straw in the wind after all, catching the eye as it flashed by, yet unimportant. Suitai's smile had faded at the mention of the barbarian, no doubt because Che Fan had actually slain the fellow. At times he thought that Suitai's thirst for blood would eventually prove a liability. Now he had no time for such petty worries.
'The crew of the galley was disposed of as I commanded. Suitai? I wish no links between myself and Hyrkania.' Not until he was able to control that region the shamans had blasted, thus containing whatever might be of danger to him within. Not until his power was secure in Turan.
The tall Khitan hesitated. 'The galley was damaged, Great Lord, and could not put to sea. I left its crew waiting for me. Without doubt the coastal tribes have attended to them by now. Instead I hired the vessel the barbarian used, and came ashore well north of the city.'
'And the crew of this ship?'
'Dead, Great Lord. I slew them, and guided the ship to the beach myself.' An unreadable expression flickered across the assassin's normally impassive face, and Jhandar eyed him sharply. Suitai shifted uneasily beneath that gaze, then went on slowly. 'The captain, Great Lord, a fat man called Muktar, leaped into the sea, surely to drown. I have no doubt of it.'
'You have no doubt of a great many things, Suitai.' Jhandar's voice was silky, yet dripped venom like a scorpion's tail.
Sweat appeared on Suitai's brow. The mage had a deadly lack of patience with those who did not perform exactly as he commanded. Hurriedly the Khitan bent to the large sack at his feet.
'I brought you this gift, Great Lord.' The lashings of the sack came loose, and he spilled a girl out onto the mosaicked floor, wrists bound to elbows behind her back, legs doubled tightly against her breasts, the thin cords that held her cutting deeply into her naked flesh. She grunted angrily into her gag as she tumbled onto the floor, and attempted to fight her bonds, but only her toes and fingers wriggled. 'The girl the barbarian stole from the compound, Great Lord,' Suitai announced with satisfaction.
Jhandar snorted. 'Don't think to make up for your shortcomings. What is one girl more or less to-'
'Why, it's Esmira,' Davinia broke in.
The necromancer scowled irritably. He had forgotten that she had followed him. 'That's not her name.
She is called....' It took a moment, though he did remember marking the wench for his bed, long ago it seemed. '. . . Yasbet. That's it. Now return to the garden, Davinia. I have matters to discuss here that do not concern you.'
Instead the lithe blonde squatted on her heels by the bound girl, using both hands to twist the struggling wench's gagged face around for a better look. 'I tell you this is the Princess Esmira, Prince Roshmanli's daughter.'
Jhandar's mouth was suddenly dry. 'Are you certain? The rumours say the princess is cloistered.'
She gave him a withering look that would have elicited instant and painful punishment for anyone else.
From her, at this moment, he ignored it. The prince was Yildizs closest advisor among the Attendants, of the nine, a man who seduced no woman with a husband and gambled only with his own gold. Yet it was said his daughter was his weakness, that he would do anything to shelter her from the world. For the safety of his Esmira, would Roshmanli send Turan to war? He had had men slain for casting their eyes upon her. If handled carefully, it could be done.
Then his eyes fell on Davinia, smiling smugly as he examined the bound girl, and a new thought came to him.
He pulled the blonde to her feet. 'You say you want only to serve me. Do you speak the truth?'
'To you,' she replied slowly, 'I speak only truth.'
'Then this night there will be a ceremony. In that ceremony you will plunge a dagger into the heart of this girl.' He gazed deeply into her eyes, searching for hesitation, for vacillation. There was none.
'As my Great Lord commands me,' Davinia said smoothly.<
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Jhandar felt the urge to throw back his head and laugh wildly. She had taken the first step. Once she had wielded the knife, she would be bound to him more firmly than with iron chains. And by the same stroke he would gain the ninth voice among the King's Attendants. All of his dreams were taking shape. Empire and the woman. He would have it all.
XXIV
Dark seas rolled beneath the galley's ram, phosphorescence dancing on her bow wave, as the measured sweep of three score oars drew it on. Ahead in the night the darker mass of the Turanian coast was marked by white-breaking waves glinting beneath the pale, cloudchased moon.
Echoes of those crashing breakers rolled across the waters to Conan. He stood in the stern of the galley, where he could keep close watch on both captain and steersman. Already they had attempted to take the ship other than as he directed-perhaps into the harbour at Aghrapur, so that he and the rest could be seized as pirates-and only the scanty knowledge he had gained with the smugglers had thus far thwarted them. The rest of the vessel's crew, sullen and disarmed, worked under the watchful eyes of Akeba, Tamur, and the nomads. Sharak clung to the lines that supported the foremast, and gazed on the heavens, seeking the configurations that would tell their fates that night.
Conan cared not what the stars foretold. Their destinies would be as they would be, for he would not alter what he intended by so much as a hair. 'There,' he said, pointing ahead. 'Beach there.'
'There's nothing there,' the captain protested.
'There,' Conan repeated. ''Tis close enough to where we're going. I'd think you would be glad to see our backs, wherever we wanted to be put ashore.'
Grumbling, the slab-checked captain spoke to his steersman, and the galley shifted a point to larboard, toward the stretch of land at which the big Cimmerian had pointed.
With scanty information had Conan made his choice. The distant glow of lamps from Aghrapur to the south. A glimpse at the stars. Instinct. Perhaps, he thought, that last had played the most important part.
The Conan Chronology Page 141