Words froze in her throat. When she found speech again she hissed at him. 'And pray tell me why not?'
'Because I sent her after the image of Al'Kiir that you speak. She knows where it is. She described it to me. It will be I who provide you with what you so desperately need. Did you think you could hide your impatience, your eagerness beyond that you've ever shown for all the parchments and artefacts you have gathered placed together? I bring it to you, Synelle, not that barbar animal, and I expect at least the reward that he got.'
Her pale, dark-eyed beauty became icy still. She let her cloak gap open to the floor; Taramenon gasped, and sweat beaded his forehead. 'You will come to my bed,' she began softly, but abruptly her words became lashes of a whip tipped with steel, 'when I summon you there. You will come, yes, perhaps sooner than you dream, certainly sooner than you deserve, but at my command.' Slowly and calmly she covered herself once more. 'Now when will the image be delivered to your hand?'
'The signal that she has it,' he mumbled sulkily, 'will be a man in my red surcoat standing before the main gate of the royal palace at noon.
That night at dusk I will meet her at a hut in the forest.'
Synelle nodded thoughtfully. 'You say this woman is beautiful? A beautiful woman who does what men do, who leads men rather than belonging to them. She must have great pride. I shall be at that meeting with you, Taramenon.' From the corner of her eye she saw a slave creeping down the corridor toward them, and rounded on him, furious at the interruption. 'Yes?' she snapped.
Falling to his knees, the man pressed his face to the marble tiles. 'A message, my gracious lady, from the noble Aelfric.' Without lifting his head he held up a folded parchment.
Synelle frowned and snatched the message. Aelfric was Seneschal of Asmark, her ancestral castle, a man who served her well, but who liked as well the fact that she seldom visited or troubled him. It was not his way to invite her attention. Hastily she broke the lump of wax sealed with Aelfric's ring.
To My Most Gracious Lady Synelle,
With pain I send these tidings. In the day past have vile brigands most cowardly struck at my Lady's manor-farms, burning fields, touching barns, driving oxen and cattle into the forests. Even as your humble servant writes these dire words, the night sky glows red with new fires. I beseech my Lady to send aid, else there will be no crops left, and starvation will be the lot of her people.
I remain obediently, your faithful servitor, Aelfric
Angrily she crumpled the letter in her fist. Bandits attacking her holdings? When she held the throne she would see every brigand in the country impaled on the walls of Ianthe. For now Aelfric would have to fend for himself.
But wait, she thought. With the power of Al'Kiir she could seize the throne, overawe both lords and peasants, yet would it not be even better had she some incident to point to that showed she was more than other women? Did she take Conan's warriors into the countryside and quell these bandits herself ...
She prodded the slave with her foot. 'I am leaving for the country.
Tell the others to prepare. Go.'
'Yes, my lady,' the slave said, backing away on his knees. 'At once, my lady.' Rising, he bowed deeply and darted down the hall.
'And you, Taramenon,' she went on. 'Set a man to watch for this woman's signal and bring me word, then ride you for Castle Asmark. Await me there, and this night your waiting will be ended.' She almost laughed at the lascivious anticipation that painted his visage. 'Go,' she said, in the same tone she had used with the slave, and Taramenon ran as quickly as the other had.
It was all a matter of maintaining proper control she told herself.
Then she went in search of writing materials, to send a summons to the barbarian.
XIII
Conan straightened from checking his saddle girth and glared about him at the assemblage pausing for yet another rest at Svnelle's command.
Three and twenty high-wheeled carts, each drawn by two span of yoked oxen, were piled high with what the Countess of Asmark considered necessary for removing to her castle in the country, rolled feather mattresses and colorful embroidered silk cushions casks of the rarest wines from Aquilonia and Corinthia and even Khauran, packages of delicate viands that might not be readily available away from the capital, chests upon chests of satins and velvets and laces.
Synelle herself travelled in a gilded litter, borne by eight muscular slaves and curtained with fine silken net to admit the breeze yet keep the sun from her alabastrine skin. Her four blonde tirewomen crouched in the shade of a cart, fanning themselves against the midday heat.
Their lithe sleekness drew many eyes among the thirty mercenaries surrounding the carts, but the women were attuned only to listening for the neat command from the litter. Nearly three score other servants and slaves hunkered out of the sun or tended to errands, drivers for the oxen, maids, seamstresses, even two cooks who were at that moment arguing vociferously over the proper method of preparing hummingbirds'
tongues.
'Watch the trees, Erlik take you!' Conan shouted. Abashedly the mercenaries tore their eyes from the blondes to scan the forest that ran along two sides of the broad, grassy meadow where they had halted.
The Cimmerian had opposed halting; he had opposed each stop they had made thus far. Slowed by the ox-carts, they would not arrive at Synelle's castle until the following afternoon did they make the best speed the lumbering animals were capable of. Even one night in the forests with this strange cortege was more than he might wish for, much less risking a second such camp. A pavilion would have to be erected for Synelle to sleep in, another in which she would bathe, and yet a third for her tirewomen's mats. There would be a fire to warm Synelle, fires for the cooks, fires to keep the maids from becoming affrighted of the night, and all no doubt large enough to announce their presence and location to anyone with eyes.
Machaon led his horse over to Conan. 'I've word of Karela, Cimmerian,'
he said. 'I crossed paths last night at the Blue Bull with a weedy scoundrel, a panderer who lost his women, and thus his income, to another, and whose tongue was free after his third pitcher of ale. I meant to speak of it earlier, but what with our patron's summons arriving hard on your heels this morn I forgot.'
'What did you hear?' Conan asked eagerly.
'She uses her own name again, for one thing. She has not been long in Ophir, but already some twenty rogues follow her, and she is making reputation enough that Iskandrian has put twenty pieces of gold on her head.'
'Such a small price must anger her,' Conan laughed. 'I fear not it will remain so low for long. But what of getting a message to her, or finding her? What did he say of that?'
'After a time the fellow seemed to realise he was babbling, and shut his teeth.' At the Cimmerian's look of disappointment Machaon smiled.
'But he let fall enough for me to question others. North of Ianthe, an hour's ride on a good horse, part of an ancient keep still stands, overgrown by the Sarelian Forest. There Karela camps her band on most nights. I am sure of it.'
Conan grinned broadly. 'I'll make her admit she has no grievance against me if I have to paddle her rump until she does.'
'A treatment I could recommend for others,' the tattooed man said with a significant look at the litter.
Conan followed his look and sighed. 'We have been halted long enough,'
was all he said.
As the young Cimmerian walked toward the net-curtained palanquin he tried to make some slight sense of these last two days, not for the first time that morning. The previous day and night seemed like a dream, but a fever-born dream of madness, with lust burning all else from his mind. Had what he remembered-Synelle's sweat-slicked thighs and wanton moans flashed in his mind-actually happened? It all seemed distant and dim.
When he answered her summons this morn, he had felt no such all-consuming desire. He wanted her, wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman, more than he had wanted all the many women of his life together, but
there had been a sense of restraint within him, strictures unnatural to his nature holding him in check. He did not lose control of himself with women-were his memories of the day before true?-but neither did he face them feeling bound with stout ropes.
And he had deferred to her! When, as haughty and regal as any queen, she commanded him as to how to order his men on the march, his urge had been to snort and tell her brusquely that such matters were his province. Instead he had found himself almost pleading with her, painfully convincing her that she should leave the command of his company to him. He had met kings and potentates and not acted so. How did this woman affect him in this manner? This time, he vowed, it would be different.
He stopped before Synelle's curtained litter and bowed. 'If it pleases my lady, we should be moving on.' Inwardly he snarled at himself. He was no man to break vows, and this had gone as swiftly as if it had never been made. What was the matter with him? Yet he could change nothing. 'It is dangerous, my lady, to stay still so long with bandits and worse about.'
A delicate hand parted the mesh curtain, and Synelle looked out at him calmly, a small smile curling her full lips. Her travelling garb of cool linen clung to her, revealing the curves and shadows of her. Conan's mouth went dry, and his palms dampened, at the sight.
'It would not be so dangerous,' she said, 'had you obeyed me and brought your entire company.'
Conan gritted his teeth. Half of him wanted to tell this fool woman that she should leave the trade of arms to those who knew it; the other half wanted to stammer an apology. 'We must be moving, my lady,' he said finally. It had been an effort to say only that, and he feared he did not want to know what else he might have said.
'Very well. You may see to it,' she said, letting the curtain fall.
Conan bowed again before turning away.
His stomach roiled as he strode back to his horse. Perhaps he was going mad. 'To horse!' he roared, swinging into his saddle. 'Mount and prepare to move! Oxdrivers to your animals!' Chattering men and giggling women darted along the row of carts. 'Keep those maids off the carts!' he shouted. 'We need what speed we can manage, and no extra weight for the animals! Move you!'
Harness creaked as massive beasts took up the strain; mercenaries scrambled to their mounts in a rattle of armour.
Conan raised his arm to signal the advance, and at that instant a mass of horsemen in chain-mail charged from the trees. Shrieks rose from terrified women, and the oxen, sensing the humans' fear, bellowed mournfully. This was what the Cimmerian had feared since leaving Ianthe, but for that reason he was ready for it.
'Bows!' he commanded, and short, curved horsebows came into thirty hands beside his own.
Those powerful bows, unknown in the west except for Conan's Free-Company, could not be drawn as ordinary bows were. Nocking an arrow with a three-fingered grip on the bowstring, the huge Cimmerian placed those fingers against his cheek and thrust the bow out from him.
There were close to a hundred of them, he estimated as he drew, wearing the sign of no house and carrying no banners or pennons, yet armoured too well for bandits. He loosed, and thirty more shafts flew after his.
They were still too distant to pick individual targets, but the mass of them made target enough. Saddles emptied, but the onrushing men-at-arms, their wordless battle cries rising, came on. By the time Conan let his third arrow fly-the feathered shaft lanced through the eye-slit of the foremost horseman's white-plumed helmet; the man threw his hands to his face and rolled backwards over the rump of his still racing horse-the enemy had closed too much for bows to be of further use.
'Out swords!' he called, thrusting his bow back into its lacquered wooden scabbard behind his saddle. As he drew sword and thrust his left arm through the leather straps of his round shield with its spiked boss, he realised his helm still hung from his pommel. Battle rage was on him; let them see who killed them, he thought. 'Crom!' he shouted.
'Crom and steel!'
At the pressure of his knees, the big Aquilonian black burst forward into a gallop. Conan caught sight of Synelle, standing by her litter with her mouth open in a scream he could not hear for the blood pounding in his ears, then his mount was smashing into another horse, riding the lighter animal down, trampling its armoured rider beneath steel-shod hooves.
The huge Cimmerian caught a blade on his shield, and his answering stroke severed the arm wielding it at the shoulder. Immediately he reversed to a backslash that cut deep into the neck of another foe.
Dimly he was aware of others of his men about him in the frenzied melee, but such were of necessity a series of individual combats; only when the vagaries of battle drew two comrades together did men of one side or the other stand together against their enemy.
A chain-mailed man rode close with broadsword raised high to chop, and Conan drove the spike on his shield into the man's chest, ripping him from the saddle with one jerk of a massive arm. War-trained, his big black lashed out with flashing fore-hooves at foemen's horses as he hacked deeper into the press with his murderous steel.
From beyond the swirling frenzy of slashing, shouting, dying men came a cry. 'Conan! For the Cimmerian!'
About time, a cool corner of Conan's brain thought, and Narus, with twenty more mercenaries following, charged into the rear of the enemy.
There was no time for more thought, for he was trading furious swordstrokes with a man whose chain-mail was splashed with blood not his own. He saw one of his men go down, head half-severed. The killer came galloping past, waving his gory blade and screaming a war-cry.
Conan kicked a foot free of its stirrup and booted the shouting man from his horse. The Cimmerian's blade freed itself from his opponent's and thrust under the other's chin, shattering the steel links of his mail coif and bringing a scarlet gout from his ruined throat. The man Conan had kicked from his saddle scrambled to his feet as his fellow fell, but the young giant's broadsword struck once, battering down his upraised steel, twice, and his headless corpse dropped across his comrade's body. 'Crom and steel!'
'Conan! Conan!'
'For the Cimmerian!'
It was too much for the mailed attackers, embattled before and behind, a huge northland beserker in their midst and no knowing in the fog of battle how many it was they faced. First a single man fled the combat, then another. Panic rippled through them, and cohesion was gone. By twos and threes they fought to get away. As they scattered some of the mercenaries set out in pursuit, echoing the halloing cry of hunters riding down deer.
'Back, you fools!' Conan bellowed. 'Back, Black Erlik rot you!'
Reluctantly the mercenaries gave over the chase, and in moments the last of the mailed men still able to flee had melted into the forest.
The men of the company who had pursued trotted back, waving gory swords and rasing shouts of victory.
'A most excellent plan, Cimmerian,' Narus laughed as he galloped up, 'having us trail behind as a surprise for unwelcome guests.' His jazeraint hauberk was splattered with blood, no drop of which was his.
The gaunt-faced man, disease-riddled though he appeared, was equal to Machaon with a blade, and none but Conan was their master. 'Ten to one in gold they never knew how many hit them.'
'A difficult wager to settle,' Conan said, but half his mind on the other. 'Machaon,' he called, 'what's the butcher's price?'
'I'm taking a count, Cimmerian.' Quickly the tattooed veteran finished and rode to join them. 'Two dead,' he retorted, 'and a dozen who'll need the carts to get back to Ianthe.'
Conan nodded grimly. Well over a score of the enemy lay on the hoof-churned ground, meadow grass and soil now seeming ploughed, and only a few moved weakly. As many more were scattered back to the trees, sprouting feathered shafts. In the grim world of the mercenary it was little better than an even trade, for enemies were always there and easily found, but new companions were hard to come by.
'See if one of them lives enough to answer questions,' the Cimmerian commanded. 'I would know who sent them against
us, and why.' Hurriedly Machaon and Narus dismounted. Moving among the bodies, stopping occasionally to heave one over, they returned supporting between them a bloodstreaked man with a wicked gash down the side of his face and neck.
'Mercy,' he gasped faintly. 'I cry mercy.'
'Then name he who sent you,' Conan demanded. 'Were you to kill us all, or one in particular?'
The Cimmerian had no intention of slaying a wounded and helpless man, but the prisoner clearly feared the worst. Almost eagerly he said, 'Count Antimides. He bid us slay you and seize the Lady Synelle. Her we were to bring to him naked and in chains.'
'Antimides!' Synelle hissed. The men shifted uneasily to see her picking her way across the bloody ground; such sights as lay about them, men hacked and torn by the savagery of battle, were not for women's eyes. Synelle did not seem to notice. 'He dares so much against me?' she continued. 'I will have his eyes and his manhood! I will-'
'My lady,' Conan said, 'those who attacked us may rejoin and seek you again,' And he also, he added to himself, though that did not concern him as much as the other. 'You must return to Ianthe, and quickly. You must ride one of the horses.'
'Back to the city?' Synelle nodded vigorously. 'Yes. And when I get there Antimides will learn the price of an attack on my person!' Her eyes were bright with eagerness for that teaching.
Conan began seeing to preparations, ordering men who hurried to obey.
The warriors, at least, knew their vulnerability should the enemy return, perhaps with reinforcements. 'Machaon, tell off ten men to ride with the carts. Unload everything except the Lady Synelle's jewellery and clothes to lighten the oxen's loads. Leave the litter here, so they can see she's no longer with the carts. Crom, of course we bring in our dead! Spread the wounded among the carts so they're not crowded, and have the maids tend them. Yes, their wounded as well.'
'No!' Synelle snapped. 'Leave Antimides' men! Fetch me naked and chained, will they? Let them die!'
Conan's hands tightened on his reins until his knuckles were white. His temples throbbed like drums. 'Load their wounded, too,' he said, and drew a shuddering breath. Almost he had not been able to get the words out.
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