by Roland Green
"Ya-haaaaa!" Conan shouted. With such men under him, the Turanians would have another battle to remember before they shoveled him under the sand or left him for the vultures. They might even win free, if they reached the top of the slope and found no enemies there.
The Afghulis reached the top of the slope, but in no way fit to flee beyond it. The climb had been too much for their horses, one of whom flung its rider off at once. Conan heard the deadly thud of a skull striking rock, and saw that the man did not move after he fell.
"Ya-haaaa!" Conan shouted again, and wheeled his mount. Beyond the ridges to either side lay darkness and perhaps ground fit to conceal a man on foot. This was no desert for a man on foot, unless he was as hardy as an Afghuli and as ready to make those pursuing him wary of closing.
But there was only one way to buy time for the Afghulis, and only one man fit to pay the price. Conan's horse staggered as he brutally jerked her head around, until she was facing down the slope. Then he drove in his spurs.
As his charge gathered way, he heard a voice rise above the hoof thunder of the onrushing Turanians. Half-lost in the blare of trumpets, it seemed from all sides, it yet sounded curiously familiar. But the man whose name the voice conjured up would never have given such a mad order as the one Conan heard now.
"Take the big one alive, at all costs!"
Someone cared little for the lives of his men tonight or their obedience tomorrow, if he thought that would be an easy task against the Cimmerian.
In the next moment the night seemed to turn solid with the onrushing shapes of mounted men. They bore lances, and crouched in the saddle both to pro-tect themselves and to thrust low. They did not succeed in doing the first. Conan cut five men out of the saddle as his mount crashed through their line.
But three lances and a sword left a cruel mark on Conan's mare. She screamed like a damned soul and had the strength to rear so violently that the Cimmerian lost his seat. He slid backward, landing spring-legged as his horse fell, blood flowing from her mouth as well as her wounds. His drawn sword hissed in a deadly arc before him and to either side, and the screams of Turanian horses drowned out the mare's death rattle.
Then the butt of a lance came down on his shoulder. It jarred even Conan's muscle-armored limb to the bone, and his sword turned in his hand as he slashed at the lance-bearer. The barbarian opened the man's chest, even through a coat of good Turanian mail, but Conan's sword stuck for a moment.
Another lance thrust forward, ripping across Conan's forearm. The shock, more than the pain or the damage, forced open his hand. His sword fell. Conan drew his dagger and leapt for the first horseman he could see—which left him open to three on his left and rear whom he could not.
All struck with lance-butts, and the darkness of the desert night poured into Conan's brain and swallowed up his being.
The young captain reined in just outside sword's reach from the circle of men around the fallen Afghuli leader. He did not doubt the obedience of his men, even though his orders had doubtless cost some their lives and more blood and pain. He did doubt that after such a fight in such darkness, all saw clearly.
"Who passes there?"
Good, it was Sergeant Barak. He was as hard to excite as a sand dune, and nearly as hard to move.
"The scarred captain." Why did he name himself so? The man on the ground might be the wrong one, and if he was the right one, he was still most likely as senseless as a prayer carpet.
No matter. It had been an impulse, of the sort the captain had learned to trust over many years. Trusting them was one of the things that had guarded his back from his enemies and his king alike—if in fact these were different.
"Make way for the captain," Barak called, pitching his voice to carry without raising it to his normal bull's roar. The captain dismounted as the circle of men opened, and stepped forward to see what lay on the ground within it.
It was the man the captain had been seeking. He was breathing and looked to be intact as to limb and vital organs. If this was so, even if the blood that covered him was partly his, he would heal swiftly and be fit to fight soon enough for the captain's plans. The best part of ten years had not taken much from the man's colossal vitality, unless all the tales of him that had reached the captain's ears were lies.
"How many of our comrades are dead?"
Muttered answers said little, until the sergeant called for silence and asked a few sharp questions.
"Nine, lord, and five more gravely hurt."
"I will reward the kin of all who died here tonight, and the living who are past service will likewise be free of want."
Whether shaken, respectful, or merely prudent when no one knew who spied where, the men were silent. None asked, "With what?" which would have been a more than reasonable question to anyone who did not know the captain's hidden resources.
Not even their being hidden could save a single brass piece, however, if this plan miscarried. The captain misliked hiding even part of the truth, but he had to admit that this was no time to pour out all of it, like flinging the contents of a chamber pot from an attic window.
"How many men had he with him?" was the captain's next question.
"We slew or took seven," the sergeant said. "Most likely there was a handful more, from the horses. But they've run off the gods alone know where."
The sergeant, like the wise of his kind, knew how to tell an officer distasteful truths without putting them into words. The man's tone and, even in the darkness, his stance told him that the men would not readily charge off into the desert night, seeking the last Afghulis.
Nor was there any need for them to do so. Those who fled were of small concern. The captives, on the other hand—
"How many taken?"
"Two who will live, and one who will not see dawn."
"Cut his throat and say proper rites over him. Bind the others' wounds, likewise this one's, and prepare horse litters for them. We ride for the Virgin's Oasis when this is done."
Barak was not the only one to bow his head and say, "As you command, my lord." He also was not the only one whose face showed doubt as to the cause of this—if it had any cause but their captain's sudden madness!
Five
Conan awoke in a tent. This was no surprise. Nor was it any surprise that his feet were chained to a stout stake driven into the ground in the middle of the tent. Wrist irons connected by another length of chain restrained his hands, but left him free to reach a jug of water and a plate of flat Turanian bread on the ground beside him.
The real surprise was his being awake and alive at all. The captain clearly had more than common control over his men, that they obeyed his orders to capture the Cimmerian alive after such a bloodbath as the final fight. Conan felt bruises, grazes, and one or two gashes, but none were more than he had expected, and all seemed to have been cleaned, poulticed, and even dressed.
Somebody—call him the captain—wanted Conan alive. For what purpose, the Cimmerian could only guess. He vowed to ask the first man who came in, and if the answer was not to his liking—well, there was enough scope in the chains that he could strangle at least one man. And if he could break the chains, as he had broken chains at least as stout when he was younger and had nothing but bull-strength—a broken chain made a weapon wise men feared.
Conan sat up, thirst crackling in his mouth and throat and thunder rumbling in his head. Awkwardly, he lifted the jug and emptied it in a few swallows. He was reaching for the bread when he saw movement behind one flap of the tent door.
"Call this food!" he shouted. "Bring me some meat fit for a man, or send your captain and I'll devour him!"
The tent flap shook violently as the Cimmerian's wrath propelled the unseen listener out into the open, then fell still. Conan's laughter sent bread sliding off the plate. Then he was too busy making the bread disappear to care further about the fugitive.
The bread had been coarse when fresh and was now stale as well, but food meant strength for the next fight
. There would be such a fight, too. Even had Conan been disposed to submit meekly to whatever death the Turanians intended for him, there were a dozen sworn comrades to properly avenge.
There were two death sentences in force in this Turanian camp this day. The first was that which the Turanians had passed on Conan. The second was the one that Conan had passed on the men who tried to carry out the first.
By the time he had taken that resolve, Conan had emptied the plate as well as the jug. He belched in satisfaction, then cautiously tested the strength of his chains.
The test pleased him. The chains were heavy enough, but the rivets holding them to the rings were another matter. Even on that first cautious test, Conan had sensed weakness there that pleased him—and also offended him.
His father would never have taken a king's silver for such shoddy work!
The captain had awakened from a dream of breaking his fast on perfumed wine, honey cakes, and fresh fruit, in a bed furnished with silk sheets and shared with a comely lady now some years dead.
His actual fast-breaker was water, bread, and a slab of sausage. He could not recognize what meat had gone into the sausage; after three bites he decided he did not wish to know. Appetite, however, kept him eating until the sausage was down and settling, however uneasily, in his stomach.
He was trimming his mustache with his dagger when Sergeant Barak entered.
"The big prisoner is awake."
"How does he fare?"
"Healthy enough to curse the guards into fits, or so I've heard."
"A good sign. What of the others?"
"The Afghulis?"
"Is that what they are? A long way from home, I should say."
That bordered on lying. It was hardly a surprise that the man would have sworn Aghuli guards, if the tales from Afghulistan these two years past held even a kernel of truth.
It was also a near-lie in a good cause. The captain wished to know how many of his men might have some chance of recognizing the captive. The fewer, the better, at least until he and the man had sat down together and felt each other out.
"I am going to visit the captive. Have wine and sausage brought to the tent when I am there. Treat the Afghulis as common prisoners, but do not allow anyone to harm them or them to harm themselves."
"As the captain wills," Barak said. Again the captain knew he was being politely reproached.
"Are the men unhappy?"
"Not so's you'd notice, even the ones who lost friends. But they're all curious."
And unsatisfied curiosity could turn into discontent and mutiny faster than the desert wind could blow down an ill-secured tent. The captain had survived one such affray when he was barely fledged, and had no wish to face a second.
"I must speak with our captive to satisfy my own curiosity," the captain said. "But when I have satisfied mine, I will do the same for all the men."
The sergeant bowed. He seemed more resigned than happy, but that was the common view of sergeants toward superiors and superiors' plans they could not understand.
The captain finished trimming his mustache, cleaned his teeth, then garbed himself properly, including mail under his tunic, both shirt and loin-guard, and a steel cap under his headdress. Of weapons openly displayed, he bore only a dagger.
If he could make his peace with the captive, he would need no weapon at all. If not, neither sword, axe, nor bow would be sufficient.
Conan had just decided that he was unobserved and that it was time to begin loosening rivets when the tent flap shivered. Then a Turanian captain walked in, wearing silk from headdress to boot-top and a jeweled dagger in his sash.
Another of Yezdigerd's well-born lapdogs, was the Cimmerian's first thought.
Then he noticed that the silk was heavy enough to wear well, and stained and patched from much hard service. The sash had the subtle bulges of one weighted to serve as a weapon, and the steel of the dagger probably cost as much as the jewels. Nor did the man move like a courtier, more like a young wolf for all that he was at least a head shorter than the Cimmerian.
"Well, Captain Conan. I will not now say well met, but I will ask if you remember me."
Conan knew the Turanian tongue well enough that he could have composed verse in it had he ever felt the desire to compose verse at all. The captain's accent was that of the very highest nobility—so wellborn, he was, if no lapdog.
The Cimmerian studied his visitor, whom he began to think he had indeed seen before. He thought the man had been thinner and the beard not so faded by years of desert sun, but above the beard—
"Crom!"
"Not I, Conan. I would not sit on a throne of ice in a cold wasteland, glowering at all men who dare ask me for the smallest favor. Or is that some other Cimmerian god?"
"That is close enough, Khezal son of Ahlbros. Or Khezal's twin brother, if ever he had such."
"There is only one and he stands before you."
"Well, sit, then. It will never be said that I made an old comrade stand in my presence, even when I'm not at my best for giving hospitality."
Something Conan could not readily name passed over Khezal's face at the words "old comrade." So the man put some value on that, did he? Enough, maybe, to explain what he planned and what part the Cimmerian had in those plans?
Khezal sat down. He seemed to move a trifle more stiffly now.
"New wounds, Khezal? Or the old ones bothering you more with the passing years?"
"Conan, I'm three years younger than you, which hardly makes me a stiffening dotard drowsing by the fireside. Can you shape your tongue to questions that are neither impertinent nor insulting?"
If Conan had held any doubt of Khezal's identity, it was fast fading. The wry speech was that of the young captain, hardly more than a boy, who had fought beside Conan against the beasts created by the Jewels of Kurag. The best part of ten years had made the manner sit better on him, like a masterpiece of a saddle on a horse, but had not changed it past recognition.
"If this question is either, may Erlik's hounds bite off your stones. What of my men?"
"We have given rites to three, and hold two honorably captive. The others have fled."
"May I see them?"
"When we have—"
"Now."
"Conan, you are hardly in the best position to make conditions."
"On the contrary, I'm in a fine position. You want something from me. As long as I refuse it, you are worse off than I."
"Your position could be made worse."
"How, without risking my death? Dead men help no living man's schemes, as I'm sure I need not tell you."
Khezal muttered something that invoked unlawful parts of a number of still less lawful gods. Conan laughed.
"I'm not meaning to begin our new friendship with a quarrel. Not if there's to be a friendship, which I imagine there is, or I'd have awakened with my throat cut. But a quarrel, there'll be, if I can't see my men."
"Conan, by Erlik, Mitra, Vashti, and Crom, by the blood we have shed in each other's company, by Dessa's lively legs, and by Pylia's fine breasts, I swear that your men have come to no harm."
The Cimmerian laughed. "I can almost believe that oath. How fare the ladies?"
Khezal's face turned sober. "Pylia is dead. The story goes that she challenged some younger rival to see who could wear out the most men in a single night. She won, but died of her victory."
"Remembering Pylia, I can believe that. And Dessa?"
"She keeps her own tavern, after years as Pylia's most trusted girl. Still comely, the last time I saw her, and as we thought she might, thriving as she never would have wed to some dull clerk."
"A wench after my own heart—"
"And other parts? Never mind, you are right. We are neither of us made to be clerks, either."
"No, but I am made so that I will see those men of mine, whether you help or hinder."
"Conan, were I my own master—"
"The son of one of the Seventeen Attendants, not his own m
aster? Tell me that shrimp sing bawdy ballads, and I will believe this more easily."
Khezal's face went taut and dark, and Conan instantly realized that he had struck too deep, even in jest. He had indeed heard much of the affairs of Turan since Yezdigerd ascended the throne, to make him believe that even a man like Khezal could fall from favor. After all, why otherwise would the man be prowling the desert with Turanian cavalry patrols, instead of governing a whole province?
"I ask your pardon, Khezal. I spoke too hastily. But those men are sworn to me, and I to them."
"I doubt it not. And I am sworn to defend Turan against all its enemies, among whom you are numbered. If I am to be forsworn, the fewer who know about it, the better for us all. Informers are always cheap, and there is more than enough silver to buy them. The less you are seen until after we march, the better."
Conan had also heard that Turan now swarmed with spies as an ill-kept kitchen with vermin. If Khezal risked more than his authority over his men— risked his own life, indeed—he deserved a hearing.
He also was a battle comrade, and it was not in Conan to forget the debt he owed to such.
"Let it be as you wish, Khezal. Tell me what you want of me, and I will trust you for what comes next."
"You almost said that without smiling, Conan."
"Did I? Perhaps I'd best become a player in temple pageants, to command my face better."
"I remember seeing you draw—what was his name? Kilar?—anyway, the one with the loaded dice—into cheating you before a half-score of witnesses. One would have taken you for a temple image, not a temple player!"
"I'll thank you more for the flattery when I've heard you out. Or do the tent walls have ears?"
Khezal shrugged, then sat down cross-legged and began to speak.
Khezal had more trouble than expected, finding words to make the situation in the Kezankian Mountains clear to the Cimmerian. It was not that he distrusted Conan's wits—nobody but a fool thought the Cimmerian an overmuscled oaf, and not a few of such fools had over the years died from their mistake.