That there was a safe beach ahead he did not doubt. Even excisemen wanted a smuggler's cargo undamaged for the portion of its value that was theirs in reward. Of what came after the prow had touched shore, however, there was always doubt.
Sand grated under the keel and without the need of orders, every man backed water. To be too firmly aground could mean death. A splash came from the bow as Hordo tossed a stone anchor over the side. It would help hold the lightly beached craft against the tide, but the rope could be cut in an instant.
Even as the shudder of grounding ran through the craft, Conan joined the one-eyed man in the bow. The point of light that had brought them ashore was gone. Varying shades of darkness suggested high dunes and perhaps stunted trees.
Abruptly a click as of stone striking metal came from the beach. Almost directly before them a fire flared, a large fire, some thirty-odd paces from the water. A lone man stood beside the fire, hands outspread to show they were empty. His features could not be seen, but the turban on his head was large, like those favored by Vendhyans.
"We'll discover no more by looking," Conan said and jumped over the side. He landed to his calves in water and more splashed over him as Hordo landed.
The bearded man caught his arm. "Let me do the talking, Cimmerian.
You've never been able to lie well, except to women. The truth may serve us here, but it must be used properly."
Conan nodded, and they moved up the beach together.
The waiting man was indeed a Vendhyan, with swarthy skin and a narrow nose. A large sapphire and a spray of pale plumes adorned his turban and a ring with a polished stone was on every finger. Rich brocades and silks made up his garments, though there were stout riding boots on his feet. His dark, deep-set eyes went past them to the boat. "Where is Patil?" he said in badly accented Hyrkanian. His tone was flat and unreadable.
"Patil left Sultanapur before us," Hordo replied, "and bv a different way. He did not tell me his route, as you may understand."
"He was to come with you."
Hordo shrugged. "The High Admiral of Turan was slain, you see, and it was said the deed was done by a Vendhyan. The streets of Sultanapur are likely still not safe for one of your country."
The truth, Conan thought. Even, word the truth, but handled, as Hordo would put it, properly.
A frown creased the Vendhyan's brow, though he nodded slowly. "Very well. You may call me Lord Sabah."
"You may call me King Yildiz if you need names," Hordo said.
The Vendhyan's face tightened. "Of course. You have the ... goods, Yildiz?"
"You have the gold? Patil spoke of a great deal of gold."
"The gold is here," Sabah said impatiently. "What of the chests, O King of Turan?"
Hordo raised his right hand above his head, and from the vessel came the grate of the hatch being pushed back. "Let your men come on foot for them," he cautioned, "and no more than four at a time. And I will see the gold before a chest is taken."
Six of the smugglers appeared on the edge of the firelight, bows in hand and arrows nocked. The Vendhyan looked at them levelly, then bowed to Hordo with a dry smile. "It shall be as you wish, of course."
Backing around the fire, he faded into the darkness up the beach.
"I mistrust him," Conan said as soon as he was gone.
"Why?" Hordo asked.
"He accepted the tale of Patil too easily. Would you not have asked at least a few more questions if you were he?"
The one-eyed man shook his shaggy head. "Perhaps. But keep your eyes open, and we will get out of this with whole skins whatever he intends."
A dark band of wet about the bottom of his robes, Ghurran puffed up the sandy shelf. "This mode of travel is uncomfortable, inconvenient and damp," he muttered, holding his bony hands out to the fire. "Have you spoken to that man about the antidote, Cimmerian?"
"Not yet."
"Do not. Hear me out," he went on when Conan opened his mouth. "They will be nervous of a man like you with a sword on his hip. And what reason would you give for asking? I have one, you see." To Conan's surprise, the herbalist produce Patil's pushdagger from his sleeve. "I purchased the weapon from Patil, but he said he had none of the antidote. If you said such a thing, they would assume you took the blade from his body. If I say it ... well, they would sooner believe I had bedded one of their daughters than that these old arms had slain a man." He hastily made the small dagger disappear as Sabah walked into the circle of light.
Two obvious servants followed the Vendhyan, turbaned men in dull-colored cotton, without rings or gems. One carried a dark woolen blanket that he spread beside the fire at Sabah's gesture. The other bore a leather sack, which he upended over the blanket. A cascade of golden coins tumbled to the blanket, bouncing and ringing against each other till a hundred gleaming roundels lay in a scattered heap.
Conan stared in amazement. It was far from the first time he had seen so much gold in one place, but never before offered so casually. If those chests had been filled with saffron, they would not be worth so much. "What is in the chests?" he asked.
The Vendhyan's smile touched only his lips. "Spices."
The tension was broken by Hordo bending to scoop up five of the coins at random. He examined them closely, finally biting each before tossing it back to the blanket. "I will want the sack as well," he said, then shouted over his shoulder, "Bring up the chests!"
Half a score of smugglers appeared from the direction of the ship, each bearing one of the small chests. Hordo motioned, and they set their burdens down off to one side of the fire, then trotted back toward the water. Without a word, Sabah hurried to the chests, the servants at his heels, and two more men ran down the beach to join them. Conan saw Ghurran there as well, but he could not tell if the old man was speaking to anyone. Dropping to his knees, Hordo stuffed coins into the leather sack as fast as he could.
Abruptly a cry of rage rose from the men around the chests. Smugglers coming up the beach with the second load of chests froze where they stood. Conan's hand went to his sword-hilt as Sabah all but hurled himself back into the firelight.
"The seals!" the Vendhyan howled. "They have been broken and resealed!"
Hordo's hand twitched as though he wanted to drop the last coins he held and reach for a weapon. "Patil did it on the day he left," he said hastily. "I do not know why. Check the chests and you will see that we have taken nothing."
The Vendhyan's fists clenched and unclenched, and his eyes darted in furious uncertainty. "Very well," he rasped at last. "Very well. But I will examine each chest." His hands still worked convulsively as he stalked away.
"You were right, Cimmerian," Hordo said. "He should not have accepted that so easily."
"I am glad you agree," Conan said dryly. "Now, have you considered that this fire makes us targets a child could hit?"
"I have." The one-eyed man jerked the drawstrings of the sack closed and knotted them to his belt. "Let us get everyone back aboard as quickly as possible."
Sabah was gone, Conan saw, as well as the first ten chests. Turbaned men waited warily for the rest. Ten, not the agreed-upon four, but the Cimmerian was not about to argue the point now. Ghurran was with them, and talking, by his gestures. Conan hoped the herbalist had found what they sought. There was certainly no more time for looking.
With seeming casualness, Conan drifted to the line of smugglers who still waited well down toward the water. Beyond them some of the archers had half-drawn their bows, but all still held their weapons down.
"What was that shouting," Prytanis demanded.
"Trouble," Conan replied. "But I do not think they will attack until those chests are safely off the beach. Not unless they decide we are suspicious. So take the chests on up, then get back aboard as fast as you can without running. And bring Ghurran."
"And you go back to the ship now?" Prytanis sneered. A ripple of uneasiness ran through the others.
It was an effort for Conan to keep the anger out of his voi
ce. "I stand right here until you get back, as if we trust them like brothers. They are getting impatient, Prytanis. Or do you not want a chance to leave this beach without fighting?"
The Nemedian still hesitated, but another man pushed by him, then another. With a last glare at the big Cimmerian, Prytanis fell in with the file.
Crossing his arms across his chest, Conan tried to give the image of a man at ease, all the while scanning the beach for the attack he was sure must come. The file of smugglers met the clustered Vendhyans, the chests changed hands, and the two groups parted, walking swiftly in opposite directions. The smugglers had the shorter distance to go. Even as the thought came to Conan, one of the Vendhyans looked back, then said something to his fellows, and they all broke into a run made awkward by the chests they carried.
"Run!" Conan shouted to the smugglers, and for once they obeyed with alacrity, two of them dragging Ghurran between them. A rhythmic pounding came to him as he drew his sword, and he stifled a curse to shout to the archers. "War horsemen!"
The archers had only time to raise their bows before half a score of mounted men in turbaned helmets and brigantine hauberks galloped out of the dunes with lowered lances. Bowstrings slapped against leather bracers, and five saddles were emptied. The others, one swaying, jerked at their reins and let the charge carry them back into the dark. There were bowmen among the Vendhyans as well, but their target was not men.
Flaming arrows arched into the night to fall around the ship. Some hissed into the sea, but others struck wood.
Then Conan had time to worry neither about the ship nor about anyone else. Two horsemen pounded out of the night, bent low in their saddles, seeming to race shoulder to shoulder to see which would lance him first. Snarling, he leaped to the side, away from the long-bladed lances. The two riders tried to wheel on him together, but he closed with them, thrusting at the closer of them. His blade struck a metal plate in quilted brigantine, then slid off and between the plates. The movements of his attack were continuous. Even as his steel pierced ribs and heart, he was scrambling onto the dying man's horse, throwing both the corpse and himself against the second enemy.
The second Vendhyan's eyes bulged with disbelief behind the nasal of his turbaned helmet; he dropped the lance and struggled to reach his tulwar. Conan grappled the live man with one hand while trying to pull his broadsword from the dead one with the other, and the two horses, joined by three linked bodies, danced wildly on the sand. In the same instant, Conan's blade and the Vendhyan's came free. The dark-eyed man desperately raised his weapon to slash. Conan twisted and all three men fell. As they slammed into the ground, the Cimmerian sliced his sword across a dark neck as though he were wielding a dagger and rose from two corpses.
The horses' pavane had carried him well down the beach, and what he saw as he looked back did not appear good. Bodies dotted the sand, though he could not make out how many were smugglers, and neither a standing man nor a mounted one was to be seen. Worse, the stern of the ship was a bonfire. As he watched, a man with a bucket silhouetted himself against the flames. Almost as soon as he appeared, the man dropped the bucket, tried to claw at his back with both hands and toppled into the fire. Not Hordo, Conan thought. The one-eyed man was too smart to do something like that with bowmen about.
The fire had lessened the darkness on the beach considerably, Conan realized. He was not so well lit as the man on the boat but neither could he consider himself shielded by the night from the Vendhyan archers. It was always better to be the hunter than the hunted, and the Easterners were not to be found by staying where he was.
Bent almost double, he ran for the dunes ... and threw himself flat against a slope of sand as nearly a score of riders appeared above him.
This, he thought sourly, was a few more than he had hoped to find at once. He was considering whether or not he could slip away unnoticed when the Vendhyans began talking.
"Are the chests on the pack animals?" a harsh, rasping voice demanded.
"They are."
"And where is Sabah?"
"Dead. He wanted to take the one-eyed man alive to see what he said about the seals under hot irons. The smuggler drowned him in the surf and escaped."
Conan smiled at that, at both parts of it.
"Good riddance," the harsh voice snapped. "I said from the start that we should come down on them as soon as the chests were in sight. Sabah always had to complicate matters. I think he was beginning to believe he really was a lord, with his secrets and his plottings."
"No matter. Sabah is dead, and we will soon hunt down the rest of the vermin."
"You propose to wait that long?" the harsh voice said. "How long do you think the caravan will wait?"
"But Sabah said we must kill all of them. And there is the gold."
"You think of a dead man's orders and a hundred gold pieces?" the harsh voice sneered. "Think instead of our reception if those chests fail to reach Ayodhya safely. Better we all join Sabah now than that." The silence was palpable. Conan could almost feel agreement radiating from the listeners. As if no further words were necessary, the Vendhyans reined their mounts around and galloped into the dark. Moments later Conan heard other hooves joining these, and all receded to the south.
There was much in what the Cimmerian had heard for him to consider. For one thing, the accursed chests seemed to take on greater importance every time someone spoke of them. For the moment, though, there were more immediate matters to be concerned with.
Half of the boat was burning by the time he reached it. In the light of the fire, Hordo and three others, waist-deep in the surf with buckets, were picked out clearly as they desperately threw water on the flames and watched the shore with equal desperation.
"The Vendhyans are gone!" Conan shouted. Grabbing the strake, he vaulted to the deck. Rivulets of fire ran forward along the sail. "It is too late for that, Hordo!"
"Erlik blast you!" the one-eyed man howled. "This is my ship!" One of the goats was dead, an arrow through its throat. Food might be in short supply, Conan thought, and tossed the carcass toward the beach. The live goat followed, almost dropping on Hordo's head. "My ship!" the one-eyed man growled. "Karela!"
"There will be another." Conan lowered the cage of fluttering pigeons and met Hordo's glare over it. "There will be another, my friend, but this one is done."
With a groan, Hordo took the wicker cage. "Get off, Cimmerian, before you burn, too."
Instead, Conan began seizing everything he found loose and not burning-coils of rope, water bags, bundles of personal possessions and hurled them shoreward. They were stranded in a strange land, which meant it was best to assume a hostile land, and all they would have by way of supplies was what was saved from the flames. The heat became blistering hot as the fire crept closer. Pitch caulking bubbled and fed the conflagration, giving off foul black smoke. Only when there was nothing left unburning within his grasp, however, did Conan leap from the fiery craft.
Splashing to shore, he sank coughing to his knees. After a time he became aware of Ghurran standing over him. The herbalist's parchment-skinned hands clutched a leather bag with a long strap.
"I regret," Ghurran said quietly, "that none of the Vendhyans had the antidote you seek. Though as they apparently planned to slay us, it may be they lied. I will search their dead in any case. You may be assured, however, that I have what is needed to keep you alive until we reach Vendhya."
Conan ran his eyes over the beach. Dead and wounded dotted the sand. A handful of smugglers were tottering hesitantly out of the dark. Behind him the boat was a pyre.
"Until we reach Vendhya," he said bleakly.
As the last flames flickered out on the ruin of the smugglers' craft, Jelal slipped away into the dunes, a coarse-woven bag under his arm.
The others were too tired to take notice, he knew, so long as he was quick.
By touch he found dead twigs on the stunted trees scattered in the low hills of sand, and in a spot well sheltered from the beach, he bu
ilt a tiny fire. Flint and steel went back into his pouch, and other things came out. A small brass bottle, tightly capped. A short length of goose quill. Strips of parchment, scraped thin. As rapidly as he could without tearing the parchment, he wrote.
My Lord, by chance I have perhaps stumbled on to a path to the answers you seek. To believe otherwise is to believe in too great a coincidence. I have no answers as yet, only more questions. As you fear, the path leads to Vendhya, and I will follow it there.
Something rustled in the night, and Jelal hastily pushed a handful of sand over the tiny fire, quenching the light. A faint aroma of burned wood lingered in the air but that could easily be mistaken for the smell of the charred remains of the ship. For a long moment he listened, holding his breath. Nothing. But there was no reason to take chances at this point. Signing the message by feel, he stowed his paraphernalia and rolled the strip of parchment into a thin tube.
From the coarse-woven sack he took a pigeon. It had been sheer luck, getting the birds brought along, and greater luck that they were not all eaten. Deftly he tied the parchment tube to the pigeon's leg, then tossed the bird aloft. In a flutter of wings it was gone, carrying all he was really sure of thus far to Lord Khalid in Sultanapur. It was little enough, he knew. But if the indications he had seen so far grew much stronger, he vowed to see that this Conan and this Hordo returned to a Turan ready to put their heads on pikes.
Chapter VIII
Dawn south of the Zaporoska was gray and dull, for heavy clouds filtered the light of the rising sun to lifelessness. From where he crouched in the dunes behind a twisted scrub oak, Conan watched the Bhalkhana stallion cropping scattered tufts of tough grass and wondered if the animal had settled enough for another try. The tall black's high-pommeled saddle was worked with silver studs and a fringe of red silk dangled from the reins.
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