The guards held their places, but their hands crept closer to their weapons.
Eloikas nodded, and Conan saw Raihna quiver like a released bowstring.
"Our gratitude to you extends to answering many questions. But let Us hear your first two."
Raihna wasted no words. She wanted to know if her caravan fee would be paid at once so that she could divide it among her men. Some had not been paid since long before they joined her company, save in clothing with which to make themselves decent and weapons with which to make themselves fit for battle.
"I would judge also that some may not wish to remain in Our service and that you wish them to travel safely," Eloikas said.
This time Raihna's reply was as swift as a runner's start. "I cannot swear to that, Your Majesty. But if there are such men, would you ask me to hold them in your realm against their will?"
"We would not. We suspect that if We did, We would hear plain words on the matter from Lord Decius."
The only word for Eloikas's look at his captain-general was "fatherly."
"Your Majesty is gracious," Raihna said. "I would also beg that you consider taking my under-captain, Conan of Cimmeria, into your service."
This time Eloikas's look was that of a king asking advice of a trusted counselor. The captain-general shrugged.
"Conan might have my voice in less troubled times. As matters stand, when a stranger might have more than one allegiance
Now it was Conan's elbow that prodded Raihna's ribs. Her outraged look did not turn into outrageous words.
"Your Majesty, if I may speak for myself¦ ?" Conan said.
Oyzhik hissed again. "Who asked you”?" he began.
"Peace, Oyzhik," Eloikas said. "Even a condemned man may ask one final favor of the judge."
"Your Majesty, before you condemn me to leaving Mistress Raihna's service, to which I am sworn until she sets me free, please hear from my own lips what I did."
"You may speak."
Conan obeyed. His account of his deeds since entering the Border Kingdom was as plain as a halberd head. No gilding that he could give it would make it more convincing. He could hope for no more or no less than persuading the king that he was not in Count Syzambry's service and never would be.
When Conan finished, the king nodded. "You speak very freely before a king."
"Your Majesty, I've faced men, and more than men, far more to be feared than just a king."
"And learned flattery from them?"
"Call it what you will, Your Majesty. I call it the truth."
Eloikas laughed softly, but it seemed that his eyes were not altogether dry. The silence lasted some good while until the king spoke again.
"We think that this Cimmerian can be trusted sufficiently to be offered a post in Our service. Oyzhik, you have spoken often of needing more seasoned soldiers in the Guard to instruct the recruits."
Oyzhik was silent. He looked ready to deny that he had ever said any such thing until he saw Decius's eye upon him. The captain-general might have been shouting, "Lie at your peril!"
"It is true that I can instruct the recruits only by plucking the ranks of the veterans," Oyzhik said sullenly.
"Then We think the favor of the gods is evident in sending Conan the Cimmerian to Our realm. Conan, if it pleases Mistress Raihna, would you become Sergeant of the Second Company of Our Guard?"
Conan looked a question at Raihna. She nodded.
Conan knelt again. "I accept with pleasure, Your Majesty. By all the lawful gods of this and other lands, I swear that you'll not regret this decision."
"Then rise, Sergeant Conan."
The gods might keep King Eloikas from regretting his decision. One look told Conan, however, that the same could hardly be said of Captain Oyzhik. Had he been able to conjure the roof down on his king and his new sergeant alike, he might well have done so.
As Conan expected, his quarters and those of the Guard lay outside the palace, while Raihna's men would seek a dry room within it, if such existed. It was hard upon sunset before they had a chance to speak without fear of eavesdroppers by dint of taking a light supper out onto the drill ground and eating it while sitting on a blanket.
"I wish we could serve together," Raihna said.
"Missing a bedmate already?" Conan jested. "Cast one of your languishing looks at Decius and you'll not”ufffl"
He broke off as she punched him urgently in the ribs. "I am not blind to his desire for me. I am also not blind to his kinship with Eloikas."
"I wonder. Could Decius have something to do with Princess Chienna's abduction? Bastards have won thrones before this when there were no legitimate heirs."
"My gratitude to you overflows, Conan. You know perfectly how to give me a sound sleep at night."
"Yes, and I'll have no chance to use it tonight, or for many nights to come. If Decius is no enemy, best we not make him one."
"I fear Oyzhik more."
"An open enemy's easier to watch than one biding his time. Turan taught me that, if nothing else. Moreover, I'd wager all the wine in this realm that Eloikas or Decius have men among the Guards to watch Oyzhik.
Unless his chiefs want me dead, Oyzhik might find a few obstacles in his path."
"Wager more than this wine," Raihna said. She spat into the dust and rinsed her mouth from the water bottle. "In some lands, this would not pass even as vinegar."
"I've heard a score of tales of the Border Kingdom," Conan said, "but none of them ever claimed that it was a great land for fine living."
He did not add what most of the tales did say: that the Border Kingdom reeked of ancient and unwholesome sorcery. Or sorcery even more unwholesome than that commonly found, at least since the fall of the nighted realm of Acheron.
Was this the secret truth about the Border Kingdom? That when the tide of the dark hosts of Acheron drew back from civilized lands, some of its leavings remained here among the sharp-peaked mountains and the forests as dark as a death-spell?
It was, as such things went, a warm night for the Border Kingdom. But the Cimmerian felt more than an itch between his shoulder blades at the thought of Acheron yet living here. He felt a chill, as from the breath of the wind off of a Hyperborean glacier.
Chapter 7
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Conan began his new undertaking as Sergeant of the Second Company of the Palace Guard the next day.
Indeed, he began it before the roses of sunrise touched the eastern sky and the fanged peaks jutting against it. This was not much to the liking of some of the recruits, who had been accustomed to rising when whim or wine allowed.
"From this day forth, you've no whims unless I order you to have them,"
Conan roared at the staggering, bleary-eyed men. "I'll not give that order."
He spat on the ground in disgust. "Or at least I won't give it until you sons of flea-ridden wolves are closer to being soldiers than you are now. From the looks of you, I'll have a long gray beard before that happens!"
He put his hands on his hips and raked the line with his eyes. No one laughed, no one flinched, and several men looked him in the eye as if daring him to put them to the test.
Good. They might lack training but perhaps not spirit. Seen by the dawn's light, indeed, they looked a trifle closer to being soldiers than they had when he first met them.
"Very well. Now, let me see your weapons."
Conan remained silent until it became clear that fewer than half of the men had brought their weapons. That, and the condition of many of those that were displayed, drew another sulphurous blast from the Cimmerian.
He eloquently described the ancestry of soldiers who went about without their weapons. He added predictions of the fate awaiting them, barring the favor of gods sometimes charitable to fools.
When Conan told the unarmed to run back to their quarters and bring their weapons, most of them actually ran.
The first day was a tale of errors and omissions, intermingled with minor catastrophes and fo
llies. By the second day, the Second Company had mustered its wits and concluded that its new sergeant was serious.
By the third day, it dawned upon them that neither Captain Oyzhik nor the captain of the Second Company was going to lift a finger to save them from the Cimmerian. The choice was either mutiny or obedience.
Somewhat to Conan's relief, those who favored obedience outnumbered those who favored mutiny. He suspected that a reluctance to face Decius's seasoned veterans had something to do with the matter.
After the third day, Conan's work with the Second Company marched forward swiftly and, for the most part, steadily. It was work he knew well, having learned it from a master, High Captain Khadjar in Turan.
It was work that needed doing if the Second Company was to be worth even its scanty rations.
Most of all, it was work that Conan enjoyed and that the men of the company came to enjoy also. They were not so lost to pride that being a company of soldiers instead of a rabble did not put heart into them. By the fifth day, Conan had appointed four under-sergeants from their ranks. Three of them were men who had on the first day brought clean weapons to muster; the fourth was the one who had first returned from quarters with his.
By now, Conan had concluded that nothing could be expected for good or ill from either Oyzhik or the company's captain. The latter spent most of his time in his quarters and most of that time either drunk or sleeping. It passed belief that anyone could stomach enough of the Border wine to fuddle his wits, but it seemed that the man was made of stout stuff.
As for Oyzhik, it was said that he was being kept busy strengthening the palace's defenses against an attack by Count Syzambry. This left the captain-general's men free to take the field against the count and on the trail of the lost princess.
Conan might have believed those tales except that Decius seemed to be present at the palace almost every day. He seldom missed spending at least a moment with Raihna, either”or so the Bossonian told Conan.
"I no longer wonder why you suspect Decius," Raihna added. "I sleep no sounder because of it, but that is hardly your fault."
Conan grinned, and as they were alone, slapped her smartly on the rump.
Raihna was no woman for sleeping alone unless she had to. But with so many doubtfully friendly eyes around and about, a cold and narrow bed was also the safest.
Some of the village girls had eyed the Cimmerian's massive frame with open approval. But Conan had soon thereafter seen soldiers of both the Guards and Decius's troops eyeing him in a rather less-than-friendly fashion. Clearly, bedding one of the girls would be poaching. Conan could live with a cold bed if it meant a safe back.
He also kept a watchful eye and a keen ear for any opportunity to win enough gold to free Raihna's company from any need to remain in this land. Once the need for gold no longer bound her men to Eloikas's service, they would hardly let another sun set before they marched south.
It was the eighth day of Conan's service in the Border Kingdom. The sun was well up, and he was watching over an archery match. Not all of the Guards had bows, and not all of those who had bows had any skill with them.
Conan, however, had gone to Turan barely knowing the point of an arrow from the fletching. Little more than two years later, he was an archer fit for the battlefield. He vowed that every man of his company could achieve at least that much mastery of the bow. Then the company could hurl forty arrows at a single command, two hundred paces in any direction.
That would be no small gift to King Eloikas, Conan judged. Archers would be useful in every kind of fighting the king faced, beginning with the defense of the palace against Count Syzambry.
The contest was not yet half done when Kalk, the senior sergeant, approached Conan. "Sergeant Conan, I have sighted men skulking up toward the ridge. I am sure they are none of ours."
Conan turned his eyes toward the hillside, which sloped up toward a knife-edged ridge. The slope was covered with small trees or large bushes. Call them what one would, they were abundant enough to hide a company.
"We need not raise the alarm yet," Conan said. "Pick five men and tell the rest to continue the contest. Then meet me here, and we'll go teach these uninvited guests better manners."
Kalk nodded, then remembered to raise his hand in acknowledgment and respect. He also seemed to be smiling as he turned away.
Kalk was like many of the recruits of the Guard, fit to learn the arts of the soldier if someone was ready to teach him. Oyzhik never had been, and Conan wondered how many Guards had died through Oyzhik's sloth. Their kin would owe Oyzhik a blood-debt, that he knew.
Conan led the six men toward the hill as the sun finished burning off the mist. When they struck the steepest part of the slope, he allowed Kalk to take the lead. Careful not to be noticed, he dropped back to the rear. From there he could study the ground both uphill and down. He also had no man at his back.
The recruits set a good pace in mounting the slope. The Border Kingdom was home to all. As children, they had climbed its hills, and as men, they could teach even a long-limbed Cimmerian something about moving on rough terrain.
Beyond the line of the ridge, the ground plunged away into a cliff.
Only a bird, or perhaps an ape, could descend the drop. The cliff was so high that the stream below was a silver thread winding through gray rocks dwarfed to pebbles and dark green trees that might have been flowers in a garden.
The slope behind Conan lay silent in the sun. If the skulkers were not Kalk's fancy, they had either departed or lain quiet as the Guards passed them.
Conan frowned at Kalk. The sergeant spread his hands. "It was not the sun," he said mildly.
"I didn't say it was," Conan replied. "We'll spread out as we go down.
Grow eyes in the backs of your heads and ears in your arses and we may find something."
Six men was a jest for a real search of the slope. Sixty would not have been too few, and three times that many might not have been wasted.
The men had finished spreading out along the ridge line when Kalk shouted.
"Sergeant Conan! I was not deceived. Come and look just below the top of the cliff!"
Conan thought of drawing his sword but realized that he would need both hands for a secure grip. He stepped cautiously toward Kalk, but no caution could have saved his ankle from the snare Kalk had set the night before.
What caution could not prevent, strength and speed did. As he felt the leather thongs coil serpent-like around his ankle, Conan flung himself backward, away from the cliff. With his sword still at his waist, he had both hands free to break his fall.
The Cimmerian landed, rolled, then lashed out with his feet. The savage lunge of powerful legs snapped the thongs like twine before Kalk could draw his steel. The sergeant's blade was still coming clear when Conan's feet lashed out again.
This time one boot drove against Kalk's knee. He screamed at the pain of his ruined kneecap, then toppled sideways over the cliff. Kalk went on screaming all the way down, until the scream ended in a distant sound, like a ripe melon flung down on a stone floor.
Conan did not wait to listen to the would-be assassin's fate. Kalk had friends, and the Cimmerian had other matters at hand.
He dealt with two of the friends in a flurry of steel striking sparks from steel, then slicing flesh. Both men were down and bleeding when a shout made Conan turn.
One of the Guards was grappling with an archer who had an arrow nocked to his bow. Conan hurled himself at the men as his ally drew a dagger and stabbed the archer in the thigh. The man screamed but lashed out with his bow. The other man fell backward, to land on the very edge of the cliff.
Then he was over the edge as the stone under him crumbled. Conan was barely in time to grab the hand that was the only part of the man visible. The man's bloody fingers made Conan's grip uncertain, and he shifted to using both hands. Thus he pulled the man up until he could firmly grip a wrist. Then the sound of boots in dry grass drew Conan's attention to his rear.
Conan knew that his death might be no more than a few score heartbeats away. But he did not have it in him to send the man who had saved him plunging after Sergeant Kalk. That might not save him either.
What saved Conan was a man who burst from undergrowth the Cimmerian would have sworn could not hide a squirrel. The man jumped on the archer, lashing out with hands and feet. The archer seemed to leap upright, then to topple. When he came down, he landed squarely on Conan's rib cage. The Cimmerian's breath came short, and for a moment he had to fight for his grip. Then he saw, with staring eyes and doubting mind, who had come to save him.
The man wore sun-bleached leather leggings and a sweat-stained linen jerkin. He looked twenty years younger than usual, but he was nevertheless Captain-General Decius.
"If dangling your friends over the edge of a cliff is sport to you, Conan, no wonder you walk alone."
Decius knelt and caught the loyal Guard's free arm. The double pull had him safe in another moment, whereupon he fainted.
Conan rose cautiously and retrieved his sword. "So this is where you've been in days past, when you were not flattering Raihna?"
"Here and there and other places like it," Decius said. "My men are out and about, however. I mean no insult, Conan, but I can trust my sergeants more than yours."
Conan remembered his glimpse of Kalk's body, bent backward over a blood-spattered stone. "By Erlik's brass tool, I should hope so!"
While they spoke, Decius tore strips from the archer's shirt and bound his bloody thigh. Now he wiped his hands on the remnant of the shirt and stood.
"He will do long enough for questioning. I doubt that we will learn many of Oyzhik's secrets from him, but Kalk is silent forever."
"I didn't send him Conan began, then realized that Decius was smiling. The smile broadened, and Conan knew that his own face must have said more than he wished.
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