A trap perhaps, Conan thought. Had Antimides learned of his failure already? Was he inside with his guards gathered close about him for protection? Such would be a foolish move, sure to have been protested by any competent captain. Yet a lord with Antimides’ arrogance might well have bludgeoned his guard commander into complacent compliance long since.
He turned in his saddle, studying the men behind. The seven besides Machaon and Narus who had crossed the border from Nemedia with him were there. They had followed him far, and loyally.
Long and hard had he labored to build this company, and to keep it, yet fairness made him say, “What numbers we face inside I do not know. Does any man wish to leave, now is the time.”
“Speak not foolishness,” Machaon said. Taurianus opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking.
Conan nodded. “Four men to hold the horses,” he ordered as he dismounted.
With steady, purposeful tread they climbed the white marble steps, drawing swords as they did. Conan stepped through the open door, its broad bronze face scribed hugely with the arms of Antimides’ house, and found himself in a long, dome-ceilinged hall, with grand, alabaster stairs sweeping up to a columned balcony that encircled the hall.
A buxom serving girl in plain green robes that left her pretty legs bare to the tops of her thighs dashed out of a door to one side of the hall, a large, weighty bag over her shoulders. A scream bubbled out of her when she saw the armed and armored men invading the palace. Dropping the bag, she sped wailing back the way she had come.
Narus thoughtfully eyed the array of golden goblets and silver plate that had spilled out of the bag. “A guess as to what happens here?”
“Antimides fleeing our righteous wrath?” Machaon hazarded hopefully.
“We cannot afford let him escape us,” Conan said. He did not believe the count would flee, but there was strangeness here that worried him. “Spread out. Find him.”
They scattered in all directions, but warily, swords at the ready. Too many battles had they faced, too many traps had been sprung around them, for complacency. The continued survival of a mercenary lay in his readiness to give battle on an instant. Any instant.
A lord’s chambers would be above, the Cimmerian thought. He took the curving stairs upward.
Room by room he searched, finding no one, living or dead. Everywhere there were signs of hasty flight, and of a desire to carry away everything of value. Marks where tapestries had been pulled from the walls and carpets taken up. Tables overturned, whatever they had borne gone. Golden lamps wrenched halfway from brackets that had resisted being pried from the walls. Oddly, every mirror he saw was starred with long cracks.
Then he pushed open a door with his sword, and looked into a room that seemed untouched. Furniture stood upright, golden bowls and silver vases in place, and tapestries depicting heroic scenes of Ophir’s past hung from the walls. The one mirror in the room was cracked, however, as the others were. An intricately carved chair was set before it, the high back to the door, but the voluminous, gold-embroidered green silk sleeve of a man’s robe hung over one gilded wooden arm.
With the strides of a great hunting cat the giant Cimmerian crossed the room, presented his sword to the throat of the man seated there. “Now, Antimides—” Conan’s words died abruptly, and the hairs on the back of his neck stirred.
Count Antimides sat with eyes bulging from an empurpled face and blackened tongue protruding between teeth clenched and bared in a rictus of agony. The links of a golden chain were buried in the swollen flesh of his neck, and his own hands clutched the ends of that chain, seeming even in the iron grip of death to strain at drawing it tighter.
“Crom!” Conan muttered. He would not believe that fear of his vengeance had been enough to make Antimides sit before a mirror and watch as he strangled himself. The Cimmerian had met sorcery often enough before to know the smell of it.
“Conan! Where are you?”
“In here!” he replied to the shout from the hall.
Machaon and Narus entered with a slender, frightened youth in filthy rags that had been fine satin robes not long past. His wrists bore the bloody marks of manacles; the pallor of his skin and the thinness of his face spoke of long days in darkness and missed meals.
“Look what we found chained below,” the tattooed man said.
Not so much of a youth, Conan saw at second glance; there was that in the man’s manner—a petulant thrust of a too-full lower lip; a sulkiness of eye and stance—that gave an air of boyishness.
“Well, who is he?” the Cimmerian asked. “You speak as if I should know him.”
The youthful appearing man lifted his chin with almost feminine hauteur. “I am Valentius,” he said in a high voice that strained for steadiness, “count now, but King to be. I give you my thanks for this rescue.” His dark eyes flickered uncertainly to Narus and Machaon. “If rescue it indeed is.”
Narus shrugged. “We told him why we are here,” he said to Conan, “but he does not believe. Or not fully.”
“There are two guards below with their gullets slit,” Machaon said, “but we’ve seen no one living. There is madness in this place, Cimmerian. Has Antimides truly fled?”
For an answer Conan jerked his head toward the high-backed chair. The other three hesitated, then moved quickly to look.
Shockingly, Valentius giggled. “However did you make him do this? No matter. ’Tis fitting for his betrayal of my trust.” His fine-featured face darkened quickly. “I came to him for aid and shelter, and he laughed at me. At me! Then he clapped me in irons and left me to rot and fight rats for my daily bowl of swill. So pious, he was. So unctuous. He would not have my blood on his hands, he said, and laughed. He would leave that to the rats.”
“I’ve seen death on many fields, Conan,” Machaon said, “but this is an ugly way to slay a man, for all he deserved killing.” His knuckles were white on his sword hilt as he gazed on the corpse. Narus formed his fingers into a sign to ward off evil.
“I did not kill him,” Conan told them. “Look at his hands on the chain. Antimides slew himself.”
Valentius laughed again, shrilly. “However ’twas done, it was done well.” Moods shifting like quicksilver, his face screwed up viciously, and he spat in the corpse’s bloated face. “I but regret I could not see the doing.”
Conan exchanged glances with his two friends. This was the man with the best blood claim to succeed Valdric on the throne of Ophir. The young Cimmerian shook his head in disgust. The urge to be rid of the youth quickly was strong, but did he simply leave him the fool would have his throat cut in short order. Perhaps that would be the better for Ophir, but such was not his decision to make.
To Valentius he said, “We will take you to the royal palace. Valdric will give you protection.”
The slender young man stared at him, wild-eyed and trembling. “No! No, you cannot! Valdric will kill me. I am next in line for the throne. He will kill me!”
“You speak foolishness,” Conan growled. “Valdric has no care for aught but saving his own life. ’Tis likely in a day he’ll not even remember you are in the palace.”
“You do not understand,” Valentius whined, wringing his hands. “Valdric will look at me, knowing that he is dying, knowing that I will be King after. He will think of the long years I have before me, and he will hate me. He will have me slain!” He looked desperately from one face to the next, and finished with a sullenly muttered, “’Tis what I would do, and so will he.”
Machaon spat on the costly Turanian carpet. “What of blood kin?” he asked gruffly. “What of friends, or allies?”
The cringing man shook his head. “How can I know who among them to trust? My own guards turned on me, men who have served my house faithfully for years.” Suddenly his voice quickened, and his dark eyes took on a sly light. “You protect me! When I am King, I will give you wealth, titles. You shall have Antimides’ palace, and be count in his stead. You and your men shall be the King�
�s personal bodyguard. Riches beyond imagining I shall grant you, and power. Choose a woman, noble or common, and she will be yours. Two, do you wish them, or three! Name the honor you desire! Give it name, and I shall grant it!”
Conan grimaced. It was true that there could be no better service for a Free-Company than what Valentius offered, but he would sooner serve a viper. “What of Iskandrian?” he said. “The general takes no part in these struggles, follows no faction.”
Valentius nodded reluctantly. “If you will not serve me,” he said sulkily.
“Then let us leave this place,” Conan said, “and quickly. It would be ill to be found standing over Antimides’ corpse.” As the others hurried from the room, though, he paused for one last look at the dead man. Whatever sorcery Antimides had enmeshed himself in, the Cimmerian was glad it did not touch him. With a shiver he followed the others.
XVI
Dusk was falling as Conan returned to the house where his company was quartered, and the gray thickening of the air, the coming blackness, fitted his mood well. Iskandrian had taken Valentius under his protection at the army’s barracks readily enough, but the old general had listened to their story with a suspicious eye on the Cimmerian. Only for Valentius’ agreement that Antimides appeared to have strangled himself had the mercenaries left those long, stone buildings unchained, and the petulant glare the young lord gave Conan as he said the words was as clear as a statement that he would have spoken differently could he but he sure he would not himself be implicated.
And then there had been Synelle. Conan had found her in a strange mixture of fury and satisfaction. She already knew of Antimides’ death, though he was not aware the word had spread so quickly; that accounted for her contentment. But she had upbraided him savagely for riding away without her permission, and for taking the time to bring Valentius to Iskandrian’s care.
The last seemed to infuriate her more than the first. He was in her service, not that of the fopling Valentius, and he would do well to remember it. To his own amazement he had listened meekly, and worst of all had had to fight with himself to stop from begging her forgiveness. He had never begged anything from man or woman, god or demon, and it made his stomach turn to think how close he had come.
He slammed open the door of his room, and stopped dead. In the dimness. Julia, naked and bound hand and foot, frowned up at him with her mouth working frantically at a gag.
“Machaon!” he shouted. “Narus!” Hastily he untied her gag. Her bonds had been tightly tied, and she had pulled them tighter with her struggles. He had to wield his dagger carefully to cut only the strips of cloth and not her flesh. “Who did this?” he demanded as he labored to free her.
With a groan she expelled a damp wad of cloth from her mouth, and worked her jaw before speaking. “Do not let him see me like this,” she pleaded. “Hurry! Hurry!”
Machaon, Narus and Boros tumbled through the door, all shouting questions at once, and Julia screamed. As Conan severed the last binding, she jerked free of him and scrambled to the bed, snatching a blanket to cover herself.
“Go away, Machaon!” she cried, cowering back. Rubiate color suffused her cheeks. “I will not have you see me so. Go away!”
“ ’Tis gone,” Boros said drunkenly, pointing to the corner where Conan had hidden the bronze figure.
For the first time the Cimmerian realized the board was lifted aside, and the space beneath it empty. A chill as of death oozed through him. It seemed meet that this day should end so, with disaster peering at him like the vacant eye-sockets of a skull.
“Mayhap,” Boros muttered, “do we ride hard, we can be across the border before it’s used. I’ve always wished to see Vendhya, or perhaps, Khitai. Does anyone know a land more distant?”
“Be quiet, you old fool,” Conan growled. “Julia, who took the bronze? Crom, woman, stop worrying about that accursed blanket and answer me!”
Not ceasing her efforts to make the blanket cover all of her bountiful curves, and less precariously, Julia glared at him and sniffed. “ ’Twas a trull in men’s breeches and wearing a sword.” She glanced at Machaon out of the corner of her eye. “She said I have a boy’s bottom. My bottom is as round as hers, only not so big.”
Conan ground his teeth. “Her eyes,” he asked impatiently. “They were green? Her hair red? Did she say anything else?”
“Karela?” Machanon said. “I thought she meant to kill you, not steal from you. But why is Boros so frighted by this thing she took? You’ve not got us meddling with sorcerers again, Cimmerian?”
“You know her,” Julia said accusingly. “I thought so from what she said about my …” She cleared her throat and began again. “All I remember of what she said is that she swore by Derketo and thanked you for five hundred pieces of gold. Have you truly given her so much? I remember my father’s lemans, and I’d not think this Karela was worth a silver.”
Conan pounded a huge fist on his thigh. “I must find her, Machaon, without delay. She has stolen a bronze figure that came to me by happenstance, a thing of evil power that will wreak destruction undreamed of, does she sell it to those I fear she will. Give me precise directions to find that ruined keep.”
Julia moaned. “That is what she meant about gold? She takes the hellish thing to those Boros spoke of? Mitra protect us all, and the land!”
“I understand not a word of all this,” Machaon said, “but one thing I do know. An you enter the Sarelain Forest in the night, you’ll break your neck. That tangle is bad enough to travel in daylight. Twould take a man born there to find his way in the dark.”
“I can find her,” Boros said, swaying, “so long as she has the bronze. Its evil is in truth a beacon.” He pushed his sleeves up bony arms. “A simple matter of—”
“An you attempt magic in your condition,” Conan cut him off, “I’ll put your head on a spike over the River Gate with my own hands.” The gray-bearded man looked hurt, but subsided, muttering under his breath. Conan turned to Machaon. “There is no time to waste. Daylight may be too late.”
Machaon nodded reluctantly, but Narus said, “Then take a score of us with you. Her band—”
“—would hear so many coming and melt away,” the Cimmerian finished for him. “I go alone. Machaon?”
Slowly the tattooed veteran spoke.
Machaon was right, Conan thought as an unseen branch whipped across his face for what seemed the hundredth time. A man could easily break his neck in that blackness. He forced his horse on through the heavy thicket of vines and undergrowth, hoping he moved in the right direction. As a boy he had learned to guide himself by the stars, but the sky was seldom visible, for the forest was ancient, filled with huge oaks whose thick interwoven branches formed a canopy with few openings above his head.
“You’ve come far enough,” a voice called from the dark, “unless you want a quarrel in your ribs!”
Conan put a hand to his sword.
“None of that!” another man said, then chuckled. “Me and Tenio grew up in this forest, big man, poaching the King’s deer by night. He sees better than I do, and you might as well be standing under a full moon for all of me.”
“I seek Karela,” Conan began, but got no further.
“Enough talk,” the first voice said. “Take him!”
Suddenly rough hands were pulling the big Cimmerian from his horse, into the midst of a knot of men. He could not even see well enough to count how many, but he seized an arm and broke it, producing a scream. There was no room to draw his sword, nor light to see where to strike; he snatched his dagger instead and laid about him, bringing yells and curses when he slashed flesh. In the end their numbers were too great, and he was pressed to the dirt by the weight of them, his wrists bound behind him and a cord tied between his ankles for a hobble.
“Anybody hurt bad?” panted the man who had chuckled earlier.
“My arm,” someone moaned, and another voice said, “Bugger your arm! He near as cut my ear off!”
Cursing
the dark—not all had cat’s eyes—they pulled Conan to his feet and pulled him through the trees, dragging him, when the hobble caught roots and tripped him, until he managed to get his feet under him again.
Abruptly a blanket was pulled aside before him, and he was thrust into a stone-walled room lit by rush torches in rusted iron sconces on the walls. A huge hearth with a roaring fire of logs as big as a man’s leg, a great iron pot suspended on pivoting arm above it, filled one wall. Blankets at the windows—narrow arrow-slits, in fact—kept the light from spilling into the surrounding forest. A dozen men, as motley a collection of ruffians as Conan had ever seen, sprawled on benches at crude trestle tables, swilling wine from rough clay mugs and wolfing down stew from wooden bowls.
Karela got to her feet as Conan’s captors crowded in after him, complaining loudly about their wounds and bruises. Her dark leather jerkin, worn over tight breeches of pale gray silk tucked into red boots, was laced snugly, yet gaped enough at the top to reveal the creamy upper slopes of her full, heavy breasts. A belt worn low on her well-rounded hips supported her scimitar.
“So,” she said, “you’re more fool than I thought you, Cimmerian. You’ll force me to kill you yet.”
“The bronze, Karela,” he said urgently. “You must not sell it. They’re trying—”
“Silence him!” she snapped.
“—to raise Al’Kiir,” he managed to get out, then a club smashed against the back of his head, and darkness claimed him.
XVII
The fool, Karela thought as she stared at Conan’s huge prostrate form. Was his masculine arrogance so great that he could believe all he must needs do to retrieve the figure was ride up and take it? She knew him for a priceful man, and knew as well that the pride was justified. By himself, with naught but his broadsword, he was more than a match for …
Abruptly she cursed to herself. The Cimmerian was no longer the same man who had emprisoned a part of her and carried it away with him. She had been thinking of him as he was when she first knew him, a thief and a loner with naught but his wits and the strength of his sword arm. Now he commanded men, and men who, she reluctantly admitted, were a more dangerous pack than the hounds she led.
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