Conan Chronicles 2 Page 22

  “Can I help you?” the shopkeeper asked, reappearing with a coarsely woven sack in his hand. There was no “noble sir” for this sort.

  “That,” slit-ear said gruffly, pointing to the statuette. “A gold piece for it.”

  The smith coughed and spluttered, glaring reproachfully at Conan.

  “It’s mine,” the Cimmerian said calmly, “and I’ve no mind to sell.”

  “Two gold pieces,” slit-ear said. Conan shook his head.

  “Five,” the bald man offered.

  Slit-ear rounded on his companion. “Give away your profit, an you will, but not mine! I’ll make this ox an offer,” he snarled and spun, his sword whispering from its sheath.

  Conan made no move toward his own blade. Grasping the bronze figure by its feet, he swung it sideways. The splintering of bone blended with slit-ear’s scream as his shoulder was crushed. The bald man had his sword out now, but Conan merely stepped aside from his lunge and brought the weighty statuette down like a mace, splattering blood and brains. The dead man’s momentum carried him on into the tables, overturning those he did not smash, sending brass vases and bowls clattering across the floor. Conan whirled back to find the first man thrusting with a dagger held left-handed. The blade skittered off his hauberk, and the two men crashed together. For the space of a breath they were chest to chest, Conan staring into desperate black eyes. This time he disdained to use a weapon. His huge fist traveled more than half the length of his forearm, and slit-ear staggered back, his face a bloody mask, to pull shelves down atop him as he crumpled to the floor. Conan did not know if he was alive or dead, nor did he care.

  The smith stood in the middle of the floor, hopping from one foot to the other. “My shop!” he wailed. “My shop is wrecked! You steal for a silver what they would have given five gold pieces for, then you destroy my place of business!”

  “They have purses,” Conan growled. “Take the cost of your repairs from—” He broke off with a curse as the scent of roses wafted to his nose. Delving into his pouch, he came out with a fragment of vial. Perfume was soaking into his hauberk. And his cloak. “Erlik take the pair of them,” he muttered. He hefted the bronze figure that he still held in one hand. “What about this thing is worth five gold pieces? Or worth dying for?” The shopkeeper, gingerly feeling for the ruffians’ purses, did not answer.

  Cursing under his breath Conan wiped the blood from the figure and thrust it into the sack the smith had let drop.

  With a shout of delight the smith held up a handful of silver, then drew back as if he feared Conan might take it. He started, then stared at the two men littering his floor as if realizing where they were for the first time. “But what will I do with them?” he cried.

  “Apprentice them,” Conan told him. “I’ll wager they won’t put anything valuable in the scrap barrel.”

  Leaving the dumpy man kneeling on the floor with his mouth hanging open, Conan stalked into the street. It was time and more to find himself a woman.

  In his haste he did not notice the heavily veiled woman whose green eyes widened in surprise at his appearance. She watched him blend into the crowd then, gathering her cloak about her, followed slowly.

  II

  The Bull and Bear was almost empty when Conan entered, and the half-dread silence suited his mood well. The curly-haired trull had been leaving with a customer when he got back to her corner, and he had not seen another to compare with her between there and this tavern.

  An odor of stale wine and sweat hung in the air of the common room; it was not a tavern for gentlefolk. Half a dozen men, carters and apprentices in rough woolen tunics, sat singly at the tables scattered about the stone floor, each engrossed in his own drinking. A single doxy stood with her back to a corner, not plying her trade but seeming rather to ignore the men in the room. Auburn hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders. Wrapped in layers of green silk, she was more modestly covered than most noble ladies of Ophir, and she wore none of the gaudy ornaments such women usually adorned themselves with, but the elaborate kohl of her eyelids named her professional, as did her presence in that place. Still, there was a youthful freshness to her face that gave him cause to think she had not long been at it.

  Conan was so intent on the girl that he failed at first to see the graying man, the full beard of a scholar spreading over his chest, who muttered to himself over a battered pewter pitcher at a table to one side of the door. When he did, he sighed, wondering if the wench would be worth putting up with the old man.

  At that moment the bearded man caught sight of Conan, and a drunken, snaggle-toothed grin split his wizened face. His tunic was patched in a rainbow of colors, and stained with wine and food. “Conan,” he cried, gesturing so hard for the big youth to come closer that he nearly fell from his stool. “Come. Sit. Drink.”

  “You look to have had enough, Boros,” Conan said drily, “and I’ll buy you no more.”

  “No need to buy,” Boros laughed. He fumbled for the pitcher. “No need. See? Water. But with just a little …” His voice trailed off into mumbles, while his free hand made passes above the pitcher.

  “Crom!” Conan shouted, leaping back from the table. Some in the room looked up, but seeing neither blood nor chance for advantage all went back to their drinking. “Not again while you’re drunk, you old fool!” the Cimmerian continued hastily. “Narus still isn’t rid of those warts you gave him trying to cure his boil.”

  Boros cackled and thrust the pitcher toward him. “Taste. ’S wine. Naught to fear here.”

  Cautiously Conan took the proffered pitcher and sniffed at the mouth of it. His nose wrinkled, and he handed the vessel back. “You drink first, since it’s your making.”

  “Fearful, are you?” Boros laughed. “And big as you are. Had I your muscles …” He buried his nose in the pitcher, threw back his head, and almost in the same motion hurled the vessel from him, gagging, spluttering and spitting. “Mitra’s mercies,” he gasped shakily, scrubbing the back of a bony hand across his mouth. “Never tasted anything like that in my life. Must have put a gill or more down my gullet. What in Azura’s name is it.”

  Conan suppressed a grin. “Milk. Sour milk, by the smell.”

  Boros shuddered and retched, but nothing came up. “You switched the pitcher,” he said when he could speak. “Your hands are swift, but not so swift as my eye. You owe me wine, Cimmerian.”

  Conan dropped onto a stool across the table from Boros, setting the sack containing the bronze on the floor at his side. He had little liking for wizards, but properly speaking Boros was not such a one. The old man had been an apprentice in the black arts, but a liking for drink that became an all-consuming passion had led him to the gutter rather than down crooked paths of dark knowledge. When sober he was of some use in curing minor ills, or providing a love philtre; drunk, he was sometimes a danger even to himself. He was a good drinking companion, though, so long as he was kept from magic.

  “Here!” the tavernkeeper bellowed, wiping his hands on a filthy once-white apron as he hurried toward them. With his spindly limbs and pot belly, he looked like a fat spider. “What’s all this mess on the floor? I’ll have you know this tavern is respectable, and—”

  “Wine,” Conan cut him off, tossing coppers to clatter on the floor at his feet. “And have a wench bring it.” He gestured to the strangely aloof doxy. “That one in the corner will do.”

  “She don’t work for me,” the tavernkeeper grunted, bending to collect the pitcher and the coins. Then he got down on hands and knees to fetch one copper from under the table and grinned at it in satisfaction. “But you’ll have a girl, never fear.”

  He disappeared into the rear of the building, and in short moments a plump girl scurried out, one strip of blue silk barely containing her bouncing breasts and another fastened about her hips, to set a pitcher of wine and a pair of dented tankards before the two men. Wriggling, she moved closer to Conan, a seductive light in her dark eyes. He was barely aware of her, his eyes had g
one back to the auburn-haired jade.

  “Fool!” the serving wench snapped. “As well take a block of ice in your arms as that one.” And with a roll of her lips she flounced away.

  Conan stared after her in amazement. “What is Zandru’s Nine Hells got into her?” he growled.

  “Who understands women?” Boros muttered absently. Hastily he filled a tankard and gulped half of it. “Besides,” he went on in bleary tones once he had taken a deep breath, “now Tiberio’s dead, we’ll have too much else to be worrying about …” The rest of his words were drowned in another mouthful of wine.

  “Tiberio dead?” Conan said incredulously. “I spoke of him not too hours gone and heard no mention of this. Black Erlik’s Throne, stop drinking and talk. What of Tiberio?”

  Boros set his tankard down with obvious reluctance. “The word is just now spreading. Last night it was. Slit his wrists in his bath. Or so they say.”

  Conan grunted. “Who will believe that, and him with the best blood claim to succeed Valdric?”

  “Folk believe what they want to believe, Cimmerian. Or what they’re afraid not to believe.”

  It had had to come, Conan thought. There had been kidnappings in plenty, wives, sons, daughters. Sometimes demands were made, that an alliance be broken or a secret betrayed; sometimes there was only silence, and fear to paralyze a noble in his castle. Now began the assassinations. He was glad that a third of his Free-Company was always on guard at Timeon’s palace. Losing a patron in that fashion would be ill for a company’s reputation.

  “Tis all of a piece,” Boros went on unsteadily. “Someone attempts to resurrect Al’Kiir. I’ve seen lights atop that accursed mountain, heard whispers of black knowledge sought. And this time there’ll be no Avanrakash to seal him up again. We need Moranthes the Great reborn. It would take him to bring order now.”

  “What are you chattering at? No matter. Who’s next in line after Tiberio? Valentius, isn’t it?”

  “Valentius,” Boris chuckled derisively. “He’ll never be allowed to take the throne. He’s too young.”

  “He’s a man grown,” Conan said angrily. He knew little of Valentius and cared less, but the count was a full six years older than he.

  Bores smiled. “There’s a difference between you two, Cimmerian. You’ve put two hard life-times’ experience into your years. Valentius has led a courtier’s life, all perfumes and courtesies and soft words.”

  “You’re rambling,” Conan barked. How had the other man read his thoughts? A fast rise had not lessened his touchiness about his comparative youth, nor his anger at those who thought him too young for the position he held. But he had better to do with his time than sit with a drunken failed mage. There was that auburn-haired wench, for instance. “The rest of the wine is yours,” he said. Snatching up the sack with the bronze in it, he stalked away from the table, leaving Boros chortling into his wine.

  The girl had not moved from the corner or changed her stance in all the time Conan had been watching her. Her heart-shaped face did not change expression as he approached, but her downcast eyes, blue as a northland sky at dawn, widened like those of a frightened deer, and she quivered as if prepared for flight.

  “Share some wine with me,” Conan said, motioning to a table nearby.

  The girl stared at him directly, her big eyes going even wider, if such were possible, and shook her head.

  He blinked in surprise. That innocent face might belie it, but if she wanted directness … “If you don’t want wine, how does two silvers take you?”

  The girl’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t … that is, I … I mean …” Even stammering, her voice was a soprano like silver bells.

  “Three silvers, then. A fourth if you prove worth it.” She still stared. Why was he wasting time with her, he wondered, when there were other wenches about? She reminded him of Karela, that was it. This girl’s hair was not so red, nor her cheekbones so high, but she recalled to him the woman bandit who had shared his bed—and managed to disrupt his life—every time their paths had crossed. Karela was a woman fit for any man, fit for a King. But what use raking up old memories? “Girl,” he said gruffly, “if you don’t want my silver, say so, and I’ll take my custom elsewhere.”

  “Stay,” she gasped. It was an obvious effort for her to get the word out.

  “Innkeeper,” Conan bellowed, “a room!” The wench’s face went scarlet beneath the rouge on her cheeks.

  The spidery tapster appeared on the instant, a long hand extended for coin. “Four coppers,” he growled, and waited until Conan had dropped them into his palm before adding, “Top of the stairs, to the right.”

  Conan caught the furiously blushing girl by the arm and drew her up the creaking wooden stairs after him.

  The room was what he had expected, a small box with dust on the floor and cobwebs in the corners. A sagging bed with a husk-filled mattress and none-too-clean blankets, a three-legged stool, and a rickety table were all the furnishings. But then, what he was there for went as well in a barn as in a palace, and often better.

  Dropping the sack on the floor with a thump, he kicked the door shut and put his hands on the girl’s shoulders. As he drew her to him he peeled her silken robes from her shoulders to her waist. Her breasts were full, but upstanding, and pink-nippled. She yelped once before his mouth descended on hers, then went stiff in his arms. He could as well have been kissing a statue.

  He drew back, but held her still in the circle of his arms. “What sort of doxy are you?” he demanded. “A man would think you’d never kissed a man before.”

  “I haven’t,” she snapped, then began to stammer. “That is, I have. I’ve kissed many men. More than you can count I am very … experienced.” She bared her teeth in what Conan suspected was meant to be an inviting smile; it was more a fearful rictus.

  He snorted derisively and pushed her out to arms’ length. Her hands twitched toward her disarrayed garments, then were still. Heavy breathing made her breasts rise and fall in interesting fashion, and her face slowly colored again. “You don’t talk like a farm wench,” he said finally. “What are you? Some merchant’s runaway daughter without sense enough to go home?”

  Her face became a frozen mask of arrogant pride. “You, barbarian, will have the honor of taking a noblewoman of Ophir to … to your bed.” Even the stumble did not crack her haughty demeanor.

  Taken together with her manner of dress—or undress, rather—it was too much for the Cimmerian. He threw back his head and bellowed his laughter at the fly-specked ceiling.

  “You laugh at me?” she gasped. “You dare?”

  “Cover yourself,” he snapped back at her, his mirth fading. Anger sprouted from stifled desires; she was a tasty bit, and he had been looking forward to the enjoyment of her. But a virgin girl running away from a noble father was the last thing he needed, or wanted any part of. Nor could he walk away from her if she needed help, either. That thought came reluctantly. Softhearted, he grumbled to himself. That was his trouble. To the girl he growled, “Do it, before I take my belt to your backside.”

  For a moment she glared at him, sky-blue eyes warring with icy sapphire. Ice won, and she hastily fumbled her green robes back into place, muttering under her breath.

  “Your name,” he demanded. “And no lies, or I’ll pack you to the Marline Cloisters myself Besides the hungry and the sick, they take in wayward girls and unruly children, and you look to be both.”

  “You have no right. I’ve changed my mind. I do not want your silver.” She gestured imperiously. “Stand away from that door.”

  Conan gazed back at her calmly, not moving. “You are but a few words away from a stern-faced woman with a switch to teach you manners and proper behavior. Your name?”

  Her eyes darted angrily to the door. “I am the Lady Julia,” she said stiffly. “I will not shame my house by naming it in this place, not if you torture me with red-hot irons. Not if you use pincers, and the knout, and … and …”

 
“Why are you here, Julia, masquerading as a trull, instead of doing needlework at your mother’s knee?”

  “What right have you to demand …? Erlik take you! My mother is long dead, and my father these three months. His estates were pledged for loans and were seized in payment. I had no relations to take me in, nor friends who had use for a girl with no more than the clothes on her back. And you will call me Lady Julia. I am still a noblewoman of Ophir.”

  “You’re a silly wench,” he retorted. “And why this? Why not become a serving girl? Or a beggar, even?”

  Julia sniffed haughtily. “I would not sink so low. My blood—”

  “So you become a trull?” He noted she had the grace to blush. But then, she did that often.

  “I thought,” she began hesitantly, then stopped. When she resumed her voice had dropped to a murmur. “It seemed not so different from my father’s lemans, and they appeared to be ladies.” Her eyes searched his face, and she went on urgently. “But I’ve done nothing. I am still … I mean … Oh, why am I telling any of this to you?”

  Conan leaned against the door, the crudely cut boards creaking at his weight. If he were a civilized man, he would abandon her to the path she was following. He would have his will of her and leave her weeping with her coins—or cheat her of them, for that was the civilized way. Anything else would be more bother than she was worth. The gods alone knew what faction she might be attached to by blood, for all they had not helped her so far, or what faction he might offend by aiding her.

  His mouth twisted in a grimace, and Julia flinched, thinking it was for her. He was thinking too much of factions of late, spending too much time delving the labyrinthine twists of Ophirean politics. This he would leave to the gods. And the wench.

  “I am called Conan,” he said abruptly. “and I captain a Free-Company. We have our own cook, for our patron’s kitchens prepare fussed-over viands not fit for a man’s stomach. This cook, Fabio, needs a girl to fetch and serve. The work is yours, an you want it.”