Conan Chronicles 2 Page 23

  “A pot girl!” she exclaimed. “Me!”

  “Be silent, wench!” he roared, and she rocked back on her heels. He waited to be certain she would obey, then nodded in satisfaction when she settled with her hands clasped at her throat. And her mouth shut. “Do you decide it is not too far beneath you, present yourself at Baron Timeon’s palace before sunfall. If not, then know well what your future will be.”

  She let out one startled squeak as he took the step necessary to crush her to his chest. He tangled his free hand in her long hair, and his mouth took its pleasure with hers. For a time her bare feet drummed against his shins, then slowly her kicking stopped. When he let her heels thud to the floor once more, she stood trembling and silent, tremulous azure eyes locked on his face.

  “And I was gentle compared to some,” he said. Scooping up the sack containing the bronze, he left her standing there.

  III

  Boros was gone from the common room when Conan returned below, for which the Cimmerian was just as glad.

  The spidery innkeeper rushed forward, though, rubbing his hands avariciously. “Not long with the girl, noble sir. I could have told you she’d not please. My Selina, now …”

  Conan snarled, and the fellow retreated hastily. Crom! What a day, he thought. Go out searching for a wench and end up trying to rescue a fool girl from her own folly. He had thought he had outgrown such idiocy long ago.

  Outside the street was narrow and crooked, little more than an alley dotted with muddy potholes where the cracked paving stones had been pried up and carried away, yet even here were there beggars. Conan tossed a fistful of coppers into the nearest out-thrust bowl and hurried on before the score of others could flock about him. A stench of rotted turnip and offal hung in the air, held by stone buildings that seemed to lean out over the way.

  He had not gone far when it dawned on him that the mendicants, rather than chasing after him crying for more, had disappeared. Such men had the instincts of feral animals. His hand went to his sword even as three men stepped into the cramped confines of the street before him. The leader had a rag tied over where his right eye had been. The other two wore beards, one no more than a straggly collection of hairs. All three had swords in hand. A foot grated on paving stone behind the Cimmerian.

  He did not wait for them to take another step. Hurling the bag containing the bronze at the one-eyed man, he drew his ancient broadsword and dropped to a crouch in one continuous motion. A blade whistled over his head as he pivoted, then his own steel was biting deep into the side of the man behind. Blood spurting, the man screamed, and his legs buckled.

  Conan threw himself into a dive past the collapsing man, tucking his shoulder under, and rolled to his feet with his sword at the ready just in time to spit one-eye as he rushed forward with blade upraised. For an instant Conan stared into a lone brown eye filling with despair and filming with death, then one of the others was crowding close, attempting to catch the big Cimmerian while his sword was hung up in the body. Conan snatched the poignard from one-eye’s belt and slammed it into his other attacker’s throat. The man staggered back with a gurgling shriek, blood pumping through the fingers clutching his neck to soak his filthy beard in crimson.

  All had occurred so quickly that the man impaled on Conan’s blade was just now beginning to fall. The Cimmerian jerked his blade free as one-eye dropped. The first attacker gave a last quiver and lay still in a widening sanguinary pool.

  The man with the straggly beard had not even had time to join the fight. Now he stood with sword half-raised, dark eyes rolling from one corpse to another and thin nose twitching. He looked like a rat that had just discovered it was fighting a lion. “Not worth it,” he muttered. “No matter the gold, it’s not worth dying.” Warily he edged backwards until he came abreast of a crossing alley; with a last frightened glance he darted into it. In moments even the pounding of his feet had faded.

  Conan made no effort to follow. He had no interest in footpads, of which the city had an overabundance. These had made their try and paid the price. He bent to wipe his sword, and froze as a thought came to him. The last man had mentioned gold. Only nobles carried gold on their persons, and he was far from looking that sort. Gold might be paid for a killing, though the life of a mercenary, even a captain, was not usually considered worth more than silver. Few indeed were the deaths that would bring gold. Except … assassination. With a shout that rang from the stone walls Conan snatched up the sack-wrapped statuette and was running in the same motion, encarmined blade still gripped in his fist. With him out of the way it might be easier to get through his company to Timeon. And that sort of killing had already begun. His massive legs pumped harder, and he burst out of the alley onto a main street.

  A flower-girl, screeching at the giant apparition wielding bloody steel, leaped out of his way; a fruit peddler failed to move fast enough and caromed off Conan’s chest, oranges exploding from his basket in all directions. The peddler’s imprecations, half for the huge Cimmerian and half for the apprentices scurrying to steal his scattered fruit, followed Conan down the crowded street, but he did not slow his headlong charge. Bearers, scrambling to move from his path, overturned their sedan chairs, spilling cursing nobles into the street. Merchants in voluminous robes and serving girls shopping for their masters’ kitchens scattered screaming and shouting before him.

  Then Timeon’s palace was in sight. As Conan pounded up the broad alabaster stairs, the two guards he had set on the columned portico rushed forward, arrows nocked, eyes searching the street for what pursued him.

  “The door!” he roared at them. “Erlik blast your hides! Open the door!”

  Hurriedly they leaped to swing open one of the massive bronze doors, worked with Timeon’s family crest, and Conan rushed through without slowing.

  He was met in the broad entry hall by Machaon and half a score of the company, their boots clattering on polished marble tiles. Varying degrees of undress and more than one mug clutched in a fist showed they had been rousted from their rest by his shouts, but all had weapons in hand.

  “What happens?” Machaon demanded. “We heard your shouts, and—”

  Conan cut him off. “Where is Timeon? Have you seen him since arriving?”

  “He’s upstairs with his new leman,” Machaon replied. “What—”

  Spinning, Conan raced up the nearest stairs, a curving sweep of alabaster that stood without visible support. Pausing only an instant Machaon and the others followed at a dead run. At the door to Timeon’s bedchamber, tall and carved with improbable beasts, Conan did not pause. He slammed open the door with a shoulder and rushed in.

  Baron Timeon leaped from his tall-posted bed with a startled cry, his round belly bouncing, and snatched up a long robe of red brocade. On the bed a slender, naked girl clutched the coverlet to her small yet shapely breasts. Ducking her head, she peered shyly at Conan through a veil of long, silky black hair that hung to her waist.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Timeon demanded, furiously belting the robe about his girth. After the current fashion of the nobility, he wore a small, triangular beard on the point of his chin. On his moon face, with his found, protuberant eyes, it made him look like a fat goat. An angry goat, now. “I demand an answer immediately! Bursting into my chambers with sword drawn.” He peered suddenly at the blade in Conan’s hand. “Blood?” he gasped, staggering. He flung his arms around one of the thick intricately carved posts of his bed as if to hold himself erect, or perhaps to hide himself behind. “Are we attacked? You must hold them off till I escape. That is, I’ll ride for aid. Hold them, and there’ll be gold for all of you.”

  “There’s no attack, Lord Timeon,” Conan said hastily. “At least, not here. But I was attacked in the city.”

  Timeon glanced at the girl. He seemed to realize he had been far from heroic before her. Straightening abruptly, he tugged at his robe as if adjusting it, smoothed his thinning hair. “Your squabbles with the refuse of Ianthe have no interest for
me. And my pretty Tivia is too delicate a blossom to be frightened with your tales of alley brawls, and your gory blade. Leave, and I will try to forget your ill manners.”

  “Lord Timeon,” Conan said with forced patience, “does someone mean you harm, well might they try to put me out of the way first Count Tiberio is dead this last night at an assassin’s hand. I will put guards at your door and in the garden beneath your windows.”

  The plump noble’s water blue eyes darted to the girl again. “You will do no such thing. Tiberio took his own life, so I heard. And as for assassins—” he strode to the table where his sword lay, slung the scabbard into a corner and struck a pose with the weapon in hand— “should any manage to get past your vigilance, I will deal with them myself. Now leave me. I have … ” he leered at the slender girl who still attempted unsuccessfully to cover herself, “matters to attend to.”

  Reluctantly Conan bowed himself from the room. The instant the door was shut behind him, he growled, “That tainted sack of suet. An old woman with a switch could beat him through every corridor of this palace.”

  “What are we to do?” Machaon asked. “If he refuses guards …”

  “We guard him anyway,” Conan snorted. “He can take all the chances he wants to with us to protect him, and he will so long as there’s a woman to impress, but we cannot afford to let him die. Put two men in the garden, where he can’t see them from his windows. And one at either end of this hall, around the corners where they can hide if Timeon comes out, but where they can keep an eye on his door.”

  “I’ll see to it.” The scarred warrior paused. “What’s that you’re carrying?”

  Conan realized he still had the bronze, wrapped in its sack, beneath his arm. He had forgotten it in the mad rush to get to Timeon. Now he wondered. If the men who had attacked him had not been trying to open a way to the baron—and it now seemed they had not—perhaps they had been after the statuette. After all, two others had been willing to kill, and die, for it. And they had thought it worth gold. It seemed best to find out the why of it before giving Machaon a gift that might bring men seeking his life.

  “Just a thing I bought in the city,” he said. “Post those guards immediately. I don’t want to take chances, in case I was right the first time.”

  “First time?” Machaon echoed, but Conan was already striding away.

  The room Conan had been given was spacious, but what Timeon thought suitable for a mercenary captain. The tapestries on the walls were of the second quality only, the lamps were polished pewter and brass rather than silver or gold, and the floor was plain red tiles. Two arched windows looked out on the garden, four floors below, but there was no balcony. Still, the mattress on the big bed was goose down, and the tables and chairs, if plain varnished wood, were sturdy enough for him to be comfortable with, unlike the frail, gilded pieces in the rooms for noble guests.

  He tossed the rough sacking aside and set the bronze on a table. A malevolent piece, it seemed almost alive. Alive and ready to rend and tear. The man who had made it was a master. And steeped in abomination, Conan was sure, for otherwise he could not have infused so much evil into his creation.

  Drawing his dagger, he tapped the hilt against the figure. It was not hollow; there could be no gems hidden within. Nor did it have the feel or heft of bronze layered over gold, though who would have gone to that much trouble, or why, he could not imagine.

  A knock came at the door while he was still frowning at the horned shape, attempting to divine its secret. He hesitated, then covered it with the sack before going to the door. It was Narus.

  “There’s a wench asking for you,” the hollow-cheeked man said. “Dressed like a doxy, but her face scrubbed like a temple virgin, and pretty enough to be either. Says her name is Julia.”

  “I know her,” Conan said, smiling.

  Narus’ mournful expression did not change, but then it seldom did. “A gold to a silver there’s trouble in this one, Cimmerian. Came to the front and demanded entrance, as arrogant as a princess of the realm. When I sent her around back, she tried to tell me her lineage. Claims she’s noble born. The times are ill for dallying with such.”

  “Take her to Fabio,” Conan laughed. “She’s his new pot girl. Tell him to put her peeling turnips for the stew.”

  “A pleasure,” Narus said, with a brief flicker of a smile, “after the way her tongue scourged me.”

  At least one thing had gone well with the day, Conan thought as he turned from the door. Then his eye fell on the sacking covered bronze on the table, and his moment of jollity faded. But there were other matters yet to be plumbed, and the feeling at the back of his neck told him there would be deadly danger in doing so.

  IV

  The sly-faced man who called himself Galbro wandered nervously around the dusty room where he had been told to wait. Two great stuffed eagles on perches were the only decoration, the amber beads that had replaced their eyes seeming to glare more fiercely than ever any living eagle’s eyes had. The lone furnishing was the long table supporting the leather bag in which he had brought what he had to sell. He did not like these meetings; despite all the silver and gold they put in his purse, he did not like the woman who gave him the coin. Her name was unknown to him, and he did not want to know it, now anything else about her. Knowledge of her would be dangerous.

  Yet he knew it was not the woman alone who made him pace this time. That man. A northlander, Urian said he was. From whencever he came, he had slain five of Galbro’s best and walked away without so much as a scratch. That had never happened before, or at least not since he came to Ophir. It was an ill omen. For the first time in long years he wished that he was back in Zingara, back in the thieves’ warren of alleys that ran along the docks of Kordava. And that was foolish, for if he was not shortened a head by the guard, his throat would be slit by the denizens of those same alleys before he saw a single nightfall. There were penalties attached to playing both sides in a game, especially when both sides discovered that you cheated.

  A light footstep brough him alert. She stepped into the room, and a shiver passed through him. No part of her but her eyes, dark and devoid of softness, was visible. A silver cloak that brushed the floor was gathered close about her. A dark, opaque veil covered the lower half of her face, and her hair was hidden by a white silk headcloth, held by a ruby pin, the stone as large as the last joint of his thumb.

  The ruby invoked no shreds of greed within him. Nothing about her brought any feeling to him except fear. He hated that, fearing a woman, but at least her coin was plentiful. His taste for that was all the greed he dared allow himself with her.

  With a start he realized she was waiting for him to speak. Wetting his lips—why did they dry so in her presence?—he opened his bag, spread his offerings on the table. “As you can see, my lady, I have much this time. Very valuable.”

  One pale, slender hand extended from the cloak to finger what he had brought, object by object. The brass plaque, worked with the head of the demon that so fascinated her, was thrust contemptuously aside. He schooled his face not to wince. Leandros had labored hard on that, but of late she accepted few of the Corinthian’s forgeries. Three fragments of manuscript, tattered and torn, she studied carefully, then lay to one side. Her fingers paused over a clay head, so worn with age he had not been certain it was meant to be the creature she wanted. She put it with the parchments.

  “Two gold pieces,” she said quietly when she was done. “One for the head, one for the codexes. They but duplicate what I already have.”

  A gold for the head was good—he had expected two for each of the manuscripts. “But, my lady,” he whined, “I can but bring you what I find. I cannot read such script, or know if you already possess it. You know not what difficulties I face, what expenses, in your service. Five of my men slain. Coin to be paid for thefts. Men to be—”

  “Five men dead?” Her voice was a whipcrack across his back, though she had not raised it.

  He squirmed b
eneath her gaze; sweat rolled down his face. This cold woman had little tolerance for failure, he knew, and less for men who drew attention to themselves, as by leaving corpses strewn in the streets. He had Baraca as example for that. The Kothian had been found hanging by his feet with his skin neatly removed, yet still alive. For a few agonized hours of screaming.

  “What have you been into, Galbro,” she continued, her low words stabbing like daggers, “to lose five men?”

  “Naught, my lady. A private matter. I should not have mentioned it, my lady. Forgive me, please.”

  “Fool! Your lies are transparent. Know that the god I serve, and whom you serve through me, gives me the power of pain.” She spoke words that his brain did not want to comprehend; her hand traced a figure in the air between them.

  Blinding light flashed behind his eyes, and agony filled him, every muscle in his body writhing and knotting. Helpless, he fell, quivering in every limb, bending into a backbreaking arch till only his head and drumming heels touched the floor. He tried to shriek, but shrieks could not pass the frozen cords of his throat, nor even breath. Blackness veiled his eyes, and he found a core within him that cried out for death, for anything to escape the all-consuming pain.

  Abruptly the torment melted away, and he collapsed in a sobbing heap.

  “Not even death can save you,” she whispered, “for death is one of the realms of my master. Behold!” Again she spoke words that seared his mind.

  He peered up at her pleadingly, tried to beg, but the words stuck in his throat. The eagles moved. He knew they were dead; he had touched them. But they moved, wings unfolding. One uttered a piercing scream. The other swooped from its perch to the table, great talons gripping the wood as it tilted its head to regard him as it might a rabbit. Tears rolled uncontrollably down his thin cheeks.