Conan the Defender Read online

  Women came later, he reminded himself. Shifting the cloak-wrapped sword beneath his arm, he looked about for an empty table.

  From what seemed rather a bundle of rags than a man, a bony hand reached out to pluck at his tunic. A thin, rasping voice emerged from a toothless mouth. “Ho, Cimmerian, where go you with that strange blade of murder?”

  Conan felt the hair stir on the nape of his neck. The old man, too emaciated to be wrinkled, had a filthy rag tied across where his eyes should be. But even had he had eyes, how could he have known what was in the cloak? Or that Conan was from Cimmeria?

  “What do you know of me, old man?” Conan asked. “And how do you know it, without sight?”

  The old man cackled shrilly, touching the bandage across his eyes with a crooked stick he carried. “When the gods took these, they gave me other ways of seeing. As I do not see with eyes, I do not see what eyes see, but … other things.”

  “I’ve heard of such,” Conan muttered. “And seen stranger still. What more can you tell me of myself?”

  “Oh, much and much, young sir. You will know the love of many women, queens and peasant girls alike, and many between in station. You will live long, and gain a crown, and your death will be shrouded in legend.”

  “Bull dung!” Hordo grunted, thrusting his head past Conan’s shoulder.

  “I was wondering where you were,” Conan said. “The old man knew I’m Cimmerian.”

  “An earful of your barbarous accent, and he made a lucky guess. Let’s get a table and a pitcher of wine.”

  Conan shook his head. “I didn’t speak, but he knew. Tell me, old man. What lies weeks ahead for me, instead of years?”

  The blind man had been listening with a pained expression, tilting his head to catch their words. Now his toothless smile returned. “As for that,” he said. He lifted his hand, thumb rubbing his fingertips, then abruptly flattened it, palm up. “I am a poor man, as you can see, young sir.”

  The big Cimmerian stuck two fingers into the pouch at his belt. It was light enough, filled more with copper than silver, and little enough of either, but he drew out a silver queenshead and dropped it on the old man’s leathery palm.

  Hordo sighed in exasperation. “I know a haruspex and three astrologers would charge half that together, and give you a better telling than you’ll find in this place.”

  The old man’s fingertips drifted lightly over the face of the coin. “A generous man,” he murmured. The coin disappeared beneath his rags. “Give me your hand. The right one.”

  “A palmist with no eyes,” Hordo laughed, but Conan stuck out his hand.

  As swiftly as they had moved over the coin the old man’s fingers traced the lines of the Cimmerian’s hand, marking the callouses and old scars. He began to speak, and though his voice was still thin, the cackle was gone. There was strength, even power in it.

  “Beware the woman of sapphires and gold. For her love of power she would seal your doom. Beware the woman of emeralds and ruby. For her love of you she would watch you die. Beware the man who seeks a throne. Beware the man whose soul is clay. Beware the gratitude of kings.” To Conan his voice grew louder, but no one else looked up from a winecup as he broke into a sing-song chant. “Save a throne, save a king, kill a king, or die. Whatever comes, whatever is, mark well your time to fly.”

  “That’s dour enough to sour new wine,” Hordo muttered.

  “And makes little sense, besides,” Conan added. “Can you make it no plainer?”

  The old man dropped Conan’s hand with a shrug. “Could I say my prophecies plainer,” he said drily, “I’d live in a palace instead of a pigsty in Hellgate.”

  Stick tapping, he hobbled toward the street, deftly avoiding tables and drunken revelers alike.

  “But mark my words, Conan of Cimmeria,” he called over his shoulder from the doorway. “My prophecies always tell true.” And he disappeared into the feverish maelstrom outside.

  “Old fool,” Hordo grumbled. “If you want good advice, go to a licensed astrologer. None of these hedge-row charlatans.”

  “I never spoke my name,” Conan said quietly.

  Hordo blinked, and scrubbed his mouth with the back of his calloused hand. “I need a drink, Cimmerian.”

  The scarlet-haired strumpet was rising from a table, leading a burly Ophirian footpad toward the stairs that led above, where rooms were rented by the turn of the glass. Conan plopped down on a vacated stool, motioning Hordo to the other. As he laid the cloak-wrapped sword on the table, the one-eyed man grabbed the arm of a doe-eyed serving girl, her pale breasts and buttocks almost covered by two strips of green muslin.

  “Wine,” Hordo ordered. “The biggest pitcher you have. And two cups.” Deftly she slipped from his grasp and sped away.

  “Have you yet spoken to your friends of me?” Conan asked.

  Hordo sighed heavily, shaking his head. “I spoke, but the answer was no. The work is light here, Conan, and the gold flows free, but I am reduced to taking orders from a man named Eranius, a fat bastard with a squint and a smell like a dungheap. This bag of slime lectured me—imagine you me, standing still for a lecture?—about trusting strangers in these dangerous times. Dangerous times. Bah!”

  “’Tis no great matter,” Conan said. Yet he had hoped to work again with this bearded bear of a man. There were good memories between them.

  The serving girl returned, setting two leathern jacks and a rough clay pitcher half again the size of a man’s head on the table. She filled the jacks and waited with her hand out.

  Hordo rummaged out the coppers to pay, at the same time giving her a sly pinch. “Off with you, girl,” he laughed, “before we decide we want more than you’re willing to sell.”

  Rubbing her plump buttock she left, but with a steamy-eyed look at Conan that said she might not be averse to selling more were he buying.

  “I told him you were no stranger,” Hordo continued, “told him much of you, of our smuggling in Sultanapur. He’d not even listen. Told me you sounded a dangerous sort. Told me to stay away from you. Can you imagine him thinking I’d take an order like that?”

  “I cannot,” Conan agreed.

  Suddenly the Cimmerian felt the ghost of a touch near his pouch. His big hand darted back, captured a slender wrist and hauled its owner before him.

  Golden curls surrounded a face of child-like innocence set with guileless blue eyes, but the lush breasts straining a narrow strip of red silk named her profession, as did the girdle of copper coins low on her hips, from which hung panels of transparent red that barely covered the inner curves of her thighs before and the inner slopes of her rounded buttocks behind. Her fist above his entrapping hand was clenched tightly.

  “There’s a woman of sapphires and gold,” Hordo laughed. “What’s your price, girl?”

  “Next time,” Conan said to the girl, “don’t try a man sober enough to notice how clumsy your touch is.”

  The girl put on a seductive smile like a mask. “You mistake me. I wanted to touch you. I’d not be expensive, for one as handsome as you, and the herbalist says I’m completely cured.”

  “Herbalist!” Hordo spluttered in his wine. “Get your hand off her, Conan! There’s nine and twenty kinds of pox in this city, and if she’s had one, she likely has the other twenty-eight yet.”

  “And tells me of it right away,” Conan mused.

  He increased the pressure of his grip slightly. Sweat popped out on her forehead; her generous mouth opened in a small cry, and her fingers unclenched to drop two silver coins into Conan’s free hand. In a flash he pulled her close, her arm held behind her back, her full breasts crushed against his massive chest, her frightened, sky-blue eyes staring into his.

  “The truth, girl,” he said. “Are you thief, whore, or both? The truth, and I’ll let you go free. The first hint of a lie, and I’ll take you upstairs to get my money’s worth.”

  She wet her lips slowly. “You’ll truly let me go?” she whispered. Conan nodded, and her shu
ddering breath flattened her breasts pleasantly against his chest. “I am no doxy,” she said at last.

  Hordo grunted. “A thief, then. I’ll still wager she has the pox, though.”

  “It’s a dangerous game you play, girl,” Conan said.

  She tossed her blonde head defiantly. “Who notices one more strumpet among many? I take only a few coins from each, and each thinks he spent them in his cups. And once I mention the herbalist none want the wares they think I offer.” Abruptly she brought her lips to within a breath of his. “I’m not a whore,” she murmured, “but I could enjoy a night spent in your arms.”

  “Not a whore,” Conan laughed, “but a thief. I know thieves. I’d wake with purse, and cloak, and sword, and mayhap even my boots gone.” Her eyes flashed, the guilelessness disappearing for an instant in anger, and she writhed helplessly within the iron band of his arm. “Your luck is gone this night, girl. I sense it.” Abruptly he released her. For a moment she stood in disbelief; then his open palm cracking across her buttocks lifted her onto her toes with a squeal that drew laughter from nearby tables. “On your way, girl,” Conan said. “Your luck is gone.”

  “I go where I will,” she replied angrily, and darted away, deeper into the tavern.

  Dismissing her from his mind he turned back to his wine, drinking deep. Over the rim of the leathern jack his eyes met those of the girl who had seemed out of place. She was looking at him with what was clearly approval, though not invitation, just as clearly. And she was writing on a scrap of parchment. He would wager there were not a handful of women on that entire street who could read or write so much as their own names. Nor many men, for that matter.

  “Not for us,” Hordo said, noticing the direction of his gaze. “Whatever she is, she’s no daughter of the streets dressed like that.”

  “I care not what she is,” Conan said, not entirely truthfully. She was beautiful, and he was willing to admit his own weakness for beautiful women. “At the moment I care about finding employment before I can no longer afford any woman at all. I spent the day walking through the city. I saw many men with bodyguards. There’s not so much gold in it as in smuggling, but I’ve done it before, and I likely will again.”

  Hordo nodded. “There’s plenty enough of that sort of work. Every man who had a bodyguard a year ago has five now. Some of the fatter merchants, like Fabius Palian and Enaro Ostorian, have entire Free-Companies in their pay. There the real money is to be made, hiring out your own Free-Company.”

  “If you have the gold to raise it in the first place,” Conan agreed. “I couldn’t buy armor for one man, let alone a company.”

  The one-eyed man drew a finger throug a puddle of wine on the table. “Since the trouble started, half of what we smuggle in is arms. Tariff on a good sword is more than the price used to be.” He met Conan’s gaze. “Unless I miscount, we could steal enough to outfit a company without anyone being the wiser.”

  “We, Hordo?”

  “Hannuman’s Stones, man! When they start telling me who my friends can be, I’m not much longer for smuggling.”

  “Then it’s a matter of getting silver enough for enlistment bonuses. For, say, fifty men—”

  “Gold,” Hordo cut him off. “The going rate is a gold mark a man.”

  Conan whistled between his teeth. “It’s not likely I’ll see that much in one place. Unless you … .”

  Hordo shook his head sadly. “You know me, Cimmerian. I like women, drink and dice too much for gold to stay long with me.”

  “Thief!” someone shouted. “We’ve caught a thief!”

  Conan looked around to see the innocent-faced blonde struggling between a bulky, bearded man in a greasy blue tunic and a tall fellow with a weaselly look to his close-set eyes.

  “Caught her with her hand in my purse!” the bearded man shouted.

  Obscene comments rose amid the tavern’s laughter.

  “I told her her luck was gone,” Conan muttered.

  The blonde screamed as the bearded man ripped the strip of silk from her breasts, then tossed her up to the skinny man, who had climbed onto a table. Despite her struggles, he quickly tore away the rest of her flimsy garb and displayed her naked to the tavern.

  The bearded man shook a dice cup over his head. “Who’ll toss for a chance?” Men crowded round him.

  “Let us go,” Conan said. “I don’t want to watch this.” He gathered up the cloak-wrapped sword and started for the street.

  Hordo took one regretful look at the barely touched pitcher of wine, then followed.

  At the door Conan caught the eye of the young woman in the plain cotton dress once more. She was staring at him again, but this time her face bore disapproval. What had he done, he wondered. Not that it mattered. He had more important concerns on his mind than women. Followed by Hordo, he ducked through the doorway.

  III

  Full dark was on the Street of Regrets, and the frenzy of its denizens had grown as if by motion they could warm themselves against the chill of night. Whores no longer strutted sensuously, but rather half-ran from potential patron to potential patron. Acrobats twisted and tumbled in defiance of gravity and broken bones as though for King Garian himself, receiving hollow, drunken laughter in payment, yet tumbling on.

  Conan paused to watch a fire-juggler, his six blazing brands describing slow arcs above his bald head. A small ever-changing knot of people stood watching as well. Three came and two left even as the Cimmerian stopped. There were better shows that night on the street than a juggler. Conan fingered a copper out of his pouch and tossed it into the cap the quick-handed man had laid on the ground. There were only two in the cap to precede it. To Conan’s surprise the juggler suddenly turned toward him, half-bowing as he kept the brands aloft, as if acknowledging a generous patron. As he straightened, he began to caper, legs kicking high, fiery batons spinning now so that it seemed his feet were always in the midst of the circles they described.

  Hordo pulled at Conan’s arm, drawing the muscular youth away down the street. “For a copper,” the one-eyed man muttered disgustedly. “Time was, it’d have taken a silver piece to get that out of one of them. Maybe more.”

  “This city is gone mad,” Conan said. “Never have I seen so many beggars this side of the Vilayet Sea. The poor are poorer, and more in number, than in any three other cities. Peddlers charge prices that would choke a Guild Merchant in Sultanapur, and wear faces like they were going bankrupt. More than half a silver queenshead for a pitcher of wine, but a juggler does his best trick for a copper. I haven’t seen a soul who looks to care if tomorrow comes or no. What happens here?”

  “What am I, Cimmerian? A scholar? A priest? ’Tis said the throne is cursed, that Garian is cursed by the gods.”

  Conan involuntarily made the sign against evil. Curses were nothing to fool with. Several people noticed and shied away from the big man. They had evil enough in their lives without being touched by the evil that troubled him.

  “This curse,” the big Cimmerian said after a time, “is it real? I mean, have the priests and astrologers spoken of it? Confirmed it?”

  “I’ve heard nothing of that,” Hordo admitted. “But it’s spoken on every street corner. Everyone knows it.”

  “Hannuman’s Stones,” Conan snorted. “You know as well as I do that anything everyone knows is usually a lie. Is there any proof at all of a curse?”

  “That there is, Cimmerian,” Hordo said, poking a blunt finger at Conan for emphasis. “On the very day Garian ascended the Dragon Throne—the very day, mind you—a monster ran loose in the streets of Belverus. Killed better than a score of people. Looked like a man, if you made a man out of clay, then half melted him. Thing is, a lot of people who saw it said it looked something like Garian, too.”

  “A man made out of clay,” Conan said softly, thinking of the blind man’s prophecy.

  “Pay no attention to that blind old fool,” Hordo counseled. “Besides, the monster’s dead. Wasn’t those stay-in-the-barrack
s City Guards who did it, though. An old woman, frightened half out of her wits, threw an oil lamp at it. Covered it with burning oil. Left nothing but a pile of ash. The City Guard was going to take the old woman in, for ‘questioning’ they said, till her neighbors chased them off. Pelted them with chamber pots.”

  “Come,” Conan said, turning down a narrow street.

  Hordo hesitated. “You realize we’re going into Hellgate?”

  “We’re being followed. Ever since the Gored Ox,” Conan said. “I want to find out who. This way.”

  The street narrowed and twisted, and the laughter and the light of the Street of Regrets were quickly lost. The stench of offal and urine thickened. There was no paving here. The grate of their boots on gravel and the sounds of their own breathing where the loudest things to be heard. They moved through darkness, broken only occasionally by a pool of light from a window high enough for its owner to feel some safety.

  “Talk,” Conan said. “Anything. What kind of king is Garian?”

  “Talk, he says,” Hordo muttered. “Bel save us from your … .” He sighed heavily. “He’s a king. What more is there? I hold no brief for any king. No more did you, last I saw you.”

  “Nor do I now. But talk. We’re drunk, and too senseless to be silent while walking Hellgate in the middle of the night.” He eased his broadsword in its scabbard. A hint of light from a window far above glinted on his face; his eyes seemed to gleam in the dark like those of a forest animal. A hunting animal.

  Hordo stumbled over something that made ripe squelching sounds beneath his boots. “Vara’s Guts and Bones! Let me see. Garian. At least he got rid of the sorcerers. I like kings better than I do sorcerers.”

  “How did he do that?” Conan asked, but his ear was bent for sounds from behind rather than the answer. Was that a foot on gravel?

  “Oh, three days after he took the throne he executed all the sorcerers still at court. Gethenius, his father, had had dozens of them in the palace. Garian told no one what he intended. Some few did leave, giving one excuse or another, but the rest … . Garian gave orders to the Golden Leopards three glasses past midnight. By dawn every sorcerer still in the palace had been dragged out of bed and beheaded. Those who fled were true sorcerers, Garian said, and could keep their wealth. These, who couldn’t even discover he intended their deaths, were charlatans and parasites. He had their belongings distributed to the poor, even in Hellgate. Last good thing he’s done.”