Conan of Venarium Page 11

  Conan discovered he had only thought he hated the Aquilonian nobleman. Now, with jealousy tearing at him like acid venom, he would gladly have stuffed Stercus into his father’s forge and worked the bellows for a hotter fire with a will he had never shown while helping Mordec to forge a sword or an andiron.

  Tarla murmured in confusion and what was obviously pleasure. No one in the rude village of Duthil had ever paid her such a compliment before. Conan knew too well he had not, and wondered why. The answer was not hard to find: he had no more imagined such candied words than he had a bow from horseback. What the folk who had it called civilization knew wiles subtler and more clinging and perhaps more deadly than a spider’s web.

  With another seated bow, Stercus continued, “I had not looked for so fair a flower in these parts, even in springtime. I must come back again soon, to see how you bloom.”

  Tarla murmured again, in even more confusion. Stercus urged his horse forward. As he rode on through Duthil, he turned and waved to the weaver’s daughter. Tarla started to raise her hand to return the gesture. A panther might have sunk its fangs into Conan’s vitals. Tarla let her hand fall without completing the gesture, but that she had so much as begun it was a lash of scorpions to the blacksmith’s son. He watched Stercus leave the village. That the Aquilonian commander failed to fall over dead proved beyond any possible doubt that looks do not, cannot, kill.

  One of the slightly younger boys, to whom the byplay between Stercus and Tarla had meant nothing, kicked the ball again. It spun straight past Conan, but he heeded it not. With Stercus gone, his gaze had returned to Tarla’s. He had had his share—perhaps more than his share—of a youth’s half-formed longings for a maid, and had dared hope Tarla harbored half-formed longings for him as well. But Count Stercus had crashed in upon his dreams like a stone crashing into an earthenware jug. Stercus’ longings were anything but half-formed; the Aquilonian knew exactly what he wanted—and, very plainly, how to go about getting it.

  “That is a foreign dog,” snarled Conan.

  Had Tarla been truly ensnared by Stercus, that outburst against him would have cost Conan the game on the spot. As things were, she shook herself like someone coming out of deep water. She nodded, but said, “No doubt he is. Still, he speaks very gently, doesn’t he?”

  Conan had no answer to that, or none that would not have involved the vilest curses he knew. From across the street, though, a gray-haired woman called, “Why should he speak a young girl so fair, with him a man full grown?”

  Another woman said, “You know why as well as I do, Gruoch.” They both cackled—there was no other word for it. The shrill sound filled Conan with almost as much horror as Count Stercus’ irruption into Duthil had done. Tarla’s cheeks went red as ripe apples. That horrified Conan, too. The weaver’s daughter drew back into her house, closing the door behind her. Her embarrassment only made the women cackle more. Conan had not fled from serpent or wolves or Aquilonian knight. The women of his own village were another matter. They went on laughing and clucking, hardly noticing his retreat.

  His father was sharpening a knifeblade against the grinding wheel when Conan came into the smithy. Sparks flew from the edge of the blade. Without looking away from what he was doing, Mordec said, “I’m glad you’re back, son. We’ve got some firewood behind the house that needs chopping.”

  Firewood was the furthest thing from Conan’s mind. “We have to slay all the damned Aquilonians who’ve come into our land!” he burst out.

  “I expect we’ll do our best one of these days.” Now Mordec did lift the blade away from the grinding wheel. He also stopped pumping the foot pedal, so the wheel groaned to a stop. Eyeing Conan, he asked, “And what has set you to eating raw meat and breathing fire like a dragon from out of the trackless north?”

  “Didn’t you see him, Father?” demanded Conan in angry amazement. “Didn’t you see that cursed Count Stercus ride past our doorway?”

  Mordec’s gaze narrowed and sharpened. “I saw an Aquilonian knight go by, yes. Do you mean to tell me that was their commander?”

  Conan nodded. “I do. It was.”

  His father scowled. “I hope you did not make him notice you. Remember, even the Aquilonian captain at the camp nearby warned us against this man.”

  “He knows I speak a little of his language. Past that, no,” said Conan.

  “I do not suppose that will put you in any particular danger,” said Mordec. “A few of use have learned some Aquilonian, and some of the invaders can speak a bit of Cimmerian now.”

  “This Stercus does—more than a bit, in fact. He knows it well,” said Conan.

  “I am not sure this is good news,” said his father. “Those people commonly use our tongue when they want to take something from us.”

  “He spoke—” The words did not want to come after that, but Conan forced them out one by one: “He spoke to the weaver’s daughter.” He did not wish to name Tarla. If he did not, he would not need to admit, either to himself or to his father, that he cared more about her than he might have about some other girl in Duthil.

  “Did he, by Crom?” said his father, and his scowl got deeper. By the way he looked at Conan, what the boy felt was no secret to him. After a moment, Mordec went on, “If Stercus spoke to Tarla, I am going to have to speak to Balarg. That man has made a name for debauching young girls—though despite what Captain Treviranus said I did not think his gaze would light on one so young as she. But who can know? Once a man goes into the swamp, is he not likely to mire himself ever deeper?”

  Conan did not follow all of that. He had only the vaguest notion of what debauching meant. All he knew was that he had not liked the way the Aquilonian looked at Tarla, and had liked the way Stercus spoke to her even less. He said, “Do you think Balarg will make her stay away from him?”

  “I hope so,” answered Mordec. “I would, were she my daughter. Still, Balarg is a free man—or as free a man as any of us can be, living under Numedides’ yoke. He must choose for himself. To choose well, he must know the truth.” He looked down at the knife blade he had laid on the frame of the wheel. It still needed more work. Even so, shrugging, he went down the street toward the weaver’s house.

  He came back in less than half an hour. To Conan, the wait had seemed like an eternity. “Well?” asked the boy eagerly.

  “He says he will do what he can,” answered Mordec. “I do not know just what this means. I do not think Balarg knows, either. He cannot keep Tarla inside his house all day and all night. She was work to do, like anyone else in Duthil.”

  Had Conan had his way, he would have had Balarg wrap Tarla in a blanket and stick her in a storeroom so Stercus’ eye could never fall on her again. Or would he? If she were hidden away like that, his own eye could never fall on her again, either. In murky, misty Cimmeria, he spied the sun seldom enough as things were. Losing sight of Tarla would be like having it torn from the sky.

  Mordec set a large, hard hand on his shoulder. “We may be fretting over nothing,” the blacksmith said. “Tomorrow, Stercus may find another girl in a different village, or even some Aquilonian wench, and trouble us no more.”

  “If he troubles Tarla, I will kill him myself,” said Conan fiercely.

  “If he troubles Tarla, every man in the village will want to kill him,” said Mordec. “If you see clearly he has come for that—strike quick, or someone else will snatch the prize from you.”

  “If he comes for that,” said Conan, “he is mine.”

  Whenever Conan went into the woods to hunt these days, whenever he loosed an arrow, he imagined he was aiming at Count Stercus’ neatly bearded face. Imagining the shaft going home in the narrow space between the Aquilonian’s dark eyes made him send it with special care.

  Songbirds twittered on the branches of firs and pines and spruces. Here and there in the forest, Conan had smeared birdlime on some of those branches. He hoped for grouse, but would take whatever he caught. Food was food; he approached hunting with a barbari
an’s complete pragmatism and lack of sentimentality.

  He had not called on Melcer’s farm since Stercus rode through Duthil. He did not care to admit, even to himself, that he had formed something of a liking for the Gunderman; the mere idea of liking any of the invaders was abhorrent to him. But it took Stercus’ visit to the village to remind him that there could be, there should be, no meeting between those who had come into Cimmeria and those who rightfully belonged here. In his own country, Melcer would have been a good enough fellow. In Conan’s country, what was he but a marauder and a thief?

  Conan was gliding through the forest, not on a game track but not far from one, either, when he heard a twig snap on the track a hundred yards behind him. In an instant, he silently slipped behind the bole of a great, towering fir. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot. Deer were not usually so careless as to announce themselves.

  A moment’s listening convinced him that this was no deer. It was no Cimmerian, either; no one from Conan’s people could possibly have been so inept among the trees. The blacksmith’s son grinned a wide and ferocious grin. What better sport than tracking one of the Aquilonians through the forest? Actually, Conan could think of one better: tracking the Aquilonian and then slaying him. But his father had forbidden that, and no doubt wisely, for it would cost the folk of Duthil dear.

  Through gaps in the trees, Conan soon saw who the blunderer was—a squat, heavyset Gunderman named Hondren. Conan’s lip curled scornfully. He did not care for Hondren, and had trouble thinking of anyone who could. The soldier roared and cursed whenever he came into Duthil, and had been known to cuff boys out of his path when they did not step aside fast enough to suit him. He had not tried cuffing Conan, but Conan had never got in his way, either. Trailing him, dogging him, would be a pleasure.

  On through the woods Hondren stumbled. Of course he found nothing worth pursuing; he could hardly have spread a better warning of his presence had he gone along the trail beating a drum. Conan followed, quiet as a shadow.

  For most of an hour, Conan had all he could do not to laugh out loud at Hondren’s blundering. He could have shot the Gunderman a hundred different times, and Hondren would have died never knowing why, or who had slain him. He had to work hard to remember his village would suffer if anything befell this miserable lump of a man.

  Hondren began cursing ever louder and more foully at his lack of luck. That his own incompetence had brought that bad fortune never seemed to have crossed his mind. Conan got bored with trailing him through the forest and began showing himself. He wondered how long Hondren would take to notice him. The Gunderman needed even longer than he had expected.

  At last, though, Hondren realized he was not alone in the woods. “Who’s there?” he growled. “Come out, you dog, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Out Conan came, laughing. “You not catch anything?” he jeered in his bad Aquilonian.

  “No, by Mitra, I didn’t catch anything.” Fury on his face, Hondren advanced on the young Cimmerian. “And now I know why, too: I had a stinking barbarian close by, scaring off the game.”

  Conan laughed louder than ever. “I not scare game. I follow you long time. You scare plenty all by self.”

  “Liar!” Hondren slapped him in the face, as he might have done with a small boy on the main street in Duthil.

  But they were far from the main street in Duthil, and Conan, though a boy, was far from small. His ears rang from the blow. It did not cow him, though—far from it. Red rage ripped through him. He struck back with all his strength, not with a slap but with his closed fist. Hondren’s head snapped back. Blood spurted from his nose. He blinked, clearing his senses. A slow, vicious smile spread over his face.

  “You’ll pay for that, swine,” he said, gloating anticipation in his voice. He flung himself at Conan and bore him to the ground by weight and momentum.

  The blacksmith’s son knew at once that Hondren did not merely seek to punish him for presuming to answer one blow with another. The Gunderman wanted his life, and would take it unless he lost his own. Hondren’s hands, hard as horn, sought his throat. Conan tucked his chin down against his chest to keep his enemy from gaining the grip he wanted.

  A knee to the belly made the Gunderman grunt. But Hondren was still stronger and, most of all, heavier than Conan, who had not yet got all the inches or thews that would one day be his. Hondren dealt out a savage buffet that made Conan’s senses spin, and his weight was a dreadful burden that seemed as if it would crush the life from the Cimmerian even if his foe failed to find the stranglehold he sought.

  Scrabbling wildly and more than a little desperately, Conan felt his hand close on a rock that fit it nicely. In a mad paroxysm of fury, he tore the stone from the ground and brought it smashing down on the back of Hondren’s head. The Gunderman’s eyes opened very wide. A shudder ran through his body; his hands lost their cunning and ferocity. With a savage cry of triumph, Conan struck again, and then again and again, until blood poured onto him from Hondren’s torn scalp and smashed skull, and until the man from the south stopped moving altogether.

  After making sure Hondren was dead, Conan stood a little while in thought. If the deed were traced to him, ten from Duthil would die. But if Hondren were to vanish in the forest—who could say for certain what had befallen him?

  Decision came on the instant. Conan took hold of the Gunderman’s boots and dragged his corpse to a stream that chuckled through the woods less than a hundred yards away. Before pushing the body into the stream, he went back and carefully erased every sign of its passage from the place where he and Hondren had fought to the streambank. By the time he was finished, he doubted even a Cimmerian hunter could have traced what he had done. From everything he had seen, the Aquilonians were far less woodswise than his own folk.

  He stuffed stones into Hondren’s breeches and tunic, to make sure the corpse did not rise once decay set in. Although he pushed it into the stream at the deepest point he could find, less than a yard of water covered it—not enough to suit him. An alert searcher might spy it, no matter how shadowed by tall trees its final resting place was. He gathered more stones, these larger and heavier, and set them on the body to weight it down and to break up its outline and make it harder to see. That done, he used moss and branches and pine needles to disguise the places from which he had taken the stones. Someone who knew the streambank well might notice something had changed; someone seeing it for the first time would spy nothing out of the ordinary.

  By the time he finished his work, he was soaked from head to foot. That gave him yet another idea: he pulled his tunic off over his head and scrubbed it in the stream, cold water being best for taking bloodstains out of cloth. Having taken care of that last detail, he went on with the hunt.

  Mordec looked up from his work when Conan came into the smithy carrying a brace of grouse and some songbirds. “Those will be tasty,” said the blacksmith, and then he took a closer look at his son. “What happened to you? You’re all wet.”

  “I—fell in a stream,” answered Conan.

  Hearing his hesitation, Mordec advanced on him, hammer still in hand. “What happened to you?” he repeated, ominous thunder his his voice. “The truth this time, or you’ll be sorry.” He hefted the heavy hammer to show how sorry Conan might be.

  His son did not flinch from the weapon. Looking Mordec in the eye, he said, “I killed a man in the woods.”

  “Crom!” exclaimed Mordec; whatever response he had expected, that was not it. Gathering himself, he asked, “Was he a man of this village, or a stranger from some other place? Will the blood feud take in our family alone, or all of Duthil?”

  “He was an Aquilonian,” said Conan: “that brute called Hondren.”

  “Crom!” repeated Mordec; surprises were coming too fast to suit him. He knew the man his son meant, and knew he was indeed a brute. But he also knew of the warning the invaders had laid down. If one of their men was murdered, ten Cimmerians were to escort his spirit out of the world. “Tel
l me what passed. Tell me all of it. Leave out nothing—nothing, do you hear?”

  “Aye, Father.” Conan did: a bald, straightforward account. He finished, “The lich is hidden as well as I could hide it. In the forest, the Aquilonians are all fumblefingered fools. I do not think they will come across it. They will decide he had a mishap in the woods—and so he did.” Savage pride filled his voice.

  Without hesitation, Mordec knocked him down. When he got up, the blacksmith flattened him again. Afterwards, Mordec helped him to his feet. “That was to remind you the Aquilonians will decide Hondren had a mishap in the woods—if you do not brag of what you did. It is a brave and bold thing, a boy beating a warrior trained. But it is your life and nine more if you ever breathe a word of it. Silence, or you die! This is no game. Do you understand?”

  “I do, Father.” Conan shook his head to clear it; Mordec had not held back with either blow. “You have a hard hand with your lessons.”

  “And you have a thick skull to drive them through,” said the blacksmith with rough affection. “I have to make sure they get home.”

  “I’ll keep quiet,” said Conan. “I know what I did. I don’t have to shout it in the street—I’m not Balarg.”

  Mordec threw back his head and laughed. That was his opinion of the weaver, too, although Balarg, no doubt, also had a low opinion of him. Their rivalry did not keep them from working together when they had to. Since the coming of the Aquilonian, they had to ever more often.

  But laughter quickly faded. Setting a hand on his son’s shoulder, Mordec said, “You did well, son, as well as you could once he attacked you. Now we hope all the invaders are as woodsblind as you say. I think they may be.” Even saying that, though, he wished Crom were the sort of god who hearkened to his worshipers’ prayers.

  chapter vii

  THE WEAVER’S DAUGHTER

  When the Aquilonian army advanced into Cimmeria, it had come through the woods. It had had to; without coming through the woods, it could not have penetrated the country. But pioneers with axes had widened the forest tracks so good-sized columns of men could advance along them, and all of the Gundermen and Bossonians could see one another and draw strength from seeing one another.