Conan of Venarium Read online

  That made Conan want to cry out in triumph again, even louder and more joyfully than he had when the wolves ran off into the woods. He said, “I will slaughter the Aquilonians, and plunder them, too.”

  His father still stared at the rolled-up, uncured hides and at the gobbets of meat on the floor beside them. “Maybe you will,” muttered Mordec. “I am not the one to say you won’t.” He shook his head in slow wonder, then bestirred himself. “For now, though, go put all that in the snow behind the house. It will keep the meat and the skins from going bad.”

  “All right, Father.” Conan moved to obey. “Wolf’s flesh is not of the best, I know—”

  “But better than nothing,” interrupted Mordec. “And if it stays in the stew pot long enough, it loses some of that rank and gamy taste. Oh, and Conan—when you come back in, wash. Your clothes aren’t all that’s bloody.”

  Though no more enamored of washing than any other boy his age, Conan only nodded: a telling measure of how exhilarated, and how blood-soaked, he was. As he carried the hides and the meat out to the snow, he heard a clank as Mordec thrust the andiron into the forge to heat it again. Soon the smith’s hammer rang once more on red-hot iron. The work always went on.

  Melcer’s hastily cleared farm had not brought in enough to feed him and his family through their first winter in Cimmeria. He had expected nothing different. When he came north, he had brought with him all the silver lunas he had. Those that remained now rested in a stout iron box buried under the dirt floor of the snug, securely chinked cabin he had run up.

  Some of those lunas jingled in his belt pouch as he led one of his oxen toward the rapidly growing town around Fort Venarium. He went armed, of course, with a pike that doubled as a staff in his hand and with a long knife that would do duty as a shortsword on his hip. The barbarians hereabouts seemed cowed, but a man would be a fool to trust them too far, and Melcer prided himself on being no one’s fool. Some of the settlers might also try to take advantage of anything they saw as weakness; he intended to show them none.

  It had not snowed for several days. Enough people had traveled the road since to have cleared it of drifts. With the ground frozen hard under the snow, the going was, if anything, easier than it had been during the fall, when the roadway turned into a bottomless morass of muck and ooze. Melcer slogged along, alert for wild beasts and wilder men.

  A couple of riders trotted north toward him, their mail-shirts jingling every time their horses’ hooves came down. He held the pike a little tighter, in case they had trouble in mind. But one of them waved, while the other touched a hand to the edge of his conical helm and called, “Mitra keep you safe on the road, stranger.”

  “May the god guard you as well,” replied Melcer. Both horsemen waved this time as they rode on. Hoofbeats and clinking chainmail faded behind the farmer. He plodded on. So did his ox, with slow, patient, uncomplaining strides.

  Seeing Venarium—the town seemed to have taken on the name of the fort—always made Melcer want to rub his eyes. Every time he came here, it was bigger and had a more finished look. By now, it was at least as large as the market town to which he had gone in Gunderland. New buildings, new businesses, sprang up like mushrooms after a rain.

  As the farmer walked into town, he saw an Aquilonian knight carrying new horse tackle out of a saddlery that had not existed the last time he came into Venarium. Next door, a farrier in an equally new establishment was shoeing the knight’s charger. The horse snorted indignantly as the man drove nails into its hoof. “Hush, my beauty—you know it doesn’t hurt a bit,” said the farrier, and went right on with what he was doing. After that one protest, the big chestnut let him do it. In the same way that some men had a gift with women, others had a gift with horses.

  A woman who looked too prosperous to be a farmer’s wife was haggling with a cloth merchant over a length of brocade. Perhaps she was married to one of the other tradesmen in Venarium, perhaps to an officer who had brought her up from the south. A Cimmerian in a pantherskin coat that came down to his knees, a barbaric garment if ever there was one, came out of the cloth merchant’s shop carrying a shirt of lustrous green silk, a shirt he might have worn if presented at the court of King Numedides. Civilization spread in strange ways.

  When Melcer saw the Cimmerian, his grip on the pike tightened again. But the man of the north was in anything but a warlike mood. Pleased with his purchase, he beamed at Melcer as he walked by. The farmer, caught off guard, smiled back. Out in the woods, he would not have trusted the barbarian for an instant—though the youngster called Conan had caused him no trouble in several visits to his farm. Here in Venarium, even a full-grown Cimmerian seemed safe enough.

  So Melcer thought, at any rate, until he rounded a corner and espied a drunken Cimmerian sprawled, oblivious to the world around him, outside the door to one of the many taverns in the new town. A blond Gunderman, at least as sodden, lay beside him in the gutter. Venarium might bring barbarians to civilization, but it also dragged civilized men down to barbarism.

  Melcer made his way to a miller’s a few doors beyond the tavern. There he bought flour poured into sacks of coarse canvas. He lashed them onto the ox’s back, then led it in the direction of the fort. It followed. What choice did it have? It was but a slave. Melcer prided himself on his freedom.

  He had to pause at a corner while soldiers led manacled Cimmerian captives toward Fort Venarium. They too would be slaves, either here or down in the mines of Aquilonia. A short life, that, but not a merry one. The difference between the ox and the barbarians was that they had known freedom’s sweetness, and knew it was taken from them.

  Melcer stopped at a shop that sold what it called notions: little things of the sort a farmer was ill-equipped to make for himself. Melcer bought some fine iron needles for Evlea; she was down to the last one fetched from Gunderland, and had talked about making more from bone. He also bought her a sachet of dried rose petals. Drying flowers in the cool damp of Cimmeria was a losing proposition. And, to give their food a little extra savor, he bought some spices that had made the long journey from Iranistan to Aquilonia and then to the frontier.

  How much the spices cost jolted him. The man who ran the shop only shrugged his shoulders. “What I have to sell is what bandits did not steal and what kings did not confiscate,” he said. “You pay for all the hardships and robberies on the road.”

  “What did you pay for your goods?” asked Melcer.

  “Less than I’m charging you,” answered the merchant. “If you think I will tell you otherwise, you are wrong. I have not seen it written anywhere in the stars that I am not allowed to make a living.”

  He sent Melcer a challenging stare. Since he was so frank about what he was doing, Melcer saw no real way to quarrel with him. The farmer did ask, “How much would I have to give for pepper and cinnamon in some other shop here?”

  “Go ahead and try, friend, and good luck to you,” said the other man. “Good luck finding them at all, first. And if you find them for less, bring back what you bought from me and I will give back your money.”

  That convinced Melcer not to waste his time trying. He led the ox down the street to a tavern that had no drunks from any nation lying sozzled outside it. He tied the beast to a pillar supporting the entrance, then strode inside and ordered a mug of ale. He sat down where he could keep an eye on the ox. It had only the flour on its back; the smaller things he had bought he kept with him. But even an ox with nothing on its back might tempt a thief.

  When the Gunderman finished that first mug of ale, he bought himself a second. When he finished the second, the pretty barmaid who had brought it came back with a broad, inviting, expectant smile. Instead of ordering a third, he got up and walked out of the tavern. The smiling barmaid cursed him behind his back. Pretending not to hear, Melcer kept walking. He untied the ox and started back to his farm.

  He was inside the forest again and within a mile of his own land when an arrow hissed past his face and thudded into the
bole of a fir to his right. He clutched his pike and stared in the direction from which the shaft had come. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. A ghost might have drawn the bow. He pounded that way anyhow. If a brigand wanted him, he would go down fighting.

  After a few strides through ever thicker snow, he did hear something: laughter. Snowshoes on his feet, Conan emerged from behind a pine. “You jump!” he shouted in his bad Aquilonian. “You jump high!” He imitated Melcer’s reaction, then laughed harder than ever.

  “Of course I jumped, you cursed son of a dog!” shouted Melcer. “You could have killed me!”

  Conan only nodded at that. “Could have killed, yes. Did not kill. Too easy. No—” He said something in his own language, then frowned, looking for a way to put it into Melcer’s. When he brightened, the farmer knew he had found it. “No sport. Is a word, sport?”

  “Yes, sport’s a word,” growled Melcer. “Come down here and I’ll warm your behind for you, you damned murderous savage. I’ll teach you words, by Mitra!”

  Only after he had spoken did he wonder how wise he was to revile a fiery young barbarian with a bow in his hands, especially when the boy had already shown a regrettable talent for archery. Conan studied him watchfully. “You not afraid?” he asked at last.

  “Afraid? Hell, no!” said Melcer. “What I am is furious. You come down here and I will wallop you. You deserve it, too.”

  To his surprise, Conan nodded to him, a nod that was almost a bow. “You brave man,” said the Cimmerian. “I not play games with you no more.” His voice remained a boy’s treble, but it held a man’s conviction. Melcer believed him without reservation. Then the barbarian added. “Not shoot at you till war time.”

  Before Melcer could find an answer to that, Conan ducked behind the pine once more. He did not come out. He said nothing further. The farmer did not see him move deeper into the woods, but at last decided that was what he must have done. Melcer wished he could match the boy in woodcraft.

  Shaking his head, the Gunderman went back to the placidly waiting ox. He broke off the arrow’s shaft close to the tree trunk. Then he had another thought, and used his knife to dig out the iron arrowhead. How far it had penetrated surprised him anew; Conan might be a beardless boy, but he boasted a man’s strength. Melcer put the arrowhead in his belt pouch. It was one, at least, that Conan would not shoot at him in war.

  Melcer picked up the lead rope he had dropped. “Come on!” he told the ox. They walked on toward his farm.

  Duthil had never boasted a tavern. No one could make a living selling ale there, not when so many families did their own brewing. When the villagers wanted to hash out the way things wagged in the world over a few mugs of amber ale, they gathered at the home of one man or another.

  Mordec put down his hammer after finishing work on a stout iron hinge. He left the shop at the front of his own house, slogged through the snow between the door and the street, and walked along until he came to Balarg’s home. No Aquilonian soldiers were anywhere in the village. Since the blizzards started rolling in every week or so, the men from the south had been content, even eager, to stay in their own encampment. To them, this was dreadful weather. Mordec chuckled grimly. To him, it was only another winter, worse than some but milder than a good many others.

  He knocked at Balarg’s door. The weaver opened it. “Come in, come in,” he said. “Don’t let the heat from the hearth leak out.”

  “I thank you,” answered Mordec. Balarg made haste to shut the door behind him. The two men were careful around each other. Mordec, the stronger of the two, was clever enough to realize Balarg was more clever. And Balarg, for his part, was clever enough to understand not everything in Duthil yielded to cleverness; sometimes—often—straightforward smashing best solved a problem.

  “Ale?” asked the weaver.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Mordec. Balarg waved to the pitcher and mugs set up on a table by his loom. Mordec filled a mug, took a strip of smoked meat from a tray by the pitcher, and perched on a stool not far from the fireplace. Along with Balarg, four other men sat in the chamber: three villagers and a stranger, a rugged man whose checked breeks were woven in a pattern worn by a northern clan. After a sip from the mug, the blacksmith asked. “Anyone else coming?”

  “I invited Nectan,” answered Balarg. “Whether he’ll come—” He shrugged. So did Mordec. Nectan was a a shepherd, and stayed out with his sheep in all weather unless he could find someone to watch them while he left the flock.

  Mordec’s gaze slipped to the man who did not come from the village. “And our friend is—?”

  Before Balarg could answer, the stranger spoke for himself: “My name is Herth.” His voice was almost as deep as Mordec’s. “I come from Garvard, up near the border with the Æsir.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Mordec took his measure. “You are a chieftain there, or I miss my guess,” he said, and Herth did not deny it. After another pull at his ale, Mordec said, “It’s a long way from Garvard to Duthil. What are you doing here?”

  “Now, Mordec,” said Balarg.

  “It’s all right,” said Herth, but, before he could say anything more, another knock resounded.

  Balarg opened the door. “Nectan!” he exclaimed. “I thought we’d have to do without you. Who’s minding the flock?”

  “Why, the blacksmith’s son.” Nectan pointed toward Mordec.

  “Is he?” said Mordec. “Just as well, by Crom. Otherwise, Conan would insist on being here.”

  “Yes, so he would.” Balarg’s voice had an edge to it, though one so slight that Mordec thought he was the only man in the room who caught it. The weaver must have noticed the way Conan looked at his daughter. One of these days, he and Mordec would have to sit down and decide what would spring from that—if Conan didn’t take matters into his own hands by running off with the girl.

  Nectan poured himself some ale and started gnawing on a strip of mutton. When he pulled a stool close to the fire, Mordec slid aside to make room for him. He had been out in the cold and the wind for a long time, and had earned the warmth now.

  Herth said, “A tinker named Loarn told me what had passed here. I decided to come down and see for myself, and I find it is so. Yellow-haired soldiers who spoke in grunts and trills put their hands on me not far north of here, and I had to bear the insult, for they were many and I but one. Yet though I had to bear it then, I shall not forget it.”

  “As you say, they are many,” answered Mordec. “For now, we also have to bear it, though we shall not forget, either.”

  “But the longer we bear it, the stronger the Aquilonians become,” said Balarg.

  “Aye, that’s so, curse them,” said Nectan, and the other men of Duthil nodded. The shepherd went on, “The fortress they build, the place they call Venarium”—he pronounced the foreign name with an odd kind of contemptuous care—“has already grown harder to take than any hill fort of our folk.” He sipped from his ale, then inclined his head to Herth. “Have you seen it?”

  “Not yet,” replied the northern chieftain. “No, not yet, though I intend to before I go back to my own country.”

  “Now that you have seen this much, what will you do up in the north?” asked Mordec.

  “What needs doing,” said Herth. “Loarn spoke somewhat of rousing the clans. By Crom, he roused me, but not everyone cares to hearken to a landless wanderer who makes his living, such as it is, by patching pans and fixing broken jugs.”

  “What he does, he does well,” observed Mordec. “When you speak of a man, you could say worse.”

  Herth’s gaze might have been a swordblade. The blacksmith’s might have been another. When they clashed, sparks flew. From off to one side, Balarg said, “Here, friends, it is of no great importance.”

  Mordec did not reply. He kept his eyes on Herth. After a few heartbeats, the chieftain was the one who looked away, saying, “Well, perhaps it is not. But I say this, and say it true: when I travel through Cimmeria, men will hearken to me.” He ha
d a clan chiefs pride, sure enough.

  “Hearkening is one thing,” said Nectan. “Moving is another. Once they have hearkened, will they move?”

  “Oh, yes.” Herth spoke softly, but with great certainty. “You may rely on that, friend shepherd. Once they have hearkened, they will move.”

  Conan stood on a hilltop, watching the sheep on the hillside pawing their way down through the snow to get at the grass beneath it. He also watched the woods not far away. If wolves came trotting forth, he had his bow and he had Nectan’s stout staff with which to fight them. The staff was of some hard, dark wood with which Conan was unfamiliar. It was shod with silver. “Keep it safe, lad,” the shepherd had said when he handed it to Conan. “You’d leave me a poorer man if you should lose it.”

  A small fire burned close by, sheltered from the north wind by several tall stones. Conan stooped and tossed a few more branches onto the flames. The fire did not give a great deal of warmth, but Nectan had kept it going, and Conan wanted to maintain everything as the shepherd had had it. Nectan doubtless cooked over it and slept beside it. Having to start it afresh in this raw weather would be a nuisance for him.

  For that matter, if Nectan did not come back from Duthil until the morrow, the blacksmith’s son would have to cook on the fire and sleep by it himself. Nectan had said he would return before sundown, but Conan had seen that promises, however well meant when made, were not always to be relied upon.

  Something flew past overhead. Conan did not pay much heed. The greatest eagle might perhaps carry off a newborn lamb, but lambing season was still months away, and no bird ever hatched could hope to seize a full-grown sheep and fly away with it. So Conan thought, at any rate, but the flying thing stooped like a falcon. A stout ewe let out a sudden bleat of agony.

  Whatever the creature struggling to lift the sheep into the air was, it was no bird. Its huge wings were black and membranous, while a pair of pointed ears pricked up above its fiercely glowing red eyes. When it snarled, it showed a mouth full of teeth like needles and razors and knives.