Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (19 page)

Lysinka instead knelt and examined Rasha’s wound. “Just my scalp,” the other said. “I-rode with that bastard’s blow. The blood was enough to make him think I was dead. I reckoned there was no cause to make him think otherwise until he turned his back. Sorry that I screamed, though.”

“You had to draw our attention somehow,” Fergis said. “So never mind that. What did he say?”

The Ranger had claimed to know of six men who were going to raid the recovered Nemedian supplies then flee. He had thought that they might accept him too, if he brought a woman.

“And he asked you?” Lysinka said.

“Aye.”

The chieftain spat over the cliff. She hoped she struck the dead Ranger below. His death still would raise more suspicion than she liked, but the gods knew it was well deserved!

“Did he give names?”

“No.”

This was not well done. She could double the guards on the stores, but how to be sure that she was not setting wolves to guard the sheep? Or she could divide up all the supplies tonight, so that everyone could guard their own.

Either way might encourage desertion, and not just of the weaklings that the band could spare. Enough of those otherwise brave and shrewd might look to their own safety, to ruin the band and leave both Conan and the Soul of Thanza to their fates.

Lysinka had just reached the point of a short prayer for good sense among her followers when a war cry broke in on her thoughts. Then the night breeze carried another, with a background of confused shouting— and unmistakably, the clash of arms.

Lysinka was already nearly out of sight before Fergis and Rasha began to run.

“Grolin. Grolin! Do you wake?”

Lord Grolin did not know where the voice was. He only knew that he heard those words and no others. He also doubted that it would be useful or prudent to guess at this latest of the sorcerer’s mystifying tricks.

He sat up, threw off his dew-dampened blankets (praise Mitra for the tall trees that had kept rains from turning the forest floor into a bog!), and stood.

“Turn right, and walk until you are out of sight of the camp,” came the voice.

Grolin obeyed, first looking at the sentries to make sure they were alert enough to notice his departure. At least one of them was. He hoped the man was not also a waggle-tongue. Rumours were already skittering about, like dry leaves in the autumn wind, of the baron’s mysterious conversations with the empty air and mysterious night time walks.

The sorcerer’s instructions should have been: “Walk until you have bumped into seven trees.” The canopy overhead kept off the rain but also kept out even the faintest starlight. Beyond the reach of the watchfire, the blackness was what one might expect to find at the heart of the universe.

This time the sorcerer appeared in one of the trees again, but only his body. The glow was amber, and as his robe was of the same hue, it was hard to learn much of the man’s size or build.

“I am here,” Grolin said. “Bruised and weary, but here. Speak, and I shall listen.”

A greenish glow appeared in the heart of the amber, where the head would have been. The green glow wavered, took a spherical form, and developed features. At last it became a face—and Grolin wanted to strike at it with his sword, or even his bare fist.

Although green light still shimmered around the face, it was unmistakably the face of one of the flying snakes.

Fergis and Rasha caught up with Lysinka halfway to the fight. The three of them pelted together into the open courtyard of the citadel.

The courtyard was almost full; every man and woman of both the bandits and the Rangers seemed to be present. All eyes were on the entrance to the storeroom,' where lay not only the day’s Nemedian spoils but everything brought to the citadel.

One man stood with a blazing torch before the open archway of the storeroom. Five others made a half circle in front of him. Lysinka recognized four Rangers and two of her men, including the one holding the torch. His name was Horkas, and he was a doughty fighter of uncertain temper and still more uncertain ancestry.

It was, Lysinka supposed, a monument to Conan’s work at binding the Rangers and the bandits that they were willing to mutiny together. She also hoped that the Cimmerian would have a better monument, or best of all, no monument at all for many years to come.

Now she stared hard at Horkas. He had always acted upon impulse and might change from mutineer to suppliant as quickly as he had gone from loyalty to mutiny.

Before Lysinka could speak, Horkas waved the torch.

“Hear me! We six are going out of this cursed land, with anyone who will join us and follow me.”

This drew some murmurs of agreement but more laughter, a few curses, and several bawdy jests about why anyone should want to get behind Horkas other than to avoid looking at his face.

None of this pleased Horkas. It was a while before he went on. In that time, several of the more trustworthy men of both bands slipped in behind or beside Lysinka and whispered that they stood with her.

She would have been happier if they had shouted it aloud so that all could hear them. No doubt they were being cautious, waiting to see which way the wind blew.

The silence was drawing on unreasonably. Lysinka cupped her hands and shouted:

“So this land is cursed? Likewise are oath-breakers! If we do not punish you, the gods will. Why should we let you go?”

“If I throw a torch into the storeroom, everything will bum,” Horkas replied. “All of us, all of you, must alike flee. Flee, or starve unless you can eat rocks!”

Lysinka was not the only one who gasped. Trying to flee a real danger might be no worse than cowardly. Threatening to doom your sworn comrades if they did not allow you to flee was not merely accursed, it was disgusting.

It was also a potent threat. Lysinka was certain that a fair number of both bands thought it no great matter to lose six fools and even their share of the food and weapons.

Lysinka knew she had to halt that thought before% swept away all good sense. What six fools would do today, ten might do tomorrow, and twenty the day after that.

Mutiny would kill the band and perhaps also Conan, leaving the world at the mercy of the Soul of Thanza whether in Grolin’s hands or another’s. Kill swift, kill slow, but death was certain.

Lysinka shouldered her way through the crowd. Several followed her, but they were barely more than shadows seen dimly from the comer of her eye. The moon was up, but the only other light in the courtyard was Horkas’s torch.

She stepped out into the open.

“Horkas! I have a better idea. You have the right of challenge for the leadership of my band. Fight me, and if you win, then you may give a lawful order that all must obey. Are you--------?”

“Hold!” came Klarnides’s voice from behind. “I swore no oath of friendship with any leader of Lysinka’s band except Lysinka herself. Change leaders, warriors of Lysinka of Mertyos, and the Thanza Rangers will march alone!”

“Big windy words, from a little captain whose own men won’t follow him!” Horkas sneered. “Did Conan’s favour make you think you were worth something?” Except that “favour” was not the word Horkas used. It was something far more obscene—and Klarnides lost what little remained of his temper.

He strode out into the open, sword drawn. Too late to halt the Aquilonian, Lysinka saw that one of the mutineers had a bow. He nocked an arrow and started to draw.

“No, fool! No!” came from several voices. The archer hesitated.

“I have offered myself,” Lysinka shouted. “Fear the gods’ wrath, if you shoot at anyone but me.”

The next moment, she realized that these words were hardly wiser than Klarnides’s. Horkas clutched the archer’s arm, turning him. The point of the arrow suddenly seemed to Lysinka as large as Conan’s face when he pinned her to the ground after their duel.

And two shadow figures suddenly became solid flesh so that Lysinka’s feet went out from under her, and she crashed to the ground. Both solid men were on top of her, and she thought she heard Fergis using most unaccustomed oaths.

Then somebody screamed, a scream that ended in choking. Warm, salty wetness ran over Lysinka. With frantic strength she heaved herself upright.

Fergis went sprawling, but sat up at once. The other man did not. He would never rise again.

Regius Panon lay on his side, the arrow meant for Lysinka protruding from his chest. Blood had already pooled beneath his chest and was trickling from his mouth to form another pool beneath his head.

“You have a low taste in jests,” Grolin said, to the snake-headed image of the sorcerer. “You offend the eye, as those who speak such jests offend the ear.”

“Your dignity is the least of my concerns,” the sorcerer replied. For the first time, Grolin detected a note of impatience in the sorcerer’s normally even, almost inhuman voice.

It. would be as well to not offend the fellow—one had to call him “man,” as he had surely been human at some time since the birth of the world. It was most necessary for Grolin to know about anything capable of making the sorcerer sound impatient.

Knowledge, others besides scribes said, was power. All spoken truly. Grolin sought power, therefore he would not turn away knowledge.

“I am sure that from where you stand, that is so,” Grolin said. “But I do not know enough of our road toward the Soul of Thanza, to know what are your greatest concerns. Speak, then—and if I must beg, I. shall.”

For a moment, the reptilian countenance seemed to hesitate, as though the sorcerer were considering taking Grolin’s offer seriously. Then what had to be laughter (although it sounded more like files on rusty iron) hammered through the baron’s skull.

“You would know, then? Well, you may learn if you look where you see the stars.”

Grolin started to look upward. Then the snake-face opened its mouth. Framed in fang and scale was a pit of blackness, in which stars, or at least star-like sparkles, swirled and glimmered.

“Stand close,” said the sorcerer. “Look deep within the darkness where the stars dance. Deep within, and do not turn your eyes away no matter what your senses bid you do.”

Grolin’s senses were urging him to flee and bid his men to do the same. More immediately, the stench of rotten carrion from the serpent’s maw was real enough to make him gag.

Knowledge would lead him to freedom, Grolin told himself firmly.

When he had done so three times, he had the courage to thrust his face into the maw. As he did, the stars faded and the blackness began to turn grey, with dim shapes slowly taking form in the greyness.

In the moments it took for the crowded courtyard to realize what had happened, only one man seemed able to move. Klarnides’s rage had not entirely driven out his wits.

With a steady, even pace, Klarnides walked toward the semi-circle. He kept his eyes fixed on something invisible just above the heads of the men, rather than asking a challenge with a stare. Only Lysinka saw that his knuckles were white and sweat had broken out along the line of his jaw.

The man and the warrior were breaking out from the shell of the youth within which they had hidden.

Lysinka would have given years of her life if Conan could see how well he had done his work on Klarnides—he and Tharmis Rog.

The archer threw down his bow and flung himself on his knees in the pose of a suppliant. Klarnides ignored him.

Not so Horkas. The man looked wildly about, snatched a dagger from his belt with his free hand, brandished it wildly, then flung the torch into the storeroom.

Lysinka would have given even more years of her life for a bow, to shoot down Horkas before he closed the door on himself and the flames. Doomed, he looked a man determined to doom as many others as he could.

But Lysinka had nothing to hurl except a dagger that would never carry this far. The other archers either lacked bows, wits, or a clear shot without risk of hitting Klarnides.

In the end it made no difference. Klarnides seemed to spring forward like a leopard. He knocked the archer to one side, another kneeling man the other way. Horkas whirled to face him, stabbing with desperate strength and deadly speed.

Klarnides seemed to dance away from the dagger thrust. He had only his short sword at a bad angle for thrusting. But his strength was also that of desperation. His slash looked wild... but went where it was aimed.

Horkas screamed, dropped his dagger, and clutched a blood-spouting arm. His lips moved. They had not quite shaped themselves into a plea for mercy when Klarnides’s sword thrust into Horkas’s belly, chest, and throat in three strokes that seemed to be a continuous motion, so swiftly did one follow upon another.

Then Klarnides turned and screamed, sounding like a eunuch with his leg in a bear trap:

“In Mitra’s name! Come and put out the fire before it reaches the oil!”

So many rushed forward that they trampled Horkas’s body, nearly trampled Klarnides and the surviving mutineers, and would have trampled out the fire if they had all been able to get through the door. Some made it through, others jammed, and there was. much pushing, cursing, and shouting before order reigned again.

Lysinka was one of those who helped to restore it. She had not been among those who rushed forward at once. Instead she had knelt beside Regius Panon, closed his eyes, then draped her cloak over him.

Only then did she join the reunited bands in putting out the fire.

The shapes in the black snake’s maw ceased to waver. Then they coalesced into a single shape.

It was a roughly carved (or perhaps vastly ancient and weathered) stone head. It seemed raw mountain rock, the only colour fragments of jewels partly filling the eye sockets.

It stood upright on a cracked marble slab within a high, narrow cave dimly lit by the ubiquitous moss of the Thanzas. He saw a crack in one wall and a thin sliver of starlit sky beyond it.

“You ask me to believe that this piece of rubble is important?” Grolin said.

“It is the Soul of Thanza,” the sorcerer said.

To that, Grolin had no reply. He did not quite dare to call the sorcerer a liar, but nothing else came to his mind.