Conan The Freelance (12 page)

The single man standing night watch at the main gate of Karatas was bored. He could hardly be blamed for being so; after all, the last real threat to the city from without had come in the time of his father’s father. The village was somewhat under the protection of the Mist Mage, at least enough so that any of the roving bands of bandits who might not be deterred by the palisade were loath to try Dimma’s power. The region was remote enough so that no king with a great army and a wizard of his own cared to bother with a small village on the edge of a big lake with few riches to offer. True, the guard thought-and the dullness of his watch offered much time for thinking, though he was not overburdened with an apparatus for cerebration-there were a few attractive women, some passable wines, and even a little gold here. Hardly enough of all three together to be considered sufficient booty by a king with an army to feed and clothe, however.

Having entertained this particular train of thinking more than a few times during the boring seasons of his watch, the guard could not be bothered to worry when, from his perch on the wall, he saw a single Pili approaching the village in the silvery moonlight. The guard’s beard was shot full of gray and he had been assigned this watch since before that beard had begun to fully sprout. The most dangerous incident he had faced in all that time had been a drunken farmer who threw rotten melons at him. And missed.

The guard had seen lizard men before. They were rare in these parts, to be sure, but probably half a dozen had passed through the gates during his watch at one time or another, so the guard was not one to gape at the sight of a Pili, even one with a decidedly regal bearing such as this one had.

“Alert, the watch!” the Pili called.

“Alert, indeed,” the guard called back. “What be your business here?”

“I carry a message for one of the fishmen. Permit me to enter.”

Even though the lizard man carried a long spear, the guard felt no particular peril. He tugged at the lever that opened the smaller entrance. Below him, the door began to swing open.

The Pili turned and shouted something into the darkness in a tongue the guard did not understand.

“What … ?” the guard began. He stopped when he caught sight of at least a score of spear-carrying lizard men running toward the gate. “Hey!”

The guard tried to reverse the lever. The greenish bronze suddenly seemed slippery in his hands. This was bad business!

“Here!” came a voice.

The guard looked, and saw the first Pili standing below him, inside the gate, The guard was still deciding whether to question, threaten, or plead with the lizard man when the thrown spear struck him solidly in the center of the chest. He was filled with hot pain, but only for an instant. The pain stopped, he became numb, then he could not feel anything.

The guard’s final thought was an odd one. After all the years of dullness, something exciting had finally happened.

Kleg awakened after the cloak of night had fallen over the village. He felt much better. He arose, .drenched himself with the bowl of wash water in the room, and thus refreshed, left the room on the inn’s third and highest floor, intending to eat another meal before going out.

As the selkie reached the stair landing, he chanced to glance out through the small window cut through the outer wall. The sky’s cloth of darkness was pierced by the sharp pinpricks of uncountable stars and easily half the grinning moon, and a cool breeze carried the living odor of the lake through the opening. Kleg felt quite good, until he happened to look down through the window.

There on the narrow street between the inn and the leather shop across it, several figures scurried along. Between the moon’s glow and that of a fat-fueled torch mounted on the side of the inn at street level, it was easy for the selkie’s sharp eyes to tell that the trotting forms were neither men nor selkies.

They were Pili.

The chill that enveloped Kleg had nothing whatever to do with the night winds blowing through the window.

Pili! How could they be here? Surely the guard would not have admitted an armed band of them! Had they scaled the wall surrounding the village? Broken through the gate?

Never mind that, Kleg. How they got inside is not nearly so important as why they are here: they are after you and not the least doubt of that.

For a moment, Kleg yielded to panic. A score of Pili would move through the village like dung through a worm; it would only take moments for them to find him!

Unbidden, his hand found the pouch of his belt containing the magical talisman. Should they manage to obtain the Seed and somehow spare him, his fate would make a quick death by spear pleasant compared to what He Who Creates would do to him. He had to escape!

Yea, even though it was dark and the weed paths under the water would be most dangerous, he had to get to the lake. In his Changed form, his chances were much better there than in his upright from here. And while the Pili might have managed to breach the village’s wall, it would be a cold sun in the desert before they learned how to swim well enough to catch a selkie!

Carefully, Kleg started down the steps.

From below, a voice called out loudly, “We seek a fishman! Is there one here? Speak, or taste my spear!”

“U-u-up-s-stairs,” came a quavering response.

Kleg stopped cold. By the Black Depths! He was trapped!

A tall Pili with whom Thayla considered trysting once he got a little older slid down the side of the sand dune from the top and came to rest next to the queen.

“They are coming!” he said.

Thayla nodded. “Exactly as I planned. You know what you are to do.”

“Aye, my queen.”

“Prepare, then.”

The young male nodded and climbed upward, where he rejoined the other two males Thayla had kept with her. The queen herself followed, moving more slowly. She planned to watch from the peak of the hillock as her troops attacked. The numbers on both sides were about equal, but she had the advantage of surprise. Night would help, insofar as confusion went in the dark, but the Pili saw no better than did men, nor was their hearing an improvement.

Well, it did not matter if many or all of her troops died, as long as she got what she wanted.

Now, there was carnage to observe. Doubtless her reptilian ancestors would have been pleased with the smile that thought brought to her lips.

The Queen of the Pili continued to grin as she climbed to a position from which she could watch the slaughter.

Conan slipped away from the others and circled to his right. Perhaps Cheen was right. Perhaps he worried needlessly, like some child afraid of ghosts in the dark. He had seen once again, however, from his confrontation with Crom-if that had been other than a potion-inspired dream-that leaping without looking was fraught with danger. Were it not for that rope about his ankle during the ceremony in the trees, likely his brains would have been dashed all over the roots below. Conan of Cimmeria was not a man to repeat the same mistake once he had grasped the idea of it. One who always used his might and never his wits would likely lead a short life, and he had no intention of so doing.

The sand of the slope was finer than that upon which they had been walking, and Conan stepped upon it carefully to avoid having it cheep birdlike under his sandals. The wind was at his back, and it carried tiny sharp teeth of sand that bit at his exposed flesh and sought to burrow beneath his clothing. The odor of the desert was dry and lifeless, and his nostrils detected no sign of the lizard musk he recalled from the cage and caves.

Halfway up the slope, Conan’s sharp blue eyes caught sight of three dark splotches above him, at the peak of the dune. At first he thought the shapes some type of plant, but as he cautiously climbed upward, he realized that he was mistaken.

The three forms were Pili warriors, and they were intent on something on the other side of the dune.

Conan could easily guess what that something was: the Tree Folk, walking into a trap.

Taking care to avoid scraping the blade on the scabbard, the Cimmerian drew his sword. He was nearly upon the three, who had risen from prone to half crouches, when the night wind at his back gave him away.

“Gah, what is that stink?” one of the Pili answered.

“Not I,” a second said.

“It smells familiar,” the third said. “Like … it is a man!”

The three started to turn.

No more need for stealth. Conan churned up the slope, the sand chee-cheeing under his sandals.

He bellowed a warning: “Pill! On the dune tops! Pili! Beware!”

The yell was replaced by the exclamations of the startled Pili.

The nearest of the three lunged up, and the angle of the dune gave him momentum as he stabbed at Conan with his spear. The Cimmerian dodged, slow in the dry mire, but quick enough to avoid the thrust. The Pili’s lunge turned into a fall, then a helpless, uncontrolled tumble as he flew down the side of the dune, screaming as he went.

The second Pili managed only to lift his weapon before Conan’s blued-iron blade whistled in the night air and cleaved the lizard man open from one side of his neck to the opposite shoulder. He sprouted his life’s blood into the dry sand, which drank it eagerly.

The third Pili stood to flee, but not fast enough. The point of Conan’s sword found and entered the Pili’s back and exited through the lizard man’s heart and sternum. Conan lifted his right foot and used it to shove the dying Pili from his blade, and this one tumbled down the opposite side of the dune toward the startled Tree Folk below.

Conan took in the scene: the Tree folk, warned by his yell, were already climbing the hill toward him, to take the high ground. Several Pili charged down other dunes, waving spears and yelling. As Conan watched, one of the Tree Folk took a thrown spear in the leg. Little Hok was halfway up the dune by now, with Cheen right behind him. One of the Tree Folk spun and hurled a spear, and was rewarded by a scream from the Pili who caught the point in the belly.

Conan grinned. A simple battle, odds nearly even, now this was something he understood! He yelled wordlessly and charged down the dune, sword raised to smite the enemies below.

Keg searched for options and found them few. Below in the main room of the ramshackle inn, an unknown number of Pili had just discovered his whereabouts. He was on the third floor with only one stairway leading down. He could go down the stairs to a likely death. He could hide and hope to avoid being discovered, or he could develop wings and escape; otherwise he would have to leap to the cobblestones below and that would cost him broken legs at the least and probably worse.

Things did not look promising.

From his belt, Kleg drew the long dagger he habitually carried and resolved to sell his life for as much Pili blood as he could. He did not know if He Who Creates could reach across the death barrier to the Gray Lands, but were such a thing possible, certainly it would happen; did

Kleg die here this night, he meant to show he had struggled valiantly in his master’s service before falling.

Suddenly there came a loud crash. The inn shook, as though rattled by an earth tremor, and the voices of those below raised into a frantic, panicked babble. Came up the stairs screams and the sounds of breaking furniture and general chaos. .

What in the world … ?

Cautiously, Kleg stole down the stairs, dagger in hand.

When he rounded the final turning on the second-story landing, he saw a chair fly past the base of the stairwell, followed by a Pili-sans head.

Something was definitely amiss here.

Kleg descended further, and what he beheld was indeed a frightening sight.

The east wall of the inn was more or less collapsed, the ceiling above canting down over a massive hole to the outside; half a dozen Pili scrabbled around the wrecked room, jabbing their spears at a nightmare.

The monster they fought looked to be part toad, part bear, and perhaps leavened with dog or wolf, but it was huge! Its gaping maw was lined in the front with needlelike teeth that tapered to solid plates of flat molars in the back. The beast chewed something, and Kleg’s stomach roiled as he realized that what it chewed was the remains of a Pili’s head. The. morsel crunched wetly in the monster’s jaws.

The jabs of the Pili’s spears did not seem to affect it much, if at all, and as Kleg watched, the thing lunged forward, very quickly for such a large creature, and bit the leg from another Pili.

The lizard man screamed, but the beast was apparently as unaffected by this as it was by the spears, which sank into its flesh but drew no blood. The mottled gray-green monster chewed on the leg as a cow chews on her cud, oblivious to all else.

There was a mostly clear pathway to the inn’s door, and Kleg decided that there would never be a better time for him to depart. He sprinted toward the exit.

The Pili were too busy to notice him, but Kleg’s run did draw the attention of the monster, whose red eyes turned to follow the selkie’s dash for freedom.

The knowledge came suddenly to Kleg; the thing was here for him!

Certainly the beast was no friend to the Pili. Could it have been sent by the Tree Folk?

Kleg reached the door and ran through it into the street. A small crowd had gathered and was moving toward the inn.

“Hey, whut’s alla noise about … ?”

“… god’s cursed racket in there … ?”

“… watch it, fool!”

Kleg ignored the people, save for the one he banged into during his flight, and he only paid enough attention to that one to shove him roughly aside. If these idiots wished to enter

the inn, so much the better. They would make fodder for the thing therein, and perhaps keep it from following him.

It did not seem likely that the Tree Folk had fielded such a monster, and since it was not one of the Pili’s pets, then the logical conclusion was that He Who Creates had sent it. But why? To help Kleg? Or to devour him? Mayhaps the magical talisman that bumped at his waist could survive a trip in the belly of the beast quite easily and that was He Who Creates’ intent in sending it.