Conan The Freelance (2 page)

The greenish-gray-scaled dragons stood upright, had long tails, pointed snouts and yellow eyes, and were not without peripheral vision. The nearest one either saw or smelled or heard the Cimmerian and flicked a glance in the man’s direction. So still was Conan that the thing looked back toward its female prey, then snapped its attention-to Conan a second time. It made a burbling hiss, drawing the gazes of the other dragons.

Conan wondered how fast they were. Could he turn and flee without being caught? Well, likely not, the path being rather steep around the turn, and besides, there was the woman. Now that he looked closer, he could see bloody gouges on one of her shoulders, doubtless put there by the thing that had stolen her garment, and despite his danger, Conan had time to notice that the shoulder was well rounded and firm, and the breast next to it also well rounded and firm. Indeed, the woman’s torso was more muscular than most women’s he had seen, sinews shifting under the tanned skin as she shifted the spear in her grasp. It was not unattractive, the sight, and despite his resolve to avoid women for a time, he felt himself curious about this one.

The first dragon hissed and burbled again, and two of the other dragons shifted toward Conan, leaving two to watch the woman.

“Best you run, stranger,” the woman said, her voice quite calm. “These are Korga, the Pili’s hunting dogs.”

Conan did not know who the Pili were, nor did he care. To the woman he said, “I am going south. Are these … ah, Korga apt to allow me to pass?”

“Nay, stranger.”

“Well, then, I know how to deal with dogs, no matter what their shape,” Conan said, loosening his grip on the sword, then re-forming it. To the dragons, he said, “Here, curs!”

But he did not wait for the Korga to gather themselves. Raising the heavy sword over his right shoulder as a man raises an ax for splitting firewood, he sprang. The closest dragon seemed startled by the man’s sudden charge. It flashed wicked teeth, pointed and as long as a man’s little finger, but before it could do more than bare these deadly fangs, Conan was upon it. The blade whistled in the cool evening air, and when it landed, it was not wood that split but the beast’s skull. Gore splashed and the thing dropped, dead before it sprawled on the rocky ground.

Conan spun to his left to meet the charge of the second Korga. The thing hissed and burbled and clawed at the man, and its jaws snapped shut with a loud click, but missed as Conan dodged backward and swung the sword. The blade met scaled flesh, but the angle was bad and the sharpened iron merely tore a fist-size chunk of the beast’s side away and flung it from the mountain. The monster howled liquidly and backed away a pace, lashing its thick tale in rage.

Conan sensed the approach of the third attacker, but it moved faster than he’d thought possible, and quick as the Cimmerian was, he could not better the dragon’s speed. The thing barreled into him, knocking him from his feet. In the fall, Conan lost his grip on his sword, and it clattered to the ground half a body length away.

Catlike, the Cimmerian twisted, turning his fall into a dive. He rolled and came up, but the third Korga charged him before he could retrieve his blade. The pointed teeth loomed large in the gaping maw, and Conan drew back his fist. He would ram his hand down its throat. Maybe he could choke it before it bit his arm off-The dragon screeched and stumbled, then fell forward to land facedown at the Cimmerian’s feet. What … ?

The woman’s spear stood embedded deeply in the beast’s back. She had sacrificed her weapon to save him!

Conan dived again, snatched up his blade, and sprinted toward the woman. She had fetched up a rock the size of a hen’s egg, and as Conan ran, he saw her throw the stone at the nearer of the two Korga watching her. The missile struck the thing squarely on the chest, knocking it backward. The creature clasped its front claws to the injury, hissing and howling as might a cat tossed into a fire.

The Korga Conan had wounded earlier sought to stop the man’s charge, but Conan’s powerful right arm and shoulder arced the sword in a one-handed cut that ripped out the beast’s throat. It fell, mortally wounded.

Three down, two more to go.

The woman bent for another rock, but the second of the two Korga she faced hopped in and grabbed her. It lifted her clear off the ground, and Conan realized he would arrive too late to save her; it opened its mouth to bite off her head-She poked the monster in the eye with her finger.

The Korga dropped the woman and clapped its claws to its injured eye; it danced around in a circle with the pain and outrage. Unfortunately for the Korga, that was to be its last dance, for Conan held his sword point forward and ran the monster through, spitting it neatly. If a lizard the size of a man could look surprised, this one did as it fell, its spirit already on the way to the Gray Lands to join those of its dead brothers.

The last Korga found itself with a bruised chest and all alone against two opponents. The woman came up with another rock and hurled it with good effect, smacking into the Korga’s belly as Conan stalked forward with his bloody weapon lifted. The Korga apparently decided it had had enough, for it turned and left in a great hurry. The woman tossed another rock after it, but missed, and the thing fled down the mountain path much faster than a running man could hope to match.

Not that Conan was really interested in chasing it. He took a few halfhearted steps after the thing, waving his sword and yelling, but the farther away it got, the better, as far as he was concerned.

When he turned back toward the woman, she was retrieving her garment from the claws of the dead Korga. Conan watched as she donned the ripped but still serviceable sleeveless jerkin and pulled it shut with a thin belt. A pity, that, Conan thought, because she was quite a well-endowed woman, for all her muscle. Those feelings toward women he had thought slaked now reared again, as if the past months had not existed.

“I owe you my life, stranger,” she said, and smiled.

Conan gestured with his sword at the spear standing from the killed beast. “And I owe you mine. Consider us even on that score.”

“Done. I am Cheen, medicine woman of the Tree Folk.” She went to retrieve her spear.

“I am called Conan, of Cimmeria.”

“Well met, Conan, from the top of the world.”

“You know Cimmeria?”

“We have heard of it. My grove is but half a day’s journey from here. Would you stop and rest and eat with us?”

Conan had been several weeks on the trail and in no hurry for much company, but this woman who could slay dragons with such offhand calmness intrigued him. “Aye, I suppose my journey would not suffer greatly for such hospitality.”

“Come, then. It will be dark soon and best we find a safe place for camp. Night travel in the mountains is not without its dangers.”

Conan looked at the dead beasts. “Nor would daylight seem to be altogether trouble free.”

“There are things in these hills after dark that make the Pili’s dogs look like tame pups,” she said.

“By all means, then, let us find a campsite.”

As they moved along the mountain path, Cheen told Conan of the Pili.

“They are like men,” she said, “but also distant kin to the Korga. Warm blood flows in their veins, but it is lizard blood to be sure. They inhabit the desert two days’ journey past my grove. They eat people when they capture them.”

Conan considered this. “Can one travel south to Shadizar without traversing this Pili desert?”

“There are ways to skirt their territory, yes.”

“Good.” Conan was afraid of no man in a stand-up fight, but the idea of walking across a wasteland of maneaters who used tame dragons for dogs held little appeal.

None, actually.

He did not ask what Cheen had been doing alone in such dangerous territory, it being none of his business, but she volunteered the information. “I have been for the last moon seeking a plant that grows in these hills. A kind of toadstool used in our religious ceremonies. Such fungi grow only on the dung of the wild mountain goats, these goats unfortunately being also a favorite prey of the Pili when they cannot obtain human meat.”

Conan grunted noncommittally. Religion was another form of magic; he preferred to have no truck with it either, but he did not begrudge those who did.

“I have found enough for our next True Seeing.” Hereupon she opened a small purse tied to her belt and showed Conan some dank-smelling little brown mushrooms. “Properly mixed and consecrated, the brew made from these allows one to see one’s god.”

Again Conan shrugged. He could do without such sights. He had more in mind filling his senses with good wine, better food, well-made weapons, and well-made women, all of which would be available to a rich thief in Shadizar. Let the priests see to the gods, a man had enough to worry about without that.

As the sun touched the western horizon, they came upon a wide ledge twice a tall man’s height above the trail and climbed up to it. Cheen climbed well, better in fact than Conan had ever seen any woman climb. She was like a spider as she moved up the rock, finding toe and fingerholds he would have thought impossible for any save a Cimmerian.

Once on the ledge, they built tall cairns of loose rock on both ends so that nothing larger than a rabbit could approach without tumbling the barriers. A dead bush on the rock face gave them tinder and fuel for a small fire, and it was but the work of a moment for Conan to strike sparks from a flint and a hardened chunk of melted iron he carried for that purpose to start the fire. He had a skin of water and several strips of dried squirrel jerky the two of them shared as night laid its dark shroud over the land.

The night was cold and the fire offered but a small warmth. Conan was of a mind to offer to share his wolf-pelt cloak with Cheen. He did so, but she only smiled and told him it was not necessary.

Perhaps, he thought, it was because he had more in mind to share with her than merely the cloak and she somehow sensed this. Women were adept at knowing such things, he had found, though the how of it had eluded him. In his travels, Conan had met many men, but never one who claimed to understand the minds of women. Well, no, there had been one who said he knew exactly what women wanted, but he had also thought that the world was round, like a ball, and that he could fly by flapping his arms like a bird. That one had tried his second theory from the roof of the tallest structure in the village in which he had lived, a water tower ten times a man’s-height. He had not survived the test. Mad as a pig full of wine, he had been.

He wondered at times if a man who truly understood women existed anywhere.

With those thoughts in his mind, Conan drifted into a sound slumber.

The morning broke crisply, the sun’s rays slanting over the eastern hilltops to paint pink and yellow the ledge upon which Conan and Cheen lay. Conan stirred easily from sleep, alert and a bit stiff from his bed on solid rock.

The woman awakened as Conan rekindled the fire and began to warm his hands against the morning’s chill.

“Slept you well?” she asked.

“Aye. As always.”

After sharing the last of Conan’s dried meat and rinsing it down with water from his skin, they descended the cliff face. Once again, Conan was impressed by the woman’s agility. She moved like the snow monkeys of Cimmeria, never a slip or slide as she clambered downward.

Conan, never loath to recognize a notable skill, remarked upon Cheen’s ability as they attained the trail.

She smiled. “We do some climbing where I come from. But I confess that I am least among those who have real talent at it. It is good that I am a medicine woman, for I would make a poor hunter.”

Conan did not speak to this, but he was surprised. If she were the least climber among her people, what must the best be like? Perhaps they could even rival Cimmerians for agility.

As the sun rose to his highest perch, Conan followed Cheen downward toward a green valley in the distance. Aye, it was as if some god had a particular fondness for the hue, splashing verdaccio and emerald and olive everywhere.

The path twisted and turned upon itself as it worked its serpentine way around the mountain’s side. Because of the circuitous nature of the hike, Conan did not see the forest until it practically stared them in the face. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps his hearing had gone bad, for to be so close to such a large wood, surely there should have been sounds his ears could detect?

But, no. The Cimmerian’s eyes gave him the truth after a moment. The forest was in fact much farther away than first he had thought. The trees were of such proportions that they appeared like a glen of normal oaks, but Conan quickly realized that these trees were much larger than any he had seen before. There were hundreds of them, and unless Conan was very much mistaken, this grove of trees was full of giants, thrice the height of the tallest he had ever seen before. Crom, they must be fifty times the height of a man or more, massive plants that reached for the roof of the world.

As the pair drew nearer the grove of giants, Conan saw that there were houses built in the branches, an entire village mounted in the sky. Some of the constructions were relatively low to the ground, not more than ten spans up; some were much higher. There was no undergrowth, the ground being bare save for a carpet of dead leaves. He wondered whether this was because the thick canopy stopped light and rain from reaching the ground or if it were from design.

Had Conan half a dozen brothers his own size, it would have been impossible for them to link hands and surround the largest of the wooden monsters; even the smaller trees dwarfed the biggest normal trunk Conan had ever beheld.

“My grove,” Cheen said.

“Your people live in the trees,” Conan said.

“Aye. We are born, we live, and we die there.”

“I can see how it is you know something of climbing.”

“For a groundling, you have no small ability yourself.” She smiled at him. “Especially seeing how … large you are. None of our men approach your size.”

They reached the base of the nearest tree. Conan looked up into the crown. The mighty limbs extended from the trunk in a rough circle, narrowing as they went up. The bark was smooth to his touch, a reddish color with patches peeled away to show a lighter color underneath. The leaves were long, triple-pointed, and the size of a man’s hand, a dark, waxy green that was almost black in color.