Conan The Indomitable (2 page)

“I will have your sword,” the figure said.

At that moment Elashi appeared behind the six, clambering up the rock so
that she was above them.

Conan swung the sword back and forth to limber his shoulder, then gripped
the handle with both hands and aimed the point at the throat of the nearest
pikeman, a techinque he had learned from the swordmaster of the Suddah Oblates.
“I think not,” he said.

The pikeman swallowed dryly.

“Do not be a fool,” the horse rider said. “We are six to your
one. Give us your sword and live. Refuse and die.”

“I find it somewhat strange that you seem willing to lose at least some
of your men to collect a sword. Such an exchange is bad business. I think that
perhaps there is something else on your mind.”

The man-woman
laughed,
a deep, throaty sound.
“Wise, for a savage.”

On the boulder, Elashi had put her sword down and was lifting a head-sized
rock.

The leader of the bandits leaned forward on the horse. The creak of the
saddle leather was loud in the otherwise quiet clearing.
“Very
well.
Then we shall have to obtain that which we wish the hard way. Take
him!”

Elashi chose this precise instant to hurl the rock she held. Now the desert
woman was not much of a swordswoman, true, and she talked too much for Conan’s
taste, but apparently the throwing of rocks could be numbered among her skills:
the large stone smacked into the head of one of the pikemen, felling him like a
poleaxed pig. The sound of the rock striking the skull was much like that of a
melon when smashed with a heavy board. That one would trouble no one else in
this world.

Startled, the pikemen turned to espy this new threat. The rider’s mount
shied at the sudden movements, backing itself almost to the boulder.
Before the rider could turn, Elashi, sword in hand, leaped upon
him—or her—screaming.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Conan darted forward, swift for a man so
large, and swung the ancient blue-iron blade. The stroke met flesh, cleaving
muscle and bone, toppling a second pikeman into a fall that would ultimately end
in the
Gray
Lands
—and
likely Gehanna.

Elashi and the rider fell from the horse. Conan had time to see the
mysterious bandit leader leap up and twist about sharply; the movement spun
Elashi away as a terrier tosses a rat. She hit the ground and rolled up, sword
held ready.

No matter. Her distraction had accomplished its purpose. Conan swung his
sword back and forth, chopping at the disorganized pikemen, who were at
quarters too close to use their weapons effectively. Blue iron met pike wood
and sheared it, continuing on to carve bloody canyons through leather armor.
Conan’s mighty arms drove the weapon he bore, gutting one man, removing
another’s head, driving all before the Cimmerian whirlwind. Before they could
gather their wits, four of the five pikemen were down, one by Elashi’s stone,
the others by courtesy of Conan’s blade.

The fifth pikeman deemed it wise to change occupations at that moment, to
that of a fleet-footed messenger; he ran, dropping his pike to attain yet more
speed. For an instant Conan considered retrieving one of the fallen pikes to
use as a spear against the fleeing man, but decided that dealing with the
leader was more important. As he turned, however, the rider managed to
recapture the horse. Flinging itself onto the saddle, the leader of the bandits
spurred the animal, which bolted straight at Conan.

The Cimmerian dodged, swiping at the rider, but the figure leaned away from
the sword’s arc and Conan cut nothing more than air. The force of the slash
spun the young Cimmerian off balance. In a heartbeat, horse and rider were
past, moving too swiftly for Conan to recover in time to give chase.

Conan watched the retreating figures of pike-man and rider.
Came
the rider’s call: “I’ll have your sword yet,
barbarian!”

Conan,
shook his head. Why would anyone be willing
to risk death for a sword of uncertain worth? In fact, while the blued-iron
weapon was of good quality and quite serviceable, it had no intrinsic value.
The handle was plain and leather-wrapped, not bejeweled or carved ivory, and
the guard was merely a single bar of thick brass. The strange bandit leader
must be mad.

Elashi approached, brushing dirt from her cloak.

“Are you injured?” Conan asked.

“Nay.”
She finished her cloak dusting and
looked at Conan askance. “You let two of them escape.”

He could not suppress a surprised grunt. “You never mentioned that you
desert dwellers drank blood.”

“Little point in leaving a job half accomplished,” she said.
“I suppose there’s nothing to be done for it. Let us examine the
corpses.”

“Examine them? Why?”

She regarded him as she might a simpleminded child. “And you intend to
become a thief?
For valuables, of course.”

Conan nodded at this. For once she had a point. But even as he rifled the
sparse purses of the fallen bandits, the question of why they had attacked
continued to plague him. And the man-woman’s retreating threat to have his
sword—what was that all about?

Well, he would pay it no more
mind
. It was finished
and done with, and like as not, he had seen the last of that odd personage.

Although the purses of the slain mountain bandits yielded only a few
coppers, Conan was not the least averse to collecting the coins and sharing
them equally with Elashi. Certainly the bandits had no further need for money
where they were bound.

As the Cimmerian and the desert woman made their way down the mountain road,
they saw in the distance a small village; thanks to the bandits, they could now
buy food and a room for the night. Only a few days past, Conan had carried two
silver coins, the last of his profit from the pelt of a dire-wolf he had slain.
Unfortunately, as he had raced through the halls of the necromancer’s castle,
he had somehow dislodged the silver from his purse. After the aggravation of
the bandit’s attack, providing supper and shelter was the least the dead men
could do.

As evening sought to claim the day, stormy purple and gray clouds gathered
on the horizon. The wind grew colder, carrying in its chilly teeth the promise
of snow. Conan knew the signs: a blizzard was building. It would be most
uncomfortable to be caught out in the open in the coming weather. The village
lay less than an hour ahead by his reckoning, and the two of them should arrive
there at about the time the storm did.
If they hurried.

The village was like a dozen others Conan had seen in his travels. Perhaps a
score of structures, most of them small houses of stone with sod roofing,
sprawled along the sides of the road, now somewhat wider than it had been in
the mountains. The largest of the buildings was, naturally, the village inn.
The wordless sign over the doorway bore merely a carved picture of a sheep,
doubtless detailing the mainstay of local industry. The building was also of
stone, weathered and in disrepair, with oiled but torn lambskin over the
windows, showing a fitful yellow glow from within.

As Conan and Elashi approached the inn, the snow began to flurry about them.
In a moment the swirling winds had the powdery whiteness dancing thickly in the
evening air. The combination of snow and gathering darkness quickly reduced
visibility to a few spans.

“Not a very appealing place,” Elashi observed.

“Our choices are somewhat limited,” Conan said.

“True.”

He swung the heavy wooden door inward and took in the interior of the inn.
The ceiling was
low,
hardly an arm’s length taller
than Conan himself, and the central room into which they stared was occupied by
perhaps twenty people, most of them men. They sat at rude tables or stood near
the large fireplace within which a fat log burned brightly. An archway at the
end of the room led, Conan surmised, to sleeping rooms and storage for food and
drink.

Stepping into the room, Conan shut the door behind Elashi, never taking his
gaze from the occupants. Most of them were obviously locals: dark-complected,
older men dressed in shepherd garb. There were a few women who matched the men
in age and clothes, also likely local folk.

At the far end of the communal eating and drinking room sat a thin man
dressed as though for summer in thigh-length trousers and a short tunic. He had
hair the color of straw and a foolish grin upon his face. Likely drunk or
slack-witted, Conan thought.

Behind this summery fool sat two men who looked very much like the five who
had assaulted Conan upon the trail. There were no pikes in evidence, but each
man wore a sword and long dagger ensheathed upon his belt, and their features
looked hard in the light of guttering tapers mounted at odd intervals upon the
stone walls.

Conan finished his scan of the room just as a tall and spindly man whose
face seemed buried within the shroud of a gray beard approached.
The innkeeper, no doubt.

“Ah, welcome, travelers. Would ye be desirin’ food ‘n’ drink,
then?”

Conan nodded.
“Aye.
And a
room for the night.”

Graybeard bobbed his head in an enthusiastic nod. “Done, done. Ye made
it just in time, I warrant.
“Tis a howler startin’ up
out there.”
As if to punctuate his words, the wind whistled and
blew a blast of snow through one of the torn shades. Graybeard said,
“Lalo, cover that hole!”

The thin blond man stood and moved to the window, where he began to repair
the window cover with a patch and string that he pulled from a pocket on his
tunic. The man continued smiling all the while, and he hummed a strange little
tune as he worked.

Conan and Elashi, meanwhile, moved to an empty table not far from the fire
as Graybeard went to fetch wine and whatever passed for supper.

The meal, as it turned out, was not altogether bad. The meat was mutton,
somewhat greasy, but edible. Hard brown bread accompanied the meat, and the
wine was red and sharp but better than some that Conan had tasted. Elashi
produced a small knife from her belt and sliced the meat into strips; Conan
draped pieces of these over chunks of bread and washed them down with the wine.
Certainly it bested foraging along the trail for roots and ground squirrels, as
they had been doing for several days.

Graybeard accepted half a dozen coppers for the meal and asked another four
for the room. Conan would have bargained but he was tired, and what did it
matter anyway? The money had been his for only a few hours; he had not grown
particularly attached to it. He paid for the meal and room, causing a smile to
grow in the midst of Graybeard’s hairy visage.

Over his third cup of wine, Conan began to feel somewhat relaxed. The
journey along the mountains had been relatively uneventful—save
for the inept bandits—but even so, it had been a long walk. With food and wine
in his belly and shelter against the winter’s rages, he felt most comfortable.

He should have known that meant trouble. Every time he felt at ease of late,
something always seemed to come along to spoil it.

“Watch it, fool!”

Conan looked up from his warm feeling, to see the straw-haired
man,
the one Graybeard had called “Lalo,” backing
away from the table at which the two swordsmen sat. Apparently Lalo had jostled
the table in passing and the occupants had taken umbrage at his clumsiness. One
of the swordsmen was missing most of an ear. The other had a nose that had been
broken more than once, and was decidedly bent to one side.

“Sorry, m’lord,” Lalo said.

Bent Nose half-stood. “Are you making sport of me, fool? Calling me
lord?”

“Why, no, m’lor—I mean, no, sir
. ‘
Twould be
hard to make sport of one such as yourself.”

“That’s better.”

Lalo’s grin never faltered. “I mean, there’s so little to work
with.”

Bent Nose blinked, obviously not understanding.

At his table, Conan smiled. He might be called a barbarian for his looks,
but he knew humor when he heard it.

Unfortunately for Lalo, One Ear’s wits were at least a bit sharper than his
companion’s. “Fool,” he said. “He has insulted you!”

Bent Nose looked at him quizzically. “What are you talking about?”

“Ah,” Lalo said. “I see that you are indeed a wit.” He
paused for a second, then continued: “No, on second pass, I think that is
probably only half-true.”

Conan chuckled into his wine. Judging from Bent Nose’s reaction, it seemed
true enough.

“Why are you laughing?” Elashi asked. “Those two will cut
that poor man into bloody ribbons!”

Conan shrugged. “That’s his problem. A sharp tongue is no match for a
sharp blade.”

One Ear said, “Idiot! He insults you again.”

This was enough for Bent Nose. He cleared his blade. “I shall have your
laughing head for a soup bowl!” he bellowed, advancing slowly toward Lalo.

Elashi jumped to her feet, drawing her own sword.

Conan said, “What are you doing?”

“Since there are no
men
in here to protect a harmless, unarmed
soul from such brutes, I shall do so myself!”

Conan sighed. Always something came to disturb his peace. He stood. “Be
seated. I shall handle this.”

“I would not want you to strain yourself,” she said.

Conan merely shook his head. Is this a test, Crom? Perhaps I should have
remained at the monastery with the late Cengh and given up women. They are
certainly more trouble than they are worth, at times.

Bent Nose looked up to see Conan looming. He paused in his pursuit of Lalo.
“What is your business here, outlander?”

Conan decided to try reason. “I have had a long day,” he said,
“and I would not see it ended by being blood-spattered. Why not allow Lalo
here to live?”