Conan the Savage (27 page)

The foreigner’s answer was a nod, accompanied by a faint grunt and an upward flick of his hand.

“What of your people? Do others follow you here?”

A head shake and a curt, frowning syllable: “No.” “Alone, then.” Regnard turned slowly, extending an arm to summon his new friend back toward the gate. “It must have been hard travelling so far by yourself. I have heard that men lose themselves in these mountains—even large parties of armed men—and vanish there without a trace.” “Um.” The grunt that Regnard’s primitive companion offered in reply did not make clear that he understood. But then, it hardly mattered as long as the flow of words was kept up. Walking amiably beside the savage, he conducted him through the gate.

The two Imperial guards did not bother to descend the ladder from their railed lookout. They cast down contemptuous glances at the newcomer but let him retain his rustic spear and stone club. Obviously they cared little about his fate and judged that if he stayed with Regnard, he would pose them no problem.

Within the gate, the town streets were near-deserted, so the uncouth foreigner drew only an occasional, pointed look from a uniformed trooper or an early rising shop man.

“I know a place... do you have any trade goods?” The Gunderman peered up at the savage, who was scanning Shihar’s smelly, mud-midden streets and ramshackle cabins with a bleak, uninterested gaze. “You know, barter...?” Regnard rubbed thumb against fingers in the universal gesture, eliciting no sign of comprehension. Then he shrugged with elaborate casualness. “No matter. I will stand you to a meal. Come along!”

He led his scowling companion to a broad, low-porched cabin that, aside from its greater size and loftier roof of mossier shingles, was very little different from any of the other town hovels. Inside, it was laid out as a public room, with benches and trencher-boards set around the mud-chinked log walls, and an open space of hard-packed dirt surrounding the firepit at the centre. Flourishing an arm overhead and shouting to the bald-headed taverner, Regnard led his guest to one of the trestle tables farthest from the door.

The place was nearly deserted; thus there were few snorts and raised eyebrows at the stranger’s uncouth appearance. There were even some murmurs of appreciation, feminine ones that issued from an alcove at one side of the room. At Regnard’s urging, his guest surrendered his rough-hewn ax and spear and let them be hung up on a weapons-rack over the table. Wine and cider were offered and refused; at length, the customer accepted a wooden jack of warm, brown Brythunian ale. From it he finally drank—a single sip, which he almost seemed to retain in his mouth as he sat stonily reflecting.

When their feast of salt fish, boiled pork, and sour turnip slaw arrived, the foreigner ate resignedly enough, though Regnard set to work on his own portion with confidence. From his travels about the edges and crevices of the Hyborian world, he was sure he understood the nature of the primitive spirit. This fellow, for instance—for all his deep, inscrutable seriousness, he had the mind of a little child. Such a barbarian, simple and credulous at heart, was bound to understand little about the new world before him. Creatures like this one survived from day to day in the wild, satisfying their coarse urges as luck provided, and worshipping sticks, stones, vermin, and other objects hardly worthy of a five-year-old babe, to improve their meagre chances. This stranger looked strong and splendid enough now, coming here from the raw wilderness, but the fellow was all bluff; after a few days in the real, civilized world, without protection and guidance, he would be confused and helpless—sick, stuporous, and penniless—all because of his inborn lack of fitness to survive.

Regnard, however, had no such fate in view for him. Finishing his repast, scraping up the sour gravy with good stiff camp bread that snapped between a man’s teeth as he bit into it, he mumbled, “Well now, that was excellent!” Gathering his resources for a moment, he belched cordially. “Now that we have broken fast together... tell me, friend, what is your name?”

“Conan,” was the other’s reply. Having emptied his trencher of food, he sat once again sullen and stoic.

“Well now, Conan, what do you seek here in Shihar? Wisdom, perhaps?” He tapped the side of his head knowingly. “Romance?” He shot a roguish glance across the room to the alcove of women. “Or wealth, such as might be gained by brokering that fine fur cape on your shoulders, and the bauble you wear around your middle?”

In reply, the outlander made not even a grunt, but Regnard interpreted a narrowing of the savage’s steel-blue eyes as signifying interest.

“Wild skins command a good price,” Regnard explained to him. “Of late, they have grown scarcer in these parts. And such trinkets as you are wearing might be saleable too. Do you know, perchance, where any more are to be found?”

To his question, the savage grunted and gave a frowning head shake.

“No? Ah well, ’tis of little matter.” The Gunderman amiably smiled. “What, then, of your tribe or kinsfolk.? Do they know of your wanderings, so far across the Kezankian Mountains?”

Conan regarded him emotionlessly. “My tribe is all dead.”

“What? Dead, you say? Of a disease, was it?” Regnard knew from long experience that such brute, uncleanly primitives were highly vulnerable to disease. They often died in droves from ills that were commonplace and lightly regarded in civilized towns.

The savage gazed back at him levelly. “Yes, they died of a disease.”

“So. A shame.” The Gunderman was not worried; he had little fear of any foreign plague being carried to him that he had not already survived in his travels. “So you have come west to Brythunia, one of the richest of the Hyborian empires, to seek your fortune?”

A grunt and a nod of assent.

“A wise decision. There are comforts here, and rare delights...” He gestured across to the tavern women, who now ventured out of their cubbyhole, bantering together in shrill, teasing tones. “This outpost, Shihar, is but nothing, a mere camp. In the greater Brythunian cities there lie wealth and power beyond a man’s wildest dreams. But let me tell you—” Regnard leaned across to his guest in a confidential way.“—the only safe course in civilized lands is to find a friend, someone you can trust, someone to help you get started. Else-wise, these sly, wily town merchants will outsmart you before you have a chance to learn civilized ways.”

At this, the outlander seemed intrigued. “You want to help me?” he asked with a steely blue squint.

The Gunderman hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so.” He smiled and shook his head cannily. “But not unless I, too, can get something out of it. That is how things are done here in the city.”

“What do you want out of it?”

Regnard stroked his blond moustache. “What occurs to me is this: what I want most of all—because of the lateness of the season, and my wish to return to more familiar parts—is to get out of Shihar. It strikes me that you, too, would do best to travel into the heart of the kingdom. That way, you will command the best possible price for what you have to offer.”

The Gunderman stepped up the pace of his speech, unsure whether the barbarian understood, but wishing to bear him along nevertheless on the tide of ideas. “Now, if we were to sell something here immediately—say, that rough hide cape of yours—why, that would bring us enough coin to buy good woven capes with. And there would be enough money left over to travel together to a great city. Once there, we could easily strike our fortunes. You, by selling that jewelled gewgaw of yours, could be set up quite comfortably—”

“What city?” Conan finally interrupted him.

“What city?” Regnard mused. “Well, my mountain friend, why not the greatest of them all? It is only a fortnight’s walk from here—Sargossa, the capital of all Brythunia!” he declared with a flourish.

“Sargossa, yes.” With a curt nod, the savage stood up from his bench. Untying the plush pelt from around his neck, he laid it on the trestle table.

At this action, sighs and lewd remarks sounded from across the room. The tavern women—four of them, in assorted sizes, shapes, and slatternly costumes—seemed genuinely impressed by the baring of the outlander’s husky torso. Two drifted over, cooing with admiration, to stroke the sleek fur of the cape and the sleeker, muscular pelt of its owner. To these intimacies he failed to respond, except with impatient snorts and sullen, dangerous glances that soon drove his admirers to Regnard’s side of the table.

The other two wenches, dressed in thinly stretched scraps of blouse and skirtlet, commenced a dance. Carelessly and desultorily, they moved to plinks and plunks from a mandolin in the lap of a bearded, sleepy-looking musician seated against an ale keg. Regnard tried lustily, within the limits of the trade dialect, to point up how they epitomized two very different sorts of feminine beauty then in fashion—the one plump and rounded, with lush, fleshly attributes and the saucy, taunting looks that full-blooded men desire. The other was willowy by comparison, even wispy—a slender phantasm of a girl, scarcely past her twelfth year, and carefully starved, yet nimble and fetching nonetheless. Both girls, moreover, were very fashionably pale, with a powdered, luminous complexion that set off the deep-blue kohl painted around their eyes. The selection was quite good in all, Regnard proclaimed, for a rough border outpost.

Even so, the outlander’s failure to take interest in the dancers did not surprise him. These savage woods-dwellers had more crotchets, taboos, and superstitions than a Stygian priest, lacking the first notion of how to relax and enjoy themselves in civilized company. Crude and barbarous as they were, they regarded themselves as haughty noblemen. One had to be careful of offending their rustic dignity if he did not want his skull cracked.

This was all very familiar to Regnard; he must have placated his companion’s pride adequately so far, he decided, since the lout did not brain him. In a short time, the uncouth foreigner, with his forbidding snorts and growls, had carved out for himself a safe, dark enclave at the comer of the near-empty tavern. Leaving him brooding over his ale, the Gunderman took up the fur skin and went to trade it away at the local pelt-broker’s.

When he returned, a purse jingled comfortably at his belt. He declared, without going into needless detail, that they now had an adequate cash stake for their journey. It was necessary to spend the afternoon provisioning, he said, if they intended to depart the next morning.

Their trek across the heartland of Brythunia was made in mid-autumn, at the height of the country’s prosperity. The civil war had ended swiftly enough that it did not lay widespread waste to the land or hinder crop planting; and the victory was recent enough not to have given the common folk a soured opinion of their new queen’s wisdom, or their new goddess’s favour. Now the harvest was in, and cellars, pantries, and granaries overflowed. Chaff was being burned in the fields, filling the sky with brown, sweetish smoke; fragrant wine grapes were stamped in shallow vats by bare-kneed country girls, and every rural rafter was draped with gourds, cornstalks, and thick ropes of garlic, onion, and sausage. Inns and farm tables set forth lavish meals for the wayfarers; and even in sparsely populated districts where lodgings and victuals were generally scarce, it was not hard for Regnard to buy or beg, and for Conan to hunt or steal, supplies enough to keep them comfortable.

Most typically along the way, the two would be lodged in a rural coach-house. Regnard would be led to a sleeping-stall or a bench near the fire in the Common Room, while Conan, in keeping with his brutish dress and aspect, would be lodged on a hayloft or in a comer of the cattle shed. Food and drink were furnished, in keeping with the traveller's respective stations in the world, at the guest table or outside by the kitchen stoop. Additionally, there might be livelier entertainments, drinking-fests or night-long revels with customers and wenches of the inn. These were solely Regnard’s province, since Conan retained his sullen, solitary demeanour along the route.

Luckily, the savage hunter was strong and uncomplaining, inured enough to hard labour to carry the main share of their supplies and belongings—or the whole lot, on days when the Gunderman was too ill or overhung to manage. Indeed, there were times when Conan almost carried Regnard himself, and defended him as well, from irate inn lords and angry gambling partners. The savage’s fighting prowess was amply tested on those occasions when bandits ‘ tried to waylay the pair by night or in forest depths. Such brigands departed none the richer—rather the poorer, after accounting for hacked limbs and the spent lives of those of their number they left behind.

On the whole, though, the journey was congenial. Because of the mild, prosperous season and the widespread goodwill arising from the success of the popular rebellion, Regnard—and, to a lesser extent, his savage minion—were I cordially received across the breadth of Brythunia. The Gunderman was quick to take advantage of this trust and acceptance, ingratiating himself into the hearts and pockets of the common folk. Conan, however, remained sullen and grim-faced, retreating at every opportunity into broodings and sorrows only he could know.

XIV

The Small Usurper

Prince Clewyn, bound for his morning visit to Queen Tamsin, wended his laborious way through the palace antechambers. His progress was slowed, not so much by age or infirmity as by the need to stop and exchange gossip and pleasantries with a great many court functionaries as he went. He had come to regard such casual contacts as vital to survival, even when they delayed his engagement at the seat of Imperial authority. He viewed such civility as the grease that made the complex cogs of the palace grind in harmony.

His own uncertain status at court—as a disinherited Imperial relic and sometime-exiled pretender—did not raise him above contact with the lower ranks. On the contrary, his status as the queen’s current favourite made it compulsory for almost everyone to seek him out and placate him. Hence, running the gauntlet between his bedchamber and Queen Tamsia’s, he chatted with a wide variety of persons: councillors, eunuchs, courtesans, military officers, priests, attaches, emissaries, even high-ranking attendants and slaves. All such meetings ended cordially, he made sure, for the sake of clinging to power in an ill-defined political turmoil where a single misplaced word could mean banishment or death.