“Run!” Conan shouted to the smugglers, and for once they obeyed with alacrity, two of them dragging Ghurran between them. A rhythmic pounding came to him as he drew his sword, and he stifled a curse to shout to the archers. “Ware horsemen!”
The archers had only time to raise their bows before half a score of mounted men in turbaned helmets and brigantine hauberks galloped out of the dunes with lowered lances. Bowstrings slapped against leather bracers, and five saddles were emptied. The others, one swaying, jerked at their reins and let the charge carry them back into the dark. There were bowmen among the Vendhyans as well, but their target was not men. Flaming arrows arched into the night to fall around the ship. Some hissed into the sea, but others struck wood.
Then Conan had time to worry neither about the ship nor about anyone else. Two horsemen pounded out of the night, bent low in their saddles, seeming to race shoulder to shoulder to see which would lance him first. Snarling, he leaped to the side, away from the long-bladed lances. The two riders tried to wheel on him together, but he closed with them, thrusting at the closer of them. His blade struck a metal plate in quilted brigantine, then slid off and between the plates. The movements of his attack were continuous. Even as his steel pierced ribs and heart, he was scrambling onto the dying man’s horse, throwing both the corpse and himself against the second enemy.
The second Vendhyan’s eyes bulged with disbelief behind the nasal of his turbaned helmet; he dropped the lance and struggled to reach his tulwar. Conan grappled the live man with one hand while trying to pull his broadsword from the dead one with the other, and the two horses, joined by three linked bodies, danced wildly on the sand. In the same instant, Conan’s blade and the Vendhyan’s came free. The dark-eyed man desperately raised his weapon to slash. Conan twisted and all three men fell. As they slammed into the ground, the Cimmerian sliced his sword across a dark neck as though he were wielding a dagger and rose from two corpses.
The horses’ pavane had carried him well down the beach, and what he saw as he looked back did not appear good. Bodies dotted the sand, though he could not make out how many were smugglers, and neither a standing man nor a mounted one was to be seen. Worse, the stern of the ship was a bonfire. As he watched, a man with a bucket silhouetted himself against the flames. Almost as soon as he appeared, the man dropped the bucket, tried to claw at his back with both hands and toppled into the fire. Not Hordo, Conan thought. The one-eyed man was too smart to do something like that with bowmen about.
The fire had lessened the darkness on the beach considerably, Conan realized. He was not so well lit as the man on the boat but neither could he consider himself shielded by the night from the Vendhyan archers. It was always better to be the hunter than the hunted, and the Easterners were not to be found by staying where he was.
Bent almost double, he ran for the dunes…and threw himself flat against a slope of sand as nearly a score of riders appeared above him. This, he thought sourly, was a few more than he had hoped to find at once. He was considering whether or not he could slip away unnoticed when the Vendhyans began talking.
“Are the chests on the pack animals?” a harsh, rasping voice demanded.
“They are.”
“And where is Sabah?”
“Dead. He wanted to take the one-eyed man alive to see what he said about the seals under hot irons. The smuggler drowned him in the surf and escaped.”
Conan smiled at that, at both parts of it.
“Good riddance,” the harsh voice snapped. “I said from the start that we should come down on them as soon as the chests were in sight. Sabah always had to complicate matters. I think he was beginning to believe he really was a lord, with his secrets and his plottings.”
“No matter. Sabah is dead, and we will soon hunt down the rest of the vermin.”
“You propose to wait that long?” the harsh voice said. “How long do you think the caravan will wait?”
“But Sabah said we must kill all of them. And there is the gold.”
“You think of a dead man’s orders and a hundred gold pieces?” the harsh voice sneered. “Think instead of our reception if those chests fail to reach Ayodhya safely. Better we all join Sabah now than that.”
The silence was palpable. Conan could almost feel agreement radiating from the listeners. As if no further words were necessary, the Vendhyans reined their mounts around and galloped into the dark. Moments later Conan heard other hooves joining these, and all receded to the south.
There was much in what the Cimmerian had heard for him to consider. For one thing, the accursed chests seemed to take on greater importance every time someone spoke of them. For the moment, though, there were more immediate matters to be concerned with.
Half of the boat was burning by the time he reached it. In the light of the fire, Hordo and three others, waist-deep in the surf with buckets, were picked out clearly as they desperately threw water on the flames and watched the shore with equal desperation.
“The Vendhyans are gone!” Conan shouted. Grabbing the strake, he vaulted to the deck. Rivulets of fire ran forward along the sail. “It is too late for that, Hordo!”
“Erlik blast you!” the one-eyed man howled. “This is my ship!”
One of the goats was dead, an arrow through its throat. Food might be in short supply, Conan thought, and tossed the carcass toward the beach. The live goat followed, almost dropping on Hordo’s head.
“My ship!” the one-eyed man growled. “Karela!”
“There will be another.” Conan lowered the cage of fluttering pigeons and met Hordo’s glare over it. “There will be another, my friend, but this one is done.”
With a groan, Hordo took the wicker cage. “Get off, Cimmerian, before you burn, too.”
Instead, Conan began seizing everything he found loose and not burning—coils of rope, water bags, bundles of personal possessions—and hurled them shoreward. They were stranded in a strange land, which meant it was best to assume a hostile land, and all they would have by way of supplies was what was saved from the flames. The heat became blistering hot as the fire crept closer. Pitch caulking bubbled and fed the conflagration, giving off foul black smoke. Only when there was nothing left unburning within his grasp, however, did Conan leap from the fiery craft.
Splashing to shore, he sank coughing to his knees. After a time he became aware of Ghurran standing over him. The herbalist’s parchment-skinned hands clutched a leather bag with a long strap.
“I regret,” Ghurran said quietly, “that none of the Vendhyans had the antidote you seek. Though as they apparently planned to slay us, it may be they lied. I will search their dead in any case. You may be assured, however, that I have what is needed to keep you alive until we reach Vendhya.”
Conan ran his eyes over the beach. Dead and wounded dotted the sand. A handful of smugglers were tottering hesitantly out of the dark. Behind him the boat was a pyre. “Until we reach Vendhya,” he said bleakly.
As the last flames flickered out on the ruin of the smugglers’ craft, Jelal slipped away into the dunes, a coarse-woven bag under his arm. The others were too tired to take notice, he knew, so long as he was quick.
By touch he found dead twigs on the stunted trees scattered in the low hills of sand, and in a spot well-sheltered from the beach, he built a tiny fire. Flint and steel went back into his pouch, and other things came out. A small brass bottle, tightly capped. A short length of goose quill. Strips of parchment, scraped thin. As rapidly as he could without tearing the parchment, he wrote.
My Lord, by chance I have perhaps stumbled on to a path to the answers you seek. To believe otherwise is to believe in too great a coincidence. I have no answers as yet, only more questions. As you fear, the path leads to Vendhya, and I will follow it there.
Something rustled in the night, and Jelal hastily pushed a handful of sand over the tiny fire, quenching the light. A faint aroma of burned wood lingered in the air but that could easily be mistaken for the smell of the charred re
mains of the ship. For a long moment he listened, holding his breath. Nothing. But there was no reason to take chances at this point. Signing the message by feel, he stowed his paraphernalia and rolled the strip of parchment into a thin tube.
From the coarse-woven sack he took a pigeon. It had been sheer luck, getting the birds brought along, and greater luck that they were not all eaten. Deftly he tied the parchment tube to the pigeon’s leg, then tossed the bird aloft. In a flutter of wings it was gone, carrying all he was really sure of thus far to Lord Khalid in Sultanapur. It was little enough, he knew. But if the indications he had seen so far grew much stronger, he vowed to see that this Conan and this Hordo returned to a Turan ready to put their heads on pikes.
CHAPTER VIII
Dawn south of the Zaporoska was gray and dull, for heavy clouds filtered the light of the rising sun to lifelessness. From where he crouched in the dunes behind a twisted scrub oak, Conan watched the Bhalkhana stallion cropping scattered tufts of tough grass and wondered if the animal had settled enough for another try. The tall black’s high-pommeled saddle was worked with silver studs and a fringe of red silk dangled from the reins.
Carefully the Cimmerian straightened. The horse flicked an ear but munched in seeming unconcern at another clump of grass. Sand crunched underfoot as Conan approached with slow steps. His hand touched the reins…and the stallion seemed to explode.
Fingers tangled in the bridle, Conan was jerked into the air as the ebon animal reared. Like a cat he twisted, throwing his legs around the horse’s neck, clutching its mane with his free hand. The stallion dropped, and the added weight of the man pulled it to its knees. Scrambling back to its feet, the horse shook its head furiously. With wild snorts and whinnies, the animal leaped and plunged but Conan clung tenaciously. And as he knew it must, his presence in such an unaccustomed place began to take a toll. The leaps became shorter, the rearings farther apart. Then the stallion was still, nostrils flared and blowing hard.
The animal was not beaten, Conan knew. He was all but staring it in the eye, and that eye was filled with spirit. The question was whether or not it had decided to accept a strange rider. He knew better than to let go of the beast. With infinite caution he pulled himself onto its back, then lifted himself over the high pommel and into the saddle. The stallion only shifted as he took up the red-fringed reins. Finally letting himself relax, Conan patted the glossy arched neck and gently kneed the animal into a trot toward the beach.
The charred ribs of the smugglers’ craft, awash in the frothy surf, yet with tendrils of gray smoke still rising, spoke eloquently of the previous night’s attack. Some three hundred paces to the north, gray kites screamed and circled above the dunes as they contended with the larger vultures for the pickings below. No one among among the smugglers had considered digging graves for the Vendhyan dead, not after digging three for their own.
The situation on the beach had changed since Conan’s leave-taking that morning. Then the smugglers had been gathered around the fire, where the last of the arrow-slain goat still decorated a spit. Now they were in three well-separated knots. The seven survivors of those who had previously sailed with Hordo formed one group, huddled and muttering among themselves, while the men who had joined on the night they left Sultanapur made a second group. All were bedraggled and sooty-faced, and many sported bandages.
The third group consisted of Hordo and Ghurran, standing by the eight Vendhyan horses the smugglers had spent the morning gathering. Hordo glared indiscriminately at newcomers and oldsters alike, while the herbalist looked as though he wished he knew the location of a soft bed.
As Conan swung down from his saddle beside Hordo, Prytanis limped from the cluster of old crew members.
“Nine horses,” the Nemedian announced. His tone was loud and ranting but directed only to his six fellows. “Nine horses for three and twenty men.”
The newer men stirred uneasily, for the numbers were plain when considered the way Prytanis obviously intended. If they were left out of the calculation, there were horses to go around.
“What happened to his foot?” Conan said softly.
Hordo snorted. “He tried to catch a horse, and it stepped on him. The horse got away.”
“Look at us,” Prytanis shouted, spinning to face Conan and Hordo. “We came for gold, at your urging, and here we stand, our boat in ashes, three of our number dead, and the width of the Vilayet between us and Sultanapur.”
“We came for gold and we have it,” Hordo shouted back. He slapped the bulging sack tied at his wide belt; the clinking weight of it pulled the belt halfway down his hip. “As for the dead, a man who joins the Brotherhood of the Coast expecting no danger would do better to become a real fisherman. Or have you forgotten other times we have had to bury comrades?”
The Nemedian seemed taken aback at the reminder that the gold was still with them. It would be difficult to work up much opposition to Hordo among the smugglers as long as the one-eyed man had gold to hand out. Mouth working, Prytanis cast his eyes about angrily until they landed on Ghurran. “The old man is to blame,” he cried. “I saw him among the Vendhyans, talking to them. What did he say to stir them up against us?”
“Fool!” Ghurran spat, and the coldness of that bony face was startling. “Why should I bring them down on us? A sword can split my head as easily as yours, and my desire to live is easily as great as yours. You are a fool, Nemedian, and you rant your foolishness because seeking to blame others for your troubles is easier than seeking solutions to those troubles.”
Every man there stared at the unexpected outburst, Prytanis the hardest of all. Face pale with rage, the Nemedian stretched a clawed hand toward the scrawny old man, who stared at him disdainfully.
Conan drew his sword, not threatening anyone, just letting it hang at his side. Prytanis’ hand stopped short of the herbalist’s coarse brown robes. “If you have something to say,” Conan said calmly, “then say it. Touch him, though, and I will cut your head off.” The Nemedian jerked his hand back and muttered something under his breath. “Louder,” Conan said. “Let everyone hear.”
Prytanis took a deep breath. “How are nine horses going to carry three and twenty men back to Sultanapur?”
“They are not,” Conan said. “One horse goes to Vendhya with me, and another for Ghurran.”
“A horse each for the two of you, while the rest of us—” The Nemedian took a step back as Conan raised his blade.
“If you want the horses badly enough,” Conan said grimly, “then take them. Myself, I want the animals very much indeed.”
Prytanis’ hand moved slowly in the direction of his sword, but his eyes shifted as though he wished he could gauge the support of those behind him without being so obvious as looking over his shoulder.
“Four horses go to Vendhya,” Hordo said quickly. “At least. I will ride one, and we will need one for supplies. Anyone else going with us gets a horse, as well, for we have the longer way to go, and the harder. What are left over go to those returning to Sultanapur. I’ll give each man his share of the Vendhyan gold before we part. That should buy all the horses you need before you reach Khawarism—”
“Khawarism!” Prytanis exclaimed.
“—Perhaps sooner,” Hordo went on as though there had been no interruption. “There should be caravans in the passes of the Colchians.”
The Nemedian seemed ready for further argument, but Baltis pushed by him.
“That is fair enough, Hordo,” the earless man said. “I speak for the others as well. At least for those of us who have been with you before. It is only Prytanis here who wants all this crying and pulling of hair. As for Enam and myself, we have it in mind to go with you.”
“Aye,” the cadaverous Shemite agreed. His voice matched his face. “Prytanis can go his own way and take his wailing with him. Straight to Zandru’s Ninth Hell for all I care.”
The other group, the newcomers, had been stirring and murmuring among themselves all this time. Now Hasan gr
owled, “Enough!” at his fellows and moved away from them. “I want to go with you, too,” he said to Hordo. “I will likely never get another chance to see Vendhya.”
Shamil was almost on Hasan’s heels. “I, also, should like to see Vendhya. I joined you for gold and adventure, and there seems little of either in trudging back to Sultanapur. In Vendhya, though…well, we have all heard that in Vendhya even beggars wear gold. Perhaps,” he laughed, “some of it will stick to my fingers.”
None of the rest of the newlings seemed tempted by tales of Vendhyan wealth and when it came to them that but a single horse was left for those returning to Sultanapur, they lapsed into glum silence, slumping like half-empty sacks on the sand. The experienced smugglers were already seeing to their boots and sandals for the long walk around the Vilayet.
Prytanis seemed stunned by the turn of events. He glared about him at the men, at the ruins of the ship, at the horses, then sighed heavily. “Very well then. I will go as well, Hordo.”
Conan opened his mouth to refuse the Nemedian but Hordo rushed in.
“And welcome, Prytanis. You are a good man in tight places. The rest of you see to dividing the supplies. The sooner we travel, the sooner we all reach our destinations. You come with me, Cimmerian. We have plans to make.”
Conan let himself be drawn away from the others, but as soon as they were out of earshot, he spoke. “You were right in Sultanapur. I should have broken his head or slit his throat. All he wants is that last horse to himself instead of having to share it. And mayhap a chance to steal the rest of the gold.”
“No doubt you speak the truth,” Hordo replied. “At least about the horse. But credit me with the one eye I have. While you and Prytanis stared at each other, I was watching the newlings.”