“I am King Garian,” the creature said to Vegentius. The soldier muttered an oath.
“Be silent,” Albanus commanded, straightening. “This,” he prodded Garian’s form with his foot, “will acknowledge my right to the throne before I let him die.”
“But the danger,” Vegentius protested. “He was to die now.”
“Enough!” Albanus snapped. “Deliver him in chains to the dungeons beneath my palace. I’ll hear no more on it.”
Vegentius nodded reluctantly, and turned to go.
“And, Vegentius,” the cruel-faced man added, “see that those who do this task are disposed of after. Fewer tongues to waggle loosely.”
The big soldier stood rigidly in the door, then left without speaking. But he would do it, Albanus knew, even to his beloved Golden Leopards.
“Who is the woman?” Sularia asked again.
Albanus looked at her in amusement, wondering if there were room for two thoughts at once in that pretty head. All that had happened before her eyes, and it was Ariane that concerned her.
“Do not worry,” he told her. “In the morning you will be proclaimed Lady Sularia. This,” he touched Ariane’s expressionless face, “is naught but a tool to build a path to the Dragon Throne. And tools are made to be discarded once used.”
His gaze swung to Sularia, a reassuring smile on his face. Tools, he repeated to himself, are made to be discarded once used.
XX
Conan awakened hanging spreadeagled in chains in the center of a dungeon. At least, he assumed it was the center. Two tall tripod lamps cast a yellow pool of light around him, but he could see no walls in any direction. The chains that held his wrists disappeared into the gloom above. Those holding his ankles were fastened to massive ringbolts set in the rough stone blocks of the floor. His tunic was gone; he wore naught but a breechclout.
Without real hope of escape he tensed every muscle, straining until sweat popped out on his forehead, beaded his shoulders and rolled down his broad chest. There was not slightest give in the chains. Nor in himself. He had been stretched to the point of joints cracking.
Cloth rustled in the darkness, and he heard a man’s voice.
“He is awake, my lady.” There was a pause. “Very good, my lady.”
Two men moved into the light, burly, shaven headed and bare chested. One bore a burn across his hairless chest as if some victim had managed to put hand to the hot iron intended for his own pain. The other was as heavily pelted as an ape from the shoulders down, and wore a smile on his incongruously pleasant round face. Each man carried a coiled whip.
As they wordlessly took positions to either side of the Cimmerian, he strained his eyes to penetrate the darkness. Who was this ‘lady’? Who?
The first whip hissed through the air to crack against his chest. As it was drawn back the other struck his thigh. Then the first was back, wrapping around an ankle. There was no pattern to the blows, no way to anticipate where the next would land, no way to steel the soul against pain like lines of acid eating into the flesh.
The muscles of Conan’s jaws were knots with the effort of not yelling. He would not even open his mouth to suck in the lungfuls of air his great body demanded in its agony. To open his mouth would be to make some noise, however slight, and from there it would be but a step to a yell, another to a scream. The woman watching from the darkness wanted him to scream. He would make no sound.
The two men continued until Conan hung as limply as the chains would allow, head down on his massive chest. Sweat turned to fire the welts that covered him from ankles to shoulders. Here and there blood oozed.
From the darkness he heard the clink of coins, and the same man’s voice. “Very generous, my lady. We’ll be just outside, an you need us.” Then silence until hinges squealed rustily, stopping with the crash of a stout door closing.
Conan lifted his head.
Slowly a woman walked into the circle of light and stood watching him. The woman veiled in gray.
“You!” he rasped. “Are you the one who has been trying to kill me, then? Or are you the one who uses those fools at the Thestis, the one who put me here with lies?”
“I did try to have you killed,” she said softly. Conan’s eyes narrowed. That voice was so familiar. But whose? “I should have known there were no men in Nemedia capable of slaying you. Where you hang, though, is your own doing, though I joy to see it. I joy, Conan of Cimmeria.”
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Her hand went to her face, pushed back the veils. No disease-ravaged skin was revealed, but creamy ivory beauty. Tilted emerald eyes regarded him above high cheekbones. An auburn mane framed her face in soft waves.
“Karela,” he breathed. Almost he wondered if he saw a vision from pain. The Red Hawk, fierce bandit of the plain of Zamora and the Turanian steppes, in Belverus, masquerading as a woman of the nobility. It seemed impossible.
That beautiful face was impassive as she gazed at him, her voice tightly controlled. “Never again did I think to see you, Cimmerian. When I saw you that day in the Market District I thought I would die on the spot.”
“And did you see Hordo?” he asked. “You must know he is here, still hoping to find you.” He managed a wry smile. “Working with the smugglers you now command.”
“So you have learned that much,” she said wonderingly. “None but a fool ever accounted you stupid. Hordo surprised me almost as much as you did, turning up in Khorshemish while I was there. Still, I would not let him know who I am. He was the most faithful of my hounds, yet others were faithful, too, and even so remembered the gold on my head in Zamora and Turan. Think you I wear these veils for the pleasure of hiding?”
“It has been a long time, Karela,” Conan said. “’Tis likely they’ve forgotten by now.”
Her calm facade cracked. “The Red Hawk will never be forgotten!” Emerald eyes flaring, she faced him with fists on hips and feet apart. Almost he could see the jeweled tulwar at her hip as it had been.
“Now that you’re no longer being the Lady Tiana,” he said grimly, “why in Zandru’s Nine Hells do you want me dead?”
“Why?” she screeched in furious astonishment. “Have you forgot so soon leaving me naked and chained, on my way to be sold to whatever man bid highest?”
“There was the matter of the oath you made me swear, Karela. Never to lift a hand to save—”
“Derketo blast you and your oaths, Cimmerian!”
“Besides which, I had five coppers in my pouch. Think you to have gone for so paltry a price?”
“You lie!” she spat. “I would not heel at your command, so you let me be sold!”
“I tell you—”
“Liar! Liar!”
Conan snarled wordlessly and clenched his teeth on any further explanation. He would not argue with her. Neither would he plead. That last he had never learned to do.
Pacing angrily, Karela hurled her words as if they were daggers, never looking at him directly. “I want you to know my humiliations, Cimmerian. Know them, and remember them, so the memory will be a blade to prick you constantly when you are in the mines, ever reminding you that when the King proclaims pardons for all who have served a certain time, I will be there to place gold in the proper hands so that one prisoner will be forgotten.”
“I knew you would escape,” Conan muttered. “As you obviously did.”
Her emerald eyes squeezed shut for a moment, and when she opened them her tone was flat. “I was bought by a merchant named Haffiz, and placed in his zenana with two score other women. That very day did I escape. And that very day was I brought back and given the bastinado, the cane across the soles of my feet. I would not cry, but for ten days I could only hobble. The second time I was free for three days. On being returned, I was put to scrubbing pots in the kitchens.”
Despite his position Conan chuckled. “A fool he was, to think to tame you so.”
She turned to face him, and if her words were soft her eyes held murder. “Th
e third time I was taken while still climbing the wall. I spat in Haffiz’ face, told him to slay me, for he could never break me. Haffiz laughed. I thought I was a man, he said. I must be taught differently. Henceforth I was to be allowed no waking hour that I was not dressed as if about to be presented to a master’s bed, in the sheerest silks and the finest fragrances, kohl on my eyelids and rouge on my lips and cheeks. I must learn to dance, to play instruments, to recite poetry. Failure in any of these, failure to be pleasing at all times, would be punished immediately. But, as I was like a young girl learning to be a woman, no punishment would I receive not suitable for a child. How he roared with laughter.”
Conan threw back his head and roared as well. “A child!”
Raising a fist as if she wished it had strength to knock him senseless, Karela raged. “What do you know of it, fool? Having my buttocks turned up for the switch ten times a day. Spoons of ca’teen oil forced down my throat. A hundred more too shaming even to think on. Laugh, you barbar oaf! For a year was I forced to endure, and how I wish I could make you live a year in the mines for every day of it.”
With an effort he managed to control his mirth. “I thought you would escape in half a year, perhaps less. But the Red Hawk turned to a thrush in a silver cage.”
“Day and night was I watched,” she protested. “And I did escape, with a sword in my hand.”
“Because you tired of being sent to your bed with no supper?” Chuckles reverberated in his massive chest.
“Derketo blast your eyes!” Karela howled. She raced forward to pound her small fists against his great chest. “Erlik take you, you Cimmerian bastard! You … you … .” Abruptly she sagged, clutching him to keep from falling. Her cheek was pressed against his chest; he was astounded to see a tear at the corner of her eye. “I loved you,” she whispered. “I loved you.”
The muscular Cimmerian shook his head in wonderment. Did she act like this when she loved him, he could not imagine anyone surviving her hate.
Pushing herself away, she stepped back from him, refusing to acknowledge the tears that trembled on her long lashes. “There is no fear in you,” she whispered. “You are not trembling. Nor will you think, ‘if she suffered so, what will she make me suffer?’”
“I have no blame for what happened to you, Karela,” he said quietly.
She did not seem to hear. “But if you have no fear, still you are a man.” A strange smile played about her lips.
Abruptly her fingers went to the brooches that held her robes; in an instant the gray silk lay in a pool about her slender ankles. Gracefully she stepped from the robes. She was as he remembered, full breasts and rounded thighs, long legs and a tiny waist. Karela was a sensual delight for the male eye.
Slowly, on her toes, she spun, arms raised, head turning to let her silken tresses caress now creamy shoulders, now satin breasts. With a gentle sway to her hips she walked to him, stopping only when her breasts touched him, just below the ribs as he hung in the chains. Touching her full lower lip with her tongue and looking up at him through her lashes, she began in a sultry tone.
“When you are taken into the mines only death can bring you to the surface again. You will live your life in dank, foul air and the dim light of guttering torches. There are women there, if you want to call them women. Their hands are as calloused as any man’s.” Her fingers stroked across his iron-hard chest. “Their hair and skin are filth encrusted, their stench foul; their kisses … .”
Her slender arms stretched up, her hands hooked behind his neck, and she pulled herself up until her face was level with his.
“They have no sweet kisses such as this,” she whispered, and pressed her lips to his. He met her kiss savagely, until at last she broke free with a whimper. Her emerald gaze was tremulous, his the blue of windswept northern skies. “You will never have a kiss like that again,” she said breathlessly.
Abruptly she dropped to the stone floor and backed away, biting her full lower lip. There was sudden uncertainty in her green eyes. “Now I will be the only woman in your mind for the rest of your life,” she said. “The only woman for the rest of your life.” And, snatching her robes from the floor, she ran into the darkness. After a time he heard the door squeak open and clash shut.
She had not changed, he thought. She was still the Red Hawk, fierce and hot-blooded as any bird of prey. But if she thought he would go meekly to the mines, or whatever the ancient penalty Garian had spoken of, then she was also as wrong-headed as she had ever been.
Conan eyed his chains, but did not again attempt to break them. Among the lessons taught by the treacherous snow-covered crags of the Cimmerian mountains was this: when action was not possible, struggle only brought death sooner; waiting, conserving strength, brought the chance of survival. The Cimmerian hung in his chains with the patience of a hunting beast waiting for its prey to come closer.
XXI
Breaking, the chains that held Conan’s arms began to rattle down, lowering him to the stone floor. He could not suppress a groan as his position shifted; he had no idea how many hours he had hung there. The pool of light and the dark beyond were unchanging, giving no sign of time’s passage.
His feet touched the floor, and knees long strained gave way. The full length of his massive body collapsed on the stone. Straining, he tried to get his arms under him, but the blood had long since drained from them. They could only twitch numbly.
The two men who had wielded the whips hurried into the light and began removing the chains. His weakened struggles were useless as they manacled his hands behind him and linked his ankles with heavy iron chains. The man with the burn scar was as silent and expressionless as before, but hairy-chest, he with the oddly pleasant face, talked almost jovially.
“Almost did I think we’d let you hang another day, what with all the excitement of this one. Fasten that tighter,” he added to the other. “He’s dangerous, this one.” The second man grunted and went on as he was, hammering a rivet into the iron band on Conan’s left wrist.
“My men,” the Cimmerian croaked. His throat felt dry as broken pottery shards.
“Oh, they were part of it,” the round-faced man laughed deprecatingly. “Fought off the Golden Leopards sent to arrest them, they did, and disappeared. Might have been made much of, another time, but more has happened since dawn this day than since Garian took the throne. First the King banished all of his old councilors from the city on pain of death. Then he created the title High Councilor of Nemedia, with near the power of the King himself attached, and gave it to Lord Albanus, an evil-eyed man if ever I saw. And to top that, he named his leman a lady. Can you imagine that blonde doxy a lady? But all those fine nobles walk wide of her, for they say she may be Queen, next. Then there were the riots. Get the rest of it, Struto.”
The silent man grunted again and lumbered away.
Conan worked his mouth for moisture. “Riots?” he managed.
The one-faced man nodded. “All over the city.” Looking about as if to see if anyone might overhear, he added in a whisper. “Shouting for Garian to abdicate, they were. Maybe that’s why Garian got rid of the old councilors, hoping any change would satisfy them. Leastways, he didn’t send the Golden Leopards out after them.”
Ariane’s people had finally moved, Conan thought. Perhaps they might even bring changes —indeed, it seemed as if they already had—but for better or for worse? He forced a question out, word by word. “Had—they—armed—men—with—them?”
“Thinking of your company again, eh? No, it’s been naught but people of the streets, though a surprising number have swords and such, or so I hear. Struto! Move yourself!”
He with the burn scar returned, carrying a long pole that the two of them forced between Conan’s arms and his back. Broad straps fastened about his thick upper arms held it in place. From a pouch at his belt, the round-faced one took a leather gag and shoved it between the Cimmerian’s teeth, securing it behind his head.
“Time to take you before
the King,” he told Conan. “What they’re going to do to you, likely you’d rather be in Lady Tiana’s gentle care. Eh, Struto?” He shook with laughter; Struto stared impassively. “Well, barbarian, you have some small time to make peace with your gods. Let’s go, Struto.”
Grasping the ends of the pole, the two forced Conan to his feet. Half carrying, half pushing, they took him from the dungeon, up stairs of rough stone to the marble floors of the Palace. By the time they reached those ornate halls the Cimmerian had regained full use of his legs. Pridefully he shook off the support of the two, taking what short steps the chains at his ankles allowed.
Round-face looked at him and laughed. “Anxious to get it over with, eh?”
They let him shuffle as best he could, but retained their grip on the pole. A grim smile touched his lips. Did he wish to, he could sweep both men off their feet using the very pole with which they thought to control him. But he would still be chained and in the heart of the Palace. Patience. He concentrated on flexing his arms in their bonds to get full feeling back.
The corridors through which they passed seemed empty. The slaves were there, as always, scurrying close to the walls. But the nobles, sleek and elegant in silks and velvets, were missing. The three men made their way alone down the center of the passages.
As they turned into a broad hall, its high arched ceiling supported by pilasters, another procession approached them from ahead. Graecus, Gallia and three others from the Thestis stumbled along under the eyes of two guards. All five were gagged and had their hands roped behind them. At the sight of Conan, Graecus’ eyes widened, and Gallia tried to shy away from the big Cimmerian.
One of their guards called out to the two with Conan, “This lot for the mines.”
“Better than what this one gets,” the round-faced man laughed.
Joining in his mirth, the guards prodded their charges on. The bedraggled young rebels hurried past, seeming as fearful of Conan as of their captors.