“What’s your name, girl?” Hordo asked. “You’re a pretty little bit. Get rid of that cotton shift, deck yourself with a little silk, and you could work in any tavern in Belverus.”
She tossed her head, laughing gaily, silken brown hair rippling about her shoulders. “Thank you, kind sir, and for your generous contribution.” Hordo frowned in uncomprehension. “My name is Kerin,” she went on, her soft brown eyes shifting to Conan like a light-fingered caress. “And by those shoulders, you must be the Conan Ariane spoke of. I work in clay, though I hope to have my sculpture cast in bronze some day. Would you pose for me? I can’t pay you, but perhaps … .” Her mouth softened, full lower lip dropping slightly, and her eyes left no doubt what sort of arrangement she wanted with the muscular barbarian.
Conan had barely listened after the mention of posing. An image flashed in his brain of Ariane, posing on the table, and he was uncomfortably aware of his face growing hot. Surely she did not mean … . She could not want … .
He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “You mentioned Ariane. Did she send a message?”
“Why did she see you first?” Kerin sighed. “Yes, she did. She’s waiting in your room. To tell you something very important, she said.” She ended with a slight smirk.
Conan scraped back his stool.
“Girl,” Hordo said as the Cimmerian rose, “what is this posing? I might well do it.” Kerin slipped into the seat Conan had vacated.
All the way across the common room Conan waited for Hordo’s outraged shout, but when he looked back from the foot of the stairs the one-eyed man was nodding slowly, a delighted grin on his face. Laughing, Conan ran up the stairs. It seemed his friend would receive more than good value for his silver piece.
Upstairs the narrow hall was lined with many doors, most crudely made, for the original chambers had been roughly partitioned into more. When Conan pushed open his own rude plank door, Ariane was standing below the small window high in the wall. His cloak was still wrapped tightly around her, her fists showing at the neck where she held it together. He closed the door behind him and leaned back against it.
“I pose,” she said without preamble. Her eyes glinted with something he could not quite read. “I pose for my friends, who cannot hire models. I do it often, and never have I felt embarrassment. Never until today.”
“I merely looked at you,” he said quietly.
“You looked at me.” She uttered a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You looked at me, and I felt like one of those girls at the Gored Ox, wriggling to a flute for drooling men. Mitra blast your eyes! How dare you make me feel like that!”
“You are a woman,” he said. “I looked at you as a man looking at a woman.”
She closed her eyes and addressed the cracked ceiling. “Hama All-Mother, why must I be stirred by an untutored barbarian who thinks with his sword?” A smug smile grew on his face, to be quashed almost immediately by a glare from her large hazel eyes. “A man may take as many women as he wishes,” she said fiercely. “I refuse to have less freedom than a man. If I choose to have but one man at a time to my mat, and have no other till he leaves or I do, that is my affair. Can you accept me as I am?”
“Did your mother never tell you a man likes to do the asking?” he laughed.
“Mitra blast your heart!” she snarled. “Why do I waste my time?” Muttering to herself she stalked toward the door, cloak flaring in her haste.
Conan reached out one massive arm, curling it around her waist beneath the cloak. She had time for one strangled squawk before he lifted her, the cloak floating to the floor, to crush her soft breasts against the hard expanse of his chest.
“Will you stay with me, Ariane?” he asked, looking into her startled eyes.
Before she could speak he tangled his free hand in her hair and brought her lips to his. Her small fists bruised themselves against his shoulders; her feet kicked futilely at his shins. Slowly her struggles subsided, and when a satisfied murmur sounded in her throat he released her hair. Panting, she let her head drop onto his broad chest.
“Why did you change your mind?” she managed after a time.
“I didn’t change it,” he replied. She looked up, startled, and he smiled. “Before you asked. This time I did the asking.”
Laughing throatily, she let her head fall back. “Hama All-Mother,” she cried, “will I never understand these strange creatures called men?”
He laid her gently on his sleeping mat, and for a long time thereafter only sounds passion-wrought passed her lips.
VI
The Street of Regrets in the morning hours fit well Conan’s mood. The paving stones were littered with the tawdry refuse of the previous night’s revelry; those few people to be seen were stumbling home bleary eyed and hollow faced. Conan kicked rubbish from his path as he strode along, and gave growl for growl to the stray dogs that scavenged among the leavings.
The ten nights past had been an idyll at the Sign of the Thestis, wrapped in Ariane’s arms, her passions and appetites feeding his own even as they sated them. Stephano brooded much in jealousy and wine, yet the memory of the Cimmerian’s anger kept his tongue between his teeth. Hordo, drawn by the attractions of the slender Kerin, had moved his few belongings from an inn three streets away, and of an evening they drank and told each other lies till the charms of Ariane and Kerin parted them. Those were the nights. Days were another matter.
Conan paused at the sound of running boots behind him, then continued on as Hordo joined him.
“Ill luck this morrow, too?” the one-eyed man asked, eyeing the Cimmerian’s face.
Conan nodded shortly. “When I had defeated all three bodyguards now in his service, Lord Heranius offered three gold marks for me to take service as their chief, with two more every tenday.”
“Ill luck?” Hordo exclaimed. “Mitra! That’s twice the usual rate for bodyguards. I’m tempted to give up smuggling. At least there’d be no danger of the headsman’s block.”
“And I must swear bond-oath before the City Magistrates not to quit his service without leave for two years.”
“Oh.”
Conan’s right fist cracked into the other palm with a sound like a club striking leather. A drunk, stumbling his way home, jumped a foot in the air and fell in a puddle of vomit. Conan did not notice.
“Everywhere it is the same,” he grated, “Free-Companies or single blade-fee alike. All demand the bond-oath, and some require three years, if they do not require five.”
“Before the bond-oaths,” Hordo mused. “Some men changed masters every day, getting a silver piece more each time. Look you. Why not take service with whoever offers the most gold? This Lord Heranius, by the sound of it. When you’re ready to go, if he won’t release you, just go. An oath that makes a man a slave is no oath at all.”
“And when I do, I must leave Belverus, perhaps all of Nemedia.” He was silent for a time, his boots kicking broken clay wine-jars and soiled bits of abandoned clothing from his path. At last he said, “At first it was but talk, Hordo, this Free-Company that I would lead. Now it’s more. I’ll take no service until I ride at the head of my own company.”
“It means so much to you?” Hordo said incredulously. He dodged a jar of slops thrown from a second-story window, hurling a curse at the thrower, already gone.
“It does,” Conan said, ignoring the other’s mutters about what had splashed on his boots. “In the final sum of it all, perhaps a man has no more than himself, naught but a strong right hand and the steel in it. And still, to rise, to make some mark in the world, a man must lead others. I was a thief, yet did I rise to command in the Army of Turan, and did well at it. I know not how far I may rise nor how far the path I follow may take me, yet do I intend to rise as high and go as far as my wits and a good sword will take me. I will have that Free-Company.”
“When you do,” the one-eyed man said drily, “be you certain they swear the bond-oath.” They turned into the street that led to the S
ign of Thestis.
As Conan laughed, three men stepped out to spread themselves across the narrow street, broadswords in hand. The sound of boots behind made Conan glance quickly over his shoulder. Two more armed men stood there, cutting off retreat. The Cimmerian’s blade whispered from its worn shagreen scabbard; Hordo, sword flickering free, pivoted to face those behind.
“Stand aside,” Conan called to the three. “Find you easier meat elsewhere.”
“Naught was said of a second man,” the one to Conan’s left muttered, his thin, rat-like face twitching.
The man to the right, shaven dome gleaming in the morning sun, hefted his sword uneasily. “We cannot take one without the other.”
“You’ll find but your deaths here,” Conan said. With his left hand he unfastened the bronze pin that held his cloak, doubling the fur-lined garment loosely over that arm.
The leader, for the tall man in the center with his closely cropped beard was clearly so, spoke for the first time. “Kill them,” he said, and his blade thrust for Conan’s belly.
With pantherine grace the muscular Cimmerian moved aside, his cloak tangling the tall man’s blade while his right foot planted itself solidly in the fellow’s crotch. In the same move Conan’s sword beat aside a thrust of the shavenhead. Gagging, the leader attempted to straighten; but Conan pivoted, his left foot taking the bearded man on the side of the head, knocking him under the feet of onrushing rat-face. Both went down in a heap.
The shaven-headed attacker hesitated, goggle-eyed at his companions on the ground, and died for it. Conan’s slashing steel half-severed his throat. Bright red blood fountained as he went to his knees, then toppled onto his face in the muck of the street. Rat-face scrambled to his feet, and he tried a desperate overhead hack. Conan’s blade rang against the other, bringing it into a sweeping downward circle, sliding his blade along his opponent’s, thrusting it into the villain’s chest.
A quick kick next to his blade freed the body to collapse alongside the other; and Conan spun to find the leader on his feet, his narrow, bearded face suffused with rage. He swung while the big Cimmerian was yet turning, staring with surprise as Conan dropped to a squat, buttocks on his heels. Conan’s steel sliced a bloody line across his abdomen. The tall man screamed like a woman, dropping his sword as his frantic hands tried vainly to hold his intestines in. His eyes were glazed with death before he struck the filthy paving stones.
Conan looked for Hordo in time to see the one-eyed man’s blade decapitate his second attacker. With the head still rolling across the pavement Hordo turned to glare at Conan, blood oozing from a gash on his sword arm and another, smaller, on his forehead.
“I’m too old for this, Cimmerian.”
“You always say that.” As he spoke, Conan bent to check the pouches of the men he had killed.
“It’s true, I tell you,” Hordo insisted. “If these hadn’t been such fools as to talk and dither while we set ourselves, they might have chopped us to dog meat. As it was, my two nearly sliced my cods off. I’m too old, I say.”
Conan straightened from the bodies with six new-minted gold marks. He bounced them on his palm. “Fools they may be, but they were sent after one of us. By somebody willing to pay ten gold marks for a death.” He jerked his head at the two Hordo had killed. “You’ll find each of them has a pair of these too.”
Hordo muttered an oath and bent to the remaining bodies, straightening up with four fat coins. The one-eyed man closed his fist tightly on them. “Yon rat-face spoke of not expecting two. Mitra, who’d pay ten gold marks for either of us?”
A gangling boy shambled out of an alley not a dozen paces distant. At the sight of the bodies his jaw dropped open, and with a scream of pure terror he dashed away, his wail fading as he sped.
“Let us discuss it at the Thestis,” Conan said, “before we gather an audience.”
“With our luck,” Hordo muttered, “this will be the one morning in half a year the City Guard has patrols out.”
It was but a short distance down the twisting street to the inn, but obviously no one had heard the fighting. Only Kerin gave them a second glance when they walked in. In those morning hours there were few of the artists about, and none of the noise that would reverberate in the evening.
“Hordo,” the slender girl said, “what happened to your arm?”
“I fell over a broken wine-jar,” he replied sheepishly.
She gave him a sharp look and left, returning in a moment with a pile of clean rags and a jug of wine. Uncorking the wine, she began to pour it over the gash on Hordo’s arm.
“No!” he shouted, snatching it from her hand.
An amused smile quirked her mouth. “It hurts not that much, Hordo.”
“It hurts not at all,” he growled. “But this is the proper way to use wine.”
And he tipped the clay jug up to his mouth, with his free hand fending off her attempts to take it back. When finally he stopped for breath she jerked it way, pouring the little wine that remained over a cloth and dabbing at his forehead.
“Hold still, Hordo,” she told him. “I will fetch you more wine later.”
Across the common room Conan noticed a face strange to the inn. A handsome young man in a richly embroidered red velvet tunic sat at a table in a corner, talking to Graecus, a swarthy sculptor who spent considerable time in the company of Stephano.
After discovering that someone might want him dead, Conan was feeling suspicious of strangers. He touched Kerin’s arm.
“That man,” he said. “The one talking to Graecus. Who is he? He seems well dressed for an artist.”
“Demetrio, an artist?” she snorted. “A catamite and a wastrel. They say he’s a great wit, but I’ve never found him so. Betimes he likes to dazzle those among us who can be dazzled by his sort, when he is not rolling in the fleshpots.”
“Think you it’s him?” Hordo asked.
Conan shrugged. “Him, or anyone else.”
“By Erebus, Cimmerian, I’m too old for this.”
“What are you two talking about?” Kerin demanded. “No. I’d as lief not know.” She rose, pulling Hordo behind her, a faun leading a bear. “That cut on your arm needs ointment. Wine-jar, indeed!”
“When I return,” Hordo called over his shoulder to Conan, “we can begin looking for the men we want. Courtesy of our enemy, eh?”
“Done,” Conan called back, rising. “And I’ll fetch that sword. It should fetch a coin or two.”
In his room abovestairs the Cimmerian pried up a loosened floor board and took out the serpentine blade. Light from the small window ran along the gleaming steel, and glinted on the silver work of the quillons. The feel of taint rose from it like a miasma.
As he straightened he wrapped his cloak, rent from the tall man’s sword, about the blade. Even holding it in his bare hand made his stomach turn as the slaying of his first man had not.
When Conan returned to the common room, the man in the red velvet tunic was waiting at the foot of the stair, a pomander to his aquiline nose, his eyes lidded with langorous indolence, yet the Cimmerian noted that the hilt of his sword showed wear, and the hand that held the pomander had bladesman’s calluses. Conan started past.
“A moment, please,” the slender man said. “I am called Demetrio. I collect swords of ancient pattern, and I could not help but hear that you possess such a one, and wish to sell it.”
“I remember nothing of calling it artcient,” Conan replied. The man had a viperish quality the Cimmerian liked not. As if he could smile and clasp a hand, yet strike to the heart while doing so. Still, he found himself listening.
“Perhaps I but imagined you named it ancient,” Demetrio said smoothly. “If it is not, I have no interest. But an it is, well might I buy.” He eyed the cloak-wrapped bundle beneath the Cimmerian’s arm. “You have it there?”
Conan reached into the cloak and drew forth the blade. “This is the sword,” he said, and stopped as Demetrio jumped back, hand to his own sword.
The Cimmerian flipped the sword over, proffering the hilt. “Perhaps you wish to try its heft?”
“No.” The word was a shaky whisper. “I can see that I want it.”
The flesh about Demetrio’s mouth was tight and pale. The strange thought came to Conan that the slender man was afraid of the sword, but he dismissed the notion as foolish. He tossed the sword onto a nearby table. His hand felt dirty from holding it. And that was foolish too.
Demetrio swallowed, seeming to breathe more easily as he looked at the blade where it lay. “This sword,” he said, not looking at the Cimmerian. “Has it any … properties? Any magicks?”
Conan shook his head. “None that I know.” Such might add to the price he could demand, but any such claims would be easily disproved. “What will you give?”
“Three gold marks,” Demetrio said promptly.
The big Cimmerian blinked. He had been thinking in terms of silver pieces. But if the sword had some value to this young man, it was time to bargain. “For a blade so ancient,” he said, “many collectors would pay twenty.”
The slender man gave him a searching look. “I have not so much with me,” he muttered.
Shocked, Conan wondered if the blade was that of some long-dead king; Demetrio had made not even a pretense of haggling. His practised thief’s eye priced the amethyst-studded gold bracelet on Demetrio’s wrist at fifty gold marks, and a small ruby pin on his tunic at twice that. The man would be good for twenty marks, he thought.
“I would be willing to wait,” Conan began, when Demetrio pulled the bracelet from his wrist and thrust it at him.
“Will you take that?” the fellow asked. “I would not risk another buying while I am gone to get coin. It is worth more than the twenty marks, I assure you. But add in that cloak, for I would not carry a bare blade in the streets.”
“Cloak and blade are yours,” the Cimmerian said, and quickly exchanged the fur-trimmed garment for the bracelet.
He felt a surge of joy as his fist closed over the amethyst-studded gold. No need to make do now with the few men ten gold pieces would hire. His Free-Company was literally in his grasp.