KHALAR ZYM CROUCHED, tracing a finger through a footprint high on a ledge overlooking the Shaipur Pass, and Marique studied him carefully. Already one of his troopers had fallen quite by accident, confirming that the ledge was the point from which Remo had been launched. That man’s misfortune saved Khalar Zym from having to toss a man from that height, something her father would not have hesitated to do.
Her father studied the footprint keenly, a hunter assessing spoor. It had been forever since she had seen that in him, and it pleased Marique no end. Khalar Zym glanced down and back at the much broader shelf a dozen feet below where she waited with the others. A trail led back around the promontory to a small valley in which they’d already discovered traces of a campsite and more footprints. Her father nodded slowly, then stood.
“He is a tall man, and heavy. Very strong.” Khalar Zym pointed at the path he’d taken to ascend to the ledge. “He climbed up here with Remo over his shoulder. I imagine he broke Remo’s neck before carrying him, but he’s a very good climber. Born in the mountains, no doubt.”
A thrill ran through her. Cimmeria is full of mountains. She bent, finding another of the footprints, but a swirling zephyr vanished it before she could touch the track. She listened for whispers, but caught only the hiss of the wind.
Khalar Zym opened his arms and raised his face to the sun. “I wish, Marique, your mother was here. I shall bring her, once she is back. From here I can look down to see the instrument of our victory, and out to see the world that will be ours.”
“Yes, Father.”
He looked down at her. “Have you more sense of the woman, Marique?”
“Yes, Father.” Marique pointed toward the hidden camp. “She slept there. Remo, too, and apart. Their essence yet resides where they bedded down.”
“And what of her protector?”
“You read more in his tracks than I can read in his essence, Father. She has powerful blood. Remo reeked of hedge wizardry meant to cure his many ills; but the man, nothing. Other than lingering impressions of hot curses uttered in the name of a cold, uncaring god, nothing.”
Khalar Zym leaped down to her level—a dangerous maneuver, but one he dared, certain as he was of his destiny. “What would your mother tell me of him, Marique?”
She would miss even the tracks in the dust, Father. The girl shook her head. “Far more than I could, Father. She would express caution.”
Khalar Zym’s expression shifted to an impassive mask. “She would not doubt me, Marique . . . as you apparently do.”
“No, Father, no.” Marique immediately dropped to her knees and kissed his boots. “She loved you as do I. Caution is only that you should not waste your valuable energies to capture the girl. Please, let me do it for you, to prove my love. I will bring her to you, I will.”
“I am certain you would, Marique. And I do love you for that.” Her father chuckled lightly. “But the challenge was issued to me. I have no intention of going alone, but I will go. I must see with my own eyes the man who would presume to command me. But fear not, daughter mine, for your love endears you to me; and for that reason, I grant you the honor of being at my side.”
CHAPTER 23
CONAN PACED THE sandy courtyard of the Shaipur outpost with the fierce economy of a panther. The outpost had been established many centuries before atop a cliff overlooking a natural bay with deep blue waters. The kings of Argos had intended it to house tax collectors who could discourage smugglers, but the smugglers paid better than the kings. As the land around the outpost became exhausted, the outpost could no longer sustain itself. The people fled, taking with them most anything of value, and pirate raids successfully ended the smuggling trade.
Of two things Conan had been certain when he stuffed the note written in Tamara’s blood into Remo’s mouth and dropped him. The first was that the falling rock would not kill Khalar Zym. Civilized men might have added to the note some paean to the glory of Fortune, hoping the stone would crush the life out of his enemy. Conan had no doubt that while some gods were capricious enough to interfere with the affairs of men, Crom was not. For him, the only satisfaction would be watching Conan slay or be slain. While Conan never minded a bit of luck here and there, those who counted on it always ran out of it when they needed it most.
Second, Conan knew that Khalar Zym would not abide by the admonition to come alone. The man had no honor, therefore could only be trusted to act dishonorably. He was, however, vain. Tamara had described him in his ebony armor, appearing at the monastery as if he were some god of the underworld. Such a man would believe that Conan—simpleton that he must be for issuing such a challenge—expected him to come alone. Khalar Zym would, for the sake of appearance, come to the outpost and meet Conan in open combat. This would give Conan his best chance at slaying the man.
Conan had prepared his battlefield well. Opposite the entrance, at the top of stairs on the balustraded outpost, Tamara stood bravely. A rope had been looped about her waist and appeared to bind her hands behind her, and her body to the worn stone pillar against which she leaned. On either side of her burned torches in sconces, giving her the appearance of a sacrifice intended to appease some ancient and terrible god.
The folds of her robe hid a dagger. If Khalar Zym got past Conan, she was prepared to pin the madman’s tongue to the top of his skull.
Conan looked to the west and shook his head. What fools these civilized men are. Khalar Zym had sent troops ahead—most likely his female archers—to take up a position near the ruins of the western wall. Even if they had not knocked over some of the piles of rocks Conan had set up to warn him of their advance, the dust they raised as they slipped into position would have given them away.
Their arrival heralded that of their master. Khalar Zym entered through the long-shattered main gate, pausing at the top of the stone ramp leading down into the courtyard. Clad in black leather armor and purple skirts that contrasted sharply with the dusty beige of the outpost’s walls, he surveyed the ruins and deliberately avoided catching Conan’s eye. His gaze measured the place not as a combatant might, but as a conqueror come to survey a far-flung shard of his empire.
Behind him, clinging to what little shadow existed in the sun-washed outpost, lurked a woman. In her, Conan recognized the strange girl he had seen in his father’s forge. The Cimmerian shivered as he recalled the rasp of her tongue and her whisper. Khalar Zym might have grown to be evil, but she had been raised in it, steeped in it. Killing him alone would not end the threat to the world.
Khalar Zym plucked a small leather bag from his belt and tossed it into the sand. It clinked and gold coins spilled out. “You are bold, northerner. I admire valor, even when it is in service to a doomed cause. There, take your reward.”
Conan shook his head. “I do not want your gold.”
The man in black armor studied him for a moment. “An ambitious man. What do you wish? Jewels? To replace Remo at my right hand?” He glanced over his shoulder at the woman. “To win my daughter and become my heir? You exalt yourself.”
Conan drew his sword.
Khalar Zym’s face lit with surprise. “You wish to kill me?”
Conan beckoned him forward with a hand.
Khalar Zym sighed. “I had so hoped for more. So many people have wanted to kill me. It becomes tedious, and I really haven’t the time for it.” He raised a hand. “Marique, my pet, show me how much you love me. Kill him.”
THOUGH SHE WISHED to take a moment to luxuriate in the warmth of her father’s words, Marique fell to obeying his command in an instant. In her left-hand palm lay a half-dozen shards of clay plucked from the fortress’s crumbling outer walls. Upon them, using one of the Stygian talons, Marique had drawn the image of warriors, and covered them with venerable glyphs of considerable power. She closed her hand into a fist, crumbling them into dust, then opened her hand and blew.
The dust spread into a cloud that rolled down over the courtyard. The barbarian drew back, apparently intelligent enough
to recognize sorcery, but not nearly bright enough to understand it would be his undoing. The dust plunged into the courtyard sand, mingling again with the earth that created it, and the sand itself rippled. The Cimmerian studied the patterns, shifting this way and that, tracking them and seeking a position from which he could fight.
A shiver ran through Marique. She’d not known he was a Cimmerian, that impression had just come to her. But now, as she watched him, this magnificent man whose muscles rippled under flesh bronzed by the sun’s kiss, she understood that he was the Cimmerian. She sniffed, hoping for more than dust, for a hint of his scent. He is special.
Her stomach twisted. It took her a moment to understand the emotion. Fear, but fear as she had never known it before. This man could slay her father. And though she hated that thought, she did not call out a warning. For in the wake of fear came a thrill as she watched her father work his way around toward the woman, blithely unconcerned that his destiny danced with naked steel in the courtyard below.
CONAN PULLED BACK, watching the movement within the sand. Whatever lurked there, the things moved as sharks through the water in the aftermath of a sea battle. Conan leaped across their paths, seeing how quickly they could turn, then spun and lashed out low, expecting to split the skull of some saw-toothed serpent or venomous blind worm.
He found his target, but instead of slicing through its head, he cut cleanly through both skeletal shins. His blade met less resistance than it might have done with a human foe. Worse yet, as his sword passed through, sand flowed down from above, and up from below, closing the cut without the hint of a scar. The sandlich slashed back at him with a curved dagger blade made of glass, which shattered when Conan blocked the cut. The sandlich spun away, but the blade grew back.
Conan took one step toward it, but the warrior, its death’s-head grinning, melted back into the sand. Another rose behind him, its shadow his only warning, and the sting of a dagger his reward for sloth. The Cimmerian whirled, again aiming low. He expected his foe to melt away, and he was right. His blade carved the skull up from down, leaving a small pyramid of dust to mark its passing.
Conan’s eyes narrowed. He had the sandliches’ measure now. Though he had no use for sorcery, he’d had ample experience of it. The two he’d faced had strange sigils inscribed in breastbone and forehead. While these doubtless gave them life, they also provided him with targets to destroy them. And once them, then Khalar Zym. Or, perhaps, the daughter.
Two of the warriors jetted up through the sand, one to each side. Instead of cutting at them, Conan dove forward, tucking himself into a roll, then came up and spun. Both of them came in slashing; what had been dagger blades had grown into long swords, similar to the one Khalar Zym wore. The Cimmerian smiled, ducking both slashes, then lunged, piercing one’s breastbone glyph. It evaporated as Conan broke the other’s sword, and he allowed himself a quick glance at Marique. They shall not stop me.
MARIQUE FROZE FOR a heartbeat as the Cimmerian’s hot gaze met hers. Her sandliches should have dispatched him easily. They’d slaughtered countless enemies when she’d used them before. Then, in a flash of insight, she understood the barbarian’s smile and why he looked at her. Her sandliches fought in the style of her father, but only at the level of her understanding of swordsmanship. All she knew of it was what she had gleaned from watching her father dispatch enemies. She was no match for the barbarian in that realm.
Will my father be?
She could not bring herself to imagine her father any man’s inferior, but dared not chance that he was. From a small pouch at the back of her belt, she drew a small brass device shaped like a dragonfly and a small vial sealed with wax. She flicked open a panel on the dragonfly’s thorax, scraped the wax from the vial, and poured a thick, black liquid into the hollow body. She snapped the panel shut again. The wings glistened as the poison oozed out to cover them.
Muttering words she’d learned from her mother when the dragonfly had been given her as a child’s amusement, she launched it into the air, and sent it into orbit around the outpost.
“CONAN”
The Cimmerian turned at Tamara’s cry and bounded up the steps three at a time. Khalar Zym had reached her side. She’d slashed at him, and he’d recoiled from her attack. She moved to press it before he could draw his sword, but one of the sandliches had risen to grab her ankle.
Khalar Zym drew his curved sword and stepped back, allowing Conan to meet him on level ground. They circled for a moment, each eyeing the other. Khalar Zym finally nodded, and beckoned Conan forward with the same casual gesture the Cimmerian had made before.
Conan darted in, thrusting low, then bringing his blade up for a cut at Khalar Zym’s groin. Zym parried the blade out and up in a circle, steel skirling. Conan drew his blade back as they passed, then whirled and slapped, knowing his blade would hit flat. Khalar Zym had not expected that, but still turned and avoided most of the blow. Nonetheless, the blade caught him over the ear, knocking him back and sending him stumbling down the steps.
Khalar Zym’s hand came up and fingers probed his ear. They came away bloody. He looked from his hand to Conan. “Who are you?”
“You left a boy in Cimmeria holding a chain. You stole something from his people.”
Recognition washed over Khalar Zym’s face, but in its wake came a dismissive snort. “You’ll have to do better than pinking my ear, boy.”
Conan, intent on pinking the other ear as well, and thrusting steel through the skull to link them, flew down the stairs at Khalar Zym. The Cimmerian’s sword came up in an overhand blow. Khalar Zym blocked it, but staggered back two steps. He thrust, hoping to drive Conan back, but Conan beat the blade aside and lunged again. Khalar Zym retreated, a line on his armor revealing how close Conan had come to opening an artery.
As Conan engaged Khalar Zym at the outpost’s heart, Tamara engaged two of the sandliches. With a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other, she fended off the sorcerous creatures. One ducked beneath a swipe with the torch, but Tamara’s front kick crushed the sigil on his breastbone. She leaped away from the second, moving up toward the outpost’s seaside wall.
Khalar Zym drew back, becoming less arrogant in his stance. Conan knew better than to mistake that as a retreat. He waited, knowing the man who had destroyed his village would have to prove himself the superior warrior. Zym obligingly drove forward, a stamp feint raising dust, then lunged. As Conan went to parry, Zym brought his blade up and over. That thrust missed and Zym sailed past, giving Conan an easy shot at his back.
Conan hesitated for a heartbeat. Zym’s twin blades parted, one twisting around and locking into place at the other end of the hilt. As the man whirled, the second blade passed through where Conan would have been. The blow would have cut him from hip to spine, and before he fell, the second slice would have taken his head.
As Khalar Zym came around, Conan parried his slashing blow low, then whipped his left fist around, catching the man in the face. Zym spun away, flailing to catch his balance. He went down to a knee and continued to twist around. He regained his feet, swaying drunkenly, then spat blood from a split lip.
Before Conan could close, he caught a glint of light in the corner of his left eye. For a moment he thought it was an arrow and twisted away. It still sliced him, a flesh wound, nothing more, on the neck. It plunged past and into the dirt, a metal dragonfly, which Conan stomped on contemptuously.
“Enough games, Khalar Zym. It is time for you to die.” Conan took a step toward the man, but suddenly the landscape shimmered strangely. Khalar Zym’s shape blurred and wavered as if he were a heat mirage. The man lunged and Conan parried, but it came slow and Zym’s blade cut him over the thigh. Numbness began to spread over Conan’s left shoulder, a tingling descending that arm.
The Cimmerian reeled back, falling at the foot of the steps. Khalar Zym loomed above him, twin blades whirling. “Now you join your misbegotten clan, Cimmerian.”
“Touch him, Khalar Zym, and I throw mysel
f from the battlement.”
Khalar Zym hesitated and Conan scuttled back up the steps. Though he could only see her as a dim outline, Tamara stood there on the wall, tall between crenels, a burning torch held aloft. “If he dies, so do your plans.”
Khalar Zym retreated to the middle of the courtyard. “Well played, monk.”
“Master Fassir taught me well.”
“Alas, not well enough.” He raised a hand. “Cherin, your archers. Varminting points. Take her.”
Around the western wall appeared the female archers, bows drawn, arrows with thick, blunt points nocked.
Tamara’s voice gained urgency. “Now, Conan!”
Though the world blazed in some spots and grew dim in others, though his limbs quivered and his tongue had thickened in his mouth, Conan sped into action. He lumbered up the steps, or so it seemed to him, though, in reality, thick thews made short work of the distance. Bows thrummed and a few arrows hit him like punches. More had hit Tamara and she fell inward toward the courtyard, but still she had the presence of mind to pitch her torch to the left, through the hole that led into the bowels of the outpost.
Conan and Artus had once explored the outpost as a potential sanctuary for their corsairs. It had been thoroughly looted and in need of an abundance of repairs. It would not suit them, but in it they located several tunnels filled with a viscous mixture of naptha and oil that the Argosians had once used to project fire onto attacking ships below. Since their arrival at the outpost, Tamara and Conan had filled urns and casks with the stuff, placing it where Khalar Zym would most likely hide his troops, and laying a trail to it that led back to a number of holes like the one into which Tamara had cast her torch.
As she fell inward, Conan rose to meet her. He caught her around the waist, gained the top of the battlement in a step, then launched himself into the air. Behind him, in a series of explosions, fire geysered up and gushed out. Archers screamed and a few fell toward the sea. Others launched arrows that sped past. But of his plunging fall into the water, aside from a brief glimpse of the Hornet coming around the headland and into the bay, Conan remembered nothing.