The house where Conan’s company of rogues was gathered lay just ahead. That morning she had watched him ride out with half his company. A short time later another large contingent of his men had departed by another gate and trailed after the first. Wily Cimmerian! She had long since gotten over the foolishness of failing to respect his abilities. He would be taken in no ordinary trap. But then she was no ordinary woman.
Unbidden, her thoughts went back to that woman of the nobility he had been escorting. Did she know him, he had already visited the wench’s bed. He had always had an eye for willing wenches, and few were those who were not willing did he once smile at them. The red-haired woman wished she could get her hands on this Synelle. Lady, indeed. She would not soil her hands with the like of those who called themselves ladies. Karela would show her what a real woman looked like, then send her back to Conan as a present, stuffed naked into a sack. When someone had offered her gold to burn the jade’s farms, she had not stopped to ask why or query who the man with the deep-set, commanding eyes was behind his mask of black silk. It had been a chance to strike at Conan, and his precious Synelle, and she leaped at it. She would prick him and prick him until he was forced to flee, and if he would not … .
Angrily she pulled her mind back to the matter at hand. She no longer cared what women he took, she told herself. Such interest in the man had brought her naught but grief. With the men he had taken to protect his new trull, he could not have left many behind. She looked through the arched gateway as she passed. Yes. There were only a handful to be seen, playing at dice against the side of the fountain in the courtyard. He who had made the cast cursed, and the others laughed as they scooped up his losings.
Karela raised a hand to her face as if brushing away a fly, and two men pushing a handcart toward her, its flat bed piled high with wooden boxes held in place by ropes, suddenly turned it into the alley beside the house. Karela followed them. The men glanced at her questioningly; she nodded, and they turned to watch the street.
One, a dark-faced Zamoran with drooping mustaches, whom she had taken on out of memory of better days, said softly, “No one looks.”
In the space of two breaths Karela scrambled up the carefully arranged boxes and into a window on the second floor. It was Conan’s room. Her sources of information had discovered that for her easily enough.
Her lip curled contemptuously as she looked around the bare chamber. So this was what he had come to since forsaking a palace in Nemedia. She had never heard the straight of his departing that land when he had been offered honors and wealth by the King, but it brought a measure of continuing satisfaction that he had not profited from the adventures which ended in her flight. It did her good to think of him brought low. Yet the blankets were folded neatly on the bed. There were no cobwebs on the ceiling, no dust in the corners, and the floor had been freshly swept. A woman, she thought, and not likely it was his fine Synelle. The Cimmerian gathered a zenana about him like an easterner.
Sternly she reminded herself of her lack of interest in Conan’s women. She had come for that obscene bronze figure, and nothing more. But where to begin searching? There did not look to be many places for hiding. Beneath the bed, perhaps.
Before she could take a step, the door opened and a girl wearing plain white robes walked in. There was something oddly familiar about her face and hair, though Karela could swear she had never seen the girl before.
“Keep your silence, wench,” Karela commanded. “Close the door and answer my questions quickly, and you’ll come to no harm.”
“Wench!” the girl said, her eyes flashing indignantly. “What are you doing here … wench? I think I’ll let you see if you like Fabio’s switch. Then you can answer questions for me.”
“I told you,” Karela began, but the girl was already turning back to the door. With a curse the woman bandit jumped across the room and grappled with her, managing to kick the door shut as she did.
She expected the girl to surrender, or try to scream for help at most, but with a sqawl of rage the other woman buried her hands in Karela’s red hair. The two women fell to the floor in a kicking, nail-clawing heap.
Derketo, Karela thought, she did not want to kill the jade, but she had defended herself too long with a sword to remember well this womanfighting. She almost screamed as the other sank teeth into her shoulder; handfuls of her hair were at the point of being ripped from her head. Desperately she slammed a knee into the girl’s belly. Breath left the other woman in a gasp, and Karela wriggled forward to kneel on her arms. Her dagger slipped into her hand, and she held it before the girl’s face.
“Now be silent, Derketo take you!” she panted. The girl glared up at her defiantly, but held her tongue.
Abruptly Karela realized what was familiar about the girl. The eyes were different, but the color of her hair, the shape of her face. Conan had found himself an imitation of herself. She could not think whether to laugh, or cry, or slit the wench’s throat. Or wait for the Cimmerian and slit his. No interest, she told herself again. No interest at all.
“What is your name?” she grated. That would never do. She made an effort to sound more friendly, if that was possible while brandishing a dagger in the wench’s face. “What’s your name, girl? I like to know who I’m talking to.”
The woman beneath her hesitated, then said, “Julia. And that is all you will get from me.”
Karela dressed her face with a smile. “Julia, Conan has a bronze figure that I must have, a filthy thing with horns. An you’ve seen it, you’ll not have forgotten. No woman could. Tell me where it is, and I’ll leave you unharmed when I go.”
“I’ll tell you nothing!” Julia spat. But her eyes had flickered to a corner of the room.
There was nothing there at all that Karela could see. Still … . “Very well, Julia, I must search without your help then. But I’ll have to bind you. Now hear my warning well. Do you try to fight or flee, either one, this,” she gestured with her blade, “will find a home in your heart. Do you understand?”
Julia’s face was still filled with fury, but she nodded, albeit with obvious reluctance.
Carefully Karela cut away Julia’s robe. The girl flinched, but otherwise did not change her hatefilled expression. As Karela was slicing strips from the robe with her dagger she could not help noticing her naked prisoner’s body. The Cimmerian always had had a liking for full-breasted women, she thought sourly. But hers were better. That was, if she had still been interested in him in that way, which she was not.
“Roll over,” she commanded, nudging Julia with her foot. When the girl obeyed, Karela swiftly tied her hands and feet. The wench groaned through clenched teeth as she pulled the bindings together in the small of the naked woman’s back, but the threat of the dagger was enough to keep the protest muted. Not comfortable, Karela thought savagely, but then the girl had not truly answered her question. A wadding of cloth fastened with another strip of cloth did her a gag, but before Karela left she lifted Julia’s face by a handful of hair. “Conan likes round bottoms,” she said with a biting smile. “You have a bottom like a boy.”
Julia jerked wildly at her bonds and made angry sounds behind her gag, but Karela was already studying the corner the girl’s eyes had indicated. There was nothing there. Neither crack in the plaster nor new work gave sign that anything had been hidden behind the wall, and no opening in the fly-specked ceiling … . A board sagged beneath her foot, and she smiled.
Swiftly she knelt and levered up the floorboard with her dagger. The malevolent bronze lay beneath, nestled in decades of dirt and rat droppings. Fitting, she thought. She reached for the horned figure, but her fingers stopped, quivering, a handsbreadth away. She could not bring herself to touch it. The evil she had felt before still radiated from it, twisting her stomach. Contact with it would surely have her wretching. Hastily she fetched a blanket from the bed, folded it around the bronze, and gathered it up like a sack, holding the weighty burden well away from her. Even so she could
sense the abomination of the thing, but so long as she did not have to look at it she could stand carrying it.
At the window she paused. “Thank Conan for me,” she told the struggling girl. “Tell him I thank him for five hundred pieces of gold.”
With that she dropped through the window and scampered down the boxes. In the alley she hid the blanket-wrapped figure inside a box on the cart. And the relief it was to get rid of it, she thought, even after so brief a contact.
“We’ll meet in one turn of the glass,” she told the mustached Zamoran, “at the Carellan Stables.”
As she slipped back into the crowded street, the hood of her cloak once more shielding her face, she glanced regretfully at the sun. Too late today to post a man before the royal palace. On the morrow, though, the signal would be sent, and by nightfall she would have her five hundred pieces of gold. She wished fervently that she could see the Cimmerian’s face when he learned how much he had lost.
15
Silvery hair and slit robe alike flowing behind her, Synelle raced through the wide corridors of her great house, heedless of the horrified cries of servants and slaves at her dusty dishevelment, unhearing of their pleas after her welfare and concern for her precipitate return. Conan had left ten of his archers, now standing watch at the entrances, to protect her, then rode off before she could stop him. To deal with Count Antimides, one of those left behind had told her. But she would not wait for him to deal with the Mitraaccursed wretch. Antimides had struck at her—at her!—and his destruction, utter and complete, was her right and hers alone. The means of it must be exquisite, so that when the truth of it could at last be proclaimed to the world the expunging of that excresence would be told and retold for centuries. His desire for the crown and and chains he had meant to emprison her in, that was it.
From a wall she snatched a mirror of silvered glass. With that under her arm, she swept into her secret chamber. From amidst the scintillant flasks and seething beakers of vile substances she took a vial of Antimides’ blood. He had been a useful, if unknowing, tool until now, adding to the confusion and weakening those she would eventually have to cow, but always had she been aware that he might become dangerous to her. That blood had been obtained from an ensorceled serving girl, one who often shared Antimides’ bed and passed on to Synelle, for the bewitchment that held her, all she learned of the great lord’s plans, and kept against just such a day as this. Necromantic spells that could hold a corpse incorruptible for a thousand years kept it liquid.
With great care she sketched the crown of Ophir on the mirror in the count’s blood. Below that she drew a sanguine chain.
“See yourself with the crown you seek upon your head, Antimides,” she whispered. “But only for a time. A brief, painful time.” Laughing cruelly, she bent back to her dark work.
“We attract attention,” Machaon announced to no one in particular.
The file of nineteen armored horsemen in spiked helms with round shields slung on the arms, led by Conan, made its way slowly through the streets of Ianthe, and the crowds who parted before them did indeed stare. Deadly intensity hung about them like a cloud, stunning even those who would have looked away, numbing their reticence to see.
“There will be trouble for this,” Narus said dolefully. He rode next in line behind Machaon. “Even can we slay Antimides—and the gods alone know how many guards he has—Iskandrian will not look the other way for our killing of a noble within the very walls of the capital. We shall have to flee Ophir, if we can.”
“And if we do not slay him,” Conan said grimly, “then still we must flee. Or would you ever be sitting with your back to a wall for protection, ever looking across your shoulder for his next attack?”
And more attacks there would be, the Cimmerian was sure. Whatever Antimides’ reason for wanting to seize Synelle, he could only be seeking Conan’s death to still his tongue. The attacks would continue until Conan was dead, or Antimides was.
“I didn’t say we should not kill him,” Narus sighed. “I simply said we must flee afterwards.”
“If we must flee in any case,” Taurianus demanded, “why should we then take this risk? Let the lord live, and let us be gone from Ianthe with all our blood in us.” The lanky man looked more glum even than Narus, and the dark hair that straggled from under his helm was damp with anxious sweat.
“You’ll never make a captain, Ophirean,” the gaunt-faced mercenary replied. “A Free-Company lives by its name, and dies by it, as well. Can we be attacked with impunity, then the company is as dead as if we have all had our weazands slit, and we are no better than vagabonds and beggars.”
Taurianus muttered under his breath, but spoke no more complaints aloud.
“There is Antimides’ palace,” Machaon said abuptly. He frowned suspiciously at the sprawling, golden-domed edifice of marble and alabaster. “I see no guards. I do not like this, Cimmerian.”
Antimides’ palace was second in size within Ianthe only to the royal palace itself, a massive structure of columns and terraces and spired towers, with broad, deep steps leading up from the street. There were no guards in sight on those steps, and one of the great bronze doors stood ajar.
A trap perhaps, Conan thought. Had Antimides learned of his failure already? Was he inside with his guards gathered close about him for protection? Such would be a foolish move, sure to have been protested by any competent captain. Yet a lord with Antimides’ arrogance might well have bludgeoned his guard commander into complacent compliance long since.
He turned in his saddle, studying the men behind. The seven besides Machaon and Narus who had crossed the border from Nemedia with him were there. They had followed him far, and loyally.
Long and hard had he labored to build this company, and to keep it, yet fairness made him say, “What numbers we face inside I do not know. Does any man wish to leave, now is the time.”
“Speak not foolishness,” Machaon said. Taurianus opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking.
Conan nodded. “Four men to hold the horses,” he ordered as he dismounted.
With steady, purposeful tread they climbed the white marble steps, drawing swords as they did. Conan stepped through the open door, its broad bronze face scribed hugely with the arms of Antimides’ house, and found himself in a long, domeceilinged hall, with grand, alabaster stairs sweeping up to a columned balcony that encircled the hall.
A buxom serving girl in plain green robes that left her pretty legs bare to the tops of her thighs dashed out of a door to one side of the hall, a large, weighty bag over her shoulders. A scream bubbled out of her when she saw the armed and armored men invading the palace. Dropping the bag, she sped wailing back the way she had come.
Narus thoughtfully eyed the array of golden goblets and silver plate that had spilled out of the bag. “A guess as to what happens here?”
“Antimides fleeing our righteous wrath?” Machaon hazarded hopefully.
“We cannot afford let him escape us,” Conan said. He did not believe the count would flee, but there was strangeness here that worried him. “Spread out. Find him.”
They scattered in all directions, but warily, swords at the ready. Too many battles had they faced, too many traps had been sprung around them, for complacency. The continued survival of a mercenary lay in his readiness to give battle on an instant. Any instant.
A lord’s chambers would be above, the Cimmerian thought. He took the curving stairs upward.
Room by room he searched, finding no one, living or dead. Everywhere there were signs of hasty flight, and of a desire to carry away everything of value. Marks where tapestries had been pulled from the walls and carpets taken up. Tables overturned, whatever they had borne gone. Golden lamps wrenched halfway from brackets that had resisted being pried from the walls. Oddly, every mirror he saw was starred with long cracks.
Then he pushed open a door with his sword, and looked into a room that seemed untouched. Furniture stood upright, golden bowls and
silver vases in place, and tapestries depicting heroic scenes of Ophir’s past hung from the walls. The one mirror in the room was cracked, however, as the others were. An intricately carved chair was set before it, the high back to the door, but the voluminous, gold-embroidered green silk sleeve of a man’s robe hung over one gilded wooden arm.
With the strides of a great hunting cat the giant Cimmerian crossed the room, presented his sword to the throat of the man seated there. “Now, Antimides—” Conan’s words died abruptly, and the hairs on the back of his neck stirred.
Count Antimides sat with eyes bulging from an empurpled face and blackened tongue protruding between teeth clenched and bared in a rictus of agony. The links of a golden chain were buried in the swollen flesh of his neck, and his own hands clutched the ends of that chain, seeming even in the iron grip of death to strain at drawing it tighter.
“Crom!” Conan muttered. He would not believe that fear of his vengeance had been enough to make Antimides sit before a mirror and watch as he strangled himself. The Cimmerian had met sorcery often enough before to know the smell of it.
“Conan! Where are you?”
“In here!” he replied to the shout from the hall.
Machaon and Narus entered with a slender, frightened youth in filthy rags that had been fine satin robes not long past. His wrists bore the bloody marks of manacles; the palor of his skin and the thinness of his face spoke of long days in darkness and missed meals.
“Look what we found chained below,” the tattooed man said.
Not so much of a youth, Conan saw at second glance; there was that in the man’s manner—a petulant thrust of a too-full lower lip; a sulkiness of eye and stance—that gave an air of boyishness.