“I will not scream,” she said sullenly.
He suppressed a smile. “It would but make him easier to defeat, for he would see you the more as a woman and the less as an opponent.”
“But the sword. What do I do with the sword?”
“Beat him with it,” he said, and laughed at her look of complete uncomprehension. “Think of the sword as a stick, girl.” Understanding dawned on her features; she hefted the sica with both hands like a club. “And forget not to poke him,” he added. “Such as these usually think only to hack, forgetting a sword has a point. You remember it, and you’ll win.”
“How long will you talk to the wench?” Muktar shouted. “Your minutes are gone. An you talk long enough, perhaps Bayan will grow old, and even your jade can defeat him.”
Beside the bearded sea captain stood a wiry man of middle height, his sun-darkened torso stripped to the waist. With his bare tulwar he drew gleaming circles of steel, first to one side then the other, a tight smile showing yellowed teeth.
Conan’s heart sank. He had hoped Muktar would indeed choose his fat ship’s cook, or one of the bigger men of the crew, so as to intimidate Yasbet with her opponent’s sheer size. Thus Yasbet’s agility would count for more. Even if it meant eating his words, he could not allow her to be hurt. A bitter taste on his tongue, he opened his mouth to end it.
Yasbet strode out to meet the seaman before Conan could speak, shortsword gripped in her two small hands. She fixed the man with a defiant glare. “Bayan, are you called?” she sneered. “From the look of you, it should be Baya, for you have about you a womanish air.”
Conan stood with his mouth still open, staring at her. Had the wench gone mad?
Bayan’s dark eyes seemed about to pop from his narrow head. “I will make you beg me to prove my manhood to you,” he snarled.
“Muktar!” Conan called. Yasbet looked at him, pleading in her eyes, and despite himself he changed what he had been about to say. “This is but a demonstration, Muktar. No more. Does he harm her, you’ll die a heartbeat after he does.”
The bearded man jerked his head in a reluctant nod. Leaning close to Bayan he began whispering with low urgency.
The wiry sailor refused to listen. Raising his curved blade on high, he leaped toward Yasbet, a snarling grimace on his face and a terrible ululating cry rising from his mouth.
Conan put a hand to his sword hilt.
Bayan landed before her without striking, though, and it was immediately obvious that he thought to frighten her into immediate surrender. His grimace became a gloating smile.
Yasbet’s face paled, but with a shout of her own she thrust the sword into the seaman’s midsection. The unsharpened blade could not penetrate far, but the point was enough to start a narrow stream of blood, and the force of the blow bulged Bayan’s eyes.
He gagged and staggered, but she did not rest. Clumsily, but swiftly, she brought the blunted blade down like a club on the shoulder of his sword arm. Bayan’s scream was not of his choosing, this time. His blade dropped from a hand suddenly useless. Before the tulwar struck the deck Yasbet caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head, splitting his scalp to the bone. With a groan Bayan sank to his knees.
Conan watched in amazement as the wiry sailor tried desperately to crawl away. Yasbet pursued him across the deck, beating at his shoulders and back with the edgeless steel. Yelping, Bayan found himself against the rail. At one and the same time he tried to curl himself into a ball and claw his way through the wood to safety.
“Surrender!” Yasbet demanded, standing above him like a fury. She stabbed at Bayan’s buttocks, drawing a howl and a stain of red on his dirty once-white trousers.
Hand on his dagger, Muktar started toward her, a growl rising in his throat. Suddenly Conan’s blade was a shining barrier before the captain’s eyes.
“She won, did she not?” the young Cimmerian asked softly. “And you owe me five gold pieces. Or shall I shave your beard at the shoulders?”
Another shriek came from Bayan; the other buttock of his trousers bore a spreading red patch as well, now.
“She won,” Muktar muttered. He flinched as Conan caressed his beard with the broadsword, then almost shouted, “The wench won!”
“See that this goes no further,” Conan said warningly. He got a reluctant nod in reply. When the Cimmerian thrust out his palm, the gold coins were counted into it with even greater reluctance.
“I won!” Yasbet shouted. Waving her short-sword above her head, she capered gaily about the deck. “I won!”
Conan sheathed his blade and swept her into the air, swinging her in a circle. “Did I not say that you would?”
“You did!” she laughed. “Oh, you did! On my oath, I will believe anything that you tell me from this moment. Anything.”
He started to lower her feet to the deck, but her arms wove about his neck, and in some fashion he found himself kissing her. A pleasant armful, indeed, he thought. Soft round breasts flattened against his broad chest.
Abruptly he pulled her loose and set her firmly on the deck. “Practice, girl. There’s a mort of practice to be done before I grind an edge on that blade for you. And you did not fight as I told you. I should take a switch to you for that. You could have been hurt.”
“But, Conan,” she protested, her face falling.
“Place your feet so,” he said, demonstrating, “for balance. Do it, girl!”
Sullenly she complied, and he began to show her the exercises in the use of the short blade. That was the problem, he thought grimly, about setting out to protect a wench. Sooner or later you found yourself protecting her from you.
XV
Squatting easily on his heels against the pitching of the ship as it breasted long swells, Conan watched Yasbet work her blunted blade against a leather-wrapped bale of cloaks and tunics. Despite a freshening wind, sweat rolled down her face, but already she had gone ten times as long as she had managed the first day. She still wore her mannish garb, but had left off the woolen tunic, complaining that the coarse fabric scratched. The full curves of her breasts swelled at the lacings of her jerkin, threatening to burst the rawhide cords at her every exertion.
Sword arm dropping wearily, she looked at him with artistic pleading in her eyes. “Please, Conan, let me retire to my tent.” That tent, no more than a rough structure of grimy canvas, had been his idea, both to keep her from the constant wetting of sudden squalls and to shelter her sleep from lustful eyes. “Please? Already I will be sore.”
“There’s plenty of linament,” he said gruffly.
“It smells. And it stings. Besides, I cannot rub it on my back. Perhaps if you—”
“Enough rest,” he said, motioning her back to the bale.
“Slaver,” she muttered, but her shortsword resumed its whacking against leather.
Well over half their voyage was done. The coast of Hyrkania was now a dark line on the eastern horizon, though they had yet a way north to sail. Every day since placing the sica in her hands he had forced Yasbet to practice, exercising from gray dawn to purple dusk. He had dragged her from her blankets, poured buckets of water over her head when she whined of the midday heat, and threatened keelhauling when she begged to stop her work. He had tended and bandaged blisters on her small hands, as well, and to his surprise those blisters seemed at once a mark of pride to her and a spur.
Akeba dropped down beside him, eying Yasbet with respect. “She learns. Can you teach so well, and to a woman, there is need of you in the army, to train the many recruits we take of late.”
“She has no ideas of swordplay to unlearn,” Conan replied. “Also, she does exactly as I say.”
“Exactly?” Akeba laughed, lifting an eyebrow. At the look on Conan’s face he pulled his countenance into an expression of exaggerated blandness.
“Does your stomach still trouble you?” the youthful Cimmerian asked hopefully.
“My head and my legs now ignore the pitching,” Akeba replied with a fixed g
rin.
Conan gave him a doubtful look. “Then perhaps you would like some well-aged mussels. Muktar has a keg of the ripest—”
“No, thank you, Conan,” the Turanian said in haste, a certain tautness around his mouth. As though eager to change the subject, he added, “I have not noticed Bayan about today. You did not drop him over the side, did you?”
The Cimmerian’s mouth tightened. “I overheard him discussing his plans for Yasbet, and I spoke to him about it.”
“In friendly fashion, I trust. ’Tis you who mutters that these sea rats would welcome an excuse to slit our throats.”
“In friendly fashion,” Conan agreed. “He is nursing his bruises in his blankets this day.”
“Good,” the Turanian said grimly. “She is of an age with Zorelle.”
“A tasty morsel, that girl,” Sharak said, sitting down on Conan’s other side. “Were I but twenty years younger I would take her from you, Cimmerian.”
Yasbet’s sword clanged on the deck, drawing all three men’s eyes. She glared at them furiously. “I am no trained ape or dancing bear that you three may squat like farm louts and be entertained by me!”
She stalked away, then back to snatch up the sica—her eyes daring them to speak, as she did—and marched down the deck to disappear within her small tent before the mast.
“Your wench begins to develop a temper, Conan,” Sharak said, staring after her. “Perhaps you have made a mistake in teaching her to use a weapon.”
Akeba nodded with mock gravity. “She is no longer the shy and retiring maiden that once she was, Cimmerian, thanks to you. Of course, I realize that she is no longer a maiden at all, also thanks to you, but at least you could gentle her before she begins challenging us all to mortal combat.”
“How can you talk so?” Conan protested. “But moments gone you likened her to your own daughter.”
“Aye,” Akeba said gravely, his laughter gone. “I was much concerned with Zorelle’s virtue while she lived. I see things differently now. Now she is dead, I hope that she had what joy she could of her life.”
“I have not touched her,” Conan muttered reluctantly, and bridled at their disbelieving stares. “I rescued her. She’s innocent and alone, with none to protect her but me. Mitra’s Mercies! As well ask a huntsman to pen a gazelle fawn and slay it there for sport.”
Sharak hooted with laughter. “The tiger and the gazelle. But which of you is which? Which hunter, which prey? The wench has you marked, Cimmerian.”
“’Tis true,” Akeba said. He essayed a slight smile. “The girl is among those aboard this vessel who think her your wench. Zandru’s Nine Hells, do you think to be a holyman?”
“I may let the pair of you swim the rest of the way,” Conan growled. “I tell you … .” His words trailed off as Muktar loomed over the three men.
The bull-necked man tugged at his beard, spread fan-shaped across his chest, and eyed Conan with speculation. “We are followed,” he said finally. “A galley.”
Conan rose smoothly to his feet and strode to the stern, Akeba and Sharak scrambling in his wake. Muktar followed more slowly.
“I see nothing but water,” the Turanian sergeant complained, shading his eyes. Sharak muttered agreement, squinting furiously.
Conan saw the follower, though, seeming no more than a chip on the water in the distance, but with the faint sweep of motion at its sides that told of long oars straining for speed.
“Pirates?” Conan asked, Although there were many such on the Vilayet Sea, he did not truly believe those who followed were numbered among them.
Muktar shrugged. “Perhaps.” He did not sound as if he believed it either.
“What else could they be?” Akeba demanded.
Muktar glanced sideways at Conan, but did not speak.
“I still see nothing,” Sharak put in.
“How soon before they come up on us?” Conan said.
“Near dark,” Muktar replied. He looked at the gray-green water, its long swells feathering whitely in the wind, then peered at the sky, where pale gray clouds were layered against the afternoon blue. “We may have a storm before, though. The Vilayet is a treacherous bitch.”
The Cimmerian’s eyes locked on the approaching ship, one huge fist thumping the rail as he thought. How to fight the battle that must come, and win? How?
“If we have a storm,” the old astrologer said, “then we will hide from them in it.”
“If it comes,” Conan told him.
“I have counted their oarstroke,” Muktar said abruptly, “and they will kill slaves if they do not slacken it. Yet I do not believe they will. No one cares enough about Hyrkanians to chase them with such vigor. And Foam Dancer is a small ship, not a dromond loaded to the gunnels with ivory and spices. It must be you three, or the wench. Have you the crown of Turan hidden in your bales? Is your jade a princess stolen from her father? Why do they follow so?”
“We are traders,” Conan said levelly. “And you have been paid to carry us to Hyrkania and back to Turan.”
“I’ve gotten no coin for the last.”
“You will get your gold. Unless you let pirates take our trade goods. And your ship. Then all you’ll receive is a slaver’s manacles, an you survive.”
Motioning the others to follow, the big Cimmerian left Muktar muttering into his beard and peering at the ship behind.
In the waist of the ship Conan took a place by the rail where he, too, could watch the galley. It seemed larger, now. Tamur joined them.
“It follows us,” Conan said quietly.
“Baalsham,” the Hyrkanian snarled at the same instant that Akeba, nodding, said, “Jhandar.”
Sharak shook his staff at the galley with surprising fierceness. “Let him send his demons. I am ready for them.”
Tamur’s dark eyes shone. “This time we will carve him as a haunch of beef if he has a thousand demons.”
Conan met Akeba’s gaze. It seemed more likely that those on Foam Dancer would be meat on a spit.
“How many men does such a vessel carry?” the Turanian asked. “I know little of naval matters.”
Conan’s own knowledge of the sea was limited to his short time with the smugglers in Sultanapur, but he had been pursued by such vessels before. “There are two banks of oars to a side, but the oar-slaves will not be used to fight. A vessel of that size might carry five score besides the crew.”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the rigging lines humming in the rising wind. Then Sharak said hollowly, “So many? This adventuring begins to seem ill-suited for a man of my years.”
“By the One-Father, I shall die happy,” Tamur said, “an I know Baalsham goes with me into the long night.”
Akeba shook his head bleakly. “He will not be on this ship. Such men send others to do their killing. But at least we shall find blood enough to pay our ferryman’s fee, eh, Cimmerian?”
“It will be a glorious fight in which to die,” Tamur agreed.
“I do not intend to die yet,” the Cimmerian said grimly.
“The storm,” Sharak said, his words holding a new excitement. “The storm will hide us.” The clouds were thicker now, and darker, obscuring the lowering sun.
“Mayhap,” Conan replied. “But we will not depend on that.
The god of the icy peaks and wind-ravaged crags of Conan’s Cimmerian homeland was Crom, Dark Lord of the Mound, who gave a man life and will, and nothing more. It was given to each man to carry his own fate in his hands and his heart and his head.
Conan strode aft to Muktar, who still stood gazing at the galley. The bronze glint of its ram could be seen plainly now, knifing through gray swells. “Will they reach us before night falls?” Conan asked the captain. “Or before the storm breaks?”
“The storm may never break,” Muktar muttered. “On the Vilayet lightning may come from a sky where the sun was bright an instant before, or clouds may darken for days, then lift without a drop of rain. Do you lose me my ship, Cimmerian, I??
?ll see your corpse.”
“It was in my mind you were a sea captain,” Conan taunted, “not an old woman wanting only to play with her grandchildren.” He waited for Muktar’s neck to swell with anger and his face empurple, then went on. “Listen. We may all be saved. For as long as we are able, we must run before them. Then … .”
As Conan spoke the dark color slowly left Muktar’s face. Once he blanched, and tried to stop the Cimmerian’s flow of words, but Conan would not pause for the other’s objections. He pressed on, and after a time Muktar began to listen intently, then to nod.
“It may work,” he said finally. “By Dagon’s Golden Tail, it may just work. See to your nomads, Cimmerian.” Whirling with more agility that would have seemed possible, the bulky captain roared, “To me, you whoreson dogs! To me, and listen to how I’ll save your worthless hides still another time!”
“What in Mitra’s name is that all about?” Akeba asked when Conan was back at the rail.
As Muktar’s voice rose and fell in waves, haranguing the crew in the stern, Conan told his companions what he planned.
A grin appeared on Sharak’s thin face, and he broke into a little dance. “We have them. We have them. What a grand adventure!”
Tamur’s smile was wolfish. “Whether we escape or die, this will be a thing to be told around the campfires. Come, Turanian, and show us if any remnant of Hyrkanian blood remains in you.” With a wry shake of his head Akeba followed Tamur to join the other nomads.
It was done then, Conan thought. Nothing remained but … Yasbet. Even as her name came into his head, she was there before him. Her soft round eyes caressed his face.
“I heard,” she said. “Where is my place in this?”
“I will make you a place in the midst of the bales,” he told her, “where you will be safe. From archers or slingers, at least.”
“I will not hide.” Her eyes flashed, suddenly no longer soft. “You’ve taught me much, but not to be a coward!”