Conan the Guardian Read online

  Conan wished he could find something to laugh about. From the stir of movement downhill, the captain of guards was already on his way up, and with a mounted escort.

  As Akimos rode uphill, he heard trumpets and drums sounding. Guards ran past, carrying clubs and short-swords, passing Akimos as if he were riding a turtle.

  The guards vanished around the bend in the trail, to be greeted by more shouts. Akimos almost spurred his horse, before he remembered its condition. The next time he wore a disguise, he vowed, it would be as someone who travelled well-mounted!

  Around the bend lay a clearing, recently cut from the forest. A pile of dressed logs lay ready to be rolled to the river and sent downstream. Atop the pile stood a giant, tangled black hair sweeping broad shoulders. Huge hands danced in signals, sending ragged men with axes and mauls scurrying about.

  Akimos had been neither Guardian nor caravan guard nor yet free lance, but he had seen all three in action. He knew that he was seeing a war captain readying his men for a fight.

  The camp’s guards’ faces told plainly of the same knowledge. They gripped their weapons, but even those with bows were pale and sweating. All kept their distance, even the captain.

  That worthy turned to Akimos. “Lord—”

  “Hsstt! Guard your tongue, fool!”

  “Councillor, then. Best stay back. That mad Cimmerian and his men have struck down two of my guards. They refuse to submit to justice.”

  Looking at the men the captain had to enforce that justice, Akimos found his sympathies with the Cimmerian. He would not have trusted the captain’s notions of justice either.

  Memory flickered in Akimos, then glowed brightly. Had not it been said of the dragon-slayer that he had the look of Cimmeria about him?

  “Ho, Captain,” Akimos called. “I am a councillor to Lord Akimos. He seeks the sorcerer who slew a river dragon by the Great Khorotas Bridge. Do you know where he might be found?”

  Something that might have been amusement passed over the face of the Cimmerian, but the blue eyes remained as cold as the northern sky. “I might. If I did, I might even tell you, if you made it worth my while.” Akimos kept his face straight with an effort. The guard captain looked on the verge of a seizure.

  “How much would that take?” Akimos said. “My master knows the value of information. He also knows the value of a drachma.”

  “How many drachmas will it take to pay the fines of my men?”

  Akimos looked a question at the guard captain. The man shrugged. “That depends on the timber merchant’s judgement and the hurt to the guards.”

  “How long must we wait for that?”

  “More than days, less than a month.”

  “And meanwhile, I must return to Lord Akimos and tell him why I have not been able to find the sorcerer? ’ ’ Had the captain dropped dead on the spot, Akimos would not have been surprised. He was beginning to find this entertaining. Bargaining was in his blood, an art he had mastered so well that he could do it equally well in a dungeon, aboard a ship, or here where the mountain peaks gnawed at the northern horizon.

  “No—that is, I can name a price. But if my master does not think it sufficient—”

  “My master will make it up to him. Indeed, he has already agreed with your master to give me the power of judgement in such matters as this.”

  The captain’s face now showed more greed than fear. Akimos dismounted and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come, my friend. Our masters have already agreed. Why should we quarrel?”

  The captain snapped his mouth shut, then jerked his head. “No reason at all, if you have a hundred drachmas.”

  “A hundred!” Akimos’s voice squealed like a fresh-gelded pig’s. “My master will have my blood if he must pay more than sixty.”

  “Mine will also have blood, if his guards desert because they have not had justice!”

  “A hundred drachmas is not justice for two hurt guards. It is a ransom for the Crown Prince of Aquilonia!”

  “Well, perhaps seventy...”

  Akimos turned away to smile where only his horse could see him. The man had agreed to bargain. Now let him learn what it was to bargain with a merchant prince of Argos!

  Conan watched the bargaining with thinly veiled amusement. Talouf did not even bother to veil his. The rest of the company did not take their eyes off the guards. If it came to a fight, the guards’ archery would do much to balance their lack of numbers, at least until the archers fell.

  Conan had no particular stomach for a fight. If he had been alone, he would long since have been on his way across the mountains. Zingara and Aquilonia both lay that way, and neither made such a fuss as the Argosseans about whence came a man with a good sword arm.

  But more than a score of men oath-bound to him was too many either to leave behind or to lead across the mountains. He must settle their fate here in Argos, and just maybe the gods had sent him a way, in this Lord Akimos. (If the man was the lord’s agent and not the lord himself, then he, Conan, was the High Priest of Set!)

  At last the captain of the guards grunted and nodded. “I will take that offer. But if my master repudiates it, you had best flee to the Pictish Wilderness to escape me!”

  “Oh, have no fear,” the other man replied. “I am too old and fat to wish to leave my lord’s service. What I have told you is only the truth.”

  Conan waited, arms crossed on his chest, as the drachmas changed hands. When the man climbed over the stumps to stand before him, the Cimmerian gave an open-palmed greeting.

  “Now, Captain. I hope my—my master’s gold—has bought something worth having.”

  Conan grinned. “Would you believe that / am the dragon-slayer?”

  The other’s surprise was transparent. “You are a sorcerer? ’ ’

  It was Conan’s turn to be surprised, but he hid it with care. What game was afoot, that Lord Akimos needed a sorcerer? That they were rare in Argos was was one of the few good things the Cimmerian knew about this land so far! Best say something that sounded well, truth or not.

  “I have some small power over weapons,” Conan said. “I can’t say if that helped me with the dragon or not. I’ve certainly heard that they’re creatures of magic, so those powers couldn’t do the dragon any good or me any harm.”

  “Very surely,” the robed man said. He looked about him, to see who was within hearing. “Captain—”

  “Conan.”

  “Ah, the same who commanded free lances in Ophir?”

  “Your master seems to have spies everywhere.”

  “He can afford them, and knowledge can bring more wealth. Nor is this true only of merchants. It can be true for you as well.”

  “What kind of knowledge?”

  “Your magic.”

  “My—” Conan closed his mouth, deciding that what he had heard was really what Akimos had said. This did not mean that neither of them was mad, but it made Akimos even more interesting.

  “Yes, your magic,” Akimos went on. “You will be richly rewarded, if you use it on behalf of a young lady, a friend of mine direly in need of help.”

  Conan had to fight the urge to laugh in Akimos’s face several times during the merchant’s tale. But as the story of Lady Livia’s magic-wielding enemies drew to an end, a thought leaped unbidden into his head.

  “I’ll serve the lady as best I can,” Conan said. That at least was the truth. “But I’m captain as well as wizard. These men are oath-sworn to me. I’ll not leave them at the mercy of the likes of that guard captain.” “Your old company can certainly come with you—” Akimos began. Conan let the man babble a welcome, before explaining about the amount yet to be paid on his men’s Argossean bond. The merchant’s face promptly lost some of its colour, and he found himself briefly speechless.

  He was not long finding his tongue again. “Of course, Captain Conan. Not all of Lady Livia’s foes may strike at her by magic. Good men with steel in their hands may be needed as well. How many of your men were you thinking of b
ringing? ’ ’

  “All of them.”

  “All?”

  “All who wish to remain with the company, and that’s a score at least. ’ ’

  Akimos appeared to be doing sums in his mind. Conan grinned and clapped the merchant on the shoulder, hard enough to make him reel. “Come on, man. Your master’s been good for a hundred drachmas. A hundred more won’t empty his coffers.”

  “A hundred-?”

  “Our bonds, and something to put decent clothes on our backs and decent boots on our feet. Lady Livia won’t thank any of us if we land on her doorstep looking like the pick of Aghrapur’s beggars!”

  “No-o-o,” Akimos said.

  The bargaining went quickly, but put a smile back on Akimos’s face. At last the merchant returned to his horse to count out more money. Conan sat down on a handy log and struck it three times with his fist.

  From a hollow in the ground under the log, Talouf arose, brushing wood chips and dirt from his clothes. “Well, Talouf?”

  “Well, Captain. If I’d seen that in the bazaar, I’d wonder where he stole what he was trying to sell.” “My thought too. But pretending to be a sorcerer for some wealthy old harridan is no bad way out of here. At least it gets our bond paid and takes us to Messantia. After that—well, being a free lance makes the wits and the hands quick.”

  “Almost as good as being a thief, eh?”

  Conan decided that Talouf was referring to his own previous career, not his captain’s. Between lifting other men’s purses and bedding other men’s wives, Talouf had earned death sentences in more lands than his native Shem.

  “We need to send a messenger to the men in the village,” Conan said. “Who’s best?”

  “Vandar.”

  “Jarenz doesn’t need him?”

  “He’s lame but not crippled. And Vandar would walk through fire for you now. Best put him to work before the fit passes.”

  “When was the last time you trusted anybody, Talouf?”

  “It was on my fifth—no, fourth naming-day—” Conan made a disgusted sound and rose. “See to the men, Sergeant. I’m going to see if our merchant friend knows a decent wineshop within a day’s ride!”

  IV

  Livia of Damaos lay face-down on the couch in her bath chamber while her maids massaged oil scented with Vendhyan incense into her skin. The air of the chamber was fragrant with the oil and warm and moist from the bath. If she could simply drift off to sleep, and when she awoke find all the problems facing her House a thing of the past—

  A familiar knock rattled the door.

  “Reza?”

  “My lady, there is urgent news.”

  “A moment.”

  She sat up and took the lemon-hued robe a maid handed her. A cap pulled hastily over her hair, and she called, “Enter.”

  Reza entered, with the catlike tread that was not the least remarkable thing about the man, considering his size. He wore his working tunic and a face like a thundercloud.

  One look at that face sufficed. The maids gathered the oil jars and fled as if the room had caught fire. Livia wished her dignity permitted the same. But it did not, nor did putting off the hearing of bad news make it any better when it came.

  “Lord Akimos is doing us a favour.,” Reza said heavily. “Or at least that is what the letter says.”

  “If I may...?” Livia held out her hand, and Reza put the parchment in it.

  “No scribe wrote this one,” she said. “This is his very own scrawl.” She read swiftly, and felt her eyebrows rising and her hair crawling on her scalp.

  “How did he hear of the attack?”

  “Do you wish me to ask?”

  “Was it through Lady Doris, do you think?”

  “Most likely.”

  Livia shook her head. “If we ask, she will know that we are uneasy, and that she has made us so. I would not give her that pleasure. Besides, it may be Harphos’s tongue that has wagged, not hers.”

  Reza’s face said what he thought should be done about the young man’s tongue. Livia shook her head. “To do anything would be to shame him before his mother. What has he done to deserve that?”

  “He has thought himself good enough for you!” Reza burst out. “Atlantis will rise again before that is true!” “If there is magic afoot in Argos, then who knows what may happen?” Livia said, but she had to smile at Reza’s outburst. The man had no children, and with both her father and her keeper-father dead he had begun to keep a fatherly eye on her.

  “One of the things that will not happen is Harphos being a fit husband for you,” Reza said doggedly. “Perhaps left to himself he might mend, but will his mother let him out of the nursery while she lives?” “You may be speaking wisdom,” Livia said. “But let us return to Lord Akimos. He speaks of sending us a sorcerer who is also a captain of free lances, or a captain who is also a sorcerer. With a score of his company. And not just any hedge-wizard, either. It is the man who slew the river dragon at the Great Bridge.” “There are no river dragons for him to slay in Messantia,” Reza said. “And I like not taking a band of strangers among us, whatever magic their captain commands.”

  “If a sorcerer is attacking us, then a sorcerer may defend us,” Livia said. “Nor are sorcerers so common in Argos that we can afford to throw one away like a rotten cabbage. If we must send to Shem or Koth for one, it will take longer and reveal our danger to even more strangers.”

  “True,” Reza admitted. “Then this—Captain Conan—will be allowed into the house?”

  “Yes, and even some of his men.”

  “Not all?”

  “Only as many as you think you and the other men can overcome if needful. Nor will they have any secrets from us for long.”

  “Ah,” Reza said. His face seemed to glow, and Livia could swear that his nostrils flared, like an old war horse who hears a distant trumpet.

  “Yes. I will trust you to devise ways of ferreting out those secrets.” She smiled. “If you cannot, I shall wonder if you were truly a sergeant in Turan, or only a midden-cleaner! ’ ’

  * * *

  Lord Akimos’s drachmas did not reach to providing horses for Conan’s whole company. They had a five-day march before the walls of Messantia rose white by the bay ahead of them.

  It was not one of the easier marches Conan could remember. The roads were splendid, the weather equally so, and the countryside all about rich and inviting. But there was more than one wineshop between the mountain camp and Messantia. In fact, there was more than one wineshop on each day’s march.

  Keeping his men on the march or at least on their feet taxed Conan’s powers and patience to the utmost. By the halfway mark of the journey, he would gladly have left them to drink themselves senseless while he went on to Messantia. Once he had taken his place in Lady Livia’s house, he could summon those sober enough to understand the message when it reached them.

  The only flaw in that plan was the Argosseans. Conan had little reason and less instinct to trust them. They would surely find that his men had broken one or several of their fine-spun laws. Then Conan’s Company would be back where they had been, and no doubt with Lord Akimos turned against them for spoiling his grand gesture.

  The last league to Messantia was all downhill and even men with aching heads and dry mouths could make good time. Conan rode at the rear on a piece of crow-bait barely equal to his weight, while Talouf headed the line, leading the company mule. Across the mule’s back were sprawled the two men who could not be routed to their feet that morning.

  A mounted patrol of Guardians rode up, studied the company and Conan’s letter with Akimos’s seal, then let them pass. This happened twice more before they reached the Orchard Gate of Messantia, and at the gatehouse itself the Guardians dallied until it was well past noon.

  “A pox take these mincing children,” Jarenz muttered. “What could they do against us if we drew steel?’ Conan wanted to laugh. Some of the Guardians looked old enough to be Jarenz’s grandfather.

&
nbsp; Talouf shrugged. “I have counted five score of them at this gate alone,” the Shemite said. “I would wager that many could do a good deal to twenty free lances who were none of them sober last night.”

  The walls of Messantia were also enough to sober any man. They were five men high and three men at least thick, apart from the protection provided by the Guardians. Though the streets inside the walls might be paved with gold, any man with his wits intact might still think twice about seeking to breach the walls.

  In time they were given a pass, a finer piece of parchment than Conan’s old commission as a captain in the hosts of Turan. They were given no directions to the Damaos palace, but how could they lose themselves, in a city not half the size of Aghrapur?

  The answer was; far too easily. They contrived to do so thrice at least, and the last time cost them the mule. It seemed they had wandered into an area where folk were allowed only on foot between dawn and dusk.

  “It seems we ought to be wanderin’ back out of this gilded jakes of a city,” muttered one of the men who’d been forced to walk when the mule was confiscated. “They’re keepin’ the dung off the streets, but puttin’ it between their ears!”

  Conan was beginning to agree with the man when they finally reached a gate and wall that would have served for most of the cities in Ophir. Lemon trees in bloom barely rose above the gilded spikes on top of the wall. A large bell hung from a silken thong, with a padded hammer on another thong beside it. Conan gripped the hammer and pounded on the bell until its clanging seemed about to raise echoes from the distant mountains.

  “Who goes there?” came a voice from inside the gate.

  “Captain Conan and his company, to enter the service of House Damaos at the behest of Lord Akimos.”

  “His seal?”

  It was a command. Conan chose to obey, displaying the parchment with its impressive blue wax seal. A moment later the outer gate of iron-bound logs opened in response to the command of some unseen sentry. Then, the inner gate of gilded bronze did likewise, with a faint sigh. A path of white gravel ran arrow-straight up to a house of blue and white marble.