Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza Read online

  Lysinka thought she knew most of the true dangers and many of the legendary ones of the Thanzas. But she had never heard of the Spider Wind.

  How did one sell one’s life dearly against such?

  She had not found even the vaguest of answers, before they reached the end of the climb, and torchlight and the smell of roasting meat made the terrors of the climb seem a child’s nightmare.

  At least for a while.

  When Conan awoke, the last light had long since departed from the sky. Within the oak grove, it was as dark as the tunnels beneath a temple of Set. Save that the Cimmerian smelled rich forest soil instead of ancient dust, heard night birds calling instead of water dripping, and saw fresh human footprints, rather than the marks of the sacred serpents.

  For the same reason that he had taken the long way to the scene of combat, Conan had brought sword, dagger, and various lesser knives. He and Tharmis Rog would fight barehanded; those they might meet on the way could well be less honourable.

  His sheathed dagger dangling about his neck, Conan crawled swiftly on the trail of the men. He soon thought he could have marched along with a drummer and a trumpeter. The newcomers had so little march discipline or knowledge of the forest that cracking twigs and rustling leaves made a trail as plain to Conan’s senses as that left by their boots.

  If matters went on as they had begun there would be no need to warn Tharmis Rog.

  For a while, it seemed that matters would go just that way. The men and their pursuer had to be halfway through the grove now. From the occasional word they let drop, Conan knew they were Aquilonian, some perhaps not native speakers. He recognized no voices.

  Time for a prisoner to answer a few pointed questions—or the dagger’s point, if all else failed.

  Deed followed thought as quickly as the Cimmerian could find a man a little apart from his comrades. That did not take long—these men were city folk, to whom a forest was as alien as a city would have been to the boy Conan.

  The Cimmerian’s chosen prey braced himself against a gnarled, arching oak root, scratched himself and bent over to tie the laces of his boots. He was thus engaged when the Cimmerian snaked under the arch in the root and snatched the man off his feet.

  The man went down face-first. As he struggled to rise and shout at the same time, a massive hand pressed his face into the leaf mould and rotten fungus.

  “You can speak quickly or die slowly. Chose.”

  Conan decided that the man’s gasps and grunts promised cooperation and rolled him over, while drawing his own dagger. When the man breathed freely again, the steel was at his throat.

  No night-sight much less keen than Conan’s could have made out the man’s features, but the scar from the right ear across the cheek to the corner of the mouth was unmistakable. Conan had last seen this man writhing on the floor of the Golden Lion after the Cimmerian’s boot took him in the stomach.

  “Mikros does not give up easily, does he?” Conan said, in an almost conversational tone.

  “Ahhh—” the man gasped.

  “The worse for your friends,” Conan said. “How many are there?”

  The man shook his head. The dagger’s point pricked harder.

  “Ten—a dozen—no more,” the man said, eyes huge and showing mostly whites.

  “My thanks,” Conan said. He cracked the man’s head smartly against the root and the bully went limp. He still breathed, but it would be dawn before he regained his senses and days before his head stopped aching.

  Conan resumed his pursuit, more swiftly now that he knew whom he sought. He was still well behind the panderer’s men when he found a gap in the trees that showed him the meadow. The moon silvered the grass, the fallen trees, and the boulder against which Tharmis Rog sat, his broad back protected by the stone and his sword across his knees.

  His head was bowed on his chest, and Conan thought briefly that it would hardly be a fair fight if the man were half-asleep or fuddled with wine. Of more immediate importance, Mikros’s men were preparing to attack.

  A dark silhouette rose to Conan’s left, another to his right. The leftward man was nocking an arrow to a bow, the other lifting a short spear.

  Conan cupped his hands, took a deep breath, and bellowed:

  “’Ware, Tharmis Rog! We’ve another fight before ours!”

  The fare in the lord of Thanza’s camp was frugal but well-prepared. After ten days of marching through the forest, Lysinka was ready to praise the cook out of more than mere politeness.

  “I thank you on his behalf,” her host replied. “But then, he was a good cook when he served me at the manor on the Rhyl. He has not lost his skill by moving to the Thanzas.”

  Lysinka did her best not to look confused. The Rhyl was a river in Nemedia, several days’ ride from the Border Range and well to the north of the Thanzas.

  The man laughed. It was a robust laugh and under other circumstances might have warmed Lysinka’s spirit. Here on this dark windy crag, she felt more as she had when the Spider Wind fumbled at her.

  “I hold the rank of baron in both Nemedia and Aquilonia.”

  ‘Then why do you choose to live here, which is really neither, nor indeed any place fit for civilized folk?”

  “Perhaps I am not civilized enough. Or at least so my enemies in both lands have said. My life would be forfeit within the reach of either realm’s justice. So I live here, with my followers.”

  “And conjure your food and weapons from the air and the rocks?” Lysinka said.

  “Such curiosity can be dangerous, Countess.”

  “You have not earned the right to use that name, my friend. Indeed, you have not even told me if you have one, other than ‘lord of Thanza.’”

  “You may call me Grolin,” the baron said. “May I ask that you walk apart with me for a short while? I mean no harm and indeed hope that it will be for our mutual good.”

  Lysinka decided that if the walk led to a certain kind of wrestling bout, Grolin might well find himself fit for work as a eunuch in Vendhya. But time enough for that if it proved necessary.

  Grolin led the bandit chieftain away from the firelight, up a crumbling flight of stairs that he allowed her to mount unassisted, and across a floor that showed gaps large enough to swallow an ox. Safely on what was left of a curtain wall, they had a splendid view out over the nighted forest, tinted unnatural shades of silver, grey, and blue by the moon.

  “The chest is what you seek, is it not?” Grolin asked.

  “I can hardly pretend otherwise, can I now?” Lysinka replied. Her voice held a bitter edge.

  “You did yourself no harm by revealing your desire,” Grolin said. “It is one I share. Together, we may attain it.”

  “And fighting some mad wizard for its possession?”

  “You were ready to do that with your unaided steel, Lysinka. Together, we can do better. You have thirty stout fighters. I have a sorcerer. Or at least one who finds this quest worthy.”

  Lysinka frowned. Grolin was flinging open a door to a whole new world, much too large for her to grasp readily. She said the first thing that came to her mind, to avoid seeming a witling.

  “As long as he is master over whoever magicked the chest—”

  Grolin stopped her with a hand to her lips. It seemed to Lysinka that he and his men must learn the rules of her band, about touching women, if there was to be peace tonight, let alone during a quest of days or weeks.

  After a moment, Grolin let his hand fall. “Your pardon,” he said.

  “Granted. But is this hedge-wizard likely to be strong enough?”

  “I do not know. No sorcerer called the chest. It flew of its own will, called by the Mountain of the Skulls. That is the original resting place of what lies within the chest.”

  “A treasure?” Lysinka frowned. Within, she was torn between eagerness to make her comrades rich and suspicion that Grolin would be deft in treachery to avoid sharing any gains.

  “Some have called it so,” Grolin replied,
so softly that Lysinka could barely hear him over the moan of the wind. “It is called the Soul of Thanza.”

  In spite of herself, Lysinka felt the night wind as chill against her as if she had been unclothed. She shivered, but stepped aside as Grolin moved to embrace her.

  “What does this Soul do?”

  Grolin did not look at her as he replied. “It gives its possessor lordship over death.”

  Conan expected his shout to bring Tharmis Rog to his feet and the big man’s sword out of its scabbard. Instead the master-at-arms only grunted like the sleepiest of boars and shifted his position slightly.

  The Cimmerian had no time to marvel at this or ponder the reason for it. He snatched up a rock and flung it with all the strength of his arm at the archer. The rock took the man in the shoulder as he loosed his arrow. He roared with surprise more than pain, but his arrow flew wide.

  In the next moment Conan leaped on the spear man just as his weapon flew. Its course was truer, but the archer’s cry had roused Rog more than the Cimmerian’s warning shout. He moved, just in time to take the spear across the mail shoulder pieces of his corselet. Sparks flew but no blood.

  Meanwhile, Conan was trying to end the spear man’s fighting, keep the archer from shooting again, and fight the other men who were swarming out of the trees toward Tharmis Rog like dogs at a bear-baiting. Not for the first time, Conan would have given some years of his life for the power to be in two places at once.

  His own strength and sheer good luck divided the work between him and Rog. The spear man had no more chance against Conan than a goat against a tiger. In moments he was limp.

  Meanwhile, one of the running men darted squarely into the path of the archer’s second shaft. He reeled, clutching his throat, which had suddenly sprouted the arrow. Then he fell as the archer let out something between a wail and a curse. That was the last sound the archer made, as the Cimmerian closed with him and split his skull with the broadsword.

  Meanwhile, the death of friend at the hand of friend had slowed the onrush of Mikros’s other hirelings. So had Tharmis Rog’s lurching to his feet and drawing his sword. He held it uncertainly, and Conan saw him rub his eyes with the back of his free hand. He might for now be no more use in a fight than an unschooled soy, but he was still a head taller than any of the men around him.

  While some of those men were merely standing and gaping and others trying to form a circle around Rog, Conan struck them from behind. He had both sword and dagger in hand, and also used fists and feet, all with dreadful effectiveness.

  He snapped one man’s spine with a kick, clove mother’s arm from its shoulder with the sword, hamming a third with a low slash from the dagger, then found himself surrounded. He tried to find an opening that would leave him with no one at his back, but his surviving enemies now seemed to use speed of foot against strength of arm and steel.

  Conan kept whirling and striking, but half a dozen of his minor cuts oozed blood and he knew a serious wound was only moments away. At least Mikros would hardly have enough men left alive and hale to track down Brollya, after Conan fell—

  A roar like storm-flung surf on rocks half-deafened the Cimmerian. Suddenly two men facing him were jerked aloft, as if by a hangman’s noose. Where they had been, stood Tharmis Rog, with one massive hand clamped around either neck.

  This time, the master-at-arms had not allowed the Cimmerian to remain in danger longer than necessary.

  Conan saw a man to Rog’s right raising a knife, leaped to meet the skulker, and knocked down another bravo in so doing. The uplifted dagger met Conan’s down-slicing sword and flew from the man’s hand as the hand also flew from the wrist. The man howled and ran; Conan idly wondered if he would reach a hiding place before loss of blood brought him down.

  Now the two big men stood side by side, facing no more than four opponents; Conan no longer counted the two men Rog was holding. The master-at-arms lifted these, briskly cracked their heads together, then flung them away as if they had been offal that soiled his hands and offended his nostrils. Flying through the air, they brought down two of their comrades.

  The two bravos left on their feet did not stand their ground. They fled into the trees, screaming as if being burned alive. One of the men thrown down by Rog regained his senses and lurched off after them.

  Rog looked down at the other. “I suppose we’d best wake up this fellow and ask him who sent him out to spoil an honest fight.”

  “Never mind that,” Conan said. “Pardon, I did not mean to give you an order. But I know who sent them.” He described the scarred man.

  “Ha!” Rog said. “I had begun to suspect the same. As well to be certain.” He looked Conan up and down. “Do you still want to fight?”

  The Cimmerian replied with a level gaze and voice. “Do you still think that boulder was aimed at you?” The night birds had begun to sound again after the fight. Rog’s bellow of laughter silenced them once more. “After you risked your life to save me, I should go on believing you seek my blood? If I do that, call me a witling and give me to my daughter’s care, for I’m past soldiering!”

  “Well, then,” Conan said, “it seems we have no more quarrel.”

  “Rightly enough,” Rog said, shaking his head. “But we’ve some talking to do. Shall we do it over some better wine than the camp holds?”

  “If I refuse that offer, you may call me a witling,” Conan replied, with a grin that bared the white teeth in his blood-spattered face. “I don’t know where you’d send me, though, for I’ve no daughters or sons either—that I know of.”

  If the mountain wind had seemed cold before, Lysinka now felt rather as if she were embedded naked n a block of ice. She swayed and would have fallen if Grolin had not held her upright. She did not notice whether his hands strayed and for some moments hardly cared.

  Once again, the need to prove she was no witling drove her tongue into movement.

  “Does this mean the possessor of the Soul is immortal, free from death? Or does it mean that he can command death for others, at will?”

  “Yes, I think,” Grolin said.

  “Both? Or do you not know?”

  “The legend says both, and legend is all there is about the power of the Soul, when it is in the Mountain of the Skulls. One should not be surprised, when the legends also say that the Soul comes from the time of Acheron.”

  Lysinka jerked herself out of Grolin’s arms. “That musty tale to frighten children! Every time someone meets magic they do not understand, they blame it on Acheron.” She knew she said this to lessen her own doubts.

  “Sometimes, they do so justly,” Grolin said, once again speaking as if he were afraid the wind or the rocks might overhear him. “Acheron rose, wrought mighty magic, and fell. Though it disappeared, all its evil did not. That lingers yet in odd comers of the world.”

  “Mitra knows this is odd enough,” Lysinka said, with forced heartiness. “So are its people. So, even, are the bargains they offer.”

  “Is it too odd for you to accept?” Grolin asked. She heard greed in his voice but no treachery and, indeed, some gentleness, as though he understood how much he was asking.

  “Not that I can say, tonight,” Lysinka said. “But the decision is not mine alone. I must put it before my people.” She hesitated, then added, “Have you friends in either realm who send you aid?”

  “I see your shrewdness was no rumour,” Grolin said, a trifle sourly. “Call them enemies of my enemies and you will be right. But they would ask the swine’s share of anything we won through the Soul. Nor are they as fair as you.”

  The flattery was open, but the desire in Grolin’s voice likewise sincere. Plainly he expected that the bargain be sealed in the oldest way between a man and a woman.

  Just as plainly, she had to come to her decision tonight.

  “Grolin, I must go below and my ten with me. In such a matter, my band must meet and speak together.”

  He looked as if he wished to kiss her or at least pat her s
houlder, but he withheld his hand. “Then go, and speak so that they will do the wise thing and join the quest for the Soul of Thanza.”

  “It was something in my food that had me sleeping there like a drunkard,” Rog said. He was hardly sober now, but he and Conan were at a snug country inn, the White Raven, not facing armed bravos.

  “Any notion who might have put it there?” Conan said. He had drunk less than Rog because he feared the master-at-arms might need further protection. He hoped this would not extend to putting the man to bed. The Cimmerian had expected to win the fight, but he had less hope of moving the man’s dead weight if he drank himself senseless.

  “Notions only, but enough to let me know where to start asking questions.”

  “Best not punish anyone without Klarnides’s approval,” Conan said. “If he does have the ear of the count—”

  Rog spat into the bark chips that covered the floor. The tavern-keeper looked daggers at the two big men but prudently refrained from more.

  “That for Klarnides and the other lapdogs coming to join him.”

  Conan’s look framed a question.

  “You haven’t heard?” Rog explained. He went on to describe two new captains said to be on their way to the Thanza Rangers. If half what he said was the truth, the two newcomers made Klarnides seem a more seasoned warrior than Conan.

  “Well, we’ve settled our quarrel,” Conan said. “So come good captains or bad, we can stand together against them and for our men.”

  Rog’s reply to that was to lay his head on his arms and begin to snore. Conan laid out enough brass coins to pay for the last jug of wine and wrapped himself in his cloak.

  “Huh,”' the tavern-keeper said. “Either pay for a room or take yourself and your friend—”

  An empty wine cup neatly parted the man’s hair— or would have, if he had not been entirely bald. It smashed to powder against the wall behind him.