Conan the Guardian Read online

  “Captain Conan. I think you have the right to know what has been done here tonight, and why.”

  “And an apology, at least for the sake of my men!” Conan growled.

  Reza’s reply was one of the fiercest glares. Instead of stamping her foot, as Conan had expected, the lady gripped both men by the wrists. Either could have shaken her off as easily as a fly, but her grip seemed to have the force of an iron shackle.

  “Reza, enough. Captain Conan, hear us out first. Then if you feel that you need an apology, it will be given. But I want you to listen first.”

  It seemed to Conan that he had been doing rather too much listening since he entered Argos. It also seemed that Lady Livia might tell him more than some of the others. Certainly, not listening to her could only mean a savage fight, and perhaps not even against his real enemies. It was not in Conan to hold back from a fight, but he did like to know if he was fighting the right people!

  * * *

  “I did what?” Akimos exclaimed. “Who has been filling you with nonsense?”’

  This protest of innocence fell on deaf ears. Skiron glared at the merchant prince.

  “I have ways of learning anything that may be known, not given to common men.”

  “You also seem to have conjured up fancies that are not known to anyone because they are not true.”

  “Do you deny that you sent a sorcerer to House Damaos? A sorcerer who may choose to oppose rather than aid me?”

  Akimos started to laugh. “Skiron, did your—ways, or wine, or whatever talked to you—?”

  “These insults are unbearable!”

  “If you cannot bear them, you can doubtless find some way of living out your last years without my aid.” “Indeed, there is the fee I would earn, by informing the archons—”

  “Of what? Can you say anything they would believe, coming from a man / will denounce for practising unlawful magic?”

  The two men stood facing each other across Akimos’s table for a moment, like two billy goats on a narrow path. They might wish to fight, but both had seen clearly the long fall into the swift-flowing stream below.

  It was the sorcerer who lowered his eyes, and the sense of victory made Akimos magnanimous. With his own hands he poured wine and set out a golden plate of cheese and pastries.

  “Come, friend Skiron. You have wearied yourself with your labours for our plans. You need not weary yourself with fear of what exists only in your fancies. Drink, and I will tell you the truth.”

  “Or as much as it is in you to tell,” Skiron grumbled, but he clutched at a piece of cheese like a starving man.

  Akimos told of his scheme to have men grateful to him in the bosom of House Damaos. As Skiron listened, ate, and drank, his thin face seemed to gain flesh and lose weariness.

  At last he nodded. “Can we trust a Cimmerian’s gratitude?”

  “We can trust it for part of what we need. As to the rest—I have yet to meet a Cimmerian who knew how to find the jakes when he needed to piss. Conan will never think to ask the questions that would reveal our plans for him.”

  Skiron made a gesture of aversion. “Then will you still want your men disguised? ’ ’

  “Are you too weary?”

  Skiron glared. “I have all the strength—”

  “I meant no insult, Skiron. Truly, if you lack the strength—”

  “I can shadowface half a dozen men with ease. More will take time that we may not have.”

  “That will be enough. House Lokhri would surely hire knifemen off the streets for much of its work. Its own men would be the leaders only. Have you faces for that half-dozen, from the ranks of the Lokhri men?” “How many times have I gone with you to the Lokhri palace, and endured that cow Lady Doris pretending that she is a bull, and her bleating calf of a son?” “More than you have enjoyed, I am sure.”

  “The gods know that is the truth!” Skiron said, gulping wine. “I will not need to go again. Give me two days, and also some knowledge of the size and strength of your chosen men. Then we may go on.”

  Disguising the attackers on House Damaos as minions of House Lokhri would sow confusion enough. Having Captain Conan letting the attackers pass freely would sow even more. It would probably also end the Cimmerian’s place and even life, but one needed only a single arrow if it struck a vital spot.

  And the Cimmerian’s blood would go some ways toward keeping the peace with Skiron. That, the gods knew, would be no small gain, considering the sorcerer’s manners even when he was not in fear of his position.

  Conan sat at the small ebony table in Lady Livia’s dressing room. Reza stood or rather loomed at the door, and the lady herself reclined on a couch also of ebony but inlaid with walrus ivory. She had donned a blue gown, but two long-toed feet and one slender arm were bare.

  He sipped at his wine and listened to Reza finish the story of how the men of House Damaos had been set to bait him into a fight, to reveal his true allegiance. Had he slain them, it would have seemed wisest to put him and his men out at once, for they clearly served another master.

  Conan listened to this babble for as long as his patience lasted. The wine helped. It made almost every other vintage he had ever tasted seem like vinegar. When Reza broke off to refill the Cimmerian’s cup, Conan realized that this was his fourth cup and he felt as if he had been drinking weak ale.

  He lifted the cup, drained it in a few swallows, then brought it down with a bang that silenced Reza.

  “Enough!” Conan said. “I accept the apologies you’ve made and all the ones you haven’t made but are thinking of wasting our time with.”

  “Now, Captain—” Reza began, in spite of a warning look from his mistress.

  “Reza, take your turn listening or I’m taking my men out of here. I don’t know or care where, so long as it’s away from this house.”

  Conan took a deep breath and spoke quietly when he wanted to roar. “What made you think the way I fought your men would tell you anything? Did you think I was an ox, to respond to the goad any time you used it?” Reza seemed beyond speech, but his mistress was of a different fibre. “Conan, that was indeed an error, and it was mine. I thought—forgive me, but I thought that a Cimmerian—”

  “You thought that a Cimmerian was an ox? And no doubt Lord Akimos thought the same?”

  Livia nodded, then her full lips twisted into something that might have been a wry grin. “Captain Conan, that cup was a wedding gift to my mother.”

  Conan looked at the wine cup in his hand. It was silver inlaid with turquoise, the metal a finger’s breadth thick. Unknowing, he had squeezed the cup as flat as an oyster.

  “Well, my lady. Here’s a gift to you. Don’t think a Cimmerian a fool until he’s proved it. Otherwise he may think you one, and in Cimmeria fools are set out for the wolves and the blizzards.”

  Livia swallowed and nodded, then smiled again. “I will remember. But you must know this. In Argos we know other folk mostly by their traders, and Cimmeria sends few our way.”

  “Then at least don’t listen to what others say. Use your own eyes and ears.”

  “I will,” Livia said. “But consider, if Lord Akimos had done so, where would you and your men be now?”

  Conan was still too close to rage to smile back, but he nodded. “Let’s call tonight fair fight and no harm done. And what about another cup and some wine in it?”

  “Captain, it is late—” Reza began.

  “It’s cursed near dawn,” Conan growled. “But / don’t want to sleep until we’ve planned how to deal with Akimos. A man doesn’t treat me like a fool to have me do his bidding, not me, not anyone under me.” If he had not already crushed the cup, his grip on it would have finished the work.

  Livia brought another cup—plain pewter this time— and the wine jug with her own hands. Then she sat, with the gown falling away so that one leg was bare to the knee. It was as shapely as every other part of her that Conan had seen.

  “I suppose you will want to bring your men fr
om the inn—” Livia began.

  Both Conan and Reza shook their heads. “How many men can Akimos send against us, if he trusts steel more than spells?” the Cimmerian asked.

  “Not above three score,” Lydia said.

  “Then my ten and Reza’s fifteen have the edge over any lesser number,” Conan said. “We’re defending, we know the house, and we won’t let ourselves be surprised.”

  “Conan, you speak like Captain Khadjar,” Reza said.

  “I served under him for the best part of a year,” Conan replied. Reza’s face twisted, then turned red.

  “Who is Captain Khadjar?” Livia asked.

  Reza started a long description of the Turanian captain who had taught Conan much of the art of civilized warfare. After a time, Livia raised a hand.

  “I will grant that he is the greatest captain since Kull of Atlantis,” she said, smiling. “And I will thank all the gods that a man he taught has come to us. Join me in that, if you wish.”

  “My lady-”

  “Enough, as Captain Conan said not long ago. What of defending the house against sorcery?”

  At last Conan could laugh. “My lady, I do have power over weapons, as I told Akimos. I can wield anything made by man, and few men can face me and live. As for spells over weapons or anything else—I couldn’t cast one to save Messantia from falling into the Western Sea.” His smile faded. “I’ve never yet met wizard or sorcerer who didn’t ruin everything he touched, himself included. They’re dung and belong on dunghills.”

  “I’ll pray that you can put any sorcerer in Akimos’s service where he belongs,” Livia said. “But as to your men—do you fear to warn Akimos, by uniting them under my roof?”

  Conan looked at the young woman with new respect. No lessons from Khadjar for her, but a good head for war nonetheless!

  The Cimmerian nodded. “Surprise will let us take prisoners, not just beat off the attack. I don’t know what the archons say about this kind of game, but I’ll wager one thing. Akimos won’t like it if we have his men singing like birds to the archons.”

  They ended by agreeing to put a reliable man with a lantern on the roof of the house. Another reliable man would be posted on the roof of the inn. From there he could see any signals from House Damaos. On the proper signal, the free lancers at the inn would come at a run.

  “The gods willing, we can put them in the rear of any unwanted visitors and sweep up the lot,” Conan said. ‘ ‘If our luck’s out, we can still beat them off. That will make Akimos pause. While he’s rubbing his head, it’ll be our turn to move.”

  They toasted this strategy with wine for all, and Conan departed to see to his men.

  VI

  Once more Conan walked by night in the gardens of the Damaos palace. He was not far from the place of his mock fight two days ago, but he was clad quite differently. He wore boots on his feet, mail under his tunic, and a mace swinging from his belt opposite his broadsword.

  He also carried no staff for seeking out mantraps, for there were none to seek. That was Conan’s advice, and it had not gone down well with Reza. Indeed, the steward had at first looked like a man called on to drown his children.

  “I want anyone coming in through the garden to be close to the house before the alarm’s given,” Conan explained. He tried not to use the tone he would have with a child or a woman—or at least a woman with her wits less in order than Livia.

  “Then it will be easier for them to enter,” Reza urged.

  “Also harder for them to leave,” Conan replied. “They’ll have to cross all those fine open lawns with my archers and yours sitting on the roof with loaded quivers and lighted torches.”

  “I suppose the danger is worthwhile,” Livia said. “May my sword and manhood both fail me if it isn’t,” Conan said. “We don’t want to just drive off— whoever comes.” Even among themselves, they did not use the term “Akimos’s men.”

  “We don’t just want to scare those bog-trolls’ sons away. We want to eat them for a midnight snack and throw their bones back in their masters’ faces. It’s the masters we want to scare, not the men!”

  Reza glared at the Cimmerian. No doubt it was the language Conan had used. In spite of everything, Reza seemed to think that his lady’s ears were innocent and virginal, and must be guarded from soldiers’ language.

  Before the steward could speak, Livia nodded. “Yes. I do not want a long, weary battle before House Damaos is safe. As long as we are fighting, I will have few suitors, except those who wish to protect me for a price I may not wish to pay. ’ ’

  Conan had heard of Lady Livia’s present crop of suitors. One matter where he and Reza saw alike: none of them were worthy of her. If they kept to their own houses for a time, House Damaos would lose nothing thereby.

  But Conan knew that it was not his place to say that. “Place” was a word he’d learned well since he came to Argos; it seemed to loom over a man’s daily uprisings and downsittings as “face” did among the folk of Khitai.

  After a few days he had learned that it meant mostly sitting and listening to others do the talking. As often as not, they told him more than they wished him to know. So he had less quarrel with the idea of “place” than he had expected.

  “You’re the judge of your own value, my lady,” Conan said. “I’m just a soldier. I judge the value of frightening an enemy into being foolish. I also judge the value of not getting any of my men snapped up in those mantraps.”

  “Your men should know the grounds by now,” Reza grumbled.

  “Some do, some don’t,” Conan said. “The ones from the inn surely don’t. Besides, if there’s a spy in the house”—Reza coughed and Lydia made a silencing gesture—“he’ll send word that the mantraps are gone. The garden’s safe. Any attack may come over the walls and walk up to the house where our men on the roof can practically piss on them!”

  Livia smiled, then giggled, then laughed out loud. It was a good laugh for a man to hear, just as the lady herself was good to look at.

  “I wish we really could do that,” she said at last. “Can you imagine what the poor fools would say to their master when they went home? If they dared go home, and didn’t just run off to Kush and change their names? ’ ’

  Reza finally smiled. “Well, Conan, once again I learn how well High Captain Khadjar taught you.”

  “Let’s not sell the wool before we’ve bought the sheep,” Conan said. They all drank to a fine fat sheep wandering in within the next few nights.

  * * *

  The black-owl cry sounded from the roof of the palace. Silent as a hunting tiger, Conan hurried to the meeting place for messengers. Vandar ran up as the Cimmerian settled his back against a tree.

  “We have armed men in sight from the roof.”

  “Any badge?”

  In most cities, it would have been work to tell men from apes at night, let alone read house badges. But in the wealthy quarters at least, torches lit Messantia’s streets bright enough to read the stamped date on an Aquilonian tenth-crown.

  “None. But the Damaos man said that they had the look of Guardians to them.”

  “Erlik bugger the Guardians!”

  Conan could endure a city whose streets did not turn into jungles between sunset and sunrise. He’d given over the profession of thief some time since, when he saw it led only to short rations and a short life. But the last thing he wanted tonight was the Guardians inviting themselves to a personal fight, when he was ready to meet his enemies with his own strength and steel.

  Vandar shrugged. “Reza’s at the gate. If he smells a bad fish—”

  From inside the palace, a shrill scream tore into the night. Conan and Vandar whirled, swords leaping free in a single gesture. The scream came again, and found an echo from another part of the house.

  The two men ran for the house. Conan stopped twice to give the hunting cry of a leopard, the signal to the lantern-bearer on the roof. As he caught up with Vandar by a splendid marble statue of a nude woman,
Conan saw the lantern beginning to wink. Now, if the watcher on the inn’s roof was just half as sober as he should be—

  A woman wearing only a night shift ran from the bushes, eyes wide but unseeing. Conan held out a massive arm in her path. She struck it and rebounded as if she had struck the branch of an oak tree. Then she collapsed, sobbing.

  Vandar knelt and shouted in her ear. “What’s happening, you witless sow? Answer, or I’ll—”

  Conan gripped the boy by the collar of his tunic and pulled him upright. Then he gripped the woman by the arm and did the same. “What is happening in there?” he asked, more gently.

  The woman gaped, then shook her head like a horse beset by flies. “Sorcery again! Oh, we thought we’d seen the last of it. But it’s abroad again. Worse than before. Oh, sir, if you’ve any magic in you at all—” Conan shifted his sword to his left hand and tucked the woman firmly under his right arm. As he did, her shift caught on a bush and tore free.

  So Conan reached the palace to greet Lady Livia with sword in one hand and a naked woman under the other arm. The head of House Damaos was herself clad only in her night shift and her face was milk-pale, but she managed a smile when she saw Conan.

  ‘ ‘I thought you were one for keeping your hands off the women of the house, Captain.”

  “Not when they run to me babbling of magic. Is that tame sorcerer at work again? ’ ’

  Livia nodded. “Lights, sounds, foul smells, jars and barrels cracking and leaking. All in the cellar, for now. I’ve ordered everyone out of—”

  “Gods, woman!” Conan roared. “That’s just what our enemies want!” He dropped the woman unceremoniously to the grass and took the stairs two at a time.

  Vandar was hard on his heels as they thundered through the door.

  “Which way to the cellar?” Conan bellowed.

  A manservant pointed, with a shaking hand. “There. But demons are loose—”

  “Demons fly away with you!" Vandar shouted. “Hedge-magic is for children! Stand aside, and let men into the cellar.”