The Conan Compendium, page 133
The laughter broke through, and Conan let it roar, though he was careful not to take his eyes from the spearmen or his hand from his sword. Jondra’s face slowly froze in amazement. “I am already in service,” he managed, “to myself. But, my lady, I wish you good day and will no longer block your passage.” He made a sweeping bow-not deep enough to lose sight of the spear points-and strode to the side of the street.
For an instant there was stunned silence, then the Lady Jondra was shouting. “Zurat! Tamal! March on! Junio! The beat!”
The spearmen straightened, and the drummer stiffly took up his cadence again. In moments the procession was moving. Jondra rode past stiffly, her eyes drifting to the big Cimmerian as if she did not realize what she did. The hawkfaced man rode beside her, arguing volubly, but she seemed not to hear.
A knot of barefooted street urchins, all color long faded from their tattered tunics, suddenly appeared near Conan. Their leader was a girl, though at an age when her scrawniness could pass for either sex. Half a head taller than her followers, she swaggered to the muscular youth’s side and studied the array of hunters. The lion dogs passed, heavy, snarling brutes with spiked collars, pulling hard on the leashes held by their handlers.
“Dog like that could take your leg off,” the girl said. “Big man, you get a spear in your belly, and who’s going to pay us?”
“You get paid when you’ve found her, Laeta,” Conan replied. The trophies of the hunt were borne by skins of leopards and lions, great scimitar antelope horns, the skull of a huge wild ox with horns as thick and long as a man’s arm, all held aloft for the view of the onlookers.
She cast a scornful glance at him. “Did I not say as much? We found the wench, and I want those two pieces of silver.”
Conan grunted. “When I am sure it’s her.”
This was not the first report of Tamira he had had. One had been a woman more than twice his age, another a potter’s apprentice with only one eye. The last of Jondra’s procession passed, pack animals and highwheeled ox-carts, and the throng that had stood aside flowed together behind like water behind a boat.
“Take me to her,” Conan said.
Laeta grumbled, but trotted away down the street, her coterie of hard-eyed urchins surrounding her like a bodyguard. Under every ragged tunic, the Cimmerian knew, was a knife, or more than one. The children of the street preferred to run, but when cornered they were as dangerous as a pack of rats.
To Conan’s surprise they moved no closer to the Desert, but rather farther away, into a district peopled by craftsmen. The din of brass-smiths’ hammers beat at them, then the stench of the dyers’ vats.
Smoke from kiln fires rose on all sides. Finally the girl stopped and pointed to a stone building where a sign hanging from chains showed the image of a lion, half-heartedly daubed not too long past with fresh carmine.
“In there?” Conan asked suspiciously. Taverns attracted likes, and a thief would not likely be welcome amid potters and dyers.
“In there,” Laeta agreed. She chewed her lip, then sighed. “We will wait out here, big man. For the silver.”
Conan nodded impatiently and pushed open the tavern door.
Inside, the Red Lion was arranged differently from the usual tavern. At some time in the past a fire had gutted the building. The ground floor, which had collapsed into the cellar, had never been replaced. Instead, a balcony had been built running around the inside of the building at street level, and the common room was now in what had been the cellar.
Even when the sun was high on the hottest day, the common room of the Red Lion remained cool.
From a place by the balcony rail just in front of the door, Conan ran his gaze over the interior of the tavern, searching for a slender female form. A few men stood on the balcony, some lounging against the railing with tankard in hand, most bargaining quietly with doxies for time in the rooms abovestairs. A steady stream of serving girls trotted up and down stairs at the rear of the common room with trays of food and drink, for the kitchen was still on the ground level. Tables scattered across the stone floor below held potters whose arms were flecked with dried clay and leatheraproned metal workers and apprentices with tunics stained by rainbow splashes.
The ever-present trulls, their wisps of silk covering no more here than they did in the Desert, strolled the floor, but as he had expected Conan could see no other women among the tables. Satisfied that Laeta was mistaken or lying, he started to turn for the door. From the corner of his eye he saw a burly potter, with a round-breasted doxy running her fingers through his hair, look away from her bounty to glance curiously at a spot below where the big Cimmerian stood. Another man, his leather apron lying across the table before him and a squealing jade on his knees, paused in his pawing of her to do the same. And yet another man.
Conan leaned to look over the railing, and there Tamira sat beneath him, demurely clothed in pale blue robes, face scrubbed to virginal freshness … and a wooden mug upended at her mouth. With a sigh she set the mug on the table upside-down, a signal to the serving girls that she wanted it refilled.
Smiling, Conan slipped the flat throwing knife from his belt. A flicker of his hand, and the black blade quivered in the upturned bottom of her mug. Tamira started, then was still except for the fingers of her left hand drumming on the tabletop. The Cimmerian’s smile faded. With a muttered oath he stalked to the stairs and down.
When he reached the table the throwing knife had disappeared. He ignored the wide-eyed looks of men at nearby tables and sat across from her.
“You cost me eight pieces of gold,” were his first words.
The corners of Tamira’s mouth twitched upward. “So little? I received forty from the Lady Zayella.”
Conan’s hand gripped the edge of the table till the wood creaked in protest. Forty! “Zarath the Kothian would give a hundred,” he muttered, then went on quickly before she could ask why he was then only to receive eight. “I want a word with you, wench.”
“And I with you,” she said. “I didn’t come to a place like this, and let you find me, just to-“
“Let me find you!” he roared. A man at a nearby table hurriedly got up and moved away.
“Of course, I did.” Her face and voice were calm, but her fingers began to tap on the table again. “How could I fail to know that every beggar in Shadizar, and a fair number of the trulls, were asking after my whereabouts?”
“Did you think I would forget you?” he asked sarcastically.
She went on as if he had not spoken. “Well, I will not have it. You’ll get in my-my uncles’ attention. They’ll not take kindly to a stranger seeking after me. I led you here, well away from the Desert, in the hopes they’ll not hear of our meeting. You’ll find yourself with a blade in your throat, Cimmerian. And for some reason I don’t quite understand, I would not like that.”
Conan looked at her silently, until under his gaze her large, dark eyes began blinking nervously. Her finger-drumming quickened. “So you do know my country of birth.”
“You fool, I am trying to save your life.”
“Your uncles look after you?” he said abruptly. “Watch over you?
Protect you?”
“You will find out how carefully if you do not leave me alone. And what’s that smug grin for?”
“It’s just that now I know I’ll be your first man.” His tone was complacent, but his every muscle tensed.
Tamira’s mouth worked in silent incredulity, and scarlet suffused her cheeks. Suddenly a shriek burst from her lips, and the throwing knife was in her hand. Conan threw himself from his bench as her arm whipped forward. Beyond him an apprentice yelped and stared disbelieving at the tip of his nose, from which a steady drip of red fell to put new blotches on his dye-stained tunic.
Warily Conan got to his feet. Tamira shook her small fists at him in incoherent fury. At least, he thought, she did not have another of those knives. It would be out, otherwise. “But you must ask me,” he said as if there had been no interruption. “That will make up for the eight gold pieces you stole from me, when you ask me.”
“Erlik take you!” she gasped. “Mitra blast your soul! To think I worried … to think I … You’re nothing but an oaf after all! I hope my uncles do catch you! I hope the City Guard puts your head on a pike! I hope-I hope-oh!” From head to toe she shook with rage.
“I eagerly await our first kiss,” Conan said, and dodged her mug, aimed at his head.
Calmly turning his back on her wordless shouts, he strolled up the stairs and out of the tavern. As soon as the door closed behind him, his casual manner disappeared. Urgently he looked for Laeta, and smiled when she appeared with her palm out.
Before she could ask he tossed her two silver coins. “There’s more,” he said. “I want to know everywhere she goes, and everyone she sees. A silver piece every tenday for you, and the same for your followers.”
Baratses’ gold was disappearing fast, he thought, but with luck it should last just long enough.
Laeta, with her mouth open to bargain, could only nod wordlessly.
Conan smiled in satisfaction. He had Tamira now. After his performance she thought he was a buffoon intent on seduction to salve his pride. He doubted if she even remembered her slip of the tongue. Almost she had said he would get in her way. She planned a theft, and wanted no encumbrance. But this time he would get there first, and she would find the empty pedestal.
Chapter IV
Much of the Zamoran nobility, the Lady Jondra thought as she strolled through her palace garden, deplored that the last of the Perashanids was a woman. Carefully drawing back the vermilion silk sleeve of her robe, she dabbled her fingers in the sparkling waters of a fountain rimmed with gray-veined marble. From the corner of her eye she watched the man who stood next to her. His handsome, dark-eyed face radiated self-assurance. A heavy gold chain, each link worked with the seal of his family, hung across the crisp pleats of his citrine tunic. Lord Amaranides did not deplore her femininity at all. It meant that all the wealth of the Perashanids went with her hand. If he could manage to secure that hand.
“Let us walk on, Ama,” she said, and smiled at his attempt to hide a grimace for the pet name she had given him. He would think the smile was for him, she knew. It was not in him to imagine otherwise.
“The garden is lovely,” he said. “But not so lovely as you.”
Instead of taking his proffered arm she moved ahead down the slate-tiled walk, forcing him to hurry to catch up to her.
Eventually she would have to wed. The thought brought a sigh of regret, but duty would do what legions of suitors had been unable to. She could not allow the Perashanid line to end with her. Another sigh passed her full lips.
“Why so melancholy, my sweetling?” Amaranides murmured in her ear. “Let me but taste your honey kiss, and I will sweep your moodiness away.”
Deftly she avoided his lips, but made no further discouraging move.
Unlike most nobly born Zamoran women, she allowed few men so much as a kiss, and none more. But even if she could not bring herself to stop her occasional tweaking of his well-stuffed pomposity, Amaranides must not be put off entirely.
At least he was tall enough, she thought. She never allowed herself to contemplate the reason why she was taller than most Zamoran men, but she had long since decided that her husband must be taller than she.
Amaranides was a head taller, but his build was slender. With an idle corner of her mind she sketched the man she wanted. Of noble lineage, certainly. An excellent horseman, archer and hunter, of course.
Physically? Taller than Amaranides by nearly a head. Much broader of shoulders, with a deep, powerful chest. Handsome, but more ruggedly so than her companion. His eyes …
Abruptly she gasped as she recognized the man she had drawn in her mind. She had dressed him as a Zamoran nobleman, but it was the sky-eyed street-ruffian who had disrupted her return from the hunt. Her face flooded with scarlet. Blue eyes! A barbarian! Like smoky gray fires her own eyes blazed. That she could consider allowing such a one to touch her, even without realizing it! Mitra! It was worse done without realizing it!
“… And on my last hunt,” Amaranides was saying, “I killed a truly magnificent leopard. Finer than any you’ve taken, I fancy. It will be a pleasure for me to teach you the finer points of hunting, my little sweetmeat. I …”
Jondra ground her teeth as he rattled blithely on. Still, he was a hunter, not to mention nobly born. If he was a fool-and of that there was little doubt in her mind-then he would be all the more easily managed.
“I know why you’ve come, Ama,” she said.
“… Claws as big as…” The nobleman’s voice trailed off, and he blinked uncertainly. “You know?”
She could not keep impatience from her voice. “You want me for your wife. Is that not it? Come.” Briskly she set out through the garden toward the fletcher’s mound.
Amaranides hesitated, then ran after her. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made me, sweetling. Sweetling? Jondra? Where are you … ah!”
Jondra fended off the arms he tried to throw around her with a recurved bow she had taken from a gilded rack standing on a grassy sward. Calmly she slipped a leather bracer onto her left arm for protection from the bowstring. Another bow, a second bracer, and two quivers, clustered fletchings rising above their black-lacquered sides, hung on the rack.
“You must … equal me,” she said, gesturing toward a small round target of thickly woven straw hanging at the top of a wide wooden frame, which was three times the height of a man, a hundred paces distant. She had intended to say ‘best,’ but at the last could not bring herself to it. In truth, she did not believe any man could best her, either with a bow or on horseback. “I can marry no man who is not my equal as an archer.”
Amaranides eyed the target, then took the second bow with a smug smile.
“Why so high? No matter. I wager I’ll beat you at it.” He laughed then, a shocking bray at odds with his handsome features. “I’ve won many a purse with a bow, but you will be my finest prize.”
Jondra’s mouth tightened. Shaking back the hanging sleeves of her robes, she nocked an arrow and called, “Mineus!”
A balding man, in the short white tunic of a servant, came from the bushes near the frame and tugged at a rope attached near the target.
Immediately the target, no bigger than a man’s head, began to slide down a diagonal, and as it slid it swung from side to side on a long wooden arm. Clearly it would take a zig-zag path, at increasing speed, all the way to the ground.
Jondra did not raise her bow until the target had traversed half the first diagonal. Then, in one motion, she raised, drew and released.
With a solid thwack her shaft struck, not slowing the target’s descent.
Before that arrow had gone home her second was loosed, and a third followed on its heels. As the straw target struck the ground, she lowered her bow with an arrow nocked but unreleased. It was her seventh. Six feathered shafts decorated the target. “The robes hamper me somewhat,” she said ruefully. “With your tunic, you may well get more than my six. Let me clothe myself in hunting garb-are you ill, Ama?”
Amaranides’ bow hung from a limp hand. He stared, pale of face, at the target. As he turned to her, high color replaced the pallor of his cheeks. His mouth twisted around his words. “I have heard that you delight in besting men, but I had not thought you would claim yourself ready to wed just to lure me to … this!” He spat the last word, hurling the bow at the riddled target. “What Brythunian witch-work did you use to magic your arrows?”
Her hands shook with rage as she raised her bow and drew the nocked arrow back to her cheek, but she forced them to be steady. “Remove yourself!” she said grimly.
Mouth falling open, the dark-faced nobleman stared at the arrow pointed at his face. Abruptly he spun about and ran, dodging from side to side, shoulders hunched, as if simultaneously attempting to avoid her arrow and steel himself against its strike.
She followed every skip and leap, keeping the arrow centered on him until he had disappeared among the shrubs. Then she released the breath in her tight lungs and the tension on her bowstring together. Thoughts she had disciplined from her mind came flooding back.
Lord Karentides, her father, had been a general of the Zamoran Army, as well as the last scion of an ancient house. Campaigning on the Brythunian border he chose a woman from among the prisoners, Camardica, tall and gray-eyed, who claimed to be a priestess. In the normal course of events there would have been nothing strange in this, for Zamoran soldiers often enjoyed themselves with captive Brythunian women, and the Brythunian slaves in Zamora were beyond counting. But Karentides married his captive. Married her and accepted the ostracism that became his.
Jondra remembered his body-his and … that woman’s-lying in state after the fever that slew so many in the city, sparing neither noble nor beggar. She had been raised, educated, protected as what she was, heiress to vast wealth, to blood of ancient nobility. The marks were on her, though-the height and the accursed eyes of gray-and she had heard the whispers. Halfbreed. Savage. Brythunian. She had heard them until her skill with a bow, her ready temper and her disregard of consequences silenced even whispers in her hearing. She was the Lady Jondra of the House Perashanid, daughter of General Lord Karentides last of a lineage to rival that of King Tiridates himself, and ware to anyone who mentioned aught else.
“He would not have hit it once, my lady,” a quiet voice said at her elbow.
Jondra glanced at the balding servant, at the concern on his wrinkled face. “It is not your place to speak so, Mineus,” she said, but there was no rebuke in her voice.
