The Sword of Skelos (12 page)

I should have kept running
, Conan thought.

That is it then
, he told himself mentally.
It is death. Well, I’ll flee and then fight. They will have to kill me fighting
—
I’m damned if I give them opportunity to take me and amuse themselves by torturing me to death! No, I will flee as long as I can, and see how many of these motherless desert jackals I can take with me to Hell
!

Chestnut pawed his way to the ridge and kicked over. He went slip-sliding down the other side. Conan hung on and let the horse have his own way; he did not lunge this time, but slid-floundered, in a wallowing sort of gait. Perhaps this was granting the animal a few moments of rest.

“Get me out of this,” Conan muttered, “and I’ll give you a better name!”

He had no need of glancing leftward to check the enemy; twenty feet away and angling toward him as they descended, they paralleled his course. The right arm of the rearmost was tucked into his robe, and he bent, clinging to his saddle with his left hand.

Ahead, Conan saw that Isparana was just topping the other, taller hill that cut off their view further south.

Why was she reining in?

Chestnut reached the base of the incline. He stumbled, and indicated he would be very happy to gallop rightward, along level terrain. Conan indicated otherwise. The horse stumbled, tried to shake his head, broke wind, and with faltering strength and obvious reluctance, started up the long, steeper hill. Conan set the animal to climb at an angle to make it easier for him. He chose a direction opposite the angling line of Isparana’s tracks.

His pursuers were closer, and coming, yelling. They too had seen their reinforcements, and obviously now hoped to save face by destroying this lone rider before their fellows arrived.

Conan decided to saw Chestnut’s reins the other way. Isparana could see to herself while he turned his right side to the enemy. Yet to do so, he realized, would put him instantly in danger of running combat or worse, for the green-robed riders were now that close.

It was then that the discordant chorus of yells and battle screams rose from above, and Conan looked up.

Isparana sat her nervous mount on the very ridge, while on either side of her swept camel after camel, in two files. Atop each, a man in fluttering white kaffia and white burnoos shouted, screamed, and waved his sword. Their ungainly mounts came pounding down the declivity on big feet designed for the desert. Sand flew in pale yellow clouds. High saddles creaked atop those ridiculous single humps.

Cries of consternation rose from Conan’s pursuers. They forgot him to turn their horses’ heads back down the slope. Down the opposite one, with Conan’s pack animals among them, came their seven fellows. Conan’s grin was grim and ugly as he watched one of the three fall off his mount. The man whose sword arm he had chopped was finally succumbing to loss of blood, exacerbated by pursuing his wounder and being forced to manhandle his horse on several hillsides.

Camels plunged past Conan and their riders hardly glanced at him.

The last two of his original accosters were hacked to the ground ere they reached the brief stretch of level terrain between the two slopes. Up the other incline lunged over a half-score camel riders, still yelling. All these desert people, Conan reflected, were a noisy lot when they attacked one another! And he remembered the shrieking Cimmerians he had accompanied at Venarium, and he put the thought from his mind.

The green-robed horsemen also yelled—and fled. Six sat their mounts on a downhill slide-run to the west; the seventh, greed making him think he was clever, snatched the lead-rein that connected Conan’s four sumpter animals and urged his mount eastward.

With an owner’s snarl, Conan kicked Chestnut to bolt after him. Four of the camel-riders, too, pursued him; the others swerved westward, ten camels after six horses. These white-burnoosed men, Conan mused, must be mean fighters! With odds of ten to six who were
men
, the six stood and fought.

The green-robed
jazikh
with Conan’s supply-laden animals glanced back, saw the pursuit, and dropped the lead rein. The four beasts slowed to a halt. They tried to prance and kick as four camels tore past them. Again Conan changed Chestnut’s course. As he reached his pack animals, swerving across their new course to herd and stop them, he heard their would-be owner shriek and die.

Conan nearly lost his saddle in stopping Chestnut and regaining the lead of his supply horses. He sat his mount on the slope, waiting. Chestnut heaved and blew; Conan patted his sweat-running neck. Now they were still, Conan felt very very hot indeed—and nevertheless vowed not again to ride thus without wearing that excellent vest of linked mail he’d bought in Shadizar with a Khaurani gem!

Four men on camels came up the slope to him, and separated. Running sweat, Conan spoke quickly.

“You are most welcome, hawks of the desert!” he hailed them, in the Turanian he hopefully assumed they spoke.

They said nothing; their leader nodded without showing his teeth. All four wore thick, short beards of black or brown and were made to look weirdly ferocious by their black-encircled eyes.

“These belong to me and my woman,” he said, briefly pointing to Isparana, who waited atop the larger hill. “The green-robed dogs beset us in their numbers, and we struck down four ere we flew. Their leader is a few leagues back; I blinded him.”

A big-nosed, curly-bearded man only a few years older than Conan stared at him from atop his dromedary. “Who are you? Where go you? Why is the woman unarmed?”

“See his eyes!” one of the others said in barely hushed excitement.

“I am Conan, a Cimmerian,” said the owner of those blue eyes, unknown to many so far south. “We go to Zamboula, which is her home. Over there lies a man I bowled over. He was crushed by his horse,” he said, not wishing them to take all credit or think he was ineffectual. “He lies near another whose leg I chopped. Her dagger is in the first one’s shoulder. As for her sword…” He shook his head and lied easily. “A few leagues back. She lost it, in the onset of these brigands. They are your enemies?”

“They are everyone’s enemies—ah!”

The camel-riders stared westward, toward the source of shrieks and metallic clashes. Their fellows had overtaken the green-robes, and would presumably make short work of thieving wights who fled rather than fought.

The man with the curly beard and unusually deep-set eyes framed in black returned his gaze to Conan. Conan noticed a scar on his forehead, a small v, neatly etched.

“You two are alone? I know of no… Cimmeria?”

“Cimmeria is a nation far north, beyond the kingdom of Zamora,” Conan said, wondering if these desert tribesmen knew of Zamora. “Aye, we are alone. We were four, and two were slain far, far back. Two of these are their horses, bearing their weapons. She is most anxious to reach Zamboula. Are you men of Zamboula?”

“No. Do those packs also contain the ears of those who slew your companions?”

Conan shook his head. “We, uh, do not take ears.”

The four white kaffias turned each toward the other, and their wearers grinned. One of them held out his dark-skinned palm to show Conan a bloody trophy: ears, freshly sliced off.

“We do.”

“Oh. Well, you are welcome to the ears of those I slew—unless that is not honorable;” he rather hurriedly added, when he saw their frowns. He also noted then that two others had the same v-shaped scars just above the inner corner of the right eye. He could not be sure of the fourth, whose kaffia was pulled a bit lower in front.

“It would not be honorable. They are yours.”

“Umm. Well, as my people do not take ears, perhaps your leader will accept them as gift.” Conan felt that they did not look overly happy about that, either. “You are not of Zamboula, then.”

“No.”

“Citizens of the Turanian Empire?”

“No.”

“These, uh… this is within the area it claims, is it not?”

The curly-bearded man shrugged. “We do not acknowledge the suzerainty of Turan.”

Conan thought,
I think we’re in trouble
.

The tall Eagle Gates of Zamboula swung wide. A file of horsemen came cantering importantly forth, by twos. Ten such pairs emerged while the gate sentries looked down upon onion-shaped helms the peaks of which trailed three yellow streamers each. From each helmet depended a shoulder-length arras of linked chain that gleamed and rippled like snakeskin in the morning sunlight. Each fall of steel mesh was bordered by three rows of bronze links, for color and decor. Twenty strong, horse-soldiers of the Empire rode forth. They expected no trouble and wore no other mail.

The blousy white leggings of each were tucked into crimson-topped boots of brown leather. Over that each man wore knee-length, back-split tunic of crimson, and over that a sleeveless white surcoat split front and back and blazoned with the golden griffin of Turan. Two yellow sashes, around hips and from left hip in front over shoulder to right hip behind, gleamed boldly against the white. Ten men wore swords and from ten high-cantled saddles swung axes shaped like pregnant half-moons. All the men were mustached; sixteen wore beards. Six horses bore crossbows and each man led a change of horse bearing food and water.

From the horn of every saddle swung a short wide-mouth trumpet.

They rode north and north, and on the fifth day they spread out in a long, long line. Each disposed himself so as to be just within sight of another. Somehow Akter Khan knew that a foreign male and a woman of Zamboula approached, having come down the steppes and the desert from the far north. He had sent forth twenty men to meet them. None knew why the pilgrims were so important to their khan. They were soldiers whose business was not to know, but to do. They were escort. The pilgrims were to be aided, guided, politely escorted—unless they evinced desire to go somewhere other than to Zamboula. In that case every effort was to be made to persuade them to continue to the city.

If they persisted in recalcitrance to visit the khan, they—with all their possessions, that was most important—were to be conveyed to the khan at any cost, dead or alive.

The sun blazed and the desert shimmered and twenty men rode north and behind them in Zamboula a young mage looked into his mirror to watch the progress of the two who approached, and reported thrice daily to his khan. And he plotted, and so did the rebel Balad and his followers, while Zamboula shimmered and festered like a boil on the southern desert.

Conan and Isparana were not in trouble.

They were guests of the little desert community of the Shanki, whose ancient religion dictated that they ride camels, not horses, and that each child be marked with the little v-shaped scar on the forehead—above the leftmost corner of the right eye, among boys, and the rightmost corner of the left eye, on girls.

Even so, as they returned to their oasis community, they were accompanied by eighteen horses. Two were bestridden by Conan and Isparana. Two had been the mounts of Sarid and Khassek. Two had been Conan’s and Khassek’s sumpter beasts. The remaining twelve were the erstwhile mounts of the green-robed raiders the Shanki called Yoggites, after their god; one beast had been wounded in the encounter. It had been slain and left for scavengers on wings or legs. The Shanki would not ride horses, or wear their hides, or eat their meat.

The sun was low and the sky streaked with blood and topaz and nacarat when the camel warriors and their guests reached the nameless community; it was the home of the Shanki. Here palms reared tall and hung their topknots Like dangling arms over tents and little rounded storehouses. Here men wore long-sleeved white tunics over loose leggings or trousers of yellow or orange or red or a rich brown the making of which involved camel urine; their women wore scarlet, and only skirts sheathed their bodies and legs. Married women showed no portion of their heads.

Though the visitors were told that the Shanki had occupied this oasis for “hundreds of years,” the only buildings were storehouses; granaries of mud and dung. The Shanki lived in tents, as had their nomadic ancestors, and they preserved the trappings and customs of a warrior people. Here dwelt less than five hundred persons—the oasis was home, and population was strictly controlled—under a man called khan.

He was Akhimen Khan’s son Hajimen who led the attack on the old Shanki enemy, the
jazikhim
called Yoggites. Akhimen was not yet twoscore years of age; his son and heir was four-and-twenty, and his older sister was in the harem of the Great Khan in Aghrapur; Akhimen’s gift. The Shanki lived within the bounds of the Empire of Turan, but were not of it. As they patrolled the desert hereabouts and would occasionally act as caravan guard, the King-Emperor in Aghrapur of Turan suffered them to remain, without Turanian soldiery or taxation.

Both Akhimen and his son, Conan noted when they removed the white outer robes they donned only when riding out of their community, wore loose yellow tabards over scarlet shirts and very long, loose white leggings. To the breast of each man’s tabard was pinned a black star of five points.