The Sword of Skelos (13 page)

Hajimen’s wife, faceless and all in scarlet hung and encrusted with opals and garnets and silver, took Isparana away to see to her toilet. Akhimen welcomed Conan to his tent. The Shanki leader wore an extraordinary mustache; greased and oiled to glisten, it was curled up in a thick coil that arced on his cheeks nearly to his lower eyelids. Above his eye, the Shanki mark was oddly bent by two of the vertical furrows etched by sand and wind. Forty years on the desert created the face of a man of sixty. His single ring was set with a large garnet, and a hemispherical opal swung on his breast from a thong of twisted camel hair.

“Conan of Cimmeria is welcome among the Shanki. We will pen your horses.”

“What do the Shanki do with captured horses, Akhimen Khan?”

“The Shanki trade them in Zamboula,” that most courtly man said, “for good camels and a few things they need. The Zamboulans are happy to receive them, along with the opals my people carve into the likeness of camels, and stars, and split and smooth into perfect hemispheres.”

“I have noted many opals among the Shanki,” Conan said, “and all are beautiful. You are artists. The Shanki have this day captured eight horses, and I five.”

Akhimen inclined his head. People stepped respectfully from their path as they approached his tent, and stared at the strange-eyed man who towered over their khan, for the Cimmerian was nigh a giant and the Shanki were not a tall people. Conan never learned whence they came.

“We respected the right of Conan to lay claim to all those horses. However, I have heard my son, and agree that eight horses fall to us and five are Conan’s, by right of combat and capture. One of ours we slew. Here: fill this man’s mug!” For Conan had been handed a large Shanki-made cup of earth and fired sand within a minute of his dismounting.

While a young warrior was honored to fill the cup, Conan said, “I beg the khan of the Shanki to choose three of the five for his own, for without his people my woman and I had died this day.”

They entered the tent, which was in the community’s center and was no larger than any other. The warrior of the Shanki—he looked about twelve, Conan thought—did not enter with them. Inside were low tables that were surely not of Shanki manufacture, and mats that surely were; they were of the hide or woolly hair of camels, and some were dyed red and the brown that was a Shanki secret.

At his guest’s words, Akhimen again inclined his head. “Conan is generous to a fault, both with horses and words. However a mighty warrior who was attacked by six and slew five appears not to have needed our aid!”

Conan bowed his head, which he felt would be proper among these ferocious camel-warriors of the desert who were so courtly within their community and who used no direct form of address. He made no denial. The Shanki chieftain knew as well as the Cimmerian that Akhimen exaggerated.

“They were only Yoggites,” Conan said, knowing that would please a man he respected; the Cimmerian had known few such men. He noted that Akhimen affected to spit.

“I shall accept one horse as Conan’s kind gift,” Akhimen said.

Encouraged by such reverse bargaining, Conan nervously made bold to be expansive and to affect a ridiculous generosity. “Akhimen will displeasure me by not accepting five.”

“Perhaps my guest will not be displeased if I accept three,” Akhimen said, returning to the original offer, “of his choice.”

“It shall be three of the khan’s choice,” Conan said. While it was his life’s hope to become wealthy, he could not conceive of doing so by the steady acquisition of animals or real estate.

“I shall be honored to choose two from among my guest’s five horses.”

“I trust that the khan will choose well, though they are only horses, not camels.”

“I am pleased,” Akhimen Khan said.

“I am pleased,” Conan said.

“Fill our guest’s mug!” Akhimen said.

As there was no one else in the tent, he lifted an ewer and filled the mug himself. Conan bowed. The khan, whose tent was the color of sand and hung with a string of human ears on either side of its entry, turned to a partition formed by a thick curtain of opaque scarlet. He snapped his fingers, twice.

From behind the partition came two just-nubile girls who looked enough alike to be slim sisters. Each wore enormous heavy earrings of bronze that would surely in time lengthen their lobes past their jawlines; each wore a tallish, thick anklet of bronze; each wore a

strip of braided camel hide wrapped and bound about her left upper arm, dangerously tightly. Each wore nothing else whatever, and Conan essayed not to stare as they dropped to their knees and bowed deeply. Despite their age, Conan of a sudden wished himself behind them.

From behind them, between them walked a young woman. She was shapeless in several overlapping garments of red strung with silver and opals. An opal stood from her left nostril, which Conan thus knew was pierced, and the left sleeve of her garments was tightly wrapped with dark leather. Pinned to her bosom was a black star of five points. Her lips were stained black, her eyes completely circled—with obvious care in the application—by kohl so that her pupils looked huge, and the ivory decoration that hung below her waist in front was obscene.

“My daughter Zulfi,” Akhimen Khan said.

While Conan sought within his mind for words courtly enough for the Shanki, Zulfi covered her face with her hands and bowed very low. Conan came of a warrior people and was among such, and felt that it behooved him to stand perfectly still. If he offended, he would apologize and remind his host that he was from afar. If that were not enough, the Cimmerian thought, his ever-effective solution hung at his hip.

“The khan’s daughter Zulfi is a beauty and a credit to his tent and loins,” Conan said, and the uncharacteristic words obviously pleased both the weird-lipped young woman and her father.

Another now emerged; she was faceless and indeed headless beneath a long gold-arabesqued scarlet veil that dangled to her waist’s cincture, which was of silver disks and fell below her deep belly. The disks were coins, Conan saw, and knew that the woman bore much weight of them.

“My wife Aqbi,” Akhimen said. Her bow was not quite so deep, Conan saw, as her daughter’s.

“I am honored, and… pleased to be spared the doubtless blinding beauty of the mother of the beautiful Zulfi and so handsome a son as Hajimen.”
And a few more such speeches
, the Cimmerian thought sourly,
and I may throw up my beer
!

Again Aqbi bowed. She and Zulfi retreated to a dim corner to seat themselves, in flowing movements that scarcely disturbed their all-covering scarlet garments. Akhimen snapped his fingers. The two naked girls crawled awkwardly backward to flank the two women.

“Daughters of the Yoggites,” Akhimen said, and affected to spit.

Conan said, “Of course,” and wondered how long captives were kept naked… and how long it might be before their left arms withered and died.

The khan turned to his wife and daughter. “Zulfi, you will serve me and this guest in our tent. Woman: take your animals and cook for us.”

Conan noted that the two “animals,” limping slightly because of their large metal anklets, preceded their mistress from the tent. Zulfi came to the men and inspected their mugs. Both still held plenty of the thick Shanki beer. Even on the desert with grain at a premium, Conan reflected, men managed to make beer! Or perhaps the Shanki purchased it in Zamboula, with carven opals from some area of soft clay stone, and with the horses of slain men.

The Cimmerian hoped that Akhimen expected no return gesture. Isparana had seen the wisdom of being referred to among these warrior primitives as “Conan’s woman.” However, Conan could not imagine so proud and competent a thief and agent of her khan acting as servant, even to this mighty chieftain of all of five hundred peoples. At the same time, he wondered about her.

“I would ask where my woman Isparana is.”

“She receives clothing suitable to a woman,” Akhimen Khan told him, “and will supervise the placing of the pegs of Conan’s tent, as bents a woman who rides with her man.”

Conan said, “Oh.”

“Fill this man’s cup!”

Zulfi did; Aqbi was outside with her “animals,” where Conan had seen two mud-walled stoves and now smelled garlic heating in grease.

“My guest is not accustomed to the desert,” Akhimen said, slipping sinuously down to his knees and then seating himself on a camel-hair mat spread on a camel hide laid on the ground. He indicated that Conan should join him.

Conan did. “No,” he said. “My homeland, which I have left, has no desert, and during part of the year grows very cold.”

Akhimen nodded. “I have heard of cold,” he said solemnly, though Conan well knew the desert could grow grievously chill at night. “Nor have Conan’s strange sky-hued eyes suffered from the glare-sickness.”

“No.”

“Conan is blessed. It is a plague, the glare-sickness. We wear a stone to ward against it. And kohl beneath the eyes, of course. Zulfi: you will fetch our guest a glarestone.”

Zulfi rustled and jingled away behind the partition, and Conan heard his stomach rumble; outside, Aqbi was preparing something most savory. Bread with garlic, he was sure, and, he hoped, more. He knew better than to refuse any gift… and then, as Zulfi returned carrying a garnet the size of a plum, he remembered Akhimen’s reverse bargaining.

Accept that immense stone
, the Cimmerian thought,
and I am as one with the
—
spit
!—
Yoggites
!

“I will accept a gift of glarestone no larger than the fiftieth part of that treasure.”

“Ah! Theba shows displeasure,” Akhimen said as if lamenting and naming, Conan assumed, a god; the name was unfamiliar to him. “A guest will not accept my proffered gift! Zulfi, protect our honor; fetch in a glarestone half the size of that one!”

“
I
shall accept a gift of the khan,” Conan said, with the concept of Shanki bargaining and honor battling natural avarice within him, “of no more than a twentieth the size of that one.”

Akhimen sighed as if exasperated. “Our guest will accept of us naught but a gift of a third that which we wish him to take. Fetch such, Zulfi.”

“Too much honor is done me,” Conan said, trying not to show his sadness at swallowing a choking lump of greed. “My own honor will not allow me to accept so rich a gift! I can accept no more than the tenth part of the stone in the beautiful hands of the khan’s daughter.”

“Our guest honors himself by his modesty,” Akhimen Khan said, striking his forehead.

He shocked Conan then by producing a curved knife from the broad scarlet sash that encircled his waist under his tabard. Even as the Cimmerian’s arm started to move to seize and crush the man’s wrist, Akhimen touched his own chest with the point of his blade.

“Does my guest, who gives me many horses, not accept two gifts of glarestones the tenth part of this one which is in truth too large for the wearing so that such an offer shames me, I shall slay myself on the instant.”

“Let the khan’s hand be stayed,” Conan said, wanting to laugh. “Rather would I spill my own blood even to the death, than bring doom upon the Shanki by causing their great khan to be so much as scratched.”

Akhimen threw the Cimmerian a look. Whether it was of admiration for the return of flowery language or of some dolor at his guest’s “surrender,” Conan could not be certain. Zulfi departed, swishing and jingling.

“Is it permissible that I bow to the khan’s daughter on her return?”

Akhimen looked shocked, and Conan felt that it was not sham. “In what way have I offended Conan of Cimmeria, that he would bow to a woman within my very tent?”

Conan thought fast, and fetched out his little eating dagger. “I shall kill myself,” he said, and improvised: “Among some people it is great honor a man offers, to offer to bow to the daughter of another.”

“Ahh!” Akhimen’s hand rose to his beard, which he combed with his fingers. “A fascinating concept! I see that Conan meant only to honor me. People are so different throughout the world, are they not? What strange customs my guest must know!”