The Sword of Skelos (16 page)

Quietly, pressing against him still, she said, “Conan…”

He tugged free and turned
to
the tent’s open flap. “Come, Isparana. Our camel-riding escort is waiting.

So is the khan of Zamboula… and sufficient reward that we won’t need to steal again. After that… the biggest room in the biggest inn in Zamboula?”

“Aye!” she cried, her eyes alight. “The best, in the Royal Turan Inn, for Lord Conan and his… the Lady Kiliya?”

And laughing, they went out into the sun.

The camel-warriors saw the horsemen first, or one of them.

A moment after the Shanki called out and pointed to the approaching rider whose helmet flashed in the sunlight, that man reined in. The Shanki also drew up, less than a mile from the horseman who was recognizably a uniformed soldier. They watched him lift a brass trumpet to his lips and heard the blast he blew. As if in reply, another sounded well to his left. A third followed, off to his right, and then another, farther off. And another.

Hajimen lifted an arm straight up. His men—and the two horse-mounted people they escorted—moved in closer to his dromedary.

“Stand ready to charge or fight,” he said, “and do nothing without my command save proceed, at a walk.”

Conan and Isparana had to wait until ten Shanki had acknowledged, aloud. Then the eleven camels and eighteen horses paced forward on the sparkling sand.

Minutes later, helmeted horsemen in yellow sashes had converged in a sort of pincer, and they were surrounded by soldiers.

“Zamboulans,” Hajimen muttered. “Halt. Do nothing without my command.”

“Hai, Shanki!” the leader of the horse-soldiers called.

Seated high atop his dromedary, Hajimen looked around at each of twenty men, and saw no drawn weapons or cocked crossbows. He lifted his weapons hand.

“Hajimen, son of Akhimen Khan of the Shanki, greets the warriors of the Khan of the Zamboulans,” he called, in his best voice. “The Khan of the Zamboulans knows of our coming, to trade horses in the marketplace?”

Conan listened to Hajimen’s voice, brought up from the diaphragm, wander off across the desert to be lost.

“If those two with you are Isparana of Zamboula and her companion, we are sent to escort them.”

“I am Isparana!”

Conan kicked forward the horse he had named Dunestrider, as he had promised the beast. “I am Conan, a Cimmerian. I ride with Isparana of Zamboula. How knew your khan that we were approaching?”

“I do not know, uh, Conan. He said you were, though we weren’t given your name, only hers. He sent us to conduct you to the city and the palace.”

“Kind of your khan,” Conan said with some amusement. “We are escorted by these Shanki, too. Do you have a name?”

“I am Jhabiz, Prefect. That is Isparana of Zamboula with you?”

“I said I was, Jhabiz, and I know you,” she called. “We bring that which Akter Khan desires.”

“Good. There is no need for your people, Hajimen Shanki, to ride all the way to Zamboula.” The big-beaked wight had a face like an accipitrine.

“Oh well, we will,” Hajimen said, glancing around. “So many horse-soldiers to escort two! Conan and Isparana are our friends, and we are charged by our khan to see them into the camp of the Zamboulans. And we came to trade horses, remember?”

The Zamboulan prefect lifted a ringer to scratch in the fork of his beard. He sat forward a bit, revealing the beginnings of a belly. Thus he sat his big chestnut horse, chewing his mustache while he reflected. “I suppose we must all ride together, then. We have the same charge from our khan.”

“We will be happy for the warriors of the Khan of the Zamboulans to join us,” Hajimen said, with no enthusiasm whatever.

Conan grinned. A couple of Shanki chuckled— and so did at least one of the men in the bright double sash and helmet streamers of Zamboula. The Cimmerian looked up at Hajimen, perched atop his single-humped camel. The Shanki leader nodded. Shanki camels began to pace forward. The two they escorted rode amid them, and Prefect Jhabiz had to move. Seizing on opportunity, he wheeled his chestnut about and set off at the walk, toward Zamboula. This way Jhabiz seemed to be leading the entire group of eleven camels, fifty-eight horses, one woman, and thirty-one, men in addition to his uncomfortable self. His men drew in slowly, bracing the clot of camels and lead-horses in the midst of which rode the two objects of this massive escort.

Conan looked over at Isparana and grinned. “Does the size of our retinue meet my lady’s satisfaction?”

“Aye, Lord Conan,” she said, and they laughed together.

Though the Zamboulans were as aware of their mission and conscientiously proprietary of their two charges as the Shanki, all managed to avoid incidents during the next few days. At last Conan watched the desert sprout the towers and domes of a city. Next he saw its walls, a glaring white. The whole grew larger, and he was able to make out trees; palms and twisty olives. Eventually Jhabiz called two of his men to him and issued quiet instructions. First directing a dual trumpet blast at those slowly nearing walls, both men set off for them at the gallop. Little coils of yellowish dust curled up behind them so that they seemed pursued by sand demons.

The gates stood wide by the time the company reached them. All rode in on a broad thoroughfare that Conan saw was well defended by walls on two sides. The temperature within the walls was higher though the city proper began a bit farther on. Some horse- and camelmanship allowed Jhabiz to wait while Hajimen came alongside.

“You know the way to the market,” the Zamboulan said.

“Aye. We will ride with my friends as far as the palace, and thence to the market.”

“Hajimen Shanki son of a khan—camels are not allowed on the Royal Way! Nor may more than twenty riders approach the palace in a body.”

Hajimen stared impassively down from his camelish perch. Silence rose like mist, and tension rode it.

“Prefect,” Conan said, and Jhabiz, gone all uncomfortable again, looked at him. “Best suspend one rule for today, and bend the other. There are thirteen of us; it seems wise that you and six of your men ride with us, while the rest of your command hurries ahead, or follows at a goodly interval, or takes a different route.”

“No one is going to like this…”

“I am one with them,” Conan assured the poor man. “And I but suggested a remedy to a problem. It would seem to save some feelings and some face. Any other attempt at solution might endanger Zamboula’s relationship with the Shanki.”

The eagle-nosed prefect glanced around. His lips moved silently and now he looked unhappy in addition to uncomfortable. At last he nodded. He ordered his second to choose a dozen men and start to follow, at walk, once Jhabiz and company had turned onto the Royal Way, a little way down this thoroughfare.

Thus the thief Isparana returned to Zamboula of the orchards and mulberry groves and dome-topped buildings and scarlet towers, surrounded by an escort that attracted as many stares as a royal delegation.

Thus did Conan first enter Zamboula; trousered, wearing a white kaffia and flowing Shanki robe over his mailvest, escorted by helmeted soldiers and camel-mounted tribesmen as he paced his horse up the Royal Way toward the onion-like dome of the palace of a high Turanian satrap—who had never heard of him. Nor could any staring citizen guess who might be this obviously important man who was so tall that his legs hung down on a horse as other men’s did when they bestrode ponies.

Prefect Jhabiz, maintaining the semblance of being in charge, rode solemnly, stolidly ahead of them all. He stared straight ahead and his left hand lay decoratively on his thigh.

Behind that strange procession plodded sixteen riderless horses; Conan’s and Isparana’s four sumpter beasts, their packs now much shrunken, and the trained desert riding horses captured from the Yoggite raiders. Akhimen Khan had made his choices from among Conan’s five and Conan gave Hajimen one, so that only two were the property of the Cimmerian. He had not mentioned to Isparana that he also considered both Sarid’s and Khassek’s former mounts his property.

Riding beside him, she looked anything but a woman of Zamboula. They, Conan noted, wore not so much makeup around the eyes, and their lips, when painted, were red or a purplish pink. Nor were these women given overmuch to clothing, he saw, which was unfortunate for those with jiggly bellies.

Closer and higher loomed the palace. It rose up in a jumble of additions of gray and white stone faced by yellow-painted columns, and a broad flight of sand-hued steps topped by a crenellated defense wall before the great carven doorway. About it lofted the palace proper, in multiple towers, walls of painted mud-brick, and the great dark dome that was like unto a gigantic onion pulled fresh from the ground. Robed and trousered, tunicked and tabarded, courtiers and bureaucrats on their varied business paused to stare at the mass of approachers.

Camels on the Royal Way! This giant of a man with his painted, Shanki-dressed woman must be important indeed!

At the foot of the broad palace steps, Conan turned to Hajimen.

“Do the Shanki bargain well?”

Hajimen allowed his lips to widen and show a small flash of teeth. “The Shanki bargain better than the Zamboulans!”

“Good,” Conan said, “as we are in Zamboula. Do you then trade for all six of my horses with yours, for pearls or necklace of Zamboulan coinage, or some such that I can carry easily. And the swords in that bay’s pack, as well.”

“We will be pleased and honored to trade for Conan of Cimmeria.”

“Will the khan’s son name a place where we shall meet some hours hence? Say at sunset?”

“At the camel stables in the Quarter called Bronze will be the Shanki, or one to meet and guide Conan.”

Conan nodded and dismounted. Atop the steps, Zamboulans watched, in rich garments. Rounding his horse, Conan put up his hands for Isparana. After a moment’s hesitation, her face relaxed. With a smile, she allowed herself to be lifted down as if she were a lady. Since she was the khan’s agent, Conan had decided to be kind; he would let her seem knowledgeable before her employer. Once her feet were on the ground, he held her long enough to mutter into her hair.

“I wear the amulet under my clothes. You may tell him so.”

“But you—when did you put it there?” She stepped back only a little, frowning, trying to decide whether to believe.

“Months ago, in Arenjun.”

“But—”

“But you did not find it when you searched me in ‘our’ Shanki tent a few nights ago!” he said, with a chary smile. “It was there. I hung it around my neck the day after I slew Hisarr Zul and burned his manse.”

“But… no! You mean it is that ugly…
thing
?”

Conan smiled benignly at her.

Doubtless some of the openly curious watchers wondered why the blacklipped woman in the white Shanki robe over red Shanki sirwal was cursing while she and Conan ascended the palace steps.

Conan’s query of the man beside him was casual; “Someone will take care of our mounts, won’t he?”

“Aye,” Jhabiz said, and turned to give that order. He hurried after Conan and Isparana, who had not paused.

“In the event you are dismissed while we are still with the khan, Jhabiz,” Conan said, returning the glare of a silk-robed courtier who might outweigh a horse, “I’ll be looking for an inn later. You know that I will be starting from the stables in the Bronze Quarter no later than sundown.”

“And if the khan wishes to keep you longer?”

Conan swaggered; a superbly robed man stepped aside. “He won’t.”

“I—”

“I will be buying,” the Cimmerian said. “Won’t I, ‘sparana. “

“—whelp of a camel-molesting rot-crotched viper —yes—son and heir of a Khitan yellow mongrel bitch…”

“I will try to be there,” Jhabiz said. “What is the matter with her, man of Cimmeria? Have you two had a falling out?”

“She is insanely in love with me and fears that Akter Khan will separate us to get at her beautiful mouth,” Conan said, and they passed into the palace with Isparana still running through her vocabulary of invective.

Conan looked first for means of defense and exit, in Akter Khan’s broad hall of state.

He and Isparana were escorted through an entry closed by two heavy doors that Conan saw secured from within by means of an enormous bar of iron-bound wood. It was counterbalanced in a pivot for easy raising and lowering. Thirty paces to his left the cream-painted wall was split by a single portal, tall and paneled. An identical door cut the wall forty paces to rightward. Both doors were closed and he saw no others.

The high-backed fruitwood chair with its carvings picked out in silver rested on a dais projecting from the wall opposite the main entry. The throne rested in its center, twenty paces from Conan. Four slim tall niches slitted the wall behind it, to let in air and light. By their depth Conan was made aware of the great thickness of the palace’s outside walls. Each of the shoulder-high windows was framed by yellow hangings broidered with a vermiform pattern of antirrhinum in green and scarlet and white. A large copper-bound pot of unglazed stone rested below each archery-and-light-slit, bravely thrusting up some waxy-leafed plant. That long, long wall was braced and embellished by five half-columns or pilasters with carven lions’ heads, and by a single decoration.

Conan assumed that the latter was not purely for decor. Only an ell or so to the left of the throne, which was nearly the same distance forward of the wall, two spikes had been forced into the stone. Each held in place a bracket that seemed to be of gold and was more likely a gilded lesser metal. The brackets supported, perhaps five feet above the floor, a curved sword sheath banded about with silver and red leather. From the mouth of the sheath thrust the gem-set hilt of a sword.

That of Zamboula’s founder, perhaps
, Conan mused.
Or Akter’s Sword of State, a symbol of rule he doesn’t care to wear while sitting his throne. A gift from Turan’s king, perhaps
. It didn’t matter.