The Sword of Skelos (24 page)

Only as he approached the naked, bound woman did Conan discover that Isparana was not alone in the pit.

The master of this smoky, blood-splashed and pain-haunted domain had been taking his rest, snoozing on a pallet back in shadows. Now Conan saw him for the first time; Baltaj the torturer was a man as burly as he with as much reach of arm and perhaps as much strength, and more belly. Like the Cimmerian, he bore sword and dagger both. The difference was that his big knife was intact.

“Big one,” he said, in a throaty though oddly high voice, “aren’t you.”

Conan did not think to command Zafra’s sword of sorcery. Nor did he wait for the torturemaster to attack. He flipped the broken dagger into the air and thrust his sword into the earthen floor in time to catch the knife in his right hand. Never mind the scratch; he swept that arm back and forward and the hilt and three or so inches of raggedly snapped blade was still in air when his hand came down on his swordhilt. The entire strange maneuver required only seconds. It was a desperate act; Conan did not care to waste time facing a fellow of such strength and length of arm, who was better armed then he.

He had not thrown at Baltaj’s head, but at his chest, assuming that the man could not be so fast as to dodge aside, with that well-fed belly. He was right. Too, Akter’s torturer moved awrong; he ducked. Thus he presented his face to the hurled missile. The hilt of the broken dagger struck him in the mouth, loudly and hard. The torturer grunted in shock and pain; lip tore and tooth broke; unweeping tears started from both his eyes. He was blinded, if only momentarily. It was long enough.

Conan’s sword, jerked from the earth by arm bent out to the side, came straight up to split Baltaj’s belly from navel to sternum. The cut was not deep, though painful and long and bloody. Trailing blood, the blade continued moving, missing the torturer’s face, sweeping up above his head. Conan stepped forward as he reversed his action to bring the blade down. Zafra’s excellent sword split the skull of Zamboula’s torture-master.

“Too bad,” the Cimmerian muttered. “It would have been pleasant to put you to your own devices, fat swine!”

“Stop… talking to the dead,” a straining, bound woman said with some difficulty, “and cut me loose. I’ve waited long enough for you, you hen-brained barbarian cur of a camel-stealing Cymrian.”

“Cimmerian, damn it, Cimmerian,” Conan said, and cut her free, the while silently admiring her pluck. Things had been done to her, and none of them nice. “You are a bit of a mess, ‘sparana my love—though I swear, even welted and filthy and with that brand on you, you do look better naked than any ten other woman.”

She sat up weakly, wincing, chafing her rope-marked wrists.

“Fat swine there had some wine and meat over by his pallet,” she said. “How sweetly you talk, lover, to a poor sweet innocent girl you left in an inn for Akter Khan’s pigs and dogs! Oh… Conan… I’m sorry, but I think I am going to faint…”

“There isn’t time, ‘sparana. It’s just the blood running down out of your head, anyhow—how long since you have stood?” He fetched the wine, shaking the jug and smiling at its sloshing sounds, and gave her first long sip. He aided her to her feet, and suddenly she was fiercely hugging him.

“Oww,” she uttered, and pushed back from him.

“I understand gratitude and undying love, “sparana, but I’d never hug anyone wearing mail.”

From under her brows, she rolled her eyes to look up at him. “You really are a small-souled barbarian pig, Conan, do you know it?”

He tightened his face. This was accomplishing nothing save perhaps to release a bit of tension, for which time did not pause, and she was starting to sound too serious besides.

“Perhaps, my sweet lady of Zamboula, but I’ve just slain Zafra, three of the Khan’s Thorns, and several hundred pounds of torturer to come and get you out of here.”

“Oh—oh Conan,” she said, and squeezed his forearms—which were slippery with the blood of others— and looked down. “You should not turn serious on me so suddenly; you know I’m grateful, and that I love you.” After a moment, when he had said nothing, she looked up with bright eyes: “
Zafra
?”

“Aye. With his own sword—that is it. I will tell you about it another time. Are you ready to be a warrior woman again, ‘sparana?”

“NAKED?”

“The torturemaster’s pallet is nice and soft and scented… it seems to be composed of the clothing of more women than you. I did recognize that pretty red fluff you wore the night they came for you, though.”

“Ugh. I’d rather not wear anything he has been sleeping on…” She glanced around. “Still, that seems the single choice. If only the slime did not have fleas.” She went naked into the shadows where Baltaj had lain. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am about Zafra, Conan—or how sorry I am that you gave this pig Baltaj so swift a death! They have done a lot more than merely use me, you know.”

Conan nodded. “Merely” being “used,” he knew, would have been far far more to another woman, or the girl Isparana was not. Perhaps she had contrived to gain some enjoyment of it; he hoped so. He was glad he was male, and never had to make such a statement about “merely” being used.

“You are a warrior, Isparana,” he said quietly.

“You sound so formal, suddenly.”

“Impressed with you,” Conan said. “Are you interested in a coat of mail with blood on it?”

“A good idea,” she said, dressing. “Couldn’t you wipe it a bit with his tunic or something?”

Just as he’d got the tunic off the younger dead man with the ruined arm and broken neck, Conan’s peripheral vision reported a movement well above. He looked up. He recognized one of Akter Khan’s bodyguards, Farouz. The thick, middle-aged guardsman smiled down at him.

“Fine. I have ever abhorred that scum Baltaj anyhow.”

Conan, squatting, wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword at his side. He stared balefully up at Farouz, who stood just inside the door. There would be no reaching him before he was on its other side and securing it.

“A good place for you, barbarian. I will just close this door while my lord Khan decides what he wishes done with you two!”

Conan drew the sword. “Yog take you, Farouz, you would have to come along just now, wouldn’t you! You sure you’re not ready to change masters?”

“Hardly. I am well taken care of, Conan. We will see you two later—
several
of us.”

Weirdly, a tiny smile tugged at the corners of the Cimmerian’s mouth. He pointed the sword at the man twenty feet above him. “Slay him,” he muttered, and opened his hand.

Zafra’s sword fell to the dungeon floor.

Farouz laughed. “Ah, I thought that was—so it won’t work for a barbarian, eh, barbarian?”

“Damn!” Conan snarled. “That dog Zafra—the spell worked only for him! It’s just a sword!”

As he squatted to pick up the sword, a slim hand snaked from the shadows in the unlit corner of the pit, and plucked up Baltaj’s dagger. Conan scooped up Zafra’s sword and hurled it in desperation, just as Farouz was backing out. The sword clanged off the stone wall. Farouz laughed and waved an arm in japish farewell— and the dagger thrown by Isparana proved that from below, the leathern skirt of his tunic was not quite long enough; Baltaj’s dagger drove into the guardsman’s groin. Croaking, puking, his eyes enormous and glazed with agony, Farouz fell backward.

Conan whirled to Isparana. She had emerged into the light, ridiculously motley-dressed even for this chamber. “I didn’t know you could throw a knife that way
twice!”

“Fortunately for you, I can. There have been many times I would have put one into you, my dear, if only I had the chance. I did not—again, fortunately for you.” She was gnawing the meat off a big greasy bone, with relish.

Conan stared, thinking back on all the times she might easily have slain him—back when she was of a mind to—had she possessed a dagger balanced for throwing. This woman, calmly eating, slew with the mental ease and aplomb of a Cimmerian! “Uh! All gods be thanked that all you ever used against me was the sword! Let’s not forget to talk about that—some other time. That dagger was heavy, too.”

“Aye. I am not weak. But I could use your help, getting into that mail.”

“Oh.”

While he assisted her in getting thirty or so pounds of seamless, linked chain down over her head and mass of black hair—which at present was dirty and sweat-matted—Isparana asked him an embarrassing question:

“What was that strange business with the sword? You said ‘Slay him’—and
dropped
it?”

Swiftly he told her how Zafra had used the sword, and what he had said of it, and how it had chased Conan—and plunged into its ensorcellor.

“Yog’s fangs,” the woman said with a little shudder, “what a ghastly bit of magic! I’m glad he is gone and that we have the sword now—and you think that it was so magicked as to obey only Zafra’s order?”

“Well,” Conan said as they headed for the steps, “it didn’t obey mine! Nor did I throw it well at all— but for you we’d be prisoners awaiting a horde of armed men.”

“Two would have been enough,” Isparana said, “with bows or crossbows. So Zafra plotted for all, did he—and would Akter not have demanded such a weapon as that sword had he known about it!”

Conan smiled grimly, and nodded. Moments later they had booted Farouz into the pit of torment, and both were armored and doubly armed. None of the helms fit Isparana properly; she had too much hair. They swung to the open door. Her hand caught his.

“I cannot believe well ever get out of the palace alive, Conan. I want to tell you that—”

“Let’s get help, then,” he said, and flung wide the door.

“Wait—Conan! I wanted to say—get help? What do you mean? Conan!”

He wasn’t waiting, and with a nasty face she hurried along with him, into the corridor and along it. “What do you mean, get help, damn you?”

“You’re doubtless right that we could never fight free of the palace, and certainly we cannot sneak out. None who sees us at more than a glance will believe we are Khan-Khilayim! Well, there is one here who can help us get out—by being our captive! We’ll find him in the throneroom.”

She gasped. “You cannot mean to kidnap Akt—” She broke off, and slowly a smile spread over her features. “You can! You do! And if anyone can do it—
we
can, Conan!”

“You could try calling me Fouzle, or something,” he said in exasperation. “There’s no use trumpeting my name to see how much attention we can attract!”

“Sorry, Fuzz,” she said, and they strode the palace halls as if they owned them.

One, then two and soon a third servant fled their grim-faced approach, an armored giant and an armored woman whose hair was tangled and whose face and legs bore both dirt and grease. Still a fourth servant saw them, and hesitated, and fled. Two members of the Khilayim should have done. Conan and Isparana left one dead and the other groaning in his blood while they moved in on the doors that opened into Zamboula’s hall of royalty.

“Nice of him to have no guards standing out here,” Conan said with an ugly smile. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Conan and Isparana hurled open the two big doors and walked into the broad long throneroom.

Nigh fifty feet away Akter Khan sat enthroned, regally robed and scarlet-shod. Between him and the two invaders stood eleven guardsmen. They were surprised; Conan and Isparana were worse than surprised. Twelve pairs of eyes stared at them. Above the eyes of one, a helmet sprouted yellow plumes, and it was that man who spoke.

“Take them.”

“Wait!”

That counter-command came from Akter Khan, and the ten members of his Thorns paused, poised, hands on hilts. The khan’s face showed excitement as he sat forward in his silver-inlaid chain of fruitwood.

“Conan,” he went on, “Isparana: move aside, both of you. Clear a way to the door. Captain Hamer: take your men out into the corridor. All of them. I wish to talk with these two.”

The man in the plumed helmet jerked his face toward Akter, without turning. “Lord Khan! These are enemies—and armed!”

Conan attentively watched satrap and captain. He saw no sign pass between them. The officer seemed genuinely horrified at his ruler’s seeming insanity. Across his shoulder, Akter looked at Conan.

“Will you pass over your weapons? There will be no tricks, Conan. I do want only the three of us alone in this hall.”

“Why?”

The Cimmerian’s single word rode the air like a snarl amid the silence of the great hall.

“I will tell you,” Akter Khan said, surprising all but Conan. “Perhaps you have some knowledge of just why a small horde of camel-warriors is giving my army so much trouble, even now. I remember that you arrived in Zamboula in the company of some of those Shanki… and I do hate to wipe them out, which both you and they know I can do. I would talk with you and Isparana, alone.”

Just above a whisper, Isparana said, “Don’t believe him!”

Aloud Conan said, “I believe him.”

“Lord Khan—” Captain Hamer began in a pleading tone.

Showing some anger, Akter waved a hand. “Enough! You will leave this hall and remain close to hand in the corridor, Captain, you and your men. I will accept some disrespect from this mighty man of weapons, Hamer, who feels that I betrayed him. But I’ll not argue with you, whom I appointed because you were the brother of a one-time wh—mistress. Remain close outside, mind; enough of my Thorns have left the palace already, to be sure those desert rats on their mangy camels make no sudden attack on the gate!”