The Sword of Skelos (9 page)

“I do not believe it. In any case, I know my lord. I know that he will reward us both. I have no reason to wish you ill, or try to gain the amulet from you. Even were we enemies, I should prefer to cross the desert with you than alone!”

Abruptly Conan laughed. “I can think of one who wishes me ill
and
has reason to try to gain the amulet of me… preferably off my corpse!”

“That Zamboulan woman.”

“Aye!”

“You believe that she was wearing the amulet when Hisarr Zul made it melt into a blob of yellow metal.”

“With three gems imbedded in it. I’d not have expected her to take it off. Poor Isparana! A good thief, and so clever—and so good to look upon too, Khass.”

“A nice reward for her thievery, I’m thinking,” Khassek said, ignoring the fact that he, sent to steal the amulet for one other than its owner, rode in the company of a thief. “And you did not have her.”

“No.”

“Tsk. And now that pretty bosom of hers may be burn-scarred.”

“It may.”

“You do not, ah, sound too… sorrowful, my friend.”

The horses paced south, leaving the Gorge of the Sand-lich and the Dragon Hills behind them. Their two pack horses plodded along in their wake, surely insulted to be turned from riding beasts into sumpter animals, every second day. Only Conan’s fine mount seemed to recognize its unimaginative name; Khassek called “Ironhead” whichever horse he rode at the time. At least that was what he told Conan was the meaning of the Iranistani word by which he called the animal.

“She tried to kill me, Khass. Twice. And then again, come to think: three times! And left me for dead or to be slain by those Khawarizmi slavers. After I had saved her from them, mind! It was only because she so treacherously struck me down that we both put in years trudging along in their slave coffle.”

“Years!”

“So it seemed,” the Cimmerian growled. “A day without freedom is a year, to a Cimmerian.”

“Conan… about the Eye. Since Hisarr combined its components to destroy the copy—he must have seen the original.” Khassek adjusted the crotch of his baggy trousers. “At the time, I mean.”

“That was my mission for him,” Conan said. “He had placed a time limit on me; I had to take the Eye back to him. Of course he saw it. He just did not get it.”

“I weep for him. But in that case… Conan… it seems strange to me that after you had returned to Arenjun with it, and shown it to Hisarr, and slain him… it seems strange that you would then leave Arenjun again, to ride out into the desert to bury the Eye.”

“Questioning my word, are you Khass?”

Khassek twitched his horse’s rein a little more leftward and looked back over his shoulder at the other man, who was adjusting his sweatband. Khassek was not all that far ahead; Ironhead’s right flank practically rubbed the nose of Conan’s mount. The Cimmerian had given the chestnut-brown animal the name Chestnut. It served. The other one he called Horse.

“With great care, you son of a Cimmerian, since you are behind me!”

Conan smiled, then chuckled. “All right. If my story were a bucket it wouldn’t hold two drops. I did not bury the Eye of Erlik in the desert.”

“You had it hidden in Arenjun?” Khassek slapped his head. “With the horses!”

Conan shook his head. “It has been on my person all the time, Khassek.”

Khassek swore, in two languages and by four several gods. Conan grinned and nodded appreciatively. Swearing was good for a person, and some ability at variety in languages helped.

“But why—”

“It seemed a good idea to be sure that we remained both fugitives, and out of Shadizar—and past Arenjun too—before I let you know I had the thing, Khass. With only the two of us, together, I think I can handle you.”

“Crafty hillborn barbarian!” The Iranistani was grinning.

“Tricky kidnapping mountaineer!” Conan, too, grinned, and wagged his head. And the horses plodded on, ever southward. Behind the pack-animals, the line of razorbacked hills called Dragons seemed to shrink, to clump together, to diminish.

“Ha! Hold my horse!”

Hurling his mount’s reins forward over its head to trail the ground, Khassek swung a leg up and over and sprang from his saddle. His dagger flashed into his hand as he ran; Conan watched him throw it. The abandoned horse stood staring. The dagger flew as aimed, and Conan nodded, pursing his lips. Best he remembered Khassek’s ability at knife-throwing!

Grinning, the Iranistani returned, boots crunching in the sand. He carried his prize: a hideous little lizard.

“Fresh meat for dinner,” he announced.

“Ugh,” Conan said.

“Feast on that accursed salt-meat then,” Khassek said, and forced the lizard through the loop on the side of his boot before he flung himself up and settled into the high-cantled saddle.

Conan said nothing; he knew the lizard would smell as good as the finest beef when they roasted it over a couple of the camel droppings they had picked up, and that he would love it. They rode on. The sun stared down at them, and its great eye burned. Conan’s nose had peeled days ago. And again yesterday.

“Conan: about this Isparana. After all you told me she did—treacherous bitch!—you still had her released from slavery to your… Samaratan friends.”

“I wish slavery on no one, Khass. She served her lord, and I was her rival, her enemy.
Am
her enemy, I mean! She tried to serve him well. I had the power to free her or to condemn her to slavery. I do not hate her so much as that, and did what I had to do.”

“What you felt you had to do.”

Conan pulled off his headband, squeezed sweat from it. “It is the same, to a Cimmerian.” He restored the headband, blinking.

“I would not have had her freed,” the Iranistani admitted reflectively. “It is not the same, to an Iranistani.”

“I will remember, Khassek of Iranistan.”

“Conan!” Khassek’s tone was accusing; mock-petulant.

“Just stay a little ahead where I can see you, Khassek my friend.”

Days and shimmering, sun-baked days later Conan had not responded to Khassek’s queries concerning the whereabouts of the amulet; Khassek thought he had guessed; and he still rode a little ahead when they emerged from the long “ravine” formed by two dunes. Water was low, and both men had at last admitted nervousness.

It was the Iranistani who first met the couple riding from the opposite direction. All three were much surprised and disconcerted, and two of their horses. Harness jingled and leather creaked as hands tightened to jerk at reins.

From behind the Iranistani, Conan saw beyond him a twin-bearded soldier in a peaked helmet and, beside and just behind him, a smaller rider muffled in a jallaba whose sand hood covered the face. It was from that invisible face that the first words issued.

“Sarid! It’s he—Conan!”

“What the—” Khassek was reaching across himself to draw steel even as he spoke. His horse pranced nervously. The Iranistani’s full-cut trousers, yellow and filthy, fluttered a little in a slight breeze—warm.

Sarid drew first, catalyzed by his companion’s words.

The Iranistani’s Ilbarsi knife had not quite cleared its sheath when Sarid’s swordblade struck, drawing, across his face. Khassek spluttered through a spray of blood and the wind of the words he could not form turned the blood to red froth. Tatters of tongue and lip fell down the front of his surcoat.

He reeled back; Sarid’s backstroke slammed his edge into the side of the other man’s face with a
chok
sound.

Sarid had to twist his blade free hurriedly, as the Iranistani fell back and sidewise out of his saddle. His face was a hideous ruin, the mouth destroyed by the first stroke and the whole side of his head by the second. He struck the sandy ground with a sound like that of a bag of grain dropped by a careless dock-worker—dropped wetly into a puddle. Khassek flopped, twitched, made hideous wet sounds.

Only seconds had passed. The dry warm wind whipped garments. Conan was sure that Khassek would not suffer long and knew too that he would never let the man live with such a face.

Khassek’s horse, in the mouth of the narrow passage betwixt the dunes, reared when Sarid tried to spur forward. He had struck at his companion’s shouted words, and struck without a thought; now the trained

soldier recognized the real quarry. Isparana had told him all about the big dogson Cimmerian. Sarid tried to spur past the rearing riderless horse. It backed into Conan’s mount. The Cimmerian cursed and clung to rein and swiftly drawn sword. Remembering the lead-rein of the sumpter horses, he reached back to force it up off his saddle’s high back. The leathern strap dropped; the animals stood where they were, though restlessly.

“Accursed dumb… beast—get… AWAY!” Sarid stormed, striving to spur past the riderless Ironhead. The horse neighed and half-reared again.

Behind Sarid, Isparana had thrown back her hood. She, too, now held sword in fisted hand on which the knuckles showed pale and bony. On the ground Khassek twitched. His horse remained between Conan and Sarid, at the very mouth of the ravine.

More seconds rushed by. Leaning out from his saddle only a little, Conan struck Khassek’s beast; he twitched his wrist at the last instant so that the flat of his sword loudly slapped Ironhead’s rump.

With a cry almost human, the animal lurched blindly forward. Thus its shoulder struck Sarid’s mount just back of the arching, long-maned neck—and Ironhead kept moving. He forced his way on, and his shoulder and then saddle nearly tore Sarid’s leg off. The man screamed in a voice as high and un-human as the animal’s.

Then Ironhead was bolting past Isparana, and Sarid was no longer in control of horse or self, reeling, his face twisted, and Conan kicked his mount with both heels—which he then clamped. The muscles bulged in the Cimmerian’s legs.

His horse jerked forward to follow the animal it knew and had followed all the way down from Shadizar. And Conan struck from the right, across Chestnut’s neck, across his own chest, and into Sarid’s left arm.

The blade went deep. Both horses were amove, in opposite directions. The swordblade held, imbedded in muscle and bone. Conan’s arm was twisted across himself and pressed back against his chest. His horse kept moving. Conan grunted and his body twisted. The horse strove on. Conan, already unbalanced, at last let go his hold in desperation—too late. Conan fell.

The left rear hoof of Sarid’s big bay horse missed the Cimmerian’s head by the breadth of two fingers.

The bay lurched into a trot, free of restraint, for Sarid’s left arm was half severed and fountaining blood in a glistening wash around the blade that stood out from it. The horse galloped past Conan’s pack-animals, which were still within the little pass betwixt the dunes. There was not enough room; the bay did not care. Sarid was wiped from the saddle by a protruding pack. He fell heavily. The sword standing from his arm seemed to shorten.

Sarid, out of desire for Isparana and spurred into a reasonless fever by lust, blandishments and promises of reward beyond even her enticing self, had abandoned his oath as a soldier of Turan. He had attacked mindlessly, had slain Khassek, a complete stranger… and had lost his left arm and the use of his left leg.

Now a prancing, panicky sumpter horse stepped on his chest, and into it.

Conan, meanwhile, plopped heavily to the sand. Twisting even as he struck, he was up in two seconds. He had lost both horse and sword and narrowly missed being stepped on. He was angered to an extent that approached madness. Facing back the way he had come, he gazed at the rump of Isparana’s horse. Its long black tail fluttered behind like a banner, a taunting pennon.

The big Cimmerian snarled and did the insane. He grasped that long flowing tail in both hands, and he set himself.

In an instant his heels were deep in sand and horsehair was cutting into his ringers.

With a squeal and a jerk that rocked the woman in its saddle, the animal came to a halt. It strained, snorting—and Conan held!

Its rider, twisting in a high-backed saddle of leather over wood, leaned back to cut at Conan with her sword, which was curved in the eastern manner; a drawing blade. Her mount’s tail was beautifully long and the straining man was well back. He was just out of reach of her swordtip. She tried again.

The reshifting of her weight rearward on her mount, along with her violent movements and Conan’s dragging at its tail, brought the horse up into an air-pawing rear.

Grinning like a wolf, Conan released his grip just as Isparana tumbled onto him.

They rolled, man and robed woman. Both cursed. The offended horse looked back with large, rolling eyes that showed considerable white and seemed to mirror shocked sensibilities. Then it turned away, to exchange stares with the pack animals. One of them—the one with blood on its right forehoof—whickered. So did Isparana’s horse. Several yards beyond it, Conan’s chestnut looked back. Harness jingled as it bobbed its head. It too made that low, gentle whickering sound, then lifted its muzzle and whinnied. A quarter mile away, Ironhead heard and slowed to a stop. It turned to gaze back the way it had come. It bobbed its head. The horse neighed loudly.