She was a woman worth looking at, Conan thought. And besides, he knew of her, as did every thief in Shadizar. The Lady Jondra was known for many things, her arrogance, her hunting, her racing of horses, but among thieves she was known as the possessor of a necklace and tiara that had set more than one man’s mouth watering. Each was set with a flawless ruby, larger than the last joint of a big man’s thumb, surrounded by sapphires and black opals. In the Desert men taunted each other with the stealing of them, for of all those who had tried, the only one not taken by the spears of her guards had died with Jondra’s own arrows in his eyes. It was said she had been more furious that the thief entered her chambers while she was bathing than at his bungled attempt at theft.
Conan prepared to step from the procession’s path, when the spearmen, not five paces from him now, dropped their spears to the ready. They did not slow their pace, but came on as if the threat should send him scurrying for cover.
The big Cimmerian’s face tightened. Did they think him a dog, then, to beat from their way? A young man’s pride, dented as much as he could stand in recent days, hardened. He straightened, and his hand went to the worn, leather-wrapped hilt of his broadsword. Dead silence fell among the crowd lining the sides of the street.
The spearmen’s eyes widened at the sight of the young giant standing his ground. The streets always cleared before their mistress, the drum usually sufficing, and never more than the gleam of a spearpoint in the sunlight required at most. It came to each in the same instant that this was no apprentice to be chivvied aside. As one man they stopped and dropped into a crouch with spears presented.
The drummer, marching obliviously, continued his pounding until he was between the two spearmen. There his mallets froze, one raised and one against the drumhead, and his eyes darted for a way out. The three men made a barricade across the street that perforce brought the rest of Lady Jondra’s cortege to a halt, first the mailed hunters, then the horsemen, and so back down the line, till all stood stopped.
The ludicrousness of it struck Conan, and he felt mirth rising despite himself. How did he get himself into these predicaments, he wondered.
“You there!” a husky woman’s voice called. “You, big fellow with the sword!” Conan looked up to find the Lady Jondra staring at him over the heads of her spearmen and archers. “If you can stop Zurat and Tamal in their tracks, perhaps you can face a lion as well. I always need men, and there are few who deserve the name in Shadizar. I will take you into my service.” A tall, hawk-faced man riding next to her opened his mouth angrily, but she cut him off with a gesture.”What say you? You have the shoulders for a spearman.”
The laughter broke through, and Conan let it roar, though he was careful not to take his eyes from the spearmen or his hand from his sword. Jondra’s face slowly froze in amazement. “I am already in service,” he managed, “to myself. But, my lady, I wish you good day and will no longer block your passage.” He made a sweeping bow—not deep enough to lose sight of the spear points—and strode to the side of the street.
For an instant there was stunned silence, then the Lady Jondra was shouting. “Zurat! Tamal! March on! Junio! The beat!”
The spearmen straightened, and the drummer stiffly took up his cadence again. In moments the procession was moving. Jondra rode past stiffly, her eyes drifting to the big Cimmerian as if she did not realize what she did. The hawk-faced man rode beside her, arguing volubly, but she seemed not to hear.
A knot of barefooted street urchins, all color long faded from their tattered tunics, suddenly appeared near Conan. Their leader was a girl, though at an age when her scrawniness could pass for either sex. Half a head taller than her followers, she swaggered to the muscular youth’s side and studied the array of hunters. The lion dogs passed, heavy, snarling brutes with spiked collars, pulling hard on the leashes held by their handlers.
“Dog like that could take your leg off,” the girl said. “Big man, you get a spear in your belly, and who’s going to pay us?”
“You get paid when you’ve found her, Laeta,” Conan replied. The trophies of the hunt were borne by, skins of leopards and lions, great scimitar antelope horns, the skull of a huge wild ox with horns as thick and long as a man’s arm, all held aloft for the view of the onlookers.
She cast a scornful glance at him. “Did I not say as much? We found the wench, and I want those two pieces of silver.”
Conan grunted. “When I am sure it’s her.”
This was not the first report of Tamira he had had. One had been a woman more than twice his age, another a potter’s apprentice with only one eye. The last of Jondra’s procession passed, pack animals and high-wheeled ox-carts, and the throng that had stood aside flowed together behind like water behind a boat.
“Take me to her,” Conan said.
Laeta grumbled, but trotted away down the street, her coterie of hard-eyed urchins surrounding her like a bodyguard. Under every ragged tunic, the Cimmerian knew, was a knife, or more than one. The children of the street preferred to run, but when cornered they were as dangerous as a pack of rats.
To Conan’s surprise they moved no closer to the Desert, but rather farther away, into a district peopled by craftsmen. The din of brass-smiths’ hammers beat at them, then the stench of the dyers’ vats. Smoke from kiln fires rose on all sides. Finally the girl stopped and pointed to a stone building where a sign hanging from chains showed the image of a lion, half-heartedly daubed not too long past with fresh carmine.
“In there?” Conan asked suspiciously. Taverns attracted likes, and a thief would not likely be welcome amid potters and dyers.
“In there,” Laeta agreed. She chewed her lip, then sighed. “We will wait out here, big man. For the silver.”
Conan nodded impatiently and pushed open the tavern door.
Inside, the Red Lion was arranged differently from the usual tavern. At some time in the past a fire had gutted the building. The ground floor, which had collapsed into the cellar, had never been replaced. Instead, a balcony had been built running around the inside of the building at street level, and the common room was now in what had been the cellar. Even when the sun was high on the hottest day, the common room of the Red Lion remained cool.
From a place by the balcony rail just in front of the door, Conan ran his gaze over the interior of the tavern, searching for a slender female form. A few men stood on the balcony, some lounging against the railing with tankard in hand, most bargaining quietly with doxies for time in the rooms abovestairs. A steady stream of serving girls trotted up and down stairs at the rear of the common room with trays of food and drink, for the kitchen was still on the ground level. Tables scattered across the stone floor below held potters whose arms were flecked with dried clay and leather-aproned metal workers and apprentices with tunics stained by rainbow splashes.
The ever-present trulls, their wisps of silk covering no more here than they did in the Desert, strolled the floor, but as he had expected Conan could see no other women among the tables. Satisfied that Laeta was mistaken or lying, he started to turn for the door. From the corner of his eye he saw a burly potter, with a round-breasted doxy running her fingers through his hair, look away from her bounty to glance curiously at a spot below where the big Cimmerian stood. Another man, his leather apron lying across the table before him and a squealing jade on his knees, paused in his pawing of her to do the same. And yet another man.
Conan leaned to look over the railing, and there Tamira sat beneath him, demurely clothed in pale blue robes, face scrubbed to virginal freshness … and a wooden mug upended at her mouth. With a sigh she set the mug on the table upside-down, a signal to the serving girls that she wanted it refilled.
Smiling, Conan slipped the flat throwing knife from his belt. A flicker of his hand, and the black blade quivered in the upturned bottom of her mug. Tamira started, then was still except for the fingers of her left hand drumming on the tabletop. The Cimmerian’s smile faded. With a muttered oath he stalked to t
he stairs and down.
When he reached the table the throwing knife had disappeared. He ignored the wide-eyed looks of men at nearby tables and sat across from her.
“You cost me eight pieces of gold,” were his first words.
The corners of Tamira’s mouth twitched upward. “So little? I received forty from the Lady Zayella.”
Conan’s hand gripped the edge of the table till the wood creaked in protest. Forty! “Zarath the Kothian would give a hundred,” he muttered, then went on quickly before she could ask why he was then only to receive eight. “I want a word with you, wench.”
“And I with you,” she said. “I didn’t come to a place like this, and let you find me, just to—”
“Let me find you!” he roared. A man at a nearby table hurriedly got up and moved away.
“Of course, I did.” Her face and voice were calm, but her fingers began to tap on the table again.”How could I fail to know that every beggar in Shadizar, and a fair number of the trulls, were asking after my whereabouts?”
“Did you think I would forget you?” he asked sarcastically.
She went on as if he had not spoken. “Well, I will not have it. You’ll get in my—my uncles’ attention. They’ll not take kindly to a stranger seeking after me. I led you here, well away from the Desert, in the hopes they’ll not hear of our meeting. You’ll find yourself with a blade in your throat, Cimmerian. And for some reason I don’t quite understand, I would not like that.”
Conan looked at her silently, until under his gaze her large, dark eyes began blinking nervously. Her finger-drumming quickened. “So you do know my country of birth.”
“You fool, I am trying to save your life.”
“Your uncles look after you?” he said abruptly. “Watch over you? Protect you?”
“You will find out how carefully if you do not leave me alone. And what’s that smug grin for?”
“It’s just that now I know I’ll be your first man.” His tone was complacent, but his every muscle tensed.
Tamira’s mouth worked in silent incredulity, and scarlet suffused her cheeks. Suddenly a shriek burst from her lips, and the throwing knife was in her hand. Conan threw himself from his bench as her arm whipped forward. Beyond him an appentice yelped and stared disbelieving at the tip of his nose, from which a steady drip of red fell to put new blotches on his dye-stained tunic.
Warily Conan got to his feet. Tamira shook her small fists at him in incoherent fury. At least, he thought, she did not have another of those knives. It would be out, otherwise. “But you must ask me,” he said as if there had been no interruption. “That will make up for the eight gold pieces you stole from me, when you ask me.”
“Erlik take you!” she gasped. “Mitra blast your soul! To think I worried … to think I … . You’re nothing but an oaf after all! I hope my uncles do catch you! I hope the City Guard puts your head on a pike! I hope—I hope—oh!” From head to toe she shook with rage.
“I eagerly await our first kiss,” Conan said, and dodged her mug, aimed at his head.
Calmly turning his back on her wordless shouts, he strolled up the stairs and out of the tavern. As soon as the door closed behind him, his casual manner disappeared. Urgently he looked for Laeta, and smiled when she appeared with her palm out.
Before she could ask he tossed her two silver coins. “There’s more,” he said. “I want to know everywhere she goes, and everyone she sees. A silver piece every tenday for you, and the same for your followers.” Baratses’ gold was disappearing fast, he thought, but with luck it should last just long enough.
Laeta, with her mouth open to bargain, could only nod wordlessly.
Conan smiled in satisfaction. He had Tamira now. After his performance she thought he was a buffoon intent on seduction to salve his pride. He doubted if she even remembered her slip of the tongue. Almost she had said he would get in her way. She planned a theft, and wanted no encumbrance. But this time he would get there first, and she would find the empty pedestal.
Chapter 4
Much of the Zamoran nobility, the Lady Jondra thought as she strolled through her palace garden, deplored that the last of the Perashanids was a woman. Carefully drawing back the vermilion silk sleeve of her robe, she dabbled her fingers in the sparkling waters of a fountain rimmed with gray-veined marble. From the corner of her eye she watched the man who stood next to her. His handsome, dark-eyed face radiated self-assurance. A heavy gold chain, each link worked with the seal of his family, hung across the crisp pleats of his citrine tunic. Lord Amaranides did not deplore her femininity at all. It meant that all the wealth of the Perashanids went with her hand. If he could manage to secure that hand.
“Let us walk on, Ama,” she said, and smiled at his attempt to hide a grimace for the pet name she had given him. He would think the smile was for him, she knew. It was not in him to imagine otherwise.
“The garden is lovely,” he said. “But not so lovely as you.”
Instead of taking his proffered arm she moved ahead down the slate-tiled walk, forcing him to hurry to catch up to her.
Eventually she would have to wed. The thought brought a sigh of regret, but duty would do what legions of suitors had been unable to. She could not allow the Perashanid line to end with her. Another sigh passed her full lips.
“Why so melancholy, my sweetling?” Amaranides murmured in her ear. “Let me but taste your honey kiss, and I will sweep your moodiness away.”
Deftly she avoided his lips, but made no further discouraging move. Unlike most nobly born Zamoran women, she allowed few men so much as a kiss, and none more. But even if she could not bring herself to stop her occasional tweaking of his well-stuffed pomposity, Amaranides must not be put off entirely.
At least he was tall enough, she thought. She never allowed herself to contemplate the reason why she was taller than most Zamoran men, but she had long since decided that her husband must be taller than she. Amaranides was a head taller, but his build was slender. With an idle corner of her mind she sketched the man she wanted. Of noble lineage, certainly. An excellent horseman, archer and hunter, of course. Physically? Taller than Amaranides by nearly a head. Much broader of shoulders, with a deep, powerful chest. Handsome, but more ruggedly so than her companion. His eyes … .
Abruptly she gasped as she recognized the man she had drawn in her mind. She had dressed him as a Zamoran nobleman, but it was the sky-eyed street-ruffian who had disrupted her return from the hunt. Her face flooded with scarlet. Blue eyes! A barbarian! Like smoky gray fires her own eyes blazed. That she could consider allowing such a one to touch her, even without realizing it! Mitra! It was worse done without realizing it!
‘‘ … And on my last hunt,” Amaranides was saying,”I killed a truly magnificent leopard. Finer than any you’ve taken, I fancy. It will be a pleasure for me to teach you the finer points of hunting, my little sweetmeat. I … .”
Jondra ground her teeth as he rattled blithely on. Still, he was a hunter, not to mention nobly born. If he was a fool—and of that there was little doubt in her mind—then he would be all the more easily managed.
“I know why you’ve come, Ama,” she said.
“ … Claws as big as … .” The nobleman’s voice trailed off, and he blinked uncertainly. “You know?”
She could not keep impatience from her voice. “You want me for your wife. Is that not it? Come.” Briskly she set out through the garden toward the fletcher’s mound.
Amaranides hesitated, then ran after her. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made me, sweetling. Sweetling? Jondra? Where are you … ah!”
Jondra fended off the arms he tried to throw around her with a recurved bow she had taken from a gilded rack standing on a grassy sward. Calmly she slipped a leather bracer onto her left arm for protection from the bowstring. Another bow, a second bracer, and two quivers, clustered fletchings rising above their black-lacquered sides, hung on the rack.
“You must … equal me,” she said, gesturi
ng toward a small round target of thickly woven straw hanging at the top of a wide wooden frame, which was three times the height of a man, a hundred paces distant. She had intended to say ‘best,’ but at the last could not bring herself to it. In truth, she did not believe any man could best her, either with a bow or on horseback. “I can marry no man who is not my equal as an archer.”
Amaranides eyed the target, then took the second bow with a smug smile. “Why so high? No matter. I wager I’ll beat you at it.” He laughed then, a shocking bray at odds with his handsome features. “I’ve won many a purse with a bow, but you will be my finest prize.”
Jondra’s mouth tightened. Shaking back the hanging sleeves of her robes, she nocked an arrow and called, “Mineus!”
A balding man, in the short white tunic of a servant, came from the bushes near the frame and tugged at a rope attached near the target. Immediately the target, no bigger than a man’s head, began to slide down a diagonal, and as it slid it swung from side to side on a long wooden arm. Clearly it would take a zig-zag path, at increasing speed, all the way to the ground.
Jondra did not raise her bow until the target had traversed half the first diagonal. Then, in one motion, she raised, drew and released. With a solid thwack her shaft struck, not slowing the target’s descent. Before that arrow had gone home her second was loosed, and a third followed on its heels. As the straw target struck the ground, she lowered her bow with an arrow nocked but unreleased. It was her seventh. Six feathered shafts decorated the target. “The robes hamper me somewhat,” she said ruefully. “With your tunic, you may well get more than my six. Let me clothe myself in hunting garb—are you ill, Ama?”
Amaranides’ bow hung from a limp hand. He stared, pale of face, at the target. As he turned to her, high color replaced the pallor of his cheeks. His mouth twisted around his words. “I have heard that you delight in besting men, but I had not thought you would claim yourself ready to wed just to lure me to … this!” He spat the last word, hurling the bow at the riddled target. “What Brythunian witch-work did you use to magic your arrows?”