Conan made an effort to keep his mind on the matter at hand. “Then we must start now. You will have to keep up, for if we stop in this heat we shall likely never move again. Now, which way?”
Jondra hesitated, clearly as unused to taking commands as to walking. Haughty gray eyes dueled with cool sapphire blue; it was gray that fell. Without another word, but with an irritated expression painted on her features, the tall noblewoman fitted a shaft to her bow and began walking, headed south of the rising sun.
Conan stared after her before following, and not for the pleasant rolling motion of her rump. The fool woman had not wanted him behind her. Did she fear he would take her by force? And why had she seemed shaken by fear when she recognized him? Slowly, however, his questions were submerged in the pleasure of watching her make her way over the rolling hills. The silk riding breeches fit her buttocks like skin, and the view as she toiled upslope ahead of him was enough to make any man forget himself.
The sun climbed on, a ball of luteous fire baking the air dry. Shimmers rose from the rocky ground, and boot soles burned as if they rested on coals. Every breath sucked moisture from the lungs, dried the throat. Across the sky marched the sun, to its zenith and beyond, roasting the flesh, baking the brain.
The sun, Conan realized as he labored uphill in Jondra’s wake, had replaced the woman as the center of his thoughts. He tried to calculate the time he had left to find water, the time before the strength of his thews began to fail. The effort of wetting his cracking lips was wasted, for the dampness did not last beyond the doing. He saw no use in offering up prayers. Crom, the Lord of the Mound, the god of his harsh native land, listened to no prayers, accepted no votive offerings. Crom gave a man but two gifts, life and will, and never another. Will would carry him till dark, he decided. Then, having survived a day, he would set about surviving the night, and then the next day, and the next night.
Of the girl he was not so sure. Already she had begun to stagger, tripping over stones she would easily have stepped over when they left the horses. Abruptly a rock smaller than her fist turned under her boot, and she fell heavily. To hands and knees she rose, but no further. Her head hung weakly, and her sides heaved with the effort of drawing a decent breath from the bone-dry air.
Scrambling up beside her, Conan pulled her to her feet. She hung limply from his hands. “Is this the right direction, girl? Is it?”
‘‘How—dare—you,” she managed through cracked lips.
Fiercely he shook her; her head lolled on her neck. “The direction, girl! Tell me!”
Unsteadily she looked around them. “Yes,” she said finally. ‘‘I—think.”
With a sigh, Conan lifted her over his shoulder.
‘‘Not—dignified,” she panted. ‘‘Put—me—down.”
“There’s no one to see,” he told her. And perhaps never would be, he told himself. A well-honed instinct for direction would keep him moving on the path Jondra had set as long as he was able to move; an instinct for survival and an indomitable will would keep him moving long after the limits of ordinary human endurance had been breeched. He would find her camp. If she actually followed the true path. If he had not waited too late to question her. If … .
Putting his doubts and Jondra’s weak struggles alike from his mind, Conan set out slightly to the south of the line the sun had followed in rising. Constantly his eyes searched for signs of water, but in vain. It was too much to hope for palm fronds waving above a spring. Now, however, he could not find even the plants that would show him where to dig for a seep hole. No trace of green met his eyes save the short, wiry grass that could grow where a lizard would die of thirst. The sun blazed its way westward.
Conan’s gaze swept toward the horizon. No smoke marked a campsite, no track disturbed the stony flanks of the hills before him. A steady, ground-eating pace he kept, tirelessly at first, then, as shadows lengthened before him, with an iron determination that denied the possibility of surrender. With water the coming night would have been a haven. Without it, there would be no stopping, for if they stopped they might well never take another step.
Darkness swooped, with no twilight. The stretching shadows seemed to merge and permeate the air in moments. The searing heat dissipated quickly. Stars blinked into being, like flecks of crystal on black velvet, and with them came a chill that struck to the bone as fiercely as had the sun. Jondra stirred on his shoulder and murmured faintly. Conan could not make out what she said, nor waste the energy to wonder what it had been.
He began to stumble, and he knew it was not only the dark. His throat was as dry as the rocks that turned under his feet, and the cold gave little relief to the sun-cracked skin of his face. All he could see were the unwinking stars. Locking his eyes on the horizon, a thin line where sable merged into ebon, he trudged on. Abruptly he realized that three of those stars did seem to shimmer. And they lay below the horizon. Fires.
Forcing his feet to move faster, Conan half-ran toward the camp, for such it must be, whether Jondra’s or another. Whoever’s camp it was, they must go in, for they had to have water. With his free hand he loosened his sword in its scabbard. They needed water, and he meant to have it.
The ‘stars’ clearly became fires built high, surrounded by two-wheeled carts and round tents, with picket lines of animals beyond. Conan stumbled into the firelight; men in short mail tunics and baggy white trousers leaped to their feet. Hands reached for spears and tulwars.
The Cimmerian let Jondra fall and put a hand to his sword hilt. “Water,” he croaked. The one word was all he could manage.
“What have you done?” a tall hawk-faced man demanded. Conan worked for the moisture to ask what the man meant, but the other did not wait. “Kill him!” he snarled.
Conan’s broadsword slid smoothly free, and it was not the only steel bared to gleam in the light of the fires. Some men raised their spears to throw.
“No!” The faint command came in a thirst-hoarsened voice. “No, I say!”
Conan risked a glance from the corner of his eye. One of the mail-shirted men held a water-skin solicitously to Jondra’s lips, and her shoulders were supported by Tamira, in the short, white tunic of a servant.
Not lowering his sword—for few of the others had lowered theirs—Conan began to laugh, a dry, rasping sound of relief. It hurt his throat, but he did not care.
“But, my lady,” the hawk-faced man protested. Conan remembered him, now, at Jondra’s shoulder that day in Shadizar.
“Be silent, Arvaneus,” Jondra barked. She took two more thirsty gulps from the waterskin, then pushed it aside and held out an imperious hand, demanding to be helped to her feet. The man with the waterskin hastened to comply. She stood unsteadily, but pushed him aside when he tried to support her. “This man saved me from wolves, Arvaneus, and carried me when I could not walk. While you huddled by the fires, he saved my life. Give him water. Tend his hurts, and see to his comfort.”
Hesitantly, eying Conan’s bare blade, the man with the waterskin handed it to the big Cimmerian.
Arvaneus spread his hands in supplication. “We searched, my lady. When you did not return, we searched until dark, then built the fires high that you might see them and be guided to the camp. At first light we would have—”
“At first light I would have been dead!” Jondra snapped. “I will retire to my tent now, Arvaneus, and give thanks to Mitra that my survival was not left to you. Attend me, Lyana.” Her rigid-backed departure was spoiled slightly by a stumble, and she muttered a curse as she ducked into her scarlet-walled pavillion.
Conan cast an eye about the encampment—the tulwars and spears were no longer in evidence—and sheathed his own blade. As he was raising the waterskin, he met Arvaneus’ gaze. The huntsman’s black eyes were filled with a hatred rooted in his marrow. And he was not the only one staring at the Cimmerian. Tamira’s glare was one of frustration.
“Lyana!” Jondra called from her tent. “Attend me, girl, or … .” The threat was implicit
in her tone.
For the barest moment Tamira hesitated, giving Conan a well-honed look, then she darted for the tent.
Arvaneus’ face was still a mask of malignity, but Conan neither knew the reason nor cared. All that mattered was that he would now surely reach the necklace and tiara before the young woman thief. That and nothing more. With a rasping chuckle he tilted up the waterskin and drank deeply.
Chapter 8
The tall, gray-eyed young man kicked his horse into a trot as the lay of the country told him he neared his village. The last wisps of morning fog lingered among the towering forest oaks, as it often did in this part of Brythunia, not far from the Kezankian Mountains. Then the village itself came in view. A few low, thatch-roofed houses of stone, those of the village’s wealthiest men, were dotted among the wattle structures that clustered around two dirt streets that lay at right angles to each other.
People crowded the street as he rode into the village. “Eldran!” they shouted, and dogs ran beside his horse, adding their barking to the uproar. “You have come! Boudanecea said you would!” The men were dressed as he, their tunics embroidered at the neck, with cross-gaitered fur leggings that rose to the knee. The women’s dresses were longer versions of the tunics, but in a profusion of scarlets and yellows and blues where the men’s were brown and gray, and embroidered at hem and at the ends of the sleeves as well.
“Of course I’ve come,” he said as he dismounted. “Why should I not?” They gathered about him, each trying to get close. He noticed that every man wore a sword, though few did in the normal course of days, and many leaned on spears and carried their round shields of linden wood rimmed with iron. “What has happened here? What has the priestess to do with this?” A tumult answered him, voices tumbling over each other like brook water over stones.
“ … Burned the farmsteads … .”
‘‘ … Men dead, women dead, animals dead … .”
‘‘ … Some eaten … .”
‘‘ … Devil beast … .”
“ … Went to hunt it … .”
‘‘ … Ellandune … .”
‘‘ … All dead save Godtan … .”
“Hold!” Eldran cried. “I cannot hear you all. Who spoke of Ellandune? Is my brother well?”
Silence fell, save for the shuffling of feet. No one would meet his eyes. A murmur spread from the rear of the crowd, and they parted for the passage of a tall woman with a face serene and ageless. Her hair, the black streaked with gray, hung to her ankles and was bound loosely back with a white linen band. Her dress was of pristine linen as well, and the embroideries were of the leaves and berries of the mistletoe. A small golden sickle hung at her belt. She could walk anywhere in Brythunia and the poorest man in the land would not touch that sickle, nor the most violent raise a finger against her.
Eldran’s clear gray eyes were troubled as they met hers of dark brown. “Will you tell me, Boudanecea? What has happened to Ellandune?”
“Come with me, Eldran.” The priestess took his arm in a strong grasp.”Walk with me, and I will tell you what I can.”
He let her lead him away, and none of the rest followed other than with sympathetic eyes that made fear rise in him. In silence they walked slowly down the dusty street. He kept a rein on his impatience, for he knew of old she would not be rushed.
Before the gray stone house where she lived, Boudanecea drew him to a halt. “Go in, Eldran. See Godtan. Speak with him. Then I will tell you.”
Eldran hesitated, then pushed open the door of pale polished wood. A short, slight woman met him inside, dressed like Boudanecea, but with her dark, shiny hair braided in tight spirals about her head as a sign that she was still an acolyte.
“Godtan,” was all he could say. What of Ellandune, he wanted to shout, but he had begun to fear the answer.
The acolyte silently drew aside a red woolen door-hanging and motioned him to enter the room. A stomach-wrenching melding of smells drifted out. Medicinal herbs and poultices. Burned meat. Rotting meat. He swallowed and ducked through. She let the hanging fall behind him.
It was a simple room, with a well-swept floor of smooth wooden planks and a single window, its curtains pulled back to admit light. A table with a glazed pottery basin and pitcher stood beside the bed on which lay the naked shape of a man. Or what had once been a man. The right side of his face was burned away, a fringe of gray hair bordering what remained. From the shoulder to the knee his right side was a mass of charred flesh, crimson showing through cracks in the black. There were no fingers on the twisted stick that had once been his right arm. Eldran remembered that right arm well, for it had taught him the sword.
“Godtan.” The name caught in his throat. “Godtan, it is I, Eldran.”
The horribly burned man’s remaining eye flickered weakly open, swiveled toward him. Eldran groaned at the madness in it.
“We followed,” Godtan said, his voice a gurgling croak. ‘‘Into—the mountains. Kill it. We were—going to—. We didn’t—know. The colors—of it. Beau—tiful. Beautiful—like death. Scales—turned—our arrows—like straws. Spears wouldn’t—. Its breath—is fire!”
That mad eye bulged frantically, and Eldran said, “Rest, Godtan. Rest, and I’ll—”
“No!” The word came from that twisted mouth with insistence. “No rest! We—fled it. Had to. Hillmen—found us. Took Aelric. Took—Ellandune. Thought—I was—dead. Fooled them.” Godtan gave a rasping bark; Eldran realized with a shiver that it was meant to be laughter. ‘‘One—of us—had to—bring word—what happened. I—had to.” His one eye swiveled to Eldran’s face, and for a moment the madness was replaced by bewilderment and pain. ‘‘Forgive—me. I—did not—mean—to leave him. Forgive—Eldran.”
“I forgive you,” Eldran said softly. “And I thank you for returning with word of what happened. You are still the best man of us all.”
A grateful smile curved the half of Godtan’s mouth that was left, and his eye drifted shut as if the effort of keeping it open were too great.
Grinding his teeth, Eldran stalked from the building, slapping the door open so that it banged against the wallstones. His eyes were the gray of forged iron, hard and cold from the quenching, and when he confronted Boudanecea his fists were clenched till the nails dug into his palms in an effort to control his anger.
“Will you tell me now?” he grated.
“The beast of fire,” she began, but he cut her off.
“A tale for children! Tell me what happened!”
She shook a fist under his nose, and her fury blazed back at him as strongly as his own. “How think you Godtan took his burns? Think, man! A tale for children, you call it. Ha! For all the breadth of your shoulders I’ve alway had trouble thinking of you as a man grown, for I helped your mother birth you, and wrapped your first swaddling cloths about you with these hands. Now you bring my doubts home again. I know you have the fierce heart of a man. Have you the brain as well?”
Despite his chill rage Eldran was taken aback. He had known Boudanecea since his childhood, and never had he seen her lose her temper. “But, Godtan … I thought … he’s mad.”
“Aye, he’s mad, and as well he is. All the way from the Kezankians he came, like that, seeking to tell us the fate of his companions, seeking the help of his people. Seeking my help. But none of my spells or potions can help him. The greenrot had set in too deeply by the time I saw him. Only a necromancer could help him now.” She touched the golden sickle at her belt to ward off the evil of the thought, and he made the sign of the sickle.
“So the … the devil beast came,” Eldran said.
Her long hair swayed as she nodded. ‘‘While you were in the west. First one farmstead was burned, all of the building, and only gnawed fragments of people or cattle left. Men made up stories to settle their minds, of a fire that killed the family and the animals, of wolves getting at the remains when the fire burned down. But then a second farmstead was destroyed, and a third, and a fourth, and … .” She to
ok a long breath. “Twenty-three, in all, and all at night. Seven on the last night alone. After that the hotheads took matters into their own hands. Aelfric. Godtan. Your brother. A score of others. They talked like you when I spoke of the beast of fire after the first farmstead. A tale for children. Then they found spoor, tracks. But they still would not believe me when I said no weapon forged by the hands of ordinary men could harm the creature. They made their plans in secret, and sneaked from the village before dawn to avoid my eye.”
“If no weapon forged by man … .” Eldran’s hands worked futilely.”Boudanecea, I will not let it rest. The hillmen must pay for my brother, and the beast must be slain. Wiccana aid me, it must! Not only for revenge, but to stop it coming again.”
“Aye.” The priestess breathed the word. “Wait here.” In what would have been hurry for one without her stately dignity, she disappeared into her house. When she returned she was followed by a plump acolyte with merry brown eyes. The acolyte carried a flat, red-lacquered chest atop which were neatly folded white cloths and a pitcher of white-glazed pottery. “From this moment,” Boudanecea told him, “you must do exactly as you are told, and no more. For your life, Eldran, and your sanity, heed. Now, come.”
They formed a procession then, the priestess leading and the acolyte following behind Eldran. The women marched with a measured tread, and he found himself falling into it as if an invisible drum beat the steps.
The hair of the back of his neck stirred as he realized where they were taking him. The Sacred Grove of Wiccana, eldest of the sacred groves of Brythunia, where the boles of the youngest oaks were as thick and as tall as the largest elsewhere in the forest. Only the priestesses and acolytes went to the sacred groves now, though once, countless centuries in the past, men had made that journey. As sacrifices to the goddess. The thought did not comfort Eldran.