Arvaneus’ face was a mosaic of emotion, rage and shame, desire and frustration. With a wordless shout he slammed his blade back into its scabbard as if into the tall Cimmerian’s ribs.
Conan waited until the other’s sword was covered before sheathing his own, then said grimly, “I still want to know why you hide from your own army.”
Jondra looked at him, hesitating, but Arvaneus spoke up quickly, urgently. “My lady, this man should not be among us. He is no hunter, no archer or spearman. He does not serve you as … as I do.”
With a deep chuckle, Conan shook his black-maned head. “It is true I am my own man, but I am as good a hunter as you, Zamoran. And as for the spear, will you match me at it? For coin?” He knew he must best the man at something, or else contend with him as long as he remained with the hunters. And he carefully had not mentioned the bow, of which he knew little beyond the holding of it.
“Done!” the huntsman cried. “Done! Bring the butts! Quickly! I will show this barbarian oaf the way of the spear!”
Jondra opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again as the camp erupted in a bustle of men, some scurrying to clear a space for the throwing, others rushing to the carts to wrestle with a heavy practice butt. The thick bundle woven of straw was a weighty burden to carry on a hunting expedition, but it did not break arrows or spear points, as did casting and shooting at trees or at targets on a hillside.
A shaven-headed man with a long nose leaped on an upturned keg. “I’ll cover all wagers! I give one to twenty on Arvaneus, twenty to one on the barbarian. Don’t crowd.” A few men wandered over to him, but most seemed to take the outcome as foregone.
Conan noticed Tamira among those about the keg. When she left she strolled by him. “Throw your best,” she said, “and I’ll win a silver piece … .” She waited until his chest began to expand with pride, then finished with a laugh, ‘‘ … Since I wagered on the other.”
“It will be a pleasure to help you lose your coppers,” he told her dryly.
“Stop flirting, Lyana,” Jondra called sharply. “There’s work for you to be doing.”
Tamira made a face the tall woman could not see, bringing a smile to Conan’s face despite himself, then scurried away.
“Will you throw, barbar?” Arvaneus asked tauntingly. The tall huntsman held a spear in his hand and was stripped to the waist, revealing hard ropes of muscle. “Or would you rather stay with the serving girl?”
“The girl is certainly more pleasing to look on than your face,” Conan replied.
Arvaneus’ face darkened at the ripple of laughter that greeted the Cimmerian’s words. With the blade of his spear the Zamoran scratched a line on the ground. “No part of your foot may pass this line, or you lose no matter how well you throw. Though I doubt I must worry about that.”
Doffing his tunic, Conan took a spear handed to him by another of the hunters and moved to the line. He eyed the butt, thirty paces away. “It does not look a great distance.”
“But see the target, barbar.” The swarthy huntsman smiled, pointing. A lanky spearman was just finishing attaching a circle of black cloth, no bigger than a man’s palm, to the straw.
Conan made his eyes go wide. “Aaah,” he breathed, and the hawk-faced man’s smile deepened.
‘‘To be fair,” Arvaneus announced loudly,”I will give you odds. One hundred to one.” A murmur rose among the watchers, and all in the camp were there.”You did mention coin, barbar. Unless you wish to acknowledge me the better man now.”
“They seem fair odds,” Conan said, “considering the reputation you have with yourself.” The murmur of astonishment at the odds offered became a roar of laughter. He considered the weight of his purse. “I have five silver pieces at those odds.” The laughter cut off in stunned silence. Few there thought the hawk-faced man might lose, but the sheer magnitude of his unlikely loss astounded them.
Arvaneus seemed unmoved. “Done,” was all he said. He moved back from the line, took two quick steps forward, and hurled. His spear streaked to the center of the black cloth, pinning it more firmly to the butt. Half a score of the hunters raised a cheer, and some began trying to collect their bets now. “Done,” he said again, and laughed mockingly.
Conan hefted his spear as he stood at the line. The haft was as thick as his two thumbs, tipped with an iron blade as long as his forearm. Suddenly he leaned back, then whipped forward, arm and body moving as one. With a thud that shoved the butt back his spear buried its head not a finger’s width from the other already there. ‘‘Mayhap if it were further back,” he mused. Arvaneus ground his teeth.
There was silence in the camp till the man on the keg broke it. “Even odds! I’ll give even odds on Arvaneus or—what’s his name? Conan?—or on Conan! Even odds!”
“Shut your teeth, Telades!” Arvaneus shouted, but men crowded around the shaven-headed man. Angrily the huntsman gestured toward the butt. “Back! Move it back!” Two men rushed out to drag it a further ten paces, then returned quickly with the spears.
Glaring at Conan, Arvaneus took his place back from the line again, ran forward and threw. Again his spear struck through the cloth. Conan stepped back a single pace, and again his throw was one single continuous motion. His spear brushed against Arvaneus’s, striking through the black cloth even more closely than the first time. Scattered shouts of delighted surprise rose among the hunters. The Cimmerian was surprised to see a smile on Jondra’s face, and even more surprised to see another on Tamira’s.
Arvaneus’s face writhed with fury. “Further!” he shouted when the spears were returned once more. “Further! Still further!”
An expectant hush settled as the butt was pulled to sixty paces distant. It was a fair throw for the mark, Conan conceded to himself. Perhaps more than a fair throw.
Muttering under his breath, the huntsman set himself, then launched his spear with a grunt. It smacked home solidly in the butt.
‘‘A miss!” Telades called.”It touched the cloth, but a miss! One to five on Conan!”
Arm cocked, Conan hurtled toward the line. For the third time his shaft streaked a dark line to the cloth. A tumultuous cry went up, and men pounded their spears on the ground in approbation.
Telades leaped from his keg and capered laughing through the crowd to clasp Conan’s hand. “You’ve cost me coin this day, northerner, but ’twas worth every copper to see it done.”
Eyes bulging in his head, Arvaneus gave a strangled cry. “No!” Suddenly he was running toward the butt, pushing men from his path. He began wrestling the heavy mass of straw further away. “Hit this, barbar dog!” he shouted, fighting his weighty burden still. ‘‘Erlik take you and your accursed cheating tricks! Hit this!”
“Why, ’tis a hundred paces,” Telades exclaimed, shaking his head. “No man could—” He cut off with a gasp as Conan took a spear from the hand of a nearby hunter. Like antelope scattering before a lion, men ran to get from between the Cimmerian and the distant target.
Arvaneus’ voice drifted back to them, filled with hysterical laughter. “Hit this, barbar! Try!”
Weighing the spear in his hand, Conan suddenly moved. Powerful legs drove him forward, his arm went back, and the spear arched high into the air. The hawk-faced huntsman stared open-mouthed at the spear arcing toward him, then screamed and hurled himself aside. Dust lifted from the butt as the spear slashed into the straw beside the two already there.
Telades ran forward, peering in disbelief, then whirled to throw his arms high. “By all the gods, he hit cloth! You who call yourselves spearmen, acknowledge your master! At a hundred paces he hit the cloth!”
A throng of hunters crowded around Conan, shouting their approval of his feat, striving to clasp his hand.
Abruptly the shouts faded as Jondra strode up. The hunters parted before her, waiting expectantly for what she would say. For a moment, though, she stood, strangely diffident, before speaking.
“You asked me a question, Cimmerian,” she said at la
st, looking over his shoulder rather than at him. ‘‘I do not give reasons for what I do, but you did save my life, and your cast was magnificent, so I will tell you alone. But in private. Come.” Back rigid and looking neither to left nor right, she turned and walked to her scarlet tent.
Conan followed more slowly. When he ducked through the tent flap, the well-curved noblewoman stood with her back to the entrance, toying with the laces of her leather jerkin. Fine Iranistani carpets, dotted with silken pillows, made a floor, and golden lamps stood on low, brass tables.
“Why, then?” he said.
She started, but did not turn around. “If the army is out in such force,” she said distractedly, “they must expect trouble of some sort. They would surely try to turn back a hunting party, and I do not want the trouble of convincing some general that I will not be ordered about by the army.”
“And you keep this secret?” Conan said, frowning. “Do you think your hunters have not reasoned some of this out themselves?”
“Is Lyana as you said?” she asked. “Pleasing to look on? More pleasing than I?”
“She is lovely.” Conan smiled at the stiffening of her back, and added judiciously, “But not so lovely as you.” He was young, but he knew enough of women to take care in speaking of one woman’s beauty to another.
“I will pay Arvaneus’s wager,” Jondra said abruptly. “He does not have five hundred pieces of silver.”
The tall Cimmerian blinked, taken aback by her sudden shift. “I will not take it from you. The wager was with him.”
Her head bowed, and she muttered, seemingly unaware that she spoke aloud. “Why is he always the same in my mind? Why must he be a barbarian?” Suddenly she turned, and Conan gasped. She had worked the laces from her jerkin, and the supple leather gaped open to bare heavy, round breasts and erect, pink nipples. “Did you think I brought you to my tent merely to answer your questions?” she cried. “I’ve allowed no man to touch me, but you will not even stretch out a hand. Will you make me be as shameless as—”
The young noblewoman’s words cut off as Conan pulled her to him. His big hands slid beneath her jerkin, fingers spreading on the smooth skin of her back, to press her full breasts against him. “I stretch out both hands,” he said, working the leather from her shoulders to fall to the carpets.
Clutching at him, she laid her head against his broad chest. “My hunters will know … they will guess what I … what you … .” She shivered and held to him harder.
Gently he tipped her head back and peered into her eyes, as gray as the clouds of a mountain morning. “If you fear what they think,” he said, “then why?”
The tip of her small pink tongue wet her lips. “I could never have made that spear cast,” she murmured, and pulled him down to the silken cushions.
Chapter 10
Conan tossed aside the fur coverlet and got to his feet with an appreciative look at Jondra’s nude form. She sighed in her sleep, and threw her arms over her head, tightening the domes of her breasts in such a way as to make him consider not dressing after all. Chuckling, he reached for his tunic instead. The locked iron chests containing her gems got not a wit of his attention.
Three days since the spear casting, he reflected, and for all her fears of what her hunters might think, it would take a man both blind and deaf to be still unaware of what occurred between Jondra and him. She had not let him leave her tent that first night, not even to eat, and the past two had been the same. Each morning, seemingly oblivious of the hunters’ smiles and Arvaneus’s glares, she insisted that Conan “guide” her while she hunted, a hunt that lasted only until she found a spot well away from the line of march where there was shade and a level surface large enough for two. The chaste, noble Lady Jondra had found that she liked lying with a man, and she was making up for lost opportunities.
Not that her absorbtion in the flesh was total. That first day she had been unsatisfied on their return with how far the column had traveled. Up and down the line she galloped, scoring men with her tongue till they were as shaken as if she had used her quirt. Arvaneus she took aside, and what she said to him no one heard, but when he galloped back his lips were a tight, pale line, and his black eyes smouldered. There had not been another day when the progress of the column failed to satisfy her.
Settling his black Khauranian cloak around his shoulders, Conan stepped out into the cool morning. He was pleased to see that the cookfires had at last been made with dried ox dung, as he had suggested. No smoke rose to draw eyes to them, and that was more important than ever, now. A day to the north of where they camped, at most two days amid the now steep-sloped hills, lay the towering ranges of the Kezankian, dark and jagged against the horizon.
The camp itself squatted atop a hill amidst trees twisted and stunted by arid, rocky soil. Every man wore his mail shirt and spiked helm at all times, now, and none went so far as the privy trenches without spear or bow.
A sweating Tamira, dodging from fire to fire under the watchful eye of the fat cook, gave Conan a grimace as she twisted a meat-laden spit half a turn. Arvaneus, sitting cross-legged near the fires, sullenly buried his face in a mug of wine when he saw the Cimmerian.
Conan ignored them both. His ears strained for the sound he thought he had heard. There. He grabbed Tamira’s arm. “Go wake J … your mistress,” he told her. Hands on hips, Tamira stared at him wryly. “Go,” he growled. “There are horsemen coming from the south.” A look of startlement passed over her face, then she darted for the big scarlet tent.
“What offal do you spout now?” Arvaneus demanded. “I see nothing.”
Telades came running across the camp to the hawkfaced man’s side. “Mardak claims he hears horses to the south, Arvaneus.”
With an oath the huntsman tossed his mug to the ground and scrambled to his feet. A worried frown creased his face. “Hillmen?” he asked Telades, and the shaven-headed man shrugged.
“Not likely from the south,” Conan said. “Still, it couldn’t hurt to let the rest of the camp know. Quietly.”
“When I need your advice,” Arvaneus snarled, but he did not finish it. Instead he turned to Telades. “Go among the men. Tell them to be ready.” His face twitched, and he added a muttered, ‘‘Quietly.”
Unasked, the Cimmerian added his efforts to those of Telades, moving from man to man, murmuring a word of warning. Mardak, a grizzled, squint-eyed man with long, thin mustaches also was passing the word. The hunters took it calmly. Here and there a man fingered the hilt of his tulwar or pulled a lacquered quiver of arrows closer, but all went on with what they were doing, though with eyes continually flickering to the south.
By the time Conan returned to the center of the camp, ten horsemen had topped the crest of the next hill and were walking their horses toward the camp.
Arvaneus grunted. “We could slay all of them before they knew we were here. What are they, anyway? Not hillmen.”
“Brythunians,” Telades replied. “Is there really cause to kill them, Arvaneus?”
“Barbarian scum,” the hawk-faced hunter sneered. “They don’t even see us.”
“They see us,” Conan said, “or they’d never have crossed that crest. And what makes you think we see all of them?”
The two Zamorans exchanged surprised looks, but Conan concentrated on the oncoming men. All wore fur leggings and fur-edged capes, with broadswords at their waists and round shields hung behind their saddles. Nine of them carried spears. One, who led them, carried a long, recurved bow.
The Brythunian horsemen picked their way up the hill and drew rein short of the camp. The man with the bow raised it above his head. “I am called Eldran,” he said. “Are we welcome here?”
A sour look on his face, Arvaneus stood silent.
Conan raised his right hand above his head. “I am called Conan,” he said. “I welcome you, so long as you mean harm to none here. Dismount and share our fires.”
Eldran climbed from his horse with a smile. He was almost as tall as
Conan, though not so heavily muscled. “We cannot remain long. We seek information, then we must move on.”
“I seek information as well,” Jondra said as she strode between the men. Her hair, light brown sun-streaked with blonde, was tousled, and her tight riding breeches and tunic of emerald silk had an air of having been hastily donned. “Tell me … .” Her words died as her eyes met those of Eldran, as gray as her own. Her head was tilted back to look up at him, and her mouth remained open. Finally she said unsteadily, ‘‘From … from what country are you?”
“They’re Brythunians,” Arvaneus spoke up. “Savages.”
“Be silent!” Jondra’s enraged scream caught the men by surprise. Conan and Eldran stared at her wonderingly. Arvaneus’s face paled. “I did not speak to you,” she went on in a voice that shook. “You will be silent till spoken to! Do you understand me, huntsman?” Not waiting for his answer, she turned back to Eldran. The color in her cheeks was high, her voice thin but cool. “You are hunters, then? It is doubly dangerous for you to hunt here. The Zamoran army is in the field, and there are always the hillmen.”
“The Zamoran army does not seem to find us,” the Brythunian answered. His still-mounted men laughed. “As for the hillmen … .” There was an easiness to his voice, but grim light flashed in his eyes.”I have given my name, woman, but have not heard yours.”
She drew herself up to her greatest height, still no taller than his shoulder. “It is the Lady Jondra of the House Perashanid of Shadizar, to whom you speak, Brythunian.”
“An honorable lineage, Zamoran.”
His tone was neutral, but Jondra flinched as if he had sneered. Strangely, it seemed to steady her in some fashion. Her voice firmed. “If you are a hunter, perhaps you have seen the beast I hunt, or its sign. I am told its body is that of a huge serpent, covered with scales in many colors. Its track—”