Conan the Invincible Part 6

"In any case, it's doubtful that Yildiz, or whoever is responsible, would send his own people into the very palace. One of those being questioned screamed the name of the Red Hawk before he died."

"She's just a bandit, my lord Counselor."

"And a man babbles when he's dying. But she's a bandit who will dare much for gold, and we have no other way to search. Until one of those being questioned loosens his tongue." The chill in his tone promised the questioning would continue until many tongues were loosened; Haranides s.h.i.+vered. "You, captain, will take two companies of cavalry and hound this Red Hawk. Run her to ground and bring her here in chains. We'll soon find if she had aught to do with this business."

Haranides took a deep breath. "My lord Counselor, I must have some idea of where to look. This woman brigand ranges the entire countryside."

Incongruously, one of the slaves giggled. Tiridates had both fair heads clutched to his chest.

The stooped counselor flickered an eye at the king and pursed his lips briefly. "Before dawn this morning, captain, a party claiming to be pilgrims departed Shadizar by the Gate of the Three Swords. I believe these were the Red Hawk's men."

"I will ride within the hour, my lord Counselor," Haranides said with a bow. He suspected the guards at that gate were among those under the question. "With your permission, my lord Counselor? My King?"

"Find this jade, captain," Aharesus said, "and you will find yourself a patron as well."

He waved a bony hand in dismissal, but as the captain turned to go Tiridates lurched unsteadily to his feet, pus.h.i.+ng the two pale-skinned slaves sprawling at his feet.

"Find my pendants!" the drunken King snarled. "Find my casket and my dancing girls! Find my gifts from Yildiz, captain, or I'll decorate a pike with your head! Now, go! Go!"

With a sour taste in his mouth, Haranides bowed once more and backed out of the audience chamber.

The garden of Imhep-Aton's rented dwelling was pleasant, a cool breeze rustling in the trees and stirring the brightcolored flowers, but the mage took no pleasure in it. He had had some idea that Conan could deliver the pendants before the five days he had bargained for-the necromancer had some knowledge of thieves, and the way their minds worked. But never had he expected the Cimmerian to revert to his barbarism and turn the palace into a charnel house. The chief king's counselor, in Set's name!

He cared not what Zamorans died, or how, but the fool had set the city on its ear with these murders. Now Imhep-Aton must worry that the thief would be run to earth before the prize was delivered into his bony hands.

The mage whirled as his muscular Shemite servant came into the garden, his lean face so twisted that the big man quailed.

"I did as you commanded, master. To the word."

"Then where is the Cimmerian?" The thaumaturge's voice was deceptively gentle. If this cretin had bungled as well ....

"Gone, master. He has not been seen at the tavern since this morning, early."

"Gone!"

The brawny Shemite half-raised his hands as if to s.h.i.+eld himself from the other's anger. "So I was told, master. He sent a message to some wench at the tavern that he would be away some time, that he was riding to the northeast."

Imhep-Aton's scowl deepened. Northeast? There was nothing to the ....

The caravan route from Khesron to Sultanapur. Could the barbarian be thinking of selling the pendants in the very country from which they came? Obviously he had decided to work for himself. But, Set, why the dancing girls? He shook his vulturine head angrily. The savage's reasons were of no account.

"Prepare horses and sumpter animals for the two of us at once," he commanded. "We ride to the northeast." The Cimmerian would pay for this betrayal.

Chapter VII.

The Well of the Kings lay some days to the east and west of Shadizar, surrounded by huge, toppled slabs of black stone, worn by rain and wind. Some said they were the remains of a wall, but none knew when or by whom it could have been built, as none knew what kings had claimed the well.

Conan walked his horse between the slabs and into the stunted trees, to the well of rough stones, and dismounted. On the other side of the well, back under the trees, four swarthy men in dirty keffiyehs squatted, watching him with dark eyes that s.h.i.+fted greedily to his horse. He flipped back the edge of his Khauranian cloak so they could see his sword, and heaved on the hoist pole to lift a bucket of water from the depths. Other than his cloak, he was covered only by a breechclout, for he liked to travel unenc.u.mbered.

The four moved closer together, whispering darkly without looking away from him. One, the leader by the deference the others showed, wore rusting ring mail, his followers breastplates of boiled leather. All had ancient scimitars at their hips, the sort a decent weapons dealer sold for sc.r.a.p. Behind them Conan could see a woman, naked and bound in a package, wrists and elbows secured behind her back, knees under her chin, heels drawn in tight to her b.u.t.tocks. She raised her head, tossing back a mane of dark red hair, and stared at him in surprise, tilted green eyes above a dirty twist of cloth for a gag. The fortuneteller.

Conan emptied the bucket in a worn stone trough for his horse, and drew up another for himself. The last time he had helped this woman, she had shown not even the grat.i.tude to warn him of the two Iranistanis'

attack. Besides, he had Velita to find. He dashed water in his face, though it made little difference in the gritty heat, and upended the rest of the bucket over his head. The four men gabbled on.

So far he had tracked the pilgrims by questioning those pa.s.sersby who would let an armed man of his size approach them. Enough had glimpsed something to keep him on this path, but in the last day he had seen only an old man who threw rocks and ran to hide in the thorn scrub, and a boy who had seen nothing.

"Have you fellows seen anything of pilgrims?" he said, levering up yet another bucket of water. "Hooded men on horseback, with camels?"

The leader's sharp nose twitched. "An we did, what's for us?"

"A few coppers, if you can tell me where they are." There was no reason to tempt this lot. After a day when he could be traveling away from the men he sought, he had no time to waste killing vultures. He put on a pleasant smile. "If I had silver or gold, I'd not be out chasing pilgrims. I'd be in Shadizar, drinking." He dried his hands on his cloak, just in case.

"What do you want with those pilgrims?" the sharp-nosed man wanted to know.

"That's my affair," Conan replied. "And theirs. Yours is the coppers, if you've seen them."

"Well, as to that, we have," sharp-nose said, dusting off his hands and getting up. He started toward Conan with his hand out. "Let's see the color of your coins."

Conan dug into the leather pouch at his belt with his right hand, and sharp-nose's grin turned nasty. A short dagger with a triangular blade appeared in his fist. Laughing wickedly, the other three pulled their scimitars and rushed forward to join the kill.

Without pausing a beat Conan s.n.a.t.c.hed up the bucket left-handed and smashed it down on the man's head, blood and water flying in all directions. "No time!" he shouted. He plucked the dagger from its forearm sheath, and of a sudden its hilt was sticking from the throat of the foremost attacker. Even as it struck Conan was unlimbering his broadsword. "Bel strike you!" He leaped across the collapsing man, who was clutching the dagger in his throat with blood-covered hands. "I've no time!" A sweeping slash of the broad blade, and the third man's torso sank to the ground where his head was already spinning. "No time, curse you!" The last man had his scimitar raised high when Conan lunged with a two-handed grip and plunged his blade through leather breastplate, chest and backbone. Black eyes filmed over, and the man toppled to one side with his hands still raised above his head.

Conan put a foot on the leather armor and tugged his sword free, wiping it clean on the man's dingy keffiyeh before he sheathed it. The dagger was retrieved from its temporary home in a brigand's throat and cleaned in the same way. The woman watched him wide-eyed, starting away as much as her bonds allowed when he came near, but he only cut the cords and turned away, sheathing his dagger.

"If you don't have your own horse," he said, "you can have one of these vermin's. The rest are mine. You can have the weapons, if you want.

They'll fetch something for your trouble." But not much, he thought.

Still, he owed her nothing, and the horses, poor as they were likely to be, would be a help if he had to pursue those accursed pilgrims far.

The red-haired woman rubbed her wrists as she walked to the dead men, unashamed of her nakedness. She was an ivory-skinned callimastian delight, all curves and long legs and rounded places. There was a spring to her walk that made him wonder if she was a dancer. She picked up one of the scimitars, ran a contemptuous eye along its rust-pitted blade, and suddenly planted a bare foot solidly in the ribs of one of the dead men.

"Pig!" she spat.

Conan went about gathering the horses, five of them, one noticeably better than the rest, while she kicked and reviled each body in turn.

Abruptly she whirled to face him, feet well apart, fist on rounded hip, scimitar swinging free. With her tousled hair in an auburn mane about her head, she had the air of a lioness brought to human form.

"They took me unawares," she announced.

"Of course," Conan said. "I suppose the black is yours? Best of the lot." He braided the reins of the other four, hairy plains animals two hands shorter at the shoulder than his own Turanian gray, and fastened them to his highpommeled saddle. "Best for you would be to go straight back to Shadizar. It's dangerous out here for a woman alone. What possessed you to try it in the first place?"

She took a quick step toward him. "I said they took me unawares! They'd have died on my blade, else!"

"And I said of course. I can't take you back to the city. I seek men who took something that... that belongs to me."

A pantherine howl jerked him around, and he tumbled backwards between the horses just in time to avoid decapitation by her curved blade.

"Derketo take you!" she howled, thrusting at him under a horse's belly.

He rolled aside, and the blade gouged the packed earth where his head had been.

Scrambling on his back, he tried at once to avoid her steel and the hooves of the horses, now dancing excitedly as she moved swiftly around them trying to stab him. The roiling of them brought him suddenly looking out from under a s.h.a.ggy belly at her as she pulled back her scimitar for yet another thrust. Desperately his legs uncoiled, propelling him out to tackle her around the knees. They went down in a heap together on the hard ground, and he found his arms full of female wildcat, clawing and kicking and trying to jerk her sword arm loose.

Her soft curves padded her firm muscle, and she was no easy packet to hold.