Conan and the Gods of the Mountain Part 25

Conan had expected anything but that Valeria would throw her arms around him, then pull his head down with a firm grip on his hair, and kiss him soundly.

"All the G.o.ds be praised! I did not know I could so easily avoid sitting and waiting to be thrown to some warrior like a bone to a dog!"

Conan decided that Valeria was actually saying what he had heard, and that neither of them had gone mad. He much doubted that if the drum-dance went against him, there would now be any tame submission to death. Valeria was not so made.

But that submission had never had any purpose, save keeping her alive.

If it was her free choice to fling herself into a last battle at his side, then so be it-and the worse for the Ichiribu if they took the verdict of the drum-dance seriously!

NINE.

Valeria still did not understand much of the Ichiribu tongue. She could read faces well enough, though, and she read in all around her the common thought that she was mad.

For the tenth time since she had sat down in the canoe, she raised her paddle, letting it find its own balance in her long-fingered hands. The morning sun gilded the drops of water that fell from the paddle blade into the lake.

This morning, Lake of Death seemed a monstrously false name for such fine water. The surface sparkled, emerald-tinted with flashes of azure, and rippled softly under the light breeze. Sun flashed from the rose- and snow-hued wings of whole flocks of birds beating their way high above the island of the Ichiribu toward the distant sh.o.r.e.

She put the paddle down and, again for the tenth time, gently rocked the canoe to test its balance. It was as fine and light a dugout as she had ever known, both the inside and the bottom sc.r.a.ped and oiled until they were as smooth as the back of her hand. Smoother, likely enough, with all that she had done since fleeing that captain's embraces.

Conan was not far wrong. She might have wasted years in that dismal border settlement, until time had taken the strength and grace from her and the Red Brotherhood would no longer have her back.

Or she might have died from a fever, from a fall from horseback, or by the arrow or blade of some bandit unworthy to scrub the bilges of a Red Brotherhood s.h.i.+p. Died, without ever feeling a deck under her feet, seeing a sail swell with the wind, hearing the chant of rowers as they took a s.h.i.+p out of harbor-

She blinked and thrust the past from her. For now, she could live only from one moment to the next, from one stroke of the paddle to the next.

Otherwise, Conan would have a mark against him, those with doubts of the pale-skinned strangers would rejoice, and she would have thrown her life into the scales for nothing.

From twenty paces to starboard, Aondo bared misshapen teeth in a mocking grin. Then he raised his paddle and thrust it back and forth in an unmistakable gesture.

Valeria replied in kind, biting her thumb, then pretending to throw it overboard and spitting after it. Aondo's grin wavered, then vanished as the onlookers onsh.o.r.e laughed. Valeria even heard one or two besides Conan shout her name as if it were a war cry.

Fifty paces to port, the two older warriors judging the race sat in the sterns of their canoes. Each of the judges' canoes had four paddlers, although one of the boats was hardly larger than the stout craft Aondo was paddling alone.

Aondo, Valeria decided, was once more determined to strut and crow like a c.o.c.k on a dunghill, and much good might it do him! She had chosen a canoe that she was sure she could handle over the whole length of the race. It did not matter where else Aondo might be ahead as long as she led him past the finis.h.i.+ng mark!

Onsh.o.r.e, the drums began. The Ichiribu drums were the "talking" kind, able to send complex messages, but today they had no such task. They were to spur her and Aondo on to greater efforts-and their steady, deep rumble was already reaching down into her belly, filling her as if with strong wine.

Valeria tossed her head, her hair brushed her shoulders, and the two judges raised their tridents. When those tridents came down-

Spray jetted into rainbows as the judges flung their tridents. The rainbows had not faded when Valeria's paddle plunged into the water, driving her canoe forward.

She paddled as she had learned to, head up so that her arms had free play and all the muscles of her upper body could feed the arms. Aondo, she saw, was hunched over, as if that would urge his canoe faster through the water. His strokes were not as smooth as hers, but his stout thews made them formidable.

There was not a spear's length between the two canoes as they pa.s.sed the first mark. Valeria already felt sweat streaming down her face and body, and her headband growing sodden. She thanked Mitra that she had worn only the briefest of loinguards, apart from binding her hands with leather against blisters.

The race spanned six marks, about a league or a trifle more in Valeria's judgment. She had fallen farther behind than she liked by the second mark, and by then, her hair was as sodden as her headband.

She was not gaining by the third mark-halfway along-but neither had she lost any more ground. Aondo also was dripping sweat, and his canoe seemed to be lower in the water than it had been. Was the water splashed from his vigorous strokes finding its way aboard?

The judges' canoes were keeping up well, but Valeria did not expect much of the judges. She was many things that were strange to the Ichiribu, and honor might not outweigh ignorance when it came to deciding her fate. She would do as she had done before-wager all on her own skill and strength and leave the rest to the G.o.ds.

Dip, thrust, lift, twist slightly to the other side, dip, thrust, lift, twist again. Her thigh and belly muscles joined her arms and shoulders in shrieking protests. Dip, thrust, lift, twist a little harder this time to shake sweat from her eyes, which had begun to burn as if they were filled with hot wax.

Aondo's canoe had been steering an uncertain course for some time now.

His thrusts seemed almost frantic, but they had lost none of their power. His canoe was no longer settling. Had he somehow managed to bail it out when Valeria's eyes were elsewhere? Or had it been only her wishful fancy that it was low in the water?

It was no fancy that his steering was growing still more erratic.

Valeria stared at the Ichiribu warrior. In a moment when he thought himself un.o.bserved, she caught him staring back at her. The malice in that stare chilled her blood and seemed to turn the sweat upon her into ice. If he had any voice in her fate, she would be begging for death long before death took her.

Her sweat-dimmed eyes made out something else, too. Aondo was steering a course that was gradually taking him across her bow. Before they reached the next mark, she would have to either back water or strike him-and if she struck him, she would forfeit the race.

Rage did not blunt Valeria's wits. She had to surprise her opponent.

Aondo was as strong as an ox, but not much quicker of thought. She wondered who had counseled him to this treachery, doubted she would learn, but knew one thing: the man was not in Aondo's canoe.

Valeria subtly altered the force and angle of her strokes so that her canoe began to drift quite as subtly to starboard. She felt a surge of strength as she saw Aondo actually slow his pace, and she knew that her deception was working. He thought she was exhausting her strength and would have no reply to his scheme.

As they approached the fourth mark, the canoes were barely a sword's length apart. Aondo was halfway across Valeria's bow now, paddling only hard enough to keep the distance. A few missed strokes and he would be lying across her path like a log.

But it was Valeria who missed a stroke, by intent, but making it seem the error of one at the end of her strength. She lost ground, but only by a few paces- then her paddle churned the water, and she shot under Aondo's stern.

Aondo screamed something that Valeria doubted was praise and stabbed wildly at the lake with his paddle. It struck the water on the wrong side, and he had completed his stroke before he realized this.

His canoe swerved sharply, until it had almost reversed its course.

Valeria was clear by then, past Aondo and into open water. She did not care if he spent the rest of the day spinning around in circles, or jumped overboard to be eaten by the lionfish and crocodiles. She only cared that the fourth mark was pa.s.sing her to port, and now it was time to spend her strength freely. She would not allow herself even a moment's doubt that she still had that strength.

Her paddle seemed to dive now, then leap over the canoe to dive on the other side. Each thrust seemed to raise the canoe as well as thrust it forward. Water gurgled at the stern, spray made rainbows at the bow, and Valeria knew she was kneeling in a hand-breadth of water in the bottom of the craft.

She would not allow herself a moment to look back at Aondo, either. She was already giving the race everything that was in her. Aondo could no longer make any difference. The world shrank ever more swiftly to the endless rhythms of her paddle strokes, the water churning past, the fifth mark vanis.h.i.+ng astern, the sixth and last now in sight-

Aondo was there again, to port now. He seemed to have no treachery left, but too much strength for Valeria's comfort. Comfort no longer mattered. Her world was no more than one stroke after another, and nothing else mattered as long as each stroke carried her toward the mark.

Was Aondo larger, meaning that he was closer? Valeria would not waste a single moment to even look. It would make no difference. None at all.

She would dip the paddle, lift it, twist-and it had begun to seem that a white-hot band was locked about her waist and thighs-

"Hoaaaaa, Valeria!"

There was only one voice in the world like that. Valeria did not know if Conan was hailing her victory or urging her to greater efforts. She had not thought she had any more strength in her, but the Cimmerian's thunderous cry proved her wrong.

She raced along in a cloud of spray, her paddle flying from side to side and up and down, almost too fast for her eye to follow. She was only muscle and sinew, bone and breath, with no human senses left in her.

"Valeria!"

She heard Conan's voice again, but this time it was almost instantly lost in the din of other voices. They were shouting her name from the sh.o.r.e, from the lake, even, it seemed, from the sky.

"Valeria!" The Cimmerian cut through the din. "You won!"

Valeria wanted to join the shouting. Instead, she found that her mouth seemed packed with wool. She opened it, but only a frog's croak came out. She bent forward, cautiously because she feared that her eyes would pop from her head and roll about on the canoe's bottom.