Conan the Invincible, Page 2

  Conan marked the locations of those who looked dangerous. A turbanned Kezankian hillman licked his thin lips as he studied the prostitute, and two swarthy Iranistanis in loose, flowing red pantaloons and leather vests ogled her, as well. Blood might well be shed there. A Turanian coiner sat hunched over his mug, pointed beard waggling as he muttered to himself. It was known in the Desert that he had been badly bested by a mark, and he was ready to assuage his humiliation with the three-foot Ibarri sword-knife at his hip. A third Iranistani, dressed like the first two but with a silver chain dangling on his bare chest, attended a fortuneteller turn-ing her cards at a table against the far wall.

  “What hold you, Conan,” Abuletes said abruptly, “on the coming troubles?”

  “What troubles?” Conan replied. His mind was not on the tavernkeeper’s words. The soothsayer was no wrinkled hag, as such women were wont to be. Silken auburn hair showed at the edges of her voluminous brown cloak’s hood, framing a heart-shaped face. Her emerald eyes had a slight tilt above high cheekbones. The cloak and the robe beneath were of rough wool, but her slender fingers on the K’far cards were delicate.

  “Do you listen to nothing not connected to your thievery?” Abuletes grumbled. “These six months past no fewer than seven caravans bound for Turan, or coming from there, have disappeared without a trace. Tiridates has the army out after the Red Hawk, but they’ve never gotten a glimpse of that she-devil. Why should this time be any different? And when the soldiers return empty-handed, the merchants screaming for something to be done will force the king to crack down on us in the Desert.”

  “He has cracked down before,” Conan laughed, “and nothing changes.” The Iranistanis said something with a smirk. The soothsayer’s green eyes looked daggers at him, but she continued to tell her cards. Conan thought the Iranistani had the same idea he did. If Semiramis wanted to flaunt her trade before him … . “What proof is there,” he said, without taking his eyes from the pair across the room, “that the Red Hawk is responsible? Seven caravans would be a large bite for a bandit to chew.”

  Abuletes snorted. “Who else could it be? Kezankian hillmen never raid far from the mountains. That leaves the Red Hawk. And who knows how many men she has? Who knows anything of her, even what she looks like? I’ve heard she has five hundred rogues who obey her like hounds the huntsman.”

  Conan opened his mouth for an acid retort, and at that moment the situation at the fortuneteller’s table flared. The Iranistani laid a hand on her arm. She shook it off. He clutched at her cloak, whispering urgent words, hefting a clinking purse in his other hand.

  “Find a boy!” she spat. Her backhand blow to his face cracked like a whip.

  The Iranistani rocked back, his face livid. “Slut!” he howled, and a broad-bladed Turanian dagger appeared in his fist.

  Conan crossed the room in two pantherish strides. His big hand clamped the bicep of the Iranistani’s knife arm and lifted the man straight up out of his chair. The Iranistani’s snarl changed to open-mouthed shock as he tried to slash at the big youth and his knife dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. Conan’s iron grip had shut off the blood to the man’s arm.

  With contemptuous ease, Conan hurled the man sprawling on the floor between the tables. “She doesn’t want your attentions,” he said.

  “Whoreson dog!” the Iranistani howled. Left-handed, he snatched the Turanian coiner’s Ibarri sword-knife and lunged at Conan.

  Hooking his foot around the Iranistani’s toppled chair, Conan swung it into the man’s path. The Iranistani tumbled, springing up again even as he fell, but Conan’s booted toe took him under the chin before he could rise above a crouch. He flipped backward to collapse at the feet of the coiner, who retrieved the sword-knife with a covetous glance at the Iranistani’s purse.

  Conan turned back to the pretty fortuneteller. He thought he saw a dagger disappearing beneath her capacious cloak. “As I saved you an unpleasantness,” he said, “perhaps you will let me buy you some wine.”

  Her lip curled. “I needed no help from a barbar boy.” Her eye flickered to his left, and he dove to his right. The scimitar wielded by one of the other Iranistanis bit into the table instead of his neck.

  He tucked his shoulder under as he dove, rolling to his feet and whipping his broadsword free of its shagreen sheath in the same motion. The two Iranistanis who had been sitting alone faced him with scimitars in hand, well apart, knees slightly bent in the stance of experienced fighters. The tables around the three had emptied, but otherwise the denizens of the tavern took no notice. It was a rare day that at least one man did not give his death rattle on that sawdust-covered floor.

  “Whelp whose mother never knew his father’s name!” one of the longnosed men snarled. “Think you to strike Hafim so and walk away? You will drink your own blood, spawn of a toad! You will—”

  Conan saw no reason to listen to the man’s rantings. Shouting a wild Cimmerian battle cry, he whirled his broadsword aloft and attacked. A contemptuous smile appeared on the dark visage of the nearer man, and he lunged to spit the muscular youth before the awkward-seeming overhand slash could land. Conan had no intention of making an attack that left him so open, though. Even as the Iranistani moved, Conan dropped to the right, crouching with his left leg straight out to the side. He could read death-knowledge in the man’s dark bulging eyes. As the gleaming blue blade of the scimitar passed over his left shoulder his broadsword was pivoting, slashing through the leather jerkin, burying itself deep in the Iranistani’s ribs.

  Conan felt the blade bite bone; beyond the man choking on his own blood he saw the second Iranistani, teeth bared in a rictus, rushing at him with scimitar extended. He threw his shoulder into the pit of the dying man’s stomach, straightening to lift the Iranistani and hurl him at his companion. The sword tearing free of the body held it up enough that it fell sprawling at the other man’s racing feet. The second Iranistani leaped over his friend, curved blade swinging. Conan’s slash beat the scimitar aside, and his backhand return ripped out the man’s throat. Blood spilling down his dirty chest, the Iranistani tottered back with disbelieving eyes, pulling an empty table over when he fell.

  Conan caught sight of Semiramis heading up the stair, one of the Kothian’s big hands caressing a nearly bare buttock possessively as he followed. With a grimace, he wiped his blade clean on the baggy pantaloons of one of the dead men. Be damned to her, if her eyes had not shown her she already had a better man. He turned back to the table of the red-haired woman. It was empty. He cursed again, under his breath.

  “This one’s dead, too,” Abuletes muttered. The fat tavern keeper knelt beside the first man Conan had confronted, his hands like plump spiders as they slipped the silver chain from about the dead man’s neck. “You broke his neck. Hanuman’s stones, Conan. That’s three free-spenders you’ve done me out of. I’ve half a mind to tell you to take your custom elsewhere.”

  “Now you have it all,” Conan said sourly, “and you don’t have to give them any of your watered wine. But you can bring me a pitcher of your best. Kyroian. On them.”

  He settled at a table against the wall, thinking rough thoughts about women. At least the red-haired wench could have shown a little gratitude. He had saved her from a mauling, if nothing worse. And Semiramis … . Abuletes plonked down a rough earthenware pitcher in front of him and stretched out a grubby hand. Conan looked significantly at the last of the dead Iranistanis being hauled away by the two scruffy men who earned coppers fetching and carrying around the tavern. He had seen all three of the dead men’s purses disappear beneath Abuletes’ filthy apron. After a moment the tavern keeper shuffled his feet, wiped his fat hands on his apron, and left. Conan settled down to serious drinking.

  III

  The tables that had emptied during the fight refilled quickly. No one had given more than a passing glance to the dead men as they were removed; the level of shouted laughter and raucous talk had never decreased. The half-naked courtesan briefly considered the b
readth of Conan’s shoulder with lust-filled eyes, then passed on from his grim face.

  His troubles, Conan decided by the time he had emptied four wooden tankards of the sweet wine, would not be settled by the amounts he normally stole. Had he been a man of means the auburn-haired baggage would not have gone. Semiramis would not have thought it so important to ply her trade. But golden goblets lifted from the halls of fat merchants, pearl necklaces spirited from the very bedsides of sleek noblewomen, brought less than a tenth their value from the fences in the Desert. And the art of saving was not in him. Gambling and drinking took what remained from wenching. The only way to sufficient gain was one grand theft. But what? And from where?

  There was the palace, of course. King Tiridates had treasures beyond counting. The king was a drunkard—he had been so since the days when the evil mage Yara was the true power in Zamora — but in justice he should willingly part with some portion of his wealth for the man who had brought Yara and the Elephant Tower down. If he knew that man’s deeds, and if he were of a mind to part with anything to a barbarian thief. But the debt was owed, to Conan’s mind, and collecting on it—albeit without Tiridates’ knowledge or consent —would not be theft at all.

  Then there was Larsha, the ancient, accursed ruins not far from Shadizar. The origin of those toppled towers and time-eroded walls was shrouded in the depths of time, but everyone agreed there was treasure there. And a curse. A decade before, when Tiridates was still a vigorous king, he had sent a company of the King’s Own inside those walls in the full light of day. Not one had returned, and the screams of their dying had so panicked the king’s retinue and bodyguard that they had abandoned him. Tiridates had been forced to flee with them. If any had tried to penetrate that doom-filled city since, none had ever returned to speak of it.

  Conan did not fear curses—had he not already proven himself a bane of mages?—as he did not fear to enter the very palace of the king. But which? To remove sufficient wealth from the palace would be as difficult as removing it from the accursed ruins. Which would give him the most for his labors?

  He became aware of eyes on him and looked up. A dark, hook-nosed man wearing a purple head-cloth held by a golden fillet stood regarding him. A purple silk robe hung from the watcher’s bony shoulders. He leaned on a shoulder-high staff of plain, polished wood, and, though he bore no other weapon and was plainly not of the Desert, there was no fear of robbery — or anything else — in his black eyes.

  “You are Conan the Cimmerian,” he said. It was not a question. “It is said you are the best thief in Shadizar.”

  “And who are you,” Conan said warily, “to accuse an honest citizen of thievery? I am a bodyguard.”

  The man took a seat across from him without asking. He held his staff with one hand; Conan saw that he regarded it as a weapon. “I am Ankar, a merchant dealing in very special merchandise. I have need of the best thief in Shadizar.”

  With a confident smile Conan sipped his wine. He was on familiar ground, now. “And what special merchandise do you wish to acquire?”

  “First know that the price I will pay is ten thousand pieces of gold.”

  Conan set his mug down before he slopped wine over his wrist. With ten thousand … by the Lord of the Mound, he would be no longer a thief, but a man with a need to guard against thieves. “What is it you wish stolen?” he said eagerly.

  A tiny smile touched Ankar’s thin lips. “So you are Conan the Thief. At least that is settled. Know you that Yildiz of Turan and Tiridates have concluded a treaty to stop the depredations against trade along their common border?”

  “I may have heard, but there’s no loot in, treaties.”

  “Think you so? Then know that gifts were exchanged between the kings in token of this pact, which is to last for five years. To Tiridates Yildiz sent five dancing girls bearing a golden casket, on the lid of which are set five stones of amethyst, five of sapphire and five of topaz. Within the casket are five pendants, each containing a stone the like of which no man has ever seen.”

  Conan was tiring of the strange man’s supercilious air. Ankar took him for a rude, untutored barbarian, and perhaps he was, but he was not a fool. “You wish me to steal the pendants, not the casket,” he said, and was pleased to see Ankar’s eyes widen.

  The self-named merchant took his staff with both hands. “Why do you say that, Cimmerian?” His voice was low and dark.

  “The casket you describe could be duplicated for far less than what you offer. That leaves the pendants.” He measured the other’s age and added with a laugh, “Unless it’s the dancing girls you want.”

  Ankar did not join in, continuing to watch Conan with hooded eyes. “You are not stupid—” He stopped abruptly.

  Conan angrily shut off his laughter. Not stupid—for a barbarian. He would show this man a thing or three of barbarians. “Where are these pendants?” he growled. “If they’re in the treasure room, I will need time for planning and—”

  “Tiridates basks in the reflected glory of a more powerful monarch. The casket shows that Yildiz has concluded a treaty with him. It is displayed in the antechamber before his throne room, so that all who approach him may see.”

  “I will still need time,” Conan said. “Ten days for preparations.”

  “Impossible! Make fewer preparations. Three days.”

  “Fewer preparations and you’ll never see those pendants. And my head will decorate a pike above the West Gate. Eight days.”

  Ankar touched the tip of his tongue to thin lips. For the first time he appeared uncertain. His eyes clouded as if he had lost himself in his thoughts. “Fi … four days. Not a moment more.”

  “Five days,” Conan insisted. “A moment less, and Tiridates will keep his pendants.”

  Ankar’s eyes dimmed again. “Five days,” he said finally.

  “Done.” Conan suppressed a grin. He meant to have those pendants in his hand that very night, but had he told this Ankar that, when he put the pendants in the man’s hands, Ankar would think it nothing out of the ordinary. By negotiating for ten days and settling for five as the absolute minimum, he would be thought a miracle worker when he produced the pendants on the next morn. He had seen each reaction from men before. “There was mention of ten thousand gold pieces, Ankar.”

  The swarthy man produced a purse from beneath his robe and slid it halfway across the table. “Twenty now. A hundred more when you tell me your plan. The balance when you hand me the pendants.”

  “A small part beforehand for a payment of ten thousand,” Conan grumbled, but inside he was not displeased at all. The twenty alone equalled his largest commission before this, and the rest would be in hand on the morrow.

  He reached for the purse. Of a sudden Ankar’s hand darted to cover his atop the gold-filled pouch, and he started. The man’s hand was as cold as a corpse’s.

  “Hear me, Conan of Cimmeria,” the dark man hissed. “If you betray me in this, you will pray long your head did in truth adorn a pike.”

  Conan tore his hand free from the other’s bony grip. He had to restrain himself from working the hand, for those icy fingers had seemed to drain the warmth from his own. “I have agreed to do this thing,” he said hotly. “I am not so civilized as to break the honor of my word.”

  For a moment he thought the hook-nosed man was going to sneer, and knew that if he did he would rip the man’s throat out. Ankar contented himself with a sniff and a nod, though. “See that you remember your honor, Cimmerian.” He rose and glided away before Conan could loose a retort.

  Long after the dark man was gone the muscular youth sat scowling. It would serve the fool right if he kept the pendants, once they were in hand. But he had given his word. Still, the decision as to where to gain his wealth had been settled. He upended the pouch, spilling thick, milled-edge roundels of gold, stamped with Tiridates’ head, into his palm, and his black mood was whisked away.

  “Abuletes!” he roared. “Wine for everyone!” There would be time eno
ugh for frugality when he had the ten thousand.

  The man who called himself Ankar strode out of the Desert, trailed to the very end of the twisting, odoriforous streets by human jackals. They, sensing something of the true nature of the man, never screwed their courage tight enough to come near him. He, in turn, spared them not a glance, for he could bend men’s minds with his eye, drain the life from them with a touch of his hand. His true name was Imhep-Aton, and many who knew him shuddered when they said it.

  At the house he had rented in Hafira, one of the better sections of Shadizar, the door was opened by a heavily muscled Shemite, as large as Conan, with a sword on his hip. A trader in rare gems—for as such he was known among the nobles of the city —needed a bodyguard. The Shemite cowered away from the bony necromancer, hastening to close and bolt the door behind him.

  Imhep-Aton hurried into the house, then down, into the basement and the chambers beneath. He had chosen the house for those deep buried rooms. Some works were best done in the bowels of the earth, where no ray of sun ever found its way.

  In the anteroom to his private chamber two lush young girls of sixteen summers fell on their knees at his entrance. They were naked but for golden chains at wrist and ankle, waist and neck, and their big, round eyes shone with lust and worshipful adoration. His will was theirs, the fulfillment of his slightest whim the greatest desire of their miserable lives. The spells that kept them so killed in a year or two, and that he found a pity, for it necessitated the constant acquisition of new subjects.

  The girls groveled on their faces; he paused before passing into his inner chamber to lay his staff before the door. Instantly the wooden rod transmuted into a hooded viper that coiled and watched with cold, semi-intelligent eyes. Imhep-Aton had no fear of human intruders while his faithful myrmidion watched.