“And I play no game,” she said, kneeling erect again, her knees touching his. She made no move toward her garments. “I know that all aboard this vessel think I am your … your leman.” Her cheeks pinkened; that, more than her nudity, made him groan and squeeze his eyes shut. A brief look of triumph flitted across her face. “Have I not complained to you before,” she said fiercely, “about protecting me when I did not want to be protected?”
Unclenching white-knuckled fists, he pulled her to him; she gasped as she was crushed against his chest. “The toying is done, wench,” he growled. “Say go, and I will go. But if you do not … .” He toppled them both to the deck, her softness a cushion under him, his agate blue eyes gazing into hers with unblinking intensity.
“I am no girl,” she breathed, “but a woman. Stay.” She wore a triumphant smile openly now.
Conan thought it strange, that smile, but she was indeed a woman, and his mind did not long remain on smiles.
XVII
From a rocky headland covered with twisted, stunted scrub, waves crashing at its base, Conan peered inland, watching for Tamur’s return. The nomad had claimed that he would have horses for them all in three or four turns of the glass, but he had left at dawn, and the sun sat low in its journey toward the western horizon.
On a short stretch of muddy sand north of the headland Foam Dancer lay drawn up, heeling over slightly on her keel. An anchor had been carried up the beach to dunes covered with tall, sparse brown grass, its long cable holding the vessel against the waves that tugged at her stern. Cooking fires dotted the sand between the ship and the dunes. Yasbet’s tent had been pitched well away from the blankets of the Hyrkanians and the sailors, scattered among their piles of driftwood.
As Conan turned back to his scanning, a plume of dust inland and to the south caught his eye. It could be Tamur, with the horses, or it could be … who? He wished he knew more about this land. At least the sentry he had set atop the highest of the dunes could see the dust, too. He glanced in that direction and bit back an oath. The man was gone! The dust was closer, horses plain at its base. Tamur? Or some other?
Making an effort to appear casual, he walked up the headland to where a steep downward slope led to the beach, dotted with wind-sculpted trees, their gnarled roots barely finding a grip in the rocky soil. Between the dunes and the plain lay thickets of such growth. He half-slid down that slope, still making an effort to show no haste.
At the fires he leaned over Akeba, who sat cross-legged before a fire, honing his sword. “Horsemen approach,” he said quietly. “I know not if it is Tamur or others. But the sentry is nowhere to be seen.”
Stiffening, the Turanian slid his honing stone into his pouch and his curved blade into its scabbard. He had removed his distinctive tunic and spiral helmet, for the Turanian army was little loved on this side of the Vilayet. “I will take a walk in the dunes. You can see to matters here?” Conan nodded, and Akeba, taking up a spade as if answering a call of nature, strolled toward the dunes.
“Yasbet!” Conan called, and she appeared at the flap of her tent. He motioned her to come to him.
She made a great show of buckling on her sword belt and adjusting its fit on her hips before making her way slowly across the sand. As soon as she was in arm’s reach of him, he grabbed her shoulders and firmly sat her down in the protection of a large driftwood bole.
“Stay there,” he said when she made to rise. Turning to the others, scattered among the campfires, he said, as quietly as he could and still be heard, “None of you move.” Some turned their faces to him curiously, and Muktar got to his feet. “I said, ‘don’t move!’” Conan snapped. Such was the tone of command in his voice that the bearded captain obeyed. Conan went on quickly. “Ho
rsemen will be here any moment. I know not who. Be still!” A Hyrkanian drew back the hand he had stretch forth for his bow, and a sailor, who had risen with a look of running on his face, froze. “Besides this, the sentry has disappeared. Someone may be watching us. Choose your place of cover and when I give the word—not yet!—seize your weapons and be ready. Now!”
In an instant the beach seemed to become deserted as men rolled behind piles of driftwood. Conan snatched a bow and quiver, and dropped behind the bole with Yasbet. He raised himself enough to barely look over it, searching the dunes.
“Why did you see to my safety before telling the others?” Yasbet demanded crossly. “All my life I have been wrapped in swaddling. I will be coddled no longer.”
“Are you the hero in a saga, then?” Was that the drumming of hooves he heard? Where in Zandru’s Nine Hells was Akeba? “Are you impervious to steel and proof against arrows?”
“A heroine,” she replied. “I will be a heroine, not a hero.”
Conan snorted. “Sagas are fine for telling before a fire of a cold night, or for entertaining children, but we are made of flesh and blood. Steel can draw blood, and arrows pierce the flesh. Do I ever see you attempting to be a hero—or a heroine—you’ll think your bottom has suddenly become a drum. Be still, now.”
Without taking his eyes from the dunes he felt the arrows in his quiver, checking the fletching.
“Will we die then, Conan, on this pitiful beach?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he said quickly. “I’ll take you back to Aghrapur and put pearls around your neck, if I don’t return you to Fatima for a stubborn wench first.” Of a certainty the sound of galloping horses was closer.
For a long moment she seemed to consider that. Then suddenly she shouted, “Conan of Cimmeria is my lover, and I his! I glory in sharing his blankets!”
Conan stared at her. “Crom, girl! I told you to be still!”
“If I am to die, I want the world to know what we share.”
As Conan opened his mouth, the drumming abruptly became a thunder, and scores of horses burst over the dunes, spraying muddy sand beneath their hooves, roiling in a great circle on the beach. Conan nocked an arrow, then hesitated when he saw that many of the horses had no riders. Tamur appeared out of the shifting mass of riders.
“Do not loose!” Conan shouted, striding out to meet the Hyrkanian, who swung down from his horse as Conan approached. “Erlik take you, Tamur! You could have ended wearing more feathers than a goose, riding in that way.”
“Did not Andar tell you who we were?” The scarred Hyrkanian said, frowning. “I saw you set him to watch.”
“He was relieving himself,” Akeba said disgustedly, joining them, “and did not bother to set another in his place.” He was trailed by a narrowjawed Hyrkanian, greased mustaches framing his mouth and chin.