Slowly his gaze rose to the leather-armored figure. Still no breath stirred in that body. Was there light in the eyes? “Can you hear me?” he demanded. There was no reply. “Step forward!” Obediently the warrior took one pace forward and stood again as a statue. “Of course,” Naipal mused. “You are without volition of your own. You obey me, who gave you life again, and only me, unless I command you to heed another. Good. It is as the writings said. So far. Follow me!”
Maintaining the exact distance between them, the warrior obeyed. Naipal unlocked the door in the iron latticework and motioned. The other stepped through, and the wizard closed and relocked the barred door. It was good, Naipal thought, that spoken commands were not necessary. The writings had been unclear.
A hollow tone boomed as Naipal struck the gong with the padded mallet. In the pit the iron-bound door swung open. Moving cautiously, twenty men appeared, eyes going immediately to Naipal and the motionless figure at the head of the ramp. Behind them the door closed silently. When they saw the swords piled on the sand, there was but a moment’s hesitation before they rushed for the weapons. The men were as varied as the blades they seized, wearing garb ranging from filthy rags to some noble’s cast-off silken finery. They had not been randomly chosen. The test would not be complete then. In that pit were brigands, bandits, deserters from the army, each one familiar with a sword. Freedom and gold had been promised to those who survived. Naipal thought he might even honor the promise.
“Kill them,” he commanded.
Even as the words left his mouth, six of the ruffians charged howling up the ramp, blades swinging. His face an expressionless mask, the leather-clad warrior drew his archaic swords and moved smoothly to meet them. The six attacked with a frenzy driven by the promise of freedom; the warrior fought with lightning precision. When the form in ancient armor moved on, a single head rolling down the ramp before it, si
x corpses littered the way behind.
In the pit two of the deserters hastily chivvied those remaining into two lines as though they were infantry on a battlefield. The warrior neither slowed his approach nor altered his stride. The two ranks of desperate men tensed to meet him. But a pace short of them, the warrior suddenly leaped to his right, attacking. The rogues Naipal had gathered may have thought their formation made them infantry, but they had no shields to protect them. Two fell, bloodied and twitching, before the ranks could wheel under the deserters’ shouted instructions. The resurrected warrior did not wait for them, however. As the lines pivoted, he leaped back the other way and dashed into their midst from the flank. The deserters’ small order dissolved in a melee of hacking steel, welling blood and screaming men, each fighting frantically for himself alone, each dying as the ancient warrior’s flashing blade reached him.
When the leather-armored figure slit the throat of the last kicking wretch, Naipal breathed deep in wondering satisfaction. Twenty corpses littered the crimson-splashed sand, and the reborn warrior stood unharmed. In truth there were rents in the studded leather of his armor, and his teeth could be seen through a gash that laid open his cheek, but not a drop of blood fell from him. He moved among the bodies, making sure that each was actually dead, as though no blade had ever touched him.
Turning his back on the scene below, the wizard sagged against the bars, laughing until he wheezed for breath. Everything the ancient writings had claimed was true. The wounds would heal quickly. Nothing could slay the warrior he had resurrected.
More than two thousand years earlier, a conqueror called Orissa had carved a score of small nations and city-states into the kingdom of Vendhya, with himself as its first king. And when King Orissa died, an army of twenty thousand warriors was entombed with him, a royal bodyguard for the afterlife, preserved so perfectly by intricate thaumaturgies that though they no longer lived, neither were they dead as ordinary men died. With the proper rituals, life could be restored after a fashion, and an army that could not die would march again. All that was necessary was to find the centuries-lost tomb.
“And that,” Naipal laughed, loud and mocking, “is all but done, is it not, Masrok, my faithful servant?”
Success so filled him with ebullience that the stupefying fear of the past few days was swept away. Certainly enough time had passed. On whatever waters that vessel rode, if it was near enough to threaten him when he was so close to his goals, it must have made shore by now. And if it had, surely whatever danger it carried had been dealt with by his myrmidons. He would admit no other thought, not when so many victories were already his on this day.
With a firm hand he raised the carven ivory lid and brushed back the silken coverings. Black was the surface of the mirror, and dotted with tiny points of light. It took a moment for Naipal to realize that he saw a vast array of campfires, viewed from a great height. If one small ship had threatened him before, now it seemed that an army did. For his days of fear he was repaid with more fear, and with uncertainty. Had the danger of the ship been disposed of, or had it been transmogrified to this? Was this a new threat, surpassing the old?
Long into the night Naipal’s howls of rage echoed in the vast dome.
CHAPTER XI
When the first paleness of dawn appeared on the horizon, Conan was already up and saddling the stallion. The hollow thunk of axes chopping wood drifted to him from the bank of the Zaporoska, not half a league off and lined with tall trees. He shook his head at the Khitan merchant’s camels, sharing the picket line with the smugglers’ horses. Camels were filthy beasts, to his mind, both in habits and smell, and untrustworthy besides. He would rather have a horse at any time, or even a mule.
“Stinking beast,” Hordo grumbled, slapping a camel’s flank to make it move aside. Coughing from the cloud of dust he had raised, the one-eyed man edged into the space created to reach his own mount. “And dirty, too.”
“Have you looked at the goods they carry?” Conan asked quietly.
“I saw no chests, if that’s what you mean. We cross the river this morning, you know.”
“Pay attention, Hordo. It is all carpets and velvet and tapestries, as the Khitan said. But the value of it, Hordo.” The big Cimmerian had been a thief in his youth, and his eye could still gauge the price of anything worth stealing. “ ’Tis mainly of the third quality, with only a little of the second. I should not think it worth carrying to Arenjun, much less all the way to Vendhya.”
“Distance and rarity increase value,” Kang Hou said, approaching silently on felt-slippered feet. His hands were tucked into the sleeves of a pale-blue velvet tunic, this one embroidered with swallows in flight. “It is clear you are no merchant, Patil. The Iranistani carpet that will barely procure a profit in Turan will bring fifty times as much in Vendhya. Do you think the finest Vendhyan carpets go to Turan? Those grace the floors of Vendhyan nobles, yet a far greater price may be obtained by taking a carpet of the second quality to Aghrapur than by selling one of the first quality in Ayodhya.”
“I am no merchant,” Conan agreed, backing the black Bhalkhana away from the picket line, “nor wish to be. Yet I am as eager to reach Vendhya as you. If you will excuse me, Kang Hou, I will see when the caravan is to move on. And what else I can discover,” he added for Hordo’s ears.
Conan rode through the encampment slowly, for though he was indeed eager to travel onward, also did he wish to give his eyes a chance to roam, to see if they might perchance light on some chests like those used for shipping tea.
The caravan was in fact three encampments, though the three camps butting one against the other, and even larger than Conan had supposed. Three and forty merchants, with their servants, attendants and animal tenders, made up nearly the thousand people he thought the entire caravan contained, numbering among them Vendhyans and Khitans, Zamorans and Turanians, Kothians and Iranistanis. Men scurried to collapse and fold tents, to load bales and bundles and wicker panniers on camels and mules under the watchful eyes of finely-clad merchants, who eyed each other as well with surreptitious suspicion, wondering if some other had cut a sharper bargain or aimed for the same markets. Conan received his own share of speculative glances, and more than one merchant called nervously for his guards as the tall Cimmerian rode past.
Vendhyan nobles who had accompanied the wazam to Aghrapur had the second encampment, and it was odd enough for a second glance even if the chests were not there. Conan’s first thought was that he had stumbled onto a traveling fair, for well over half a thousand people surrounded those gaily striped and pennoned pavilions, being lowered now by turbaned servants. Here, too, were men from many lands, but these were jugglers keeping a dozen balls in the air at once, and acrobats balancing atop limber poles. A bear danced to a flute, tumblers leaped and twisted, and strolling players plucked lute and zither. Skull-capped men in flowing robes and long beards moved through the seeming carnival as if it did not exist, talking in twos and threes, though in truth two of them, screaming insults, were being held from each other’s throats by one who, stripped to the waist and with bulging muscles oiled, appeared to be a strongman.
The third encampment had already been struck and taken to the river, where axemen were building rafts for the crossing, but Conan had no intention of approaching that one in any case. It was not that he could imagine no way the chests might have ended up in the baggage of Karim Singh, wazam of Vendhya, but five hundred hard-eyed Vendhyan cavalry provided steep odds. Their brigantine hauberks and turbaned helms with mail neck guards were much like those of the Vendhyans on the beach, but these men were very obviously aware of just how far into disputed territory they were. They rode like cats, ready to jump at a sound, and their long-bladed lances swung down if anyone came within a hundred paces.
Abruptly something whistled past Conan’s face, close enough for him to feel the breeze. Crossbow bolt, a part of his mind told him even as he instinctively dropped as low as the high pommel would permit and dug his heels into the big black’s flanks. The stallion bounded forward and was at a dead run in three strides. Conan sensed rather than saw other quarrels streak by, and once his saddle was jolted by a hit.
As the river drew closer, he finally pulled up and looked back. Nothing in the breaking camp appeared out of the ordinary. No crossbows were in evidence; no one even looked in his direction. Dismounting, he checked the black over. The animal was uninjured and eager to run farther, but in the high cantle of the saddle there was a quarrel thicker than his finger. Conan felt a grim chill. A hand-breadth higher and it would have been in his back. At least there could no longer be any doubt that the chests were in the caravan.
“You there!” came a shout from the direction of the river. “You, Patil!”
Conan looked up and saw Torio, the caravan guard captain, riding toward him. A quick tug pulled the quarrel free. Letting it fall to the ground, he mounted and rode to meet the other man, who began to speak immediately.