“I know,” she laughed as she dug her heels into her mount’s ribs. “You like the view.”
He did that, he thought wryly, but he intended to watch Karela with an eye to treachery. Trailing the robbers’ horses, he rode after her.
VIII
For the rest of that day they rode north, across rolling countryside sparsely covered with low scrub. When they camped at nightfall, Conan said, “How much farther?”
Karela shrugged; her heavy round breasts shifted beneath the tight green tunic. “We’ll reach it some time after dawn, if we break camp early.”
She began to pile dry twigs from the scrub for a fire, but he scattered them. “No need to advertise our presence. What makes you think they’ll still be there?”
Tucking flint and steel back in her pouch, she gave him an amused smile. “If they’ve gone, at least you’ll be closer than you were. Who is this man in Shadizar who wants his slave girl back?”
“If we’re riding early, we’d better turn in,” he said, and she smiled again.
He wrapped himself in his cloak but did not sleep. Instead he watched her. She was wrapped in a blanket she had carried on her horse, and had her head pillowed on her high-pommeled saddle of tooled red leather. He would not have put it past her to try sneaking off with the horses in the night, but she seemed to settle right into sleep.
Purple twilight deepened to black night, and scudding clouds crossed stars like diamonds on velvet, but Conan kept his eyes open. A gibbous moon rose, and at its height the Cimmerian thought he felt eyes on him from the surrounding night. Easing his narrow-bladed dagger from its forearm sheath, he loosed the bronze brooch that held his cloak and snaked into the night on his belly. Thrice he circled the camp in silence, always feeling the eyes, but he saw no one, nor any sign that anyone had ever been there. And then, abruptly, the feeling was gone. Once more he crawled all the way around the camp, but there was still nothing. Disgusted with himself, he got up and walked back to his cloak. Karela still slept. Angrily he wrapped himself in the black wool. It was the woman. Waiting for her treachery was making him see and feel what just was not there.
While the sun was but a red rim shining above the horizon Karela woke, and they rode north again. Slowly the land changed, the low rollings becoming true hills. Conan was beginning to wonder what the men he sought would be doing so far to the north of the caravan route, when suddenly Karela kicked her horse into a gallop.
“There it is,” she cried. “Just over those next hills.”
Hurriedly he galloped after her. “Karela, come back! Karela!” She hurried on, disappearing around a hill. Fool woman, he thought. If the pilgrims were still there, she would have them roused.
As he rounded the hill, he slowed his mount to a walk. She was nowhere in sight, and he could no longer hear the sounds of her horse running.
“Conan!”
Conan’s head whipped around at the shout. Karela sat her horse atop a hill to his right. “Crom, woman! What are you —”
“My name is Karela,” she shouted. “The Red Hawk!”
She let out a shrill whistle, and suddenly mounted men in a motley collection of bright finery and mismatched armor were boiling through every gap in the hills. In a trice he was the center of a shoulder-to-shoulder ring of brigands. Carefully he folded his hands on the pommel of his saddle. So much as a twitch toward his sword would put iron-tipped quarrels through his body from the four crossbows he could see, and there might be more.
“Karela,” he called, “is this the way you keep your oath?”
“I’ve said no uncivil word to you,” she replied mockingly, “And I haven’t raised my hand against you. Nor will I. I’m afraid the same can’t be said of my men. Hordo!”
A burly, black-bearded man with a rough leather patch over his left eye forced his horse through the circle to confront Conan. A jagged scar ran from under the patch and disappeared in the thatch of his beard. That side of his mouth was drawn up in a permanent sneer. His ring mail had once belonged to a wealthy man—there were still traces of gilt left—and large gold hoops stretched his ears. A well-worn tulwar hung at his side.
“Conan, she called you,” the big man said. “Well, I’m Hordo, the Red Hawk’s lieutenant. And what I want to know, what we all want to know, is why we shouldn’t cut your miserable throat right here.”
“Karela was leading me,” Conan began, and cut off as Hordo launched a fist the size of a small ham at him. The big man’s single eye bulged as Conan caught his fist in mid-swing and stopped it dead.
For a moment the two strained, arm to arm, biceps bulging, then Hordo shouted, “Take him!” The ring of bandits closed in.
Dozens of hands clutched at Conan, tearing away his cloak, ripping loose his sword, pulling him from the saddle. But their very numbers hampered them somewhat, and he did not go easily. His dagger found a new home in ribs clothed in dirty yellow—in the press he never saw the face that went with them—a carelessly reached arm was broken at the elbow, and more than one face erupted in blood and broken teeth from his massive fists. The numbers were too many, though, and rough hands at last managed to bind his wrists behind him and link his ankles with a two-foot hobble of rawhide. Then they threw him to the stony ground, and those who had boots began to apply them to his ribs.
Finally Hordo chased them back with snarled threats, and bent to jerk Conan’s head up by a fistful of hair. “We call her the Red Hawk,” he spat. “You call her mistress, or my lady. But don’t ever sully her name with your filthy mouth again. Not as you live.”
“Why should he live at all?” snarled a weasel-faced man in dented half-armor and a guardsman’s helmet with the crest gone. “Hepakiah’s choking to death on his own blood from this one’s dagger right now.” He grimaced suddenly and spat out a tooth. “Cut his throat, and be done!”
With a grin Hordo produced a wavy-bladed Vendhyan dagger. “Seems Aberius has a good idea for a change.”
Suddenly Karela forced her horse through the pack around Conan, her green cat-eyes glaring down at him. “Can’t you think of something more interesting, Hordo?”
“Still keeping your oath?” Conan snarled. “Fine payment for saving you from the slave block, or worse.” Hordo’s fist smashed his head back into the ground.