“A mistake on the part of my apprentice, noble sir. A worthless lad.” The dumpy fellow’s voice dripped regretful anger at the worthlessness of his apprentice. “I’ll leather him well for it. A mere two gold pieces, and it is—”
Conan cut him off with a raised hand. “Any more lies, and I may not buy it at all. If you know something of it, then speak.”
“I tell you, noble sir, it is easily worth—” Conan turned away, and the shopkeeper yelped. “Wait! Please! I will speak only the truth, as Mitra hears my words!”
Conan stopped and looked back, feigning doubt. This fellow, he thought, would not last a day among the peddlers of Turan.
There was sweat on the shopkeeper’s face, though the day was cool. “Please, noble sir. Come into my shop, and we will talk. Please.”
Still pretending reluctance, Conan allowed himself to be ushered inside, plucking the figure from the barrel as he passed. Within, the narrow shop was crowded with tables displaying examples of the smith’s work. Shelves on the walls held bowls, vases, ewers and goblets in a welter of shapes and sizes. The big Cimmerian set the statuette on a table that creaked under its weight.
“Now,” he said, “name me a price. And I’ll hear no more mention of gold for something you were going to melt.”
Avarice struggled on the smith’s plump face with fear of losing a purchaser. “Ten silvers,” he said finally, screwing his face into a parody of his former welcoming expression.
Deliberately Conan removed a single silver coin from his pouch and set it on the table. Crossing his massive arms across his chest, he waited.
The plump man’s mouth worked, and his head moved in small jerks of negation, but at last he sighed and nodded. “Tis yours,” he muttered bitterly. “For one silver. It’s as much as it is worth to melt down, and without the labor. But the thing is ill luck. A peasant fleeing the troubles brought it to me. Dug it up on his scrap of land. Ancient bronzes always sell well, but none would have this. Ill favored, they called it. And naught but bad luck since it’s been in my shop. One of my daughters is with child, but unmarried; the other has taken up with a panderer who sells her not three doors from here. My wife left me for a carter. A common carter, mind you. I tell you, that thing is … .” His words wound down as he realized he might be talking himself out of a sale. Hurriedly he snatched the silver and made it disappear under his tunic. “Yours for a silver, noble sir, and a bargain greater than you can imagine.”
“If you say so,” Conan said drily. “But get me something to carry it through the streets in.” He eyed the figure and chuckled despite himself, imagining the look on Machaon’s face when he presented it to him. “The most hardened trull in the city would blush to look on it.”
As the smith scurried into the back of his shop, two heavy-set men in the castoff finery of nobles swaggered in. One, in a soiled red brocade tunic, had had his ears and nose slit, the penalties for first and second offences of theft. For the next he would go to the mines. The other, bald and with a straggly black beard, wore a frayed wool cloak that had once been worked with embroidery of silver or gold, long since picked out. Their eyes went immediately to the bronze figure on the table. Conan kept his gaze on them; their swords, at least, looked well tended, and the hilts showed the wear of much use.
“Can I help you?” the shopkeeper asked, reappearing with a coarsely woven sack in his hand. There was no ‘noble sir’ for this sort.
“That,” slit-ear said gruffly, pointing to the statuette. “A gold piece for it.”
The smith coughed and spluttered, glaring reproachfully at Conan.
“It’s mine,” the Cimmerian said calmly, “and I’ve no mind to sell.”
“Two gold pieces,” slit-ear said. Conan shook his head.
“Five,” the bald man offered.
Slit-ear rounded on his companion. “Give away your profit, an you will, but not mine! I’ll make this ox an offer,” he snarled and spun, his sword whispering from its sheath.
Conan made no move toward his own blade. Grasping the bronze figure by its feet, he swung it sideways. The splintering of bone blended with slit-ear’s scream as his shoulder was crushed. The bald man had his sword out now, but Conan merely stepped aside from his lunge and brought the weighty statuette down like a mace, splattering blood and brains. The dead man’s momentum carried him on into the tables, overturning those he did not smash, sending brass vases and bowls clattering across the floor. Conan whirled back to find the first man thrusting with a dagger held left-handed. The blade skittered off his hauberk, and the two men crashed together. For the space of a breath they were chest to chest, Conan staring into desperate black eyes. This time he disdained to use a weapon. His huge fist traveled more than half the length of his forearm, and slit-ear staggered back, his face a bloody mask, to pull shelves down atop him as he crumpled to the floor. Conan did not know if he was alive or dead, nor did he care.
The smith stood in the middle of the floor, hopping from one foot to the other. “My shop!” he wailed. “My shop is wrecked! You steal for a silver what they would have given five gold pieces for, then you destroy my place of business!”
“They have purses,” Conan growled. “Take the cost of your repairs from—” He broke off with a curse as the scent of roses wafted to his nose. Delving into his pouch, he came out with a fragment of vial. Perfume was soaking into his hauberk. And his cloak. “Erlik take the pair of them,” he muttered. He hefted the bronze figure that he still held in one hand. “What about this thing is worth five gold pieces? Or worth dying for?” The shopkeeper, gingerly feeling for the ruffians’ purses, did not answer.
Cursing under his breath Conan wiped the blood from the figure and thrust it into the sack the smith had let drop.
With a shout of delight the smith held up a handful of silver, then drew back as if he feared Conan might take it. He started, then stared at the two men littering his floor as if realizing where they were for the first time. “But what will I do with them?” he cried.
“Apprentice them,” Conan told him. “I’ll wager they won’t put anything valuable in the scrap barrel.”
Leaving the dumpy man kneeling on the floor with his mouth hanging open, Conan stalked into the street. It was time and more to find himself a woman.
In his haste he did not notice the heavily veiled woman whose green eyes widened in surprise at his appearance. She watched him blend into the crowd then, gathering her cloak about her, followed slowly.
2
The Bull and Bear was almost empty when Conan entered, and the half-dread silence suited his mood well. The curly-haired trull had been leaving with a customer when he got back to her corner, and he had not seen another to compare with her between there and this tavern.
An odor of stale wine and sweat hung in the air of the common room; it was not a tavern for gentlefolk. Half a dozen men, carters and apprentices in rough woolen tunics, sat singly at the tables scattered about the stone floor, each engrossed in his own drinking. A single doxy stood with her back to a corner, not plying her trade but seeming rather to ignore the men in the room. Auburn hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders. Wrapped in layers of green silk, she was more modestly covered than most noble ladies of Ophir, and she wore none of the gaudy ornaments such women usually adorned themselves with, but the elaborate kohl of her eyelids named her professional, as did her presence in that place. Still, there was a youthful freshness to her face that gave him cause to think she had not long been at it.