“I’m taking a count, Cimmerian.” Quickly the tattooed veteran finished and rode to join them. “Two dead,” he retorted, “and a dozen who’ll need the carts to get back to Ianthe.”
Conan nodded grimly. Well over a score of the enemy lay on the hoof-churned ground, meadow grass and soil now seeming plowed, and only a few moved weakly. As many more were scattered back to the trees, sprouting feathered shafts. In the grim world of the mercenary it was little better than an even trade, for enemies were always there and easily found, but new companions were hard to come by.
“See if one of them lives enough to answer questions,” the Cimmerian commanded. “I would know who sent them against us, and why.”
Hurriedly Machaon and Narus dismounted. Moving among the bodies, stopping occasionally to heave one over, they returned supporting between them a bloodstreaked man with a wicked gash down the side of his face and neck.
“Mercy,” he gasped faintly. “I cry mercy.”
“Then name he who sent you,” Conan demanded. “Were you to kill us all, or one in particular?”
The Cimmerian had no intention of slaying a wounded and helpless man, but the prisoner clearly feared the worst. Almost eagerly he said, “Count Antimides. He bid us slay you and seize the Lady Synelle. Her we were to bring to him naked and in chains.”
“Antimides!” Synelle hissed. The men shifted uneasily to see her picking her way across the bloody ground; such sights as lay about them, men hacked and torn by the savagery of battle, were not for women’s eyes. Synelle did not seem to notice. “He dares so much against me?” she continued. “I will have his eyes and his manhood! I will—”
“My lady,” Conan said, “those who attacked us may rejoin and seek you again.” And he also, he added to himself, though that did not concern him as much as the other. “You must return to Ianthe, and quickly. You must ride one of the horses.”
“Back to the city?” Synelle nodded vigorously. “Yes. And when I get there Antimides will learn the price of an attack on my person!” Her eyes were bright with eagerness for that teaching.
Conan began seeing to preparations, ordering men who hurried to obey. The warriors, at least, knew their vulnerability should the enemy return, perhaps with reinforcements. “Machaon, tell off ten men to ride with the carts. Unload everything except the Lady Synelle’s jewelry and clothes to lighten the oxen’s loads. Leave the litter here, so they can see she’s no longer with the carts. Crom, of course we bring in our dead! Spread the wounded among the carts so they’re not crowded, and have the maids tend them. Yes, their wounded as well.”
“No!” Synelle snapped. “Leave Antimides’ men! Fetch me naked and chained, will they? Let them die!”
Conan’s hands tightened on his reins until his knuckles were white. His temples throbbed like drums. “Load their wounded, too,” he said, and drew a shuddering breath. Almost he had not been able to get the words out.
Synelle looked at him strangely. “A strong will,” she said musingly. “And yet there could be pleasure in—” Abruptly she stopped, as if she thought she had said too much, but the Cimmerian could understand nothing of it.
“My lady,” he said, “you must ride astride. We have no side-saddle.”
She held out a hand to him. “Your dagger, barbarian.”
When she took it from him it felt as though sparks jumped from her hand to his. Deftly she slit the front of her robe. Narus led forward a horse, and she mounted with flashing limbs, exposed to the tops of her pale thighs, nor did she do anything to cover them once in the saddle. Conan could feel her eyes on him as solidly as a touch, but of which sort he could not tell. He tore his gaze from her long legs, and heard a laugh softly, the sound burning in his brain.
“We ride!” he commanded hoarsely, and galloped toward Ianthe, the rest streaming behind.
14
Karela kept the hood of her dark blue woolen cloak pulled well forward; there were those about her in the crowd-filled streets of Ianthe who would put aside their habit of ignoring what occurred around them for a chance at Iskandrian’s reward.
She snorted at the thought. Twenty pieces of gold! A thousand times so much had been placed on her head by the Kings of Zamora and Turan. The merchants of those countries had offered more, and would have considered it cheap to rid their caravans of her depredations at the price. High Councils had had debated methods of dealing with her, armies had pursued her, and no man took passage from one city to another without offering prayers that she would spare his purse, all with equal futility. Now, she found herself reduced to an amount of coin that spoke of petty irritation. The humiliation of it was so great that barely could she keep her mind on her purpose for entering the city.
The house where Conan’s company of rogues was gathered lay just ahead. That morning she had watched him ride out with half his company. A short time later another large contingent of his men had departed by another gate and trailed after the first. Wily Cimmerian! She had long since gotten over the foolishness of failing to respect his abilities. He would be taken in no ordinary trap. But then she was no ordinary woman.
Unbidden, her thoughts went back to that woman of the nobility he had been escorting. Did she know him, he had already visited the wench’s bed. He had always had an eye for willing wenches, and few were those who were not willing did he once smile at them. The red-haired woman wished she could get her hands on this Synelle. Lady, indeed. She would not soil her hands with the like of those who called themselves ladies. Karela would show her what a real woman looked like, then send her back to Conan as a present, stuffed naked into a sack. When someone had offered her gold to burn the jade’s farms, she had not stopped to ask why or query who the man with the deep-set, commanding eyes was behind his mask of black silk. It had been a chance to strike at Conan, and his precious Synelle, and she leaped at it. She would prick him and prick him until he was forced to flee, and if he would not … .
Angrily she pulled her mind back to the matter at hand. She no longer cared what women he took, she told herself. Such interest in the man had brought her naught but grief. With the men he had taken to protect his new trull, he could not have left many behind. She looked through the arched gateway as she passed. Yes. There were only a handful to be seen, playing at dice against the side of the fountain in the courtyard. He who had made the cast cursed, and the others laughed as they scooped up his losings.
Karela raised a hand to her face as if brushing away a fly, and two men pushing a handcart toward her, its flat bed piled high with wooden boxes held in place by ropes, suddenly turned it into the alley beside the house. Karela followed them. The men glanced at her questioningly; she nodded, and they turned to watch the street.
One, a dark-faced Zamoran with drooping mustaches, whom she had taken on out of memory of better days, said softly, “No one looks.”
In the space of two breaths Karela scrambled up the carefully arranged boxes and into a window on the second floor. It was Conan’s room. Her sources of information had discovered that for her easily enough.
Her lip curled contemptuously as she looked around the bare chamber. So this was what he had come to since forsaking a palace in Nemedia. She had never heard the straight of his departing that land when he had been offered honors and wealth by the King, but it brought a measure of continuing satisfaction that he had not profited from the adventures which ended in her flight. It did her good to think of him brought low. Yet the blankets were folded neatly on the bed. There were no cobwebs on the ceiling, no dust in the corners, and the floor had been freshly swept. A woman, she thought, and not likely it was his fine Synelle. The Cimmerian gathered a zenana about him like an easterner.
Sternly she reminded herself of her lack of interest in Conan’s women. She had come for that obscene bronze figure, and nothing more. But where to begin searching? There did not look to be many places for hiding. Beneath the bed, perhaps.
Before she could take a step, the door opened and a girl wearing plain white robes walked in. There was something oddly familiar about her face and hair, though Karela could swear she had never seen the girl before.