A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the Guardsmen were pouring into the alley. The gods must have tainted his luck, he thought, to send him the only Guardsmen in Belverus with a mind for duty. Perhaps they did not like women. Shouting and slipping in the filth, the black-cloaked squad rushed after him.
Conan set out at a run, keeping his balance as best he could, half falling against the walls at every twisting of the alley, his massive shoulders knocking more stucco from the flaking, mildewed buildings. Another alley serpentined across the one he followed; he dodged down it. Still another passage appeared, winding cramped between dark walls, and he turned into that. Behind the curses of his pursuit followed.
As he ran he realized that he was in a warren, a maze of ancient passages in an area surrounded by more normal roadways. The buildings seemed ready to topple and fill those passages with rubble, for though they had begun long years past with but single stories, as years and needs demanded more room that could not be got by building outward, extra rooms had been constructed atop the roofs, and more atop those, till they resembled nothing so much as haphazard stacks of stuccoed and gray-tiled boxes.
In such a region, running like a fox before hounds, it would be a matter of luck if he found his way to the outside before his pursuers seized him. And it seemed his luck was sour that day. But there was another option, for one who had been born among the icy crags and cliffs of Cimmeria.
With a mighty leap he caught the edge of a roof, and swung himself up to lie flat on the slate tiles. The curses and shouts of the Guardsmen came closer, were below him, were moving off.
“He’s up there!” a man shouted below. “I see his foot!”
“Erlik’s Bowels and Bladder!” Conan muttered. His luck was not sour. Verily it had rotted.
As the Guardsmen struggled to climb, the Cimmerian darted across the slates, hoisted himself onto a higher level, scrambled over it and leaped to a lower roof. With a great crack the tiles gave way beneath his feet, and he plummeted into the room below.
Dazed, Conan struggled to his feet in a welter of broken slate. He was not alone, he realized. In the shadows against the far wall, face obscured, a large man in an expensive cloak of plain blue uttered a startled oath in the accents of the gutter. Another man, short beard circling a face pocked with the
marks of some disease, stared in disbelief at Conan.
It was the third man, though, a gray cloak pulled over his scarlet tunic, who drew the eye. Hawk-faced and obsidian-eyed, his dark hair slashed at the temples with white, he looked born to command. And now he issued one. “Kill him,” he said.
Crom, Conan thought, reaching for his sword. Did everyone in Belverus want him dead? The pock-faced man put hand to sword hilt.
“Down there!” came a shout from above. No muscle moved in the room save a twitching of the pock-faced man’s cheek. “That hole in the roof! A silver piece to the man who first draws blood!”
Visage dark as death, the hawk-faced man raised a clawed hand, as if he could strike Conan across the breadth of the room. There were thuds above as men dropped to the roof. “No time,” the hawk-faced one snarled.
Turning, he stalked from the room. The other two vanished behind him.
Conan had no mind either to greet the Guardsmen or to follow on the heels of those three. His eye lit on a tattered cloth, hung against the wall like a tapestry. As if it hid something. He jerked it aside to reveal a door. That let onto another room, full of dust and empty of else, but from there another door opened into a hall. As Conan closed that one softly behind him, he heard the thumps of men dropping through the hole in the roof.
For a wonder, after the maze of the alleys, the corridor ran straight to a street, and for its length the Cimmerian saw no one save one aging blowze who cracked a door and gave him a gap-toothed smile of invitation. Shuddering at the thought, he hurried on.
When he got back to the Thestis, the first person he saw was Hordo, scowling into a mug of wine. He dropped onto a stool across from him.
“Hordo, did you send a message telling me to meet you at the Sign of the Full Moon?”
“What? No.” Hordo shook his head without looking up from his mug. “Answer me this, Cimmerian. Do you understand any part of women? I walked in, told Kerin she had the prettiest eyes in Belverus, and she slapped my face and said she supposed I thought her breasts weren’t big enough.” He sighed mournfully. “And she won’t say another word to me.”
“Mayhap I can illumine your problem,” Conan said, and in a low voice he told of the message purporting to come from the one-eyed man, and what had occurred at the Full Moon.
Hordo caught the import at once. “Then ‘tis you they’re after. Whoever ‘they’ are. Did the knifemen not take you, the Guardsmen were meant to.”
“Aye,” Conan said. “When the Guardsmen followed so doggedly, I knew their palms had been crossed with gold. But I still know not who did the crossing.”
Hordo drew a line through a puddle of spilled wine with a spatulate finger. “Have you thought of leaving Belverus, Conan? We could ride south. Trouble brews in Ophir, too, and there’s no dearth of hiring for Free-Companies. I tell you, this business of someone you know not seeking your death sits ill with me. I knew you should have heeded that blind soothsayer.”
“You knew … .” Conan shook his head. “An I ride south, Hordo, I lose the company. Some would not leave the gold to be had here, and I have not the gold to pay the rest until we find service in Ophir. Besides, there are things I must attend to here first.”
“Things? Conan, tell me you’re not involving us in this … this hopeless children’s revolt.”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly,” Hordo said hollowly. “Tell me what it is you are doing. Exactly.”
“Earn a little gold,” Conan replied. “Discover who means to have me dead, and deal with them. Oh, and save Ariane from the headsman’s axe. You don’t want Kerin’s pretty head to fall, do you?”
“Perhaps not,” the one-eyed man said grudgingly.