The big soldier stood rigidly in the door, then left without speaking. But he would do it, Albanus knew, even to his beloved Golden Leopards.
“Who is the woman?” Sularia asked again.
Albanus looked at her in amusement, wondering if there were room for two thoughts at once in that pretty head. All that had happened before her eyes, and it was Ariane that concerned her.
“Do not worry,” he told her. “In the morning you will be proclaimed Lady Sularia. This,” he touched Ariane’s expressionless face, “is naught but a tool to build a path to the Dragon Throne. And tools are made to be discarded once used.”
His gaze swung to Sularia, a reassuring smile on his face. Tools, he repeated to himself, are made to be discarded once used.
XX
Conan awakened hanging spreadeagled in chains in the center of a dungeon. At least, he assumed it was the center. Two tall tripod lamps cast a yellow pool of light around him, but he could see no walls in any direction. The chains that held his wrists disappeared into the gloom above. Those holding his ankles were fastened to massive ringbolts set in the rough stone blocks of the floor. His tunic was gone; he wore naught but a breechclout.
Without real hope of escape he tensed every muscle, straining until sweat popped out on his forehead, beaded his shoulders and rolled down his broad chest. There was not slightest give in the chains. Nor in himself. He had been stretched to the point of joints cracking.
Cloth rustled in the darkness, and he heard a man’s voice.
“He is awake, my lady.” There was a pause. “Very good, my lady.”
Two men moved into the light, burly, shaven headed and bare chested. One bore a burn across his hairless chest as if some victim had managed to put hand to the hot iron intended for his own pain. The other was as heavily pelted as an ape from the shoulders down, and wore a smile on his incongruously pleasant round face. Each man carried a coiled whip.
As they wordlessly took positions to either side of the Cimmerian, he strained his eyes to penetrate the darkness. Who was this ‘lady’? Who?
The first whip hissed through the air to crack against his chest. As it was drawn back the other struck his thigh. Then the first was back, wrapping around an ankle. There was no pattern to the blows, no way to anticipate where the next would land, no way to steel the soul against pain like lines of acid eating into the flesh.
The muscles of Conan’s jaws were knots with the effort of not yelling. He would not even open his mouth to suck in the lungfuls of air his great body demanded in its agony. To open his mouth would be to make some noise, however slight, and from there it would be but a step to a yell, another to a scream. The woman watching from the darkness wanted him to scream. He would make no sound.
The two men continued until Conan hung as limply as the chains would allow, head down on his massive chest. Sweat turned to fire the welts that covered him from ankles to shoulders. Here and there blood oozed.
From the darkness he heard the clink of coins, and the same man’s voice. “Very generous, my lady. We’ll be just outside, an you need us.” Then silence until hinges squealed rustily, stopping with the crash of a stout door closing.
Conan lifted his head.
Slowly a woman walked into the circle of light and stood watching him. The woman veiled in gray.
“You!” he rasped. “Are you the one who has been trying to kill me, then? Or are you the one who uses those fools at the Thestis, the one who put me here with lies?”
“I did try to have you killed,” she said softly. Conan’s eyes narrowed. That voice was so familiar. But whose? “I should have known there were no men in Nemedia capable of slaying you. Where you hang, though, is your own doing, though I joy to see it. I joy, Conan of Cimmeria.”
“Who are you?” he demanded.
Her hand went to her face, pushed back the veils. No disease-ravaged skin was revealed, but creamy ivory beauty. Tilted emerald eyes regarded him above high cheekbones. An auburn mane framed her face in soft waves.
“Karela,” he breathed. Almost he wondered if he saw a vision from pain. The Red Hawk, fierce bandit of the plain of Zamora and the Turanian steppes, in Belverus, masquerading as a woman of the nobility. It seemed impossible.
That beautiful face was impassive as she gazed at him, her voice tightly controlled. “Never again did I think to see you, Cimmerian. When I saw you that day in the Market District I thought I would die on the spot.”
“And did you see Hordo?” he asked. “You must know he is here, still hoping to find you.” He managed a wry smile. “Working with the smugglers you now command.”
“So you have learned that much,” she said wonderingly. “None but a fool ever accounted you stupid. Hordo surprised me almost as much as you did, turning up in Khorshemish while I was there. Still, I would not let him know who I am. He was the most faithful of my hounds, yet others were faithful, too, and even so remembered the gold on my head in Zamora and Turan. Think you I wear these veils for the pleasure of hiding?”
“It has been a long time, Karela,” Conan said. “’Tis likely they’ve forgotten by now.”
Her calm facade cracked. “The Red Hawk will never be forgotten!” Emerald eyes flaring, she faced him with fists on hips and feet apart. Almost he could see the jeweled tulwar at her hip as it had been.
“Now that you’re no longer being the Lady Tiana,” he said grimly, “why in Zandru’s Nine Hells do you want me dead?”
“Why?” she screeched in furious astonishment. “Have you forgot so soon leaving me naked and chained, on my way to be sold to whatever man bid highest?”