She was attempting to ignore the tension, the Cimmerian knew, and so disarm it, but he thought the answer to her question was more important than killing Arvaneus. “It is true that bands of hillmen are ususally small, but in Shadizar it is said the Kezankian tribes are gathering. The soldiers we saw marching north bear this out, for it is also said the army is being sent to deal with them. To go risks nothing; to stay risks that the few who fled may bring back a thousand more.”
“A thousand!” the hawk-faced man snorted. “My lady, it is well known how the hill tribes war constantly with one another. A thousand hillmen in one place would kill each other in the space of a day. And if, by some miracle, so many were gathered together, their attention would surely be on the soldiers. In any case, I cannot believe in this bazaar rumor of a gathering of the tribes. It goes against all that I know of the hillmen.”
Jondra nodded thoughtfully, then asked, “And our injured? How many are they, and how badly hurt?”
“Many nicks and cuts, my lady,” Arvaneus told her, “but only fourteen hurt badly enough to be accounted as wounded, and but two of those seriously.” He hesitated. “Eleven are dead, my lady.”
“Eleven,” she sighed, and her eyes closed.
“’Twould have been more, my lady, save for Conan,” Telades said, and Arvaneus rounded on him.
“Cease your chatter of the barbar, man!”
“Enough!” Jondra barked. Her voice stilled the hunters on the instant. “I will reach a decision on what is to be done tomorrow. For now the wounded must be tended, and the fires put out. Arvaneus, you will see to it.” She paused to take a deep breath, looking at no one.”Conan, come to my tent. Please?” The last word was forced, and as she said it she turned away quickly, her robe flaring to give a glimpse of bare thighs, and hurried from the circle of men.
Conan’s visits to Jondra’s tent and sleeping furs had been an open secret, but an unacknowledged one. Studiously the men all avoided looking at Conan, or at each other, for that matter. Arvaneus seemed stunned. Tamira alone met his eyes, and she glared daggers.
With a shake of his head for the vagaries of women, the big Cimmerian sheathed his sword and followed Jondra.
She was waiting for him in her scarlet tent. As he ducked through the tent-flap, she slipped the silk robe from her shoulders, and he found his arms full of sleek bare skin. Full breasts bored into his ribs as she clutched at him, burying her head against his broad chest.
“I … I should not have spoken as I d
id earlier,” she murmured. ‘‘I do not doubt what you saw, and I do not want you to stay away from my bed.”
“It is well you believe me,” he said, smoothing her hair, “for I saw as I said. But now is no time to speak of that.” She sighed and snuggled closer, if that was possible. “It is time to speak of turning back. Your hunters have taken grievous hurt from the hillmen, and you are yet a day from the mountains. Do you enter the mountains with carts and oxen, you’ll not escape further attention from the tribes. Your men will be slain, and you will find yourself the slave of an unwashed tribesman whose wives will beat you constantly for your beauty. At least, they will until the harsh life and the labor leaches your youth as it does theirs.”
Word by word she had stiffened in his arms. Now she pushed herself from him, staring up at him incredulously. “It has been long years,” she said in breathless fury, “since I apologized to any man, and never have I b … asked one to my bed before you. Whatever I expected for doing so, it was not to be lectured.”
“It must be spoken of.” He found it hard to ignore the heavy, round breasts that confronted him, the tiny waist that flared into generous hips and long legs, but he forced himself to speak as if she were draped in layers of thick wool. “The hillmen are roused. Ants might escape their notice, but not men. And should you find this beast you hunt, remember that it is a hunter as well, and one that kills with fire. How many men will you see roasted alive to put a trophy on your wall?”
“A folk tale,” she scoffed. “If hillmen cannot frighten me off, do you think I will run before a myth?”
“Eldran,” he began with a patience he no longer felt, but her screach cut him off.
“No! I will not hear of that … that Brythunian!” Panting, she struggled to gain control of herself. At last she drew herself up imperiously. “I did not summon you here for argument. You will come to my bed and speak only of what we do, or you will leave me.”
Conan’s anger coiled to within a hair’s breadth of erupting, but he managed to keep his reply to a mocking, “As my lady wishes.” And he turned his back on her nudity.
Her furious cries followed him into the fading night, echoing across the camp. “Conan! Come back here, Mitra blast you! You cannot leave me like this! I command you to return, Erlik curse you forever!”
No man looked up from his labor, but it was clear from the intensity with which they minded their work that none was deaf. Those prodding burning bundles from the carts with spears abruptly redoubled their efforts to save what had not already caught fire. The newly set sentries suddenly peered at the failing shadows as if each hid a hillman.
Tamira was passing among the wounded, lying in a row on blankets in the middle of the camp, holding a waterskin to each man’s mouth. She looked up with a bright smile as he passed. “So you’ll sleep alone again tonight, Cimmerian,” she said sweetly. “A pity.” Conan did not look at her, but a scowl darkened his face.
One of the carts had been abandoned to burn, and flaming bundles lay scattered about the others. The fat cook capered among the men, waving a pewter tray over his head and complaining loudly at their use of his implements for shoveling dirt onto the fires. Conan took the tray from the rotund man’s hands and bent beside Telades to dig at the rocky soil.
The shaven-headed hunter eyed him sideways for a time, then said carefully, “There are few men would walk out on her without reason.”
Instead of answering the unasked question, Conan snarled, “I’ve half a mind to tie her to her horse so you can lead her back to Shadizar.”
“You’ve half a mind if you think that you could,” Telades said, throwing a potful of dirt and small stones on a fiery bale, “or that we would. The Lady Jondra decides where to go, and we follow.”
“Into the Kezankians?” Conan said incredulously. “With the tribes stirring? The army didn’t come north for the weather.”
“I’ve served the House Perashanid,” the other man said slowly, “since I was a boy, and my father before me, and his before him. The Lady Jondra is the house, now, for she is the last. I cannot desert her. But you could, I suppose. In fact, perhaps you should.”
“And why would I do that?” Conan asked drily.