“And for all your thievery,” she chided, “what do you have? Every copper you steal drips from your fingers like water.”
“Crom
! Is that why you will not be mine alone? The money?”
“You’re a fool!” she spat. Before he could say more, she flounced out of the room.
For a time he sat frowning at the bare wooden walls. Semiramis did not know half of his troubles in Shadizar. He was indeed the most successful thief in the city, and now his successes were beginning to rebound on him. The fat merchants and perfumed nobles whose dwellings he robbed were making up a reward to put an end to his depredations. Some of those self-same men had hired him upon occasion to retrieve an incriminating letter or a gift given indiscreetly to the wrong woman. What he knew of their secrets was likely as big a reason for the reward as his thefts. That, and their hot-eyed daughters, who found it delightfully wicked to dally with a muscular young barbarian.
With a grunt he got to his feet and slung a black Khauranian cloak edged in cloth-of-gold around his broad shoulders. These ruminations were gaining him nothing. He was a thief. He should be about it.
As he made his way down the rickety stair into the crowded common room, he ground his teeth. In the center of the room Semiramis sat on the lap of a mustachioed Kothian kidnapper in a striped cloak of many colors. Gold armlets encircled his biceps, and a gold hoop hung from one dark ear. The oily man’s right hand gripped Semiramis’ breasts; his left arm flexed as the other hand worked beneath the table. She wriggled seductively, and giggled as he whispered in her ear. Conan ignored the pair as he strode to the bar.
“Wine,” he ordered, and dug into the leather purse at his belt for the necessary coppers. There were few enough remaining.
Fat Abuletes made the coins disappear, replacing them with a leathern jack of sour-smelling wine. His neck rose in grimy folds above the collar of a faded yellow tunic. His dark eyes, sunk in the suet of his face, could weigh a man’s purse to the last copper at twenty paces. Instead of moving away, he remained, studying Conan from behind the fat, flat mask of his face.
The smells of the thin wine and half-burned meat from the kitchens warred with the effluvia wafted in from the streets whenever the door opened to let another patron in or out. It yet lacked three full glasses of night-fall, but the tables were filled with cutpurses, panderers and footpads. A busty courtesan in brass-belled ankle bracelets and two narrow strips of yellow silk hawked her wares with lascivious smiles.
Conan marked the locations of those who looked dangerous. A turbanned Kezankian hillman licked his thin lips as he studied the prostitute, and two swarthy Iranistanis in loose, flowing red pantaloons and leather vests ogled her, as well. Blood might well be shed there. A Turanian coiner sat hunched over his mug, pointed beard waggling as he muttered to himself. It was known in the Desert that he had been badly bested by a mark, and he was ready to assuage his humiliation with the three-foot Ibarri sword-knife at his hip. A third Iranistani, dressed like the first two but with a silver chain dangling on his bare chest, attended a fortuneteller turn-ing her cards at a table against the far wall.
“What hold you, Conan,” Abuletes said abruptly, “on the coming troubles?”
“What troubles?” Conan replied. His mind was not on the tavernkeeper’s words. The soothsayer was no wrinkled hag, as such women were wont to be. Silken auburn hair showed at the edges of her voluminous brown cloak’s hood, framing a heart-shaped face. Her emerald eyes had a slight tilt above high cheekbones. The cloak and the robe beneath were of rough wool, but her slender fingers on the K’far cards were delicate.
“Do you listen to nothing not connected to your thievery?” Abuletes grumbled. “These six months past no fewer than seven caravans bound for Turan, or coming from there, have disappeared without a trace. Tiridates has the army out after the Red Hawk, but they’ve never gotten a glimpse of that she-devil. Why should this time be any different? And when the soldiers return empty-handed, the merchants screaming for something to be done will force the king to crack down on us in the Desert.”
“He has cracked down before,” Conan laughed, “and nothing changes.” The Iranistanis said something with a smirk. The soothsayer’s green eyes looked daggers at him, but she continued to tell her cards. Conan thought the Iranistani had the same idea he did. If Semiramis wanted to flaunt her trade before him … . “What proof is there,” he said, without taking his eyes from the pair across the room, “that the Red Hawk is responsible? Seven caravans would be a large bite for a bandit to chew.”
Abuletes snorted. “Who else could it be? Kezankian hillmen never raid far from the mountains. That leaves the Red Hawk. And who knows how many men she has? Who knows anything of her, even what she looks like? I’ve heard she has five hundred rogues who obey her like hounds the huntsman.”
Conan opened his mouth for an acid retort, and at that moment the situation at the fortuneteller’s table flared. The Iranistani laid a hand on her arm. She shook it off. He clutched at her cloak, whispering urgent words, hefting a clinking purse in his other hand.
“Find a boy!” she spat. Her backhand blow to his face cracked like a whip.
The Iranistani rocked back, his face livid. “Slut!” he howled, and a broad-bladed Turanian dagger appeared in his fist.
Conan crossed the room in two pantherish strides. His big hand clamped the bicep of the Iranistani’s knife arm and lifted the man straight up out of his chair. The Iranistani’s snarl changed to open-mouthed shock as he tried to slash at the big youth and his knife dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. Conan’s iron grip had shut off the blood to the man’s arm.
With contemptuous ease, Conan hurled the man sprawling on the floor between the tables. “She doesn’t want your attentions,” he said.
“Whoreson dog!” the Iranistani howled. Left-handed, he snatched the Turanian coiner’s Ibarri sword-knife and lunged at Conan.
Hooking his foot around the Iranistani’s toppled chair, Conan swung it into the man’s path. The Iranistani tumbled, springing up again even as he fell, but Conan’s booted toe took him under the chin before he could rise above a crouch. He flipped backward to collapse at the feet of the coiner, who retrieved the sword-knife with a covetous glance at the Iranistani’s purse.
Conan turned back to the pretty fortuneteller. He thought he saw a dagger disappearing beneath her capacious cloak. “As I saved you an unpleasantness,” he said, “perhaps you will let me buy you some wine.”
Her lip curled. “I needed no help from a barbar boy.” Her eye flickered to his left, and he dove to his right. The scimitar wielded by one of the other Iranistanis bit into the table instead of his neck.
He tucked his shoulder under as he dove, rolling to his feet and whipping his broadsword free of its shagreen sheath in the same motion. The two Iranistanis who had been sitting alone faced him with scimitars in hand, well apart, knees slightly bent in the stance of experienced fighters. The tables around the three had emptied, but otherwise the denizens of the tavern took no notice. It was a rare day that at least one man did not give his death rattle on that sawdust-covered floor.
“Whelp whose mother never knew his father’s name!” one of the longnosed men snarled. “Think you to strike Hafim so and walk away? You will drink your own blood, spawn of a toad! You will—”
Conan saw no reason to listen to the man’s rantings. Shouting a wild Cimmerian battle cry, he whirled his broadsword aloft and attacked. A contemptuous smile appeared on the dark visage of the nearer man, and he lunged to spit the muscular youth before the awkward-seeming overhand slash could land. Conan had no intention of making an attack that left him so open, though. Even as the Iranistani moved, Conan dropped to the right, crouching with his left leg straight out to the side. He could read death-knowledge in the man’s dark bulging eyes. As the gleaming blue blade of the scimitar passed over his left shoulder his broadsword was pivoting, slashing through the leather jerkin, burying itself deep in the Iranistani’s ribs.
Conan felt the blade bite bone; beyond the man choking on his own blood he saw the second Iranistani, teeth bared in a rictus, rushing at him with scimitar extended. He threw his shoulder into the pit of the dying man’s stomach, straightening to lift the Iranistani and hurl him at his companion. The sword tearing free of the body held it up enough that it fell sprawling at the other man’s racing feet. The second Iranistani leaped over his friend, curved blade swinging. Conan’s slash beat the scimitar aside, and his backhand return ripped out the man’s throat. Blood spilling down his dirty chest, the Iranistani tottered back with disbelieving eyes, pulling an empty table over when he fell.
Conan caught sight of Semiramis heading up the stair, one of the Kothian’s big hands caressing a nearly bare buttock possessively as he followed. With a grimace, he wiped his blade clean on the baggy pantaloons of one of the dead men. Be damned to her, if her eyes had not shown her she already had a better man. He turned back to the table of the red-haired woman. It was empty. He cursed again, under his breath.