“A few coppers, if you can tell me where they are.” There was no reason to tempt this lot. After a day when he could be traveling away from the men he sought, he had no time to waste killing vultures. He put on a pleasant smile. “If I had silver or gold, I’d not be out chasing pilgrims. I’d be in Shadizar, drinking.” He dried his hands on his cloak, just in case.
“What do you want with those pilgrims?” the sharp-nosed man wanted to know.
“That’s my affair,” Conan replied. “And theirs. Yours is the coppers, if you’ve seen them.”
“Well, as to that, we have,” sharp-nose said, dusting off his hands and getting up. He started toward Conan with his hand out. “Let’s see the color of your coins.”
Conan dug into the leather pouch at his belt with his right hand, and sharp-nose’s grin turned nasty. A short dagger with a triangular blade appeared in his fist. Laughing wickedly, the other three pulled their scimitars and rushed forward to join the kill.
Without pausing a beat Conan snatched up the bucket left-handed and smashed it down on the man’s head, blood and water flying in all directions. “No time!” he shouted. He plucked the dagger from its forearm sheath, and of a sudden its hilt was sticking from the throat of the foremost attacker. Even as it struck Conan was unlimbering his broadsword. “Bel strike you!” He leaped across the collapsing man, who was clutching the dagger in his throat with blood-covered hands. “I’ve no time!” A sweeping slash of the broad blade, and the third man’s torso sank to the ground where his head was already spinning. “No time, curse you!” The last man had his scimitar raised high when Conan lunged with a two-handed grip and plunged his blade through leather breastplate, chest and backbone. Black eyes filmed over, and the man toppled to one side with his hands still raised above his head.
Conan put a foot on the leather armor and tugged his sword free, wiping it clean on the man’s dingy keffiyeh before he sheathed it. The dagger was retrieved from its temporary home in a brigand’s throat and cleaned in the same way. The woman watched him wide-eyed, starting away as much as her bonds allowed when he came near, but he only cut the cords and turned away, sheathing his dagger.
“If you don’t have your own horse,” he said, “you can have one of these vermin’s. The rest are mine. You can have the weapons, if you want. They’ll fetch something for your trouble.” But not much, he thought. Still, he owed her nothing, and the horses, poor as they were likely to be, would be a help if he had to pursue those accursed pilgrims far.
The red-haired woman rubbed her wrists as she walked to the dead men, unashamed of her nakedness. She was an ivory-skinned callimastian delight, all curves and long legs and rou
nded places. There was a spring to her walk that made him wonder if she was a dancer. She picked up one of the scimitars, ran a contemptuous eye along its rust-pitted blade, and suddenly planted a bare foot solidly in the ribs of one of the dead men.
“Pig!” she spat.
Conan went about gathering the horses, five of them, one noticeably better than the rest, while she kicked and reviled each body in turn. Abruptly she whirled to face him, feet well apart, fist on rounded hip, scimitar swinging free. With her tousled hair in an auburn mane about her head, she had the air of a lioness brought to human form.
“They took me unawares,” she announced.
“Of course,” Conan said. “I suppose the black is yours? Best of the lot.” He braided the reins of the other four, hairy plains animals two hands shorter at the shoulder than his own Turanian gray, and fastened them to his high-pommeled saddle. “Best for you would be to go straight back to Shadizar. It’s dangerous out here for a woman alone. What possessed you to try it in the first place?”
She took a quick step toward him. “I said they took me unawares! They’d have died on my blade, else!”
“And I said of course. I can’t take you back to the city. I seek men who took something that … that belongs to me.”
A pantherine howl jerked him around, and he tumbled backwards between the horses just in time to avoid decapitation by her curved blade. “Derketo take you!” she howled, thrusting at him under a horse’s belly. He rolled aside, and the blade gouged the packed earth where his head had been.
Scrambling on his back, he tried at once to avoid her steel and the hooves of the horses, now dancing excitedly as she moved swiftly around them trying to stab him. The roiling of them brought him suddenly looking out from under a shaggy belly at her as she pulled back her scimitar for yet another thrust. Desperately his legs uncoiled, propelling him out to tackle her around the knees. They went down in a heap together on the hard ground, and he found his arms full of female wildcat, clawing and kicking and trying to jerk her sword arm loose. Her soft curves padded her firm muscle, and she was no easy packet to hold.
“Have you gone mad, woman?” he shouted. For an answer she sank her teeth into his shoulder. “Crom!”
He hurled her away from him. She rolled across the ground and bounded to her feet. Still, he saw wonderingly, gripping the rusty sword.
“I need no man to protect me!” she spat. “I’m not some pampered concubine!”
“Who said you were?” he roared.
Then he had to jerk his sword free of its scabbard as she rushed at him with a howl of pure rage. Her green eyes burned, and her face was twisted with fury. He swung up his sword to block her downward slash. With a sharp snap the rusty scimitar broke, leaving her to stare in disbelief at the bladeless hilt in her hands.
Almost without a pause she hurled the useless hilt at his face and spun to dash for the dead men by the well. Their weapons still lay about them. Conan darted after her, and as she bent to snatch another scimitar, he swung the flat of his blade with all his strength at the tempting target thus offered. She lifted up on her toes with a strangled shriek as the steel paddle cracked against her rounded nates. Arms windmilling, she staggered forward, her foot slipping in a pool of blood, and screaming she plunged headfirst over the crude stone wall of the well.
Conan dived as she went over; his big hand closed on flesh, and he was dragged to his armpits into the well by the weight of her. He discovered he was holding the red-haired wench by one ankle while she dangled over the depths. An interesting view, he thought.
“Derketo take you!” she howled. “Pull me up, you motherless whelp!”
“In Shadizar,” he said conversationally, “I saved you a mauling. You called me a barbar boy, let a man near take my head off, and left without a word of thanks.”
“Son of a diseased camel! Spawn of a bagnio! Pull me up!”
“Now here,” he went on as if she had not spoken, “all I did was save you from rape, certainly, perhaps from being sold on the slave block. Or maybe they’d just have slit your throat once they were done with you.” She wriggled violently, and he edged further over the rim to let her drop another foot. Her scream echoed up the stone cylinder. She froze into immobility.
“You had no thought of saving me,” she rasped breathlessly. “You’d have ridden off to leave me if those dogs hadn’t tried you.”