Conan the Triumphant (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 4)

Conan was so intent on the girl that he failed at first to see the graying man, the full beard of a scholar spreading over his chest, who muttered to himself over a battered pewter pitcher at a table to one side of the door. When he did, he sighed, wondering if the wench would be worth putting up with the old man.

At that moment the bearded man caught sight of Conan, and a drunken, snaggle-toothed grin split his wizened face. His tunic was patched in a rainbow of colors, and stained with wine and food. “Conan,” he cried, gesturing so hard for the big youth to come closer that he nearly fell from his stool. “Come. Sit. Drink.”

“You look to have had enough, Boros,” Conan said drily, “and I’ll buy you no more.”

“No need to buy,” Boros laughed. He fumbled for the pitcher. “No need. See? Water. But with just a little … .” His voice trailed off into mumbles, while his free hand made passes above the pitcher.

“Crom!” Conan shouted, leaping back from the table. Some in the room looked up, but seeing neither blood nor chance for advantage all went back to their drinking. “Not again while you’re drunk, you old fool!” the Cimmerian continued hastily. “Narus still isn’t rid of those warts you gave him trying to cure his boil.”

Boros cackled and thrust the pitcher toward him. “Taste. ’S wine. Naught to fear here.”

Cautiously Conan took the proffered pitcher and sniffed at the mouth of it. His nose wrinkled, and he handed the vessel back. “You drink first, since it’s your making.”

“Fearful, are you?” Boros laughed. “And big as you are. Had I your muscles … .” He buried his nose in the pitcher, threw back his head, and almost in the same motion hurled the vessel from him, gagging, spluttering and spitting. “Mitra’s mercies,” he gasped shakily, scrubbing the back of a bony hand across his mouth. “Never tasted anything like that in my life. Must have put a gill or more down my gullet. What in Azura’s name is it?”

Conan suppressed a grin. “Milk. Sour milk, by the smell.”

Boros shuddered and retched, but nothing came up. “You switched the pitcher,” he said when he could speak. “Your hands are swift, but not so swift as my eye. You owe me wine, Cimmerian.”

Conan dropped onto a stool across the table from Boros, setting the sack containing the bronze on the floor at his side. He had little liking for wizards, but properly speaking Boros was not such a one. The old man had been an apprentice in the black arts, but a liking for drink that became an all-consuming passion had led him to the gutter rather than down crooked paths of dark knowledge. When sober he was of some use in curing minor ills, or providing a love philtre; drunk, he was sometimes a danger even to himself. He was a good drinking companion, though, so long as he was kept from magic.

“Here!” the tavernkeeper bellowed, wiping his hands on a filthy once-white apron as he hurried toward them. With his spindly limbs and pot belly, he looked like a fat spider. “What’s all this mess on the floor? I’ll have you know this tavern is respectable, and—”

“Wine,” Conan cut him off, tossing coppers to clatter on the floor at his feet. “And have a wench bring it.” He gestured to the strangely aloof doxy. “That one in the corner will do.”

“She don’t work for me,” the tavernkeeper grunted, bending to collect the pitcher and the coins. Then he got down on hands and knees to fetch one copper from under the table and grinned at it in satisfaction. “But you’ll have a girl, never fear.”

He disappeared into the rear of the building, and in short moments a plump girl scurried out, one strip of blue silk barely containing her bouncing breasts and another fastened about her hips, to set a pitcher of wine and a pair of dented tankards before the two men. Wriggling, she moved closer to Conan, a seductive light in her dark eyes. He was barely aware of her; his eyes had gone back to the auburn-haired jade.

“Fool!” the serving wench snapped. “As well take a block of ice in your arms as that one.” And with a roll of her lips she flounced away.

Conan stared after her in amazement. “What is Zandru’s Nine Hells got into her?” he growled.

“Who understands women?” Boros muttered absently. Hastily he filled a tankard and gulped half of it. “Besides,” he went on in bleary tones once he had taken a deep breath, “now Tiberio’s dead, we’ll have too much else to be worrying about … .” The rest of his words were drowned in another mouthful of wine.

“Tiberio dead?” Conan said incredulously. “I spoke of him not too hours gone and heard no mention of this. Black Erlik’s Throne, stop drinking and talk. What of Tiberio?”

Boros set his tankard down with obvious reluctance. “The word is just now spreading. Last night it was. Slit his wrists in his bath. Or so they say.”

Conan grunted. “Who will believe that, and him with the best blood claim to succeed Valdric?”

“Folk believe what they want to believe, Cimmerian. Or what they’re afraid not to believe.”

It had had to come, Conan thought. There had been kidnappings in plenty, wives, sons, daughters. Sometimes demands were made, that an alliance be broken or a secret betrayed; sometimes there was only silence, and fear to paralyze a noble in his castle. Now began the assassinations. He was glad that a third of his Free-Company was always on guard at Timeon’s palace. Losing a patron in that fashion would be ill for a company’s reputation.

“Tis all of a piece,” Boros went on unsteadily. “Someone attempts to resurrect Al’Kiir. I’ve seen lights atop that accursed mountain, heard whispers of black knowledge sought. And this time there’ll be no Avanrakash to seal him up again. We need Moranthes the Great reborn. It would take him to bring order now.”

“What are you chattering at? No matter. Who’s next in line after Tiberio? Valentius, isn’t it?”

“Valentius,” Boris chuckled derisively. “He’ll never be allowed to take the throne. He’s too young.”

“He’s a man grown,” Conan said angrily. He knew little of Valentius and cared less, but the count was a full six years older than he.

Boros smiled. “There’s a difference between you two, Cimmerian. You’ve put two hard lifetimes’ experience into your years. Valentius has led a courtier’s life, all perfumes and courtesies and soft words.”

“You’re rambling,” Conan barked. How had the other man read his thoughts? A fast rise had not lessened his touchiness about his comparative youth, nor his anger at those who thought him too young for the position he held. But he had better to do with his time than sit with a drunken failed mage. There was that auburn-haired wench, for instance. “The rest of the wine is yours,” he said. Snatching up the sack with the bronze in it, he stalked away from the table, leaving Boros chortling into his wine.

The girl had not moved from the corner or changed her stance in all the time Conan had been watching her. Her heart-shaped face did not change expression as he approached, but her downcast eyes, blue as a northland sky at dawn, widened like those of a frightened deer, and she quivered as if prepared for flight.