Conan’s big hand seized the scruff of the Kothian’s neck and half hurled him into the scuffle near the casket. The Iranistani’s nose crunched and spurted blood beneath his fist, and a back-hand blow sent Scarface to join his friends on the filthy stones of the street.
“Find another woman,” the Cimmerian growled. “There are doxies enough about.”
The girl stared at him wide-eyed, as if she was not sure if he was a rescuer or not.
“I’ll carve your liver and lights,” Scarface spat,
“and feed what’s left to the fish.” He scrambled to his feet, a curved Khawarismi dagger in his fist.
The other two closed in beside him, likewise clutching curved daggers. The man in the head-cloth was content to glare threateningly, ruining it somewhat by scrubbing with his free hand at the blood that ran from his broken nose down over his mouth. The Kothian, however, wanted to taunt his intended victim. He tossed his dagger from hand to hand, a menacing grin on his thin mouth.
“We’ll peel your hide, barbar,” he sneered, “and hang it in the rigging. You’ll scream a long time before we let you—”
Among the lessons Conan had learned in his life was that when it was time to fight, it was well to fight, not talk. His broadsword left its worn shagreen scabbard in a draw that continued into an upward swing. The Kothian’s eyes bulged, and he fumbled for the blade that was at that moment in mid-toss. Then the first fingerlength of the broadsword clove through his jaw, and up between his eyes. The dagger clattered to the paving stones, and its owner’s body fell atop.
The other two were not men to waste time over a dead companion.
Such did not long survive on the sea. Even as the lanky man was falling, they rushed at the big youth. The Iranistani’s blade gashed along Conan’s forearm, but he slammed a kick into the dark man’s midsection that sent him sprawling. Scarface dropped to a crouch, his dagger streaking up toward Conan’s ribs. Conan sucked in his stomach, felt the dagger slice through his tunic and draw a thin, burning line across his midriff. Then his own blade was descending. Scarface screamed as steel cut into the joining of his neck and shoulder and continued two handspans deeper. He dropped his dagger to paw weakly at the broadsword, though life was already draining from him. Conan kicked the body free—for it was a corpse before it struck the pavement—and spun to face the third sailor.
The Iranistani had gotten to his feet yet again, but instead of attacking he stood staring at the bodies of his friends. Suddenly he turned and ran up the street. “Murder!” he howled as he ran, heedless of the bloody dagger he was waving. “Murder!” The harlots and mendicants who had so recently been lost in their fighting scattered like leaves before a high wind.
Hastily Conan wiped his blade on Scarface’s tunic and sheathed it. There were few things worse than to be caught by the City Guard standing over a corpse. Most especially in Turan, where the Guard had a habit of following arrest with torture until the prisoner confessed. Conan grabbed the girl’s arm and joined the exodus, dragging her behind him.
“You killed them,” she said incredulously. She ran as if unsure whether to drag her heels or not. “They’d have run away, an you threatened them.”
“Mayhap I should have let them have you,” he replied. “They would have ridden you like a post horse. Now be silent and run!”
Down side streets he pulled her, startling drunks staggering from seafarers’ taverns, down cross-alleys smelling of stale urine and rotting offal. As soon as they had put some distance between themselves and the bodies, he slowed to a walk—running people were too well noticed—but yet kept moving. He wanted a very goodly distance between himself and the Guardsmen who would be drawn to the corpses like flies. He dodged between high-wheeled pushcarts, carrying goods from harbor warehouses deeper into the city. The girl trailed reluctantly at his heels, following only because his big hand engulfed her slender wrist as securely as an iron manacle.
Finally he turned into a narrow alley, pushing the girl in ahead of him, and stopped to watch his back-path. There was no way that the Guard could have followed him, but his height and his eyes made him stand out, even in a city the size of Aghrapur.
“I thank you for your assistance,” the girl said suddenly in a tone at once haughty and cool. She moved toward the entrance of the alley. “I must be going now.”
He put out an arm to bar her way. Her breasts pressed pleasurably against the hardness of his forearm, and she backed hastily away, blushing in confusion.
“Not just yet,” he told her.
“Please,” she said without meeting his eye. There was a quaver in her voice. “I … I am a maiden. My father will reward you well if you return me to him in the same … condition.” The redness in her cheeks deepened.
Conan chuckled deep in his throat. “It’s not your virtue I want, girl. Just the answers to a question or three.”
To his surprise her eyes dropped. “I suppose I should be glad,” she said bitterly, “that even killers prefer slender, willowy women. I know I am a cow. My father has often told me I was made to bear many sons and … and to nurse all of them,” she finished weakly, coloring yet again.
Her father was a fool, Conan thought, eyeing her curves. She was a woman made for more than bearing sons, though he did not doubt that whoever she was wed to would find the task of giving them to her a pleasurable one.
“Don’t be silly,” he told her gruffly. “You’d give joy to any man.”
“I would?” she breathed wonderingly. Her liquid eyes caressed his face, innocently, he was certain. “How,” she asked falteringly, “is a post horse ridden?”
He had to think to remember why she asked, and then he could barely suppress a smile. “Long and hard,” he said, “with little time for rest, if any.”
She went scarlet to the neck of her silken robe, and he chuckled. The girl blushed easily, and prettily.
“What is your name, little one?”
“Yasbet. My father calls me Yasbet.” She looked past him to the street beyond, where pushcarts rumbled by. “Do you think the casket, at least, would be there if we went back? It belonged to my mother, and Fatima will be furious at its loss. More furious than for the jewels, though she’ll be mad enough at those.”
He shook his head. “That casket has changed hands at least twice by now, for money or blood. And the jewels as well. Who is Fatima?”