Another shriek came from Bayan; the other buttock of his trousers bore a spreading red patch as well, now.
“She won,” Muktar muttered. He flinched as Conan caressed his beard with the broadsword, then almost shouted, “The wench won!”
“See that this goes no further,” Conan said warningly. He got a reluctant nod in reply. When the Cimmerian thrust out his palm, the gold coins were counted into it with even greater reluctance.
“I won!” Yasbet shouted. Waving her short-sword above her head, she capered gaily about the deck. “I won!”
Conan sheathed his blade and swept her into the air, swinging her in a circle. “Did I not say that you would?”
“You did!” she laughed. “Oh, you did! On my oath, I will believe anything that you tell me from this moment. Anything.”
He started to lower her feet to the deck, but her arms wove about his neck, and in some fashion he found himself kissing her. A pleasant armful, indeed, he thought. Soft round breasts flattened against his broad chest.
Abruptly he pulled her loose and set her firmly on the deck. “Practice, girl. There’s a mort of practice to be done before I grind an edge on that blade for you. And you did not fight as I told you. I should take a switch to you for that. You could have been hurt.”
“But, Conan,” she protested, her face falling.
“Place your feet so,” he said, demonstrating, “for balance. Do it, girl!”
Sullenly she complied, and he began to show her the exercises in the use of the short blade. That was the problem, he thought grimly, about setting out to protect a wench. Sooner or later you found yourself protecting her from you.
XV
Squatting easily on his heels against the pitching of the ship as it breasted long swells, Conan watched Yasbet work her blunted blade against a leather-wrapped bale of cloaks and tunics. Despite a freshening wind, sweat rolled down her face, but already she had gone ten times as long as she had managed the first day. She still wore her mannish garb, but had left off the woolen tunic, complaining that the coarse fabric scratched. The full curves of her breasts swelled at the lacings of her jerkin, threatening to burst the rawhide cords at her every exertion.
Sword arm dropping wearily, she looked at him with artistic pleading in her eyes. “Please, Conan, let me retire to my tent.” That tent, no more than a rough structure of grimy canvas, had been his idea, both to keep her from the constant wetting of sudden squalls and to shelter her sleep from lustful eyes. “Please? Already I will be sore.”
“There’s plenty of linament,” he said gruffly.
“It smells. And it stings. Besides, I cannot rub it on my back. Perhaps if you—”
“Enough rest,” he said, motioning her back to the bale.
“Slaver,” she muttered, but her shortsword resumed its whacking against leather.
Well over half their voyage was done. The coast of Hyrkania was now a dark line on the eastern horizon, though they had yet a way north to sail. Every day since placing the sica in her hands he had forced Yasbet to practice, exercising from gray dawn to purple dusk. He had dragged her from her blankets, poured buckets of water over her head when she whined of the midday heat, and threatened keelhauling when she begged to stop her work. He had tended and bandaged blisters on her small hands, as well, and to his surprise those blisters seemed at once a mark of pride to her and a spur.
Akeba dropped down beside him, eying Yasbet with respect. “She learns. Can you teach so well, and to a woman, there is need of you in the army, to train the many recruits we take of late.”
“She has no ideas of swordplay to unlearn,” Conan replied. “Also, she does exactly as I say.”
“Exactly?” Akeba laughed, lifting an eyebrow. At the look on Conan’s face he pulled his countenance into an expression of exaggerated blandness.
“Does your stomach still trouble you?” the youthful Cimmerian asked hopefully.
“My head and my legs now ignore the pitching,” Akeba replied with a fixed g
rin.
Conan gave him a doubtful look. “Then perhaps you would like some well-aged mussels. Muktar has a keg of the ripest—”
“No, thank you, Conan,” the Turanian said in haste, a certain tautness around his mouth. As though eager to change the subject, he added, “I have not noticed Bayan about today. You did not drop him over the side, did you?”
The Cimmerian’s mouth tightened. “I overheard him discussing his plans for Yasbet, and I spoke to him about it.”
“In friendly fashion, I trust. ’Tis you who mutters that these sea rats would welcome an excuse to slit our throats.”
“In friendly fashion,” Conan agreed. “He is nursing his bruises in his blankets this day.”