Conan the Destroyer (Robert Jordan's Conan Novels 6)

xv

The valleys were purple with the shadows of mountains when finally Conan drew rein. He had not galloped all that time—the horses could not have stood such a pace for so long on flat ground, let alone in a maze of twisting valleys—but the animals could not travel forever even at a sensible speed. Besides, he was of a mind to find a place for the night before it was too dark to see.

He glanced back at Jehnna, to see how she was bearing up. The slender girl’s cheeks were stained with dust and tear-tracks, and she was sunk in the wide-eyed silence with which she had first greeted him. She held to her saddle with both hands, and showed no more desire to take her own reins now than she had at any time during their flight. She had replied to his few comments only with shakes or nods of her head, though he reluctantly admitted his gruffness of the past few hours might have had something to do with that. All she appeared to want to do was stare at him, and it was beginning to make him nervous. If being in the middle of a battle had driven her mad … .

“Are you all right?” he demanded roughly. “Well? Speak to me, girl!”

“You were … terrible,” she said softly. “They might as well have held switches instead of swords.”

“It was not a sport,” he muttered, “not the game you still seem to think it.” Wondering why he suddenly felt so angry, he resumed looking for a place for camp.

“It is just that I have never seen such a thing before,” she continued. “What Zula did, in the village, what happened at Akiro’s hut, they were different. I … I was apart from them. They were like entertainments, like jugglers or a dancing bear.”

He could not help growling his reply. “Men died in those … entertainments. Better that they should die than we should, but that does not change the fact of it. No man should die for entertainment.” He saw a likely spot, half a score boulders, taller than a man on horseback, set close together and near to a steep slope. Twitching his reins, he turned toward them.

“I did not mean to offend you, Conan.”

“I am not offended,” he replied sharply.

He led her horse between two of the boulders, just far apart enough to admit him, and found a space between the great stones and the precipitous slope that was more than large enough for them and the animals. The boulders would keep off the worst of the mountain winds and, more importantly, shield them from searchers. Dismounting, he helped Jehnna down and set about unsaddling the horses.

“Build a fire,” she said, hugging her cloak about her. “I am cold.”

“No fire.” Even had there been anything to burn he would not have risked giving away their hiding place. “Here,” he said, and tossed the saddle blankets at her.

“They smell,” she sniffed, but as he squatted to check their meager supplies he saw that she had draped them about her shoulders over the cloak of white wool, albeit with much wrinkling of her nose.

He had had a waterskin and a pouch of dried meat tied behind his saddle, and there was enough of the meat for several days. Water, however, could be a problem. The skin was only half full.

“Do you think they got away, too?” she asked suddenly. “Bombatta, I mean, and Zula, and the others?”

“Perhaps.” Abruptly he tore the bandage from his head, and began unwinding the one about his chest.

“No!” Jehnna cried. “You must leave them. Akiro says—”

“Akiro and the others could be dead because of these,” he growled. “Because of me.” He used the bandages to wipe off the wizard’s greasy ointment. To his surprise the gashes were only slightly swollen pink lines, as if they had had days of healing already. “I was worrying about these, about the itching and the stink. If I had had my mind about me those Corinthians would never have been able to take us by surprise so easily.” With an oath he tossed the wadded cloth aside.

“It was not your fault,” she protested. “It was me. I was sulking like a child when I should have been telling you the way to go. Had I not been, we would have turned aside before they attacked us.”

Conan shook his head. “’Tis foolishness, Jehnna. In this twisted maze you could have seen the true way but moments sooner, at best, and the Corinthians would have attacked as soon as we turned away from them.” He chewed on a strip of dried mutton, as tough as ill-tanned leather and of equal taste, while she frowned pensively.

“Perhaps I could not have done anything more,” she said at last, “but I see your point concerning yourself. You, of course, can see around corners and through stone, and so should have warned us. It is quite wonderful to know we had two wizards in our party. But why did you not give us wings, so we could fly away?”

Conan choked on a bit of mutton. Regaining his breath, he glared at her, but she looked back as a wide-eyed vision of innocence. It was possible, he thought, that she was innocent enough to mean exactly what she said, to actually believe that he … . No! He was not fool enough to believe that of anyone. He opened his mouth for a retort, and closed it again with the certainty that anything he said would only end in making him feel truly the fool.

“Eat,” he said sourly, throwing the pouch of dried meat at her feet.

She chose a piece delicately. He could not be sure, but he thought, as she nibbled at it with small white teeth, that he detected the edges of a smile. It did little for his disposition.

Light faded from the sky, and amethyst twilight descended on the mountains. Finishing the meager meal, Jehnna began to shift about as if seeking for a more comfortable spot on the stony ground. She hitched the blankets this way and that, finally complaining, “I am cold, Conan. Do something.”

“No fire,” he said curtly. “You have the blankets.”

“Well, get beneath them with me, then. If you’ll not allow me a fire, at least you can share the warmth of your body.”

Conan stared. More innocent than any child, he thought. “I cannot. That is, I will not.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “I am freezing. Did not my aunt send you along to protect me?”