“I said I would,” he snapped. He hefted the pendant on his palm. Ankar would likely not pay any part of the ten thousand for one pendant, but to gather the other four from women scattered throughout the palace, each in the company of a man, was clearly impossible. Reluctantly he replaced the silver chain about her neck. “I will take you away, but I fear you must remain another night yet.”
“Another night? If I must, I will. But why?”
“Tomorrow night at this hour I will come again to this room. You must gather the pendants here, with the other girls or without. I cannot carry more than one of you over the wall, but I’ll not harm them, I promise.”
Velita worried her lower lip with small, white teeth. “They care not, so long as their cage be gold,” she muttered. “There’s risk in what you ask.”
“There is. If you cannot do it, say so. I’ll take you away tonight, and get what I can for the single piece.”
For a moment longer she knelt frowning among the tangled sheets. “You risk your life, I but a whipping. I will do it. What—”
He planted a hand over her mouth as the door of the darkened room opened. A mailed man entered, the red-dyed crest of a captain on his helm, blinking in the dimness. He was even taller than Conan, though perhaps a finger less broad of shoulder.
“Where are you, wench?” the captain chuckled, moving deeper into the room. Conan waited, letting him come closer. “I know you’re here, you hot-bodied little vixen. A chamberlain saw you flee red-faced hence from our good king’s chambers. You need a true man to assuage your — What!”
Conan launched himself at the large man as the other jumped back, clawing for his sword. One of the Cimmerian’s big hands clutched the captain’s sword wrist, the other seized his throat beneath a bearded chin. He could afford no outcry, not even such as the man might make after a dagger was lodged twixt his ribs.
Chest to chest the two big men stood, feet working for leverage on the mosaic arabesques of the floor. The guardsman’s free hand clubbed against the back of Conan’s neck, and again. The Cimmerian released his grip on the man’s throat, throwing that arm around the Zamoran to hold him close. At the same instant he let go the sword wrist, snaked his hand under that arm and behind the other’s shoulder to grab the bearded chin. His arms corded with the strain of forcing the helmeted head back. The tall soldier abandoned his attempt to reach his sword and suddenly grasped Conan’s head with both his hands, twisting with all his might.
Conan’s breath rasped in his throat, and the blood pounded in his ears. He could smell his own sweat, and that of the Zamoran. A growl built deep in his throat. He forced the man’s head back. Back. Abruptly there was an audible snap, and the guardsman was a dead weight sagging on his chest.
Panting, Conan let the man fall. The helmeted head was at an impossible angle.
“You’ve killed him,” Velita breathed. “You’ve … I recognize him. That’s Mariates, a captain of the guard. When he’s found here … .”
“He won’t be,” Conan answered.
Quickly he dragged the body out onto the balcony and dug his rope out of the sack at his side. It would stretch but halfway to the ground. Hooking the graponel over the stone balustrade at the side of the balcony, he let the dark rope fall.
“When I whistle, Velita, unloose this.”
He bound the dead guardsman’s wrists with the man’s own swordbelt, and thrust his head and right arm through the loop they formed. When he straightened, the man dangled down his back like a sack. A heavy sack. He reminded himself of the ten thousand pieces of gold.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “And what’s your name? I don’t even know that.”
“I’m making sure the body isn’t found in this room.” He stepped over the rail and checked the graponel again. It wouldn’t do to have it slip here. Clad in naught but the pendant, Velita stood watching him, her big dark eyes tremulous. “I am Conan of Cimmeria,” he said proudly, and let himself down the rope hand over hand.
Almost immediately he felt the strain in his massive arms and shoulders. He was strong, but the Zamoran was no feather, and a dead weight besides. His bound wrists dug into Conan’s throat, but there was no way to shift the burden while dangling half a hundred feet in the night air.
With a mountaineer’s practiced eye he studied distances and angles, and stopped his descent in a stretch of the carven wall free of balconies. Thrusting with his powerful legs he pushed himself sideways, walking two steps along the wall, then swinging back beyond the point where he began. Then back the other way again. He stepped up the pace until he was running along the wall, swinging in an ever greater arc. At first the dead Zamoran slowed him, but then the extra weight added to his momentum, taking him closer to his goal, another balcony below and to the right of the first.
He was ten paces from the niveous stone rail. Then five. Three. And he realized he was increasing his arc too little on each swing now. He could not climb back up the rope—the guardsman’s
wrists were half-strangling him—nor could he continue to inch his way closer.
He swung back to his left and began his sideways run toward the balcony. It was the last time, he knew as he watched his goal materialize out of the dark. He must make it this time, or fall. Ten paces. Five. Three. Two. He was going to fall short. Desperately he thrust against the enchased marble wall, loosed one hand from the rope, stretched for the rail. His fingers caught precariously. And held. Straining, he hung between the rope and his tenuous grasp on the stone. The dangling body choked his burning breath in his throat. Shoulder joints cracking, he pulled himself nearer. And then he had a foot between the balusters. Still clutching the rope he pulled himself over the rail and collapsed on the cool marble, sucking at the night air.
It was an illusory haven, though. Quickly he freed himself from the Zamoran and bent back over the rail to whistle. The rope swung as the graponel fell free. He drew it up with grateful thanks that Velita had not been too terrified to remember, and stowed it in his sack. There was still Mariates to deal with.
Mariates’ sword belt went back about the officer’s waist. There was naught Conan could do about the abrasions on the man’s wrists. On the side away from Velita’s balcony, he rolled the dead man over the rail. From below came the crashing of broken branches. But no alarm.
Smiling, Conan used the carven marble foliage to make his way to the ground. Evidence of Mariates’ fall was plain in shattered boughs. The captain himself lay spreadeagled across an exotic shrub, the loss of which Conan thought the dilettante king might regret more than the loss of a soldier. And best of all, of the several balconies from which the man could have fallen, Velita’s was not one.
Swiftly Conan made his way back through the garden. Once more the guards’ paces were counted, and once more he went over the wall easily. As he reached the safety of the shadows around the plaza, he thought he heard a shout from behind, but he was not sure, and he did not linger to find out. Boots and cloak were on in moments, sword slung at his hip.
As he strode through pitchy streets at once broader and less odoriferous than those of the Desert, he thought that this might be almost his last return to that squalid district. After tomorrow night he would be beyond such places. From the direction of the palace, a gong sounded in the night.
V