The air was filled with a whir as of angry hornets, and the madman suddenly resembled a feathered pincushion. Conan blinked. The City Guard had arrived at last, a black-cloaked score of archers. They stayed well back, drawing again, for transfixed though he was, the madman still stood. His mouth was a gash emitting a wordless howl of bloodlust, and he hurled his sword at the big Cimmerian.
Conan’s blade had no more than a hand’s span to travel to deflect the strange blade to clatter in the street. The Guardsmen loosed their arrows once more. Pierced through and through the madman toppled. For a brief moment as he fell, the look of madness faded to be replaced by one of unutterable horror. He hit the pavement dead. Slowly, weapons at the ready, the soldiers closed in on the corpse.
The big Cimmerian slammed his blade home in its sheath with a disgusted grunt. It was unnecessary even to wipe a speck of blood from it. The only blood shed had been his, and every one of those cuts, insignificant as each was, ached with the shame of it. The one attack he had managed to meet cleanly, the thrown sword, could have been met by a ten years’ girl.
A Guardsman grabbed the dead man’s shoulder and heaved him over onto his back, splintering half a dozen arrows on the stones of the street.
“Easy, Tulio,” another growled. “Like as not our pay will be docked for those shafts. Why—”
“Black Erlik’s Throne!” Tulio gasped. “It’s Lord Melius!”
The knot of mailed men stepped back, leaving Tulio standing alone over the corpse. It was not well to be too near a dead noble, most especially if you had had a hand in killing him, and no matter what he had done. The King’s Justice could take strange twists where nobles were concerned.
A livid scar across his broad nose visible beneath the nasal of his helmet, the Guardsmen’s grizzled sergeant spat near the corpse. “There’s naught to be done for it now. Tulio!” That Guardsman suddenly realized he was alone by the body and jumped, his eyes darting frantically. “Put your cloak over the … the noble lord,” the sergeant went on. “Move, man!” Reluctantly Tulio complied. The sergeant told off more men. “Abydius, Crato, Jocor, Naso. Grab his arms and legs. Jump! Or do you want to stay here till the flies eat him?”
The four men shuffled forward, muttering as they lifted the body. The sergeant started up the street, and the bearers followed as quickly as they were able, the rest of the troop falling in behind. None gave a second look to Conan.
“Are you slowing that much, Cimmerian?” a gruff voice called.
Conan spun, his angry retort dying on his lips as he saw the bearded man leaning against a shop front. “I’m still faster than you, Hordo, you old robber of dogs.”
Nearly as tall as Conan and broader, the bearded man straightened. A rough leather patch covered his left eye, and a scar running from beneath the leather down his cheek pulled that side of his mouth into a permanent sneer, though now the rest of it was bent to a grin. A heavy gold hoop swung from each ear, but if they tempted thieves the well-worn broadsword and dagger at his belt dissuaded them.
“Mayhap you are, Conan,” he said. “But what are you doing in Nemedia, aside from taking a lesson on bladesmanship from a middle-aged noble? The last I saw of you, you were on your way to Aghrapur to soldier for King Yildiz.”
Hordo was a friend, but he had not always been so. The first time they met, the one-eyed man and a pack of bandits had pegged Conan out on the Zamoran plains at the orders of Karela, a red-haired woman bandit known as the Red Hawk. Later they had ridden together to the Kezankian Mountains to try for treasure stolen by the sorcerer Amanar. From that they had escaped with naught but their lives. Twice more they had met, each time making a try at wealth, each time failing to gain more than enough for one grand carouse in the nearest fleshpots. Conan had to wonder if once again they would have a chance at gold.
“I did,” Conan replied, “but I left the service of Turan a year gone and more.”
“Trouble over a woman, I’ll wager,” Hordo chuckled, “knowing you.”
Conan shrugged his massive shoulders. He always had trouble over women, it seemed. But then, what man did not?
“And what woman chased you from Sultanapur, Hordo? When last we parted you sat in your own inn with a plump Turanian wife, swearing never again to smuggle so much as a sweetmeat, nor set foot outside Sultanapur until you were carried out to your funeral pyre.”
“It was Karela.” The one-eyed man’s voice was low with embarrassment. He tugged at his thick beard. “I could not give up trying to find word of her, and my wife could not cease nagging me to stop. She said I made a spectacle of myself. People talked, she said, laughed behind my back, said I was strange in the head. She would not have it said she married a man lacking all his brains. She would not stop, and I could not, so I said goodbye one day and never looked back.”
“You still look for Karela?”
“She is not dead. I’m sure she lives.” He grabbed Conan’s arm, a pathetic urgency in his eyes. “I’ve heard never a whisper, but I’d know if
she was dead. I’d know. Have you heard anything? Anything at all?”
Hordo’s voice carried anguish. Conan knew that the Red Hawk had indeed survived their expedition into the Kezankians. But to tell Hordo would entail telling how last he saw her —naked and chained in a slave coffle on her way to the auction block. He could explain that he had had but a few coppers in his pouch, not even close to the price of a round-breasted, green-eyed slave in Turan. He could even mention the oath she had made him swear, that he would never lift a hand to save her. She was a woman of pride, Karela was. Or had been. For if Hordo had found no sign of her, it was more than likely the strap had broken her, and that she now danced for the pleasure of a dark-eyed master. And if he told the tale, he might well have to kill his old friend, the man who had always called himself Karela’s faithful hound.
“The last I saw of her was in the Kezankians,” he said truthfully, “but I’m sure she got out of the mountains alive. No pack of hillmen would have stood a chance against her with a sword in her hand.”
Hordo nodded, sighing heavily.
People were venturing back into the street, staring at the bodies that still lay where they had been slain. Here and there a woman fell wailing across a dead husband or child.
Conan looked around for the sword the madman had been carrying. It lay before an open-fronted shop piled high with colorful bolts of cloth. The proprietor was gone, one of the dead or one of those staring at them. The Cimmerian picked up the sword, wiping the congealing blood from the serpentine blade on a bolt of yellow damask.
He hefted the weapon, getting the balance of it. The quillons were worked in a silver filigree that spoke of antiquity, and the ricasso was scribed with calligraphy that formed no words he had ever seen before. But whoever had made the weapon, he was a master. It seemed to become an extension of his arm. Nay, an extension of his mind. Still he could not help thinking of those it had just killed. Men. Women. Children. Struck from behind, or however they could be reached, as they fled. Slashed and hacked as they tried to crawl away. The images were vivid in his brain. He could almost smell their fear sweat and the blood.
He made a disgusted noise in his throat. A sword was a sword, no more. Steel had no guilt. Still, he would not keep it. Take it, yes—a sword was too valuable to be left behind—it would fetch a few silver pieces for his too-light purse.
“You’re not keeping that?” Hordo sounded surprised. “The blade’s tainted. Women and children.” He spat and made the sign to ward off evil.