“What’s wrong with my eyes?” the muscular youth growled.
“Not a thing, friend,” the sergeant replied, raising a hand apologetically. “But never did I see eyes the color of the sea before.”
“Where I come from there are few with dark eyes.”
“Ah. A far traveler come to seek adventure. And what better place to find it than in the army of King Yildiz of Turan? I am Alshaam. And how are you called?”
“Conan,” the muscular youth replied. “But I’ve no interest in joining your army.”
“But think you, Conan,” the sergeant continued with oily persuasiveness, “how it will be to return from campaign with as much booty as you can carry, a hero and conqueror in the women’s eyes. How they’ll fall over you. Why, man, from the look of you, you were born for it.”
“Why not try them?” Conan said, jerking his head toward a knot of Hyrkanian nomads in sheepskin coats and baggy trousers of coarse wool. They wore fur caps pulled tightly over grease-laced hair, and eyed everyone about them suspiciously. “They look as if they might want to be heroes,” he laughed.
The sergeant spat sourly. “Not a half-weight of discipline in the lot of them. Odd to see them here. They generally don’t like this side of the Vilayet Sea. But you, now. Think on it. Adventure, glory, loot, women. Why—”
Conan shook his head. “I’ve no desire to be a soldier.”
“Mayhap if we had a drink together? No?” The sergeant sighed. “Well, I’ve a quota to fill. King Yildiz means to build his army larger, and when an army’s big enough, it’s used. You mark my words, there will be loot to throw away.” He motioned to the other soldiers. “Let us be on our way.”
“A moment,” Conan said. “Can you tell me where to find the tavern called the Blue Bull?”
The soldier grimaced. “A dive on the Street of the Lotus Dreamers, near the harbor. They’ll cut your throat for your boots as like as not. Try the Sign of the Impatient Virgin, on the Street of Coins. The wine is cheap and the girls are clean. And if you change your mind, seek me out. Alshaam, sergeant in the regiment of General Mundara Khan.”
Conan stepped aside to let the procession pass, the recruits once more attempting unsuccessfully to march to the drum. As he turned from watching the soldiers go he found himself about to trample into another cortege, this a score in saffron robes, the men with shaven heads, the women with braids swinging below their buttocks, their leader beating a tambourine. Chanting softly, they walked as if they saw neither him nor anyone else. Caught off balance, he stumbled awkwardly aside, straight into the midst of the Hyrkanian nomads.
Muttered imprecations rose as thick as the rank smell of their greased hair, and black eyes glared at him as dark leathery hands were laid to the hilts of curved sword-knives. Conan grasped his own sword hilt, certain that he was in for a fight. The Hyrkanians’ eyes swung from him to follow the saffron-robed procession continuing down the crowded street. Conan stared in amazement as the nomads ignored him and hurried after the yellow-robed marchers.
Shaking his head, Conan went on his way. No one had ever said that Aghrapur was not a city of strangenesses, he thought.
Yet, as he approached the harbor, it was in his mind that for all its oddities the city was not so very different from the others he had seen. Behind him were the palaces of the wealthy, the shops of merchants, and the bustle of prosperous citizens. Here dried mud stucco cracked from the brick of decaying buildings, occupied for all their decay. The peddlers offered fruits too bruised or spoiled to be sold elsewhere, and the hawkers’ shiny wares were gilded brass, if indeed there was even any gilding. Beggars here were omnipresent, whining in their rags to the sailors swaggering by. The strumpets numbered almost as many as the beggars, in transparent silks that emphasized rather than concealed swelling breasts and rounded buttocks, wearing peridot masquerading as emeralds and carbuncle passing for ruby. Salt, tar, spices, and rotting offal gave off a thick miasma that permeated everything. The pleadings of beggars, the solicitations of harlots, and the cries of hawkers hung in the air like a solid sheet.
Above the cacophony Conan heard a girl’s voice shout, “If you will but be patient, there will be enough to go around.”
Curious, he looked toward the sound, but could see only a milling crowd of beggars in front of a rotting building, all seeming to press toward the same goal. Whatever, or whoever, that goal was, it was against the stone wall of the building. More beggars ran to join the seething crowd, and a few of the doxies joined in, elbowing their way to the front. Suddenly, above the very forefront of the throng, a girl appeared, as if she had stepped up onto a bench.
“Be patient,” she cried. “I will give you what I have.” In her arms she carried an engraved and florentined casket, almost as large as she could manage. Its top was open, revealing a tangled mass of jewelry. One by one she removed pieces and passed them down to eagerly reaching hands. Greedy cries were raised for more.
Conan shook his head. This girl was no denizen of the harbor. Her robes of cream-colored silk were expensively embroidered with thread-of-gold, and cut neither to reveal nor emphasize her voluptuous curves, though they could not conceal them from the Cimmerian’s discerning eye. She wore no kohl or rouge, as the strumpets did, yet she was lovely. Waist-length raven hair framed an oval face with skin the color of dark ivory and melting brown eyes. He wondered what madness had brought her here.
“Mine,” a voice shouted from the shoving mass of mendicants and doxies, and another voice cried, “I want mine!”
The girl’s face showed consternation. “Be patient. Please.”
“More!”
“Now!
Three men with the forked queues of sailors, attracted by the shouting, began to push their way through the growing knot of people toward the girl. Beggars, their greed vanquishing their usual ingratiating manner, pushed back. Muttered curses were exchanged, then loud obscenities, and the mood of the crowd darkened and turned angry. A sailor’s horny fist sent a ragged, gap-toothed beggar sprawling. Screams went up from the strumpets, and wrathful cries from the beggars.
Conan knew he should go on. This was none of his affair, and he had yet to find the Blue Bull. This matter would resolve itself very well without him. Then why, he asked himself, was he not moving?
At that instant a pair of bony, sore-covered hands reached up and jerked the casket from the girl’s arms. She stared helplessly as a swirling fight broke out, the casket jerked from one set of hands to another, its contents spilling to the paving stones to be squabbled over by men and women with clawed fingers. Filth-caked beggars snarled with avaricious rage; silk-clad harlots, their faces twisted with hideous rapacity, raked each other with long, painted nails and rolled on the street, legs flashing nakedly.
Suddenly one of the sailors, a scar across his broad nose disappearing beneath the patch that covered his right eye, leaped up onto the bench beside the girl. “This is what I want,” he roared. And sweeping her into his arms, he tossed her to his waiting comrades.
“Erlik take all fool women,” Conan muttered.
The roil of beggars and harlots, lost in their greed, ignored the massive young Cimmerian as he moved through them like a hunting beast. Scarface and his companions, a lanky Kothian with a gimlet eye and a sharp-nosed Iranistani, whose dirty red-striped head cloth hid all but the tips of his queues, were too busy with the girl to notice his approach. She yelped and wriggled futilely at their pawings. Her flailing hands made no impression on shoulders and chests hardened by the rigors of stormy, violent Vilayet Sea. The sailors’ cheap striped tunics were filthy with fish oils and tar, and an odor hung about them of sour, over-spiced ship’s cooking.