"Sandstorm?"
"I see you have not forgotten everything you learned in the Turanian service."
"No, although one of the things I did forget was your tongue. Some day Yezdigerd may have it out by the roots."
"And you"ll stand drinks for the executioner, of course?" The brittleness in Khezal"s voice told Conan more than he cared to know about the uneasy situation honest men could face under the ruthless young king.
"I"ll wring his neck and s.n.a.t.c.h you to life and freedom," the Cimmerian replied.
"But I won"t expect thanks for it."
"You know me well," Khezal said. "And now, if you know this desert, let us seek that campsite. At this time of year it"s death to ride in a sandstorm and no small risk even to camp in one away from water. They can blow for days at a time."
The wind moaned steadily outside Muhbaras"s quarters, occasionally rising to a shriek. He shivered, not so much at the wind"s cry but at the man sitting across the room from him.
Through the smoke from the bronze brazier Ermik"s face looked even more complacent and self-satisfied than usual. It was hard to believe, but all the man"s time in the mountains had not cost him any flesh. Muhbaras wondered how much money he had spent in bribes squeezing banquets from the rocks, or perhaps how many pack animals he had killed bringing supplies from more civilized lands or even from Khoraja itself.
The spy had come to speak of a rumor abroad in the valley. After three cups of Muhbaras"s wine, he had yet to put it into plain words.
Muhbaras hardened his voice. "I ask you for the last time. Put a name to the rumor or hold your piece."
"And what will you do if I do neither?" Ermik taunted.
"Do you wish to test me to the point of learning?" Muhbaras said. His voice was low, and to his own ears, that of a man dangerously near the end of his patience.
Ermik shrugged. "I have as many friends as before, and you have as few," he said. "What I speak of concerns how we may both have more friends here."
"We will have few friends and many enemies if you have been roaming where our men are not allowed," Muhbaras said wearily. "That also remains as true as it was before."
Ermik shrugged. "I doubt that your fears are wise counselors-"
"Either do not call me a coward or be prepared to lose your tongue," Muhbaras snapped.
This time Ermik did seem to recognize danger, at least when it took the form of a man within a heartbeat of drawing steel. He bowed his head, in a gesture at once graceful and contemptuous.
"I beg your pardon. I do not call you coward. Do you not call me fool, unless I give more proof of it than I think I have so far."
Ermik drew in breath. "The Maidens say that the Lady of the Mists desires you, as a woman does a man.
They did not say how they knew this, as this no doubt is part of the mysteries of the Valley of the Mist and its Lady. But the Maiden who told me swore such oaths by G.o.ds I knew, as well as by those I knew not, that I do not doubt she spoke the truth as far as she apprehended it."
That was unusual care in choosing words for Ermik, but surprise did not make Muhbaras less alert. He folded his hands across one silk-trousered knee.
(Actually he folded the hands across the homespun knee patch on the silk. The trousers and several other silk garments were a gift from his sister, who had died in childbirth two years ago. Hard wear on campaign and in the mountains was rapidly reducing them to a state in which Muhbaras would hardly care to be buried in them, for all his affection for his sister"s memory.) "So we face a sorceress who has begun to think with her loins, as do many common women. Many common women also command their loins, or at least do not roam about like starving she-lions in search of a man to serve them."
"Many do, the more fools they when there are any number of willing men," Ermik said. "But I do not think the Lady of the Mists is one of them."
If the truth be known, neither do I. Red-hot pincers and boiling oil could not have drawn from the captain a description of the Lady"s face, for Ermik"s delectation. Of course, if the Maidens were women enough to recognize desire, the spy might not need such a description, either...
"Why me?" Even to his own ears, Muhbaras"s words sounded pathetic.
Ermik laughed outright. "Why not you? I have not a woman"s eye for judging a man, but no doubt the Lady sees in you what she needs."
"Yes, but why me, if her need is for a man?" "Who can know the truth of a woman"s will? Of course, you may be right. If she does not care greatly as to which man comes forward, I might-"
"No!"
"Jealous?"
This time Muhbaras actually rose from his stool, although he stopped short of drawing his sword. He sat down, shaking his head, while Ermik had at least had the decency not to laugh again.
"The whole idea of bedding the Lady is near-kin to madness," Muhbaras said, when he knew he could command his voice. "One does not know what will please Her Magicalness, nor what will displease her, nor what she will do to the man who displeases her.
"Also, she is not being wise in regard to her Maidens. You would not know how this seems, to one who has commanded soldiers in battle."
"You see the Lady as a captain over her Maiden soldiers?"
"Yes, and fighting a war to bring her magic to victory."
"That may be so," Ermik said. Without asking Muhbaras"s leave, he went over to the wine jug resting in a stone crock half-filled with cold water. The captain noticed that the spy"s hands were not entirely steady as he poured himself another cup, still less so when he drank it off in one gulp.
"It is so," Muhbaras said. "And one rule which wise captains obey is never to take pleasures that you forbid your men. Do you think Khoraja will profit from a mutiny among the Maidens that leads to war in the valley and the ruin of all our plans to bedevil Turan?"
"No," Ermik said. "Nor will our native city profit from a scorned woman turning against us and all our plans. How long do you think we would live if the Lady of the Mists hurled her magic against us?" Muhbaras said that he doubted that a man could measure so short an interval of time. Ermik nodded.
"Then the Lady should not feel scorned, even if this will make the Maidens jealous. Then, we need not fear so greatly. Nor need we fear them at all if the man goes to the Lady discreetly."
"That certainly means the man cannot be you," Muhbaras said. Then he shut his mouth with a snap of teeth as he realized that he had walked into a cleverly baited trap.
He forced laughter. "I see that I have talked myself into doing as the Lady wishes-which, of course, may be only to hear me sing tavern songs and juggle dried goat"s ears-"
Ermik joined in the laughter. After the laughing ceased, Muhbaras poured them both more wine. That emptied the jug, but there was enough in his cup to soothe his dry throat, and all the wine in the world would not answer the one question that remained.
How, in the name of every G.o.d who takes thought for such matters, does a common man go about scratching a sorceress with an itch?
The sandstorm blew up during the night, and was still blowing the next day. The campsite had no well within its boundaries, as Khezal and Conan had chosen it for ease of defense. However, the well was so close that with a rope strung from the outermost sentry post to the well, water bearers could come and go safely even when the sand cut a man"s vision to the length of his outstretched arm.
One Greencloak, a new man not yet desert-wise, still wandered away from the rope. Fortunately he had the wits to stop where night overtook him, and as he had been returning from the well with full water bags, did not suffer from thirst.
In the morning the man came in, scoured raw by the sand but not otherwise harmed, and Khezal ordered the camp broken. Sand was still drifting down from a haze-dimmed sky, and the horizon was barely visible at all, but the captain said that the next campsite had two wells and could be held against an army.
"Even one that does not reckon losses if they can bring down an enemy?" Conan said.
"You understand the tribesmen well, Conan-"
"I am a Cimmerian. Does that answer your question?"
"Not entirely. I was about to say that you do not understand them perfectly. No chief will throw away too many warriors. They might be driven to turn on him.
Even if they remained loyal, if they were too few, his tribe or clan might fall to a more numerous enemy, or he himself might fall at the hands of a would-be chief with more followers. It is seldom that the tribesmen will fight to the last man, unless one gives them no choice.
"Of course," Khezal concluded with a wry grin, "this might be one of those times."
"I shall always remember you as a cheerful companion," Conan said.
"May we both live long enough to remember each other," Khezal said.
"We shan"t, if you don"t keep a better watch for snakes," Conan snapped. He pointed at a desert asp wriggling toward the left forefoot of the captain"s mount.
"I keep watch enough," Khezal said. In one moment his dagger was in his hand. In another, it was sunk deep in the sand, severing the asp just behind the hood.
The body writhed furiously, but was still by the time the captain mounted. They rode off, arrayed in the manner the Green-cloaks used when they feared a sandstorm. They rode close together, in double columns, with no man much farther than a spear"s length from a comrade. Each man wore upon his clothes the whitest object he possessed, and there was a man with horn or drum for every ten riders.
The boy Conan had known in the Ilbars Mountains had become a man to follow. If Khezal"s will could have kept him safe in the Turanian service, the Cimmerian might even have returned to it.
But the G.o.ds had willed otherwise, so Conan would ride west once more when this quest into the North was done.
Eleven.
That morning they were close to the stretch of desert the Girumgi called their own. (Or at least the one where wandering strangers were more likely to die at the hands of Girumgi than of any other tribe"s warriors. That was as far as territorial claims commonly went in the desert, where a tribe that wished to could move almost as freely as a fleet of merchant vessels on the open sea.) So in spite of their formation, the riders were keeping a better lookout for human enemies than for the weather. It was not a total surprise when the sandstorm blew up again, but it gave what would have been little enough notice even for the most vigilant men.
It did not help that only moments before the storm came upon them, they saw riders at the head of a val-ley not far off to their right. Thanks to some curious twist of the land, the air between them and the riders was as clear as a fine day in Vanaheim. It was possible to count the riders, some three score, and to recognize a Girumgi banner and headdresses among the nearer men.
Conan did not dispute the identification of the banner or the nearer riders, but his keen sight left him in doubt about the rest. He could not have said what tribe they were, but he was prepared to wager that they would turn out to be other than Girumgi.
He was not prepared to wager the lives of his men, however. He took the lead when the sky and air both turned brown and the Turanians had to seek shelter before they could no longer see their hands before their faces. He rode down into the foot of the valley, then spread his Afghulis in a line across it. Still mounted, they watched the Turanians follow them out of the thickening storm and find refuge in a natural bowl on the north side of the valley.
"We"ll watch above, you watch below," Khezal said, or rather shouted. The sandstorm now howled like a gale at sea, and hand signals would have been more sensible had anyone been able to see them.
"Fair enough," Conan shouted back. He did not add that he was personally going to slip up the valley and see whom they might be facing. It would be hard to punish him for disobeying an order that he had not received.
Conan waited until Turanians and Afghulis were in their intended places, and until the far end of the valley was as invisible as if it had been in Vendhya.
The storm was less thick in the valley than on the open desert above, but Conan judged he could still slip close to these mysterious neighbors without being seen.
This quest had already sprouted too many mysteries. Here perhaps was one that he could solve before nightfall, risking no man"s life but his own.
In this a.s.sumption he had not reckoned on Farad. When Conan slipped between the horses and gripped a rock to pull himself up and over, he found Farad sitting cross-legged atop the rock.
"You were near having your throat slit," Conan snapped. "Indeed, you may be still."
"Would that not be poor repayment for my loyalty?" the Afghuli said.
"Are you being loyal, or more like a louse in a man"s breech-guard?"
"It seemed to us that you should not go scouting alone. Who would bring the truth, if you twisted an ankle or struck your head-"
"My head is not the one most likely to be struck here, my friend."
"-on a rock?" Farad went on, unperturbed and keeping his face totally blank. "So we rolled dice for the honor of going with you."
"Using your dice, of course?" Conan said. He could not help smiling, moved by Farad"s evident determination.
"Of course. I am not one to leave too much to chance."
"Then let us be off. I could have subdued you if I needed to go alone. Both of us together cannot subdue Khezal and his Greencloaks if they learn of our plan."
Conan leaped off the far side of the rock, Farad followed him, and side by side they walked into the storm.
The storm above must have been scouring the desert and blinding or choking any traveler unfortunate enough to lack shelter. Before Conan and Farad had covered half the distance to the other band"s outposts, they had to veil all of their faces but their eyes to breathe freely.
Conan had heard of tribes in Khitai who had the art of making masks of the bladders of certain fish, transparent yet strong enough to keep out the sandstorms of their deserts. The Cimmerian did not wish himself in Khitai-curiosity was joining his oath to Khezal and his men, to drive him onward along the trail of this quest-but he vowed that if ever he returned to Khitai, he would pay those tribesmen a visit.
Meanwhile, he was desert-wise enough to know how to study the ground about him without ever facing directly into the wind, and how to shield his eyes with his fingers when he had no choice. At least today there need be no fear of sun-dazzle!
The ground grew more rugged toward the end of the valley. Even without a sandstorm, a line of sentries would have needed to be close together to guard one another"s flanks. As it was, the Girumgi sentries were a good spear-toss apart, and one at least seemed to have scant notion of a sentry"s duties.
He wore a Girumgi headdress, two long daggers thrust into his belt, and a waist pouch. He also wore an expression of total disgust at being out here alone amid the blowing sand.
The man furthermore spent much of his time in the shelter of a rock, which prevented both sand from reaching him and his eyes from reaching much of anything. When he did stand in the open, he looked more toward his rear than his front. It was as if he expected enemies to leap from his own camp, not from the valley before him.
Conan was prepared to s.n.a.t.c.h another prisoner, but Farad saw the sentry"s weaknesses as swiftly as the Cimmerian, and struck faster. Crouching low enough to be hidden behind a waist-high rock, Farad crawled to within arm"s length of the sentry without being detected. Then the man heard or saw something amiss, his eyes widened-then they widened further as Farad"s flung dagger sank into the man"s bare throat.
Conan crouched beside the fallen man, as windblown sand covered the pool of blood. "I wanted to capture him silently."
"I was silent. More so than you were, reproaching me."
Conan forced himself to remember that free speech to a chief was one of the most sacred rights of the free Afghuli warrior. The man to fear was he who would not speak plainly to your face, as he was likely enough planning to thrust something sharper than words into your back.
"We must go forward, then. This time, I strike first."
"Of course, Conan. It is with stupid sentries as it is with willing women-there are usually enough to go around."
Conan and Farad slipped through the hole they"d made in the sentry line almost all the way to the main camp. Unfortunately, by the time they were close enough to recognize tribal colors, the storm was blowing so thickly that their sand-scoured eyes could barely tell rocks from huddled humans.
There were also too many of those huddled humans to make it safe to s.n.a.t.c.h a prisoner. Even the sc.r.a.pe of dagger on leather sheath might be enough to alert five of the prisoner"s comrades and bring on a battle royal at the worst possible moment.
Nothing would come of that except their deaths, leaving the Afghulis without leadership. Conan did not trust even Khezal enough to believe his comrades would then escape harm.