"You looked at me." She uttered a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. "You looked at me, and I felt like one of those girls at the Gored Ox, wriggling to a flute for drooling men. Mitra blast your eyes! How dare you make me feel like that!"
"You are a woman," he said. "I looked at you as a man looking at a woman."
She closed her eyes and addressed the cracked ceiling. "Hama All-Mother, why must I be stirred by an untutored barbarian who thinks with his sword?" A smug smile grew on his face, to be quashed almost immediately by a glare from her large hazel eyes. "A man may take as many women as he wishes," she said fiercely. "I refuse to have less freedom than a man. If I choose to have but one man at a time to my mat, and have no other till he leaves or I do, that is my affair. Can you accept me as I am?"
"Did your mother never tell you a man likes to do the asking?" he laughed.
"Mitra blast your heart!" she snarled. "Why do I waste my time?"
Muttering to herself she stalked toward the door, cloak flaring in her haste.
Conan reached out one ma.s.sive arm, curling it around her waist beneath the cloak. She had time for one strangled squawk before he lifted her, the cloak floating to the floor, to crush her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s against the hard expanse of his chest.
"Will you stay with me, Ariane?" he asked, looking into her startled eyes.
Before she could speak he tangled his free hand in her hair and brought her lips to his. Her small fists bruised themselves against his shoulders; her feet kicked futilely at his shins. Slowly her struggles subsided, and when a satisfied murmur sounded in her throat he released her hair. Panting, she let her head drop onto his broad chest.
"Why did you change your mind?" she managed after a time.
"I didn"t change it," he replied. She looked up, startled, and he smiled. "Before you asked. This time I did the asking."
Laughing throatily, she let her head fall back. "Hama All-Mother," she cried, "will I never understand these strange creatures called men?"
He laid her gently on his sleeping mat, and for a long time thereafter only sounds pa.s.sion-wrought pa.s.sed her lips.
Chapter VI.
The Street of Regrets in the morning hours fit well Conan"s mood. The paving stones were littered with the tawdry refuse of the previous night"s revelry; those few people to be seen were stumbling home bleary eyed and hollow faced. Conan kicked rubbish from his path as he strode along, and gave growl for growl to the stray dogs that scavenged among the leavings.
The ten nights past had been an idyll at the Sign of the Thestis, wrapped in Ariane"s arms, her pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes feeding his own even as they sated them. Stephano brooded much in jealousy and wine, yet the memory of the Cimmerian"s anger kept his tongue between his teeth. Hordo, drawn by the attractions of the slender Kerin, had moved his few belongings from an inn three streets away, and of an evening they drank and told each other lies till the charms of Ariane and Kerin parted them. Those were the nights. Days were another matter.
Conan paused at the sound of running boots behind him, then continued on as Hordo joined him.
"Ill luck this morrow, too?" the one-eyed man asked, eyeing the Cimmerian"s face.
Conan nodded shortly. "When I had defeated all three bodyguards now in his service, Lord Heranius offered three gold marks for me to take service as their chief, with two more every tenday."
"Ill luck?" Hordo exclaimed. "Mitra! That"s twice the usual rate for bodyguards. I"m tempted to give up smuggling. At least there"d be no danger of the headsman"s block."
"And I must swear bond-oath before the City Magistrates not to quit his service without leave for two years."
"Oh."
Conan"s right fist cracked into the other palm with a sound like a club striking leather. A drunk, stumbling his way home, jumped a foot in the air and fell in a puddle of vomit. Conan did not notice.
"Everywhere it is the same," he grated, "Free-Companies or single blade-fee alike. All demand the bond-oath, and some require three years, if they do not require five."
"Before the bond-oaths," Hordo mused. "Some men changed masters every day, getting a silver piece more each time. Look you. Why not take service with whoever offers the most gold? This Lord Heranius, by the sound of it. When you"re ready to go, if he won"t release you, just go.
An oath that makes a man a slave is no oath at all."
"And when I do, I must leave Belverus, perhaps all of Nemedia." He was silent for a time, his boots kicking broken clay wine-jars and soiled bits of abandoned clothing from his path. At last he said, "At first it was but talk, Hordo, this Free-Company that I would lead. Now it"s more. I"ll take no service until I ride at the head of my own company."
"It means so much to you?" Hordo said incredulously. He dodged a jar of slops thrown from a second-story window, hurling a curse at the thrower, already gone.
"It does," Conan said, ignoring the other"s mutters about what had splashed on his boots. "In the final sum of it all, perhaps a man has no more than himself, naught but a strong right hand and the steel in it. And still, to rise, to make some mark in the world, a man must lead others. I was a thief, yet did I rise to command in the Army of Turan, and did well at it. I know not how far I may rise nor how far the path I follow may take me, yet do I intend to rise as high and go as far as my wits and a good sword will take me. I will have that Free-Company."
"When you do," the one-eyed man said drily, "be you certain they swear the bond-oath." They turned into the street that led to the Sign of Thestis.
As Conan laughed, three men stepped out to spread themselves across the narrow street, broadswords in hand. The sound of boots behind made Conan glance quickly over his shoulder. Two more armed men stood there, cutting off retreat. The Cimmerian"s blade whispered from its worn s.h.a.green scabbard; Hordo, sword flickering free, pivoted to face those behind.
"Stand aside," Conan called to the three. "Find you easier meat elsewhere."
"Naught was said of a second man," the one to Conan"s left muttered, his thin, rat-like face twitching.
The man to the right, shaven dome gleaming in the morning sun, hefted his sword uneasily. "We cannot take one without the other."
"You"ll find but your deaths here," Conan said. With his left hand he unfastened the bronze pin that held his cloak, doubling the furlined garment loosely over that arm.
The leader, for the tall man in the center with his closely cropped beard was clearly so, spoke for the first time. "Kill them," he said, and his blade thrust for Conan"s belly.
With pantherine grace the muscular Cimmerian moved aside, his cloak tangling the tall man"s blade while his right foot planted itself solidly in the fellow"s crotch. In the same move Conan"s sword beat aside a thrust of the shavenhead. Gagging, the leader attempted to straighten; but Conan pivoted, his left foot taking the bearded man on the side of the head, knocking him under the feet of onrushing ratface.
Both went down in a heap.
The shaven-headed attacker hesitated, goggle-eyed at his companions on the ground, and died for it. Conan"s slashing steel half-severed his throat. Bright red blood fountained as he went to his knees, then toppled onto his face in the muck of the street. Rat-face scrambled to his feet, and he tried a desperate overhead hack. Conan"s blade rang against the other, bringing it into a sweeping downward circle, sliding his blade along his opponent"s, thrusting it into the villain"s chest.
A quick kick next to his blade freed the body to collapse alongside the other; and Conan spun to find the leader on his feet, his narrow, bearded face suffused with rage. He swung while the big Cimmerian was yet turning, staring with surprise as Conan dropped to a squat, b.u.t.tocks on his heels. Conan"s steel sliced a b.l.o.o.d.y line across his abdomen. The tall man screamed like a woman, dropping his sword as his frantic hands tried vainly to hold his intestines in. His eyes were glazed with death before he struck the filthy paving stones.
Conan looked for Hordo in time to see the one-eyed man"s blade decapitate his second attacker. With the head still rolling across the pavement Hordo turned to glare at Conan, blood oozing from a gash on his sword arm and another, smaller, on his forehead.
"I"m too old for this, Cimmerian."
"You always say that." As he spoke, Conan bent to check the pouches of the men he had killed.
"It"s true, I tell you," Hordo insisted. "If these hadn"t been such fools as to talk and dither while we set ourselves, they might have chopped us to dog meat. As it was, my two nearly sliced my cods off.
I"m too old, I say."
Conan straightened from the bodies with six new-minted gold marks. He bounced them on his palm. "Fools they may be, but they were sent after one of us. By somebody willing to pay ten gold marks for a death." He jerked his head at the two Hordo had killed. "You"ll find each of them has a pair of these too."
Hordo muttered an oath and bent to the remaining bodies, straightening up with four fat coins. The one-eyed man closed his fist tightly on them. "Yon rat-face spoke of not expecting two. Mitra, who"d pay ten gold marks for either of us?"
A gangling boy shambled out of an alley not a dozen paces distant. At the sight of the bodies his jaw dropped open, and with a scream of pure terror he dashed away, his wail fading as he sped.
"Let us discuss it at the Thestis," Conan said, "before we gather an audience."
"With our luck," Hordo muttered, "this will be the one morning in a year the City Guard has patrols out."
It was but a short distance down the twisting street to the inn, but obviously no one had heard the fighting. Only Kerin gave them a second glance when they walked in. In those morning hours there were few of the arum about, and none of the noise that would reverberate in the evening.