"You threaten me, Aberius?" the Kothian growled. His fingers slid from his pommel toward the tulwar at his hip.
Karela spurred suddenly into their midst, her naked sword in hand.
"I"ll kill the first man to bare an inch of blade," she announced heatedly. Her catlike eyes flicked each man in turn; both hurriedly removed their hands from their weapons. "Now tell me what has you at each other"s throats like dancing girls in a zenana."
"The soldiers," Aberius began.
"These supposed pendants," Talbor started at the same instant.
"Soldiers!" Karela said. She jerked her head around, and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when she spotted the distant line of men on the plain below. "Fear you soldiers so far away, Aberius?" she sneered.
"What would you fear closer? An old woman with a stick?"
"I like not being followed by anyone," Aberius replied sulkily, "Or think you they follow us not?"
"I care not if they follow us or no," she flared. "You are the Red Hawk"s men! An you follow me, you"ll fear what I tell you to fear and naught else. Now all of you get up ahead. There"s level ground there where we"ll camp the night."
"There"s a half a day yet we could travel," Hordo protested.
She rounded on him, green eyes flashing. "Did you not hear my command?
I said we camp! You, Cimmerian, remain here."
Her one-eyed lieutenant grumbled, but turned his horse up the mountain, and the rest followed in sullen silence broken only by the creak of saddle leather and the slick of hooves on stone.
Conan watched the red-haired woman warily. She hefted her sword as if she had half a mind to drive it into him, then sheathed it. "Who is this girl, Conan? What is her name?"
"She"s called Velita," he said. He had told her of Velita before, and knew she remembered the dancing girl"s name. In time she would come to what she truly wanted to speak of. He twisted around for another look at the column of soldiers. "They gain ground on us, Karela. We should keep moving."
"We move when I say. And stop when I say. Do you think to play some game, Conan?"
He turned back to her. Her green eyes were clouded with emotion as she stared at him. What emotion he could not say. "I play no more games than you, Karela."
Her snort was eloquent. "Treasures taken from a king"s palace, so you say, not to mention this baggage you claim to have promised her freedom. Why then do the thieves flee to these mountains, where none live but goats, and savages little better than goats?"
"I don"t know," he admitted. "But it convinces me all the more they are the men I seek. Honest pilgrims do not journey to Vendhya by way of the heart of the Kezankian Mountains."
"Perhaps," she said, and shifted her gaze to the soldiers, far below.
With a laugh she reared her big black to dance on its hind legs.
"Fools. They"ll not clip the Red Hawk"s wings."
"It seems most likely they seek Tiridates" pendants, as we do," he said. "Much more so than that they seek you."
The red-haired woman glowered at him. "The Zamoran Army seeks me incessantly, Cimmerian. Of course, they"ll never catch me. When their hunting becomes too troublesome, my men disperse to become guards on the very caravan routes we raid. The pay is high, for fear of the Red Hawk." Her sudden laugh was exultant.
To his amus.e.m.e.nt he realized she had been offended by his suggestion that the soldiers hunted other than her. "Your pardon, Karela. I should have remembered that taking seven caravans in six months would certainly rival even a theft from Tiridates" palace."
"I had naught to do with those," she said scornfully. "No creature from those caravans, man, horse, or camel, has even been seen again. When I take a caravan, those too old or ill-favored to fetch a price on the slave block are turned loose with food and water to find their way to the nearest city, albeit poorer than before."
"If not you, then who?"
"How should I know? The last caravan I took was a full eight months ago, and fat. When we left our celebrating in Arenjun it was to find the countryside too hot to hold us for those vanished caravans. I sent my men to their hiring, and these four months past have I been in Shadizar telling cards beneath the very noses of the King"s Own." Her full mouth twisted. "I would be there still, if the risk of calling my band together once more had not seemed less than the odium of being eyed by men who thought to give me a tumble." Her glare seemed to include him and every other man in the world.
"Strange things are happening in the Kezankians," Conan said thoughtfully. "Perhaps those we follow have something to do with the vanished caravans."
"You make flight of fancy," she muttered, and he realized she was eyeing him oddly. "Come to my tent, Cimmerian. I would talk with you."
She spurred away up the mountainside before he could speak.
Conan was about to follow when he became aware of being watched from the jagged mountains to the south. His first thought was of Kezankian hillmen, but then, as the hackles stood on the back of his neck, he knew it was the same invisible eyes he had felt that night with Karela, and again before Crato appeared. Imhep-Aton had followed him.
His ma.s.sive shoulders squared, and he threw back his head. "I do not fear you, sorcerer!" he shouted. A hollow, ringing echo floated back to him. Fear you, sorcerer! Scowling, he spurred his horse up the mountain.
Karela"s red-striped pavilion had been set up on a level patch of stony ground. Already the motley brigands had cook fires going, and were pa.s.sing their stone jars of kil.
"What was that shouting?" Aberius called as Conan climbed down from his horse.
"Nothing," Conan said.
The weasel-faced man led a knot of ruffians down to face him warily.
When he casually laid his hand on the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword, the memory of how he had used that sword against Crato was clear on those bearded, scarred and gnarled faces.
"Some of us have thought on these soldiers," Aberius said.
"You have thought," another muttered, but Aberius ignored him.
"And what have you thought?" Conan asked.
Aberius hesitated, looking to either side as if for support. There was scant to be found, but he went on. "Never before have we come into these mountains, excepting to hide a day. Here there is no room to scatter. We must go where the stone will let us go, not where we will.
And this when five times our number of soldiers follow our backtrail."
"If you"ve lost your enthusiasm," Conan said, "leave. I"d as lief go on alone as not."
"Aye, and take the pendants alone," Aberius barked, "and the rest.
You"d like it well for us to leave you."
Conan"s sapphire eyes raked them scornfully. Even Aberius flinched under that lashing gaze. "Make up your minds. Fear the soldiers and run, or follow the pendants. One or the other. You cannot do both."
"And you bring us to where these soldiers can take us," Aberius began, "you"ll not live-"
Conan cut him off. "You do as you will. On the morrow I ride after the pendants." He pushed through them. They muttered fretfully as he went.
He found himself wondering if it would be better for him if they stayed or went. They still had no right to the pendants, in his eyes, but now that they were in the mountains he could use Aberius" tracking ability, at least. The man could tell the mark a hoof made on stone from that made by a falling rock. That was always supposing the weasel-faced brigand did not decide to slip a knife between his ribs. The muscular young Cimmerian sighed heavily. What had started out to be a simple, if spectacular, theft, had grown as convoluted as a pit of snakes, and he had the uneasy feeling that he was not yet aware of all the twists and turns.
As he approached Karela"s red-striped pavilion, with half its ropes tied to small boulders because the ground was too hard for driving pegs, Hordo suddenly stepped in front of him.
"Where do you think you"re going?" the one-eyed bandit demanded.
Conan"s temper had been shortened by knowing Imhep-Aton followed him, and by the encounter with Aberius. "Where I want to go," he growled, and pushed the scar-faced man from his path.
The startled brigand stumbled aside as Conan started past, then whirled, his broadsword coming out, at the whisper of steel leaving leather. Hordo"s tulwar darted toward him. Conan beat the curved blade aside in the same motion as his draw, and the bearded man danced backward down the slope with surprising agility for one of his bulk.
The scar that ran from under his rough leather eye-patch was livid.