A sharp eye and sharper steel might still be needed against Marr the Piper and all his works.
The second night and second day repeated the pattern of the first.
Breaking camp in the twilight, they heard the sound of men on the march, and Conan went to scout. He returned to report that they were a band of peasants.
"They made enough noise that I could have ridden up on a dragon before they saw me," Conan said. "So I lay close and watched. They were forty or more, but wearing only their work clothes and armed only with their farming tools. Oh, a man or so had a sword that his grandfather might have carried as a free lance. But n.o.body had provided them arms or harness."
"That gives hope," Raihna said. "If Syzambry had called them out, surely he would not have left them a rabble."
"If he had spare arms, perhaps not," Conan said. "But they could be rallying to Syzambry of their own will. Hoping to spare their villages, likely as not."
Raihna spat. "They are fools, then. They rush to embrace a man who will be as grateful as a hungry bear."
"They do not know that," Marr said. "They are desperate, and that fogs the wits. Or have you come so far from your village that you forgot that?"
Raihna gasped and glared. Conan stared hard at the piper. The Cimmerian"s look said plainly: "I have told you nothing about Raihna"s birth. Have you been reading her thoughts against her will, as you said you could not do?"
Marr looked away, then lifted his pipes. Conan raised a hand, ready to s.n.a.t.c.h them. Now the Cimmerian"s look said, "Earn your pardon with words, not with your magic."
"Mistress Raihna, forgive me for calling you a witling," the piper said. "You are no such thing. But I hear Bossonia in your speech, and I know something of that land."
"If you thought it bore witlings, you did not know enough," Raihna muttered, but she seemed eased.
Presently the sound of the marching peasants died away, and they resumed their own march through the silent forest as night came down.
The would-be rescuers neither heard nor met any further bands on their journey to the valley. This was not altogether by chance. Marr knew every hill, every valley, and it sometimes seemed to Conan, every tree in the forests. He knew which drew hunters and woodcutters, even in troubled times like these, and which were left to the birds and the wolves.
"There was once a good number of bears in these forests," the piper added. "But most of them were hunted out some generations back. I know of two villages where they go in fear of the beasts, so a few may still den up and live off deer and the odd sheep."
"So? We"re not here to hunt animals for the royal menagerie," Raihna said.
"I do not babble without cause," the piper said. "One of those villages is close to our path."
"Then take us wide of it, for Crom"s sake!" Conan snapped. It was the fifth day of their journey. Marr talked less in riddles than he formerly had, but when he did, Conan had less patience with him. He would gladly match steel against half of the warriors of the Pougoi, or strength against the wizards" beast, simply to end this skulking about in an inhdspitable land.
"I cannot lead you too wide of it," the piper said, "unless you wish to pa.s.s through the Blasted Land."
"From what I have heard of that land, I"d take my chances with the bears and the villagers both," Raihna said. Conan nodded in agreement.
"Wise," Marr said. "The Pougoi watch the farther side of the Blasted Land, and few escape their sentries, if they cross the Land at all without taking the bone-burning sickness."
"We"ll fight neither beasts nor wizards with our bones turning to water within our flesh," Conan growled. "Lead as you wish."
The floor under Count Syzambry"s feet was shaking. Had unfriendly magic conjured up an earthquake?
No, it was his body swaying and his legs threatening to give way under him so that he would topple like a tree overborne by a high wind. He gripped the bedpost with one hand and held out the other.
"My sword!"
Zylku, the surgeon"s apprentice, stared. One of the men-at-arms lifted the count"s blade from the bench at the foot of the bed.
"No. We cannot be sure that steel-"
"I am sure that steel in my hand will do much good," the count said.
His voice rasped and croaked, but he still forced some authority into it. It was another gift that was returning, like being able to stand on his own feet.
"Much good," the count repeated. "Beginning with ending your babble."
His hand gripped the sword. For a moment, the grip was firm. Then the weight of the sword jerked it from his fingers, nearly overbalancing him at the same time.
Syzambry"s blade clattered to the floor. He did not dare meet Zylku"s eyes. He would see triumph in them, and Zylku might see tears of rage in his.
"Steel in my hand will do much good when I can wield it as I once did,"
the count said. "It seems that the time is not now." He commanded himself to stare at Zylku. "Summon your master and bid him prepare an answer. How long will I be lame and halt, unable to lead my men against my enemies?"
"A horse litter-" Zylku murmured.
"I said lead!" the count thundered. The strength of his voice surprised himself as well as those in the bedchamber. "A horse litter is for women, babes, and others who must remain behind when battle is joined.
A leader rides or he does not deserve the name!"
"I will obey," Zylku said. "I will also ask certain folk I know who have arts other than those of common surgeons."
"Indeed," the count said. "And what do you ask in return for this, as I doubt not you risk the wrath of your master?"
"Your silence about my asking, yours and your men"s," Zylku replied.
"Also, such reward as you consider fit should Ilearn anything that serves to restore your health. I will trust to your justice."
"You may do that," the count said. "Only remember that my justice can mean a sharp sword for those who have deceived me."
"Dead or alive, my Lord Count, I will not deceive you," Zylku said. "By anything you hold sacred, I will swear it."
The count was not sure that he held anything sacred within his heart of hearts, save well-wielded steel. Steel that, the G.o.ds willing, he would one day soon be able to hold again. If Zylku brought that day more swiftly, he could name his own reward!
It was the sixth night of the journey, and if Marr knew one rock from another, it was the last night. Conan would be glad if Marr"s knowledge proved true, even if it made the man prouder than ever.
The Cimmerian did not care to tarry long here; the place was too close to the Blasted Land for comfort. Even in the darkness, he could see that the trees had unnatural shapes. The bird sounds were few and furtive, the insects altogether silent. Nothing else was to be heard, not even the sigh of a night breeze.
All three travelers were walking catfooted, trying not to dislodge a single pebble or break the smallest twig. The Pougoi did not watch this land, Marr had said. The villagers themselves drove strangers away. Yet any place so close to the Blasted Land had its watchers, who were neither wizard nor human.
That was all the piper would say. Nothing that Conan dared do would move him to speak further. He would not even say if these watchers could be dangerous, although in that matter Conan needed no advice. He would reckon on the worst and advance steel in hand.
The piper was leading. Now he was bearing to the right, past a vast twisted oak tree that seemed to be lifted half off the ground by a dozen-roots thicker than a man"s body. Enough moonlight crept through the clouds to show that fallen acorns lay about the base of the tree.
Among the acorns lay the skeleton of what might have been a wild boar, except that no boar ever had such splayed hooves or such a bulging skull...
Conan remembered the tales of the Blasted Land.
It came to be in a single night, when the Star Brothers" beast rode down from the sky in a giant stone. Fire and shards of the sky-stone cut a swathe across the land, wider than a man could ride in a single day. Within a year, the beasts and growing things returned, but they were horribly changed and misshapen.