Conan looked at the offering. A few pieces of leaf floated on the wine"s surface along with the sprinkling of varicolored powders. "This will rid me of the poison?"
Ghurran looked at him levelly. "In the time it would take you to reach the docks and return, you will either be able to walk from this room, or you will be dead." The listening smugglers stirred.
"If he dies-" Hordo began threateningly, but Conan cut him off. "If I die, it will not be Ghurran"s fault, will it, Ghurran?"
"Drink," the old man said, "or it will be your own fault."
Conan drank. With the first mouthful a grimace twisted his face, becoming worse with every swallow. As the goblet was taken from his mouth, he gasped, "Crom! It tastes as if a camel bathed in it!" A few of the listeners, those sober enough, laughed.
Ghurran grunted. "Do you want sweetness on the tongue, or the poison counteracted?" His eye fell on the opened chest. Face made even more hollow by a frown, he took some of the leaves, stirring them on his palm with a bony finger.
"Do you know the leaf?" Conan asked. He was not sure if his breathing was easier, or if he just imagined it so. "The man who did this told us they were spices."
"Spices?" Ghurran said absently. "No, I do not think they are spices.
But then," he added, letting the leaves fall back into the chest, "I do not know all plants. I would like to look in the other chests. If there are herbs unknown to me in those also, perhaps I will take some of them in payment."
"Look all you want," Hordo said eagerly. "Prytanis, help him open the chests." The Nemedian and the herbalist moved toward the stacked chests, and Hordo dropped his voice to a whisper ranged for Conan"s ears. "If he will take herbs rather than a hundred gold pieces, then well enough, I say."
Conan drew a breath; they were coming easier. "Help me to my feet, Hordo," he urged. "He said I would walk or die, and by Mitra"s bones, I intend to walk."
The two of them exchanged a long look; then the one-eyed man reached down. Conan pulled himself up, putting a hand against the wall to steady himself. Leaning against a wall would not do, though. He took a tottering step. His bones felt ready to bend, but he forced himself to move the other foot forward.
"It is too late for that one," Prytanis" voice came loudly from where he stood beside the chests, dagger in hand. Three already had their lids pried open. "I found some more of those leaves."
Ghurran let the cloak fall back over the corpse"s face. "I was curious as to the sort of man who uses a poisoned blade. But I suppose new herbs are more important than dead men. More of the leaves, you say?"
Conan made another step, and another. The weakness was still on him, but he felt firmer in some fashion, less like a figure made of reeds.
Hordo followed him, looking like an anxious bear. "Are you all right, Cimmerian?"
"Right enough," Conan told him, then laughed. "But moments ago I would have settled for living long enough to know the way of all this. Now I begin to think I may live a bit longer than that after all."
"This body is too frail," Ghurran said suddenly. "Too old!" He knelt, peering into one of the chests. All twenty had been opened, and some of their contents pulled out. There were more dried leaves, exactly like those in the first chest. There were saffron crystals that seemed, from the powder beneath the pile of them on the dirt floor, to crumble almost of their own weight, and tightly corded leather sacks, several of which had been sliced open to spill out what could have been salt except for its crimson color. Two of the chests contained clear vials filled with a verdant liquid and well-packed in linen bags of goose down.
"What ails you?" Conan asked. "I walk, as you said I would, and I will see that you get the gold Hordo promised you." The one-eyed smuggler made a m.u.f.fled sound of pained protest.
"Gold," Ghurran snorted contemptuously.
"If not gold, then what?" Conan asked. "If any of the herbs or other substances in those chests can be of use to you, take them, leaving only a little for me. It seems we will not be delivering them to the Zaporoska, but I still want to know why a man would try to kill to keep them hidden. A small portion of the leaves and the rest may help me find out."
"Yes," the herbalist said slowly, "you will want to find out, won"t you?" He hesitated. "I do not know exactly how to tell you this. If what I gave you had not been successful, there would have been no need to say anything. I hoped to find something in these chests, or more likely on the body. A man who carries a poisoned weapon will betimes also carry an antidote in case he himself is accidently wounded."
"What need is there of antidotes?" Hordo demanded. "You have already counteracted the poison."
Ghurran hesitated again, eying both Hordo and Conan in turn. "The treatment I have given you, northlander, has only masked the poison for a time."
"But I feel no more than a slight ache in the head," Conan said. "In an hour I will wrestle any man in Sultanapur."
"And you will continue to feel so for another day or two perhaps, then the poison will take hold again. A permanent cure requires herbs that I know, but that can be found only in Vendhya."
"Vendhya!" Hordo exclaimed. "Black Erlik"s bowels and bladder!" Conan motioned Ghurran to speak on, and the old man did so.
"You must go to Vendhya, northlander, and I must go with you, for a daily infusion prepared by me will be necessary to keep you alive. The journey is not one I look forward to, for this old body is not suited to such travels. You, however, may find the answers you seek in Vendhya."
"Mayhap I will," Conan said. "It will not be the first time my life has been measured out a day at a time."
"But Vendhya," Hordo protested. "Conan, they do not much like folk from this side of the Vilayet in Vendhya. If you with your accursed eyes are thought strange here, how will they think you there? We"ll lose our heads, like as not, and be lucky if we are not flayed first. Ghurran, are you sure there is nothing you can do here in Turan?"
"If he does not go to Vendhya," Ghurran said, "he dies."
"It is all right, my friend," Conan told the one-eyed man. "I will find the antidote there, and answers. Why are those chests worth killing for? Patil was Vendhyan, and I cannot think they were destined elsewhere. Besides, you know I have to leave Sultanapur for a time anyway, unless I want to hide from the City Guard until they find Tureg Amal"s killer."
"The chests," Hasan said abruptly. "They can still be taken to the Zaporoska. Whoever was to meet Patil will not know he is dead. They will be waiting there, and they may have answers to our questions. They may even have an antidote."
" "Tis better than Vendhya," Hordo said quickly. "For one thing, it is closer. No need to travel to the ends of the world if we do not need to."
"It cannot hurt to try," Conan agreed. "An easier trip for your bones, Ghurran." The old man shrugged his thin shoulders noncommitally.
"And if Patil"s friends do not have what you need," Hordo added, "then we can think about Vendhya."
"Hold there!" Prytanis strode, into the middle of the room, glaring angrily. The other smugglers were listening drunkenly, but he alone seemed sober enough to truly understand what had been said. "Take the chests to the Zaporoska, you say. How are we to find the men we seek?
The mouth of the Zaporoska is wide, with dunes and hills to hide an army on both sides."
"When I agreed to carry Patil"s goods," Hordo said, "I made sure he told me the signals that would be given by the men ash.o.r.e, and the signs we must give in return."
"But what profit is there in it?" Prytanis insisted. "The Vendhyan cannot pay. Do you think his companions will when we arrive without him? I say forget these chests and find a load of "fish" that will put gold in our purses."
"You spineless dog." Hordo"s voice was low and seemed all the more deadly for it. "Conan is one of us and we stand together. How deep is the rot in you? Will you now throw goods over the side at the sight of a naval bireme, or abandon our wounded to the excis.e.m.e.n?"
"Call me not coward," the Nemedian snapped. "Many times I have risked having my head put on a pike above the Strangers" Gate, as you well know. If the Cimmerian wants to go, then let him. But do not ask the rest of us to tease the headsman"s axe just for the pleasure of the trip."
The jagged scar down Hordo"s left cheek went livid as he prepared a blast, but Conan spoke first.
"I do not ask you to come for the pleasure of the trip, Prytanis, nor even for the pleasure of my company. But answer me this. You say you want gold?"
"As any man does," Prytanis said cautiously.
"These chests are worth gold to the men waiting at the Zaporoska.
Vendhyans, if Patil is a guide. You have seen other Vendhyans, men with rings on every finger and gems on their turbans. Did you ever see a Vendhyan without a purse full of gold?"
Prytanis" eyes widened as he suddenly realized that Conan spoke not only to him. "But-"
The big Cimmerian went on over the attempted interruption like an avalanche rolling over a hapless peasant. "The Vendhyans waiting on the Zaporoska will have plenty of gold, gold due us when we deliver the chests. And if they will not pay. . ." He grimed wolfishly and touched the hilt of his broadsword. "They"ll not be the first to try refusing to pay for their "fish." But we did not let the others get away with it, and we"ll not let the Vendhyans either."
Prytanis looked as though he wanted to protest further but one of the smugglers cried out drunkenly, "Aye! Cut "em down and take it all!"
"Vendhyan gold for all of us!" another shouted. Others grunted agreement or laughingly repeated the words. The slit-nosed Nemedian sank into a scowling silence and withdrew sullenly to a corner by himself.
"You still have the gift of making men follow you," Hordo told Conan quietly, "but this time it would have been better to break Prytanis"