Conan of Venarium

Chapter Six The Hunters

Spring came late to Cimmeria, especially to one used to the warmer clime of Aquilonia. Indeed, to Count Stercus what the calendar called spring hardly seemed worthy of the name. True, the sky was gray longer than it was black, where the opposite had held true through the seemingly unending winter. True also, the snow at last stopped falling and then, with even more reluctance, began to melt.

But there was no great burgeoning of life, as there would have been farther south. The trees did not burst into bright green leaf. They were evergreens, and had kept such gloomy color as they originally owned all through the winter, though snow had hidden much of it. Little by little, fresh grass did begin to poke up through the dead and yellow growth of the previous year, but the process was so gradual that days went by without much perceptible change. And birdsongs other than owls' hoots, hunting hawks' harsh cries, and the croaking and chirring calls of grouse and ptarmigan started to sweeten the air.

Birdsongs, however, left Stercus cold. Almost everything that had to do with Cimmeria left Stercus cold. He had written at least a score of letters to King Numedides and to everyone else in Tarantia who might have had influence with the King of Aquilonia, all of them requesting, pleading—begging—that he be recalled to a civilized country once more.

Even' one of those letters had fallen on deaf ears. Oh, through one of his secretaries Numedides had replied, but only to say that, as Stercus had done such a fine job in the north up to this time, who better to continue to oversee the growth of the Aquilonian settlements there? Count Stercus would not soon see civilization again.

For a little while longer, his sport with Ugaine sufficed to amuse him, to distract him. But the Cimmerian girl was not exactly what he wanted, and for Stercus anything that was not exactly what he wanted soon became something he wanted not at all. When he tired of Ugaine, he sent her back to her home village, though she protested he did her no favors by returning her.

In that, she was mistaken. Fortunately for her, she did not know and never learned how mistaken she was. There were reasons, good reasons, why Stercus had been sent beyond the Aquilonian frontier, why he was unlikely ever to be welcome in Tarantia or even some provincial town of Aquilonia ever again. It was not least because he still so vividly recalled the reasons for his exile that the nobleman had sent Ugaine to Rosinish instead of adding further to his remarkable reputation. Then, too, the girl was already too old to be altogether satisfying or satisfactory.

After he banished her from Venarium, he spent some little while brooding: even if she was not exactly what he had had in mind, had she not come close enough? By the time he began to wonder, it was too late for such worries anyhow, since he had already sent her away- And, in any case, he decided he had been right all along. He wanted what he wanted, no less. Some imperfect substitute simply was not good enough.

Having sent Ugaine back to barbarism, Stercus tried throwing himself into the administration of the lands his soldiers had seized from the Cimmerians. For a few weeks, a stream of directives flew from his pen to the garrison commanders in the conquered territory and to the leaders of the colonists. Then that burst of activity also slackened. The colonists were busy turning their new farms and settlements into going concerns. The officers knew enough to keep their men alert and well fed and healthy without Stercus' telling them to do so. Some of them sent back letters saying as much in very blunt terms.

Count Stercus was no trained, professional soldier, though like any Aquilonian noble he was expected to know enough of the military art to help defend the kingdom in case of invasion. Trained or not, however, he was King Numedides' chosen commander in this gods-forsaken part of the world, however little that delighted him. If he chose to ride forth on an inspection tour to investigate whether the garrison commanders were doing all they said they were to keep the countryside safe, who could gainsay him? No one.

And if, on that tour, he chose to inspect and investigate certain other matters, certain more personal matters — again, who could gainsay him? Again, no one. No one at all.

Granth son of Biemur was taking his turn at sentry-go at the Aquilonian encampment outside of Duthil. Everything there was quiet, which suited him down to the ground. If the barbarians got used to the idea that they had been beaten, they were less likely to shoot a man from ambush or sneak up behind him and slit his throat.

Also, the weather was such that Granth found standing sentry no hardship, as he had during the long, hard winter. The sunshine that poured down on him was watery, but it was sunshine nonetheless: here in Cimmeria, something to be cherished. He tilted his helm back on his head to bask in it as best he could.

"You think you'll be handsome when you're tan?" said Vulth. "I'm here to tell you, forget about that. You'll just be ugly and tan."

Granth glowered at his cousin. "You mean, like you?"

After that, it was Vulth's turn to scowl. The two Bossonian bowmen with whom they shared the watch snickered. Benno said, "We haven't fought the Cimmerians for a while, so you two want to have a go at each other."

Before Granth could come up with something suitably crushing—with luck, something that insulted both Benno and Vulth, and maybe Daverio as well —the sound of hoofbeats distracted him. A horseman emerged from the woods to the south and trotted toward the encampment. The horse was a big Aquilonian destrier, not one of the shaggy local ponies that often seemed too small for their big-boned Cimmerian riders.

Eyeing the charger made him slow to give heed to the man aboard it. When he did, he frantically stiffened to attention. "Heads up, you dogs!" he hissed to his cousin and the Bossonians. "That's Count Stercus, or I'm a black Kushite!"

Vulth and the bowmen almost did themselves an injury by straightening up while at the same time pretending they had never slouched. Count Stercus' pale, nearly handsome face was unreadable as he reined in. But he did not call the pike-men and archers to account. Instead, pointing toward the Cimmerian village ahead, he asked, "That is the place called Duthil, is it not so?"

Vulth was the senior sentry. "Yes, your Grace, it is," he replied, looking as if he wished someone else could speak for him.

That Stercus' eyes were set too close together only made his stare the more piercing. Granth felt glad all the way down to his boots that that stare was not aimed at him. Vulth had done nothing wrong, and had spoken with all respect due Stercus' rank. Even so, Stercus seemed to be sharpening knives for Granth's cousin in his mind.

Yet the Aquilonian nobleman's words were mild enough: "Be so good as to let your commander know I am riding into that village. I aim to know in full the lands we have taken for King Numedides, and everyone in them." The way he said "everyone" made Granth want to hide. Stercus continued, "If by some mischance I do not ride out of Duthil, avenge me in full upon the barbarians." He urged his horse forward. Saddle trappings clinking and clattering, it trotted on toward the Cimmerian village.

"Mitra!" exploded Vulth once Stercus had ridden out of earshot. "He chills the marrow in your bones."

"As long as he chills the Cimmerians worse," said Granth.

"Ah, no." Daverio slyly shook his head. "He wants to warm the Cimmerians up. Or do you forget the native wench he had for himself down at Fort Venarium?"

"I remember her," said Granth. "She was no wench, only a chit of a girl. And he did not let her wear enough in the way of clothes to stay warm."

The Bossonian shook his head again and laughed. "Are you really so young and innocent? There is warm, and then there is warm." He stuck his elbow in Granth's ribs and leered. "You know what I mean, eh?"

"I know what you mean," growled Granth. "And I know if you poke me again, I'll wrap your damned bowstring around your neck."

"I'm not afraid," said Daverio, bristling.

"Enough, both of you," said Vulth. "You don't want to quarrel while Stercus is around. If he catches you at it, he'll string you up by the thumbs and roast you over a slow fire — and that's if he doesn't decide to do something really juicy instead."

Granth watched the Aquilonian commander ride into Duthil. He breathed a sigh of relief when the first Cimmerian huts hid Count Stercus from view. If he could not see Stercus, Stercus could not see him, either. He wished the commander were back in Fort Venarium, but simply having him out of sight would do for now.

Conan ran like the wind after the ball, his mane of coal-black hair streaming out behind him. The ball was stuffed with rags and covered with scraps of old leather begged or stolen from here and there and then erratically stitched together by the boys of Duthil. If they wanted to play games, they had to make their own arrangements. They had to —and they did.

Another lad kicked the ball up the street just before Conan got to it. Conan lowered his shoulder and knocked the other boy sprawling in the mud. The boy was on his feet and running again a heartbeat later. If he could pay Conan back, he would. Conan's clothes were already muddy, but not so muddy as those of the other boys in the game. With his size and strength and speed, it usually took at least two of them to knock him down.

He effortlessly outsped the boy he had flattened. Girls and women and a few men stood in doorways, watching the sport. Sometimes the men would rush into the game, too. Then it would get very rough. Conan waved to Tarla as he sprinted past Balarg's house. He thought she waved back—oh, how he hoped she waved back—but she blurred past before he could be sure.

Two boys between him and the ball. Instead of going after it himself, the closer boy tried to block Conan. Conan might have feinted one way and dodged the other. He might simply have slipped past. Instead, without breaking stride, he smashed into the other boy chest to chest. With a startled yelp of dismay, his foe went flying. Conan ran on.

"Oh, nicely done!" called someone from behind him. Was that Tarla's voice? He thought so. He hoped so. But he did not look back. Instead, he ran harder than ever.

He bore down on the ball with such ferocity that the last boy who was nearer to it dove out of the way to keep from being trampled. Conan guided the ball forward with the side of his foot. One more boy stood between him and the goal, which was no more than the space between two rocks plopped down in the mud of the street. The boy set himself, but his face said he had no hope of stopping the hurtling missile that would momentarily fly his way.

And yet the goal was never scored. In the same instant as Conan drew back his foot for the last kick, a rider on horseback trotted into Duthil: a rider on a horse so astonishing, the blacksmith's son skidded to a stop and simply stared, all but unable to believe his eyes.

Horses in Cimmeria were few and far between. This great snorting monster was almost man-high at the shoulder, which put its rider high as a god above the ground. That rider stared down at Conan from an elevation even his tall father had been unable to match since the boy was much younger.

The Aquilonian horseman had a long, pale, big-nosed face with a receding chin partly concealed by a thin fringe of beard and with eyes set too close together. When he spoke, he startled Conan by using Cimmerian: "Get out of my way, boy."

He urged the horse forward. Oman's surprise and that huge beast bearing down on him made him jump aside. Had he not, the Aquilonian would have ridden him down. He was as sure of that as of his own name. Even so, shame at giving way brought fire to his cheeks. He hurried after the rider— the knight, Aquilonians called such armored horsemen —and spoke in the invaders' language: "Who are you? What you do here?"

Hearing Aquilonian made the man on horseback rein in. He gave Conan a second glance —gave him, in fact, what was almost a first glance, for he had paid him little heed up until then. "I am Count Stercus, commander of all the Aquilonians in Cimmeria, and I have come to see how the village of Duthil prospers under the rule of the great and good King Numedides," he answered, and paused to find out whether Conan understood. Conan did—well enough, anyhow. Seeing as much, Stercus asked, "And who are you, and how did you learn this speech?"

"Conan, son of Mordec the blacksmith." To Conan, his father's trade was at least as important as Stercus' noble blood. With a shrug, he went on, "How I learn? I hear, I listen, I talk. How you learn Cimmerian?"

A civilized man, even a civilized boy, would have known better than to challenge thus the leader of the host that had subjected his folk, but Conan was familiar with only the rude frankness of the barbarian. And his candor seemed to amuse Count Stercus, whose smile illuminated every part of his face but those dark, fathomless eyes. "How do I learn?" he echoed in Cimmerian considerably more fluent than Conan's all but grammarless Aquilonian. "I also hear and listen and speak. And I have had most excellent, most lovely, most charming teachers. You may be sure of that."

Although Conan was anything but sure of precisely what Stercus meant, he did get the feeling hidden meanings lurked in the Aquilonian's words. That in itself was plenty to rouse his easily kindled temper: why could the man not come straight out and say whatever was in his mind? Roughly, Conan asked, "When are you people going to leave Cimmeria? This not your country."

Again, that was forthrightness no civilized man would have shown. Again, it but amused Stercus, who threw back his head and laughed uproariously. "Leave, boy? We shall never leave. I told you, this is King Numedides' land now."

He rode down the street; his horse's hooves, almost as big as dinner plates, clopped and squelched through the mud.

Conan spied a fist-sized stone near a house. He could take it and hurl it and perhaps lay even an armored man low with it—but what if he did? The soldiers in the encampment outside of Duthil would wreak a fearful vengeance, and his own people lacked the warriors to hope to withstand them. Hate smoldering in his heart, Conan followed Stercus.

The Aquilonian continued along the street at a slow walk, an expression of disdain on his face. None of the other boys who had been kicking the ball dared impede him, even for a moment. Conan stayed close to Stercus until the knight reined in once more, in front of the home of Balarg the weaver.

He bowed in the saddle there, something Conan had not only never seen but never imagined. "Hello, my pretty," he murmured in Cimmerian suddenly sweet as honey. "What is your name?"

"Tarla," answered the girl still standing in the doorway. She stared at the horse, too, and stared even more at the man atop it.

"Tarla," repeated Count Stercus. In his mouth, it might have been a caress. "What a lovely name."

Conan discovered he had only thought he hated the Aquilonian nobleman. Now, with jealousy tearing at him like acid venom, he would gladly have stuffed Stercus into his father's forge and worked the bellows for a hotter fire with a will he had never shown while helping Mordec to forge a sword or an andiron.

Tarla murmured in confusion and what was obviously pleasure. No one in the rude village of Duthil had ever paid her such a compliment before. Conan knew too well he had not, and wondered why. The answer was not hard to find: he had no more imagined such candied words than he had a bow from horseback. What the folk who had it called civilization knew wiles subtler and more clinging and perhaps more deadly than a spider's web.

With another seated bow, Stercus continued, "I had not looked for so fair a flower in these parts, even in springtime. I must come back again soon, to see how you bloom."

Tarla murmured again, in even more confusion. Stercus urged his horse forward. As he rode on through Duthil, he turned and waved to the weaver's daughter. Tarla started to raise her hand to return the gesture. A panther might have sunk its fangs into Conan's vitals. Tarla let her hand fall without completing the gesture, but that she had so much as begun it was a lash of scorpions to the blacksmith's son. He watched Stercus leave the village. That the Aquilonian commander failed to fall over dead proved beyond any possible doubt that looks do not, cannot, kill.

One of the slightly younger boys, to whom the byplay between Stercus and Tarla had meant nothing, kicked the ball again. It spun straight past Conan, but he heeded it not. With Stercus gone, his gaze had returned to Tarla's. He had had his share —perhaps more than his share—of a youth's half-formed longings for a maid, and had dared hope Tarla harbored half-formed longings for him as well. But Count Stercus had crashed in upon his dreams like a stone crashing into an earthenware jug. Stercus' longings were anything but half-formed; the Aquilonian knew exactly what he wanted — and, very plainly, how to go about getting it.

"That is a foreign dog," snarled Conan.

Had Tarla been truly ensnared by Stercus, that outburst against him would have cost Conan the game on the spot. As things were, she shook herself like someone coming out of deep water. She nodded, but said, "No doubt he is. Still, he speaks very gently, doesn't he?"

Conan had no answer to that, or none that would not have involved the vilest curses he knew. From across the street, though, a gray-haired woman called, "Why should he speak a young girl so fair, with him a man full grown?"

Another woman said, "You know why as well as I do, Gruoch." They both cackled — there was no other word for it.

The shrill sound filled Conan with almost as much horror as Count Stercus' irruption into Duthil had done. Tarla's cheeks went red as ripe apples. That horrified Conan, too. The weaver's daughter drew back into her house, closing the door behind her. Her embarrassment only made the women cackle more. Conan had not fled from serpent or wolves or Aquilonian knight. The women of his own village were another matter. They went on laughing and clucking, hardly noticing his retreat.

His father was sharpening a knifeblade against the grinding wheel when Conan came into the smithy. Sparks flew from the edge of the blade. Without looking away from what he was doing, Mordec said, "I'm glad you're back, son. We've got some firewood behind the house that needs chopping."

Firewood was the furthest thing from Conan's mind. "We have to slay all the damned Aquilonians who've come into our land!" he burst out.

"I expect we'll do our best one of these days." Now Mordec did lift the blade away from the grinding wheel. He also stopped pumping the foot pedal, so the wheel groaned to a stop. Eyeing Conan, he asked, "And what has set you to eating raw meat and breathing fire like a dragon from out of the trackless north?"

"Didn't you see him, Father?" demanded Conan in angry amazement. "Didn't you see that cursed Count Stercus ride past our doorway?"

Mordec's gaze narrowed and sharpened. "I saw an Aquilonian knight go by, yes. Do you mean to tell me that was their commander?"

Conan nodded. "I do. It was."

His father scowled. "I hope you did not make him notice you. Remember, even the Aquilonian captain at the camp nearby warned us against this man."

"He knows I speak a little of his language. Past that, no," said Conan.

"I do not suppose that will put you in any particular danger," said Mordec. "A few of use have learned some Aquilonian, and some of the invaders can speak a bit of Cimmerian now."

"This Stercus does —more than a bit, in fact. He knows it well," said Conan.

"I am not sure this is good news," said his father. "Those people commonly use our tongue when they want to take something from us."

"He spoke— " The words did not want to come after that, but Conan forced them out one by one: "He spoke to the weaver's daughter." He did not wish to name Tarla. If he did not, he would not need to admit, either to himself or to his father, that he cared more about her than he might have about some other girl in Duthil.

"Did he, by Crom?" said his father, and his scowl got deeper. By the way he looked at Conan, what the boy felt was no secret to him. After a moment, Mordec went on, "If Stercus spoke to Tarla, I am going to have to speak to Balarg. That man has made a name for debauching young girls — though despite what Captain Treviranus said I did not think his gaze would light on one so young as she. But who can know? Once a man goes into the swamp, is he not likely to mire himself ever deeper?"

Conan did not follow all of that. He had only the vaguest notion of what debauching meant. All he knew was that he had not liked the way the Aquilonian looked at Tarla, and had liked the way Stercus spoke to her even less. He said, "Do you think Balarg will make her stay away from him?"

"I hope so," answered Mordec. "I would, were she my daughter. Still, Balarg is a free man—or as free a man as any of us can be, living under Numedides' yoke. He must choose for himself. To choose well, he must know the truth." He looked down at the knife blade he had laid on the frame of the wheel. It still needed more work. Even so, shrugging, he went down the street toward the weaver's house.

He came back in less than half an hour. To Conan, the wait had seemed like an eternity. "Well?" asked the boy eagerly.

"He says he will do what he can," answered Mordec. "I do not know just what this means. I do not think Balarg knows, either. He cannot keep Tarla inside his house all day and all night. She was work to do, like anyone else in Duthil."

Had Conan had his way, he would have had Balarg wrap Tarla in a blanket and stick her in a storeroom so Stercus' eye could never fall on her again. Or would he? If she were hidden away like that, his own eye could never fall on her again, either. In murky, misty Cimmeria, he spied the sun seldom enough as things were. Losing sight of Tarla would be like having it torn from the sky.

Mordec set a large, hard hand on his shoulder. "We may be fretting over nothing," the blacksmith said. "Tomorrow, Stercus may find another girl in a different village, or even some Aquilonian wench, and trouble us no more."

"If he troubles Tarla, I will kill him myself," said Conan fiercely.

"If he troubles Tarla, every man in the village will want to kill him," said Mordec. "If you see clearly he has come for that—strike quick, or someone else will snatch the prize from you."

"If he comes for that," said Conan, "he is mine."

Whenever Conan went into the woods to hunt these days, whenever he loosed an arrow, he imagined he was aiming at Count Stercus' neatly bearded face. Imagining the shaft going home in the narrow space between the Aquilonian's dark eyes made him send it with special care.

Songbirds twittered on the branches of firs and pines and spruces. Here and there in the forest, Conan had smeared birdlime on some of those branches. He hoped for grouse, but would take whatever he caught. Food was food; he approached hunting with a barbarian's complete pragmatism and lack of sentimentality.

He had not called on Melcer's farm since Stercus rode through Duthil. He did not care to admit, even to himself, that he had formed something of a liking for the Gunderman; the mere idea of liking any of the invaders was abhorrent to him. But it took Stercus' visit to the village to remind him that there could be, there should be, no meeting between those who had come into Cimmeria and those who rightfully belonged here. In his own country, Melcer would have been a good enough fellow. In Conan's country, what was he but a marauder and a thief?

Conan was gliding through the forest, not on a game track but not far from one, either, when he heard a twig snap on the track a hundred yards behind him. In an instant, he silently slipped behind the bole of a great, towering fir. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot. Deer were not usually so careless as to announce themselves.

A moment's listening convinced him that this was no deer. It was no Cimmerian, either; no one from Conan's people could possibly have been so inept among the trees. The blacksmith's son grinned a wide and ferocious grin. What better sport than tracking one of the Aquilonians through the forest? Actually, Conan could think of one better: tracking the Aquilonian and then slaying him. But his father had forbidden that, and no doubt wisely, for it would cost the folk of Duthil dear.

Through gaps in the trees, Conan soon saw who the blunderer was —a squat, heavyset Gunderman named Hondren. Conan's lip curled scornfully. He did not care for Hondren, and had trouble thinking of anyone who could. The soldier roared and cursed whenever he came into Duthil, and had been known to cuff boys out of his path when they did not step aside fast enough to suit him. He had not tried cuffing Conan, but Conan had never got in his way, either. Trailing him, dogging him, would be a pleasure.

On through the woods Hondren stumbled. Of course he found nothing worth pursuing; he could hardly have spread a better warning of his presence had he gone along the trail beating a drum. Conan followed, quiet as a shadow.

For most of an hour, Conan had all he could do not to laugh out loud at Hondren's blundering. He could have shot the Gunderman a hundred different times, and Hondren would have died never knowing why, or who had slain him. He had to work hard to remember his village would suffer if anything befell this miserable lump of a man.

Hondren began cursing ever louder and more foully at his lack of luck. That his own incompetence had brought that bad fortune never seemed to have crossed his mind. Conan got bored with trailing him through the forest and began showing himself. He wondered how long Hondren would take to notice him. The Gunderman needed even longer than he had expected.

At last, though, Hondren realized he was not alone in the woods. "Who's there?" he growled. "Come out, you dog, or you'll be sorry."

Out Conan came, laughing. "You not catch anything?" he jeered in his bad Aquilonian.

"No, by Mitra, I didn't catch anything." Fury on his face, Hondren advanced on the young Cimmerian. "And now I know why, too: I had a stinking barbarian close by, scaring off the game."

Conan laughed louder than ever. "I not scare game. I follow you long time. You scare plenty all by self."

"Liar!" Hondren slapped him in the face, as he might have done with a small boy on the main street in Duthil.

But they were far from the main street in Duthil, and Conan, though a boy, was far from small. His ears rang from the blow. It did not cow him, though—far from it. Red rage ripped through him. He struck back with all his strength, not with a slap but with his closed fist. Hondren's head snapped back. Blood spurted from his nose. He blinked, clearing his senses. A slow, vicious smile spread over his face.

"You'll pay for that, swine," he said, gloating anticipation in his voice. He flung himself at Conan and bore him to the ground by weight and momentum.

The blacksmith's son knew at once that Hondren did not merely seek to punish him for presuming to answer one blow with another. The Gunderman wanted his life, and would take it unless he lost his own. Hondren's hands, hard as horn, sought his throat. Conan tucked his chin down against his chest to keep his enemy from gaining the grip he wanted.

A knee to the belly made the Gunderman grunt. But Hondren was still stronger and, most of all, heavier than Conan, who had not yet got all the inches or thews that would one day be his. Hondren dealt out a savage buffet that made Conan's senses spin, and his weight was a dreadful burden that seemed as if it would crush the life from the Cimmerian even if his foe failed to find the stranglehold he sought.

Scrabbling wildly and more than a little desperately, Conan felt his hand close on a rock that fit it nicely. In a mad paroxysm of fury, he tore the stone from the ground and brought it smashing down on the back of Hondren's head. The Gunderman's eyes opened very wide. A shudder ran through his body; his hands lost their cunning and ferocity. With a savage cry of triumph, Conan struck again, and then again and again, until blood poured onto him from Hondren's torn scalp and smashed skull, and until the man from the south stopped moving altogether.

After making sure Hondren was dead, Conan stood a little while in thought. If the deed were traced to him, ten from Duthil would die. But if Hondren were to vanish in the forest—who could say for certain what had befallen him?

Decision came on the instant. Conan took hold of the Gunderman's boots and dragged his corpse to a stream that chuckled through the woods less than a hundred yards away. Before pushing the body into the stream, he went back and carefully erased every sign of its passage from the place where he and Hondren had fought to the streambank. By the time he was finished, he doubted even a Cimmerian hunter could have traced what he had done. From everything he had seen, the Aquilonians were far less woodswise than his own folk.

He stuffed stones into Hondren's breeches and tunic, to make sure the corpse did not rise once decay set in. Although he pushed it into the stream at the deepest point he could find, less than a yard of water covered it —not enough to suit him. An alert searcher might spy it, no matter how shadowed by tall trees its final resting place was. He gathered more stones, these larger and heavier, and set them on the body to weight it down and to break up its outline and make it harder to see. That done, he used moss and branches and pine needles to disguise the places from which he had taken the stones. Someone who knew the streambank well might notice something had changed; someone seeing it for the first time would spy nothing out of the ordinary.

By the time he finished his work, he was soaked from head to foot. That gave him yet another idea: he pulled his tunic off over his head and scrubbed it in the stream, cold water being best for taking bloodstains out of cloth. Having taken care of that last detail, he went on with the hunt.

Mordec looked up from his work when Conan came into the smithy carrying a brace of grouse and some songbirds. "Those will be tasty," said the blacksmith, and then he took a closer look at his son. "What happened to you? You're all wet."

"I—fell in a stream," answered Conan.

Hearing his hesitation, Mordec advanced on him, hammer still in hand. "What happened to you?" he repeated, ominous thunder in his voice. "The truth this time, or you'll be sorry." He hefted the heavy hammer to show how sorry Conan might be.

His son did not flinch from the weapon. Looking Mordec in the eye, he said, "I killed a man in the woods."

"Crom!" exclaimed Mordec; whatever response he had expected, that was not it. Gathering himself, he asked, "Was he a man of this village, or a stranger from some other place? Will the blood feud take in our family alone, or all of Duthil?"

"He was an Aquilonian," said Conan: "that brute called Hondren."

"Crom!" repeated Mordec; surprises were coming too fast to suit him. He knew the man his son meant, and knew he was indeed a brute. But he also knew of the warning the invaders had laid down. If one of their men was murdered, ten Cimmerians were to escort his spirit out of the world. "Tell me what passed. Tell me all of it. Leave out nothing-nothing, do you hear?"

"Aye, Father." Conan did: a bald, straightforward account. He finished, "The lich is hidden as well as I could hide it. In the forest, the Aquilonians are all fumblefingered fools. I do not think they will come across it. They will decide he had a mishap in the woods— and so he did." Savage pride filled his voice.

Without hesitation, Mordec knocked him down. When he got up, the blacksmith flattened him again. Afterwards, Mordec helped him to his feet. "That was to remind you the Aquilonians will decide Hondren had a mishap in the woods —if you do not brag of what you did. It is a brave and bold thing, a boy beating a warrior trained. But it is your life and nine more if you ever breathe a word of it. Silence, or you die! This is no game. Do you understand?"

"I do, Father." Conan shook his head to clear it; Mordec had not held back with either blow. "You have a hard hand with your lessons."

"And you have a thick skull to drive them through," said the blacksmith with rough affection. "I have to make sure they get home."

"I'll keep quiet," said Conan. "I know what I did. I don't have to shout it in the street—I'm not Balarg."

Mordec threw back his head and laughed. That was his opinion of the weaver, too, although Balarg, no doubt, also had a low opinion of him. Their rivalry did not keep them from working together when they had to. Since the coming of the Aquilonians, they had to ever more often.

But laughter quickly faded. Setting a hand on his son's shoulder, Mordec said, "You did well, son, as well as you could once he attacked you. Now we hope all the invaders are as woodsblind as you say. I think they may be." Even saying that, though, he wished Crom were the sort of god who hearkened to his worshipers' prayers.