Conan of Venarium

Chapter Eight The Wandering Seer

As spring passed into summer, Mordec at last began to believe the Aquilonians would not take revenge on Duthil for Hondren's disappearance, and that Conan had hidden the soldier's body well enough to foil detection. He had not thought that Captain Treviranus would seize hostages and slay them without good reason; the commander of the local garrison impressed him as a decent enough fellow within the limits of his position and situation. But Count Stercus — Count Stercus was a different story. Whenever Mordec saw the Aquilonian commander, he thought of a serpent, and serpents were all too likely to strike without warning.

And Mordec saw Stercus far more often than he wished he would. The Aquilonian nobleman kept riding into Duthil on one pretext or another. And, whenever he came into the village, he always made a point of seeing, or of trying to see, Balarg's daughter Tarla.

After three or four such visits, there could be little doubt of Stercus' intentions. Conan, in his jealous rage, had seen through them from the first. Mordec was loath to believe that his son could be right, that the Aquilonian had conceived an unhealthy passion for a girl so young. When the blacksmith could no longer escape the truth, the hatred he conceived for Stercus, though colder than Conan's, was no less savage. He wanted to crush King Numedides' governor under the sole of his boot, to wipe him off the face of the earth. And what was worst of all was that Stercus behaved so smoothly, he gave no provable cause for offense, no matter how plain he made his interest in Tarla. Worse still, she seemed as much flattered as repelled by it; Mordec wondered if she were using the Aquilonian nobleman to lacerate Conan's feelings.

He soon discovered he was far from alone in his reaction to Stercus, for the Gundermen and Bossonians of the nearby garrison loved the count hardly better than did he. Nor were they shy about saying so over a stoup of ale at the smithy.

"Oh, aye, he's a piece of work, he is," declared one of them with drunken sincerity. "Ready for aught —if it's pretty and not quite ripe."

"Why put up with such a man?" asked Mordec. "In Cimmeria, he would not last long. His first crime would be his last."

The Gunderman stared at him owlishly. "You haven't got noblemen in Cimmeria, have you?"

"Noblemen?" Mordec shook his head. "We have clan chiefs, but a man is a chief because of what he has done, not because of what his great-great-grandfather did."

"I thought so. That explains it," said the Gunderman. "We put up with bad nobles, you see, for the sake of good nobles—and there are some. If you know who's on top right from the start, you don't need to fight about it all the time. You can get on with the rest of your business."

That made more sense than Mordec wished it did. Tiny, pointless wars between clans or, even more often, within clans had plagued Cimmeria for centuries uncounted. What Cimmerian would ever admit he was any other man's inferior? Not even the edge of a sword against his throat was sure to make him say such a craven thing; he was as likely to lash out against the swordbearer, conquer or die. Mordec wondered whether the invaders from the south fully grasped the difference between their land and the one in which they now found themselves. He doubted it. Getting on with the rest of your business had never been a great worry in Cimmeria.

"Besides," added the Gunderman, "who knows what we'd get for a commander if we did knock Stercus over the head? No matter what else you say about him, he's a brave fighter. We might be stuck with some other fellow in bad odor with the King who'd run away if a hawfinch chirped at him."

"I thought you spoke of good nobles," said Mordec.

"I did, and there are," said the soldier, draining his mug. Mordec poured it full again. "I thank you," the Gunderman told him. "There are plenty of good nobles —in places like Tarantia. But you'll not see many of that sort here, by Mitra. A man comes to a place like this without a reputation or at best to try to repair one. If his is already good, he can do better."

Had he spoken with contempt, he would have infuriated Mordec. But he did not: he simply told the blacksmith how he saw the world. Mordec judged that worth knowing. He did not believe any of the Aquilonians cared to learn how the folk whose lands they had invaded looked at them. Learning such a thing would have proved instructive for the men from the south, had they attempted it.

The Gunderman heaved himself to his feet. "I'd best get back to the camp," he said. "I thank you again for your ale and for your company. You're a good Cimmerian, you are." Off he went, wobbling slightly as he walked.

He might have called Mordec a good dog in the same tone of voice. The blacksmith's great, hard hands folded into fists. "A good Cimmerian, am I?" he whispered. "One of these days, you will see how good I am."

Conan spent as much time as he could either in his father's smithy or in the forests far from Duthil. If he did not wander the now dusty, now muddy streets of the village, he ran no risk of bumping into Tarla —and he did not have to see Count Stercus coming to Balarg's house for yet another visit. Conan would cheerfully have murdered the Aquilonian noble. Fear of Stercus' armor and weapons deterred him not at all. Not even the fear of his father held him back, for he sensed Mordec would not have minded in the least seeing Stercus stretched lifeless and bleeding in the dirt. Only fear of what the invaders would do to Duthil in reprisal stayed his hand.

Even' so often, while pumping the bellows or changing a quenching bath or doing such other work as his father set him, he would see Count Stercus riding past. Then he wanted nothing more than to take up Mordec's heaviest hammer and smash Stercus' skull as he had broken Hondren's. When his father let him shape simple tools, he pounded at them in a perfect passion of fury.

Escaping Duthil altogether suited him better. Then he did not have to boil with rage at spying Stercus or flinch with mortification and jealousy whenever he set eyes on the weaver's daughter. In the woods he saw no one, spoke to no one. And if he looked back on his last unfortunate conversation with Tarla and wished that conversation might have gone otherwise —if he did that out there among the pines and fragrant spruces, who but he would know?

He perched on a great gray granite boulder one noon, eating a frugal lunch of oatcakes and cheese, when a man said, "Might I share somewhat of that?"

Conan started. He had neither seen nor heard the stranger approach, a fact that should have been impossible. His hand closed round the shaft of a javelin he had plunged into the ground by the boulder. "Who are you?" he demanded roughly. "What do you want?"

"My name is mere rubbish. If you would have it, though, it is Rhiderch." The stranger bowed. "A wandering seer, I." He bowed again. He looked the part. He was about sixty, his hair gone gray, his beard —nearly white —reaching halfway down his chest. His garments were of colorless homespun set off by a necklace and bracelets of honey-gold amber. "As for what I want, well, after far travel a bite of food is welcome."

"Share what I have, then," said Conan, and gave him some of the oatcakes and half the chunk of cheese. The old man ate with good appetite. Conan watched him for a while, then burst out, "How did you come upon me without my being the wiser? By Crom, you could have slit my throat and taken everything I had, and I would not have known you were there until too late."

Rhiderch's eyes, gray as the granite upon which Conan sat, twinkled. "I am no robber, lad. I seek what's free-given, and thank you for your kindness."

"You did not answer me. How did you come upon me unawares? I thought no wolf nor panther could do the like, let alone a man."

The seer chuckled. "There are ways, lad. Indeed there are. I know but the minor mysteries. Many others are wiser by far."

"Teach me!" said Conan.

At that, the laughter faded from Rhiderch's face. Now he had come upon something he took seriously. "Why, perhaps I shall, if it be your fate to learn such things. Give me your hand, that I may learn whether it is permitted me."

Conan held it out. Rhiderch clasped it in his own. The two hands were a study in contrasts: Conan's square and scarred and callused, with short, grimy nails on thick, strong fingers; Rhiderch's long and thin and pale and spidery, his palm narrow, his fingernails fastidiously groomed. Conan had seen palm readers before, but Rhiderch did not examine the lines on his hand. Instead, the seer closed his eyes and murmured a charm in a language whose cadences were like those of Cimmerian but which the blacksmith's son could not understand.

Suddenly and without warning, Rhiderch's hand closed tight on Conan's. At the same time, the seer's eyes opened very wide. Thinking it a trial of strength, Conan squeezed back as hard as he could. He was twice as thick through the shoulders and arms as the scrawny Rhiderch. But, for all the impression his grip made on the long-bearded wanderer, he might as well not have bothered responding to what he took to be the challenge. Rhiderch's hand clenched tighter and tighter, at last with crushing force.

As abruptly as the seer had begun to squeeze, he relaxed the pressure. Sweat poured down his forehead and cheeks; a drop dangled at the end of his long, pointed nose. He swiped a sleeve across his face. "Crom!" he muttered: the ejaculation of a man shaken to the core.

"Well?" demanded Conan. "Am I fit to learn your tricks for sliding through the trees without a sound?"

"You are fit for— " Rhiderch broke off and mopped his brow again. "What you are fit for, son of Mordec, is more than I can say. Never have I seen — " He stopped once more, shaking his head. "Truly, I wonder whether I read you aright."

"How do you know my father's name?" asked Conan, for he was sure he had not spoken it.

"I know a good many things," said Rhiderch, but after a moment he shivered, though the day was mild. "One of the things I know is that yours is the strangest destiny of any ever to come into my ken."

"How so?" asked Conan, but the seer would not answer him. He tried a different question: "If you saw my destiny, did you see the Aquilonian called Stercus in it?" He did not say that Stercus commanded the Aquilonians in Cimmeria; this, from him, passed for cleverness and caution.

Rhiderch looked at him —looked through him. "Speak not of slicing saplings when the tall tree towers. Speak not of slaying sparrows when the hawk hovers."

"I spoke of slicing nothing. I spoke of slaying no one." Conan knew some of his countrymen collaborated with the invaders. He could not fathom it, but he knew it to be true. He would not admit his lust for Stercus' gore to a man he had not met before this moment.

But what he admitted, what he denied, seemed to mean nothing to Rhiderch. "Your mouth spoke no words," said the seer. "Your spirit cried aloud —though the greater cry all but drowned the smaller."

"Will you speak sense?" asked Conan testily. "All your words go round and round, reflecting back on one another with no meaning left behind."

"If you will not hear, you shall surely see." Rhiderch remained cryptic. "Like a migrating bird, your fate flies high and far. Where you will end your days, and in what estate, I cannot say, but no Cimmerian's weird is stranger."

"Lies and foolishness. You make me sorry I fed you instead of driving you away," said Conan.

He hoped to anger Rhiderch, but the seer only smiled. "No mean feat for me, for few will ever make you sorry for anything you do."

That did it. Anger sparked in the blacksmith's son. "Get you gone," he growled. "Get you gone, or I shall not answer for what will come next." Now he reached for the javelin he always kept close at hand.

"As you say it, so shall it be." Rhiderch vanished with the same unnerving speed and silence he had used in appearing. One instant, he stood beside Conan; the next, the blacksmith's son might have been — was — alone on his boulder.

Too late, Conan remembered that he had wanted Rhiderch to teach him that trick of silent appearances and disappearances. "Come back!" he shouted. "Come back, you stinking old fraud!" But Rhiderch, however obscure he might have been, was no fraud, not in the way Conan meant it. He did not come back, nor did Conan ever ask him about it again — and if the young Cimmerian ever mastered the art of silently and unexpectedly entering or leaving a scene, as many in times to come were to find he had done, he did it by himself and on his own.

For the time being, Conan sat there muttering curses and regretting the waste of the oatcakes and cheese. They could have kept him well fed for another meal out here in the woods, which meant they could have kept him away from Duthil for another half a day, maybe longer. Away from Duthil, and especially away from Balarg's house, was where he most longed to be.

But later that day he knocked down a stag. It was perhaps the cleanest kill he had ever made: his arrow pierced the stag's heart, and the animal fell over dead after only a handful of stumbling steps. Conan wanted to roar in triumph like a great hunting cat. Only the knowledge that such a cry would surely draw scavengers, whether of the two-legged or four-legged sort, held him back.

Still, to the hunter went the rewards. Conan kindled a small, almost smokeless fire and roasted the stag's kidneys and mountain oysters and slices of its liver over the flames. Eaten with mushrooms he found nearby and washed down with pure, cold water from a chuckling brook, the repast was as fine as any he had ever enjoyed. He buried the offal and wedged the rest of the meat, wrapped in the deer's hide, in the crutch of two branches, too high up for wolves to reach. He slept nearby; also up a tree.

Waking before sunrise the next morning, he hurried back to the pine where he had secured the meat. He found wolf tracks in the soft ground by the base of the tree and claw marks in the bark on the tree trunk as high as his head. The beasts had done all they could to despoil him, but their best had not been good enough.

After starting up the fire again, he breakfasted on more liver and a chunk of the stag's heart. He wished he could keep the rest of the meat fresh longer. Since he could not, he put the remainder of the carcass on his back and started off to Duthil.

Count Stercus rode out of Fort Venarium and through the brawling streets of the little town that had come to bear the same name. Many Aquilonians took the existence of the town of Venarium to mean that civilization had come to southern Cimmeria. To Stercus' way of thinking, by contrast, the town of Venarium was proof that civilization would never come here.

He escaped the smells and the clamor of the place with a sigh of relief. Once out in the countryside, he was at least in territory honestly barbarous: Venarium wore a tawdry mask and aped its betters. He tried to imagine King Numedides or some other truly cultured man finding pleasure here on the wild frontier, tried and felt himself failing. A truly sophisticated taste would recoil in horror from what was available hereabouts.

"But even so—" murmured Stercus, and urged his horse up from a walk to a trot. Some of the raw material to be found here, though often very raw indeed, did hold a certain promise. That girl in that stinking Cimmerian village might prove very enjoyable indeed, once he broke her to his will — and breaking her would be enjoyable, too, in its way.

He wondered if he simply ought to take her back to the fortress and get on with the business of turning her into his pliant slave. Some of the barbarians had grumbled about the other girl with whom he had so amused himself, but that was not his principal reason for holding back here. Showing himself too eager had ended up disgracing him down in Tarantia; if not for that, he never would have had to come to this accursed frontier at the edge of the world. Restraint, then, might serve better—and might also be amusing.

In one way, though, Stercus showed no restraint whatever. He rode with his sword naked across his knees, ready to use at a heartbeat's notice. It would be years before Aquilonians could travel through this country without a weapon to hand. Stercus muttered to himself, wishing his officers had not persuaded him to refrain from avenging the disappearance of that Gunderman near Duthil. He remained convinced the man had not vanished all on his own. If he had, would his body—or at least his bones —not have come to light? Stercus thought so.

The road was narrow, not a great deal broader than the game track it had been before the Aquilonians first came to this miserable land. Dark, frowning firs pressed close on either side. It made ideal country for an ambush. Much of Cimmeria, in fact, made ideal country for an ambush. That was another reason why Stercus doubted whether the soldier named Hondren had gone missing all on his own. "Damned skulking barbarians," he muttered.

But the barbarian he met when he guided his horse around the next bend in the road did not skulk. The fellow strode along boldly, as if he had as much right to the roadway as any civilized man. His hair and beard had gone gray. The only ornaments he wore were a necklace and bracelets of amber.

Stercus nearly rode him down then and there. In truth, the nobleman could hardly have said what held him back. He reined in and pointed an accusing finger at the Cimmerian, saying, "Stand aside, you!" He did not bother with Cimmerian. He had no idea whether the other man knew Aquilonian, nor did he care: that pointing finger and a loud, commanding voice more than sufficed to make his meaning plain.

As it happened, the barbarian proved to understand his language, and even to speak it himself. "Soon, soon," he said soothingly. "First I would know something of the manner of man you are."

"By Mitra, I will tell you what manner of man I am," snapped Stercus, brandishing his blade. "I am a man with scant patience for any who would let or hinder me."

He hoped to put the barbarian in fear, but found himself disappointed. The man came up to him and said, "But give me your hand for a moment, and I will speak to what lies ahead for you."

That piqued Count Stercus' interest. "A seer, are you?" he asked, and the Cimmerian nodded. Stercus lowered the sword, but only partway. He held out his left hand, at the same time saying, "Come ahead, then. But I warn you, dog, any treachery and you die the death."

"You may trust me as you would your own father," said the barbarian, at which Stercus laughed raucously. He would not have trusted his father with his gold, nor with his wine, nor with any woman he chanced to meet. He thought that meant the barbarian knew not the first thing whereof he spoke. That the man might have known more than Stercus guessed never once crossed his mind.

"Here," said Stercus, extending his hand farther yet in a gesture he copied from King Numedides.

The Cimmerian took it. His own grip was warm and hard. He nodded to himself, once, twice, three times. "You are measured," he said. "You are measured, and you are found wanting. You shall not endure. Twist as you will, turn as you will, nothing you do shall stand. The old serpent dies. The young wolf endures."

"Take your lies and nonsense elsewhere," snarled Stercus, snatching his hand away. "Not even one word of truth do you speak, and you should praise Mitra in his mercy that I do not take your life."

"You laugh now. You jeer now," said the Cimmerian.

"Come the day, see who laughs. Come the time, see who jeers."

"Get you gone, or I will stretch your carcass lifeless in the dust," said Stercus. "I have slain stouter men for smaller insults."

"I go," said the barbarian. "I go, but I know what I am talking about. I have seen the wolf. I have counted his teeth. You are but a morsel, if you draw consolation from that."

Stercus swung up the sword with a shout of rage. The Cimmerian who called himself a seer skipped back between two tree trunks that grew too close together to let Stercus follow unless he dismounted. Not reckoning the barbarian worth his while to pursue, he rode on toward Duthil.

By the time the Aquilonian got to the village, he had all but forgotten the warning, if that was what it was, the barbarian had given him. He looked ahead, toward seeing Tarla, toward tempting her into wanting for herself all the things he wanted for her. He sometimes thought the temptation the greatest sport of all, even finer than the fulfillment.

When Stercus came into Duthil, he saw the blacksmith's son walking up the street with the evidence of a successful hunt on his shoulders. The Aquilonian noble reined in and waved. "Hail, Conan," he called. "How are you today?"

The boy's face flushed with anger. Stercus knew Conan loved him not; that knowledge only piqued his desire to annoy the young Cimmerian. He suspected that Conan held some childish affection of his own for Tarla, which would do him no good at all when set against the full-blooded and refined passion of a sensual adult.

"How are you, I say?" Stercus' voice grew sharper.

"Well, till now," answered Conan in thickly accented Aquilonian — though somewhat less so than when Stercus began coming to Duthil. Like a parrot, the boy could mimic the sounds his betters made.

And, as Stercus realized after a moment, Conan could also ape, or try to ape, the studied insults a grown man might offer. Had a grown man, one of his own countrymen, offered Stercus such an insult, he would have wiped it clean with blood. The code duello was ancient and much revered in Aquilonia. Dirtying his sword with the blood of a barbarous blacksmith's boy never once occurred to Stercus. But he did suddenly spur his horse forward, and the destrier would have trampled Conan if the youngster had not sprung to one side with an agility that belied his loutish size. Laughing, Stercus rode on to the house of Balarg the weaver, the house of Tarla, the house of what he conceived to be his affection.

Conan found his mother up and about, filling a pot from a great water jar and hanging it to boil above the hearth. "You should rest," he told her reproachfully.

"Oh? And if I rest, who will cook our food? I see no slave in the house," replied Verina. "And what's the point of rest? When your father begins to hammer, every stroke seems to go straight through my head." She raised a hand to press it to her temple.

"I'm sorry," said Conan, who could have slept sound and undisturbed were Mordec beating a sword blade into shape six inches from his ear. He set down the burden he had brought from the forest. "See the fine venison we'll have?"

His mother looked at it, sniffed, and coughed. To Conan's relief, the cough did not begin one of her spasms. "This will do for tomorrow, I suppose," she said indifferently. "For stew today, I killed the black hen who'd stopped laying. We may as well get some use out of her."

"Ah," said Conan, and then, a moment later, "All right." He did his best to make himself believe it was.

"If you want to be useful, you can cut up these turnips and parsnips and onions for the stew —and chop up this head of cabbage, too —not too fine, mind you, or it will cook too fast when I put it in," said his mother.

"Of course," said Conan. As the knife tore through the vegetables, he wished it were tearing through Count Stercus' flesh instead. He imagined blood spurting from every cut, not colorless turnip juice. The picture pleased him, so much that he sliced harder than ever.

"Easy, easy," said Verina. 'These are not heads to be set above the doorposts of our house, you know. No need for murder here."

"Oh, but there is," said Conan. "If ever a man wanted killing, that damned Aquilonian is the one."

"I doubt he's any worse than the rest of them," said Verina.

"He is," insisted Conan. "The way he sniffs around — around this village is nothing but a disgrace." He felt uncomfortable mentioning Tarla to his mother.

She understood what he was talking about even when he did not talk about it. With a toss of the head, she answered, "That one is a little hussy. If she weren't, the accursed Aquilonian wouldn't keep sniffing around her. I don't know why you worry about her. She isn't good enough for you."

Conan started chopping the vegetables even more savagely than before. His mother did not think anyone was good enough for him. Conan did not know what he thought. He only knew that, as he passed from boy to man, he cared less with each new day that went by whether a girl was good enough for him. Whether she was interested in him —that was another story, and one in which he had a burning interest.

"But don't mind me," said Verina. "After I'm dead and gone, you and your father will settle things to your own liking, I'm sure." She began to cough again, softly but steadily.

"Here. Drink some water, Mother." Conan hurried to dip some out of the jar and into a mug. He handed it to his mother and stood over her until she did drink. Not so long before, she had been taller than he; he remembered those days very well. Now he towered over her. Before too long, he would overtop his father, too. That was a truly dizzying thought. No one in Duthil could match Mordec's inches.

Mordec came back into the kitchen from the smithy, as if thinking of him were enough to conjure him up. Sweat ran down his fire-reddened face and forearms, washing clean rills through the soot that covered them. "I could do with some water, too, son," he rasped. "Fetch me a cup, if you'd be so kind."

"Aye, Father." Conan found a larger mug and dipped it full.

"My thanks." Mordec drained it in one long draught. Then he went to the water jar himself. He filled the mug again. Instead of drinking from it, he poured it over his head. "Ahhh!" he said: a long exhalation of pleasure. Water ran through his hair, ran through his beard, and dripped from the end of his nose.

"There you go, making part of my kitchen floor into mud," said Verina shrilly. As in the smithy, the floor here was only of rammed earth. When it got wet, it did turn muddy.

But Conan's father only shrugged. "Give it a little while and it will dry, Verina," he said. "As for me, though, I needed that, by Crom. I'm surprised I didn't hiss like hot iron quenched when I poured it over me."

"Did you see Count Stercus today, Father?" asked Conan.

Mordec's mouth thinned to a narrow line. "I saw him, all right. What if I did?"

Conan scowled blackly. "Is that not the face of a man who deserves death?"

"I've seen men I liked better at first glance," answered his father. "But my guess is, where he looks bothers you more than how he looks."

That shaft hit unpleasantly close to the center of the target. Conan flushed so hot that he longed for a mug of water to cool him. Stubborn as always, he said, "He's got no business here."

"He thinks otherwise," said Mordec.

"Well, I think he can — " But Conan broke off. He could not say what he wanted Count Stercus to do, not with his mother listening. He growled in frustration, down deep in his throat.

"What happens to him does not first depend on what you think," said his father. "We've been over this ground before. It depends on what Balarg thinks. He is the girl's father, after all." Verina tossed her head once more. Mordec took no notice of her.

"Why doesn't Balarg do something, then?" cried Conan.

His father frowned. "By now, I wish he would do more myself. And I wish Tarla would stop preening every time she sets eyes on the Aquilonian noble. Balarg should speak to her about that. But the world is as it is. It is not the way we wish it were. I suppose that's why Crom isn't the sort of god who makes a habit of granting prayers."

However earnestly he spoke, Conan hardly heard him. Mordec had presumed to criticize Tarla, which only served to infuriate his son. As far as Conan was concerned, Tarla could do no wrong—this despite the fact that she did not care to speak to him and showed Stercus far more sweetness, just as Mordec had said. Verina started to cough again. Conan scarcely noticed even that sound, which most of the time roused nothing but dread in him.

Mordec guided Verina back to the bedchamber. A glum frown on his heavy-featured face, the blacksmith returned to the kitchen and finished the supper his wife had begun.

At harvest time, almost everything in Duthil stopped. Even folk who did not farm went into the fields to help bring in the oats and rye. The ripe grain had to come in before bad weather could spoil it. On it depended the hopes of the village through the winter and into the following spring.

Conan and Mordec both swung scythes whose blades the blacksmith had forged. So did Balarg. Along with the other women of Duthil, Tarla helped gather the golden grain into sheaves. The Aquilonian soldiers watched the work from their encampment not far away. None of them came out to help the Cimmerians. The first autumn they had been here, and even the second, they had tried to join the villagers. Everyone in Duthil had pretended they did not exist. By now, the invaders had learned their lesson: they might be here, but they were not welcome.

Mordec stood up straight. He grunted and twisted and rubbed at the small of his back. "This is not my proper trade," he grumbled, "and every year my bones tell me so louder and louder." Conan worked on tirelessly. He might have been powered by the water that would turn the grindstones in the mill to make the grain into flour. With his fourteenth winter approaching, aches in the bones were as far from him as gray hair and a walking stick.

Like all the villagers, he did pause ever so often to glance anxiously up toward the sky. Mist and clouds floated across it even at high summer, and high summer was a long way behind them now. Rain at harvest time would be disastrous. Hail would be even worse. Hail at harvest time might mean old men and women and young children would never see another spring. As Mordec had said, Crom did not answer prayers, but more than a few went his way at this season even so.

Bend. Swing the scythe. Watch the grain fall. Straighten. Take a step forward. Bend. Swing again. That was Conan's life from first light of dawn until the last evening twilight leaked from the sky. Almost all the men in Duthil, and the boys old enough to do their fair share, took part; the chief exception was Nectan the shepherd, who did not leave his flock even for the harvest.

When the men came back to the village, the}' wolfed down food and ale, then fell into bed and slept like the dead. When morning came, they would munch oatcakes or porridge, then stuff more oatcakes and perhaps some cheese into their belt pouches and lurch out to the grainfields for another day's backbreaking labor.

At last, only a few gleaners were left in the fields, gathering up the last heads of grain the main harvest had missed. And then, with only stubble and dirt remaining, Duthil took one of its rare days of rest. Instead of rising before sunup, men — and women —slept late. When at last they rose, they did only the most essential things. Whatever was not essential would wait. A lot of families, Conan's among them, did heat water for baths, which had gone by the wayside along with so much else during the work-filled chaos of harvest time.

After the day of rest came a day of celebration. By age-old custom, the folk of Cimmeria celebrated whether the harvest was good or bad. If it was good, they celebrated because it deserved celebrating. If it was bad, they celebrated to cast defiance in the face of fate. Chickens stewed. Ducks and geese roasted, with thrift)' housewives carefully catching the drippings. Slaughtered hogs turned on spits over trenches full of fire. Casks and jars of ale were broached.

Like any Cimmerian, Conan had been drinking ale since he stopped drinking his mother's milk. It was more filling and often more wholesome than water. He rarely drank to excess. A couple of thick heads had made him wary of that. Today, though, he recklessly poured down the ale, hoping to borrow enough courage from it to say some of the things he wanted to say to Tarla.

He had not said them by midafternoon, when Count Stercus rode into Duthil. The Aquilonian noble sat astride his charger and, unusually, led a pack horse with several stout casks tied to its back. Spotting Conan's father in the crowd of strangers, he pointed to him and spoke in Aquilonian, no doubt to make himself seem more important: "Translate for me, my good man."

Mordec nodded. "Say what you will."

"Tell your people I heard they would feast today. Tell them also that no feast is a true feast without wine." Stercus pointed to the pack horse. "I have brought your enough to prove the point."

He could not have bought himself popularity, or even toleration, with silver or with gold. Wine proved another story. The Cimmerians drank it when they could get it; Aquilonian traders had made it known in this land where no vineyard could prosper. But so much of the strong, sweet brew at harvest time —yes, sly Stercus had known what coin to spend.

And if he made sure Tarla drank several beakers of the red blood of the grape, if he laughed by her when her walk went clumsy and her speech got slurred, if he whirled her in a sprightly Aquilonian dance when pipes and drums began to play, who could hold it against him? No one at all —no one but Conan the blacksmith's son, who found himself upstaged again.