Conan The Defender Part 4

"Not for us," Hordo said, noticing the direction of his gaze. "Whatever she is, she's no daughter of the streets dressed like that."

"I care not what she is," Conan said, not entirely truthfully. She was beautiful, and he was willing to admit his own weakness for beautiful women. "At the moment I care about finding employment before I can no longer afford any woman at all. I spent the day walking through the city. I saw many men with bodyguards. There's not so much gold in it as in smuggling, but I've done it before, and I likely will again."

Hordo nodded. "There's plenty enough of that sort of work. Every man who had a bodyguard a year ago has five now. Some of the fatter merchants, like Fabius Palian and Enaro Ostorian, have entire Free-Companies in their pay. There the real money is to be made, hiring out your own Free-Company."

"If you have the gold to raise it in the first place," Conan agreed. "I couldn't buy armor for one man, let alone a company."

The one-eyed man drew a finger through a puddle of wine on the table.

"Since the trouble started, half of what we smuggle in is arms. Tariff on a good sword is more than the price used to be." He met Conan's gaze. "Unless I miscount, we could steal enough to outfit a company without anyone being the wiser."

"We, Hordo?"

"Hannuman's Stones, man! When they start telling me who my friends can be, I'm not much longer for smuggling."

"Then it's a matter of getting silver enough for enlistment bonuses.

For, say, fifty men-"

"Gold," Hordo cut him off. "The going rate is a gold mark a man."

Conan whistled between his teeth. "It's not likely I'll see that much in one place. Unless you...."

Hordo shook his head sadly. "You know me, Cimmerian. I like women, drink and dice too much for gold to stay long with me."

"Thief" someone shouted. "We've caught a thief."

Conan looked around to see the innocent-faced blonde struggling between a bulky, bearded man in a greasy blue tunic and a tall fellow with a weaselly look to his close-set eyes.

"Caught her with her hand in my purse!" the bearded man shouted.

Obscene comments rose amid the tavern's laughter.

"I told her her luck was gone," Conan muttered.

The blonde screamed as the bearded man ripped the strip of silk from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then tossed her up to the skinny man, who had climbed onto a table. Despite her struggles, he quickly tore away the rest of her flimsy garb and displayed her naked to the tavern.

The bearded man shook a dice cup over his head. "Who'll toss for a chance?" Men crowded round him.

"Let us go," Conan said. "I don't want to watch this." He gathered up the cloak-wrapped sword and started for the street.

Hordo took one regretful look at the barely touched pitcher of wine, then followed.

At the door Conan caught the eye of the young woman in the plain cotton dress once more. She was staring at him again, but this time her face bore disapproval. What had he done, he wondered. Not that it mattered.

He had more important concerns on his mind than women. Followed by Hordo, he ducked through the doorway.

Chapter III.

Full dark was on the Street of Regrets, and the frenzy of its denizens had grown as if by motion they could warm themselves against the chill of night. Wh.o.r.es no longer strutted sensuously, but rather half-ran from potential patron to potential patron. Acrobats twisted and tumbled in defiance of gravity and broken bones as though for King Garian himself, receiving hollow, drunken laughter in payment, yet tumbling on.

Conan paused to watch a fire-juggler, his six blazing brands describing slow arcs above his bald head. A small everchanging knot of people stood watching as well. Three came and two left even as the Cimmerian stopped. There were better shows that night on the street than a juggler. Conan fingered a copper out of his pouch and tossed it into the cap the quick-handed man had laid on the ground. There were only two in the cap to precede it. To Conan's surprise the juggler suddenly turned toward him, half-bowing as he kept the brands aloft, as if acknowledging a generous patron. As he straightened, he began to caper, legs kicking high, fiery batons spinning now so that it seemed his feet were always in the midst of the circles they described.

Hordo pulled at Conan's arm, drawing the muscular youth away down the street. "For a copper," the one-eyed man muttered disgustedly. "Time was, it'd have taken a silver piece to get that out of one of them.

Maybe more."

"This city is gone mad," Conan said. "Never have I seen so many beggars this side of the Vilayet Sea. The poor are poorer, and more in number, than in any three other cities. Peddlers charge prices that would choke a Guild Merchant in Sultanapur, and wear faces like they were going bankrupt. More than half a silver queenshead for a pitcher of wine, but a juggler does his best trick for a copper. I haven't seen a soul who looks to care if tomorrow comes or no. What happens here?"

"What am I, Cimmerian? A scholar? A priest? 'Tis said the throne is cursed, that Garian is cursed by the G.o.ds."

Conan involuntarily made the sign against evil. Curses were nothing to fool with. Several people noticed and shied away from the big man. They had evil enough in their lives without being touched by the evil that troubled him.

"This curse," the big Cimmerian said after a time, "is it real? I mean, have the priests and astrologers spoken of it? Confirmed it?"

"I've heard nothing of that," Hordo admitted. "But it's spoken on every street corner. Everyone knows it."

"Hannuman's Stones," Conan snorted. "You know as well as I do that anything everyone knows is usually a lie. Is there any proof at all of a curse?"

"That there is, Cimmerian," Hordo said, poking a blunt finger at Conan for emphasis. "On the very day Garian ascended the Dragon Throne-the very day, mind you-a monster ran loose in the streets of Belverus.

Killed better than a score of people. Looked like a man, if you made a man out of clay, then half melted him. Thing is, a lot of people who saw it said it looked something like Garian, too."

"A man made out of clay," Conan said softly, thinking of the blind man's prophecy.

"Pay no attention to that blind old fool," Hordo counseled. "Besides, the monster's dead. Wasn't those stay-in-the-barracks City Guards who did it, though. An old woman, frightened half out of her wits, threw an oil lamp at it. Covered it with burning oil. Left nothing but a pile of ash. The City Guard was going to take the old woman in, for 'questioning' they said, till her neighbors chased them off. Pelted them with chamber pots."

"Come," Conan said, turning down a narrow street.

Hordo hesitated. "You realize we're going into h.e.l.lgate?"

"We're being followed. Ever since the Gored Ox," Conan said. "I want to find out who. This way."

The street narrowed and twisted, and the laughter and the light of the Street of Regrets were quickly lost. The stench of offal and urine thickened. There was no paving here. The grate of their boots on gravel and the sounds of their own breathing were the loudest things to be heard. They moved through darkness, broken only occasionally by a pool of light from a window high enough for its owner to feel some safety.

"Talk," Conan said. "Anything. What kind of king is Garian?"

"Talk, he says," Hordo muttered. "Bel save us from you...." He sighed heavily. "He's a king. What more is there? I hold no brief for any king. No more did you, last I saw you."

"Nor do I now. But talk. We're drunk, and too senseless to be silent, while walking h.e.l.lgate its the middle of the night." He eased his broadsword in its scabbard. A hint of light from a window far above glinted on his face; his eyes seemed to gleam in the dark like those of a forest animal. A hunting animal.

Hordo stumbled over something that made ripe squelching sounds beneath his boots. "Vara's Guts and Bones! Let me see. Garian. At least he got rid of the sorcerers. I like kings better than I do sorcerers."

"How did he do that?" Conan asked, but his ear was bent for sounds from behind rather than the answer. Was that a foot on gravel?

"Oh, three days after he took the throne he executed all the sorcerers still at court. Gethenius, his father, had had dozens of them in the palace. Garian told no one what he intended. Some few did leave, giving one excuse or another, but the rest .... Garian gave orders to the Golden Leopards three gla.s.ses past midnight. By dawn every sorcerer still in the palace had been dragged out of bed and beheaded. Those who fled were true sorcerers, Garian said, and could keep their wealth.

These, who couldn't even discover he intended their deaths, were charlatans and parasites. He had their belongings distributed to the poor, even in h.e.l.lgate. Last good thing he's done."

"Interesting," Conan said absently. In the dark his keen eyes picked out one shadow from another. There was a crossing alley ahead. And behind? Yes. That was the mutter of someone who had stepped in whatever had fouled Hordo's boots. "Say on," he said. His blade whispered on leather as it eased from its sheath.

The one-eyed man lifted his eyebrow at what Conan had done, then he, too, drew his sword. Both men walked with steel swinging easily in their fists.