Conan the Invincible Part 4

Chest to chest the two big men stood, feet working for leverage on the mosaic arabesques of the floor. The guardsman's free hand clubbed against the back of Conan's neck, and again. The Cimmerian released his grip on the man's throat, throwing that arm around the Zamoran to hold him close, At the same instant he let go the sword wrist, snaked his hand under that arm and behind the other's shoulder to grab the bearded chin. His arm corded with the strain of forcing the helmeted head back.

The tall soldier abandoned his attempt to reach his sword and suddenly grasped Conan's head with both his hands, twisting with all his might.

Conan's breath rasped in his throat, and the blood pounded in his ears.

He could smell his own sweat, and that of the Zamoran. A growl built deep in his throat. He forced the man's head back. Back. Abruptly there was an audible snap, and the guardsman was a dead weight sagging on his chest.

Panting, Conan let the man fall. The helmeted head was at an impossible angle.

"You've killed him," Velita breathed. "You've... I recognize him.

That's Mariates, a captain of the guard. When he's found here...."

"He won't be," Conan answered.

Quickly he dragged the body out onto the balcony and dug his rope out of the sack at his side. It would stretch but halfway to the ground.

Hooking the graponel over the stone bal.u.s.trade at the side of the balcony, he let the dark rope fall.

"When I whistle, Velita, unloose this."

He bound the dead guardsman's wrists with the man's own swordbelt, and thrust his head and right arm through the loop they formed. When he straightened, the man dangled down his back like a sack. A heavy sack.

He reminded himself of the ten thousand pieces of gold.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "And what's your name? I don't even know that."

"I'm making sure the body isn't found in this room." He stepped over the rail and checked the graponel again. It wouldn't do to have it slip here. Clad in naught but the pendant, Velita stood watching him, her big dark eyes tremulous. "I am Conan of Cimmeria," he said proudly, and let himself down the rope hand over hand.

Almost immediately he felt the strain in his ma.s.sive arms and shoulders.

He was strong, but the Zamoran was no feather, and a dead weight besides.

His bound wrists dug into Conan's throat, but there was no way to shift the burden while dangling half a hundred feet in the night air.

With a mountaineer's practiced eye he studied distances and angles, and stopped his descent in a stretch of the carven wall free of balconies.

Thrusting with his powerful legs he pushed himself sideways, walking two steps along the wall, then swinging back beyond the point where he began. Then back the other way again. He stepped up the pace until he was running along the wall, swinging in an ever greater arc. At first the dead Zamoran slowed him, but then the extra weight added to his momentum, taking him closer to his goal, another balcony below and to the right of the first.

He was ten paces from the niveous stone rail. Then five. Three. And he realized he was increasing his arc too little on each swing now: He could not climb back up the rope-the guardsman's wrists were half-strangling him-nor could he continue to inch his way closer.

He swung back to his left and began his sideways run toward the balcony. It was the last time, he knew as he watched his goal materialize out of the dark. He must make it this time, or fall. Ten paces. Five. Three. Two. He was going to fall short. Desperately he thrust against the enchased marble wall, loosed one hand from the rope, stretched for the rail. His fingers caught precariously. And held.

Straining, he hung between the rope and his tenuous grasp on the stone.

The dangling body choked his burning breath in his throat. Shoulder joints cracking, he pulled himself nearer. And then he had a foot between the bal.u.s.ters. Still clutching the rope he pulled himself over the rail and collapsed on the cool marble, sucking at the night air.

It was an illusory haven, though. Quickly he freed himself from the Zamoran and bent back over the rail to whistle. The rope swung as the graponel fell free. He drew it up with grateful thanks that Velita had not been too terrified to remember, and stowed it in his sack. There was still Mariates to deal with.

Mariates' sword belt went back about the officer's waist. There was naught Conan could do about the abrasions on the man's wrists. On the side away from Velita's balcony, he rolled the dead man over the rail.

From below came the crashing of broken branches. But no alarm.

Smiling, Conan used the cavern marble foliage to make his way to the ground. Evidence of Mariates' fall was plain in shattered boughs. The captain himself lay spreadeagled across an exotic shrub, the loss of which Conan thought the dilettante king might regret more than the loss of a soldier. And best of all, of the several balconies from which the man could have fallen, Velita's was not one.

Swiftly Conan made his way back through the garden. Once more the guards' paces were counted, and once more he went over the wall easily.

As he reached the safety of the shadows around the plaza, he thought he heard a shout from behind, but he was not sure, and he did not linger to find out. Boots and cloak were on in moments, sword slung at his hip.

As he strode through pitchy streets at once broader and less odoriferous than those of the Desert, he thought that this might be almost his last return to that squalid district. After tomorrow night he would be beyond such places. From the direction of the palace, a gong sounded in the night.

Chapter V.

Conan woke early the morning after his foray into the palace. He found the common room empty except for Abuletes, counting his night's take at the bar, and two skinny sweepers in rags. The fat tavernkeeper eyed Conan warily and put a protective arm about the stacked coins.

"Wine," Conan said, fishing out the necessary coppers. For all his celebration the night before there were still six of the dark man's gold coins in his purse. "I don't steal from friends," he added, when Abuletes drew the money down the bar after him in the crook of his arm.

"Friends! What friends? In the Desert, a brother in blood is no friend." Abuletes filled a rough earthenware mug from a tap in a keg and shoved it in front of Conan. "But perhaps you think to buy friends with the gold you were throwing about last night. Where did that come from, anyway? Had you aught to do with what happened at the palace in the night? No, that couldn't be. You were spending like Yildiz himself before ever it happened. You'd better watch that, showing your gold so free in the Desert."

The tavernkeeper would have gone on, but Conan cut him short.

"Something happened at the palace?" He was careful to drink deep of the thin wine for punctuation, as if the question were casual.

"And you call a king's counselor dead something, plus others to the king's household and a dozen guardsmen besides, then it did."

"A dozen!"

"So I said, and so it was. Dead guardsmen at every hand, Yildiz's gifts to Tiridates taken, and never a one who saw a hair of those who did it.

Never a one in all the palace." Abuletes rubbed his chins with a pudgy hand. "Though there's a tale about that a pair of the sentries saw a man running from the palace. A big man. Mayhap as big as you."

"Of course it was me," Conan snorted. "I leaped over the wall, then leaped back again with all that on my back. You did say all the gifts were taken, didn't you?" He emptied his mug and thumped it down before the stout man. "Again."

"Five gemstones, five dancing girls and a golden casket." Abuletes twisted the tap shut and replaced the mug on the bar. "Unless there's more than that, they took all. I'll admit you couldn't have done it. I admit it. But why are you so interested now? Answer me that."

"I'm a thief. Someone else has done the hard part on this. All I have to do is relieve him of his ill-gotten goods." Relieve whom, he wondered. He had had no other plan beyond himself. Of that he was certain. That left guardsmen gone wrong, stolen away with the treasure and the slave girls after slaying their comrades, or slain themselves after letting someone else into the palace to do the theft.

Abuletes hawked and spat on a varicolored rag, and began to scrub the bartop. "Was me," he said absently, "I'd have naught to do with this.

Those who did this thing aren't of the Desert. Those who rob kings aren't to be crossed. Necromancers, for all you know. There was no one seen, remember. Not a glimpse of a hair."

It could have been a mage, Conan thought, though why a mage, or anyone else, would go through the danger of stealing five dancing girls from the palace, he could not imagine. Too, magicians were not so thick on the ground as most men believed, and he was one who should know.

"You begin to sound worried for me, Abuletes. I thought you said there were no friends in the Desert."

"You spend freely," the tavernkeeper said sourly. "That's all there is.

Don't think there's more. You stay out of this, whatever it is.

Whoever's behind this is too big for the likes of you. You'll end with your throat cut, and I'll be out a customer."

"Perhaps you're right. Bel! I'm for a breath of air. This sitting around talking of other men's thefts gives me a pain in the belly."

He left the fat tapster muttering darkly to himself and found his way to the street. The air in the Desert was anything but fresh. The stench of rotting offal blended with the effluvia of human excrement and vomit. The paving stones, where they had not been ripped up to leave mudholes, were slick with slime. From the dim depths of an alley, barely wide enough for a man to enter, the victim of a robbery moaned for help. Or the bait for a robbery. Either was equally likely.

Conan strode the crooked streets of that thieves' district purposefully, though he was not himself sure of what that purpose was.

A swindler with tarnished silver embroidery on his vest waved a greeting as he pa.s.sed, and a wh.o.r.e, naked but for gilded bra.s.s bells and resting her feet in a doorway, smiled at the broad-shouldered youth as she suddenly felt not so tired after all. Conan did not even notice them, nor the "blind" beggar in black rags, tapping his way down the street with a broken stick, who eased his dagger back under his soiled robes after a glance at the grim set of Conan's jaw, or the three who followed him through the winding streets, the edges of their headcloths drawn across their faces, white-knuckled hands gripping cudgels beneath their dingy cloaks, before the size of his arms and the length of his sword made them take another turning.

He tried telling himself that the pendants were beyond his reach now.

He had naught beyond glimmers of suspicion who had taken them, no idea at all where they were. Still, ten thousand pieces of gold was not a thing a man gave up on easily. And there was Velita. A slave girl. She would be happy with any master who was kind to her. But he had promised, sworn, to free her. By Bel and by Crom he had sworn it. His oath, and ten thousand pieces of gold.