Conan The Warlord Part 8

Conan had borne her back through her dim-lit door with no sound of pursuit behind them; now her face glared up at him, pallid and tear-stained in the wavering candlelight. "You, my brother's trusted bodyguard-you abandoned your post at the vital moment! And then you came here to seduce me, and keep me from his side in his final hour!" She threw herself on him, bruising her fists against his steel-plated chest. "Murderer! Villain!"

"Hush, girl, you are mad! Crom knows I had no love for your brother, but..." Realizing that she was clutching for the dagger sheathed at his waist, he thrust her back into the center of the room. "Calissa, calm yourself!"

"Nay, deceiver! Vile lecher! For all I know, you slew him yourself!" She was on him again, clawing at his eyes. "Guards, come seize this traitor!"

He shoved her back once again, and she tumbled onto the divan. After lying there panting for a moment in her disarranged nightgown, she lunged to the bed-table and rummaged for a weapon. The turbulent sounds coming from other parts of the Manse had increased, although they might not be in response to her outcries.

"As for Favian, he died of his own vices; I had no part in it." The Cimmerian's voice was low and bitter. "But you, Calissa . . . you make yourself too dangerous to protect! Bolt the door after me, and farewell!" He eased the panel shut behind him, hearing bottles smash against it as he closed off the tumult of her curses.

Groping his way down the pa.s.sage, senses swimming in the darkness, his heart alternately plummeted and soared in his chest. Calissa was just as mad as the rest of her family, sad to see! But he, the Einharsons' p.a.w.n, was free of them at last, all his oaths discharged. He could leave now, if only he could carve his way out of this viper's nest.

He bethought himself of the rebels. Certainly, they had his sympathy, against the likes of the baron. And this Evadne . . . now there was a fine figure of a woman! Yet somehow he felt no great desire to kiss her b.l.o.o.d.y hand. All these Nemedian wenches were too treacherous for his liking; he was best away.

For that matter, should he not, while the Manse was in confusion, try to collect the back pay owed him? -with a comfortable bonus for severance, perhaps? He bethought himself of the money chest he had seen in Baldomer's chamber. His resemblance to Favian might help him in the theft, if he acted soon; yet perhaps 'twas wiser just to fly by night, and avoid even more painful severances.

He came to the door at the end of the pa.s.sage; working its flimsy latch, he pressed it open and peered through. On the far side hung a curtain, screening the doorway from a sleeping-chamber. This in turn adjoined a lamplit spiral stair.

There was no one to be seen, and still no sound of imminent pursuit; even Calissa's angry cries had subsided. But from below came shouts and the sound of weapons thumping at the doors. He slipped past the curtain and, mentally gauging directions in this unfamiliar corner of the Manse, turned away from the stair to pa.s.s through the empty second-level chamber.

The chamber's far door opened onto one of the broad halls, but no sooner had he set out along it than he was opposed. Around the corner ahead of him two men came running, obviously pursued. The first Conan recognized as Svoretta, the chief of espionage, his portly figure black-caped and wearing a soft-brimmed hat that concealed half his face. Close beside him came Eubold, the fencing-master, armored from neck to waist and laboring breathlessly.

"Well, barbarian, you are a welcome sight!" Panting, the spy-chief slowed as he drew near. "Your ward is dead, I am told! But fear not, you still can be of service to us!" He halted, casting an uneasy glance behind him, then turned a guileless look on Conan. "Unless, of course, you have cast your lot in with the traitors ...?"

"Nay, not with traitors." Conan regarded Svoretta stonily as he drew his sword. "Hence, never with you!"

The whistling slash of his saber should have killed the spymaster in his tracks; yet the portly man moved swiftly under his cape. His own unsheathed sword, carried slyly out of sight, gashed forth to meet Conan's; it was a longer, straighter blade than the cavalry weapon carried by the northerner, made slim to pierce the joints of armor suits. In riposte it darted swiftly toward the Cimmerian's unshielded neck, causing him to dodge back.

The fencing-master was quick to draw his sword and join Svoretta, and so the Cimmerian battled the two of them. He did so with a blinding rain of strokes, weaving a clashing, glinting hedge of menace in the yellow light of the hall lamps. A powerful cut drove Eubold's saber down and aside, forcing it out of action for a moment; it was as a follow-up to this, seemingly an afterthought, that Conan's blade licked under Svoretta's cape to emerge red-splashed.

The spy-chief staggered, grunting in guttural pain, his hands clutching at himself beneath his tunic. His eyes widened in horror to discover the extent of his wound. Fumblingly he dropped his sword and with a paralytic sideward lurch, pitched to the floor.

"If I trusted you to die by yourself, I would let you do so," Conan told his fallen foe, who lay straining to breathe, gasping in slow, toiling shudders. "Yet I would rather not live out my years in fear of your poison-cup, or your henchmen at my back." Ignoring the watching Eubold, he raised his saber high over the spymaster's neck, then brought it down, using the arching strength of his entire body. At its chopping crunch, the fallen man's motions ceased and his head rolled free.

Conan looked to Eubold, who had not renewed his attack; the fencing-master stood well clear of Svoretta's spreading gore, gazing back up the corridor where three armed men jostled into view. Rebels they were, sporting the now-familiar combination of wedding-guests' raiment and ready swords. They conferred calmly together, advancing at a walk.

Eubold turned to face Conan. The sc.r.a.pes and bruises his face had gained during their first encounter had almost healed, although their last yellowing traces lent a jaundiced look to his sweat-gleaming stare. He raised his sword none too heartily; his eyes darted involuntarily to his companion's cloaked, blood-smirched body on the floor.

"Well, fencing-master, I see you are ready to tutor me once again." The Cimmerian lashed his blade forth and back, slicing air audibly. "I have learned much since our last meeting, as you can see."

Spitting a curse, Eubold turned and pounded away toward the three advancing rebels, preferring their mercies to those of his former pupil. Conan watched him go, disappointed but reluctant to follow.

Closing swiftly with his adversaries, the fencing-master drove between two of them with wild slashes and parries, wounding the sword-arm of one; but he failed to break completely through their rank, and the third man ducked and stabbed low to pierce his leg. Then, moving at their leisure, the three surrounded the limping tutor; gradually overwhelming his desperate defenses, their blades scored further cuts.

Conan did not stay to watch the inevitable end; he wanted no more to fight these rebels than to join them. While they were still enthusiastically and bloodily occupied, he turned to sprint in the opposite direction.

That route, as luck would have it, angled directly toward the center of the Manse, whence echoed more cries and clashings of steel. A recklessness blazed in the outlander's heart, fueled in part by the prospect of taking loot amid the havoc. But no stray imaginings could have prepared him for the encounter that awaited him then: mere paces ahead, Baron Baldomer Einharson strode forth into the corridor through a side door of his apartment.

The baron may have understood the feral hatred that blazed from Conan's steel-blue eyes; whether he did or not, he was followed by a fully armored man of the Iron Guard, who clearly knew no qualms as to Conan's ident.i.ty or allegiance. At a gesture from the old warlord, the helmeted trooper blocked the pa.s.sage and swung his sword in a level stroke, meeting the Cimmerian's upraised weapon with a ringing clang.

Thus battle was joined. The two warriors hovered an arm's length apart and hacked resolutely at one another. The guardsman's blade dashed time and again toward the youth's unhelmeted, black-tousled head, only to be ducked beneath or beaten aside; Conan's saber struck repeatedly at the neck and groin of the guard's cuira.s.s, with no more effect than to brighten the polish of the supple black steel. The trend of the wordless, desperate combat was an unclear as its purpose, and the baron deigned neither to speak nor join in; he watched the contest coolly while buckling on his armor-scaled gauntlets.

Inflamed with battle-l.u.s.t, Conan soon wearied of the futility of fencing with the armored man. Darting inside one of the ponderous sword-swings, he grappled with him chest to chest; an instant later he used the guard's own top-heavy momentum to throw him off balance over his hip. As his foe clattered to the floor, Conan was astraddle him; savagely he wrenched and twisted at the helmeted head, clubbing with his sword-hilt at the leather-sheathed joint of the man's spine 'twixt helm and scapular plate. In a few moments the guard lay quiescent, his head c.o.c.ked aside at an unnatural angle.

"Ah, my son! You have attained mature fighting skill at last." Baldomer, his armor now lacking only a helmet, stood regarding the panting victor, the sane half of his face set in a smile of n.o.ble resignation. "It prides me to see you prevail, though my heart is saddened by your b.l.o.o.d.y rebellion."

"I am not your son," Conan told him, breathing heavily as he rose to his feet. "Favian is dead, slain by the bride he brought to his chamber to ravish."

The baron shook his head, smiling grimly. "Nay, boy, do not tease; that was the northern savage I sent to wait in your place. Now see you the timely unfolding of your father's wisdom? And yet you shake your head. If you wouldst forfeit your n.o.ble name and deny your lineage"-Baldomer reached to his belt, drawing his long straightsword from its sheath with surprising smoothness and ease-"then we must fight, resolutely and to the death! Yet be a.s.sured, son"-his eyes gleamed madly on his false child -"that whichever one of us pours out his blood on these ancient tiles, it will be n.o.ble blood!"

So saying, the baron opened combat with a sideways slash of his blade. It was no great challenge to avoid, yet when Conan replied with a downward stroke, the straightsword was suddenly before him again, turning aside his saber and boring perilously through his defenses. Only an urgent expenditure of his strength blocked the thrust, breaking apart the combatants. Conan realized that he faced a subtle foe, strong with madness and seasoned by countless campaigns. Deliberately he set about stalking the elder man so as to wear down his strength, darting at him only occasionally with swift, forceful strokes.

"Not so easy, stripling, is it, this killing game?" Baldomer gave ground smoothly before Conan's greater exertions, parrying and sidestepping watchfully. His economy of motion left him ample breath for speech as he kept eye and blade trained on his foe. "My sword would far better have been raised in your behalf, son. Yet I knew that someday you would turn on me, however much I tried to set you on the right path." The old warlord let a powerful overhand blow of Conan's slide off his sword and his armor, seeming to stagger under its force, before his blade lashed menacingly close to the younger man's throat.

"In the Einharson blood there courses a turbulent strain," the baron proclaimed, backing away again, "that distills forth every few generations in the darkest crimes-parricide, fratricide, suicide! So it must be, perhaps; a sanguine recklessness is needed for efficient rule. I prayed against it to our holy forebears . . . and yet, since your childhood, Favian, I have sensed an overlarge share of that evil ferment in you!"

The residential corridor was left behind them now, their contest having carried them onto the wide, bal.u.s.traded mezzanine overlooking the Manse's entry hall. Here the combat was exposed to others' view. The stairhead was held by Iron Guardsmen wielding pikes and sabers, and the lower stairs were crowded with rebels fighting their way upward across scattered corpses. Unsure, perhaps, of which of the aristocratic-seeming duelists to support, none of the nearby defenders came to Baldomer's aid. Yet both sides paused in their fighting to watch the n.o.ble pa.s.sage of arms.

Conan spoke for the first time. "You accuse others of fratricide and black crimes," he said, whirling his blade through air as he edged closer. "But what deed could be viler, old baron, than the murder of your own wife out of the north, your Lady Heldra?"

"Aye, boy, the death of your mother! A great crime indeed." Baldomer glanced swiftly around at the watchers, his voice beginning to rasp with effort or emotion. "Done by the rebels you league with even now in your unnatural treason! But why broach the matter here?"

"Because you lie!" Conan punctuated his words with a saber swipe at the baron's head, stiff-necked and slow to bend, so that the old man's long gray hairs were disarranged by the pa.s.sing stroke. "After your battle-wounds unmanned you, you had no more use for a wife. You grew to hate her," Conan grated between heavy breaths, "and so you ordered her death. Svoretta carried it out, poisoning her as he tried to poison me. Together you blamed it on rebels!"

"Nay, a calumny! She was unfaithful!" Baldomer's voice spat out the words, his good eye flaring as wildly as his wounded. "I loved her still, but she betrayed me, so the spymaster said. How could I let it be known?" His face, suffused by emotion, clenched so fiercely that for once its battle-wound was invisible. "She betrayed me! Even as you do now, treacherous boy!"

For the first time, the baron lunged onto the offensive, his sword hacking at Conan's flitting shape with l.u.s.ty abandon. This voided all of the n.o.bleman's crafty webs of defense, and in time, even as he gave back before the relentless a.s.sault, Conan saw a chance. As a wild stroke clanged off the railing beside him, the Cimmerian clenched both hands on the hilt of his saber, driving it straight forward and up. The curving blade, which would in less strong, sure hands have been turned aside or broken, pierced through the black steel of the finely turned breastplate. Before its momentum was spent, it traveled half of its slim length into flesh and bone.

The baron's sword, relinquished in mid-stroke, bounded off Conan's backplate to crash to the floor beside him. Meanwhile, the old man's gauntleted hands gripped the blade standing out from his chest. Hanging on to it as if to a lifeline, the baron eased his transfixed body to a kneeling position.

"So it ends." Baldomer's voice, lacking its accustomed timbre, ground onward with bitter strength. "The Einharson line continues after all. Good! May this murder harden you to rulership, son." Still clutching the downturned sword with one gauntleted hand, he fumbled at his neck with the other, withdrawing a gleaming pendant on a heavy chain from inside his pierced armor. It was the gold six-bladed starburst Conan had seen him wear during his necromantic devotions at the nether shrine. "This pa.s.ses to you . . . and with it, the rule of Dinander and all of our family's divine rights and protections. Be harsh, boy. ..." As small torrents of blood issued from his nostrils, the elder man relaxed his grip on the sword and settled backward to the floor. His craggy face, though pale and crimson-stained, seemed eerily composed, its features in balance at last.

With Baldomer's gold amulet dangling from one hand, Conan felt a sudden, squeamish reluctance to wrench his saber out of the baron's chest. Instead, he let go of the upstanding hilt and stooped to take up the baron's longer, straighter sword. Hanging the pendant around his own neck for safekeeping, he stood and turned to meet the stares of the fighters who, all around the gallery, had halted their combats.

The scene of the interrupted battle was not only b.l.o.o.d.y, but chaotic. The high, porched entry hall had been designed for the defense of the main doorway by means of arrow-fire, in case the great door was ever breached. Yet the outbreak of the rebellion within the Manse itself had foiled that purpose. Now the doors stood wide, a throng of attackers visible without. The Iron Guard controlled only the head of the stairs and the corridors flanking the baron's suite, standing off the host of motley-clad rebels who held the gallery below and both wings of the mezzanine. The battle lines were frozen as the fighters watched Conan -most of them thinking him Favian, he reminded himself. They were waiting to see which side he would champion.

Beyond the stair waited Durwald and a handful of n.o.bles, including the silver-haired tutor, Lothian; they looked on in silence, as uncertain as anyone else. Abruptly then, from the corridor at their side, hurried a distraught, disheveled Calissa, flanked by two guardsmen. Taking in the scene at a glance, she rushed to her father's counselors, darting an accusing finger at Conan and breaking the -silence with her cries.

"There he is, the traitor! One murder was not enough for him; now he stands over the butchered body of my father! Take him quickly, strap him in irons! No torment is too great. . . ." The rest of her diatribe was lost in a general clatter around the chamber. The waiting combatants, inflamed or alarmed by her-words, braced their weapons in new readiness; a few even flung themselves back into battle, mouthing curses.

Seeing the guards at the stairhead shift their pikes toward him, Conan finally made up his mind. There was no place for him among Dinander's pompous overlords. He strode straightaway from them toward the wing of the mezzanine where the black-armored men stood thinnest, opposed by a dense gang of rebels. At his approach from their rear, his sword raised in undisguised menace, the Iron Guards' cordon broke and scattered apart. The rebels were quick to take advantage of their disarray, pressing forward to seize new ground. Weapons clashed on either hand as Conan, crossing swords briefly with two guardsmen, found himself among the insurgents.

They welcomed him with cheers, clapping hands on his black-mailed shoulders. To his surprise, he found the warrior-woman before him again-the one called Evadne, now wearing a man's kilt and chain vest over her yellow robe. At Conan's stare she only blinked, unsmiling, and addressed him in level, terse accents: "n.o.ble or savage, if you join us, you are one among equals, no more, no less. Remember that." Then she turned and vanished into the press.

The battlefronts were moving now, because the guardsmen, at the death of their baron and the desertion of his apparent successor, fought with flagging spirit. Conan turned to join the attack, yet the defenders gave ground so fast that he stalked back almost to the head of the stair before he reached the skirmishing. Then, ere he could elbow his way among the battling rebels, his attention was drawn by fresh shouts and screams from below, down in the gallery.

He forced his way to the rail and looked over, seeing townsmen scattering back from the inner doors in panic. At the fringes of the crowd, weapons were flailing, swung by armored warriors not yet plainly in view. Conan leaned far out to see who they were. Reinforcements from the munic.i.p.al barracks, perhaps?

"Flee, they have come!" From the panicking throng below, the cries drifted up to him. "It is the Einharsons! The dead barons are risen to fulfill their curse!"

CHAPTER 11.

The Warlords

Staring down from the balcony, Conan felt his scalp tighten with certainty that the frightened shouts were true. Beneath him there stalked, amid the flying shapes of the rebels, gigantic warriors in weird-looking armor, antique fighters whose swords appeared rusted and evil and whose ancient copperplate-and-scale mail blazed leprous green with tarnish: the dead Einharson warlords! With a chill, Conan remembered the ancestral armor laid out on the stone coffins in the crypt beneath the Manse, and the mystical hints that its owners would someday arise to sway the fate of the province.

The attackers were fully suited and helmed, so there was no knowing what lurked inside the decrepit armor. Some of the fighters appeared to be damaged, or oddly incomplete. Yet all swung swords and battleaxes relentlessly, their grim efficiency evinced by the hacked corpses strewn behind them on the patterned floor.

No sooner had the Cimmerian comprehended the threat than it erupted close at hand. Astonished shouts were raised behind him, and he turned to see three of the h.o.a.ry, sinister warriors issuing from a nearby corridor. In a dreamlike glimpse, he remembered the long stairway leading from the vicinity of Baldomer's apartment directly to the cellar; thence, doubtless, these marauders had crawled. Spitting out a bitter oath, Conan shoved past the scattering rebels to confront the nemesis.

The tall, menacing shape that first came before him was certainly the product of sorcery. Its bronze-sheathed limbs moved with the noiseless, supple ease of an insect's jointed carapace, while the eye-slits of its crested helm revealed only fluid darkness lurking within. The creature's long, notched sword plied air with a swift surety that Conan took diligent care to avoid; and yet the vacancies of the shriveled leathern bindings at the strange warrior's elbows and ankles did not appear to contain any form, not even bones.

Lunging in the wake of one of its long swordsweeps, Conan struck a blow at its green-mottled breastplate. He hoped to knock it over, but instead heard his blade gong hollowly on empty metal. The stabbing force of his stroke did nothing to unbalance his attacker, rather, it left Conan exposed to a recoiling blow that stung his shoulder, buffeting him aside with its casual force.

Angered, he stalked his foe afresh, waiting his turn to feint and strike; this time, though his blade-tip pa.s.sed between the upper and lower arm-pieces of the ghostly warrior's suit and scattered bits of rotten strapping through the air, the being's sword-slashed arm swung on unimpaired. Its weapon grazed his ear and dented his armored shoulder with a smarting impact.

So, Conan learned, it scarcely mattered what was done to the beings' nonexistent bodies. The power of these phantom Einharsons was in their swords, which clove onward in ravaging arcs, empowered with their own mystic energy. The armor suits seemed to march behind the weapons as mere decorations, with no vital functions within, nothing in need of protection. Conan fought on doggedly, seeking some means with which to halt his phantom adversary; whether the haunted blades could be broken, or even parried, his best fencing could not discover.

As he fell back before the mailed specter's onslaught, a calm, fatalistic part of his mind took in the deteriorating situation around him. A few of the rebels on the balcony were halfheartedly battling the Einharsons, but none managed to hold their ground, and some had already fallen before the tireless threshing of the ancient swords. At first the Iron Guard moved in to exploit the vacancy left by the rebels, a.s.suming to fight alongside the undead warriors-but apparently the weirdlings knew no allies. Conan saw one of the guardsmen stabbed through the groin by a rusty, cobwebbed sword before his black-mailed comrades had the sense to fall back from the monsters.

Whatever the mystical provisions of the animating curse, they did not seem to apply to the unblest, unburied Baldomer, whose transfixed body lay motionless on the balcony a few paces away. Nor did the ancient spell command the baron's fine sword, for the stolen weapon had not sprung to unearthly life in Conan's hand-or not yet, at least.

These minor boons scarcely mattered, for the Einharsons already under arms were more than adequately murderous to clear the entire Manse of living humans. Cut off from the corridors along with a dozen or more of the rebels, Conan gave ground with them, eyeing the central stairway as an escape route.

"See thou, traitor!" A shrill, hysterical voice abruptly sounded close behind Conan. "Learn how the undying spite of my fathers punishes you!" A swift backward glance told him that the taunts came from Calissa, who had crept away from the broken phalanx of loyal guardsmen to advance along the front of the balcony. Clinging to the heavy wooden rail, she watched the one-sided battle with venomous, exultant eyes. "Fight your savage best, Cimmerian, and endure long, for if you do, my kin will hound you all the way back to your northern wastes! Nay, you will not escape them! Nevermore can they be laid to rest, now that you have murdered the last Einharson heir!"

She was mad, Conan knew, totally unhinged by the night's b.l.o.o.d.y events. How unlike the n.o.ble girl who had caressed him mere hours past! His heart flinched even as his body shrank before the blade of his attacker.

And yet, at her ravings, a new thought awakened in his brain. Breaking clear of his undead foe's tireless sword-play, he turned to dart after the n.o.ble girl. She sought to flee, but he caught her tightly by the wrist.

"What? Away from me, villain! Do you mean to add me to the list of your murders?" As she writhed in his clutch, Conan sheathed his weapon and reached to his throat. He took the chain with its heavy amulet, removed it and drew it over Calissa's head of tangled red hair. She spat at him in fury, her struggles causing the six-pointed talisman to flail in his face like a chain-mace. But he caught hold of her shoulders and held her fast, letting the pendant settle between her unruly lace-gowned b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

In an instant a transformation was evident in the gallery around them. The phantom Einharson warrior that had been stalking Conan promptly ceased its sword-slashing. Exhibiting the proud, erect bearing of a victorious duelist, it pivoted away in the direction of the cellar stair. Its fellow ghosts on the terrace did the same within moments, their weapons held low at their sides. A glance over the rail showed that the combat on the ground floor had likewise ceased.

"What trickery is this?" Calissa demanded shrilly of the room at large. "Who ever said that a woman could wear the baron's sigil? Off with it, I say!" She grasped the gleaming amulet and tried to tear it from her throat, but Conan's fist knotted in its stout chain, drawing it up so snugly that a twist of his arm could easily have throttled her. "Come back, you musty tomb-haunts! Keep on fighting, I say!" But the undead warriors mechanically continued their retreat, disregarding her frantic, half-choked cries.

The surviving rebels, no longer beset, were quick to surround Conan and help him restrain Calissa. Meanwhile, they faced down the Iron Guards, who looked as if they might move to rescue her. The Cimmerian rapped instructions to those motley fighters near him.

"Keep her quiet, and keep this trinket secured around her neck." He knotted the chain at her creamy nape, beneath her wildly lashing tresses. "This is the power that staves off the marching ghosts. Belike their curse requires only that a living Einharson wear the sigil, not that she rule the city grandly. Here, hold her fast, but do not harm her, at your peril! Dru, the blacksmith, can set a rivet through this chain at the first opportunity."

The last of the Einharson forebears shambled out of sight, and rejoicing cries began to sound from the gallery below. Most of the watchers audibly mistook Conan for Favian; they praised the young lord for joining the rebels and turning back his father's curse, where moments before they had sought to wipe out his line. Many who had fled now found their way back into the Manse, and the press in the lower gallery deepened once again.

The rebel force remained scattered and weakened, seemingly easy prey for the close-knit Iron Guard. And yet moments later, to Conan's surprise, a party of n.o.bles came forth from the loyalist line, their weapons sheathed and their empty palms raised to signify a truce.

"Hold your steel, for we would parley!" came the cry. "Whoever claims to lead this uprising, come and treat with us now."

Prominent in the delegation were Marshal Durwald and the elderly chief of protocol, Lothian. Flanked by lesser n.o.bles, they came straight toward Conan's place in the crowd, halting a few paces away for the sake of their dignity and safety. Rebel officers, including the woman Evadne, had gathered on the scene, and now the Cimmerian moved with them as a body to confront the emissaries.

"Before you wear out your tongues with lies and threats, n.o.ble rogues, be a.s.sured that we will accept nothing but your absolute surrender!" The speaker was a lean rebel youth with short-cropped yellow hair, having more the look of a Temple School acolyte than of a fighter. "The Manse is practically ours, and our followers have risen up throughout the province." Several of his companions nodded in earnest a.s.sent, though none spoke to second him.

Durwald, standing at the center of the royalist faction, his helmet laid in the crook of one arm, smoothed his rumpled black hair with his free hand as he gazed on the youth. Finally he answered.

"And so you think you can do without us? You have been pledged the support of the town's leading families and the squires, perhaps? Can you muster an army fit to police and defend this city?" His jet mustache arched in aristocratic disdain. "Or will you merely import priests of Set out of Stygia to run your stolen fiefdom?"

"Set-priests? We have no truck with the snakecult!" This came from a male rebel, gray at the temples and wearing the brown robe of a disciple of Ulla, cinched now at the waist with an unpriestly sword-belt. "Our party is loyal to the true church of Nemedia. I have heard of the snake-frenzy sweeping the east, but our cause here is a pious one."

"Aye, and our Reform Council includes the best families," Evadne declared from the crowd, her stern demeanor silencing others who clamored to speak. "Not the n.o.blest, but the best." She regarded the royalists with a challenging look. "In our council, the voice of the craftsman is heard along with that of the knight, the farmer's as freely as the squire's. We claim this barony for the benefit of all, putting an end to the cruelties and inequities that have worsened daily under Baldomer's rule!"

At her speech, a murmur of a.s.sent sounded from the other rebels. She did not acknowledge it, giving attention instead to Durwald's reply.

"Fine-sounding sentiments, Evadne. And fresh ones for this tight-laced, regimented part of Nemedia. I wonder what our neighboring barons will think of them . . . especially the gentle lords Sigmarck and Ottislav?" This time Durwald's mustaches canted upward in amus.e.m.e.nt. "How long will it be, do you suppose, before they turn on Dinander with sharp swords and sharper pens, to redraw the maps of their baronies and write an end to your little political experiment?"

"But you fail to take account of King Laslo, who owns all the lands," a black-bearded rebel protested. "He holds the barons in check, and he has championed us in the past against unfair decrees and taxes. His armies in Numalia far exceed those that any local lord might muster!"

Durwald laughed. "So that is the fate you would call down on our heads: to be invested and garrisoned by royal legions! Think you that such shame would improve your lot, or that rough mercenaries from the south of the empire would be more sympathetic to your woes than our native guardsmen?" He shook his head broadly. "Be a.s.sured that they will strut and steal as ruthlessly as any invaders! Likely as not, King Laslo will appoint some petty officer as satrap over us, with unbridled powers."

The rebels, muttering and expostulating in angry dismay, fell silent as Conan spoke abruptly. "What do you propose, Durwald?"

Before the marshal could answer, frail old Lothian leaned forward at his side to speak with surprising firmness and resonance. "I can, I think, suggest a course of action that will benefit both sides. If you insurgents will decide who among you are leaders, you can withdraw with us to more private surroundings to discuss the matter."

At this the rebels fell back to confer for a moment. Though they muttered suspiciously, they were able to select delegates with a speed and unanimity that surprised Conan. Evadne and the sword-bearing priest were chosen, as well as the black-bearded man and two others. The Cimmerian found himself included without question among the elect party.

The two groups walked to one of the doors adjoining Baldomer's apartment. The rebels went in first, cautiously, to beat the hangings with their swords; then followed the half-dozen n.o.bles. A guard of each faction stayed just outside the door, waiting in a standoff along with the battle lines nearby.

"Well, n.o.bles and rebel . . . officers." Walking slowly across the room, old Lothian seated himself with his back to a dining table opposite the door, although the others continued to stand with hands ready at sword-hilts. "'Tis clear, I think, that some form of compromise would be in the best interests of all. As you may know, I differed with the late baron over his more draconian decrees; in fact, I frequently warned him of just such an eventuality as this." The sage adjusted his slender shanks primly in the cushioned chair. "On the other hand, of course I have firm belief in the virtue of aristocratic rule. Speaking as one of the originators of the science of n.o.ble precedence-"

"Get on with it, Counselor!" Evadne interrupted him. "If you palaver too long, your troops and munic.i.p.als all across the city will be whittled away by our armed followers and you will have nothing left to bargain with. Just tell us"-her eyes flashed at Durwald as she spoke-"what interest the people of Dinander can possibly find in common with our recent tormentors."

"Here now," Durwald protested, "I, too, warned Baldomer against his excesses too. There is none here who despises needless cruelty more than I."

"There, you see," Lothian put in good-naturedly. "We are not so far apart as all that. Now if we can just settle on a suitable division of power-"

"Old fool!" interposed the slim, yellow-haired youth. "When has power ever been divided in Dinander, except by the cutting edge of a sword?"

Evadne firmly overruled her fellow rebel. "Rather, when has it not been divided? Tell me, Counselor, who is next in the line of baronial succession after Favian?"

"Why, 'twould be old Eggar, Baldomer's cousin, squire of the Forest Lakes."

"As I thought; a drunken trifler, already infamous for the misrule of his own petty domain. Our folk would never accept such a contemptible tyrant." The strong-featured girl stared challengingly around the company. "He was not in attendance at the Manse tonight?"

"If he was here, he is dead or fled," Durwald replied. "And no great loss. If you are thinking of a puppet, I agree, we need a more attractive palatable than that."