Conan the Barbarian (18 page)

He suspected, in fact, that if he followed the road and tried to enter the Wastes from another direction, he’d end up near some other campsite of relative safety. It was akin to when his father had placed a sword at his throat, keeping him back from any potential harm in their first duels. Frustrating, yes, but his father wasn’t going to let him hurt himself.

But it is worth the effort.
Conan took a deep breath and faced himself due west. He spotted a stone twelve feet in front of him. His shadow touched it. He deliberately put one foot in front of the other and in two strides had reached it. Something tried to convince him that he’d gone far enough, but he picked another target and moved to it.

With each step, the Red Waste tried to fight back. It tried to convince him that he need not go any further. But its argument melted in the face of his conviction that he
did
need to go further. In fact, its every attempt to discourage him just encouraged him more. He pitted his determination against that of the sorcery protecting the land, and refused to be stopped.

He glanced at his back trail. It looked as if he’d not gotten very far at all. Hopelessness slammed into him. He snarled. Indulging it was as bad as a warrior indulging in revenge. He would not. It was not part of him or his tradition, so it would find no purchase in his mind or upon his soul.

He turned back to the west and pushed hard, then something broke. He stumbled forward, all opposition gone. Conan wasn’t certain what had happened, but he figured it was not good. Drawing his sword, he whistled for his horse, mounted up, and headed west as fast as he could.

 

 

TAMARA GREETED THE
sun as she always did on the eastern battlements, but found it difficult to find peace. Master Fassir’s vision and explanation had confused her. She’d known, of course, about the world beyond the monastery’s walls. She’d met monks from Hyrkania and someday imagined being sent on a mission into the outer world. Even so, her very existence had been defined through her relationship to the monastery and her service within the order.

Fassir had left her wondering who she was and why someone might be seeking her. Yes, he had told her it was a madman who wanted her so he could garner power, but that explanation could cover a multitude of possibilities. Unbidden had come to her the idea that somehow she had been a princess, perhaps the twin of some other princess. She’d been stolen and hidden to prevent a civil war. The madman was some renegade prince, perhaps her father’s disgruntled brother, come to raise her up and claim that she was the true princess.

She’d known that idea was nonsense, but still it troubled her when a few of the other women who had heard the words of the prophecy teased her about this warrior. They fashioned him into a knight or a noble come to rescue her. That easily fit with her own scenario, which, while devoid of substance, still had the power to enchant.

Tamara drew in a deep breath and forced herself to be calm. She was not a princess, she was a monk. Her master had seen a warrior in her future, but how far into it she did not know. And he had made her promise to go to Hyrkania if so commanded. That precluded her involvement in any civil war.
The source of my blood does not matter. I am Tamara Amaliat Jorvi Karushan, a monk, and that is more than enough for me.

Smiling at her foolishness, she began to move through her exercises. Away to the south, on the far side of the central courtyard, Fassir watched from a balcony. He acknowledged her with a nod and a quick smile. As he returned to his private thoughts, she closed her eyes and continued with her drills. She flowed from tiger through dragon and into the serpent.

As she pivoted on her left foot, something felt out of place. The ground trembled in an odd way. Two ways, really, a low tremor and a series of staccato beats. She’d not felt its like before, at least not in that intensity or combination. She opened her eyes and glanced over the walls as the first of the riders poured into the monastery.

The riders, encased in black armor, rode down two monks and a novitiate before drawing their swords. Fassir shouted commands, then turned and ran. Tamara immediately sprinted down the stairs and leaped from the lowest landing toward one of the riders. She caught him with both feet in the chest, spilling him from the saddle. He started to get up, but she kneed him in the face and he went back down.

Monks with bows let fly with arrows. One flashed past Tamara’s face, thudding into a horse’s chest. The beast collapsed, vaulting the rider high into the air. He smashed into the stairs, his body bowing so his heels touched his shoulders, and slumped lifeless. Elsewhere riders fell, skewered by a handful of arrows, yet others continued fighting despite their wounds.

More soldiers, clearly allied with the riders, burst in through the gate. Female archers filled the air with barbed projectiles. Monks curled up around shafts sped deep into their bellies. And then Kushite warriors, led by a giant in mail, brandished oval shields and stabbing spears. A few monks had managed to obtain pole arms and dueled with the invaders. Though the monks had trained for ages to be swift and deadly, the larger spearmen fought with a zeal for slaughter beyond Tamara’s comprehension. They needed a lot of killing.

Shocked, she hesitated, and that saved her life. A misshapen man on horseback pointed his sword in her direction. “Get her with the others.” He reined away as two lightly armored men moved to grab her.

For a moment she wilted in their grasp. As they tightened their grip, she stomped on their feet. One fist swung down, delivering a sharp blow to a groin, while the other went up, crushing a nose. As one man sank to his knees, she slammed the other face-first into the wall, then darted off toward the monastery’s interior.

“Where is Master Fassir?” She shouted the question a half-dozen times, but never got an answer. She reached the top of the veranda stairs, looking back from where she and Fassir had spoken the day before. More troops poured into the courtyard, and more monks died, the morning’s peace forever shattered.

The slaughter would have been complete at that point, and she would have died with the rest, save for one thing. The staccato rumbling had been the cavalry, but the lower, more consistent thunder had come from a vehicle she never could have imagined existing. The first she saw of it was the stout wooden ram crashing through the battlement above the monastery’s gate. That the falling stones crushed monk and invader alike seemed of little concern to few, and of almost none to the man who stood atop the land ship’s forecastle.

Arms upraised, clad in black leather armor that devoured the sun’s early light, the man seemed more a god than a mortal. He peered down from the heights, surveying all the carnage. The path of a single arrow did not concern him, nor did the flight of a spear. One monk shot at him. The arrow struck the rail by his waist, but the land ship’s master gave it no notice.

And a moment later a dozen black-fletched arrows pierced the monk’s heart in recompense for his temerity.

For just a moment, as the last stone fell and the land ship squeezed into the gate, the battle stopped. Tamara even stopped breathing. The home she had always known, the place that had been her sanctuary, had been broken by a demigod. He was not, she knew, the warrior of Fassir’s vision, but she feared that he
was
the madman of Fassir’s tale.

A hand grabbed her forearm and yanked her away from the courtyard. She spun, a hand coming up in a palm strike to the face, but Fassir blocked it easily. “Come with me, Tamara.”

“Who was that?”

“It’s best you don’t know. If you have his name and think on it, he can find you.”

She blinked. “How did he find me here?”

“You don’t have his name. I do.” Fassir dragged her deeper into the monastery grounds, toward the western gate. “We hid you and never thought he might have sought me. I should have sent you to Hyrkania sooner.”

She stopped. “I’m not leaving. Our people are dying.”

Fassir’s voice became edged with steel. “It is for the sake of
all
people that you must go, Tamara. To Hyrkania. Do not hesitate. Do not waver.”

A company of twenty spearmen poured into the little courtyard. “We have our orders.”

Fassir pushed Tamara toward the western gate and the coach waiting there. One monk sat ready to drive the team of four, and a half-dozen others had mounted up to ride as guards. “Go, Tamara. I prepared the coach against this. Go.”

“I don’t want to leave you here, Master.”

“Deprive me of my fun?”

“Master!”

“Do you trust me, Tamara?”

She nodded. “With my life. With everything I—”

“Then ask no more questions, and do as I say.”

The intensity of his stare forced her back. She retreated from him as if half asleep. She did not want to leave, but he had given her no choice.
For the sake of
all
people . . .

Fassir, his hands open, entered the semicircle of warriors. “Your orders end with me.”

Though she knew she should have run to the coach, and though the shouts of the other monks implored her to do so, she hesitated, hypnotized by her master. She had only ever known him as a demanding yet gentle teacher. In exercises, he would bring students to the point where they could seriously injure themselves, then release them and calmly explain their errors.

With the invading spearmen he showed no restraint, and his demonstrations of their errors did not save them from pain. The first of the invaders laughed as he rushed forward, stabbing a spear at Fassir’s chest. The old man turned on a foot, letting the spear pass between body and arm. Before the attacker could recover from his lunge, Fassir had flowed forward. He jammed his left elbow into the man’s face, then plucked the spear from him. Fassir returned to his spot, spinning the spear with the ease and abandon of a boy idly twirling a stick.

Then he cast it aside. It clattered against the courtyard’s cobblestones.

As Tamara climbed into the waiting coach, her master beckoned the rest of the invaders forward. With a clatter of hooves and the cracking of a whip, Tamara fled the monastery and yet allowed herself to imagine that her master still fought and that all was not lost.

MARIQUE STRUGGLED MIGHTILY
and succeeded in resisting the temptation to stop in the center of the monastery courtyard to bask in the ebon glow of her father’s victory. She told herself that this was because she had significant work to do. Her part in his victory—in their victory—had not yet begun. She hoped he would notice how quickly she fell to her work, advancing even in the face of the monks’ continued resistance.

She made slow her advance toward the main temple, flanked by her father’s Kushite general, Ukafa. She kept her head high, and brought her right hand up higher. Each finger had been capped with a silver talon of Stygian manufacture. Too delicate to be used to flense an enemy, they had other, more subtle uses. Sunlight lanced from them as Marique thrummed the dying threads of the magick wards that had hidden the monastery. Soon all of the monks’ secrets would be open to her.

Ukafa’s Kushite spearmen had gathered young female monks onto the temple’s top step. A few of the women had been bloodied in combat, but none seriously, as per her father’s instructions. Demanding restraint of the warriors had doubtless cost some lives, but the dull ends of spears and the flat of swords had been enough to herd the women together.

Marique was equal parts lioness hunting and empress victorious. Of the dozen women gathered above, three were too young and two far too old to be the one she sought. She did not segregate them, however, since they appeared the most nervous.
Terror is contagious
. Making an example of one would inspire the others to be more compliant, and that would speed her task to completion.

She chose one of possible candidates and approached. The woman shied from her, cringing halfway down to a grovel, but Marique caught her chin in her left hand. She raised the woman up, then tipped her head back. Her right hand came up. She stroked a talon’s needle-sharp point over pale flesh, drawing a single drop of blood.

Marique caught the blood on the talon, then delicately deposited it on her tongue. In an instant she knew this was not the one she wanted, but she allowed herself to savor the taste. The girl did have promise, she had power, but not the right type, nor in sufficient quantity.
And then there is the quality of it
. Far too sweet, too light—an offering of weak tea when one sought strong brandy.

Marique smiled. “You are not the one I seek. Go.”

The monk stared at her in utter disbelief, then ducked her head in thanks. She darted past Marique, keeping her eyes downcast. Which is why she never saw Ukafa’s headman’s sword come around. The curved blade took the woman at the base of the skull, shearing through her neck cleanly. Her head slowly spun, her body sagged. Her severed queue writhed like a decapitated snake for a moment, then the woman’s head, eyes yet open, bounced down the stairs and rolled up against the body of another dead monk.

The remaining monks drew back a step, but the wall of Kushite shields prevented escape.

Marique paced before them, her silver-sheathed fingers undulating back and forth sensuously. “I look for one among you who is special. In her veins runs the blood of an ancient and venerable noble line. She is descended from the last of the Royal House of Acheron. She is here. I know this. I can smell her. I will taste her. She is among you, and if you have any compassion for your friends and companions, you will make yourself known.”

The women glanced at one another, confusion and terror warring on their faces. One, one of the younger ones, bowed her head. “We do not know who you seek, Mistress.”

Marique smiled and opened her hands. “There. Honesty. Was that so difficult? Your courage and honesty deserves a reward. Go.”