Conan the Barbarian (23 page)

Muttering words she’d learned from her mother when the dragonfly had been given her as a child’s amusement, she launched it into the air, and sent it into orbit around the outpost.

 

 

The Cimmerian turned at Tamara’s cry and bounded up the steps three at a time. Khalar Zym had reached her side. She’d slashed at him, and he’d recoiled from her attack. She moved to press it before he could draw his sword, but one of the sandliches had risen to grab her ankle.

Khalar Zym drew his curved sword and stepped back, allowing Conan to meet him on level ground. They circled for a moment, each eyeing the other. Khalar Zym finally nodded, and beckoned Conan forward with the same casual gesture the Cimmerian had made before.

Conan darted in, thrusting low, then bringing his blade up for a cut at Khalar Zym’s groin. Zym parried the blade out and up in a circle, steel skirling. Conan drew his blade back as they passed, then whirled and slapped, knowing his blade would hit flat. Khalar Zym had not expected that, but still turned and avoided most of the blow. Nonetheless, the blade caught him over the ear, knocking him back and sending him stumbling down the steps.

Khalar Zym’s hand came up and fingers probed his ear. They came away bloody. He looked from his hand to Conan. “Who
are
you?”

“You left a boy in Cimmeria holding a chain. You stole something from his people.”

Recognition washed over Khalar Zym’s face, but in its wake came a dismissive snort. “You’ll have to do better than pinking my ear, boy.”

Conan, intent on pinking the other ear as well, and thrusting steel through the skull to link them, flew down the stairs at Khalar Zym. The Cimmerian’s sword came up in an overhand blow. Khalar Zym blocked it, but staggered back two steps. He thrust, hoping to drive Conan back, but Conan beat the blade aside and lunged again. Khalar Zym retreated, a line on his armor revealing how close Conan had come to opening an artery.

As Conan engaged Khalar Zym at the outpost’s heart, Tamara engaged two of the sandliches. With a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other, she fended off the sorcerous creatures. One ducked beneath a swipe with the torch, but Tamara’s front kick crushed the sigil on his breastbone. She leaped away from the second, moving up toward the outpost’s seaside wall.

Khalar Zym drew back, becoming less arrogant in his stance. Conan knew better than to mistake that as a retreat. He waited, knowing the man who had destroyed his village would have to prove himself the superior warrior. Zym obligingly drove forward, a stamp feint raising dust, then lunged. As Conan went to parry, Zym brought his blade up and over. That thrust missed and Zym sailed past, giving Conan an easy shot at his back.

Conan hesitated for a heartbeat. Zym’s twin blades parted, one twisting around and locking into place at the other end of the hilt. As the man whirled, the second blade passed through where Conan would have been. The blow would have cut him from hip to spine, and before he fell, the second slice would have taken his head.

As Khalar Zym came around, Conan parried his slashing blow low, then whipped his left fist around, catching the man in the face. Zym spun away, flailing to catch his balance. He went down to a knee and continued to twist around. He regained his feet, swaying drunkenly, then spat blood from a split lip.

Before Conan could close, he caught a glint of light in the corner of his left eye. For a moment he thought it was an arrow and twisted away. It still sliced him, a flesh wound, nothing more, on the neck. It plunged past and into the dirt, a metal dragonfly, which Conan stomped on contemptuously.

“Enough games, Khalar Zym. It is time for you to die.” Conan took a step toward the man, but suddenly the landscape shimmered strangely. Khalar Zym’s shape blurred and wavered as if he were a heat mirage. The man lunged and Conan parried, but it came slow and Zym’s blade cut him over the thigh. Numbness began to spread over Conan’s left shoulder, a tingling descending that arm.

The Cimmerian reeled back, falling at the foot of the steps. Khalar Zym loomed above him, twin blades whirling. “Now you join your misbegotten clan, Cimmerian.”

“Touch him, Khalar Zym, and I throw myself from the battlement.”

Khalar Zym hesitated and Conan scuttled back up the steps. Though he could only see her as a dim outline, Tamara stood there on the wall, tall between crenels, a burning torch held aloft. “If he dies, so do your plans.”

Khalar Zym retreated to the middle of the courtyard. “Well played, monk.”

“Master Fassir taught me well.”

“Alas, not well enough.” He raised a hand. “Cherin, your archers. Varminting points. Take her.”

Around the western wall appeared the female archers, bows drawn, arrows with thick, blunt points nocked.

Tamara’s voice gained urgency. “Now, Conan!”

Though the world blazed in some spots and grew dim in others, though his limbs quivered and his tongue had thickened in his mouth, Conan sped into action. He lumbered up the steps, or so it seemed to him, though, in reality, thick thews made short work of the distance. Bows thrummed and a few arrows hit him like punches. More had hit Tamara and she fell inward toward the courtyard, but still she had the presence of mind to pitch her torch to the left, through the hole that led into the bowels of the outpost.

Conan and Artus had once explored the outpost as a potential sanctuary for their corsairs. It had been thoroughly looted and in need of an abundance of repairs. It would not suit them, but in it they located several tunnels filled with a viscous mixture of naptha and oil that the Argosians had once used to project fire onto attacking ships below. Since their arrival at the outpost, Tamara and Conan had filled urns and casks with the stuff, placing it where Khalar Zym would most likely hide his troops, and laying a trail to it that led back to a number of holes like the one into which Tamara had cast her torch.

As she fell inward, Conan rose to meet her. He caught her around the waist, gained the top of the battlement in a step, then launched himself into the air. Behind him, in a series of explosions, fire geysered up and gushed out. Archers screamed and a few fell toward the sea. Others launched arrows that sped past. But of his plunging fall into the water, aside from a brief glimpse of the
Hornet
coming around the headland and into the bay, Conan remembered nothing.

MARIQUE REACHED THE
wall beside her father, having dodged blazing puddles and the thrashing of burning bodies. A ship—smaller than her father’s land ship—had rounded the headland and had deployed two longboats. Corsairs pulled at oars, heading for where the monk was managing to keep the Cimmerian afloat.

Her father, a trickle of blood running down the side of his face, slammed his fist against the wall. “She is getting away.”

Marique laid a hand on her father’s forearm. “We shall get her, Father.”

He turned on her, fury knotting his features. “We?
We?
Her escape is
your
fault.”

“My fault?”

“Yes, your sorcery has failed me . . .” His eyes became slits. “Your
weakness
sickens me.”

Marique fell back, clutching her stomach as she might have had her father shoved a foot and a half of steel into her belly. “My weakness?”

He stared out at the sea again. “You know it is true.”

“My weakness?” Anger entered her voice, tinged with ice. “It is
I
who found her for you, Father.”

“And you could not do as I asked. You could not kill the barbarian as I asked. So now she flees. My archers burn and the two of them swim to that ship.” He thrust a finger toward the east. “So, what does your sorcery tell you now, Marique? That they will sail up the River Styx and, from there, overland to Hyrkania? Or perhaps they will skirt the Black Coast and sail to Vendhya and go north from there. Maybe all the way to Khitai and then west? Will that be it?”

“Father, I can track her, but you know that I cannot predict . . .”

“Then what good are you to me?” He turned, a hand raised to slap her. “Your mother was not weak. She could have predicted.”

Marique clenched her jaw.
Could she? Could she indeed?
Marique wanted to shout the obvious at him: that her mother had
failed
to foresee the trap that led to her own death.
Where was the strength of her magic when
that
happened?

Outrage raced through Marique. She forced herself to look out at the ocean. Pirates were already pulling the Cimmerian’s unconscious body into a longboat. What an amazing constitution he had, for the poison, even with so tiny a scratch, should have felled him in two steps or three. Even wounded and wavering, he had fended her father off—proving himself to be the better man.

The moment that particular thought entered her head, Marique’s vision of the future shifted. She had always believed that they would succeed in activating the Mask of Acheron. It would allow her father to draw Maliva back from the dead, but that did not mean that the mask was good for nothing else. Marique knew far more of the ways of the mask than her mother ever had. With it activated, on his face, and he in full command of its magicks, Khalar Zym would become invincible in battle. No force could stand against him. He would be able to summon the wisdom of Acheron’s finest generals, direct the magicks of its greatest necromancers. Compared to that, the things her mother might offer would be but the snarls of a puppy in a company of wolves.

But my father is not the only one who could wear that mask.
She allowed herself to imagine Conan wearing it, with her at his side—or rather, with him as
her
consort. With her magicks and his skill, not only would Acheron rise again, but it would expand far beyond the borders it had once known. Her father’s dreams of power and glory would fade in comparison to the reality Conan and she could create.

Khalar Zym turned cold eyes on her, a fingertip probing his busted lip. “So silent, Marique. I would take this as a sign of your being appalled at your weakness, but you are not at my knees, begging my forgiveness.”

“Do you wish to know the depth of my
weakness
, Father?” Marique turned, and with a crooked finger summoned the acolyte who bore the standard upon which hung the Mask of Acheron. The man came forward, stumbling, the mask swinging. Two of Ukafa’s burly spearmen moved to stop him, but sandliches sprang up and hamstringed them with quick cuts. The acolyte flew up the stairs even more swiftly than the barbarian had done, and slammed into the wall.

The Mask of Acheron hung past the battlements, dangling above sea and stone.

“
This
is how weak I am, Father. Watch my sorcery shatter the mask and scatter the pieces into the sea.” She looked at the soldiers who had filtered into the outpost. “Watch me burn the eyes from your warriors, snap their spines, and boil brains within skulls. And ask yourself, Father, once I have done all that, will you
dare
to call me weak?”

Marique watched him.
Show me one sign of your own weakness, Father, just one sign . . .
She looked for a lip to quiver, for a bead of sweat to rise on his brow. She wanted a muscle to twitch, his pupils to contract, his mouth to hang open, just a bit. Anything to show that he knew that she had grown past him, past her mother.

Give me that sign, and I shall destroy you
.

Instead his head canted to the side, only a degree or two, in a sign of curiosity. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, Marique, so much of your mother’s fire, so much of my spirit . . . they have melded in you in ways unexpected. You make me so proud.”

Her grim expression eased.

“You must forgive me for scolding you, beloved daughter. We are
so
close to everything we have sought. Being able to rebuild our family, to recover our heritage.” Khalar Zym turned his back to the sea and the sight of the monk as she was taken aboard the pirate ship. “And you will forgive me for testing you.”

“Testing me?”

“Oh yes, Marique.” He focused distantly. “My longing to have my wife returned to my side has not blinded me to the difficulties of the future. The task we set ourselves of restoring Acheron is not one which two alone can accomplish. I have driven you hard, Marique, and today the hardest of all. Never have I questioned your love for me, but being as close as we are, now, I had to assure myself that you were committed to realizing our entire goal. Resurrecting your mother is but one part of it—a minor part—and you shall be a major player in all the rest.”

The girl frowned and gestured toward the outpost. “This was a test?”

“Yes, and you proved yourself, Marique.” Khalar Zym smiled. “When I
allowed
the barbarian to strike me, when I
allowed
it to seem as if I was in danger, you reacted. You attacked him, unbidden. You worked
with
me to defeat him . . . and so shall you work with me to defeat
all
of our enemies.”

He reached out and caressed her cheek. She raised a finger to his broken lip, repairing the torn flesh with a whisper, ignoring the fact that Ukafa had pulled the standard back from the battlement. “I love you, Father.”

“I know.” He slid his arm around her shoulder to guide her out of the burning outpost. “Come, we return to Khor Kalba to continue our preparations.”

“But, Father, we don’t have
her
.”

“This shall not be a problem for long, I trust, Marique, will it?” Her father gave her a squeeze. “I want you to use your unique and valuable gifts . . . your very
strong
gifts . . . to find the woman for me again.”

“Yes, Father, I shall.” Marique nodded solemnly. “And at Khor Kalba, we have just the creature we need to bring her to us.”

 

 

CONAN SHIVERED AS
consciousness teased him with its return. The world moved around him, but resolved itself into a steady, rhythmic motion. Combined with faint creaks and tang of salt air, he concluded that he was aboard a ship. He tried to move an arm and wasn’t certain he’d been able to do so. Still, he felt no band around his wrist, nor heard the clank of chains, so he assumed he was not in the hands of his enemies.