Conan The Fearless (2 page)

“And a room for the night,” Conan interrupted. “A room with a door and bolt.”

“Mitra has blessed my establishment with such things as you seek,” the fat innkeeper said, showing his blackened teeth again.

Conan grunted. “Fetch me food then, and we shall see if Mitra’s blessing extends to the cook. And wine, your best.”

The man appeared to appraise Conan shrewdly; but before he could speak, the wide-shouldered youth flipped a coin at him. The fat innkeeper’s eyes widened as he caught the reflection of dim lamplight on yellow, even as the disk flew, through the air. He snatched the piece from its flight faster than a falcon slays a thrush, then opened his fingers carefully, to keep the coin hidden from the curious stares of the others in the dank room. But the flash of gold would not be denied.

“Gold!” The fat man’s whisper spoke at once of greed and lust, and reverence. He made as if to bite the gold, to assure its purity, but apparently considered the stage of his teeth and only weighed the money in his palm. He clamped his fingers tightly around the shining disk and glanced around at his patrons, seeming, as he did so, kin to some wily rodent.

Conan chose that moment to stretch his mighty frame. Sinews cracked and joints popped as he rolled his massive shoulders and flexed his thick arms. The sounds and motion seemed to startle the innkeeper from his greed-fed trance. He bowed, mumbled, and hurried away. He was back in a moment bearing a wineskin and cup, which he fawningly placed on the table nearest Conan.

“Your meal will be prepared at once, my lord.”

Conan grinned, aware that the riffraff of the tavern were staring at him. Disdaining the cup, he snatched up the wineskin and lifted it over his head. The stream of thin red wine tasted slightly bitter; but it was cool enough. Thrice Conan filled his mouth and swallowed before he downtilted the skin for breath. He stretched again, his muscles dancing like tame beasts under his deeply tanned skin, then sat upon the rude bench next to the table.

Around him the inn’s customers turned back to pursue their own business-save the rotund man, who continued to watch the young giant from the corner of one pale eye.

The innkeeper returned in a short while bearing a wooden platter covered with a slab of steaming beef. The meat was as thick as Conan’s hand and dripping blood, being only lightly seared, but the Cimmerian fell to eating, using his razor-edged Karpashian dagger to hew great chunks from the steak. He chewed lustily and washed the half-raw meat down with streams of the thin wine. It was not the best meal he had ever had, but it would suffice.

When he finished the meat and most of the wine, Conan turned to search for the innkeeper. Before he could do more than glance around, the obsequious man with the blacktoothed smile appeared at Conan’s elbow. “My lord?”

“I am no man’s lord,” Conan said, feeling sated with food and wine. “But I am tired and would see the room Mitra saw fit to bless in this … establishment.”

“At once.”

The innkeeper led Conan from the smoke-filled room, through a narrow corridor, to a steep set of wooden stairs. Each step creaked as Conan trod upon it, so that his ascent reminded him of a twittering flock of feeding birds. He grinned. Good. No thief could climb these steps to take a man unawares in the night.

The room was scarcely an improvement on the scene below, save that it was empty of anything but a pile of clean straw and a rough wool blanket. There was a round hole cut in the outside wall-window enough to admit air or moonlight, but too small for a man to enter. The door seemed solid, and there was a well-oiled brass bolt that slid easily in its recess to seal the portal. Odd, that. The bolt was the best-kept part of the room. Conan waved the innkeeper away, bolted the door, and tossed his leather bags full of loot into the corner near the mound of hay.

Something scuttled away from the solid thump of the gold and silver, chittering unseen in the dimness. Conan pulled his dagger and crept closer to the rude bed, his blue eyes alert. When he was ready, he rustled one edge of the hay.

The rat burst forth, fleeing, but he moved too slowly.

Conan stabbed with remarkable speed and impaled the brown-furred rodent on his dagger.

Conan grinned. That one would not be nibbling at him this night. He stood and flicked the dagger toward the small window, flinging the dead rodent from the blade, outside into the deepening evening. He wiped the dagger on the hay, sheathed the knife, and settled himself for sleep.

A whisper of a noise came in the hours before false dawn. It was so faint that it would have seemed to be hidden from ordinary ears by the night-creaks of the inn growing older. Conan awakened instantly, his senses alert.

Skritch. Skritch. It was a tiny thing, this aural intruder upon his rest; but it boded ill, for Conan detected in the noise the scrape of metal upon metal. Only a man used instruments of iron or brass, and a man at this hour meant danger.

Through the hole in the wall a faint beam of sinking moon and starlight entered the room. This was hardly enough for a cat to navigate by, but the Cimmerian’s vision was sharper than other men’s, and honed by many past dangers. He swept his gaze around the room until he focused upon the cause of the nocturnal sound.

In the pale glow Conan saw a thin wire sliding between the door and its jamb, a hooked bit of copper that tugged at the well-oiled bolt.

For a moment Conan felt a prickle of fear along the back of his neck. No man born of woman had mounted the stairs that he had climbed earlier-this he would wager. He reached for his sword.

Suddenly, the greasy bolt slid free and the door burst inward. Three men rushed into the room, each wielding a dagger raised to strike.

Conan leaped up, jerked his broadsword free of its scabbard, and lunged for the assassins. If they thought to slay a sleeping man, they were sadly mistaken, for the Cimmerian attacked.

The first man was spitted before he saw his mortal danger. Conan ripped his sword free as the man fell gargling in his death throes. The Cimmerian instantly swung the heavy blade with a force denied all but the most powerful of men. The second assassin half-turned and managed to raise his dagger in defense, but his effort counted for naught. Sparks flew as the broadsword mated with the dagger and swept it aside as if it were no more than a feather. Conan’s blade bit deeply into the villain’s side, shearing ribs and organs alike, and the man screamed in his final agony as he fell, to lie prone upon the filthy wooden floor.

The third man backed quickly away into the tight corridor, fear staining his features.

The wall across the corridor kissed the would-be assassin’s back. He looked frantically to the right and left, but seemed to know that if he turned to flee, the berserk giant would be on him instantly. He switched grips on the dagger, holding it like a sword, and jabbed the point in Conan’s direction.

Just then, from the stairs came a cacophony of screeching footfalls. Flickering tapers threw ghostly fingers of yellow light ahead of their bearers. Conan did not take his attention from the dagger-bearing thief; however, the man must have thought it so. He lunged at Conan, seeking to bury the point of his weapon in the Cimmerian’s groin. Conan leaped lithely to one side, fast for so large a man, and swung his sword overhead and downward with all his might. The sharp edge connected with the villain’s head and bisected it, as a cook might split a melon. Gore splashed patterns upon the walls of the corridor, now better-lit by the innkeeper and the roundish man Conan had seen earlier in the common room. Conan turned toward these two with the point of his bloody sword aimed at the innkeeper’s heart, a heart hidden under a grimy nightshirt.

The innkeeper went deathly pale and began to sweat profusely. “P-p-please, sir, I have a family!”

Conan fixed the man with an unblinking stare, with eyes blazing like two glowing blue coals. He looked away, finally, at the mortal remains of those men who would have killed him had he been less vigilant. “Who were these scum?” he asked, pointing his blade at the nearest corpse.

“I-I-I know them not, sir,” the innkeeper managed to stammer. Sweat rolled from him in fat, greasy drops that plopped onto the floor by his bare feet.

The short rotund man spoke. “Zamorian cutpurses, it would seem. They arrived at the inn only earlier this day.”

Conan regarded the man. “I am called Conan of Cimmeria, but late of Shadizar. Who might you be?”

“I am Loganaro, friend, a merchant from Mornstadinos, in Corinthia. I am returning there from a visit to Koth, where I have-ah-business interests.”

Conan nodded and turned his gaze back to the innkeeper. “How came these carrion-feeders to my room, owner of this Mitra-cursed dog barn? Not by way of those stairs.”

“G-g-good sir, there is a second set of stairs at the far end of the corridor. B-bet-better-constructed ones.”

“Aye. Now explain the reasons for the oiled bolt, dog.”

“B-b-bolt? It-it was but recently installed, sir. The craftsman would have oiled it.” The innkeeper swallowed and nodded. as though he were a puppet with a loosened string. “Yes, that must be it; the craftsman must have done it.”

Conan shook his head. “A likely story. I am disposed to look up this craftsman and ask him.”

The innkeeper turned an ashen hue. “B-b-but he is no longer in our village. He-ah-left-for Turan.”

Conan spat at the floor. He squatted and used the ragged cloak of the dead cutpurse to clean his blade, then inspected the steel for nicks. There were no fresh marks on the blade; the thief’s dagger must have been of poorly made steel.

Smoothly, Conan rose to tower over the trembling innkeeper. “Drag this offal away from my room,” he ordered the innkeeper. “I would return to my disturbed slumber.”

“S-s-sleep?” The fat man seemed horrified at the idea.

“What else? No cock has crowed, and I am tired. Be quick, and I may overlook the matter of the oiled bolt.”

Conan grinned as he ate portions of the breakfast the innkeeper had laid before him. The food was well-prepared and hot. If he belched, the owner of the dog kennel called an inn came running to inquire if he could be of service.

As Conan sat there the short merchant approached him. He addressed the Cimmerian. “Do you travel west, by happenstance?”

“Aye. To Nemedia.”

“Then you will ride the north fork of the Corinthian road through Haunted Pass.”

“Haunted Pass?”

The merchant smiled. “A name to scare children, no doubt. The wind sings strange songs as it makes its journey over the rocks. There are hollow places that give back sounds some men find unnerving.”

Conan laughed, and tore a final chunk of fresh bread away from the third loaf the innkeeper had brought him. He washed the bread down with a sip of wine. “In the land of my birth we know of such wind-flutes,” Conan said. “Even small children in Cimmeria have no fear of such sounds, much less a man of eighteen winters.”

Loganaro shrugged under his dark brown robe. “There is also a haunted lake, called Spokesjo, near the summit of the pass.”

“And do fish blow bubbles at unwary travelers from this haunted lake?” Conan laughed again, amused by his own humor.

The merchant’s face grew serious. “Nay, no fish swim in this lake. Those things which do are better left unmentioned, save to say one should avoid the shores of the place in which they dwell.”

Conan shrugged. “I travel through Corinthia to Nemedia, and this pass is the route by which I go, wind-noises and wives’ tales notwithstanding.”

Loganaro grinned. “Ah, a brave man. As it happens, I will also be returning to my country by this route. Perhaps you would care for a companion?”

Conan shook his head. “Nay, merchant. I travel better when I travel alone.”

The merchant shrugged. “As you wish. I shall be before or behind you, in any event. I would not startle you should you note me upon your trail.”

“It would take more than a single merchant on the road to startle me, Loganaro.”

The short man nodded and said no more, but there was a look of amusement about him Conan did not care for. It was as if he withheld some deep and dark secret from the young Cimmerian.

The snow lay like a thick and crusty blanket on the rocks girding the pass. The breath of Conan and his buckskin horse fogged the freezing air as they wound along the trail. Conan took no notice of the temperature, save to pull his fur cloak a bit tighter about him.

The buckskin mount picked its way slowly along the rocky path. There was little wind, but Conan heard a distant howling of air across some hollow. He grinned. Wind-flutes might scare the timid, but not a Cimmerian. The slow clop-clop of the horse’s hooves accompanied the faint echo of the wind playing its ghostly tunes.

Ahead, Conan saw the surface of the small lake of which he’d been told. He shook his head, and his square-cut black hair moved stiffly in the cold. The lake was frozen from shore to shore, and Conan would wager half the gold in the sack mounted behind him that the ice was as thick as his own well-thewed leg. It was less than likely any evil spirits would be emerging from that lake.

The trail passed within a few yards of the lake’s frozen edge. The horse picked its way along in a lazy fashion, lulling Conan with the motion.

Halfway along the length of the lake the horse stopped suddenly and turned its head sideways to stare at the giant slab of ice.

Conan looked, but saw nothing. He dug his heels into the beast’s sides. “Move,” he said.

The horse whinnied and shook its head, almost as if answering him. The animal snorted and began to sidestep away from the lake. “Foolish fly-brain!” Conan said. He kicked the horse harder. “I will feast on horseflesh this night if you do not move!”

There came a cracking sound, loud in the silence, and Conan jerked his gaze away from the recalcitrant horse and stared at the lake. A long, jagged fracture appeared on the surface of the ice; quickly, another appeared, then a third. It was almost as if something were pushing up from under the ice.

The surface of the frozen lake burst asunder, and chunks of ice the size of large dogs flew through the air before smashing back down. As Conan watched, beings began to clamber from the fissure onto the surface of the lake. And what beings they were! Each was man-sized, but shaped like a great ape. They were pure white, without facial features-no mouths or noses or eyes-and each was as smooth as polished crystal. A dozen of the creatures scrambled from the ice and began to run. For an instant Conan thought them pursued by something and uninterested in him, for they ran at angles away from him. Then he realized what they were doing: cutting off his escape!