Conan The Freelance (17 page)

The villagers were obviously not expecting an attack by the Pili; Blad’s war cry, a hissing, screeching, yodellike scream designed to frighten enemies, seemed to do just that. The men turned to look at the two Pili, freezing where they stood.

Fortunately, only one man was directing in their path. Blad skewered him with the spear and hurled the startled victim aside, releasing the spear and man together. Blad veered to his right a hair and slowed, so that Thayla passed him and leaped into the boat. Blad shoved the boat into the water and jumped in behind her. Fetching up a paddle, he stood in the stern and turned back toward the stunned men. The young Pili screeched again and waved the paddle menacingly.

Several of the men started forward as if to chase the drifting boat. Another group of four or five men ran to the last boat, drawing the attention of the ones chasing the Pili.

Thayla found another paddle and began using it, propelling the boat into deeper water.

At that, all but one of the pursuing men turned back and ran toward the one boat remaining. Before they had covered half a dozen paces, the dock next to the boat collapsed sideways, and buried boat and men under a wall of flaming debris. A hot blast of wind hit Thayla, making her gasp, but she did not stop paddling.

The man who had not run to the boat was now in the water; he was a good swimmer. He was able to move faster than Thayla could paddle the boat, and in a few seconds he was nearly to the craft.

“Wait! Let me in!”

“Blad!” Thayla said sharply.

The young Pili turned to look at his queen, and she nodded meaningfully. at the man in the water. Blad nodded.

To the man, he said, “Here, catch the paddle!”

When the man drew close enough to reach the extended paddle, Blad jerked it up and snapped it down again. The edge of the heavy wooden implement smashed the swimming man squarely on top of the head.

The sound was quite loud, Thayla thought as she watched the man sink. A lot of bubbles came up where he went down, but the man did not rise again: Good. They were free of the burning land. Thayla pulled her paddle from the water.

“Take us to the weed there, Blad,” she ordered.

She had in mind waiting there until the fire died down, then returning to the dead village and home. Surely her husband or Conan, or both of them, had perished in the fire. Her quest was therefore over.

It had been a near thing, but she felt a lot better now.

Kleg twisted and leaped over a fallen timber that tried to roast him. The dried mud was sloughing off his skin in flat chunks, but it still offered him a fair amount of protection. There was but one more obstacle between him and the water, a low wall of fire fed by a line of tar spilled from a flaming barrel that had tipped onto its side next to where the dock had been.

The running selkie pulled the pouch from his belt and tied it securely around his neck. The pouch bounced on his chest, cracking away more mud, but the weight of the Seed within was the important thing.

Kleg leaped the line of fire, felt it scorch his legs, and came down not on flat ground but on a piece of red-hot iron, some kind of brace from the dock. He was not prepared for the misstep, and his left ankle twisted. He heard a pop in his ankle and knew he had done some damage.

His next step told the tale. When he put his left foot to the ground again, he fell. Some ligament had torn and his ankle would not support his weight.

Behind him, the barrel of pitch exploded, slinging globs of fire out in a fountain. One bit of pitch landed on Kleg’s right boot. Desperately he pulled the boot off and flung it away as he managed to come up to a one-legged stance on that same foot.

The water was only a few spans away. He hopped.

A river of burning pitch flowed toward the selkie. He glanced backward and saw more barrels of the stuff starting to burn. If they all went up at once, he would be bathed in the boiling tar!

Kleg hopped for all he was worth.

The barrels blew apart behind him, but he was already diving into the cool safety of the lake when the sheet of deadly pitch arced toward him. When the tar splashed into the water, Kleg was half a span deep and still diving.

He began the Change, and in a matter of moments, he had no more worries about what dangers the land might offer. He was long, sleek, and deadly, and aside from a sore fin on his left side, had never felt better in his life.

That which had been manlike bared its teeth in a fearsome grin and swam once again in the waters of its birth.

Conan rowed the small boat to the sloping edge of the weed. When the bow struck the plant, it was as if they had hit solid ground.

The four of them climbed out of the boat onto the mat, and Conan found that indeed the substance seemed very solid. The leaves he saw lay curled tightly against the vinelike runners. Those finger-thick strands of the material, easily visible in the light of the burning village, ran back and forth in a kind of tight weave that supported Conan’s weight with a spongy consistency much like damp forest ground covered with leaves and humus. The plant had a distinctly sour, almost fishy odor.

Several boats in the water still moved toward the Sargasso, but none came near where Conan and his friends stood. There might have been other survivors already on the strange weed, but the surface was uneven, rising up into small hillocks here and there, forming shallow trenches in other places, and he did not see anybody else. What an odd thing this Sargasso was.

Conan turned back toward the village, which was now engulfed in its entirety in raging fire. Even where the flame stopped short of the water, the heat must be of killing intensity, to judge from the hot wind that reached him here, hundreds of spans away. If anything still lived within the confines of what had been the village of Karatas, surely it would soon be charred beyond recognition.

As he watched, a great spinning column of fire formed and twisted across the beach, twirling and sending sparks high into the air.

Aye, they had been blessed with good fortune. Many had not been so swift or so lucky.

After a few moments observing the conflagration, Conan turned to Cheen. “It would seem that our quest has ended. If your magical talisman was there”-he pointed at the village”then surely it is destroyed. I am sorry.”

Cheen turned away from the fire, and for an instant Conan mistook her action for grief.

“No,” she said. “The Seed is not destroyed.”

Conan looked at her, puzzled.

She turned slightly to her right, then her left. She glanced downward. “At least one thief must have escaped. I can feel the presence of the Seed yet,” she said, “but it is moving away. There.” She pointed at the Sargasso beneath them.

Conan’s hand stole quickly to the hilt of his sword, then stopped when its master realized there was no threat. “In the weed?”

“Underneath it. The selkies must still have it. One of them swims away from the fire with it. There.”

Conan nodded. This was some kind of magic, Cheen’s ability to know such things, and he liked it not. Still, he believed that she spoke the truth.

The Cimmerian turned toward Tair. “Your sister says the Seed survives. If we are to retrieve it still, we shall have to cross this weed after it.”

Tair nodded. “Aye. Well, never let it be said that Tair was frightened of a treacherous plantscape and its denizens, not to mention the evil wizard who controls them. I shall follow the thieves to the earth’s bowels if need be.”

“And I too,” the boy added.

Conan looked at the vast expanse of Sargasso, lit here by the flickering orange of the dying village, but invisible farther out into the lake and night. Well. He had come this far; another day or two would hardly matter.

“I am with you,” he said.

Tair grinned. “Good. Between the two of us, the Mist Mage’s beasts will be as nothing.”

Conan could not repress his own grin. He was glad Tair thought so, though his own experiences had taught him to be more cautious in making such statements; still, you could not fault the man’s bravery.

“I think perhaps we should wait until daylight before beginning our trek,” Conan said.

“Aye,” Cheen said. “You are wise.”

Conan smiled again. Wise? Hardly. A wise man would likely never have begun this quest. Then again, he had never claimed wisdom. Plenty of time to develop that when his hair turned the color of high mountain snow, his eyes grew dim, and his ears became dulled like an old and rusted blade.

If he lived that long.

The Queen of the Pili and her young trooper left their small boat and began immediately looking for a place to conceal themselves. Blad, as usual, did not comprehend the reasons for their actions, and Thayla was beginning to tire of explaining things to him.

“We are alone, you have lost your spear, and we have nothing to protect ourselves save our knives. Suppose for an instant that you are one of the residents of that torched village yon, huddled here with others of your kind. You did see the other boats?”

“Aye, mistress, but I fail to see-“

“You are no doubt most miserable,” she continued over his interruption, “and having lost everything you own, might be feeling more than a little anger along with your sorrow. So you see two unarmed Pili, one of whom is a beautiful female; what might you consider doing to them in your sorrow and rage, were you a man among a group of men?”

She watched as the thought worked its way through Blad’s mind. Slowly.

“Ah,” he said. “I see.”

“Good that you-,do. Now find us a place of concealment until we can determine who else inhabits this stinking weed.”

Blad cautiously led his queen toward a flat-topped hill not far from where they had landed the boat. As they rounded the tangle of growth, they saw a figure crouched in the shadows next to the hill’s base. Blad drew his knife.

“Thayla? Is that you?”

The voice was unmistakable, the figure impossible to deny even in the darkness, and Thayla’s shock was great and her thoughts near panic. So it was that the Queen of the Pili found her husband, the King of the Pili.

Blad put away his knife. “Milord!”

Thayla ground her teeth as the young fool looked from Rayk back at her, his guilt at having lain with her shining forth from his face like a torch. She had told him that Rayk was most likely dead.

“What are you doing here?” Rayk moved into what starlight the patchy clouds allowed to pass and looked at his wife.

“My lord husband! How happy I am to see you

Thayla pushed past the openmouthed Blad and embraced her husband, pressing herself tightly against his body and working her fingers against the muscles of his back.

“Thayla … ?”

She dropped her hands lower and pressed his hips toward her own, moving suggestively. “My husband, I thought perhaps you had perished!”

“I very nearly did. But-but-how-why … ?”

Thayla’s mind worked quickly. She pulled back from her embrace, but kept her hands on her husband’s shoulders, gazing lovingly-she hoped it appeared so-into his face. She had to spin a believable tale, and in a hurry.

“A band of Tree Folk attacked our home,” she said, glancing peripherally at Blad.

The young Pili stood there, openmouthed still.

“They had with them several barbarian warriors, the like of which I have never known.” Well, that was partially true. She had never been with anyone like Conan before.

“We fought them off and pursued them.”

“You did? Yourself?”

She drew herself upright. “You did not marry a weakling, Rayk.”

He nodded. “How true.”

“We chased them as far as the Tongue River, and there we saw bodies, fishmen and Pili.”

“Yes, yes, we slew them as we crossed the river. Many of our own were lost in the fight.”

“I was so concerned that I had to find you,” she said. “I feared for your safety, husband.”

She watched his face as he assimilated her tale. He nodded, and Thayla breathed a small sigh of relief.

“We have had our own troubles,” he said. “A monster attacked us, we lost the fishman with the talisman-I think he still had it-and then the fire …”

“Where is the rest of your troop?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Who knows? I found myself alone in a boat at the water’s edge, then here. I have seen no more of them. What of your own group?”

“Only Blad here remains.” She nodded at the young Pili. “He has been most brave in defending me.”

Rayk looked at Blad, who had finally managed to close his mouth. “I shall see him rewarded once we return home.”

She was safe! Likely as not, Conan was dead, cooked to a crisp in the blazing village. If he had survived the fire somehow, he was out here somewhere. Once they headed back to the desert, they would never see him again.

“Then as soon as the fire dies down, we can go?”

He frowned at her. “No, of course not. We have not recovered the magical talisman. I am sure the fishmen have taken it to the wizard’s castle, in the center of the lake. We must go there and see.”

“Are you mad? The smoke magician will turn us into jelly! We cannot face that!”

Rayk shook his head, and his face bore that insufferably stubborn look she had grown to hate over the years. “Most of our men have died. We must have the talisman to survive, now more than ever. Do you not recall what you said on the matter?”

“But … that was then. It is different now-“

“No,” he said, cutting her off. “It is the same. We must find a way to reap some profit from this disastrous venture. Our numbers are too small to survive without help.”

Thayla stared at him, aghast. Oh, no! If Conan were out on this weed somewhere, there was still a chance they might meet! And even if they did not, to face the Mist Mage was suicide!

As her mind scrabbled to find a way out of this new danger, Rayk smiled and pulled her against him. “I have missed you greatly,” he said. “Come and let us find a comfortable spot to lie down.” He handed his spear to Blad. “Stand watch,” he ordered. “The queen and I have things to, ah … discuss privately.”

Thayla felt his hand at the small of her back, urging her away from Blad, who now glared at his king with sudden jealousy and hatred. Rayk did not notice Blad’s expression, however, intent as he was on other things.