Conan woke on his pallet in the barracks, to the long quick rattling roll of the sunrise snare-drum and the brass blatting of the trumpets. Stretching, he rose to seek the jakes, then the bathhouse to sluice himself down. He dressed and proceeded to stand in the loose line in the barracks square as the drum ended and the roll was called. The rule in the Free Companions was that you were ticked off first, before assignments for the day, and it seemed to work well enough.
The clerk began to call names.
“Conan, scout, attached to company headquarters!”
“Present and fit for duty,” Conan responded in a voice both bored and loud.
Standing on the stretch of dirt between the quadrangle of two-story barrack-halls, armories, and storerooms in peeling stucco over more adobe, most were yawning and scratching under the bright hot dawn sun. They answered to their names as they were read off from the parchment roll. A few reported themselves ill and were told to go see the surgeon. Conan suspected that was mostly hangovers looking for a dose of willow-bark or the like, though the usual fevers and gripping bellies were always a problem.
They all had their personal side-arms—they didn’t turn out with armor and pike or helm and crossbow except to drill with them or to fight—and they didn’t even smell too badly.
Except for one Zingaran, who staggered out halfway through, fell to his knees and puked up a remarkable quantity of the local brew, much the worse for wear and smell for its hours-long stay in his gut. The clerk’s lips compressed at the sight and stench. He was a northerner himself and might have been anything from a Kothian to a Nemedian by his looks and, contrary to the usual stories about the men skilled with pen and counting-tray, he was built like a muscular hitching-post and had one eye covered by a patch, with grizzled gray in his close-cropped hair.
“Arparos, pikeman file-closer,” he said in a voice like iron given a throat, “drunk on duty, fine one week’s pay and two weeks on barracks work detail.” The luckless Arparos looked even seedier than before, if that was possible.
“Valeria, skirmisher.” The big woman’s voice rang out in her clear contralto, though Conan thought she looked slightly more worse for wear. He nodded inwardly, unsurprised at the role she’d been assigned. Zarallo was nobody’s fool.
How she’d fare in a push of pike was an open question, but he’d seen what she could do in the sort of open scrambling encounter expected by a skirmisher—or a pirate in a boarding action or longshore raid. A different set of skills was needed than for straightforward head-butting between formed-up masses.
She wore the same sea-breeks and boots as yesterday, but a long linen shirt with sleeves and a floppy canvas hat with one side tucked up and ornamented with a peacock feather. For all her sailor’s tan, the sun here was hard on a northerner who didn’t take precautions.
Next came the day’s duty assignments. Starting the day after tomorrow, the once-a-month route-march of twenty miles, followed by pitching a fortified camp, battle drill out in the countryside, and then a march back.
Today had nothing posted on the chalkboard outside the captain’s quarters. As long as nothing specific came up, Conan intended to grab a bowl of porridge and some bread, and then spend a couple of hours using a double-weighted practice sword and shield against the pells, strong wooden posts driven into the ground at the other end of the drill-field. That would be mixed with throwing spears and drawing the bow.
Then he’d see if he could get someone to match him for a few bouts of sword-sparring and wrestling and all-in, and after the afternoon sleep—a sensible custom in many of the hot lands he’d visited—he would run the circuit of the town’s walls a few times carrying his fighting gear. It was the best remedy for the stale feeling after a day on leave, spent dicing and drinking.
“Conan, scout, and Valeria, skirmisher, report to the commander’s office after morning parade,” the clerk bellowed.
Conan’s brows went up. Whatever it was it would be less boring than another day in garrison.
* * *
The commandant’s house was set catercorner to the main encampment, bordering on the space kept open around the inside of the city wall. From the outside it looked like yet another two-story adobe block, with only narrow slit windows on the upper level.
Two men in mail shirts stood guard before the dark copper-studded polished wood of the doors, sweating stolidly and holding their seven-foot spears to one side with the butt braced against their right boot, round shields on shoulders, and plain bowl helmets. The helms were wrapped in cloth—in this climate or the deserts to the north the steel got hot enough to produce blisters.
Their mail shirts were likewise covered in light cotton surcoats. Cotton was an expensive exotic luxury back in the northern realms, and Conan had never even seen any until well after he left Cimmeria, but it was cheaper than linen here. The sigil of the Companions was on their breasts, an ornate gold letter “Z” on a black circle.
They crossed their spears as the pair approached.
“Who goes?” one growled.
“Conan the scout, summoned by the commander.”
He didn’t show his impatience with this ritual, when the man knew full-well who he was. Every place and folk had their customs, and it was rarely worth offending those among whom you lived. Zarallo had learned his practices in the royal army of his homeland, but they didn’t differ much from the other northern kingdoms, and those all had a family resemblance born of centuries of regular warfare.
“Valeria, skirmisher, summoned by the commander.”
The spears were withdrawn. “Pass, comrades,” the sentry said. Conan groaned inwardly but kept his silence.
Inside the structure had the layout that a Stygian gentleman expected—that was the sort of man who’d occupied it when this was a purely Stygian garrison. Two courtyards, one just inside the front doors and one further back, with an open gate between the two and arched colonnades all around. The front would be public rooms and the rear family quarters.
Through the gate to the flower-rich inner court, Conan caught a glimpse of Zarallo’s stout wife, at breakfast with her children and surrounded by maids. Then an aide—one of Zarallo’s young cousins, he remembered—gestured them through to a big chamber Zarallo used as his office.
It had a floor of blue tile interspersed with cream-white, and smoothly plastered walls painted in Stygian style with up-and-down panels portraying colorful scenes of court ceremony, religious procession, and sacrifice. Some of the latter could be a bit unnerving, and those were the ones that had easels with large maps standing in front of them, blocking much of the imagery. It would be offensive to deface them—blasphemous to Stygian ways of thought.
This was a sensible compromise.
For maps Stygians used strips of a reed paper glued together at the edges, but Zarallo stuck with the northern habit of making field maps on soft-tanned leather with hot needles to burn in the lines. There were baskets full of scrolls, and two clerks—this pair more of the weedy, rabbity type Conan expected—clicking abacuses and scratching away at tables on the other side. An open strongbox had the interesting glint of silver, and coins clinked as they were weighed on a jeweler’s scale, counted, and wrapped in parchment.
The whole place smelled of hot plaster, water, and huge vivid tropical flowers from the gardens, with a faint underlying tang of greased steel and sweat-soaked leather that was inseparable from a war-camp, even this part of it.
“Conan! Valeria!” Zarallo said, beckoning them.
He sat behind a large table with an embroidered linen cloth over it. An empty bowl and platter had been pushed to one side, holding fried fish and rounds of flatbread. They reminded Conan that he hadn’t eaten.
Zarallo was a Zingaran of more or less gentlemanly but originally impoverished background; tanned olive skin, a scar kinking his long nose, of medium height, broad-shouldered but getting a bit paunchy in his fortieth year. His chin-beard was trimmed to a point, his mustaches were waxed to stand up like a plains-buffalo’s horns, and his long raven-black hair was dressed in curls that fell to his shoulders, mixed with the first gray threads.
The polished breastplate and high-combed morion helmet he’d wear outside were on the table, too, with his use-battered rapier and dagger lying across them. There were also scrolls pinned open by gauntlets and ink bottles, and piles of Stygian reed-paper.
His black eyes went to Valeria.
“Can you ride, skirmisher?” he said. “How well?” he said, not waiting for an answer. “And can you use a blade from the saddle? At all, or barely?”
She blinked in surprise. “Yes, I can do both,” she said, adding, “sir, and well enough. My family had a farm, and my father trained me when I made it plain I wanted it. He had no son and wished to pass on the skills. I can fight in the saddle. That is, I won’t cut off my mount’s ears or fall off, but I wouldn’t call myself a cavalry trooper. Most of my warring has been done at sea, or on raids where we came ashore in longboats.”
“Good.” He grunted and shuffled among the documents. “Good enough, at least. Because this is a formal complaint—” He brandished a piece of reed-paper embellished with the glyph-like signs of the Stygian script.
“—from the provincial governor, saying that you set upon one of his officers unprovoked, broke his nose, and inflicted… ‘other injuries.’”
“Drew blade, pricked his lip, kicked him in the balls, then dosed his nose with the toe of my boot to correct his humors,” Valeria specified, and Zarallo fought down a smile.
“As for provocation?”
She shrugged broad shapely shoulders; even then Conan found the gesture riveting, and he thought he heard one of the clerks across the room miss in the steady rhythm of quill pen on paper, then curse when he blotted a line.
“Well, he grabbed my arse, and tried to stick two fingers where they shouldn’t go,” she replied. “Seemed to think I’d like it, and he was very, very wrong.”
Conan fought down a snort of laughter, and Zarallo didn’t try.
“I was there, Captain Zarallo,” Conan offered. “It’s as she said, and she handled it cleverly—there would have been men dead, starting with the Stygian, if she hadn’t, and a pitched battle between our dog-brothers and the snake-lovers. Instead it ended in a drubbing and laughs, not guts and brains on the floor. Some of the Stygian’s own men wanted to laugh at him, you could see it in their eyes.”
Valeria gave him a quick look with narrowed eyes, then nodded, acknowledging his account of the wit she’d used to manage the incident, he thought. This made it plain he wasn’t just flattering her to gain favor.
She was no fool, either.
“I thought that might be the case,” the Zingaran said, the hissing accent of his native tongue stronger as he tried not to grin. They were using the mixed dialect of the mercenary bands of the western world, not all that different from the seafaring argot.
Zarallo went on to Valeria. “If I were going to get upset when you hard-schooled an over-eager swain, I wouldn’t have hired you. Anyone could guess it would happen a time or two, with a woman in a man’s trade—and a hard man’s trade at that. Still, Khafset’s a noble and he has influence here in this pisspot, however much trouble he might have encountered at court.”
He tapped another paper. “There’s a convoy heading for the Wedi Shebelli gold mine tomorrow morning.”
Conan nodded and said—mostly to Valeria, “That’s the reason the Stygians bother to hold this district, the mines. It all covers about a hundred and fifty leagues south and east.” There was trade in slaves, ivory, emeralds, ostrich-plumes, rare ornamental woods, and the like, but gold was the thing that undergirded the others. Conan had never sought to be a merchant, but to be a predator he had to know his prey.
Zarallo flicked the document. “The Stygians claim a big chunk hereabouts, and do have a grip around Sukhmet and points north, but past a long day’s march south of here they only hold the mine compounds and a few outposts on the Darfar border. There are still plenty of locals in the hills and forests who hate them for their slave-raiding and the taxes, and who’ll jump them any time it looks possible. The convoys are an obvious target.
“They’re adamant, even though the rains have started. Idiots. Who gives a shit if a few mercenaries die along the way?” He tapped the paper again. “We’re contributing an escort, mounted scouts, and skirmishers who’ll guard the convoy along with the Stygian reinforcements headed for the mine garrison. The ones stationed there now will be coming back with the convoy, but apparently they’ve had losses and will need help.”
He did grin now. “Help with the gold ingots, too… to be sure, to be sure.”
Then he gave an almost imperceptible sigh. Valeria’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and Conan’s thumb touched the hilt of his sword. If harvesting gold with steel hadn’t appealed, none of them would have followed the mercenary drum, or been pirates with the Red Brotherhood.
Zarallo continued with brisk practicality.
“You’ll both be going along. You, Conan, because you’re my best scout and you know the countryside here. You, Valeria, because you’ll be useful, and because I don’t want anyone in Sukhmet seeing your face or that yellow hair for the next month. Out of sight, out of mind. Let the fuss fade with the bruises.”
“By then, Khafset’s face will be less sore, but still lumpy,” Conan said, grinning. “And his balls will be swollen like pomegranates. Maybe he’ll just keep putting his hands there.”
He was rewarded by Valeria’s chuckle.
With obvious effort Zarallo made himself scowl, and the listening clerks gargled as they choked down mirth.
“Take warning, woman,” the commander said, “if you had killed Khafset, I would have had to throw you to the wolves—or here, to the hyenas—however much the snake-worshipping swine had it coming. So keep your head down and do your work. Dismissed!”
They saluted and left.
Once they were outside, Valeria turned to Conan.
“You’ve been there before?”
“Not to this mine, no, but to a couple of the others.”
“What extra gear will I need?”
He grunted in appreciation. That was the right question, and if she hurried she had just enough time to do some quick buying.
“Well, the horses come from the company’s herd, but I’d slip the stablemaster a little something to get the best, if I were you. You’ll need some mail—light stuff, for this. The Companions has some you can get on credit. And…”
* * *
Conan learned much of his horse-craft after he left home; in Cimmeria, chiefs kept a few ponies, but the bulk of the land was too hilly and too thickly forested for ordinary folk to bother. His father had been a blacksmith when he wasn’t farming or hunting or fighting.
Part of his learning had been done in Zamora and points east, where the endless steppes meant nobody walked if they could find a nag, and he was a quick learner. The tall rawboned mount he took from the company’s herd was well-enough trained, big enough to carry his weight without collapsing, and after a little settling of who knew what and who was master, it was satisfactory. He made sure that everyone in the skirmisher detachment had at least one reasonable remount along, too, as the convoy mustered in the dust of the beaten area outside Sukhmet’s south gate.
They were supposed to depart at dawn, so naturally it took about two hours more for everyone to muster, especially the town contractors who were renting the governor their carts and draught-beasts for the convoy.
Valeria picked a smaller beast, about thirteen hands, with more of the desert-Shemite strain that was present in all Stygian mounts, and he could see solid competence if not brilliance in the way she handled it. The ex-pirate had a light steel helm slung to her saddlebow, a rolled-up sleeveless vest of meshmail lashed behind the crupper of her saddle, and a crossbow over her shoulder with a quiver of bolts at her belt.
She gave him the same quick professional once-over, noting the heavier rolled mail shirt behind his saddle, and the bowl helmet with a riveted nose guard and a leather neck flap covered in a fan of steel splints. He had a four-foot recurve bow of horn and sinew at his left knee as he sat, with a quiver of bright-fletched arrows on the other side.
“You can use that from horseback?” she said. It wasn’t a common skill in the western kingdoms.
“A bit, though I’m no Turanian,” he said. “I rode with the Kazakhi near the Sea of Vilayet for a while, though, and they all use them. The fighting’s all on horseback there, except when you storm a town or fort or the like. Without a bow, you just wave your sword and yell insults.”
She whistled. Turan and the Vilayet Sea were the eastern fringe of the known world, though while he was there, Conan had heard tales of kingdoms and tribes and empires further east. Of treasures and wonders, and he recalled them wistfully now and then.
Perhaps, someday…
“There are pirates on the Sea of Vilayet, too,” he added. “No horses at sea, but they use these bows before it comes to hand-strokes.”
Valeria snorted. “If there’s enough water and something to steal, there are pirates.”
The rest of the company’s contribution to the escort was thirty mounted skirmishers and scouts, including a dozen Shemite archers with bows much like Conan’s.
The Stygian contingent that would stay at the mines was much larger. A hundred Stygian footmen carried broad-bladed spears and wore bronze helmets shaped much like the linen headdress upper-crust wore, with breastplates and coffin-shaped shields of boiled and lacquered elephant-hide.
A hundred more were archers from some black tribe called the Nubakans that carried laminated bamboo bows even taller than their wielders’ long-limbed height, and knives and hatchets for close work. They were naked save for goatskin mantles and headdresses made from the manes of lions, and their muscles were impressive even by Cimmerian standards.
Besides that there were forty lancers in scale-mail shirts and half a dozen chariots, light wicker two-wheeled vehicles carrying driver and armored warrior-archer, pulled by horses much like the ones the lancers and Conan rode. For the most part the mounts were better-looking, with plumed headdresses not unlike those on the helmets of the warriors they carried.
Conan cocked an eye at them. “Old-fashioned,” he said. Nobody else had used war-chariots for a very long time.
“Stygians,” Valeria replied, and she shrugged.
Which was true enough. Stygia kept up customs that had been ancient when its northern cousin Acheron fell before the swords of the barbarian founders of the northern kingdoms, deep in the misty past.
The rest of the convoy was a long column of mule-drawn or ox-drawn wagons with canvas tilts and long coffles of slaves, each of about forty with the riveted metal collars on their necks linked together by iron chains. The men also had their hands clamped in ironwood manacles, and each coffle had a trio of drivers and overseers with short swords, clubs and whips.
Sukhmet was a collecting center for the slave trade, captives from Stygian raids and purchases from Darfar and the other southern kingdoms. The commerce was split about equally between exports to the north, to Stygia and Shem and even Koth and Argos, and the mines close by. Gold mines ate men, though there were a fair number of women in the coffles too. Valeria studied the stretch of stinking misery out of the corner of her eye, her expression grim.
“Plenty of slaves in the northern realms,” he observed mildly, though mines there tended to use convicts instead.
“Not where I was raised,” she said darkly. “Except a few rich men’s servants.”
She glanced at him. “No slaves in Cimmeria, either, from what I’ve heard.”
Conan smiled grimly. “No. We kill our enemies in our blood feuds and nail their heads over the door or put them on a rack before a shrine. Or we sell them out of the country and let some ignorant foreigner get their throat slit in their sleep or their house burned down around their ears. There was a chief north of my clan’s land who liked to keep his enemies around in chains. Not for work—for show. He blinded and gelded them first, and cut out their tongues.”
She chuckled at that. “Safe enough then, I should think.”
“No, when he came out to gloat, one of them tripped him and ripped his throat out with their teeth before the chief’s men could drag him away. Heads are safer.”
“I wouldn’t buy you to hoe my turnips,” she said, then murmured, “Other things, perhaps, but not that.”
He gave no indication that he’d heard, then stood in the stirrups and shouted.
“Zarallo’s—”
He stopped himself before he said Zarallo’s men.
“—Free Companions!”
They all looked at him as whips cracked, oxen bellowed, mules brayed, and wheels began their eternal creaking. Though they wouldn’t start to squeal like tortured pigs until the morning’s dollop of grease dried away.
Conan chopped a hand forward and used the old mercenary’s trail-call.