The convoy made camp. It was only a few miles from the mine compound, but marching after dark would be too risky. Unencumbered, the rebel slaves could have sent a part of their number to run down the Stygians and mercenaries, and darkness would take away too much of the advantage. While on the move, discipline and gear would fail against numbers and ferocity.
Conan didn’t much fear an attempt to overrun their camp, though he kept all the Nubakans, his skirmishers, and half the spearman on sentry-go while it was pitched and secured.
Gelete showed them a trick his people used to protect their traveling camps; cut thornbush and small acacias—formidably fanged with iron-hard thorns—and drag them into a circle around the encampment, laced together and secured by stakes driven into the ground. The wagons were placed just inside. He called it a zariba, and with many hands it hadn’t taken long to erect.
Looking at it from the outside, Conan had decided that even for men in armor it would be painful to break through, and delay an attack long enough for the camp to be roused. For the nearly naked rebels it would be a much more serious obstacle.
It was no obstacle to arrows, however, and the Nubakans could shoot from the cover of the wagons. No scratch force like the slaves—
Former slaves, he corrected.
—would pose any threat.
Once camp was set up and reasonably safe, they prepared a scratch meal of mush and bits of a couple of floundered oxen, charred on the outside and raw within. Then they began to examine the contents of all the wagons, carts, and packs.
“Aaaaaah,” Valeria said softly as the chest-lid swung back with a creak. “Oh, that is so pretty. Ohhhhh, yes, yes!”
She’s never looked on me with such favor, Conan thought—but with an inward chuckle, for the sight restored his good spirits, too. Tired and irritated, he’d begun to feel the effects of hours spent bullydamning and shoving at terrified refugees to keep them from getting everyone killed or slowing them down, which would accomplish the same thing.
Of course, I’m not a chest filled with gold.
Excess baggage would slow them down too, especially in the oppressive heat, but the Stygians clung to it like leeches. Hence this rough sorting, with an emphasis on the rough. He had to use his fist or the flat of his sword occasionally as they went from wagon to wagon. By the time they were halfway done, by silent mutual agreement they just evicted the owners and made them stand fifty yards off.
Now and then he’d been tempted to just leave everyone, take his skirmishers, and head for the ocean…
Never more than now, he thought, looking down at the latest open containers, lit by the reflected light of the fires off the canvas tilt and by the flicker of a clay lamp Zarkabaal held in one hand.
It also lit the Shemite’s slow, delighted grin. His dark eyes caressed the contents the way they might have a lover stripping down for bedchamber sport. Most of the gear in this wagon was goods from the household of the dead commander, the fat man the equally dead Akhenset had come to replace. In the scramble to get through the gates, two chests—each about big enough to hold a newborn babe—had been thrown in among them, under piles of robes and bedding and brass candlesticks shaped like snakes and scorpions, and packets of kitchen spices.
The spices were light in weight and high in value, and would be dumped into the mercenaries’ stew.
But these chests were another matter entirely. Made from thick short planks of some hard glossy black wood, with arched lids carved from a section of log, edged and strapped with hammered steel. The hinges were internal, the mark of a container designed to hold valuables.
What they held…
The gold came in rough-shaped disks, each about the size of his palm, as thick through as his middle finger, and heaped high. He picked one up, hefted the dense weight, marked the soft metal with his thumbnail, and dropped it back in the chest with a dull clunk of gold on gold. Judging from the weight and the rumors they’d heard, this was the full six-months output of the Wedi Shebelli mine—or at least of as much of it as the fat Stygian commandant had intended to put on the official books.
Presumably his unofficial share would have been hidden somewhere else. Gold and its mining were a royal monopoly in Stygia. That meant that a little stuck to every official’s hand it passed through on its way to the treasury in Luxor.
“We can’t just take it and run,” he said with a sigh as Valeria joined them.
“Why not?” Zarkabaal demanded. He slammed the pommel of his sword into the lock holding the other chest, and murmured again as he opened it and lifted the lamp high to reveal a duplicate heaping of raw wealth.
“Why not, by Chemosh of the Plunder?” the Shemite repeated. “We could all be rich men!” He stroked his curled black beard. “There’s this villa outside my city of Dan-Marcah… with a good spring, a vineyard, olive groves, fruit-trees, honest pomegranates and apricots and almonds—none of this southern dung. That and a townhouse, shares in ships… Lying on my couch sipping wine and looking out to sea from the tower, with pretty women fanning me with ostrich-plumes on ebony staffs…”
Gelete shot him a look. “My men get share! Many cattle, much land; bride-price for wives! Why we fight for—” The term he used in his native tongue contained the word “Stygian” and, from the gesture that accompanied it, highly uncomplimentary opinions of their romantic lives.
“Shut up, both of you,” Conan snarled. He slammed both the lids closed, turned, and peered around. Some of his skirmishers and Gelete’s Nubakans were nearby, but not within earshot. Except for the ones on guard, most were asleep. It had been a trying day.
There was a full file of the Stygian spearmen who’d taken to following him with embarrassing doglike devotion since he’d gotten them out of the rat-screw at the mine, fought at their head, and even saved their women and gear. There weren’t any Stygian noblemen left, and the soldiers were used to being told what to do.
“Think, Zarkabaal,” he said as he turned back, his voice low and urgent. “Do you think you could cross the length of Stygia, north to the Styx, down it all the way to Khemi, and over the border into Shem, then across most of Shem—Dan-Marcah’s on the coast near the Argossean border, isn’t it? All with your share of this in your baggage? None of your men would boast in a tavern?”
The swarthy hook-nosed man opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“We could go west from here…” he suggested.
Conan clenched a fist and slammed it sideways into one of the wooden hoops that bore the wagon’s tilt. It cracked under the force of the blow, which had his own frustration behind it. What he had suggested was exactly what he wanted to do—and planned to do, someday soon. Not yet, however, not until there was a chance of success.
“Think, man! We’re not far west of the bend of the Styx.” He jerked his thumb to the north, where the great river did a sharp turn and headed for the Western Sea. “Two thousand miles and more through the savannah kingdoms to the Black Coast, Darfar, Meroe, Kush, Bornu, the others… and they all know the value of gold.”
The Shemite nodded reluctantly. The coastal cities of Shem were in that trade too.
“Then if you make the coast, yes,” Conan continued, “there are traders who ply those waters, and they’d all cut your throat for it unless you take ship with a cousin who just happens to be there… and he might cut your throat, too. Maybe not if you promise him half—and that’s the merchant skippers who aren’t pirates.”
“My people’s homeland is south of the Styx, east of here,” Gelete said, eking out the words with gestures. “Maybe we go there? You welcome. Strong men, brave. I… how do you say… I speak for you with the elders. Get cattle, wives, fields. Neighbors help build huts for you. Beer, beef, screwing, good fighting, good hunting, many sons.”
Conan sighed. To him, that was tempting—but he knew the Shemites and northern mercenaries in his new following. They would consider it exile among savages. It mattered less to him because by their lights he was a savage, too. Even if he agreed to it, he’d grow as bored there as he’d been at home in his father’s hut.
Valeria gave a blue-eyed glance sidelong at the Nubakan chief and then rolled her eyes upward for an instant as if to say that went double for her. A land where men traded cattle for wives, and daughters weren’t even worth mentioning, didn’t seem to hold much charm for her.
“Nubaka is south of Taia, isn’t it?” Conan asked.
“Yes. From here… cross Darfar, cross Punt, cross Keshan, cross Zembabwei, then Land of Lion-Men, we say—in our tongue, Nubakaara. Green hills, sweet grass!”
“Do they love you Nubakans in Darfar, Punt, Keshan, and Zembabwei?”
“Ummmm… no. Raiding, both ways.”
“How do you get to Stygia to take service… to fight for them?”
“We go north along Styx, boats, paddle, many weeks.” He was getting visibly more thoughtful about a fifteen-hundred-mile overland trek through hostile realms, all while bearing a treasure.
“You want to give it all back to the Stygians, Conan?” Zarkabaal burst out. “Ishtar! I thought better of you!”
“No, no,” Conan said, making a patting gesture at the air. “Just some of it. No risk, no gain, but not stupid-greedy, either. The Stygians will think we’re heroes for rescuing any of the gold—and their people, to be sure. They may even give us a reward.
“Here is my plan…”
* * *
An hour later, Conan sought his bedroll.
The skirmishers had two campfires, and they’d liberated a four-mule wagon, stuffing it with enough jerky, sorghum meal, and beans to get them home—
Or at least to Sukhmet, Conan reflected. He wasn’t sure if anywhere in the world was truly “home” to him now.
—if they were careful. It also held a selection of easily carried valuables they’d accumulated one way or another. Not far away was a picket-line with their horses and remounts, the latter including all the spare mounts from the now-dead Stygian lancers and Akhenset’s other team. Mercenaries tended to be sticky-fingered when anything useful came to hand. Or just caught the eye.
The fire was bright with the flammable part of the goods that his troop and the Nubakans had ruthlessly purged from the convoy’s baggage. By burning the excess, they made sure none of the Stygian civilians would try to smuggle back any non-essentials, and slow them down. They’d be eating the oxen, driving them along for food rather than letting them set the pace with yokes on their necks.
Zarallo’s detachment had only lost two men. One dead outright, one with a gut-wound that would infallibly be fatal, and an assortment of other injuries that would probably heal and wouldn’t slow the men down too much in the interim. That was a minor miracle, considering the fix they’d been in at Wedi Shebelli.
Best they think that without me they’d be dead, or being tortured to death by the rebels, Conan thought, gravely returning respectful nods and waves. As it is, they’re getting away with a tidy packet of loot. Though by next sundown half will have convinced themselves it was their own wonderful sword-work and heroism.
Valeria gathered up her saddle and bedroll from where she’d dumped it by her horse.
“How long do you expect to keep this all secret, once we’re back in Sukhmet and you hand out the shares of the gold?” she asked, sotto voce. He turned his head and smiled thinly at her.
“Long enough for me to get out of Sukhmet,” he said. “Do you love the place?”
She coughed back a laugh and shook her head.
“No, but I enlisted with Zarallo to let the flames die down on the Western Sea. Quarrels in the Brotherhood.”
“Sukhmet has flames of its own, now,” he pointed out. “And you are the torch.”
“Men!” She snorted and shouldered her saddle. Then she walked off, bending to the right, and found a spot under the wagon.
Conan did a last tour of the perimeter. He was very tired, but didn’t want to wake up amid screams, flames, and a horde of rebel slaves swarming over the zariba, throwing things before closing with spear, sword, knife, fists, and teeth.
Not far off he found a wagon, not well concealed but unobtrusive enough that his eyes almost slid past. He was startled to recognize it. Not many of the wagons had a closed wooden body, but this did, decorated with the wiggling line sigil of Set. It was the priest’s wagon, and the priest himself sat beside it, his face unreadable.
He turned away as Conan glanced at it.
Crom! he thought. Of all the people to survive, why did it have to be him?
I suppose I could…
No, I’ve no reason to kill him or cast him out, not if I’m going back to Sukhmet.