After camp was made that night, Conan took stock with the other leaders—Zarkabaal and Gelete—and with Valeria, who wore a mysterious smile and had a canvas sack at her feet. Conan had his own, smaller sack; it was the one containing the priest’s head, and they’d all gotten a glimpse.

He intended to throw it out to see whether even the hyenas and ants could stomach it. Sometime soon, since in this climate the stench would be noticeable quickly, but that had to be done where it wouldn’t be noticed. This meeting was about as private as the encampment itself could be, the fire being thirty feet away from anyone else. They were in plain sight of scores of eyes, but nobody could follow their conversation.

Some of the Stygian spearmen were making sure nobody got too close, and doing it with enthusiasm. The crocodile frenzy at the ford had increased Conan’s standing in their eyes. Wading out of the deadly waters carrying a Stygian soldier’s child hadn’t hurt, either, and the glamor on the priest’s sacrificial perch had held until he was dead.

Everyone just assumed the reptiles had gotten him.

“You all saw,” Conan said, his voice low and serious, “how the crocodiles stopped when he was gone. Three dead, and another child to follow.” He spat into the fire, sending up sparks.

“Why didn’t anyone else see the priest?” Zarkabaal asked, his eyes going distant for a moment as he remembered the lay of land and water. “That rock stood out like a thumb, and it was only a little way downstream from the ford—maybe a quarter bowshot—but I didn’t see a thing until you jumped into the water with the boy.”

“High Priests of Set are sorcerers. All of them a little, some of them a lot,” Conan said. “I called on Crom just before I noticed him… Crom, the god of my people. Crom doesn’t help you, but he gives you the strength to fight for yourself.”

“How very Cimmerian,” Valeria murmured under her breath.

Conan went on. “So he gave me the strength to see through the illusion.” At his words the circle around his fire made signs—hidden from outsiders’ views—and murmured protective prayers.

“Why? Why ye’ibabi liji inati priest do what he do?” Gelete said. “Most those the crocodiles eat, they Stygians, too.”

Valeria shrugged. “Sons of… rulers like that usually don’t care much about common people at the best of times,” she said. “In Stygia? The commons are lucky the nobles and priests don’t choose to eat their children like suckling pigs, because if they wanted to, they would.”

The Nubakan chief nodded with a grimace. He seemed to recognize the truth of what she’d said, but found it revolting. In the abstract, so did Conan. A Cimmerian chief didn’t have any power his clansmen-warriors didn’t give him. Without their loyalty and sword arms, the chief was nothing. That was true among most barbarians, and from Gelete’s reaction it was so in the home of the Sons of the Lion, too.

Conan had been in civilized lands long enough to be used to their behavior, though that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“He hated Valeria, for some reason,” Conan said. “I don’t know why—maybe that she’s a northerner, and looks like someone from the ancient tales.”

The people of the northern kingdoms that had risen out of Acheron’s ashes were thoroughly mixed with the folk their tribal ancestors had overrun in the migrations and wars back then, if only because descendants of slaves gradually won their freedom and merged into the general population over scores of generations. Men from Poitain, in southern Aquilonia, mostly looked a lot like Zingarans. Kothites had a heavy dose of Shemite blood and some of them could have been Zarkabaal’s cousin once removed, as far as appearance went, if not in speech and dress and custom.

“So he—” Conan used his foot to nudge the bag. “—likely did it to kill her, and perhaps me, as well. Anyone else… they were the price of his success. What he paid to hire the crocodiles as mercenaries, so to speak. His sorcery could make them attack, but they couldn’t tell one human from another.”

Or maybe Khafset asked him to do it, Conan thought. Nobles and priests hang together in Stygia—often from the same families.

“On top of that, we lost the gold,” Zarkabaal said dismally, prodding at the fire with a stick until sparks flew upward, like more stars in the darkness of a moonlit night. “I saw that wagon go over myself, and half a dozen of the beasts smashed it to splinters while I shot at them. The only good thing to come out of this cursed trip, and it’s wasted in some crocodile’s droppings or scattered down miles of river bottom haunted by the ugly brutes.”

“No, it isn’t.” Valeria laughed, a soft husky chuckle. “No thanks to you, though, you fierce bearded heroes.” She nudged the bigger canvas bag at her feet. “My horse got eaten, I almost got eaten… but I dived in and got these out of the wagon. Both of them. Good thing we tied them shut after we broke the locks, eh?”

There was a moment of echoing silence.

“That took nerve,” Conan observed.

All of them looked at her with admiration, and she basked it in like a great golden cat—the human sister of the lion that had almost ripped Conan’s throat out. That made him think of the Stygian priest again, which helped to damp down the reaction looking at Valeria produced in him.

“I was a pirate.” She shrugged and gave him a sidelong glance that was full of mocking knowledge. “It’s not the first time I’ve gone into dangerous waters for gold. A tiger-shark off the Baracha Isles will kill you just as dead as a crocodile, and the salt sea stings worse in your wounds.”

Conan reached over and with a grunt lifted the sack. It was an unexpected effort for him, and probably weighed nearly as much as Valeria did.

“How in the name of Manannán Mac Lir did you get these up? They’re heavy and that water must have been… eight, nine feet deep?”

Valeria’s grin grew wider. “I tied them together with a rope, and then used a horse to haul them up from the north bank,” she said. “Nobody was paying much attention while they ran around screaming… and I’m a sailor. Rope I understand, Mitra knows.”

There were murmurs of admiration once more. That took not only nerve, but skill and coolness of mind.

“And lots of people saw the wagon go over,” Zarkabaal gloated, raising his bottle in a toast, and looking as if he’d like to rub his hands at the same time. “Now we can keep it all!” He said that with hope, but without much conviction.

Conan and Gelete both shook their heads.

“No, if we said it was all lost, the minute any of us shows a glint of gold they’d think we stole it all,” Conan said. Then he brightened. “It means we can keep more of it, though. Say, half. The rest we have to return.”

It took a moment to thrash out the meaning, then Gelete agreed.

Valeria was silent.

“We can just say that the other half of it was lost in the crossing,” Conan continued. “Plenty of wagons and gear were lost, and everyone in the convoy will swear to it. If we’re careful, nobody but the four of us should know, and we can share it out with our followers later as we planned.” This was very much the way the Red Brotherhood divided a prize between captain, quartermaster, and crew.

Then Valeria bristled.

“I should get a bigger share,” she growled. “I saved it all.” She put on an appearance of pious virtue, and Conan suppressed a laugh. “And it’s all there. You can count it. So—four shares for me, that would be fair.”

He snorted. “You are a pirate.”

They all chuckled, and Valeria shifted to mock umbrage.

“No, I was a pirate,” she protested. “Now I’m a mercenary. There’s a difference!”

“Yes,” Zarkabaal said dryly. “Dry feet, sometimes, and less throwing up.” There was more laughter at that.

They had cheered up substantially.

“We should all agree to give her a double share,” Conan said, “like we’ve earned as the leaders, taking a bit from everyone.” He peered at them, one at a time. “That’s fair.” When he’d gotten assent, and without much grumbling, he continued thoughtfully, tugging at his square chin:

“We should hide it before we get past the border of the settled land—but not too far from Sukhmet. When we want it, a man on horseback could get out and back in a day, calling it a ‘hunting trip’ perhaps.”

There were more nods, but also suspicious glances. What was hidden could be retrieved…

Zarkabaal gritted his teeth and sighed.

“I think Conan should be the one to bury it, and only he knows where,” the Shemite said. “If all four of us here know where it is… well, my people have a saying.” He uttered a string of throaty gutturals, and translated. “‘Two men can keep a secret, but only if one of them is dead.’ The Cimmerian is a man of honor… for a pirate and a mercenary.”

“I am,” Conan said, serious as death but conscious of Valeria’s smile. “I won’t cheat my own crew, or my comrades in arms.”

Gelete nodded. “We have same saying about secrets,” he agreed. “Conan hide it, but just Conan!” He glanced at Valeria. “You brave, good fighter, woman. Smart, too, but not know you like I know Conan. Plenty smart brave fighter steal, if he can. If she can, too.”

She nodded, tight-lipped.

Before she could reply, a Stygian woman—perhaps a half-Stygian, being blunter-featured and darker than their usual aquiline-faced light brown—came over, carrying a pot of hot stew.

“Antelope, beans, and some of our last onions and wild greens,” she said, bowing low and smiling broadly at Conan’s gesture of thanks. They ladled it into their bowls. The late Stygian commandant’s packets of spice had been put to good use by his cook, who’d also survived.

“This good,” Gelete said, smacking his lips after a taste. “Good as my first wife made, Gods keep her.” The Nubakan sighed. “Would be even better with crocodile-tail meat.”

Conan shook his head. “Not those crocodiles.”

“Why not?”

The Cimmerian looked around the camp; they’d lost forty or fifty at the ford.

“You wouldn’t know who that crocodile had known, if you know what I mean.”

Gelete roared laughter, along with Zarkabaal and Valeria. Conan reflected that his command of Stygian was improving if he could joke in it.