Seven
Conan rode well to the fore, flanked by Farad and Sorbim. They were careful to keep their distance from the Greencloaks, without moving out of bowshot. That would smell of an attempt to escape, and no goodwill that Khezal bore the Cimmerian would stay the captain's command to his archers to shoot.
There also might be other men of warlike disposition roaming this patch of desert, besides Turanians and Afghulis. Among them, the three riders left no part of the horizon unwatched, nor the ranks of Turanian riders behind them.
Khezal had said the place where peacemaking was direly needed might be two hours away at a fast pace, as much as three at one that spared the horses. Conan stood silent as to which pace they should use, but gave the world a dusty grin as he saw the Turanians settle down to a pace that their mounts could keep up all day.
This was much as he had expected, Khezal being no fool. However, even wise men had been known to hasten unwisely, if they thought this would show loyalty and help keep their heads on their shoulders.
Conan had no quarrel with any such desire in Khezal. He only insisted that Khezal's head not survive at the price of his and his Afghulis'.
Everyone's head remained not only on his shoulders but clear and alert during that first hour. They were riding out from a well-supplied, well-watered camp, and even the newest to the ranks of the Greencloaks was a veteran of at least five years' service.
Watching the ranks of desert-wise riders behind him and remembering their gallant fight at the rocks, Conan felt a twinge of regret at his flight from Turanian service. The officer whose mistress he had "stolen" (a word he always resented, considering how willingly the lady had come to him) had been a friend of then-Prince Yezdigerd. Even if others had been able to patch up a truce between Conan and the officer, the lady would surely have suffered. The truce would also have ended the moment Yezdigerd felt himself secure enough on the throne to do such minor favors for his friends as handing them a Cimmerian's head…
No, it was as well to be out of Turanian service. It would have been better to be out of Turanian reach altogether, but Conan had small choice if he was to do his duty by the Afghulis who had exiled themselves out of loyalty to him. He could trust Khezal for everything the nobleman could control, and as for the rest, the Cimmerian trusted to his sword arm and steel—which had kept him above ground for a good many years and had not grown slack or dull in Afghulistan.
They were halfway through the second hour of their journey when Conan saw the horseman on a distant ridge to the north.
Danar son of Araubas looked rather better than his captain had expected when the two Khorajans met in the low rocky chamber where the younger man was confined awaiting execution. A second look told Muhbaras that the walls had once been bricked, more centuries ago than he cared to think about.
What he faced now was quite sufficiently disagreeable—and as nothing compared to what Danar might face if his luck were out.
Four Maidens had escorted the captain to the entrance of the chamber, so low that he had to stoop to enter—and he was not tall for a Khorajan. Four other Maidens were already on guard, which seemed none too few when the captain saw that the door itself was only a woven screen of rushes. A child with a toy dagger could have cut his way through that to a brief freedom, before the guards cut him down.
But none of the Maidens approached it, and on the floor the captain saw a dead mouse and more than a few dead insects. When a Maiden did open the screen, she did it with the bronze point of a spear whose shaft was carved into unpleasantly familiar if still incomprehensible runes. She also wore an amulet of feathers and small rose- and amethyst-hued stone beads, and moved as cautiously as if the floor might open up and swallow her at a misstep.
The captain had seldom moved with such exquisite care as when he stooped and entered Danar's chamber. He would have gone down on his hands and knees to avoid touching the screen if it had been necessary.
To his mild surprise, the Maiden with the spear raised the screen high enough to spare him that humiliation. He said his thanks to her in his heart, knowing that even if she would keep the secret, her comrades would not. The Lady of the Mists kept her Maidens, if not at one another's throats, at least looking over one another's shoulders.
Doubtless the Lady knew that this could do harm in a battle against a serious foe. Comrades who had to fear one another's tongues as much as they did the enemy's steel could hardly be called comrades at all.
Just as certainly, the Lady was more concerned about keeping the Maidens loyal to her. A serious foe, she no doubt thought, would not enter the Valley of the Mists before her work was done.
It was no pleasure to Muhbaras to realize that the Lady of the Mists was quite probably right.
Even Conan's hawk-keen sight could make out little about the rider, other than that he rode a horse and wore dark robes.
"Which is the garb of half the tribes in this land," Khezal said when he rode up to move level with the Cimmerian. Otherwise they made no change of pace or formation, so that from a distance the watcher might think they had not seen him.
"Yes, and no doubt the garb of the other half when they go long enough without washing," Farad said.
"Speak for yourself, rock-crawler," Sergeant Barak muttered, before a glare from both Conan and Khezal silenced their followers.
The watcher seemed to have chosen a good post, overlooking the easiest march route but not actually on it. As they drew closer, the watcher drew back, and Conan saw that he was retreating toward a nightmarish tangle of ravines and rocks. A band half again the size of the Turanians could hide in that land, and seeking one man in it would take the rest of the day before they had to admit failure.
A few hundred paces farther on, the ground before the Turanians also grew rough. They could slow to a trot that made for easy conversation without revealing anything to the watcher.
The conversation was brief.
"The tribes could not have sent too many men into this area," Khezal said. "Otherwise the patrol's messenger could not have returned to camp to warn us."
"Unless they let the messenger through with the purpose of drawing us out into an ambush," Conan added.
"We have still done more than before, in keeping the large bands to the south and west," Khezal insisted. "One doubts that our number of Greencloaks has much to fear from any number of tribesmen who may lie ahead."
It would be unwise to dispute with Khezal before his own men, and Conan had little wish to do so. The Turanian captain might even be right. Still…
"Far be it from me to speak against your men," the
Cimmerian said. "But what of your men and my Afghulis? I wager that the tribesmen consider all alike lawful prey. If the tribesman have surrounded them since last night—"
"You see clearly. Yet only a large tribal band could maintain such a siege and still mount an ambush against us."
Conan had paid with his own blood and seen comrades pay with theirs for a captain's saying that "the enemy could not do so-and-so." Prophecy was a matter for sorcerers and the less honest sort of priest (which to the Cimmerian's mind was most of the breed).
Once again, the Cimmerian would not undermine Khezal's authority or flaunt his doubts of the prowess of the hosts of Turan (which, if half the tales he had heard were true, had indeed notably increased under Yezdigerd the Ambitious). This left him with few choices.
"I think we still need to fear an ambush. Is there another route to our destination, besides the shortest one? You know this land better than I."