"You see the Lady as a captain over her Maiden soldiers?"
"Yes, and fighting a war to bring her magic to victory."
"That may be so," Ermik said. Without asking Muhbaras's leave, he went over to the wine jug resting in a stone crock half-filled with cold water. The captain noticed that the spy's hands were not entirely steady as he poured himself another cup, still less so when he drank it off in one gulp.
"It is so," Muhbaras said. "And one rule which wise captains obey is never to take pleasures that you forbid your men. Do you think Khoraja will profit from a mutiny among the Maidens that leads to war in the valley and the ruin of all our plans to bedevil Turan?"
"No," Ermik said. "Nor will our native city profit from a scorned woman turning against us and all our plans. How long do you think we would live if the Lady of the Mists hurled her magic against us?"
Muhbaras said that he doubted that a man could measure so short an interval of time. Ermik nodded.
"Then the Lady should not feel scorned, even if this will make the Maidens jealous. Then, we need not fear so greatly. Nor need we fear them at all if the man goes to the Lady discreetly."
"That certainly means the man cannot be you," Muhbaras said. Then he shut his mouth with a snap of teeth as he realized that he had walked into a cleverly baited trap.
He forced laughter. "I see that I have talked myself into doing as the Lady wishes—which, of course, may be only to hear me sing tavern songs and juggle dried goat's ears—"
Ermik joined in the laughter. After the laughing ceased, Muhbaras poured them both more wine. That emptied the jug, but there was enough in his cup to soothe his dry throat, and all the wine in the world would not answer the one question that remained.
How, in the name of every god who takes thought for such matters, does a common man go about scratching a sorceress with an itch?
The sandstorm blew up during the night, and was still blowing the next day. The campsite had no well within its boundaries, as Khezal and Conan had chosen it for ease of defense. However, the well was so close that with a rope strung from the outermost sentry post to the well, water bearers could come and go safely even when the sand cut a man's vision to the length of his outstretched arm.
One Greencloak, a new man not yet desert-wise, still wandered away from the rope. Fortunately he had the wits to stop where night overtook him, and as he had been returning from the well with full water bags, did not suffer from thirst.
In the morning the man came in, scoured raw by the sand but not otherwise harmed, and Khezal ordered the camp broken. Sand was still drifting down from a haze-dimmed sky, and the horizon was barely visible at all, but the captain said that the next campsite had two wells and could be held against an army.
"Even one that does not reckon losses if they can bring down an enemy?" Conan said.
"You understand the tribesmen well, Conan—"
"I am a Cimmerian. Does that answer your question?"
"Not entirely. I was about to say that you do not understand them perfectly. No chief will throw away too many warriors. They might be driven to turn on him. Even if they remained loyal, if they were too few, his tribe or clan might fall to a more numerous enemy, or he himself might fall at the hands of a would-be chief with more followers. It is seldom that the tribesmen will fight to the last man, unless one gives them no choice.
"Of course," Khezal concluded with a wry grin, "this might be one of those times."
"I shall always remember you as a cheerful companion," Conan said.
"May we both live long enough to remember each other," Khezal said.
"We shan't, if you don't keep a better watch for snakes," Conan snapped. He pointed at a desert asp wriggling toward the left forefoot of the captain's mount.
"I keep watch enough," Khezal said. In one moment his dagger was in his hand. In another, it was sunk deep in the sand, severing the asp just behind the hood. The body writhed furiously, but was still by the time the captain mounted.
They rode off, arrayed in the manner the Green-cloaks used when they feared a sandstorm. They rode close together, in double columns, with no man much farther than a spear's length from a comrade. Each man wore upon his clothes the whitest object he possessed, and there was a man with horn or drum for every ten riders.
The boy Conan had known in the Ilbars Mountains had become a man to follow. If Khezal's will could have kept him safe in the Turanian service, the Cimmerian might even have returned to it.
But the gods had willed otherwise, so Conan would ride west once more when this quest into the North was done.
Eleven
That morning they were close to the stretch of desert the Girumgi called their own. (Or at least the one where wandering strangers were more likely to die at the hands of Girumgi than of any other tribe's warriors. That was as far as territorial claims commonly went in the desert, where a tribe that wished to could move almost as freely as a fleet of merchant vessels on the open sea.)
So in spite of their formation, the riders were keeping a better lookout for human enemies than for the weather. It was not a total surprise when the sandstorm blew up again, but it gave what would have been little enough notice even for the most vigilant men.
It did not help that only moments before the storm came upon them, they saw riders at the head of a val-ley not far off to their right. Thanks to some curious twist of the land, the air between them and the riders was as clear as a fine day in Vanaheim. It was possible to count the riders, some three score, and to recognize a Girumgi banner and headdresses among the nearer men.
Conan did not dispute the identification of the banner or the nearer riders, but his keen sight left him in doubt about the rest. He could not have said what tribe they were, but he was prepared to wager that they would turn out to be other than Girumgi.
He was not prepared to wager the lives of his men, however. He took the lead when the sky and air both turned brown and the Turanians had to seek shelter before they could no longer see their hands before their faces. He rode down into the foot of the valley, then spread his Afghulis in a line across it. Still mounted, they watched the Turanians follow them out of the thickening storm and find refuge in a natural bowl on the north side of the valley.
"We'll watch above, you watch below," Khezal said, or rather shouted. The sandstorm now howled like a gale at sea, and hand signals would have been more sensible had anyone been able to see them.
"Fair enough," Conan shouted back. He did not add that he was personally going to slip up the valley and see whom they might be facing. It would be hard to punish him for disobeying an order that he had not received.
Conan waited until Turanians and Afghulis were in their intended places, and until the far end of the valley was as invisible as if it had been in Vendhya. The storm was less thick in the valley than on the open desert above, but Conan judged he could still slip close to these mysterious neighbors without being seen.
This quest had already sprouted too many mysteries. Here perhaps was one that he could solve before nightfall, risking no man's life but his own.
In this assumption he had not reckoned on Farad. When Conan slipped between the horses and gripped a rock to pull himself up and over, he found Farad sitting cross-legged atop the rock.
"You were near having your throat slit," Conan snapped. "Indeed, you may be still."
"Would that not be poor repayment for my loyalty?" the Afghuli said.
"Are you being loyal, or more like a louse in a man's breech-guard?"
"It seemed to us that you should not go scouting alone. Who would bring the truth, if you twisted an ankle or struck your head—"