Conan had prepared his battlefield well. Opposite the entrance, at the top of stairs on the balustraded outpost, Tamara stood bravely. A rope had been looped about her waist and appeared to bind her hands behind her, and her body to the worn stone pillar against which she leaned. On either side of her burned torches in sconces, giving her the appearance of a sacrifice intended to appease some ancient and terrible god.
The folds of her robe hid a dagger. If Khalar Zym got past Conan, she was prepared to pin the madman’s tongue to the top of his skull.
Conan looked to the west and shook his head. What fools these civilized men are. Khalar Zym had sent troops ahead—most likely his female archers—to take up a position near the ruins of the western wall. Even if they had not knocked over some of the piles of rocks Conan had set up to warn him of their advance, the dust they raised as they slipped into position would have given them away.
Their arrival heralded that of their master. Khalar Zym entered through the long-shattered main gate, pausing at the top of the stone ramp leading down into the courtyard. Clad in black leather armor and purple skirts that contrasted sharply with the dusty beige of the outpost’s walls, he surveyed the ruins and deliberately avoided catching Conan’s eye. His gaze measured the place not as a combatant might, but as a conqueror come to survey a far-flung shard of his empire.
Behind him, clinging to what little shadow existed in the sun-washed outpost, lurked a woman. In her, Conan recognized the strange girl he had seen in his father’s forge. The Cimmerian shivered as he recalled the rasp of her tongue and her whisper. Khalar Zym might have grown to be evil, but she had been raised in it, steeped in it. Killing him alone would not end the threat to the world.
Khalar Zym plucked a small leather bag from his belt and tossed it into the sand. It clinked and gold coins spilled out. “You are bold, northerner. I admire valor, even when it is in service to a doomed cause. There, take your reward.”
Conan shook his head. “I do not want your gold.”
The man in black armor studied him for a moment. “An ambitious man. What do you wish? Jewels? To replace Remo at my right hand?” He glanced over his shoulder at the woman. “To win my daughter and become my heir? You exalt yourself.”
Conan drew his sword.
Khalar Zym’s face lit with surprise. “You wish to kill me?”
Conan beckoned him forward with a hand.
Khalar Zym sighed. “I had so hoped for more. So many people have wanted to kill me. It becomes tedious, and I really haven’t the time for it.” He raised a hand. “Marique, my pet, show me how much you love me. Kill him.”
THOUGH SHE WISHED to take a moment to luxuriate in the warmth of her father’s words, Marique fell to obeying his command in an instant. In her left-hand palm lay a half-dozen shards of clay plucked from the fortress’s crumbling outer walls. Upon them, using one of the Stygian talons, Marique had drawn the image of warriors, and covered them with venerable glyphs of considerable power. She closed her hand into a fist, crumbling them into dust, then opened her hand and blew.
The dust spread into a cloud that rolled down over the courtyard. The barbarian drew back, apparently intelligent enough to recognize sorcery, but not nearly bright enough to understand it would be his undoing. The dust plunged into the courtyard sand, mingling again with the earth that created it, and the sand itself rippled. The Cimmerian studied the patterns, shifting this way and that, tracking them and seeking a position from which he could fight.
A shiver ran through Marique. She’d not known he was a Cimmerian, that impression had just come to her. But now, as she watched him, this magnificent man whose muscles rippled under flesh bronzed by the sun’s kiss, she understood that he was the Cimmerian. She sniffed, hoping for more than dust, for a hint of his scent. He is special.
Her stomach twisted. It took her a moment to understand the emotion. Fear, but fear as she had never known it before. This man could slay her father. And though she hated that thought, she did not call out a warning. For in the wake of fear came a thrill as she watched her father work his way around toward the woman, blithely unconcerned that his destiny danced with naked steel in the courtyard below.
CONAN PULLED BACK, watching the movement within the sand. Whatever lurked there, the things moved as sharks through the water in the aftermath of a sea battle. Conan leaped across their paths, seeing how quickly they could turn, then spun and lashed out low, expecting to split the skull of some saw-toothed serpent or venomous blind worm.
He found his target, but instead of slicing through its head, he cut cleanly through both skeletal shins. His blade met less resistance than it might have done with a human foe. Worse yet, as his sword passed through, sand flowed down from above, and up from below, closing the cut without the hint of a scar. The sandlich slashed back at him with a curved dagger blade made of glass, which shattered when Conan blocked the cut. The sandlich spun away, but the blade grew back.
Conan took one step toward it, but the warrior, its death’s-head grinning, melted back into the sand. Another rose behind him, its shadow his only warning, and the sting of a dagger his reward for sloth. The Cimmerian whirled, again aiming low. He expected his foe to melt away, and he was right. His blade carved the skull up from down, leaving a small pyramid of dust to mark its passing.
Conan’s eyes narrowed. He had the sandliches’ measure now. Though he had no use for sorcery, he’d had ample experience of it. The two he’d faced had strange sigils inscribed in breastbone and forehead. While these doubtless gave them life, they also provided him with targets to destroy them. And once them, then Khalar Zym. Or, perhaps, the daughter.
Two of the warriors jetted up through the sand, one to each side. Instead of cutting at them, Conan dove forward, tucking himself into a roll, then came up and spun. Both of them came in slashing; what had been dagger blades had grown into long swords, similar to the one Khalar Zym wore. The Cimmerian smiled, ducking both slashes, then lunged, piercing one’s breastbone glyph. It evaporated as Conan broke the other’s sword, and he allowed himself a quick glance at Marique. They shall not stop me.
MARIQUE FROZE FOR a heartbeat as the Cimmerian’s hot gaze met hers. Her sandliches should have dispatched him easily. They’d slaughtered countless enemies when she’d used them before. Then, in a flash of insight, she understood the barbarian’s smile and why he looked at her. Her sandliches fought in the style of her father, but only at the level of her understanding of swordsmanship. All she knew of it was what she had gleaned from watching her father dispatch enemies. She was no match for the barbarian in that realm.
Will my father be?
She could not bring herself to imagine her father any man’s inferior, but dared not chance that he was. From a small pouch at the back of her belt, she drew a small brass device shaped like a dragonfly and a small vial sealed with wax. She flicked open a panel on the dragonfly’s thorax, scraped the wax from the vial, and poured a thick, black liquid into the hollow body. She snapped the panel shut again. The wings glistened as the poison oozed out to cover them.
Muttering words she’d learned from her mother when the dragonfly had been given her as a child’s amusement, she launched it into the air, and sent it into orbit around the outpost.