It was instead his grim fatalism that caused her anxiety. All of the pirates appeared to go through dark moments, but Conan dwelt most comfortably there. Quick and clever and vital as he was, in those moments of quiet where she found peace, he retreated into melancholy. Tamara worried that there might come a time when he could not find his way back.
But she smiled bravely when he looked up at her. “May the gods speed you, Conan.”
He nodded once, solemnly, then shouldered a supply satchel and headed down the gangway to the abandoned stone pier by which they had dropped anchor. Without looking back, the broad-shouldered barbarian marched to shore and started up the nearest hillside.
Artus looked up at her. “Well, woman?”
“What, Captain Artus?”
“I like the sound of that, ‘Captain Artus.’ You poxed dogs remember that.” Artus plucked a rolled piece of canvas from his belt. “The Cimmerian forgot his map. I’d send a man, but they all need to be filling our water casks. I need someone fleet to catch him.”
Smiling, Tamara leaped to the main deck. “I’ll gladly . . .”
Artus extended the map to her, but did not yet let go. “We sail with the tide. Be back by dawn.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Artus smiled. “And if you have a chance, Tamara, tell him he’d best meet me in Hyrkania, or I will hunt him down.”
EVEN BEFORE HE caught sight of her, Conan knew it was Tamara. She made more noise, deliberate noise, than an advancing company of freebooters. He paused on a sandy switchback, the breeze teasing long blades of sea grass, and smiled as she turned the corner. Beyond her, on the beach, Artus waved.
She held the map out to him. “Artus said you forgot this.”
Conan patted a folded piece of canvas at his belt. “You’ll have to take that back. He’s forgotten I made my own copy.”
Her face fell.
“But not yet, Tamara.”
She closed the distance between them and slipped her hand into his. “You’ll think me silly, but in all my time at the monastery, I never had to say good-bye.”
The Cimmerian resumed his hike up the hillside with her in tow. “People must have died.”
“Yes, but you knew that you would never see them in this life again. There was no wondering as to their fate. No anticipating a return, or hearing bad news.” She shook her head. “I would not have thought it so hard.”
“Hard are the times when you never have the chance to say good-bye.” They crested the hill and turned inland. There, just on the other side of the hill, lay another cove similar to the one where the Hornet anchored. At this one, however, the beach had risen to bury ruins, leaving visible only two massive statues. White sand covered them to the waist. They stared blindly at the ocean, and the fanglike stones that warded the cove and kept all ships at sea.
Tamara stopped. “Who were these people? Did they think they could conquer earth and sea?”
“Perhaps for a time they did conquer earth and sea.”
“And now all they know is ruin.” She squeezed his hand, then looked up into his face. “Do you think our lives are part of some grand plan?”
Conan shook his head. “I do not know. I do not care. I live, I slay, I love, I call no man master. If there is a purpose to life beyond that, it means nothing to me.”
Tamara’s gaze met his openly, with no guile or hidden intent. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I want nothing of you, Conan, save that, for this night, you do not have to pass it alone.”
Two dozen yards along the path and back up a bit, they found shelter in the ruins of what had once been a watchtower. A cleared floor and a small stack of firewood revealed that other travelers had used it before them. The Cimmerian kindled a fire and Tamara spread out a blanket. She shed her clothes, then freed him of his.
It was not the first time he had seen her naked, but that morning, aboard the Hornet, it had been entirely different. Now her long hair fell forward of her shoulders, but did not conceal her full breasts with their dark nipples. Her body tapered at the waist, then flared gently through her hips down into long, slender legs. Her face, though half shadowed, had a regal beauty that insisted she must be of nobility, and her slender hands, which caressed his chest, testified to her femininity.
Conan took her in his arms and kissed her, deeply and passionately, but she broke the kiss and forced him to lie down on the blanket. She knelt at his feet, then worked her way up his body, kissing each of his scars, solemnly and slowly, the intimacy of her caresses all the greater for their simple innocence.
She was not the first woman he had bedded since his days on the Black Coast. He could not remember all of them. He had sought their company to hold ghosts at bay. He’d thought to bury Bêlit’s memory and the pain in the anonymity of hot couplings. That effort had failed, for the hollowness of the acts resonated within the void in his heart, mocking with their shallowness the depth of what he had once had.
But Tamara . . . she saw him differently than the legions of whores and concubines. She continued kissing him, but when her lips met a scar on his left hip, he flinched.
She looked up. “Did I . . . ?”
Conan shook his head. That wound he’d taken aboard the Argus, as Bêlit and the Tigress’s crew had overwhelmed the smaller ship. She’d made him her consort and king. She had danced for him and then, later, kissed that same scar.
Tamara’s eyes glistened. “She must have been very special.”
Conan nodded.
Hot tears anointed the scar. “And so fortunate to have won your heart.”
The Cimmerian reached down and drew her up. His fingers slipped into her dark hair and he brought her mouth to his. He kissed her fiercely, as if it were the last kiss he might ever give, then crushed her to him.
Theirs was not the sloppy, clumsy lovemaking of children, nor the passionless joining of bodies performing for pay or duty. At first it was frenzied and urgent, because of the primal hunger that united them. Khalar Zym’s machinations may have thrown them together, but this union was of their choice, for them and them alone. And through it, and as it settled into a more sustained course, they confirmed their existences. It gave each of them a piece of the other, a slice of time shared, that guaranteed they would never be alone. Without regret, and yet with great joy, they came together again and again and, eventually, with hungers sated, lay entwined in the dying firelight.
He held her so she could not escape, but she made no attempt to do so. Instead she traced fingers over his myriad scars like a palm reader tracing the lines of his hands. She kissed the scars, though this time more quickly and playfully, wistfully, then snuggled in with her cheek pressed to his chest.
“I shall be thinking of you always on your journey, Conan.”
“Three days to Asgalun, and another to Khor Kalba.”
“Artus said that if you did not meet him in Hyrkania, he would hunt you down. Will you meet him?”
He pulled back, and looked her full in the face. “I will find him. I shall need to know that he brought you to safety. If, for some reason, he failed, then I shall have to know who to kill.”
She kissed his lower lip. “He will not fail, Conan. On the tide he shall bear me safely away.”
With another woman, these words would have been an invitation to ask her to come with him, but he did not take them as such. Tamara did not look at him quizzically, wondering why he refrained. She smiled and nestled deeper into his arms.