Zarono was on his feet, his black rage submerging his craftiness. “You Barachan dog! I’ll give you your answer …in your guts…”
He tore aside his cloak and caught at his sword hilt. Strombanni heaved up with a roar, his chair crashing backward to the floor. Valenso sprang up, spreading his arms between them as they faced each other across the board with jutting jaws close together, blades half drawn, and faces convulsed. “Gentlemen, have done! Zarono, he has my pledge …”
“The foul fiends gnaw your pledge!” snarled Zarono.
“Stand from between us, my lord,” growled the pirate, his voice thick with lust for killing. “Your word was that I should not be treacherously entreated. It shall be considered no violation of your pledge for this dog and me to cross swords in equal play.”
“Well spoken, Strom!” said a deep, powerful voice behind them, vibrant with grim amusement. All wheeled and glared open-mouthed. Up on the stair, Belesa started up with an involuntary exclamation.
A man strode out of the hangings that masked the chamber door and advanced toward the table without haste or hesitation. Instantly he dominated the group, and all felt the situation subtly charged with a new, dynamic atmosphere.
The stranger was taller and more powerfully built than either of the freebooters, yet for all his size he moved with pantherish suppleness in his high, flaring-topped boots. His thighs were cased in close-fitting breeches of white silk. His wide-skirted, sky-blue coat was open to reveal an open-necked, white silken shirt beneath, and the scarlet sash that girded his waist. His coat was adorned with acorn-shaped silver buttons, gilt-worked cuffs and pocket flaps, and a satin collar. A lacquered hat completed a costume obsolete by nearly a hundred years. A heavy cutlass hung at the wearer’s hip.
“Conan!” ejaculated both freebooters together, and Valenso and Galbro caught their breath at that name.
“Who else?” The giant strode up to the table, laughing sardonically at their amazement.
“What …what do you here?” stuttered the senescal. “How came you here, uninvited and unannounced?”
“I climbed the palisade on the east side while you fools were arguing at the gate,” Conan answered, speaking Zingaran with a barbarous accent. “Every man in the fort was craning his neck westward. I entered the manor while Strombanni was being let in at the gate. Every since, I’ve been in that chamber there, eavesdropping.”
“I thought you were dead,” said Zarono slowly. “Three years ago, the shattered hull of your ship was sighted off a reefy coast, and you were heard of on the Main no more.”
“I didn’t drown with my crew,” answered Conan. “’Twill take a bigger ocean than that one to drown me. I swam ashore and tried a spell of mercenarying among the black kingdoms; and since then I’ve been soldiering for the king of Aquilonia. You might say I have become respectable,” he grinned wolfishly, “or at least that I had until a recent difference with that ass Numedides. And now to business, fellow thieves.”
Up on the stair, Tina was clutching Belesa in her excitement and staring through the balustrade with all her eyes. “Conan! My lady, it is Conan! Look! Oh, look!”
Belesa was looking, as though she beheld a legendary character in the flesh. Who of all the sea-folk had not heard the wild, bloody tales told of Conan, the wild rover who had once been a captain of the Barachan pirates, and one of the greatest scourges of the sea? A score of ballads celebrated his ferocious, audacious exploits. The man could not be ignored; irresistibly he had stalked into the scene, to form another, dominant element in the tangled plot. And, in the midst of her frightened fascination, Belesa’s feminine instinct prompted the speculation as to Conan’s attitude toward her. Would it be like Strombanni’s brutal indifference or Zarono’s violent desire?
Valenso was recovering from the shock of finding a stranger within his very hall. He knew that Conan was a Cimmerian, born and bred in the wastes of the far north, and therefore not amenable to the physical limitations that controlled civilized men. It was not so strange that he had been able to enter the fort undetected, but Valenso flinched at the reflection that other barbarians might duplicate that feat …the dark, silent Picts, for instance.
“What would you here?” he demanded. “Did you come from the sea?”
“I came from the woods.” The Cimmerian jerked his head toward the east
“You have been living with the Picts?” Valenso asked coldly.
A momentary anger flickered in the giant’s eyes. “Even a Zingaran ought to know there’s never been peace between Picts and Cimmerians, and never will be,” he retorted with an oath. “Our feud with them is older than the world. If you’d said that to one of my wilder brothers, you’d have found yourself with a split head. But I’ve lived among you civilized men long enough to understand your ignorance and lack of common courtesy …the churlishness that demands his business of a man who appears at your door out of a thousand-mile wilderness. Never mind that.” He turned to the two freebooters, who stood staring glumly at him. “From what I overheard,” quoth he, “I gather there is some dissension over a map.”
“That is none of your affair,” growled Strombanni.
“Is this it?” Conan grinned wickedly and drew from his pocket a crumpled object …a square of parchment, marked with crimson lines.
Strombanni started violently, paling. “My map!” he ejaculated. “Where did you get it?”
“From your mate, Galacus, when I kiled him,” answered Conan with grim enjoyment.
“You dog!” raved Strombanni, turning on Zarono. “You never had the map! You lied …”
“I never said I had it,” snarled Zarono. “You deceived yourself. Be not a fool. Conan is alone; if he had a crew he’d already have cut our throats. We’ll take the map from him …”
“You’ll never touch it!” Conan laughed fiercely.
Both men sprang at him, cursing. Stepping back, he crumpled the parchment and cast it into the glowing coals of the fireplace. With an incoherent bellow, Strombanni lunged past him, to be met with a buffet under the ear that stretched him half-senseless on the floor. Zarono whipped out his sword, but before he could thrust, Conan’s cutlass beat it out of his hand.
Zarono staggered against the table with all Hell in his eyes. Strombanni dragged himself erect with his eyes glazed and blood dripping from his bruised ear.
Conan leaned slightly over the table, his outstretched cutlass just touching the breast of Count Valenso.
“Don’t call for your soldiers, Count,” said the Cimmerian softly. “Not a sound out of you …or from you, either, dog-face!” he said to Galbro, who showed no intention of braving his wrath. “The map’s burned to ashes, and it’ll do no good to spill blood. Sit down, all of you.”
Strombanni hesitated, made an abortive gesture toward his hilt, then shrugged his shoulders and sank sullenly into a chair. The others followed suit. Conan remained standing, towering over the table, while his enemies watched him with eyes full of bitter hate.
“You were bargaining,” he said. “Thats all I’ve come to do.”
“And what have you to trade?” sneered Zarono.
“Only the treasure of Tranicos.”
“What?” All four men were on their feet, leaning toward him.
“Sit down!” roared Conan, banging his broad blade on the table.
They sank back, tense and white with excitement. Conan grinned in huge enjoyment of the sensation his words had caused and continued:
“Yes! I found the treasure before I got the map. That’s why I burned the map. I need it not, and nobody shall ever find it unless I show him where it is.”
They stared at him with murder in their eyes.
“You’re lying,” said Zarono without conviction. “You’ve told us one lie already. You said you came from the woods, yet you say you haven’t been living with the Picts. All men know this country is a wilderness, inhabited only by savages. The nearest outposts of civilization are the Aquilonian settlements on Thunder River, hundreds of miles to eastward.”