Beautiful women had always been one of his weaknesses, and his imagination had been fired by Ardashir’s account He increased his speed, watching the dimmed doorways and nighted lane mouths with smoldering eyes as he hurried past.
As they emerged upon the central square, Conan mouthed a barbaric oath. Four sentries paced in pairs before the copper door of the residence. He had counted on taking the governor by surprise, but that was no longer possible. Swinging his great sword, he raced across the flagstones of the market place. Such was his speed that one of the spearmen was down with his side caved in before the others collected their shattered wits. Conan’s followers were twenty yards behind, unable to match the Cimmerian’s terrific speed.
Two spearmen thrust their weapons against his broad breast, while the third put a horn to his lips and sent forth a bellowing signal. This was cut short by a well-aimed Zuagir arrow, which pierced the trumpeter’s brain. The horn fell to the ground with a clank.
Conan parried the spear thrusts with a fierce swipe of his sword that sheared off the heads of both weapons.
With a vicious thrust he impaled one antagonist on his long blade. The Turanian fell sprawling against the other with a gurgle. The second man’s sword stroke at the Cimmerian’s head went awry and struck sparks from the flagstones. In the next instant, the man was pincushioned with arrows. With a groan and a clatter of mail he fell.
Roused to a vicious lust for killing, Conan sprang forward and tried the copper door. Time was short. In answer to the ringing note of the horn, people thrust their heads out of casements around the square.
Archers appeared on some of the roofs; he must get into the tower before the foe had time to organize a defense.
The door opened before his thrusting shoulder. Leaving ten of his men to guard against attack from the rear, Conan led the rest inside.
With a clink of mail and a flash of sword blades, ten soldiers in the white turbans of the Imperial Guard rushed against him out of a doorway. The Cimmerian’s battle cry rang high as he and his followers closed with their enemies. Many a curved knife or shortened spear found its mark in Turanian vitals, but the flashing scimitars also took a heavy toll. However, the bloodiest havoc wreaked was that of Conan’s cross-hiked sword. He leaped, cut, and thrust with a tigerish frenzy and speed that blurred the sight of his adversaries. In a couple of minutes, the ten Turanians lay in pools of blood, though eight silent figures in bloodstained khalats bore witness to the ferocity of the defense.
Conan swept up to the second floor, taking four steps at a stride. On this floor, he knew, the quarters of the governor were located.
Pausing, he flung swift orders at his followers.
“Ten of you, search for the keys to the dungeon and free Yin Allal. The rest, take all the plunder you can carry.
I’ll pay the governor a visit. ”
As the Zuagirs, howling and laughing, stormed up and down the stairs, Conan broke the sandalwood door before him into splinters with a mighty kick. He found himself in the anteroom of the governor’s apartments.
Crossing the floor swiftly on sound-deadening mats, he halted in midstep. From the other side of the door before him he heard a woman’s voice raised in angry expostulation.
Conan’s brows drew together in a vast frown. He picked up a heavy table and heaved it against the new obstacle. With a crashing impact, the ungainly missile burst open the shattered door. He tossed the remains of the table aside and strode through.
At a table in the middle of the lamplit room stood a tall, powerful man of middle age. Conan knew him by description as Veziz Shah. Silken divans and tables laden with delicacies stood about on the rug-covered floor. On one table rested a flagon of wine with two filled goblets.
A woman rested on the divan. Her wide dark eyes held no trace of fear as she looked upon the invading barbarian. Conan gave a start. This was the girl who had accosted him in Khanyria and almost led him to his death!
No time now to mull over such matters. With a curse, the governor unsheathed his jeweled scimitar and advanced catlike upon the Cimmerian.
“You dare invade my chambers, you red-handed rogue!” he snarled. “I have heard you are on the rove again, and I hoped for the pleasure of having your limbs torn off by wild horses. But as it is …”
He whipped forward in a swift arching stroke. Most men would have been so distracted by his words as to have their throats slit by that whistling edge, but the pantherish speed of barbarian muscles saved Conan. Parrying with his hilt, he lashed out in a vicious countercut.
In the exchange of blows and thrusts, he soon found he faced one of the most skilled swordsmen he had ever met.
But no civilized fencer could match the skill and speed of Conan, hardened in wars and battles since boyhood against foes from all over the world. The skill at arms he had won as a mercenary would by itself have made him master of any ordinary swordsman, for his learning had been pounded into his brain in endless, bloody strife on far battlefields. In addition he retained the flashing, lightning-quick speed of the primordial barbarian, unslowed by civilized comfort.
As the duel continued, Veziz Shah began to tire and his eyes filled with an awful fear. With a sudden cry he flung his scimitar into Conan’s face and raced for the far wall. There his questing fingers probed the surface as if seeking the spring to open a hidden exit.
Conan avoided the missile with a jerk of his black-maned head. The next second his arm was around the neck and his knee in the back of the Turanian amir. His voice was a terrible whisper in Veziz Shah’s ear.
“Dog, remember when you caught ten of my Afghulis when you commanded a squadron in Secunderam? And how you sent me their pickled heads in jars with wishes for a hearty repast? Your time has come. Rot in Hell!”
With a terrible heave, the blood-mad Cimmerian forced his enemy’s body backwards against the thrust of his knee until the Turanian’s spine snapped like a dry twig. A lifeless corpse flopped to the floor.
Sweating and panting, Conan turned to the woman on the divan.
Thanara had not moved during the fight. Now she rose, eyes shining, raised her arms and came fearlessly towards Conan, ignoring the bloody sword in his hand. The blood ran swiftly through his veins at the sight of her.
“You are a real man!” she whispered, pressing herself against his rough mail and twining her arms around his corded neck. “None other could have slain Veziz Shah. I am glad you did. He forced me by threats to come in here to do his bidding.”
Conan felt the hot urge of his racing blood. In his younger days he would have swept the woman into his arms and damned the consequences.
But now the caution of long experience asserted itself. He growled warningly.
“You were clad otherwise when we met in Khanyria,” he said, taking both her wrists in one big paw and drawing her firmly down to the couch beside him. “Tell me the tale behind that ambush, and your part in it. No lies, now, if you know what’s good for you!”
The dark eyes under the long lashes regarded him without fear. A well-formed hand gently drew itself from his grasp and took one of the goblets of wine from the table. She handed him this vessel and began sipping the other herself. The assurance of a beautiful and intelligent woman colored her actions.
“You must be thirsty after killing. Have a draught of this wine. It is the best from Veziz Shah’s own cellar.
Drink, and I will tell you the story you ask for.”
Conan stared into the depths of the cup as Thanara’s musical voice began: “I am Thanara, a yedka or high-born lady of Maypur. King Yezdigerd has graciously appointed me one of his personal agents …the eyes and ears of the king, as we call them in Turan. When word came that you had embarked on your lonely journey, I was sent to supervise the work of the stupid mercenaries engaged by our agent in Tarantia. I suppose …”