Conan the Relentless Part 4

and he doubted that she would much care for having these matters talked of in broad daylight before her men.

Raihna's frown trembled, then vanished. Her full lips trembled also, before curving into a smile. In a single fluid series of movements, she sheathed her sword, slid from her saddle, and crossed the b.l.o.o.d.y ground to the Cimmerian.

"Conan?" She sounded delighted and wondering at the same time.

"I've no twin brother that I know of, and no sorcerer has ever done much with an image of me. Trust me, Raihna. I am here."

"Oh, Mitra!"

For a moment it seemed to Conan that Raihna would swoon. He raised a hand, ready to save her from this indignity. It would cost her some obedience from her men, that he did not doubt. Without the battle haze in his eyes, he saw them for a stout band who would not readily take orders from a woman. No, better said: would not take orders from most women.

But Raihna was not most women. It hardly surprised Conan to see her with her own band of caravan guards in less than two years after she had left Turan as a simple guard in another's band.

What did surprise him was that their paths should cross again here, in this dreary wilderness that called itself the Border Kingdom. Yet that was most probably another tale best saved until later.

Raihna now seemed to have regained command of herself. She reached up and tugged at a stray lock of Conan's black hair.

"G.o.ds, it is no bad thing to see you again. Better still, when you have put me-us-so much in your debt. I swear that I will find some way to-"

"Pay that debt?" Conan said with a grim smile. Again thinking of her authority, he lowered his voice. "Best pay it by rallying your men and moving on." He told of his own battle in the trees in a few words, leaving out altogether his first notions about joining the bandits.

"You have the right of it, Conan. If these wretches have friends, that one you put to flight may send them warning. And we are hardly in a fit state to meet them if they come."

Raihna seemed to grow a hand's breadth in height, and Conan would have sworn that her eyes glowed. When she turned their gaze on her men and snapped out a half-score of commands, they leaped to obey as if a warrior G.o.ddess was among them.

Conan resolved to worry less about Raihna's authority among her men and more about his own welcome. He would have her favor, but many in the southern lands did not know Cimmerians. Some of those, like fools everywhere, feared what they did not know.

Seeing that Raihna had matters well in hand, Conan strode off uphill.

He returned with the leader's body and the discarded weapons of the bandits he had slain.

"Best not to leave anything lying about that some witling can pick up,"

he said of the weapons. Raihna nodded, then looked a silent question about the body.

"He has some rank among these mongrels," Conan said. "There's also a public gallows a bit farther on, at the foot of a hill with a ruined castle atop it. Hang this fellow up and it might send a message to any friends who think of trying us again."

Raihna nodded. "You were always a longheaded man for one of your years."

Conan laughed. "You make me sound like a green lad!"

"No," she said, and both her voice and her eyes held memories that made Conan's blood leap. "No lad."

Then she was the war captain again, calling to her men to contrive a pack animal or a litter for the bandit's body.

Conan stood apart, smiling. The promise had been made and returned. Now they needed only darkness.

Chapter 3.

A few of Raihna's men wanted to track the fleeing bandits.

"Keep 'em from warnin' their friends, be there any," one man said.

"And loot anything the friends stole from other caravans, I'll be bound?" Raihna smiled as she spoke, but her voice was as hard as the rock where she sat.

"Well-I'll not deny that, Mistress."

"Good. You're truthful, if not wise. We have four dead and six hurt past fighting again today. This forest is no place to be dividing our strength against foes who likely know it well."

The man took the rebuke with a shrug and a smile and set to work mending the harness of a pack mule.

In less time than Conan needed for a meal at a good wineshop, the caravan was on the march again. As they retraced Conan's path from the ruined castle and gallows, the Cimmerian rode in the van. Raihna rode in the center, well out of earshot, which denied Conan the chance for a discreet word with her.

Not that he would have taken it had they been riding side by side.

Every eye and every ear would be needed until they left the forest, and every mouth had best remain closed.

Clouds and the pa.s.sing of the day had brought twilight to the land before they reached the gallows. It was then that Raihna drew rein beside the Cimmerian and studied the ruined village.

"I like not the looks of that place, Conan. Know you anything of it, for good or for ill?"

"You have no one from this realm among your men?"

"Folk of the Border Kingdom who have won free of it seem not overeager to return, I have learned. I had good men of my own, and no wish to burden them with fainthearts."

Conan nodded. One willing man was worth three dragged into an undertaking. Moreover, a native of this land could well have been in league with the bandits.

"Castle or village?" Conan asked.

"The path up to the castle's too steep for the beasts, and I'll not be dividing the men here, either," Raihna said.

"Then it's the village or sleep wet and cold tonight," Conan said, looking at the sky. It had grown yet more sullen in the time they sat their mounts, watching the bandit's body rise to the gallows.

"That would ill serve our wounded," Raihna said. She cupped her hands.

"Ho! We camp in the village tonight. Find the softest stones and the driest mud it offers, and see to the animals. Blue Watch takes first guard."

She turned to Conan. "That means me. The sergeant of Blue Watch is among the wounded. But I will not be awake all night."

Conan grinned. "You mean, you'll not be standing guard all night.

Whether you sleep or not-"

"You seem sure of your prowess, Cimmerian!"

"Have I no reason?"

Raihna returned Conan's grin. "If you press me for an answer, I would not deny it. But before I see to the men-what brought you from Turan?

The service of spylord Mishrak again?"

Conan suggested that Mishrak defiled he-goats and p.i.s.sed in wells, then laughed. "Not Mishrak, nor anyone in Turan, bade me here. Indeed, the farther the better from Turan for a few years."

He told of his final year in the Turanian service and of how it had ended in flight when a high-ranking officer took offense at the Cimmerian's ways with the man's mistress. He told more briefly of his travels afterward, north to Cimmeria and then south again.