Conan - Blood of the Serpent E-Book

S. M. Stirling

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 566

Beschreibung

The pulse-pounding return of Conan, the most iconic fantasy hero in popular culture, with a brand-new illustrated standalone novel by New York Times bestselling author S.M. Stirling, tied directly to the famous tales written by Robert E. Howard. Mercenary, thief, soldier, usurper… CONAN OF CIMMERIA As sword for hire for a mercenary troop, Conan finds himself in Sukhmet, a filthy backwater town south of the River Styx considered "the arse-end of Stygia." Serving in the company known as Zarallo's Free Companions, he fights alongside soldiers of fortune from Zingara, Koth, Shem, and other lands—a hard-handed band of killers loyal to anyone who pays them well. In a Sukhmet tavern he encounters one soldier in particular—Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, a veteran of freebooters with whom Conan also sailed, launching raids out of the Barachan Isles on the Western Sea. Valeria's reputation is that of a deadly swordswoman, a notoriety she quickly proves to be accurate. When she runs afoul of an exiled Stygian noble, however, things take a deadly turn, embroiling them both in the schemes of a priest of the serpent god Set. The first new Conan novel in more than a decade, Blood of the Serpent leads directly into one of Robert E. Howard's most famous sword-and-sorcery adventures, "Red Nails." As a bonus feature that story, as well, is included in this volume.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

BLOOD OF THE SERPENTby S. M. Stirling

Part One: Slayers in Sukhmet

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part Two: Rebellion at Wedi Shebelli

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Part Three: Death Beyond Stygia

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

Part Four: Xuchotl

30

RED NAILSby Robert E. Howard

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

LEAVE US A REVIEW

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CONAN: BLOOD OF THE SERPENT

Print edition ISBN: 9781803361833

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803361871

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: December 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2022 Conan Properties International LLC. CONAN, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, HYBORIA, and related logos, names and character likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of Conan Properties International LLC. ROBERT E. HOWARD is a trademark or registered trademark of Robert E. Howard Properties LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Interior illustrations by Roberto De La Torre

S. M. Stirling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Janet Cathryn Stirling, 1950–2021,dearest of all.

BLOOD

OF THE

SERPENT

S. M. STIRLING

PART ONE

SLAYERS INSUKHMET

Eyes of Set!” The soldier sitting across the stained tavern table snarled as the dice bounced to a stop on the rough splintery-worn planks. It wasn’t just a curse—or from a Stygian point of view, a presumptuous prayer by an outland mercenary. Here in Stygia, “snake eyes” was the winning toss.

Here in Stygia’s dung-encrusted back end, where all the garbage gets thrown, Conan thought. Including us.

“Double or nothing, Anjallo?” the Cimmerian said aloud, draining his mug.

Anjallo was a Zingaran, part of the core of Zarallo’s Free Companions. Like Conan, an experienced fighting man, smaller but whipcord-strong and very quick, with a narrow olive hawk-face. An old scar drew one corner of his full mouth up in a perpetual sneer. Like many of the northern mercenaries here, he stubbornly stuck to the loose trousers, boots, baggy-sleeved linen shirt, and sleeveless leather jerkin that most ordinary men wore in the northern nations.

Conan was bare to the waist and wore only knee-length loose canvas breeks, seaman-style, and the naturally pale skin of his broad-shouldered, taut, heavily muscled torso was tanned the same nut-brown as his arms and legs and face, except where thin or puckered scars showed white. His hair fell to his shoulders, square-cut and as black as any Stygian’s, tied back with a strip of black silk. The eyes under his brows were volcanic blue and his features bluntly, ruggedly carved, with close-shaven jowls.

Not quite a bear of a man. More like a lion, big and immensely strong but deadly fast. Lounging at ease but with senses ever spread for threats, he was covered with sweat, the sort normally shed in fighting or working hard in more pleasant climates.

In Sukhmet he sweated just sitting in the shade, and it didn’t even dry off unless he was in the wind. It turned rancid until he sluiced himself down… whereupon he had a few blessed moments of coolness before being bathed in sweat again.

Conan didn’t have the Zingaran sense of propriety and so didn’t wear more than he had to in the sweltering heat, even if it meant he had to keep slapping at the buzzing flies and mosquitos that tried to use him as their tavern and beer-barrel.

Few threats presented themselves in the Claw and Fang Tavern, however. The innkeeper’s stout sons kept human beggars out with even stouter truncheons of a local timber called ironwood, and for good reason. The swarming cats suppressed rats and feasted on the huge flying cockroaches and the ever-present termites, leaving their shells and wings and legs in drifts in the corners.

The felines were insolent beasts though, and anyone who so much as nudged one aside with a foot risked a deadly serious human mob out to gut them. Cats were sacred to Stygians, and if one house-moggie died, the whole family from the grandparents down to the kitchen-maids shaved their heads in grief, mummified the dead beast, and buried it in their ancestral tomb as if it were a child.

They kept pythons, too, and sometimes cobras. Fortunately the big constrictors from the temples only came out at night, and weren’t as gigantic as the ones in far-off Khemi or Luxor. Thosecould be big enough to swallow a man whole, and Stygians considered it an honor to feed the Great God Set’s emissaries with their own flesh.

Though they prefer it when the god picks a foreigner, Conan thought with grim amusement. He’d had encounters with them himself, luckily without witnesses when he blasphemously refused to be devoured.

No witnesses except a dead snake.

Conan leaned his back against the rough mud-brick wall behind him and casually let a hand drop to his sword-hilt as the Zingaran glared with the quick surge of rage a bad toss could bring. The Cimmerian knew better than to relax in a dice-game, especially when he’d just won the round and was playing with men who earned their bread with sword and pike and face-to-face killing.

Sixes, the winning throw in the northlands, was the demons here. The soldier was wise enough not to invoke Mitra, even to swear. Stygians might hire his like for dirty jobs in dirty spots, but they didn’t like them, a feeling that was more than mutual. Set was a demon of the more northerly kingdoms, while Mitra of the Aquilonians or Nemedians was a figure of hate and terror this far south.

“Curse you, yes,” the other mercenary said finally, mastering himself and even giving a smile. “Double or nothing.” Then his crooked grin grew broader. “I can’t even blame the dice, since they’re mine.”

He pushed a few more thin, clipped coins into the center of the ale-stained planks and paused with his finger still on one.

Raised voices…

Then shouts, and the clash of steel on steel.

Conan and Anjallo pivoted smoothly, kicking their sword-scabbards to make sure the weapons wouldn’t tangle their legs, positioning the hilts to be just where they needed them.

A young brown-haired man Conan vaguely recalled as a pikeman was facing off against a fellow-member of the Free Companions, a Zamoran sword-and-buckler fighter—one of four who served in the ranks of the Free Companions. They both had blades in their hands—the pikeman with a dagger in his left fist and the Zamoran with the little leather-and-steel shield, gripped by the single handle in the middle.

“My dice are as honest as the word of the Great God Bel,” the Zamoran snarled, his words thickly accented.

“Bel, god of thieves!” the pikeman snarled. He was Brocas, a Corinthian, Conan remembered. “Zamora is a country of thieves. Thieves born to whores.”

With that he attacked, spitting more insults. He was quick, but an occasional misstep showed he’d been punishing the sorghum beer hard, particularly considering the sun wasn’t yet down. Using his buckler the Zamoran knocked aside a thrust, a sharp bang sounding under the growing brabble of voices. Men were yelling, demanding what was going on… or, increasingly, laying bets as the first rank shouldered the growing crowd away to give the fighters room.

“I’ll be back,” the Cimmerian said to Anjallo. He rose and went forward, elbowing his way to the front. Having lived in Zamora himself for a memorable year—and in the capital, Shadizar the Wicked—it was Conan’s considered opinion that Brocas’ judgment was more-or-less fair.

It didn’t do to underestimate Zamorans, though…

He eyed the fight warily. A little of the red wine was flowing already. Brocas had a cut on one cheek that sent blood running down his face and spattering as he shuffled and darted, while the Zamoran had a shallow gash on his upper left arm. This had gone past fighting out of sheer boredom—first blood might have satisfied honor, yet neither showed any sign of stopping. Both men were serious.

Their feet rutched on the packed dirt of the floor and the blades met again. Some of the spectators surged back, cursing as a backswing missed a man’s nose only because he jerked away.

Conan’s eyes narrowed. The Zamoran wasn’t as drunk as Brocas, and he also wasn’t fighting to kill, keeping a little more than optimum distance instead, which made him safer… but drew out the fight. He was pushing the Corinthian in a single direction, too.

Toward another Zamoran, Conan realized. He knew the four of them by sight, if not by name. The Zamoran spectator wasn’t shouting like the others, or just enjoying himself. He was wire-taut and crouched as the Corinthian was pushed back by a series of showy stamping lunge-thrusts.

There was a glint of steel in the second Zamoran’s hand. Not a knife, but a folding straight-razor; just right for shaving—which nearly all Zamoran men did—and ideal for cutting someone’s tendon just above the heel, crippling them for a killing stroke. To the average spectator, it would seem as if the lesser and more drunken swordsman had stumbled and lost.

It was a standard tactic in the Maul district of Shadizar, and had been tried on the Cimmerian more than once.

Face to face is one thing, Conan thought. Backstabbing is another.

The first Zamoran distracted everyone with a shout and a flourish of high-low-middle thrusts. The second Zamoran, still crouched, moved his hand forward.

Now.

Conan’s right hand snapped down, taking the crouched man’s wrist in its grip. With his left hand he took hold of the collar of the man’s openwork leather jerkin. Lifting him off his feet, he squeezed and wrenched sharply with his right. Bone cracked as muscle like steel cables writhed and twisted on the Cimmerian’s bare arms.

The Zamoran who’d been advancing abruptly stopped, his motion stuttering as his eyes bulged in shock at the abrupt end of the scheme.

Brocas was in a fighter’s trance of utter concentration, and he took instinctive, immediate advantage. His point flashed out, neatly bisected the Zamoran’s throat and withdrew with a twist. Blood shot from the wound, and from the Zamoran’s mouth and nose in froth and bubbles. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, and Brocas wheeled as he sensed something going on behind him.

He was in time to see the straight razor fly glittering out of the second Zamoran’s hand, turning in the air and making men shout and dodge. One of them scooped it up from the floor, closed it and slipped it into his belt-pouch. Good steel was always worth something, and it had a pearl handle.

“Quiet!” Conan shouted, a bellow from deep in his massive chest.

Something like silence fell, enough that they could all hear the quick panting of Brocas, brought on by the sudden extreme effort of a fight to the death. Conan spoke into the silence.

“Fair combat is a man’s own choice, if he wants to fight to the death, but striking at a comrade’s back is another thing. I won’t serve with a man who’d do that. Nor will any man of Zarallo’s Free Companions.” He scanned the crowd. “What say you, dog-brothers?”

There was a roar of approval, cut through with the Zamoran’s scream of agony as Conan wrenched and twisted and the man’s arm separated at the shoulder, broke at the wrist, and the bone of the upper arm snapped. The Cimmerian threw him down and kicked him in the ribs; it wasn’t the only kick the man received as he crawled through the strings of ebony beads on sisal cords that covered the doorway. Even the cats didn’t approach him.

He wouldn’t live long, Conan wagered.

The din of the tavern rose to its earlier levels, and Conan got a few slaps on the back. Nobody liked the thought of interference in a duel, especially backstabbing, though if it had erupted into a brawl, things would have been different. Someone on his way back to barracks grabbed the dead Zamoran by his heels and dragged him out. Two friends of Brocas handed the dead men’s swords and daggers and belts to Conan and the young Corinthian respectively, the customary victor’s prize. The belt Conan received held a pouch.

Brocas scowled, then shook himself and took a deep breath.

“You saved my life from treachery,” he said to Conan, his voice sullen with youth and its juices. “I owe you a debt.”

Conan shrugged. “If you choose,” he said. Then he grinned disarmingly. “You may save my life, someday, dog-brother.”

“Perhaps I will.” Brocas smiled, then laughed. “After I sleep this off.” He nodded and turned away.

Conan half-drew the dead Zamoran’s sword. It was quite fair-quality steel, and so was the dagger. The gilt-bronze buckle and fittings on the sword-belt were well-made. That made it a profitable evening, as well as one that broke the boredom of garrison duty. He went back to the table where he’d been dicing and threw the ivories again.

“Eyes of Set!” Conan said, happily echoing the other man’s earlier complaint. Anjallo swore, but he paid. Everyone in Zarallo’s Free Companions knew that the Cimmerian was a bad man to cross. That had been driven home by public exhibition.

“Damned if I’ll dice with you again tonight,” he said. “Your luck’s in—especially with women, I’d wager—if the dice favor you!” Anjallo slouched off without waiting for the mug the winner traditionally bought the loser.

Conan raked in ten coppers and a small, clipped silver coin the size of the nail on his little finger, dropping them into a pouch at his sword-belt. Then he checked the dead Zamoran’s pouch, which had about as much again. Adding that loot to his own, he carefully drew the strings tight. The sword, scabbard, dagger, and belt… he’d get four silver pieces at least for the whole of it.

The dicing bout had lasted all afternoon and to the beginnings of twilight. His winnings were about a week’s pay for a common spearman, and half what he made in the same time as a scout in Zarallo’s company… on those occasions when everyone was paid in full. Throw in what he’d gotten from the Zamoran and it made four months’ wages all up, which in turn meant he had as much money as he would have if the paydays had been as regular as an Argossean clock.

To celebrate he took a long swallow of the Claw and Fang’s rather sour, weak, lumpy beer. Even bad beer was better than the water from foul shallow town wells, and safer too. The greatest of heroes could still die of diarrhea.

Conan of Cimmeria had seen a great many taverns, inns, gambling dens and alehouses since he left his northern homeland more than… He counted on his fingers, then looked down at the bare toes on his sandaled feet, ticking off the years by memories and events… There were plenty of those.

More than ten years! Crom! How the seasons fly away. The friends and maidens I played with will be raising their families now, and the men growing their beards. The ones who haven’t been killed, that is.

Taverns were a feature of civilization, back where he’d grown to manhood—or at least to the young warrior with his first downy whiskers who’d helped sack and burn the fortress-city of Venarium. Cimmerians either brewed their own ale or bartered with a neighbor for it. Bartered food they’d raised or made or hunted themselves. Coined money was a rare thing among his home hills and forests. Those who traveled relied on hospitality, which was freely given—unless there was a blood-feud.

Or the loot was taken by force, he thought. Even sweeter then! He smacked his lips at the pleasant memory of the casks of wine and brandy in Venarium’s cellars and warehouses, of smashing in the head of one cask with the hilt of his sword then sticking his face up to the ears in the contents.

Things got blurry after that.

They could have killed us all, helpless as suckling babes while we slept it off. Good thing we’d killed all the clanless Aquilonian bastards first.

This tavern on an alleyway in the Stygian outpost city of Sukhmet was better than some he’d drunk in. Nobody was trying to rob or kill him right now, for example, and the outhouse stink from the alley beyond the door wasn’t too bad. The day before yesterday there had been a heavy rain to sluice things away. If he hadn’t spent a fair amount of time outside the walls in the countryside and wilderness, he might not have noticed the stench at all. Most didn’t, after they’d been in a city for a while—though coming in from outside, the stink was obvious from miles away.

Conan grinned. The first time he’d approached a city of size, he’d been convinced everyone inside had died of the plague and he was smelling their liquified bodies.

The tavernkeeper kept a vaguely pork-based stew simmering in a great iron pot over the hob and threw vegetables and scraps and trimmings and even some spices into it as they came to hand. He could get a bowl of that for two coppers, with a lump of dense millet-bread, and an onion thrown in to munch on.

For a copper more, he could get a big slice or a long meaty rib from the pig carcass that turned on the spit there beside the stew-cauldron. That was actually fairly tasty and spiced with a good hot sauce of peppers, though the savory taste would decline to rankness before it was finished in a day or so, and another beast went on the spit. Meat didn’t keep well in this clime.

Big bowls of coarse pottery around the walls held fruits exotic to him, oranges and mangoes and the like from the farms of the Stygian settlers outside the town wall. Patrons were welcome to sample, as long as they kept buying drinks, as well.

The Claw and Fang was also worse than some other boozing-dens he’d patronized. The wine was so terrible that even his not particularly discriminating palate preferred the beer that was the main alternative, though that was like drinking thin fermented porridge. Which wasn’t surprising, really; vines wouldn’t grow here. Some sort of rot got them.

Sukhmet was far south of the Styx, the great river whose valley marked the northern border of the vast Stygian empire. They made wine there, watering the vines from the river in that dry, dry land, and some of that wasn’t bad. Better-than-fair Shemite stuff could be found there, too. Getting wine to this gods-forsaken outpost, however, meant weeks in riverboats and then weeks on camel-back from oasis to oasis through desert, and then over a month in ox carts over bad roads that led southeast through the greener and greener savannah toward the Darfar border marches.

It was expensive bad wine, too. All that transport cost silver, along with the guards who were needed… and merchants needed to hire ones they could trust not to drink up too much of the cargo, which meant higher wages too.

Stygia was a vast and varied empire, of many lands and peoples. Conan had about decided that as far as he was concerned the snake-worshippers were welcome to every blighted overheated sun-cursed inch of the place. In this part it didn’t even cool down at night, the way the deserts did. The bugs were bad in the valley of the Styx, but here south of the desert they were beyond belief; some of the scorpions were as big as his foot, and the sting in their tails led to a long painful death.

They also distilled a yellowish-white drink from their sorghum here that had about the same effect on your head as a Vanir war axe, or at least a Pictish raider’s flint hatchet. Conan waved for a small clay cup of that. The innkeeper came over with it himself, cats scattering from his path. He was a thickset middle-aged brown man in a simple linen kilt and with a shaven head.

“On house,” he said, keeping his Stygian pidgin-simple for outlanders. “Dinner, too. You keep fight from too bad, smash place up.”

Except for the blood soaking into the dirt floor, but dirt hid a multitude of sins.

“I thank you,” Conan said, deciding to take a chance on the roast pig. Eating Zarallo’s rations back at barracks, before he unrolled his pallet on the earth-bench bed, would mean beans and mush and dried meat and maybe another onion. It was part of the wage, which meant he could save toward getting away from here.

And he’d contributed some of the meat, hunting on scouting missions and setting up frameworks to dry the flesh in strips so that others could haul it back to town in bulk. The hunting here was excellent, animals familiar and half-familiar and weirdly alien swarming in astonishing numbers, sport better than anything he’d seen before.

Which was about the only compensation for being rammed up the Stygian empire’s backside.

Conan spent as much time at the hunt as Zarallo would allow, arguing that it cut the mercenary chief’s provisioning bills, kept his skills sharp, and let him learn the ins and outs of the wilderness. He could sell the skins and horns, but being more common, hides sold for less than a woven blanket hereabouts. There was a market for ivory, of course, but hunting elephants required special skills and trusted comrades.

So even hunting paled after a while.

We’re fighting men, but we haven’t had a fight in Crom knows how long, he mused over the wretched beer. The moss that hangs from the trees will start sprouting on me, soon enough.

As the innkeeper turned to go, Conan motioned for him to wait. He shoved the Zamoran’s sword across the table.

“You buy?” he said. “Six silvers.”

“Three,” the innkeeper said quickly, then he examined the weapon and gear.

“Five,” Conan countered. “Keep it, I draw on it for food, drink.” That would be considerably safer than keeping it under his pallet, and less trouble than the Free Companions’ treasury.

“Four and twelve coppers.”

“Done,” Conan said, and they slapped palms on it. “Bring pig meat and bread?”

*   *   *

The food arrived, with one of the innkeeper’s daughters bringing it. Like most Stygian women she wore less than the men—only a loincloth. Unlike most, she had full breasts and haunches like a draft-horse, probably a dash of local blood. All those parts swayed interestingly as she bent over to serve the dishes. Then she walked away, glancing over her shoulder; perhaps his display of speed and strength had impressed her.

Or possibly his sudden accession of silver.

A voice cut through his musings, and his head came up with smooth swiftness as he eased forward on the stool, sandals beneath him and a little weight on the balls of his feet. Suddenly he was acutely aware of every dim outline in big smoky adobe-walled, dirt-floored room.

“Keep your paws off my arse, Stygian pig,” the voice said, “or I’ll feed you your fingers and ram your severed sword hand thumb up your bunghole with the toe of my boot.”

Two fights in one night would be unusual, though not really rare.

It was a woman’s voice… and speaking not Stygian or the pidgin-Stygian common in Sukhmet, or even one of the gobbling local tribal languages, but the slangy stripped-down seafaring argot of the seaports and sea-lanes thousands of miles to the northwest. A mongrel Argossean dialect with words from Zingaran, Shemite, and gods-knew-what mixed in. It was like the breath of a cool sea-breeze in the rank sweaty dimness.

She spoke it with a northern accent clear-cutting.

“And I’ll dip it in burning candle wax first for lubrication,” she added.

There was a clatter of stools falling to the hard-packed dirt, a boil of armed figures, and once again a circle of watcher’s shoulders. The hubbub of delighted exclamations at yet another break in the monotony provided a sudden contrast to the sleepy buzz of moments before.

Valeria! he thought, with a smile of grim pleasure. Rumors had spread that Zarallo had hired her two days ago, straight off a caravan somewhere to the west.

He’d heard of her during his freebooting time on the Western Sea, though they’d never crossed paths. She was a member of the Red Brotherhood and, judging from the songs and stories, as dangerous as any three pirates put together. Valeria’s reputation said she was good-looking, too, though he’d taken that with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, he’d been looking forward to seeing her in the flesh.

Zarallo himself was a lazy businessman, or the Free Companions wouldn’t have taken a contract in such a remote place as Sukhmet, away from all the serious action. Conan wouldn’t have enlisted with him, either, if the Argosseans hadn’t sunk his last ship. A desperate swim to shore had left him with nothing but a loinclout, a sword, and a purse containing the price of three days’ food and lodging. But the Zingaran mercenary captain was also a tried-and-tested leader of fighting men, and nobody’s fool, so she must have been up to his standards.

Conan stood to see better.

Stygians were a tall people, particularly the better-fed classes, but few equaled his height of a handspan over six feet. Being mostly slim, few had his weight of bone and muscle, either. Nobody looked his way, which was good—surprise could be a strong ally.

A woman’s head reared across the room—dark yellow shoulder-length hair held back by a silk headband. She wore a baggy-sleeved silk shirt that had once been the same old-gold color before considerable staining and patching, now tied off in a knot below her breasts. Below that, a sash of red around her supple waist and a leather belt carrying a straight two-edged sword and a dagger. Wide silk knee-length sailor-style breeks of the same cut he was wearing, but stained with tar of the sort used on ship’s rigging, and loose knee-high sea boots.

The dagger was a foot long and worn on the back of her belt, with the hilt to the left. This was significant, he knew. It marked certain styles of bladework that were common in the seaports of the west, and among the sea-rovers.

She was only four inches shorter than Conan—as towering for a woman as he was among men. And…

For once, the ballads didn’t lie, he thought appreciatively. That is a woman, by all the spirits, and not just a pretty toy.

Built like a smoothly muscled she-leopard, Valeria was long-limbed, deep-bosomed, with large shapely hands. Her skin had a sailor’s tan, too, though still clear with youth, with tawny hair and gray-blue eyes and a long straight-nosed, high-cheeked, broad-browed face. He’d seen plenty of male equivalents coming at him behind a Gunderman’s sixteen-foot pike, but on her it looked much better.

The whole ensemble would have been striking anywhere.

In Sukhmet, it was exotic almost beyond belief.

Facing off against her was a Stygian who Conan recognized—Khafset, commander of the Setnakht Frontier Guards. The first word of the regimental title meant “Set is victorious.” The grandiloquent name didn’t disguise the rather shabby second-rank quality of the “official” government outfit. Normally a commander of Khafset’s high birth wouldn’t be found anywhere near here, and the frontier guards would be led by a promoted ranker, or at most some sprig of the minor gentry.

Rumor had it that some scandal at court in Luxor, the capital of Stygia, had forced him to choose between this humiliating exile or an execution involving very large snakes and starving hyenas. Khafset’s sour-stomach attitude with his posting was well-known among the soldiers and mercenaries alike.

Apparently the man hadn’t heard of Valeria.

“If a woman comes into a soldier’s tavern, she can expect a friendly pat now and then,” Khafset said, and Conan winced. “Come, wench, sit and share this wine with me. It’s Argossean, and a fine vintage. My brother brought me a crate of it from Luxor, just last week.”

He was using the same mixed-language way of speaking Valeria had, the argot of seamen, pirates, and the taverns of coastal cities with an Argossean accent in it plastered over his native gutturals. That supported the rumors that he came from Khemi or Luxor. For a country so large, Stygia didn’t do much seaborne trade, but what there was went through the religious and royal capital cities along the Styx, which opened on the Western Sea and which even the big ships could navigate over a thousand miles east of the coast.

Northern shipping that did come from the north—to Stygia and points south—most often passed through the coastal cities of the kingdom of Argos, Zingara’s enemy and rival. Conan knew that for a fact, since he’d robbed a good many Argossean merchantmen in his own time with the Red Brotherhood, sailing out of the Baracha Isles. And with the Zingaran pirates, too, though they had dressed it up with the title of privateer.

“I am a soldier, dog-dung-for-brains,” Valeria said. “On the rolls of Zarallo’s Free Companions and paid on the drumhead when I enlisted. I’m here to drink and dice and eat, and I get to pick who I’ll screw. Someone a lot better-looking than you, pig-snout, and not with his tiny dick rotting from Ishtar’s measles. Use your Argossean swill to poultice the puss-running sores dripping on your feet.”

Conan rumbled laughter at that, and he wasn’t the only one—some of the other mercenaries added comments of their own. Clumps rose from the tables, gathering and sorting themselves by allegiance. Zarallo’s mixed bag of mercenaries scowled at the outnumbered Stygians, and got it back in full. It was amazing how fast being isolated together here had made the mercenaries into a tribe of their own. A quarrel among themselves was one thing, but no outsider could attack one of theirs.

They wouldn’t shy away from a fight, either. If that had been the case, they’d have picked a different way to earn their bread. It only remained for Valeria to prove worthy of the title of Free Companion.

About a third of Zarallo’s eight hundred or so were Zingarans like the commander, nearly as dark as Shemites and given to bristling waxed mustachios. Fierce as you could want if flighty, and very picky about matters of honor and respect.

The majority of the rest were from half a dozen kingdoms, foreigners to each other at home and often hereditary enemies like Kothians and Ophirites, or Aquilonians and Nemedians, but brothers within the Companions. The rest included a scattering from everywhere—one Cimmerian named Conan, for starters.

There were also some curly-bearded Shemites, crafty and fierce, four Zamorans… only two as of now… wandered far from their landlocked kingdom away off on the edge of the eastern steppes. Shifty-eyed light-fingered rogues fond of loaded dice but dangerous as weasels in a fight. A pair of red-headed Vanir twin brothers who matched Conan’s height and muscle, very good men to fight beside… when they were sober. A tattooed Pict had the expressionless stoicism and keen tracking skills expected from a man of that remote western wilderness, though he wept into his beer with blubbering homesickness and sang incomprehensible ballads when he was drunk enough, which was once a week.

There was even a scattering of blacks from the Southern Isles—what some called the CorsairIslands—cheerful laughing killers with patterns of scars like chevrons on their faces. And one flat-faced oddity with curious eyes and amber skin from somewhere further east than Zamora, or even Hyrkania. He didn’t talk much, but was death on two feet in a hand-to-hand fight. Conan had learned some valuable wrestling tricks from him.

All sorts could be found in most mercenary bands.

What all Zarallo’s bully boys had in common was being tough as rawhide, and despising their employers even more than mercenaries usually did. In turn, the Stygian soldiers of the garrison considered the very presence of the mercenaries an insult, since their empire only used foreign hirelings for duties on which its generals didn’t want to waste really valuable units. The local soldiers knew it was a judgment on them and their capabilities.

As Valeria glared at the Stygian, the owner of the tavern and his wives, sons, and daughters glanced at one another and began packing up anything breakable they could reach, preparing to retreat behind a door they could shut and secure with a strong iron bar. They had experience with tavern brawls, which in a soldiers’ dive like this were even more chancy than the common variety, since all the participants were armed and trained to kill.

The Stygian officer…

Khafset, Conan reminded himself.

The name meant “He Appears as Set,” and the man did have snake-like characteristics. Of course, rumor had it that the Stygian nobility all had traces of the blood of the legendary serpent-men of ancient Valusia. At Valeria’s insults, his dark-olive hawk face flushed purple-crimson beneath the folded striped-linen nobleman’s headdress he wore, with two tails falling to his smooth chest and a gold cobra-head with ruby eyes fixed over his brows. It was his only garment save for belt, pleated linen kilt, and sandals. His hand drifted toward the hilt of his kopesh sword, a peculiarly Stygian weapon with a straight section that gave way to a sickle-like curve sharpened on the outside for slashing.

Conan stood and strolled forward casually, the cup of the local white-yellow lightning in his right hand. A Stygian sitting a bit behind Valeria had his eyes locked on her back in a lust that was for blood, not rut, and his right hand strayed toward the curved knife tucked into the back of the belt that held his kilt.

The Cimmerian’s big left hand fell on the trooper’s muscular shoulder in what looked like a friendly gesture. His fingers closed, tightening until bone creaked like wood in a vise on a carpenter’s bench. He bent to murmur into the Stygian’s ear.

“Let’s all just watch, friend,” Conan said, striving to sound genial. “Because I’d hate to have to tear your arm off and beat in your skull with it. That would interrupt the lady and spoil the show she’s putting on for us.”

The Stygian soldier whipped his head around and looked up at Conan, then flared in recognition. He’d witnessed the earlier duel and its spectacular conclusion. His lips were tight and pale around the edges, but he forced a snarl-smile and nodded. In turn, Conan let the hand rest lightly as he stood again and sipped at his drink. Ripping the Stygian’s arm apart, the way he had the Zamoran backstabber, would start a full-scale brawl between the Free Companions and the frontier guards, and that might be less interesting than the drama he was watching.

Hissst!

Conan blinked at the brief sound of steel snapping out of a leather-and-wood scabbard greased with neatsfoot oil. He remained silent among the cheers and jeers, instead pursing his lips in thoughtful respect.

Quick, he thought. She’s death-quick.

Valeria had drawn swiftly enough to impress him, and he’d won a good many fights because people couldn’t believe someone his size could be so cat-fast. A lot of them had never had the opportunity to repeat the mistake.

Khafset had an even better point of view to judge the quality of the woman’s sword wrist. Before he could react, the slim point of her double-edged blade of blue-tinted Aquilonian steel was resting on the fleshy part of his lip, just below his hawk nose. As Conan watched, a single drop of red blood showed and then trickled down the shimmering metal. One sharp push with the strength and speed and control she’d shown, and the Stygian would be dead even before he started to fall, with a foot of steel through his brain and the point buried in the back of his skull.

The inside of the back of his skull.

Khafset froze, and his eyes crossed for a second as they instinctively tried to focus on the point that had stung him. His hands slowly, slowly spread out and went wide, away from his own sword and dagger. He gestured for his group of hangers-on, toadies, and subordinates to sit down behind him. They bristled like the cats they loved so, but they still obeyed.

His head started to tilt back away from the point that had—just—pricked his skin, then stopped as the blade followed. It pressed with exactly the same butterfly touch, neither heavier nor lighter.

Quick, and perfect control, Conan thought, his eyes lighting with a wholehearted admiration that was not limited to—but certainly included—the sight of that magnificent half-bare body. I’ll bet her sweat smells good, he thought. And look at the way the skin of her back ripples when she moves. Ishtar and Derketa! It would be like grappling a living statue.

As the Stygian’s followers sunk back to their stools and benches, Valeria took a light shuffling fencer’s half-step back. She shifted the point so it was directed precisely at Khafset’s right eye, and moving in delicate circles about the same circumference as his iris, ready to dart in and out like a needle punching through cloth. Sweat that had nothing to do with the heat burst out on the Stygian’s forehead.

She raised one tawny brow and her wrist tensed.

“Perhaps I was a little… less than courteous,” he said.

Naked death brings out his manners, Conan thought, grinning silently again. And he’s looking at stark death right now, however nice the package.

The soldier whose shoulder Conan held looked at him again, muttered something about pissing, then rose and sidled out the door, going along the wall to avoid attracting attention. Conan put one foot on the stool to claim it and the little round table.

“The damp heat here would try the patience of an adept of the Shining One,” Khafset said. “I will leave.” He bowed his head very slightly and began a slow but dignified turn toward the door.

“And I won’t lift your kilt, even to spank you rosy as you go,” Valeria said in the same tone of grave courtesy, with a nod that matched his.

Khafset’s relief was great enough that he’d turned three-quarters of the way toward the door before grasping the sense of the words she’d used. He hesitated for half a step, then wheeled with a snarl and reached for his sword again. A man couldn’t afford to lose too much face, the Cimmerian supposed, if he wanted his life to be anything but a drawn-out misery.

Thud!

The Stygian gave a high-pitched squeal and fell to the floor, clutching himself and rolling about, his mouth working as if he couldn’t decide whether to puke or scream. Conan chuckled and winced at the same time. The sea boot to the crotch wasn’t enough to ruin the Stygian for life, but he’d be moving very carefully for some time.

Valeria lifted her blade and kept the rest at bay for the moment with the glittering menace of its point. Stepping in, she kicked him again with nicely judged force to the face. His nose cracked audibly, but not his teeth, which meant that this had been a lesson, and not an attempt to cripple or kill.

Always kick a man when he’s down, Conan thought with amusement. It’s much easier then.

Valeria stepped sideways, sheathed her sword, without looking down, then reached out and took up the globe-bottomed bottle of wine that still sat on the Stygian’s table. She knocked off the top with a quick flick of her wrist and poured a stream of deep blood-red liquid between her full red lips, tilting her head further and further back as her throat worked.

“Ahhhhhh…” Tossing the bottle through the bead curtain to crash and tinkle in the alley, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “He was half-right. It is a fine vintage, and it’s not gone off with travel—but it’s Corinthian, not Argossean, or I’m a Pict.”

The Stygian’s followers had rushed forward to pick him up. Valeria jerked a thumb in the direction of the door and a pair of them grabbed him under the arms, dragging him out with his heels trailing. Bubbles of blood formed and popped on his shattered nose.

“My thanks to Captain Khafset, for inviting me to share his wine!”

There was another outbreak of laughter, which grew louder when she bowed with a dramatic flair. The rest of the Stygians backed away cautiously in their wake, swords half-drawn to keep the mercenaries from following. That wasn’t likely, though—they were too busy hooting obscene suggestions and making mocking kissing sounds, rather than giving the killing snarl of the truly enraged.

“What a woman,” Conan whispered to himself. “Clever, too.” That performance had probably cut deeply into the problems she would face as the lone female in a gang of hard-handed stick-at-naughts like the Free Companions. Cut them by three-quarters at least. She’d only have to kill one or at most two before the rest got the message. Humiliating the Stygian had made her firmly one of the clan—someone who’d scored a public point on their common foes.

She’d kept the brawl from turning into a lethal scrimmage, as well, so Zarallo wouldn’t need to hand her over to the Stygians to appease their anger. If Khafset had died, a high-ranking nobleman killed by an infidel foreigner, and a woman at that…

Khafset would want blood anyway.

There was no way around that.

It won’t be the first time she’s dealt with his kind, though, he thought. The Red Brotherhood are a hard-handed gang of killers, so she’s learned ways before this, to survive and prosper.

The ebb and flow of the tavern returned to normal. Valeria sat, and the innkeeper’s wife scurried over with some ribs cut from the pig, along with the usual side-dishes and a big pot of beer. Conan returned to his own meal and watched with a smile as the mercenaries vied to pay court. In return they got jibes, jests, buffets fit to make a man’s head ring, and one half-friendly squeeze that gave the recipient a warning ghost of what Khafset had received from the toe of her boot.

The fellow sidled away, biting his lips and trying not to bend and clutch himself.

*   *   *

The innkeeper and his family were just replenishing the sesame-seed oil in the earthenware lamps and trimming the wicks for the second time when Valeria threw down some coins—more than the meal was worth, but not recklessly more—and pushed back her chair.

Conan rose and approached her carefully, taking an unoccupied chair and reversing it, sitting with the wicker back in front of him, knees wide and hands resting on his thighs. She noted that, and by the narrowing of her eyes took the meaning. He was deliberately putting himself in a position where he’d be slower to reach his sword, and would have to jump backward to do it. Her gaze went over him from head to foot.

“A Cimmerian,” she said, her voice very slightly slurred. “You’re a long way from home, northman.”

Holds her liquor better than most, he thought, and he smiled.

“Conan of Canach, by name,” he said, in the seafarer’s dialect, “and a wanderer by inclination.”

“Conan of the Red Brotherhood?”

“The same, though I sailed with the Zingarans, too,” he said. “That quarrel isn’t mine.”

The Brotherhood, pirates of the Baracha Isles, robbed and raided with a fine free unprejudiced hand from the Styx to the Pictish Wilderness. The Zingaran freebooters styled themselves privateers and in theory—since there weren’t any witnesses, or none left alive—avoided attacking fellow Zingarans. The two groups didn’t get along.

“I’d heard of you, but we never shipped together,” he said. “Unfortunately,” he added. He didn’t add that Zingarans had sunk his last ship, leaving him penniless on the coast of Shem with only his sword, and sandals. That was when he heard Zarallo was hiring.

“Perhaps fortunately—for you,” she said warily.

He shrugged and spread his hands. “I’m not Khafset,” he said. “For a start, I can tell a she-wolf from a lapdog.”

“Calling me a bitch, Cimmerian?” she said, but with a very slight smile.

“Only in a good way,” he replied. “By way of respect. I heard how you made your way in the Brotherhood. You’ve got fangs, and you can bite hard, no dispute.”

She rose. “And now I’ll be off.”

He raised his hands in an ostentatiously unarmed pose again, and gave her a frankly admiring look.

“Care to have me walk back to the barracks with you?” he offered. “I’m heading there soon.”

“Not tonight, Cimmerian.” Her gaze was coolly neutral. “Perhaps not ever.”

He dropped his hands back to his thighs. “Your choice, soldier.”

She staggered ever so slightly but recovered smoothly. He judged from long experience that she was just at the stage where she could still do nearly everything she could do sober… but where she was likely to try to do things she wouldn’t under normal circumstances.

You can walk, but another cupful or three and you couldn’t, he thought. But you wouldn’t like to hear it. Touchy as a wildcat with a sore paw, and it’s no surprise.

She paused by the bench where Brocas was sitting with his friends. They still were basking in the reflected glory of the encounter with the Zamoran.

“You,” she said, pointing at a handsome young slinger next to the pikeman. “Unless you’re too drunk to raise a stand?”

He bounced erect and bowed low, correcting a stagger at the end of it.

“My lady, for you a marble statue could raise a stand.”

She considered him, blinking. “That would be uncomfortable,” she said. “Come on.”

Conan sighed and raised a hand to signal for another mug.

Crom curse it!

Conan tossed the stripped pork rib into the fierce low red embers of the hearth-fire and rose, hitching at his sword-belt as the bone crackled and popped and fat-rich marrow flared up.

Sukhmet is a bad town to wander in, drunk or not, he thought, moving toward the doorway. She can’t object to a soldier going home when he chooses, and who knows what mighthappen…?

If anything was going to light a fire under Valeria’s tail, a fight would do it, and a man who fought at her side might well get a pleasant surprise out of it—unlike the ones who fought against her. He nodded to the innkeeper, trying to remember what the man now owed him. Unlike many of his comrades in the Free Companions, he usually didn’t keep a running tab with the owner of the Claw and Fang, or any tavern. Long experience had taught him the wisdom of paying on the nail, if you were going to pay at all.

For starters it meant the innkeeper liked him better, since he didn’t have to risk having a customer die or “wander off,” or finding that the company’s treasury was short that month. In this case the positions were reversed; the man was holding Conan’s money, and would want to keep him sweet lest it be demanded in cash.

Outside Conan felt the same disappointment as always. When stepping into the night from a room with a fire in it, he always expected it to be cooler, and hereabouts that wasn’t going to happen. Stepping to the other side of the alley he unbuttoned and did what many had before him, politely aiming the stream away from the tavern, and then padded out into the gathering darkness. A full bladder might distract at the wrong moment, and the pause let his eyes adapt fully to the dark.

Only a shadow of sunset still showed in the west, down the winding street. Night fell like a hammer here, without any of the long twilight gloaming to which he’d been born. The boom of the gate-drums sounded, along with a raucous shiver from a Stygian trumpet. About a quarter of a mile away they’d be shoving the massive hardwood portals closed for the night and letting the ironwood bar drop home in the thick forged-metal brackets.

He’d had that duty himself a few times. The bar was a baulk of seasoned tropical hardwood timber as thick through as one of Valeria’s splendid thighs…

Shows where my thoughts are, he thought with an utterly noiseless chuckle, and he padded off in the direction she’d likely taken. Ishtar of the Shemites, what a backside that woman has. He picked up the pace. I’ll follow far enough behind that she and her pretty toy never see me. Just in case.

Aquilonian legend had it that a Cimmerian could come up behind you, slit your throat, and be a mile away before you even noticed you were dead—and that he’d stolen your horse and coin-purse, too. It wasn’t quite true, but Conan often took advantage of the rumors, and had learned the hard way how to move silently.

His people hunted for nearly as much of their meat as they got from their herds, and the forests of his home held hunters that walked on four feet. The kind that weren’t in the least shy of feasting on those who stood on two. If you wanted your hide whole, children uneaten, and food on your table… then in Cimmeria you had to be able to out-stalk and out-fight the wolves. City-bred men, or even ones from a tame countryside, were sheep by comparison.

*   *   *

Ah, Conan thought. That’s quicker than I thought it would be.

Valeria was whistling a jaunty tune as she swaggered along with her arm around her companion’s shoulders—they were about the same height. She’d probably ducked into an alley for relief, too, a bit more complicated and time-consuming for her, giving her male companion some useful guarding to do. The whistle helped as Conan ghosted close to the southern walls, where the shadows were deeper.

This district was all mudbrick, some plastered with stucco and some not, mostly three stories high with the butt-ends of the beams protruding out through the walls. There wasn’t much traffic. At sundown Sukhmet’s respectable folk, such as they were, went to ground and barred their doors. Those who had to move after dark carried torches and clubs and moved in groups.

The darkness was deep, broken only by the half-full moon and brilliant southern stars that could be seen through the narrow slit of sky above, and an occasional leak of lamplight. The windows on the ground floor were all narrow slits in the thick adobe walls, often barred with grillwork to boot.

Valeria and her companion halted a dozen yards ahead of him, where the narrow road opened out into a misshapen oval all of twenty feet or so at its filth-strewn widest, what might with a stretch be called a square. It was a little less cave-dark, too, since the walls didn’t narrow the sky so much, though the smoke-haze was thick from the evening cooking going on all around them.

Just enough light penetrated to reveal six thugs standing across its width, and the gleam as three of them pulled long knives from sheaths under their left armpits. A fourth drew a shortsword and hefted a small buckler in the other paw, while a fifth brandished a club with a metal spike through the knob on its end. The last had a long ironwood staff of more than head height, and whirled it in a figure-eight that made a burring sound as it twisted.

“Hey, yellow-hair!” one called in the pidgin of Sukhmet’s streets. “Give us your money, we let you live.”

“Give us your sword and knife, we let you live,” another shouted.

“Give us all your clothes and make us happy, maybe we let you live,” the last said, with an illustrative hip-movement and one-handed clutch at his loincloth. “Or you die very good!”

“Your friend he can kneel and make us happy.”

Conan could hear shutters slamming shut and being barred in buildings close-by.

Valeria chuckled and gave a happy sigh, pulling her companion along without stopping her forward stroll, but Conan could see the taut readiness in it. The mercenary slinger frowned until the situation penetrated his ale-fuddled mind; then he drew a dagger with one hand and pulled his sling from his belt, whirling it like a whip.

The thugs looked at each other in surprise, then shrugged and began to close in, the ends of their line curling inward in a way that showed they’d worked together before. Valeria hadn’t drawn a weapon, and they probably thought of the odds as six-to-one instead of six-to-two.

That was still bad enough…

Conan regarded this type of street-rat the way a wolf did their four-footed namesakes. He’d been a thief by trade in his first exposure to cities, but he’d robbed rich merchants and others even more dangerous, including a magician and a fallen god. And usually in the victim’s own well-guarded mansion, tower, or fort. He hadn’t stooped to preying on passers-by.

Invisible in the darkness, he squatted on his hams to watch the show. If the toughs had taken their work seriously, they might have had a good chance. As an old Cimmerian saying went, even Lugh Longspear couldn’t fight two if one of them was behind his back. But as it was…

Hisssst!

This time the blond woman didn’t stop after the quick draw. Whoever her teachers had been—probably her Gunderman father, the professional guardsman—they’d taught her how to do a good stepping lunge, and she’d learned the lesson well. Keeping the flat of the blade horizontal to the ground and less likely to jam in bone.

The point went through the throat of the bravo with the shortsword, cutting off his shout with a brief agonized gurgle of astonishment as his windpipe instantly filled with the jets of blood from the arteries in his neck.

She didn’t stop then, either, moving past him fast and wrenching the sword sideways like someone jointing a goose, sending blood out in a huge fan that cast gouts in the faces of the men to either side. It looked black in the dimness.

The slinger whipped his weapon around the neck of a man distracted by the woman’s bewildering speed and yanked him forward. He came in a running stagger, nearly jerked off his feet and windmilling his arms… including his knife-hand, which left him exposed to a stab up under the breastbone. The victor had just long enough to start to grin before the spiked club smacked into his left shoulder with a sound like a butcher’s cleaver. His expression turned into a rictus of snarling agony, but he rammed his knife into the club-man’s crotch, which brought a shriek of pain.

His advantage was short-lived as a knife buried itself in his chest.

Valeria was past the man she’d spitted and wheeling before his body hit the ground with a limp flaccid thump, and her dagger flashed into her left hand. The thugs halted in shock for a crucial instant. They probably hadn’t seen the details—even in the light of day she’d have been a blur—but it was clear that the one she’d spitted had a neck was open to the air all the way to the spine.

In the darkness it looked like sorcery.

The mercenary slinger lay dead, too, but two Stygians were down beside him. That meant half their number, shocking casualties even for experienced fighters, and these were street-toughs.

“Good choice, Valeria!” Conan murmured to himself. “He was the only one with real gear, and he might have known how to use it.” In his experience, even full-time pirates could be careless hack-and-smashers, fishermen or merchant sailors with delusions of warriorhood. Most didn’t live long. Despite being a woman, Valeria had lasted several years, enough to win some fame.

“You run now,” she said helpfully, in very basic Stygian. “Run away, little boy-boys, run away.”

The living three looked at each other, then rushed her, the two knife-men in the lead. Conan was astonished for a second as Valeria turned and began to flee. Until she suddenly dropped flat on her back, curled into a ball, and rolled against the ankles of the leading thug, her steel-bearing arms still stretched out to either side.

It would have been difficult to dodge even in daylight. At night and close range, and working up to full-tilt pursuit, the knife-man barely had time to squawk as his shins thumped into her and he went over full-tilt, planting his face in the hard-packed dirt. Instantly he went limp, probably breaking nose and jaw and any number of teeth, possibly his neck as well, from the way the body convulsed.

The other thug with a knife showed rare good sense in not trying to do anything but turn around, take her advice, and run as fast as he could while she bounced back to her feet with lithe ease. Eyes bulging, he went past Conan’s hiding place in a heedless dash.

The man with the staff who’d laughed as he clutched his loincloth came forward, sweeping his long weapon around his head and howling. Valeria skipped aside, ducked under a swing, and thrust with clinical precision into the back of his knee-joint, twisting the sword as she withdrew it. The man went over, and the very weight of his ironwood staff and the strength of his swing spun him around in mid-fall. His berserk howl of rage turned to a squawk of dismay and then a shriek of pain.

Valeria waited only long enough to check that her companion was well and truly dead, then turned and ran in earnest. With all the thugs down or gone, it was probably reflex learned in civilized cities where the night-watch showing up would pose a potential problem.

Unlike Sukhmet, he thought.

Conan could hear the husky, reckless chuckle of her mirth as she ran full-tilt at the wall and sheathed her weapons as she ran. Springing to a barrel-top with her foot barely touching it as she leapt upward again, she clamped her hands on the railing of a balcony, swung up nimble as an acrobat—or a sailor—ran up a drain-pipe like a squirrel, and disappeared onto the flat roof.

The light patter of her feet was interrupted by a yell from a family sleeping there under the stars, as many did in this hot box. Then a carol of laughter fading toward the next street over.