He began pumping the foot pedal on the grinding wheel for all he was worth. A coruscating shower of sparks flew from the axehead as he held it to the rapidly spinning wheel. Mordec chuckled grimly as he fed the fire in the forge. Soon the axehead boasted an edge sharp enough for shaving. Conan tested it with his thumb, nodded, and thrust it at his father. “Here.”
Not even Mordec could find anything to criticize.
When Granth went back to Fort Venarium with a message from Captain Treviranus, he was amazed to see how much the place had changed. A lot more of the forest around the encampment had gone down under the axes of the soldiers still stationed there. The tents had been replaced by barracks halls. A real keep, even if made of wood, was going up in the center of the encampment. A bridge of boats and boards linked Fort Venarium with the way south, the way down to Aquilonia.
Cimmeria was not so safe as to let Aquilonians travel alone with any confidence they would get where they were going. Along with Granth tramped Vulth and the two Bossonian archers, Daverio and Benno. Pointing to a string of wagons coming toward Venarium from the south, Vulth said, “Look. Some of the first settlers.”
“Good to see ‘em,” said Granth. “They may not be soldiers, but the men will know how to fight. Anybody who can draw a bow or swing a sword against these damned barbarians is welcome.”
“Pot hunters,” said Benno scornfully. “Half of those poor fools can’t hit the side of a barn.”
“Well, at least they’ll be aiming at the Cimmerians,” said Vulth. “I’m with my cousin on this.” He clapped Granth on the back.
“And they’ll be building houses and barns,” added Granth. “If we’re going to settle this land, we’ll have to make it our own.”
The horses and oxen that drew the settlers’ wagons would soon plow fields in what had been forest. More cattle, along with sheep and goats, traveled behind the wains. They would graze in meadows and crop tender shoots. If the new arrivals also had dogs and cats and swine and hens and ducks, they carried them inside the wagons.
Daverio did not seem very happy to see the settlers coming up toward Fort Venarium. When Granth asked the Bossonian why, he answered, “Because the Cimmerians will want to murder them even more than they want to murder us. We don’t take the land itself away from them. These fellows do.”
“Too bad,” said Vulth. “This is why we came up into Cimmeria, after all: to make it a place where Aquilonians can live and to drive back the barbarians.”
“Yes, that’s why we came, all right,” agreed Daverio. “Now we get to find out whether we’ve done it.”
Sentries at the gate of the encampment gave Granth and his comrades a careful once-over before standing aside and letting them go in. That only irritated the Gundermen and Bossonians. Granth wondered if the gate guards feared they were Cimmerians in disguise. He laughed at the idea. Even with their hair dyed blond, the northern barbarians would have a hard time passing for men of Aquilonian blood.
He had to ask several times before finding out that Captain Nario, the officer to whom Captain Treviranus had written his letter, stayed in a barracks hall not far from what would soon be the keep. The hall had its own guards, which struck Granth as excessive. His disgust must have shown on his face, for one of the guardsmen said, “You’d better wipe off that frown, soldier. We’re here on account of this is where Count Stercus makes his headquarters.”
Another guard snickered. “That’s not all he makes here.”
“You shut your fool mouth, Torm,” hissed the first guard. “The count heard you make a crack like that, there’d be hell to pay, and you know it.”
“He wouldn’t hear if you didn’t have a big mouth,” said Torm angrily. While the guards bickered. Granth and his comrades went inside.
After the daylight from which he had come, Granth blinked a few times to help his eyes adjust to the gloom within. This was plainly a hall for officers. They had more room than ordinary soldiers, and real beds rather than just blankets in which to roll themselves. Some of the officers had body servants, whose bedrolls rested beside their beds. Granth asked for Captain Nario.
“I am Nario,” called a man sitting on a bed not far from a guarded door at the far end of the barracks hall. Granth would have bet Count Stercus lived in the chamber beyond that door. He had no time to dwell on that, though, for Nario asked, “What do you wish of me?”
“Sir, I have a letter for you from my commander, Captain Treviranus, up at the place called Duthil,” answered Granth.
“Do you indeed?” Nario’s smile showed even, very white teeth. “Give it to me, then. I shall be pleased to read it, and I shall write an answer on the spot.”
“Yes, sir.” Granth handed the officer the rolled-up parchment, meanwhile concealing his own annoyance. He had hoped to deliver the message and be on his way. Now he would have to wait around until Captain Nario not only read what his own commander had to say but came up with a reply.
And then, quite suddenly, he did not mind waiting any more. A very pretty Cimmerian girl carrying a pitcher of wine and two goblets on a tray came into the barracks. She could not have been above sixteen, and wore little enough that she would have had a hard time sneaking anything lethal into the room at the end of the hall. The guards there did not try to search her, but let her in unchallenged.
Granth had stared and stared. So had a good many of the soldiers in the barracks, though they seemed more used to her presence than he was. In a hoarse voice, he asked, “Who is she?”
“She’s Count Stercus’ plaything,” answered Captain Nario, looking up from his writing. He noticed that Granth’s eyes had not left the doorway through which the Cimmerian girl had passed: noticed and started to laugh. “Don’t hope you’ll see her again coming out, my good fellow. She won’t come out of there for quite a while.”
“Oh.” Granth felt foolish. His ears got hot.
Nario laughed again, so Granth supposed his flush was only too visible. He felt more foolish yet. He had been ready to face roaring Cimmerian warriors. How could a nearly naked Cimmerian serving girl unman him so? He mumbled, “She’s too young,” and looked down at the ground between his boots.
“Our distinguished commander would disagree with you, and his is the only opinion that matters,” said Nario in a silky voice. “And now I am going to do you a considerable favor: I am not going to ask you what your name is.”
For a moment, Granth did not see what sort of favor that was. He was a young man, and inclined to be naive. But then he realized what Captain Nario was driving at, and flushed again. This time, he knew precisely the mistake he had made. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
“You are welcome.” The officer finished writing, melted some sealing wax at a brazier, and used it and a ribbon to close his letter. The seal on his signet ring was of a fire-breathing dragon, which showed in reverse when he pressed it into the wax. He said, “Now you should make yourself unwelcome, if you follow my meaning, for others more zealous than I may have heard you and may be curious about your choice of words.”
This time, Granth had no trouble taking the hint. He left the barracks in a hurry, with Vulth and Benno and Daverio trailing after him. For a wonder, none of his companions chaffed him until they were out of the encampment altogether. Then, leering, Benno asked, “Did you want to rescue the wench or just to keep her for yourself?”
“Mitra!” ejaculated Granth in an agony of embarrassment: was he as obvious as that? Evidently he was. Gathering himself, he said, “She was too young for such sport. She should be finding her first sweetheart, not—what Stercus is giving her.”
All that won him was more teasing from the two Bossonians and his cousin. They kept it up just about the whole way back to Duthil. By the time he handed Nario’s letter to Treviranus, he had decided he was never going to say another word to anyone else as long as he lived.
Men gathered in a little knot in the main —and almost only —street in Duthil. They spoke in low voices, too low for Conan to make out most of what they were saying. He got only snatches: “Her name is Ugaine… from Rosinish, to the east of… a foul lecher, if ever there…”
When one of the men noticed Conan, they all fell silent. He walked up to them, asking, “What is it?”
No one answered right away. No one looked as if he wanted to answer at all. At last, a farmer called Nucator said, “Well, maybe you’d best hear it from your father, lad, and not from us.”
Conan glowered, not least because he already stood taller than Nucator, who was a weedy little fellow. “Hear what?” he demanded.
“Nucator is right,” said Balarg, his voice smooth as butter. “This is a business for men.” The rest of the Cimmerians in the knot nodded, plainly agreeing with the tailor.
That they agreed only made Conan angrier. He wanted to fight them all. That would show them who was a man. But the beating his father had given him before going off to war remained too painfully fresh in his memory for him to snarl out the challenge right away. None of these villagers was a match for Mordec —but Conan had proved to be no match for the blacksmith, either.
When he hesitated, nerving himself, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder from behind. “Here, what’s toward?” asked Mordec, who like his son had been drawn by the sight of that group of men with their heads together.
Nucator beckoned the blacksmith forward. “We’ll gladly tell you,” he said, “though we were not sure if you would want your boy to hear of this.”
“Stay here,” said Mordec to Conan. Fuming, Conan had to obey. His father joined the rest of the village men, towering over most of them by half a head or more. Again, they spoke in low voices. Again, Conan heard bits of what they said, but not enough to tell him what he wanted to know. Along with trying to listen, he kept an eye on his father. Mordec’s hard countenance soon darkened with anger. “This is known to be true?” he asked ominously.
“It is,” said Nucator. The others nodded.
“A foul business. A most foul business, without a doubt. And yes, my son may know. Better he should have some notion of what manner of men the occupiers are.” Mordec’s eyes speared Conan. “You remember the Aquilonian captain here warned us to ward our young women when his commander, Count Stercus, came to Duthil?”
“I do, Father, yes,” said Conan.
“Well, it would seem he spoke no less than the truth.” Mordec spat in disgust. “This Stercus, if the reports be true—
“As they are,” interrupted Balarg.
“If these reports be true,” repeated Mordec, slightly stressing the first word, “this Stercus has taken for his own a Cimmerian girl of good family, using her for his pleasure and threatening to turn his Aquilonian dogs loose against the countryside if she does not yield to his desires.”
Rage ripped through Conan. “Do you not see? We must slay him! We must slay all the invaders!” He took a step forward, then another, and more than one of the grown men in Duthil gave back a pace before the blood lust blazing in his blue eyes, so like his father’s.
“The day will come,” said Mordec, stern certainty in his voice. “The day will come indeed. But it is not yet here.”
Balarg nodded, as if in agreement. But he said, “If you had not been as hot as your forge to go to war when the Aquilonians first crossed our border, many men from this village now dead would yet walk under the light of the sun.”
“By Crom, we had to have a go at driving the invaders out,” said Mordec. “We came close to winning, too. If not for their damned knights, I think we would have. Will you say the fighting did not cost us dear? Will you say we have the strength for another battle so soon after we lost the first?”
“I have the stomach for it!” cried Conan, wishing a man’s sword swung at his hip.
Neither Mordec nor Balarg paid any attention to him. Each seemed more interested in scoring points off the other than in anything else. Some of the men of Duthil ranged themselves behind the blacksmith, others behind the weaver. To them, the usual squabbles of village life seemed more immediate, more urgent, more important, than driving the men from the south out of Cimmeria.
“What if it were a girl from Duthil?” cried Conan. “What if she came from here, not from some other place? Would you do more than stand and mumble then?”
For all his fury, his voice remained a boy’s treble, and the men from Duthil would not heed him. The small arguments, the familiar arguments, were meat and drink to them. Those went on and on. Meanwhile, the camp full of Bossonians and Gundermen just out of bowshot of the village was becoming ever more familiar, too.
Conan stormed off. No one else cared, not even his father, who was wagging a callused, burn-scarred finger under Balarg’s nose. Conan stomped back into the smithy. He snatched up his quiver and bow. Only one arrow in the quiver was poisoned; he had set the rest aside for need more desperate than game. For now, if he could not slaughter Aquilonians, he wanted to kill something —indeed, almost anything—else.
Before he could make for the forest, his mother called, “Where are you going?”
“Out to the woods,” he replied.
“Would you bring me some water first?” asked Verina. “And would you tell me what the men are arguing about this time?”
He took a mug of water into the bedchamber, helped support his mother with a strong arm, and held the mug to her lips. Then, in guarded terms, he told her of Count Stercus and the girl from Rosinish.
Verina drank again, then sighed. “She probably brought it on herself with forward ways,” she said.
“That’s not what the men say. They blame it on the Aquilonian count.” Conan spoke hesitantly, for disagreeing with his mother made him uneasy.
In any case, she paid no more attention to him than had the men of Duthil. “Mark my words. It will turn out to be the way I said,” she told him, and then began to cough. He eased her back down to the pillow. Slowly, the spasm ebbed. She sighed again, this time wearily. “You can go now. Just leave me be. I’ll manage somehow,” she said.
“Mother,!-“
“Go!” said Verina. Conan stood, irresolute: a posture into which no one but his mother could put him. Her gesture of dismissal might have come from a queen, not a sick woman lying in a bed behind a smithy. Biting his lip, Conan went.