Conan of Venarium

Reuda rubbed her chin. After a moment's thought, she nodded. "Aye, let it be as you say. If you'll not work your best for fear of Mordec's heavy hand, nothing less will squeeze that best from you."

"I am not afraid of him," said Conan fiercely, but an ingrained regard for the truth compelled him to add, "Still, I would not feel his fist without good cause." Reuda laughed and nodded and went back to her husband's tannery, taking the stink of hides and sour tanbark with her.

Conan went to work straightaway, choosing an iron bar about as thick as his finger. He heated one end of it white-hot, then brought it back to the anvil and, with quick, cunning strokes of the hammer, shaped that end into a loop about two inches long. That done, he used a cold chisel to cut through the extremity of the loop, giving him the two tines he would need for the work. Some forks had three tines, but that was as yet beyond his skill. He did not think Reuda would complain if hers proved to be of the ordinary sort.

Heating the iron again, he bent the tines on the heel of the anvil until something close to a right angle separated them. That way, he could work on each of them in turn more conveniently. Careful hammerstrokes flattened the tines. Conan heated the metal once more and brought the tines back to their proper position. He set the fork aside and let it cool.

When he could safely handle it without tongs, he used brass rivets to bind a wood handle to the iron shank. He looked the work over to see if Reuda could find any way to fault it. Seeing none, he took the fork to the tanner's wife fully a day earlier than he had promised.

She examined it, too, plainly with the same thing in mind. Seeing nothing about which she could complain, she gave the young smith a grudging nod, saying, "I think it may serve. When your father comes home, we'll settle on a price."

"All right." Conan nodded. Almost all business in Duthil was done that way. The Cimmerians minted no coins; the few that circulated here came up from the south. Barter and haggling took the place of money and set costs.

When Conan left Reuda's kitchen, he saw Glemmis, who had taken word of the Aquilonian invasion from Duthil to the nearby village of Uist and then, no doubt, gone on to fight the men from the south. Glemmis limped up the street toward him; a filthy, blood-soaked rag covered most of a wound on the man's left arm.

Conan's heart leaped into his mouth. "The battle—!" he blurted.

Glemmis spoke a word Conan had never imagined he would hear: "Lost." He went on, "We hit the Aquilonians a hard blow, but they held us, and then —Crom! —their cursed horsemen cut us down like ripe rye at harvest time." He shuddered at the memory.

"What of my father?" asked Conan. "What of the other warriors who left our village?"

"Of Mordec I know naught. He may well be hale," answered Glemmis with a certain rough kindness. "But I can tell you truly that many fell. Eogannan, for instance, I saw go down, a Bossonian's arrow through his throat. We've not known such a black day for many long years."

Had he got away safe by running first and fastest? Even so young, Conan saw the possibility and scorned him for it. But before long other men started coming home to Duthil, many of them wounded, all hollow-eyed and shocked with defeat. Even Balarg the weaver, who prided himself on never seeming at a loss, looked as if he had grappled with demons and come off second best. Women began to wail as some men did not come home again, and as survivors began bringing word of those who never would.

Several returning warriors had seen Conan's father where the fighting was hottest, but none could say whether Mordec lived or had fallen. "I will wait, then, and learn," said Conan, "and if need be avenge myself on the Aquilonians." When he told Verina what he had learned, his mother started keening, as for one dead.

But Mordec did come back to Duthil, limping in with a spearshaft clamped in his left fist to help bear his weight. His right arm briefly slipped around Conan in a rough embrace. "We'll fight them again," said Conan. "We'll fight them again, and we'll beat them."

"Not soon." Mordec wearily shook his head. "Not tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Not next year, all too likely. We lost too much in this round."

"What then?" asked Conan, aghast.

"What then?" echoed his father. "Why, the bitter beer of the beaten, for beaten we are."

Chapter Three

The Temple Out of Time

Conan saw his first Aquilonians a few days after his father came home to Duthil. By then, the villagers had a good idea of who would never come home again. Women's keening went on night and day. New mourning had broken out only the night before, when a Cimmerian died after taking a fever from his wound.