Conan of Venarium

Benno stared after him, jaw dropping in astonishment. "Did you see his bag?" whispered the Bossonian. "Did you see it?"

"Woodcock make mighty fine eating," said Granth. "Fry the breast in butter, do the legs the same way. If you feel like it, you can cook up the guts, too —fry 'em along with everything else."

"Oh, yes. Every word true," said Benno nodding. "But they are easier to frighten into nets than to take with the bow. To bring home three like that—Mitra! I am glad the boy was not shooting at us in the battle."

"For all you know, he was," said Vulth.

Benno looked surprised in a different way. "It could be," he admitted, "though I saw no children amongst our foes — or amongst the slain afterwards."

The other Bossonian bowman was a scarfaced veteran named Daverio. "Anyone who shoots like that is no child in my book—especially not if the dog is shooting at me," he said.

"True enough," said Vulth. "He'd put a worshiper of Asura on a pilgrim boat for his last journey, sure as sure."

"A fat lot you know about that," jeered Granth.

"I don't care to know anything about the people who worship Asura, and nobody who worships Mitra should," answered his cousin. "People say it's the same black slave who takes every one of those pilgrim boats down the river to the sea, or wherever they end up when all's said and done. That's not natural, you ask me."

Benno and Daverio both nodded. So did Granth. Benno turned to what was uppermost in his mind: "Mowing down woodcock like that isn't natural, either. It's closer to supernatural than a good many things I've seen sorcerers do."

"If he shoots one of us, we burn him and nine of his neighbors," said Vulth. "Even barbarians understand that kind of arithmetic."

"I hope so," said Granth. "Sometimes barbarians will kill without counting the cost. That's what makes them barbarians."

Daverio shrugged cynically. "That will probably happen once or twice. Then we'll kill ten or twenty Cimmerians, or however many it takes. Before long, the ones we leave alive will say, "Don't do anything to King Numedides' men. It hurts us worse than it hurts them."

"And so it will—except for the poor Gunderman or Bossonian who gets it in the neck," said Vulth.

The four sentries looked at one another. The same thought filled all their minds —as long as it is not me.

Conan got used to the presence of the invaders with a boy's speed and ease. He soon came to take light-haired men walking through the village for granted, and learned to tell Bossonians from Gundermen by looks rather than by weapons of choice.

And he began learning Aquilonian. Before long, he had picked up almost as much of it as his father knew. That amused Mordec, in a grim way. "You've got a good ear, son," he said. "I don't suppose it will matter much, but it's there."

"Why do so many people here have trouble with the other language?" asked Conan in puzzled tones. "It's only more words."

"People seem to," said Mordec. "You don't notice the Gundermen learning Cimmerian, either, do you?"

"I've seen one man trying," answered Conan. "He was doing his best to talk with Derelei, the miller's wife."

"Aye, and I know what he was doing his best to ask for, too," said Mordec. "Derelei is a very pretty woman, and she knows it a little too well. But aside from that, the invaders don't bother. Why should they? They beat us. We're the ones who have to fit ourselves to them, not the other way around."

Why should they? They beat us. The words tolled in Conan's mind like the mournful clangor of a brazen bell. "What can we do, Father?" he asked. "We have to do something. If we don't, we might as well be so many sheep."

"One day, the time will be ripe," said Mordec. "One day, but not yet. Patience, lad —patience. For now, we mourn and we heal. The time will come, though. Sooner or later, it will. And when it does, we will know it, and we will seize it."

Patience came hard for the boy, even harder than it would have for a man. Days came when Conan dared not look at an Aquilonian, for fear he would hurl himself against the foeman to his folk and bring disaster down on Duthil. When such fits took him, he would flee the village as if it lay in the grip of a deadly pestilence, and would go alone to hunt in the forests and on the hillsides nearby.

Mordec said never a word to him about those jaunts. The blacksmith could have used his son's help in the day-to-day work of the smithy, but seemed to sense how Conan needed to escape that which had become intolerable for him. While the boy stalked woodcock and grouse, squirrel and rabbit, he imagined he went after bigger game: Gundermen and Bossonians and the fearsome armored Aquilonian knights he had heard of but not yet seen. And hunting for the pot, though he did not fully realize it, helped him gain some of the arts he would use in war.