Conan of Venarium

"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.

He ran to the woods as if demons prowled his trail. He might have been glad to see demons, for they would have given him something he could oppose, something he could hope to defeat with arrows and knife and simple strength. But what chased him out of Duthil dwelt within him, and he could not bring it forth to slay it.

Melcer hacked at a pine with his axe as if the tree were a Cimmerian warrior. The farmer, newly come from Gunderland, struck again and again, with almost demoniac energy. The pine tottered, crackled, and began to fall. "Coming down!" Melcer shouted, though no one but him stood anywhere close to the tree that crashed to earth. He grunted in satisfaction and spat on his hands. One more tree down, one more tree towards a cabin in the woods, one more bit of open space in what would become a farm.