Conan of Venarium

"Disgraceful business," said Loarn, a small, skinny man with a drooping gray mustache. "Disgraceful, I tell you. They stopped me and searched my goods as if I were a thief. They could have robbed me and murdered me, too, and who would have been the wiser? News of the invasion still hasn't spread up to the north, where my clan dwells."

"You can take it with you, then, when you travel that way again," said Mordec, and Loarn nodded his agreement. "Conan!" called the blacksmith, and then again, louder: "Conan! Where has the boy got to, anyhow? Oh, there you are. About time. Here's Loarn, just in off the road. Fetch him a mug of ale and something to eat."

"Aye, Father," said Conan. "Welcome, Loarn." He hurried into the back of the house.

Loam's eyes followed him. "He's as tall as I am already, and he has how many years behind him? Fifteen?"

"Twelve," answered Mordec.

"Crom!" said the peddler. "He'll have your inches before he's done, then, and maybe two or three more besides."

"I know." Mordec lowered his voice: "I had a demon of a time keeping him from joining the army that fought the invaders. He thinks he's a man now."

"I can understand why," said Loarn. "How did it fall out that they beat you? Such a thing hasn't happened in all the years of my life."

Mordec shrugged massive shoulders. "We didn't put enough men in the field to swamp them, and their knights hit us at just the right time—right for them, wrong for us. Not enough clans joined the fight on our side."

"And now all Cimmeria will suffer because they didn't," said Loarn.

"Take the news north," said Mordec, shrugging again. "If all the clans in the countryside joined against the invaders — He broke off and laughed. "If that happened, it would be a miracle, and when was the last time Crom worked a miracle in these parts? He's not that sort of god. He wants his folk to work the miracles."

Loarn grunted. He did not quarrel with Mordec; no Cimmerian could have, not where their god was concerned. The blacksmith had spoken only the truth about the dour deity who watched over this tree-draped land and expected the people dwelling in it to solve their own problems without bothering him.

Conan came in just then, carrying a wooden tray with two mugs of ale, and with oatcakes and a slab of roasted pork ribs for the guest in the house. "Thank you, lad," said Loarn, and then, in surprise, "Mistress Verina! I know you're not well. You did not need to trouble yourself for me."

From behind Conan, his mother said, "It is no trouble, Loarn." A moment later, she gave herself the lie, coughing till her face went a dusky purple and blood-flecked foam clung to her lower lip.

"Get into bed, Verina," growled Mordec. He snatched one of the mugs of ale from the tray in Conan's hands and drained it at a single long pull. "Loarn is right—you do yourself no good by being up and about when you shouldn't."

"I do the honor of the household good," said Verina with quiet pride.

The blacksmith ground his teeth in a curious mix of frustration and fury. Verina was willing —was perhaps even eager—to give up, to throw away, her own life to prove a point. Mordec had seen that years before, when her illness first came upon her. He often thought she used it as a weapon, turning her weakness against him where strength would not have sufficed. That he kept to himself. Had he spoken of it, it would only have ignited more strife between them. But he spent as much time away from the smithy as he could.

His absences, of course, only tightened the bond between Verina and Conan. When she began to cough again, the boy anxiously asked, "Are you all right, Mother?" and started to go to her.

She waved him away, saying, "Tend to the guest in the house, if you please. I will do well enough."

Conan grimaced but obeyed. He heeded her better than he had ever obeyed Mordec, against whose iron will his own, equally hard, clashed at every opportunity. The smith grimaced, too, but for different reasons. He did not care for Verina's use of their son to show off her illness, but she had been doing it for years, and he had never found a way to stop her. He wished the mug he had drained had held twice as much ale.

Loarn, tactfully, said only, "Tell me more of the coming of the cursed Aquilonians. When I do go into the north country again, I will need to answer many questions, and I will want to have the answers right."

Before Mordec could reply, Conan did: "Not only soldiers have come to Cimmeria, but also farmers, and their women and children with them. The men from the south aim to take this land away from us forever."

"He speaks the truth," said Mordec. He scowled at Verina, then got off the stool on which he had been sitting. "If you will not go back to bed, at least come over here and sit down. Conan, bring your mother a mug of ale. Maybe it will lend her some strength."