Conan of Venarium

He urged the horse forward. Oman's surprise and that huge beast bearing down on him made him jump aside. Had he not, the Aquilonian would have ridden him down. He was as sure of that as of his own name. Even so, shame at giving way brought fire to his cheeks. He hurried after the rider— the knight, Aquilonians called such armored horsemen —and spoke in the invaders' language: "Who are you? What you do here?"

Hearing Aquilonian made the man on horseback rein in. He gave Conan a second glance —gave him, in fact, what was almost a first glance, for he had paid him little heed up until then. "I am Count Stercus, commander of all the Aquilonians in Cimmeria, and I have come to see how the village of Duthil prospers under the rule of the great and good King Numedides," he answered, and paused to find out whether Conan understood. Conan did—well enough, anyhow. Seeing as much, Stercus asked, "And who are you, and how did you learn this speech?"

"Conan, son of Mordec the blacksmith." To Conan, his father's trade was at least as important as Stercus' noble blood. With a shrug, he went on, "How I learn? I hear, I listen, I talk. How you learn Cimmerian?"

A civilized man, even a civilized boy, would have known better than to challenge thus the leader of the host that had subjected his folk, but Conan was familiar with only the rude frankness of the barbarian. And his candor seemed to amuse Count Stercus, whose smile illuminated every part of his face but those dark, fathomless eyes. "How do I learn?" he echoed in Cimmerian considerably more fluent than Conan's all but grammarless Aquilonian. "I also hear and listen and speak. And I have had most excellent, most lovely, most charming teachers. You may be sure of that."

Although Conan was anything but sure of precisely what Stercus meant, he did get the feeling hidden meanings lurked in the Aquilonian's words. That in itself was plenty to rouse his easily kindled temper: why could the man not come straight out and say whatever was in his mind? Roughly, Conan asked, "When are you people going to leave Cimmeria? This not your country."

Again, that was forthrightness no civilized man would have shown. Again, it but amused Stercus, who threw back his head and laughed uproariously. "Leave, boy? We shall never leave. I told you, this is King Numedides' land now."

He rode down the street; his horse's hooves, almost as big as dinner plates, clopped and squelched through the mud.

Conan spied a fist-sized stone near a house. He could take it and hurl it and perhaps lay even an armored man low with it—but what if he did? The soldiers in the encampment outside of Duthil would wreak a fearful vengeance, and his own people lacked the warriors to hope to withstand them. Hate smoldering in his heart, Conan followed Stercus.

The Aquilonian continued along the street at a slow walk, an expression of disdain on his face. None of the other boys who had been kicking the ball dared impede him, even for a moment. Conan stayed close to Stercus until the knight reined in once more, in front of the home of Balarg the weaver.

He bowed in the saddle there, something Conan had not only never seen but never imagined. "Hello, my pretty," he murmured in Cimmerian suddenly sweet as honey. "What is your name?"

"Tarla," answered the girl still standing in the doorway. She stared at the horse, too, and stared even more at the man atop it.

"Tarla," repeated Count Stercus. In his mouth, it might have been a caress. "What a lovely name."

Conan discovered he had only thought he hated the Aquilonian nobleman. Now, with jealousy tearing at him like acid venom, he would gladly have stuffed Stercus into his father's forge and worked the bellows for a hotter fire with a will he had never shown while helping Mordec to forge a sword or an andiron.

Tarla murmured in confusion and what was obviously pleasure. No one in the rude village of Duthil had ever paid her such a compliment before. Conan knew too well he had not, and wondered why. The answer was not hard to find: he had no more imagined such candied words than he had a bow from horseback. What the folk who had it called civilization knew wiles subtler and more clinging and perhaps more deadly than a spider's web.

With another seated bow, Stercus continued, "I had not looked for so fair a flower in these parts, even in springtime. I must come back again soon, to see how you bloom."

Tarla murmured again, in even more confusion. Stercus urged his horse forward. As he rode on through Duthil, he turned and waved to the weaver's daughter. Tarla started to raise her hand to return the gesture. A panther might have sunk its fangs into Conan's vitals. Tarla let her hand fall without completing the gesture, but that she had so much as begun it was a lash of scorpions to the blacksmith's son. He watched Stercus leave the village. That the Aquilonian commander failed to fall over dead proved beyond any possible doubt that looks do not, cannot, kill.