Conan of Venarium

He had not said them by midafternoon, when Count Stercus rode into Duthil. The Aquilonian noble sat astride his charger and, unusually, led a pack horse with several stout casks tied to its back. Spotting Conan's father in the crowd of strangers, he pointed to him and spoke in Aquilonian, no doubt to make himself seem more important: "Translate for me, my good man."

Mordec nodded. "Say what you will."

"Tell your people I heard they would feast today. Tell them also that no feast is a true feast without wine." Stercus pointed to the pack horse. "I have brought your enough to prove the point."

He could not have bought himself popularity, or even toleration, with silver or with gold. Wine proved another story. The Cimmerians drank it when they could get it; Aquilonian traders had made it known in this land where no vineyard could prosper. But so much of the strong, sweet brew at harvest time —yes, sly Stercus had known what coin to spend.

And if he made sure Tarla drank several beakers of the red blood of the grape, if he laughed by her when her walk went clumsy and her speech got slurred, if he whirled her in a sprightly Aquilonian dance when pipes and drums began to play, who could hold it against him? No one at all —no one but Conan the blacksmith's son, who found himself upstaged again.

Chapter Nine

For Stercus Sake?

Rhiderch the seer stayed in and around Duthil through the winter. He made himself useful now and again. Balarg's wife had lost a silver ring—work of the ^£sir—and Rhiderch told her to slaughter a certain hen. Sure enough, she found it in the bird's gizzard. It must have slipped from her finger while she was scattering grain for her chickens. She valued the ring enough to feed the seer for a week afterwards — and she was not one usually given to fits of generosity.

And Rhiderch also found four sheep that had wandered away from Nectan during a snowstorm that covered their tracks as fast as they were made. He told the shepherd to look by a red rock beneath a tall spruce. Nectan knew a reddish boulder just in from the edge of the forest that fit the bill. When he went to the rock, there were the sheep. He gave Nectan one of them, reckoning it better to have three back than to have lost them all.

The seer's powers came and went. They did not always serve him as he would have wished. He also did odd jobs to keep himself fed and sheltered. Except for his erratic gift, he did nothing better than everyone else. But he did a lot of things better than most people, and so found ways to make himself useful.

One morning in early spring, Conan came upon him repairing the wall of a neighbor's house. Wherever he had learned to work with wattle and daub, he took pains to do a proper job, using plenty of sticks and twigs to anchor the mud. Nodding to the blacksmith's son, he said, "A good day to you. Next I'll put more thatch on the roof, to keep the rain from dripping through and marring the wall again."

"That will keep the house sound, sure enough." Conan hesitated, then asked, "How do you see what you see?"

Rhiderch did him the courtesy of taking the question seriously. "I know not, lad," he answered. "All I know is that I see. Sometimes it will be as clear as if it were before my eyes, the way I see you now. Sometimes what I see will mean nothing or next to nothing to me, yet seem plain enough to the person to whom I tell it. And sometimes neither I nor he will know what a vision means."

"When you see something, are you ever wrong?" asked Conan.

"Wrong?" Again, Rhiderch paused to think before replying. "Well, as I say, there are times when I cannot tell you what will come from things I have seen. But that's not what you meant, is it?" Conan shook his head. Rhiderch thought a little longer, then said, "No, I don't believe I see falsely. If a meaning comes of it, it is the meaning I have seen."

"So it seemed to me," said Conan. "Tell me, then: what do you see about our folk and the Aquilonians?"

"So far, I have not seen anything, not in the way you mean," replied Rhiderch.

"Could you?" asked Conan eagerly.

"Could I bring on a vision instead of waiting for one to strike me?" The seer frowned. "I know not. I do not believe I have ever tried. For most visions, I would not try."

"But this one is important to all our people," protested Conan.

"Well, so it is," admitted Rhiderch. "All right, lad. I'll give it a go. Let no one say I fought shy of doing what we Cimmerians need."

He stood there at the edge of Duthil's main street: a lean old man with long, clever hands filthy from mud. His lips moved, at first silently and then in a soft, droning chant. Awe prickled through Conan. He realized the seer was gathering his mental powers to pierce the veil of the unknown as a sharp awl might pierce thick, resistant leather. Rhiderch's eyes met Conan's, but the blacksmith's son did not think the other man truly saw him. Whatever Rhiderch saw, it was not the little village where Conan had lived all his life.