Conan of Venarium

The seer suddenly went stiff. His eyes opened very wide, so that white showed all around their irises. "Crom!" he muttered, whether calling on the grim northern god or simply in astonishment Conan could not have said. In a voice that might have come from the other side of the grave, Rhiderch went on, "Gore and guts and grief and glory! War and woe and fire and flame! Death and doom and dire deeds! War, aye, war to the knife, war without mercy, war without pity, battle till the last falls still fighting!"

Conan shuddered. He had got more in the way of a vision than he had bargained for. Rhiderch twitched like a man in the throes of an epileptic fit. Hoarsely, Conan asked, "But who will win?" Nothing else mattered to him. "Who will win?"

Now Rhiderch's gaze thrust through him like a sword. "War and woe!" repeated the seer. "Duthil dies a dismal death. The golden lion— ' He twitched again. "Aye, the golden lion flaps above your head."

"No!" howled Conan, a long wail of misery. Bitterly he repented of his own curiosity. Repentance, as usual, came too late. "No! Let it not be so! Tell me not that accursed Aquilonia triumphs."

Rhiderch blinked several times. Only after the fact did Conan notice the seer's eyes had stayed open every moment while he was prophesying. With reason on his face once more, Rhiderch inquired, "What said I?"

"You do not know?" exclaimed Conan. Rhiderch shook his head. Although he had manifestly returned to the mundane plane, he still seemed pale and drawn, as though he had just shaken off a nearly killing fever. As best Conan could, he recounted Rhiderch's baleful words.

The seer heard him out in silence. Rhiderch looked down at the daub on his hands as if it were dripping blood. "I know not what to say to you, lad," he said at last, "save this alone: the foretelling and the event are not the same. The event is the thing, the foretelling but a shadow. Like any shadow, it shifts and grows and shrinks in response to the light that casts it."

"Cold comfort, by Crom!" jeered Conan. "You have seen my village dead. How shall the shadow of that shift? You are nothing but a stinking carrion crow with corpse meat in your mouth!"

Rhiderch bowed his head. "If you blame the messenger for the message, strike now," he said.

Instead of striking, Conan swore. He spun on his heel and stormed out of Duthil. Slaying Rhiderch would solve nothing, for how could he slay the seer's words? They would echo inside him until the unfolding of time revealed their fulfillment—and he was all too sure it would. Rhiderch had been a man inspired; however shadowy his words might have been, he had spoken truth.

Air spicy with the sap of conifers surrounded Conan as he rushed into the woods. Leaving behind the stinks of Duthil — the dung, the animals, the smoke, the unbathed bodies, the tanning hides —was easy. Leaving behind Rhiderch's prophecy came harder. That followed Conan: indeed, try as he would, he took it with him. Escape was what he wanted most, and what he could not have.

A raven croaked at him from a tall spruce. He shook his fist at the big, black bird. "Begone, cruel corbie!" he cried. "You'll not take the flesh from my bones to feed your nestlings." He stooped to pick up a stone.

Wise and wary in the ways of men, the raven leaped into the air with a great rustle of wings. Conan hurled the stone anyway, as much from sheer rage as for any other reason. It just grazed the outermost feather on the raven's left wing. The bird gave another hoarse cry and vanished into the forest.

"And take your ill-luck with you, accursed thing!" shouted Conan after it. The woods seemed to swallow his words. He wondered if they reached the raven. He could only hope. Had curses stuck as readily as they were given, all the Aquilonians would long since have vanished from Cimmeria.

Conan realized he had only an eating knife at his belt, for he had rushed out of the village in a passion, with not the slightest thought for what he would do next. Now that his temper began to cool, he keenly felt the lack of either bow or javelin. A knife was no weapon to wield against wolf, let alone panther. He took two steps toward Duthil, but then abruptly checked himself. What would the villagers do if he came stumbling back after rushing away so furiously? Would they not laugh at him, whether to his face or behind his back? Of a certainty, they would.

Pride is a terrible thing. For pride's sake, the blacksmith's son would sooner have risked his life than risked the laughter of friends and neighbors. And, had any other man of Duthil stood where Conan stood, he would have made the same choice. What the Cimmerians lacked in material goods, they made up for in a superabundance of pride. If not for pride, they would have fought less amongst themselves, and would have made a harder nut for the Aquilonians to crack. None of that crossed Conan's mind. He knew only that he would rather have faced wolves than his fellow villagers.