Conan of Venarium

"However you like, Conan," said Stercus, smiling a twisted smile. "For any way you like, I am your master." He lashed out at Conan with a booted foot. But the blacksmith's son had expected that. He grabbed the boot with both hands and yanked. With a startled squawk, Stercus toppled. But he kicked Conan away when the Cimmerian would have sprung on top of him. The two of them grappled, rolling and pummeling and cursing each other as foully as they could.

Stercus soon found the fight warmer than he really wanted. He tried to knee Conan in the groin. More by luck than by Conan's design, Stercus caught him in the hipbone instead: a painful blow but not a disabling one. Conan seized a fallen arrow and scored the back of Stercus' hand with the point. Stercus' laugh was more than half snarl. "You'll have to do better than that, barbarian!" he said.

The Aquilonian brought his knee up again, this time into the pit of Conan's stomach. The air whooshed out of the blacksmith's son. He writhed on the ground struggling to breathe, all else forgotten. Tarla wailed in despair. Count Stercus laughed once more, this time triumphantly.

But even as he rose to finish Conan, he suddenly gasped in horror. "I burn!" he whispered. "Oh, I burn! Poison!" He shook all over, like a man with an ague. His eyes rolled up in his head. Foam started from his mouth. He let out a bubbling shriek of supernal agony. The foam gave way to blood. Now Stercus was the one whose breath failed, and his failed forever. Tearing at his own throat for the air that would not pass, he fell over, dead.

When Conan got his breath back, he looked at the arrow that had slain Count Stercus. Sure enough, it had a greenish discoloration on the head and several inches down the length of the shaft: it was one of those he had envenomed from the fangs of the serpent he slew in the temple out of time. He had not known that when he grabbed it and used it. But who had proved mightier here, Mitra or Crom?

He scrambled to his feet, shaking off the battering that Stercus had given him as a dog coming out of a stream might shake off cold water. And then he snatched up Stercus' sword and hurried over to Tarla.

"Conan!" she said. The sound of his name in her mouth just then was worth more to him than the rubies of Vendhya, the gold of distant Khitai. And the look of her—Conan realized, more slowly than he might have, that she likely wished he would look away rather than staring at all Stercus had uncovered. And look away he did, but only after he had seen his fill.

"Here," he said roughly, stooping beside her. "I'll get you loose. Hold still, now, or you're liable to get cut."

Freeing her ankle was the work of a moment. He had to take more care with the thongs that bound her hands, but soon they too troubled her no more. As soon as the job was done, she turned lithely, flung her arms around him, and covered his face with kisses. "I thought he'd kill you!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Conan, sweet Conan, I was so afraid!"

He hardly heard a word she said. That she held him was miracle enough. Of themselves, his arms tightened around her as well. At the pressure of his hands against her bare, smooth flesh, she squeaked in surprise — surprise, perhaps, not altogether unmixed with pleasure. A heartbeat later, though, she twisted away and snatched up the tunic Count Stercus had stripped from her. But even after she donned it once more, it scarcely covered her, for Stercus had torn it in taking it away.

"I'd better bring you back to the village," said Conan. He cast a longing glance toward Stercus' great horse, which was tied to a young pine at the far edge of the clearing. He would have liked nothing better than to return to Duthil aboard the nobleman's charger. But he had never been on horseback, and bringing the destrier back to Duthil would have told the nearby garrison that Stercus had come to grief. Regretfully, he shook his head. Even more regretfully, he realized he had to leave behind Stercus' armor, which lay discarded beside the horse. The back-and-breast would be too small for him, but the helm might well fit. Even so —no. Better to sneak back and get them under cover of darkness. The sword he would keep now.

"Duthil will be all in an uproar," predicted Tarla. "That— that wretch killed Wirp and another boy who tried to keep him from stealing me. He cut one of them down, and the horse struck the other with its hoof." She shuddered at the memory and interlaced her fingers with Conan's.

He squeezed her hand, several different excitements warring in his breast. "Our folk will not bear an outrage like that," he said. "If there is to be an uprising against the Aquilonians at last, let the bards sing that it began in Duthil."

"Aye," said Tarla softly. "I — I was wrong to let Stercus have anything to do with me. I did it partly to make you jealous. I'm—I'm sorry."