“Fah, lame excuses!” The general shot a self-righteous glance at Yildiz, then turned again to upbraid the sorcerer. “You have been given all the wealth and authority you requested, Ibn Uluthan… and more, against the counsel of some of us. That should enable you to do your part! Are you saying that the mightiest empire in the world cannot impose its mystic will on a band of jungle savages and ignorant rice-puddlers?”
“General Abolhassan.” Yildiz’s voice, soft but resonant, restrained the warrior. “It ill befits you to be so wroth when I, your emperor, am not. Surely we are well on our way to victory in Venjipur in any case? All my counselors have assured me of this, including you.” The emperor nodded at the seer, then turned toward the door. “When I see fit to administer a rebuke to Ibn Uluthan, I will do so. Meanwhile, I hope that he will continue his most able efforts.”
“Certainly, Your Resplendency!” Scowling, the general nodded curtly at the sorcerer, then turned to follow Yildiz and his guard to the inner passage. Azhar and Ibn Uluthan watched them depart. As they left, their backs were lit by the window’s surreal glow and the jeweled skull’s eerie, radiant smile.
As the tropic sun climbed higher its hot weight increased; the ruthless orb mounted the sky like the sweaty bulk of a wrestler, slowly strangling his opponent and forcing him down to the hot, dry earth.
Since his arrival in Venjipur, Conan had often wondered at the sharpness of the contrast between steaming jungle miasmas and the parched heat of the compounds. Here, where the invaders had cleared away trees and vines to build an encircling palisade, the bare earth was ridged into furrows and stump-holes, baked rock-hard by sun… at least until afternoon, when rain squalls off the Gulf of Tarqheba would surely melt them back to slimy mud.
As noon approached, even the sunrays reflecting off the yellow earth were scorchingly hot; Conan shifted back underneath the frayed awning of the mess tent to avoid them. Jostling inward among huddled, muttering soldiers and sloe-eyed Venji camp girls, he nevertheless lingered near enough to the entry to have an unobstructed view of the staff officers’ compound across the yard. Leaning against a tentpost, he endured the flat taste of his beaker of kvass and the smelly companionship of the field canteen.
Juma edged close up beside him, grumbling as was the universal custom. “Small thanks Captain Murad gave us for raiding the demon temple! Conan, you were too honest, telling them the old wizard escaped!” The black trooper smiled, his teeth and eyes glinting yellowish in the shadows. “We should have taken off the head of his ugliest warrior and kicked it a few leagues through the jungle. Then we could have passed it off as Mojurna’s, and they would have granted us a week’s leave in the capital!”
Conan shook his head, laying a good-natured hand on Juma’s shoulder. “Nay, fellow, that old lizard-splitter is too dangerous a foe to trifle with. If our commanders thought him dead, ‘twould make them all the more lax and reckless. And who bears the brunt of their half-hatched schemes?” He drained his cup of sour beer, grimacing. “By all the gods of the snowy mountains, Venjipur is a vile place! I joined this war because southern duty sounded easy; now I count myself lucky to survive another day!”
“Aye, Conan, too true. Remember when the Venji campaign seemed a good chance to make rank?” Juma’s grin flashed again, wistfully. “But here all the commissioned officers are eagle-beaked aristocrats born to command.” He scowled morosely. “If they never expose themselves to danger, how will vacancies occur? Aii it is too dismal to think about!” The Kushite gazed moodily around at the troopers loitering near them. Settling on the largest one, who overtopped even himself and Conan, he confronted him and asked, “What of you, Orvad? How did you find your way here to Fort Sikander?”
The trooper he addressed was truly a massive man, so tall that his straggling hair brushed the grubby canvas overhead. The lank black strands hung unnaturally close to his skull on one side, denoting the loss of an ear—probably on some northern battlefield or civic maimer’s block; none had ever dared ask him where. His remaining facial features, though overlarge and hideously battered, identified him as a native of Turan or Hyrkania. He was slow to speech, knitting his scar-seamed forehead and peering at Juma a long time before answering.
“I killed a tavern-keeper in Sultanapur,” he rumbled finally. “The fellow tried to drug my wine and steal my pay. Then I killed some of the taverner’s kin, and a few city guards.” Orvad frowned thoughtfully. “When I went back to the garrison, the commandant called me before him. He said if I enjoyed killing so much, Venjipur was the place for me. So I came here.” The giant lowered his eyes, shaking his head in childish disappointment. “But the commandant didn’t tell me I’d only be killing Hwong, these little jungle monkeys! That’s not the same as killing men!”
His observation was greeted by guffaws from the others in the tent. The gruff male outburst was soon joined by shriller female tones, as troopers translated the joke for the camp slatterns. Orvad looked around at them all, his brow knitting in suspicion at their levity, his big fists slowly knotting—until Juma ventured near enough to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Orvad, you are certainly right! Everyone here feels the same! Luckily the Hwong are not easy to kill, so that gives us all some sport.”
At Orvad’s slow smile and nod, the watchers laughed heartily again. Juma, after placating the giant further and ordering him another drink, returned to Conan’s side. The Cimmerian, somewhat detached from the merriment, was gazing out from under the pavilion at a log-walled, canvas-roofed building opposite.
“Even dull-witted Orvad is not content!” Juma muttered at his side. “Was there ever a soldier so dim that he enjoyed serving in Venjipur?”
“Maybe.” Conan nodded at a corner of the pavilion where a cluster of rough-looking troopers sucked vapors out of long, yellow-fuming pipes. “Remember, for lovers of lotus, this land is paradise,” he observed to his friend. “All the old Venji hands develop the taste eventually, they say, making them useless for other kinds of service. Someday you and I, Juma, may learn to love Venjipur too!”
A level, earnest voice joined in from beside them. “Ofttimes, brothers, I think that we are here only because of the lotus trade.” The lean, desert-brown soldier, known to Conan as Babrak, joined them with easy familiarity. “The red and purple lotus extracts command vast prices in the Hyborian lands. Together with the other narcotic strains, the vile stuff is one of Turan’s prime trade-goods. A shameful thing for a land that professes to follow Tarim’s law!”
“Aye, truly.” Conan kept his gaze trained outside the pavilion, over the other troopers’ heads. “My own encounters with lotus have been mostly unwilling, and some of them near-fatal. I put no trust in that kind of city-bred slackness.”
“Nor I,” Juma assured them, though his good-natured smile may have held an ironic glint. “In my native Kush, the black lotus was tabu. But that did not keep foreign mystics and wizards from risking their lives in the deep jungle to gather it.”
“A sad thing,” Babrak assured them. “As you may know, true followers of the prophet disdain all narcotics and unmanly indulgences.” He waved in one hand a pocket-scroll he had been holding at his side. “In a heathen land like this, it is essential to have a strong faith to protect one’s spirit from decay. If ever you wish to learn Tarim’s way—”
“Aye, ‘tis a good way, a way of fierce fighters,” Juma answered quickly. “Would that you could persuade more of your fellow Turanians to follow it—including our soft-bellied officers. For myself, I still pray and swear by the gods of my ancestors.”
“And you, Hyborian?” Babrak’s cool gray eyes fixed on Conan. “What god do you follow?”
“My oaths are to Crom and his fierce, frosty cousins,” Conan answered shortly. “But hold, I must go; they have ended the interrogation!”
The others followed his intent gaze across the compound, where two spike-helmeted officers stood outside one of the tent barracks. As Conan pushed forward out of the pavilion, his two friends edged after him. Others drifted in their wake, sensing a diversion to speed the dreary morning.
Outside under the baking sun, a pair of native troops dragged forth two scrawny, blood-smeared bodies, recognizable in their dusky nakedness as the Hwong captives from the jungle shrine. As the Venjis tossed the victims onto a cart behind a slack-eared mule, their torturer and slayer emerged—a thick-muscled, copper-skinned man with dark tattoos patterning his cheeks and the shaven top of his head. Conan knew him as Sool, one of the eunuchs of the local warlord Phang Loon.
From the shadows of the tent Sool dragged forth a slender arm, around which his blunt fingers were clamped, followed by a shapely shoulder and the staggering form of the woman Sariya. She wore a cotton shift her captors had given her to cover her nakedness; but it proved scanty enough as Sool propelled her violently forward, to stagger onto one bare knee in the dirt of the compound. As she arose, blinking in the sun’s brightness and trying to dust off her shift, the beauty of her long, straight limbs and fine-boned face drew low comments and hisses from the watching men. The slave Sool paid the girl no further heed, turning to join the departing Turanians.
Sariya seemed well in control of herself. She did not appear to have been tortured—as indeed, she had assured Conan she would not be because of her rank. Obviously the interrogators had finished with her, and to Conan’s relief, none of the staff officers seemed to take a personal interest. He strode swiftly forward, calling out, “Sariya! Come, girl, I’ll find you a place.”
But as she raised her dark eyes to him, another figure interposed—a tall, lean trooper, brown and hard beneath sweat-stained leather field-vest and breeches. Dark hair straggled from beneath his grimy turban, fringing a seamed, sun-toughened face. A long, curved dagger hung sheathed at his belt, and the coil of red cord tucked beside it marked him as one of an elite corps of lone killers, whose duty took them on long forays into enemy territory.
Conan did not know the man, but the reputation of his unit was all anyone needed to know. He took another firm step forward, and the trooper moved between him and Sariya. “Why so eager, petty officer? Have you not learned that, excepting only the Emperor and his High Counselors, we Red Garrotes get first pick of all the women?” The man’s drawl was ironic and confident, his face dangerously calm as he sized up Conan’s height and fitness.
“Be warned, fellow.” The Cimmerian’s voice grated low but clear as he moved near his challenger. “I took this captive yesterday, and she remains in my charge. I will brook no interference.”
“Is that an order, northling? Think twice before you move to enforce it! My rank is the equal of yours—and my manhood the greater.” The lean assassin flashed a look at the growing straggle of onlookers, who laughed appreciatively. “You must be the raw foreigner I heard of, Captain Murad’s newest petty—if so, Sergeant, be warned that your men despise you! ‘Tis said you run a suicide squad at the gray one’s bidding; learn your place, or you’ll not last long in Venjipur.”
Reaching behind him, the garroter laid a brown, wiry hand on the unflinching Sariya’s saffron shoulder, caressing her under Conan’s eyes. Most of the watchers laughed at the spectacle, eager to see the comeuppance of an officer, and a barbarian at that. The boldest moved up beside the challenger to leer at Conan.
“Do not worry about the girl, Cimmerian,” a voice called from their ranks. “In time she will go among the camp followers; then you too can have your turn!”
A murmur of laughter following this remark, and in its midst Conan moved. His action was too swift to be traced by the eye, except as a change from utter stillness to utter speed, traced by a single flash of steel. His lunge carried him between Sariya and the elite trooper, sending the unprepared woman staggering with the glancing force of his rush. In the shocked stillness ensuing, amidst the puff of hanging yellow dust, every eye peered blinking to assess the damage, and count the toll of the dead. All marveled to see that, swift as the attack had been, it had not been swift enough.
Conan crouched in a fighting stance, hands poised ready in air. One held steel, the other, blood—and not his adversary’s. Rather the red drops marking the dust of the compound fell from his own palm, slashed open by the curved dagger clutched in his opponent’s raised hand.
“So you see, northling, things happen swiftly in these tropical lands. The hooded snake strikes fast, the mongoose faster yet! Had you watched patiently and learned, you might have lived to acquire the necessary quickness yourself.” The garroter leered at his audience. “Now, alas, ‘tis too late for you to gain wisdom.”
His speech had served the purpose of covering his actions as he raised first one foot, then the other in front of him, deftly inserting something into the toe of each sandal. Foot-knives, Conan realized, too late to do anything about it. There would be no choice but to fight on the enemy’s terms.
Conan had heard of these weapons, flat-handled blades inserted between the ball of the foot and the sole of the sandal, with narrow necks to be gripped by the first and second toes. Their use was a deadly art of the southern lands. Those glinting from his opponent’s feet were of bronze, leaf-bladed and deeply grooved. Conan did not doubt that they were poisoned.
The watchers formed a tight circle in anticipation of the duel, some murmuring together in groups and presumably laying bets. Conan noticed that Juma and Babrak took up protective stances on either side of Sariya, slapping their hilts menacingly at any who edged too near her. Vowing silent thanks to them, he turned to meet the red strangler’s rush.
The jungle trooper had unsheathed a second curved dagger from behind his back, providing him a steel fang on each limb. Bending suddenly like a bow, he launched himself at Conan in a gleaming pinwheel of death. He kicked out first one foot, then the other, then spun forward, his daggers slashing high and low simultaneously. While fighting he ceased his taunts, intent on the intricate motions, his brown-knotted throat issuing only sharp gasps and grunts of exertion.