"'Twas better than this, that mud," Tauria.n.u.s muttered, but he climbed down from his saddle.

Grumbling men began carrying blanket rolls and bundles of personal belongings in search of places to settle themselves. Others led their horses into the stables; curses quickly floated out as to the number of rats and cobwebs. Rotund Fabio hurried in search of the kitchens, trailed by a half-running Julia, her arms full of soot-blackened pots and bundles of herbs, strings of garlic and peppers dangling from her shoulders.

Boros stood at the gate staring about him in amazement, though he certainly slept in little better as a matter of course. Synelle, Conan thought, had much to learn about what was properly provided a Free-Company.

They had attracted entirely too much attention for Conan's taste during their search for the house. Three-score armored men on horseback, laden with sacks and cloak-wrapped bundles till they looked like a procession of country peddlers, could not help but draw eves even in a city that a.s.siduously attempted to avoid seeing anything that might be dangerous.

The Cimmerian would just as soon they could all have become invisible till the matter of Timeon's death was forgotten. And he was none too eager to look into any of those bundles, most of which clinked and seemed heavier than they had a right to be. For all his injunction against looting he was sure they were filled with silver goblets and trinkets of gold. More of those following him than not, the Ophireans most certainly, were light-fingered at the best of times.

Giving his horse over to one of the men, the big Cimmerian went in search of a room for himself, his blanket roll over one shoulder and the sack containing the bronze under his arm. Save for weapons and armor, horse and change of clothes, they were all the possessions he had.

Soon he found a large, corner room on the second floor, with four windows to give it light. A wad of straw in one corner showed that a rat had been nesting there. Two benches and a table stood in the middle of the floor, covered with heavy dust. A bed, sagging but certainly large enough even for his height, was jammed against a wall. The mattress crackled with the sound of dried husks when he poked it, and he sighed, remembering the goose-down mattress in Timeon's palace.

Think of the mud, he reminded himself sternly.

Machaon's voice drifted up from the courtyard. "Conan, where are you?

There's news!"

Tossing his burdens on the bed, Conan hurried out onto the balcony.

"What word? Has Synelle summoned us?"

"Not yet, Cimmerian. The a.s.sa.s.sins were busy last night. Valentius fled his palace after three of his own guards turned their blades on him.

'Tis said others of his men cut them down, but the lordling now seems affrightened of his own shadow. He has taken refuge with Count Antimides."

Conan's eyebrows went up. Antimides. The young fool had unknowingly put himself in the hands of one of his rivals. Another lord removed from the race, this one by his own hand, in a manner of speaking. Who stood next in the blood-right after Valentius? But what occurred among the contending factions, he thought, no longer concerned him or his company.

"We're done with that, Machaon," he laughed. "Let them all kill each other."

The grizzled veteran joined his laughter. "An that happens, mayhap we can make you King. I will settle for count, myself."

Conan opened his mouth to reply, and suddenly realized a sound that should not be there had been impinging on his brain. Creaking boards from the room he had just left. No rat made boards creak. His blade whispered from its sheath, and he dove through the door, followed by Machaon's surprised shout.

Four startled men in cast-off finery, one just climbing in the window, stared in shock at the appearance of the young giant. Their surprise lasted but an instant; as he took his first full step into the room, swords appeared in their fists and they rushed to attack.

Conan beat aside the thrust of the first to reach him, and in the same movement planted a foot in the middle of his opponent's dirty gray silk tunic. Breath left the man in an explosive gasp, and he fell in a heap at the feet of a thick-mustached man behind him. The mustached man stumbled, and the tip of Conan's blade slashed his throat in a fountain of blood. As the dying man fell atop the first attacker, a man with a jagged scar down his left cheek leaped over him, sword hacking wildly.

Conan dropped to a crouch-whistling steel ruffled the hair atop his head-and his own blade sliced across scar-face's stomach. With a shriek the man dropped in a heap, both hands clutching at thick ropes of entrails spilling from his body. A sword thrust from the floor slid under the metal scales of Conan's hauberk, slicing his side, but the Cimmerian's return blow struck through gray-tunic's skull at the eyes.

"Erlik curse you!" the last man screamed. Sly-faced and bony, he had been the last into the room, and had not joined in the wild melee.

"Eight of my men you've slain! Erlik curse all your seed!" Shrieking, he dashed at Conan with frenzied slashes.

The Cimmerian wanted to take this man alive, in condition to answer questions, but the furious attack was too dangerous to withstand for long. A half-mad light of fear and rage gleamed in the man's sweaty face, and he screamed with every blow he made. Three times their blades crossed, then blood was spurting from the stump of sly-face's neck as his head rolled on the floor.

With a clatter of boots mercenaries crowded into the room, led by Machaon, all with swords in hand. "Mitra, Cimmerian," the tattooed man said, scanning the scene of carnage. "Couldn't you have saved just one for us?"

"I didn't think of it," Conan replied drily.

Julia forced her way through the men. When she saw the bodies her hands went to her face, and she screamed. Then her eyes lit on Conan, and her composure returned as quickly as it had gone. "You're wounded!" she said. "Sit on the bed, and I will tend it."

For the first time Conan became aware of a razor's edge of fire along his ribs, and the blood wetting the side of his hauberk. " 'Tis but a scratch," he told her. "Get these out of here," he added to Machaon, gesturing to the corpses.

Machaon told off men to cart the dead away.

Julia, however, was not finished. "Scratch or not," she said firmly, "if it is not tended you may grow ill. Fetch me hot water and clean clothes," she flung over her shoulder, as she attempted to press Conan toward the bed. "Clean, mind you!" To everyone's surprise two of the mercenaries rushed off at her command.

Amused, Conan let her have her way. Muttering to herself she fussed over getting his metal-scaled leather tunic off. Gently she palped the flesh about the long, shallow gash, a thoughtful frown on her face. She seemed unconcerned about his blood on her fingers.

"It seems you are ahead once more," Machaon said ruefully, before leaving them alone.

"What did he mean by that?" she asked absently. "Don't talk. Let the wound lie still. There are no ribs broken, and I will not have to sew it, but after it is bandaged you must take care not to exert yourself.

Perhaps if you lie-" She broke off with a gasp. "Mitra protect us, what is that evil thing?"

Conan followed her suddenly frightened gaze to the bronze figure, lying on the bed and now out of the sack. "Just something I bought as a gift for Machaon," he said, picking it up. She backed away from him. "What ails you, girl? The thing is but dead metal."

"She is right to be affrighted," Boros said from the door. His eyes were fixed on the bronze as on a living demon. "It is evil beyond knowing. I can feel the waves of it from here."

"And I," Julia said shakily. "It means me harm. I can feel it."

Boros nodded sagely. "Aye, a woman would be sensitive to such. The rites of Al'Kiir were heinous. Scores of men fighting to the death while the priestesses chanted, with the heart of the survivor to be ripped from his living body. Rites of torture, with the victim kept alive and screaming on the altar for days. But the most evil of all, and the most powerful, was the giving of women as sacrifices. Or as worse than sacrifices."

"What could be worse than being sacrificed?" Julia asked faintly.

"Being given to the living G.o.d whose image that is," Boros answered, "to be his plaything for all eternity. Such may well have been the fate of the women given to Al'Kiir."

Julia swayed, and Conan snapped, "Enough, old man! You frighten her. I remember now that you mentioned this Al'Kiir once before, when you were drunk. Are you drunk now? Have you dredged all this from wine fumes in your head?"

"I am deathly sober," the gray-bearded man replied, "and I wish I were pickled in wine like a corpse. For that is not only an image of Al'Kiir, Cimmerian. It is a necessary, a vital part of the worship of that horrible G.o.d. I thought all such had been destroyed centuries ago.

Someone attempts to bring Al'Kiir again to this world, and did they have that unholy image they might well succeed. I, for one, would not care to be alive if they do."

Conan stared at the bronze gripped in his big hand. Two men had died attempting to take it from him in the shop. Three more perished in the second attack, and that that had been for the same thing he no longer doubted. Before he himself died, sly-face had accused Conan of slaying about eight of his men. The numbers were right. Those who wanted to bring back this G.o.d knew the Cimmerian had the image they needed. In a way he was relieved. He had had stray thoughts that some of these attacks, including the one just done, were Karela's work.

The men fetching the hot water and bandages entered the room; Conan thrust the image under his blanket roll and signed the others to silence until they were gone.

When the three were alone again, Julia spoke. "I'll tend your wound, but not if you again remove that evil thing from its hiding. Even there I can sense it."

"I'll leave it where it is," the young Cimmerian said, and she knelt beside him and busied herself with bathing and bandaging his wound. "Go on with your telling, Boros," he continued. "How is it this G.o.d cannot find his own way to the world of men? That seems like no G.o.d to fear greatly, for all his horns."

"You make jokes," Boros grumbled, "but there is no humor in this. To tell you of Al'Kiir I must speak of the distant past. You know that Ophir is the most ancient of all the kingdoms now existing in the world, yet few men know aught of its misty beginnings. I know a little.

Before even Ophir was, this land was the center of the worship of Al'Kiir. The strongest and handsomest of men and the proudest and most beautiful of women were brought from afar for the rites of which I have spoken. But, as you might imagine, there were those who opposed the worship of Al'Kiir, and foremost of these were the men who called themselves the Circle of the Right-Hand Path."

"Can you not be shorter about it?" Conan said. "There's no need to dress the tale like a story-teller in the marketplace."

Boros snorted. "Do you wish brevity, or the facts? Listen. The Circle of the Right-Hand Path was led by a man named Avanrakash, perhaps the most powerful pract.i.tioner of white magic who has ever lived."

"I did not know there was such a thing as white magic," Conan said.

"Never have I seen a sorcerer who did not reek of blackness and evil as a dunghill reeks of filth."

This time the old man ignored him. "These men made contact with the very G.o.ds, 'tis said, and concluded a pact. No G.o.d would stand against Al'Kiir openly, for they feared that in a war between G.o.ds all that is might be destroyed, even themselves. Some-Set, supposedly, was one-declared themselves apart from what was to happen. Others, though, granted those of the Right-Hand Path an increase in powers, enough so that they in concert could match a single G.o.d. You can understand that they would not give so much to a single man, for that would make him a demiG.o.d at the least, nor enough to all of them that they could not be vanquished easily by as few as two of the G.o.ds in concert."

Despite himself Conan found himself listening intently. Julia, her mouth hanging open in wonderment, held the ties of the Cimmerian's bandages forgotten as she followed Boros' words.