"Come," he said at last. "Embracing men is like dropping your steel.

Best save it until we've heard from our last enemy." Gently he pushed her away, then followed the chain around the dead man's leg to the edge of the deck and looked down.

One of the slaves stood on tiptoe, staring over the edge of the deck.

There had been just enough slack in the chain that held him to his sweep to let him use it as a weapon.

"My friend," Conan said. "I don't know if you've earned yourself freedom or impalement." From the slave's gaunt face and lash-marked back, it seemed unlikely that he cared greatly.

The eyes in the gaunt face were still steady. So was the voice. "The master was plotting, and I owed him nothing. You be the judge of your debt to me, you and your woman."

"I'm not-" Illyana began indignantly, then found the strength to laugh.

She was still laughing when Raihna appeared, wiping blood from her sword.

"The two you left me are both down, Conan. One may live to answer questions if you have any. Oh, our friend speaks the truth about the master. He was to join the fight, too, but lost his courage at the last moment."

"Where is he?"

"Clinging for his life to the end of the skiff's line," Raihna said with a wicked grin. "The two hands threw him overboard and cut it loose. They were still well short of the bank when it sank under them.

One of them could swim. I saw him clambering up the bank."

Conan wished sunstroke, snakebite, and thirst upon the treacherous hand and strode aft. The master was no longer pale, but red as if scalded with the effort of hanging to the line.

"For the love of the G.o.ds, don't let me drown!" he wheezed. "I can't swim."

"The G.o.ds don't love traitors and neither do I," Conan said. "Nor does Lord Mishrak."

The master nearly lost his grip on the line. "You serve Mishrak!"

"I can make him interested in you or not, as I choose. It lies in your hands."

"Then have mercy! To name me to Mishrak-would you slay me and all my kin?"

"I'd see you drown without blinking," Conan said brusquely. "Your kin may be worth more. Tell me what you know about these knifeman and I may hold my tongue."

For a man nearly at his last gasp, the master managed to tell a great deal in a short time. It appeared that the knifeman were indeed Lord Houma's. The master had never heard of Master Eremius or the Jewels of Kurag, nor did Conan choose to inform him.

At last the master began to repeat himself. Conan decided that there was little more to be heard worth the danger of losing the man to the river.

He reached down, heaved the man aboard, then shook him over the side like a wet dog. When he finally set the master down, the man's knees buckled. Conan tied his hands behind his back with his own belt.

"You swore-" the master began.

"I didn't swear a thing. You don't need hands to give orders. All you need is a tongue you had best shape to something like respect. Or I may kick you overboard and not trouble Mishrak with the work of learning any more from you."

The master turned pale again and sat mute as a stone, watching Conan turn forward and stride away.

It was a while before they could bring the ferry to a safe landing on the far bank of the Shimak. The master could barely speak at all. The peddler and his boy seemed concerned only that their mule was unhurt.

"Demons take you!" Conan swore at their fifth refusal to help handle the ferry. "Will it help your precious pet if he dies of thirst or drowns in the rapids?"

"When we know Lotus is well, then you can call on us," the peddler said. "Until then, leave us."

"Please, lady," the boy added, addressing Illyana. "If you can do magic, can you do a healing on Lotus? We couldn't pay very much, but we'd miss him a lot."

Conan wrestled notions of spanking the boy or throwing the mule overboard. It helped that Illyana was smiling at the boy.

"My magic isn't the kind that can help animals," she said. "But my sister was raised around horses. Perhaps she can help you."

Conan strode away with a curse, as Raihna knelt to take the mule's left hind foot in both hands.

It was Ma.s.souf, the slave who'd saved Illyana, who finally brought them to safety. Freed from his chains with a key Conan found in the master's purse (along with a good sum in gold that he decided the master had no further use for), Ma.s.souf put his comrades to some sort of regular stroke. With Conan to lend strength if not skill to the steering oar, they eventually crunched ash.o.r.e some ways downstream.

"We're in your debt once more," Illyana said, as she emerged from behind a boulder in clean garb. "You already have your freedom. Is there more we can give? We are not ill-provided with gold-"

"Best not say that too loudly, my lady," Ma.s.souf said. "Even the rocks may have ears. But if you have gold to spare-" For the first time he seemed to lose his self-a.s.surance, so unlike a slave's.

"If you have gold, I beg you to take it to the house of Kimon in Gala and buy the slave girl Dessa. They will ask much for her, comely as she is. But if you free her, I will be your slave if I can repay you no other way."

"What was she to you?" Raihna said. "We are not unwilling-"

"We were betrothed, when-what made us both slaves came about. It was ordered that we be sold separately, and each serve as hostage for the other. Otherwise, we would long since have fled or died together."

Conan heard an echo of his own thoughts as a slave in the young man's words. "What made you turn against your master this time? If Dessa is still a slave-"

"If you perished, Captain, I would not long outlive you. All the slaves would have been impaled as rebels. That is the law. With no hold over Dessa, Kimon might have sold her to Vendhya, or slain her outright." He straightened. "I had nothing to lose by aiding you."

"Mishrak didn't send us out here to rescue slave girls," Conan growled.

"He didn't send you out here to be rescued by slaves, either," Ma.s.souf said cheerfully. "But that's been your fate. Take it as a sign from the G.o.ds, Captain."

"You may take this as a sign to hold your tongue," Conan said, raising one ma.s.sive fist. "I'm a good deal closer than the G.o.ds, too. Never fear. We'll pay a visit to Gala and free your Dessa. We'll even pay for her out of your master's gold." Conan hefted the master's purse. "If Kimon thinks this isn't enough, I'll show him reason to change his mind.

"But don't think you can jaunt along with us beyond Gala! Or I'll send your name to Mishrak, for keeping us from going about his business!"

Seven.

THEY RODE INTO Gala as sunset flamed in the west. The Three Coins, where Dessa had worked, lay shuttered and silent, its garden a rank tangle of weeds. Inquiries of pa.s.sing villagers took them to the Horned Wolf at the far end of the village. Illyana's nostrils flared in distaste as she contemplated the second inn.

"Is that the best we can hope for?"

"That depends, mistress," Conan said. Tales of the battle at the ferry might well have reached Gala already. It still seemed best to continue their masquerade until they knew it was useless.

"On what?"

"On how comfortable you find sleeping in open fields among sheep t.u.r.ds.

The Horned Wolf may offer only lice-ridden straw, but-"