"The Katari?"

"The a.s.sa.s.sins for which Vendhya is so famous. You mean you did not even know the name?" Vyndra shook her head and shuddered. "They kill, sometimes for gold, sometimes for whim it seems, but always the death is dedicated to the vile G.o.ddess Katar."

"That name I have heard," he said, "somewhere."

Vyndra sniffed. "No doubt on the lips of a man. It is a favorite oath of Vendhyan men. No woman would be so foolish as to call on one dedicated to endless death and carnage."

She was clearly shaken, and he could sense her withdrawing into herself. Frantically he sought another topic, one fit for a woman's ears. One of her poets would no doubt compose a verse on the spot, he thought bitterly, but all the verse he knew was set to music, and most of it would made a trull blush.

"A man of your country did say something out of the ordinary to me today," he said slowly, and latched on to the one remark out of several that would bear repeating. "He thought my eyes marked me as demonsp.a.w.n.

A pan-kur, he called it. You obviously do not believe it, else you'd have run screaming rather than inviting me to drink your wine."

"I might believe it," she said, "if I had not talked to learned men who told me of far-off lands where the men are all giants with eyes like sapphires. And I rarely run screaming from anything." A small smile had returned to play on her lips. "Of course, if you actually claim to be a pan-kur, I would never doubt the man who calls himself Patil."

Conan flushed slightly. Everyone seemed to know the name was not his, but he could not bring himself to say that he had lied about it. "I have fought demons," he said, "but I am none of their breed."

"You have fought demons?" Vyndra exclaimed. "Truly? I saw demons once, a score of them, but I cannot imagine anyone actually fighting one, no matter what the legends say."

"You saw a score of demons?" Despite his own experience seemingly to the contrary, Conan was aware that demons-and wizards, for that matter-were not so thick on the ground as most people imagined. It was just that he had bad luck in the matter, though Hordo insisted it was a curse. "A score in one place?"

Vyndra's dark eyes flashed. "You do not believe me? Many others were there. Five years ago in the palace of King Bhandarkar, he who was then the court wizard, Zail Bal, was carried off in full view of scores of people. The demons were rajaie, which drink the life from their victims. You see, I know whereof I speak."

"Did I say I did not believe you?" Conan asked. He would believe in twenty demons in one place-much less anyone escaping alive from that place-when he saw it, but he hoped devoutly that his luck was never quite that bad.

A small crease appeared between Vyndra's brows, as though she doubted his sincerity. "If you have truly fought demons-and you see I do not question your claim-then you must certainly stay at my palace in Ayodhya. Why, perhaps even Naipal would come to meet a man who has fought demons. What a triumph that would be!"

It might have sounded promising, he thought ruefully, if not for this other man. "Do you wish me there, or this Naipal?"

"I want both of you, of course. Think of the wonderment. You, a huge warrior, obviously from a land shrouded in distance and mystery, a fighter against demons. He, the court wizard of Vendhya, the-"

"A wizard," Conan breathed heavily. Hordo would believe he had done this apurpose, or else he would mutter about the curse.

"I said that," Vyndra said. "He is the most mysterious man in Vendhya.

No more than a handful other than King Bhandarkar, and perhaps Karim Singh, know his face. Women have arranged a.s.signations with him merely in the hope they might be able to say they could recognize him."

"I have never met the man," he said, "nor intend to, yet I do not like him."

Her laugh was low and wicked. "He keeps the a.s.signations, too, with those women pretty enough. They are gone for days and return on the point of exhaustion with stories of pa.s.sion beyond belief, but when they are asked of his features, they grow vague. The visage they describe could belong to any handsome man. Still, the transports of rapture they speak of are such that I myself have considered-"

With a curse Conan hurled the golden goblet aside. Vyndra squeaked as he pounced, catching her face between his hands. "I do not want you to attract some sorcerer," he told her heatedly. "I do not want you because you are from a country distant from mine or because you would seem strange to the people of my land. I want you because you are a beautiful woman and you make my blood burn." There was invitation on her face and when he kissed her, she tangled her hands in his hair as though it were she who held him, not the reverse.

When at last she snuggled against his chest with a sigh, there was a mischievous twinkle in her big dark eyes, and small white teeth indented her full lower lip. "Do you intend to take me now?" she asked softly and then added as he growled in his throat, "With Alyna watching?"

Conan did not take his eyes from her face. "She is still here?"

"Alyna is faithful to me in her fashion and rarely leaves my side."

"And you do not intend to send her away." It was not a question.

"Would you have me separated from my faithful tirewoman?" Vyndra asked with a wide-eyed smile.

Clearing his throat, Conan got to his feet. Alyna was there, bright eyes glinting with amus.e.m.e.nt above her veil. "I have half a mind," he said conversationally, "to switch both your rumps till you have to be tied across your saddles like bolts of silk. Instead, I think I will see if there is an honest trull in this caravan, for your games bore me."

He stalked out on that, thinking he had quieted her, but laughing words followed him before he let the tent flap fall. "You are a violent man, O one who calls himself Patil. You will be a wonderment to my friends."

Chapter XV.

There were panderers on the outskirts of the encampment, as Conan had known there would be in a caravan so large and going so far. Two of them. Karim Singh might have his own women along, as would the Vendhyan n.o.blemen and even many of the merchants; but for the rest-for guards and camel drivers and mule handlers-from Khawarism to Secunderam was a long way without a woman. Except for the panderers.

They had set out tables made of planks laid on barrels before their tents, with casks to sit on and drink while a man waited his turn for the use of the tents. Cheap wine they gave away to those who bought their other merchandise, sour wine served by sweet women, slender jades and voluptuous trulls, tall wenches and short. Soft, willing flesh. If the gilded bra.s.s girdles low on their hips and their strips of diaphanous silk were more than a purdhana dancer wore, all could be removed for a coin, for women were the goods sold here.

And yet, Conan realized, it was not a woman he wanted. He sat on an upended keg before the second panderer's tents, a leathern jack of thin wine in his fist, a slender wench wiggling on his knee as she bit at his neck with small white teeth. He could not pretend disinterest in her, but she seemed a distraction, if a pleasant one. A buxom jade at the first panderer's tent had been the same. Though he was not yet twenty, he had long since learned to curb his anger when need be, but on that day he had held it in check with Karim Singh and lashed it down with Kandar. And then there had been Vyndra. Now he wanted to loose the rage, to strike out at something. He wanted one of the other men fondling a woman to challenge him for the doxy on his lap, or two, or five. Hammering fists, even b.l.o.o.d.y steel, would drain the anger coiled in his belly like a serpent dripping venom from its fangs.

The slender trull snuggled against him contentedly as he stood with her in his arms, then stared at him in consternation when he plopped her bottom onto the keg. "I am not a Vendhyan," he told her, dropping coins in her hands. "I do not take out my anger on others than those who have earned it." Her look was one of total uncomprehension, but he spoke for his own benefit as much as hers.

The raucous laughter of the panderers' tents followed him into the encampment. Many of the merchants' tents were darkened now, and silence lay even on the picket lines of animals behind each, though the thin sounds of zither and flute, cithern and tambor, drifted from the n.o.bles' portion of the camp. Sleep, he thought. Sleep, then journey on the morrow, then sleep again and journey again. The antidote would be found in Vendhya, and the answers he sought would come, but he would dissipate the tightness of anger with sleep.

The fire burned low in front of the lone tent shared by Kang Hou and his nieces. A Khitan servant poking the embers was all that moved among the blanket-wrapped shapes of smugglers scattered about the merchant's tent. But Conan stopped short of the dim light of that fire, a jangling in the back of his head that he recognized as a warning that something was wrong.

His ears strained for sounds below normal hearing, and his eyes sought the shadows between the other tents. The sounds were all about him now that he listened. The rasp of leather on leather, the soft clink of metal, the pad of softly placed feet. Shadows shifted where they should be still.

"Hordo!" Conan roared, broadsword coming into his hand. "Up, or die in your blankets!" Before the warning was past his lips, smugglers were rolling to their feet with swords in hand. And Vendhyans as well, afoot and mounted, were upon them.

To attempt to make his way to his companions was madness, the Cimmerian knew. They did not fight to hold a piece of ground but to escape, and every man would be seeking to break through the ring of steel. He had no time for thought on the matter. He had killed one man and was crossing swords with a second by the time he shouted the last word.

Jerking his blade free of the second corpse, he all but decapitated another Vendhyan, searching all the while for his path to freedom, ignoring the screams and clanging steel around him as he fought his way away from the Khitan's tent. A turban-helmed horseman appeared in front of him, lance gone but tulwar lifted to slash. The Vendhyan's fierce, killing grin turned to shock as Conan leaped to grapple with him.

Unable to use his sword so close, the horseman beat at Conan with the hilt as the horse danced in circles. The big Cimmerian could not use his broadsword either, merely wrapping that arm about the Vendhyan, but his dagger quickly slid between the metal plates of the brigantine hauberk. The horseman screamed, and again as he was toppled from the saddle. Then Conan was scrambling into the other's place, seizing the reins and slamming his heels into the horse's flanks.

The calvary-trained animal burst into a gallop, and Conan, lying low in the saddle, guided it between the tents. Merchants and their servants, roused by the tumult, jumped shouting from the path of the speeding rider. Suddenly there was a man who did not leap aside, a caravan guard who dropped to one knee and planted the base of his spear. The horse shrieked as the long blade thrust into its chest, and abruptly Conan was flying over the crumpling animal's head. All of the breath was driven from him by the fall, yet the Cimmerian struggled to rise. The guard rushed in for an easy kill of the man on his knees, tulwar raised high. With what seemed his last particle of strength, Conan drove his sword into the other's chest. The force of the man's charge carried him into the big Cimmerian, knocking him over. Still fighting for breath, Conan pushed the man away, extricated his blade, and staggered into the shadows. Half-falling, he pressed his back against a tent.

Wakened merchants shouted on all sides. "What happens?"

"Are we attacked?"

"Bandits!"

"My goods!"

Vendhyan soldiers shoved the merchants aside, beating at them with the b.u.t.ts of their lances. "Go back to your tents!" was their cry. "We seek spies! Go back to your tents, and you will not be harmed! Anyone outside will be arrested!"

Spies, Conan thought. He had found his fight, but there was yet a trickle of his previous anger remaining, a trickle growing stronger.

Moments before, escape from the encampment had been paramount in his mind. Now he thought he would first visit the man who considered all foreigners spies.

Like a hunting leopard, the big Cimmerian flowed from shadow to shadow, blending with the dark. Curious eyes were easily avoided, for there were few abroad now. No one moved between the tents save soldiers, announcing their coming with creak of harness and clink of armor and curses that they must search when they would be sleeping. Silently Conan moved into deeper shadows as the Vendhyans appeared, watching with a feral grin as they marched or rode past him, sometimes within arm's reach, yet always unseeing.

Karim Singh's tent glowed with light within, and two fires blazed high before the canopied entrance. The fires made the dim light filtered through golden silk at the rear seem almost as dark as the surrounding light. A score of Vendhyan cavalry sat their horses like statues in a ring about the tent, facing outward, ten paces at least separating each man from the next.