Part 16 (1/2)

”So Oyzhik has fled,” Raihna said grimly. ”Do we have much to fear from those he may have left behind?”

”Oyzhik was a fool and likely to choose other fools to do his work. We have more to fear if Count Syzambry chose them,” Conan said. He drained half his cup of wine at a gulp, as if this could wash the words from his mouth.

At least it was wine good enough for a man's tongue and belly instead of for scrubbing the jakes! The wine was one of the fruits of Conan's work the day before, along with the furs on Raihna's bed and the embroidered Khitan-silk chamber robe she wore.

”We'll learn more in the next day or two,” Conan added. ”My company has the work of studying all those traps Oyzhik promised to set. We know that he planned to either make them harmless to Syzambry's men or to turn them against us. Beyond that, we've yet to learn.”

Conan poured more wine into Raihna's offered cup. ”Decius simply wanted to ruin all the traps. He said they were no honorable way of fighting.

I told him that Syzambry had already p.i.s.sed into the wind what honor he had. Didn't we owe the king and the princess at least the knowledge that we gave the son of a hundred fathers a decent fight?”

”Decius seems to know what-”

”In Turan, Decius would be called a child! Pitied or ignored until he offended someone who'd squash him like a c.o.c.kroach!”

”Conan, I think the wine speaks now, not your heart. I was going to say that Decius seems to know what will let him sleep of nights. So do you.

Or was it another Cimmerian named Conan whom Decius s.n.a.t.c.hed from death today?”

Conan confessed his guilt and begged for mercy. Raihna laughed. ”I will grant it if you pour yourself more wine and join me in a toast.” He obeyed and she raised her cup.

”To Captain Conan and the Second Company of the Palace Guard of the Border Kingdom! May they both continue to rise!”

Conan drank, but not without some doubts. Giving him the Second Company was just and wise, if the men would obey him. Making the company's old captain chief over the Guard in Oyzhik's place was not so wise, unless one believed that the honor would sober the man.

Decius would surely end having to be captain over the Guard as well as his own men. As good a captain as he was, he still lacked the art of being in three places at once, or of doing without sleep, food, and visits to the jakes! The best captain could not defy nature without someone paying a price, most commonly in blood.

It was also somewhat in Conan's mind that Decius was following in an ancient tradition. If you wished to court a woman, and had it in your power, you advanced, honored, or enriched her kin.

Well, Decius would learn that he could not follow that path very far before he ran afoul of worse dangers than any of Oyzhik's traps.

Raihna's tongue would be the first, but hardly the last.

Raihna had stood beside Conan while they drank. Now she rested one hand on his right arm and leaned gently against him. Not much to Conan's surprise, it seemed that she wore nothing beneath the chamber robe. He slipped a hand under the garment and found that he'd judged rightly.

The hand wandered up across a firm flank, then climbed a supple back.

Raihna turned, opened the robe, and slipped out of it. It made a blue and gold pool as she climbed onto Conan's lap. Then she let out a yelp of mock fear as the Cimmerians' ma.s.sive arms caught her up and flung her across the room onto the bed.

”I think it's lying down that was on your mind, woman!” Conan said.

Raihna laughed, and she was still laughing when her arms and lips welcomed him to her bed.

Chapter 8.

Good wine and long loving meant late sleep for both Conan and Raihna.

It was as well that the summons to an audience with King Eloikas came well into the morning and that the audience itself was not before noon.

The Cimmerian and the Bossonian alike were able to break their fast and garb themselves in their best without haste.

King Eloikas greeted them with something very like a smile. Decius, standing beside the throne, had his face set in a blank mask, but Conan judged that he was not displeased either. The captain-general's eyes followed Raihna, however, from the moment she entered to the moment that Eloikas bid her step back while Conan knelt before the throne.