Che Fan bowed. “Forgive me, Great Lord, if I spoke out of my place.”
“There are more important matters afoot,” Jhandar said. “The barbarian has sailed for Hyrkania. He would not have done so were he merely fleeing. Therefore he must be seeking something, some weapon, to use against me.”
“But there is nothing, Great Lord,” Suitai protested. “All was destroyed.”
“Are you certain of that?” Jhandar asked drily.
“Certain enough to risk all of my plans? I am not. I intend to secure the fastest galley in Aghrapur, and the two of you will sail on the next tide. Kill this Conan, and bring me whatever it is he seeks.”
“As you command, Great Lord,” the Khitans murmured together.
All would be well, Jhandar told himself. He had come too far to fail now. Too far.
XIV
Gray seas rolled under Foam Dancer’s pitching bow, and a mist of foam carried across her deck. The triangular sail stood taut against the sky, where a pale yellow sun had sunk halfway from zenith to western horizon. At the stern a seaman, shorter than Conan but broader, leaned his not inconsiderable weight against the steering oar, but the rest of the crew for the most part lay sprawled among the bales of trade goods.
Conan stood easily, one hand gripping a stay. He was no sailor, but his time among the smugglers of Sultanapur had at least taught his stomach to weather the constant motion of a ship.
Akeba was not so fortunate. He straightened from bending over the rail—as he had done often since the vessel left Aghrapur—and said thickly, “A horse does not move so. Does it never stop?”
“Never,” Conan said. But at a groan from the other he relented. “Sometimes it will be less, and in any case you will become used to it. Look at the Hyrkanians. They’ve made but a single voyage, yet show no illness.”
Tamur and the other nomads squatted some distance in front of the single tail mast, their quiet murmurs melding with the creak of timbers and cording. They passed among themselves clay wine jugs and chunks of ripe white cheese, barely interrupting their talk to fill their mouths.
“I do not want to look at them,” Akeba said, biting off each word. “I swear before Mitra that I know not which smells worse, rotted fish or mare’s milk cheese.”
Nearby, in the waist of the ship, a few of the sailors listened to Sharak. “ …Thus did I strike with my staff of power,” he gestured violently with his walking staff, “slaying three of the demons in the Blue Bull. Great were their lamentations and cries for mercy, but for such foulhearted creatures as they I would know no mercy. Many more would I have transmuted to harmless smoke, blown away on the breeze, but they fled before me, back to their infernal regions, casting balls of fire to hinder my pursuit, as I … .”
“Did he truly manage to harm one of the creatures?” Conan asked Akeba. “He has boasted of that staff for years, but never have I seen more from it than support for a tired back.”
“I know not,” Akeba said. He was making a visible effort to ignore his stomach, but his dark face bore a greenish pallor. “I saw him at the first, leaping about like a Farthii fire-dancer and flailing with his stick at whatever moved, then not again till we had fled to the street. Of the fire, however, I do know. ’Twas Ferian. He threw a lamp at one of the demons, harming the creature not at all, but scattering burning oil across a wall.”
“And burned down his own tavern,” Conan chuckled. “How it will pain him to build anew, though I little doubt he has the gold to do it ten times over.”
Muktar, making his way aft from the necessary —a plank held out from the bow on a frame—paused by Conan. His beady eyes rolled to the sky, then to the Cimmerian’s face. “Fog,” he said, then chewed his thought a moment before adding, “by sunset. The Vilayet is treacherous.” Clamping his mouth shut as though he had said more than he intended, he moved on toward the stern in a walk that would have seemed rolling on land, but here exactly compensated for the motion of the deck.
Conan grimly watched him go. “The further we sail from Aghrapur, the less he talks and the less I trust him.”
“He wants the other half of his gold that you hold back. Besides, with the Hyrkanians we outnumber his crew.”
Mention of the gold was unfortunate. After he paid the captain, Conan would have exactly eight pieces of gold in his pouch. In other times it would have seemed a tidy sum, but not so soon after having had a hundred. He found himself hoping to make a profit on the trade goods, and yet thoughts of profits and trading left a taste in his mouth as if he had been eating the Hyrkanians’ ripest cheese.
“Mayhap,” he said sourly. “Yet he would feed us to the fish and return to his smuggling, were he able. He—What’s the matter, man?”
Eyes bulging, Akeba swallowed rapidly, and with force. “Feed us to—” With a groan he doubled over the rail again, retching loudly and emptily. There was naught left in him to come up.
Yasbet came hurrying from the stern, casting frowns over her shoulder as she picked her way quickly among coiled ropes and wicker hampers of provisions. “I do not like this Captain Muktar,” she announced to Conan. “He leers at me as if he would see me naked on a slave block.”
Conan had declared her saffron robe unsuited for a sea voyage, and she had shown no reluctance to rid herself of that reminder of the cult. Now she wore a short leather jerkin, laced halfway up the front, over a gray wool tunic, with trousers of the same material and knee-high red boots. It was a man’s garb, but the way the coarse wool clung to her form left no doubt there was a woman inside.
“You’ve no need to fear,” Conan said firmly. Perhaps he should have a talk with Muktar in private. With his fists. And the captain was not the only one. His icy gaze caught the leering glances of a dozen sailors directed at her.
“I’ve no fear of anything so long as you are with me,” she said, and innocently pressed a full breast against his arm. At least, he thought it was innocently. “But what is the matter with Akeba, Conan?” She herself had showed no effects from the roughest seas.
“He’s ill.”
“I am so sorry. Perhaps if I brought him some soup?”