Her pale, dark-eyed beauty became icy still. She let her cloak gap open to the floor; Taramenon gasped, and sweat beaded his forehead. “You will come to my bed,” she began softly, but abruptly her words became lashes of a whip tipped with steel, “when I summon you there. You will come, yes, perhaps sooner than you dream, certainly sooner than you deserve, but at my command.” Slowly and calmly she covered herself once more. “Now when will the image be delivered to your hand?”
“The signal that she has it,” he mumbled sulkily, “will be a man in my red surcoat standing before the main gate of the royal palace at noon. That night at dusk I will meet her at a hut in the forest.”
Synelle nodded thoughtfully. “You say this woman is beautiful? A beautiful woman who does what men do, who leads men rather than belonging to them. She must have great pride. I shall be at that meeting with you, Taramenon.” From the corner of her eye she saw a slave creeping down the corridor toward them, and rounded on him, furious at the interruption. “Yes?” she snapped.
Falling to his knees, the man pressed his face to the marble tiles. “A message, my gracious lady, from the noble Aelfric.” Without lifting his head he held up a folded parchment.
Synelle frowned and snatched the message. Aelfric was Seneschal of Asmark, her ancestral castle, a man who served her well, but who liked as well the fact that she seldom visited or troubled him. It was not his way to invite her attention. Hastily she broke the lump of wax sealed with Aelfric’s ring.
To My Most Gracious Lady Synelle,
With pain I send these tidings. In the day past have vile brigands most cowardly struck at my Lady’s manor-farms, burning fields, touching barns, driving oxen and cattle into the forests. Even as your humble servant writes these dire words, the night sky glows red with new fires. I beseech my Lady to send aid, else there will be no crops left, and starvation will be the lot of her people.
I remain obediently,
your faithful servitor,
Aelfric
Angrily she crumpled the letter in her fist. Bandits attacking her holdings? When she held the throne she would see every brigand in the country impaled on the walls of Ianthe. For now Aelfric would have to fend for himself.
But wait, she thought. With the power of Al’Kiir she could seize the throne, overawe both lords and peasants, yet would it not be even better had she some incident to point to that showed she was more than other women? Did she take Conan’s warriors into the countryside and quell these bandits herself … .
She prodded the slave with her foot. “I am leaving for the country. Tell the others to prepare. Go.”
“Yes, my lady,” the slave said, backing away on his knees. “At once, my lady.” Rising, he bowed deeply and darted down the hall.
“And you, Taramenon,” she went on. “Set a man to watch for this woman’s signal and bring me word, then ride you for Castle Asmark. Await me there, and this night your waiting will be ended.” She almost laughed at the lascivious anticipation that painted his visage. “Go,” she said, in the same tone she had used with the slave, and Taramenon ran as quickly as the other had.
It was all a matter of maintaining proper control she told herself. Then she went in search of writing materials, to send a summons to the barbarian.
13
Conan straightened from checking his saddle girth and glared about him at the assemblage pausing for yet another rest at Synelle’s command. Three and twenty high-wheeled carts, each drawn by two span of yoked oxen, were piled high with what the Countess of Asmark considered necessary for removing to her castle in the country, rolled feather mattresses and colorful embroidered silk cushions, casks of the rarest wines from Aquilonia and Corinthia and even Khauran, packages of delicate viands that might not be readily available away from the capital, chests upon chests of satins and velvets and laces.
Synelle herself traveled in a gilded litter, borne by eight muscular slaves and curtained with fine silken net to admit the breeze yet keep the sun from her alabastrine skin. Her four blonde tirewomen crouched in the shade of a cart, fanning themselves against the midday heat. Their lithe sleekness drew many eyes among the thirty mercenaries surrounding the carts, but the women were attuned only to listening for the next command from the litter. Nearly three score other servants and slaves hunkered out of the sun or tended to errands, drivers for the oxen, maids, seamstresses, even two cooks who were at that moment arguing vociferously over the proper method of preparing hummingbirds’ tongues.
“Watch the trees, Erlik take you!” Conan shouted. Abashedly the mercenaries tore their eyes from the blondes to scan the forest that ran along two sides of the broad, grassy meadow where they had halted.
The Cimmerian had opposed halting; he had opposed each stop they had made thus far. Slowed by the oxcarts, they would not arrive at Synelle’s castle until the following afternoon did they make the best speed the lumbering animals were capable of. Even one night in the forests with this strange cortege was more than he might wish for, much less risking a second such camp. A pavillion would have to be erected for Synelle to sleep in, another in which she would bathe, and yet a third for her tire-women’s mats. There would be a fire to warm Synelle, fires for the cooks, fires to keep the maids from becoming affrighted of the night, and all no doubt large enough to announce their presence and location to anyone with eyes.
Machaon led his horse over to Conan. “I’ve word of Karela, Cimmerian,” he said. “I crossed paths last night at the Blue Bull with a weedy scoundrel, a panderer who lost his women, and thus his income, to another, and whose tongue was free after his third pitcher of ale. I meant to speak of it earlier, but what with our patron’s summons arriving hard on your heels this morn I forgot.”
“What did you hear?” Conan asked eagerly.
“She uses her own name again, for one thing. She has not been long in Ophir, but already some twenty rogues follow her, and she is making reputation enough that Iskandrian has put twenty pieces of gold on her head.”
“Such a small price must anger her,” Conan laughed. “I fear not it will remain so low for long. But what of getting a message to her, or finding her? What did he say of that?”
“After a time the fellow seemed to realize he was babbling, and shut his teeth.” At the Cimmerian’s look of disappointment Machaon smiled. “But he let fall enough for me to question others. North of Ianthe, an hour’s ride on a good horse, part of an ancient keep still stands, overgrown by the Sarelian Forest. There Karela camps her band on most nights. I am sure of it.”
Conan grinned broadly. “I’ll make her admit she has no grievance against me if I have to paddle her rump until she does.”
“A treatment I could recommend for others,” the tattooed man said with a significant look at the litter.
Conan followed his look and sighed. “We have been halted long enough,” was all he said.
As the young Cimmerian walked toward the net-curtained palanquin he tried to make some slight sense of these last two days, not for the first time that morning. The previous day and night seemed like a dream, but a fever-born dream of madness, with lust burning all else from his mind. Had what he remembered—Synelle’s sweat-slicked thighs and wanton moans flashed in his mind—actually happened? It all seemed distant and dim.