Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza by Roland Green Read Free Book Online Page A

curses rattled jugs and bottles on the taproom’s shelves. Finally Rog held up a hand. “It’s a lawful order, which you swore to obey. Hand it over, or I’ll strike you off the books and you go take your chances with the thief-takers. We’ll need most of it to pay for the damage to the Golden Lion.”
    Conan undid his purse from his belt and flung it down on the table. His look at Tharmis Rog was that of one wolf to another, when intending to challenge the leadership of the pack. Rog returned the look.
    “Captain, will you sign for this?” Rog said, turning to the youth. Conan kept his mouth shut as the youth stepped forward and with a quill signed the name “Klarnides” under Conan’s name in the ledger.
    A collection of street sweepings under a master-at-arms with-an itchy palm, who had the boy-captain in his pocket as well. It was not the way Conan would have chosen to leave Aquilonia. But anything else would put a price on his head in the mightiest of the Hyborian kingdoms.
    Also, the Cimmerian knew that he could face anything the Thanza Rangers might fling at him, Tharmis Rog included, in exchange for the few days he would need to find a way of deserting. It might even be worth staying with them all the way to the mountains, where a born hillman could cover his tracks from city-bred pursuers as easily as a babe sucked in its mother’s milk!
    But before he departed, both Captain Klarnides and Master-at-Arms Tharmis Rog would have cause to remember “Sellus the Northerner.”

    III
     
    “Here, Countess. Something to warm you.”
    The speaker not only woke Lysinka; his use of the pet name told her that he was one of the handful of old comrades entitled to use it. No one else had ever died for calling Lysinka the “Countess,” but cracked pates and broken arms were not unknown.
    She unwrapped herself from the layers of oiled leather cloaks and woollen blankets in which she had slept cocooned from the mountain weather. She wore nothing within her sleep cocoon, but the man holding the bowl of porridge did not look away as she emerged nude into the grey morning.
    That was the law among her band—a woman might be bare without being willing. Men—even one woman—had died for breaking the law.
    “Hullo, Fergis,” she said. “Anything happen during the night?”
    “Not a cursed thing. You did well to sleep the night through.”
    “I slept the night through because several strong-willed folk—a red-bearded Bossonian among them— would give me no peace unless I did.” She drew an ivory comb from her sleeping gear with one hand and a tunic and breeches with the other.
    Fergis had the grace to flush, as far as she could judge under the dirt that now clung to him as to all of the band. Ten days’ march into the Thanzas, with no baths save what they could snatch in icy streams, had made them all as grimy as charcoal-burners or chimney sweeps.
    More than one of the men had dared to wonder aloud if this chase after the flying chest would lead anywhere save to blisters and bear-clawings. Lysinka hid her own doubts, but let the men grumble. She knew that she need not worry unless the grumbling stopped and the men marched in sullen silence.
    As Lysinka pulled on her clothes, she felt a drop of rain on her shoulder. A moment later she felt another. Hastily she snatched for the porridge, knowing it might be her last chance at hot food this day.
    She had just finished scraping the wooden bowl empty when the skies opened and the camp seemed to be plunged under a waterfall. Fergis cursed, and from the trees around them other voices echoed his curses.
    “Have our people ready to move out,” Lysinka said. Her lilting command cut through the curses and somehow even rose above the rain.
    Fergis’s bushy eyebrows rose. “In this?” he muttered, reluctant to question any of her orders but concerned as always that she should give none the band would not obey.
    “We’ll be warmer on the move than sitting and feeling