Conan: Road of Kings by Karl Edward Wagner Read Free Book Online

haberdashery here,” Mordermi smiled. “A fine rapier perhaps? We have several to choose from as to edge and blade length. Or do you prefer the hand-and-a half sword with which you dispatched Captain Rinnova?”
    “A broadsword would suit me better,” Conan hazarded. He would have preferred the two-handed double-edged straight sword, but doubted that he would find one readily here.
    “Of course,” Mordermi remarked. “You’ll want to choose your own from those we have, so I’ll take you to our storeroom. My men and I steal only the very finest for ourselves.”
    “I’ll pay you for all this when I can,” Conan remembered.
    “Pay us?” Mordermi clapped his shoulder. “Conan, I told you it’s all stolen. Besides, without your intercession this morning, my rescue attempt would have been in just past the nick of time.”
    “We but distribute to the people the products of their own labor, wrongfully appropriated from them by an unjust economic structure…”
    “Oh, shut up, Santiddio!” Mordermi groaned. “Conan isn’t joining us to hear your prattle!”
    “But you are joining us?” Santiddio asked him.
    Conan shrugged. “I joined Rimanendo’s army in good faith; his government betrayed me. I killed an overbearing bully in a fight he demanded; General Korst would have hanged me. I don’t quite understand your fine talk and theories, Santiddio, but I owe a grudge against Rimanendo and his tools—and I owe Mordermi for a sword.”

Four

Steel and Dreamers
    “He and his friends may argue and posture like scatterbrained fools, but Santiddio’s ideas are basically sound ones,” Mordermi commented.
    Somewhat defensively, so Conan thought. He studied the blade with a critical eye. There were several broadswords in the storeroom that Mordermi had dubbed his arsenal; Santiddio and his sister had left them while Conan made his selection. This one had a blade of watered steel that claimed Conan’s attention—such blades were uncommon in the west.
    “The two of you strike me as unlikely comrades,” Conan said, testing the sword’s balance.
    “Why not?” Mordermi laughed bitterly. “The Pit is a haven for frustrated dreamers—be their dreams of wealth and station, or of artistic and social ideals. Rimanendo rules over Zingara like a bloated vampire, growing fat on our blood while his nobles devise new schemes to steal our wealth and our freedom. In another realm Santiddio would be free to put forward his arguments in the public forum—there to be ridiculed as a fool, or honored as a champion of the common folk. In Kordava they hang those whose dreams tempt them to speak out against an oppressive tyrant, just as they hang those whose dreams tempt them to steal the riches that tyranny has denied them.”
    “Then you are part of the ‘people’s army’ of the White Rose?”
    “With all respect to Santiddio’s feelings, the White Rose is a debating society, not an army by any stretch. Santiddio’s friends represent the greatest intellects of Zingara, or so they tell me. They can quote to you from the massed political and social wisdom of countless philosophers and thinkers, living or long dead, in any language—but half of them couldn’t guess which end of a sword to grasp if you gave them three chances.”
    “I like this one,” Conan decided. It was a fine weapon—a straight, wide, single-edged blade, with basket hilt and a complex guard of loops and shells. The watering was extremely delicate, and the layers seemed of infinite number.
    “That is a splendid broadsword, isn’t it,” Mordermi agreed. “I’d be curious to know its history—the hilt isn’t original. I’m certain. I’d consider carrying that one myself perhaps, but the hilt is a bit clumsy for my hand, and a rapier is a more versatile weapon than the broadsword, I find. It’s a lighter, more nimble blade—gives you a long reach in fencing, with the edge for the slash and the point for the thrust. Tradition still demands