Conan The Freelance by Steve Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

selkies took any notice of Tair and Conan, they gave no sign, but as Conan neared two spans above the ground, the yelling attackers abruptly turned and squinted into the darkness.
    Conan leaped the final distance, pulled his sword forth with a rasp of leather and a ring of tempered iron, and charged after Tair, who pursued the suddenly fleeing selkies. The tree dweller might be a faster climber, but Conan’s long and powerful legs gave him the edge on the ground. In two heartbeats, the Cimmerian passed Tair and began gaining on the retreating selkies. Conan had time to wonder why the attackers fled. Surely one small tree dweller and one somewhat larger Cimmerian could not have frightened them so badly? Most odd.
    That was something to worry over later, though. Conan began to overtake the selkie nearest the rear of the running group, and he had to decide how best to stop the straggler without killing him. A sword thrust to one leg? Aye, that would do it.
    The starlight reflected from the blued iron blade as the running man took aim at the intended target and prepared to strike
    At that moment, however, the fleeing selkie must have sensed his danger. Whether he heard Conan’s thudding footsteps or caught some peripheral movement or detected his pursuer with some sense unknown to men, it mattered not, for he glanced over his shoulder, saw Conan, and dodged sharply just as Conan jabbed with the point of his heavy sword.
    The intended thrust missed its mark, and the lack of expected resistance off-balanced Conan the slightest bit. In itself this would have been of little consequence; however, at that precise moment a gnarled root loomed from the dark ground, Conan’s bare foot connected with the root, and he tripped. Such was the Cimmerian’s momentum that he took to the air, launched from the earth in a headlong dive. Conan uttered a curse he had first heard his father speak when once the smith had accidentally struck his hand with a forge hammer.
    Fortune smiled upon the endangered selkie, only to turn its back with a frown an instant later. The selkie saw Conan’s mishap, must have thought it an intentional leap, and dodged again. Alas for the selkie, he mistook the angle of his pursuer’s flight and instead of leaving Conan’s path, he shifted the wrong way; realizing his error, the selkie tried to twist away, succeeding only in stopping cold.
    Conan smashed into the startled selkie with all of his not inconsiderable weight, stretching the creature out and slamming him facedown into the ground with the man on his back. The two slid for perhaps three spans, the Cimmerian youth riding the figure beneath him as a boy rides a sled across new snow.
    The other selkies quickly gained the cover of night and disappeared.
    Tair arrived a moment later and skidded to a stop. “I am the best spring dancer in the trees,” he said as Conan stood, “but you must teach me that leap, I have never seen anything quite like it.”
    Conan looked down at the unconscious selkie, then at Tair. He had the presence of mind to shrug. “That? That was nothing, a child’s trick where I come from.”
    “Shall we take this one back and question him?”
    “Aye,” Conan began.
    He was interrupted by the sound of approaching footfalls. Conan spun away from the downed selkie; sword held ready, but it was a contingent from the trees and not the selkie’s comrades.
    “The sacred Seed!” one of the men yelled. “They have stolen the sacred Seed!”
    Back at the tree in which the god-seeing ceremony had been held, Conan listened as Cheen explained.
    “The trees of our grove are the mightiest in all the world,” she said, “but it was not always so. Twenty generations past, the most powerful of our medicine women created a spell that caused normal trees to grow thrice or more times their usual size.”
    Conan nodded, but did not speak. He looked at the empty chest at her feet.
    “But it was not enough that they should grow. The ground here