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They nodded, then frowned when he added that Scyra and her father clearly had either great powers or
friends among the Picts.
If Lysenius and his daughter had magick enough to stand off the whole Pictish nation, dealing with
them would be a chancy matter. They would be too cursed powerful! And if so powerful, why did they
need help?
If they had Pictish allies, helping them would mean fighting alongside Picts. Conan had no
blood-debts owed to the Picts, unlike many Cimmerians had, but the ancient feud between Cimmerian
and Pict was nothing he could easily forget. Nor did it necessarily matter what he wanted; the Picts might
choose to slaughter the Cimmerian in one moment and the Bamulas in the next.
These things were true. It was also true that Conan's band had small chance of fighting their way to
anything more than a warrior's death. They would be twenty-odd men fit to fight against all the Picts in
the forests, Picts who knew these forests as they knew their own hands, shot arrows from cover one
would swear could not hide a mouse, and did not shiver on a mild summer night!
Conan had walked into the demon's gate because of his duty to Vuona. It should not come hard to
do worse than fight beside Picts, to save Vuona and all the rest who had honored him by following in his
footsteps.
"Can your father conjure us up some warm clothes and hot food if we enter his service?" Conan
asked. "We will expect more, but those we must have before we can do enough to earn it."
"Can your men not hunt, cook, and clean hides?"
"All of these things take time, Scyra. Time the Picts may not allow us. Do you think whatever
friendship you have for them will save us?"
"Do not call the Picts my friends. At best, they are allies."
She sounded as if she expected to be believed, and for Conan not to ask "Against whom?" Conan
decided that it did not matter. Anything that took his band closer to safety would help, and to obtain that,
he would swear any oath. If Lysenius needed their aid at all, he was not powerful enough to punish them
for breaking such an oath, and the band could take its chances with the Picts. Fed and garbed for this
wilderness, those chances would be better than they had now.
"As well. I will never call a Pict my friend, but I may take a day off from killing them if they do the
same for me."
"That I believe my father and I can promise. We have furs and hides, salt meat and dry nuts, and a
part of the cave where you will be safe from the Picts as if you were at home in the Black Kingdoms."
"Also, I'll be bound, where you will be as safe from us." Scyra looked indignant, but Conan held up
a hand. "No insult taken and I hope none given. In your place, I'd do the same. We've no need for a
Zingaran love-temple feast, as long as we understand each other."
Conan watched Scyra sidelong as he translated for Govindue and Kubwande. She seemed to
understand what he was offering and what his doubts were. He hoped he would not have to put into
words his intention to end both her and her father at any sign of treachery. That would be a sad waste of
a fine woman, apart from everything else.
The two Bamula chiefs each had to go apart and talk to their followers, while Conan and Scyra sat
cross-legged facing one another. She assumed that posture as easily as any Pict or Khitan, and seemed
as calm as if she had been waiting in a nobleman's hall for the horses to be brought up.
Out of the corner of his eye, Conan saw Vuona flatten herself against a tree, as she thought out of
his sight. He wanted to go over and shake some sense into her. If she wandered about by night in this
land to spy on him out of jealousy, the Picts would be making magick with her skull before three dawns,
if they found anything in it.
The other chiefs returned.
"Will the wise-woman swear blood-oath to treat us with honor, even if she must go against her
father?" Kubwande asked.
"That demands too much!" Govindue exclaimed. "The gods would frown on "
"The gods would spit on us from a high cloud if we did not at least ask," Kubwande said.
"Lad young chief not all fathers are as yours was. I learned that before my manhood ordeal."
There was some dark secret about his childhood lurking in Kubwande's voice, one Conan would
have given a barrel of good Nemedian wine to know. Doubtless also it was something that torture could
not wring from the warrior.
Conan turned to Scyra and translated the question. He saw her flinch, and even in the darkness he
could see her face lose some of its color.
"Please. If my father knew "
"Does your father not know about your coming here?" Conan wanted to roar loud enough to crack
branches and shake birds' nests out of the trees. He had wits enough to realize that would only frighten
Scyra out of hers, besides warning Picts half a days march away.
"He doubtless knows by now that I am not in the cave," Scyra said. Conan heard the effort it took
for her to control her voice.
"Then you do not come here by his command?"
"I do not come here against it, either."
"You might have said that."
"You, my friend, might have asked." She had the impudence to grin. Conan resisted the urge to
shake her, then suddenly could not resist the urge to grin back.
"Scyra, I think you'd have the courage to go against your father if needs be. If these chiefs will take
my word for it, you need swear no oath."
He translated. Govindue was almost eager to forget the oath, Kubwande reluctant. The older man
at last yielded however, muttering as he did, that he seemed to spend all his time running about on
matters begun by women&
***
About this time, Lysenius's ghost-ear came within hearing of the meeting place by the cliff. Tonight it
was carried within an owl, because the Picts most likely to be about were of the Owls and the bird was
taboo to their hunters. Lysenius had not forgotten the time he sent a ghost-ear hawk into the land of the
Snake Clan and next saw it as feathers on a chiefs headdress.
The sorcerer had enough command of the owls keen night-sight to recognize Scyra. He also saw
what proved his judgment about the men of the band with whose leaders Scyra was meeting. Their
ghost-voice was that of folk of the Black Kingdoms. The world-walker had finally won him what he
wished most of all: warriors with no kin in the Pictish lands or anywhere close enough for them to reach
him before he had done his work.
He would brew his vengeance with their blood, and then his daughter would see him as he truly
was.
Was she, in her delusions about him, warning them? And if she was, were they believing her? The
ghost-ear should warn him of that much, even in the modest brain of an owl. Better by far was a man,
even a Pict, but Lysenius had decided against that before he went into his ghost-ear trance. The Owl
Clan would not be pleased if these black warriors slaughtered one of their men while he was too
bespelled to defend himself.
The owl swooped low, as it might have swooped chasing a squirrel on a low branch. It passed
within easy ghost-ear hearing of Scyra and those sitting with her.
The bird should have sent all their secrets across the nighted forest to Lysenius, waiting on his pallet
of scented needles. Instead, it heard nothing closer than the warriors by the cliff.
It was as if Scyra and those sitting opposite her had no ghost-voices, which was impossible.
Everyone had a ghost-voice, from the gods down to the lowest insects, even to the worms crawling
beneath the earth. Sometimes it was all but impossible for Lysenius to separate the voices of those he
wished to hear from the din of all the rest.
Now, however, Scyra and three men might have been outside the common world for all that the
ghost-ear could hear them. On his pallet, Lysenius twitched, writhed, bit his lip for self-command, and
contrived to avoid losing his mastery of the spell. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]