His weapon training, by contrast, had grown routine, even interesting, since being taken over by Durwald. And his horse pacing was tolerable under the lax supervision of Arga, the farrier. After the perils of the first days, Conan was beginning to feel more at ease among these Nemedians, vain as they were of their petty local crotchets and customs. It might do to linger here at the Manse, but not without a ready escape route and some material provision for his survival. He glanced carefully through the arch before entering the ground-floor corridor. He a.s.sumed that his movements around the place were watched.

Going to the kitchen, he did his share in helping to lay out the servants' dinner, then did more than his share in consuming it. The other menials had grown to accept him, even to like him. This was especially true of Velda, the fat, bawdy chief cook; the sly tow-headed boy, Glin; and Lokey, the half-witted kitchen hand whose forehead was still flat on one side from a mule kick received in childhood.

Conan's preemptive appet.i.te posed no threat to any of them since food was ever-plentiful in the lower reaches of the house, as it was wasted royally by the n.o.bles above. And in these gatherings, Ludya's familiarity helped to draw the stolid Cimmerian forth. She teased him merrily during the meal, as usual, and he enthralled the diners with heroic legends and gruesome accounts of northern ogres and trolls.

Later, when all were abed-and after a brief, restless wait in his own sleeping-closet for discretion's sake-Conan went to Ludya's side. They embraced, and conversed in whispers while lying close together, and embraced again. Ludya confided her fondest ambitions to him.

"Even in cla.s.s-bound Nemedia, Conan, it happens from time to time that a girl of lowly station is favored by a man of position and taken by him to wife. Here, unlike some of the southern kingdoms where queens and priestesses hold sway, rank accrues only to the male. But a woman, if she is both beautiful and strong in spirit, can rise greatly. Like the Lady Heldra." Ludya's voice was a sighing warmth in Conan's ear.

"Great good fortune," he murmured back, "as long as one doesn't end as she did, with poison in her craw or a dagger in her back!"

"I serve the baron's table, Conan, and of late I have felt the young Lord Favian's eyes on me. He is an impulsive fellow, and yet he nears marrying age."

Conan's voice rumbled in the narrow bunk. "I would warn you against Favian. He is an intemperate chap, and violent in his cups."

"Not like you in the least, is he, Conan?" Ludya teased. "But truly, n.o.bles must not be judged by the same mete as ordinary men. Rank and responsibility weigh heavily on them and impel them to excess. Favian merely bridles under his father's strictness, as any son would."

"Now there is a thought! If you want to rise in the world, why not catch the watery eye of the old man himself? Go straight to the top, marry the baron and make yourself Favian's mother!" Conan's husky whisper managed to convey a cynical distaste.

"Oh no, Conan! 'Tis a well-known state secret that Baldomer has no use for women." Ludya's voice shifted from protest back to confidentiality. "In the last Brythunian border war, just before Favian was born, he sustained two grave wounds: the one to his face and another lower down, here!" Ludya's hand moved expressively beneath the bedclothes. "'Tis a dangerous custom, the wearing of kilts by Nemedian n.o.bles. He was sorely impaired; that is why he so cherishes Favian as the last Einharson heir.

"But I know you were jesting. Really, Conan, how could you suggest such a thing? Me seduce the baron, indeed!" She laid a hand on her bedmate's cheek in a mock slap. "Baldomer is mad and old, and not nearly so good-looking as Favian." She pecked a kiss on Conan's cheek. "Why, Favian is just as beautiful as you are ... maybe even handsomer. I can't make up my mind!"

Late that night, groggy with sleep and ebbed tides of pleasure, Conan raised himself from the warmth of Ludya's bed. He crawled to the end of the stall and drew on his clothes quietly to avoid waking her. He peered through the drapery, then went silent into the dim moonlit common-room.

His destination was not the burlap and hay of his own pallet. For that he would not willingly have abandoned the Nemedian girl's linen and soft furs, nor the fragrant warmth of her body.

He padded to the kitchen archway and felt his way cautiously through the room beyond, lit by the faint red glow of banked cook fires. An almost imperceptible fringe of light outlined the half-open door to the corridor; when Conan edged up to the opening and eased his head through, he saw the night sentry standing against the wall beside the Manse's rear entry.

The guard was a veteran in full uniform, including steel helmet and breastplate. Burdened so uncomfortably, he would not stand motionless for long Conan knew. He stepped back inside the kitchen and waited.

Indeed, in a little while he heard the scuff of leather soles in the corridor. They pa.s.sed the kitchen, turned around and pa.s.sed it again. Conan chose that moment to steal into the pa.s.sage. Before the guard ended his circuit and turned back to face the corridor, the youth had flitted behind him through another archway.

The Cimmerian made his way slowly and noiselessly through pitch-black storerooms, using skills honed in night-stalking panther and minx through northern woods. Now he employed these talents in pursuit of a more fabled reward: the vast treasure that all castles harbored and all barons h.o.a.rded. Legendry told him it was so; he believed unquestioningly, and the promise of claiming his share of it made him bear all the vexations of the place.

Another hope was to find some escape route that might prove safer, when at length he needed it, than a desperate dash through the open palace gates by daylight. Although he had found no hint of such a route yet, a previous night's wanderings had taken him to the highest roof of the Manse, to an aerie above the very helmets of the pacing sentries. There he had breathed the heady airs of summer night, smelled the perfume of blooming jasmine, and gazed out over the slate and thatch of the town roofs to the moonlit band of river. Close beneath him, he had seen how tightly secured and well-patrolled was the baron's keep during the dark hours. Still, there would be a way.

The once-glimpsed stair, which Conan now found by touch, ascended toward an unexplored quarter of the Manse. But as he started up the narrow steps, he heard the sc.r.a.pe of a door at the top. A crease of light appeared and widened, sending forth yellow rays to pierce the dusty expanse of the storeroom; Conan ghosted off to take refuge behind a bale of coa.r.s.e cloth.

The source of the light proved to be tapers of crimson wax, set in two of the three sockets of a gleaming silver candelabrum. As the wavering rays descended toward Conan, he was forced to crouch low out of sight. But the scuff of feet on the steps bespoke the presence of only one person, and so, as the light pa.s.sed him by, Conan risked a look. The candles' glare illuminated an heroic if worn and war-ravaged profile: Baldomer's.

After the baron's pa.s.sing, Conan glanced up to see that the door was shut. Then, moving silently and lurking among the shifting shadows thrown back by the swaying double flame, he followed. The Cimmerian felt intense curiosity over Baldomer's presence in the castle's nether rooms at this eerie hour. The n.o.bleman's garb was strange for the excursion, consisting of a long, pale nightshirt, his leather kilt belted over it, and upon his breast a heavy, gleaming amulet in the form of a star, with six dagger-pointed blades.

The night-walker moved on steadily, as if sure of his purpose; yet Conan wondered that he seemed to be heading for the blank end of the vast, vaulted storeroom. No pa.s.sage was visible in the wavering light. Was Baldomer going to visit a treasure-h.o.a.rd secreted inside one of these dusty bales or kegs, or mayhap beneath the heavy flags of the cellar floor?

Walking straight to the back wall of the chamber, the baron set down his candelabrum on a crate at one side; then he laid his hands on a cobwebbed wooden loom across which a dusty, half-finished tapestry stretched like the sagging web of a t.i.tanic spider. Leaning and straining, the n.o.bleman shoved the heavy frame aside to reveal a breach in the wall beyond a low, dark archway barred by a metal grating.

Without working any lock or bolt that Conan could see, Baldomer grasped the metal crossbar and pulled; as the grating swung open, it sent a rusty, rasping groan echoing through the dim emptiness. The baron picked up his candlestick and stooped to enter the cramped tunnel, the light sinking and dwindling immediately. It was almost out of sight when Conan ventured forward to follow.

He nearly tumbled down the steep, uneven steps waiting inside the archway, but he caught himself by wedging his palms between the narrow walls. He descended swiftly and silently, anxious to overtake the last faint glim of candlelight disappearing beneath.

The level corridor at the bottom was a burial crypt lined with open alcoves. Reflections of retreating candle-flame gleamed against its wet, slimy cobbles, and the joints of the masonry walls were green-bearded with sparkling nitre. Conan feared that the baron might look back at any moment and see him skulking along the straight, narrow pa.s.sage; fortunately, stone monuments bulked out of the alcoves at intervals, large enough for him to hide behind.

These were the sarcophagi of Dinander's past rulers, Conan surmised. Involuntary contact with the marble casks confirmed the impression gained from the light of the distant candle-beams, that the sides of each one were intricately carved with runes and heraldic symbols. Laid atop each coffin were a rusting sword and suit of mail, probably once the favorite battle-dress of the n.o.ble cadaver tucked away inside.

Conan felt uneasy about these relics; he avoided touching them, for he possessed the primitive's dread of tombs and anything that lingers in them. Though some of the armor might be inlaid with silver or gold, this foul grave-trash was scarcely the treasure he sought. Nevertheless, each time the light was raised high in the pa.s.sage ahead, he found it necessary to shelter behind the coffins and press up close against them.

After a long, tense stalk down the arrow-straight corridor, Conan began to wonder just where beneath the Manse or its grounds he was; the tunnel seemed to extend too far to be a part of the building's foundation. Then he saw an end to the journey, for the will-o'-the-wisp candlestick came to rest. It was deposited atop an especially large, ornate sarcophagus. The box lay transverse across the corridor where it ab.u.t.ted a wall just ahead.

Halting, the baron knelt with a genuflection that was screened by his body and invisible to Conan. Then he reached forward among the armor debris laid on that largest box-lid, taking up what looked like the rust-eaten skeleton of a great longsword. With careful reverence he propped it against the wall behind the sarcophagus. When it was placed thus, its hilt, star-shaped because of its crossed double hand-guard, stood up behind the marble coffin lid like a holy fetish above an altar. It resembled the amulet around Baldomer's neck, Conan realized; indeed, it was probably the model after which the charm was fashioned.

The baron took up the candelabrum and placed it in front of the hilt, so that the star was visible through the vacant center of the silver-branched utensil. The flickering tapers at either side illumined it, their flames playing brightly within the gems still gleaming from the ornate, decaying hilt.

The light in the gloomy pa.s.sage seemed to grow brighter by virtue of Baldomer's careful placement of the sword. To Conan the weapon seemed inhabited by a radiance of its own; there was something uncanny in the way the flames danced and shimmered on the ancient metal, and for a moment he could not tell whether the sword he gazed on was old or new, corroded or freshly polished. He blinked repeatedly, squinting at the odd illusion.

Baldomer knelt before the tomb as before an altar, folding his kilt beneath his bare knees on the stone. Meanwhile, Conan crept forward for a better view, until he was lurking behind the last sarcophagus short of the candlelit one, mere paces from the baron. He peered over the coffin carefully so as not to disturb the debris atop it; some of the armor in this deeper and older part of the crypt was more intact than was the newer rusted plate. Fashioned of heavy bronze rather than of steel, it was tarnished bright green, but still serviceable.

Baldomer now spoke in a prayerful chant that reverberated along the narrow confine. His utterance was couched in archaic dialect containing obscure hints and allusions, but Conan could follow the gist of the ritualized statement.

"Sacred sword of Einhar! Blade of my father's father's first father, I commend myself and mine unto thy power! Still we sing the storied times when they wielder was king. Still we remember the old days, and honor the old ways. Kin of thine shall never brook the insolent eye, nor the treasonous tongue, nor the hand that moveth sluggishly to obey. All such are the rightful prey of the blades of Einhar's sons!

"O Sword of my father, our rule is by thy license. I pray thee, keep vigilant on our behalf. Watch over our clan; temper our spirits harshly with thine iron strength. Stand thee ready to lead us in the exercise of our n.o.ble privilege, carved aforetimes from the bones and blood of men!"

As Baldomer spoke this sanguinary chant, the hallowed sword appeared to blush ever brighter, Conan could now distinctly see candle-flickers playing along a gleaming blade, where before had stood a mere rust-eaten twig. The undeniable evidence of sorcery made him restless, and he glanced nervously over his shoulder to spy for other lurking shapes among the crypt's huddled shadows.

Then a further thought struck him: Baldomer's candles were burning low. The baron must soon finish his observance, and when he did, he must needs make his way back via this same corridor. Even if Conan managed to hide behind a coffin and then follow the n.o.ble out, he would reach the catacomb's entrance to find the grating closed and the heavy dross of the storeroom shoved once again in front of it.

The thought of being entombed with the dead of the ages in this magick-ridden crypt made the Cimmerian shudder. Keeping his eye on the kneeling, intoning n.o.ble, he crept back along the pa.s.sage. Once he put a safe distance between himself and the light, he paused to watch the baron halt his utterances and, a moment later, arise and reach between the dwindling candles for his ancestor's sword. Satisfied that the strange religious observance was ending, Conan groped the rest of the way along the pa.s.sage and at length back through the darkened storerooms to his bed.

But one thing of value he took with him from the crypt: a fragment of knowledge. For as he had lurked in an alcove near the end of that ancient corridor, he found that it contained, in addition to a coffin, a concealed door. Cleverly shaped of stone, the portal filled and sealed the niche almost completely, but not quite; for through the crack beneath it blew a draft, a warmer current invading the dank, noisome air of the tomb.- Putting his face near the floor to sniff it, the northerner had smelled the jasmine-scented breath of summer night.

INTERLUDE.

The Plain of Smokes

From the Varakiel a forest of smoke-pillars rose skyward. Through sultry, yellowed daylight a motley army moved, stretching in a ragged line across field and copse, scrambling over hedges and splashing through shallow ca.n.a.ls.

Peasants they were, st.u.r.dy men and apple-cheeked women in the rude garb of their daily toil. Yet they marched as an army, swinging their threshing flails and hayforks like swords, their faces wearing a hardened warrior's lack of expression. Their home fields and crofts were left far behind, else they danced up in flames with the others gouting fire on either hand.

In places along their line where a cottage or a hayrick was set newly alight, groups of marchers lingered nearby; weapons laid aside, they crouched in waiting circles. As rats, cats and sundry vermin were driven out of hiding by the scorching heat, the waiting ones seized them up and devoured them. In these attacks the pillagers threw off any sign of their humanity; oft-times two or three of them clutched together at the same struggling carca.s.s, rending it alive with eager teeth.

When human refugees were caught, similar struggles ensued, but the feasting was of a different nature. As many as half a dozen of the marchers would fall greedily upon the victim and drag his or her wrists and ankles to their gaping mouths. But instead of tearing and devouring their prey, each captor would bite down once, hard. The victims, after their initial shrieks of agony and fear, would lie stricken on the ground. In time then they would arise, weak and faltering, to shuffle after their attackers. Finally each would take up a weapon, to become a part of the ever-advancing line.

So the campaign proceeded from swamp to plain, from onion field to ox pasture. Through it all, there sounded no drums or trumpets and there galloped no dispatch-riders. Seemingly the conquerors went on of their own accord, with no sign of leadership but one: down a rough dirt path that ran diagonally across the line of mounting smokes, a chariot rumbled.

It was a rude vehicle cut down from an ox-wain, decked with bright metal fittings, gaudy draperies and other petty spoils of the rural campaign. To its heavy poles had been yoked three st.u.r.dy farm horses, a brisk and healthy team, though not well matched in size or color.

Inside the rumbling conveyance rode three figures. The driver, a brawny man, wore the leather ap.r.o.n of a smith, with smudges of soot still shining on his thick arms and unshaven jaw; the fellow beside him was blackly bearded and also burly, a swamp-dwelling trapper judging by the rich and somewhat unripe appearance of the animal furs in which he was decked from neck to toe. These two stood in the front of the chariot, wordless and expressionless, stiffly balancing the weight of their bodies above the jolting axle.

The third pa.s.senger lay at leisure on a bed of cushions behind them, his weight so slight as to be ignored by the laboring team. For he was a mere boy, though he reclined in a plundered shawl of gold-embroidered purple, and wore on his brow a gold chaplet arrogating to royal rank. It was none other than the swamp-child, Lar, arisen from his sickbed and clearly exalted to some strange rulership. Of all those who stalked the plain under his command that day, his was the only face that wore what could be recognized as a distinctly human emotion, and that an incongruous one: he gazed over the whole scene with a look of imperious boredom.

As the charioteers rolled past peasant troopers who strode the fields, there was no exchange of signs or hails, nor even a glance of shared recognition. Both went their own way in cold, mindless efficiency. The chariot splashed across a shallow stream and followed the dwindling track into a brushy copse of elms and laurels. As the woods crowded closer and darker, the path grew fainter. The team finally scuffed to a halt before a hut of moss-green stone.

Marchers had already found and entered the place, as evidenced by its broken door and by the flames that gnawed tentatively at one corner of its mossy thatch. The burly guards stepped out over the sides of the chariot, and the young princeling stretched and sat up in his bed. Even as he stood erect, two armed peasants emerged from the hut dragging a third person; a scrawny, elderly man with a wild look in his eyes and a wilder disarray to his gray, bushy hair.

"Nay, infect him not!" Lor's voice piped abruptly, for already the captors were raising the old man's wrists toward their gaping mouths. "First I would put him to the question." Casually he hopped down from the chariot and ambled over; his two helpers went to crowd up close behind the captive.

"Well, old witch-man, your petty sway in this district is ended! An elder and greater magick comes to lay claim to you and yours." The boyish reediness of the lad's voice gave the portentous words a quality incongruous with the scene. He flicked a beckoning finger impatiently, and his henchmen forced the old one down on one knee, so that his face was on a level with the boy's.

"Tell me, old man, did you have time to send word to your far-flung brethren?" He glanced to the empty straw-filled cages at one side of the cottage. "I see that your pigeons have flown .. . bearing news of me, no doubt. What did you tell the others about this new faith which sweeps the plain?" He strutted and preened before his captive, like a child playing at men's conquests. "Will your warlocks guild be foolish enough to oppose me?"

The old one, grimacing in dismay, kept his yellowed, decayed teeth clamped shut behind his white-puckered lips. The bone-and-tooth beads around his neck and the grimy medicine-bag suspended thereon showed him to be a rural wizard, as did the herbs and fetishes hung from the eaves of his smoldering roof. He showed no sign of any vast or preternatural power as his watery eyes flashed doubtfully at his inquisitor. Still, he made no answer.

"Enough! He will not speak." Lar glanced up at his escort, one hand slipping casually inside his gaudy robe. "Cut him!"

Obediently and expressionlessly, the burly trapper produced a short, gleaming blade from his furs and jabbed it into the old warlock's side. Issuing a sharp yelp of pain and surprise, the captive writhed between the men who pinioned his shoulders.

At the instant the old man's mouth opened for the cry, Lar's hand leaped from the folds of his garment to the captive's face. So swift was the motion that it was hard to see, but it appeared that the youth tossed something into the withered old mouth-something small and blackly gleaming that seemed to wriggle like a thin, sinuous tadpole as it pa.s.sed the ramshackle gate of the wizard's rotted teeth.

The old one clamped his jaws shut, his pain quickly forgotten, eyes wide in astonishment. Lar's hand fell back slowly to his side as the blacksmith's thick, sooty paw was insinuated under the old man's chin to keep his mouth closed.

The princeling stared closely at the wizard's face, now mutely eloquent. In the course of a moment it pa.s.sed from surprise to alarm, through choking panic, to agony. Then the pale eyes bled tears, and rolling skyward in torment at whatever unseen predations and violations were taking place inside the gray old skull.

The witch struggled between his captors, his legs kicking violently enough to tear the moss of the cottage yard. With his mouth clamped shut within the blacksmith's sooty, viselike grasp, he could only emit stifled nasal grunts of pain, these gradually diminishing in intensity. And even after the warlock's struggles subsided, his head still nodded in exhaustion, his labored breaths sighing through his nose.

In a moment Lar waved an impatient hand and the smith's grip was withdrawn. The princeling leaned closer, putting his ear to the old man's mouth, which now lolled slightly open. He waited in a pose of alert listening, though all that could have been heard by the others was an exceedingly faint and scarcely articulated hissing, seemingly nothing more than the victim's feeble, glottal gasps. But the youth lingered patiently, nodding as if at some sage piece of advice imparted by a kindly gray-haired grandfather.

Finally, straightening up with a satisfied look, he reached a hand to the oldster's mouth and removed something from it, which he once again secreted in the breast of his mantle. Carelessly he turned and strode back to the chariot, tossing his minions one further command as they threw down the dying witch-man and hastened to follow.

"Watch the roads."

CHAPTER 5.

Sword and Lash.

"By Mitra's holy beard, lad wherever did you get this torso?" Dru, the armorer, lifted his largest black-armor breastplate away from Conan's naked chest. He replaced it on one of the heavy dowels set inside an oaken armoire. "Nothing here is going to fit him!"

He turned to Baron Baldomer, who stood at one side in black-and-gold casual equipage, his arms folded on his chest and a slight smile softening the wildness of his face. Dru said, "Milord ... I cannot alter anything we have on hand. I must turn a new piece of plate."

"They grow them big in Cimmeria." Baldomer reached forth a hand and squeezed the muscles of Conan's shoulder. The youth bore the touch for a moment, then twisted away uncomfortably. His ma.s.sive chest was smooth-skinned and almost hairless, although marked by newly healed welts and some shackle scars at the neck. The baron eyed him appraisingly. "The feral northern vitality ... it shows in my son, too, but not so much as in this boy."

"We could as well let the youth hammer out his own steel plate," said Arga, the farrier, matter-of-factly. "Conan tells me his father was a smith. His folk use small forges, but they make good-sized, hotly tempered blades." The farrier kept his eyes downcast, sheepish about showing off his knowledge before the baron. "It must require a strong, untiring pair of arms at the bellows."

"Thus accounting for this boy's ma.s.sive physique." Baldomer glanced amusedly at Conan, who said nothing. "Well, I have more urgent need of him than smithy toil." He addressed the armorer. "How long did you say a new plate would take?"

"A week, Milord, at least."

"Hm." The baron's brow furrowed. "Perhaps you could work from one of Favian's old outfits."

Dru nodded. "Perhaps, Milord. Though much of the young lord's weight is distributed . . . lower down."

"Come." Baldomer turned and strode out the double doors of the armory. The other three followed, last of all Conan, still shrugging his jerkin over his head.

Their lord led them briskly through the main entry hall and up the central steps. For the first time, Conan found himself on the broad expanse of marble stairway, and he took the opportunity to gawk; the room's stately alabaster pillars loomed tall from this angle, and the gold-and-scarlet tapestries blazed in sunlight from the windows set high above the Manse's front portal. It was afternoon, and the hall was empty except for Iron Guardsmen, who flanked its doorways, their eyes riveted straight ahead.

Moving swiftly, Baldomer crossed the mezzanine and entered a corridor that Conan recognized from his former explorations. Wheeling to a halt before a black-polished door, the baron gave two hard raps. Without waiting for a reply he struck the latch with the heel of his hand, pressed the door open and entered. The others followed him at a respectful distance.

The chamber, low-ceilinged and s.p.a.cious, had no other occupants-only carven furniture, a great bed whose blankets were wildly disarrayed, and walls adorned with cavalry gear and bright tapestries. At a nod from the baron, Arga went to the window and dragged apart the thick curtains, letting in beams of dusty daylight.

Baldomer strode to a black-lacquered wardrobe opposite the bed and threw open its doors. Multicolored folds of clothing inside emitted musty scents of sweat and talc.u.m. "Hmm. I know there are several suits of mail in here. One of them should be usable." He began sorting through the close-packed sleeves; after a moment's hesitation, Dru started working from the other end.

Shortly the armorer reached both arms into the cabinet and produced a cuira.s.s; it was fashioned of bra.s.s, unadorned, and showing many sc.r.a.pes and shallow dents. Its leather fastenings were sweat-stained and frayed, and the bra.s.s-ribbed leather battle-skirt hanging underneath it was in no better shape.

"Lord Favian's old training gear . . . not really enough to work with, I fear, Milord."

"No. It won't do." Baldomer was fingering a flimsy sleeve of scarlet fabric thoughtfully: a woman's diaphanous gown. He pulled it free of the other clothing, crumpled it in his fist and tossed it to the floor. "Keep on looking."

After a smart but undersized mailcoat had been rejected, the baron produced an impressive-looking armor suit from the back wall of the cabinet. It was a steel breastplate trimmed with black leather after the fashion of the Iron Guard, but more carefully crafted, and inlaid with silver. The matching silver-spiked helmet hung on a peg above it. "Here now, what about this?" He held the plate up against Conan's chest.

"A fair fit, Milord, with some alterations. But that is Lord Favian's new formal suit of mail, turned by me last fall at Milord's command for the Baronial Conclave." Dru's gaze at Baldomer showed some concern. "I doubt that your son has anything else so splendid to wear."

"Our need is more immediate." Baldomer did not spare him a glance. "I authorize you to fix up something for Favian from the standard guard uniform. And see that it's padded at the shoulders to make his figure better match this lad's. Here, boy, try this on."

As Conan began donning the heavy breastplate over his jerkin, Dru continued to protest. "But, Milord . . . is it really necessary to outfit a bodyguard so resplendently, with the provincial tour slated for so soon?"

"Better not to ask, armorer." The baron silenced him with a steely look. "And I bid you make no mention of it. To anyone . . . understood?"

"Yes, Milord." Dru stepped back, looking cowed.

"Now then. Raise your arms, boy. Yes, the straps will need lengthening, but it should do nicely. What's that?"

The baron turned as the chamber door banged open behind him. Arga and Dru stepped forward to their baron's defense, but when they saw that the intruder was only young Favian, they stood at ease, looking slightly abashed.

Favian was booted and leather-clad, fresh from the saddle. His lip was newly shaved by his father's decree, making his resemblance to Conan more noticeable. He stared at the party in surprise for a moment; then his eyes narrowed, and his broad, handsome countenance darkened. "So, Father, a new enormity! Stealing my face and my name is not enough for you. You find it necessary to ransack my closet, too! Truly, how can you explain this?" He flashed the baron a defiant look as he slammed his unstrung hunting-bow onto a rack by the door.