Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

"I remember her," said Granth. "She was no wench, only a chit of a girl. And he did not let her wear enough in the way of clothes to stay warm."

The Bossonian shook his head again and laughed. "Are you really so young and innocent? There is warm, and then there is warm." He stuck his elbow in Granth's ribs and leered. "You know what I mean, eh?"

"I know what you mean," growled Granth. "And I know if you poke me again, I'll wrap your damned bowstring around your neck."

"I'm not afraid," said Daverio, bristling.

"Enough, both of you," said Vulth. "You don't want to quarrel while Stercus is around. If he catches you at it, he'll string you up by the thumbs and roast you over a slow fire — and that's if he doesn't decide to do something really juicy instead."

Granth watched the Aquilonian commander ride into Duthil. He breathed a sigh of relief when the first Cimmerian huts hid Count Stercus from view. If he could not see Stercus, Stercus could not see him, either. He wished the commander were back in Fort Venarium, but simply having him out of sight would do for now.

Conan ran like the wind after the ball, his mane of coal-black hair streaming out behind him. The ball was stuffed with rags and covered with scraps of old leather begged or stolen from here and there and then erratically stitched together by the boys of Duthil. If they wanted to play games, they had to make their own arrangements. They had to —and they did.

Another lad kicked the ball up the street just before Conan got to it. Conan lowered his shoulder and knocked the other boy sprawling in the mud. The boy was on his feet and running again a heartbeat later. If he could pay Conan back, he would. Conan's clothes were already muddy, but not so muddy as those of the other boys in the game. With his size and strength and speed, it usually took at least two of them to knock him down.

He effortlessly outsped the boy he had flattened. Girls and women and a few men stood in doorways, watching the sport. Sometimes the men would rush into the game, too. Then it would get very rough. Conan waved to Tarla as he sprinted past Balarg's house. He thought she waved back—oh, how he hoped she waved back—but she blurred past before he could be sure.

Two boys between him and the ball. Instead of going after it himself, the closer boy tried to block Conan. Conan might have feinted one way and dodged the other. He might simply have slipped past. Instead, without breaking stride, he smashed into the other boy chest to chest. With a startled yelp of dismay, his foe went flying. Conan ran on.

"Oh, nicely done!" called someone from behind him. Was that Tarla's voice? He thought so. He hoped so. But he did not look back. Instead, he ran harder than ever.

He bore down on the ball with such ferocity that the last boy who was nearer to it dove out of the way to keep from being trampled. Conan guided the ball forward with the side of his foot. One more boy stood between him and the goal, which was no more than the space between two rocks plopped down in the mud of the street. The boy set himself, but his face said he had no hope of stopping the hurtling missile that would momentarily fly his way.

And yet the goal was never scored. In the same instant as Conan drew back his foot for the last kick, a rider on horseback trotted into Duthil: a rider on a horse so astonishing, the blacksmith's son skidded to a stop and simply stared, all but unable to believe his eyes.

Horses in Cimmeria were few and far between. This great snorting monster was almost man-high at the shoulder, which put its rider high as a god above the ground. That rider stared down at Conan from an elevation even his tall father had been unable to match since the boy was much younger.

The Aquilonian horseman had a long, pale, big-nosed face with a receding chin partly concealed by a thin fringe of beard and with eyes set too close together. When he spoke, he startled Conan by using Cimmerian: "Get out of my way, boy."

He urged the horse forward. Oman's surprise and that huge beast bearing down on him made him jump aside. Had he not, the Aquilonian would have ridden him down. He was as sure of that as of his own name. Even so, shame at giving way brought fire to his cheeks. He hurried after the rider— the knight, Aquilonians called such armored horsemen —and spoke in the invaders' language: "Who are you? What you do here?"

Hearing Aquilonian made the man on horseback rein in. He gave Conan a second glance —gave him, in fact, what was almost a first glance, for he had paid him little heed up until then. "I am Count Stercus, commander of all the Aquilonians in Cimmeria, and I have come to see how the village of Duthil prospers under the rule of the great and good King Numedides," he answered, and paused to find out whether Conan understood. Conan did—well enough, anyhow. Seeing as much, Stercus asked, "And who are you, and how did you learn this speech?"

"Conan, son of Mordec the blacksmith." To Conan, his father's trade was at least as important as Stercus' noble blood. With a shrug, he went on, "How I learn? I hear, I listen, I talk. How you learn Cimmerian?"

A civilized man, even a civilized boy, would have known better than to challenge thus the leader of the host that had subjected his folk, but Conan was familiar with only the rude frankness of the barbarian. And his candor seemed to amuse Count Stercus, whose smile illuminated every part of his face but those dark, fathomless eyes. "How do I learn?" he echoed in Cimmerian considerably more fluent than Conan's all but grammarless Aquilonian. "I also hear and listen and speak. And I have had most excellent, most lovely, most charming teachers. You may be sure of that."

Although Conan was anything but sure of precisely what Stercus meant, he did get the feeling hidden meanings lurked in the Aquilonian's words. That in itself was plenty to rouse his easily kindled temper: why could the man not come straight out and say whatever was in his mind? Roughly, Conan asked, "When are you people going to leave Cimmeria? This not your country."

Again, that was forthrightness no civilized man would have shown. Again, it but amused Stercus, who threw back his head and laughed uproariously. "Leave, boy? We shall never leave. I told you, this is King Numedides' land now."

He rode down the street; his horse's hooves, almost as big as dinner plates, clopped and squelched through the mud.

Conan spied a fist-sized stone near a house. He could take it and hurl it and perhaps lay even an armored man low with it—but what if he did? The soldiers in the encampment outside of Duthil would wreak a fearful vengeance, and his own people lacked the warriors to hope to withstand them. Hate smoldering in his heart, Conan followed Stercus.

The Aquilonian continued along the street at a slow walk, an expression of disdain on his face. None of the other boys who had been kicking the ball dared impede him, even for a moment. Conan stayed close to Stercus until the knight reined in once more, in front of the home of Balarg the weaver.

He bowed in the saddle there, something Conan had not only never seen but never imagined. "Hello, my pretty," he murmured in Cimmerian suddenly sweet as honey. "What is your name?"

"Tarla," answered the girl still standing in the doorway. She stared at the horse, too, and stared even more at the man atop it.

"Tarla," repeated Count Stercus. In his mouth, it might have been a caress. "What a lovely name."

Conan discovered he had only thought he hated the Aquilonian nobleman. Now, with jealousy tearing at him like acid venom, he would gladly have stuffed Stercus into his father's forge and worked the bellows for a hotter fire with a will he had never shown while helping Mordec to forge a sword or an andiron.

Tarla murmured in confusion and what was obviously pleasure. No one in the rude village of Duthil had ever paid her such a compliment before. Conan knew too well he had not, and wondered why. The answer was not hard to find: he had no more imagined such candied words than he had a bow from horseback. What the folk who had it called civilization knew wiles subtler and more clinging and perhaps more deadly than a spider's web.