Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

Conan was gliding through the forest, not on a game track but not far from one, either, when he heard a twig snap on the track a hundred yards behind him. In an instant, he silently slipped behind the bole of a great, towering fir. He had an arrow nocked and ready to shoot. Deer were not usually so careless as to announce themselves.

A moment's listening convinced him that this was no deer. It was no Cimmerian, either; no one from Conan's people could possibly have been so inept among the trees. The blacksmith's son grinned a wide and ferocious grin. What better sport than tracking one of the Aquilonians through the forest? Actually, Conan could think of one better: tracking the Aquilonian and then slaying him. But his father had forbidden that, and no doubt wisely, for it would cost the folk of Duthil dear.

Through gaps in the trees, Conan soon saw who the blunderer was —a squat, heavyset Gunderman named Hondren. Conan's lip curled scornfully. He did not care for Hondren, and had trouble thinking of anyone who could. The soldier roared and cursed whenever he came into Duthil, and had been known to cuff boys out of his path when they did not step aside fast enough to suit him. He had not tried cuffing Conan, but Conan had never got in his way, either. Trailing him, dogging him, would be a pleasure.

On through the woods Hondren stumbled. Of course he found nothing worth pursuing; he could hardly have spread a better warning of his presence had he gone along the trail beating a drum. Conan followed, quiet as a shadow.

For most of an hour, Conan had all he could do not to laugh out loud at Hondren's blundering. He could have shot the Gunderman a hundred different times, and Hondren would have died never knowing why, or who had slain him. He had to work hard to remember his village would suffer if anything befell this miserable lump of a man.

Hondren began cursing ever louder and more foully at his lack of luck. That his own incompetence had brought that bad fortune never seemed to have crossed his mind. Conan got bored with trailing him through the forest and began showing himself. He wondered how long Hondren would take to notice him. The Gunderman needed even longer than he had expected.

At last, though, Hondren realized he was not alone in the woods. "Who's there?" he growled. "Come out, you dog, or you'll be sorry."

Out Conan came, laughing. "You not catch anything?" he jeered in his bad Aquilonian.

"No, by Mitra, I didn't catch anything." Fury on his face, Hondren advanced on the young Cimmerian. "And now I know why, too: I had a stinking barbarian close by, scaring off the game."

Conan laughed louder than ever. "I not scare game. I follow you long time. You scare plenty all by self."

"Liar!" Hondren slapped him in the face, as he might have done with a small boy on the main street in Duthil.

But they were far from the main street in Duthil, and Conan, though a boy, was far from small. His ears rang from the blow. It did not cow him, though—far from it. Red rage ripped through him. He struck back with all his strength, not with a slap but with his closed fist. Hondren's head snapped back. Blood spurted from his nose. He blinked, clearing his senses. A slow, vicious smile spread over his face.

"You'll pay for that, swine," he said, gloating anticipation in his voice. He flung himself at Conan and bore him to the ground by weight and momentum.

The blacksmith's son knew at once that Hondren did not merely seek to punish him for presuming to answer one blow with another. The Gunderman wanted his life, and would take it unless he lost his own. Hondren's hands, hard as horn, sought his throat. Conan tucked his chin down against his chest to keep his enemy from gaining the grip he wanted.

A knee to the belly made the Gunderman grunt. But Hondren was still stronger and, most of all, heavier than Conan, who had not yet got all the inches or thews that would one day be his. Hondren dealt out a savage buffet that made Conan's senses spin, and his weight was a dreadful burden that seemed as if it would crush the life from the Cimmerian even if his foe failed to find the stranglehold he sought.

Scrabbling wildly and more than a little desperately, Conan felt his hand close on a rock that fit it nicely. In a mad paroxysm of fury, he tore the stone from the ground and brought it smashing down on the back of Hondren's head. The Gunderman's eyes opened very wide. A shudder ran through his body; his hands lost their cunning and ferocity. With a savage cry of triumph, Conan struck again, and then again and again, until blood poured onto him from Hondren's torn scalp and smashed skull, and until the man from the south stopped moving altogether.

After making sure Hondren was dead, Conan stood a little while in thought. If the deed were traced to him, ten from Duthil would die. But if Hondren were to vanish in the forest—who could say for certain what had befallen him?

Decision came on the instant. Conan took hold of the Gunderman's boots and dragged his corpse to a stream that chuckled through the woods less than a hundred yards away. Before pushing the body into the stream, he went back and carefully erased every sign of its passage from the place where he and Hondren had fought to the streambank. By the time he was finished, he doubted even a Cimmerian hunter could have traced what he had done. From everything he had seen, the Aquilonians were far less woodswise than his own folk.

He stuffed stones into Hondren's breeches and tunic, to make sure the corpse did not rise once decay set in. Although he pushed it into the stream at the deepest point he could find, less than a yard of water covered it —not enough to suit him. An alert searcher might spy it, no matter how shadowed by tall trees its final resting place was. He gathered more stones, these larger and heavier, and set them on the body to weight it down and to break up its outline and make it harder to see. That done, he used moss and branches and pine needles to disguise the places from which he had taken the stones. Someone who knew the streambank well might notice something had changed; someone seeing it for the first time would spy nothing out of the ordinary.

By the time he finished his work, he was soaked from head to foot. That gave him yet another idea: he pulled his tunic off over his head and scrubbed it in the stream, cold water being best for taking bloodstains out of cloth. Having taken care of that last detail, he went on with the hunt.

Mordec looked up from his work when Conan came into the smithy carrying a brace of grouse and some songbirds. "Those will be tasty," said the blacksmith, and then he took a closer look at his son. "What happened to you? You're all wet."

"I—fell in a stream," answered Conan.

Hearing his hesitation, Mordec advanced on him, hammer still in hand. "What happened to you?" he repeated, ominous thunder in his voice. "The truth this time, or you'll be sorry." He hefted the heavy hammer to show how sorry Conan might be.

His son did not flinch from the weapon. Looking Mordec in the eye, he said, "I killed a man in the woods."

"Crom!" exclaimed Mordec; whatever response he had expected, that was not it. Gathering himself, he asked, "Was he a man of this village, or a stranger from some other place? Will the blood feud take in our family alone, or all of Duthil?"

"He was an Aquilonian," said Conan: "that brute called Hondren."

"Crom!" repeated Mordec; surprises were coming too fast to suit him. He knew the man his son meant, and knew he was indeed a brute. But he also knew of the warning the invaders had laid down. If one of their men was murdered, ten Cimmerians were to escort his spirit out of the world. "Tell me what passed. Tell me all of it. Leave out nothing-nothing, do you hear?"

"Aye, Father." Conan did: a bald, straightforward account. He finished, "The lich is hidden as well as I could hide it. In the forest, the Aquilonians are all fumblefingered fools. I do not think they will come across it. They will decide he had a mishap in the woods— and so he did." Savage pride filled his voice.