Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

"He has?" cried Conan. He grabbed for an arrow once more, though the gesture was even more useless than it had been with the fox or the hawk. "What is he doing there? Why won't he leave us alone?"

"Well, he said he came because of the Aquilonian soldier who disappeared near Duthil," answered Mordec. "The first time he said that, I feared he was going to punish us even if his men never found the fellow's body. But I think that just gave him the excuse he needed to come back anyhow."

"The excuse?" echoed Conan, his voice rising in puzzlement. But then a sudden, horrid certainty blazed in him, fueling fun' fierce as his father's forge. "Tarla!" he burst out.

"It seems so, yes," said Mordec unhappily. "He sniffs around her, sniffs around Balarg's house like a hungry hound after meat."

"I'll kill him!" raged Conan. "I'll cut his heart out and feed it to swine. I'll drape his guts over the roofpole. I'll —

His father shook him, hard. Conan's teeth clicked together on his tongue. Pain lanced through him. He tasted blood in his mouth. When he spat, he spat red. He said no more. Seeing that he was going to say no more, Mordec nodded in somber approval. "Good," said the blacksmith. "Maybe I've shaken some sense into you. Can you imagine what would happen to Duthil if you were mad enough to murder the Aquilonian commander? Can you?"

"He deserves death," said Conan sullenly.

"Yes, no doubt," said Mordec. "I told you once you might kill him if he aims to debauch Balarg's daughter the way he did that other Cimmerian girl. But think on it. Wouldn't you say it's truly Balarg's first duty to defend her honor?'"

"I— " Conan broke off in confusion.

Laughing, Mordec finished for him: "You like the shape of Tarla's nose and her pretty little ankles, and so you think you can do what her father really should."

Conan walked on for a long time without saying another word. His cheeks and ears felt as if they were on fire. Like most boys first setting eyes on a girl they fancied, he had been too shy, too much afraid of making a fool of himself, to say much to the one who was the object of his affection. Like most boys, also, he had fondly believed his grand passion went unobserved by those around him. Finding himself so badly mistaken could be nothing less than mortifying.

"Don't fret, lad," said Mordec, not unkindly. "Maybe there will be a match between the two of you, and maybe there won't. It could happen. Seeing where Balarg and I stand in the village, joining our two houses might prove wise. We've even spoken of it, once or twice. But I will tell you this: whether the match comes or not, the world will go on. Do you understand me?" Still not trusting himself to speak, Conan grudged a nod. His father went on, "And I will tell you one thing more, no matter how little you care to hear it — no one dies of a broken heart, even if people often wish they could. Do you understand that?"

Since Conan was convinced his father was raving like a lunatic, he could not very well nod again. Yet to shake his head would have been to deny the plain import of his father's words. With both choices bad, he walked on, pretending he had not heard. Mordec's rumbling chuckle said the pretense was imperfectly convincing. Conan flushed once more.

They walked into Duthil side by side, Conan matching his father's long, tireless strides. Villagers and two or three soldiers from the camp not far away were on the main street. Conan, who had had no company save Nectan and a flock for the past month, stared in wonder at so many people all together.

A ball came rolling his way. Before he could do anything about it, his father leaped forward, kicked it with all his might, and sent it flying far down the street. The usual shouting pack of boys chased after it. "I liked that," said Mordec, more cheerfully than Conan was used to hearing him speak. "When you grow up, you don't get the chance for such things so often, and that's a cursed shame." He pointed to the boys. "Do you want to get into the game? Do it while you can."

But Conan shook his head. After a month tending sheep, kicking a ball seemed a childish pursuit. He had been playing games all his life. If his father enjoyed them so much, he was welcome to them.

And then Conan forgot Mordec, forgot the ball, forgot everything around him, for up the street toward him came Tarla, a brass-bound wooden water bucket on her hip. He hurried toward her. "Are you all right?" he demanded.

Though she had no more years then he, she knew what to do with them. Her cool gray eyes measured him with womanly precision. Her gaze made him realize how seldom he had washed, how seldom he had run a bone comb through his hair, in all the time he had spent with Nectan. The shepherd cared nothing for such fripperies, and Conan had cared for them no more. Now, too late, he did. He stared down at the mud under his boots.

"Of course I'm all right," answered Tarla. In Conan's ears, her voice might have been the chiming of silver bells, even though she continued, "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Why? Because of that—that blackguard Stercus." Conan had learned some fine new curses from Nectan, and wanted to tar the Aquilonian nobleman's name with all of them. Somehow, though, he did not think that would improve his standing with Balarg's daughter, and so he swallowed most of what he might have said.

Tarla tossed her pretty head. Sable curls flew. "Oh, he's not so bad," she said, and sniffed. "At least he bathes now and again."

Even a few weeks earlier, that sally would have sent Conan off in headlong retreat. As much as anything else, what made him stand his ground was the loathing he felt for Stercus. Once more in lieu of worse, he said, "He's nothing but a damned invader."

The weaver's daughter tossed her head again. "And what business is it of yours, Conan, who I see or what I do?"

His father had reminded him such things were Balarg's business first, and not his own. From Mordec, those were only words, words to be evaded or ignored. From Tarla, they were a thrust through the heart. Again, though, he did not flee. "What business is it of mine?" he repeated. "The business of someone who— " He broke off. He did not flee, no, but he could not go on, either.

Yet what he managed to say was enough to draw Tarla's notice in a way nothing that came before had done. She leaned forward, and had to make a hasty grab at the water bucket to keep it from slipping from its place. "Someone who what?" she asked softly.

"Someone who thinks you should have nothing to do with the stinking Aquilonian, that's what!" blurted Conan.

Tarla's gaze went hard as flint, cold as ice. "You would know more about stinking than Stercus does," she said, and pushed past the blacksmith's son, walking on toward her father's house with angry, determined steps.

Conan stared helplessly after her. He knew he had blundered. He even knew what he should have said —not that that did him any good now. He kicked at the dirt and snarled some of the things he had wanted to call Stercus, bringing the curses down on his own head instead.

"Come on, son," said Mordec. Conan started; he had almost forgotten his father. The blacksmith added, "Maybe time will mend it. That often chances."

"It's ruined," said Conan. If something was wrong now, it would stay a disaster forever. That was a law of nature, especially when one was thirteen.

"We lost the fight against the cursed Aquilonians," said his father. "Do you suppose we'll stay quiet under their heels forever? Things have a way of changing."

"What's that got to do with Tarla?" stormed Conan: there is none blinder than he who will not see. He hurried away from Mordec and stormed on to the smithy. The boys kicking the ball hastily got out of the way, wanting no part of the storm clouds that darkened his features. More than one grown man stepped aside, too; had the whole world had but a single neck, he would gladly have brought a sword down on it, and his face showed as much.