Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

Daverio was a hard and stubborn man, but no common soldier would have been so rash as to beard Captain Treviranus in his den. He shook his head now, saying, "I'm trying to find out what's going on, that's all. If the tribes are stirring out there somewhere, what are we supposed to do about it?"

Exactly how vast was Cimmeria? Granth did not know, not in any detail; he knew only that the corner of it Count Stercus' army had worried off was just that—a corner. Countless clans of barbarians — clans assuredly uncounted by any Aquilonian, at all odds —still prowled the dark woods in squalid freedom. If they were to band together against the soldiers and settlers from the south— "Aye, Sergeant," said Granth. "What are we supposed to do about it?"

"I was coming to that," said Nopel portentously. "Did you think I wasn't? We've got to push scouts up to the north and see with our own eyes what the damned barbarians are up to."

"We can send scouts north, all right," said Vulth. "We can send 'em, but will we ever see 'em again if we do?"

"And why wouldn't we?" demanded Nopel.

All the sentries laughed. The laughs were not pleasant. "Why, Sergeant?" said Granth. "On account of the damned Cimmerians will do for them, that's why. Do you think we can kill ten for one for what happens up there?"

Nopel grunted. He turned and tramped away without answering. Vulth clapped Granth on the back. "Well done, cousin," said Vulth. "You made the sergeant shut up, and not everybody can boast of that."

Benno had a more practical way of congratulating Granth. He took his water bottle off his belt and offered it to him. When Granth tilted back his head and drank, he wasn't too surprised to find sweet, strong wine running down his throat. He took another pull at the bottle, and then another, until at last Benno snatched it out of his hand.

Granth wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Benno glowered. Vulth chuckled. "You see?" he said to the archer. "He's figuring out what it's all about."

"It's about him being greedy, that's what," said Benno. But even the touchy Bossonian seemed not too put out.

For his part, Granth looked to the north. He had seen one swarm of Cimmerians bearing down on the army of which he was a small part. In his mind's eye, he saw another, this one bigger, fiercer, more ferocious. Until that moment, he had not imagined anything more ferocious than the onslaught he and his countrymen had so narrowly survived. Now he discovered his imagination was stronger than he had thought possible.

"What do we do if the barbarians come down on us, the way Nopel and the captain say they might?" he asked, worn' in his voice.

"Kill 'em," Vulth answered stolidly. "Kill 'em till they're piled so high, they have to climb over their cousins to jump down onto our pikes."

When Granth looked toward the village of Duthil, everything seemed tranquil enough. Women carried water from the stream back to their homes. Wood smoke rose from the smoke holes in their roofs. A couple of men stood talking. Neither of them paid the least attention to the Aquilonian encampment. Two years after the fight at Fort Venarium — now the citadel at the heart of the town of Venarium — the villagers might have accepted the camp as part of the landscape. A dog nosed at a mound of garbage. He ignored the encampment, too. He might have been sincere. Granth had his doubts about the Cimmerians.

If more barbarians swarmed down out of the north, what would the folk of Duthil do? Would they take up arms and fight alongside the Aquilonians against the new invaders? Would they sit quietly and wait to see how the other Cimmerians fared against the men from the south? Or would they grab whatever weapon came to hand and try to murder every Gundermanand Bossonian they could find?

Granth did not know, of course. Only a god could know the future. But the pikeman had a good idea which way he would bet.

He said, "We ought to haul some of the villagers out of that place and squeeze them. To hell with me if they don't know more than they're letting on."

"Not a bad notion," agreed Vulth. "Some of the women seem plenty squeezable — or they would, if you didn't think they'd knife you for touching them."

"They act that way when others are around to see, sure enough," said Benno. "But some of them are friendly enough if you can get them off by themselves."

"Braggart," said Granth. Benno preened.

"Braggart and liar both," said Vulth. "Before I believe a word he says, I want to know who he means, and I want to know how he knows."

"Who? The miller's wife, for one." Benno looked toward Duthil and licked his chops. "And how do I know? When the millstones start grinding, the Cimmerian who runs them has to make sure they behave, and then he can't make sure his lady behaves. And the stones are so noisy, he can't hear a thing that goes on anywhere close by."

After looking at each other, Granth and his cousin both shook their heads. "Braggart," said the one. "Liar," said the other. Benno protested, but not, Granth judged, in the way he would have it he really had done the things he claimed to have done. Soldiers, of course, had been telling lies about women ever since Mitra first let there be soldiers and women.

Then something else occurred to Granth. "Maybe the young one Count Stercus keeps coming back for will stick a knife in him one of these days, and maybe we'll all be better off if she does."

"No." Vulth shook his head. "Think of the vengeance we'd have to wreak. Have you got the stomach for massacring a whole village?"

"For Stercus' sake? For him doing what he's got no business doing, with somebody he's got no business doing it with?" Granth did not need to think that over; he knew the answer at once. "Not a bit of it." But then he hesitated. "To save our own necks, though? That's a different story." None of the other Aquilonian soldiers argued with him.

Chapter Ten

For Tarla's Sake

Few would have called Count Stercus a patient man. In the matter of the weaver's daughter in Duthil, though, he had been more patient than most of the debauched rogues who had known him down in Aquilonia would have dreamt possible. For one thing, he reckoned the game with Tarla worth the candle. And, for another, he still painfully remembered the consequences of his impatience in Tarantia. If not for that, he never would have found himself reduced to pursuing a chit of a barbarian girl here at the misty northern edge of the world.

And so, patience—patience to a point, at any rate. But Stercus was no Stygian priest, no mystic from the distant, legendary land of Khitai, to practice patience for its own dusty sake. He was an Aquilonian to the core: a man of action, a man of deeds. He could bide his time —he had bided his time—with some definite end in view, but if the end remained in view, remained close enough to reach out and touch, he would, sooner or later, reach out and touch it.

That time, at last, had come.

He rode forth from Venarium in helm and back-and-breast, more to make a brave show when he came to Duthil than for any other reason. These days, the country north of what had become a booming little town put him more in mind of the Bossonian Marches or Gunderland than of the dark, brooding wilderness Cimmeria had been before the coming of the gold lion on black.

Fair-haired men and women worked in fields and garden plots carved from primeval wilderness. Smoke rose from the chimneys of sturdy cabins. Garrisons overawed surviving Cimmerian villages. Some of those forts might grow into towns, as Venarium had. The barbarians themselves would surely go to the wall, overwhelmed by the strength and majesty of advancing Aquilonian civilization. Contemplating their fate, Stercus allowed himself a certain delicate melancholy. It was a pity, but the count did not see how it could be helped.