Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

Vulth and Sergeant Nopel both guffawed. His cousin said, "You try to sell a slave dealer Cimmerians, and he'll laugh in your face and spit in your eye. But he won't give you a counterfeit copper for 'em, let alone the silver lunas you're dreaming about."

"Why not?" Granth still did not slay the barbarian at his feet. "They're big and bold and strong. Mitra! We found out everything we wanted to know about how strong they are."

"And you should have noticed none of them surrendered," said Vulth. "They aren't known for yielding to another man's will"—he rolled his eyes at the understatement—"and what good is a slave who won't?"

Before Granth could answer, the Cimmerian on the ground hooked an arm around his ankle and tried to drag him off his feet. Only a hasty backward leap saved him from a grapple. His cousin speared the Cimmerian, who groaned, spat blood, and at last, long after a civilized man would have, died.

"You see?" said Vulth.

"Well, maybe I do at that," admitted Granth. "They're like serpents, aren't they? You're never sure they're dead until the sun goes down."

"When the sun goes down, more of them come out," said Nopel. "Now get on about your business."

Granth obeyed, sending the Cimmerians he found still breathing on the field out of this world with such speed and mercy as he could give them: had they won the fight, as they had come so close to doing, he would have wanted a last gift of that sort from them. Vulth and Nopel and most of the Gundermen and Bossonians acted the same way. No one who had stood up against the barbarians rushing out of the woods could have reckoned them anything but worthy foes.

Count Stercus rode up as the foot soldiers continued their grisly work. Excitement reddened the commander's usually pale cheeks and made his eyes sparkle. "Well done, you men," he said. "Every barbarian you slay now is a barbarian who will not try to slay you later."

Granth and Vulth and Sergeant Nopel all nodded. "Aye, my lord," murmured Nopel. The sight of Stercus cheerful startled them all. The nobleman had despised his soldiers. Vic-ton', though, seemed to have changed his mind.

He said, "We shall seize this country, such as it is, and hold it for our own. Farmers will come north from Aquilonia and take their places here, to prosper for generation upon generation. Fort Venarium will be their center, and one day will grow into a city that can stand beside Tarantia and the other great centers of the realm."

That sounded good to Granth. Only one question still troubled his mind. He was bold, or rash, enough to ask it: "What about the Cimmerians, my lord?"

Nopel hissed in alarm between his teeth, while Vulth made a horrible face and then tried to pretend he had done no such thing. But Count Stercus' good cheer was proof even against impertinent questions. "What about the Cimmerians, my good fellow?" he echoed. "We have smashed their barbarous horde." His wave encompassed the corpse-strewn field; that many of the corpses were those of his countrymen seemed not to have come to his notice. Grandly, he continued, "Now we subdue their haunts in these parts, and compel them to obedience. Surely every Cimmerian man and woman, every boy and every little girl" —his voice lingered lovingly over the last few words—"shall bend the knee before the might of King Numedides."

From all that Granth had heard and seen, the fierce folk of the north bent the knee to no man. He started to say what he thought; he was as forthright as any other Gunderman. But the thought of what Vulth and Nopel had done a moment before gave him pause, and Count Stercus rode off before he could speak. He did not care enough about the argument to call the commander back.

"By Mitra, slaughter goes to his head like strong wine from Poitain," said Vulth in a low voice. "You'd hardly know he was the sour son of a whore who led us here."

"He didn't bite this fool's head off," agreed the sergeant, jerking a thumb toward Granth son of Biemur. "If that doesn't prove he's a happy man, curse me if I know what would."

"Do you suppose holding the Cimmerians down will be as easy as he says?" asked Granth.

Before answering, Nopel spat on the blood-soaked soil. "That for the Cimmerians," he said. "I'll tell you this much: we have a better chance now that we've smashed the manhood of three or four clans. What can they do but submit?"

Vulth stopped to search a dead man. He rose, muttering to himself and shaking his head. "I've not found any plunder worth keeping. The poorest, most hardscrabble Bossonian carries more in the way of loot than these dogs."

"What do we want with them, then?" wondered Granth. He had also searched corpses. He had found nothing worth holding on to but a curiously wrought copper amulet on a leather thong around the neck of a fallen enemy swordsman, and even that could not have been worth more than a couple of lunas at the outside. He had taken it more as a souvenir of the battle than in the hope of selling it later.

"They're here. They're on our doorstep. If we don't beat them, they'll come down into the Bossonian Marches, into Gunderland, maybe even into Aquilonia proper," said Nopel. "Better we should fight them, better we should whip them, in their own miserable country."

"Well, so it is," said Granth. The sergeant's words made good sense to him. He strode across the field, looking for more Cimmerians to finish. Carrion birds had already begun to settle on bodies indisputably dead.

Conan's bruises healed quickly, thanks to his youth and the iron constitution of the barbarian. He was not only up and about but busy in the smithy only a couple of days after his father beat him. But, though he might have been strong enough to go after Mordec, he chose to remain in Duthil instead. Belatedly, he had come to realize his father was right. If he went to fight the Aquilonians with his father and they both fell, who would tend to his mother? She had no other kin left alive in the village; she would have to rely on the kindness of those not tied to her by blood, and such kindness was always in short supply in Cimmeria.

As well as he could, Conan tended to the forge and the rest of the smithy. No large jobs came his way while his father was gone, for most of the other men of Duthil had gone with Mordec into battle. But Reuda, who was married to Dolfnal the tanner, came to Conan asking for a cooking fork. "Must I wait until Mordec comes home?" she said.

He shook his head, pausing for a moment to brush his thick mane of black hair back from his forehead with a swipe of the hand. "Nay, no need," he told her. "Come back tomorrow, just before the sun goes down. I'll have it for you then."

"And if I am not satisfied with your work?" asked Reuda. "If I see I would sooner have your father's?"

"Then save the fork and show it to him," replied Conan. "If you are sorry with what I give you, he will make me sorrier that I did not suit you."

Reuda rubbed her chin. After a moment's thought, she nodded. "Aye, let it be as you say. If you'll not work your best for fear of Mordec's heavy hand, nothing less will squeeze that best from you."

"I am not afraid of him," said Conan fiercely, but an ingrained regard for the truth compelled him to add, "Still, I would not feel his fist without good cause." Reuda laughed and nodded and went back to her husband's tannery, taking the stink of hides and sour tanbark with her.

Conan went to work straightaway, choosing an iron bar about as thick as his finger. He heated one end of it white-hot, then brought it back to the anvil and, with quick, cunning strokes of the hammer, shaped that end into a loop about two inches long. That done, he used a cold chisel to cut through the extremity of the loop, giving him the two tines he would need for the work. Some forks had three tines, but that was as yet beyond his skill. He did not think Reuda would complain if hers proved to be of the ordinary sort.