Michael Stackpole - Conan the Barbarian

She spun, watching him warily. “It is a good thing you die here, Cimmerian. Were you to live, you would prove troublesome.” She gazed after her father, then strode quickly to Conan’s side and licked sweat and blood from his cheek. Her voice became a whisper. “Not that this might prove wholly unwelcome, but we shall never know.”

In a swirl of cape she departed. From outside, men cheered their great victory, but the rising crackle of flames swallowed all sound of their retreat.

Corin met his son’s gaze. Though collared and chained to the helmet, begrimed, bloody, and exhausted, he did not look defeated. “Conan, you cannot save me. Save yourself.”

Already the chain had begun to get hot, but the boy shook his head. “A Cimmerian warrior does not fear death.”

“Nor does he rush foolishly to embrace it.” Corin raised a hand to the chain on his collar. “Let go of the chain, boy.”

“I’m not afraid to die.” A fiery coal fell from the ceiling, burning Conan’s cheek. It smarted fiercely, but to brush it away would be to doom his father. Conan snarled against the pain, but held on.

“Conan, look at me .”

The boy looked up into his father’s eyes. “Your mother . . . she wanted more for you in this life than fire and blood. As do I.” Corin’s grip tightened on his chain. “I love you, son.”

Corin yanked and his body fell. The chain ripped free of Conan’s grasp. Molten metal poured down over the smith, outlining his features in red-gold as the forge’s light had often done, then liquified them.

Conan darted toward his father, but the blast of heat from the metal drove him back. A rafter cracked, cutting him off. The heat forced him to the doorway. The boy stumbled through, expecting a spear thrust or an arrow. He tumbled into a snowbank, burying his face and hands. The snow cooled his seared flesh but could do nothing to erase the image of his father’s death.

The boy rolled over and looked at his blistered hands. Each link had left its mark on his flesh. He tried to remember his father’s hands, so big, so callused, and yet so gentle when circumstance required. Already that memory had begun to fade within the liquid metal pool that had consumed his father. Conan pressed his hands into the snow again and waited for numbness to swallow the pain.

He had no idea how long he lay there. Though he did not fear death, in that moment he was not so certain that he was fond of living. He knew that if Crom meant him to live, he would live—the courage and strength to do so would have been born in him. But there, with the forge burning and the stink of roasting flesh filling the gray smoke, Conan saw little reason to move.

Then he heard something. Not a random sound like fire’s crackle or the hiss of bubbling water. A voice. A voice free from pain and full of joy. In this place, at this time, that could herald only one thing.

Conan rolled to his feet and looked about warily. There, through a swirl of smoke, he saw two things. A raider, one of the heavy cavalry, kneeling over the body of a woman. He grabbed a double handful of her hair and pulled back, stretching her throat and opening her mouth in a silent scream. Then he pressed the edge of his sword to her hairline and, in one swift stroke, harvested her scalp.

And, halfway between the raider and Conan, a Cimmerian sword had been stabbed into a snowbank, forgotten.

Swiftly and silently, fluidly, the last Cimmerian warrior ran forward. He grasped the sword’s hilt with his left hand, mindless of the pain of bursting blisters. He splashed through a puddle of snowmelt that he could have run around, because he wanted the raider to know he was coming.

The man heard the sound and half turned toward it. His right hand came up to ward off the sword, but Conan’s first cut separated wrist from arm. Before the raider could scream, a second blow dented his helmet. He sagged to the side, dazed, and stared up.

Conan buried the sword in his throat and watched the light flow out of his eyes.

Conan sat down beside the dead raider and looked at the burning village. The boy he had been that morning would not have wanted to cry, but could never have held back the tears. The man he had become understood the desire to weep, but could never let him give in to weakness. Crom cared not for the lamentations of mortals, and Conan, determined to be make Marique’s comment into a prophecy, had no time to mourn.

As night came on and the warmth of fires faded, he freed the sword from the raider’s throat, took a knife from his body, scavenged meager supplies, and set off to find his grandfather.

CHAPTER 9

CONAN AWOKE WITHa start. He couldn’t feel his hands. He pulled them from beneath the heavy aurochs skin that was all but smothering him. They’d become as large as hams, or at least the cloth wrapping them was. And when he tried to tense his fingers, he couldn’t move them much, but something inside the cloth squished and a noxious scent poured out.

A stick clacked against the foot of the bed. “Boy, if you pull those poultices apart again, I will let your hands rot off.”

He looked and could only see a silhouette moving through the hut’s darkened interior. Still, there was no mistaking the voice. “Grandfather?” Conan meant to ask the question forcefully—befitting a warrior—but it came out as a croak, and a weak one at that.

“No other fool would take you in, Conan.” The old man stirred coals in the hearth, then tossed on more wood. A little blaze began to flare. Connacht, leaning heavily on the stick, walked to the bedside and peered down at the boy. He placed a hand on his forehead. “Good. I think the fever’s broken. Death wanted you, boy, but we cheated him, we did.”

“Water?”

The old man helped Conan sit up and drink. He didn’t let the boy have too much, or drink it quickly. With his bandaged hands he couldn’t have managed the cup anyway, so Conan drank at the dictated pace. He nodded when done.

“How long?”

“A week, though now’s the first you’re right in the head.” Connacht shook his head. “Came in fevered. Burns on your hands all infected. Had the blood poison. Lucky for you I remembered what a Shemite healer did for me once. Had to use bear fat instead of goat. Smells worse, seems to work the same.”

Conan stared at his hands as they lay like lifeless lumps in his lap. “A week?”

“Came crashing through the bush wild-eyed and burning up.”

My father burned up . . .

“Weren’t in your right mind. Went for me with your sword, you did.”

Conan’s eyes widened. “I didn’t . . . ?”

“Hurt me?” Connacht laughed. “You were too weak to break an egg with a hammer, boy. How in the name of Crom did you get here?”

Conan closed his eyes. Is my father really dead? Are they all dead?

“Conan?”

The young Cimmerian shook himself. “Raiders destroyed the village. I was the only one who survived.”

Connacht’s face became graven. “I know you didn’t run, boy.”

“I wasn’t a coward, Grandfather. But . . .” Conan’s throat closed.

Connacht poured more water. Conan drank, both because he was thirsty and to soften the lump in his throat. Yet even when his grandfather took the cup away, he couldn’t say anything.

The old man nodded slowly. “Seen a lot of people die. Many of them friends. Had more than one in my arms, just talking to him, easing the passage. Never an easy thing.”

Conan shook his head.

“My son?”

“I . . . I tried to save him.”

“And he wanted you to live.”

Conan nodded.

“You think he was wrong? You think he was stupid?”

The young Cimmerian looked up horrified. “No.”