Michael Stackpole - Conan the Barbarian

The Cimmerian resumed his hike up the hillside with her in tow. “People must have died.”

“Yes, but you knew that you would never see them in this life again. There was no wondering as to their fate. No anticipating a return, or hearing bad news.” She shook her head. “I would not have thought it so hard.”

“Hard are the times when you never have the chance to say good-bye.” They crested the hill and turned inland. There, just on the other side of the hill, lay another cove similar to the one where the Hornet anchored. At this one, however, the beach had risen to bury ruins, leaving visible only two massive statues. White sand covered them to the waist. They stared blindly at the ocean, and the fanglike stones that warded the cove and kept all ships at sea.

Tamara stopped. “Who were these people? Did they think they could conquer earth and sea?”

“Perhaps for a time they did conquer earth and sea.”

“And now all they know is ruin.” She squeezed his hand, then looked up into his face. “Do you think our lives are part of some grand plan?”

Conan shook his head. “I do not know. I do not care. I live, I slay, I love, I call no man master. If there is a purpose to life beyond that, it means nothing to me.”

Tamara’s gaze met his openly, with no guile or hidden intent. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “I want nothing of you, Conan, save that, for this night, you do not have to pass it alone.”

Two dozen yards along the path and back up a bit, they found shelter in the ruins of what had once been a watchtower. A cleared floor and a small stack of firewood revealed that other travelers had used it before them. The Cimmerian kindled a fire and Tamara spread out a blanket. She shed her clothes, then freed him of his.

It was not the first time he had seen her naked, but that morning, aboard the Hornet , it had been entirely different. Now her long hair fell forward of her shoulders, but did not conceal her full breasts with their dark nipples. Her body tapered at the waist, then flared gently through her hips down into long, slender legs. Her face, though half shadowed, had a regal beauty that insisted she must be of nobility, and her slender hands, which caressed his chest, testified to her femininity.

Conan took her in his arms and kissed her, deeply and passionately, but she broke the kiss and forced him to lie down on the blanket. She knelt at his feet, then worked her way up his body, kissing each of his scars, solemnly and slowly, the intimacy of her caresses all the greater for their simple innocence.

She was not the first woman he had bedded since his days on the Black Coast. He could not remember all of them. He had sought their company to hold ghosts at bay. He’d thought to bury Bêlit’s memory and the pain in the anonymity of hot couplings. That effort had failed, for the hollowness of the acts resonated within the void in his heart, mocking with their shallowness the depth of what he had once had.

But Tamara . . . she saw him differently than the legions of whores and concubines. She continued kissing him, but when her lips met a scar on his left hip, he flinched.

She looked up. “Did I . . . ?”

Conan shook his head. That wound he’d taken aboard the Argus , as Bêlit and the Tigress ’s crew had overwhelmed the smaller ship. She’d made him her consort and king. She had danced for him and then, later, kissed that same scar.

Tamara’s eyes glistened. “She must have been very special.”

Conan nodded.

Hot tears anointed the scar. “And so fortunate to have won your heart.”

The Cimmerian reached down and drew her up. His fingers slipped into her dark hair and he brought her mouth to his. He kissed her fiercely, as if it were the last kiss he might ever give, then crushed her to him.

Theirs was not the sloppy, clumsy lovemaking of children, nor the passionless joining of bodies performing for pay or duty. At first it was frenzied and urgent, because of the primal hunger that united them. Khalar Zym’s machinations may have thrown them together, but this union was of their choice, for them and them alone. And through it, and as it settled into a more sustained course, they confirmed their existences. It gave each of them a piece of the other, a slice of time shared, that guaranteed they would never be alone. Without regret, and yet with great joy, they came together again and again and, eventually, with hungers sated, lay entwined in the dying firelight.

He held her so she could not escape, but she made no attempt to do so. Instead she traced fingers over his myriad scars like a palm reader tracing the lines of his hands. She kissed the scars, though this time more quickly and playfully, wistfully, then snuggled in with her cheek pressed to his chest.

“I shall be thinking of you always on your journey, Conan.”

“Three days to Asgalun, and another to Khor Kalba.”

“Artus said that if you did not meet him in Hyrkania, he would hunt you down. Will you meet him?”

He pulled back, and looked her full in the face. “I will find him. I shall need to know that he brought you to safety. If, for some reason, he failed, then I shall have to know who to kill.”

She kissed his lower lip. “He will not fail, Conan. On the tide he shall bear me safely away.”

With another woman, these words would have been an invitation to ask her to come with him, but he did not take them as such. Tamara did not look at him quizzically, wondering why he refrained. She smiled and nestled deeper into his arms.

He kissed the top of her head. “There are hours before the tide, Tamara. I shall return you to the ship soon, and see you off. Then I am bound for Khor Kalba, to see you free forever.”

CHAPTER 29

TAMARA DISENTANGLED HERSELFfrom the safe warmth of Conan’s arms and silently pulled on her clothes. She sat there for a bit, watching him, listening to him murmur in a dialect she did not understand. She chose to assume it was Cimmerian. It gave her great pleasure to imagine that their passion had left him untroubled enough that he could revisit a peaceful time.

Mitra, thank you for granting him peace. She smiled and resisted the temptation to softly kiss his brow. She did not wish to waken him. She would have welcomed his pulling her back to him, and to sharing intimacy with him, but for both their sakes she had to be away and to the Hornet .

Though she was taking her leave of him, she did not feel she was abandoning him. What they had shared, this consummation of their relationship, made positive a thing fashioned by the desires of evil. Prior to the previous night, they were simply people Khalar Zym had drawn together by dint of his avarice. They had been running in parallel courses, but now they were a team. Though their paths would split apart—and part of her believed she would never see the Cimmerian again—their purpose and effort were united. Until Khalar Zym had her blood, his plan could not be fulfilled, which gave Conan ample time to put an end to Zym’s planning for all time.

Tamara left their shelter and worked her way back along the sandy path. In the light of the waning moon’s sliver, she watched silver waves caress half-buried statues. There would come a time when the sands would fully cover what the ocean had not eroded. So it would be with the stories of Khalar Zym, and how he sought her, but how she, with Conan, destroyed him. Their efforts, for good or evil, would be forgotten.

She did not think that a bad thing. The sun and moon rode through the sky, uncaring of the travails of men. Tamara had no idea who had built the ruins below her. She did not know the name of the sorcerer who had raised the stone teeth to close the bay. She was willing to grant that having that knowledge could not hurt her cause, and might help it, but in the steady progression of the aeons, who these people had been and what they had done were immaterial.