Conan of Venarium

Instead of answering in words, Conan sprang up and grabbed for his father's axe. For the moment, he was ready to do murder for the sake of going to war. But even as his hand closed on the axe handle, Mordec's larger, stronger hand closed on his wrist. Conan tried to twist free, tried and failed. Then he hit his father. He had told the truth —he did have the strength of an ordinary man. The blacksmith, however, was no ordinary man. He took his son's buffet without changing expression.

"So you want to see what it's really like, do you?" asked Mordec. "All right, by Crom. I'll let you have a taste."

He had hit Conan before; as often as not, nothing but his hand would gain and hold the boy's attention. But he had never given him such a cold-blooded, thorough, methodical beating as he did now. Conan tried to fight back for as long as he could. Mordec kept hitting him until he had no more fight left in him. The blacksmith aimed to make the boy cry out for mercy, but Conan set his jaw and suffered in silence, plainly as intent on dying before he showed weakness as Mordec was on breaking him.

And Conan might have died then, for his father, afraid he would fall to an enemy's weapons, was not at all afraid to kill him for pride's sake. After the beating had gone on for some long and painful time, though, Verina came out of the bedchamber. "Hold!" she croaked. "Would you slay what's most like you?"

Mordec stared at her. Rage suddenly rivered out of him, pouring away like ale from a cracked cup. He knelt by his bruised and bloodied son. "You will stay here," he said, half commanding, half pleading.

Conan did not say no. Conan, then, could not have said anything, for his father had beaten him all but senseless. He saw the smithy through a red haze of anguish.

Taking his silence for acquiescence, Mordec filled a dipper with cold water and held it to his battered lips. Conan took a mouthful. He wanted to spit it in his father's face, but animal instinct made him swallow instead. Mordec did not take the dipper away. Conan drained it dry.

"You are as hard on your son as you are on everything else," said Verina with a bubbling sigh.

"Life is hard," answered Mordec. "Anyone who will not see that is a fool: no, worse than a fool —a blind man."

"Life is hard, aye," agreed his wife. "I am not blind; I can see that, too. But I can also see that you are blind, blind to the way you make it harder than it need be."

With a grunt, the blacksmith got to his feet. He towered over Verina. Scowling, he replied, "I am not the only one in this home of whom that might be said."

"And if I fight you, will you beat me as you beat the boy?" asked Verina. "What point to that? All you have to do is wait; before long the sickness in my lungs will slay me and set you free."

"You twist everything I say, everything I do," muttered Mordec, at least as much to himself as to her. Fighting the Aquilonians would seem simple when set against the long, quiet (but no less deadly for being quiet) war he had waged with his wife.

"All you want to do is spill blood," said Verina. "You would be as happy slaying Cimmerians as you are going off to battle Aquilonians."

"Not so," said Mordec. "These are thieves who come into our land. You know that yourself. They would take what little we have and send it south to add to their own riches. They would, but they will not. I go to join the muster of the clans." He strode forward, snatched up his axe and shield and wallet, and stormed forth from the smithy, a thunderstorm of fury on his face.

"No good will come of this!" called Verina, but the blacksmith paid no heed.

Conan heard his father and mother quarrel as if from very far away. The pain of the beating made everything else seem small and unimportant. He tried to get to his feet, but found he lacked the strength. He lay in the dirt, even his ardor to go forth to battle quelled for the moment.

Verina stooped beside him. His mother held a bowl full of water and a scrap of cloth. She wet the cloth and gently scrubbed at his face. The rag, which had been the brownish gray of undyed wool, came away crimson. She soaked it in the bowl, wrung it nearly dry, and went back to what she was doing. "There," she said at last. "You're young—you'll heal."

With an effort, Conan managed to sit up. "I still want to go and fight, no matter what Father says," he mumbled through cut and swollen lips.

But his mother shook her head. "Mordec was right." She made a sour face. "Not words I often say, but true. However great you've grown, you are yet too young to go to war." And Conan, who would have and nearly had fought to the death against his father, accepted Verina's words without a murmur.

Chapter Two

The Fight by the Fort