Conan of Venarium

He heaved and twisted. So did the enormous Aquilonian. Whichever of them could wrest the spade from the other would live. His enemy would die. It was as simple as that. The Aquilonian's first couple of jerks on the handle were almost contemptuous. He had never yet met a man who could match his strength.

But then he grunted in surprise. He set his feet. He took a better grip. The youth who opposed him might have been made of iron and leather and powered by a lion's heart, or a dragon's. Strain as the Aquilonian would, he could make no progress against him. Indeed, he felt himself beginning to fail. A few more twists, and he would be without the weapon that had worked such slaughter.

"No!" he cried hoarsely, and tried to stamp on Conan's foot. But that foot was not there when the Aquilonian's boot crashed down. And, distracted from the struggle over the spade, the Aquilonian felt it rip from his fingers. "No!" he shouted once more, this time in despair and disbelief. That was the last word that ever passed his lips.

Breathing hard, Conan stood over his corpse for a moment. Then he threw aside the murderous spade. It had served him well enough, but he knew there were better weapons. He had his choice of any on the field now, and of the loot his comrades and their foes had carried.

His father's axe on his shoulder, a fine sword on his hip, his belt pouch heavy with silver lunas and golden rings, he strode down the road toward Tarantia.

A curious thing happened then. As long as Conan was part of a band of Cimmerians, all the Aquilonians in the countryside had done their best to hunt him down. When he walked along by himself, they forgot all about him. One lone youth, they seemed to say to themselves, could never threaten their grip on this kingdom. Knights who might well have slain him on sight had they found him in company with others of his kind rode past him without a second glance — sometimes even without a first.

And the deeper into Aquilonia he got, the more he began to see that the people who lived on the land did not know him for a Cimmerian at all. They should have; he resembled them no more than a wolf takes after a lap dog. But he heard one peasant woman murmur, "How big and strong they grow them in Gunderland!" to another as he walked by. He did not catch what the second woman said in reply, but it sent both of them into a fit of giggles.

Obscurely annoyed without knowing why, Conan kept on toward the capital without giving the slightest indication he had heard the peasant women or noticed them in any way. For some unfathomable reason, that only set them giggling again.

Sometimes he would stop and chop wood or pitch hay for a meal and a place to sleep. Even his bad Aquilonian got taken for a frontier accent, not a barbarous one. He began to wonder about the ignorant folk who lived near the heart of this kingdom. The Bossonians and Gundermen he'd known had been enemies, aye, but worthy enemies. A lot of the people near Tarantia, shielded for generations by the rougher men who dwelt closer to the border, would not have lasted long had they had to defend their holdings against raiders from the north.

They did not even seem to know how lucky they were to be so shielded. Conan was drinking wine in a tavern when an Aquilonian at the next table spoke to his friend: "They say the barbarians have run us out of that Cimmeria place."

The friend's jowls wobbled as he swigged from his mug of wine. They wobbled again when he shrugged. "Well, so what?" he said. "Mitra, I don't know what we wanted with such a miserable country to begin with."

"Oh, it wasn't us —not folk like you and me," said the first man wisely. "It was those miserable frontiersmen. All they do is make babies, and they were looking for somewhere to put more of them."

"Well, they didn't find it there." His friend laughed. "Not my worry any which way."

"Nor mine," said the first man. "Here, drink up, Crecelius, and I'll buy you another round."

They too were enemies. Even so, Conan wanted to pound their heads together. He doubted whether it would do any good, though. They were so sunk in sottish stupidity, nothing was likely to knock sense into their thick skulls.

Another thought crossed his mind later that day, after he had left the tavern behind. If the ordinary folk of Aquilonia had this view of the Cimmerian expedition, what did King Numedides think about it? Up until now, Conan had always assumed the King of Aquilonia would be gnashing his teeth in fury over his failure in the north. Now, suddenly, the blacksmith's son wondered. Could it be that Numedides was as indifferent to the disaster as so many of his subjects seemed to be?

What sort of a sovereign was Numedides if in fact he did not care? Conan laughed gustily and shrugged. As if the doings and thoughts of the King of Aquilonia could possibly matter to him!