Conan of the Red Brotherhood Read online

  “Nay, Knulf, and damn your mealy mouth for asking.” The Cimmerian growled out the words levelly, in a measured, businesslike curse. “I would rather hold out for the full ransom... or not, as I please. ’Tis my name, after all, and my oath that was given on the matter!”

  “Aye, Captain. But you are green to these waters, less feared and respected than I. You might soon move on to other enterprises, unless you want to spend years building up a reputation like mine!” Raising a scarred, grimy fist, the pirate smugly thumped his drink-stained beard where it lay across his barrel chest. ‘ ‘Anyway, I do not imagine it has been easy keeping two women on a ship. Three really, counting the dim-witted serving-maid. One wench is hard enough to watch in a thieves’ den like Djafur—”

  “Enough! I will handle the business myself.” As if to punctuate the remark, Conan’s arm lashed powerfully, sending his short, thin lance angling down toward the waves. Where it struck, there commenced a frenzied splashing and swirling beneath the surface. But when Conan hauled taut the braided cord knotted to the lance, its barbed length floated free, trailing redness in the murky, grey-green water. As Conan drew up the lance and coiled the line, the splashing swirl receded but did not cease.

  “A good cast,” commented Knulf. “Must be sharks. They are hard to bring in... see there.” He pointed a thick finger at triangular fins darting and circling through red-tinged harbour foam.

  “Aye, a whole pack of the stripey devils,” a gruff voice added. “They gather thickest near the haunts of men.” The speaker was a bystander who had come forward to watch the flurry: a beached, decrepit-looking sailor who slouched from the shadows of the inn’s eaves.

  “I have speared a good many,” Conan said, easing down watchfully on the curb. “But for every one I kill, two or three more seem to appear.”

  “Ha, Cimmerian!” Knulf chided him. “Do you not know it is the blood that draws them?”

  “Aye, they prey on their own kind,” the stranger cackled. “Like some humans I know.”

  The Vanirman laughed again, none too pleasantly. “No great loss. You would not want to catch and eat them knowing what else they eat!” He gestured to the beach shallows where, often as not, human skulls and bones could be seen washing among the pebbles and winkle-shells. Meanwhile, Knulf hove himself to his feet, making the planks creak. “Consider my offer, Conan. You and I have both sailed the turbulent Western Ocean, but the Vilayet is a tideless inland sea, where a captain needs wit and tact to survive.” He turned on his heel. “Good hunting to you.”

  “Good hunting, aye,” Conan returned according to the etiquette of the Brotherhood.

  When the Vanirman had passed through the kitchen doorway, the wharf idler spoke again. “Knulf is a canny fighter and navigator, but most of all, a sly conniver.” “Aye,” Conan grunted, “so I have heard. He polished his skills along with his breeches on the oar-bench of a Vanir dragonship, raiding as far south as Argos, and a hundred leagues up the Khorotas River.”

  “I, too, have sailed the Western Sea,” the pirate said. “I know your fame as Amra of the Black Corsairs... and as Conan the General, hero of the Shamla Pass and vanquisher of undead Natohk’s sorcerous legions.”

  Conan turned to peer at the wharf rat. The round face was pale and ill-shaven from a dissolute existence on the beach, the features puffy and shapeless with drink. “I do not know you, and I give no alms.”

  “I am Ferdinald of Zingara, a smith and shipwright afore-times, till I learned the higher craft of piracy. Know me as a man in search of a leader.”

  Conan sized up the fellow further, assessing the wasted countenance, outweighed somewhat by the robust frame, the level stance and gaze. “Follow me, then. Will you have some drink... nay, some food in you, if the morning kettle is not empty? ’ ’

  “If it is not emptied, it will be soon, with five-score more mouths to feed.”

  “What?” Conan turned, following the Zingaran’s gaze to scan the mirror-bright sea. There around the chalky headland came a high, trim galley, its black-painted hull highlighted by the flash of fast-stroking oars. “’Tis a pirate craft, sure,” the Cimmerian declared. “Under pursuit, or else putting the oar-crew through its paces. Looks like the Tormentress.”

  “Aye,” Ferdinald affirmed, “Santhindrissa’s cruiser. She and her pirate maids will make this place lively soon.” “Let us go inside, then,” Conan said, arising from his seat. “I want my party to be ready for them.”

  After watching for a moment to make sure that no hostile ship chased the pirates, Conan turned and led the way inside. Any such pursuit was unlikely, he knew; it had been years since Imperial vessels had tried to blockade Djafur, much less attempted a raid. The place was too remote from Turanian harbours and too well hidden amid the ill-mapped shoals and treacherous currents of the surrounding Aetolian Isles. The pirate captains themselves, often as not, hired pilots from the native sea-tribes to guide them in and out through the maze of reefs.

  These same tribes, deriving much of their wealth from the Red Brotherhood’s activities, seemed willing to tolerate the presence of the Vilayet Sea’s criminal dregs. They even joined in the Brotherhood’s mainland raids with low, fast, crew-heavy ships of their own. Having no love for either the Turanian or Hyrkanian empires, the islanders would misguide Imperial ships onto the rocks or attack them with fire-skiffs in the narrow straits, rather than see them enter successfully. In these dangerous waters, the risk to foreign fleets was too great; thus the pirates continued to cruise with impunity out of Djafur and the lesser island ports.

  Conan seated the beggar Ferdinald before a generous bowl of fish porridge. He turned to the inn’s narrow, angular staircase just in time to watch his female entourage descend from their chambers. There came Philiope, looking calm and capable, if less regal than before, wearing one of her long, silk gowns shorn off at the knees for greater ease at shipboard manoeuvring. Behind her was Sulula the handmaid; having grievously neglected her appearance, she wore a shapeless plain tunic and walked with her eyes downcast beneath ill-kempt hair, frowning timidly. Last was Olivia in blouse and pantaloons, as beautiful as ever, but haughty, her face already made proof against the stares and catcalls she anticipated from the rabble.

  Indeed, the rogues did stir and mutter upon the entrance of the women. But once their looks flashed to Conan, who scowled in his place below the stair, silence spread through the room like a fast-gnawing ship worm through a soft pine hull. Other females, in any event, were present: slack, slatternly barmaids and a pair of fisher-girls, variously buck-toothed and wall-eyed, who were quick to avail themselves of the interest generated among the tavern patrons by the unapproachable beauties.

  “Captain Amra, good morn to you!” Philiope, calm and demure, came straight off the stair to Conan. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she raised up on tiptoe to kiss his smooth-shaven cheek. “You could have roused me up earlier... though I will say, I enjoyed the rest.” Staying near him, she glanced about the watching pirates to mark the fact of her intimacy with their captain.

  “Lady Philiope,” Conan greeted her, smiling as ever at her forwardness. “Fair Sulula—” the young maid jerked her face fearfully aside “—and my hardy mate Olivia, good day!”

  Conan’s rough embrace, bolstered by a caress to her loose, dark hair and a firm clap to her rump, did not improve the dark-eyed Ophirean’s humour. “No good day can follow an ill night,” she retorted, pulling sharply away. “This smelly slum on its worm-eaten pilings rocks worse than a round-bellied merchant ship riding a gale! The lodging rooms are raucous at all hours with pirates’ carousing and cursing... and damnably cramped!” She added this remark with a pointed look at her female companions.

  “Olivia, love.” Clasping an arm about her shoulders, Conan led all three women to a broad, round table. “If the men dallied late at their game of drafts, ’tis my fault,” he explained, sitting down beside her. “Through ill luck or others’ connivance, I went a hundred guilders in the hole. I had to sta
y up most of the night, and mash a few cheating fingers, to win it back.”

  “Oh... did you get adequate rest, then?” Olivia’s eyes flashed too sternly to reflect tender solicitude.

  “Aye, on yonder stairwell—” Conan nodded toward the upper landing “—with other seafarers even more sodden than I.”

  “Hmm.” Olivia nodded pensively. “It must have been so, since you did not retire to my side.” She sent another sharp glance at Philiope and her maid.

  “Be assured, Olivia—” Conan lowered his voice to a murmur, casting a surly glance over the other men in the place “—I remained half-awake and vigilant. If any skulking rogue had tried to creep to your room—or to yours, good ladies—” he added to the two captive women, “I would have dealt severely with him.”

  “Poor Captain Amra!” Philiope said with a winning smile. “You must surely have a difficult time guarding the three of us from evil-doers! It was bad enough on shipboard, but here on land—”

  “Aye, Captain. You spread yourself too thin,” Olivia remarked with a dangerous look.

  “It might be better,” Philiope resumed, “if the four of us could share a single sleeping chamber. That would make it easier for Sulula, instead of having to run between two rooms to serve us... that is, of course, if dear Olivia would not mind—”

  “Impossible!” Olivia interrupted her. “I could not bear it. As for your poor, terrified maid, she is clumsy and next to useless. You may have her back. But keep to your own rooms, if you please. Things are far too close here already.” “Aye,” Conan allowed, “and they may be a good deal more crowded in a moment or two, when the Tormentress and her crew hit the beach.”

  “What, that pirate slut Santhindra—whatever her name is—and her vile pack?” Olivia shook her head in disbelief. “That does it! I will sleep aboard the Hyacinth, whether the cabin door is repaired or not!”

  With a discreet glance around them, Conan leaned closer to his mistress. “I urge you, Olivia, to give a thought to what you say in company about Captain Drissa. Of all these scallywags and cutthroats, she is the one I might find it hardest to protect you from.”

  “You mean to say, the inn is going to be visited by a woman pirate?” Lady Philiope half-arose, craning her slender neck in eagerness toward the door. “Although I had heard tales of you, Captain Amra, there was no talk at home of such a marvel!”

  “It may be that none who met her on the high seas has ever escaped to spread her renown,” Conan said, helping Philiope to her feet.

  Outside on the dock, Conan and his women joined the crowd that had formed to watch the trim, mastless craft put into port. It was a sleek bireme, longer than Conan’s Vixen and somewhat broader in the beam, boasting a double row of oars closely interleaved on either side. At its prow, churning the water into a frothy wake that streamed alongside and astern, was a sharp, triple-barbed ram capable of pinning a ship in place or sending it to the bottom.

  The Tormentress was well-commanded, as evidenced by the steady stroking of the oars, with never a missed beat or flurry of confusion down the rows. It moved at a fast clip and steered nicely, negotiating the turn around the last few unmarked rocks in the harbour mouth without a visible reduction in speed.

  Of the two figures leaning on steering-oars astern, the taller, black-harnessed one was probably the captain. If ever anyone ran a tight ship, Santhindrissa did. Half of her crew, those manning the upper oar banks, were women—fierce, armed fighters who swarmed overside to seize the prizes her ship caught. The rest were male captives, taken at sea or on land raids. In and out of port, these slaves remained shackled in the lower benches to provide raw power—except, so it was rumoured, when one or more of them was unchained at captain or crew’s request, to perform some special service. Day and night, these men laboured. at a task that made their bodies flourish and their spirits wilt, toiling naked under the stinging lashes of their female overseers.

  The Tormentress, like any bireme, had oar-benches set at two levels. Male pirates who had gone aboard told scandalously of how the men, confined to the lower seats, were made to work all day in Vilayet heat, their eyes on a level with the sparsely clad hips and shanks of the female pirates, who toiled above and paced the catwalk. Whether such a fate would make a man mad, or send him into an idiot’s dumb raptures, Conan knew not. But in his talks with Vilayet pirates, he had heard of no successful escapes or mutinies aboard the Tormentress.

  For security’s sake, even so, Santhindrissa did not drive her ship up onto the beach. Instead, she deftly double-anchored just off the Red Hand’s pier, a good deal closer in than the Hyacinth. After warping their ship around with a temporary line to one of the sturdier pilings, her crew stretched a long plank straight across from deck to pier.

  Presumably, in the piratesses’ absence, it would be withdrawn; the harbour sharks would then guard the captives as effectively as any sentries could.

  Striding across the bobbing plank, the women were greeted with shouts of enthusiasm by the male brigands. Strong drink was brought out from the tavern and given to those arriving. Several bottles were slung through the air, so that before even stepping from their deck, some of the women were already half-drunk, frolicking perilously on the gangplank or wantonly dancing on their ship’s rail.

  Yet predictably, ere love had time to blossom, bloodshed did. A knife duel broke out on the pier, swirling swift and furious through the crowd. Before the bystanders could form a proper circle and lay bets, the loser—a male, one of Knulf’s crew—was down. The deep gash to his hip, so it was judged, would probably bleed him or fever him to death in a week’s time. The winner—a scrawny, pale, murky-haired pirate wench named Brylith, who wore a patch over one eye—held her bloody dagger high in the air, turning in a slow circle to acknowledge the crowd’s cheers. Then she drank deep from the victory goblet that was brought forward, and did her fallen enemy the honour of pouring its purple dregs into his upturned, gasping mouth.

  “Unship this plank!” Attention was drawn back to the bireme by a high, hoarse command. The ship’s captain, the last female to come ashore, strode along the bouncing gangway. Santhindrissa was an extraordinarily tall, slim, sharp-nosed woman, dark-tanned and sinewy—a Stygian, judging by her hawk-like features and her straight black hair. Her shallow breasts were all but concealed by a harness of criss-crossed black strapping; her short leather kirtle rattled with weapons and manacle keys; her high-bound, black-leather sandals spiked the gangplank firmly. Raising one leather-wrapped fist on high, she gave a hoarse cry before setting foot on the dock. “All hail the Red Sisterhood!”

  “Hail the Sisters!” the high-pitched cry came back, with a gruff underlayer of male voices joining in good-naturedly.

  “A whole ship of women pirates,” Philiope marvelled, holding tightly to Conan’s arm. “I never knew there could be such! Do they breed pirate babes, too?”

  “Nay,” Conan grunted. “Heavy work at the oars seems to prevent that. Or maybe it’s Knulf’s rot-gut,” he added, nodding toward a piratess who knelt over the side of the pier, already puking with land-sickness. “As a rule, they do not marry, but seem to prize their shipboard life.”

  “If you admire them so much, noble lady, you might join them!” Olivia spoke disdainfully, staying close though she refused to clasp Conan’s free arm. “You, and your maidservant there, as well.” She flicked a glance at Sulula, cowering by her mistress’s side. “It would probably take only a small knifing to win each of you a seat at the oars.”

  “No,” the noble girl thoughtfully replied, “I think not. The life of a sea-wench is, after all, somewhat less gracious than we are accustomed to.”

  “What? Why, you little baggage—” Olivia’s retaliatory words were cut off by the jostle of bodies on the pier as Conan moved purposely to follow the mob back into the Red Hand.

  Inside, the tavern was twice as raucous and crowded, with more idlers drawn in from the street by the excitement. Sullen, ill-kempt Ferdinald had somehow managed to kee
p possession of Conan’s broad table, which now became a refuge for captains. The Cimmerian fell into conversation with a squat, broad-faced, moustached captain named Hrandulf, one of the chiefs of the sea-tribes, who always liked to stay abreast of the pirates’ doings. Santhindrissa came to perch on the table’s edge, and soon afterward the pirate-innkeeper Knulf ambled over, bringing with him a heavy ale jar for the party.

  Their talk centred first on the Tormentress’s successful cruise, which had netted medium-rich cargoes from two Zaporoskan trading sloops. Weather and Imperial patrols were discussed: There had been little of either in the Southern Sea. The only news, gained from one of the captured traders, was of some kind of naval proclamation in the distant Turanian port of Aghrapur, involving a competition, a vast prize... and rumours of sorcery. The account was unclear, gained third-hand from the mouths of sailors who tended to be superstitious, even under torture. Captain Drissa did not pretend to understand it; instead, she asked about the merchant cog anchored in the harbour, which led to talk of the Vixen’s recent exploits, and of the hostages.

  “Interesting,” the female pirate told Conan, swivelling in her place to regard the women seated at the lower end of the table. “You still like them soft and delicate, I see.”

  Conan’s female entourage ignored the remark; scowling Olivia fortunately hurled no insults, and Philiope wore a demure smile. Only the maid Sulula, cringing at her mistress’s side, glanced up the table, then away, looking like a small creature trapped by Captain Drissa’s bird-of-prey stare.

  “That one... if you cannot get a fair ransom for her, sell her to me,” the captainess declared in her softly husky voice.