Free Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza by Roland Green Page A

with the back of his free hand. He might for now be no more use in a fight than an unschooled soy, but he was still a head taller than any of the men around him.
    While some of those men were merely standing and gaping and others trying to form a circle around Rog, Conan struck them from behind. He had both sword and dagger in hand, and also used fists and feet, all with dreadful effectiveness.
    He snapped one man’s spine with a kick, clove mother’s arm from its shoulder with the sword, hamming a third with a low slash from the dagger, then found himself surrounded. He tried to find an opening that would leave him with no one at his back, but his surviving enemies now seemed to use speed of foot against strength of arm and steel.
    Conan kept whirling and striking, but half a dozen of his minor cuts oozed blood and he knew a serious wound was only moments away. At least Mikros would hardly have enough men left alive and hale to track down Brollya, after Conan fell—
    A roar like storm-flung surf on rocks half-deafened the Cimmerian. Suddenly two men facing him were jerked aloft, as if by a hangman’s noose. Where they had been, stood Tharmis Rog, with one massive hand clamped around either neck.
    This time, the master-at-arms had not allowed the Cimmerian to remain in danger longer than necessary.
    Conan saw a man to Rog’s right raising a knife, leaped to meet the skulker, and knocked down another bravo in so doing. The uplifted dagger met Conan’s down-slicing sword and flew from the man’s hand as the hand also flew from the wrist. The man howled and ran; Conan idly wondered if he would reach a hiding place before loss of blood brought him down.
    Now the two big men stood side by side, facing no more than four opponents; Conan no longer counted the two men Rog was holding. The master-at-arms lifted these, briskly cracked their heads together, then flung them away as if they had been offal that soiled his hands and offended his nostrils. Flying through the air, they brought down two of their comrades.
    The two bravos left on their feet did not stand their ground. They fled into the trees, screaming as if being burned alive. One of the men thrown down by Rog regained his senses and lurched off after them.
    Rog looked down at the other. “I suppose we’d best wake up this fellow and ask him who sent him out to spoil an honest fight.”
    “Never mind that,” Conan said. “Pardon, I did not mean to give you an order. But I know who sent them.” He described the scarred man.
    “Ha!” Rog said. “I had begun to suspect the same. As well to be certain.” He looked Conan up and down. “Do you still want to fight?”
    The Cimmerian replied with a level gaze and voice. “Do you still think that boulder was aimed at you?” The night birds had begun to sound again after the fight. Rog’s bellow of laughter silenced them once more. “After you risked your life to save me, I should go on believing you seek my blood? If I do that, call me a witling and give me to my daughter’s care, for I’m past soldiering!”
    “Well, then,” Conan said, “it seems we have no more quarrel.”
    “Rightly enough,” Rog said, shaking his head. “But we’ve some talking to do. Shall we do it over some better wine than the camp holds?”
    “If I refuse that offer, you may call me a witling,” Conan replied, with a grin that bared the white teeth in his blood-spattered face. “I don’t know where you’d send me, though, for I’ve no daughters or sons either—that I know of.”
    If the mountain wind had seemed cold before, Lysinka now felt rather as if she were embedded naked n a block of ice. She swayed and would have fallen if Grolin had not held her upright. She did not notice whether his hands strayed and for some moments hardly cared.
    Once again, the need to prove she was no witling drove her tongue into movement.
    “Does this mean the possessor of the Soul is immortal, free from death? Or does it mean that he can