Free The Harp and the Blade by John Myers Myers Page A

suppose some Conan is still alive,” I conceded, “but the one I know is dead.” I looked up sourly at the one who seemed to be in charge. “Are you ever going away so I can sleep?”
    “I don’t know who you are,” he said thoughtfully, “or how you got mixed up in that business, but Fulke says he heard you—or somebody—singing when he located Conan.”
    “Damned good singing,” I said complacently, less annoyed with him then.
    “Well, anyhow,” he concluded, “you won’t be in a state to make a getaway for a while to come, so I’ll let Conan decide what to do with you when he gets around to knowing what’s what again.”
    He left, and I slept.

Chapter
  Six
    I T was a few days before I knew anything much, but when clarity and recollection returned I was in bed in a tiny wooden shack. I hurt in quite a few places, I was weak, and the wound in my chest stabbed me as I pulled myself up to look outside. There was nothing in sight except trees and nobody came when I yelled, so I lay back, trying to reconstruct what had happened and calculate what was liable to happen to me.
    In an hour or so and after I had dozed off once or twice a man, a woodsman by the look of him, came in. He was a compact, quick fellow, quiet but pleasant.
    “Are you my host?” I demanded when we’d exchanged greetings.
    He scratched his head and chuckled as if I’d said something funny. “Well, I guess I am at that. I live here.”
    “Could you get me some food please? I’m hungry as a bitch werewolf with pups. What’s more I’ve got the money to pay you with—or I did have.”
    “They left you everything they found in the vault,” he assured me, “but you won’t need any money. They’re figuring you may be the fellow that stood by Conan, and anyways food don’t cost me nothing.”
    I watched him catch a spark on tinder and nurse it to a blaze. “When they brought me here I couldn’t get it out of my head that Conan was dead, but now I remember that they claimed he was all right.”
    A shadow took his face. “He’s not all right, but he’s alive. He got a bad cut on the head and still sleeps.”
    It was bad news, but we were both fortunate to be alive at all; and there was no use in mourning yet. “How did they happen to rescue us?” I inquired.
    “Oh, we had every man and boy out looking for signs of Conan when he didn’t show up after the wolf hunt. Fulke the minstrel was sent to scout around the Old Farms. He saw that armed men had somebody treed and guessed that Conan was there, too, though all he could hear was somebody singing about cats and rats.” My host grinned at me. “Maybe you were the one, though nobody will be sure until Conan comes to.”
    The head of the rescue party, I recalled, had said almost the same thing. “And if Conan doesn’t come out of it?” I asked.
    The woodsman’s face sobered. “I don’t know what will happen,” he said quietly, giving me something to think over with great care.
    “Well, anyhow,” I said by way of shelving unpleasant subjects until my meal was ready, “Fulke wandered into the neighborhood. Oliver’s men were too entranced with my song to spot him, and he rallied Conan’s men?”
    “Leaving out a couple of words I ain’t so sure of, why, I guess the answer’s yes. Our men were scattered, and it was a while before we could get word to a reasonable number; but Rainault led twenty horses there. They’d had enough fighting by then and were glad to reach their mounts in time to get clear.”
    “What about Oliver?”
    “Oh, they all got away except the corpses. Rainault was too anxious about Conan to waste time following them. Besides, counting two we sort of put out of their misery, they lost nine men, and some of the others looked well chewed. Oliver and his crew won’t forget that fight in a hurry, and Fulke has seen to it that the song is sweeping the countryside. He’s a real Minstrel, that boy; he memorized your whole song. Everybody’s