Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza by Roland Green

paid for it.”
    The innkeeper wrung his hands. “But those who come in the morning—”
    “—will have the place to themselves, if you give us. something to break our fast when you want us to leave. A few loaves of bread, a plate or two of sausages, any odd fowl you may have ready roasted—” The innkeeper promised a bountiful breakfast so quickly that his tongue kept tripping over itself, and Conan hardly understood what he and Rog had been promised. Nor, for the moment, did he particularly care.
    Tomorrow they could return to the camp and begin working together to make the Thanza Rangers worthy of the name of soldier.
     
    * * *
     
    “Countess?”
    The voice was Fergis’s. Lysinka rolled over and sat up to contemplate her comrade, who was squatting beside her sleeping cocoon. It was close enough to dawn that she could recognize his face as well as his voice.
    “Have our folk voted?”
    “Aye.”
    “How did they vote?”
    “We will follow you to join with Grolin.”
    “That is as well. He will go questing for it, whether we join or not. Together, we will be more than twice as strong as either band. We may win further allies too.”
    “Aye, and if those levies they are supposed to be raising in Shamar come calling, we’ll be better prepared to meet them.”
    Fergis looked at his chieftain, and for the first time in years she was conscious that she was naked before him. She would not make matters worse by covering herself, however.
    “Eh, Countess. Does he want to bed you?”
    “You think it proves him a man of poor judgement if he does?”
    “Proves him—?” Fergis began indignantly, then gave a short bark of laughter. “Countess, it is between him and you. I have not lost my senses.”
    Nor, Lysinka suspected, the desire for her that glowed gently within him. This made his loyalty all the more perfect, so that she felt ashamed of baiting him.
    “I have not lost mine either,” she said. “The Soul of Thanza is said to fight against death. It does not fight against common sense.”

    V
     
    Conan awoke in the blackness of the nighted forest with a toe prodding him in the ribs. He had reached for his sword when he saw that the toe belonged to Tharmis Rog.
    “Is it time for me to relieve you?” he asked the master-at-arms.
    “Not yet, but I hear movement in the mule lines.” “Not our people?”
    “Too quiet to be any of our drunkards.”
    “A deserter?”
    “I think all such fools have already left. My wager is on bandits.”
    “Then why haven’t you gone down to the lines to deal with them?” The Cimmerian had been sleeping in his clothes. To join Rog, all he had to do was grip his sword and stand up.
    Rog chuckled. “Because I want to see if the lads on sentry duty remember aught of what we told them, back in Shamar. Then I’ll help them.”
    “We’ll be in sorry shape if bandits take the mules.”
    “Sellus—if that’s your name—they may not have mules in those benighted northern lands you hail from. Around here, a farm boy grows up ignorant of mules only if he’s a halfwit. I was a farm lad, and I joined the army as a mule driver.
    “Between bandits and those pack mules, my money would be on the mules—”
    Before Rog could finish or Conan reply, one of the sentries proved that he remembered at least part of his training.
    “Help! Help! Somebody’s trying to steal the mules! Help!”
    The sentry’s panicky squall was no proper alarm, but it did its work just as well. The camp of the Thanza Rangers came alive and awake around Conan and Tharmis Rog.
    The two big men listened to the cries, the stumblings and fallings, the clatter and scrape of desperately snatched weapons, and the disordered footsteps of men hurrying toward the mules. When the two thought that enough men were awake and armed, they ran toward the now-braying mules, ready to guide the men of the Thanza Rangers into their first combat.
    The Thanza Rangers had taken their time on the road from the camp outside