Starke said, "What's the setup? All the fighting out there, and this
Rann dame trying to plant a killer on the inside. And what happened at
Falga? I never heard of this whole damn ocean, let alone a place called
Falga."
The bard swept his hand across the strings. "I'll tell you, Hugh
Starke. And maybe you won't want to stay in that body any longer."
Starke grinned. He glanced at Beudag. She was watching him with a queer
intensity from under lowered lids. Starke's grin changed. He began
to sweat. Get rid of this body, hell! It was really a body. His own
stringy little carcass had never felt like this.
The bard said, "In the beginning, in the Red Sea, was a race of people
having still their fins and scales. They were amphibious, but after a
while part of this race wanted to remain entirely on land. There was
a quarrel, and a battle, and some of the people left the sea forever.
They settled along the shore. They lost their fins and most of their
scales. They had great mental powers and they loved ruling. They
subjugated the human peoples and kept them almost in slavery. They
hated their brothers who still lived in the sea, and their brothers
hated them.
"After a time a third people came to the Red Sea. They were rovers from
the North. They raided and rieved and wore no man's collar. They made a
settlement on Crom Dhu, the Black Rock, and built longships, and took
toll of the coastal towns.
"But the slave people didn't want to fight against the rovers. They
wanted to fight with them and destroy the sea-folk. The rovers were
human, and blood calls to blood. And the rovers like to rule, too,
and this is a rich country. Also, the time had come in their tribal
development when they were ready to change from nomadic warriors to
builders in their own country.
"So the rovers, and the sea-folk, and the slave-people who are caught
between the two of them, began their struggle for the land."
The bard's fingers thrummed against the strings so that they beat like
angry hearts. Starke saw that Beudag was still watching him, weighing
every change of expression on his face. Romna went on:
"There was a woman named Rann, who had green hair and great beauty, and
ruled the sea-folk. There was a man called Faolan of the Ships, and
his sister Beudag, which means Dagger-in-the-Sheath, and they two ruled
the outland rovers. And there was the man called Conan."
The harp crashed out like a sword-blade striking.
"Conan was a great fighter and a great lover. He was next under Faolan
of the Ships, and Beudag loved him, and they were plighted. Then Conan
was taken prisoner by the sea-folk during a skirmish, and Rann saw
him--and Conan saw Rann."
Hugh Starke had a fleeting memory of Rann's face smiling, and her low
voice saying, _It's a good body. I knew it, before_....
Beudag's eyes were two stones of blue vitriol under her narrow lids.
"Conan stayed a long time at Falga with Rann of the Red Sea. Then he
came back to Crom Dhu, and said that he had escaped, and had discovered
a way to take the longships into the harbor of Falga, at the back of
Rann's fleet, and from there it would be easy to take the city, and
Rann with it. And Conan and Beudag were married."
Starke's yellow hawk eyes slid over Beudag, sprawled like a young
lioness in power and beauty. A muscle began to twitch under his
cheekbone. Beudag flushed, a slow deep color. Her gaze did not waver.
"So the longships went out from Crom Dhu, across the Red Sea. And
Conan led them into a trap at Falga, and more than half of them were
sunk. Conan thought his ship was free, that he had Rann and all she'd
promised him, but Faolan saw what had happened and went after him. They
fought, and Conan laid his sword across Faolan's brow and blinded him;
but Conan lost the fight. Beudag brought them home.
"Conan was chained naked in the market place. The people were careful
not to kill him. From time to time other things were done to him. After
a while his mind broke, and Faolan had him chained here in the hall,
where he could hear him babble and play with his chain. It made the
darkness easier to bear.
"But since Falga, things have gone badly from Crom Dhu. Too many men
were lost, too many ships. Now Rann's people have us bottled up here.
They can't break in, we can't break out. And so we stay, until...." The
harp cried out a bitter question, and was still.
* * * * *
After a minute or two Starke said slowly, "Yeah, I get it. Stalemate
for both of you. And Rann figured if I could kill off the leaders,
your people might give up." He began to curse. "What a lousy, dirty,
sneaking trick! And who told her she could use me...." He paused.
After all, he'd be dead now. After all, a new body, and a cool million
credits. Ah, the hell with Rann. He hadn't asked her to do it. And
he was nobody's hired killer. Where did she get off, sneaking around
his mind, trying to make him do things he didn't even know about?
Especially to someone like Beudag.
Still, Rann herself was nobody's crud.
And just where was Hugh Starke supposed to cut in on this deal? Cut was
right. Probably with a longsword, right through the belly. Swell spot
he was in, and a good three strikes on him already.
He was beginning to wish he'd never seen the T-V Mines payroll ship,
because then he might never have seen the Mountains of White Cloud.
He said, because everybody seemed to be waiting for him to say
something, "Usually when there's a deadlock like this, somebody calls
in a third party. Isn't there somebody you can yell for?"
Faolan shook his rough red head. "The slave people might rise, but
they haven't arms and they're not used to fighting. They'd only get
massacred, and it wouldn't help us any."
"What about those other--uh--people that live in the sea? And just what
is that sea, anyhow? Some radiation from it wrecked my ship and got me
into this bloody mess."
Beudag said lazily, "I don't know what it is. The seas our forefathers
sailed on were water, but this is different. It will float a ship, if
you know how to build the hull--very thin, of a white metal we mine
from the foothills. But when you swim in it, it's like being in a cloud
of bubbles. It tingles, and the farther down you go in it the stranger
it gets, dark and full of fire. I stay down for hours sometimes,
hunting the beasts that live there."