For The Love of Athyr-Bast

Blood cooled slowly on Conan’s chest and thews—the heat of his own madly rushing heart kept the flame of the other man guttering long after it should’ve been snuffed out.

The steam of his opponent’s entrails had already sifted into the uncaring air, along with whatever light had once been behind the man’s now-vacant eyes. Now Conan stood above that discarded form, his own blood cooling, the clarity of battle replaced with a confusion as to what to do next.

A confusion Conan clung to. It separated him from the procession of gladiators who had gone before him, heedless as sheep to the slaughter, and who waited in patient lines to take his place now that his showcase was over.

His blood refused to stay in his veins. It rampaged out from a dozen small cuts. The combat had been brutal, as if a delayed coup de grâce from the raid that had taken Conan prisoner with his men and his woman.

Conan felt no shame at that loss. The raiders had been well-armed and finely armored, a press of numbers that he could only stand against so long. It would have been an honorable end to fall to them, but they had taken him alive. Borne him to this city of dark sorcery, where he’d been auctioned off to the luscious Athyr-Bast, a maiden whose skin was as pale as her hair was dark.

From there, he’d been shoved along as fast as his bound legs could carry him, forced at knifepoint into a barred enclosure and only then released from his bonds. Into a macabre combination of battlefield and prison.

He would’ve gladly killed every one of the pallid onlookers in the crowd and all the tamed, uncaring slaves besides. But he was only allowed to take the life of Krum-va the Carver.

Conan spat blood, turning the battle over in his mind. He’d been weak and weary from the raid and the forced march after, but he’d not been meant to fight well. Only to sate the crowd’s thirst for blood, as slaves excess to requirement were thrown to Krum-va to be cut down as mercilessly as a crop was reaped.

Pah! Conan needed no overseers to line up executions for him. The amount of raiders he’d sent home lifeless or limbless proved that, and they’d not been brought in one at a time like a steer entering a slaughterhouse. He’d taken them on all at once and only fallen after long minutes counted in souls. Krum-va might’ve had the strength of ten men, but he had the neck of one and only so much blood to give the arena sands.

It had still been a hard-fought duel. Krum-va’s job was to see which slaves were worth further attention and which did not merit the trouble of being broken. Conan took it that in winning, Athyr-Bast’s attention was seized. His next fight would be no disposable thing, but a chance to see Krum’va’s slayer at work once more.

The bruises of the raids, hard hits on armored flesh, were yet purpling the bare skin he’d been left with after he was stripped to a loincloth. The pain had faded, but little other healing has been done. Conan knew now was the time to rest his sore muscles and bind his cuts with herbs to prevent death off the battlefield. A Cimmerian might be reckless in combat, but not in preparation for the next.

But of course, the choice of when to fight next was not always up to a warrior—and to a slave, never. If another of Krum-va’s worth was brought in, Conan could not say he wouldn’t fall. Yet he felt his instincts were proving correct. The audience was not baying for blood, not yet, but talking amongst themselves, boredom setting in as they awaited the next match.

Conan looked about the arena: high bars on all sides, buckets of sand waiting to be poured on the bloodstains so the next kill would have a fresh tapestry to paint. Above, on a second tier that started where the bars terminated, the world of the onlookers. Grand robes and jewelry, the audience making of themselves a sideshow to the main attraction. Food vendors walking the aisles, bringing jugs of wine and legs of mutton. Conan did not imagine he would eat so well down here, where the ground was gore piled on top of gore.

The slavers of Makesh, that race that seemed exclusively to concern themselves with the worth of human flesh, readied blowpipes. They were safely on the other side of the bars from him and Conan knew those darts could bring down a charging bull. He might fling his sword, and that of fallen Krum-va, to exact a vengeance through the bars, but doing so would earn him time under the lash and only so much satisfaction. And even the lightest scourging would halve his vitality, conditioning he needed to vouchsafe against his next fight. Well-fed and healed from his wounds, he was sure he could find victory in any encounter.

But Conan did not intend to be any man’s slave, fighting one meaningless battle after another until he was too broken to continue and discarded without care. He must split the difference. Stay defiant, keep sharp the urge for freedom, but not allow himself meaningless rebellion. In the arena, he could afford frenzy; there he was a warrior. In the world without, where he was now slave, he must be cold enough to freeze the inferno he might erupt into.

“Throw down sword!” a Makeshian yelled—the overseer of Athyr-Bast, who had taken possession of him after she’d won the auction. A rangy man of loping limbs and threadbare face, with a beard cut to his face as though there were little hair to be used, his fingers were blunt cudgels used to handing out chastisement. “Present for binding!”

Conan maintained a haughty mien as he tossed down his sword and walked to the door, giving out his wrists to be tied through the bars. He would not cringe or cower, though it could buy him the guards’ overconfidence. At any moment, at a whim or a lucky opponent, he might lose his life. Whatever precious few grains of sand he had left in his hourglass, he would live them as a Cimmerian. Bound but unbent. Bloodied without breaking.

Once more tied and once more at spearpoint, Conan and a handful of other slaves were led through the labyrinth of underground tunnels that fed the arena bodies and extracted victory. The surface, the sun and fresh air, was reserved for those blessed to watch death-fights from a comfortable perch, an accompaniment to whatever words they snaked into each other’s ears, their intrigues gilded with others’ blood.

“Good fight, Cimmerian!” the Makeshian overseer crowed, his voice brusque, used to addressing only those he must order about. “Perhaps I get used to your face!”

Conan snorted. The only thing he wanted this man to learn was the taste of his iron. But when it came, the overseer wouldn’t have much time to memorize it.

The tunnels replaced tiles and brick with rough clay and packed earth. These were little more than gutters, running under the city to allow the movement of slaves without offending the eye of those above. Through grates in the ceiling came mutilated light, secondhand air, the runoff of every wash-bucket and chamber pot in the city. And the sight of Athyr-Bast’s estate—Conan knew it by how the Makeshians gave whip to those already in motion, wanting to make a good impression on their mistress by showing how quickly they’d been about their duties.

The estate was small but luxurious, more underground than above it, as that was where the ranks of her fighting slaves dwelled. Household staff, guests, and the mistress of the property lived above. The property came up four stories, with the lower two built out of adobe resembling the unplanted grounds, while the upper two were limestone, a staircase leading directly up to that shining abode. The living quarters of Athyr-Bast.

In the cavern below, newly acquired slaves were placed in stocks to be thoroughly broken in, while those already accepting their fates returned to their familiar cells with only a lazy eye upon them. Conan was taken to a well-room, with a cage big enough for a dozen slaves to be washed at a time, but it was not for him to be restrained while water was pumped over him. Two slave girls awaited, pretty things of the sort that might find themselves aboveground if they caught the eye of a house slave or profitable gladiator.

They tended to him as a merchant would an investment, stripping Conan of what little remained of his raiment, then washing him with a care and tenderness that their doe eyes promised could go much further.

Conan allowed himself to be freed of the dirt of the road and the sweat of his exertions.