The Best of Planet Stories, No. 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

in the dying light of the fires.
    "I don't know," he murmured.
    Starke waited, not speaking. His face was without expression.
    "Conan we knew. Starke we don't know. Perhaps it would have been better if Conan had come back." He ran his thumb absently over the hilt of the knife in his girdle. "I don't know. Perhaps it would have been better for all of us if I'd cut your throat before Beudag came in."
    Starke's mouth twitched. It was not exactly a smile.
    "You see," said the bard seriously, "to you, from outside, none of this is important, except as it touches you. But we live in this little world. We die in it. To us, it's important."
    The knife was in his hand now. It leaped up glittering into the dregs of the firelight, and fell, and leaped again.
    "You fight for yourself, Hugh Starke. Rann also fights through you. I don't know."
    Starke's gaze did not waver.
    Romna shrugged and put away the knife. "It is written of the gods," he said, sighing. "I hope they haven't done a bad job of the writing."
    He went out. Starke began to shiver slightly. It was completely quiet in the hall. He examined his collar, the rivets, every separate link of the chain, the staple to which it was fixed. Then he sat down on the fur rug provided for him in place of the straw. He put his face in his hands and cursed, steadily, for several minutes, and then struck his fists down hard on the floor. After that he lay down and was quiet. He thought Rann would speak to him. She did not.
    The silent black hours that walked across his heart were worse than any he had spent in the Luna crypts.
    She came soft-shod, bearing a candle. Beudag, the Dagger-in-the-Sheath. Starke was not asleep. He rose and stood waiting. She set the candle on the table and came, not quite to him, and stopped. She wore a length of thin white cloth twisted loosely at the waist and dropping to her ankles. Her body rose out of it straight and lovely, touched mystically with shadows in the little wavering light.
    "Who are you?" she whispered. "What are you?"
    "A man. Not Conan. Maybe not Hugh Starke any more. Just a man."
    "I loved the man called Conan, until . . ." She caught her breath, and moved closer. She put her hand on Starke's arm. The touch went through him like white fire. The warm clean healthy fragrance of her tasted sweet in his throat. Her eyes searched his.
    "If Rann has such great powers, couldn't it be that Conan was forced to do what he did? Couldn't it be that Rann took his mind and molded it her way, perhaps without his knowing it?"
    "It could be."
    "Conan was hot-tempered and quarrelsome, but he . . ."
    Starke said slowly, "I don't think you could have loved him if he hadn't been straight."
    Her hand lay still on his forearm. She stood looking at him, and then her hand began to tremble, and in a moment she was crying, making no noise about it. Starke drew her gently to him. His eyes blazed yellowly in the candlelight.
    "Woman's tears," she said impatiently, after a bit. She tried to draw away. "I've been fighting too long, and losing, and I'm tired."
    He let her step back, not far. "Do all the women of Crom Dhu fight like men?"
    "If they want to. There have always been shield-maidens. And since Falga, I would have had to fight anyway, to keep from thinking." She touched the collar on Starke's neck. "And from seeing."
    He thought of Conan in the market square, and Conan shaking his chain and gibbering in Faolan's |hall, and Beudag watching it. Starke's fingers tightened. He slid his palms upward along the smooth muscles of her arms, across the straight, broad planes of her shoulders, onto her neck, the proud strength of it pulsing under his hands. Her hair fell loose. He could feel the redness of it burning him.
    She whispered, "You don't love me."
    "No."
    "You're an honest man, Hugh Starke."
    "You want me to kiss you."
    "Yes."
    "You're an honest woman, Beudag."
    Her lips were hungry, passionate, touched with the bitterness of tears. After a while Starke blew out the