Conan of Venarium by Harry Turtledove Page B

his folk and bring disaster down on Duthil. When such fits took him, he would flee the village as if it lay in the grip of a deadly pestilence, and would go alone to hunt in the forests and on the hillsides nearby.
    Mordec said never a word to him about those jaunts. The blacksmith could have used his son’s help in the day-to-day work of the smithy, but seemed to sense how Conan needed to escape that which had become intolerable for him. While the boy stalked woodcock and grouse, squirrel and rabbit, he imagined he went after bigger game: Gundermen and Bossonians and the fearsome armored Aquilonian knights he had heard of but not yet seen. And hunting for the pot, though he did not fully realize it, helped him gain some of the arts he would use in war.
    Spring slowly moved into summer. In that northern land, days grew long and almost warm. The sun rose in the far northeast and set many hours later in the far northwest. Some of Cimmeria’s perpetual mist burned away. The sky was a water)’, grayish blue, but blue it was nonetheless. Even the conifer-filled forests seemed—less dour, at any rate. Ferns growing by the bases of the tree trunks added splashes of brighter green to the scenery.
    Silent as the beasts he stalked, Conan slipped through the woods. When he came to the edge of a small clearing, he froze into immobility. His eyes scanned the open space ahead to make sure he disturbed nothing before he ventured out from the concealment a pair of pines gave him. Not even a savage Pict from the rugged country west of Cimmeria could have walked more lightly on the land.
    Once out in the clearing, Conan froze again, watching, listening, waiting. Something seemed to call him, but not in a way to which he could set words. He frowned, then went on. Whatever it was, he would find it.
    He frowned again on the far side of the clearing. He had been through these woods many times, yet he did not recall this particular track. Shrugging, he silently strode along it. It took him in the direction he wanted to go. That it might also take him in the direction it wanted him to go never entered his mind.
    Some little distance down the trail, he stopped, his head turning this way and that. The frown that harshened and aged his features grew deeper. Birdsongs were scarcer now than they had been in springtime, when returning migrants vied for mates. Still, he had been able to hear the calls of doves and finches and the occasional distant, strident shriek of a hunting hawk.
    Not here, not now. Silence had settled over him, soft as snowfall. His eyes flicked now to the left, now to the right, now up, now down. The forest looked no different from the way it had before he set foot on this treacherous track. It looked no different, but somehow it was. That muffling drift of silence lay thick upon the land. Even the buzz of flies and the hum of gnats were softly swallowed up and gone.
    “Crom!” muttered Conan, as much to hear his own voice— to hear anything at all —as for any other reason. The grim god’s name seemed to reverberate through the trees, carrying farther than it had any business doing. But Crom would not help him if he came to grief. He knew that only too well. The god might have helped breathe life into him, but, now that he had it, keeping it was his own lookout.
    He nocked an arrow before pressing on down the trail. He could not have said why, save that the unnatural silence oppressed him. Against silence, what could an arrow do? Nothing Conan could think of, yet having a weapon instantly ready to use heartened him.
    On he went, his perplexity mounting at ever}’ stride. These woods felt more ancient than the ones with which he was so intimately familiar, as if the trees had been brooding here since the dawn of time. He scratched his head, wondering why and how such certainty filled him. Again, he could not have said, but fill him it did, more so with each step he took.
    That feeling of age immemorial soon began to oppress