Conan remains captain of the Vastreli for about two years, and all this time he has been incredibly lucky. In the end, other Zingar pirates, jealous of the success of a stranger who had slipped into their ranks, land him on the coast of Shem, and themselves secretly sail away. Conan decides not to go far from the sea. He learns that some kind of war is going on in the area of the coastal borders of Stygia, and decides to join the “Free Brotherhood” - a gang of robbers under the command of a certain Zarallo. However, instead of raids and rich booty, he has to carry out a tedious, monotonous service to protect the country’s borders in Sukhmet, a city on the border with the Black Kingdoms. The wine there is sour, the profit is meager, and he soon gets tired of black women. Boredom ends with the appearance in Sukhmet of Valeria, a female pirate from the “Gang of Red Brothers”, familiar to him from the Barakh Islands. But she has to resort to drastic measures to repel the advances of the Stygian boss, as a result of which she has to flee. Then Conan follows her to the south, to the lands of the blacks.