Beyond the Black River

by Robert E. Howard

  4 The Beasts of Zogar Sag

  Fires dazzled Balthus again as he slowly recovered his senses. Heblinked, shook his head. Their glare hurt his eyes. A confused medley ofsound rose about him, growing more distinct as his senses cleared. Helifted his head and stared stupidly about him. Black figures hemmed himin, etched against crimson tongues of flame.

  Memory and understanding came in a rush. He was bound upright to a postin an open space, ringed by fierce and terrible figures. Beyond thatring fires burned, tended by naked, dark-skinned women. Beyond the fireshe saw huts of mud and wattle, thatched with brush. Beyond the hutsthere was a stockade with a broad gate. But he saw these things onlyincidentally. Even the cryptic dark women with their curious coiffureswere noted by him only absently. His full attention was fixed in awfulfascination on the men who stood glaring at him.

  Short men, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped, they were nakedexcept for scanty loin-clouts. The firelight brought out the play oftheir swelling muscles in bold relief. Their dark faces were immobile,but their narrow eyes glittered with the fire that burns in the eyes ofa stalking tiger. Their tangled manes were bound back with bands ofcopper. Swords and axes were in their hands. Crude bandages banded thelimbs of some, and smears of blood were dried on their dark skins. Therehad been fighting, recent and deadly.

  His eyes wavered away from the steady glare of his captors, and herepressed a cry of horror. A few feet away there rose a low, hideouspyramid: it was built of gory human heads. Dead eyes glared glassily upat the black sky. Numbly he recognized the countenances which wereturned toward him. They were the heads of the men who had followed Conaninto the forest. He could not tell if the Cimmerian's head were amongthem. Only a few faces were visible to him. It looked to him as if theremust be ten or eleven heads at least. A deadly sickness assailed him. Hefought a desire to retch. Beyond the heads lay the bodies of half adozen Picts, and he was aware of a fierce exultation at the sight. Theforest runners had taken toll, at least.

  Twisting his head away from the ghastly spectacle, he became aware thatanother post stood near him--a stake painted black as was the one towhich he was bound. A man sagged in his bonds there, naked except forhis leathern breeks, whom Balthus recognized as one of Conan's woodsmen.Blood trickled from his mouth, oozed sluggishly from a gash in his side.Lifting his head as he licked his livid lips, he muttered, makinghimself heard with difficulty above the fiendish clamor of the Picts:'So they got you, too!'

  'Sneaked up in the water and cut the other fellow's throat,' groanedBalthus. 'We never heard them till they were on us. Mitra, how cananything move so silently?'

  'They're devils,' mumbled the frontiersman. 'They must have beenwatching us from the time we left midstream. We walked into a trap.Arrows from all sides were ripping into us before we knew it. Most of usdropped at the first fire. Three or four broke through the bushes andcame to hand-grips. But there were too many. Conan might have gottenaway. I haven't seen his head. Been better for you and me if they'dkilled us outright. I can't blame Conan. Ordinarily we'd have gotten tothe village without being discovered. They don't keep spies on the riverbank as far down as we landed. We must have stumbled into a big partycoming up the river from the south. Some devilment is up. Too many Pictshere. These aren't all Gwaweli; men from the western tribes here andfrom up and down the river.'

  Balthus stared at the ferocious shapes. Little as he knew of Pictishways, he was aware that the number of men clustered about them was outof proportion to the size of the village. There were not enough huts tohave accommodated them all. Then he noticed that there was a differencein the barbaric tribal designs painted on their faces and breasts.

  'Some kind of devilment,' muttered the forest runner. 'They might havegathered here to watch Zogar's magic-making. He'll make some rare magicwith our carcasses. Well, a border-man doesn't expect to die in bed. ButI wish we'd gone out along with the rest.'

  The wolfish howling of the Picts rose in volume and exultation, and froma movement in their ranks, an eager surging and crowding, Balthusdeduced that someone of importance was coming. Twisting his head about,he saw that the stakes were set before a long building, larger than theother huts, decorated by human skulls dangling from the eaves. Throughthe door of that structure now danced a fantastic figure.

  'Zogar!' muttered the woodsman, his bloody countenance set in wolfishlines as he unconsciously strained at his cords. Balthus saw a leanfigure of middle height, almost hidden in ostrich plumes set on aharness of leather and copper. From amidst the plumes peered a hideousand malevolent face. The plumes puzzled Balthus. He knew their sourcelay half the width of a world to the south. They fluttered and rustledevilly as the shaman leaped and cavorted.

  With fantastic bounds and prancings he entered the ring and whirledbefore his bound and silent captives. With another man it would haveseemed ridiculous--a foolish savage prancing meaninglessly in a whirl offeathers. But that ferocious face glaring out from the billowing massgave the scene a grim significance. No man with a face like that couldseem ridiculous or like anything except the devil he was.

  Suddenly he froze to statuesque stillness; the plumes rippled once andsank about him. The howling warriors fell silent. Zogar Sag stood erectand motionless, and he seemed to increase in height--to grow and expand.Balthus experienced the illusion that the Pict was towering above him,staring contemptuously down from a great height, though he knew theshaman was not as tall as himself. He shook off the illusion withdifficulty.

  The shaman was talking now, a harsh, guttural intonation that yetcarried the hiss of a cobra. He thrust his head on his long neck towardthe wounded man on the stake; his eyes shone red as blood in thefirelight. The frontiersman spat full in his face.

  With a fiendish howl Zogar bounded convulsively into the air, and thewarriors gave tongue to a yell that shuddered up to the stars. Theyrushed toward the man on the stake, but the shaman beat them back. Asnarled command sent men running to the gate. They hurled it open,turned and raced back to the circle. The ring of men split, divided withdesperate haste to right and left. Balthus saw the women and nakedchildren scurrying to the huts. They peeked out of doors and windows. Abroad lane was left to the open gate, beyond which loomed the blackforest, crowding sullenly in upon the clearing, unlighted by the fires.

  A tense silence reigned as Zogar Sag turned toward the forest, raised onhis tiptoes and sent a weird inhuman call shuddering out into the night.Somewhere, far out in the black forest, a deeper cry answered him.Balthus shuddered. From the timbre of that cry he knew it never camefrom a human throat. He remembered what Valannus had said--that Zogarboasted that he could summon wild beasts to do his bidding. The woodsmanwas livid beneath his mask of blood. He licked his lips spasmodically.

  The village held its breath. Zogar Sag stood still as a statue, hisplumes trembling faintly about him. But suddenly the gate was no longerempty.

  A shuddering gasp swept over the village and men crowded hastily back,jamming one another between the huts. Balthus felt the short hair stiron his scalp. The creature that stood in the gate was like theembodiment of nightmare legend. Its color was of a curious pale qualitywhich made it seem ghostly and unreal in the dim light. But there wasnothing unreal about the low-hung savage head, and the great curvedfangs that glistened in the firelight. On noiseless padded feet itapproached like a phantom out of the past. It was a survival of anolder, grimmer age, the ogre of many an ancient legend--a saber-toothtiger. No Hyborian hunter had looked upon one of those primordial brutesfor centuries. Immemorial myths lent the creatures a supernaturalquality, induced by their ghostly color and their fiendish ferocity.

  The beast that glided toward the men on the stakes was longer andheavier than a common, striped tiger, almost as bulky as a bear. Itsshoulders and forelegs were so massive and mightily muscled as to giveit a curiously top-heavy look, though its hind-quarters were morepowerful than that of a lion. Its jaws were massive, but its head wasbrutishly shaped. Its brain capacity was small. It had room for n
oinstincts except those of destruction. It was a freak of carnivorousdevelopment, evolution run amuck in a horror of fangs and talons.

  This was the monstrosity Zogar Sag had summoned out of the forest.Balthus no longer doubted the actuality of the shaman's magic. Only theblack arts could establish a domination over that tiny-brained,mighty-thewed monster. Like a whisper at the back of his consciousnessrose the vague memory of the name of an ancient god of darkness andprimordial fear, to whom once both men and beasts bowed and whosechildren--men whispered--still lurked in dark corners of the world. Newhorror tinged the glare he fixed on Zogar Sag.

  The monster moved past the heap of bodies and the pile of gory headswithout appearing to notice them. He was no scavenger. He hunted onlythe living, in a life dedicated solely to slaughter. An awful hungerburned greenly in the wide, unwinking eyes; the hunger not alone ofbelly-emptiness, but the lust of death-dealing. His gaping jawsslavered. The shaman stepped back; his hand waved toward the woodsman.

  The great cat sank into a crouch, and Balthus numbly remembered tales ofits appalling ferocity: of how it would spring upon an elephant anddrive its sword-like fangs so deeply into the titan's skull that theycould never be withdrawn, but would keep it nailed to its victim, to dieby starvation. The shaman cried out shrilly, and with an ear-shatteringroar the monster sprang.

  Balthus had never dreamed of such a spring, such a hurtling ofincarnated destruction embodied in that giant bulk of iron thews andripping talons. Full on the woodsman's breast it struck, and the stakesplintered and snapped at the base, crashing to the earth under theimpact. Then the saber-tooth was gliding toward the gate, half dragging,half carrying a hideous crimson hulk that only faintly resembled a man.Balthus glared almost paralysed, his brain refusing to credit what hiseyes had seen.

  In that leap the great beast had not only broken off the stake, it hadripped the mangled body of its victim from the post to which it wasbound. The huge talons in that instant of contact had disemboweled andpartially dismembered the man, and the giant fangs had torn away thewhole top of his head, shearing through the skull as easily as throughflesh. Stout rawhide thongs had given way like paper; where the thongshad held, flesh and bones had not. Balthus retched suddenly. He hadhunted bears and panthers, but he had never dreamed the beast livedwhich could make such a red ruin of a human frame in the flicker of aninstant.

  The saber-tooth vanished through the gate, and a few moments later adeep roar sounded through the forest, receding in the distance. But thePicts still shrank back against the huts, and the shaman still stoodfacing the gate that was like a black opening to let in the night.

  Cold sweat burst suddenly out on Balthus' skin. What new horror wouldcome through that gate to make carrion-meat of his body? Sick panicassailed him and he strained futilely at his thongs. The night pressedin very black and horrible outside the firelight. The fires themselvesglowed lurid as the fires of hell. He felt the eyes of the Picts uponhim--hundreds of hungry, cruel eyes that reflected the lust of soulsutterly without humanity as he knew it. They no longer seemed men; theywere devils of this black jungle, as inhuman as the creatures to whichthe fiend in the nodding plumes screamed through the darkness.

  Zogar sent another call shuddering through the night, and it was utterlyunlike the first cry. There was a hideous sibilance in it--Balthusturned cold at the implication. If a serpent could hiss that loud, itwould make just such a sound.

  This time there was no answer--only a period of breathless silence inwhich the pound of Balthus' heart strangled him; and then there soundeda swishing outside the gate, a dry rustling that sent chills downBalthus' spine. Again the firelit gate held a hideous occupant.

  Again Balthus recognized the monster from ancient legends. He saw andknew the ancient and evil serpent which swayed there, its wedge-shapedhead, huge as that of a horse, as high as a tall man's head, and itspalely gleaming barrel rippling out behind it. A forked tongue darted inand out, and the firelight glittered on bared fangs.

  Balthus became incapable of emotion. The horror of his fate paralysedhim. That was the reptile that the ancients called Ghost Snake, thepale, abominable terror that of old glided into huts by night to devourwhole families. Like the python it crushed its victim, but unlike otherconstrictors its fangs bore venom that carried madness and death. It toohad long been considered extinct. But Valannus had spoken truly. Nowhite man knew what shapes haunted the great forests beyond Black River.

  It came on silently rippling over the ground, its hideous head on thesame level, its neck curving back slightly for the stroke. Balthus gazedwith glazed, hypnotized stare into that loathesome gullet down which hewould soon be engulfed, and he was aware of no sensation except a vaguenausea.

  And then something that glinted in the firelight streaked from theshadows of the huts, and the great reptile whipped about and went intoinstant convulsions. As in a dream Balthus saw a short throwing-speartransfixing the mighty neck, just below the gaping jaws; the shaftprotruded from one side, the steel head from the other.

  Knotting and looping hideously, the maddened reptile rolled into thecircle of men who strove back from him. The spear had not severed itsspine, but merely transfixed its great neck muscles. Its furiouslylashing tail mowed down a dozen men and its jaws snapped convulsively,splashing others with venom that burned like liquid fire. Howling,cursing, screaming, frantic, they scattered before it, knocking eachother down in their flight, trampling the fallen, bursting through thehuts. The giant snake rolled into a fire, scattering sparks and brands,and the pain lashed it to more frenzied efforts. A hut wall buckledunder the ram-like impact of its flailing tail, disgorging howlingpeople.

  Men stampeded through the fires, knocking the logs right and left. Theflames sprang up, then sank. A reddish dim glow was all that lightedthat nightmare scene where the giant reptile whipped and rolled, and menclawed and shrieked in frantic flight.

  Balthus felt something jerk at his wrists, and then, miraculously, hewas free, and a strong hand dragged him behind the post. Dazedly he sawConan, felt the forest man's iron grip on his arm.

  There was blood on the Cimmerian's mail, dried blood on the sword in hisright hand; he loomed dim and gigantic in the shadowy light.

  'Come on! Before they get over their panic!'

  Balthus felt the haft of an ax shoved into his hand. Zogar Sag haddisappeared. Conan dragged Balthus after him until the youth's numbbrain awoke, and his legs began to move of their own accord. Then Conanreleased him and ran into the building where the skulls hung. Balthusfollowed him. He got a glimpse of a grim stone altar, faintly lighted bythe glow outside; five human heads grinned on that altar, and there wasa grisly familiarity about the features of the freshest; it was the headof the merchant Tiberias. Behind the altar was an idol, dim, indistinct,bestial, yet vaguely man-like in outline. Then fresh horror chokedBalthus as the shape heaved up suddenly with a rattle of chains, liftinglong misshapen arms in the gloom.

  Conan's sword flailed down, crunching through flesh and bone, and thenthe Cimmerian was dragging Balthus around the altar, past a huddledshaggy bulk on the floor, to a door at the back of the long hut. Throughthis they burst, out into the enclosure again. But a few yards beyondthem loomed the stockade.

  It was dark behind the altar-hut. The mad stampede of the Picts had notcarried them in that direction. At the wall Conan halted, grippedBalthus and heaved him at arm's length into the air as he might havelifted a child. Balthus grasped the points of the upright logs set inthe sun-dried mud and scrambled up on them, ignoring the havoc done hisskin. He lowered a hand to the Cimmerian, when around a corner of thealtar-hut sprang a fleeing Pict. He halted short, glimpsing the man onthe wall in the faint glow of the fires. Conan hurled his ax with deadlyaim, but the warrior's mouth was already open for a yell of warning, andit rang loud above the din, cut short as he dropped with a shatteredskull.

  Blinding terror had not submerged all ingrained instincts. As that wildyell rose above the clamor, there was an instant's lull, and then ahu
ndred throats bayed ferocious answer and warriors came leaping torepel the attack presaged by the warning.

  Conan leaped high, caught, not Balthus' hand but his arm near theshoulder, and swung himself up. Balthus set his teeth against thestrain, and then the Cimmerian was on the wall beside him, and thefugitives dropped down on the other side.