Conan the Swordsman
Page 4
Before he could vault up behind her on the prancing animal, several of the living corpses, obeying the furious commands of their mistress, seized Conan from behind and clung, leechlike, to his left arm.
With a superhuman effort, before he was dragged earthward by the putrid monsters, Conan struck the stallion's rump with the flat of his sword "Ride, girl, ride!" he shouted. "To Asgard and safety!"
The black horse reared, neighing, and bolted across the foggy, snow-clad plain. Rann hugged the animal's neck, pressing her tear-stained cheek against its warm hide, and her long blond hair mingled with its flying mane.
As the steed swept around the base of the hill and off to the west, she cast one backward glance, just as the brave youth who twice had saved her life went down beneath a mound of fighting cadavers. Queen Vammatar, her white robes spattered with slime, stood in the frosty moonlight, sniffing her evil smile. Then the loom of the hill and the rising fogs mercifully hid the scene of the carnage.
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Across the plain, a score of Æsir survivors trudged eastward in the pallid moonlight, their wrists bound behind their backs with rawhide thongs. The walking dead—those who had not been cut to pieces in the fray—surrounded the captives. At the head of the weird procession marched two figures: Conan and Queen Vammatar.
With every step the queen, her handsome face twisted with fury, slashed at the Cimmerian youth with her riding whip. Red weals crisscrossed his face and body; but he walked with shoulders squared and head held high, although he knew that none returned from the slave pens of this accursed land. Easy it would have been to slay the queen when he threw her from her stallion, but in his natal land custom demanded chivalry toward women, and he could not forsake his childhood training.
As the eastern fogs paled with the approach of dawn, Rann Njalsdatter reached the borders of Asgard. Her heart was heavy, but she remembered the last stanza of the song that Gorm had chanted beneath the fog-dimmed moon:
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You can cut us down; we can bleed and die,
But men of the North are we:
You can chain our flesh; you can blind our eye;
You can break us under the iron sky,
But our hearts are proud and free !
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The brave words of the song stiffened her back and lifted her spirits. With shoulders unbowed and bright head high, she rode home under the morning.
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THE PEOPLE OF THE SUMMIT
After a year or two of felonious life as a thief in Zamora, Corinthia, and Nemedia, Conan, who has just about turned twenty, undertakes to earn a more or less honest living as a mercenary soldier serving King Yildiz of Turan. Following the events of the story "The City of Skulls," the mighty Cimmerian, as a reward for his services to the kings daughter Zosara, is given a noncommissioned rank corresponding to that of sergeant. In this capacity he goes to the Khozgari Hills as part of the military escort of an emissary sent by the king to the restless tribesmen of that region, in hope of dissuading them by bribes and threats from raiding and plundering the Turanians of the lowlands. But the Khozgarians are warlike barbarians who respect only immediate and overwhelming force. They treacherously attack the detachment, killing the emissary and all but two of the soldiers. These two, Conan and Jamal, escape.
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The lean Turanian, whose dusty crimson jerkin and stained white breeches testified to the rigors of his flight, reined in his mare at the signal. Turning questing black eyes upon his giant leader, he asked:
"Dare we tarry here?"
His companion, similarly garbed, save that the flowing left sleeve of his woolen shirt bore the golden scimitar of a sergeant in the Turanian frontier cavalry, scowled. Blue eyes blazing beneath the crimson turban that bound his spired helmet, he tossed aside the flap of cloth that protected his face from the swirling dust and spat before he answered. 'The beasts must rest."
The heaving flanks of the two animals and their foam-flecked mouths made plain the need for a halt.
"But, Conan," protested the Turanian, "what if those Khozgari devils still follow us?" Uneasily he studied the curved scimitar thrust into his sash, and his grip tightened on the lance resting in its leathern pouch beside his right stirrup. He was comforted by the weight of the double-curved bow and the full quiver of arrows slung upon his back .
"Damn that stupid emissary!" growled the Cimmerian. "Jamal, thrice I warned him of the treacherous Khozgari tribesmen; but his head was so full of trade treaties and caravan routes that he would not listen. Now that thick-skulled head of his hangs in the smoke-room of a chief s hut, along with seven of our company. Damn him to Hell, and damn the lieutenant for permitting the palaver in the rock village!"
"Aye, Conan, but what could our lieutenant do? The emissary had full power to command. Our task was to * protect him and obey him, only. Had he countered the emissary's orders, the captain would have snapped his scimitar before the regiment and reduced him to the ranks. You know the captain's temper."
"Better broken to the ranks than dead," growled Conan, scowling. "We two were lucky to escape when the devils rushed us ! Listen!" He held up his hand. "What was that?"
Conan rose in his stirrups, blue eyes sweeping the gorges and crevices for the source of the faint sound he had heard. As his companion silently unslung his great bow and nocked an arrow, Conan's hand closed on the hilt of his scimitar.
A moment later, he flung himself from the saddle and, like a charging bull, rushed toward the nearby rock wall; for in that fleeting space of time, a youth had raced across the narrow gorge and scaled the steep cliff with the agility of a monkey.
Conan swept to the granite wall, found purchase for reaching hands and feet, and clambered upward with the assurance born of long experience. He heaved himself over the rim of the rock and cast himself aside just as a club descended on the spot where, a moment earlier, his head had been. Rolling to his knees, he rose and gripped the arms of his assailant before another blow could fall. Then he stared.
It was a girl he held, dirty and disheveled but nevertheless a girl, and her body would have graced the statues of a king's sculptor. Her face was pretty even through the grime, although she was sobbing now in impotent rage as she twisted her slim arms savagely against the fierce grip of her captor.
Conan's voice was rough with suspicion. "You are a spy! What tribe?"
"The girl's emerald eyes flamed as she hurled back her defiance:
"I am Shanya, daughter of Shaf Karaz, chief of the Khozgari and ruler of the mountains! He will spit you on his lance and roast you over his council fire for daring to lay hands on me!"
"A likely story!" taunted the Cimmerian. "A chief ' s daughter without an armed following, here, alone?"
"No one dares lay violent hands on Shanya. The Theggir and the Ghoufags cower in their huts as Shanya, daughter of Shaf Karaz, rides abroad to hunt the mountain goat. Dog of a Turanian! Let me loose!"
She twisted angrily, but Conan held her slim body in the vise of his arms.
"Not so fast, my pretty one! You'll make a fine hostage for our safe passage back to Samara. You will ride before me on the saddle all the way; and you'd best sit still, lest you make the journey bound and gagged. He grinned in cold indifference to her hot temper.
"Dog!" she cried. "I do as you say for the present. But have a care that you fall not into the hands of the Khozgari in the future!"
"We were surrounded by your tribesmen a scant two hours past," growled Conan. "But their bowmen could not hit the wall of a canyon. Jamal here could outsh oot a dozen of them. Enough of this chatter! We move, and move fast. Keep your pretty mouth shut from now on; it is easy enough to gag."
The girl's lips curled with unspoken ire as the horses picked their careful way between the rocks and boulders.
"Which way do you plan to go, Conan?" Jamal's voice was anxious.
"We cannot go back I don't trust this hostage business too much in the heat of ambush. We will ride straight south to the road of G
arma and cross the Misty Mountains through the Bhambar Pass. That should put us within two days' journey of Samara."
The girl turned to stare at him, her face blanched with sudden fright.
"You fool! Are you so careless of life as to try to cross the Misty Mountains? They are the haunts of the People of the Su mm it. No traveler has ever entered their land and returned. The People emerged but once out of the mists during the reign of Angharzeb of Turan, and they defeated his whole army by magic and monsters, as the king strove to recover the burial grounds o f the ancient Turanians. ' Tis a land of terror and death! Do not go there!"
Conan's reply was indifferent. "Everywhere there a r e old wives' tales of demons and monsters that no one living has ever seen. This is the safest and shortest way. If we make a detour, we shall have to spend a week in the guardhouse for dallying along the road." He urged his horse forward. The clatter of hooves on stone alone broke the silence as they wove their way among the towering cliffs.
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'This blasted fog is as thick as mare's milk!" exclaimed Jamal some time later.
The mist hung dank and impenetrable; the travelers could see a scant two yards ahead. The horses walked slowly, side by side, occasionally touching, feeling their way forward with careful steps. The thickness of the milky mist was inconstant; the whiteness wavered and billowed, and now and then the bleak walls of the mountain pass appeared for a fleeting moment, Conan's senses were sharply tuned. One hand held the bared scimitar; the other clutched Shanya firmly. His eyes ranged the small field of vision, taking advantage of every opening to reconnoiter.
The girl's scream, ringing out with sudden shock, brought them to a halt. She pointed with a trembling finger, cowering in the saddle against Conan's massive chest.
"I saw something move! Just for a second! It was not human!"
Conan swept the scene with narrowed lids as a random billowing of the mist cleared the roadway in front for a moment. He stiffened in the saddle, then relaxed and urged the horses forward, saying:
"Naught for the daughter of a Khozgari chief to worry about!"
But the shape at the roadside was disturbing. A human skeleton danced from two poles, crossed slantwise. The bones were held together by some fluttering rags, bits of tendon, and shriveled skin. The skull lay on the ground, grinning, snapped from the neckbones and cracked open like a coconut.
A sound floated through the mists. It began as a demonaic laugh that rose and fell, changing into angry chattering, and ending in an ululating wail. The girl responded with keening. Stiff with terror, her lips moved dryly.
The—the demons of the Summit are calling for our flesh! Our bones will lie stripped in their stone dwelling before evening. Oh, save me! I do not want to die!"
Conan felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck; and chills ran down his spine on little lizard feet. But he shook off his fear of the unknown with a shrug of his great shoulders.
"We are here, and we have to get through. Let that howler come within reach of my blade, and hell scream in another key."
As his horse stepped forward, a heavy crash and a groan caused Conan to glance back. At that moment, he felt a tug upon his weeping captive. Before he could grasp her more firmly, she rose screaming into the mists on the end of a snakelike rope. Conan's horse reared wildly, flinging him to the ground, and the clatter of its hooves died away as he staggered to his feet .
Nearby lay Jamal and his horse, both crushed beneath a giant boulder. The man's dead hand protruded from under the gray stone, still clutching the war bow and a quiver of arrows, These Conan scooped up in one swift motion. He wasted no time in mourning the death of his comrade; for here was deadly danger. Snarling like an angry panther, he slung the bow over his shoulder, stuck the arrows in his sash, and gripped his bared scimitar.
The thick mist swirled around him as he felt a noose drop over his head. Moving with the speed of lightning, he ducked, then seized the rope with his free hand, gave a tug, and voiced a gurgling cry like that of a strangling man. His eyes were s li tted as he swung upward, hauled by an immense power whose source he knew not The feel of the mist was wet in his nostrils.
Heavy hands gripped him as he reached the edge of the escarpment, but the figures he discerned in the thinning mist were shadows only. He shrugged free of the clutching fingers and drove in silent deadliness at the nearest shadow. Soft resistance and a shriek told him that his scimitar had entered living flesh. Then the shadows closed around him. Standing with his back to the edge of the abyss, he swung his great blade in devastating arcs.
Never had Conan battled in such eerie surroundings. His enemies disappeared into the misty whirls, only to return again and again, like insubstantial ghosts. Their blades flicked out like serpents' tongues, but he soon took the measure of their clumsy swordsmanship. With renewed self-confidence, he taunted his silent attackers.
"Time you learned something of the way of the sword, your jackals of the mist! Ambushing travelers does not make for skill with the scimitar. You need lessons. The undercut—like this! The overhand slash —there! The upward rip with the point into the throat—watch!"
His exclamations were accompanied by demonstrations that left many shadowy figures gurgling or shrieking on the rocks. The Cimmerian fought with cold and terrible control, and suddenly he carried the fight to his assailants in a swift and devastating charge. Two more figures fell to his vicious slashes, their crimson guts spilling out upon the moss. Suddenly the remaining foemen melted away in panicky flight.
Conan wiped the sweat off his forehead with the wide sleeve of his uniform. Then, bending down to stare at one of the corpses, he grunted in surprise. It was no human being that sprawled there with small, sightless eyes and flaring nostrils. The low forehead and receding jaw were those of an ape, but an ape unlike any he had seen in the forests on the shores of the Sea of Vilayet. This ape was hairless from head to toe, and its only accouterment was a heavy rope twisted around its bulging swagbelly.
Conan was puzzled. The great Vilayet apes never hunted in packs and lacked the intelligence to use arms and tools, save when trained for performances before the royal court in Aghrapur. Nor was the creature's sword of a crude design. Forged of the best Turanian steel, its curved blade was honed to a razor's edge. Conan noticed a penetrating, musky odor emanating from the dead ape. His nostrils widened as he inhaled the scent with care. He would smell out his escaped prey and, following its trail, win a path through the milky mist .
"I shall have to save that fool of a girl," he muttered in an undertone. "She may be the daughter of an enemy, but I will not leave a woman in the hands of hairless apes." Like a hunting leopard, he moved forward on the scent.
As tie mists began to thin, he trod more carefully. The spoor of the scent twisted and turned, as if panic had wrought havoc with his quarry's sense of direction. Conan smiled grimly. Better to be the hunter than the hunted.
Here and there beside the path small pyramids of spherical stones the size of a man's head rose above the low-lying mists. These, Conan knew, were ancient places of the dead, graves of the chiefs of the early Turanian tribes. Neither time nor the apes had managed to demolish them The Cimmerian stepped carefully around each grave, not only to avoid a possible ambush, but also to show reverence for those who rested there.
Only torn shreds of mist remained as he reached the upper heights. Here the path became a narrow walkway atop a mountain wall, which bisected a dizzying abyss. At the end of the walkway, at the very summit of the mountain, an imposing keep of mottled serpentine loomed like an index finger of evil against the backdrop of bleak and distant mountain ranges. Conan hid behind one of the graves along the path to spy out the situation. But he saw no sign of life.
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Shanya woke in odd surroundings. She lay upon a divan draped in a rough black cloth No fetters bound her, but she had been deprived of all her clothing. She stretched her supple body upon this strange bed to look around and recoiled from what she saw.
'It has been many long years since a beautiful woman last came to the abode of Shangara," he said in a sibilant whisper. "No new blood has infused the race of the People of the Summit for twice a hundred years. You are a fit mate for me and for my son."