Conan the Swordsman

by L. Sprague De Camp

  The newcomer was a true Zingaran, lean and elegant, with sallow features and an aquiline nose that seemed to reinforce his supercilious manner. Trim mustachios and a small beard framed his tight mouth and adorned his pointed chin. He was Gonzago, a freebooter of some repute among the Barachan pirates and captain of the Hawk. For the past month Conan had been his second mate.

  "Get the men together and follow me." he said. The Cimmerian nodded and turned to wave the pirates on; but the conjuror touched his arm and halted him.

  'What ails you?" demanded Conan gruffly. He did not like the Stygian's swarthy, vulpine features, shaven pate, and lackluster eyes. But then, he never had much use for wizards.

  "Death," whispered the conjuror. "I smell death on the wind...."

  "Hush, you fool, before you panic the men!" growled Conan. He knew the Barachan corsairs for an unruly, quarrelsome, superstitious lot, and once again he wished that Captain Gonzago had heeded his advice not to enlist the Stygian magician for the expedition. But Gonzago was master here, not Conan.

  "What holds you up?" snapped Gonzago, striding over to join them. "We have barely an hour of daylight left and must traverse this cursed jungle ere we can reach the tower. Every moment counts, so get the men moving."

  Conan repeated the whispered warning, and the Zingaran looked at Mena the wizard.

  "Can you not be more precise, man?" the captain grated. "What manner of death—and whose—and from what quarter?"

  Mena shook his head, his eyes dull and haunted. "I cannot say," he replied. "But I regret that I have come to this dark isle with you. The Master Siptah is a high prince among magicians, and the spells of such an one are more powerful than any I command."

  Gonzago spat a curse. Conan stood, arms folded on his mighty chest, and cast wary eyes about him. But innocent and normal seemed the yellow strand, the blue sea, and the red-streaked sky. Only the gloom-drenched forest, ominous with shadows, gave cause for hesitation. Its menace was merely of the unexplored, the wild, the savage—a matter of eyes gleaming with feral, hungry fires from the underbrush, or vipers gliding across the boles of fallen tree trunks, or quicksands and jungle fevers, or hostile natives and sudden storms.

  Nothing in all these dangers was especially fearsome, for such were the ordinary hazards of the buccaneering trade. So far the weather had held fair; they had seen no sign of human habitation; and Conan's experience told him that, in general, small islands do not harbor dangerous animals.

  Still, the wizard scented death upon the wind. And wizards sense things other men do not.

  -

  2 • Jewel of Wizardry

  Before night drew her veil across the lingering light of day, the raiders gained the farther reaches of the island. A pair of pirates with bared blades plunged into the jungle ahead of their fellows, hacking away the lush vegetation and blazing the larger trees to mark a trail against their return. As one pair tired, another seized the task, and so the crew moved forward with little hesitation.

  The trek proved neither difficult nor dangerous, and nothing occurred to fulfill Mena's dire prophecy. The men encountered no creature more fearsome than a sounder of small wild pigs, a few squawking parrots flaunting their vivid plumage, and a sluggish serpent, rope-coiled upon a root, which slithered away at the noisy approach of the pirates.

  So easy was their progress that Conan felt a growing apprehension. He sensed a chilling air of unseen menace about the place, and like Mena began to wish that Gonzago had never undertaken the foray.

  For longer than the memory of man, the tower that now loomed above the trees had stood upon the eastern coast of this small, nameless island off the shores of Stygia, south of Khemi. It was said to be inhabited by the Stygian sorcerer Siptah, and by him alone, save for divers uncanny creatures from other planes and ancient worlds that he might summon by his spells. The pirates of the Barachan Archipelago whispered that the sorcerer concealed within his slender spire a fabulous treasure, gleaned through the years from troubled souls who sought the seer's advice and supernatural aid. But it was not to win this treasure trove that Gonzago had decided to attack the tower.

  Legends told of, a mysterious gem recovered long ago by the Stygian mage from deep within a desert tomb. A huge and glittering crystal it was said to be, graven with magic sigils in a language unknown to any living man. Immense and uncanny were the reputed powers of that gem, for it was common gossip among the merchants and seamen of the ports of Shem and Zingara that, by secret spells locked within the massy jewel, Siptah could command the spirits of air, earth, fire, and water, and the less savory demons of the underworld.

  Those seafarers who had purchased the favor of Siptah sailed serenely forth into harbors, safe and hospitable. No storm or flood could touch them; neither were their ships becalmed, nor fell they prey to hostile monsters of the deep. The merchant princes of those sea-lapped cities would offer fortunes to possess the crystal, for with it in their hands they could enjoy the safety of the seas without the ruinous tribute demanded by the sorcerer. Deprived of that great gem, Siptah would be powerless to do them harm, since the very touch of the enchanted crystal was the key to all his demon-raising spells.

  Now there were those who whispered that Siptah of Stygia was dead; for many months had passed since the merchants of the seacoast cities had received demands for tribute, and even longer since the sorcerer had replied to their petitions. Indeed, if he were living, Siptah the Stygian would be of an enormous age— but wizards can transcend the mortality of common men, warding off senility and death with their uncanny powers.

  At length, anxious to render the rapacious Stygian powerless and to arrogate to themselves his mastery over wind and wave, a consortium of merchants had approached the more daring of the Barachan pirate captains to commission such a venture. If in truth Siptah was dead, they urgently desired possession of the gem, to which the spirits of Stygia were bound by terrible oaths. If another wizard gained the gem in the tower, he might prove even more extortionate in his demands than Siptah.

  This scheme appealed to the daring of Gonzago, and to his greed. The merchants' plan had roused in his breast a lust to seize the fabulous gem, even if he must wrest it from the withered arms of the ancient sorcerer. For if the maritime merchants would pay him well to secure the gem, another sorcerer, lusting for Siptah's power, might reward him far more handsomely.

  Yet Gonzago was no fool. Wizards are dangerous, and men seldom live to enjoy the treasures stolen from practitioners of the black arts. Gonzago would be careful.

  -

  3 • Blood on the Sand

  In a waterfront tavern at Messantia, the pirate captain first encountered Mena. A cunning thought inflamed his greed: how better to fight magic than with magic? He had bought the conjuror's services on the spot and bade his officers prepare the Hawk for a voyage to the lonely isle.

  Now, as the pirates hacked a narrow path across the jungle and reached the eastern shore close to the tower, Gonzago knew his plans had been well laid. He had dropped anchor on the west side of the island lest the approaching carack and its ship's boats be seen from the sorcerer's stronghold. The raiders had transversed the jungle without loss of life and without discovery by the dreaded sorcerer—if in truth he still lived at all. Now that the blue-green of the sea shimmered through the trees, the men had but to rush the tower, batter their way in, and seize for themselves the gem and other treasures of the aged magician.

  But Gonzago had not survived his hazardous trade thus long by acting rashly. So now he summoned the gaunt Stygian to his side.

  "Can you cast a spell upon us, Master Mena, to ward off Siptah's magic?" he demanded.

  Mena shrugged. "I can perchance becloud his vision so that he perceives not our approach until too late," he murmured.

  Gonzago grinned, white teeth gleaming in his sallow, bearded face. "As you did in the tavern?" he suggested. For it had been this trick—a spell of seeming invisibility—that had inspired Gonzago to hire the conjuror to wor
k his subtle arts against the Stygian mage. Mena nodded his shaven pate.

  Without further words, the conjuror gathered dry twigs and built a little fire near the jungle's edge at a sheltered spot, where the trees ended and the sands ran out to meet the sea. As the curious pirates watched, Mena drew from his girdle small leathern bags and, with a tiny silver spoon, measured minute quantities of colored powders into a little copper pan. When the twigs had burned to a bed of glowing embers, he placed the pan upon the fire. A sharp and pungent vapor wafted seaward on the evening wind.

  Conan sniffed and spat. He little liked such witcheries; his way would have simply been to charge the tower with naked steel, a band of fearless swordsmen at his back. But since Gonzago was master here, Conan held his tongue.

  Mena sat crosslegged before the little mound of coals, whereon the nameless melded powders seethed in the copper pan and wafted perfumed smokes upon the evening breeze. Arms folded on his bony breast, the conjuror chanted a sonorous spell in a sibilant tongue.

  The crimson embers cast a weird, rosy light on the sorcerer's fleshless face, lending it the aspect of a living skull. Deep-sunken in their sockets, the magician's eyes gleamed like the ghosts of long-dead stars. He bent to peer into his bubbling melt, and his singsong wail sank to the faintest whisper.

  Then Mena ceased his incantation and crooked a finger at Gonzago. When the pirate captain bent his head to listen, Mena hissed;

  "You and the men must leave me. The last step in the cantrip requires a stringent solitude."

  Gonzago nodded and herded his men back upon the trail along which they had come. When all were out of sight of the magician, they sat on fallen logs or rested elbows on the ground, idly swatting flies as they waited the Stygian's call.

  Time passed. The light drained from the sky. Suddenly a hoarse scream rent the evening quiet.

  With muttered exclamations, Gonzago and Conan dashed back to the small clearing where the magician plied his trade. Mena lay face-down beside his little fire.

  Cursing sulphurously, Gonzago clutched the conjuror's bony shoulder and turned the body over. What he saw by the glow of the dying coals made him cry out to his forgotten boyhood gods. For Mena's throat had been cleanly cut, and his blood trickled out and soaked into the humus of the forest floor.

  This meant, thought Conan, either that Siptah still lived to guard his treasure, or that the spirits bound to the terrible gem yet served his will though he himself were dead. Either way, the knowledge enkindled grim forebodings.

  Gonzago stared down upon the ghastly figure as fresh gore welled from the gaping wound. The crew behind them muttered, the whites of their eyes gleaming redly in the gloom.

  Gonzago squatted, brooding with thoughtful eyes. Conan, shivering in the warm air, said nothing. Mena had spoken but the truth when he said he scented death upon the wind.

  -

  4 • Where None May Enter

  Few of the men were willing to return to their ship empty-handed, though all felt the cold breath of mysterious menace at their backs. Gonzago was determined to attack the tower, confident that bright steel would triumph over even the darkest wizardry. Therefore he led his party through the tangled vines that edged the jungle and out upon the beach where the first stars of evening gleamed above an oily, darkling sea.

  Their spirits cowed by Mena's strange and unexpected death, the pirates plodded along the strand, hugging the jungle's edge and speaking in hoarse, furtive whispers.

  Presently Conan parted a clump of tall dune grass that rose from a small headland and studied a smooth stretch of beach that lay as pale and untrodden as a silver stream beneath the wan glimmer of the far, * uncaring stars. There were few sounds to break the hush of night—only the plash of little waves against the sands, the mournful cry of a distant gull, and the buzz and chirp of nocturnal insects.

  A bowshot's distance along the deserted beach, a black shape like a pointing finger pierced the starry sky, now paling in the east. As Conan watched, a silver slice of moon, just past its full, manifested itself above the seascape. The moon moved slowly up the sky, turning the tower into an ink-sketched silhouette backed by the silvery light. It was a simple, slender cylinder surrounded at its tapered height by a narrow parapet; and above this prominence sharply rose the spire.

  There was no sign of light or life within the tower. The tower seemed untenanted and forlorn; but where magic is concerned, looks can ever be deceiving. Besides, thought Conan grimly, someone or something had slain the conjuror. Now the pirates had no recourse but to attack the tower directly, sure that the Stygian wizard had perceived their presence. Since the advantage of surprise was lost, little could be gained by further secrecy.

  So Gonzago set his men to felling a slender palm tree, cutting notches down its trunk, and tying thereto small lengths of branches. Then, beneath the risen moon, they carried this crude ladder across the virgin sand to the base of the black tower. But at the spire's foot they halted, staring at each other in wild-eyed disbelief.

  For Siptah's tower had neither doors nor windows. Sleek walls of black basalt rose windowless from the rugged rocks of its foundation to the small parapet that crowned its castled height. Although they strained their eyes, they could discern no opening, crack, or crevice in the satin-textured fitted stones.

  "Crom and Mitra," rumbled Conan, his nape-hair lifting and scalp a tingle, "has this sorcerer wings?"

  "Only Set knows," mused Gonzago.

  "Mayhap we could scale the height by means of a grappling hook," said Conan.

  "Too tall," replied the captain heavily.

  They explored the rocks around the base of Siptah's spire and found nothing that was useful in their predicament. The tower thrust skyward from a shelf of naked rock that jutted into the sea's edge as the tide came in. There was no possibility of entrance there.

  Yet some way of entry must exist, however well concealed; for every dwelling—if this was a dwelling —must have a mode of entrance and egress. Gonzago stood silent for a moment, the sea breeze ruffling his black cloak as he chewed his lower lip.

  "Back up the beach, bullies," he said at last. "We can do naught at night, without tools and a plan. We'll camp two bowshots from this accursed tower, lest one loose arrows from the parapet. Behind a jungle screen, we'll wait for dawn."

  The raiders plodded dispiritedly back along the beach, subdued but seemingly relieved. None, Conan noted with wry amusement, had been too eager to beard the wizard in his lair, such gentry being as notoriously unlucky to disturb as hibernating bears.

  -

  The pirates set up camp in a sheltered spot where the tree line met the sand. Conan ordered some to gather brush to build a fire, while Gonzago dispatched a pair to the far shore whereon the longboats lay hidden under palm fronds. Then, rowing to the Hawk, they must inform Gonzago's first mate, the Argossean Borus, of all that had befallen on the island and gather sacks of axes, hammers, chisels, drills, and other tools to aid in their attack upon the spire. Food, too, and flasks of wine were needed to replenish their supplies.

  Under the fitful glimmer of the inconstant moon, the others sat about the fire, broiling what meat they had and grumbling at the scarcity of water. Their grumbling was muted only, for their captain, not an easy man even in the best of times, was in the grip of icy fury. As the others fell asleep beside the dying fire, he sat apart, wrapped in his cloak, and brooded sulkily. *

  Conan set the watch and retired to the place that he had chosen for his rest. Thrusting his cutlass into the soil where it would be within reach of his hand, he leaned against a palm tree and prepared himself for slumber. But that night sleep did not come easily to the giant Cimmerian.

  The playful waves ceased their chattering, and the jungle, like a crouching beast, silently watched and waited. Waited for what? Conan did not know, but he felt as tense as a coiled spring. With the fine-honed senses of the barbarian, he detected menace lurking in the uncanny silence of the night.

  Something was o
ut there, that he knew. And it was stalking them.

  -

  5 • Dreams in the Night

  Toward midnight Conan slept at last, but through his troubled sleep flitted dark, chaotic dreams. An ominous foreboding hovered about him, and in the darkness of his dreaming he saw a beach whereon he and others slept with readied swords. The men around him were rough and villainous seafarers—not unlike his comrades—but their faces were unfamiliar to him.

  One face among them was familiar. This man was lean and elegant, with aristocratic bearing, and the long jaw and icy, cunning eyes of Captain Gonzago.

  In his dream it seemed to Conan that Gonzago, wrapped in his long cloak, sat huddled on a log brooding over the coals of a dying fire. And as the dreaming Cimmerian watched, another form materialized out of the gloom at the edge of the silent jungle. Like the seated man of Conan's dream, the stranger, too, was swathed in the folds of a long black cloak, which concealed his shape entirely.