Red Nails

by Robert E. Howard

  _5. Twenty Red Nails_

  Two warriors lounged in the guardroom on the floor known as the Tier ofthe Eagle. Their attitude was casual, though habitually alert. An attackon the great bronze door from without was always a possibility, but formany years no such assault had been attempted on either side.

  "The strangers are strong allies," said one. "Olmec will move againstthe enemy tomorrow, I believe."

  He spoke as a soldier in a war might have spoken. In the miniature worldof Xuchotl each handful of feudists was an army, and the empty hallsbetween the castles was the country over which they campaigned.

  "Even as he shifted, he hurled the knife."]

  The other meditated for a space.

  "Suppose with their aid we destroy Xotalanc," he said. "What then,Xatmec?"

  "Why," returned Xatmec, "we will drive red nails for them all. Thecaptives we will burn and flay and quarter."

  "But afterward?" pursued the other. "After we have slain them all? Willit not seem strange, to have no foes to fight? All my life I havefought and hated the Xotalancas. With the feud ended, what is left?"

  Xatmec shrugged his shoulders. His thoughts had never gone beyond thedestruction of their foes. They could not go beyond that.

  Suddenly both men stiffened at a noise outside the door.

  "To the door, Xatmec!" hissed the last speaker. "I shall look throughthe Eye----"

  Xatmec, sword in hand, leaned against the bronze door, straining his earto hear through the metal. His mate looked into the mirror. He startedconvulsively. Men were clustered thickly outside the door; grim,dark-faced men with swords gripped in their teeth--_and their fingersthrust into their ears_. One who wore a feathered head-dress had a setof pipes which he set to his lips, and even as the Tecuhltli started toshout a warning, the pipes began to skirl.

  The cry died in the guard's throat as the thin, weird piping penetratedthe metal door and smote on his ears. Xatmec leaned frozen against thedoor, as if paralyzed in that position. His face was that of a woodenimage, his expression one of horrified listening. The other guard,farther removed from the source of the sound, yet sensed the horror ofwhat was taking place, the grisly threat that lay in that demoniacfifing. He felt the weird strains plucking like unseen fingers at thetissues of his brain, filling him with alien emotions and impulses ofmadness. But with a soul-tearing effort he broke the spell, and shriekeda warning in a voice he did not recognize as his own.

  But even as he cried out, the music changed to an unbearable shrillingthat was like a knife in the ear-drums. Xatmec screamed in sudden agony,and all the sanity went out of his face like a flame blown out in awind. Like a madman he ripped loose the chain, tore open the door andrushed out into the hall, sword lifted before his mate could stop him. Adozen blades struck him down, and over his mangled body the Xotalancassurged into the guardroom, with a long-drawn, blood-mad yell that sentthe unwonted echoes reverberating.

  His brain reeling from the shock of it all, the remaining guard leapedto meet them with goring spear. The horror of the sorcery he had justwitnessed was submerged in the stunning realization that the enemy werein Tecuhltli. And as his spearhead ripped through a dark-skinned bellyhe knew no more, for a swinging sword crushed his skull, even aswild-eyed warriors came pouring in from the chambers behind theguardroom.

  It was the yelling of men and the clanging of steel that brought Conanbounding from his couch, wide awake and broadsword in hand. In aninstant he had reached the door and flung it open, and was glaring outinto the corridor just as Techotl rushed up it, eyes blazing madly.

  "The Xotalancas!" he screamed, in a voice hardly human, "_They arewithin the door!_"

  Conan ran down the corridor, even as Valeria emerged from her chamber.

  "What the devil is it?" she called.

  "Techotl says the Xotalancas are in," he answered hurriedly. "Thatracket sounds like it."

  * * * * *

  With the Tecuhltli on their heels they burst into the throne room andwere confronted by a scene beyond the most frantic dream of blood andfury. Twenty men and women, their black hair streaming, and the whiteskulls gleaming on their breasts, were locked in combat with the peopleof Tecuhltli. The women on both sides fought as madly as the men, andalready the room and the hall beyond were strewn with corpses.

  Olmec, naked but for a breech-clout, was fighting before his throne, andas the adventurers entered, Tascela ran from an inner chamber with asword in her hand.

  Xatmec and his mate were dead, so there was none to tell the Tecuhltlihow their foes had found their way into their citadel. Nor was there anyto say what had prompted that mad attempt. But the losses of theXotalancas had been greater, their position more desperate, than theTecuhltli had known. The maiming of their scaly ally, the destruction ofthe Burning Skull, and the news, gasped by a dying man, that mysteriouswhite-skin allies had joined their enemies, had driven them to thefrenzy of desperation and the wild determination to die dealing death totheir ancient foes.

  The Tecuhltli, recovering from the first stunning shock of the surprisethat had swept them back into the throne room and littered the floorwith their corpses, fought back with an equally desperate fury, whilethe door-guards from the lower floors came racing to hurl themselvesinto the fray. It was the death-fight of rabid wolves, blind, panting,merciless. Back and forth it surged, from door to dais, bladeswhickering and striking into flesh, blood spurting, feet stamping thecrimson floor where redder pools were forming. Ivory tables crashedover, seats were splintered, velvet hangings torn down were stained red.It was the bloody climax of a bloody half-century, and every man theresensed it.

  But the conclusion was inevitable. The Tecuhltli outnumbered theinvaders almost two to one, and they were heartened by that fact and bythe entrance into the melee of their light-skinned allies.

  These crashed into the fray with the devastating effect of a hurricaneplowing through a grove of saplings. In sheer strength no threeTlazitlans were a match for Conan, and in spite of his weight he wasquicker on his feet than any of them. He moved through the whirling,eddying mass with the surety and destructiveness of a gray wolf amidst apack of alley curs, and he strode over a wake of crumpled figures.

  Valeria fought beside him, her lips smiling and her eyes blazing. Shewas stronger than the average man, and far quicker and more ferocious.Her sword was like a living thing in her hand. Where Conan beat downopposition by the sheer weight and power of his blows, breaking spears,splitting skulls and cleaving bosoms to the breast-bone, Valeria broughtinto action a finesse of sword-play that dazzled and bewildered herantagonists before it slew them. Again and again a warrior, heaving highhis heavy blade, found her point in his jugular before he could strike.Conan, towering above the field, strode through the welter smiting rightand left, but Valeria moved like an illusive phantom, constantlyshifting, and thrusting and slashing as she shifted. Swords missed heragain and again as the wielders flailed the empty air and died with herpoint in their hearts or throats, and her mocking laughter in theirears.

  Neither sex nor condition was considered by the maddened combatants. Thefive women of the Xotalancas were down with their throats cut beforeConan and Valeria entered the fray, and when a man or woman went downunder the stamping feet, there was always a knife ready for the helplessthroat, or a sandaled foot eager to crush the prostrate skull.

  From wall to wall, from door to door rolled the waves of combat,spilling over into adjoining chambers. And presently only Tecuhltli andtheir white-skinned allies stood upright in the great throne room. Thesurvivors stared bleakly and blankly at each other, like survivors afterJudgment Day or the destruction of the world. On legs wide-braced, handsgripping notched and dripping swords, blood trickling down their arms,they stared at one another across the mangled corpses of friends andfoes. They had no breath left to shout, but a bestial mad howling rosefrom their lips. It was not a human cry of triumph. It was the howlingof a rabid wolf-pack stalking among the bodies of its victims.


  Conan caught Valeria's arm and turned her about.

  "You've got a stab in the calf of your leg," he growled.

  She glanced down, for the first time aware of a stinging in the musclesof her leg. Some dying man on the floor had fleshed his dagger with hislast effort.

  "You look like a butcher yourself," she laughed.

  He shook a red shower from his hands.

  "Not mine. Oh, a scratch here and there. Nothing to bother about. Butthat calf ought to be bandaged."

  * * * * *

  Olmec came through the litter, looking like a ghoul with his nakedmassive shoulders splashed with blood, and his black beard dabbled incrimson. His eyes were red, like the reflection of flame on black water.

  "We have won!" he croaked dazedly. "The feud is ended! The dogs ofXotalanc lie dead! Oh, for a captive to flay alive! Yet it is good tolook upon their dead faces. Twenty dead dogs! Twenty red nails for theblack column!"

  "You'd best see to your wounded," grunted Conan, turning away from him."Here, girl, let me see that leg."

  "Wait a minute!" she shook him off impatiently. The fire of fightingstill burned brightly in her soul. "How do we know these are all ofthem? These might have come on a raid of their own."

  "They would not split the clan on a foray like this," said Olmec,shaking his head, and regaining some of his ordinary intelligence.Without his purple robe the man seemed less like a prince than somerepellent beast of prey. "I will stake my head upon it that we haveslain them all. There were less of them than I dreamed, and they musthave been desperate. But how came they in Tecuhltli?"

  Tascela came forward, wiping her sword on her naked thigh, and holdingin her other hand an object she had taken from the body of the featheredleader of the Xotalancas.

  "The pipes of madness," she said. "A warrior tells me that Xatmec openedthe door to the Xotalancas and was cut down as they stormed into theguardroom. This warrior came to the guardroom from the inner hall justin time to see it happen and to hear the last of a weird strain of musicwhich froze his very soul. Tolkemec used to talk of these pipes, whichthe Xuchotlans swore were hidden somewhere in the catacombs with thebones of the ancient wizard who used them in his lifetime. Somehow thedogs of Xotalanc found them and learned their secret."

  "Somebody ought to go to Xotalanc and see if any remain alive," saidConan. "I'll go if somebody will guide me."

  Olmec glanced at the remnants of his people. There were only twenty leftalive, and of these several lay groaning on the floor. Tascela was theonly one of the Tecuhltli who had escaped without a wound. The princesswas untouched, though she had fought as savagely as any.

  "Who will go with Conan to Xotalanc?" asked Olmec.

  Techotl limped forward. The wound in his thigh had started bleedingafresh, and he had another gash across his ribs.

  "I will go!"

  "No, you won't," vetoed Conan. "And you're not going either, Valeria. Ina little while that leg will be getting stiff."

  "I will go," volunteered a warrior, who was knotting a bandage about aslashed forearm.

  "Very well, Yanath. Go with the Cimmerian. And you, too, Topal." Olmecindicated another man whose injuries were slight. "But first aid us tolift the badly wounded on these couches where we may bandage theirhurts."

  This was done quickly. As they stooped to pick up a woman who had beenstunned by a war-club, Olmec's beard brushed Topal's ear. Conan thoughtthe prince muttered something to the warrior, but he could not be sure.A few moments later he was leading his companions down the hall.

  Conan glanced back as he went out the door, at that shambles where thedead lay on the smoldering floor, blood-stained dark limbs knotted inattitudes of fierce muscular effort, dark faces frozen in masks of hate,glassy eyes glaring up at the green fire-jewels which bathed the ghastlyscene in a dusky emerald witch-light. Among the dead the living movedaimlessly, like people moving in a trance. Conan heard Olmec call awoman and direct her to bandage Valeria's leg. The pirate followed thewoman into an adjoining chamber, already beginning to limp slightly.

  * * * * *

  Warily the two Tecuhltli led Conan along the hall beyond the bronzedoor, and through chamber after chamber shimmering in the green fire.They saw no one, heard no sound. After they crossed the Great Hall whichbisected the city from north to south, their caution was increased bythe realization of their nearness to enemy territory. But chambers andhalls lay empty to their wary gaze, and they came at last along a broaddim hallway and halted before a bronze door similar to the Eagle Door ofTecuhltli. Gingerly they tried it, and it opened silently under theirfingers. Awed, they stared into the green-lit chambers beyond. For fiftyyears no Tecuhltli had entered those halls save as a prisoner going to ahideous doom. To go to Xotalanc had been the ultimate horror that couldbefall a man of the western castle. The terror of it had stalked throughtheir dreams since earliest childhood. To Yanath and Topal that bronzedoor was like the portal of hell.

  They cringed back, unreasoning horror in their eyes, and Conan pushedpast them and strode into Xotalanc.

  Timidly they followed him. As each man set foot over the threshold hestared and glared wildly about him. But only their quick, hurriedbreathing disturbed the silence.

  They had come into a square guardroom, like that behind the Eagle Doorof Tecuhltli, and, similarly, a hall ran away from it to a broad chamberthat was a counterpart of Olmec's throne room.

  Conan glanced down the hall with its rugs and divans and hangings, andstood listening intently. He heard no noise, and the rooms had an emptyfeel. He did not believe there were any Xotalancas left alive inXuchotl.

  "Come on," he muttered, and started down the hall.

  He had not gone far when he was aware that only Yanath was followinghim. He wheeled back to see Topal standing in an attitude of horror, onearm out as if to fend off some threatening peril, his distended eyesfixed with hypnotic intensity on something protruding from behind adivan.

  "What the devil?" Then Conan saw what Topal was staring at, and he felta faint twitching of the skin between his giant shoulders. A monstroushead protruded from behind the divan, a reptilian head, broad as thehead of a crocodile, with down-curving fangs that projected over thelower jaw. But there was an unnatural limpness about the thing, and thehideous eyes were glazed.

  Conan peered behind the couch. It was a great serpent which lay therelimp in death, but such a serpent as he had never seen in hiswanderings. The reek and chill of the deep black earth were about it,and its color was an indeterminable hue which changed with each newangle from which he surveyed it. A great wound in the neck showed whathad caused its death.

  "It is the Crawler!" whispered Yanath.

  "It's the thing I slashed on the stair," grunted Conan. "After ittrailed us to the Eagle Door, it dragged itself here to die. How couldthe Xotalancas control such a brute?"

  The Tecuhltli shivered and shook their heads.

  "They brought it up from the black tunnels _below_ the catacombs. Theydiscovered secrets unknown to Tecuhltli."

  "Well, it's dead, and if they'd had any more of them, they'd havebrought them along when they came to Tecuhltli. Come on."

  They crowded close at his heels as he strode down the hall and thrust onthe silver-worked door at the other end.

  "If we don't find anybody on this floor," he said, "we'll descend intothe lower floors. We'll explore Xotalanc from the roof to the catacombs.If Xotalanc is like Tecuhltli, all the rooms and halls in this tier willbe lighted--what the devil!"

  They had come into the broad throne chamber, so similar to that one inTecuhltli. There were the same jade dais and ivory seat, the samedivans, rugs and hangings on the walls. No black, red-scarred columnstood behind the throne-dais, but evidences of the grim feud were notlacking.

  Ranged along the wall behind the dais were rows of glass-coveredshelves. And on those shelves hundreds of human heads, perfectlypreserved, stared at the startled watchers with emotionless eyes, asthey
had stared for only the gods knew how many months and years.

  * * * * *

  Topal muttered a curse, but Yanath stood silent, the mad light growingin his wide eyes. Conan frowned, knowing that Tlazitlan sanity was hungon a hair-trigger.

  Suddenly Yanath pointed to the ghastly relics with a twitching finger.

  "There is my brother's head!" he murmured. "And there is my father'syounger brother! And there beyond them is my sister's eldest son!"

  Suddenly he began to weep, dry-eyed, with harsh, loud sobs that shookhis frame. He did not take his eyes from the heads. His sobs grewshriller, changed to frightful, high-pitched laughter, and that in turnbecame an unbearable screaming. Yanath was stark mad.

  Conan laid a hand on his shoulder, and as if the touch had released allthe frenzy in his soul, Yanath screamed and whirled, striking at theCimmerian with his sword. Conan parried the blow, and Topal tried tocatch Yanath's arm. But the madman avoided him and with froth flyingfrom his lips, he drove his sword deep into Topal's body. Topal sankdown with a groan, and Yanath whirled for an instant like a crazydervish; then he ran at the shelves and began hacking at the glass withhis sword, screeching blasphemously.

  Conan sprang at him from behind, trying to catch him unaware and disarmhim, but the madman wheeled and lunged at him, screaming like a lostsoul. Realizing that the warrior was hopelessly insane, the Cimmerianside-stepped, and as the maniac went past, he swung a cut that severedthe shoulder-bone and breast, and dropped the man dead beside his dyingvictim.

  Conan bent over Topal, seeing that the man was at his last gasp. It wasuseless to seek to stanch the blood gushing from the horrible wound.

  "You're done for, Topal," grunted Conan. "Any word you want to send toyour people?"

  "Bend closer," gasped Topal, and Conan complied--and an instant latercaught the man's wrist as Topal struck at his breast with a dagger.

  "Crom!" swore Conan. "Are you mad, too?"

  "Olmec ordered it!" gasped the dying man. "I know not why. As we liftedthe wounded upon the couches he whispered to me, bidding me to slay youas we returned to Tecuhltli----" And with the name of his clan on hislips, Topal died.

  Conan scowled down at him in puzzlement. This whole affair had an aspectof lunacy. Was Olmec mad, too? Were all the Tecuhltli madder than he hadrealized? With a shrug of his shoulders he strode down the hall and outof the bronze door, leaving the dead Tecuhltli lying before the staringdead eyes of their kinsmen's heads.

  Conan needed no guide back through the labyrinth they had traversed. Hisprimitive instinct of direction led him unerringly along the route theyhad come. He traversed it as warily as he had before, his sword in hishand, and his eyes fiercely searching each shadowed nook and corner; forit was his former allies he feared now, not the ghosts of the slainXotalancas.

  He had crossed the Great Hall and entered the chambers beyond when heheard something moving ahead of him--something which gasped and panted,and moved with a strange, floundering, scrambling noise. A moment laterConan saw a man crawling over the flaming floor toward him--a man whoseprogress left a broad bloody smear on the smoldering surface. It wasTechotl and his eyes were already glazing; from a deep gash in hisbreast blood gushed steadily between the fingers of his clutching hand.With the other he clawed and hitched himself along.

  "Conan," he cried chokingly, "Conan! Olmec has taken the yellow-hairedwoman!"

  "So that's why he told Topal to kill me!" murmured Conan, dropping tohis knee beside the man, who his experienced eye told him was dying."Olmec isn't so mad as I thought."

  Techotl's groping fingers plucked at Conan's arm. In the cold, lovelessand altogether hideous life of the Tecuhltli his admiration andaffection for the invaders from the outer world formed a warm, humanoasis, constituted a tie that connected him with a more natural humanitythat was totally lacking in his fellows, whose only emotions were hate,lust and the urge of sadistic cruelty.

  "I sought to oppose him," gurgled Techotl, blood bubbling frothily tohis lips. "But he struck me down. He thought he had slain me, but Icrawled away. Ah, Set, how far I have crawled in my own blood! Beware,Conan! Olmec may have set an ambush for your return! Slay Olmec! He is abeast. Take Valeria and flee! Fear not to traverse the forest. Olmec andTascela lied about the dragons. They slew each other years ago, all savethe strongest. For a dozen years there has been only one dragon. If youhave slain him, there is naught in the forest to harm you. He was thegod Olmec worshipped; and Olmec fed human sacrifices to him, the veryold and the very young, bound and hurled from the wall. Hasten! Olmechas taken Valeria to the Chamber of the----"

  His head slumped down and he was dead before it came to rest on thefloor.

  * * * * *

  Conan sprang up, his eyes like live coals. So that was Olmec's game,having first used the strangers to destroy his foes! He should haveknown that something of the sort would be going on in that black-beardeddegenerate's mind.

  The Cimmerian started toward Tecuhltli with reckless speed. Rapidly hereckoned the numbers of his former allies. Only twenty-one, countingOlmec, had survived that fiendish battle in the throne room. Three haddied since, which left seventeen enemies with which to reckon. In hisrage Conan felt capable of accounting for the whole clan single-handed.

  But the innate craft of the wilderness rose to guide his berserk rage.He remembered Techotl's warning of an ambush. It was quite probable thatthe prince would make such provisions, on the chance that Topal mighthave failed to carry out his order. Olmec would be expecting him toreturn by the same route he had followed in going to Xotalanc.

  Conan glanced up at a skylight under which he was passing and caught theblurred glimmer of stars. They had not yet begun to pale for dawn. Theevents of the night had been crowded into a comparatively short space oftime.

  He turned aside from his direct course and descended a winding staircaseto the floor below. He did not know where the door was to be found thatlet into the castle on that level, but he knew he could find it. How hewas to force the locks he did not know; he believed that the doors ofTecuhltli would all be locked and bolted, if for no other reason thanthe habits of half a century. But there was nothing else but to attemptit.

  Sword in hand, he hurried noiselessly on through a maze of green-lit orshadowy rooms and halls. He knew he must be near Tecuhltli, when a soundbrought him up short. He recognized it for what it was--a human beingtrying to cry out through a stifling gag. It came from somewhere aheadof him, and to the left. In those deathly-still chambers a small soundcarried a long way.

  Conan turned aside and went seeking after the sound, which continued tobe repeated. Presently he was glaring through a doorway upon a weirdscene. In the room into which he was looking a low rack-like frame ofiron lay on the floor, and a giant figure was bound prostrate upon it.His head rested on a bed of iron spikes, which were alreadycrimson-pointed with blood where they had pierced his scalp. A peculiarharness-like contrivance was fastened about his head, though in such amanner that the leather band did not protect his scalp from the spikes.This harness was connected by a slender chain to the mechanism thatupheld a huge iron ball which was suspended above the captive's hairybreast. As long as the man could force himself to remain motionless theiron ball hung in its place. But when the pain of the iron points causedhim to lift his head, the ball lurched downward a few inches. Presentlyhis aching neck muscles would no longer support his head in itsunnatural position and it would fall back on the spikes again. It wasobvious that eventually the ball would crush him to a pulp, slowly andinexorably. The victim was gagged, and above the gag his great blackox-eyes rolled wildly toward the man in the doorway, who stood in silentamazement. The man on the rack was Olmec, prince of Tecuhltli.