The rumble increased in volume, until Conan had to shout to the trembling girl, urging her to join him. From Kolari came a continuing ululation of screams as terror-stricken people rushed from their tumbling houses. Behind Conan and the girl, a section of the cave roof collapsed with a thunderous roar, filling the air with rock dust.
As Conan, growling curses, seized the bars that penned them in, the ground beneath his feet split open. A line like black lightning zigzagged down the rock in which the hinges of the barred gate were set. The gate loosened in Conan’s desperate grip, as the lower hinge parted from its setting. A violent push, and the gate hung awry.
“Get out, girl!” shouted Conan, as he forced the gate ajar. The girl squeezed past him through the narrow opening and ran screaming into the night, clutching her furs and flimsy garments against her naked bosom.
With another mighty heave, Conan broke the gate loose from its remaining hinge and hurled it down the hillside. As the earth rocked and vibrated beneath his feet, he staggered out into the moonlight and glared wildly at the scene of devastation. In the middle distance, he perceived the houses of Kolari in ruins, and their homeless tenants running aimlessly about, like ants after the obliteration of their nest.
“Conan!” came the voice of Toghrul. “Conan! Help
me!”
Below him, at the foot of the little hill, Conan saw the Pit master’s head protruding from a wide crack in the earth. He saw that the earth had opened beneath the Hyrkanian’s feet and swallowed him to his shoulders. Wedged in the crack, the man was unable to free himself.
“Pull me out!” implored the Pit master.
“Why should I?”
“I’ll pay gold! I’ll give you your freedom! Only save me now!”
“My freedom, eh?” Conan threw back his head and laughed—his first good laugh since the Vanir had captured him, ten long years ago. “That I already have. Stay there, swine! If the earth swallows you down, good riddance to you!”
Conan turned and walked away. Guided by the moonlight, he headed for a clump of trees on a hillock in the distance. He had neither supplies nor weapons and did not know whither he was going, but at least he knew that southward the weather was warmer. Behind him, Toghrul’s frantic voice rose to an awful shriek as, in a final earth tremor, the crack that held him closed once more.
Conan saw no one, alive or dead, in the direction he chose to travel, save, after a time, one Hyrkanian warrior, who sprawled beneath a fallen tree. In its descent, the tree had broken the fellow’s back. Conan knelt and looted the corpse for such articles as he might need: boots, flint and steel, a dagger, a fur cloak, and a bag of coins. He also took the man’s quiver and bow case, although he looked doubtfully at them for the bow was little used among the Cimmerians, and Conan had never learned to shoot.
“You’ll have no use for these in the red pits of Hell, Hyrkanian,” he said cheerfully, “and they may serve me well before I join you there." So saying, he donned the dead man’s gear and glided away through the trees.
Then, as the first faint glow of dawn suffused the eastern sky, Conan increased his pace and headed south.
IV
The Witch
The plain stretched southward under a pewter sky. Here and there the ground showed black where winds had scoured away the snow, exposing naked earth.
Once more Conan paused in his trudging to glance back along the path that he had travelled. Straining his ears, he heard the tell-tale whining and knew that wolves were still on his trail. From the distance came their eerie song. He scowled, set his jaw, and gathered his bearskin cloak about him. If only, in all this bleak, flat stretch of land, he could find a rocky place to shield him—something to put his back against—he could face the pack and use his dagger to good advantage.
Grimly, the Cimmerian turned to plod ahead; but in the dull, metallic luminescence of the motionless mist, he could not see his surroundings clearly. He strode along, nevertheless, his keen barbarian eyes searching for a haven against the hungry fangs. At last he found one. It was only a low rise, a wrinkle in the earth’s skin; but the higher ground was strewn with boulders. On the crest of this small rise, he hoped to make his stand; for there the beasts could come at him only singly, or at the worst in pairs.
As he began to clamber up the rocky pile, his booted feet slipped on the sheathing ice. A cold wind came up and tugged at his cloak as if to hold him back. Still he persevered and made some progress. Pausing to catch his breath at last, he turned to see a dozen gaunt, dark-furred forms lope into view. The wolves’ eyes burned like glowing coals through the gathering murk, as the grey light faded from the clouded heavens.
Seeing their quarry trying to escape, the pack broke into a chorus of snarls. Just before the foremost reached the foot of the rock pile, Conan found a smooth, upright slab which thrust up from the side of the knoll. In shape it was oddly symmetrical, as though hewn by artisans of some forgotten race and set there for a marker. Conan neither knew or cared about that; the slab was something he could stand against, something to protect his back.
Whining and growling, the wolves threaded a passage between the boulders, scrambling for footholds as they clawed their way up the rough hillside. One leaped high in the air to snap at the Cimmerian’s leg, but a slash of his dirk caught the beast across its muzzle. With a yelp of pain, it fell back, giving its prey a moment’s respite.
As he inched along the ledge that fronted the vertical slab, in search of a more secure footing, Conan’s fingers found a narrow gap in the rock. A quick glance revealed a dark opening, just wide enough for a man to slip through sidewise. Once within the sheltering cleft, however small the space, he knew that he would gain an advantage against his pursuers.
Lithe as a panther, Conan wriggled through the slot in the stone; but his cloak caught on a jagged rock and was tom from his shoulders. Through the aperture, he watched the wolves hurl themselves upon the fur, their fangs ripping the bear’s hide to ribbons.
For some reason that he could not fathom, the animals did not even try to squirm through the opening. From the way they whined and scratched against the slab, he sensed that, starving though they were, they feared to pass through this mysterious stone portal.
Turning, Conan found himself in a larger space than he had expected, a stone-walled cubicle with a flat; stone-paved floor. The regularity of the floor and walls gave the barbarian youth an uneasy premonition that the chamber had been fashioned by intelligent beings, human or otherwise. He felt his way in the dark along the smooth wall and came to an opening through which a flight of smoothly-chiselled stone steps descended into deeper darkness. He followed them to their foot.
On the lower level, the floor seemed littered with debris, rotted cloth intermixed with hard lumps that he could not at first identify. He gathered up a handful of the unseen litter, wondering if it were combustible. He felt in his pouch for the flint and steel he had taken from the dead Hyrkanian. Soon he had a small flame burning, for the cloth was dry and ignited easily.
By this feeble orange light, Conan saw that the walls were embellished with polished stone reliefs, an intricate mixture of bizarre figures and forms unknown to him. Examining the floor, he found it cluttered with skulls and bones, the remains of at least a score of human beings. He saw that the bones were clean and dry, the flesh having long since disintegrated into dust.
Peering deeper into the gloom, Conan discovered a huge throne, carved from a block of some opalescent material such as marble or alabaster. On this seat of honour sat an enormous skeletal warrior, still clad in copper armour of a strange design, turned green by the corrosion of many years. Conan guessed that the living man whose bones these were had been half again as tall as he, perhaps a member of a long-forgotten race.
Lighting his way with a rude torch fashioned from a femur wrapped in a piece of rotting cloth, Conan approached the armed figure. Beneath the shadow of the heavy helm, the face of the skull seemed frozen in a silent scream. Across the s
pread knees of the armoured skeleton lay a great sword, sheathed in leather so rotted that patches of iron beneath the hide were visible. The hilt and pommel of corroded bronze crawled with cryptic characters, wrought by a master’s hand.
Conan took up the sword. At the touch of his fingers, the scabbard crumbled into dust and thin fragments of bronze fell to the floor with the ghost of a tinkle. The blade, now fully exposed, proved to be a huge length of dull iron, spotted with patches of corrosion; but rust had not bitten it deeply enough to affect its strength. Th6 edge, when Conan thumbed it, was still sharp.
Conan’s eyes clouded with painful memories as he caressed the perfect planes of the blade and the exquisite workmanship of the hilt. He recalled the making of the great steel sword that was his father’s masterpiece. Shrugging the memory away, Conan hefted the ancient weapon. Heavy as it was, he found the balance so perfect that it seemed made for his arm alone. He raised the sword above his head, and felt his thews swell with power and his heart beat faster with the pride of possession. With such a blade, no destiny would be too high for a warrior to aspire to! With such a blade, even a barbarian slave, a Pit fighter scorned and marked for death, might hack his way to an honoured place among the rulers of the earth.
Exhilarated by the dreams that the splendid weapon aroused in his barbarian breast, Conan feinted and cut the air with wild abandon; and as the keen sword sliced through the stale air of the death chamber, he uttered the venerable war cry of the Cimmerians. Loud and clear he shouted it; and the cry reverberated around the chamber, disturbing ancient shadows and age-old dust. In his exuberance, the young barbarian never paused to think that such a challenge, wide-flung in such a place, might rouse thoughts and feelings that had slumbered there for countless centuries among the bones of those whose thoughts they were.
Suddenly, Conan heard an answering war cry. It seemed to come from a great distance, carried on the wind. But there was no wind. Conan paused, his sword arm still upraised. Was it perhaps the wolves that howled? Again the mad cry rose, so near now that it beat against his ears and deafened him. Conan wheeled. He felt the hair lift from his scalp and his blood congeal to ice. For the dead man lived and moved.
Slowly, the skeleton rose from the marble throne, glaring at the Cimmerian youth from the deep pits now filled, it seemed, with demonic fire. Bone rubbed against bone, like tree branches brushing together in a storm, as the terrible grinning skull approached on funereal feet. Conan, his arm still raised, stood frozen by horror into immobility.
Suddenly a bony claw shot out, to snatch the sword from Conan’s hand. Numb with terror, Conan retreated step by step. Only the Cimmerian’s laboured breath and the clicking of bones against the stone floor of the chamber broke the silence.
Now the dead thing had Conan backed against a wall. Pit fighter though he was, ready to do battle with man or beast and fearing neither pain nor mortal foes, he was still a barbarian and like all barbarians he feared the terrors of the grave and the monstrous beings that inhabit the dark world and the hells beneath hells. The small torch burned low as he stood paralysed by fear. Then a wolf howled.
Galvanized into action by that familiar sound, Conan’s terror melted like the snow in spring. He brought the sword down with a chopping blow that lopped off the clutching bony claw. He swivelled to the side and, in the sputtering light, searched vainly for the stairs down which he had come. Relentlessly, the helmeted skull strode forward. With swift, powerful strokes Conan defended himself. At last he found the narrow stairs, and backing up a single step, he drove his weapon through the rusted armour, through the bare rib cage, into the area where a living heart would beat.
With a sigh like sedge blown by an autumn wind, the walking skeleton paused in mid-step. The giant form reeled, took two tottering steps towards the throne, and collapsed into a heap of bones and dust. The helmet rang like a cracked bell when it struck the stone flooring. Then the torch flickered and went out.
For a moment, the Cimmerian stood staring into the darkness, unable to comprehend that his supernatural adversary was truly dead and that the great sword was his. Then he turned and, holding his weapon at the ready, mounted the stairs.
At last Conan emerged into the moonlight to find the wolves still waiting for him. Howling, they bounded toward him, tongues lolling from their fanged jaws. With a tight smile, he took his stance on the ledge and raised the long blade over his head. As the first beast hurled itself toward him, Conan pivoted, sweeping his sword in a horizontal arc. Caught in mid-leap, the wolf was tossed high in the air and fell, yelping, to its death on the boulders.
Before the Cimmerian could lift his sword arm to deliver another slashing blow, a second wolf sprang at him, its jaws agape. In the white light of the moon, he drove the point of his blade between the open jaws, seating it deep in the animal’s gullet. The wolf’s legs scrambled frantically on the rounded surface of a boulder as it tried in vain to tear itself loose from the impaling blade.
At that instant, a third wolf dove at Conan from the side, snapping at his legs. Still encumbered by the spitted animal, Conan kicked out, in time to catch the new attacker on its nose. The beast drew back with a yelp, then made another dive; but Conan, having freed his sword, dealt the attacker a blow that laid open its skull.
With three of their number down, the remaining wolves drew back. Whining, they trotted off, tails low, and disappeared into the low-lying mists.
Conan spent the night, a long and wearisome time, hidden among the boulders on the upland, alert to the twin dangers of further attacks by hungering beasts or by walking dead men from the nearby cave. In the grey dawn, he skinned the three dead wolves and, tying the skins together, made a crude mantle for protection against the cold. Some of the flesh he roasted over a small fire and ate with ravenous enjoyment; some he wrapped in the skin of a wolf’s leg to assuage his hunger during the journey southward.
The sword Conan slung on his back, thrust through the dead soldier’s belt and secured there by a string of animal sinews. Thus outfitted and provisioned, he clambered down the rock pile and, sighting on a pallid sun, headed south.
Three days later, the level tundra had given way to a vista of gently rolling hills crowned with scrub timber. The ground beneath his feet had grown soft from the melting of the lingering snows, and clear water ran in rills from tunnels in the thawing drifts. In the distance, a lazy pillar of smoke wavered upward to meet the high overcast.
Conan headed for the place whence the smoke ascended; and, coming to a clearing, found a stone-walled, sod-roofed dwelling dug into the side of a hill. Curiously carved wooden poles jutted from the earth at crazy angles about the hut, like a flimsy palisade. Several standing stones had been rudely chipped into the semblance of human heads, grimacing or shouting into the uncaring wind. His primitive instincts attuned to the supernatural, Conan could almost feel the emanations of evil power arising from these cryptic sticks and stones.
The door of the hut stood ajar, and the barbarian approached it, moving with the feline caution of a stalking leopard. Suddenly he stopped, rigid with amazement; for, tethered by a chain to a heavy stone post, he saw a crouching figure, wrapped in ragged furs. It was a man, squat, bow-legged, and half naked, who with the eyes of an injured animal regarded the newcomer. Voiceless and unmoving as the stone against which he huddled, the short man stared at the young Cimmerian from slitted, ebon eyes.
Suddenly, a voice, as clear as a cowbell in the gloaming, jolted Conan from his curious contemplation.
“There is warmth in fire.” The voice was soft and inviting.
Conan raised his eyes to see a woman’s figure silhouetted against the firelight from her hearth. Her curvaceous body, pressed against the portal of her home, radiated a sinister but inviting mystery; her languid, smiling eyes ran down the strong body of the Cimmerian youth, exuding an eroticism as strong as a caress.
“Do you not wish to warm yourself by my fire?” Her lace, framed by her long black hair, was past the bl
oom of youth, but there was a compelling beauty in it that was as old as time.
Conan, restrained by his premonition of evil, hesitated for a heartbeat, while the woman, with a secret smile, turned from the doorway to stoke her fire of tamarisk chips. Drawn by her easy manner and the glow of her oval face in the firelight, Conan ducked under the low lintel and entered the hut.
The fire leaped up, and by its roseate glow, Conan studied the room. The stone walls were enhanced by hangings of animal hides; the floor was covered by skins of luxuriant softness but of beasts unfamiliar to the Cimmerian. Strange skulls were suspended from the twin posts that supported the sod roof—bears with great teeth, sabre-fanged cats, and one horned beasts of indescribable immensity.
Before the fire the woman spread a low table with a wooden platter of barley bread and goat cheese, a bowl of dried fruit, and a mug of fresh milk. Then she beckoned to him, and gratefully he settled down to enjoy the repast. Sated, he looked up to find the woman leaning against the nearer centre post, studying him. An expression of amusement curled her full-lipped mouth.
“From the north, that is whence you come,” she said in her throaty voice.
Suddenly aware that the woman has been staring at him, Conan looked down, uneasy. His hand dropped to the sword now lying by his side.
“I am a Cimmerian,” he said.
The woman, noting the youth’s ardent glance and evident embarrassment, laughed harshly. “You are a slave! Do you not think that I can see a slave by his eyes? Barbarian slave!”
There was an uneasy silence. Then, with a sinuous movement, the woman tossed back her long hair and prowled about the room with unsettling, erotic grace. Something about her shadow, not quite where it should be, disturbed the barbarian youth.
Conan the Barbarian Page 5