Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza

by Roland Green

  He could, however, hope that the sorcerer—whose name he ought to ask, even if he received no reply— would have something useful to say about the matter.

  Grolin’s men fled from a pursuit that in fact the Thanza Rangers and their new allies were not even attempting.

  The united bands had a number of tasks to accomplish before any of them took a single step off the battlefield. They had wounded to succour and dead to bury. They had to formally invest Conan with the command of the Thanza Rangers—or as formally as one could expect from an oath-taking witnessed by a handful of young captains and otherwise only by the gods.

  Then all the men and women of the two newly joined bands had to swear peace while on the quest for Grolin and the Soul of Thanza. The Rangers had to swear to abide by Lysinka’s laws for the women, and Lysinka’s folk swore to obey Conan, Klarnides, and Tharmis Rog as they would obey Lysinka herself.

  A few of the Rangers looked at the women in a way Conan did not much care for, and Lysinka even less. The Cimmerian met with Klarnides and Tharmis Rog once the oath-taking was done to settle that little matter.

  “One man’s hand in the wrong place on a woman and we’d be at blood-feud while facing sorcery, perhaps, or at least some desperate men,” Conan said. “I took command to lead the Rangers to victory, not have them killed off faster!”

  Klarnides flushed. “What about dividing the Rangers and Lysinka’s band? We both of us have wounded unfit to travel and needing rest and care. So why not leave some of both bands at the nearest good campsite with water, wood, and game? We can be sure that any bad apples stay in this barrel, instead of rotting on the trail.”

  Conan nodded. “Yes, but that means we must leave behind a captain all will obey.” He looked at Tharmis Rog. “What about you, my friend?”

  The master-at-arms swore so eloquently that he gained the attention of most of both bands. Had they not also been under close scrutiny, Conan and Klarnides would have collapsed laughing.

  Finally Tharmis Rog ran out of breath, shrugged, winced, and raised his good hand in a placating gesture. “Can you both swear that you did not plan this to keep me out of the fight?”

  “No,” Conan replied. “But can you swear that your arm will let you fight, or your leg let you walk, let alone march?”

  “No,” Rog said in turn, sounding rather like a small boy who has to confess to a roaring stomach ache after eating too many honey cakes. “But I heal quickly, and I don’t see your hide entirely whole either. That gash in your side—”

  “I can walk,” Conan interjected. “I can wield a sword. I can—”

  “—be a northerner, more stubborn than any Aquilonian ever whelped,” Klarnides said with a sigh. “Give over, Tharmis Rog. You’ve had your share of fighting, and you’ll have your share of anything we bring home from this quest.

  “If we bring ourselves home, that is,” the captain added, in a lowered voice.

  Three of Lysinka’s wounded who remained behind were women. However, the least hurt among them was also something of a wise-woman, who knew a good many poultices and febrifuges that could be made from common plants. Some of her knowledge she had passed on to trusted comrades, including Lysinka and Fergis, so neither band would lack for healing.

  “And besides, the Rangers have several among them who can at least bind wounds and set broken bones,” Lysinka added, in facing down the woman’s protests. “Against what men can do, we shall fare well enough.”

  That was the truth, as far as it went. She doubted that Grolin had more than twenty-five fighting men left to face the sixty she and the Aquilonians were planning to take against him. She also doubted that his strength was any longer entirely in human form.

  “The Soul?” Conan asked when she broached this matter to him.

  “I think not. But those men of his who charged—I do not believe they were in control of their senses. Something had maddened them.’v

  “I’ve marched within reach of more than a few sorcerers,” the Cimmerian said. “I’ve marched out again too, which is more than can be said of them.

  “If the Soul is only magic then let’s see that Grolin doesn’t command it. If it’s more—well, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  This was as far as she could make Conan declare himself. Under his iron exterior, she thought she detected the same distrust of sorcery that she herself felt.

  Did this make him a better man to march with, seeking the Soul of Thanza? It might. Although Conan could be destroyed by magic; he was not one to be tempted to possess it for his own.

  In Grolin, that temptation had seemingly turned into lust, and might yet turn into madness even without the help of whatever spells the Soul held. Life and death— and the big Cimmerian with the eyes so akin to her own would be upholding life. If the gods existed, Lysinka decided, they had a taste for grim jests.

  She laid a hand on Conan’s arm. He almost jerked it away.

  “Your wound?” she asked.

  “It’s more than a fly bite, I’ll admit that much.”

  “It looks clean enough for the march. It’s only one day’s good travelling to the citadel, and I’ve seen axe-root for the poultices growing at the foot of the cliffs.” Conan raised a hand. “You missed your calling, Lysinka. You should have been a healer or even a priestess.”

  He did not quite touch her, but that huge, scarred hand was only a hair’s breadth from her skin. She vividly imagined his touch, half-hoping that wishing would bring the hand across the last bit of distance.

  Then she shook her head. “I wasn’t one to remain a maiden. I once thought that would give me an easy life, but I soon learned otherwise. This life’s not easy, but I’m at no one’s bidding either.”

  She stood without moving away. It was the Cimmerian who rose and stepped back.

  “Best we be at our work,” he said. “Or the stay-behinds will snatch up the choicest rations and gear and squall like catamounts when we take them back!”

  VIII

  To Lord Grolin, the dark forest seemed to be holding its breath. He wished his men would do likewise. In this silent darkness, even a cough seemed ready to float through the trees and warn their enemies.

  “They are all intent on the citadel.” No need to ask whose voice that was.

  “Why should they be otherwise?” Grolin replied, whispering to help the words form themselves clearly. “There is nothing to keep them out of my home—mine and that of my men for six good years. They will enter and learn all its secrets.”

  “They will learn nothing,” the voice said. (No face now, nothing to break the darkness.) “They may not even enter.”

  “What is to prevent them?”

  “Do not waste your breath asking. Wait and see.” Grolin waited until the silence of the night seemed like frozen velvet, stifling him and chilling him at the same time. He took a few steps out from behind his sheltering tree to have a better view of the citadel.

  It was only a silhouette against the starlit sky. He had never seen so many stars from deep in the forest, only in the clear air atop the citadel.

  A man stumbled over something, probably another man, because two voices cursed, one challenging the other.

  “Silence!” Grolin snapped. Something in his voice demanded instant obedience.

  Then he saw that above the citadel, the stars wavered, as if he were seeing them through water.

  The gap Conan found in the rocks had clearly been nature’s creation at a time so long ago that even the gods had been young and Atlantis not yet risen from the sea.

  Grolin’s masons, however, had done their work cunningly. When one pushed aside two cleverly balanced rocks, a broad opening gaped ahead—broad enough for pack trains or men two or three abreast.

  The back door to Lord Grolin’s citadel lay open.

  “How could this be safe, if we found and opened it so easily?” Klarnides asked.

  “It’s a cursed sight easier to find something you know exists and are looking for,” Conan r
eplied. “Also, I’d wager it was normally watched from somewhere up there.” He pointed at the crags looming black against the stars. “I confess this was easier than I expected—and I dislike it more than a little.”

  Lysinka’s eyes met his. She seemed to know his thoughts, on war and perhaps on other things, better than Klarnides.

  “A trap?” she said.

  Conan nodded. “Best we pick a few men, to go up and spring it.”

  Klarnides protested. “Conan, we’ve been roaming among these rocks all day because you said not to divide our strength! Why do it now?”

  “Because dividing our strength down here would have tempted Grolin to attack us,” Conan snapped. The day had been long enough and the climbing rough enough even for a hillman to lend an edge to the Cimmerian’s voice. He took a deep breath and continued more politely.

  “Up there, our being together is the temptation. If evil is waiting, we don’t want all of us to be within its reach when it pounces.”

  Even in the darkness, Klarnides’s grim face told Conan that he might have chosen his words a trifle better. Then the captain shrugged. “Very well, Conan. I will go with you.”

  Lysinka shook her head. “No. We need Conan for his climbing skill. He needs a second captain who has been up there. That means me. Klarnides, you and Fergis must keep the men down here under cover until we return—and lead them away, if we do not.”

  Fergis muttered a much ruder word than the pious bandit commonly used. But he nodded, and after a moment so did Klarnides.

  Twelve fighters went through the gap-and started to climb the slope toward the citadel. Conan went first; Lysinka brought up the rear; and between them walked ten men, the five best climbers from each band. Each was fully armed, and each had a white triangle chalked on his forehead and his back. In a night battle, telling friend from foe could be the edge that promised victory. If there were any foe up there—any human one, that is.

  Conan thought that the citadel was either abandoned or else held the best-laid ambush that he had ever faced. Or both might be true, if the ambush was not in human hands.

  Conan looked up. The stars seemed brighter, more numerous, and less friendly than usual, more so even than the cold sky of his native land. The wind was still, not even the usual faint piping of small creatures among the rocks reaching his ears.

  He drew his sword, and the rasp of freed steel was a homely, earthly noise that briefly gave him comfort.

  “I think we turn right here,” he whispered to the man behind him. The message vanished into the night as the marchers repeated it down the line to Lysinka.

  High above in the citadel, some of the stars briefly wavered, unseen by the climbing band.

  From his vantage point, Lord Grolin saw the stars do more than waver. Some of them were extinguished. Not as if the clouds had swept across them but as if they were candles suddenly plunged into water. He almost heard the hiss of extinguished flames.

  Then he heard real hisses. They sounded so much like serpents’ warnings that he started to draw his sword, until he realized that it was already in his hand. He searched the ground on all sides of him, saw nothing, then heard the hisses again.

  Fear clawed at his chest, sweat dripped from his forehead. Suddenly the fear vanished like clouds driven by the wind. Instead of dripping sweat, his face flushed hot with embarrassment.

  It was his own men whom he’d heard, breath hissing between their teeth as they watched the stars vanishing. His own fevered imagination had done the rest.

  But what was that blackness? Potent sorcery, to be sure; but that told him little. It did not even say whether it would help or harm him among his enemies.

  Then he heard it—not within his ears, or even within his mind, but someplace deeper. If Grolin had thought he had a soul, he would have said that the crying voices were within his soul, calling out to it in their loss and pain.

  “Can you put a name to that, O Lord of Thanza?”

  This time the voice came from within his mind. So came his reply.

  “The Spider Wind.” Then he dared to ask:

  “Do you command the Spider Wind, O Master of the Soul of Thanza who will not give your name?”

  Silence answered, within and without. No, not complete silence. Faintly in the night, the crying of the Spider Wind reached across the forest.

  To those climbing toward the citadel, the Spider Wind gave scant warning. Conan heard a man scream, looked around him for signs of attack, then saw heads bent back and wide eyes staring at the sky.'

  Or rather, they were staring at where the sky had been. A hideous black maw seemed to have swallowed a patch of the blazing stars, and more were vanishing every moment. At the same time Conan felt gossamer fingers of wind trailing across his face, and heard a thin, distant cry.

  At the cry, he knew what the climbers faced. Lysinka had described it as vividly as any talespinner by a northern fire. Conan remembered the chill he’d felt at the name of the Spider Wind.

  One of Lysinka’s people cried out the name at that same moment. Then the wind became a gale, the Cimmerian had to brace himself against a rock to stay on his feet, and one of Lysinka’s men rose into the air.

  The man hung suspended in mid-air, his feet kicking frantically a spear’s length above the highest rocks. Conan expected the wind to carry him to the edge of a cliff and fling him to his doom.

  Instead, the wind began to crush the life out of the man, like a gigantic snake, invisible but of immeasurable power. The man’s eyes bulged from their sockets; his hands flailed at emptiness; blood dripped from his mouth.

  Choking on his own blood, the breath driven from his lungs, the man still screamed.

  “Captain Conan! Someone! In Mitra’s name! Kill me!”

  Grolin heard only two sounds now. One was the distant cry of the Spider Wind. He was sure it was the wind. He had to believe it was the wind, not living men about to die, crying out like ghosts in the night.

  The other was the receding footfalls of his men. The idea of lingering close to where someone was commanding the Spider Wind, bidding it attack where he wished, had snapped the remains of their courage.

  Grolin wondered if his dignity allowed him to join them. He could see little good that might come of remaining here, a chief without a band to follow him.

  He might indeed become only a dead lord, instead of the Death Lord.

  Grolin began to laugh at his own modest wit, but the laughter rang false on his ears, like that of a madman. He swallowed his laughter and nearly his tongue as well; then listened in silence to the Spider Wind sowing agony and terror in his old home.

  If it had been one of his own Rangers, Conan might not have hesitated to deliver the death stroke. But his hand baulked at shedding the blood of one of Lysinka’s people, despite the man’s mortal agony.

  In the last moments of Conan’s hesitation, Lysinka moved. She snatched a spear from one of the Rangers, lifted it, and threw.

  The point drove deep into the man’s chest. A last cry burst from his mouth, along with a gush of blood. His writhing ceased, and his eyes now stared lifeless into the blackness above.

  The next moment, a scream that made the man’s agony seem like a babe’s cooing tore at everyone’s ears. It was a sound that mountains might have made, or even gods, dying in anguish for which there were no words in any human tongue. The death of every animal that Conan had ever witnessed seemed to be part of the cry. Men, women, and children of every race of Man, and even unnatural beings such as dragons and chakans repeated the sound.

  The scream went on, as if the world itself were dying horribly—but looking up, Conan saw part of the blackness shredding like cheap cloth. Stars wavered into sight, brightened, and shone steadily once more, as they had before the Spider Wind’s maw swallowed them.

  A war cry reached Conan’s ears, piercing the Spider Wind’s screaming. Then more cries, of rage this time, made the Cimmerian whirl.

  The Spider Wind had plucked Lysinka up o
ff her feet. But she had a firm grip on a rock, and one of her men had an even firmer grip upon her legs.

  “Conan! If the Spider Wind’s prey is slain in its grip—the Wind can be slain too!”

  The man holding Lysinka’s legs blanched. Conan wondered to what colour his own face had turned, under the scars and weathering. The idea of slaying Lysinka to destroy the Spider Wind froze not merely his sword arm, but almost his soul.

  Yet Conan’s will drove his muscles into action, and Lysinka and the Spider Wind might have died together save for the courage of the man holding Lysinka’s legs. He heaved so fiercely that he broke her grip on the rock and the Wind’s grip on her.

  Then he leaped forward. From the top of the rock, he flung himself into the air. He did not fall, for the Wind caught him. Nor did he die in agony.

  The moment she saw that the Wind held the man, Lysinka struck. Her sword pierced his side. He seemed to smile then, before an archer put an arrow through his throat from a safe distance.

  Life left the man without his making a sound—or at least no sound that any human ear could discern. Not so was the unearthly agony of the Spider Wind. It was as if death itself was dying, raving in agony and rage at meeting the fate it had dealt so often to others.

  Abruptly silence returned, for a moment as tangible and overwhelming as had been the sound of the Spider Wind. Overhead, the blackness did not shred, it shattered like glass. Conan half-expected to hear the tinkle and crash of blackness falling into the rocks of the citadel.

  To his amazement the stars returned, all of them, all as bright as before. The silence ran on, broken only by the thud of the man’s dead body falling onto the rocks and the thud of Lysinka’s boots as she ran to kneel beside the faithful follower who gave his life for her.

  “Are you all right?” Conan asked, after Lysinka’s tears abated.

  “Oh—yes. Yes. That Wind—it barely touched me. I—I was only frightened.”

  Conan put a hand on her shoulder, thinking she might welcome the human touch in her sorrow. She did not draw away, but he felt her trembling.