by Roland Green
Even he seemed to recoil from the stench that arose as the nest took fire. Conan felt rather as if he had been flung head-first into a midden pit long ripened under a hot sun. He still retreated at a walk, despite the fact that his nose and lungs were urging his feet to run.
Conan sought the open air near the cave’s mouth, while the other skeletons joined in the work of burning the nests. The skeleton warriors ran about, striking sparks and hurling tinder. Black smoke poured up and out, reeking and fouler than Conan had words to describe. Amid the smoke red flames glimmered, and Conan heard them crackling.
He also heard, slowly at first and then coming in rapid succession, the pops and bangs of the serpents’ eggs bursting amid the flames.
That sound brought the fleeing serpents back, attacking in a frenzy to save their eggs and their race from the flames. Conan had to plunge into the smoke to join the skeletons, though he could barely breathe.
In the end, his sword was not much needed. Against opponents who took no breath, the serpents were hopelessly burdened by the smoke. They could hardly breathe, they could see less well, they could hear or feel nothing whatever—and the skeletons had a merry slaughter.
When the last serpent was dead, the skeletons began joining Conan in the open air. Most of them had turned from greyish-white to sooty black, with occasional spots of charred ichor. Few of them still had their weapons, and some of them swayed on their feet in a way that told Conan even warriors of stone could reach the limit of endurance.
The Cimmerian leaned on his sword and looked outward into the Thanzas without truly seeing anything. He felt rather as he had in Vendhya, when he and his friends had hunted down a man-eating tiger that had devastated whole villages. They had finally slain her by getting between her and her cubs and taking her as she came to their rescue.
It was work that needed doing, or people would die. It was work that demanded a warrior’s skill and courage. But it was not work that a warrior could look back upon with pleasure or that he would care to boast about over the wine in taverns at night.
None doubted any longer that the ichor of the serpents was “strong blood” enough for the skeletons’ needs. The problem was how to bring it to the still-inanimate skeletons far below—or bring the skeletons to the ichor—and to do one or the other before the blood lost its strength.
Luck, which had so long eluded the warriors charged with overthrowing the Death Lord of Thanza, now turned their way. They found a crippled but living snake, and almost at the same time, a nearly-vertical shaft that plummeted deep into the mountain.
He shouted, echoes replied—and then so did one of the skeleton warriors who had been left below, guarding their as yet inanimate comrades and procuring more weapons. The shaft lay within a hundred paces of the remaining skeletons.
Not that using this luck was entirely easy. It meant making rope of the hide cut from the dead serpents, and lowering the moribund one down the shaft. Twice it stuck, but two of the skeleton warriors had prudently climbed down after it and were able to pry it loose.
One of them fell during the descent, and once again the dirge for a shattered comrade rose from the skeleton warriors. The Cimmerian would have silenced them had he known how, but an appeal to the leaders that hostile ears might be listening was in vain.
“It is a custom from the days when we were men’” said one of them. Considering how long ago that must have been, Conan decided that the custom might be several thousand years old.
If anyone was going to argue the skeleton warriors out of their customs, it would have to be someone with a quicker tongue than his. He also had to admit that if the uproar of the battle and the smoke from the burning of the serpents’ nest had not warned enemies, none were there to be warned.
Even while they sang the dirge, the skeleton warriors were hauling up the first of their comrades reanimated by the serpent’s ichor. The newcomers seemed more befuddled than the earlier ones, being reanimated amid the slaughterhouse scenes of the serpents’ nest. But the leaders told off one of the first party to advise and counsel each of the newcomers. They were soon snatching up weapons and doing what in living men Conan would have called an arms drill.
Sleeping a few thousand years clad only in your bones would, he supposed, render a warrior somewhat out of practice.
Around the time that the fifteenth reanimated warrior from below rose into daylight, Conan heard a sound in the distance. It reached his ears as a low-pitched humming, as if a swarm of enormous flies had passed overhead. The Cimmerian called the leaders’ attention to it, but they merely posted extra sentries and continued retrieving their comrades.
By now there were too few inanimate skeletons below to require the help of all their animate comrades. Many of those whom Conan had first encountered began their climb. Some rode up the shaft on the ropes, others followed the path of Conan and the snake-killers.
The first of these had just reached daylight when the mountain quivered. It was not a violent movement, but for a moment the solid rock underfoot seemed to Conan to be as mobile as jelly.
At the same moment, the distant droning grew louder. Now the flies might have been swarming toward Conan. It nearly drowned out the next sound, which was the rumble and crash of falling rock, far away and far below.
Conan and his skeletal comrades looked in all directions, from the sky to down the tunnel shaft. The skeleton warriors in the tunnel hastened their pace, five of them dashing out almost in a single body.
Then a roar like a waterfall swept over them. The mountain no longer quivered; it seemed to be dancing. Loose rock cascaded everywhere, and dust poured out of the tunnel and up the shaft. Mingled with the ashes of the fire, it formed an opaque cloud through which the Cimmerian could scarcely see his hand at the end of his outstretched arm.
“Out!” he roared, and the leaders echoed him, in so far as anyone could make himself heard over the groaning of the mountain. The open slope might be shaking; it might be swept by rockfalls; it might harbour live serpents or other unknown perils. But it was safer than in the caves and tunnels or under overhanging cliffs, where rock might fall at any moment and crush flesh and stone alike.
Conan did not head the withdrawal. With the other leaders, he remained coughing until he thought his ribs would crack from the dust and ashes.
At last none of the other skeleton warriors seemed to be lagging behind. The three leaders turned—and as they did, the mountain heaved again, causing both shaft and tunnel to collapse with a roar that eclipsed everything before it. A blast of dust and heat that made Conan think of erupting volcanoes filled the air.
He and the leaders dashed out on to the open mountainside—and saw their band standing about, all looking downward and some pointing, while others waved their arms frantically. One could not say that their skulls showed any emotion, but Conan had seen similar poses in men stricken with horror at some indescribable sight.
Conan pushed through the ranks of the skeleton warriors. Then his own mouth dropped open, and for a moment words failed him.
A vast hole yawned below where the mountaintop had been. In those moments of quivering and uproar, the entire top of the mountain had lifted from its base into the sky.
Already they were nearly clear of the hole. The flying mountaintop seemed to be drifting aimlessly as it rose higher each moment.
Conan wondered what would happen if it reached into the clouds. A man could climb so high on an earthbound mountain that he died of cold and an inability to breathe. How high could one rise on a flying mountain—one sent aloft by the Death Lord of Thanza?
That thought seemed to have occurred to the skeleton warriors too. They sang the dirge for their comrades now lost forever far below, but they also posted sentries and set themselves to sharpening their weapons. It was with horror that Conan watched a skeleton sharpening a short sword on his own thigh.
“We have enough,” cried the leader who had been the first to rise from the serpents’ ichor. “None to spare
, but enough for the work at hand. You yourself are worth ten of us or twenty living warriors.”
“You flatter me,” Conan said, then realized that he had no names for the two leaders. He could barely tell them apart.
“Do you have lawful names?” he asked.
The leader below nodded. “I may be called Iom. He is—I think—Ruks. The gods allow us no other names.” Those were odd names, but then these folk might have worshipped odd gods. Conan was content.
“Iom, Ruks. When your—men—have their weapons ready, it is time for us to go hunt the Death Lord of Thanza in his lair. Unless you think some other power has sent this mountain kiting off like a piece of thistledown?”
Both Iom and Ruks shook their heads eloquently.
XVI
It had not been easy for the Death Lord of Thanza— who now thought of Baron Grolin as a man who had died to bring the Death Lord to life—to decide what to do next with his powers.
Once he made the decision, however, it was easy to wield the power to turn the thought into a reality.
He merely imagined rock splitting all around and all through the mountain, far enough down so that a large solid mass would rise into the sky. He also wished to divide the mountain high enough so that perhaps some of its unwanted visitors would not go with him.
He was not, after all, a trail guide giving rich city folk a safe view of the forest. He was the Death Lord of Thanza. He flew over forests, so that no one had a safe view of him; and what he wished, he asked for— his flying mountain would descend and crush the obdurate until wiser survivors yielded.
What should he ask for first? It was unimaginable that he should need to eat, drink, sleep, or perform other merely human actions. That also made it needless to ask for women.
Silver, gold, jewels? Toys, all of them.
The Death Lord allowed the mountain to rise slowly and drift on the wind while he pondered his needs. At last he decided that he most needed more living folk to give up their lives to increase the power of the Death Lord.
A few hundred would do, and of course they would require food, water, quarters, and discipline while waiting for death. He would demand the first two from the worms below, offer caves for the third, and see to it that the victims provided their own discipline. There were always folk who would play tyrant over their fellows, even in the most hopeless of situations, merely to gain the privilege of being the last to be destroyed.
Or they might gain the privilege of watching their fellows die exotic and horrible deaths. That too would be a simple matter to contrive. Perhaps that would give the Death Lord a hold over certain humans, so strong that they would raid the ground for their master’s prey.
If he wanted several hundred people, however, the mountain would need to leave its native Thanzas. He trusted that his power would still work outside the range; if not it was hardly worth having.
Before Grolin died, he had held a map of this borderland region in his mind. His memories had gone to the Death Lord when Grolin ceased to be. They told the Death Lord that there was a town about a day’s ride to the north-west, that held enough people to provide the first few hundred inhabitants after the inevitable death of the others in the destruction of the town.
The town would have to be destroyed, of course. No one would believe that the Death Lord really meant what he threatened, unless he used his power at least once.
He could, when appropriate, slay many more for his own pleasure, but this first destruction of a town was a matter of stem duty.
Lysinka, Klarnides, and their fighters had a much better view of the mountain’s rise than had the Cimmerian. They saw the cracks girdle the mountain then turn into crevices that swallowed slabs of rock the size of small temples. Lysinka crammed her hand into her mouth to keep out the dust.
When she finally pulled her fingers out, she saw that she’d bitten her knuckles bloody. She flexed her wrists, drew her sword, and looked downhill.
The dust was still rising too thickly from the gaping cavity where the mountain had stood for her to see the place where she had left the wounded. She only hoped that they had been lying below the crack, so that they had not been ground to bits by falling rock or carried off on the moving stone. Since she herself and those around her were clinging to the shaking rock by their fingertips, the wounded fighters would surely lose their grip and fall to their doom.
Presently the shaking ended, and the dust blew away. But by now the mountain—mountaintop, as she now saw it—was moving away from its original resting place, She could no longer make out the spot where she had left the wounded clearly enough to tell whether or not they were safe.
One small blessing, though: the mountain was moving away from Lord Grolin’s citadel, instead of returning to crush it. Fergis and those left behind would be safe—until the mountain finished whatever tasks its new master had in mind.
“It seems we are going for a ride with the Death Lord of Thanza,” Klarnides said. He was sitting up, polishing his helmet with the sleeve of his tunic. Only the fact that his face was the colour of chalk spoiled the impression of his complete self-control.
“Yes,” Lysinka managed to say. “I agree. So the first thing to do is to find out if we have any fellow passengers and if they are friends or foes.”
She found that she could not utter the name “Conan,” any more than she could say “Death Lord.” “Then we go hunting the master of this mountain,” she concluded.
“What if he is down below, sending this rock on its wild flight?” Klarnides asked.
Sometimes Klarnides’s habit of expounding on the tactical possibilities annoyed her. There were times to parade new knowledge and times to keep to the point at hand. She said shortly: “Then we jump off and go hunting for him on the ground.”
She felt like laughing at Klarnides’s face, as he plainly wondered if she was jesting or not. It was the first time she had felt like laughing in a long while, so on impulse she bent over and kissed him. His face turned from white to red, and he seemed to have inhaled a cloud of dust. Then he too laughed.
Lysinka wondered if this was to be her last laugh in the world. If so, she could have had worse company for it. And now her thoughts flowed again, so that at least she would not die with anyone thinking her a witling or a coward.
“Up!” she shouted. “We still have a mountain to climb, even if we can’t climb down again!”
Conan, Iom, and Ruks led some fifty skeleton warriors to the mountainside. Conan wanted to march straight to the top, but Ruks reminded him that they should search for friends and foes while the Death Lord was occupied with his magic.
“Unless all we were taught about him is false, this levitation of a mountain must be a burden for the Death Lord,” the leader said. “We may not have another such chance, before he grows into his power like a root growing into a crack in the rock.”
Conan could see that Iom and Ruks were hoping— in vain, he thought—to find more of their animated or at least intact comrades and give them the honour of joining in the final battle. It went against his notions of war to give a foe as powerful as the Death Lord one unnecessary heartbeat’s worth of time, but Iom and Ruks clearly had made their decision.
Also, while they were searching for their comrades, Conan might be able to learn the fate of any of his followers who had come in search of him.
At least he could, if they had climbed high enough on the mountain before it rose to the sky.
After a while, commanding the flight of the mountain became such a simple task that the Death Lord grew bored. He glazed one wall of his chamber into a mirror and studied himself in it.
He appeared to be a larger and stronger version of Grolin, except that he was clad all in crimson—if he was clad at all. It was hard to tell whether the shimmering substance that covered him from crown to toe was clothing, armour, skin, or a shell like that of a lobster.
Only in two places did other hues intrude on the blazing crimson. In the centre of his chest was a
space that he could cover with his two hands, that pulsed a virulent green. He knew without being told that there the Soul of Thanza had taken its seat.
His eyes were also something other than crimson. At times they glowed the same green as the Soul. At other times they took on the hue of tarnished gold or shone jet black flecked with silver.
The Death Lord wished the mirror out of existence. He did not much care to look into his own eyes or at what his chest now held.
Grolin, when a living man, had sought the Soul to gain power that would be his alone. It displeased the Death Lord to have to wonder if Grolin had died in vain.
But the power was real. He toyed with it, making the mountain rock gently, like a boat on a river. Then he sent it out searching the mountainside for signs of life. If there were persons riding the mountain through the sky, they could scarcely harm him.
But their lives might feed and strengthen him while the mountain journeyed toward the first town it would destroy.
Lysinka did not cry out when she saw the armed, walking skeletons emerge from behind a rocky outcrop. Some of those behind her had less fortitude.
The skeleton warriors halted, formed a line with their weapons at the ready, but made no hostile move. One of their number turned and withdrew briskly. Lysinka’s gaze followed it until it was out of sight.
Meanwhile, her fighters had formed their own line, with Klarnides on the other flank. She saw many pale and sweating faces, suspected that hers was among them, and knew that fear needed little encouragement to rampage through her as well.
These had to be creatures of the Death Lord, sent to scour the mountainside. Who else would send out as soldiers those from whom life had departed so long ago that nothing remained of them but bones?
Then the messenger returned, with two more skeletons and between the skeletons—
If Rasha had not held her upright, Lysinka might have fallen. As it was, she swayed, blinked, and only then allowed herself to believe that what she saw was reality.