The Other Tales of Conan

by Howard, R. E.

  Then all were frozen in their tracks by the soul-shaking horror of a scream, which rose from the chamber into which Posthumo had hurled Promero. From the velvet-hung door the clerk came reeling and stood, shaking with great silent sobs, tears running down his pasty face and dripping from his loose, sagging lips, like an idiot-babe weeping.

  All halted to stare at him aghast Conan with his dripping sword, the police with their lifted bills, Demetrio crouching on the floor and striving to staunch the blood that jetted from the great gash in his thigh, Dionus clutching the bleeding stump of his severed ear, Arus weeping and spitting out fragments of broken teeth even Posthumo ceased his howls and blinked with his good eye.

  Promero reeled out into the corridor and fell stiffly before them, screeching in an unbearable high-pitched laughter of madness: “The god has a long reach; ha-ha-ha! Oh, a cursed long reach!” Then, with a frightful convulsion, he stiffened and lay grinning vacantly at the shadowy ceiling.

  “He’s dead!” whispered Dionus in tones of awe, forgetting his own hurt and the barbarian who stood with dripping sword so near him. He bent over the body, then straightened, his pig’s eyes popping. “He’s not wounded. In Mitra’s name, what is in that chamber?”

  Then horror swept over them, and they ran screaming for the outer door. The guards, dropping their bills, jammed into it in a clawing and shrieking mob and burst through like madmen. Arus followed, and the half-blind Posthumo blundered blindly after his fellows, squealing like a wounded pig and begging them not to leave him behind. He fell among the rearmost, and they knocked him down and trampled him, screaming in their fear. He crawled after them, and behind him came Demetrio, limping along and grasping his blood-spurting thigh. Police, charioteer, watchman, and officials, wounded or whole, they burst screaming into the street, where the men watching the house took panic and joined in the flight, not waiting to ask why.

  Conan stood in the great corridor alone, save for the three corpses on the floor. The barbarian shifted his grip on his sword and strode into the chamber. It was hung with rich silken tapestries. Silken cushions and couches lay strewn about in careless profusion, and over a heavy, gilded screen a Face looked at the Cimmerian.

  Conan stared in wonder at the cold, classic beauty of that countenance, whose like he had never seen among the sons of men. Neither weakness, nor mercy, nor cruelty, nor kindness, nor any other human emotion showed in those features. They might have been the marble mask of a god, carved by a master hand, except for the unmistakable life in them life cold and strange, such as the Cimmerian had never known and could not understand. He thought fleetingly of the marble perfection of the body concealed by the screen; it must be perfect, he thought, since the face was so inhumanly beautiful.

  But he could see only the finely molded head, which swayed from side to side. The full lips opened and spoke a single word, in a rich, vibrant tone like the golden chimes that ring in the jungle-lost temples of Khitai. It was an unknown tongue, forgotten before the kingdoms of man arose, but Conan knew that it meant: “Come!”

  And the Cimmerian came, with a desperate leap and humming slash of his sword. The beautiful head flew from the body, struck the floor to one side of the screen, and rolled a little way before coming to rest.

  Then Conan’s skin crawled, for the screen shook and heaved with the convulsions of something behind. He had seen and heard men die by the scores, and never had he heard a human being make such sounds in his death-throes. There was a thrashing, floundering noise. The screen shook, swayed, tottered, leaned forward, and fell with a metallic crash at Conan’s feet. He looked beyond it.

  Then the full horror of it rushed over the Cimmerian. He fled, nor did he slacken his headlong flight until the spires of Numalia faded into the dawn behind him. The thought of Set was like a nightmare, and the children of Set who once ruled the earth and who now slept in their nighted caverns below the black pyramids. Behind that gilded screen had lain no human body only the shimmering, headless coils of a gigantic serpent.

  4. THE HAND OF NERGAL

  Conan has enjoyed his taste of Hyborian intrigue. It is clear to him that there is no essential difference between the motives of the palace and those of the Rats’ Den, whereas the pickings are better in higher places. With his own horse under him and a grubstake from the grateful and thoughtful Murilo, the Cimmerian sets out to look over the civilized world, with an eye to making it his oyster.

  The Road of Kings, which winds through the Hyborian kingdoms, at last leads him eastward into Turan, where he takes service in the armies of King Yildiz. He does not at first find military services congenial, being too self-willed and hot-tempered to submit easily to discipline. Moreover, being at this time an indifferent horseman and archer, in a force of which the mounted bowman is the mainstay, he is relegated to a low-paid, irregular unit. Soon, however, a chance arises to show his true mettle.

  I. Black Shadows

  “Crom!”

  The oath was torn from the young warrior’s grim-set lips. He threw back his head, sending his tousled shock of black hair flying, and lifted his smouldering blue eyes skyward. They widened in sheer astonishment. An eery thrill of superstitious awe ran through his tall, powerfully-built body, which was burnt brown by fierce wasteland suns, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, lean of waist, long of leg, and naked save for a rag of cloth about his loins and high-strapped sandals.

  He had entered the battle mounted, as one of a troop of irregular cavalry. But his horse, given him by the nobleman Murilo in Corinthia, had fallen to the foemen’s arrows at the first onset and the youth had fought on afoot. His shield had been smashed by the enemy’s blows: he had cast it aside and battled with sword alone.

  Above, from the sunset-smouldering sky of this bleak, windswept Turanian steppe, where two great armies were locked in a fury of desperate battle, came horror.

  The field was drenched in sunset fires and bathed in human blood. Here the mighty host of Yildiz, king of Turan, in whose army the youth served as a mercenary, had fought for five long hours against the iron-shod legions of Munthassem Khan, rebellious satrap of the Zamorian Marches of northern Turan. Now, circling slowly downwards from the crimson sky, came nameless things whose like the barbarian had never seen or heard of before in all his travels. They were black, shadowy monsters, hovering on broad, arch-ribbed wings like enormous bats.

  The two armies fought on, unseeing. Only Conan, here on this low hill, ringed about with the bodies of men his sword had slain, saw them descending through the sunset sky.

  Leaning on his dripping blade and resting his sinewy arms for a moment, he stared at the weird shadow-things. For they seemed to be more shadow than substance translucent to the sight, like wisps of noisome black vapor or the shadowy ghosts of gigantic vampire bats. Evil, slitted eyes of green flame glared through their smoky forms.

  And even as he watched, nape-hairs prickling with a barbarian’s dread of the supernatural, they fell upon the battle like vultures on a field of blood fell and slew.

  Screams of pain and fear rose from the host of King Yildiz, as the black shadows hurtled amongst their ranks. Wherever the shadow-devils swooped, they left a bloody corpse. By the hundred they came, and the weary ranks of the Turanian army fell back, stumbling, tossing away their weapons in panic.

  “Fight, you dogs! Stand and fight!” Thundering angry commands in a stern voice, a tall, commanding figure on a great black mare sought to hold the crumbling line. Conan glimpsed the sparkles of silver-gilt chain mail under a rich blue cloak, and a hawk-nosed, black-bearded face, kingly and harsh under a spired steel helm that caught the crimson sun like a polished mirror. He knew the man for King Yildiz’ general, Bakra of Akif.

  With a ringing oath, the proud commander drew his tulwar and laid about him with the flat of the blade. Perhaps he could have rallied the ranks, but one of the devil-shadows swooped on him from behind. It folded vaporous, filming wings about him in a grisly embrace and he stiffened. Conan could see his face,
suddenly pale with staring, frozen eyes of fear and he saw the features through the enveloping wings, like a white mask behind a veil of thin, black lace.

  The general’s horse went mad and bolted in terror. But the phantom-thing plucked the general from his saddle. For a moment it bore him in mid-air on slowly beating wings, then let him fall, a torn and bloody thing in dripping rags. The face, which had stared at Conan through shadowy wings with eyes of glazing terror, was a red ruin. Thus ended the career of Bakra of Akif.

  And thus ended his battle, as well.

  With its commander gone, the army went mad. Conan saw seasoned veterans, with a score of campaigns under their belts, run shrieking from the field like raw recruits. He saw proud nobles fly screaming like craven serfs. And behind them, untouched by the flying phantoms, grinning with victory, the hosts of the rebel satrap pressed their weirdly-won advantage. The day was lost unless one strong man should stand firm and rally the broken host by his example.

  Before the foremost of the fleeing soldiers rose suddenly a figure so grim and savage that it checked their headlong, panic-stricken flight.

  “Stand, you fatherless curs, or by Crom I’ll fill your craven bellies with a foot of steel!”

  It was the Cimmerian mercenary, his dark face like a grim mask of stone, cold as death. Fierce eyes under black, scowling brows, blazed with volcanic rage. Naked, splattered from head to heel with reeking gore, he held a mighty longsword in one great, scarred fist. His voice was like the deep growl of thunder.

  “Back, if you set any value on your sniveling lives, you white-livered dogs back or I’ll spill your cowardly guts at your feet! Lift that scimitar against me, you Hyrkanian pig, and I’ll tear out your heart with my bare hands and make you eat it before you die. What! Are you women, to fly from shadows? But a moment ago, you were men aye, fighting-men of Turan! You stood against foes armed with naked steel and fought them face to face. Now you turn and ran like children from night-shadows, faugh! It makes me proud to be a barbarian to see you city-bred weaklings cringe before a flight of bats!”

  For a moment he held them but for a moment only. A black-winged nightmare swooped upon him, and he even he stepped back from its grim, shadowy wings and the stench of its fetid breath.

  The soldiers fled, leaving Conan to fight the thing alone. And fight he did. Setting his feet squarely, he swung the great sword, pivoting on slim hips, with the full strength of back, shoulders, and mighty arms behind the blow.

  The sword flashed in a whistling arc of steel, cleaving the phantom in two. But it was, as he had guessed, a thing without substance, for his sword encountered no more resistance than the empty air. The force of the blow swung him off balance, and he fell sprawling on the stony plain.

  Above him, the shadowy thing hovered. His sword had torn a great rent through it, as a man’s hand breaks a thread of rising smoke. But, even as he watched, the vapory body reformed. Eyes like sparks of green hell-fire blazed down at him, alive with a horrible mirth and an inhuman hunger.

  “Crom! Conan gasped. It may have been a curse, but it sounded almost like a prayer.

  He sought to lift the sword again, but it fell from nerveless hands. The instant the sword had slashed through the black shadow, it had gone cold, with an aching, stony, bone-deep chill like the interstellar gulfs that yawn blackly beyond the farthest stars.

  The shadow-bat hovered on slowly beating wings, as if gloating over its fallen victim or savoring his superstitious fear.

  With strengthless hands, Conan fumbled at his waist, where a strip of rawhide bound his loincloth to his middle. There a thin dagger hung beside a pouch. His fumbling fingers found the pouch, not the dagger hilt, and touched something smooth and warm within the leathern bag.

  Suddenly, Conan jerked his hand away as a tingling electric warmth tore through his nerves. His fingers had brushed against that curious amulet he had found yesterday, when they lay encamped at Bahari. And, in touching the smooth stone, a strange force had been released.

  The bat-thing veered suddenly away from him. A moment before, it had hovered so close that his flesh had crawled beneath the unearthly chill that seemed to radiate from its ghostly form. Now it tore madly away from him, wings beating in a frenzy.

  Conan dragged himself to his knees, fighting the weakness that pervaded his limbs. First, the ghastly cold of the shadow’s touch then the tingling warmth that had seethed through his naked body. Between these two conflicting forces, he felt his strength draining away. His vision blurred; his mind wavered on the brink of darkness. Fiercely, he shook his head to clear his wits and gazed about him.

  “Mitra! Crom and Mitra! Has the whole world gone mad?”

  The grisly host of flying terrors had driven the army of General Bakra from the field, or slain those that did not flee fast enough. But the grinning host of Munthassem Khan they had not touched had ignored, almost as if the soldiers of Yaralet and the shadowy nightmare-things had been partners in some unholy alliance of black sorcery.

  But now it was the warriors of Yaralet who fled screaming before the shadowy vampires. Both armies broken and fled. Had the world indeed gone mad, Conan wildly asked of the sunset sky?

  As for the Cimmerian, strength and consciousness drained from him suddenly. He fell forward into black oblivion.

  II. Field of Blood

  The sun flamed like a crimson coal on the horizon. It glowered across the silent battlefield like the one red eye that blazes madly in a Cyclops’s misshapen brow. Silent as death, strewn with the wreckage of war, the battlefield stretched grim and still in the lurid rays. Here and there amidst the sprawled, unmoving bodies, scarlet pools of congealing gore lay like calm lakes reflecting the red-streamered sky.

  Dark, furtive figures moved in the tall grasses, snuffling and whining at the heaped and scattered corpses. Their humped shoulders and ugly, doglike snouts marked them as hyenas from the steppes. For them, the battlefield would be a banquet table.

  Down from the flaming sky flapped ungainly, black-winged vultures, come to feast on the slain. The grisly birds of prey dropped upon the mangled bodies with a rustle of dusky wings. But for these carrion-eaters, nothing moved on the silent, bloody field. It was still as death itself. No rumble of chariot wheels or peal of brazen trumpets broken the unearthly silence. The stillness of the dead followed fast on the thunder of battle.

  Like eery harbingers of Fate, a wavering line of herons flapped slowly away down the sky toward the reed-grown banks of the river Nezvaya, whose turgid flood glinted dully crimson in the last light. Beyond the further shore, the black, walled bulk of the city of Yaralet loomed like a mountain of ebony into the dusk.

  Yet one figure moved through that wide-strewn field of ruin, pygmylike against the glowing coals of sunset. It was the young Cimmerian giant with the wild black mane and the smouldering blue eyes. The black wings of interstellar cold had brushed him but lightly; life had stirred and consciousness returned. He wandered to and fro across the black field, limping slightly, for there was a ghastly wound in his thigh, taken in the fury of battle and only noticed and crudely bandaged as he had recovered consciousness and moved to arise.

  Carefully yet impatiently he moved among the dead, bloody as were they. He was splashed with gore from head to foot, and the great sword he trailed in his right hand was stained crimson to the hilt. Bone-weary was Conan, and his gullet was desert-dry. He ached from a score of wounds mere cuts and scratches, save for the great slash on his thigh and he lusted for a skin of wine and a platter of beef.

  As he prowled among the bodies, limping from corpse to corpse, he growled like a hungry wolf, swearing wrathfully. He had come into this Turanian war as a mercenary, owning naught but his horse now slain and the great sword in his hand. Now that the battle was lost, the war was ended, and he was marooned alone in the midst of the enemy land, he had at least hoped to loot the fallen of some choice pieces of gear they would no longer need. A gemmed dagger, a gold bracelet, a silver breastplate a few such baubles
and he could bribe his way out of the reach of Munthassem Khan and return to Zamora with a grubstake.

  Others had been here before him, either thieves slinking from the shadowy city or soldiers who crept back to the field from which they had fled. For the field was stripped; there was nothing left but broken swords, splintered javelins, dented helms and shields. Conan glared out across the littered plain, cursing sulphurously. He had lain in his swoon too long; even the looters had left. He was like the wolf who lingers so late at his blood-letting that jackals have stripped the prey; in this case, human jackals.

  Straightening up from his fruitless quest, he gave over the search with the fatalism of the true barbarian. Time now to think of a plan. Brows knotted, scowling in thought, he glanced uncertainly afar off across the darkening plain. The square, flat-roofed towers of Yaralet stood black and solid against the dying gleam of sunset. No hope of refuge there, for one who had fought under the banners of King Yildiz! Yet no city, friend or enemy, lay nearer. And Yildiz’s capital of Aghrapur was hundreds of leagues south.

  Lost in his thoughts, he did not notice the approach of the great black figure until a faint, shuddering neigh reached his ears. He turned swiftly, favoring his injured leg, lifting the longsword threateningly then relaxed, grinning.

  “Crom! You startled me. So I am not the only survivor, eh?” Conan chuckled.

  The tall black mare stood trembling, gazing at the naked giant with wide, frightened eyes. It was the same mount that General Bakra had ridden he who lay somewhere on the field, sprawled in a puddle of blood.

  The mare whinnied, grateful for the sound of a friendly human voice. Although not a horseman, Conan could see that she was in sad condition. Her sides heaved, lathered with the sweat of fear, and her long legs trembled with exhaustion. The devil-bats had struck terror into her heart, too, Conan thought grimly. He spoke soothingly, calming her, and stepped gingerly nearer until he could reach out and stroke the panting beast, gentling her into submission.