Conan seized Amalric’s wrist in a bone-crushing grip. “We must get out of here, quickly!” he said in a low, tense lone. “Come along!”
Amalric did not doubt the Cimmerian’s knowledge of the dangers they faced. He followed Conan down the steps of the dais. In the plaza, all was confusion. Plumed warriors milled around, shouting and gesticulating. Fights had broken out here and there among them.
“Die, slayer of Kordofo!” screamed a voice above the din. Directly in front of Conan, a tall, brown man drew back his arm and hurled a javelin at point-blank range. Only the steel-trap quickness of the barbarian saved Conan. The Cimmerian whirled and crouched, so that the missile passed over him, missing Amalric’s head by a finger’s breadth and burying itself in the body of another warrior.
The attacker drew back his arm to hurl a second spear; but, before he could loose it, Conan’s sword sang from its sheath, whirled in a scarlet arc in the firelight, and struck home. The Tombalkan sank to the ground, cloven from shoulder to breastbone.
“Run!” yelled Conan.
Amalric ran, dodging through the swirling crowds in the plaza. Men shouted and pointed at them; some ran after them.
Amalric, his legs pounding and his lungs laboring, raced down a side street after Conan. Behind them swelled the sounds of pursuit. The street narrowed and bent Ahead of Amalric, Conan suddenly disappeared.
“In here, quickly!” came the voice of the Cimmerian, who had dodged into a space a yard in width between two mud-brick houses.
Amalric squeezed into this alcove and stood silently, gasping for breath, as the pursuit raced past in the street.
“Some more of Kordofo’s kin,” muttered the Cimmerian in the darkness. “They’ve been sharpening their spears for me ever since Sakumbe got rid of Kordofo.”
“What do we do now?” asked Amalric.
Conan turned his head up to the narrow, starlit strip of sky above them. “I think we can climb up to the roofs,” he said.
“How?”
“The way I used to climb a cleft in the rocks, when I was a youth in Cimmeria. Here, hold this sticker for me.”
Conan handed Amalric a javelin, and Amalric realized that the Cimmerian had taken it from the man he had slain. The weapon had a narrow head a full yard in length, of soft iron sharpened to a finely serrated edge. Below the hand grip, a slender iron shank balanced the weight of the head.
Conan grunted softly, braced his back against one wall and his feet against the other, and inched his way up. Soon he became a black silhouette against the stars, and then disappeared. A call came softly down: “Hand up that spear, and come on up.”
Amalric handed up the javelin and, in his turn, inched his way up. The roofs were made of wooden beams, on which was laid down a thick layer of palm fronds and, over that, a layer of clay. Sometimes the clay gave a little as they walked on it, and the crackle of the fronds underneath could be heard.
Following Conan, Amalric crossed several roofs, leaping over the chasms between them. At length, they came to a building of good size, almost on the edge of the plaza.
“I must get Lissa out of here!” said Amalric, desperately anxious.
“One thing at a time,” growled Conan. “We want to know what is happening.”
The confusion in the plaza had somewhat died down. Officers were getting their men into orderly formations once more. On the dais with the two thrones, across the square, stood Aslria in his wizard’s regalia, speaking. Although Amalric could not hear all his words, the wizard was evidently telling the Tombalkans what a great and wise leader he would be to them.
A sound off to Amalric’s left drew the Aquilonian’s attention. At first a murmur, like the crowd noises in the square, it swelled to a roar. A man dashed into the square and shouted to Askia:
“The Aphaki attack the east wall!”
Then all was chaos again. The war drams thundered. Askia screamed orders right and left. A regiment of black spearmen began to file out of the square towards the disturbance. Conan said: “We’d better get out of Tombalku. Whichever side wins, they’ll have our hides. Sakumbe was right; these people will never obey a whiteskin. Go to your house and get your girl ready. Rub your faces and arms with soot from the hearth; that way you’ll be less conspicuous in the dark. Crab whatever money you have. I’ll meet you there with horses. If we hurry, we can get out the west gate before they close it or Zehbeh attacks it Before I go, though, I have one little task.”
Conan stared across the serried ranks of the black warriors at Askia, still shouting and orating on the dais. He hefted the javelin.
“A long cast, but I think I can do it,” he muttered.
The Cimmerian walked deliberately back to the other side of the roof, then made a short ran forward, towards the side facing the square. Just before he reached the edge of the roof, with a mighty whirl of arms and twist of torso, he hurled the weapon. The missile vanished from Amalric’s sight into the darkness above. For three heartbeats he wondered whither it had gone.
Askia suddenly screamed and staggered about, the long shaft protruding from his chest and lashing back and forth with the wizard’s convulsive movements. As the witch-man collapsed on the dais, Conan snarled:
“Let’s go!”
Amalric ran, leaping from roof to roof. To the east, the din of battle rose in a medley of war cries, drumbeats, trumpet calls, screams, and clatter of weapons.
It was not yet midnight when Amalric, Lissa, and Conan reined in their horses on a sandy ridge a mile to the west of Tombalku. They looked back toward the city, now illumined by the lurid glare of a conflagration. Fires had sprung up here and there during the battle, when the Aphaki had swarmed over the eastern wall and fought the black spearmen in the streets. Although the latter were much more numerous, their lack of leaders put them at a disadvantage that all their barbaric valor might not be able to overcome. The Aphaki pressed further and further into the city, while the fires merged into a holocaust.
From the ridge, the hideous clamor of battle and massacre came as a murmur. Conan grunted:
“So much for Tombalku! Whoever wins, we shall have to seek our fortunes elsewhere. I’m for the coast of Kush, where I have friends—and also enemies—and where I can pick up a ship for Argos. What of you?”
“I had not thought,” said Amalric.
“That’s a shapely filly you have there,” said Conan with a grin. The light of the rising moon gleamed on his strong white teeth, shining against his soot-blackened skin. “You can’t drag her over the whole wide world.”
Amalric felt himself bristle at the Cimmerian’s tone. He drew closer to Lissa and slid an arm around her waist, meanwhile dropping his free hand toward his sword hilt. Conan’s grin broadened.
“Fear not,” he said. “I have never been so hard up for women that I’ve had to steal those of my friends. If you two come with me, you can beat your way back to Aquilonia.”
“I cannot return to Aquilonia,” said Amalric,
“Why not?”
“My father was slain in a broil with Count Terentius, who is in favor with King Vilerus. So all my father’s kin had to flee the land, lest Terentius’ agents hunt us down.”
“Oh, had you not heard?” said Conan. “Vilerus died within a six-month; his nephew, Numedides, is now king. All the old king’s hangers-on, they say, have been dismissed, and the exiles recalled. I got it from a Shemite trader. If I were you, I’d scurry home. The new king should find a worthy post for you. Take your little Lissa along and make her a countess or something. As for me, I’m for Kush and the blue sea.”
Amalric glanced back toward the red blaze that had been Tombalku. “Conan,” he said, “why did Askia destroy Sakumbe instead of us, with whom he had a more immediate quarrel?”
Conan shrugged his huge shoulders. “Perhaps he had fingernail parings and the like from Sakumbe but not from us. So he worked what spells he could I have never understood wizardly minds.”
“And why did you take the time to
kill Askia?”
Conan stared. “Are you joking, Amalric? Me, leave a slain comrade unavenged? Sakumbe, damn his sweaty black hide, was a friend of mine. Even if he got fat and lazy in his late years, he was a better man than most of the white men I have known.” The Cimmerian sighed gustily and shook his head, as a lion shakes his mane. “Well, he’s dead, and we’re alive. If we want to go on being alive, we had better move on before Zehbeh sends a patrol out to hunt for us. Let’s go!”
The three horses plodded down the western slope of the sandy ridge and broke into a brisk trot to westward.
16. THE TREASURE OF TRANICOS
I. The Painted Men
One moment the glade lay empty; the next, a man stood poised warily at the edge of the bushes. There had been no sound to warn the gray squirrels of his coming; but the gay-hued birds that flitted about in the sunshine of the open space took fright at his sudden appearance and rose in a clamoring cloud. The man scowled and glanced quickly back the way he had come, as if fearing that their flight had betrayed his position to someone unseen. Then he stalked across the glade, placing his feet with care.
For all his massive, muscular build, the man moved with the supple certitude of a leopard. He was naked except for a rag twisted about his loins, and his limbs were crisscrossed with scratches from briars and caked with dried mud. A brown-crusted bandage was knotted about his thickly-muscled left arm. Under his matted, black mane, his face was drawn and gaunt, and his eyes burned like those of a wounded wolf. He limped slightly as he followed the faint path that led across the open space.
Halfway across the glade, he stopped short and whirled catlike, racing back the way he had come, as a long-drawn call quavered out across the forest. To another man it would have seemed merely the howl of a wolf. But this man knew it was no wolf. A Cimmerian, he understood the voices of the wilderness as a city-bred man recognizes the voices of his friends.
Rage burned redly in his bloodshot eyes as he turned once more and hurried along the path. This path, as it left the glade, ran along the edge of a dense thicket that rose in a solid clump of greenery among the trees and bushes. A massive log, deeply embedded in the grassy earth, paralleled the fringe of the thicket, lying between it and the path. When the Cimmerian saw this log, he halted and looked back across the glade. To the average eye there were no signs to show that he had passed; but the evidence was visible to his wilderness-sharpened eyes and therefore to the equally keen eyes of those who pursued him. He snarled silently, like a hunted beast ready to turn at bay.
He walked with deliberate carelessness down the trail, here and there crushing a grass-blade beneath his foot Then, when he had reached the further end of the great log, he sprang upon it, turned, and ran lightly back along it. As the bark had long been worn away by the elements, he left no sign to show the keenest eyes that he had doubled on his trail. When he reached the densest part of the thicket, he faded into it like a shadow, with hardly the quiver of a leaf to mark his passing.
The minutes dragged. The gray squirrels chattered again—then flattened their bodies against the branches and were suddenly mute. Again the glade was invaded.
As silently as the first man had appeared, three other men materialized out of the eastern edge of the clearing: dark-skinned men of short stature, with thickly-muscled chests and arms. They wore beaded buckskin loincloths, and an eagle’s feather was thrust into each black topknot. Their bodies were painted in intricate designs, and they were heavily armed with crude weapons of hammered copper.
They had scanned the glade carefully before showing themselves in the open, for they moved out of the bushes without hesitation, in close single file, treading as softly as leopards and bending down to stare at the path. They were following the trail of the Cimmerian—no easy task even for tireless human bloodhounds. They moved slowly across the glade; then one of them stiffened, grunted, and pointed with his broad-bladed stabbing-spear at a crushed grass-blade where the path entered the forest again. All halted instantly, their beady black eyes questing the forest walls. But their quarry was well hidden. Seeing nothing to awaken suspicion, they presently moved on, more rapidly now. They followed the faint marks that implied their prey was growing careless through weakness or desperation.
They had just passed the spot where the thicket crowded closest to the ancient trail, when die Cimmerian bounded into the path behind them, gripping the weapons he had drawn from his loincloth: a long copper-bladed knife in his left hand and a hatchet of the same material in his right. The attack was so quick and unexpected that the last Pict had no chance to save himself as the Cimmerian plunged his knife between the man’s shoulders. The blade was in the Pict’s heart before he knew he was in peril.
The other two whirled with the steel-trap quickness of savages; but, even as the Cimmerian wrenched the knife out of his first victim’s back, he struck a tremendous blow with the war-ax in his right hand. The second Pict was in the act of turning as the ax fell, splitting his skull to the teeth.
The remaining Pict, a chief by the scarlet tip of his eagle feather, came savagely in to the attack. He was stabbing at the Cimmerian’s breast even as the killer wrenched his ax from the dead man’s head. The Cimmerian had the advantage of a greater intelligence, and a weapon in each hand. The hatchet, checked in its downward sweep, struck the spear aside, and the knife in the Cimmerian’s left hand ripped upward into the painted belly.
An awful howl burst from the Pict’s lips as he crumpled, disemboweled. The cry of baffled, bestial fury was answered by a wild chorus of yells from some distance east of the glade. The Cimmerian started convulsively and wheeled, crouching like a wild thing at bay, lips snarling and shaking the sweat from his face. Blood trickled down his forearm from under the bandage.
With a gasping, incoherent imprecation, he turned and fled westward. He did not pick his way now but ran with all the speed of his long legs, calling on the deep and all but inexhaustible reservoirs of endurance that are Nature’s compensation for a barbaric existence. Behind him for a space the woods were silent. Then a demoniac howling burst out, and he knew his pursuers had found the bodies of his victims. He had no breath for cursing the drops of blood that kept falling to the ground from his freshly-opened wound, leaving a trail a child could follow. He had thought that perhaps these three Picts were all that still pursued him of the war-party that had followed him for over a hundred miles. But he might have known that these human wolves would never quit a blood trail.
The woods were silent again; that meant they were racing after him, marking his path by the betraying blood-drops he could not check. A wind out of the west, laden with a salty dampness that he recognized, blew against his face. Dully, he was amazed. If he was that close to the sea, the chase must have been even longer than he had realized.
But now it was nearly over; even his wolfish vitality was ebbing under the terrible strain. He gasped for breath, and there was a sharp pain in his side. His legs trembled with weariness, and the lame one ached like the cut of a knife in the tendons every time he set the foot to earth. He had followed the instincts of the wilderness that had bred him, straining every nerve and sinew, exhausting every subtlety and artifice to survive. Now, in his extremity, he was obeying another instinct—to find a place to turn at bay and sell his life at a bloody price.
He did not leave the trail for the tangled depths on either hand. It was futile, he knew, to hope to evade his pursuers now. He ran on down the trail while the blood pounded louder and louder in his ears and each breath he drew was a racking, dry-lipped gulp. Behind him a mad baying broke out, token that they were close on his heels and expected swiftly to overhaul their prey. Now they would come as fleet as starving wolves, howling at every leap.
Abruptly he burst from the denseness of the trees and saw, ahead of him, the face of a cliff that rose almost straight from the ground without any intermediate slope. Glances to right and left showed that he faced a solitary dome or crag of rock that rose like a tower from the
depths of the forest. As a boy, the Cimmerian had scaled the steep bills of his native land; but, while he might have attempted the near side of this crag had he been in prime condition, he knew that he would have little chance with it in his present wounded and weakened state. By the time he had struggled up twenty or thirty feet, the Picts would burst from the woods and fill him with arrows.
Perhaps, however, the crag’s other faces would prove less inhospitable. The trail curved around the crag to the right Following it, he found that at the west side of the crag it wound up rocky ledges between jagged boulders to a broad ledge near the summit That ledge would be as good a place to die as any. As the world swam before him in a dizzy red mist, he limped up the trail, going on hands and knees in the steeper places, holding his knife between his teeth.
He had not yet reached the jutting ledge when some forty painted savages raced around from the far side of the crag, howling like wolves. At the sight of their prey, their screams rose to a devilish crescendo, and they ran to the foot of the crag, loosing arrows as they came. The shafts showered about the man who climbed doggedly upward, and one stuck in the calf of his leg. Without pausing in his climb, he tore it out and threw it aside, heedless of the less accurate missiles that cracked against the rocks about him. Grimly he hauled himself over the rim of the ledge and turned about, drawing his hatchet and shifting his knife to his hand. He lay glaring down at his pursuers over the rim, only his shock of hair and blazing eyes visible. His chest heaved as he drank in the air in great, shuddering gasps, and he clenched his teeth against a tendency toward nausea.
Only a few more arrows whistled up at him; the horde knew its prey was cornered.
The warriors came on howling, war-axes in hand and leaping agilely over the rocks at the foot of the hill. The first to reach the steep part of the crag was a brawny brave, whose eagle feather was stained scarlet as a token of chieftainship. He halted briefly, one foot on the sloping trail, arrow notched and drawn halfway back, head thrown back and lips parted for an exultant yell.
The Other Tales of Conan Page 46