Then they were outside, into the night, but there was no safety, The rumblings of the ground filled the air as if Erlik himself walked the face of the earth, making it tremble beneath his footsteps. Great trees toppled like weeds, and tall spires fell thunderously in ruin.
Here there were people, hundreds of them, fleeing in all directions, furcapped Hyrkanians mixed with saffron-robed cult members. But safety did not always come with flight. Ahead of him, Conan saw a rift open in the earth beneath the very feet of four running men, three with shaven heads, one in a bulky sheepskin coat. When the Cimmerian reached the spot the ground had closed again, sealing all four in a common tomb.
Other fissures were opening as well, great crevasses that did not close. A tower tilted slowly, shaking with the earth, and slid whole into a great chasm that widened and lengthened even as Conan looked.
At the wall there was no need to climb. Great lengths of it had fallen into rubble. Over those piled stones they scrambled. Conan would not let them slow. Memories of the Blasted Lands drove him on, away from the compound, into the forest surrounding, further and further, till even his great muscles quivered with effort and he half-carried and half-dragged Yasbet and Davinia.
With shocking abruptness the land was still. Dead silence hung in the air. A new sound began, a hissing roar, building.
Hanging onto a tree, Sharak looked a question at Conan.
"The sea," Conan panted. The women stirred tiredly in his encircling grasp. "The fissures have reached the sea."
Behind them the sable sky turned crimson. With a roar, fiery magma erupted, scarlet fountains mixed with roaring geysers of steam as the sea sought the bowels of the earth. The air stirred, became a zephyr, a gale, a whirlwind rushing in to battle with the ultimate void.
Conan tried to hold the women against the force of that wind, but the strength of it grew seemingly without end. One moment he was standing, the next he was down, his hold on the women gone, clutching the ground lest he be sucked back toward the holocaust. Dirt, leaves, branches, even stones, filled the air in a hail.
"Hold on!" he tried to shout to them, but the fury of the wind drove the words back in his teeth.
Then the earth began to heave again. The Cimmerian had only an instant to see a broken branch flying toward him, and then his head seemed to explode into blackness.
Epilogue
Conan woke to daylight. The flat coastal forest had become rolling hills, covered with a tangle of uprooted trees. Yasbet. Scrambling to his feet, he began to pick his way among trees tossed like jackstraws, calling her name without reply. Then, as he topped a hill, he fell silent in amazement.
The hills were not the only change that had been wrought upon the land. A bay now cut into the land, its surface covered thickly with dead fish. Wisps of steam rolled up from that water, and he was ready to wager that despite all of the sea to cool it the waters in that bay would remain hot for all time.
"The compound stood there," a hoarse voice said, and Sharak limped up to stand beside him. Somehow, he saw, the astrologer had kept his staff through all that had occurred. Now he leaned on it tiredly, his tubes torn and his face muddy.
"I do not think fishermen will often cast their nets in those waters," Conan replied. Sharak made a sign against evil. "Have you seen Yasbet?"
The astrologer shook his head. "I have seen many, mainly cult members leaving this place as fast as they can. I have seen Tamur and half a dozen of the Hyrkanians, wanting only to be gone from Turan, yet unsure of their welcome at home. I wager we'll find them in a tavern in Aghrapur. I saw Akman, hurrying west." His voice saddened. "Yasbet, I fear, did not survive."
"I did, too, you old fool," the girl's voice called.
A broad smile appeared on Conan's face as he watched her clamber up the hill, still leading Davinia on her leash, and Akeba following close behind. All three were streaked with mud, a condition the Cimmerian realized for the first time that he shared.
"I lost my sword," she announced when she reached them. A narrow length of saffron was her only garment, affording her little more covering than the tavern girls of Aghrapur, but if anything her costume seemed to add to her jauntiness. "But I'll get another one. You owe me more lessons, Conan." Her smile became mischievous. "In the sword, and other things."
Akeba coughed to hide a grin; Sharak openly leered.
"You'll get your lessons," Conan said. "But why are you still pulling Davinia about? Set her free, or kill her, if that's your wish. You have the right, for she would have killed you."
The blonde's knees buckled. She crouched weeping at Yasbet's feet, her beauty hidden by layers of filth.
"I'll do neither," Yasbet said, after studying the cringing woman. "I'll sell her to a brothel. 'Tis all she's fit for, and a fitting place for her." Davinia moaned into her gag; the horror in her eyes indicated she might rather be slain. "And thus," Yasbet added, "will I get the wherewithal for my sword."
"I am as glad as any to see the rest of you," Akeba said, "but I would as soon be gone from this place."
"Yes," Sharak said excitedly. "I must return to Aghrapur. With the powers of my staff proven, I can double, no, triple my fees. You will attest to it, will you not, Akeba?"
"Attest to what?" the soldier demanded. "Are you making claims about that stick again?"
Offering a helping hand to Yasbet, Conan started down the hill, away from the bay, toward Aghrapur.
"Jhandar called you by another name than Yasbet," he said as she scrambled after him. "What was it?"
"You must have misheard," she told him blandly. "Yasbet is all the name I have." Davinia pressed forward, making urgent sounds at Conan through her gag. Yasbet glared over her shoulder. "Do you want a sound switching before you're sold?" Eyes wide with shock, the blonde fell silent, and thereafter would not even meet the Cimmerian's gaze.
Conan nodded to himself. Clearly Yasbet was lying, but some said that was a woman's right. He would not press her on it.
Snatches of conversation drifted forward from the two men behind.
"If Conan saw it, let him attest to it. I saw nothing."
"But you are a sergeant, an official as it were. Can you not see how much better your word would be?
I'm certain Conan will tell you what he saw."
The smile Conan had worn since seeing Yasbet alive widened even further. For all the days before, there was much to be said for this day. He was alive, with a little gold-he checked his pouch to see if the two coins still rested there; they did-good friends, and a pretty woman. What more could any man ask for?
What more?
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.
1. 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 sa
ndals.
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, wind-swept 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.
2. Field of Blood
The sun flamed like a cr
imson 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.
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