The Conan Compendium

by Various Authors

  There were moments of quiet over the amphitheater as the spectators realized that the incredible struggle was entering its final phase. The bull dug in its hooves and began to push, forcing Conan back toward the wall, heading for a spot just below where most of the chiefs sat. Conan's feet gouged a twin path in the turf as he resisted every inch of the animal's progress. The bull's breathing became labored and his tongue lolled from his mouth as he strove to drive the man against the wall and crush him like a fly. Two paces short of the wall, Conan stopped the bull.

  They stood like a bronzen statue for long moments, Conan's arms spread wide toward the ends of the horns for leverage, muscles chiseled into rigid prominence, face empurpled with effort, sinews creaking audibly with the titanic strain. Sweat poured from him in pails as he put forth more strength than any mortal man could be expected to. Slowly, remorselessly, the bull's head began to turn. Conan's left arm raised one horn as the right forced the other down. Moving barely perceptible inches at a time, the great head came around as the neck twisted.

  The wide horns were almost vertical now, and it seemed impossible that man or beast could stand an ounce more strain. The limit had been reached, and something had to give way. There was a faint crackling sound, and Conan released the horns, stepping back as the great beast collapsed, its neck broken. One great eye rolled in its socket for a moment, then it was darkened by death. The animal's last breath went from it in a long sigh, then it was inert upon the ground.

  Conan stood trembling with exhaustion, not hearing the frantic cheers, his eyes upon the great bull he had slain. Then he looked up at the sound of an inarticulate scream. It was Atzel, pointing down at him and yammering curses so garbled that none could understand him.

  Rage spread its red mantle across Conan's face. From some deep reservoir within him he found a last store of strength. With a tigerish leap he scrambled up the arena wall and onto the sloping turf of the spectator's

  area. His great hand shot out and grasped Atzel by the throat. The crazed old chiefs eyes bulged with terror as he saw the death he had brought upon himself.

  "Damn you to Hell for a torturer of women and children!" Conan bellowed. "Crom curse you for a nithing!" He grasped Atzel's belt and hoisted the big man, kicking and squalling, over his head. None sought to hinder him as he strode to the edge of the arena. "And demons gnaw your guts forever for making me kill this noble beast!" He accompanied the final malediction with a mighty heave, and Atzel sailed screaming through the air to land on the upthrust horn of the King Bull. With a sickening crunch the horn pierced his back and burst out through his breastbone.

  Atzel saw the foot of bloody horn that stood out from his chest and opened his mouth to scream, but produced only a great fountain of blood that soon stopped pulsing from his mouth.

  Conan leaped back down into the arena, but this time his knees buckled and he fell heavily to the ground, his great strength drained at last.

  Shouting and cheering, others followed. They made a litter of shields and spears and rolled Conan onto it, then raised the litter to their shoulders.

  Aelfrith's men cut her bonds and lowered her gently to another litter while a chief wrapped her in a magnificent cloak.

  "Bring them hither!" shouted the chief Conan had spoken to on the road. The two were brought to the edge of the arena wall and the chief looked down upon them in deep perplexity. "A thing has happened here today, and for the life of me I cannot decide whether it was a heroic feat out of the old legends or a terrible sacrilege. The King Bull is dead. A chief is dead. Blood has been shed in the sacred precincts. How shall we resolve this matter, my fellow chieftains?"

  "What has Utric the Lawspeaker to say?" said the silver-helmed chief.

  A gray-bearded elder rose and walked to the edge of the wall, where he looked down at the man and woman, the corpse of Atzel. the carcass of the great bull. He closed his eyes and stood in deep thought for several minutes while the assemblage maintained a respectful silence. At last his eyes opened.

  "This is my judgment: Atzel was the evil behind these happenings. In his madness for vengeance he accused the innocent Aelfrith and went so far as to seize her person for purposes of revenge. To save himself from

  suspicion, he committed the hideous sacrilege of suborning the King Bull himself for his purposes. The gods have been angered at this, and decreed that because this King Bull was defiled he must die before his time. To that end they sent this mighty champion to slay him in the only lawful way: with his own strength, using no weapon. In this way he was the triple instrument of justice: He slew the defiled King Bull, he saved the unjustly persecuted Aelfrith, and he executed the vile Atzel. In recompense for his sacrilegious treatment and untimely death, the gods allowed the King Bull's own horn to be the ultimate instrument of Atzel's death.

  "Let no man interfere with or offer violence to these just people. I have spoken."

  Laughing and cheering wildly, Aelfrith's men bore their chieftainess and her champion out of the arena and back toward Cragsfell. Conan was only half-conscious, and those bearing his litter heard him mutter some words none of them could understand. He was speaking his native Cimmerian, and he was saying: "Damn you, Khitan, and your game-playing gods."

  When Conan awoke upon his bed in Cragsfell he found himself unable to move. He felt, it seemed to him, very much like a man who has-accidentally fallen into a mill and has now emerged after spending an hour or two between the great grinding stones. After an hour of wakefulness he was able to raise his head on neck muscles that screamed with agony. His body, as he had suspected, was near as black as a Kushite's, a single, solid bruise from chest to toes. He let his head fall back and thought of other great battles he had fought. None had been more desperate, more demanding of strength, intelligence, and courage than this conflict with the King Bull.

  Later, a woman came in to feed him broth, and soon he was demanding stronger food. He asked after Aelfrith and the woman told him that the chieftainess was sleeping deeply, and might not wake that day.

  "And the child?" Conan asked.

  "Playing with her dolls as if nothing had happened," the woman said.

  "Praise Ymir, she is too young to understand what happened, and she slept through the butchery you and the lads accomplished in rescuing her.

  It has passed like a bad dream for her, to be forgotten in the morning.

  Besides, she has the blood of warriors in her veins."

  The next day Conan was able to stand and walk about his bedroom, and then into the great hall to take his place at the tables. All were amazed to see him on his feet so soon. He paid a visit to Aelfrith's chamber, and found her barely able to sit up in bed and speak.

  After four days of recuperation he was able to mount his horse and ride a mile or two, and he knew that very soon he would be hale. Increasingly, he cast his gaze northward. He had intended to be in Cimmeria by this time. By his calculation he was nearing the last day of departure upon which he might have some confidence of arriving at the slopes of Ben Morgh in time.

  On the eve of the day he had chosen for his departure, Conan took to his bed early, after a meal at which he had eaten hugely and drunk uncharacteristically little. He was about to snuff the candle when he heard a scratching at the door of his chamber. Aelfrith entered, still moving a little stiffly. This night she wore a long gown of green silk, bought from some Zamoran trader. She crossed to the side of his bed and looked down upon him.

  She did not waste words. "Do not go, Conan. Stay with me. I will make you a king. Be my husband and we will breed children such as the northlands have never seen, strong and beautiful. Since Rulf was slain, I have desired no man, but you I will serve all my days."

  If he could not be kind, at least he could be brief. "No, Aelfrith.I must be away upon the rising of the sun. I have sworn my most solemn oath to complete my mission, and by now you know that I honor my given word.

  The days grow shorter already. I must be on my way on the morrow or violate m
y trust."

  "Will you not return to me when your duty is done?" she asked despairingly.

  "I cannot. From boyhood I have been a wanderer, and I must wander all my days until I fulfill my destiny. That destiny does not lie here; I can feel it in my bones. I shall know what my destiny is when I meet it. I am sorry, Aelfrith. I have never met a worthier woman than you, but our fates are not linked after this night."

  She drew herself to her full height. "So be it. I am a chieftainess and you are a hero. I'll not beg and you'll not yield." She leaned forward and

  pinched out the flame of the candle. In the sudden darkness Conan heard the faint rustle of silk as the green robe whispered to the floor. Then she slid into the bed and their arms were around each other.

  "I do not recover as swiftly as you, Conan," she breathed. "Be careful of my back." Then they spoke no more.

  Six

  The hand of Mist and Stone

  Two men sat upon an outcropping of stone, keeping watch over a small herd of shaggy, longhorned cattle. One man was middle-aged, with grizzled beard and hair, the other young and beardless, but there was a strong family resemblance in their craggy, powerful features.

  Their hair was black, hacked off crudely at shoulder length and square cut above their level brows. Their eyes were identical sapphire blue. Both men had rangy, muscular builds, and despite the biting wind they wore only brief tunics of rough homespun and short cloaks of wolfskin, with sheepskin wrappings on their feet, cross-gartered below the knee.

  They held spears, and each had a dirk and a long, heavy sword sheathed at his belt. These were Cimmerians, and no Cimmerian went unarmed after earliest childhood. These weapons were severely plain, but finely made, for weapon-smithing was the only craft practiced with devotion in Cimmeria.

  "There's a man coming up the mountain," said the younger man.

  The older shaded his eyes and looked down the slope. He saw a tiny figure making its way slowly up the rugged slant of rocky land. "You've good eyes, lad. He'll be here before the sun's much lower."

  "Enemy?" the young man asked. He drew his sword and tested its edge.

  "What enemy comes alone onto Canach land? He's a Cimmerian, anyway. No lowlander walks with that stride in the mountains."

  This meant nothing in itself. The mountain clans fought unceasingly among themselves. The new arrival was still so far away that eyes

  untrained by the vast distances of the mountains would never have seen him, much less been able to judge his stride.

  "Who might it be?" the younger mused. "I know of no clansman who has been away in the lowlands. Not in that direction, at any rate."

  "Not since you can remember, lad, but I think I know who that one is."

  Far below, the growing figure was leaping from one rocky outcrop to another rather than scrambling around them. "Yes, that's Conan, the blacksmith's son."

  "Conan?" the boy said. He knew the name. The smith's unruly son had made a name for himself before seeking his fortune in the lowlands. "I'd thought him dead long ago."

  "As did I," agreed the elder. "He was with us when we took Venarium.

  Only fifteen years old in those days, younger than you are now, but a proven warrior."

  "Venarium," breathed the younger enviously.

  The story of that great fight was sung around the fires throughout the mountains. The Aquilonians had pushed a settlement across the Bossonian Marches and on to land held by the mountain clans for a hundred generations. Settled by the Aquilonian's tame Gundermen and Bossonians, the frontier town of Venarium had reared its crude ramparts against the marauding raiders. But when the Cimmerians came, it was not as raiding clansmen, but as a whole race gone to war. Clan enmities were put aside for one screaming day and night of incredible ferocity, and the howling, blackhaired horde had swept aside the disciplined courage of the lowlands like chaff before the arctic wind.

  Prominent amid the struggling had been the young Conan. Envy grew bitter in the youth's heart. There had been no such notable battling in the few years since he had been old enough to go to war, and he could take little pleasure in the knowledge that Cimmerian cattle now grazed where the city of Venarium had stood. Besides, he had a deeper sorrow gnawing at his heart.

  Conan saw the cattle on the mountainside above him, and soon he spotted the two men keeping watch over them―and over him as well, he knew. He had left his horse in the keeping of a homesteader three days

  before. This steep, rocky land was death to a plains-bred horse. Only mountain goat and stag and the tough little Cimmerian cattle could live on these slopes. And, of course, the Cimmerians themselves. Mist blew in wisps and skeins across the fells, for it was almost always misty and drizzly in the Cimmerian uplands. The abundance of rock, the thin soil, and the great amounts of rain fathered many springs; since setting foot in the mountains he had never been out of earshoj of falling water. He had almost forgotten that.

  Conan wondered who the men above might be. Kinsmen, most likely.

  He was on land held by his own clan, if his clan had not been utterly destroyed.

  He had not yet found a village, but that was not unusual. The Cimmerians were semi-nomadic, wintering in a different mountain glen each year, returning to the same site perhaps only one year in ten. Many such deserted sites lay behind him, with roofless walls of piled dry stone.

  The villagers took their precious roof poles with them when they moved from place to place, for Cimmeria was a treeless land.

  Conan drew his cloak closer about him. There was a cutting wind blowing out of Hyperborea; and unless he was much mistaken, they were in for an early snow tonight. He had found kinsmen none too soon. Now, at least, he could see that these were indeed his kin. Even at a distance the craggy features of the Canach were unmistakable. In these inbred upland valleys, each clan had a distinctive physiognomy, and the square jaw of the Murrogh was as recognizable as the high forehead of the Tunog or the long nose of the Raeda.

  "Greeting, Conan," the older man said when he was close enough.

  "Greeting, Milach," Conan said. For all the excitement the two showed, they might have parted days before. "You've grown some silver in your hair since last we met. Who's the lad?"

  "I'm Chulainn, your kinsman, and I'm a grown man." He said this not with the windy posturing of the city-bred adolescent, but as a simple statement of fact.

  Conan acknowledged it with a curt nod. Henceforth, he would treat Chulainn as a warrior.

  "My sister's son," Milach said. "And blooded in brushes with the Vanir and the Murrogh."

  "That is good," Gonan said. "A young man needs exercise for his weapons."

  He did not ask how many kills Chulainn had, for such things were irrelevant. Cimmerians did not take heads or hands or any of the other ghastly trophies prized by other northern peoples. When a clansman was old enough to bear arms for the clan, it was assumed that he would do what had to be done, and if an exceptional feat of arms drew praise around the council fires, yet it was assumed that every blooded man was a competent warrior. Proven cowards were rare in the mountains, and they were not tolerated.

  Now the faint drizzle was being replaced by huge flakes of snow. Conan looked up at the lowering clouds. "First snow of the season. Is there shelter hereabout?"

  "There's a good place a short way from here," Milach said. "Plenty of shelter from a storm. Chulainn, let's drive the kine down into the Broken Leg Glen."

  Conan helped the men drive the twenty or so shaggy, surefooted little cattle the mile separating them from the small valley. When the beasts were driven into the skimpy pasture, the men retired to Milach's "shelter,"

  which turned out to be a mere rock overhang, which shielded them slightly from the snow that was falling ever thicker. They made no attempt to build a fire, for fuel was too precious to waste on the mere comfort of herdsmen in winter pasture.

  Conan drew his cloak more closely about him against the growing cold.

  The other two did no such thin
g, but they politely refrained from making any remark at this unwonted display of sensitivity.

  "Does my father's brother, Cuipach, still live?" Conan asked.

  "Dead in a Vanir ambush, these three years," Milach said.

  "And my cousins Balyn and Turach?"

  "Dead in the feud with the Nachta," Milach told him.

  "The Nachta?" Conan said. "I thought we'd slain all their fighting men years agone."

  "We did," Milach confirmed. "But the boys grew into more, and they're breeding another batch of them, last I heard."

  Conan nodded. It was an old story in these mountains. In the fierce feuding many a clan had been pared down to a single male to carry the name. The Cimmerians married young and bred many children, though, and such a clan could be strong and numerous again in two or three generations.

  "How did you find the southern lands?" Chulainn asked.

  "I found them much to my taste," Conan said. "They glitter with gold and the folk wear silk instead of sheepskin. The food is rich and spicy, and the wine is sweet. The women are soft and smell of perfume instead of peat smoke and cattle."

  "Men have no need of such things," snorted Milach. "Things like that soften a man."

  "Best of all," Conan pressed on, "they fight all the time, and a man who's handy with his weapons can make something of himself."

  "Fighting?" Milach said. "Is that what you call it? I'll wager they've taught you to fight from the back of a horse, as if a man's legs were not good enough, and to wear armor into a fight instead of your own good skin." His tone was one of unbounded contempt for such effete warmaking.

  "That's the way of it in the South," Conan said. "What do you know of it? I've been on battlefields swept with the thunder of ten thousand horsemen, when the drums beat and the trumpets snarl and the banners blind you, so bright are they. These mountains see nothing of real war. I've been on a sea full of burning ships and smashing oars and hulls split in twain by bronzen rams. That is real fighting."