Before the Shemites could loose again, the doorway was blocked by a gigantic shape. With affrighted yells the mercenaries wheeled and began beating a frantic way through the throng, which crushed back in sudden, galvanized horror, trampling one another in their stampede.
But the monster seemed to be watching Valerius and the girl. Squeezing its vast, unstable bulk through the door, it bounded toward him, as he ran down the steps. He felt it looming behind him, a giant shadowy thing, like a travesty of nature cut out of the heart of night, a black shapelessness in which only the staring eyes and gleaming fangs were distinct.
There came a sudden thunder of hoofs; a rout of Shemites, bloody and battered, streamed across the square from the south, plowing blindly through the packed throng. Behind them swept a horde of horsemen yelling in a familiar tongue, waving red swords - the exiles, returned! With them rode fifty black-bearded desert-riders, and at their head a giant figure in black mail.
`Conan!' shrieked Valerius. 'Conan!'
The giant yelled a command. Without checking their headlong pace, the desert men lifted their bows, drew and loosed. A cloud of arrows sang across the square, over the seething heads of the multitudes, and sank feather-deep in the black monster. It halted, wavered, reared, a black blot against the marble pillars. Again the sharp cloud sang, and yet again, and the horror collapsed and rolled down the steps, as dead as the witch who had summoned it out of the night of ages.
Conan drew rein beside the portico, leaped off. Valerius had laid the queen on the marble, sinking beside her in utter exhaustion. The people surged about, crowding in. The Cimmerian cursed them back, lifted her dark head, pillowed it against his mailed shoulder.
`By Crom, what is this? The real Taramis! But who is that yonder?'
`The demon who wore her shape,' panted Valerius.
Conan swore heartily. Ripping a cloak from the shoulders of a soldier, he wrapped it about the naked queen. Her long dark lashes quivered on her cheeks; her eyes opened, stared up unbelievingly into the Cimmerian's scarred face.
'Conan!' Her soft fingers caught at him. `Do I dream? She told me you were dead-'
`Scarcely!' He grinned hardly. `You do not dream. You are Queen of Khauran again. I broke Constantius, out there by the river. Most of his dogs never lived to reach the walls, for I gave orders that no prisoners be taken - except Constantius. The city guard closed the gate in our faces, but we burst in with rams swung from our saddles. I left all my wolves outside, except this fifty. I didn't trust them in here, and these Khaurani lads were enough for the gate guards.'
`It has been a nightmare!' she whimpered. `Oh, my poor people! You must help me try to repay them for all they have suffered, Conan, henceforth councilor as well as captain!'
Conan laughed, but shook his head. Rising, he set the queen upon her feet, and beckoned to a number of his Khaurani horsemen who had not continued the pursuit of the fleeing Shemites. They sprang from their horses, eager to do the bidding of their new-found queen.
`No, lass, that's over with. I'm chief of the Zuagirs now, and must lead them to plunder the Turanians, as I promised. This lad, Valerius, will make you a better captain than I. I wasn't made to dwell among marble walls, anyway. But I must leave you now, and complete what I've begun. Shemites still live in Khauran.'
As Valerius started to follow Taramis across the square towards the palace, through a lane opened by the wildly cheering multitude, he felt a soft hand slipped timidly into his sinewy forgers and turned to receive the slender body of Ivga in his arms. He crushed her to him and drank her kisses with the gratitude of a weary fighter who has attained rest at last through tribulation and storm.
But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path . . .
The sun was rising. The ancient caravan road was thronged with white-robed horsemen, in a wavering line that stretched from the walls of Khauran to a spot far out in the plain. Conan the Cimmerian sat at the head of that column, near the jagged end of a wooden beam that stuck up out of the ground. Near that stump rose a heavy cross, and on that cross a man hung by spikes through his hands and feet.
`Seven months ago, Constantius,' said Conan, `it was I who hung there, and you who sat here.'
Constantius did not reply; he licked his gray lips and his eyes were glassy with pain and fear. Muscles writhed like cords along his lean body.
`You are more fit to inflict torture than to endure it,' said Conan tranquilly. `I hung there on a cross as you are hanging, and I lived, thanks to circumstances and a stamina peculiar to barbarians. But you civilized men are soft; your lives are not nailed to your spines as are ours. Your fortitude consists mainly in inflicting torment, not in enduring it. You will be dead before sundown. And so, Falcon of the desert, I leave you to the companionship of another bird of the desert.'
He gestured toward the vultures whose shadows swept across the sands as they wheeled overhead. From the lips of Constantius came an inhuman cry of despair and horror.
Conan lifted his reins and rode toward the river that shone like silver in the morning sun. Behind him the white-clad riders struck into a trot; the gaze of each, as he passed a certain spot, turned impersonally and with the desert man's lack of compassion, toward the cross and the gaunt figure that hung there, black against the sunrise. Their horses' hoofs beat out a knell in the dust. Lower and lower swept the wings of the hungry vultures.
Black Tears
1. The Jaws of the Trap.
The noonday sun blazed down from the fiery dome of the sky. The harsh, dry sands of Shan-e-Sorkh, the Red Waste, baked in the pitiless blaze as in a giant oven. Naught moved in the still air; the few thorny shrubs that crowned the low, gravel-strewn hills, which rose in a wall at the edge of the Waste, stirred not.
Neither did the soldiers who crouched behind them, watching the trail.
Here some primeval conflict of natural forces had riven a cleft through the escarpment Ages of erosion had widened this cleft, but it still formed a narrow pass between steep slopes―a perfect site for an ambush.
The troop of Turanian soldiery had lain hidden atop the hills all through the hot morning hours. Sweltering in their tunics of chain and scale mail, they crouched on sore hams and aching knees. Cursing under his breath, their captain, the Amir Boghra Khan, endured the long, uncomfortable vigil with them. His throat was as dry as sun-baked leather; within his mail, his body stewed. In this accursed land of death and blazing sun, a man could not even sweat comfortably; the desiccated desert air greedily drank up every drop of moisture, leaving one as dry as the withered tongue of a Stygian mummy.
Now the amir blinked and rubbed his eyes, squinting against the glare to see again that tiny flash of light. A forward scout, concealed behind a dune of red sand, caught the sun in his mirror and flashed a signal toward his chief, hidden atop the hills.
Now a cloud of dust could be seen. The portly, black-bearded Turanian nobleman grinned and forgot his discomfort. Surely his traitorous informant had truly earned the bribe it took to buy him!
Soon, Boghra Khan could discern the long line of Zuagir warriors, robed in flowing white khalats and mounted on slender desert steeds. As the band of desert marauders emerged from the cloud of dust raised by the hoofs of their horses, the Turanian lord could even make out the dark, lean, hawk-faced visages of his quarry, framed by their flowing headdresses―so clear was the desert air and so bright the sun.
Satisfaction seethed through his veins like red wine of Aghrapur from young King Yezdigerd's private cellars.
For years, now, this outlaw band had harried and looted towns and trading posts and caravan stations along the borders of Turan―first under that blackhearted Zaporoskan rogue, Olgerd Vladislav; then, a little more than a year ago, by his successor, Conan. At last, Turanian spies in villages friendly to the outlaw band had found a corruptible member of that band―one Vardanes, not a Zuagir but a Zamorian. Var
danes had been a blood brother to Olgerd, whom Conan had overthrown, and was hungry for vengeance against the stranger who had usurped the chieftainship.
Boghra thoughtfully tugged his beard. The Zamorian traitor was a smiling, laughing villain, dear to a Turanian heart Small, lean, lithe, and swaggering, handsome and reckless as a young god, Vardanes was an amusing drinking companion and a devilish fighter but as cold-hearted and untrustworthy as an adder.
Now the Zuagirs were passing through the defile. And there, at the head of the outriders, rode Vardanes on a prancing black mare. Boghra Khan raised a hand to warn his men to be ready. He wanted to let as many as possible of the Zuagirs enter the pass before closing the trap upon them. Only Vardanes was to be allowed through. The moment he was beyond the walls of sandstone, Boghra brought his hand down with a chopping motion.
"Slay the dogs!" he thundered, rising.
A hail of hissing arrows fell slanting through the sunlight like a deadly rain. In a second, the Zuagirs were a turmoil of shouting men and bucking horses. Flight after flight of arrows raked them. Men fell, clutching at feathered shafts, which sprouted as by magic from their bodies. Horses screamed as keen barbs gashed their dusty flanks.
Dust rose in a choking cloud, veiling the pass below. So thick it became that Boghra Khan halted his archers for a moment, lest they waste their shafts in the murk. And that momentary twinge of thrift was his undoing. For out of the clamor rose one deep, bellowing voice, dominating the chaos.
"Up the slopes and at them!"
It was the voice of Conan. An instant later, the giant form of the Cimmerian himself came charging up the steep slope on a huge, fiery stallion. One might think that only a fool or a madman would charge straight up a steep slope of drifting sand and crumbling rock into the teeth of his foe, but Conan was neither. True, he was wild with ferocious lust for revenge, but behind his grim, dark face and smouldering eyes, like blue flames under scowling black brows, the sharp wit of a seasoned warrior was at work. He knew that often the only road through an ambush is the unexpected.
Astonished, the Turanian warriors let bows slacken as they stared.
Clawing and scrambling up the steep slopes of the sides of the pass, out of the dust-clouded floor of the defile, came a howling mob of frenzied Zuagirs, afoot and mounted, straight at them. In an instant the desert warriors―more numerous than the amir had expected― came roaring over the crest, scimitars flashing, cursing and shrieking bloodthirsty war cries.
Before them all came the giant form of Conan. Arrows had ripped his white khalat, exposing the glittering black mail that clad his lion-thewed torso. His wild, unshorn mane streamed out from under his steel cap like a tattered banner, a chance shaft had torn away his flowing kaffia. On a wild-eyed stallion, he was upon them like some demon of myth. He was armed not with the tulwar of the desert folk but with a great, cross-hilted western broadsword―his favorite among the many weapons of which he was master. In his scarred fist, this length of whirling, mirror-bright steel cut a scarlet path through the Turanians. It rose and fell, spraying scarlet droplets into the desert air. At every stroke it clove armor and flesh and bone, smashing in a skull here, lopping a limb there, hurling a third victim mangled and prone with ribs crushed in.
By the end of a short, swift half-hour it was all over. No Turanians survived the onslaught save a few who had fled early―and their leader.
With his robe torn away and his face bloody, the limping and disheveled amir was led before Conan, who sat on his panting steed, "wiping the gore from his steel with a dead man's khalat.
Conan fixed the wilted lordling with a scornful glance, not unmixed with sardonic humor.
"So, Boghra, we meet again!" he growled.
The amir blinked with disbelief. "You!" he gasped.
Conan chuckled. A decade before, as a wandering young vagabond, the Cimmerian had served in the mercenaries of Turan. He had left King Yildiz's standards rather hurriedly over a little matter of an officer's mistress―so hurriedly, in fact, that he had failed to settle a gambling wager with the same amir who stood astonished before him now. Then, as the merry young scion of a noble house, Boghra Khan and Conan had been comrades in many an escapade from gaming table to drinking shop and bawdy house. Now, years older, the same Boghra gaped up, crushed in battle by an old comrade whose name he had somehow never connected with that of the terrible leader of the desert tribesmen.
Conan raked him with narrowing eyes. "You were awaiting us here, weren't you?" he growled.
The amir sagged. He did not wish to give information to the outlaw leader, even if they were old drinking companions. But he had heard too many grim tales of the Zuagirs' bloody methods of wringing information from captives. Fat and soft from years of princely living, the Turanian officer feared he could not long keep silent under such pressure.
Surprisingly, his cooperation was not needed. Conan had seen Vardanes, who had curiously requested the post of advance scout that morning, spur ahead through the further end of the pass just before the trap had been sprung.
"How much did you pay Vardanes?" Conan demanded suddenly.
"Two hundred silver shekels…" the Turanian mumbled. Then he broke off, astonished at his own indiscretion. Conan laughed.
"A princely bribe, eh? That smiling rogue―like every Zamorian, treacherous to the bottom of his rotten black heart! He's never forgiven me for unseating Olgerd." Conan broke off, leveling a quizzical glance at the bowed head of the amir. He grinned, not unkindly. "Nay, berate yourself not, Boghra. You did not betray your military secrets; I tricked you out of them. You can ride back to Aghrapur with your soldierly honor intact."
Boghra lifted his head with astonishment. "You will let me live?" he croaked.
Conan nodded. "Why not? I still owe you a bag of gold from that old wager, so let me settle the debt this way. But next time, Boghra, have a care how you set traps for wolves. Sometimes you catch a tiger!"
2. The Land of Ghosts.
Two days of hard riding through the red sands of Shan-e-Sorkh, and still the desert marauders had not caught up with the traitor. Thirsty for the sight of Vardanes' blood, Conan pressed his men hard. The cruel code of the desert demanded the Death of Five Stakes for the man who betrayed his comrades, and Conan was determined to see the Zamorian pay that price.
On the evening of the second day, they made camp in the shelter of a hillock of parched sandstone, which thrust up from the rust-colored sands like the stump of some ruined ancient tower. Conan's hard face, burnt almost black by the desert sun, was lined with fatigue. His stallion panted at the edge of exhaustion, slobbering through frothy lips as he set the water bag to the animal's muzzle. Behind him, men stretched weary legs and aching arms. They watered the horses and lit a campfire to keep the wild desert dogs away. He heard the creak of ropes as saddlebags disgorged tents and cooking equipment.
Sand crunched under a sandaled heel behind him. He turned to see the lined, bewhiskered face of one of his lieutenants. This was Gomer, a sloe-eyed, hook-nosed Shemite with greasy, blue-black ringlets escaping from the folds of his headdress.
"Well?" growled Conan as he rubbed down the tired stallion with long, slow strokes of a stiff brush.
The Shemite shrugged. "He's still making a straight path to the southwest," he said. "The blackhearted devil must be made of iron."
Conan laughed harshly. "His mare may be iron, but not Vardanes. He's flesh and blood, as you shall see when we spread him out to the stakes and slit his guts for the vultures!"
Gomer's sad eyes were haunted by a vague fear. "Conan, will you not give over this quest? Each day takes us deeper into this land of sun and sand, where only vipers and scorpions can live. By Dagon's tail, unless we turn back, we shall leave our bones here to bleach forever!"
"Not so," grunted the Cimmerian. "If any bones are left to bleach here, they'll be Zamorian. Don't fret, Gomer; we'll catch up to the traitor yet. Tomorrow, perhaps. He can't keep up this pace forever."
"Nor c
an we!" Gomer protested. He paused, feeling Conan's smoldering blue gaze searching his face.
"But that's not all that's eating at your heart, is it?" demanded Conan. "Speak up, man. Out with it!"
The burly Shemite shrugged eloquently. "Well, no. I ―the men feel―" His voice trailed away.
"Speak, man or I'll kick it out of you!"
"This―this is the Makan-e-Mordan!" Gomer burst out "I know. I've heard of this 'Place of Ghosts' before. So what? Are you afraid of old crones' fables?"
Gomer looked unhappy. "They are not just fables, Conan. You are no Zuagir; you do not know this land and its tenors, as do we who have long dwelt in the wilderness. For thousands of years, this land has been a cursed and haunted place, and with every hour that we ride, we go deeper into this evil land. The men fear to tell you, but they are half mad with terror."
"With childish superstition, you mean," snarled Conan. "I know they've been quaking in their boots over legends of ghosts and goblins. I've heard stories of this country, too, Gomer. But they are only tales to frighten babes, not warriors! Tell your comrades to beware. My wrath is stronger than all the ghosts that ever died!"
"But, Conan!"
Conan cut him off with a coarse word. "Enough of your childish night fears, Shemite! I have sworn by Crom and Mitra that I will have the blood of that Zamorian traitor or die trying! And if I have to scatter a little Zuagir blood along the way, I'll not scruple to do so. Now cease yammering and come share a bottle with me. My throat's as dry as this blasted desert, and all this talk dries it out the more."
Clapping Gomer on the shoulder, Conan strode away toward the campfire, where the men were unpacking stores of smoked meat, dried figs and dates, goat cheese, and leathern bottles of wine.
But the Shemite did not rejoin the Cimmerian at once. He stood long, gazing after the swaggering chieftain he had followed for nearly two years, ever since they had found Conan crucified near the walls of Khauran. Conan had been a guard captain in the service of Queen Taramis of Khauran until her throne was usurped by the witch Salome, leagued with Constantius the Falcon, the Kothic voivode of the Free Companies.
The Conan Compendium Page 489