The Conan Compendium

by Various Authors

  The hunter lay back and closed his eyes. Presently he felt the soft, cold touch of mist on his cheek and heard the cry of the mountain eagle as it soared in the chill sky found only above the tree line.

  Conan's long arm whipped the sling up and over. At the high point of its arc, the slung stone leaped across the little stream and into the monkey-laden tree on the other side. The monkeys' chattering turned into shrieks of rage and fear. They scattered, leaves, twigs, and birds' nests tumbling in their wake.

  One monkey neither cried out nor fled. Struck a deadly blow by the stone, it toppled from its branch, bounced from a second, then stuck firmly in the crotch of a third. From ground to the dead monkey was the height of six men taller than Conan.

  The Cimmerian cursed the whole race of monkeys and the inventor of the sling. Then he saw that Valeria was kicking off her boots.

  "Guard my back, Conan. I will have our dinner down in a trice."

  Warned of leeches, Valeria leaped the stream, though Conan saw her wince at the pain this gave her feet. Then she was climbing the tree with almost the agility of the vanished monkeys, in the manner Conan had seen on the Black Coastsbody and legs at nearly right angles, arms gripping the tree as if it were a lover, well-formed hindquarters in the air.

  She moved surely, fingers and toes seeking out the tiniest rough patches in the bark. The angle of the trunk was just enough to allow her to climb as she did, and it was not long before she reached the monkey. A slap to the branch did nothing; the branch was too thick.

  Valeria climbed another arm's length, crawled out onto the branch, and pushed the dead monkey off.

  It thumped into a patch of ferns. Conan crossed the stream, thrust his sword into the patch, and withdrew it with the monkey spitted on the point.

  "What is there to make you uneasy?" Valeria called.

  "In this jungle, less than ferns can hide serpents. An asp bite won't kill as fast as the Apples of Derketa, but it's just as sure."

  "You, Cimmerian, are as heartening as a priest of Set preparing me for sacrifice."

  "Don't kill the bearer of bad news, good lady. It was not my advances that drove you from Sukhmet, nor my idea that you should flee into this jungle."

  Perched where she was, Valeria could not draw her dagger. Instead, she made a face to frighten trolls and reached about her for something to throw. Finding nothing, she suggested that the Cimmerian harbored unlawful passions for sheep, then started back down.

  She took the descent with more care and bent over farthertoo far, as she learned, for her trousers. There was a sharp ripping sound, and Valeria suddenly had nothing between her rump and the jungle air.

  She finished the descent with as much dignity as she could manage, then hastily backed against the tree. Her face dared Conan to so much as smile. He controlled the urge to roar with laughter with some difficulty.

  "Thank you, Valeria," he said when he could trust his voice.

  "You are welcome, I suppose," she replied. "A tree is not so far different from a mast, and I have been climbing those since before I was a woman." She glared at him. "Or do you think I was foolish, only to prove I could haul and draw my share?"

  "I said nothing."

  "Conan, you can say more with a moment's silence than most men can with talking from sunrise to nightfall." She glanced at the monkey. Its dead eyes stared back at her, and she looked away.

  "If you will make the fire, I will skin it. I doubt it much differs from a fish."

  "It does, but there'll be no fire."

  "No… fire?" She said the word as if it were a solemn curse.

  Conan shook his head. "We've nothing by which to strike a spark, nothing to burn if we struck it, and no knowledge of who might see the fire or smell the smoke."

  "Eat the monkey raw?"

  "Not uncommon in these lands. Monkeys eat much as we do, so their flesh is commonly wholesome."

  "But… raw?"

  "Raw."

  Valeria gagged, but there was nothing in her stomach to come up. She leaned against the tree and braced one hand against it.

  "If I had known that, Conan, I'd have left your cursed monkey for the kites and the ants!"

  "Not wise, Valeria. Go hungry too long and the kites and the ants'll make their meal off of you."

  This time she did bend over, heaving until her face was pale. Then she remained kneeling, sweat-sodden hair veiling her. Conan gently lifted her to her feet.

  "Come, Valeria. Find somewhere to sit, and I will do the honors with a knife. I know which parts taste best uncooked, and I'll also do better work with the skin."

  "The skin? Oh, to wear." To Conan's relief, she no longer seemed mazed in her wits.

  "Just so, unless you'd rather walk bare-arse all the way through the jungle"

  She threw a stick at him.

  The hunter knew that the voices he heard above him were those of the God-Men. In the last corner of his mind that remained human, he knew he should be afraid.

  He was not, although he did remember having been afraid when the Monkey warriors carried him up the last few paces of the hill to the God House. The door of the house was of ironwood logs, planked with slabs of mahogany, and on the planks was painted the crimson-and-sapphire spiral of the God-Men.

  The fear had gone briefly when the door opened and only common men came forth, in loincloths and headdresses dyed with the same spiral. They had lifted the hunter's litter and borne him within the God House, leaving the Monkey warriors standing in the evening rain.

  Then the hunter had not only been unafraid; he had been ready to laugh…

  at the disappointment on the faces of the Monkey warriors. No doubt they had dreamed of being greeted as heroes.

  It was when he saw the first of the God-Men that he was again afraid, but not for long. The eyes of the God-Man were entirely white, like those of a man struck blind with the eye-rot and doomed to be cast into the forest for the beasts to devour if no one would feed and shelter him.

  Yet the God-Man moved as surely as if he could count every leg on an ant in the dimmest corner of the chamber where the hunter lay. He wore only a loinguard that might have been of snakeskin, figured in hues of rose and vermilion.

  He carried in one hand a staff taller than himself, crowned with a golden spiral, and in the other hand, a gourd. A pungent odor rose from the gourd, sour, sweet, and sharp all at once.

  Without letting go of the staff, the God-Man knelt beside the hunter and motioned that he should sit up. This the hunter did, and at once the gourd was thrust to his lips. The taste of the brew within was so vile that he wanted to spit it out. When he found himself swallowing, he wanted to gag; when the brew reached his stomach, he wanted to spew.

  Then it seemed that he was no longer tasting something vile and tainted, but beer of the most cunning brewing from the best grain and seeds. It went straight to his head as such beer often did, and he no longer felt pain, not even in his foot and ankle.

  He was not wholly at ease over this; the ankle had grown swollen, the flesh turning pallid and noisome matter oozing from it. It should have been hurting as if hot irons were at work upon it.

  Yet it did not, and soon he was walking whole and hearty through the nightmarish halls of Xuchotl. He was not afraid, for the God-Man was with him and the magic in the staff would stand against any evil there, living or dead. As he walked, he told the God-Man all he had seen or guessed, and it seemed that the God-Man heard every word and planted it in his memory like a seed in a garden patch. In time, they came out of Xuchotl the same way they had entered, and walked into the jungle. The walls of the evil city faded into a green mist, and when the mist cleared, the hunter knew he still lay in the God House.

  But his ankle still did not hurt.

  It did not hurt even when the God-Man made a series of intricate motions over the hunter's body with the staff. Was it only a fever-fancy, or did the golden spiral of the staff seem to whirl, like a swirling eddy in a stream?

 
No matter. When the God-Man was done, the hunter found that he could rise and walk. He did so, and followed the God-Man where he was bidden, out of the chamber and down a long passage that seemed carved from living rock. The heads of the totemic animals of each clan of the Kwanyi hung thick on the walls. The hunter saw that where the rock showed, it was painted in colors for which he did not wish to find names, let alone utter them.

  Then they passed a wall of rocks that seemed bound together more by magic than by mud. Beyond lay a chamber so vast that the hunter could barely make out the ceiling, and could not see the far wall at all.

  As for what lay below, after one look, he turned his head away. It was not fear of the swirling smoke or what it might conceal. It was only that in his heart he knew it was taboo for him to gaze upon that smoke, and worse than that for him to see what the smoke hid.

  The God-Man pointed to a seat carved from the rock at the very lip of the ledge where the hunter stood. The hunter sat down, dangling his legs over the abyss. From above, he heard more voices, and then he was alone and the voice of the God-Man who had led him there joined the others.

  They chanted in a tongue the hunter did not know and beat on a drum that sounded unlike any he had ever heard. Or was it not a drum but their staves pounding on the rock floor? If those staves were shod with iron, they might sound much like that, striking the living rock

  The smoke reared up in a wall before him, like a cobra ready to strike.

  Indeed, it spread out in such a likeness of a cobra's head that the hunter wanted to cry out.

  I am not of the Cobras. I am of the Leopards. Send a leopard for my spirit.

  He knew in the same moment that he would not speak, nor would it matter if he cried out to all the gods of his people. This was a place where mere mortals were impotent in the face of the older powers under the command of the God-Men.

  Even then, the hunter did not fear. Nor did he fear when the smoke swirled around him and the scream of a mighty wind tearing at the treetops came with it. He felt himself lifted as gently as a babe in a sling on its mother's breast.

  Then the smoke drew back. The hunter faced crimson-and-sapphire light, swirling like the smoke. He saw the light rise around him, taking away his sight, and all of his other senses as well. He never knew the moment when the life was sucked from his body and only an empty husk remained in the stone seat.

  "What was that?" Conan muttered. He thought he had spoken only to himself, but Valeria was more wakeful than he had known.

  "I heard nothing," she said. She rolled over and tried for the tenth time to find a spot where a root of their sheltering spicebush would not dig into her flesh.

  "Ugh," she said. "The planks of a ship's bed are down cushions compared to this jungle."

  Conan held up a hand for silence, and although Valeria looked sulky, she obeyed. The Cimmerian waited until he was sure that whatever had reached him on the night breeze would not come again.

  "It may have been nothing. But I thought I heard… well, if a spell of evil magic made a sound, it might have been like that."

  Valeria sat up and her shirt slipped from her shoulders. She ignored the display of her magnificent breasts and made several gestures of aversion.

  "Are you a spell-smeller, as we call them at home?" she asked.

  It seemed to Conan that she would not much care for any answer he might give. In truth, he also would be happy if he had not suddenly gained the power to detect magic. That was almost magic itself, and Conan loathed the idea of finding it within himself.

  The Cimmerian had fought more sorcerers and wizards than he had fingers and toes. But when he had an honorable choice, he gave the whole accursed breed a berth many leagues wide.

  "I've never been one yet," Conan said. "I'd as soon not be one now.

  Likely enough it was just some trick of the wind. I've been away from these lands for so long that I may not remember all that I thought I did."

  Valeria had the look of one who doubts she is hearing the truth, but the Cimmerian's blue eyes were steady and he smiled. After a moment, the Aquilonian woman smiled back, turned on her side, and lay down. The display of breasts now gave way to a display of well-rounded buttocks.

  Conan had no eye for them. He sat cross-legged, sword in his lap, waiting with the patience of one who has watched a Zamboulan counting house for three days to learn the comings and goings of its watchmen.

  He also waited with more knowledge of the jungle than he had admitted to Valeria. Nothing in nature had made that sound, and what was not in nature was, more often than not, dangerous.

  In time, Valeria's breathing steadied as she slipped deep into sleep.

  Conan's breathing also slowed, until he might have seemed an iron statue in the jungle night. Only the relentless flickering of his eyes about him betrayed life.

  Whatever stalked them would gain no help from him in its quest, and only sharp steel if it found them.

  TWO

  Seyganko, son of Bayu, was not the swiftest, strongest, or tallest of the warriors of the Ichiribu. He was the best swimmer, which was not a small matter in his people's wars against the Kwanyi.

  He was also a longheaded sort of man, in spite of his lack of years. He thought before he used the speed, strength, and height that he had.

  Thus he made shrewder use of them than his better-endowed comrades.

  This earned him some jealousy, and at least once a death-duel, from which he had emerged not merely victorious, but unhurt. It also earned him rather more respect from the day of his manhood ceremony to the day Dobanpu Spirit-Speaker read the signs and declared Seyganko worthy to be followed in battle.

  From that day forward, Seyganko led. He always led in war when the whole manhood of the Ichiribu was called forth. He also led as often as not in raids and skirmishes, when no custom or taboo required that someone else lead.

  Seyganko did not survive all this fighting as unscathed as he had the duel. No man could, against a foe such as the Kwanyi. Their Paramount Chief Chabano would have made his warriors formidable with his spear-and-shield art, even without the aid of the God-Men. With that aid, the chief might have swept the shores and islands of the Lake of Death clean of all tribes save his own, then marched downriver on a campaign of conquest.

  It was as well for others besides Seyganko that the God-Men and Chabano could seldom work together for long, and often barely spoke to one another. It was necessary at all times for the Ichiribu to know of Chabano's schemes and whether or not he was on a friendly footing with the God-Men.

  So that is how Seyganko came to the western shore of the Lake of Death on the night that Conan sat keeping watch beside the spicebush where Valeria slept.

  He and the four men in the canoe paddled as silently as wraiths to within a hundred paces of the shore. They drove the canoe forward with steady, practiced strokes, lifting their paddles so skillfully that no splash or drip betrayed their presence. Clouds veiled the moon, and this was not the season for the lampfish, whose glow when disturbed often betrayed canoe-borne warriors.

  A hundred paces from the shore, all five men lifted their paddles as one. The canoe glided forward on its own momentum for another fifty paces. By then, its bow was sliding in among the weeds that grew so thick in places that a child might walk upon them.

  Seyganko led his comrades over the side of the craft with as little noise as they had made in paddling. Gripping the sides, they kicked silently until they could sink their feet into the oozy bottom.

  Each man wore only his headdress and a snakeskin loinguard, besides his weapons: a club or a trident, a knife of stone chips set in wood, and a net. Each also wore a generous coating of rancid fish oil. Its reek made any except the Ichiribu gag. It also hid the odor of living flesh from the small fish known as the eunuch-maker which swarmed along the shores of the Lake of Death.

  "Remember," Seyganko whispered, "we need no women prisoners. If they flee, do not chase them."

  "And if they stay?" one warr
ior asked with a grin that showed even in the darkness.

  "Remember, too, that a man taking a woman turns his back on the world,"

  Seyganko said.

  "Ho" the largest of the warriors said. "You need not think where to find your next woman, Seyganko. Not when"

  "Hold your tongue, Aondo," a third man said. "Or if Seyganko does not challenge you, I will. You are jealous as well as foolish."

  Seyganko could add nothing to those words of wisdom, although he knew that his betrothal to the shaman's daughter Emwaya had indeed aroused much jealousy. Emwaya was the finest woman of the Ichiribu and deserved nothing less than their finest warrior, but not all men saw that as clearly as she did.

  The young chief vowed to look to his back when the huge Aondo was near, then crept to the left to his chosen hiding place. The other warriors followed, with only the faintest rustling of the damp grass and the soft chrrr of insects to mark their passage.

  They had been in hiding barely long enough for the grass to rise again when they heard voices and footfalls on the trail. As was most often the case, the sounds were those of women and men together warriors guarding a band of women, taking food and other comforts to the camp where the Gao River flowed out of the Lake of Death.

  The Kwanyi also kept warriors in the south, guarding their herdlands and grain fields on the other side of the lake. Chabano would gladly have kept much more strength there, to raid through the pass into the riverlands beyond the mountains. That the Ichiribu ruled the Lake of Death with their canoes stood in his way and made his hatred for them burn like a live coal.

  Now someone among the Kwanyi on the trail, wiser than his fellows, called for silence. But he called for it in a voice as loud as the others'. Seyganko's keen ears let him measure the distance to the speaker almost as if he had stretched a length of vine between them. If the enemy advanced another twenty paces farther, they were as doomed as a dog in the jaws of a leopard.