The bowmen—left behind when Conan’s horse had bolted—now reached the shoreline and began shooting. The Cimmerian thanked the fates that the Iranistani were among the poorer of arbalesters, or they would have speared him like a fish ere he swam beyond their range.
“Zariri swine!” they cried, hurling oaths at the escaping barbarian. “May the sea-beasts gnaw your accursed bones!”
Conan would have laughed, but he saved his breath for the swim. He had escaped the archers, but dozens of Bajkari warriors still relentlessly pursued him. Weighted by his sack of gold and heavy sword, he felt his pace slacken. The Bajkaris swam within a stone’s throw, closing in with every stroke.
III
“Welcome aboard the Mistress...”
Conan quickened his pace, drawing deeply from his well of reserve vitality. The burden of a heavy broadsword and a gold-filled sack would have dragged a lesser man to the ocean’s floor, but the Cimmerian’s muscular frame and powerful thews carried him through the placid ocean waters with a swiftness that would have shamed many a sea creature.
Exhaling and inhaling rhythmically, Conan pumped his arms and legs for every measure of speed that he could muster. When his destination loomed ahead, he lifted his head, tossing his hair back in a spray of salt-water as he looked over his shoulder.
Many Bajkari, more accustomed to their saddles than the sea, had begun to flag. A few had stopped and were simply treading water, too exhausted to swim back. The bowmen on the beach looked like mere insects. “Dogs!” Conan yelled.
This epithet left him short of breath, and he paused before renewing his efforts to reach the ship. He was close enough to study her in detail. She was a high-stemed, broad-waisted craft, a design similar to many Vendhyan coastal vessels. She accommodated ten rowers on each side, but her captain may have crewed her sparingly, for Conan saw only ten oarsmen at work. Perhaps the ship master had counted more on trade winds than on bowed backs. Her single sail was bundled against the yard by its brails, and she bore no standard that indicated her origin.
To Conan’s practised eye, she had the look of a cargo-laden Vendhyan merchant. Sniffing the air, he also judged that she was not a slaver. Such vessels carried an unmistakable stench that fouled the air around them. A ship rowed by free men might welcome the Cimmerian, who knew his way around an oar. Better to pay for his passage with labour than part with any of his loot.
He knew that a strong rower and skilled swordsman would be welcome aboard—captains of small merchant ships lived in constant fear of pirate attacks. Years ago, Conan and Bêlit—the beautiful but deadly piratess—had preyed upon many such vessels. Bêlit's Tigress, with her eighty oarsmen and steel-beaked ram, would have made short work of this seagoing morsel.
As he swam on, exhaustion led Conan into sadly but fondly remembering the Shemite lover with whom he had spent many happy years. The two of them had terrorized countless Stygian vessels—their raiding, plundering, and slaying had made them infamous among those who dwelled along the southern coasts of the Western Ocean.
He had never before—or since—known a woman like Bêlit. She had revelled in her life of roaming, fighting, and plundering, as Conan did. And of the many women Conan had bedded, none had matched her raw, insatiable passion for lovemaking. Bloody battles fuelled the fires of her lust as much as they fuelled Conan’s. In his arms, she was as wild and untamed as a jungle cat. After every conquest, the two would quench their thirst for each other—often from sunset to sunrise.
Bêlit's hunger for pleasure of the flesh had been exceeded only by her appetite for loot. It was the latter, and a vile legacy of tainted treasure, that had long ago taken her from him.
Conan missed his pirate queen, and he realized that he had—perhaps deliberately—avoided the sea since the Queen of the Black Coast’s untimely death. Without her, the seafaring life had lost its lustre.
His face hardened like a mask chiselled from stone. Now was not the time for reminiscing. Conan pushed aside the haunting memories, focusing on his goal. A few Bajkari doggedly swam after him, and the Cimmerian did not yet wish to join Bêlit in Hell.
Glancing back toward the beach, he saw that only three men had stayed in the race. As they closed the distance, he saw water streaming from their reddened faces. Sunlight flashed wickedly from daggers clenched between their teeth.
The Cimmerian considered facing them. His sword, however, would be unwieldy in a free-floating fight, and he had no mail to turn their blades. To worsen matters, his heavy sack of loot hindered him. He knew that he should cut it loose, but after hauling it this far, he was loathe to drop it.
A furtive movement caught Conan’s eye, and he spun his head toward it. Rippling under the water’s surface just a few feet from his side, he saw a long, silvery shape darting toward him. Back-pedalling with his legs, he drew his broadsword. It just cleared its sheath before the gigantic barracuda was upon him. Sharpened teeth brushed the flesh of his calf as he desperately thrust his blade toward the vicious beast.
The point struck home, spearing the barracuda, sinking deep into its vitals and lodging in bone. Thrashing in agony, the wounded fish tried to dislodge the blade, but the sword was stuck fast. Conan clung to the hilt, vainly tugging at the blade. The maddened barracuda lunged toward him, forcing back his arms and clamping his belt between its jaws.
Conan’s sword had not weakened the fish. With a violent tug the beast pulled him under. He sucked in a lungful of air before sinking, placing his feet against the slippery scales of the impaled predator and wrenching at the trapped blade.
Man and beast waged a tense tug-of-war. Conan hung on to his sword-hilt while the dying barracuda pulled its stubborn passenger through the water. Conan ached to expel stale air, and pounding blood sent waves of dizziness through his head. He held the air in, knowing that a watery grave awaited him if he exhaled. His only chance was to free his sword and skewer the thing again.
He could not will his arms to move.
Shadowy fog engulfed his vision. He was only dimly aware of the barracuda’s final spasm. Chest heaving, he broke the paralysis that had seized him and ripped his broadsword from the fish’s guts. The dead creature relinquished its grip, drifting away in a red ruin. Resisting his body’s involuntary urge to open his mouth wide and take in what would be a drowning breath, the Cimmerian kicked his legs frantically, swimming toward the light. He knew that the blood and thrashing might attract even worse creatures—great striped sharks who were said to infest these waters.
After several moments of nearly unbearable agony, Conan’s head cleared the surface. Gasping, he gulped the sweet, life-giving air, expelling several lungfuls before his eyesight returned. He gazed with astonishment at the faraway beach, and almost smiled. The barracuda had towed him away from the Bajkari, closer to the safety of the Vendhyan ship.
His hunters had apparently abandoned the chase. They receded to tiny specks as Conan forced his aching limbs to swim the remainder of his harrowing escape route. No tell-tale fins broke the surface; perhaps the sea predators lurked elsewhere today.
A bored-looking Argossean leaned against the ship’s taffrail, straightening with a jerk when he sighted the approaching Cimmerian. His shouts roused a few other sailors, and they tossed a knotted rope overboard, which Conan seized. He pulled himself up the rope and over the rail, thumping wetly to the starboard thwart between two cursing, sweating rowers. They and the other rowers stopped, raising their twenty-foot oars and gaping at the drenched barbarian.
The tall, bearded Argossean strolled amid the thwarts toward Conan, keeping a beefy hand upon the brass hilt of an enormous tulwar thrust through his wide belt. The other sailors—olive-skinned Vendhyans, stout Argosseans, and a few shifty-eyed Zingarans—fingered the hilts of their keen-edged scimitars. The tall Argossean barked a greeting in his native tongue. “Bel’s beard! A blue-eyed giant—a northerner, by yer looks. Welcome aboard Zarkhan’s Mistress. I’m Tosco, her first mate. What be yer name, and how in Hell come ye dr
ifting’ to us?” Anticipation lingered in his voice—and in the fingers that flexed around his brass hilt.
Fatigue had not completely robbed Conan of his wits. He made a show of rising to his feet to take a good look at his surroundings. In particular, he studied the ship’s helmsman, who stood on the poop deck behind Tosco, manning the till. The helmsman’s dusky-hued skin marked him as a Stygian; his leather jerkin and slender dagger bore symbols of Set, the dread serpent god.
Conan groaned inwardly while drawing himself up to his full height. The helmsman might recognize the name Conan—one of Stygia’s most infamous pirates. “I am Vraal,” he rumbled in rough Argossean. “I am a son of the Border Kingdom—though I know well the code of the sea,” he added.
“Vraal, eh? Are ye deserter or slave, then, running’ from them?” He gestured toward the remote shore, to which many of the Bajkari were swimming.
“Nay, friend Tosco. They ambushed me as I rode through the Mountains of Gold, on my way to sell my sword in Anshan or Aghrapur, wherever it would fetch the highest price. I would as soon pay for my passage by sweat. You seem short of rowers, and if we are waylaid by corsairs, my blade is at your service.”
Tosco’s grey eyes narrowed to slits, and a frown clouded his sunburned face. “Ha! We be a private merchant in a Stygian priest’s hire. Yer bits of bronze and oafish sword-work together would nae be enough to secure ye as much as a place on the thwarts. And we have scant provisions, not for sharin’ with the likes o’ ye!”
Conan tensed, readying himself for an attack. But he knew that Tosco’s gibes were the time-honoured Argossean way of testing a stranger’s mettle. “Among my bits of bronze,” he said, opening his makeshift sack just enough to palm a gold piece, “is a gold dragon.” He flipped the heavy coin to Tosco, who deftly caught it. Fingering the thick golden disc, he examined its markings: a Nemedian king’s likeness on one side and a royal coat of arms on the other. Grinning, the first mate stuffed it into the pocket of his soiled brown vest. “Bend yer back at the bench. I’ll ask the captain if we need another hand. Though yer wits be as slack as yer shoulders are broad, perhaps ye can be trained to row.”
Conan suppressed the urge to fling the rude Argossean pig overboard. Scowling, he turned his back to Tosco and moved toward a vacant forward rower’s position. Tosco nodded to a short, bald Vendhyan. The little fellow picked up a wooden mallet and sat cross-legged on the poop deck, next to a weather-worn drum. The Vendhyan began pounding his drum to set a pace for the oar strokes.
Irked by Tosco’s derisive comments, Conan felt the raw energy of anger revitalizing his weary limbs. He would show this fat sea-cur how to move a boat through becalmed waters. Forgetting his fatigue, the Cimmerian gritted his teeth and sat in the foremost centre between the thwarts, gripping an oar in each hand.
Tosco seemed in no hurry to disturb the captain. He stood on the poop deck like a king on a throne, barking guttural commands to his subjects. “Lay forward! Bend yer backs, dogs—to Stygia, afore our beards turn grey!” he boomed.
He had scarcely ceased his bellowing when Conan began rowing rhythmically. At the bottom of each stroke, the enraged barbarian lowered himself to the deck, then lifted his body for the next pull. Knotted sinews rippled beneath his bronzed skin as the drummer quickened his beats, and the other rowers laboured to maintain Conan’s arduous pace.
The oars protruded fifteen feet from the sides of the vessel, their wide blades dipping smoothly into the placid sea. Conan did not bother to pace himself; he doubted that he would need to sustain this effort for too long before Tosco accepted him into the crew. And the irascible first mate had not demanded the Cimmerian’s, weapon or attacked him for the sack of Zariri gold.
Slowly, the Mistress gained speed, propelled by Conan’s vigorous rowing and the strained efforts of the men behind him. The Cimmerian timed his breathing with practised skill; he was no stranger to the hard life of an oarsman. Many times had a taskmaster’s whip laid open his heaving back while he sat seething, chained to a slaver’s thwart, and the memory stoked the coals of his fury. Faster and faster he rowed, until two of his strokes marked a drummer’s single beat.
The gasping rowers behind him were robust men, but they could only match half of Conan’s mark. As the Mistress leapt forward, a gentle breeze stirred across the deck. She cruised west-southwest, within view of Zembabwei’s jungle-choked coastline. The Vendhyan pacer’s wrists hastened to match Conan’s gruelling pace, and the drum beats took on a feverish pitch. A wooden crack sounded behind Conan; from the comer of his eye, he saw that an oarsman had collapsed from exhaustion. The Cimmerian’s oar smashed into the oarsman’s fallen, idling blade.
Tosco, who had kept silent, snorted and spoke to the helmsman in Stygian, lowering his voice—but not low enough to keep his commands from reaching Conan’s keen ears. “That insolent cur rows well. He’ll fetch a pretty price on the slaver’s block in Luxur!”
Conan’s blood surged, his face an angry thundercloud. His eyes blazed—fiery blue torches framed by his tousled mane of black hair. Bracing his legs against the deck, he heaved upward and snapped the oars off at the tholepins, raising the spear-length pieces over his head and turning to face Tosco. “Argossean bilge rat! Perhaps you would care to match your sword with these twigs—or is your dog-like yapping meant to conceal a feeble bite?”
Roaring, the Argossean whipped the curved three-foot blade from his belt and jumped to the deck between the thwarts, his heavy boots thumping on the hard planking. Racing past the mast and shoving rowers out of his way, he swung his tulwar with brutal ferocity, aiming for Conan’s neck.
The Cimmerian smoothly stepped back, blocking the lethal sweep with one oar-shaft and swinging the other with all the force he could muster. It struck Tosco’s neck, knocking his head back in the opposite direction. A loud crack sounded beneath the thick flesh of his throat as Tosco’s spine snapped like a twig. Twitching, the bulky Argossean stumbled, head wobbling, his right ear lying against his shoulder. Then his eyes rolled upward as his last breath wheezed from his crushed windpipe. He fell over the rail while the panting rowers, drummer, and helmsman froze in amazement.
“You there,” Conan pointed to the Stygian helmsman. “Tell the captain that a new first mate is taking Tosco’s place. He’ll find the going quicker when his ship’s run by Conan of Cimmeria—” Belatedly, he bit off the hasty, damning words.
Gasping, the helmsman abandoned the tiller, sliding a slim-bladed throwing dagger from his copper-studded belt.
Conan ducked and rolled between the thwarts, stopping behind the partial cover provided by the ship’s single mast and drawing his sword.
The Stygian’s well-aimed dagger found a fleshy target, burying inches of steel in Conan’s calf. Bending and pulling out the dagger with a grunt, Conan fell to one knee. The knife had sunk into his shin bone. His sword, jarred loose when he struck the deck, clattered beyond his reach.
“Captain!” the frantic Stygian cried, pounding on the hatch to a cabin below decks.
Conan planted his back against the mast, readying himself for a last stand. He longed to toss his knife at the Stygian, but it was his only weapon. With it, he could bring down a crewman and grab a better weapon.
The dazed rowers regained their senses, rising stiffly from their benches and surrounding the Cimmerian. They pummelled and kicked him unmercifully, but Conan struck back with blind sweeps of the Stygian knife. Three rowers clutched bleeding wounds and backed away, but the others overwhelmed Conan by sheer numbers. Five men held him down while two others wrenched away his dagger.
Then the captain burst out of his cabin, drawing his double-edged dagger from a high-topped boot and strolling toward the pinned barbarian.
Conan groaned, seeing that the captain was Stygian, taller and swarthier than many of his race. The high, curving collar of his thick leather jerkin protected his neck. His head was shaven at the sides, forming a forward-pointing triangle of raven-black hair that ended above the bridge
of his nose. At his sharp command, the rowers backed away-—and Conan immediately saw the captain’s scar, slanting from his high forehead to the stump of his ear. His bloodshot eyes, the stubble of whiskers on his face, the hasty manner in which he had laced his wine-splashed jerkin—they all hinted that he might have been sleeping off a night of drinking. How else could he have slept through Conan’s encounter with Tosco?
He seemed to be fully awake now. Lifting a heavy boot, he kicked Conan in the belly just as the Cimmerian was rising to one knee. Another boot lashed out at Conan’s head, burying its hard toe under his jaw and sending a ripple of agony through his skull. Fighting to stay conscious, Conan managed to shake off the blinding pain of the captain’s kicks.
The Stygian chuckled, a low, dry laugh that froze Conan’s blood, lifting the fog from an old memory. That sneering face was different—aged and scarred—but it was the face of a Stygian admiral he had met years ago. Conan, back in his days of piracy, had put that scar on Khertet’s face.
It had been a lucrative raid, surprising the admiral by its very boldness. Too late had Khertet reacted, and his fleet had let the Tigress slip through with rich plunder destined for the treasury of the Stygian king and queen. Only Khertet’s flagship had caught up with the Tigress, but the ferocious defence of the pirates had driven back the admiral.
The Stygian admiral had sunk low indeed, from commanding a fleet of warships to captaining a miserable Vendhyan merchant vessel. Now Conan would bear the brunt of an anger that had doubtless been festering for years.
The Cimmerian tried to rise, but his reserves of strength were drained. All he could do was lie upon the planks while the rowers bound his hands and feet with thick ropes. “Admiral Khertet,” he panted, then mouthed a crude oath in Stygian.
“Conan.” Khertet spoke the word slowly, rolling it around in his mouth like a bite of bitter food. He fingered his scarred jaw and earlobe, then dug the point of his dagger into the skin above Conan’s ear. “After you burned my flagship, the king exiled me, ending my glorious career in Stygia. Since that day, I have prayed to Set for retribution. He has finally answered my prayers.” Khertet spat into the prone Cimmerian’s face. “Your dying agonies will bring me great pleasure....”
Conan and the Shaman's Curse Page 2