When he woke up, the hold was as dirk as a Stygian tomb. He peered through the grate, squinting, but he could see only the inky blackness of a cloudy night sky. Above decks, footfalls thudded against thick planking. The night watchmen were faithfully making their rounds.
Conan’s head ached miserably, and he could not concentrate through the fog of pain that seemed to enfold his whole body. He shivered in spite of the muggy heat that permeated the hold, and thick beads of sweat ran from his brow, soaking the rags around his head and stinging his wounds. He recognized the signs of fever and knew he was in for a long, restless night. At least no other rats had troubled him thus far.
Warm wind circulated through the grate, providing breathable air but doing little to ease his fever. The Mistress was again moving swiftly, if the rapidly slapping waves and creaking timbers were any indication. Little wonder that Khertet had insisted on this change of course. As a former admiral, he must have accumulated a wealth of information about the winds and currents of the waters near to his native Stygia.
A familiar rasping sounded beyond the cargo hold’s door; Conan knew well the scrape of steel against whetstone. The sentry was sharpening his sword, a common enough way to avoid nodding off during long stretches of quiet guard duty. Sighing, Conan ground his teeth together, trying vainly to shut out the increasingly painful headache.
Pallid light suddenly diffused the hold, causing Conan to stare through the grate at the sky. Like heavy curtains, the thick clouds had parted, unveiling the full moon. Its dull glow, more sallow than white, drew him in, transfixing his eyes. His gaze as vacuous and unblinking as those of a lotus dreamer’s, Conan watched in fascination as the moon grew, filling his entire field of vision like a bloated, pulsating orb.
The loud rush of wind filled his throbbing ears, but he felt no air stirring his body. Grunting apprehensively, he squeezed his eyelids shut, but the image of that bright sphere had been indelibly etched into his brain. His hands began to tremble, and a violent shiver rippled through his body from head to toe. Squirming and twisting as much as the ropes would permit, Conan lifted his head and stared down at his trapped limbs, certain that a nasty fever was burning through him.
The heavy cords seemed to tighten around him, digging into him until blood welled anew from dozens of abraded cuts. Another tremor shook him, and his skin began to itch, as if a thousand ants were crawling over him.
In the dim moonlight, he watched in horrified fascination as thick white hair began to sprout from his sweat-drenched skin. It sprang out, creeping over him and tickling his flesh until he writhed and thrashed, forcing the rope deeper into his arms, legs, and torso. Only then did the awful realization strike him—his body was swelling, his limbs distorting and expanding far beyond their normal size and shape.
His nose twitched uncontrollably at the scent of his own sweat. He detected a hundred other odours in the air, in the hold, and above, through the ceiling grate.
The scent of prey.
Conan shivered.
His hands, which he could bend only at the wrists, seemed to bum as if dipped in oil and set aflame. They had been tied against his hips, and he could feel... and hear... the fingers growing, elongating with a popping and stretching of bones and ligaments. Likewise, his feet began to curl, warping themselves into large, misshapen hands. The toes grew into long fingers with hairy white knuckles.
Conan opened his mouth to bellow, but all that came out was a rattling gargle. He felt intense pressure against his nose and forehead, as though something swelled inside his skull and sought egress through his face. He ran his tongue across unnaturally sharp teeth, and his jaw thrust itself forward, jutting against the taut skin of his face with a sound like wet leather being stretched and scraped.
A surge of pain knocked the breath out of him, and he arched his back, watching his already-massive chest enlarge. Invisible hands pulled at his ribs, bending them outward with agonizing slowness, until Conan thought he could bear the torment no longer.
A tortured howl finally burst out of his throat, his voice more animal than human. Bucking and heaving, Conan strained against his bonds with his furry white limbs, grunting, flexing, until the wood beneath him splintered. The Cimmerian slid from beneath the ropes and rolled onto the floor of the hold, feeling the circulation return to his misshapen, furry limbs.
He pressed his palms against the sides of his head, lifting his eyes to the glowering yellowish moon, snarling and growling in low, brutish tones.
His memory seemed strangely distant; he reached deep to recall where he had heard those sounds before. If only he could remember! His mind slipped away, and he fought to hold it, to remember who he was. He pounded his massive fists against a sturdy crate, reducing it to a pile of splinters.
Finally, he grasped the time and place of his guttural snarls. Years ago, in the dank, primeval jungles of the Black Kingdoms, he had faced a creature who made the same sounds... a hideous grey ape. That carnivorous abomination had tom apart half a dozen sturdy Bamula warriors before Conan and the rest of the Bamula hunting party brought it down. The ape, bleeding and bristling with spears, had wounded three more men before falling.
Conan felt the memory slip away, like water trickling between his fingers, and it was gone... all the remembrances of his life as the human, Conan, fled from his lumpy, shrunken brain.
All that remained was raw, unquenched fury.
He needed to kill, to sink his fangs and claws into soft flesh, to rip and shred limbs of anything living, to crack bones and suck the marrow from their jagged ends.
He felt no pain from the wounds on the sides of his head or from his punctured leg. His nose twitched, again catching the sweet scent of warm blood nearby. So keen had his senses become that through the thick wood of the cargo hold’s door, he could hear the beating of a heart.
Prey.
He charged at the barrier that separated him from his quarry. His burly shoulder crashed into it, cracking the dense boards and wrenching iron nails from the cross-pieces. The door blew off its hinges, slamming the astonished guard against the opposite wall and crushing him like a bug. Conan tossed aside the wooden wreckage and wrapped his hand around the stunned guard’s neck, lifting him into the air and squeezing until the man’s eyes bulged and burst from their sockets.
Conan casually tore the corpse into two bloody halves, flinging the head and torso away and cramming the man’s soft vitals into his slavering mouth.
As the grisly feast continued, shouts from above mingled with the rasp of drawn swords and the thump of booted feet, running toward the hold. Conan’s predatory instincts registered all these noises, and he let the guard’s gutted carcass plop to the deck. Leaping straight for the hold’s doorway, he rushed toward those sounds, knowing that it was more of the weak, pink-skinned beasts that were coming. He would kill them all and grind their bones between his teeth.
He stopped at the stairs leading up to the deck. Bending his knees, he flexed calf muscles that were as thick as a strong man’s thighs. Before the sailors reached the top of the short staircase, Conan sprang upward, landing upon the deck with a thump that made the planks shudder under his weight.
A searing light stabbed through his eyes, piercing his brain like a spear. Conan looked up into the black-blue night sky and saw the cause of his pain, the orb that burned him with pale fire. He would quench the flames of his agony with blood from the bodies of these puny, soft creatures who approached him. There were many of them, enough to drench that orb’s baleful glow in a river of blood.
Five rowers brandished their blades, surrounding him. Their arms rippled with muscle from years of hard labour at the bench. Vendhyans did not use slaves for rowing; only staunch, robust men with combat skills that had ended many a pirate’s career. But even a hardened rogue would have trembled at the sight of the blood-besmeared ape who towered before them. Only their numbers lent them courage, and they struck as one.
Cutlasses whistled through empty air. Conan b
ounded backward with catlike agility, confounding his would-be slayers. His elongated arms outreached their blades, and he seized the closest rower by his sword arm, wrenching the limb from its socket and hurling the still-twitching appendage into the sea. The dismembered man fell forward, toward Conan, clutching at the spewing socket and screaming like a doomed soul in Hell.
Paling at the grisly ferocity of the ape’s attack, the others nonetheless surged forward, trying to drive Conan into the Mistress’s narrow bow. Wrapping his claws around the prone rower’s ankles, Conan lifted the screeching man and swung him in an arc before the others could stay their sword cuts.
Conan’s human shield absorbed the rowers’ blows, and the force of his swing knocked two onto the deck while stripping the others’ weapons from their hands. Roaring, Conan bludgeoned a prone man with the flopping, blood-spewing corpse, and charged between the two unarmed men.
Other rowers were arriving, pouring from the forecastle, while behind them, the hatch to the officer’s quarters banged open. Conan would have recognized the men who dashed out as Jhatil, Chadim, and Khertet—but to the ape they were all naught but fodder. Khertet shouted orders, but all Conan heard were a jumble of sounds, strange mouthings with less meaning than the squawking of birds or the chattering of monkeys.
The disarmed rowers scrambled for their blades, but Conan tore one apart before the man could retrieve his fallen cutlass. The other managed to jab his point into Conan’s side before he, too, was held fast in the ape’s lethal grip. His arms were pulled from his body, their ragged stumps jetting blood.
The foremost rank of rowers stepped forward, jamming the ship’s deck from starboard to port. Eager to strike a blow for their fallen fellows, they swallowed their fear and shock, following Khertet’s shouted commands, trying to keep to the rail and looking for an opening. These men fought more shrewdly, aiming cuts and slashes at Conan’s flailing arms. But again the cunning ape used the bodies of the fallen, this time as gory missiles.
The deck afforded the rowers no easy means to duck the hail of severed limbs and mangled torsos that Conan was hurling. But from the safety of the poop deck, Chadim tossed knives at the hairy, blood-smeared juggernaut. With each throw, a hilt jutted from the ape’s hide, but the beast did not so much as flinch. The knives were naught but the stings of steel bees; his vitals were untouched by Chadim’s short blades.
A few rowers slipped in puddles of ghastly slime that gushed or oozed from the ruptured bodies of the slain. Conan pounced upon the fallen, rending their limbs and cracking their bones, tossing their pulped cadavers overboard with wanton frenzy. Bravely, the crew surrounded the gore-stained ape and hewed wildly at hide as tough as a leather jerkin. A few drew blood—thick, reddish-black ichor that welled sluggishly from deep stab wounds.
These blows served only to pump Conan’s savage ape brain full of murderous hysteria. He ran amok into their ranks, heedless of their slashing swords, biting huge chunks of flesh from their unarmored bodies and slitting their throats with the deadly swipe of his cruel claws. Pitted against an unstoppable storm of talons and teeth, the crew finally lost their nerve and fell back. Of the score of men who had stood against the ape, only three officers and five rowers still breathed.
Khertet thundered in frustration, desperately trying to rally his beleaguered men.
V
Nehebku’s Noose
The few surviving crewmen turned their cutlasses to the lines of the Mistress’s single launch, leaping onto it as it fell to the water. They seized the oars and bent their backs, rowing like men possessed. Cursing, the Stygian captain looked up fearfully at the rampaging ape and promptly threw himself through the hatch to the officer’s quarters with Chadim and Jhatil at his heels. They had barely slammed the hatch’s cross bar into place before Conan reached the stout wooden portal.
This door was more secure than the cargo hold’s, for it had been built to keep previous loot—and the officers’ skins—-safe from pirate assaults. Working with the furious speed borne of fear, the three men wedged every heavy object that they could find against the hatch. They piled up barrels, built makeshift braces of a few spare oars, and hammered spikes into the timbers for reinforcement. The Vendhyan custom of keeping tools in the officer’s storage proved its worth, although no mariner could have imagined this emergency.
Roaring with the furore of a dozen tempests, Conan pounded on the hatch until the wood shivered in its heavy frame. But the thick hinge-bolts held, and the hatch withstood the abuse of the ape’s bludgeoning fists. By design, the hatch lay at an angle. Its size and position prevented Conan from throwing his shoulder against the wood, as he had done with the cargo hold’s door.
Panting, Conan stepped back from the hatch, smacking his lips at the visceral stench that was rising from the ship. He vented his ire upon the human wreckage littering the Mistress’s gruesome deck. The moon loomed nearer the water, as if bearing witness to the atrocious scene: the grunting ape, gorging itself upon the glistening innards of victims.
Eating until his belly could hold no more, the sated beast loped across the planks toward the mast Settling against it with a moist, booming belch, he felt his gaze drawn again to the moon. It had sunk below the water, as if swallowed by the sea.
Its glow had receded. He smacked his lips and sighed, sliding down the mast until his buttocks rested upon the deck. When the last sliver of the moon disappeared, Conan’s eyelids grew heavy. The red tide of blood had extinguished the unbearable burning of the disc that dominated the night sky.
Conan’s head drooped until his chin slumped against his massive chest, and sleep overcame him.
In the officer’s quarters, Khertet paced restlessly, his lips drawn back in a ferocious scowl.
Chadim wiped his damp forehead on the sleeve of his tunic. The moist heat of night filled the cabin, and the air was stale and oppressive. “From which of Sebeq’s seven abysses did that hairy fiend crawl? By Asura, I have never seen a beast so thirsty for blood!”
Khertet ignored the Vendhyan helmsman, lifting his gaze from the deck only to glance at the barricaded door.
He had not spoken since the pounding on the door had ceased.
Groaning, Jhatil rubbed the back of his neck and scratched his wispy grey beard. “Aye,” he said, nodding to Chadim. “Truly it is a demon, but worse than any issue from Sebeq’s vile wombs. You were right, Chadim, we should never have set a course through these waters. Nehebku’s Noose has snared us!”
“Silence, old fool,” Khertet snapped. “You city-bred Vendhyans have never seen the jungle apes of Zembabwei I have, though never have I seen one so vicious. That ape is no minion of Nehebku’s—it is some deviltry of Conan’s. I should have slit the Cimmerian pig’s throat when I had the chance.”
Chadim’s eyes flashed as Khertet spoke. “You are unwise to discount Nehebku, Stygian. When she last fed, Jhatil’s grandfather was but a stripling. Our lore-masters say that she awakens every three generations, preying upon creatures of the deep and even rising to the surface to seize unwary vessels. She has taken many forms in her long and terrible reign of this region’s waters. This shaggy man-beast is surely another of her incarnations.”
“And the blood,” Jhatil added, nodding. “That ‘ape’ has strewn a fresh trail of meat that the most sluggish of sea beasts would find impossible to resist.”
Chadim chewed his lower lip. “Did you see the full moon tonight? It marks the beginning of the Month of the Fish, midway through the Year of the Serpent. Yama’s star is in the House of Abwharim—”
Khertet interrupted, rolling his eyes upward. “Pah! Only fools or madmen let the night skies decide their fate. I know not how, but the Cimmerian has once again slain my crew and stolen my vessel. By the fangs of Set, I would wish that your Nehebku were real, if she would come and slay the barbarian. Doubtless he stands above us, laughing from the tiller, steering the Mistress to some pirate cove.” The three men lapsed into glum silence, staring dejectedly at the walls of t
heir self-made prison. Then Khertet’s brow furrowed, and Chadim tilted his head sideways, as if straining to hear a distant sound.
Jhatil, balancing atop a barrel, pressed his ear to the top of the hatch.
WHUMP!
The Mistress lurched violently, as if slapped by a giant hand. Jhatil’s arms whirled in the air, then he lost his balance and fell to the deck, narrowly rolling away from a toppling barrel.
Khertet, whose sea legs were not so easily upset, stood gaping incredulously as the Mistress shuddered, listing and reeling as if rammed full bore by a Turanian war galley. The Stygian’s dusky face paled.
“Nehebku,” Chadim whispered, his eyes wide, mouth agape. He flung himself to the deck, covering his head with his arms and sobbing in sheer terror.
A thunderous crash jolted Conan from his deep repose. Rising slowly to his feet, he shook an unusual fog of slumber from his brain. He was instantly aware that something was wrong, for he seldom slept so heavily. Even the faint light of the coming dawn had failed to awaken him.
He braced himself against the mast. As his vision cleared, the carnage surrounding him came into focus. He stared at the blood-soaked deck and the shredded heaps of entrails and bones, almost gagging at the putrid, nose-shrivelling reek that wafted up his nostrils. And although the haze of sleep lingered in his mind, his body tingled with energy, more vitality than he had felt in days.
But how had he escaped from the cargo hold?
He lifted his hands to the sides of his head, and an icy finger brushed his spine. Where there had been ghastly cuts, his fingers traced nearly healed skin. It was as if the slashes had been made days ago. Conan’s flesh crawled in suspicion of this miracle; he wondered if he were dreaming. He accepted the boon with hesitant cheer, for he had an instinctive dread of events that were stained even faintly with the ink of sorcery. The calf-wound he had taken from Chadim’s knife had also vanished, leaving not even the pink line of a scar. The only marks on his body were faint abrasions criss-crossing his arms, legs, and chest.
Conan and the Shaman's Curse Page 4