“Crom,” he muttered. “What sorcery is this?” Racking his hazy memory, he struggled to recall the events that had brought him here. He remembered drifting into sleep last night...
Then the images flashed into his mind, like scenes from a half-remembered nightmare. His transformation—and the butchery that had followed. Reeling from the repugnant memories of his macabre feast, he forced down his rising gorge.
But Conan pushed aside these disturbing, shadowy recollections. He had little time to dwell upon the atrocities that he had committed while transformed, for the Mistress had begun to list. The wind was still pushing her through the water on a meandering course. He had thought the crash that awakened him had been the Mistress striking a reef, but near her stem, he saw a churning, boiling eddy. It was nothing natural, that whirlpool, a thing unlike any he had ever seen in all his years at sea. His flesh crawled in spite of the heat, and a feeling of dread rippled through his bones.
Staring at the whirlpool, he watched it bubble and foam until steam rose from the water in thick, translucent vapours. The Mistress, caught in the swirling current, slowly circled around the eddy’s widening perimeter.
Without so much as a warning splash, a scaly, red leviathan reared its head from the centre of the boiling region. Barnacles and sea scum sprouted from its bumpy, dull skin. Its immense skull reminded Conan of a serpent’s save for the rows of pulsating gills on its neck and the pair of eyes each as large as Conan’s head. Those dreadful orbs bulged from its misshapen skull like noxious, pinkish-yellow boils. Its tail was nowhere in sight; doubtless it lay deep below the maelstrom.
Opening its fanged mouth wide enough to swallow three men, the behemoth’s head lunged straight for the Mistress.
Conan froze, transfixed by the unspeakable, ageless malice that glistened in those veined eyes. It was as if the bowels of the deepest Hell had opened, spewing out the most fearsome serpent-devil ever spawned.
As its dripping snout thrust toward him, Conan could see splintered pieces of the keel, impaled on the sea beast’s fangs. The Cimmerian immediately deduced the reason for the Mistress’s labouring: the monster’s jaw had ripped through wood as thick as a man’s waist, tearing out a chunk of timber large enough to gut the Mistress.
A blast of steam hissed through the serpent’s yawning orifice, reddening Conan’s skin and searing his eyes. He shielded his face with his arm and broke the paralysing effect of the thing’s insidious eyes.
The Cimmerian sprang sideways, his heels brushing against the beast’s sweltering skin. Its rapier-like fangs missed him by a handspan, closing instead upon the base of the mast. The thick wooden shaft broke like a twig, thumping against the rail. Conan rolled out of its way, ducking under the sweep of the crimson-skinned head.
Undaunted, the barbarian grabbed the largest cutlass within reach, prying away a disembodied hand that still gripped the hilt. Grimly, he braced himself against the slanting deck, preparing for the serpent’s next lunge. He had fought against the children of Set before and knew that a well-placed sword thrust through the tender, vulnerable roof of a snake’s mouth might pierce the vile creature’s brain. He would need to bury the blade deep, to be certain, and his first attack must succeed, before the whirlpool swallowed the doomed ship and sucked him into its steamy abyss.
The air around him grew unbearably hot, thickening and filling his nose with a rotten, sulphurous stench. The labouring vessel creaked as the water roared and bubbled around it.
Swinging back and around, the beast again thrust its maw toward Conan, who stood defiantly in its path, his feet planted upon the blood-besmeared deck. Again the serpent’s gleaming fangs flashed in the light like ivory daggers in curving racks.
But the Cimmerian was ready. Vaulting forward to meet its diving head, he plunged his blade into the exposed pink flesh of the mouth. A stinging cloud of steam washed over him before he could release his grip on the sword, but he avoided the deadly fangs by diving and rolling onto the deck. The powerful jaws snapped onto naught but air— and a few strands of Conan’s flowing black mane.
Reaching for another cutlass, the Cimmerian scrambled to his feet and waited to see if his attack had skewered the thing’s brain. Would one thrust be enough? Never had he clashed with so gigantic a serpent!
As the beast pulled its head back toward the centre of the eddy, Conan could see the hilt jutting from its mouth, its three-foot blade a meagre thorn in that elephantine maw. The Mistress continued to spiral and sink; the sea rose to the halfway mark on her broached hull. The desperate Cimmerian knew that time was running out. In another moment he would have to plunge overboard and swim like a man possessed lest the whirlpool suck him into its churning, frothing throat.
He tossed aside the useless cutlass as another plan sprang into his head. Positioning himself amidships and bracing his feet against the starboard thwarts, he waited for the sea giant’s next assault. Its head, rocking back on a neck thick enough for a horse to ride on, jumped forward again, intent on devouring its tiny but elusive Cimmerian prey.
Flexing his knees and wrapping his iron-hard arms around the fallen mast, Conan strained to lift it, using legs and arms to wrestle the thick, unwieldy spar into the path of the spike-toothed muzzle. Its weight was easily thrice his own, and he felt his back creak from the burden. The thicker end of the mast had been splintered into a tapering, jagged point, and Conan struggled to lift this end over his head, shifting his grip and unbending his knees. He dragged the pole slightly forward, bracing the far end against the deck as if setting a titan’s spear against a charge.
The serpent, with eerie cunning, seemed to be aware of Conan’s defiant effort. It twisted its snout away, trying to check its swift forward motion. But the Mistress was moving, too, as Conan had foreseen.
“Eat this, by Crom!” he bellowed, swinging the wide, hardwood beam straight for the brutish skull. Corded muscles rippled from his forearms and knotted in this shoulders, bulging from the strain. The beast’s dodging head slammed into the broken mast, but the jagged base missed its mouth by a sword-length. It plunged into the glowering pink eye with a sickening wet smack, lancing the bulging orb in a gout of yellow spew.
Driven by the force of the serpent’s lunge, the mast gouged out the eye and ploughed into the thing’s thick brain-pan. Gobs of pungent pink slime gushed from the gaping socket, spraying the mast with an ooze so rancid that its smell made Conan’s eyes water. The gelatinous eye slipped from the end of the mast and flopped to the deck with a greasy splat.
Hissing out a foul gasp of scalding breath, the impaled creature slid down the mast and crashed onto the deck, convulsing. Thrashing weakly, the serpent tugged to free its head, but the mast’s yardarm had caught on the rowers’ bench, trapping the beast. Spouting puffs of steam mixed with its own vital fluids. The jaws flexed one final time, heaving up a viscous mound of sludge before slumping at the feet of its slayer.
Panting, Conan stepped back, light-headed from his exertions. He looked out over the bow, along the serpent’s body, toward the whirlpool. The eddy was slowing, receding. But the Mistress continued spinning toward the gurgling centre of the maelstrom—from where the now-motionless body of the serpent had emerged. Conan wondered where its tail might be; the thing had been at least thrice the length of the ship.
Other snakes he had slain had whipped their bodies about in their death throes, but this brute had kept its end submerged throughout the battle. Perhaps it was anchored deep in the bowels of a reef or even the floor of the ocean.
But he had no time to ponder this further, thinking instead of how to escape from the sinking Mistress. The ship’s only launch had been taken, so Conan set to the task of hastily slapping together a crude raft. He dragged up the cargo hold’s door, noting with alarm that the hold wallowed in water. Lashing wood from a crate to the door with a length of hawser, he fashioned a makeshift and far from seaworthy craft. He hoped it would hold together long enough to bear him to an island, if not to the southern c
oast.
He left a length of rope ties to the crude craft, lowering it into the water. If only he could find some supplies... he eyed the hold wistfully, knowing that the time for foraging was well past. Lack of water would slim his chances of survival... with even a small barrel, he could last for weeks.
Swearing, he raced for the hatch to the officer’s quarters, where the food and water would be found. Perhaps the galley would not be as flooded as the cargo hold had been.
As Conan neared the hatch, a muffled shout reached his ears. Startled, he paused and pressed his restored ear against the wood. From within, he heard a familiar voice.
“Cower here if you wish and drown like rats! Set take both of you dogs!” Khertet’s loud curse boomed through the door.
“Nehebku will strip your insolent flesh and crack your bones, Stygian whoreson!” Chadim yelled back, his voice tight with panic.
Jhatil’s strained tones cut short any reply that Khertet might have made. “Enough, both of you! The water rises to our knees already, and you waste precious time. Perhaps Nehebku’s gullet is too full of ape-meat to worry with morsels like us. Better to risk whatever awaits us above than to spend out last breath trading insults.”
A vague memory returned to Conan, of chasing prey into a hold and being unable to pursue them further. Conan heard the sounds of frantic scraping and hammering from the other side of the door, noticing for the first time that the hard wood bore wide, shallow dents, in the shapes of massive fists. He put his hands against them, noting with awe that his alter ego’s bestial paws were twice the size of his own. The door must have been barricaded against him.
Abandoning any hope of recovering a barrel of water, Conan quickly surveyed the fallen, retrieving the best sword he could find. Before he could return to his makeshift raft, the closed hatch burst open. Khertet emerged, his dusky face flushed as he saw the Cimmerian awaiting him. He lifted his thin-bladed sword, a master armourer’s work forged of unbreakable Akbitanan steel.
VI
Steel Vengeance
“You!” Khertet screamed at Conan. “Barbarian dog, I’ll—” he stepped back, gaping at the slain serpent. The beast’s gory head lolled on the besmeared foredeck, its single eye frozen in a death-stare.
As the two men faced each other, the ailing ship continued to spin slowly, so that Khertet now stood between Conan and the raft. Conan’s blood seethed with red-hot fury. “Stygian scum—join your crew in Hell!” Leaping with the speed of a panther, Conan lifted his blade, aiming a slash at Khertet’s swarthy neck.
The wily Stygian regained his composure just in time to raise his blade, parrying Conan’s lunge. He whirled and countered with a thrust of his own, nicking the Cimmerian’s forearm.
Ignoring the dripping wound, the barbarian aimed another brutal swipe at Khertet. There was no time for prolonged swordplay, and Conan knew that Khertet’s weapon—forged from metal as resilient as it was rare— was both stronger and lighter than his own. He would of necessity have to beat Khertet by brute force. Knotted muscle and iron-hard sinew propelled a slash that the Stygian parried by sheer reflex, sparks flying from both weapons at the impact.
Conan’s blade shattered. “Crom’s teeth!” he swore, tossing aside the broken cutlass.
Laughing, Khertet stepped toward his opponent for a killing blow. But the Mistress, continuing to sink, shifted and threw her captain off balance. Khertet stumbled forward and pitched to the deck. His sword clattered to the planks, well beyond the reach of his frantically grasping fingers. The Stygian’s laugh turned to a groan of pain as his leg twisted under him. He fumbled at his belt for his dagger.
Chadim rushed out from below decks., dagger in hand. Jhatil ran up behind him, cutlass upraised, moving so fast that he nearly stumbled into Chadim.
Conan wrenched a cutlass from the hand of a dead sailor. Balancing it carefully, he hurled it at Chadim, whose arm was drawn back to throw his own knife. The cutlass struck the Vendhyan in the breast, slipping between his ribs and passing through his body. Its bloody point jutted out between Chadim’s shoulder blades, slashing Jhatil’s neck. Chadim fell backward, his heart pierced. Pinned beneath him, Jhatil drowned in the blood that spewed from his own slit throat.
Khertet held his dagger low for a disembowelling thrust. Conan dived for the captain’s dropped sword, seizing its slippery hilt as the Stygian’s dagger-thrust grazed his side. Conan shot out his free hand, grabbing Khertet’s wrist and twisting it until he heard the snapping of bones. The dagger spun from the Stygian’s nerveless fingers, and Conan shoved Khertet toward the rail.
But the stubborn Stygian scooped up a dead rower’s cutlass. Wielding it in his good hand, he charged at the Cimmerian. “Scum!” he panted, approaching warily in an expert swordsman’s stance. “With this base blade shall I send you to Hell!” He lunged with blinding speed.
Conan swept his arms back over his right shoulder, wielding the Stygian’s blade in a two-handed grip. Twisting to avoid Khertet’s point, he swung the thin blade in a wide arc, driving the sharpened edge through skull and jawbone. Wrenching the weapon from Khertet’s cloven neck, Conan leapt to the deck of the raft while the twitching corpse fell over the rail and into the swirling sea.
The Cimmerian coiled the mooring-rope and took up an oar, hoping to escape from the whirlpool that churned around him. Although the swirling of the water had slowed somewhat since the sea-beast’s death, Conan could feel the unnatural warmth of the roiling ocean; it lapped hungrily at his raft. Rowing with deep, powerful strokes, he gradually moved away from the ship of death. He glanced over a labouring shoulder at the doomed Mistress. Her bellyful of water had dragged her down, dislodging the floating mast from its deck. The serpent’s carcass sank quietly into a briny grave.
Sweat poured down Conan’s back. The water had warmed his raft, and the sun blazed down from a cloudless sky. Conan felt precious moisture drain from his body, but he was powerless to stop it. When he had put enough distance between himself and the Mistress, he lifted his oar from the water to conserve strength. He was not yet weary, but his pulse was racing and his heart pounded more rapidly than it should from the exertion of rowing.
He did not dwell upon his lack of provisions. In his travels, he had crossed deserts on foot and endured day after day of thirst and starvation. While his raft drifted, he was struck by the similarity between the southern sea and the eastern desert. Vast wastelands they were, ruled by the same king. From his lofty throne, the baleful sun reigned supreme over these two wildernesses, demanding a tribute of sweat from those who dared enter. Even the ruthless kings of Stygia or Turan could show more compassion that the cruel sun.
Conan was concerned less about sustenance than about the mystery of his recent transformation. As much as the sun beat upon him, Conan dreaded more the coming of the moon. Would the shaman’s curse strike him again? Its effects troubled even the battle-hardened Cimmerian. He felt no pity for his dead captors. What irked him was the loss of control—no, the loss of his very identity. On the ship, Conan of Cimmeria had ceased to exist. He had become a mindless carnivore.
The thought of eating man-flesh twisted his belly into knots. Once, he had tangled with the cannibals of Darfar, in the lawless city of Zamboula. Those dark-hearted dogs were the scourge of the southern lands, and it sat ill with Conan to share anything in common with them. But the curse had helped him to escape imprisonment and avoid a grisly fate in Luxur. He had beaten the sea serpent, and he would find some way of overcoming the shaman’s hideous spell.
He wrung the sweat from his matted hair, feeling a sudden dizziness. Closing his eyes, he settled onto his raft. There was barely enough room on its hard, uneven surface to accommodate his sizeable frame. The dull ache in his forearm reminded him of the nick he had taken in the brief fight with Khertet, and he glanced at the red-rimmed wound.
The dagger’s cut was narrow, not even as wide as his thumb, but an angry purple swelling had risen from the wound’s edges. He recognized all too cl
early the signs of poison—a paralysing stain with a hue characteristic of the Purple Lotus. He should have known that Khertet, in true Stygian fashion, would envenom his dagger. Cimmerians had no need to resort to such base tactics, relying upon their strength and savagery. Conan deemed poison unmanly.
At least the venom was acting slowly, not impeding his escape.
Willing himself to remain conscious, Conan forced his body to move. He dipped the blade into the sea to cleanse it, knowing that its metal was more resistant to rust than baser steel. Washed of its stains, his sword gleamed in the sun. Gritting his teeth, he made three deep slashes across his forearm, then plunged it into the water. He felt the sting of salt burning the lotus from the cuts. When the sensation abated, he drew out his arm and shook it, sucking at the wound and spitting until he no longer tasted the poison’s bitter residue.
No venom remained at the surface of the slash, but his rowing efforts had circulated the accursed stuff into the rest of his body. He fought it with fading willpower, eventually slumping back to the raft. Staring upward, he saw that clouds had begun to gather overhead, dark and brooding. Wind gusted across the raft, cooling him off.
Conan fought to concentrate, recognizing the signs of the impending storm. With ebbing strength, he tied the raft’s heavy mooring-rope around his waist, lashing himself to the craft lest he become separated from it. He worked his sword-point into the wood, sinking it as far in as he could. He knew he would be in for a rough time, but he did not despair. Tropical storms were wont to end as quickly as they began; he had weathered plenty of them on land and sea.
He struggled to stay alert but could not overcome the powerful taint of the Purple Lotus. While the sky darkened, he slipped into a torpid slumber.
Conan and the Shaman's Curse Page 5