“Ah well, it was a worthy effort,” Tjai reflected. “At least, if those guards had not been lucky enough to die, we might have gained hostages.”
To Conan, seated on a flat stone nearby, Tjai’s words did not sound genuinely comforting; in truth, they sounded even more glum and disconsolate than the drab innermost hues of the Cimmerian’s own sullen spirit. In reply he only grunted, yielding the conversation to the moonlit silence and the gurgle of water in the rock crevice.
“It would have been well worth dying for,” the Dbarsi tried again moments later.
“Aye,” Conan snarled, “but most assuredly not worth living for—or through!” Impatiently he flexed his shoulder, then halted himself, emitting a low, reluctant breath of pain. The thews of his back and side, exposed through the rents in his shredded shirt, were one large and vivid bruise.
“Nay,” the northman ruefully said. “My attempt cost the lives of a dozen hopeless men. Now the bitter survivors shun me—shun us, that is, since you insist on casting in your lot with mine—and the pox-ridden guards pelt us from the catwalks every chance they get, and aim quarrels at me because of my reputation as a troublemaker.”
“True enough,” Tjai agreed glumly. “’Tis a real misfortune. I had my groin-stash with me—” he patted a pouch of cloth at his waist “—the tidy fortune of gems I have set aside for the chance of escape. Have you seen it, my friend?” Removing the twisted rag from his clout, he unfolded and spread it on a stone. Its grimy folds contained raw jewels and nuggets that glinted dimly in the moonlight: gold and turquoise, amethyst and jasper, chrysoprase and ruby. “Not a man here but has one, and carries it with him at all times... haven’t you?”
“Um,” Conan grunted. Taking a packet from his lap, he twisted it open and emptied it carelessly on the stone beside him. “Not as well-chosen as yours, since I have had less time here—but that will come, doubtless.” Again he shook his black-maned head. “Crom,” he cursed, “is there no future for us but to rake and shovel up all the rock we toppled down, and hoist it up in basket loads out of this wretched hole—after gleaning through it for any pittance of gold and gems our slave-masters may require?”
“’Tis hard, I know,” Tjai murmured, gathering up his hoarded treasures and returning them to his belt. “Day by day one gets used to the routine, toiling and sleeping, handling the gems. But then, when the hope of escape is dangled so near, so vividly, and is just as suddenly snatched away—” He shook his head. “The thought of freedom, of returning to one’s homeland and seeing one’s family... why, one begins to wonder if this life is worthwhile.” “Aye,” Conan grated, shaking his fist out toward the throat of the crevice at the beetling walls beyond. “It is rankle-some to me, a climber trained since birth! None here can mount sheerer, smoother scarps than I. But the coarse, rotten stone of these hills is hard enough to abrade a man’s flesh, yet scuffs or crumbles away at the weight of his step. When solidly bedded, it patters down and gives warning. I dare say that if I made the climb, I could not get within a dozen paces of the edge without calling down a rain of stones, arrows, and offal upon myself!” Settling back and resting his elbow on one knee, the Cimmerian fisted his chin grimly.
“I may yet try an escape again, but if I do, Tjai, I warn you, it will be alone.” He regarded his slender Ilbarsi companion balefully. “I want no more innocents to share the bitter fruit of my scheming!”
Some days later, Tjai stalked Conan down the dusty ramp to the stream crevice. He watched as his quarry waded out into the pond, bent, and bathed his face and upper body in the chill water.
Then some animal instinct warned the Cimmerian. He splashed to the bank and seized hold of his pick-hammer.
The lean Ilbarsi laughed and stepped forward. “Tell me, Conan—the time is near, is it not? What is your plan? ’ ’ “Tjai, what are you raving about? Are you mad, to creep up on a man this way?”
“Mad, Conan? Nay, not I. You are the hag-ridden one these past days, hulking about and brooding... ready to crack other men’s heads on the least provocation, and answering none save in grunts and snarls.” The hillman cagily eyed him. “You are hatching some escape, Cimmerian— I can tell it, and I want to go with you! It cannot be far off now. Tell me, what is your scheme?”
Squatting beside the pond, dripping and goose-prickling, the northerner sombrely shook his head. “It matters not what plan I may or may not have, since if I have one, it is for myself alone. ’Tis me the guards are trying to murder, not you. You cannot follow where I would go, nor could any man here, even if I chose to let him try. So just leave me alone!”
“Tell me, knave!” Hefting his own battered pick, the olive-skinned man took a menacing stance. “For you were right: I am half-mad, and will be wholly so if I cannot escape this filthy hole!” The dark hollows around the Ilbarsi's eyes seemed to echo his words, as did the shadowy recesses of the crevice they stood in. “Another week here will be the death of me, Cimmerian. Do do me a kindness... let me die seeking freedom!”
“Nay, Tjai, hush now. ’Tis nonsense,” the larger man said. “Listen, though. If I do escape, I promise you I will be back to fill a wagon or two with this wealth—” he patted the pouch at his waist “—and to avenge myself on these ape-fisted guards. See here, fellow, do you really believe I could pass up such wealth? Or take the abuse these louts have heaped on me, without exacting full payment? Just sit tight, and when I return, I’ll slit a few slandering Brythunian gullets, free the lot of you rogues, and make us all rich in the bargain. Now, let us have no more of it!”
Tjai stood unmoving before him, weapon in hand. “You have three choices, Conan. Watch me go to the centre of the mine and scream out that you are plotting an escape, or slay me to prevent it, or else tell me your plan. Now, speak, and truthfully, without your false promises!”
Conan raised his pick in menace, but then cast it down to clatter sharply on the stones. “All right, then, Tjai, and curse you for a wheedling hillman! I’ll tell you, if you swear to say nothing of it to the others. Once I tell, you’ll see why I cannot take you along.”
“After you tell me,” Tjai put in, “I will be bound to go along—”
“Enough!” Conan rapped at him. “Ilbarsi hound, can you swim?”
That stopped the hillman flat. “Swim?” he marvelled after a moment. “What do I look like, Cimmerian, a man or a fish? What man can breathe underwater?”
The northman grunted. “I thought not,” he said. “Your folk are ignorant of the skill. I myself, when raiding Vanir trading-posts by canoe in the far north, picked up the knack of it. It comes in handy from time to time.”
Tjai shook his head. “Conan, be not a fool! If you are thinking of throwing yourself into this underground stream, I warn you, it means sure death. Legends say with certainty that it runs straight to Tartarus, the kingdom of the dead— the one place under heaven that is worse than here!” The convict folded his arms, accepting the story with total faith. “Anyway, there is no air beneath, so you will smother first in the black, boiling depths of the earth. Other miners, crazed with despair, have tried that route of escape, and none was ever heard from again.”
“And what does that prove? That they died, or that they had good sense?” Conan shook his head impatiently. “Nay, Tjai, I would not wish to persuade you of it, since you cannot accompany me. But I tell you so that you will have faith in my survival: there is air, caught in pockets in the roof of such water caves as this. And light too, for a little way at least, let in through crevices in the quarry wall above us.”
“How do you know that?” the Ilbarsi asked sullenly.
“I have explored downstream in secret—three, no, four times now, and each time I practised stretching my lungs to go without breath a little longer. I have swum to the extent of fifty paces or more. So far into the cave, one can still find air—enough for one man to fill his lungs, anyway, if he does not tarry too long and waste too many breaths. I know there would not be enough for two.” He laid his hand grav
ely onto his friend’s shoulder.
“Beyond the farthest point of my explorations, the fissure narrows, and the stream grows swift. I do not think I could make my way back against the current.” The hulking Cimmerian shook his head. “That is the spot I intend to pass today. A rope would be of little use, for eventually I will have to swim free and trust the river. So, likely you will not see me again—until I return with a band of cutthroats to free you,” he added to reassure his listener.
“Conan, take me with you!” the Ilbarsi pleaded, laying aside his pick. “Wait another few days, and teach me to swim and breathe underwater. I can learn too!”
“Not in this fish-bath, Tjai, and not in cramped darkness. It would be impossible. The chill of this water by itself is enough to knock most men senseless. Who here of the miners swims in this pool—or even bathes in it, I ask you.” Stepping into the pond knee-deep, he resumed the slow process of inuring his body to the cold. “No, my friend, you must wait and preserve yourself. I shall return, I swear it—only for your sake, since these others dogs mean nothing to me.”
“Conan, I must come along! Having once smelt freedom—”
“Nay, enough!” The Cimmerian slung a handful of water at Tjai, who shrank back in dread from its chilly touch. Meanwhile, Conan strode deeper into the pond until its lapping mirror-surface ringed his waist. “If I die, your death would be in vain. If I live, I can win your freedom. Either way, you will do better to wait and have faith.”
A moment later, Conan eased in deeper, letting the water lap around his chest and shoulders. He had to incline his head under the low overhang of the rock wall, and his voice echoed with the trickling water. “Wait here a while if you will,” he told Tjai, “and learn whether I am turned back by some unknown obstacle. If not, then farewell.” He took a deep breath and ducked his head underneath the water.
The cold was sharp enough to enforce brisk physical activity. It bored in at die nape of Conan’s neck and gripped the top of his skull like an icy helmet. Yet even as he cringed from it, his skin numbed. Kicking and breasting through the water in frog-fashion, he dove down under the hummock of stone that crowded the pool’s sandy bottom.
Beyond, the cavern widened into dim reaches that offered the faint glimmer of light to his wide-open eyes. Pacing himself, Conan added the force of his kicks to the smooth trending of the current. He covered the distance efficiently but unhurriedly, only occasionally scraping his back against the cave ceiling and the pointed-stone icicles that hung fang-like from above.
Below him, blurred and barely discernible in the dimness, was the eerie show-place Conan had forborne to mention to Tjai, lest the hillman’s supernatural imaginings be goaded to madness. Tangled and half-buried in the dimness it lay—an underwater garden of bones, with here and there the gape of a hollow-eyed skull or the sparkle of gold and gems from a rotted purse. These were the remains of convicts who, over the centuries of the mine’s operation, had flung themselves, well-ballasted with treasure, into the underground stream, vainly questing freedom or oblivion. Presumably, having made it only this far, they lacked the skill of swimming, or of finding air; in any event, Conan hoped for better luck than had been vouchsafed them.
Ahead, a thin screen of flowstone jutted down toward the thicket of bones, presenting a difficult obstacle; just beyond it, Conan remembered, lay a large air pocket where he could thrust up his face and fill his lungs decently. A little way farther ahead was the place where the light entered: a mere crevice, alas, and one so narrow it didn’t afford a likely breath, much less a potential exit.
He bellied down toward the cave floor, feeling a superstitious reluctance to brush against any of the algae-slimed bones. His head nudged the lower fringe of the stone curtain, more felt than seen. Then of a sudden, he felt real, corpse-like fingers brush him as a sodden bulk bore up against his nether parts.
In a flurry of panicked motion, expelling most of his hoarded, near-depleted breath, Conan turned to face the menace—and saw only a dark, looming form, spectral and man-sized, pressing forward against him in the gloom. Its pallid fingers did not clutch or tear; in fact, the attacker appeared driven onto him mainly by the current, its gestures slack and random-seeming as it groped for his face.
Kicking out again in dread, and ramming the back of his head against the stone outcrop, Conan struggled beneath the overhang. Then he dragged himself upward, scraping his face in the open stone cavity as he gulped air. A moment later he ducked down again, laying hold of the slender, drifting shape—which he now identified in the brighter cave light as Tjai’s. He dragged the Ilbarsi upward, to thrust his face into a pocket of precious air and hold him there as best he could.
But what, in Crom’s name, could he do? He could hardly tell the fool to breathe or, in that confined space, pummel him into doing so; neither could he breathe for him. It soon became obvious, from the bluish-pale hue of his flesh and the unchanging slackness of his limbs, that the hillman— having plunged after Conan in desperation and ventured too far in the paralysing chill—was already dead.
Conan, leaving off his battle with the corpse and laying it aside, was close to being the same. Coughing, he tried to suck new air from the cavity, yet found his attempts unsatisfying, the air having been depleted of its vital power. Thrusting away, he found another remembered pocket, a shallow one that choked him with water droplets, barely justifying the effort of reaching it. At a third breathing place, lunging desperately to fill his lungs, he rammed his head against a stone outcrop and saw stars explode in the dimness. He must have drifted senseless for a moment; he wakened to the tickle of spent air bubbling upward from his slack mouth.
Deprived of breath, sight, and direction, the Cimmerian began drowning in earnest. He lashed out blindly... and felt himself sucked by the accelerating current into light-less, airless depths.
III
Dark Protectress
“Tamsin, Tamsin! Freckle-nose, Tamsin!”
The singsong noise of the children swirled and scattered through the house yard. Frequently it boiled over into the muddy lane adjoining the huddled stone cottages of the hamlet. The noise of the urchins rose and dwindled with their pell-mell scamper as they played in turn at being warriors, animals, or nobles. Only intermittently did they swarm at the back of the cottage and bedevil the young girl who sat alone on the kitchen stoop, quietly grooming her doll.
“Tamsin, head of flax! Get the ax, Tamsin!”
In truth, the little child was fairer-coloured than the rest, coming as she did from a family only remotely related to the village folk—a proud, standoffish family who had insisted on staking out a croft in the distant woods, to their sorrow. The children, mistrustful of outsiders and quick to seize on any visible difference, made common cause against this stranger who intruded on their sleeping space and supper table.
“Don’t you mind their teasing, Ninga,” the little girl comforted her doll, ignoring the unruly stampede. “Your hair is the same colour as mine—I know, because it is mine! Papa saved some and used it when he made you. I think you are splendid, no matter what they say.”
“Why do you always play with that stupid doll?” a brisk, boyish voice intruded. “You act as if you’re talking to it, but you never really make any sound!”
The wave of children had changed direction and rushed back to the doorway, with nut-brown Arl leading the pack in his ragged, oversized shirt.
“Why don’t you answer when I ask you things?” he demanded. “You used to talk when your parents were alive. What’s the matter, have you forgotten how?”
To a chorus of laughter, small Ulva piped up: “Look at that doll, it’s so ugly! See, its head is falling off!”
“The awful thing!” another girl-voice chimed in. “We ought to throw it in the well!”
A small, mischievous boy, creeping from behind Arl, made as if to snatch the object from Tamsin; but her quick clutch of the doll to her bosom, combined with the look of utter terror on her face, made him veer away.
“A plague on you urchins,” a strident, brassy voice overruled them all. “Must you do your prating and screeching here by the kitchen? Off with you! I won’t have you cluttering up my dooryard.” Quick sweeps of a broom sent dust and grit pelting at them from the threshold, scattering the mob—all except Tamsin, who remained hunched on the stoop.
The broom-wielder was great old Gurda in her soiled, greasy bonnet and apron, her face as seamed and puffy as one of her overcooked turnip pies. In the fleeing children’s wake, she stood muttering distractedly. “Enough it is that I must feed you, boil your foul laundry, and cater to your mother’s idle vanity,” she declared. “I will not be your wet nurse too!” Indignantly she turned back toward the kitchen.
“As for you, young missy...” The clumping slattern abruptly paused, looming over Tamsin. “You hold no privileged place in this household—what, you rascal, have you been into my rag bin, stealing brightly coloured scraps for that hideous doll of yours? Take care, my girl, or you will have your fingers seared as a thief!” The beldame made a perfunctory snatch at the doll, though her middle was too thick to allow her to bend over far enough.
“All right, then,” she declared at last to the crouching child. “If these whelps will have no part of you, why then, you can be my playmate. Go find an old shingle and scrape the ashes out of yon fire grate—” she pointed to a scorched heap in the middle of the yard “—so that when I render down the pork guts this noon, the fire will flare up crisp and bright. Off to work now,” she goaded, aiming raps with her knotty broom handle at the door jamb near the child’s head. “You can begin earning your keep around here!”
Conan the Savage Page 3