Conan the Savage

by Leonard Carpenter

  At this remark, the mob’s outrage and frenzy burst forth instantaneously. Objects were hurled, most of them falling short of the speaker’s lofty perch; chants were set up, to swell like waves through the human sea; spasmodically the whole mass surged forward, trampling and crushing some of its comrades while hurling others up like wavelets onto the high temple steps—where they scurried immediately forward and mounted higher toward the row of sword-hearing guards.

  “He profanes the goddess!” the fanatics near Tamsin’s chariot cried. “Slay the blasphemer!”

  Epiminophas, however, paid scant attention; already he had fallen to his grey-robed knees. Alternately bowing low and supplicating above his head with both arms, he began his prayers and expostulations to Great Amalias.

  “O Lord of all gods! O terrible Ancient One,” he called out to the storm clouds overhead. “Thy humble servant Epiminophas invokes thee! If thou hearest, Great Lord of the Rivers, pray grant thy patient worshippers some sign.” “Kill him! Silence the devil!” The cry passed from tongue to tongue. “He prays to a dead, corrupt god whose name is infamy!”

  At that moment, however, as if in direct answer to the priest’s sonorous prayers, thunder murmured faintly overhead. The sound rumbled vague and distant, like a door grating open somewhere in the heavens. Moments later, tentative, scattered raindrops began to fall.

  The large, warm spatters drove deep into the dust of roofs and alleyways, giving rise to the charged, musty smell that heralds a thunderstorm. It mingled with the ripe, sweaty stench rising off the angry mob, thereby creating an air of dread anticipation.

  “Priestly fool,” the zealots cried, “your prayers accomplish nothing! Ninga brings this rain! She mocks you and your old, weak god!”

  “Huzzah, give thanks!” Epiminophas nevertheless exulted. “A thousand humble obeisances, Great Lord, for your all-knowing attention! We have called upon Amalias Pluvias, our High God in his role as rain-bringer,” the priest declared to the crowd, “and he answers us! Heaven praise this glorious day! I now beseech Amalias Feroher, Master of Thunders... Terrible One, your faithful servants invoke thee! Pray, bring forth the lightnings!”

  “This rain comes late for last year’s drought in the south,” a sceptic was proclaiming, but his words were drowned out by new tollings of thunder, heavier and more distinct. As the crowd looked around, lightning strokes etched themselves above the horizon, and the raindrops fell thicker and faster.

  “Aiaa,” Epiminophas screamed unto heaven, “Lord-Amalias, I pray you, persuade the doubters—and smite down the blasphemers!”

  The mob was hardly slowed by the display. If anything, their righteous frenzy increased. The insurgents on the temple steps came up against the swords of the acolytes, and the coppery stench and spatter of blood was added to that of the rain.

  “Fraud, hypocrite!” the fanatics cried. “Why does yo feeble god Amalias trouble to scratch the sky with lightnings, when Ninga swallows whole cities in flame?”

  The rebels took further heart as the broad parade banners, now nearing the front of the crowd, were suddenly lowered and furled. Their function became clear, as behind them were revealed neat ranks of armoured horse-soldiers, carefully drilled cavalry, Nemedian-trained and equipped, the sort proven so grimly effective in the northern province rebellions. A new standard was raised above them, drooping from a steel-pointed lance: the emblem of Isembard, the rebellious Baron of Urbander.

  “Huzzah the cavalry!” the mob cried. “For Ninga, unto death!”

  “Ho-ho, the dying god sends rain to rust the armour of our Nemedian allies!”—though even as the cry went up, the rain stopped.

  “Great Amalias, now is the moment—ugh-uhrk!”

  From among the horsemen grouped near Isembard, an ugly, blunt-nosed crossbow was raised. Its twanging snap sent an arrow shaft whirring over the heads of the crowd-straight into the heart of Epiminophas. The priest, with his next prayer transfixed in his chest, toppled and died.

  “Rejoice, the false prophet is dead!”

  “Ninga is triumphant!” As if in confirmation, the sullen rumblings of thunder had ceased.

  Sharp-eyed observers stood with King Typhas atop his lofty tower. When they reported the death of the High Priest, the storming of the temple, and the uncloaking of the rebel cavalry, an order was conveyed by swiftly flashing semaphore fans. Moments later, Imperial household troops and mounted guards moved forth through broad gateways and over low walls to confront the armoured vanguard of the mob.

  Who might prevail in such a battle? The outcome was difficult to judge. The Imperials, well-fed, well-mounted, splendidly trained and armoured as they were, with crack morale and ample experience at the ruthless craft of city fighting—even these elite warriors, facing off against hard-eyed northern campaigners in equally tight and heavy armour, with the many-handed, fanatical mob pressing at their back to pull down and tear apart whatever enemy the horsemen had bowled over—even these staunch defenders could promise no easy victory.

  It would be a vicious fight, spilling over into the gardens and stable-yards of aristocratic dwellings, the courts and porticoes of temples, and the villas of the empire’s richest merchants. It would have brought greater devastation to Sargossa—if King Typhas had not called a truce

  Yet he did so, sending his First Steward Basifer hurrying down from the castle to strike a conditional peace with Tamsin and Isembard. Thus it was that the young witch’s chariot, and by her side the baron astride his battle-charger set out for the castle. With Tamsin on the chariot’s platform stood stepbrother and fellow-priest Ari. Flanked by three other high-born, clanking equestrians, they followed a phalanx of Imperial knights.

  The crowd left behind in the temple plaza roared in mingled triumph, disappointment, suspicion, and apprehension. The summer rainstorm conjured by slain Epiminophas— or merely taken advantage of, some few guessed, by shrewd timing on his part—had all but dissipated. Only occasional distant lightnings etched the southern horizon and a few volleys of rain spattered the crowd. Most of the: teeming rioters were secretly grateful that Ninga had relied on a crossbow rather than her dreaded magic, and that the apocalyptic battle foreseen between the old god and the new had not come to pass. Yet other, more rabid believers felt vaguely dissatisfied, cheated of the supernatural spectacle and the fierce, bloody strife that had seemed imminent.

  Most of these zealots were satisfied for the moment with looting and defiling the Temple of Amalias—pulling down ornate tapestries, toppling idols, and hounding forth the last few acolytes and vestal maidens who cowered within. Soon there would be holy torments, public burnings and quarterings, to occupy the mob. Yet in spite of the temporary peace, there remained the prospect that a battle with King Typhas’s forces would be unleashed. The Urbander cavalry waited ready, its steeds champing and pawing a scant dozen paces from the iron-masked muzzles of the enemy horse troops.

  One worrisome prospect, a cause for vigilance, was that the priestess Tamsin and her small retinue, even travelling under the goddess Ninga’s powerful protection, might be slain or taken prisoner by wily King Typhas. Or worse, they might unwittingly sell themselves and their loyal followers into some unwise bargain with the reigning tyrant. Yet surely, the worshippers told themselves, great Ninga would not permit such an injustice...?

  Goddess, priestess, step-priest, and knights were led into the palace. They passed through an elaborate defensive maze of cullised gates, narrow courtyards, and barred vestibules, into the main audience chamber. King Typhas had retired for this meeting to his seat of honour, the legendary Gryphon Throne of Brythunia. At the head of the long, intricately vaulted hall it stood, beneath the multicoloured arabesques of a wondrous octagonal window, formed of ten thousand transparent gems set in delicate' metal web-work high overhead. By its light the monarch slouched on the vast ebony chair, a single chunk of black stone carved in the shape of a crouching mythical beast.

  The king sat on a cushion in the lap of the animal, whose
fore-claws rested on its bent knees, with lion and bird talons picked out alike in keen points of purest emerald. Above the king—aggrandizing, yet somewhat diminishing, his mortal form—hung the gold-beaked, vulpine head with eyes carved of gloating rubies. Arching up behind were the half-open wings, resplendent in plumage carved of platinum and mother-of-pearl.

  Typhas himself, lounging in a simple doublet of gold-trimmed purple, with gold sword-chain about his waist and a fine, narrow gold circlet crowning his balding brow, was less whelming in appearance than his massive throne. His warriorly muscles had long since collapsed to the paunchy slack of middle age, his campaigner’s bronze skin had washed out tallow-pale, and his conqueror’s erect bearing now stooped to the more clerkly posture suitable for signing numberless writs and sitting through obscure, interminable counsel. Yet there was about him a remnant of restless energy, signalled by his darting gaze and his continual shifting in the high seat. These things suggested an active, penetrating mind.

  The legation approached the raised end of the throne room, where it was cordoned off by a velvet cable. As they did so, a plumed herald’s voice rang forth. “Your Majesty, the First Chancellor begs to approach the throne. In his company: the rebel knight Isembard, pretended Baron of Urbander; the proscribed seeress Tamsin; the warlock Arl; and three proscribed gentlemen-at-arms.”

  “Approach.” At a gesture from the king, Tamsin, Isembard, and the chancellor were conducted forward toward the throne. Arl and the three rebel knights, meanwhile, were kept back behind the cable with the small throng of courtiers and military officers who waited on the king. Coming to the fringed end of the plush carpet before the dais, the chancellor knelt on one knee, then bowed so deeply as to touch his forehead to his other, half-bent knee—an obeisance pointedly omitted by the rebels.

  “We should reprimand our court herald,” the king amiably began “—have him burned in oil, as seems so much the fashion these days—for failing to proclaim the presence of a goddess among us, alongside these stiff-necked mortal rebels! Therefore let us correct the omission: hail Ninga, soul and spirit of an uprising so strident that it merits even our Imperial attention.”

  Whether King Typhas spoke satirically, or whether he might be embarking in a roundabout manner on one of his famous stratagems, it was difficult to say. The herald, from his sudden, sweatily pale and grim-faced look, obviously gave weight to his monarch’s words; Sir Isembard, ever alert for an offence., looked uncertain whether to take umbrage.

  But Tamsin, innocent-seeming as ever, appeared to accept the king’s homage as genuine. “Thank you, Typhas,” she boldly began, meanwhile propping up her doll to face the ebon throne, “for being the first in your royal peerage to acknowledge what your subjects have long understood.”

  The king blinked, impressed, then leaned forward on one elbow to answer. “Often we mighty, secure in our high castles, are slow to attend to stirrings and upheavals in the farm fields and city gutters. ’Tis hard to know how broad and portentous they may become.”

  “Even so,” Baron Isembard declared, obviously wanting to press the king and have his voice heard, “when miracles are sung and celebrated throughout the land, when ancient prophecies unfold, and when the old kings and gods are cast out of their thrones, it hardly serves as a fit excuse for a king to vouchsafe ignorance.”

  “Sir Knight, some respect, I must insist—’’.the black-browed first steward set out to rebuke Isembard. But the king waved him quiet; Typhas betrayed neither outrage nor fear at the rebel knight’s harsh impetuousness. He answered patiently.

  “Where miracles and prophecies are proclaimed by the rabble, anyone with a viewpoint as elevated as our own is bound to have considerable scepticism. After all, we have gulled the commoners often enough ourselves to know how easily it can be done.” He smiled. “As to topplings from thrones, be assured, my ersatz baron, that you will never unseat our reign. This interview does not concern our Imperial survival, but our convenience and enhanced power... possibly yours as well, Isembard, if you go carefully.” “The king recognizes the new goddess Ninga,” Tamsin spoke up, “yet doubts the miracles she has performed. Know, Typhas,” she said with a cautionary glance at the doll nestled in the crook of her elbow, “that our sacred mistress does not smile upon doubters.”

  “Come, now, young priestess,” the king cozened good-naturedly. “Do not try to persuade us that supernatural dooms, demonic conjurings, and summary damnations play so large a part in your religion as the popular myth would have it! If we believed so, we would scarcely be talking so cosily with you, and you would hardly need to be here.

  But know that we, in our kingly tenure, have dealt over so many years with priests and prophets of the formerly dreaded Amalias that we have gained, after all, a fairly clear notion of how this god-business plays out. Knowing this, I—we—would guess that there is room here for an understanding.”

  “If you mean to say,” Isembard broke in again, “that our sacred Ninga is the same sort of lax, feckless god as weak old Amalias, it would be a slander to our faith.”

  “Nay, nay, of course not,” the king soothed the impetuous knight. He switched his position on the taloned arms of his throne, yet kept the force of his looks and arguments directed at the female. “Nay indeed, young Tamsin, the mob that surges from the temple steps clear up to the postern wall outside—” he gestured to die ornate, vaulted end of the chamber “—is enough to apprise us that your Ninga is no weak, common slackard of a goddess! That, indeed, is what we find most likeable about her.

  “Yet on the other hand,” Typhas continued, “you must confess that your goddess acted with admirable circumspection during the recent dispute with High Priest Epiminophas. She did not unleash her apocalyptic talents on him when she had a chance; she did not engulf the citadel, or even the temple, in burning slag, nor did she upheave the earth and rend apart our much-despised palace, stone from stone. Instead, she relied on no miracle greater than a crack Nemedian crossbowman to achieve her purpose. Admirable economy, we must say!

  “That is why, faced with the incontrovertible evidence, we are ready to see reason and acknowledge a change in the tides of our empire.” Typhas spoke magnanimously from his place on the throne. “We propose, therefore, to bring the full force of our kingship to bear in your behalf; to repudiate once and for all the old god Amalias, and to embrace your Ninga as the new state divinity, performing public devotions to her in our own royal personage—while maintaining our Imperial dignity, of course—and assisting you to apprehend and punish any dissenters with the full weight of government power.”

  All those present in the throne room heard the king’s words with muted reactions: the guards frozen-faced, the courtiers watchful, some officers barely able to conceal their surprise, the herald and first steward wide-eyed with astonishment. Isembard’s response seemed to veer in a moment’s time from outrage to equally repressed but gloating anticipation. Only Tamsin showed no inner flurry, her pretty young face looking almost as demure and unsurprised as that of the effigy clasped at her side.

  “So you propose, King Typhas,” she questioned, “that instead of a new and pious rulership—instead of relief from a thousand grievances, and holy vengeance against their Imperial oppressors—Ninga’s followers should be content with their goddess’s installation in the same place foul Amalias formerly held, in the same corrupt order, under your odious rule?”

  The courtiers’ collective gasp at Tamsin’s insult was mirrored only slightly in their king, by a faint darkening of his waxy-pale countenance. “Your words are strong ones, Priestess... no less than I would expect from one who uses them, along with myth and priestly sleight-of-hand, to inflame a mighty rabble to rebellion.” He shook his head, frowning. “Even so, I will ignore them and continue to essay reason, for a while longer at least. For I remind you that one of your small age and experience cannot possibly know what is involved in the governance of a vast empire— the trials and responsibilities, with complications enough to
madden a general or confound even a middling king.” By this time, King Typhas, the consummate negotiator, had managed a return to his former amiable smile. “You may crave power, my child... and in truth have shown yourself entitled to it. More power, indeed, than a woman ever had in Brythunia. But believe me, you would not want my throne.” He thumped the black stone arm beside him with the heel of one hand. “It is a hard seat, weighted o’er with cares and tribulations of office—” he gestured to the looming gargoyle face above his head “—hounded and haunted by a thousand dilemmas and crises, of which you and your conquering goddess are not the least, nor either the greatest. Nay, my girl, it is not for such a fresh, pretty young lass as you to take on such a burden—”

  “No, you are right,” Tamsin agreed suddenly with the king. “Your throne is ugly, too dark and garish for this bright chamber—do you not think so, Ninga?” she queried the goddess at her side. “Ill-favoured too, with such a menacing look about it. Do you not agree?”

  As the seeress spoke, others in the room could not but turn their eyes to the throne, so eerie was her manner. And surely enough, a change was occurring. Before their gaze, the bright ruby eyes of the carved gryphon flickered to sinister life, animated by a dark, shadowy interior flame. Stiffly, ponderously, the throne’s ebony limbs began to move, flexing and straining to enfold the one seated in its gargantuan lap.

  “Nay, it is a monstrosity,” Tamsin declared. “I wish it were gone from here—and you with it, Typhas!”

  The king, with a sudden, quavering cry of astonishment, tensed to spring up from his place—but too late, for the ebon arms were already closing across his chest. As the bird talons clutched tighter to arrest his writhing struggles, their emerald tips pierced his flesh, and a scream of agony lanced from his convulsing throat.

  On either side of the dais, guards sprang forward and attacked the gryphon, but to no avail; their halberds and swords bent and shattered on its hard stone flanks-. Meanwhile, the beast reared up, its feline hinder-claws gouging into the ornamental tiles underfoot. The long lion tail swung like a mace, knocking over one guard, then another, with grunts and clanking of armour.