Conan the Savage

by Leonard Carpenter

  “Here we are at last, Conan... the one place where you can receive the best price in all Brythunia for your wares.” Shoving his companion briskly through the mob, Regnard pressed toward the front of the crowd. “Why should we fatten the purse of some middleman, I ask you, when we can go straight to the source and reap a full, round profit ourselves?”

  While shouldering through the bidding customers, the tall outlander was able to see over their heads to the centre of the thronging bazaar. There a statuesque, bronze-skinned southern female stepped up onto a stone platform. Standing at her side, a fezzed, wiry-haired Corinthian merchant peeled aside the thin robe that was her only garment, commending her naked charms to the crowd of enthusiastic bidders. Behind those two, a coal-black Kushite waited, festooned with chains far heavier than Conan’s. Next in line after him was a Hyperborean lad, fresh from the northern snows, slim and platinum-haired, his wrists bound to a wooden yoke suspended around his neck. Beyond these glum-looking prisoners a pair of burly guards loomed, armed with flails and wearing gold-braided vests and fezzes in the same orange hue as the auctioneer’s livery.

  “Our next consignment,” the dealer was saying, “ripe from the desert oases of the fragrant south, is this fair maid of Zamora, a dancer and fipple-flute player of unexampled beauty. From Shadizar she harks, gentlemen... where the nights are warm, the melons grow lush and ripe, and the honeyed fig is luscious to the tongue—”

  “Do you really take me for such a fool, Regnard?” Conan murmured at last, a note of grim resignation in his voice. “Here is no gem market—by the Great Badger, you have led me to a slave mart!”

  “Now, now, Conan, be not afraid.” The Gunderman still prodded his companion forward with the butt of the stone spear. “As I said before, all will be plain to you in time. We may as well put your splendid carcass up on the block, just for now, along with your few possessions; your gems will only make the bidding all the keener. I will collect the money and save it for us. Later on—perhaps this very night—I can creep to your slave den and free you. Both of us will then be wealthy—wait, what are you doing?” Enthusiastic bidding over the Zamoran wench distracted the buyers on all sides, but Regnard wore a look of alarm. He watched unbelievingly as Conan, working behind his back with all the vice-like strength in his hands, pried open the heavy copper manacles and slid them free of his thick, hairy wrists. His motions were swift; as Regnard tried to bolt, he lunged after him. The Gunderman was caught, and sagged nearly to his knees under the weight of the savage grip on his shoulder.

  “Now, my good friend, let us see how your own irons fit you—and how long it takes you to pry them open!” As he spoke, his movements swift and ruthless, Conan double-looped the bronze chain around his captor’s neck. The wrist-clasps he forced closed on one another, forming two tight, heavy links fastened at Regnard’s nape.

  The shortness of the manacle did not allow for breath.

  In growing panic, Regnard tugged vainly at the heavy fastenings, then at the taut chain, with motions that became a wild clawing at his throat. The noises he emitted were breathless and faint, mere glottal clicks; even so, his lurching frenzy drew notice from the nearby crowd.

  “What is it, a stabbing? No, a slave mutiny!”

  “Help him, someone, if you can!”

  “Nay, fool, to Hades with the foreign trader! Kill that renegade, before he escapes and spreads his madness!” Retrieving his weapons amid the confusion, Conan lashed out fiercely at the surging, grasping mob. His stone ax struck home once, and again. Blood, spittle, and teeth flew in a maelstrom around him, while choking Regnard writhed and purpled underfoot. As the crowd fell back, the two huge overseers bulled their way forward; but their thin, cruel flails were made for inflicting pain at close range, not for honest fighting. One of them, receiving a light jab in the gut from Conan’s spear, sat down on the pavement, bellowing; the other, taking the keen ax-blade across the face, stumbled away blinded with blood.

  “Look out, the savage is berserk!”

  “He is armed! Call for the city guard!”

  The crowd scattered before him, jostling one another in fear, but already Conan heard the clank of guards’ armour approaching from a nearby street. Running in desperation, he rushed the line of slaves awaiting Sale and lashed out with his weapons. His ax struck the wooden yoke of the pale-haired Hyperborean, shearing through its knotted thongs. The youth, with an excited cry, freed his hands and began working his neck loose of the poles. Coming from him, Conan hacked through a rope that bound two ragged convicts together, then ran his spear into the city warder who ventured forward to stop their escape.

  The Kushite captive, some moments before, had doubled his wrist-chains about the neck of the auctioneer, throttling him till his body hung as limp as a meal sack; now, snatching up the man’s key ring and flinging the corpse aside, he plunged forward to hide himself in the crowd. Even the Zamoran woman, bending to steal the dagger from Regnard’s now-lifeless, contorted body, tucked the purloined weapon in the bosom of her robe and slipped away, doubtless on some errand of revenge.

  The slave revolt and the press of frightened merchants covered Conan’s escape. He darted into the least-clogged alleyway, bowling citizens aside and clubbing down those few who stood to oppose him. The city was a cramped, crowded, stench-filled maze to him after his months in the wilderness, but his knowledge of it was swiftly returning. As soon as immediate pursuit was behind him, he bent his steps uphill toward the temple square and the palace, to carry out his high hunt.

  It was impossible to pass stealthily. Even in a town as cosmopolitan as Sargossa, with all the broad panoply of costumes and nationalities that peopled its streets, a near-naked savage, hulking and sun-bronzed, bearing stone-headed spear and ax into bazaars and residential alleys, was a remarkable sight. Conan could not fail to draw the excited attention of housemaids, peddlers, ragged urchins, and small, yapping dogs.

  Accordingly, in place of discretion, he relied on speed. To foil his pursuers and head off encirclement, he loped through the city at a full hunter’s gait, using the stamina that had served him so well on long hunts beyond the mountains. As luck would have it, he met with no crowd too dense to be jostled through, no obstacle too large to be upturned or vaulted over, and no Imperial officer too alert and deadly to be beaten down with a single curt weapon-stroke.

  So he went, the living image of savagery... a swift, darting glimpse of his race’s origins, astonishing and unnerving to all those tame urban drones he flickered past. He was the primal hunter, set loose in the city labyrinth: swift and feral, yet surely doomed, stalking who knew what terrible, unconquerable prey?

  In time, teeming slums gave way to grand villas and public enclosures, with long, broad avenues running between; this in turn gave the populace more opportunities to scatter at Conan’s approach, and to wonder from a distance at his fierce, outlandish aspect. It also gave rise to new dangers—that he might be brought down by arrow-flights from the temple roof, or overridden by mounted troopers. To prevent such disaster, he took action. Spying a wheeled conveyance in the street, he sprang aboard it: a spoked, railed chariot, whose richly robed driver he cast out headlong. It was a light, swift vehicle. Gathering the reins in his ax-fist, he smote the rumps of its two roan coursers with his spear point, starting them off at a lively gallop toward the palace gate.

  He trusted the beasts to choose their way through the city press, and the citizenry to keep out from under the mounts’ sparking, flailing hooves. He would have been uncertain of how to slow their gallop in any case; and he could scarcely steer their headlong rush as it was.

  But their speed was a blessing to him, a heady drug.

  Perched on the chariot-bed, panting from his exertions, Conan was borne along faster than any possible warning or signal of his coming... through the broad, uncrowded temple square, jolting and rumbling toward the main gate of the Imperial Palace.

  As it happened, the gate stood open. The guards who moved to bar his way w
ere driven aside by the foaming coursers, who kept up their gallop straight across the inner courtyard. They raced for the double doors of the palace, one huge portal of which gaped wide. When the animals struck the broad, shallow steps leading to the archway, they tried heroically to maintain their speed—but the chariot behind them disintegrated, its frail wheels and axle splintering under the impact. Conan held fast to the rail, riding the slewing wreck until the lathered, panting team could drag it no farther. Then he leaped free, bounding up the remaining stairs toward the palace entry.

  “Halt, savage! Advance no nearer, on pain of death!”

  A pair of guards moved into the doorway, blocking entry with the hafts of their battle axes. Conan continued forward, mounting the steps with a weapon levelled in either hand.

  “Stop, I say, wild heathen! If you cannot speak as men do, then list ye carefully to my ax—it speaks a language any stinking brute will understand!”

  Bounding straight up to the guards, close enough to see the sweat of fear on their faces, Conan abruptly halted. Gathering both his weapons into one fist, he dug a forefinger into his loin-pouch—underneath the jewelled belt that still girdled his hips—and produced a small, shiny object. “Mayhap you can understand this,” he told them in coarse Brythunian. “I have it from one named Dolphas, on the eastern frontier.”

  Suspiciously the senior guard unclasped one hand from the haft of his battle-ax and accepted the ring, holding it up before his face. “Truly enough, it bears the sigil of the Imperial throne.” He glanced sharply at his companion, then back to the intruder. “You really expect us to believe you are one of Dolphas’s spies? This is all most irregular!” Conan glared levelly at him. “I carry an urgent message from Dolphas, for your queen’s ears only. Lead me to her at once.”

  “O-ho. Some savage, this!” Continuing to watch Conan warily, the officer waved away the guards who were closing in on them from the gate. “Come, you will have to wait here for clearance.” He shot a look to his companion. “Has Lord Basifer returned?”

  “Aye, Captain. He passed within some minutes ago on an errand from the temple.”

  “So—you, lay down those mock weapons of yours, and wait here.” He gestured to a bench situated in an alcove beside the doorway. “Remember to behave yourself. The Imperial Palace is no place for your play-acting!” Retaining the signet ring and shouldering his ax, he turned away, heading for the central stair.

  Conan waited under the eyes of the guardsman while another officer came forward from the staircase to take the captain’s place. Laying his stone weapons against the wall, the outlander hovered near them, sullenly refusing to be seated. Quietly he sized up his chances to break through into the palace, and found them slight in view of the number of guards lining the broad vestibule. Now was a time for restraint, and for stealth, as on any hunt. First he must get near the quarry, as he had learned from Yugwubwa, by covering himself with the enemy’s stink.

  From outside, through the lancet window of the guards’ alcove, he heard a turmoil at the gate. Likely it signalled the arrival of news from the lower city of his doings there, and of the riot at the slave-mart. Voices were once again raised, and a call went up for the captain of the watch. A mounted civilian officer was admitted through the gate.

  More moments passed in the polished dimness. Conan eased himself onto the cold stone bench, within easy reach of his weapons. The two guards had become inattentive to him, gazing through the open door at those bustling toward them from the gate.

  All at once, heavy footsteps sounded on the staircase; it was the captain returning in haste. “Come,” he said, beckoning to Conan. “The First Steward will see you at once.” “Captain, you are summoned to the gate,” the door guard said, glancing uncertainly from the courtyard to his superior. “There appears to have been some kind of trouble in the town—”

  “It will have to wait,” the officer told him, “for this affair will not!” He turned, and as Conan grabbed his weapons and strode after him, led the way upstairs. “This is a matter of high state import,” the captain called back over his shoulder. “Stall off those others until I return, and reveal nothing about our visitor.”

  Before them unfolded the palace’s columned, filigreed interior, a gaudy, impossible stone cage. The clash of the captain’s heels on the polished floor made echoes that rang louder than the whisper of Conan’s sandals. Rigid-faced guards, servants, and gleaming statues flashed by on either hand, looking as unreal as the phantasms of a fever dream to one whose home was the forest’s leafy glades.

  But there, just ahead, waited one with real dimension and presence. The watch officer led Conan through a gilded door into a tapestried anteroom, where stood a figure with intensity in his look and restrained menace in his bearing. Wearing the foppish fez and caftan of an eastern eunuch, holding the queen’s signet between thumb and forefinger, he paced the ornate tiles, coming abruptly to a halt as the two approached.

  “Milord Basifer,” the captain announced, “here is the messenger who arrived so indiscreetly—”

  “Yes, yes, I can tell.” The aristocrat, beside himself with impatience, began his questioning even before Conan fully entered the room. “Well, man, what of Dolphas? Why has he not come himself?” He looked Conan up and down. “You bring me no gems to speak of! Does that mean he has not carried out the queen’s command?”

  “Dolphas will carry out no more commands.” Starting forward at a run inside the archway, Conan raised ax and spear in either hand. “Nor will you and your queen be giving more of them!”

  The captain, alert and quick, lunged to intercept him with a sideward sweep of his ax. Conan ducked beneath and came up swinging his own hatchet. Its heavy flint blade slashed crosswise, scraping against the guard’s steel helmet and striking sparks from its visor rim. The captain collapsed to the tiles, clutching his face in blood-streaming hands.

  “What! You dare violence here? Guards, seize this assassin!” Instead of wheedling for his life or turning to run, the one called Basifer strode indignantly forward—only to take the hurtling point of Conan’s spear straight in his breastbone. He made no sound, after the initial grunt of impact, but sank down to his knees, and then sideways onto the polished floor. In spite of his garb, he did not grovel like a eunuch; Conan had to admit that he died a man.

  At the far end of the room stood another golden door. It was guarded by two yellow-clad Imperials, who rushed forward at Basifer’s outcry. Conan, without time to recover his spear, ran straight forward between their scything blades. One sword missed; the other, striking the hard flint of his ax, snapped off near the hilt. Conan, as he lunged past the broken sword’s wielder, cut a leg out from under him by striking at the unarmored back of his knee.

  The other swordsman doubled back swiftly. His blade, slashing at the Cimmerian’s belly, glanced off his ornamental belt. The blow did no damage, serving only to anger the snarling savage. The swinging ax smote the guardsman on the side of the head, sending the man’s cracked steel helmet spinning away across the floor and stretching him out senseless.

  The gilded door in the far wall stood ajar. At a kick from Conan’s sandalled foot, it shuddered open. Within was a broad chamber lined with dark hangings and lit by bright-burning oil lamps attended by servants. Several courtiers waited around the periphery of the room, while at its centre stood two persons in elegant dress: an elderly man, and a pale young woman who clasped in one arm a doll with a painted, misshapen head.

  “So,” Conan growled, “you are Brythunia’s queen, who rules the land by earthquake and volcano, who has set up her toy doll as a god, and who slaughters whole nations to possess their trinkets!”

  “What Ninga and I do is our business,” the woman answered him readily with a wan, quizzical smile. “In any case, it is idle of you to menace us, for we are proof against mortal weapons. Steel wilts at our touch—” She gestured to a cabinet of charms and ornaments that stood open beside her. “Our trinkets, as you call them, are mightier.”
“Tyrant!” Conan shouted, maddened by the sight of the gems. “Do you think to frighten me away with the stink of sorcery?” Raising his ax, he started forward.

  Several things occurred at once. Guards from the outer corridor, drawn by the strife and shouting, burst in at the chamber door. The servants, in response to a gesture from Prince Clewyn, smothered their lamps, bringing near-total darkness to the draperied room. And Conan, in the last flicker of lamplight, hurled his stone ax straight at the tall, stately figure of Queen Tamsin where she stood at Clewyn’s side.

  There were curses then, thumps and shrieks in the darkness, all of which swiftly fell silent as an uncanny radiance was kindled at its centre. It was an eerie, bluish-pale glow, streaming up from eggshell-like fragments that lay scattered across the floor.

  The light limned, against the room’s dark tapestries, the astonished faces of the watchers, as well as one small, forlorn shape. Out of the tumult, the only sound that persisted was that of a little child sobbing.

  “Help me. Please, someone, won’t you help?” The ragged figure, a thin, tow-headed girl, stood in the spot formerly occupied by Queen Tamsin.

  “The bad men, they hurt Papa,” she cried out piteously. In one hand she bore a limp rag doll, crudely stitched. Its head—obviously nothing more than a broken gourd—hung shattered, yet it was from those shards that the mystic light emanated. “They came on horses and burned our farm... and oh, oh, Mama...!” Her childish words gave way to fresh peals of grief as she dropped her broken doll and stood knuckling her eyes, wailing wretchedly.