Conan Of The Isles

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Conan grinned at the spectacle the bluff old Northman made. The golden thread that covered his cloak with embroidered arabesques was worn and tarnished, and several of the big, ornate ivory buttons were missing. A sash of many dashing colors, which bristled with the usual half -dozen jeweled dirks, bludgeons, and a huge scimitar with a notched blade, girdled Sigurd's massive belly. Under the vast cloak, the old Vanr wore a patched, torn white blouse, spotted with wine stains and gravy. It was open to the navel, and through the opening bristled the silver-shot red fur that thatched the Northman's chest. A gaudy scarlet kerchief was wound about his bald head, and glittering hoops of gold wobbled from each ear.

  'Hah! By HeimdaTs horn and Tanifs veil, 'tis a morning for the very gods, eh, Lion?' he said.' 'Tis like wine to me thirsty guts to be at sea again with a good deck under me heels and a crew of rascally cutthroats ready at call to fill the nine seas with blood!'

  'Aye,' growled Conan. 'It is a stout ship the king of Argos' gems got us, and as staunch a crew of rogues as ever I shipped with in the old days.'

  He peered down into the waist, where the crew scrubbed the deck and performed other sailorly chores. The legends that burned with lurid light around the name of Amra the Lion had brought a full complement of seasoned sea-thieves, eager to share the glory and loot of Amra's venture into the dim West. They were a motley lot, the throng of men that milled and toiled in the waist with half-naked brown bodies, smelling of tar and sour wine, but the very cream of the pirates of the Barachas.

  The largest group was composed of Argosseans, men of medium height and sturdy build, with brown or tawny hair. Mixed with these were a number of olive-skinned, black-browed Zingaran renegades. There were men of Ophir and Koth. There were a few swarthy, hook-nosed Shemites with blue-black hair and beards, and even a huge, brown-skinned, hawk-faced Stygian or two. There was a stocky, fair-haired Zaporoskan - Yakov, the bow-master. There was a black giant from jungled Kush, with the sunlight gleaming on his glossy hide - Yasunga, the navigator. There was a powerful, brown-skinned man with a curly black beard - Goram Singh of Vendhya, a land so far to the east and so little known that many Westerners thought it a mere fable. But, white or brown or black, they were veteran seamen all.

  Sigurd fixed Conan with a keen blue eye. 'Now, what's the plan, mate? Fine words and resounding promises of glittering loot, but what is it we look for in the Western Ocean, and whither are we bound? So far we've seen naught but a few whales.'

  Conan shrugged. 'Crom knows, not I! But I’ve heard men talk of lost continents and fabulous isles beyond the sunset. And from the hints the shade of Epemitreus let fall, and the counsels of King Ariostro's pack of glib-tongued star-watchers, I gather we just keep on the westward and watch for anything unlikely and odd. Devil take me, Northman, I hope we find the source of the Terror soon! This taste of sea life makes me hungry for a trifle of action. Peace is beautiful, but . . .' Conan eased his broadsword out of its scabbard and cut the air with a swish that could be heard above the sough of the wind.

  Redbeard laughed with a deep chuckle that shook his paunch. He cocked a tufted eyebrow at the glowering Cimmerian.

  'Ho ho, mate!' he snorted. 'So that's the way the wind lies, is it? Ye're still the cunning, black-hearted rascal I knew of old. When we've fought this shadowy foe, as we promised, shall we turn about for a bit of honest roguery? There were fat merchantmen tied up in Messantia's harbor, and 'twould be a fine joke to loot Argos's ships with the very ship their king furnished, would it not?'

  Conan smiled a grim, cynical smile and clapped Sigurd on the shoulder. 'Same thieving old walrus, you are! No, I like not the taste of that.'

  'Don't tell me that, after all these years, ye've turned honest!'

  Conan uttered a bark of laughter. 'Not I! But being a king does spoil a man's taste for the pettier forms of thievery. Besides., Ariostro has never given me trouble, so why should I trouble him? Conn will have enough problems, guarding his frontiers against the neighboring kingdoms, without my stirring them up.'

  'Then - do ye mean to take a crack at the Stygians, as I was for doing when we met in Messantia? They're a fell and hardy lot; but with this crew we might just—’

  Conan shook his head. 'Not that, even. After all, I've been a pirate captain, and a bloody successful one, several times over. Why should I climb that same ladder once more?'

  'Well, then,' growled Sigurd impatiently, 'what in all the flaming hells is it ye mean? Out with it, man!'

  Conan flung out a long arm, and a gnarled forefinger stabbed toward the bow. ‘Away to westward, mate, there's something we know naught about. The Red Shadows are pan of it, too.' A deep laugh rumbled in Oman's chest. 'You can't imagine me as a scholar, now can you?’

  'It were easier to think of one of Ariostro's pretty little dancing girls as a bloody-handed pirate.'

  'Well, I can read a few different scripts. And in the royal library at Tarantia I found tales of the Cataclysm, when the ocean gulped down Atlantis, eight thousand years ago. They tell, these tales, how thousands of Atlan-teans fled to the Mainland - or Thuria, as they used to call it. And in the iron-bound Book of Skelos it said: "Others fled from sinking Atlantis to westward, and it is said that thither they came upon another continent, over against the Thurian continent and bounding the Western Ocean on the farther side. But what befell these refugees I know not, for with the destruction of Atlantis the track-less ocean became too wide for the ships of those days to maintain a regular commerce betwixt the lands we know and the unknown western land." That is all, but it may very well be connected with our present mission.’ 'Well?' said Sigurd. 'I've heard tales like that, too.' 'Well, if there be a land of mighty sorcery ahead of us, it will also be a land of wealth and power, ripe for enterprising rascals like us to pluck. Why fool around with the loot of a few ships when, with some luck and some guts, we can take an empire!’

  Sigurd sighed and wiped his eyes with the backs of his hairy hands. "Ah, Amra, I might have knowed ye'd have some scheme in your thick skull, madder and wilder than anything any ordinary man could think up! 'Tis a fine old wolf ye are, my word upon it! Though they feed us to dragons when we get there, I'll ship with you as far as the sunset itself, by all the gods!'

  He broke off to peer suspiciously at the sun. With a snort of anger, he waddled to the nearer of the quarter rudders, where a one-eyed Shemitish ruffian stood to the watch.

  'Avast, ye hooknosed dogl Be ye blind or stinking drunk?' he roared, cuffing the startled seaman aside and seizing the tiller in capable paws. 'We're riding half a point off the course ye set last night, Amra! Curse and rot these lazy pigs - the scum of the Barachas,, by the bowels of Ahriman and the breasts of Ishtar!' He squinted ferociously at the sun and thrust the tiller over with a practiced heave. The Red Lion heeled slightly, responding like a well-trained steed.

  Then a cry came ringing down from above. 'Sail ho!' Conan sprang to the rail and raked the gray, misty seas with keen eyes. But he could see nothing.

  'Whither away?’ he boomed through cupped hands.

  The reply floated down from the lookout at the foretop: 'Point and a half off the port bow!'

  'I see her!' The old Northman was again at Conan's side, puffing like an asthmatic walrus having shoved the one-eyed sailor back to the tiller. There she be - and by all the gods, she looks like a galley!'

  Conan shaded his eyes with one hand and followed Sigurd's pointing finger. There, looming out of the coiling morning haze, were two slender, bare masts. When the Red Lion rose on the long swell, those on her poop deck could glimpse the long, low hull of a galley beneath this rigging.

  'Now what in the scarlet Hells of the Stygian Set-worshippers,' rumbled Conan, 'is a galley doing out here? We must be fairly close to land. No skipper with all his wits would sail far out into the Western Ocean in such a craft. If the long swells didn't swamp her, the crew would collapse from lack of food and water and from not having a place to lie down.'

  The galley was now closer, so that t
hey could see the sleek lines of her low, sea-green hull. White foam flashed along her sides, and Conan saw the twinkle of sunlight on dripping water from her double bank of oars - a bireme, with a high, curved prow carved of brass into the likeness of a dragon's head. Below this figurehead, level with the waterline, a long, viciously pointed bronze ram, green with verdigris and spotted with barnacles, cut through the waves.

  'Hm, that's cursed odd, Amra!' grumbled Sigurd. 'She flies no banner. Well, you said we were to look for oddities.'

  Conan shrugged. 'What's that painted on her bow?'

  Sigurd peered. 'Looks like a black cloud with a red center, or is it a black starfish ?'

  Conan glowered on the strange green galley. 'Well, she's no merchantman but a war galley, with that ram in her stem and double banks of oars. Let's let her pass; she'd give us hard knocks and no loot..,'

  Still, he thought, it was strange to find such a ship hovering about these untraveled waters. Could it be that which they sought? Throwing back his gray mane, Conan called out to the watchman on the foretop.

  'Ahoy there! Can you make out the marking on her prow?'

  'Aye, Captain. Tis a black thing like a devilfish, with a fringe of tentacles around a burning eye—’

  Conan's voice rose in a mighty bellow: 'Helmsman! Two points to port; head straight for that galley. All hands on deck! Swords, pikes, and defenses! Stand by to trim sail. Archers, to the forecastle deck, with your gear! Yasunga, make up a boarding party. Hop to it, swabs! Here's the fight you've been spoiling for.'

  Sigurd peered at him, baffled. 'What in the name of Mitra?''

  'The sign of the Black Kraken, you red dog of Vana-heim! Does that mean naught to you? Stir your befuddled wits!' growled Conan.

  Sigurd followed Conan about the poop and halted when the Cimmerian did to let the cabin boy lace him into his coat of mail and settle the horned helmet on his head. The Northman's brow was knotted in thought. Then his frown relaxed, but his face paled.

  'Do ye mean,' he said slowly, 'that old tale about the emblem of the Witch Kings of Atlantis ?’

  'I do. Now get your cuirass on, before they spill those fat guts of yours all over the deck.'

  'Gods of the sea!' said Sigurd, turning slowly away. 'The Kraken of the Atlanteans, that should all have been decently drowned eight thousand years agone . . . Crom, Badb,andlshtar! Canitbe?'

  Although she was clearly no merchantman bearing loot, the green galley turned and fled before the Red Lion on the morning wind. On each of her two masts, a high-peaked, triangular sail bloomed and filled with the following breeze. The Red Lion followed close upon her foaming track.

  Conan had clambered into the rigging and clung with one bronzed hand while the other shaded his eyes.

  'Odd - cursed odd!' he muttered. 'All oars in motion, yet I'm damned for a Stygian if I can see a single oarsman on the benches. She seems bare of fighting men as well; none on her poop or forecastle deck, and not a hand aloft in her rigging.'

  He lowered himself to the deck, where Sigurd and the giant black, Yasunga, stood,

  'Cursed odd indeed, Amra,' said the old Northerner. 'And look at the cut of her hull! I've never seen such a ship in all me days.'

  'Green ship of Hell,' muttered Yasunga in his deep, musical bass. 'Ship of ghosts, Amra!’

  'Belay that!' barked Conan. 'Ship of Hell or ship of earth, she's running free as if she bore the Empress of Khitai and all her treasure! Look at that stem slice the swells!' He raised his voice. 'Milo! Hoist the raffee tops'l! And if you get the lines fouled I'll skin you.' He spoke to Sigurd and Yasunga again: 'She's fast, with both oars and sails; but with our greater spread of sail we may run her down yet. Wherever she's from, she's in a hurry to shake us off her tail!'

  'But with no escort,’ growled Sigurd. 'Damned suspicious! Whoever heard of a king's galley or treasure ship barging around the seas without extra protection?'

  The crew had now mustered in their places. Archers were stringing their bows on the forecastle deck and looking over the arrows in their quivers to make sure that none had warped. In the waist, men stood to the ropes, while the deck fighters clustered at the rail, buckling the chin straps of helmets., tying the laces of cuirasses and leather jacks, and sharpening their cutlasses with whetstones.

  'By Crom!’ boomed Conan. 'We'll find out what she bears so precious that she flees like a frightened maid at the mere sight of us!'

  The men, inflamed by the excitement of the chase, sent up a cheer. Sigurd, now covered from neck to crotch by a shirt of bronzen scales sewn to leather, puffed up the ladder to the poop deck. Conan clapped him on the shoulder.

  cCrom and Mitra, old sea horse, but the taste of battle makes my heart swell like that of an old charger sniffing blood!'

  The Northman grinned broadly and gave a bellow of joy that would have summoned a hippogriff in the mating season had one been within earshot.

  'Hah! Well, Lion, old Sigurd said things would look up soon, and here they are! I have a feeling in me bones that this'll be a treasure the likes of which we never saw in all our days.'

  'Aye?' laughed Conan. ‘Then let's at it!'

  With every sail she possessed filled with wind, the carack plunged after her prey. The following swells boosted her along, slowly rising and falling as they foamed by underneath her. Her blunt bow threw up twin fans of green foam., and white foam bubbled in her wake. And ever ahead of her, pitching on the swells, the mysterious green galley rowed and sailed, her two triangular sails set wing-and-wing, like the leathery pinions of some flying reptile of old.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAGIC FIRE

  A long, green galley from the unknown West,

  The dread Black Kraken on her bow impressed,

  In full sail hastens from a land untold,

  With Hell's foul secret in her deep, dark hold.

  - The Voyage of Amra

  The sun hung high in the clear, blue vault when the Red Lion at last caught up with the mysterious green galley with the symbol of the Black Kraken of Atlantis on her bow. All morning the galley fled before them, with her tall black triangular sails swollen with the wind and her oars rising and falling as if her oarsmen knew no human fatigue. But, foot by foot,, the big carack closed the distance between them.

  Conan, in a horned steel helmet and a long shirt of link mail over a haqueton of soft leather, strode about the deck, inspecting the arm and armor of his boarding party. Then he climbed back to the poop, where Sigurd stood spraddle-legged, watching the galley's every move and barking commands to the steersmen who stood with muscular, brown arms gripping the twin tillers.

  'She's giving up the chase at last and putting about,’ grunted Sigurd.

  As if owning the futility of flight, the galley was turning and slowing as the Red Lion neared. Now they were almost within bowshot. Conan glanced to the forecastle deck, where Yakov's archers stood behind the wicker mantlets hung along the rail, awaiting the command to shoot.

  'Strange, Amra,' grumbled the Northman. 'Still no one on deck!'

  'It is cursed strange,' agreed Conan. 'They should at least have a party gathered to repel boarders. Are they all hiding below like mice, or is there nobody aboard but the oarsmen and steersmen?'

  'We're getting close,' said Sigurd.

  Facing the bow where the archers stood, Conan raised his voice to a bellow: 'Shoot one!'

  'Aye, aye, Captain,' Yakov called back. The bowmaster tapped an archer on the shoulder. The man drew his bow to the ear and released with a fiat twang. The arrow arched over the intervening gulf of water, to fall ten paces short, For a short while the crew stood silent as the wind sighed, the water hissed, and the ships wallowed.

  'Shoot one!'

  This time the shaft thudded home in the enamelled planking.

  'In range!' boomed Sigurd.

  'One volley, your command!' roared Conan.

  ‘Aye, aye!' Yakov lined up his archers. Presently all the bows released at once. With a swish like the rush of wings,
a flight of arrows swept across the narowing gulf and thudded home, mostly out of sight behind the mantlets that lined the rail of the galley.

  Conan narrowly watched the action of the galley's oars. Ordinarily, such a volley of arrows should have struck at least a few of the rowers, disorganizing the beat of the oars until the men hit could be replaced or their oars shipped. But the oars of the galley, in two banks, continued to rise and fall at the same unvarying, mechanical beat.

  'She must be full-decked,' grunted Conan.

  'I think she's turning to ram us,' said Sigurd.

  'Right. Keep our head toward her. If we hit her bow on, we'll drive her down and break her ram.'

  The Vanr bellowed commands to the steersmen and to the sailors at the lines. The tillers were put up and the sails trimmed to take the wind abeam as the Red Lion swung to port to keep the galley dead ahead. Unseen hands brailed the galley's sails up against their yards.

  The galley continued her swing, and for an instant the two ships rushed at each other head-on. From the poop, Conan got a good view of the galley's deck. Not a soul was to be seen.

  Then the galley, as if losing courage at the sight of the tall, massive bow of the Red Lion foaming down upon her, turned again to port, heeling with the sharpness of her turn. A mere fifty paces away, Conan could plainly discern the strange black emblem blazoned on the bow. More like a circular cloud of dense, black vapor it seemed, with whorls of mist escaping in tentacular wisps, than a literal devilfish. But the crimson eye, glaring from the center of the black mass, blazed with lust and fury.

  Still nobody was to be seen on deck. The green galley could have been a ghost ship, bare of mortal life.

  'No watch in the rigging! Not a hand on deck! Not even a helmsman at the tiller!' rumbled Sigurd uneasily. 'By Badb and Mitra, I like it not, mate, not a bit of it!'