Swiftly she collected her wits. A seasoned spy, she was already hatching a plan to save herself and further the king’s aims. She grabbed a white robe from one of the chests and donned it She armed herself with a long, gold-hiked dagger. Thrusting aside the broken and staring corpse of the late governor, she searched with swift hands for the spring activating the secret door.
With a grating sound, a section of the wall swung inward, disclosing a spiral staircase leading downwards. She went back to the couch where the unconscious form of Conan rested. Grasping him beneath the armpits, she dragged him inside the secret door, straining her muscles to the utmost to move his great weight. She worked the spring from inside to close the door and laid the Cimmerian to rest on the steps. He lay snoring like a hibernating bear.
Thanara hurried down the steps. Light came faintly from several narrow window slits. On the ground floor she found herself in a small circular chamber. The exit worked in the same way as the entrance to the hidden passage.
She pressed the stud and slipped out, taking good note of the means of reentry.
The fort was a hell. The Zuagirs had broken out the contents of the wine cellars and gotten swiftly drunk, with the light-hearted irresponsibility of the primitive nomad unused to civilized drink.
Their laughing torchmen had set fire to every house. Bands of captive, half-naked women were rounded up and herded, with whiplashes and coarse jests, toward the main gate.
At the barracks the slaughter had been awful. The cornered soldiers, rushing out through the only exit, had run into a hail of arrows from the waiting Zuagir archers. None of them had a chance, blinded by smoke and confused by sleep. Hundreds of pincushioned bodies lay in heaps about the ruins of the barracks, while charred bodies in the debris showed that many had been caught by the flames before they could win out the door to face the arrows.
Among the inner buildings of the fort, bands of blood-mad nomads were still cutting down the remnants of the company of the Imperial Guard who, awakened by the noise, burst out of their scattered lodgings. Such a bloody stroke as tonight’s sack had not been dealt a Turanian stronghold in decades.
Hardened to a life of raw experience, Thanara hurried through the dark streets. The way was lit only by the guttering flames of burning houses. Unfrightened by the corpses choking the gutters, she melted into dark doorways whenever a screaming Zuagir band shuffled by, swinging golden spoils and herding captive women.
When passing the mouth of a small lane, she heard a gurgle. She peered swiftly into the gloom and discerned a prostrate figure. She also saw that it wore the spired helmet and fine-meshed mail coif of a Turanian Imperial Guard.
Hurrying into the narrow space, she bent and removed the gag from the man’s mouth. She at once recognized Ardashir of Akif, half suffocated by the smoke of nearby fires but otherwise very much alive.
She cut his bonds and motioned him to rise and follow her, stifling the imprecations that he started to gasp out by a finger at her lips. With the habits of an old soldier, he accepted her leadership without argument.
The journey back to the governor’s palace was uneventful. The drunken bands seemed satisfied with their spoils and were drawing back out of the fort. Once, however, the Turanians were confronted by a pair of leering, drunken desert raiders, but the Zuagirs could not match the swift strokes of Ardashir’s scimitar by clumsy motions with their curved knives. Leaving their bloodied bodies behind, the couple won unscathed to the tower. They slipped into the secret entrance. Ardashir followed unwillingly as Thanara led the way up the stairs to where Conan lay.
Recognizing his foe, Ardashir snatched at his scimitar with an oath.
Thanara caught his arm. “Calm yourself! Know you not that the king will shower us with gold if we bring the barbarian to him alive?”
Ardashir made a pungent suggestion as to what King Yezdigerd could do with his gold. “The swine has smirched my honor!” he shouted. “I will …”
“Hold your tongue, fool! What will happen to you when the king learns you have lost a whole company of his precious Imperials but escaped without a scratch yourself?”
“Hm,” said Ardashir, his fury abating and giving way to calculation.
Thanara continued:
“The king’s most skilled executioners will have to meet in conclave to invent sufferings hellish enough to atone for the trouble he has given Turan. Take hold of your senses! Will you forsake wealth and a generalship for a moment of personal vengeance?”
Growling but quieted, Ardashir sheathed his sword and helped the girl to tie the barbarian’s hands and feet.
Peering into the deserted quarters of the governor through a secret spyhole, she whispered: “We shall wait until dawn. By then the Zuagir bands will have left, and we shall take horses from some stable.
The drunken raiders must have overlooked some. If we spur hard, we can be out of danger in half a day.
Provisions can be found in this house. We shall ride straight for the capital and drug our prisoner anew during the journey to keep him quiet. In five days he shall lie in the king’s deepest dungeon in Aghrapur!”
Her dark eyes flashed triumphantly as she gazed on the prostrate form of the Cimmerian.
CHAPTER 4: The Palace on the Cliff
With head whirling, stomach knotted with nausea, and throat parched, Conan the Cimmerian slowly regained his senses. His last memory was of sitting on the sumptuous couch of Veziz Shah, governor of Fort Wakla.
Now he found himself gazing at dank, dripping walls, with the squeak of scuttling rats in his ears as he turned heavily over to sit up on a bed of moldy straw. As he moved, there was a jingle of chains linking the fetters on his wrists and ankles with a massive stone staple set in the wall. He was naked but for a loincloth.
His head felt as if it were going to split. His tongue stuck to his palate with thirst, and intense pangs of hunger assailed him. In spite of the shooting pains in his skull, he raised his voice in a mighty bellow.
“Ho, guards! Would you let a man perish of hunger and thirst? Fetch food and drink! What cursed nook of Hell is this?”
With a patter of footsteps and a jingle of keys, a paunchy, bearded jailer appeared on the other side of the iron grille that barred the door of the cell. “So the western dog has awakened! Know that these are the dungeons of King Yezdigerd’s palace at Aghrapur. Here are food and water. You will need to fill your belly to appreciate the cordial reception the king has prepared for you.”
Thrusting a loaf and a small jug through the bars, the jailer went away, his cackling laughter resounding hollowly in the corridor. The famished Cimmerian flung himself on the food and drink. He munched great hunks of the stale loaf and washed them down with gulps of water.
At least he did not now have to fear poison, for if the king had wanted to kill him out of hand it would have been easy to do so while he lay unconscious.
He pondered his predicament. He was in the hands of his most implacable enemy. In the olden days King Yezdigerd had offered fabulous rewards for Conan’s head. Many had been the attempts on Conan. Several would-be assassins had been killed by Conan himself. But the tenacious hatred in Yezdigerd’s heart had not slackened even when his foe had won power as king of far Aquilonia. Now, by a woman’s devious schemes, Conan was at last at the mercy of his merciless antagonist. Any ordinary man would have been daunted by the terrible prospect.
Not so Conan! Accepting things as they were with barbarian stolidity, his fertile mind was already trying and discarding plans of winning to freedom and turning the tables of his vengeful captor. His eyes narrowed as the clank of footsteps sounded in the corridor.
At a harsh word of command the steps halted. Through the grille Conan could discern a half-score of guardsmen, gilt-worked mail a-shimmer in the torchlight, curved swords in their hands. Two bore heavy bows at the ready. A tall, massive officer stood forward. Conan recognized Ardashir, who spoke in a sharp, cutting voice.
“Shapur and Vardan! Truss the barbarian securely and sl
ing a noose about his neck! Archers! Stand by to prevent any trick!”
The two soldiers stepped forward to carry out the order. One bore a log of wood six feet long and several inches thick, while the other carried a stout rope. Ardashir addressed himself to the Cimmerian. His eyes glowed with malevolence and his fingers twitched with eagerness to attack Conan, but he held himself in check with the iron self-control of a well-trained officer. He hissed: “One false move, barbarian dog, and your heart shall know the marksmanship of my archers! I should dearly love to slay you myself, but you are the king’s own meat.”
Conan’s chill blue eyes regarded the maddened officer without emotion as the soldiers placed the log across his shoulders and bound his arms to it. Without apparent effort, Conan tensed his huge arm muscles, so that the rope was stretched to its greatest tautness at the moment of tying.
The jailer than unlocked Conan’s fetters. Conan rumbled:
“You Turanian dogs will get what you deserve sooner or later. You will see.”
Ardashir’s face twitched in fury as he spat back: “And you will get yours, you red-handed rogue! No torture devised by human brains will be too cruel when the royal executioners set to work upon you.” He laughed a shrill uncontrolled laugh that betrayed his hysteric mood. “But enough of this gabble. Follow me, Your Majesty of maggoty Aquilonia!”
At a gesture to the guardsmen, the little company marched along the dank corridors. The bound barbarian walked in their midst, bearing the log across his shoulders. Conan was quite unruffled. He had been in many tight places before and won his way to freedom. He was like a trapped wolf, alert and constantly looking for a chance to reverse the situation. He did not waste thought on the terrible odds against him, or on futile recriminations against his foes, or on self-reproach for the moment’s lapse in vigilance that resulted in his capture. His whole mind and nervous system were concentrated on what to do next.
Winding stone staircases led upward. As nobody had blindfolded Conan, his keen eyes took in every detail. The dungeons of the royal palace were far below ground level. There were several floors to pass, at each of which an armed guard stood ready with sword or pike.
Twice Conan glimpsed the outside world as they passed window slits. The darkling sky showed that the time was either dawn or dusk. Now he understood the mystifying murmur of surf which had reached his ears.
The palace was built on the outskirts of Aghrapur, on a crag overlooking the Sea of Vilayet. The dungeons were carved out of the heart of the rock whose sheer face ended in the lapping waves below.
That was why Conan could see the sky through the window slits, though they had not yet reached the lower floors of the palace itself. Conan stored the knowledge in his mind.
The size of the palace was amazing. The party passed through endless rooms with fountains and jeweled vases.
Exotic blooms exuded heavy perfume. Now their steps echoed from arching walls; now they were muffled by rich rugs and hangings. Corseleted soldiers stood like statues everywhere with inscrutable faces and eyes alert. Here the splendor of the East bloomed in its full glory.
The party halted before two gigantic, goldworked doors. Fully fifty feet high they towered, their upper parts disappearing in the gloom.
Mysterious arabesques curled their snaky course across the surfaces of the doors, on which the dragons, heroes, and wizards of Hyrkanian legend were depicted. Ardashir stepped forward and struck the golden plates a ringing blow with the hilt of his scimitar.
In response, the immense doors opened slowly. The low murmur of a great assembly of people reached Conan’s ears.
The throne room was vaster than anything Conan had ever seen, from the sumptuous state chambers of Ophir and Nemedia to the smoky, timber-roofed halls of Asgard and Vanaheim. Giant pillars of marble reared lofty columns toward a roof that seemed as distant as the sky.
The profusion of cressets, lamps, and candelabra illuminated costly drapes, paintings, and hangings. Behind the throne rose windows of stained glass, closed against the fall of night.
A glittering host filled the hall. Fully a thousand must have assembled there. There were Nemedians in jupons, trunk hose, and leathern boots; Ophireans in billowing cloaks; stocky, black-bearded Shemites in silken robes; renegade Zuagirs from the desert; Vendhyans in bulging turbans and gauzy robes; barbarically-clad emissaries from the black kingdoms to the far southwest. Even a lone yellow-haired warrior from the Far North, clad in a somber black tunic, stared sullenly before him, his powerful hands gripping the hilt of a heavy longsword that rested before him with the chape of its scabbard on the floor.
Some had come here to escape the wrath of their own rulers, some as informers and traitors against the lands of their birth, and some as envoys. The gluttonous mind of King Yezdigerd was never satisfied with the size of his growing empire. Many and devious were the ways in which he sought to enlarge it.
The blare of golden trumpets rang across the huge hall. An avenue opened through the milling mass, and Conan’s little group set itself again in motion. The distance to the dais was still too great to make out the individuals clustered there, but their brisk approach would soon bring them into range.
Conan was afire with curiosity. Though he had fought this eastern despot many years ago on several occasions… as war-chief of the Zuagirs, as admiral of the Vilayet pirates, as leader of the Himelian hillmen, and as hetman of the kozaki …he had never yet seen his implacable foe in person. He kept his eyes full on the figure on the golden throne as he approached it.
So it came about that he did not notice the widening of the blond giant’s gray eyes in sudden recognition. The powerful knuckles whitened as the enigmatic gaze intently followed the towering figure of the Cimmerian on his way toward the dais.
King Yezdigerd was a swarthy giant of a man with a short black beard and a thin, cruel mouth. Although the debauchery of the Turanian court had wrought pouches under his glittering eyes, and lines crisscrossed his stern and gloomy features ten years too early, his hard-muscled, powerful body bore witness that self-indulgence had not sapped his immense vitality.
A brilliant strategist and an insatiable plunderer, Yezdigerd had more than doubled the size of the kingdom inherited from his weak predecessor Yildiz. He had wrung tribute from the city-states of Brythunia and eastern Shem. His gleaming horsemen had beaten the armies of such distant nations as Stygia and Hyperborea. The crafty king of Zamora, Mithridates, had been shorn of border provinces and had kept his throne only at the price of groveling before his conqueror.
Arrayed in a splendor of silk and cloth-of-gold, the long lolled on the shining throne with the deceptive ease of a resting panther.
At his right sat a woman. Conan felt his blood run hot with recognition. Thanara! Her voluptuous body was draped in the seductive robes of a Turanian noblewoman. A diamond-studded diadem glittered in her lustrous black hair. Her eyes fastened triumphantly on the trussed and weaponless figure of her captive. She joined in the laughter of the courtiers round the throne at some grim jest uttered by the king.
The detail halted before the throne. Yezdigerd’s eyes blazed with triumphant glee. At last he held in his power the man who had slaughtered his soldiers, burnt his cities, and scuttled his ships. The lust for vengeance churned up within him, but he held himself in check while the guardsmen knelt and touched their foreheads to the marble floor.
Conan made no obeisance. His blue eyes aflame with icy fire, he stood still and upright, clashing with the Turanian king in a battle of looks. Every inch of his body expressed defiance and contempt. Unclad as he was, he still commanded the attention of all by the aura of power that radiated from him. The rumor of his fabulous exploits was whispered back and forth among the members of the glittering throng.
Many knew him under other dreaded names in their own distant lands.
Sensing the strain upon the rope he held, Ardashir looked up from his kneeling posture. Black rage seethed in his face as he saw the disdain of the Cimmeria
n for court etiquette. He tugged viciously at the rope, tightening the noose about Conan’s neck. A lesser man would have stumbled and fallen, but Conan stood steady as a rock. The massive muscles of his bull-neck swelled in ridges against the pressure of the rope. Then he suddenly bent forward and straightened up again, pulling the rope backwards. Ardashir was jerked off his knees and sprawled with a clatter of gear on the marble.
“I pay homage to no Hyrkanian dog!” Conan’s roar was like a peal of thunder. “You wage your wars with the help of women. Can you handle a sword yourself? I’ll show you how a real man fights!”
During his short speech, Conan relaxed the taut muscles of his arms, so that the rope binding them went slack.
By stretching, he got the tips of his left fingers around one end of the log on his back. With a quick jerk he slipped his right arm out of the loose coils of rope and brought the log around in front of him. Then he swiftly freed his left arm.
Ardashir scrambled up and lunged towards him, drawing his scimitar.
Conan whipped the end of the log around with a thud against the Turanian’s helmet. The officer was hurled across the floor, his body spinning like that of a thrown doll.
For a split second, everybody stood unmoving, struck still by this seemingly magical feat. With the fighting instinct of the barbarian, Conan took instant advantage of this pause. One end of the log shot out and caught a guardsman in the face. The man flew over backwards, his face a mere smear of blood and broken bones. Then Conan whirled and threw the log into the nearest group of guards on the other side of him, even as they started to rise and draw their weapons. The men were bowled over in a clattering heap.
Lithe and quick as a leopard, Conan bounded forward, snatching up the scimitar that Ardashir had dropped when knocked unconscious. A couple of courtiers tried to bar the Cimmerian’s way at the foot of King Yezdigerd’s dais, but he easily cut his path through them, slashing and thrusting. He bounded up the steps of the dais.
As he came, the king rose to meet him, sweeping out his own scimitar.
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