Conan and the Manhunters

by John Maddox Roberts

  Sagobal saw a man caught in a beam of pure white light. Thus imprisoned, he froze in place, screaming. Then the flesh flew from his bones in bloody, smoking clots. Within three heartbeats, only his blackening skeleton stood there; then it collapsed into a steaming black heap.

  'Arrows into the windows!' Berytus shouted. Immediately, his archers plied their weapons, and the beams seemed not to affect the flight of the shafts, for they sped through the openings undeflected and unharmed. From within came a scream.

  'At least someone is doing us some good,' Sagobal said. A glowing, unstable shape arose from the ground at his feet, its arms outspread. Quick as a thought, his sword flicked through it. He felt the slightest of resistance, then the thing dispersed in fading dots of dim light. 'Some of the wizard's defences are naught but illusion,' he said.

  'Where is Osman?' Berytus asked, enraged. 'He acted too quickly and gave us away! I will slit his gullet!' Just then one of the ape-monsters attacked the Aquilonian, and Sagobal saw the quickness, coolness and skill that had kept the man-hunter alive in the fighting-pits. Berytus did not waste a motion, nor did he allow fear to affect him in the slightest.

  His left hand shot out and he buried his fingers in the thing's throat, holding it stiff-armed, ignoring its snapping jaws and clawing hands as he plied the short, heavy blade of his curved sword. He jammed the blade into its belly and twisted it about, eviscerating the animal in seconds. Then he withdrew the reeking steel and brought it down on the sloping skull, splitting bone and scattering teeth. The beast thrashed with unnatural life for a few seconds, then was still. Berytus dropped the carcass and looked about for his next foe. Sagobal knew that an ordinary swordsman would have lopped off his own hand with that last blow.

  Shosq took something that looked like a ball of herbs from a pouch at his waist and cast it at the house, where it expanded, fastened and threw out tendrils that spread to envelop all the walls, red sparks crawling along the network of lines until the whole structure was covered with moving, blinking points of red. The beams of light from the windows faltered and faded.

  'This is too much,' Berytus announced calmly as he watched three of his men struggling with something that looked like a crab the size of a bull. With a huge pincer, it snipped an arm from one of them even as the other two sent their axes crashing through its brittle shell, hewing away legs and spilling its entrails. 'We must go back to the horses!'

  'I shall have all his defences neutralized within minutes!' hissed the priest.

  'Many of us can die within minutes,' Berytus countered.

  Sagobal was shaken by the supernatural apparitions, but he lusted for the treasure. In any case, it was not his men who were being slaughtered. Even as the thought struck him, a man-hunter trod upon something unseen and was enveloped in green flames that licked over his body. He screamed and fell to the ground and thrashed even as the green fire faded away to nothing. The burned man continued to howl until a comrade put him from his pain by drawing a dagger swiftly across his throat. The blood fountained for a moment before subsiding.

  'We stay,' Sagobal said grimly. Then he looked around. 'Osman!' he shouted. 'Where are you, jackal?'

  Above the ridge, flashes lit the sky like distant lightning, but in colours no natural lightning ever boasted. Conan heard thunderous noises, and faint screams. Something bat-winged arose with a struggling human form clamped in toothy jaws and flapped away to the north. Just ahead of him, the Cimmerian heard the pounding of hooves, then a score or so of horses came pounding down the draw. He reined aside and as they passed, he saw that a single human figure rode among the saddled but riderless mounts, hunched over and flogging his horse's rump as if he could never run fast enough. Then they were past and Conan rode on.

  Lying on the ground surrounded by hoof-prints lay a human body. Conan halted by it and dismounted. He squatted and examined the corpse. He did not know the man, but his belt and dagger were Poitainian, as was the way his hair was dressed, although he wore the voluminous desert robe common to the district. He had been stabbed from behind, the thrust passing neatly between the ribs, piercing the heart. If this was one of the man-hunters, Conan mused, then he had been slain by someone he knew, for such a one would not be ambushed in this spot.

  He rode to the top of the ridge and gazed down upon the spectacle below. The lights from the house were fading and the structure seemed to be wrapped in glowing embers. A few of the men still surrounding it were struggling with uncanny creatures, but these brutal fights were soon ended and there was near silence. He saw a small group of men standing before the door. One was Sagobal. Another looked like one of the temple priests. The third was a hulking, dangerous-looking man. The way he moved told the Cimmerian that this was a formidable swordsman. The attackers seemed to have gained the upper hand.

  A faint nickering sound drew his attention. A number of horses were picketed at the end of the pool farthest from the house. The vicious fighting, with its unaccustomed sights, sounds and smells, had upset them, but they were securely tethered and they were now calming. He began to make his way toward them.

  'Can you make that door safe for us to assault?' Sagobal asked the priest.

  'The web of Ahriman sucks the power from it even now,' replied the priest. 'When the last of the red fires extinguishes, all magical power will have been drawn from the house and you may go in.'

  'What sort of traps might he have waiting for us inside?' Berytus demanded.

  'All magical power is drained from the place,' said Shosq. 'If you cannot deal with the men inside, that is your problem and one with which I decline to aid you. The wizard's power is exhausted.'

  'Men I can deal with,' Berytus said.

  'Then do so,' Sagobal commanded.

  Berytus began to station his men, with the bulk of them before the door. Others took up station near the windows with arrows nocked to their bowstrings. Two of them hewed down a palm tree and began fashioning it into a crude battering ram.

  'We are ready,' Berytus announced.

  'Wait,' Sagobal commanded as a few sparks of red crawled listlessly over the fragile-looking web, like dying fireflies. Then the last of them winked out and the web fell to pieces, as if it were made of ashes.

  'Now!' Sagobal commanded. Berytus waved his arm and the men with the ram rushed forward. The soft, pulpy wood of the palm trunk was not as effective as that of a hardwood tree, but gradually the stout door began to bend inward, straining against its hinges and locking-bar. The men stood nervously, fingering their weapons. The archers sent an occasional shaft inside, but were reluctant to waste too many arrows when they could not see their targets.

  'It will break in soon,' Sagobal said, gloating. 'Then the treasure is mine.'

  Conan led the horses around to the back of the house. He moved carefully, but the men surrounding the place were so preoccupied that none even glanced in his direction. Picketing the beasts at a safe distance, he made his stealthy way on foot to the rear. This wall had but a single window, and a few paces from it stood a pair of archers, poised to shoot.

  They never heard the Cimmerian come up behind them. His dagger was in the throat of one before the other could even turn his head. Conan jerked his knife from the first man's neck and slashed it viciously across the larynx of the other, severing flesh and cartilage all the way down to the spinal cord. The two men dropped almost as one, their blood spraying onto the sandy ground. He wiped his blade on the tunic of one and stepped silently to the window.

  'Ubo! Chamik! Volvolicus! Are you alive?' His voice was a loud whisper. He jerked aside as a long, curved sword thrust out on the end of a silver-braceleted arm. With a blow of his fist, he knocked the weapon to the ground.

  'It's me, fool! Conan!'

  'How did you get here?' Ubo asked, rubbing his stinging wrist.

  'Never mind that. The rear is unguarded and I have horses nearby.' The sound of loud thumping came from the front of the house. 'How many of you are alive?'

  'Auda took an a
rrow in his leg, but we can all ride.'

  'Then come with me quickly. They will be through the front door soon.'

  The four bandits piled out the window without delay and made their way toward the horses, guided by Conan's pointing finger. Auda limped heavily, but he was no slower than the rest. Layla pushed her father through the aperture, burdened as he was by a sack of books and instruments.

  'Leave those,' said Conan in an urgent whisper.

  'I cannot,' the mage declared. 'They are my whole life.'

  'They are apt to prove your whole death,' Conan said. 'Woman, hurry up!'

  'I have something to leave for them,' she said. 'It will be but a moment.'

  The Cimmerian fumed while he waited; then she all but dove through the window and he caught her. She kissed him soundly, squirmed from his arms and began to run. He was close behind her.

  'What did you leave them?' he asked.

  'Just some things we no longer needed... some tow, old oil, and a bit of fire.'

  They ran on into the night to where the others, already mounted, awaited them.

  Berytus called a halt. 'It will go down within the next three or four blows. Be ready.' The men were already alert and tense.

  'What is that smell?' Sagobal asked, sniffing. There was a tinge of smoke upon the night air.

  'Probably one of my men burning,' Berytus said.

  'Light from inside!' cried an archer stationed at one of the windows. 'A flame!'

  'They've fired the place,' Berytus muttered. 'Resume!'

  Three times more the improvised ram struck the door as smoke began to pour from the windows. With the fourth, the thick portal smashed inward. At the inrush of air, flames leapt high and the foremost ram-handler jumped back, beating at the flaming cuff of his sleeve.

  'Bring water!' Sagobal shouted. 'Use whatever you have! Helmets, purses, anything that will hold water! Someone search for buckets or jars!'

  From their proposed man-slaying, the hunters turned to fire-fighting. Their attempts to quench the blaze were futile, for the little water they could dash upon the burning material did naught more than spread the burning oil. The flames reached the dry wood and palm thatch of the roof and roared fifty feet into the air.

  'Get back,' Berytus ordered. 'This is futile!' The men pulled back and sat on the ground, some of them bandaging heir wounds. The heat from the house grew intense.

  'Why did they do this?' Sagobal wondered, tugging at his moustache.

  'Perhaps they did not wish to face your dungeon and instruments of torture,' said Berytus.

  'Rogues and bandits? I never yet saw one take his own life. Always, they try to preserve their wretched existence one more day, one more hour.'

  'It might have been the wizard, or the woman,' the Aquilonian pointed out. 'The bandits may all have been killed by the arrows we shot in. Whatever the case, you have little to worry about. If the treasure is in there, such a fire as this will not damage it much.'

  'Aye,' said Sagobal with some satisfaction.

  'I must see to my men.' Berytus went off to count his dead and evaluate his wounded.

  'Well, priest,' said Sagobal. 'Are you content with your night's work?'

  'That I shall tell you when I have been within the house and have seen what lies therein. If the wizard be dead, and if I see no sign that he has wrought us greater hurt, then perhaps I shall be satisfied.'

  'These are strange words,' Sagobal said. 'His house is destroyed and the wizard himself almost certainly dead. What more can you wish? And what do you mean by 'greater hurt'?'

  'That is a matter that concerns only myself and my brethren,' the priest answered. Then the mottled face resumed its expressionless contemplation of the burning house.

  Berytus returned to them as the flames were dying down. 'I have had six killed and four so wounded as to be useless for months to come! I am down to seven men, counting myself!'

  'What is that to me?' Sagobal said coldly. 'Men are cheap. Come, let us see what is in there.'

  'Two of my men are out back with their throats slit,'

  Berytus told him. 'They were watching the single window in the rear wall. Somebody must have come upon them from behind. That means that side of the house was unattended, probably from before the time we noticed the fire.' He watched rage fill Sagobal's face. 'Now let us go see what is in there.'

  The rising sun of morning revealed the devastation in the little oasis. Dead men and the carcasses of uncanny creatures lay everywhere. The palms had been ravaged and the house was a gutted hulk. Only the pool was untouched, its waters shimmering placidly.

  Berytus in the lead, they walked into the now roofless house, the hard, hot cinders crunching beneath their boots and sandals.

  'Ambula,' Berytus said, 'this is no place for a barefoot man. Go over the ridge. You and the Poitainian fetch our horses back.' The dark man saluted with his spear and trotted off to do his commander's bidding.

  They searched the main room, then the small rooms opening off it. They found nothing save ashes. There were no human remains.

  'Where are they?' Sagobal asked.

  'Stairway here,' said Barca the Shemite, tugging up a charred trapdoor. 'A cellar lies below.'

  'If any took refuge down there, they must be suffocated,' Berytus said. 'But be cautious anyway. Urdos, go you first.'

  The huge Kothian drew his short-handled ax and descended the stair, his steps light for one of his bulk. A minute later he called up through the trap. 'No one down here, but it is a strange place.'

  'They got away!' Sagobal raged. 'Those fools of yours in the back allowed themselves to be killed and let them escape!'

  'Calm yourself, Turanian,' Berytus said contemptuously. 'They cannot have carried much with them.'

  Reminded of his true reason for being in this place, Sagobal rushed down the stair and stood within the wizard's chamber. It seemed empty except for the strange table of stone, but the light flooding down from the open roof above revealed that walls and ceiling were covered with close-set carvings of exotic and wondrous design. Otherwise, it was even emptier than the rooms above.

  'Where is my treasure?' Sagobal shouted at the top of his lungs. 'I want you men to tear this place apart until you find

  it!'

  'It is not here,' Berytus said, coming down the steps. 'And it has never been here, just as I told you. All this was for nothing, because you chose to listen to that lying, sneaking villain, Osman. Who, by the way, is nowhere to be found. It is too much to hope that one of those monsters carried him off.'

  'Go after them!'

  'I intend to,' Berytus said, 'for once I have undertaken to hunt a man down, I always catch him. But that is the only reason, for this commission has already cost me more than your pay will recompense.'

  'I care not for your problems, man-hunter,' said the guard commander. 'Just carry out your orders.'

  The Aquilonian went up the stair and the priest came down. Shosq ignored the fuming Turanian soldier and went to the table, running his repellently long, flexible fingers over its intricately marked surface. It seemed to Sagobal that the fingers of those hands had far more joints than was natural for human hands to possess.

  The priest left the table and examined the walls and ceiling, emitting a low, whistling sound as he walked along the lines of carving. Disgusted by Shosq and by the night's fiasco, Sagobal went back up the steps. He found Berytus just as Ambula returned.

  'Where are the horses?' the Aquilonian asked.

  'They are gone,' said the man of Punt. 'And the Poitainian is dead, stabbed through the back.'

  'Now there are six of us,' Berytus said. 'Six of us, and we are afoot.'

  'More of your bungling,' Sagobal said. 'There are some

  horses at the other end of the pool. Fetch them and we may ride to Shahpur. More can be sent back for the others.'

  'Those horses are gone,' said Berytus, his conversational tone masking his deadly anger. 'What do you think the bandits and the wizard escap
ed on? Bahdur found the place where they mounted and rode away. One man rode in and took those horses, led them around behind the house, and killed my men. Perhaps he killed the Poitainian and ran off our horses, perhaps it was Osman. But it must have been the Cimmerian. Among them, only he has the skill to accomplish such a thing undetected.'

  'Conan!' Sagobal bit out, beside himself with rage. 'Will that barbarian plague me to the end of my days?'

  'I should add that he -was riding one of your horses. Some of those tied down at the other end of the pool were yours as well. We could tell by the way they were shod.'

  Sagobal saw red and almost began to draw his sword. The Aquilonian's fearless gaze and steady voice made him pause.

  'Do not mistake me for an unarmed priest, Sagobal,' he warned. 'You are a dead man if you draw your steel on me. We must be away while the day is still cool. Pull yourself together and let us go. If we retrace our steps, perhaps we will come across 'some of our runaway horses.'

  Sagobal whirled and stalked off toward the ruined house. He needed to calm himself, knowing that he needed this man if he was ever to see the treasure and kill the Cimmerian. He went down the stairs and found the priest still examining the wizard's inner sanctum.

  'We must go,' said Sagobal.

  'Go, then,' said Shosq, not looking at him.

  'The horses are gone. We have to walk. We must leave now.'

  This time the priest turned and regarded him with snake-like eyes. 'Take whatever way you can to get back to your city, Turanian. I shall remain here. There is work for me to accomplish. I will make my own way back. Have no concern on my account.'

  'Be assured I shall not,' said Sagobal. He went back up the stairs and out of the ruins. His thoughts were black.

  Ubo, Chamik and Mamos laughed for a long time, joyous with their escape when all had seemed lost. Auda was happy, but in too much pain to laugh about it. The wizard was grim, and Conan was silent. Layla seemed content to be riding through the night, apparently undisturbed by the destruction of her home.

  'What happened back there?' Conan asked when he was satisfied that they were safe. He called for a slackening of pace and they trotted along beneath the desert stars.