The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  'Ha! Hold my horse!'

  Hurling his mount's reins forward over its head to trail the ground, Khassek swung a leg up and over and sprang from his saddle. His dagger flashed into his hand as he ran; Conan watched him throw it. The abandoned horse stood staring. The dagger flew as aimed, and Conan nodded, pursing his lips. Best he remembered Khassek's ability at knife-throwing!

  Grinning, the Iranistani returned, boots crunching in the sand. He carried his prise: a hideous little lizard.

  'Fresh meat for dinner,' he announced.

  'Ugh,' Conan said.

  'Feast on that accursed salt-meat then,' Khassek said, and forced the lizard through the loop on the side of his boot before he flung himself up and settled into the high-cantled saddle.

  Conan said nothing; he knew the lizard would smell as good as the finest beef when they roasted it over a couple of the camel droppings they had picked up, and that he would love it. They rode on. The sun stared down at them, and its great eye burned. Conan's nose had peeled days ago. And again yesterday.

  'Conan: about this Isparana. After all you told me she did—treacherous bitch!—you still had her released from slavery to your… Samaratan friends.'

  'I wish slavery on no one, Khass. She served her lord, and I was her rival, her enemy. Am her enemy, I mean! She tried to serve him well. I had the power to free her or to condemn her to slavery. I do not hate her so much as that, and did what I had to do.'

  'What you felt you had to do.'

  Conan pulled off his headband, squeezed sweat from it. 'It is the same, to a Cimmerian.' He restored the headband, blinking.

  'I would not have had her freed,' the Iranistani admitted reflectively. 'It is not the same, to an Iranistani.'

  'I will remember, Khassek of Iranistan.'

  'Conan!' Khassek's tone was accusing; mock-petulant.

  'Just stay a little ahead where I can see you, Khassek my friend.'

  Days and shimmering, sun-baked days later Conan had not responded to Khassek's queries concerning the whereabouts of the amulet; Khassek thought he had guessed; and he still rode a little ahead when they emerged from the long 'ravine' formed by two dunes. Water was low, and both men had at last admitted nervousness.

  It was the Iranistani who first met the couple riding from the opposite direction. All three were much surprised and disconcerted, and two of their horses. Harness jingled and leather creaked as hands tightened to jerk at reins.

  From behind the Iranistani, Conan saw beyond him a twin-bearded soldier in a peaked helmet and, beside and just behind him, a smaller rider muffled in a jallaba whose sand hood covered the face. It was from that invisible face that the first words issued.

  'Sarid! It's he—Conan!'

  'What the—' Khassek was reaching across himself to draw steel even as he spoke. His horse pranced nervously. The Iranistani's full-cut trousers, yellow and filthy, fluttered a little in a slight breeze—warm.

  Sarid drew first, catalyzed by his companion's words.

  The Iranistani's Ilbarsi knife had not quite cleared its sheath when Sarid's swordblade struck, drawing, across his face. Khassek spluttered through a spray of blood and the wind of the words he could not form turned the blood to red froth. Tatters of tongue and lip fell down the front of his surcoat.

  He reeled back; Sarid's backstroke slammed his edge into the side of the other man's face with a chok sound.

  Sarid had to twist his blade free hurriedly, as the Iranistani fell back and sidewise out of his saddle. His face was a hideous ruin, the mouth destroyed by the first stroke and the whole side of his head by the second. He struck the sandy ground with a sound like that of a bag of grain dropped by a careless dock-worker—dropped wetly into a puddle. Khassek flopped, twitched, made hideous wet sounds.

  Only seconds had passed. The dry warm wind whipped garments. Conan was sure that Khassek would not suffer long and knew too that he would never let the man live with such a face.

  Khassek's horse, in the mouth of the narrow passage betwixt the dunes, reared when Sarid tried to spur forward. He had struck at his companion's shouted words, and struck without a thought; now the trained soldier recognised the real quarry. Isparana had told him all about the big dogson Cimmerian. Sarid tried to spur past the rearing riderless horse. It backed into Conan's mount. The Cimmerian cursed and clung to rein and swiftly drawn sword. Remembering the lead-rein of the sumpter horses, he reached back to force it up off his saddle's high back. The leathern strap dropped; the animals stood where they were, though restlessly.

  'Accursed dumb… beast—get… AWAY!' Sarid stormed, striving to spur past the riderless Ironhead. The horse neighed and half-reared again.

  Behind Sarid, Isparana had thrown back her hood. She, too, now held sword in fisted hand on which the knuckles showed pale and bony. On the ground Khassek twitched. His horse remained between Conan and Sarid, at the very mouth of the ravine.

  More seconds rushed by. Leaning out from his saddle only a little, Conan struck Khassek's beast; he twitched his wrist at the last instant so that the flat of his sword loudly slapped Ironhead's rump.

  With a cry almost human, the animal lurched blindly forward. Thus its shoulder struck Sarid's mount just back of the arching, long-maned neck—and Ironhead kept moving. He forced his way on, and his shoulder and then saddle nearly tore Sarid's leg off. The man screamed in a voice as high and un-human as the animal's.

  Then Ironhead was bolting past Isparana, and Sarid was no longer in control of horse or self, reeling, his face twisted, and Conan kicked his mount with both heels—which he then clamped. The muscles bulged in the Cimmerian's legs.

  His horse jerked forward to follow the animal it knew and had followed all the way down from Shadizar. And Conan struck from the right, across Chestnut's neck, across his own chest, and into Sarid's left arm.

  The blade went deep. Both horses were amove, in opposite directions. The swordblade held, imbedded in muscle and bone. Conan's arm was twisted across himself and pressed back against his chest. His horse kept moving. Conan grunted and his body twisted. The horse strove on. Conan, already unbalanced, at last let go his hold in desperation—too late. Conan fell.

  The left rear hoof of Sarid's big bay horse missed the Cimmerian's head by the breadth of two fingers.

  The bay lurched into a trot, free of restraint, for Sarid's left arm was half severed and fountaining blood in a glistening wash around the blade that stood out from it. The horse galloped past Conan's pack-animals, which were still within the little pass betwixt the dunes. There was not enough room; the bay did not care. Sarid was wiped from the saddle by a protruding pack. He fell heavily. The sword standing from his arm seemed to shorten.

  Sarid, out of desire for Isparana and spurred into a reasonless fever by lust, blandishments and promises of reward beyond even her enticing self, had abandoned his oath as a soldier of Turan. He had attacked mindlessly, had slain Khassek, a complete stranger… and had lost his left arm and the use of his left leg.

  Now a prancing, panicky sumpter horse stepped on his chest, and into it.

  Conan, meanwhile, plopped heavily to the sand. Twisting even as he struck, he was up in two seconds. He had lost both horse and sword and narrowly missed being stepped on. He was angered to an extent that approached madness. Facing back the way he had come, he gazed at the rump of Isparana's horse. Its long black tail fluttered behind like a banner, a taunting pennon.

  The big Cimmerian snarled and did the insane. He grasped that long flowing tail in both hands, and he set himself.

  In an instant his heels were deep in sand and horsehair was cutting into his ringers.

  With a squeal and a jerk that rocked the woman in its saddle, the animal came to a halt. It strained, snorting—and Conan held!

  Its rider, twisting in a high-backed saddle of leather over wood, leaned back to cut at Conan with her sword, which was curved in the eastern manner; a drawing blade. Her mount's tail was beautifully long and the straining man was well back.
He was just out of reach of her swordtip. She tried again.

  The reshifting of her weight rearward on her mount, along with her violent movements and Conan's dragging at its tail, brought the horse up into an air-pawing rear.

  Grinning like a wolf, Conan released his grip just as Isparana tumbled onto him.

  They rolled, man and robed woman. Both cursed. The offended horse looked back with large, rolling eyes that showed considerable white and seemed to mirror shocked sensibilities. Then it turned away, to exchange stares with the pack animals. One of them—the one with blood on its right forehoof—whickered. So did Isparana's horse. Several yards beyond it, Conan's chestnut looked back. Harness jingled as it bobbed its head. It too made that low, gentle whickering sound, then lifted its muzzle and whinnied. A quarter mile away, Ironhead heard and slowed to a stop. It turned to gaze back the way it had come. It bobbed its head. The horse neighed loudly.

  Isparana and Conan floundered and rolled in the sand. When they came to pause, she was atop him. She rose up, kneeling-sitting astride him in a flash of yellow-trousered knees, and her sword rushed up. Hate and kill-rage made her eyes ugly and the sun flashed fire from them as well as from her crescent blade.

  Conan saw the glitter of those hating, mad eyes, though the flash of her sword was of far more immediate interest. His arms shot up, just as she struck.

  Her wrist slammed down into his right hand like an oar into its groove. Her whole arm shivered with the impact, and was arrested as if she'd struck stone. Conan's arm held, staying hers, and his hand closed. It tightened.

  His other hand drew her dagger.

  Isparana groaned and her scimitar fell away as her wristbones grated and her fingers flexed involuntarily open. She cried 'NO!' on seeing her own dagger come flashing at her, and then he struck—to slash open her jallaba, all down the front.

  Under the desert robe she wore naught but a cotton bandeau and the slashed, lowslung drawstring trousers. Both were of a bright yellow that contrasted beautifully with her tawny skin. Conan saw no scar on her bilobate chest. He tossed away the dagger, and pulled. She fell onto him and he rolled over once. He was atop her now, staring into her eyes. When she bit at his hand, he let go with the other long enough to slap her.

  'NO, damn you!' she cried and she writhed wildly.

  Khassek of Iranistan lay still, and Sarid, Turanian soldier of Samara lay still; and Isparana of Zamboula writhed and panted and soon Conan saw the ugly burn-scar on her hip. The uncaring desert sun smiled brightly down on them and soon sweat strained the sands and after a time Isparana's curses became moans and little cries, and after another while they took on a different note, for she was no girl.

  VIII

  Strange Relationships

  Southward on the desert rode a man and a woman. All about them rolled low dunes forming shallow ravines, and above the sun was an enemy that turned the sky into a brass cauldron. The horses they bestrode paced slowly, heads down. To the back of the woman's saddle was attached the long lead-line of four more horses. Two were saddled in addition to being laden with packs; the other pair bore even larger packs.

  The man was most definitely a man, though quite young. Tall and burly with massive shoulders straining the white burnoose he wore, he could have been a wrestler. None would have called him handsome—nor could he have been called ugly, with his face in repose. A sweatband of yellow cotton circled his head above his brows and confined his mane of black hair. His face was dark, as were his hands, though the long wedge of chest displayed by his robe's slashed front was of a lighter hue. He had been riding with the legs of his loose desertman's leggings drawn high up on his thighs; now, deciding he had taken enough sun on his muscular legs, he drew the dun-hued leggings down over his boots. The eyes that stared out of that sun-darkened face beneath the jet mop and garish sweat-band were strange, on this southern desert of Turan's expanding empire; they glowed with a smouldering blue that imitated the sun-hot sky.

  The day was hot, as every day was hot. Pale sand reflected the light of the snarling sun in a billion diamond-like flashes so that the world of the desert was both hotter and bright with glare. The horses plodded. Man and woman rode slumped, their lips compressed and their eyes fixed ahead. Clothing clung to sweat-filmed bodies.

  The woman was most definitely a woman, and older than the man. Her face was longish, with moulded cheekbones and staring dark eyes and a slightly curved nose above pronounced lips and a chin that was centre-holed by a round dimple. None could call her truly beautiful; only another woman might call her less than pretty, and that not in truth. Her ballooning leggings or sirwal, a dirt- and sand-soiled yellow that was sweat-dark in patches, were both side-slit and torn. Sliced from her jallaba, her sand-hood lay across her thighs, for the dirty white robe had been raggedly slashed and torn across so that it ended well above her knees. The full-blousing sirwal vanished into red boots that rose above the considerable swell of her calves. A superb mass of waving black hair glinted blue and purplescent in the angry sunlight; it crowded her face with curls and toppled over the dirty old sweatband she wore; it had been the man's. The unfettered halves of her bosom were as restless animals beneath her jallaba's slashed front that displayed much of their curves; her confining bandeau had become a man's sweat-band.

  Her tawny skin, he had ruthlessly pointed out, was well adapted to the sun and would not burn. He had infuriated her with that and surprised her by aiding her in the renewal of the bandage on her hip. There, the saffron sirwal was sadly burned in a ragged, black-edged hole.

  'The skin of my breasts stings, dog!'

  'It won't burn,' he said, riding placidly at her right. 'Not much, anyhow,' he added, and she compressed her full lips.

  'Why take me along at all? Why not leave me to die on the desert, used and ill-clothed and helpless, barbarian? '

  'After all we've been through together? Isparana, Isparana! I feel responsible for you, woman! Beside… your outlook is to get the Eye of Erlik to Zamboula, isn't it?'

  She stared at him bright-eyed, and her sweat-sheened, partially bared chest heaved. She almost whispered, 'Ye-esss…'

  'Right.' Conan shrugged. 'Khassek—whom I liked, damn you—is gone. Zamboula is a lot closer than Iranistan, and I owe nothing to that far land. You will have accomplished your task, 'sparana. You and the amulet return to Zamboula together. It is just that I will be carrying the Eye, not you. Do you comport yourself in manner friendly and I shall be glad to tell your employer that you persuaded me to bring it home to him, in your company.'

  Blinking, staring, Isparana said nothing. Her tonguetip emerged to wet her lips while she considered, reflected, surely puzzled over his words and his accursed hillman's unpredictability. Wisely, Isparana said nothing. The big dog of a barbarian was obviously a survivor, and a worthy fighter as well as fair companion—and, damn him, a worthy lover at that.

  Besides, they were headed for Zamboula, and he had assured her that he had the amulet, though all he seemed to be wearing was that ugly, cheap clay thing hanging from its thong around his neck.

  That afternoon she essayed a few complaints about the scant attire allowed her. She received a friendly slap on the thigh and assurance that this way she was less dangerous. Again he repeated that as she was hardly white to begin with, she was in no danger of suffering sunburn.

  'If we are attacked,' she said, 'I don't even have a weapon!'

  Conan gave her a dark and very serious look. 'If we are attacked,' he said 'you will not need a weapon.'

  Warmth rose in her, and she did not welcome the reaction. Isparana maintained her wise silence, compressing her lips and facing front. They rode south toward Zamboula.

  'I do not like your presence here when I am at my work,' Zafra said. 'Also I do not care for that decadent incense you insist on burning, or the scented candles. This is my place of work. It also adjoins the throneroom. I do not like your presence here at all! Should he find out—'

  'Him!' the woman spewed forth the word
as if it were an epithet. 'How can he find out? Balad has our poor little Akter frightened! Balad wants the throne and I think he will have it, Zafra! Akter nervously keeps his son under constant close guard—the closest. Meanwhile our lord khan is afraid to order troops openly against the challenger Balad—least the people favour Balad!'

  She walked from the couch to Zafra's scrying table, slinking in her few ounces of silk and a pound of gems and pearls. She was sinuous as a lithe slinking cat, this woman of Argos whom Akter Khan called Tigress. Well he might. Chia was a magnificently if economically constructed woman with a catlike speed and grace and an aura of sensuality to arouse an octagenarian. Wild tawny hair sprayed out over broad shoulders the colour of amber and her eyes, large and surrounded by kohl with blued eyelids, were a disconcerting grey. A slave from far Aquilonia brushed that mane daily for many minutes, measured by the time required to move the sundial's shadow half the distance between two-hour points. Once she had done, her mistress deliberately disarranged it to maintain her careless, sensuously tousled appearance.

  For all that he knew her well, for all their hours together, Zafra still watched her movements in fascination and appreciation and was aroused merely by the sight of her, walking.

  She was born to tempt, he mused; a woman worthy of an emperor—or a mage who would in years to come rule, and rule a broader domain than little Zamboula of the desert. Trustworthy as her predatory jungle namesake was Chia of Argos, and her morals were those of a cat in heat. She was effete and she was estheticism and decadence personified, and it pleased Zafra that he had made her his, who had been Akter Khan's. Not that the khan knew she was no longer his!

  Only last night Akter had called for her and of course she had gone, while Zafra ground his teeth and plotted darkly a future dominated by sorcery; dominated by Zafra who would be Zafra Khan.