The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Another now emerged; she was faceless and indeed headless beneath a long gold-arabesqued scarlet veil that dangled to her waist's cincture, which was of silver disks and fell below her deep belly. The disks were coins, Conan saw, and knew that the woman bore much weight of them.

  'My wife Aqbi,' Akhimen said. Her bow was not quite so deep, Conan saw, as her daughter's.

  'I am honored, and… pleased to be spared the doubtless blinding beauty of the mother of the beautiful Zulfi and so handsome a son as Hajimen.' And a few more such speeches, the Cimmerian thought sourly, and I may throw up my beer!

  Again Aqbi bowed. She and Zulfi retreated to a dim corner to seat themselves, in flowing movements that scarcely disturbed their all-covering scarlet garments. Akhimen snapped his fingers. The two naked girls crawled awkwardly backward to flank the two women.

  'Daughters of the Yoggites,' Akhimen said, and affected to spit.

  Conan said, 'Of course,' and wondered how long captives were kept naked… and how long it might be before their left arms withered and died.

  The khan turned to his wife and daughter. 'Zulfi, you will serve me and this guest in our tent. Woman: take your animals and cook for us.'

  Conan noted that the two 'animals,' limping slightly because of their large metal anklets, preceded their mistress from the tent. Zulfi came to the men and inspected their mugs. Both still held plenty of the thick Shanki beer. Even on the desert with grain at a premium, Conan reflected, men managed to make beer! Or perhaps the Shanki purchased it in Zamboula, with carven opals from some area of soft clay stone, and with the horses of slain men.

  The Cimmerian hoped that Akhimen expected no return gesture. Isparana had seen the wisdom of being referred to among these warrior primitives as 'Conan's woman.' However, Conan could not imagine so proud and competent a thief and agent of her khan acting as servant, even to this mighty chieftain of all of five hundred peoples. At the same time, he wondered about her.

  'I would ask where my woman Isparana is.'

  'She receives clothing suitable to a woman,' Akhimen Khan told him, 'and will supervise the placing of the pegs of Conan's tent, as bents a woman who rides with her man.'

  Conan said, 'Oh.'

  'Fill this man's cup!'

  Zulfi did; Aqbi was outside with her 'animals,' where Conan had seen two mud-walled stoves and now smelled garlic heating in grease.

  'My guest is not accustomed to the desert,' Akhimen said, slipping sinuously down to his knees and then seating himself on a camel-hair mat spread on a camel hide laid on the ground. He indicated that Conan should join him.

  Conan did. 'No,' he said. 'My homeland, which I have left, has no desert, and during part of the year grows very cold.'

  Akhimen nodded. 'I have heard of cold,' he said solemnly, though Conan well knew the desert could grow grievously chill at night. 'Nor have Conan's strange sky-hued eyes suffered from the glare-sickness.'

  'No.'

  'Conan is blessed. It is a plague, the glare-sickness. We wear a stone to ward against it. And kohl beneath the eyes, of course. Zulfi: you will fetch our guest a glarestone.'

  Zulfi rustled and jingled away behind the partition, and Conan heard his stomach rumble; outside, Aqbi was preparing something most savory. Bread with garlic, he was sure, and, he hoped, more. He knew better than to refuse any gift… and then, as Zulfi returned carrying a garnet the size of a plum, he remembered Akhimen's reverse bargaining.

  Accept that immense stone, the Cimmerian thought, and I am as one with the—spit!—Yoggites!

  'I will accept a gift of glarestone no larger than the fiftieth part of that treasure.'

  'Ah! Theba shows displeasure,' Akhimen said as if lamenting and naming, Conan assumed, a god; the name was unfamiliar to him. 'A guest will not accept my proffered gift! Zulfi, protect our honour; fetch in a glarestone half the size of that one!'

  'I shall accept a gift of the khan,' Conan said, with the concept of Shanki bargaining and honour battling natural avarice within him, 'of no more than a twentieth the size of that one.'

  Akhimen sighed as if exasperated. 'Our guest will accept of us naught but a gift of a third that which we wish him to take. Fetch such, Zulfi.'

  'Too much honour is done me,' Conan said, trying not to show his sadness at swallowing a choking lump of greed. 'My own honour will not allow me to accept so rich a gift! I can accept no more than the tenth part of the stone in the beautiful hands of the khan's daughter.'

  'Our guest honours himself by his modesty,' Akhimen Khan said, striking his forehead.

  He shocked Conan then by producing a curved knife from the broad scarlet sash that encircled his waist under his tabard. Even as the Cimmerian's arm started to move to seize and crush the man's wrist, Akhimen touched his own chest with the point of his blade.

  'Does my guest, who gives me many horses, not accept two gifts of glarestones the tenth part of this one which is in truth too large for the wearing so that such an offer shames me, I shall slay myself on the instant.'

  'Let the khan's hand be stayed,' Conan said, wanting to laugh. 'Rather would I spill my own blood even to the death, than bring doom upon the Shanki by causing their great khan to be so much as scratched.'

  Akhimen threw the Cimmerian a look. Whether it was of admiration for the return of flowery language or of some dolor at his guest's 'surrender,' Conan could not be certain. Zulfi departed, swishing and jingling.

  'Is it permissible that I bow to the khan's daughter on her return?'

  Akhimen looked shocked, and Conan felt that it was not sham. 'In what way have I offended Conan of Cimmeria, that he would bow to a woman within my very tent?'

  Conan thought fast, and fetched out his little eating dagger. 'I shall kill myself,' he said, and improvised: 'Among some people it is great honour a man offers, to offer to bow to the daughter of another.'

  'Ahh!' Akhimen's hand rose to his beard, which he combed with his fingers. 'A fascinating concept! I see that Conan meant only to honour me. People are so different throughout the world, are they not? What strange customs my guest must know!'

  'Aye,' Conan solemnly said, sheathing his dagger and reminding himself of the desert man's words concerning cold:I have heard of it, Akhimen had said.

  'Aye,' the Cimmerian repeated. 'Some raise slaves among them, whom they persuade to accept their gods and customs. These slaves then wed among their captors, and their children are as any other.'

  Akhimen shook his head and looked as if he wanted to vomit. 'Surely such is not the custom in Cimmeria!'

  'Oh no,' Conan said.

  He had discovered what he wanted to know. For hundreds of years this little band of five hundred people had practiced endogamy, so that all the blood of the Shanki remained the same—whencever it had come— and customs and rites became only more ornate, and strictured with the passage of time.

  Zulfi returned bearing two garnets, each large enough to form the pommel of a dagger. Each had been expertly and doubtless laboriously pierced, and threaded with a strip of braided camel hair. Conan accepted the gifts with grace, and was careful not to bow to the daughter of Akhimen, khan of five hundred.

  'May Theba bless Conan of Cimmeria with the sight of an eagle and protect him from the glare sickness,' she said, and Akhimen repeated the words after her.

  'Might a guest, nervous of offending, ask why the khan and his family wear the star of black cloth, while I saw none on any other among the Shanki? Is it the sign of the family of the khan?'

  'Nay,' Akhimen said, and gazed at the mat between his folded knees. 'We mourn, man of Cimmeria. My people have only just removed the black stars of Death, after a month. We will wear ours for a full year, and at the end of that time pin the stars to the bodies of two captives, and burn them.'

  Conan's thoughts went to the two naked little slaves, but he was not shocked. These were a warrior people. The Yoggites were their deadly enemies, and customs were customs. Too, Conan had abode in Shadizar, where in temples to many strang
e gods were performed the most abominable and horrific rites involving both animals and humans, and the blood sacrifice that was as old as his race—the cruelest of all the animals of the world.

  'A guest mourns with his host,' Conan said, gazing down at his mat. 'The khan of the Shanki had another son, who is lost to him?'

  'Nay. A daughter. I sent her, in honour and much friendliness, to the khan of the Zamboulans. She was a maiden in the bloom of her youth, a white rock-rose unplucked. Among those people who abide within walls, that daughter of the desert sickened and died. Word was brought us. The khan of the Zamboulans sent message that she had been with child, doubtless a son, and he sought to honour us by laying her body with those of his ancestors and his women. We forgive him this, for he could not know that she would not wish to be pent thus, in the earth. She should of course have been returned to the desert her home, to be burned and her ashes given up to the wind to become one with the sands.'

  'Of course,' Conan said.

  'I sadden at these thoughts,' Akhimen said, 'and such is not meet in the presence of a warrior guest! 'Give up to grief that time reserved for grief,' Theba tells us, 'and to joy that time for rejoicing, and make always the guest welcome in the tents of the Shanki.' Zulfi! Fill our cups!' Akhimen turned his eagle's eyes on Conan and they seemed to burn with fervour. 'We will get drunk together, man of Cimmeria!'

  And on the morrow I will set off for Zamboula with a swollen head, Conan thought. We do not have to get drunk before we eat, I hope!

  They did not, though a meal of spiced vegetables cooked in beer and chunks torn from broad flat disks of greasy, garlic-laden bread of whole wheat was no feast for a born meat eater of the Cimmerian hills, for all the tastiness of Aqbi's salted cookery. It did raise a thirst.

  'You are… you are beautiful,' Conan told Isparana on the morrow, nor did he seek to disguise his astonishment. Sprawled on his back, he had opened his eyes to discover her sitting beside him.

  Her brows had been shaped by judicious plucking, and greased; while her lips were the weird black of Shanki women, they were shaped by the cosmetic and made to glisten; her eyes were huge within frames of kohl and the lashes fair dripping; and her nails had been lacquered. Shanki scarlet covered her. On a chain of woven camel hair, a large white opal sparkled with pink and green between her breasts, where it pressed weightily so that they were emphasized.

  When he sat up in the tent he did not remember entering, he saw that her toenails, too, had been lacquered. Isparana had quite pretty feet, no darker than his.

  'You are… hideous,' she told him without passion. 'You were half-carried in, mumbling, long after moonrise, drunk and reeking of garlic and their beer —as you still do!'

  He grinned, noting how thick his head felt and wondering if it would complain of strenuous activity.

  'And you did not slay me.'

  'Slay you? Why should I slay you?'

  'Why 'sparana,' he said, putting a very large hand on her hip, 'we are rivals and blood-enemies, remember?'

  'I remember. I also threw a dagger that saved your life, remember?'

  'I do. I am grateful. We are allies, then. And you did not even search me.'

  She gave him a look. 'You have on you a dagger, two nice garnets on camel-hair thongs—luck, among these lunatics—and a nice ring secreted in your pouch, and that piece of junk around your neck, which stinks of garlic.'

  Conan, who had thoughtfully rubbed the glass-set clay 'amulet' with the Shanki bread when he knew he would soon lose his senses, grinned. So she had searched him!

  'And if I'd had the Eye of Erlik on my handsome person?'

  'Why I'd have slit open the back of your tent with your dagger, dear Conan, and then sheathed it under your garlic-stenchy ribs, and been leagues south by now!'

  'Ah, 'sparana, 'sparana! What a foul evil witch you wish you were! How fortunate for us both that you did not find your precious khan's precious amulet.' And he drew her down to him.

  'Ugh,' she murmured, 'Beer and garl—'

  His head complained, and Conan bade it go away and be patient.

  XI

  Spies of Zamboula

  Torches flickered. They rolled up oily smoke to add to the sinister stain of darkened beams that connected stone walls rising from a floor of hard dark earth. The victim hung from one of those beams and her feet only just touched the floor.

  The man in the black hood wrapped several additional convolutions of the terribly slim cord around her wrists and knotted the cord securely with a heartless jerk. Her body lurched and her toes strained to maintain contact with the floor. Very blond and young and naked but for her welts, she gasped and a long groan shuddered from her. Her limbs were so securely bound that no blood could circulate into her hands. The ropes had scraped and abraded, cutting into her wrists and arms while he tightened them. Now she felt only a tingling, and she could not feel her hands at all. She wondered wretchedly, extraneously if they were deep red, or purple, or blackening. Her arms seemed hot, strangely; tugged up this way they should have been cold. Another attempt at struggling assured her that was useless. She was powerlessly bound so as to allow her no movement whatever. Her heels were just off the floor… that only her toes and the balls of her feet touched. The man in the black hood was tall, and his arms were long.

  Throaty gurgling sounds emerged high-voiced from lips she could not bring together. They were very dry.

  The two robed men watched. One said, 'Up.'

  She sobbed at the command. She knew what it meant. The ropes from her wrists ran up over the leather wrapping on a beam high above her head.

  The man in the black hood pulled her up, until her feet cleared the floor. Her groan was hideous. The two robed men watched in silence and the torches flickered. The man in the black hood began to raise and lower the rope and its burden as though he were ringing a great bell. His big belly tautened with effort.

  Bobbing up and down, the dangling victim began to moan steadily and her ribs seemed trying to tear their way through her flesh. She was being whipped up and down at the same time as her strained, limp body rotated and swung in a pendulum motion. Sweat streamed from her. She sobbed with each hard-fought breath.

  'Speak!'

  She heard the voice; she whimpered and tears slid down her cheeks and she would not speak.

  'I see no reason to whip her more. Use the hot irons.'

  'No-o…' she murmured, and her head hung.

  The man in the black hood secured the end of his rope so that only her toes touched the earthen floor. From his belt he drew a gauntlet. He pulled it on as he paced to the brazier, an evil black thing squatting on three legs, with its hair afire. From it thrust up the wooden handles of two slim stems of black iron. He withdrew one. Its tip glowed white. It yellowed as he paced unhurriedly back to his victim, and her wide eyes watched its approach. She mumbled 'no' in that tiny voice again, and he lifted the iron.

  The watching robed men watched him hold the iron firmly, remorselessly against her body, which was twitching and quivering in apprehension and horror. A shriek ripped from her throat while she threw her head up and back and new sweat glistened and rolled. The robed men heard the sharp sizzling sound and smelled the odor of burning flesh.

  'Stop.'

  The hooded man drew away his iron. His victim hung panting, sobbing, while she smelled cooked skin. Sweat poured from her and matted her hair.

  'Speak!'

  She swallowed repeatedly, and gasped, and sobbed, and she panted.

  'Again.'

  The man in the black hood moved, and she felt the heat of the iron's approach.

  'Stop! I will tell you.' Her voice was dully pleading.

  'Stop,' the robed man said; he who wore the sword. The younger man beside him wore no weapons. A fine pendant of gold and pearls and topazes seemed to blaze on his tunic's breast. 'Speak, then. Just hold the iron ready, Baltaj.'

  The black-hooded man remained by her side, the iron in his hand, as if hopeful that she w
ould not say enough. He was a big man, tall and heavy.

  'You are a spy for Balad?'

  'Yes.'

  'You serve the woman Chia, and live here in the palace with her, and you spy on her and on me for the traitor, Balad.'

  She hesitated; the hooded man moved his hand. 'Yes,' she said, accepting even the words that Balad was traitor.

  'You are paid by him?'

  'Yes.'

  'How does he pay you?'

  'My… my parents live well… and do not know why. And… I… I…'

  'Speak!'

  'I am to have my mistress's apartment when Balad has seized Zamboula, and… and she is to serve me.'

  'Idiot! Aquilonian fool! Can you imagine the majestic Argossean Chia whom I call Tigress… can you imagine her consenting to serve you? You have made a fool's bargain, and see what it has cost you?'

  'Bal… Balad will… will make her!'

  'Oh of course. Of course he will! You would not last a day before she slipped a few of her precious clothing-pins into you, stupid slut of Aquilonia! How do you report to Balad the traitor?'

  'He—he is not a traitor! He seeks to free Zamboula of—'

  'Baltaj!'

  The hooded man responded by moving his arm and gauntleted hand. The iron's tip was faded to red now, but it did its work, and they heard it and smelled it, and she shrieked and dangled limply.

  Water and nettles revived her.

  She spoke of how she met the palace guard Khoja three afternoons of every ten, and passed him messages. No, she had never herself seen Balad. He had sent her a message, and the gem they had found secreted in her hair. No, there was no message for them to see; she did not read and it had been taken away again. She was sure she recognised his seal and name.

  'It might have been a warrant for your death, stupid bitch!'

  'No-o-o…'

  'That is enough. Baltaj, replace the iron. Come up here.'

  A long sigh escaped the captive and she hung limp, trying to get her weight on her toes while she laboured for breath. The hooded man thrust the iron back into the brazier, and ascended the five-and-twenty steps from the dungeon pit to the two robed men on the landing.