Why he had been spared so long, he did not understand, unless the malign entity which ruled the river meant to keep him alive to torture him with grief and fear. All pointed to a human or superhuman intelligence – the breaking of the water-casks to divide the forces, the driving of the blacks over the cliff, and last and greatest, the grim jest of the crimson necklace knotted like a hangman’s noose about Bêlit’s white neck.
Having apparently saved the Cimmerian for the choicest victim, and extracted the last ounce of exquisite mental torture, it was likely that the unknown enemy would conclude the drama by sending him after the other victims. No smile bent Conan’s grim lips at the thought, but his eyes were lit with iron laughter.
The moon rose, striking fire from the Cimmerian’s horned helmet. No call awoke the echoes; yet suddenly the night grew tense and the jungle held its breath. Instinctively Conan loosened the great sword in its sheath. The pyramid on which he rested was four-sided, one – the side toward the jungle – carved in broad steps. In his hand was a Shemite bow, such as Bêlit had taught her pirates to use. A heap of arrows lay at his feet, feathered ends toward him, as he rested on one knee.
Something moved in the blackness under the trees. Etched abruptly in the rising moon, Conan saw a darkly blocked-out head and shoulders, brutish in outline. And now from the shadows dark shapes came silently, swiftly, running low―twenty great spotted hyenas. Their slavering fangs flashed in the moonlight, their eyes blazed as no true beast’s eyes ever blazed.
Twenty: then the spears of the pirates had taken toll of the pack, after all. Even as he thought this, Conan drew nock to ear, and at the twang of the string a flame-eyed shadow bounded high and fell writhing. The rest did not falter; on they came, and like a rain of death among them fell the arrows of the Cimmerian, driven with all the force and accuracy of steely thews backed by a hate hot as the slag-heaps of hell.
In his berserk fury he did not miss; the air was filled with feathered destruction. The havoc wrought among the onrushing pack was breath-taking. Less than half of them reached the foot of the pyramid. Others dropped upon the broad steps. Glaring down into the blazing eyes, Conan knew these creatures were not beasts; it was not merely in their unnatural size that he sensed a blasphemous difference. They exuded an aura tangible as the black mist rising from a corpse-littered swamp. By what godless alchemy these beings had been brought into existence, he could not guess; but he knew he faced diabolism blacker than the Well of Skelos.
Springing to his feet, he bent his bow powerfully and drove his last shaft point-blank at a great hairy shape that soared up at his throat. The arrow was a flying beam of moonlight that flashed onward with but a blur in its course, but the were-beast plunged convulsively in midair and crashed headlong, shot through and through.
Then the rest were on him, in a nightmare rush of blazing eyes and dripping fangs. His fiercely driven sword shore the first asunder; then the desperate impact of the others bore him down. He crushed a narrow skull with the pommel of his hilt, feeling the bone splinter and blood and brains gush over his hand; then, dropping the sword, useless at such deadly-close quarters, he caught at the throats of the two horrors which were ripping and tearing at him in silent fury. A foul acrid scent almost stifled him, his own sweat blinded him. Only his mail saved him from being ripped to ribbons in an instant. The next, his naked right hand locked on a hairy throat and tore it open. His left hand, missing the throat of the other beast, caught and broke its foreleg. A short yelp, the only cry in that grim battle, and hideously human-like, burst from the maimed beast. At the sick horror of that cry from a bestial throat, Conan involuntarily relaxed his grip.
One, blood gushing from its torn jugular, lunged at him in a last spasm of ferocity, and fastened its fangs on his throat – to fall back dead, even as Conan felt the tearing agony of its grip.
The other, springing forward on three legs, was slashing at his belly as a wolf slashes, actually rending the links of his mail. Flinging aside the dying beast, Conan grappled the crippled horror and with a muscular effort that brought a groan from his blood-flecked lips, he heaved upright, gripping the struggling, tearing fiend in his arms. An instant he reeled off balance, its fetid breath hot on his nostrils, its jaws snapping at his neck; then he hurled it from him, to crash with bone-splintering force down the marble steps.
As he reeled on wide-braced legs, sobbing for breath, the jungle and the moon swimming bloodily to his sight, the thrash of bat-wings was loud in his ears. Stooping, he groped for his sword, and swaying upright, braced his feet drunkenly and heaved the great blade above his head with both hands, shaking the blood from his eyes as he sought the air above him for his foe.
Instead of attack from the air, the pyramid staggered suddenly and awfully beneath his feet. He heard a rumbling crackle and saw the tall column above him wave like a wand. Stung to galvanized life, he bounded far out; his feet hit a step, half-way down, which rocked beneath him, and his next desperate leap carried him clear. But even as his heels hit the earth, with a shattering crash like a breaking mountain the pyramid crumpled, the column came thundering down in bursting fragments. For a blind cataclysmic instant the sky seemed to rain shards of marble. Then a rubble of shattered stone lay whitely under the moon.
Conan stirred, throwing off the splinters that half covered him. A glancing blow had knocked off his helmet and momentarily stunned him. Across his legs lay a great piece of the column, pinning him down. He was not sure that his legs were unbroken. His black locks were plastered with sweat; blood trickled from the wounds in his throat and hands. He hitched up on one arm, struggling with the debris that prisoned him.
Then something swept down across the stars and struck the sward near him. Twisting about, he saw it – the winged one!
With fearful speed it was rushing upon him, and in that instant Conan had only a confused impression of a gigantic man-like shape hurtling along on bowed and stunted legs; of huge hairy arms outstretching misshapen black-nailed paws; of a malformed head, in whose broad face the only features recognizable as such were a pair of blood-red eyes. It was a thing neither man, beast, nor devil, imbued with characteristics subhuman as well as characteristics superhuman.
But Conan had no time for conscious consecutive thought. He threw himself toward his fallen sword, and his clawing fingers missed it by inches. Desperately he grasped the shard which pinned his legs, and the veins swelled in his temples as he strove to thrust it off him. It gave slowly, but he knew that before he could free himself the monster would be upon him, and he knew that those black-taloned hands were death.
The headlong rush of the winged one had not wavered. It towered over the prostrate Cimmerian like a black shadow, arms thrown wide – a glimmer of white flashed between it and its victim.
In one mad instant she was there – a tense white shape, vibrant with love fierce as a she-panther’s. The dazed Cimmerian saw between him and the onrushing death, her lithe figure, shimmering like ivory beneath the moon; he saw the blaze of her dark eyes, the thick cluster of her burnished hair; her bosom heaved, her red lips were parted, she cried out sharp and ringing as the ring of steel as she thrust at the winged monster’s breast.
'Bêlit!' screamed Conan. She flashed a quick glance toward him, and in her dark eyes he saw her love flaming, a naked elemental thing of raw fire and molten lava. Then she was gone, and the Cimmerian saw only the winged fiend which had staggered back in unwonted fear, arms lifted as if to fend off attack. And he knew that Bêlit in truth lay on her pyre on the Tigress’ deck. In his ears rang her passionate cry: 'Were I still in death and you fighting for life I would come back from the abyss –'
With a terrible cry he heaved upward, hurling the stone aside. The winged one came on again, and Conan sprang to meet it, his veins on fire with madness. The thews started out like cords on his forearms as he swung his great sword, pivoting on his heel with the force of the sweeping arc. Just above the hips it caught the hurtling shape, and the knotted legs fell
one way, the torso another as the blade sheared clear through its hairy body.
Conan stood in the moonlit silence, the dripping sword sagging in his hand, staring down at the remnants of his enemy. The red eyes glared up at him with awful life, then glazed and set; the great hands knotted spasmodically and stiffened. And the oldest race in the world was extinct.
Conan lifted his head, mechanically searching for the beast-things that had been its slaves and executioners. None met his gaze. The bodies he saw littering the moon-splashed grass were of men, not beasts: hawk-faced, dark-skinned men, naked, transfixed by arrows or mangled by sword-strokes. And they were crumbling into dust before his eyes.
Why had not the winged master come to the aid of its slaves when he struggled with them? Had it feared to come within reach of fangs that might turn and rend it? Craft and caution had lurked in that misshapen skull, but had not availed in the end.
Turning on his heel, the Cimmerian strode down the rotting wharfs and stepped aboard the galley. A few strokes of his sword cut her adrift, and he went to the sweep-head. The Tigress rocked slowly in the sullen water, sliding out sluggishly toward the middle of the river, until the broad current caught her. Conan leaned on the sweep, his somber gaze fixed on the cloak-wrapped shape that lay in state on the pyre the richness of which was equal to the ransom of an empress.
IV
The Funeral Pyre
Now we are done with roaming, evermore;
No more the oars, the windy harp’s refrain; Nor crimson pennon frights the dusky shore;
Blue girdle of the world, receive again Her whom thou gavest me.– The Song of Bêlit.
Again dawn tinged the ocean. A redder glow lit the river-mouth. Conan of Cimmeria leaned on his great sword upon the white beach, watching the Tigress swinging out on her last voyage. There was no light in his eyes that contemplated the glassy swells. Out of the rolling blue wastes all glory and wonder had gone. A fierce revulsion shook him as he gazed at the green surges that deepened into purple hazes of mystery.
Bêlit had been of the sea; she had lent it splendor and allure. Without her it rolled a barren, dreary and desolate waste from pole to pole. She belonged to the sea; to its everlasting mystery he returned her. He could do no more. For himself, its glittering blue splendor was more repellent than the leafy fronds which rustled and whispered behind him of vast mysterious wilds beyond them, and into which he must plunge.
No hand was at the sweep of the Tigress, no oars drove her through the green water. But a clean tanging wind bellied her silken sail, and as a wild swan cleaves the sky to her nest, she sped seaward, flames mounting higher and higher from her deck to lick at the mast and envelop the figure that lay lapped in scarlet on the shining pyre.
So passed the Queen of the Black Coast, and leaning on his red-stained sword, Conan stood silently until the red glow had faded far out in the blue hazes and dawn splashed its rose and gold over the ocean.
Conan the Barbarian (Part II)
Michael A. Stackpole
I
THE CARAVAN WENDED its way along the Zingaran coast, moving slowly in the bright sunshine. Bound for Messantia, it travelled overland because pirate predation had made shipping far too risky. Though Bêlit, the Queen of the Black Coast, had vanished, her second in command, Conan, had joined with Artus and his band of cutthroats, terrorizing any ships that dared slip down the coastline.
Navarus, the caravan master, once again looked toward the sea. The road hugged the coastal hills. The receding tide had created a flat, sandy expanse between the breakers and the slope leading up to the road. The Argosian merchant had no doubt that the beach was truly quicksand, and as good as a wall to protect them from marauding pirates, but even an absence of raiders and the lack of a single sail between him and the horizon did not make him comfortable.
The caravan would take a week to travel the distance a ship could make in two days. While this did give him a greater opportunity to sample the delights of the female slaves in their cages, it forced him to load wagons and pack animals with food and water for his human merchandise. For the men it hardly mattered. They would pull the wagons into Messantia then get sold in lots to Lucius to work his mines. They were not expected to live long, so fattening them up on the road would be pointless.
The women, on the other hand, had to be handled more delicately. He shaded their cages so the sun’s angry kiss would not blister their soft flesh. He brought casks of fragrant unguents so they could oil their skin. Fruits and watered wine would keep them healthy, and the hateful crone who served as his camp cook would boil up a broth that made them pliant and radiant at the same time. The best of the women he grouped with a tutor, teaching them to recite Argosian and Shemite verse so they might entertain powerful men, thus fetching a higher price.
One of the mercenaries he’d hired to guard the caravan came running forward. 'The coast is clear, Master Navarus.'
'Very good, Captain.' Navarus wrinkled his nose at the stench rising from the man’s armour. 'How long until we reach the camping place?'
'We’re making good time. Two hours, leaving us two hours shy of dusk. We could push further, but there’s fresh water there . . .'
'Yes, yes.' The Argosian flicked at a fly with a horsehair stick. 'In early, up before dawn.'
'And away before the pirates notice. Yes, Master.'
HIDDEN IN SHADOWS of the inland hills, Conan and Artus crouched to study the approaching caravan. 'By Bel, you’re right, Cimmerian. Naravus thought to steal from us by travelling overland.'
Conan, a dozen years removed from his homeland, allowed himself a wolfish grin. He need say nothing, for Artus knew him as well as any man alive. The massive Zingaran―born of Kushite slave parents on a Thunder River vineyard―had crossed the Cimmerian’s path a number of times down through the years. Never enemies, but not always friends, mutual respect and intrigue bound them. When Conan returned from the Black Coast, he found Artus’s company less irritating than solitude, and a solid friendship blossomed between them. It rendered Artus, whose dark hair had been gathered in long braided rows, immune to Conan’s sullen bouts of temper.
Conan’s blue eyes narrowed. Lying languorously upon a daybed, Navarus rode in an open cart at the head of the caravan, a parasol of the same green silk as his robe shading him. The little man had positioned himself to study the sea, which Conan regretted, for he wished to see the man’s face when the pirates attacked.
Artus nudged Conan with an elbow. 'Do we let him live this time, or put an end to it?'
'Let the gods decide.' Conan didn’t care if Navarus lived or died, but as long as he lived and Conan was able, he would bedevil the man. One of Navarus’s agents had once drugged wine and fed it to the Cimmerian, thinking to take Conan and sell him into a noble’s stable of pit fighters. Fortunately the Cimmerian’s constitution and the trick about shackles he had learned from Connacht had thwarted that plan. Conan had killed his abductor, but had never really brought himself to care enough about Navarus to wring his scrawny neck.
'We’d best get to our horses.'
Conan nodded and slipped back through the shadows with the lithe grace of a great cat. Taller and stronger than he had been at Venarium, with more scars to mar his flesh and mark his adventures, the barbarian warrior had met no equal among men in combat. Wearing a surcoat of mail with the ease of a virgin wrapping herself in silk, he mounted his horse and drew his sword. He raised it aloft, and from their places on the hillside, the Zingaran pirate crew acknowledged the signal.
The sword fell.
The pirates, who had spent the night digging and levering great boulders into place, knocked away pins, hauled cables, and pushed. The stones rumbled down the hillside, picking up speed. Some bounced. An oblong one began wobbling, its ends pounding the ground, first one then the other. The rocks bounded into the caravan, smashing through wagons laden with fruits and trinkets. Crates of oranges exploded into the air. Burst pomegranates spewed glistening seeds. Shattered urn
s gushed olive oil, and stale bread loaves tumbled through the dust.
Even before the stones had hit the caravan, the Cimmerian had spurred his horse down the hill. Behind him rode Artus, whose lusty war cry bellowed loudly. Conan kicked out, shattering the first mercenary’s jaw, then whipped his sword around to spin another man to the earth, bleeding. Artus cut past, his sword striking sparks from another. With a quick twist of his wrist he sent his foe’s blade flying, then stabbed the man in the throat.
Chaos reigned over the caravan. The stones had passed through and, in a couple of cases, had crushed warriors who had been guarding the oceanside. The survivors of that contingent faced an uphill assault against screaming pirates and angry slaves. No matter what Navarus was paying them, it was not enough for them to rush to certain death. They retreated toward the ocean and the northwest, banding together to discourage pursuit.
Artus stood in his stirrups, waving his sword high. 'Come back and fight, you pink-bellied, stub-cocked goat lovers!'
Conan reined up beside him, laughing. 'You insult them.'
The Zingaran raised an eyebrow. 'Slavers?'
'Goat lovers.'
Artus roared with laugher, but another roar, utterly mirthless, mingled with panicked screams from slaves. One of the mercenaries raised a bloody spear on high. At the hooves of his horse lay a half-dozen slaves and two of the pirates. The mercenary, his brows beetling, muscles bulging beneath hirsute flesh, grinned crookedly. From his expression there could be no mistaking the fact that he counted himself as dead. His only purpose was to take as many people with him as possible.
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