The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  As Conan engaged Khalar Zym at the outpost’s heart, Tamara engaged two of the sandliches. With a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other, she fended off the sorcerous creatures. One ducked beneath a swipe with the torch, but Tamara’s front kick crushed the sigil on his breastbone. She leaped away from the second, moving up toward the outpost’s seaside wall.

  Khalar Zym drew back, becoming less arrogant in his stance. Conan knew better than to mistake that as a retreat. He waited, knowing the man who had destroyed his village would have to prove himself the superior warrior. Zym obligingly drove forward, a stamp feint raising dust, then lunged. As Conan went to parry, Zym brought his blade up and over. That thrust missed and Zym sailed past, giving Conan an easy shot at his back.

  Conan hesitated for a heartbeat. Zym’s twin blades parted, one twisting around and locking into place at the other end of the hilt. As the man whirled, the second blade passed through where Conan would have been. The blow would have cut him from hip to spine, and before he fell, the second slice would have taken his head.

  As Khalar Zym came around, Conan parried his slashing blow low, then whipped his left fist around, catching the man in the face. Zym spun away, flailing to catch his balance. He went down to a knee and continued to twist around. He regained his feet, swaying drunkenly, then spat blood from a split lip.

  Before Conan could close, he caught a glint of light in the corner of his left eye. For a moment he thought it was an arrow and twisted away. It still sliced him, a flesh wound, nothing more, on the neck. It plunged past and into the dirt, a metal dragonfly, which Conan stomped on contemptuously.

  'Enough games, Khalar Zym. It is time for you to die.' Conan took a step toward the man, but suddenly the landscape shimmered strangely. Khalar Zym’s shape blurred and wavered as if he were a heat mirage. The man lunged and Conan parried, but it came slow and Zym’s blade cut him over the thigh. Numbness began to spread over Conan’s left shoulder, a tingling descending that arm.

  The Cimmerian reeled back, falling at the foot of the steps. Khalar Zym loomed above him, twin blades whirling. 'Now you join your misbegotten clan, Cimmerian.'

  'Touch him, Khalar Zym, and I throw myself from the battlement.'

  Khalar Zym hesitated and Conan scuttled back up the steps. Though he could only see her as a dim outline, Tamara stood there on the wall, tall between crenels, a burning torch held aloft. 'If he dies, so do your plans.'

  Khalar Zym retreated to the middle of the courtyard. 'Well played, monk.'

  'Master Fassir taught me well.'

  'Alas, not well enough.' He raised a hand. 'Cherin, your archers. Varminting points. Take her.'

  Around the western wall appeared the female archers, bows drawn, arrows with thick, blunt points nocked.

  Tamara’s voice gained urgency. 'Now, Conan!'

  Though the world blazed in some spots and grew dim in others, though his limbs quivered and his tongue had thickened in his mouth, Conan sped into action. He lumbered up the steps, or so it seemed to him, though, in reality, thick thews made short work of the distance. Bows thrummed and a few arrows hit him like punches. More had hit Tamara and she fell inward toward the courtyard, but still she had the presence of mind to pitch her torch to the left, through the hole that led into the bowels of the outpost.

  Conan and Artus had once explored the outpost as a potential sanctuary for their corsairs. It had been thoroughly looted and in need of an abundance of repairs. It would not suit them, but in it they located several tunnels filled with a viscous mixture of naptha and oil that the Argosians had once used to project fire onto attacking ships below. Since their arrival at the outpost, Tamara and Conan had filled urns and casks with the stuff, placing it where Khalar Zym would most likely hide his troops, and laying a trail to it that led back to a number of holes like the one into which Tamara had cast her torch.

  As she fell inward, Conan rose to meet her. He caught her around the waist, gained the top of the battlement in a step, then launched himself into the air. Behind him, in a series of explosions, fire geysered up and gushed out. Archers screamed and a few fell toward the sea. Others launched arrows that sped past. But of his plunging fall into the water, aside from a brief glimpse of the Hornet coming around the headland and into the bay, Conan remembered nothing.

  XIII

  MARIQUE REACHED THE wall beside her father, having dodged blazing puddles and the thrashing of burning bodies. A ship―smaller than her father’s land ship―had rounded the headland and had deployed two longboats. Corsairs pulled at oars, heading for where the monk was managing to keep the Cimmerian afloat.

  Her father, a trickle of blood running down the side of his face, slammed his fist against the wall. 'She is getting away.'

  Marique laid a hand on her father’s forearm. 'We shall get her, Father.'

  He turned on her, fury knotting his features. 'We? We? Her escape is your fault.'

  'My fault?'

  'Yes, your sorcery has failed me . . .' His eyes became slits. 'Your weakness sickens me.'

  Marique fell back, clutching her stomach as she might have had her father shoved a foot and a half of steel into her belly. 'My weakness?'

  He stared out at the sea again. 'You know it is true.'

  'My weakness?' Anger entered her voice, tinged with ice. 'It is I who found her for you, Father.'

  'And you could not do as I asked. You could not kill the barbarian as I asked. So now she flees. My archers burn and the two of them swim to that ship.' He thrust a finger toward the east. 'So, what does your sorcery tell you now, Marique? That they will sail up the River Styx and, from there, overland to Hyrkania? Or perhaps they will skirt the Black Coast and sail to Vendhya and go north from there. Maybe all the way to Khitai and then west? Will that be it?'

  'Father, I can track her, but you know that I cannot predict . . .'

  'Then what good are you to me?' He turned, a hand raised to slap her. 'Your mother was not weak. She could have predicted.'

  Marique clenched her jaw. Could she? Could she indeed? Marique wanted to shout the obvious at him: that her mother had failed to foresee the trap that led to her own death. Where was the strength of her magic when that happened?

  Outrage raced through Marique. She forced herself to look out at the ocean. Pirates were already pulling the Cimmerian’s unconscious body into a longboat. What an amazing constitution he had, for the poison, even with so tiny a scratch, should have felled him in two steps or three. Even wounded and wavering, he had fended her father off―proving himself to be the better man.

  The moment that particular thought entered her head, Marique’s vision of the future shifted. She had always believed that they would succeed in activating the Mask of Acheron. It would allow her father to draw Maliva back from the dead, but that did not mean that the mask was good for nothing else. Marique knew far more of the ways of the mask than her mother ever had. With it activated, on his face, and he in full command of its magicks, Khalar Zym would become invincible in battle. No force could stand against him. He would be able to summon the wisdom of Acheron’s finest generals, direct the magicks of its greatest necromancers. Compared to that, the things her mother might offer would be but the snarls of a puppy in a company of wolves.

  But my father is not the only one who could wear that mask. She allowed herself to imagine Conan wearing it, with her at his side―or rather, with him as her consort. With her magicks and his skill, not only would Acheron rise again, but it would expand far beyond the borders it had once known. Her father’s dreams of power and glory would fade in comparison to the reality Conan and she could create.

  Khalar Zym turned cold eyes on her, a fingertip probing his busted lip. 'So silent, Marique. I would take this as a sign of your being appalled at your weakness, but you are not at my knees, begging my forgiveness.'

  'Do you wish to know the depth of my weakness, Father?' Marique turned, and with a crooked finger summoned the acolyte who bore the standard upon which hung the Ma
sk of Acheron. The man came forward, stumbling, the mask swinging. Two of Ukafa’s burly spearmen moved to stop him, but sandliches sprang up and hamstringed them with quick cuts. The acolyte flew up the stairs even more swiftly than the barbarian had done, and slammed into the wall.

  The Mask of Acheron hung past the battlements, dangling above sea and stone.

  'This is how weak I am, Father. Watch my sorcery shatter the mask and scatter the pieces into the sea.' She looked at the soldiers who had filtered into the outpost. 'Watch me burn the eyes from your warriors, snap their spines, and boil brains within skulls. And ask yourself, Father, once I have done all that, will you dare to call me weak?'

  Marique watched him. Show me one sign of your own weakness, Father, just one sign . . . She looked for a lip to quiver, for a bead of sweat to rise on his brow. She wanted a muscle to twitch, his pupils to contract, his mouth to hang open, just a bit. Anything to show that he knew that she had grown past him, past her mother.

  Give me that sign, and I shall destroy you.

  Instead his head canted to the side, only a degree or two, in a sign of curiosity. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. 'Oh, Marique, so much of your mother’s fire, so much of my spirit . . . they have melded in you in ways unexpected. You make me so proud.'

  Her grim expression eased.

  'You must forgive me for scolding you, beloved daughter. We are so close to everything we have sought. Being able to rebuild our family, to recover our heritage.' Khalar Zym turned his back to the sea and the sight of the monk as she was taken aboard the pirate ship. 'And you will forgive me for testing you.'

  'Testing me?'

  'Oh yes, Marique.' He focused distantly. 'My longing to have my wife returned to my side has not blinded me to the difficulties of the future. The task we set ourselves of restoring Acheron is not one which two alone can accomplish. I have driven you hard, Marique, and today the hardest of all. Never have I questioned your love for me, but being as close as we are, now, I had to assure myself that you were committed to realizing our entire goal. Resurrecting your mother is but one part of it―a minor part―and you shall be a major player in all the rest.'

  The girl frowned and gestured toward the outpost. 'This was a test?'

  'Yes, and you proved yourself, Marique.' Khalar Zym smiled. 'When I allowed the barbarian to strike me, when I allowed it to seem as if I was in danger, you reacted. You attacked him, unbidden. You worked with me to defeat him . . . and so shall you work with me to defeat all of our enemies.'

  He reached out and caressed her cheek. She raised a finger to his broken lip, repairing the torn flesh with a whisper, ignoring the fact that Ukafa had pulled the standard back from the battlement. 'I love you, Father.'

  'I know.' He slid his arm around her shoulder to guide her out of the burning outpost. 'Come, we return to Khor Kalba to continue our preparations.'

  'But, Father, we don’t have her.'

  'This shall not be a problem for long, I trust, Marique, will it?' Her father gave her a squeeze. 'I want you to use your unique and valuable gifts . . . your very strong gifts . . . to find the woman for me again.'

  'Yes, Father, I shall.' Marique nodded solemnly. 'And at Khor Kalba, we have just the creature we need to bring her to us.'

  CONAN SHIVERED AS consciousness teased him with its return. The world moved around him, but resolved itself into a steady, rhythmic motion. Combined with faint creaks and tang of salt air, he concluded that he was aboard a ship. He tried to move an arm and wasn’t certain he’d been able to do so. Still, he felt no band around his wrist, nor heard the clank of chains, so he assumed he was not in the hands of his enemies.

  As more of his senses returned, with them came an awareness of aches and pains, and general stiffness. The cut on his neck burned still, but not with poison. The unguent’s scent reminded him vaguely of the poultice Connacht had used to preserve his hands so many years before. Other nicks and cuts he found through the tightness of stitches. The wounds hadn’t been deep that he remembered, and had they been, cautery would have been used to close them instead of needlework.

  A gentle hand laid a cool compress on his forehead. Another cloth dabbed at the wound on his neck. Soft words in distant whispers reached his ears, and his mind reconstructed his world. On a ship, a woman attending him, her hand so gentle, her voice warm for him. My beloved ...

  When he opened his eyes, even the feeble candlelight burned them. He began to tear up, but not quickly enough. He could not recognise the woman perched on the edge of the bunk, but he knew who she was not. She is gone, Conan, long gone. A tremor shook him, then all strength fled his limbs.

  Tamara pressed a hand to his chest. 'Don’t speak, Conan. Don’t try to move. The poison gave you a fever. It’s only just broken.'

  He blinked away tears. 'How long?'

  The monk smiled. 'You don’t listen very well.'

  'How long?' He tried to make his words forceful, but he could barely muster a whisper.

  'Two days. There has been no sign of them.' Tamara nodded sincerely. 'Artus has set course for the east, to Hyrkania.'

  Conan shook his head and tried to sit up. 'No.'

  She restrained him with a light hand. 'Once I am safe, there is nothing more to fear.'

  Conan sighed. He wanted to explain to her that as long as Khalar Zym lived and had the mask, she would never be safe. She would argue that her master had directed her to Hyrkania, and he would explain that her journey and his mission were not intertwined. He had to go after Khalar Zym and destroy the mask.

  But weakness betrayed him. He surrendered to her ministrations and exhaustion. First defeat the poison, then the one who uses it.

  IT TOOK ONE more day for Conan to crawl from the bunk, and that over Tamara’s protestations that he would faint and his stitches would burst. He just growled at her, and the woman proved she had some sense by not trying to stop him. She showed she had more by not laughing when he bumped his head on the companionway ceiling as he stumbled his way to the main deck.

  Thank Crom it’s night. He straightened up and drew in a deep breath, resisting the temptation to shade his eyes from the harsh moonlight. It splashed silver over the waves and he smiled, remembering many an evening watching it, content with his life as a corsair.

  Artus looked down from the wheel deck. 'So the dead have risen.'

  'How long are we out of Shaipur?'

  'Three days, but becalmed for the last half.' Artus shrugged. 'Trade winds will be shifting soon. I’d rather not chance the Styx. So what will be your pleasure? Vendhya or Khitai?'

  Conan slowly trudged up the steps and stood beside his friend. 'Someday both, but not for me, now.'

  'But the girl said . . .'

  The Cimmerian patted Artus on the shoulder. 'You can take her to Hyrkania, and may all the gods speed that journey. But me, you’ll be putting me ashore as soon as we find a place where I can buy a horse. Khalar Zym has to be bound for Khor Kalba. I’ll happily kill him there.'

  'That will be quite the undertaking for one man, Conan, even such as you. Let us come with you.'

  The Cimmerian shook his head. 'It is not your fight, Artus.'

  'Either you are lying to me now, my brother, or you are lying to yourself.' Artus waved a hand toward the shore, which was but a distant black band beneath the starry sky. 'You tell me that Khalar Zym must die and the mask must be shattered so he cannot raise Acheron. You claim preventing this is a responsibility you inherited through your father. But I ask you, were Khalar Zym to succeed, what would his empire mean to me, mean to this motley pack of sea wolves?

  'One empire from mountains to sea, from ice to the Black Kingdoms? Would there be room for corsairs and adventurers? No, save perhaps in arenas where men die for the amusement of nobles. No freedom. No wealth to be won, no wenches to be bedded. My parents were slaves, but not I, and I shall die fighting Khalar Zym’s empire.'

  The barbarian’s head ached. Conan could not tell if Artus was right, or if he
’d been lying to himself and indulging in dreams of revenge. Ultimately it did not matter, because either answer still pointed to the same necessities.

  'You are wise, Artus, perhaps wiser than I.' Conan exhaled heavily. 'You can help me, but it will not be by travelling with me.'

  Artus folded his hands over his chest. 'Go on.'

  'If I fail, the girl must be hidden in Hyrkania and the world must know the danger it faces. Upon you I rely for both of those things.'

  The Zingaran’s expression tightened. 'You cannot assault Khor Kalba alone.'

  'I don’t intend to go alone. And I don’t intend to make an assault.' Conan smiled. 'Remember, Artus, before either of us were pirates, we were both thieves. A thief will do what pirates can’t . . . and pirates will be free to save the world.'

  XIV

  CONAN STOOD ON the main deck a day later, the sword in his hand whistling through the air. He’d lost his sword at the Shaipur outpost. The Hornet’s armory boasted a fine selection of weapons plundered from the world over. As sailors were wont to do, they wagered on which they thought the Cimmerian might choose.

  He tried a half dozen, almost instantly rejecting anything saberlike that resembled Khalar Zym’s sword. While the sabers were fine weapons, and curved cutlasses worked well aboard ship, both served best when the fighting allowed for grand slashes. He wanted more reach than afforded by an Aquilonian short sword. The closest blade they had to the one he lost needed a new grip. Finally he settled on a long sword, which gained in length what it surrendered in width. Had this been my blade at Shaipur, I might have spitted him.

  Conan studied the blade once more, then turned to face Artus. 'Raise an edge on it, open the toe of my scabbard so it fits, and I am set.'

  Artus smiled and accepted a small pouch of gold coins from the first mate. 'I thought that might be it.'

  'And ’twas your teeth that gnawed the grip on the broadsword.'