The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Zarono looked sick. 'I have the choice of remaining here in exile, or abandoning my crew and going alone on the Red Hand to have my throat cut?'

  Conan's laughter rang gustily through the hall, and he smote Zarono jovially on the back, ignoring the black murder in the buccaneer's glare. 'That's it, Zarono!' quoth he. 'Stay here while Strom and I sail away, or sail away with Strombanni, leaving your men with me.'

  'I'd rather have Zarono,' said Strombanni frankly. 'You'd turn my own men against me, Conan, and cut my throat before I raised the Barachans.'

  Sweat dripped from Zarono's livid face. 'Neither I, nor the count, nor his niece will ever reach the land alive if we ship with that devil,' said he. 'You are both in my power in this hall. My men surround it. What's to prevent my cutting you both down?'

  'Not a thing,' Conan admitted cheerfully, 'except the fact that if you do, Strombanni's men will sail away and leave you stranded on this coast, where the Picts will presently cut all your throats; and the fact that with me dead you'd never find the treasure; and the fact that I'll split your skull down to your chin if you try to summon your men.'

  Conan laughed as he spoke, as if at some whimsical situation; but even Belesa sensed that he meant what he said. His naked cutlass lay across his knees, and Zarono's sword was under the table, out of the buccaneer's reach. Galbro was not a fighting man, and Valenso seemed incapable of decision or action.

  'Aye!' said Strombanni with an oath. 'You'd find the two of us no easy prey. I'm agreeable to Conan's proposal. What say you, Valenso?'

  'I must leave this coast!' whispered Valenso, staring blankly. 'I must hasten — I must go — go far — quickly!'

  Strombanni frowned, puzzled at the count's strange manner, and turned to Zarono, grinning wickedly. 'And you, Zarono?'

  'What can I say?' snarled Zarono. 'Let me take my three officers and forty men aboard the Red Hand, and the bargain's made.'

  'The officers and thirty men!'

  'Very well.'

  'Done!'

  There was no shaking of hands or ceremonial drinking of wine to seal the pact. The two captains glared at each other like hungry wolves. The count plucked his moustache with a trembling hand, rapt in his own somber thoughts. Conan stretched like a great cat, drank wine, and grinned on the assemblage, but it was the sinister grin of a stalking tiger.

  Belesa sensed the murderous purposes that reigned there, the treacherous intent that dominated each man's mind. Not one had any intention of keeping his part of the pact, Valenso possibly excluded. Each of the freebooters intended to possess both the ship and the entire treasure. None would be satisfied with less.

  But how? What was going on in each crafty mind? Belesa felt oppressed and stifled by the atmosphere of hatred and treachery. The Cimmerian, for all his ferocious frankness, was no less subtle than the others — and even fiercer. His domination of the situation was not physical alone, although his gigantic shoulders and massive limbs seemed too big for even the great hall. There was an iron vitality about the man that overshadowed even the hard vigor of the other freebooters.

  'Lead us to the treasure!' Zarono demanded.

  'Wait a bit,' answered Conan. 'We must keep our power evenly balanced, so that one cannot take advantage of the others. We'll work it thus: Strom's men shall come ashore, all but a half-dozen or so, and camp on the beach. Zarono's men shall come out of the fort and likewise camp on the strand, within easy sight of them. Then each crew can watch the other, to see that nobody slips after us who go for the treasure, to ambush either of us. Those left aboard the Red Hand shall take her out into the bay, out of reach of either party. Valenso's men shall stay in the fort but leave the gate open. Will you come with us, Count?'

  'Go into that forest?' Valenso shuddered and drew his cloak, about his shoulders. 'Not for all the gold of Tranicos!'

  'All right. 'Twill take about thirty men to carry the loot. We'll take fifteen from each crew and start as soon as we can.'

  Belesa, keenly alert to every angle of the drama being played out beneath her, saw Zarono and Strombanni shoot furtive glances at each other, then quickly lower their gaze as they lifted their glasses, to hide the murky intent in their eyes. She perceived the fatal weakness in Conan's plan and wondered how he could have overlooked it. Perhaps he was too arrogantly confident in his personal prowess. But she knew that he would never come out of that forest alive. Once the treasure was in their grasp, the others would form a rogue's alliance long enough to rid themselves of the man both hated. She shuddered, staring morbidly at the man she knew to be doomed. Strange to see that powerful fighting man sitting there, laughing and swilling wine, in full prime and power, and to know that he was already doomed to a bloody death.

  The whole situation was pregnant with dark and bloody portents. Zarono would trick and kill Strombanni if he could, and she knew that Strombanni had already marked Zarono for death and, doubtless, her uncle and herself also. If Zarono won the final battle of cruel wits, their lives were safe — but, looking at the buccaneer as he sat there chewing his moustache, with all the stark evil of his nature showing naked in his dark face, she could not decide which was more abhorrent — death or Zarono.

  'How far is it?' demanded Strombanni.

  'If we start within the hour, we can be back before midnight,' answered Conan. He emptied his goblet, rose, adjusted his girdle, and glanced at the count. 'Valenso,' he said, 'are you mad, to kill a Pict not in his hunting paint?'

  Valenso started. 'What do you mean?'

  'Do you mean to say you don't know that your men killed a Pict hunter in the woods last night?'

  The count shook his head. 'None of my men was in the woods last night.'

  'Well, somebody was,' grunted the Cimmerian, fumbling in a pocket. 'I saw his head nailed to a tree near the edge of the forest. He wasn't painted for war. I found no boot tracks, from which I judged that it had been nailed up there before the storm. But there were plenty of other signs — moccasin tracks on the wet ground. Picts have been there and seen that head. They were men of some other clan, or they'd have taken it down. If they happen to be at peace with the clan the dead man belonged to, they'll make tracks to his village to tell his tribe.'

  'Perhaps they slew him,' suggested Valenso.

  'No, they didn't. But they know who did, for the same reason that I know. This chain was knotted about the stump of the severed neck. You must have been utterly mad, to identify your handiwork like that.'

  He drew forth something and tossed it on the table before the count, who lurched up, choking, as his hand flew to his throat. It was the gold seal-chain that he had habitually worn about his neck.

  'I recognised the Korzetta seal,' said Conan. 'The presence of that chain alone would tell any Pict it was the work of a foreigner.'

  Valenso did not reply. He sat staring at the chain as if at a venomous serpent.

  Conan scowled at him and glanced questioningly at the others. Zarono made a quick gesture to indicate that the count was not quite right in the head. Conan sheathed his cutlass and donned his lacquered hat.

  'All right; let's go,' he said.

  The captains gulped down their wine and rose, hitching at their sword belts. Zarono laid a hand on Valenso's arm and shook him slightly. The count started and stared about him, then followed the others out like a man in a daze, the chain dangling from his fingers. But not all left the hall.

  Forgotten on the stair, Belesa and Tina, peeping between the balusters, saw Galbro fall behind the others, loitering until the heavy door closed after them. Then he hurried to the fireplace and raked carefully at the smouldering coals. He sank to his knees and peered closely at something for a long space. Then he straightened and, with a furtive air, stole out of the hall by another door.

  Tina whispered: 'What did Galbro find in the fire?'

  Belesa shook her head; then, obeying the promptings of her curiosity, rose and went down to the empty hall. An instant later, she was kneeling where the seneschal had knelt, an
d she saw what he had seen.

  It was the charred remnant of the map that Conan had thrown into the fire. It was ready to crumble at a touch, but faint lines and bits of writing were still discernible upon it. She could not read the writing, but she could trace the outlines of what seemed to be the picture of a hill or crag, surrounded by marks evidently representing dense trees. She could make nothing of it; but, from Galbro's actions, she believed that he recognised it as portraying some scene or topographical feature familiar to him. She knew the seneschal had penetrated inland further than any other man of the settlement.

  VI

  The Plunder of the Dead

  The fortress stood strangely quiet in the noonday heat that had followed the storm of the dawn. Voices of people within the stockade sounded subdued, muffled. The same drowsy stillness reigned on the beach outside, where the rival crews lay in armed suspicion, separated by a few hundred yards of bare sand. Far out in the bay, the Red Hand lay at anchor with a handful of men aboard her, ready to snatch her out of reach at the slightest indication of treachery. The carack was Strombanni's trump card, his best guaranty against the trickery of his associates.

  Belesa came down the stair and paused at the sight of Count Valenso seated at the table, turning the broken chain about in his hands. She looked at him without love and with more than a little fear. The change that had come over him was appalling; he seemed to be locked up in a grim world all his own, with a fear that flogged all human characteristics out of him.

  Conan had plotted shrewdly to eliminate the chances of an ambush in the forest by either party. But, as far as Belesa could see, he had failed utterly to safeguard himself against the treachery of his companions. He had disappeared into the woods, leading the two captains and their thirty men, and the Zingaran girl was positive that she would never see him alive again.

  Presently she spoke, and her voice was strained and harsh to her own ear: 'The barbarian has led the captains into the forest. When they have the gold in their hands, they'll slay him. But when they return with the treasure, what then? Are we to go aboard the ship? Can we trust Strombanni?'

  Valenso shook his head absently. 'Strombanni would murder us all for our shares of the loot. But Zarono secretly whispered his intentions to me. We will not go aboard the Red Hand save as her masters. Zarono will see that night overtakes the treasure party, so they shall be forced to camp in the forest. He will find a way to kill Strombanni and his men in their sleep. Then the buccaneers will come on stealthily to the beach. Just before dawn, I will send some of my fishermen secretly from the fort, to swim out to the ship and seize her. Strombanni never thought of that, and neither did Conan. Zarono and his men will come out of the forest and, together with the buccaneers encamped on the beach, fall upon the pirates in the dark, while I lead my men-at-arms from the fort to complete the rout. Without their captain, they will be demoralized and, outnumbered, fall easy prey to Zarono and me. Then we shall sail in Strombanni's ship with all the treasure.'

  'But what of me?' she asked with dry lips.

  'I have promised you to Zarono,' he answered harshly. 'But for my promise, he would not take us off.'

  'I will never marry him,' she said helplessly.

  'You shall,' he responded gloomily, without the slightest touch of sympathy. He lifted the chain so that it caught the gleam of the sun, slanting through a window. 'I must have dropped it on the sand,' he muttered. 'He has been that near — on the beach ...'

  'You did not drop it on the strand,' said Belesa, in a voice as devoid of mercy as his own; her soul seemed turned to stone. 'You tore it from your throat, by accident, last night in this hall, when you flogged Tina. I saw it gleaming on the floor before I left the hall.'

  He looked up, his face grey with a terrible fear; she laughed bitterly, sensing the mute question in his dilated eyes. 'Yes! The black man! He was here! In this hall! He must have found the chain on the floor. The guardsmen did not see him, but he was at your door last night. I saw him, padding along the upper hallway.'

  For an instant she thought he would drop dead of sheer terror. He sank back in his chair, the chain slipping from his nerveless fingers and clinking on the table.

  'In the manor!' he whispered. 'I thought bolts and bars and armed guards could keep him out, fool that I was! I can no more guard against him than I can escape him! At my door! At my door!' The thought overwhelmed him with horror. 'Why did he not enter?' he shrieked, tearing at the lace upon his collar as though it strangled him. 'Why did he not end it? I have dreamed of waking in my darkened chamber to see him squatting above me, with the blue hell-fire playing about his head! Why —'

  The paroxysm passed, leaving him faint and trembling.

  'I understand!' he panted. 'He is playing with me, as a cat with a mouse. To have slain me last night in my chamber were too easy, too merciful. So he destroyed the ship in which I might have escaped him, and he slew that wretched Bet and left my chain upon him, so that the savages might believe I had slain him. They have seen that chain upon my neck many a time.

  'But why? What subtle deviltry has he in mind, what devious purpose no human mind can grasp or understand?'

  'Who is this black man?' asked Belesa, a chill of fear crawling along her spine.

  'A demon loosed by my greed and lust to plague me throughout eternity!' he whispered. He spread his long, thin fingers on the table before him and stared at her with hollow, weirdly luminous eyes, which seemed to see her not at all but to look through her and far beyond to some dim doom.

  'In my youth, I had an enemy at court,' he said, as if speaking more to himself than to her. 'A powerful man who stood between me and my ambition. In my lust for wealth and power, I sought aid from the people of the black arts — a sorcerer who, at my desire, raised up a fiend from the outer gulfs of existence. It crushed and slew mine enemy; I grew great and wealthy, and none could stand before me. But I thought to cheat the wizard of the price a mortal must pay who calls the black folk to do his bidding.

  'He was Thoth-Amon of the Ring, in exile from his native Stygia. He had fled in the reign of King Mentupherra, and when Mentupherra died and Ctesphon ascended the ivory throne of Luxur, Thoth-Amon lingered in Kordava though he might have returned home, dunning me for the debt I owed him. But, instead of paying him the moiety of my gains as I had promised, I denounced him to my own monarch, so that Thoth-Amon must needs willy-nilly return to Stygia in haste and stealth. There he found favour and waxed in wealth and magical might until he was the virtual ruler of the land.

  'Two years ago in Kordava, word came to me that Thoth-Amon had vanished from his accustomed haunts in Stygia. And then one night I saw his brown devil's face leering at me from the shadows in my castle hall.

  'It was not his material body, but his spirit sent to plague me. This time I had no king to protect me, for upon the death of Ferdrugo and the setting up of the regency, the land, as you know, had fallen into factional strife. Before Thoth-Amon could reach Kordava in the flesh, I sailed to put broad seas between me and him. He has his limitations; to follow me across the seas he must remain in his human, fleshly body. But now this fiend has tracked me down by his uncanny powers even here in this vast wilderness.

  'He is too crafty to be trapped or slain as one would do with a common man. When he hides, no man can find him. He steals like a shadow in the night, making naught of bolts and bars. He blinds the eyes of guardsmen with sleep. He can command the spirits of the air, the serpents of the deep, and the fiends of the night; he can raise storms to sink ships and throw down castles. I hoped to drown my trail in the blue, rolling waves — but he has tracked me down to claim his grim forfeit . . .'

  The weird eyes lit palely as Valenso gazed beyond the tapestried walls to far, invisible horizons. 'I'll trick him yet,' he whispered. 'Let him delay to strike this night, and dawn shall find me with a ship under my heels, and again I will cast an ocean between me and his vengeance.'

  'Hell's fire!'

  Conan stopped short,
glaring upward. Behind him, the seamen halted — two compact clumps of them, bows in their hands and suspicion in their attitude. They were following an old path made by Pictish hunters, which led due east. Although they had progressed only some thirty yards, the beach was no longer visible.

  'What is it?' demanded Strombanni suspiciously. 'Why are you stopping?'

  'Are you blind? Look there!'

  From the thick limb of a tree that overhung the trail, a head grinned down at them: a dark, painted face, framed in thick black hair, in which a hornbill feather drooped over the left ear.

  'I took that head down and hid it in the bushes,' growled Conan, scanning the woods about them narrowly. 'What fool could have stuck it back up there? It looks as if somebody were trying his damnedest to bring the Picts down on the settlement.'

  Men glanced at one another darkly, a new element of suspicion added to the already seething cauldron. Conan climbed the tree, secured the head, and carried it into the bushes, where he tossed it into a stream and watched it sink.

  'The Picts whose tracks are about this tree weren't Hornbills,' he growled, returning through the thicket. I've sailed these coasts enough to know something about the sea-land tribes. If I read the prints of their moccasins aright, they were Cormorants. I hope they're having a war with the Hornbills. If they're at peace, they'll head straight for the Hornbill village, and there'll be trouble. I don't know how far away that village is — but, as soon as they learn of this murder, they'll come through the forest like starving wolves. That's the worst insult possible to a Pict — to kill a man not in war-paint and stick his head up in a tree for the vultures to eat. Damned peculiar things going on along this coast. But that's always the way when civilised men come into the wilderness; they're all crazy as Hell. Come on.'