Luckily, Conan encountered none of these in his pursuit of Bwatu.
As the sky lightened with the approach of dawn, Conan flung himself down to drink from a water hole and to bathe his chest and arms. Thorns and spines had tattered his white blouse and had drawn scarlet scratches across his chest and arms, until his torso streamed with mud, blood, and sweat.
Cursing, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, tossed back his black mane, and rested for a moment. Then, growling an oath, he rose and plunged grimly on, trusting to his iron strength. He had tested his endurance many times, in the course of his years of wild adventure, and he knew that he could outlast any common man, even one of the most powerful.
The sun rose over the jungles of Kush and lit a steamy, humid morning. The great cats retired, with bellies full or empty as the case might be, to sleep away the heat of the day.
By the growing light, Conan could see, where the trail was muddy, the fresh prints of long, splayed bare feet. This, he was sure, was the spoor of the fleeing Bwatu. Although the run that Conan had already made would have caused most men to collapse, the sight of these tracks lent extra strength to his limbs.
Soon enough, Chabela regretted her impulsive action in following Conan into the forest. Conan and Sigurd, neither of whom knew that she was following them, soon outdistanced her. At a bend in the trail, she strayed off the path and at once lost all sense of direction. With the setting of the moon, the jungle had become as black as pitch. Beneath the canopy of leaves, she could not see the stars to get a hint of her direction. She wandered helplessly in circles, bumping into trees and tripping over roots and underbrush.
The night was alive with the chirp and click and buzz of nocturnal insects.
Although Chabela feared the wild beasts, she encountered none. But now and then a distant rustle or the crashing of a large body through the brush brought her heart into her mouth.
Toward dawn, trembling with fear and fatigue, the exhausted girl sank down in a mossy glade to rest. Why had she ever done so foolish a thing as to rush off into this trackless maze? Worn out, she presently fell asleep.
She awoke in terror as strong black arms seized her and hauled her to her feet.
She was surrounded by lean black men in ragged robes and turbans. They lashed her arms behind her and muffled her screams with a gag.
Toward mid-mom, Conan caught up with Bwatu, as he had known that he would.
Bwatu, however, was in no state to return the stolen crown to Conan. He was dead―and empty-handed.
The thieving black lay face down on the trail in a puddle of blood. He had been virtually hacked to pieces. Conan squatted over the body and examined the wounds. These seemed to have been made by the blades of steel swords, not by the bronze or flint or ivory points of the native spears. Weapons of bronze and copper are easily dulled and notched by use and hence tend to leave ragged wounds, but these were the clean cuts typical of well-honed steel. The black folk of the Kushite jungles knew not the arts of smelting and forging ferrous metal. Hence iron and steel were rarities this far south, being found only when brought down by trade from the more advanced peoples to the north: the kingdom of Kush, properly so called, and Darfar and Keshan. Conan wondered if the black Amazons had struck down the thief and carried off the crown, thus robbing him both of his property and his revenge. As he rose from his crouch, lips drawn back in a snarl, a weighted net fell upon him from the branches above. Its thick strands enwrapped and pinned his limbs. With a roar of rage, the Cimmerian struck out with his cutlass, but the tough fabric yielded to the blow and closed all the tighter about him.
Like the web of some enormous spider, the net dragged him down and muffled his blows. The robed and turbaned blacks who rose from concealment beside the trail, in a calm and businesslike manner, drew tight the lead lines that tightened the net about Conan like the cocoon of some giant caterpillar. Other men dropped from the branches overhead and quickly clubbed their captive into unconsciousness.
As he fell forward into blackness, the Cimmerian's final thought was to curse himself for a besotted fool. Not in years had he let himself be caught in such a simple trap, netted like a Kushite bush pig. But it was too late for regrets now…
Chapter Twelve
CITY OF WARRIOR WOMEN
In the Oasis of Khajar, it was pitch-black night. A heavy blanket of cloud overlay the desert, shutting off the rays of the moon, which manifested themselves only as a faint, gray luminescence filtering through the clouds.
It was dark, too, in the throne room of Thoth-Amon. The green flames in the torcheres had dimmed to a mere glow, like that of fireflies. The Stygian sorcerer seemed to slumber on his carven chair, so motionless was he. Had any been present to observe, they would have seen that his muscular chest did not rise and fall. His grim visage was inert and vacant, like an inanimate mask. His body seemed untenanted.
And so it was. Failing to find any clues to the Cobra Crown on the astral plane, Thoth-Amon had freed his ka from its prison of flesh and ascended to the highest plane, the akashic. Here, in this dim, immaterial spirit realm, the laws of time do not obtain. Past, present, and even a cloudy vision of the future lie visible to the all-encompassing glance of the adept, like a four-dimensional map. And here, in a sense, Thoth-Amon's spirit self could "see" the arrival of the Petrel, the landing of Conan, the awakening of the toad-god, its destruction, the seizure of the Cobra Crown, and Conan's subsequent voyage to the Black Coast. That much Thoth-Amon observed before permitting his ka to descend again to the lower planes of the cosmos. The ka had to return before it altogether lost its connection with its material body.
So Thoth-Amon, reentering his body, felt a prickling sensation spread through his form as numb flesh again became animate. The sensation was like the familiar "pins and needles" when circulation in a limb is interrupted; but, in the case of the prince of magicians, the tingling spread through his entire body. He stoically endured the pain. Then―"Zaronol Menkaral" Thoth-Amon's voice rolled like thunder through the crypts beneath his palace.
"Eh?" said Zarono, pulling on his doublet as he came from his sleeping chamber, yawning and rubbing his eyes. "What is it, my lord wizard?" Behind him, Menkara glided silently in.
"Prepare to return to the Black Coast at once. I have discovered the current whereabouts of the Cobra Crown and of your Princess Chabela. Both are in Kulalo, the capital of Juma the Kushite."
"How got they there?" said Zarono.
"Your fellow ruffian, Conan the Cimmerian, took them―"
"That damned barbarian!" snarled Zarono. "Ill―"
"If you encounter him, do to him as you will. I have no love for him, for he has caused me no small annoyance by his adventurings. But your main task will be to recapture your princess. Even I cannot control her mind at so great a distance."
"And the Crown?"
"You may leave the Crown to me."
"Are you coming with us, sir?"
Thoth-Amon smiled bleakly. "Nay, not in the flesh. It will require a work of magic that few magicians in the entire world could do, and that will tax my powers to the utmost; but I shall reach Kulalo before you. Waste no time, you two, but gather your gear to set forth at once. Wait not even for daybreak!"
Conan revived in a yile temper. His head ached, as much from overindulgence in Juma's banana liquor as from having been beaten unconscious. Moreover, he was a disarmed and helpless captive, in the hands of slavers. Although this had happened to Conan before, it never failed to rouse him to a state of wild-beast fury.
Hours had passed, to judge by the angle of the sun's rays as they sent an occasional spear of light down through the roof of leaves. From die condition of his arms and legs, which were scraped raw, the burly Cimmerian assumed that he had been dragged through the underbrush to the clearning in which he now found himself. Heavy manacles bound his wrists. Through the tangle of his disordered mane, he glared about him, noting the number, alertness, and positions of the guards.
He
was startled to see Chabela, huddled white-faced and frightened in a cluster of sad-looking blacks. He had no idea of how she had been captured. He did not, however, see Sigurd among the captives. This might or might not be a good thing.
Then, mounted on a lean mare, a tall black in the gray robes of a slaver cantered into the clearing. Like the other slavers, this man was black of skin, but lean and wiry, with sharper-cut features than were usual among the jungle tribes. Conan guessed that the slavers were Ghanatas, of whom Juma had already spoken. This was a nation of nomadic Negroes, who dwelt in the deserts along the southern borders of Stygia. While Shemite and Stygian slavers raided the Ghanatas and other peoples of Kush and Darfar for captives, the Ghanatas in turn raided still farther south, into the equatorial jungles.
The newcomer reined up and exchanged curt words with the man in command of the group that had captured Conan. The latter turned away, snapping his whip and yelling for his men to get the slaves moving.
The captives were herded into a double line. Their manacles were chained together so that no one of them could break free by himself. The giant Cimmerian towered above the surrounding blacks, bending a lionlike glare about him. The mounted slaver ran a cold, disdainful glance over the lot.
"By Zambi," he grunted, and spat. "This lot will scarcely bring a fistful of cowrie shells in Gamburur His lieutenant nodded. "Aye, Lord Mbonani. Methinks they grow feebler year by year. The breeding Stock must be running out…"
Just then, a slaver flicked Conan on the shoulder with his whip. As the whip kissed his skin, the Cimmerian swung into action. Swifter than thought, he reached up with his manacled hands, caught the whip, and pulled with a mighty surge of power.
Jerked off balance, the slaver sprawled at Conan's feet. As the man scrambled up, snarling curses, he half drew the heavy, razor-edged Ghanata knife― really more a short sword―from its scabbard thrust through his girdle.
Before the weapon could clear its sheath, Conan kicked the slaver in the face, knocking him down again. Conan then bent, pulling the blacks chained next in line to him off their feet in turn, and seized the hilt of the knife. Another slaver raced toward Conan, whirling an ax up over his head to split the Cimmerian's skull. Before the blow could fall, Conan drove the knife to the hilt in the slaver's belly, so that the point stood out of hand's breadth from the man's back just above the kidneys.
As the slaver paled, gurgled, and collapsed, the clearing erupted into a whirling mass of yelling men. Chained as he was, Conan had no chance. Still, it took five men to hold him and three more to batter his thick skull with clubs until he again sagged to the ground, unconscious.
Mbonani, struggling to keep his frightened mare under control, watched the flurry of action with an appraising stare. "Well," he grunted, "that one at least has spirit. A white man, too; what does he here?"
"I mentioned him earlier," said the slaver lieutenant. "There is a white woman, also―that one, yonder." Mbonani looked Chabela over appraisingly.
"The two best of the lot," he said. "Treat them well, Zuru, or it will go hard with you."
Mbonani walked his horse forward to where Co-nan, his face a mask of blood from scalp wounds, was dazedly lurching to his feet again. As Conan raised his bloody face, Mbonani struck the Cimmerian across the cheek with his riding ship.
"That for slaying one of my men, white man!" he barked.
The blow raised a welt, but the barbarian neither winced nor cried out. He watched the slaver captain with cold, expressionless hatred. Mbonani grinned wolfishly, showing white teeth against his black skin.
"I like your guts, white man!" he said. "Keep them, so that the Amazons shall pay a good price. Now forward!"
Escorted by the ragged slavers, the double line of captives clanked along the trail to Gamburu.
Conan marched with the rest, his iron frame stol-idly enduring the heat, the thirst, the flies, and the burning weight of the sun. He wondered what had befallen the Cobra Crown, but it was an idle thought. When one's life is at hazard, he had long since learned, loot becomes a mere side issue.
At length he noted a bulge in one of Zuru's saddle bags. Conan's eyes gleamed with savage humor. The slaver lieutenant might bow and scrape before Captain Mbonani, but he obviously had a mind of his own.
The Ghanta slavers led their captives out of the jungle and into an area of grassy veldt. On the next day, gleaming in the low sun of the late afternoon, the stone city of Gamburu loomed on the horizon.
Conan stared at the city appraisingly. Compared to glittering Aghrapur, the capital of Turan―or even Meroe, the capital of the kingdom of Kush― Gamburu was not impressive. Still, in a land where most houses were squat cylinders of dried mud and thatch, and a city wall was a stockade of sharpened wooden poles, and a "city" was but an overgrown village by the standards of more northerly lands, Gamburu stood out.
About the city ran a low wall of uncemented stone blocks, rising to about twice the height of a man. Four gates broke the circle of this wall, each flanked by guard towers with slits for archers and machicolations for the abuse of besiegers, Massive wooden valves were set in the gates.
Conan noted the masonry of the gates. Some of the stones were ordinary fi«ldstone, crudely chipped to fit. Others were finely dressed ashlars, but worn as if by great age. As Mbonani led his clanking column through the western gate, Conan observed that the houses inside the city showed a similar mix-ture. Most of the buildings were of one or two stories, with roofs of thatch. The lower story was in most cases made largely of the old, well-carved stones, while the upper was composed more of newer and cruder masonry. Here and there a bit of sculpture, such as a frowning, demonic face, appeared on the surface of one of the worn old stones; but it was as often as not mounted in its wall sideways or upside down.
From his previous experience with ruined cities, Conan drew his own conclusions.
Some ancient― perhaps pre-human―folk had originally built a city here. Centuries later, the ancestors of the present inhabitants had taken possession of the town. In building and rebuilding, they had re-used the ancient stones and had also imitated, though crudely, the stone-building methods of their predecessors.
The hooves of Mbonani's mare kicked up little clouds of dust from the unpaved streets and betimes splashed through a mud puddle. As the column shambled along the main street, the Gamburuvians crowded to the sides to let them pass.
Conan's glance darted from side to side as he strode along. He noted that, in this city, the sexes differed in an unusual way. The women were tall and powerful; they strode imperiously, like great black panthers, with bronze swords slapping their naked thighs. They were resplendent in bangles and beads, in plumes and lion-skin headdresses.
The men, on the other hand, were puny, sad-looking blacks, inches shorter than the women and confined to such menial tasks as street-cleaning, chariot-driving, and litter-bearing. Conan, tall even for a Cimmerian, towered over them all.
The column crossed a bazaar, where merchandise lay spread under awnings in the twilight, and thence down a broad avenue to a central plaza. This huge open space, a bowshot across, was fronted on one side by the royal palace, a worn but imposing structure of dull-red sandstone. On either side of the gate rose a pair of massive, squat statues of the same material. They were not the statues of human beings―that much was evident from their proportions―but just what they were meant to represent was hard to tell, so worn by the weather of ages were they. They could have originally been figures of owls, of apes, or of some unknown pre-human monstrosities.
Conan's attention was next drawn to a peculiar pit in the center of the plaza.
This shallow depression was a good hundred feet across. Its rim was cut down into the earth in a series of concentric steps, like the rows of stone benches in an amphitheater. The floor of the pit was strewn with sand, in which stood a few puddles from recent rains. In the midst of these sands rose a peculiar clump of trees.
Conan had never, in all his travels, seen a
n arena like this. He was, however, allowed only a momentary glimpse of it before he was hurried along to the slave pen. There he remained with his fellow captives through the night under heavy guard.
That one glimpse, however, had shown Conan a disquieting detail. Scattered about the bases of the strange-looking trees, white against the yellow-brown of the sand, was a clutter of clean white bones ―human bones, such as one might find about the lair of a man-eating lion.
Conan thought about this oddity all the way to the pen. The Argosseans, he knew, sometimes fed condemned criminals to lions in their arena in Messantia; but such an arena was so planned that no lion could leap from the floor up into the tiers of benches where sat the spectators. This pit was too shallow for such a purpose; a lion could clear it in a single bound.
The more Conan thought about this phenomenon, the more uneasy he became.
Chapter Thirteen
THE QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS
Dawn broke in orange flame above the squat stone towers of the city of the Amazons. The display did not long abide; for in these tropical latitudes, the sun soared almost straight up from the horizon. With dawn, Conan, Chabela, and the other new-caught slaves were herded from the pen and marched to the bazaar.
Here, one by one, they were stripped, led to the block, displayed, bargained over, and finally led away.
The buyers were all women, who were the ruling sex in Gamburu. The tall, lean Mbonani stood to one side, his hawklike black face impassive, as the buyers haggled with his lieutenant Zuru. The warrior women accorded more respect to the Ghanatas, whose slave-catching talents they valued, than they did to their own men.
When Chabela's turn came, the girl blushed scarlet and tried to hide her person with her hands as she stood naked on the block. When Zuru had made her turn about, he shouted for bids.
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