Conan the Barbarian (12 page)

Conan drew back, frowning in thought. If he let his body topple forward, bracing his chest against the pylon, he could reach the jewel without touching the serpent’s coils. I If he failed, he would surely die. He drew a deep breath, stiffened his back, and, standing on his toes, fell forward, until his outstretched hands made contact with the altar’s edge and broke his fall.

Tightening the grasp of his right hand, he stretched forth his left to pluck the gem from the indentation in the carven surface on which it lay. Although the jewel felt icy cold against his palm, Conan tucked the stone into his tunic. He was about to try to regain his balance when another object on the altar caught his eye.

Next to the hollow in which the gem had reposed lay a small bronze medallion, embossed with a design that, despite the dim light, awoke echoes in the barbarian’s mind.

At the sight of two writhing serpents with intertwining tails, Conan’s memory fled back to the dreadful day in his childhood when, through the snow-trampled rutted road of his Cimmerian village, wheeling horsemen drove their merciless dogs and raised their swords against defenceless villagers. And he remembered the glittering arc made by Doom’s sword—his father’s sword—and his mother’s severed head....

It was a grim-faced Conan who clamped the medallion between his jaws and heaved himself into an upright position. Turning, he started toward the low archway, when a look of horror crossed the Hyrkanian’s face.

“Behind you!” croaked Subotai, his vocal chords half paralysed with terror.

Conan whipped around to find that the serpent had awakened. The great wedge-shaped head, as large as that of horse, rose to the height of a man. The slavering jaws opened, like a miniature drawbridge, to reveal rows of dagger fangs.

When the huge body lunged forward, Conan whipped out his long-bladed dirk; and as the snake’s head approached, he struck with the tigerish speed of a trained killer. The dagger’s needle point impaled the serpent’s lower jaw and drove in through the reptile’s palate, pinning the wicked jaws together.

Hissing, the wounded serpent threw a confining coil about its attacker’s body, immobilizing one of Conan’s arms. A jerk of the creature’s head tore the dirk out of the barbarian's grasp and carried it out of reach. Struggling to loose the deadly coil, Conan staggered back against the wall of the chamber, but to no avail. The snake threw a second coil about him.

Conan’s face blackened as the relentless coils squeezed the breath from his body. With his free arm, the Cimmerian sought to batter the serpentine head against the wall; but so large and powerful was the reptile that his effort was futile.

In an agony of fear, Subotai danced about trying to get a clear shot at the serpent without further endangering his friend. At last, he nocked an arrow and released his bowstring. The missile sank halfway into the scaly neck, but the serpent seemed to feel nothing. It whipped another murderous coil about the Cimmerian’s legs, nearly dragging 1 him to the ground.

With a mighty heave of chest and shoulders, Conan if managed to force the serpent’s head against the wall, so that 1 the dagger point, which protruded from the creature’s skull, 9 scrapped on the mortar between two stones. With his remaining strength, the barbarian pounded the pommel of the dirk with his free fist, driving the point into the crumbling mortar.

During that momentary respite, Subotai shot another arrow; then a third. This missile drove through the serpent’s neck and pierced the mortar, immobilizing the reptile. As it thrashed about to free itself, it loosed its grip on its adversary, and Conan reeling from the exertion, fought free.

“Catch, Conan, catch!” hissed Subotai, tossing the barbarian’s sword to him, hilt first. Conan caught the weapon and wheeled, just as the snake pulled loose from its insecure restraint. As the scaly body plunged toward the Cimmerian, he raised the sword and, with two mighty hands upon the pommel, brought the blade down across the serpent’s neck, severing the head.

“Watch out!” called Subotai, as the headless body thrashed like a giant whip, knocking Conan to the ground and sending the Hyrkanian flying across the empty altar. Slowly, the reptilian thrashings ceased as the creature’s life-blood ebbed; and the battered adventurers gathered up their scattered gear and made their way back into the carrion-littered hall.

In the hall above, the ceremony neared its climax. Conan saw the black priest, Yaro, rise to his full height. At his commanding gesture, the mesmerized girl poised on the jutting corbel, raised her arms, and fell or threw herself into the corpse-filled pit.

A chorus of cries of surprise and superstitious terror filled the darkened chamber when none heard the expected thud of a fallen body or scream of a dying victim. Yaro leaned forward, peering into the dim depths below. Instead of a broken body atop the pile of corpses, he saw the girl lowered unharmed to the floor by the arms of a giant who had caught her as she fell. He heard her shriek, “Our god is dead, is dead!” as she stared through the archway wherein the headless serpent lay. He watched as the giant recovered the bloodstained sword he had cast aside to catch the falling girl and as, with a smaller man beside him, the intruder vanished into the darkness.

As Conan and Subotai raced for the stair, the shocked moment of silence erupted into a clamour of confusion. By the time they reached the top step, they saw between the pillars several robed figures bending over the supine body of a dishevelled woman. Conan looked in vain for Valeria; he saw that the woman on the floor was raven-haired and so could not be the she-thief.

“Make for the tower shaft!” panted Subotai, and the two sprinted for the grating that separated the great hall from the tower well.

“The intruders!” shouted Yaro behind them. “There go the infidels! Slay them, ye faithful!”

The mob pressed forward, robes billowing. Among them came Yaro, two shaven-headed archers, and a man armed with an axe. Conan and Subotai squeezed through die grating.

“Where in the nine hells is the wench?” snarled Conan.

“Go on, you two!” cried a familiar voice. “I’ll cover your retreat.”

“Come on!” shouted Subotai, setting foot on the lowest mug of the ladder. Reluctantly, Conan sheathed his sword and, seizing the rung, followed his friend upward. The two archers reached the tower well and, kneeling down, nocked their arrows and drew their bowstrings back.

Suddenly a small, robed figure leaped forward and slashed the taut bowstrings. An instant later, one archer lay sprawling in his gore, with two of the faithful at his side. Bloody dagger in hand, Valeria threw off her stolen disguise mid ran for the rope.

“Seize her!” bellowed Yaro.

The axe-man pushed after the fleeing girl and swung his weapon. Valeria ducked, and the force of his blow spun the fellow halfway round. Instantly, Valeria grasped her dagger with her teeth, whipped the rope’s end around her adversary’s throat, and tightened it.

As the man struggled, tearing at the rope that was strangling him, Valeria tied a quick knot and pushed the gasping man over the edge of the opening in the floor. Then, as the man spun into the black pit, the she-thief seized the other end of the rope, which passed over the pulley at the top of the tower. The weight of the falling body sent Valeria soaring effortlessly out of sight of the faithful who huddled, howling with frustration, at the bars of the grating.

As she hurtled upward, she passed Conan and Subotai, who were struggling painfully, hand over hand, up the narrow rungs of the iron ladder. Clinging to her rope with both hands, and gripping her dagger in her teeth, the girl threw back her head and laughed, as if to say, “Hurry, laggards, if you want to catch me!”

Moments later, the men, panting with exertion, reached the top of the shaft and found Valeria cleaning the blood from her mouth and dagger. They sank to the well-rim flooring to catch their breath.

“Well, did you get it?” asked Valeria.

Wordlessly, Conan pulled the ice-fire gem from his tunic and held it up to view. Her smile of satisfaction was brief; for sounds of pursuit billowed up from below. “They’re climbing the ladder!” the girl whispered, peering down the long shaft. “I think some beast-men are among them. Hide the Serpent’s Eye!”

“Get out on the parapet,” said Conan, nodding toward the star-decked doorway. “I’ll lop off their heads, one by one, as they reach this platform.”

“No!” replied Valeria. “Too risky! Let’s go down the tower wall before they cut my rope. But hurry!”

Soon the three, like flies upon a wall, were holding the rope and backing down the tower’s face, grateful that the setting moon no longer marked their hasty passage.

All but the Cimmerian had reached the safety of the ground when a hideous face appeared above the battlements, and a knife-wielding, hairy hand slashed at the slender rope that had supported the fugitives’ descent. Seeing the strands begin to part, Conan glanced briefly downward to locate the black surface of the reflecting pool. Reassured, he planted both feet firmly on the tower wall, gave a mighty heave with his strongly muscled legs, and launched himself in mid-air just as the rope gave way. Twisting his lithe body like a falling cat, he plunged, unharmed, into the dark water.

Valeria laughed as Conan emerged unscathed; and her laughter echoed the angry cries from a growing number of observers on the battlements.

“Fools!” she explained. “They’ve aided our escape! Now none can descend to hinder our flight from these most foul confines!”

Chuckling, Subotai coiled the rope and slung it over his shoulder, then followed Conan and Valeria over the garden wall to the anonymity of the darkling city streets.

VIII

The Mission

Fire roared on the stone hearth of a dingy tavern in the Thieves’ Quarter of Shadizar. The pungent smoke that curled, like a lazy cat, against soot-blackened rafters did not dim the rainbow brilliance refracted by the hundred polished facets of the Serpent’s Eye. Three cloaked figures, hunched conspiratorially around the rubiate gem as it lay on the rough oak table, shielded it with their bodies from the casual observation of strangers.

“By Nergal, but it’s beautiful!” sighed Subotai, as his greedy eyes feasted on the glittering jewel.

“That it is,” drawled Valeria. She raised her wine goblet to her lips without diverting her attention from the object of her admiration.

“It had better be beautiful,” growled Conan. “It all but cost the lot of us our lives.”

Subotai grimaced fastidiously. “Must you awaken sleeping memories?” he asked. “A peril past is a danger best forgotten, as we say in Hyrkania.”

Nevertheless, the little man began to recount the events which followed their discovery in the temple of the Tower of the Black Serpent. He recalled how they had clambered over the temple garden wall, while others of the cultists, alerted by their brethren upon the battlements, poured forth in a torrent of fury from an unseen door of the obscene place of worship. He reminded his companions of their day of hiding, too fearful of pursuit even to seek food in the local shops, and of how, at last, they made their way, gawking like newcomers to the city, to the lawless quarter whither few honest men or officers of the peace dared to seek out thieves and murderers. Sighing, Subotai squeezed shut his eyes to banish the painful memories. Then opening them, he feasted on the gorgeous gem as on a royal banquet.

“It was worth it,” he murmured. “Think, Cimmerian, shall we have two dukedoms in Aquilonia, two emirates in Turan, or a pair of adjacent satrapies down in Vendhya? And on what, Lady Valeria, do you expect to spend your share of the fortune from the gem?”

“First we have to find a buyer for so valuable a jewel,” murmured Valeria, glancing warily about. The tavern was a beehive of red-faced, sweating men, bawling out hoarse songs and thumping their mugs on the rude table-tops, while a naked dancer, her oiled body gleaming in the firelight, undulated to the barbaric rhythm of the music.

“You had no trouble disposing of the stones you prised from the tower battlements,” observed the little thief, with a meaningful nod at Valeria’s wallet, abulge with gold coinage stamped with the bearded profile of Osric, King of Zamora. The girl, pressing the purse closer to her side, mistrustfully eyed the merrymakers, a crowd of whores, highwaymen, pimps, mercenaries, and off-duty guardsmen.

“Lower your voice, idiot, before you attract attention,” she snapped, the pupils of her eyes glinting like a pair of daggers.

Subotai shrugged. A lean-shanked serving boy sidled over, gathering up empty flagons; and the Hyrkanian, nudging the Cimmerian’s knee, caught the boy’s arm.

“Find us girls, lad, sleek girls with round hips and pointed teats! Having explored the horizons of the world, I now intend to explore the limits of the fleshly pleasures, for which I have waited long—too long.”

The youth, with a knowing leer, bent to whisper directions in the Hyrkanian’s ear. Conan and Valeria exchanged a long and meaningful look.

“Well, comrade. I’m off to Madame Ilga’s house for a night of well-earned revelry. What are your plans? And yours, Lady Valeria?”

“As for the two of us, we have—other plans,” said Conan, gruffly. Subotai grinned, eyeing two pairs of hooded eyes.

“So, it’s like that, is it? I thought as much! Well, joy to you both, my friends; I now bid you a fond goodnight. Every man has his weakness; I intend to exercise mine assiduously. I leave you to practice your own.”

Valeria caught his sleeve, as the Hyrkanian lurched unsteadily to his feet, prepared to venture forth into the night. She handed him a portion of the wealth contained in the plump pouch.

“Be wary, little man! Remember: a man of means has many boon companions, but few true friends.”

Subotai scoffed at her temerity. “I have killed men before this—men who have had eyes in the backs of their heads, like that monstrosity atop the tower, young Conan! Besides, this gold was far too dearly bought for me to squander it on others’ satisfactions. I intend to spend it entirely on myself!”

With a careless wave of his hand, the bow-legged man strutted off through the crowd toward the nighted street beyond the tavern door. Conan met Valeria’s thoughtful stare with eyes that burned a volcanic blue. “Let’s seek the comfort of our room, girl.”