Conan the Barbarian (4 page)

The fires of wrath faded from his eyes. He took a deep breath. Then, silently, he picked up the chain and handed the end to his new master. The horseman grinned.

“The animal has spirit!” he grunted. “He will make a rare spectacle in the Pit.”

III

The Pit

Followed by his bodyguard on their shaggy ponies, Toghrul trotted smartly from the town. The chain, now wound around the pommel of his saddle, clanked against the clumsy wooden collar that confined the neck of the Cimmerian slave. The muscles of Conan’s legs were strong lion years of toil at the wheel, and massive was his chest; yet his thews ached, and each indrawn breath became a strangled sob as his master quickened his pace from a trot to mi easy canter.

Stones thrust jagged edges against Conan’s naked feet. Once, when he stumbled, he was dragged along until the pony, unsettled by the unaccustomed weight of an inert body, slowed to a walk. Then the youth regained his footing and forced his bruised and bleeding limbs to carry him forward.

At length the group dismounted for their midday meal. A skin of sour red wine and slabs of bread and cheese were passed around. Conan, listening to the men’s rude banter while he munched his food, learned that his new owner was a pit master from Hyrkania, a land far to the east, beyond barren Hyperborea. Around Asgard and Vanaheim, sometimes together called Nordheim or Northlands, the red-bearded man travelled with his troupe, staging fights for the amusement of local chieftains and their gaming cronies. Sometimes he lured, with promises of gold, neighbourhood champions to do combat with his Pit fighters—slaves all, whose final adversary was always Death.

As dusk turned the northern sky to steel and smudged the greenery along the narrow track, the sturdy ponies and the footsore young Cimmerian reached Toghrul’s encampment. Here, encircled by a rough log palisade, were several houses and sheds, a corral for the horses, and pens for the Pit slaves—men who had been selected as much for their savage truculence as for their powerful bodies and superior fighting skills.

Toghrul halted before one of the slave pens and shouted a question to the armoured guards who lounged around the enclosure. Although Conan failed to comprehend all the Hyrkanian words, he gathered that his master was seeking someone named Uldin. Uldin proved to be a stocky, long-armed man with a shaven scalp, who, after exchanging words with Toghrul, the exact meaning of which the Cimmerian did not understand, unwound the chain from Toghrul’s pommel and grasped it firmly in large and sinewy hands.

Speaking Vannish with a foreign accent, he muttered, | “Come along, you!”

As he was led into an airless, stench-filled room, something akin to panic seized the young barbarian. He felt the presence of others, but their forms were only shadows in the darkness. Then Uldin lit the stub of a taper. In the flickering light of this pale candle, Conan saw his fellow slaves, ragged and unwashed, lying on the raw dirt floor. Silent, unmoving, they watched him, their fire-lit eyes reflecting scant humanity.

Uldin unlocked Conan’s bulky collar and removed it. Then he faced the travel-worn youth. “What is your name?” he barked.

“Conan.”

“Whence come you?”

“I am a Cimmerian. Why am I here?”

“To learn to fight,” said Uldin. “What do you know of fighting?”

“Nothing,” growled Conan. “I was captured eight summers past, and I’ve been pushing that cursed mill wheel ever since. Before that, sometime, I fought with other

boys.”

“Then we’ll start with bare hand fighting. Take off your shirt.”

The Cimmerian obeyed, peeling off his coarse tunic carefully, lest the rotten fabric tear beyond utility. The trainer studied Conan’s body critically, raising the taper to complete his task.

“The wheel gave you good shoulders,” he grunted. "Try to throw me.”

Crouching, Conan moved toward the Hyrkanian trainer, his arms reaching out for a hold. He never understood what happened next. The short man slipped out of Conan's grasp as if he had been a column of smoke. A moment later, a foot caught the Cimmerian’s ankle and sent him sprawling.

“Again!” commanded Uldin, as the befuddled youth struggled to his feet.

Conan advanced cautiously, thinking: I’ll seize his neck and throw him across my hip, as we used to do as boys. But the trainer, instead of avoiding Conan’s clutching arms, allowed the Cimmerian to catch his head in the crook of an elbow. Then, lithe as a panther, Uldin threw himself backwards, pulling Conan forward above him. As Uldin fell supine, he doubled up his legs, planting his feet against Conan’s belly, and shoved violently upward. The youth flew over the trainer’s head, to land heavily on his back. Uldin rolled to his feet and stood looking down at him with a crooked grin.

Conan rose, snarling like a wolf at bay. “Crom damn you!” he spat, and rushed upon Uldin again—only to go sprawling once more.

This time, when Conan got up, he found Uldin grinning at him like a bald-headed ape. “Go on, hate me!” rasped the Hyrkanian. “Hate will make you a better fighter. But you have much to learn. Tomorrow we’ll get on with the first lesson.”

Throughout that summer, Conan learned to fight for his life. In the Pit, it was fight or die. Conan fought and lived.

Conan did not become intimate with his fellow Pit fighters. As one of them confided early in his training, it was senseless to make friends with a man you might have to kill lest you be killed by him.

The first time Conan was dropped into the Pit, he gave a swift, all-encompassing glance around the place of death or triumph. With others of Toghrul’s troupe, he had been taken in chains to Skaun, a town of the Vanir. Here the fighters were herded into a high-roofed, barn-like structure, wherein fires smouldered in beds of charcoal to lessen the biting chill of early autumn.

The Pit was ten paces long, five wide, and as deep as the height of a man. The edges were hung with crudely-figured shields and standards of hide, painted in cranberry red, cerulean blue, and raw earth tones.

Looking up from the enclosure, Conan saw a ring of Vanir chieftains, sitting on crude benches and guzzling ale from cups of horn. When they tired of handling these vessels, they thrust the horn points into the soft earth at their feet. Torches set in brackets encircled the upper reaches of the Pit. The fitful light gleamed on the red manes and ruddy faces of the men and glinted on their bracelets and pectorals of gold and silver, embellished with uncut gemstones. Smoke hung heavy in the air, commingling with the reek of ill-tanned hides and baggy woollens, stiff with dirt and rancid sweat.

The chieftains laughed, hooted, drank heavily, and bawled obscene jests. But they eyed the fighters shrewdly before placing bets and displayed bars of gold, precious jewels, and fine weapons as earnest of their wagers.

Half a dozen fighters stood against the far wall of the Pit, a group of powerful men, naked save for dirty clouts. Their deep chests, broad backs, and muscled limbs were smeared with grease, to afford scant hold to their opponents. Conan recognized none of these men. Since he had heard some muttered talk among Toghrul’s people of a rival Pit master, an Asa from Asgard named Ivar, the Cimmerian inferred that the strange fighters might be of Ivar’s troupe.

A second glance upward at the swilling, shouting Vanir showed Toghrul standing to one side, talking with a fellow whose tawny beard was streaked with grey. Conan could not hear their words as they gestured and pointed to the line of slaves in the Pit. But presently Uldin and two other men clambered down a ladder and hustled out all save the fighter who had been chosen for Conan’s adversary. Those dismissed ascended the ladder and disappeared, leaving the barbarian alone with the remaining man, a gigantic Negro.

Conan stared; he had never before seen skin of ebon hue. A thousand leagues or more to the south, in the land of Kush, his father had told him, such men were said to live. The Negro’s bullet head was shaven smooth. Deep in the shining mask of his heavy-featured face, the man’s eyes burned with feral fires. His jaws moved rhythmically as he chewed on a handful of leaves; and as the potent narcotic entered his blood stream and ascended to his brain, the look in his eyes became inhuman, the eyes of a beast of prey.

Pretending to be feckless and bewildered, the young barbarian studied his opponent. The black was a magnificent specimen of savage manhood, his oiled body gleaming in the firelight like a statue carved from obsidian. Terrific strength slept in those massive shoulders and arms; while beneath the skin of torso and legs, muscles like writhing pythons tensed and relaxed.

When the drug had taken full charge of the Negro’s brain, he sprang upon Conan like a charging tiger. In an instant his huge hands closed about the novice’s throat and clamped tight, sinking into the flesh and stifling the warning growl that rose from Conan’s chest. The Cimmerian’s hands locked on the wrists of the black, and the two struggled together in a dance of death, swaying back and forth in an embrace as intimate as that of lovers. The Vanir chieftains howled with excitement.

Conan fought desperately for breath, tensing the corded muscles of his throat. His lungs were afire; a red haze thickened before his eyes. The Negro leaned close, his thick lips spread in a lurid grimace that exposed yellow teeth filed to fang-like points. His hot breath, sickly-sweet with the effluvium of the drug, fanned Conan’s brow.

The black’s face came closer still. Now the combatants swayed cheek to cheek, as the Kushite strove to reach Conan’s jugular vein with his fangs.

Suddenly, Conan released his grip on the Negro’s wrists, planted his palms against the other’s chest, and shoved, as once, unaided, he had pushed against the spokes of the Wheel of Pain. His massive thews stood out in bold relief beneath the bronzen hide of his huge arms; for long years of toil at the Wheel had hardened them, as iron is hardened under the hammer of the smith.

Amazement flickered across the black’s visage when, despite the enormous power of his own solid arms, he was slowly thrust away, until his fingers slipped off the corded muscles of his opponent’s neck. In that instant, Conan seized the black’s wrists again and, bending double, pulled the man over his back. The giant Negro flew over Conan’s shoulders to thud heavily against the packed earth.

The Kushite regained his feet almost at once. But during that brief respite, Conan had sucked precious air into his starved lungs. Now the two circled warily, knees bent, legs spread, and clutching arms wide. Blood trickled down the Cimmerian’s chest from punctures in his throat made by the black’s sharpened nails. Sweat ran down his forehead and seeped, stinging, into his eyes. He shook his head, causing his matted mane to lift as he tried to shake the sweat away.

Blood lust flamed in the black man’s eyes. Grinning his fanged smile, he sprang catlike at Conan. But the young Cimmerian was ready. He twisted lightly aside and, as his opponent flew past, brought one balled fist down on the nape of the other’s neck. Half stunned, the black fell to his knees, while the throng yelled hoarsely. Some shouted in amazement; others in anger, as they saw their wagers fade away. Still others roared encouragement; for never had they seen such a fight between an untried youth and a proven champion.

Conan ignored the crowd. For him the world had narrowed to one Pit and one antagonist. As the lust to kill welled up within him, he hammered the dazed Negro again and again, smashing his nose into a smear of red and closing an eye with a swelling bruise.

Then the black sprang back and, bending nearly double, hurled himself at his adversary. His bullet head slammed into Conan’s belly, driving the youth back against the boards that lined the wall of the Pit. The Negro’s partisans went wild with cries of “Junga! Junga!”

As Junga closed with the Cimmerian, Conan seized one ebon arm. Ignoring the pain in his belly, he wrenched that arm behind its owner’s back and pulled up with all his might. The black screamed like a speared stallion as sinews tore from their moorings and the bone was twisted from its socket. He slumped to his knees, his dislocated arm hanging uselessly.

Then Conan got his hands under the black’s armpits mid slammed his head into the wall of the Pit. The onlookers fell silent with tension; and in the silence they heard a sound like the snapping of a stick. Conan had broken the Negro’s neck. Swaying with exhaustion, Conan let the twitching body slide to the ground. He staggered away, bracing himself against the Pit wall, and gasped for air.

The crowd went mad. Chieftains ripped off golden armlets and broaches and hurled them into the Pit, at Conan’s feet. But the weary Cimmerian ignored the glittering bounty. Just being alive was treasure enough for a Pit lighter.

Toghrul lowered himself into the Pit and slapped Conan’s bruised and aching shoulders. The Hyrkanian grinned and gabbled incoherent praise while stooping to gather up the golden offerings.

“Come, boy!” he said at last, his hands full of gewgaws. “I always knew you would be a champion! We’ll wash those cuts, and you shall have all the ale you can drink.”

On unsure feet, Conan followed his owner up the ladder and into the tiring room. There Uldin awaited him with a basin of warm water, a towel, and a pitcher of cold ale.

Thus the young Cimmerian became a Pit fighter, a man-slayer, battling for his life to feed the blood lust of the Nordheimers. When Toghrul found his takings dwindling in Vanaheim, he moved his people and animals eastward into Asgard, home of the golden-haired Æsir. While the two nations hated each other and lost no opportunity to raid, plunder, and slaughter their enemies, they were united in their love of Pit fighting. It was not unusual to see tribesmen from both nations, who had busily savaged each other the month before, mingling in the Pit fight sheds, slapping backs, exchanging bear hugs, and trading toasts and wagers.

The life of a Pit fighter was not quite the worst of lives, Conan grimly discovered. To face an adversary and kill him was to enjoy, for a fleeting moment at least, the illusion of freedom. It was, in a way, to be a whole man again. The gruelling torment of the Wheel had dehumanized him; the fierce battles of the Pit restored something of manhood and self-love.