Conan the Barbarian (6 page)

Presently, Toghrul’s raised voice drew his attention. The Pit master was chaffering with a slim young woman wrapped in a cloak of fine sable. Her dress, jewels, and confident manner suggested a lady of high rank, perhaps even kin to royalty. As Conan caught the exchange of words, he gathered that the woman wished to retain his services as a love partner for the night. He drew a sharp breath in amazement, for such a thing was unheard-of among the Cimmerian tribesmen. Then his astonishment changed to ire at the thought of his master’s gaining riches from such a use of his slave’s body.

Toghrul took the girl’s money, unlocked the gate, opened it just enough for her to slip through, then hastily relocked it. As the girl, dropping her fur cloak, approached him hesitantly, the Cimmerian’s eyes roved up and down her slender, diaphanously clad form. He felt his blood pound as he stepped forward to meet her. Then he noticed Toghrul at the gate, grinning, his eyes ashine in the candlelight.

“What are you waiting for?” growled Conan.

“To see your performance, Cimmerian,” snickered the Pit master.

“To the nine hells with you!" snarled Conan. “There’ll be no performance so long as you stand there goggling!”

The girl spoke in a light, high voice. “Indeed, sirrah, I have paid you well. Now depart, I command you!”

As Toghrul, disappointed, shrugged and strode off, Conan said, “Now, lady, you will have to show me a thing or two. I have had some experience at man-slaying, but this kind of combat is new to me....”

The full moon was on its downward path across the heavens when a small sound broke Conan’s slumber. He raised himself on one elbow, staring through the darkness. A faint light came from the declining moon, which shot silver arrows through the imprisoning bars. As a lazy cloud drifted across the moon, the landscape seemed bathed in lustreless crimson. A heavy silence lay upon the world, as if Nature held her breath and waited. Beside Conan, the sleeping girl stirred.

The Cimmerian did not know what had aroused him; but his savage instincts warned him of impending danger. Quietly, he reached for his garments and pulled them on.

Somewhere a dog barked, then another. Soon every dog within earshot gave uneasy tongue. A hoarse whinnied; then Conan heard a chorus of whinnies. Asses brayed, and restless cattle lowed in their pastures. The entire animal kingdom seemed to cry out a warning of impending disaster.

Suddenly the earth shook. A muffled moan within the ground swelled to a rumbling roar. The ground cracked open. A stream of rocks cascaded down the hillside past the entrance to the cave.

The girl woke, screaming, and fumbled for her lover; but Conan, fully clad, was crouching on the cave floor, his outstretched arms braced against the stone wall, as the ground heaved and shook beneath him. Huddled there, he recalled the legends that his father told him about giants in the earth and wondered whether some of them, astir, were causing the catastrophe.

The rumble increased in volume, until Conan had to shout to the trembling girl, urging her to join him. From Kolari came a continuing ululation of screams as terror-stricken people rushed from their tumbling houses. Behind Conan and the girl, a section of the cave roof collapsed with a thunderous roar, filling the air with rock dust.

As Conan, growling curses, seized the bars that penned them in, the ground beneath his feet split open. A line like black lightning zigzagged down the rock in which the hinges of the barred gate were set. The gate loosened in Conan’s desperate grip, as the lower hinge parted from its setting. A violent push, and the gate hung awry.

“Get out, girl!” shouted Conan, as he forced the gate ajar. The girl squeezed past him through the narrow opening and ran screaming into the night, clutching her furs and flimsy garments against her naked bosom.

With another mighty heave, Conan broke the gate loose from its remaining hinge and hurled it down the hillside. As the earth rocked and vibrated beneath his feet, he staggered out into the moonlight and glared wildly at the scene of devastation. In the middle distance, he perceived the houses of Kolari in ruins, and their homeless tenants running aimlessly about, like ants after the obliteration of their nest.

“Conan!” came the voice of Toghrul. “Conan! Help

me!”

Below him, at the foot of the little hill, Conan saw the Pit master’s head protruding from a wide crack in the earth. He saw that the earth had opened beneath the Hyrkanian’s feet and swallowed him to his shoulders. Wedged in the crack, the man was unable to free himself.

“Pull me out!” implored the Pit master.

“Why should I?”

“I’ll pay gold! I’ll give you your freedom! Only save me now!”

“My freedom, eh?” Conan threw back his head and laughed—his first good laugh since the Vanir had captured him, ten long years ago. “That I already have. Stay there, swine! If the earth swallows you down, good riddance to you!”

Conan turned and walked away. Guided by the moonlight, he headed for a clump of trees on a hillock in the distance. He had neither supplies nor weapons and did not know whither he was going, but at least he knew that southward the weather was warmer. Behind him, Toghrul’s frantic voice rose to an awful shriek as, in a final earth tremor, the crack that held him closed once more.

Conan saw no one, alive or dead, in the direction he chose to travel, save, after a time, one Hyrkanian warrior, who sprawled beneath a fallen tree. In its descent, the tree had broken the fellow’s back. Conan knelt and looted the corpse for such articles as he might need: boots, flint and steel, a dagger, a fur cloak, and a bag of coins. He also took the man’s quiver and bow case, although he looked doubtfully at them for the bow was little used among the Cimmerians, and Conan had never learned to shoot.

“You’ll have no use for these in the red pits of Hell, Hyrkanian,” he said cheerfully, “and they may serve me well before I join you there." So saying, he donned the dead man’s gear and glided away through the trees.

Then, as the first faint glow of dawn suffused the eastern sky, Conan increased his pace and headed south.

IV

The Witch

The plain stretched southward under a pewter sky. Here and there the ground showed black where winds had scoured away the snow, exposing naked earth.

Once more Conan paused in his trudging to glance back along the path that he had travelled. Straining his ears, he heard the tell-tale whining and knew that wolves were still on his trail. From the distance came their eerie song. He scowled, set his jaw, and gathered his bearskin cloak about him. If only, in all this bleak, flat stretch of land, he could find a rocky place to shield him—something to put his back against—he could face the pack and use his dagger to good advantage.

Grimly, the Cimmerian turned to plod ahead; but in the dull, metallic luminescence of the motionless mist, he could not see his surroundings clearly. He strode along, nevertheless, his keen barbarian eyes searching for a haven against the hungry fangs. At last he found one. It was only a low rise, a wrinkle in the earth’s skin; but the higher ground was strewn with boulders. On the crest of this small rise, he hoped to make his stand; for there the beasts could come at him only singly, or at the worst in pairs.

As he began to clamber up the rocky pile, his booted feet slipped on the sheathing ice. A cold wind came up and tugged at his cloak as if to hold him back. Still he persevered and made some progress. Pausing to catch his breath at last, he turned to see a dozen gaunt, dark-furred forms lope into view. The wolves’ eyes burned like glowing coals through the gathering murk, as the grey light faded from the clouded heavens.

Seeing their quarry trying to escape, the pack broke into a chorus of snarls. Just before the foremost reached the foot of the rock pile, Conan found a smooth, upright slab which thrust up from the side of the knoll. In shape it was oddly symmetrical, as though hewn by artisans of some forgotten race and set there for a marker. Conan neither knew or cared about that; the slab was something he could stand against, something to protect his back.

Whining and growling, the wolves threaded a passage between the boulders, scrambling for footholds as they clawed their way up the rough hillside. One leaped high in the air to snap at the Cimmerian’s leg, but a slash of his dirk caught the beast across its muzzle. With a yelp of pain, it fell back, giving its prey a moment’s respite.

As he inched along the ledge that fronted the vertical slab, in search of a more secure footing, Conan’s fingers found a narrow gap in the rock. A quick glance revealed a dark opening, just wide enough for a man to slip through sidewise. Once within the sheltering cleft, however small the space, he knew that he would gain an advantage against his pursuers.

Lithe as a panther, Conan wriggled through the slot in the stone; but his cloak caught on a jagged rock and was tom from his shoulders. Through the aperture, he watched the wolves hurl themselves upon the fur, their fangs ripping the bear’s hide to ribbons.

For some reason that he could not fathom, the animals did not even try to squirm through the opening. From the way they whined and scratched against the slab, he sensed that, starving though they were, they feared to pass through this mysterious stone portal.

Turning, Conan found himself in a larger space than he had expected, a stone-walled cubicle with a flat; stone-paved floor. The regularity of the floor and walls gave the barbarian youth an uneasy premonition that the chamber had been fashioned by intelligent beings, human or otherwise. He felt his way in the dark along the smooth wall and came to an opening through which a flight of smoothly-chiselled stone steps descended into deeper darkness. He followed them to their foot.

On the lower level, the floor seemed littered with debris, rotted cloth intermixed with hard lumps that he could not at first identify. He gathered up a handful of the unseen litter, wondering if it were combustible. He felt in his pouch for the flint and steel he had taken from the dead Hyrkanian. Soon he had a small flame burning, for the cloth was dry and ignited easily.

By this feeble orange light, Conan saw that the walls were embellished with polished stone reliefs, an intricate mixture of bizarre figures and forms unknown to him. Examining the floor, he found it cluttered with skulls and bones, the remains of at least a score of human beings. He saw that the bones were clean and dry, the flesh having long since disintegrated into dust.

Peering deeper into the gloom, Conan discovered a huge throne, carved from a block of some opalescent material such as marble or alabaster. On this seat of honour sat an enormous skeletal warrior, still clad in copper armour of a strange design, turned green by the corrosion of many years. Conan guessed that the living man whose bones these were had been half again as tall as he, perhaps a member of a long-forgotten race.

Lighting his way with a rude torch fashioned from a femur wrapped in a piece of rotting cloth, Conan approached the armed figure. Beneath the shadow of the heavy helm, the face of the skull seemed frozen in a silent scream. Across the spread knees of the armoured skeleton lay a great sword, sheathed in leather so rotted that patches of iron beneath the hide were visible. The hilt and pommel of corroded bronze crawled with cryptic characters, wrought by a master’s hand.

Conan took up the sword. At the touch of his fingers, the scabbard crumbled into dust and thin fragments of bronze fell to the floor with the ghost of a tinkle. The blade, now fully exposed, proved to be a huge length of dull iron, spotted with patches of corrosion; but rust had not bitten it deeply enough to affect its strength. Th6 edge, when Conan thumbed it, was still sharp.

Conan’s eyes clouded with painful memories as he caressed the perfect planes of the blade and the exquisite workmanship of the hilt. He recalled the making of the great steel sword that was his father’s masterpiece. Shrugging the memory away, Conan hefted the ancient weapon. Heavy as it was, he found the balance so perfect that it seemed made for his arm alone. He raised the sword above his head, and felt his thews swell with power and his heart beat faster with the pride of possession. With such a blade, no destiny would be too high for a warrior to aspire to! With such a blade, even a barbarian slave, a Pit fighter scorned and marked for death, might hack his way to an honoured place among the rulers of the earth.

Exhilarated by the dreams that the splendid weapon aroused in his barbarian breast, Conan feinted and cut the air with wild abandon; and as the keen sword sliced through the stale air of the death chamber, he uttered the venerable war cry of the Cimmerians. Loud and clear he shouted it; and the cry reverberated around the chamber, disturbing ancient shadows and age-old dust. In his exuberance, the young barbarian never paused to think that such a challenge, wide-flung in such a place, might rouse thoughts and feelings that had slumbered there for countless centuries among the bones of those whose thoughts they were.

Suddenly, Conan heard an answering war cry. It seemed to come from a great distance, carried on the wind. But there was no wind. Conan paused, his sword arm still upraised. Was it perhaps the wolves that howled? Again the mad cry rose, so near now that it beat against his ears and deafened him. Conan wheeled. He felt the hair lift from his scalp and his blood congeal to ice. For the dead man lived and moved.

Slowly, the skeleton rose from the marble throne, glaring at the Cimmerian youth from the deep pits now filled, it seemed, with demonic fire. Bone rubbed against bone, like tree branches brushing together in a storm, as the terrible grinning skull approached on funereal feet. Conan, his arm still raised, stood frozen by horror into immobility.

Suddenly a bony claw shot out, to snatch the sword from Conan’s hand. Numb with terror, Conan retreated step by step. Only the Cimmerian’s laboured breath and the clicking of bones against the stone floor of the chamber broke the silence.

Now the dead thing had Conan backed against a wall. Pit fighter though he was, ready to do battle with man or beast and fearing neither pain nor mortal foes, he was still a barbarian and like all barbarians he feared the terrors of the grave and the monstrous beings that inhabit the dark world and the hells beneath hells. The small torch burned low as he stood paralysed by fear. Then a wolf howled.