Conan the Barbarian: The Stories That Inspired the Movie (41 page)

“I swore I would not tell the king a jest concerning you! I did not swear not to take matters into my own hands if I could. Do you think I would pass up such an opportunity? Under ordinary circumstances I would not dare to kill you myself, without sanction of the king, but now none will ever know. You will go into the acid-vats along with Thak and the nationalist fools, and none will be the wiser. What a night this has been for me! If I have lost some valuable servants, I have nevertheless rid myself of various dangerous enemies. Stand back! I am over the threshold, and you can not possibly reach me before I tug this cord and send you to hell. Not the gray lotus, this time, but something just as effective. Nearly every chamber in my house is a trap. And so, Murilo, fool that you are –”

Too quickly for the sight to follow, Conan caught up a stool and hurled it. Nabonidus instinctively threw up his arm with a cry, but not in time. The missile crunched against his head, and the Red Priest swayed and fell face-down in a slowly widening pool of dark crimson.

“His blood was red, after all,” grunted Conan.

Murilo raked back his sweat-plastered hair with a shaky hand as he leaned against the table, weak from the reaction of relief.

“It is dawn,” he said. “Let us get out of here, before we fall afoul of some other doom. If we can climb the outer wall without being seen, we won’t be connected with this night’s work. Let the police write their own explanation.”

He glanced at the body of the Red Priest where it lay etched in crimson, and shrugged his shoulders.

“He was the fool, after all; had he not paused to taunt us, he could have trapped us easily.”

“Well,” said the Cimmerian tranquilly, “he’s travelled the road all rogues must walk at last. I’d like to loot the house, but I suppose we’d best go.”

As they emerged into the dimness of the dawn-whitened garden, Murilo said: “The Red Priest has gone into the dark, so my road is clear in the city, and I have nothing to fear. But what of you? There is still the matter of that priest in The Maze, and –”

“I’m tired of this city anyway,” grinned the Cimmerian. “You mentioned a horse waiting at the Rat’s Den. I’m curious to see how fast that horse can carry me into another kingdom. There’s many a highway I want to travel before I walk the road Nabonidus walked this night.”