Conan the Savage (22 page)

Fortunate it was, too, that Yugwubwa had a fierce temper, and hurled itself at the Atupans again and again in slavering rage. Otherwise, it might easily have followed the ravine out to the level plain, where the hunters would have been even less a match for it.

“Come, Yugwubwa! Try and bite me! I’ll poke you in the eye!” Youths eager to earn fame goaded Yugwubwa, while the more seasoned hunters waited for the beast to turn aside and afford them a heart-thrust. Some few cast spears down into the pit; but even those weapons that struck the thick, jointed hide did not pierce it deeply. They were scraped off and forgotten because of the creature’s restless, violent movements in the narrow space.

Glubal, trying to jab the hairy fiend in the neck, made the mistake of standing too close to the gully’s crumbling edge. He tumbled in with the monster, his fighting-yell changing to a terrified shriek; moments later he was tossed out by Yugwubwa’s flailing horns. His limp body twisted high overhead, to land with a crash in a flower-bush and slide brokenly to earth.

“Demon! Man-killer! Come taste my spear, foul Yugwubwa!” Songa, having run some distance along the gully to a stone outcrop that gave her a vantage over the beast, now waved and gesticulated to attract it. Her sharp cries and frantic motions succeeded; as the monster snorted and turned, Conan ran along the rim to join her.

“Here, tree-eater! Come and try to crack my limbs! Peel my bark, you lumbering clump!” Kneeling on the stone overhang, Songa bent forward and jabbed with her spear, which clashed and scraped against the homed mantle of the lunging, straining creature. The beast blatted in rage; it tried to catch and crush the spear point between its nose-horns and the pale, chalky stone buttress. But the woman was too deft, driving her weapon instead at the creature’s ear and starting a trickle of blood down Yugwubwa’s dusty flank.

Most of the others, moving closer to the fight, raised a cheer at this. But Conan saw a danger that his mate could not: the prey-beast, ever wily and treacherous, was butting and clawing at the cliff side beneath the overhanging stone where its tormentress stood.

“Songa, be careful—”

Conan’s warning came too late. As he watched, the pale stone ledge, really just an embedded rock slab, began to shift and settle toward the monster’s raking, scrabbling clutch. Songa turned and sprang for level ground, vaulting across her spear-pole, but earth and stones slumping in the boulder’s wake slipped loosely and bore her downward. Grasping and lighting for balance, silent and earnest, she disappeared into the dust cloud rising from beneath Yugwubwa’s trundling feet.

“Aiaa!” Conan, in a reflex born of inarticulate rage, felt his shoulder spasm and his arm lash powerfully. His spear, its hide banner trailing, hurtled through air to strike the brute’s back just behind the foreleg. It lodged there, loose in the muscle-slabbed flesh, giving rise to only a small, spreading bloodstain; the monster responded with a mere sidelong toss of its horns and a snort of irritation.

Conan, meanwhile, cast about frenziedly for another weapon. Sliding down the lip of the ravine, he seized hold of a pointed chunk of rock and dragged it loose from the earthen wall. Clutching it in two hands, he bounded out along the broken slope to a jagged fin of soil that protruded over the prey. Once there, careless of the spears flying down to strike the monster, he launched himself out into space and onto Yugwubwa’s back.

He landed with a grunt across the knobby spine, near the place where a more graceful creature would have had a neck. Clinging tight with knees and elbows, using embedded Atupan spears as footholds, he worked himself astride the massive back. Then, wielding the pointed rock in both hands, he began battering at the plate of bony armour and the heavily corded muscles just behind Yugwubwa’s eye-ridges and rearmost horns.

The beast’s reaction was to lunge and toss, braying and snorting raucously while trying to dislodge the intruder from its back. Try as it might, it could not arch its mushroom-shaped horns around far enough to reach its own nape; instead, lurching sideways with scuffing steps, it rammed and scraped the gully wall in an effort to grind its attacker to pulp. But vainly, for the slope was not steep enough. Clinging tight with his knees, Conan continued to club and jab with his chisel-pointed weapon.

He strove desperately, clinging and pounding in frantic hatred while his skin dripped sweat and his nostrils sucked in the animal’s dusty reek. Then, to his joy, he saw that Songa still lived, plying her spear agilely somewhere beyond Yugwubwa’s flailing horns and fore-claws. Now other Atupans—reluctant, perhaps, to cast their spears down from long range and risk striking their hunt-mates—were clambering into the gully to harry the beast from its walls, or even from the level bottom. And the monster’s reactions appeared different to Conan now. They were more scattered against the threats from all sides, with what sounded like a note of plaintive confusion in the thunderous bellows.

All at once, striking savagely with his stone bludgeon, Conan felt something give. Blinking amid stinging dust, he saw bright-purplish blood well up from a spot at the edge of Yugwubwa’s bony head-plate. A sudden impulse seized him: abandoning the stone chunk, letting it slide away down the sloping back, he reached behind him to one of the spears that lolled in the monster’s thick hide. A tug and a sharp twist were sufficient to dislodge it. Then, digging its point into the oozing wound, he gripped the shaft two-handed and bore down with all his strength. The effort, aided by an upward toss of Yugwubwa’s convulsing back, was successful; the stone leaf-blade sank in a hands-breadth and more, meeting small resistance once it was past the tough hide and fractured horn.

That same instant, the monster’s bleatings took on a choking, rasping tone. Looking down, Conan saw Songa clinging heroically to her bucking, tossing spear shaft—which must, he realized, be lodged deep in Yugwubwa’s throat.

Whatever the cause, their quarry had stopped fighting; it reeled, its legs faltering beneath its vast weight. It lurched sideways, fetching up against the gully wall with a slapping thud. Then it slid to earth and lay motionless, surrendering without even enough violence to dislodge the enemy who clung to its back.

Beneath him, Conan felt deep tremors and a shuddering heave: massive heartbeats, he slowly understood, and the breath of Yugwubwa. As he crouched there listening, they gradually ceased.

About him in the gully bottom, there reigned a wary silence. Then, all at once, a plaintive cry sounded. The wailing, mournful voice promptly became a chorus.

“Yugwubwa is dead! Oh, pity! Alas!”

“Our great friend of the forest, the Eater of Trees, is no more!”

“We are sorry, dear friend, for your misfortune!” This last voice, Conan dimly grasped, was Songa’s.

“How sad for us all—oh, sorrowful day!”

The moans and laments rained down on all sides now, from cliff top, slope, and canyon bottom. Conan, suddenly impatient, arose and jumped down from the hulking corpse. “What in Crom’s name is all this blubbering for?” He made the demand of his mate, who stood near Yugwubwa’s snout with her hands respectfully clasped together. “This stinking brute is finally murdered, and you’re still alive— and a hero, to boot! Why must you mourn and carry on so?” “But Conan, do you not see? It is a terrible loss, a tragedy! A cherished Mend is gone this day, a great heart has been stilled—”

“River-man has a point, after all,” Aklak spoke up abruptly. “My sister is now a great hero, indeed. And none of us died in the hunt—not many, anyway. Our tribe will have a great feast, and food for the coming winter! It is a time for rejoicing!”

“Yes, rejoice!” Now this cry was taken up along the cliff top and spread through the canyon.

“We have food. Yugwubwa is dead!”

“Songa is a hero!”

The mood of the hunters abruptly changed to what Conan would first have expected, with backslapping, frolicking, and excited pummelling of the huge carcass. Even Glubal appeared on the cliff top, grinning and waving excitedly— though from a prone position, having presumably dragged his broken nether limbs behind him.

With ritual celebration, a cup was brought forward and held to the spear wound in Yugwubwa’s throat. The hunters, beginning with Songa, were allowed to drink the steaming blood of their slaughtered prey.

Then, to everyone’s delight, more faces appeared on the cliff top. The rest of the tribe, moving far slower than the hunters and bringing with them appliances for food preparation, had followed on their track. They descended into the ravine, and the butchery of the fallen beast became a festival. The hide was stripped and cut into usable shapes, teeth and tusks were extracted, and long fillets of meat were removed and staked out in the noon sun to dry. Fires were built and carefully maintained, with choice parts of Yugwubwa set out roasting and smoking on an array of racks and spits; Water vessels, too, were filled from a nearby stream, with an ample supply made available for necessary washing and boiling. The hunters were even able, with the many hands present, to turn over the massive carcass so that the meat on the bottom side was not wasted.

As it happened, the tribe did not return to its former camp. The Elder Council decreed that it was time to move, so only a few small parties were sent back to strip the village of its remaining portables and put the place in order. Several nights were spent at the site of the kill. Then the tribe, burdened down with its fresh provisions, moved downriver to a new camp, a lower and more southerly one that promised good hunting and milder weather as leaf-fall approached. Conan and Songa shared the labour of carrying their belongings, bound up in a litter between two padded spear-poles they alternately rested on their shoulders or slung in their hands.

After three weary days’ march, as the land levelled and began to seem boggy and mosquito-ridden, Conan grew gruff and openly dubious of the move. He himself, inured to colder climes, saw no reason why they could not have wintered where they were. But the others, who had seen the lower camp, were enthusiastic to go there. Some of the young hunters—including Glubal, who hobbled along on a splinted leg and crutches—acted jubilant or positively frenzied as landmarks told them the place was near.

At last they arrived, crossing a broad field of waving grass-groats to halt on the sandy shore of a blue, tree-lined lake. There lay the circles of last year’s huts, the fire-pits, and, suspended from nearby trees, some canoes skilfully made of hide and boughs. But the hunters, heaving down their burdens, showed little interest in these things; instead, they flocked to a spot some distance from the lake shore.

Songa, holding Conan’s hand, led him in their wake. “Follow me, and be careful where you step,” she cautioned him.

Coming to an exposed, barren place where die young hunters clustered together, they stopped and waited uncertainly. Aklak knelt before them and pierced the hard clay soil with a digging-stick. Surprisingly, it gave easily. As Aklak lifted a chunk of clay carefully aside, a pungent but familiar smell wafted to Conan’s nostrils. The men and women about him sighed appreciatively; he noticed for the first time that they and Songa carried gourd-flasks and dippers.

“It is ready... it is, ah, very fine!” Aklak called out, zestfully wrinkling his nose. “No, do not crowd, do not fall in! There will be plenty this year!” Dipping his arm into the hole, he ladled out a foamy substance and raised it to his lips.

“Come, Conan,” Songa urged, prodding him forward with her gourd-spoon. “You will like it! Have you never had—” her lips formed a word he had thus far paid slight attention to, but that would now become a good deal more familiar to him “—no, you couldn’t have, for it is our invention! How could you ever have tasted beer?”

XI

Queen and Goddess

Queen Tamsin’s coronation was a discreet affair. Now that her popular uprising had achieved its victory, it was seen as unfitting to expose her royal personage—and the sacred fetish of the living goddess Ninga—to the prying eyes and coarse entreaties of the common mob. Rather, it was thought, an aura of distance and priestly mystery would help restore stability to the recently troubled empire; in this, Tamsin allowed her new court advisors to have their way.

Accordingly, the young queen’s ordination was held before several dozen privileged members of her court, in the refurbished throne hall now made over as a shrine to Ninga—its vanished throne replaced by an altar, its gem-faceted window supplanted by a single disk of translucent black glass. Most of those present at the ceremony were old, familiar faces: a score or so of high nobles, officers, eunuchs, and other worthies who, on fervently renouncing their allegiance to dead King Typhas, had been allowed to retain their lives and estates under Tamsin’s sway.

Outside in the temple square, the enthusiasm of the populace was satisfied with torments and executions—of the high chancellor and some few dozen knights, fugitive priests, and civil servants who were denounced as loyal to the old regime, or were at least deemed expendable to the new. These proceedings were carried out under the supervision of the new Marshall of War, Baron Isembard, and his crack troops.

Inside, the assembled court sat watching a program of newly devised Ningan Temple dances, which, though performed with stately dignity by gowned women and robed men, had much in them of rural Brythunian peasant reels and flings. This rustic innocence seemed to satisfy the girl-queen.

“Now you have seen, First Steward, the full penalty of misrule and kingly negligence.” Tamsin, gowned in Imperial finery, with the diminutive goddess on her arm clothed in even costlier splendour, deigned to share a few wise words with her advisor during the dance. “There are some slights and abuses an empire will not bear, even from a clever, watchful monarch.”

The eunuch Basifer, first steward of the Imperial household, was in appearance an unlikely tutor for the young queen; he was large and heavy-featured, displaying the hairlessness and excess flesh that so often accompanied his physical alteration. His hands, back, and head were welted and scarred by maltreatment during his boyhood in the palace service, and his coarse flesh had been stained a deeper tan by applications of fragrant nut-oil balm, as was the fashion among the castrated servants. Yet he, with his dispassionate wisdom and his leadership of his fellow civil officers and palace administrators, was the perfect one to carry over the smooth efficiency of the late king’s regime into the new theocracy.