Fantasy Masterworks 01 (24 page)

Tuthmes glanced out over that vast expanse of huts. Fires glowed in the ragged squares, torches swayed to and fro in the wandering streets, and from time to time he caught a snatch of song, a barbaric chanting that thrummed with an undertone of wrath or bloodlust. Tuthmes drew his cloak closer about him and shivered.

Advancing across the roof, he halted by a figure which slept in the shadow of a palm growing in the artifical garden. When stirred by Tuthmes’s toe, this man awoke and sprang up.

‘There is no need for speech,’ cautioned Tuthmes. ‘The deed is done. Amboola is dead, and before dawn, all Punt will know he was murdered by Tananda.’

‘And the - the devil?’ whispered the man, shivering.

‘Shh! Gone back into the darkness whence it was invoked. Harken, Shubba, it is time you were gone. Search among the Shemites until you find a woman suitable - a white woman. Bring her here speedily. If you return within the moon, I will give you her weight in silver. If you fail, I will hang your head from that palm tree.’

Shubba prostrated himself and touched his head to the dust. Then rising, he hurried from the roof. Tuthmes glanced again into Punt. The fires seemed to glow more fiercely, somehow, and a drum had begun an ominous monotone. A sudden clamor of bestial yells welled up to his ears.

‘They have heard that Amboola is dead,’ he muttered, and again he was shaken by a strong shudder.

Life flowed on its accustomed course in the filth-littered streets of Punt. Giant black men squatted in the doorways of their thatched huts, or lolled on the ground in their shade. Black women went up and down the streets with water-gourds or baskets of food on their heads. Children played or fought in the dust, laughing or squalling shrilly. In the squares the black folk chaffered and bargained over plantains, beer and hammered brass ornaments. Smiths crouched over tiny charcoal fires, laboriously beating out spear blades. The hot sun beat down on all,

he sweat, mirth, anger, nakedness and squalor of the black

eople. Suddenly there came a change in the pattern, a new note in

be timbre. With a clatter of hoofe a group of horsemen rode by, half a dozen men, and a woman. It was the woman who dominated the group. Her skin was dusky, her hair, a thick black mass, caught back and confined by a gold fillet. Her only garment, besides the sandals on her feet, was a short silk skirt girdled at the waist. Gold plates, crusted with jewels, partially covered her dusky breasts. Her features were straight, her bold, scintillant eyes full of challenge and sureness. She rode and handled her steed with ease and certitude, the slim Kushite horse, with the jeweled bridle, the reins of scarlet leather, as broad as a man’s palm and worked with gilt, and her sandalled feet in the wide silver stirrups.

As she rode by, work and chatter ceased suddenly. The black faces grew sullen, and the murky eyes burned redly. The blacks turned their heads to whisper in each other’s ears, and the whispers grew to a sullen, audible murmur.

The youth who rode at the woman’s stirrup grew nervous. He glanced ahead, along the winding street, measured the distance to the bronze gates, not yet in view along the flat-topped houses, and whispered: ‘The people grow ugly, Tananda; it was foolish to ride in Punt.’

‘All the black dogs in Kush shall not keep me from my hunting,’ answered the woman. ‘If any seem threatening, ride them down.’

‘Easier said than done,’ muttered the youth, scanning the silent throng. ‘They are coming from their houses and massing thick along the street - look there!’

They were entering a broad, ragged square, where the black folk swarmed. On one side of this square stood a house of mud and rough-hewn beams, larger than its neighbors, with a cluster of skulls above the wide doorway. This was the temple of Jullah, which the black folk worshipped in opposition to Set, the Serpent-god worshipped by the Chagas in imitation of their Stygian ancestors. The black folk were thronged in this square, sullenly staring at the horsemen. There was a distinct menace in their attitude, and Tananda, for the first time feeling a slight nervousness, did not notice another rider approaching the square along another street. This rider would have attracted attention in ordinary times, for he was neither Chaga nor Gallah, but a white man, a powerful figure in chain-mail and helmet, with a scarlet cloak whipping its folds about him.

‘These dogs mean mischief,’ muttered the youth at Tananda’s side, half drawing his curved sword. The others, guardsmen, black men like the folk about them, drew closer about her, but did not draw their blades. A low sullen muttering rose louder, though no movement was made.

‘Push through them,’ ordered Tananda, reining her horse forward. The blacks gave back sullenly before her advance, and suddenly, from the devil-devil house came a lean black figure. It was old Ageera, clad only in a loincloth. Pointing his finger at Tananda, he yelled: ‘There she rides, she whose hands are dipped in blood! She who murdered Amboola!’

His yell was the spark that set off the explosion. A vast roar rose from the mob, and they surged forward, yelling: ‘Death to Tananda!’ In an instant a hundred black hands were clawing at the legs of the riders. The youth reined between Tananda and the mob, but a stone, cast from a black hand, shattered his skull. The guardsmen, slashing and hacking, were torn from their steeds and beaten, stamped and stabbed to death. Tananda, beset at last with terror, screamed as her horse reared. A score of wild black figures, men and women, were clawing at her.

A giant grasped her thigh and plucked her from her saddle, full into the eager and furious hands which awaited her. Her skirt was ripped from her body and waved in the air above her, while a bellow of primitive laughter went up from the surging mob. A woman spat in her face and tore off her breastplates, scratching her breasts with her fingernails. A stone hurled at her grazed her head. She screamed in frantic fear; a score of brutal hands were tearing at her, threatening to dismember her. She saw a stone clenched in a black hand, while the owner sought to reach her in the press and brain her. Daggers glinted. Only the hindering numbers of the jammed mass kept them from doing her to death instantly. ‘To the devil-devil house!’ went up a roar, followed by a responsive clamor, and Tananda felt herself half carried, half dragged along with the surging mob, grasped by her hair, arms, legs, wherever a black hand could grip. Blows aimed at her in the press were blocked or diverted by the mass; and then there came a shock under which the whole throng staggered as a horseman on a powerful steed crashed full into the press.

Men went down screaming, to be crushed under the flailing hoofs; Tananda got a dizzy glimpse of a figure towering above the press, of a dark scarred face under a steel helmet, of a scarlet cloak unfurled from mighty mailed shoulders, and a great sword lashing up and down, spattering crimson splashes. But from somewhere in the press a spear licked upward, disembowelling the steed. It screamed, plunged and went down, but the rider landed on his feet, smiting right and left. Wildly driven spears and knives glanced from his helmet or the shield on his left arm, while his broadsword cleft flesh and bone, split skulls, scattered brains and spilled entrails into the bloody dust.

Flesh and blood could not stand before it. Clearing a space he stooped, caught up the terrified girl and, covering her with his shield, fell back, cutting a ruthless way. He backed into the angle of a wall and, dropping her behind him, stood before her, beating back the frothing, screaming onslaught.

Then there was a clatter of hoofs and a regiment of the guardsmen swept into the square, driving the rioters before them. The captain approached, a giant negro resplendent in crimson silk and goldworked harness.

‘You were long in coming,’ said Tananda, who had risen and regained much of her poise. The captain turned ashy, but before he could turn, Tananda had made a sign that was caught by his men behind him. One of them grasped his spear with both hands and drove it between his captain’s shoulders with such force that the point started out from his breast. The captain sank to his knees, and thrusts from half a dozen more spears finished the task.

Tananda shook back her long black disheveled hair and faced her rescuer. She was bleeding from a score of scratches on her breasts and thighs, her locks fell in confusion down her back, and she was as naked as the day she was born; but she stared at him without perturbation or uncertainty, and he gave back her stare, frank admiration in his expression of her cool bearing, and the ripeness of her brown limbs.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘Conan, a Cimmerian,’ he answered.

‘What are you doing in Shumballa?’

‘I came here to seek my fortune. I was formerly a corsair.’

‘Oh!’ New interest shone in her dark eyes; she gathered her hair back in her hands. ‘We have heard tales of you, whom men call Amra the Lion. But if you are no longer a corsair, what are you now?’

‘A penniless wanderer.’

She shook her head. ‘No, by Set! You are captain of the royal guard.’

He glanced casually at the sprawling figure in silk and steel, and the sight did not alter the zest of his sudden grin.

Shubba returned to Shumballa, and coming to Tuthmes in his chamber where leopard skins carpeted the marble floor, he said: ‘I have found the woman you desired. A Nemedian girl, captured from a trading vessel of Argos. I paid the Shemitish slave-trader many broad gold pieces.’

‘Let me see her,’ commanded Tuthmes, and Shubba left the room, returning a moment later leading a girl by the wrist. She was supple, her white skin almost dazzling in contrast with the brown and black bodies to which Tuthmes was accustomed. Her hair fell in a curly rippling gold stream over her white shoulders. She was clad only in a tattered shift. This Shubba removed, leaving her shrinking in complete nudity.

Tuthmes nodded, impersonally.

‘She is a fine bit of merchandise. If I were not gambling for a throne, I might be tempted to keep her for myself. Have you taught her Kushite, as I commanded?’

‘Aye; in the city of the Shemites, and later daily on the caravan trail, I taught her, and impressed upon her the need of learning by means of a slipper, after the Shemite fashion. Her name is Diana.’

Tuthmes seated himself on a couch, and indicated that the girl should sit cross-legged on the floor at his feet, which she did.

‘I am going to give you to the king of Kush as a present,’ he said. ‘You will nominally be his slave, but actually you will belong to me. You will receive your orders regularly, and you will not fail to carry them out. The king is degenerate, slothful, dissipated. It should not be hard for you to achieve complete dominance over him. But lest you might be tempted to disobey, when you fancy yourself out of my reach in the palace of the king, I will demonstrate my power to you.’

He took her hand and led her through a corridor, down a flight of stone stairs and into a long chamber, dimly lighted. The chamber was divided in equal halves by a wall of crystal, clear as water though some three feet in thickness and of such strength as to have resisted the lunge of a bull elephant. He led her to this wall and made her stand, facing it, while he stepped back. Abruptly the light went out. She stood there in darkness, her slender limbs trembling with an unreasoning panic, then light began to float in the darkness. She saw a hideous malformed head grow out of the blackness; she saw a bestial snout, chisel-like teeth, bristles - turned and ran, frantic with fear, and forgetful of the sheet of crystal that kept the brute from her. She ran full into the arms of Tuthmes in the darkness, and heard his hiss in her ear: ‘You have seen my servant; do not fail me, for if you do he will search you out wherever you may be, and you cannot hide from him.’ And when he hissed something else into the quivering ear of the Nemedian girl, she promptly fainted.

Tuthmes carried her up the stairs and gave her into the hands of a black wench with instructions to revive her, to see that she had food and wine, and to bathe, comb, perfume and dress her for her presentation to the king.

‘The Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite--’ E. Hoffman Price: The Girl From Samarkand

Only the age-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in the mind of Shevatas, the thief, driving his breath quick and sharp against his clenched teeth.

He stood, the one atom of life amidst the colossal monuments of desolation and decay. Not even a vulture hung like a black dot in the vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat. On every hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen cyclopean blocks of stone; shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust-storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life: only the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the midst of that vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up like broken masts of sunken ships - all dominated by the towering ivory dome before which Shevatas stood trembling.

The base of this dome was a gigantic pedestal of marble rising from what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of the ancient river. Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in the dome, which rested on its base like the half of some titanic egg. The dome itself was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknown hands kept it polished. Likewise shone the spired gold cap of the pinnacle, and the inscription which sprawled about the curve of the dome in golden hieroglyphics yards long. No man on earth could read those characters, but Shevatas shuddered at the dim conjectures they raised. For he came of a very old race, whose myths ran back to shapes undreamed of by contemporary tribes.

Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became a master-thief of Zamora. His small round head was shaven, his only garment a loincloth of scarlet silk. Like all his race, he was very dark, his narrow vulture-like face set off by his keen black eyes. His long, slender and tapering fingers were quick and nervous as the wings of a moth. From a gold-scaled girdle hung a short, narrow, jewel-hiked sword in a sheath of ornamented leather. Shevatas handled the weapon with apparently exaggerated care. He even seemed to flinch away from the contact of the sheath with his naked thigh. Nor was his care without reason.