The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (2 page)

ROBERT E. HOWARD

I

T
orches
flared
murkily
on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the East held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamour of drinking jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.

In one of those dens merriment thundered to the low smoke-
stained roof, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and
tatters—furtive cutpurses, leering kidnappers, quick-fingered thieves,
swaggering bravoes with their wenches, strident-voiced women clad
in tawdry finery. Native rogues were the dominant element—dark-
skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile
in their hearts. But there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations
there as well. There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn,
dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame—
for men wore steel openly in the Maul. There was a Shemitish
counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard. There
was a bold-eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-
haired Gunderman—a wandering mercenary soldier, a deserter from
some defeated army. And the fat gross rogue whose bawdy jests were
causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper come up
from distant Koth to teach woman-stealing to Zamorians who were
born with more knowledge of the art than he could ever attain. This
man halted in his description of an intended victim’s charms and
thrust his muzzle into a huge tankard of frothing ale. Then blowing
the foam from his fat lips, he said, “By Bel, god of all thieves, I’ll show
them how to steal wenches; I’ll have her over the Zamorian border
before dawn, and there’ll be a caravan waiting to receive her. Three
hundred pieces of silver, a count of Ophir promised me for a sleek
young Brythunian of the better class. It took me weeks, wandering
among the border cities as a beggar, to find one I knew would suit.
And is she a pretty baggage!”

He blew a slobbery kiss in the air.

“I know lords in Shem who would trade the secret of the Elephant
Tower for her,” he said, returning to his ale.

A touch on his tunic sleeve made him turn his head, scowling at the interruption. He saw a tall, strongly made youth standing beside him. This person was as much out of place in that den as a grey wolf among mangy rats of the gutters. His cheap tunic could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist, and heavy arms. His skin was brown from outland suns, his eyes blue and smouldering; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead. From his girdle hung a sword in a worn leather scabbard.

The Kothian involuntarily drew back; for the man was not one of
any civilized race he knew.

“You spoke of the Elephant Tower,” said the stranger, speaking
Zamorian with an alien accent. “I’ve heard much of this tower; what
is its secret?”

The fellow’s attitude did not seem threatening, and the Kothian’s
courage was bolstered up by the ale and the evident approval of his
audience. He swelled with self-importance.

“The secret of the Elephant Tower?” he exclaimed. “Why, any fool
knows that Yara the priest dwells there with the great jewel men call
the Elephant’s Heart, that is the secret of his magic.”

The barbarian digested this for a space.

“I have seen this tower,” he said. “It is set in a great garden above
the level of the city, surrounded by high walls. I have seen no guards.
The walls would be easy to climb. Why has not somebody stolen this
secret gem?”

The Kothian stared wide-mouthed at the other’s simplicity, then
burst into a roar of derisive mirth, in which the others joined.

“Harken to this heathen!” he bellowed. “He would steal the jewel
of Yara!—Harken, fellow,” he said, turning portentously to the other,
“I suppose you are some sort of a northern barbarian—”

“I am a Cimmerian,” the outlander answered, in no friendly tone.
The reply and the manner of it meant little to the Kothian; of a
kingdom that lay far to the south, on the borders of Shem, he knew
only vaguely of the northern races.

“Then give ear and learn wisdom, fellow,” said he, pointing his
drinking jack at the discomfited youth. “Know that in Zamora, and
more especially in this city, there are more bold thieves than anywhere
else in the world, even Koth. If mortal man could have stolen the gem,
be sure it would have been filched long ago. You speak of climbing
the walls, but once having climbed, you would quickly wish yourself
back again. There are no guards in the gardens at night for a very
good reason—that is, no human guards. But in the watch chamber,
in the lower part of the tower, are armed men, and even if you passed
those who roam the gardens by night, you must still pass through the
soldiers, for the gem is kept somewhere in the tower above.”

“But if a man
could
pass through the gardens,” argued the
Cimmerian, “why could he not come at the gem through the upper
part of the tower and thus avoid the soldiers?”

Again the Kothian gaped at him.

“Listen to him!” he shouted jeeringly. “The barbarian is an eagle
who would fly to the jewelled rim of the tower, which is only a
hundred and fifty feet above the earth, with rounded sides slicker
than polished glass!”

The Cimmerian glared about, embarrassed at the roar of mocking
laughter that greeted this remark. He saw no particular humour in
it and was too new to civilization to understand its discourtesies.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know
they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general
thing. He was bewildered and chagrined and doubtless would have
slunk away, abashed, but the Kothian chose to goad him further.

“Come, come!” he shouted. “Tell these poor fellows, who have
only been thieves since before you were spawned, tell them how you
would steal the gem!”

“There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage,”
answered the Cimmerian shortly, nettled.

The Kothian chose to take this as a personal slur. His face grew
purple with anger.

“What!” he roared. “You dare tell us our business, and intimate
that we are cowards? Get along; get out of my sight!” And he pushed
the Cimmerian violently.

“Will you mock me and then lay hands on me?” grated the
barbarian, his quick rage leaping up; and he returned the push with
an open-handed blow that knocked his tormentor back against the
rude-hewn table. Ale splashed over the jack’s lip, and the Kothian
roared in fury, dragging at his sword.

“Heathen dog!” he bellowed. “I’ll have your heart for that!”

Steel flashed and the throng surged wildly back out of the way. In their flight they knocked over the single candle and the den was plunged in darkness, broken by the crash of upset benches, drum of flying feet, shouts, oaths of people tumbling over one another, and a single strident yell of agony that cut the din like a knife. When a candle was relighted, most of the guests had gone out by doors and broken windows, and the rest huddled behind stacks of wine kegs and under tables. The barbarian was gone; the centre of the room was deserted except for the gashed body of the Kothian. The Cimmerian, with the unerring instinct of the barbarian, had killed his man in the darkness and confusion.

II

The lurid lights and drunken revelry fell away behind the Cimmerian. He had discarded his torn tunic and walked through the night naked except for a loincloth and his high-strapped sandals. He moved with the supple ease of a great tiger, his steely muscles rippling under his brown skin.

He had entered the part of the city reserved for the temples. On
all sides of him they glittered white in the starlight—snowy marble
pillars and golden domes and silver arches, shrines of Zamora’s
myriad strange gods. He did not trouble his head about them; he
knew that Zamora’s religion, like all things of a civilized, long-settled
people, was intricate and complex and had lost most of the pristine
essence in a maze of formulas and rituals. He had squatted for hours
in the courtyards of the philosophers, listening to the arguments of
theologians and teachers, and come away in a haze of bewilderment,
sure of only one thing, and that, that they were all touched in the
head.

His gods were simple and understandable; Crom was their chief,
and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth dooms and
death. It was useless to call on Crom, because he was a gloomy, savage
god, and he hated weaklings. But he gave a man courage at birth,
and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian’s
mind, was all any god should be expected to do.

His sandalled feet made no sound on the gleaming pave. No
watchmen passed, for even the thieves of the Maul shunned the
temples, where strange dooms had been known to fall on violators.
Ahead of him he saw, looming against the sky, the Tower of the
Elephant. He mused, wondering why it was so named. No one seemed
to know. He had never seen an elephant, but he vaguely understood
that it was a monstrous animal, with a tail in front as well as behind.
This a wandering Shemite had told him, swearing that he had seen
such beasts by the thousands in the country of the Hyrkanians; but all
men knew what liars were the men of Shem. At any rate, there were
no elephants in Zamora.

The shimmering shaft of the tower rose frostily in the stars. In
the sunlight it shone so dazzlingly that few could bear its glare, and
men said it was built of silver. It was round, a slim, perfect cylinder, a
hundred and fifty feet in height, and its rim glittered in the starlight
with the great jewels which crusted it. The tower stood among the
waving, exotic trees of a garden raised high above the general level of
the city. A high wall enclosed this garden, and outside the wall was a
lower level, likewise enclosed by a wall. No lights shone forth; there
seemed to be no windows in the tower—at least not above the level
of the inner wall. Only the gems high above sparkled frostily in the
starlight.

Shrubbery grew thick outside the lower, or outer wall. The
Cimmerian crept close and stood beside the barrier, measuring it with
his eye. It was high, but he could leap and catch the coping with his
fingers. Then it would be child’s play to swing himself up and over,
and he did not doubt that he could pass the inner wall in the same
manner. But he hesitated at the thought of the strange perils which
were said to await within. These people were strange and mysterious
to him; they were not of his kind—not even of the same blood as the
more westerly Brythunians, Nemedians, Kothians, and Aquilonians,
of whose civilized mysteries he had heard in times past. The people
of Zamora were very ancient and, from what he had seen of them,
very evil.

He thought of Yara, the high priest, who worked strange dooms
from this jewelled tower, and the Cimmerian’s hair prickled as he
remembered a tale told by a drunken page of the court—how Yara
had laughed in the face of a hostile prince, and held up a glowing,
evil gem before him, and how rays shot blindingly from that unholy
jewel, to envelop the prince, who screamed and fell down, and shrank
to a withered blackened lump that changed to a black spider which
scampered wildly about the chamber until Yara set his heel upon it.

Yara came not often from his tower of magic, and always to work
evil on some man or some nation. The king of Zamora feared him
more than he feared death, and kept himself drunk all the time
because that fear was more that he could endure sober. Yara was very
old—centuries old, men said, and added that he would live for ever
because of the magic of his gem, which men called the Heart of the
Elephant; for no better reason than this they named his hold the
Elephant’s Tower.