Young Thongor (24 page)

Thongor limped over to inspect the remains of the enchanter’s mummy. The skull was a blackened shell, hollow and cracked in the heat. It fell to pieces at his touch. From the pile of ashes, crumbling bits of bone, and scaly, blackened gristle, he drew forth the jeweled collar, smeared and dull with ashes. He wiped his hand across the glistening crystals.

They were dead and dull. No longer did the dancing emerald flames inwardly illuminate them. Mere lusterless bits of smooth crystal now, devoid of beauty or value. Obviously, when the life force of the mummy was extinguished in the flames, the spell was broken whereby the souls of his murdered victims where chained within the gems. Thongor dropped the dead crystals with a little grimace of disgust.

* * * *

By mid-morning they had reached the ring of hills that enclosed the vast, bowl-shaped depression. Thongor reined in his
kroter
, and turned for one last look at the black citadel that thrust its wilderness of turrets and cupolas skyward from the rocky knoll at the centre of the valley of death and desolation. Rarely had he been so glad to shake the dust of any place from his heels.

Where she lay in his arms, seated before him astride the
kroter
, Zoroma trembled at the memory of the horrors they had endured in that ghastly ruin.

Grinning, Chelim reined up beside his chieftain. “Where now, Thongor?”

The young barbarian flexed his powerful arms as the girl lay back against his chest, her warm cheek laid trustingly upon his mighty heart.

“Anywhere at all where we can find water and game—due north along the coast, I think; the sooner we get back into Chush, the happier I will be!” he said.

The massive Zangabali grimaced and spat. He turned his gaze to where the fortress of Shan Chan Thuu loomed in the distance. “After the nights of fear we spent in that haunted mausoleum, I’ll be glad to face Dorgand Tul and his spearmen again,” he laughed. “They, at least, are mortal! Give me a foe you can kill with the thrust of good, clean steel, and I will stand against any enemy. But this battling against shadowy sorcerers is not for the likes of me!”

Thongor grinned. “Aye, but still, we did not come away empty handed,” he growled.

Chelim blinked in puzzlement—then grinned at the girl nestled demurely in the circle of the young barbarian’s arms. “Say, rather, that
you
did not come away with empty arms—but what of the rest of us?”

Thongor grinned and dug one hand into the pocket-pouch of his girdle. He held out a fistful of gold coins and glittering gems and laughed at the expression of astonishment that crossed Chelim’s heavy features. “In Gorm’s name, man, you did not think I came away from that crypt of nameless horrors in such a hurry that I failed to fill my pouch, did you? There’s enough loot here to buy you all women and weapons and new mounts at the next city we enter!”

The slack-jawed astonishment faded from Chelim’s features and was replaced by a grudging admiration. “Well…perhaps I did underestimate you,” he grunted. “I doubt that
I
would have lingered in that gloomy cavern long enough to pick up loot.”

“Nonsense,” Thongor snorted. “Why fear? The mummy was dead at last. But, come, let us get on. Ahead lie good, comfortable jungles—complete with streams of fresh, cold water, and game.
Game!
Gorm’s blood, it has been so long since I last had a good steak that my belly has almost forgotten the taste of meat! Tell the men to ride west, Chelim—I’ll have a hot meal before I curl up in my pallet to sleep this night!”

He thumped booted heels in the ribs of his
kroter
and rode past the burly Zangabali. Noticing with a grin how the arms of his young chieftain tenderly enfolded the slim form of the jungle girl, Chelim laughed. Thongor was thinking of more things than filling his hungry middle, Chelim knew, and it would be hours before the young barbarian finally slept.

They rode off through the dusty hills, to where the lush jungles of Chush beckoned once more.

INTRO TO BLACK MOONLIGHT

Again Thongor’s band raids the rich caravans of the merchants of Arzang Pome, Sark of Shembis, until at last the furious ruler finally snares them and consigns them to the slave block. They endure the merciless life of galley slaves until Thongor leads a revolt which frees them and sets them on a new life, as members of the bloody corsairs of Tarakus, the renegade Pirate City.

For two years Thongor rises to notoriety among them, winning his own craft, the Black Hawk; he and his lusty crew sail the dangerous seas in search of riches and new glories.

BLACK MOONLIGHT

1

Uncharted Seas

The red sun sank in a sheet of flame over the dark waters of Yashengzeb Chun, the Southern Sea. It blazed fiercely, igniting the western sky, and against the flame the jungle isle of Zosk loomed up: shaggy, black, mysterious.

Since noon the pirate galley
Black Hawk
had stood against the wind, lying off the wide lagoon where billows drove snowy foam against a curve of tawny beach. Now a chill wind rose with the coming of night. It rattled the fronded tree-ferns and cycads that stood like a green wall beyond the curve of wet sand: it caught and boomed the scarlet sails of the lean, rakish black galley, and the gusting breeze sent waves slapping against the sharp dragon-prow.

The gusts were dank with wet and chill. On the foredeck of the galley the first mate shivered to the wind’s bite, and drew his heavy boat cloak more closely about him. The tall, massive Zangabali, Chelim, with stubbled jaw and shaven pate, shivered in the keen breeze, gold hoops glittering in his ears. It was late in Shamath, the first month of autumn, with a hint of winter on the wind’s edge.

A dark shape loomed against the crimson sky; turning, Chelim nodded to his captain. “No signal yet; the lad’s lost,” he grunted.

The captain of the
Black Hawk
said nothing. The dank wind caught and spread his black cloak, like dark wings on the wind. Beneath the cloak he was half-naked, his bronze body possessing thews like a young gladiator. Black and thick as a
vandar
’s mane, his unshorn hair blew from broad shoulders, framing his stern, impassive face, strong-jawed, clean-shaven, grimly expressionless. Under scowling black brows his strange gold eyes blazed with sullen, lion-like fires. Few city-bred men could meet the glare of those sombre, burning eyes; fewer still could stand before him in battle. Despite the chill night-wind, his superb body was clad only in a Lemurian war-harness of belted straps, with a heavy ornate girdle about his lean hips and a scarlet cloth about his loins. As a Barbarian from the wintry Northlands beyond the Mountains of Mommur, he found the night sultry.

To the pirates of Tarakus, to his fellow captains of the Red Brotherhood, he was Khongrim of the Black Hawk. But those who had served him since before his pirate days knew his true name as Thongor.

“Lost, or slain,” he growled in a deep voice. “Gorm knows what beasts lair in those jungles. And there may be savages…I have heard the captains tell strange tales of such isles.”

“I, too,” muttered the mate, and if he shivered a little, perhaps it was the cold edge of the wind. But these were uncharted seas, and yonder isle was marked on no chart. Few ever dared sail this deep into the unknown west: the fat merchants of Thurdis or Tsargol clung to the coasts of Kovia or Ptartha, and the corsairs preyed only where there were rich cities to loot and plunder.

But Thongor of the
Black Hawk
would venture down the red throat of hell itself for such a treasure as the jungle isle of Zosk held hidden, if old, whispered legends were true. Somewhere in the dark mass of trackless jungle lay a fortune in pearls, a treasure-trove of the rare flame pearls of Cadorna, worth a kingdom’s price in the thieves’ bazaar at Tarakus. And the captain of the
Black Hawk
meant to claim that treasure at sword’s point, if need be. Since noon the corsair craft had sounded the jungle isle, finding this lagoon, and sending ashore a volunteer to scout for hostile savages. Reckless young Kanthar Kan had won the toss of the dice. Hours since they should have glimpsed his signal, as arranged. What unexpected doom had befallen the gay, laughing young swordsman? They could wait on him no longer.

Thongor tossed back his mane impatiently. “Chelim, take us in and let go the anchor. Trice up all sail. Fulvio!”

“Aye, Cap’n?” A scrawny, wizened little rogue detached himself from the wheel and snapped to alertness.

“Pick a landing party, and see them well-armed. Lower the longboat when ready. We’re going in.”

2

Death by Fear

A quarter-hour later the longboat was slung over the side on squealing winches. Fulvio’s landing party swarmed down the lines to take places in the thwarts—a motley crew of ruffians they looked, ragtag scrapings of the gutters of half the cities of the West. There was a fat, moon-faced Kovian with cold eyes and a placid smile, and a notched cutlass in his sash; swarthy-hued, black-thatched Thurdans, a villainous and foul-mouthed lot, with gaudy kerchiefs knotted about their brows and gems flashing on dirty fingers; even a few tawny-skinned, almond-eyed men of Cadorna, who cursed their mates in sing-song, soft voices, fingering dagger-hilts. Some were marked with slave-brands and some bore the sign of outlawry; all were scarred with sword-cuts from many battles on land and sea. A villainous lot, but loyal to the death, and gallant fighting-men who would follow wherever Thongor led, and serve him to the last drop of red blood.

The longboat pulled away from the lean black hull of the galley and glided in on silent oars. They ran the boat up on the wet beach and sprang out, sea-boots crunching in slick sand, dragging the hull further up the strand where the waves could not reach. It was nearly dark as they entered the dense wall of foliage; the moon had not yet risen, and the dying coals of sunset glimmered on their naked cutlasses and flashed in their eyes as they glanced about uneasily.

The jungle was thick and black and still.
Too
still. The jungle aisles should have rung to the roar of hunting
vandars
, the screech of river-
poa
. But all was silent as death.

Thongor sensed the wrongness in the heavy air from the first. His pirates were city-bred men, their senses dulled from the stench and clamor of the back-alleys that had spawned them. But he had the keen, sharp-honed senses of the wilderness-born—the cruel wastes of the frozen North had cradled him, and his was the hair-trigger sensitivity of the true savage. To have survived in the bitter land of his native Valkarth, he had learned to taste the breeze like a hunting cat, to listen to every whisper, to read the night like a stalking beast.

Once they had wormed through the dense wall of trees, the chill wind died. Blackness lay about them, heavy with the stench of rotting leaves, sour mud, thick with the heady perfume of jungle flowers. And there was something else on the air, as well.

There was the smell of death…

His strange gold eyes searching the gloom to every side, his great Valkarthan broadsword naked in his hand, Thongor took the lead, prowling through the black jungle as silent as a cat. A quarter of an hour later they found the body.

It was Fulvio who came upon it first. The scrawny, one-eyed little rogue almost stumbled across it in the impenetrable gloom. His squawk of alarm brought Thongor shouldering through the heavy bushes. The body lay sprawled half under a towering
jannibar
tree. They dragged it into the open and the bosun, a grizzled old Thurdan named Thad Novis, unhooded the lantern he carried, lighting the man’s face with the dim beam of candle-flame.

It was Kanthar Kan.

“Gods, Cap’n, I nigh stepped on him in the dark, and me blind as a
xuth
!” Fulvio whined, shivering. One stifled a cry of surprise as the lantern lit the face of the young swordsman.

Thongor said nothing, but his jaws set grimly. There was no mark on the swordsman’s body, no cut or wound to be found. But he was stone dead; and the expression stamped on his face was horrible to view—hideous beyond thought. His eyes stared half out of his skull, frozen in a goggle-eyed stare of incredulous horror. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a ghastly grin. His features were distorted in a grimace of utter horror that sent a chill up the spine to look upon.

Thad Novis ran his hands gently over the cooling corpse, finding nothing. He raised grim eyes to the questioning gaze of his captain. “‘Tis devilish weird,” he said in a low voice. “Like the lad died of sheer fright. Not a mark on him, anywhere.”

The men muttered at that, casting uneasy glances at the black jungle that crowded silently to every side. Some fingered protective amulets or small images of carved stone that dangled about their necks on chains or leather thongs. Thongor took up the lantern and went to search the ground where Kanthar Kan was found. The lantern-beam disclosed something even more mysterious than a man who died from fear alone. Kanthar Kan had drawn three words in the bare earth with his fingers before death had claimed him—and they had another mystery to solve.