Conan of Cimmeria Part 15

"Conan!" The cry broke involuntarily from her lips. With a fierce inarticulate yell, the barbarian sprang into the air, lashing upward with his sword that flamed in the starlight.

The great black wings rose and fell. Livia, dumb with horror, saw the Cimmerian enveloped in the black shadow that hung over him. The man's breath came pantingly; his feet stamped the beaten earth, crushing the white blossoms into the dirt. The rending impact of his blows echoed through the night. He was hurled back and forth like a rat in the grip of a hound; blood splashed thickly on the sward, mingling with the white petals that lay strewn like a carpet.

And then the girl, watching that devilish battle as in a nightmare, saw the black-winged thing waver and stagger in midair; there was a threshing beat of crippled wings, and the monster had torn clear and was soaring upward to mingle and vanish among the stars. Its conqueror staggered dizzily, sword poised, legs wide-braced, staring upward stupidly, amazed at victory but ready to take up again the ghastly battle.

An instant later Conan approached the altar, panting, dripping blood at every step. His ma.s.sive chest heaved, glistening with perspiration.

Blood ran down his arms in streams from his neck and shoulders. As he touched her, the spell on the girl was broken and she scrambled up and slid from the altar, recoiling from his hand. He leaned against the stone, looking down at her, where she cowered at his feet.

"Men saw you ride out of the village," he said. "I followed as soon as I could and picked up your track, though it was no easy task following it by torchlight. I tracked you to the place where your horse threw you, and though the torches were exhausted by then, and I could not find the prints of your bare feet on the sward, I felt sure you had descended into the valley. My men would not follow me, so I came alone on foot. What vale of devils is this? What was that thing?"

"A G.o.d," she whispered. "The black people spoke of it -a G.o.d from far away and long ago!"

"A devil from the Outer Dark," he grunted. "Oh, they're nothing uncommon. They lurk as thick as fleas outside the belt of light which surrounds this world. I've heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them.

Some find their way to earth, but when they do they have to take on some earthly form and flesh of some sort. A man like myself, with a sword, is a match for any amount of fangs and talons, infernal or terrestrial. Come; my men await me beyond the ridge of the valley."

She crouched motionless, unable to find words, while he frowned down at her. Then she spoke: "I ran away from you. I planned to dupe you. I was not going to keep my promise to you; I was yours by the bargain we made, but I would have escaped from you if I could. Punish me as you will."

He shook the sweat and blood from his locks, and sheathed his sword.

"Get up," he grunted. "It was a foul bargain I made. I do not regret that black dog Bajujh, but you are no wench to be bought and sold. The ways of men vary in different lands, but a man need not be a swine wherever he is. After I thought awhile, I saw that to hold you to your bargain would be the same as if I had forced you. Besides, you are not tough enough for this land. You are a child of cities and books and civilized ways-which isn't your fault, but you'd die quickly following the life I thrive on. A dead woman would be no good to me. I will take you to the Stygian borders. The Stygians will send you home to Ophir."

She stared up at him as if she had not heard aright. "Home?" she repeated mechanically. "Home? Ophir? My people? Cities, towers, peace, my home?" Suddenly tears welled into her eyes, and sinking to her knees, she embraced his knees in her arms.

"Crom, girl," grunted Conan, embarra.s.sed. "Don't do that. You'd think I was doing you a favor by kicking you out of this country. Haven't I explained that you're not the proper woman for the war chief of the Bamulas?"

The Castle of Terror --------------------.

Before he can bring off his plans for building a black empire with himself at its heady Conan is thwarted by a succession of natural catastrophes and the intrigues of his enemies among the Bamulas, many of whom resent the rise to power in their tribe of a foreigner. Forced to flee, he heads north through the equatorial jungle and across the gra.s.sy veldt toward the semicivilized kingdom of Kush.

1. Burning Eyes

Beyond the trackless deserts of Stygia lay the vast gra.s.slands of Kush.

For over a hundred leagues, there was naught but endless stretches of thick gra.s.s. Here and there a solitary tree rose to break the gently rolling monotony of the veldt: spiny acacias, sword-leaved dragon trees, emerald-spired lobelias, and thick-fingered, poisonous spurges.

Now and then a rare stream cut a shallow dell across the prairie, giving rise to a narrow gallery forest along its banks. Herds of zebra, antelope, buffalo, and other denizens of the savanna drifted athwart the veldt, grazing as they went.

The gra.s.ses whispered and nodded in the wandering winds beneath skies of deep cobalt in which a fierce tropical sun blazed blindingly. Now and then clouds boiled up; a brief thunderstorm roared and blazed with catastrophic fury, only to die and clear as quickly as it had arisen.

Across this limitless waste, as the day died, a lone, silent figure trudged. It was a young giant, strongly built, with gliding thews that swelled under a sun-bronzed hide scored with the white traces of old wounds. Deep of chest and broad of shoulder and long of limb was he; his scanty costume of loinclout and sandals revealed his magnificent physique. His chest, shoulders, and back were burnt nearly as black as the natives of this land.

The tangled locks of an unkempt mane of coa.r.s.e black hair framed a grim, impa.s.sive face. Beneath scowling black brows, fierce eyes of burning blue roamed restlessly from side to side as he marched with a limber, tireless stride across the level lands. His wary gaze pierced the thick, shadowy gra.s.ses on either side, reddened by the angry crimson of sunset. Soon night would come swiftly across Kush; under the gloom of its world-shadowing wings, danger and death would prowl the waste.

Yet the lone traveler, Conan of Cimmeria, was not afraid. A barbarian of barbarians, bred on the bleak hills of distant Cimmeria, the iron endurance and fierce vitality of the wild were his, granting him survival where civilized men, though more learned, more courteous, and more sophisticated than he, would miserably have perished. Although the wanderer had gone afoot for eight days, with no food save the game he had slain with the great Bamula hunting bow slung across his back, the mighty barbarian had nowhere nearly approached the limits of his strength.

Long had Conan been accustomed to the spartan life of the wilderness.

Although he had tasted the languid luxuries of civilized life in half the walled, glittering cities of the world, he missed them not. He plodded on toward the distant horizon, now obscured by a murky purple haze.

Behind him lay the dense jungles of the black lands beyond Kush, where fantastic orchids blazed amid foliage of somber dark green, where fierce black tribes hacked a precarious living out of the smothering bush, and where the silence of the dank, shadowed jungle pathways was broken only by the coughing snarl of the hunting leopard, the grunt of the wild pig, the bra.s.sy trumpeting of the elephant, or the sudden scream of an angered ape. For over a year, Conan had dwelt there as the war chief of the powerful Bamula tribe. At length the crafty black priests, jealous of his rise to power and resentful of his undisguised contempt for their bloodthirsty G.o.ds and their cruel, sanguinary rites, had poisoned the minds of the Bamula warriors against their white-skinned leader.

It had come about in this wise. A time of long, unbroken drought had come upon the tribes of the jungle. With the shrinking of the rivers and the drying up of the water holes had come red, roaring war, as the ebon tribes locked in desperate battle to secure the few remaining sources of the precious fluid. Villages went up in flame; whole clans had been slaughtered and left to rot. Then, in the wake of drought, famine, and war, had come plague to sweep the land.

The malicious tongues of the cunning priests laid these terrors to Conan. It was he, they swore, who had brought these disasters upon Bamula. The G.o.ds were angry that a pale-skinned outlander had usurped the ornate stool of a long line of Bamula chieftains. Conan, they persisted, must be flayed and slain with a thousand ingenious torments upon the black altars of the devil-G.o.ds of the jungle, or all the people would perish.

Not relishing so grim a fate, Conan had made a swift, devastating reply. A thrust through the body with his great northern broadsword had finished the high priest. Then he had toppled the bloodstained wooden idol of the Bamula deity upon the other shamans and fled into the darkness of the surrounding jungle. He had groped his way for many weary leagues northward, until he reached the region where the crowding forest thinned out and gave way to the open gra.s.slands. Now he meant to cross the savanna on foot to reach the kingdom of Kush, where his barbaric strength and the weight of his sword might find him employment in the service of the dusky monarchs of that ancient land.

Suddenly his thoughts were s.n.a.t.c.hed away from contemplation of the past by a thrill of danger. Some primal instinct of survival alerted him to the presence of peril. He halted and stared about him through the long shadows cast by the setting sun. As the hairs of his nape bristled with the touch of unseen menace, the giant barbarian searched the air with sensitive nostrils and probed the gloom with smoldering eyes. Although he could neither see nor smell anything, the mysterious sense of danger of the wilderness-bred told him that peril was near. He felt the feathery touch of invisible eyes and whirled to glimpse a pair of large orbs, glowing in the gloom.

Almost in the same instant, the blazing eyes vanished. So short had been his glimpse and so utter the disappearance that he was tempted to shrug off the sight as a product of his imagination. He turned and went forward again, but now he was on the alert. As he continued his journey, flaming eyes opened again amid the thick shadows of dense gra.s.ses, to follow his silent progress. Tawny, sinuous forms glided after him on soundless feet. The lions of Kush were on his track, l.u.s.ting for hot blood and fresh flesh.

2. The Circle of Death

An hour later, night had fallen over the savanna, save for a narrow band of sunset glow along the western horizon, against which an occasional small, gnarled tree of the veldt stood up in black silhouette. And Conan had almost reached the limits of his endurance.

Thrice lionesses had rushed upon him out of the shadows to right or to left. Thrice he had driven them off with the flying death of his arrows. Although it was hard to shoot straight in the gathering dark, an explosive snarl from the charging cats had thrice told him of hits, although he had no way of knowing whether he had slain or only wounded the deadly predators.

But now his quiver was empty, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the silent marauders pulled him down. There were eight or ten lions on his track now, and even the grim barbarian felt a pang of despair. Even if his mighty sword accounted for one or two of the attackers, the rest would tear him into gory pieces before he could slash or thrust again. Conan had encountered lions before and knew their enormous strength, which enabled them to pick up and drag a whole zebra as easily as a cat does a mouse. Although Conan was one of the strongest men of his time, once a lion got its claws and teeth into him that strength would be no more effective than that of a small child.

Conan ran on. He had been running now for the better part of an hour, with a long, loping stride that ate up the leagues. At first he had run effortlessly, but now the grueling exertions of his flight through the black jungles and his eight-day trek across the plain began to take their toll. His eyes blurred; the muscles of his legs ached. Every beat of his bursting heart seemed to drain away the strength remaining in his giant form.

He prayed to his savage G.o.ds for the moon to emerge from the dense, stormy clouds that veiled most of the sky. He prayed for a hillock or a tree to break the gently rolling flatness of the plain, or even a boulder against which he could set his back to make a last stand against the pride.

But the G.o.ds heard not. The only trees in this region were dwarfish, th.o.r.n.y growths, which rose to a height of six or eight feet and then spread their branches out horizontally in a mushroom shape. If he managed to climb such a tree despite the thorns, it would be easy for the first lion to reach the base to spring upon him from below and bear him to the ground in one leap. The only hillocks were termite nests, some rising several feet in height but too small for purposes of defense. There was nothing to do but run on.

To lighten himself, he had cast aside the great hunting bow when he had spent his last shaft, although it wrenched his heart to throw away the splendid weapon. Quiver and straps soon followed. He was now stripped to a mere loinclout of leopard hide, the high-laced sandals that clad his feet, his goatskin water bag, and the heavy broadsword, which he now carried scabbarded in one fist. To part with these would mean surrendering his last hope.

The lions were now almost at his heels. He could smell the strong reek of their lithe bodies and hear their panting breath. Any moment, now, they would close in upon him, and he would be making his last furious fight for life before they pulled him down.

He expected his pursuers to follow their age-old tactics. The oldest male-the chief of the pride-would follow directly behind him, with the younger males on either flank. The swifter lionesses would range ahead on either side in a crescent formation until they were far enough ahead of him to close the circle and trap him. Then they would all rush in upon him at once, making any effective defense impossible.

Suddenly, the land was flooded with light. The round, silver eye of the rising moon glared down upon the broad plains, bathing the racing figure of the giant barbarian with her gaze and drawing lines of pale silver fire along the rippling sinews of the lions as they loped at his heels, washing their short, silken fur with her ghostly radiance.

Conan's wary eye caught the moonfire on rippling fur ahead to his left, and he knew that the encirclement was nearly complete. As he braced himself to meet the charge, however, he was astounded to see the same lioness veer off and halt. In two strides he was past her. As he went, he saw that the young lioness on his right had also stopped short. She squatted motionless on the gra.s.s with tail twitching and lashing. A curious sound, half roar and half wail, came from her ranged jaws.

Conan dared to slow his run and glance back. To his utter astonishment, he saw that the entire pride had halted as if at some invisible barrier. They stood in a snarling line with fangs gleaming like silver in the moonlight. Earth-shaking roars of baffled rage came from their throats.

Conan's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and his scowling brows knotted in puzzlement. What had halted the pride at the very moment when they had made sure of their prey? What unseen force had annulled the fury of the chase? He stood for a moment facing them, sword in hand, wondering if they would resume their charge. But the lions stayed where they were, growling and roaring from foam-dripping jaws.

Then Conan observed a curious thing. The place where the lions had halted seemed to mark a line of demarcation across the plain. On the further side grew thick, long, lush gra.s.ses. At the invisible boundary, however, the gra.s.s became thin, stubbly, and ill-nourished, with broad patches of bare earth. Although Conan could not clearly distinguish colors by moonlight alone, it seemed to him that the gra.s.ses on the hither side of the line lacked the normal green color of growing things. Instead, the gra.s.ses around his feet seemed dry and gray, as if leached of all vitality.

To either side, in the bright moonlight, he could see the region of dead gra.s.ses curve away into the distance, as if he stood alone in a vast circle of death.

3. The Black Citadel

Although he still ached with weariness, the brief pause had given Conan the strength to continue his progress. Since he did not know the nature of the invisible line that had halted the lions, he could not tell how long this mysterious influence would continue to hold them at bay.

Therefore he preferred to put as much distance between the pride and himself as possible.

Soon he saw a dark ma.s.s take form out of the dimness ahead of him. He went forward even more warily than before, sword in hand and eyes searching the hazy immensities of this domain. The moonlight was still brilliant, but its radiance became obscure with distance as if veiled by some thickening haze. So, at first, Conan could make nothing of the black, featureless ma.s.s that lifted out of the plain before him, save for its size and its stillness. Like some colossal idol of primitive devil worship, hewn from a mountain of black stone by some unknown beings in time's dawn, the dark ma.s.s squatted motionless amid the dead gray gra.s.s.

As Conan came nearer, details emerged from the dark, featureless blur.