Conan of Cimmeria Part 17

7. Flight from Nightmare

In an instant, the Stygians were on their feet. Hardbitten ravagers though they were, the sight was frightful enough to wring yells of terror from some. Wheeling at the first scream, the sentry rushed back into the hall to hack at the monster with his sword. Bellowing commands, the leader s.n.a.t.c.hed up the nearest weapon and fell to. The rest, although unarmored, disheveled, and confused, seized sword and spear to defend themselves against the shape that shambled and slew among them.

Swords hacked into misshapen thighs; spears plunged into the swollen, swaying belly. Clutching hands and arms were hacked away to thud, jerking and grasping, to the floor. But, seeming to feel no pain, the monster s.n.a.t.c.hed up man after man. Some Stygians had their heads twisted off by strangling hands. Others were seized by the feet and battered to gory remnants against the pillars.

As the Cimmerian watched from above, a dozen Stygians were battered or torn to death. The ghastly wounds inflicted on the monster by the weapons of the Stygians instantly closed up and healed. Severed heads and arms were replaced by new members, which sprouted from the bulbous body.

Seeing that the Stygians had no chance against the monster, Conan resolved to take his leave while the Thing was still occupied with the slavers and before it turned its attention to him. Thinking it unwise to enter the hall, he sought a more direct exit. He climbed out through a window. This let on to a roof terrace of broken tiles, where a false step could drop him through a gap in the pavement to ground level.

The rain had slackened to a drizzle. The moon, now nearly overhead, showed intermittent beams again. Looking down from the parapet that bounded the terrace, Conan found a place where the exterior carvings, together with climbing vines, provided means of descent. With the lithe grace of an ape, he lowered himself hand over hand down the weirdly carven facade.

Now the moon glazed out in full glory, lighting the courtyard below where the Stygians' horses stood tethered, moving and whinnying uneasily at the sounds of mortal combat that came from the great hall.

Over the roar of battle sounded screams of agony as man after man was torn limb from limb.

Conan dropped, landing lightly on the earth of the courtyard. He sprinted for the great black mare that had belonged to the leader of the slavers. He would have liked to linger to loot the bodies, for he needed their armor and other supplies. The mail shirt he had worn as Belit's piratical partner had long since succ.u.mbed to wear and rust, and his flight from Bamula had been too hasty to allow him to equip himself more completely. But no force on earth could have drawn him into that hall, where a horror of living death still stalked and slew.

As the young Cimmerian untethered the horse he had chosen, a screaming figure burst from the entrance and came pelting across the courtyard toward him. Conan saw that it was the man who had stood the first sentry-go. The Stygian's helmet and mail shirt had protected him just enough to enable him to survive the ma.s.sacre of his comrades.

Conan opened his mouth to speak. There was no love lost between him and the Stygian people; nevertheless, if this Stygian were the only survivor of his party, Conan would have been willing to form a rogues'

alliance with him, however temporary, until they could reach more settled country.

But Conan had no chance to make such a proposal, for the experience had driven the burly Stygian mad. His eyes blazed wildly in the moonlight, and foam dripped from his lips. He rushed straight upon Conan, whirling a scimitar so that the moonlight flashed upon it and shrieking, "Back to your h.e.l.l, O demon!"

The primitive survival instinct of the wilderness-bred Cimmerian flashed into action without conscious thought. By the time the man was within striking distance, Conan's own sword had cleared its scabbard.

Again and gain, steel clanged against steel, striking sparks. As the wild-eyed Stygian swung back for another slash, Conan drove his point into the madman's throat. The Stygian gurgled, swayed, and toppled.

For an instant, Conan leaned on the mare's saddle bow, panting. The duel had been short but fierce, and the Stygian had been no mean antagonist.

From within the ancient pile of stone, no more cries of terror rang.

There was naught but an ominous silence. Then Conan heard slow, heavy, shuffling footsteps. Had the ogreish thing slaughtered them all? Was it dragging its misshapen bulk toward the door, to emerge into the courtyard?

Conan did not wait to find out. With trembling fingers he unlaced the dead man's hauberk and pulled the mail shirt off. He also collected the Stygian's helmet and shield, the latter made from the hide of one of the great, thick-skinned beasts of the veldt. He hastily tied these trophies to the saddle, vaulted upon the steed, wrenched at the reins, and kicked the mare's ribs. He galloped out of the ruined courtyard into the region of withered gra.s.s. With every stride of the flying hoofs, the castle of ancient evil fell behind.

Somewhere beyond the circle of dead gra.s.s, perhaps the hungry lions still prowled. But Conan did not care. After the ghostly horrors of the black citadel, he would gladly take his chances with mere lions.

The Snout in the Dark ---------------------.

Continuing his northward trek, now speeded by his possession of a horse, Conan at last reaches the semicivilized kingdom of Kush. This is the land to which the name "Kush" properly applies, although Conan, like other northerners, tends to use the term loosely to mean any of the Negro countries south of the deserts of Stygia. Here an opportunity to display his prowess at arms soon presents itself.

1. The Thing in the Dark

Amboola of Kush awakened slowly, his senses still sluggish from the wine he had guzzled at the feast the night before. For a muddled moment, he could not remember where he was. The moonlight, streaming through the small barred window, high up on one wall, shone on unfamiliar surroundings. Then he remembered that he was lying in the upper cell of the prison into which Queen Tananda had thrown him.

There had, he suspected, been a drug in his wine. While he sprawled helplessly, barely conscious, two black giants of the queen's guard had laid hands upon him and upon the Lord Aahmes, the queen's cousin, and hustled them away to their cells. The last thing he remembered was a brief statement from the queen, like the crack of a whip: "So you villains would plot to overthrow me, would you? You shall see what befalls traitors!"

As the giant black warrior moved, a clank of metal made him aware of fetters on his wrists and ankles, connected by chains to ma.s.sive iron staples set in the wall. He strained his eyes to pierce the fetid gloom around him. At least, he thought, he still lived. Even Tananda had to think twice about slaying the commander of the Black Spearmen-the backbone of the army of Kush and the hero of the lower castes of the kingdom.

What most puzzled Amboola was the charge of conspiracy with Aahmes. To be sure, he and the princeling had been good friends. They had hunted and guzzled and gambled together, and Aahmes had complained privately to Amboola about the queen, whose cruel heart was as cunning and treacherous as her dusky body was desirable. But things had never gotten to the point of actual conspiracy. Aahmes was not the man for that sort of thing anyway-a good-natured, easygoing young fellow with no interest in politics or power. Some informer, seeking to advance his own prospects at the cost of others, must have laid false accusations before the queen.

Amboola examined his fetters. For all his strength, he knew he could not break them, nor yet the chains that held them. Neither could he hope to pull the staples loose from the wall. He knew, because he had overseen their installation himself.

He knew what the next step would be. The queen would have him and Aahmes tortured, to wring from them the details of their conspiracy and the names of their fellow plotters. For all his barbaric courage, Amboola quailed at the prospect. Perhaps his best hope would lie in accusing all the lords and grandees of Kush of complicity. Tananda could not punish them all. If she tried to, the imaginary conspiracy she feared would quickly become a fact...

Suddenly, Amboola was cold sober. An icy sensation scuttled up his spine. Something-a living, breathing presence-was in the room with him.

With a low cry, he started up and stared about him, straining his eyes to pierce the darkness that clung about him like the shadowy wings of death. By the faint light that came through the small barred window, the officer could just make out a terrible and grisly shape. An icy hand clutched at his heart, which through a score of battles had never, until this hour, known fear.

A shapeless gray fog hovered in the gloom. Seething mists swirled like a nest of coiling serpents, as the phantom form congealed into solidity. Stark terror lay on Amboola's writhing lips and shone in his rolling eyes as he saw the thing that condensed slowly into being out of empty air.

First he saw a piglike snout, covered with coa.r.s.e bristles, which thrust into the shaft of dim luminescence that came through the window.

Then he began to make out a hulking form amidst the shadows-something huge, misshapen, and b.e.s.t.i.a.l, which nevertheless stood upright. To a piglike head was now added thick, hairy arms ending in rudimentary hands, like those of a baboon.

With a piercing shriek, Amboola sprang up-and then the motionless thing moved, with the paralyzing speed of a monster in a nightmare. The black warrior had one frenzied glimpse of champing, foaming jaws, of great chisel-like tusks, of small, piggish eyes that blazed with red fury through the dark. Then the brutish paws clamped his flesh in a viselike grip; tusks tore and slashed...

Presently the moonlight fell upon a black shape, sprawled on the floor in a widening pool of blood. The grayish, shambling thing that a moment before had been savaging the black warrior was gone, dissolved into the impalpable mist from which it had taken form.

2. The Invisible Terror

"Tuthmes!" The voice was urgent-as urgent as the fist that hammered on the teakwood door of the house of the most ambitious n.o.bleman of Kush.

"Lord Tuthmes! Let me in! The devil is loose again!"

The door opened, and Tuthmes stood within the portal -a tall, slender, aristocratic figure, with the narrow features and dusky skin of his caste. He was wrapped in robes of white silk as if for bed and held a small bronze lamp in his hand.

"What is it, Afari?" he asked.

The visitor, the whites of his eyes flashing, burst into the room. He panted as if from a long run. He was a lean, wiry, dark-skinned man in a white jubbah, shorter than Tuthmes and with his Negroid ancestry more prominent in his features. For all his haste, he took care to close the door before he answered.

"Amboola! He is dead! In the Red Tower!"

"What?" exclaimed Tuthmes. "Tananda dared to execute the commander of the Black Spears?"

"No, no, no! She would not be such a fool, surely. He was not executed but murdered. Something got into his cell-how, Set only knows-and tore his throat out, stamped in his ribs, and smashed his skull. By Derketa's snaky locks, I have seen many dead men, but never one less lovely in death than Amboola. Tuthmes, it is the work of the demon, of whom the black people murmur! The invisible terror is again loose in Meroe!" Afari clutched the small paste idol of his protector G.o.d, which hung from a thong around his scrawny neck. "Amboola's throat was bitten out, and the marks of the teeth were not like those of a lion or an ape. It was as if they had been made by razor-sharp chisels!"

"When was this done?"

"Some time about midnight. Guards in the lower part of the tower, watching the stair that leads up to the cell in which he was imprisoned, heard him cry out. They rushed up the stairs, burst into the cell, and found him lying as I have said. I was sleeping in the lower part of the tower, as you bade me. Having seen, I came straight here, bidding the guards to say naught to anyone."

Tuthmes smiled a cool, impa.s.sive smile that was not pleasant to see. He murmured: "You know Tananda's mad rages. Having thrown Amboola and her cousin Aahmes into prison, she might well have had Amboola slain and the corpse maltreated to look like the work of the monster that has long haunted the land. Might she not, now?"

Comprehension dawned in the eyes of the minister. Tuthmes, taking Afari's arm, continued: "Go, now, and strike before the queen can learn of it. First, take a detachment of black spearmen to the Red Tower and slay the guards for sleeping at their duty. Be sure you let it be known that you do it by my orders. That will show the blacks that I have avenged their commander and remove a weapon from Tananda's hand. Kill them before she can have it done.

"Then spread word to the other chief n.o.bles. If this be Tananda's way of dealing with the powerful ones of her realm, we had all best be on the alert.

"Then go into the Outer City and find old Ageera, the witch-smeller. Do not tell him flatly that Tananda caused this deed to be done, but hint at it."

Afari shuddered. "How can a common man lie to that devil? His eyes are like coals of fire; they seem to look into depths unnamable. I have seen him make corpses rise and walk, and skulls champ and grind their fleshless jaws."