Conan of Cimmeria Part 2

Through the shrill piping, a faint, squashy sound reached Conan's ears.

It seemed to come from above. The muscles of Conan's bullneck stood out as he twisted his head to look upward; the spired Turanian helmet grated against the stone as he moved. Then the blood froze in his veins.

The mist that had obscured the top of the pylon was gone. The rising half moon shone on and through an amorphous thing, which squatted obscenely on the summit of the column. It was like a huge lump of quivering, semitranslucent jelly-and it lived. Life-throbbing, bloated life-pulsed within it. The moonlight glistened wetly upon it as it beat like a huge, living heart.

Chapter Four.

As Conan, frozen with horror, watched, the dweller on the top of the monolith sent a trickle of jelly groping down the shaft toward him. The slippery pseudopod slithered over the smooth surface of the stone.

Conan began to understand the source of the stains that discolored the face of the monolith.

The wind had changed, and a vagrant down-draft wafted a sickening stench to Conan's nostrils. Now he knew why the bones at the base of the shaft bore that oddly eaten appearance. With a dread that almost unmanned him, he understood that the jellylike thing exuded a digestive fluid, by means of which it consumed its prey. He wondered how many men, in ages past, had stood in his place, bound helplessly to the pillar and awaiting the searing caress of the abomination now descending toward him.

Perhaps Feng's weird piping summoned it, or perhaps the odor of living flesh called it to feast. Whatever the cause, it had begun a slow, inching progress down the side of the shaft toward his face. The wet jelly sucked and s...o...b..red as it slithered slowly toward him.

Despair gave new strength to his cramped, tired muscles. He threw himself from side to side, striving with every last ounce of strength to break the grip of the mysterious force. To his surprise, he found that, in one of his lunges, he slid to one side, partway around the column.

So the grip that held him did not forbid all movement! This gave him food for thought, though he knew that he could not long thus elude the monster of living jelly.

Something prodded his mailed side. Looking down, he saw the rust-eaten dagger he had glimpsed before. His movement sideways had brought the hilt of the weapon against his ribs.

His upper arm was still clamped against the stone by the sleeve of his mail shirt, but his forearm and hand were free. Could he bend his arm far enough to clasp the haft of the dagger?

He strained, inching his hand along the stone. The mail of his arm sc.r.a.ped slowly over the surface; sweat trickled into his eyes. Bit by bit, his straining arm moved toward the handle of the dagger. The taunting tune of Feng's flute sang maddeningly in his ears, while the unG.o.dly stench of the slime-thing filled his nostrils.

His hand touched the dagger, and in an instant he held the hilt fast.

But, as he strained it away from the shaft, the rust-eaten blade broke with a sharp ping. Rolling his eyes downward, he saw that about two thirds of the blade, from the tapering point back, had broken off and lay flat against the stone. The remaining third still projected from the hilt. Since there was now less iron in the dagger for the shaft to attract, Conan was able, by a muscle-bulging effort, to tear the stump of the weapon away from the shaft.

A glance showed him that, although most of the blade was lost to him, the stump still had a couple of apparently sharp edges. With his muscles quivering from the effort of holding the implement away from the stone, he brought one of these edges up against the leathern thong that bound the two halves of the mail shirt together. Carefully, he began to saw the tough rawhide with the rusty blade.

Every movement was agony. The torment of suspense grew unbearable. His hand, bent into an uncomfortable, twisted position, ached and grew numb. The ancient blade was notched, thin, and brittle; a hasty motion might break it, leaving him helpless. Stroke after stroke he sawed up and down, with exquisite caution. The stench of the creature grew stronger and the sucking sounds of its progress, louder.

Then Conan felt the thong snap. The next instant, he hurled his full strength against the magnetic force that imprisoned him. The thong unraveled through the loopholes in the mail shirt, until one whole side of the shirt was open. His shoulder and half an arm came out through the opening.

Then he felt a light blow on the head. The stench became overpowering, and his unseen a.s.sailant from above pushed this way and that against his helmet. Conan knew that a jellylike tendril had reached his helmet and was groping over its surface, seeking flesh. Any instant, the corrosive stuff would seep down over his face...

Frantically, he pulled his arm out of the sleeve of the unlaced side of the mail shirt. With his free hand, he unbuckled his sword belt and the chin strap of his helmet. Then he tore himself loose altogether from the deadly constriction of the mail, leaving his tulwar and his armor flattened against the stone.

He staggered free of the column and stood for an instant on trembling legs. The moonlit world swam before his eyes.

Glancing back, he saw that the jelly-beast had now engulfed his helmet.

Baffled in its quest for flesh, it was sending more pseudopods down and outward, wavering and questing in the watery light.

Down the slope, the demoniac piping continued. Feng sat cross-legged on the gra.s.s of the slope, tweedling away on his flute as if absorbed in some inhuman ecstasy.

Conan ripped off and threw away the gag. He pounced like a striking leopard. He came down, clutching hands first, upon the little duke; the pair rolled down the rest of the slope in a tangle of silken robe and thrashing limbs. A blow to the side of the head subdued Feng's struggles. Conan groped into the Khitan's wide sleeves and tore out the ivory cylinder containing the doc.u.ments.

Then Conan lurched back up the hill, dragging Feng after him. As he reached the level section around the base of the monolith, he heaved Feng into the air over his head. Seeing what was happening to him, the duke uttered one high, thin scream as Conan hurled him at the shaft.

The Khitan struck the column with a thud and slid unconscious to the ground at its base.

The blow was merciful, for the duke never felt the slimy touch of the haunter of the monolith as the gla.s.sy tentacles reached his face. For a moment, Conan grimly watched. Feng's features blurred as the rippling jelly slid over them. Then the flesh faded away, and the skull and teeth showed through in a ghastly grin. The abomination flushed pink as it fed.

Conan strode back to camp on stiff legs. Behind him, like a giant's torch, the monolith stood against the sky, wrapped in smoky, scarlet flames.

It had been the work of moments only to strike fire into dry tinder with his flint and steel. He had watched with grim satisfaction as the oily surface of the slime-monster ignited and blazed as it squirmed in voiceless agony. Let them both burn, he thought: the half-digested corpse of that treacherous dog and his loathsome pet!

As Conan neared the camp, he saw that the last of his warriors had not yet retired. Instead, several stood staring curiously at the distant firelight. As he appeared, they turned upon him, crying out: "Where have you been, Captain? What is that blaze? Where is the duke?"

"Ho, you gaping oafs!" he roared as he strode into the firelight. "Wake the boys and saddle up to run for it. The Jaga headhunters caught us, and they'll be here any time. They got the duke, but I broke free.

Khusrol Mulai! Hop to it, if you do not want your heads hung up in their devil-devil huts! And I hope to Crom you've left me some of that wine!"

The Bloodstained G.o.d --------------------.

Conan continues his service as a soldier of Turan for a total period of about two years, traveling widely and learning the elements of organized warfare. As usual, trouble is his bedfellow. After one of his more unruly episodes-said to have involved the mistress of the commander of the cavalry division in which he was serving-Conan finds it expedient to desert from the Turanian army. Rumors of treasure send him seeking for loot in the Kezankian Mountains, along the eastern borders of Zamora.

It was dark as the Pit in that stinking alley down which Conan of Cimmeria groped on a quest as blind as the darkness around him. Had there been anyone to witness, they would have seen a tall and enormously powerful man clad in a flowing Zuagir khilat, over that a mail shirt of fine steel mesh, and over that a Zuagir cloak of camel's hair. His mane of black hair and his broad, somber, youthful face, bronzed by the desert sun, were hidden by the Zuagir kaffia.

A sharp, pain-edged cry smote his ears.

Such cries were not uncommon in the twisting alleys of Arenjun, the City of Thieves, and no cautious or timid man would think of interfering in an affair that was none of his business. But Conan was neither cautious nor timid. His ever-lively curiosity would not let him pa.s.s by a cry for help; besides, he was searching for certain men, and the disturbance might be a clue to their whereabouts.

Obeying his quick barbarian instincts, he turned toward a beam of light that lanced the darkness close at hand. An instant later he peered through a crack in the close-drawn shutters of a window in a thick stone wall.

He was looking into a s.p.a.cious room hung with velvet tapestries and littered with costly rugs and couches. About one of these couches a group of men cl.u.s.tered-six brawny Zamorian bravos and two more who eluded identification. On that couch another man was stretched out, a Kezankian tribesman naked to the waist. Though he was a powerful man, a ruffian as muscular as himself gripped each wrist and ankle. Between the four of them they had him spread-eagled on the couch, unable to move, though the muscles stood out in quivering knots on his limbs and shoulders. His eyes gleamed redly and his broad chest glistened with sweat. As Conan looked, a supple man in a turban of red silk lifted a glowing coal from a smoking brazier with a pair of tongs and poised it over the quivering breast, already scarred from similar torture.

Another man, taller than the one with the red turban, snarled a question Conan could not understand. The Kezankian shook his head violently and spat savagely at the questioner. The red-hot coal dropped full on the hairy breast, wrenching an inhuman bellow from the sufferer. In that instant Conan launched his full weight against the shutters.

The Cimmerian's action was not so impulsive as it looked. For his present purposes he needed a friend among the hillmen of the Kezankian range, a people notoriously hostile to all strangers. And here was a chance to get one. The shutters splintered inward with a crash, and he hit the floor inside feet-first, scimitar in one hand and Zuagir sword-knife in the other. The torturers whirled and yelped in astonishment.

They saw a tall, ma.s.sive figure clad in the garments of a Zuagir, with a fold of his flowing kaffia drawn about his face. Over his mask his eyes blazed a volcanic blue. For an instant the scene held, frozen, then melted into ferocious action.

The man in the red turban snapped a quick word, and a hairy giant lunged to meet the oncoming intruder. The Zamorian held a three-foot sword low, and as he charged he ripped murderously upward. But the down-lashing scimitar met the rising wrist. The hand, still gripping the knife, flew from that wrist in a shower of blood, and the long narrow blade in Conan's left hand sliced through the man's throat, choking the grunt of agony.

Over the crumpling corpse the Cimmerian leaped at Red Turban and his tall companion. Red Turban drew a knife, the tall man a saber.

"Cut him down, Jillad!" snarled Red Turban, retreating before the Cimmerian's impetuous onslaught "Zal, help here!"

The man called Jillad parried Conan's slash and cut back. Conan avoided the swipe with a shift that would have shamed the leap of a starving panther, and the same movement brought him within reach of Red Turban's knife. The knife shot out; the point struck Conan's side but failed to pierce the shirt of black ring mail. Red Turban leaped back, so narrowly avoiding Conan's knife that the lean blade slit his silken vest and the skin beneath. He tripped over a stool and fell sprawling, but before Conan could follow up his advantage, Jillad was pressing him, raining blows with his saber.

As he parried, the Cimmerian saw that the man called Zal was advancing with a heavy poleax, while Red Turban was scrambling to his feet.

Conan did not wait to be surrounded. A swipe of his scimitar drove Jillad back on his heels. Then, as Zal raised the poleax, Conan darted in under the blow, and the next instant Zal was down, writhing in his own blood and entrails. Conan leaped for the men who still gripped the prisoner. They let go of the man, shouting and drawing their tulwars.

One struck at the Kezankian, who evaded the blow by rolling off the bench. Then Conan was between him and them. He retreated before their blows, snarling at the Kezankian:

"Get out! Ahead of me! Quickly!"

"Dogs!" screamed Red Turban. "Don't let them escape!"