Conan of the Isles Part 4

It tasted like wine, but a stronger wine than the Cimmerian had ever encountered. Conan felt its warmth spread through him and put new life into his aching muscles. And then the blood froze within him, for there, hovering near the silken curtains., was the man he had just slain!

It was the same man, for the rosy-hued chain mail was cloven over his heart where Conan had sent the fatal thrust, and blood rilled down from the gash. Paying no heed to the frozen Cimmerian, the spectral figure plucked aside the tapestries, revealing a hidden niche in which was set a silver casket. As Conan watched, the translucent figure of the sorcerer picked up the casket and stepped to the diamond-paned window on the after side of the cabin. The window opened, revealing the foaming blue sea and part of the hull of the Red Lion. The phantom was about to step out into the rushing waves, when Conan crashed across the cabin, clutching at the smoky figure and the mysterious chest he sought to bear with him into the deep, blue sea.

'What are you doing, Amra?' cried Sigurd behind him. The Vanr and the Kus.h.i.te had just crowded into the cabin behind Conan.

Conan's b.l.o.o.d.y arm encircled the sorcerer's waist but pa.s.sed through the lean body as easily as if it were made of mist. But the Cimmerian's clutching hand fastened upon a corner of the silver chest. This, at least, was solid, and Conan dragged it out of the feeble clutch of the specter. The ghostly sorcerer toppled out the window, and as he fell he turned upon Conan one ghastly glare of maniacal rage. Then the phantom vanished into the waves.

Conan swayed in the open window, clutching the box and striving to gather his wits to answer the questions that Sigurd and Yasunga showered upon him. To them, the wraith of the sorcerer had not been visible. They had seen the chest rise from its alcove and dart for the window, apparently without support, and they had seen Conan bound after it and seize it.

Before he could satisfy their yammerings, there was a rush of feet outside the cabin and Goram Singh bellowed: 'Captain! The forecastle and the hold are empty - not a trace of loot - and the ship is foundering. The deck is awash! We must get back to the Red Lion!'

Conan stared down at the small silver casket. This was the green galley's only loot. This was the prize that the magical ship had fled from pirates to keep. This was what the alien sorcerer had fought and died to guard ...

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE CASKET FROM ATLANTIS.

Where slain suns sink in crimson gore, Amidst the gloom of brooding skies, Dim isles of ancient legend rise, where cold seas lash the somber sh.o.r.e.

-- The Visions of Epemitreus

With the silver box clasped under one arm, Conan vaulted across the rails of the coupled ships, his sheathed broadsword clattering after him. With him came Sigurd and the brawny Vendhyan, Goram Singh. His men were prying grapnels loose from the galley's woodwork and coiling the ropes that trailed from them.

'Cast off!' roared Conan. 'Yare! Back the mains'l! Brace the fores'l to starboard - all the way round!'

With a grinding of timbers, the two ships drew apart. Soon 3 javelin-cast of green, heaving water separated the two. The galley, which had filled from the damage she had received, had settled until her deck was awash and every wave broke and foamed over her. Only her masts and her raised p.o.o.p and forecastle decks remained consistently above water, on which bits of wreckage danced. Having no dense, heavy cargo to drag her down, she might float thus submerged for months - a menace to other ships, if there were any in these waters - until she drifted ash.o.r.e or broke up.

'Forward on the main!' commanded Conan. 'Furl tops'l and mizzen! Trim sail to run free! Two points to starboard of the wind!'

With a brisk wind filling the mainsail and foresail of the Red Lion, the carack responded like a mettlesome steed to the tillers. Away she plunged, over the trackless waves, leaving the wreck of the galley behind her.

At Conan's shoulder, Sigurd watched astern as the wreck sank out of sight. The hearty old Northman was pale and constrained, as were they all. Something about that graceful green hull had struck a note of supernatural terror, like an icy wind from some open tomb. Yasunga shuddered and muttered prayers in his Kus.h.i.te dialect. Sigurd furtively signed himself, drawing upon his heart with his thumbnail the sign of Thor's hammer.

Soon, even the slender masts of the galley were no longer visible. The sky was clear - blue overhead, rose-red in the west, where a blood-red sun sank slowly into an ominous, inky ma.s.s of black vapors. Conan shivered, then clapped Sigurd on the shoulder, rousing the latter from his trance.

'Come to the cabin, Redbeard, where we can toast the fight. And we still have to examine the loot. Yasunga, take the deck!'

Within the cabin, a fire crackled on the hearth and hot water steamed. Conan splashed his naked torso, scrubbed away the dried blood and sweat of battle, and winced at the sting of his scratches and cuts. Then he dried himself with a hot towel, donned a fleecy robe, eased off his boots with a grunt of relief, and sprawled at the table by Sigurd, with his feet in a bucket of hot water. The Northman pushed a flagon of wine toward him. He drank heartily. As he basked in the heat of the fire and felt the inward warmth of the wine, he relaxed into a cheerful good humor.

'Pour me another,' he said. This foray has at least served to blood the men. But there was no real loot, aside from this d.a.m.ned silver box!'

He laid it on the table between them and ran a finger thoughtfully along it. The box was shaped like a brick and was not much bigger than one. It was wrought in silver - or was it silver? In the fire's uneven, ruddy glow, the metal glistened with a reddish hue, and to the touch it somehow lacked that cool, oily smoothness of silver.

Sigurd also puzzled over it, running his hairy hand across the raised lines of cryptic pictographs with which the casket was embossed. Then he opened his mouth to speak a word, just as Conan spoke the same word: 'Orichalc.u.m!'

The legendary magical metal of lost Atlantis was said to be silver-like in density and weight but with a coppery tinge. Could this casket be a relic of the lost continent? All his days, Conan had relished tales of the old hero-kings of the Atlantean age - mighty Kull of Valusia, lord of the Purple Throne - the terrible Kaa-Yazoth and his Iron Legions - the White Emperor who had been driven from the City of the Golden Gates by the enmity of the black magicians, who had put the sorcerer-king Thevatata on the throne - such tales and sagas, intoned around the tribal fires in his old homeland, had whiled away the long, grim Cimmerian winter nights and planted the seeds of a yearning for travel and adventure that had led him halfway across the world. He stroked the strange box with gentle hands, his eyes softening in a vague dream of bygone glories.

Sigurd, with less room in his mercenary soul for romance, shook the chest. 'What do ye suppose is in it?'

'Something precious, by Crom!' laughed Conan. 'That's ail the galley held, and that's what it fled to keep from us. Let's crack it open.'

There was a keyhole, plainly visible, but the key was doubtless drowned in the smaragdine depths of the unknown sea. Still, a lid has hinges, and hinges can be forced. Conan rummaged in his sea chest. Then he placed the box on end and put the point of a big, bronze needle against the end of the linchpin of the upper hinge. He hammered gently on the needle with the leaden ball that formed the pommel of a ma.s.sive dirk. He grinned at Sigurd.

'I learned this trick when I was a thief in Zamora - let's see - by Mitra, it's over forty years ago! But I haven't had occasion to use it since.'

Soon both linchpins had been forced out of their hinges, and the box lay open. Within lay a small scroll, tied up by a pair of ribbons of scarlet cloth.

'Treasure?' groaned Sigurd. 'By the horns of Shaitan and the belly of Moloch! Were ever two honest rogues so put upon? Board a vile galley with bloodshed and battling in the very teeth of half the imps of h.e.l.l, and for what? A d.a.m.ned piece of paper!'

He spat excessively. But Conan examined the scroll, grunting: 'Don't give up too soon, Redbeard! This is more than a sc.r.a.p of paper. Aye, Crom blast me if I'm wrong, but it may be as precious as that devil-faced sorcerer thought! Look here.'

Sigurd bent to examine the scroll, which Conan had untied and spread out on the table. For one thing, it was not papyrus but some stiff, crackling parchment that might have been made from the tanned hide of flying dragons, such as - the sagas said - the ancient Atlanteans had used. For another, it was obviously a chart, mapping seas that stretched halfway across an unknown world to the west.

'This line here to the east is curved very like the coastline of our own continent,' said Conan thoughtfully. 'See? Here's Messantia harbor, and the bulge that curves east from Zingara to Shem...'

'Aye, man, and these irregular spots be the Barachas, by Lir and Mannanan!' Sigurd muttered, his brow furrowed. 'But G.o.ds, look at the expanse of sea to the west!' His stubby forefinger swept westward across the chart from the lines that depicted the coasts with which he was familiar.

'Look there!' said Conan, indicating the coast of an unknown continent along the westward edge of the chart and the chain of seven large islands that lay to the southeast of this land. Although the geography was strange to Conan, the chart had been drawn with a meticulous care for detail in those parts. It showed coasts, harbors, reefs, shoals, and directions of wind and current, proving the cartographer to have been well acquainted with the lands and seas of that region. Conan thumped the table with his fist.

'Crom! I see it now. Do you grasp the secret, Red-beard?'

Sigurd shrugged. Conan tapped the parchment with a long, gnarled finger. 'The green ship came from the isles, here, all the way to our coast. Crom knows why, unless 'twas to loose the Red Shadows upon our cities, for some reason we cannot even guess as yet. But what would be so precious to this ship that it would flee our carack like the plague ? A chart showing the way home!'

Sigurd blinked, 'I think ye've struck the truth, Amra. But then, what are these d.a.m.ned isles?'

'Antillia!'

Sigurd grunted and rubbed a hairy paw over his jowls, 'Well, fry me guts, I've heard the tale ere now but never quite believed it. D'ye mean the story that, when Atlantis sank beneath the briny, a band of wizard-priests fled to unknown lands to the west and built there a successor to the Golden Empire? I've heard tell of the walls of the Seven Cities of the Antilles made of bricks of gold, and streets paved with silver, and temple pyramids of orichal-c.u.m, with gems big enough to choke a whale lying on the beaches to be picked up ... G.o.ds and devils, d'ye suppose there's truth in it?'

Conan shrugged. 'Crom knows. I heard stories like that about Vendhya and Khitai, but when I went to those places I found that the tales had grown in the telling. The only way to find out is to sail there, and this chart shows our way!'

CHAPTER NINE.

VOYAGE ON AN UNKNOWN SEA.

Our sails are full and straining tight, Our prow is riding high; We're out in search of gold tonight Beneath a starlit sky.

- Sea-Chanty of the Baracha Isles

And so it came to pa.s.s that the Red Lion set forth into the storm-tossed, monster-haunted wastes of the Western Ocean, on the strangest of quests. The only guideposts to show her people the way were the sun by day and the stars by night, for the compa.s.s was unknown to the mariners of the Hyborian Aage, between the foundering of Atlantis and the rise of Sumeria and Egypt. But, with the chart from the casket of orichalc.u.m as their guide, they sailed deeper and deeper into the unknown.

Some balked at this fantastic venture, until Conan pointed out two good reasons for their consenting to this quest: first, that they sailed for adventure, glory, and loot, and would doubtless find all three in plenty in the Seven Isles of Antillia, amidst the age-old ruins of the last Atlan-tean cities; second, that he would personally pitch any grumblers over the side for the krakens to devour. Reasoning of this kind proved remarkably persuasive.

Still, the farther they got from the coasts they knew, the greater grew their superst.i.tious terrors. They remembered old tales, wherein the world was said to end just beyond the horizon. There, the earth fell away in a mighty cliff., over which the oceans poured in an endless flood, down and down to thunder at last against the very foundations of Eternity. According to the tales, any ship that sailed beyond the visible horizon would soon find itself caught in an irresistible current, which would soon carry its helpless, screaming crew right over the world's edge.

Conan squelched this by cracking a few heads together and by pointing out, with una.s.sailable logic, that, with every league west they sailed, the horizon visibly retreated to a corresponding distance.

They sailed on, with full sails straining in the steady blast of the northeast trades. Ahead lay an unknown world; all about was a mysterious waste of wind-torn waves, wherein might lurk fearful denizens of the deep. Conan had little fear of sea monsters. He had faced warriors, wizards, monsters, demons, and even G.o.ds. All had proved vulnerable to sharp steel in .the final test. But, just to be on the safe side, he had the ship's carpenter rig a.catapult and mold some gummy spheres of black tar into whose center he poured lamp oil, with pitchy wicks of old cloth.

As day followed day across the endless waste of waters, Conan came almost to long for some desperate action to break the eternal monotony. But alas, if sea monsters there were, they gave the Red Lion a wide berth. To keep his shipload of b.l.o.o.d.y-handed rogues from getting restless with the inactivity, he kept them busy swabbing the decks, fletching new arrows to replace those expended in the brief battle with the green galley, and toiling at a mult.i.tude of other make-work tasks. As an old Hyborian saying had it, Nergal finds work for idle hands.

From time to time, the old Cimmerian found himself wondering what was happening in far-off Aquilonia. He thought of his stalwart son and wondered how the young buck liked the weight of a crown-on his pate. He thought of his old friends at court, what few of them still lived. Conan thought, too, of the palace where he had spent so many happy years with his dead wife, Zen.o.bia. She had been a slave in Nemedia, but he had made her sole queen over the green hills and golden fields of sunny Aquilonia. While she lived, he had - save for a few lapses while traveling afar - been faithful to her, no small feat for a rough, red-blooded warrior of Cimmerian lineage.

Since she had died in childbirth, he had resumed the habits of his days as a bachelor king, by keeping a harem of shapely concubines. The acquisition of these presented no difficulty. Conan's peculiar, highly individualistic sense of honor had kept him from ever in his life compelling a woman to submit to his embraces. On the other hand, there had always been plenty who were willing and eager to encounter this fate. But he had wedded no more wives; no woman had taken Zen.o.bia's place.

Now that she was gone, he found himself often thinking of her, in moods of black depression that were unlike him. While she lived, he had taken her devotion as his due and thought little of it, as is the way of the barbarian. Now he regretted the words he had not said to her and the favors he had not done for her.

He found himself, too, thinking of old times and old friends. Faces out of the past thronged his mind: Belit, the pantherine, languorous pirate queen of the Black Coast, his first great love ... Taurus of Nemedia, the fat old thief with whom he had sought to plunder the fabulous Tower of the Elephant... the enigmatic Stygian sorcerer, Thoth-Amon, whose trail had crossed his so often before that final, fatal confrontation ... loyal, grinning Juba, the giant black from Kush with whom he had fought the men of the lost valley of Mem in the distant East. . . Count Trocero of Poitain, the shrewd banker Publius, the gallant soldiers Prospero and Pallantides - all friends who had come to his aid when the jealousy of King Numedides of Aquilonia had driven Conan into exile, and who had rallied to him when he led a revolt against the degenerate monarch ...

Thus the faces of friends, lovers, comrades, and foes of his long past, which he would never look upon in this life, crowded upon him. The memories came back to him with increasingly poignant intensity, now that the bold, bright days of his reckless youth were long since over and gone and the Long Night was fast approaching. Well, he mused, age comes to every man if he lives long enough. And, by Crom, Conan would see one last sunset go down on a field of b.l.o.o.d.y corpses before the final hour of his life came upon him!

'Land ho!'

Sunk deep in melancholy, Conan had been leaning moodily against the rail of the p.o.o.p deck, watching the morning sun climb out of the ocean through the eastern cloud banks. This cry brought him about, with the blood leaping in his veins.

'Whither away?' he thundered.

Three points off the starboard bow, Captain! ' replied the lookout from the foretop.

Conan clambered the shrouds to the maintop and searched the horizon ahead of the Red Lion with a fierce hawk's gaze. The West was still dark; but beneath the bands of cloud, to the right of the bow, a strip of more solid darkness lay along the horizon. Land. Pirates crowded the forecastle rail below, pointing and exclaiming as the shadowy bulk of hills loomed out of the morning mist. As Conan returned to the p.o.o.p deck, Sigurd stamped up to join him.

'What is it, mate?' said the Vanr. 'The Antilles at last? By the sun disc of Shamash and the silver crescent of Demetrial! Action at last! Gold and loot for all, and hot blood for sauce, by all the G.o.ds! '

Conan grinned. 'Aye. Two moons aboard this craft, with naught but sea and sky around, seems like two centuries. But the voyage is over!'

Then came a wild cry from the lookout: 'Dragon off the starboard bow! Coming toward us!'

Dragon? Conan felt a chill at the word. Then he froze, staring ahead to starboard.

Out of the unknown West it came, its spread wings and lofty curve of neck glittering with golden flame in the ruddy morning light, its mighty breast cleaving the smooth, oily swells. Eyes blazing with white fire and black smoke boiling from its flaring nostrils, it came across the waves at them out of the dim foggy ma.s.s of the islands -a t.i.tanic winged serpent, mailed in gleaming scales, with eyes like globes of fire.

CHAPTER TEN.

DRAGON FIRE.

Submerged in red, tenebrous haze, where suns in sanguine splendor set, Forgotten empires linger yet, like phantoms of forgotten days.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

'All hands on deck, with arms!' Conan's bellow, like the crack of doom, snapped his crew out of its wide-eyed trance, as the men watched the monster approach. 'Archers to the forecastle! Yakov, signal when it's in range! Milo, man the catapult, with your squad! Aim it four points off the starboard bow. Steersmen, two points to port! Sigurd, shake out the mizzen; we may have to dance this ship around like a drunken Kothian peasant. Marco, fetch my helm and corselet to the p.o.o.p!'

Then men scurried to obey with a clatter of weapons, sometimes punctuated by the clang of a dropped sword or pike. Up forward, the burly boatswain and his squad grunted and sweated as they levered the ponderous throwing engine into position, and others brought the tarry missiles up from the hold.

The Red Lion heeled and swung to port to bring the monster in line with the catapult, since the engine was not pivoted and therefore had to be aimed by aiming the ship. The eyes of the monster, glaring like meteors, came closer and seemed to climb higher.

As soon as the thing came within bowshot, Yakov's squad sent a storm of arrows arching across the intervening water. Some stuck fast in the scaly hide; others glanced off the golden scales. But the monster seemed not to feel the hissing shafts. The clawed feet, on the ends of long, slender, birdlike forelegs, rising from the sides of its breast., did not twitch. The arched, swanlike neck did not writhe, nor did the snarling visage change expression. The golden mask came on, all glaring eyes and grimacing visage,, filled with bristling tusks.

Then the sun, which had been hidden behind the eastern clouds, climbed out and shone upon the scene in its full glory. And Conan gave a shout: 'That's not alive., men; 'tis a ship - a machine! Ready the catapult!'

For the sudden increase in illumination had shown Conan the truth. The 'dragon' was a galley, like that which they had overcome in mid-ocean, but with its bow built up to resemble the front of a monster. The 'wings' were two tall, narrow triangular sails, stiffened by bamboo battens like the sails of the ships of Khitai. These sails rose from a pair of masts in the waist, side by side instead of fore and aft as in most sailing vessels. Now the sails were trimmed to point straight aft, since the galley was rowing directly into the wind. Hence they contributed nothing to the ship's progress, albeit they did fortify the illusion of a winged sea monster.

A second volley of arrows rattled harmlessly against the bow of the dragon-ship. Conan saw that the 'forelegs' were a pair of grappling devices, held up by cables over the water in front of the bow. When the vessel got close enough, these twin booms would be allowed to fall, and the 'claws' would be driven into the woodwork of the Red Lion to hold her fast.

'Milo! Shoot one!'yelled Conan. The boatswain signaled to the steersmen to bring the bow a little to starboard, so that this engine would bear. With a loud thump, the catapult released. The first of the b.a.l.l.s of tar, trailing black smoke from its wick, arched across the water, glanced from the monster's neck, and fell into the sea.

Now the galley was a mere javelin-throw away. The curved breast of the dragon opened. A pair of doors swung wide, and a boarding plank extended itself out over the water. Inside the vessel, mustered at the base of the boarding plank, stood a fantastically garbed boarding party, bristling with weapons.

The ratchet of the catapult rattled as the crew desperately heaved on the windla.s.s to rec.o.c.k the weapon. Then, thump! A second smoke-trailing ball flew over the water -right into the opening where the boarding party was mustered.

There was a burst of smoke, and a lurid light illumined the interior of the vessel. The boarding party milled in confusion; a couple of men fell or were pushed off into.the sea, where the weight of their armor quickly dragged them under.

Smoke spurted from the hull of the dragon ship in a hundred places. The fire seemed to spread with preternatural speed. Faintly, Conan could hear the cries of trapped men. There was an impression of desperate efforts, half-seen through the breast-opening, to fight the fire. But soon flame spurted from the dragon's neck; then the wing-sails caught fire and blazed up...