Conan of the Isles Part 5

'Amra!' screamed Sigurd. 'Another one, to port!'

Conan whirled with a sulphurous oath. A second dragon-ship was bearing down upon them from the opposite side. Since this one was travelling with the wind on her beam, her wing-sails helped the oars so that she moved much faster than the first ship had done.

'Milo!' roared Conan. 'Get that engine over to port!'

As the catapult crew struggled to lever their machine to the opposite side of the forecastle deck, the second dragon-ship quickly closed the distance. Conan swore at his own stupidity in letting the sight of the blazing first ship so rivet his attention that he had not been aware, until he heard Sigurd's bellow, of the approach of the second. 'Yakov!' he thundered. 'Hold your shot until the doors open!'

This time, however, the dragon-ship did not open the doors to its boarding party so soon. Instead, it gave out a hiss as of a thousand kettles. From its open mouth, a tongue of liquid flame shot out. It formed a blazing arch across the narrowing gulf. It struck the side and deck of the Red Lion. In an instant, drops of the burning liquid were running hither and yon about the deck. In a panic, the pirates ran back from the rail, some of them beating at smoldering spots in their clothing. The liquid gave off a dense, black smoke with an oily smell. Conan guessed at once that this was a natural oil, like that which seeped out of the ground in the deserts of Iranistan and southern Turan.

But he had no time to explain this to his men. A second hiss, and another jet of liquid flame struck the foresail, which in an instant blazed up like a torch. The catapult crew and the archers scattered, screaming, as the sail flamed over their heads and showered the deck with bits of burning sailcloth.

'Hard to starboard!' yelled Conan. 'Trim sail to run with the wind on the starboard beam!' For he saw that another flaming jet might destroy his mainsail and make the Red Lion a helpless hulk.

But it was too late. Again came the hiss and the jet, and the mainsail dissolved into a ma.s.s of leaping, thundering flame. The Red Lion, shorn of all motive power save the little triangular mizzen, slowed and wallowed. The grappling booms of the galley crashed down, driving their claws into the carack's deck. The doors opened, the plank extended, and the second boarding party rushed to the deck of the Red Lion.

These men had brown skins and slitted eyes, with k.n.o.bby cheekbones and hawk noses. They wore bird-helms like those of the sorcerer on the green galley, and strange gla.s.sy armor over leathern jerkins. They carried curious weapons - swords with saw-toothed edges of crystal, hooked spears, and gla.s.sy globes held in slings. There were other weapons, which Conan could not, in the first moment, make out.

Yakov's archers should have met the boarding party with a deadly hail of arrows, but the archers had become as demoralized as the rest of the pirates. Conan roared and threatened from the p.o.o.p, but still they milled and yammered witlessly in the waist. A few arrows whizzed into the boarders, but to little effect. The shafts splintered against and glanced off the fragile-looking armor of gla.s.s. A few of the crew mustered where the tongue of the boarding plank rested upon the Red Lion's rail.

Conan leaped down the ladder from the p.o.o.p deck, his great broadsword in hand, to add his weight to the defenders. The men of the boarding party, he now saw, bore curious equipment: tubes that ran from their nostrils, inside the gla.s.s helmets, to containers on their backs. It must, he surmised, be breathing equipment of some sort. But why?

The answer came just as he reached the main deck. The foremost of the attackers paused to whirl slings and shower his men with gla.s.s globes, each about the size of an apple. The globes burst with a musical tinkle and shattered into thousands of shining shards. Where each globe struck, a billowing cloud of pale vapor arose.

More and more'of the globes smashed and tinkled; as fast as the wind blew away the vapor, more of the uncanny missiles renewed it. And Conan saw his men, milling about in the waist, sag and slump to the deck, unconscious. Down they went, man after man, until only a few still stood erect. The deck looked like a shambles, save that the fallen men lay peacefully and apparently unhurt, as if sleeping, Then the boarding party swarmed down from the plank to the smoke-obscured deck, on which fragments of burning sail and rope still showered. With a challenging roar, Conan drove in amongst them, his broadsword weaving a shimmering web of steel around him. The crystalline armor splintered as the heavy blade struck it, shearing through gla.s.s, leather, flesh, and bone. Limbs were lopped off; howling cries of pain came m.u.f.fled through the gla.s.sy helmets.

Conan hacked his way through the loose ranks of the first boarders, leaving three foes rec.u.mbent on the deck behind him. But others dropped down from the boarding plank to ring him round and return to the attack. He hacked his way through to the rail where, with his back protected, he won a moment's respite.

On the far side of the deck he saw Sigurd trading mighty blows with two a.s.sailants. Two more had already fallen at his feet. Then, although he did not seem to have been struck, the Northman dropped his scimitar and folded up on the deck, as had all the rest of the crew.

There was a sweetish smell in Conan's nostrils, and the world swam before his eyes. The attackers had given back before him, to form a semicircle hemming him against the rail. For three heartbeats, the Cimmerian faced his a.s.sailants, his gray-bearded lips bared in a silent snarl. Then, over the heads of the foremost attackers, several of the gla.s.s globes flew through the air, to smash on the deck at his feet.

Conan did not wait for the vapor to rise and drag him down. With a hoa.r.s.e, gasping roar, he hurled himself against the semicircle. His broadsword, wielded in both rough, scarred hands, whirled about his head like the vane of a windmill. Crash! Crash! Two of the Antillians fell before his blade with heads or ribs crushed in. And then Conan was through the press and out in the open again.

He knew he could not fight the entire hostile crew single-handed. Though he might account for a few more, sooner or later they would surround him and cut him down. Already the fatigue of his years was weighting his limbs and slowing his movements. His breath came in gasps. The smoke and the whiff of the pallid vapor he had inhaled made him cough. Every one of his crew was now down - a few slain by the enemy's weird weapons, but the great majority felled by the vapor.

Another man might have been paralyzed by the problem of what to do next. The ship was plainly lost. Her deck swarmed with the boarders from the dragon ship. Her sails and rigging had vanished in flame and smoke; at that instant her fore yard, its sail consumed, crashed to the forecastle deck as the ropes upholding it burned through. A score of minor fires smouldered here and there about the deck, where pieces of burning saii, rope, or spar had ignited them. The first dragon-ship, which had been set ablaze, had vanished except for a floating patch of wreckage.

Conan saw that he could do his men no good by letting himself be slain or captured. If, on the other hand, he could escape, perhaps a chance would offer itself later . ..

The decisiveness of Conan's barbarian heritage decided his next actions without his consciously having to think about them or to weigh alternatives. With a final burst of strength, he bounded up the ladder to the p.o.o.p deck. Of the two steersmen at the quarter rudders, one had disappeared; the other lay dead, while over the body stood one of the boarders with a b.l.o.o.d.y saw-edged blade in his hand. Conan rushed him and shattered the crystal blade with a single chop. A mighty thrust with both long arms sent the point of the broadsword crunching through the other's gla.s.s-plated mail shirt and through the man's body. Down went the man.

Then Conan dropped his b.l.o.o.d.y broadsword, doffed his horned helmet, and hurled it far out into the water. No use leaving any arms for the foe to salvage! He bent and tore from the head of the dead boarder the bird-shaped gla.s.s helmet and the breathing apparatus that went with it. As more Antillians stamped up the ladder to the p.o.o.p deck, Conan "settled the apparatus about his own head and shoulders.

The enemies rushed upon him with cries of rage. He caught up his sword just in time to parry the thrust of a wavy-headed spear, and a mighty slash smashed the helmet of the pikeman and the skull beneath it. Before any others could close with him, the Cimmerian sprang to the rail and dove into the heaving, blue waters. Carried down by the weight of his chain mail, he sank like a stone.

The morning sun, now high in the heavens, had burned off the last remains of the morning mist; the clouds dwindled and fled before its hot golden rays. Two by two, the boarders picked up the rec.u.mbent forms of the unconscious crewmen of the Red Lion and carried them over the boarding plank into the dragon-ship. Others busied themselves with putting out the many small fires, beating them with cloaks and dousing them with buckets of sea water drawn up by ropes.

At length, leaving a small prize crew aboard, the men of the dragon-ship returned to their own vessel. With a rattle of gear, the boarding plank withdrew; the grappling arms rose from the deck; the doors in the dragon's breast closed. The dragon ship backed water with oars and sails and maneuvered to bring her stern near the bow of the Red Lion. Presently, with a creaking of ropes to trim her sails to the following wind, the dragon ship forged ahead in the direction whence she had come, towing the Red Lion behind her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

TERRORS OF THE SEA.

Bedight with tentacle and fang, The monsters on the Lion sprang .

. . - The Voyage of Amra

Conan struck the water with a mighty splash. Green waves closed over his head. Weighted by the chain mail that clothed his body to mid-thigh and by the ma.s.sive broadsword in his fist, he sank like a stone.

The sea was cold; the morning sun had not been up long enough for its warmth to penetrate far below the surface. The bracing tang of cold salt water on Conan's limbs was not unwelcome. Salt stung his cuts and bruises, and the icy shock sent new vigor surging through his aching muscles.

He fell slowly through a world of pale jade green. As the hull of the Red Lion rose above him, he could discern the barnacles on her keel. Looking up, the old warrior saw two hulls above him - oval planets in a sky of shimmering, greenish silver. A weird sight...

His first impulse on hitting the water had been to strike out with his arms and swim. Then it came to him that the breathing apparatus in the crystal helm was designed, in some incomprehensible fashion, to enable him to breathe under water. Furthermore, he could see the sea bottom not far beneath his booted heels. At this point, close to the isles of Antillia, the ocean bottom sloped gently upward. Instead of falling into an ebony abyss of lightless gloom, he would descend only a few fathoms and then could walk to sh.o.r.e. So, controlling his instinct to swim, he permitted himself to sink to the bottom, treading water just enough to keep himself right side up.

Breathing was another matter. The helm came down to fit in saddle fashion over chest and back. Two gla.s.s tubes curved away over either shoulder to a tanldike affair on his back between his shoulders. The first tube entered the front of the helm on a level with his nostrils; the second, on a level with his mouth. A little experimenting showed that the wearer of the helmet was expected to wrap his lips around the lower tube, press his nostrils into the aperture of the upper, and then breathe in through the nostril tube and out through the other. When he exhaled, a column of silvery, shining bubbles rose from the apparatus with a gurgling sound. This unusual method of breathing took a little practice, but Conan got used to it by the time he landed softly, in a sprawling position, on the sea bottom. The bottom was covered with fine, soft sand, which rose in little clouds as he scrambled into an upright position. Around him, the water was clouded with puffs and swirls of slowly settling particles.

Conan found that his vision through the crystal helm was good, except that beyond a few yards the water clouded and confused his gaze. Although there was enough light clearly to make out his nearby surroundings, the more distant hillocks of sand were drowned in a deep emerald gloom.

He oriented himself easily enough, since to follow the rising slope of the sea bottom he knew would lead him to sh.o.r.e. So he set off in that direction, laboriously plodding through the soft sand, lurching from side to side because his armor and the breathing apparatus made him top- heavy. Despite the weight of his mail, boots, and sword, his body felt peculiarly light. It was gripped with an even pressure, which exerted itself against his entire body surface. This made breathing a wearying effort. But, disregarding the difficulties of moving, he forged along with grotesquely slow strides., which lifted him clear of the ocean floor with every step.

Curious growths flourished on the sea bottom. He pushed through an enchanted forest of weird plants, whose long, silky fronds undulated like glistening, multicolored ribbons. Small, brightly colored fish darted about him like fantastic birds, flashing golden and purple and emerald and crimson and azure. Towers of pink and white coral rose about him, cloven and branching like petrified trees.

Pa.s.sing through the coral growths, Conan emerged into an area of tumbled, upward-sloping rocks, which lay this way and that and leaned against one another like the ruins of some primeval city of giants. Cl.u.s.ters of sea creatures clung to them. Some were flower-like or star-shaped or covered with spines. Some had jointed legs and eyes on stalks; others thrust out branching, feathery appendages.

Pulling himself up from level to level among the tumbled boulders, Conan silently cursed as something sharp gashed one of his fingers. In time, he emerged on a level plateau and stood for a moment, resting.

The sun must be higher now,, or else he had risen to a level quite near the surface, for the deep emerald of the depths had given way to a lucent chartreuse. By this clearer luminance he could make out another upward slope, which must extend almost to the surface. In this slope gaped the dark mouth of a sea cave.

Eyeing the cave warily, Conan decided to give it a wide berth. His experience with caves on dry land had often proved them to be tenanted - and tenanted by creatures formidable to man. He was sure that things other than the bright, harmless little fishes dwelt in these liquid depths. As he skirted the mouth of the cave, his eye caught a surge of motion in the darkness within. A spot of dim luminosity, as big as a serving platter, appeared, then another beside it. And something came sliding toward him across the sea bottom. It was like a ship's cable - or rather, like a tree trunk, covered with black, smooth, oily-looking bark, which had somehow been given flexibility and animation. The near end tapered to a slender whiplash, while toward the cave the tentacle thickened to the diameter of an old tree.

As the member writhed toward Conan, squirming and looping and rising from the sea bottom, he saw that its flat underside bore a double row of suckers, from little ones no bigger around than his thumb at the tapering end to others the size of horses's hooves further in. The thin end of the tentacle lifted from the sea bottom and tentatively touched Conan's boot, as if feeling this curious creature to see if it was edible.

'Crom!' gasped Conan, recognizing the tentacle as that of a creature of the kraken kind. He sprang backward, ripping his sword from the scabbard.

On dry land, such a leap would have taken him several feet back from where he stood, but things were different beneath the sea. Conan found himself floundering above the surface of the sand, turning end over end. Water leaked into his gla.s.sy helmet and gurgled in his ears as he revolved. With his free hand, he beat at the water to right himself.

The tentacle drew back. Then, like a striking serpent, it lunged up and out and coiled around his thigh.

Conan brought his sword down in a mighty slash. But the resistance of the water sent his stroke awry and robbed it of most of its force. The sword slightly gashed the rubbery tentacle and rebounded from it. *

The grip on Conan's thigh tightened., until his leg began to go numb. His lungs labored against the pressure of the water. He struck again at the tentacle, only to have the water again weaken the blow.

The grip on his leg grew crushing; Conan became terribly aware of the giant strength in that coil. With desperate certainty he knew that unless he broke the hold of the sea monster, the tentacle would pull him down into the cave. There, in the center of the spreading circle of arms, a sharp, parrot-like beak and a rasping tongue awaited their feast.

The giant kraken was not yet fully aroused. It toyed lazily with its victim, sluggishly curious but perhaps not yet hungry enough. But now Conan saw another tentacle lifting into view, and yet another behind it.

He reversed his blade and thrust the point of the broadsword into the thick hide of the tentacle, just above the coil that was clamped about his leg. The point slowly sank into the rubbery flesh, until the blade transfixed the tentacle and came out on the other side. Thanks be to all the G.o.ds, he was armed with a straight, sharp-pointed blade, and not with a curved, blunt-ended scimitar or cutla.s.s! Had the latter been the case, the epic of Conan of Cimmeria might have ended right there.

The sluggish kraken seemed hardly to feel the pain of its pierced limb. Conan sawed the blade slowly up and down. Suddenly he seemed to strike a nerve, for the tentacle whipped loose and lashed back and forth, hurling him head over heels through the water.

As he again settled to the sandy surface, another tentacle came snaking toward him, blindly questing like the weaving, bobbing head of some huge black snake. As it writhed past him, Conan brought the point of his blade down upon the limb, trying to pin it against the ocean floor. As the writhing arm rippled to one side, the point gashed it, sending it slithering back toward the cave, like a wounded serpent.

Now the water about Conan surged as the t.i.tanic octopus, fully aroused by the pain of its wounds, heaved its bulk out of the cave mouth. Conan gaped in awe at the size of the thing.

Counting its eight writhing arms, it was as big as a house. First came the tentacles, as long as the Red Lion and as thick at their bases as the trunks of century-old trees. They swept writhing out, seized boulders in their sucker grip, and drew the rest of the monster after them. The mouth with its beak was hidden from view beneath the circle of arms.

After the tentacles came the head with its two platter-sized eyes, mounted side by side above the bases of the forward tenacles. These eyes had slit pupils, like those of a cat, but the slits were horizontal instead of vertical. Their cold, lidless stare was one of the most unnerving that Conan had ever faced.

Behind the head came the bloated, baglike,, limbless body, as big as one of the colossal wine vats in King Ario-stro's cellars. Waves of changing color chased one another over the mottled ma.s.s: white, pink, russet., maroon, and black.

Conan stood motionless, debating what to do. He dared not flee down the broken incline at his back, because he would have to go slowly and would have his hands occupied and his back turned to the pursuing, angry monster. Conan guessed that it could not clearly discern him as long as he stood still. But if he moved, the motion would instantly draw the attention of the kraken. On the other hand, he could not remain where he was, for the monster's present course would carry it close to him. As the octopus hunched and edged its way forward, one or another of the lashing tentacles was soon bound to encounter Conan's body.

Choosing the simplest way of escape, Conan sprang upwards to get above the octopus. He hoped to circ.u.mvent it entirely and reach the upper slope beyond the cave before it sensed his location.

But Conan forgot that he was now clearly silhouetted as a black, moving object against the rippling, silvery plane of the sunlit surface above. Even as he swam above the brute, two questing tentacles reared up and closed crushingly about him - one about his waist and the other about his left foot. In that viselike grip he was helpless. In a few heartbeats, the tentacles would draw him down to the clashing beak...

Again Conan thrust the point of his blade against the thick, rubbery skin of a tentacle and pierced it. But the monster was not very sensitive to pain. Such was its vitality that he could have hacked through half its tentacles before seriously weakening it, and then it would have merely withdrawn to regrow its mutilated Umbs. Conan felt the surge of t.i.tanic muscles in the crushing grip that held him helpless as, with inexorable force, the kraken drew him down toward its beaked mouth ...

Then a bolt of black lightning struck and snapped through one of the tentacles holding him.

The dark shape had flashed out of dimness like a vast projectile. One snap of the triple rows of teeth had chopped a foot-long section out of one of the tentacles. The severed end uncoiled from Conan's midsection and drifted down to the ocean floor, flopping and writhing like a bisected worm.

The new arrival was a colossal shark, with a thick, tapering body over thirty feet in length. Dark slate-gray above, creamy white below, it banked and curved at the end of its lunge. For an instant it hung poised in the green waters. Then, with an arch of its supple spine, it curved about and came eeling back for another attack. Its small, yellow eyes, gla.s.sy with mindless hunger, glared into Conan's.

The Cimmerian was now held by a single tentacle, looped about his foot. Urgency lent extraordinary strength to his arms. Swung in both k.n.o.bby hands, the broadsword sheared through the slender terminal portion of the tentacle., and Conan was free.

Not pausing to sheathe his blade, Conan swam furiously off at a tangent., striving to avoid the meteoric rush of the shark. The sword in his hand enc.u.mbered him and weighed him down on the right side, so that he slewed about in a wide half-circle. That was just enough to take him out of the path of the onrushing shark, whose triangular fins cut through the green-lit waters like plowshares.

It shot past him., its tooth-lined maw snapping shut on empty water. It missed him so narrowly that he could see the individual small, pebbly scales that crusted its rough, white underbelly as it raced by in front of his face. The displacement of the water tossed him about like a straw in the wind.

Then the shark turned and poised again at the end of its lunge. This time, Conan knew, he could not dodge. As the shark writhed toward him, three black tentacles flailed up past the Cimmerian and lashed about its bulky barrel, ensnaring the monster, The kraken's arms writhed like a nest of enraged serpents. The shark doubled, snapping furiously. Another tentacle was bitten in two, and the severed end sank writhing to the sand below.

But more tentacles whipped around the shark's body. Conan, holding his sword in his teeth to free both arms for swimming, saw what was happening as he stroked himself swiftly away from the combat. The octopus had thrown five of its eight arms - including even those that had had their tips severed - about the forward part of the shark's body and its head, covering its gills and its eyes.

No matter how the shark blindly writhed and snapped, it could not bring its terrible jaws to bear upon its rubbery antagonist.

Meanwhile, the octopus had anch.o.r.ed itself to the rocks below by means of the suckers on its remaining three tentacles, to keep from being carried away bodily by the struggles of the shark. Sand, stirred up in clouds by the combat, obscured the spectacle. And then the water around the battle was plunged into darkness as a vast cloud of ink, ejected by the octopus, billowed up and out in all directions.

Conan was happy at this outcome. Engaged in fighting each other, neither the kraken nor the giant shark had time for him. He seized the opportunity to sheathe his sword and swim away from the scene of conflict. Before long, it vanished behind him in the dimness of the deeps, a cloud of deeper darkness against the gloom of the watery world. He never learned whether the octopus succeeded in smothering and destroying the shark, or whether the cloud of ink meant that the shark was winning and the octopus was seeking to cover its flight.

As he settled to the ocean floor a few hundred yards further to continue his progress on foot, Conan was just as glad not to know the outcome of the battle behind him. Ahead, up the slope, the bottom brightened as it rose to meet the surface of the Western Ocean. Conan plodded steadily forward, resolutely ignoring the pressure on his chest and the ache in his legs that came from the effort of dragging them forward against the resistance of the water. He still had a good part of a mile to go - perhaps even more - and he was eager to get out into clean, fresh air again.

He plodded slowly on through the dim waters, a weird, fantastical shape crowned with a glistening crystal helm, like some eerie G.o.d of the deeps.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

LOST CITY.

Submerged in deep, red, mystic haze, where suns in sanguine splendor set, Forgotten empires linger yet, like phantoms of primeval days.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

Conan heaved himself out of the waves and on to the lowest of the stone steps that led up to the sea gate, now closed for the night. From where he crouched, the setting sun had disappeared behind the crenelations of the towering sea wall.

Wearily, he pulled off the crystal helmet and its breathing tubes, whose supply of air was now exhausted, and laid the apparatus on the stone beside him. Then he tagged off his boots and poured the water out of them. For a while he sat hunched on the stone, glaring warily about him and breathing heavily. The task of hiking three miles over the bottom of the shallow, shark-infested sea, and then another mile along the sh.o.r.e to the city, had gravely sapped the old warrior's strength.

When he had reached the city in midafternoon, he had slipped back into the water. He waited, almost submerged, until all the small craft had tied up for the night, the sailors had gone in through the gate, and the gate had closed, before daring to come closer.

Up and down the long, stone quays, which stretched north and south from the gate, several larger vessels were moored. Others rode at anchor in the harbor, but no life appeared on their decks. The crews either were below at their evening repast or had gone ash.o.r.e. These Antillians, thought Conan, must either be careless or confident in their own strength, to post no watches on their walls and their ships at all times. Among the Antillian ships, the fire-blackened hull of the Red Lion lay half-submerged in shallow water.

Conan was not only tired after his day-long exertions but also ravenously hungry. As he sat under the darkening sky, he thought out his next step. Whatever it was, he had better be about it before some watchman stumbled across him.

His best chance, he thought, would be to get into the city. This would place him in a fearfully dangerous position. Not only would he be alone and friendless; but also he could not hope to pa.s.s unnoticed, because his height, color, and features distinguished him at the slightest glance from the small, brown Antillians.

Added to this was the problem of language. Back in his own world, he had a rough-and-ready command of a dozen tongues, albeit he had never lost the barbarous Cimmerian accent with which he spoke them. But the Antillians would use some speech of remotely Atlantean origin, long forgotten in Conan's world and changed in the course of eight thousand years out of all resemblance to any languages Conan knew.

Nonetheless, he could not lie here by the water's edge forever. Perhaps this evening hour, when the people were at their meals, would offer the best chance he could look for.

He rose and ran a hand along the stone of the forty-foot sea wall. The wall was made of huge, well-shaped blocks, worn by the salt spray of centuries. Between the blocks, the mortar had softened and crumbled out, leaving gaps into which fingers and toes could be thrust between the courses of stone.

As a youth, Conan would have faced the climb of such a wall without trepidation. Scaling sheer cliffs was a normal accomplishment of a Cimmerian clansman. But he had not had occasion to make such a climb in many years, and his grasp was not so strong, nor his movements so sure as formerly.

He pulled himself together, kicked the helmet and its breathing apparatus into the water, and tucked his boots through his belt. He was tempted to leave his mailshirt but decided to keep it after all. Doffing one's armor in the face of peril, merely to rid oneself of its irksome weight, was the act of a rash and foolish youth - not of crafty old Conan.