Conan Pastiche - Conan Part 15

"Murder it is, my lord," answered the prefect. "But we have a suspect who, though Demetrio seems to have doubts on the matter, will doubtless go to the stake for it."

"A vicious-looking brute," murmured the young aristocrat. "How can any doubt his guilt? Never before have I seen such a villainous countenance."

"Oh, yes you have, you scented dog," snarled the Cimmerian, "when you hired me to steal the Zamorian goblet for you. Revels, eh? Bah! You were waiting in the shadows for me to hand you the loot. I would not have revealed your name if you had given me fair words. Now tell these dogs that you saw me climb the wall after the watchman made his last round, so they shall know I had no time to kill this fat swine before Arus entered and found the body."

Demetrio looked quickly at Aztrias, who did not change color. "If what he says is true, my lord," said the inquisitor, "it clears him of the murder, and we can easily hush up the matter of attempted theft. The Cimmerian merits ten years at hard labor for housebreaking; but, if you say the word, we'll arrange for him to escape, and none but us shall ever know about it. I understand-you wouldn't be the first young n.o.bleman who had to resort to such means to pay gambling debts and the like-but you can rely on our discretion."

Conan looked expectantly at the young n.o.ble, but Aztrias shrugged his slender shoulders and covered a yawn with a delicate white hand.

"I know him not," he answered. "He is mad to say I hired him. Let him take his just deserts. He has a strong back, and the toil in the mines will be good for him."

Conan, eyes blazing, started as if stung. The guards tensed, gripping their bills; then relaxed as he dropped his head, as if in sullen resignation. Arus could not tell whether or not he was watching them from under his heavy black brows.

The Cimmerian struck with no more warning than a striking cobra; his sword flashed in the candlelight. Aztrias began a shriek that ended as his head flew from his shoulders in a shower of blood, the features frozen into a white mask of horror.

Demetrio drew a dagger and stepped forward for a stab. Catlike, Conan wheeled and thrust murderously for the inquisitor's groin. Demetrio's instinctive recoil barely deflected the point, which sank into his thigh, glanced from the bone, and plowed out through the outer side of his leg. Demetrio sank to one knee with a groan of agony.

Conan did not pause. The bill that Dionus flung up saved the prefect's skull from the whistling blade, which turned slightly as it cut through the shaft, glanced from the side of his head, and sheared off his right ear. The blinding speed of the barbarian paralyzed the police. Half of them would have been down before they had a chance to fight back except that the burly Posthumo, more by luck than by skill, threw his arms around the Cimmerian, pinioning his sword arm. Conan's left hand leaped to the guard's head, and Posthumo fell away shrieking, clutching a gaping red socket where an eye had been.

Conan bounded back from the waving bills. His leap carried him outside the ring of his foes to where Arus had bent over to rec.o.c.k his crossbow. A savage kick in the belly dropped him, green-faced and gagging, and Conan's sandaled heel crunched square in the watchman's mouth. The wretch screamed through a ruin of splintered teeth, blowing b.l.o.o.d.y froth from his mangled lips.

Then all were frozen in their tracks by the soul-shaking horror of a scream, which rose from the chamber into which Posthumo had hurled Promero. From the velvet-hung door the clerk came reeling and stood, shaking with great silent sobs, tears running down his pasty face and dripping from his loose, sagging lips, like an idiot-babe weeping.

All halted to stare at him aghast-Conan with his dripping sword, the police with their lifted bills, Demetrio crouching on the floor and striving to staunch the blood that jetted from the great gash in his thigh, Dionus clutching the bleeding stump of his severed ear, Arus weeping and spitting out fragments of broken teeth-even Posthumo ceased his howls and blinked with his good eye.

Promero reeled out into the corridor and fell stiffly before them, screeching in an unbearable high-pitched laughter of madness: "The G.o.d has a long reach; ha-ha-ha! Oh, a cursed long reach!" Then, with a frightful convulsion, he stiffened and lay grinning vacantly at the shadowy ceiling.

"He's dead!" whispered Dionus in tones of awe, forgetting his own hurt and the barbarian who stood with dripping sword so near him. He bent over the body, then straightened, his pig's eyes popping. "He's not wounded. In Mitra's name, what is in that chamber?"

Then horror swept over them, and they ran screaming for the outer door.

The guards, dropping their bills, jammed into it in a clawing and shrieking mob and burst through like madmen. Arus followed, and the half-blind Posthumo blundered blindly after his fellows, squealing like a wounded pig and begging them not to leave him behind. He fell among the rearmost, and they knocked him down and trampled him, screaming in their fear. He crawled after them, and behind him came Demetrio, limping along and grasping his blood-spurting thigh. Police, charioteer, watchman, and officials, wounded or whole, they burst screaming into the street, where the men watching the house took panic and joined in the flight, not waiting to ask why.

Conan stood in the great corridor alone, save for the three corpses on the floor. The barbarian shifted his grip on his sword and strode into the chamber. It was hung with rich silken tapestries. Silken cushions and couches lay strewn about in careless profusion, and over a heavy, gilded screen a Face looked at the Cimmerian.

Conan stared in wonder at the cold, cla.s.sic beauty of that countenance, whose like he had never seen among the sons of men. Neither weakness, nor mercy, nor cruelty, nor kindness, nor any other human emotion showed in those features. They might have been the marble mask of a G.o.d, carved by a master hand, except for the unmistakable life in them-life cold and strange, such as the Cimmerian had never known and could not understand. He thought fleetingly of the marble perfection of the body concealed by the screen; it must be perfect, he thought, since the face was so inhumanly beautiful.

But he could see only the finely-molded head, which swayed from side to side. The full lips opened and spoke a single word, in a rich, vibrant tone like the golden chimes that ring in the jungle-lost temples of Khitai. It was an unknown tongue, forgotten before the kingdoms of man arose, but Conan knew that it meant: "Come!"

And the Cimmerian came, with a desperate leap and humming slash of his sword. The beautiful head flew from the body, struck the floor to one side of the screen, and rolled a little way before coming to rest.

Then Conan's skin crawled, for the screen shook and heaved with the convulsions of something behind. He had seen and heard men die by the scores, and never had he heard a human being make such sounds in his death-throes. There was a thrashing, floundering noise. The screen shook, swayed, tottered, leaned forward, and fell with a metallic crash at Conan's feet. He looked beyond it.

Then the full horror of it rushed over the Cimmerian. He fled, nor did he slacken his headlong flight until the spires of Numalia faded into the dawn behind him. The thought of Set was like a nightmare, and the children of Set who once ruled the earth and who now slept in their nighted caverns below the black pyramids. Behind that gilded screen had lain no human body-only the shimmering, headless coils of a gigantic serpent.

Rogues in the House -------------------.

Somewhat disillusioned about the possibility of avoiding supernatural obstacles to the orderly pursuit of his calling, and having made Nemedia much too hot to hold him, Conan drifts south again into Corinthia, where, in one of the small city-states making up that country, he continues to occupy himself with the unlawful appropriation of private property. He is about nineteen at this time, harder and more experienced if not more given to unprofitable caution than when he first appeared in the southern kingdoms.

"One fled, one dead, one sleeping in a golden bed."

-Old Rime

Chapter One.

At a court festival, Nabonidus, the Red Priest, who was the real ruler of the city, touched Murilo, the young aristocrat, courteously on the arm. Murilo turned to meet the priest's enigmatic gaze, and to wonder at the hidden meaning therein. No words pa.s.sed between them, but Nabonidus bowed and handed Murilo a small gold cask. The young n.o.bleman, knowing that Nabonidus did nothing without reason, excused himself at the first opportunity and returned hastily to his chamber.

There he opened the cask and found within a human ear, which he recognized by a peculiar scar upon it. He broke into a profuse sweat and was no longer in doubt about the meaning in the Red Priest's glance.

But Murilo, for all his scented black curls and foppish apparel, was no weakling to bend his neck to the knife without a struggle. He did not know whether Nabonidus was merely playing with him or giving him a chance to go into voluntary exile, but the fact that he was still alive and at liberty proved that he was to be given at least a few hours, probably for meditation. However, he needed no meditation for decision; what he needed was a tool. And Fate furnished that tool, working among the dives and brothels of the squalid quarters even while the young n.o.bleman shivered and pondered in the part of the city occupied by the purple-towered marble and ivory palaces of the aristocracy.

There was a priest of Anu whose temple, rising at the fringe of the slum district, was the scene of more than devotions. The priest was fat and full-fed, and he was at once a fence for stolen articles and a spy for the police. He worked a thriving trade both ways, because the district on which he bordered was the Maze, a tangle of muddy, winding alleys and sordid dens, frequented by the boldest thieves in the kingdom. Daring above all were a Gunderman deserter from the mercenaries and a barbaric Cimmerian. Because of the priest of Anu, the Gunderman was taken and hanged in the market square. But the Cimmerian fled, and learning in devious ways of the priest's treachery, he entered the temple of Anu by night and cut off the priest's head. There followed a great turmoil in the city, but search for the killer proved fruitless until a woman betrayed him to the authorities and led a captain of the guard and his squad to the hidden chamber where, the barbarian lay drunk.

Waking to stupefied but ferocious life when they seized him, he disemboweled the captain, burst through his a.s.sailants, and would have escaped but for the liquor that still clouded his senses. Bewildered and half blinded, he missed the open door in his headlong flight and dashed his head against the stone wall so terrifically that he knocked himself senseless. When he came to, he was in the strongest dungeon in the city, shackled to the wall with chains not even his barbaric thews could break.

To this cell came Murilo, masked and wrapped in a wide black cloak. The Cimmerian surveyed him with interest, thinking him the executioner sent to dispatch him. Murilo set him at rights and regarded him with no less interest. Even in the dim light of the dungeon, with his limbs loaded with chains, the primitive power of the man was evident. His mighty body and thick-muscled limbs combined the strength of a grizzly with the quickness of a panther. Under his tangled black mane his blue eyes blazed with unquenchable savagery.

"Would you like to live?" asked Murilo. The barbarian grunted, new interest glinting in his eyes.

"If I arrange for your escape, will you do a favor for me?" the aristocrat asked.

The Cimmerian did not speak, but the intentness of his gaze answered for him.

"I want you to kill a man for me."

"Who?"

Murilo's voice sank to a whisper. "Nabonidus, the king's priest!"

The Cimmerian showed no sign of surprise or perturbation. He had none of the fear or reverence for authority that civilization instills in men. King or beggar, it was all one to him. Nor did he ask why Murilo had come to him, when the quarters were full of cutthroats outside prisons.

"When am I to escape?" he demanded.

"Within the hour. There is but one guard in this part of the dungeon at night. He can be bribed; he has been bribed. See, here are the keys to your chains. I'll remove them and, after I have been gone an hour, the guard, Athicus, will unlock the door to your cell. You will bind him with strips torn from your tunic; so when he is found, the authorities will think you were rescued from the outside and will not suspect him.

Go at once to the house of the Red Priest and kill him. Then go to the Rat's Den, where a man will met you and give you a pouch of gold and a horse. With those you can escape from the city and flee the country."

"Take off these cursed chains now," demanded the Cimmerian. "And have the guard bring me food. By Crom, I have lived on moldy bread and water for a whole day, and I am nigh to famishing."

"It shall be done, but remember-you are not to escape until I have had time to reach my house."

Freed of his chains, the barbarian stood up and stretched his heavy arms, enormous in the gloom of the dungeon. Murilo again felt that if any man in the world could accomplish the task he had set, this Cimmerian could. With a few repeated instructions he left the prison, first directing Athicus to take a platter of beef and ale in to the prisoner. He knew he could trust the guard, not only because of the money he had paid, but also because of certain information he possessed regarding the man.

When he returned to his chamber, Murilo was in full control of his fears. Nabonidus would strike through the king-of that he was certain.

And since the royal guardsmen were not knocking at his door, it was as certain that the priest had said nothing to the king, so far. Tomorrow he would speak, beyond a doubt-if he lived to see tomorrow.

Murilo believed the Cimmerian would keep faith with him. Whether the man would be able to carry out his purpose remained to be seen. Men had attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Red Priest before, and they had died in hideous and nameless ways. But they had been products of the cities of men, lacking the wolfish instincts of the barbarian. The instant that Murilo, turning the gold cask with its severed ear in his hands, had learned through his secret channels that the Cimmerian had been captured, he had seen a solution of his problem.