Conan The Freebooter Part 3

She had not liked Mazdak. The sardonic adventurer was coldly masterful in his relations with women, keeping a large harem and letting none command or persuade him in the slightest. Because Rufia could endure no rival, she had not been displeased when Mazdak had gambled her away to his rival Othbaal.

The Anaki was more to her taste. Despite a streak of cruelty and treachery, the man was strong, vital, and intelligent. Best of all, he could be managed. He only needed a spur to his ambition, and Rufia supplied that. She had started him up the shining rungs of the ladder-and now he had been slain by a pair of masked murderers who had sprung from nowhere.

Engrossed in her bitter thoughts, she looked up with a start as a tall, hooded figure stepped from the shadows of an overhanging balcony and confronted her. Only his eyes burned at her, almost luminous in the starlight. She cowered back with a low cry.

"A woman on the streets of Asgalun!" The voice was hollow and ghostly.

"Is this not against the king's commands?"

"I walk not the streets by choice, lord," she answered. "My master has been slain, and I fled from his murderers."

The stranger bent his hooded head and stood statue-like. Rufia watched him nervously. There was something gloomy and portentous about him. He seemed less like a man pondering the tale of a chance-met slave-girl than a somber prophet weighing the doom of a sinful people. At last he lifted his head.

"Come," said he. "I will find a place for you."

Without pausing to see if she obeyed, he stalked away up the street.

Rufia hurried after him. She could not walk the streets all night, for any officer of the king would strike off her head for violating the edict of King Akhirom. This stranger might be leading her into worse slavery, but she had no choice.

Several times she tried to speak, but his grim silence struck her silent in turn. His unnatural aloofness frightened her. Once she was startled to see furtive forms stealing after them.

"Men follow us!" she exclaimed.

"Heed them not," answered the man in his weird voice.

Nothing was said until they reached a small arched gate in a lofty wall. The stranger halted and called out. He was answered from within.

The gate opened, revealing a black mute holding a torch. In its light, the height of the robed stranger was inhumanly exaggerated.

"But this-this is a gate of the Great Palace!" stammered Rufia.

For answer, the man threw back his hood, revealing a long pale oval of a face, in which burned those strange, luminous eyes.

Rufia screamed and fell to her knees. "King Akhirom!"

"Aye, King Akhirom, O faithless and sinful one!" The hollow voice rolled out like a bell. "Vain and foolish woman, who ignores the command of the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of the World, which is the word of the G.o.ds! Who treads the street in sin, and sets aside the mandates of the Good King! Seize her!"

The following shadows closed in, becoming a squad of Negro mutes. As their fingers seized her flesh, Rufia fainted.

The Ophirean regained consciousness in a windowless chamber whose arched doors were bolted with bars of gold. She stared wildly about for her captor and shrank down to see him standing above her, stroking his pointed, graying beard while his terrible eyes burned into her soul.

"O Lion of Shem!" she gasped, struggling to her knees. "Mercy!"

As she spoke, she knew the futility of the plea. She was crouching before the man whose name was a curse in the mouths of the Pelishtim; who, claiming divine guidance, had ordered all dogs killed, all vines cut down, all grapes and honey dumped into the river; who had banned all wine, beer, and games of chance; who believed that to disobey his most trivial command was the blackest sin conceivable. He roamed the streets at night in disguise to see that his orders were obeyed.

Rufia's flesh crawled as he stared at her with unblinking eyes.

"Blasphemer!" he whispered. "Daughter of evil! O Pteor!" he cried, flinging up his arms. "What punishment shall be devised for this demon?

What agony terrible enough, what degradation vile enough to render justice? The G.o.ds grant me wisdom!"

Rufia rose to her knees and pointed at Akhirom's face. "Why call on the G.o.ds?" she shrieked. "Call on Akhirom! You are a G.o.d!"

He stopped, reeled, and cried out incoherently. Then he straightened and looked down at her. Her face was white, her eyes staring. To her natural acting ability was added the terror of her position.

"What do you see, woman?" he asked.

"A G.o.d has revealed himself to me! In your face, shining like the sun!

I burn, I die in the blaze of thy glory!"

She sank her face in her hands and crouched trembling. Akhirom pa.s.sed a shaking hand over his brow and bald pate.

"Aye," he whispered. "I am a G.o.d! I have guessed it; I have dreamed it.

I alone possess the wisdom of the infinite. Now a mortal has seen it also. I see the truth at last-no mere mouthpiece and servant of the G.o.ds, but the G.o.d of G.o.ds himself! Akhirom is the G.o.d of Pelishtia; of the earth. The false demon Pteor shall be cast down from his place and his statues melted up..."

Bending his gaze downward, he ordered: "Rise, woman, and look upon thy G.o.d!"

She did so, shrinking before his awful gaze. A change clouded Akhirom's eyes as he seemed to see her clearly for the first time.

"Your sin is pardoned," he intoned. "Because you were the first to hail your G.o.d, you shall henceforth serve me in honor and splendor."

She prostrated herself, kissing the carpet before his feet. He clapped his hands. A eunuch entered and bowed.

"Go quickly to the house of Abdashtarth, the high priest of Pteor," he said, looking over the servant's head. "Say to him: This is the word of Akhirom, who is the one true G.o.d of the Pelishtim, and shall soon be the of all the peoples of the earth: that on the morrow shall be the beginning of beginnings. The idols of the false Pteor shall be destroyed, and statues of the true G.o.d shall be erected in their stead.

The true religion shall be proclaimed, and a sacrifice of one hundred of the n.o.blest children of the Pelishtim shall celebrate it...' "

Before the temple of Pteor stood Mattenbaal, the first a.s.sistant to Abdashtarth. The venerable Abdashtarth, his hands tied, stood quietly in the grip of a pair of brawny Anaki soldiers. His long white beard moved as he prayed. Behind him, other soldiers stoked the fire in the base of the huge, bull-headed idol of Pteor, with his obscenely exaggerated male characteristics. In the background towered the great seven-storied zikkurat of Asgalun, from which the priests read the will of the G.o.ds in the stars.

When the brazen sides of the idol glowed with the heat within, Mattenbaal stepped forward, raised a piece of papyrus, and read:

"For that your divine king, Akhirom, is of the seed of Yakin-Ya, who was descended from the G.o.ds when they walked the earth, so is a G.o.d this day among ye! And now I command ye, all loyal Pelishtim, to recognize and bow down to and worship the greatest of all G.o.ds, the G.o.d of G.o.ds, the Creator of the Universe, the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom, the king of G.o.ds, who is Akhirom the son of Azumelek, king of Pelishtia! And inasmuch as the wicked and perverse Abdashtarth, in the hardness of his heart, has rejected this revelation and has refused to bow down before his true G.o.d, let him be cast into the fire of the idol of the false Pteor!"

A soldier tugged open the brazen door in the belly of the statue.

Abdashtarth cried:

"He lies! This king is no G.o.d, but a mortal madman! Slay the blasphemers against the true G.o.d of the Pelishtim, the mighty Pteor, lest the all-wise one turn his back upon his people-"

At this point, four Anakim picked up Abdashtarth as if he had been a log of wood and hurled him feet-first through the opening. His shriek was cut off by the clang of the closing door, through which these same soldiers had, in times past, tossed hundreds of the children of the Pelishtim in times of crisis under the direction of this same Abdashtarth. Smoke poured from the vents in the statue's ears, while a look of smug satisfaction spread over the face of Mattenbaal.

A great shudder rippled across the throng. Then a frenzied yell broke the stillness. A wild-haired figure ran forward, a half-naked shepherd.

With a shriek of "Blasphemer!" he hurled a stone. The missile struck the new high priest in the mouth, breaking his teeth. Mattenbaal staggered, blood streaming down his beard. With a roar, the mob surged forward. High taxes, starvation, tyranny, rapine, and ma.s.sacre-all these the Pelishtim had endured from their mad king, but this tampering with their religion was the last straw. Staid merchants became madmen; cringing beggars turned into hot-eyed fiends.

Stones flew like hail, and louder rose the roar of the mob. Hands were clutching at the garments of the dazed Mattenbaal when the armored Anakim closed in around him, beat the mob back with bowstaves and spear shafts, and hustled the priest away.

With a clanking of weapons and a jingling of bridle chains, a troop of Kus.h.i.te horse, resplendent in headdresses of ostrich feathers and lions' manes and corselets of silvered scales, galloped out of one of the streets leading into the great Square of Pteor. Their white teeth shone in their dark faces. The stones of the mob bounced off their bucklers of rhinoceros hide. They urged their horses into the press, slashing with curved blades and thrusting long lances through the bodies of the Asgalunim. Men rolled howling under the stamping hooves.

The rioters gave way, fleeing wildly into shops and alleys, leaving the square littered with writhing bodies.

The black riders leaped from their saddles and began crashing in the doors of shops and dwellings and heaping their arms with plunder.

Screams of women sounded from within the houses. A crash of latticework, and a white-clad body struck the street with bone-crushing impact. Another horseman, laughing, pa.s.sed his lance through the body as it lay.

The giant Imbalayo, in flaming silk and polished steel, rode roaring among his men, beating them into order with a heavy leaded ship. They mounted and swung into line behind him. In a canter they swept off down the street, gory human heads bobbing on their lances as an object lesson to the maddened Asgalunim who crouched in their coverts, panting with hate.

The breathless eunuch who brought news of the uprising to King Akhirom was swiftly followed by another, who prostrated himself and cried: "O divine king, the general Othbaal is dead! His servants found him murdered in his palace, and beside him the ring of Keluka the Sworder.