Conan the Barbarian (7 page)

Galvanized into action by that familiar sound, Conan’s terror melted like the snow in spring. He brought the sword down with a chopping blow that lopped off the clutching bony claw. He swivelled to the side and, in the sputtering light, searched vainly for the stairs down which he had come. Relentlessly, the helmeted skull strode forward. With swift, powerful strokes Conan defended himself. At last he found the narrow stairs, and backing up a single step, he drove his weapon through the rusted armour, through the bare rib cage, into the area where a living heart would beat.

With a sigh like sedge blown by an autumn wind, the walking skeleton paused in mid-step. The giant form reeled, took two tottering steps towards the throne, and collapsed into a heap of bones and dust. The helmet rang like a cracked bell when it struck the stone flooring. Then the torch flickered and went out.

For a moment, the Cimmerian stood staring into the darkness, unable to comprehend that his supernatural adversary was truly dead and that the great sword was his. Then he turned and, holding his weapon at the ready, mounted the stairs.

At last Conan emerged into the moonlight to find the wolves still waiting for him. Howling, they bounded toward him, tongues lolling from their fanged jaws. With a tight smile, he took his stance on the ledge and raised the long blade over his head. As the first beast hurled itself toward him, Conan pivoted, sweeping his sword in a horizontal arc. Caught in mid-leap, the wolf was tossed high in the air and fell, yelping, to its death on the boulders.

Before the Cimmerian could lift his sword arm to deliver another slashing blow, a second wolf sprang at him, its jaws agape. In the white light of the moon, he drove the point of his blade between the open jaws, seating it deep in the animal’s gullet. The wolf’s legs scrambled frantically on the rounded surface of a boulder as it tried in vain to tear itself loose from the impaling blade.

At that instant, a third wolf dove at Conan from the side, snapping at his legs. Still encumbered by the spitted animal, Conan kicked out, in time to catch the new attacker on its nose. The beast drew back with a yelp, then made another dive; but Conan, having freed his sword, dealt the attacker a blow that laid open its skull.

With three of their number down, the remaining wolves drew back. Whining, they trotted off, tails low, and disappeared into the low-lying mists.

Conan spent the night, a long and wearisome time, hidden among the boulders on the upland, alert to the twin dangers of further attacks by hungering beasts or by walking dead men from the nearby cave. In the grey dawn, he skinned the three dead wolves and, tying the skins together, made a crude mantle for protection against the cold. Some of the flesh he roasted over a small fire and ate with ravenous enjoyment; some he wrapped in the skin of a wolf’s leg to assuage his hunger during the journey southward.

The sword Conan slung on his back, thrust through the dead soldier’s belt and secured there by a string of animal sinews. Thus outfitted and provisioned, he clambered down the rock pile and, sighting on a pallid sun, headed south.

Three days later, the level tundra had given way to a vista of gently rolling hills crowned with scrub timber. The ground beneath his feet had grown soft from the melting of the lingering snows, and clear water ran in rills from tunnels in the thawing drifts. In the distance, a lazy pillar of smoke wavered upward to meet the high overcast.

Conan headed for the place whence the smoke ascended; and, coming to a clearing, found a stone-walled, sod-roofed dwelling dug into the side of a hill. Curiously carved wooden poles jutted from the earth at crazy angles about the hut, like a flimsy palisade. Several standing stones had been rudely chipped into the semblance of human heads, grimacing or shouting into the uncaring wind. His primitive instincts attuned to the supernatural, Conan could almost feel the emanations of evil power arising from these cryptic sticks and stones.

The door of the hut stood ajar, and the barbarian approached it, moving with the feline caution of a stalking leopard. Suddenly he stopped, rigid with amazement; for, tethered by a chain to a heavy stone post, he saw a crouching figure, wrapped in ragged furs. It was a man, squat, bow-legged, and half naked, who with the eyes of an injured animal regarded the newcomer. Voiceless and unmoving as the stone against which he huddled, the short man stared at the young Cimmerian from slitted, ebon eyes.

Suddenly, a voice, as clear as a cowbell in the gloaming, jolted Conan from his curious contemplation.

“There is warmth in fire.” The voice was soft and inviting.

Conan raised his eyes to see a woman’s figure silhouetted against the firelight from her hearth. Her curvaceous body, pressed against the portal of her home, radiated a sinister but inviting mystery; her languid, smiling eyes ran down the strong body of the Cimmerian youth, exuding an eroticism as strong as a caress.

“Do you not wish to warm yourself by my fire?” Her lace, framed by her long black hair, was past the bloom of youth, but there was a compelling beauty in it that was as old as time.

Conan, restrained by his premonition of evil, hesitated for a heartbeat, while the woman, with a secret smile, turned from the doorway to stoke her fire of tamarisk chips. Drawn by her easy manner and the glow of her oval face in the firelight, Conan ducked under the low lintel and entered the hut.

The fire leaped up, and by its roseate glow, Conan studied the room. The stone walls were enhanced by hangings of animal hides; the floor was covered by skins of luxuriant softness but of beasts unfamiliar to the Cimmerian. Strange skulls were suspended from the twin posts that supported the sod roof—bears with great teeth, sabre-fanged cats, and one horned beasts of indescribable immensity.

Before the fire the woman spread a low table with a wooden platter of barley bread and goat cheese, a bowl of dried fruit, and a mug of fresh milk. Then she beckoned to him, and gratefully he settled down to enjoy the repast. Sated, he looked up to find the woman leaning against the nearer centre post, studying him. An expression of amusement curled her full-lipped mouth.

“From the north, that is whence you come,” she said in her throaty voice.

Suddenly aware that the woman has been staring at him, Conan looked down, uneasy. His hand dropped to the sword now lying by his side.

“I am a Cimmerian,” he said.

The woman, noting the youth’s ardent glance and evident embarrassment, laughed harshly. “You are a slave! Do you not think that I can see a slave by his eyes? Barbarian slave!”

There was an uneasy silence. Then, with a sinuous movement, the woman tossed back her long hair and prowled about the room with unsettling, erotic grace. Something about her shadow, not quite where it should be, disturbed the barbarian youth.

“Where do you go, Cimmerian?” she demanded.

Conan shrugged. “To the south.”

“Why?” she persisted, smiling, a touch of cruelty in her expression.

Conan threw her a brief glance. “They say it is warmer there, and they ask few questions of strangers. Besides, there is gold to be earned by a man who can use a sword.”

The woman bent over the fire and threw a powder into the hot coals. Suddenly the flames roared up, then fell away. She studied the surge of flame, her lips curling, then said:

“Gold, women, thievery—that’s civilization! What would a savage like you know of civilized life? But it matters not. In a short time your spine will be nailed to a tree.”

The woman poured the barbarian a cup of wine, then stood staring at him with rising sexual interest. Under her soft robe, her voluptuous breasts rose and fell, as her breathing quickened. A strange light shone in the depths of her dark eyes, and the firelight glistened on her firm, oiled limbs as she rubbed her hands against her thighs with rising excitement.

Acutely aware of the woman’s desires, Conan looked into his wine cup. The surface of the liquid gleamed like polished silver. Then, as Conan drank deeply of the dark wine, his manhood responded to the lust she radiated. Still, he distrusted her. He could not have told why, save that there were strange things about her and about the place in which she lived. He noted the smile, which suddenly became a frozen mask, drained of all entrancing warmth. And the eyes, which lost, for a moment only, all humanity.

“They said you would come.. She spoke in a sibilant whisper, while her eyes, phosphorescent in the firelight, were fixed upon him. “From the north, they said.. a man of great strength. A conqueror, a humbler of kings, who would one day seize a throne for himself and hold it against the red tides of war and treachery. One who would crush the serpents of the earth beneath his sandalled feet...

“Serpents? Did you say serpents?” Conan’s voice was razor-sharp, and his glance was keen upon her.

She returned look for look. “What seek you in the south, barbarian? Speak truth, now.”

“A standard... on a shield, perhaps, or on a banner. There are two serpents, face to face; yet they are one, joined at the tail.” He clenched his fists, remembering.

“Upholding a black sun, with ebon rays,” the woman added, nodding.

“You know whereof I speak?” Conan moved forward, grasping the woman by her upper arms. She slid out of his grasp, her shadow not quite keeping up with her.

“I know. But there is a price, barbarian.”

“Name it,” growled the Cimmerian.

A smile curved her full lips as, arms spread wide, she moved towards him. Conan’s blood surged within him as he took her into the circle of his arms and felt her breasts and thighs pressed against him. She fumbled in her excitement to loosen her garments and his; and, all thoughts of resistance vanquished, he gave himself over to the ecstasy of her passion.

Their naked bodies glistened in the firelight, as she writhed against him, her breath hot with desire; Conan responded in an impassioned blend of need and pain. All thought vanished in the intensity of his emotion. He felt her fingers clawing at his back and stroking his unruly hair, but his passion absorbed him utterly. As he neared his climax, a faint moan sounded in the woman’s throat. She whispered a message, no less ferocious than her love-making.

“In Shadizar of Zamora, the crossroads of the world, you will find that which you seek. But you would be a fool to go.... Only fools seek their own death....”

Then, convulsed in a violent orgasm, she took her ultimate pleasure of him, and he of her.

Something, he did not know what, caused him to open his eyes a heartbeat later. A revulsion of horror replaced the passion of the earlier moment.

“Crom!” he breathed.

For, even as he watched the woman in his arms, her white teeth lengthened into fangs, like those of a wolf. Her lips and nipples turned an iridescent blue, and the fingers that clutched his shoulders became flesh-searing claws, like the talons of some monstrous, predatory bird. A dark smoke rose in serpentine wisps from nostrils set in a burgeoning snout, and the tongue that darted out was the forked tongue of a serpent.

Conan, still locked in an embrace of love, found himself enveloped in the unrelenting arms of death. He struggled to free himself from the hideous thing that wound limbs of iron about him, like the coils of a giant snake. And when her eyelids lifted, he found himself confronting the slit-pupiled orbs of no earthly woman. All his strength, he realized, could not free him from the fate that awaited him.

Then he remembered his training in the Pit and the wrestling tricks Uldin had taught him. While the demon-woman clutched him closer, Conan ceased to struggle. Suddenly, he twisted and rolled with her toward the fire, thrusting her scaled, inhuman back against the burning coals. Her long locks, which seemed to have developed a serpentine life of their own, hissed as they burst into flame.

Shrieking, the monster strove to rise from the dancing flames; then it shrank and blackened while jets of coloured lire exploded into whirling sparks. From the incinerated body, a weightless fireball arose and spun around the chamber, shedding a momentary radiance on the hanging hides and skulls of animals. The door burst open, as if from the pressure of an unseen hand, and the fireball careened out into the darkness. A dwindling spark, like a shooting star, quickly vanished into the distance. With it a lingering cry of agony faded into nothingness.

Bathed in cold sweat and weak from the release of tension, the young Cimmerian sank to his knees and began groping for his clothing.

“Crom!” he exclaimed, and followed the word with a curse.

The stench of burning flesh was swept from the room by the night wind that poured in through the open door. The hearth fire sank to a bed of smouldering coals.

As Conan went to close the door against the chill wind and the evil things that infest the dark hours, his eye fell upon the huddled being whose alert gaze reflected the red glow of the fire. Enscorcelled by the witch-woman, Conan had completely forgotten the miserable creature, who now regarded him inscrutably.

“Food!” the prisoner croaked. “I starve, barbarian! I've had no food for days.”

“Who says you’ll have some now?” scowled Conan. "What are you doing here?”

“I’m dinner for the wolves, pets of the witch-woman. She put a spell on me and bound me here. Just leave me food, so I may have the strength, when the wolves come, to die fighting like a man.”

“Who are you?” rumbled Conan.

The small man rose and faced Conan with a dignity that belied his misery and his rags. “I am Subotai, a Hyrkanian of the Kerlait tribe. In happier days, an archer, an assassin, and a thief.”

Conan studied the Hyrkanian. He was small and as lean as a ferret. His set of head and shoulders reflected stealth and cunning, hard-bitten courage, and an honesty that Conan found to his liking. Here, he thought, is a man who might throw a lie in your face but would never stab you in the back.

As beady black eyes watched hopefully, Conan searched the hut, located the keys and, by the light of the rising moon, unlocked the shackles. The little man grinned crookedly as he staggered toward the open door, rubbing his unshackled limbs.