The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1 (24 page)

We went careening through the streets and purty soon the driver said: “Say, are you an escaped criminal? There’s a car followin’ us.”

“You drive,” I yelled. “I don’t care if they’s a thousand cars follerin’ us. Likely it’s a Chinaman with a pink Pomeranian he wants to sell me for a white bull dog.”

The driver stepped on it and when we pulled up in front of the innocent looking building which was Steinmann’s secret arena, we’d left the mysterious pursuer clean outa sight. I jumped out and raced down a short flight of stairs which led from the street down to a side entrance, clearing my decks for action by shedding my bathrobe as I went. The door was shut and a burly black-jowled thug was lounging outside. His eyes narrowed with surprise as he noted my costume, but he bulged in front of me and growled: “Wait a minute, you. Where do you think you’re goin’?”

“In!” I gritted, ripping a terrible right to his unshaven jaw.

Over his prostrate carcass I launched myself bodily against the door, being in too much of a hurry to stop and see if it was unlocked. It crashed in and through its ruins I catapulted into the room.

It was a big basement. A crowd of men–the scrapings of the waterfront–was ganged about a deep pit sunk in the concrete floor from which come a low, terrible, worrying sound like dogs growling through a mask of torn flesh and bloody hair–like fighting dogs growl when they have their fangs sunk deep.

The fat Dutchman which owned the dive was just inside the door and he whirled and went white as I crashed through. He threw up his hands and screamed, just as I caught him with a clout that smashed his nose and knocked six front teeth down his throat. Somebody yelled: “Look out, boys! Here comes Costigan! He’s on the kill!”

The crowd yelled and scattered like chaff before a high wind as I come ploughing through ’em like a typhoon, slugging right and left and dropping a man at each blow. I was so crazy mad I didn’t care if I killed all of ’em. In a instant the brink of the pit was deserted as the crowd stormed through the exits, and I jumped down into the pit. Two dogs was there, a white one and a big brindle one, though they was both so bloody you couldn’t hardly tell their original color. Both had been savagely punished, but Mike’s jaws had locked in the deathhold on Terror’s throat and the brindle dog’s eyes was glazing.

Joe Ritchie was down on his knees working hard over them and his face was the color of paste. They’s only two ways you can break a bull dog’s death-grip; one is by deluging him with water till he’s half drowned and opens his mouth to breathe. The other’n is by choking him off. Ritchie was trying that, but Mike had such a bull’s neck, Joe was only hurting his fingers.

“For gosh sake, Costigan,” he gasped. “Get this white devil off. He’s killin’ Terror.”

“Sure I will,” I grunted, stooping over the dogs. “Not for your sake, but for the sake of a good game dog.” And I slapped Mike on the back and said: “Belay there, Mike; haul in your grapplin’ irons.”

Mike let go and grinned up at me with his bloody mouth, wagging his stump of a tail like all get-out and pricking up one ear. Terror had clawed the other’n to rags. Ritchie picked up the brindle bull and clumb outa the pit and I follered him with Mike.

“You take that dog to where he can get medical attention and you do it pronto,” I growled. “He’s a better man than you, any day in the week, and more fittin’ to live. Get outa my sight.”

He slunk off and Steinmann come to on the floor and seen me and crawled to the door on his all-fours before he dast to get up and run, bleeding like a stuck hawg. I was looking over Mike’s cuts and gashes, when I realized that a man was standing nearby, watching me.

I wheeled. It was Philip D’Arcy, with a blue bruise on his jaw where I’d socked him, and his right hand inside his coat.

“D’Arcy,” I said, walking up to him. “I reckon I done made a mess of things. I just ain’t got no sense when I lose my temper, and I honestly thought you’d stole Mike. I ain’t much on fancy words and apologizin’ won’t do no good. But I always try to do what seems right in my blunderin’ blame-fool way, and if you wanta, you can knock my head off and I won’t raise a hand ag’in’ you.” And I stuck out my jaw for him to sock.

He took his hand outa his coat and in it was a cocked six-shooter.

“Costigan,” he said, “no man ever struck me before and got away with it. I came to Larnigan’s Arena tonight to kill you. I was waiting for you outside and when I saw you run out of the place and jump into a taxi, I followed you to do the job wherever I caught up with you. But I like you. You’re a square-shooter. And a man who thinks as much of his dog as you do is my idea of the right sort. I’m putting this gun back where it belongs–and I’m willing to shake hands and call it quits, if you are.”

“More’n willin’,” I said heartily. “You’re a real gent.” And we shook. Then all at once he started laughing.

“I saw your poster,” he said. “When I passed by, an Indian babu was translating it to a crowd of natives and he was certainly making a weird mess of it. The best he got out of it was that Steve Costigan was buying dogs at fifty dollars apiece. You’ll be hounded by canine peddlers as long as you’re in port.”

“The
Sea Girl
’s due tomorrer, thank gosh,” I replied. “But right now I got to sew up some cuts on Mike.”

“My car’s outside,” said D’Arcy. “Let’s take him up to my rooms. I’ve had quite a bit of practice at such things and we’ll fix him up ship-shape.”

“It’s a dirty deal he’s had,” I growled. “And when I catch Johnnie Blinn I’m goin’ kick his ears off. But,” I added, swelling out my chest seven or eight inches, “I don’t reckon I’ll have to lick no more saps for sayin’ that Ritchie’s Terror is the champeen of all fightin’ dogs in the Asiatics. Mike and me is the fightin’est pair of scrappers in the world.”

The Grey God Passes

A voice echoed among the bleak reaches of the mountains that reared up gauntly on either hand. At the mouth of the defile that opened on a colossal crag, Conn the thrall wheeled, snarling like a wolf at bay. He was tall and massively, yet rangily, built, the fierceness of the wild dominant in his broad, sloping shoulders, his huge hairy chest and long, heavily muscled arms. His features were in keeping with his bodily aspect–a strong, stubborn jaw, low slanting forehead topped by a shock of tousled tawny hair which added to the wildness of his appearance no more than did his cold blue eyes. His only garment was a scanty loin-cloth. His own wolfish ruggedness was protection enough against the elements–for he was a slave in an age when even the masters lived lives as hard as the iron environments which bred them.

Now Conn half crouched, sword ready, a bestial snarl of menace humming in his bull-throat, and from the defile there came a tall man, wrapped in a cloak beneath which the thrall glimpsed a sheen of mail. The stranger wore a slouch hat pulled so low that from his shadowed features only one eye gleamed, cold and grim as the grey sea.

“Well, Conn, thrall of Wolfgar Snorri’s son,” said the stranger in a deep, powerful voice, “whither do you flee, with your master’s blood on your hands?”

“I know you not,” growled Conn, “nor how you know me. If you would take me, whistle up your dogs and make an end. Some of them will taste steel ere I die.”

“Fool!” There was deep scorn in the reverberant tone. “I am no hunter of runaway serfs. There are wilder matters abroad. What do you smell in the sea-wind?”

Conn turned toward the sea, lapping greyly at the cliffs far below. He expanded his mighty chest, his nostrils flaring as he breathed deeply.

“I smell the tang of the salt-spume,” he answered.

The stranger’s voice was like the rasp of swords. “The scent of blood is on the wind–the musk of slaughter and the shouts of the slaying.”

Conn shook his head, bewildered. “It is only the wind among the crags.”

“There is war in your homeland,” said the stranger sombrely. “The spears of the South have risen against the swords of the North and the death-fires are lighting the land like the mid-day sun.”

“How can you know this?” asked the thrall uneasily. “No ship has put in to Torka for weeks. Who are you? Whence come you? How know you these things?”

“Can you not hear the skirl of the pipes, the clashing of the axes?” replied the tall stranger. “Can you not smell the war-reek the wind brings?”

“Not I,” answered Conn. “It is many a long league from Torka to Erin, and I hear only the wind among the crags and the gulls screeching over the headlands. Yet if there is war, I should be among the weapon-men of my clan, though my life is forfeit to Melaghlin because I slew a man of his in a quarrel.”

The stranger gave no heed, standing like a statue as he gazed far out across the reaches of hazy barren mountains and misty waves.

“It is the death-grip,” he said, like one who speaks to himself. “Now comes the reaping of kings, the garnering of chiefs like a harvest. Gigantic shadows stalk red-handed across the world, and night is falling on Asgaard. I hear the cries of long-dead heroes whistling in the void, and the shouts of forgotten gods. To each being there is an appointed time, and even the gods must die…”

He stiffened suddenly with a great shout, flinging his arms seaward. Tall, rolling clouds, sailing gigantically before the gale, veiled the sea. Out of the mist came a great wind and out of the wind a whirling mass of clouds. And Conn cried out. From out the flying clouds, shadowy and horrific, swept twelve shapes. He saw, as in a nightmare, the twelve winged horses and their riders, women in flaming silver mail and winged helmets, whose golden hair floated out on the wind behind them, and whose cold eyes were fixed on some awesome goal beyond his ken.

“The Choosers of the Slain!”
thundered the stranger, flinging his arms wide in a terrible gesture. “They ride in the twilight of the North! The winged hooves spurn the rolling clouds, the web of Fate is spun, the Loom and Spindle broken! Doom roars upon the gods and night falls on Asgaard! Night and the trumpets of Ragnarok!”

The cloak was blown wide in the wind, revealing the mighty, mail-clad figure; the slouch hat fell aside; the wild elf-locks blew free. And Conn shrank before the blaze of the stranger’s eye. And he saw that where the other eye should have been, was but an empty socket. Thereat panic seized him, so that he turned and ran down the defile as a man flees demons. And a fearsome backward glance showed him the stranger etched against the cloud-torn sky, cloak blowing in the wind, arms flung high, and it seemed to the thrall that the man had grown monstrously in stature, that he loomed colossal among the clouds, dwarfing the mountains and the sea, and that he was suddenly grey, as with vast age.

II

Oh Masters of the North, we come with tally of remembered dead,

Of broken hearth and blazing home, and rafters crashing overhead.

A single cast of dice we throw to balance, by the leaden sea,

A hundred years of wrong and woe with one red hour of butchery.

The spring gale had blown itself out. The sky smiled blue overhead and the sea lay placid as a pool, with only a few scattered bits of driftwood along the beaches to give mute evidence of her treachery. Along the strand rode a lone horseman, his saffron cloak whipping out behind him, his yellow hair blowing about his face in the breeze.

Suddenly he reined up so short that his spirited steed reared and snorted. From among the sand dunes had risen a man, tall and powerful, of wild, shock-headed aspect, and naked but for a loin-cloth.

“Who are you,” demanded the horseman, “who bear the sword of a chief, yet have the appearance of a masterless man, and wear the collar of a serf withal?”

“I am Conn, young master,” answered the wanderer, “once an outlaw, once a thrall,–always a man of King Brian’s, whether he will or no. And I know you. You are Dunlang O’Hartigan, friend of Murrogh, son of Brian, prince of Dal Cais. Tell me, good sir, is there war in the land?”

“Sooth to say,” answered the young chief, “even now King Brian and King Malachi lie encamped at Kilmainham, before Dublin. I have but ridden from the camp this morning. From all the lands of the Vikings King Sitric of Dublin has summoned the slayers, and Gaels and Danes are ready to join battle–and such a battle as Erin has never seen before.”

Conn’s eyes clouded. “By Crom!” he muttered, half to himself, “it is even as the Grey Man said–yet how could he have known? Surely it was all a dream.”

“How come you here?” asked Dunlang.

“From Torka in the Orkneys in an open boat, flung down as a chip is thrown upon the tide. Of yore I slew a man of Meath, kern of Melaghlin, and King Brian’s heart was hot against me because of the broken truce; so I fled. Well, the life of an outlaw is hard. Thorwald Raven, Jarl of the Hebrides, took me when I was weak from hunger and wounds, and put this collar on my neck.” The kern touched the heavy copper ring encircling his bull-neck. “Then he sold me to Wolfgar Snorri’s son on Torka. He was a hard master. I did the work of three men, and stood at his back and mowed down carles like wheat when he brawled with his neighbors. In return he gave me crusts from his board, a bare earth floor to sleep on, and deep scars on my back. Finally I could bear it no more, and I leaped upon him in his own skalli and crushed his skull with a log of firewood. Then I took his sword and fled to the mountains, preferring to freeze or starve there rather than die under the lash.

“There in the mountains,”–again Conn’s eyes clouded with doubt–” I think I dreamed,” he said, “I saw a tall grey man who spoke of war in Erin, and in my dream I saw Valkyries riding southward on the clouds…

“Better to die at sea on a good venture than to starve in the Orkney mountains,” he continued with more assurance, his feet on firm ground. “By chance I found a fisherman’s boat, with a store of food and water, and I put to sea. By Crom! I wonder to find myself still alive! The gale took me in her fangs last night, and I know only that I fought the sea in the boat until the boat sank under my feet, and then fought her in her naked waves until my senses went from me. None could have been more surprised than I when I came to myself this dawn lying like a piece of driftwood on the beach. I have lain in the sun since, trying to warm the cold tang of the sea out of my bones.”

“By the saints, Conn,” said Dunlang, “I like your spirit.”

“I hope King Brian likes it as well,” grunted the kern.

“Attach yourself to my train,” answered Dunlang. “I’ll speak for you. King Brian has weightier matters on his mind than a single blood-feud. This very day the opposing hosts lie drawn up for the death-grip.”

“Will the spear-shattering fall on the morrow?” asked Conn.

“Not by King Brian’s will,” answered Dunlang. “He is loath to shed blood on Good Friday. But who knows when the heathen will come down upon us?”

Conn laid a hand on Dunlang’s stirrup-leather and strode beside him as the steed moved leisurely along.

“There is a notable gathering of weapon-men?”

“More than twenty thousand warriors on each side; the bay of Dublin is dark with the dragon-ships. From the Orkneys comes Jarl Sigurd with his raven banner. From Man comes the Viking Brodir with twenty longships. From the Danelagh in England comes Prince Amlaff, son of the King of Norway, with two thousand men. From all lands the hosts have gathered–from the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Hebrides–from Scotland, England, Germany, and the lands of Scandinavia. “Our spies say Sigurd and Brodir have a thousand men armed in steel mail from crown to heel, who fight in a solid wedge. The Dalcassians may be hard put to break that iron wall. Yet, God willing, we shall prevail. Then among the other chiefs and warriors there are Anrad the berserk, Hrafn the Red, Platt of Danemark, Thorstein and his comrade-in-arms Asmund, Thorleif Hordi, the Strong, Athelstane the Saxon, and Thorwald Raven, Jarl of the Hebrides.”

At that name Conn grinned savagely and fingered his copper collar. “It is a great gathering if both Sigurd and Brodir come.”

“That was the doing of Gormlaith,” responded Dunlang.

“Word had come to the Orkneys that Brian had divorced Kormlada,” said Conn, unconsciously giving the queen her Norse name.

“Aye–and her heart is black with hate against him. Strange it is that a woman so fair of form and countenance should have the soul of a demon.”

“God’s truth, my lord. And what of her brother, Prince Mailmora?”

“Who but he is the instigator of the whole war?” cried Dunlang angrily. “The hate between him and Murrogh, so long smoldering, has at last burst into flame, firing both kingdoms. Both were in the wrong–Murrogh perhaps more than Mailmora. Gormlaith goaded her brother on. I did not believe King Brian acted wisely when he gave honors to those against whom he had warred. It was not well he married Gormlaith and gave his daughter to Gormlaith’s son, Sitric of Dublin. With Gormlaith he took the seeds of strife and hatred into his palace. She is a wanton; once she was the wife of Amlaff Cauran, the Dane; then she was wife to King Malachi of Meath, and he put her aside because of her wickedness.”

“What of Melaghlin?” asked Conn.

“He seems to have forgotten the struggle in which Brian wrested Erin’s crown from him. Together the two kings move against the Danes and Mailmora.”

As they conversed, they passed along the bare shore until they came into a rough broken stretch of cliffs and boulders; and there they halted suddenly. On a boulder sat a girl, clad in a shimmering green garment whose pattern was so much like scales that for a bewildered instant Conn thought himself gazing on a mermaid come out of the deeps.

“Eevin!” Dunlang swung down from his horse, tossing the reins to Conn, and advanced to take her slender hands in his. “You sent for me and I have come–you’ve been weeping!”

Conn, holding the steed, felt an impulse to retire, prompted by superstitious qualms. Eevin, with her slender form, her wealth of shimmering golden hair, and her deep mysterious eyes, was not like any other girl he had ever seen. Her entire aspect was different from the women of the Norse-folk and of the Gaels alike, and Conn knew her to be a member of that fading mystic race which had occupied the land before the coming of his ancestors, some of whom still dwelt in caverns along the sea and deep in unfrequented forests–the De Danaans, sorcerers, the Irish said, and kin to the faeries.