Conan the Adaptable, page 65
Amra scowled ferociously, but it somehow seemed forced.
“I didn’t know you had a wife and child,” he said almost defensively.
“The lass is but five years old,” gulped Wakim. “I haven’t seen them in nearly a year. By the gods, what’s to become of them now? A navy captain’s pay is none so great. I’ve never been able to save anything. It was for them I sailed in search of Van Raven and his treasure. I hoped to get a prize that would take care of them if aught happened to me. Kill me!” he cried shrilly, his voice cracking at the highest pitch. “Kill me and be done with it, before I lose my manhood with thinking of them, and beg for my life like a craven dog!”
But Amra stood looking down at him with a frown. Varying expressions crossed his dark face, and suddenly he thrust the portrait back in the Turanian’s hand.
“You’re too poor a creature for me to soil my hands with!” he sneered, and turning on his heel, strode through the inner door.
Wakim stared dully after him, then, still on his knees, began to caress the broken picture, whimpering softly like an animal in pain as if the breaks in the ivory were wounds in his own flesh. Men break suddenly and unexpectedly in the tropics, and Wakim’s collapse was appalling.
He did not look up when the swift stamp of boots announced Amra’s sudden return, without the pirate’s usual stealth. A savage clutch on his shoulder raised him to stare stupidly into the Cimmerian’s convulsed face.
“You’re an infernal dog!” snarled Amra, in a fury that differed strangely from his former murderous hate. He broke into lurid imprecations, cursing Wakim with all the proficiency he had acquired during his years at sea. “I ought to split your skull,” he wound up. “For years I’ve dreamed of it, especially when I was drunk. I’m a cursed fool not to stretch you dead on the floor. I don’t owe you any consideration, blast you! Your wife and daughter don’t mean anything to me. But I’m a fool, like all the Cimmerian, a blasted, chicken-hearted, sentimental fool, and I can’t be the cause of a helpless woman and her colleen starving. Get up and quit sniveling!”
Wakim looked up at him stupidly.
“You – you came back to help me?”
“I might as well stab you as leave you here to starve!” roared the pirate, sheathing his sword. “Get up and stick your skewer back in its scabbard. Who’d have ever thought that a scraun like you would have women-folk like those innocents? Hell’s fire! You ought to be shot! Pick up your sword. You may need it before we get away. But remember, I don’t trust you any further than I can throw a whale by the tail, and I’m keeping your bow. If you try to stab me when I’m not looking I’ll break your head with my cutlass hilt.”
Wakim, like a man in a daze, replaced the painting carefully in his bosom and mechanically picked up his sword and sheathed it. His numbed wits began to thaw out, and he tried to pull himself together.
“What are we to do now?” he asked.
“Shut up!” growled the pirate. “I’m going to save you for the sake of the lady and the lass, but I don’t have to talk to you!” With rare consistency he then continued: “We’ll leave this trap the same way I came and went.
“Listen: four years ago I came here with a hundred men. I’d heard rumors of a ruined city up here, and I thought there might be loot hidden in it. I followed the old road from the beach, and those brown dogs let me and my men get in the ravine before they started butchering us. There must have been five or six hundred of them. They raked us from the walls, and then charged us – some came down the ravine and others jumped down the walls behind us and cut us off. I was the only one who got away, and I managed to cut my way through them, and ran into this bowl. They didn’t follow me in, but stayed outside the Gateway to see that I didn’t get out.
“But I found another way – a slab had fallen away from the wall of a room that was built against the cliff, and a stairway was cut in the rock. I followed it and came out of a sort of trap door up on the cliffs. A slab of rock was over it, but I don’t think the Savages knew anything about it anyway, because they never go up on the cliffs that overhang the basin. They never come in here from the ravine, either. There’s something here they’re afraid of – ghosts, most likely.
“The cliffs slope down into the jungle on the outer sides, and the slopes and the crest are covered with trees and thickets. They had a cordon of men strung around the foot of the slopes, but I got through at night easily enough, made my way to the coast and sailed away with the handful of men I’d left aboard my ship.
“When you captured me the other day, I was going to kill you with my manacles, but you started talking about treasure, and a thought sprang in my mind to steer you into a trap that I might possibly get out of. I remembered this place, and I mixed a lot of truth in with some lies. The Fangs of Satan are no myth; they are a hoard of jewels hidden somewhere on this coast, but this isn’t the place. There’s no plunder about here.
“The Savages have a ring of men strung around this place, as they did before. I can get through, but it isn’t going to be so easy getting you through. You Turanian are like buffaloes when you start through the brush. We’ll start just after dark and try to get through before the moon rises.
“Come on; I’ll show you the stair.”
Wakim followed him through a series of crumbling, vine-tangled chambers, until he halted before a doorway that gaped in the wall that was built against the cliff. A thick slab leaned against the wall which obviously served as a door. The Turanian saw a flight of narrow steps, carved in the solid rock, leading upward through a shaft tunneled in the cliff.
“I meant to block the upper mouth by heaping big rocks on the slab that covers it,” said Amra. “That was when I was going to let you starve. I knew you might find the stair. I doubt if the Savages know anything about it, as they never come in here or go up on the cliffs. But they know a man might be able to get out over the cliffs some way, so they’ve thrown that cordon around the slopes.
“That black man I killed was a different proposition. A slave ship was wrecked off this coast a year ago, and the blacks escaped and took to the jungle. There’s a regular mob of them living somewhere near here. This particular black man wasn’t afraid to come into the ruins. If there are more of his kind out there with the Savages, they may try again tonight. But I believe he was the only one, or he wouldn’t have come alone.”
“Why don’t we go up the cliff now and hide among the trees?” asked Wakim.
“Because we might be seen by the men watching below the slopes, and they’d guess that we were going to make a break tonight, and redouble their vigilance. After awhile I’ll go and get some more food. They won’t see me.”
The men returned to the chamber where Wakim had slept. Amra grew taciturn, and Wakim made no attempt at conversation. They sat in silence while the afternoon dragged by. An hour or so before sundown Amra rose with a curt word, went up the stair and emerged on the cliffs. Among the trees he brought down a monkey with a dextrously-thrown stone, skinned it, and brought it back into the ruins along with a calabash of water from a spring on the hillside. For all his woodscraft he was not aware that he was being watched; he did not see the fierce black face that glared at him from a thicket that stood where the cliffs began to slope down into the jungle below.
Later, when he and Wakim were roasting the meat over a fire built in the ruins, he raised his head and listened intently.
“What do you hear?” asked Wakim.
“A drum,” grunted the Cimmerian.
“I hear it,” said Wakim after a moment. “Nothing unusual about that.”
“It doesn’t sound like a savage drum,” answered Amra. “Sounds more like an African drum.”
Wakim nodded agreement; his ship had lain off the mangrove swamps of the Slave Coast, and he had heard such drums rumbling to one another through the steaming night. There was a subtle difference in the rhythm and timbre that distinguished it from a savage drum.
Evening came on and ripened slowly to dusk. The drum ceased to throb. Back in the low hills, beyond the ring of cliffs, a fire glinted under the dusky trees, casting brown and black faces into sharp relief.
A Savage whose ornaments and bearing marked him as a chief squatted on his hams, his immobile face turned toward the ebony giant who stood facing him. This man was nearly a head taller than any other man there, his proportions overshadowing both the Savages squatting about the fire and the black warriors who stood in a close group behind him. A jaguar-skin mantle was cast carelessly over his brawny shoulders, and copper bracelets ornamented his thickly-muscled arms. There was an ivory ring on his head, and parrot-feathers stood up from his kinky hair. A shield of hard wood and toughened bull-hide was on his left arm, and in his right hand he gripped a great spear whose hammered iron head was as broad as a man’s hand.
“I came swiftly when I heard the drum,” he said gutturally, in the bastardised tongue that served as a common speech for the savages of both colors. “I knew it was N’Onga who called me. N’Onga had gone from my camp to fetch Ajumba, who was lingering with your tribe. N’Onga told me by the drum-talk that a white man was at bay, and Ajumba was dead. I came in haste. Now you tell me that you dare not enter the Old City.”
“I have told you a devil dwells there,” answered the Savage doggedly. “He has chosen the white man for his own. He will be angry if you try to take him away from him. It is death to enter his kingdom.”
The black chief lifted his great spear and shook it defiantly.
“I was a slave to the Turanians long enough to know that the only devil is a white man! I do not fear your devil. In my land his brothers are big as he, and I have slain one with a spear like this. A day and a night have passed since the white man fled into the Old City. Why has not the devil devoured him, or this other who lingers on the cliffs?”
“The devil is not hungry,” muttered the Savage. “He waits until he is hungry. He has eaten recently. When he is hungry again he will take them. I will not go into his lair with my men. You are a stranger in this country. You do not understand these things.”
“I understand that Bigomba who was a king in his own country fears nothing, neither man nor demon,” retorted the black giant. “You tell me that Ajumba went into the Old City by night, and died. I have seen his body. The devil did not slay him. One of the white men stabbed him. If Ajumba could go into the Old City and not be seized by the devil, then I and my thirty men can go. I know how the big white man comes and goes between the cliffs and the ruins. There is a hole in the rock with a slab for a door over it. N’Onga watched from the bushes high up on the slopes and saw him come forth and later return through it. I have placed men there to watch it. If the white men come again through that hole, my warriors will spear them. If they do not come, we will go in as soon as the moon rises. Your men hold the ravine, and they can not flee that way. We will hunt them like rats through the crumbling houses.”
IV
“Easy now,” muttered Amra. “It’s dark in this shaft.”
Dusk had deepened into early darkness. The white men were groping their way up the steps cut in the rock. Looking back and down Wakim made out the lower mouth of the shaft only as a slightly lighter blur in the blackness. They climbed on, feeling their way, and presently Amra halted with a muttered warning. Wakim, groping, touched his thigh and felt the muscles tensing upon it. He knew that Amra had placed his shoulders under the slab that closed the upper entrance, and was heaving it up. He saw a crack appear suddenly in the blackness above him, limning the Cimmerian’s bent head and foreshortened figure.
The stone came clear and starlight gleamed through the aperture, laced by the overhanging branches of the trees. Amra let the slab fall on the stone rim, and started to climb out of the shaft. He had emerged head, shoulders and hips when without warning a black form loomed against the stars and a gleam of steel hissed downward at his breast.
Amra threw up his cutlass and the spear rang against it, staggering him on the steps with the impact. Snatching a bow from his belt with his left hand he fired point-blank and the black man groaned and fell, head and arms dangling in the opening. He struck the pirate as he fell, destroying Amra’s already precarious balance. He toppled backward down the steps, carrying Wakim with him. A dozen steps down they brought up in a sprawling heap, and staring upward, saw the square well above them fringed with indistinct black blobs they knew were heads outlined against the stars.
“I thought you said the Savages never –” panted Wakim.
“They’re not Savages,” growled Amra, rising. “They’re negroes. Cimarroons! The same dogs who escaped from the slave ship. That drum we heard was one of them calling the others. Look out!”
Spears came whirring down the shaft, splintering on the steps, glancing from the walls. The white men hurled themselves recklessly down the steps at the risk of broken limbs. They tumbled through the lower doorway and Amra slammed the heavy slab in place.
“They’ll be coming down it next,” he snarled. “We’ve got to heap enough rocks against it to hold it – no, wait a minute! If they’ve got the guts to come at all, they’ll come by the ravine if they can’t get in this way, or on ropes hung from the cliffs. This place is easy enough to get into – not so damned easy to get out of. We’ll leave the shaft open. If they come this way we can get them in a bunch as they try to come out.”
He pulled the slab aside, standing carefully away from the door.
“Suppose they come from the ravine and this way, too?”
“They probably will,” growled Amra, “but maybe they’ll come this way first, and maybe if they come down in a bunch we can kill them all. There may not be more than a dozen of them. They’ll never persuade the Savages to follow them in.”
He set about reloading the bow he had fired, with quick, sure hands in the dark. It consumed the last grain of powder in the flask. The white men lurked like phantoms of murder about the doorway of the stair, waiting to strike suddenly and deadlily. Time dragged. No sound came from above. Wakim’s imagination was at work again, picturing an invasion from the ravine, and dusky figures gliding about them, surrounding the chamber. He spoke of this and Amra shook his head.
“When they come I’ll hear them; nothing on two legs can get in here without my knowing it.”
Suddenly Wakim was aware of a dim glow pervading the ruins. The moon was rising above the cliffs. Amra swore.
“No chance of our getting away tonight. Maybe those black dogs were waiting for the moon to come up. Go into the chamber where you slept and watch the ravine. If you see them sneaking in that way, let me know. I can take care of any that come down the stair.”
Wakim felt his flesh crawl as he made his way through those dim chambers. The moonlight glinted down through vines tangled across the broken roofs, and shadows lay thick across his path. He reached the chamber where he had slept, and where the coals of their fire still glowed dully. He started across toward the outer door when a soft sound brought him whirling around. A cry was wrenched from his throat.
Out of the darkness of a corner rose a swaying shape; a great wedge-shaped head and an arched neck were outlined against the moonlight. In one brain-staggering instant the mystery of the ruins became clear to him; he knew what had watched him with lidless eyes as he lay sleeping, and what had glided away from his door as he awoke – he knew why the Savages would not come into the ruins or mount the cliffs above them. He was face to face with the devil of the deserted city, hungry at last – and that devil was a giant anaconda!
In that moment Wakim experienced such fear and loathing horror as ordinarily come to men only in foul nightmares. He could not run, and after that first scream his tongue seemed frozen to his palate. Only when the hideous head darted toward him did he break free from the paralysis that engulfed him and then it was too late.
He struck at it wildly and futilely, and in an instant it had him – lapped and wrapped about with coils which were like huge cables of cold, pliant steel. He shrieked again, fighting madly against the crushing constriction – he heard the rush of Amra’s boots – then the pirate’s bow crashed together and he heard plainly the thud of the arrows into the great snake’s body. It jerked convulsively and whipped from about him, hurling him sprawling to the floor, and then it came at Amra like the rush of a hurricane through the grass, its forked tongue licking in and out in the moonlight, and the noise of its hissing filling the chamber.
Amra avoided the battering-ram stroke of the blunt nose with a sidewise spring that would have shamed a starving jaguar, and his cutlass was a sheen in the moonlight as it hewed deep into the mighty neck. Blood spurted and the great reptile rolled and knotted, sweeping the floor and dislodging stones from the wall with its thrashing tail. Amra leaped high, clearing it as it lashed but Wakim, just climbing to his feet, was struck and knocked sprawling into a corner. Amra was springing in again, cutlass lifted, when the monster rolled aside and fled through the inner door, with a loud rushing sound through the thick vegetation.
Amra was after it, his berserk fury fully roused. He did not wish the wounded reptile to crawl away and hide, perhaps to return later and take them by surprise. Through chamber after chamber the chase led, in a direction neither of the men had followed in his former explorations, and at last into a room almost choked by tangled vines. Tearing these aside Amra stared into a black aperture in the wall, just in time to see the monster vanishing into its depths. Wakim, trembling in every limb, had followed, and now looked over the pirate’s shoulder. A reptilian reek came from the aperture, which they now saw as an arched doorway, partly masked by thick vines. Enough moonlight found its way through the roof to reveal a glimpse of stone steps leading up into darkness.
“I missed this,” muttered Amra. “When I found the stair I didn’t look any further for an exit. Look how the door-sill glistens with scales that have been rubbed off that brute’s belly. He uses it often. I believe those steps lead to a tunnel that goes clear through the cliffs. There’s nothing in this bowl that even a snake could eat or drink. He has to go out into the jungle to get water and food. If he was in the habit of going out by the way of the ravine, there’d be a path worn away through the vegetation, like there is in this room. Besides, the Savages wouldn’t stay in the ravine. Unless there’s some other exit we haven’t found, I believe that he comes and goes this way, and that means it lets into the outer world. It’s worth trying, anyway.”
