Conan the Adaptable, page 70
A bent figure in the door of the storeroom wheeled erect, to face him. For an instant they both stood frozen. Conan saw a man confronting him like an image of the primordial—naked, gaunt, with a great matted tangle of hair and beard, from which the eyes blazed weirdly. It might have been a caveman out of the dawn centuries who stood there, a stone gripped in each brawny hand. But the high, broad forehead, half hidden under the thatch of hair, was not the slanting brow of a savage. Nor was the face, almost covered though it was by the tangled beard.
“Ivan!” ejaculated Conan aghast, and the explanation of the mystery rushed upon him, with all its sickening implications. Al Wazir was a madman.
As if goaded by the sound of his voice, the naked man started violently, cried out incoherently, and hurled the rock in his right hand. Conan dodged and it shattered on the wall behind him with an impact that warned him of the unnatural power lurking in the maniac’s thews. Al Wazir was taller than Conan, with a magnificent, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped torso, ridged with muscles. Conan half turned and set his bow against the wall, and as he did so, Al Wazir hurled the rock in his left hand, awkwardly, and followed it across the cave with a bound, shrieking frightfully, foam flying from his lips.
Conan met him breast to breast, bracing his muscular legs against the impact, and Al Wazir grunted explosively as he was stopped dead in his tracks. Conan pinioned his arms at his side, and a wild shriek broke from the madman’s lips as he tore and plunged like a trapped animal. His muscles were like quivering steel wires under Conan’s grasp, that writhed and knotted. His teeth snapped beast-like at Conan’s throat, and as the Cimmerian jerked back his head to escape them, Al Wazir tore loose his right arm, and whipped it over Conan’s left arm and down. Before the Cimmerian could prevent it, he had grasped the scimitar hilt and torn the blade from its scabbard. Up and back went the long arm, with the sheen of naked steel, and Conan, sensing death in the lifted sword, smashed his left fist to the madman’s jaw. It was a short terrific hook that traveled little more than a foot, but it was like the jolt of a mule’s kick.
Al Wazir’s head snapped back between his shoulders under the impact, then fell limply forward on his breast. His legs gave way simultaneously and Conan caught him and eased him to the rocky floor.
Leaving the limp form where it lay, Conan went hurriedly into the storeroom and secured the rope. Returning to the senseless man he knotted it about his waist, then lifted him to a sitting position against a natural stone pillar at the back of the cave, passed the rope about the column and tied it with an intricate knot on the other side. The rope was too strong, even for the superhuman strength of a maniac, and Al Wazir could not reach backward around the pillar to reach and untie the knot. Then Conan set to work reviving the man—no light task, for Conan, with the peril of death upon him, had struck hard, with the drive and snap of steel-trap muscles. Only the heavy beard had saved the jawbone from fracture.
But presently the eyes opened and gazed wildly around, flaring redly as they fixed on Conan’s face. The clawing hands with their long black nails, came up and caught at Conan’s throat, as the Cimmerian drew back out of reach. Al Wazir made a convulsive effort to rise, then sank back and crouched, with his unwinking stare, his fingers making aimless motions. Conan looked at him somberly, sick at his soul. What a miserable, revolting end to dreams and philosophies! Al Wazir had come into the desert seeking meditation and peace and the visions of the ancient prophets; he had found horror and insanity. Conan had come looking for a hermit-philosopher, radiant with mellow wisdom; he had found a filthy, naked madman.
The Cimmerian filled an empty tin with water and set it, with an opened tin of meat, near Al Wazir’s hand. An instant later he dodged, as the mad hermit hurled the tins at him with all his power. Shaking his head in despair, Conan went into the storeroom and broke his own fast. He had little heart to eat, with the ruin of that once-splendid personality before him, but the urgings of hunger would not be denied.
It was while thus employed that a sudden noise outside brought him to his feet, galvanized by the imminence of danger.
V—
Hawks At Bay
It was the rattling fall of the stone Conan had placed in the path that had alarmed him. Someone was climbing up the winding trail! Snatching up his bow he glided out on the ledge. One of his enemies had come at last.
Down at the pool a weary, dusty camel was drinking. On the path, a few feet below the ledge there stood a tall, wiry man in dust-stained boots and breeches, his torn shirt revealing his brown, muscular chest.
“Conan!” this man ejaculated, staring amazedly into the head of the drawn arrow on the Cimmerian’s bow. “By Mitra, how did you get here?” His hands were empty, resting on an outcropping of rock, just as he had halted in the act of climbing. His bow was slung to his back, weapon and scimitar in their scabbards at his belt.
“Put up your hands, Hawkston,” ordered Conan, and the Bossonian obeyed.
“What are you doing here?” he repeated. “I left you in el-Azem—”
“Salim lived long enough to tell me what he saw in the hut by Mekmet’s Pool. I came by a road you know nothing about. Where are the other jackals?”
Hawkston shook the sweat-beads from his sun-burnt forehead. He was above medium height, brown, hard as sole-leather, with a dark hawk-like face and a high-bridged predatory nose arching over a thin black mustache. A lawless adventurer, his scintillant grey eyes reflected a ruthless and reckless nature, and as a fighting man he was as notorious as was Conan—more notorious in Shemiteia, for Afghanistan had been the stage for most of Conan’s exploits.
“My men? Dead by now, I fancy. The Zuagir are on the war-path. Shalan ibn Mansour caught us at Sulaymen’s Well, with fifty men. We made a barricade of our saddles among the palms and stood them off all day. Van Brock and three of our camel-drivers were killed during the fighting, and Krakovitch was wounded. That night I took a camel and cleared out. I knew it was no use hanging on.”
“You swine,” said Conan without passion. He did not call Hawkston a coward. He knew that not cowardice, but a cynical determination to save his skin at all hazards had driven the Bossonian to desert his wounded and beleaguered companions.
“There wasn’t any use for us all to be killed,” retorted Hawkston. “I believed one man could sneak away in the dark and I did. They rushed the camp just as I got clear. I heard them killing the others. Ortelli howled like a lost soul when they cut his throat—I knew they’d run me down long before I could reach the Coast, so I headed for the Caves—northwest across the open desert, leaving the road and Khosru’s Well off to the south. It was a long, dry ride, and I made it more by luck than anything else. And now can I put my hands down?”
“You might as well,” replied Conan, the bow at his shoulder never wavering. “In a few seconds it won’t matter much to you where your hands are.”
Hawkston’s expression did not change. He lowered his hands, but kept them away from his belt.
“You mean to kill me?” he asked calmly.
“You murdered my friend Salim. You came here to torture and rob Al Wazir. You’d kill me if you got the chance. I’d be a fool to let you live.”
“Are you going to shoot me in cold blood?”
“No. Climb up on the ledge. I’ll give you any kind of an even break you want.”
Hawkston complied, and a few seconds later stood facing the Cimmerian. An observer would have been struck by a certain similarity between the two men. There was no facial resemblance, but both were burned dark by the sun, both were built with the hard economy of rawhide and spring steel, and both wore the keen, hawk-like aspect which is the common brand of men who live by their wits and guts out on the raw edges of the world.
Hawkston stood with his empty hands at his sides while Conan faced him with bow still drawn.
“Bows, weapons or swords?” asked the Cimmerian. “They say you can handle a blade.”
“Second to none in Shem,” answered Hawkston confidently. “But I’m not going to fight you, Conan.”
“You will!” A red flame began to smolder in the blue eyes. “I know you, Hawkston. You’ve got a slick tongue, and you’re treacherous as a snake. We’ll settle this thing here and now. Choose your weapons —or by God, I’ll shoot you down in your tracks!”
Hawkston shook his head calmly.
“You wouldn’t shoot a man in cold blood, Conan. I’m not going to fight you— yet. Listen, man, we’ll have plenty of fighting on our hands before long! Where’s Al Wazir?”
“That’s none of your business,” growled Conan.
“Well, no matter. You know why I’m here. And I know you came here to stop me if you could. But just now you and I are in the same boat. Shalan ibn Mansour’s on my trail. I slipped through his fingers, as I said, but he picked up my tracks and was after me within a matter of hours. His camels were faster and fresher than mine, and he’s been slowly overhauling me. When I topped the tallest of those ridges to the south there, I saw his dust. He’ll be here within the next hour! He hates you as much as he does me.”
“You need my help, and I need yours. With Al Wazir to help us, we can hold these Caves indefinitely.”
Conan frowned. Hawkston’s tale sounded plausible, and would explain why Shalan ibn Mansour had not come hot on the Cimmerian’s trail, and why the Bossonian had not arrived at the Caves sooner. But Hawkston was such a snake-tongued liar it was dangerous to trust him. The merciless creed of the desert said shoot him down without any more parley, and take his camel. Rested, it would carry Conan and Al Wazir out of the desert. But Hawkston had gauged Conan’s character correctly when he said the Cimmerian could not shoot a man in cold blood.
“Don’t move,” Conan warned him, as he disarmed Hawkston, and ran a hand over him to see that he had no concealed weapons. If his scruples prevented him shooting his enemy, he was determined not to give that enemy a chance to get the drop on him. For he knew Hawkston had no such scruples.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” he demanded.
“Would I have come here alone, on a worn-out camel, if I wasn’t telling the truth?” countered Hawkston. “We’d better hide that camel, if we can. If we should beat them off, we’ll need it to get to the Coast on. Damn it, Conan, your suspicion and hesitation will get our throats cut yet! Where’s Al Wazir?”
“Turn and look into that cave,” replied Conan grimly.
Hawkston, his face suddenly sharp with suspicion, obeyed. As his eyes rested on the figure crouched against the column at the back of the cavern, his breath sucked in sharply.
“Al Wazir! What in God’s name’s the matter with him?”
“Too much loneliness, I reckon,” growled Conan. “He’s stark mad. He couldn’t tell you where to find the Blood of the Gods if you tortured him all day.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter much just now,” muttered Hawkston callously. “Can’t think of treasure when life itself is at stake. Conan, you’d better believe me! We should be preparing for a siege, not standing here chinning. If Shalan ibn Mansour—look!” He started violently, his long arm stabbing toward the south.
Conan did not turn at the exclamation. He stepped back instead, out of the Bossonian’s reach, and still covering the man, shifted his position so he could watch both Hawkston and the point of the compass indicated. Southeastward the country was undulating, broken by barren ridges. Over the farthest ridge a string of white dots was pouring, and a faint dust-haze billowed up in the air. Men on camels! A regular horde of them.
“The Zuagir!” exclaimed Hawkston. “They’ll be here within the hour!”
“They may be men of yours,” answered Conan, too wary to accept anything not fully proven. Hawkston was as tricky as a fox, and to make a mistake on the desert meant death. “We’ll hide that camel, though, just on the chance you’re telling the truth. Go ahead of me down the trail.”
Paying no attention to the Bossonian’s profanity, Conan herded him down the path to the pool. Hawkston took the camel’s rope and went ahead leading it, under Conan’s guidance. A few hundred yards north of the pool there was a narrow canyon winding deep into a break of the hills, and a short distance up this ravine Conan showed Hawkston a narrow cleft in the wall, concealed behind a jutting boulder. Through this the camel was squeezed, into a natural pocket, open at the top, roughly round in shape, and about forty feet across.
“I don’t know whether the Shemites know about this place or not,” said Conan. “But we’ll have to take the chance that they won’t find the beast.”
Hawkston was nervous.
“For Mitra’s sake let’s get back to the Caves! They’re coming like the wind. If they catch us in the open they’ll shoot us like rabbits!”
He started back at a run, and Conan was close on his heels. But Hawkston’s nervousness was justified. The white men had not quite reached the foot of the trail that led up to the Caves when a low thunder of hoofs rose on their ears, and over the nearest ridge came a wild white-clad figure on a camel, waving a bow. At the sight of them he yelled stridently and flogged his beast into a more furious gallop, and threw his bow to his shoulder. Behind him man after man topped the ridge— Zuagirs on hejin— white racing-camels.
“Up the cliff, man!” yelled Hawkston, pale under his bronze. Conan was already racing up the path, and behind him Hawkston panted and cursed, urging greater haste, where more speed was impossible. Arrows began to snick against the cliff, and the foremost rider howled in blood-thirsty glee as he bore down swiftly upon them. He was many yards ahead of his companions, and he was a remarkable marksman. Firing from the rocking, swaying saddle, he was clipping his targets close.
Hawkston yelped as he was stung by a flying sliver of rock, flaked off by a smashing arrowhead.
“Damn you, Conan!” he panted. “This is your fault, —your bloody stubbornness—, he’ll pick us off like rabbits—”
The oncoming rider was not more than three hundred yards from the foot of the cliff, and the rim of the ledge was ten feet above the climbers. Conan wheeled suddenly, drew his bow back and released all in one motion, so quickly he did not even seem to take aim. But the Shemite went out of his saddle like a man hit by lightning. Without pausing to note the result of his shot, Conan raced on up the path, and an instant later he swarmed over the ledge, with Hawkston at his heels.
“You shoot like a Bossonian!” gasped the man.
“There’s your bows,” grunted Conan, throwing himself flat on the ledge. “Here they come!”
Hawkston snatched his bow from the rock where Conan had left it, and followed the Cimmerian’s example.
The Zuagirs had not paused. They greeted the fall of their reckless leader with yells of hate, but they flogged their mounts and came on in a headlong rush. They meant to spring off at the foot of the trail and charge up it on foot. There were at least fifty, of them.
The two men lying prone on the ledge above did not lose their heads. Veterans, both of them, of a thousand wild battles, they waited coolly until the first of the riders were within good range. Then they began firing, without haste and without error. And at each shot a man tumbled headlong from his saddle or slumped forward on his mount’s bobbing neck.
Not even Zuagirs could charge into such a blast of destruction. The rush wavered, split, turned on itself —and in an instant the white-clad riders were turning their backs on the Caves and flogging in the other direction as madly as they had come. Five of them would never charge again, and as they fled Hawkston drilled one of the rearmost men neatly between the shoulders.
They fell back beyond the first low, stone-littered ridge, and Hawkston shook his bow at them and cursed them with virile eloquence.
“Desert scum! Try it again, you bounders!”
Conan wasted no breath on words. Hawkston had told the truth, and Conan knew he was in no danger from treachery from that source, for the present. Hawkston would not attack him as long as they were confronted by a common enemy —but he knew that the instant that peril was removed, the Bossonian might stab him in the back, if he could. Their position was bad, but it might well have been worse. The Zuagirs were all seasoned desert-fighters, cruel as wolves. Their chief had a blood-feud with both white men, and would not fail to grasp the chance that had thrown them into his reach. But the defenders had the advantage of shelter, an inexhaustible water supply, and food enough to last for months. Their only weakness was the limited amount of ammunition.
Without consulting one another, they took their stations on the ledge, Hawkston to the north of the trailhead, Conan about an equal distance to the south of it.
There was no need for a conference; each man knew the other knew his business. They lay prone, gathering broken rocks in heaps before them to add to the protection offered by the ledge-rim.
Spurts of flame began to crown the ridge; arrows whined and splatted against the rock. Men crept from each end of the ridge into the clusters of boulders that littered the plain. The men on the ledge held their fire, unmoved by the slugs that whistled and spanged near at hand. Their minds worked so similarly in a situation like this that they understood each other without the necessity of conversation. There was no chance of them wasting two cartridges on the same man. An imaginary line, running from the foot of the trail to the ridge, divided their territories. When a turbaned head was poked from a rock north of that line, it was Hawkston’s shot that knocked the man dead and sprawling over the boulder. And when a Zuagir darted from behind a spur of rock south of that line in a weaving, dodging run for cover nearer the cliff, Hawkston held his fire. Conan’s bow unleashed an arrow and the runner took the earth in a rolling tumble that ended in a brief thrashing of limbs.
A voice rose from the ridge, edged with fury.
“That’s Shalan, damn him!” snarled Hawkston. “Can you make out what he says?”
“He’s telling his men to keep out of sight,” answered Conan. “He tells them to be patient—, they’ve got plenty of time.”
