Conan the Adaptable, page 90
“No more than he will need if Orkhan Bahadur comes against him,” she prophesied.
“I have heard of this Orkhan,” he replied. And so he had; who in Hyboria had not heard of the daring and valorous Turanian chief who defied the power of the north and had cut to pieces a Hyborean expedition sent to subdue him? “In the bazaars they say the Khan fears him.”
That was a blind venture. Men did not speak of Shaibar Khan’s fears openly.
Ayisha laughed. “Who does the Khan fear? Once the Amir sent troops to take Khawarism, and those who lived were glad to flee! Yet if any man lives who could storm the city, Orkhan Bahadur is that man. Only tonight the Kosalans were hunting his spies through the alleys.”
Conan remembered the Turanian accent of the stranger he had unwittingly aided. It was quite possible that the man was a Turanian spy.
As he pondered this, Ayisha’s sharp eyes discovered the broken end of the gold chain dangling from his girdle, and with a gurgle of delight she snatched it forth before he could stop her. Then with a squeal she dropped it as if it were hot, and prostrated herself in wriggling abasement among the cushions.
He scowled and picked up the trinket.
“Woman, what are you about?” he demanded.
“Your pardon, lord!” She clasped her hands, but her fear seemed more feigned than real; her eyes sparkled. “I did not know it was the token. Aie, you have been making game of me—asking me things none could know better than yourself. Which of the Twelve are you?”
“You babble as bees hum!” He scowled, dangling the pendant before her eyes. “You speak as one of knowledge, when, by Erlik, you know not the meaning of this thing.”
“Nay, but I do!” she protested. “I have seen such emblems before on the breasts of the emirs of the Inner Chamber. I know that it is a talisman greater than the seal of the Amir, and the wearer comes and goes at will in or out of the Shining Palace.”
“But why, wench, why?” he growled impatiently.
“Nay, I will whisper what you know so well,” she answered, kneeling beside him. Her breath came soft as the sighing of the distant night wind. “It is the symbol of a Guardian of the Treasure!”
She fell away from him laughing. “Have I not spoken truly?”
He did not at once reply. His brain was dizzy, the blood pounding madly in his veins.
“Say nothing of this,” he said at last, rising. “Your life upon it.” And casting her a handful of coins at random, he hurried down the stair and into the street. He realized that his departure was too abrupt, but he was too dizzy, with the realization of what had fallen into his hands, for an entirely placid course of action.
The treasure! In his hand he held what well might be the key to it—at least a key into the palace, to gain entrance into which he had racked his brain in vain ever since coming to Khawarism. His visit to Ayisha had borne fruit beyond his wildest dreams.
II
The Unholy Plan
Doubtless in Mechmed Shah’s day the Shining Palace deserved its name; even now it preserved some of its former splendor. It was separated from the rest of the city by a thick wall, and at the great gate there always stood a guard of Kosalans with bows, and girdles bristling with knives and pistols.
Shaibar Khan had an almost superstitious terror of accidental projectiles, and would allow only edged weapons to be brought into the palace. But his warriors were armed with the best bows that could be smuggled into the hills.
There was a limit to Conan’s audacity. There might be men on guard at the main gates who knew by sight all the emirs of the symbol. He made his way to a small side gate, through a loophole in which, at his imperious call, there peered a black man with the wizened features of a mute. Conan had fastened the broken finks together and the chain now looped his corded neck. He indicated the plaque which rested on the silk of his khalat; and with a deep salaam, the black man opened the gate.
Conan drew a deep breath. He was in the heart of the lion’s lair now, and he dared not hesitate or pause to deliberate. He found himself in a garden which gave onto an open court surrounded by arches supported on marble pillars. He crossed the court, meeting no one. On the opposite side a grim-looking Kosalan, leaning on a spear, scanned him narrowly but said nothing. Conan’s skin crawled as he strode past the somber warrior, but the man merely stared curiously at the gold oval gleaming against the Iranistani vest.
Conan found himself in a corridor whose walls were decorated by a gold frieze, and he went boldly on, seeing only soft-footed slaves who took no heed of him. As he passed into another corridor, broader and hung with velvet tapestries, his heart leaped into his mouth.
It was a tall slender man in long fur-trimmed robes and a silk turban who glided from an arched doorway and halted him. The man had the pale oval face of a Iranistani, with a black pointed beard, and dark shadowed eyes. As with the others his gaze sought first the talisman on Conan’s breast—the token, undoubtedly, of a servitor beyond suspicion.
“Come with me!” snapped the Iranistani. “I have work for you.” And vouchsafing no further enlightenment, he stalked down the corridor as if expecting Conan to follow without question; which, indeed, the Cimmerian did, believing that such would have been the action of the genuine Guardian of the Treasure. He knew this Iranistani was Ahmed Pasha, Shaibar Khan’s vizir; he had seen him riding along the streets with the royal house troops.
The Iranistani led the way into a small domed chamber, without windows, the walls hung with thick tapestries. A small bronze lamp lighted it dimly. Ahmed Pasha drew aside the hangings, directly behind a heap of cushions, and disclosed a hidden alcove.
“Stand there with drawn sword,” he directed. Then he hesitated. “Can you speak or understand any northern tongue?” he demanded. The false Iranistani shook his head.
“Good!” snapped Ahmed Pasha. “You are here to watch, not to listen. Our lord does not trust the man he is to meet here—alone. You are stationed behind the spot where this man will sit. Watch him like a hawk. If he makes a move against the Khan, cleave his skull. If harm comes to our prince, you shall be flayed alive.” He paused, glared an instant, then snarled:
“And hide that emblem, fool! Shall the whole world know you are an emir of the Treasure?”
“Hearkening and obedience, ya khawand,” mumbled Conan, thrusting the symbol inside his garments. Ahmed jerked the tapestries together, and left the chamber. Conan glanced through a tiny opening, waiting for the soft pad of the vizir’s steps to fade away before he should glide out and take up again his hunt for the treasure.
But before he could move, there was a low mutter of voices, and two men entered the chamber from opposite sides. One bowed low and did not venture to seat himself until the other had deposited his fat body on the cushions, and indicated permission.
Conan knew that he looked on Shaibar Khan, once the terror of Mount Yimsha, and now lord of Khawarism. The Kosalan had the broad powerful build of his race, but his thick limbs were soft from easy living. His eyes held some of their old restless fire, but the muscles of his face seemed flabby, and his features were lined and purpled with debauchery. And there seemed something else—a worried, haunted look, strange in that son of reckless nomads. Conan wondered if the possession of the treasure was weighing on his mind.
The other man was slender, dark, his garments plain beside the gorgeous ermine-trimmed kaftan, pearl-sewn girdle and green, emerald-crested turban of the Khan.
This stranger plunged at once into conversation, low voiced but animated and urgent. He did most of the talking, while Shaibar Khan listened, occasionally interjecting a question, or a grunt of gratification. The Khan’s weary eyes began to blaze, and his pudgy hands knotted as if they gripped again the hilt of the blade which had carved his way to power.
And Conan forgot to curse the luck which held him prisoner while precious time drifted by. Both men spoke a tongue the Cimmerian had not heard in years—a northern language. And scanning closely the slim dark stranger, Conan admitted himself baffled. If the man were, as he suspected, a northern man disguised as an easterner, then Conan knew he had met his equal in masquerade.
For it was northern politics he talked, northern politics that lay behind the intrigues of the East. He spoke of war and conquest, and vast hordes rolling down the Zhaibar Pass into Vendhya; to complete the overthrow, said the dark slender man, of a rule outworn.
He promised power and honors to Shaibar Khan, and Conan, listening, realized that the Kosalan was but a pawn in his game, no less than those others he mentioned. The Khan, narrow of vision, saw only a mountain kingdom for himself, reaching down into the plains of Iranistan and Vendhya, and backed by northern arms—not realizing those same arms could just as easily overwhelm him when the time was ripe.
But Conan, with his western wisdom, read behind the dark stranger’s words, and recognized there a plan of imperial dimensions, and the plot of a northern power to seize half of easten Hyboria. And the first move in that game was to be the gathering of warriors by Shaibar Khan. How? With the treasure of Khawarism! With it he could buy all the swords of Central Hyboria.
So the dark man talked and the Kosalan listened like an old wolf who harks to the trampling of the musk oxen in the snow. Conan listened, his blood freezing as the dark man casually spoke of invasions and massacres; and as the plot progressed and became more plain in detail, more monstrous and ruthless in conception, he trembled with a mad urge to leap from his cover and slash and hack both these bloody devils into pieces with the scimitar that quivered in his grasp. Only a sense of self-preservation stayed him from this madness; and presently Shaibar Khan concluded the audience and left the chamber, followed by the dark stranger. Conan saw this one smile furtively, like a man who has victory in his grasp.
Conan started to draw aside the curtain, when Ahmed Pasha came padding into the chamber. It occurred to the Cimmerian that it would be better to let the vizir find him at his post. But before Ahmed could speak, or draw aside the curtain, there sounded a rapid pattering of bare feet in the corridor outside, and a man burst into the room, wild eyed and panting. At the sight of him a red mist wavered across Conan’s sight. It was Yar Akbar!
III
Wolf Pack
The Afghuli fell on his knees before Ahmed Pasha. His garments were tattered; blood seeped from a broken tooth and clotted his straggly beard.
“Oh, master,” he panted, “the dog has escaped!”
“Escaped!” The vizir rose to his full height, his face convulsed with passion. Conan thought that he would strike down the Afghuli, but his arm quivered, fell by his side.
“Speak!” The Iranistani’s voice was dangerous as the hiss of a cobra.
“We hedged him in a dark alley,” Yar Akbar babbled. “He fought like Yog. Then others came to his aid—a whole nest of Turanians, we thought, but mayhap it was but one man. He too was a devil! He slashed my side—see the blood! For hours since we have hunted them, but found no trace. He is over the wall and gone!” In his agitation Yar Akbar plucked at a chain about his neck; from it depended an oval like that held by Conan. The Cimmerian realized that Yar Akbar, too, was an emir of the Treasure. The Afghuli’s eyes burned like a wolf’s in the gloom, and his voice sank.
“He who wounded me slew Othman,” he whispered fearfully, “and despoiled him of the talisman!”
“Dog!” The vizir’s blow knocked the Afghuli sprawling. Ahmed Pasha was livid. “Call the other emirs of the Inner Chamber, swiftly!”
Yar Akbar hastened into the corridor, and Ahmed Pasha called:
“Ohe! You who hide behind the hangings—come forth!” There was no reply, and pale with sudden suspicion, Ahmed drew a curved dagger and with a pantherish spring tore the tapestry aside. The alcove was empty.
As he glared in bewilderment, Yar Akbar ushered into the chamber as unsavory a troop of ruffians as a man might meet, even in the hills: Kosalans, Afghulis, scarred with crime and old in wickedness. Ahmed Pasha counted them swiftly. With Yar Akbar there were eleven.
“Eleven,” he muttered. “And dead Othman makes twelve. All these men are known to you, Yar Akbar?”
“My head on it!” swore the Afghuli. “These be all true men.”
Ahmed clutched his beard.
“Then, by God, the One True God,” he groaned, “that Iranistani I set to guard the Khan was a spy and a traitor.” And at that moment a shriek and a clash of steel re-echoed through the palace.
When Conan heard Yar Akbar gasping out his tale to the vizir, he knew the game was up. He did not believe that the alcove was a blind niche in the wall; and, running swift and practiced hands over the panels, he found and pressed a hidden catch. An instant before Ahmed Pasha tore aside the tapestry, the Cimmerian wriggled his lean body through the opening and found himself in a dimly lighted chamber on the other side of the wall. A black slave dozed on his haunches, unmindful of the blade that hovered over his ebony neck, as Conan glided across the room, and through a curtained doorway.
He found himself back in the corridor into which one door of the audience chamber opened, and crouching among the curtains, he saw Yar Akbar come up the hallway with his villainous crew. He saw, too, that they had come up a marble stair at the end of the hall.
His heart leaped. In that direction, undoubtedly, lay the treasure—now supposedly unguarded. As soon as the emirs vanished into the audience chamber where the vizir waited, Conan ran swiftly and recklessly down the corridor.
But even as he reached the stairs, a man sitting on them sprang up, brandishing a tulwar. A black slave, evidently left there with definite orders, for the sight of the symbol on Conan’s breast did not halt him. Conan took a desperate chance, gambling his speed against the cry that rose in the thick black throat.
He lost. His scimitar licked through the massive neck and the Soudani rolled down the stairs, spurting blood. But his yell had rung to the roof.
And at that yell the emirs of the gold came headlong out of the audience chamber, giving tongue like a pack of wolves. They did not need Ahmed’s infuriated shriek of recognition and command. They were men picked for celerity of action as well as courage, and it seemed to Conan that they were upon him before the Negro’s death yell had ceased to echo.
He met the first attacker, a hairy Pathan, with a long lunge that sent his scimitar point through the thick throat even as the man’s broad tulwar went up for a stroke. Then a tall Kosalan swung his heavy blade like a butcher’s cleaver. No time to parry; Conan caught the stroke near his own hilt, and his knees bent under the impact.
But the next instant the kindhjal in his left hand ripped through the Kosalan’s entrails, and with a powerful heave of his whole body, Conan hurled the dying man against those behind him, bearing them back with him. Then Conan wheeled and ran, his eyes blazing defiance of the death that whickered at his back.
Ahead of him another stair led up. Conan reached it one long bound ahead of his pursuers, gained the steps and wheeled, all in one motion, slashing down at the heads of the pack that came clamoring after him.
Shaibar Khan’s broad pale face peered up at the melee from the curtains of an archway, and Conan was grateful to the Khan’s obsessional fear that had barred firearms from the palace. Otherwise, he would already have been shot down like a dog. He himself had no gun; the pistol with which he had started the adventure had slipped from its holster somewhere on that long journey, and lay lost among the snows of the Himelias.
No matter; he had never yet met his match with cold steel. But no blade could long have held off the ever-increasing horde that swarmed up the stair at him.
He had the advantage of position, and they could not crowd past him on the narrow stair; their very numbers hindered them. His flesh crawled with the fear that others would come down the stair and take him from behind, but none came. He retreated slowly, plying his dripping blades with berserk frenzy. A steady stream of taunts and curses flowed from his lips, but even in his fury he spoke in the tongues of the East, and not one of his assailants realized that the madman who opposed them was anything but a Iranistani.
He was bleeding from a dozen flesh cuts, when he reached the head of the stairs which ended in an open trap. Simultaneously the wolves below him came clambering up to drag him down. One gripped his knees, another was hewing madly at his head. The others howled below them, unable to get at their prey.
Conan stooped beneath the sweep of a tulwar and his scimitar split the skull of the wielder. His kindhjal he drove through the breast of the man who clung to his knees, and kicking the clinging body away from him, he reeled up through the trap. With frantic energy, he gripped the heavy iron-bound door and slammed it down, falling across it in semicollapse.
The splintering of wood beneath him warned him and he rolled clear just as a steel point crunched up through the door and quivered in the starlight. He found and shot the bolt, and then lay prostrate, panting for breath. How long the heavy wood would resist the attacks from below he did not know.
He was on a flat-topped roof, the highest part of the palace. Rising, he stumbled over to the nearest parapet, and looked down, onto lower roofs. He saw no way to get down. He was trapped.
It was the darkness just before dawn. He was on a higher level than the walls or any of the other houses in Khawarism. He could dimly make out the sheer of the great cliffs which flanked the valley in which Khawarism stood, and he saw the starlight’s pale glimmer on the slim river which trickled past the massive walls. The valley ran southeast and northwest.
And suddenly the wind, whispering down from the north, brought a burst of crackling reports. Shots? He stared northwestward, toward where, he knew, the valley pitched upward, narrowing to a sheer gut, and a mud-walled village dominated the pass. He saw a dull red glow against the sky. Again came reverberations.
Somewhere in the streets below sounded a frantic clatter of flying hoofs that halted before the palace gate. There was silence then, in which Conan heard the splintering blows on the trap door, and the heavy breathing of the men who struck them. Then suddenly they ceased as if the attackers had dropped dead; utter silence attended a shrilling voice, indistinct through distance and muffling walls. A wild clamor burst forth in the streets below; men shouted, women screamed.
