Conan by Sprague, page 3
With iron nerve, Conan forced himself to peer into those time-eaten features. The eyes had sunken in, leav-ing two black pits. Skin had peeled back from dried lips, letting the yellow fangs grin in a mirthless leer.
Who had he been, this dead thing? A warrior of ancient times—some great chief, feared in life and still enthroned in death? None could say. A hundred races had roved and ruled these mountainous borderlands since Atlantis sank beneath the emerald waves of the Western Ocean, eight thousand years before. From the horned helm, the cadaver might have been a chief of the primal Vanir or AEsir , or the primitive king of some forgotten Hyborian tribe, long since vanished into the shadows of time and buried under the dust of ages.
Then Conan's gaze dropped to the great sword that lay across the corpse's bony thighs. It was a terrific weapon: a broadsword with a blade well over a yard in length. It was made of blued iron—not copper or bronze, as might have been expected from its obvious age. It might have been one of the first iron weapons borne by the hand of man; the legends of Conan's people remembered the days when men hewed and thrust with ruddy bronze, and the fabrication of iron was unknown. Many battles had this sword seen in the dim past, for its broad blade, although still keen, was notched in a score of places where, clanging, it had met other blades of sword and ax in the slash and parry of the melee. Stained with age and spotted with rust, it was still a weapon to be feared.
The boy felt his pulses pound. The blood of one born
to war seethed within him. Crom, what a sword! With a blade like that, he could more than hold his own against the starving wolves that padded, whined, and waited without. As he reached for the hilt with eager hand, he failed to see the warning flicker that moved within those shadowed eye sockets in the skull-head of the ancient warrior.
Conan hefted the blade. It seemed as heavy as lead—a sword of the Elder Ages. Perhaps some fabled hero-king of old had borne it—some legendary demigod like Kail of Atlantis, king of Valusia in the ages before Atlantis found-ered beneath the restless sea ...
The boy swung the sword, feeling his thews swell with power and his heart beat faster with pride of possession. Gods, what a sword! With such a blade, no destiny was too high for a warrior to aspire to!
With a sword such as this, even a half-naked young barbarian from the raw Cimmerian wilderness might hack his way across the world and wade through rivers of gore to a place among the high kings of earth!
He stood back from the throne of stone, feinting and cutting the air with the blade, getting the feel of the age-worn hilt against his hard palm. The keen old sword whistled through the smoky air, and the flickering light of the fire glanced in sparkling rays from the planes of the blade to the rough stone walls, whipping along the sides of the chamber like little, golden meteors. With this mighty brand in his grasp, he could face not only the hungry wolves outside but a world of warriors as well.
The boy expanded his chest and boomed out the sav-age war cry of his folk. The echoes of that cry thunder-ously reverberated about the chamber, disturbing ancient shadows and old dust. Conan never paused to think that such a challenge, in such a place, might rouse things other than shadows and dust—things that by all rights should
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have slumbered without interruption through all future eons.
He stopped, frozen in mid-stride, as a sound—an inde-scribable, dry creaking—came from the throne side of the crypt. Wheeling, he saw . . . and felt the hair lift from his scalp and the blood turn to ice in his veins. All his superstitious terrors and primal night-fears rose howling, to fill his mind with shadows of madness and horror. For the dead thing lived.
4. When Dead Men Walk
Slowly, jerkily, the cadaver rose from its great stone chair and glared at him from its black pits, whence now living eyes seemed to blaze forth with a coldly malignant stare. Somehow—by what primeval necromancy the boy Conan could not guess—life still animated the withered mummy of the long-dead chief. Grinning jaws moved open and shut in a fearful pantomime of speech. But the only sound was the creaking that Conan had heard, as if the shriveled remains of muscles and tendons rubbed dryly together. To Conan, this silent imitation of speech was more terrible than the fact that the dead man lived and moved.
Creaking, the mummy stepped down from the dais of its ancient throne and swiveled its skull in Conan's di-rection.
As its eyeless gaze fixed itself on the sword in Conan's hand, lurid witch fires burned within the hollow sockets.
Stalking clumsily across the chamber, the mummy advanced upon Conan like a shape of nameless horror from the nightmares of a mad fiend. It extended its bony claws to snatch the sword from Conan's strong young hands.
Numb with superstitious terror, Conan retreated step by step. The firelight painted the mummy's black, monstrous 45
shadow on the wall behind it. The shadow rippled over the rough stone. Save for the crackle of the flames as they bit into the pieces of ancient furniture with which Conan had fed the fire, the rustle and creak of the cadaver's leathery muscles as they propelled it step by faltering step across the crypt, and the panting breath of the youth as he struggled for air in the grip of terror—save for these sounds, the tomb was silent.
Now the dead thing had Conan backed against a wall. One brown claw stretched jerkily out. The boy's reaction was automatic; instinctively, he struck out. The blade whistled and smote the outstretched arm, which cracked like a broken stick. Still clutching at empty air, the severed hand fell with a dry clack to the floor; no blood spurted from the dry stump of the forearm.
The terrible wound, which would have stopped any living warrior, did not even slow the walking corpse. It merely withdrew the stump of the maimed arm and ex-tended the other.
Wildly, Conan burst from the wall, swinging his blade in great, smashing strokes. One blow caught the mummy in the side. Ribs snapped like twigs under the impact, and the cadaver was hurled off its feet with a clatter. Conan stood panting in the center of the room clutching the worn hilt in a sweaty palm. With widened eyes he watched as slowly, creakily, the mummy dragged itself to its feet again and began mechanically shuffling toward him, its remaining claw extended.
5. Duel With the Dead
Around and around they went, circling slowly. Conan swung lustily but retreated step by step before the un-stoppable advance of the dead thing that came on and on.
A blow at its remaining arm missed as the mummy
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jerked the member out of the path of the sword; the impetus swung Conan half around and, before he could recover, it was almost upon him. Its claw-hand snatched at him, caught a fold of his tunic, and ripped the rotten cloth from his body, leaving him naked except for sandals and loincloth.
Conan danced back and swung at the monster's head. The mummy ducked, and again Conan had to scramble to keep out of its grip. At last he caught it a terrific blow on the side of the head, shearing off one horn of the helm. Another blow sent the helmet itself clanging into a corner. Another bit into the dry, brown skull. The blade stuck for an instant—an instant that almost undid the boy, whose skin was scraped by ancient black nails as he frantically tugged his weapon loose.
The sword caught the mummy in the ribs again, lodged for a nearly fatal second in the spine, and then was jerked loose once more. Nothing, it seemed, could stop it. Dead, it could not be hurt. Always it staggered and shuffled toward him, untiring and unfaltering, even though its body bore wounds that would have kid a dozen stout warriors moaning in the dirt.
How can you kill a thing that is already dead? The question echoed madly in Conan's brain. It went round and round until he thought he would go mad with the repetition of it. His lungs labored; his heart pounded as if it were about to burst. Slash and strike as he would, nothing could even slow the dead thing that shuffled after him.
Now he struck with greater cunning. Reasoning that if it could not walk it could not pursue him, he drove a fierce, back-handed slash against the mummy's knee. A bone cracked, and the mummy collapsed, groveling in the dust of the cavern floor. But still the unnatural life burned within the mummy's withered breast. It staggered to its
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feet again and lurched after the boy, dragging its crippled leg behind it.
Again Conan struck, and the dead thing's lower face was shorn away; the jawbone went rattling off into the shadows. But the cadaver never stopped. With its lower face a mere expanse of broken white bone beneath the uncanny glow in its eye sockets, it still shambled after its antagonist in tireless, mechanical pursuit. Conan began to wish he had stayed outside with the wolves rather than sought shelter in this cursed crypt, where things that should have died a thousand years ago still stalked and slew.
Then something caught his ankle. Off balance, he fell full-length to the rough stone floor, kicking wildly to free his leg from that bony grip. He stared down and felt his blood freeze when he saw the severed hand of the corpse clutching his foot. Its bony claws bit into his flesh.
Then a grisly shape of nightmare horror and lunacy loomed over him. The broken, mangled face of the corpse leered down into his, and one claw-hand darted towards his throat.
Conan reacted by instinct. With all his might, he brought both sandaled feet up against the shrunken belly of the dead thing stooping over him. Hurled into the air, it fell with a crash behind him, right in the fire.
Then Conan snatched at the severed hand, which still gripped his ankle. He tore it loose, rolled to his feet, and hurled the member into the fire after the rest of the mummy. He stopped to snatch up his sword and whirled back toward the fire—to find the battle over.
Desiccated by the passage of countless centuries, the mummy burned with the fury of dry brushwood.
The un-natural life within it still flickered as it struggled erect, while flames ran up its withered form, leaping from limb to limb and converting it into a living torch. It had almost 48
clambered out of the fire when its crippled leg gave way, and it collapsed in a mass of roaring flame. One blazing arm dropped off like a twitching stick. The skull rolled through the coals. Within minutes the mummy was utterly consumed, but for a few glowing coals of blackened bone.
6. The Sword of Conan
Conan let out his breath with a long sigh and breathed; deeply once again. The tension drained out of him, leav-ing him weary in every limb. He wiped the cold sweat of terror from his face and combed back the tangle of his black hair with his fingers. The dead warrior's mummy was at last truly dead, and the great sword was his. He hefted it again, relishing its weight and power.
For an instant he thought of spending the night in the tomb. He was deathly tired. Outside, the wolves and the cold waited to bring him down, and not even his wil-derness-bred sense of direction could keep him on his chosen course on a starless night in a strange land.
But then revulsion seized him. The smoke-filled cham-ber stank, now, not only of the dust of ages but also of the burning of long-dead human flesh—a strange odor, like nothing Conan's keen nostrils had ever detected before, and altogether revolting. The empty throne seemed to leer at him. That sense of presence that had struck him when he first entered the inner chamber still lingered in his mind. His scalp crawled and his skin prickled when he thought of sleeping in this haunted chamber.
Besides, with his new sword, he was filled with con-fidence. His chest expanded, and he swung the blade in whistling circles.
Moments later, wrapped in an old fur cloak from one of the chests and holding a torch in one hand and the
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sword in the other, he emerged from the cave. There was no sign of the wolves. A glance upward showed that the sky was clearing. Conan studied the stars that glimmered between patches of cloud, then once more set his foot-steps to southward.
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The Cify of Skulls
Conan remains in Turanian service for about two years, becoming an expert horseman and archer and traveling over the immense deserts, mountains, and jungles of Hyrkania, as far as the borders of Khitai. One such journey takes him to the fabled kingdom of Mem, a comparatively unknown land between Vendhya to the south, Hyrkania to the north and west, and Khitai to the east.
1. Red Snow
howling like wolves, a horde of squat, brown warriors swept down upon the Turanian troop from the foothills of the Talakma Mountains, where the hills flattened out into the broad, barren steppes of Hyrkania.
The attack came at sunset. The western horizon streamed with scarlet banners, while to the south the invisible sun tinged the snows of the higher peaks with red.
For fifteen days, the escort of Turanians had jogged across the plain, fording the chill waters of the Zaporoska River, venturing deeper and ever deeper into the illimitable distances of the East. Then, without warning, came the attack.
Conan caught the body of Hormaz as the lieutenant slumped from his horse, a quivering, black-feathered arrow protruding from his throat. He lowered the body to the ground; then, shouting a curse, the young Cimmerian ripped his broad-bladed tulwar from its scabbard and turned with his comrades to meet the howling charge. For
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most of a month, he had ridden the dusty Hyrkanian plains as part of the escort. The monotony had long since begun to chafe him, and now his barbaric soul craved violent action to dispell his boredom.
His blade met the gilded scimitar of the foremost rider with such terrific force that the other's sword snapped near the hilt. Grinning like a tiger, Conan drew his sword in a back-handed slash across the bowlegged little warrior's belly.
Howling like a doomed soul on the red-hot floors of Hell, his opponent fell twitching into a patch of blood-spattered snow.
Conan twisted in his saddle to catch another slashing sword on his shield. As he knocked the foeman's blade aside, he drove the point of his tulwar straight into the slant-eyed, yellowish face that snarled into his, watching the enemy's visage dissolve into a smear of ruined flesh.
Now the attackers were upon them in force. Dozens of small, dark men in fantastic, intricate armor of lacquered leather, trimmed with gold and flashing with gems, as-sailed them with demoniac frenzy. Bows twanged, lances thrust, and swords whirled and clashed.
Beyond the ring of his attackers, Conan saw his comrade Juma, a gigantic black from Kush, fighting on foot; his horse had fallen to an arrow at the first rush. The Kushite had lost his fur hat, so that the golden bangle in one ear winked in the fading light; but he had retained his lance. With this, he skewered three of the stocky attackers out of their saddles, one after another.
Beyond Juma, at the head of the column of King Yildiz's troop of picked warriors, the commander of the escort, Prince Ardashir, thundered commands from atop his mighty stallion. He wheeled his horse back and forth to keep between the foe and the horse-litter which bore his charge. This was Yildiz's daughter, Zosara. The troop were escorting the princess to her wedding with Kujula, the Great Khan of die Kuigar nomads.
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Even as Conan watched, he saw Prince Ardashir clutch at his fur-cloaked chest. As if conjured up by magic, a black arrow had sprouted suddenly from his gemmed gorget. The prince gaped at the shaft; then, stiff as a statue, he toppled from horseback, his jewel-crusted, spiked hel-met falling into the blood-spotted snow.
Thereafter, Conan became too busy to notice anything but the foes that swept howling around him. Although little more than a youth, the Cimmerian towered several inches above six feet. The swarthy attackers were dwarfed by comparison with his clean-limbed height. As they whirled around him in a snarling, yelping ring, they looked like a pack of hounds attempting to pull down a kingly tiger.
The battle swirled up and down the slope, like dead leaves whirled by autumnal gusts. Horses stamped, reared, and screamed; men hacked, cursed, and yelled. Here and there a pair of dismounted men continued their battle on foot.
Bodies of men and horses lay in the churned mud and the trampled snow.
Conan, a red haze of fury thickening before his eyes, swung his tulwar with berserk fury. He would have pre-ferred one of the straight broadswords of the West, to which he was more accustomed. Nevertheless, in the first few moments of the battle, he wreaked scarlet havoc with the unfamiliar weapon. In his flying hand, the glittering steel blade wove a shimmering web of razor-edged death about him. Into that web no less than nine of the sallow little men in lacquered leather ventured, to fall disem-boweled or headless from their shaggy ponies. As he fought, the burly young Cimmerian bellowed a savage war chant of his primitive people; but soon he found that he needed every last bit of breath, for the battle grew rather than lessened in intensity.
Only seven months before, Conan had been the only warrior to survive the ill-fated punitive expedition that 191
King Yildiz had launched against a rebellious satrap of northern Turan, Munthassem Khan. By means of black sorcery, the satrap had smashed the force sent against him. He had—so he thought—wiped out the hostile army from its high-born general, Bakra of Akif, down to the lowliest mercenary foot soldier. Young Conan alone had survived.
He lived to penetrate the city of Yaralet, which was writh-ing under the magic-maddened satrap's rule, and to bring a terrible doom on Munthassem Khan.
Returning in triumph to the glittering Turanian capital of Aghrapur, Conan received, as a reward, a place in this honor guard. At first he had had to endure the gibes of his fellow troopers at his clumsy horsemanship and indifferent skill with the bow. But the gibes soon died away as the other guardsmen learned to avoid provoking a swing of Conan's sledgehammer fists, and as his skill in riding and shooting improved with practice.
Now, Conan was beginning to wonder if this expedition could truly be called a reward. The light, leathern shield on his left arm was hacked into a shapeless ruin; he cast it aside. An arrow struck his horse's rump. With a scream, the beast brought its head down and bucked, lashing out with its heels. Conan went flying over its head; the horse bolted and disappeared.
