A Thunder of Trumpets

by Robert E. Howard

  A section of the dome gave way, catapulting her into the air. The next instant a huge misshapen bulk came rushing from the opening. And as it rushed, the impact of its body against the edges of the door was like the crash of a thunderbolt. The dome split in a hundred places from base to pinnacle, and fell in with a thunderous roar. Through a cloud of dust and debris and falling stone the huge figure burst into the open. A yell went up from the watchers.

  The thing that had emerged from the dome was bigger than an elephant, and in shape something like a gigantic slug, except that it had a fringe of tentacles all about its body. And from these writhing tentacles crackled sparks and flashes of blue flame. It spread its writhing arms, and at their touch stone walls crashed to ruin and masonry burst apart. It was brainless, sightless—elemental force incorporated in the lowest form of animation—power gone mad and run amuck in a senseless fury of destruction.

  There was neither plan nor direction to its plunges. It rushed erratically, literally plowing through solid walls which buckled and gave way, falling on it in showers which did not seem to injure it. On all sides men fled aghast.

  “Get back through the shaft, all who can!” I yelled. “Take the girls—get them out first!” I was dragging the dazed creatures from the prison chamber and thrusting them into the arms of the nearest warriors, who carried them away. On all sides of us the towers and minarets were crumbling and roaring down in ruin.

  “Make ropes of the tapestries,” I yelled. “Slide down the cliff! In God’s name, hasten! This fiend will destroy the whole city before it is done!”

  “I’ve found a bunch of rope ladders,” shouted a warrior. “They’ll reach to the water’s edge, but—”

  “Then fasten them and send the women down them,” I shrieked. “Better take the chance of the river, then—here, Ghor, take Altha!”

  I threw her into the arms of the bloodstained giant, and rushed toward the mountain of destruction which was crashing through the walls of Yugga.

  Of that cataclysmic frenzy I have only a confused memory, an impression of crashing walls, howling humans, and that engine of doom roaring through all, with a ghastly aurora playing about it, as the electric power in its awful body blasted its way through solid stone.

  How many Yagas, warriors and women slaves died in the falling castles is not to be known. Some hundreds had escaped down the shaft when falling roofs and walls blocked that way, crushing scores who were trying to reach it. Our warriors worked frenziedly, and the silken ladders were strung down the cliffs, some over the town of Akka, some, in haste, over the river, and down these the warriors carried the slave-girls—Guras, red and yellow girls alike.

  After I had seen Ghor carry Altha away I wheeled and ran straight toward that electric horror. It was not intelligent, and what I expected to accomplish I do not know. But through the reeling walls and among the rocking towers that spilled down showers of stone blocks I raced, until I stood before the rearing horror. Blind and brainless though it was, yet it possessed some form of sensibility, because instantly, as I hurled a heavy stone at it, its movements ceased to be erratic. It charged straight for me, casting splintered masonry right and left, as foam is thrown by the rush of an ox through a stream.

  I ran fleetly from it, leading it away from the screaming masses of humanity that struggled and fled along the rim of the cliff, and suddenly found myself on a battlement on the edge of the cliff, with a sheer drop of five hundred feet beneath me to the river Yogh. Behind me came the monster. As I turned desperately, it reared up and plunged at me. In the middle of its gigantic slug-like body I saw a dark spot as big as my hand pulsing. I knew that this must be the center of the being’s life, and I sprang at it like a wounded tiger, plunging my sword into that dark spot.

  Whether I reached it or not, I did not know. Even as I leaped, the whole universe exploded in one burst of blinding white flame and thunder, followed instantly by the blackness of oblivion.

  They say that at the instant my sword sank into the body of the fire-monster, both it and I were enveloped in a blinding blue flame. There was a deafening report, like a thunderclap, that tore the creature asunder, and hurled its mangled form, with my body, far out over the cliff, to fall five hundred feet into the deep blue waters of Yogh.

  It was Thab who saved me from drowning, leaping into the river despite his crippled condition, to dive until he found and dragged my senseless body from the water.

  You will say, perhaps, that it is impossible for a man to fall five hundred feet into water and live. My only reply is that I did it, and I live; though I doubt if there is any man on Earth who could do it.

  For a long time I was senseless and for longer I lay in delirium; for longer again, I lay completely paralyzed, my disrupted and numbed nerves slowly coming back into life again.

  I came to myself on a couch in Koth. I knew nothing of the long trek back through the forests and across the plains from the doomed city of Yugga. Of the nine thousand men who marched to Yagg, only five thousand returned, wounded, weary, bloodstained, but triumphant. With them came fifty thousand women, the freed slaves of the vanquished Yagas. Those who were neither Kothan nor Khoran were escorted to their own cities—a thing unique in the history of Almuric. The little yellow and red women were given the freedom of either city, and allowed to dwell there in full freedom.

  As for me, I have Altha—and she has me. The glamor of her, akin to glory, dazzled me with its brilliance, when first I saw her bending over my couch after my return from Yagg. Her features seemed to glimmer and float above me; then they coalesced into a vision of transcendent loveliness, yet strangely familiar to me. Our love will last forever, for it has been annealed in the white-hot fires of a mutual experience—of a savage ordeal and a great suffering.

  Now, for the first time, there is peace between the cities of Khor and Koth, which have sworn eternal friendship to each other; and the only warfare is the unremitting struggle waged against the ferocious wild beasts and weird forms of animal life that abounds in much of the planet. And we two—I an Earthman born, and Altha, a daughter of Almuric who possesses the gentler instincts of an Earthwoman—we hope to instill some of the culture of my native planet into this erstwhile savage people before we die and become as the dust of my adopted planet, Almuric.

  THE HILLS OF KANDAHAR

  Weird Tales, June-July 1939

  The night primeval breaks in scarlet mist;

  The shadows gray, and pales each silent star,

  The eastern sky that rose-lipped dawn has kissed

  Glows crimson o’er the hills of Kandahar.

  A trumpet song re-echoes from afar;

  Across the crags the golden glory grows

  To drive the shades, renewing ancient war;

  Now bursts full bloom the gorgeous morning rose.

  ~

  These are the hills that many a sultan trod;

  Their rocks have known full many a victor’s stride;

  These peaks could tell their tale of human pride—

  See where they rear, each like a somber god.

  Aye, they have gazed since first the primal dawn

  Fired with a wild, vague flame a bestial soul

  Who rose and stood and saw his fallen spawn

  With him, somehow, part of Creation’s whole,

  And made himself immortal with a goal

  To be attained—this untaught simian faun.

  ~

  Aye, but these peaks have known the human tread:

  The ebb and flow of dim humanity,

  The restless, surging, never-ceasing tide,

  The swarming tribes that came unceasingly;

  The lust of kings, the bloody war-dawn’s red,

  The races that arose and ruled—and died.

  They will be brooding when mankind is gone;

  The teeming tribes that scaled their barricades—

  Dim hordes that waxed at dusk and waned at dawn—

  Are but as snow that on their shoulders fade
s.

  SONG AT MIDNIGHT

  Always Comes Evening (1957)

  I heard an old gibbet that crowned a bare hill

  Creaking a song in the midnight chill;

  And I shivered to hear that grisly refrain

  That moaned in the night through the fog and the rain.

  ~

  “Oh, where are the men who came to me

  “And danced all night on the gallows tree?

  “Gallant and peasant, man and maid,

  “Many have walked in that long parade.

  “My chains are broken and red with rust,

  “My wood is sealed with the moldy crust.

  “Have men forgotten their debt to me,

  “That they come no more to the gallows tree?”

  ~

  The drear wind moaned for a dark refrain,

  And a raven called in the drifting rain:

  “Oh, where are the feasts that awaited me

  “Long, long ago on the gibbet tree?”

  ~

  A slow-worm spoke from the gallows foot:

  “Death is spoils for a crow to loot.

  “The winds and the rain they worked their will,

  “The kites and the ravens have had their fill,

  “But last of all when the chains broke free,

  “The fruit of the gallows came to me.

  “Men and their works, so swiftly past,

  “Come to a feast for the worms at last.

  “Here I have gnawed on this marrow good,

  “Where now I gnaw on this crumbling wood.

  “For men and their works are a feast for me—

  “The bones, and the noose, and the gallows tree.”

  THE WITCH FROM HELL’S KITCHEN

  Avon Fantasy Reader #18 (1952)

  “Has he seen a night-spirit, is he listening to the whispers of them who dwell in darkness?”

  Strange words to be murmured in the feast-hall of Naram-ninub, amid the strain of lutes, the patter of fountains, and the tinkle of women’s laughter. The great hall attested the wealth of its owner, not only by its vast dimensions, but by the richness of its adornment. The glazed surface of the walls offered a bewildering variegation of colors—blue, red, and orange enamels set off by squares of hammered gold. The air was heavy with incense, mingled with the fragrance of exotic blossoms from the gardens without. The feasters, silk-robed nobles of Nippur, lounged on satin cushions, drinking wine poured from alabaster vessels, and caressing the painted and bejeweled playthings which Naram-ninub’s wealth had brought from all parts of the East.

  There were scores of these; their white limbs twinkled as they danced, or shone like ivory among the cushions where they sprawled. A jeweled tiara caught in a burnished mass of night-black hair, a gem-crusted armlet of massive gold, earrings of carven jade—these were their only garments. Their fragrance was dizzying. Shameless in their dancing, feasting and lovemaking, their light laughter filled the hall in waves of silvery sound.

  On a broad cushion-piled dais reclined the giver of the feast, sensuously stroking the glossy locks of a lithe Arabian who had stretched herself on her supple belly beside him. His appearance of sybaritic languor was belied by the vital sparkling of his dark eyes as he surveyed his guests. He was thick-bodied, with a short blue-black beard: a Semite—one of the many drifting yearly into Shumir.

  With one exception his guests were Shumirians, shaven of chin and head. Their bodies were padded with rich living, their features smooth and placid. The exception among them stood out in startling contrast. Taller than they, he had none of their soft sleekness. He was made with the economy of relentless Nature. His physique was of the primitive, not of the civilized athlete. He was an incarnation of Power, raw, hard, wolfish—in the sinewy limbs, the corded neck, the great arch of the breast, the broad hard shoulders. Beneath his tousled golden mane his eyes were like blue ice. His strongly chiselled features reflected the wildness his frame suggested. There was about him nothing of the measured leisure of the other guests, but a ruthless directness in his every action. Whereas they sipped, he drank in great gulps. They nibbled at tidbits, but he seized whole joints in his fingers and tore at the meat with his teeth. Yet his brow was shadowed, his expression moody. His magnetic eyes were introspective. Wherefore Prince Ibi-Engur lisped again in Naram-ninub’s ear: “Has the lord Pyrrhas heard the whispering of night-things?”

  Naram-ninub eyed his friend in some worriment. “Come, my lord,” said he, “you are strangely distraught. Has any here done aught to offend you?”

  Pyrrhas roused himself as from some gloomy meditation and shook his head. “Not so, friend; if I seem distracted it is because of a shadow that lies over my own mind.” His accent was barbarous, but the timbre of his voice was strong and vibrant.

  The others glanced at him in interest. He was Eannatum’s general of mercenaries, an Argive whose saga was epic.

  “Is it a woman, lord Pyrrhas?” asked Prince Enakalli with a laugh. Pyrrhas fixed him with his gloomy stare and the prince felt a cold wind blowing on his spine.

  “Aye, a woman,” muttered the Argive. “One who haunts my dreams and floats like a shadow between me and the moon. In my dreams I feel her teeth in my neck, and I wake to hear the flutter of wings and the cry of an owl.”

  A silence fell over the group on the dais. Only in the great hall below rose the babble of mirth and conversation and the tinkling of lutes, and a girl laughed loudly, with a curious note in her laughter.

  “A curse is upon him,” whispered the Arabian girl. Naram-ninub silenced her with a gesture, and was about to speak, when Ibi-Engur lisped: “My lord Pyrrhas, this has an uncanny touch, like the vengeance of a god. Have you done aught to offend a deity?”

  Naram-ninub bit his lip in annoyance. It was well known that in his recent campaign against Erech, the Argive had cut down a priest of Anu in his shrine. Pyrrhas’ maned head jerked up and he glared at Ibi-Engur as if undecided whether to attribute the remark to malice or lack of tact. The prince began to pale, but the slim Arabian rose to her knees and caught at Naram-ninub’s arm.

  “Look at Belibna!” She pointed at the girl who had laughed so wildly an instant before.

  Her companions were drawing away from this girl apprehensively. She did not speak to them, or seem to see them. She tossed her jeweled head and her shrill laughter rang through the feast-hall. Her slim body swayed back and forth, her bracelets clanged and jangled together as she tossed up her white arms. Her dark eyes gleamed with a wild light, her red lips curled with her unnatural mirth.

  “The hand of Arabu is on her,” whispered the Arabian uneasily.

  “Belibna!” Naram-ninub called sharply. His only answer was another burst of wild laughter, and the girl cried stridently: “To the home of darkness, the dwelling of Irhalla; to the road whence there is no return; oh, Apsu, bitter is thy wine!” Her voice snapped in a terrible scream, and bounding from among her cushions, she leaped up on the dais, a dagger in her hand. Courtesans and guests shrieked and scrambled madly out of her way. But it was at Pyrrhas the girl rushed, her beautiful face a mask of fury. The Argive caught her wrist, and the abnormal strength of madness was futile against the barbarian’s iron thews. He tossed her from him, and down the cushion-strewn steps, where she lay in a crumpled heap, her own dagger driven into her heart as she fell.

  The hum of conversation which had ceased suddenly, rose again as the guards dragged away the body, and the painted dancers came back to their cushions. But Pyrrhas turned and taking his wide crimson cloak from a slave, threw it about his shoulders.

  “Stay, my friend,” urged Naram-ninub. “Let us not allow this small matter to interfere with our revels. Madness is common enough.”

  Pyrrhas shook his head irritably. “Nay, I’m weary of swilling and gorging. I’ll go to my own house.”

  “Then the feasting is at an end,” declared the Semite, rising and clapping his hands. “My own litter shall bear you to the house the king has given you—nay
, I forgot you scorn to ride on other men’s backs. Then I shall myself escort you home. My lords, will you accompany us?”

  “Walk, like common men?” stuttered Prince Ur-ilishu. “By Enlil, I will come. It will be a rare novelty. But I must have a slave to bear the train of my robe, lest it trail in the dust of the street. Come, friends, let us see the lord Pyrrhas home, by Ishtar!”

  “A strange man,” Ibi-Engur lisped to Libit-ishbi, as the party emerged from the spacious palace, and descended the broad tiled stair, guarded by bronze lions. “He walks the streets, unattended, like a very tradesman.”

  “Be careful,” murmured the other. “He is quick to anger, and he stands high in the favor of Eannatum.”

  “Yet even the favored of the king had best beware of offending the god Anu,” replied Ibi-Engur in an equally guarded voice.