Moon of Skulls

by Robert E. Howard

  “We had trekked for the best part of a month and had gotten into a part of the country I knew was unknown to the average explorer. The veldt and thorn forests gave way to what approached real jungle and what natives we saw were a thick-lipped, low-browed, dog-toothed breed — not like the Somali at all. We wandered on though, and our porters and askari began muttering among themselves. Some of the black fellows had been hobnobbing with them and telling them tales that frightened them from going on. Our men wouldn’t talk to me or Conrad about it, but we had a camp servant, a half-caste named Selim, and I told him to see what he could learn. That night he came to my tent. We had pitched camp in a sort of big glade and had built a thorn boma; for the lions were raising merry Cain in the bush.

  “‘Master,’ said he in the mongrel English he was so proud of, ‘them black fella he is scaring the porters and askari with bad ju-ju talk. They be tell about a mighty ju-ju curse on the country in which we go to, and —’

  “He stopped short, turned ashy, and my head jerked up. Out of the dim, jungle-haunted mazes of the south whispered a haunting voice. Like the echo of an echo it was, yet strangely distinct, deep, vibrant, melodious. I stepped from my tent and saw Conrad standing before a fire, taut and tense as a hunting hound.

  “‘Did you hear that?’ he asked. ‘What was it?’

  “‘A native drum,’ I answered — but we both knew I lied. The noise and chatter of our natives about their cooking-fires had ceased as if they had all died suddenly.

  “We heard nothing more of it that night, but the next morning we found ourselves deserted. The black boys had decamped with all the luggage they could lay hand to. We held a council of war, Conrad, Selim and I. The half-caste was scared pink, but the pride of his white blood kept him carrying on.

  “‘What now?’ I asked Conrad. ‘We’ve our guns and enough supplies to give us a sporting chance of reaching the coast.’

  “‘Listen!’ he raised his hand. Out across the bush-country throbbed again that haunting whisper. ‘We’ll go on. I’ll never rest until I know what makes that sound. I never heard anything like it in the world before.’

  “‘The jungle will pick our bally bones,’ I said. He shook his head.

  “‘Listen!’ said he.

  “It was like a call. It got into your blood. It drew you as a fakir’s music draws a cobra. I knew it was madness. But I didn’t argue. We cached most of our duffle and started on. Each night we built a thorn boma and sat inside it while the big cats yowled and grunted outside. And ever clearer as we worked deeper and deeper in the jungle mazes, we heard that voice. It was deep, mellow, musical. It made you dream strange things; it was pregnant with vast age. The lost glories of antiquity whispered in its booming. It centered in its resonance all the yearning and mystery of life; all the magic soul of the East. I awoke in the middle of the night to listen to its whispering echoes, and slept to dream of sky-towering minarets, of long ranks of bowing, brown-skinned worshippers, of purple-canopied peacock thrones and thundering golden chariots.

  “Conrad had found something at last that rivaled his infernal bugs in his interest. He didn’t talk much; he hunted insects in an absent-minded way. All day he would seem to be in an attitude of listening, and when the deep golden notes would roll out across the jungle, he would tense like a hunting dog on the scent, while into his eyes would steal a look strange for a civilized professor. By Jove, it’s curious to see some ancient primal influence steal through the veneer of a cold-blooded scientist’s soul and touch the red flow of life beneath! It was new and strange to Conrad; here was something he couldn’t explain away with his new-fangled, bloodless psychology.

  “Well, we wandered on in that mad search — for it’s the white man’s curse to go into Hell to satisfy his curiosity. Then in the gray light of an early dawn the camp was rushed. There was no fight. We were simply flooded and submerged by numbers. They must have stolen up and surrounded us on all sides; for the first thing I knew, the camp was full of fantastic figures and there were half a dozen spears at my throat. It rasped me terribly to give up without a shot fired, but there was no bettering it, and I cursed myself for not having kept a better lookout. We should have expected something of the kind, with that devilish chiming in the south.

  “There were at least a hundred of them, and I got a chill when I looked at them closely. They weren’t black boys and they weren’t Arabs. They were lean men of middle height, light yellowish brown, with dark eyes and big noses. They wore no beards and their heads were close-shaven. They were clad in a sort of tunic, belted at the waist with a wide leather girdle, and sandals. They also wore a queer kind of iron helmet, peaked at the top, open in front and coming down nearly to their shoulders behind and at the sides. They carried big metal-braced shields, nearly square, and were armed with narrow-bladed spears, strangely made bows and arrows, and short straight swords such as I had never seen before — or since.

  “They bound Conrad and me hand and foot and they butchered Selim then and there — cut his throat like a pig while he kicked and howled. A sickening sight — Conrad nearly fainted and I dare say I looked a bit pale myself. Then they set out in the direction we had been heading, making us walk between them, with our hands tied behind our backs and their spears threatening us. They brought along our scanty dunnage, but from the way they carried the guns I didn’t believe they knew what those were for. Scarcely a word had been spoken between them and when I essayed various dialects I only got the prod of a spear-point. Their silence was a bit ghostly and altogether ghastly. I felt as if we’d been captured by a band of spooks.

  “I didn’t know what to make of them. They had the look of the Orient about them but not the Orient with which I was familiar, if you understand me. Africa is of the East but not one with it. They looked no more African than a Chinaman does. This is hard to explain. But I’ll say this: Tokyo is Eastern, and Benares is equally so, but Benares symbolizes a different, older phase of the Orient, while Peking represents still another, and older one. These men were of an Orient I had never known; they were part of an East older than Persia — older than Assyria — older than Babylon! I felt it about them like an aura and I shuddered from the gulfs of Time they symbolized. Yet it fascinated me, too. Beneath the Gothic arches of an age-old jungle, speared along by silent Orientals whose type has been forgotten for God knows how many eons, a man can have fantastic thoughts. I almost wondered if these fellows were real, or but the ghosts of warriors dead four thousand years!

  “The trees began to thin and the ground sloped upward. At last we came out upon a sort of cliff and saw a sight that made us gasp. We were looking into a big valley surrounded entirely by high, steep cliffs, through which various streams had cut narrow canyons to feed a good-sized lake in the center of the valley. In the center of that lake was an island and on that island was a temple and at the farther end of the lake was a city! No native village of mud and bamboo, either. This seemed to be of stone, yellowish-brown in color.

  “The city was walled and consisted of square-built, flat-topped houses, some apparently three or four stories high. All the shores of the lake were in cultivation and the fields were green and flourishing, fed by artificial ditches. They had a system of irrigation that amazed me. But the most astonishing thing was the temple on the island.

  “I gasped, gaped and blinked. It was the tower of Babel true to life! Not as tall or as big as I’d imagined it, but some ten tiers high and sullen and massive just like the pictures, with that same intangible impression of evil hovering over it.

  “Then as we stood there, from that vast pile of masonry there floated out across the lake that deep resonant booming — close and clear now — and the very cliffs seemed to quiver with the vibrations of that music-laden air. I stole a glance at Conrad; he looked all at sea. He was of that class of scientists who have the universe classified and pigeon-holed and everything in its proper little nook. By Jove! It knocks them in a heap to be confronted with the paradoxical-unexplainable-s
houldn’t-be more than it does common chaps like you and me, who haven’t much preconceived ideas of things in general.

  “The soldiers took us down a stairway cut into the solid rock of the cliffs and we went through irrigated fields where shaven-headed men and dark-eyed women paused in their work to stare curiously at us. They took us to a big, iron-braced gate where a small body of soldiers equipped like our captors challenged them, and after a short parley we were escorted into the city. It was much like any other Eastern city — men, women and children going to and fro, arguing, buying and selling. But all in all, it had that same effect of apartness — of vast antiquity. I couldn’t classify the architecture any more than I could understand the language. The only thing I could think of as I stared at those squat, square buildings was the huts certain low-caste, mongrel peoples still build in the valley of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. Those huts might be a degraded evolution from the architecture in that strange African city.

  “Our captors took us straight to the largest building in the city, and while we marched along the streets, we discovered that the houses and walls were not of stone after all, but a sort of brick. We were taken into a huge-columned hall before which stood ranks of silent soldiery, and taken before a dais up which led broad steps. Armed warriors stood behind and on either side of a throne, a scribe stood beside it, girls clad in ostrich-plumes lounged on the broad steps, and on the throne sat a grim-eyed devil who alone of all the men of that fantastic city wore his hair long. He was black-bearded, wore a sort of crown and had the haughtiest, cruelest face I ever saw on any man. An Arab sheikh or Turkish shah was a lamb beside him. He reminded me of some artist’s conception of Belshazzar or the Pharaohs — a king who was more than a king in his own mind and the eyes of his people — a king who was at once king and high priest and god.

  “Our escort promptly prostrated themselves before him and knocked their heads on the matting until he spoke a languid word to the scribe and this personage signed for them to rise. They rose, and the leader began a long rigmarole to the king, while the scribe scratched away like mad on a clay tablet and Conrad and I stood there like a pair of blooming gaping jackasses, wondering what it was all about. Then I heard a word repeated continually, and each time he spoke it, he indicated us. The word sounded like ‘Akkaddian,’ and suddenly my brain reeled with the possibilities it betokened. It couldn’t be — yet it had to be!

  “Not wanting to break in on the conversation and maybe lose my bally head, I said nothing, and at last the king gestured and spoke, the soldiers bowed again and seizing us, hustled us roughly from the royal presence into a columned corridor, across a huge chamber and into a small cell where they thrust us and locked the door. There was only a heavy bench and one window, closely barred.

  “‘My heavens, Bill,’ exclaimed Conrad, ‘who could have imagined anything equal to this? It’s like a nightmare — or a tale from The Arabian Nights! Where are we? Who are these people?’

  “‘You won’t believe me,’ I said, ‘but — you’ve read of the ancient empire of Sumeria?’

  “‘Certainly; it flourished in Mesopotamia some four thousand years ago. But what — by Jove!’ he broke off, staring at me wide-eyed as the connection struck him.

  “‘I leave it to you what the descendants of an Asia-Minor kingdom are doing in East Africa,’ I said, feeling for my pipe, ‘but it must be — the Sumerians built their cities of sun-dried brick. I saw men making bricks and stacking them up to dry along the lake shore. The mud is remarkably like that you find in the Tigris and Euphrates valley. Likely that’s why these chaps settled here. The Sumerians wrote on clay tablets by scratching the surface with a sharp point just as the chap was doing in the throne room.

  “‘Then look at their arms, dress and physiognomy. I’ve seen their art carved on stone and pottery and wondered if those big noses were part of their faces or part of their helmets. And look at that temple in the lake! A small counterpart of the temple reared to the god El-lil in Nippur — which probably started the myth of the tower of Babel.

  “‘But the thing that clinches it is the fact that they referred to us as Akkaddians. Their empire was conquered and subjugated by Sargon of Akkad in 2750 B.C. If these are descendants of a band who fled their conqueror, it’s natural that, pent in these hinterlands and separated from the rest of the world, they’d come to call all outlanders Akkaddians, much as secluded oriental nations call all Europeans Franks in memory of Martel’s warriors who scuttled them at Tours.’

  “‘Why do you suppose they haven’t been discovered before now?’

  “‘Well, if any white man’s been here before, they took good care he didn’t get out to tell his tale. I doubt if they wander much; probably think the outside world’s overrun with bloodthirsty Akkaddians.’

  “At this moment the door of our cell opened to admit a slim young girl, clad only in a girdle of silk and golden breast-plates. She brought us food and wine, and I noted how lingeringly she gazed at Conrad. And to my surprize she spoke to us in fair Somali.

  “‘Where are we?’ I asked her. ‘What are they going to do with us? Who are you?’

  “‘I am Naluna, the dancer of El-lil,’ she answered — and she looked it — lithe as a she-panther she was. ‘I am sorry to see you in this place; no Akkaddian goes forth from here alive.’

  “‘Nice friendly sort of chaps,’ I grunted, but glad to find someone I could talk to and understand. ‘And what’s the name of this city?’

  “‘This is Eridu,’ said she. ‘Our ancestors came here many ages ago from ancient Sumer, many moons to the East. They were driven by a great and cruel king, Sargon of the Akkaddians — desert people. But our ancestors would not be slaves like their kin, so they fled, thousands of them in one great band, and traversed many strange, savage countries before they came to this land.’

  “Beyond that her knowledge was very vague and mixed up with myths and improbable legends. Conrad and I discussed it afterward, wondering if the old Sumerians came down the west coast of Arabia and crossed the Red Sea about where Mocha is now, or if they went over the Isthmus of Suez and came down on the African side. I’m inclined to the last opinion. Likely the Egyptians met them as they came out of Asia Minor and chased them south. Conrad thought they might have made most of the trip by water, because, as he said, the Persian Gulf ran up something like a hundred and thirty miles farther than it does now, and Old Eridu was a seaport town. But just at the moment something else was on my mind.

  “‘Where did you learn to speak Somali?’ I asked Naluna.

  “‘When I was little,’ she answered, ‘I wandered out of the valley and into the jungle where a band of raiding black men caught me. They sold me to a tribe who lived near the coast and I spent my childhood among them. But when I had grown into girlhood I remembered Eridu and one day I stole a camel and rode across many leagues of veldt and jungle and so came again to the city of my birth. In all Eridu I alone can speak a tongue not mine own, except for the black slaves — and they speak not at all, for we cut out their tongues when we capture them. The people of Eridu go not forth beyond the jungles and they traffic not with the black peoples who sometimes come against us, except as they take a few slaves.’

  “I asked her why they killed our camp servant and she said that it was forbidden for blacks and whites to mate in Eridu and the offspring of such union was not allowed to live. They didn’t like the poor beggar’s color.

  “Naluna could tell us little of the history of the city since its founding, outside the events that had happened in her own memory — which dealt mainly with scattered raids by a cannibalistic tribe living in the jungles to the south, petty intrigues of court and temple, crop failures and the like — the scope of a woman’s life in the East is much the same, whether in the palace of Akbar, Cyrus or Asshurbanipal. But I learned that the ruler’s name was Sostoras and that he was both high priest and king — just as the rulers were in old Sumer, four thousand years ago. El-lil was their god, who abode in
the temple in the lake, and the deep booming we had heard was, Naluna said, the voice of the god.

  “At last she rose to go, casting a wistful look at Conrad, who sat like a man in a trance — for once his confounded bugs were clean out of his mind.

  “‘Well,’ said I, ‘what d’you think of it, young fella-me-lad?’

  “‘It’s incredible,’ said he, shaking his head. ‘It’s absurd — an intelligent tribe living here four thousand years and never advancing beyond their ancestors.’

  “‘You’re stung with the bug of progress,’ I told him cynically, cramming my pipe bowl full of weed. ‘You’re thinking of the mushroom growth of your own country. You can’t generalize on an Oriental from a Western viewpoint. What about China’s famous long sleep? As for these chaps, you forget they’re no tribe but the tag-end of a civilization that lasted longer than any has lasted since. They passed the peak of their progress thousands of years ago. With no intercourse with the outside world and no new blood to stir them up, these people are slowly sinking in the scale. I’d wager their culture and art are far inferior to that of their ancestors.’

  “‘Then why haven’t they lapsed into complete barbarism?’

  “‘Maybe they have, to all practical purposes,’ I answered, beginning to draw on my old pipe. ‘They don’t strike me as being quite the proper thing for offsprings of an ancient and honorable civilization. But remember they grew slowly and their retrogression is bound to be equally slow. Sumerian culture was unusually virile. Its influence is felt in Asia Minor today. The Sumerians had their civilization when our bloomin’ ancestors were scrapping with cave bears and sabertooth tigers, so to speak. At least the Aryans hadn’t passed the first milestones on the road to progress, whoever their animal neighbors were. Old Eridu was a seaport of consequence as early as 6500 B.C. From then to 2750 B.C. is a bit of time for any empire. What other empire stood as long as the Sumerian? The Akkaddian dynasty established by Sargon stood two hundred years before it was overthrown by another Semitic people, the Babylonians, who borrowed their culture from Akkaddian Sumer just as Rome later stole hers from Greece; the Elamitish Kassite dynasty supplanted the original Babylonian, the Assyrian and the Chaldean followed — well, you know the rapid succession of dynasty on dynasty in Asia Minor, one Semitic people overthrowing another, until the real conquerors hove in view on the Eastern horizon — the Aryan Medes and Persians — who were destined to last scarcely longer than their victims.