Conan the Swordsman

by L. Sprague De Camp

  The Cimmerian, weary from the loss of blood and the past night's vigil, summoned his last reserves of strength. Pouncing like a tiger, he leaped forward toward his foe and drove the poniard deep into its chest, hoping to pierce the heart.

  The blade sank to the hilt in a deep flying muscle, and beneath the forceful blow the devil crumpled. Squawking furiously, the creature twisted its disabled body, wrenching the hilt-buried knife from Conan's hand, and then lay prone upon the flagstones. Conan, gasping painfully, wiped the blood from his eyes and looked for signs of life. He saw none.

  The Cimmerian looked closely at the pit centered beneath the columned pavillion and saw that it housed a circular stair of stone that led down to a room below. He had indeed smoked the devil out, for even now the dwindling plumes of smoke from the surrounding bonfires swirled like a whirlpool beneath the conical roof of the pavillion and were sucked into the stairwell.

  Not knowing what he should encounter there, he set his feet upon the narrow steps and clambered down. Within the tower the air was hot and stifling, and the smoke obscured parts of the circular chamber in which he found himself.

  Here was luxury indeed. The polished wooden floor, inlaid with fighter woods in curious designs, was embellished with small silken rugs in which were woven pentacles and circles and other mystic patterns. The chamber's curved stone walls were hung with tapestries and rich brocades; and worked into the fabric Conan saw threads of gold and silver gleaming bril-liandy in the slanting rays of sunlight that, by some strange arrangement of mirrors, lit the room as if the sun itself shone in upon it. To one side stood a lectern of carved and polished wood upon which rested an open book of ancient parchment leaves. Farther along the wall an idol leered, its wolfish mien a frozen mask of menace.

  Conan moved quickly around the room, searching for a weapon; but he found nothing. The circumferential chamber had several curtained alcoves, that he ascertained; and choosing one at random, he flung the curtains back. And stared.

  The center of the alcove was occupied by a high-backed chair of creamy marble, intricately carved into a labyrinthine tangle of serpent bodies and devil's heads; and seated on this throne was Siptah the sorcerer, his expressionless eyes returning Conan's stare.

  -

  9 • Slave of the Crystal

  Conan, who had tensed, prepared to fight again, let his breath out with a sigh of satisfaction. Siptah was dead. His eyes were dull and shriveled, and the flesh had fallen in upon his visage, so that his face was but a skull over which dried skin was tightly stretched. Conan sniffed but could not, above the odor of the wood smoke, detect any taint of carrion. Siptah had sat for months upon his throne while his muscles and organs dried and shriveled.

  The shrunken figure wore a gown of emerald cloth; and in the bony upturned hands resting in its lap was cradled a huge, unfaceted crystal, which glowed with topaz fire. This, Conan surmised, was the demon-dreaded gem whose quest had brought him and his comrades to this death-haunted isle.

  Conan stepped forward to examine the crystal. To his untutored eyes it seemed but a glimmering sphere of glass lit by an inner glow. Yet so many men desired it that it must have value far beyond imagining. Demons were somehow bound to this pale sphere and could not be released from service save by this orb. But Conan knew not how. He did not understand such matters, and all that was clean and savage within him shrank from traffic with the powers of darkness.

  The scrape of a clawed foot on flagstones roused the Cimmerian from his contemplation. He whirled.

  The creature did not descend the stairs in human fashion, but on half-opened wings dropped down the well to the floor below. Amazed, Conan saw the arrow still transfixing its shoulder and his poniard still sunk into the muscles of its breast; and yet it showed no lessening of its preternatural vitality. A man, however strong, or a wild jungle beast would have been rendered helpless by such wounds; but not, it seemed, the guardian of Siptah's tower.

  The creature raised a clawed forelimb and advanced upon him. Frantically, Conan leaped to the left and seized the lectern on which rested the ancient tome. The book crashed to the floor as the Cimmerian raised the heavy piece of furniture like an unwieldy club.

  As the winged demon lurched toward him with taloned feet outstretched, Conan swung the clumsy weapon above his head and brought it down upon the monster's skull. The force of the blow sent the devil reeling back and smashed the lectern into a dozen shattered fragments.

  Mewling and leaking blood from its crushed skull, the bat-man staggered slowly to its feet and once again advanced. Conan felt a momentary thrill of admiration for any being that sustained such crippling punishment and yet fought on. Still, his own plight was dire—a thing that would not die and Conan weaponless!

  And then an idea, simple and audacious, exploded into consciousness; and Conan cursed himself for past stupidity. He turned and snatched the crystal from the mummy's lap, then hurled it at the oncoming monster.

  Although Conan's aim was true, the wily creature ducked the missile; and it hurtled through the smoky air to land at last upon the lowest step of the stone staircase. And there, with a tinkling crash and a flash of amber light, the crystal shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Then as Conan watched, slit-eyed and empty-handed, his adversary fell headlong to the floor. There was a puff of dust, an acrid odor. When the air cleared, he witnessed an amazing transformation: the monster's skin shriveled, curled up, and crumbled into powder. It was as if the process of decay were speeded up ten thousand times before his wondering eyes. He watched the membranes of the bat wings vanish and saw the bones disintegrate beneath the leathery hide. In a few minutes, nothing was left of the creature but an outline of its shape marked on the floor by little heaps and ridges of dust And a spent arrow and Conan's dirk.

  -

  10 • Siptah's Treasure

  The midday sun beat on the yellow sand when Conan's shaggy mane appeared above the parapet. A bloodstained bandage was wound around his head, and strips of sheeting staunched wounds on his arms and chest.

  He waved to the cheering men below and, using a knotted strip of bedding for a rope, he lowered a small chest into their eager hands. Then grasping that self-same rope a trifle gingerly, he stiffly slid down into the ashes of the burned-out bonfire.

  "Gods and devils, is there aught to drink in this accursed place?" he croaked.

  "Here!" cried several corsairs, thrusting leathern wine skins toward him. Conan took a hearty swig, then greeted Borus, the first mate of the Hawk.

  "While you were in the tower, the lads sent back for food and drink," explained the Argossean. "From what they told me, I thought it best to come ashore. What in the nine hells happened in the tower, Conan?"

  "I'll tell you once I get these scratches cleaned and bandaged," growled the Cimmerian.

  An hour later, Conan sat upon a stump, eating huge mouthfuls of brown bread and cheese and gulping red wine from the ship's stores.

  "And so," he said, "the monster crumbled into dust in less time than it takes to tell of it. It must have been an ancient corpse kept living by Siptah's sorcery. The old he-witch laid some command upon it to drive all uninvited callers from the island; and under Siptah's spell, it followed the command long after its master's death."

  "Is that the only treasure in the tower?" asked Abimael, pointing to the chest.

  "Aye, all but the furnishings, and those we could not carry. I went through every alcove—where he cooked and worked his spells, where he stored supplies, even in his narrow bedchamber, but I found naught save this. Twill furnish all a good share-out—naught fabulous—and a good carouse in Port Tortage."

  'Were there no secret doors?" said Fabio, when the men had ceased their shouts of laughter.

  "None that I could find, and I hunted the place over. It stands to reason Siptah gained more gold than's in this little chest, but I saw no sign of it. Perhaps it's buried somewhere on this island, but without a map to guide us, we could dig a hundred years in
vain." Conan took a gulp of wine and looked at Siptah's spire. "Methinks this tower was built centuries before the Stygian came with his black arts to conquer it."

  "Whose was the tower, then?" asked Borus.

  "My guess would be it was the winged man's, and others of his kind," said Conan somberly. "I think the devil was the last of a tribe that walked the earth—or flew the skies—before mankind appeared. Only winged men would build a tower with neither doors nor windows."

  "And Siptah with his magic enslaved the bat-man?" asked Borus.

  Conan shrugged. "That were my guess. The Stygian bound him to the magic crystal in some occult manner; and when the crystal broke, the spell was ended."

  Abimael said: "Who knows? Mayhap the creature was not hostile after all, until the sorcerer compelled it to obey his cruel commands."

  "To me a devil is a devil," said Conan, "but you may be right. That we shall never know. Let's get back to the Hawk, Boras, and trim sail for the Barachas. And once aboard, if any dog wakes me before I've slept my fill, I'll make him wish the bat-man had cut his throat instead!"

  -

  THE IVORY GODDESS

  Among the Barachan pirates, Conan acquires more enemies than even he can handle. Fleeing the isles, he is picked up by a ship of the Zingaran buccaneers, whose captaincy he usurps. He makes himself welcome at the Zingaran court by rescuing the daughter of King Ferdrugo from captivity among the Black Amazons; but other Zingarans, jealous of his rise, sink his ship. Conan gets ashore, joins a band of condottieri soldiering for Stygia, and finds an ancient city whose people, divided into two factions, are waging a war of mutual extermination. Escaping the final massacre, Conan tries his luck in Keshan, a black kingdom rumored to harbor a set of priceless jewels in the ruined city of Alkmeenon. He wins the gems but loses them in a matter of minutes.

  After the events of "Jewels of Gwahlur," Conan takes Muriela, the girl he picked up at Alkmeenon, eastward to Punt. He means to use the actress to swindle the Puntians out of some of their abundant gold. He is disconcerted to find that his Stygian enemy Thutmekri, like himself, has been compelled to flee from Keshan and has already reached Kassali, the capital of Punt. Thutmekri is deep in intrigues with King Lalibeha, which fact calls for a sudden change in Conan's plans.

  -

  Borne on winds from the west, the sound of drums beat against the temple tower, flamingo pink in the setting sun. On its sunlit wall the shadow of Zaramba, chief priest of Punt, stood transfixed, his attenuated form resembling a stork. The figure etched upon the wall was no darker than the black man whose shape it mimicked, although the outlined beak was but a pointed tuft of hair that decorated the front of his wooly pate.

  Zaramba tossed back the cowl of his short purple robe and listened intently, straining to catch the message that pulsed out of the west. His drummer, clad only in a linen loin cloth, squatted beside two—now voiceless—hollow logs that served as temple drums, and marked each note as the distant roll of a great drum irregularly alternated with the clack of a lesser.

  At length the drummer turned a somber face. "Bad news," he said.

  "What says the message?" asked Zaramba.

  "Keshan has been plagued by the intrigue of foreigners. The king has expelled all strangers. Priests of the shrine of Alkmeenon were massacred by demons, one priest alone escaping to tell the tale. The scoundrels who wrought this evil are on their way to Punt Let the men of Punt beware!"

  "I needs must tell the king," said Zaramba. "Send a message to our brother priests in Keshan to thank them for their warning."

  The drummer raised his sticks and pounded the logs in a rattling code, as Zaramba hastened from the tower and bent his steps toward the royal palace of sun-dried mud, which raised its towers in the center of Kassali, the capital of Punt.

  -

  Days passed. The sun of late afternoon stood far down in the western sky, where long clouds lay athwart the deepening azure like red banners floating on the winds of war. From the grassy hill whereon the painted temple stood, the city stretched all around.

  The low sun gleamed on the gold and crystal ornaments that topped the dun-brown palace in the middle distance and lent sparkle to the temple on the hill.

  Eastward, beyond the city, a stretch of forest encroached upon the uplands, and from the far side of these clustered trees now issued two figures mounted on wiry Stygian ponies.

  In the lead rode a huge man, nearly naked, his massive arms, broad shoulders, and deeply arched chest burned to a bronzen hue. His only garments were a pair of ragged silken breeks, a leathern baldric, and sandals of rhinoceros hide. A belt of crocodile skin, which upheld the breeches, also supported a dirk in its sheath, and from the baldric hung a long, straight sword in a lacquered wooden scabbard.

  The man's thick mane of coarse, blue-black hair was square-cut at the nape of his neck. Smoldering eyes of volcanic blue stared out beneath thick, drawn brows. The man scowled as a gust of wind disordered his sable mane. Not long before, he had worn a circlet of beaten silver around his brows, denoting him a general of the Keshani hosts. But the medal he had sold in Kassali to a Shemitish trader for food and other needfuls now carried in a sack, along with a meager roll of possessions, on the back of the pack horse he led.

  Emerging from the forest cover, the man pulled up his pony and rose in his stirrups to stare about. Satisfied that they were unobserved, he gestured to his companion to follow.

  This was a girl who slumped with exhaustion in her saddle. She was nearly as nude as the man, for generous areas of smooth, soft flesh gleamed through the rents in her scanty raiment of silken cloth. Her hair was a foam of jet-black curls, and her oval features framed eyes as lustrous as black opals.

  As the weary girl caught up with him, the man thumped his heels against the ribs of his mount and trotted out upon the savanna. The westerly sun was setting in a sea of flame as they crossed the grassy flatland and reached the somber hills.

  -

  Conan of Cimmeria, soldier, adventurer, pirate, rogue, and thief, had come to the land of Punt with his love of the moment, the Corinthian dancing girl Muriela, former slave to Zargheba. They came to search for treasure, having escaped a hideous death at the hands of the priests of Keshan.

  There Zargheba, his slave girl Muriela, and his Stygian partner Thutmekri had concocted a plan to steal from the temple of Alkmeenon a chest of precious gems just when Conan, then a hireling general in Keshan, had set afoot a similar scheme. When all their plots were foiled and Zargheba- fell victim to the supernatural guardians of the shrine, Conan and Muriela fled together from Keshan ahead of the vengeful Thutmekri and the furious, scandalized priests.

  When Muriela's impersonation of the goddess Yelaya became known throughout the land, Thutmekri and his retinue narrowly escaped being thrown to the royal crocodiles. The Stygian claimed innocence in the blasphemous plot and strove to lay the blame on his enemy Conan. But the incensed priests refused to listen to his plaints, and he and his men departed hastily under cover of darkness and came to the land of Punt.

  In Punt, the Stygian made his way to Kassali, the capital, where the mud-brick palace of King Lalibeha reared its towers, spangled with ornaments of glass and gold, into the blue tropical sky. Arguing that the Keshanis planned an invasion of Punt, the wily Thutmekri offered his services to the black ruler.

  The king's advisers scoffed. The armies of Punt and Keshan, they said, were too evenly matched for either to attack the other with reasonable hope of success. The Stygian then claimed that the king of Keshan had formed a secret alliance with the twin monarchs of the southeasterly kingdom of Zembabwei to grind Punt between them. He promised, if accorded gold and plunder, to train the black legions of Punt in the skills of civilized war and swore that he could lead the Puntish hosts to the destruction of Keshan.

  Thutmekri was not alone in his search for wealth and power. The riches of Punt also drew Conan and Muriela; for there, it was said, people sieved golden nuggets the size of goose eggs in the sand
y beds of sparkling mountain streams. There, too, the devout worshiped the goddess Nebethet, whose likeness was carved in ivory inlaid with diamonds, sapphires, and pearls from the farthest seas.

  The flight from Alkmeenon had told upon the strength of Muriela, who had hoped to stop in Kassali long enough to recover; but when Conan learned that Thutmekri had preceded him thither, he abruptly changed his plans, bought a supply of food, and left the city. The Cimmerian now schemed to have the Corinthian girl, an accomplished actress, impersonate the goddess Nebethet, reasoning that the priests of Punt would not refuse to share their wealth when so instructed by their goddess. Conan would, in return, humbly obey the goddess's command to lead the Puntian army and defend the land against invasion.

  Muriela doubted the wisdom of this plan. She pointed out that such a scheme had failed in the shrine of Alkmeenon and that their enemy, Thutmekri, had already arrived in Kassali and was closeted with King Lalibeha.