Epilogue
It was a perfect double ram, I tell you,” Santhindrissa boasted to those present on the Remorseless's quarterdeck. “One of Yildiz’s admirals could not have done it better... my ship from the port side, your Venom from the starboard—” she raised her cup to the sea-chieftain Hrandulf, who nodded and drank from his own “—and that filthy sorcerer was scuppered, scuttled, finished! Even if his zombie crew had wanted to fight, our two ships would have been more than a match for them!”
“Yes, most surely,” the sea-chief replied, looking solemn. “But it was strange, was it not, the way those grey-faced men just kept rowing and rowing, even as their hull filled up with water. Never did I see an oarship go down like that, so swiftly, unless it carried heavy cargo.” He raised his tankard, grim-faced. “A warship should not sink, but remain awash to fight.”
Philiope, from her place at Conan’s side, spoke up. “That ship belonged to the Corinthian sorcerer Zalbuvulus, so they said in port. His crew were dead men, cruelly slain by him in his mad wish for total obedience. Perhaps they intended to go to the bottom, and drag him with them—”
“But the white-robed magician did not die!” Santhindrissa cried disgustedly. “He swam clear of the hulk, and we could not trouble to turn and run him down, with the Imperial Navy on our tail.”
“It was the rowing underwater that did it.” Hrandulf spoke up a little drunkenly, shaking his head in morbid gloom. “The dead crew rowed their ship straight down to Dagon’s weedy realm.”
“Sorcery is ever an ill business,” Conan avowed with a shrug that was nigh to a superstitious shudder. “That Corinthian should never have lived, not after what he did to our galliot.” He swigged from his own cup. “But at least we gathered up the penteconter’s crew.”
“That other wizard is yet alive, too—Crotalus, was it?” Santhindrissa challenged him haughtily. “The one that you say ruled the giant bug?”
“Aye, most likely.” Conan ignored the sceptical tone of her remark. “I may just throw his vile egg-gems into the middle of the Vilayet, rather than let him rear up more giant centipedes to trouble us.” He waved his hand out over the broad blue sea, where the pirate fleet sailed together before a stiff westerly breeze. “That thing was as hideous a creature as I ever want to kill.”
“I should have warned you,” Philiope said, embracing Conan’s broad, bronze shoulders. “I heard, but I did not believe. While you were a prisoner, our pirates picked up a swimmer who had escaped from Crotalus’s shed in the marshes. He was a Zaporoskan, and could make himself understood to but a few of our rowers. He claimed that the sorcerer was growing a giant creature in a vat, and feeding his labourers to it one by one! It seemed too mad to be true.”
“Ah, well,” Conan said, comforting the girl by stroking the back of her neck. “’Tis all past us now. We have our pirate brothers back, and this fine warship, along with a passable fleet and a host of new, rough hands who may yet learn to enjoy piracy. Yildiz has been put in his place, and his infernal spell-casters are off our necks, for the time at least.”
From his seat on the steering-bench, Conan turned to the others and raised his cup in salute. “For the future, I see greater things a-beckoning: wealth and glory for our Red Brotherhood, more confusion for our enemies... and for Amra, the fabled pirate, mayhap the birth of a sea-kingdom!”
Ashore, meanwhile, the naval battle in Aghrapur harbour was the talk of the empire. There was ample criticism, to be sure. In the main part, it consisted of complaints that the outcome did not reflect well on Turanian leadership and naval power. But at the very least, the invaders had been kept from raiding and burning the capital, as some had feared might happen. And the naval show had been spectacular, truly diverting.
In court circles it was even rumoured that the pirates’ escape represented a triumph for the reigning Emperor Yildiz, that he had secretly aided them—as a means both of putting his ambitious son Yezdigerd in his place and of preventing him from seizing the reins of sea power through the expedient of the naval contest. In the aftermath of it all, no prize was awarded, and the wags subjected the young prince to a good deal more sly ridicule than they did his father.
In point of fact, the only real danger of public ferment and dissatisfaction was over the loss of the captive pirate Amra and his henchmen, and the belief that the citizens would be deprived of their promised public trials and executions. This complaint was remedied in some degree by the provision of various convicts out of the lesser municipal dungeons—and, in main part, by a drumhead court martial held to indict and punish two naval conspirators who were seized that very day.
One of them was a blatant fraud who had made an open mockery of the naval contest by, among other absurdities, constructing a ship with wheels. The guilty one, the once-respected astrologer Tambur Pasha, was also guilty of shirking battle shamelessly, to wit hanging back near the shore while his fellow contestants faced defeat at the hands of the pirates. His sentence, fittingly enough, was death.
The other conspirator, according to evidence produced by high officers of the Imperial Court, was guilty of naval sabotage and the murder of the engineer Mustafar, all with the motive of gaining the prize money himself. This Zalbuvulus, a rank philosopher of foreign birth, was another of the unsuccessful contestants, and had to be fished out of the harbour after the battle. He was brought immediately to trial with his fellow criminal and condemned fairly. The executions were carried out promptly in the traditional manner, using eight teams of sturdy volunteers. By all accounts, it was a long and lively afternoon.
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Epilogue
Conan of the Red Brotherhood Page 26
