Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza

by Roland Green

An idea glimmered in Conan’s mind—far off and dim, like a single candle in a cave no larger than this.

  “Must strong blood be human?” he asked.

  The others looked about, their gaze finally resting on the water dragon’s remains. Their leader slowly shook his head.

  “Human blood is best. But if the living creature is strong, it will create movement... and everything else.”

  “Good. Then let me lead as many of you as are willing, up inside the mountain to the caves above. Those caves shelter flying serpents. They are strong, fast, brave, and fierce. If their blood isn’t strong enough, then I don’t know what is!”

  Conan would have sworn that the leader was frowning. “Are they... are they creatures of the Death Lord?”

  “I said that there is no living Death Lord. But that may change, if we stand around here arguing while Grolin snatches the Soul above.”

  “You did not answer me.”

  “Then ask a question that I can understand well enough to answer!” Conan snapped. He had never been overfond of law courts, and the leader was beginning to sound more like a pleader than a warrior.

  “Are the flying snakes creatures of magic?” the leader asked.

  Conan frowned. He could at least try to answer that question.

  “They could be. I’ve never seen anything like them elsewhere or before. But they can be killed. I’ve killed some with this sword. Does that make them fit to give you blood?”

  The leader looked along the line of his followers. Conan saw some of them nod. Others shook their heads. More looked at the rock at their feet.

  “I think you have given us hope, which is almost as great a gift as blood,” the leader said. “We will not take your blood unless the serpents’ blood is useless.”

  In his mind, Conan vowed that they would not take his blood at all, Death Lord or no Death Lord. Then inspiration came again.

  “Can you carry your comrades up to the caves, the ones who cannot move?”

  “We can, but that makes the fighting more dangerous to all of us.”

  “You wouldn’t need to carry all of them. Just one will do, to see if his blood will serve. Then we can drop the dead serpents down here, before their blood weakens. If we leave some of your men here, they can wake up the others and lead them to us.

  “Then we can go hunting whatever needs to be hunted.”

  The skeletons bent to pick up their weapons, and Conan raised his sword. But they were not attacking. They began to strike their steel rhythmically on their ribs until, the clang and crash hammered at Conan’s ears.

  At least for the moment, he had trustworthy allies and a place to go. With luck, his friends on the surface would not have to worry about the flying serpents much longer.

  Then matters would go as the gods decreed, and Conan had not expected them to warn him about their wishes since he was a lad in Cimmeria!

  Grolin was leading his men because the sorcerer had to guide them through this wilderness of rocks and would speak to no one else. Sometimes he did not even speak to Grolin, and then the baron would break into a chill sweat in spite of the mountain wind.

  He could have sworn that the slope ahead looked different each time he studied it. Was that his imagination, which he knew to be working with greater vigour than usual? Or was it magic at work on this mountainside, changing the shape of the land the way the sorcerer had changed his shape each time he appeared to Grolin?

  “A profitless question,” the baron heard in his mind. “I can guide you whether it is magic or only your fear that makes the rocks dance before your eyes.”

  Then, well below him and near the limits of his vision, Grolin saw something. It was not rock, and it was not dancing.

  It was an armed party on his trail.

  At first he thought it was Conan and whatever weird allies he might have discovered within the mountain. That idea made his blood run even colder than the wind.

  Then he saw that there were too many. He also thought he recognized the lithe figure leading the party.

  He fell back to the end of his own line, ordered it to halt and go to cover, and crouched beside a boulder. He ignored the sorcerer who was fussing at him in his mind. This was business for warriors, not for nameless wizards who hid in various guises from real dangers.

  He did recognize the leader. Lysinka and her people were on his trail. Also some of the Thanza Rangers. Whatever else might have happened since Conan entered the Mountain of the Skull, the unlikely alliance of bandits and Aquilonian soldiers still held.

  This meant Grolin had enemies of twice his own strength on his trail.

  “Up!” he called to his men. Then he ran as fast as the slope allowed, back to the head of the line.

  He said nothing to the sorcerer. But after a moment, he heard the voice in his mind again.

  “Bear left, at that rock with the reddish streak down one side. The ground on the right side is too loose and crumbly for marching...”

  There was no returning the way Conan had come. The skeletons could not swim, the Cimmerian could not face another water dragon, and the way led nowhere save to the bottom of the shaft down which he had fallen.

  Fortunately the skeletons had some memories of the interior of this mountain. Sharing them with Conan, they enabled him to find a useful way upward from the cave where they stood. Time had little meaning in this endlessly-twilit underworld, but it could not have been more than a few hours before the Cimmerian hillman found himself climbing as he had never climbed before.

  He had clambered up mountains, through mazes of caves, tunnels, and shafts. He had indeed done this many times, sometimes retreating, sometimes advancing to battle with stranger foes than flying serpents. But he had never advanced with twenty-odd armed skeleton warriors climbing behind him, making a din that would deafen a god.

  Nor had he climbed with one of those warriors’ comrades on his back, the skeleton disassembled into its individual bones and wrapped firmly into a bundle with thongs cut from the water dragon’s hide. In spite of their stony composition, the bones were not too great a burden for the Cimmerian, even on the roughest ascent.

  The burden would, however, slow him in a fight. He hoped the unknown warrior would not mind being brusquely put out of harm’s way, when Conan and his strange company reached the caves of the flying serpents.

  The serpents would surely be alert and ready to fight. The sound of the climb would not only deafen gods, it would awaken any creature with ears in its skull!

  XIV

  Lord Grolin thought at first he could simply outrun Lysinka’s fighters. He had, after all, a considerable head start, as well as guidance from the sorcerer through the mysteries of the upper slopes. He even knew what the mouth of the cave looked like.

  Unfortunately for him and his men, he had not reckoned on how hard Lysinka’s rage was driving her— and how hard she and Klarnides were driving their men. Or pulling them along, or pushing them, or dragging them, or spurring them to undreamed-of efforts with nothing more powerful than the rough sides of their tongues.

  In much less time than Grolin found agreeable, it had become plain that he was going to have to stop and fight. The ground ahead was growing steeper. This would slow his already-weary men—but it would also give them an advantage.

  If they could gain a little help from the invisible and, for some while, silent sorcerer.

  “A fight now was not part of my plan,” the sorcerer said, in reply to Grolin’s unspoken question.

  “Welcome to the real world of the warrior.” Grolin’s voice would have been a dry-throated rasp had he not been speaking the words only in his mind. “To survive, a plan needs the cooperation of your enemy. Lysinka is not cooperating.”

  “Then I suppose you speak the truth. Lysinka and her people must be fought, if you are to come safely to the Soul and what it will give us.”

  Grolin did not say “Us?” even to himself. Had he done so, the sorcerer would have heard an edge of sarcasm. What work th
e sorcerer was doing that entitled him to a share in Grolin’s gain, the baron did not know.

  “I may need some help,” Grolin thought. “Am I valuable enough to your plans that you will give that help?”

  The sorcerer hesitated so long that Grolin guessed he would have drawn his sword against any living man within a reach of his steel.

  The sorcerer must have read Grolin’s thoughts. He sounded almost pleading when he spoke again.

  “Do not be hasty, friend, or ask haste of me, or mistake my slowness for reluctance to aid you. I am merely studying the rocks, to see how I can best be of use to you.”

  “What about sending out your flying serpents?” “They will soon have to defend their own nests.” “From Conan?”

  No answer to that question came.

  “Can you send magic within the mountain and halt—whoever menaces your snakes?”

  “Within the mountain, I do not have such power as I would need.” The sorcerer added hastily, “The serpents would be less useful than you think. They would attack moving flesh, your men’s and Lysinka’s.”

  That argument carried weight. Grolin was outnumbered already. The serpents could devour equal numbers of his men and Lysinka’s and still leave her queen of the mountain.

  Unless they devoured that bitch too! Grolin briefly imagined that pleasant spectacle and the sound of Lysinka’s screams.

  Except that she probably would not scream, because she would know that he anticipated hearing her cries. A man did not get much satisfaction from a woman like that, living in his bed or dying before his eyes!

  The baron realized that the sorcerer was speaking again.

  “Halt your men and send them into hiding. I can combine my power with that of nature to help you. Make sure you are ready to charge when I give the sign.”

  “Are you a god, to speak of giving signs?”

  “No. The signs the gods give are often hard for men to read. Thus do fools come to believe that their gods do not exist, or else that they must listen to priests to understand the wishes of their gods. And thus do priests become rich and strike at anyone who threatens their wealth and power.”

  Grolin heard raw hatred in those last words. It was the first thing he had learned or at least reasonably suspected, about the sorcerer’s life as a man on earth.

  “What I am now is of no concern to you. I offer a promise of help and intend to honour it. Trust me with your life and those of your men, and I will repay that trust.”

  Something had the sorcerer approaching desperation, Grolin thought. Those last words sounded almost like a plea.

  Grolin decided to give the sorcerer his chance. He waved to his men, his hands signalling them to find cover and halt.

  He hoped they would not be so weary that once they went to ground, they could not rise for the attack the sorcerer said would be necessary. Even if the sorcerer had not requested the attack, Grolin would have wished to make it.

  He wanted to make Lysinka, or at least her people, bleed.

  Other earth tremors that Lysinka had felt seemed to rise from deep below the ground. This tremor felt different.

  She was no seer or sorcerer. All she had to judge by was the soles of her feet and long experience in the Thanzas. Her feet and her experience told her that this tremor had been shallow.

  Her eyes also told her that the earth was shaking under her when she and her fighters (she called the Thanza Rangers hers now, for they called her leader) were directly downhill from a field of precariously seated boulders. There seemed to be scores of them, ranging from man- to horse-sized.

  In Lysinka, two notions warred savagely.

  She knew magic was at work, which meant she was in the right place for finding Conan—or so near it that those charged with defending the place were hurling spells at her.

  She also knew that if those spells forced the boulders down on her and her fighters, it would be chancy for anyone to live long enough to rescue the barbarian.

  She had always expected to die at the head of her band, so that the survivors would at least remember that she fell with her face to the enemy. Now she contemplated the prospect of there being no survivors, to remember how she died with her face crushed into the earth as tons of boulders rolled over her.

  She challenged that thought for possession of her limbs and mind as she had challenged fear for ten years. As she had for ten years, she won.

  Lysinka had drawn sword and dagger, more to lend authority to her gestures than to menace any foe, when the boulders began to move.

  Grolin had reached such a pitch of rage against Lysinka that had he been promised her death in return for giving up the Soul of Thanza, he might have accepted the bargain. He wanted to see the entire hillside of boulders rolling down upon the chieftain arid hear her scream as she vanished under the crushing weight of stone.

  He would even be content if her screams were lost in the roar of the rockslide, as long as he could find her body afterward and know that she had died in agony and fear, with all her comrades with her.

  But instead of an entire hillside turned loose, only a few boulders started to move. They heaved themselves out of the ground like mired bullocks from the mud, and at first they rolled so slowly that a walking man could have kept pace with them.

  But the slope was steep. The rocks were heavy. They gained speed, and soon they were leaping and crashing down the mountainside, toward Lysinka’s people.

  Grolin saw the men scattering, with Lysinka leading one way and that boy-warrior Klarnides the other. He realized that his own men were going to have to take a hand, weary as they were. The enemy would lose a few men and perhaps a trifle of courage.

  They would also lose all their positions. While they were disordered, a smaller force could strike them hard. Grolin wondered how many of his own men would return uphill after such a stroke.

  Lysinka counted eight boulders thundering down upon her people. Klarnides was leading the escape to the right; she led the one to the left. The slope offered too little room for them to scatter without dividing.

  The chieftain could only pray that Klarnides’s new-found shrewdness and quickness of wit would not desert him now.

  Then she saw the boulders towering higher. One of them hit a firmly embedded rock and shattered into fragments, rattling off in a dozen directions. No fragment touched a man.

  Another boulder also hit something solid at such a speed that it leaped into the air like a horse taking a fence. It rose so high that Lysinka could have stood upright under its arc without disordering a hair of her head.

  Then the boulder crashed to the ground and split in three. Two pieces shot off harmlessly downhill. A third rolled inexorably toward one of the Rangers. At the last moment he tried to leap over it but in vain.

  He could only scream before the boulder crushed the breath from his body and rolled on, leaving a bloody sack on the hard ground.

  “Don’t try to run. Lie down, heads upslope. If you see one coming at you, roll to either side. But stay tow!”

  That was Klarnides, and Lysinka thought she could not have done better herself.

  A boulder loomed up, bearing down on her like a wounded bear. She waited until she was sure that only smooth ground lay between it and her. No bumps or rocks, to send it to either side or over her.

  She rolled over a jutting root and felt her clothes and skin tear. She rolled over rocks and felt bruises that reached through garments to flesh and touched her bones. She rolled until she feared rolling out of the path of the first boulder into the path of another. She rolled until much work of healers’ hands and simple remedies was undone, and old pains screamed anew.

  The boulder crashed past her. She felt the wind of its passage as dust and gravel stung her skin and eyes. She heard a hideous scream, swiftly cut off, as someone’s luck ran out.

  Then at last she heard only boulders rolling away below her, while none rolled down from above. She raised her head—and immediately leaped to her feet.

&n
bsp; Grolin was not leaving matters in the hands of whatever magic was allied with him. He was leading his men down to finish the battle hand-to-hand.

  Grolin felt as if he could leap downhill like one of the boulders. Was it magic in the earth touching him, battle-fury strengthening him, or merely the act of going downhill instead of up that made his way easier?

  Regardless, he wished that he could inflict as much harm as the boulders had done with as little effort. Out of more than forty fighters, Lysinka and Klarnides appeared to have five or six down and most of the rest scattered. Grolin had barely a dozen with him, but they were in a compact body.

  They were also the strongest of his men and the longest-enduring. The gods willing, they would be the hardest to kill.

  “Stay together!” Grolin shouted. “Strike when the odds are with you! A wound is enough!”

  A bloodthirsty growl answered his last admonition. Grolin understood it. He felt as his men did. But wounded fighters on this slope were as useless in battle as dead ones. Worse, their comrades could not leave them behind. They would have to carry the injured out of reach of rolling boulders and other mountainside terrors.

  Grolin drew his sword, sheathed it again, and unslung his old battleaxe. He had not used it in years; and before he removed it from the wall of his old family seat, no one had used it for generations. The weapon was heavy and needed a strong man to wield it for long.

  But it gave satisfaction as no sword could, to feel the blade sunder flesh and crush bone. The screams it drew from those who died under it satisfied a warrior’s soul. Life that departed under it fled. It did not simply ebb away like a receding tide.

  Grolin whirled the axe overhead with both hands, and shouted his house’s ancient war cry.

  Lysinka saw Grolin charging down upon her tattered line, at the head of a compact wedge of his men. He was screaming and brandishing an axe. Was he mad? Or had he become the Death Lord already?

  Lysinka’s own cry rallied a handful of men around her. Klarnides had gathered twice as many and was running toward her. But some of his men bore hurts from the boulders; all were winded from the climb. They would not arrive soon enough.