It limped, from a festering wound on its left leg that oozed yellow. A spear had left a barely healed gouge across its ribs. One eye was half-closed by the scab over a scalp wound. Clearly, the beast's sojourn in the alien jungle had brought it across the paths of humans more than once. From the brown smears across its muzzle and on its forearms, none could doubt the fate of those humans, dying even as they left their mark.
Its ordeal might have slowed the beast, but it had also taught it cunning. It approached silently, so that it was almost upon the rearmost men before they knew their peril. Then it charged into their midst, kicking and clawing wildly.
Hammer-blows of clawed hands flung bleeding warriors to the ground.
Kicks sent others flying. Some landed rolling and leapt up to rejoin the battle. One, slashed open from throat to belly, landed almost at Conan's feet and did not move. The Cimmerian snatched up his fallen sword, leapt over the body, and closed with the lizard-ape, sword in one hand, axe swinging in the other.
Spears flew wildly, flung by desperate men who had forgotten that friends stood between themselves and the enemy. One spear skewered a village warrior in the buttocks. He leapt and howled, then cried out in a different voice as the lizard-ape ripped open his shoulder.
With the courage of desperation, the warrior reached behind, snatched the spear from his body, and thrust wildly. The spear-point sank through scales into flesh, but a furious buffet from one long arm flung the valiant villager aside. He fell and lay still, his skull crushed out of all human semblance.
A woman's scream checked the Cimmerian's rush into battle. He slowed, searching for the wench without taking his eyes off the lizard-ape. New wounds had slowed the beast further, but those of its ilk seemed to be as tenacious of life as any creature he had ever fought. He thought it had clutched one of the women, but it lumbered forward with bloody paws empty.
Not the lizard-ape, but Idosso had brought forth the scream. The big man held Chira, one of the two women, with his fingers wound in her hair. She struggled and spat at him, but he mastered her as easily as he would a child.
Then he gripped her by loinguard as well as hair, lifted her high, and flung her straight at the lizard-ape. She screamed again. The beast caught her before she struck the ground, and its teeth fastened themselves in her throat. The screaming crescendoed in a welter of blood.
In the next moment, the ghastly meal ended as Conan lunged forward. He plunged the axe's blade in the massive skull, then slashed the beast across the muzzle to force it to turn. Beast's blood and woman's blood both showered Conan as he struck again, this time a thrust through the ribs with all his gigantic strength behind it.
The fine Aquilonian steel was bent and nicked when the Cimmerian withdrew the blade, but the lizard-ape was as dead as the Empire of Acheron.
Conan jerked the axe free next, then glared at Idosso over the two corpses, beast and woman. He lifted the axe, ready to throw, judging its balance. He really wanted to choke the life out of the brute with his bare hands, but anything that left Idosso dead was better than nothing.
The axe never flew. Idosso roared with surprise and pain and whirled.
The other woman”Vuona, Conan remembered”leapt with a gazelle's grace from the reach of Idosso's arms. In her hand she held a small but well-made dagger. It's blade dripped Idosso's blood.
The huge Bamula lunged at Vuona. He only hooked her loinguard, tearing it away. Nudity did not slow her flight.
Idosso flung the spear he had held ready for the lizard-ape, but it only grazed her ankle. Then she was running with the speed of mortal fear down to the river.
Whatever might be in the river terrified her less than Idosso did. She leapt into the water without breaking stride, then splashed furiously across. Bare and dripping, proud and slender, she rose from the water.
Idosso snatched another spear from the nearest warrior. He raised it to throw, but Conan closed and chopped down, wielding his sword left-handed and holding another axe in his right hand. The blade might need a smith's attention, but it could hack through a Bamula spearshaft as through straw.
Conan stepped back and tossed his weapons, snatching the sword out of the air with his right hand, the axe with the left. He spat on the ground, then put his foot on the spittle and rubbed it into the earth.
"Come on, Idosso, brave against women. Come, and end underfoot like that."
Idosso roared a wordless challenge filled with mindless fury. Then a great cry arose, freezing the warrior to the spot and making Conan turn.
Vuona still stood on the opposite bank, but now her hair rippled as if in a strong wind. She stared at the demon's gate with the gaze of a bird ensorceled by a snake. Conan thought he saw sparks of light dancing over her skin.
"Vuona!" he shouted. "Back!"
She seemed to hear”at least he thought he saw her shake her head. Then she took two steps forward, lengthened her stride with a third, and broke into a run.
Ten paces brought her to the edge of the golden spiral. Its light now gilded all her dark skin to the hue of fine bronze. Conan shouted again, and this time she showed no sign of hearing him or anything else.
Without breaking stride, she vanished into the spiral. Conan thought he saw it waver, and he cursed women turned witless by fear as he waited for the gate to vanish behind Vuona.
It did not. Instead, Idosso loomed up at Conan's shoulder. By pure instinct, the Cimmerian whirled, fists clenched. No steel touched the Bamula, but one weathered fist sank deep into the pit of the chief's stomach. As he doubled over, the other fist smashed into his jaw. He fell sideways into the bloody mud around the dead lizard-ape.
Conan now cursed his own temper. He could have slain Idosso with steel and lived with a clear conscience, and not a Bamula would have complained until after their mission was done, if then. Now he had made the man helpless, and it was not in Conan to kill a senseless man in cold blood. Nor, most likely, was it in the Bamulas to peacefully see him do it. Least of all was it in Idosso to learn wisdom from a mere crack on the jaw.
Conan wished Idosso in Crom's nethermost and coldest afterworld, where fools and traitors stood encased in blocks of ice. He wished any Bamula who followed Idosso all the lice of all the ill-kept taverns in Zingara.
Then he sheathed his sword, ran down to the bank, and took a running dive into the water. Shouts rose behind him as his head broke the surface, and he felt something rough scrape his leg. But the crocodile”if it was one”fell short in its first lunge at the Cimmerian.
Before it could turn for another attack, Conan's powerful strokes had carried him across the river.
He scrambled onto the land and gazed at the demon's gate with the care of a hunter seeking the weak points of a beast he has never seen before. A golden spark settled in his hair; he brushed it away as he would a persistent fly. His hand seemed to tingle where the spark struck it, but the tingling faded quickly.
Shouts rose behind him again, louder than before. He recognized Govindue's voice, and thought he heard that of Bessu as well. If they were trying to tell him to stay away from the demon's gate, they were wasting their wind.
The gate had not compelled his will, as it seemed to have done with Vuona. It had done nothing except swallow the woman”who would not have been desperate enough to pass within it had she not been fleeing Idosso.
Nothing compelled Conan except his own honor. An honor he had allowed to be stained by not dealing with Idosso the way the chief deserved, and in the moment he saw what the man was. In honor, he owed Vuona rescue, as well as Idosso's death¦ if he ever returned to the Black Kingdoms.
And if he did not? Well, Crom promised nothing to even the best warriors, but left their fate in their own hands. If no more, he could at least see that Vuona did not die alone.
Conan drew his sword, wiped it on the grass to remove a trifle of water from the blade, and strode forward into the golden spiral of the demon's gate.
Eight
The boy Govindue was the f
irst to follow Vuona and the Cimmerian. He flung his spear across the Afui to free both arms for swimming, then leapt into the water. The head of a crocodile broke the surface just behind him, but the boy reached land before the tooth-studded jaws could close on him.
Spears rained upon the crocodile. Few penetrated the ridged, scaly hide, but one struck an eye and another the sensitive flesh of the nose. The creature hissed like porridge boiling over into the cookfire and sank out of sight.
The boy made a ritual gesture of dedicating himself to conquer or die, hands over heart and head bowed. Then in silence he turned and walked into the golden swirling that had swallowed Vuona and the Cimmerian.
Bessu let out a terrible cry, like a half-score hyenas all at once. The birds not already driven from the banks of the Afui by the demon's gate flew up screeching and chattering. Then he was tugging the one lopped tree trunk forward, toward the narrowest stretch of the river.
Bessu had help from the others toward the end, but he did most of the work himself. His lank frame seemed to have been endowed with a strength greater than that of the vanished Cimmerian. Sweat poured from him and his breath came in gasps, but he was the first across the bridge, running lightly as a monkey to the far side.
"Warriors, I follow my son!" he called. "Join us and battle the demon's gate and its master. Stay, and let all know that you are less brave than a woman, a white-skinned outlander, a boy, and an old man."
Then he ran forward, to become the fourth person swallowed in the golden swirling.
One foolish warrior raised a spear to bring down Bessu, but a wiser head struck that spear out of the wielder's hand. With a shrewd blow of his war club, Kubwande slapped the second man on the shoulder, then ran across the bridge.
He did not rush straight off on the trail of the others, though. He carried over his shoulder lengths of branch hastily hewn into stout pegs. These he drove in on either side of the log bridge with the blunt side of an axe. On the near end of the bridge, others did the same.
The thudding of axes on pegs woke Idosso. He lurched to his feet with all the grace of a beer-swollen river-horse and stared about him as if those he saw had fallen from the sky. Then he shouted at Kubwande.
"Where is that dog of a Conan?"
"No dog," Kubwande said, "but one who has led where we must follow."
"Whaaaaa”?" Idosso's roar would have stunned in the air any birds not already startled into panic flight by the uproar before the demon's gate.
"Yes," Kubwande said. Being no fool, he had seen the look in the other warriors' eyes after Bessu vanished into the demon's gate on the trail of his son. The village chief's appeal to everyone's honor was not one to resist.
Also, Idosso's offenses against Conan's honor, as well as against many taboos, were great. Kubwande recrossed the bridge, stepped close to the large man, and whispered this message into one large scarred ear.
Idosso's nostrils flared, like those of a leopard scenting prey. He raised one fist, then put the other hand to his aching head.
"Of course, if the outlander struck you so fiercely that your wounds demand I summon the village women Kubwande began.
"Shall I tell you what to do with the village women?" Idosso muttered.
Kubwande pretended not to have heard.
The last pegs were driven in, and the first warriors crossed the bridge. They moved slowly, and not only because the log was slippery and the crocodile might be waiting below, wounded and wrathful.
On every man's face was a common look. No one rejoiced that Conan's honor had taken them through the demon's gate on Vuona's trail. No one seemed ready to let his own courage be doubted, by refusing to follow the northerner into whatever lay beyond the demons gate.
Kubwande was of a mind to blame that eager lad, Govindue, more than he blamed the Cimmerian, and perhaps the lad's father likewise. Conan was a stranger, and one could always say he was not worthy to be followed”until a boy said otherwise, then led the way.
There would be a reckoning with son and father, Kubwande vowed. He hoped there would also be no reckoning with Idosso for shaming him into action, but knew Idosso's temper was as certain as a crocodile's hunger.
But Idosso was grasping a spear and strapping his zebra-hide shield to his other arm. He tightened his war belt of crocodile hide set with river-horse teeth. Then he raised his spear and flung it with all the terrible strength of his right arm. It flew across the river, skimming over the heads of the men on the bridge, and bit into the ground just short of the demon's gate.
"Where Conan leads, any warrior must follow!" Idosso shouted.
Kubwande was on the bridge ahead of Idosso. Then the big chief was on the log. It groaned and swayed, in spite of the pegs. Kubwande half-hoped that the gods would spare him a host of burdens by snapping the log like a twig and dropping Idosso into the crocodile's jaws.
Undoubtedly Idosso was not the only war chief of the Bamula who might allow himself to be ruled by Kubwande's advice.
All the men were now across the river, save a few too hurt to fight but able to remain behind and tend the dead and dying. Briefly, Kubwande envied them. Their scars would tell all that they had reason not to go battle demons.
He was almost ready to prod Idosso forward with the point of a spear when the big man leapt ahead, snatching up his spear and flinging it again, straight at the heart of the demon's gate.
It flew into the golden swirling and vanished. A moment later, Idosso was striding forward, and a moment after that, he had likewise vanished.
"We have a chief to lead us into the demon's land," Kubwande called.
"Forward, warriors!"
No one ran at that call, but none dared hold back, and in the time needed to heat a pot of stew, the far bank of the Afui was empty. As the crocodile rose again, its remaining eye and slit nostril alone showing above the water, the swirling of the demon's gate became swifter. The golden light darkened, and a roar as of a mighty cataract battered at the hearing of the wounded.
They clapped their hands over their ears and opened their mouths. As they did, the spiral grew tighter and a wind from beyond nature churned spray from the Afui, drove the crocodile into the depths, and scattered leaves and lengths of vine.
Branches and whole trees snapped, unheard in the roar. Nuts pelted the cowering wounded, and a branch flew down and ended the suffering of a dying man by crushing his skull.
The wounded murmured words they had been taught, but they knew that a score of the greatest wizards of the land would have been powerless.
The demon's gate had gained new strength by devouring those who sought a warrior's reputation by entering it. Soon it would leap across the Afui and devour them, then go on to ravage the land.
Between one breath and the next, the roar and the sinister glare died.
The wind eased, the last few leaves drifted down from the sky, and the log bridge slipped into the Afui with a gentle splash.
Those whose eyes had not been dazzled or ears deafened thus far saw a thin spiral of smoke rising from the circle in the ground, and heard the faint cackle of flames in dried leaves. Little else except the wide eyes and trembling hands of the watchers remained to tell the tale of how the unknown had entered the jungle, then departed with more than a score of warriors.
***
Conan walked at a steady pace through the demon's gate. He would learn what lay on the other side soon enough, if there was another side.
Meanwhile, a wise warrior took care when he could not see the ground under his feet and barely feel it (if indeed it was ground; it felt more like a half-frozen marsh).
The golden light was all around him, and in his ears sounded a low-pitched drone, like an immense swarm of bees the size of pigeons, returning to a hive the size of Aghrapur. Then the light and the drone began to fade, and Conan stood ready to draw his sword to face whatever might await him on the other side of the gate.
Whether he faced demon, wizard, or peasant with a flail and outrage against
the stranger trampling his crops, Conan was prepared (although he would rather not kill the farmer, who could not be counted a real foe, and perhaps would be willing to tell him much useful about the local wizard).
Chill wind blew on Conan, the golden light gave way to daylight, without the emerald tint of the jungle, and he seemed to fall the length of his sword. His hillman's swiftness of hand and foot, eye and sinew, would have guarded him, had his sensibilities not been blunted more than he realized by the demon's gate.
As it was, he felt a steep slope under his sandals, and gravel sliding away, taking his balance with it. He threw himself backward, thrusting out his spear like a Gunderman mountaineer's climbing staff. The spear-point met rock and rebounded, not sinking in even the length of the first joint of a child's finger. Conan had the sense of being about to slide over the edge of the precipice, and in his ears roared the unmistakable din of rapids below.
Then something snagged his hair. It gripped so fiercely that for a moment he feared his hair would tear loose from his scalp or his scalp from his skull. Then his slide ended, the pain faded as the golden light had done, and he was able to look about him with a clearer vision.
His hair was tangled in a low, thorn-studded branch of a bush growing seemingly out of the bare rock. Below him, a slope strewn with boulders and patches of gravel dropped sharply to a stream thirty paces beyond.
White foam boiled over more boulders as green water seethed past them, and stunted trees thrust gnarled brown branches toward the sky.
Conan carefully sliced away hair with his dagger until he was free, then stood up. The sky was largely hidden by the sides of the valley, although the slopes were not as steep above as they were below. Seamed and weathered rock sparking with bits of quartz bulged outward to either side of a ravine that gave Conan his best view of the sky.
It had a northern look to it, a hard blue that found a reflection in the Cimmerian's eyes. Under such a sky had he been born, although the clouds marching by on the wind were softer than those of his native sky. It still had to be a long journey to the north from the Black Coast, or from whence came the breeze that crept even down into the valley and blew cool on his bare skin.
The Conan Compendium Page 409
