`Dog!' he taunted. `You can't hit me! I was not born to die on Hyrkanian steel! Try again, pig of Turan!'
Jehungir did not try again. That was his last arrow. He drew his scimitar and advanced, confident in his spired helmet and close-meshed mail. Conan met him halfway in a blinding whirl of swords. The curved blades ground together, sprang apart, circled in glittering arcs that blurred the sight which tried to follow them. Octavia, watching, did not see the stroke, but she heard its chopping impact, and saw Jehungir fall, blood spurting from his side where the Cimmerian's steel had sundered his mail and bitten to his spine.
But Octavia's scream was not caused by the death of her former master. With a crash of bending boughs Khosatral Khel was upon them. The girl could not flee; a moaning cry escaped her as her knees gave way and pitched her grovelling to the sward.
Conan, stooping above the body of the Agha, made no move to escape. Shifting his reddened scimitar to his left hand, he drew the great half-blade of the Yuetshi. Khosatral Khel was towering above him, his arms lifted like mauls, but as the blade caught the sheen of the sun, the giant gave back suddenly.
But Conan's blood was up. He rushed in, slashing with the crescent blade. And it did not splinter. Under its edge the dusky metal of Khosatral's body gave way like common flesh beneath a cleaver. From the deep gash flowed a strange ichor, and Khosatral cried out like the dirging of a great bell. His terrible arms flailed down, but Conan, quicker than the archers who had died beneath those awful flails, avoided their strokes and struck again and yet again. Khosatral reeled and tottered; his cries were awful to hear, as if metal were given a tongue of pain, as if iron shrieked and bellowed under torment.
Then wheeling away he staggered into the forest; he reeled in his gait, crashed through bushes and caromed off trees. Yet though Conan followed him with the speed of hot passion, the walls and towers of Dagon loomed through the trees before the man came within dagger-reach of the giant.
Then Khosatral turned again, flailing the air with desperate blows, but Conan, fired to berserk fury, was not to be denied. As a panther strikes down a bull moose at bay, so he plunged under the bludgeoning arms and drove the crescent blade to the hilt under the spot where a human's heart would be.
Khosatral reeled and fell. In the shape of a man he reeled, but it was not the shape of a man that struck the loam. Where there had been the likeness of a human face, there was no face at all, and the metal limbs melted and changed . . . Conan, who had not shrunk from Khosatral living, recoiled blenching from Khosatral dead, for he had witnessed an awful transmutation; in his dying throes Khosatral Khel had become again the thing that had crawled up from the Abyss millenniums gone. Gagging with intolerable repugnance, Conan turned to flee the sight; and he was suddenly aware that the pinnacles of Dagon no longer glimmered through the trees. They had faded like smoke - the battlements, the crenellated towers, the great bronze gates, the velvets, the gold, the ivory, and the dark-haired women, and the men with their shaven skulls. With the passing of the inhuman intellect which had given them rebirth, they had faded back into the dust which they had been for ages uncounted. Only the stumps of broken columns rose above crumbling walls and broken paves and shattered dome. Conan again looked upon the ruins of Xapur as he remembered them.
The wild hetman stood like a statue for a space, dimly grasping something of the cosmic tragedy of the fitful ephemera called mankind and the hooded shapes of darkness which prey upon it. Then as he heard his name called in accents of fear, he started, as one awaking from a dream, glanced again at the thing on the ground, shuddered and turned away toward the cliffs and the girl that waited there.
She was peering fearfully under the trees, and she greeted him with a half-stifled cry of relief. He had shaken off the dim monstrous visions which had momentarily haunted him, and was his exuberant self again.
`Where is he?' she shuddered.
`Gone back to hell whence he crawled,' he replied cheerfully. `Why didn't you climb the stair and make your escape in my boat?'
`I wouldn't desert-' she began, then changed her mind, and amended rather sulkily, `I have nowhere to go. The Hyrkanians would enslave me again, and the pirates would-'
`What of the kozaks?' he suggested.
`Are they better than the pirates?' she asked scornfully. Conan's admiration increased to see how well she had recovered her poise after having endured such frantic terror. Her arrogance amused him.
`You seemed to think so in the camp by Ghori,' he answered. `You were free enough with your smiles then.'
Her red lip curled in disdain. `Do you think I was enamored of you? Do you dream that I would have shamed myself before an ale-guzzling, meat-gorging barbarian unless I had to? My master - whose body lies there - forced me to do as I did.'
`Oh!' Conan seemed rather crestfallen. Then he laughed with undiminished zest. `No matter. You belong to me now. Give me a kiss.'
`You dare ask-' she began angrily, when she felt herself snatched off her feet and crushed to the hetman's muscular breast. She fought him fiercely, with all the supple strength of her magnificent youth, but he only laughed exuberantly, drunk with his possession of this splendid creature writhing in his arms.
He crushed her struggles easily, drinking the nectar of her lips with all the unrestrained passion that was his, until the arms that strained against him melted and twined convulsively about his massive neck. Then he laughed down into the clear eyes, and said: `Why should not a chief of the Free People be preferable to a city-bred dog of Turan?'
She shook back her tawny locks, still tingling in every nerve from the fire of his kisses. She did not loosen her arms from his neck. `Do you deem yourself an Agha's equal?' she challenged.
He laughed and strode with her in his arms toward the stair. `You shall judge,' he boasted. `I'll burn Khawarizm for a torch to light your way to my tent.'
The Flame Knife
1. Knives in the Dark
The scuff of swift and stealthy feet in the darkened doorway warned the giant Cimmerian. He wheeled to see a tall figure lunging at him from the black arch. It was dark in the alley, but Conan glimpsed a fierce, bearded face and the gleam of steel in a lifted hand, even as he avoided the blow with a twist of his body. The knife ripped his tunic and glanced along the shirt of light chain mail he wore beneath it Before the assassin could recover his balance, the Cimmerian caught his arm and brought his massive fist down like a sledge hammer on the back of the fellow's neck. The man crumpled to earth without a sound.
Conan stood over him, listening with tense expectancy. Up the street, around the next comer, he caught the shuffle of sandaled feet, the muffled clink of steel. These sinister sounds told him the nighted streets of Anshan were a deathtrap. He hesitated, half-drew the scimitar at his side, then shrugged and hurried down the street. He swerved wide of the dark arches that gaped in the walls that lined it.
He turned into a wider street and a few moments later rapped softly on a door, above which burned a bronze lantern. The door opened almost instantly. Conan stepped inside, snapping:
"Lock the door!"
The massive Shemite who had admitted the Cimmerian shot home the heavy bolt and turned, tugging his curled blue-black beard as he inspected his commander.
"Your shirt is gashed, Conan!" he rumbled.
"A man tried to knife me," answered Conan. "Others followed."
The Shemite's black eyes blazed as he laid a broad, hairy hand on the three-foot Ilbarsi knife that jutted from his hip. "Let us sally forth and slay the dogs!" he urged.
Conan shook his head. He was a huge man, much taller than the Shemite, but for all his size he moved with the lightness of a cat His thick chest, corded neck, and square shoulders spoke of primordial strength, speed, and endurance.
"Other things come first" he said. "They're enemies of Balash, who knew I quarreled with the king tonight."
"You did!" cried the Shemite. "This is dark news indeed. What said the king?"
Conan picked
up a flagon of wine and gulped down half of it. "Oh, Kobad Shah is mad with suspicion," he said. "Now it's our friend Balash. The chiefs enemies have poisoned the king against him; but then, Balash is stubborn. He won't come in and surrender as Kobad demands, saying Kobad means to stick his head on a pike. So Kobad ordered me to take the kozaki into the Ilbars Mountains and bring back Balash―all of him if possible, but his head in any case."
"And?"
"I refused."
"You did?" said the Shemite in an awed whisper.
"Of course! What do you think I am? I told Kobad Shah how Balash and his tribe saved us when we got lost in the Ilbars in the middle of winter, on our ride south from the Vilayet Sea. Most hillmen would have wiped us out. But the fool wouldn't listen. He began shouting about his divine right and the insolence of low-born barbarians and such stuff.
One more word and I'd have stuffed his imperial turban down his throat."
"You did not strike the king?" said the Shemite.
"Nay, though I felt like it Crom! I can't understand the way you civilized men crawl on your bellies before any copper-riveted ass who happens to sit on a jeweled chair with a bauble on his head."
"Because these asses can have us flayed or impaled at a nod. Now, we must flee from Iranistan to escape the king's wrath."
Conan finished the wine and smacked his lips. "I think not; hell get over it He knows his army is not what it was in his grandsire's time, and we're the only light horse he can count on. But that still leaves our friend Balash. I'm tempted to ride north to warn him."
"Alone, Conan?"
"Why not? You can give it out that I'm sleeping off a debauch for a few days until―"
A light knock on the door made Conan cut off his sentence. He glanced at the Shemite, stepped to the door, and growled:
"Who's there?"
"It is I, Nanaia," said a woman's voice.
Conan stared at his companion. "Do you know any Nanaia, Tubal?"
"Not I. It must be some trick."
"Let me in," said the voice.
"We shall see," muttered Conan, his eyes blazing a volcanic blue in the lamplight. He drew his scimitar and laid a hand on the bolt, while Tubal, knife drawn, took his place on the other side of the door.
Conan snapped the bolt and whipped open the door. A veiled figure stepped across the threshold, then gave a little shriek and shrank back at the sight of the gleaming blades poised on muscular arms.
Conan's blade darted out so that its tip touched the back of the visitor. "Enter, my lady," he rambled in barbarously accented Iranistani.
The woman stepped forward. Conan slammed the door and shot home the bolt "Is anybody with you?"
"N-nay, I came alone…"
Conan's left arm shot out with the speed of a serpent's strike and ripped the veil from the woman's face. She was tall, lithe, young, and dark, with black hair and finely-chiseled features.
"Now, Nanaia, what is this all about?" he said.
"I am a girl from the king's seraglio―"
Tubal gave a long whistle. "Now we are in for it."
"Go on, Nanaia," said Conan.
"Well, I have often seen you through the lattice behind the throne, when you were closeted with Kobad. It is the king's pleasure to let his women watch him at his royal business. We are supposed to be shut out of this gallery when weighty matters are discussed, but tonight Xathrita the eunuch was drunk and failed to lock the door between the gallery and the women's apartments. I stole back and heard your bitter speech with the king.
"When you had gone, Kobad was very angry. He called in Hakhamani the informer and bade him quietly murder you. Hakhamani was to make it look like an accident."
"If I catch Hakhamani, I'll make him look like an accident," gritted Conan. "But why all this delicacy? Kobad is no more backward than most kings about shortening or lengthening the necks of people he likes not."
"Because the king wants to keep the services of your kozaki, and if they knew he had slain you they would revolt or ride away."
"And why did you bring me this news?"
She looked at him from large dark melting eyes. "I perish in the harem from boredom. With hundreds of women, the king has no time for me. I have admired you through the screen ever since you took service here and hope you will take me with you. Anything is better than the suffocating monotony of this gilded prison, with its everlasting gossip and intrigue. I am the daughter of Kujala, chief of the Gwadiri. We are a tribe of fishermen and mariners, far to the south among the Islands of Pearl. I have steered my own ship through a typhoon, and such indolence drives me mad."
"How did you get out of the palace?"
"A rope and an unguarded old window with the bars broken away… But that is not important. Will you take me?"
"Send her back," said Tubal in the lingua franca of the kozaki: a mixture of Zaporoskan, Hyrkanian, and other tongues. "Or better yet, cut her throat and bury her in the garden. He might let us go unharmed, but he'd never let us get away with the wench. Let him find that you have run off with one of his concubines and he'll overturn every stone in Iranistan to find you."
The girl evidently did not understand the words but quailed at the menace of the tone.
Conan grinned wolfishly. "On the contrary. The thought of slinking out of the country with my tail between my legs makes my guts ache. But if I can take something like this along for a trophy―well, so long as we must leave anyway…" He turned to Nanaia. "You understand that the pace will be fast, the going rough, and the company not so polite as you're used to?"
"I understand."
"And furthermore," he said with narrowed eyes, "that I command absolutely?"
"Aye."
"Good. Wake the dog-brothers, Tubal; we ride as soon as they can stow their gear and saddle up."
Muttering his forebodings, the Shemite strode into an inner chamber and shook a man sleeping on a heap of carpets. "Awaken, son of a long line of thieves. We ride northward."
Hattusas, a slight, dark Zamorian, sat up yawning. "Whither?"
"To Kushaf in the Ilbars Mountains, where we wintered, and where the rebel dog Balash will doubtless cut all our throats," growled Tubal.
Hattusas grinned as he rose. "You have no love for the Kushafi, but he is Conan's sworn friend."
Tubal scowled as he stalked out into the courtyard and through the door that led to the adjacent barrack. Groans and curses came from the barrack as the men were shaken awake.
Two hours later, the shadowy figures that lurked about Conan's house shrank back into the shadows as the gate of the stable yard swung open and the three hundred Free Companions clattered out in double file, leading pack mules and spare horses. They were men of all nations, the remnants of the band of kozaki whom Conan had led south from the steppes around the Vilayet Sea when King Yezdigerd of Turan had gathered a mighty army and broken the outlaw confederacy in an all-day battle. They had arrived in Anshan ragged and half-starved. Now they were gaudy in silken pantaloons and spired helmets of Iranistani pattern, and loaded down with weapons.
Meanwhile in the palace, the king of Iranistan brooded on his throne.
Suspicion had eaten into his troubled soul until he saw enemies everywhere, within and without For a time he had counted on the support of Conan, the leader of the squadron of mercenary light horse. The northern savage might lack the suave manners of the cultivated Iranistani court, but he did seem to have his own barbarian code of honor. Now, however, he had flatly refused to carry out Kobad Shah's order to seize the traitor Balash…
The king glanced at the curtain masking an alcove, absently reflecting that the wind must be rising, since the tapestry swayed a little. His eyes swept the gold-barred window and he went cold. The light curtains there hung motionless. Yet the hangings over the alcove had stirred…
Though short and fat, Kobad Shah did not lack personal courage. As he sprang, seized the tapestries, and tore them apart, a dagger in a dark hand licked from between them and smote him ful
l in the breast He cried out as he went down, dragging his assailant with him. The man snarled like a wild beast his dilated eyes glaring madly. His dagger ribboned the king's robe, revealing the mail shirt that stopped his first thrust.
Outside, a deep shout echoed the king's shrill yells for help. Booted feet pounded in the corridor. The king had grasped his attacker by throat and knife wrist but the man's stringy muscles were like knotted steel cords. As they rolled on the floor, the dagger, glancing from the links of the mail shirt, fleshed itself in arm, thigh, and hand. Then, as the bravo heaved the weakening ruler under him, grasped his throat and lifted the knife again, something flashed in the lamplight like a jet of blue lightning. The murderer collapsed, his head split to the teeth.
"Your majesty! Sire!" It was Gotarza, the towering captain of the royal guard, pale under his long black beard. As Kobad Shah sank down on a divan, Gotarza began ripping strips from the hangings to bind his wounds.
"Look!" gasped the king, pointing. His face was livid; his hand shook.
"The knife! By Asura, the knife!"
It lay glinting by the dead man's hand―a curious weapon with a wavy blade shaped like a flame. Gotarza started and swore under his breath.
"The flame knife!" panted Kobad Shah. "The same weapon that struck at the King of Vendhya and the King of Turan!"
"The mark of the Hidden Ones," muttered Gotarza, uneasily eyeing the ominous symbol of the terrible cult.
The noise had roused the palace. Men were running down the corridors, shouting to know what had happened.
"Shut the door!" exclaimed the king. "Admit no one but the major-domo of the palace!"
"But we must have a physician, your majesty," protested the officer.
"These wounds will not slay of themselves, but the dagger might have been poisoned."
The Conan Compendium Page 526
