Conan Of The Isles

by L. Sprague De Camp

  As the first one came within reach, a slash sent it flying in two halves over the heads of its comrades. Then, for long minutes, the heavy broadsword whirled like the vanes of a windmill as Conan struck right and left in a deadly figure-eight pattern, his point just clearing the ground with each stroke. And with each stroke, one or more rats went flying - sometimes whole, sometimes as separated heads, bodies, limbs, and entrails. Blood splashed Conan's arms and legs. Now and then he miscalculated so that his point touched the stone in its sweep, striking sparks.

  But on pressed the horde, as those behind pushed those before them into the whirling blade. Now the press loosened somewhat, for some of the rats turned from the attack to feast upon the mutilated remains of their dead brethren. And still Conan swung and sent rat corpses flying by the score. His blade was now red halfway to the hilt, and the stone underfoot became sticky and slippery with blood. With each stroke, his sword threw off a spray of red droplets.

  Now they pressed upon him again, and for all the slaughter he wrought upon them he could not hold them back. Some dug their chisel-teeth into the tough leather of his boots. Furiously, Conan kicked and stamped, crunching the life out of those that swarmed around his feet; but others quickly took their place.

  A rat scrambled up to the top of Conan's boot and bit through the cloth of his breeches at the knee, inflicting a flesh wound. A quick slash sent the rat spinning away in two halves. Others gained his waist and breast, but their attempts to bite were foiled by the mail shirt. One made a great leap from the ground, landing on Conan's chest, and scrambled on up towards his throat. Conan snatched it away just as its whiskered muzzle touched his flesh. He grabbed at those swarming up his body, hurling them against the tunnel walls or into the river behind him.

  But they were gaining upon him. Rat corpses lay in heaps about him, and he stood on an uncertain footing of mangled, furry bodies, spilt entrails, and rodent gore. Although his boots and mail had so far protected him from all but a few minor bites, both knees bled from nips, and the left hand with which he seized rats that climbed his body streamed blood from several gashes.

  Then the rats gave back for an instant. Panting, Conan glared around. In his desperation, he saw something that he would have noted sooner, had he not been so closely pressed. A bowshot downstream from where he stood, a natural bridge of stone spanned the rushing black water. Instantly he realized that, if he could gain this arch, the rats could come at him only two or three at a time. On such a narrow way, he could hold out against the horde indefinitely.

  To think was to act. With a surge of power, he rushed towards the bridge, wading through swirling masses of rats and crushing the life from one with every bound. Others leaped upon him to scramble and bite, until his knees streamed blood and his breeches hung about them in tatters. But such was his impetus that he reached the bridge before the rats could pull him down.

  Gasping for breath, he staggered out upon the arch of stone and took his stand in the middle, where the footway narrowed. He regretted that in his haste he had not taken time to fetch the little lantern with him; but its fuel must be nearly exhausted anyway. From a distance it still shed a faint, pulsating light upon the scene.

  It took the rats only a few heartbeats to perceive him, but the pause enabled him to catch his breath and clear his head. He felt his age in laboring lungs, aching thews, and pounding heart.

  Now they came on again. As they flowed up the slope of the arch, Conan confronted them, crouching with his sword in both hands. As they came nearer, he began methodically slashing, right-left-right-left, each blow hurling rats off the narrow way. They died by scores and hundreds. Those that were merely knocked off fell splashing into the stream below, which swiftly bore them away into the darkness. Small, furry heads bobbed in the flood, circling to get their bearings and then striking out for the nearest shore until the darkness swallowed them up.

  Never in all his years of war and slaughter had his sword taken so many lives. If the rats had been men, Conan's stand upon the underground river would have depopulated a whole nation. Like a tireless machine, he fought on ...

  The end came quickly. A huge black rat with bristling whiskers - a grandfather of all rats, weighing over ten pounds - came bounding from the squealing pack to leap at Conan's gasping throat. Conan was long past feeling. His arms were numb and as heavy as lead, and the pillars of his spread legs seemed like cold columns of iron. With his left hand he snatched at the furry body as the rat dug its sharp claws into the links of his mail and lunged for his jugular vein. But strength was draining from Conan's limbs; he seemed unable to tear the creature loose, even when its sharp chisel-teeth gashed the skin beneath his beard.

  As another rat attacked his boot, he kicked out at it, missed., and staggered back, followed by a worrying mass of rodents. As he brought his heels down heavily to keep him falling off the arch, the natural bridge broke beneath the weight and the pounding. With a loud crack, the whole center section on which Conan stood fell straight down into the flood with tremendous splash.

  Conan found himself under water, carried down by the weight of his mail. The gigantic rat that had been worrying his throat was gone, but Conan now faced the prospect of ending his last stand by drowning.

  With a thrust of his legs against the bottom, he fought his way up to the surface and gasped a lungful of air before the weight dragged him down again. The swift current bumped and banged him against the irregularities of the bottom, rolling him over and over. Once more he fought his way to the surface. He had always been a splendid swimmer; but now the mailshirt, which he had retained through such peril and which had protected his torso from scores of bites, was dragging him down to his doom.

  Once more he fought up to the surface. Once more he took in a straining lungful of air. And once more the weight drew him inexorably under. His consciousness was slipping away, as though he were falling into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DUNGEON OF DESPAIR

  In vain the Lion fought and fell –

  His crew already gazed on Hell..

  . — The Voyage of Amra

  Sigurd of Vanaheim was disgusted. When the stout old Vanr, like the rest of the Red Lion's crew, had succumbed to the narcotic vapor released by the men of the Antillian dragon-ship, he hardly expected ever to see daylight again. But Death had withdrawn its black claws from the fallen warrior. Not this time had Sigurd met his bane.

  Instead, dazed and confused, the old pirate had awakened with sharp, aromatic fumes in his nostrils. He found himself in the capacious hold of the Antillian vessel, amid his Barachan shipmates^ who were also returning to consciousness. They were surrounded by small., brown, grinning warriors in weird glass armor.

  As Sigurd slowly recovered his wits, he saw that the dragon-ship was not really built from gold or some other yellow metal, but was just thinly plated with it. The planking under his feet was of good, solid wood, seemingly as hard as oak and of a darker color. Wooden bulkheads and hull planking surrounded him. To his ears came the muffled thunder of waves breaking against the curved hull, and Sigurd knew what must have happened.

  His eyes searched the faces of his crew. They were battered and bloody, and a couple bore bad wounds. But nearly all of them seemed to be present and alive, even if prisoners in the hands of the Antillians.

  A pang went through the old freebooter's heart. Anxiously he searched the faces of his men again – but where was Conan? The familiar scarred, frowning face under the iron-gray mane was not to be seen.

  Sigurd's heart sank as a doleful expression clouded his ruddy features. He well knew the iron courage of the old Cimmerian; few men during Conan's long life, could boast of having taken him alive. Fiercely attached to his freedom, the old gray wolf might well have preferred to go down fighting rather than to be taken prisoner by these doll-like little brown men. And, if Conan were indeed among the slain, then upon Sigurd's bowed head devolved the awesome responsibility of command.


  'Courage, my hearties!' he rumbled. 'Belike we be free men no more, but we still live. And whilst we draw breath, sink me for a lubber, but there's always a chance of fighting our way to freedom!'

  Goram Singh probed him with large, somber black eyes. 'Where is the lord Amra, O Sigurd? Why is he not amongst us?' the Vendhyan demanded.

  Sigurd slowly wagged his graying red beard. 'By Shai-tan's tail and the star of Ningal, comrade, I know not. Mayhap he is in another part of this cursed galley ...'

  The Vendhyan silently nodded, but he bowed his tur-baned head and avoided Sigurd's eye. He knew as well as the Vanr that Conan would probably not have been chained apart from the rest. More likely, the mighty Cimmerian had gone down to the cold halls of the restless dead with an Antillian glass sword in his vitals.

  The voyage to the harbor of Ptahuacan took them nearly an hour, what with the extra weight of half a hundred burly pirates in the hold. Sigurd blinked in the sunlight as they were led out of the gold-sheathed dragonship in heavy glass chains. Curiously, he peered at the vista of the ancient city of weathered stone and gaudily painted stucco, rising tier upon tier up the slope of the mountain. Never in all his days had Sigurd of Vanaheim seen so strange a metropolis, whose every building was covered with sculptured friezes of monster-headed gods and animal-headed men, with monolithic gateways of solid stone and strange pylons climbing into the bright morning sky. Over all, the cryptic and ominous shadow of the vast, black-and-crimson pyramid shed a pall of gloom. Rising from the temple on its top, a perpetual plume of smoke streamed from the structure as from a man-made volcano.

  The pirates, however, caught only a brief glimpse of the ancient Atlantean city. Their guards led them briskly through the city streets, up the stupendous ramps from tier to tier, and through the bronze gates of the gray citadel adjoining the square of the great pyramid. When those mighty gates clanged to behind their backs, the pirates saw their last of open air and blue skies for many a long day.

  Guards herded them down endless stone stairs, which coiled deeply into the bowels of the mountain on .whose side Ptahuacan was built. When their knees, aching from the interminable descent, seemed ready to collapse under them, they came at length into a tremendous chamber cut from the solid stone. Here their shackles were unlocked while they stood, guarded by alert wardens with leveled., glass-headed pikes.

  Next, their ankles were secured to a long chain of glass, which ran through looped rings set into the stone wall. Although they had a little slack - enough to move about and lie down - for practical purposes they were confined to an area extending a few feet from the wall.

  Then the guards filed out, and the captives were left in solitude.

  In this huge room, vast stone columns, like the trunks of gigantic trees, rose to support the roof. They seemed to be part of the natural rock and to have been left standing when the rest of the chamber was excavated, to provide support for the roof.

  Far above their heads, plates of shiny metal were set in the ceiling. By some forgotten Atlantean science or wizardry, these plates glowed with a soft, ruddy light, shedding a wan illumination upon the chamber beneath. Sigurd wondered for an instant whether these plates were made of the rumored Atlantean metal, orichalcum, but he had too many other things of more urgency to spend much time with this surmise.

  Once a day the captives were fed. Buckets of greasy, tepid stew were dumped into a long, foul, stone trough that ran along the wall behind them. The stuff was lumpy with cold grease and stretched out with some unpalatable meal. But hunger soon overcomes squeamishness, and Conan's crew came eagerly to await the feeding hour. It took all of Sigurd's authority to keep them from fighting over this unappetizing swill.

  Immured in this dank place, far from a sight of the heavenly bodies^ the pirates lost all sense of time. Had they been here hours or days? They argued endlessly among themselves over this question, until Sigurd roared: 'Shut up, all of you! Ye'll drive me mad with your clack. We can be pretty sure they feed us at the same time every day, so each feeding marks one day. Yasunga, ye shall be our timekeeper. Find a place on the wall and make a scratch there for each serving of this slop.'

  'But Sigurd,' complained a small Ophirean, 'we know not how many days have passed up to now. Some say four, some five, some six or seven. How shall we know-—'

  He broke off as the Vanr, shaking huge fists in his face until his chains rattled, roared: 'Shut up, Ahriman blast you, or I'll wind a chain around your scrawny neck and tighten it until your lousy little head comes off! Every man can add his own guess to the number of days shown on Yasunga's tally, and it matters not a dam anyway!

  And the next man who raises this question, I'll smash his skull like an egg!'

  ‘Ah, eggs!' said Artanes the Zamorian, a stout-bellied bull of a man renowned among the pirates for his appetite. 'What I could do with a couple of dozen fresh fowl's eggs...'

  They grew matted with filth. Their untended wounds: either festered or scabbed and began to heal. Two died: a burly Shemite, who had taken a cracked skull in the battle, died screaming and fighting invisible foes. The other was a stolid black from the steaming jungles of southern Rush, whose tongue had been cut out by Stygian slavers before he had escaped to the Baracha Isles, and who perished from a fever. Both bodies were taken away by glass-mailed Antillian guards for some unknown disposal.

  With the help of Yasunga the navigator, Milo the boatswain, and Yakov the bowmaster, Sigurd did his best to keep his men in order and their spirits up. This was not easy, for they were a motley lot, given to irrational grudges and hatreds, outbursts of violent passion, superstitious fears and crotchets, and sudden fits of gloom, despair, or quarrelsomeness. And Sigurd, while a mighty man whose name commanded respect among the Red Brotherhood, lacked the aura of invincible luck and supernatural power that accompanied Amra the Lion.

  The best way to keep them interested and out of mischief, the Northman found, was to encourage them to talk about their exploits of the past. So they reminisced for hours, arguing point by point through battles, sieges, and forays in which they had taken part.

  Again and again they recalled the deeds of Conan - or Amra the Lion, as most of them knew him. They told and retold how, at the sleek side of Belit, his first great love, he had plundered the Black Coast and ventured deeply into the unknown jungle rivers of the South, where the she-pirate had come to a grisly doom in a ruined city of stone. They told how, a decade later, he had reappeared out of nowhere to sail with the Barachan pirates, and how still later he had cut a swath as captain of a ship of Zingaran buccaneers. Again and again they recalled the fantastic career of their chief, the hero of a thousand perils and the victor of a thousand fights, from single duels to earthshaking battles.

  At length, even Sigurd's spirit began to fail. The dark, dank dungeon with its silent stone walls, the pall of gloom that weighed down their spirits, and the threat of an unknown doom all spread a mood of sullen, hopeless depression heavy enough to bow down the brightest spirits.

  Several times Sigurd, with the help of the strongest men in the company, tried to break the chains that bound them. The links were fashioned of what looked like fragile glass - but no glass he had ever seen was as tough as this transparent material. It was as strong and unyielding as bronze. No amount of pulling, pounding, stamping, twisting, or jerking did more than slightly mar its slick, iridescent surface.

  No, escape appeared to be beyond their powers. They could only wait for doom to strike in its own good time. And, at last, strike it did.

  The metallic clash of spears on shields aroused Sigurd from uneasy slumbers. He started up from the straw to see the room filled with small, flat-faced soldiers and to see his comrades being prodded into wakefulness and their hands being bound behind them.

  'What is it, Captain?' muttered Goram Singh.

  Sigurd shook his head, so that the unkempt, graying red beard wagged. 'Crom and Mitra know, shipmate!' he growled. Then he raised his voice: 'Look alive, lads! Straighten up and s
how these brown dogs we be men, even though kenneled here in our own filth like beasts. If it be the executioner's block, then by the green beard of Lir and the red heart of Nergal, we'll show these stinking pigs how men can die, eh lads? Be ye with old Sigurd to the last?'

  His exhortations raised a ragged cheer from the pirates, who croaked: 'Ay, Redbeard!'

  'Good lads, all! And mayhap 'twill be only the slave-dealer's mart, eh? With the luck of the Brotherhood, I think such lusty lads as we will be purchased by high-born ladies, for special service in their boudoirs!' He gave an exaggerated wink.

  The men responded with a chorus of catcalls and obscene jests. Sigurd grinned and chuckled, but it was all pretense. For he thought he could guess the terrible end that awaited them, here among the black-hearted heathen of these cursed islands at the edge of the world.

  Sigurd was right. Blinking blearily in the unaccustomed sunlight, the pirates gazed around them, awestruck at the spectacle. Above soared the blue vault of heaven, like a sapphire dome in some palace of the gods. The sun stood almost overhead, blazing down upon them with a furnace-like heat that was welcome after the cool darkness of the stinking dungeon. They drank in the fresh sea breeze from the harbor, knowing that it might be their last chance in this world to draw a lungful of salt air.

  They had issued from the portals of the grim, gray citadel called the Vestibule of the Gods into the square of the great red-and-black pyramid. The pyramid towered up in front of them, over the heads of the thousands of An-tillians who thronged the square.

  At the head of the line, Sigurd looked back upon his comrades. They were a sorry-looking lot, ragged and filthy, with long hair and matted beards. Ribs showed through the holes in their tattered shirts from the meager, unwholesome diet.

  Ranks of soldiers kept a lane open through the throng from the Vestibule to the base of the pyramid., and along this lane the pirates' guards prodded their captives until they came to the tail of a tine of naked AntiUians.