“From this hour, I am no longer your king until I have returned with my stolen queen. If I cannot defend my own mate, I am not fit to rule. But, by Crom, I will seek out this robber and wreak vengeance upon him, be he protected by all the armed hosts in the world! ”
Then the king opened his mouth to voice a weird and terrible call that echoed shudderingly through the hall. It rang like the cry of doomed souls. The eerie horror of its tones made many a face turn ashen.
The king was gone.
Prospero hurried after Conan. Trocero paused, surveying all, before he, too, followed.
A trembling Poitainian countess voiced the question that pressed the minds of many guests. “What was that terrible shout? It froze the blood in my veins. I felt as if a frightful doom were upon me. The avenging souls of the Dark Lands must scream like that when they roam the barren wastes for their prey. ”
The gray-haired count of Raman, veteran of border wars, answered: “Your guess is close enough, milady. It is the battle cry of the Cimmerian tribes. It is voiced only when they are about to fling themselves into battle with utter abandon and no concern other than to kill.” He paused. “I have heard it once before at the bloody sack of Venarium, when the black-haired barbarians swarmed over the walls despite our arrow storm and put everybody to the sword. ”
Silence fell over the throng.
“No, Prospero, no! ” Conan’s heavy fist thundered down upon the table.
“I will travel alone. To draw armored legions from the realm might tempt attack by some scheming foe.
Tarascus has not forgotten the beating we gave him, and Koth and Ophir are untrustworthy as always. I shall ride, not as King Conan of Aquilonia, with a shining retinue of lords and lancers, but as Conan of Cimmeria, the common adventurer. ”
“But Conan, ” said Prospero with the easy familiarity that obtained between him and the king, “we cannot let you risk your life on such an uncertain quest. In this manner you may never attain your goal, whereas with the lances of Poitainian knights at your back you can brave any foe. Let us ride with you! ”
Conan’s blue eyes glowed with fierce appreciation, but he shook his black-maned head. “No, my friend. I feel I am destined to free my queen alone. Even the help of my trusty knights will not assure success. You shall command the army in my absence, and Trocero shall rule the kingdom. If I am not back in two years …choose a new king! ”
Conan lifted the slender golden circlet from his black hair and put it on the oaken table. He stood for a moment, brooding.
Trocero and Prospero made no attempt to break the silence. They had long ago learned that Conan’s ways were sometimes queer and unfathomable to civilized men. With his barbarian mind unsullied by civilized life, he was apt to let his thoughts run along paths other than the common ones. Here stood not only a king whose queen had been abducted. Here stood the primordial man, whose mate had been torn from him by forces dark and unknown, and who, without show or bluster, was silently storing terrible vengeance in his heart.
With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Conan broke the silence. “A horse, Prospero, and the harness of a common mercenary! I ride at once. ”
“Whither? ” asked the general.
“To the sorcerer Pelias of Koth, who dwells in Khanyria, in Khoraja. I smell black sorcery in tonight’s happenings. That flying creature was no earthly bird. I care not for wizards and would rather manage without their help, but now I need Pelias’ advice.”
Outside the heavy oaken door, a man stood with his ear pressed to the panel. At these words, a smile spread over his features. With a furtive glance, he melted into one of the niches, overhung with heavy draperies, that lined the corridor. He heard the door open. Conan and his friends passed, their footfalls dwindling down the staircase.
The spy waited till the sounds had died. Then, looking right and left, he slunk out of hiding. Garbed in the dress of a retainer of the court, he crossed the courtyard without being challenged. He disappeared into the servants’
quarters and soon emerged, donning a heavy woolen cloak against the chill of night. He gave the password to the guard and was let out. He set out for the western part of the city.
Nobody followed him. The smaller streets and lanes were black as the inside of a chimney. Few rays of the clouded moon pierced their murk.
Watchmen, bill on shoulder and peaked helmet on head, paced the streets in pairs, talking in low voices. Harlots leaned out of their windows and called to the wanderer. Some were beautiful, showing off the splendor of their white necks by low-cut gowns or sheer silken wraps.
Others had haggard and sleazy faces coated with powder and Hyrkanian rouge. But the man hurried on without swerving from his path.
At last he came to a large house in a parklike garden. A high wall surrounded it on all sides, but into a niche was recessed a small door.
He knocked four times. The door was opened by a giant, dusky Stygian clad in white. The two men whispered a few words. Then the palace servant hastened, toward the house, where all windows were dark but one.
Evidently this was not the house of a native Aquilonian. Heavy tapestries and rich paintings, adorned the walls, but the motifs depicted were not western. Domed marble temples, white zigurats, and people with turbaned heads and flowing robes dominated the rich pageantry of gold and silver thread, of silk and satin and curved swords.
Arabesqued oval tables, divans with spreads of red and green silks, golden vases with exotic flowers combined to lend an air of the opulent and exotic East.
Resting on a divan, a big, florid man sipped wine from a jeweled goblet. He returned the salaam of the palace servant with a careless nod.
“What brings you, Marinus? ” There was asperity in the languid voice.
“Have you not enough work to do for me at the king’s ball? It does not end until early morning, unless Conan has called it off in one of his barbaric moods. What has happened? ” Taking another sip, he regarded Marinus with a piercing stare.
“Ghandar Chen, my lord, the queen of Aquilonia has been abducted by an unearthly monster, which flew away with her into the sky! The king rides alone tonight to search for her. First, however, to get some clue to the whereabouts of the reaver, he will visit the Kothian sorcerer Pelias in Khanyria.”
“By Erlik, this is news indeed! ” Ghandar Chen sprang up, eyes blazing.
“Five of my poisoners hang on the hill of execution, so much kite’s meat. Those damned martinets of the Black Dragons are incorruptible. But now Conan will be alone, in foreign lands!”
He clapped his hands. The Stygian entered silently and stood at attention, his dark visage somber and inscrutable. Ghandar Chen spoke:
“Conan of Aquilonia embarks tonight on a long journey. He rides alone, as a common mercenary. His first goal will be the city of Khanyria in Khoraja, where he will seek the assistance of the sorcerer Pelias. Ride swiftly to Baraccus, who camps on the Yivga River. Order him to take as many trustworthy men as he needs and slay Conan in Khanyria. The Cimmerian must not reach Pelias. If that cursed necromancer chooses to help him, he might blast all our men from the earth with a wave of his hand! ”
The Stygian’s somber eyes flashed, and his usually immobile features were split by a dreadful smile.
“Will do. I know Conan, ” he rumbled, “since he crushed the host of Prince Kutamun outside Khoraja. I was one of the few survivors, later to be captured by Kothic slavers and sold! I, born a noble and bred to war and the hunt!
Long have I waited for my revenge! If the gods permit, I will slay the Cimmerian myself.” His hand sought the hilt of his long dagger. “I go at once, master.” He salaamed deeply and left.
Ghandar Chen seated himself at a richly-inlaid rosewood table. From the drawer he took a golden pen and parchment. He wrote:
To King Yezdigerd, lord of Turan and the Eastern Empire. From your faithful servant Ghandar Chen, greetings.
Conan the Cimmerian, the kozak and pirate, rides alone for Khanyria. I have
sent word to slay him there. When it is done, I will send you his head. Should he by some magical feat escape, his road will probably run through Turanian territory. Written in the Year of the Horse, on the third day of the Golden Month.
He signed and sanded it. The Turanian then rose and gave the parchment to Marinus, who had been lolling in the background. He snapped:
“Ride swiftly eastward. Start at once. My servants will furnish you with arms and a horse. You shall take this to King Yezdigerd himself in Aghrapur. He will reward us both handsomely.”
A satisfied smile was upon Ghandar Chen’s face as he sank back upon the divan, his hand reaching for the goblet again.
CHAPTER 2: The Ring of Rakhamon
The scorching afternoon sun cast searing rays across the desert like whiplashes of white fire. Distant groves of palm trees shimmered; flocks of vultures hung like clumps of ripe, black grapes in the foliage. Endless expanses of yellow sand stretched as far as the eye could see in undulating dunes and flats of ultimate aridity.
A solitary rider halted his horse in the shade of the palm fronds that fringed an oasis. Though he wore the snowy khalat of the desert-dwellers, his features belied any thought of Eastern origin. The hand that shaded his questing eyes was broad and powerful and ridged with scars. His skin was browned, not with the native duskiness of the Zuagir, but with the ruddy bronze of the sunbaked Westerner. The eyes were a volcanic blue, like twin pockets of unprovable depth. A glint at his sleeve betrayed the fact that the traveler wore a coat of mail under his flowing dress. At his side hung a long, straight sword in a plain leather scabbard.
Conan had ridden far and fast. Plunging across country with reckless speed, he had broken four horses on his way to Koth. Having reached the expanses of desert that formed the eastern end of the Kothian kingdom, he had paused to buy a khalat and some bread and meat at a dingy, dirty-white border village. Nobody had barred his way, though many an unkempt head was thrust through a door in wonder at the speed of this lonely rider, and many an armored guardsman stroked his beard, pondering on this mercenary’s haste.
There were, indeed, few in the Kothic realm who would have recognized king Conan of Aquilonia, for between the mutually hostile Aquilonians and Kothians there was little intercourse.
Conan’s sharp eyes swept the horizon. In the shimmering distance he detected the faint outlines of domed buildings and towering walls.
This, then, would be the town of Khanyria in the kingdom of Khoraja.
Here he would seek the help of Pelias the sorcerer in recovering his stolen queen. Five years before, he had met and befriended Pelias when the Kothian wizard lay imprisoned in the vaults of the scarlet citadel of his foe Tsotha-lanti.
Conan spurred the black stallion toward the distant towers. “Crom!” he muttered. “I hope Pelias is in his full senses. Like as not he’s lying drunk on his golden divan, dead to the world. But, by Badb, I’ll waken him!”
In the narrow streets and cobbled marketplace of Khanyria, a motley throng swirled and eddied. Zuagirs from the desert villages to the northeast, swaggering mercenaries with roving eyes and hands on hilts, hawkers crying their wares, harlots in red kirtles and painted faces milled together in a flamboyant tableau. Now and then the crowd was riven by the armored retainers of a wealthy noble, his perfumed sedan chair bobbing on the shoulders of ebony-skinned, ox-muscled Kushite slaves. Or a troop of guardsmen clattered out from the barracks, accoutrements clanking and horsehair plumes flowing.
Crassides, the burly captain of the guard at the Western Gate, stroked his graying beard and muttered. Strangers often passed into the city, but seldom such curious strangers as today’s arrivals. Early this afternoon, in a cloud of dust stirred up from the desert sands, had come a troop of seven. The rider in the lead was a lean fellow of vulture look, his narrow mustache framing a thin line of mouth. He was armed like a Western knight, though his cuirass and helm were plain, without any device. By his side rode a huge Stygian on a black horse. A khalat enshrouded the Stygian’s form, and his only visible weapon was a massive war bow.
The other five were all well armored, wearing serviceable swords and daggers at their sides and holding lances in their hands. They looked like hardy rogues, as ready to slit a throat as to bounce a wench.
It was not the custom of the Khanyrian city guard to stop strangers without good reason, for here East and West met to mingle, haggle, and trade tall tales. Nevertheless, Crassides cast a searching glance at the seven as they jingled away towards the northern quarter. They disappeared into the profusion of smoky taverns with mongrels yapping about their horse’s hooves.
The rest of the day passed quietly, but now it seemed that the trickle of odd strangers must go on. As the sun flung its last rays across the darkening heavens, a tall, burnoosed foreigner reined in before the closed gate and demanded entrance.
Crassides, called to the gate by one of the guards on duty, arrived just as the remaining guard shouted down: “What seek you here, rogue? We let no outlanders in at night to cut our throats and debauch our women! State your name and errand before I clap you in irons!”
The stranger’s glowing eves, half hidden beneath his kaffia, regarded the trooper icily. “My friend,” said the stranger in a barbarous accent, “for words less than those I have slit a hundred gullets. Let me in or, by Crom, I’ll raise a horde to sack this bunch of hovels!”
“Not so fast! ” said Crassides, thrusting the guard aside. “Get down, you young fool, and I’ll teach you how to speak to strangers later. Now, you, sir! ” He spoke to the horseman. “We want no quarrels in Khanyria, and as you see the gate is closed for the night. Ere we open it, you must account for yourself.”
“Call me Arus,” growled the stranger. “I seek Pelias the sorcerer.”
“Let him in,” said Crassides. The heavy bolts were drawn. Two watchmen strained at the bronze handles, and one of the door valves swung slowly open. The stranger cantered through, not even glancing at those around the gate. He headed for the northern district, and the click of his horse’s hoofs dwindled in the distance.
The discomfited young guard spoke to his captain with restrained heat: “Why do we let this insolent lout ride in as if he were lord of the city? Why not put a shaft through his ribs? ”
Crassides smiled through his beard. “Years may teach you wisdom, though I doubt it. Have you never heard how, years ago, a northern barbarian like this one was captured by the warlord of one of the little city-states of Shem to the south? And how he escaped, rounded up a band of outlaw Zuagirs, and came back for vengeance?
And how the savage horde stormed the city, putting the people to the sword, flaying captives in the public square, and burning everything except the pole on which the warlord’s head was stuck? This fellow might be one of that sort. But alone, he can do us little harm. And if he mean us ill, Pelias will know it by his arcane arts and take measures. Now do you begin to see? ”
Conan knew that Pelias lurked in a tower of yellow stone at the northern end of the city. He planned to visit the wizard first and later to seek board and lodging. Anything would do. His body and tastes had not been softened by his years of civilized life. A loaf of bread, a hunk of meat, and a jack of foaming ale were all he wanted. For sleep, why, he could use the floor of a tavern if all else failed.
Conan had no wish to spend the night in Pelias’ abode, for all its luxury. Too many dark and nameless things were apt to stalk the nighted corridors of the sorcerer’s dwellings.
There came a muffled oath and a cry of fear. A door to the right flew open, and a young girl flung herself into the street.
Conan reined in. The girl was shaped like one of the mekhrani, that people the pleasure houses in the paradise of Erlik’s true believers.
This Conan could readily see, for her simple dress was torn to tatters, leaving her but scantily covered. Brushing back the jet-black tangle of hair from her face, she cast a terrified glance towards the door, which had closed behind her. Then her large ey
es turned to Conan, sitting his horse like a statue. Her hand flew to her mouth in terror.
“Now, lass, what’s eating you? ” spoke the Cimmerian roughly, bending forward. “Is your lover cross with you, or what? ”
The girl rose with a lithe motion. “Two drunken soldiers tried to rape me. I came to buy wine for my father.
They took my money, too.”
Conan’s eyes flashed as he jumped to the ground.
His barbaric code of chivalry made him hate a man’s inflicting wanton brutality on a woman.
“Steady, lass. We’ll pull their beards yet. Just open the door. Are they the only guests? ”
Nodding in terrified confirmation, she led him to the tavern. After a moment’s hesitation she opened the door. In two long strides Conan was inside. The door clicked shut behind him.
But no such scene as he had expected confronted him. Here were no drunken soldiers to be quieted by a couple of buffets. Seven alert armed men ranged the walls, swords and daggers gleaming in their hands.
The determination to kill was in their eyes as they instantly rushed upon Conan.
A civilized man would have been stunned by surprise one second and cut down in the next, but not the giant Cimmerian. His keen primitive instincts gave him a flash of warning as he crossed the threshold, and his lightning reflexes went instantly into action. No time now to draw the great sword, before he had it out, they would be upon him like a pack of wolves. His only chance lay in instant attack, surprising his attackers by its very boldness before they could ring him and close with him.
A mighty kick sent a bench whaling against the legs of three of his adversaries as they rushed forward. They fell in a clattering, cursing tangle. Conan ducked a whistling sword stroke of one of the other four and smashed his right fist into the man’s face before the latter could recover his balance. Conan felt the man’s bones crack under the blow, which cast him back against his advancing comrades.
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