Conan and the Manhunters

by John Maddox Roberts

  'Is it not too soon to stop?' Osman asked worriedly. 'Pursuit may be close behind.'

  'And they will catch us the quicker if we wear out our mounts,' Conan insisted.

  A quarter of an hour later, they reached the pool. At Conan's order, they dismounted and let their horses drink a little, checked girths and cinches, looked for wounds on men and beasts alike. While they waited, other men rode in, some of them wounded. Eventually, besides Conan and Osman there were eight surviving bandits.

  'By Set, we lost half our number back there!' said Char when it was clear there would be no more arrivals.

  'That is not a great loss when one considers the size of the reward,' said Osman, in high good spirits. 'And each of us will have that much greater a share of the treasure.'

  'Aye,' Mamos agreed. 'I've been in many a band halved during a raid for a handful of horses or a small herd of cattle. None of us took up this profession in order to enjoy a long life.'

  'We lost good comrades in Shahpur,' said Ubo as he poured blood from his boot. An arrow had struck him in the calf, causing a wound that was superficial, but which bled freely.

  'That is right,' said Izmil the desert man. 'And there will le fewer of us to fight the battle should Sagobal catch up with us. What happened to your fine plan, Conan?'

  The Cimmerian had his own reservations, but he was not about to show weakness before these volatile jackals. 'Every man here and every man who died back there has lived with rope around his neck. Death in a fight is quick and clean. We have all gambled with our lives. Some have won, some have lost. Come, we will gather our loot and pour out a draught of wine for our fallen friends. Let's have no mourning.'

  Ubo winced as he pulled on his soggy boot. 'You have it right, Chief. Let us ride.'

  There were some frowns and muttering as they mounted, but within the hour, the men were laughing and joking, making plans for their huge haul.

  'Your men regain their good humour quickly, Cimmerian,' said Volvolicus.

  'Like children,' said Layla, 'who laugh and weep and laugh again within the. space of a hundred heartbeats.'

  'They are men who have cut loose from their past and who have no future,' the Cimmerian answered. 'For them, nothing has great meaning save the present. And now, the prospect of much gold overrides all else.'

  They rode far into the night, beneath the gleaming stars. Many of them would have become lost amid the maze of hills, gullies and dry washes, but Conan guided them unerringly. As the light of morning paled the eastern horizon, they entered the defile leading to their hideout. When they came out by the pool, the men set up a happy growl for they could see the great file of chests. It had settled in its obelisk shape, I hen collapsed into a long, irregular heap as the wizard's spell dispersed. It was quick-witted Osman who first noticed that something was amiss.

  'I like this not, Chief,' he said to Conan.

  'Crom!' Conan muttered in growing dismay. 'Where are the camels?'

  There were many tracks and other signs that camels had been there, but not a single such beast was anywhere in sight.

  VI

  'Fresh sign!' cried Ambula of Punt. The lean brown man dismounted and ran through the canyon upon bare feet, his bow and arrows cased across his back, stooped over as if he were sniffing out the trail with his wide-flared nostrils. He bent, picked up something and ran back to Berytus, holding up a near-invisible few strands of glossy black hair.

  'Horsehair?' said the Aquilonian.

  'Hair from a clipped mane,' Ambula said. 'The guardsmen of Sagobal clip the manes of their horses. Smell them, ll is ointment of the flowering tamarind, such as Sagobal uses to make glossy the hides of his mounts.'

  Berytus could smell nothing in such tiny quantity, but he knew he could trust the senses of his prize tracker. 'This way!' he called. Ambula remounted and they rode off up the canyon.

  'This is good,' said Urdos of Koth. 'For a while, I thought we had lost them.'

  'We never lose a man,' said Berytus. 'But I will allow that this Conan is a canny prey. He chooses the best path to leave the smallest trace of his passing. If he were alone, on foot, it might take months to find him in this maze. But travelling with many men, all on horseback, there is no way he can avoid leaving some traces, and with such trackers as Ambula and Bahdur, we will not lose them.'

  Berytus spoke these words smiling, for he loved the chase. Even without the high pay he demanded of his employers, he relished the sport of matching wits and skill with his prey. Whether that prey was a terrified runaway slave, a band of ragged rebels or fleeing bandits, the pleasure was a matter of degree. Finest of all was the kind of sport he enjoyed this minute—chasing down a fierce, skilful fighting-man who might at any time turn and set a counter-ambush. He did not anticipate such an eventuality just yet, for the Cimmerian did not know what manner of men pursued him. But if Berytus and his followers could not bag the lot in a single ambush, the game would enter a new, and far more dangerous, phase.

  For by now, Berytus knew that the man he pursued was one much like himself. Back on the rooftop over the city square, while the others were plying their bows, Berytus had taken no part in the fighting. Instead, he had watched Conan closely, weighing the man, judging his skills, his strengths and his weaknesses. Of the latter, he saw no trace save a certain reluctance on the man's part to run from his friends and save his own hide.

  As a swordsman, he was very nearly the best Berytus had ever seen. The highest rating was one Berytus reserved for himself alone. As a planner and leader, the northerner was superb, carrying off the daring raid with wit and style. Only the intervention of the rooftop archers had spoiled what might have been a perfect robbery.

  Yes, there could be no doubt of it. This was going to be one of his more memorable chases.

  'Blood!' cried Bahdur as they rode from the little canyon into one slightly larger. He pointed to his find in passing and the others did not dismount to examine it, but only glanced as

  I hey rode by. A few drops glistened redly upon the top leaves of a desert weed that grew a bit above two feet high.

  'Brushed from the foot of a mounted man,' said Barca the Shemite as he passed it. 'Probably a leg wound. It cannot be a serious wound, or we'd have seen more blood ere now.'

  'Aye, they had many killed, but they got away with remarkably few wounded,' Berytus observed. 'Such are the

  workings of fate.'

  By the time darkness overtook them, they knew they were only a few hours behind their prey. Whatever his precautions, here was nothing the Cimmerian could do about horse-droppings, and the condition of these gave the man-hunters a fair estimate of the time since the robbers had passed. 'Shall we hunt on by torchlight?' Urdos asked Berytus. 'Nay, these are not runaway slaves. That keen-eyed mountaineer will see a single torch miles away and set an ambush for us before daylight. We'll camp here and continue at dawn. We'll have them by tomorrow afternoon, never fear.'

  They dismounted and unsaddled their mounts, curried them and secured them to a picket line. Then, without kindling a fire, they washed down preserved rations with water, rolled into their blankets and slept. When on the trail, these men did not pamper themselves. They became hunting beasts for the duration.

  'Where are they?' Mamos screamed. He pointed at Conan with a grubby finger. 'You! You said that the camels were to he here! Why are they not?'

  Conan gripped his sheath with his left hand and pressed against his hilt with his thumb, loosening the sword. 'You know where I have been these last few days, Mamos. If you think this is treachery on my part, you are as stupid as you are ugly, and that is stupid indeed.'

  'They were here!' Auda insisted. 'You can all see the tracks and the dung they left behind. But where is Junis, whom we left to watch over the beasts and nurse his wounded leg?'

  'That at least is plain,' said Ubo. 'Look.' He raised an arm and pointed to the vultures circling over a spot a few hundred paces away, around a bend of the little canyon.

  The men raced u
p the canyon and they found Junis in a stunted tree, although they had to drive away the flocking vultures in order to see him. Junis had been hewn into numerous pieces, and the various parts of him hung from the branches. Already he was well gnawed and substantial pieces of him were missing.

  'They found him!' Auda wailed. 'Those crawling, god-accursed camel-herders tracked their animals all the way here and they took them back! They butchered Junis and hung him here as a warning!'

  'They must be demons in human form,' Layla said ironically. 'Who would think that men could be capable of such a deed?' She averted her face from the thing in the tree, repelled either by the sight or the smell.

  'Do not mock us, woman,' Chamik warned. 'That is our comrade hanging there.'

  'Do not insult my intelligence, bandit,' she said. 'You rogues care no more for each other than do wolves in a pack. You fall upon the weaker with the savagery of beasts, so let us not prate about our poor, departed friends. The camels are gone. The problem is what to do with this great mass of metal.'

  The woman's cold-blooded words shocked even the hardbitten brigands into reality.

  'Aye, the wench is right,' said Ubo. 'What do we do now?'

  'Great Volvolicus,' said Osman, 'can you not help us move the gold with your magical arts? You brought it hither with such impressive power, surely you can so manoeuvre it again.'

  'I fear not,' said the mage. 'Moving the mass this, far has nigh exhausted me. Even so, the spell cannot work again for ' a full turning of the moon.'

  'The moon?' cried Mamos, as if the very idea offended him. 'What has the moon to do with anything?'

  'A great deal,' said the wizard. ' could explain to you about tidal forces and how they affect the crystalline structure of stone and metal, but you would not understand.'

  'You are probably right,' said Mamos, drawing his dagger and thumbing its razor-keen edge. 'I might think that you were spouting wizardly nonsense to conceal your true plans.'

  'Enough of that,' said Conan. 'If we are to fall to bickering among ourselves, we might as well make a gift of this treasure to Torgut Khan. We got the greatest heap of treasure any of us has seen this far, and is that not a splendid thing?'

  All agreed that it was.

  'Then,' the Cimmerian went on, 'we must simply work out a way to get it farther, so that it and we are beyond the grasp of Torgut Khan and his dog, Sagobal.'

  'Can we not steal more camels?' Osman asked.

  'Nay,' Auda said, 'for every man in the district who owns a single beast will be guarding it now. Times will be hard for camel-thieves for months.'

  'More than that,' Conan pointed out, 'Sagobal's guards will be out searching. Soon they must stop at the village from whence the camels were taken, and they will need no great wit to figure out who needed so many camels and drove them to an obscure place. Those herdsmen could lead them right to this spot. We dare not tarry long.'

  'Say you that we must abandon the bulk of this treasure here?' Chamik bellowed. 'Just ride off with such little of it as a man may bear on a single horse? I'll carve your liver ere I do such a thing!' The pot-bellied Corinthian put hand to hilt, and others did likewise. Osman and Auda drew closer to Conan.

  Layla laughed musically. 'Snarling dogs fighting over a dead horse! None can bear it away,.and none can stand to see another get a piece of it. Never again shall I believe a tale about the fine, free life of the brigand. Such fools have I never beheld!'

  'Be still, daughter,' Volvolicus said in a low voice. 'These are not serving men to be upbraided.'

  But her words had stung the would-be rebels and caused them to think again.

  'What's to be done, then?' asked one-eyed Ubo.

  'We must conceal it here,' Conan insisted, 'until such time as we may come back and bear it off, taking only enough to pay our way until that time.'

  'Where?' Osman demanded, spreading his arms, indicating the bare landscape.

  'There is a painted cave not far from where we stand,' Auda said. 'I discovered it once when I hid out here and another band hostile to my people occupied the oasis. I slept there many days and came down at night for water. They never suspected me.'

  'What is a painted cave?' Conan asked.

  'They are much to be seen in the desert places,' Auda explained. 'Always, they are hard to find, their entrances small. I found this one when a hare I was pursuing darted into it. Within, their walls are painted with figures of men and animals. Hunting peoples must have sheltered there, and it must have been long, long ago, for many of the beasts are such as are not seen in this place.'

  'Show me this painted cave,' Conan said.

  They followed the desert warrior into a side canyon, and then into another, each of them so similar to all the others in the area that only experience could prevent a man from becoming lost among them. They mounted a shattered boulder that served them for a crude stair, and Auda indicated an irregular hole beneath a rock-slab overhang, all but invisible from just a few feet away. A grown man could enter only by crouching.

  There may be venomous serpents inside,' Auda warned.

  'Some of you go and make us torches,' Conan instructed. 'Take no brush from nearby, and take none from a living bush. Let's leave no sign of our doings.'

  Minutes later, two of the men returned with dry brush bound into long torches. Osman, an able fire-raiser, sparked die brush to flame with flint and steel. Then, holding a torch before him, Conan ducked and squeezed his bulk through the opening. The others followed. Last of all came Volvolicus and Layla.

  Within, they found a chamber of irregular shape, twenty puces long and eight or ten wide. There were no side passages, and the floor was littered only with the sort of refuse left by animals that had sheltered there: nesting materials, gnawed bones, feathers, eggshells and so forth. If human beings had kindled fires within, it had been so long ago that not even ashes or cinders remained.

  'Set!' swore a man, raising his torch to examine the walls and ceiling. 'What manner of creatures are these?'

  The rough stone was covered with paintings of men and animals. The human figures were but crude stick-men such as children draw, but the beasts were splendid renderings, so detailed and subtle that the artists had captured not only the look but the movement, the very essence, of the creatures.

  'That is an elephant, by Mitra!' said a bandit. 'But look how its tusks curl, and it has long hair all over it!'

  'I have seen a few of those in the far northern woods,' Conan said, 'although they are near hunted out now, and are rare.'

  'And here is a rhinoceros,' said a man of Keshan. 'And it, too, is hairy.'

  'Here are giraffes,' Conan pointed out, 'but their markings and horns are not such as I have seen. And these are aurochs or bison of some breed.'

  'Are these horses?' Osman asked, pointing to a group. 'Yet they seem to be no larger than dogs, if the stick-men hunting them are represented truly. Wizard, what do these things mean?'

  'First, that the world is an ancient and wonderful place. Go to the sandy desert and sift the sand through your fingers. Soon you will find shark teeth, for that desert was once sea bottom.' The mage wandered among the paintings, admiring

  them. 'Farmland was once jungle, a city on a flat plain is where a mountain once stood, before wind and water wore it away to nothing. A hillside in the icy northern waste reveals hot-water coral that once grew in a tropic sea. All is mutable. 'As for these,' he gestured at the painted beasts, 'I would hazard that the painters were a hunting folk who were also gifted artists. They did not create these images for the pleasure of it, but to make magic to aid them in their hunting. Look closely and you will see the marks where they shot the images with arrows or jabbed them with darts, hoping this would help them do the same with the living creatures. They went to great lengths to capture the essence of their prey, getting every gesture, colour and contour in their renderings. Yet you see that they represent themselves only as stick figures, one indistinguishable from another? That was so that they
would not fall victim to their own magic, for they knew that the image can capture the spirit of the model.'

  The bandits gaped in wonder at the strange, enigmatic paintings, until their chief's words brought them back to their situation.

  'If the cave served those people then, it can serve us as well now,' Conan announced. 'We will carry the treasure here and erase all trace of our passage, then conceal the entrance even better than it is hidden by nature. It will be hard work, but there is plenty of room here and the chests will re- main concealed for as long as need be. Let us be about it.'

  They left the cave and went back to their water pool. The rest of the day was a great toil as chest by chest and bag by bag, they carried the treasure to the cave. They cried out and grumbled, for they were opposed to hard labour on principle, but somehow knowing that the weight was gold and silver made it seem not so terrible. Often, two men would stagger under the weight of a single chest. Only Conan could hoist two of the chests to his brawny shoulders and carry them to the cave without having to pause for breath. At last, only a single leather bag remained.

  'Auda,' Conan ordered, 'get rid of all the marks we left.'

  Auda and two other desert men prepared brooms of brush and carefully swept every inch of ground traversed by the bandits in their labours. When they were done, Conan inspected their work, piled some carefully chosen stones over the cave entrance, and at last pronounced himself to be satisfied.

  The worn-out men lounged by the pool, drinking watered wine and rubbing the cramps from their sore limbs. The Cimmerian returned and walked to the final bag. This he grasped and raised one-handed, although it weighed better than a hundredweight. Only the knotted, vein-bulging muscle of his shoulder revealed the strain. The Cimmerian drew his dirk and drew its edge the length of the bag. The light of the set-ling sun glittered from the cascade of silver coin. A low moan arose from the bandits to greet the pretty sight.

  'We divide this among ourselves,' Conan said. 'Then we ride. Pursuit may not be far off.'

  The men began to scoop up silver by handfuls. 'Where do we go from here?' asked a desert man.