The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  'That is your business,' said Catigern. 'By the bye, that

  black stallion looks uncommonly like one of the temple's horses.'

  'Egil is mine,' growled Conan. 'Some day I'll tell you how Harpagus stole him from me. If you doubt me, I'll show you how he answers to my voice.'

  'I am in no condition to gainsay you,' said Catigern. 'At least, with a new High Priest, let us hope there will be no more giant spiders.'

  'Whence did Feridun get that one?'

  Catigern shrugged, then winced at the sudden pain in his injured arm. 'I know not. Perchance it was a leftover from some bygone era; or perchance he grew it by sorcery from an ordinary tarantula.'

  'What's become of the last two Vicars?'

  'Harpagus is still out of his mind, and Mirzes is dead, found him in the naos, apparently suffocated by smoke.

  'Good!' growled Conan.

  Catigern looked keenly at the Cimmerian. 'That reminds me. One of my men swears he saw you come rushing out of the naos with the spider hot behind you, although no one had seen you go in. Might there be a connection betwixt your unauthorized visit and the death of Mirzes?'

  'There might,' said Conan. 'But there is something else you should know.' He described the cavern with the swarming Children of Zath. 'The spider must have laid a clutch of eggs after Feridun installed her in the tunnels. If the King didn't give in, Feridun would unleash the horde on Zamora. I think there must be some means of draining that pool, to let the Children escape their cave and scatter over the countryside.'

  Catigern whistled. 'Then the real spider was a female, for all that they call Zath a male god! And these creatures are still there?'

  'Unless the river of flaming oil, running down into the cavern, has cooked them. I suppose it did, or they'd have swarmed up out of their burrow as did the big one.'

  'This I must see,' mused the Brythunian. 'Can you show me the cave entrance?'

  Conan shook his head. 'It is somewhere in these hills; but you could search for a month without finding it. You'd better go down through the trapdoor, as I did.'

  Catigern shuddered. 'I must lead my men into that hole with pikes and torches, to make sure all those vermin are dead,' he muttered. 'Feridun was honest in his way, but the gods preserve me from fanatics!'

  'I'm told he controlled beasts of all kinds,' said Conan, yawning prodigiously. 'If he'd lost his spiders but survived, he might have set wolves or lions or eagles on the Zamorians. Well, I must away.'

  Catigern accompanied Conan out the door, musing: 'There are mysteries here, which the priests will want me to investigate. I shall be glad not to pry into the doings of one who has twice saved my hide, not to mention thwarting the High Priest's mad plan.'

  Conan wrung the hand of Catigern's uninjured arm and began to unhitch his horse when he spied the barrel of bitumen, for Bartakes's lamps, standing around the corner of the inn.

  Conan left the horse and opened the door. 'Mandana!' he called.

  'Aye?' The innkeeper's daughter came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Conan turned to Catigern. 'Farewell, friend. I would have a word with the damsel alone.'

  Catigern grinned wolfishly and entered the tavern. Conan said: 'Mandana, will you step out here? I have somewhat to say.'

  Misinterpreting Conan's grim smile, the girl came forward with alacrity, simpering. 'So, have you tired of that skinny temple wench at last?'

  'I shall never see her again,' said Conan. 'Ere he went mad, Harpagus the Vicar told me that you had informed him of Rudabeh's visit to the inn.'

  'What if I did? She deserved it for violating her temple's rules and coming down here to lure away my patrons. How are we to live, with such unfair competition?'

  Conan nodded sagely. 'I'll show you something.' He stepped to the barrel and threw off the lid. 'Now,' he said, clutching Mandana about the waist and swinging her off her feet.

  'Corin!' she cried. 'Not here in the mud! You barbarians are so impetuous! I have a fine bed upstairs -'

  'Aye,' grunted Conan. With a stride he towered over the barrel. Bending over, with the laughing girl still clutched about the waist, he dipped her flowing black mane into the tar-like fluid.

  So speedy and so accurate was his move that Mandana did not suspect his true intention until her scalp was immersed in the black, sticky oil. Then she screamed.

  In a single, sweeping motion, Conan raised and set her on her feet. She stood for a moment transfixed, with tar running down her plump, pink cheeks to drip on her bodice. Frantically, she ran her hands through the rope-like strands of hair, stared at the viscous substance that befouled them, and shrieked wordlessly.

  'Your just desert for tattling,' rumbled Conan. 'By the time your shaven skull has grown a new crop, perhaps you'll have learned to mind your own affairs.'

  Conan unhitched his horse and swung into the saddle. Pursued by screams of 'I hate you! I hate you!' he trotted briskly away on the Shadizar road.

  Where the narrow valley below Yezud opened out, Conan rode past Kharshoi and into the more spacious lands of central Zamora. the sun being well past its zenith, Conan drew rein on a rise in the road, whence he had a good view of the route by which he had come. Yawning, he pulled a fowl's leg and a biscuit out of his saddle bag and sat cross-legged on he ground, eating, while Egil, reins trailing, cropped the grass behind him. Sleep plucked seductively at Conan's elbow, for he had had none the night before; but he dared not relax until he was farther from Yezud.

  Suddenly there came a disturbance in the air before Conan, as if a tiny dust-devil had formed. The dust cleared, and there stood Psamitek the Stygian, holding a small brass tripod with a little smoking brazier at its apex. While Conan gaped with astonishment, the Stygian stooped and set the tripod on the ground. He made passes over it, chanting in some guttural tongue that Conan did not know.

  'What the devil?' cried Conan, scrambling to his feet and reaching for his scimitar. 'By Crom, this time -'

  As he spoke, Psamitek shouted a word. Thereupon the sapphire smoke from the tripod instantly compacted itself into a rope-like column, writhing like a pale-blue, translucent serpent in the still afternoon air.

  Another gesture and word from the Stygian, and the blue serpentine of smoke whipped toward Conan like a striking snake. The smoky cord threw coils around Conan's body, like some ghostly python, pinioning his sword arm with his scimitar half drawn. Another coil wrapped itself around Conan's neck and tightened, cutting off the Cimmerian's breath.

  Conan struggled until he foamed at the mouth. With his free left hand he clawed at the loop of smoke around his throat, so that his tunic bulged with the desperate bunching of muscles beneath it. To his touch the smoke felt like a cable of some slick, yielding, but animate substance, like a live eel, but dry.

  He forced his thumb between the noose and his neck, although he had to gouge his own flesh with his thumbnail. He pulled the loop far enough from his throat to allow a wheezy, strangulated breath, but he might as well have tugged at a steel cable. The loop tightened, and Conan's face purpled. The veins in his temples swelled until they seemed likely to burst.

  Psamitek smiled thinly. 'I said you should see more of my little tricks. Now I shall at leisure collect your head and the reward therefore. I need not even divide it with that Turanian savage. I shall have the finest occult library in Stygia!'

  Conan tried to bite into the noose but could not pull it far enough from his chin to get his teeth into it. He thought of trying to throw his dagger, but one of the loops of smoke had pinioned the weapon against his side. Behind him he heard Egil moving uneasily, watching the drama with anxious incomprehension.

  At the spectacle of Conan's violent but unavailing struggles, Psamitek gave a coldly cynical laugh. 'This,' he purred, 'gives me more pleasure than even the gladiatorial games of Argos!'

  Before Conan's eyes, the landscape swam and darkened. With a final effort, he pulled the noose far enough from his throat to emit one shout. 'Egil!' he croa
ked. 'Kill him!'

  With a snort, the well-trained war horse sprang past Conan and reared up at Psamitek. Conan had a glimpse of the Stygian's sallow countenance, suddenly wide-eyed with alarm at this unexpected intervention. And then one of Egil's hooves descended on Psamitek's shaven head with a crunch of shattered cranium.

  Instantly the magical rope faded away, dissolving into wisps of ordinary smoke. Freed, Conan sank down, gasping great lungfuls of air.

  When he had recovered, Conan heaved himself erect and tottered over to where Psamitek lay. He went through the Stygian's purse, finding an assortment of coins, some of them gold, and the roll of parchment bearing Tughril's offer for Conan's head. The money Conan transferred to his own purse.

  The scroll he stared at, trying to puzzle out its spidery glyphs. It would not do, he thought, to leave such a document adrift in the world. Someone else might get his hands on it and be inspired, like Psamitek, to try to collect the reward.

  Conan bent and gently blew upon the tiny, smouldering fire in the brazier; the little tripod still stood upright. When he had coaxed a flame into being, he dipped a corner of the parchment into the blaze and held it there until the writing surface caught fire. He held the sheet, turning it to spread the fire across it. The cryptic writings glowed red for an instant and disappeared. Soon the entire document, save the corner by which Conan held it, was reduced to ash.

  Then Conan swung into the saddle and cantered off, leaving the Stygian's body for the hyenas.

  The Blood-Stained God

  Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp

  It was dark as the Pit in that stinking alley down which Conan of Cimmeria groped on a quest as blind as the darkness around him. Had there been anyone to witness, they would have seen a tall and enormously powerful man clad in a flowing Zuagir khilat, over that a mail shirt of fine steel mesh, and over that a Zuagir cloak of camel’s hair. His mane of black hair and his broad, somber, youthful face, bronzed by the desert sun, were hidden by the Zuagir kaffia.

  A sharp, pain-edged cry smote his ears.

  Such cries were not uncommon in the twisting alleys of Arenjun, the City of Thieves, and no cautious or timid man would think of interfering in an affair that was none of his business. But Conan was neither cautious nor timid. His ever-lively curiosity would not let him pass by a cry for help; besides, he was searching for certain men, and the disturbance might be a clue to their whereabouts.

  Obeying his quick barbarian instincts, he turned toward a beam of light that lanced the darkness close at hand. An instant later he peered through a crack in the close-drawn shutters of a window in a thick stone wall.

  He was looking into a spacious room hung with velvet tapestries and littered with costly rugs and couches. About one of these couches a group of men clustered―six brawny Zamorian bravos and two more who eluded identification. On that couch another man was stretched out, a Kezankian tribesman naked to the waist. Though he was a powerful man, a ruffian as muscular as himself gripped each wrist and ankle. Between the four of them they had him spread-eagled on the couch, unable to move, though the muscles stood out in quivering knots on his limbs and shoulders. His eyes gleamed redly and his broad chest glistened with sweat. As Conan looked, a supple man in a turban of red silk lifted a glowing coal from a smoking brazier with a pair of tongs and poised it over the quivering breast, already scarred from similar torture.

  Another man, taller than the one with the red turban, snarled a question Conan could not understand. The Kezankian shook his head violently and spat savagely at the questioner. The red-hot coal dropped full on the hairy breast, wrenching an inhuman bellow from the sufferer. In that instant Conan launched his full weight against the shutters.

  The Cimmerian’s action was not so impulsive as it looked. For his present purposes he needed a friend among the hillmen of the Kezankian range, a people notoriously hostile to all strangers. And here was a chance to get one. The shutters splintered inward with a crash, and he hit the floor inside feet-first, scimitar in one hand and Zuagir sword-knife in the other. The torturers whirled and yelped in astonishment.

  They saw a tall, massive figure clad in the garments of a Zuagir, with a fold of his flowing kaffia drawn about his face. Over his mask his eyes blazed a volcanic blue. For an instant the scene held, frozen, then melted into ferocious action

  The man in the red turban snapped a quick word, and a hairy giant lunged to meet the oncoming intruder. The Zamorian held a three-foot sword low, and as he charged he ripped murderously upward. But the down-lashing scimitar met the rising wrist. The hand, still gripping the knife, flew from that wrist in a shower of blood, and the long narrow blade in Conan’s left hand sliced through the man’s throat, choking the grunt of agony.

  Over the crumpling corpse the Cimmerian leaped at Red Turban and his tall companion. Red Turban drew a knife, the tall man a saber.

  'Cut him down, Jillad!' snarled Red Turban, retreating before the Cimmerian’s impetuous onslaught 'Zal, help here!'

  The man called Jillad parried Conan’s slash and cut back. Conan avoided the swipe with a shift that would have shamed the leap of a starving panther, and the same movement brought him within reach of Red Turban’s knife. The knife shot out; the point struck Conan’s side but failed to pierce the shirt of black ring mail. Red Turban leaped back, so narrowly avoiding Conan’s knife that the lean blade slit his silken vest and the skin beneath. He tripped over a stool and fell sprawling, but before Conan could follow up his advantage, Jillad was pressing him, raining blows with his saber

  As he parried, the Cimmerian saw that the man called Zal was advancing with a heavy poleax, while Red Turban was scrambling to his feet.

  Conan did not wait to be surrounded. A swipe of his scimitar drove Jillad back on his heels. Then, as Zal raised the poleax, Conan darted in under the blow, and the next instant Zal was down, writhing in his own blood and entrails. Conan leaped for the men who still gripped the prisoner. They let go of the man, shouting and drawing their tulwars.

  One struck at the Kezankian, who evaded the blow by rolling off the bench. Then Conan was between him and them. He retreated before their blows, snarling at the Kezankian:

  'Get out! Ahead of me! Quickly!'

  'Dogs!' screamed Red Turban. 'Don’t let them escape!'

  'Come and taste of death yourself, dog!' Conan laughed wildly, speaking Zamorian with a barbarous accent.

  The Kezankian, weak from torture, slid back a bolt and threw open a door giving upon a small court. He stumbled across the court while behind him Conan faced his tormentors in the doorway, where in the confined space their very numbers hindered them. He laughed and cursed them as he parried and thrust. Red Turban was dancing behind the mob, shrieking curses. Conan’s scimitar licked out like the tongue of a cobra, and a Zamorian shrieked and fell, clutching his belly. Jillad, lunging, tripped over him and fell. Before the cursing, squirming figures that jammed the doorway could untangle themselves, Conan turned and ran across the yard toward a wall over which the Kezankian had already disappeared.

  Sheathing his weapons, Conan leaped and caught the coping, swung himself up, and had one glimpse of the black, winding street outside.

  Then something smashed against his head, and limply he toppled from the wall into the shadowy street below.

  The tiny glow of a taper in his face roused Conan. He sat up, blinking and cursing, and groped for his sword. Then the light was blown out and a voice spoke in the darkness:

  'Be at ease, Conan of Cimmeria. I am your friend.'

  'Who in Crom’s name are you?' demanded Conan. He had found his scimitar on the ground nearby, and he stealthily gathered his legs under him for a spring. He was in the street at the foot of the wall from which he had fallen, and the other man was but a dim bulk looming over him in the shadowy starlight.

  'Your friend,' repeated the other in a soft Iranistanian accent. 'Call me Sassan.'

  Conan rose, scimitar in hand. The Iranistani extended something toward him.
Conan caught the glint of steel in the starlight, but before he could strike he saw that it was his own knife, hilt first.

  'You’re as suspicious as a starving wolf, Conan,' laughed Sassan. 'But save your steel for your enemies.'

  'Where are they?' Conan took the knife.

  'Gone. Into the mountains, on the trail of the bloodstained god.'

  Conan started and caught Sassan’s khilat in an iron grip and glared into the man’s dark eyes, mocking and mysterious in the starlight.

  'Damn you, what know you of the bloodstained god?' Conan’s knife touched the Iranistani’s side below his ribs.

  'I know this,' said Sassan. 'You came to Arenjun following thieves who stole from you the map of a treasure greater than Yildiz’s hoard. I, too, came seeking something. I was hiding nearby, watching through a hole in the wall, when you burst into the room where the Kezankian was being tortured. How did you know it was they who stole your map?'

  'I didn’t,' muttered Conan. 'I heard a man cry out and thought it a good idea to interfere. If I had known they were the men I sought… how much do you know?'

  'This much. Hidden in the mountains near here is an ancient temple which the hill folk fear to enter. It is said to go back to Pre-Cataclysmic times, though the wise men disagree as to whether it is Grondarian or was built by the unknown pre-human folk who ruled the Hyrkanians just after the Cataclysm.

  'The Kezankians forbid the region to all outsiders, but a Nemedian named Ostorio did find the temple. He entered it and discovered a golden idol crusted with red jewels, which he called the bloodstained god. He could not bring it away with him, as it was bigger than a man, but he made a map, intending to return. Although he got safely away, he was stabbed by some ruffian in Shadizar and died there. Before he died he gave the map to you, Conan.'

  'Well?' demanded Conan grimly. The house behind him was dark and still.

  'The map was stolen,' said Sassan. 'By whom, you know.'

  'I didn’t know at the time,' growled Conan. 'Later I learned the thieves were Zyras, a Corinthian, and Arshak, a disinherited Turanian prince. Some skulking servant spied on Ostorio as he lay dying and told them. Though I knew neither by sight, I traced them to this city.