'You realise you must be detained, pending investigation,' the captain said through his megaphone. 'Where are you from?'
'An Argossean merchantman, whose cheap-jack owners hired what crew they could get. These are Kushites. I am from Vanaheim myself.'
The captain had heard only vague rumours of that boreal country, but he knew barbarians sometimes wandered afar in search of adventure or fortune, and he bore the contempt of a civilised person for such tramps. This one had clearly been humbled by his experience, and his companions croaked pitifully for drink. 'In oars,' the officer directed. 'Lay to and make fast.' When this had been done: 'Come over here, the lot of you, and let me have a look at you.'
'Yes, sir, yes, sir.' The big man staggered across joined bulwarks and along the catwalk between rowers' benches to a lantern on the foredeck where the captain and trumpeter waited. His mates trailed him. 'Please, water!'
'In due course, after you have answered my questions,' the Stygian commander said. This might be a chance to learn a little about what was going on abroad. In these chaotic days, when King Ctesphon was still groping, lords of state might pay well for information. Be that as it may, the captain would enjoy watching these monkeys grovel.
'Thank you - thank you, sir,' the big man blubbered as he approached. 'May the gods reward you as you deserve.'
A sword flashed from beneath his garment. The trumpeter fell, skull cloven. That was the last thing the captain ever saw. The black men drew weapons of their own. From under canvas, in the bottom of the lifeboat, swarmed more.
The struggle was not loud, nor was it long. The pirates had every advantage of surprise, skill, and wrathfulness. 'Good,' said Conan. 'Dump the corpses, let us care for any wounded among us, and then you start back, N'Gora.'
Bêlit's first officer, who knew some Stygian, gave orders. The launch raised sail and tacked seaward. Whoever happened to be watching would suppose she had been denied admittance. Bearing a minimal crew, Conan their skipper, the picket boat cruised the bay as always.
Presently a swart galley with a feline figurehead hove in view.
?
The sentinel craft met her and the two lay side by side for a while. No doubt her presence attracted the attention of shore patrols and men guarding the naval ships. It would be natural that the police took time to make sure of her bonafides. They must have been satisfied at last, for their vessel accompanied the newcomer, both rowing straight toward the royal docks. Did she perhaps bear a foreign diplomat, come to implore the goodwill of mighty Stygia, or did she - a shudder - bring home an agent of wizard-priests?
Aboard Tigress again, Bêlit at his side again, Conan looked ahead from the prow. Starlight sheened on darkling waters, ample for eyes from Cimmerian forest, Kushite jungle, or the high seas. To port, beyond the bay, the Styx pierced nighted fields at the end of its long journey past the land where Daris dwelt... and dreamed? Forward, the city where he had been captive bulked monstrous, altogether black, save where furtive windows glimmered. Nearby, bone-hued under the mass of the Grand Pyramid, were the quarries where Jehanan had been a slave until his sister's man won him his freedom that he himself made eternal. Conan had an eerie premonition that all this was but the beginning of a long war he must wage against ancient horror, the first of whose names was tyranny.
He forced his attention to what loomed before him. The Stygian galleys were berthed bows to a stone wharf which extended piers between the slips. Their masts stood sharp against star-clouds, but their hulls lay shadowed, a lantern or two gleaming lonely upon each. The barracks beyond must hold many sailors, but these would not rouse to action as fast as a barbarian could.
'We are ready,' he said, and strung his longbow.
Down the raised deck, men uncovered firepots. Coals within glowed, a row of small infernos. The picket boat came back alongside, her skeleton crew abandoned her for Tigress, she drifted off. Oars clunked softly, metal clanked, whispers hissed.
Under the foredeck, Falco ignited a cloth-wrapped, oil-soaked arrow. The flame light brought his young face vivid out of the dark as he handed it up. 'Here, Conan,' he said. 'Yours is the first shot.'
'No,' he answered, 'it is Bêlit's.'
The queen of the Black Coast took the shaft and nocked it to her
own bowstring. She drew, she aimed, she let fly a meteor. Thereafter Conan did, and Falco, and a suddenly savagely yelling pirate crew.
Sun-dried, pitchy wood kindled easily. Where an arrow struck, a tiny blaze stood forth, hell-blue, cackled like anew-hatched eaglet, reached out a claw, fed, grew, and spread wings. Upward then it soared, from stern to stem, and the radiance of it made bright that water the Styx poured into the sea, and the crying of it was akin to that of a bird of prey as it swoops upon a snake. From end to end of the royal docks Tigress went, while fire streaked from her to scourge the foes of Bêlit. Sparks swarmed on the wind, reached where her lash could not, and sowed more flame.
Stygians hastened frantic to stem the conflagration, but already it was too vast. They could do no better than to save what merchant and fisher craft were in harbour None dared venture forth against the galley that prowled on the red edge of sight.
Mission completed, Tigress stood out to sea. Aft, Khemi Bay resembled a storm-tossed lake of blood. Once on the waves, she brought oars in, hoisted sail, and beat northward.
Conan came down the ladder to Falco. 'Well, lad,' the Cimmerian said gruffly, 'next we take you to Dan-marcah, and let you off with enough gold in your purse for an easy trip home.'
Adoration looked back at him. 'After - after I have told my tale and it has reached the palace,' Falco stammered, 'never shall you lack for a friend among the kings of Ophir.'
'Thanks,' replied Conan. 'That may be useful someday -as may my friendships in Taia should I ever want to cross the Stygian realm by myself. Who knows what years unborn may bring? Death on a heath or life on a throne or anything in between; no matter now.' He shrugged. 'All I have done while you knew me has just been in the service of my lady.'
Above them on the foredeck, vengeful and joyful, Bêlit was laughing.
Queen of the Black Coast (Part II)
Robert E. Howard
I
The Black Lotus
In that dead citadel of crumbling stone
Her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen, And curious madness took me by the throat,
As of a rival lover thrust between.– The Song of Bêlit.
TheTigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered. Tom-toms beat in the night, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion. And survivors of butchered Stygian ships named Bêlit with curse, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes remembered this man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore crimson fruit in the years to come.
But heedless as a vagrant wind, the Tigress cruised the southern coasts, until she anchored at the mouth of a broad sullen river, whose banks were jungle-clouded walls of mystery.
'This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death,' said Bêlit. 'Its waters are poisonous. See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptiles live in that river. The black people shun it. Once a Stygian galley, fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished. I anchored in this very spot, and days later, the galley came floating down the dark waters, its decks blood-stained and deserted. Only one man was on board, and he was mad and died gibbering. The cargo was intact, but the crew had vanished into silence and mystery.
'My lover, I believe there is a city somewhere on that river. I have heard tales of giant towers and walls glimpsed afar off by sailors who dared go part-way up the river. We fear nothing: Conan, let us go and sack that city!'
Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long as they sailed and fought. He found the life good.
<
br /> Battle and raid had thinned their crew; only some eighty spearmen remained, scarcely enough to work the long galley. But Bêlit would not take the time to make the long cruise southward to the island kingdoms where she recruited her buccaneers. She was afire with eagerness for her latest venture; so the Tigress swung into the river-mouth, the oarsmen pulling strongly as she breasted the broad current.
They rounded the mysterious bend that shut out the sight of the sea, and sunset found them forging steadily against the sluggish flow, avoiding sand bars where strange reptiles coiled. Not even a crocodile did they see, nor any four-legged beast or winged bird coming down to the water’s edge to drink. On through the blackness that preceded moonrise they drove, between banks that were solid palisades of darkness, whence came mysterious rustlings and stealthy footfalls, and the gleam of grim eyes. And once an inhuman voice was lifted in awful mockery – the cry of an ape, Bêlit said, adding that the souls of evil men were imprisoned in these man-like animals as punishment for past crimes. But Conan doubted, for once, in a gold-barred cage in an Hyrkanian city, he had seen an abysmal sad-eyed beast which men told him was an ape, and there had been about it naught of the demoniac malevolence which vibrated in the shrieking laughter that echoed from the black jungle.
Then the moon rose, a splash of blood, ebony-barred, and the jungle awoke in horrific bedlam to greet it. Roars and howls and yells set the black warriors to trembling, but all this noise, Conan noted, came from farther back in the jungle, as if the beasts no less than men shunned the black waters of Zarkheba.
Rising above the black denseness of the trees and above the waving fronds, the moon silvered the river, and their wake became a rippling scintillation of phosphorescent bubbles that widened like a shining road of bursting jewels. The oars dipped into the shining water and came up sheathed in frosty silver. The plumes on the warriors’ head-pieces nodded in the wind, and the gems on sword-hilts and harness sparkled frostily.
The cold light struck icy fire from the jewels in Bêlit’s clustered black locks as she stretched her lithe figure on a leopardskin thrown on the deck. Supported on her elbows, her chin resting on her slim hands, she gazed up into the face of Conan, who lounged beside her, his black mane stirring in the faint breeze. Bêlit’s eyes were dark jewels burning in the moonlight.
'Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm of horror and death,' she said. 'Are you afraid?'
A shrug of his mailed shoulders was his only answer.
'I am not afraid either,' she said meditatively. 'I was never afraid. I have looked into the naked fangs of Death too often. Conan, do you fear the gods?'
'I would not tread on their shadow,' answered the barbarian conservatively. 'Some gods are strong to harm, others, to aid; at least so say their priests. Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong god, because his people have builded their cities over the world. But even the Hyborians fear Set. And Bel, god of thieves, is a good god. When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him.'
'What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them.'
'Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?'
'But what of the worlds beyond the river of death?' she persisted.
'There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people,' answered Conan. 'In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a grey misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.'
Bêlit shuddered. 'Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny. What do you believe, Conan?'
He shrugged his shoulders. 'I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.'
'But the gods are real,' she said, pursuing her own line of thought. 'And above all are the gods of the Shemites – Ishtar and Ashtoreth and Derketo and Adonis. Bel, too, is Shemitish, for he was born in ancient Shumir, long, long ago, and went forth laughing, with curled beard and impish wise eyes, to steal the gems of the kings of old times.
'There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this, too, Conan of Cimmeria' – she rose lithely to her knees and caught him in a pantherish embrace – 'my love is stronger than any death! I have lain in your arms, panting with the violence of our love; you have held and crushed and conquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the fierceness of your bruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart, my soul is part of your soul! Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back from the abyss to aid you – aye, whether my spirit floated with the purple sails on the crystal sea of paradise, or writhed in the molten flames of hell! I am yours, and all the gods and all their eternities shall not sever us!'
A scream rang from the lookout in the bows. Thrusting Bêlit aside, Conan bounded up, his sword a long silver glitter in the moonlight, his hair bristling at what he saw. The black warrior dangled above the deck, supported by what seemed a dark pliant tree trunk arching over the rail. Then he realised that it was a gigantic serpent which had writhed its glistening length up the side of the bow and gripped the luckless warrior in its jaws. Its dripping scales shone leprously in the moonlight as it reared its form high above the deck, while the stricken man screamed and writhed like a mouse in the fangs of a python. Conan rushed into the bows, and swinging his great sword, hewed nearly through the giant trunk, which was thicker than a man’s body. Blood drenched the rails as the dying monster swayed far out, still gripping its victim, and sank into the river, coil by coil, lashing the water to bloody foam, in which man and reptile vanished together.
Thereafter Conan kept the lookout watch himself, but no other horror came crawling up from the murky depths, and as dawn whitened over the jungle, he sighted the black fangs of towers jutting up among the trees. He called Bêlit, who slept on the deck, wrapped in his scarlet cloak, and she sprang to his side, eyes blazing. Her lips were parted to call orders to her warriors to take up bow and spears; then her lovely eyes widened.
It was but the ghost of a city on which they looked when they cleared a jutting jungle-clad point and swung in toward the in-curving shore. Weeds and rank river grass grew between the stones of broken piers and shattered paves that had once been streets and spacious plazas and broad courts. From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green. Here and there buckling towers reeled drunkenly against the morning sky, and broken pillars jutted up among the decaying walls. In the centre space a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column, and on its pinnacle sat or squatted something that Conan supposed to be an image until his keen eyes detected life in it.
'It is a great bird,' said one of the warriors, standing in the bows.
'It is a monster bat,' insisted another.
'It is an ape,' said Bêlit.
Just then the creature spread broad wings and flapped off into the jungle.
'A winged ape,' said old N’Yaga uneasily. 'Better we had cut our throats than come to this place. It is haunted.'
Bêlit mocked at his superstitions and ordered the galley run inshore and
tied to the crumbling wharfs. She was the first to spring ashore, closely followed by Conan, and after them trooped the ebon-skinned pirates, white plumes waving in the morning wind, spears ready, eyes rolling dubiously at the surrounding jungle.
Over all brooded a silence as sinister as that of a sleeping serpent. Bêlit posed picturesquely among the ruins, the vibrant life in her lithe figure contrasting strangely with the desolation and decay about her. The sun flamed up slowly, sullenly, above the jungle, flooding the towers with a dull gold that left shadows lurking beneath the tottering walls. Bêlit pointed to a slim round tower that reeled on its rotting base. A broad expanse of cracked, grass-grown slabs led up to it, flanked by fallen columns, and before it stood a massive altar. Bêlit went swiftly along the ancient floor and stood before it.
'This was the temple of the old ones,' she said. 'Look – you can see the channels for the blood along the sides of the altar, and the rains of ten thousand years have not washed the dark stains from them. The walls have all fallen away, but this stone block defies time and the elements.'
'But who were these old ones?' demanded Conan.
She spread her slim hands helplessly. 'Not even in legendry is this city mentioned. But look at the handholes at either end of the altar! Priests often conceal their treasures beneath their altars. Four of you lay hold and see if you can lift it.'
She stepped back to make room for them, glancing up at the tower which loomed drunkenly above them. Three of the strongest blacks had gripped the handholds cut into the stone – curiously unsuited to human hands – when Bêlit sprang back with a sharp cry. They froze in their places, and Conan, bending to aid them, wheeled with a startled curse.
'A snake in the grass,' she said, backing away. 'Come and slay it; the rest of you bend your backs to the stone.'
The Conan Chronology Page 253
