'Aye, and you hunted me to your sore cost.'
'This is foolish, this talk of old battles and vengeance,' Layla said. 'Slay him.'
'No!' Conan said. 'He is an evil jackal who hunts down fleeing slaves and desperate men, but I'll not say he lacks courage. And he has some justice in his claim. Draw your steel, Aquilonian. You and I shall fight Venarium all over again.'
'This is insane!' Layla said. 'You have already won!'
'This is extraordinary!' exclaimed Idris.
'Aye,' said Eltis. 'Perhaps they will slay one another. That will save us a chest of gold.'
The rebels drew back in a wide semicircle facing the pond. Within this cleared space the two northerners drew their swords and cast away their sheaths. Then they circled one another slowly, each seeking an advantage before hazarding a blow. They were well matched in size and weight. Berytus was somewhat bulkier, Conan a bit longer of arm and leg. Except for the Aquilonian's steel cap and the plating on his hands and forearms, neither was armoured.
The two feinted a few times, feeling each other out. Then Berytus shuffled in, his feet flat, sending a flurry of cuts at the Cimmerian's head and body. Conan was forced to give ground, defending himself without opportunity to counter-attack. The manhunter wielded his broad, curved sword in a quick series of short, powerful chops, keeping his armoured forearms close to his body. Conan recognised the style. It had been perfected in the fighting-pits and was ideal for combat within confined quarters.
Conan jumped back a pace and sent a flurry of blows toward the head of his opponent, forcing the man to cease his own attack. Berytus fended the blows with his sword or batted them aside with his hand-plates.
Simultaneously, the two men sprang apart. Both were breathing heavily and sweating profusely. They had taken one another's measure, and the next exchange would be the final one. The spectators maintained utter silence as the two deadly combatants paused. Berytus was tense, every muscle coiled. Conan was almost relaxed.
Then the two sprang together and the blows rained too fast for those watching to follow. Steel rang on steel in a continuous clatter that sounded like all the armourers in a workshop hammering at once. They advanced and retreated until they were in the pond, fighting in water almost to their knees. The clashing of steel silenced for long seconds as the two hilts locked and the men pushed at one another, muscles straining, the breath wheezing from their lungs as from a cracked bellows.
Then there was a convulsive spasm of flesh and steel. Conan's sword twisted down, the plated hand of Berytus flashed out. There were meaty smacks of metal on flesh. Then Conan staggered back, blood streaming from four long, parallel furrows in his face where the spikes over Berytus's knuckles had ripped the skin bone-deep.
The Aquilonian lurched forward, trying to follow up the terrible blow with more of the same, but his arms and his feet would not obey his will. Conan had released the hilt of his sword, and the blade remained thrust through the Aquilonian's body, the cross-guard tight against his belly, two feet of bloody steel protruding from his back.
'Curse you for a Cimmerian swine,' Berytus said. Then he toppled and splashed his full length into the bloody water. Conan walked over to the corpse and tore his sword free. He dipped the shining steel into the water to cleanse it of blood and flesh.
'Crom,' Conan said, 'but that one was a worthy enemy!
Had he not been an evil, murdering hyena, I would send him off with a fine funeral.'
'Splendid!' Idris cried. Eltis looked less pleased, for now he was out a chest of gold.
For the rest of the day, the rebels toiled to bring up the treasure. Men dived into the blood-fouled water and secured ropes to the chests; then the ropes were snubbed to saddle pommels and the heavy treasure was dragged ashore. Other men waded out with leather bags of silver upon their shoulders.
'It is even greater than the woman described,' Idris said, full of elation. 'With such treasure at my disposal, all of northern Iranistan will flock to my cause. I will drive the usurper from the throne!' His men cheered lustily.
'Conan,' Idris continued, 'you have been of good service to me, although I would not truly care to see you within my borders again. Choose a chest and take it. It is yours.'
Conan selected a chest, and hoisted it to his shoulder and carried it to the place where his horse was picketed. Ubo had ridden out and rounded up the beast after the fight with Berytus. Now the bandit sat on the ground, disconsolate.
'So we have a single chest and the rebels have everything else. What is the good of that?'
'We could have nothing,' Conan said. The blood had dried on his face, but his cheek looked as if a tiger had swiped a paw across it. 'Have you ever stolen as much as lies in this chest?'
'Nay, not in my whole career.'
'Then do not complain. The world is full of gold, and a man of spirit can help himself to it.'
An hour later the treasure was packed up and the rebels were gone, riding back toward Iranistan. They had taken their own dead, but the manhunters and Torgut Khan's troopers lay where they had fallen. Jackals and hyenas prowled the heights, and even a rare desert lion made an appearance. The air was thick with vultures.
'Let us go,' Conan said. The two strapped their chest to a
trooper's horse that Idris had allowed them and they mounted. They rode to the other side of the lake, where Layla was speaking with a new arrival.
'I rejoice to see you alive, Volvolicus,' Conan said. 'Ordinarily I do not like wizards, but you have been a faithful companion, even though you were carrying out your own scheme with that accursed temple and all those foreign mages. Is the thing dead?'
'It never dies,' replied the wizard, who had no horse, yet had arrived dressed in spotless white robes. Conan was not inclined to ask him how he had accomplished the feat. 'But it will not try to be reborn for another thousand years, or perhaps ten thousand, or a hundred thousand.'
'Then I'll not concern myself further,' said the Cimmerian. 'You were one of our band. The gold is not as much as we took, but you are welcome to your share of it.'
The wizard shook his head. 'I need no gold. I have been elevated to the First Rank, and such a one need never concern himself with worldly matters.'
'Farewell to you then,' Conan said and turned to Layla. 'You were more than capable in the doings of these past days. Will you ride on with us?'
She smiled. 'Nay, this has been a glorious adventure, but I stay with my father. He has much yet to teach me and I think your wild life would pall on me before long. Goodbye, Cimmerian.'
'Farewell to you both then.' Conan saluted, wheeled his mount and trotted away, followed closely by Ubo, who led their packhorse.
The two men rode for a number of hours until they were out of the hills and upon the edge of the great desert, laced with its caravan trails linking the rare water holes.
'Where to now, Chief?' Ubo asked.
Conan pointed a finger due west. 'Over there lies a city called Zamboula. It is a wicked place, and it welcomes men with gold and does not ask how they got it. If the water holes are full, we can be there in ten or twelve days.'
Ubo scratched his chin. 'That sounds a congenial place. This chest of gold holds a year's income for a good-sized town. In such a city as you describe, it might last us for a month or more! And then we can round up another band of robbers, for wicked cities are always full of men who want gold and know better than to toil for it.'
'Aye,' Conan said. 'To Zamboula!' Laughing, the two men rode away from the hills of Turan. Behind them, the vultures circled.
The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
Robert E. Howard
I
A Drum Begins
'Peril hides in the house of Aram Baksh!'
The speaker’s voice quivered with earnestness and his lean, black-nailed fingers clawed at Conan’s mightily-muscled arm as he croaked his warning. He was a wiry, sun-burnt man with a straggling black beard, and his ragged garments proclaimed him a nomad. He looked small
er and meaner than ever in contrast to the giant Cimmerian with his black brows, broad breast, and powerful limbs. They stood in a corner of the Sword-Makers’ Bazaar, and on either side of them flowed past the many-tongued, many-coloured stream of the Zamboula streets, which is exotic, hybrid, flamboyant and clamorous.
Conan pulled his eyes back from following a bold-eyed, red-lipped Ghanara, whose short slit skirt bared her brown thigh at each insolent step, and frowned down at his importunate companion.
'What do you mean by peril?' he demanded.
The desert man glanced furtively over his shoulder before replying, and lowered his voice.
'Who can say? But desert men and travellers have slept in the house of Aram Baksh, and never been seen or heard of again! What became of them? He swore they rose and went their way – and it is true that no citizen of the city has ever disappeared from his house. But no one saw the travellers again, and men say that goods and equipment recognised as theirs have been seen in the bazaars. If Aram did not sell them, after doing away with their owners, how came them there?'
'I have no goods,' growled the Cimmerian, touching the shagreen-bound hilt of the broadsword that hung at his hip. 'I have even sold my horse.'
'But it is not always rich strangers who vanish by night from the house of Aram Baksh!' chattered the Zuagir. 'Nay, poor desert men have slept there – because his score is less than that of the other taverns – and have been seen no more! Once a chief of the Zuagirs whose son had thus vanished complained to the satrap, Jungir Khan, who ordered the house searched by soldiers.'
'And they found a cellar full of corpses?' asked Conan in good-humoured derision.
'Nay! They found naught! And drove the chief from the city with threats and curses! But –' he drew closer to Conan and shivered, 'something else was found! At the edge of the desert, beyond the houses, there is a clump of palm-trees, and within that grove there is a pit. And within that pit have been found human bones, charred and blackened! Not once but many times!'
'Which proves what?' grunted the Cimmerian.
'Aram Baksh is a demon! Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built and which Hyrkanians rule – where white, brown and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds – who can tell who is a man, and who a demon in disguise? Aram Baksh is a demon in the form of a man! At night he assumes his true guise and carries his guests off into the desert where his fellow demons from the waste meet in conclave!'
'Why does he always carry off strangers?' asked Conan skeptically.
'The people of the city would not suffer him to slay their people! But they care naught for the strangers who fall into his hands. Conan, you are of the West, and know not the secrets of this ancient land. But, since the beginning of happenings, the demons of the desert have worshipped Yog, the Lord of the Empty Abodes, with fire – fire that devours human victims!
'Be warned! Thou hast dwelt for many moons in the tents of the Zuagirs, and thou art our brother! Go not to the house of Aram Baksh!'
'Get out of sight!' Conan said suddenly. 'Yonder comes a squad of the city-watch. If they see you they may remember a horse that was stolen from the satrap’s stable –'
The Zuagir gasped, and moved convulsively. He ducked between a booth and a stone horse trough, pausing only long enough to chatter: 'Be warned, my brother! There are demons in the house of Aram Baksh!' Then he darted down a narrow alley and was gone.
Conan shifted his broad sword-belt to his liking, and calmly returned the searching stares directed at him by the squad of watchmen as they swung past. They eyed him curiously and suspiciously, for he was a man who stood out even in such a motley throng as crowded the winding streets of Zamboula. His blue eyes and alien features distinguished him from the Eastern swarms, and the straight sword at his hip added point to the racial difference.
The watchmen did not accost him, but swung on down the street, while the crowd opened a lane for them. They were Pelishtim, squat, hook-nosed, with blue-black beards sweeping their mailed breasts – mercenaries hired for work the ruling Turanians considered beneath themselves, and no less hated by the mongrel population for that reason.
Conan glanced at the sun, just beginning to dip behind the flat-topped houses on the western side of the bazaar, and hitching once more at his belt, moved off in the direction of Aram Baksh’s tavern.
With a hillman’s stride he moved through the ever-shifting colours of the streets, where the ragged tunics of whining beggars brushed against the ermine-trimmed khalats of lordly merchants, and the pearl-sewn satin of rich courtesans. Giant black slaves slouched along, jostling blue-bearded wanderers from the Shemitish cities, ragged nomads from the surrounding deserts, traders and adventurers from all the lands of the East.
The native population was no less heterogeneous. Here, centuries ago, the armies of Stygia had come, carving an empire out of the eastern desert. Zamboula was but a small trading town then, lying amidst a ring of oases, and inhabited by descendants of nomads. The Stygians built it into a city and settled it with their own people, and with Shemite and Kushite slaves. The ceaseless caravans, threading the desert from east to west and back again, brought riches and more mingling of races. Then came the conquering Turanians, riding out of the East to thrust back the boundaries of Stygia, and now for a generation Zamboula had been Turan’s western-most out-post, ruled by a Turanian satrap.
The babel of a myriad tongues smote on the Cimmerian’s ears as the restless pattern of the Zamboula streets weaved about him – cleft now and then by a squad of clattering horsemen, the tall, supple warriors of Turan, with dark hawk-faces, clinking metal and curved swords. The throng scampered from under their horses’ hoofs, for they were the lords of Zamboula. But tall, somber Stygians, standing back in the shadows, glowered darkly, remembering their ancient glories. The hybrid population cared little whether the king who controlled their destinies dwelt in dark Khemi or gleaming Aghrapur. Jungir Khan ruled Zamboula, and men whispered that Nafertari, the satrap’s mistress, ruled Jungir Khan; but the people went their way, flaunting their myriad colours in the streets, bargaining, disputing, gambling, swilling, loving, as the people of Zamboula have done for all the centuries its towers and minarets have lifted over the sands of the Kharamun.
Bronze lanterns, carven with leering dragons, had been lighted in the streets before Conan reached the house of Aram Baksh. The tavern was the last occupied house on the street, which ran west. A wide garden, enclosed by a wall, where date palms grew thick, separated it from the houses farther east. To the west of the inn stood another grove of palms, through which the street, now become a road, wound out into the desert. Across the road from the tavern stood a row of deserted huts, shaded by straggling palm trees, and occupied only by bats and jackals. As Conan came down the road he wondered why the beggars, so plentiful in Zamboula, had not appropriated these empty houses for sleeping quarters. The lights ceased some distance behind him. Here were no lanterns, except the one hanging before the tavern gate: only the stars, the soft dust of the road underfoot, and the rustle of the palm-leaves in the desert breeze.
Aram’s gate did not open upon the road, but upon the alley which ran between the tavern and the garden of the date-palms. Conan jerked lustily at the rope which depended from the bell beside the lantern, augmenting its clamor by hammering on the iron-bound teak-wood gate with the hilt of his sword. A wicket opened in the gate and a black face peered through.
'Open, blast you,' requested Conan. 'I’m a guest. I’ve paid Aram for a room, and a room I’ll have, by Crom!'
The black craned his neck to stare into the starlit road behind Conan; but he opened the gate without comment, and closed it again behind the Cimmerian, locking it and bolting it. The wall was unusually high; but there were many thieves in Zamboula, and a house on the edge of the desert might have to be defended against a nocturnal nomad raid. Conan strode through a garden where great pale blossoms nodded in the starlight, and entered the tap-room, where a
Stygian with the shaven head of a student sat at a table brooding over nameless mysteries, and some nondescripts wrangled over a game of dice in a corner.
Aram Baksh came forward, walking softly, a portly man, with a black beard that swept his breast, a jutting hook nose, and small black eyes which were never still.
'You wish food?' he asked. 'Drink?'
'I ate a joint of beef and a loaf of bread in the suk,' grunted Conan. 'Bring me a tankard of Ghazan wine – I’ve got just enough left to pay for it.' He tossed a copper coin on the wine-splashed board.
'You did not win at the gaming tables?'
'How could I, with only a handful of silver to begin with? I paid you for the room this morning, because I knew I’d probably lose. I wanted to be sure I had a roof over my head tonight. I notice nobody sleeps in the streets in Zamboula. The very beggars hunt a niche they can barricade before dark. The city must be full of a particularly blood-thirsty brand of thieves.'
He gulped the cheap wine with relish, and then followed Aram out of the tap-room. Behind him the players halted their game to stare after him with a cryptic speculation in their eyes. They said nothing, but the Stygian laughed, a ghastly laugh of inhuman cynicism and mockery. The others lowered their eyes uneasily, avoiding each others’ glance. The arts studied by a Stygian scholar are not calculated to make him share the feelings of a normal human being.
Conan followed Aram down a corridor lighted by copper lamps, and it did not please him to note his host’s noiseless tread. Aram’s feet were clad in soft slippers and the hall-way was carpeted with thick Turanian rugs; but there was an unpleasant suggestion of innate stealthiness about the Zamboulan. At the end of the winding corridor Aram halted at a door, across which a heavy iron bar rested in powerful metal brackets. This Aram lifted and showed the Cimmerian into a well appointed chamber, the windows of which, Conan instantly noted, were small and strongly set with twisted bars of iron, tastefully gilded. There were rugs on the floor, a couch, after the Eastern fashion, and ornately carven stools. It was a much more elaborate chamber than Conan could have procured for the price nearer the centre of the city – a fact that had first attracted him, when, that morning, he discovered how slim a purse his roisterings for the past few days had left him. He had ridden into Zamboula from the desert a week before.
The Conan Chronology Page 388
