'Why was one of the slaves sniffing at it?' Achilea asked.
'Checking for leaks in the fixtures,' Amram said. 'They are made of bronze and ceramic, and with long use, they can work loose and allow the vapor to leak out in small amounts, but still enough to be
dangerous. They need constant adjusting. Because the vapor has no odor, another vapor is added to it in the processing plant to give it a sharp scent. Thus may a leak be detected.'
'Not only do drey live beneath the earth like burrowing insects,' Conan said, 'but they suffer the constant threat of burning and suffocation. What sort of way is that for men to live?'
Amram shrugged. 'Have you ever sailed upon the sea? Life aboard ship is far more precarious.'
'At least it is in the open air, beneath the sun and the stars,' Conan protested.
'Each to his own taste,' Amram said. 'I am a man of broad tolerance and I find all modes of life to be equally peculiar.'
In silence, they traversed the sleeping city, walking down broad corridors, padding through narrow passages flanked by sleeping chambers whence drifted the sounds of snoring and wheezing, up long stairways, some straight, others winding. Several times they detected the approach of flame patrols, and then they ducked into the nearest room that had no lighting fixture to be checked. They came to a vast chamber from which came a sharp, nose-stinging scent.
'This is the vapor-works,' Amram cautioned. 'Use utmost care. There are workers on duty here at all hours.'
The chamber was cavernous, and Conan entered it with trepidation, not because of the danger of discovery, but because of his great distaste at being near anything as uncanny as a vapor-works. He knew from what Omia had said that these people were not even capable of sorcery, but this great reservoir for burning gas was sufficiently unearthly that to his barbarian instincts, it was little different from the most powerful wizardry.
The light was dim and uncertain, provided here not by open flames, but by clumps of the glowing fungi. The sickly green, blue, orange and yellow phosphorescence provided sufficient illumination that they could recognise the shapes of huge, closed vats of riveted bronze sheet from which trailed bewildering tangles of metal pipes leading to smaller tanks, to other pipes, and to fixtures to which Conan could not assign a name. Everywhere there were wheels of greater or lesser dimensions, apparently controlling valves to regulate the flow of the vapor. Over everything lay the pungent scent of the additive.
Conan wondered how they would ever be able to detect a leak here.
Among the mysterious fixtures moved shadowy shapes, some small, some hulking. With a prickling scalp, he saw men with long, heavily muscled arms and shoulders of gorilla dimensions, but with heads that were unnaturally small. He tapped Amram on the shoulder and pointed at one who walked along a catwalk above them, his knuckles almost dragging upon the metal treads, his mouth agape and his eyes blankly staring. Amram whispered in his ear.
'Those are harmless―-slaves specially bred to turn the largest valve wheels no matter how badly they may be stuck. When there is an emergency here, there is no time to call in extra help or use mechanical aid. The vapor must be shut off instantly.'
Even in the midst of his powerful urge to get away, Conan sought to memorize the salient features of the operation. Compared to the city without, it was a noisy place, full of hissings and rumblings, the creak and clank of metal, the sounds of barked orders and the stertorous breathing of the hulking slaves, whose small noses and mouths were scarcely up to the task of providing air for their overgrown bodies.
They passed a gigantic horizontal wheel to which no fewer than six of the massive slaves were chained by the wrist Conan surmised that this was the master valve, whereby the vapor could be cut off to the whole city, including this facility, in an extreme emergency. He wondered how the city could ever function in total darkness, then realised that the answer was all around him: the fungus that glowed with its own cold, unearthly light. Doubtless the ant-people kept enough of it in all parts of the city to provide instant illumination.
No doubt about it, he thought, they had planned well. But then, they had had many thousands of years to perfect the art of living without the sun. He shuddered at the thought. The slaves and the free workers in this place revealed with merciless clarity the consequences of such a life. The cold light of the fungi gave their colorless skin the semblance of the rotting flesh of corpses.
Once through the vapor works, they were back on more familiar ground. The Cimmerian recognised the environs as an area they had passed through upon first entering the city. They were climbing now, and he guessed that Amram was taking them back up to the great temple. He did not greatly relish the thought of recrossing the desert, but anything was preferable to spending more days as the guest of Omia and Abbadas.
During the climb, Amram took them down an unfamiliar side corridor. 'Where are we going?'
Conan demanded, grasping the small man’s arm and halting him. 'I don’t remember this place.'
'Nor should you,' was the answer. 'But you said you wanted your weapons and belongings, did you not?'
Conan grinned. 'Lead on.'
They continued until, at a bend in the passage, Amram halted them. He pulled Conan and Achilea’s heads close to him and whispered almost too faintly to hear: 'Around this comer is a guardroom. There should be at least two guards on duty, and these you must deal with yourselves. Your belongings lie in the chamber beyond.' The two nodded and drew their acquired weapons. At Conan’s signal, they rushed around the comer.
The two guards flanked the door, leaning on pole-arms, barely awake. They wore black armour and beast-masks and were so startled that they had not even time to speak before the two were upon them.
Conan grasped the one on the left by the throat and rammed his short sword through to the spine.
Achilea put her dagger through the throat of her victim as the women rushed from behind to grasp the arms of bom guards and lower them to the floor without a betraying clatter. With great dexterity, Amram darted forward to grab a toppling pole-arm before it could make a noise.
Instantly, Conan dashed through the door into the chamber beyond, bloody sword in his fist, turning in a circle, ready for more enemies. Nothing moved within the guardroom and he straightened, surveying the room’s contents. It was not one of the larger chambers, about ten paces on a side, but it was crammed with chests, and upon the walls miscellaneous objects were draped from pegs.
'Here!' said Achilea triumphantly. She rushed to a wall where her belt of tooled leather hung, her sword and dagger sheathed upon it. She snatched the belt down and fastened it about her sinewy waist, then crouched to examine the bundle of goods on the floor below the peg.
Conan found his own weapons nearby, hanging above a heap that contained his desert robes and miscellaneous belongings. He rolled everything except the weapon-belt into his cape and slung it all over his shoulder. The women were doing the same. They ignored the things that had belonged to Jeyba and Kye-Dee.
Something seemed to the Cimmerian to be missing. 'Where are our camel saddles and harness?'
'Still on the camels, for aught I care,' Achilea said. 'I hope so. It will save us time getting away from this hideous place.'
'Come!' Amram urged. 'We have tarried here too long. The city will be waking soon and it will be time to change the guards at your cells. An alarm spreads through this city instantly!'
'I am ready,' Conan said, striding out of the guardroom. 'Now that we are armed, these degenerates had best not stand in our way!'
Up the great spiral and ramp they went, and as they did, they heard a loud commotion behind them.
There was a thunder of gongs and a clanging of alarm bells and a shrill skirling of unearthly pipes.
'Too late, dogs!' Achilea cried. 'We are out of your grasp now!'
'Do not speak presumptuously!' Amram warned. 'The gods like nothing better than to punish mortals for making such pronouncements.'
'Just now,' said
the Amazon, 'I fear neither gods, men nor devils!'
Then they were in a huge, dim space where their voices and footsteps echoed. It was the interior of the immense idol within Janagar’s greatest temple. The vapor torches still burned inside the immense bronze thing, their flames so low that only the vaguest shapes were visible above them.
'Where is that gate?' Achilea demanded.
'It is beneath the feet of the goddess,' Amram said, rushing to the front of the chamber. 'There are controls here somewhere.' He jerked upon levers and there came to them a rattling of chains and a creaking of hinges. But the noise from behind them was already much louder.
'They come!' Payna cried. 'Many of them!' The three women arranged themselves between the mouth of the ramp and their queen. Short swords and axes appeared in their hands as if by magick.
Conan and Achilea drew their longer blades and set their feet, ready for anything.
'Hurry with that gate!' Conan shouted. 'I’d rather deal with them outside than in this bronze tomb!'
Light blossomed within the idol as the torches flared, five-foot tongues of flame leaping from their cupped terminals. Someone below had turned up the vapor. Conan chanced a look overhead. There was always the possibility that enemies could lurk above, ready to drop upon them. He saw a maze of catwalks and ladders, chains hanging in great loops, levers and wheels and gears of unguessable function, but no living thing. Then something above caught his eye. It was a faint purple glow, one that he had seen before.
There was no further time for speculation. The guards had reached the end of the ramp. The Cimmerian darted around the queen’s women and hacked at the first three to gain the top. Steel crunched through black armour and into flesh and bone. Taken aback, the three were easily overcome. Even as he hewed, he noted with relief that this was not the well-drilled team that had greeted their arrival with nets and lassos. They were merely the guards who had been first to answer the alarm, and they were all half-winded from the long ascent.
'Give me room!' Achilea demanded as she waded in, her blade whistling. Two guards rushed to meet her and fell back as swiftly, one with an arm slashed to the bone its whole length, the other pumping bright blood from a severed artery in his thigh. The wild women plied their shorter weapons with expert skill. The ramp grew slippery with blood, and for a moment the attackers withdrew in confusion.
Conan risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that Amram had the door open about a foot as he heaved at various levers and stole glances of his own at the skirmish behind him. He heaved once more and there was a mechanical clank. The door opened almost another foot. The Cimmerian made a note of which lever it was that the little man fought with.
'Go!' Conan shouted 'Get through the door and I will hold diem here, men follow. Head for the great gate and our camels!'
'I’ll not desert a fight!' Achilea barked at him, her face transported with battle-lust. 'No man does my fighting for me!'
Conan turned to the other women, 'Get your queen out of here!'
Dumbly, they nodded. Then all three laid hold of Achilea and began dragging her bodily away.
'Conan!' she cried. 'You cannot stay them alone! They will kill you!'
'They want us alive, have you forgotten? ' Truthfully, be was not certain of any such thing, Omia might want him alive, but she was nowhere to be seen and these guards might well have standing orders to kill any intruders. He saw the women hustle their chieftainess through the doorway. Amram was not in sight. Presumably, he had gone through first, exerting his customary care for his own hide. Then the Cimmerian had no attention to spare.
A guard larger than the others and more heavily armoured came through the rabble of his fellows amid approving growls. Conan guessed that the local champion had arrived. The man wore a demon-faced mask and in his hands he cradled a mace with a flanged head. With a roar, he swung a full-armed blow at Conan’s head. The Cimmerian ducked and replied with a horizontal slash, but the guard leapt back to avoid it and brought his own weapon down to block the tip. Blade and mace-shaft rang and sparked. Then the massive head of the weapon arced toward Conan’s side, but the Cimmerian stepped within the man’s swing and with one hand, grabbed the guard’s arm below the elbow.
Conan’s sword-hilt smashed into the guard’s face, crumpling the thin metal of the mask, the blow so powerful that blood jetted from the eye-slits. The man howled and fell back and as he did, Conan plucked the mace from his grip. A whirling blow of the weapon smashed the guard’s head and without
pause, Conan crushed another’s side even as he ran his blade through the ribs of a third. The mob fell back in consternation and he spun and rushed for the gateway.
The guards gathered their nerve and pursued, but he was already at the gale. He did not go through though. Instead, he put his sword in his teeth and dropped the mace as he grasped the control lever and heaved. His muscles bulged as the lever groaned forward and the gate shut before him. Then he stooped, snatched up the mace and swung it in a terrific, horizontal circle. The iron lever, as thick as a man’s wrist, snapped off at the floor and whizzed end over end through the air until it slammed into the bronze side of the hollow idol with a dull clang.
The guards stood gaping, unable to understand what had just happened. Then there was a commotion behind them and Omia appeared. Just behind her was Abbadas.
'What is this? Where―' Then she saw the Cimmerian grinning at her.
'You never raised bulls before, did you?' he taunted. 'You’d have been more careful if you had. All cattlemen know that the best breeding stock is the most dangerous!'
'Where are those women?' Abbadas shouted.
'What care you?' Conan demanded. 'You’ll not live to touch them!' With the final word, he hurled the mace straight for Abbadas. He had never cared for the mace as a weapon and had taken it only so he could destroy the door control. With a squawk, Abbadas dodged in a move so swift that a tumbler might have envied it Two men behind him went down with their faces pulped.
'Kill him!' Abbadas howled.
'No!' countered the queen. 'I want him alive!'
But the object of their attention was not listening to them. With a fleet-footed spring, Conan dashed for the nearest ladder. With his sword between his teeth again, he sprang straight up and his hands grasped a rung fifteen feet from the floor. Instantly, he was swarming upward with the agility of a monkey. Below him, he heard the twang of a crossbow, and a quarrel whispered past his head to carom off a bronze plate. Omia squalled something. Apparently the shot had been made against her orders.
The ladder ended at a catwalk and he vaulted onto it. Close behind him climbed the guards. The ladder was bolted too firmly for him to dislodge it, and he had nothing to hurl down. He knew that he could stand where he was and lop their heads off all day as they reached the catwalk, but he was a clear target for archers, at least some of whom were following the orders of Abbadas.
'Come down!' Omia called, 'You will not be harmed!' Ignoring her, Abbadas signaled to a pair of women who bore crossbows, and the strings twanged simultaneously. One fired a barb-headed quarrel, the other a wicked lead pellet that could crush a skull. The Cimmerian avoided both, but narrowly. Omia turned upon Abbadas. 'You will die for this, traitor!'
'I think not,' the man said. He stepped to Omia and seemed to embrace her tenderly. 'Your timid rule is at an end, my queen. It is time for us to abandon the past and rejoin the real world.'
'You are mad!' she cried, squirming in his arms. 'We will all die! Janagar will be no more! You must not― Guards!' The last word was torn from her throat in horror as she saw the blade Abbadas held before her eyes. Then, so slowly that it might have been an act of love, he drew the keen edge across her throat. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came forth save a great effusion of blood. She could grow no paler, but life left her eyes and she collapsed in a small heap at the feet of her murderer. The guards stood about, unable to absorb what had transpired.
'You will obey me now,'
Abbadas calmly announced to them. 'I am the new king of Janagar. My first order to you as king is to slay that… where is he?' His gaze followed the direction of his own pointing finger, but the catwalk above was empty except for a guard who had just reached the top of the ladder When he saw the queen of Janagar die, Conan did not tarry. He had known many a throne to change hands with even less ceremony, and be knew that the new monarch was less tenderhearted than the last. At least, this one had no interest in keeping him alive. Quietly, the Cimmerian ran to the end of the catwalk and sprang upon its railing. Sheathing his sword, he jumped to another catwalk above, grasping a railing support and pulling himself over with the ease of one raised among cliffs and crags. No
mountain goat was as surefooted and agile as a Cimmerian.
'There he is!' shouted someone, and Conan dodged, knowing that crossbow bolts would soon follow. He took a run along the catwalk and sprang outward into empty space. He grasped a dangling chain and swung to a large platform crowded with gears and levers, doubtless a part of the controls of the idol’s arms and other mobile features. He went to a comer of the platform and looked for a place to go next, balancing himself on the lip of the void, a hundred feet up. He had no fear of heights, an attribute the pursuing guards did not share, for they came with cautious deliberation.
But come they did. They were swarming up the ladders and catwalks, and in no great time, they would be upon the platform with him. He knew that even the greatest fighter must bow to superior numbers. Then he saw something above him. From his platform, a wobbly ladder of bars connected by a pair of cables stretched like a strand of spiderweb up into the darkness beyond. There, too far from the torchlight for him to make out any details, was a purple glow. In its centre was a man-shape, and it seemed to be beckoning him.
The Conan Chronology Page 417
