The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Low clouds wreathed the area, billowing about them and bestowing a constant, fine drizzle. Their already ragged clothing began to deteriorate further and constant care was required to keep the rust from their weapons. But here, at least, they could at last leave the rocky watercourse. The ground between the strange plants and stony crags was open, covered with mossy growth that was pleasant to feet bruised by days of boulder-climbing.

  'How do you stand it, Conan?' Malia asked of the Cimmerian who strode beside her. She shivered in the chilly mist of morning but he seemed not to notice it. 'You now wear less than a Shadizar dancing girl, but you act as if it were a summer afternoon in Tarantia. While the rest of us groaned all night for lack of a soft spot of ground to sleep on, you just curled up on a rock and slept like a two-year-old child. We are worn down by hardship, yet you look better than when we found you in Asgalun!'

  'I come of a hard land and a hard race,' he told her. 'What are hardships to you are the everyday conditions of living in Cimmeria.'

  She shivered again. 'I thought I had seen some of the toughest men in the world, soldiers and adventurers and warlords. You are an education in the real meaning of the word.' She studied him frankly and saw much to her liking. His long-swinging stride made her half run to keep up, but he moved with a grace a racehorse could not match. Every part of him was in movement. When she looked at the others, nothing on them seemed in motion save their toiling legs and their puffing faces. It was as if the legs did nothing but haul along the inert

  mass of their bodies. Not Conan. The weeks of effort had removed the last traces of what little spare flesh he had carried and his skin lay paper-thin over the great rolling muscles and rippling smaller muscles that were in constant motion as he walked. Even his hair, which had grown longer, waved in the faint breeze. His skin, except for its numerous scars, was as glossy and supple as the finest leather of Kordava. In his sun-darkened face the gaze of his brilliant blue eyes was as that of an eagle.

  Of the others, only Goma had anything like Conan's physical address, and the dark man was so abstracted and withdrawn that much of the time he scarcely seemed to be present. Conan, on the other hand was always, intensely there. His presence and his unfailing alertness made him seem ten times more alive than the others.

  Once, as they climbed, she had seen a covey of pheasant-like birds fly abruptly from beneath the Cimmerian's feet. In a reflex action as swift as a steel trap Conan's hand flashed out and caught a bird by the neck, killing it instantly. As he hung the bird from his belt for later plucking and cleaning, she reflected that she would never have believed that a man could be so quick. And yet, when he was at rest he was absolutely still, never shifting or fidgeting like others. At those times such necessary movements as he made were minimal and were performed with absolute precision. She was jolted from this pleasant contemplation when he raised a hand.

  'Stop!' he said, quietly but urgently.

  'What is it?' she asked. He stood frozen, his nostrils flared but his eyes scanning the far distance from one side to the other, then back again. The others began to catch up.

  'What is it?' Ulfilo demanded. He was fast adapting and his breathing was regular. Springald and Wulfrede arrived along with Goma.

  'Do you see it?' Conan said to their guide.

  'I do,' he said.

  'See what?' said Springald testily.

  'Sign that we may not be alone,' Conan said. 'We go forward slowly now, weapons out.'

  'Get behind us, Malia,' said Ulfilo as he unsheathed his great sword. She complied amid a sound of steel sliding against wood and leather.

  Conan and Goma went ahead, twenty paces upslope of the others. Their heads sweeping from side to side, they looked like hounds on a scent. They stopped at what looked like a cairn of stones and waited for the rest.

  'Put up your weapons,' Conan said. 'They have not been here in a long time.'

  'Not been here? Who?' Ulfilo demanded. Then, 'Mitra!'

  The cairn surrounded what had been a large fire pit. Within the pit, along with the cinders and ashes, were clean-picked bones. Human bones. Other bones were scattered around the site.

  'It was the gleam of bones I saw first,' Conan said. 'Then the stones.'

  'The long bones have been split to extract their marrow,' Springald said shakily, his face pale. 'Cannibals have feasted here.'

  'Not cannibals,' Goma said. 'Bumbana.'

  'What are bumbana?' Wulfrede asked.

  'Half man, half ape. They haunt these mountains, seeking such prey as they can find. They have fire but no speech that a man can understand.'

  'That explains who did the feasting,' said Springald, regaining his composure. 'But who provided the feast?'

  'Search for anything that might tell us who these bones belonged to,' Conan ordered. 'These remains are many months old. They are only here because there are no hyenas or other big scavengers this high up. Wood and cloth will have rotted, but there may be metal.' All save Springald spread out to search the ground. The scholar began to examine the bones.

  'Look here!' crowed a sailor, holding up something glittering. They crowded around and passed it from hand to hand. It

  was a jewelled brooch, figured in designs none of them recognised.

  'It comes from no land I know of,' Wulfrede said, excitement in his voice. 'And the treasures of many lands have passed through my hands.'

  'These men must have come from beyond the mountains,' said Ulfilo.

  'They may have travelled here from there,' said Springald, 'but by no means did they originate there. Come here and see.' They encircled the pit, where the scholar sat upon the edge of the stone cairn with a collection of bones at his feet. He held up a bowl-shaped piece. It was strangely marked, with four deep grooves forming a square. The bone thus surrounded was perhaps an inch on a side, thin and porous.

  'This, as you can see, is the top of a skull, removed no doubt to get at the brain, which it seems is esteemed as a delicacy among the bumbana.' He ignored a gagging sound made by Malia and went on. 'This man has been trephined. That means that his skull was opened to relieve pressure on the brain caused by illness or injury. This is an operation performed only by certain very expert surgeons of Nemedia. A silken cord is dipped in diamond dust and drawn along the skull as a flexible saw, cutting out a small square of bone. This operation was a success, as it healed over many years ago. And look here.' Now he held up a jawbone. There was a glint of gold at the base of some teeth.

  'This fellow lost three teeth at some time, and they were replaced by a trick the Stygians use. Three teeth were extracted, probably from a slave, and their roots filed off. These were then bound together with the very finest gold wire, and the assembly similarly wired to the flanking, healthy teeth. I think that we see here the remains of some members of one of Marandos's expedition.'

  'But which expedition?' said Ulfilo.

  'And which members?' Malia asked, distressed. 'Could my husband be among these?'

  'That is difficult to say,' Springald mused, looking over his collection of bones. 'Had Marandos any injuries or surgical procedures that might have left marks upon his bones?''

  'None,' she said miserably.

  'These are fool's questions!' said a sailor. He was a gap-toothed sea dog with rings in both ears and a ruby stud in his nose. A faded kerchief covered his pate and a scowl decorated his ugly face. 'What care we who these were? We did not sign on this voyage to deal with man-eating half-apes!' The other seamen made sounds of agreement. Conan and Ulfilo were about to draw their swords but Wulfrede brushed past them. 'I'll deal with this,' he muttered as he passed. He strode up to the speaker, truculent as a wolfpack king whose leadership has been challenged.

  'What is this, Blamath? Would you be captain now, you ill-begotten son of a diseased mother? Think you that you can handle a ship like the Sea Tiger by yourself?' He laughed loud and scornfully. 'You'll have her on the bottom and your mates feeding the fish before you're half a league from shore!'
r />   'Now, chief,' the man growled, 'I speak no mutiny, but we are sailors, not foot-slogging soldiers. What business have we toiling over mountains at the behest of gilded Aquilonian bluebloods?'

  'What business?' Wulfrede bellowed. 'What business, you say?' He held the glittering brooch beneath the man's nose. 'Is this not business enough for you? Would you not like to find more of this? This bauble alone is worth two years of a seaman's pay! A few such trinkets in your purses and not a man of you need ever ship before the mast again! Would that not be worth a bit of hardship and danger, eh? Is life at sea so easy and so safe that this little hike and perhaps a bit of fighting frightens you off? I never shipped cowardly dogs before, why have the sea-gods so cursed me now?' He wore a look of near-comical consternation as his men rushed to assure him that they were his men and would follow him anywhere.

  'Lead us, Captain!' said a skinny Zingaran whose face was

  bisected by a scar from hairline to chin. 'Lead us to more treasure!'

  'Aye!' said a Kushite with shark teeth in his hair. 'Lead us to gold and jewels, and we will slay your enemies and drink their blood!' The one named Blamath withdrew sullenly and owned that he had spoken out of line.

  'That is better,' Wulfrede said expansively. 'Now I think I lead men again! Now, continue searching and bring back anything that might tell us who these men were. And I'll have the hide off the back of any man who tries to conceal valuables! That is not the way of the sea! Now go.' The men sprang to do his bidding as vigorously as they would have swarmed up the rigging at sea. The shipmaster returned to the group around the fire pit.

  'That was masterful,' said Springald admiringly.

  'It went well enough,' Wulfrede said. 'But men like these are as changeable as children in their moods. I may have this to do over again before long.'

  'The treasure gets split more ways every day we travel, it seems,' Ulfilo said, sourly.

  Wulfrede grinned at him. 'Come, my friend, did you really expect to lead these sea dogs to treasure and have them carry it back for you, and not give them a share of it? If so, you are a fool beyond the ken of any man with a head on his shoulders.'

  Ulfilo reddened but said nothing.

  'He is right,' Malia said. 'We must let them have a share or fight them for all of it. And someone has to man the ship!'

  The search turned up no more evidence, and within the hour they continued their march. The line of men, formerly straggling, was now bunched tightly and their hands never strayed far from their weapons. The ghastly remains of the feast had sobered everyone.

  That night they huddled near their fires, and the sailors started at every noise. If the Aquilonians were as apprehensive, they hid it well. Conan patrolled around their campsite but found

  nothing and heard nothing. Even so, he slept even more lightly than usual that night.

  The next day they crested the mountain and saw the pass before them. It was no mere dip in the mountain's spine. In some long-past age the mountain had split, so that sheer, almost vertical walls of stone rose to either hand. The millennia had deposited an uneven floor of dirt upon which little grew, for little sunlight penetrated the crack in the mountain.

  'At last!' said Wulfrede. 'A little march through this easy pass and we can start going downhill for a while!' The sailors laughed at his wit and entered the pass in good spirits. Conan and Goma ranged ahead and were as cautious as ever. The Cimmerian had lived a hard and adventure-filled life, and he knew better than to assume a passage would be easy just because it looked that way.

  'I like a level way free of obstacles as well as any man,' Conan said to his companion, 'but I never liked any place that was cramped and narrow, where there is no room to manoeuvre and the only choices were to carve your way forward or turn and run straight back.'

  'Aye, that is wise,' said Goma. 'But it could be worse. Here there is room to swing an axe, or a sword.'

  'Aye, it's . . . what is that?' Conan pointed to something high on the rock wall. It appeared to be a carving of some sort, much weathered by the water that dripped down the sheer walls.

  'A mark on the stone,' Goma said, shrugging. 'What of it?'

  By stretching, Conan could just reach the device. Faded lichen crusted it and the once sharp edges had softened over uncounted years, but the design was plain enough: an oval frame within which was carved a wavy-bladed trident inside a crescent moon.

  'What have you found?' called Springald as the rest caught up with them.

  'Something that needs some explanation,' Conan said hotly. 'Tell me what you three were doing—' His words were cut

  short by a wild, inhuman howling. In his distraction over finding the carving, the approach of enemies had gone undetected.

  'Bumbana!' Goma cried. A shadowy mass of hairy, near-human forms bore down upon them from the eastern end of the pass.

  'The man-eaters come!' screamed a sailor. 'Run!'

  'Nay, there are more of the fiends behind us!' Wulfrede yelled. 'We carve our way ahead or die here! Fight, you dogs!'

  Conan whirled his blade through a short arc, shearing through the breast of one of the creatures. It was all muscle, fangs, and stinking breath, and even dead its charge knocked the Cimmerian back several paces while he wrenched his blade free.

  Goma slew two with two swift blows of his light axe and Ulfilo plied his blade with both hands. Wulfrede began a Vanir fighting song as he worked his blade among the foe. Occasionally he would yank a sailor forward and thrust him into the front line to spell one of the leaders who was seriously engaged. Other sailors stabbed from the second rank with their spears. All were canny fighters, but they did not escape without casualties. With their massive strength and inhuman vitality, the bumbana managed to snatch some sailors from their companions and rip them apart barehanded. Of weapons, the bumbana had only crude clubs. A few clutched stones in their ill-formed paws.

  Gradually, by dint of hard fighting, the human band pushed the bumbana back, a foot at a time. The reek of blood and spilled entrails was stronger even than the stink of the apemen themselves. A sailor screamed as apish hands snatched him from the band and snapping jaws buried themselves in his face. Another died silently as his neck was wrung too quickly for him to utter a sound.

  In time, though, the half-men could stand no more. As one hairy creature, they turned and fled. As they went, they carried off all the dead, both their own and those of the men. Led by Conan, the humans gave chase, maddened by the fighting and by the undoubted fate of those carried off. Within minutes they burst through the pass, only to see the bumbana disappearing

  into a dense growth of trees that grew right up to the pass on the eastern end. A platform of stone perhaps ten paces on a side stretched from the gap in the mountain, and upon this the exhausted men cast themselves down.

  Malia breathed in great, sobbing gasps. She had taken no part in the fighting, but the sheer terror of the situation had left her spent. When she had breath to speak, she glared at Wulfrede.

  'You had me terrified! I thought we were trapped! But I saw no beast-men behind us.'

  He shrugged. 'If the men had known that, they would have turned and run. I had to do something to keep them going forward.'

  'It is well for us that the things lacked the wit to attack from both ends of the pass,' Conan said.

  'Aye,' agreed Ulfilo, who was methodically cleaning his gore-bedecked blade. 'We might have died in there had they done so.'

  'Look!' shouted Springald, pointing eastward. For the first time they began to take stock of their surroundings.

  From the ledge upon which they rested, the ground sloped sharply away, so sharply that they looked out over the tops of the nearest trees. Below them was the great hulk of the mountain. Beyond that stretched a huge vista of sandy brown wasteland.

  'The desert,' said Malia wearily.

  'No!' Springald cried. 'Beyond that!' Following the direction of his pointing finger they could just descry two crags of stone, almost symmetrical, the one on
the left snowy white, the other a dull black. 'The Horns of Shushtu!'

  'Then it is true!' said Ulfilo at last.

  'Did you ever doubt it?' Springald crowed. 'The ancient books are always to be trusted.'

  'Aye,' said Wulfrede, clapping the scholar on the shoulder and almost knocking him down in the process. 'I never doubted you.'

  'It does not look very far,' said Malia wistfully. 'After all, we can see the Horns from here.'

  'Don't be deceived,' said Conan. 'From this high up, we can see for many days' travel. Goma, are there water holes?'

  The guide nodded. 'Aye, a few. None of them reliable, all of them dangerous.''

  'How do you mean?' asked Ulfilo.

  'Some are mere depressions that catch the rare rains. These are dry much of the time and not to be relied on. Others are where small springs well to the surface, and these may be dry when we get to them. There is one large spring, with good water at all times, and that one is the most dangerous, for all the animals for many miles use it, and therefore the predators lurk nearby in great numbers.'

  'Lions?' Malia asked.

  'Aye, and bold hyenas, and many big cats and creatures found nowhere else. The meat-eaters of the desert are fiercer than those of the plain. They are also more likely to be desperately hungry and therefore more likely to hunt men. It takes much territory to feed such a beast, so the lions and others fight to drive one another off the good hunting grounds. The losers are likely to be wounded from the fight, unable to chase down the eland or the swift oryx. Therefore he is looking for something slow, weak, and easy.'

  'To wit: us,' Springald said.

  'Even a foul-smelling human is meat to a lion with a lean belly,' Goma said.

  'We accomplish nothing here,' said Ulfilo in his usual, matter-of-fact manner. 'Has everyone regained his breath? Any serious wounds to tend?' It transpired that all were rested and none was too injured to march.