The Conan Chronology

by J. R. Karlsson

  Men loosened blades in their scabbards and shafts in their quivers as they strode deeper into the forest. Men of the sea, accustomed to rolling expanses of grey water, they were ill at ease with mysterious, green walls of trees and vines hemming them in. The path wound and twisted until most of them quickly lost their sense of direction and did not even know in which direction the beach lay.

  Conan was uneasy for another reason. He kept scanning the trail and finally grunted: 'Somebody's passed along here recently — not more than an hour ahead of us. Somebody in boots, with no woodcraft. Was he the fool who found that Pict's head and stuck it back up in that tree? No, it couldn't have been he. I didn't find his tracks under the tree. But who was it? I found no tracks there, except those of the Picts I'd already seen. And who's this fellow hurrying ahead of us? Did either of you bastards send a man ahead of us for any reason?'

  Both Strombanni and Zarono loudly disclaimed any such act, glaring at each other with mutual disbelief. Neither man could see the signs Conan pointed out; the faint prints that he saw on the grassless, hard-beaten trail were invisible to their untrained eyes.

  Conan quickened his pace, and they hurried after him, fresh coals of suspicion added to the smouldering fire of distrust. Presently the path veered northward, and Conan left it and began threading his way through the trees in a southeasterly direction. The afternoon wore on as the sweating men ploughed through bushes and climbed over logs. Strombanni, momentarily falling behind with Zarono, murmured:

  'Think you he's leading us into an ambush?'

  'He might,' retorted the buccaneer. 'In any case, we shall never find our way back to the sea without him to guide us.' Zarono gave Strombanni a meaningful look.

  'I see your point,' said the latter. 'This may force a change in our plans.'

  Suspicion grew as they advanced and had almost reached panic proportions when they emerged from the thick woods and saw, just ahead of them, a gaunt crag that jutted up from the forest floor. A dim path, leading out of the woods from the east, ran along a cluster of boulders and wound up the crag on a ladder of stony shelves to a flat ledge near the summit.

  Conan halted, a bizarre figure in his piratical finery. 'That trail is the one I followed, when I was running from the Eagle Picts,' he said. 'It leads up to a cave behind that ledge. In that cave are the bodies of Tranicos and his captains, and the treasure he plundered from Tothmekri. But a word before we go up after it If you kill me here, you'll never find your way back to the trail we followed from the beach. I know you seafaring men; you're helpless in the deep woods. Of course, the beach lies due west; but, if you have to make your way through the tangled woods, burdened with the plunder, it'll take you, not hours, but days. And I don't think these woods will be very safe for white men, when the Hornbills learn about their hunter.'

  He laughed at the ghastly, mirthless smiles with which they greeted his recognition of their intentions toward him. And he also comprehended the thought that sprang in the mind of each: Let the barbarian secure the loot for them and lead them back to the beach trail before they killed him.

  'All of you stay here except Strombanni and Zarono,' said Conan. 'We three are enough to pack the treasure down from the cave.'

  Strombanni grinned mirthlessly. 'Go up there alone with you and Zarono? Do you take me for a fool? One man at least comes with me!'

  And he designated his boatswain, a brawny, hard-faced giant, naked to his broad leather belt, with gold hoops in his ears and a crimson scarf around his head.

  'And my executioner comes with me!' growled Zarono. He beckoned to a lean sea-thief with a face like a parchment-covered skull, who carried a two-handed scimitar naked over his bony shoulder.

  Conan shrugged his shoulders. 'Very well. Follow me.'

  They were close on his heels as he strode up the winding path and mounted the ledge. They crowded him close as he passed through the cleft in the wall behind it, and their breath sucked greedily between their teeth as he called their attention to the iron-bound chests on either side of the short, tunnel-like cavern.

  'A rich cargo here,' he said carelessly. 'Silks, laces, garments, ornaments, weapons — the loot of the southern seas. But the real treasure lies beyond that door.'

  The massive door stood partly open. Conan frowned. He remembered closing that door before he left the cavern. But he said nothing of the matter to his eager companions as he drew aside to let them through.

  They looked into a wide cavern, lit by a strange, blue glow that glimmered through a smoky, mistlike haze. A great ebon table stood in the midst of the cavern, and, in a carved chair with a high back and broad arms, which might once have stood in the castle of some Zingaran baron, sat a giant figure, fabulous and fantastic. There sat Bloody Tranicos, his great head sunk on his bosom, one hand still gripping a jewelled goblet — Tranicos, in his lacquered hat, his gilt-embroidered coat with jewelled buttons that winked in the blue flame, his flaring boots and gold-worked baldric, which upheld a jewel-hilted sword in a golden sheath.

  And ranging the board, each with his chin resting on his lace-bedecked breast, sat the eleven captains. The blue fire played weirdly on them and on their giant admiral, as it flowed from the enormous jewel on the tiny ivory pedestal, striking glints of frozen fire from the heaps of fantastically-cut gems that shone before the place of Tranicos — the plunder of Khemi, the jewels of Tothmekri! The stones whose value was greater than that of all the rest of the known jewels in the world put together!

  The faces of Zarono and Strombanni showed pallid in the blue glow. Over their shoulders, their men gaped stupidly.

  'Go in and take them,' invited Conan, drawing aside.

  Zarono and Strombanni crowded avidly past him, jostling each other in their haste. Their followers were treading on their heels. Zarono kicked the door wide open — and halted, with one foot on the threshold, at the sight of a figure on the floor, previously hidden from view by the partly-closed door. It was a man, prone and contorted, with his head drawn back between his shoulders and his white face twisted in a grin of mortal agony.

  'Galbro!' exclaimed Zarono. 'Dead! What—' With sudden suspicion, he thrust his head over the threshold. Then he jerked back and screamed: 'There's death in the cavern!'

  Even as he screamed, the blue mist swirled and condensed. At the same time, Conan hurled his weight against the four men bunched in the doorway, sending them staggering — but not headlong into the misty cavern as he had planned. Suspecting a trap, they were recoiling from the sight of the dead man and the materializing demon. Hence his violent push, while it threw them off their feet, yet failed of the result he desired. Strombanni and Zarono sprawled half over the threshold on their knees, the boatswain tumbled over their legs, and the executioner caromed against the wall.

  Before Conan could follow up his ruthless intention of kicking the fallen men into the cavern and holding the door against them until the supernatural horror within had done its deadly work, he had to turn and defend himself against the frothing onslaught of the executioner, who was the first to regain his balance and his wits.

  The buccaneer missed a tremendous swipe with his headsman's sword as the Cimmerian ducked, and the great blade banged against the stone wall, spattering blue sparks. The next instant, the executioner's skullfaced head rolled on the cavern floor under the bite of Conan's cutlass.

  In the split seconds this swift action consumed, the boatswain regained his feet and fell on the Cimmerian, raining blows with a cutlass that would have overwhelmed a lesser man. Cutlass met cutlass with a ring of steel that was deafening in the narrow cavern.

  Meanwhile the two captains, terrified of they knew not what in the cavern, scuttled back out of the doorway so quickly that the demon had not fully materialized before they were over the magical boundary and out of its reach. By the time they rose to their feet, reaching for their swords, the monster had diffused again into blue mist.

  Hotly engaged with the boatswain, Conan redoubled his efforts to dispo
se of his antagonist before help could come to him. The boatswain dripped blood at each step as he was driven back before the ferocious onslaught, bellowing for his companions. Before Conan could deal the finishing stroke, the two chiefs came at him with swords in their hands, shouting for their men.

  The Cimmerian bounded back and leaped out on to the ledge. Although he felt himself a match for all three men — each a famed swordsman — he did not wish to be trapped by the crews, which would come charging up the path at the sound of the battle.

  These were not coming with as much celerity as he expected, however. They were bewildered by the sounds and the muffled shouts issuing from the cavern above them, but no man dared start up the path for fear of a sword in the back. Each band faced the other tensely, grasping their weapons but incapable of decision. When they saw the Cimmerian bound out on the ledge, they still hesitated. While they stood with their arrows nocked, he ran up the ladder of handholds niched in the crag near the cleft and threw himself prone on the summit of the crag, out of their sight.

  The captains stormed out on the ledge, raving and brandishing their swords. Their men, seeing that their leaders were not at sword-strokes, ceased menacing each other and gaped in bewilderment.

  'Dog!' screamed Zarono. 'You planned to trap and murder us! Traitor!'

  Conan mocked them from above. 'Well, what did you expect? You two were planning to cut my throat as soon as I got the plunder for you. If it hadn't been for that fool Galbro, I should have trapped the four of you and explained to your men how you rushed in heedless to your doom.'

  'And with us both dead, you'd have taken my ship and all the loot, too!' frothed Strombanni.

  'Aye! And the pick of each crew! I've been thinking of coming back to the Main for months, and this was a good opportunity!

  'It was Galbro's footprints I saw on the trail, although I know not how the fool learned of this cave, or how he expected to lug the loot away by himself.'

  'But for the sight of his body, we should have walked into that death-trap,' muttered Zarono, his swarthy face still ashy.

  'What was it?' said Strombanni. 'Some poisonous mist?'

  'Nay, it writhed like a live thing and came together in some fiendish form ere we backed out. It is some devil bound to the cave by a spell.'

  'Well, what are you going to do?' their unseen tormentor yelled sardonically.

  'What shall we do?' Zarono asked Strombanni. 'The treasure cavern cannot be entered.'

  'You can't get the treasure,' Conan assured them from his eyrie. 'The demon will strangle you. It nearly got me, when I stepped in there. Listen, and I'll tell you a tale the Picts tell in their huts when the fires burn low!

  'Once, long ago, twelve strange men came out of the sea. They fell upon a Pictish village and put all the folk to the sword, except a few who fled in time. Then they found a cave and heaped it with gold and jewels. But a shaman of the slaughtered Picts — one of those, who escaped — made magic and evoked a demon from one of the lower hells. By his sorcerous powers, he forced this demon to enter the cavern and strangle the men as they sat at wine. And, lest this demon thereafter roam abroad and molest the Picts themselves, the shaman confined it by his magic to the inner cavern. The tale was told from tribe to tribe, and all the clans shun the accursed spot.

  'When I crawled in there to escape the Eagle Picts, I realised that the old legend was true and referred to Tranicos and his men. Death guards old Tranicos's treasure!'

  'Bring up the men!' frothed Strombanni. 'We'll climb up and hew him down!'

  'Don't be a fool!' snarled Zarono. 'Think you any man on earth could climb those hand-holds in the teeth of his sword? We'll have the men up here, right enough, to feather him with shafts if he dares show himself. But we'll get those gems yet. He has some plan of obtaining the loot, or he'd not have brought thirty men to bear it back. If he could get it, so can we. We'll bend a cutlass blade to make a hook, tie it to a rope, and cast it about the leg of that table, then drag it to the door.'

  'Well thought, Zarono!' came down Conan's mocking voice. 'Exactly what I had in mind. But how will you find your way back to the beach path? It'll be dark long before you reach the beach, if you have to feel your way through the woods, and I'll follow you and kill you one by one in the dark.'

  'It's no empty boast,' muttered Strombanni. 'He can move and strike in the dark as subtly and silently as a ghost, if he hunts us back through the forest, few of us will live to see the beach.'

  'Then we'll kill him here,' gritted Zarono. 'Some of us will shoot at him, while the rest climb the crag. If he is not struck by arrows, some of us will reach him with our swords. Listen! Why does he laugh?'

  'To hear dead men making plots,' came Conan's grimly amused voice.

  'Heed him not,' scowled Zarono. Lifting his voice, he shouted for the men below to join him and Strombanni on the ledge.

  The sailors started up the slanting trail, and one started to shout a question. Simultaneously there sounded a hum like that of an angry bee, ending with a sharp thud. The buccaneer gasped, and blood gushed from his open mouth. He sank to his knees, a black shaft protruding from his back. A yell of alarm went up from his companions.

  'What's the matter?' shouted Strombanni.

  'Picts!' bawled a pirate, lifting his bow and loosing blindly. At his side, a man moaned and went down with an arrow through his throat.

  'Take cover, you fools!' shrieked Zarono. From his vantage point, he glimpsed painted figures moving in the bushes. One of the men on the winding path fell back dying. The rest scrambled hastily down among the rocks about the foot of the crag. They took cover clumsily, not being used to fighting of this kind. Arrows flickered from the bushes, splintering on the boulders. The men on the ledge lay prone.

  'We're trapped!' said Strombanni, his face pale. Bold enough with a deck under his feet, this silent, savage warfare shook his ruthless nerves.

  'Conan said they feared this crag,' said Zarono. 'When night falls, the men must climb up here. We'll hold this crag; the Picts won't rush us.'

  'Aye!' mocked Conan above them. 'They won't climb the crag to get at you, that's true. They'll merely surround it and keep you here until you all die of thirst and starvation.'

  'He speaks truth,' said Zarono helplessly. 'What shall we do?'

  'Make a truce with him,' muttered Strombanni. 'If any man can get us out of this jam, he can. Time enough to cut his throat later.' Lifting his voice, he called: 'Conan, let's forget our feud for the time being. You're in this fix as much as we are. Come down and help us out of it.'

  'How do you figure that?' retorted the Cimmerian. 'I have but to wait until dark, climb down the other side of this crag, and melt into the forest. I can crawl through the line the Picts have thrown around this hill, return to the fort, and report you all slain by the savages — which will shortly be the truth!'

  Zarono and Strombanni stared at each other in pallid silence.

  'But I'll not do that!' Conan roared. 'Not because I have any love for you dogs, but because I don't leave white men, even my enemies, to be butchered by Picts.'

  The Cimmerian's touseled black head appeared over the crest of the crag. 'Now listen closely: That's only a small band down there. I saw them sneaking through the brush when I laughed, a while ago. Anyway, if there had been many of them, every man at the foot of the crag would be dead already. I think that's a band of fleet-footed young bucks sent ahead of the main war party to cut us off from the beach. I'm certain a big war band is heading in our direction from somewhere.

  'They're thrown a cordon around the west side of the crag, but I don't think there are any on the east side. I'm going down on that side, to get into the forest and work around behind them. Meanwhile, you crawl down the path and join your men among the rocks. Tell them to unstring their bows and draw their swords. When you hear me yell, rush the trees on the west side of the clearing.'

  'What of the treasure?'

  'To Hell with the treasure! We shall be lucky if we
get out of here with our heads on our shoulders.'

  The black-maned head vanished. They listened for sounds to indicate that Conan had crawled to the almost sheer eastern wall and was working his way down, but they heard nothing. Nor was there any sound in the east. No more arrows broke against the rocks where the sailors were hidden. But all knew that fierce, black eyes were watching with murderous patience.

  Gingerly, Strombanni, Zarono, and the boatswain started down the winding path. They were halfway down when black shafts began to whisper around them. The boatswain groaned and toppled limply down the slope, shot through the heart. Arrows shivered on the helmets and breastplates of the chiefs as they tumbled in frantic haste down the steep trail. They reached the foot in a scrambling rush and lay panting among the boulders, swearing breathlessly.

  'Is this more of Conan's trickery?' wondered Zarono profanely.

  'We can trust him in this matter,' asserted Strombanni. 'These barbarians live by their own particular code of honour, and Conan would never desert men of his own complexion to be slaughtered by people of another race. He'll help us against the Picts, even though he plans to murder us himself — hark!'

  A blood-freezing yell knifed the silence. It came from the woods to the west, and simultaneously an object arched out of the trees, struck the ground, and rolled bouncingly toward the rocks — a severed human head, the hideously painted face frozen in a snarl of death.

  'Conan's signal!' roared Strombanni, and the desperate freebooters rose like a wave from the rocks and rushed headlong toward the woods.

  Arrows whirred out of the bushes, but their flight was hurried and erratic; only three men fell. Then the wild men of the sea plunged through the fringe of foliage and fell on the naked painted figures that rose out of the gloom before them. There was a murderous instant of panting, ferocious, hand-to-hand effort. Cutlasses beat down war-axes, booted feet trampled naked bodies, and then bare feet were rattling through the bushes in headlong flight as the survivors of that brief carnage quit the fray, leaving seven still, painted figures stretched on the bloodstained leaves that littered the earth. Farther back in the thickets sounded a thrashing and heaving; then it ceased, and Conan strode into view, his lacquered hat gone, his coat torn, his cutlass dripping in his hand.