Conan and The Mists of Doom

by Roland Green

  He did not do so, because Conan twisted with the agility of an eel, shifting his grip as he did so. His hands closed around the man's ankles. But he was off balance for a moment—the moment in which all the weight of the man came on his wrists.

  Conan dug in his feet, but an arrow creased the back of his knees. The sudden sting made him start, and that broke the grip of his toes. At the same moment the man squalled as if he were being impaled, which drew more arrows, and struggled wildly.

  The Cimmerian felt himself sliding. Both his own honor and the need to keep the prisoner alive barred him from just letting go. Instead he tried to turn the slide into a leap, but he had no time. He was still turning, trying to get his feet under him to land softly, when he slid over the edge of the chimney and plunged down.

  The Lady of the Mists let out a screech like a mating wildcat. The sphere of fire instantly swelled to three times its previous size and leaped toward Danar's suspended form.

  Colors that Muhbaras would not have believed possible in Hell blazed in the Lady's eyes. They were mirrored in the sphere. It lost its spherical shape and licked out now more like the tongue of an immense serpent.

  Its flame-shot core drove between two Maidens, so close that its fringes touched them. Each fell backward as if kicked by a horse, sprawling on the stone with clatters of armor. Some of their comrades hesitated, but others sprang forward to drag them to safety.

  Muhbaras gave scant attention to what was happening on the platform. Instead he stared at what was happening to Danar. He hung in midair like a soap bubble as a web of fire wove itself around him, forming now obscene figures, now gouts of flame in sap-phire and emerald hues, at once dazzling and unwholesome.

  Each time the Lady of the Mists raised her hands, the web grew tighter. Each time Muhbaras caught a glimpse of Danar, he bore more signs of torment. His mouth was open in a soundless scream and his back arched until his spine had to be ready to snap.

  Then the fire closed around what had been a living man, but his being gone from sight did not mean the end of the torment. Instead the Lady allowed Danar's scream out of the fire—and Muhbaras had never heard a viler sound in all his years of warfare.

  Then Muhbaras shut his ears and strode forward with his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other. Before anyone, Lady or Maiden, could move spell or steel to halt him, he tossed the dagger, caught it by the point, then flung it into the sphere of fire.

  It was long range for anyone who had not learned the art of the throwing knife at ten and won prizes in the bazaar at twelve (and been beaten by his father for dealing with such lowborn folk). Also, Muhbaras had spent little time at practice of late.

  His hand and eye still marched together. The dagger vanished into the fire. As it did, Muhbaras saw the Lady turn toward him—and raised his sword until its point thrust into the tongue of fire streaming from the Lady.

  Mitra be my witness and guard my men, I cannot do otherwise.

  Good fortune was with the Cimmerian and his prisoner in their fall. They landed on sand, with the prisoner uppermost, and Conan's ribs were sheathed in iron-hard muscle. He also had skill in jumping and falling that a carnival tumbler might have envied.

  The fall still knocked the breath out of him, and he was slow to rise. Fortunately his captive was as breathless from fear as the Cimmerian was from the fall. The man only attempted his escape after Conan was fit to prevent it, with a large hand clamped firmly around the handiest ankle.

  The man cursed and opened his mouth to scream, then appeared to see Conan clearly for the first time. His mouth stayed open, until he croaked words that sounded like:

  "You—no—Girumgi man?"

  The tongue was Turanian, but such a thick dialect that Conan was not sure what was being said.

  "I am not Girumgi," Conan said, in Turanian, as if he were speaking to a child. "I mean you no harm, nor do any of my friends. Come with me."

  The words seemed to escape the man's understanding, but the tone and the gestures carried enough meaning. Also, the man was short and lean even for a desert tribesman. The Cimmerian could have carried a man of that size under each arm, and the man seemed to prefer using his own feet to such a fate.

  They made a good pace back to shelter. The enemy above seemed to be wholly lost in their shouting contest. Conan prefered to rejoin his comrades before the shouting turned back to shooting. As for the men below, the ground was against them, but numbers were for them. Their not coming on was another mystery, and two mysteries on the same battlefield were two more than the Cimmerian enjoyed facing.

  Battles were confusing enough when everybody did what he was supposed to. When he did not, only a god could see some pattern in the chaos of a battle.

  If he had owed nothing to comrades, the Cimmerian would have been using the enemy's confusion to show them all a clean pair of heels. When others' lives hung on your continued presence, however—

  Farad was the first to greet Conan, and motioned quickly to a low cave whose mouth had been dug free while Conan was garnering the prisoner. It was too shallow to be much of a last refuge, and held no water—not that the battle was likely to exhaust even the single water bag apiece Conan's band was carrying.

  "No attacks?" the Cimmerian said.

  Farad looked at the sky. "Would we be here if there had been? And who is this aged boy?"

  Again the man understood Farad's tone rather than his Afghuli words, and drew a dagger. Conan promptly slapped it out of his hand, then retrieved it and thrust it into his own belt.

  "You are lucky to be alive," he said. "I will keep this knife until you have told us what is happening uphill. Why do you fear the Girumgi?"

  The man began babbling a hasty explanation, of which Conan understood possibly two words out of three. He found more sense in the man's tale when he remembered that the Girumgi were one of the more powerful of the desert tribes.

  Before the man had finished his explanation, Conan heard the shouting atop the hill die away. As it did, he thought he also heard Turanian war horns, but so far away that it was impossible to tell whether it was a trick of the desert wind moaning around the rocks.

  Conan signaled with his hand to Farad: Make ready for an attack. Farad nodded and undid his belt, to bind the prisoner's hands. The man's eyes rolled up until only the whites showed.

  Conan glared. "He will cut your throat if you do not submit, and I will not stop him."

  "No—I fight—I friend you—I fight Girumgi—" he said, with frantic gestures uphill and toward the right.

  That told Conan that the Girumgi had been pressing the attack more vigorously, but not enough else to dispel the mystery. He nodded to Farad, who looped the thong around the man's wrists and started to pull it tight.

  Then demons seemed to break loose on the hill above. Fifty men at least were screaming, in defiance, terror, or mortal agony. Above the screaming rose unmistakable Turanian war horns, this time not far away at all. Even better, some of the war cries were also Turanian.

  Conan looked at the prisoner, who had fainted. Then he looked at Farad, who returned a "Do you take me for an oracle?" expression.

  The Cimmerian shifted to the nearest position that might allow him to see what was going on uphill, or tell where he could send an arrow without skewering a friend!

  Muhbaras did not expect another life in another world, for he had served too many bad masters for far too long. He also did not expect anyone to speak well of the manner of his death, or compose about it a poem that would be sung in the halls of Khorajan nobles for centuries or even moons to come. He did expect that his death would make amends to Danar's spirit, if it did not end his torment.

  What Muhbaras did not know about sorcery and witchcraft would fill several long and closely written scrolls. He did know, however, that the presence of cold iron, such as a sword blade, could hinder many spells.

  All this whirled through Muhbaras's thoughts in the heartbeat between his lifting the sword and its entering the fire. T
hen he staggered backward as the tongue of fire jerked upward, snatching the sword from his hand so violently that the shagreen grip left his palm bloody.

  Like a mortally stricken serpent, the tongue of fire writhed wildly in the air. The Lady of the Mists braced her legs and clutched at her end of it like a drowning man clutching at a rope. Muhbaras heard her chanting, then screaming, loud enough to be heard over Danar's agony, but was too surprised at still being alive to look closely at the Lady's face.

  Too surprised, and also too fearful that if she took serious notice of him, his death would be next and in a form that made Danar's look mild. He had not fallen dead the moment his sword pierced the fire. He judged this to mean that something far worse awaited him.

  Then Danar's cry ended. The fire around him vanished, and only gray ash remained, drifting down into the valley on the evening breeze, past life, past pain, past fear.

  The Lady chanted on, and the tongue of fire now lashed about like the tail of an immense cat. Everyone gave it ample room, except the Lady who commanded it and Muhbaras. He stood as if his feet had turned to stone and joined with the balcony. Indeed, he had to look down to be sure that this had not happened.

  He was alive, but knew this could not last long. Since he was a dead man who yet stood, he would not fling aside the dignity of this last moment by seeking to run.

  Perhaps his death would not pass unnoticed—at least among the Maidens. Some of them had the souls of women rather than witches. Danar had proved that. They might not be such ready tools for their mad mistress with the example of Muhbaras's death in front of them.

  Suddenly the tongue of fire shrank from the height of a tree to the height of a man in a single instant. Then it shrank further, into a sphere no larger than an apple, and fell to the stone. As it struck, it vanished—but smoke rose where it struck, and Muhbaras saw stone bubble and fume as it ran liquid.

  They stood, sorceress and mercenary, staring at one another across a patch of cooling lava no wider than a footstool but seemingly as wide as the valley itself for all that either could cross it. The silence around them seemed as solid as bronze or stone, encasing their limbs so firmly that the mere thought of movement seemed futile.

  Only the rise and fall of the Lady's breasts told Muhbaras that she yet lived. He could not have told why he knew that he lived, yet he did—and as the moments flowed one into another, he began to wonder if he might go on living.

  Do not hope. Death that snatches away hope is the harshest.

  That was an old lesson, in books any boy born to be a soldier knew almost as soon as he could mount a horse. Muhbaras clung to it, but he also clung to the thought that he had done something the Lady of the Mists could not have expected, and did not know what to make of it.

  As long as she doubted, Muhbaras might live.

  It did not occur to him to try to escape while the Lady stood bemused and doubting, perhaps for the first time since she bent the valley to her will. Had he been able to form the reason for this completely, it would have been that any movement by him would break this fragile truce, and make the Lady lash out wildly.

  His own death was certain, a death he had faced to end Danar's torment. He would not bring death to the Maidens if he could contrive otherwise.

  A sound broke the silence—the clang of steel on stone. Muhbaras still did not move. He did not need to. Without so much as moving his eyes, he saw his sword lying on the stone between him and the Lady.

  He had expected the sword to be a blackened, twisted relic of itself. Instead it gleamed as if the finest armorer in the world had lavished entire days bringing out the luster in the steel. Jewels winked in the hilt where only a few disks of silver had shone before—but they did not make the weapon useless.

  "Take it up," the Lady said. At least that was what Muhbaras thought he heard, although he could not have sworn the words were not coming from the air. He did know, however, that it would be ill done to make the Lady repeat herself.

  He squatted, and without taking his eyes from the Lady's face, lifted his sword. It felt lighter than before, yet as well balanced as ever.

  One heard about such swords, in old tales of heroes who had died when the waves still rolled over the fresh grave of Atlantis. One did not imagine seeing one's own blade transformed into such a weapon.

  "Cut off a lock of your hair with your blade, honored captain," the Lady said. This time Muhbaras knew that it was she who spoke. He also knew that disobeying was impossible. Never mind the possible consequences—disobeying was a thought that did not enter his mind.

  He had cut a lock of hair, the edge of his sword shearing through it effortlessly, when he remembered another bit of witch lore.

  Give a witch anything of yours, particularly part of your body, and she can conjure potent spells against you, or at least to serve herself.

  Muhbaras allowed this thought to linger in his mind. Then he deliberately thought of refusing.

  Instead of blasting him to ashes on the spot, the Lady of the Mists smiled. It was the smile of one to whose face such an expression is newly come and not altogether welcome. It seemed as if she was trying to put herself as well as him at ease.

  This seemed improbable to the last degree. Had the Lady any vestige of conscience, she would not have done as she had to Danar. If she felt remorse, it was too late for a good soldier.

  But her face was shaping itself into a smile, and after a moment, Muhbaras returned it. After another moment he stepped forward, but he did not hold out the lock of hair, nor put from his mind the thought of refusing it.

  "You have nothing to fear from the gift of your substance, honored captain," the Lady said. She looked him up and down with those golden cat's eyes. Muhbaras could not escape the thought that here was a woman considering him as a man. There had been—not tenderness—but what might be called warmth in her eyes.

  That thought also provoked no death-dealing spells.

  Muhbaras took another step forward, and this time the Lady also moved. Cool fingers touched his, reaching as high as his wrist, briefly gripping it, then withdrawing with the lock of hair clasped between thumb and forefinger.

  As the Lady of the Mists withdrew her hand, Muhbaras noted that her fingernails were a muted shade of the same gold as her eyes.

  Then he noticed nothing more, until he found himself standing amid a rising wind, with light almost gone from the sky and eight Maidens standing around him in a circle.

  It did not surprise him that the Maidens now looked like impatient women rather than daughters of a warrior goddess. It did not even surprise him that some of them were shivering noticeably in the onrushing chill of the evening.

  His voice came out strongly when he spoke, what he hoped would be the last surprise of the evening.

  "All of you need not come, unless our Lady commands it. I only need guides to the mouth of the valley."

  "Our Lady commands all," one of the Maidens said, in a voice almost as flat as before.

  It seemed they had not unbent enough to follow his suggestions rather than their Lady's command.

  Conan had not found a good shooting spot when the primal chaos seemed to descend on the hillside. Dust rose like a young sandstorm, and out of the brown cloud warriors rolled, fell, leaped, and ran.

  In spite of the dust, Conan could tell that some were tribal warriors—no doubt the Girumgi, although he did not remember the pattern of their headdress. The rest were Turanian Greencloaks. Clearly Khezal's roving band had scented trouble in time to ride to Conan's rescue.

  The arrival of friends did not, however, ensure Conan's victory or even his survival. Desperate tribesmen were swarming downhill, and they outnumbered the Cimmerian's band two or three to one. Also, the tribesmen could shoot both uphill and down with small risk of striking friends. The Turanians both above and below were not so fortunate.

  Best hold with steel, Conan thought, then shouted that aloud.

  One Afghuli archer protested; Farad made to snatch his bow an
d looked ready to break it. The archer slung his bow and drew a long knife, which to Conan looked much the best weapon for close-quarters work.

  Then the Girumgi came down upon them. Conan spared one glance to the left flank, where nobody seemed to be either shouting or shooting now. Then his world shrank to the rocks on either side and the dust-caked, wild-eyed opponent in front of him.

  He swung hard from the right at one tribesman's rib cage and caught the man's left arm as it swung down. The man's forearm and tulwar fell to the ground; he howled and tried to push his spouting stump in the Cimmerian's face. Conan's blade ended that dying effort, shearing deep into the man's torso and reaching his heart.

  He fell in a narrow passage between two rocks, partly blocking it. Conan half-turned, snatched up a rock, and flung it left-handed at the next man to appear in the passage. It turned his face to bloody jam as he stumbled forward on the point of Conan's newly drawn dagger and fell atop his comrade.

  An arrow whssshed close to the Cimmerian's ear, from the right. He faced that way, snatching up another rock and leaping forward as well. The tribesman who'd shot was too close for a throw, so close he ought not to have been able to miss. But panic or even haste will make the best warrior hardly more than a child—certainly much less than a Conan.

  The Cimmerian struck the archer with his stone-weighted left hand, while thrusting over the man's shoulder with his sword. The first man's head snapped back hard enough to break his neck, and he crashed into the man behind at the same moment Conan's steel entered the second one's throat. Again two tribesmen fell, almost atop one another.

  But Conan now stood in an open space, with rocks all around that might hide archers and two entrances that might let tribesmen outflank him. He gave ground, drifting to the left. Along that way lay a single narrow passage with both flanks secure and only room for one man to come at him.

  Conan had to kill but one tribesman on the way to that narrow passage. From the shouting and screaming to either side of him, not to say the clang of steel, he judged his comrades were having better fortune.