The Conan Compendium

by Robert E. Howard

  Then Conan suddenly halted, frozen motionless. Huddled in the rain-streaming gutter, a shapeless clump of soiled garments and sprawled limbs had it his gaze.

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  His eyes probed right and left, searching housetops, doorways, and the mouths of alleys for signs of lurking assailants. Gently he brushed aside his heavy black rain cloak and eased the cutlass in his scabbard. In this quarter of the old city, a corpse was no cause for surprise. The crumbling hovels that lined the crooked alleys harbored thieves, assassins, and other such human scum. But where a victim lies, his assailant sometimes lurks nearby, and Conan had long since learned caution in such matters.

  As silently as a prowling leopard, the burly Cimmerian slunk through the shadows to kneel beside the huddled figure. With one careful hand he turned it over on its back. Fresh blood guttered darkly in the reddening light of dawn. The cowl fell back to reveal the face.

  Xrom!" growled Conan. For this was the ex-thief and priest, Ninus of Messantia, for whom Conan had waited so long.

  With swift hands, the Cimmerian examined the body. The chart, which Ninus had promised to bring to the inn to sell him, was missing.

  As Conan squatted back on his haunches, his thoughts raced swiftly behind his grim, impassive features. Who would wish the death of an insignificant little priestling, with no more than a few coppers in his purse? The chart was the only thing of any value that the priest could have carried. Since it was absent, logic asserted that the harmless Ninus must have been knifed so that his assailant could possess himself of the chart.

  The upper limb of the rising sun reddened the towers and roof ridges of old Kordava. In its light, Con-an's volcanic gaze burst into fierce blue flame.

  Clenching his scarred fist, the giant Cimmerian swore that someone should pay for this deed, and in blood.

  Gently, the Cimmerian lifted the small body in his powerful arms and strode swiftly back to the Nine Drawn Swords. Pushing into the common room, he barked at the taverner: "Sabral! A private room and a chirurgeon, and quickly!"

  The taverner knew that, when he used this tone, the Cimmerian brooked no delay.

  He hastened to lead Conan with his burden up the rickety stairs to the second floor.

  The eyes of the few remaining customers followed the Cimmerian's course with curious stares. They saw a tall man, almost a giant, of enormously powerful build. The dark, scarred face under the battered sailor's hat was clean-shaven, and the heavy, sun-bronzed features were framed by a square-cut mane of coarse black hair. The deep-set eyes under the massive black brows were blue. The buccaneer carried the body in his arms with as little effort as if it had been a small child.

  None of Conan's crew was in the tavern. Conan had made sure of this when he had formed his appointment with Ninus, for he did not wish news of the treasure chart to pass current among the crew until he was ready to tell them himself.

  Sabral led Conan to the chamber that he reserved for guests of quality. Conan started to lay Ninus on the bed, but he paused as Sabral whisked the bedspread out from under the body.

  "No blood on my best spread!" he said.

  "Fiends take your spread!" snarled Conan, laying Ninus down. While Sabral folded the spread, Conan examined Ninus. The priest breathed faintly, and his pulse fluttered.

  "He lives, at least," growled Conan. "Get you gone, man, and fetch a leech! Do not stand gaping like an idiot!"

  The taverner silently vanished. Conan bared Ninus' torso and crudely bound the wound, which still seeped blood.

  Sabral entered with a yawning physician in a night robe, with a straggle of gray hairs escaping from under die edges of his nightcap.

  "The good Doctor Cratos," said the taverner.

  The physician undid Conan's bandage, cleansed the wound, and bound it up again with a clean cloth. "Luckily," said he, "the stab seems to have missed the heart and the large blood vessels and to have only scratched the lung. With good care, he should live. Are you paying for him, Captain?"

  Conan grunted assent. A few swallows of wine restored Ninus to partial consciousness. In a voice that was little more than a whisper, the priest told his tale:

  "I ran into―two men―on the street. One―Menkara, the priest of Set. I cried―cried out. He told― the other―slay me."

  "Who was the other?" demanded Conan.

  "All wrapped up―wide hat and cloak―but methinks―buccaneer Zarono…"

  Conan scowled. Zarono! That was the sneering privateer with whom he had quarreled, hours before.

  Had Zarono heard of his rendezvous with Ninus and waylaid the priest to rob him of the chart? Everything pointed to a shrewd conspiracy to wrest the secret of the treasure from Conan.

  He stood up, his face flushed with anger. "Here!" he rumbled. Digging a fistful of coins from his purse, he slapped them into Cratos' palm. Another handful was pressed upon Sabral.

  "See that he has good care and gets well, you two!" said Conan. "Well settle the exact charges when I return, and woe betide you if you do not your best for him!

  If he dies, bury him with the full rites of Mitra.NowI'moff."

  Like a ghost, he vanished out the door of the chamber, glided down the stair, and plunged out the heavy front door of the Inn of the Nine Drawn Swords. He strode swiftly, with the heavy black cloak flapping about his boot heels.

  As the risen sun gilded the masts and yards of the ships, the harbor bustled with activity. Sailors scrambled up and down the rigging, officers bellowed commands through parchment speaking trumpets, and creaking wooden cranes, powered by the muscles of longshoremen straining at winches and capstans, swung bales from pier to deck.

  Conan came striding down to the waterfront. In answer to his curt query, the captain of the harbor watch told him that Zarono's Petrel had departed more than an hour previously and had long since vanished behind the hook that formed the eastern horn of the harbor. Conan growled rude thanks, spun on his heel, and went clattering up the gangplank of his own vessel, the carack Wastrel.

  "Zeltran!" he bellowed.

  "Aye, Captain?" said the mate, who was ordering the placing of provisions in the hold. Zeltran was a short, rotund Zingaran with a long, sweeping black mustache.

  Despite his fat, he movedas lightly as a cat.

  "Line the rascals up and call roll!" said Conan. "We shove off as soon as we can!"

  Presently the entire crew of buccaneers was assembled in the waist. The majority were swarthy Zingarans, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. Three were missing, and the ship's boy was sent scurrying to drag them out of the dives in which they had overslept their liberty. The rest of the crew, lashed on by Conan's voice, speeded up their leisurely loading of the ship.

  The missing men at last appeared at a run; the last bale was stowed; the cables were cast off from the quay. Eight sailors strained at the oars of the longboat to tow the Wastrel out to open water. When the first hint of a sea breeze caused the sails to lift and flap, the longboat came alongside and was hauled aboard.

  Then, as her sails filled, the Wastrel leaned with the wind; the ripple at her bow grew to a white curl of foam. She rocked gently and rhythmically as she met the swells of the open sea, and the squeal of the circling gulls mingled with the splash of the bow wave, the groan of timbers, the creak of cordage, and the sigh of the wind in the rigging.

  Conan stood at the forward end of the quarterdeck, leaning on the rail and peering moodily past the edge of the mainsail at the distant horizon. Having given the course that Conan had commanded and organized the watches, Zeltran bustled up to stand beside the Cimmerian.

  "Well, my Captain," quoth he, "and whither away this time?"

  "Know you Black Zarono's PetreW said Conan.

  "That big tub that put out an hour before you came to the ship? Aye, I know her.

  They say that Zarono's a skilled seaman but a hard, black-hearted man. He had connections among the lesser nobility; but they kicked him out, 'tis said, because of something he did that even those highborn
reprobates wouldn't stand for. That's how he came to be a buccaneer. Be you at odds with Captain Zarono?

  He's no copemate to take on lightly."

  "Keep it to yourself, rattlepate, and 111 tell you." Conan gave Zeltran a brief account of Ninus, the chart, and Zarono. "So," he continued, "if I catch him in open sea, 111 give him a proper taste of steel. If the Petrel is bigger, the Wastrel has finer lines and can beat closer to the wind."

  "Oh, aye, we can catch her," said Zeltran, giving his mustache a fierce twirl.

  "And I've no doubt that I could slay six or seven of Zarono's knaves all by myself. But, Captain, weren't it cleverer to follow him without letting him know, thus letting him lead you to the treasure?"

  Conan turned a burning, slit-eyed gaze on the mate. Then he grinned and clapped the smaller man on the back.

  "By Crom and Mannanan, little man," he roared, "you ve earned your pay!" He glanced up to where a cluster of sailors, standing on the topsail footrope with one arm each about the yard, were awaiting the command to break out the topsail.

  "Belay that!" he bellowed. "Back to the deck, you!" He turned to Zeltran. "We won't fly our topsail, because Zarono would see it, and we can sail as fast without ours as he can with his. Who is that man with the eagle sight?"

  TUegoof Jerida?"

  "That's the one. Put Mm in the top and let us see what he sees."

  The young Zingaran sailor was presently standing in the basket-shaped main top, peering toward the southeastern horizon. He called down: "Carack dead ahead, Captain. I see her topsail, and when a wave lifts her I can glimpse a black hull."

  "That's the Petrel," said Conan. "Steady as you go, helmsman." He turned to Zeltran, who stood tugging at his huge mustache. "Well hold back during the day, and at night draw close enough to glimpse his running light. With luck, hell not even see us!"

  Conan grinned hardily, with a gleam of pleasure in his eyes. He drew a deep breath, and expelled it in a gust. This was the Me: a sound deck under heel, half a hundred hardy rogues at your command, a sea to sail and a foe to fight―and wild, red, roaring adventure in the offing!

  With all sails but the telltale topsail spread, the Wastrel foamed southeastward on the track of the Petrel, as the blinding sun soared into the azure heavens and dolphins bounded out of the turquoise swells 1 back in again.

  Chapter Three

  DEATH OF THE SEA QUEEN

  The caravel Sea Queen, which served as the Zingaran royal yacht, had passed between the Zingaran coast and the Barachan Isles. This archipelago was a notorious nest of pirates―most of them Argosseans ―but on this occasion none of their corsairs was scouring that part of the Western Ocean. Then the ship passed die boundary between Zingara and Argos.

  The Argossean coast fell off to eastward. Following Chabela's commands, Captain Kapellez bore to port, but not so sharply as the coast curved. Hence the Argossean coast fell away until it was barely visible from the masthead.

  There were two reasons for this course. One was to reach the coast of Shem near Asgalun as quickly as possible. The other was to lessen the chance that some mainland-based Argossean pirate or privateer might put out after them.

  Now, however, a massive black carack had been visible aft since mid-moming. By early afternoon it had drawn close enough for the keenest-eyed sailor of the crew to make out its insignia.

  "Tis naught to fear, my lady," said Captain Kapellez. "Yonder ship is but one of the privateers in the service of your royal sire. I make it out to be the Petrel, under Captain Zarono."

  Chabela was still not satisfied. There was something ominous about the steady approach of that bulky black hull. Of course, it might be happenstance that the other ship was following the same course as their own.

  Neither was the name of Zarono reassuring. She hardly knew the man beyond a formal acquaintance at court functions, but sinister rumors wafted about concerning the buccaneer. One of her friends, the lady Estrellada, had passed on to Chabela the tale that Zarono was smitten with her, Chabela's, charms. But the princess had paid little heed to this, for unattached men around the court were always smitten with the charms of a princess as a matter of course. There was always a chance that one or another would become a royal consort…

  Now her suspicions were fully aroused. It was the third day after the Sea Queen had left Kordava, and by now her disappearance would have become general knowledge. In fact, the palace would be in an uproar.

  The absence of the royal yacht from its usual mooring would have betrayed Chabela's method of flight. Since it was incredible that she would have headed north to the wild shores of Pictland, or west into the trackless wastes of the unexplored ocean, it was plain that she must have set her course southeast, along the coast oS the main continent. There lay Argos, the city-states of Shem, and the sinister kingdom of Stygia 'ere one came to the black countries.

  The disturbance over her disappearance might well, she thought, have been loud enough even to rouse King Ferdrugo from the lethargy that gripped him. He might have dispatched Zarono with a commission to hale his fugitive daughter back home.

  Chabela murmured gracious but distracted words to the captain and turned away.

  After pacing the deck restlessly, she leaned her elbows on the rail, which was carved with leaping dolphins and trident-brandishing mermen. She watched the pursuing craft as if under a hypnotic spell.

  The Petrel drew steadily nearer, its blunt bow smashing through the waves. At this rate, she thought, in another half-hour it would forge up to windward, blanketing the sails of the Sea Queen and bringing the smaller vessel to a halt.

  Chabela was by no means ignorant of naval and nautical lore. Unlike her father, who detested the sea and never went near the Sea Queen, she had been a sailor girl ever since she was a small child. Only in the last few years, since she had grown into womanhood, had her father's strict commands stopped her practice of donning sailor garb and swarming into the rigging with the seamen.

  The princess shivered, then forced herself to relax. The other carack had so far displayed no hostile or alarming intentions. A Zingaran privateer would hardly be so insane as to attack the private yacht of the king of Zingara.

  Then a shadow fell across the sun-bright deck. This shadow was, strangely, a dark green: an uncanny emerald shroud of mystic gloom.

  Raising her head, the princess could see nothing to explain the weird nebulosity that now enshrouded the Sea Queen. No cloud lay athwart the sun; no flying monster hovered on flapping wings. Yet a shroud of emerald gloom had enveloped the Sea Queen like a dense though impalpable fog. The faces of the crew were pale and wide-eyed with fear.

  Then terror struck. Tentacles of green gloom swirled about the nearest sailor, who snrieked with fear. Like the coiling limbs of some kraken of the deep, the shadowy tentacles enmeshed him. The girl caught one wild look at his white, despairing face and thrashing limbs. Then the green coils seemed to sink into his body and disappear. The burly seaman stiffened to statuesque immobility, while a green hue suffused his flesh and even his garments. He looked like a statue of jade.

  Chabela cried out to Mitra. The entire ship was a mass of yelling, struggling men, battling with mad futility against the slithering coils of emerald mist that swept about them and sank into their flesh, transforming them into motionless green effigies.

  Then ropy green tendrils curled about the princess herself. Her flesh crept with fear as she felt the touch of the impalpable stuff. At the touch, a chilling paralysis ran through her body. As the coils sank into her, a cold darkness closed down on her mind and she knew nothing more.

  On the quarterdeck of Zarono's Petrel, the privateer watched with ill-concealed awe as the Stygian sorcerer worked his spell. Motionless as a dusty mummy, the Stygian squatted before an apparatus he had constructed as the carack approached the Sea Queen. This consisted of a small cone of dim, gray crystal, atop a low altar of black wood. The altar had the appearance of great age. It had once been elaborately carved, but the carvings were
now largely worn away. Those that survived showed minute naked human beings fleeing from a colossal serpent. The eyes of the serpent had originally been a pair of opals, but one had fallen out of its socket and been lost.

  In response to Menkara's whispered incantation, the crystal cone had flashed into an eery radiance. A nimbus of pulsing emerald light had woven about It, illuminating the swart features of the mage and making his visage look more skull-like than ever.

  When the nimbus of green light was actively pulsating, the Stygian had held before his face a mirror of black metal, framed by an iron wreath of intertwined monsters. As Zarono watched with mounting awe, the emerald radiance seemed to be drawn to the surface of the mirror and reflected thence to the distant deck of the Sea Queen. Faint in the sunlight, the green beam was nevertheless plainly visible, stretching straight across the heaving gap between the ships. Something was happening on the caravel, although Zarono could not quite see what because of the distance.

  With the loss of control of her tiller, the Sea Queen lost seaway and lay wallowing with sails flapping. Zarono brought his carack alongside. The Stygian emerged from his trance and sagged wearily against the rail. His dark features were the color of dirty linen, and cold sweat bedewed his impassive countenance.

  I "I am done," sighed Menkara. "That conjuration taxes one's strength to the limit And yet, it is no great spell, being easily warded off by one who knows how… But those silly beings yonder are ignorant of magical matters. Go; you will find them harmless to you for an hour."

  "Are they dead, then?"

  "Nay; merely in a suspension of animation. Help me to my cabin."

  Zarono assisted the enfeebled sorcerer to his feet and led him, stumbling, to his quarters, while the boatswain carried the altar with its cone.

  When he had closed the door upon the exhausted Stygian, Zarono wiped the sweat from his forehead with a lace kerchief. Wizardry was all very well, but it was a fearsome weapon. Far more would he, Black Zarono, prefer the clash of cutlasses, the whine of arrows and bolts, the smash of catapult balls, and the crash of a bronzen ram into the side of a hostile ship. He had committed not a few villainies in his career, but at least they had been sins of the normal human kind, not this dabbling with dark and perhaps uncontrollable powers from unearthly planes and dimensions.