Conan the adaptable, p.45
Conan the Adaptable, page 45
Conan glanced up, then halted, frozen. Moonlight fell on the opposite wall and suddenly a shadow fell silently across it – he bounded to his feet, whirling toward the outer door as he did so. The doorway stood empty. Conan sprang across the room and went through another door, closing it behind him. Then he halted, shaken. Not a sound broke the stillness. What was it that had stood for an instant in the doorway opening into the hall, throwing its shadow into the room where he had stood? He was still gripped with the nameless fear of superstition. The thought of some desperate man was bad enough, but the glance Conan had had of that shadow had left upon his soul an impression of something strange and unholy – inhuman!
The room in which Conan now was also opened in the hallway. He started to cross to the hall door and then hesitated at the thought of pitting his powers against whatever lurked in the outer darkness. The door sagged open – Conan saw nothing, but to his soul-freezing horror, a hideous shadow fell across the floor and moved toward him!
Etched blackly in the moonlight on the floor, it was as if some frightful shape stood in the doorway, throwing its lengthened and distorted shade across the boards to his feet. Yet he swore that the doorway was empty!
Conan rushed across the room and entered the door that opened into the next room. Still he was adjacent to the hallway. All these upstairs rooms seemed to open into the hall. He stood, shivering, his knife gripped so tightly in his hand that the it shook like a leaf. The pounding of his heart sounded thunderously in the silence. What in Mitra's name was this horror which was hunting him through these dark rooms? What was it that threw a shadow, when its own substance was unseen? Silence lay like a dark mist; the ghostly radiance of the moon patterned the floor. Two rooms away lay the corpse of a man who had seen a thing so unnamably terrible that it had shattered his brain and taken away his life.
And here stood Conan, alone with the unknown monster.
What was that? The creak of ancient hinges! He shrank back against the wall, his blood freezing. The door through which he had just come was slowly opening! A sudden gust of wind shuddered through. The door swung wide, but Conan, nerving myself to meet the sight of some horror framed in the opening, saw nothing!
Moonlight, as in all of the rooms on this side of the hall, streamed through the hall door and lay on the opposite wall. If any invisible thing was coming from that adjoining room, the moonlight was not at its back. Yet a distorted shadow fell across the wall which shone in the moonlight and moved forward.
Now Conan saw it clearly, though the angle at which it was thrown deformed it. A broad, shambling figure, stooped, head thrust forward, long man-like arms dangling – the whole thing was hideously suggestive of the human, yet fearsomely unlike. This he read in the approaching shadow, yet saw no solid form that might throw this shadow.
Then panic seized him and Conan stabbed forth with his blade again and again. Just so Cagle must have done in the last terrible moment which preceded his death. Conan hurled the weapon wildly. Not an instant had halted the unseen thing – now the shadow was close upon him.
His back-flung hands encountered the door – tore at the knob. It held! The door was locked! Now on the wall beside him, the shadow loomed up black and horrific. Two great treelike arms were raised – with a roar Conan hurled his full weight against the door. It gave way with a splintering crash and he fell through into the room beyond.
The rest was nightmare. He scrambled up without a glance behind him and rushed into the hall. At the far end Conan saw, as through a fog, the stair landing and toward it he rushed. The hall was long – it seemed endless. It seemed as though it stretched into Eternity and that he fled for hours down that grisly corridor. And a black shadow kept pace with him, flying along the moonlit wall, vanishing for an instant in black darkness, reappearing an instant later in a square of moonlight, let in by some outer window.
Down the hall it kept by his side, falling upon the wall at his left, telling him that whatever thing threw that shadow, was close at his back. It has long been said that a ghost will fling a shadow in the moonlight, even when it itself is invisible to the human sight. But no man ever lived whose ghost could throw such a silhouette. Such thoughts as these did not enter his mind tangibly as Conan fled; he was in the grip of unreasoning barbaric fear, but piercing through the fogs of his horror, was the knowledge that he was faced by some supernatural thing, which was at once unearthly and bestial.
Now he was almost at the stair; but now the shadow fell in front of him! The thing was at his very back--was reaching hideous unseen arms to clutch him! One swift glance over his shoulder showed him something else: on the dust of the corridor, close upon the footprints he left, other footprints were forming! Huge misshapen footprints, that left the marks of talons! With a terrible roar he swerved to the right, leaping for an open outer window as a drowning man seizes a rope – without conscious thought.
His shoulder struck the side of the window; he felt empty air under his feet – caught one whirling, chaotic glimpse of the moon, sky and the dark pine trees, as the earth rushed up to meet him, then black oblivion crashed about him.
His first sensation of returning consciousness was of soft hands lifting his head and caressing his face. Conan lay still, his eyes closed, trying to orient myself – he could not remember where he was, or what had happened. Then with a rush it all came back to him. His eyes flared open and he struggled wildly to rise.
"Conan, oh Conan, are you hurt?"
Surely he was insane, for it was the voice of Zebel! No! His head was cradled in her lap, her large dark eyes, bright with tears, gazed down into mine.
"Zebel! In Bel's name, what are you doing here?" Conan sat up, drawing her into his arms. His head throbbed nauseatingly; he was sore and bruised. Above us rose the stark grim wall of the Deserted House, and he could see the window from which he had fallen. He must have lain senseless for a long time, for now the moon lay red as blood close to the western horizon, glimmering in a scarlet wallow through the tops of the pines.
"The horse you rode away came back riderless. I couldn't stand to sit and wait – so I slipped out of the house and came here. They told me you'd gone to find the posse, but the horse came back to the old road. There wasn't anyone to send so I slipped away and came myself."
"Zebel!" the sight of her forlorn figure and the thought of her courage took hold of his heart and he kissed her without speaking.
"Conan," her voice came low and frightened, "what happened to you? When I rode up, you lay here unconscious, just like those other two men who fell from those windows – only they were killed."
"And only pure chance saved me, despite my powerful frame and heavy bones," Conan answered. "Once out of a hundred times a fall like that fails to injure a man – Zebel, what happened in that house twenty years ago to throw a curse upon it?"
She shivered. "I don't know. The people who owned it before the war had to sell it afterwards. The tenants let it fall into disrepair, of course. A strange thing happened there just before the death of the last tenant. A huge gorilla escaped from a circus which was passing through the country and took refuge in the house. He fought so terribly when they tried to recapture him that they had to kill him. That was over twenty years ago. Shortly after that, the owner of the house fell from an upstairs window and was killed.
Everyone supposed he committed suicide or was walking in his sleep, but - "
"No!" Conan broke in with a shudder. "He was being hunted through those horrible rooms by a thing so terrible that death itself was an escape. And that travelling man – I know what killed him—and Cagle..."
"Cagle!" she started violently. "Where..."
"Don't worry, child," Conan soothed. "He's past harming you. Don't ask him any more. No, I didn't kill him; his death was more horrible than any I could have dealt. There are worlds and shadows of worlds beyond our ken, and bestial earth-bound spirits lurk in the dark shadows of our world, it may be. Come, let us go."
She had brought two horses with her, and had tethered them a short distance from the house. Conan made her mount and then, despite her protests and pleas, he returned to the house. He went only as far as a first story window and stayed only a few moments. Then Conan also mounted, and together we rode slowly down the old road. The stars were paling and the east was beginning to whiten with the coming morn.
"You have not told me what haunts that house," said Zebel in an awed voice, "but I know it's something frightful; what are we to do?"
For answer Conan turned in his saddle and pointed. We had rounded a bend in the old road and could just glimpse the old house through the trees. As we looked, a red lance of flame leaped up, smoke billowed to the morning sky, and a few minutes later a deep roar came to them, as the whole building began to fall into the insatiate flames Conan had started before they left. The ancients have always maintained that fire is the final destroyer, and Conan knew as he watched, that the ghost of the dead gorilla was lain, and the shadow of the beast forever lifted from the pine lands.
Hawks of Khoraja
(Originally titled Hawks of Outremer)
Robert E. Howard & J.R. Karlsson
I
A Man Returns
“Halt!” The bearded man-at-arms swung his pike about, growling like a surly mastiff. It paid to be wary on the road to Khoraja. The stars blinked redly through the thick night and their light was not sufficient for the fellow to make out what sort of man it was who loomed so gigantically before him.
An iron-clad hand shot out suddenly and closed on the soldier’s mailed shoulder in a grasp that numbed his whole arm. From beneath the helmet the guardsman saw the blaze of ferocious blue eyes that seemed lambent, even in the dark.
“Ishtar preserve us!” gasped the frightened man-at-arms, “Conan of Cimmeria! Avaunt! Back to Hell with you, like a good soldier! I swear to you, sir—”
“Swear me no oaths,” growled the Cimmerian. “What is this talk?”
“Are you not an incorporeal spirit?” mouthed the soldier. “Were you not slain by the Moorish corsairs on your homeward voyage?”
“By the accursed gods!” snarled Conan. “Does this hand feel like smoke?”
He sank his mailed fingers into the soldier’s arm and grinned bleakly at the resultant howl.
“Enough of such mummery; tell me who is within that tavern.”
“Only my master, De Vaile, of Poitain.”
“Good enough,” grunted the other. “He is one of the few men I count friends, in the East or elsewhere.”
The big warrior strode to the tavern door and entered, treading lightly as a cat despite his heavy armor. The man-at-arms rubbed his arm and stared after him curiously, noting, in the dim light, that Conan bore a shield with a horrific emblem—a white grinning skull. The guardsman knew him of old—a turbulent character, a savage fighter and the only man among the soldiers who had been esteemed stronger than the king himself. But Conan had taken ship even before the king had departed from the Holy Land. The battle had ended in failure and disgrace; most of the soldiers had followed their kings homeward. What was this grim Cimmerian killer doing on the road to Khoraja?
De Vaile, once of Poitain, now a lord of the fast-fading Khoraja, turned as the great form bulked in the doorway. Conan of Cimmeria was well above six feet, with mighty shoulders and iron muscle. The Poitainian stared in surprised recognition, and sprang to his feet. His fine face shone with sincere pleasure.
“Conan, by Ishtar! Why, man, we heard that you were dead!”
Conan returned the hearty grip, while his thin lips curved slightly in what would have been, in another man, a broad grin of greeting. De Vaile was a tall man, and well knit, but he seemed almost slight beside the huge Cimmerian warrior who combined bulk with a sort of dynamic aggressiveness that was apparent in his every movement.
Conan was clean-shaven and the various scars that showed on his dark, grim face lent his already formidable features a truly sinister aspect. When he took off his plain visorless helmet and thrust back his mail coif, his square-cut, black hair that topped his low broad forehead contrasted strongly with his cold blue eyes. A true son of the most indomitable and savage race that ever trod the bloodstained fields of battle, Conan of Cimmeria looked to be what he was—a ruthless fighter, born to the game of war, to whom the ways of violence and bloodshed were as natural as the ways of peace are to the average man.
Son of a woman who died upon the battlefield and a smith who he had seen cut down, in whose veins, it is said, coursed the blood of Kull the Conqueror, Conan had seldom known an hour of peace or ease in all his thirty years of violent life. He was born in a feud-torn and blood-drenched land, and raised in a heritage of hate and savagery. The ancient culture of Cimmeria had long suffered the repeated onslaughts of the Picts and Hyperboreans. Harried on all sides by cruel foes, the rising civilization of the Cimmerians had been tempered by the fierce necessity of incessant conflict, and the merciless struggle for survival had made them as savage as the heathens who assailed them.
Now, in Conan’s time, war upon red war swept the crimson land, where clan fought clan, and adventurers tore at one another’s throats, or resisted the attacks of the Cimmerians, playing tribe against tribe, while from the east, the still half-pagan Vanir ravaged all impartially.
A vague realization of all this flashed through De Vaile’s mind as he stood staring at his friend.
“We heard you were slain in a sea-fight,” he repeated.
Conan shrugged his shoulders. “Many died then, it is true, and I was struck senseless by a stone from a ballista. Doubtless that is how the rumor started. But you see me, as much alive as ever.”
“Sit down, old friend.” De Vaile thrust forward one of the rude benches which formed part of the tavern’s furniture. “What is forward in the West?”
Conan took the wine goblet proffered him by a dark-skinned servitor, and drank deeply.
“Little of note,” said he. “In your own Poitain the king counts his gold and squabbles with his nobles. My former employer—if he lives—languishes somewhere in Nemedia, it is thought. In Brythunia the new king oppresses the people and betrays the barons. And in Cimmeria—Crom!” He laughed shortly and without mirth. “What shall I say of Cimmeria but the same old tale? Local and foreigner cut each other’s throat and plot together against the chiefs. One of them has raged like a madman, burning and pillaging, while others lurk in the west to destroy what remains. Yet, I think this land is but little better.”
“Yet there is peace of a sort now,” murmured De Vaile.
“Aye—peace while the Aquilonians gather their powers,” grunted Conan. “Think you he will rest idle while they squabble amongst themselves? The north is of little consequence to Numedides in truth. He but waits an excuse to seize the remnants of Khoraja.”
De Vaile shook his head, his eyes shadowed.
“This is a naked land and a bloody one. Were it not akin to blasphemy I could curse the day I followed my King eastward. Betimes I dream of the orchards of Poitain, the deep cool forests and the dreaming vineyards. Methinks my happiest hours were when a page of twelve years—”
“At twelve,” grunted Conan, “I was running wild with shock-head barbarians on the naked fens—I wore wolf skins, weighed near to fourteen stone, and had killed three men.”
De Vaile looked curiously at his friend. Separated from Conan’s native land by a great stretch of land and mountain, the Poitanian knew but little of the affairs in that far isle. But he knew vaguely that Conan’s life had not been an easy one. Hated by his fellow Cimmerians and despised by the rest of the Nordheimers, he had paid back contempt and ill-treatment with savage hate and ruthless vengeance. It was known that he owned no shadow of allegiance to any, a wandering mercenary for hire who lived by his own barbarous code.
“You wear another sword than that you wore when I saw you last.”
“They break in my hands,” said Conan. “Three Turanian sabers went into the forging of the sword I wielded at Joppa—yet it shattered like glass in that sea-fight. I took this from the body of a Nordheim sea-king who led a raid into Munster. It was forged in Asgard—see the pagan runes on the steel?”
He drew the sword and the great blade shimmered bluely, like a thing alive in the candle light. The servants crossed themselves and De Vaile shook his head.
“You should not have drawn it here—they say blood follows such a sword.”
“Bloodshed follows my trail anyway,” growled Conan. “This blade has already drunk its fair share. Many of my comrades has it slain”
“And you wear such a sword?” exclaimed De Vaile in horror. “No good will come of that evil blade, Conan!”
“Why not?” asked the big warrior impatiently. “It’s a good blade—I wiped out the stain of my comrade’s blood when I slew their slayer. By Crom, but that sea-king was a grand sight in his coat of mail with silvered scales. His silvered helmet was strong too—ax, helmet and skull shattered together.”
“How came you here in the first place?” asked De Vaile curiously. “Were you stirred with a desire to cleanse your soul by smiting our foes?”
“Cimmeria was too dull for me,” answered the Cimmerian candidly. “One of the clan chiefs wished to make peace with another and I feared he would buy favor by delivering me into the hands of the man's warriors. As there was feud between myself and most of the Cimmerian clans, there was nowhere for me to go. I was about to seek my fortune in Vanaheim when I ran into some Vanir heading south and I chose to accompany them.”
