Conan the adaptable, p.48
Conan the Adaptable, page 48
V
The Lion of Turan
At the top of the stairs, Conan came into a corridor and along this he strode swiftly but warily, the Norse sword shimmering bluely in his hand. Going at random he turned into another corridor and here came full on a Turanian warrior, who stopped short, agape, seeing a supernatural horror in this grim slayer who strode like a silent phantom of death through the castle. Before the man could regain his wits, the blue sword shore through his neck cords.
Conan stood above his victim for a moment, listening intently. Somewhere ahead of him he heard a low hum of voices, and the attitude of this man, with shield and drawn scimitar, had suggested that he stood guard before some chamber door. An irregular torch faintly illumined the wide corridor, and Conan, groping in the semi-darkness for a door, found instead a wide portal masked by heavy silk curtains. Parting them cautiously he gazed through into a great room thronged with armed men.
Warriors in mail and peaked helmets, and bearing wide-pointed, curved swords, lined the walls, and on silken cushions sat the chieftains—rulers of El Ghor and their satellites. Across the room sat Nureddin El Ghor, tall, lean, with a high-bridged, thin nose and keen dark eyes; his whole aspect distinctly hawk-like. His Semitic features contrasted with the Turanians about him. His lean strong hand continually caressed the ivory hilt of a long, lean saber, and he wore a shirt of mesh-mail. A renegade chief from southern Arabia, this sheik was a man of great ability; his dream of an independent kingdom in these hills was no mad hashish hallucination. Let him win the alliance of a few Seljuk chiefs, of a few Nemedian renegades like Von Gonler, and with the hordes of Shemites, Turanians and Khauranians that would assuredly flock to his banner, Nureddin would be a menace both to Yildiz and those who still clung to the fringes of Khoraja. Among the mailed Turanians Conan saw the sheepskin caps and wolf skins of wild chiefs from beyond the hills—Khauranians and Shemites. Already the man’s fame was spreading, if such unstable warriors as these were rallying to him.
Near the curtain-hung doorway sat Kosru Malik, known to Conan of old, a warrior typical of his race, strongly built, of medium height, with a dark cruel face. Even as he sat in council he wore a peaked helmet and a gilded mail hauberk and held across his knees a jeweled-hilted scimitar. It seemed to Conan that these men argued some matter just before setting out on some raid, as they were all fully armed. But he wasted no time on speculation. He tore the hangings aside with a mailed hand and strode into the room.
Amazement held the warriors frozen for an instant, and in that instant the giant Cimmerian reached Kosru Malik’s side. The man, his dark features paling, sprang to his feet like a steel spring released, raising his scimitar, but even as he did so, Conan braced his feet and smote with all his power. The Asgard sword shivered the curved blade and, rending the gilded mail, severed the man’s shoulder-bone and cleft his breast.
Conan wrenched the heavy blade free from the split breastbone and with one foot on Kosru Malik’s body, faced his foes like a lion at bay. His helmeted head was lowered, his cold blue eyes flaming from under the heavy black brows, and his mighty right hand held ready the stained sword. Nureddin had leaped to his feet and stood trembling in rage and astonishment. This sudden apparition came as near to unmanning him as anything had ever done. His thin, hawk-like features lowered in a wrathful snarl, his beard bristled and with a quick motion he unsheathed his ivory-hilted saber. Then even as he stepped forward and his warriors surged in behind him, a startling interruption occurred.
Conan, a fierce joy surging in him as he braced himself for the charge, saw, on the other side of the great room, a wide door swing open and a host of armed warriors appear, accompanied by sundry of Nureddin’s men, who wore empty scabbards and uneasy faces.
The man and his warriors whirled to face the newcomers. These men, Conan saw, were dusty as if from long riding, and his memory flashed to the horsemen he had seen riding into the hills at dusk. Before them strode a tall, slender man, whose fine face was traced with lines of weariness, but whose aspect was that of a ruler of men. His garb was simple in comparison with the resplendent armor and silken attendants. And Conan swore in amazed recognition.
Yet his surprize was no greater than that of the men of El Ghor.
“What do you in my castle, unannounced?” gasped Nureddin.
A giant in silvered mail raised his hand warningly and spoke sonorously: “The Lion of Turan, Protector of the Faithful, needs no announcement to enter yours or any castle.”
Nureddin stood his ground, though his followers began grovelling madly; there was iron in this renegade.
“My lord,” said he stoutly, “it is true I did not recognize you when you first came into the chamber; but El Ghor is mine, not by virtue of right or aid or grant from any king, but the might of my own arm. Therefore, I make you welcome but do not beg your mercy for my hasty words.”
Yildiz merely smiled in a weary way. Half a century of intrigue and warring rested heavily on his shoulders. His brown eyes, strangely mild for so great a lord, rested on the silent Nemedian giant who still stood with his mail-clad foot on what had been the chief Kosru Malik.
“And what is this?” asked the King.
Nureddin scowled: “An outlaw has stolen into my keep and assassinated my comrade. I beg your leave to dispose of him. I will give you his skull, set in silver—”
A gesture stopped him. Yildiz stepped past his men and confronted the dark, brooding warrior.
“I thought I had recognized those shoulders and that dark face,” said the king with a smile. “So you have turned your face east again, Conan?”
“Enough!” The deep voice of the Cimmerian giant filled the chamber. “You have me in your trap; my life is forfeit. Waste not your time in taunts; send your jackals against me and make an end of it. I swear by Crom, many of them shall bite the dust before I die, and the dead will be more than the living!”
Nureddin’s tall frame shook with passion; he gripped his hilt until the knuckles showed white. “Is this to be borne, my Lord?” he exclaimed fiercely. “Shall this Nazarene dog fling dirt into our faces—”
Yildiz shook his head slowly, smiling as if at some secret jest: “It may be his is no idle boast. In many battles I have seen his blade glitter like a star of death in the mist, and my soldiers fall before his sword like garnered grain.”
The great Kurd turned his head, leisurely surveying the ranks of silent warriors and the bewildered chieftains who avoided his level gaze.
“A notable concourse of chiefs, for these times of truce,” he murmured, half to himself. “Would you ride forth in the night with all these warriors to fight in the desert, or to honor some ghostly sultan, Nureddin? Nay, nay, Nureddin, thou hast tasted the cup of ambition—and thy life is forfeit!”
The unexpectedness of the accusation staggered Nureddin, and while he groped for reply, Yildiz followed it up: “It comes to me that you have plotted against me—aye, that it was your purpose to seduce various Shemite and Nemedian lords from their allegiances, and set up a kingdom of your own. And for that reason you broke the truce and murdered a good soldier, and burned his castle. I have spies, Nureddin.”
The tall man glanced quickly about, as if ready to dispute the question with Yildiz himself. But when he noted the number of his foe’s warriors, and saw his own fierce ruffians shrinking away from him, awed, a smile of bitter contempt crossed his hawk-like features, and sheathing his blade, he folded his arms.
“Very well,” he said simply, with the fatalism taught by the East.
Yildiz nodded in appreciation, but motioned back a chief who stepped forward to bind the man. “Here is one,” said the king, “to whom you owe a greater debt than to me, Nureddin. I have heard Conan of Cimmeria was brother-at-arms to the De Gissclin. You owe many debts of blood, oh Nureddin; pay one, therefore, by facing the lord Conan with the sword.”
The man’s eyes gleamed suddenly. “And if I slay him—shall I go free?”
“Who am I to judge?” asked Yildiz. “It shall be as the gods will it. But if you fight the Cimmerian you will die, Nureddin, even though you slay him; he comes of a breed that slays even in their death-throes. Yet it is better to die by the sword than by the cord, Nureddin.”
The sheik’s answer was to draw his ivory-hilted saber. Blue sparks flickered in Conan’s eyes and he rumbled deeply like a wounded lion. He hated Yildiz as he hated all of Turan, with the savage and relentless hatred of the Cimmerian. He refused to believe that there could be ought but trickery and craftiness in a king’s mind. Now he saw in his suggestion but the scheming of a crafty trickster to match two of his foes against each other, and a feline-like gloating over his victims. Conan grinned without mirth. He asked no more from life than to have his enemy at sword-points. But he felt no gratitude toward Yildiz, only a smoldering hate.
The king and the warriors gave back, leaving the rivals a clear space in the center of the great room. Nureddin came forward swiftly, having donned a plain round steel cap with a mail drop that fell about his shoulders.
“Death to you, Cimmerian!” he yelled, and sprang in with the pantherish leap and headlong recklessness of a Nemedian's attack. Conan had no shield. He parried the hacking saber with upflung blade, and slashed back. Nureddin caught the heavy blade on his round buckler, which he turned slightly slantwise at the instant of impact, so that the stroke glanced off. He returned the blow with a thrust that rasped against Conan’s coif, and leaped a spear’s length backward to avoid the whistling sweep of the Asgard sword.
Again he leaped in, slashing, and Conan caught the saber on his left forearm. Mail links parted beneath the keen edge, and blood spattered, but almost simultaneously the Norse sword crashed under the Arab’s arm, bones cracked and Nureddin was flung his full length to the floor. Warriors gasped as they realized the full power of the Cimmerian’s tigerish strokes.
Nureddin’s rise from the floor was so quick that he almost seemed to rebound from his fall. To the onlookers it seemed that he was not hurt, but the man knew. His mail had held; the sword edge had not gashed his flesh, but the impact of that terrible blow had snapped a rib like a rotten twig, and the realization that he could not long avoid the barbarian’s rushes filled him with a wild beast determination to take his foe with him to Eternity.
Conan was looming over Nureddin, sword high, but the Nemedian nerving himself to a dynamic burst of superhuman quickness, sprang up as a cobra leaps from its coil, and struck with desperate power. Full on Conan’s bent head the whistling saber clashed, and the Cimmerian staggered as the keen edge bit through steel cap and coif links into his scalp. Blood jetted down his face, but he braced his feet and struck back with all the power of arm and shoulders behind the sword. Again Nureddin’s buckler blocked the stroke, but this time the man had no time to turn the shield, and the heavy blade struck squarely. Nureddin went to his knees beneath the stroke, bearded face twisted in agony. With tenacious courage he reeled up again, shaking the shattered buckler from his numbed and broken arm, but even as he lifted the saber, the Asgard sword crashed down, cleaving the Shemite helmet and splitting the skull to the teeth.
Conan set a foot on his fallen foe and wrenched free his gory sword. His fierce eyes met the whimsical gaze of Yildiz.
“Well, Yildiz,” said the Cimmerian warrior challengingly, “I have killed your rebel for you.”
“And your enemy,” reminded Yildiz.
“Aye,” Conan grinned bleakly and ferociously. “I thank you—though well I know it was no love of me or mine that prompted you to send the man against me. Well—make an end, king of Turan.”
“Why do you hate me, Conan?” asked the king curiously.
Conan snarled. “Why do I hate any of my foes? You are no more and no less than any other robber chief, to me. Your empire is founded on lies, with courtly words and fine deeds, but you never deceived me, who well knew you sought to win by deceit where you and your son could not gain by force of arms.”
Yildiz shook his head, murmuring to himself. Conan glared at him, tensing himself for a sudden leap that would carry the king with him into the Dark. The Cimmerian was a product of his age and his country; among the warring chiefs of blood-drenched Cimmeria, mercy was unknown and chivalry an outworn and forgotten myth. Kindness to a foe was a mark of weakness; courtesy to an enemy a form of craft, a preparation for treachery; to such teachings had Conan grown up, in a land where a man took every advantage, gave no quarter and fought like a blood-mad devil if he expected to survive.
Now at a gesture from Yildiz, those crowding the door gave back.
“Your way is open, Conan.”
The Cimmerian glared, his eyes narrowing to slits: “What game is this?” he growled. “Shall I turn my back to your blades? Out on it!”
“All swords are in their sheaths,” answered the king. “None shall harm you.”
Conan’s lion-like head swung from side to side as he glared at the Shemites and Turanians alike.
“You honestly mean I am to go free, after leaving your army and slaying your jackals?”
“You were forced into my army,” answered Yildiz. “I find in you no fault for wanting to leave in time. You have repaid blood for blood, and kept your faith to the dead. You are rough and savage, and I would fain have men like you in mine own train once again. There is a fierce loyalty in you to your own code, you are a singular and ambitious man, and for this I honor you.”
Conan sheathed his sword ungraciously. A grudging admiration for this weary-faced king was born in him and it angered him. Dimly he realized at last that this attitude of fairness, justice and kindliness, even to foes, was not a crafty pose of Yildiz’s, not a manner of guile, but a natural nobility of the king’s nature. He saw suddenly embodied in the man, the ideals of chivalry and high honor so much talked of—and so little practiced—by the Nemedian soldiers. Blondel had been right then, and De Gissclin, when they argued with Conan that high-minded chivalry was no mere romantic dream of an outworn age, but had existed, and still existed and lived in the hearts of certain men. But Conan was born and bred in a savage land where men lived the desperate existence of the wolves whose hides covered their nakedness. He suddenly realized his own innate barbarism had prevented him from seeing this. He shrugged his lion’s shoulders.
“I have misjudged you, Yildiz,” he growled. “There can be fairness in you. I hope for your sake you never encounter me upon the battlefield again.”
“I thank you, Lord Conan,” smiled Yildiz. “Your road to the west is clear.”
And the warriors courteously saluted as Conan of Cimmeria strode from the royal presence of the king he was destined to strive against for having let him live.
Swords of the Northern Sea
- Robert E. Howard, Richard L. Tierney & J.R. Karlsson
“Skoal!” The smoke-stained rafters shook as the deep-throated roar went up. Drinking horns clashed and sword hilts beat upon the oaken board. Dirks hacked at the great joints of meat, and under the feet of the revelers gaunt, shaggy wolf-hounds fought over the remnants.
At the head of the board sat Rognor the Red, scourge of the Narrow Seas. The huge Vanir meditatively stroked his crimson beard, while his great, arrogant eyes roved about the hall, taking in the familiar scene. A hundred warriors feasted here, waited on by bold-eyed, yellow-haired women and by trembling slaves. Spoils of the Southland were flung about in careless profusion. Rare tapestries and brocades, bales of silk and spice, tables and benches of fine mahogany, curiously chased weapons and delicate masterpieces of art vied with the spoils of the hunt—horns and heads of forest beasts. Thus the Vanir proclaimed his mastery over man and beast.
The Northern nations were drunken with victory and conquest. Acheron may have fallen long ago; with many races looting the fairest possessions of the ancient world. But even now these peoples found themselves hard put to hold their prizes from the wilder, fiercer forces who swept down on them from the blue mists of the North. East, west and south to the ends of the world ranged the dragon-beaked long ships of the Vanir.
The Nordheimers had already begun to settle in the southern parts, though as yet it was more a rendezvous of pirates than the later colonization. And the lair of Rognor the Red was here, called by the Scots Ladbhan, the Picts Golmara and the Asgaard Valgaard. His word was law, the only law this wild horde recognized; his hand was heavy, his soul ruthless, his range the open world.
The sea-king’s eyes ranged about the board, while he nodded slightly in satisfaction. No pirate that sailed the seas could boast a fiercer assortment of fighting men than he; a mixed horde they were, Nordheimers and Hyperboreans—big, yellow-bearded men with wild, light eyes. Even now as they feasted they were fully armed and girt in mail, though they had laid aside their horned helmets. A ferocious, wayward race they were, with a latent madness burning in their brains, ready to leap into terrible flame at an instant.
Rognor’s gaze turned from them, with their great bare arms heavy with golden armlets, to rest on one who seemed strangely different from the rest. This was a tall, rangily built man, deep-chested and strong, whose square-cut black hair and dark, smooth face contrasted with the yellow manes and beards about him. This man’s eyes were narrow slits and of a cold-steel grey, and they, with a number of scars that marred his face, lent him a peculiarly sinister aspect. He wore no gold ornaments of any kind and his mail was of chain mesh instead of the scale type worn by the men about him.
Rognor frowned abstractedly as he eyed this man, but just as he was about to speak, another man entered the huge hall and approached the head of the board. This newcomer was a tall, splendidly made young Vanir, beardless but wearing a yellow mustache. Rognor greeted him.
“Hail, Hakon! I have not seen you since yesterday.”
