Conan the adaptable, p.61
Conan the Adaptable, page 61
He was a giant, he who sprawled on the bearskin within the hut; erect he must have stood fully seven feet in height, and his mighty shoulders and huge limbs were knotted with great muscles. His face was that of a brute, thin lipped, jutting jawed, sloping brow, with a tangled mop of shaggy hair. Beside him lay an axe, a keen-edged blade of what Conan now knew to be green jade, set in the cleft of a shaft of a strange, hard wood which once grew in the far north, and which took a polish like mahogany. At the sight he desired to possess it, though it was too long-hafted and heavy for easy use on horseback.
Conan thrust his lance through the door of the lodge and drew the thing out, laughing at the protests of his companions.
‘I commit no sacrilege!’ Conan maintained. ‘This is no death-lodge, where warriors laid the corpse of a great chief. This man died in his sleep, as they all died. Why he has lain here so many ages without being devoured by wolves or buzzards, or his flesh rotting I do not know, but this whole land is a medicine land. And I will take this axe.’
It was just as Conan was about to dismount and secure it, having drawn it outside the lodge, that a sudden cry brought them wheeling about – to face a dozen Hyperboreans in full war-paint! And one was a woman! She bestrode her horse like a warrior, and waved a flint-headed war-axe.
Warrior-women were rare among the plains tribes, but they did occur now and then. They knew her, instantly, Casima, the warrior-girl of the southern Hyperboreans. She was a war-bird, in truth, leading a band of picked fighting men in reckless forays all over the Southwest.
Conan whirled and saw her – a slim, supple, arrogant figure, vibrant with life and menace, barbarically magnificent as she sat her rearing charger, with the fierce painted faces of her braves crowding close behind her. She was naked save for a huge skin about her shoulders. Her girdle supported a knife in a beaded sheath. Moccasins were on her slender feet, and her black hair, done up in two thick glossy braids hung down her supple back. Her dark eyes flashed, her red lips parted in a cry of mockery as she brandished her axe at them, managing her bridleless, saddleless steed with a horsemanship that was breath-taking in its negligent grace.
All this Conan saw and knew in the brief glance as he turned, for with a shrill cry she hurled herself at them and her braves swept in behind her. Horse and rider seemed to lunge at them rather than gallop, so swiftly did she come to the attack.
The fight was short. How could it be otherwise? They were twelve men, on comparatively fresh horses. They were five weary Cimmerians on foundered steeds. The tall chief with the scarred face came at him with a rush. In the fog they had not seen each other, until they were almost together. Seeing their empty quivers they came in to finish them with their lances and war-axes. The tall chief thrust at him, and Conan wheeled his horse who responded to the nudge of his knee with his last strength. No Hyperborean could ever equal a Cimmerian in open battle, not even a southern Hyperborean. The lance swished past his breast, and as the horse and rider plunged past him, carried by their own momentum, Conan drove his own lance through the Hyperborean’s back, so the point came out from his breast.
Even as Conan did so he was aware of another brave charging down on him from the left, and Conan sought to wheel his steed again, as Conan dragged the lance free. But the horse was foredone. He rolled like a foundered canoe in the swift tide of the black river, and the club in the Hyperborean’s hand smashed down. Conan threw himself side-wise and saved his skull from crushing like an egg, but the club fell stunningly on his shoulder, knocking him from his horse. Cat-like Conan got to his feet, drawing his knife, but then the shoulder of a horse hit him and knocked him sprawling. It was Casima who had ridden him down and now as Conan struggled slowly to his knees, half-stunned, she leaped lightly down and swung up her flint-headed axe above his head.
Conan saw the dull glint of the edge, knew in a slow, stunned way that he could not avoid the downward swing – and then she froze, axe lifted, staring wide-eyed over his head towards something beyond him. Impelled beyond his will, Conan turned his dizzy head and looked.
The other Cimmerians were down, and five of the Hyperboreans. All the living froze, just as Casima had frozen. One who knelt on dead Corus’s back, wrenching at the scalp, his knife between his teeth, crouched there like one suddenly petrified, staring in the direction towards which all heads were turned.
For the fog to the west was lifting, and into view floated the walls and flat roofs of a strange structure. It was like, yet strangely unlike, the pueblos of the corn-raising Indians far to the west. Like them it was made of adobe, and the architecture was something similar, and yet there was a strange unlikeness.
And from it came a train of strange figures – short brown men, clad in garments of brightly-dyed feathers, men who looked somewhat like Picts. They were weaponless and carried only ropes of rawhide and whips in their hands. Only the foremost, a taller, gaunter Pict, bore a strange shield shaped disk of gleaming metal in his left hand and a copper mallet in his right.
The curious parade halted before them, and they stared – the warrior-girl, with her axe still poised; the Hyperboreans, afoot or a-horse, wounded or whole; Conan, crouching on one knee and shaking his fast-clearing head. Then Casima, sensing sudden peril, cried out a shrill, desperate command and sprang, lifting her axe – and as the warriors tensed for the onslaught, the man with the vulture feathers in his hair smote the gong with the mallet, and a terrible crash of sound leaped at them like an invisible panther. It was like the impact of a thunderbolt, that awful crash of sound, a thing so terrible it was almost tangible. Casima and the Hyperboreans went down as if struck by lightning, and the horses reared in agony and bolted. Casima rolled on the ground, crying out in agony, and clutching her ears.
Conan came up from the ground in a leap, knife in hand, though his skull seemed bursting from that awful blast of sound. Straight at the throat he sprang. But his knife never sheathed itself in that brown flesh. Again the awful gong clanged and yet again, smiting him in mid-leap like a tangible force, hurling him back and back. And again and yet again the mallet crashed against the gong, so that earth and sky seemed split asunder by its deafening reverberation. Down Conan went like a man beaten to the ground by a war-club.
When he could see, hear and think again, Conan found his hands were bound behind him, a rawhide thong about his neck. He was dragged to his feet and their captors began marching them toward the city. Conan called it that, though it was more like a castle. Casima and her Hyperboreans were served in like manner, except one who was badly wounded. Him they slew, cutting his throat with his own knife, and left him lying among the others. One took up the axe Conan had dragged from the hut, looked at it curiously, and then swung it over his shoulder. It took both his hands to manage it.
So they stumbled on towards the castle, half-strangled by the thongs about their necks, and occasionally encouraged by the bite of a rawhide lash across their shoulders. Only Casima was not so treated, though her captor jerked brutally on her rope when she lagged. Her warriors looked haggard. They were the most warlike of the Hyperborean nation – a branch which lived on the headwaters of the Vilayet, and which differed in many ways and customs from their northern brothers. They were more typical of a plains culture than their tribal relatives. They wore their hair in long braids that swept the ground and loaded the braids with silver ornaments.
The castle stood on the crest of a low rise, not worthy of the name of hill, which broke the flat monotony of the plain. There was a wall around it and a gate in the wall. On one of the flat stages of the roof they saw a tall figure standing, wrapped in a shining mantle of feathers that glistened even in the subdued light. A lifted arm made an imperious gesture and the figure moved majestically through a doorway and vanished.
The gate-posts were of bronze, carved with the feathered serpent, and at the sight the Hyperboreans shuddered and averted their eyes. Like all the northern peoples, they remembered that abomination from the days of old, when the great and terrible kingdoms of the far South warred with those of the far North.
They led them across a courtyard, up a short flight of bronze steps, and into a corridor, and once within all resemblance to the pueblos ceased. But they knew that once houses like this had risen in mighty cities far in the serpent-haunted jungles of the dim South, for in their souls stirred the echoes of ancient legends.
They came into a broad circular room through which the dim light streamed from an open dome. A black stone altar rose in the centre of the room, with darkly stained channels along the rims. Facing it, on a raised dais, on an ivory throne heaped with sea-otter furs, there lounged the figure they had seen on the roof.
He was a tall man, slender and wiry, with a high forehead and a narrow, keen, hawk-like face. There was no mercy in that face, only a cruel arrogance, a mocking cynicism. It was the face of a man who felt himself above the human passions of anger or mercy or love.
With a cruel amusement he swept his eyes over them, and the Hyperboreans lowered their gaze. Even Casima, after boldly meeting his stare for a moment, winced and dropped her eyes. But Conan was unlike any other northerner, and fear slept in him. He met that piercing stare with his smouldering blue eyes unwinking. He looked long at him, and presently spoke in the common language of the northerners.
‘You are like a wild beast. There is the fire of killing in your eyes. Are you not afraid?’
‘I am Conan of Cimmeria,’ he answered scornfully. ‘Ask the Aquilonians if there is anything I fear! My axe is still sticking in their heads. Ask the Æsir, the Picts, the Turanians, the Vanir, the Zamboulans, the Hyperboreans! If I were flayed alive and my skin cut into pieces no larger than a man’s palm, and each piece used to cover a dead warrior I had slain, the dead uncovered would still be more than the covered ones!’
Even in their fear the eyes of the Hyperboreans smouldered murderously at this boasting. The man on the throne laughed without mirth.
‘He is tough, he is strong, he is nerved by his vanity,’ he said to the gaunt man with the gong. ‘He will endure much, place him in the last cell.’
‘And the woman, lord Tezcatlipoca?’ quoth Xototl, bowing low, and Casima started and stared wide-eyed at the fantastic figure on the throne. She knew the legends, and the name was the name of one of the sun’s incarnations – taken, no doubt, in a spirit of blasphemy by the ruler of this evil castle.
‘Place her in the Room of Gold,’ said Tezcatlipoca, whom they called the Lord of the Mist. Curiously he glanced at the jade axe which had been placed on the altar.
‘Why, it is the axe of Guar, the chief of the Northerners!’ quoth he. ‘He swore that the axe he wore would some day split his skull! But Guar and all his tribe have been dead in their caribou hide tents for more centuries than even I like to remember, and his skull still holds the magic of the ancients! Leave the axe there and take them away! I will talk to the girl presently, and then there shall be sport, as it was in the days of the Golden Kings!’
They led them out of the circular chamber and across a series of broad rooms, where cat-footed brown women, beautiful with a sinister beauty and naked but for their golden ornaments, crowded close to stare at the prisoners, and especially the warrior-girl of the Hyperboreans. And they laughed at her, sweet, soft, evil laughter, venomous as poisoned honey.
They came into a long corridor, with heavy doors opening into it, and into each cell as they passed it, a warrior was thrust. Conan was the last and as Conan was dragged inside Conan saw terror flare in her lovely eyes as she was led away. Within the cell Conan was thrown roughly to the floor, and his legs were bound with rawhide. Neither food nor water was given to him.
Presently the door opened and Conan looked up to see the Lord of the Mist looking down at him.
‘Poor fool!’ he murmured. ‘I could almost pity you! Bloodthirsty beast of the prairies, with your swaggerings and boastings, your tale of slayings. Fool! Soon you will howl for death!’
‘A Cimmerian does not cry out at the stake,’ Conan answered, his eyes burning red with the murder-lust. His thews swelled and knotted until the rawhide cut into the flesh. But the thongs held.
He laughed and silently left the cell, closing the door behind him. Outside a bolt clashed into place.
What happened next Conan did not see, nor did he learn until long afterward. But Xototl took Casima up a flight of stairs and into a chamber where the walls, ceiling, and floor were of gold. The doors were of gold and there were gold bars on the windows. There was a golden couch heaped with sea-otter fur. Xototl unbound her and stood gazing at her for a moment with hot desire in his eyes. Then, sullenly and grudgingly, he turned away and locked the door behind her, leaving her alone. Presently to her came the Lord of the Mist, tall, striding like a god, with his strange mantle of rich-hued feathers about him and about his black mane a band in the form of a golden serpent with head upreared above his forehead.
He told her he was a magician of an ancient, ancient kingdom which was declining even before the barbaric Picts wandered into it. For his own reasons he had come far to the north and established his kingdom on that bleak plain, casting about it a mist of enchantment. He had found a tribe of Picts besieged by the invaders from the North, and they had appealed to him for aid, giving themselves fully into his hands. He had made magic and brought death to the Northerners. But he left them in their huts, and told the people that he could bring them to life whenever he wished. Beneath his cruel hands the tribe dwindled away until now not more than a hundred lived to do his bidding. He had come from the south more than a thousand years before. He was not immortal, but almost so.
Then he left her; and as he went the great serpent which did his bidding slithered silently and evilly through the corridors after him; this serpent had devoured many of the subjects of the Lord of the Mist.
Meanwhile, Conan lay in his cell and heard them drag forth a Hyperborean and haul him along the corridor. After a long while Conan heard a fearful, animal-like scream of agony, and wondered what torment could wring a cry from the throat of a southern Hyperborean. Conan had heard them laugh under the knives of the flayers. Then for the first time fear awoke in him – not physical fear so much as the fear that under the unknown torment Conan would cry out and so bring shame to the Cimmerian nation. Conan lay there and listened to the end of the Hyperboreans. Each warrior cried out but once.
Meanwhile Xototl had glided into Casima’s chamber, his eyes red with lust.
‘You are soft and beautiful,’ he mumbled. ‘I am weary of these women.’
He seized her in his arms and forced her back on the golden couch. She did not resist. But suddenly the dagger that had been in his girdle was in her hand. She sank it into his back, swiftly and deadly. Before he could voice the cry that welled to his lips, she choked it in his throat and, falling with him to the floor, stabbed at him again and again until he lay still. Then, rising like a cat, she hurried through the door, snatching up a bow, a knife, and a handful of arrows as she went.
In an instant she was in his cell, bending over him, her wide eyes blazing.
‘Quickly!’ she hissed. ‘He is slaying the last of the warriors! Prove that you are a man!’
The knife was keen, but the blade was slender and the rawhide tough. She kept at it persistently, finally sawing through. Then Conan was on his feet, knife in his girdle, bow and arrows in his hand.
They stole from the cell and moved cautiously down the corridor, to come face to face with a surprised guard. Dropping his weapons Conan had him by the throat before he could cry out, and bearing him to the floor, Conan broke his neck with his bare hands before he could release his spear and bring his knife into play.
Rising, they stole down the corridor toward the circular room of the open dome. Before it was the gigantic serpent which coiled menacingly at their approach. Quickly and silently Conan moved forward and placed a single arrow deep in the reptile’s eye, and they moved cautiously past its fearsome death throes.
They slipped into the domed room and saw the last Hyperborean die in a strange and hideous torment. As the Lord of the Mist turned to face them, Conan drove an arrow straight at his breast. It glanced harmlessly away. Conan was paralysed with surprise when a second arrow behaved similarly.
Casting aside his bow he leaped at him with knife in hand, and they rolled about the chamber seeking a death grip. He was alone; his retainers had been dispatched to another part of the castle while he worked his evil.
His knife would not bite through the strange, close-fitting garment that he wore beneath his feather-mantle, and, try as he would, Conan could not reach his throat or face. Finally his foe cast him aside and made ready to invoke his magic when Casima stopped him with a cry: ‘The dead men rise from the tents of the Northerners. They march towards the castle!’
‘A lie!’ he cried, going ashy. ‘They are dead! They can not rise!’
‘Nevertheless, they come!’ she cried with a wild laugh.
He faltered, turned toward a window, then wheeled back in realization of the trick. Nearby lay the axe of Guar the Northerner, a mighty weapon out of another age. In the instant of his hesitation, Conan seized it, and, swinging it high, leaped forward. As the Lord of the Mist turned back to him, fear leaped into his eyes as the axe crashed through his skull, spilling his brains on the floor.
Thunder crashed and rolled, and balls of fire swept over the plains; the castle rocked. Casima and Conan raced for safety, the screams of the trapped echoing in their ears. And when dawn rose upon the plains, no mist showed. There was only a rare, icy expanse on which a few bones lay mouldering.
