Conan the adaptable, p.68
Conan the Adaptable, page 68
“Bismillah el rahman el rahhim!” quoth Achmet resignedly, lifting his hands in a gesture of benediction, as the camel and its rider faded into the night.
“He rides to death,” muttered a bearded Zuagir.
“Were it another man I should agree,” said Achmet. “But it is Conan who rides. Yet Shalan ibn Mansour would give many horses for his head.”
The sun was swinging low over the desert, a tawny stretch of rocky soil and sand as far as Conan could see in every direction. The solitary rider was the only visible sign of life, but Conan’s vigilance was keen. Days and nights of hard riding lay behind him; he was coming into the Zuagir country, now, and every step he took increased his danger by that much. The Zuagir, whom he believed to be kin to the powerful Roualla of El Hamad, were true sons of Ishmael—hawks of the desert, whose hands were against every man not of their clan. To avoid their country the regular caravan road to the west swung wide to the south. This was an easy route, with wells a day’s march apart, and it passed within a day’s ride of the Caves of El Khour, the catacombs which pit a low range of hills rising sheer out of the wastelands.
Few white men know of their existence, but evidently Hawkston knew of the ancient trail that turned northward from the Well of Khosru, on the caravan road. Hawkston was perforce approaching El Khour circuitously. Conan was heading straight westward, across waterless wastes, cut by a trace so faint only a Zuagir or Conan could have followed it. On that route there was but one watering place between the fringe of oases along the coast and the Caves —the half-mythical Well of Amir Khan, the existence of which was a secret jealously guarded by the Zuagirs.
There was no fixed habitation at the oasis, which was but a clump of palms, watered by a small spring, but frequently bands of Zuagir camped there. That was a chance he must take. He hoped they were driving their camel herds somewhere far to the north, in the heart of their country; but like true hawks, they ranged far afield, striking at the caravans and the outlying villages.
The trail he was following was so slight that few would have recognized it as such. It stretched dimly away before him over a level expanse of stone-littered ground, broken on one hand by sand dunes, on the other by a succession of low ridges. He glanced at the sun, and tapped the water-bag that swung from the saddle. There was little left, though he had practised the grim economy of a Zuagir or a wolf. But within a few hours he would be at the Well of Amir Khan, where he would replenish his supply, —though his nerves tightened at the thought of what might be waiting there for him.
Even as the thought passed through his mind, the sun struck a glint from something on the nearer of the sand dunes. The quick duck of his head was instinctive, and simultaneously there rang out the crack of a bow and he heard the thud of an arrow into flesh. The camel leaped convulsively and came down in a headlong sprawl, shot through the heart. Conan leaped free as it fell, bow in hand, and in an instant was crouching behind the carcass, watching the crest of the dune over the tip of a cocked arrow. A strident yell greeted the fall of the camel, and another shot set the echoes barking. The arrow ploughed into the ground beside Conan’s stiffening breastwork, and the Cimmerian replied. Dust spurted into the air so near the target that it evoked a volley of lurid oaths in a choked voice.
The black glittering ring was withdrawn, and presently there rose the rapid drum of hoofs. Conan saw a white kafieh bobbing among the dunes, and understood the Zuagir’s plan. He believed there was only one man. That man intended to circle Conan’s position, cross the trail a few hundred yards west of him, and get on the rising ground behind the Cimmerian, where his vantage-point would allow him to shoot over the bulk of the camel—, for of course he knew Conan would keep the dead beast between them. But Conan shifted himself only enough to command the trail ahead of him, the open space the Shemite must cross after leaving the dunes before he reached the protection of the ridges. Conan rested his bow across the stiff forelegs of the camel.
A quarter of a mile up the trail there was a sandstone rock jutting up in the skyline. Anyone crossing the trail between it and himself would be limned against it momentarily. He set his sights and drew a bead against that rock. He was betting that the Zuagir was alone, and that he would not withdraw to any great distance before making the dash across the trail.
Even as he meditated a white-clad figure burst from among the ridges and raced across the trail, bending low in the saddle and flogging his mount. It was a long shot, but Conan’s nerves did not quiver. At the exact instant that the white-clad figure was limned against the distant rock, the Cimmerian loosed an arrow. For a fleeting moment he thought he had missed; then the rider straightened convulsively, threw up two wide-sleeved arms and reeled back drunkenly. The frightened horse reared high, throwing the man heavily. In an instant the landscape showed two separate shapes where there had been one —a bundle of white sprawling on the ground, and a horse racing off southward.
Conan lay motionless for a few minutes, too wary to expose himself. He knew the man was dead; the fall alone would have killed him. But there was a slight chance that other riders might be lurking among the sand dunes, after all.
The sun beat down savagely; vultures appeared from nowhere—black dots in the sky, swinging in great circles, lower and lower. There was no hint of movement among the ridges or the dunes.
Conan rose and glanced down at the dead camel. His jaws were set more grimly; that was all. But he realized what the killing of his steed meant. He looked westward, where the heat waves shimmered. It would be a long walk, a long, dry walk, before it ended.
Stooping, he unslung water-skin and food-bag and threw them over his shoulders. Bow in hand he went up the trail with a steady, swinging stride that would eat up the miles and carry him for hour after hour without faltering.
When he came to the shape sprawling in the path, he set the butt of his bow on the ground and stood looking briefly, one hand steadying the bags on his shoulders. The man he had killed was a Zuagir, right enough: one of the tall, sinewy, hawk-faced and wolf-hearted plunderers of the southern desert. Conan’s arrow had caught him just below the arm-pit. That the man had been alone, and on a horse instead of a camel, meant that there was a larger party of his tribesmen somewhere in the vicinity. Conan shrugged his shoulders, shifted the bow to the crook of his arm, and moved on up the trail. The score between himself and the men of Shalan ibn Mansour was red enough, already. It might well be settled once and for all at the Well of Amir Khan.
As he swung along the trail he kept thinking of the man he was going to warn: Al Wazir, the Shemites called him, because of his former capacity with the Sultan. A Hyperborean nobleman, in reality, wandering over the world in search of some mystical goal Conan had never understood, just as an unquenchable thirst for adventure drove Conan around the planet in constant wanderings. But the dreamy soul of the man coveted something more than material things. Al Wazir had been many things. Wealth, power, position; all had slipped through his unsatisfied fingers. He had delved deep in strange religions and philosophies, seeking the answer to the riddle of Existence, as Conan sought the stimulation of hazard. The mysticisms of the Sufia had attracted him, and finally the ascetic mysteries of the Hindus.
A year before Al Wazir had been governor of Shem, next to the Sultan the wealthiest and most powerful man in the land. Without warning he had given up his position and disappeared. Only a chosen few knew that he had distributed his vast wealth among the poor, renounced all ambition and power, and gone like an ancient prophet to dwell in the desert, where, in the solitary meditation and self denial of a true ascetic, he hoped to read at last the eternal riddle of Life—as the ancient prophets read it. Conan had accompanied him on that last journey, with the handful of faithful servants who knew their master’s intentions—, old Salim among them, for between the dreamy philosopher and the hard-bitten man of action there existed a powerful tie of friendship.
But for the traitor and fool, Dirdar, Al Wazir’s secret had been well kept. Conan knew that ever since Al Wazir’s disappearance, adventurers of every breed had been searching for him, hoping to secure possession of the treasure that the Hyperborean had possessed in the days of his power—the wonderful collection of perfectly matched rubies, known as the Blood of the Gods, which had blazed a lurid path through history for five hundred years. These jewels had not been distributed among the poor with the rest of Al Wazir’s wealth. Conan himself did not know what the man had done with them. Nor did the Cimmerian care. Greed was not one of his faults. And Al Wazir was his friend.
The blazing sun rocked slowly down the sky, its flame turned to molten copper; it touched the desert rim, and etched against it, a crawling black tiny figure, Conan moved grimly on, striding inexorably into the somber immensities of the Ruba al Khali, —the Empty Abodes.
III
—
The Fight at the Well of Amir Khan
Etched against a white streak of dawn, motionless as figures on a tapestry, Conan saw the clump of palms that marked the Well of Amir Khan grow up out of the fading night.
A few moments later he swore, softly. Luck, the fickle jade, was not with him this time. A faint ribbon of blue smoke curled up against the whitening sky. There were men at the Well of Amir Khan.
Conan licked his dry lips. The water-bag that slapped against his back at each stride was flat, empty. The distance he would have covered in a matter of hours, skimming over the desert on the back of his tireless camel, he had trudged on foot, the whole night long, even though he had held a gait that few even of the desert’s sons could have maintained unbroken. Even for him, in the coolness of the night, it had been a hard trek, though his iron muscles resisted fatigue like a wolf’s.
Far to the east a low blue line lay on the horizon. It was the range of hills that held the Caves of El Khour. He was still ahead of Hawkston, forging on somewhere far to the south. But the Bossonian would be gaining on him at every stride. Conan could swing wide to avoid the men at the Well, and trudge on. Trudge on, afoot, and with empty water-bag? It would be suicide. He could never reach the Caves on foot and without water. Already he was bitten by the devils of thirst.
A red flame grew up in his eyes, and his dark face set in wolfish lines. Water was life in the desert; life for him and for Al Wazir. There was water at the Well, and camels. There were men, his enemies, in possession of both. If they lived, he must die. It was the law of the wolf-pack, and of the desert. He slipped the limp bags from his shoulders, cocked his bow and went forward to kill or be killed—not for wealth, nor the love of a woman, nor an ideal, nor a dream, but for as much water as could be carried in a sheep-skin bag.
A wadi or gully broke the plain ahead of him, meandering to a point within a few hundred feet of the Well. Conan crept toward it, taking advantage of every bit of cover. He had almost reached it, at a point a hundred yards from the Well, when a man in white kafieh and ragged abba materialized from among the palms. Discovery in the growing light was instant. The Shemite yelled and fired. The arrow knocked up dust a foot from Conan’s knee, as he crouched on the edge of the gully, and he fired back. The Shemite cried out, dropped his bow and staggered drunkenly back among the palms.
The next instant Conan had sprung down into the gully and was moving swiftly and carefully along it, toward the point where it bent nearest the Well. He glimpsed white-clad figures flitting briefly among the trees, and then bows began to crack viciously. Bullets sang over the gully as the men fired from behind their saddles and bales of goods, piled like a rampart among the stems of the palms. They lay in the eastern fringe of the clump; the camels, Conan knew, were on the other side of the trees. From the volume of the firing it could not be a large party.
A rock on the edge of the gully provided cover. Conan thrust his knocked bow under a jutting corner of it and watched for movement among the palms. An arrow whined off the rock—. Dwindling in the distance like the dry whir of a rattler. Conan fired at the source of the shot, and a defiant yell answered him.
His eyes were slits of black flame. A fight like this could last for days. And he could not endure a siege. He had no water; he had no time. A long march to the south the caravan of Hawkston was swinging relentlessly westward, each step carrying them nearer the Caves of El Khour and the unsuspecting man who dreamed his dreams there. A few hundred feet away from Conan there was water, and camels that would carry him swiftly to his destination; but lead-fanged wolves of the desert lay between.
Fire came at his retreat thick and fast, and vehement voices rained maledictions on him. They let him know they knew he was alone, and on foot, and probably half-mad with thirst. They howled jeers and threats. But they did not expose themselves. They were confident but wary, with the caution taught by the desert deep ingrained in them. They held the winning hand and they intended to keep it so.
An hour of this, and the sun climbing over the eastern rim, and the heat beginning—, the molten, blinding heat of the southern desert. It was fierce already; later it would be a scorching hell in that unshielded gully. Conan licked his blackened lips and staked his life and the life of Al Wazir on one desperate cast of Fate’s blind dice.
Recognizing and accepting the terrible odds against success, he raised himself high enough to expose head and one shoulder above the gully rim, firing as he did so. Three bows cracked together and lead hummed about his ears; the arrow of one raked a white-hot line across his upper arm. Instantly Conan cried out, the loud, agonized cry of a man hard hit, and threw his arms above the rim of the gully in the convulsive gesture of a man suddenly death-stricken. One hand held the bow and the motion threw it out of the gully, to fall ten feet away, in plain sight of the Shemites.
An instant’s silence, in which Conan crouched below the rim, then blood-thirsty yells echoed his cry. He dared not raise himself high enough to look, but he heard the slap-slap-slap of sandalled feet, winged by hate and bloodlust. They had fallen for his ruse. Why not? A crafty man might feign a wound and fall, but who would deliberately cast away his bow? The thought of a stranger, lying helpless and badly wounded in the bottom of the gully, with a defenseless throat ready for the knife, was too much for the bloodlust of the Zuagirs. Conan held himself in iron control, until the swift feet were only a matter of yards away, —then he came erect like a steel spring released, sword in hand.
As he leaped up he caught one split-second glimpse of three of them, halting dead in their tracks, wild-eyed at the unexpected apparition— even as he straightened—his bow was roaring. One man spun on his heel and fell in a crumpled heap, cut through the head. Another fired once, with a bow, but it was reckless and without aim. An instant later he was down, with a cut through his groin and another ripping through his breast as he fell. And then Fate took a hand again—. Fate in the form of a gust of sand blown into Conan’s eyes. The shot went wild as he was momentarily blinded, just as he had drawn to end the remaining man.
This one had no bow; only a long knife. With a howl he wheeled and legged it back for the grove, his rags whipping on the wind of his haste. And Conan was after him like a starving wolf. His strategy might go for nothing if the man got back among the trees, where he might have left a bow.
The Zuagir ran like an antelope, but Conan was so close behind him when they reached the trees, the Shemite had no time to snatch up the bow leaning against the improvised rampart. He wheeled at bay, yowling like a mad dog, and slashing with the long knife. The point tore Conan’s shirt as the Cimmerian dodged, and brought down the heavy weapon on the Shemite’s head. The thick kafieh saved the man’s skull from being crushed, but his knees buckled and he went down, throwing his arms about Conan’s waist and dragging down the white man as he fell. Somewhere on the other side of the grove the wounded man was calling down curses on Conan.
The two men rolled on the ground, ripping and smiting like wild animals. Conan struck once again with his knife, a glancing blow that laid open the Zuagir’s face from eye to jaw, and then caught at the arm that wielded the knife. He got a grip with his left hand on the wrist and the guard of the knife itself, and with his other hand began to fight for a throat-hold. The Zuagirs’s ghastly, blood-smeared countenance writhed in a tortured grin of muscular strain. He knew the terrible strength that lurked in Conan’s iron fingers, knew that if they closed on his throat they would not let go until his jugular was torn out.
He threw his body frantically from side to side, wrenching and tearing. The violence of his efforts sent both men rolling over and over, to crash against palm stems and carom against saddles and bales. Once Conan’s head was driven hard against a tree, but the blow did not weaken him, nor did the vicious drive the man got in with a knee to his groin. The Zuagir grew frantic, maddened by the fingers that sought his throat, the dark face, inexorable as iron, that glared into his own. Somewhere on the other side of the grove a weapon was being loosed, but Conan did not hear the whistle of arrows.
With a shriek like a wounded panther’s, the man whirled over again, a knot of straining muscles, and his hand, thrown out to balance himself, fell on the barrel of the weapon Conan had dropped. Quick as a flash he lifted it, just as Conan found the hold he had been seeking, and crashed the butt down on the Cimmerian’s head with every ounce of strength in his lean sinews, backed by the fear of death. A tremor ran through the Cimmerian’s iron frame, and his head fell forward. And in that instant the Zuagir tore free like a wolf breaking from a trap, leaving his long knife in Conan’s hand.
Even before Conan’s brain cleared, his war-trained muscles were responding instinctively. As the Zuagir sprang up, he shook his head and rose more slowly, the long knife in his hand. The desert warrior hurled the weapon at him, and caught up the knife which lay om the samd. He gripped it with both hands and wheeled, whirling the blade above his head; but before the blow could fall Conan struck with all the blinding speed he could muster. In under the descending blade he lunged and his knife, driven with all his strength and the momentum of his charge, plunged into his foe’s breast and drove him back against a tree into which the blade sank a hand’s breadth deep. The Zuagir cried out, a thick, choking cry that death cut short. An instant he sagged against the haft, dead on his feet and nailed upright to the palm tree. Then his knees buckled and his weight tore the knife from the wood and he pitched into the sand.
