The young soldier's hose and shirt were smeared with dried blood, wet
with sweat and gray with dust. Blood oozed from the deep gash in his
thigh, from the cuts on his breast and shoulder. Perspiration glistened
on his livid face and his fingers were knotted in the cover of the divan
on which he lay. Yet his words reflected mental suffering that
outweighed physical pain.
'She must be mad!' he repeated again and again, like one still stunned
by some monstrous and incredible happening. 'It's like a nightmare!
Taramis, whom all Khauran loves, betraying her people to that devil from
Koth! Oh, Ishtar, why was I not slain? Better die than live to see our
queen turn traitor and harlot!'
'Lie still, Valerius,' begged the girl who was washing and bandaging his
wounds with trembling hands. 'Oh, please lie still, darling! You will
make your wounds worse. I dared not summon a leech--'
'No,' muttered the wounded youth. 'Constantius's blue-bearded devils
will be searching the quarters for wounded Khaurani; they'll hang every
man who has wounds to show he fought against them. Oh, Taramis, how
could you betray the people who worshipped you?' In his fierce agony he
writhed, weeping in rage and shame, and the terrified girl caught him in
her arms, straining his tossing head against her bosom, imploring him to
be quiet.
'Better death than the black shame that has come upon Khauran this day,'
he groaned. 'Did you see it, Ivga?'
'No, Valerius.' Her soft, nimble fingers were again at work, gently
cleansing and closing the gaping edges of his raw wounds. 'I was
awakened by the noise of fighting in the streets--I looked out a
casement and saw the Shemites cutting down people; then presently I
heard you calling me faintly from the alley door.'
'I had reached the limits of my strength,' he muttered. 'I fell in the
alley and could not rise. I knew they'd find me soon if I lay there--I
killed three of the blue-bearded beasts, by Ishtar! They'll never
swagger through Khauran's streets, by the gods! The fiends are tearing
their hearts in hell!'
The trembling girl crooned soothingly to him, as to a wounded child, and
closed his panting lips with her own cool sweet mouth. But the fire that
raged in his soul would not allow him to lie silent.
'I was not on the wall when the Shemites entered,' he burst out. 'I was
asleep in the barracks, with the others not on duty. It was just before
dawn when our captain entered, and his face was pale under his helmet.
"The Shemites are in the city," he said. "The queen came to the southern
gate and gave orders that they should be admitted. She made the men come
down from the walls, where they've been on guard since Constantius
entered the kingdom. I don't understand it, and neither does anyone
else, but I heard her give the order, and we obeyed as we always do. We
are ordered to assemble in the square before the palace. Form ranks
outside the barracks and march--leave your arms and armor here. Ishtar
knows what this means, but it is the queen's order."
'Well, when we came to the square the Shemites were drawn up on foot
opposite the palace, ten thousand of the blue-bearded devils, fully
armed, and people's heads were thrust out of every window and door on
the square. The streets leading into the square were thronged by
bewildered folk. Taramis was standing on the steps of the palace, alone
except for Constantius, who stood stroking his mustache like a great
lean cat who has just devoured a sparrow. But fifty Shemites with bows
in their hands were ranged below them.
'That's where the queen's guard should have been, but they were drawn
up at the foot of the palace stair, as puzzled as we, though they had
come fully armed, in spite of the queen's order.
'Taramis spoke to us then, and told us that she had reconsidered the
proposal made her by Constantius--why, only yesterday she threw it in
his teeth in open court--and that she had decided to make him her royal
consort. She did not explain why she had brought the Shemites into the
city so treacherously. But she said that, as Constantius had control of
a body of professional fighting-men, the army of Khauran would no longer
be needed, and therefore she disbanded it, and ordered us to go quietly
to our homes.
'Why, obedience to our queen is second nature to us, but we were struck
dumb and found no word to answer. We broke ranks almost before we knew
what we were doing, like men in a daze.
'But when the palace guard was ordered to disarm likewise and disband,
the captain of the guard, Conan, interrupted. Men said he was off duty
the night before, and drunk. But he was wide awake now. He shouted to
the guardsmen to stand as they were until they received an order from
him--and such is his dominance of his men, that they obeyed in spite of
the queen. He strode up to the palace steps and glared at Taramis--and
then he roared: '"This is not the queen! This isn't Taramis! It's some
devil in masquerade!"
'Then hell was to pay! I don't know just what happened. I think a
Shemite struck Conan, and Conan killed him. The next instant the square
was a battleground. The Shemites fell on the guardsmen, and their spears
and arrows struck down many soldiers who had already disbanded.
'Some of us grabbed up such weapons as we could and fought back. We
hardly knew what we were fighting for, but it was against Constantius
and his devils--not against Taramis, I swear it! Constantius shouted to
cut the traitors down. We were not traitors!' Despair and bewilderment
shook his voice. The girl murmured pityingly, not understanding it all,
but aching in sympathy with her lover's suffering.
'The people did not know which side to take. It was a madhouse of
confusion and bewilderment. We who fought didn't have a chance, in no
formation, without armor and only half armed. The guards were fully
armed and drawn up in a square, but there were only five hundred of
them. They took a heavy toll before they were cut down, but there could
be only one conclusion to such a battle. And while her people were being
slaughtered before her, Taramis stood on the palace steps, with
Constantius's arm about her waist, and laughed like a heartless,
beautiful fiend! Gods, it's all mad--mad!
'I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the
courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were
strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down,
a hundred against one. When I saw him fall I dragged myself away feeling
as if the world had burst under my very fingers. I heard Constantius
call to his dogs to take the captain alive--stroking his mustache, with
that hateful smile on his lips!'
* * * * *
That smile was on the lips of Constantius at that very moment. He sat
his horse among a cluster of his men--thick-bodied Shemites with curled
blue-black beards and hooked noses; the low-swinging sun struck glints
from their peaked helmets and the silvered scales of their corselets.
Nearly a mile behind, the walls and towers of Khauran rose sheer out of
the meadowlands.
By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on
this grim tree a man hung, nailed there by iron spikes through his hands
and feet. Naked but for a loin-cloth, the man was almost a giant in
stature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs and
body, which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of agony
beaded his face and his mighty breast, but from under the tangled black
mane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue eyes blazed with
an unquenched fire. Blood oozed sluggishly from the lacerations in his
hands and feet.
Constantius saluted him mockingly.
'I am sorry, captain,' he said, 'that I cannot remain to ease your last
hours, but I have duties to perform in yonder city--I must not keep your
delicious queen waiting!' He laughed softly. 'So I leave you to your own
devices--and those beauties!' He pointed meaningly at the black shadows
which swept incessantly back and forth, high above.
'Were it not for them, I imagine that a powerful brute like yourself
should live on the cross for days. Do not cherish any illusions of
rescue because I am leaving you unguarded. I have had it proclaimed that
anyone seeking to take your body, living or dead, from the cross, will
be flayed alive together with all the members of his family, in the
public square. I am so firmly established in Khauran that my order is as
good as a regiment of guardsmen. I am leaving no guard, because the
vultures will not approach as long as anyone is near, and I do not wish
them to feel any constraint. That is also why I brought you so far from
the city. These desert vultures approach the walls no closer than this
spot.
'And so, brave captain, farewell! I will remember you when, in an hour,
Taramis lies in my arms.'
Blood started afresh from the pierced palms as the victim's mallet-like
fists clenched convulsively on the spike-heads. Knots and bunches of
muscle started out of the massive arms, and Conan beat his head forward
and spat savagely at Constantius's face. The _voivode_ laughed coolly,
wiped the saliva from his gorget and reined his horse about.
'Remember me when the vultures are tearing at your living flesh,' he
called mockingly. 'The desert scavengers are a particularly voracious
breed. I have seen men hang for hours on a cross, eyeless, earless, and
scalpless, before the sharp beaks had eaten their way into their
vitals.'
Without a backward glance he rode toward the city, a supple, erect
figure, gleaming in his burnished armor, his stolid, bearded henchmen
jogging beside him. A faint rising of dust from the worn trail marked
their passing.
The man hanging on the cross was the one touch of sentient life in a
landscape that seemed desolate and deserted in the late evening.
Khauran, less than a mile away, might have been on the other side of the
world, and existing in another age.
Shaking the sweat out of his eyes, Conan stared blankly at the familiar
terrain. On either side of the city, and beyond it, stretched the
fertile meadowlands, with cattle browsing in the distance where fields
and vineyards checkered the plain. The western and northern horizons
were dotted with villages, miniature in the distance. A lesser distance
to the southeast a silvery gleam marked the course of a river, and
beyond that river sandy desert began abruptly to stretch away and away
beyond the horizon. Conan stared at that expanse of empty waste
shimmering tawnily in the late sunlight as a trapped hawk stares at the
open sky. A revulsion shook him when he glanced at the gleaming towers
of Khauran. The city had betrayed him--trapped him into circumstances
that left him hanging to a wooden cross like a hare nailed to a tree.
A red lust for vengeance swept away the thought. Curses ebbed fitfully
from the man's lips. All his universe contracted, focused, became
incorporated in the four iron spikes that held him from life and
freedom. His great muscles quivered, knotting like iron cables. With the
sweat starting out on his graying skin, he sought to gain leverage, to
tear the nails from the wood. It was useless. They had been driven deep.
Then he tried to tear his hands off the spikes, and it was not the
knifing, abysmal agony that finally caused him to cease his efforts, but
the futility of it. The spike-heads were broad and heavy; he could not
drag them through the wounds. A surge of helplessness shook the giant,
for the first time in his life. He hung motionless, his head resting on
his breast, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of the sun.
A beat of wings caused him to look, just as a feathered shadow shot down
out of the sky. A keen beak, stabbing at his eyes, cut his cheek, and he
jerked his head aside, shutting his eyes involuntarily. He shouted, a
croaking, desperate shout of menace, and the vultures swerved away and
retreated, frightened by the sound. They resumed their wary circling
above his head. Blood trickled over Conan's mouth, and he licked his
lips involuntarily, spat at the salty taste.
Thirst assailed him savagely. He had drunk deeply of wine the night
before, and no water had touched his lips since before the battle in the
square, that dawn. And killing was thirsty, salt-sweaty work. He glared
at the distant river as a man in hell glares through the opened grille.
He thought of gushing freshets of white water he had breasted, laved to
the shoulders in liquid jade. He remembered great horns of foaming ale,
jacks of sparkling wine gulped carelessly or spilled on the tavern
floor. He bit his lip to keep from bellowing in intolerable anguish as a
tortured animal bellows.
The sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood. Against a crimson
rampart that banded the horizon the towers of the city floated unreal as
a dream. The very sky was tinged with blood to his misted glare. He
licked his blackened lips and stared with bloodshot eyes at the distant
river. It too seemed crimson with blood, and the shadows crawling up
from the east seemed black as ebony.
In his dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings. Lifting his head he
watched with the burning glare of a wolf the shadows wheeling above him.
He knew that his shouts would frighten them away no longer. One
dipped--dipped--lower and lower. Conan drew his head back as far as he
could, waiting with terrible patience. The vulture swept in with a swift
roar of wings. Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conan's chin
as he jerked his head aside; then before the bird could flash away,
Conan's head lunged forward on his mighty neck muscles, and his teeth,
snapping like those of a wolf, locked on the bare, wattled neck.
Instantly the vulture exploded into squawking, flapping hysteria. Its
thrashing wings blinded the man, and its talons ripped his chest. But
grimly he hung on, the muscles starting out in lumps on his jaws. And
the scavenger's neck-bones crunched between those powerful teeth. With a
spasmodic flutter the bird hung limp. Conan let go, spat blood from his
mouth. The other vultures, terrified by the fate of their companion,
were in full flight to a distant tree, where they perched like black
demons in conclave.
Ferocious triumph surged through Conan's numbed brain. Life beat
strongly and savagely through his veins. He could still deal death; he
still lived. Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of
death.
'By Mitra!' Either a voice spoke, or he suffered from hallucination. 'In
all my life I have never seen such a thing!'
Shaking the sweat and blood from his eyes, Conan saw four horsemen
sitting their steeds in the twilight and staring up at him. Three were
lean, white-robed hawks, Zuagir tribesmen without a doubt, nomads from
beyond the river. The other was dressed like them in a white, girdled
_khalat_ and a flowing head-dress which, banded about the temples with a
triple circlet of braided camel-hair, fell to his shoulders. But he was
not a Shemite. The dust was not so thick, nor Conan's hawk-like sight so
clouded, that he could not perceive the man's facial characteristics.
He was as tall as Conan, though not so heavy-limbed. His shoulders were
broad and his supple figure was hard as steel and whalebone. A short
black beard did not altogether mask the aggressive jut of his lean jaw,
and gray eyes cold and piercing as a sword gleamed from the shadow of
the _kafieh_. Quieting his restless steed with a quick, sure hand, this
man spoke: 'By Mitra, I should know this man!'
'Aye!' It was the guttural accents of a Zuagir. 'It is the Cimmerian who
was captain of the queen's guard!'
'She must be casting off all her old favorites,' muttered the rider.
'Who'd have ever thought it of Queen Taramis? I'd rather have had a
long, bloody war. It would have given us desert folk a chance to
plunder. As it is we've come this close to the walls and found only this
nag'--he glanced at a fine gelding led by one of the nomads--'and this
dying dog.'
Conan lifted his bloody head.
'If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you,
you Zaporoskan thief!' he rasped through blackened lips.
'Mitra, the knave knows me!' exclaimed the other. 'How, knave, do you
know me?'
'There's only one of your breed in these parts,' muttered Conan. 'You
are Olgerd Vladislav, the outlaw chief.'
'Aye! and once a hetman of the _kozaki_ of the Zaporoskan River, as you
have guessed. Would you like to live?'
'Only a fool would ask that question,' panted Conan.
'I am a hard man,' said Olgerd, 'and toughness is the only quality I
respect in a man. I shall judge if you are a man, or only a dog after
all, fit only to lie here and die.'
'If we cut him down we may be seen from the walls,' objected one of the
nomads.
Olgerd shook his head.
'The dusk is deep. Here, take this ax, Djebal, and cut down the cross at
the base.'
'If it falls forward it will crush him,' objected Djebal. 'I can cut it
so it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack his
skull and tear loose all his entrails.'
'If he's worthy to ride with me he'll survive it,' answered Olgerd
imperturbably. 'If not, then he doesn't deserve to live. Cut!'
The first impact of the battle-ax against the wood and its accompanying
vibrations sent lances of agony through Conan's swollen feet and hands.
Again and again the blade fell, and each stroke reverberated on his
bruised brain, setting his tortured nerves aquiver. But he set his teeth
and made no sound. The ax cut through, the cross reeled on its
splintered base and toppled backward. Conan made his whole body a solid
knot of iron-hard muscle, jammed his head back hard against the wood and
held it rigid there. The beam struck the ground heavily and rebounded
slightly. The impact tore his wounds and dazed him for an instant. He
fought the rushing tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but realized that
the iron muscles that sheathed his vitals had saved him from permanent
injury.
And he had made no sound, though blood oozed from his nostrils and his
belly-muscles quivered with nausea. With a grunt of approval Djebal bent
over him with a pair of pincers used to draw horse-shoe nails, and
gripped the head of the spike in Conan's right hand, tearing the skin to
get a grip on the deeply embedded head. The pincers were small for that
work. Djebal sweated and tugged, swearing and wrestling with the
stubborn iron, working it back and forth--in swollen flesh as well as in
wood. Blood started, oozing over the Cimmerian's fingers. He lay so
still he might have been dead, except for the spasmodic rise and fall of
his great chest. The spike gave way, and Djebal held up the
blood-stained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away and
bent over the other.
The process was repeated, and then Djebal turned his attention to
Conan's skewered feet. But the Cimmerian, struggling up to a sitting
posture, wrenched the pincers from his fingers and sent him staggering
backward with a violent shove. Conan's hands were swollen to almost
twice their normal size. His fingers felt like misshapen thumbs, and
closing his hands was an agony that brought blood streaming from under
his grinding teeth. But somehow, clutching the pincers clumsily with
both hands, he managed to wrench out first one spike and then the other.
They were not driven so deeply into the wood as the others had been.
He rose stiffly and stood upright on his swollen, lacerated feet,
swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from his face and body. Cramps
assailed him and he clamped his jaws against the desire to retch.
Olgerd, watching him impersonally, motioned him toward the stolen horse.
Conan stumbled toward it, and every step was a stabbing, throbbing hell
that flecked his lips with bloody foam. One misshapen, groping hand fell
clumsily on the saddle-bow, a bloody foot somehow found the stirrup.
Setting his teeth, he swung up, and he almost fainted in midair; but he
came down in the saddle--and as he did so, Olgerd struck the horse
sharply with his whip. The startled beast reared, and the man in the
saddle swayed and slumped like a sack of sand, almost unseated. Conan
had wrapped a rein about each hand, holding it in place with a clamping
thumb. Drunkenly he exerted the strength of his knotted biceps,
wrenching the horse down; it screamed, its jaw almost dislocated.
One of the Shemites lifted a water-flask questioningly.
Olgerd shook his head.
'Let him wait until we get to camp. It's only ten miles. If he's fit to
live in the desert he'll live that long without a drink.'
The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; among them Conan
swayed like a drunken man in the saddle, bloodshot eyes glazed, foam
drying on his blackened lips.