Red Nails
By ROBERT E. HOWARD
_One of the strangest stories ever written--the tale of a barbarian
adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird roofed city inhabited by the
most peculiar race of men ever spawned_
Nearly four years ago, WEIRD TALES published a story called "The
Phoenix on the Sword," built around a barbarian adventurer named
Conan, who had become king of a country by sheer force of valor and
brute strength. The author of that story was Robert E. Howard, who
was already a favorite with the readers of this magazine for his
stories of Solomon Kane, the dour English Puritan and redresser of
wrongs. The stories about Conan were speedily acclaimed by our
readers, and the barbarian's weird adventures became immensely
popular. The story presented herewith is one of the most powerful
and eery weird tales yet written about Conan. We commend this story
to you, for we know you will enjoy it through and through.
_1. The Skull on the Crag_
The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs
wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the
gold-tasseled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a booted
foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-worked
saddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned
about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.
They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her
horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that
quested under the somber twilight of the lofty arches formed by
intertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of her
magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.
She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her
whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the
femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing
and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present
environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches,
which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a
wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather
came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved
silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straight
double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden
hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson
satin.
Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an
unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should have
been posed against a background of sea-clouds, painted masts and
wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And
that was as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red
Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever
seafarers gather.
[Illustration: "Convinced that his death was upon him, the Cimmerian
acted according to his instinct."]
She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and
see the sky which presumably lay about it, but presently gave it up with
a muttered oath.
Leaving her horse tied she strode off toward the east, glancing back
toward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in her mind.
The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty
boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of any
small animals. For leagues she had traveled in a realm of brooding
stillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.
She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but she felt the gnawings of
hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she had
sustained herself since exhausting the food she had brought in her
saddle-bags.
Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping of dark, flint-like rock
that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among the
trees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves.
Perhaps its peak rose above the tree-tops, and from it she could see
what lay beyond--if, indeed, anything lay beyond but more of this
apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many
days.
A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of the
crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet she came to the belt of
leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd
close to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about
it, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, not
able to see either above or below her; but presently she glimpsed blue
sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw the
forest roof stretching away under her feet.
She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the
tree-tops, and from it rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peak
of the crag she had climbed. But something else caught her attention at
the moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of blown dead
leaves which carpeted the shelf. She kicked them aside and looked down
on the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached
frame, but saw no broken bones nor any sign of violence. The man must
have died a natural death; though why he should have climbed a tall crag
to die she could not imagine.
* * * * *
She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward the
horizons. The forest roof--which looked like a floor from her
vantage-point--was just as impenetrable as from below. She could not
even see the pool by which she had left her horse. She glanced
northward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the
rolling green ocean stretching away and away, with only a vague blue
line in the distance to hint of the hill-range she had crossed days
before, to plunge into this leafy waste.
West and east the view was the same; though the blue hill-line was
lacking in those directions. But when she turned her eyes southward she
stiffened and caught her breath. A mile away in that direction the
forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dotted
plain. And in the midst of that plain rose the walls and towers of a
city. Valeria swore in amazement. This passed belief. She would not have
been surprised to sight human habitations of another sort--the
beehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff-dwellings of the
mysterious brown race which legends declared inhabited some country of
this unexplored region. But it was a startling experience to come upon a
walled city here so many long weeks' march from the nearest outposts of
any sort of civilization.
Her hands tiring from clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, she let
herself down on the shelf, frowning in indecision. She had come
far--from the camp of the mercenaries by the border town of Sukhmet
amidst the level grasslands, where desperate adventurers of many races
guard the Stygian frontier against the raids that come up like a red
wave from Darfar. Her flight had been blind, into a country of which she
was wholly ignorant. And now she wavered between an urge to ride
directly to that city in the plain, and the instinct of caution which
prompted her to skirt it widely and continue her solitary flight.
Her thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below her. She
wheeled cat-like, snatched at her sword; and then she froze motionless,
staring wide-eyed at the man before her.
He was almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under his
skin which the sun had burned brown. His garb was similar to hers,
except that he wore a broad leather belt instead of a girdle. Broadsword
and poniard hung from this belt.
"Conan, the Cimmerian!" ejaculated the woman. "What are _you_ doing on
my trail?"
He grinned hardly, and his fierce blue eyes burned with a light any
woman could understand as they ran over her magnificent figure,
lingering on the swell of her splendid breasts beneath the light shirt,
and the clear white flesh displayed between breeches and boot-tops.
"Don't you know?" he laughed. "Haven't I made my admiration for you
plain ever since I first saw you?"
"A stallion could have made it no plainer," she answered disdainfully.
"But I never expected to encounter you so far from the ale-barrels and
meat-pots of Sukhmet. Did you really follow me from Zarallo's camp, or
were you whipped forth for a rogue?"
He laughed at her insolence and flexed his mighty biceps.
"You know Zarallo didn't have enough knaves to whip me out of camp," he
grinned. "Of course I followed you. Lucky thing for you, too, wench!
When you knifed that Stygian officer, you forfeited Zarallo's favor and
protection, and you outlawed yourself with the Stygians."
"I know it," she replied sullenly. "But what else could I do? You know
what my provocation was."
"Sure," he agreed. "If I'd been there, I'd have knifed him myself. But
if a woman must live in the war-camps of men, she can expect such
things."
Valeria stamped her booted foot and swore.
"Why won't men let me live a man's life?"
"That's obvious!" Again his eager eyes devoured her. "But you were wise
to run away. The Stygians would have had you skinned. That officer's
brother followed you; faster than you thought, I don't doubt. He wasn't
far behind you when I caught up with him. His horse was better than
yours. He'd have caught you and cut your throat within a few more
miles."
"Well?" she demanded.
"Well what?" He seemed puzzled.
"What of the Stygian?"
"Why, what do you suppose?" he returned impatiently. "I killed him, of
course, and left his carcass for the vultures. That delayed me, though,
and I almost lost your trail when you crossed the rocky spurs of the
hills. Otherwise I'd have caught up with you long ago."
"And now you think you'll drag me back to Zarallo's camp?" she sneered.
"Don't talk like a fool," he grunted. "Come, girl, don't be such a
spitfire. I'm not like that Stygian you knifed, and you know it."
"A penniless vagabond," she taunted.
He laughed at her.
"What do you call yourself? You haven't enough money to buy a new seat
for your breeches. Your disdain doesn't deceive me. You know I've
commanded bigger ships and more men than you ever did in your life. As
for being penniless--what rover isn't, most of the time? I've squandered
enough gold in the sea-ports of the world to fill a galleon. You know
that, too."
"Where are the fine ships and the bold lads you commanded, now?" she
sneered.
"At the bottom of the sea, mostly," he replied cheerfully. "The
Zingarans sank my last ship off the Shemite shore--that's why I joined
Zarallo's Free Companions. But I saw I'd been stung when we marched to
the Darfar border. The pay was poor and the wine was sour, and I don't
like black women. And that's the only kind that came to our camp at
Sukhmet--rings in their noses and their teeth filed--bah! Why did you
join Zarallo? Sukhmet's a long way from salt water."
"Red Ortho wanted to make me his mistress," she answered sullenly. "I
jumped overboard one night and swam ashore when we were anchored off the
Kushite coast. Off Zabhela, it was. There a Shemite trader told me that
Zarallo had brought his Free Companies south to guard the Darfar border.
No better employment offered. I joined an east-bound caravan and
eventually came to Sukhmet."
* * * * *
"It was madness to plunge southward as you did," commented Conan, "but
it was wise, too, for Zarallo's patrols never thought to look for you in
this direction. Only the brother of the man you killed happened to
strike your trail."
"And now what do you intend doing?" she demanded.
"Turn west," he answered. "I've been this far south, but not this far
east. Many days' traveling to the west will bring us to the open
savannas, where the black tribes graze their cattle. I have friends
among them. We'll get to the coast and find a ship. I'm sick of the
jungle."
"Then be on your way," she advised. "I have other plans."
"Don't be a fool!" He showed irritation for the first time. "You can't
keep on wandering through this forest."
"I can if I choose."
"But what do you intend doing?"
"That's none of your affair," she snapped.
"Yes, it is," he answered calmly. "Do you think I've followed you this
far, to turn around and ride off empty-handed? Be sensible, wench. I'm
not going to harm you."
He stepped toward her, and she sprang back, whipping out her sword.
"Keep back, you barbarian dog! I'll spit you like a roast pig!"
He halted, reluctantly, and demanded: "Do you want me to take that toy
away from you and spank you with it?"
"Words! Nothing but words!" she mocked, lights like the gleam of the sun
on blue water dancing in her reckless eyes.
He knew it was the truth. No living man could disarm Valeria of the
Brotherhood with his bare hands. He scowled, his sensations a tangle of
conflicting emotions. He was angry, yet he was amused and filled with
admiration for her spirit. He burned with eagerness to seize that
splendid figure and crush it in his iron arms, yet he greatly desired
not to hurt the girl. He was torn between a desire to shake her soundly,
and a desire to caress her. He knew if he came any nearer her sword
would be sheathed in his heart. He had seen Valeria kill too many men in
border forays and tavern brawls to have any illusions about her. He knew
she was as quick and ferocious as a tigress. He could draw his
broadsword and disarm her, beat the blade out of her hand, but the
thought of drawing a sword on a woman, even without intent of injury,
was extremely repugnant to him.
"Blast your soul, you hussy!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "I'm going
to take off your----"
He started toward her, his angry passion making him reckless, and she
poised herself for a deadly thrust. Then came a startling interruption
to a scene at once ludicrous and perilous.
"_What's that?_"
It was Valeria who exclaimed, but they both started violently, and Conan
wheeled like a cat, his great sword flashing into his hand. Back in the
forest had burst forth an appalling medley of screams--the screams of
horses in terror and agony. Mingled with their screams there came the
snap of splintering bones.
"Lions are slaying the horses!" cried Valeria.
"Lions, nothing!" snorted Conan, his eyes blazing. "Did you hear a lion
roar? Neither did I! Listen at those bones snap--not even a lion could
make that much noise killing a horse."
* * * * *
He hurried down the natural ramp and she followed, their personal feud
forgotten in the adventurers' instinct to unite against common peril.
The screams had ceased when they worked their way downward through the
green veil of leaves that brushed the rock.
"I found your horse tied by the pool back there," he muttered, treading
so noiselessly that she no longer wondered how he had surprised her on
the crag. "I tied mine beside it and followed the tracks of your boots.
Watch, now!"
They had emerged from the belt of leaves, and stared down into the lower
reaches of the forest. Above them the green roof spread its dusky
canopy. Below them the sunlight filtered in just enough to make a
jade-tinted twilight. The giant trunks of trees less than a hundred
yards away looked dim and ghostly.
"The horses should be beyond that thicket, over there," whispered Conan,
and his voice might have been a breeze moving through the branches.
"Listen!"
Valeria had already heard, and a chill crept through her veins; so she
unconsciously laid her white hand on her companion's muscular brown arm.
From beyond the thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the loud
rending of flesh, together with the grinding, slobbering sounds of a
horrible feast.
"Lions wouldn't make that noise," whispered Conan. "Something's eating
our horses, but it's not a lion--Crom!"
The noise stopped suddenly, and Conan swore softly. A suddenly risen
breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the unseen
slayer was hidden.
"Here it comes!" muttered Conan, half lifting his sword.
The thicket was violently agitated, and Valeria clutched Conan's arm
hard. Ignorant of jungle-lore, she yet knew that no animal she had ever
seen could have shaken the tall brush like that.
"It must be as big as an elephant," muttered Conan, echoing her thought.
"What the devil----" His voice trailed away in stunned silence.
Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning
jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth
wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a
thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans
clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and
dripped from the huge mouth.
The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a
long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after
it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan,
a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish
belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher
than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that
of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.
"Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him.
"I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind-legs and reach
us----"
With a snapping and rending of bushes and saplings the monster came
hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before him like
leaves blown before a wind. As Valeria plunged into the leafy screen a
backward glance showed her the titan rearing up fearsomely on his
massive hind-legs, even as Conan had predicted. The sight sent panic
racing through her. As he reared, the beast seemed more gigantic than
ever; his snouted head towered among the trees. Then Conan's iron hand
closed on her wrist and she was jerked headlong into the blinding welter
of the leaves, and out again into the hot sunshine above, just as the
monster fell forward with his front feet on the crag with an impact that
made the rock vibrate.
* * * * *
Behind the fugitives the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they
looked down for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed
among the green leaves, eyes flaming, jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks
clashed together futilely, and after that the head was withdrawn,
vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool.
Peering down through broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it
squatting on its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly
up at them.
Valeria shuddered.
"How long do you suppose he'll crouch there?"
Conan kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf.
"That fellow must have climbed up here to escape him, or one like him.
He must have died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing
must be a dragon, such as the black people speak of in their legends. If
so, it won't leave here until we're both dead."
Valeria looked at him blankly, her resentment forgotten. She fought down
a surging of panic. She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times
in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning
war-ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the trampled sandy
beaches where the desperate men of the Red Brotherhood bathed their
knives in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the
prospect now confronting her congealed her blood. A cutlas-stroke in the
heat of battle was nothing; but to sit idle and helpless on a bare rock
until she perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous survival of an
elder age--the thought sent panic throbbing through her brain.
"He must leave to eat and drink," she said helplessly.
"He won't have to go far to do either," Conan pointed out. "He's just
gorged on horse-meat, and like a real snake, he can go for a long time
without eating or drinking again. But he doesn't sleep after eating,
like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, he can't climb this crag."
Conan spoke imperturbably. He was a barbarian, and the terrible patience
of the wilderness and its children was as much a part of him as his
lusts and rages. He could endure a situation like this with a coolness
impossible to a civilized person.
"Can't we get into the trees and get away, traveling like apes through
the branches?" she asked desperately.
He shook his head. "I thought of that. The branches that touch the crag
down there are too light. They'd break with our weight. Besides, I have
an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots."
"Well, are we going to sit here on our rumps until we starve, like
that?" she cried furiously, kicking the skull clattering across the
ledge. "I won't do it! I'll go down there and cut his damned head
off----"
Conan had seated himself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire.
He looked up with a glint of admiration at her blazing eyes and tense,
quivering figure, but, realizing that she was in just the mood for any
madness, he let none of his admiration sound in his voice.
"Sit down," he grunted, catching her by her wrist and pulling her down
on his knee. She was too surprised to resist as he took her sword from
her hand and shoved it back in its sheath. "Sit still and calm down.
You'd only break your steel on his scales. He'd gobble you up at one
gulp, or smash you like an egg with that spiked tail of his. We'll get
out of this jam some way, but we shan't do it by getting chewed up and
swallowed."
She made no reply, nor did she seek to repulse his arm from about her
waist. She was frightened, and the sensation was new to Valeria of the
Red Brotherhood. So she sat on her companion's--or captor's--knee with a
docility that would have amazed Zarallo, who had anathematized her as a
she-devil out of hell's seraglio.
Conan played idly with her curly yellow locks, seemingly intent only
upon his conquest. Neither the skeleton at his feet nor the monster
crouching below disturbed his mind or dulled the edge of his interest.
The girl's restless eyes, roving the leaves below them, discovered
splashes of color among the green. It was fruit, large, darkly crimson
globes suspended from the boughs of a tree whose broad leaves were a
peculiarly rich and vivid green. She became aware of both thirst and
hunger, though thirst had not assailed her until she knew she could not
descend from the crag to find food and water.
"We need not starve," she said. "There is fruit we can reach."
Conan glanced where she pointed.
"If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite of a dragon," he grunted.
"That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa.
Derketa is the Queen of the Dead. Drink a little of the juice, or spill
it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot
of this crag."
"Oh!"
She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their
predicament, she reflected gloomily. She saw no way of escape, and Conan
seemed to be concerned only with her supple waist and curly tresses. If
he was trying to formulate a plan of escape, he did not show it.
"If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak,"
she said presently, "you'll see something that will surprise you."
He cast her a questioning glance, then obeyed with a shrug of his
massive shoulders. Clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, he stared out
over the forest roof.
* * * * *
He stood a long moment in silence, posed like a bronze statue on the
rock.
"It's a walled city, right enough," he muttered presently. "Was that
where you were going, when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?"
"I saw it before you came. I knew nothing of it when I left Sukhmet."
"Who'd have thought to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians
ever penetrated this far. Could black people build a city like that? I
see no herds on the plain, no signs of cultivation, or people moving
about."
"How could you hope to see all that, at this distance?" she demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders and dropped down on the shelf.
"Well, the folk of the city can't help us just now. And they might not,
if they could. The people of the Black Countries are generally hostile
to strangers. Probably stick us full of spears----"
He stopped short and stood silent, as if he had forgotten what he was
saying, frowning down at the crimson spheres gleaming among the leaves.
"Spears!" he muttered. "What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of
that before! That shows what a pretty woman does to a man's mind."
"What are you talking about?" she inquired.
Without answering her question, he descended to the belt of leaves and
looked down through them. The great brute squatted below, watching the
crag with the frightful patience of the reptile folk. So might one of
his breed have glared up at their troglodyte ancestors, treed on a
high-flung rock, in the dim dawn ages. Conan cursed him without heat,
and began cutting branches, reaching out and severing them as far from
the end as he could reach. The agitation of the leaves made the monster
restless. He rose from his haunches and lashed his hideous tail,
snapping off saplings as if they had been toothpicks. Conan watched him
warily from the corner of his eye, and just as Valeria believed the
dragon was about to hurl himself up the crag again, the Cimmerian drew
back and climbed up to the ledge with the branches he had cut. There
were three of these, slender shafts about seven feet long, but not
larger than his thumb. He had also cut several strands of tough, thin
vine.
"Branches too light for spear-hafts, and creepers no thicker than
cords," he remarked, indicating the foliage about the crag. "It won't
hold our weight--but there's strength in union. That's what the
Aquilonian renegades used to tell us Cimmerians when they came into the
hills to raise an army to invade their own country. But we always fight
by clans and tribes."
"What the devil has that got to do with those sticks?" she demanded.
"You wait and see."
Gathering the sticks in a compact bundle, he wedged his poniard hilt
between them at one end. Then with the vines he bound them together, and
when he had completed his task, he had a spear of no small strength,
with a sturdy shaft seven feet in length.
"What good will that do?" she demanded. "You told me that a blade
couldn't pierce his scales----"
"He hasn't got scales all over him," answered Conan. "There's more than
one way of skinning a panther."
Moving down to the edge of the leaves, he reached the spear up and
carefully thrust the blade through one of the Apples of Derketa, drawing
aside to avoid the darkly purple drops that dripped from the pierced
fruit. Presently he withdrew the blade and showed her the blue steel
stained a dull purplish crimson.
"I don't know whether it will do the job or not," quoth he. "There's
enough poison there to kill an elephant, but--well, we'll see."
* * * * *
Valeria was close behind him as he let himself down among the leaves.
Cautiously holding the poisoned pike away from him, he thrust his head
through the branches and addressed the monster.
"What are you waiting down there for, you misbegotten offspring of
questionable parents?" was one of his more printable queries. "Stick
your ugly head up here again, you long-necked brute--or do you want me
to come down there and kick you loose from your illegitimate spine?"
There was more of it--some of it couched in eloquence that made Valeria
stare, in spite of her profane education among the seafarers. And it had
its effect on the monster. Just as the incessant yapping of a dog
worries and enrages more constitutionally silent animals, so the
clamorous voice of a man rouses fear in some bestial bosoms and insane
rage in others. Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic
brute reared up on its mighty hind legs and elongated its neck and body
in a furious effort to reach this vociferous pigmy whose clamor was
disturbing the primeval silence of its ancient realm.
But Conan had judged his distance with precision. Some five feet below
him the mighty head crashed terribly but futilely through the leaves.
And as the monstrous mouth gaped like that of a great snake, Conan drove
his spear into the red angle of the jaw-bone hinge. He struck downward
with all the strength of both arms, driving the long poniard blade to
the hilt in flesh, sinew and bone.
Instantly the jaws clashed convulsively together, severing the
triple-pieced shaft and almost precipitating Conan from his perch. He
would have fallen but for the girl behind him, who caught his sword-belt
in a desperate grasp. He clutched at a rocky projection, and grinned his
thanks back at her.
Down on the ground the monster was wallowing like a dog with pepper in
its eyes. He shook his head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened
his mouth repeatedly to its widest extent. Presently he got a huge front
foot on the stump of the shaft and managed to tear the blade out. Then
he threw up his head, jaws wide and spouting blood, and glared up at the
crag with such concentrated and intelligent fury that Valeria trembled
and drew her sword. The scales along his back and flanks turned from
rusty brown to a dull lurid red. Most horribly the monster's silence was
broken. The sounds that issued from his blood-streaming jaws did not
sound like anything that could have been produced by an earthly
creation.
With harsh, grating roars, the dragon hurled himself at the crag that
was the citadel of his enemies. Again and again his mighty head crashed
upward through the branches, snapping vainly on empty air. He hurled his
full ponderous weight against the rock until it vibrated from base to
crest. And rearing upright he gripped it with his front legs like a man
and tried to tear it up by the roots, as if it had been a tree.
This exhibition of primordial fury chilled the blood in Valeria's veins,
but Conan was too close to the primitive himself to feel anything but a
comprehending interest. To the barbarian, no such gulf existed between
himself and other men, and the animals, as existed in the conception of
Valeria. The monster below them, to Conan, was merely a form of life
differing from himself mainly in physical shape. He attributed to it
characteristics similar to his own, and saw in its wrath a counterpart
of his rages, in its roars and bellowings merely reptilian equivalents
to the curses he had bestowed upon it. Feeling a kinship with all wild
things, even dragons, it was impossible for him to experience the sick
horror which assailed Valeria at the sight of the brute's ferocity.
He sat watching it tranquilly, and pointed out the various changes that
were taking place in its voice and actions.
"The poison's taking hold," he said with conviction.
"I don't believe it." To Valeria it seemed preposterous to suppose that
anything, however lethal, could have any effect on that mountain of
muscle and fury.
"There's pain in his voice," declared Conan. "First he was merely angry
because of the stinging in his jaw. Now he feels the bite of the poison.
Look! He's staggering. He'll be blind in a few more minutes. What did I
tell you?"
For suddenly the dragon had lurched about and went crashing off through
the bushes.
"Is he running away?" inquired Valeria uneasily.
"He's making for the pool!" Conan sprang up, galvanized into swift
activity. "The poison makes him thirsty. Come on! He'll be blind in a
few moments, but he can smell his way back to the foot of the crag, and
if our scent's here still, he'll sit there until he dies. And others of
his kind may come at his cries. Let's go!"
"Down there?" Valeria was aghast.
"Sure! We'll make for the city! They may cut our heads off there, but
it's our only chance. We may run into a thousand more dragons on the
way, but it's sure death to stay here. If we wait until he dies, we may
have a dozen more to deal with. After me, in a hurry!"
He went down the ramp as swiftly as an ape, pausing only to aid his less
agile companion, who, until she saw the Cimmerian climb, had fancied
herself the equal of any man in the rigging of a ship or on the sheer
face of a cliff.
* * * * *
They descended into the gloom below the branches and slid to the ground
silently, though Valeria felt as if the pounding of her heart must
surely be heard from far away. A noisy gurgling and lapping beyond the
dense thicket indicated that the dragon was drinking at the pool.
"As soon as his belly is full he'll be back," muttered Conan. "It may
take hours for the poison to kill him--if it does at all."
Somewhere beyond the forest the sun was sinking to the horizon. The
forest was a misty twilight place of black shadows and dim vistas. Conan
gripped Valeria's wrist and glided away from the foot of the crag. He
made less noise than a breeze blowing among the tree-trunks, but Valeria
felt as if her soft boots were betraying their flight to all the forest.
"I don't think he can follow a trail," muttered Conan. "But if a wind
blew our body-scent to him, he could smell us out."
"Mitra grant that the wind blow not!" Valeria breathed.
Her face was a pallid oval in the gloom. She gripped her sword in her
free hand, but the feel of the shagreen-bound hilt inspired only a
feeling of helplessness in her.
They were still some distance from the edge of the forest when they
heard a snapping and crashing behind them. Valeria bit her lip to check
a cry.
"He's on our trail!" she whispered fiercely.
Conan shook his head.
"He didn't smell us at the rock, and he's blundering about through the
forest trying to pick up our scent. Come on! It's the city or nothing
now! He could tear down any tree we'd climb. If only the wind stays
down----"
They stole on until the trees began to thin out ahead of them. Behind
them the forest was a black impenetrable ocean of shadows. The ominous
crackling still sounded behind them, as the dragon blundered in his
erratic course.
"There's the plain ahead," breathed Valeria. "A little more and
we'll----"
"Crom!" swore Conan.
"Mitra!" whispered Valeria.
Out of the south a wind had sprung up.
It blew over them directly into the black forest behind them. Instantly
a horrible roar shook the woods. The aimless snapping and crackling of
the bushes changed to a sustained crashing as the dragon came like a
hurricane straight toward the spot from which the scent of his enemies
was wafted.
"Run!" snarled Conan, his eyes blazing like those of a trapped wolf.
"It's all we can do!"
Sailor's boots are not made for sprinting, and the life of a pirate does
not train one for a runner. Within a hundred yards Valeria was panting
and reeling in her gait, and behind them the crashing gave way to a
rolling thunder as the monster broke out of the thickets and into the
more open ground.
Conan's iron arm about the woman's waist half lifted her; her feet
scarcely touched the earth as she was borne along at a speed she could
never have attained herself. If he could keep out of the beast's way for
a bit, perhaps that betraying wind would shift--but the wind held, and a
quick glance over his shoulder showed Conan that the monster was almost
upon them, coming like a war-galley in front of a hurricane. He thrust
Valeria from him with a force that sent her reeling a dozen feet to fall
in a crumpled heap at the foot of the nearest tree, and the Cimmerian
wheeled in the path of the thundering titan.
Convinced that his death was upon him, the Cimmerian acted according to
his instinct, and hurled himself full at the awful face that was bearing
down on him. He leaped, slashing like a wildcat, felt his sword cut deep
into the scales that sheathed the mighty snout--and then a terrific
impact knocked him rolling and tumbling for fifty feet with all the wind
and half the life battered out of him.
How the stunned Cimmerian regained his feet, not even he could have ever
told. But the only thought that filled his brain was of the woman lying
dazed and helpless almost in the path of the hurtling fiend, and before
the breath came whistling back into his gullet he was standing over her
with his sword in his hand.
She lay where he had thrown her, but she was struggling to a sitting
posture. Neither tearing tusks nor trampling feet had touched her. It
had been a shoulder or front leg that struck Conan, and the blind
monster rushed on, forgetting the victims whose scent it had been
following, in the sudden agony of its death throes. Headlong on its
course it thundered until its low-hung head crashed into a gigantic tree
in its path. The impact tore the tree up by the roots and must have
dashed the brains from the misshapen skull. Tree and monster fell
together, and the dazed humans saw the branches and leaves shaken by the
convulsions of the creature they covered--and then grow quiet.
Conan lifted Valeria to her feet and together they started away at a
reeling run. A few moments later they emerged into the still twilight of
the treeless plain.
* * * * *
Conan paused an instant and glanced back at the ebon fastness behind
them. Not a leaf stirred, nor a bird chirped. It stood as silent as it
must have stood before Man was created.
"Come on," muttered Conan, taking his companion's hand. "It's touch and
go now. If more dragons come out of the woods after us----"
He did not have to finish the sentence.
The city looked very far away across the plain, farther than it had
looked from the crag. Valeria's heart hammered until she felt as if it
would strangle her. At every step she expected to hear the crashing of
the bushes and see another colossal nightmare bearing down upon them.
But nothing disturbed the silence of the thickets.
With the first mile between them and the woods, Valeria breathed more
easily. Her buoyant self-confidence began to thaw out again. The sun had
set and darkness was gathering over the plain, lightened a little by the
stars that made stunted ghosts out of the cactus growths.
"No cattle, no plowed fields," muttered Conan. "How do these people
live?"
"Perhaps the cattle are in pens for the night," suggested Valeria, "and
the fields and grazing-pastures are on the other side of the city."
"Maybe," he grunted. "I didn't see any from the crag, though."
The moon came up behind the city, etching walls and towers blackly in
the yellow glow. Valeria shivered. Black against the moon the strange
city had a somber, sinister look.
Perhaps something of the same feeling occurred to Conan, for he stopped,
glanced about him, and grunted: "We stop here. No use coming to their
gates in the night. They probably wouldn't let us in. Besides, we need
rest, and we don't know how they'll receive us. A few hours' sleep will
put us in better shape to fight or run."
He led the way to a bed of cactus which grew in a circle--a phenomenon
common to the southern desert. With his sword he chopped an opening, and
motioned Valeria to enter.
"We'll be safe from snakes here, anyhow."
She glanced fearfully back toward the black line that indicated the
forest some six miles away.
"Suppose a dragon comes out of the woods?"
"We'll keep watch," he answered, though he made no suggestion as to what
they would do in such an event. He was staring at the city, a few miles
away. Not a light shone from spire or tower. A great black mass of
mystery, it reared cryptically against the moonlit sky.
"Lie down and sleep. I'll keep the first watch."
She hesitated, glancing at him uncertainly, but he sat down cross-legged
in the opening, facing toward the plain, his sword across his knees, his
back to her. Without further comment she lay down on the sand inside the
spiky circle.
"Wake me when the moon is at its zenith," she directed.
He did not reply nor look toward her. Her last impression, as she sank
into slumber, was of his muscular figure, immobile as a statue hewn out
of bronze, outlined against the low-hanging stars.
_2. By the Blaze of the Fire-Jewels_
Valeria awoke with a start, to the realization that a gray dawn was
stealing over the plain.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Conan squatted beside the cactus, cutting
off the thick pears and dexterously twitching out the spikes.
"You didn't awake me," she accused. "You let me sleep all night!"
"You were tired," he answered. "Your posterior must have been sore, too,
after that long ride. You pirates aren't used to horseback."
"What about yourself?" she retorted.
"I was a _kozak_ before I was a pirate," he answered. "They live in the
saddle. I snatch naps like a panther watching beside the trail for a
deer to come by. My ears keep watch while my eyes sleep."
And indeed the giant barbarian seemed as much refreshed as if he had
slept the whole night on a golden bed. Having removed the thorns, and
peeled off the tough skin, he handed the girl a thick, juicy cactus
leaf.
"Skin your teeth in that pear. It's food and drink to a desert man. I
was a chief of the Zuagirs once--desert men who live by plundering the
caravans."
"Is there anything you haven't been?" inquired the girl, half in
derision and half in fascination.
"I've never been king of an Hyborian kingdom," he grinned, taking an
enormous mouthful of cactus. "But I've dreamed of being even that. I
may be too, some day. Why shouldn't I?"
She shook her head in wonder at his calm audacity, and fell to devouring
her pear. She found it not unpleasing to the palate, and full of cool
and thirst-satisfying juice. Finishing his meal, Conan wiped his hands
in the sand, rose, ran his fingers through his thick black mane, hitched
at his sword-belt and said:
"Well, let's go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats
they may as well do it now, before the heat of the day begins."
His grim humor was unconscious, but Valeria reflected that it might be
prophetic. She too hitched her sword-belt as she rose. Her terrors of
the night were past. The roaring dragons of the distant forest were like
a dim dream. There was a swagger in her stride as she moved off beside
the Cimmerian. Whatever perils lay ahead of them, their foes would be
men. And Valeria of the Red Brotherhood had never seen the face of the
man she feared.
Conan glanced down at her as she strode along beside him with her
swinging stride that matched his own.
"You walk more like a hillman than a sailor," he said. "You must be an
Aquilonian. The suns of Darfar never burnt your white skin brown. Many a
princess would envy you."
"I am from Aquilonia," she replied. His compliments no longer irritated
her. His evident admiration pleased her. For another man to have kept
her watch while she slept would have angered her; she had always
fiercely resented any man's attempting to shield or protect her because
of her sex. But she found a secret pleasure in the fact that this man
had done so. And he had not taken advantage of her fright and the
weakness resulting from it. After all, she reflected, her companion was
no common man.
* * * * *
The sun rose behind the city, turning the towers to a sinister crimson.
"Black last night against the moon," grunted Conan, his eyes clouding
with the abysmal superstition of the barbarian. "Blood-red as a threat
of blood against the sun this dawn. I do not like this city."
But they went on, and as they went Conan pointed out the fact that no
road ran to the city from the north.
"No cattle have trampled the plain on this side of the city," said he.
"No plowshare has touched the earth for years, maybe centuries. But
look: once this plain was cultivated."
Valeria saw the ancient irrigation ditches he indicated, half filled in
places, and overgrown with cactus. She frowned with perplexity as her
eyes swept over the plain that stretched on all sides of the city to the
forest edge, which marched in a vast, dim ring. Vision did not extend
beyond that ring.
She looked uneasily at the city. No helmets or spear-heads gleamed on
battlements, no trumpets sounded, no challenge rang from the towers. A
silence as absolute as that of the forest brooded over the walls and
minarets.
The sun was high above the eastern horizon when they stood before the
great gate in the northern wall, in the shadow of the lofty rampart.
Rust flecked the iron bracings of the mighty bronze portal. Spiderwebs
glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel.
"It hasn't been opened for years!" exclaimed Valeria.
"A dead city," grunted Conan. "That's why the ditches were broken and
the plain untouched."
"But who built it? Who dwelt here? Where did they go? Why did they
abandon it?"
"Who can say? Maybe an exiled clan of Stygians built it. Maybe not. It
doesn't look like Stygian architecture. Maybe the people were wiped out
by enemies, or a plague exterminated them."
"In that case their treasures may still be gathering dust and cobwebs in
there," suggested Valeria, the acquisitive instincts of her profession
waking in her; prodded, too, by feminine curiosity. "Can we open the
gate? Let's go in and explore a bit."
Conan eyed the heavy portal dubiously, but placed his massive shoulder
against it and thrust with all the power of his muscular calves and
thighs. With a rasping screech of rusty hinges the gate moved
ponderously inward, and Conan straightened and drew his sword. Valeria
stared over his shoulder, and made a sound indicative of surprise.
They were not looking into an open street or court as one would have
expected. The opened gate, or door, gave directly into a long, broad
hall which ran away and away until its vista grew indistinct in the
distance. It was of heroic proportions, and the floor of a curious red
stone, cut in square tiles, that seemed to smolder as if with the
reflection of flames. The walls were of a shiny green material.
"Jade, or I'm a Shemite!" swore Conan.
"Not in such quantity!" protested Valeria.
"I've looted enough from the Khitan caravans to know what I'm talking
about," he asserted. "That's jade!"
The vaulted ceiling was of lapis lazuli, adorned with clusters of great
green stones that gleamed with a poisonous radiance.
"Green fire-stones," growled Conan. "That's what the people of Punt call
them. They're supposed to be the petrified eyes of those prehistoric
snakes the ancients called Golden Serpents. They glow like a cat's eyes
in the dark. At night this hall would be lighted by them, but it would
be a hellishly weird illumination. Let's look around. We might find a
cache of jewels."
"Shut the door," advised Valeria. "I'd hate to have to outrun a dragon
down this hall."
Conan grinned, and replied: "I don't believe the dragons ever leave the
forest."
But he complied, and pointed out the broken bolt on the inner side.
"I thought I heard something snap when I shoved against it. That bolt's
freshly broken. Rust has eaten nearly through it. If the people ran
away, why should it have been bolted on the inside?"
"They undoubtedly left by another door," suggested Valeria.
She wondered how many centuries had passed since the light of outer day
had filtered into that great hall through the open door. Sunlight was
finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source.
High up in the vaulted ceiling skylights were set in slot-like
openings--translucent sheets of some crystalline substance. In the
splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked like the eyes
of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with
changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of
hell with evil stars blinking overhead.
Three balustraded galleries ran along on each side of the hall, one
above the other.
"A four-storied house," grunted Conan, "and this hall extends to the
roof. It's long as a street. I seem to see a door at the other end."
Valeria shrugged her white shoulders.
"Your eyes are better than mine, then, though I'm accounted sharp-eyed
among the sea-rovers."
* * * * *
They turned into an open door at random, and traversed a series of empty
chambers, floored like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade,
or of marble or ivory or chalcedony, adorned with friezes of bronze,
gold or silver. In the ceilings the green fire-gems were set, and their
light was as ghostly and illusive as Conan had predicted. Under the
witch-fire glow the intruders moved like specters.
Some of the chambers lacked this illumination, and their doorways showed
black as the mouth of the Pit. These Conan and Valeria avoided, keeping
always to the lighted chambers.
Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there was no perceptible accumulation
of dust on the floor, or on the tables and seats of marble, jade or
carnelian which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that
silk known as Khitan which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did
they find any windows, or doors opening into streets or courts. Each
door merely opened into another chamber or hall.