At dawn Conan waded his horse across the shallows of the Alimane and
struck the wide caravan trail which ran southeastward, and behind him,
on the farther bank, Trocero sat his horse silently at the head of his
steel-clad knights, with the crimson leopard of Poitain floating its
long folds over him in the morning breeze. Silently they sat, those
dark-haired men in shining steel, until the figure of their king had
vanished in the blue of distance that whitened toward sunrise.
Conan rode a great black stallion, the gift of Trocero. He no longer
wore the armor of Aquilonia. His harness proclaimed him a veteran of
the Free Companies, who were of all races. His headpiece was a plain
morion, dented and battered. The leather and mail-mesh of his hauberk
were worn and shiny as if by many campaigns, and the scarlet cloak
flowing carelessly from his mailed shoulders was tattered and stained.
He looked the part of the hired fighting-man, who had known all
vicissitudes of fortune, plunder and wealth one day, an empty purse and
a close-drawn belt the next.
And more than looking the part, he felt the part; the awakening of old
memories, the resurge of the wild, mad, glorious days of old before his
feet were set on the imperial path when he was a wandering mercenary,
roistering, brawling, guzzling, adventuring, with no thought for the
morrow, and no desire save sparkling ale, red lips, and a keen sword to
swing on all the battlefields of the world.
Unconsciously he reverted to the old ways; a new swagger became evident
in his bearing, in the way he sat his horse; half-forgotten oaths rose
naturally to his lips, and as he rode he hummed old songs that he had
roared in chorus with his reckless companions in many a tavern and on
many a dusty road or bloody field.
It was an unquiet land through which he rode. The companies of cavalry
which usually patrolled the river, alert for raids out of Poitain, were
nowhere in evidence. Internal strife had left the borders unguarded. The
long white road stretched bare from horizon to horizon. No laden camel
trains or rumbling wagons or lowing herds moved along it now; only
occasional groups of horsemen in leather and steel, hawk-faced,
hard-eyed men, who kept together and rode warily. These swept Conan with
their searching gaze but rode on, for the solitary rider's harness
promised no plunder, but only hard strokes.
Villages lay in ashes and deserted, the fields and meadows idle. Only
the boldest would ride the roads these days, and the native population
had been decimated in the civil wars, and by raids from across the
river. In more peaceful times the road was thronged with merchants
riding Poitain to Messantia in Argos, or back. But now these found it
wiser to follow the road that led east through Poitain, and then turned
south down across Argos. It was longer, but safer. Only an extremely
reckless man would risk his life and goods on this road through Zingara.
The southern horizon was fringed with flame by night, and in the day
straggling pillars of smoke drifted upward; in the cities and plains to
the south men were dying, thrones were toppling and castles going up in
flames. Conan felt the old tug of the professional fighting-man, to turn
his horse and plunge into the fighting, the pillaging and the looting as
in the days of old. Why should he toil to regain the rule of a people
which had already forgotten him?--why chase a will-o'-the-wisp, why
pursue a crown that was lost for ever? Why should he not seek
forgetfulness, lose himself in the red tides of war and rapine that had
engulfed him so often before? Could he not, indeed, carve out another
kingdom for himself? The world was entering an age of iron, an age of
war and imperialistic ambition; some strong man might well rise above
the ruins of nations as a supreme conqueror. Why should it not be
himself? So his familiar devil whispered in his ear, and the phantoms of
his lawless and bloody past crowded upon him. But he did not turn aside;
he rode onward, following a quest that grew dimmer and dimmer as he
advanced, until sometimes it seemed that he pursued a dream that never
was.
He pushed the black stallion as hard as he dared, but the long white
road lay bare before him, from horizon to horizon. It was a long start
Zorathus had, but Conan rode steadily on, knowing that he was traveling
faster than the burdened merchants could travel. And so he came to the
castle of Count Valbroso, perched like a vulture's eyrie on a bare hill
overlooking the road.
* * * * *
Valbroso rode down with his men-at-arms, a lean, dark man with
glittering eyes and a predatory beak of a nose. He wore black
plate-armor and was followed by thirty spearmen, black-mustached hawks
of the border wars, as avaricious and ruthless as himself. Of late the
toll of the caravans had been slim, and Valbroso cursed the civil wars
that stripped the roads of their fat traffic, even while he blessed them
for the free hand they allowed him with his neighbors.
He had not hoped much from the solitary rider he had glimpsed from his
tower, but all was grist that came to his mill. With a practised eye he
took in Conan's worn mail and dark, scarred face, and his conclusions
were the same as those of the riders who had passed the Cimmerian on the
road--an empty purse and a ready blade.
'Who are you, knave?' he demanded.
'A mercenary, riding for Argos,' answered Conan. 'What matter names?'
'You are riding in the wrong direction for a Free Companion,' grunted
Valbroso. 'Southward the fighting is good and also the plundering. Join
my company. You won't go hungry. The road remains bare of fat merchants
to strip, but I mean to take my rogues and fare southward to sell our
swords to whichever side seems strongest.'
Conan did not at once reply, knowing that if he refused outright, he
might be instantly attacked by Valbroso's men-at-arms. Before he could
make up his mind, the Zingaran spoke again:
'You rogues of the Free Companies always know tricks to make men talk. I
have a prisoner--the last merchant I caught, by Mitra, and the only one
I've seen for a week--and the knave is stubborn. He has an iron box,
the secret of which defies us, and I've been unable to persuade him to
open it. By Ishtar, I thought I knew all the modes of persuasion there
are, but perhaps you, as a veteran Free Companion, know some that I do
not. At any rate come with me and see what you may do.'
Valbroso's words instantly decided Conan. That sounded a great deal like
Zorathus. Conan did not know the merchant, but any man who was stubborn
enough to try to traverse the Zingaran road in times like these would
very probably be stubborn enough to defy torture.
He fell in beside Valbroso and rode up the straggling road to the top of
the hill where the gaunt castle stood. As a man-at-arms he should have
ridden behind the count, but force of habit made him careless and
Valbroso paid no heed. Years of life on the border had taught the count
that the frontier is not the royal court. He was aware of the
independence of the mercenaries, behind whose swords many a king had
trodden the throne-path.
There was a dry moat, half filled with debris in some places. They
clattered across the drawbridge and through the arch of the gate. Behind
them the portcullis fell with a sullen clang. They came into a bare
courtyard, grown with straggling grass, and with a well in the middle.
Shacks for the men-at-arms straggled about the bailey wall, and women,
slatternly or decked in gaudy finery, looked from the doors.
Fighting-men in rusty mail tossed dice on the flags under the arches. It
was more like a bandit's hold than the castle of a nobleman.
Valbroso dismounted and motioned Conan to follow him. They went
through a doorway and along a vaulted corridor, where they were
met by a scarred, hard-looking man in mail descending a stone
staircase--evidently the captain of the guard.
'How, Beloso,' quoth Valbroso; 'has he spoken?'
'He is stubborn,' muttered Beloso, shooting a glance of suspicion at
Conan.
Valbroso ripped out an oath and stamped furiously up the winding stair,
followed by Conan and the captain. As they mounted, the groans of a man
in mortal agony became audible. Valbroso's torture-room was high above
the court, instead of in a dungeon below. In that chamber, where a
gaunt, hairy beast of a man in leather breeks squatted gnawing a
beef-bone voraciously, stood the machines of torture--racks, boots,
hooks and all the implements that the human mind devises to tear flesh,
break bones and rend and rupture veins and ligaments.
On a rack a man was stretched naked, and a glance told Conan that he was
dying. The unnatural elongation of his limbs and body told of unhinged
joints and unnamable ruptures. He was a dark man, with an intelligent,
aquiline face and quick dark eyes. They were glazed and bloodshot now
with pain, and the dew of agony glistened on his face. His lips were
drawn back from blackened gums.
'There is the box.' Viciously Valbroso kicked a small but heavy iron
chest that stood on the floor near by. It was intricately carved, with
tiny skulls and writhing dragons curiously intertwined, but Conan saw no
catch or hasp that might serve to unlock the lid. The marks of fire, of
ax and sledge and chisel showed on it but as scratches.
'This is the dog's treasure box,' said Valbroso angrily. 'All men of the
south know of Zorathus and his iron chest. Mitra knows what is in it.
But he will not give up its secret.'
Zorathus! It was true, then; the man he sought lay before him. Conan's
heart beat suffocatingly as he leaned over the writhing form, though he
exhibited no evidence of his painful eagerness.
'Ease those ropes, knave!' he ordered the torturer harshly, and Valbroso
and his captain stared. In the forgetfulness of the moment Conan had
used his imperial tone, and the brute in leather instinctively obeyed
the knife-edge of command in that voice. He eased away gradually, for
else the slackening of the ropes had been as great a torment to the torn
joints as further stretching.
Catching up a vessel of wine that stood near by, Conan placed the rim to
the wretch's lips. Zorathus gulped spasmodically, the liquid slopping
over on his heaving breast.
Into the bloodshot eyes came a gleam of recognition, and the
froth-smeared lips parted. From them issued a racking whimper in the
Kothic tongue.
'Is this death, then? Is the long agony ended? For this is King Conan
who died at Valkia, and I am among the dead.'
'You're not dead,' said Conan. 'But you're dying. You'll be tortured no
more. I'll see to that. But I can't help you further. Yet before you
die, tell me how to open your iron box!'
'My iron box,' mumbled Zorathus in delirious disjointed phrases. 'The
chest forged in unholy fires among the flaming mountains of Khrosha; the
metal no chisel can cut. How many treasures has it borne, across the
width and the breadth of the world! But no such treasure as it now
holds.'
'Tell me how to open it,' urged Conan. 'It can do you no good, and it
may aid me.'
'Aye, you are Conan,' muttered the Kothian. 'I have seen you sitting on
your throne in the great public hall of Tarantia, with your crown on
your head and the scepter in your hand. But you are dead; you died at
Valkia. And so I know my own end is at hand.'
'What does the dog say?' demanded Valbroso impatiently, not
understanding Kothic. 'Will he tell us how to open the box?'
As if the voice roused a spark of life in the twisted breast Zorathus
rolled his bloodshot eyes toward the speaker.
'Only Valbroso will I tell,' he gasped in Zingaran. 'Death is upon me.
Lean close to me, Valbroso!'
The count did so, his dark face lit with avarice; behind him his
saturnine captain, Beloso, crowded closer.
'Press the seven skulls on the rim, one after another,' gasped Zorathus.
'Press then the head of the dragon that writhes across the lid. Then
press the sphere in the dragon's claws. That will release the secret
catch.'
'Quick, the box!' cried Valbroso with an oath.
Conan lifted it and set it on a dais, and Valbroso shouldered him aside.
'Let me open it!' cried Beloso, starting forward.
Valbroso cursed him back, his greed blazing in his black eyes.
'None but me shall open it!' he cried.
Conan, whose hand had instinctively gone to his hilt, glanced at
Zorathus. The man's eyes were glazed and bloodshot, but they were fixed
on Valbroso with burning intensity; and was there the shadow of a grim
twisted smile on the dying man's lips? Not until the merchant knew he
was dying had he given up the secret. Conan turned to watch Valbroso,
even as the dying man watched him.
Along the rim of the lid seven skulls were carved among intertwining
branches of strange trees. An inlaid dragon writhed its way across the
top of the lid amid ornate arabesques. Valbroso pressed the skulls in
fumbling haste, and as he jammed his thumb down on the carved head of
the dragon he swore sharply and snatched his hand away, shaking it in
irritation.
'A sharp point on the carvings,' he snarled. 'I've pricked my thumb.'
He pressed the gold ball clutched in the dragon's talons, and the lid
flew abruptly open. Their eyes were dazzled by a golden flame. It seemed
to their dazed minds that the carven box was full of glowing fire that
spilled over the rim and dripped through the air in quivering flakes.
Beloso cried out and Valbroso sucked in his breath. Conan stood
speechless, his brain snared by the blaze.
'Mitra, what a jewel!' Valbroso's hand dived into the chest, came out
with a great pulsing crimson sphere that filled the room with a lambent
glow. In its glare Valbroso looked like a corpse. And the dying man on
the loosened rack laughed wildly and suddenly.
'Fool!' he screamed. 'The jewel is yours! I give you death with it! The
scratch on your thumb--look at the dragon's head, Valbroso!'
They all wheeled, stared. Something tiny and dully gleaming stood up
from the gaping, carved mouth.
'The dragon's fang!' shrieked Zorathus. 'Steeped in the venom of the
black Stygian scorpion! Fool, fool to open the box of Zorathus with your
naked hand! Death! You are a dead man now!'
And with bloody foam on his lips he died.
Valbroso staggered, crying out. 'Ah, Mitra, I burn!' he shrieked. 'My
veins race with liquid fire! My joints are bursting asunder! Death!
Death!' And he reeled and crashed headlong. There was an instant of
awful convulsions, in which the limbs were twisted into hideous and
unnatural positions, and then in that posture the man froze, his glassy
eyes staring sightlessly upward, his lips drawn back from blackened
gums.
'Dead!' muttered Conan, stooping to pick up the jewel where it rolled on
the floor from Valbroso's rigid hand. It lay on the floor like a
quivering pool of sunset fire.
'Dead!' muttered Beloso, with madness in his eyes. And then he moved.
Conan was caught off guard, his eyes dazzled, his brain dazed by the
blaze of the great gem. He did not realize Beloso's intention until
something crashed with terrible force upon his helmet. The glow of the
jewel was splashed with redder flame, and he went to his knees under the
blow.
He heard a rush of feet, a bellow of ox-like agony. He was stunned but
not wholly senseless, and realized that Beloso had caught up the iron
box and crashed it down on his head as he stooped. Only his basinet had
saved his skull. He staggered up, drawing his sword, trying to shake the
dimness out of his eyes. The room swam to his dizzy gaze. But the door
was open and fleet footsteps were dwindling down the winding stair. On
the floor the brutish torturer was gasping out his life with a great
gash under his breast. And the Heart of Ahriman was gone.
Conan reeled out of the chamber, sword in hand, blood streaming down his
face from under his burganet. He ran drunkenly down the steps, hearing a
clang of steel in the courtyard below, shouts, then the frantic drum of
hoofs. Rushing into the bailey he saw the men-at-arms milling about
confusedly, while women screeched. The postern gate stood open and a
soldier lay across his pike with his head split. Horses, still bridled
and saddled, ran neighing about the court, Conan's black stallion among
them.
'He's mad!' howled a woman, wringing her hands as she rushed brainlessly
about. 'He came out of the castle like a mad dog, hewing right and left!
Beloso's mad! Where's Lord Valbroso?'
'Which way did he go?' roared Conan.
All turned and stared at the stranger's blood-stained face and naked
sword.
'Through the postern!' shrilled a woman, pointing eastward, and another
bawled: 'Who is this rogue?'
'Beloso has killed Valbroso!' yelled Conan, leaping and seizing the
stallion's mane, as the men-at-arms advanced uncertainly on him. A wild
outcry burst forth at his news, but their reaction was exactly as he had
anticipated. Instead of closing the gates to take him prisoner, or
pursuing the fleeing slayer to avenge their lord, they were thrown into
even greater confusion by his words. Wolves bound together only by fear
of Valbroso, they owed no allegiance to the castle or to each other.
Swords began to clash in the courtyard, and women screamed. And in the
midst of it all, none noticed Conan as he shot through the postern gate
and thundered down the hill. The wide plain spread before him, and
beyond the hill the caravan road divided: one branch ran south, the
other east. And on the eastern road he saw another rider, bending low
and spurring hard. The plain swam to Conan's gaze, the sunlight was a
thick red haze and he reeled in his saddle, grasping the flowing mane
with his hand. Blood rained on his mail, but grimly he urged the
stallion on.
Behind him smoke began to pour out of the castle on the hill where the
count's body lay forgotten and unheeded beside that of his prisoner. The
sun was setting; against a lurid red sky the two black figures fled.
The stallion was not fresh, but neither was the horse ridden by Beloso.
But the great beast responded mightily, calling on deep reservoirs of
reserve vitality. Why the Zingaran fled from one pursuer Conan did not
tax his bruised brain to guess. Perhaps unreasoning panic rode Beloso,
born of the madness that lurked in that blazing jewel. The sun was gone;
the white road was a dim glimmer through a ghostly twilight fading into
purple gloom far ahead of him.
The stallion panted, laboring hard. The country was changing, in the
gathering dusk. Bare plains gave way to clumps of oaks and alders. Low
hills mounted up in the distance. Stars began to blink out. The stallion
gasped and reeled in his course. But ahead rose a dense wood that
stretched to the hills on the horizon, and between it and himself Conan
glimpsed the dim form of the fugitive. He urged on the distressed
stallion, for he saw that he was overtaking his prey, yard by yard.
Above the pound of the hoofs a strange cry rose from the shadows, but
neither pursuer nor pursued gave heed.
As they swept in under the branches that overhung the road, they were
almost side by side. A fierce cry rose from Conan's lips as his sword
went up; a pale oval of a face was turned toward him, a sword gleamed
in a half-seen hand, and Beloso echoed the cry--and then the weary
stallion, with a lurch and a groan, missed his footing in the shadows
and went heels over head, hurling his dazed rider from the saddle.
Conan's throbbing head crashed against a stone, and the stars were
blotted out in a thicker night.
* * * * *
How long Conan lay senseless he never knew. His first sensation of
returning consciousness was that of being dragged by one arm over rough
and stony ground and through dense underbrush. Then he was thrown
carelessly down, and perhaps the jolt brought back his senses.
His helmet was gone, his head ached abominably, he felt a qualm of
nausea, and blood was clotted thickly among his black locks. But with
the vitality of a wild thing life and consciousness surged back into
him, and he became aware of his surroundings.
A broad red moon was shining through the trees, by which he knew that it
was long after midnight. He had lain senseless for hours, long enough to
have recovered from that terrible blow Beloso had dealt him, as well as
the fall which had rendered him senseless. His brain felt clearer than
it had felt during that mad ride after the fugitive.
He was not lying beside the white road, he noticed with a start of
surprise, as his surroundings began to record themselves on his
perceptions. The road was nowhere in sight. He lay on the grassy earth,
in a small glade hemmed in by a black wall of tree stems and tangled
branches. His face and hands were scratched and lacerated as if he had
been dragged through brambles. Shifting his body he looked about him.
And then he started violently--something was squatting over him....
At first Conan doubted his consciousness, thought it was but a figment
of delirium. Surely it could not be real, that strange, motionless gray
being that squatted on its haunches and stared down at him with
unblinking soulless eyes.
Conan lay and stared, half expecting it to vanish like a figure of a
dream, and then a chill of recollection crept along his spine.
Half-forgotten memories surged back, of grisly tales whispered of the
shapes that haunted these uninhabited forests at the foot of the hills
that mark the Zingaran-Argossean border. Ghouls, men called them, eaters
of human flesh, spawn of darkness, children of unholy matings of a lost
and forgotten race with the demons of the underworld. Somewhere in these
primitive forests were the ruins of an ancient, accursed city, men
whispered, and among its tombs slunk gray, anthropomorphic
shadows--Conan shuddered strongly.
He lay staring at the malformed head that rose dimly above him, and
cautiously he extended a hand toward the sword at his hip. With a
horrible cry that the man involuntarily echoed, the monster was at his
throat.
Conan threw up his right arm, and the dog-like jaws closed on it,
driving the mail links into the hard flesh. The misshapen yet man-like
hands clutched for his throat, but he evaded them with a heave and roll
of his whole body, at the same time drawing his dagger with his left
hand.
They tumbled over and over on the grass, smiting and tearing. The
muscles coiling under that gray corpse-like skin were stringy and hard
as steel wires, exceeding the strength of a man. But Conan's thews were
iron too, and his mail saved him from the gnashing fangs and ripping
claws long enough for him to drive home his dagger, again and again and
again. The horrible vitality of the semi-human monstrosity seemed
inexhaustible, and the king's skin crawled at the feel of that slick,
clammy flesh. He put all his loathing and savage revulsion behind the
plunging blade, and suddenly the monster heaved up convulsively beneath
him as the point found its grisly heart, and then lay still.
Conan rose, shaken with nausea. He stood in the center of the glade
uncertainly, sword in one hand and dagger in the other. He had not lost
his instinctive sense of direction, as far as the points of the compass
were concerned, but he did not know in which direction the road lay. He
had no way of knowing in which direction the ghoul had dragged him.
Conan glared at the silent, black, moon-dappled woods which ringed him,
and felt cold moisture bead his flesh. He was without a horse and lost
in these haunted woods, and that staring deformed thing at his feet was
a mute evidence of the horrors that lurked in the forest. He stood
almost holding his breath in his painful intensity, straining his ears
for some crack of twig or rustle of grass.
When a sound did come he started violently. Suddenly out on the night
air broke the scream of a terrified horse. His stallion! There were
panthers in the wood--or--ghouls ate beasts as well as men.
He broke savagely through the brush in the direction of the sound,
whistling shrilly as he ran, his fear drowned in berserk rage. If his
horse was killed, there went his last chance of following Beloso and
recovering the jewel. Again the stallion screamed with fear and fury,
somewhere nearer. There was a sound of lashing heels, and something that
was struck heavily and gave way.
Conan burst out into the wide white road without warning, and saw the
stallion plunging and rearing in the moonlight, his ears laid back, his
eyes and teeth flashing wickedly. He lashed out with his heels at a
slinking shadow that ducked and bobbed about him--and then about Conan
other shadows moved: gray, furtive shadows that closed in on all sides.
A hideous charnel-house scent reeked up in the night air.
With a curse the king hewed right and left with his broadsword, thrust
and ripped with his dagger. Dripping fangs flashed in the moonlight,
foul paws caught at him, but he hacked his way through to the stallion,
caught the rein, leaped into the saddle. His sword rose and fell, a
frosty arc in the moonlight, showering blood as it split misshapen
heads, clove shambling bodies. The stallion reared, biting and kicking.
They burst through and thundered down the road. On either hand, for a
short space, flitted gray abhorrent shadows. Then these fell behind, and
Conan, topping a wooded crest, saw a vast expanse of bare slopes
sweeping up and away before him.
13
'A Ghost Out of the Past'
Soon after sunrise Conan crossed the Argossean border. Of Beloso he had
seen no trace. Either the captain had made good his escape while the
king lay senseless, or had fallen prey to the grim man-eaters of the
Zingaran forest. But Conan had seen no signs to indicate the latter
possibility. The fact that he had lain unmolested for so long seemed to
indicate that the monsters had been engrossed in futile pursuit of the
captain. And if the man lived, Conan felt certain that he was riding
along the road somewhere ahead of him. Unless he had intended going into
Argos he would never have taken the eastward road in the first place.
The helmeted guards at the frontier did not question the Cimmerian. A
single wandering mercenary required no passport nor safe-conduct,
especially when his unadorned mail showed him to be in the service of no
lord. Through the low, grassy hills where streams murmured and oak
groves dappled the sward with lights and shadows he rode, following the
long road that rose and fell away ahead of him over dales and rises in
the blue distance. It was an old, old road, this highway from Poitain to
the sea.
Argos was at peace; laden ox-wains rumbled along the road, and men with
bare, brown, brawny arms toiled in orchards and fields that smiled away
under the branches of the roadside trees. Old men on settles before inns
under spreading oak branches called greetings to the wayfarer.
From the men that worked the fields, from the garrulous old men in the
inns where he slaked his thirst with great leathern jacks of foaming
ale, from the sharp-eyed silk-clad merchants he met upon the road, Conan
sought for news of Beloso.
Stories were conflicting, but this much Conan learned: that a lean, wiry
Zingaran with the dangerous black eyes and mustaches of the western folk
was somewhere on the road ahead of him, and apparently making for
Messantia. It was a logical destination; all the sea-ports of Argos were
cosmopolitan, in strong contrast with the inland provinces, and
Messantia was the most polyglot of all. Craft of all the maritime
nations rode in its harbor, and refugees and fugitives from many lands
gathered there. Laws were lax; for Messantia thrived on the trade of the
sea, and her citizens found it profitable to be somewhat blind on their
dealings with seamen. It was not only legitimate trade that flowed into
Messantia; smugglers and buccaneers played their part. All this Conan
knew well, for had he not, in the days of old when he was a Barachan
pirate, sailed by night into the harbor of Messantia to discharge
strange cargoes? Most of the pirates of the Barachan Isles--small
islands off the southwestern coast of Zingara--were Argossean sailors,
and as long as they confined their attentions to the shipping of other
nations, the authorities of Argos were not too strict in their
interpretation of sea-laws.
But Conan had not limited his activities to those of the Barachans. He
had also sailed with the Zingaran buccaneers, and even with those wild
black corsairs that swept up from the far south to harry the northern
coasts, and this put him beyond the pale of any law. If he were
recognized in any of the ports of Argos it would cost him his head. But
without hesitation he rode on to Messantia, halting day or night only to
rest the stallion and to snatch a few winks of sleep for himself.
* * * * *
He entered the city unquestioned, merging himself with the throngs that
poured continually in and out of this great commercial center. No walls
surrounded Messantia. The sea and the ships of the sea guarded the great
southern trading city.
It was evening when Conan rode leisurely through the streets that
marched down to the waterfront. At the ends of these streets he saw the
wharves and the masts and sails of ships. He smelled salt water for the
first time in years, heard the thrum of cordage and the creak of spars
in the breeze that was kicking up whitecaps out beyond the headlands.
Again the urge of far wandering tugged at his heart.
But he did not go on to the wharves. He reined aside and rode up a steep
flight of wide, worn stone steps, to a broad street where ornate white
mansions overlooked the waterfront and the harbor below. Here dwelt the
men who had grown rich from the hard-won fat of the seas--a few old
sea-captains who had found treasure afar, many traders and merchants who
never trod the naked decks nor knew the roar of tempest or sea-fight.
Conan turned in his horse at a certain gold-worked gate, and rode into a
court where a fountain tinkled and pigeons fluttered from marble coping
to marble flagging. A page in jagged silken jupon and hose came forward
inquiringly. The merchants of Messantia dealt with many strange and
rough characters but most of these smacked of the sea. It was strange
that a mercenary trooper should so freely ride into the court of a lord
of commerce.
'The merchant Publio dwells here?' It was more statement than question,
and something in the timbre of the voice caused the page to doff his
feather chaperon as he bowed and replied: 'Aye, so he does, my captain.'
Conan dismounted and the page called a servitor, who came running to
receive the stallion's rein.
'Your master is within?' Conan drew off his gauntlets and slapped the
dust of the road from cloak and mail.
'Aye, my captain. Whom shall I announce?'
'I'll announce myself,' grunted Conan. 'I know the way well enough. Bide
you here.'
And obeying that peremptory command the page stood still, staring after
Conan as the latter climbed a short flight of marble steps, and
wondering what connection his master might have with this giant
fighting-man who had the aspect of a northern barbarian.
Menials at their tasks halted and gaped open-mouthed as Conan crossed a
wide, cool balcony overlooking the court and entered a broad corridor
through which the sea-breeze swept. Halfway down this he heard a quill
scratching, and turned into a broad room whose many wide casements
overlooked the harbor.
Publio sat at a carved teakwood desk writing on rich parchment with a
golden quill. He was a short man, with a massive head and quick dark
eyes. His blue robe was of the finest watered silk, trimmed with
cloth-of-gold, and from his thick white throat hung a heavy gold chain.
As the Cimmerian entered, the merchant looked up with a gesture of
annoyance. He froze in the midst of his gesture. His mouth opened; he
stared as at a ghost out of the past. Unbelief and fear glimmered in his
wide eyes.
'Well,' said Conan, 'have you no word of greeting, Publio?'
Publio moistened his lips.
'Conan!' he whispered incredulously. 'Mitra! Conan! _Amra!_'
'Who else?' The Cimmerian unclasped his cloak and threw it with his
gauntlets down upon the desk. 'How man?' he exclaimed irritably. 'Can't
you at least offer me a beaker of wine? My throat's caked with the dust
of the highway.'
'Aye, wine!' echoed Publio mechanically. Instinctively his hand reached
for a gong, then recoiled as from a hot coal, and he shuddered.
While Conan watched him with a flicker of grim amusement in his eyes,
the merchant rose and hurriedly shut the door, first craning his neck up
and down the corridor to be sure that no slave was loitering about.
Then, returning, he took a gold vessel of wine from a near-by table and
was about to fill a slender goblet when Conan impatiently took the
vessel from him and lifting it with both hands, drank deep and with
gusto.
'Aye, it's Conan, right enough,' muttered Publio. 'Man, are you mad?'
'By Crom, Publio,' said Conan, lowering the vessel but retaining it in
his hands, 'you dwell in different quarters than of old. It takes an
Argossean merchant to wring wealth out of a little waterfront shop that
stank of rotten fish and cheap wine.'
'The old days are past,' muttered Publio, drawing his robe about him
with a slight involuntary shudder. 'I have put off the past like a
worn-out cloak.'
'Well,' retorted Conan, 'you can't put _me_ off like an old cloak. It
isn't much I want of you, but that much I do want. And you can't refuse
me. We had too many dealings in the old days. Am I such a fool that I'm
not aware that this fine mansion was built on my sweat and blood? How
many cargoes from my galleys passed through your shop?'
'All merchants of Messantia have dealt with the sea-rovers at one time
or another,' mumbled Publio nervously.
'But not with the black corsairs,' answered Conan grimly.
'For Mitra's sake, be silent!' ejaculated Publio, sweat starting out on
his brow. His fingers jerked at the gilt-worked edge of his robe.
'Well, I only wished to recall it to your mind,' answered Conan. 'Don't
be so fearful. You took plenty of risks in the past, when you were
struggling for life and wealth in that lousy little shop down by the
wharves, and were hand-and-glove with every buccaneer and smuggler and
pirate from here to the Barachan Isles. Prosperity must have softened
you.'
'I am respectable,' began Publio.
'Meaning you're rich as hell,' snorted Conan. 'Why? Why did you grow
wealthy so much quicker than your competitors? Was it because you did a
big business in ivory and ostrich feathers, copper and skins and pearls
and hammered gold ornaments, and other things from the coast of Kush?
And where did you get them so cheaply, while other merchants were paying
their weight in silver to the Stygians for them? I'll tell you, in case
you've forgotten: you bought them from me, at considerably less than
their value, and I took them from the tribes of the Black Coast, and
from the ships of the Stygians--I, and the black corsairs.'
'In Mitra's name, cease!' begged Publio. 'I have not forgotten. But what
are you doing here? I am the only man in Argos who knew that the king of
Aquilonia was once Conan the buccaneer, in the old days. But word has
come southward of the overthrow of Aquilonia and the death of the king.'
'My enemies have killed me a hundred times by rumors,' grunted Conan.
'Yet here I sit and guzzle wine of Kyros.' And he suited the action to
the word.
Lowering the vessel, which was now nearly empty, he said: 'It's but a
small thing I ask of you, Publio. I know that you're aware of everything
that goes on in Messantia. I want to know if a Zingaran named Beloso, or
he might call himself anything, is in this city. He's tall and lean and
dark like all his race, and it's likely he'll seek to sell a very rare
jewel.'
Publio shook his head.
'I have not heard of such a man. But thousands come and go in Messantia.
If he is here my agents will discover him.'
'Good. Send them to look for him. And in the meantime have my horse
cared for, and have food served me here in this room.'
Publio assented volubly, and Conan emptied the wine vessel, tossed it
carelessly into a corner, and strode to a near-by casement,
involuntarily expanding his chest as he breathed deep of the salt air.
He was looking down upon the meandering waterfront streets. He swept the
ships in the harbor with an appreciative glance, then lifted his head
and stared beyond the bay, far into the blue haze of the distance where
sea met sky. And his memory sped beyond that horizon, to the golden seas
of the south, under flaming suns, where laws were not and life ran
hotly. Some vagrant scent of spice or palm woke clear-etched images of
strange coasts where mangroves grew and drums thundered, of ships locked
in battle and decks running blood, of smoke and flame and the crying of
slaughter.... Lost in his thoughts he scarcely noticed when Publio stole
from the chamber.
Gathering up his robe, the merchant hurried along the corridors until he
came to a certain chamber where a tall, gaunt man with a scar upon his
temple wrote continually upon parchment. There was something about this
man which made his clerkly occupation seem incongruous. To him Publio
spoke abruptly:
'Conan has returned!'
'Conan?' The gaunt man started up and the quill fell from his fingers.
'The corsair?'
'Aye!'
The gaunt man went livid. 'Is he mad? If he is discovered here we are
ruined! They will hang a man who shelters or trades with a corsair as
quickly as they'll hang the corsair himself! What if the governor should
learn of our past connections with him?'
'He will not learn,' answered Publio grimly. 'Send your men into the
markets and wharfside dives and learn if one Beloso, a Zingaran, is in
Messantia. Conan said he had a gem, which he will probably seek to
dispose of. The jewel merchants should know of him, if any do. And here
is another task for you: pick up a dozen or so desperate villains who
can be trusted to do away with a man and hold their tongues afterward.
You understand me?'
'I understand.' The other nodded slowly and somberly.
'I have not stolen, cheated, lied and fought my way up from the gutter
to be undone now by a ghost out of my past,' muttered Publio, and the
sinister darkness of his countenance at that moment would have surprised
the wealthy nobles and ladies who bought their silks and pearls from his
many stalls. But when he returned to Conan a short time later, bearing
in his own hands a platter of fruit and meats, he presented a placid
face to his unwelcome guest.
Conan still stood at the casement, staring down into the harbor at the
purple and crimson and vermilion and scarlet sails of galleons and
caracks and galleys and dromonds.
'There's a Stygian galley, if I'm not blind,' he remarked, pointing to a
long, low, slim black ship lying apart from the others, anchored off the
low broad sandy beach that curved round to the distant headland. 'Is
there peace, then, between Stygia and Argos?'
'The same sort that has existed before,' answered Publio, setting the
platter on the table with a sigh of relief, for it was heavily laden; he
knew his guest of old. 'Stygian ports are temporarily open to our ships,
as ours to theirs. But may no craft of mine meet their cursed galleys
out of sight of land! That galley crept into the bay last night. What
its masters wish I do not know. So far they have neither bought nor
sold. I distrust those dark-skinned devils. Treachery had its birth in
that dusky land.'
'I've made them howl,' said Conan carelessly, turning from the window.
'In my galley manned by black corsairs I crept to the very bastions of
the sea-washed castles of black-walled Khemi by night, and burned the
galleons anchored there. And speaking of treachery, mine host, suppose
you taste these viands and sip a bit of this wine, just to show me that
your heart is on the right side.'
Publio complied so readily that Conan's suspicions were lulled, and
without further hesitation he sat down and devoured enough for three
men.
And while he ate, men moved through the markets and along the
waterfront, searching for a Zingaran who had a jewel to sell or who
sought for a ship to carry him to foreign ports. And a tall gaunt man
with a scar on his temple sat with his elbows on a wine-stained table in
a squalid cellar with a brass lantern hanging from a smoke-blackened
beam overhead, and held converse with ten desperate rogues whose
sinister countenances and ragged garments proclaimed their profession.
And as the first stars blinked out, they shone on a strange band
spurring their mounts along the white road that led to Messantia from
the west. They were four men, tall, gaunt, clad in black, hooded robes,
and they did not speak. They forced their steeds mercilessly onward, and
those steeds were gaunt as themselves, and sweat-stained and weary as if
from long travel and far wandering.
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