Conan the Savage (11 page)

Kneeling then in a natural fireplace near the base of an overhanging rock where his tinder and kindling were stored, he set about making fire. Laying out a long, crudely shaped plank with a notched indentation at one edge, he knelt on it and bunched soft tinder under the notch. He took up his drill—a shaved, pointed stick of finger-thick wood—and the fire-bow, a long, pliant stick bent taut by a length of rawhide. This cord he tightened further by looping it twice around the shaft of the drill. Inserting the drill point into the notched hole in the plank, he used a fourth piece—a smooth, shallowly indented stone—as a socket with which to steady the butt end of the drill and force its point into the notch. With steady sawing motions of the bow, well-practiced in recent days, he made the drill twirl rapidly in the board, its point digging into the notched hole.

In a short time, smoke began to curl from the hole; he could feel the stone socket heating in his palm from the friction of his efforts. After some moments, a glowing stream of sawdust began to sprinkle through the notch into the nest of tinder. When smoke rose abundantly, Conan laid aside the socket and bow. Cupping his hands around the smouldering heap, he blew on it ever so gently. Once a clear flame sprang into existence, he was ready with dry twigs and shavings to nurture it into a healthy, hungry fire.

Banking the blaze with hard, dry, broken limbs, he turned back to his kill. He worked at the carcass with a keen shard of rock glass. Difficult though it was to grip the tool in blood-slimed fingers, he gradually stripped away the tough skin and laid it aside. Then he set to work dismembering the game, cutting apart its flesh and bones with his various-shaped stone blades and choppers. One whole haunch he roasted over the fire. Spitting its length on a supple green stick raised between two forked poles, he tried to remember to turn it frequently over the blaze, which gradually burned down to glowing, low-flaming chunks.

The rest of the meat he cut into long strips and set out on stones and wooden racks—either close beside the fire to dry and smoke rapidly, or on the rocks above to cure more gradually in the bright sunlight. This food would be his hedge against famine. It might in the coming days enable him to rove farther afield and explore his surroundings without having to worry about day-to-day sustenance.

This land, to be sure, was bountiful, with plenteous and varied animal life as well as countless other sources of food and material. A man alone could live richly here, more so than in the sparse, craggy highlands of northern Cimmeria. Yet inevitably these pristine valleys, for their very richness, must also hold danger. Whether it was in the form of mere animal predators, or mayhap human foragers, like the wild Picts of the Western Sea—or some supernatural influence, which Conan had already half-sensed in the breathy stillnesses of dusk and midnight—he thought it best to broaden his knowledge and be prepared for any threat.

Also, if he was going to make his way here, there was the question of long-term survival. Though lush now in early summer, the country might grow barren later. Just how fiercely snow or drought could smite these rugged lands was hard to guess, since he had no fixed notion of his whereabouts. From experience, he knew that a seeming abundance of wild game and food could vanish practically overnight. Whether he ought to build and provision a winter lodge in which to sit out the snows, or mayhap follow the game downstream to some milder pasture, remained an issue. It would require sound thought and intuition, now that he was on the way to lording it comfortably over the wilderness.

Of one thing he felt certain. However prosperous he became—well-armed, well-provisioned, and free to explore the limits of the land—he would never feel obliged to skulk back to the haunts and hovels of civilized Hyborians. Their power and grandeur, as often as not, he had found a hateful thing: a compact of mutual slavery, glorying in insatiable excesses, and exalting the ruthless few over the nameless many.

He was born a savage, after all. He had been taught the code of a wild hill tribesman, along with the skills that served him now; and, while dragged or hounded through half a hundred great cities, he had clung to those native values as his steadfast virtues. Now, returned here to a feral paradise by the will of Crom—and granted the boon of ignorance as a defence against any feeble claims his past might lay on him—he resolved to yearn no more for the gleam of decadent capitals, or for the perfume of soft, sybaritic pleasure. He could take civilization or leave it, he swore; given his way, he would never tread its paved, soiled byways again.

Once he had finished butchering, he turned his attention to the joint of venison, now scorched crisp on the outside but moist and succulent at the centre. Wolfing the meat greedily from the bone, chewing and smacking with gusto, he dined; then he rounded out the repast with roasted roots and swamp greens out of the ashes, and deep draughts of cold water from a vessel he had made of river clay baked hard around tight-woven basketry.

After drinking, he laid the basin on the bed of coils to boil the remaining water. Into it he scraped those brains that remained in the antelope’s cloven skull, along with as much of the spinal cord as he could pluck from the vertebrae. He had already peeled tendons from the animal’s legs and back, to save as valuable bindings; the bones and skull he stacked beside the fire to dry. At length, taking up the gazelle’s hide and a digging stick, he walked down to the river.

The skin was far too fresh to be processed, but delving into the muddy sand near the eddying currents, he unearthed the roebuck hide that had lain there for several days. It was adequately decomposed, the hairy outer skin beginning to slip away from the tough inner hide. Wrinkling his nose at the stench, he dragged it out of the hole and buried the fresher skin in its place.

A few paces downwind of his camp, he stretched the hide over a stream-worn nubbin of pine log. Using a deer rib as a draw-knife, he carefully scraped away the hair and loose skin, a slow process that took him well into the afternoon. When he had finished and disposed of the scrapings, he bore the limp hide back to the fire.

The deer brains had long since boiled and now waited in a steaming broth into which he lowered the hide, stirring it through the slurry with a stick. He removed the vessel from the fire and set it aside, knowing that the salty brains would bleach and preserve the skin overnight. In the morning, if he wished, he could rub and stretch it dry, then smoke it over smouldering willow wood to cure it further and stain it a deep brown hue.

From such prepared skins, he knew how to make strong garments: buskins, blouse, and breeches that would protect him against night chills, sharp foliage, and insect stings. More important, he now possessed tough thong for binding his weapons strongly and for fashioning game traps. He even had fabric for sacks and canopies.

As his wealth increased, he would be able to live more comfortably, he foresaw, but there would always be one limit: he must either be able to carry his belongings with him, or else provide for their safety in his absence. Caches of food and skins would ever be prey to roaming predators and scavengers unless he could secure them in some safe, inaccessible shelter or lair.

Having gorged himself at midday, he did not feel like eating a heavy supper. He contented himself with munching tree nuts and small, tart fruits he had gathered up in his makeshift basketry. The smoked and partially dried meats from the afternoon he wrapped in leaves and buried under heavy rocks as sunset approached. The twilight hour he spent in front of the fire, splitting and grinding one of the gazelle’s tough ankle bones into a well-shaped awl. Then he retired to bed.

His sleeping place lay along an arching rock face that rose near enough the fire to catch some of the heat and reflect it downward. The camp was well above the water, escaping the worst of the river’s cold and damp; and Conan’s blanket of woven rabbit skins gave him more protection as it grew longer day by day. Even so, he kept a large supply of firewood within reach and awakened periodically to feed the fire when its flames would die and the night’s chill begin to close in. This he did as much for the protection the fire offered against night-stalkers, both animal and supernatural, as for the warmth of the flames.

It was in deepest night that the sojourner’s dimmest and most formless fears would begin to take shape. Alone in darkness, with only the flickering outlines of stones and bones near at hand—and beyond, the ghosts of looming trees—lying chill against hard, uneven earth, Conan would wonder about the reality of it all. This timeless, soulless wilderness, this sudden and total break with his past, did it bear any true relation to the world of toil and human vainglories he had left? Did it really lie on any map of the Hyborian kingdoms?

Or had he, once he abandoned himself to the down-rushing currents of the underground river, passed much farther out of human ken, into some land beyond earthly borders and time? Had he fallen back into the primal days of the world’s youth? Or had he in fact died, and been swept off to some underworld or celestial paradise?—an afterlife that tight-lipped Crom, the god of his Cimmerian fathers, had given his worshippers no inkling of? Was he now expected to correct or atone for sins and infelicities' of his earthly days before facing the stem judgement of the gods? Or must he contemplate each mistake of his past in a sort of feral, endless purgatory? If this life, or illusion, stretched on to infinity, what could he accomplish during its span? Would he be able to endure it long—alone— without slipping into madness?

Here lay the gateway to vast, mystic recesses of the soul.

Some men, and some women too, might carry such musings very far indeed, using them to conjure up whole cosmogonies of spirits and demons, giving their fears tenuous but terrifying substance. Yet Conan’s natural reaction when faced with such imponderable questions was to cling to the familiar, to anything vivid to the senses, to anything tangible and known. And so, as on many previous nights, it was with fond thoughts of the past—memories of pliant Zamoran dancing-maids and of pungent Aquilonian ale— that he slipped off to sleep.

By sunrise, he was stiff and chilled, dull and groggy, yet eager to start his limbs working and generate internal heat. The fire had not quite died, so he warmed himself with the task of fanning and stoking it back to a lively flame.

Then he went to check his fish trap. The funnel-mouthed corral of poles he had driven into the sandbar at the foot of the isle had snared one trout—a medium-sized fish, too large to wriggle out through the fence and too young to leap over its top. It was enough for breakfast. Conan, not inclined toward a frigid morning dip, did not bother to tickle up any more fish. This one, spitted and toasted over hearty flames, was as satisfying as any two of its predecessors eaten raw and cold.

With meat and other foodstuffs in ample supply, Conan decided to use the morning to complete the exploration of his islet. His recent hasty survey, made by climbing to the highest point of the stone outcrop, had revealed a granite dome well above tree level, with stone hummocks falling away steeply to the pools and rapids of the river below. Thick underbrush filled the hollows and crevices where trees could not grow, and so he had left several likely spots for a later and more leisurely visit. His current site at the base of the rock, though comfortably close to wood and water, was too openly accessible for his liking.

Girding his rabbit-skin clout about his waist—and taking up knife, hatchet, and spear, since one could never be too well-armed—he started up the mound behind his camp. The way was easy, treading along bare rock shoulders and leaping from outcrop to outcrop. That was one thing he liked about the place: a man could make his way from the crown of the island down to the waterside, day upon day if he so wished, without leaving any visible sign or track. So it was with fire-smoke, too—Conan’s experience had taught him that smoke kindled on such an airy height would soon dissipate and be far less visible than any that rose up out of the windless well of the valley floor. He had as yet seen no sign of human presence, but if man was here, he wanted to know so before being found.

Partway up the mound lay a couple of likely spots: shallow clefts that might conceal a camp. He saw where, if brush was carefully cleared, access could be restricted. Snares and dead falls might be installed to further discourage surprise by prowling marauders, or at least to give warning. The views of valley and hills the sites afforded were splendid and commanding. Even so, Conan decided that both clefts were still too exposed.

Very soon he neared the summit, without finding what he sought. The whole island was, after all, only a hundred strides across, so its possibilities were limited. He would be better off shifting camp frequently about the countryside, travelling light... but then, for the first time, he noticed a sloping, brushy terrace on the steeper stream-ward side of the mound.

The place had its advantages. For one thing, the sharp drop-offs immediately above and below made it highly defensible. Angling his way down across sloping granite, Conan found the shelf deeper than it first appeared, receding under an overhang of black, lichen-stained rock. The outer court was a mass of shrubs rooted in gravel, tough and harshly weathered; a series of jagged rock ledges along the cliff led him deeper into a more sheltered platform— and further yet to a dry, sandy gallery that would surely be safe from rain and winter snowdrifts. The place narrowed almost into a cave... especially just there, where a massive roof slab had tumbled down in some past aeon, creating a dark, triangular niche in the cleft’s dimmest recess.

Too late Conan saw his mistake. His glance came to rest on white wreckage strewn before the opening—a ghastly litter of cracked, crushed bones—but by then, a maddened, thunderous roar already hammered at his ears. The cave-bear came tumbling forth out of the impossibly narrow crevice, forcing before it a wave of its own musky stench.

It was an incredible creature, swelling as large as a small cottage, its bristling fur shading from blood-caked brown to hoary silver, its face a flaring, slavering mask of hungry ferocity. The beast roared again, exposing hands-breadths of dripping yellow fang; this time the noise in the enclosed space was so dreadful that it stabbed Conan’s ears and shook the stone underfoot, threatening to bring more of the low roof crashing down.