Conan the Savage (16 page)

The young tribesman’s attitude had grown more provocative of late. Sometimes of an evening, while Conan awaited Songa’s appearance with his dinner bowls, he could hear Aklak’s sharp voice assail her with grudging remarks about the quantity and distribution of the food. Occasionally, when he thought that his sister lingered over-long with Conan, he would toss angry comments in through the door; and once during a language lesson at fire-lit dusk, he thrust his pockmarked face straight into the fringed opening and said, as nearly as Conan could translate, “Teach him well the trick of speech, sister. Then he can beg and plead for mercy when I pound him into fish-paste and hurl him back into the river!”

That, for Conan, was enough. Wounds healed or not, he sprang up from his pallet and lunged for the door, only to find Songa crouching there, blocking his way and commanding him to lie back down again. She was a fierce nursemaid; furthermore, Conan thought it would be unseemly to rout her along with her carping kinsman.

So he turned aside and, not troubling with the doorway, burst straight through the wall of the hut. The bent poles were tough, but several pulled free of the ground and parted before his lunge.

There, just before him, gaping at the outcome of the argument, stood Aklak. The burly, tan-skinned savage wore; only beads, bison-hide sandals, and the jewelled metal gewgaw that served as a tribal insignia.

It was not in Conan’s nature to delay or call out a formal challenge. Anyway, he preferred to fight Aklak without weapons and so lessen the chance of murdering his beloved’s brother. Accordingly, he drove straight at his target, bunching one fist like a mallet to strike the man down.

He ran up hard against him, but his fist swung harmless above his adversary’s crouching, twisting form. It was an agile enough dodge, and bore a further surprise, for as Aklak spun away, his hard-sandalled foot slammed into Conan’s side opposite the place where the bear’s claw had laid him open.

A wall of pain shimmered in Conan’s vision like a blazing curtain, momentarily stopping him. Through it came an exultant victory cry as Aklak whirled back to the attack.

The Atupan used his coarse-shod feet with the same dexterity his sister had shown with her bare ones. Even so, he must have thought the Cimmerian stupid; his new assault came in the form of a straight kick at the crotch, an unmanly blow more suited to sporting games—as one of Conan’s countrymen might have launched the grisly trophy in a game of “kick-the-Vanir’s-head.” Effortlessly, Conan stepped away from the kick. With his ready hand, he caught at the flying ankle, preparing to wrench it upward and send the tribesman crashing onto his neck.

But the devious Aklak, whirling in mid-stride, extended his leg half an ell further. His hard heel drove a mule kick straight into Conan’s gut-basket—once, and then again, ruthlessly.

The fighter danced away triumphant, to the cheers of tribe members who had begun to gather ’round. Conan stood stock-still for a moment, battling nothing more tangible than nausea, breathlessness, and a pain that gnawed his vitals like a clawed, fanged dragon-pup striving to be born. When Aklak came spinning back, Conan dodged one darting foot successfully, only to take sharp buffets in the groin and neck from a knee and a hard-heeled hand. In return, he managed to elbow his assailant in the chest, lending extra force and speed to his departure.

The Atupan took longer to spring back this time, and Conan was ready for him. As the lean, wiry leg flew up, aiming once again at Conan’s weak side, the Cimmerian’s own bare foot lashed up underneath in a kick that, if it had struck the tribesman’s crotch cleanly, would have ended the fight, and possibly the family line. Instead, due to Aklak’s twisting agility, it glanced off hard tendon and muscle. His balance upset, the Atupan staggered backward toward the broad, blazing fire.

Conan pressed after, his big hands darting before him to rend and pummel. One ham-fisted blow connected with Aklak’s temple; while the Atupan reeled from it, Conan laid hold of his neck and shoulder and drew him close, thinking to stifle him into good fellowship. But the tribesman’s resources were not expended. As Conan dragged Aklak into the circle of his fullest strength, a sharp, vicious butt of the shorter man’s skull smote him on the chin. The blow made him bite his tongue, caused stars to swim in his vision, and loosened his grasp momentarily, almost allowing his wily opponent to break away.

Yet by now, pain was a devalued coin in Conan’s inn economy. Instead of grunting or gasping from the smart of his riven tongue, he roared in wrath and, tasting coppery blood, picked his opponent up bodily. Clutching the Atupan by neck and thigh, he hove him, not into the fire but over it, to crash into a mess of pole racks set out for smoke curing meat and hides on the far side. As he did so, amid the hubbub of the excited onlookers, some few of who were scattered by the toss, Conan heard behind him one exuberant cry—a breathy, involuntary cheer that rang forth in the unmistakable voice of Songa.

Aklak, cursing in phrases Conan had never yet heard, rummaged through the mess of poles, meats, hides, and crockery he was flung into. From it he produced something noteworthy: a long, thick-hafted, stone-headed ax suitable for felling and butchering a boar or an ox. This tool he brandished high with an exultant howl of his own. Whirling it dexterously overhead, he advanced around the fire toward

Conan.

The Cimmerian, in the fire-lit dusk, found nothing within reach to defend himself with except firewood chunks burned half through, as useless as twigs against Aklak’s heavy implement. None of the tribesmen around him came to his defence, but he was certainly not minded to turn and run. So he stood empty-handed, waiting for Aklak, knowing he must rely on quickness alone to counter the massive weapon. He started forward, but was restrained by a tight female grip on his shoulder. Songa’s? Had she decided to aid her brother after all, and treacherously?

Meanwhile, the Atupan, stalking to within several paces of Conan, altered the flashing arc of his tomahawk and hurled it—straight aside, into the largest chunk of wood laid in the fireplace. It struck with a red flare, lodging fast and sending a shower of sparks heavenward. A sudden cheer rose as Aklak, his snarl converted to a broad, fixed grin, led others of his tribe forward to hug and pummel Conan in a display that, in spite of its ferocity, the Cimmerian had to assume was congratulatory and friendly.

“Aklak has burned the ax!” he heard voices crying out. “The river-man is forgiven! Now he can go free!”

The villagers were enthusiastic in their rejoicing. Indeed, the occasion seemed to satisfy some pent-up need for revelry. In mere moments, all manner of foodstuffs were produced, a pot of aromatic bark tea was set to brewing, and straw mats were dragged out of the huts to form a convivial space before the fire. While women did most of the work, men and children cavorted around the combatants, retelling various parts of the fight and pantomiming it, to widespread laughter.

Conan stood amid the jubilant strangers, concealing the pain and weakness his struggle had brought back to him. In time, even these faded—so welcome was the exhilaration of the crowd—with the growing assurance that he had not been fattened so long for a cook pot, or for sacrifice to some tribal god.

Songa, now modest and bashful-looking, was brought before Conan. Aklak and a wizened woman accompanied her like proud parents. When Songa looked closely at the sticky blood seeping from Conan’s reopened wounds, she shot him a reproachful look, then turned to Aklak. She angrily denounced her brother, striking at him with a hard fist where he had kicked and battered her patient. Catching her wrist to restrain her, Aklak turned and addressed Conan directly for the first time.

“Songa is a rough, proud woman,” he observed gravely. “She lacks proper respect for a huntsman. She has provoked you and used you badly.” He frowned in pious disapproval. “You should strike her and teach her her place.” At his words, the tribe around them drew breath and fell silent. Songa looked up at him with bright, watchful eyes, Conan paused, aware that his response would have weight, yet unsure what was expected of him. At last he spoke.

“Songa has done nothing for days but nurse me and tutor me,” he announced. “If she were less proud and strong-willed, I would not be here. I cannot rebuke her.”

“Nonsense,” Aklak insisted. “She is a tree-cat! Shed spumed you with her foot the day she found you, before she summoned the men of the tribe to have you dragged here! She told everyone that.”

Sullenly, Conan shook his black mane over his massive shoulders. “Even so, I would not strike her. I owe her my life.”

Aklak sneered. “River-men, I suppose, live in fear of their women.” He looked around to the watchers, who began to snicker.

“Oh, yes,” Songa joined in suddenly with a spiteful look. “Targoka’s brothers let women abuse them! Men of his tribe never speak their will. See here, I’ll show you!” Pulling free of Aklak’s grip, she turned on Conan, smiting him on the breast with doubled fists. “See, he fears me!” Reaching up, she clawed his cheek with a sharp-nailed hand.

Lightning-quick, Conan cuffed her on the side of the head. Though slight, the blow stopped her; she clutched at him for balance, then lay her face submissively against his

chest.

Word spread swiftly through the crowd. “He struck her, now they are wedded,” the men affirmed.

“He loves her,” the women cried more emotionally. “Before all the spirits, ’tis proven!”

Aklak, now beaming, embraced both Conan and the woman who clung unashamedly to him. “Welcome, brother!” he exclaimed.

The tribe began celebrating in earnest. Dancers fanned out before the fire, stamping and prancing with arms linked, or alternating front-to-back. Hot meats and viands were passed around in gourds and basket-dishes, with Conan and Songa being made to scorch their fingertips on the first handfuls of each. Later came the singing of legends that Conan could only dimly understand, telling of how animal spirits had fashioned the heavens and the earth. This was not entirely strange to him, though in Cimmeria the worship of dour Crom had relegated these older legends to the rank of children’s tales.

The food and universal goodwill lulled him, as did the warm tea, though it did not confound him as fermented spirits would. Through it all, Songa clung meekly to his side with no further outburst of vixenish temper.

Yet later in the evening, when the fire burned low and the couples dragged their mats back into their huts, she proved as worthy an adversary as her brother—every bit as strong and demanding, nearly as careless of his wounds, and with an even greater determination to carry the contest through to its finish.

IX

Mountains of Fire, Torrents of Blood

Like a flood-maddened river, the crowd poured into the streets of the capital. No mere deluge of water, this—rather, a seething torrent of molten stone, like the river of holy tire that had at the goddess Ninga’s command cleansed and consumed the erring southern city of Phalander. This flood, like that other cataclysm, left devastation in its wake: ravening flame and ruin and the seared, writhing bodies of the unrepentant. It coursed through the city’s dark-roofed labyrinth under grey, overcast skies, its way marked by pillars of smoke and yellow flames surging heavenward. The seething human cataract poured over heaps of rubble and broken bodies, leaving behind quiet eddies that puddled red with blood.

Swifter than fire, the holy torrent of rebellion had spread from Urbander to Tamsin’s home valley and a hundred other disaffected rural districts and small cities. Inevitably the fires converged on Sargossa—the vast metropolis of Brythunia, home to the gilt-trimmed Temple of Amalias and the lofty Imperial Palace. Fanned by winds of unrest and heresy against the old gods, the greedy blaze now threatened to scorch the fabled Gryphon Throne itself and unseat its royal denizen, King Typhas the Sly.

Fiercely now, the mob surged through plaza and boulevard, carrying destruction to every shrine of Amalias and every doubter of the bloody new faith. With fierce abandon, Ninga’s adherents pillaged and rampaged, repaying the wrongs of half a lifetime’s tyranny. Yet such was their discipline and devotion, in the midst of chaos, that a slender young woman and her pampered doll, riding in a chariot at the middle of the press, could go unmolested— screened, to be sure, by a double row of drilled pikemen, and flanked by mounted guards from the revolutionary high command.

The moving perimeter was carefully maintained amid the throng, not only by horse and foot guards, but by the zealous horde itself. For this was none other than Tamsin, High Priestess and Oracle, clad in a loose green, flower-embroidered robe that set off her piercing eyes... and riding with her, nestled under her solicitous arm, the new goddess Ninga herself. Love and devotion made everyone respect the divine presence, as did the deepest, devoutest fear rising from the mystic powers of these two. For was it not whispered that far to the north, in the now-holy city of Urbander—deep in the crypt of Ninga’s bright, new-built temple—there abode a living witness to the goddess’s power? No talkative witness this, but an eloquent one nonetheless: a severed, breathless, bloodless head that mouthed and gaped in endless agony, giving silent testimony to the casual, terrible power of the High Goddess and her High Priestess... and never, ever dying.

So it was that the human flood, with the chariot borne in its midst like a royal barge, entered Sargossa’s main temple square. Here the lavender marble columns of the Temple of Amalias reared tall under the great dome, the last and mightiest bastion of the Imperial church. And here the High Priest Epiminophas, newly raised to leadership, had vowed to turn back the rising tide of heresy... if necessary, by a new confrontation with the witch-priestess herself.

Here, too, King Typhas, with deft economy, had positioned his elite troops for the defence of the capital. “If the mob would run riot, why, let them do so,” he remarked to his generals on the eve of Tamsin’s arrival. “In their own neighbourhood, that is! Let them level their wretched tenements, battle and bum and rape one another, and be scattered and diminished in drunkenness and pillage! With Imperial regiments cordoning the borders of the respectable districts, I can easily contain them. And by sweeping the central square, where all streets conjoin, we shall crush them.”