Conan the Savage (20 page)

So it was, then; the fabric of the wall was thin and delicate near the top. With a sideward lunge, his legs swinging free, Conan avoided the loose stone as it tipped and fell. Rather than carrying him over with it, it only scraped one thigh. His hands, meanwhile, slid to the next lower stone, which grated in its place but held. Using arms and toes to raise himself without levering outward against the wall, he threw a leg up and straddled the narrow rim of masonry.

The fallen stone shattered on the rocky earth below, to yelps of glee from Songa and the others. Looking down and ascertaining that they were unhurt, Conan waved to them but made no outcry. He was wary now of what might be roused out of the tower’s shadowy inner well: frightened birds, bats, swarming spiders, or blood-supping ghosts. The central cavity was obscured, bushed over with a blazing bright nest of yellow-flowered vines and happily abuzz with bees. Though he could see nothing beneath the glare, his foot, which hung down inside the leafy canopy, found a toehold of some kind. Therefore, assuming from his friends’ words that there was some means of descent, he lowered himself into the unseen depths.

After some moments of clinging to the inner curvature of the wall, waiting for his eyes to adapt to the gloom, he discerned the internal structure of the tower. It had formerly supported a spiral stair running down through part of its height at least, with stone steps protruding inward from the outer wall. When the tower had fallen in, due to mighty Twik’s burrowings or some less personal cataclysm, the steps must have been snapped off by collapsing rubble. Enough of their level surface—-a hands-breadth in places, more in others—remained to be traversed, if the user was careful—and if Conan had dared to trust his weight any farther out along the cantilevered stone.

Half-clinging to the smooth wall, squinting in sun-shot darkness and pausing to brush cobwebs from his eyes, he inched his way downward. There were gaps in the spiral path—landings perhaps, or former laddered galleries— where he had to lower himself vertically, dropping so far at times that he wondered how he would make his way back up. Then a sloping pile of rubble, with a broken arch at its bottom, led him into a deeper, ramped chasm. Was he below ground level yet? He cursed himself for not bringing along a fire-rubbing kit. As the light filtering from overhead dimmed, his eyes compensated as best they could, but now it was nigh impossible to make out even the shadowy loom of stone walls and archways.

Then at last he gained the feeling of a floor underfoot, level, if littered with rocks and debris. But an eerie yellow glow rose up before him, glistening on bright droplets or rime-flakes scattered about the chamber. And, suddenly, hunched shadows moved in the wavering torchlight; there came low moans, building swiftly to a chorus of blood-curdling howls. Conan, pivoting wildly with his obsidian blade clutched in one hand, discovered his mate Songa and her fellow huntsmen around him, their groans dissolving into peals of echoing laughter.

He waited resolutely while they staggered and rolled on the floor, howling with mirth. Patiently he stood; having willed his heart to slow its gallop, he now fought down, more fiercely than any creeping terror, a murderous urge to crack their childish Atupan heads together. If these fools knew anything of war or sorcery, or could have guessed what horrors he had faced in places such as this...

Gruffly he let out a sigh. Unclenching his fist from the stone dagger, he slid the weapon resolutely back into its sheath at his hip. These were savage innocents, after all. Somehow, he felt no desire to educate them.

“You are a good hunter, Conan,” Aklak assured him, still gasping with laughter. “You did not let your fears master you. And so I do not have to fight you and take away your knife.” He smote his hunt-brother a solid buffet on the shoulder. “As a reward, you will wear the token of a hunter.” He gestured around the chamber. “Go ahead, choose any ornament you want.”

Songa went to her mate’s side now and clung to him with one arm, though still laughing with apologetic hiccoughs. In the light of the torch she held on high, Conan could see that the sparkles strewn about the place came from some sort of crystals, or rather crafted gems. He could also see a narrow strip of sunlight, falling through some hidden entrance at the far side of the chamber that the tricksters must have used. Motioning Songa to follow him with her torch, Conan walked over and knelt by a pile of the glittering objects.

They were precious or semiprecious ornaments—charms, amulets, neck chains, and pendants—scattered from broken stone jars and bowls that must once have been arranged around the stone walls of the circular room. The pieces were strange, and somewhat crude in manufacture. They were not the faceted crystal rubies, emeralds, and sapphires that Conan had most often dealt in, but were comprised of muddy or smoky-coloured oval and tear-drop stones set in coarse whorls and flowerlets of soft grey or red metal, appended to ringlets and coarse-linked chains of the same alloys. Conan recognized their workmanship as being similar to the opal pendant that Songa sported so tantalizingly below her navel. The style was like no other he had seen, in all his years as a careful appraiser of other people’s wealth. He noted that the armlets and finger-rings in the pile were outsized and markedly oblong-shaped, which made him again wonder about the physical aspect of the tower’s builders—in point of fact, about their humanness.

“This is quite a hoard,” Conan suspiciously observed, using the Atupan tongue as adequately as he could. “Why is it still here?”

Aklak, gazing down on him, made the flat-handed motion that passed among his people for a shrug. “Because the great spirits will it, I suppose. Why are the trees here, or the waters?”

“No, I mean...” The northerner found himself hampered, because as far as he knew, the tribe’s language included no word for wealth. “Since it is so easy to get in here—” he gestured toward the dim-lit entry “—why has no one come and taken it?”

“But, river-man,” Songa protested, “all of us have come and taken it. Look!” She waggled her hips suggestively before his face, making the opal gem dance gaily on its thong dangling down her supple belly. “Every hunter of our tribe has gone through the same ordeal as you, and has chosen an amulet in honour of their initiation.”

“Yes,” her brother affirmed. “Other tribes know this spot too, and revere it highly.”

“You must mean...” Conan shook his head, groping for words “... there is a curse on this treasure, surely, one that limits each visitor to a single gem.” He blinked up at his companions. “Otherwise, why would one hunter or one single tribe not empty the whole room and keep its contents for themselves?”

“A curse?” Glubal puzzled aloud. “What curse?” “And what do you mean, one person take all?” Aklak demanded. “What would be the use of that?” He twisted a bent knuckle in one ear and squinted, the Atupan way of questioning another’s sanity. “Would one hunter kill all the game in the forest, though most of it must rot before he could eat it? Or would a single tribe lay claim to the Glass Mountain, and have more obsidian than they could possibly use?” He laughed in outrage at the idea. “Why, there would be nothing left for anyone else!”

“Besides,” young Jad pointed out, “who would want more than one gem? Two of them would rattle against each other and scare off the game. Anyway, they are of no real use. They cannot keep you warm, or fill up your belly!”

Conan slumped where he sat, all but overwhelmed by the childlike innocence of these primitives. “Believe me, there are men in the world who would take all there is in this room to themselves. And take a hundred times more, if they could find it—and kill the lot of us if such a deed enabled them to keep it.”

Aklak grunted, impressed by his hunt-brother’s earnest tone. “I do not pretend to know where such men can be found.” He knuckled his ear again. “Surely they are mad.”

For his initiation charm, Conan selected a girdle of linked circular plates, the largest ones inset with purple sardonyx-like gems of irregular shape. Songa polished and mended the amulet, using a thong, and with an air of solemn ritual, tied it about Conan’s middle. Then, impulsively, she printed its shape against both their bellies with a quick, passionate embrace.

The others cheered, dealing out shoulder-slaps and rough hunters’ embraces. Scarcely touching anything else in the ruined shrine, they departed through the hidden, half-buried portal in the base of the tower, which led them up a few paces to ground level.

On the way back, Aklak and the two youthful hunters resolved to stalk after meadow deer. Conan and Songa, by quiet agreement, took leave of the others and set out together along the rocky apron of the eastern ridge. The stream that watered the village, while pooling and cascading down from the upper valleys, passed through a broad, stony gorge that contained many sand beaches and deep, sapphire-blue ponds. The bare granite had, by mid-afternoon, stored up the balmy heat of the day’s sun; furthermore, the canyon was relatively treeless and exposed, making it easy to watch for the approach of enemies or predatory beasts across the surrounding slopes.

In this desolate paradise Conan and Songa took their ease, swimming and idling, rolling and chasing across the sand. Having knocked down a pair of plump pigeons with slung stones, they roasted them over a driftwood fire and ate them ravenously, crouching together in the sand and wiping greasy fingers on sun-bronzed thighs. This main course they filled out with crisp swamp-grass tubers and a dessert of berries plucked from a thorny hedge among the rocks.

Watching Songa’s tongue dart hungrily to her berry-stained lips, Conan felt his passion stir. He reached out to tousle the sun-lightened strands of brown hair lying across the supple bare shoulders—but she, with the alertness of a huntress and the coy instincts of a much-sought prey, sprang up and danced out of his reach, laughing at him. He lunged after, following her out onto a shelf of rock alongside the stream, where she, turning suddenly and clutching him against her, bore him over into the deep, clear chill of the pond. The shock was total, smothering all their senses at once; he watched her body twist pale in the greenish light, trailing silken hair and bubbles, luring him deeper as she teased and stroked him in the cold caress of the current. Moments later they crawled out onto the bank, gasping and clinging. Finding precarious comfort between the chill wetness of their bare skin and the sand’s scorching heat, they rolled and grappled together.

“The tribe will laugh, and our hunt-brothers will think us poor stalkers,” Conan observed later, brushing sand from his nether limbs. “Today I wear the emblem of a hunter, but we return empty-handed.”

“Do not worry,” Songa reassured him, going to the pond to rinse sand from herself. “You have stalked your prey tirelessly, I can witness. And slain it most nobly,” she added, looking back at him with a smile of contentment.

“Yes, but will I return home bearing a fat, succulent hind to share with the rest of the tribe? I do not think so.” “It does not matter.” After wading thigh-deep in the stream, she came ashore and tied on her scant garments. “You have caught a swift and wily prey, one that many others have sought after without success, and they will envy you.” Going over barefoot to his side, she twined her arms about his neck and hugged him close. “I, too, have snared and netted well today.”

Conan held her quietly for a while in the rays of the late, sinking sun. At last they relinquished one another; they must leave soon if they wished to avoid groping and blundering through the forest by night.

“Your fame as a hunter is already established,” Conan told his mate. “But I... I had better make some noted kill soon, lest your tribe-brothers doubt my fitness.”

“The chance will come,” Songa assured him, lacing on her doeskin slippers. “For both of us, for I too would wish greater fame. I want to become as great a huntress as my mother.”

Conan grunted. “I doubt not you can, Fisherwoman.” He used the nickname the tribe had bestowed on her for finding him by the river. “But your mother’s reputation came mainly after your father’s death, did it not, when you were half-grown?”

“Yes.” She tossed her head, her hair now dry and loose across her shoulders. “That is why I remember it so well.” ‘ ‘But what will happen when you join the circle of mothers, who sit around the fire before the women’s longhut?” Conan’s brow was furrowed in frank puzzlement. “Will you hunt with your belly swollen, or with babes suckling at your breasts?”

“Oh, Conan!” Songa laughed, her voice soft in the colouring. twilight. “What strange land do you come from, that you know so little the ways of women, and of the world?” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Has no one taught you the simplest fact of life—that little babes come from the moon, from the owl-spirit? If a woman does not lie with a man under the full moon, no babies will come.” Her touch on his shoulder was patient, her laughter gentle. “Why, if a woman did not know that, she would end up fat with children all her life, and the forest would swarm with babies! ’ ’

“I see.” Conan’s voice rumbled with profound uncertainty. “You’re sure it works?”

“Of course it does,” she rebuked him. “Our tribe has always observed the will of the owl-spirit! That is why there is a longhut for the mated women, and why so many of us stay there at month’s end.” She glanced up at the plump, gibbous moon in the deepening blue overhead. “It will be just a few days now—” she paused, anxious “—and I would go there, Conan. I do not want babes yet.

I want to hunt, to win fame, and someday be a respected elder of the tribe.” She reached over to where he sat close beside her and embraced him. “At your side, if you wish it.”

“If you wish it, Songa, I do too.” Conan met her embrace warmly and firmly. “But come,” he told her, arising. “Let us go, before night stalks us and catches us in the tangled wood.”

Over the next cycle of the moon, life proceeded much as usual among the Atupans. Game remained plentiful into high summer, so the tribe did not pick up and move to a new village site. Some girls were lost; three young kinswomen of Songa’s, bathing ritually in a rocky pool far from camp, were set upon by hunters of a neighbouring tribe and carried off kicking and screaming, to be ravished. So, at least, the story was indignantly told around the huntsmen’s fire at the lower end of camp, though later it was rumoured that one of the maids had been in secret contact with a likely foreign male and had induced her two friends to join her in desertion.