Conan the Savage (30 page)
Authors: Leonard Carpenter
“Dolphas will carry out no more commands.” Starting forward at a run inside the archway, Conan raised ax and spear in either hand. “Nor will you and your queen be giving more of them!”
The captain, alert and quick, lunged to intercept him with a sideward sweep of his ax. Conan ducked beneath and came up swinging his own hatchet. Its heavy flint blade slashed crosswise, scraping against the guard’s steel helmet and striking sparks from its visor rim. The captain collapsed to the tiles, clutching his face in blood-streaming hands.
“What! You dare violence here? Guards, seize this assassin!” Instead of wheedling for his life or turning to run, the one called Basifer strode indignantly forward—only to take the hurtling point of Conan’s spear straight in his breastbone. He made no sound, after the initial grunt of impact, but sank down to his knees, and then sideways onto the polished floor. In spite of his garb, he did not grovel like a eunuch; Conan had to admit that he died a man.
At the far end of the room stood another golden door. It was guarded by two yellow-clad Imperials, who rushed forward at Basifer’s outcry. Conan, without time to recover his spear, ran straight forward between their scything blades. One sword missed; the other, striking the hard flint of his ax, snapped off near the hilt. Conan, as he lunged past the broken sword’s wielder, cut a leg out from under him by striking at the unarmored back of his knee.
The other swordsman doubled back swiftly. His blade, slashing at the Cimmerian’s belly, glanced off his ornamental belt. The blow did no damage, serving only to anger the snarling savage. The swinging ax smote the guardsman on the side of the head, sending the man’s cracked steel helmet spinning away across the floor and stretching him out senseless.
The gilded door in the far wall stood ajar. At a kick from Conan’s sandalled foot, it shuddered open. Within was a broad chamber lined with dark hangings and lit by bright-burning oil lamps attended by servants. Several courtiers waited around the periphery of the room, while at its centre stood two persons in elegant dress: an elderly man, and a pale young woman who clasped in one arm a doll with a painted, misshapen head.
“So,” Conan growled, “you are Brythunia’s queen, who rules the land by earthquake and volcano, who has set up her toy doll as a god, and who slaughters whole nations to possess their trinkets!”
“What Ninga and I do is our business,” the woman answered him readily with a wan, quizzical smile. “In any case, it is idle of you to menace us, for we are proof against mortal weapons. Steel wilts at our touch—” She gestured to a cabinet of charms and ornaments that stood open beside her. “Our trinkets, as you call them, are mightier.” “Tyrant!” Conan shouted, maddened by the sight of the gems. “Do you think to frighten me away with the stink of sorcery?” Raising his ax, he started forward.
Several things occurred at once. Guards from the outer corridor, drawn by the strife and shouting, burst in at the chamber door. The servants, in response to a gesture from Prince Clewyn, smothered their lamps, bringing near-total darkness to the draperied room. And Conan, in the last flicker of lamplight, hurled his stone ax straight at the tall, stately figure of Queen Tamsin where she stood at Clewyn’s side.
There were curses then, thumps and shrieks in the darkness, all of which swiftly fell silent as an uncanny radiance was kindled at its centre. It was an eerie, bluish-pale glow, streaming up from eggshell-like fragments that lay scattered across the floor.
The light limned, against the room’s dark tapestries, the astonished faces of the watchers, as well as one small, forlorn shape. Out of the tumult, the only sound that persisted was that of a little child sobbing.
“Help me. Please, someone, won’t you help?” The ragged figure, a thin, tow-headed girl, stood in the spot formerly occupied by Queen Tamsin.
“The bad men, they hurt Papa,” she cried out piteously. In one hand she bore a limp rag doll, crudely stitched. Its head—obviously nothing more than a broken gourd—hung shattered, yet it was from those shards that the mystic light emanated. “They came on horses and burned our farm... and oh, oh, Mama...!” Her childish words gave way to fresh peals of grief as she dropped her broken doll and stood knuckling her eyes, wailing wretchedly.
All movement had ceased in the room. Its occupants gaped at the spectacle, wondering if it bore any reality in the common world of shape and substance. But although the light of the gourd-fragments gradually faded, the child’s heartfelt sobbing went on as if it would never cease.
At length, at Clewyn’s urging, one of the lamps was rekindled. By its light, the onlookers saw that the savage intruder was gone. He must have slipped away, or else been obliterated by the goddess Ninga’s final magic. Of the two guards who had burst in, one lay senseless on the floor, the other sat dazed, massaging a bruised skull. Of certain objects—the assassin’s stone ax, the gems and ornaments in Her Holiness’s cabinet—and of proud Queen Tamsin herself, there was no earthly sign. But the little orphan child remained, her face a frail cameo-image of the queen, with the same dark red hair and bright green eyes. Without question, she was tangible and alive. Her wails subsiding, she blinked up at the strangers around her in heartbroken bewilderment.
It was Prince Clewyn, his kindly old face crinkling in sympathy, who first found the presence of mind to kneel and comfort the child, hugging her dusty form against his bosom.
“There, there, little one, cry as much as you want. We are here to take care of you.”
Epilogue
Encounter by Night
“Ho, there—you, barbarian! Begone, there is no more ale for you! I am closing shop, and you are the last one here, so haul yourself away... before you pass out on my floor and I have to hitch a donkey to your drink-sodden carcass and drag you out! Enough now, go!”
The taverner’s manner was less than respectful, it occurred to Conan. He considered whether to take offence., but he decided no, what was the use? A man might rail against the ill fortunes that beset the world—or even take up arms and hurl himself at their source—but in the end, the outcome was always the same. If a mortal tried to seize hold of his own destiny and bolt from the muddy, rutted path the gods had decreed for him, it was in the relentless way of things for him to be cruelly tripped up and tumbled back into the mire.
The drink, at least, was a balm. It kept the toothed shadows at bay, deadened the ache of lost hopes, and sustained a mood of gentle, hushed reminiscence. Impressions came to him, fleeting images that seemed to be reflected from another age, another world—of fir trees shivering in an early morning breeze, the flash of sun on a mountain tarn, soft voices murmuring near a camp fire—
“All right, you hulking northerner, enough weeping in your ale! Here, fellow, I will refill your cup. Take it with you, since I don’t doubt you will be back here in the morning! But go now, before I heave you out!”
Glumly, leadenly, after shuffling to the counter to receive the last dregs of the ale-pitcher, Conan turned and trudged up the stone stairs toward the exit. He had a bed to go to— a straw-ticked pad in a bug-ridden tenement flop—assuming he could find the place and rouse up the landlord to let him in at this hour.
His jewelled metal girdle had bought him that much, at least. Sold at the recently inflated prices, it had furnished him his nondescript clothing, the sword-belt that now hugged his middle, passable meals and shelter, and, more important, the flood tide of ale that had borne him up during these past days. After witnessing the witch-queen’s strange transformation and making good his escape, he had been quick to sell the gems, change his appearance, and plunge out of sight—into the familiar haunts of the Sargossan underworld, where his absence over the last few months had scarcely been noted.
Amazingly, there did not seem to be much hue and cry. The escapees from the slave-riot were sought, but no call went up for Queen Tamsin’s assassin, perhaps because, as a matter of policy, no royal death had been acknowledged.
Instead, the Imperial Brythunian faith had taken a bizarre and rather sentimental turn; the folk of the city and the broader empire were being exhorted to worship a miracle: the birth, or rebirth, of a magical child-Tamsin. She was said to embody a living fusion of their brave queen and the former goddess Ninga. She was described as a benevolent godling who, in her girlish innocence, and ruling the empire under the sage guidance of Prince Clewyn and his councillors, would lead them all to a purer, more harmonious existence. In celebration of her virtues, Ningan priestesses and devout citizens daily donned bright robes and flower garlands to dance through Sargossa’s streets, linking hands with passers-by and singing childish songs and hymns. The carnage of the late revolution had, miraculously, given way to outpourings of faith and joy.
All of this brought small comfort to Conan in his despondency; it only made him feel more the outsider, more the misfit. As to what had really transpired in the palace with the mad queen—what dire, sorcerous change he had wrought, or unwrought—he could not fully judge. For him, revenge had been a simple necessity, not a luxury to be savoured and boasted of. It had not eased the pangs of his loss.
The top of the tavern’s dim-lit stair corridor stank of retchings and of less mentionable filth. The iron latch was set on the heavy timber door; after Conan shouldered through, the portal swung itself shut with a ragged click. Outside, the alley was dank and obscure. A thin, dusty-bright ribbon of stars zigzagged between ramshackle roofs overhead. Their pale light, mirrored in patches of scummy water pooled among the cobbles, was his only beacon.
Then, in the star-shot darkness, an even darker figure moved with a scrape of boot sole. It loomed momentarily near, then veered away abruptly and slouched off, its retreating movements accented by the muffled clink of weaponry.
“Hold, there! You seem familiar to me!” His drunken haze instantly forgotten, Conan started after the figure— who, in turn, fled all the faster. The way was treacherous, winding past mudholes and half-seen obstacles, so that the race through the streets never accelerated to a run. It ended in a courtyard whose blind recesses created a trap of starlight; there the night-lurker turned at bay, sword drawn, his features visible under the visorless bronze helmet of a city proctor.
“Desist and yield,” the fugitive said from his near-cowering stance, putting up a belated show of authority. “Throw down your weapon, in the name of the empire!” “Ah, yes, that grit-and-cinder voice!” Conan exclaimed. “Now I know you certainly. You are proctor-sergeant hereabouts, are you not?”
“If you know that much, then you know enough to yield to me,” the other said, edging forward with renewed confidence. “I tell you what, stranger... just go on about your business. I will let you off this time!”
“Indeed.” Conan shook his head amiably. “You are fond of lying in wait for late passers-by, are you not—you and your uniformed thugs?”
“The town curfew is strictly enforced—” the sergeant began.
“But tonight—” after a quick glance about them, Conan continued in his menacingly pleasant tone “—tonight you are working alone, and not up to facing a quarry that seems too fit.” He stood easily with hilt in hand, blocking the other’s path of escape. “You rob your drunken victims, clap them into the town dungeon, drug them, and bundle them off to the slave-mines! Such was my fate at your hands, as you may recall.”
“Impossible—none ever returns from the mines!” “Sergeant, there is only one place from which nobody ever returns. With Crom as my witness, one of us will go there tonight!”
As the Cimmerian spoke, he moved, and the nighted courtyard echoed with the din of swords clashing.
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