Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (16 page)

“It reaches the snakes’ lair, just as sure as jewels glitter,” Conan said. “I had another good whiff of their stink just now.”

“What if they’re waiting for us?” Dutulus said.

“We came up here to find their lair, and we’ve probably found it, and now you want to go back without being sure?” asked Panon.

“Here now, you son of a Nemedian—!”

Conan put a large hand on each man’s shoulder. “Uncoil another rope; tie one end to my waist and the other to this outcropping. I’ve better night-sight than most, so I’m the best one to go in without a torch. Light would just wake up our scaly friends, and I’m for cutting their throats as they sleep.”

Panon and Dutulus, forced allies, looked at each other. Then they looked at the sky, as if hoping the gods would heal the Cimmerian’s apparent madness. At last they began uncoiling the rope.

Nothing except the carrion stench drifted out of the doorway as the scouts prepared for Conan’s entrance. Nothing else drifted down from above either. Panon tried shouting a message to the men below, but the wind blew his words away or drowned them with unearthly moans as it curled around the rocks.

“An uncanny land, this,” Conan muttered. “If Grolin has any sense, he’ll have a friendly sorcerer conjure him up a flying chariot to take him somewhere else.” “There,” Dutulus said and grunted as he tugged on the tethered end of Conan’s line. “Much tighter and the rock edges will chafe it through. You’ve two hundred paces to play with. If the serpents do take you we’ll ask them to return the uneaten rope—along with your bones for proper rites.”

“I’ve no need for rites,” Conan grunted. “Just find a safe hilltop and tell the sky that Conan of Cimmeria died like a warrior. Crom may hear, and if no others do, that’s their loss.”

Again the other two men stared at each other, as if I still further persuaded that they were in the presence of a madman.

Conan walked to the entrance, wrinkled his nose at a particularly raw blast of the carrion odour, and took a cautious step into the shadows. Then he took a second.

On the third step, he felt rather than heard rock giving way. He took no fourth step, either forward or backward. Instead the rock underfoot cracked across, wobbled uncertainly for a moment, then plunged down into blackness.

The moment was a heartbeat too short for even the Cimmerian to find a handhold. He ended up dangling on the rope, his breath jerked out of him as it tightened, and no handholds anywhere within reach.

Then the rope jerked again, and Conan felt himself sag. A desperate wail sounded from outside, echoing through the blackness. Conan thought the snakes were attacking, and tried to gain enough breath to tell his friends to let him go and save themselves.

“The rope’s cut!” Panon’s voice shouted. Then both the Cimmerian’s comrades appeared, struggling with the severed end, trying to pull it back and Conan with it.

“Wait!” Conan shouted. He cursed himself for not remembering that within the cave, sheltered from wind and rain, rock edges might be sharp as swords.

It was too late. A second sharp edge deftly slit the rope. Dutulus made a desperate grab for the vanishing end, overbalanced, and with a wild scream fell after Conan.

The Cimmerian’s last sight as he plummeted into blackness was Panon’s horror-stricken face staring over the crumbling edge. His last thought was to hope that Panon would not stand there gaping until either the snakes woke up or the rest of the ledge brought him down to join his comrades.

X

Lysinka was taking a sentry’s watch herself at the citadel when the flying snakes attacked. She intended to prove to both bands that her bedding Conan had not made her slothful.

It was also a good way of studying the land about the citadel and adding more details to the map she already carried in her mind. With two few fighters to guard every possible road of attack even by human foes, she had to make sure which were the most likely (and therefore probably unused by an opponent with the wits of Grolin) and the least likely (which Grolin might be shrewd enough to use).

The actual battle against foolish Nemedians and ferocious flying snakes was too far within a steep-walled valley for Lysinka to see clearly. But she knew that something had swooped down behind a ridge, and something else—rather smaller—had soared up from behind the same ridge not long afterward.

If that was an attack on Conan and his men, she almost felt sorry for the attackers. She looked forward to resting her head on the Cimmerian’s shoulder—a place that had in only three nights become familiar and friendly to her.

Idly, she wondered how many of his tales of war were the truth. More than many other wanderers’, she would wager. His own prowess she had seen for herself, and indeed the bruises she had taken from it were still healing. Nor would she doubt for a moment that he had faced more than his share of formidable foes.

The world held potent enemies enough and to spare. Not all of them wore stinking furs and came at you with steel either. Some wore silk and delicate linen, and they had no weapons but honeyed words, to persuade you that if you gave them all they asked they would return the favour.

Lies, all of that. But she did not fear lies with Conan. Whether he swore eternal fidelity to a friend or eternal vengeance against an enemy, he would not be foresworn while there was breath in his body.

It was toward the end of her watch that Lysinka felt the ground quiver underfoot. It was only a single shock, and it felt to her not at all like an earthquake. It reminded her instead of a time when she had been standing atop a fallen tree, and a bear denning underneath it crawled out, shaking the tree.

That time she had saved herself by climbing high up the next standing tree for the bear. But there were no trees close to hand in this alien wilderness of rock, for which she had abandoned her familiar forests. She wished briefly that Grolin and the Soul of Thanza would both fall into a cave that would then collapse upon them, grinding them both to dust and removing them from the memory of men.

But wishes led no bands of warriors. Her watch was done; and she had much to do before daylight faded and night brought Conan’s return.

Conan awoke slowly, in what at first seemed complete darkness. Gradually he became aware of a greyish twilight that seemed to envelop him like water. He also became aware of pain in several parts of his body and saw that he was lying on a bed of fine sand.

This was as well, because he felt no great urge to rise or move about. No bones seemed broken, and he could breath and move every part of his body without unendurable pain. But plainly he had taken such a fall that even for him rest would be prudent.

Before resting however, he sat up. This sent pain ringing like a gong through more of his body than before. It also showed him his surroundings.

The dim light came from patches of greyish moss on the walls and on boulders jutting from the sand. It was enough to reveal the bottom of a vertical shaft, that shot up to vanish in darkness far above.

Conan’s wits were returning. Plainly the ledge that moved under him at the top of the shaft, and a cave lay at the bottom. How far he had fallen, he did not dare to think about. The bed of sand rose at a sharp angle, fit to break a man’s fall and leave him merely stunned rather than dead—if he were fortunate enough to strike only sand.

Dutulus had not been so lucky. A patch of blood showed where he had struck a boulder. As if that blow had been insufficient, he had bounced, like a child’s ball, to strike another. He now lay across the second boulder, his blood smearing the moss into a grisly paste, his half-crushed head lolling and his back bent far beyond any angle imaginable for a living man.

To test his strength, Conan forced himself to his feet and walked over to Dutulus. If he took one step at a time, he could walk without too much pain. He suspected that it would be some time before he could fight or run.

So he knelt beside Dutulus and told Crom that here was a brave man who deserved his attention, and that any help he gave in avenging the man’s death would not come amiss. The Cimmerian was not a man for death rituals, and in any case he did not know whether Dutulus’s folk buried, burned, or exposed to the sky their honoured dead.

A shadowy opening in the wall beyond Dutulus revealed a faint glimmering and enlarged the sound of rushing water. As underground rivers were not uncommon in this land Conan saw that he need not fear thirst.

Rest and water should make him fighting-fit long before either friend or foe came searching for him. Conan returned to his first resting place, lay down in the sand, scooped out a shallow nest like a dog lying down in high grass, and fell swiftly asleep.

Lord Grolin was so weary after the day’s march that he was asleep almost the moment he sat down. He thought briefly that he should see to the cook fires and the sentries, as a captain’s duty required. But he decided that discipline of his dwindling band of followers would survive their chiefs inattention for a single night. Indeed, it might solve many problems if he did not awake.

When Grolin did awake, it was fully dark, except for an area immediately before him. What he saw at first made him believe that he had indeed died and gone to some particularly unpleasant after-world.

A maw gaped before him. It was not the mere incorporeal blackness he had seen above the citadel but the mouth of a gigantic serpent. The creature seemed to stretch from the stars, to the earth, and all around it jutted gleaming teeth longer than a man.

Above the maw shone two red eyes that might have been ruby-coloured. But Grolin would have happily thrown any ruby of that hue into the nearest fire, although it was worth a king’s ransom.

He wanted to scream. He knew he would, if he said nothing. So once more he articulated the first words that came to his lips:

“Cease these jests, Mend sorcerer. If you have come for serious matters, speak of them. If not, depart and let me sleep.”

The gigantic maw shrank down to the size of a large melon. Grolin saw that it belonged to a real creature, a snake easily twenty paces long, covered with glossy black scales, and sporting two pairs of leathery * wings.

It hissed twice, then closed its mouth. As the fangs vanished, the sorcerer’s long face appeared where the snake’s head had been. It held no expression.

“How are we going to speak?” Grolin whispered. “Briefly, as you wished,” the sorcerer replied. If human words could describe creations of magic, Grolin would have said that the sorcerer seemed uneasy. Grolin spoke first:

“Enemies are closer to the Soul of Thanza than we are. I tried to drive them away, but they would not be driven. Some have entered the Mountain of the Skull.” “If one of the enemies you tried to drive forth was that Cimmerian, it does not surprise me that he would not go save where he wished. You may slay that man, but do not expect to frighten him.”

“Indeed. That is why I do not seek to make him the

Death Lord of Thanza. You, one may dream of guiding. The Cimmerian, never.”

Grolin decided that he had not been insulted, only described. He also decided that Conan would be a poor choice for other reasons. Many northerners loathed even lawful sorcery, and he would also have been giving ear to Lysinka.

So Conan would instead be implacably on Grolin’s trail, and nothing would save the baron except becoming the Death Lord. He propped himself up on one elbow.

“Do we seek the Mountain of the Skull now, or will morning suffice?”

“You dare much, Grolin. Without my guidance, you will be too long in finding the mountain.”

“Without my presence, you lack a human to become the Death Lord. Without my men, you will not have my presence. I will fight neither Cimmerians nor any other being with men so weary they can barely stand, let alone wield a sword.”

Grolin thought this defiance might be a death sentence. He hardly cared. He and his men would rather be dead than to undertake a night march.

The sorcerer’s face shimmered so brightly for a moment, in rich amber hues, that Grolin blinked, then looked about to see if any of his men were awake and alarmed. None seem to be stirring.

Then the sorcerer spoke in Grolin’s mind. “Very well. Please yourself. But do not presume on such friendship as I bear you.”

The face vanished. The snake reared upright until an impossible portion of its length rose like a tree. The two pairs of wings beat three times, and with a whusssh of tom air the creature soared out of sight.

“My lord!” called a sentry. “Was there a bear in the camp just now?”

“Hardly that,” Grolin replied. “I saw something too, but I think it was just a trick of light and shadow.”

“Aye, my lord.”

As before, the man sounded willing to obey rather than believe. Grolin wondered how often he would lie to the men about the sorcerer before they ceased to believe him in this matter—or in others.

Once more, he knew that the only real power was one that he held absolutely and alone, needing no aid from either men or sorcerers.

Conan’s sleep greatly refreshed him. His robust frame also healed quickly. When he awoke a second time, he hardly felt pain, and sprang up nearly as limber as before.

Exploring beyond the opening revealed that an underground river indeed flowed through the caves. It was not much more than two spear-lengths wide but of a depth he could not plumb. It was cold enough to freeze not merely a man’s flesh but also his bones.

Withal, it likewise seemed the only way out of these caves for an unassisted man. Conan looked briefly up the shaft, to be assured that it was indeed vertical. It was of height he could not even guess.

He had been very fortunate to survive his recent fall; he could not hope for such luck a second time. Nor did the smooth walls of the shaft offer any hand-or foothold to keep him from that second fall.

Waiting for help to come went against Conan’s nature, and moreover seemed less than prudent. Regius Panon might not have escaped to spread the news of Conan’s fall. Even if he had, it could be days before Conan’s friends came in search of him; days more before they found him. Meanwhile he would be growing weaker from lack of food, and friends were not all who might come seeking him.