Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza (25 page)

Conan imitated the skeleton warrior he’d seen earlier, stamping his boot down on the hatchling’s back. It writhed underfoot but was too short to raise its head high enough to strike above Conan’s boot.

The other two tried to rescue their nestmate. Conan chopped one in half with his sword, lopped a wing off the other with his dagger, then beheaded the pain-maddened serpent as it tried to strike him in the face.

As the half-grown creature fell, the other head flew out of the niche, as if hurled from a siege engine. It struck a skeleton warrior in the back, knocking him down. A comrade tripped over him and fell, but by then the first had regained his feet. The two stood back to back, one with a spear and the other with a battered sword with a heavy curved bronze blade. They fought that way long enough for three good gulps of wine before the battle drove them apart. Conan would have sworn that they were laughing as they fought.

The battle also drove Conan back until he could no longer view the niche clearly. He hoped the head would do nothing worse than plug the opening for the rest of the battle or even protect the skeleton within.

More serpents appeared, some with red wings or yellow bellies, others glossy black all over. Conan could not help wondering, between bouts of desperate swordwork, whence these creatures had sprung—and whose magic had conjured them, if they were not native to the Thanzas.

By now the fight had driven the serpents back far enough so that Conan caught a glimpse of the creatures’ nests. They were vast, spongy masses of rotten straw, leaves, and twigs, with eggs the size of a child’s head. Some nests were large enough for half a dozen men the size of Conan to sleep in, and they emitted an odour worse than anything he had encountered in the mountain thus far.

Then smoke began to trickle out of the niche. A moment later it poured forth. To Conan’s eyes, it looked a virulent shade of green, but a closer inspection revealed that it held sparks of many colours. Most of them he could not name; he doubted they had names in any language spoken by lawful men under the sun.

The smoke seemed to have no odour, but it made Conan’s breath come hard and short. It did not affect the skeletons, but the serpents plainly did not care for it. They began slithering out of the chamber where most of the fighting had taken place, seeking safety or at least fresh air.

The skeleton warriors pursued. The Cimmerian had no need to remind them that the serpents had to die. Alive, they could only help the Death Lord or at least hinder his enemies.

It also seemed to Conan that the sheer joy of their first battle in aeons had animated the skeletons. They might have no hearts to beat faster with joy but delight was plainly in them nonetheless, wherever it had found its seat.

Conan started to shout a Cimmerian war cry—then the words died on his lips. Something was crawling out of the niche.

At first Conan thought matters had gone horribly awry with the skeleton. Then he realized that it was intact and more or less normally arranged. But it had reanimated from the serpent’s ichor in the darkness and cramped quarters, and now apparently had to back out of the niche. Its feet waved in the air briefly—and a last serpent, thought long dead, reared up to snatch those feet from their ankles.

Conan crossed the cave so swiftly that his feet barely touched the ground. He came down with both boots on the snake’s back, but the creature heaved so fiercely that he flew off. Still, Conan’s attack gave the skeleton time to climb down, turn around, waver briefly—then grip the serpent’s neck in both hands.

From where the serpent had flung him sprawling, the Cimmerian watched the newly animated skeleton squeeze the snake’s neck until its writhing stopped.

Then he twisted hard until the serpent’s head and body separated.

The fresh ichor that spattered on his hands seemed to give the skeleton new strength. Conan would have sworn he grew a hand’s breadth in width and height.

The skeleton’s voice squealed, grated, and moaned. Dust puffed from between his toothless jaws, then words trickled out.

“Whoever brought me here, my thanks. Are these the foe?”

Conan was on his feet now but still wary. He nodded. But the skeleton had already turned around.

“Ah. Eggs,” he said. He strode toward the nearest nest. Actually he lurched for his first few steps, then walked, then strode out like a captain coming to inspect a regiment, or a banner-bearer leading a regiment on parade.

Other skeleton warriors, including the leader, turned to stare. Conan grinned and mouthed to the leader, “You wanted strong blood?”

As the newcomer approached the nest, a hatchling crawled out from under it. The skeleton looked at it, then picked it up by the tail and cracked its head against a wall. A moment later he was at the nest—and by now everyone who had not gone in pursuit of the other serpents was watching him, Conan among them.

The skeleton warrior picked up a wad of the nest material and looked at it. Then he stepped to the wall and raised his free arm. A moment later sparks flew, as he struck his arm against the wall.

The sparks burst in all directions, but enough of them fell on the wad of nest material to ignite it. Smoke rose first, then little flickers of flame.

Then the skeleton flung the wad in among the piled matter of the nest.

Even he seemed to recoil from the stench that arose as the nest took fire. Conan felt rather as if he had been flung head-first into a midden pit long ripened under a hot sun. He still retreated at a walk, despite the fact that his nose and lungs were urging his feet to run.

Conan sought the open air near the cave’s mouth, while the other skeletons joined in the work of burning the nests. The skeleton warriors ran about, striking sparks and hurling tinder. Black smoke poured up and out, reeking and fouler than Conan had words to describe. Amid the smoke red flames glimmered, and Conan heard them crackling.

He also heard, slowly at first and then coming in rapid succession, the pops and bangs of the serpents’ eggs bursting amid the flames.

That sound brought the fleeing serpents back, attacking in a frenzy to save their eggs and their race from the flames. Conan had to plunge into the smoke to join the skeletons, though he could barely breathe.

In the end, his sword was not much needed. Against opponents who took no breath, the serpents were hopelessly burdened by the smoke. They could hardly breathe, they could see less well, they could hear or feel nothing whatever—and the skeletons had a merry slaughter.

When the last serpent was dead, the skeletons began joining Conan in the open air. Most of them had turned from greyish-white to sooty black, with occasional spots of charred ichor. Few of them still had their weapons, and some of them swayed on their feet in a way that told Conan even warriors of stone could reach the limit of endurance.

The Cimmerian leaned on his sword and looked outward into the Thanzas without truly seeing anything. He felt rather as he had in Vendhya, when he and his friends had hunted down a man-eating tiger that had devastated whole villages. They had finally slain her by getting between her and her cubs and taking her as she came to their rescue.

It was work that needed doing, or people would die. It was work that demanded a warrior’s skill and courage. But it was not work that a warrior could look back upon with pleasure or that he would care to boast about over the wine in taverns at night.

None doubted any longer that the ichor of the serpents was “strong blood” enough for the skeletons’ needs. The problem was how to bring it to the still-inanimate skeletons far below—or bring the skeletons to the ichor—and to do one or the other before the blood lost its strength.

Luck, which had so long eluded the warriors charged with overthrowing the Death Lord of Thanza, now turned their way. They found a crippled but living snake, and almost at the same time, a nearly-vertical shaft that plummeted deep into the mountain.

He shouted, echoes replied—and then so did one of the skeleton warriors who had been left below, guarding their as yet inanimate comrades and procuring more weapons. The shaft lay within a hundred paces of the remaining skeletons.

Not that using this luck was entirely easy. It meant making rope of the hide cut from the dead serpents, and lowering the moribund one down the shaft. Twice it stuck, but two of the skeleton warriors had prudently climbed down after it and were able to pry it loose.

One of them fell during the descent, and once again the dirge for a shattered comrade rose from the skeleton warriors. The Cimmerian would have silenced them had he known how, but an appeal to the leaders that hostile ears might be listening was in vain.

“It is a custom from the days when we were men’” said one of them. Considering how long ago that must have been, Conan decided that the custom might be several thousand years old.

If anyone was going to argue the skeleton warriors out of their customs, it would have to be someone with a quicker tongue than his. He also had to admit that if the uproar of the battle and the smoke from the burning of the serpents’ nest had not warned enemies, none were there to be warned.

Even while they sang the dirge, the skeleton warriors were hauling up the first of their comrades reanimated by the serpent’s ichor. The newcomers seemed more befuddled than the earlier ones, being reanimated amid the slaughterhouse scenes of the serpents’ nest. But the leaders told off one of the first party to advise and counsel each of the newcomers. They were soon snatching up weapons and doing what in living men Conan would have called an arms drill.

Sleeping a few thousand years clad only in your bones would, he supposed, render a warrior somewhat out of practice.

Around the time that the fifteenth reanimated warrior from below rose into daylight, Conan heard a sound in the distance. It reached his ears as a low-pitched humming, as if a swarm of enormous flies had passed overhead. The Cimmerian called the leaders’ attention to it, but they merely posted extra sentries and continued retrieving their comrades.

By now there were too few inanimate skeletons below to require the help of all their animate comrades. Many of those whom Conan had first encountered began their climb. Some rode up the shaft on the ropes, others followed the path of Conan and the snake-killers.

The first of these had just reached daylight when the mountain quivered. It was not a violent movement, but for a moment the solid rock underfoot seemed to Conan to be as mobile as jelly.

At the same moment, the distant droning grew louder. Now the flies might have been swarming toward Conan. It nearly drowned out the next sound, which was the rumble and crash of falling rock, far away and far below.

Conan and his skeletal comrades looked in all directions, from the sky to down the tunnel shaft. The skeleton warriors in the tunnel hastened their pace, five of them dashing out almost in a single body.

Then a roar like a waterfall swept over them. The mountain no longer quivered; it seemed to be dancing. Loose rock cascaded everywhere, and dust poured out of the tunnel and up the shaft. Mingled with the ashes of the fire, it formed an opaque cloud through which the Cimmerian could scarcely see his hand at the end of his outstretched arm.

“Out!” he roared, and the leaders echoed him, in so far as anyone could make himself heard over the groaning of the mountain. The open slope might be shaking; it might be swept by rockfalls; it might harbour live serpents or other unknown perils. But it was safer than in the caves and tunnels or under overhanging cliffs, where rock might fall at any moment and crush flesh and stone alike.

Conan did not head the withdrawal. With the other leaders, he remained coughing until he thought his ribs would crack from the dust and ashes.

At last none of the other skeleton warriors seemed to be lagging behind. The three leaders turned—and as they did, the mountain heaved again, causing both shaft and tunnel to collapse with a roar that eclipsed everything before it. A blast of dust and heat that made Conan think of erupting volcanoes filled the air.

He and the leaders dashed out on to the open mountainside—and saw their band standing about, all looking downward and some pointing, while others waved their arms frantically. One could not say that their skulls showed any emotion, but Conan had seen similar poses in men stricken with horror at some indescribable sight.

Conan pushed through the ranks of the skeleton warriors. Then his own mouth dropped open, and for a moment words failed him.

A vast hole yawned below where the mountaintop had been. In those moments of quivering and uproar, the entire top of the mountain had lifted from its base into the sky.

Already they were nearly clear of the hole. The flying mountaintop seemed to be drifting aimlessly as it rose higher each moment.

Conan wondered what would happen if it reached into the clouds. A man could climb so high on an earthbound mountain that he died of cold and an inability to breathe. How high could one rise on a flying mountain—one sent aloft by the Death Lord of Thanza?

That thought seemed to have occurred to the skeleton warriors too. They sang the dirge for their comrades now lost forever far below, but they also posted sentries and set themselves to sharpening their weapons. It was with horror that Conan watched a skeleton sharpening a short sword on his own thigh.

“We have enough,” cried the leader who had been the first to rise from the serpents’ ichor. “None to spare, but enough for the work at hand. You yourself are worth ten of us or twenty living warriors.”

“You flatter me,” Conan said, then realized that he had no names for the two leaders. He could barely tell them apart.

“Do you have lawful names?” he asked.

The leader below nodded. “I may be called Iom. He is—I think—Ruks. The gods allow us no other names.” Those were odd names, but then these folk might have worshipped odd gods. Conan was content.

“Iom, Ruks. When your—men—have their weapons ready, it is time for us to go hunt the Death Lord of Thanza in his lair. Unless you think some other power has sent this mountain kiting off like a piece of thistledown?”