Conan the Savage (3 page)

“I see no sign of a cave-in,” one of the hairy troglodytes declared at last. “What is it, then, another false alarm?” “The northman lost his nerve,” a miner jeered at Conan through gapped, broken teeth. “Get your wits about you, fellow, or you will be climbing these walls in madness— and clawing them down on your head, as better men have done!”

“Pulling them down?” the Cimmerian countered, scowling. “Aye, ’tis an idea. If you dogs want to help, lay hold of this rope!”

Conan held up the rope end he had brought along, drawing it hand over hand to form a taut length running straight into the hollow at the base of the cliff. He threw his whole weight against the line, and Tjai, suddenly grinning, followed suit. Others joined in, until a dozen or more of them had braced their backs to the task, chanting as they would for the daily ore lifting.

“Steady, ready, heave!” Conan shouted, and the team followed through with a lusty cry, making the rope strain and oscillate in the half-shadow.

The result of their effort could scarcely have been foreseen: a creaking of timber, a grating of stone, and then an abrupt slackening and collapse of the line, all resistance gone. Its haulers staggered and cursed, regaining their footing on the broken quarry floor while still gaping backward at the cliff.

There followed stirrings and rattlings from the base of the overhang. A grating shock occurred, sending a man-tall puff of dust jetting out of the hollow, followed by creakings and small rivulets of stone from far above. Then, with a trembling roar, the whole cliff face began to slump down and forward.

The rope-haulers raised their fists and issued a cheer, which was instantly drowned out by the tumultuous din of clashing, fracturing stone; then the miners leaped and scrambled farther away as the slide sent rubble tongues and jagged boulders trundling toward the spot where they stood.

The avalanche roared and thundered, filling the air with its tumult, reverberation, and acrid-smelling dust. Then it ceased, leaving the group of miners cowering at the foot of a broad ramp way formed of loose, smoking rubble stretching up and out of sight into the pall of rolling grey.

“Now upward,” Conan cried, “before the dust settles! Fight your way to the top, and to freedom!”

Leading the charge, he started up the talus slope in great, leaping bounds. He was slowed by the rubble, which gave underfoot and caught at his loose, ill-mended sandals, vastly increasing the effort needed for every step. Seeking out the larger chunks of stone awash on the sea of gravel and shale, he began to leap from one to the next. As he progressed upward, the way grew firmer, if steeper.

Yelling and jabbering on either side of him, seized by the novel and half-forgotten notion of escape, Conan’s fellow convicts swarmed desperately forward. Some of them—the leanest, wiriest veterans at rock-scrabbling— even raced ahead of their leader. Ragged and long-bearded as they were, waving their arms with excitement, their charge resembled more the disgorging of a madhouse or a graveyard than a prison break. The convict Tjai stayed close by Conan’s side, clutching his shoulder for mutual balance in difficult spots, his face alight with hope at the sudden opportunity.

“’Tis a brilliant idea, Conan!” the Ilbarsi gasped along the way. “I did not think you knew the stone that well, to shave things so close—and after such a short time in the pit!”

Conan turned, clasping his comrade’s arm in the legionary double hand grip, the better to haul the smaller man up a cottage-sized boulder. “When I was a lad, I hunted mountain sheep through the alps of my native land. I learned to read the rocks even as the horn-heads do.”

“You learned well, Conan,” Tjai affirmed. Slit-eyed, the Ilbarsi pointed forward and upward. “There, see, through the dust... it looks as if this slide of ours stretches clean to the quarry’s rim!”

“Aye, Crom thump me,” Conan swore devoutly. “But now the thrice-cursed guards have guessed what we are about. Our work begins in earnest.”

Ahead, they could see where the landslide had cut into the mine’s defences. A catwalk was down, one end of it trailing in the sloping rubble, with what looked like the broken body of a guard lying in the stony wrack a little way beneath. Two more guards crouched on the last, sagging horizontal reach of catwalk, outlined against the bright, welcoming sky as they peered down through the roiling dust. Above them, one of the cabins had been partly undermined. Its rounded log-skids sagged out over the precipice, yet it had not fallen.

“Ho there, you prisoners, get on back!” a voice came down to them, funnelled through cupped hands. “Do not venture near the rim, on pain of death!”

“Aye, rascals, take your stenchy hides back down into the pit,” the other guard called less officiously. “You lackeys have a sorry mess of stone to clean up!”

As Conan climbed, hard, round pebbles began to shatter near him: slung stones, each one easily large enough to kill or maim. Slingers could be seen on the balcony of the guard cabin, with more now appearing at the unbroken edge of the quarry. Their barrage intensified, and just ahead, a crunching, despairing cry rang out. One of the white-bearded convicts clutched his shoulder and fell, rolling a dozen man-lengths down the rubble slope to lie moaning, his arm bloodied and one leg twisted crazily beneath him.

This, however, did not halt the others. It only hastened their climb. Some, with wild eyes set on the cliff edge, scrambled past the dangling end of catwalk and its two defenders; but Conan headed straight for it, with Tjai following close behind him.

Slipping and scrabbling in the rubble, the Cimmerian grabbed hold of a trailing end of rope and used it to haul himself up all the faster. When he reached the hanging wooden slats, he gained some protection against the bombardment of stones; they smote and dinted the thin planks, thudding down heavily at his feet.

The two catwalk guards were armed only with long daggers, which they now used to saw at the thick, tarred cordage, working to cut away the dangling portion of catwalk where it trailed into the pit.

“Tjai, grab hold! Stoutly, now!” Seized by a sudden, devilish inspiration, the two tugged and swung on the slack ropes. The men on the unstable footing above clutched for their lives, and one of them, taken by surprise, overtoppled. Flailing and calling out piteously as he fell, he ended in the netting just above Conan’s head, while his long, sharp poniard tumbled almost into the Cimmerian’s lap.

“Aha, fellow, and welcome!” But the man was dead, his neck twisted in cordage. Hauling the corpse down, Conan laid hold of the makeshift ladder. “Now we must climb, and fast!”

Clamping the weapon in his teeth, oblivious of the stones that still cracked and thudded onto the scree around him, Conan set his toes into the narrow interstices of the dangling catwalk planks. He scaled it spiderlike, mounting toward the level section and the lone guard who now gaped down at him in fear.

“Mount to the rim, and freedom!” the shouts from the other convicts rang down. “Onward, fellows! Fight! Aiahh!”

The cries and screams of the escapees echoed from the cliff as they charged the summit, wading into the thick hail of projectiles. A few lay slack or twitching on the rocks, while the surviving score or so straggled toward the last, man-high crest of the slope, which was topped by a dozen or more vigorous defenders.

Conan, meanwhile, swarmed the catwalk like a ship’s rat following the scent of rancid beef. Tjai flanked him, creeping up the loose netting with equal agility. The guard above paused in sawing at the ropes, as if debating whether to bolt from his station and flee up the sagging span. Conan’s snarled curses were unintelligible, issuing as they did from knotted lips clenched around a sharp steel blade.

Of a sudden, a new turmoil broke out along the cliff side. Barely stopping to crane his neck, Conan saw the desperate guards trigger a new avalanche. Its keystone was the guard cabin, cut loose from its moorings and toppled over the side by a group of Imperials who now stood waving and cheering. Made of beams and light timbers, the wooden hovel sagged and split apart on its sliding journey. But in its wake, shaken loose by the impact, came a slather of loose stones that no climber could dodge or resist. Those convicts at the centre of the rush were bowled over by a tide of shifting rubble; some of them were knocked sprawling, others vanished entirely from sight.

The guards, howling in exultation, turned to face the few remaining prisoners. It began to seem that none would escape the pit after all.

Snarling his inarticulate rage, Conan hauled himself up the last few planks of the rope walk and seized the tunic collar of the remaining, wide-eyed Brythunian—just as the man’s dagger finally sawed through the rope at the side of the catwalk, causing the web of cordage to sag free and reshape itself. Conan’s one-handed grip was broken; he fell backward, losing his hold on the dagger but not on the guard. Bowling Tjai loose as they tumbled, the two enemies rolled off the sagging netting at the bottom and pitched headlong into the sliding, churning avalanche.

“Ah well, it was a worthy effort,” Tjai reflected. “At least, if those guards had not been lucky enough to die, we might have gained hostages.”

To Conan, seated on a flat stone nearby, Tjai’s words did not sound genuinely comforting; in truth, they sounded even more glum and disconsolate than the drab innermost hues of the Cimmerian’s own sullen spirit. In reply he only grunted, yielding the conversation to the moonlit silence and the gurgle of water in the rock crevice.

“It would have been well worth dying for,” the Dbarsi tried again moments later.

“Aye,” Conan snarled, “but most assuredly not worth living for—or through!” Impatiently he flexed his shoulder, then halted himself, emitting a low, reluctant breath of pain. The thews of his back and side, exposed through the rents in his shredded shirt, were one large and vivid bruise.

“Nay,” the northman ruefully said. “My attempt cost the lives of a dozen hopeless men. Now the bitter survivors shun me—shun us, that is, since you insist on casting in your lot with mine—and the pox-ridden guards pelt us from the catwalks every chance they get, and aim quarrels at me because of my reputation as a troublemaker.”

“True enough,” Tjai agreed glumly. “’Tis a real misfortune. I had my groin-stash with me—” he patted a pouch of cloth at his waist “—the tidy fortune of gems I have set aside for the chance of escape. Have you seen it, my friend?” Removing the twisted rag from his clout, he unfolded and spread it on a stone. Its grimy folds contained raw jewels and nuggets that glinted dimly in the moonlight: gold and turquoise, amethyst and jasper, chrysoprase and ruby. “Not a man here but has one, and carries it with him at all times... haven’t you?”

“Um,” Conan grunted. Taking a packet from his lap, he twisted it open and emptied it carelessly on the stone beside him. “Not as well-chosen as yours, since I have had less time here—but that will come, doubtless.” Again he shook his black-maned head. “Crom,” he cursed, “is there no future for us but to rake and shovel up all the rock we toppled down, and hoist it up in basket loads out of this wretched hole—after gleaning through it for any pittance of gold and gems our slave-masters may require?”

“’Tis hard, I know,” Tjai murmured, gathering up his hoarded treasures and returning them to his belt. “Day by day one gets used to the routine, toiling and sleeping, handling the gems. But then, when the hope of escape is dangled so near, so vividly, and is just as suddenly snatched away—” He shook his head. “The thought of freedom, of returning to one’s homeland and seeing one’s family... why, one begins to wonder if this life is worthwhile.” “Aye,” Conan grated, shaking his fist out toward the throat of the crevice at the beetling walls beyond. “It is rankle-some to me, a climber trained since birth! None here can mount sheerer, smoother scarps than I. But the coarse, rotten stone of these hills is hard enough to abrade a man’s flesh, yet scuffs or crumbles away at the weight of his step. When solidly bedded, it patters down and gives warning. I dare say that if I made the climb, I could not get within a dozen paces of the edge without calling down a rain of stones, arrows, and offal upon myself!” Settling back and resting his elbow on one knee, the Cimmerian fisted his chin grimly.

“I may yet try an escape again, but if I do, Tjai, I warn you, it will be alone.” He regarded his slender Ilbarsi companion balefully. “I want no more innocents to share the bitter fruit of my scheming!”

Some days later, Tjai stalked Conan down the dusty ramp to the stream crevice. He watched as his quarry waded out into the pond, bent, and bathed his face and upper body in the chill water.

Then some animal instinct warned the Cimmerian. He splashed to the bank and seized hold of his pick-hammer.

The lean Ilbarsi laughed and stepped forward. “Tell me, Conan—the time is near, is it not? What is your plan? ’ ’ “Tjai, what are you raving about? Are you mad, to creep up on a man this way?”

“Mad, Conan? Nay, not I. You are the hag-ridden one these past days, hulking about and brooding... ready to crack other men’s heads on the least provocation, and answering none save in grunts and snarls.” The hillman cagily eyed him. “You are hatching some escape, Cimmerian— I can tell it, and I want to go with you! It cannot be far off now. Tell me, what is your scheme?”

Squatting beside the pond, dripping and goose-prickling, the northerner sombrely shook his head. “It matters not what plan I may or may not have, since if I have one, it is for myself alone. ’Tis me the guards are trying to murder, not you. You cannot follow where I would go, nor could any man here, even if I chose to let him try. So just leave me alone!”

“Tell me, knave!” Hefting his own battered pick, the olive-skinned man took a menacing stance. “For you were right: I am half-mad, and will be wholly so if I cannot escape this filthy hole!” The dark hollows around the Ilbarsi's eyes seemed to echo his words, as did the shadowy recesses of the crevice they stood in. “Another week here will be the death of me, Cimmerian. Do do me a kindness... let me die seeking freedom!”

“Nay, Tjai, hush now. ’Tis nonsense,” the larger man said. “Listen, though. If I do escape, I promise you I will be back to fill a wagon or two with this wealth—” he patted the pouch at his waist “—and to avenge myself on these ape-fisted guards. See here, fellow, do you really believe I could pass up such wealth? Or take the abuse these louts have heaped on me, without exacting full payment? Just sit tight, and when I return, I’ll slit a few slandering Brythunian gullets, free the lot of you rogues, and make us all rich in the bargain. Now, let us have no more of it!”