Conan Pastiche - Conan Part 7

"It is cheering to know that your heirs will get the reward," said another. "I wish I had thought of that."

"Oh," said the first man who had spoken, "they'll find some excuse to cheat us of the reward, even if we catch the rascal."

"The prefect himself has promised," said another. "The rich merchants and n.o.bles whom Conan has been robbing raised a fund. I saw the money-a bag so heavy with gold that a man could scarce lift it. After all that public display, they'd not dare to go back on their word."

"But suppose we catch him not," said the second speaker. "There was something about paying for it with our heads." The speaker raised his voice. "Captain Nestor! What was that about our heads-"

"Hold your tongues, all of you!" snapped the officer. "You can be heard as far as Arenjun. If Conan is within a mile, he'll be warned. Cease your chatter, and try to move without so much clangor."

The officer was a broad-shouldered man of medium height and powerful build; daylight would have shown his eyes to be gray and his hair light brown, streaked with gray. He was a Gunderman, from the northernmost province of Aquilonia, fifteen hundred miles to the west. His mission-to take Conan dead or alive-troubled him. The prefect had warned him that, if he failed, he might expect severe punishment-perhaps even the headsman's block. The king himself had demanded that the outlaw be taken, and the king of Zamora had a short way with servants who failed their missions. A tip from the underworld had revealed that Conan was seen heading for this gorge earlier that day, and Nestor's commander had hastily dis patched him with such troopers as could be found in the barracks.

Nestor had no confidence in the soldiers that trailed behind him. He considered them braggarts who would flee in the face of danger, leaving him to confront the barbarian alone. And, although the Gunderman was a brave man, he did not deceive himself about his chances with this ferocious, gigantic young savage. His armor would give him no more than a slight edge.

As the glow in the western sky faded, the darkness deepened and the walls of the gorge became narrower, steeper, and rockier. Behind Nestor, the men began to murmur again:

"I like it not. This road leads to the ruins of Larsha the Accursed, where the ghosts of the ancients lurk to devour pa.s.sers-by. And in that city, 'tis said, lies the Hall of the Dead-"

"Shut up!" snarled Nestor, turning his head. "If-"

At that instant, the officer tripped over a rawhide rope stretched across the path and fell sprawling in the gra.s.s. There was the snap of a spring pole released from its lodgment, and the rope went slack.

With a rumbling roar, a ma.s.s of rocks and dirt cascaded down the left-hand slope. As Nestor scrambled to his feet, a stone the size of a man's head struck his corselet and knocked him down again. Another knocked off his helmet, while smaller stones stung his limbs. Behind him sounded a multiple scream and the clatter of stone striking metal.

Then silence fell.

Nestor staggered to his feet, coughed the dust out of his lungs, and turned to see what had befallen. A few paces behind him, a rock slide blocked the gorge from wall to wall. Approaching, he made out a human hand and a foot projecting from the rubble. He called but received no reply. When he touched the protruding members, he found no life. The slide, set off by the pull on the rope, had wiped out his entire squad.

Nestor flexed his joints to learn what harm he had suffered. No bones appeared to be broken, although his corselet was dented and he bore several bruises. Burning with wrath, he found his helmet and took up the trail alone. Failing to catch the thief would have been bad enough; but if he also had to confess to the loss of his men, he foresaw a lingering and painful death. His only chance now was to bring back Conan-or at least his head.

Sword in hand, Nestor limped on up the endless windings of the gorge. A light in the sky before him showed that the moon, a little past full, was rising. He strained his eyes, expecting the barbarian to spring upon him from behind every bend in the ravine.

The gorge became shallower and the walls less steep. Gullies opened into the gorge to right and left, while the bottom became stony and uneven, forcing Nestor to scramble over rocks and underbrush. At last the gorge gave out completely. Climbing a short slope, the Gunderman found himself on the edge of an upland pleateau, surrounded by distant mountains. A bowshot ahead, bone-white in the light of the moon, rose the walls of Larsha. A ma.s.sive gate stood directly in front of him.

Time had bitten scallops out of the walls, and over it rose half-ruined roofs and towers.

Nestor paused. Larsha was said to be immensely old. According to the tales, it went back to Cataclysmic times, when the forebears of the Zamorians, the Zhemri, formed an island of semi-civilization in a sea of barbarism.

Stories of the death that lurked in these ruins were rife in the bazaars of Shadizar. As far as Nestor had been able to learn, not one of the many men who, in historic times, had invaded the ruins searching for the treasure rumored to exist there, had ever returned. None knew what form the danger took, because no survivor had lived to carry the tale.

A decade before, King Tiridates had sent a company of his bravest soldiers, in broad daylight, into the city, while the king himself waited outside the walls. There had been screams and sounds of flight, and then-nothing. The men who waited outside had fled, and Tiridates perforce had fled with them. That was the last attempt to unlock the mystery of Larsha by main force.

Although Nestor had all the usual mercenary's l.u.s.t for unearned wealth, he was not rash. Years of soldiering in the kingdoms between Zamora and his homeland had taught him caution. As he paused, weighing the dangers of his alternatives, a sight made him stiffen. Close to the wall, he sighted the figure of a man, slinking toward the gate. Although the man was too far away to recognize faces in the moonlight, there was no mistaking that panther-like stride. Conan!

Filled with rising fury, Nestor started forward. He walked swiftly, holding his scabbard to keep it from clanking. But, quietly though he moved, the keen ears of the barbarian warned him. Conan whirled, and his sword whispered from its sheath. Then, seeing that only a single foe pursued him, the Cimmerian stood his ground.

As Nestor approached, he began to pick out details of the other's appearance. Conan was well over six feet tall, and his threadbare tunic failed to mask the hard lines of his mighty thews. A leathern sack hung by a strap from his shoulder. His face was youthful but hard, surmounted by a square-cut mane of thick black hair.

Not a word was spoken. Nestor paused to catch his breath and cast aside his cloak, and in that instant Conan hurled himself upon the older man.

Two swords glimmered like lightnings in the moonlight as the clang and rasp of blades shattered the graveyard silence. Nestor was the more experienced fighter, but the reach and blinding speed of the other nullified this advantage. Conan's attack was as elemental and irresistible as a hurricane. Parrying shrewdly, Nestor was forced back, step after step. Narrowly he watched his opponent, waiting for the other's attack to slow from sheer fatigue. But the Cimmerian seemed not to know what fatigue was.

Making a backhand cut, Nestor slit Conan's tunic over the chest but did not quite reach the skin. In a blinding return thrust, Conan's point glanced off Nestor's breastplate, plowing a groove in the bronze.

As Nestor stepped back from another furious attack, a stone turned under his foot. Conan aimed a terrific cut at the Gunderman's neck. Had it gone as intended, Nestor's head would have flown from his shoulders; but, as he stumbled, the blow hit his crested helm instead. It struck with a heavy clang, bit into the iron, and hurled Nestor to the ground.

Breathing deeply, Conan stepped forward, sword ready. His pursuer lay motionless with blood seeping from his cloven helmet. Youthful overconfidence in the force of his own blows convinced Conan that he had slain his antagonist. Sheathing his sword, he turned back toward the city of the ancients.

The Cimmerian approached the gate. This consisted of two ma.s.sive valves, twice as high as a man, made of foot-thick timbers sheathed in bronze. Conan pushed against the valves, grunting, but without effect.

He drew his sword and struck the bronze with the pommel. From the way the gates sagged, Conan guessed that the wood of the doors had rotted away; but the bronze was too thick to hew through without spoiling the edge of his blade. And there was an easier way.

Thirty paces north of the gate, the wall had crumbled so that its lowest point was less than twenty feet above the ground. At the same time, a pile of tailings against the foot of the wall rose to within six or eight feet of the broken edge.

Conan approached the broken section, drew back a few paces, and then ran forward. He bounded up the slope of the tailings, leaped into the air, and caught the broken edge of the wall. A grunt, a heave, and a scramble, and he was over the edge, ignoring scratches and bruises. He stared down into the city.

Inside the wall was a cleared s.p.a.ce, where for centuries plant life had been waging war upon the ancient pavement. The paving slabs were cracked and up-ended. Between them, gra.s.s, weeds, and a few scrubby trees had forced their way.

Beyond the cleared area lay the ruins of one of the poorer districts.

Here the one-story hovels of mud brick had slumped into mere mounds of dirt. Beyond them, white in the moonlight, Conan discerned the better-preserved buildings of stone-the temples, the palaces, and the houses of the n.o.bles and the rich merchants. As with many ancient ruins, and aura of evil hung over the deserted city.

Straining his ears, Conan stared right and left. Nothing moved. The only sound was the chirp of crickets.

Conan, too, had heard the tales of the doom that haunted Larsha.

Although the supernatural roused panicky, atavistic fears in his barbarian's soul, he hardened himself with the thought that, when a supernatural being took material form, it could be hurt or killed by material weapons, just like any earthly man or monster. He had not come this far to be stopped from a try at the treasure by man, beast, or demon.

According to the tales, the fabled treasure of Larsha lay in the royal palace. Gripping his scabbarded sword in his left hand, the young thief dropped from the inner side of the broken wall. An instant later, he was threading his way through the winding streets toward the center of the city. He made no more noise than a shadow.

Ruin encompa.s.sed him on every side. Here and there the front of a house had fallen into the street, forcing Conan to detour or to scramble over piles of broken brick and marble. The gibbous moon was now high in the sky, was.h.i.+ng the ruins in an eery light. On the Cimmerian's right rose a temple, partly fallen but with the portico, upheld by four ma.s.sive marble columns, still intact. Along the edge of the roof, a row of marble gargoyles peered down-statues of monsters of bygone days, half demon and half beast.

Conan tried to remember the sc.r.a.ps of legend that he had overheard in the wineshops of the Maul, concerning the abandonment of Larsha. There was something about a curse sent by an angered G.o.d, many centuries before, in punishment for deeds so wicked that they made the crimes and vices of Shadizar look like virtues...

He started for the center of the city again but now noticed something peculiar. His sandals tended to stick to the shattered pavement, as if it were covered with warm pitch. The soles made sucking noises as he raised his feet.

He stooped and felt the ground. It was coated with a film of a colorless, sticky substance, now nearly dry.

Hand on hilt, Conan glared about him in the moon-light But no sound came to his ears. He resumed his advance. Again his sandals made sucking noises as he raised them. He halted, turning his head. He could have sworn that similar sucking noises came to his ears from a distance. For an instant, he thought they might be the echoes of his own footsteps. But he had pa.s.sed the half-ruined temple, and now no walls rose on either side of him to reflect the sound.

Again he advanced, then halted. Again he heard the sucking sound, and this time it did not cease when he froze to immobility. In fact, it became louder. His keen hearing located it as coming from directly in front of him. Since he could see nothing moving in the street before him, the source of the sound must be in a side street or in one of the ruined buildings.

The sound increased to an indescribable slithering, gurgling hiss. Even Conan's iron nerves were shaken by the strain of waiting for the unknown source of the sound to appear.

At last, around the next corner poured a huge, slimy ma.s.s, leprous gray in the moonlight. It glided into the street before him and swiftly advanced upon him, silent save for the sucking sound of its peculiar method of locomotion. From its front end rose a pair of hornlike projections, at least ten feet long, with a shorter pair below. The long horns bent this way and that, and Conan saw that they bore eyes on their ends.

The creature was, in fact, a slug, like the harmless garden slug that leaves a trail of slime in its nightly wanderings. This slug, however, was fifty feet long and as thick through the middle as Conan was tall.

Moreover, it moved as fast as a man could run. The fetid smell of the thing wafted ahead of it.

Momentarily paralyzed with astonishment, Conan stared at the vast ma.s.s of rubbery flesh bearing down upon him. The slug emitted a sound like that of a man spitting, but magnified many times over.

Galvanized into action at last, the Cimmerian leaped sideways. As he did so, a jet of liquid flashed through the night air, just where he had stood. A tiny droplet struck his shoulder and burned like a coal of fire.

Conan turned and ran back the way he had come, his long legs flas.h.i.+ng in the moonlight. Again he had to bound over piles of broken masonary.

His ears told him that the slug was close behind. Perhaps it was gaining. He dared not turn to look, lest he trip over some marble fragment and go sprawling; the monster would be upon him before he could regain his feet.