Conan Pastiche - Conan Part 9

Conan stepped close to one of the immobile warriors and touched the man's leg with the point of his sword. The body lay still. He murmured:

"The ancients must have mummified them, as they tell me the priests do with the dead in Stygia."

Nestor looked uneasily at the seven still forms. The feeble flames of the torches seemed unable to push the dense darkness back to the sable walls and roof of the chamber.

The block of black stone in the middle of the room rose to waist height. On its flat, polished top, inlaid in narrow strips of ivory, was a diagram of interlaced circles and triangles. The whole formed a seven-pointed star. The s.p.a.ces between the lines were marked by symbols in some form of writing that Conan did not recognize. He could read Zamorian and write it after a fas.h.i.+on, and he had smatterings of Hyrkanian and Corinthian; but these cryptic glyphs were beyond him.

In any case, he was more interested in the things that lay on top of the altar. On each point of the star, winking in the ruddy, wavering light of the torches, lay a great green jewel, larger than a hen's egg.

At the center of the diagram stood a green statuette of a serpent with up-reared head, apparently carved from jade.

Conan moved his torch close to the seven great, glowing gems. "I want those," he grunted. "You can have the rest."

"No, you don't!" snapped Nestor. "Those are worth more than all the other treasure in this room put together. I will have them!"

Tension crackled between the two men, and their free hands stole toward their hilts. For a s.p.a.ce they stood silently, glaring at each other.

Then Nestor said:

"Then let us divide them, as we agreed to do."

"You cannot divide seven by two," said Conan. "Let us flip one of these coins for them. The winner takes the seven jewels, while the other man has his pick of the rest. Does that suit you?"

Conan picked a coin out of one of the heaps that marked the places where the chests had lain. Although he had acquired a good working knowledge of coins in his career as a thief, this was entirely unfamiliar. One side bore a face, but whether of a man, a demon, or an owl he could not tell. The other side was covered with symbols like those on the altar.

Conan showed the coin to Nestor. The two treasure hunters grunted agreement. Conan flipped the coin into the air, caught it, and slapped it down on his left wrist. He extended the wrist, with the coin still covered, toward Nestor.

"Heads," said the Gunderman.

Conan removed his hand from the coin. Nestor peered and growled: "Ishtar curse the thing! You win. Hold my torch a moment."

Conan, alert for any treacherous move, took the torch. But Nestor merely untied the strap of his cloak and spread the garment on the dusty floor. He began shoveling handfuls of gold and gems from the heaps on the floor into a pile on the cloak.

"Don't load yourself so heavily that you can't run," said Conan. "We are not out of this yet, and it's a long walk back to Shadizar."

"I can handle it," said Nestor. He gathered up the comers of the cloak, slung the improvised bag over his back, and held out a hand for his torch.

Conan handed it to him and stepped to the altar. One by one he took the great, green jewels and thrust them into the leathern sack that hung from his shoulders.

When all seven had been removed from the altar top, he paused, looking at the jade serpent. "This will fetch a pretty price," he said.

s.n.a.t.c.hing it up, he thrust it, too, into his booty bag.

"Why not take some of the remaining gold and jewels, too?" asked Nestor. "I have all I can carry."

"You've got the best stuff," said Conan. "Besides, I don't need any more. Man, with these I can buy a kingdom! Or a dukedom, anyway, and all the wine I can drink and women I-"

A sound caused the plunderers to whirl, staring wildly. Around the walls, the seven mummified warriors were coming to life. Their heads came up, their mouths closed, and air hissed into their ancient, withered lungs. Their joints creaked like rusty hinges as they picked up their pikes and bills and rose to their feet.

"Run!" yelled Nestor, hurling his torch at the nearest giant and s.n.a.t.c.hing out his sword.

The torch struck the giant in the chest, fell to the floor, and went out. Having both hands free, Conan retained his torch while he drew his sword. The light of the remaining torch flickered feebly on the green of the ancient copper harness as the giants closed in on the pair.

Conan ducked the sweep of a bill and knocked the thrust of a pike aside. Between him and the door, Nestor engaged a giant who was moving to block their escape. The Gunderman parried a thrust and struck a fierce, backhanded blow at his enemy's thigh. The blade bit, but only a little way; it was like chopping wood. The giant staggered, and Nestor hewed at another. The point of a pike glanced off his dented cuira.s.s.

The giants moved slowly, or the treasure hunters would have fallen before their first onset. Leaping, dodging, and whirling, Conan avoided blows that would have stretched him senseless on the dusty floor. Again and again his blade bit into the dry, woody flesh of his a.s.sailants.

Blows that would have decapitated a living man only staggered these creatures from another age. He landed a chop on the hand of one attacker, maiming the member and causing the giant to drop his pike.

He dodged the thrust of another pike and put every ounce of strength into a low forehand cut at the giant's ankle. The blade bit half through, and the giant crashed to the floor.

"Out!" bellowed Conan, leaping over the fallen body.

He and Nestor raced out the door and through halls and chambers. For an instant Conan feared they were lost, but he caught a glimpse of light ahead. The two dashed out the main portal of the palace. Behind them came the clatter and tramp of the guardians. Overhead, the sky had paled and the stars were going out with the coming of dawn.

"Head for the wall," panted Nestor. "I think we can outrun them."

As they reached the far side of the plaza, Conan glanced back. "Look!"

he cried.

One by one, the giants emerged from the palace. And one by one, as they came into the growing light, they sank to the pavement and crumbled into dust, leaving their plumed copper helmets, their scaled cuira.s.ses, and their other accouterments in heaps on the ground.

"Well, that's that," said Nestor. "But how shall we get back into Shadizar without being arrested? It will be day-light long before we get there."

Conan grinned. "There's a way of getting in that we thieves know. Near the northeast corner of the wall stands a clump of trees. If you poke around among the shrubs that mask the wall, you will find a kind of culvert-I suppose to let the water out of the city in heavy rains. It used to be closed by an iron grating, but that has rusted away. If you are not too fat, you can worm your way through it. You come out in a lot where people dump rubbish from houses that have been torn down."

"Good," said Nestor. "I'll-"

A deep rumble cut off his words. The earth heaved and rocked and trembled, throwing him to the ground and staggering the Cimmerian.

"Look out!" yelled Conan.

As Nestor started to scramble up, Conan caught his arm and dragged him back toward the center of the plaza. As he did so, the wall of a nearby building fell over into the plaza. It smashed down just where the two had been standing, but its mighty crash was lost in the thunder of the earthquake.

"Let's get out of here!" shouted Nestor.

Steering by the moon, now low in the western sky, they ran zigzag through the streets. On either side of them, walls and columns leaned, crumbled, and crashed. The noise was deafening. Clouds of dust arose, making the fugitives cough.

Conan skidded to a halt and leaped back to avoid being crushed under the front of a collapsing temple. He staggered as fresh tremors shook the earth beneath him. He scrambled over piles of ruin, some old and some freshly made. He leaped madly out from under a falling column drum. Fragments of stone and brick struck him; one laid open a cut along his jaw. Another glanced from his s.h.i.+n, making him curse by the G.o.ds of all the lands he had visited.

At last he reached the city wall. It was a wall no longer, having been shaken down to a low ridge of broken stone.

Limping, coughing, and panting, Conan climbed the ridge and turned to look back. Nestor was no longer with him. Probably, he thought, the Gunderman had been caught under a falling wall. Conan listened but could hear no cry for help.

The rumble of quaking earth and falling masonry died away. The light of the low moon glistened on the vast cloud of dust that covered the city.

Then a dawn breeze sprang up and slowly wafted the dust away.

Sitting on the crest of the ridge of ruin that marked the site of the wall, Conan stared back across the site of Larsha. The city bore an aspect entirely different from when he had entered it. Not a single building remained upright Even the monolithic palace of black basalt, where he and Nestor had found their treasure, had crumbled into a heap of broken blocks. Conan gave up thoughts of going back to the palace on some future occasion to collect the rest of the treasure. An army of workmen would have to clear away the wreckage before the valuables could be salvaged.

All of Larsha had fallen into heaps of rubble. As far as he could see in the growing light, nothing moved in the city. The only sound was the belated fall of an occasional stone.

Conan felt his booty bag, to make sure that he still had had his loot, and turned his face westward, towards Shadizar. Behind him, the rising sun shot a spear of light against his broad back.