Chapter 20
"I am Conan, a Cimmerian," he answered. "I came into Argos seeking employment, but with no wars forward, there was nothing to which I might turn my hand."
"Why do the guardsmen pursue you?" asked t.i.to. "Not that it's any of my business, but I thought perhaps "
122."I've nothing to conceal," replied the Cimmerian. "By Crom, though I've spent considerable time among you civilized peoples, your ways are still beyond my comprehension.
"Well, last night in a tavern, a captain in the king's guard offered violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier, who naturally ran him through. But it seems there is some cursed law against killing guardsmen, and the boy and his girl fled away. It was bruited about that I was seen with them, and so today I was haled into court, and a judge asked me where the lad had gone. I replied that since he was a friend of mine, I could not betray him. Then the court waxed wroth, and the judge talked a great deal about my duty to the state, and society, and other things I did not understand, and bade me tell where my friend had flown. By this time I was becoming wrathful myself, for I had explained my position.
"But I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then, seeing they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge's skull; then I cut my way out of the court, and seeing the high constable's stallion tied near by, I rode for the wharfs, where I thought to find a s.h.i.+p bound for foreign parts."
"Well," said t.i.to hardily, "the courts have fleeced me too often in suits with rich merchants for me to owe them any love. I'll have questions to answer if I ever anchor in that port again, but I can prove I acted under compulsion. You may as well put up your sword. We're peaceable sailors, and have nothing against you. Besides, it's as well to have a fighting-man like yourself on board. Come up to the p.o.o.p-deck and we'll have a tankard of ale."
"Good enough," readily responded the Cimmerian, sheathing his sword.
The Argus was a small st.u.r.dy s.h.i.+p, typical of those trading-craft which ply between the ports of Zingara and Argos and the southern coasts, hugging the sh.o.r.eline and seldom venturing far into the open ocean. It was high of stern, with a tall curving prow; broad in the waist, sloping beautifully to stem and stern. It was guided by the long sweep from the p.o.o.p, and propulsion was furnished mainly by the broad striped silk sail, aided by a jibsail. The oars were for use in tacking out of creeks and bays, and during calms. There were ten to the side, five fore and five aft of the small mid-deck. The most precious part of the cargo was lashed under this deck, and under the fore-deck. The men slept on deck or between the rowers' benches, protected, in bad weather, by canopies. With twenty men at the oars, three at the sweep, and the s.h.i.+pmaster, the crew was complete.
So the Argus pushed steadily southward, with consistently fair weather. The sun beat down from day to day with fiercer heat, and the canopies were run up striped silken cloths that matched the s.h.i.+mmering sail and the s.h.i.+ning gold-work on the prow and along the gunwales.
123.
They sighted the coast of Shem long rolling meadowlands with the white crowns of the towers of cities in the distance, and hors.e.m.e.n with blue-black beards and hooked noses, who sat their steeds along the sh.o.r.e and eyed the galley with suspicion. She did not put in; there was scant profit in trade with the sons of Shem.
Nor did master t.i.to pull into the broad bay where the Styx river emptied its gigantic flood into the ocean, and the ma.s.sive black castles of Khemi loomed over the blue waters. s.h.i.+ps did not put unasked into this port, where dusky sorcerers wove awful spells in the murk of sacrificial smoke mounting eternally from blood-stained altars where naked women screamed, and where Set, the Old Serpent, arch-demon of the Hyborians but G.o.d of the Stygians, was said to writhe his s.h.i.+ning coils among his wors.h.i.+ppers.
Master t.i.to gave that dreamy gla.s.s-floored bay a wide berth, even when a serpent-prowed gondola shot from behind a castellated point of land, and naked dusky women, with great red blossoms in their hair, stood and called to his sailors, and posed and postured brazenly.
Now no more s.h.i.+ning towers rose inland. They had pa.s.sed the southern borders of Stygia and were cruising along the coasts of Cush. The sea and the ways of the sea were never-ending mysteries to Conan, whose homeland was among the high hills of the northern uplands. The wanderer was no less of interest to the st.u.r.dy seamen, few of whom had ever seen one of his race.
They were characteristic Argosean sailors, short and stockily built. Conan towered above them, and no two of them could match his strength. They were hardy and robust, but his was the endurance and vitality of a wolf, his thews steeled and his nerves whetted by the hardness of his life in the world's wastelands. He was quick to laugh, quick and terrible in his wrath. He was a valiant trencherman, and strong drink was a pa.s.sion and a weakness with him. Naive as a child in many ways, unfamiliar with the sophistry of civilization, he was naturally intelligent, jealous of his rights, and dangerous as a hungry tiger. Young in years, he was hardened in warfare and wandering, and his sojourns in many lands were evident in his apparel. His horned helmet was such as was worn by the golden-haired aesir of Nordheim; his hauberk and greaves were of the finest workmans.h.i.+p of Koth; the fine ring-mail which sheathed his arms and legs was of Nemedia; the blade at his girdle was a great Aquilonian broadsword; and his gorgeous scarlet cloak could have been spun nowhere but in Ophir.
So they beat southward,
"I had good trade here, aforetime. This is the work of pirates."
124.
"And if we meet them?" Conan loosened his great blade in its scabbard.
"Mine is no wars.h.i.+p. We run, not fight. Yet if it came to a pinch, we have beaten off reavers before, and might do it again; unless it were Belit's Tigress."
"Who is Belit?"
"The wildest she-devil unhanged. Unless I read the signs a-wrong, it was her butchers who destroyed that village on the bay. May I some day see her dangling from the yard-arm! She is called the queen of the black coast. She is a Shemite woman, who leads black raiders. They harry the s.h.i.+pping and have sent many a good tradesman to the bottom."
From under the p.o.o.p-deck t.i.to brought out quilted jerkins, steel caps, bows and arrows.
"Little use to resist if we're run down," he grunted. "But it rasps the soul to give up life without a struggle."
It was just at sunrise when the lookout shouted a warning. Around the long point of an island off the starboard bow glided a long lethal shape, a slender serpentine galley, with a raised deck that ran from stem to stern. Forty oars on each side drove her swiftly through the water, and the low rail swarmed with naked blacks that chanted and clashed spears on oval s.h.i.+elds. From the masthead floated a long crimson pennon.
"Belit!" yelled t.i.to, paling. "Yare! Put her about! Into that creek-mouth! If we can beach her before they run us down, we have a chance to escape with our lives!"
So, veering sharply, the Argus ran for the line of surf that boomed along the palm-fringed sh.o.r.e, t.i.to striding back and forth, exhorting the panting rowers to greater efforts. The master's black beard bristled, his eyes glared.
"Give me a bow," requested Conan. "It's not my idea of a manly weapon, but I learned archery among the Hyrkanians, and it will go hard if I can't feather a man or so on yonder deck."
Standing on the p.o.o.p, he watched the serpent-like s.h.i.+p skimming lightly over the waters, and landsman though he was, it was evident to him that the Argus would never win that race.
Already arrows, arching from the pirate's deck, were falling with a hiss into the sea, not twenty paces astern.
"We'd best stand to it," growled the Cimmerian; "else we'll all die with shafts in our backs,
125.and not a blow dealt."
"Bend to it, dogs!" roared t.i.to with a pa.s.sionate gesture of his brawny fist. The bearded rowers grunted, heaved at the oars, while their muscles coiled and knotted, and sweat started out on their hides. The timbers of the stout little galley creaked and groaned as the men fairly ripped her through the water. The wind had fallen; the sail hung limp. Nearer crept the inexorable raiders, and they were still a good mile from the surf when one of the steersmen fell gagging across the sweep, a long arrow through his neck. t.i.to sprang to take his place, and Conan, bracing his feet wide on the heaving p.o.o.p-deck, lifted his bow. He could see the details of the pirate plainly now. The rowers were protected by a line of raised mantelets along the sides, but the warriors dancing on the narrow deck were in full view. These were painted and plumed, and mostly naked, brandis.h.i.+ng spears and spotted s.h.i.+elds.
On the raised platform in the bows stood a slim figure whose white skin glistened in dazzling contrast to the glossy ebon hides about it. Belit, without a doubt. Conan drew the shaft to his ear then some whim or qualm stayed his hand and sent the arrow through the body of a tall plumed spearman beside her.
Hand over hand the pirate galley was overhauling the lighter s.h.i.+p. Arrows fell in a rain about the Argus, and men cried out. All the steersmen were down, pin-cus.h.i.+oned, and t.i.to was handling the ma.s.sive sweep alone, gasping black curses, his braced legs knots of straining thews. Then with a sob he sank down, a long shaft quivering in his st.u.r.dy heart. The Argus lost headway and rolled in the swell. The men shouted in confusion, and Conan took command in characteristic fas.h.i.+on.
"Up, lads!" he roared, loosing with a vicious tw.a.n.g of cord. "Grab your steel and give these dogs a few knocks before they cut our throats! Useless to bend your backs any more: they'll board us ere we can row another fifty paces!"
In desperation the sailors abandoned their oars and s.n.a.t.c.hed up their weapons. It was valiant, but useless. They had time for one flight of arrows before the pirate was upon them. With no one at the sweep, the Argus rolled broadside, and the steel-beaked prow of the raider crashed into her amids.h.i.+ps. Grappling-irons crunched into the side. From the lofty gunwales, the black pirates drove down a volley of shafts that tore through the quilted jackets of the doomed sailormen, then sprang down spear in hand to complete the slaughter. On the deck of the pirate lay half a dozen bodies, an earnest of Conan's archery.
The fight on the Argus was short and b.l.o.o.d.y. The stocky sailors, no match for the tall barbarians, were cut down to a man. Elsewhere the battle had taken a peculiar turn. Conan, on the high-pitched p.o.o.p, was on a level with the pirate's deck. As the steel prow slashed into the Argus, he braced himself and kept his feet under the shock, casting away his bow. A tall corsair, bounding over the rail, was met in midair by the Cimmerian's great sword, which
126.sheared him cleanly through the torso, so that his body fell one way and his legs another. Then, with a burst of fury that left a heap of mangled corpses along the gunwales, Conan was over the rail and on the deck of the Tigress.
In an instant he was the center of a hurricane of stabbing spears and las.h.i.+ng clubs. But he moved in a blinding blur of steel. Spears bent on his armor or swished empty air, and his sword sang its death-song. The fighting-madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood.
Invulnerable in his armor, his back against the mast, he heaped mangled corpses at his feet until his enemies gave back panting in rage and fear. Then as they lifted their spears to cast them, and he tensed himself to leap and die in the midst of them, a shrill cry froze the lifted arms. They stood like statues, the black giants poised for the spear-casts, the mailed swordsman with his dripping blade.
Belit sprang before the blacks, beating down their spears. She turned toward Conan, her bosom heaving, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng. Fierce fingers of wonder caught at his heart. She was slender, yet formed like a G.o.ddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s drove a beat of fierce pa.s.sion through the Cimmerian's pulse, even in the panting fury of battle. Her rich black hair, black as a Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished cl.u.s.ters down her supple back. Her dark eyes burned on the Cimmerian.
She was untamed as a desert wind, supple and dangerous as a she-panther. She came close to him, heedless of his great blade, dripping with the blood of her warriors. Her supple thigh brushed against it, so close she came to the tall warrior. Her red lips parted as she stared up into his somber menacing eyes.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "By Ishtar, I have never seen your like, though I have ranged the sea from the coasts of Zingara to the fires of the ultimate south. Whence come you?"
"From Argos," he answered shortly, alert for treachery. Let her slim hand move toward the jeweled dagger in her girdle, and a buffet of his open hand would stretch her senseless on the deck. Yet in his heart he did not fear; he had held too many women, civilized or barbaric, in his iron-thewed arms, not to recognize the light that burned in the eyes of this one.
"You are no soft Hyborian!" she exclaimed. "You are fierce and hard as a gray wolf. Those
127.eyes were never dimmed by city lights; those thews were never softened by life amid marble walls."
"I am Conan, a Cimmerian," he answered.
To the people of the exotic climes, the north was a mazy half-mythical realm, peopled with ferocious blue-eyed giants who occasionally descended from their icy fastnesses with torch and sword. Their raids had never taken them as far south as Shem, and this daughter of Shem made no distinction between aesir, Vanir or Cimmerian. With the unerring instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found her lover, and his race meant naught, save as it invested him with the glamor of far lands.
"And I am Belit," she cried, as one might say, "I am queen!"
"Look at me, Conan!" She threw wide her arms. "I am Belit, queen of the black coast. Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you. Take me and crush me with your fierce love! Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea! I am a queen by fire and steel and slaughter be thou my king!"
His eyes swept the blood-stained ranks, seeking expressions of wrath or jealousy. He saw none.
The fury was gone from the ebon faces. He realized that to these men Belit was more than a woman: a G.o.ddess whose will was unquestioned. He glanced at the Argus, wallowing in the crimson sea-wash, heeling far over, her decks awash, held up by the grappling-irons. He glanced at the blue-fringed sh.o.r.e, at the far green hazes of the ocean, at the vibrant figure which stood before him; and his barbaric soul stirred within him. To quest these s.h.i.+ning blue realms with that white-skinned young tiger-cat to love, laugh, wander and pillage