Chapter 21
"I'll sail with you," he grunted, shaking the red drops from his blade.
"Ho, N'Yaga!" her voice tw.a.n.ged like a bowstring. "Fetch herbs and dress your master's wounds! The rest of you bring aboard the plunder and cast off."
As Conan sat with his back against the p.o.o.p-rail, while the old shaman attended to the cuts on his hands and limbs, the cargo of the ill-fated Argus was quickly s.h.i.+fted aboard the Tigress and stored in small cabins below deck. Bodies of the crew and of fallen pirates were cast overboard to the swarming sharks, while wounded blacks were laid in the waist to be bandaged. Then the grappling-irons were cast off, and as the Argus sank silently into the blood-flecked waters, the Tigress moved off southward to the rhythmic clack of the oars.
As they moved out over the gla.s.sy blue deep, Belit came to the p.o.o.p. Her eyes were burning like those of a she-panther in the dark as she tore off her ornaments, her sandals and her silken
128.girdle and cast them at his feet. Rising on tiptoe, arms stretched upward, a quivering line of naked white, she cried to the desperate horde: "Wolves of the blue sea, behold ye now the dance the mating-dance of Belit, whose fathers were kings of Askalon!"
And she danced, like the spin of a desert whirlwind, like the leaping of a quenchless flame, like the urge of creation and the urge of death. Her white feet spurned the blood-stained deck and dying men forgot death as they gazed frozen at her. Then, as the white stars glimmered through the blue velvet dusk, making her whirling body a blur of ivory fire, with a wild cry she threw herself at Conan's feet, and the blind flood of the Cimmerian's desire swept all else away as he crushed her panting form against the black plates of his corseleted breast.
THE BLACK LOTUS.
In that dead citadel of crumbling stone Her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen,
And curious madness took me by the throat, As of a rival lover thrust between.
The Song of Belit.
TheTigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered. Tom-toms beat in the night, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion. And survivors of butchered Stygian s.h.i.+ps named Belit with curse, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes remembered this man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore crimson fruit in the years to come.
But heedless as a vagrant wind, the Tigress cruised the southern coasts, until she anch.o.r.ed at the mouth of a broad sullen river, whose banks were jungle-clouded walls of mystery.
"This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death," said Belit. "Its waters are poisonous. See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptiles live in that river. The black people shun it.
Once a Stygian galley, fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished. I anch.o.r.ed in this very spot, and days later, the galley came floating down the dark waters, its decks blood-stained and deserted. Only one man was on board, and he was mad and died gibbering. The cargo was intact, but the crew had vanished into silence and mystery.
"My lover, I believe there is a city somewhere on that river. I have heard tales of giant towers
129.and walls glimpsed afar off by sailors who dared go part-way up the river. We fear nothing: Conan, let us go and sack that city!"
Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long as they sailed and fought. He found the life good.
Battle and raid had thinned their crew; only some eighty spearmen remained, scarcely enough to work the long galley. But Belit would not take the time to make the long cruise southward to the island kingdoms where she recruited her buccaneers. She was afire with eagerness for her latest venture; so the Tigress swung into the river-mouth, the oarsmen pulling strongly as she breasted the broad current.
They rounded the mysterious bend that shut out the sight of the sea, and sunset found them forging steadily against the sluggish flow, avoiding sand bars where strange reptiles coiled. Not even a crocodile did they see, nor any four-legged beast or winged bird coming down to the water's edge to drink. On through the blackness that preceded moonrise they drove, between banks that were solid palisades of darkness, whence came mysterious rustlings and stealthy footfalls, and the gleam of grim eyes. And once an inhuman voice was lifted in awful mockery
the cry of an ape, Belit said, adding that the souls of evil men were imprisoned in these manlike animals as punishment for past crimes. But Conan doubted, for once, in a gold-barred cage in an Hyrkanian city, he had seen an abysmal sad-eyed beast which men told him was an ape, and there had been about it naught of the demoniac malevolence which vibrated in the shrieking laughter that echoed from the black jungle.
Then the moon rose, a splash of blood,
Rising above the black denseness of the trees and above the waving fronds, the moon silvered the river, and their wake became a rippling scintillation of phosph.o.r.escent bubbles that widened like a s.h.i.+ning road of bursting jewels. The oars dipped into the s.h.i.+ning water and came up sheathed in frosty silver. The plumes on the warriors' head-pieces nodded in the wind, and the gems on sword-hilts and harness sparkled frostily.
The cold light struck icy fire from the jewels in Belit's cl.u.s.tered black locks as she stretched her lithe figure on a leopardskin thrown on the deck. Supported on her elbows, her chin resting on her slim hands, she gazed up into the face of Conan, who lounged beside her, his black mane stirring in the faint breeze. Belit's eyes were dark jewels burning in the moonlight.
"Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm of horror and death," she
130.said. "Are you afraid?"
A shrug of his mailed shoulders was his only answer.
"I am not afraid either," she said meditatively. "I was never afraid. I have looked into the naked fangs of Death too often. Conan, do you fear the G.o.ds?"
"I would not tread on their shadow," answered the barbarian conservatively. "Some G.o.ds are strong to harm, others, to aid; at least so say their priests. Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong G.o.d, because his people have builded their cities over the world. But even the Hyborians fear Set. And Bel, G.o.d of thieves, is a good G.o.d. When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him."
"What of your own G.o.ds? I have never heard you call on them."
"Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the G.o.ds?"
"But what of the worlds beyond the river of death?" she persisted.
"There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people," answered Conan. "In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity."
Belit shuddered. "Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny. What do you believe, Conan?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I have known many G.o.ds. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content.
Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."
"But the G.o.ds are real," she said, pursuing her own line of thought. "And above all are the G.o.ds of the Shemites Ishtar and Ashtoreth and Derketo and Adonis. Bel, too, is Shemitish, for he
131.was born in ancient Shumir, long, long ago, and went forth laughing, with curled beard and impish wise eyes, to steal the gems of the kings of old times.
"There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this, too, Conan of Cimmeria" she rose lithely to her knees and caught him in a pantherish embrace "my love is stronger than any death! I have lain in your arms, panting with the violence of our love; you have held and crushed and conquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the fierceness of your bruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart, my soul is part of your soul! Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back from the abyss to aid you aye, whether my spirit floated with the purple sails on the crystal sea of paradise, or writhed in the molten flames of h.e.l.l! I am yours, and all the G.o.ds and all their eternities shall not sever us!"
A scream rang from the lookout in the bows. Thrusting Belit aside, Conan bounded up, his sword a long silver glitter in the moonlight, his hair bristling at what he saw. The black warrior dangled above the deck, supported by what seemed a dark pliant tree trunk arching over the rail. Then he realized that it was a gigantic serpent which had writhed its glistening length up the side of the bow and gripped the luckless warrior in its jaws. Its dripping scales shone leprously in the moonlight as it reared its form high above the deck, while the stricken man screamed and writhed like a mouse in the fangs of a python. Conan rushed into the bows, and swinging his great sword, hewed nearly through the giant trunk, which was thicker than a man's body. Blood drenched the rails as the dying monster swayed far out, still gripping its victim, and sank into the river, coil by coil, las.h.i.+ng the water to b.l.o.o.d.y foam, in which man and reptile vanished together.
Thereafter Conan kept the lookout watch himself, but no other horror came crawling up from the murky depths, and as dawn whitened over the jungle, he sighted the black fangs of towers jutting up among the trees. He called Belit, who slept on the deck, wrapped in his scarlet cloak, and she sprang to his side, eyes blazing. Her lips were parted to call orders to her warriors to take up bow and spears; then her lovely eyes widened.
It was but the ghost of a city on which they looked when they cleared a jutting jungle-clad point and swung in toward the in-curving sh.o.r.e. Weeds and rank river gra.s.s grew between the stones of broken piers and shattered paves that had once been streets and s.p.a.cious plazas and broad courts. From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green. Here and there buckling towers reeled drunkenly against the morning sky, and broken pillars jutted up among the decaying walls. In the center s.p.a.ce a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column, and on its pinnacle sat or squatted something that Conan supposed to be an image until his keen eyes detected life in it.
"It is a great bird," said one of the warriors, standing in the bows.
132.
"It is a monster bat," insisted another.
"It is an ape," said Belit.
Just then the creature spread broad wings and flapped off into the jungle.
"A winged ape," said old N'Yaga uneasily. "Better we had cut our throats than come to this place. It is haunted."
Belit mocked at his superst.i.tions and ordered the galley run insh.o.r.e and tied to the crumbling wharfs. She was the first to spring ash.o.r.e, closely followed by Conan, and after them trooped the ebon-skinned pirates, white plumes waving in the morning wind, spears ready, eyes rolling dubiously at the surrounding jungle.
Over all brooded a silence as sinister as that of a sleeping serpent. Belit posed picturesquely among the ruins, the vibrant life in her lithe figure contrasting strangely with the desolation and decay about her. The sun flamed up slowly, sullenly, above the jungle, flooding the towers with a dull gold that left shadows lurking beneath the tottering walls. Belit pointed to a slim round tower that reeled on its rotting base. A broad expanse of cracked, gra.s.s-grown slabs led up to it, flanked by fallen columns, and before it stood a ma.s.sive altar. Belit went swiftly along the ancient floor and stood before it.
"This was the temple of the old ones," she said. "Look you can see the channels for the blood along the sides of the altar, and the rains of ten thousand years have not washed the dark stains from them. The walls have all fallen away, but this stone block defies time and the elements."
"But who were these old ones?" demanded Conan.
She spread her slim hands helplessly. "Not even in legendry is this city mentioned. But look at the handholes at either end of the altar! Priests often conceal their treasures beneath their altars.
Four of you lay hold and see if you can lift it."