Conan of Aquilonia

ONE: Green Hell

Count Trocero of Poitain snatched at his saddlebow as his weary, lathered horse—a small but sturdy Stygian gray—slipped in the mud, nearly causing him to lose his stirrups. He tugged at the reins, pulling the gray’s head around, and slapped at the cloud of stinging gnats that hovered before his face. He muttered a weary curse. Behind him, Pallantides, commander of the Aquilonian host, ripped out a sulfurous oath as his steed slipped in the same patch of mud.

Trocero squinted at the cloudy sky which lay close above them. It seemed hardly to clear the tops of the tall, canelike grasses which rose to the height of a horseman’s head all about them. Below, the hooves of their horses splashed through the shallow sheet of water which lay fetlock-deep over the land. For the rainy season had come to the plains of Zembabwei, turning the country into a reeking morass.

In another fortnight the rains would cease and the water which drained sluggishly in this flatland would vanish. The soil would change to dry, hard-baked clay. The towering grasses would turn from green to yellow, dry out, and be swept by brush fires. But that lay in the future.

“Looks like rain,” Trocero grunted to Pallantides.

The general cast a grim eye aloft. “By Set’s slimy scales,” he growled, “tell me something new, Count! It’s rained every day for the last ten, and I’ve given up trying to keep the rust off my gear. How much longer will the king keep us at this back-breaking pace?”

Trocero shrugged with a saturnine grin. “You know Conan! Until it’s so black an owl couldn’t see its way. ’Ware serpent!” he snapped as his gray shied.

Pallantides jerked his reins as a mottled gray swamp viper, thick as a man’s thigh, slithered among the stems of the grasses and vanished.

I’ve had a bellyful of this accursed swamp,” the general snorted. “Gut me on the altars of Derketo, but I wish that spindle-shanked old tosspot of a druid were still with us! Belike he could magic us through the air to Old Zembabwei. Anything were better than slogging afoot through this mire! Half our horses and camels are dead or ailing, and half our men are spilling their guts with swamp fever… How in the forty-nine hells he expects to reach the Forbidden City in shape to fight is beyond me.”

Trocero shrugged. For more than a month King Conan had driven the Aquilonian host on and on, following the course of the Styx towards its unknown source. They had trudged along the borders of eastern Stygia, where the slender ribbon of greenery along the river was flanked on either side by the golden sands of the eastern deserts. Then the river bent southward. They had traversed a parched no man’s land, where few signs of human life were to be seen save the wandering clans of the eastern Shemites, the Zuagirs, with their camels and sheep.

The host had passed beyond the bounds of Stygia and threaded its way between the kingdoms of Keshan and Punt. The desert yielded to rolling, grassy savannas, with patches of jungle in the valleys and along the streams. In southern Punt, the Styx spread out to form vast, sluggish swamps, which they had skirted for several days. Now they were approaching the borders of mysterious Zembabwei.

There had indeed been many times when Trocero could have wished that the White Druid, Diviatix, still rode with the host. A highly civilized man, the Count of Poitain put little faith in magical mummeries. But there, in the sandy wastes of demon-haunted Stygia, the drunken old druid had acquitted himself well in the battle with Thoth-Amon’s wizardly warriors. He alone had saved them from entrapment by the sorcerers of the Black Ring. Now that the Black Ring was crushed and Thoth-Amon himself was fled to jungle-girt Zembabwei, far to the southeast, the count could have hoped that Conan would return to many-towered Tarantia.

But no! This time, Conan was determined to run the Stygian sorcerer to earth and extinguish, once and for all, the supernatural menace to his throne. With the help of that ancient talisman, the Heart of Ahriman, the White Druid had served them well at Nebthu. But Trocero knew why Conan had let Diviatix return to the West.

Dekanawatha, the high king or warlord of the savage Picts, had fallen in battle. His successor, Sagoyaga, was full of bloodthirsty ambitions. He planned to league all the Pictish tribes, and their neighbors the Ligureans as well, for an invasion of the westernmost Aquilonian provinces. Only the White Druid had enough influence in those wild parts to deter the Pictish chieftain from launching his attack while the king of Aquilonia was busy elsewhere.

So Diviatix had parted from the Aquilonian host as it paused to regroup along the northern borders of Stygia, preparing for Conan’s thunderbolt descent into the savannas and jungles of the far South. The Heart of Ahriman had gone with him, since it had to be returned for safekeeping to the great Mitraeum in Tarantia. Conan, no wizard, could not have used it effectively, anyway.

Ere he parted from the Aquilonian host, the druid had used his supernatural powers of divination to detect the refuge whither Thoth-Amon had fled. The Stygian’s northern allies, the White Hand of Hyperborea, had been crushed by the Aquilonians at Pohiola the year before. His confederates in the Far East, the Scarlet Circle, had been disorganized by the death of their master, Pra-Eun, the god-king of fabled Angkhor.

Thus there was no refuge left for Thoth-Amon save the forbidden City of Zembabwei. There his last ally, Nenaunir, the supreme wizard-priest of Damballah, ruled three million black barbarians from his skull throne. Thither, after the debacle in the ruins of Nebthu, had Thoth-Amon fled. And thither was Conan fiercely determined to follow.

TWO: Black-Winged Terror

True to Trocero’s prediction, the king of Aquilonia had pressed forward until darkness made it impossible to advance any further. The swift fall of the tropical night had caught them threading their way through the monstrous grasses that cloaked the boundless plain. Luckily, a nearby hummock allowed them to camp out of the far-spread sheet of shallow water. On that knoll, therefore, the army made its camp.

Cooking fires glimmered through the gloom. Fatigued Aquilonian men-at-arms cursed and grumbled, slapping insects, grooming their bedraggled mounts, and trying to dry their rotting boots. Sentries paced the margin of the swamp, exchanging curt passwords. Men sprawled, wearily scrubbing weapons and armor to keep the ever-present rust from gaining a foothold.

At the summit of the hillock rose the black tent of the king. The royal standard dropped from its pole in the steamy, motionless air.

Within, Conan stood, stripped to the waist, scrubbing mud and sweat from his mighty torso with hot water from a bronzen bowl. Moisture glistened in a thin sheen over his rippling thews.

Although the ruler of Aquilonia was in his late fifties, age and the civilized life of court and castle had softened his rugged physique but little. Time had streaked with gray the thick, square-cut mane of coarse black hair and the heavy mustache that swept out from his upper lip like bull’s horns. It had given a touch of gauntness to his scarred, heavy-featured face and his neck. His skin, crisscrossed with the scars of many brawls and battles, had become leathery, with an occasional pucker of little wrinkles. But the mighty muscles of arm and shoulder and trunk were still firm, and the corded belly was still flat. He toweled himself dry while his pages set out, on a low folding table, a supper of broiled steak and coarse bread for himself and his son.

The army’s supply of beer and wine had given out; so the host, including the king, was compelled to quench its thirst with swamp water. Conan insisted that the water be boiled before drinking. The aged philosopher Alcemides had told him that water so treated was less likely to carry disease. Conan had tried the system, approved it, and ordered it for his army, albeit it brought some grumbles and tapping of foreheads from his knights.

Throwing a loose cloak about his torso, Conan yawned, dismissed the pages, and attacked his simple repast. The exhausting days of plowing through scorching desert sands, hacking through jungles, and splashing across the endless, watery, reed-choked plain had not been without effect on him, even though they had tired him less than almost any man under his command. But, although physically fatigued, he was driven on by his unconquerable urge to have it out with his ancient foe.

Moreover, the wandering decades during which he had brawled and swaggered through a score of kingdoms as a footloose vagabond, thief, pirate, and mercenary soldier had given this northern barbarian a thirst for adventure and conflict which the peace of the last few years had done nothing to assuage. Thus, even when the shadow of fatigue fell upon him, he still gloried in this long trek into lands he had never seen; all the more so because the journey bade fair to end in a final confrontation with his lifelong foe.

The tent flap was twitched aside as a youth entered. Conan grunted and waved the boy to a seat across from him. “The mounts?” he inquired gruffly.

“I’ve groomed them. Father. But your camel tried to bite me.”

“You have to learn to handle the brutes.”

Prince Conn sighed. “I miss your black Ymir.”

“So do I. When we get home, I’ll make the Kothians and Ophireans return him, if I have to tum their kingdoms inside out.”

The Aquilonians’ horses had been lost at Nebthu when the Kothian and Ophirean contingents had deserted, taking the Aquilonians’ mounts with them. Conan’s men had been forced to use captured Stygian horses and camels after the rout of the Stygians by the Black Sphinx of Nebthu, together with some additional mounts they had bought from the Zuagirs.

Conan beamed fondly as the boy tore into the steak with his strong white teeth. Father and son clearly bore the stamp of the same lineage. The boy had the square-cut, coarse mane of straight black hair, the scowling brows, the fierce eyes of volcanic blue, and the stubborn jaw of his mighty sire. Scarce into his teens, Conn was already much taller than most Aquilonians of his own age. He still, however, lacked head and shoulder of his father’s towering height.

When Conan had first led the Aquilonian army across the borders of his realm into Zingara and thence through Shem into demon-haunted Stygia, he had left his son behind in Tarantia with his family. Since the war involved a struggle against the wizards of the Black Ring, Conan urgently needed the help of the Heart of Ahriman, kept under guard in a crypt below the temple of Mitra. Hence swift messengers had been sent to Tarantia to fetch the great talisman and also to fetch Conan’s heir, Prince Conn.

Conan had thereafter kept the boy near him, against all advice from his sagest councilors, who argued that the future of the dynasty should not be thus endangered. Conan felt that little was to be gained by pampering and protecting the future King of Aquilonia, except to make a weakling out of him. A future king, he firmly believed, should have the taste of battle in his guts before the heavy weight of crown responsibilities robbed him of the carefree pleasures of manslaying. Better for the next king of Aquilonia to learn of warfare in the field itself, than from dusty books and scholarly historians.

Their repast completed, the two Cimmerians were ready for rest. First, however, Conan meant to tour the camp. He would sleep better if he knew that all was secure. He did not bother to dress. Instead, he cast off his cloak and slipped a freshly-oiled mailshirt on over his half-naked torso. He donned a leathern baldric and hauled on boots, freshly cleaned and polished by his pages. As he thrust aside the tent flap and, followed by Conn, strode out into the twilight, a sudden uproar arose.

Trumpets roared; horses screamed; feet thudded. Over all sounded a strange booming sound which Conan could not identify. It reminded him, more than anything, of the boom of sails as they filled with a gusty wind—a sound familiar to him from his piratical days with the Barachan freebooters and the Zingaran buccaneers.

Just above the horizon, half obscured by damp mists, hung the pallid crescent of a sickle moon. The first stars had appeared overhead—but beneath the stars, circling and swooping to strike at running men, was a swarm of black-winged horrors. In the gathering dark they looked like a horde of monstrous, flame-eyed bats!

THREE: From Time’s Dawn

About Conan, where for a few heartbeats he stood in slackjawed amazement, a cordon of archers was posted with shafts nocked. Straight for them hurtled a black monstrosity, as big in the body as a lion, with a long, curved neck and a serpentlike head. Its elongated jaws opened to show rows of needle-sharp fangs, and its eyes burned like coals from hell.

The batlike wings of the flying demon blotted out the sky. Straight for them swooped the monster, extending clawed, birdlike feet to grasp. As one man, the Bossonian archers drew and loosed. Arrows whistled through the night air and thudded into their target. Some sank into its broad, scaly breast where heavy wing-muscles bulged with each downstroke of the vast pinions.

The monster voiced a hoarse screech and veered aside. As it did so, a human figure toppled from its back to thud on the earth almost at Conan’s feet. The figure was that of a tall, muscular black in a plumed headdress, with a necklace of claws, a loincloth of monkey fur, and a leopard-skin cloak slung about his shoulders. The feathered butts of two Bossonian arrows, protruding from his rib cage, showed how he had died.

“Crom’s blood, the things are tame!” roared Conan. “Shoot the riders off their backs!”

More of the dragon shapes swooped toward them, claws extended; and each carried a plumed black rider. Some of the riders hurled javelins down among the Aquilonians. A horse, disemboweled by a slash of monster claws, screamed in its death throes; a dragon, bristling with shafts, flapped heavily away from the camp, losing altitude.

Pallantides bellowed commands. Archers took up formations. Men ran to calm the terrified horses and camels.

Conan stared at the sky. He had heard of the monstrous winged reptiles in his travels. Dim legends came drifting down from the dawn of time, of an age of reptiles that had long preceded the rise of man from the beast. Elder myths and moldering tablets in age-lost cities told of such monstrosities, survivors from that forgotten age: wyverns, they were called.

Another black-winged wyvern swooped toward them, its deadly claws spread wide. Conan roared his terrible Cimmerian war cry. Catching Conn by the shoulder, with a sudden thrust he hurled the boy flat. Then, setting both hands on the hilt of his great sword, he whirled it so that its blade bit into the monster’s neck, half severing it. Blood spurted, black in the moonlight; a rank reptilian stench filled the air.

The wyvern flapped its huge wings, one of which knocked Conan down. The flying reptile staggered through the air across the camp to crash into one of the campfires, scattering live coals in a shower of sparks. Its dying struggles knocked men over like tenpins. The rider on its back leaped off at the moment of impact but then went down under a shower of weapons wielded by vengeful Aquilonians.

Scrambling to his feet, Conan watched the fall of the wyvern and the death of its rider. His eyes narrowed to a slitted glare. So this was the source of the legend of the flying men of Zembabwei! Terrified travelers had hinted of a monstrous horror of elder witchcraft. They spoke of topless towers with neither door nor window. Thence came the belief that the men of the forbidden city were winged like birds.

The truth, however, was just as appalling—that the Zembabwans bred and trained these survivors of a forgotten age as their steeds. By what art the black warriors effected this marvel, Conan could not guess; but it must make them almost invincible. How could any earthbound army combat winged monsters striking from the sky?

Down from the night sky hurtled the winged monstrosities, to rip asunder man or beast and rise again on beating wings before others could rally to the rescue. The darkness baffled the skill even of the Bossonian archers. As the moon set, they could not see to aim at their foes until the latter loomed suddenly close in the ruby light of the fires.

Growling a bloody oath to his primeval Cimmerian god, the kink of Aquilonia rallied his men against these forces of darkness. Even as he bellowed commands, a booming of wings behind him and a rush of displaced air warned him of another attack. But before he could even turn, a tremendous blow caught him in the back. The extended claws of the wyvern closed upon him and snatched him from the surface of the ground.

As Conan gathered his wits and the wind tore past him, he realized with a silent curse that the force of the impact had knocked the sword from his hand. He clawed desperately at his girdle for the long poniard he usually wore at his waist, but found nothing. Alas that in his haste to check the camp’s security before turning in, he had neglected to clasp about his body the broad leathern girdle—which now reposed on a folding camp stool in his tent!

Then, as he glanced at the dark ground sinking away below him, he realized that not even the dagger would have done him any good. Even if he had been able to twist his body far enough in the grip of the dragon’s claws to stab the creature mortally, he was already a hundred feet above the camp. If he slew the wyvern, he would fall to his death from such a height. He thanked Crom, at least, for his shirt of ring mail, which protected his hide from the huge claws of the dragon.

From the camp, dropping beneath him, came a hoarse bellow in the voice of Amric, captain of the royal guard: “Archers, hold your shafts!”

A cry from behind him caused Conan to crane his neck to see. At the sight, he cursed again. A second wyvern was flying in tandem with the first. In its talons, like a doll borne by an eagle, was the body of Prince Conn.

“The King!” came a despairing wail from many throats below.

As the ground sank further and was lost in midst and darkness, the second wyvern drew up abreast of its fellow, affording Conan a clearer view of his son. On its back the other beast bore a black warrior, plumed and befurred, grasping the reins in one hand and a feather-tufted spear in the other.

As Conan’s gaze shifted to the burden the creature carried, young Conn waved frantically to him. It was too dark to make out expressions, while the sough of rushing air and the drumming thunder of vast wings would have drowned all speech. But Conan’s answering wave carried an unspoken message.

On and on they flew. Burdened by the Cimmerian’s great weight, the wyvern carrying Conan seemed to have trouble maintaining altitude. A score of times it began to sink toward the darkling plain below. Every time, a sharp command from its rider and a whack of his spear shaft sent it laboring upward again.

Weary with his exertions, Conan even dozed for a time. This did not require superhuman courage; the grip of the reptile’s claws, if far from comfortable, was not acutely painful. But where a lesser man might have been paralyzed with terror, Conan was sustained by a crude, fatalistic philosophy developed in his wandering years. According to his belief, when one’s situation is utterly hopeless, one might as well not waste one’s strength in worrying. Instead, one should leave one’s fate to the gods and save one’s strength for a more promising moment.

FOUR: The Topless Towers

The swift waxing of the tropical dawn shining on his heavy eyelids, together with a change in the rhythm of the wyvern’s laboring wings, awakened Conan. He glanced downward.

Hundreds of feet below, the grass-matted plain had given way to tropical jungle, still veiled in the purple gloom of night. On the misty horizon, the dawn lit up the sky like the blaze of a furnace. A minor river snaked its way through the thick jungle. On the inner side of one serpentine curve of this stream, the greenery had been hacked down to make room for cultivated fields. And in the midst of this tract of farmland lay a fantastic city.

All of stone it was, walled about with megalithic ramparts. Inside the wall, soaring into the ruddy glow of the dawn, rose a score of more queer, curve-walled towers, like colossal chimneys. Conan’s keen gaze, raking these enigmatic structures, confirmed the legend of the towers without doors or windows. Moreover, the towers had no roofs; black emptiness yawned where their roofs would have been.

Conan felt a tingle of supernatural awe. With a sword in his strong right hand, he would fearlessly face any peril or foe. But the uncanny—the sorcerous—roused primal superstitious dread in the breast of the giant Cimmerian. The heritage of his savage ancestors awoke within him at the cold breath of the eerie and the Unknown.

His long years of wandering had carried him over much of the length and breadth of the known world. From snowy Asgard to the black kingdoms beyond Kush in the South, from the wild shores of Pictland in the West to legended Khitai in the mysterious East, he had brawled and battled and buccaneered his red road. Once, nearly twenty years before, he had briefly penetrated the kingdom of Zembabwei. He had stopped at the twin kings’ northern capital to take service as a guard to a northward-bound caravan. But never had he seen the Forbidden City, Old Zembabwei, itself: a city from which foreigners were rigidly excluded.

From many mouths he had heard hints and rumors of the Forbidden City in the trackless jungles to the south. There, it was said men worshiped Set, the Old Serpent, under the name of Damballah. The black altars of Damballah ran crimson with the blood of human sacrifices. It was whispered that, on the night of sacrifice, the very moon itself burned red with the blood of those whose souls were offered up in pain and torment to the Old Serpent.

The flying wyvern descended in a slow spiral into Zembabwei. No man of the West could say for certain when this ancient city had been built. Surely it was long ago, perhaps before the advent of man on this planet. Legends hinted that the bloodsoaked cornerstone of Old Zembabwei had been laid by the uncanny serpent-men of Valusia, those children of Set and Yig and dark Han and serpent-bearded Byatis, who had ruled the quaking fens and thick fern-jungles of the prehuman world. Kull, the great hero-king, reputed founder of Conan’s own race, crushed the remnants of the serpent folk, who had outlived their age to linger into the era of Atlantis and Valusia. But that was an age ago.

Such things did not matter to Conan at this grim moment. Well he knew that the uncanny city was a haunt of primal terrors and a sinkhole of the blackest sorcery. It was a fitting lair for Thoth-Amon, the devil-priest of Stygia, to crawl to in order to lick his wounds. This, Conan thought, would be the last battle.

FIVE: The Skull Throne

On the height of Old Zembabwei rose the citadel, the heart of the city, ringed about with those strangely shapen and topless towers. At the summit of the hill, the royal palace and the temple of Damballah frowned at each other across a stone-paved plaza.

As the wyverns bearing Conan and Conn sank with thunderbeating wings to deposit their captives, the plaza was ringed by a host of stalwart blacks armed with iron-bladed spears and shields of rhinoceros hide. Gorgeous plumes of ostrich, ibis, flamingo, and other birds nodded from their shaven pates. The wind of the wyverns’ wings whipped these plumes like a gale, and the blacks squinted against the dust thus stirred up.

The flying reptiles dropped their burdens to the stony pave and then, in obedience to their drivers’ commands, rose once more into the air. They alighted on the rims of two of the doorless towers, where more blacks seized their reins and led them out of sight below the rims. As Conan climbed stiffly to his feet and helped Conn up, he realized that the mysterious towers were nought but stables for the Zembabwans’ scaly flying steeds.

Conan and the boy stared about them at the motionless ranks of black warriors who watched with impassive faces like masks of cavern ebony.

“We meet again, dog of Cimmeria,” said a smooth, heavy voice.

Conan turned to face the dark, burning eyes of his old enemy.

“For the last time, jackal of Stygia,” he said grimly.

Thoth-Amon stood near a great throne made of human skulls mortared together with some dark, tarry substance.

The Stygian sorcerer was still a tall, powerful, commanding figure, but Conan’s keen eye thought he saw signs of encroaching age in the swarthy, hawklike features of his greatest adversary. That visage was graven with many fine lines, and there was an expression of fatigue—even of exhaustion—in the droop of the firm mouth. The feverish glitter in those black eyes was unlike their usual catlike, unwinking concentration. The powerful body under the emerald-green robe seemed a little shrunken, stooped, and paunchy.

Conan wondered if Thoth-Amon’s mighty powers were at last on the wane. The unnatural vitality which had for generations animated the prince of the world’s black magicians seemed to have guttered low. Perhaps the dark gods he worshiped had withdrawn their support after the debacle at Nebthu, when the White Druid, with the help of the Heart of Ahriman, had broken the Black Ring. Or, perhaps, the magical powers that had so long enabled Thoth-Amon, like a few other great magicians, to hold age at bay, had at last become exhausted, and the earthly term of the sorcerer’s life was at last approaching. In any case, Thoth-Amon had begun to look old.

“For the last time, you say?” came Thoth-Amon’s sonorous voice, speaking Aquilonian with scarcely a trace of accent. “So be it! From this encounter, but one shall emerge alive, and that will be myself. Nor shall we fence with words. I will slay you where you stand, and your cub beside you. Your demoralized army will be scattered by the hordes of blacks that I can summon. The West shall yet fall, and Set shall again extend his beneficent rule over the earth, when I sit as emperor in Tarantia. Prepare for death!”

Then a ringing voice broke the spell of Thoth-Amon’s words: “By the spawn of Damballah, Stygian, do you forget who kings it here?”

Conan raised his eyes to the Skull Throne, whose occupant he had had time to note only briefly. It was Nenaunir, wizard-king of Zembabwei, the last of Thoth-Amon’s allies. Nenaunir was a towering black whose mighty-muscled breast gleamed in the ruddy rays of dawn like oiled and polished ebony. His cold eyes stared down at them like the ice from some frozen hell.

The Stygian halted, and Conan thought that he visibly paled under his dusky hue. He faltered for words, and Conan sensed a tension between the two mighty princes of black magic. A rivalry for supremacy had emerged from the smashing of the worldwide league of sorcerers which Thoth-Amon had forged with his cunning and Conan had broken with his strength.

The Stygian wilted. “I—of course, brother, you are supreme here. But… our minds hold the same great scheme of empire. You shall rule the South; I, the West.

We shall divide the world, which shall henceforth grovel before Father Set…”

“Before Lord Damballah, whose prophet and vicar on this plane I am!” thundered the majestic black. “Remember your place, Stygian. The Slithering God has forsaken you at last. Your day is done, and I see no reason to share the empire of the world with such as you. Mayhap I will appoint you regent or governor of one of the provinces my armies will carve—if you behave yourself. But walk softly! I alone will decree the death of this white devil.”

The deep voice of Nenaunir, speaking the simplified Shemitish that was the trade language among the northerly black nations, ceased. A thousand blacks broke their silence to ring the butts of their spears against the stone.

In the ensuing silence, the witch-king of Zembabwei turned his icy gaze from the wasted form of Thoth-Amon to where Conan stood with arms folded calmly on his mighty breast, his young son standing brave-faced beside him.

“As for you, white dog,” intoned the black king, “you have indeed erred by entering my realm. We met in Louhi’s castle in Hyperborea. You won free because Louhi hesitated to have you slain, hoping to use you as a weapon against this Stygian and thus to rise to supreme command of the world’s magicians. While she spun her web of guile, you won free and destroyed her. You also destroyed Thoth-Amon’s power in Stygia. But I shall not repeat their errors, for I have naught to fear from the Stygian and little to gain from his friendship. I am king here, and I alone shall pronounce your doom. Think not to escape again.”

Conan said nothing, but his blazing eyes boldly met the chill glare of Nenaunir.

“We shall look upon each other one last time,” continued the other grimly, “on the Night of the Red Moon. When the moon turns red, your blood shall run scarlet on the altars of the Slithering God, whilst your soul goes shrieking forth to feed the hunger of Damballah.”

“When is all this to take place?” asked Conan calmly.

Nenaunir turned his head. “Rimush!” he boomed.

“Aye, Your Majesty?” a small, stooped, elderly Shemite in an astrologer’s worn, patched robe, embroidered with faded symbols of his craft, stepped out of the ranks and bowed low.

“When comes the Night of the Red Moon?”

“According to my calculations, it will occur—if some god interfere not—twelve nights from the one just past, sire.”

“There is your answer, white dog. Now take them away to the pits!”

SIX: The Pits of Zembabwei

The pits of Zembabwei were dungeon cells cut deeply into the bedrock below the ancient city. A party of black warriors escorted Conan and the boy thither through narrow, winding corridors lit only by the guttering flare of oil-soaked torches. From the curious angles and proportions of the passage, Conan guessed that the old myths were true; that it had indeed been the mysterious serpent-folk of prehuman times who had first raised the city of Old Zembabwei—or at least had laid the foundations on which the present city was built. He had seen that strangely angled masonry twice before in his long career: once in a ruined castle on the grassy plains of Kush; and again, years later, on the Nameless Isle in the uncharted Western Ocean, far to the south of the usual tracks of merchantmen, naval fleets, and piratical marauders.

The cell that Conan and his son were to share was narrow and damp. Moisture leaked from the mold-crusted walls of black, age-pitted stone. The floor was strewn with filthy, moldy straw. A large rat squeaked and scuttled out the door between the feet of the men entering the cell. The air was heavy with the stench of decay.

Into this cubicle they were thrust, and a barred grille of heavy bronze clanged shut behind them. The officer of the squad of black warriors locked the door with a great key, and the escort departed with a soft padding of naked feet.

As soon as the warriors had gone, Conan prowled the cage, searching the pitted stones of the walls with probing fingers, testing the bronze bars, green with age, with surge of his powerful thews. There was no window; the only light was a feeble one from a torch in a wall bracket at the last bend in the corridor.

Young Conn slumped in the driest corner and tried not to show his fatigue and despondency. He was also tormented by hunger and thirst; but, imitating his father, he set his face into an impassive mask of grim determination. Conan’s thirteen-year-old son would rather have gone to the stake than show fear before his sire.

Having examined the cell and found no means of exit, Conan kicked the driest straw together in a corner and stretched out with a huge yawn beside his son. He wrapped an arm around the lad for warmth and comfort.

After a little while, Conn asked: “What will they do with us, Father?”

Conan shrugged. “I know what they think to do with us, boy; but what may come to pass might be somewhat different. Remember, half the army of Aquilonia is on its way here at this very moment. I doubt not that Pallantides is pushing his men through the jungle at a pace that would slay less sturdy wights. The Night of the Red Moon is nearly a fortnight away, and much may happen ere then.”

Conn whispered: “They’re going to sacrifice us to Set, aren’t they?”

“So they think,” Conan grunted. “But it is not up to them, damn their black hides. Tis up to the gods, as the yammering priests would say—or to that shadowy Fate, which, some philosophers tell us, rules gods and mortals alike. As for me…”

“Yes, Father?”

“I dozed poorly in the claws of that wyvern-monster, and I could do with a bit of rest.” Conan yawned and stretched out his long legs.

Conn sighed and smiled a little in the darkness. It was impossible to feel fearful or gloomy for long in the presence of his father. It was not that his mighty sire was an optimist, but that he did not brood at length on dangers to come. Instead, he adjusted himself to circumstances as they arose and made the best of things, trusting to the future to bring a more favorable turn of fortune. Besides, Conan was already snoring loudly.

Conn’s head drooped on his father’s massive shoulder. Before long he, too, slept as deeply as his sire.

A deep, sepulchral groan aroused the huge Cimmerian from his exhausted slumbers. Instantly he came to full alertness, like a beast of the jungle aroused by the approach of an animal of a hostile species.

Sliding his arm out from under his son, Conan rose and glided across the cell. There he stood, listening keenly at the barred door. Again sounded that despairing groan, followed by labored breathing. At this repetition of the sound, Conn also awoke. He lay still, searching the gloom with keen young eyes. The boy had too much presence of mind to speak aloud.

From the edge of his barred door, Conan could see a little way down the corridor and into the nearest cell across the way. As his eyes fathomed the gloom, he made out the form of a gigantic black trussed to the farther wall. Stripped naked, his body striped with the weals of a recent flogging, the black hung from the wall in his chains as if crucified.

As Conan perceived these details, the sweat-smeared chest of the Negro heaved convulsively. Again he groaned, rolling back his head. The feeble torchlight from the corridor caught the whites of his eyes. From his long experience with dead and dying men, Conan surmised that this man was near the end of his strength.

“Why have they bound you thus?” Conan demanded in a low but penetrating voice, speaking first in the Shemitish trade language and then repeating his question in Kushite.

“Who speaks?” inquired the bound man in a slow, weary voice.

“A fellow prisoner. I am Conan, king of Aquilonia to the north,” replied the Cimmerian, seeing no point in deception.

“I am Mbega, king of Zembabwei,” said the crucified man.

SEVEN: A Tale of Two Kings

The black had been greatly weakened by his ordeal, but Conan at length elicited his tale of treachery and devil-worship.

The black warriors of Zembabwei, it seemed, were an offshoot of the Kchaka, a black nation of the interior driven from their homes by a stronger tribe. The Zembabwan branch of the Kchaka had fled eastward until they reached the ancient, crumbling ruins of an unknown city, where they settled. The nearby tribes, holding the land to be accursed, avoided the river valley wherein lay these ruins. Hence the newcomers were able to settle undisturbed and to build a new city on the ruins of the old, which they named for their tribe, of Zembabwei.

For many years, their only foes were the wyverns who soared over the jungle from cave-lairs in a range of mountains farther east. A hero-chief of the tribe, by obtaining eggs of these creatures and rearing them in captivity, discovered that they could be tamed and trained as aerial steeds. This weapon enabled the Zembabwans to extend their rule over the neighboring tribes and form the present kingdom of Zembabwei.

The hero, Lubemba, had been one of a pair of twins and had been very close to his brother. When he announced a revelation from the gods, that the Zembabwans should henceforth be ruled by pairs of twins, so great was his prestige that none protested. Lubemba’s brother was accordingly enthroned beside him.

Ever since, the land had been ruled by twin kings. To avoid conflicts over the succession, it was the custom that when one of the pair died, the other was compelled to slay himself or he was hunted out of the country. After the end of each such dual reign, the priests chose by divination a pair of healthy twin boys from amongst the people and proclaimed them the monarchs of the next reign.

All had gone well with the young nation until the dual reign of Nenaunir and Mbega. Nenaunir had fallen in with a cult of devil-worshipers whose ancient brotherhood dated back three thousand years to the age of Acheron, kingdom of shadows. The demon-god Set, or Damballah as the Negroes called him, promised greatness to Nenaunir and his people if they would turn from their tribal gods and worship him, the Slithering God.

The conversion of the young king had torn the nation into factions, one faithful to Mbega and the old gods, the other made up of adherents of the Old Serpent and his vicar, Nenaunir. Since most of the chiefs and younger warriors had joined the new cult, there was a likelihood of bloody civil war between the factions. Rather than see the kingdom rent asunder and drowned in blood, Mbega abdicated his royal powers in favor of Nenaunir. He would have lived peacefully as just another subject had not Nenaunir embarked on a course of seizing and killing those of Mbega’s faction who had been outspoken in their opposition to Nenaunir and his new god.

So Mbega and his remaining followers had risen in revolt. But this revolution, being too little and too late, aborted. The forces of the former king had been crushed in an ambush, and his sacred person had been seized.

His capture, however, had presented a problem to Nenaunir. The latter could have easily had Mbega killed, but for the law stating that when one of a pair of royal twins died, the other should be slain or driven out. Nenaunir knew that his brother still had many thousands of partisans. If necessary, these would rise to see that the old law was obeyed—the more so because Damballah’s insatiable appetite for human sacrifices had destroyed much of Nenaunir’s early popularity.

Nenaunir’s solution was to imprison Mbega for life, bringing him out to display to the people on state occasions. This policy disarmed Mbega’s faction, whose leader was held hostage by his opponent.

Nenaunir, however, wreaked an occasional private vengeance on his brother. On a recent occasion, when Mbega was taken out and paraded before the people, Nenaunir had demanded that Mbega make a speech proclaiming his allegiance to Nenaunir and urging his followers to do likewise. Instead, Mbega had defied his brother and spat in his face. Hence the flogging.

Mbega was safe for the present, Conan surmised, since Nenaunir did not yet feel strong enough on his Skull Throne to risk upsetting the ancient law of dual kingship. If he were to blind or maim Mbega, the fact could not be hidden the next time he put his captive on display.

As the crucified black related his grim narrative, he seemed to grow stronger, fires of his fury feeding his lowered vitality. Conan saw that the man was a splendid specimen of savage manhood, thewed like a gladiator. That iron physique could absorb punishment and survive where a softer, city-bred man from more civilized lands would have died long since.

“Do you still have many strong, united followers?” the Cimmerian asked.

The black king nodded. “Many are still sworn to my service, and many who were Nenaunir’s men have turned against him. They have deserted him because of his cruelties, his flouting of our ancient laws, and his slaughter of their fellows in the sacrifices. Were I to escape for but an hour, I could raise an army to storm the citadel and drag the witch-king from his throne. But what use to speak of that? Our position is hopeless here.”

“Time will tell,” said Conan with an enigmatic smile.

EIGHT: Through the Black Gate

Pallantides crawled through the thick grasses to the edge of the river, the stench of rotting vegetation thick in his nostrils. Wriggling like a snake, the Aquilonian general worked his way up to where Count Trocero lay peering between a pair of close-set tree trunks. The Poitanian looked back at his comrade, his sensitive, aristocratic face and pointed gray beard smeared with oily mud. Sweat ran down his face from under the brim of his light helmet and cut runnels through the grime.

“Sentries on the walls,” Trocero whispered. “Guard-posts on the towers. This will be a hard nut to crack.”

Pallantides, thoughtfully chewing his mustache, looked the scene over. The immense walls of Zembabwei were strongly built, and his practiced eye told him that it would take months of siege to force an entry. They must needs fell trees to build catapults and other siege engines… A black shadow fell upon them. The general dug himself deeper into the ferns and waited, sweating. Overhead, one of the bat-winged horrors that had attacked them in the swampy plain ten days before floated across the walls. They could see the plumed warrior mounted between the throbbing wings. A shudder of revulsion shook him.

“Blood of Dagon!” he growled. “If Nenaunir can tame those winged horrors, no wonder he holds a grip on his folk. Look yonder!”

The reptile fluttered down to one of the doorless towers and vanished out of sight over its lofty rim.

“So that’s the secret of the towers!” muttered Trocero. “That is where the wyverns go to roost, like bats in a cave!”

“To Moloch’s flames with the devils,” grunted Pallantides. “We have a king and a prince to rescue.”

“How can you be sure they are within those walls?”

“Fangs of Nergal, ’tis as plain as a mole on a dancing girl’s arse!” retorted Pallantides. “Thoth-Amon’s only ally is this Nenaunir, who kings it yonder, and the wizard’s flying devils pluck king and prince from our midst. Whither should they take them but to the capital?”

“Alive?”

“That we shall find out once we are within those walls.”

Trocero sighed. “You’ve had more experience with sieges than I; but to me those walls look impregnable.”

“To an army, yes; but not to a lone man.”

Trocero eyed the general. “You have a plan?”

The general ran a muddy hand over his stubbled jaw. “D’ye recall the Zingaran noble, Murzio?”

“That sly little turncoat? What of him?”

“Sly as a weasel in truth, but a good poniard-man and a faithful Aquilonian knight, for all that I misdoubt his patent of nobility. I think he was spawned in the gutters of Kordava; but no matter. Conan favors him because of a good turn his father did Conan in his buccaneering days. You recall that, three years since, the king invited to court his old friend Ninus …”

“The priest of Mitra? Aye! Our king, forsooth, has some rascally old-time comrades, but none so iniquitous as that spindle-shanked old tosspot!”

Pallantides chuckled. “True enough! You know how Ninus swaggered about the court by day, as pious as a patriarch, and how by night he wallowed in the wineshops and stews. Well, he and Murzio became thick as thieves. Conan wished to employ Murzio on a spying mission and persuaded Ninus to teach him his thievish tricks. Murzio proved an apt pupil. Conan sent him to Shem, where he uncovered a budding conspiracy among the king of Ophir and some of the Shemitish kinglets. Moreover, he brought back documents and other evidence that enabled Conan to crush the plot ere it got started.

“For this, Conan knighted Murzio. These Zingarans are a treacherous lot, but whole-hearted. Win one to you, and he’s your man to the last drop of his blood; and thus it is, I pray, with this Murzio.”

“Well, what has this to do with getting into Zembabwei?”

Pallantides winked. “There’s one unguarded gate to every great city: the sewers.”

“Sewers? The jungles have addled your wits, man! A barbarous place like this would not have sewers.”

“Ah, but it has; belike they date back to prehuman times. Do you see that trickle of ooze emerging from the grill along the southwest wall?” Pallantides pointed.

“Aye.”

“To judge from the stench wafted hither on the breeze, that is the outlet for the sewers of Zembabwei. For their jakes to empty thereinto, the blacks must have built underground tunnels connecting with that underground stream—or, mayhap, used a system already there; for I suspect that this city is built on the ruins of an older one. Now, if there be one man in our army who can worm his way through that grille, it were Murzio, who is slim as an eel and thrice as slippery.”

Trocero scratched his imperial—once neatly trimmed, now shaggy and muddy—and said: “I perceive your scheme, my friend. He’ll worm his way in, knife or sandbag the guards, and unbar the gate for us in the dark of the night.”

“You have my plan in full, noble Count. And the best part of it is the sewers. It does my heart good to think of that fastidious, long-nosed Zingaran up to his nostrils in foulness. Never have I had much heart for Zingarans, since I caught a troubadour of that persuasion in bed with my wife! My late wife, I mean.”

Trocero grinned. “Let’s return to camp and inform the noble Murzio how fate has chosen him to be the savior of his king,” he chuckled.

“Oh, no you don’t!” said Pallantides. “I am fain to be the one to tell him!”

Hours later, as purple darkness spread across the walls and towers of Zembabwei, a slim, graceful figure in black slipped from the edge of the jungle and swam noiselessly across the river. At the other side, it sought the reeking rivulet that flowed from the grille beneath the frowning walls. A few strokes more brought it to that obstacle. For a moment it lingered, seeking an entrance. Then it slid within and vanished from sight.

Murzio may or may not have possessed the noble blood he claimed. But when he swore fealty to a king, he was that king’s man to the end.

NINE: Red Moon

The ghostly light of the full moon shone down slantwise into the streets of Old Zembabwei. None slept in the city, for this was the Night of the Red Moon. When the ominous change passed over the heavenly orb, King Nenaunir would invoke his sinister god whose altar would run scarlet with the gore of human sacrifice even as the moon reflected that same sanguinary hue.

Torchlit processions moved through the narrow, winding streets of the ancient city. The thud of drums throbbed through the hot, black night. Weird chants arose.

In the pits of Zembabwei, Conan prowled his cell alertly, like a great cat. Prince Conn watched. He, too, had counted the days and the nights by keeping track of the number of times the prisoners were fed. The night they had broken the hosts of Stygia before the outstretched paws of the Black Sphinx of Nebthu, there had been a new moon in the sky. Nearly a month and a half—forty-one days, to be exact—had elapsed since then. Conn’s tutors had seen to it that he well knew the moon’s phases, since he would some day rule a mighty kingdom of farmers.

So tonight the moon would rise full, and his father had told him that an eclipse of the moon never occurred save on the night of the full moon.

So tonight, unless some unknown force intervened, he and his sire would die a hideous death on Damballah’s black altars.

Even at this depth, the eerie throb of jungle drums came to their ears in a slow, maddening rhythm. Far above their cell, thousands of Nenaunir’s savage followers were working themselves into a pitch of blood-lust for the rites that would attend the coming of the Red Moon.

Conan had more than once tested his strength against the bars of their cell, until his palms were raw. Each time, however, he had relaxed his grip, panting. His ears rang and his face was crimson with the effort. But the bars were too thick for even his superhuman strength. The builders of the cell had calculated well. Old and corroded though they were, these bars, more than an inch thick, were beyond the strength of mortal man to wrench askew.

At that instant, Conan’s keen eye caught a moving shadow, it was but a glimpse—a clot of gliding darkness scarcely more substantial than a mere shadow. Conan froze, staring out into the gloomy corridor. A narrow, sallow face floated against the darkness—a familiar face.

“Sir Murzio, is’t you, or do I dream?” whispered Conan.

“Tis I indeed, my liege,” replied a soft whisper.

“How in Crom’s name came you here? What of the host? Are they camped nearby? And how came you by that stink?”

The Zingaran smiled wearily, his lean, fine-boned face tense with excitement. In a swift, low tone he narrated his adventures.

“But, he added in tones of despair, “the sewers leading to the streets above were mere tubes, too narrow even for me to enter. I discovered this system of passages and followed it hither; but the exits are heavily guarded. I have found you, sire; but I have failed of my mission. I cannot get to the gates to open them for the army.”

Conan digested this news. “Mayhap all is not lost,” he growled. “Have you a pick-lock? Once out of this cage, we should have at least a fighting chance.”

Murzio produced a length of bent wire and began working on the mechanism of the lock. The distant torches made the beads of perspiration of the Zingaran knight’s forehead shine. For a time there was no sound save that of human breath and the faint click of metal on metal.

At last Murzio looked up, despair again overlying his features. “Father Ninus himself could not spring this lock, sire! I think it accursed.”

Conan grunted. “That may well be true. Trust the jackal of Stygia to have enchanted the lock of my cell! That crafty devil knows that I have escaped from more than one lockup. What of the lock on the cell to my left? The prisoner therein is a friend.”

The black-clad figure set to work on the lock of Mbega’s cell. The chained black watched in silence with impassive features. Presently the lock clicked open. Conan released a long-pent breath in a sigh of relief.

Murzio entered Mbega’s cell and soon released the dethroned king of Zembabwei from his chains. The knight helped the majestic Negro to limp out into the corridor, his slim form bent under Mbega’s great weight. Conan watched in grim silence as the kingly black massaged life back into his numb extremities.

Again Murzio tried, in vain, to open the lock on Conan’s cell. Again Conan essayed, with the help of the other three, to bend the bars of his cell, but without success.

“You Zembabwans build a stout cell door,” he gasped. “No matter. What cannot be cured must be endured.”

“But you face death,” said Mbega heavily.

Conan shrugged with a wolfish grin. “Not for the first time, my friend.”

“What can I do?” asked Murzio.

“First, slip me yon poniard at your belt. The blacks have stripped me nigh naked, but at least they left me my boots.” Conan slid the long blade into his right boot.

“Now help Mbega out of here. Perchance he knows a route through this maze to the surface. Help him to find haven with such of his supporters as still live. Mbega, this is your last chance. If your friends can rise before the hour of sacrifice and open the south gate to my army, we may yet outlive the dawn.

“Murzio, whether we succeed or fail, you have my thanks. You are a brave and loyal man. If we survive tonight’s perils, ask me for the barony of Castria. Fare you well! Go swiftly, and Crom and Mitrago with you.”

The two dark figures merged with the denser shadows beyond the lighted area and were gone. Conan clapped Conn’s shoulder.

“Be of good cheer, son,” he growled. “A friend within the walls is worth ten thousand locked outside them.”

He fell silent again as he heard the pad of naked feet approaching long the corridor from the other direction. He knew then that their hour was upon them—the hour that would mean either the fulfillment of Thoth-Amon’s revenge, or the fall of a kingdom.

TEN: The Slithering One

Conan and his son were bound with massive leathern thongs and escorted from the pits by a party of black warriors. They came out into the great plaza between the palace and the temple. The silver buckler of the full moon already rode high in the sky, its brilliant light rendering the stars few and wan.

The plaza was ringed with standing stones crudely chiseled with strange glyphs in an unknown symbology. Whether this had been done by Zembabwan wizards or by their prehuman predecessors, Conan could not say.

To one side, before the temple of Damballah, a sinister idol rose against the sky. Carven of black basalt, it rose to thrice the height of a man, as tall as the sinister ring of monoliths. As Conan was led towards this eidolon, he perceived that it had been fashioned into the likeness of a tremendous serpent coiled into a conical shape. The wedge-shaped ophidian head stared down from the top of the cone. For an instant the thing seemed to live, as its scarlet eyes gleamed with cold malignancy. But then Conan saw that the eyes of the Serpent God were merely gigantic rubies, and that their lifelikeness was due to the reflection of the flickering torchlight.

Conan repressed a shudder. The idol of Set—or Damballah, as the Zembabwans called it—had from time immemorial represented the forces of darkness and evil on earth. He muttered a prayer to Crom. That aloof Cimmerian god meddled but seldom in the ways of men and cared little for worship by men. But when the demon of the Ultimate Abyss glares down with eyes of lambent scarlet flame from its height, any god i,s better than none.

The altar of Damballah was like a great bowl of black marble set into the pavement before the idol. Bronze rings were sunk into the marble. Conan and Conn were bound at the bottom of the depression by chains in such a fashion that they were helpless but standing upright. Their leathern thongs were removed.

Conan studied the situation. His chains and wristcuffs were of new bronze and presumably unbreakable. But the rings set in the marble looked to be centuries old and deeply eaten by corrosion.

When the captives had been tethered, the black priests of Set withdrew. Silence fell. The night wind from the jungle moaned through the circle of standing stones and made the torches flutter. The red eyes of the statue burned through the gloom with an uncanny semblance of life.

Across the square, the bowed, wasted figure of Thoth-Amon stood beside King Nenaunir. The black monarch was in full regalia, with a purple robe to his feet and his face concealed by a serpent mask. His right hand, flashing with talismanic rings, grasped his serpent-headed staff of conjuration.

The silence lengthened. Then thousands of heads turned upwards, and a long-drawn “Ah-h-h!” came from the throats of the massed Zembabwans. Conan looked up, too. A red shadow with a curved leading edge had begun to creep across the face of the moon.

The drums, which had been silent, began again, beating a complex, febrile rhythm. They thudded like a giant’s pulse. The jungle mists, curling overhead, seemed to writhe and coil in time with the beat. The jeweled eyes of the Serpent God appeared to blink and flash in time with the same throbbing. The red shadow spread further. It was time to act.

Locking his hands about the chain that secured his right wrist, Conan whipped about and threw all his weight against the chain. Ten thousand blacks watched him with bleak, indifferent eyes. Bands of muscle stood out along his shoulders, back, and arms in one great effort. The chain held, but the old ring sunk in the marble elongated and snapped.

One hand free, Conan spun, slamming his full weight against the other chain. His brows congested, knotting with effort. His eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets; his lips drew back in a bestial snarl. The second ring, distorted, broke with a ringing crack.

At any instant now, Conan expected to feel the thudding blow of an arrow or a javelin in his back. But naught occurred. The blacks watched him free himself with stolidly indifferent faces.

With his pulse pounding in his ears, Conan turned to Conn. The red shadow crept further, the drumming changed its beat, and a booming chant arose from the massed thousands.

Emulating his father, young Conn strained at his shackles—but without effect. Conan bent to his son’s aid, conscious of a sudden arctic chill. A breath of icy wind blew against his nape. So cold was it that the sheen of perspiration on his back froze on the instant into icy granules.

Conscious of this uncanny icy breath upon him, Conan saw a strange sight. The scarlet shadow had now overspread much of the moon’s disk. But above the plaza the steamy vapors swirled, congealing from the breath of interstellar cold that blew down from the sky where the Red Moon blazed like a cyclopean eye. The vapors thickened, taking on shape and substance—the shape and substance of a tremendous, writhing serpent.

Fear clawed at Conan’s vitals. Now he knew the meaning of the bowl-shaped altar, and why they had been chained upright. As the first cold coil of the semi-solid vapor settled about him, he realized the full horror of the doom that Nenaunir had planned for them.

For Damballah himself was materializing on this earthly plane, and the coils of the Father of Evil would soon fully condense from empty air, first to crush them both to pulp and then to feed on their shuddering souls.

ELEVEN: Moon of Blood

Ignoring the cold that bit through him, the giant Cimmerian threw his full strength against the last chain that bound his son to the altar. The brazen ring broke with a crack.

The insubstantial coils were heavy about Conan now. They weighed down his brawny limbs, and their interstellar cold struck deep into his hot core of vitality. With effort he bent and drew from his boot the poniard that Murzio had given him. He sank the weapon to the hilt in the thickening coils that encumbered his body.

“Father!” cried Conn, glimpsing the demonic thing that Nenaunir had conjured from transgalactic hells.

“Run, boy!” gasped Conan. “The gates! Save yourself and try to let the army in!”

Again and again, Conan drove the dagger into the massive coils. Although his stabs bit deep, they did not seem to hurt the apparition slowly solidifying about him. Scales like saucers rasped against his hide. He staggered under the incredible weight of the monstrous serpent. Far above, Damballah’s wedge-shaped head swayed against the burning moon while eyes of scarlet flame locked into his own.

A cruel, cunning, malignant intelligence lay behind those reptilian eyes; a vast weariness, an endless despair, and a bottomless hunger. Conan’s soul quailed as he stared into the eyes of the demon that for a million years had striven to trample his race back into the mud from which it had slowly and painfully emerged.

The cold was bone-deep now. The weight of the shifting coils was crushing. Slowly the first coil tightened about his chest, squeezing heart and lungs as in a vise. The hand that held the poniard went numb, and the dagger fell to tinkle on the marble.

Conan fought on, but no longer was it a mere struggle of flesh with flesh. Now it was a battle of indomitable wills, pitted in a struggle of the spirit alone, on some plane of consciousness alien to Conan. It seemed to Conan that his mind, will, and soul formed an extension of his body. He threw the vigor of his unbroken will against the spiritual negativity of the serpent-demon, as he might hurl a javelin against a foe of flesh and blood.

He was no longer conscious of his body, which was benumbed from head to heel. In a dim way, he knew that he still stood upright, tangled in the tightening coils of the Great Serpent. His heart was slowing, his muscles were locked in the rigor of approaching death, and the very blood was congealing in his veins. But deep within him lay an untapped core of strength on which he drew. Into the shadowy battle of wills he threw his courage, his manhood, and his very lust for life. Against this last, the demon had no weapon, for it was a thing of death and decay; its compelling lust was to destroy all life.

But the strength of the serpent god was colossal, like the force that holds mountains erect and sustains the planet in its course. It hurled against its adversary the cold breath of fear, cowardice, and self-doubt. These were the weapons of the Abyss. With them, Damballah sapped the manhood of heroes, poisoned patriots with the venom of treachery, and drank the souls of nations and empires.

The cold intelligence of that transmundane being knew that it would in time destroy the earth and quench the fires of the very sun. Now it hurled that invincible vampiric force against a single mortal man. No living thing, however brave, could stand against the leeching power that drains the strength of suns.

Conan’s mind darkened, his consciousness faded, but his sheer instinct for survival kept him fighting with every ounce of power his soul possessed. He fought on against the darkness that sucked him down into the abyss of nothingness, while the red moon leered down and King Nenaunir laughed.

TWELVE: Death in the Night

Suddenly the deathly cold that numbed Conan’s body lessened. The crushing pressure on his body lightened.

The exhaustion that clouded his brain faded before a surge of fresh vigor.

He came slowly to himself. He was lying on his back at the bottom of the marble bowl, staring up at friendly, twinkling stars. The moon, once again a disk of lucid silver, poured its light down upon him.

An uproar brought him to his feet, only to sink dizzily back to his knees. His full strength had not yet returned. When he could bring himself erect once more, he saw an amazing sight.

A few paces from the edge of the marble bowl lay Nenaunir, struck down in his hour of triumph. Beside him, gleaming in the moonlight, lay the poniard that Murzio had given to Conan, and which Conan had dropped in his struggle with the demon-god. Beyond, struggling in the clutches of terror-smitten blacks, stood the assassin.

It was Prince Conn, disheveled and panting. The boy glared like a beast of prey from under tousled hair. Freed from his chains by Conan’s last effort, the lad had not fled as ordered. He had, instead, picked up the fallen dagger and flung himself across the square to where Nenaunir stood, eyes ablaze with blood-lust and triumph. All present were engrossed by the cosmic struggle in the black marble bowl, and none but Thoth-Amon had seen Conan’s son make his suicidal charge, against the entranced wizard-king of Zembabwei.

Thoth-Amon had stayed his hand for a fatal instant of hesitation, while jealousy struggled with prudence. That second was enough; the dagger was buried in Nenaunir’s heart, and the vicar of Damballah lay sprawled in his blood. The spell that sustained Damballah on the earthly plane was broken in time to rescue Conan’s withering soul from extinction. Above the bowl of sacrifice, the serpent form dissolved again into formless vapor, and Conan lived.

Before the blacks who seized Conn could make up their minds whether to slay him on the spot, a howling horde of black warriors erupted from the side streets and attacked the worshipers of Damballah from all sides. The dense, orderly lines of Nenaunir’s men melted into chaos, while noncombatants raced madly for safety. Leaderless, the partisans of Nenaunir, easily distinguishable by their plumed headdresses, went down by scores.

A brazen trumpet rang over the plaza, and the tramp of booted feet sounded. Conan grinned; his Aquilonians had come. He staggered through the wrack of combat and gasped out orders to his men. He saw Mbega, followed by a hundred partisans, dropping from the roof of one of the low buildings beside the square and racing into the fray with spear and ax and war-club.

Then the square resounded with a clatter of dropped spears as hundreds of Nenaunir’s men threw away their weapons and groveled on the pavement, begging for mercy. Mbega rushed from group to group to stop the general slaughter.

Conan stood on half-numb legs. He staggered as Conn rushed across the square and threw himself into his father’s arms. Conan hugged him briefly, spoke a gruff word of comfort, and looked around for Thoth-Amon.

The Stygian sorcerer was not to be seen. Presently a wyvern spread its batlike wings and soared out from the top of one of the towers. A swarthy man in a green robe sat astride the winged reptile. The monster circled the doomed city once, then flew off into the south. No eye but Conan’s marked it in its flight. And as he watched, his brows grew together in a thoughtful scowl. South lay nothing but countless leagues of jungle, and the terminus of the continent itself, where a nameless beach fronted an unknown sea. That southernmost point of land was the edge of the known world, as far as anyone could say. Thoth-Amon had lost his final ally; he was alone, now, having lost even the favor of his merciless god. He could flee no further, Conan grimly knew. There was no place left for him to go.

Conan had been wrong, earlier. The last battle was not here among the topless towers of forbidden Zembabwei. It would be fought on a nameless beach at the World’s Edge.

Hugging Conn to him, soothing his hysterical tears, Conan staggered out of the altar-bowl and stood, deeply wearied but smiling, to await the approach of Pallantides and Trocero. Before dawn reddened the eastern sky, a king would return to his throne and the last followers of the prophet and vicar of Damballah would perish. Conan would crown Mbega with his own hands; then the army must rest here in Zembabwei a while and lick its wounds, until it was restored to full fighting vigor after the long trek through swamp and jungle.

Then south—south to the World’s Edge—and the final battle with Thoth-Amon.

Conan grinned, deep chest expanding, drinking in the fresh night air, feeling the blood surge through his mighty frame and the vigor well up in him again.

Crom, but it felt good to be alive!