Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE BLACK LABYRINTH

Down the dark tunnel went Conan. Stalactites hung down like stone drapery from the arched ceiling far above; an occasional drop of limewater fell from their tapering ends. The cavern floor was scummed with mud and be-slimed with the calcareous drippings of the mineral growths above. Here and there, the growth rose from the floor in glassy humps and soaring pillars, where stalagmites had formed.

The cold, moist air reeked with strange, repellent odors. A faint, sour breeze blew in Conan's face. Guided by it, the old Cimmerian paced through the black labyrinth, which stretched for miles beneath the age-old city of Ptahuacan.

Old Metemphoc, the master thief of Ptahuacan, had flatly told Conan that by no conceivable route could a single armed man gain entry into the triple-guarded citadel where Conan's Barachans lay immured, awaiting the Day of Sacrifice two days thence. Countless guards, gates and doors, locks and bars lay between the open streets and the secret heart of the priestly fortress.

Conan's agile mind, however, was not so easily lulled into abandonment of his design. In response to his endless queries the Lord of Thieves bethought him of the ancient labyrinth of caverns and tunnels beneath the city. Whence they had come, no man could say. But the city was built upon a massive outcropping of limestone, and perhaps ages of erosion by underground streams had hollowed them out.

The thieves well knew the tunnels of the highest level and used them often. But the deeper tunnels were shunned even by them; for doubtful, hair-raising rumors circulated of strange cries from these noisome depths, of shambling forms half-glimpsed, and of men who, having dared the deep tunnels, cried out and then vanished forever.

Under Conan's implacable questioning, Metemphoc had reluctantly owned that the deep tunnels might well connect with the dungeons of the Vestibule of the Gods. Still, he had urged Conan to find some more wholesome way into the forbidden citadel. But Conan had proved obdurate to all his well-meant urgings.

At length, Metemphoc had seen that Conan was adamant in his determination to try to rescue his comrades by means of the deep tunnels. With a heartfelt sigh, the fat master thief then called his henchmen into conference. They began to riffle through the archives of the thieves' guild. Ancient maps of the labyrinth of tunnels were unearthed. Conan pored over these, memorizing the twists and turns of the caverns and the landmarks by which he could find his way.

So here was Conan, stalking through the darkness of the deep tunnels, scrambling and leaping over irregularities in the floor of the cavern. In one hand he bore a lantern furnished him by the master thief. This device - a fine example of Antillian technical skill - was a little bronze lamp with a cylindrical reservoir for oil, a spout from which projected a sputtering wick, a disk-shaped reflector of silvered bronze behind the flame, and a handle in back. From long polishing, some of the silver had been worn away from the face of the reflector, revealing the bronze beneath. But the little lamp was still useful for Oman's purposes. It would, Metemphoc had said, burn for several hours before its fuel was exhausted.

Here and there among the branching mouths of the tunnels, a white mark was blazoned against the wet stone. These were the thieves' blazes. Where none was visible, certain odd configurations of stone had been described to him as landmarks - for instance, a humped shape of limestone that looked like a gigantic spider.

Conan moved steadily ahead, though he little liked the cold, damp breeze that wafted upon him from the unseen depths. As he moved, his mind could not help conjuring up strange pictures from the odd sounds that wailed and echoed and whispered about him in the darkness. Now and then he heard a weird, sobbing cry, which rose to a piercing shriek of inhuman agony and died away again to a faint moan, like the wind through distant pines.

At other times, he thought he sensed the stealthy tread of unseen feet about him, in the unlighted mouths of side passages and in the main tunnel behind him. Sometimes whispered words or cold, mocking laughter roused atavistic fears of the supernatural in his barbaric soul - fears which he crushed with iron self-control.

Then, too, there came to his keyed-up senses a soft, slithering sound, as if some titanic worm or slug were crawling over the rough stone floor. Even so seasoned an old warrior as Conan could not help a shiver of revulsion as he thought of what creatures might dwell in these sunless depths, far beneath this forgotten city of Time's Dawn.

The moans and wails, he sternly told himself, were simply the sounds of wind blowing through the mock-forests of limestone formations. The laugh was the gurgle of underground waters, distorted by the conformation of the tunnels. The crawling sound might have been the slow, creaking subsidence of the very earth itself. But still the superstitious fears arose in his mind to plague him.

The skin of Conan's nape prickled. From somewhere, he was conscious of the gaze of unseen eyes. He had been winding his way through the subterranean caverns for - he thought - well over two hours. He had slipped and staggered on wet stones, stumbled over irregularities, leaped ditches and chasms athwart his path, bumped his head on low ceilings, squeezed through narrow places, and scrambled up and down steep slopes. He had disturbed colonies of bats, hanging upside down in clusters from the overhead. They squeaked angrily at him and whirred away into the darkness.

He wondered how much longer his lamp would continue to give light. It seemed to him that already its flame had weakened; it spluttered and wavered, as though its supply of oil were coming irregularly.

And now the barbarian's keen senses, but little blunted and dulled by years of urban life, told him that he was under the surveillance of hidden eyes.

He slowed his pace and went forward cautiously and silently. His keen eyes searched the dark mouths of the caverns about him for hidden agents of the Antillian priesthood, but he saw no sign of men. Nevertheless, his wilderness-trained senses told him that the pressure of an unseen gaze rested upon him. He wondered if the Antillian priesthood possessed crystal globes of magical powers, which they had inherited from their Atlantean forebears and the like of which he had seen in the Hyborian lands, whereby an initiate magician could observe events taking place afar. Were the cold eyes of an Antillian watching his every move, right now?

He froze and held his breath, listening. Far behind him sounded a metallic clang, as of a gate opening. Had he imagined it?

Now sounds grew behind him. Sweat started from his skin, for the sound was a muffled squeaking, pattering, and rustling. It was as if the unseen watcher had loosed behind him a horde of small but formidable animals, to hunt him through the cavern world and pull him down with thousands of claws and teeth.

Now the sounds grew louder and clearer. Conan muttered the name of Crom, half a curse and half a prayer. Now he believed, that, in truth, those tunnels had been barred by unseen grills, and that some watchful guard had perceived his stealthy approach and loosed the slithering horde to overwhelm him.

Conan swung his lantern to illumine the main tunnel behind him. The light was reflected redly from hundreds of pairs of small eyes close to the ground. As the living flood of pursuers came into the stronger light, Conan almost dropped his lantern in astonishment. The pursuers were rats - but what rats!

Conan had become familiar over the years with the little gray rat of the Hyborian lands, and the agile black rat of Vendhya, and the burly brown rat of Hyrkania. But these animals overtopped the rats of his world as normal rats overtopped mice. They were as big as large cats or small dogs, weighing several pounds apiece. They were not only huge, but gaunt as if half starved. Their white chisel-teeth snapped on empty air, hungry for his blood and flesh.

Conan whirled and ran, his thudding boots keeping time with his laboring pulse. Against such a bloodthirsty horde, his sword could do little; the greatest fighting man of his age would have gone down in seconds under the tide of squealing, snapping rodents.

So Conan ran as he had never run in all his life - even on that unforgotten day and night nearly fifty years before, when he had escaped from the Hyperborean slave pen, after battling his way to freedom with a length of broken chain, and had fled through rain and snow with a pack of famished wolves at his heels.

Now the breath seared his lungs with every gulp of air, as if he inhaled the breath of a furnace. His heart pounded against his ribs. His laboring legs seemed weighted with lead; his muscles ached as if devils were piercing them with fiery needles. But still he reeled and staggered on. The wind of his motion bent back the little flame of the lamp until it was in danger of being blown out altogether.

Behind him the rats scuttled and bounded and galloped, keeping pace with him. From time to time one of the foremost would jostle or tread upon another, and there would be a brief exchange of squeals and bites. But the rest of the horde flowed on, little delayed by these brief eddies in its course.

Then Conan's eyes caught a faint glimmer ahead; and the murmur of running water told him that he neared a river. As he approached, he saw that it was a rushing torrent of black water. For an instant he hoped that it would prove narrow enough to leap and thus form a barrier between himself and the pursuing horde. But then he saw that, at least right here, it was over twenty feet wide - too great a distance for him to leap. Long ago in his lusty youth, if not exhausted by running and not burdened by weapons and armor, he could easily have made such a jump. But now . ..

With widespread legs, Conan faced the furry onslaught. His chest heaved and his panting lungs drew in the cold, dank air, now fetid with the stench of the horde of rats. The headlong race through the black caverns had set his heart to pounding furiously and the blood to coursing madly through his veins. While the blood still roared in his ears, he drew his broadsword for one last, great fight. For nothing that lived could survive close combat with this horde of blood-mad, rustling rodents. All his life, Conan had only asked for a fighting chance, and now he did not have even that. But, if he had only moments left to live, he would live those moments to the full and go down fighting. For all his years, he was still in splendid condition and could have broken the backs of men half his age. And if no mortal eye should witness the last stand of Conan the Cimmerian, at least the gods would relish the spectacle - if indeed the gods looked down upon men and watched over them, as those lying priests maintained.

Conan stood on a roughly triangular ledge of rock that jutted out into the underground river, like a miniature cape or peninsula. Hence the rats could not come at him from the sides or rear, although they could still attack him on a broad front.

The giant rats poured out of the mouth of the tunnel like a river of black-and-gray fur, their eyes twinkling redly in the lamplight like the stars of some infernal dimension. Their squeaking chatter rose above the murmur of the river, and the rasp of their claws on the stone was like the hiss of dry, dead leaves whirled by an autumn gale.

Conan stooped to set down the little lantern behind his feet and gripped his sword in both hands. He raised his voice in a booming battle song of his barbarous people, and then the rats were upon him.

As the first one came within reach, a slash sent it flying in two halves over the heads of its comrades. Then, for long minutes, the heavy broadsword whirled like the vanes of a windmill as Conan struck right and left in a deadly figure-eight pattern, his point just clearing the ground with each stroke. And with each stroke, one or more rats went flying - sometimes whole, sometimes as separated heads, bodies, limbs, and entrails. Blood splashed Conan's arms and legs. Now and then he miscalculated so that his point touched the stone in its sweep, striking sparks.

But on pressed the horde, as those behind pushed those before them into the whirling blade. Now the press loosened somewhat, for some of the rats turned from the attack to feast upon the mutilated remains of their dead brethren. And still Conan swung and sent rat corpses flying by the score. His blade was now red halfway to the hilt, and the stone underfoot became sticky and slippery with blood. With each stroke, his sword threw off a spray of red droplets.

Now they pressed upon him again, and for all the slaughter he wrought upon them he could not hold them back. Some dug their chisel-teeth into the tough leather of his boots. Furiously, Conan kicked and stamped, crunching the life out of those that swarmed around his feet; but others quickly took their place.

A rat scrambled up to the top of Conan's boot and bit through the cloth of his breeches at the knee, inflicting a flesh wound. A quick slash sent the rat spinning away in two halves. Others gained his waist and breast, but their attempts to bite were foiled by the mail shirt. One made a great leap from the ground, landing on Conan's chest, and scrambled on up towards his throat. Conan snatched it away just as its whiskered muzzle touched his flesh. He grabbed at those swarming up his body, hurling them against the tunnel walls or into the river behind him.

But they were gaining upon him. Rat corpses lay in heaps about him, and he stood on an uncertain footing of mangled, furry bodies, spilt entrails, and rodent gore. Although his boots and mail had so far protected him from all but a few minor bites, both knees bled from nips, and the left hand with which he seized rats that climbed his body streamed blood from several gashes.

Then the rats gave back for an instant. Panting, Conan glared around. In his desperation, he saw something that he would have noted sooner, had he not been so closely pressed. A bowshot downstream from where he stood, a natural bridge of stone spanned the rushing black water. Instantly he realized that, if he could gain this arch, the rats could come at him only two or three at a time. On such a narrow way, he could hold out against the horde indefinitely.

To think was to act. With a surge of power, he rushed towards the bridge, wading through swirling masses of rats and crushing the life from one with every bound. Others leaped upon him to scramble and bite, until his knees streamed blood and his breeches hung about them in tatters. But such was his impetus that he reached the bridge before the rats could pull him down.

Gasping for breath, he staggered out upon the arch of stone and took his stand in the middle, where the footway narrowed. He regretted that in his haste he had not taken time to fetch the little lantern with him; but its fuel must be nearly exhausted anyway. From a distance it still shed a faint, pulsating light upon the scene.

It took the rats only a few heartbeats to perceive him, but the pause enabled him to catch his breath and clear his head. He felt his age in laboring lungs, aching thews, and pounding heart.

Now they came on again. As they flowed up the slope of the arch, Conan confronted them, crouching with his sword in both hands. As they came nearer, he began methodically slashing, right-left-right-left, each blow hurling rats off the narrow way. They died by scores and hundreds. Those that were merely knocked off fell splashing into the stream below, which swiftly bore them away into the darkness. Small, furry heads bobbed in the flood, circling to get their bearings and then striking out for the nearest shore until the darkness swallowed them up.

Never in all his years of war and slaughter had his sword taken so many lives. If the rats had been men, Conan's stand upon the underground river would have depopulated a whole nation. Like a tireless machine, he fought on ...

The end came quickly. A huge black rat with bristling whiskers - a grandfather of all rats, weighing over ten pounds - came bounding from the squealing pack to leap at Conan's gasping throat. Conan was long past feeling. His arms were numb and as heavy as lead, and the pillars of his spread legs seemed like cold columns of iron. With his left hand he snatched at the furry body as the rat dug its sharp claws into the links of his mail and lunged for his jugular vein. But strength was draining from Conan's limbs; he seemed unable to tear the creature loose, even when its sharp chisel-teeth gashed the skin beneath his beard.

As another rat attacked his boot, he kicked out at it, missed., and staggered back, followed by a worrying mass of rodents. As he brought his heels down heavily to keep him falling off the arch, the natural bridge broke beneath the weight and the pounding. With a loud crack, the whole center section on which Conan stood fell straight down into the flood with tremendous splash.

Conan found himself under water, carried down by the weight of his mail. The gigantic rat that had been worrying his throat was gone, but Conan now faced the prospect of ending his last stand by drowning.

With a thrust of his legs against the bottom, he fought his way up to the surface and gasped a lungful of air before the weight dragged him down again. The swift current bumped and banged him against the irregularities of the bottom, rolling him over and over. Once more he fought his way to the surface. He had always been a splendid swimmer; but now the mailshirt, which he had retained through such peril and which had protected his torso from scores of bites, was dragging him down to his doom.

Once more he fought up to the surface. Once more he took in a straining lungful of air. And once more the weight drew him inexorably under. His consciousness was slipping away, as though he were falling into a deep, dreamless slumber.