Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER SEVEN THE PHANTOM WARRIORS

Old Sigurd saw, understood, and quick-wittedly roared a command to Yakov on the forecastle deck: 'Skewer that devil in the feathers!’

Bowstrings twanged, and swift shafts flashed over the green water toward the high., gilded poop where the magician stood, arms raised to summon the Terror again. As the arrows hissed toward him, he broke off his shadow-conjuring stance to gesture with the flat of his hand. The first shaft was somehow deflected from its target and thudded harmlessly into the deck. The second and third were likewise sent awry - but then several whistled at him at once, too many for him to ward off by his magicial powers. And one sank to the feathering in his right hand.

His swarthy features pale with shock, the sorcerer staggered back, nursing his injured hand to his bony chest. He swept the Barachans with a burning glance and vanished.

The pirates recoiled. Sigurd grunted and rubbed his stubby nose. 'What can we do against this cursed devilry, Amra? Shall we turn tail before the. Shadows scoop us all up?'

Conan glared. 'Have you lost your wits, old walrus?

This hell-ship is what we are looking for! Tis here the Red Shadows are spawned!'

'But cold steel is no defense against that kind of magic—'

'You saw Yakov's lad put an arrow through the hand of the head devil, didn't you?' growled Conan, cuffing Sigurd on the shoulder. 'He'll summon no more devils with that crippled hand, so now's the time to strike!' He strode to the forward end of the poop deck. 'Helmsmen, one point to port! Grapnels out! Stand by for collision! Prepare to board!'

The bow of the Red Lion slid up parallel with the stern of the galley, and then the massive stem of the carack crunched into the emerald flank of the galley, with a great snapping and shattering of broken oars. Grapnels soared through the air to catch in the alien ship's woodwork, and brawny arms hauled taut the ropes that trailed from them. Other sailors caught the galley's rail with boat hooks.

'Boarders away!' shouted Conan, leaping down the ladder to join the throng of armed men pouring over the rails of the two interlocked ships to the galley's deck, knives in teeth and swords, pikes, and axes in fists. Most of them wore a cuirass of some sort - here a shirt of rusty chain mail; there a leather jack sewn with brass plates or bronze rings. A few of the wilder spirits went naked to the waist. Helmets of a score of designs capped their touseled heads.

Conan's boots crashed through one of the thin wicker mantlets, and he fell heavily into one of the rowing spaces between the deck and the rail. The rowing benches, each wide enough for two men handling a single oar apiece, were sunken half a man's height below the narrow deck. If the benches had been occupied, the heads of the rowers would have risen just above the deck level. But now the benches were empty. Whatever hands had wielded the oars were gone; the oars trailed idly in their oarlocks.

His scalp bristling with the superstitious fears of the barbarian - which all his years in civilization had not wholly ousted - Conan scrambled up out of the rowing space to the main deck. As he did so, glaring about for some foe to fight, the giant black, Yasunga, clutched his arm and pointed to the ornate poop deck.

'Amra, look! The plumed devil!'

The skull-faced wizard had reappeared. Now, instead of his magnificent cloak of feathers, he wore a long coat of chain mail, made from some unknown, rosy metal that blazed in the sunlight. A fantastic helm, shaped like a bird's head, was upon his head. In his left hand he bore a long, straight sword with saw teeth of glittering crystal, such as Conan had never seen in all his wanderings. Strapped to his right arm was a jagged-edged shield of green-enameled metal, embossed-with a Kraken emblem like that on the galley's bow.

Conan turned to confront the sorcerer. As he did so, the other uttered a sentence in the same unknown tongue he had spoken in summoning the Red Shadows. A gasp burst from the pirates as astonishment froze them in their tracks.

Where one armed sorcerer had stood, there now stood dozens, all identical to the last detail of dress and features.

'Charge them!' roared Conan, springing up the ladder to the gold-scrolled poop deck and whirling his mighty broadsword. His blade met the swords and shields of the magical army with a metallic crash; Conan was obscurely relieved to find his foes flesh-and-blood men. Tall, gaunt, and lean-muscled, they fought well. But Conan raged like a rabid wolf among them, battering their weapons aside and crunching through their defenses. Behind him, the screaming horde of pirates swarmed up and fell to, so that steel clanged on steel like the beating of anvils in some infernal smithy.

Howling Cimmerian curses, Conan hacked and thrust at the eagle-nosed, cold-eyed faces that rose before him and then fell, slashed and crimsoned. One staggered back from a backhand slash with half his face shorn away. Another fell, clutching at his spilling intestines. A third stumbled back, pawing at the stump of an arm. A fourth fell with bird-helm and skull cloven to the teeth. Still they came on, and still Conan battled with the blind ferocity of the savage he remained at heart.

Eight or nine he must have slain, and now he found himself ringed about by hawk-faced warriors in bird-helms. His blade was notched like a saw and soaked in blood to the hilt. His mail sagged from a dozen rents where the saw-toothed blades had torn it, and his gaunt but mighty shoulders bled from several small, superficial cuts.

Wielding his sword in both hands, he struck at the ring of steel around him, snarling like a trapped wolf. A tenth warrior fell, thrust through the body. Conan knocked several threatening blades aside with a twist of his wrists, feeling the breath sear his lungs and hearing his heart pound like a Pictish war drum. Blood roared in his temples, and he tottered on unsteady legs, but still deadly steel flickered in his hands like lightning and men fell before him.

Now the vision was dimming before his eyes, and the grim ranks of the inexhaustible foe swam in a ruddy mist, and Conan felt the full weight of his sixty-odd years. With half a heart he cursed the gods and fate that he no longer had the iron endurance of his stalwart youth; with the other half, he thanked those same gods that he should fall as he had always wished, face to face with a foe and with steel in hand.

Then, somehow, he had crashed through the hostile ring and confronted a single warrior, who stood at the rear of the deck against the backdrop of sea and sky. In an instant, Conan was upon him. The long blade crunched through the mail links of rosy metal to the foeman's heart - and it was all over.

Gasping and staggering, the Cimmerian whirled to face the rest of the enemy, to find only an empty deck, whereon his own men stood staring. The phantom army had vanished. Every hawknosed warrior had puffed out of existence; even the bodies of the fallen were gone. Conan reeled against the rail. One body remained - that of the last man he had slain. The old Cimmerian hobbled over and, on sudden suspicion, tore away the man's shield. The right hand of the corpse was swathed in bandages.

Conan drew several deep breaths. Then his thunderous laughter stilled the bewildered babble of his pirates.

'They were copies of this dog here,' he said, slapping the remaining corpse with the flat of his blade. 'They were real, all right - but only so long as he was here to animate them. When he died, they went poof! Now take the wounded back to our own deck. Goram Singh, make up a party to search the forecastle. Hurry up; she's leaking and will soon be awash. If there's any treasure aboard, we had better get it quickly. Sigurd, Yasunga, come with me!’

Conan stumbled down the ladder and thrust open the door of the cabin beneath the p«op deck. There, he thought, the sorcerer-captain would probably have berthed. He was bone-weary from the fury of battle and more shaken and exhausted than he wished his men to see. His sixty-odd years weighed down his limbs like armor of lead, and a reviving draught of strong wine would put new strength into his old heart.

Within the shadowy cabin, all was mystic gloom. The walls were hung with strange purple tapestries, whereon horrible demon faces leered and grimaced. On a low tab oret of strange design stood a crystal carafe filled with a dark liquid. Conan stumbled across the cabin to drain the contents.

It tasted like wine, but a stronger wine than the Cimmerian had ever encountered. Conan felt its warmth spread through him and put new life into his aching muscles. And then the blood froze within him, for there, hovering near the silken curtains., was the man he had just slain!

It was the same man, for the rosy-hued chain mail was cloven over his heart where Conan had sent the fatal thrust, and blood rilled down from the gash. Paying no heed to the frozen Cimmerian, the spectral figure plucked aside the tapestries, revealing a hidden niche in which was set a silver casket. As Conan watched, the translucent figure of the sorcerer picked up the casket and stepped to the diamond-paned window on the after side of the cabin. The window opened, revealing the foaming blue sea and part of the hull of the Red Lion. The phantom was about to step out into the rushing waves, when Conan crashed across the cabin, clutching at the smoky figure and the mysterious chest he sought to bear with him into the deep, blue sea.

'What are you doing, Amra?' cried Sigurd behind him. The Vanr and the Kushite had just crowded into the cabin behind Conan.

Conan's bloody arm encircled the sorcerer's waist but passed through the lean body as easily as if it were made of mist. But the Cimmerian's clutching hand fastened upon a corner of the silver chest. This, at least, was solid, and Conan dragged it out of the feeble clutch of the specter. The ghostly sorcerer toppled out the window, and as he fell he turned upon Conan one ghastly glare of maniacal rage. Then the phantom vanished into the waves.

Conan swayed in the open window, clutching the box and striving to gather his wits to answer the questions that Sigurd and Yasunga showered upon him. To them, the wraith of the sorcerer had not been visible. They had seen the chest rise from its alcove and dart for the window, apparently without support, and they had seen Conan bound after it and seize it.

Before he could satisfy their yammerings, there was a rush of feet outside the cabin and Goram Singh bellowed: 'Captain! The forecastle and the hold are empty - not a trace of loot - and the ship is foundering. The deck is awash! We must get back to the Red Lion!'

Conan stared down at the small silver casket. This was the green galley's only loot. This was the prize that the magical ship had fled from pirates to keep. This was what the alien sorcerer had fought and died to guard ...