Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER EIGHT THE CASKET FROM ATLANTIS

With the silver box clasped under one arm, Conan vaulted across the rails of the coupled ships, his sheathed broadsword clattering after him. With him came Sigurd and the brawny Vendhyan, Goram Singh. His men were prying grapnels loose from the galley's woodwork and coiling the ropes that trailed from them.

'Cast off!' roared Conan. ‘Yare! Back the mains'l! Brace the fores'l to starboard - all the way round!'

With a grinding of timbers, the two ships drew apart. Soon 3 javelin-cast of green, heaving water separated the two. The galley, which had filled from the damage she had received, had settled until her deck was awash and every wave broke and foamed over her. Only her masts and her raised poop and forecastle decks remained consistently above water, on which bits of wreckage danced. Having no dense, heavy cargo to drag her down, she might float thus submerged for months - a menace to other ships, if there were any in these waters - until she drifted ashore or broke up.

'Forward on the main!’ commanded Conan. 'Furl tops'l and mizzen! Trim sail to run free! Two points to starboard of the wind!'

With a brisk wind filling the mainsail and foresail of the Red Lion, the carack responded like a mettlesome steed to the tillers. Away she plunged, over the trackless waves, leaving the wreck of the galley behind her.

At Conan's shoulder, Sigurd watched astern as the wreck sank out of sight. The hearty old Northman was pale and constrained, as were they all. Something about that graceful green hull had struck a note of supernatural terror, like an icy wind from some open tomb. Yasunga shuddered and muttered prayers in his Kushite dialect. Sigurd furtively signed himself, drawing upon his heart with his thumbnail the sign of Thor's hammer.

Soon, even the slender masts of the galley were no longer visible. The sky was clear - blue overhead, rose-red in the west, where a blood-red sun sank slowly into an ominous, inky mass of black vapors. Conan shivered, then clapped Sigurd on the shoulder, rousing the latter from his trance.

'Come to the cabin, Redbeard, where we can toast the fight. And we still have to examine the loot. Yasunga, take the deck!’

Within the cabin, a fire crackled on the hearth and hot water steamed. Conan splashed his naked torso, scrubbed away the dried blood and sweat of battle, and winced at the sting of his scratches and cuts. Then he dried himself with a hot towel, donned a fleecy robe, eased off his boots with a grunt of relief, and sprawled at the table by Sigurd, with his feet in a bucket of hot water. The Northman pushed a flagon of wine toward him. He drank heartily. As he basked in the heat of the fire and felt the inward warmth of the wine, he relaxed into a cheerful good humor.

'Pour me another,' he said. This foray has at least served to blood the men. But there was no real loot, aside from this damned silver box!'

He laid it on the table between them and ran a finger thoughtfully along it. The box was shaped like a brick and was not much bigger than one. It was wrought in silver - or was it silver? In the fire's uneven, ruddy glow, the metal glistened with a reddish hue, and to the touch it somehow lacked that cool, oily smoothness of silver.

Sigurd also puzzled over it, running his hairy hand across the raised lines of cryptic pictographs with which the casket was embossed. Then he opened his mouth to speak a word, just as Conan spoke the same word:

'Orichalcum!’

The legendary magical metal of lost Atlantis was said to be silver-like in density and weight but with a coppery tinge. Could this casket be a relic of the lost continent? All his days, Conan had relished tales of the old hero-kings of the Atlantean age - mighty Kull of Valusia, lord of the Purple Throne - the terrible Kaa-Yazoth and his Iron Legions - the White Emperor who had been driven from the City of the Golden Gates by the enmity of the black magicians, who had put the sorcerer-king Thevatata on the throne - such tales and sagas, intoned around the tribal fires in his old homeland, had whiled away the long, grim Cimmerian winter nights and planted the seeds of a yearning for travel and adventure that had led him halfway across the world. He stroked the strange box with gentle hands, his eyes softening in a vague dream of bygone glories.

Sigurd, with less room in his mercenary soul for romance, shook the chest. 'What do ye suppose is in it?'

'Something precious, by Crom!' laughed Conan. 'That's ail the galley held, and that's what it fled to keep from us. Let's crack it open.'

There was a keyhole, plainly visible, but the key was doubtless drowned in the smaragdine depths of the unknown sea. Still, a lid has hinges, and hinges can be forced. Conan rummaged in his sea chest. Then he placed the box on end and put the point of a big, bronze needle against the end of the linchpin of the upper hinge. He hammered gently on the needle with the leaden ball that formed the pommel of a massive dirk. He grinned at Sigurd.

'I learned this trick when I was a thief in Zamora - let's see - by Mitra, it's over forty years ago! But I haven't had occasion to use it since.'

Soon both linchpins had been forced out of their hinges, and the box lay open. Within lay a small scroll, tied up by a pair of ribbons of scarlet cloth.

'Treasure?' groaned Sigurd. 'By the horns of Shaitan and the belly of Moloch! Were ever two honest rogues so put upon? Board a vile galley with bloodshed and battling in the very teeth of half the imps of Hell, and for what? A damned piece of paper!'

He spat excessively. But Conan examined the scroll, grunting: 'Don't give up too soon, Redbeard! This is more than a scrap of paper. Aye, Crom blast me if I'm wrong, but it may be as precious as that devil-faced sorcerer thought! Look here.’

Sigurd bent to examine the scroll, which Conan had untied and spread out on the table. For one thing, it was not papyrus but some stiff, crackling parchment that might have been made from the tanned hide of flying dragons, such as - the sagas said - the ancient Atlanteans had used. For another, it was obviously a chart, mapping seas that stretched halfway across an unknown world to the west.

'This line here to the east is curved very like the coastline of our own continent,' said Conan thoughtfully. 'See? Here's Messantia harbor, and the bulge that curves east from Zingara to Shem...'

'Aye, man, and these irregular spots be the Barachas, by Lir and Mannanan!' Sigurd muttered, his brow furrowed. 'But gods, look at the expanse of sea to the west!' His stubby forefinger swept westward across the chart from the lines that depicted the coasts with which he was familiar.

'Look there!' said Conan, indicating the coast of an unknown continent along the westward edge of the chart and the chain of seven large islands that lay to the southeast of this land. Although the geography was strange to Conan, the chart had been drawn with a meticulous care for detail in those parts. It showed coasts, harbors, reefs, shoals, and directions of wind and current, proving the cartographer to have been well acquainted with the lands and seas of that region. Conan thumped the table with his fist.

'Crom! I see it now. Do you grasp the secret, Red-beard?’

Sigurd shrugged. Conan tapped the parchment with a long, gnarled finger. 'The green ship came from the isles, here, all the way to our coast. Crom knows why, unless 'twas to loose the Red Shadows upon our cities, for some reason we cannot even guess as yet. But what would be so precious to this ship that it would flee our carack like the plague ? A chart showing the way home!’

Sigurd blinked, 'I think ye’ve struck the truth, Amra. But then, what are these damned isles?'

'Antillia!'

Sigurd grunted and rubbed a hairy paw over his jowls, 'Well, fry me guts, I've heard the tale ere now but never quite believed it. D'ye mean the story that, when Atlantis sank beneath the briny, a band of wizard-priests fled to unknown lands to the west and built there a successor to the Golden Empire? I've heard tell of the walls of the Seven Cities of the Antilles made of bricks of gold, and streets paved with silver, and temple pyramids of orichal-cum, with gems big enough to choke a whale lying on the beaches to be picked up ... gods and devils, d'ye suppose there's truth in it?'

Conan shrugged. 'Crom knows. I heard stories like that about Vendhya and Khitai, but when I went to those places I found that the tales had grown in the telling. The only way to find out is to sail there, and this chart shows our way!’