Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Nine: WIND IN THE RIGGING

For days, the Wastrel lay becalmed off the Nameless Isle. The men sat along the rail, dangling fishing lines in the water. Half a cable's length forward of the ship, the crew of the longboat, belayed by a line to the Wastrel's bow, sweated at their oars, towing the carack inch by inch toward the unknown shores of the main continent.

Conan cursed and called upon his savage Cimmerian gods, but in vain. Day after day, the sails hung slack from their yards. The small, smooth swells slapped listlessly against the hull. To the south, thunderheads rose slowly into the hazy sky, and lightning flickered along the horizon at night; but where the Wastrel lay, the air was still.

The burly Cimmerian worried. Zarono's ship could have fallen upon him and taken him, except that the local calm would have halted the Petrel as surely as it had Conan's vessel. Either the Zingaran, too, lay becalmed over the horizon, or he had taken another route in departing from the island and so had missed the Wastrel.

Whatever errand of mischief Zarono was bound on, Conan thought, it was just as well that they had not fallen in with him. They had enough trouble of their own, without his help. For one thing, they were running low on food and fresh water.

For another, there was Sigurd and his crew. Conan had taken a Liking to the frank, fearless young red-beard from Vanaheim and had offered berths among his own men to the marooned Barachans. He had known that this might lead to trouble, and so it had. There was fierce rivalry between the buccaneers of Zingara and the pirates —mainly Argosseans— of the Isles. Each had fought the other too often and too savagely to develop any mutual liking on short order.

Yet seamen are seamen and follow a common trade. Ruthless though he was in many things, Conan felt that he could not simply up-anchor and sail away, leaving fellow mariners to their fate. So he had trusted that, between himself and Sigurd, they could keep the peace. Such, alas, had not been the case. The Zingarans had baited the hapless maroons until fighting broke out. No matter how often Conan or Sigurd hauled snarling sea dogs apart and beat sense into them, another fight was soon a-brewing.

This accursed calm aggravated the friction between the rival groups of corsairs.

Furious with frustration, Conan growled a curse and gripped the rail between clenched hands. If ever, he hoped, a blessed wind would arise and give his men proper seamen's tasks to do, they would be too busy to spend time baiting rivals.

Another problem gnawed at his mind as well. Chabela had confided to him all that she had learned from Zarono and his snake-eyed Stygian sorcerer. Some information they had let slip, more she had overheard, and yet more she had shrewdly inferred, about the reason for Zarono's voyage and his seizure of her vessel. Much of the truth of the plot against the crown had revealed itself to her active mind, and all this she had passed on to Conan.

Now the Cimmerian was in a dilemma. A mere buccaneer, the dynastic conflicts of kingdoms meant little to him, and he owed little to Ferdrugo of Zingara. True, the old monarch had given him a royal commission as a privateer of the crown, and Kordava provided Conan with a safe harbor after voyages. But this much he might expect from any king of Zingara. The next one, in fact, might demand a smaller percentage of his loot.

In such matters, however, the rude chivalry of his Cimmerian heritage sometimes overcame his self-interest. It was not in the grim barbarian to stand idly by, ignoring the pleas of a beautiful Zingaran princess, while her royal father was slowly done to death by cunning plots and Stygian sorcery. Although he knew not what he was getting into, Conan at length decided to make her battle his own.

It was not, however, entirely altruism that suggested this course to the buccaneer. He had his ambitions, too. He did not intend to remain a mere privateer all his days. If he could save the king of Zingara and his daughter from the plots of traitors and thus bolster the tottering throne, what could he not ask as a reward? A dukedom? An admiralship?

Conan even toyed with the idea of suing for Princess Chabela's hand and settling down as a royal consort. During a life of wild adventure, many women had tendered Conan the ultimate hospitality. But, although the Cimmerian treated women with a rough chivalry, he had avoided any land of legitimate marriage. He liked to fulfill his definite obligations; and, to one whose lifeblood had been travel, adventure, and conflict, the thought of being tied down to one hearth, with the welfare of a family to think of, was repugnant.

Now, however, he was over thirty-five and past the first flush of youth.

Although he showed few signs of age save the many scars that crisscrossed his mighty frame, he knew that he could not expect to continue his footloose, brawling, roistering life forever. He would have to give some thought to his own future. Chabela was a fine, round, bouncing girl, forceful and intelligent, and she seemed to like him. He could fare further and do worse…

Frowning in thought, Conan left the rail, descended leisurely to his cabin, and flung himself into a chair. The twinkle of gems caught his eye, and he grinned sourly. Something, at least, had been gained from his efforts. On the desk before him, the Cobra Crown twinkled and flashed as the level shafts of the ruddy afternoon sun, slanting through the porthole, struck fire from its blazing gems.

On their march back from the cliff whence the toad-idol had fallen, Conan and his companions had again passed the black temple. Now, it seemed, the aura of evil, which had earlier enshrouded the ruin, was dispelled. The cryptic structure of black stone lay bathed in sparkling sunlight. No longer did an eerie thrill of supernatural premonition tingle in the nerves of those who viewed it.

Cautiously, Conan set foot in the gloomy place again. Where the toad-god had squatted for untold ages, a black hole yawned in the plinth on which it had been enthroned. As Conan leaned over the cavity, his alert eye had caught the sparkle of gems. Had Zarono missed something? Conan quickly thrust his hand into the opening and brought forth the Cobra Crown.

It was a hollow cone of gold, crusted with thousands of white, fiery gems. Conan guessed these to be cut and faceted diamonds, although the craft of cutting and polishing the hardest of all gems was virtually unknown to the gem carvers of his day. The crown was fashioned into the likeness of a serpent, whose coils formed the conical headpiece and whose arched neck rose up from behind, to curve across the top of the crown so that the serpent's blunt head stared out above the brows of the wearer. Thousands of gems encrusted the Cobra Crown, and their worth was beyond calculation. So after all, the trip to lie Nameless Isle had not been without its profit.

A roar of excitement roused the buccaneer from his somber thought: "By Frigga's teats and Shaitan's fiery member!"

Conan grinned, knowing the voice of Sigurd the Vanir. An instant later, a red-bearded face, flushed with excitement, thrust into his doorway. Before either could speak, Conan knew the cause without words. The boom of taut canvas and the song of wind in the rigging came to his ears, and the cabin tilted as the ship heeled. The wind had come at last.

And what a wind! For two days and a night the Wastrel, stripped to a storm foresail, rode the scudding waves, driven by one of the lusty simooms that caused the mariners of the Hyborian Age to avoid these uncharted seas.

When the wind fell, the Wastrel dropped anchor in a cove on the coast of the main continent. Just where on that coast, Conan did not know, because a heavy overcast had hidden the sun and the stars during this leg of their voyage. Conan knew that they had sailed in a generally easterly direction. From the jungled appearance of the coast, he knew that they were south of the meadowlands of Shem; but whether they had made a landfall in Stygia, or in the kingdom of Kush, or in the little-known black countries still further south, remained to be seen.

"A chancy-looking place, my Captain," grumbled Zeltran the mate. "Where is it we might be?"

"The devil knows and the devil cares," grunted Conan. "The main thing is to find water; the butts are nigh empty and full of slime. Pick me a landing party, and let's be out with barrels. Jump to it!"

Zeltran scurried to the main deck to summon all hands. As the party assembled and swung down on lines to the longboat, Sigurd cast a frowning glance at the shoreline and grumbled one of his cosmopolitan curses. The Vanir had belted a huge leathern baldric across his matted chest.

"What's that, man?" demanded Conan.

Sigurd shrugged. "Maybe naught, shipmate; but this land looks uncommon like the coasts or Kush."

"Well, what of it? We were bound to hit Kush if we kept on to eastward."

"If so it be, these lands are no safe haven for honest mariners. The black devils would as lief eat a man as give him the time of day. And there's tales of a nation of warrior women in the interior, fiercer fighters than the men even."

Conan stared across the water to where the longboat labored shoreward. "Maybe so, but water we must have, and our victuals are none too ample. When our stores are full, well steer north for Kordava again."