Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Ten: THE BLACK COAST

The harbor into which they had sailed lay at the mouth of a small, sluggish river, whose banks were thickly grown with tall, slender palms and heavy underbrush. The longboat slowed in the shallows, and several buccaneers clambered overboard to drag it to safety higher up on the beach. Then, while archers mounted guard, the party trooped up to the beach to river mouth with empty casks. They continued on up the banks of the river, out of sight, stopping betimes to taste the water to see if they had reached the place where it was no longer brackish.

Conan, who had come ashore with the second boatload, stood frowning on the beach with mighty arms folded on his bare chest. The configuration of the river mouth seemed naggingly familiar, and the name of the Zikamba River came unbidden to his mind. Either he had once seen this stretch of coast depicted on a chart, or he had actually touched here during his voyages with Belit, years before. The expression on Conan's grim, scarred features softened as he thought of his years with Belit at his side and a horde of howling black corsairs at his back. Belit … languorous, tawny panther of a woman … Belit whose eyes were like dark stars … his first and greatest love…

With the swiftness of a tropical storm, a screaming mob of naked blacks burst from the underbrush, their ebony bodies gleaming through beads, plumes, and war paint. Scraps of wild-animal skin girded their loins, and their hands brandished feather-tufted spears.

With a startled oath, Conan sprang from his resting place, whipping out his cutlass with a rasp of steel on leather and bellowing:

"To me, you buccaneer dogs! To arms! To me, and yard!"

The leader of the black warriors was a giant, muscled like a statue of a gladiator hewn from gleaming black marble. Like the rest, he was naked but for a leopard-skin loincloth and a few beads and bangles. A crown of aigrettes nodded above his head. Intelligent black eyes looked out of a clean-lined face of majestic dignity.

In fact, to Conan's hasty glance, he looked oddly familiar. But Conan was too busy to search his memory. He sprinted up the slope of the beach, the sun flashing on the blade of his cutlass, to stand before his swiftly gathering crew and face the pelting charge of the black warriors.

Suddenly the plumed warrior in the lead halted, threw out his long, powerful arms, and bellowed: "Simamani, wote!"

This command brought the charging mob to a halt … all but one man, who lunged past the leader, whipped back his arm, and started to hurl a keen-bladed assegai at Conan. His arm had started to lash forward when, moving with the speed of a striking adder, the leader brought his hardwood kirri smashing down on the warrior's head. The victim sprawled on the yellow sand, out cold.

Conan shouted to his men to hold their attack. For a long moment the two groups of armed men confronted each other, with javelins poised and arrows knocked.

Conan and the black giant stood panting, face to face in taut silence. Then the black war chiefs white teeth flashed in a grin.

"Conan!" he said in the Hyrkanian tongue, "Have you forgotten an old comrade?"

As the other spoke, Conan's memory awoke. "Juma! By Crom and Mitra, Juma!" he roared.

Dropping his cutlass, he sprang forward to hug the laughing black in his powerful arms. The buccaneers looked on in amazement as the two giants stood toe to toe, thwacking each other on the back and arms and shoulders with affectionate slaps and punches.

Years before, Conan had served in the legions of King Yildiz of Turan, far to the east. Juma the Kushite had been a fellow-mercenary. They had served together on an ill-fated expedition to farther Hyrkania, as escort for one of King Yildiz's daughters on her way to wed a nomad princeling of the steppes.

"Do you remember that fight in the snows of the Talakmas?" demanded Juma. "And that ugly little god-king, what was his name? Jalung Thongpa or something."

"Aye! And the way that ugly green idol of the demon-king Yama, as tall as a house, came to life and squashed his only begotten son like a bug!" Conan replied with gusto. "Crom, those were good days! But what in the name of nine scarlet hells are you doing here? And how did you become leader of these warriors?"

Juma laughed. "Where should a black warrior be, if not on the Black Coast? And where should a born Kushite go home to, if not to Kush? But I could ask the same of you, Conan. Since when did you become a pirate?"

Conan shrugged. "A man must live. Besides, I am no pirate, but a lawful privateer with letters of marque from the crown of Zingara. Not that … ahem … there's much difference between the two, come to think of it. But tell me of your adventures. How came you to leave Turan?"

"I am used to savanna and jungle, Conan; no native of the frozen North like you. Among other things, I got tired of freezing off my privates every Turanian winter. Besides, once you had drifted west, there were no more adventures. I had a hankering to see a palm tree once again and to tumble a plump black wench under the hibiscus bushes. So I resigned my commission, drifted south to the black kingdoms, and became a king myself!"

"King, eh?" grunted Conan. "King of what? I didn't know there was anything down here but bands of bare-arsed savages."

A mischievous grin lighted Juma's ebony features.

"That's what they are … or, at least, that's what they were before Juma came to teach them the arts of civilized war." Juma turned his head and spoke to his men, who were fidgeting behind him as their leader conversed with the strange chief in a language they did not understand. "Rahisil"

The Blacks relaxed and sat down on the sand where they stood. Behind Conan, the buccaneers sat down likewise, though keeping a wary eye on the blacks. Juma resumed:

"I found my birth-tribe engaged in an old feud with a neighboring tribe. We conquered the other tribe and absorbed it, and I became war chief. Then we conquered two other tribes, and I became war prince. Now I am ruler of all this coast for fifty leagues, and we are on the way to becoming a nation. I even plan to build a proper capital city, when I get around to it."

"Hell's blood!" said Conan. "You've learned more from this so-called civilization than ever have I. At least, you've risen further in the world. Good luck to you! When your bully-boys came charging out of the brush, I thought the gods had tired of playing with us and were going to sweep us off the board to lay down a new set of pieces. We landed here for water, as we have just lain becalmed off a damned island full of ghost snakes and walking statues."

"You shall have enough water to float your ship in," Juma promised, "and once you have taken aboard all you need, you shall all be my guests at my village this night. Well have a feast that will leave you staggering. I have a new crop of banana wine that ought to satisfy even your thirst!"

That night, most of Conan's crew sprawled on rattan mats in Juma's village of Kulalo, leaving a skeleton crew aboard the Wastrel. Kulalo —actually a sizable town— was a triple ring of conical huts of bamboo and thatch, sheltered behind a tall palisade and a thorn-bush boma.

A huge pit was dug in the open space at the heart of the town. This pit was filled with firewood and bracketed with huge spits, on which beeves, pigs, and antelope turned sizzling. Carved wooden bowls of sweetish, deceptively bland-tasting banana wine were passed from hand to hand. While black musicians beat drums in complex rhythms, fingered flutes, and plucked native lyres, young black women, clad only in a few beads and bangles, danced before the orange flames, clapping hands and shouting in chorus as they performed elaborate evolutions that would not have disgraced an emperor's troupe of dancing girls.

The sailors gorged on wild pig, millet cakes sweetened with sorghum syrup, and mountains of lush ripe fruit.

Sigurd's men joined Conan's party at the feast. The hearty, noisy scene fascinated the Argosseans. For once, the Argosseans and the Zingarans were too thankful for the food, drink, and entertainment to snarl at each other. More than one plump, saucy-eyed ebony temptress caught the fancy of a sailor and was chased squealing into the shadows of a nearby hut, to emerge a half-hour later, flushed, rumpled, and heartily appeased.

Conan had feared trouble from such things. His buccaneers had seen no women for weeks. To his pleased surprise, however, King Juma's black warriors did not seem to mind. In fact, they seemed to take it as a compliment when their women were borrowed … albeit, after a buccaneer had had his will of a woman, he was likely to be confronted afterwards by her grinning mate with his hand out for a present.

Relieved that there would be no woman trouble, Conan reflected that there was much to be said for savagery as a way of life.

The princess Chabela, however, found such bestial behavior obnoxious and said so. She sat between Conan and Juma. While Conan and Juma talked over her head, recalling adventures that each had had since they parted in Turan long ago, Conan was amused by the stiff expression on the princess's face as she looked with a cold eye on the tumbling figures in the shadows.

Conan half feared that Juma might expect, as a return for his hospitality, the loan of Chabela to his black embrace. Among the Kushites, this would have been merely good manners. While Conan fuzzily tried to think his way out of this predicament, Juma indicated that he knew enough of the ways of civilized men to realize that different codes obtained there and that the princess was safe from him.

Conan belched. "Crom's guts, comrade, but this is the life! I couldn't read the damned stars to see where we were, and the Wastrel lacked charts for this far south. Didn't know but what we were in the fabled Amazon country." He gulped down another cup of plantain wine.

Juma sobered. "As a matter of fact, you are … in a manner of speaking. At least, the warrior women of Gamburu —their main city— claim this coast as their territory. But they lack means to enforce their claim, as other tribes lie between my land and theirs."

"So? Tough bitches to fight, I've heard. Glad I need not find out, as fighting against women goes athwart my grain. Have you had any trouble with the Amazons?"

"A bit, in the beginning. I'm trying to train my boys to shoot like Turanians."

Juma sorrowfully shook his head. "But it's hard. There's no decent bow wood around here, and my bucks don't even feather their arrows. Then they get mulish and say, this is how it's been done ever since Damballah created the world, so this must be the right way. Sometimes I think it would be easier to teach a zebra to play the zither. But in spite of all, I now have the best-trained archers in Kush. The last time the Amazons tried to crack our borders, we stuck a few of them as full of quills as a porcupine."

Conan laughed but then put a hand to his throbbing brow. The plantain wine had a deceptively bland, sweet taste, which concealed a powerful kick. Mumbling an apology, Conan rose, staggering a little, and retired behind the nearest hut to relieve himself. Then he decided to call it a night. Returning to the king's couch of mats, he gathered up the bundle that he had brought ashore. The sack contained the Cobra Crown, wrapped in a blanket. He had not left it aboard the Wastrel, because the fortune in gems might tempt even the most trustworthy of his men. As he had become fond of them, he preferred to keep them from temptation rather than to have to hang any from the yardarm.

Mumbling his good-nights to Sigurd, Zeltran, Juma, and the prim-faced princess, he staggered off to the hut that Juma had reserved for him. Soon he was snoring like distant thunder.

Befuddled, Conan had not observed the ugly look on the face of one of Juma's warriors, a surly fellow named Bwatu. This was the man who had almost cast an assegai at Conan on the beach and whom Juma had struck down. That blow had rankled. A warrior high in Juma's councils, Bwatu fancied himself insulted by being felled like any common lout. Throughout the feast, his somber eye had returned again and again to the bundle at Conan's feet. The care that the buccaneer captain took of it suggested that it contained something of value.

Bwatu carefully noted which hut Conan had retired to. As the feast roared on under the glory of the tropical moon, he rose to his own feet, stumbled as if drunken —albeit he was practically sober— and wandered off into the shadows. As soon as he was out of sight, he doubled back through the inky alleyways between the huts. A vagrant ray of moonlight flashed on the keen blade of his dagger … a dagger he had just received from a sailor for the use of one of his women.

Far to the north, in the Oasis of Khajar in Stygia, Thoth-Amon had for hours searched the astral plane for some token of the whereabouts of the precious relic of the serpent-men of ago-lost Valusia. While Menkara and Zarono slept in alcoves beyond the sanctum of his private laboratorium, the mighty Stygian at length perceived the hopelessness of his task. He sat motionless, his cold black gaze brooding on nothingness.

Shadows flowed and flickered within the great orb of crystal, which invisible hands had placed before his seat of power. Dim, wavering radiance, cast by moving figures within the crystal, sent shadows rippling across the sculptured walls of the chamber.

Thoth-Amon had established that the Cobra Crown no longer rested in its ancient hiding-place beneath the stone idol of Tsathoggua the toad-god. Only another party of mariners, landing by accident or design on the Nameless Isle, could have borne off the Crown. By the power of his crystal, Thoth-Amon had searched the island, foot by foot. Not only was the Crown gone; no human beings remained on the island. There was no sign of the Zingaran princess, of whose escape from the Wastrel Zarono had told him. The disappearance of the Crown and of Chabela, as well as the destruction of the idol, all pointed to the intervention by some party unknown.

The silence remained unbroken in the chamber. Shadows flickered across the walls and across the figure that sat on the throne, as motionless as if it, too, had been carved from stone.