Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Thirteen: THE QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS

Dawn broke in orange flame above the squat stone towers of the city of the Amazons. The display did not long abide; for in these tropical latitudes, the sun soared almost straight up from the horizon. With dawn, Conan, Chabela, and the other new-caught slaves were herded from the pen and marched to the bazaar.

Here, one by one, they were stripped, led to the block, displayed, bargained over, and finally led away.

The buyers were all women, who were the ruling sex in Gamburu. The tall, lean Mbonani stood to one side, his hawklike black face impassive, as the buyers haggled with his lieutenant Zuru. The warrior women accorded more respect to the Ghanatas, whose slave-catching talents they valued, than they did to their own men.

When Chabela's turn came, the girl blushed scarlet and tried to hide her person with her hands as she stood naked on the block. When Zuru had made her turn about, he shouted for bids.

"Five quills," said a voice from a veiled litter.

Zuru glanced around the crowd of Gamburuvians and said: "Sold!"

Since both had spoken in the bastard Ghanatan used as a trade language from the kingdom of Kush southward, Conan understood. He was surprised that such a low bid had not been topped. A "quill" was a length of quill from the wing feathers of one of the larger birds, filled with a minute amount of gold dust; for the land of the Amazons had not yet learned the use of coined money. Still, Conan wondered why an aristocratic young beauty like Chabela had not fetched a higher price. The person in the litter must be so important that nobody dared bid against him … or her, Conan corrected himself.

He was tired, hungry, and in a vile temper. He had been clubbed until his scalp was a mass of wounds and swellings. He had been forced to walk leagues in the broiling sun, had been given precious little food or drink or sleep, and he was as touchy as a lion with a toothache. So, when one of the slavers jerked his chain to lead him to the block, he almost —but not quite— burst into violent and unthinking action.

A few years before, Conan would have laid lethal hands on the slaver and damned the consequences. But hard-won experience checked his impulse. He could undoubtedly kill this one guard, and perhaps several more before they brought him down, as they inevitably would. These were hardened marauders who had dealt with many a recalcitrant slave before. At ten paces, one of them could hurl a javelin through the ring made by a man's thumb and forefinger without touching his flesh.

If Conan attacked them, he might get a few, but the rest would stick him full of spears and hack him apart with their knives before he could fill his lungs to give a war cry. And then, who would care for Chabela? In taking on her cause, he had —he hated to admit it, even to himself— assumed a certain responsibility for her. He must live.

His eyelids narrowed to slits; his mouth was compressed to a thin gash; the veins in his temples throbbed and swelled with his suppressed fury. His limbs quivered with the effort of his self-control as he walked to the block. A nearby slaver mistook this tremor for a sign of fear and whispered as much to a comrade, smiling as he spoke. Conan sent the turbaned black a hard, level gaze that wiped the smile from his features.

"Strip, you!" snapped Zuru.

"You will have to help me off with these boots," said Conan calmly. "My feet are swollen from much walking." He sat down on the block and held out one leg.

Zuru grunted and seized the boot. For an instant he wrestled vainly with it.

Then Conan gently placed his other foot against the slaver's backside, relaxed the foot in the boot, and shoved. Zuru shot away as if hurled from a catapult, to fall face-down in a puddle.

With a scream of rage, the slaver lieutenant bounded to his feet. Snatching a whip from another slaver, Zuru ran back to where Conan sat with a faint smile on his grim features.

"I … I will teach you, white dog …" yelled Zuru, making a furious cut at Conan with the whip.

As the lash of hippopotamus hide snaked toward him, Conan shot out a hand and caught the whip. Then, still not rising from the block, he pulled the whip in, hand over hand, drawing Zuru toward himself.

"Be careful, little man," he rumbled. "You would not wish to damage your merchandise, now would you?"

The slaver chief, Mbonani, had been watching the scene. Trying to suppress a smile, he spoke: "The white dog is right, Zuru. Let his new owner teach him manners, not you."

But Zuru was too far gone in rage to heed even his captain. With an inarticulate howl, he whipped out his Ghanata knife. Conan rose to his feet, gathering the slack of the chain that connected his wrists to use as a weapon.

"Hold!" cried an imperious voice from the veiled litter. Its tone of command brought even the infuriated Zuru to a halt.

A jeweled black hand whipped aside the muslin hangings, which concealed the rider within from the eyes of the vulgar. A black woman stepped from the palanquin, and Conan's eyes widened with involuntary admiration.

The woman was well over six feet in height … almost as tall as Conan, and of robust build. Black as oiled ebony was she, and sunlight gleamed in satiny highlights on the curves of her heavy breasts, sleek thighs, and long, muscular legs. A jeweled coif in her bush of kinky mack hair bore ostrich plumes dyed several brilliant colors: peach, rose, and emerald green. Uncut rubies gleamed in her ear lobes, and pearls shone softy in multiple strands about her neck.

Bracelets of pure, soft gold jingled on her arms and ankles. Otherwise, her only garment was a brief kilt of leopard skin about her voluptuous loins.

Nzinga, queen of the Amazons, bent a lingering gaze upon the giant Cimmerian.

Silence fell upon the bazaar. Slowly the queen's full lips parted in a languorous smile.

"Ten quills for the white giant," she said at last.

There were no further bids.

Chabela found her new life as a slave almost unendurable. It was bad enough that she, who had been the pampered daughter of a powerful monarch, must now fetch and carry at the behest of a black queen. Worse yet was the fact that slaves were required to go about their tasks naked; garments were for free tribesmen only.

She slept on a verminous pallet in the slave quarters. A harsh-voiced, heavy-handed slave-mistress roused her and her companions in thralldom with the first light of dawn to cook and clean, scrub and mop, and serve at the royal table. It did her no good to see the erstwhile Zingaran buccaneer, Conan, lolling on fat cushions at these feasts, guzzling banana wine and gorging on fish cakes and pastries.

Her estimate of the redoubtable Cimmerian fell. She did not have a word equivalent to the modern "gigolo," but she knew the concept well enough. Her contempt for Conan was aggravated by the fact that he did not seem to resent his status as the queen's kept lover. No man worthy of the name, she told herself, would sink so low as to enjoy such disgusting servitude. Experience had not yet taught her, as it had long taught Conan, to accept such conditions as came one's way when one could do nothing to change them.

Since Conan was the only person in this dreadful city whom she could even consider as a friend, she would have despaired utterly, had not Conan, on a few rare occasions when nobody was looking, tipped her a broad wink. The wink said —or at least she hoped that it said—"Keep up your courage, girl; I'll get you out of this yet."

On the other hand, even Chabela was forced to admit that Queen Nzinga was a magnificent woman. The girl tried to imagine their behavior in bed; but, having been delicately reared, she lacked the worldly knowledge to do so. She could not know that, however the splendid black lioness of Gamburu might queen it in public, Conan was the master of the bedroom.

This was something new, too, for Queen Nzinga. Her experience, and the whole culture of her kingdom, assumed that woman was man's natural superior.

A hundred queens had reigned before her on the Ivory Throne. Each of them had despised and degraded their men, using them as servants and as tools of pleasure and parenthood, and discarding them when they became sickly or exhausted or tiresome. Such had also been her way.

Until the giant Cimmerian had come into her life, she had easily dominated all her men. But Conan could not be dominated; his will was harder than iron, and he was even taller and stronger than she. In the clasp of his mighty arms, the black Amazon found pleasures beyond her previous experience. She became insatiable in her hungers.

She also became fiercely jealous of all the women whom the Cimmerian must have known before her. Of them, however, he would say nothing; her questions were ignored. Conan was not without a certain rude chivalry in such matters. Rail and bellow and smash things though she would, he remained unmoved, with a faint smile on his lips.

"And what of that plump little white wench the Ghanatas captured along with you?" Nzinga flared. "She was your lover, yes? You found her soft, perfumed body desirable, did you not? More desirable than Nzinga, eh?"

Looking at her in the passion of her fury, with her eyes blazing and the ebony globes of her breasts dancing, Conan had to admit that never since his first great love, Belit of the Black Corsairs, had he known a more splendid woman.

But, now that he knew she was jealous of Chabela, he must be careful … extremely careful. He must find some way to quench those suspicions, or Chabela would suffer.

Nzinga was quite capable of ordering the head smitten off anyone, man or woman, who thwarted her.

Conan had hitherto done what little he could to lessen Chabela's misery. Now, however, he would not dare to intervene even to that small extent, lest Nzinga get wind of it.

He yawned. "Chabela? I hardly know the child," he said. "She is a high-born Zingaran, and such folk place an absurdly high value on virginity. If I had loved her, she wouldn't be here now."

"What mean you?"

"She'd have slain herself, as they are taught to do there."

"I believe you not! You are trying to protect …"

Conan seized Nzinga in the grip of one mighty arm, bent her backwards into the nest of pillows, and drank furious kisses from her panting mouth. He knew that he could dare her temper just so far. In the present situation, there was only one treatment that he could count upon to take her mind off her jealous brooding…