Drums of Tombalku

Chapter One

Three men squatted beside the water hole, beneath a sunset sky that painted the desert umber and red. One was white, and his name was Amalric; the other two were Ghanatas, their tatters scarcely concealing their wiry black frames. Men called them Cobir and Saidu; they looked like vultures as they crouched beside the water hole.

Nearby, a camel noisily ground its cud and a pair of weary horses vainly nuzzled the bare sand. The men cheerlessly munched dried dates. The black men were intent only on the working of their jaws, while the white man occasionally glanced at the dull-red sky or out across the monotonous level, where shadows were gathering and deepening. He was the first to see the horseman who rode up and drew rein with a jerk that set the steed to rearing.

The rider was a giant whose skin, blacker than that of the other two, as well as his thick lips and flaring nostrils, told of a heavy predominance of Kushite blood. His wide silk pantaloons, gathered in about his bare ankles, were supported by a broad girdle wrapped repeatedly about his huge belly. That girdle also supported a flaring-tipped scimitar, which few men could have wielded with one hand. With that scimitar, the man was famed wherever the dark-skinned sons of the desert rode. He was Tilutan, the pride of the Ghanata.

Across his saddle a limp shape lay, or rather hung. Breath hissed through the teeth of the Ghanatas as they caught the gleam of pale limbs. It was a white girl who hung face-down across Tilutan's saddle bow, her loose hair flowing over his stirrup in a rippling black wave.

The black giant grinned with a glint of white teeth as he casually cast his captive into the sand, where she lay laxly, unconscious. Instinctively, Gobir and Saidu turned toward Amalric, while Tilutan watched him from his saddle: three black men against one white. The entrance of a white woman into the scene had wrought a subtle change in the atmosphere.

Amalric was the only one apparently oblivious to the tension. He absently raked back his yellow locks and glanced indifferently at the girl's limp figure. If there was a momentary gleam in his gray eyes, the others did not catch it. Tilutan swung down from his saddle, contemptuously tossing the rein to Amalric.

''Tend my horse," he said. "By Jhfl, I did not find a desert antelope, but I did find this little filly. She was reeling through the sands and fell just as I approached. I think she fainted from weariness and thirst. Get away from there, you jackals, and let me give her a drink."

The big black stretched the girl out beside the water hole and began laving her face and wrists and trickling a few drops between her parched lips. Presently, she moaned and stirred. Cobir and Saidu crouched with their hands on their knees, staring at her over Tilutan's burly shoulder. Amalric stood a little apart, his interest seeming only casual.

"She is coming to," announced Gobir.

Saidu said nothing but licked his thick lips.

Amalric's gaze traveled impersonally over the prostrated form, from the torn sandals to the loose crown of glossy black hair. The girl's only garment was a silken kirtle, girdled at the waist. It left her arms, her neck, and part of her bosom bare, and the skirt ended several inches above her knees. On the parts revealed, the gaze of the Ghanatas rested with devouring intensity, taking in the soft contours, childish in their white softness, yet rounded with budding womanhood.

Amalric shrugged. "After Tilutan, who?" he carelessly asked.

A pair of lean heads turned toward him; bloodshot eyes rolled at the question.

Then the black men turned and stared at each other. Sudden rivalry crackled electrically between them.

"Don't fight," urged Amalric. "Cast the dice." His hand came out from under his worn tunic, and he threw down a pair of dice before them. A clawlike hand seized them.

"Aye!" agreed Gobir. "We cast … after Tilutan, the winner!"

Amalric threw a glance toward the giant black, who still bent above his captive, bringing life back into her exhausted body. As Amalric looked, her long-lashed lids parted. Deep violet eyes stared bewilderedly up into the leering face of the black man. An explosive exclamation of pleasure escaped the thick lips of Tilutan. Wrenching a flask from his girdle, he put it to her mouth.

Mechanically, she drank the wine. Amalric avoided her wandering gaze; he was one white man to three blacks … any one of them his match.

Gobir and Saidu bent above the dice; Saidu cupped them in his palm, breathed on them for luck, shook, and threw. Two vulture like heads bent over the cubes, which spun in the dim light. And with the same motion, Amalric drew and struck.

The edge sliced through a lean neck, severing the windpipe. Gobir, his head hanging by a thread, fell across the dice, spurting blood.

Simultaneously Saidu, with the desperate quickness of a desert man, shot to his feet, drew, and hacked ferociously at the slayer's head. Amalric barely had time to catch the stroke on his lifted sword. The whistling scimitar beat the straight blade down on the white man's head, staggering him so that he dropped his sword. Recovering, he threw both arms about Saidu, dragging him into close quarters where his scimitar was useless. Under the desert man's rags, the wiry frame was like steel and rawhide.

Tilutan, instantly comprehending the matter, had cast the girl down and risen with a roar. He rushed toward the stragglers like a charging bull, his great scimitar flaming in his hand. Amalric saw him coming, and his flesh turned cold.

Saidu jerked and wrenched, handicapped by the scimitar he was still futilely seeking to turn against his antagonist Their feet twisted and stamped in the sand; their bodies ground against each other. Amalric smashed his sandaled heel down on the Ghanata's bare instep, feeling bones give way. Saidu howled and plunged convulsively. They lurched drunkenly about, just as Tilutan struck with a rolling drive of his broad shoulders. Amalric felt the steel rasp the under part of his arm and chug deep into Saidu's body. The smaller Ghanata gave an agonized scream, and his convulsive start tore him free of Amalric's grasp.

Tilutan roared a furious oath and, wrenching his steel free, hurled the dying man aside. Before he could strike again, Amalric, his skin crawling with the fear of that great curved blade, had grappled with him.

Despair swept over Amalric as he felt the strength of the Kushite. Tilutan was wiser than Saidu. He dropped the scimitar and, with a bellow, caught Amalric's throat with both hands. The great black fingers locked like iron. Amalric, vainly striving to break their grip, was borne down with the Ghanata's great weight pinning him to the earth. The smal er man was shaken like a rat in the jaws of a dog. His head was savagely smashed against the sand. As in a red mist he saw the furious face of the Kushite, the thick lips writhed back in a ferocious grin of hate, the teeth glistening.

"You want her, you white dog!" the Ghanata snarled, mad with rage and lust.

"Arrgh! I break your neck! I tear out your throat! I … my scimitar! I cut off your head and make her kiss it!"

With a final ferocious smash of Amalric's head against the hard-packed sand, Tilutan, in an excess of murderous passion, half-lifted his antagonist and hurled him down. Rising, the black ran, stooping, and caught up his scimitar from where it lay, a broad crescent of steel in the sand. Yelling in ferocious exaltation, he turned and charged back, brandishing the blade on high. Amalric —dazed, shaken, and sick from the manhandling he had received— rose to meet him.

Tilutan's girdle had become unwound in the fight, and now the end dangled about his feet. He tripped, stumbled, and fell headlong, throwing out his arms to save himself. The scimitar flew from his hand.

Amalric, galvanized, caught up the scimitar with both hands and took a reeling step forward. The desert swam darkly to his gaze. In the dusk before him, be saw Tilutan's face go slack with a premonition of doom. The wide mouth gaped; the whites of the eyeballs rolled up. The black froze on one knee and one hand, as if incapable of further motion. Then the scimitar fell, cleaving the round head to the chin. Amalric had a dim impression of a black face, divided by a widening red line, fading in the thickening shadows. Then darkness caught him with a rush.

Something cool and soft was touching Amalric's face with gentle persistence. He groped blindly, and his hand closed on something warm, firm, and resilient. As his sight cleared, he looked into a soft, oval face, framed in lustrous black hair. As in a trance, he gazed unspeaking, hungrily dwelling on each detail of the full, red lips, the dark, violet eyes, and the alabaster throat. With a start, he realized that the vision was speaking in a soft, musical voice. The words were strange, yet possessed of an elusive familiarity. A small, white hand, holding a dripping bunch of silk, was passed gently over his throbbing head and his face. Dizzily, he sat up.

It was night, under star-splashed skies. The camel still munched its cud; a horse whinnied restlessly. Not far away lay a hulking figure with its cleft head in a horrible puddle of blood and brains.

Amalric looked up at the girl who knelt beside him, talking in her gentle, unknown tongue. As the mists cleared from his brain, he began to understand her.

Harking back into half-forgotten tongues he had learned and spoken in the past, he remembered a language used by a scholarly class in a southern province of Koth.

"Who. Are. you, girl?" he asked in slow and stumbling speech, imprisoning a small hand in his own hardened fingers.

"I am Lissa." The name was spoken with almost the suggestion of a lisp. It was like the rippling of a slender stream. "I am glad you are conscious. I feared you were not alive."

"A little more and I shouldn't have been," he muttered, glancing at the grisly sprawl that had been Tilutan. The girl, shuddering, refused to follow his glance. Her hand trembled and, in their nearness, Amalric thought he could feel the quick throb of her heart.

"It was horrible," she faltered. "like an awful dream. Anger … and blows … and blood …"

"It might have been worse," he growled.

She seemed sensitive to every changing inflection of voice or mood. Her free hand stole timidly to his own.

"I did not mean to offend you. It was very brave for you to risk your life for a stranger. You are noble as the northern knights about which I have read."

He cast a quick glance at her. Her wide dear eyes met his, reflecting only the thought that she had spoken. He started to speak, then changed his mind and said another thing.

"What are you doing in the desert?"

"I came from Gazal," she answered. "I … I was running away. I could not stand it any longer. But it was hot and lonely and wearying, and I saw only sand, sand … and the blazing blue sky. The sands burned my feet, and my sandals were quickly worn out … I was so thirsty; my canteen was soon empty. And then I wished to return to Gazal, but one direction looked like another. I did not know which way to go. I was terribly afraid and started running in the direction in which I thought Gazal to be. I do not remember much after that; I ran until I could run no further. I must have lain in the burning sand for a while. I remember rising and staggering on; and, toward the last, I thought I heard someone shouting and saw a black man on a black horse riding toward me. Then I knew no more until I awoke and found myself lying with my head in that man's lap, while he gave me wine to drink. Then there were shouting and fighting …" She shuddered. "When it was all over, I crept to where you lay like a dead man and tried to bring you to."

"Why?" he demanded.

She seemed at a loss. "Why?" she floundered, "why … you were hurt … and … it is what anyone would do. Besides, I realized that you were fighting to protect me from these black men. The people of Gazal have always said that the black people are wicked and would harm the helpless."

"That's no exclusive characteristic of the blacks," muttered Amalric. "Where is this Gazal?"

"It cannot be far," she answered. "I walked a whole day … and then I do not know how far the black man carried me after he found me. But he must have discovered me about sunset, so he could not have come far''

"In which direction?" he demanded.

"I do not know. I traveled eastward when I left the city."

"City?" he muttered. "A day's travel from this spot? I had thought there was only desert for a thousand miles."

"Gazal is in the desert," she answered. "It is built amidst the palms of an oasis."

Putting the girl aside, he got to his feet, swearing softly as he fingered his throat, the skin of which was bruised and lacerated. He examined the three blacks in turn, finding no life in any of them. Then, one by one, he dragged them a short distance out into the desert Somewhere, the jackals began yelping.

Returning to the water hole, where the girl patiently squatted, he cursed to find only the black stallion of Tilutan with the camel. The other horses had broken their tethers and bolted during the fight.

Amalric returned to the girl and proffered her a handful of dried dates. She nibbled at them eagerly, while the other sat and watched her, an increasing impatience throbbing in his veins.

"Why did you run away?" he asked abruptly. "Are you a slave?"

''We have no slaves in Gazal," she answered. "Oh, I was weary … so weary of the eternal monotony. I wished to see something of the outer world. Tell me, from what land do you come?"

"I was born in the western hills of Aquilonia," he answered.

She clapped her hands like a delighted child. "I know where that is! I have seen it on the maps. It is the westernmost country of the Hyborians, and its king is Epeus the Sword-wielder."

Amalric experienced a distinct shock. His head jerked up, and he stared at his companion.

"Epeus? Why, Epeus has been dead for nine hundred years. The king's name is Vilerus."

"Oh, of course," she said with embarrassment. "I am foolish. Of course Epeus was king nine centuries ago, as you say. But tell me … tell me all about the world!"

"Why, that's a big order!" he answered, nonplussed. "You have not traveled?"

"This is the first time I have ever been out of sight of the walls of Gazal," she declared.

His gaze was fixed on the curve of her white bosom. He was not, at the moment, interested in her adventures; Gazal might have been Hell for all he cared.

He started to speak; then, changing his mind, caught her roughly in his arms, his muscles tensed for the struggle he expected. But he encountered no resistance. Her soft, yielding body lay across his knees, and she looked up at him somewhat in surprise but without fear or embarrassment She might have been a child, submitting to a new kind of play. Something about her direct gaze confused him. If she had screamed, wept, fought, or smiled knowingly, he would have known how to deal with her.

"Who in Mitra's name are you, girl?" he asked roughly. "You are neither touched with the sun nor playing a game with me. Your speech shows you to be no simple country lass, innocent in her ignorance. Yet you seem to know nothing of the world and its ways."

"I am a daughter of Gazal," she answered helplessly. "If you saw Gazal, perhaps you would understand."

He lifted her and set her down in the sand. Rising, he brought a saddle blanket and spread it out for her.

"Sleep, Lissa," he said, his voice harsh with conflicting emotions. "Tomorrow I mean to see Gazal."

At dawn they started westward. Amalric had placed lissa on the camel, showing her how to maintain her balance. She clung to the seat with both hands, displaying no knowledge whatever of camels. This again surprised the young Aquilonian. A girl raised in the desert, who had never before been on a camel; nor, until the preceding night, had she ever ridden or been carried on a horse.

Amalric had manufactured a sort of cloak for her. She wore it without question, not asking whence it came … accepting it as she accepted all the things he did for her, gratefully but blindly, without asking the reason. Amalric did not tell her that the silk that shielded her from the sun once covered the black hide of her abductor.

As they rode, she again begged him to tell her something of the world, like a child asking for a story.

"I know Aquilonia is far from this desert," she said. "Stygia lies between, and the lands of Shem, and other countries. How is it that you are here, so far from your homeland?"

He rode for a space in silence, his hand on the camel's guide rope.

"Argos and Stygia are at war'' he said abruptly. "Koth became embroiled. The Kothians urged a simultaneous invasion of Stygia. Argos raised an army of mercenaries, which went into ships and sailed southward along the coast. At the same time, a Kothic army was to invade Stygia by land. I was one of that mercenary army of Argos. We met the Stygian fleet and defeated it, driving it back into Khemi. We should have landed, looted the city, and advanced along the course of the Styx, but our admiral was cautious. Our leader was Prince Zapayo da Kova, a Zingaran. We cruised southward until we reached the jungle-clad coasts of Kush. There we landed, and the ships anchored while the army pushed eastward, along the Stygian frontier, burning and pillaging as we went. It was our intention to turn northward at a certain point and strike into the heart of Stygia, to join the Kothic host pushing down from the north.''

"Then word came that we were betrayed. Koth had concluded a separate peace with the Stygians. A Stygian army was pushing southward to intercept us, while another had already cut us off from the coast. Prince Zapayo, in desperation, conceived the mad idea of marching eastward, hoping to skirt the Stygian border and eventually to reach the eastern lands of Shem. But the army from the north overtook us. We turned and fought … All day we fought, and we drove them back in rout to their camp. But, the next day, the pursuing army came up from the west. Crushed between the hosts, our army ceased to be. We were broken, annihilated, destroyed. There were few left to flee. When night fell, I broke away with my companion, a Cimmerian named Conan … a brute of a man with the strength of a bull.''

"We rode southward into the desert, because there was no other direction in which we might go. Conan had been in this part of the world before and believed we had a chance to survive. Far to the south we found an oasis, but Stygian riders harried us. We fled again, from oasis to oasis, starving and thirsting until we found ourselves in a barren, unknown land of blazing sun and empty sand. We rode until our horses were reeling and we were half delirious. Then, one night, we saw fires and rode up to them, taking a desperate chance that we might make friends with them. As soon as we came within range, a shower of arrows greeted us. Conan's horse was hit and reared, throwing its rider. His neck must have broken like a twig, for he never moved. Somehow I got away in the darkness, although my horse died under me. I had only a glimpse of the attackers—tall, lean, brown men, wearing strange barbaric garments.''

''I wandered on foot through the desert and fell in with those three vultures, you saw yesterday. They were jackals … Ghanatas, members of a robber tribe of mixed blood: Kushite and Mitra knows what else. The only reason they didn't murder me was that I had nothing they wished. For a month I have been wandering and thieving with them, because there was nothing else I could do."

"I did not know it was like that," she murmured. They said there were wars and cruelty out in the world, but it seemed like a dream and far away. Hearing you speak of treachery and battle seems almost like seeing it"

"Do no enemies ever come against Gazal?" he demanded.

She shook her head. "Men ride wide of Gazal. Sometimes I have seen black dots moving in lines along the horizon, and the old men said they were armies moving to war; but they never come near Gazal."

Amalric felt a dim stirring of uneasiness. This desert, seemingly empty of life, nevertheless contained some of the fiercest tribes on earth: the Ghanatas, who ranged far to the east; the masked Tibu, who he believed dwelt further to the south; and, somewhere off to the south-west, the semi-mythical empire of Tombalku, ruled by a wild and barbaric race. It was strange that a city in the midst of this savage land should be left so completely alone that one of its inhabitants did not even know the meaning of war.

When he turned his gaze elsewhere, strange thoughts assailed him. Was the girl touched by the sun? Was she a demon in womanly form, come out of the desert to luxe him to some cryptic doom?

A glance at her, clinging childishly to the high peak of the camel's saddle, was sufficient to dispel these broodings. Then again, doubt assailed him. Was he bewitched? Had she cast a spell on him?

Westward they steadily forged, halting only to nibble dates and drink water at midday. To shield her from the burning sun, Amalric fashioned a frail shelter out of his sword and sheath and the saddle blankets. Weary and stiff from the tossing, bucking gait of the camel, she had to be lifted down in his arms. As he felt again the voluptuous sweetness of her soft body, a hot throb of passion seared through him. He stood momentarily motionless, intoxicated with her nearness, before he laid her down in the shade of a makeshift tent He felt a touch almost of anger at the clear gaze with which she met his, at the docility with which she yielded her young body to his hands. It was as if she were unaware of things that might harm her; her innocent trust shamed him and pent a helpless wrath within him.

As they ate, he did not taste the dates he munched; his eyes burned on her, avidly drinking in every detail of her lithe young figure. She seemed as unaware of his intentness as a child. When he lifted her to place her again on her camel, and her arms went instinctively about his neck, he shuddered. But he lifted her up on her mount, and they took up the journey once more.