Horrible Imaginings

WHILE SET FLED

After centuries of fear and rumor, the Hyborean tribes were streaming southward in a holocaust of destruction and conquest. The northern marches of Set had been breached and the broken armies of Tuthothomes XX were in full flight, nor would they be rallied until they reached the Styx and ancient Khemi—that great stand which saved the old Southern Kingdom was yet to be made. Meanwhile, the rich northern provinces of Set were doomed.

Nuthmekri was a craftsman of little fame, yet he chose to stay behind while greater artists fled. All yesterday the castle had been frantically a-bustle as the servitors of his patron Megshastes prepared for the flight southward too long delayed. Hurried footsteps, stumblings, strained puffings of slaves seeking to carry too much too swiftly, impatient, shinny and stomp in the courtyard of horses harnessed and hitched too soon, creaking of overladen wagons, now and then a hallow snap as lashings parted that had been drawn too tight over loads too high—shouts, curses, wailings, and commands. Now all was delightfully quiet.

It was only a small statuette that Nuthmekri was preparing to cast, yet its form seemed to him perfect. The sand mold was ready, the little furnace was aglow, and now Nuthmekri reached for an ingot of bronze. But there disappointment awaited him. His chest of metals was empty. Some slave must have looted it last night while he strolled in the meadows. Perhaps the fellow had heard the Hyboreans coveted bronze beyond all else and would sometimes show mercy to a man who gave it to them.

Nuthmekri’s eyes roved questingly about his small tower room. There were a few statuettes and pleasingly shaped implements and utensils. These he passed over. High on one bare wall hung an ancient sword of bronze, dusty, cobwebbed fast, almost black. Putting stool on table, Nuthmekri was enabled to climb up and detach it.

Holding the antique weapon in his hand, Nuthmekri moved to the window. Through the narrow embrasure he could make out a nearby hilltop in the hot sunlight and a road crossing it. Suddenly there puffed up a cloud of dust, and horsemen burst from it—ragged fellows on small bony mounts, with bows and circular shields and spears on whose barbed blades Nuthmekri fancied he could discern the lust of blood. There came to his ears a faint eager shouting.

Nuthmekri stiffened and for a moment he gripped the old sword like a fencer. Then he smiled bitterly and shook his head and while the horde continued to pour across the hilltop, turned away from the window to the furnace and sheathed the sword in the narrow, glowing crucible. The slim, unbroken object was a long time melting. Again noise filled the castle—wild laughter, stampings, treadings, smashings and breakings, snarling curses of disappointment as signs of the previous looting were uncovered (an owner’s self-looting—unforgivably mean and cheap—and in this Nuthmekri agreed with them) yells as edibles and potables came to light, ludicrous and unintelligible howlings the emotional significance of which only a barbarian mind could hope to comprehend.

By jerky stages the sword descended into the crucible. Then the guard rested against the rosy lip, Nuthmekri took up the tongs and prepared to pour.

There was a heavy tramping on the tower stairs and a jabbering that increased in volume, then a jerking and pounding at the door, which was unlocked and only failed to open because it was being tried the wrong way—pushed instead of pulled. In the center of the shadowy room the crucible made a little sun. From it there jetted into the mold a slim perfect stream, blindingly white.

The door was jerked open. For a moment the barbarians stood there, puzzled. Then one—perhaps he had seen molten lead poured on his fellows when they stormed the march fortresses—lunged forward and with one great swipe of his notched yet razor-sharp longsword cut off Nuthmekri’s head.

In the pulsing crimson fountain that arched up lazily fell finally straight upon the mold. There was a hissing and a puff of steam. The barbarian drew back a step. Then something tickled his primeval sense of humor. He laughed loud and harshly and long.

The sand mold split from its bloody drenching and fell away from the tiny, black scaled figure, still faintly glowing, of a slim, and robed and hooded woman, who regarded the intruders enigmatically. Her head was complete yet no spike of waster metal stuck up from it—Nuthmekri had poured just enough and no more.

Nuthmekri’s body stopped writhing. His fingers uncurled from the tongs. A tiny branch of the metal from the fallen crucible ran along his arm, hardening almost instantly.

But the slayer of the sculptor was laughing at one of those circumstances. What had struck him as very funny was that the slim shining stream of the statuette’s pouring had been neatly twitched off by his victim a full three red-jetting heartbeats after the Hyborean’s sword had shorn through Nuthmekri’s neck.