The City of Skulls

ONE: Red Snow

Howling like wolves, a horde of squat, brown warriors swept down upon the Turanian troop from the foothills of the Talakma Mountains, where the hills flattened out into the broad, barren steppes of Hyrkania. The attack came at sunset. The western horizon streamed with scarlet banners, while to the south the invisible sun tinged the snows of the higher peaks with red.

For fifteen days, the escort of Turanians had jogged across the plain, fording the chill waters of the Zaporoska River, venturing deeper and ever deeper into the illimitable distances of the East. Then, without warning, came the attack.

Conan caught the body of Hormaz as the lieutenant slumped from his horse, a quivering, black-feathered arrow protruding from his throat.

He lowered the body to the ground; then, shouting a curse, the young Cimmerian ripped his broad-bladed tulwar from its scabbard and turned with his comrades to meet the howling charge. For most of a month, he had ridden the dusty Hyrkanian plains as part of the escort. The monotony had long since begun to chafe him, and now his barbaric soul craved violent action to dispell his boredom.

His blade met the gilded scimitar of the foremost rider with such terrific force that the other's sword snapped near the hilt. Grinning like a tiger, Conan drew his sword in a back-handed slash across the bowlegged little warrior's belly. Howling like a doomed soul on the red-hot floors of Hell, his opponent fell twitching into a patch of blood-spattered snow.

Conan twisted in his saddle to catch another slashing sword on his shield. As he knocked the foeman's blade aside, he drove the point of his tulwar straight into the slant-eyed, yellowish face that snarled into his, watching the enemy's visage dissolve into a smear of ruined flesh.

Now the attackers were upon them in force. Dozens of small, dark men in fantastic, intricate armor of lacquered leather, trimmed with gold and flashing with gems, assailed them with demoniac frenzy. Bows twanged, lances thrust, and swords whirled and clashed.

Beyond the ring of his attackers, Conan saw his comrade Juma, a gigantic black from Kush, fighting on foot; his horse had fallen to an arrow at the first rush. The Kushite had lost his fur hat, so that the golden bangle in one ear winked in the fading light; but he had retained his lance. With this, he skewered three of the stocky attackers out of their saddles, one after another.

Beyond Juma, at the head of the column of King Yildiz's troop of picked warriors, the commander of the escort, Prince Ardashir, thundered commands from atop his mighty stallion. He wheeled his horse back and forth to keep between the foe and the horse-litter which bore his charge. This was Yildiz's daughter, Zosara. The troop were escorting the princess to her wedding with Kujula, the Great Khan of the Kuigar nomads.

Even as Conan watched, he saw Prince Ardashir clutch at his fur-cloaked chest. As if conjured up by magic, a black arrow had sprouted suddenly from his gemmed gorget. The prince gaped at the shaft; then, stiff as a statue, he toppled from horseback, his jewel-crusted, spiked helmet falling into the blood-spotted snow.

Thereafter, Conan became too busy to notice anything but the foes that swept howling around him. Although little more than a youth, the Cimmerian towered several inches above six feet. The swarthy attackers were dwarfed by comparison with his clean-limbed height. As they whirled around him in a snarling, yelping ring, they looked like a pack of hounds attempting to pull down a kingly tiger.

The battle swirled up and down the slope, like dead leaves whirled by autumnal gusts. Horses stamped, reared, and screamed; men hacked, cursed, and yelled. Here and there a pair of dismounted men continued their battle on foot. Bodies of men and horses lay in the churned mud and the trampled snow.

Conan, a red haze of fury thickening before his eyes, swung his tulwar with berserk fury. He would have preferred one of the straight broadswords of the West, to which he was more accustomed. Nevertheless, in the first few moments of the battle, he wreaked scarlet havoc with the unfamiliar weapon. In his flying hand, the glittering steel blade wove a shimmering web of razor-edged death about him. Into that web no less than nine of the sallow little men in lacquered leather ventured, to fall disemboweled or headless from their shaggy ponies. As he fought, the burly young Cimmerian bellowed a savage war chant of his primitive people; but soon he found that he needed every last bit of breath, for the battle grew rather than lessened in intensity.

Only seven months before, Conan had been the only warrior to survive the ill-fated punitive expedition that King Yildiz had launched against a rebellious satrap of northern Turan, Munthassem Khan. By means of black sorcery, the satrap had smashed the force sent against him. He had—so he thought—wiped out the hostile army from its high-born general, Bakra of Akif, down to the lowliest mercenary foot soldier.

Young Conan alone had survived. He lived to penetrate the city of Yaralet, which was writhing under the magic-maddened satrap's rule, and to bring a terrible doom on Munthassem Khan.

Returning in triumph to the glittering Turanian capital of Aghrapur, Conan received, as a reward, a place in this honor guard. At first he had had to endure the gibes of his fellow troopers at his clumsy horsemanship and indifferent skill with the bow. But the gibes soon died away as the other guardsmen learned to avoid provoking a swing of Conan's sledgehammer fists, and as his skill in riding and shooting improved with practice.

Now, Conan was beginning to wonder if this expedition could truly be called a reward. The light, leathern shield on his left arm was hacked into a shapeless ruin; he cast it aside. An arrow struck his horse's rump. With a scream, the beast brought its head down and bucked, lashing out with its heels. Conan went flying over its head; the horse bolted and disappeared.

Shaken and battered, the Cimmerian scrambled to his feet and fought on afoot. The scimitars of his foes slashed away his cloak and opened rents in his hauberk of chain mail. They slit the leathern jerkin beneath, until Conan bled from a dozen little superficial wounds.

But he fought on, teeth bared in a mirthless grin and eyes blazing a volcanic blue in a flushed, congested face framed by a square-cut black mane. One by one his fellows were cut down, until only he and the gigantic black, Juma, stood back to back. The Kushite howled wordlessly as he swung the butt of his broken lance like a club.

Then it seemed as if a hammer came up out of the red mist of berserk fury that clouded Conan's brain, as a heavy mace crashed against the side of his head, denting and cracking the spiked helm and driving the metal against his temple. His knees buckled and gave. The last thing he heard was the sharp, despairing cry of the princess as squat, grinning warriors tore her from the veiled palanquin down to the red snow that splotched the slope. Then, as he fell face down, he knew nothing.