The Return of Conan

CHAPTER 4: The Palace on the Cliff

With head whirling, stomach knotted with nausea, and throat parched, Conan the Cimmerian slowly regained his senses. His last memory was of sitting on the sumptuous couch of Veziz Shah, governor of Fort Wakla.

Now he found himself gazing at dank, dripping walls, with the squeak of scuttling rats in his ears as he turned heavily over to sit up on a bed of moldy straw. As he moved, there was a jingle of chains linking the fetters on his wrists and ankles with a massive stone staple set in the wall. He was naked but for a loincloth.

His head felt as if it were going to split. His tongue stuck to his palate with thirst, and intense pangs of hunger assailed him. In spite of the shooting pains in his skull, he raised his voice in a mighty bellow.

“Ho, guards! Would you let a man perish of hunger and thirst? Fetch food and drink! What cursed nook of Hell is this?”

With a patter of footsteps and a jingle of keys, a paunchy, bearded jailer appeared on the other side of the iron grille that barred the door of the cell. “So the western dog has awakened! Know that these are the dungeons of King Yezdigerd’s palace at Aghrapur. Here are food and water. You will need to fill your belly to appreciate the cordial reception the king has prepared for you.”

Thrusting a loaf and a small jug through the bars, the jailer went away, his cackling laughter resounding hollowly in the corridor. The famished Cimmerian flung himself on the food and drink. He munched great hunks of the stale loaf and washed them down with gulps of water.

At least he did not now have to fear poison, for if the king had wanted to kill him out of hand it would have been easy to do so while he lay unconscious.

He pondered his predicament. He was in the hands of his most implacable enemy. In the olden days King Yezdigerd had offered fabulous rewards for Conan’s head. Many had been the attempts on Conan. Several would-be assassins had been killed by Conan himself. But the tenacious hatred in Yezdigerd’s heart had not slackened even when his foe had won power as king of far Aquilonia. Now, by a woman’s devious schemes, Conan was at last at the mercy of his merciless antagonist. Any ordinary man would have been daunted by the terrible prospect.

Not so Conan! Accepting things as they were with barbarian stolidity, his fertile mind was already trying and discarding plans of winning to freedom and turning the tables of his vengeful captor. His eyes narrowed as the clank of footsteps sounded in the corridor.

At a harsh word of command the steps halted. Through the grille Conan could discern a half-score of guardsmen, gilt-worked mail a-shimmer in the torchlight, curved swords in their hands. Two bore heavy bows at the ready. A tall, massive officer stood forward. Conan recognized Ardashir, who spoke in a sharp, cutting voice.

“Shapur and Vardan! Truss the barbarian securely and sling a noose about his neck! Archers! Stand by to prevent any trick!”

The two soldiers stepped forward to carry out the order. One bore a log of wood six feet long and several inches thick, while the other carried a stout rope. Ardashir addressed himself to the Cimmerian. His eyes glowed with malevolence and his fingers twitched with eagerness to attack Conan, but he held himself in check with the iron self-control of a well-trained officer. He hissed: “One false move, barbarian dog, and your heart shall know the marksmanship of my archers! I should dearly love to slay you myself, but you are the king’s own meat.”

Conan’s chill blue eyes regarded the maddened officer without emotion as the soldiers placed the log across his shoulders and bound his arms to it. Without apparent effort, Conan tensed his huge arm muscles, so that the rope was stretched to its greatest tautness at the moment of tying.

The jailer than unlocked Conan’s fetters. Conan rumbled:

“You Turanian dogs will get what you deserve sooner or later. You will see.”

Ardashir’s face twitched in fury as he spat back: “And you will get yours, you red-handed rogue! No torture devised by human brains will be too cruel when the royal executioners set to work upon you.” He laughed a shrill uncontrolled laugh that betrayed his hysteric mood. “But enough of this gabble. Follow me, Your Majesty of maggoty Aquilonia!”

At a gesture to the guardsmen, the little company marched along the dank corridors. The bound barbarian walked in their midst, bearing the log across his shoulders. Conan was quite unruffled. He had been in many tight places before and won his way to freedom. He was like a trapped wolf, alert and constantly looking for a chance to reverse the situation. He did not waste thought on the terrible odds against him, or on futile recriminations against his foes, or on self-reproach for the moment’s lapse in vigilance that resulted in his capture. His whole mind and nervous system were concentrated on what to do next.

Winding stone staircases led upward. As nobody had blindfolded Conan, his keen eyes took in every detail. The dungeons of the royal palace were far below ground level. There were several floors to pass, at each of which an armed guard stood ready with sword or pike.

Twice Conan glimpsed the outside world as they passed window slits. The darkling sky showed that the time was either dawn or dusk. Now he understood the mystifying murmur of surf which had reached his ears.

The palace was built on the outskirts of Aghrapur, on a crag overlooking the Sea of Vilayet. The dungeons were carved out of the heart of the rock whose sheer face ended in the lapping waves below.

That was why Conan could see the sky through the window slits, though they had not yet reached the lower floors of the palace itself. Conan stored the knowledge in his mind.

The size of the palace was amazing. The party passed through endless rooms with fountains and jeweled vases.

Exotic blooms exuded heavy perfume. Now their steps echoed from arching walls; now they were muffled by rich rugs and hangings. Corseleted soldiers stood like statues everywhere with inscrutable faces and eyes alert. Here the splendor of the East bloomed in its full glory.

The party halted before two gigantic, goldworked doors. Fully fifty feet high they towered, their upper parts disappearing in the gloom.

Mysterious arabesques curled their snaky course across the surfaces of the doors, on which the dragons, heroes, and wizards of Hyrkanian legend were depicted. Ardashir stepped forward and struck the golden plates a ringing blow with the hilt of his scimitar.

In response, the immense doors opened slowly. The low murmur of a great assembly of people reached Conan’s ears.

The throne room was vaster than anything Conan had ever seen, from the sumptuous state chambers of Ophir and Nemedia to the smoky, timber-roofed halls of Asgard and Vanaheim. Giant pillars of marble reared lofty columns toward a roof that seemed as distant as the sky.

The profusion of cressets, lamps, and candelabra illuminated costly drapes, paintings, and hangings. Behind the throne rose windows of stained glass, closed against the fall of night.

A glittering host filled the hall. Fully a thousand must have assembled there. There were Nemedians in jupons, trunk hose, and leathern boots; Ophireans in billowing cloaks; stocky, black-bearded Shemites in silken robes; renegade Zuagirs from the desert; Vendhyans in bulging turbans and gauzy robes; barbarically-clad emissaries from the black kingdoms to the far southwest. Even a lone yellow-haired warrior from the Far North, clad in a somber black tunic, stared sullenly before him, his powerful hands gripping the hilt of a heavy longsword that rested before him with the chape of its scabbard on the floor.

Some had come here to escape the wrath of their own rulers, some as informers and traitors against the lands of their birth, and some as envoys. The gluttonous mind of King Yezdigerd was never satisfied with the size of his growing empire. Many and devious were the ways in which he sought to enlarge it.

The blare of golden trumpets rang across the huge hall. An avenue opened through the milling mass, and Conan’s little group set itself again in motion. The distance to the dais was still too great to make out the individuals clustered there, but their brisk approach would soon bring them into range.

Conan was afire with curiosity. Though he had fought this eastern despot many years ago on several occasions… as war-chief of the Zuagirs, as admiral of the Vilayet pirates, as leader of the Himelian hillmen, and as hetman of the kozaki …he had never yet seen his implacable foe in person. He kept his eyes full on the figure on the golden throne as he approached it.

So it came about that he did not notice the widening of the blond giant’s gray eyes in sudden recognition. The powerful knuckles whitened as the enigmatic gaze intently followed the towering figure of the Cimmerian on his way toward the dais.

King Yezdigerd was a swarthy giant of a man with a short black beard and a thin, cruel mouth. Although the debauchery of the Turanian court had wrought pouches under his glittering eyes, and lines crisscrossed his stern and gloomy features ten years too early, his hard-muscled, powerful body bore witness that self-indulgence had not sapped his immense vitality.

A brilliant strategist and an insatiable plunderer, Yezdigerd had more than doubled the size of the kingdom inherited from his weak predecessor Yildiz. He had wrung tribute from the city-states of Brythunia and eastern Shem. His gleaming horsemen had beaten the armies of such distant nations as Stygia and Hyperborea. The crafty king of Zamora, Mithridates, had been shorn of border provinces and had kept his throne only at the price of groveling before his conqueror.

Arrayed in a splendor of silk and cloth-of-gold, the long lolled on the shining throne with the deceptive ease of a resting panther.

At his right sat a woman. Conan felt his blood run hot with recognition. Thanara! Her voluptuous body was draped in the seductive robes of a Turanian noblewoman. A diamond-studded diadem glittered in her lustrous black hair. Her eyes fastened triumphantly on the trussed and weaponless figure of her captive. She joined in the laughter of the courtiers round the throne at some grim jest uttered by the king.

The detail halted before the throne. Yezdigerd’s eyes blazed with triumphant glee. At last he held in his power the man who had slaughtered his soldiers, burnt his cities, and scuttled his ships. The lust for vengeance churned up within him, but he held himself in check while the guardsmen knelt and touched their foreheads to the marble floor.

Conan made no obeisance. His blue eyes aflame with icy fire, he stood still and upright, clashing with the Turanian king in a battle of looks. Every inch of his body expressed defiance and contempt. Unclad as he was, he still commanded the attention of all by the aura of power that radiated from him. The rumor of his fabulous exploits was whispered back and forth among the members of the glittering throng.

Many knew him under other dreaded names in their own distant lands.

Sensing the strain upon the rope he held, Ardashir looked up from his kneeling posture. Black rage seethed in his face as he saw the disdain of the Cimmerian for court etiquette. He tugged viciously at the rope, tightening the noose about Conan’s neck. A lesser man would have stumbled and fallen, but Conan stood steady as a rock. The massive muscles of his bull-neck swelled in ridges against the pressure of the rope. Then he suddenly bent forward and straightened up again, pulling the rope backwards. Ardashir was jerked off his knees and sprawled with a clatter of gear on the marble.

“I pay homage to no Hyrkanian dog!” Conan’s roar was like a peal of thunder. “You wage your wars with the help of women. Can you handle a sword yourself? I’ll show you how a real man fights!”

During his short speech, Conan relaxed the taut muscles of his arms, so that the rope binding them went slack.

By stretching, he got the tips of his left fingers around one end of the log on his back. With a quick jerk he slipped his right arm out of the loose coils of rope and brought the log around in front of him. Then he swiftly freed his left arm.

Ardashir scrambled up and lunged towards him, drawing his scimitar.

Conan whipped the end of the log around with a thud against the Turanian’s helmet. The officer was hurled across the floor, his body spinning like that of a thrown doll.

For a split second, everybody stood unmoving, struck still by this seemingly magical feat. With the fighting instinct of the barbarian, Conan took instant advantage of this pause. One end of the log shot out and caught a guardsman in the face. The man flew over backwards, his face a mere smear of blood and broken bones. Then Conan whirled and threw the log into the nearest group of guards on the other side of him, even as they started to rise and draw their weapons. The men were bowled over in a clattering heap.

Lithe and quick as a leopard, Conan bounded forward, snatching up the scimitar that Ardashir had dropped when knocked unconscious. A couple of courtiers tried to bar the Cimmerian’s way at the foot of King Yezdigerd’s dais, but he easily cut his path through them, slashing and thrusting. He bounded up the steps of the dais.

As he came, the king rose to meet him, sweeping out his own scimitar.

The jewels in its hilt flashed as Yezdigerd brought the blade up to parry a terrific right cut that Conan aimed at his head. Such was the force of the blow that the king’s sword snapped. Conan’s blade cut through the many folds of the snow-white turban, cleaving the spray of bird-of-paradise feathers that rose from the front of it and denting the steel cap that Yezdigerd wore beneath.

Though the blow failed to split the king’s skull as Conan intended, it threw the Turanian backwards, stunned.

Yezdigerd fell back over the arm of his throne and overset the gleaming chair. King and throne rolled off the dais, down the steps on the other side, and into a knot of onrushing guardsmen, spoiling their charge.

Conan, beside himself with battle lust, would have bounded after the king to finish him off. But loyal arms dragged Yezdigerd out of the press, and from all sides sword blades and spear points pressed in upon the unprotected Cimmerian.

Conan’s scimitar wove a lethal net of steel around him. He surpassed himself in brilliant swordsmanship.

Despite his stay in the dungeon and the aftereffects of the drug he had inhaled, he was fired with vitality. If he must die, he would now die sword in hand, laughing and slaying, to carve a niche for himself in the Hall of Heroes.

He whirled in gleeful frenzy. A quick slash sent an antagonist tumbling backwards with his entrails spilling out; a lightning thrust burst through mail links into a Turanian heart. Stabbing, slicing, smiting, and thrusting, he wrought red havoc. For an instant, raging like a mad elephant about the dais, he cleared it of soldiers and courtiers except for those who lay in a tangle about his feet.

Only the lady Thanara remained, sitting petrified in her chair. With a grating laugh, Conan tore the glittering diadem from her hair and flung her into the throng that milled about the platform.

Soldiers now advanced grimly from all sides, their spearheads and sword blades forming a bristling hedge in front of an ordered line of shields. Behind them, archers nocked their shafts. Noncombatants stood in clumps in the farther parts of the throne room, watching fascinated.

Conan flexed his muscles, swung his scimitar, and gave a booming laugh.

Blood ran down his naked hide from superficial cuts in scalp, arm, chest, and leg. Surrounded and unarmored, not even his strength and speed could save him from the thrust of many keen blades all at once.

The prospect of death did not trouble him; he only hoped to take as many foes as he could into the darkness with him.

Suddenly there came the clash of steel, the spurt of blood, and the icy gleam of a northern longsword. A giant figure hewed its way through the armored lines, leaving three blood-spattered corpses on the floor. With a mighty bound, the fair-haired northerner leaped to the dais. In his left arm he cradled a couple of heavy, round objects … bucklers of bronze and leather picked up from the floor where the victims of Conan’s first outburst had dropped them.

“Catch this!” cried the newcomer, tossing one of the shields to Conan.

Their glances met and locked. Conan cried:

“Rolf! What do you here, old polar bear?”

“I will tell you later,” growled the northerner, grasping the handle of the other buckler. “If we live, that is. If not, I am prepared to fight and die with you.”

The unexpected advent of this formidable ally raised Conan’s spirits even higher.

“Rush in, jackals,” he taunted, waving his bloodstained scimitar. “Who will be the next to consign his soul to Hell? Attack, damn you, or I’ll carry the fight to you!”

The steel-sheathed ranks of the Turanian soldiery had halted, forming a square about the dais. The two giant barbarians stood back to back, one black-haired and almost naked, the other blond and clad in somber black. They seemed like two royal tigers surrounded by timorous hunters, none of whom dared to strike the first blow.

“Archers!” cried an officer directing the Turanian troopers. “Spread out, so the shafts shall strike from all sides.”

“They have us,” growled Rolf “Had we but stout coats of Asgardean mail …Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted.”

“Not quite,” said Conan. “See you that row of windows? Here is my plan …”

He whispered a few quick words to his comrade, who nodded. The two giants sprang forward, their blades flickering with the speed of striking snakes. Two guardsmen sank to the floor in their blood, and the others shrank back momentarily from the fury of the onslaught.

“Follow me, Rolf! We’ll fool these dogs yet!” barked the Cimmerian, striking right and left.

The swords of the barbarians cleared a bloody avenue. The big northerner wheeled, thrusting and cutting, his sword cutting down the Turanians like wheat stalks before the scythe as he guarded Conan’s back. As Conan rushed forward, Rolf followed in his wake, his sword widening the bloody path opened by the Cimmerian. His booming bass was casting forth the ringing tones of old northern battle songs, and the gleam of the berserk was in his gaze.

None could stand before their terrible attack. Turanian swords and spears sought their blood, but glanced harmlessly from the shields as the pantherish speed of the barbarians blurred the eyes of their adversaries. Conan bled from a score of wounds and Rolf’s garb was in tatters, but the bodies heaped upon the floor bespoke the violence of their attack.

They put their backs to one of the large windows. For a few seconds both barbarians exploded into maniacal fury, laying about them with blood-crusted blades and clearing a space of several feet around them.

The massed soldiers shrank back for a moment. It seemed to their superstitious minds as if these were not men but invincible ogres, hard as steel, risen from the darker realms to wreak terrible vengeance.

Conan utilized this moment with lightninglike speed. The stained glass of the window shattered into thousands of gleaming, many-colored shards under blows from his scimitar that tore a great gap in the leaded pane.

Hurling their swords and shields into the faces of their foes, the Cimmerian and the northerner sprang through in headlong dives toward the sea two hundred feet below. A taunting laugh lingered behind them in the air as the guardsmen closed in.

“Archers! An archer, quickly, to have at them!” The commanding officer’s voice was shrill with desperation.

Five men stood forward, each armed with the powerful, double-curved Hyrkanian war bow. The window niche was cleared, and soon the twang of cords was heard.

Then one of the bowmen shrugged his shoulders and turned to the officer, “The range is too great in this treacherous moonlight. We cannot even discern their heads, and probably they are swimming under water most of the time. The task is beyond us.”

Glaring, the general swung about and hurried to the king’s chamber.

Yezdigerd had recovered from his shock. The only sign of damage was a small bandage round his forehead, partly covered by his turban. The terse account of the incidents elapsed was interrupted by the crash of the king’s fist on a table, spilling vases and wine jugs to the floor.

“You have dared to fail! The red-handed barbarians have escaped and mocked the majesty of Turan! Are my soldiers sucklings, that they cannot lay two men low? Every tenth man among the guards shall die in the morning, to bolster the courage of the rest!”

He continued in a lower voice: “See that two war galleys are outfitted at once. The barbarians will surely try to steal a boat and make their way across the sea. We shall overtake them. See that the ships are well-provisioned and manned by my best seamen and soldiers. Take the sturdiest slaves for rowers. When I have caught these dogs, they shall suffer the agonies of a thousand deaths in the torture chambers of Aghrapur!”

He laughed, animated by the grisly prospect, and gestured imperiously to his general. The latter hurried out, threading his way through the throng in the courtroom to carry out his lord’s commands.

Khosru the fisherman sat patiently on the gunwale of his sloop, mending a net which had been broken by the thrashing of a giant sturgeon that afternoon. He cursed his misfortune, for this was a fine net. It had cost him two pieces of gold and the promise of fifty pounds of fish to the Shemite merchant from, whom he had bought it. But what could a poor, starving fisherman do? He must have nets to get his living from the sea.

Aye, if those were the only things necessary for him and his family!

But he must also strain and work to meet the taxes imposed by the king.

He looked up in venomous, furtive hatred at the palace, limned against the moonlit sky. It perched on the cliff like a giant vulture of gold and marble. The king’s taxgatherers had supple whips and no compunction about using them. Welts and old scars on Khosru’s back told of wrongs suffered when the shoals were empty of fish.

Suddenly the sloop heaved, almost unseating him. Khosru sprang up, his eyes starting from their sockets in terror. A huge, almost-naked man was climbing aboard, his black, square-cut hair disordered and dripping. He seemed to Khosru like some demon of the sea, an evil merman, come up from unknown deeps to blast his soul and devour his body.

For a moment the apparition simply sat on a thwart, breathing in deep gasps. Then it spoke in Hyrkanian, though with a barbarous accent.

Khosra took heart a little, for the tales depicted the demons as devoid of speech. Still he quavered before the smoldering eyes and ferocious mien of the giant. His terror increased as another figure, a huge, black-clad, golden-haired man with a broad-bladed dagger at his belt, followed the first over the gunwale.

“Fear not, sailor! ” boomed the black-haired giant “We don’t want your blood, only your ship. ” He drew a glittering diadem from the waistband of his loincloth and held it out. “Here is payment enough and more. You can buy ten such craft as this one with it. Agreed…or…?”

He flexed his thick fingers suggestively. Khosru, his head whirling, nodded and snatched the diadem. With the speed of a frightened mouse he scuttled into the dinghy moored to the stern of the sloop and rowed away at desperate speed.

His strange customers lost no time. The sail went swiftly up and billowed in the freshening breeze. The trim craft gathered speed as it steered out toward the east.

Khosru shrugged his shoulders, mystified. He paused to hold up the fabulous diadem, whose gems glittered in the moonlight like a cascade of splashing white fire.