The Conan Chronology, page 252
Falco whooped, tossed his sabre glittering through the air, caught and brandished it.
Daris looked troubled. 'If we try and fail,' she said, 'I fear - I know my own folk - I fear the word may fly among them that you do not bear the true axe, and they will be the ones who flee.'
Faith blazed from Ruma. 'But it is the axe, and Conan the Wielder!' he cried.
The Cimmerian hefted his weapon. 'I have no more doubt, myself,' he said quietly. 'Shall we marshal our warriors?'
That took a while, shouting, horn-blowing, exhorting. The king's men watched stolidly, swords, spears, bows at hand, ranks unshaken. The scattered fights beyond them raged on. Sometimes a Stygian band went under, sometimes it sent its Taian assailants reeling away and joined another group. Conan rode up a hill to oversee the entire business. Yes, he thought, if he had not overwhelmed their lord, soon, his enemies would re-form and the day would become theirs.
Well, that was not going to happen. He returned. No weariness or hurt was in him, though he had taken his share of flesh wounds. He burned with lust of battle; his single wish was to strike down those creatures that stood between him and Bêlit.
He, Daris, and Falco were the last of their company who remained mounted. He supposed his stallion could wreak ample harm while he chopped from above; but if he ended afoot, no matter, as long as the axe played like a live thing in his hands. Hoy-ah!
The Taians were ready, not a regiment but a pack and perhaps the more terrible for that. Dans' banner lifted proud. Conan took the lead. axe raised like a torch, he touched spurs to his mount. Hooves banged on stone. Trot became canter. The Stygians lowered pikes and nocked arrows to bowstrings.
Pain swooped upon Conan.
It was as though a million fiery needles pierced skin, flesh, veins. He was burning alive. His guts cramped, wave after wave of agony. His muscles jerked, gone berserk, trying to snap the bones underneath them. Black mists rolled across his eyesight, it thundered in his ears, graveyard stenches assailed his nostrils. His heart skipped crazily in its rib cage, and for the first time in his life he feared his own death.
The axe clattered to earth. A moment afterward, he himself toppled and sprawled struggling before his men. Horror went through them like a night wind. They stopped in their tracks.
Daris sprang from her stirrups, forgetting the banner of the Sun, which also fell in the dust. Frantic, she knelt beside him, sought to hold him, suffered the buffets of his uncontrolled hands. 'Conan, Conan, what is wrong?' she quavered. 'In Mitra's name, speak to me! This is your own Daris who calls, Daris who loves you -'
He heard her dimly, as if from the far side of a hurricane. He could find no answer for her, in the terror and torment that were his universe.
The Taians wavered. Weapons sank, bodies shuddered, mouths gaped. Ruma shook his spear above his head. 'Stand fast!' he yelled. 'I will kill the first man who runs!'
Falco on his horse lifted sabre and said, dry-throated, 'Or I will kill him for you, Ruma.'
The tears of Daris dropped on Conan's contorted face. 'Come back,' she pleaded. 'I call you in - in the name of Bêlit. Come back to Bêlit.'
In the midst of his hell, he heard. Something awoke in him; somehow he could remember, understand, and speak. The words tore from him one by one, each as mighty an effort as ever he had made: 'My ... folly ... I met... Nehekba ... in Pteion ... She washed... me... and bore away.. .a cloth.. .full of my blood and -' He could say no more, he could only arch his back and gasp.
A Taian wailed and pelted off. Ruma cast his spear. The man went down. White-faced, Falco rode over to give him the mercy stroke. The clansmen moaned but stayed where they were. The massed Stygians regarded them with satisfaction.
From above the helmets of these, up over the Serpent banner, swept a shining shape. A brazen chariot without wheels or tongue, it bore a woman. Filmy garments and sable tresses fluttered behind her. At her throat glistened a mirror. In her hands was a small waxen image, which she tortured with twisting and a poniard and the flame of a taper as she laughed. High she flew and then downward and forward.
Throughout the slaughterous miles, noise diminished. The Taians at the front quailed. In a minute they would all break and run, fear-crazed.
'Senufer!' Falco shrieked.
Conan glimpsed her through the darkness that beset him. She seemed the very Derketa leading a troop of ghost-women in flight across the underworld. 'Nehekba,' he groaned.
Daris grew aware that somebody had joined her beside the Cimmerian. She looked at Sakumbe. 'I hear some,' the Negro said in his atrocious Stygian. Sweat of terror pearled across brow and paunch, but he spoke stoutly. 'I see what. She got body magic on him. Him blood in her doll. She hurt. Soon she kill.'
Daris slumped in despair. 'Then her whole scheme was to lure us into this,' she replied, dull-voiced, 'that our faith and will be crushed forever - oh Conan!' She sought to kiss the stricken man, but he tossed about too wildly.
'Senufer, darling Senufer,' Falco called like a sleepwalker.
He wheeled his grey horse about and struck spurs deep. Across the dead he galloped, in among the wreckage of the chariots, toward where Nehekba hovered. Conan's vision cleared, his pain sank a little, and he saw. Surely the witch wrought that, for him to witness this last betrayal.
She signalled the Stygian archers to hold their fire as Falco came in range. She lowered her vehicle to just above the road, joyful, left hand clasping Conan's. image but right held out to welcome the youth who sped her way. When they kissed, that would be the last bite of the adder in the Taian heel. A Stygian soldier would bring the axe of Varanghi to the altar of Set.
'Falco, welcome!' she sang.
The rider drew rein before her. For a pulse-beat he stared into the lustre of her eyes.
His sabre flew. She had a moment to see the steel in her bosom, and to scream. Blood ran, impossibly brilliant under the sun, but not much; it was as if a god did not wish her beauty defiled, but found it enough that her heart be pierced. She sank and was suddenly quite small. The chariot boomed to earth.
Falco left his blade where it was. He retrieved the image of Conan and raked his horse's ribs. Back he thundered. 'Here,' he said, and gave the thing into the hand of Daris. Then he rode slowly aside and dismounted.
Sakumbe yelled at Gonga. The witch doctor trod from a rebel band that stood dumbstruck, wonder-smitten. Down the road, the king's soldiers panted and shuddered.
Carefully, carefully, Daris passed the doll to Gonga, and returned to her cherishing of Conan. He lay quiet, breathing hard. The black man squatted. He chanted words, sprinkled powders from his pouch, shook rattle, waved wand. After a minute or two a smile tinged the sternness of his countenance. His Siiba waymates, who had lain prostrate, rose when he did, flourished their weapons, and bawled, 'Wakonga mutusi!'
Conan's eyes cleared. He sat up. 'I am well,' he marvelled, like a man whose fever has broken.
'The witch is dead,' Daris wept. 'You are free.'
Gonga drew knife, nicked his wrist, sprinkled a few drops of blood on the image while he chanted. Conan got to his feet. He felt as if he had slept through a long night and awakened to drink from a mountain spring.
Gonga spoke to Sakumbe, who told Conan in the lingua franca, 'He has given you of his own strength, to heal the harm in you. He cannot fight until he has recovered from that. But he will bear the evil thing away, annul the spell, and destroy it.'
Once more, titanic laughter pealed from the Cimmerian. 'Hai, I have other destruction to do this day!' He hugged Daris and Sakumbe to him. 'O faithful friends, I can never truly thank you, but nor can I ever forget!'
He lifted the axe and soared to the saddle. 'Forward!' he trumpeted. 'In the name of Jehanan!' His men howled joy. Heedless of arrows, they followed him.
Down the length of the embattled highway, word flew of a weapon and a banner once more aloft. Taians rallied for the reaping of men.
It did not fall to the lot of Conan that he slew King Mentuphera, or to that of Ruma that he claimed General Shuat. Those Stygians went down in the ruck, and only the gods knew what warriors took them. Conan was satisfied to slay right and left, and have a crowned head borne before him for a sign, and see the Stygians break.
He did not scorn Falco because the youth sat by the roadside meanwhile and wept.
XX
Vengeance for Bêlit
Brought down from its hiding place, the wingboat lay waiting at Seyan. Six people stood on the dock. Though folk moved about their tasks in town, none came near, for these friends wished to be alone when they said their farewells.
The sun was still below the eastern heights, but heaven there was silvery-gold and elsewhere blue. Mists smoked through cool air above the Styx, veiling its murkiness in white. From purple western mountains the Helu dashed in laughter.
Conan felt no chill, though he wore just a tunic. At his hip were sheathed a dirk and a sword. Solemnly he laid the axe of Varanghi across both hands and held it forth to Ausar. 'Now this is yours,' he said. 'May it ever ward Taia.'
'Mitra willing, we should have no need of it soon,' the chieftain replied.
His confidence appeared well founded. Rather than perish in a hopeless resistance, the Stygian garrison here had surrendered and was trudging home, disarmed and under guard. Fat Governor Wenamon accompanied it, having ransomed himself with all the wealth he had squeezed from the country. After the disaster at Rasht, the royal army would be in no shape to campaign for some time to come. Besides, the new King Ctesphon was known to lack his father's imperial ambitions.
'You or your descendants will have to fight again at last,' Conan warned. 'Luxur will never recognise your independence.'
Ausar took the Axe. 'True,' he agreed, 'but that matters little if we are in fact a free nation. We can find support in Keshan, Punt, and other neighbouring realms that have reason to distrust Stygia.'
Farasan the high priest was less happy. 'Alas, I fear that will sever our last ties to civilisation,' he said. 'We will become entirely a race of barbarian clansmen.'
Conan shrugged. 'What of it?' he answered. 'No irreverence meant, sir, but is not liberty worth any price? Also, frankly, I do not find that much to be said for civilisation.'
'As you will,' the old man murmured. 'I dare hope that at least we will keep the light and the grace of Mitra. His blessing be upon you, my son, for what you have wrought in his cause and ours. May .your journey back be safe and your arrival gladsome.'
Sakumbe had partly followed the conversation. Perhaps he misunderstood the last words a trifle, for he grinned, slapped the Cimmerian's back, and boomed in the lingua franca, 'Aye, when I reach the Black Coast I will tell them to prepare a nine-day festival of welcome for you, Amra!' The nickname he and his men had bestowed on Conan meant, in their language, 'Lion.'
'I look forward to that,' the Northerner said. 'Surely Bêlit and I will visit you Suba right often.' He sobered. 'However much I long for her, it is sad to bid the rest of you farewell, be-like forever. Daris -'
'Yes?' She turned her face from Falco, with whom she had been conversing.
'I will miss you more than I know how to tell,' Conan said awkwardly. 'Your well-being will always be among my dearest wishes.'
'And yours among mine.' She came to take both his hands in hers. The gaze that she laid upon him was steady, and her lips smiled. The evening before, they had talked together in private; today she must be the daughter of Ausar.
'If only we could live out our lives together,' she went on. 'It cannot be, I know. You have your sworn mate. I - I will marry some man who is strong and good, and rejoice in the children I bear him. He will be honoured to name our first son Conan. And our first daughter -' She could not quite hold back tears. 'May we call her Bêlit?'
They embraced.
Further speech was but scant, before Conan and Falco boarded. Silent, their craft slipped out onto the river, soon to be hidden from shore by the mists.
The sea sparkled sapphire under a fresh breeze, but Tigress moved from the white cliffs of Akhbet isle under oars. That was for manoeuvrability. Her captain wanted a close look at the boat that had come over her horizon.
Strange indeed were yonder metallic hull and reptilian figurehead. The spritsail was obviously jury-rigged; but if the vessel had not been intended to carry a mast, where was any provision for rowing? Despite a fifty-foot length, the crew seemed to amount to a pair of men. They showed no alarm as the galley bore down on them. Rather, the big one, astern at an equally improvised rudder, steered as best he was able to meet her.
Big man, black-maned, fair skin bronzed, leonine stance - It was as if the heart in Bêlit would burst out through her ribs. 'Conan!' she shouted. 'Conan, Conan! O Ishtar, there is my love come back!'
She caught herself and ordered her cheering corsairs to withdraw port side oars for the boat to lay alongside. The Cimmerian tossed up a painter, jumped, grabbed the rail, and hauled himself onto the deck. Bêlit entered his arms like a hurricane.
After a long while, they could let go, regard each other in ecstasy, and even look around the ship. Her glance fell on the youth who had followed Conan aboard. She stiffened. A moment passed before she could bring herself to say, 'Then Jehanan is not with you.'
'No,' replied the Cimmerian, softer-toned than was usual for him. 'He is ... wherever those go who die valiantly.'
Bêlit closed her eyes, opened them again, and said, 'You can tell me of him? Let that be enough.' She paused. 'That you have returned alive is not enough, it is abundance overflowing.'
'The tale is cruel. Best let it wait until we feel quieter,' Conan advised. 'Meanwhile I wish you to meet my gallant comrade, Falco of Kirjahan in Ophir.'
Bêlit gave the youngster her hand. 'Be very welcome,' she said. 'If I am in your debt for bringing my lord back to me, then I am in your debt for all that is mine.'
Falco blushed. 'You told me she is beautiful, but not how
beautiful,' he blurted to Conan. 'You forgot to add she is gracious. May my fortune in love be half as great as yours.'
The Cimmerian smiled. This was a healthy lad, who had soon cast off his grief over the witch.
The smile faded. Bêlit had sorrow ahead of her.
A full moon turned argent the waters and the isle where Tigress lay at anchor. Alone on her foredeck, above a ship wherein everybody else slumbered after a riotous celebration, Conan and Bêlit stood side by side.
She had finished weeping. Now she gripped the rail, stared out across the sea, and said in a voice that was like steel being drawn from scabbard: 'Rest well, my brother. You shall be avenged. The halls of Derketa shall be thronged in your honour'
'Has not the loss of a province, an army, a king, and their two foremost sorcerers appeased Jehanan's spirit?' wondered Conan.
Bêlit nodded. 'Surely. His was ever a gentle soul. But mine is otherwise, and I burn unslaked.'
The barbarian sighed. 'I thought you would feel thus. Well, as long as the gods will have it, let us prey on their shipping and harry their coasts so that the Stygian princes will remember us with a memory that is red.' He paused. 'Yet this may be too slow for you at first. Would you not rather hazard a blow of such force that your woe is eased thereby and you can again fare happily?'
'Yes, oh, yes!' she whispered. Her vision turned to search him.
'Here is my idea,' he began. 'The Stygians ended their blockade as soon as they learned we had escaped upstream, of course. Falco and I passed Khemi in darkness. He had told me the harbour patrol does not usually bother vessels outbound, but I still reckoned it best that nobody see what sort of carrier ours was. Nevertheless we could observe that the fleet lay at its docks. Those ships did not seem to have much of a watch aboard them. The crews were mostly in barracks ashore, I suppose, or in their home villages on leave. Besides, confusion must still prevail after what happened at Rasht; and Stygia never was a really naval-minded country. Yet that fleet would be vital in case of war. Its loss would absolutely kill any plans that may linger for adventures abroad - such as an invasion of Ophir.'
Bêlit seized his arms. Her nails drew blood that neither of them noticed. 'By the gods of death! Our single galley - is it possible?'
'I have a scheme. It's simple and straightforward, but I am not a cunning person. Let us talk about it tomorrow, when you are calmer.' Despite the hurt he saw in his darling, a bit of Conan's rough humour broke free. 'We can begin the task then, too, by scuttling the wing-boat. A pity, in a way; but she is no more use to us and we certainly do not want to risk her falling back into the wrong hands. Would you like to do it yourself?'
The Stygians always maintained a picket boat on Khemi Bay. This was a light craft, but extremely fast under oars or lateen sail. Aside from the weapons of her crewmen, she was unarmed, and they did not encumber themselves with mail. Their duty was not to hold off pirates or invaders. Who would dare assault the black city? In case of real trouble, a trumpet blast would summon warships; it had never happened. The picket controlled water traffic, making sure no smugglers landed here, or anyone who lacked official permission.
A while after a certain sundown, the boat on station moved to intercept a stranger bound in from the west. That was a double-ended launch such as was commonly carried on the larger ocean-going ships or towed by the lesser. A stiff breeze filled a square sail and drove the hull smartly in between the headlands, against current and unfavourable tide; the moon would not rise for hours.
'Ahoy!' shouted the Stygian trumpeter. 'Stand to for inspection!'
'Yes, sir,' responded a deep voice in the same language, with an accent. The yard lowered and the boat lost way.
Nearing, the police saw by starlight that about half a dozen men occupied the thwarts. They were Negroes, except for a large fellow at the helm. Albeit muffled in spray-drenched kaftan and burnoose, he appeared to be of white race. 'Please, sirs,' he called, 'we are poor sailors whose ship struck a reef. None but us few got to the lifeboat in time, as fast as she sank. In the name of mercy, give us water, take us ashore, and feed us!'
