The Conan Chronology, page 488
Another problem gnawed at his mind as well. Chabela had confided to him all that she had learned from Zarono and his snake-eyed Stygian sorcerer. Some information they had let slip, more she had overheard, and yet more she had shrewdly inferred, about the reason for Zarono's voyage and his seizure of her vessel. Much of the truth of the plot against the crown had revealed itself to her active mind, and all this she had passed on to Conan.
Now the Cimmerian was in a dilemma. A mere buccaneer, the dynastic conflicts of kingdoms meant lit-tie to him, and he owed little to Ferdrugo of Zingara. True, the old monarch had given him a royal commission as a privateer of the crown, and Kordava provided Conan with a safe harbour after voyages. But this much he might expect from any king of Zingara. The next one, in fact, might demand a smaller percentage of his loot.
In such matters, however, the rude chivalry of his Cimmerian heritage sometimes overcame his self-interest. It was not in the grim barbarian to stand idly by, ignoring the pleas of a beautiful Zingaran princess, while her royal father was slowly done to death by cunning plots and Stygian sorcery. Although he knew pot what he was getting into, Conan at length decided to make her battle his own.
It was not, however, entirely altruism that suggested this course to the buccaneer. He had his ambitions, too. He did not intend to remain a mere privateer all his days. If he could save the king of Zingara and his daughter from the plots of traitors and thus bolster the tottering throne, what could he not ask as a reward? A dukedom? An admiralship?
Conan even toyed with the idea of suing for Princess Chabela's hand and settling down as a royal consort. During a life of wild adventure, many women had tendered Conan the ultimate hospitality. But, although the Cimmerian treated women with a rough chivalry, he had avoided any land of legitimate marriage. He liked to fulfil his definite obligations; and, to one whose lifeblood had been travel, adventure, and conflict, the thought of being tied down to one hearth, with the welfare of a family to think of, was repugnant.
Now, however, he was over thirty-five and past the first flush of youth.
Although he showed few signs of age save the many scars that crisscrossed his mighty frame, he knew that he could not expect to continue his footloose, brawling, roistering life forever. He would have to give some thought to his own future. Chabela was a fine, round, bouncing girl, forceful and intelligent, and she seemed to like him. He could fare further and do worse…
Frowning in thought, Conan left the rail, descended leisurely to his cabin, and flung himself into a chair. The twinkle of gems caught his eye, and he grinned sourly. Something, at least, had been gained from his efforts. On the desk before him, the Cobra Crown twinkled and flashed as the level shafts of the ruddy afternoon sun, slanting through the porthole, struck fire from its blazing gems.
On their march back from the cliff whence the toad-idol had fallen, Conan and his companions had again passed the black temple. Now, it seemed, the aura of evil, which had earlier enshrouded the ruin, was dispelled. The cryptic structure of black stone lay bathed in sparkling sunlight. No longer did an eery thrill of supernatural premonition tingle in the nerves of those who viewed it.
Cautiously, Conan set foot in the gloomy place again. Where the toad-god had squatted for untold ages, a black hole yawned in the plinth on which it had been enthroned. As Conan leaned over the cavity, his alert eye had caught the sparkle of gems. Had Zarono missed something? Conan quickly thrust his hand into the opening and brought forth the Cobra Crown.
It was a hollow cone of gold, crusted with thousands of white, fiery gems. Conan guessed these to be cut and faceted diamonds, although the craft of cutting and polishing the hardest of all gems was virtually unknown to the gem carvers of his day. The crown was fashioned into the likeness of a serpent, whose coils formed the conical headpiece and whose arched neck rose up from behind, to curve across the top of the crown so that the serpent's blunt head stared out above the brows of the wearer. Thousands of gems encrusted the Cobra Crown, and their worth was beyond calculation. So after all, the trip to lie Nameless Isle had not been without its profit.
A roar of excitement roused the buccaneer from his somber thought: 'By Frigga's teats and Shaitan's fiery member!'
Conan grinned, knowing the voice of Sigurd the Vanr. An instant later, a redbearded face, flushed with excitement, thrust into his doorway. Before either could speak, Conan knew the cause without words. The boom of taut canvas and the song of wind in the rigging came to his ears, and the cabin tilted as the ship heeled. The wind had come at last.
And what a wind! For two days and a night the Wastrel, stripped to a storm foresail, rode the scudding waves, driven by one of the lusty simooms that caused the mariners of the Hyborian Age to avoid these uncharted seas.
When the wind fell, the Wastrel dropped anchor in a cove on the coast of the main continent. Just where on that coast, Conan did not know, because a heavy overcast had hidden the sun and the stars during this leg of their voyage. Conan knew that they had sailed in a generally easterly direction. From the jungled appearance of the coast, he knew that they were south of the meadowlands of Shem; but whether they had made a landfall in Stygia, or in the kingdom of Kush, or in the little-known black countries still further south, remained to be seen.
'A chancy-looking place, my Captain,' grumbled Zeltran the mate. 'Where is it we might be?'
'The devil knows and the devil cares,' grunted Conan. 'The main thing is to find water; the butts are nigh empty and full of slime. Pick me a landing party, and let's be out with barrels. Jump to it!'
Zeltran scurried to the main deck to summon all hands. As the party assembled and swung down on lines to the longboat, Sigurd cast a frowning glance at the shoreline and grumbled one of his cosmopolitan curses. The Vanr had belted a huge leathern baldric across his matted chest.
'What's that, man?' demanded Conan.
Sigurd shrugged. 'Maybe naught, shipmate; but this land looks uncommon like the coasts or Kush.'
'Well, what of it? We were bound to hit Kush if we kept on to eastward.'
'If so it be, these lands are no safe haven for honest mariners. The black devils would as lief eat a man as give him the time of day. And there's tales of a nation of warrior women in the interior, fiercer fighters than the men even.'
Conan stared across the water to where the longboat laboured shoreward. 'Maybe so, but water we must have, and our victuals are none too ample. When our stores are full, well steer north for Kordava again.'
X
The Black Coast
The harbour into which they had sailed lay at the mouth of a small, sluggish river, whose banks were thickly grown with tall, slender palms and heavy underbrush. The longboat slowed in the shallows, and several buccaneers clambered overboard to drag it to safety higher up on the beach. Then, while archers mounted guard, the party trooped up to the beach to river mouth with empty casks. They continued on up the banks of the river, out of sight, stopping betimes to taste the water to see if they had reached the place where it was no longer brackish.
Conan, who had come ashore with the second boatload, stood frowning on the beach with mighty arms folded on his bare chest. The configuration of the river mouth seemed naggingly familiar, and the name of the Zikamba River came unbidden to his mind. Either he had once seen this stretch of coast depicted on a chart, or he had actually touched here during his voyages with Bêlit, years before. The expression on Conan's grim, scarred features softened as he thought of his years with Bêlit at his side and a horde of howling black corsairs at his back. Bêlit―languorous, tawny panther of a woman―Bêlit whose eyes were like dark stars―his first and greatest love…
With the swiftness of a tropical storm, a screaming mob of naked blacks burst from the underbrush, their ebony bodies gleaming through beads, plumes, and war paint. Scraps of wild-animal skin girded their loins, and their hands brandished feather-tufted spears.
With a startled oath, Conan sprang from his resting place, whipping out his cutlass with a rasp of steel on leather and bellowing: 'To me you buccaneer dogs! To arms! To me, and yare!'
The leader of the black warriors was a giant, muscled like a statue of a gladiator hewn from gleaming black marble. Like the rest, he was naked but for a leopard-skin loincloth and a few beads and bangles. A crown of aigrettes nodded above his head. Intelligent black eyes looked out of a clean-lined face of majestic dignity.
In fact, to Conan's hasty glance, he looked oddly familiar. But Conan was too busy to search his memory. He sprinted up the slope of the beach, the sun flashing on the blade of his cutlass, to stand before his swiftly gathering crew and face the pelting charge of the black warriors.
Suddenly the plumed warrior in the lead halted, threw out his long, powerful arms, and bellowed: 'Simamani, wotel'
This command brought the charging mob to a halt ―all but one man, who lunged past the leader, whipped back his arm, and started to hurl a keen-bladed assegai at Conan. His arm had started to lash forward when, moving with the speed of a striking adder, the leader brought his hardwood kirri smashing down on the warrior's head. The victim sprawled on the yellow sand, out cold.
Conan shouted to his men to hold their attack. For a long moment the two groups of armed men confronted each other, with javelins poised and arrows nocked.
Conan and the black giant stood panting, face to face in taut silence. Then the black war chiefs white teeth flashed in a grin.
'Conan!' he said in the Hyrkanian tongue, 'Have you forgotten an old comrade?'
As the other spoke, Conan's memory awoke. 'Jumal By Crom and Mitra, Juma!' he roared.
Dropping his cutlass, he sprang forward to hug the laughing black in his powerful arms. The buccaneers looked on in amazement as the two giants stood toe to toe, thwacking each other on the back and arms and shoulders with affectionate slaps and punches.
Years before, Conan had served in the legions of King Yildiz of Turan, far to the east. Juma the Kushite had been a fellow-mercenary. They had served together on an ill-fated expedition to farther Hyrkania, as escort for one of King Yildiz's daughters on her way to wed a nomad princeling of the steppes.
'Do you remember that fight in the snows of the Talakmas?' demanded Juma. 'And that ugly little god-king, what was his name? Jalung Thongpa or something.'
'Aye! And the way that ugly green idol of the demon-king Yama, as tall as a house, came to life and squashed his only begotten son like a bug!' Conan replied with gusto. 'Crom, those were good days! But what in the name of nine scarlet hells are you doing here? And how did you become leader of these warriors?'
Juma laughed. 'Where should a black warrior be, if not on the Black Coast? And where should a born Kushite go home to, if not to Kush? But I could ask the same of you, Conan. Since when did you become a pirate?'
Conan shrugged. 'A man must live. Besides, I am no pirate, but a lawful privateer with letters of marque from the crown of Zingara. Not that―ahem―there's much difference between the two, come to think of it. But tell me of your adventures. How came you to leave Turan?'
'I am used to savanna and jungle, Conan; no native of the frozen North like you.
Among other things, I got tired of freezing off my privates every Turanian winter.
'Besides, once you had drifted west, there were no more adventures. I had a hankering to see a palm tree once again and to tumble a plump black wench under the hibiscus bushes. So I resigned my commission, drifted south to the black kingdoms, and became a king myself I'
'King, eh?' grunted Conan. 'King of what? I didn't know there was anything down here but bands of bare-arsed savages.'
A mischievous grin lighted Juma's ebony features. 'That's what they are―or, at least, that's what they were before Juma came to teach them the arts of civilised war.' Juma turned his head and spoke to his men, who were fidgeting behind him as their leader conversed with the strange chief in a language they did not understand. 'Rahisil'
The Negroes relaxed and sat down on the sand where they stood. Behind Conan, the buccaneers sat down likewise, though keeping a wary eye on the blacks. Juma resumed:
'I found my birth-tribe engaged in an old feud with a neighbouring tribe. We conquered the other tribe and absorbed it, and I became war chief. Then we conquered two other tribes, and I became war prince. Now I am ruler of all this coast for fifty leagues, and we are on the way to becoming a nation. I even plan to build a proper capital city, when I get around to it.'
'Hell's blood!' said Conan. 'You've learned more from this so-called civilisation than ever have I. At least, you've risen further in the world. Good luck to youl When your bully-boys came charging out of the brush, I thought the gods had tired of playing with us and were going to sweep us off the board to lay down a new set of pieces. We landed here for water, as we have just lain becalmed off a damned island full of ghost snakes and walking statues.'
'You shall have enough water to float your ship in,' Juma promised, 'and once you have taken aboard all you need, you shall all be my guests at my village this night. Well have a feast that will leave you staggering. I have a new crop of banana wine that ought to satisfy even your thirst!'
That night, most of Conan's crew sprawled on rattan mats in Juma's village of Kulalo, leaving a skeleton crew aboard the Wastrel. Kulalo―actually a sizable town―was a triple ring of conical huts of bamboo and thatch, sheltered behind a tall palisade and a thorn-bush boma.
A huge pit was dug in the open space at the heart of the town. This pit was filled with firewood and bracketed with huge spits, on which beeves, pigs, and antelope turned sizzling. Carved wooden bowls of sweetish, deceptively bland-tasting banana wine were passed from hand to hand. While black musicians beat drums in complex rhythms, fingered flutes, and plucked native lyres, young black women, clad only in a few beads and bangles, danced before the orange flames, clapping hands and shouting in chorus as they performed elaborate evolutions that would not have disgraced an emperor's troupe of dancing girls.
The sailors gorged on wild pig, millet cakes sweetened with sorghum syrup, and mountains of lush ripe fruit.
Sigurd's men joined Conan's party at the feast. The hearty, noisy scene fascinated the Argosseans. For once, the Argosseans and the Zingarans were too thankful for the food, drink, and entertainment to snarl at each other. More than one plump, saucy-eyed ebon temptress caught the fancy of a sailor and was chased squealing into the shadows of a nearby hut, to emerge a half-hour later, flushed, rumpled, and heartily appeased.
Conan had feared trouble from such things. His buccaneers had seen no women for weeks. To his pleased surprise, however, King Juma's black warriors did not seem to mind. In fact, they seemed to take it as a compliment when their women were borrowed―albeit, after a buccaneer had had his will of a woman, he was likely to be confronted afterwards by her grinning mate with his hand out for a present.
Relieved that there would be no woman trouble, Conan reflected that there was much to be said for savagery as a way of life.
The princess Chabela, however, found such bestial behaviour obnoxious and said so. She sat between Conan and Juma. While Conan and Juma talked over her head, recalling adventures that each had had since they parted in Turan long ago, Conan was amused by the stiff expression on the princess's face as she looked with a cold eye on the tumbling figures in the shadows.
Conan half feared that Juma might expect, as a return for his hospitality, the loan of Chabela to his black embrace. Among the Kushites, this would have been merely good manners. While Conan fuzzily tried to think his way out of this predicament, Juma indicated that he knew enough of the ways of civilised men to realise that different codes obtained there and that the princess was safe from him.
Conan belched. 'Crom's guts, comrade, but this is the life! I couldn't read the damned stars to see where we were, and the Wastrel lacked charts for this far south. Didn't know but what we were in the fabled Amazon country.' He gulped down another cup of plantain wine.
Juma sobered. 'As a matter of fact, you are―in a manner of speaking. At least, the warrior women of Gamburu―their main city―claim this coast as their territory. But they lack means to enforce their claim, as other tribes lie between my land and theirs.'
'So? Tough bitches to fight, I've heard. Glad I need not find out, as fighting against women goes athwart my grain. Have you had any trouble with the Amazons?'
'A bit, in the beginning. I'm trying to train my boys to shoot like Turanians.'
Juma sorrowfully shook his head. 'But it's hard. There's no decent bow wood around here, and my bucks don't even feather their arrows. Then they get mulish and say, this is how it's been done ever since Damballah created the world, so this must be the right way. Sometimes I think it would be easier to teach a zebra to play the zither. But in spite of all, I now have the best-trained archers in Kusn. The last time the Amazons tried to crack our borders, we stuck a few of them as full of quills as a porcupine.'
Conan laughed but then put a hand to his throbbing brow. The plantain wine had a deceptively bland, sweet taste, which concealed a powerful kick. Mumbling an apology, Conan rose, staggering a lit-tie, and retired behind the nearest hut to relieve himself. Then he decided to call it a night. Returning to the king's couch of mats, he gathered up the bundle that he had brought ashore. The sack contained the Cobra Crown, wrapped in a blanket. He had not left it aboard the Wastrel, because the fortune in gems might tempt even the most trustworthy of his men. As he had become fond of them, he preferred to keep them from temptation rather than to have to hang any from the yardarm.
Mumbling his good-nights to Sigurd, Zeltran, Juma, and the prim-faced princess, he staggered off to the hut that Juma had reserved for him. Soon he was snoring like distant thunder.
Befuddled, Conan had not observed the ugly look on the face of one of Juma's warriors, a surly fellow named Bwatu. This was the man who had almost cast an assegai at Conan on the beach and whom Juma had struck down. That blow had rankled. A warrior high in Juma's councils, Bwatu fancied himself insulted by being felled like any common lout. Throughout the feast, his somber eye had returned again and again to the bundle at Conan's feet. The care that the buccaneer captain took of it suggested that it contained something of value.
