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Read books online » Fiction » The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard (types of ebook readers txt) 📖

Book online «The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard (types of ebook readers txt) 📖». Author Robert E. Howard



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his belt. “Get for’ard before I have

you flogged! You’ll keep a civil tongue in your jaws, or by Mitra,

I’ll have you chained among the blacks to tug an oar!”

 

Conan’s volcanic temper, never long at best, burst into explosion. Not

in years, even before he was king, had a man spoken to him thus and

lived.

 

“Don’t lift your voice to me, you tar-breeched dog!” he roared in a

voice as gusty as the sea-wind, while the sailors gaped dum-founded.

“Draw that toy and I’ll feed you to the fishes!”

 

“Who do you think you are?” gasped the captain.

 

“Ill show you!” roared the maddened Cimmerian, and he wheeled and

bounded toward the rail, where weapons hung in their brackets.

 

The captain drew his knife and ran at him bellowing, but before he

could strike, Conan gripped his wrist with a wrench that tore the arm

clean out of the socket. The captain bellowed like an ox in agony, and

then rolled clear across the deck as he was hurled contemptuously from

his attacker. Conan ripped a heavy ax from the rail and wheeled cat-like to meet the rush of the sailors. They ran in, giving tongue like

hounds, clumsy-footed and awkward in comparison to the pantherish

Cimmerian. Before they could reach him with their knives he sprang

among them, striking right and left too quickly for the eye to follow,

and blood and brains spattered as two corpses struck the deck.

 

Knives flailed the air wildly as Conan broke through the stumbling,

gasping mob and bounded to the narrow bridge that spanned the waist

from poop to forecastle, just out of reach of the slaves below. Behind

him the handful of sailors on the poop were floundering after him,

daunted by the destruction of their fellows, and the rest of the crew-some thirty in all-came running across the bridge toward him, with

weapons in their hands.

 

Conan bounded out on the bridge and stood poised above the upturned

black faces, ax lifted, black mane blown in the wind.

 

“Who am I?” he yelled. “Look, you dogs! Look, Ajonga, Yasunga,

Laranga! Who am I?”

 

And from the waist rose a shout that swelled to a mighty roar:

 

“Amra! It is Amra! The Lion has returned!”

 

The sailors who caught and understood the burden of that awesome shout

paled and shrank back, staring in sudden fear at the wild figure on

the bridge. Was this in truth that bloodthirsty ogre of the southern

seas who had so mysteriously vanished years ago, but who still lived

in gory legends? The blacks were frothing crazy now, shaking and

tearing at their chains and shrieking the name of Amra like an

invocation. Kushites who had never seen Conan before took up the yell.

The slaves in the pen under the after-cabin began to batter at the

walls, shrieking like the damned.

 

Demetrio, hitching himself along the deck on one hand and his knees,

livid with the agony of his dislocated arm, screamed: “In and kill

him, dogs, before the slaves break loose!”

 

Fired to desperation by that word, the most dread to all galleymen,

the sailors charged on to the bridge from both ends. But with a lion-like bound Conan left the bridge and hit like a cat on his feet on the

runway between the benches.

 

“Death to the masters!” he thundered, and his ax rose and fell

crashingly full on a shackle-chain, severing it like matchwood. In an

instant a shrieking slave was free, splintering his oar for a

bludgeon. Men were racing frantically along the bridge above, and all

hell and bedlam broke loose on the Venturer. Conan’s ax rose and fell

without pause, and with every stroke a frothing, screaming black giant

broke free, mad with hate and the fury of freedom and vengeance.

 

Sailors leaping down into the waist to grapple or smite at the naked

white giant hewing like one possessed at the shackles, found

themselves dragged down by hands of slaves yet unfreed, while others,

their broken chains whipping and snapping about their limbs, came up

out of the waist like a blind, black torrent, screaming like fiends,

smiting with broken oars and pieces of iron, tearing and rending with

talons and teeth. In the midst of the melee the slaves in the pen

broke down the walls and came surging up on the decks, and with fifty

blacks freed of their benches Conan abandoned his iron-hewing and

bounded up on the bridge to add his notched ax to the bludgeons of his

partizans.

 

Then it was massacre. The Argosseans were strong, sturdy, fearless

like all their race, trained in the brutal school of the sea. But they

could not stand against these maddened giants, led by the tigerish

barbarian. Blows and abuse and hellish suffering were avenged in one

red gust of fury that raged like a typhoon from one end of the ship to

the other, and when it had blown itself out, but one white man lived

aboard the Venturer, and that was the bloodstained giant about whom

the chanting blacks thronged to cast themselves prostrate on the

bloody deck and beat their heads against the boards in an ecstasy of

hero-worship.

 

Conan, his mighty chest heaving and glistening with sweat, the red ax

gripped in his blood-smeared hand, glared about him as the first of

men might have glared in some primordial dawn, and shook back his

black mane. In that moment he was not king of Aquilonia; he was again

lord of the black corsairs, who had hacked his way to lordship through

flame and blood.

 

“Amra! Amra!” chanted the delirious blacks, those who were left to

chant. “The Lion has returned! Now will the Stygians howl like dogs in

the night, and the black dogs of Kush will howl! Now will villages

burst in flames and ships founder! Aie, there will be wailing of women

and the thunder of the spears!”

 

“Cease this yammering, dogs!” Conan roared in a voice that drowned the

clap of the sail in the wind. “Ten of you go below and free the

oarsmen who are yet chained. The rest of you man the sweeps and bend

to oars and halyards. Crom’s devils, don’t you see we’ve drifted

inshore during the fight? Do you want to run aground and be retaken by

the Argosseans? Throw these carcasses overboard. Jump to it, you

rogues, or I’ll notch your hides for you!”

 

With shouts and laughter and wild singing they leaped to do his

commands. The corpses, white and black, were hurled overboard, where

triangular fins were already cutting the water.

 

Conan stood on the poop, frowning down at the black men who watched

him expectantly. His heavy brown arms were folded, his black hair,

grown long in his wanderings, blew in the wind. A wilder and more

barbaric figure never trod the bridge of a ship, and in this ferocious

corsair few of the courtiers of Aquilonia would have recognized their

king.

 

“There’s food in the hold!” he roared. “Weapons in plenty for you, for

this ship carried blades and harness to the Shemites who dwell along

the coast. There are enough of us to work ship, aye, and to fight! You

rowed in chains for the Argossean dogs: will you row as free men for

Amra?”

 

“Aye!” they roared. “We are thy children! Lead us where you will!”

 

“Then fall to and clean out that waist,” he commanded. “Free men don’t

labor in such fifth. Three of you come with me and break out food from

the after-cabin. By Crom, I’ll pad out your ribs before this cruise is

done!”

 

Another yell of approbation answered him, as the half-starved blacks

scurried to do his bidding. The sail bellied as the wind swept over

the waves with renewed force, and the white crests danced along the

sweep of the wind. Conan planted his feet to the heave of the deck,

breathed deep and spread his mighty arms.

 

King of Aquilonia he might no longer be; king of the blue ocean he was

still.

Chapter 16: Black-Walled Khemi

THE Venturer SWEPT southward like a living thing, her oars pulled now

by free and willing hands. She had been transformed from a peaceful

trader into a war-galley, insofar as the transformation was possible.

Men sat at the benches now with swords at their sides and gilded

helmets on their kinky heads. Shields were hung along the rails, and

sheafs of spears, bows and arrows adorned the mast. Even the elements

seemed to work for Conan now; the broad purple sail bellied to a stiff

breeze that held day by day, needing little aid from the oars.

 

But though Conan kept a man on the masthead day and night, they did

not sight a long, low, black galley fleeing southward ahead of them.

Day by day the blue waters rolled empty to their view, broken only by

fishing-craft which fled like frightened birds before them, at sight

of the shields hung along the rail. The season for trading was

practically over for the year, and they sighted no other ships.

 

When the lookout did sight a sail, it was to the north, not the south.

Far on the skyline behind them appeared a racing-galley, with full

spread of purple sail. The blacks urged Conan to turn and plunder it,

but he shook his head. Somewhere south of him a slim black galley was

racing toward the ports of Stygia. That night, before darkness shut

down, the lookout’s last glimpse showed him the racing-galley on the

horizon, and at dawn it was still hanging on their tail, afar off,

tiny in the distance. Conan wondered if it was following him, though

he could think of no logical reason for such a supposition. But he

paid little heed. Each day that carried him farther southward filled

him with fiercer impatience. Doubts never assailed him. As he believed

in the rise and set of the sun he believed that a priest of Set had

stolen the Heart of Ahriman. And where would a priest of Set carry it

but to Stygia? The blacks sensed his eagerness, and toiled as they had

never toiled under the lash, though ignorant of his goal. They

anticipated a red career of pillage and plunder and were content. The

men of the southern isles knew no other trade; and the Kushites of the

crew joined whole-heartedly in the prospect of looting their own

people, with the callousness of their race. Bloodties meant little; a

victorious chieftain and personal gain everything.

 

Soon the character of the coastline changed. No longer they sailed

past steep cliffs with blue hills marching behind them. Now the shore

was the edge of broad meadowlands which barely rose above the water’s

edge and swept away and away into the hazy distance. Here were few

harbors and fewer ports, but the green plain was dotted with the

cities of the Shemites; green sea, lapping the rim of the green

plains, and the zikkurats of the cities gleaming whitely in the sun,

some small in the distance.

 

Through the grazing-lands moved the herds of cattle, and squat, broad

riders with cylindrical helmets and curled blue-black beards, with

bows in their hands. This was the shore of the lands of Shem, where

there was no law save as each city-state could enforce its own. Far to

the eastward, Conan knew, the meadowlands gave way to desert, where

there were no cities and the nomadic tribes roamed unhindered.

 

Still as they plied southward, past the changeless panorama of city-dotted meadowland, at last the scenery again began to alter. Clumps of

tamarind appeared, the palm groves grew denser. The shoreline became

more broken, a marching rampart of green fronds and trees, and behind

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