Almuric by Robert E. Howard (dark academia books to read .txt) đź“–
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glittering hellishly. I tore another missile from the crumbling stone,
and another and another, raining huge chunks of marble on the writhing
horror until it lay still in a ghastly mess of squirming hairy black
legs, entrails and blood.
Then catching Altha in my arms, I raced away through the shadows of
monolith and tower and pillar, nor did I halt until the city of
silence and mystery lay behind us, and we saw the moon setting across
the broad waving grasslands.
No word had passed between us since I had first come upon the girl
in that ghoulish tunnel. Now when I looked down to speak to her I saw
her dark head drooping against my arm; her white face was upturned,
her eyes shut. A quick throb of fear went through me, but a swift
examination showed me that she had merely fainted. That fact showed
the horror of what she had been through. The women of Koth do not
faint easily.
I laid her at full length on the turf, and gazed at her helplessly,
noting, as if for the first time, the white firmness of her slender
limbs, the exquisite molding of her supple figure. Her dark hair fell
in thick glossy clusters about her alabaster shoulders, a strap of her
tunic, slipped down, revealed her firm, pink-tipped young breasts. I
was aware of a vague unrest that was almost a pain.
Altha opened her eyes and looked up at me. Then her dark eyes flared
with terror, and she cried out and clutched at me frantically. My arms
closed about her instinctively, and within their iron-thewed clasp I
felt the pulsating of her lithe body, the wild fluttering of her
heart.
“Don’t be afraid.” My voice sounded strange, scarcely articulate.
“Nothing is going to harm you.”
I could feel her heart resuming its normal beat, so closely she
clung to me, before her quick pants of fright ceased. But for a while
she lay in my arms, looking up at me without speaking, until,
embarrassed, I released her and lifted her to a sitting position on
the grass.
“As soon as you feel fit,” I said, “we’ll put more distance between
us and—that.” I jerked my head in the direction of the distant ruins.
“You are hurt,” she exclaimed suddenly, tears filling her eyes. “You
are bleeding! Oh, I am to blame. If I had not run away—” She was
weeping now in earnest, like any Earthly girl.
“Don’t worry about these scratches,” I answered, though privately I
was wondering if the fangs of the vermin were venomous. “They are only
flesh wounds. Stop crying, will you?”
She obediently stifled her sobs, and naively dried her eyes with her
skirt. I did not wish to remind her of her horrible experience, but I
was curious on one point.
“Why did the Yagas halt at the ruins?” I asked. “Surely they knew of
the things that haunt such cities.”
“They were hungry,” she answered with a shudder. “They had captured
a youth—they dismembered him alive, but never a cry for mercy they
got, only curses. Then they roasted—” She gagged, smitten with
nausea.
“So the Yagas are cannibals.” I muttered.
“No. They are devils. While they sat about the fire the dog-heads
fell upon them. I did not see them until they were on us. They swarmed
over the Yagas like jackals over deer. Then they dragged me into the
darkness. What they meant to do, Thak only knows. I have heard—but it
is too obscene to repeat.”
“But why did they shriek my name?” I marveled.
“I cried it aloud in my terror,” she answered. “They heard and
mimicked me. When you came, they knew you. Do not ask me how. They too
are devils.”
“This planet is infested with devils,” I muttered. “But why did you
call on me, in your fright, instead of your father?”
She colored slightly, and instead of answering, began pulling her
tunic straps in place.
Seeing that one of her sandals had slipped off, I replaced it on her
small foot, and while I was so occupied she asked unexpectedly: “Why
do they call you Ironhand? Your fingers are hard, but their touch is
as gentle as a woman’s. I never had men’s fingers touch me so lightly
before. More often they have hurt me.”
I clenched my fist and regarded it moodily—a knotted iron mallet of
a fist. She touched it timidly.
“It’s the feeling behind the hand.” I answered. “No man I ever
fought complained that my fists were gentle. But it is my enemies I
wish to hurt, not you.”
Her eyes lighted. “You would not hurt me? Why?”
The absurdity of the question left me speechless.
It was past sunrise when we started back on the long trek toward
Koth, swinging far to the west to avoid the devil city from which we
had escaped. The sun came up unusually hot. The air was breathless,
the light morning wind blew fitfully, and then died down entirely. The
always cloudless sky had a faint copperish tint. Altha eyed that sky
apprehensively, and in answer to my question said she feared a storm.
I had supposed the weather to be always clear and calm and hot on the
plains, clear and windy and cold in the hills. Storms had not entered
into my calculation.
The beasts we saw shared her uneasiness. We skirted the edge of the
forest, for Altha refused to traverse it until the storm had passed.
Like most plains-dwellers, she had an instinctive distrust of thick
woods. As we strode over the grassy undulations, we saw the herds of
grazers milling confusedly. A drove of jumping pigs passed us,
covering the ground with gargantuan bounds of thirty and forty feet. A
lion started up in front of us with a roar, but dropped his massive
head and slunk hurriedly away through the tall grass.
I kept looking for clouds, but saw none. Only the copperish tint
about the horizons grew, discoloring the whole sky. It turned from
light color to dull bronze, and from bronze to black. The sun
smoldered for a little like a veiled torch, veining the dusky dome
with fire, then it was blotted out. A tangible darkness seemed to
hover an instant in the sky, then rush down, cloaking the world in
utter blackness, through which shone neither sun, moon, nor stars. I
had never guessed how impenetrable darkness could be. I might have
been a blind, disembodied spirit wandering through unlighted space,
but for the swish of the grasses under my feet, and the soft warm
contact of Altha’s body against mine. I began to fear we might fall
into a river, or blunder against some equally blind beast of prey.
I had been making for a mass of broken boulders, such a formation as
occasionally occurs on the plains. Darkness fell before we reached
them, but groping on, I stumbled upon a sizable rock, and placing my
back to it, drew Altha against it and stood sheltering her with my
body as well as I could. Out on the dark plains breathless silence
alternated with the sounds of varied and widespread movement—rustling
of grass, shuffle of padded hoofs, weird lowing and low-pitched
roaring. Once a vast herd of some sort swept by us, and I was thankful
for the protection of the boulders that kept us from being trampled.
Again all sounds ceased and the silence was as complete as the
darkness. Then from somewhere came a weird howling.
“What’s that?” I asked uneasily, unable to classify it.
“The wind!” she shivered, snuggling closer to me.
It did not blow with a steady blast; here and there it swept in mad
fitful gusts. Like lost souls it wailed and moaned. It ripped the
grasses near us, and finally a puff of it struck us squarely, knocking
us off our feet and bruising us against the boulder behind us. Just
that one abrupt blast, like a buffet from an unseen giant’s fist.
As we regained our feet I froze. Something was passing near our
refuge—something mountain-huge, beneath whose tread the earth
trembled. Altha caught me in a desperate clutch, and I felt the
pounding of her heart. My hair prickled with nameless fear. The
thing was even with us. It halted, as if sensing our presence. There
was a curious leathery sound, as of the movement of great limbs.
Something waved in the air above us; then I felt a touch on my elbow.
The same object touched Altha’s bare arm, and she screamed, her taut
nerves snapping.
Instantly our ears were deafened by an awful bellow above us, and
something swept down through the darkness with a clashing of gigantic
teeth. Blindly I lashed out and upward, feeling my sword-edge meet
tangible substance. A warm liquid spurted along my arm, and with
another terrible roar, this time more of pain than rage, the invisible
monster shambled away, shaking the earth with its tread, dimming the
shrieking wind with its bellowing.
“What was it, in God’s name?” I panted.
“It was one of the Blind Ones,” she whispered. “No man has ever seen
them; they dwell in the darkness of the storm. Whence they come,
whither they go, none knows. But look, the darkness melts.”
“Melts” was the right word. It seemed to shred out, to tear in long
streamers. The sun came out, the sky showed blue from horizon to
horizon. But the earth was barred fantastically with long strips of
darkness, tangible shadows floating on the plain, with broad spaces of
sunlight between. The scene might have been a dream landscape of an
opium-eater. A hurrying deer flitted across a sunlight band and
vanished abruptly in a broad streamer of black; as suddenly it flashed
into light and sight again. There was no gradual shaking into
darkness; the borders of the torn strips of blackness were as
clear-cut and definite as ribbons of ebony on a background of gold and
emerald. As far as I could see, the world was stripped and barred with
those black ribbons. Sight could not pierce them, but they were
thinning, dividing, vanishing.
Directly before one of the streamers of darkness ripped apart and
disappeared, revealing the figure of a man—a hairy giant, who stood
glaring at me, sword in hand, as surprised as I. Then several things
happened all at once. Altha screamed: “A Thugran!” the stranger leaped
and slashed, and his sword clanged on my lifted blade.
I have only a brief chaotic memory of the next few seconds. There
was a whirl of strokes and parries, a brief clanging of steel; then my
sword-point sank under his heart and stood out behind his back. I
wrenched the blade free as he sank down, and stood glaring down at him
bewilderedly. I had secretly wondered what the outcome would be when I
was called upon to face a seasoned warrior with naked steel. Now it
had occurred and was over with, and I was absolutely unable to
remember how I had won. It had been too fast and furious for conscious
thought; my fighting instincts had acted for me.
A clamor of angry cries burst on me, and wheeling I saw a score of
hairy warriors swarming out from among the rocks. It was too late to
flee. In an instant they were on me, and I was the center of a
whirling, flashing, maelstrom of swords. How I parried them even for a
few seconds I cannot say. But I did, and even had the satisfaction of
feeling my blade grate around another, and sever the wielder’s
shoulder bone. A moment later one
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