Conan was chained to the oar in their place. He was to do the work of all three. As they fastened him to the filth-slimed bench, the overseer eyed him grimly.
"We"ll see how you like pulling an oar, boy. You"ll pull and pull until you think your back is breaking-and then you"ll pull some more. And every time you slack off or miss a boat, I"ll remind you of your place, like this!"
His arm swung; the whip uncoiled against the sky and came whistling down across Conan"s shoulders. The pain was like that of a white-hot iron rod against his flesh. But Conan did not scream or move a muscle.
It was as if he had felt nothing, so strong was the iron of his will.
The overseer grunted, and the lash cracked again. This time a muscle at one corner of Conan"s grimly set mouth twitched, but his eyes looked stonily ahead. A third lash, and a fourth. Sweat formed on the Cimmerian"s brow; it trickled down into his eyes, stinging and smarting, even as the red blood ran down his back. But he gave no sign of feeling pain.
Behind him, he heard Juma"s whisper: "Courage!"
Then came a call from the afterdeck; the captain wished to sail.
Reluctantly, the overseer gave up his pleasure of lashing the Cimmerian"s back to pulp.
The sailors cast off the ropes that moored the ship to the quay and shoved off with boathooks. Aft of the oar benches but on the same level, in the shade of the catwalk that ran the length of the ship over the heads of the rowers, sat a naked Meruvian behind a huge drum. When the ship had cleared the quay, the c.o.xswain lifted a wooden maul and began to thump the drum. With each beat, the slaves bent to the oars, rising to their feet, raising the looms, and leaning back until their weight brought them down on the benches; then pushing the looms down and forward and repeating. Conan soon caught the rhythm, as did Juma, chained to the oar behind him.
Conan had never before been on a ship. As he heaved at his oar, his quick eyes peered around him at the listless, dull-eyes slaves with whip-scarred backs, who worked on the slimy benches in the frightful stench of their own waste. The galley was low through the waist, where the slaves labored; the rail was only a few feet above the water. It was higher in the bow, where the seamen berthed, and in the carved and gilded stern, where the officers had their quarters. A single mast arose amidships. The yard of the single triangular sail, and the furled sail itself, lay along the catwalk over the oar pit.
When the ship had left the harbor, the sailors untied the lashings that held the sail and its yard to the catwalk and raised it, heaving on the halyard and grunting a chantey. The yard went up by jerks, a few inches at a time. As it rose, the gold-and-purple striped sail unfurled and shook out with snapping, booming sounds. Since the wind was fair on the quarter, the oarsmen were given a rest while the sail took over.
Conan noted that the entire galley had been made from some wood that either by nature or by staining was of a dark red color. As he gazed about, eyes half shut against the glare, the ship looked as if it had been dipped in blood. Then the whip sang above him and the overseer, on the catwalk above, yelled down:
"Now lay to, you lazy swine!"
A lash laid another welt across his shoulders. It is indeed a ship of wood, he thought to himself; slaves" blood.
5. Rogue"s Moon
For seven days, Conan and Juma sweated over the ma.s.sive oars of the red galley as it plodded its way around the sh.o.r.es of the Sumeru Tso, stopping overnight at each of the seven sacred cities of Meru: Shondakor, Thogara, Auzakia, Issedon, Paliana, Throana, and then-having made the circuit of the sea-back to Shamballah. Strong men though they were, it was not long before the unremitting labor brought them to the edge of exhaustion, when their aching muscles seemed incapable of further effort. Yet still the tireless drum and the hissing whip drove them on.
Once a day, sailors drew buckets of cold, brackish water up over the side and drenched the exhausted slaves. Once a day, when the sun stood at the zenith, they were given a heaping bowl of rice and a long dipperful of water. At night they slept on their oars. The animal-like round of unvarying drudgery sapped the will and drained the mind, leaving the rowers soulless automata.
It would have broken the strength of any man-save for such as Conan.
The young Cimmerian did not yield to the crushing burden of fate as did the apathetic Moravians. The unending labor at the oars, the brutal treatment, the indignity of the slimy benches, instead of sapping his will, only fed the fires within him.
When the ship returned to Shamballah and dropped anchor in the wide harbor, Conan had reached the limits of his patience. It was dark and still; the new moon-a slim, silver scimitar-hung low in the western sky, casting a wan, illusive light. It would soon set. Such a night was called a "rogue"s moon" in the nations of the West, for such poorly-lit night were wont to be chosen by highwaymen, thieves, and a.s.sa.s.sins to ply their trades. Bent over their oars, ostensibly asleep, Conan and Juma discussed escape with the Meruvian slaves.
On the galley, the feet of the slaves were not fettered. But each wore a pair of manacles joined by a chain, and this chain was strung through an iron ring loosely looped around the loom of the oar. Although this ring slid freely along the loom, its travel was stopped at the outer end by the oarlock and, at the inner, by a collar or ferrule of lead.
This collar, securely fastened to the b.u.t.t end of the oar by an iron spike, acted as a counterweight to the blade of the oar. Conan had tested the strength of his chain and of the manacles and the ring a hundred times; but even his terrific strength, hardened by seven days of rowing, could not strain any of them. Still, in a tense, growling whisper, he urged schemes of revolt upon his fellow slaves.
"If we could get Gorthangpo down on our level," he said, "we could tear him to pieces with our nails and teeth. And he carries the keys to all our bonds. While we were unlocking the manacles, the marines would kill some of us; but once we got loose, we should outnumber them five or six to one-"
"Do not speak of it!" hissed the nearest Meruvian. "Do not even think of it!"
"Aren"t you interested?" asked Conan in astonishment.
"Nay! Even to talk of such violence turns my bones to water."
"Mine, too," said another. "The hardships we suffer have been inflicted upon us by the G.o.ds, as a just punishment for some misdeed in a former life. To struggle against it were not only useless but a wicked blasphemy as well. I pray you, barbarian, hush your unholy talk and submit with becoming humility to your fate."
Such an att.i.tude went against Conan"s grain, nor was Juma a man to bow without resistance to any threat of doom. But the Meruvians would not listen to their arguments. Even Tashudang, unusually loquacious and friendly for a Meruvian, begged Conan to do nothing that would enrage Gorthangpo, the overseer, or bring down upon them a worse punishment from the G.o.ds than that which their divinities had already inflicted upon them.
Conan"s argument was cut short by the song of the whip. Aroused by the murmur, Gorthangpo had crept out on the catwalk in the darkness. From the few whispered words he overheard, he divined that mutiny was brewing. Now his whip hissed and cracked on Conan"s shoulders.
Conan had had enough. In one surge of motion, he bounded to his feet, seized the lashing end of the whip, and tore it out of Gorthangpo"s grip. The overseer yelled for the marines.
There was still no way for Conan to get the iron ring off the loom of his oar. In his desperation, an inspiration struck him. The construction of the oarlock limited the vertical motion of the loom to a height of less than five feet above the deck on which he stood. Now he pushed the b.u.t.t end of the oar up as far as it would go, climbed to the bench, and crouching, placed his shoulders beneath the loom. Then, with a terrific heave of his long, powerful legs, he straightened up.
The oar broke in its oarlock with a rending crash. Quickly, Conan slipped his ring off the broken end. Now he had a serviceable weapon: a club or quarterstaff nine feet long, with a ten-pound ma.s.s of lead on one end.
Conan"s first terrific swing caught the goggling overseer on the side of the head. His skull shattered like a melon, spattering the benches with a b.l.o.o.d.y spray of pulped brains. Then Conan hauled himself to the catwalk to meet the charge of the marines. Below on the benches, the scrawny, brown Meruvians crouched, whimpering prayers to their devil-G.o.ds. Only Juma imitated Conan"s act, breaking his oar at the oarlock and slipping his slave ring loose.
The marines were Meruvians themselves, lax and lazy and fatalistic.
They had never had to fight a slave mutiny; they did not believe such a thing possible. Least of all had they expected to have to face a burly young giant armed with a nine-foot club. Still, they came on bravely enough, although the width of the catwalk allowed them to approach Conan only two abreast.
Conan waded in, swinging wildly. His first blow hurled the first marine off the catwalk and into the benches with a broken sword arm. The second dropped the next man with a shattered skull. A pike was thrust at his naked breast; Conan knocked the pike out of its welder"s hand, and his next blow hurled two men at once off the catwalk; the one whom he had struck with crushed-in ribs, and his companion jostled off the walk by the impact of the first victim"s body.
Then Juma climbed up beside him. The Kus.h.i.te"s naked torso gleamed like oiled ebony in the dim moonlight, and his oar mowed down the advancing Meruvians like a scythe. The marines, unprepared to face two such monsters, broke and ran for the safety of the p.o.o.p deck, whence their officer, just aroused from slumber, was screeching confused commands.
Conan bent to the corpse of Gorthangpo and searched his pouch for the key ring. Swiftly he found the key to all the manacles on the ship and unlocked his own, then did the same for Juma.
A bow tw.a.n.ged, and an arrow whistled over Conan"s head and struck the mast. The two freed slaves did not wait to pursue the battle further.
Dropping off the catwalk, they pushed through the cowering rowers to the rail, vaulted over the side, and vanished into the dark waters of Shamballah"s harbor. A few arrows sped after them, but in the dim light of the setting crescent moon the archers could do little more than shoot at random.
6. Tunnels of Doom
Two naked men hauled their dripping bodies out of the sea and peered about them in the murk. They had swum for hours, it seemed, looking for a way to get into Shamballah un.o.bserved. At last they had found the outlet to one of the storm sewers of the ancient stone city. Juma still trailed the length of broken oar with which he had fought the marines; Conan had abandoned his on the ship. Occasionally a faint gleam of light came into the sewer from a storm grating set into a gutter in the street overhead, but the light was so feeble-the thin moon having set-that the darkness below remained impenetrable. So, in almost total darkness, the twain waded through the slimy waters, seeking a way out of these tunnels.
Huge rats squeaked and fled as they went through the stone corridors beneath the streets. They could see the glimmer of eyes through the dark. One of the larger scavengers nipped Conan"s ankle, but he caught and crushed the beast in his hands and flung its corpse at its more cautious fellows. These quickly engaged in a squealing, rustling battle over the feast, while Conan and Juma hurried on through the upward-winding tunnels.
It was Juma who found the secret pa.s.sage. Sliding one band along the dank wall, he accidentally released a catch and snorted with surprise when a portion of the stone gave way beneath his questing fingers.
Although neither he nor Conan knew where the pa.s.sage led, they took it, as it seemed to slope upward toward the city streets above.
At last, after a long climb, they came to another door. They groped in utter darkness until Conan found a bolt, which he slid back. The door opened with a squeak of dry hinges to his push, and the two fugitives stepped through and froze.
They stood on an ornamental balcony crowded with statues of G.o.ds or demons in a huge, octagonal temple The walls of the eight-sided chamber soared upward, past the balcony, to curve inward and meet to form an eight-sided dome. Conan remembered seeing such a dome towering among the lesser buildings of the city, but he had never inquired as to what lay within it.
Below, at one side of the octagonal floor, a colossal statue stood on a plinth of black marble, facing an altar in the exact center of the chamber. The statue dwarfed everything else in the chamber. Rising thirty feet high, its loins were on a level with the balcony on which Conan and Juma stood. It was a gigantic idol of a green stone that looked like jade, although never had men found true jade in so large a ma.s.s. It had six arms, and the eyes in its scowling face were immense rubies.
Facing the statue across the altar stood a throne of skulls, like that which Conan had already seen in the throne room of the palace on his arrival in Shamballah, but smaller. The toadlike little G.o.d-king of Mem was seated on this throne. As Conan"s glance strayed from the idol"s head to that of the ruler, he thought he saw a hideous suggestion of similarity between the two. He shuddered and his nape p.r.i.c.kled at the hint of unguessable cosmic secrets that lay behind this resemblance.
The rimpoche was engaged in a ritual. Shamans in scarlet robes knelt in ranks around the throne and the altar, chanting ancient prayers and spells. Beyond them, against the walls of the chamber, several rows of Memvians sat cross-legged on the marble pavement. From the richness of their jewels and their ornate if scanty apparel, they appeared to be the officials and the n.o.bility of the kingdom. Above their heads, set in wall brackets around the balcony, a hundred torches flickered and smoked. On the floor of the chamber, in a square about the central altar, stood four torcheres, each crowned by the rich, gplden flame of a b.u.t.ter lamp. The four flames wavered and sputtered.
On the altar between the throne and the colossus lay the naked, white, slender body of a young girl, held to the altar by slender golden chains. It was Zosara.
A low growl rumbled in Conan"s throat. His smouldering eyes burned with blue fire as he watched the hated figures of King Jalang Thonpa and his Grand Shaman, the wizard-priest Tanzong Tengri.
"Shall we take them, Conan?" whispered Juma, his teeth showing white in the flickering dimness. The Cimmerian grunted.
It was the festival of the new moon, and the G.o.d-king was wedding the daughter of the king of Turan on the altar, before the many-armed statue of the Great Dog of Death and Terror, Yama the Demon King. The ceremony was proceeding according to the ancient rites prescribed in the holy texts of the Book of the Death G.o.d. Placidly antic.i.p.ating the public consummation of his nuptials with the slim, long-legged Turanian girl, the divine monarch of Mem lolled on his throne of skulls as ranks of scarlet-clad shamans droned the ancient prayers.