Oman"s chill blue eyes regarded the maddened officer without emotion as the soldiers placed the log across his shoulders and bound his arms to it. Without apparent effort, Conan tensed his huge arm muscles, so that the rope was stretched to its greatest tautness at the moment of tying.
The jailer than unlocked Oman"s fetters. Conan rumbled:
"You Turanian dogs will get what you deserve sooner or later. You will see."
Ardashir"s face twitched in fury as he spat back: "And you will get yours, you red-handed rogue! No torture devised by human brains will be too cruel when the royal executioners set to work upon you." He laughed a shrill uncontrolled laugh that betrayed his hysteric mood. "But enough of this gabble. Follow me, Your Majesty of maggoty Aquilonia!"
At a gesture to the guardsmen, the little company marched along the dank corridors. The bound barbarian walked in their midst, bearing the log across his shoulders. Conan was quite unruffled. He had been in many tight places before and won his way to freedom. He was like a trapped wolf, alert and constantly looking for a chance to reverse the situation. He did not waste thought on the terrible odds against him, or on futile recriminations against his foes, or on self-reproach for the moment"s lapse in vigilance that resulted in his capture. His whole mind and nervous system were concentrated on what to do next.
Winding stone staircases led upward. As n.o.body had blindfolded Conan, his keen eyes took in every detail. The dungeons of the royal palace were far below ground level. There were several floors to pa.s.s, at each of which an armed guard stood ready with sword or pike.
Twice Conan glimpsed the outside world as they pa.s.sed window slits. The darkling sky showed that the time was either dawn or dusk. Now he understood the mystifying murmur of surf which had reached his ears.
The palace was built on the outskirts of Aghrapur, on a crag overlooking the Sea of Vilayet. The dungeons were carved out of the heart of the rock whose sheer face ended in the lapping waves below.
That was why Conan could see the sky through the window slits, though they had not yet reached the lower floors of the palace itself. Conan stored the knowledge in his mind.
The size of the palace was amazing. The party pa.s.sed through endless rooms with fountains and jeweled vases. Exotic blooms exuded heavy perfume. Now their steps echoed from arching walls; now they were m.u.f.fled by rich rugs and hangings. Corseleted soldiers stood like statues everywhere with inscrutable faces and eyes alert. Here the splendor of the East bloomed in its full glory.
The party halted before two gigantic, gold-worked doors. Fully fifty feet high they towered, their upper parts disappearing in the gloom.
Mysterious arabesques curled their snaky course across the surfaces of the doors, on which the dragons, heroes, and wizards of Hyrkanian legend were depicted. Ardashir stepped forward and struck the golden plates a ringing blow with the hilt of his scimitar.
In response, the immense doors opened slowly. The low murmur of a great a.s.sembly of people reached Oman"s ears.
The throne room was vaster than anything Conan had ever seen, from the sumptuous state chambers of Ophir and Nemedia to the smoky, timber-roofed halls of Asgard and Vanaheim. Giant pillars of marble reared lofty columns toward a roof that seemed as distant as the sky.
The profusion of cressets, lamps, and candelabra illuminated costly drapes, paintings, and hangings. Behind the throne rose windows of stained gla.s.s, closed against the fall of night.
A glittering host filled the hall. Fully a thousand must have a.s.sembled there. There were Nemedians in jupons, trunk hose, and leathern boots; Ophireans in billowing cloaks; stocky, black-bearded Shemites in silken robes; renegade Zuagirs from the desert; Vendhyans in bulging turbans and gauzy robes; barbarically-clad emissaries from the black kingdoms to the far southwest. Even a lone yellow-haired warrior from the Far North, clad in a somber black tunic, stared sullenly before him, his powerful hands gripping the hilt of a heavy longsword that rested before him with the chape of its scabbard on the floor.
Some had come here to escape the wrath of their own rulers, some as informers and traitors against the lands of their birth, and some as envoys. The gluttonous mind of King Yezdigerd was never satisfied with the size of his growing empire. Many and devious were the ways in which he sought to enlarge it.
The blare of golden trumpets rang across the huge hall. An avenue opened through the milling ma.s.s, and Conan"s little group set itself again in motion. The distance to the dais was still too great to make out the individuals cl.u.s.tered there, but their brisk approach would soon bring them into range.
Conan was afire with curiosity. Though he had fought this eastern despot many years ago on several occasions-as war-chief of the Zuagirs, as admiral of the Vilayet pirates, as leader of the Himelian hillmen, and as hetman of the kozaki-he had never yet seen his implacable foe in person. He kept his eyes full on the figure on the golden throne as he approached it.
So it came about that he did not notice the widening of the blond giant"s gray eyes in sudden recognition. The powerful knuckles whitened as the enigmatic gaze intently followed the towering figure of the Cimmerian on his way toward the dais.
King Yezdigerd was a swarthy giant of a man with a short black beard and a thin, cruel mouth. Although the debauchery of the Turanian court had wrought pouches under his glittering eyes, and lines crisscrossed his stern and gloomy features ten years too early, his hard-muscled, powerful body bore witness that self-indulgence had not sapped his immense vitality.
A brilliant strategist and an insatiable plunderer, Yezdigerd had more than doubled the size of the kingdom inherited from his weak predecessor Yildiz. He had wrung tribute from the city-states of Brythunia and eastern Shem. His gleaming hors.e.m.e.n had beaten the armies of such distant nations as Stygia and Hyperborea. The crafty king of Zamora, Mithridates, had been shorn of border provinces and had kept his throne only at the price of groveling before his conqueror.
Arrayed in a splendor of silk and cloth-of-gold, the long lolled on the shining throne with the deceptive ease of a resting panther.
At his right sat a woman. Conan felt his blood run hot with recognition. Thanara! Her voluptuous body was draped in the seductive robes of a Turanian n.o.blewoman. A diamond-studded diadem glittered in her l.u.s.trous black hair. Her eyes fastened triumphantly on the trussed and weaponless figure of her captive. She joined in the laughter of the courtiers round the throne at some grim jest uttered by the king.
The detail halted before the throne. Yezdigerd"s eyes blazed with triumphant glee. At last he held in his power the man who had slaughtered his soldiers, burnt his cities, and scuttled his ships. The l.u.s.t for vengeance churned up within him, but he held himself in check while the guardsmen knelt and touched their foreheads to the marble floor.
Conan made no obeisance. His blue eyes aflame with icy fire, he stood still and upright, clashing with the Turanian king in a battle of looks. Every inch of his body expressed defiance and contempt. Unclad as he was, he still commanded the attention of all by the aura of power that radiated from him. The rumor of his fabulous exploits was whispered back and forth among the members of the glittering throng.
Many knew him under other dreaded names in their own distant lands.
Sensing the strain upon the rope he held, Ardashir looked up from his kneeling posture. Black rage seethed in his face as he saw the disdain of the Cimmerian for court etiquette. He tugged viciously at the rope, tightening the noose about Conan"s neck. A lesser man would have stumbled and fallen, but Conan stood steady as a rock. The ma.s.sive muscles of his bull-neck swelled in ridges against the pressure of the rope. Then he suddenly bent forward and straightened up again, pulling the rope backwards. Ardashir was jerked off his knees and sprawled with a clatter of gear on the marble.
"I pay homage to no Hyrkanian dog!" Conan"s roar was like a peal of thunder. "You wage your wars with the help of women. Can you handle a sword yourself? Til show you how a real man fights!"
During his short speech, Conan relaxed the taut muscles of his arms, so that the rope binding them went slack. By stretching, he got the tips of his left fingers around one end of the log on his back. With a quick jerk he slipped his right arm out of the loose coils of rope and brought the log around in front of him. Then he swiftly freed his left arm.
Ardashir scrambled up and lunged towards him, drawing his scimitar.
Conan whipped the end of the log around with a thud against the Turanian"s helmet. The officer was hurled across the floor, his body spinning like that of a thrown doll.
For a split second, everybody stood unmoving, struck still by this seemingly magical feat. With the fighting instinct of the barbarian, Conan took instant advantage of this pause. One end of the log shot out and caught a guardsman in the face. The man flew over backwards, his face a mere smear of blood and broken bones. Then Conan whirled and threw the log into the nearest group of guards on the other side of him, even as they started to rise and draw their weapons. The men were bowled over in a clattering heap.
Lithe and quick as a leopard, Conan bounded forward, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the scimitar that Ardashir had dropped when knocked unconscious. A couple of courtiers tried to bar the Cimmerian"s way at the foot of King Yezdigerd"s dais, but he easily cut his path through them, slashing and thrusting. He bounded up the steps of the dais.
As he came, the king rose to meet him, sweeping out his own scimitar.
The jewels in its hilt flashed as Yezdigerd brought the blade up to parry a terrific right cut that Conan aimed at his head. Such was the force of the blow that the king"s sword snapped. Conan"s blade cut through the many folds of the snow-white turban, cleaving the spray of bird-of-paradise feathers that rose from the front of it and denting the steel cap that Yezdigerd wore beneath.
Though the blow failed to split the king"s skull as Conan intended, it threw the Turanian backwards, stunned. Yezdigerd fell back over the arm of his throne and overset the gleaming chair. King and throne rolled off the dais, down the steps on the other side, and into a knot of onrushing guardsmen, spoiling their charge.
Conan, beside himself with battle l.u.s.t, would have bounded after the king to finish him off. But loyal arms dragged Yezdigerd out of the press, and from all sides sword blades and spear points pressed in upon the unprotected Cimmerian.
Conan"s scimitar wove a lethal net of steel around him. He surpa.s.sed himself in brilliant swordsmanship. Despite his stay in the dungeon and the aftereffects of the drug he had inhaled, he was fired with vitality. If he must die, he would now die sword in hand, laughing and slaying, to carve a niche for himself in the Hall of Heroes.
He whirled in gleeful frenzy. A quick slash sent an antagonist tumbling backwards with his entrails spilling out; a lightning thrust burst through mail links into a Turanian heart. Stabbing, slicing, smiting, and thrusting, he wrought red havoc. For an instant, raging like a mad elephant about the dais, he cleared it of soldiers and courtiers except for those who lay in a tangle about his feet.
Only the lady Thanara remained, sitting petrified in her chair. With a grating laugh, Conan tore the glittering diadem from her hair and flung her into the throng that milled about the platform.
Soldiers now advanced grimly from all sides, their spearheads and sword blades forming a bristling hedge in front of an ordered line of shields. Behind them, archers nocked their shafts. Noncombatants stood in clumps in the farther parts of the throne room, watching fascinated.
Conan flexed his muscles, swung his scimitar, and gave a booming laugh.
Blood ran down his naked hide from superficial cuts in scalp, arm, chest, and leg. Surrounded and unarmored, not even his strength and speed could save him from the thrust of many keen blades all at once.
The prospect of death did not trouble him; he only hoped to take as many foes as he could into the darkness with him.
Suddenly there came the clash of steel, the spurt of blood, and the icy gleam of a northern longsword. A giant figure hewed its way through the armored lines, leaving three blood-spattered corpses on the floor. With a mighty bound, the fair-haired northerner leaped to the dais. In his left arm he cradled a couple of heavy, round objects-bucklers of bronze and leather picked up from the floor where the victims of Conan"s first outburst had dropped them.
"Catch this!" cried the newcomer, tossing one of the shields to Conan.
Their glances met and locked. Conan cried:
"Rolf! What do you here, old polar bear?"
"I will tell you later," growled the northerner, grasping the handle of the other buckler. "If we live, that is. If not, I am prepared to fight and die with you."
The unexpected advent of this formidable ally raised Conan"s spirits even higher.
"Rush in, jackals," he taunted, waving his bloodstained scimitar. "Who will be the next to consign his soul to h.e.l.l? Attack, d.a.m.n you, or I"ll carry the fight to you!"
The steel-sheathed ranks of the Turanian soldiery had halted, forming a square about the dais. The two giant barbarians stood back to back, one black-haired and almost naked, the other blond and clad in somber black. They seemed like two royal tigers surrounded by timorous hunters, none of whom dared to strike the first blow.
"Archers!" cried an officer directing the Turanian troopers. "Spread out, so the shafts shall strike from all sides."
"They have us," growled Rolf "Had we but stout coats of Asgardean mail...
Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted."