Conan the Outcast Read online

  Prologue

  On the eighth day in the eighth month of the eighth cycle of his reign, during the seventh long year of the drought that had stricken his city, King Anaximander of Sark awoke at mid-morning and saw a vision.

  The king came to awareness out of a deep and dreamless slumber. By the bright daylight that already gilded the heavy hangings of his terrace window, he was able to judge the hour as being later than his usual awakening. Anaximander felt rested, with a sense of well-being—in part, no doubt, because of the broad palm fans that waved perpetually at the head of his bed, sending a cooling breeze down the length to his trim, kingly body.

  The slaves who plied the fans—a matched pair of comely Zamoran females, honey-pale of skin and bare but ample of chest—had been trained to perform their task in utter silence. The merest rustle of sound, the brush of a rough frond against the king’s sleeping form—or, during his wakeful nights, a flaw in the breeze so slight as to cause but a single ringlet of his oiled hair or his long-curled square beard to be displaced—would likely have resulted in one or both servants yielding up their lives to merciless torture. Only thus, King Anaximander assured himself, were slaves induced to perform with perfect efficiency day after day, month upon month.

  On that morning, instead of snapping his exquisitely manicured fingers to summon footmen or concubines as was his habit, the king did something unaccustomed. He arose from his firm, cool pallet, draping his regal nakedness in a flimsy silken coverlet. Disregarding the slaves who knelt along the wall of his chamber, he strode with kingly decisiveness to the curtained terrace window. Drawing the draperies aside with his own hand, ignoring the servants who rushed to help him, he stepped out onto his veranda into the full scorching light of day.

  He saw, in part, what he expected to see: Below him lay the public courtyard, all but empty of citizens in the rising heat, with just a few pariahs and beggars sprawled in the narrow margin of shade along the palace's northern side. From this height it was hard to tell how many of them were dead of thirst, and how many merely indolent. Beyond the courtyard and a narrow district of tile-roofed barracks lay Sark’s outer wall, lofty and thick, notched jaggedly with tooth-shaped crenellations. As always, it was patrolled by city troops in their conical helmets and bronze-scale vests, bearing aloft their long, bronze-tipped spears.

  Straight before him, however, out past the fringe of the city wall, his eyes encountered something extraordinary. The view he expected was that of a dry, barren river-plain, brown-furred with wilting crops, its mud cracking and lifting in crazed puzzle-patterns under the fierce desert sun. But instead—there in the plain beyond the city wall, as if reared overnight while King Anaximander slept—stood a city, or the vision of a city.

  Broad and sun-bright, the scene shimmered more vividly than mere life: A noble town of tiled roofs girdled by a high, straight-topped wall of light-tan firebricks. Inside its gleaming bastion rose stately villas, whitewashed domes and pale stone ziggurats. White birds wheeled above the city, lighting in rooftop pigeon-roosts and dusty green clumps of trees. Front and centre in the foreign wall stood the city gate, a broad archway clustered with awakening inhabitants. Through its bronze-faced double portals a long string of laden camels emerged, their drivers guiding them briskly out onto the raised thoroughfare. At one side of the road another caravan stood awaiting entry to the town, its cargo being assessed for tariff by helmeted officials.

  Most striking of all was what shimmered before the city: a dappled expanse of blue water. The lush river-course, fringed by bright green shrubbery, ran past the very gate. Robed desert-dwellers filled jars from its rim, and washerwomen toiled in the downstream shallows.

  Such had been the scene in years past outside Anaximander's own city of Sark... until, as the king reminded himself with a pang of bitterness, the great and generous god Votantha had inexplicably turned his back on his city of faithful worshippers, and on the able, efficient servant he had in King Anaximander.

  On this fateful morning, the king was not the only one to see the splendid vision; he could tell by the awestruck postures and less-than-disciplined gestures of the soldiers atop his own city wall. He would have called his master-at-arms to deal with the offenders, except that he himself reeled a bit giddily just now. The king blinked and passed a hand over his eyes, which felt seared by the intensity of the mystic revelation.

  Already, he saw on looking once again, the image was fading—dimming and receding into the swelter of midday heat-shimmers. Hints of the sun-parched waste that was his own true domain began to peek through the mystic city and eat around its edges.

  Rather than face the starkness of his own realm, he turned away from the scene. To the chief guard of his household troop—who stood flanking him just inside the royal bedchamber, his eyes large with wonder at the vision beyond the threshold—he gave an order. His Exalted Priest Khumanos was to be summoned at once.

  Some moments later, when the priest arrived breathless, the king sat at ease in a folding chair of gold leaf, already dressed in his gold-threaded ceremonial vest, jewelled kirtle, and flawlessly pleated kilt. In this costume of high state, while fawning servants fretted themselves over the grooming of the royal feet and fingers, he addressed Khumanos. The Exalted Priest was a slender black-skinned man, remarkably young for his high office, with an inquisitive gleam in his eye.

  "You heard of the vision that was granted to me by our god? Or saw it yourself?” To the priest’s anxious nod and half-opened mouth, the king answered, "It was an image of our ancient trading rival, the heathen city of Qjara—lying leagues to the north and east of here, but transported to my very doorstep by Votantha’s will.” King Anaximander shook his head in mazed resentment. "The place was sleek and prosperous, aflourish with water and caravans— obviously the city and its folk are much favoured by their dearly beloved... goddess.”

  The words must have been a barb to Khumanos. Surely he, more keenly than anyone else, knew how abysmally the priesthood had failed their city and king in recent years—failed to call down rain from the heavens, and to summon the related proofs of divine favour that were the lifeblood and strength of the city-state of Sark. Although Anaximander himself, as Priest-King of the realm, was titular and traditional head of the church, obviously the blame could not repose in him. Therefore it was the priests who had failed, and who, periodically, were called upon to make atonement for their city’s shame.

  Yet the stern young priest did not try to defend himself nor did he show other signs of unease. Instead he shook his head with solemn concern. "Sire, this is clearly a sending from the great god Votantha, a prophecy or warning. If you wish me and my astrologers to render an interpretation—”

  "Nay, Priest. I shall render you the interpretation—which, in any case, should be obvious to all.” The king, clearly standing in little awe of the young cleric, frowned in stern reflection past the female slaves who combed his curled, square beard. "Know you first, Priest, that in part I blame my own negligence. In the ease of my kingship, perhaps I have grown too fond of physical comfort and convenience. I may have been blind to the maladies of my kingdom around me, and the decline of our standing by comparison with the neighbouring city-states.”

  The Exalted Priest drew an eager breath and spoke almost too readily. "Why, Sire, to be sure, there are steps that might be taken—”

  "But no longer,” Anaximander resumed, ignoring his priest’s impetuousness. As if to signify his new resolve, he struck the grovelling servants away from his shoulders and sandalled feet. "Now, clearly, our city’s god demands a sacrifice. Not just the slaughter of a few score infants or virgins atop the ziggurat on Mid-summer's Eve... nor the priming of wells and waterways with the blood of convicts and captive nomads
... but a true offering, such as the ones our holy legends tell of aforetimes. The god Votantha, by sending us this vision, demands as his rightful sacrifice a whole and prospering kingdom... by his divine choice, the city-state of Qjara!”

  The king, having arisen from his seat, towered over his cringing slaves. "It is clear to me now that if this sacrifice is carried out, great blessings will be ours. Rain will fall in the hills, replenishing our wells and cisterns, and the rivers will brim over with water for our crops. Caravans will once again ply their routes through Sark instead of Qjara, bringing us rich bounties of trade and tariffs. Votantha will be appeased at last, and his divine favour will enhance our city’s power in war and commerce.” "My King—” Khumanos, while not daring to oppose his monarch's visionary ecstasies, was plainly ill at ease. "If it is a war that you are proposing, you must be aware that the city of Qjara is strongly fortified. I am told they are defended by a force of elite warrior-priests sworn to their goddess. Such a siege would be long and costly—’’

  “Siege? I spoke of no siege. You, Khumanos, should know better than anyone what I am speaking of.” The king turned on his cleric with impressive and dangerous poise. "Secrets are passed down in priesthoods, after all, as well as in royal dynasties.”

  He turned his regal back on the priest and strolled toward the terrace window, whose curtain now stood open on a barren waste ending in ragged hills. “Our city's ancient traditions tell of empires in these eastern deserts that were stricken by the hand of god—of our god, Votantha, who in those days chose to wear a more fearsome aspect than he now does.

  "Those cities of hoary legend—ancient Pesk, Elgashi, and Yb of the Edomites—were stricken as by holy thunder, it is said, blasted from the face of the desert for their sins and blasphemies. Though by my reckoning of history, it must have been in great part for their sins against our own proud city of Sark and the ancestors of my royal lineage.”

  Anaximander turned against the bright sunlight from the terrace and faced Khumanos, a proud, unreadable silhouette. "In each case, priests of Votantha pronounced curses against the offending cities. They presided over civic exultation and orgy in honour of their destruction. Each bolt from heaven was followed by a resurgence of our holy faith, and a new epoch of prosperity and expansion for our city.” The king grew silent a moment. “Methinks, Khumanos, our god is telling us the time is nigh for another such miracle.”

  "So it may be.” The Exalted Priest’s voice came back faint and a little husky. "I only hope my king understands that such a miracle would be no mere godly boon or favour, nor an empty display to promote mortal and civic fortune. It would be a millennial event—nothing less than the god Votantha himself visiting the earth, showing his true and terrible aspect.”

  "Very good, then, priest." Anaximander spoke coldly. "I am glad we both know what is at issue. I would remind you that three former Exalted Priests, all men of vastly greater age and experience than yourself, have poured out their heart’s blood atop the Great Ziggurat in the past half-dozen years. All three made the supreme sacrifice in vain, since they failed to break this drought. Therefore I suggest that the time has come for what you describe—a full and dreadful visit by the Living God himself.”

  The king moved closer out of the glare, showing his subordinate a more visible face. "I understand there are preparations that must be made. A considerable expense of money and labour, too, which I know I can trust you to minimize. I have pondered the matter for some time, as you may have guessed—but now, in view of this morning’s sign from the heavens, there is no further question.” He moved up to his servant and laid a firm, hard hand on his shoulder. "Priest, I command you to open the way.”

  "It shall be so.”

  Bowing unsteadily to his king, Khumanos turned and moved toward the door. He went carefully, struggling at each step to overmaster his own creeping, paralysing fear.

  I

  The Unclean

  The river marsh stretched still and sultry in the afternoon heat. Over the cattails, the golden-tan walls of Qjara loomed in the middle distance; yet there was no alarm or clatter atop them to disturb nature’s peace. The air lying heavy on the reedy margins of the pond thrummed with bees, dragonflies and wasps, but this was a lulling sound, faint and continuous in the heat.

  A man stood in the pool, his broad back sun-bronzed above the blue-green water. He was intent upon his fishing, and so made no noise— until, with a lightning motion and a silvery explosion of water, he lunged forward, driving a rude three-pronged spear into the pond shallows ahead of him. There followed a brief, splashing chase, until he retrieved what he had pinned to the weedy bottom; when he turned he clutched a long, slippery, greenish-brown thing that wriggled in his two-handed grasp.

  He bore it quickly to a sun-bleached snag protruding like a gnarled knuckle from the water’s edge. From this rough mooring hung half-submerged a coarse wet sack already bulging with unseen, writhing shapes. Into it he transferred his latest catch, then jerked tight the drawstring at its neck.

  He paused then to shake water from his unruly mane of black hair. Taking from behind the stump a ragged loin-wrap, from whose heavy belt hung a thick, long-bladed knife, he fastened it with a single motion around his trim muscle-ribbed waist. Then, looping the squirming sack through the forks of his fish-spear, he levered it up over his shoulder and started back along the shallow edge of the pond.

  His camp lay a little way downstream, on a sandy beach shaded by musty-scented bushes. It was within sight and sound of a place where the river played and splashed among stones in a shallow downhill reach. There, among his scant belongings, the forager busied himself for some minutes.

  He rekindled a fire, which had sunk to glowing coals and feathery ash in its circle of stones. He fetched clean water in the battered, blackened bronze war-helmet that served him as a kettle. Gingerly he removed some of his day’s catch from the sack and did careful violence to it with his overlarge knife on the fallen, bark-stripped log that served as his table.

  In the course of these tasks a primal awareness of his surroundings, his hunter's alertness, did not fail him. And so in time, he became mindful of small things—a faint scent of freshly turned swamp-muck wafting unexpectedly to his nostrils, a furtive rustling of leaves and twigs that occasionally made itself heard above the talking of the river—and finally, in the bushes beyond the fire, the shifting of dim shadows that did not correspond to those of branch or bird.

  Without showing any concern, the forager arose and ambled to the fire to throw on additional twigs. Slowly, negligently, he turned before it, sweeping the foliage with a glint of steel-blue eyes. Then at once, with a pounce swifter than the one he had made in the river pond, he darted into the brush and emerged dragging a struggling figure, his knife poised near its throat. His victim was slender, nut-brown and near-naked—a yelping, muddy-footed boy.

  "Well, what have we here?” the captor guffawed, laying down his weapon. "I thought I had my fill of frogs and marsh-puppies—I certainly didn’t mean to catch any more!” He spoke in the Shemitish dialect that was most current in the eastern deserts.

  “Let him go!”

  This voice, speaking a similar tongue, issued from the edge of the brush, from an older, ganglier boy who stood looking on. The youth stepped clear of the bushes in an adamant, demanding posture. "If you try to eat him, I warn you, we will hang your hide from the city wall!”

  He brandished a small flint knife in one fist. Two more children crouched at his back.

  “Eat him?... why would I want to? Nay, why would I risk the stomach-gripes, unless you urchins steal what food I have!” Releasing the boy from his hammerlock, he nevertheless kept one hand around the lad's wrist, letting him strain and struggle as he wished at arm’s length. “Does he really think I would eat him?”

  “You are a troll, are you not?” the elder boy demanded. “An evil northern giant!”

  "No troll I! I am Conan of Cimmeria—no giant either, for my race, and onl
y evil when my head aches from a night’s carouse.”

  "As I thought—all men know that Cimmerians and such northerners are cannibals.” The youth gestured with haughty abhorrence at the helmet-kettle which, braced on stones above the languidly flaming fire, was now boiling and frothing. "At the very least you are a djinn, and an eater of unclean food!”

  "Faugh, to eat this young snipe—now that would be uncleanly indeed!” He released the boy—who scampered back to his friends, but soon turned to regard the northerner again in interested suspicion. "What I have cooking here is more than enough anyway—there could even be some to spare.” Picking up his knife from the sand, he wiped it on his breech-wrap and used it to stir the bubbling kettle.

  "Wha-what is it?” one of the boys sheltering behind the leader asked.

  "Why, ’tis a savoury stew of crayfish and river eels.” The one called Conan angled his knife-blade flat and lifted out a limp, insect-like crustacean which hung on the tip a moment before slipping back into the cauldron with a plop.

  "Unclean!” the third of the watching boys piped up. "The priests of the One True Goddess would thump your head on the altar-stone twelve times if you were caught eating such vermin, or even confessed to it.”

  "Nonsense,” the northerner declared. "You town-dwellers are foolish indeed if you do not consume good, wholesome river-food—or salt it up for the lean times, which must come to your city now and again.” He slid his knife through the leather strap of the bubbling helmet and hoisted it off the fire. "Do you boys live within the walls of Qjara?”

  "Yes,” one of the younger ones replied. "I am Jabed. My father is Japeth, a camel trader, although...” the expression on the lad's face grew pensive, "... he went away on a camel-buying trip some years since, and has not returned yet. My mother weaves reed baskets for the city market to support us, until father comes back to make us all rich. I will take her some reeds when I go home,” he added, displaying a small flint knife of his own, good for cutting through the tough stalks.