Conan of the Red Brotherhood

  I

  Blades of the Red Brotherhood

  The sail was a white speck on the horizon, scarcely visible in day glare off the Southern Vilayet. From the coastal hillside, looking out beyond the pale ribbon of beach, the sea spread glassy-bright, stirred in places to glinting shards by fickle westerly breezes. Overhead, a scattered fleet of clouds sailed cottony-white... whiter even than the fair limbs of Olivia, who languished in the meadow grass near at hand.

  “Conan, what are you gazing at? Look back to me, my love!”

  Lithe arms twined about the Cimmerian’s neck and drew him down to the crumpled greensward.

  “I swear to you, my darling, my eyes never tire of you! I wish we could remain here forever, lying together like this.” The supple arms enfolded him, drawing his face down into the soft curvature of neck and dark, fragrant hair. “As a lover, you are beyond price to me... more than ever I could have wanted... my husband, my master, my Captain!” The woman’s murmured rhapsodies and twining caresses smothered his senses as she drew him down into the grass.

  In time Olivia’s breaths grew less rapid and insistent, slower even than the soft, rhythmic thudding of waves on the shoreline below. “We had best get back,” Conan told her then, adjusting his crimson kirtle and hitching his sword-belt about his middle.

  “Must we, really?” The woman reluctantly sat up, gathering her silken blouse and skirt around her. “Back to those coarse and brutish men, to hear their gibes and obscene mutterings?”

  “Aye. We shall be putting out to sea soon.”

  “They watch me all the time, you know.” Olivia bent to fasten gilt-trimmed sandals about her shapely ankles. “’Tis a rare relief for me to get out of their sight.” She rose to her feet, drawing her gown about her shoulders to protect her from the sun.

  “I cannot blame them, the poor wretches! Can you? Tempted by such beauty?” Grinning in good spirit, Conan administered a firm slap to the woman’s thinly draped rump. “Anyway, they’ll be getting thirsty by now.” Stepping into a double brace of damp, heavy earthenware bottles lashed to either end of a boat-pole, he eased the makeshift yoke across his shoulders and bore up the weight on powerful legs.

  Waiting briefly for Olivia to gather up a pair of bulging waterskins, he let her lead the way down the faint, ancient footpath through the grass. They skirted the brook where it spattered down a rocky cliff on its way to the rank salt slough, then continued past it downhill. They went in silence, with Conan quietly content to observe the jiggle of the water bottles against Olivia’s shapely, dampened hips.

  Before they left the meadow he stopped her and pointed out the distant sail, which had scarcely progressed northward along the coast. “Say nothing of it to the crew,” he instructed her.

  Just below, the path crossed a fringe of piny wilderness; beyond it, sheltered from the sea by brushy dunes, a narrow inlet sparkled. On the slope of this inner beach lay a slender galliot, drawn up out of the water and lying askew on its keel. Around the scant shade of its hull, some two-score ragged and semi-clothed men loitered, some of them ill-humouredly raking the boat’s weedy planks with sharp stones and crescent hunks of clamshell.

  Here were swarthy, turbulent knaves, both bearded and shaven-headed, tattooed and ear-ringed, men of motley races in ragged, garish undress. Some were maimed or half-blinded, but all moved with a fighter’s wariness and glittered with sharp steel weapons—hard-eyed corsairs, pirates of the Vilayet coast.

  “Curse this voyage for a liverless farce!”

  “Aye, ’tis a Cimmerian hill-humper’s pleasure cruise!” The sharp-voiced complaints could have come from any of a dozen rogues muttering together in a pidgin mockery of Hyrkanian. Whether they were meant to be heard by the oarship’s captain was anyone’s guess. But when the Cimmerian and his woman arrived on the beach, all eyes turned their way.

  “Look alive, ye scabby scuts! Here comes our captain now... and his fair shipmate!”

  There was a general stir in the shadow of the hull, combined with a grudging half-willingness to appear busy at maintenance duties. The galliot was little more than an open launch, its narrow shell stretching a mere dozen man-lengths between the tall, curving keel-posts that rose from its bow and stem. Except for solid timber framing to hold up the mast, whose sail was furled around a single long spar, the ship’s side-wales were braced together chiefly by the rowers’ benches. A brief quarterdeck built up over a low, cramped cabin astern was the sole stretch of level planking.

  “Here is our water at last,” one fork-bearded crewman proclaimed loudly from the shade of the hull. “And see, ’tis borne to us by a fairy-maid. A goddess, no less! Captain, may I take your place on the next water-hauling expedition? I can haul that set of jugs as well as any man,” he proclaimed, to raucous laughs.

  “Quiet, Punicos!” a gruff voice called from the other end of the hull. “Such a junket would cost you your life, I’ll wager! Sure as my name is Ivanos, the trip would draw more blood than water.” The jest brought further snarls of laughter from the crew.

  “Enough now, you skulking pirate curs!” Conan thumped down his jars of water on the sand and accepted the sheepskin flasks from haughty Olivia. Carrying the bags over to his crew, he hove them firmly into the paunches of two of the most brazen idlers. “Here, Jephat, Ogdus—suckle on those, and pass them down! Then back to work careening. I want the Vixen fit for swift travel by noon.” He glanced up at the steep-angling sun.

  “Why should we scrape and polish this old barge,” a gap-toothed, pigtailed pirate carped, “when there has been nothing for us to chase in days, and rations are short? Why not let the currents float us back to Djafur?”

  The Cimmerian, whose bare, muscle-knotted shoulders bulked as tall as most of the other buccaneers’ heads, loomed near enough the grumbler to make him skulk back toward the hull and set his holystone to the weedy planks. “You, Diccolo, should be keenest of all to keep the hull clean—” Conan growled at the offender “—so it will feel smooth and pleasant against your skin when I keelhaul you under it!”

  None of the others seemed inclined to take up the argument. After wetting their craws from the common water-flasks, they resumed work, with Conan diligently criticizing their labour to keep them at it. Olivia, meanwhile, found a shady spot well away from the crew’s scrutiny. She combed out her long black hair and busied herself mending ship’s tackle and the goods and garments obtained in the pirating trade.

  When the time came to turn the vessel on its other side, Conan helped his crew manhandle the keel over. He then hoisted the wizened pirate-priest, Yorkin, bodily on his shoulder. The toothless elder cut-throat, thus borne up, ritually touched up the all-seeing eyes painted on the ship’s bows above the waterline.

  When the scraping was near complete, Conan dispatched a keen-eyed lookout up over the sandy headland. The man was Juwala, a mahogany-coloured Keshan with pale, ornamental scars patterned across his face and chest. In moments he returned, his voice thick and deep with urgency. “There is a ship offshore, Conan. A wide-bellied merchantman, a Turanian cog by the look of her. She has rounded the southern reef and stands well out from the coast.”

  At his words, an exultant murmur spread among the pirates.

  “A ship, by Dagon’s teeth! A fat trader!”

  “’Tis blades, then—the oar blade and the cutlass!”

  “Alas,” Diccolo bellyached, “our so-called captain keeps kept us here doing slaves’ work when we should be out farming the waves!”

  “Aye, ploughing them up with our sharp keel,” old Yorkin’s rough voice chanted, “and fertilizing them with merchant’s blood!”

  “Just what I did not want,” Conan growled at them “—you pack
of starveling curs racing out to frighten off our prey before she worked far enough downwind! I saw the ship at mid-morn, but I said nothing of it. Better to keep you toiling, and save us a stem chase!” He strode among the men, shoving and buffeting them about the shoulders. “Come, dogs, now is the time! Launch this little fox-bitch of ours, and we’ll hook into that merchant or run ashore trying us both! Shove hearty, lads,” he cried, laying his shoulder against the keel. “Give us a heave, now, and again, a heave!”

  In moments the Vixen was afloat, her keel scuffing the sand of the estuary, her red-painted eyes sloping sinister as she floated free. Olivia came along at a run, bringing with her a bundle of cordage and silken finery. Conan caught her up and boosted her over the prow, pulling himself close after. While others scrambled aboard, the captain and his mistress picked their way aft across the twenty-odd rowers’ benches, amid crewmen cursing and jostling to fit their oars between the thole-pins.

  “Look alive, now!” At last Conan sprang onto the quarterdeck, the swaying planks resilient under his sandal-soles. “Oarsmen ready!” Seizing hold of one of the long steering-sweeps whose pivots flanked the narrow cabin, he dipped its blade and agilely began plying it, turning the hull sidewise underfoot. “Olivia, fetch your flute, girl, and pipe us a tune! Ivanos, tell off the biggest rogues to man the boat-poles.”

  The burly lieutenant and several of the larger pirates had already anticipated Conan’s order. The Vixen, propelled by the snub ends of poles against the sandy bottom, already gained way in the shallow lagoon. At the bow, a pair of poles-men stood ready to fend the ship off sandbars; Conan, meanwhile, plied his sweep strongly enough to steer the craft and drive it forward as well.

  “Steady, now,” the Cimmerian ordered. “Keep under way, but no more speed till we cross the outer bar.” Along the seaward beach, dense, shrubby trees gave place to sculptured dunes; these presently dwindled to a windblown, brushy sandspit ending in a stretch of weed-draped, tilting rock spires. The Vixen slid forward easily before the thrusting poles, with forty dry oars poised over the lapping brine on either hand. Conan felt the first sea-swell lift the craft, scraping its keel against rough coral sand. He leaned against his steering-sweep, bending its long shank with his weight; then wave-tops began splashing in over the bow, and he bellowed commands.

  “Oarsmen ready—stroke! Bravely, you sea-skites, stroke! Keep together and carve this surf. Stroke! Poles inboard, and man oars! Ivanos, take the port helm.” Conan plied his long oarloom overhead, his muscle-corded body flexing like an elm in a gale as his lieutenant hurriedly unlimbered the second steering-oar. “Keep the bows steady against this chop and we’ll soon be seaborne.” The captain ceased calling the rowers’ stroke; in his stead, a shrill, rhythmic piping took up the tempo. Olivia, at Conan’s order, had fetched her silver syrinx out of the cabin. With ankles tucked beneath her, and the hood of her gown puffing in the fitful breeze, she knelt at the break of the deck, blowing across the gleaming wedge of pipes with pursed, expert lips. The tune throbbed sweetly and steadily, with only the faintest overtone of the orgiastic gaiety associated with such music in the western hills.

  Olivia’s service as aeoliolite for the chase was a rare pleasure, and Conan appreciated it even as he laboured. Her music and her womanly good looks kept the attention of the oarsmen far better than the charms of old Yorkin, who usually performed the office with his Brythunian bone flute.

  Steering became surer as the last of the cresting waves surged along the starboard side, dousing the rowers in turn. The pirates toiled over low sea-swells, straining unevenly and cursing as their oar blades were dragged under or spewed aloft by coiling waters. But they pulled with fierce energy; those few who could tear their eyes from Olivia gazed over their shoulders at the sight, even more tempting, that was in Conan’s view: a sleek, round merchant vessel, red-painted, with touches of gilt at bow and stem, idling northward toward them under slack-bellied square sails.

  The cog, though well offshore, was already putting about to gain sea-room. Before the pirates’ yearning eyes, the angle of her three masts changed; ivory sails shivered uncertainly before drinking in the new, tauter breeze. The vessel’s lookouts and officers could have little doubt of the intent of a small, heavily manned craft putting out to intercept them along this wild coast. On a sea as broad and treacherous as the Vilayet, shipping almost universally hugged the shore or kept within sight of well-known islands; as a result, this whole south-eastern coastline had become a noted hunting ground, both of pirates and for them. Yet here was no low, well-armed Imperial pirate-chaser, but a fat and tempting prize.

  Luckily for their chances, the midday breeze remained slack even here on open water. And the sailing ship, having come so far downwind, did not dare run any closer inshore; she could only tack obliquely out to sea. Her sailing speed on that course was limited, and Conan judged her power under oars to be scant or non-existent.

  “Ivanos, work your sweep thus! Starboard rowers, feather oars... hold them in, aye, four... five strokes! Enough idling now, back to work, you miserable dogs! Olivia, pipe us slow courage for the long haul!”

  The effect of Conan’s order, rowing with port oars only and side-paddling vigorously with the stem sweeps, was to shift the galliot’s course to intercept the merchant some way out along her new tack. The sea-waves now ran low and even alongside, offering no resistance to the Vixen's high-stemmed hull, and seldom even casting spray in over her bows. The pirates, encouraged by the steady, resolute tempo of Olivia’s fluting, toiled ably. They only occasionally burst out in yelping, hooting eagerness, like a wolf-pack baying after the haunches of a weary stag.

  The wind held, unfortunately, and the chase stretched out to seaward. The hazy sky deepened about them, the high sun showing off the Vilayet’s blue-green sparkling depths. The Hyrkanian coast dwindled behind to a line of white breakers, a scatter of pale crystal sand, and a crumpled green tarpaulin of brushy hills. The men began to scowl and curse, swearing vengeance on the cog’s crew if ever they caught them. Ivanos, securing his steering-oar with a line, took the seat of old Yorkin, who then went among the rowers with a bucket to splash seawater over their toiling backs—and, later, to spray fresh water out of the leathern flasks into eager, gaping, yellow-toothed mouths.

  “Save yourselves, rogues! Olivia, pace them slower, lest they waste their strength!” Conan steered the long, true course, plying his sweep watchfully. To raise sail would be useless, since the cog strained seaward with the wind abeam and the little galliot lacked enough keel to work any distance upwind. Watching the sails of the merchant draw slowly nearer, Conan yet wondered if the discipline of his crew would hold... or worse, if the breeze might suddenly freshen, speeding their quarry hopelessly out of reach.

  But the pirates, seeing the merchant draw gradually taller and more splendid alongside, gained in strength rather than losing it. Olivia’s piping gradually, imperceptibly, quickened, lashing them on with carnival abandon; again Conan reminded her to slow down. But at last he joined in, roaring out a traditional pirate chanty to entertain them:

  Row, you misbegotten dogs,

  Row till your backs break!

  Row till your oars crack,

  Row till your gizzards splinter!

  Row till your skin splits off

  And tendons peel like rotten leather.

  Row till your ribs snap

  For your shipmates and the hope of treasure—

  The song had more verses, many more, but Conan was not far into them before a twang and a thud sounded across the narrowing expanse of waves. The merchant evidently mounted a missile thrower on its high stemcastle; a faint whirring sounded high overhead, and a small gout of water kicked up some way off the starboard bow. None of the pirates noticed, or seemed to, since they were facing sternward and craning necks to port, toward the fleeing cog.

  Row across the stinking brine Where your dead brothers palely float,

  The foul broth where they stew and bloat,

&nb
sp; Their mouths agape to call you hellward!

  The second projectile struck just aft of the galliot’s bows with a vibrating blow. The missile was a heavy wooden ballista-bolt: a man-tall, wrist-thick shaft tipped with a square bronze head that pierced, luckily, through one of the oar-benches rather than the hull. By a miracle, none of the densely packed pirates was slain, though Atrox the Kothian howled a wrathful curse as he clutched a gashed shoulder with one massive hand. Oar-stroking was disrupted though the whole for’ard section—by the heavy shaft pinned down to the deck, blocking the swing of nearby oars, and by Atrox’s loose oar dragging in the water. Conan left off chanting and barked orders to clear up the mess, even as he bore heavily onto his steering-sweep to hold the vessel on course.

  The Vixen soon made way with more speed than before as the pirates, offended by what seemed to them a cowardly attack, strove mightily to close the distance between the vessels. At their insistence, the skull-jack—the flag of the Red Brotherhood, a white skull on a black field above crossed red sabres—was run up the mast. They sweated harder at their oars thereafter, their curses and blood oaths drowning out the thin tempo of Olivia’s flute.

  All hands made a show of ignoring the catapult, though bolts still twanged from the cog’s quarterdeck and occasionally hit home. As they drew near, in any case, the projectiles flew in at flatter angles and with less accuracy, merely glancing off the bows or snapping an oar blade in the water. One lucky shot pinned a Corinthian rowdy’s chest to a Gunderman’s belly amidships, while another carried Zagar the Shemite’s head clean away; but these events only served to speed up the oar-stroke, once the bodies were cast overside.

  “Rein in, you mad devils, before you work yourselves to gasping, puking wrecks! Save some strength for the fight ahead!” Conan could see victory slipping away due to his pirates’ indiscipline, or, in truth, their frenzied fear under the wrath of the catapult. He readied himself to wade among his rowers and slow them down with fist-blows.