Conan of the Red Brotherhood Read online

  As they rounded the hillocks of bone, a ship edged into view: the low, sleek penteconter, adrift in the lagoon, her black-and-gilt finish showing up trim in the dark water. No rowers lined the oar-benches; only helmeted Imperials were aboard, and those few seemed intent on doings ashore near the base of the giant tree. They did not turn and see the galliot approach.

  The scene, as it unfolded to the fast-closing pirates, was of a shore party weirdly embattled. Several dozen Turanian marines—no mere oar-crew these, but full-armoured Imperial troops—had been set ashore and were approaching the tree in a tight phalanx. These men had not, most likely, rowed across the Vilayet; they had been ferried in the larger dromon and kept at the peak of their fitness, to take their place on the oar-benches only when the smaller ship began its mission inshore. Now, superbly armed and trained, they moved toward their goal—but found themselves up against a hideous foe.

  Giant black centipede-like things, ponderous relatives of the scourge that had dropped out of the trees onto Conan’s men, blocked their path. These monsters, numbering a dozen and more, exceeded a full-sized warrior in length and girth. Rearing up on their hind sets of legs, they towered over the helmeted troopers. Their supple bodies flexed left and right with swift, darting motions, each one occupying several Turanians at once. The mandibles and leg-talons were proportionally huge and deadly, with the two claws next to the head prehensile and red-tipped, dripping venom. Their hard body-segments provided tight, natural armour against the flailing steel of their attackers.

  The Imperials were caught in a stand-off. Having moved partway up the bone escarpment and found their way barred by the giant creatures, they dared not break formation and rush past for fear of being isolated and dragged down.

  Conan watched one of the Turanians come to grapples with a centipede; the armoured man twisted and thrashed in its grip, unable to swing his sword or to inflict any damage with his dagger. Once the monster’s mouth-parts sank home in the back of the man’s neck, the victim writhed and screamed energetically, his struggles lasting long moments. The centipede pulsed greedily all down its length as if feeding; when at last the trooper fell away, his armour suit rattled and rebounded loosely on the bone scarp, a hollow carapace drained of all living substance.

  Meanwhile, the skeleton force left aboard the penteconter watched rapt, and Conan’s ship quietly closed with them. He steered to ram, but without sufficient speed; at the last moment, he sheered aside, motioning his pirates to draw in oars as the galliot thumped the Imperial ship and scraped to a halt alongside. The impact toppled the men standing in the penteconter, and the pirates, shaken out of their daze, knew at once what to do; they boarded all down the enemy’s length and overwhelmed its crew, making swift and efficient work of the fight with their daggers. In the brief time the affair took, it was doubtful whether anyone ashore noticed the pirates’ victory.

  “Quickly now, dogs, make this ship ready for our escape. But I want two dozen men—you there, amidships— to row the Vixen ashore and help me snatch the treasure!”

  In moments, the galliot nosed in toward the island, steering some distance away from the phalanx of soldiers. As soon as the prow grated on submerged bone, Conan sprang overside and bounded up toward the spectral tree. He saw advantage in being unarmored and light on his feet, especially in contest against enemies already pinned down and distracted in battle. Burdened only with a pirate’s tools—the sword and the sack—he could outrace man or centipede, and the goal was plainly in sight.

  Set in the base of the great tree, in an angular recess resembling an alcove, a cluster of gemlike amber droplets glinted in the wan daylight. Whether they were frozen globules of the dead tree’s ancient sap, or amulets left behind by faithful worshippers, these baubles—hanging in the crevice like a bunch of oversized grapes—were clearly the objects sought after by the invaders and defended by the Guardians. If they were worth lives to either group, they plainly had value; on that theory, Conan made for them with his best speed.

  The going was neither easy nor sure. The bones, brittle on the higher slope, crunched and shifted under his sandalled feet, and the tree’s great roots wound and knotted like frozen serpents, providing uneven footing. When he was partway up the mound, a cry of alarm rose from the embattled Turanians; to Conan’s quick glance, it seemed that the centipedes, too, had taken notice and begun to turn aside.

  Now he was on the spreading base of the tree, leaping across dead bark that felt as course and tough as rhinoceros hide. Ahead rose the bleached, exposed flesh of the trunk, vaster even than it had seemed from below, enfolding the shadowy alcove. Straining his thews to keep up momentum, he sprang into the opening, steadied himself to reach in, and tugged at the hard amber spheres. They were held loosely in place by some tough, fibrous substance. Drawing his scimitar, he swung it wide and struck at the sinewy attachment; the gems pulled free in his hand, adhering together in a loose, rattling cluster, and went into his ready sack. Clenching the loot in one fist and his sword in the other, Conan turned and began leaping and sliding down the precipitous trunk.

  His path was clear. Turanians and Guardians alike neglected their battle; both now moved belatedly to block his path, the centipedes creeping over the loose bones faster by virtue of their many legs. Yet he could make the waiting ship easily, much faster so than he had ascended. He bounded toward it, sliding down slope in places, scattering bones with careless strides in others—until he glimpsed agile movement in the dead branches above him.

  Checking his headlong rush and scrabbling away up-slope, he barely avoided what plummeted into his path: a full-sized, wriggling Guardian, dropping from above as its smaller cousins had done. It shattered dry bones with its impact, then instantly squirmed forward and reared high over him, its broad segments and taloned legs making it a tall, sizeable tree in its own right.

  Raising his scimitar, Conan struck mightily... and could almost feel the heavy blade dulled by the hardness of the monster’s armoured skeleton. Great mandibles, each one longer than Conan’s curved sword, scythed down together at his head, the poison-claws squirting. He ducked and dove aside, fleeing as much from the beast’s bug-eyed hideousness as from its bite.

  Try as he might to win past, the centipede was nimble, cutting off Conan’s lunges with scrapings and clashings of its serrated jaws. Each false effort gave the brother-Guardians and avenging Turanians time to move closer across the slope. Conan, unable to set down his treasure, tried a desperate one-handed overhead slash, straight down between the creature’s gaping pincers. But his blade, rather than splitting the ogreish head, was clamped instantly in lightning-quick jaws. The Cimmerian, clinging to the hilt an instant too long, was borne over backward, with the full wriggling weight of the many-taloned body falling forward on top of him.

  At once he felt himself splashed by gelatinous, foul-reeking ichor; the Guardian twitched massively aside, freeing him of its spiky weight. Its centre segments, Conan saw as he scrambled to his feet, were shattered and transfixed by a long shaft: an arrow from the catapult mounted aboard the Vixen, two of whose pirate crew now leaped and hooted amidships.

  The others waved their captain on, cheering from both ships in the lagoon. Recovering his sword and clutching his stolen gems, Conan dashed down the slope just ahead of the new detachment of clacking, racing centipedes.

  The Turanians, however, now angled down toward the beach. As Conan sprinted for the galliot, the fleetest runner came between him and its bows.

  The two fighters met in a clash of steel. Conan’s downhill speed doubled the power of his stroke and drove the armoured trooper over backward. The Imperial was fitted out in casque, greaves, and hauberk, with plate and chain attachments protecting his extremities; so he climbed to his feet patiently and deliberately, raising his lozenge-shaped shield with the certainty of warding off slashing blows from the heavy blade.

  He could not have expected the long, curved scimitar to dart in under his shield like a light poniard, blindingly
swift, yet powerful enough to drive though chain mail and rib cage alike, burying its point deep in his chest. Savage, piratical desperation, and an arm moulded by death-grapples with northern savages and wild beasts, impelled the stroke that laid the Imperial marine dead in a clatter of armour.

  Even so, others followed close behind. Conan sprang aboard the beached craft—whose half-dozen rowers had begun to push off, resigned to losing both captain and treasure—and instantly turned back to fight his pursuers. Mailed hands seized the bow, pinning the galliot to shore. A second heavy arrow spanged from the catapult, grazing the ship’s prow; it missed the Turanians as well, losing itself ashore in a harmless scatter of bones. Armoured troops now crossed the beach by the dozen, splashing into the water alongside the Vixen. Laying hold of the oar-tholes, they began dragging the stem of the vessel around toward shore. In spite of the heads and fingers Conan managed to crush and sever with his heavy blade, he knew that his boat crew was sorely outnumbered.

  Then at once came a thudding impact astern. The second body of pirates out in the lagoon had finally gotten the captured penteconter under way, and now guided it inshore to aid their brothers and rescue the treasure. But few pirates from the larger ship leaped into the galliot to face the hordes of marines; instead, the movement was backward, the galley crew racing over the benches toward the penteconter to escape. As Conan retreated, he slashed the thick bowstring of the catapult with his scimitar, disabling the weapon.

  As the last of the fugitives abandoned ship, a score of Imperials swarmed over the rocking galliot’s side, their weapons raised to attack. But the pirates stood ready with oars, thrusting the captured vessel clear of the smaller one and stroking to gain speed.

  “Bear to port! Port oars easy, starboard side pull hearty!” Conan barked out his commands even before he had climbed up onto the stemcastle and taken hold of a steering-oar. “Nicely now, dog-brothers, learn the feel of this fine ship.” The oar-crew’s differential stroke had already sent the penteconter out on a broad curve into the lagoon; now with the sweeps, he sculled it in a tighter circle. “To port, aye, again to port. Now both sides, gather speed!”

  The penteconter was a fine ship indeed, more tautly built than the weathered old galliot and much better refined for its special purpose. Placing a hand on one of the heavy hemp cables strung from bow to stem along the rail, Conan felt it hum like the string of a well-tuned zither. The craft gained way rapidly under the crew’s efforts, and the lagoon’s dark water foamed redly in the wake of the oars.

  Most of the Turanians were aboard the galliot readying oars, except for a dozen or so who maintained a last, defensive phalanx on the beach. A few looked up; even if they realized what was happening, there was little they could do. The galliot lay dead in the water, and the penteconter still gathered way as it completed its circle and bore down on them.

  “Now, dogs, all speed forward! Death to Imperial Turan and glory to the Red Brotherhood!”

  The words were scarcely out of Conan’s mouth before the shattering impact occurred. The penteconter’s keen bronze ram drove in through the galliot’s hull. The blow knocked some Turanians off their benches, others clean overside.

  “Now, sea-dogs, backwater oars! Push, I say, before they grab hold and try to board! Aye, there’s the way, shove off! Let them row a swamped ship for their oar-drill! Let them mend her hull with grass and bones, if they can— they will not be racing after our stem! And what a send-off their leggy friends are giving them!”

  Indeed, the enormous centipedes that had continued to harry the Turanian rearguard now flopped and writhed across the beach to the water’s edge. The last Imperial troopers, retaining their three-sided defensive phalanx, waded backward into the lagoon. Some threw off helmets and armour to join their comrades who sat or clung aboard the half-sunken galliot. It could be poled or rowed to one of the grass islets to be repaired, Conan judged. Whether the hellish Guardians would enter the water or drop from the outermost branches of the death-tree was something he had no wish to wait and learn.

  “Steady oars, now. Yorkin, pipe us a tune! With a new ship and treasure in our poke, it’s homeward for us! Diccolo, shinny up the mast and spy out our way to the open sea!”

  VIII

  Sea-Trials

  Mild sun warmed the harbour at Aghrapur. It blazoned the bright angular sails of dhows, dahabiyahs, and merchant cogs out in the seaway, lending the Navy yard an aspect of vigorous, bustling activity. The scene was a rare one, for this was a day of sea-trials and contest a-judgement. The docks and breakwaters buzzed with silk-clad crowds of influential spectators—male and female alike, the men fezzed or turbaned according to their station. All were eager to see the emperor’s prize awarded; many had gold or silver of their own staked on the outcome through unofficial side bets.

  Alaph the alchemist shared in the excited preparation. At rare moments he even dared hoped that he might win a portion of the gold—though of course, the more distinguished seers would precede him in demonstrating their innovations. He felt nervous at the prospect of testing his device before such a distinguished audience; Emperor Yildiz himself was said to be in attendance, sheltering with some of his harem-wives and high counsellors in a canopied pavilion set up along the main wharf. His royal son Yezdigerd, the contest’s guiding spirit, had been glimpsed as well, strolling though the yards in the company of Nephet Ali and the other administrators.

  The one unhappy circumstance—though in fact, Alaph guessed, it might be regarded as good fortune by some of the competitors—was the unaccounted absence of the prophet Crotalus. The black mage, as inscrutable and arrogant as befit his reputation in the court of Aghrapur, had sailed off into the Vilayet a fortnight before, at the project’s very commencement. With him had gone a low, swift penteconter and a well-fitted dromon of the Imperial line, as well as crack oar-crews and a squad of elite marines— now all of them vanished without a trace in the hazy east.

  Their course had been a risky one, straight across the trackless sea beyond sight of land. A blinding storm, a fog, or a mere navigational error could have delayed them many days. That was self-evident, even if one discounted the coastal sailors’ superstitious warnings of floating sargassos and sudden, bottomless whirlpools on the high Vilayet—which menaces, after all, the arch-wizard Crotalus should have been able to deal with better than any ordinary man.

  More to the point, in Alaph’s judgement, the squadron had steered far outside the normal shipping routes, where their distress could have been observed and help offered. So they might reappear at any time, in his view. Imperial ships and troops were tough and resourceful, however untried their commander. They had not been given up as lost, but were still sought after by the empire’s whole wide-ranging fleet.

  In any event, rumour said, it had been deemed unwise to postpone the sea-trials until Crotalus’s return. After all, why call more public attention to what might yet become a famous sea tragedy? Debate and recrimination within the Admiralty and the Court had been firmly silenced, and a festive face put on the gathering. If Crotalus had forfeited the prize by his tardiness, why, so much the better.

  Alaph, feverishly preparing for his own exhibition, was scarcely able to give heed as the Corinthian sage Zalbuvulus began displaying his work. The alchemist knew of it only when the expectant chatter of the crowd on the docks suddenly fell silent and heads turned toward the gate of the Naval Garrison. Of a sudden, the dockyard resounded with a familiar drumbeat, its steady thump scattering ragged echoes off walls, pilings, and ships’ hulls.

  Looking up from his work-crew’s bustle, Alaph glimpsed a long double file of near-naked men—specially drilled rowers, decently breach clouted for this public expedition—marching out along the main dock.

  The clever baker’s-boy knew something of the Corinthian philosopher’s highly innovative ideas. It would have been difficult not to, because for a fortnight past, the sound of bronze drums had throbbed continuously from the basement of the nearby jail.

>   There, by some form of spell-casting or conjuration, Zalbuvulus had worked to mould a hundred-odd convicts, captives, and pressed men into the perfect rowing crew. During that period, they had been induced to toil, eat, breathe, sleep, and perform every other action in unison, in time to steady, relentless drumming. Their hearts, it was rumoured, followed the drumbeats as well; if the rhythm were to falter or cease for any length of time, they would all topple over dead. Employing shaven-headed Vendhyan drummers in shifts, the dour Corinthian had himself spent long hours with the rowers in their lock-up and afloat, training in the harbour; Alaph did not doubt that the philosopher’s stem personal manner, his steady, compelling gaze, and his powerful will had much to do with the evident success of the crew’s conditioning.

  That their discipline impressed the crowd was evident. Marching out along the dock and into their waiting bireme, the Autarch, led by their lean, white-robed master, the rowers trudged to the drumbeat in perfect accord, showing no discordant hint of individual identity. Zalbuvulus himself signalled approval with a satisfied twitch of his fierce grey moustache and eyebrows. Later, as the ship cast off and pulled away to sea, Alaph heard appreciative cheers; the trial crew’s performance at the oars was evidently flawless. The alchemist had to acknowledge a twinge of dismay at his rival’s instant popularity.

  A display of inshore manoeuvring. was also well received; the ship’s only baulkiness seemed to be in medium turns, when half of the crew was called on to stop rowing while the other half laboured. to the drumbeat. But even so, the trials seemed to go off well; Alaph overheard a pair of turbaned courtiers speculating whether such drum-conditioning might be applied to land infantry as well, or even to slaves and Imperial subjects in their daily tasks. Alaph secretly dreaded the prospect, because of the noise it would make.

  Once the bireme set out across the harbour on a lengthy endurance run, its drumbeat dwindling rapidly over the blue-green wavelets, attention shifted elsewhere—to Tam-bur Pasha in particular, and the wide-bellied galley he had fitted out to test his improvements to sail power. As the craft was paddled out of its slip by bright-vested slaves, a new murmur of acclaim passed around the crowd lining the docks.