Conan the Outcast Read online

  Although the low rocky mounds marking the end of the valley looked near to hand, it took Conan the remainder of the day to reach them. Such was the way of the desert... where mirages, real and illusory, appeared over vast distances without warning, sending shimmering lakes and phantom cities to tempt more wayfarers to their deaths than any siren’s song on the shoaling sea.

  Once Conan’s mount breasted the earthen slope formed by the last clotted hillocks of the Blood of Attalos range, a new prospect greeted him—one that was, if anything, more barren and desolate than the landscape he had just traversed. While the valley behind him appeared to be the bed of an ancient dead sea—which, in the sunset, swirled with the chaos of another dust-storm like the one that had started the day—the terrain ahead mirrored nothing more than the pale barrenness of a gaunt crescent moon which now leered down on it from a sky purpling to cobalt.

  The plain stretched dead flat in the dimness, from the near-vertical base of the northern mountains to the scarified jaws that sustained Zhafur’s Fangs in the distance. Across the waste, shards and monoliths were scattered like fragments of stone idols crushed and hurled down by a giant’s hand. In the near distance, along the base of the Desolation chain, lay what looked like the ruin of a city long toppled and abandoned. And nearer yet, in the lower pediment of the mountains, spread a dark fringe of vegetation. There, where jumbled boulders choked the entry of a narrow gorge, might be water.

  From the scant description he had been offered, Conan knew it must be the oasis of Tal’ib, the City in the Waste. Urging his camel toward it, he sensed that the beast approved of his choice, as it lumbered forward with a quickened gait.

  Even so, as rider and mount drew up under the massive dark haunch of mountains, night overtook them. No gale blew here, mercifully. There were only a last few eerie patches of radiance as the sun lit the bellies of clouds high in the heavens.

  Conan headed straight for the canyon mouth, and was not long in finding promising signs— blackish-green palm fronds glinting from crevices of jumbled stones, and soon afterward a pebbled stream splashing through the open. Finding a flat space in the mouth of the gorge, a spot safe from the overhanging cliffs and hedged in with plentiful forage for his camel, Conan gathered up dry twigs and kindled a campfire.

  The city ruins—faint as they appeared, with scarcely one stone standing atop another—lay some distance downstream on the spreading plain. Conan resolved that any exploration of them could wait for daylight. This steam had obviously been the source of water for the former city; it ran down from a mountain gorge choked with rubble from landslides. There was no sign of current habitation—not even marks of visitation by caravans or herders. Yet the water ran plentiful, cool from its passage through the depths of the boulder-choked chasm. The reason for its disuse, Conan speculated, must be some dark taint of fear associated with the ancient city. By making camp so far upstream of the ruins, Conan hoped to avoid it.

  A hot porridge of groats and stewed figs tasted better, or at least different, than the same ingredients eaten dry—especially when chased down with plentiful gulps of water. Thus sated, Conan lay himself down between the fire and his camel. Doubling his blankets against the chill draft that poured from the canyon, he went to sleep.

  It was late, well after the fire had died and the thin shard of moon had followed the sun down in the west, that the sleeper was disturbed by furtive noises. Scratchings, these were—scuffings, and an odd, rasping whisper that stood out briefly against the mumbling of the stream.

  Awake instantly, Conan made no sudden move. Grasping the hilt of his long knife beside him, he flexed first his neck and then his whole body where he lay, trying to gain a glimpse of the intruders.

  Judging by the smell, they could have been sheep. He could make them out, low forms ambling toward him under furry, rumpled backs that reflected only the thinnest fringes of starlight. Conan half expected to hear baaing at any moment, or the scrape of cloven hooves on pebbles... but he did not, and there was something strangely purposeful in the way these shapes flowed into and around his camp.

  Suddenly his camel was roused from its huddled sleep. Hissing and spraying angrily, it unfolded its long legs and commenced heaving itself upright. Two or three of the hunched beings were already around the beast, harrying it in a most unsheeplike way; as they strove to pull it back down to earth, the creatures straightened up into near-erect, two-legged postures.

  Conan rolled from his bed, swung his heavy knife overhead and slashed the knotted halter rope, allowing the camel to lunge free of its attackers. He sprang up to face the marauders, who responded with slavering, jabbering snarls and swiftly fanned out around him.

  Hunched, apelike beings they were, robed in filthy hides bound about their middles. Their musty stink wafted to Conan more sickeningly, now that it contained the scent of fear. Human they might be—in some degree, judging by their cooperation and half-verbal sputterings. It appeared, too, that under their stolen hides they were at least partly hairless. They stood armed, bearing sticks or stones and, in a few cases, the two lashed together in the form of a crude ax.

  The dim outlines of the faces, where visible under their ragged, hooded robes, looked vaguely monkeyish. But in the faint starlight, the lower parts of their faces were rendered shapeless by a hideous length and profusion of teeth. These glinted at unnatural angles, protruding from their slack mouths and even from ill-healed ruptures in the skin of their cheeks and jaws.

  The camel had stilted away, fending off its pursuers with savage kicks and bites; the rest of the ape-things now turned their feral attention toward Conan. In defence., he snatched up his woollen blanket, whipping it over his forearm as a makeshift shield. When several of the marauders rushed at him, he raised his muffled arm to fend off the blow of a club, kicked one in the vitals, and jabbed his blade into another, sending it reeling back clutching its side. He drove in close to the wily ax-wielder, striking the creature a stunning blow on the skull with the hilt of his knife.

  The other ape-things, undeterred by his show of force, surged about him in a clutching, snarling mob. Some hurled stones with savage recklessness, striking their own fellows more than their dodging, elusive quarry. Jagged nails tore at Conan’s hair and clothing, raking his skin with a clutch that felt strangely heavy and tenacious. Hideous fanged visages leered and gibbered in the starlight, blowing foul carrion breath in his face.

  An ax was raised in a pale hand to strike at his head; in the dimness he sensed that the fingers wrapped around its haft were many, far too many. He struck at it with his blade, shearing through the handle and some of the fingers—but those remaining, jerked away in pain, were still more than a normal hand possessed.

  Desperate blows, kicks, and slashes of his long knife bought Conan a momentary respite; yet dozens of the creatures still stalked him, the females surging in to the attack as viciously as the males.

  He realized he couldn't hold them off much longer, and for once he was weary of killing. Darting low, he snatched up his waterskins and saddlebags from beside the dead fire. He took off at a run, heading downstream in the direction his camel had gone. An ape-thing loomed up to head him off in the dim light, then another; each in turn was felled by a glancing stroke of his knife. He ran clumsily, his pouches and near-empty flasks jolting and sloshing against his knees; but in a while he sensed that his attackers were far behind him.

  Stopping to listen, he heard no sounds of pursuit. Occasional snarls and chitterings echoed from the camp; but around him the brushy desert and high slopes were peaceful, outlined in faint starlight.

  Conan guessed that the hunched, deformed things would have difficulty overtaking him. Likely they lived in the fallen rocks up-canyon and shunned the open desert. Even so, he walked some distance in the stream, hoping to confuse them in case they were capable of tracking him by scent.

  As he emerged from the looming canyon walls there was more starlight. By its glow he easily found his camel, browsing in the ric
h forage alongside the stream. Managing to catch the skittish beast's halter rope, he led it further away from the danger.

  Having abandoned most of his food in a meal sack at camp, he scarcely felt like killing a dozen more of the ape-things to win it back. It might hold them off, in any event, for food had surely been the object of their attack. And if they were ready to devour him, human-like as they were, then quite likely they now feasted on the remains of their own fellows whom he had slain or wounded. That, and battling over the spoils, would account for the faint shrieks and sputterings that still echoed down from the canyon.

  These were no apes of any breed Conan had seen before. And if indeed their forebears had been human, they must have fallen a long way. They might be the age-old inhabitants of this ruined city, or of the savage race that destroyed it—but in his heart Conan knew that no such abject creatures could raze a city, much less raise one.

  He wondered what force had laid them so low—deprived them of human wisdom and arrogance, stricken them to a shambling crouch like baboons, and rendered hideous their faces, their hands, and Crom knew what more of their anatomy. An evil sorcery, or mayhap the same power that had levelled the city?

  Its ruins now spread not far ahead, glowing palely radiant under the broad dome of starlight. Not wanting to venture too close lest he awaken some other nocturnal horror, Conan settled himself and his camel in an open space away from the stream. He used his Ilbarsi knife to hack off dry shrubs near the ground, ringing the camp with them so that it would be difficult to approach noiselessly. Then he lay down beside his camel, pillowing his head on his few remaining possessions, and sank into a fitful, wary sleep.

  XII

  The City in the Waste

  Conan was abroad before dawn. After scouting the nearby desert, he crept upstream and paid a visit to his former camp. Circling it cautiously, he found no ape-things, living or dead; just a few chewed, bloodied pieces of his lost clothing and gear.

  Now that he looked closer in the dusky light, he could see signs of the creatures’ habitual presence—a trodden path here, a dried spoor or gnawed camel bone there. Turning his attention to the jumbled rocks of the upper gorge, he decided it must be the beasts’ lair. The tumbled monoliths and the crawlspaces between them would make a wretched dwelling place, but at the same time a formidable one. There was no telling what might already be watching him from the weedy crevices of the pile; the thought deterred him from exploring further.

  Returning downstream, he filled his water bags and fastened the scant but adequate remainder of his belongings to the back of his camel. Morning sandstorms in the eastward valley shrouded the low sun, washing the barren plain and the high slopes around it in a smouldering copper-pink light. In this eerie ambience, before the heat could rise, Conan set out to examine the ruined city.

  From the brush-dotted knolls overlooking the ruin, it did not resemble any dead city Conan had ever seen. Most of these started with straggling mounds of rubble at the outskirts and rose gradually through more massive, enduring ruins toward some natural height or man-made fortress near the centre. But here stood no such prominence. The ancient wall was visible, a low ridge of masonry girdling the tract in a roughly circular shape; the only sizeable mounds of rubble lay just inside it. At its centre, instead of the massive walls of palace, temple, and granary one would look for in a city of any size, there stretched a level space, so flat and featureless it almost looked glazed over.

  Of course, Conan reminded himself, the nearby city of Qjara had a paved open plaza at its heart, and a spacious caravan quarter within its compass. This place might reflect a similar tendency of the residents to wall in open spaces—where perhaps they dwelt in tents, nomad-fashion, or raised cattle in open kraals. Such was possible for a people as remote and time-lost as the builders of this ancient pile— yet it seemed unlikely.

  The very existence and site of the place suggested a thriving agriculture. It stood at the edge of the flat, spreading valley bottom, with the ancient course of the mountain river passing through its outskirts. Around and below the city, the stream must surely have been diverted through canals to water a large expanse of orchards, pastures and grain fields outside the wall.

  Now in the yellow-lit distance, only a few faint ditches remained as vestiges of cultivation. The stream, displaced by the rubble of the wall, trickled through a shallow rocky wash it had dug along one side of the ruin. Thereafter it spread in branching channels to dissipate and die in the barren, thirsty desert.

  Urging his beast forward, Conan kept a watchful eye for ape-things, or worse haunters of the forsaken place. But there was little cover here, only scrubby grass and ankle-high shrubs clinging to the meagre shade of roughly squared stones. The footings and rubble mounds themselves were so low they afforded no concealment.

  Along the ring of wall, Conan vaguely hoped to find an arch or a gatepost. Such a monument might identify the city; it might even display carvings or graffiti that told its history—such as, whether its former occupants were human.

  But in this he was disappointed. The wall at its loftiest was less than Conan's height sitting atop his camel—and by some circumstance, its rubble all seemed to have toppled outward. The low, trailing piles were choked with dust and sand of centuries, leaving no visible sample of the stone-masonry that must, judging by its massiveness, have been skilled.

  Regarding the name of the place, Conan could make a rough guess. The nomads called it Tal’ib, after all; and from his experience of eastern Shem, a tal or tel was a mound or ruin. So it could simply mean the ruins of lb, or some such cognomen—come to think on it, in tales murmured around camp fires, had he not heard whispers of an ancient city named lb? Or more properly, Yb, pronounced with the sneering southern inflection. An accursed place, according to legend, stricken by the hand of an angry god for its sinful, faithless ways. If any place fit that description, this was it. On seeing a path of clotted rubble over the hummock of city wall, Conan dismounted and led his camel across.

  He was surprised to find the inner face of the wall in a somewhat less ruined state. Here, vertical surfaces of finished stone stood to the height of a man. Here, too, were the intact remnants of stone carving Conan sought, though not resembling any frieze or relief he had ever seen.

  The surviving decorations were human figures carved in a graceful, natural-looking style—so natural, indeed, that they gave Conan a shiver of surprise. They were human, undeniably: ordinary townsfolk engaged in dance or stylized ritual. There was a young woman clad in a loose chiton; her arms were raised, her hands poised before her face in an attitude of frolic or worship. From a short distance away a robed man leaned toward her, reaching to embrace her in play or dance. At her feet, a small dog leaped with two of its paws in the air. A few paces further a child paused at play, seated on the ground, hands likewise raised to its face.

  The shapes, even as eroded by centuries on the worn, square-jointed stonework, were vivid and natural. Obviously they were carved by the hand of a highly skilled artisan. What seemed strange was that they were mere outlines, flat silhouettes lacking any fuller embellishment of faces, costumes, or even the completion of limbs where they overlapped the bodies. To Conan it almost seemed that shadows of living people might have been traced on the wall with chalk, then immortalized there with hammer and chisel; but this idea was disproved, on further reflection, by the leaping positions of man and dog, whose fluid motions could never have been traced so quickly and unerringly by human hands.

  No, undeniably it was the work of a master craftsman, transcribing from keen memory, then engraving his sketch with finely-honed skill. As for the details, such as faces—likely these had once been painted onto the carved outlines, or sculpted into soft mortar that had since worn away without a trace.

  The only further peculiarity was that, rather than chiselling his design into the stone wall, the sculptor had let his figures stand out in deep, uniform relief, cutting away instead all the surrounding space represent
ing open air.

  This was unaccountable to Conan, because it involved so much more work—that of chipping away the broad and, to his eye, wasted stone surface around the figures. In any reliefs he had seen before, there would have been more objects: suns and moons, dragons, or graven mottos to fill in the space and save the workers’ thews and chisel-points.

  In all, this was a form of expression Conan was unused to... and like any great art, it bordered uncomfortably on sorcery. Turning from it in the smouldering light, he led his camel away. Try to shrug it off as he might, some part of his primitive soul was secretly convinced that he had viewed mortal spirits frozen forever by a magic spell, their living shadows burned eternally into dead stone.

  Moving on past the wall, it was easy to believe in such curses; for here the city itself seemed to have been burned away to nothingness. No vegetation grew within its ragged perimeter, and what foundations remained were little more than knee-high, giving the impression of having been scorched or blasted by some tremendous force; the fire that accompanied the fall of the city must have been intense. A few remnants standing toward the city's centre were fused, hanging down in crusts of ashy-dark slag, or frothed with brittle glass bubbles like the waste of a kiln. Where intact, the stoutest thresholds and cornerstones yet flaked away their substance at Conan’s touch, or at the idle scuff of his sandalled foot.

  A little further, and even these frail remnants were passed; the site stretched away in a hard, stony-smooth depression that seemed to merge with the featureless desert beyond. There was but one exception: near what seemed to be the centre of the devastation a lone monument stood, a jagged monolith. Toward it, across the almost-slippery black glass, Conan led his camel. His shadow and the beast’s were long and spectral in the eerie pinkish light, and the stone’s stretched an equal length, pointing westward like the finger of a sundial.