Conan the Outcast Page 14

  Arriving at its base, he saw that it rested atop the slaty ground. It must have been hewn roughly to shape, dragged here and set upright some time after the city’s fall; otherwise it could hardly have survived the comprehensive destruction that levelled all else.

  The obelisk bore a single inscription: not words, but a figure. It was that of a tree, or something resembling one, with twisted roots and a thick, straight trunk. Its wavy branches bore not foliage, but a number of round, bulbous fruits. These were seamed and gnarled, possibly meant to have human faces or mouths, it was hard to tell. The symbol was deeply etched, and whitened to stand out against the black stone of the monolith.

  Was it done by taloned, apelike hands, Conan wondered—hands gifted with an unnatural surplus of fingers? It hardly seemed possible, in view of the fineness of the task, not to mention the cutting, hauling, and raising of the stone.

  The petroglyph was evidently some kind of religious symbol, possibly that of the ancient city’s god. As such it made Conan uneasy, and he turned away from it. Commanding his camel to kneel, he climbed onto the brute’s back and urged it westward, in search of an unchoked pass through the Mountains of Desperation.

  The ruins of Yb, it such they were, soon lay well behind. As the sun rose hot on Conan’s back and the cryptic dark flank of mountains unfolded before him, the mystery of the city’s doom faded in his mind. This first canyon looked too shallow to pierce through the mountain chain, he decided; that one ahead could prove more promising, once the view opened out a little more....

  And yet, before he had found a route that looked passable for himself and his plodding beast, a new distraction arose. Away across the desert, vanishing and reappearing from moment to moment in the shimmering heat, he spied a procession. Afoot, they appeared to be, but grouped around a central object or vehicle that served as the focus of their efforts. Conan hoped at first that they were a northbound caravan; but their route, it soon became clear, bore eastward through the valley, opposite to his own. In any case, their slow pace and the size of their burden made it unlikely that they meant to tackle the northern mountains.

  Whoever they were, they did not look dangerous. He approached them openly with the eager, involuntary elation any lone traveller feels at the chance to meet and talk with his fellow humans. If nothing else, he told himself, they might let him expend the small remainder of his money to replace some of his missing food and gear. And yet, as he drew nearer, he began to see that they were in far worse shape than he was.

  They were bent and starved, for one thing, burnt scarlet or scabbed black where their ragged, filthy clothing furnished incomplete protection against the fierce sun. Some toiled barefoot over the hot, glaring alkali; others were bareheaded, their scalps so badly scorched that only a few straggling wisps of hair remained to shade them. The bulk of the unfortunates, two score or more, toiled at ropes and levers to trundle forward a heavy six-wheeled conveyance.

  The wheels were of thick rounded planks, paired in caissons made fast to a long, unwieldy, shrouded bundle. A scant dozen guards walked free, though themselves heavily burdened with food sacks and dry, stiff waterskins. Among the whole party there were no pack or saddle animals; camels, in any case, would never have let themselves be harnessed together as draft animals, and horses would not have survived. The ferrying of such a massive burden across the desert required human drays, nothing less.

  As Conan’s camel bore him into earshot, the piteous pleas of the toilers could be heard, rasping forth from parched throats via lips split and husked thickly with thirst. "Water, fine sir! In the name of the Almighty One, a sip of water, please Milord, or a rind of fruit! We thirst, O Master, we die! Show mercy on us, we beg you!” As he halted his camel some dozen paces from the procession, the pilgrims let their wheeled burden rumble to a halt, sinking to their knees with exhaustion and raising their arms in feeble supplication.

  Here, then, was the situation he had feared— and yet by Crom’s grace he had a full stock of water, enough to soothe the thirst of each and every sufferer, if only temporarily. Untying his water bags—all but a half-empty one for himself—he lowered them to the ground beside his camel.

  One of the party, a tall, thin black man who had walked ahead of the others, came forward to meet him. He did not cringe or beg, but walked with the air of a leader—a priest, Conan guessed to himself. Two of the armed guards, moving as fast as their obvious fatigue would allow, came forward to flank him.

  “Greetings, wayfarers,” Conan called down to them. "You can share out my water, since you are in such dire need of it.” He waited in vain for some expression of thanks. "A goodly source of water lies but a day's walk from here,” he essayed again. "With luck, all of your party can make it.”

  The priest looked from the water bags to Conan. He spoke in the desert trade dialect, southern-accented. “The water will help,” he said with an odd flatness of intonation. "You say there are springs between here and Qjara?”

  Something about the man’s question vexed Conan—as if he did not know the distance involved, or the number of oases, and did not care to. He must indeed by a priest, trusting his own life and those of his hapless followers to the whims of a fickle god. He was barefoot and hat-less, his clothing just as scant and ragged as that of his flock—a zealot, no doubt. Conan had never before seen a black man whose skin was sun-scorched and peeling. The only token of rank he wore was the old, corroded hilt of a knife, dangling from a thong around his neck. A useless weapon, its blade a mere rusted stub; it must be a holy relic, Conan decided.

  Impressively, the southerner made not the slightest move toward the water. Now, at a nod of his head, the guards took up the water bags and bore them back toward the waiting sufferers.

  "No, stranger,” Conan finally rasped to him, "there are not nearly enough springs to water you to Qjara. The Stork Wadi is dry, strewn with the bones of fools who staked their lives on it. Yon dead city—” he jerked his head back toward the simmering east—"is abrim with water, but haunted by demon-apes who devour wayfarers. I must needs return there now, to replenish myself—I would suggest that you do the same. Rest and fill yourselves there, but keep careful watch—and then head back to wherever you came from.”

  The black priest did not shake his head, did not even blink. "We shall continue to Qjara.”

  Conan shrugged impatiently. "Very well, then, if you think your people can bear the hardship. Rest up first, travel late and early, and lie under canopies at highest noon. Of course, you will not be able to drag this... whatever it is.” He waved at the shrouded, wheeled behemoth in the toilers’ midst. “You may as well abandon it right here.”

  “It is a sacred object; we shall bring it along with us," the priest declared flatly. “Tell me... you seem to know the desert, and the road to eastward. What is your name?”

  “Conan, of Cimmeria. And yours?”

  “I am Khumanos, Exalted Priest of the Temple of Votantha, from the city of Sark in the southern desert. I find myself in need of a scout. Do you know Qjara?”

  Conan sat cagily atop his camel. “Indeed, Khumanos, I am fresh from there. I know the place and know aught of your mission, as well. But now I am bound for Shadizar.” He shook his head in grave dubiety. “Impoverished as you are, I hardly think you can make it worth my while to guide you back the long, weary way I have already come—”

  “Why did you leave Qjara, Conan of Cimmeria?"

  “I told you, I am headed north.” Swallowing the obvious question of why he was so far west of the city instead, he continued, “I was unable to wait and join a caravan because of some peculiar business involving a priest of their local goddess. Sheer nonsense, I trow! By a fluke of their temple law I was bidden to leave, and my pride would not let me do otherwise—”

  "Enough. Sergeant Astrak...” Without taking his eyes from Conan, Khumanos snapped two fingers back over his shoulder toward his followers. A stout, helmeted man, carrying dusty canvas bags counterbalanced across both shoulders,
detached himself from the mob near the water bottles and jogged forward. “The gems,” the priest specified as he arrived.

  Fumbling in one of his sacks, the sergeant produced a wooden casket. After turning the latch he cracked it open—to reveal its bright silver-lined interior, heaped with roughly formed jewels that blazed greenly in the piercing daylight.

  “Ahem,” Conan hedged, trying not to seem overly impressed, “I never saw such stones before. I suppose you mean to tell me they are of some value—”

  "All the jewels you can grasp in one hand,” Khumanos interrupted him. “That will be your reward, once you see this idol safely into Qjara.” At a nod of the exalted priest’s shaven head, the soldier snapped the casket shut and returned it to the sack.

  “Well, now,” Conan reasoned aloud. "If I come as your guide, the pedants of the One True Goddess can hardly turn me away.”

  Khumanos regarded him evenly. “You will be an envoy in the pay of King Anaximander of Sark, a servant of the Temple of Votantha. Your place is assured by a solemn compact made between the kings of Sark and Qjara.”

  "I see." Serene in his place atop the camel, Conan felt in no hurry to accept. Certainly this was no shining opportunity, helping yet another arrogant priest and his miserable herd manhandle their holy fetish across this infernal waste, with gems of unproven value as the prize. Yet, on the other hand, he could hardly relish the prospect of a lone trek over these barren mountains with inadequate food, clothing, and bedding. However wretched this band might be, they would certainly fare better with his help than under this Khumanos’s heedless captaincy. From their standpoint it would be a kindness, an act of mercy—at the end of which, if he still chose to, he could refit, find a proper caravan, and travel north to Shadizar in style.

  At the root of it all, he sensed, was a strange hankering to return to Qjara. Something told him he was not through with that proud city yet. "All right, then,” he answered Khumanos at last, "we head eastward.”

  XIII

  The Stone Ship

  It would have been hard for Conan to foresee how slowly the bearers of the great idol moved. They toiled doggedly, patiently, as if numb to their labour from long hardship. It was unclear to him whether these were willing pilgrims or slaves, and he was not sure he wanted to know. Many had perished along the way, certainly; their places had been filled in by helmeted Sarkad troopers who now, instead of wielding the rod, sweated under it.

  Those men, the troopers, were by far the strongest physical specimens, setting a hard pace for the frailer ones to sustain. The band toiled silently, without ribald banter or the hymns and chanties Conan would have expected to hear. Even when idle they kept silent, glowering as if the very souls within them had been killed by pain and hardship.

  All bore grisly burns and sores, even the guards who wore adequate uniforms and carried only shoulder-burdens—indeed, Conan was beginning to doubt whether these blemishes were truly from the sun. He had never seen such deformities or experienced them himself, even from the severest exposure; now he misdoubted whether the rashes, weals and other plagues the worker suffered, such as the widespread loss of teeth and hair, might not be from some other cause—from starvation, or bad water imbibed in the southern desert, mayhap even from poison soils they had wrestled their massive burden through. At worst it might stem from some ill sorcery, possibly relating to their harsh lord Votantha or his godly enemies.

  In any event, their path was gruelling. On that first day Conan met the party, they did not reach Tal’ib. They halted in barren desert, sinking to earth under the wheels of their juggernaut, barely stirring from where they lay. To alleviate their suffering, Conan carried empty water bags ahead on his camel, filled them from the stream, and rode back to furnish the party with water for the next day.

  When at last they reached the City in the Waste, they camped well down the stream's course, near its junction with the ruined wall. Conan was careful to have Khumanos assign sentries, though he ended up standing most of the watches himself. Once or twice he thought he heard stealthy sounds or saw a flicker of movement in the brush. But he hoped the ape-things would never learn of the camp, or at least not venture downstream in force to attack it.

  He was affected by the eeriness of the scene— the frail moon listing like a sinking coracle in the west, its light gleaming across the wan desolation as over a dead-calm sea. Mountains loomed vast and formless on the one hand, fang-like and remote on the other; around the fireless camp, the litter of slack bodies might have been asleep or dead in the haunted dark. The shrouded, supine idol in their midst resembled the twisted, ill-preserved corpse of a giant on its funeral caisson. Now, in the wan glow of stars and moon, it seemed to give off a light of its own—the greenish luminosity of decay creeping beneath its matted, filthy winding-cloth.

  Behind them, across the listless, dying stream and blasted wall, lay the shallow depression that had once been mighty Yb—the hard, glassy cauldron that had brewed the death of a city.

  Conan heard a rustle of motion—distinct this time, and close at hand. Turning, he stuck out his blade—and almost hewed into the tall, silent form of Khumanos, looming black against deeper blackness.

  Muttering an oath, Conan returned the weapon to his belt and eased back down onto his haunches. “By Crom, priest, did you mean to test my wakefulness? You almost tested the keenness of my knife as well! Do you never sleep?”

  Khumanos squatted down opposite Conan. "You are a swift fighter, wary and vigilant.” “Yes. I should hope to be, when two nights agone I was set on by fanged, slavering cannibals not far from where we sit!” A moment later, the Cimmerian shrugged off his unease. "Even so, I think we are safe here from the monsters. I urge you to have your followers remain a day or two—rest, bathe in the stream, and restore your strength.”

  "We will continue onward tomorrow at first light.” Khumanos said, not shaking his head or refuting Conan in any direct way. He eased down on to the ground where the fire would have been, if there had been a fire.

  "That would be unduly hard on your people, Khumanos,” Conan argued. "They will go faster in the long run if they rest now, and will have a better chance of surviving to the journey's end.”

  "With great Votantha's help we shall endure,” the priest said with finality. "In the southern wastes we became lost in a sandstorm and wandered far from our path. There we were set on by nomads, who slew many of our guards before we drove them back. Other guards have had to take the place of our fallen bearers. Even so, we have found our way this far.”

  "A hellish bad journey,” Conan observed. "It sounds as if your almighty lord were testing your mettle.”

  Gravely Khumanos nodded his shaven head. "For some, the hardship is too extreme. They cannot bear it.” He held the rusted dagger-stub away from his chest, examining it in the moonlight. Then he unlooped it from his neck, clutching it before him in one hand as if it were a divining rod or holy wand. “They would rather perish inside, feel nothing at all, than face the degradation of their bodies and the failure of their hopes—or even witness it in others.” He looked questioningly to Conan.

  "I, for one, would never seek to die—I cannot understand a man who would.” His eyes and lips narrowed as his thoughts ran back to Zaius. "For me, while there is breath left in my body and blood in my veins, there is always hope.” He exhaled the moment’s melancholy. "What is that rusty relic you are playing with, anyway, Khumanos?” he asked the priest. “A remnant of the blade that killed your hoary god’s grandfather?”

  "This, the Sword of Onothimantos?” the priest asked, holding up the object. "It is a powerful talisman, bequeathed to me by a wise elder. It has changed my life.”

  "A symbol of your faith, no doubt. But as for this holy quest you are on, to glorify your god—" Conan's keen eyes fixed the watchful Khumanos—"I say it is a fool's errand, a bout of needless suffering you foist on your brainless followers. So do not bother to try and convert me to your beliefs. I would never take a hand in such
folly—”

  "—Were it not for the pay I promised you,” Khumanos supplied for him.

  "Nay. Not even for pay, if I did not have my own private reasons to come along." Conan finished with a shake of his head.

  "You have a strong, independent soul that resists suasion and control.” The priest was weighing the stump of his amulet-knife in one hand.

  “Aye, 'tis so. That is why you find me alone in the middle of this infernal waste.”

  "Indeed.” Khumanos nodded thoughtfully. "Your stubborn, wary spirit makes you a fierce fighter and a cunning desert hand.”

  “Yes—which is why I am of use to you.” Conan gazed quizzically and a little dangerously at the priest. “Why—did you expect a spineless, simpering toady instead? Just what are you worrying at?”

  "Nay, nothing. It is Votantha's will." Looping his amulet around his neck, the Exalted Priest tucked it out of sight in his burnoose. Then he arose to make his way back toward his sleeping place.

  "Well, then... good night to you, too,” Conan said to Khumanos's back, wondering just what the interview had been about.

  Later that night there was one further alarm, when Conan spied a figure roving the barrens across the stream, in the levelled city. A tall, lean figure, dark-clad against the chalky-pale waste— surely it was Khumanos again! Striding over to the priest's bed, Conan found that, surely enough, the tattered blanket was empty.

  But what was he doing so far from safety, recklessly alone? Conan started after him, then stopped. He gathered breath to shout, but thought better of it. The robed priest went at a brisk walk, going steadily toward the monolith in the middle of the barren zone.