Conan of the Red Brotherhood Read online

  “Good,” Conan affirmed. “Because she, like you, stands under my protection, and all Set’s minions had better flock to the aid of the man who brings her to harm!” So saying, he swept the noble maid up in his arms and assailed her with kisses.

  “A splendid fight, a victory!” voices cried from the common room. Conan arose with Philiope to see whose footsteps sounded on the stair.

  “Djafur is ours!” Santhindrissa came into view, backed by several of her pirate women. “The turncoats are scattered, and the place is fallen to the sea-chiefs. There are few losses to speak of among my women, and by tomorrow, my lower oar-deck will be full!” She flashed a glance at Conan. “If you want a permanent place on the Tormentress, Captain, this might be your last chance.”

  Conan laughed heartily. “’Tis a brave victory all around, then!” He stood with an arm clasping Philiope as the piratess strode onto the landing. “We should keep the men from sacking the town, come dawn. Djafur was our home, and will be again. Make them stop killing the faithless pirates, too. Any survivors are sure to rejoin us.”

  “I would not worry overly,” Drissa replied. “Already this siege is much like any other port leave—hard on the wine and trollops, but wasting only a fair amount of blood.” She looked wryly from Conan and Philiope to the body on the floor. “This looks to be a happy domestic scene. You have vanquished our betrayer... and with a most cunning sword stroke!”

  “It was not my work. Philiope slew him,” Conan explained humbly. “In doing so, she saved me a good deal of time.”

  “A lifetime, it would seem to me.” Santhindrissa examined the broken cutlass that still hung at chest level, its blade hammered deep into the wood of the door jamb. “If you want a place among my crew, young lady, say but a word,” she told Philiope.

  “Thank you, Drissa, no,” the girl muttered, clinging tight to Conan as she watched the swaggering women.

  “Well then.” The she-pirate left the hacked remains of the hallway behind. “You might take up the business of hotel-keep, a fit occupation for a grieving gentle-widow.”

  “Aye, there is a happy inspiration.” Conan looked at Philiope. “This place had better have an owner, else it will be taken down stick by stick and carried off as driftwood.”

  “Why, I would imagine perhaps...” She looked up to her companion. “If that would allow us to keep company...”

  “Aye, to be certain,” Conan told her. “Djafur will remain my home port. I have plans for the place. Of course Knulf had other belongings, treasure and ships, that Drissa and I will be sharing out—”

  “I have no need for more ships. You may keep those,” Santhindrissa replied quickly. “One vessel suits our style of living—does it not, girls?” she asked her mates to grunts of assent.

  “Then you can take out the difference in treasure, once we break open the rascal’s hoard.” Conan turned, inspecting the opulent if ill-assorted furnishings of the master bedchamber. “If I get the ships, I will be needing most of the men to crew them. I will want back the crews Knulf stole from me. And there are the gems I brought down from Hyrkania—those too are mine, looted fairly under the law of the Red Brotherhood.”

  “He keeps his treasure in a safe-hole under the wash-stand,” Philiope said.

  “Aha, most clever indeed!” Conan strode across the room to the massive, square-framed marble tub, doubtless taken from some Imperial barge. “That would explain why he never used it to bathe himself. ’ ’ Bending his knees and seizing hold, he shifted the heavy fixture aside with a grunt. “Aha, look there.” He pointed down at bulging sacks, loose ornaments, and rare vessels of gleaming gold. “Here are the gems,” he said, bending and taking up the wooden cask. Opening it and looking inside, he remarked, “One of them is missing.”

  “Aye, Knulf sent it off to Aghrapur.” Philiope knelt beside Conan, placing an arm on his shoulder as she gazed down at the trove.

  “Alas.” Conan shook his head. “Before letting any of them go, I would have liked to know just what mischief that sorcerer wanted them for. ’ ’

  “Knulf said he would sell the Turanians just one at first, to sharpen their appetite. He sent it off with the prisoners a fortnight ago.”

  “Prisoners? My men, you mean?”

  “Aye.” Philiope nodded. “The captured crewmen, the score or so who would not forswear you, he sent to Aghrapur in your stead. He said they were needed for some kind of public ceremony at the palace.”

  “Ivanos, that would be! Ferdinald—old Yorkin, too, and the gadfly Diccolo!” Conan threw his gem cask down into the vat of gold. “That is too much, it cannot be borne!” Rising up restless, he strode away across the room, then turned to face his comrades. “I will have them back here, I tell you,” he declared, clutching the hilt of the scimitar at his waist. “My men, my treasure, and everything else that belongs to me!”

  Santhindrissa stood facing him with a hand on each of her shipmates’ shoulders. “You mean, snatch them out of Imperial Aghrapur, if they are not yet dead or impaled?” She twisted her mouth in a smirk at the idea. “True, I might attempt it for my crewmates—but only if it were possible!”

  “Those men are my friends! Rogues they may be, but they were loyal to me! And I need loyal men for what I have in mind.” Clenching a scarred, scabbed fist in the air before him, Conan stood opposite the women. “Drissa, I told you why the Turanians wanted Djafur, wanted it badly enough to pay a scoundrel like Knulf as its governor. Now I tell you: I want it for the same reason!”

  He turned to Philiope, who stood a little apart from the others. “Ships have crossed the Vilayet, straight from Aghrapur to these isles. More will be sailing direct instead of using the slow, dangerous southern route. Djafur, this harbour—he scuffed the floor underfoot with his booted heel “—is the ideal base for raiding such commerce. More, it is the single best port to shelter and provision those ships. It could be a rich city someday, a rival to Aghrapur itself. Kept independent, it may become the seat of a sea-empire!”

  Shifting his gaze from one face to another, Conan went on sketching sea-castles in the air. “To control the waters around Djafur, I need ships... enough now, we have a fleet of them! And we have the sea-tribes to scout and bear messages for us.” He shook his head. “But for those ships, 1 also need captains—men or women,” he added with a nod to Santhindrissa, “who are loyal to me, or at least honest, and who will do what I say when out of my sight. That loyalty is a precious thing, which has to be nurtured and protected. Loyalty to the death is rare, especially among pirates.

  “So you see,” he finished, “it would be in your interest, Drissa, to help me rescue my friends. If you join me, more of the sea-chiefs will lend support.”

  “A raid on Aghrapur?” She shook her head cynically. “Aye, perhaps so, if you can hatch a plan that won’t get us all killed.”

  “And you, Philiope? Are you with me in this?”

  “I, Captain Amra?” The young woman moved to his side, embracing him and laying her head against his shoulder. “I will fight beside you, or steer for you... pull an oar for you, or captain one of your ships. Because you have given me what I never had before, and that is respect. My days of servitude are over. Now I stand with you in rebellion, and I say death to Turan’s empire!”

  XIII

  Trial and Torment

  Green tropical sunlight filtered through trees and vines high overhead. A glance skyward revealed tangles of jungle branches, cascades of lush, bright foliage, and a dazzling riot of fragrant blossoms, their hues and smells accented by flitting traces of butterfly splendour and monkey musk. Bird songs chorused on every hand, while from the near distance came the gentle plash of water meandering through stony ponds.

  Amid the verdure, on a pliant bench cunningly woven of living, leafing flower-vines, Prince Yezdigerd sat waiting. The thin, fez-hatted prince made an incongruous figure in the jungle shadows, sitting straight upright with his trousered legs crossed, fingers tapping his thigh. He sat restless as if wait
ing for the trumpeting of the hour from the grand minaret in central Aghrapur—as in fact he was. At his feet a small puppy frolicked, exploring among the exotic shoots set in the flower beds and around the bases of trees in their carefully anchored stone planters. When waiting made the prince thirsty, he had but to snap his fingers; a turbaned servant appeared, fetching him at his request a chilled lime beverage in a gold-chased tumbler.

  Moments later, another serving man approached, bowing deeply before him. “Your Majesty, the mage Crotalus.” A brisk nod from the prince was enough to make the man turn and disappear from sight.

  From a distance, the wizard, his dark face illusory-looking in the flickering forest shadow, wandered slowly toward Yezdigerd’s seat. “This place is remarkable,” was his first comment. “I regret, O Prince, if I have caused you to wait. Tardiness seems to be a difficulty of mine of late.”

  “No matter.” Yezdigerd spoke without arising or changing his posture, bending only to scratch the neck of the dog at his feet. “I thought my father’s hanging garden would be an interesting site for our interview.”

  ‘ ‘Indeed, it puts me in mind of my native country. Zembabwei is a land of high mountains and vast plains, but on the rainy slopes of those mountains are broad, dense jungles much like this. I have had frequent occasion to visit them; they contain every manner of animal and plant, including many that I have used in my researches.” Moving nearer, the tall, dark-robed wizard chose a place beside a man-thick tree and settled there, seating himself easily on the edge of the stone pot.

  “I am glad to hear it; these gardens may then have some practical use, rather than being just another expense of gross indulgence—but wait.” Raising a hand, Yezdigerd paused in an attitude of listening, counting the rhythmic blasts of a conch horn that came drifting through the trees from the remote distance. “There. By the water clock in the Grand Minaret, it is just the ninth hour. You were not late; rather, more punctual than I, who was early. And I would expect no less, Crotalus, from a man who can row a fleet across the high Vilayet in bold disregard of fog and storm. But go on, tell me more of your origins. When I meet a man of your exceptional powers and faculties, I want to learn further about his upbringing.”

  “If you wish it, my Prince.” Crotalus nodded solemnly. “By my power, I take it you mean my far-seeing, for that is the greatest of my skills, the one on which the navigational feat you refer to was based. And it is, indeed, rooted in my origins.” Finding that his sandalled toes had become the object of the puppy’s affectionate scrutiny, he bent idly to stroke the animal’s back. “My origins are—” the mage’s rounded, noble features composed in thought “—far behind me.” Sitting upright again, he folded his slender hands, which were pale-skinned about the palms and fingernails, in his robed lap.

  “At home in Zembabwei, as in most every place, there are many conjurers. They draw their magicks out of the earth, from the plants, stones, and bones of forest and plain. Some of them transfer their souls into the bodies of wild beasts, to fly or stalk through the jungle as shape-changers. Others study at working their will over a distance, as by hexing and hypnotic suggestion. Such was my own childhood training, in the commonplace skills of rural magic.

  “Yet when I sent my spirit forth to roam the night wind, it may be that I fared farther than most. Or perhaps I was more keenly alert... to the faint resonances of larger sorceries, the more powerful webs and beacons of power emanating from distant places. I came to learn that there were skills and beliefs of a higher order than the crude nature-worship of my fathers. Across the broad world, especially in the great cities and civilizations, mystical power—like Imperial power, if my Prince will permit the comparison—could rise to heights undreamt of in my native land.

  “So it was that I turned my back on the common tricks, the hexings and healings, the birthings and deathings, the tribal and religious ceremonies of low, coarse humans. I projected my mystic sight ever farther to find the whole knowledge and truest tokens of power; and, in time, I journeyed far in my body to gather them. In so doing, I gained skills that can make me useful even here in Imperial Aghrapur, the grandest up-piling of wealth and civilization on the map, to men who control the destiny of half the world.”

  “I see.” Yezdigerd nodded in his concise, economical way. “It was your far-seeing, then, and your sensitivity to magical emanations that enabled you to fare across the Vilayet in quest of the missing ingredient for your spell... though you have not yet disclosed to me what that spell is to be.”

  “No indeed, my Prince.” Crotalus’s smile was polite and confident. “’Twere better if I keep the exact nature of my enchantment a secret until I am able to put it into effect. Though, I promise you, it will be a formidable contender for the Naval Prize. ’ ’

  “That I continue to accept your word on it shows my faith in your abilities. They soon will be put to the test, now that the charm you sought has come to us via the southern trade routes.” Absently the prince stroked the neck hairs of the puppy, which had crawled panting into his lap. “You had already heard of its arrival, I take it?” Crotalus sat calm, his smile unchanged. “I knew it without hearing,” he said.

  “I believe you, though it would not have been hard for you to find out, given the ebb and flow of rumour in this port.” Reaching into the waist pouch of his western-style pantaloons, he withdrew an object wrapped in a pale silk kerchief. Unrolling the parcel in his hand, he held up the oddly faceted stone before him in a ray of sunlight. “I know that wizards value certain gems, but I have never yet clearly understood why.” He gazed closely at the gem, perhaps searching for the rumoured traces of movement in its amber depths. “It seems strange that such an object, small as it is, should warrant path-finding voyages across the sea, and exact a price tallied in ships and lives.” “Quite so. Although that,” Crotalus pointed out, “is only one of the group of gems I sought.”

  “Is it enough for you, then?” Yezdigerd asked.

  “With one gem, I can win the naval contest.” The wizard eyed the gleaming bauble in the prince’s hand, showing admirable restraint in not standing and reaching out for it. “With the whole set, I can do more, much more.” “Then it would seem that my father’s tame initiative to buy out the so-called pirate Brotherhood was not wasted after all.” Yezdigerd laid the gem back in the kerchief, re-wrapping it carefully. “Quite likely we can obtain the rest of them, once you demonstrate their value. But first there is the question of the time remaining. With such notable progress being made on the diplomatic front, the new naval trials cannot be postponed much longer.” “Time is no obstacle. I need only...” Crotalus paused, then held up two pale-palmed hands with all ten fingers outspread “... this many days.”

  “How can that be? Initially you requested a month and more after your return from sea.” Yezdigerd finally held out the wrapped gem, causing the mage to arise from his seat.

  “My task is simplified for the present, having only one stone to work with.” Crotalus bowed graciously as he accepted the packet, which disappeared promptly into the folds of his dark robe. “Time, in any case, is not necessarily fixed and unvarying. It is mutable, subject to change... how can I express it?” His eyes fell on the puppy panting in its master’s lap. “That dog, O Prince... is it dear to you?”

  Frowning at the question, Yezdigerd shrugged. “No, it is merely one of the palace pets. It is a good breed, but there are plenty others of its ilk. Do you mean to work an enchantment on it?” He gazed up into the wizard’s sombre, intent countenance. “I am ready to make small sacrifices to observe lessons of science.”

  Silently Crotalus seated himself on the bench beside Yezdigerd. Taking the puppy out of the prince’s lap, he set it in his own. With deft hands, he stroked the small creature—or rather, he moved his fingertips at a distance without actually touching the dog, as if enfolding it in some kind of tangible but invisible barrier. The animal sat contented, with mouth open and tongue hanging slack, occasionally cocking its head as its
eyes followed the puzzling orbits of the wizard’s hands.

  “You can see, O Prince, already it begins to age.” Yezdigerd looked closer. Indeed, a subtle change had begun to come over the beast. Its bearing was now more sedate and dignified, and its physical proportions did seem subtly altered. As the spell took hold, the dog did not grow; nor, indeed, did it become a miniature replica of a graceful adult hound, with limbs attenuated and elongated. As the changes progressed, the pup remained an odd sort of hybrid: still blunt-pawed and round-bodied, but with a seeming of maturity.

  “Size as well as time are subject to the envelope of my will.” Crotalus continued his mystical passes—more broadly and smoothly now, like a sculptor imparting a final rounding to his clay. “In this exceedingly simple case, since there is no growth, and no need to let the subject eat and drink, years can be compressed into mere moments. As you see, the respirations are not even accelerated.”

  True, the animal sat calm. Even so, there was a melancholy, questioning look in the dog’s eyes as it gazed up from Crotalus to the prince. Feeling itself age, it may have sensed that something intangible and precious was being taken away. Its bearing was definitely more weary and sedate; the creature’s breaths came more heavily, and its coat grew out coarser, lacking the former sheen of health. Now grey tinges sprouted around the dog’s neck and whiskers, like winter frost on a dying stump. With an exhausted sigh, the strange, half-developed creature settled its blunt, puppyish head wearily on the sorcerer’s knee.

  “The process can go on and on, or be halted,” Crotalus explained, ceasing his hand motions. “It does not have to end with the life of the subject.”

  Interested, Prince Yezdigerd reached down to stroke the dog. He gave a start at finding the animal inert and cool to his touch. It had been reduced to a mere lifeless mummy, rapidly stiffening and desiccating. The skin of its neck pelt tore slightly as he jerked his hand away.