Conan of the Red Brotherhood Page 2

  But then, without warning, their cause found aid from an unseen quarter. The wind, as if in annoyance at the catapult’s whine and the pirates’ curses, abruptly fled... or rather, fell still. The merchant cog’s triangular sails were left slack and pendulous; its masts stood near-vertical, rocking in a fitful way that could hardly have helped the aim of the catapult crew.

  Conan’s men, on sensing the change, set up a howl of exultation, one that did not diminish as their craft turned and bore in toward the drifting prize, and safely inside the reach of the centre-mounted missile thrower. At the last moment, a handful of archers appeared at the cog’s high rail, unleashing arrows on the pirates with some passing effect. But the rowers gaily disregarded the shafts falling among them; some even thrust a wounded bench mate down into the bilges out of the way and pulled two oars, one in either hand.

  “Ship the port oars, you hell hounds! Olivia cease piping! Jephat, Juwala, look alive with your grappling hooks! Stand ready to board!”

  Dragging his rudder-oar abeam, Conan braced its thick loom overhead long enough to bring the galliot gliding close in under the merchant’s hull; then he abandoned it and sprang to the rail. Snatching up a heavy bronze grapple and whirling it on its chain-lead, he flung it over the stem rail of the cog and hauled it taut.

  “Olivia, tend to the wounded as you can,” he told his mistress, meanwhile winding the braided rope tight around a cleat. “Keep a sharp blade with you to cut away grapples and defend yourself, if need be!”

  Then Conan, after seizing the woman in his arms and administering a wild, rough kiss to her lips, sprang away. Smoothly he mounted the grapple line, his loose-topped boots scuffing for purchase on the hull, his heavy scimitar swaying in its belt at his side.

  All along the Vixen’s length, the marauders did likewise, swarming up ropes and chains and even hook-ended boat-poles amidships, where the cog’s waist wallowed lowest. It was a stiff climb, like storming a fort wall, but the defence was thin and sporadic. Already wrathful cries and the clashing of weapons rang out from the cog’s deck overhead.

  Even as Conan hauled himself up to the foeman’s rail, a spike-tipped pole was thrust at his face. Dodging aside, he seized its head just behind the barb and wrenched it back one-handed, causing the stout-bellied wielder to stagger after, clinging to its haft. Then, shoving forward just as swiftly, he smote the defender in the middle with its butt end, dropping the man breathless to his knees.

  This bought the Cimmerian time to vault the rail and draw his scimitar—just barely—before others were upon him.

  II

  Reavers of the Coast

  First upon the Cimmerian was a guard or marine trooper, swarthy and moustached, fitted out like a mercenary in bronze cap and boiled-leather vest. His sword, a stick-straight estocade, had a longer reach than Conan’s heavy scimitar. Therefore it was necessary for Conan to whittle away at him while dodging his thrusts—first at his shoulder, with an ill-directed slash that barely wetted his leather sleeve with blood. Then his ear; Conan grazed it with a cut that resounded against the man’s helm, goading him to dizzy rage.

  Swearing fiercely, the defender slashed his blade at Conan’s face. It was a reckless stroke, one that was easily turned aside by the pirate’s scimitar... an instant before the curved blade lashed up under the hauberk into the man’s vitals, doing terrible damage. The guardsman went down with an agonized shriek, dropping his sword to clutch at his red-streaming belly.

  There was no time for a mercy stroke before Conan faced the next man: a dusky-faced Ilbarsi or Iranistani, outfitted the same as the first. This one thrust mightily at Conan’s chest, but stumbled over the slippery limbs of his still-writhing comrade. His staggering recovery brought his neck within range of the scimitar, which struck deep and sent him spinning away across the deck in a pin-wheel of blood.

  Aiming, with a deliberate stroke of his blade, Conan struck the head from the gutted man, cutting off his monotonous screams. But an insistent squealing still sounded; looking up from his butchery, the Cimmerian saw the heavy, square-framed snout of the catapult pivoting noisily toward him, its cord-wrapped arms straining backward and a broad shaft nested in the arrow-trough.

  At the same instant that he shrank aside, the arrow whanged free. Furrowing air with its force, it whipped the hairs of his loose black mane in passing. Less lucky was the man behind him, the pirate Ogdus, who had just stepped up onto the ship’s rail. The heavy shaft struck him in the middle and carried his whole tattooed body away in a whirl of limbs, arching out of sight into the sea.

  Conan, recovering his balance, darted forward after the lone crewman who had unleashed the catapult. He beat him down with the flat of his heavy blade, taking care not to slaughter the man; after all, he might need an able hand to work the catapult later.

  Turning to survey the deck of the cog, he saw that it had all but fallen to his hell hounds’ onslaught. The armed troopers, seldom seen on a merchant vessel, had made the fight all the fiercer, scattering the ship’s pale planks with fallen bodies and besmearing them with blood. Now their presence pricked the Cimmerian’s curiosity. What cargo, he wondered, might be precious enough to warrant such special protection?

  All of the helmeted warriors, true to their mission, had fallen to the boarders’ ravaging blades or been pushed overboard to drown. The last defenders huddled close by the poop rail, near the stepladders and the sealed doorway set into the break of the deck. These holdouts were a diverse lot: several sailors armed with boarding pikes and boat hooks; the paunchy, silk-clad officer who had tried so clumsily to spear Conan when first he hove aboard; a tousled, barefoot ship’s-boy of scarce a dozen summers; and a couple of finely groomed, silk-turbaned men. These latter were Turanian nobles, undoubtedly. They held their slender sabres delicately poised, as if accustomed to plying them in duels rather than in battles.

  Those few waited in a temporary stand-off against the foes all around them. The pirates now thronged in the ship’s waist and menaced their victims from before the side and stem rails, most of them strutting and jeering in their certainty of victory. Left to themselves, Conan saw, his men would soon overwhelm the survivors and put them to the sword. Striding toward the ship’s waist, he bellowed his commands fiercely enough to claim everyone’s attention.

  “Throw down your weapons, prisoners! Yield to the law and might of the Red Brotherhood!”

  “Aye, surrender and die!” a gruff pirate voice, Diccolo's, chimed in helpfully.

  “Law, indeed!” one of the aristocratic-looking men answered in loud, high-bred Hyrkanian. “Law is what you miscreants are skulking from,” he accused, waving his expensive sabre at the boarders “—the true, righteous law of the Turanian Empire and of His Divine Majesty in Aghrapur, Emperor Yildiz, scourge of the sea-brigands!”

  “Now, now, Khalid Abdal.” The plump officer, hearing the rancorous murmurs and menacing shouts his companion’s words drew from the encircling pirates, expostulated with him. “These seafarers have their own laws and traditions, ’tis will known. Perhaps their captain will consent to deal openly with us.” He glanced warily up to Conan, who had shouldered his way to the after-deck rail.

  “Nonsense, Tibalck! Where are these famed piratical laws written or graven down, I ask you? These ignorant brutes cannot write, and they know but one stylus—the slinking dagger for cutting purses and throats! If I have my way,” the noble declared, his sabre flicking brightly overhead, “I will take a few more of them with me, and die cleanly in combat—”

  “Aye, truly! Fight!” blood-lusty pirates bayed. “Let it be blades, then!”

  “But nay, Khalid Abdal.” The portly merchant Tibalck showed calm determination in restraining the nobleman. “You do not have your way here! As the Hyacinth's owner and commander, I instruct you to listen to our adversaries. Hear them out, do not provoke them further. Be silent, for the good of all concerned.”

  So saying, the ship’s master threw his sword down onto the deck. Most of the othe
r survivors followed suit. Khalid only half-complied, lowering his weapon to waist level; his fellow aristocrat did likewise.

  “Aye, merchant, a wise course,” Conan affirmed. From his place along the poop-deck rail, he gazed down on the captives and on the bulk of his own men. “As you say, we are ready to dispose of you fairly by our laws. Yield up to us what treasure you have, and your fate will be honestly decided.”

  “Just kill them, take the loot, and bum this rotty hulk!” a pirate’s rough voice—brash Punicos’s, it sounded like-echoed Conan’s.

  “Aye. The sack, the blade, and then the brand!” cried another, heralded by widespread cheers. “Why invoke the law? They unleashed their catapult on us first, remember! ’Twas their fight!”

  “Yes, and they skewered Arkos and Scorpho, and struck off poor Zagar’s head!” The troublemaker Diccolo managed to sound primly self-righteous. “They ought to be butchered in kind!”

  Swords glinting, the mob stirred restlessly. Conan, sensing an insurrection near at hand, roared out fiercely, “Back off, you yapping dogs!” He threw a leg over the quarterdeck rail, bestriding it threateningly. “Who first breaks my oath will answer to me—known to you as Amra, the Scourge of the Western Ocean!” He turned to the topic closest to every captain’s heart. “What of enlistments? Are they not called for, to replace the oar-hands we have lost?”

  “Aye, yes, enlistments! Let us have some sport!” The pirate mob, fickle enough to follow their commander’s urgings as much as anyone else’s, eased back from their victims. “Who among you wants to join the Brotherhood?” lusty voices demanded.

  “The law in this matter is well established.” Juwala, the black Zembabwan, respected by his fellow pirates as a scholar and arbiter of fights, was brought to the fore. “If any member of the captured crew wants to sail with us as a free pirate and gain untold wealth, he may choose to.” He flashed his dazzling grin around the small group of survivors. “To enlist, he must do only one thing—spill the blood of one of his former lords and oppressors.” “What?” Tibalck exclaimed. “Captain, is this part of your fair dealing?”

  “Aye, merchant,” Conan avowed. “It is our way.”

  At these words, the look that passed among the captives was a queasy one, compounded of mistrust, uncertainty, outrage, and desperation. The righteous Khalid opened his mouth to protest, but the fork-bearded pirate Punicos spoke first.

  “What about you, Hyrkanian?” Edging close to one of the barefoot seamen—a rough-shirted, pantalooned youth with the squat build and yellow-gold complexion of an eastern steppe rider—the corsair coaxed him in resonant tones. “What are you? A war captive, a pressed man?” With a swift motion of his blade he flipped up the man’s shirt-back, exposing whip scars, to the laughter of the pirates. “A slave? Or an apprentice, little better! What is your name, fellow?”

  The sailor regarded him proudly but uncertainly. “Tamur, boss. Tamur-Laga of the Hradyu tribe.”

  Punicos laughed. “As I thought, an impressed landsman! Well, Tamur, would you not wish to buy life and freedom—say, with the blood of one of these arrogant Turanian fops? Here, I’ll make it easy for you.”

  So saying, with a cunning sidelong move that misdirected attention, he seized hold of the younger, slighter nobleman’s sword-hand and sent his weapon clattering to the deck. Simultaneously, two other pirates grabbed Khalid. Disarming him, they held him pinioned some distance from his brother noble, who was also weaponless.

  Punicos, picking up one of the fallen Turanian sabres, handed it hilt-first to the young sailor. “There, fellow, have at him! A sword stroke or two will buy you a place in our brave company... with all the loot and easy living you could want!” He stepped aside and waited. “Well, man, what say you? Use it and the sword is yours! Fair enough, my fair-minded Captain?”

  Conan, from his place at the rail, gave solemn assent. “So be it. If you have been good masters to your crew, there is nothing to fear.”

  The young Hyrkanian, holding up the finely curved blade uncertainly, looked from Punicos to the tall figure of Khalid Abdal. The elder Turanian returned his look sternly, drawing himself up in a proud, imposing stance. The sailor hefted the sword above his shoulder, yet checked himself, restrained by loyalty or fear.

  “What troubles you, Tamur? Cannot bring yourself to slay a noble, is that it?” Grinning, Punicos reached to the cutlass hilt at his own waist. “It is not hard; here, I will teach you—”

  On the instant, with a pained, inarticulate cry, the young Tamur raised his sword and lashed out—not at the captive, but at the taunting fork-beard, hacking at him with frenzied strokes. Punicos’s blade rose swiftly to meet the other’s, clashing against it twice, thrice. With an expert lunge, the fork-bearded pirate flicked the narrow sabre aside; he ran its owner through, smoothly between the ribs.

  The Hyrkanian, sliding down off the red-smeared cutlass, sank to the deck amid a thunder of shouts and jeers from the pirates.

  “The whelp was a-scairt,” one observer cried. “Cowed to death by a strutting turban!”

  “He never would have made a good rogue of the Brotherhood!”

  “Come then,” Punicos said to the remaining captives. “Who among you will have this fine sword for the stabbing of a scented lordling?”

  “Uu-aahg!”

  The merchant Tibalck, instead of voicing further protests, emitted a dull groan and fell forward to his knees, then onto his face. Behind him, the half-grown, sandy-haired cabin boy extracted a dagger blade from his back and waved its bloody length on high. “I did it!” he yelled, dancing and skipping about the deck. “I am a pirate now, hurray! But I’ll have no sword, this dirk is enough for me!” From his grimacing and mad cavorting, it seemed the lad must be addled or feeble-minded. “Death to old Tibalck!” he howled. “Hail the Red Brotherhood!” “Huzzah!” the pirates cheered him. “Excellent, lad. You set a fine example for your elders. A pirate in the finest sense of the word! ’ ’

  “No more will I toil for him,” the boy rejoiced, “bend to his whims, nor warm his mattress at night! I am a pirate, huzzah!” he crowed, brandishing his knife.

  “Death to Tibalck. I say it, too.” Another of the ragged crewmen, a thick-moustached Turanian, accepted the costly sabre hilt-first from Juwala. Turning with its gleaming length, he hacked into the merchants’ lifeless body, reddening the blade with a swift blow. “My name is Iliak... of the Red Brotherhood!” he added to exuberant cheers.

  “So, Tibalck,” the noble Khalid Abdal bitterly remarked, “now you know the reward of bargaining with thieves!” His words were all but lost in the hubbub as several more of the sailors stepped forward, taking the keen sabre in hand to hack at the corpse.

  “Point of law!” the pirate Punicos protested during the proceeding. “Is it fair that so many enlist in the Brotherhood by drawing cold blood out of a dead merchant? I say, have them hack at some of the others for good measure!”

  Juwala drew breath to render a judgement, but was prevented from doing so by Conan. “Enough! I have heard all I want of sea-lawyers this day!” He vaulted down from the poop rail amid pirates and captives. “An end to this idle sport,” he growled, swaggering among them with his scimitar in hand. “Let us see to the spoils.” He waved his heavy blade at the sealed hatch set in the break of the deck.

  “Aye, the spoils!” the pirates agreed. “Slay the captives and steal the treasure!” Eager corsairs moved forward with raised cutlasses.

  “Nay,” Conan barked at them. “No more killing for now, unless I do it!” He strode through their midst on the balls of his feet, in aggressive readiness. Seeing his broad, muscle-cabled form clad only in kilt and soft boots, and the blade he gripped at his waist, none doubted that he could sell his own life for a dozen or more of theirs. He fixed his gaze on Juwala. “Hold these prisoners under guard while we see to the loot.”

  “But, Captain,” the black Keshan pointed out with an air of wearied patience, “is that not putting the mizzen before the main?” He
gave Conan a tolerant smile. “I know you do not always follow the ways of the Brotherhood, but our tradition is to slay them first and avoid trouble. At least drown them, if we do not wish the bodies to bear marks—”

  “I do not intend to kill the nobles,” Conan declared. “They can bring us a ransom more valuable than this tub’s cargo. I’d have kept the owner hostage, too,” he said, regarding Tibalck’s butchered body. “Had he lived. Of these others—” he waved his blade at the pale-looking survivors who now watched him, daring once again to hope “—they will be set loose, adrift.”

  “Set adrift!” Fork-bearded Punicos led in the general chorus of astonishment. “By Bel-Dagoth, such a thing is unheard of! They can tell of our whereabouts, and recount our crimes to the Turanian and Hyrkanian Admiralties!” “Fool,” Conan said curtly. “There is no way to collect a ransom without risking that! Anyway, we are Red Brothers, proud of our reputation and fame. I am not bound to slaughter every witness just to enable us to skulk away from the authorities! Let some of them live and spread the word of our exploits far and wide.”

  “Captain Amra,” Juwala joined in angrily, “do you know the rudiments of the pirating trade? As it stands, this merchant and her crew could have been lost in a squall with no survivors, or gone aground on an offshore reef; none will know any different. But fame, such conceit as you talk of—” he shook his head soberly “—that kind of notoriety is the enemy of a pirate! It causes the waters he sails in to be shunned by merchants, and to swarm instead with the toothed beaks of Imperial warships. It turns every hand against him, including those of his false brothers—”

  “Nay, Juwala,” Conan interrupted firmly. “Such fame works to my benefit. Henceforth when I chase a ship, they’ll lack the stomach for a fight if they know it is Amra the Corsair hauling up alongside. And no merchant will be able to shun or outrace us when we have both oarships and sailships to hound them out with.”