THE SNOUT IN THE DARK
(Draft)
A Conan Story
by Robert E. Howard
1
Amboola awakened slowly, his senses still sluggish from the wine he had guzzled the night before. For a muddled moment he could not remember where he was; the moonlight, streaming through the barred window, shone on unfamiliar surroundings. Then he remembered that he was lying in the upper cell of the prison where the anger of Tananda, sister to the king of Kush, had consigned him. It was no ordinary cell, for even Tananda had not dared to go too far in her punishment of the commander of the black spearmen which were the strength of Kush’s army. There were carpets and tapestries and silk-covered couches, and jugs of wine – he remembered that he had been awakened and wondered why.
His gaze wandered to the square of barred moonlight that was the window, and he saw something that partially sobered him, and straightened his blurred gaze. The bars of that window were bent and buckled and twisted back. It must have been the noise of their rending that had awakened him. But what could have bent them? And where was whatever had so bent them? Suddenly he was completely sober, and an icy sensation wandered up his spine. Something had entered through that window, something was in the room with him.
With a low cry he started up on his couch and stared about him; and he froze at the sight of the motionless figure that stood at the head of his couch. An icy hand clutched the heart of Amboola which had never known fear. That silent, greyish shape did not move nor speak; it stood there in the shadowy moonlight, misshapen, deformed, its outline outside the bounds of sanity. Staring wildly, Amboola made out a pig-like head, snouted, covered with coarse bristles – but the thing stood upright and its diick hair-covered arms ended in rudimentary hands –
Amboola shrieked and sprang up – and then the motionless thing moved, with the paralyzing speed of a monster in a nightmare. The black man had one frenzied vision of champing, foaming jaws, of great chisel-like tusks flashing in the moonlight … presently the moonlight fell on a black shape sprawled amidst the dabbled coverings of the couch on the floor; a grayish, shambling form moved silently across the chamber toward the window whose broken bars leaned out against the stars.
“Tuthmes!” The voice was urgent, urgent as the fist that hammered on the teak door of the chamber where slept Shumballa’s most ambitious nobleman. “Tuthmes! Let me in! The devil is loose in Shumballa!”
The door was opened, and the speaker burst into the room -a lean, wiry man in a white djebbeh, dark-skinned, the whites of his eyes gleaming. He was met by Tuthmes, tall, slender, dusky, with the straight features of his caste.
“What are you saying, Afari?”
Afari closed the door before he answered; he was panting as if from a long run. He was shorter than Tuthmes, and the negroid was more predominant in his features.
“Amboola! He is dead! In the Red Tower!”
“What?” exclaimed Tuthmes. “Tananda dared execute him?”
“No! No, no! She would not be such a fool, surely. He was not executed, but murdered. Something broke through the bars of his cell and tore his throat out, and stamped in his ribs, and broke his skull – Set, I have seen many dead men, but never one less lovely in his death than Amboola! Tuthmes, it is the work of some demon! His throat was bitten out, and the prints of the teeth were not like those of a lion or an ape. It was as if they had been made by chisels, sharp as razors!” “When was this done?”
“Sometime about midnight. Guards in the lower part of the tower, watching the stair that leads up to the cell in which he was imprisoned, heard him cry out, and rushing up the stairs, burst into the cell and found him lying as I have said. I was sleeping in the lower part of the tower as you bade me, and having seen, I came straight here, bidding the guards say naught to anyone.”
Tuthmes smiled and his smile was not pleasant to see. “Gods and demons work for a bold man,” he said. “I do not think Tananda was fool enough to have Amboola murdered, however she desired it. The blacks have been sullen, ever since she cast him into prison. She could not have kept him imprisoned much longer.
“But this matter puts a weapon into our hands. If the Gallahs think she did it, so much the better. Each resentment against the dynasty is a weapon for us. Go, now, and strike before the king can learn of it. First, take a detachment of black spearmen to the Red Tower and execute the guards for sleeping at their duty. Be sure you take care to do it by my orders. That will show the Gallahs that I have avenged their commander, and remove a weapon from Tananda’s hands. Kill them before she can have it done.
“Then go into Punt and find old Ageera, the witch-finder. Do not tell him flatly that Tananda had this deed done, but hint at it.” Afari shuddered visibly.
“How can a common man lie to that black devil? His eyes are like coals of red fire that look into depths unnameable. I have seen him make corpses rise and walk, and skulls champ and grind their naked jaws.”
“Don’t lie,” answered Tuthmes. “Simply hint to him your own suspicions. After all, even if a demon did slay Amboola, some human summoned it out of the night. Perhaps Tananda is behind this, after all!”
When Afari had left, mulling intensely over what his patron had told him, Tuthmes drew a silken cloak about his otherwise naked limbs and mounting a short, wide staircase of polished mahogany, he came out upon the flat roof of his palace.
Looking over the parapet, he saw below him the silent streets of the inner city of Shumballa, the palaces and gardens, and the great square, into which, at an instant’s notice, a thousand black horsemen could ride, from the courts of adjoining barracks.
Looking further, he saw the great bronze gates, and beyond them, the outer city that men called Punt, to distinguish it from El Shebbeh, the inner city. Shumballa stood in the midst of a great plain, of rolling grass lands that stretched to the horizons, broken only by occasional low hills. A narrow, deep river, meandering across the grass lands, touched the straggling edges of the city. El Shebbeh was separated from Punt by a tall and massive wall, which enclosed the palaces of the ruling caste, descendants of those Stygians who centuries ago had come southward to hack out a black empire, and to mix their proud blood with the blood of their dusky subjects. El Shebbeh was well laid out, with regular streets and squares, stone buildings and gardens; Punt was a sprawling wilderness of mud huts; the streets straggled into squares that were squares in name only. The black people of Kush, the Gallahs, the original inhabitants of the country, lived in Punt; none but the ruling caste, the Chagas, dwelt in El Shebbeh, except for their servants, and the black horsemen who served as their guardsmen.
Tuthmes glanced out over that vast expanse of huts. Fires glowed in the ragged squares, torches swayed to and fro in the wandering streets, and from time to time he caught a snatch of song, a barbaric chanting that thrummed with an undertone of wrath or bloodlust. Tuthmes drew his cloak closer about him and shivered.
Advancing across the roof, he halted by a figure which slept in the shadow of a palm growing in the artifical garden. When stirred by Tuthmes’s toe, this man awoke and sprang up.
“There is no need for speech,” cautioned Tuthmes. “The deed is done. Amboola is dead, and before dawn, all Punt will know he was murdered by Tananda.”
“And the – the devil?” whispered the man, shivering.
“Shh! Gone back into the darkness whence it was invoked. Harken, Shubba, it is time you were gone. Search among the Shemites until you find a woman suitable – a white woman. Bring her here speedily. If you return within the moon, I will give you her weight in silver. If you fail, I will hang your head from that palm tree.”
Shubba prostrated himself and touched his head to the dust. Then rising, he hurried from the roof. Tuthmes glanced again into Punt. The fires seemed to glow more fiercely, somehow, and a drum had begun an ominous monotone. A sudden clamor of bestial yells welled up to his ears.
“They have heard that Amboola is dead,” he muttered, and again he was shaken by a strong shudder.
Life flowed on its accustomed course in the filth-littered streets of Punt. Giant black men squatted in the doorways of their thatched huts, or lolled on the ground in their shade. Black women went up and down the streets with water-gourds or baskets of food on their heads. Children played or fought in the dust, laughing or squalling shrilly. In the squares the black folk chaffered and bargained over plantains, beer and hammered brass ornaments. Smiths crouched over tiny charcoal fires, laboriously beating out spear blades. The hot sun beat down on all,