THE POOL OF THE BLACK ONE
By Robert E. Howard
Into the west, unknown of man,
Ships have sailed since the world began. Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote,
With dead hands fumbling his silken coat;
And follow the ships through the wind-blown wrack—
Follow the ships that come not back.
I
Sancha, once of Kordava, yawned daintily, stretched her supple limbs luxuriously, and composed herself more comfortably on the ermine-fringed silk spread on the carack’s poop-deck. That the crew watched her with burning interest from waist and forecastle she was lazily aware, just as she was also aware that her short silk kirtle veiled little of her voluptuous contours from their eager eyes. Wherefore she smiled insolently and prepared to snatch a few more winks before the sun, which was just thrusting his golden disk above the ocean, should dazzle her eyes.
But at that instant a sound reached her ears unlike the creaking of timbers, thrum of cordage and lap of waves. She sat up, her gaze fixed on the rail, over which, to her amazement, a dripping figure clambered. Her dark eyes opened wide, her red lips parted in an O of surprize. The intruder was a stranger to her. Water ran in rivulets from his great shoulders and down his heavy arms. His single garment – a pair of bright crimson silk breeks – was soaking wet, as was his broad gold-buckled girdle and the sheathed sword it supported. As he stood at the rail, the rising sun etched him like a great bronze statue. He ran his fingers through his streaming black mane, and his blue eyes lit as they rested on the girl.
`Who are you?’ she demanded. `Whence did you come?’
He made a gesture toward the sea that took in a whole quarter of the compass, while his eyes did not leave her supple figure.
`Are you a merman, that you rise up out of the sea?’ she asked, confused by the candor of his gaze, though she was accustomed to admiration.
Before he could reply, a quick step sounded on the boards, and the master of the carack was glaring at the stranger, fingers twitching at sword-hilt.
`Who the devil are you, sirrah?’ this one demanded in no friendly tone.
`I am Conan,’ the other answered imperturbably. Sancha pricked up her ears anew; she had never heard Zingaran spoken with such an accent as the stranger spoke it.
`And how did you get aboard my ship?’ The voice grated with suspicion.
`I swam.’
`Swam!’ exclaimed the master angrily. `Dog, would you jest with me? We are far beyond sight of land. Whence do you come?’
Conan pointed with a muscular brown arm toward the east, banded in dazzling gold by the lifting sun.
`I came from the Islands.’
`Oh!’ The other regarded him with increased interest. Black brows drew down over scowling eyes, and the thin lip lifted unpleasantly.
`So you are one of those dogs of the Barachans.’
A faint smile touched Conan’s lips.
`And do you know who I am?’ his questioner demanded.
`This ship is the Wastrel; so you must be Zaporavo.’
`Aye!’ It touched the captain’s grim vanity that the man should know him. He was a tall man, tall as Conan, though of leaner build. Framed in his steel morion his face was dark, saturnine and hawk-like, wherefore men called him the Hawk. His armor and garments were rich and ornate, after the fashion of a Zingaran grandee. His hand was never far from his sword-hilt.
There was little favor in the gaze he bent on Conan. Little love was lost between Zingaran renegades and the outlaws who infested the Baracha Islands off the southern coast of Zingara. These men were mostly sailors from Argos, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. They raided the shipping, and harried the Zingaran coast towns, just as the Zingaran buccaneers did, but these dignified their profession by calling themselves Freebooters, while they dubbed the Barachans pirates. They were neither the first nor the last to gild the name of thief.
Some of these thoughts passed through Zaporavo’s mind as he toyed with his sword-hilt and scowled at his uninvited guest. Conan gave no hint of what his own thoughts might be. He stood with folded arms as placidly as if upon his own deck; his lips smiled and his eyes were untroubled.
`What are you doing here?’ the Freebooter demanded abruptly.
`I found it necessary to leave the rendezvous at Tortage before moonrise last night,’ answered Conan. `I departed in a leaky boat, and rowed and bailed all night. Just at dawn I saw your topsails, and left the miserable tub to sink, while I made better speed in the water.’
`There are sharks in these waters,’ growled Zaporavo, and was vaguely irritated by the answering shrug of the mighty shoulders. A glance toward the waist showed a screen of eager faces staring upward. A word would send them leaping up on the poop in a storm of swords that would overwhelm even such a fightingman as the stranger looked to be.
`Why should I burden myself with every nameless vagabond that the sea casts up?’ snarled Zaporavo, his look and manner more insulting than his words.
`A ship can always use another good sailor,’ answered the other without resentment. Zaporavo scowled, knowing the truth of that assertion. He hesitated, and doing so, lost his ship, his command, his girl, and his life. But of course he could not see into the future, and to him Conan was only another wastrel, cast up, as he put it, by the sea. He did not like the man; yet the fellow had given him no provocation. His manner was not insolent, though rather more confident than Zaporavo liked to see.
`You’ll work for your keep,’ snarled the Hawk. `Get off the poop. And remember, the only law here is my will.’
The smile seemed to broaden on Conan’s thin lips. Without hesitation but without haste he turned and descended into the waist. He did not look again at Sancha, who, during the brief conversation, had watched eagerly, all eyes and ears.
As he came into the waist the crew thronged about him Zingarans, all of them, half naked, their gaudy silk garments splashed with tar, jewels glinting in earrings and dagger-hilts. They were eager for the time-honored sport of baiting the stranger. Here he would be tested, and his future status in the crew decided. Up on the poop Zaporavo had apparently already forgotten the stranger’s existence, but Sancha watched, tense with interest. She had become familiar with such scenes, and knew the baiting would be brutal and probably bloody.
But her familiarity with such matters was scanty compared to that of Conan. He smiled faintly as he came into the waist and saw the menacing figures pressing truculently about him. He paused and eyed the ring inscrutably, his composure unshaken. There was a certain code about these things. If he had attacked the captain, the whole crew would have been at his throat, but they would give him a fair chance against the one selected to push the brawl.
The man chosen for this duty thrust himself forward – a wiry brute, with a crimson sash knotted about his head like a turban. His lean chin jutted out, his scarred face was evil beyond belief. Every glance, each swaggering movement was an affront. His way of beginning the baiting was as primitive, raw and crude as himself.
`Baracha, eh?’ he sneered. `That’s where they raise dogs for men. We of the Fellowship spit on ‘em – like this!’
He spat in Conan’s face and snatched at his own sword.
The Barachan’s movement was too quick for the eye to follow. His sledge-like fist crunched with a terrible impact against his tormentor’s jaw, and the Zingaran catapulted through the air and fell in a crumpled heap by the rail.
Conan turned towards the others. But for a slumbering glitter in his eyes, his bearing was unchanged. But the baiting was over as suddenly as it had begun. The seamen lifted their companion; his broken jaw hung slack, his head lolled unnaturally.
`By Mitra, his neck’s broken!’ swore a black-bearded searogue.
`You Freebooters are a weak-boned race,’ laughed the pirate. `On the Barachas we take no account of such taps as that. Will you play at sword-strokes, now, any of you? No? Then all’s well, and we’re friends, eh?’
There were plenty of tongues to assure him that he spoke truth. Brawny arms swung the dead man over the rail, and a dozen fins cut the water as he sank. Conan laughed and spread his mighty arms as a great cat might stretch itself, and his gaze sought the deck above. Sancha leaned over the rail, red lips parted, dark eyes aglow with interest. The sun behind her outlined her lithe figure through the light kirtle which its glow made transparent. Then across her fell Zaporavo’s scowling shadow and a heavy hand fell possessively on her slim shoulder. There were menace and meaning in the glare he bent on the man in the waist; Conan grinned back, as if at a jest none knew but himself.