Publio shook his head mutely, his tongue frozen to his palate. He could not speak.
One of the Khitans caught up a silken cover from a couch and threw it over the corpse. Then they melted behind the tapestry, but before the tallest man disappeared, he murmured: ‘Talk to this man who comes, and send him away quickly. If you betray us, neither he nor you will live to reach that door. Make no sign to show him you are not alone.’ And lifting his staff suggestively, the yellow man faded behind the hangings.
Publio shuddered and choked down a desire to retch. It might have been a trick of the light, but it seemed to him that occasionally those staffs moved slightly of their own accord, as if possessed of an unspeakable life of their own.
He pulled himself together with a mighty effort, and presented a composed aspect to the ragged ruffian who burst into the chamber.
‘We have done as you wished, my lord,’ this man exclaimed. ‘The barbarian lies dead on the sands at the water’s edge.’
Publio felt a movement in the arras behind him, and almost burst from fright. The man swept heedlessly on.
‘Your secretary, Tiberio, is dead. The barbarian slew him, and four of my companions. We bore their bodies to the rendezvous. There was nothing of value on the barbarian except a few silver coins. Are there any further orders?’
‘None!’ gasped Publio, white about the lips. ‘Go!’
The desperado bowed and hurried out, with a vague feeling that Publio was both a man of weak stomach and few words.
The four Khitans came from behind the arras.
‘Of whom did this man speak?’ the taller demanded.
‘Of a wandering stranger who did me an injury,’ panted Publio.
‘You lie,’ said the Khitan calmly. ‘He spoke of the king of Aquilonia. I read it in your expression. Sit upon that divan and do not move or speak. I will remain with you while my three companions go search for the body.’
So Publio sat and shook with terror of the silent, inscrutable figure which watched him, until the three Khitans filed back into the room, with the news that Conan’s body did not lie upon the sands. Publio did not know whether to be glad or sorry.
‘We found the spot where the fight was fought,’ they said. ‘Blood was on the sand. But the king was gone.’
The fourth Khitan drew imaginary symbols upon the carpet with his staff, which glistened scalily in the lamplight.
‘Did you read naught from the sands?’ he asked.
‘Aye,’ they answered. ‘The king lives, and he has gone southward in a ship.’
The tall Khitan lifted his head and gazed at Publio, so that the merchant broke into a profuse sweat.
‘What do you wish of me?’ he stuttered.
‘A ship,’ answered the Khitan. ‘A ship well manned for a very long voyage.’
‘For how long a voyage?’ stammered Publio, never thinking of refusing.
‘To the ends of the world, perhaps,’ answered the Khitan, ‘or to the molten seas of hell that lie beyond the sunrise.’
15 The Return of the Corsair
Conan’s first sensation of returning consciousness was that of motion; under him was no solidity, but a ceaseless heaving and plunging. Then he heard wind humming through cords and spars, and knew he was aboard a ship even before his blurred sight cleared. He heard a mutter of voices and then a dash of water deluged him, jerking him sharply into fall animation. He heaved up with a sulphurous curse, braced his legs and glared about him, with a burst of coarse guffaws in his ears and the reek of unwashed bodies in his nostrils.
He was standing on the poopdeck of along galley which was running before the wind that whipped down from the north, her striped sail bellying against the taut sheets. The sun was just rising, in a dazzling blaze of gold and blue and green. To the left of the shoreline was a dim purple shadow. To the right stretched the open ocean. This much Conan saw at a glance that likewise included the ship itself.
It was long and narrow, a typical trading-ship of the southern coasts, high of poop and stern, with cabins at either extremity. Conan looked down into the open waist, whence wafted that sickening abominable odor. He knew it of old. It was the bodyscent of the oarsmen, chained to their benches. They were all negroes, forty men to each side, each confined by a chain locked about his waist, with the other end welded to a heavy ring set deep in the solid runway beam that ran between the benches from stem to stern. The life of a slave aboard an Argossean galley was a hell unfathomable. Most of these were Kushites, but some thirty of the blacks who now rested on their idle oars and stared up at the stranger with dull curiosity were from the far southern isles, the homelands of the corsairs. Conan recognized them by their straighter features and hair, their rangier, cleaner-limbed build. And he saw among them men who had followed him of old.
But all this he saw and recognized in one swift, all-embracing glance as he rose, before he turned his attention to the figures about him. Reeling momentarily on braced legs, his fists clenched wrathfully, he glared at the figures clustered about him. The sailor who had drenched him stood grinning, the empty bucket still poised in his hand, and Conan cursed him with venom, instinctively reaching for his hilt. Then he discovered that he was weaponless and naked except for his short leather breeks.
‘What lousy tub is this?’ he roared. ‘How did I come aboard here?’
The sailors laughed jeeringly – stocky, bearded Argosseans to a man – and one, whose richer dress and air of command proclaimed him captain, folded his arms and said domineeringly: ‘We found you lying on the sands. Somebody had rapped you on the pate and taken your clothes. Needing an extra man, we brought you aboard.’
‘What ship is this?’ Conan demanded.
‘The Venturer, out of Messantia, with a cargo of mirrors, scarlet silk cloaks, shields, gilded helmets and swords to trade to the Shemites for copper and gold ore. I am Demetrio, captain of this vessel and your master henceforward.’
‘Then I’m headed in the direction I wanted to go, after all,’ muttered Conan, heedless of that last remark. They were racing southeastward, following the long curve of the Argossean coast. These trading-ships never ventured far from the shoreline. Somewhere ahead of him he knew that low dark Stygian galley was speeding southward.
‘Have you sighted a Stygian galley-‘ began Conan, but the beard of the burly, brutal-faced captain bristled. He was not in the least interested in any question his prisoner might wish to ask, and felt it high time he reduced this independent wastrel to his proper place.
‘Get for’ard!’ he roared. ‘I’ve wasted time enough with you! I’ve done you the honor of having you brought to the poop to be revived, and answered enough of your infernal questions. Get off this poop! You’ll work your way aboard this galley-‘
‘I’ll buy your ship-‘ began Conan, before he remembered that he was a penniless wanderer.
A roar of rough mirth greeted these words, and the captain turned purple, thinking he sensed ridicule.
‘You mutinous swine!’ he bellowed, taking a threatening step forward, while his hand closed on the knife at his belt. ‘Get for’ard before I have you flogged! You’ll keep a civil tongue in your jaws, or by Mitra, I’ll have you chained among the blacks to tug an oar!’
Conan’s volcanic temper, never long at best, burst into explosion. Not in years, even before he was king, had a man spoken to him thus and lived.
‘Don’t lift your voice to me, you tar-breeched dog!’ he roared in a voice as gusty as the sea-wind, while the sailors gaped dumfounded. ‘Draw that toy and I’ll feed you to the fishes!’
‘Who do you think you are?’ gasped the captain.
‘I’ll show you!’ roared the maddened Cimmerian, and he wheeled and bounded toward the rail, where weapons hung in their brackets.
The captain drew his knife and ran at him bellowing, but before he could strike, Conan gripped his wrist with a wrench that tore the arm clean out of the socket. The captain bellowed like an ox in agony, and then rolled clear across the deck as he was hurled contemptuously from his attacker. Conan ripped a heavy ax from the rail and wheeled cat-like to meet the rush of the sailors. They ran in, giving tongue like hounds, clumsyfooted and awkward in comparison to the pantherish Cimmerian. Before they could reach him with their knives he sprang among them, striking right and left too quickly for the eye to follow, and blood and brains spattered as two corpses struck the deck.