I

Slave Ship

The crew of the pirate galley Shrike smelled the slaver long before they could see her.

An ill-assorted lot these pirates were, rogues of a dozen nationalities—ear-ringed, tattooed, scarred, and weather-beaten, squatting half-naked in their oar-banks after a night of dogged pursuit. Slaves and convicts, many of them had been, or might yet be. But every one of them, fugitive or not, bore the same opinion of a slaver.

Their captain stood astride the bireme’s stem deck. Alert for sight, sound, and scent of his prey, he scanned the thick dawn haze and watched the surface of the water. As a youth, he had stalked game across his native Cimmerian forests and mountain crags in much the same way.

The faint but distinctive slave-reek, blended of sweat, dung, urine, and the sour fruits of nausea, told vividly of the ship’s recent passing, and of chained rowers who might never leave their oar-benches from one year to the next. It also hinted at a direction in the sluggish morning breeze: eastward, toward the brightening sun glare and the weedy, rocky shallows of the Hyrkanian coast.

The captain plied his steering oar briskly. Determined to stay on the scent, he lent his strength to that of his oarsmen. Naked but for silk breeks, loose sea boots, and a few looted gewgaws looped about his brawny neck and arms, he felt no need of clothing in the sultry mist. Savage and primitive in appearance, he showed by his firm stance on the quarterdeck that he was in command: Conan of Cimmeria, known and dreaded more widely as Amra, the Scourge of the Vilayet.

“Ahoy, Cap’n Amra!”

The call from the lookout, obedient to Conan’s order, came low-voiced so as not to betray the hunters’ presence. “There lies another one, off the starboard bow!”

Easing up on his thick-helved oar, Conan searched the sea ahead and to the right. There it floated sure enough, a human body drifting facedown. All that could be seen above the water was the low hummock of the back, bent by toil at oars and burnt near-black with sun. Plainly visible were the marks: the deep, criss-crossed gashes of a brutal and ultimately fatal flogging, the ridges of pale flesh swollen open by salt water. It was the spoor of a slave ship, indeed; the third such clue since finding the trail last evening.

“By Bel,” an oarsman remarked, craning his neck, “they’re killing them faster than the fish can eat them!”

“Aye, saving us the effort,” another echoed.

“Must be breaking in a new crew,” added the pock-faced Rondo. “Setting examples.”

“Why bother to chase a miserable slave scow, anyway? Straining our backs to steal groats and sacking from peasants is beyond me....” This voice issued sharply from the lower oar-bank. An anonymous griper, but Conan had no doubt of his identity.

“Enough, Diccolo,” he growled. “Have a care for your own hide, and stiffen up your pace!” He gave his steering sweep a vigorous shove. “We draw near our quarry, I can tell. Their stench grows stronger.”

The swish and gurgle of the oars increased smoothly, paced by the muffled thump of Old Yorkin’s drum. The crew laboured in good discipline; few of those in the upper oar-banks even glanced aside at the body—out of superstition, in main part, because of a pirate’s dread of still water and its floating occupants.

Conan knew of their fear; it was based on fanciful notions of what they might find staring back up at them from the sea’s dead realm. He did not share in the childish belief... at least not wholly. Yet he heartily approved of it. It made them work all the harder in these glassy-calm coastal waters, where patient toil at the oars was required.

“Avast rowing, dogs! Lie quiet a few drumbeats, and cock your ears.”

The oarsmen, glad to comply, hauled their oars out of the water and balanced them inboard. For a moment, aside from the dripping of the oar-blades and the chuckling rush of water over the bireme’s ram, there was silence.

Then, faintly, out of the glowing mist ahead, drifted other sounds. They heard a low, rhythmic groaning— whether of oars poorly greased in their tholes or of men moaning dismally at their toil, it was difficult to tell. There was also the faint, steady clanking of a chime, and an occasional thin snap that could be nothing but the stroke of a cattle-whip.

Then at once the sounds had a source, as the ship itself came into view. Unveiled by drifting curtains of haze, it hung ghostly before them, its low, broad hull packed with human forms and a-bristle with ill-managed oars. The tapering bow and stern curved inward over the deck, Colchian-fashion, bracketing the single bare spindle of a mast.

Sailless above the splashing, rippling oars, the galley wallowed onward, groping its way between pillars of mist stained orange by the glare of sunrise over the Hyrkanian steppe.

“Look lively!” Conan called out. “There goes our enemy! Stir up the sea, knaves, and give chase. We’ll catch her easy, overloaded and ill-manned as she is!”

“Aye,” other pirate voices exclaimed, “scuttle the rotty hulk! Pin her with a ram, then loot her before sending her to the bottom!”

“Nay, nay,” another cried. “Bum the stinking plague-bucket, and her slave crew with her. That will spare Lord Dagon’s realm below an ill stench!”

“We will not ram them.” Conan, as the bireme surged forward with fresh energy, levered his trailing oar up out of the water to cut the drag. “Ready grapples, and take us in close astern to board. I’ll have that ship intact, with its whole cargo.” Summoning two burly rowers to man each steering-sweep, he strode for’ard between the benches to prepare for the attack. “You may put sword to the overseers as you like,” he said, smiting his crew hard on the shoulders as he went. “But butcher no slave, not unless he takes up arms to defend his chains.”

The space of gleaming water between the ships narrowed rapidly. The lean pirate vessel, laden with little but oars, steel weapons, and the muscle to wield them, furrowed the waveless water like a swimming snake. The round-bellied merchant tub, on the other hand, seemed to falter in confusion at the sight of its attacker. The desperate slave rowers were spurred on by faster chiming, harsher shouts, and more profuse whip-cracks. But they laboured poorly and at cross-purposes, so the galley gained no speed.

Amid scattering mists that were roofed over now by pale blue sky, the two vessels met. The pirates’ starboard oars rattled smartly inboard on command, allowing the ship’s side-wales to thump and scrape along the galley’s stem. Grapples were whirled in the air and flung across the gap by burly pirates. Conan’s grapple arched high, catching the silk-clad shoulder of a turbaned officer who tried, too late, to dart clear of the port quarter; the steel hook hauled him back against the wood rail, pinning him there by his shirt collar and one arm. Conan, hauling hard against the slow angling of the hulls, jerked the grapple-line taut. He looped it fast around a stanchion, content to disable one of the galley’s company without a fight.

An instant later, the pirate captain was on the rail with cutlass in hand, bounding straight across from the bireme’s high ’midships to the galley’s stem. The first wave of pirates were already at their work, driving the defenders back across the broad stem deck, slashing crewmen and beating them overside with fierce cutlass strokes. Conan sprinted for’ard instead; breasting the all-but-intolerable stench, he headed for the roped catwalk that ran above the slave-benches in the ship’s waist.

On his arrival, he was opposed by a fat, bearded, bare-chested overseer armed only with a bull whip. Below him cowered chained ranks of rowers: male and female, adult and half-grown child alike. Thin and filthy, with unshorn, matted scalps and bare skins beaten brownish-black by sun and tempest, they crouched frightened and impassive in their stinking hold.

Conan lunged forward, driving his sword point at the mat of hair above the overseer’s prominent belly. But the guard, well-accustomed to the catwalk, scuttled back from the stroke as nimbly as a spider in the midst of its web. Conan, intent on skewering the man, heard a deafening crack in his ear. He felt a lightning-quick touch that set his shoulder afire with pain—the casual caress of the bull whip.

Conan reeled with half his body aflame, sinking almost to one knee on the planks. He would be weaponless had it been his other arm; thank Crom the hilt of his heavy cutlass still filled his hand. Recovering his feet and swinging the curved blade high overhead, he lunged and brought the steel slashing down—not on his enemy, but on a twist of rope in the catwalk’s railing.

The blow severed the grimy, finger-thin rope and splintered the post it was doubled around. The line pulled free and slackened all down its length, even to where the overseer clutched it, drawing back his bull whip. for another stroke. Feeling his support give way beneath him, the man flailed and clawed, his lash twisting slackly in air.

His effort to steady himself was desperate, and it came too late. Snarling surprise from black-bearded lips, he toppled over backward into the pit, falling amid the benches of rowers in the galley’s stem.

The clamour that arose there was muffled but frenzied—a wild outcry in a dozen crude languages, rasped out in voices rusty from weakness and disuse. The slave-crew’s hands, though clawed and blistered with toil at the oars, were eager and able. By the dozen, they clamped onto the overseer, knotting in his beard, hooking at his eyes, wrenching back thick wrists and ankles and looping the snaky coils of his whip around his neck. He fought and bellowed in vain as he was drawn back head-downward, his spine doubled across an oar-helve.

Leaving him to his reward, Conan strode on along the catwalk. A second overseer, this one a grizzled, lean-faced officer in silk shirt and turban, wielded a less dexterous whip than the first. When his lash hissed out evilly through the air, Conan ducked low to avoid it; his body rebounded off the uncut side of the rope rail as he sprang forward. The whip-wielder, caught suddenly at too-close quarters, turned to flee—only to feel the razory bite of the cutlass across his nape as Conan overtook him.

The officer pitched forward into the oar-benches, amid spatterings of his own blood. He made only feeble, twitching resistance against those who seized hold of him. This time it was not his neck, but the ring of keys at his waist that the greedy hands clutched for.

The for’ard deck lay ahead. There the last five ship-hands stood ill-prepared, mustered out in a reluctant line to defend themselves with cutlass and boarding pike. Conan knew they had but a short time to live. He heard the wolf-like baying of his fellow pirates behind him, and felt their steps thudding on the gangplank as they raced to follow his lead. Yet he did not rush headlong onto the open foredeck.

Instead, coming to the end of the catwalk, he stopped long enough to hack through two more ropes. These secured a pair of hinged gang-ladders that now, with an ill-oiled creaking and scraping, trundled down into place against the filthy planks of the lower deck. A new howling and baying, throaty and fierce, filled the air as newly freed slaves swarmed forward to mount the ladders and face their tormentors.

Conan led their charge. Swinging his cutlass high, he chose the fittest-looking opponent, a hard-faced Hyrkanian armed with a cruel, hook-ended boarding pike. His first stroke hacked the pikestaff in twain. His second would have done the same to the skull—had the man not, in that instant, been swarmed over by bare-skinned devils who bore him back thrashing into the bows.

Deprived of his target, Conan turned and looked in vain for another. In the brief time that had passed, the whole line of defenders had been overrun by a horde of frenzied, snarling avengers.

The slaves, lank, wiry men and women alike, clawed and tore at their former captors. Their callused fingers found hair, eyes, and tongues to pluck and gouge at, limbs to lever and snap. Some few slaves died in the onslaught, trodden unnoticed under a tide of bare, filthy feet; the rest, relentless in their hatred, used stolen weapons, ropes and marlinspikes, along with fists, feet, and teeth, to slake their vengeance.

In spite of their fiendish inventiveness, or because of it, it all ended too soon. The brooding hatred, nursed over long years, was quickly spent and rendered pointless against targets who lay tom, limp, and bloody. The slaves stood over the bodies dully staring, their life’s purpose momentarily ended.

The pirates who swarmed after Conan onto the foredeck looked disappointed at the lack of a fight, and more than a little mistrustful of the brute, weaponless furies their captain had unleashed. Unsure of what to do next, they stood heavily armed at the break of the stem and along the catwalk. Guarding against a further attack, some began herding the unchained slaves to one side of the foredeck.

From below-decks, through cargo hatches accessible fore and aft, pirate quartermasters were just emerging. One of them, the sometime captain Jalaf Shah, climbed up the for’ard companion way carrying a bolt of coarse cloth, frowning and shaking his head.

“Cap’n, a poor cargo it looks to be,” he announced in pirate Aetolian. “There are barrels of grass-groats, most of them soggy or weevilly—” he let a handful of finely clumped grain scatter to the deck—“salted hides and pork carcasses, rope cables, tar, vinegar, and a good bit of this rough sailcloth. No wine, silk, fine goods or made goods... no better than you would expect on a slave-scow.” Shrugging, he let the roll of fabric thump to the deck and trundle away toward the scuppers. “We could bum her or scuttle her just as well.”

“Could we?” Conan fixed him with a captainly glare. “What of these worthies here? Do you want to be the one to usher them overboard?” He indicated the naked, milling rowers with the merest jerk of his head, mindful of who might understand his pirate patois. Already the sharpest of the slaves looked suspicious, attentive to the conversation.

Jalaf Shah shrugged carelessly, standing up to his captain’s scowl. “These slaves could be the most valuable property aboard, even run-down as they are. But it will be hard getting them ashore to a decent flesh-market.” He looked askance at the rowers on the foredeck, who eyed him with open hostility. “Now that they’ve tasted blood, they’re very likely spoiled as workers.”

“That’s what you think? Enough, then.” Conan left off glowering at his quartermaster and turned toward the broader crowds of pirates and slaves. Most of the latter remained on the lower deck, even though unshackled.

Drawing breath, he used his steadiest tone of command. “Let there be no talk of burning or swamping this ship and its cargo! Let there be no fear of slave-markets, or of more killings, or of having to swim ashore!” Speaking now in Hyrkanian, he was certain of being understood by virtually everyone present.

“This galley, odious as it is, has value to me.” He flared his nostrils as he spoke, drawing sympathetic laughs from his pirates^—for now that the tension of battle had fled, the stench was nigh overpowering to any unused to it. “Its cargo, too, will not be wasted. Nor will the crew, which has value—you survivors, you real toilers—at least so far as you value yourselves!” He moved to a more prominent place at the end of the catwalk.

“The food, the pork and flour, can be eaten. The canvas will serve to cover your backs for a time, and your beds and hearth fires as well.” As he spoke, a stir of growing interest was evident among the listening slaves. “The tar and cables can be moulded into the sinews of power, as I will show you. The whips—throw them overboard, we have no more need of them!”

At his words, there was an impulsive cheer and an obedient flurry on the lower deck. The bull whips, unwound from the necks of their dead owners, were flung overboard amid widespread celebration.

“But the chains, your shackles—” Conan paused long enough to regain the mob’s attention. “Save them, cherish them! They can be beaten into swords to flay at our enemies!”

At this statement, mad exultation boiled across the foredeck and lower deck. The pirates waited rigidly alert, clutching their weapons in fear of some new rebellion. They were unnerved at seeing a ferocity and abandon even greater than their own pirate wrath—so unexpected from these naked, starveling dregs.

But the wild dancing and gesticulating gradually subsided, allowing Conan to continue.

“Know you, we of the Red Brotherhood are no mere sea-looters. Nay, not any longer! On our home isle in the north, we are building a sea-castle and a safe harbour. The stronghold we shape will someday command the whole Vilayet: the Free Port of Djafur! We need men there, and women, too. Not slaves, but free workers to handle our wares, arm us, provision our ships, and strengthen our defences. Those of you who are sick of the sea, if you want to learn masonry, carpentry, farming, know this: food and shelter and work aplenty are available for you in Djafur. Those who want to sail and fight like us, the dreaded Pirate Brotherhood... here is your chance to scourge the sea! We mean to paint both the east and west coasts, the Hyrkanian and Turanian tyrants alike, red with their own Imperial blood!”

Again a frenzy of cheering went up. Conan saw that his references to loot and slaughter drew the liveliest responses of all. He guessed that these rowers were of a dozen wild races, hunted down like animals and set to slavery. On the faces of his own pirate crew, he saw scepticism; they listened to his dreams and boastful claims with as much surprise as did the freed rowers. Yet he continued speaking from the heart.

“This ship... take good care of it, I can use it! Its timbers can rafter my halls, its planks roof your cottages. Or else it will ply the sea again, one small part of a fleet that can send our will sweeping across the Vilayet like a desert wind. From its decks, some of you may fight and slay, spill the blood of your former oppressors, and wrap the ill-hoarded wealth of two empires in your yearning hands!” Conan spoke above the new round of cheering, seeking to further bind the mob’s enthusiasm to the task at hand. “If you want to row beside me—Amra of the Red Brotherhood—then you can join us. But, if you want to live the free, proud pirate life and sup off the spoils of kingdoms, you will have to work at it! This ship must be steered north to Djafur, its wares parcelled out and its planks broken up... or else strengthened as a raiding ship.” He gestured broadly with his cutlass across the smelly morass of the oar-deck.

“But first it must be washed clean of the stench of slavery, scrubbed and sluiced out with mops and a hundred bucketfuls of good clean ocean. Ferdinald, Ivanos, see to it! Take command of our new crew... have them strip these worthless carcasses and toss them overboard! Bid them bathe, rinse away the blood and filth, and get these decks in order!”

His officers, though unsure at first, were equal to the task. They organized bucket- and body-brigades and set their minions to work hacking off lengths of the fabric bolt to serve as swabbing rags. A flour sack was broached, and a gruel was set stewing on the makeshift hearth astern. Meanwhile, vinegar was mingled with water from the mouldy drinking casks to make a sour-tasting victory wine. It might as well have been the finest Argossean vintage, judging from the effect it had on the freed rowers. They set about their new labour with smiles, exuberant shouts, even song.

The Shrike, meanwhile, retrieved its grapple-lines and straightened itself astern of the captured vessel. It stayed upwind though, and well clear of the filthy spewing of the merchant’s bilge. Very little loot was taken aboard the pirate cruiser: only the dead officers’ sea-chests and the iron-bound cash vault, which could be hammered open at leisure. The ship had been plying regularly between Hyrkanian coastal towns, so it might be expected to carry a fund of gold for the purchase of tradegoods and fresh slaves.

The balance of food, cargo, hardware, and weapons were left aboard the galley. They were for the use of the rowers, and of the prize crew assigned to guide the vessel home to Djafur.

The mists had scattered since the sea-fight. The two ships lay adrift on a calm, weedy, sunlit sea, fringed to eastward by the low bluffs of the coastal steppe. Fitful morning airs promised enough wind to sail northward later and rest the oars. But for now, the water remained dark and glassy-flat; it made the pirates restless, nervously avoiding their reflections on the water’s listless surface... and then feeling the urge to gaze down deeper into the greenish-black void, where the murdered bodies had sunk....

In consequence, they worked briskly, even helping the ex-slaves with their cleaning and ship-trimming tasks. They were in no mood to wait for a wind. By mid-morning, the vessels turned under oars, pivoting seaward and northward along the coast. Conan lingered with the freed slaves long enough to get them under way with a chant before leaping across to the foaming bow of his well-steered pirate craft.

“Ready now, sea-dogs, and pull! Put your backs in it and row. That’s the way! Pull, to save your wretched skins! Pull to fill your bellies! Row, not for your slave masters, but for escape and a passage to free Djafur. Row, you miserable dogs. Row for your freedom, and for revenge!”

II

Tide of Skulls

The port of Djafur had prospered in recent years. The normal strife and treachery continued among its pirate rulers, marked of late by the overthrow of a tyrant. The Red Brotherhood’s former ringleader Knulf had been slain— righteously enough, it was generally agreed—for striking a cowardly bargain with Djafur’s enemies and making the island port an outpost of Imperial Turan, and for the unjust theft of a woman.

Now, under Captain Amra’s hand, piracy again throve and grew. It had help, as always, from the fiercely independent Sea Tribes that inhabited Djafur and its surrounding Aetolian chain. The reefs and maelstroms among these isles made the port relatively secure from invasion, accessible only to canny local navigators.

Djafur was well-positioned to prey on the new breed of traders who dared to steer their heavy ships far out of sight of land and trace a straight route across the Vilayet. By doing so, these captains could forsake the numberless shoals and pirates of the sea’s two coasts—to face the fewer, fiercer pirates and lesser-known dangers of the open sea.

So far, a number of daring merchant voyagers had slipped through. There had also been some massive hauls by the Red Brotherhood. These and other legendary exploits—the capture of sacred gems and their resale to Hyrkania, the taking of hostages for ransom, and the theft of a huge vessel straight out of the Imperial Turanian harbour. at Aghrapur—brought wealth and fame to Djafur, transforming the once-sleepy thieves’ roost into a bustling harbour., alive with goods and men.

Now the flamboyant Amra was engaged in building a castle on the heights above the town—or rather, rebuilding it on the ruined foundations that had long jutted there. A new stone pier was under construction, along with breakwaters and catapult bastions at the harbour. mouth.

Unfamiliar faces, sailors and landsmen alike, swarmed about the port. They lodged in tents and barracks and in the spacious wing that had been added to Lady Philiope’s Red Hand Inn on the waterfront. Newly freed slaves and newly captive freemen laboured at the hewing and fitting of castle-stones and ship-timbers. Masons and shipcrafters had been imported from far cities, bribed or kidnapped from their snug mainland dwellings, to wait out their ransoms or earn their release at Conan’s bidding.

Into this warren of activity one bright afternoon, sailed two ships, the pirate cruiser Shrike and its newest prize, a round-waisted merchant galley.

The pirates, after what could hardly be called a rich voyage, looked none too jubilant. But the galley’s ragged crew, clearly Amra’s latest batch of freed slaves, wore grins on their sun-dark faces. Rowing close inshore and shipping oars, they leaped spiritedly overboard to drag both vessels stem-first up onto the sand.

The low surf of the tideless inland sea gave them aid, as did the shallow slope of the sheltered beach. A few of the newcomers baulked or muttered prayers to pagan gods at the sight of skulls and worn bones rolling and washing with the seashells in the surf underfoot—a normal feature of this pirate port, with its fatal rivalries and bloody doings. But the grisly sight did not trouble the pirates, not so long as the water was moving. And it did not keep other ex-slaves from falling on their faces and hugging solid earth, or tumbling and plastering each other from head to foot with warm sand.

Conan assigned a land crew to unload both ships, arms and perishables first. He paid off his pirates in gold from the merchantman’s coffers and his own, and ordered his officers to see to the former slaves. The majority of the motley newcomers were led off by Diccolo to the labour camp run by Sea Tribesmen under the island chief, Hrandulf. There they would find coarse rations, rough shelter, and heavy work in fortifying the harbour. They went off with hope on their faces, thinking any fate better than slavery on an oar-bench.

Of the rest, some claimed to have knowledge of carpentry and shipbuilding, and so went with Old Yorkin to the dockyard. Many of the women, still half-naked and more than half-starved, paired off with men and followed them. Other hard-looking faces, male and female alike, were given a gold drachm each as an advance on their future pay. These few, in main part the ringleaders of the attack on the galley’s crew, were told to keep their ears open and muster early for the next voyage, where their mettle as pirates would be tested.

Conan’s path led him, along with the bulk of his crew, to the Red Hand Inn, where he kept his temporary treasury and lodgings. The angular old pile, built of flotsam and ship-timbers, stood out over the beach at the head of the pier, its new annex of red coral masonry and dressed timber fronting the bay atop the seawall. The pirate crew trooped toward it over the sand, skirting the stems of beached ships; they found this a quicker way to the grog than braving the drunken throngs and hurly-burly of the harbour-front lane. As they mounted the stairs from the beach, entering the common-room via the pier and the inn’s seaward archway, they waved aside countless sly queries as to the success of their voyage.

Philiope, inheritor of the inn from her late and brief husband Knulf, had heard of the ships’ landfall. She awaited her favourite captain with an embrace, a lavish tongue-kiss, and a pitcher of ale standing ready nearby to quench his thirst. Of late, the inn-hostess found it convenient to be wantonly public in her affections for Conan; it was a way of giving notice that she and her hostelry were under the protection of the much-feared captain, and not to be trifled with.

Conan, for his part, made no protest. A stunning and raven-haired beauty, Philiope—dressed in a cut-down Turanian gown that bared both under struts and the whole starboard half of her foredeck—furnished him with a homecoming that would gratify any sailor. The tavern’s murmur of welcome, choked off enviously when the two clinched, subsided into stray hoots and a few coughs as Conan sat himself down on a bench and took the pliant Lady Philiope onto his lap.

“So, Captain, how went the voyage?” came the inevitable question from others seated along the central table. These were too notable to ignore—including the female captains Brylith and Santhindrissa, Conan’s lieutenants Ivanos and Ferdinald, and Hrandulf himself, drinking wine with a pair of his fellow sea-chieftains.

“It went well enough for my purposes,” Conan declared. “My crew, may Dagon pity the rogues, are slow to see the value of a stout prize and a bulk cargo—of labourers and materials to strengthen their home port, and farm-lubbers who mayhap can feed them when the sea-pickings grow scarce. They are too accustomed to a life of drunken laying-about to have any vision.” He made this complaint loudly enough for the ears of his crew, many of whom were dispersing to tables around the room. “I may have to give them a bonus,” he added more confidentially, “since the lion’s share of the goods went to me. I’ll be needing their efforts on more such voyages... but the results, I warrant, will fatten us all in the end.”

“A slave scow,” Santhindrissa remarked wryly. The she-pirate, tall and hawk-nosed, clad as scantily as ever in leather breeks and harness, sat eyeing Conan and the lush woman in his lap, shaking her head insolently. “’Tis a far cry from the past exploits of Amra the Pirate, on this sea or the Western Ocean!”

“Aye, a safer pastime.” The smaller, wirier female, Captain Brylith, took up the teasing note. “But then, hugging the coast for easy pickings may be wise. After all, ’tis well known the Turanians will pay a thousand talents to anyone who can bring in Amra’s carcass for public execution in the Temple Square.” Her portside eye, the one that wasn’t blocked by a leather patch, blinked insinuatingly at him. “Amra was rightly warned about the dangers of too much fame. I can’t say that I blame him for lying low.”

“Now, Brylith,” Conan answered mildly, “that is a spiteful way to talk, when you captain a ship I liberated for you.” He raised his foaming ale-mug to his lips to punctuate his argument. “If not for me, you’d still be hauling an oar for Drissa there,” he added with a nod to the taller female.

“Her ship the Victrix is her own,” Santhindrissa replied, “as much as the Tormentress is mine! She paid for it with good Colchian silver advanced out of my own coffers, I’d remind you.”

Conan shrugged, thumping down his ale-jack. “If it is a question of loyalty, I will not challenge you. We are a Brotherhood of independent captains, free to lead or follow as we choose.”

“A Sisterhood, I would say.” Drissa looked adamant. “No matter,” Conan replied. “The plans that I intend will benefit us all, and should bring any forward-looking captain into my service.”

As he spoke, Philiope eased out of his lap and took the emptied pitcher to the keg room for a refill. Her departure seemed to ease Santhindrissa’s sour demeanour. There were wenches aplenty serving the broad room—scullery boys too, and pleasure-women, experienced hussies plucked from oar-benches and wharf-sides all round the Vilayet. But such was the inflow of customers from newly arrived ships that service was hard-pressed to keep up.

“Regarding our future plans,” Hrandulf stated from his place at the end of the table, “a number of schemes have been brought up that call for a decision.” Squatly built and broad-nosed, with his grey hair and beard knotted in small, tight braids, he obviously was the senior of three Aetolian sea-chiefs who sat sharing a wine-beaker.

“Once the harbour. defences. are in place,” he said, “it will be safer to conduct foreign ships into Djafur—without necessarily killing the officers and liberating the rowers and goods, I mean.” He let his words settle in around the table, where they were greeted with impassive scowls from the pirates and nods and grunts of uncertainty from his fellow sea-chiefs.

“It is a radical idea, I know, not seizing the ships,” Hrandulf resumed. “But it could make Djafur more favoured, and make us all rich from commerce. Instead of shunning us, vessels might lay over here, especially on the trans-Vilayet voyages.”

“What an infamous notion!” Brylith spoke in sudden understanding, her hand falling to the hilt of the knife at her belt. “Why, if Djafur becomes a regular port-of-call, piracy will soon be outlawed hereabouts! We and our sister and brother thieves will someday be hunted from the seas like common brigands!” Her good eye shifted suspiciously among her fellow captains.

“Not necessarily, my dear Brylith,” Hrandulf said, seeking to reassure her in a fatherly way. “Protection will be given only to certain ships—or possibly to certain nationalities, who will pay our Brotherhood handsomely for the privilege. Other vessels would still be fair game... indeed, their destruction would be at a premium.” “Privateering, you mean,” Brylith said, “or some type of rank favouritism!” She frowned in disapproval. “I much prefer open, even-handed piracy.” Her fist, nevertheless, relaxed on her dagger-hilt.

“These island waters are hazardous,” Conan pointed out to Hrandulf. “Our salvation until now has been that few ships can make it in to Djafur on their own, the deep-keeled Imperial ramships least of all.”

“Precisely.” The sea-chief nodded, smiling. “That is why it will be necessary for Djafur-bound galleys to take on board a pilot from one of the Sea-Tribes—for a fair price—just as you pirate captains generally do. Ships of our nation can wait ready at channel-entries, or rendezvous there with right-thinking merchants, and collect tariffs by pre-arrangement. They’ll tip you off to any hostile sightings—-for the usual finder’s fee, of course.”

“There are many sorts and breeds of pirates in these waters,” Conan said with a glance to Santhindrissa. “Not all of them honour the law of our Brotherhood. If foreign pirates were to begin striking at Djafur’s trade—”

“Why, then,” Hrandulf crowed, “what better escort than a shipful of armed cutthroats? We can sell our protection to any willing vessels, whether bound here or not.”

“My thinking runs the same way,” Conan affirmed with a grin. “We can fight on contract, or else offer them safety for, say, a half-share of their profits. The details can easily be worked out later.”

“We will end up as mere sea-constables instead of real fighting pirates,” Brylith grumbled, plucking at a scab from a sword-wound on her arm. “It will have to pay us prettily to make up for our boredom.”

“Do not worry too much, Brylith,” Santhindrissa advised her. “There will always be plenty of ships for the Sisterhood to loot.”

“Aye,” Conan said. “The best of us will simply voyage farther in larger, better-crewed vessels. That is the fashion anyway, with more reliance on sail.” He held up his flagon for the newly returned Philiope to fill. “Speaking of which, Ferdinald, how goes my Nemesis?’

The fleshy-faced pirate, once a beached derelict and now Conan’s sailing-master and shipwright, put down his wine flagon and fished inside the chest of his grimy doublet. From it he drew a roll of dog-eared parchment that he spread on the table, wiping aside the spilled ale first. These were drawings done in a fairly capable hand, ink-and-charcoal sketchings of a ship with masts and rigging half-traced.

“The keel is laid, Cap’n, and the hull’s framing is in place. I made her solid as we agreed, with stout ribs, a bottom strong enough to hold ballast, and planks nailed securely in place. We’ll have no more of this light peg-work, to be tossed about like a cockleshell in Vilayet gales!” His grubby forefinger thrust at the plan’s cutaway details as he spoke. “I laid her out shallow-draft as you ordered—but see here, astern are gudgeon and pintle, to give us a real rudder and helm. That will make her hold a course true, with none of this eastern side-paddling.”

“Excellent, Ferdinald,” Conan declared. “Long I have yearned to captain a ship like Nemesis on these seas—a real stout-built sailer, like the ones we had out west. It should teach these paddle-boaters a thing or two, to see a square-rigged carrack bearing down on them! ’Twill bring on a new age in piracy.”

Ferdinald nodded, intent on his drawings. “No ram on her, that will prevent drag. E’en so, this heavy keel should serve to cut down a ship twice her size. See here, this is the shape I have given her.” Fumbling in a pocket of his doublet, he produced a model, a roughly carved ship’s hull with three mast-stubs. The shape offered a high prow and stern-castle to rough seas, as Conan could plainly see; yet it had a narrow, semi-flattened bottom with a straight, thick keel.

“Just give me a month and another shipload of good Colchian timber,” Ferdinald said, “and she will be off the ways.” He raised his cup to his stubbled lip. “You’d best have a safe berth to anchor her in, for you’ll never drag this one up onto a beach!”

“By then the new breakwater should be finished,” Conan said, “and the cargo dock as well, for unloading loot. You can inspect the slave-ship I just brought in for any usable timbers,” he added offhandedly. “The tub is too round-bellied to make a good pirate.”

“While you’re breaking up ships,” Ferdinald said, “give me the spars and decking of that Imperial dromon you stole.” He doffed his wine and extended his cup to Philiope for a refill. “That is a prize that will never serve you as a pirate. ’Tis far too big and lumbering to chase merchants, and too costly to man and float, much less to take out on a raid. No sense in letting it lie and shrivel on the beach.”

“Nay, the Remorseless is a fine ship,” Conan said. “I want her intact. Crom only knows when we may have need of her. There will be great opportunities, great fights in store for our Brotherhood in the days to come.”

When supper was brought in—a stew of mutton for once, instead of fish—everyone set to work in earnest. Silence settled over the room, moving from the captains’ table with the distribution of food. For a time, the only sounds were the thumping of bread loaves and the scrape of spoons in wooden trenchers. Then rough fellowship resumed, with good-natured laughing and belching and strident calls for drink. The commencement of piping and singing boded soon to bring on frenzied outbursts of dance.

Conan, weary of talking business, tugged at Philiope to leave the inn with him. The hostess was reluctant. Under her management, the Red Hand had become a genteel place by pirate standards, more a perfumed brothel than a tavern. But the room was well-stocked with drink and women, and the pirates were flush; it would be some hours before the less lucky gamblers lost everything they had and the serious fights began. So, for the nonce, the counterfeit noblewoman let herself be lured out into the evening.

“This town gets more crowded by the hour,” Conan observed approvingly. He elbowed a path through the press of inebriates, idlers, and cutpurses thronging the harbour-front lane. “Soon Djafur will rival the grand western ports I have roistered in, from Kordava to Asgalun.”

Grabbing one scruffy loiterer by the collar, he flung him aside in the lamp-lit gloom. This evoked oaths and frightened recognition from others nearby, who shrank back respectfully, opening the way. “Though, to be sure,” Conan went on, “Djafur is but an island and can never grow larger.”

“That may be best for us,” Philiope said, clutching him around the waist and angling her raven head against his bare chest. “It will be easier to keep control of things this way.”

“Aye. They know me, and they curb their mischief in my sight.” To illustrate his point, Conan shot a captainly glare at a knot of grog-swillers clustered in a doorway, who averted their eyes or else raised their beakers in half-hearted salute. “There are a good many rogues here I would not trust out of thumping-distance.”

“As more strangers come into port, from Aghrapur and like places—”

“Indeed, there will be spies and schemers among them.” Sheltering Philiope in one arm, Conan turned their steps aside into a dark lane that led uphill between rows of fishermen’s huts. “These pirates of mine are none too quick of understanding, but as talk spreads among them of the lofty enemies I’ve made, and of bounties offered for my head, truly or falsely... why, even some of our old comrades may bear watching.”

Philiope nodded, nestling against him as they walked. “I have seen it ashore, in Imperial Court doings—they are like tumblers in a circus. When one of them rises to the lop, there are always lesser ones who wish to vault themselves up by the force of his downfall... or hers.” Conan grunted. “That is why I crave a castle around me. When I stand on my quarterdeck, though I be naked, I feel safe. I can defeat any ship, lesser or greater, and I can slap down the ugliest ruffian of my crew, or a whole gaggle of them if need be. I can be certain that most of my own rogues will back me, whether through goodwill or weak gizzards.” He shook his black mane sombrely. “But here ashore, where they can mull and plot out of my hearing... I have no wish to sit out my nights waiting for the assassin’s arrow or the poisoner’s cup.”

The way had grown steep, leading up a rocky path between scattered, low-walled cottages screened by olive and fruit trees. Behind them, the seafront and its revelry dwindled to a fading, yellow-lit hubbub of voices and clinking tones, its rhythm paced by the slap of waves against the long crescent beach. The harbour’s fish-stink was forgotten here, where the night lay warm with scents of jasmine, pear blossom, and coriander.

The two turned aside along a hill path skirting the town, rutted by wheels of carts and tamped down by the bare feet of labourers who drew them. The route angled up through several switchbacks, offering progressively grander views of Djafur bay and of the moonlit, wave-broken, reef-fanged Vilayet beyond. The path at once grew steep, almost vertical, then levelled out on a plateau.

It was a rock-rimmed, partly walled outcrop where an old castle had caved in and a new one grew in its place. Clusters of hewn stone, conical heaps of mortar, and stacks of timber stood about—unguarded, since there was nothing here for a pirate to steal. Ancient tile floors merged with new flagstones, and most of the broken walls were finished out in straight, even courses of stonework. A few pillars and archways stood tall, independent of the as-yet-unbuilt defences.

“Here, now, would be a splendid bedchamber.” Philiope, freeing herself from Conan, strode out onto a tessellated pavement that overlooked bay, town, everything— all from a dizzy height. “I could lie abed and watch your ship row in. And make sure my lovers are safely gone when you arrive.” Turning gracefully in the moonlight, she strode back to him and placed a kiss on his frowning brow. “I was only teasing, my love. There is no other.”

Relinquishing her embrace, Conan shrugged. “If you decide to take a lover, that is your decision. And his, as to whether he dares it. Just be sure you do not plot my death with him.”

“No, truly, Conan, I don’t think I could ever want another man.” She turned from him. “Tell me, then, will our bed be here?”

Conan frowned again and shook his head. “Umm, no. The catapults, more likely.” At her glance of incomprehension he explained. “This vantage commands the beach, the town, and the safest anchorage. It is secure from assault. With a good heavy engine of the best Turanian design, I can hurl a stone half the weight of your lovely self—” he swatted sharply at the curve of her rump—“through any ship that may seek to land.”

“But why would you need to?” She looked out over the view with slight dismay. “Djafur is protected by reefs, as you said. Do you expect a siege?”

He laid a hand on her smooth, pale shoulder. “Island shoals have guarded us passably so far. But all it requires is treachery, which would be nothing new. The first time one of the Sea Tribes decides to revolt, and furnishes our enemy with pilots, an Imperial fleet can find us. And, fierce as our sea-fighters are, I could not with any certainty stop an attacker from blockading the port or burning our ships. No harbour. is that safe.”

Glancing around at the unfinished walls, he raised a hand. “But here, girt in a well-stocked castle and surrounded by trusty fellow-thieves, I can deny anyone else the use of the port.” He grinned at her. “No shore party, unaided from within, could take these heights. And no Vilayet empire is wealthy enough to post a fleet off this island forever. Djafur is the best local harbour.; schemers would need it as a base were they to rule these waters. They recognized that before and tried to steal the place. As long as I can prevent it, I rule the Eastern Vilayet.” “You will be safe up here from your fellow-pirates, as well.” Thoughtful, Philiope regarded the shimmering lights of the port. “They may come to resent that in time.”

“Yes, but I do not fear them. Had they the will to band against me, they’d have the wit to see it’s wiser to follow me.” He laughed. “Do not worry, I would not readily bombard the town, or sink the galleys of our friends. Their fates and ours are linked.” He took her into his arms, kissing her brow, face, neck. “As for our bedchamber—never fear, it will sit higher and grander than this.”

“I like it here. It is warmer than the beach.” Pulling away from him, Philiope loosened her thick, dark hair and shook it free in the fragrant hill breeze. “The stones are still warm, as are these tiles underfoot.” Seating herself on a hewn wall at the edge of the parapet, she kicked off her sandals.

“The view of the stars is better here, too,” Conan remarked, drawing her close again and gazing skyward. “Would that my topmast could reach this high when I try to navigate on a foggy evening.”

“I’ll raise your topmast, and I’ll fill your sails for you,” she bragged, eluding his grasp and standing upright on the paves. “First, let’s strike some of this extra canvas.”

Reaching to the back of her gown, she loosened it and let it slip down around her bare ankles.

“Then stand ready to grapple and board,” he muttered hoarsely, lunging to his feet after her.

Philiope turned and with a flash of pale limbs, darted away from him. Lithe in the moonlight, she flitted for the shadows, with Conan following close at her heels.

III

Schemes and Simmerings

High Emissary Adi Bulbul stepped haughtily down from the coach that had been sent for him. The vehicle was resplendent, covered by gold leaf inlaid with ivory and lapis lazuli, its roof onion-domed and minaretted like some small travelling mosque for the new cult of Tarim-worshippers. Its costly glory almost blinded the ambassador in the noonday glare; he nevertheless pretended to ignore it, for the sake of the guards, coachmen, and footmen who stood awaiting his whim. The dignity of his mission and of his sacred Hyrkanian homeland demanded no less.

The royal coach, in any event, was dwarfed by the grander spectacle of Aghrapur’s Imperial Palace. Before Adi Bulbul it rose up mountainous, dome upon gleaming dome, spire on spire embellished with precious stone, tile, and alloy. Quite properly, he gave all this gaudy ostentation scarcely a glance. Instead, he kept a supercilious frown on his moustached lip while eyeing the lavishly clothed and armed guards, most of them female, who saluted him from the courtyard.

Even so, his carriage horses, as he grudgingly had to admit, merited close attention. Splendid animals they were, their honey-brown coats well-brushed and their braided blond manes agleam with gold ribbons. Fine, spirited beasts—though over-large, bred too massively as drays or heavy cavalry chargers. They had far more bulk than was needed to carry a rider equipped with sword and bow, a blanket, and a few days’ dry rations over the barren steppe. They would slow down after a few hours’ pursuit, most certainly, and would fall short in speed and endurance over the extended campaign.

“His Gracious Honour Adi Bulbul,” a eunuch’s tenor voice rang out, “High Emissary and Attaché Extraordinary of the Hyrkanian Empire.”

His title, proclaimed in the triple-arched portico, trumpeted down the broad marble stair and inward into the gilded recesses of the palace. It was an announcement, and a summons. He took care not to mount the steps too briskly, lest he appear eager or worse, subservient.

Neither were his Turanian hosts in any evident hurry. His lightly armed escort led him at a deliberate pace through the grand entry hall, through a second row of portals, and across a gaudy, glittering ballroom. But instead of ascending, as Adi Bulbul half expected, into the domed and terraced heights of the palace, he was conducted down a circular stair well with a broad alabaster rail. At the bottom stretched a tiled corridor lit by filigreed windows high overhead; it ended at double doors whose ornate bronze valves, though polished, were greenly tinged by verdigris. Here his honour guard, their golden axes clanking at their sides, stopped at attention and drew open the portals. The high-turbaned majordomo bowed deeply. With a flourish of his gloved hand, he gestured the Hyrkanian envoy forward into a brightly echoing chamber where three silk-clad nobles waited.

“Greetings, and a most jubilant welcome—Adi Bulbul, is it?” The smallest and stoutest of the three men, elderly but active-looking in a businesslike dashiki and fez of chartreuse silk, bustled forward to take his guest’s hand. “I am Emperor Yildiz, and very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

On recognizing that the emissary did not have the western custom of gripping hands, or rather did not honour it, Emperor Yildiz contented himself with a firm clap on the man’s shoulder.

“This tall river-reed here is my boy, Prince Yezdigerd.” The Emperor of All Turan nodded to indicate an equally plain-dressed noble who shared something of his look.

“And this is my Finance Minister and Imperial Engineer, Nephet All.” The third noble was fitted out more fashionably in a silken blouse, sash, and pantaloons, with an abundant loose turban and gold-tasselled slippers.

Lacking a previous introduction, Adi Bulbul would have assumed that this third and most ostentatious man was the emperor. Yet to the Hyrkanian—in his more tasteful and practical garb of loose shirt, fleece-lined vest, belted riding breeches, and fur-trimmed boots—these westerners looked effete and decadent anyway. He responded primly with a stiff bow and a suspicious glance toward the broader reaches of the gallery.

“Have you brought me here for a diplomatic conference, then,” Adi Bulbul asked, “or for a bath?” He posed this question because the room, beyond the terrace where they stood, consisted of a gold-tiled pool of blue, mirror-still water.

“Both, if you like,” Emperor Yildiz told him with an impish look, turning to lead his guest back toward the others. “In truth, whenever we have these dreary affairs at high levels of state, I try to provide some kind of diversion. Always put pleasure before business, that’s my motto.”

Arriving at a low table spread with viands and decanters and circled by four elaborately carved folding chairs, the emperor motioned for ready servants to seat his guests. He then raised a hand overhead and snapped his fingers resoundingly. “All right, girls, you can begin! Gentlemen, whatever you desire is yours.”

The emperor’s commandments were answered by a bustling of menials at the pool’s edge just ahead. But Adi Bulbul was temporarily distracted by servants nearer to hand, hurrying to make him comfortable. They pulled out a chair for him, plumped cushions under his lean haunches, and stood eagerly on either hand with beverage pitchers and trays of dainty food. Senior harem-maids, these must be, plump and bouncy matrons in keeping with Yildiz’s far-famed tastes. In spite of their station, they were none too warmly clothed, even for the mild, humid air of the indoor bath.

Adi Bulbul’s reaction to their barely veiled ampleness was one of tight-lipped disapproval. Full-figured women were not favoured in Hyrkania; he would never think of overburdening his horse by slinging such a one across his saddlebow. A steppe-rider’s taste in females, as with animals, ran toward lithe compactness and agility. To Adi Bulbul, this display of dimpled flesh was just one more proof of the western kingdom’s decadence.

“Merely indicate your desires, High Emissary.” The turbaned minister Nephet Ali—his shoulders lasciviously rubbed by a buxom and ruby-lipped nymphet—winked at him. This principle of Turanian courtly life was driven home to Adi Bulbul as one of his own hovering attendants misinterpreted a stray glance of his as somehow signalling a desire for stuffed candied fish. She dove immediately for the golden platter bearing them, cupped one of the reeking delicacies in the soft palm of her purple-nailed hand, and bore it temptingly under his nose. The Hyrkanian averted his face in disgust, shoving her arm away. He turned with his last vestige of dignity toward Emperor Yildiz, who had allowed himself to be seated at his visitor’s right hand.

“How gracious we find it,” Yildiz told him benignly, “to lighten the cares of government with simpler and less vexatious pastimes.” The remark was made in evident reference to activities that were taking shape at the poolside.

“Indeed,” the ambassador growled back at him, not even bothering to follow his host’s languid gaze, “I had rather intended to discuss the actions of your Imperial legions and proxy armies in the Colchian and Zaporoskan frontier zones, and your pre-emptive naval policy in the Southern Vilayet.”

“Yes, of course, that’s what we’re here for,” Yildiz beamed, glancing back at his guest. “That, and to celebrate goodwill between our allied empires, two peoples strongly linked in culture and heritage.”

At this, Adi Bulbul drew himself up more stiffly yet. “Whether Hyrkania and Turan even comprise two different nations is open to debate,” he pointed out sternly. “Your kingdom was first founded as a Hyrkanian colony, a western expansion of the glorious empire carved out by our steppe-riding forefathers. We are of one spirit and one blood, remember! Our continued union is a necessity.” “What could be truer, after all?” Prince Yezdigerd spoke now for the first time, and with cordial energy. “Our nations share the same language and the same customs, and our two methods of government are similar. What matters it that our seat of culture has moved westward? Why, Turan’s great reach of wealth and power today—” he gestured vaguely upward toward the vast palace looming over their heads—“is based on our rough, sturdy Hyrkanian roots, there can be no question.”

Adi Bulbul felt the less-than-subtle barb that lay in the words; he did not smile at its sting. “One people we are, certainly, known to the world as a single Hyrkanian race. Unfortunate it is that some of our western colonial descendants have turned their backs on the great old gods of our ancestors to take refuge in a false foreign religion.” At this, it was Prince Yezdigerd’s turn to stiffen. “Most gracious Adi Bulbul, allow me to correct the slanders that some have heaped upon our faith. The worship of the Prophet Tarim is a native Turanian belief, an achievement of the highest civilization of our time.” The prince sat opposite Adi Bulbul at the table, with his back to the indoor pool; his pale-faced righteousness filled the emissary’s vision. “The New Faith can fittingly be claimed by both our peoples—indeed, it should be shared by all men everywhere, but especially by Hyrkanians.”

“Now, now, my lad,” the Emperor Yildiz chided his son. “You will have ample time to convert our guest once his official business here is complete. But for now, let us consider things that are of interest to all men everywhere, such as sporting prowess, high adventure, and feminine charms!”

He waved toward the aquatic activities nearby that had now taken definite shape. Several of the emperor’s maidservants or harem-wives—slimmer ones these, with a more brisk and athletic bearing—had carried brightly coloured objects to the waterside. Though dressed much as everyday houris, in frilly, insubstantial lace that became clinging and transparent when wet, they seemed practised and intent on what they were doing. Having floated several long pontoons at different places around the indoor pool—thus spreading ripples across the water’s clear blue surface, breaking up its flawless reflection of the ornate tiled ceiling—they straddled the floats in pairs and made ready to put out from shore.

Each woman, Adi Bulbul saw, was armed with a long pole bearing stiffened bladders in the shape of paddles at either end. These could be used as oars, propelling the pontoon and its two riders forward when plied with a dexterous, alternating rhythm. They also served as weapons, as was demonstrated when two of the pontoons neared one another in mid-pond. Each vessel’s crew fought to unseat or overturn the other by poking and swatting with the padded ends of the poles. The flailing and splashing, with its attendant shrieks, made a colourful spectacle... one that the Hyrkanian emissary found juvenile and uninteresting.

“There, now, Ambassador, you see,” the turbaned finance minister Nephet Ali said amiably, glancing over his shoulder to Adi Bulbul. “By travelling all this way to visit Turan, you get a valuable look at what our country does best—striving and adventuring on the high sea!” With the quip, he raised his golden cup to his lips. But then, wiping ruby wine from his mouth with the back of one hand, he seemed to observe that the envoy had not taken his joke. “Turan, you know, has always been a formidable sea-power,” he finished on an apologetic note.

“Yet in truth,” Adi Bulbul coldly parried, “when Turan was first founded as a colony, it was carved out of the wilderness by Hyrkanian cavalry riding around the southern shores of the Vilayet, campaigning and conquering in the immemorial fashion.”

“And what about you, High Emissary?” Prince Yezdigerd, seated with his back to the lively water-sports, had no distraction from observing and questioning his father’s guest. “When you came from your homeland on this mission, did you gallop around the Vilayet on the back of a sturdy Hyrkanian war-steed?”

The ambassador’s olive complexion darkened a shade. “No, I crossed on a merchant ship.”

“One of the new oversea sail galleys, was it not?” Nephet Ali joined in helpfully. “Crossing direct from Hyrkania to the capital?”

“Indeed,” Adi Bulbul affirmed, scowling. “We spent several days out of sight of land.” His doumess concealed memories that were less than pleasant; he had no wish to discuss his initial terror, and his bout of seasickness.

“Such voyages are the way of the future,” Emperor Yildiz said, turning amiably from the pool spectacle. “Now more than ever, commerce between our two countries can flourish by this oversea route we have pioneered, and with it, our friendly relations. My empire, with its vast trade fleet and powerful navy, is in a good position to regulate sea-traffic for both our countries’ sakes-—but say, High Emissary,” the emperor cried out abruptly, “what neglect is this? You have been offered no beverage!” Waving down at the horseman’s empty, callused hands, Yildiz grew self-righteously agitated. “Aspasia, Isdra, my girls, you have been sorely remiss in your duty! Pour our guest some good palm arrak from this same pitcher I have tasted. Here, Adi Bulbul, use my cup, if it makes you feel safer—”

Surprised and somewhat mollified by his Imperial host’s gesture, Adi Bulbul leaned forward and accepted the jewel-encrusted goblet from the emperor’s hand. He sampled its contents, pursuing his lips critically. “Hmm, not as rich and sour as our good koumiss, the fermented mare’s milk of my native district—but strong, yes, for a civilized drink.” He shook his pigtailed head to clear away the fumes, then tasted once more.

“The fighting grows lively,” Yildiz observed, turning back to his aquatic diversion. And in truth, the activity was intense, with all but one crew of pontoon-paddlers having suffered a capsizing. The two now defended their honour heroically at the centre of the pool, fighting off one spirited attack after another. The rest of the women, having been thoroughly doused, fought or looked on in soggy harem-garb that clung and flopped against their supple wet bellies and haunches. Some, in consequence of this, had shucked off parts of their costume or tom away irksome frills; they now toiled naked or nearly so, beautiful sea-sprites attacking from the depths.

Adi Bulbul’s sportsmanlike interest, primed somewhat by the arrak, was finally drawn by one team as they improvised to unseat their opponents. Having cast aside their pontoon, the taller combatant stood neck-deep in water and allowed her smaller, lighter companion to vault onto her shoulders. Taking up the float-ended paddle and riding piggyback, the warrior urged her steed forward against the water-borne enemy.

Here at last was a mode of attack Adi Bulbul could appreciate. To his cavalryman’s trained eye, the tautness of the nubile sea-raider’s thighs as they strove against her water-steed’s neck, her lusty cries, and the play of shoulders and breasts as she flailed and smote with her padded bludgeon—it made an inspiring spectacle, even as horse and rider lost their balance and toppled into the waves without unseating their enemies. The envoy celebrated their heroism by refilling his flagon.

Then, from an unexpected quarter, fate intervened. The seaborne onslaught had driven the defenders perilously close to shore, and now from the pool’s rim, running and leaping in an airborne attack, came one of the lean, agile harem-maids, with matted hair and wet shreds flying. She landed across the pontoon, capsizing it and sending both of its occupants headlong into the depths.

“Aha, so it is proved,” Yildiz declared, blandly turning back to the table. “No marauder can stand for long against Turanian naval power.”

“Quite true, Father.” Of the four nobles, the one who showed no interest at all in the watery contest was Prince Yezdigerd; all this time, evidently, he had waited patiently to resume business. “The key issue in guarding the sea,” the younger man declared, “is the suppression of piracy, which has been my special concern. Pirates, as you are no doubt aware, have done inestimable damage along the eastern and southern coasts—particularly this rascal Amra, who should be caught without delay and impaled on his own mainmast.”

“Off our Turanian coast, there is less problem,” Nephet Ali put in helpfully. “Except, of course, for the recent incident here in Aghrapur harbour.,” the finance minister seemed to then belatedly recall, with a blushing glance to his emperor and prince. “But in western waters generally, because of our naval supremacy, we have them fairly well under control.”

“Under control, I would certainly agree, and also under command.” Adi Bulbul spoke up sharply, his recent good humour forgotten. “Need I remind you, Sir,” he said, singling out Prince Yezdigerd for his rebuke, “that the latest pirate craft caught in a running fight off the Aetolians carried your nation’s Imperial ensign? And that, since your envoys reportedly made overtures to pirate leaders at Djafur, land and sea raids have been widely conducted under your flag, sometimes by Turanian warships marauding as pirates?” With arrak firing his veins, he felt no need of restraint. “Keeping these facts in mind, Prince, how can you claim the special goal of eradicating the Vilayet pirates?”

Yezdigerd matched his guest’s indignation. “It is a most personal and heartfelt aim, I assure you, in view of these rogues’ continual affronts to Turanian naval power—” “Your naval power!” Adi Bulbul flared, having paused in his diatribe only long enough to drink. “I hear of nothing else from you, as if the Vilayet were your harem-pool here! Do you not know, Hyrkania has a navy too! And it is more than sufficient to keep you from crowding us off the face of the sea!”

“Now, now, High Emissary,” Emperor Yildiz broke in. “Let us remain friends. I know of no actions by our navy hostile to you, and I would never condone such a thing. If there have been abuses, rest assured we will get to the bottom of them and soundly punish the offenders. As for the so-called pirate Brotherhood,” he added with a wry shrug, “we tried to buy them off, it is true. But not at your country’s expense, no, never. And they proved to be treacherous and unreliable, as pirates will be. They have struck against us since, and I cannot be responsible for the damage they do to others. So let us rest and be convivial.” “No, ’tis enough, I say!” Gulping down the last of his arrak, Adi Bulbul slammed the flagon down onto the lacquered table. “Let there be no more pretence of hearty good-fellowship while your forces continue their war moves in supposedly neutral holdings. I ask you, can you deny your General Artaban’s mission in the Colchians, threatening Hyrkania’s source of strategic timber and minerals? Or your manoeuvres along the Zaporoskan front, building up your country’s armed presence and aiding puppet warlords like Gleg and his ilk? Can you truly deny that your agents had a hand in the recent Yuetshi uprising? Piracy, it would seem, is the least of the infamies afoot here!”

“Adi Bulbul, let me reassure you—” Leaning forward in his chair, Emperor Yildiz laid a calming hand on his guest’s arm. But the emissary spumed it with a violent gesture, his own hand coming back to rest on the pommel of the small, curved dagger at his belt.

The Hyrkanian felt no wish to fight, especially not with such a useless weapon. But by all the gods, and by the arrak seething in his blood, he swore that he would be heard. “Listen, you Turanian upstarts,” he said, rising from his seat. “The Hyrkanian ruling council has empowered me to state—nay, to demand—but here now, what is this?”

As he railed at the others, he found himself surrounded and seized by the armed escort, who had moved up from their station at the door. Female guards, they were, two pairs of tall, muscular Æsir women garbed in bronze plates, homed helmets, and the bearskin kilts of their homeland, with light axes holstered at their hips. Doubtless they had seen his violent gesture against Emperor Yildiz and his instinctive grab for his hilt. But that did not excuse the insult.

“Away with you, release me,” he raged at them, struggling futilely in their grip. “How dare you lay violent hands on Hyrkania’s ambassador, whom you have received under Erlik’s laws of hospitality? And how dare you, Emperor, make me the prisoner of women? My lords will hear of this affront, I warn you! Yildiz, for shame! Are king and prince alike scoundrels?”

The emperor, looking on sadly, did not intervene as his guards dragged the spry Hyrkanian toward the door. “Show him to the guest tower,” he instructed his major-domo. “Let him cool down for a day or so, then I will think about releasing him. Furnish him with a scribe, in case he can vent his rage in writing, and with maidservants of the softer sort. And try him out on lotus wine instead of arrak''

As Adi Bulbul’s furious shouts receded down the corridor, Yildiz turned mildly to his son. “An excitable fellow, our Hyrkanian envoy. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you intended to provoke him. You must give$ deeper study to the subtle arts of diplomacy, Yezdigerd.” The prince shrugged faintly, barely acknowledging his father. “Things might have gone differently had you not urged him to partake of fermented drink. It is a barbarous custom, unclean in the eyes of our Prophet Tarim.”

The emperor sighed. “Yes, well, as messy as it can be, there is nothing like it to take the true measure of a man. An excitable one, Adi Bulbul. But if his views are matched by those of his leaders, why then, they are painfully alert to our every move along the southern frontier.” “Let them watch and react as they wish.” The prince sat calmly erect, not troubling to meet his father’s gaze. “With but a meagre navy and their traditional slowness in uniting their mounted clans, there is little they can do to oppose us.”

Yildiz sighed again. “Son, I would that you observed my method of statecraft more carefully. Whether we want peace with the Old Empire, or seek to parcel them out in bits, or want outright war, it’s still desirable that we conciliate them as long we can. It is possible at times to fight on for decades and emerge victorious, before your enemy even knows there has been a war.” He looked across the table to Nephet Ali, who sat watching him respectfully.

“But how I do run on about these boring affairs,” he recollected himself. “Isdra, come, girl, refill my royal flagon. Drink heady enough to befuddle a horse-soldier is not too strong for the Emperor of All Turan!”

Prince Yezdigerd, arising and silently taking his leave, mused over his father’s admission. So the old man had a method to his madness! Or he thought he did, at least when his mind was not too blurred with intoxicants and the fleshy charms of his houris.

Yet even so, his approach was indirect and cowardly. To Yezdigerd’s thorough disapproval, his royal father’s nature remained devious and equivocating, never letting anyone know where he stood. The old man lacked the righteousness born of Tarim and the unifying principles of the Prophet’s teaching. He had resisted the True Faith thus far in his sly, insinuating way, and there was no likelihood of a change.

In the prince’s view, if there was to be war with Hyrkania, let it come without guise or concealment. It did not befit a ruler to be glib-tongued and insincere, as in his father’s connivance with the Vilayet pirates. From the start, Yezdigerd had sought their destruction at sea, both on principle and as a fairly easy display of his empire’s might. Yildiz, on the other hand, had coddled and tolerated the scofflaws, bribing and bargaining in endless efforts to use them as catspaws.

It had become the heart of the struggle between father and son, especially when the prince saw his own reputation and Imperial Turan’s openly besmirched by bloody-handed Amra the Pirate. Yet the emperor seemed to delight in making his son a public failure.

As the prince passed out of the main palace, a frown deepened on his moustached face. Yildiz was old-fashioned, he was lax with age and vice; yet he had no notion of ever relinquishing power to a younger, more vigorous generation. Yezdigerd, for his part, was restless; he sought to outshine his father, to establish his own reputation in the strongest possible way, as a prelude to becoming the greatest emperor Turan had yet known. What better way to make his mark than in war?

Striding down to the harbour-front, he waved up one of the palace boatmen. In moments, the neatly fezzed and uniformed fellow was ready at the pier-side, standing up in the stem of one of the gilded gondolas. Stepping in and taking his seat, Yezdigerd spoke without turning to face the man. “To the mudflats,” he commanded, “and the compound of the wizard Crotalus.”

If there was a moment’s hesitation astern, that was the sole evidence of any fear the gondolier may have felt. Smoothly the long oar shoved off against the pilings, then fishtailed in the water. The boat gathered speed forward, passing the marble terraces and perfumed gardens of the palace precinct. Aiming out between the catapult-topped bastions of the mole, it entered the estuary.

Beyond the palace docks, Aghrapur’s harbour. spread vast and dazzling-blue. Near at hand was the Imperial Navy Yard, a complicated forest of masts, pilings, high-carved prows, and looming cargo cranes; beyond the tangle rose barracks, heaps of navy stores, and fortress battlements looming up tall as coastal cliffs and hills. Ships bobbed in the harbour., giant anchored war-galleys and smaller dhows, feluccas, and dahabiyahs. Their painted sails angled brightly in the mild breeze, their wet oars flashed.

Beyond the navy yard, the public harbour. sheltered an even grander array of ships, bustling even more colourfully with their comings and goings. The gondola’s course, however, angled sharply away from these bright scenes and the wharves of the teeming city. The gondolier, having steered out into the grey currents of the Ilbars River’s southern channel, had to stroke energetically for some minutes.

Then, as the water grew calm again, his task became that of avoiding grey shoals and treacherous shallows of feathery, sticky mud. Morning mists still clung to these low, wet islets, obscuring both near and middle distance. The smell that accompanied the dampness was enough to remind trespassers that the Ilbars was not only one of the world’s largest rivers, but one of its grandest open sewers.

The glaring, grey horizon, the listless, lapping wavelets and forlorn squeak of marsh birds, all conjured an atmosphere of fatal desolation. As the river seemed to lose its way among sparsely reeded banks, Aghrapur and its glories shrank to a mere memory. Outside the low, garish confines of the boat, the only substantial fragment of reality was a squarish, irregular shape that loomed near in the mist: a broad enclosure formed of pilings driven close together into the mud.

The compound’s jagged-topped wall gaped open-ended into the river. Toward the back lay buildings, derelict ships, and launching skids that led up onto at least semi-solid land. Before the inlet stood a triple piling driven into fairly deep water. Obviously made for mooring a fair-sized ship, it was now untenanted. Smaller boats and barges floated or lay beached inside the walls; such vessels formed the only means of entering or leaving, since there was evidently no land gate.

Steering into the enclosure, the gondolier brought the boat smoothly to a halt alongside a rude timber dock. Yezdigerd arose from his seat and stepped up onto the planks; after waiting for a moment, he gestured peremptorily for the boatman to follow. The servant, though obviously reluctant, joined the prince ashore, stepping down from the pier onto a corduroy wood path that led across damp, reeking mud toward the rough timber sheds.

As they approached, a figure emerged from a doorway that yawned in the side of the largest building. A black-skinned man he was, tall and white-robed, with a round, shaven head. His smile gleamed strongly yellow in the misty light.

“Ah, Prince, you come to see my workshop! I welcome you with a craftsman’s humble pride—” he nodded a polite bow, if a scant one—“though you must know I would have been happy to attend your convenience at the palace.”

“Hail to you, Crotalus. I prefer having fewer witnesses and less gossip of our meetings,” Yezdigerd explained with a glance to the boatman. “Anyway, I have been eager to see your work first-hand, and so expand my knowledge of science. It will affect my imminent choice of actions.”

“Again, I am honoured,” Crotalus said. “Since you already know the direction of my efforts, I will let the various phases of my project speak for themselves. Come.” With a wave of his long-cloaked arm, he ushered his visitors back toward the shed.

The rank, swampy smell had gradually grown worse, but here near the buildings it was blotted out and eclipsed by stronger, fouler odours that suddenly made the mudflat fumes seem fresh and healthy. As the three entered the dark building, they were met by a stifling wave of corruption and decay; the air was further soured by a musky animal foetor that made all except the wizardly proprietor halt dead in the doorway.

“Do not mind the smell, you will grow used to it,” Crotalus assured them. “Here, as you can see, is our germination phase. It shows that breeding is a problem readily overcome.”

What he pointed to was a large wooden vat, a steel-hooped product of the cooper’s craft, whose surface seethed and boiled continuously without any visible source of heat. On closer inspection, its contents proved to be not bubbling liquid but brown, finger-sized insects, segmented, many-legged, and armed with broad mouth-pincers. They writhed and squirmed through putrid muck lying clotted around a litter of human bones.

“Ample feeding is a must,” Crotalus informed his guests. “It prevents them from devouring each other, and the eggs.” He indicated a pair of squat, ragged, subhuman-looking slaves at work in the shadows; having wheeled a wooden barrow near, they eased a human corpse from it into the vat. “With tender care in these early stages of life,” the wizard observed, “the death rate of the grubs can be kept tolerably low.”

“Does the dead flesh have to be human?” Yezdigerd asked, his voice dull and flat with his effort not to breathe in the stench.

“Predominantly human, yes, and fairly well decomposed.” The wizard’s gaze trailed coolly from the set, unemotional face of his questioner to the gaping, fear-stricken countenance of the oarsman. “These newborns are well-adapted to stripping remains in city sewers and river shallows. They run the risk of digestive problems in dealing with tough hides and hair. We’ve had some limited success with adding in flayed animal carcasses, and even fish. But on the whole, rare hatchlings like these must be pampered.”

“There is no shortage of feed, then?” The prince tore his gaze away from the teeming charnel muck, turning to the wizard.

“Not so far,” Crotalus said, “what with the hooking stray bodies out of the harbour., harvesting from the city’s pauper-fields, and servicing the jails. Luckily, the remains do not have to be any too fresh.”

“No wonder they call your craft necromancy.” Yezdigerd shrugged his shoulders in what amounted to a shudder of distaste. “What, then, of the older generation?” “They thrive well,” Crotalus said, leading them across the shed to a row of six oblong vats. “They are less ravenous than their small brothers, and far more responsive to the nurturing force of my magic.”

Each vat, filled waist-deep with water, contained a single large centipede writhing on a carpet of bones; of these monsters, only one was currently engaged in feeding at the bottom of its surging, mercifully clouded trough. These many-legged horrors were about the length of a man’s arm or leg; the size of the vats, however, suggested that they would grow considerably larger. The pale-faced gondolier, after an unwise glance into the roiling, pitching vat, turned away and emptied his stomach violently onto the mud floor of the shed—a development that did not appreciably add to the stench.

The wizard Crotalus, ignoring the interruption, beckoned his guests through the shed and out a door to another neighbouring structure. This, evidently, was nothing more than the hull of a dismantled ship lying upright on the mud. The tall mage led the way up a set of stairs onto a platform. The vantage point overlooked the ship’s waist, which lay open to the sky.

“I and my assistants could make them grow faster,” the wizard explained. “But it would avail us little. Time and skill are needed for their training, in any case, and there are scarce few acolytes I can entrust with the task. Teaching the human pilots is the real limiting factor at present, even more so than building or adapting the vessels.”

The meaning of his words was made evident by a glance inside the ship. Wallowing there in its filthy bottom, half-submerged in mucky water, was the largest of the centipedes, a gargantuan creature thicker than a row boat and longer than twenty men together.

It did not lie quiet. Inside the grounded hulk, the stubs of oars were still hinged to their tholes; these the insect clutched in its hooked claws and toyed with, moving them in sinuous motions that rippled all down its hundred-armed length. It acted, though sluggishly, in approximate response to the oscillating motion of a baton wielded by a grey-robed trainer, who stood in the forecastle mere paces from the monster’s many-faceted eyes and its sickle-sharp mandibles. It seemed likely that, if properly taught and controlled, the insect could be made into a powerful and efficient oar-crew of one.

“When they reach this size,” Yezdigerd studiously asked, “do they still require human fodder?”

“We have had success with substitute foods—ewes, oxen, mid such. They can be alive or fresh-slaughtered.” Crotalus rattled off the facts with scientific detachment, his shaven head gleaming in the wan daylight as he spoke. “Even so, the remipedes can be temperamental at times. To deny them their accustomed diet too long may result in the loss of a trainer. On manoeuvres, therefore, I suggest furnishing captives as food.”

“A minor limitation,” Yezdigerd said, “if it enables them to be used in battle. You say the insect-driven ships can carry fighting crews and weapons on their upper decks without difficulty?”

“Indeed,” the Keshan affirmed. “Just as long as the beasts are kept happy. Why so concerned, O Prince? Do you foresee a need for them soon?”

“Sooner, perhaps, than anyone anticipated.” After glancing aside at the gondolier, who stood gazing down in dread at the writhing monster, Yezdigerd added, “Having just run afoul of the Hyrkanian ambassador, I can avow that things are tense. Whether we allow him to return home or not may matter little now. War is an imminent likelihood.” “Is that so, Prince?” Crotalus frowned in perplexity. “In that case, I had better move forward with the plans I had made. I am fitting out a new expedition across the Vilayet. I intended to apply to you, of course, for assistance.” “Across the Vilayet—bearing northward again?” At Crotalus’s nod, the prince continued, “That will carry you into dangerous waters. The pirates have been devilishly active, and now Hyrkanian war-galleys will be hunting them—and challenging Turanian ships as well, I would expect.”

Crotalus shrugged. “I had planned to take but a single vessel, a sailship fast enough to outrun naval or pirate galleys. That should prevent any repetition of our past difficulties.”

“That is indeed unfortunate.” Yezdigerd shook his head sadly. “I fear that your absence would be inadvisable just now in view of the hazards, and of our likely future need for your services. I must instruct you to cancel your trip.” Crotalus’s frown was half a smile, scarcely admitting Yezdigerd’s authority. “Now, Prince, let me reassure you... I expect to be gone for only a fortnight or so, and the research I intend to carry out will be of surpassing importance—”

“But, honoured friend, what about the operation that is already under way?” Yezdigerd gestured around at the sheds and ship-hulls. “How can this nurturing and training go on without your supervision?”

“There should be no problem with that,” the wizard said. “Except for the application of my magic at the critical stages of growth, the creatures can be handled well enough by trained apprentices.”

Yezdigerd listened dubiously. “And these overseas researches you intend... can you tell me their exact nature? Would they, too, be of importance to the Turanian State?” Crotalus stiffened slightly. “I am not in a position, My Prince, to expound the more esoteric details of my craft. However, I can assure you, their importance is vast.” “No, Crotalus, I think not.” After a moment’s deliberation, Yezdigerd shook his head. “I am afraid it is impossible. Under my sponsorship, you have made yourself an essential part of the Turanian defence system. To do without such a vital talent for even a fortnight, or to risk losing you altogether, is unacceptable.”

“Do you mistrust me so much, Prince? You really fear that I will be lost at sea?”

Yezdigerd shook his head. “You are a famed navigator, ’tis true. Men say your wizardly powers enable you to see through night and fog.” The prince smiled. “That makes you all the more valuable to me, my friend—too valuable to lose.”

There was very little smile left in the wizard’s scowl. “You will not aid me in my preparations, then?”

“More than that, Crotalus, I positively forbid you to sail.” The haughty young prince spoke as one utterly assured of obedience. “You are to remain here until this current enterprise is complete. After that, if political conditions warrant it, we can discuss such a voyage.”

“So be it, then.” Seeming to accept the prince’s words, the wizard eyed him thoughtfully. “You do not fear the prospect of war, O Prince?”

“Why, no, it will be greatly in our interest! My father, as usual, wants to sneak around the issue and keep all sides happy. But a war, especially a naval one, would be a fine thing for our empire. It would clarify matters, bring new leadership to the fore, and discredit the old, mincing ways of doing business.” He steadied himself against the rail of the observation platform, as on the foredeck of a charging dromon. “Given the opportunity, I could make a name for myself and lead our forces to a notable victory.” Crotalus nodded. “But what if Hyrkania were to put forth a large-scale effort—and, say, build a new navy?” “Why, then all the more glory for Turan,” Yezdigerd said frankly. “New ships or old, there is no way the Hyrkanians can defeat us at sea. They are horsemen, not sailors.”

Growing suddenly impatient, the prince turned his gaze on the gondolier, waiting nearby on the platform. “You, there—you heard nothing of what was said, I presume. But if you had, you would not breathe a word of it to anyone?” The boatman, who still stared with mouth agape at the writhing centipede, turned to his ruler, only half-comprehending.

“I brought you ashore with me in the hope that these hell-born wonders would impress you more than any mere bribe or warning.” At the man’s frightened silence, Yezdigerd pressed him further. “Have you a tongue in your head?”

The man nodded dumbly.

“If you would keep it, then keep it in check! Do not tell another of this visit, nor anything you have seen or heard here.”

The servant, already pale and dumbstruck, nodded abjectly. No more than an inarticulate murmur of fear escaped his lips.

“Good, then! Take me home. Crotalus, carry on with your vital work, and good health to you.”

So saying, the prince turned and led the way back toward the launch.

IV

The Black Corsair

Blue-green sea toothed with white foam rolled under the prow of the pirate ship Raven. Cord and canvas thrummed taut in the breeze, and the steady-canted deck rolled with every surging wave.

“By all the fates and furies, here is the life!” Conan exulted from his place at the eight-spoked wheel. “A tall Barachan carrack plying the broad Vilayet—what a pirate cannot do in this fine craft! Thanks, Ferdinald, for your care and obedience in nailing her together.” Standing jaunty at the helm, he turned aside and smote his paunchy lieutenant on the shoulder. “Our Raven will outfox them, outfight them, and show them her heels in a trice! These eastern sailors have much to learn from Amra of the Western Ocean.”

“Do these ships always pitch so badly?” Philiope clung to the windward rail, grey-faced though a seasoned voyager.

“Girl, we are reaching into a breeze no flat-water scow could touch under sail! We’re making Crom’s own speed, too—see there how the Aetolians are sunk half out of sight already.” He directed her gaze sternward. Somehow, though, the view of retreating island hilltops did not seem to make her any happier. “Then, too,” he added, “our height above the water makes it worse.” He gestured at the high, narrow stem-deck on which they stood. “If it gets too be too much for you, you may go below.”

“A tall, spirited craft indeed,” Hrandulf said in guarded praise. The squat, braided sea-chief looked none too well at ease himself, standing braced astern where a steering oar would have been moored in any native vessel. “Some of my men dislike your new ship’s hue, black all over. They say it is an ill omen.”

“Aye, well, Raven can be no other colour.” Conan spoke reasonably, edging the wheel a few points farther against the wind. “This is no Colchian shell-ship, pegged and mortised together by the lute-maker’s art. These planks are hammered fast with hard steel spikes to timber ribs. They must be caulked with oakum and sealed with black pitch: out of the Hyrkanian marshes—that is the only way she can stay float. Fresh tar will not take paint.”

“True enough,” Ferdinald chimed in. “Do not let her be} holed, or capsized, either,” he solemnly warned. “Otherwise, with the weight of stone ballast laid in along her keel, she’ll go straight to the bottom. No chance of swamping and floating tamely like one of your light oarships.”

The passengers contemplated this news in silence for several moments. The crew, picked for their skill, seemed to have adjusted to the carrack’s demands. Barefoot pirates crept aloft in the rigging, tautening stays and trimming square-sails against the buffeting breeze, while gangs of men hauled ropes on the main deck with barely any complaint.

Santhindrissa, from her place near Philiope, finally offered her evaluation. “You built her strong enough to bear, these gusts and strains, I’ll say that much. I do not regret coming along on your shakedown cruise, since she seems to be holding together.”

“This is the way we sail them on the Western Ocean,” Conan declared. “Straight into the teeth of gale and storm-swell, with no friendly port to run and hide in.” While boasting, he kept his gaze steady ahead. “That is what we must become in these waters too, if we want to venture singly out of sight of land—far-roving pirates, corsairs who can strike from nowhere and vanish unseen. You’ll have a taste of it soon enough, if the sail on yon horizon is no mirage.”

At his words, a dozen eyes followed his gaze toward the far rim of sea. There was, indeed, a whitish shred visible under the blue dome of sky—no hull yet, for extreme distance had a tricky way of revealing only the sailtops. But it was there, surely enough; so clear was the air that tented points of canvas were visible.

“Mast, there!” Conan roused up his lookout. “Scrape the barnacles off your eyeballs and tell me what you see!” “Open water, Cap’n,” came the rough, apologetic voice from atop the masthead. “Just the isles, and not a scrap of coastline. But aye, ahead, half off the port bow... a sail!” The shout rang lively with a note of astonishment. “’Pears to be a lateener, Cap’n. Be-like a fast galley bearing east and northward!”

“Out of the south-west,” Ferdinald said. “That’d be Aghrapur.” He removed a greasy map from his shirt front and unrolled it.

“Aye,” Hrandulf agreed, “and sailing far out of hail of land. They keep well shy of our Aetolian chain.”

“A lone ship crossing the open Vilayet. It promises to be a worthy prize.” Captain Drissa’s hard palm already polished the gold hilt of the cutlass at her waist. “A shame we cannot hope to catch them.”

“Speak not too soon,” Conan said, adjusting course with a half-turn of the heavy wheel. “As long as they run before this same westerly breeze, we can make better speed quartering. Once I get between them and the wind, they cannot row upwind to escape. Ahead of them, too, lies the Hyrkanian coast, with nary a port or inlet.” He waved a hand vaguely to starboard. “If they don’t want to run aground sometime soon, they must turn.” He glanced to the canvas shivering overhead. “I can match or better their speed on any crosswind tack. Either way, I’ll have them.” “You really think you can outrun a fast lateener in this square-rigged sea casket?” Santhindrissa cast a sceptical eye at the spider’s-maze of rigging and spars. “I’m almost inclined to let you waste my time trying!”

“It will be over sooner than you think,” Conan assured her. His voice broadened then to a roar. “Deck, there, lay on more sail! String up the rest of the hamper and give us some speed!”

The crew was made up of veteran pirates and seamen “recruited” from merchant prizes. Before the captains’ eyes, they showed a surprising readiness to obey detailed commands from Conan, Ferdinald, and Ivanos. Likely as not, they were enamoured with this foreign type of rig. Seeing its possibilities, they felt eager to try it out; that venturesomeness was why Conan had chosen them.

After some minutes of trial-and-error hoisting and scrambling, broad white wings flapped overhead between the carrack’s square-sailed masts. The ship’s tight, hard roll had changed to a longer, deeper, queasier pitching; but already the distant, triangular patch stood up more clearly on the horizon.

“Tighten down those sheets and trim sail, you swabs! We can get better service out of the wind than this!” Conan gave his orders in a habitual bellow, though in truth he looked fairly satisfied where he stood, bracing the wheel against the stiffening breeze.

“Conan, can you not steer downwind a point or two?” Hrandulf clung with the other passengers to the heaving, wind-lashed rail in an unhappy position of enforced idleness. He looked uneasy about the new, steeper cant of deck and masts, and the way the taut rigging now skimmed the wave-tops to leeward. “Remember what your mate said about capsizing—this is no courier-boat to be upset and righted again!”

“True enough.” Conan grinned back at them into the teeth of the wind. “No oarship could hold this course under sail. The steering-sweeps would snap off and the oarports would swamp!” He grinned happily at them, his mane blowing straight back off his brow, and gave no sign of changing course. “Even so, this is our best tack. I shall keep on it till we sight the Hyrkanian coast.”

That goal, at the angle they chose, required a whole midday of punishing speed, with both Ferdinald and Ivanos taking turns at the wheel. When the low pale cliffs finally emerged from the eastern haze, they formed a none-too-distant backdrop to the sleek, two-masted galley as it heeled abruptly in the water and bore away south-east.

“Likely we have cut them off from their destination in the north,” Conan guessed aloud. Having raised himself up on the rail, he clung fast to the ratlines for a clearer view. “They’ll try to stay out of reach and lose us, either in coastal reefs and shallows, or by night.- See there, they lower sweeps to speed them downwind.” He pointed to pale oar-flashes alongside the distant ship. “But we are faster, and we have gained the weather gage. It will not be long.”

As the Raven shifted to a downwind tack, the sensation of great speed was lost. Wind and sea moved with them now, the cresting waves barely slapping the Raven's flat stem. Sun-heated air settled warm on their backs, with scarcely enough breeze to ruffle the crew’s hair. Even so, the coastal bluffs loomed swiftly near, as did the sail-galley’s arching stempost.

It was a single-decked craft, long and broad for a two-master. Its pair of triangular sails spread out to either side on their tapering booms like huge gull-wings. Instead of oar-benches, a covered bulk occupied the deck amidships: possibly a boat or, more menacingly, a war engine. On either side of the shrouded object, crewmen could be seen pacing and returning, plying long sweeps to help the breeze drive their ship forward.

“White water, Cap’n, away to port!”

Ivanos’s cry from the bows called their attention to a point alongside, where surf tossed and swirled over invisible rocks.

“At this speed,” Ferdinald complained from his place at the wheel, “we can’t see hazards in time to avoid them. Cutting down sail would be wise—”

“Nay,” Conan growled. “That’d only lengthen the chase and carry us farther inshore.” Leaping down from the rail, he strode across the deck toward the helm. “We follow that thrice-blasted galley, so let her worry about reefs and sandbars! Just steer sharp on her tail.”

“See there, she weathers off to starboard. There must be more shoals ahead!” Ferdinald made as if to change course, but Conan, standing close at hand, restrained him.

“Steady, fellow, ’tis a trap! Look you there, the reefs are to starboard.” Conan pointed to fanged rocks that now broke the water directly between them and the heeling ship. “Yon barque has a clever captain. Steer in her wake if you want safety, do not cut comers.” He raised his voice and bellowed to Ivanos. “Stand ready to go on a starboard tack, but await my order! We have a game of hound-and-hare in store.”

As the Raven hauled gradually closer, Conan pointed out to his crewmates which of the ship’s complement he thought was captain. This enigmatic figure stood white-robed in the galley’s bows, gazing dead ahead and only occasionally raising a hand to signal his steersmen to left or right. Being thus able to read his prey’s actions a moment or two in advance helped Conan; yet it could not offset the galley officer’s evident and uncanny foreknowledge of the sea’s hidden rocks and shallows. Trying repeatedly to confound his pursuers or wreck them, the elusive commander more than once came near succeeding.

“This all seems familiar to me somehow,” was Conan’s only spoken judgement.

“What mortal captain knows this forlorn coast so well?” Santhindrissa mused. “Be it a woman, she must be a sea-witch.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Striding to the mainmast, Conan raised the skull-jack on its halyard. “Ready grapples, you dogs, and stand by to board!”

In minutes, the hulls bruised together. The pirates came howling, but there was no fight aboard the lateener. Most of its crew were sail hands and fishermanly types, who babbled in various southern dialects. The rest were mere children, half-clad boys and ruffianly girls who had already blistered their palms with unaccustomed labour at the sweeps.

As the Raven hooked in astern, two dozen pirates, led by three fierce captains, came swinging in on tackle-ropes. Their victims milled backward against the farther rails, having armed themselves with little more than marlin-spikes and fish-scaling knives. Their robed captain, who had led such a resourceful pursuit over the waves, stood silent in the bows, making no effort to organize a defence.

In an instant, the steering oars were seized and the two ships brought around into the wind, their slack sails flapping and booming overhead.

“Here now,” Hrandulf shouted officiously, “what manner of ship is this? How dare you trespass in these waters without paying your legal tariff to the Sea Tribes and their pirate allies, the Red Brotherhood of Djafur? I declare this vessel and all it contains contraband, instantly forfeit to the rightful authorities on pain of death!”

“What is this great chamberpot lashed to the deck?” Santhindrissa strode forward arrogantly. Raising a comer of the tarpaulin, she smote the dome-shaped object with the flat of her cutlass, producing a sound of gonging bronze. “Is it a treasure-trove, then? A stew-pot, or some fiendish war device?”

“Whatever it be, it is their only cargo.” Ivanos, who had been quick about delving into the aft hold, came on deck to report. “There are meagre provisions for the crew, and a lot of empty crates and kegs, that is all. No wonder she ran so lightly from us.”

The pirates, meanwhile, had cut the lashings and dragged aside the tarpaulin that covered the deck cargo. Revealed there, gleaming yellowly in the sun, was a dome of raw bronze with a ring moulded at the top. Cast-marked and roughly tooled, it lacked surface design or inlaid ornament. Several of the pirates struck it with their swords, making it clank and echo dully.

“The thing is empty inside.” A pigtailed pirate who had lain down on the deck and peered underneath spoke up. “It ’pears to be a great bell though there is no mooring for a clapper. Some kind of hollow gong, it must be.”

Conan, apart from the others, had kept his eye on the tall, robed figure of the galley’s captain standing aloof in the bows. Black of skin he was, and bald of skull, though not particularly old or ill-favoured. His face, from the bunched cowl of his hood, regarded the captors of his ship with a fixed, wry grin.

“A sorcerer, no doubt of it,” Conan announced to his crew, halting far enough back to keep the foremast between himself and the man in the bows. “Some of you have met him before, and more have heard tell of his powers. Doubtless the great bronze bell is the tool of one of his spells, so beware it.” Glancing back briefly, he waved three pirates forward to do his bidding.

“Go, lead him here to me. Keep your swords drawn and use them if you must. Do not look into his eyes or let him lay hands on you. If he contrives to flap away or vanish in a puff of smoke, there is little we can do about it.” He stepped forward. “But fear not. Likely ’tis I who face the most danger, and I will confront him.” He raised his voice. “Skipper, come astern and parley!”

“Why must we deal with the beaten master of this treasureless hulk?” Hrandulf protested. “If he were really so dangerous, he would have kept us off his decks—” “Nay, fellow,” Conan interrupted with a raised hand. “That bell is of middling value, good only for its metal. But we should learn the purpose it was brought here for— likely as a trap to catch something and carry it back across the Vilayet. Knowing that much, we may yet turn a real profit... as little liking as I have for sorcery!” He leaned close to Hrandulf and spoke in lowered tones. “As for this wizard, we may do better with his cooperation. If you have not guessed who he is—”

“I am Crotalus, soothsayer to the High Court at Aghrapur.” The black seer, still some distance away among his pirate guards, gave evidence of having supernatural hearing, at least. “I am at your service, Captain Amra—since the fates have seen fit that our paths cross again.”

“A face-to-face meeting this time,” Conan said, turning toward his counterpart. “Not just ships passing in the fog.” He waited, letting the wizard come before him as befit a sea-captive. He raised a hand when the man stood two strides away, flanked by the Raven's uncertain-looking guards. “Stop there. Tell me, Soothsayer, what has brought you into the Red Brotherhood’s waters this time? You steer a fast ship, doubtless to foil pursuit—” He glanced at the lateen sails flapping overhead. “Why should you seek to deny us our rightful share of the profit?”

“Your share is always Amra’s—which in the speech of Keshan, where I hail from, means the Lion’s. It means all, or near all. And it is more than paid for in the pain, waste, and delay of the honest voyagers you prey on.” The black man retained his wry smile as he spoke, biting off his terse phrases with strong, yellow teeth. “Yet even so, Captain— and even though my dislike of piracy equals yours of wizardry—on this voyage, we can still profit from an alliance. There may be spoils enough for even the lion to share fairly.”

“That is what I like to hear.” Conan grinned, glancing back at his captains and officers. “So tell me, Soothsayer—if you can be trusted to speak sooth—what is this great bell you have shipped, and who are these odd crew members you have enlisted?”

“The bell will require much explaining if it is to be grasped by your pirate minds. As for the crew, most of them are natives of Khawarism. Beach-dwellers and layabouts, young and untutored, to be sure. But on the circle of the broad Vilayet, there are no better divers.” “Divers?” The glint in Conan’s eye flashed sharper than the sun off Crotalus’s bald pate. “You sail in quest of a sunken treasure, then.” His voice had fallen far below its accustomed quarterdeck bawl, to a discreet murmur.

“No quest. Rather, a certainty.” The wizard all but shrugged, evidently amused at his captor’s keen interest. “The nature of our voyage is no secret to my crew.” Conan scowled. “Even so, ’tis a matter best spoken of among captains, in the privacy of a quarterdeck. You’ll come aboard my ship—and your harbour. waifs too, so I can keep them safe from my rogues.” Crotalus made no protest as Conan turned to his officers.

“Ivanos, tell off a prize crew. Take any of these sailors you need and have them get this tub under way. Ferdinald, you do the same for my Raven. We must work clear of this lee shore with its reefs and hazards. Put the galley in tow if you must, and set a course northward!”

Late in the afternoon, the three captains and Philiope gathered against the carrack’s stem rail, aft of the helm where Ferdinald presided. Their prisoner, Crotalus, having offered them no threat of a sorcerous attack, was kept unbound in their midst.

“Have you ever heard of a pirate named Kobold?” the mage asked.

“Kobold the Red,” Santhindrissa exclaimed, “in his brave ship Basilisk! Why, of course. He is a legend of centuries past. A most able and distinguished pirate, who rounded out his career with the famous sack of Sultanapur.”

“Aye,” Conan spoke up. “One-eyed Kobold was one of the first and mightiest captains of our Brotherhood. I heard stories of him far away on the Western Sea, long before I ever pirated these waters. He met death on his homeward voyage, did he not?”

“So the stories tell.” Crotalus, solemn-faced, stood unaided on the rolling deck as he regaled his captors. “While finding his way back through the northern archipelagos, he ran into foul weather. His ship, heavy with the plunder of the northern port, was holed and went straight to the bottom.”

“I do not like this talk,” Hrandulf broke in suddenly. “What sort of fool’s venture will you be leading us on? So a treasure-ship sinks—would you really try to wrest its cargo back from the deep?” He looked indignantly at his fellow pirates. “We all hear tales of lost treasure, but there is no mortal way of laying hands on it. Would you search for treasure out there?” He pointed angrily over the rail, into dark and choppy water that looked bottomless, though it still lay in sight of Hyrkanian cliffs.

Crotalus shrugged. “Ships generally sink in shallow shoal waters. Or they swamp, losing the power of sails and oars, and drift ashore before breaking up. The wealth seldom lies at great depth.”

“Even so, seeking to reclaim lost treasure is a devil’s lure.” There was a flare of superstitious fear in the whites of Hrandulf’s eyes as he pressed his argument. “None I know has yet succeeded and countless have died trying. What descends to great Lord Dagon remains his forever!”

The sea-chief finished by doffing the heel of his hand against his forehead, a genuflection to the crested sea-god.

“Such may be your belief,” Crotalus answered him patiently. “But on this voyage I have made ample provision for success. My divers are unequalled at fetching coins, shellfish, and lost cargoes off the bottom of the eight-fathom harbour. at Khawarism.” He gestured at the crowd of youths sheltering among the hardier members of the crew. “To aid them, I have brought along an air-bell.” He indicated the galley that followed astern, with the heavy bronze dome still hulking amidships. “Such a metal basin can be lowered into the water inverted, without tipping up. It stores air for divers to breathe far below the surface, thus saving valuable time and strength.”

“I see what you mean,” Conan said. “Clever—but how, pray tell, do you keep it from filling up with water?” He wrinkled his brow in consternation. “By some sly wizard’s spell, I would guess.”

“Yes, you could say that,” Crotalus answered with a smile.

“But, say,” Hrandulf objected, “what use is all your sorcery if you don’t know where to look? Amra, be not fooled by this arch-wizard! He is casting a spell on us even now as we sit here, using the lure of treasure to trick us into an offence against the sea-gods.”

“He did not fit out an expedition and sail across the Vilayet in pursuit of a ghost, or merely to catch us,” Santhindrissa, rising up from her seat on the rail, stepped forward. The slender fingertips of one hand caressed the razor-edged blade of a dagger, whose hilt she gripped in the other. “What is it that leads you here, Crotalus? A map?”

The black seer did not flinch or look down at her bare steel. “A map, yes. And my ancient knowledge, gleaned through countless nights of research.”

“The map will do for now.” Drissa extended her hand palm-up to the wizard, letting her blade fall to a less threatening position. Conan did not interfere, knowing that the she-pirate was unequalled at this kind of questioning.

“The map, I am afraid, lies far from here,” Crotalus calmly told his inquisitor. “It is engraved in the domed ceiling of the Court of Seers in the Imperial Palace at Aghrapur. I studied the ancient mural night-long and committed its details to memory.” The wizard smiled politely at her, tapping the glossy dome of his bald head.

“Most clever of you, Keshan! If what you say is true, we’ll need your cooperation.” Captain Drissa shot a glance aside at Conan. “But why should we believe your guesses? How have you decided on a location for the treasure?” “From the accounts of eyewitnesses,” the wizard replied. “The words of castaway survivors, as preserved in antique scrolls. The ship did not go down with all hands, after all. A few of Kobold’s crew drifted south in a longboat and were picked up by pursuing galleys.”

“To be racked and tortured by their Imperial rescuers, no doubt.” Santhindrissa’s harshness seemed half-hearted, an almost transparent attempt to keep up some kind of pressure against Crotalus.

“In truth, there is every reason to suppose the accounts they rendered were... complete.” The wizard nodded to her, unfazed. “Surprisingly, the witnesses all agree on one striking detail.”

“I remember it,” Hrandulf put in. “The Sword of Dagon.”

“Indeed,” the wizard affirmed with a nod. “They said that the Basilisk, driven through stormy open water, was pierced through the hull and sunk without warning—by a giant sword thrust up out of the sea, gripped in a titanic hand.”

“By Crom’s cudgel! I heard such a tale as well, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it.” Conan gave the others a solemn look. “Seamen tend to exaggerate such events.” “It was the god himself who sank the ship, don’t you see?” Hrandulf eyed the others forebodingly. “That is why they say the treasure is accursed!”

Crotalus spoke again. “Legend says that Red Kobold looted Dagon’s Temple in the Sultanapur raid, and so the god took his revenge. But I have another explanation.” He raised one hand to the chest of his robe. “Have you ever seen an emblem like this one?”

The others’ hands tautened on their hilts as the Keshan reached into the throat of his hooded garment. But he drew no sorcerous weapon, bringing forth instead a shiny object fastened on a thong around his neck. It was a round medallion—gold, but of no greater weight than a Hyrkanian doubloon. Lifting the loop over his head, he held the imprinted medal out for the pirate chiefs to see.

It portrayed a godly and all-but-naked warrior holding a shield before his vitals and brandishing a sword overhead. On close examination, the figure was seen to be a giant statue. It stood on a pedestal, with broad-sailed ships and a section of castle or harbour. wall engraved before its sandalled feet.

“I do not recognize the form of writing on the inscription,” Philiope offered.

“Nor the stone colossus, if truly it exists,” Conan added. “Never have I seen or heard tell of such a huge idol, not on this coast. What is on the back?” Seizing the trinket out of the air, he twisted it before him, revealing the shiny blank obverse.

Crotalus, still smiling, unwound his dark fingers from the thong, relinquishing it. “Take it, Captain. It is yours by right of plunder, after all. And it has no special magical use that would endear it to me.”

“Very well. But if you find us a shipful more of such loot, you may pick out a replacement for it.” Turning to Philiope, Conan looped the medallion over her raven head, bestowing a kiss on her brow.

“It is the emblem of Sarpedon, the ancient seaport,” Crotalus explained. “Few moderns know of it. But ten thousand years ago, it flourished somewhere along these shores. A proud city it was, known in its time as the Jewel of the Vilayet.”

“Ah, yes,” Hrandulf said, “the ancient kingdom of Sarp, whose sea-captains could command the wind.” The sea-chief nodded sagely. “It is a legend among our tribes, too.” Crotalus regarded him narrowly. “But do you then know its whereabouts?”

Hrandulf eyed the wizard suspiciously. “Somewhere in the north, but who would care? Our version of the tale says that it too sank into the sea.”

“Indeed, yes.” The wizard smiled. “While Sarpedon reigned, its folk enjoyed the benefits of far-flung trade and a powerful navy, with wealth and ease far exceeding the great kingdoms of modem days.” He gestured toward the medallion where it gleamed on Philiope’s shapely, lace-frilled bosom. “The image on that token hints of their vast resources and engineering skill, as well as their vaulting ambition. The old texts agree that toward the end of the city’s life, its sages found a way of commanding the Vilayet’s fickle winds to blow at their bidding.

“Alas—” Crotalus spread his palms, now empty—“it may be just another case of the revenge of a jealous god. Or, more likely, the ancient city’s wizards lacked the true, ultimate skills with which to restrain the forces they had unleashed. But in a single night, the sea buried Sarpedon, piled up over it and smothered it... or perhaps the land quaked and foundered in a cataclysm. It was all drowned, all the city tenements and mortal lives, all the statuary, forts, and temples, History does not even recall where the great city was. As poor as our modem charts of the Vilayet tend to be, the map I studied on the palace ceiling doesn’t remotely match them. The doom that swallowed Sarpedon must have sunk many islands, reared up others, and greatly changed the contours of our inland sea.”

Crotalus paused before his listeners, who were plainly awed. “Even so, I was able to find a likely spot by making reference to later events: namely, the route of Captain Kobold on his flight from Sultanapur. For I understand that without the least doubt, the giant sword that transfixed the pirate galley Basilisk was the same one clutched in the fist of the titan on yonder medallion.”

The breast that sported the medal heaved with a surprised breath. “You mean to say,” Philiope managed in response to the others’ stares, “that Kobold’s wreck and treasure lie at the foot of this statue—” she clutched the amulet—“in the harbour. of a sunken, ruined city?”

Crotalus gave no answer, letting his smile gleam affirmation.

“Let me see if I understand you aright.” Santhindrissa, her dagger now sheathed, stepped forward challengingly. “You expect to find a treasure whose whereabouts nobody knows, by first finding a city whose whereabouts none knows.”

“Yes. Where the two legends meet.” Crotalus confronted them with his strong yellow smile. “There is no question. Follow me into the north and I will prove it. I can benefit from your protection, expensive as it may be— also from your strong, manly and womanly backs, if the treasure is as large and heavy as the old stories tell!”

V

Gods of the Deep

For days the two ships cruised northward across blue-green foaming sea. Conan followed Crotalus’s lead— though the wizard seldom glanced at a map and gave his directions with the same air of brusque certainty whether it was day or night, mist or moon-glare. He stationed himself in the bows of the carrack as he had done on the galley, standing watch at all hours and seldom eating. Only occasionally did he hunker down to sleep, his back against the foremast, his hooded forehead propped on forearms laid across his arched, bony knees.

Conan well knew the Keshan’s supernatural knack for navigation, so he contented himself with keeping a sharp eye aloft and a firm hand on the helm. He thought he trusted Crotalus to guide them honestly, at least as far as any treasure. Still, he stood long watches in alternation with his fellow captains to ensure that the sorcerer did not sail them into shoaling waters or a hostile port.

The pirates, at their captain’s order, made grudging room for the wizard. They threatened him only routinely, muttering with but a minimum of dread and resentment over their captains’ alliance with sorcery. Word of the treasure spread quickly via the captured crew, kindling both excitement and sceptical complaint. Because the carrack performed well without toil at oars, and was provisioned for a long sail, mutiny was seldom discussed. The captured divers came closest to causing chaos; but the comely youths, male and female alike, were locked in the hold at night. By day they were restricted to the main deck, thus allowing for rough, guarded sociability with the crew.

The two ships stayed within signalling distance of each other, though Raven inevitably had to reduce sail and slack off the wind to let the galley keep pace. At night they kept in sight by means of lanterns. Around them, meanwhile, the Vilayet changed from breezy open main to cliff-bound straits and channels. Islands reared up hazily to seaward, even as the distant Hyrkanian coastline sank into marshes. Foggy calms, unnerving to the pirates, would set in near dawn and linger till a morning breeze arose; more than once the mists parted to reveal grey stone cliffs and looming island mountainsides.

Yet the weather held. Their pilot seemed sure of his course, and the crew became expert at handling the ropes and sails of the carrack, so they pressed onward.

There came a starry dusk when the ships hove into a reach of black water, somewhere between snow-gleaming mountain crests to northward and a craggy chain of islets that unwound along the port beam. A mist crept over the sea, dulling the stars and emptying the sails. Crotalus, uncharacteristically, insisted on dropping anchor. The wrist-thick anchor cable ran out to a moderate depth, not over a dozen fathoms, before finding a firm bottom and being ratcheted tight. Conan gave Santhindrissa the night watch for once, retiring early with Philiope to his cabin astern.

By early morning, the masthead lookout reported a thinning of the mist and a stray breath of wind. Conan arose and ordered a half-dozen pirates to the windlass in the bows. At first the anchor stuck, drawing the carrack forward in the water; then it began to rise heavily, as if fouled with weed, causing the haulers unaccustomed labour. One of the pirates peered overside, cursing the toil and the stillness of the water in this tideless inland sea. He saw the anchor coming up at last... and gave a yell. He drew his cutlass and began hacking at the hempen cable, jabbering for the pirates to cast off anchor.

Conan was there in a flash. Restraining the man with a bear-hug, he peered overside to see what had maddened him. In the depths, a face grimaced, greenly monstrous and weedily ribboned, mounting straight toward the ship.

“Haul steady, dogs, ’tis but a statue!” Bellowing, Conan held tight till the man’s struggles subsided. Moments later, the anchor came to the surface; and caught in its flukes, true enough, was a chunk of stone carved in human, or near-human, shape. A nymph or caryatid of crude, ancient design, it consisted of a head and one shoulder fractured cleanly from the base. Slimy and hideous with sea-bottom encrustations, it broke the water like some sinister ocean dweller that had shinnied up the cable.

“This gargoyle gave you a scare, eh, Thraxus?” Conan released the sailor, who eased his cutlass back into his sash, still regarding the stone image with bulging-eyed distaste. The laughter and taunts of his crewmates were half-hearted as well—Conan guessed that the incident played on their fears of still water and the brooding dead who lived there. Against all logic, it was taken by them as an ill omen.

“Crotalus” Conan called out, seeking to put a better light on things. “Surely this places us near our goal?”

“Aye, most certainly.” The sorcerer moved forward to the windlass. “When the fog lifts, you may see that which makes this demon look tame.” He knelt over the chunk of marble and fingered the bottom edge, rose-tinted where it had detached from some sunken cornice or mass of statuary.

Still the pirates muttered uneasily, and the fog did not lift. Conan sent one of the young male divers overside; but the youth soon returned, assuring him it was too gloomy to see beneath the surface. Meanwhile, the captured galley, having unlimbered its sweeps, rowed alongside for instructions.

When consulted for directions, Crotalus pointed an imperious finger, so Conan resolved to keep the crews busy. Giving Ivanos the anchor, he ordered him to row the galley out the anchor-line’s full length and drop the weight. The carrack could then haul it in inch by inch, kedging itself along. Thus they might sound out the anchorage without risk of losing its location. It would stir up the sea at least, get the rogues used to hauling, and give them something tangible to grumble about.

They were so engaged, muttering a work-chanty to the creak of rigging and the clack of ratchet pawls, when the fog began to scatter in earnest. As the ships glided forward in the mist, a startled shout went up from the galley and was almost immediately echoed by turmoil and cries aboard the carrack.

Ahead of them, outlined in the dim paleness, loomed a titan face. Half-raised out of the water, it stared at them with ghastly hollow-pupiled eyes. Across the beak of its ancient, foreign-looking nose, the low swells washed and lapped, lazily stirring green strands of weed rooted there. It was standing up from the waves, not gliding toward them, not so far as Conan could tell. But beyond, just now emerging from the fog, was a giant fist clutching a broad, leaf-shaped sword.

“’Tis the head of the statue!” Philiope breathed at Conan’s side. “And there, if legends are true, is the sword that sank Red Kobold’s ship!”

“Aye then,” Conan said, “we have reached our goal at last!” He thundered forth the words, eager to check his crew’s budding panic. “Crotalus, you have guided us well! You men there, avast hauling,” he yelled unnecessarily to the fear-stricken crew. “Bend a rope around that chunk of marble, secure it well, and drop it as a second anchor astern. We can kedge up near this great stone face and make ready, once the fog lifts, to hunt for treasure.”

The pirates were clearly oppressed by the giant apparition looming over their ship. They cowered and muttered superstitiously, slow to obey their captain. Yet the word “treasure” gnawed at them, causing a half-hearted stirring, just as he had hoped.

The galley, meanwhile, drifted around to broadside in a confusion of oars; its port quarter actually bumped against the statue’s Cyclopean cheek, but without any evident effect on ship or statue. Soon afterward, Ivanos’s men fended away from the obstacle and rowed some ways back abeam of the Raven. At Conan’s order, they dropped their anchor and hauled it fast, forming a triple mooring.

The fog continued to scatter moment by moment. In a short time, the warm eastern sun shone forth on a blue, tranquil Vilayet morning. Only the faintest breeze ruffled the sails as they were brailed up to the yards, and scarcely a ripple stirred the northern sea’s glassy surface. This last fact was misfortunate, to Conan’s mind, given the pirates’ beliefs. But then, if they feared the sea’s depths, there would be plenty to dread; divers even now were stripping off their tunics to plumb those depths, while aboard the galley, the great bronze bell was being made ready to swing overside.

The titan statue, seen by clear daylight, appeared to be shaped of marble slabs laid over a skeletal bronze framework. Straight seams were visible between the stone plates, especially near the waterline, where they were traced by barnacles and shaggy clumps of mussels. Some comers of the carefully shaped polyhedrons had broken away, exposing greenish metal struts that resisted fouling by worm and barnacle.

The overall aspect of the stone face was grim—not so much because of its blank, staring eyes and imperious cheekbones, as because its sunken part was overgrown by a dense, slimy-green beard of kelp shreds and streamers trailing away underwater. The growth disfigured the proud countenance, rendering it shapeless and masking any semblance of humanness that lay beneath. The green, undulating weed flowed visibly underwater, down to the shoulders of the statue. There the massive sword-arm could be seen out-thrust, supporting the mossy stone fist and decaying, wave-eaten bronze sword that angled out over the water a dozen mortal man-lengths beyond the head. The warrior’s curly stone scalp, ornamented only by a carved circlet of laurel leaves, was spattered brilliant-white; its crown had become a nesting-place for the sea birds that now wheeled out over the idle ships, keening angrily at the human invasion.

In spirit at least, the nameless ancient warrior had been transformed to a sea-god, and an ill-favoured. one at that. The effect was all the more striking because the statue, huge as it was, represented the only sign of human belief or handiwork in a broad, forlorn expanse of sea and coast. On all sides, the brine rolled flat and listless; barren, rocky islets notched the horizon to southward and westward, while to the north, snow-capped mountains rose from a rugged mainland.

Those slopes and sea-cliffs, where not masked by fleeing scraps of fog, showed no sign of human occupancy, present or past. No ruin or other effigy protruded from the water, nor could anything be glimpsed in the near depths below the ship’s side-wales. The great civilization that reared this titan god must have been drowned utterly, its entire history wiped out except for one awesome trace.

Conan took all this in as he oversaw the hoisting of the great bell. First it was strung to the heavy, slanting boom of the galley’s lateen-rigged mainmast; the mast-top in turn was guyed stem-and-stem to the heavy carrack as it snubbed alongside. Chanting work-gangs drawn from the two crews hoisted the bronze vessel clear of the deck, pivoted it outboard, and slowly levelled the boom. The calm sea made the lowering easy; the bell struck the water with a muffled, gonging clap. It inched smoothly down out of sight without releasing a single bubble.

The wizard Crotalus seemed to approve. He stood near Conan, saying nothing, with no pride or enthusiasm on his dusky, inscrutable face. Conan had reached agreement with him—and secured the other captains’ grudging assent—that if the wizard succeeded in filling Raven with treasure, then he could keep the galley and what plunder it might hold as his own share, along with full freedom of the sea and a pirate escort halfway home.

Yet the Keshan’s manner betrayed no thirst for wealth. Rather, he wore a subdued, almost impatient air, as if this triumph were but a small and time-consuming step on the road to a greater destiny.

Divers had already slipped overside and returned with promising reports. The morning light, they said, slanted deeply enough into the sea to reveal a bottom thick with wreckage and ruin. The excited boys and barely nubile maids idled in the waves or stood naked and dripping on the galley’s rail; the sight would doubtless have goaded the pirates to lust and ravishment if gold-frenzy had been less thick in the air... and if the doleful eyes of the drowned god had not gazed down disapprovingly over the decks. Meanwhile, the youths kept bobbing down out of sight and returning like water-sprites. At last their leader, Keltras by name, reported to Conan and the watching sorcerer that he believed he had spied the Kraken’s wreck.

“I will see it, too,” Conan said.

Reserving no modesty for his fellow captains and crew, he shed his sword and his few brief garments. He handed them over to Ivanos for safekeeping, retaining only his dagger with its sheath and belt, which he slung around his neck and one shoulder.

Then Philiope spoke. “I shall go with you; I am a strong swimmer.” Scarcely hesitating before the eyes of the others, she stripped her sun-bleached gown off over her head and stepped lithe and naked to Conan’s side.

“Good, if you think you can manage it. Let’s go.” Taking her hand, Conan followed Keltras to the rail. Stepping up together, the three breathed and exhaled deeply for a moment or two, then dove overside.

The water, though cool, was hardly so chill as to make them return to the surface; Conan, with Philiope trailing black tresses and fragile bubbles beside him, followed the pale wisp of the boy diver into the green depths.

Keltras led them away from the bright silver roof of the sea, down the taut rope-cable to the air-bell yellowly agleam in the dimness. Two smaller, kettle-sized bells had also been brought on the voyage; these were now being alternately lowered and retrieved on a separate line, bearing fresh portions of air down to the larger bronze vessel. A pair of lithe Khawar harbour-sylphs loitered at the bell’s mouth, gulping lungfuls from the inverted chalices, then upturning them to release their contents with a gush and a thump upward into the larger cavity.

Even so, the bell was no more than half full of air, as Conan and Philiope learned when they thrust their heads up into the dark, echoing recess. The air was thick, but good. Keltras barely popped up beside them and was gone again, but they required deep lungfuls to refresh themselves. Then, after embracing and kissing earnestly, they turned back into the depths.

It took long moments for their eyes to adjust to the gloom. But in time, they saw a sea floor expanse of angular and largely intact walls and buildings. Only in a few places did the structures lie collapsed, choked with silt and weed or half-buried in wreckage. Elsewhere, they stretched in a familiar-seeming maze, the crooked map of a long-dead seaport.

There was no speech in the depths, and Conan did not let his awe at the sight deprive him of breath. He knew from Philiope’s clutch at his shoulder that she saw before her the same weird, murky scene, a survival of a forgotten

age.

He kicked and stroked powerfully, drawing them both deeper. Other pale, slim forms already wriggled and flitted through the bottom shadows, youthful divers nimbly exploring the desolation. Conan swam toward the largest school of them, hovering near a low, short ridge. It was no natural reef; it lay across the grid-work of walls and alleys near the curved fringe of ruin that must represent the old waterside.

It was indeed the long-lost Basilisk, Conan guessed, or some equally unlucky ship stricken out of the waves by the sword of the sea-giant. It had sailed to its final port of call, one that mouldered on the sea’s dead floor. Now it lay but a few-score paces from the berth it might have had a millennium ago, subject instead to a last mooring atop crumpled walls and dissolved roofs. No remains of other ships lay nearby—whether because the port’s original fleet had long since rotted in place, or because it had been borne away by the cataclysm that drowned the ancient city.

The harbour., an empty plain bordered on two sides by seawalls, lay at the feet of the sky-reaching statue—feet that were, surprisingly, free of the weed that clotted the part near the surface. From firm toes to sturdy ankles it rose, thence to strong white shanks and half-flexed knees. Only an occasional alabaster plate was broken or missing, harbouring eels and starfish in the crevices. The mighty loins were still draped in carved folds, but the chest spread bare and massive, with sword and buckler-shield raised heroic on thick arms. Only at neck and wrist did the dense clot of weed obscure the noble shape, up there near the ships’ twin hulls and the ropes extending down.

Philiope and Conan found their way back repeatedly to the air-bell hanging in the titan’s shadow. On Keltras’s instruction, it had been lowered to within two man-lengths of the sea-floor and kedged nearer to the wreck. Now guide-ropes were being strung from the bell to the work site, speeding travel back and forth.

The Basilisk lay canted on one side, its keel broken across the remnant of a thick, crumbled wall, its rigging reduced to two angling mast-stubs and a mossy tent of decaying spars and cordage. In the exposed part of the hull gaped the massive breach that must have spelt the galley’s doom. Conan had no doubt it could have been caused by the statue’s great bronze sword, poised so fatefully to slice through high storm waves. Into and out of this jagged-timbered hole, across the decks and under the ship’s recurving stem and stem, pale-skinned divers flitted, tireless in their explorations.

With breath fresh in his lungs, Conan left Philiope behind and ducked under a curtain of broken timbers. Inside the wreck, in silt-misted darkness, he strained to see his own hands before his face. The dim, circling forms of other divers and scattering silver minnows gradually helped him pierce the gloom. The big galley’s hold sloped away cavernously into weedy-black obscurity; but here, a little way back, were transverse beams and a hatchway with a broken gang-ladder. Pulling up through it, he found himself alone in a compartment lit by a single crease of light slanting through a missing deck-plank. It took long moments for his eyes to pick out details.

The ship had been struck unawares, he realized, the crew, instead of plunging overboard, remained below-decks. Human bones lay tumbled along the lower edge of the cabin, tangled loose in wispy hammocks and shreds of old silk and leather. Skulls agrin and fleshless hands agrasp, the skeletons were heaped and clumped together by the bushelful. There were rotting weapons, too, and bronze utensils, scraps and shreds of old fixtures; Conan resolved to say nothing of this scene to those above, lest he frighten his men to mutiny.

From one thick-boned skeleton strewn nearest the forward hatch, Conan retrieved a heavy gold sword-hilt. Though bereft of steel, it obviously had once been a fine weapon, fit for defending captainly rank. The squarish, heavy-browed skull beside it lacked the red curls that had given Kobold his nickname, but was recognizable by the gaping scar that crossed one socket; it proved that the fabled captain had indeed been one-eyed. Respectfully, Conan crowned him with a green-rimed pannikin that lay nearby.

Of a sudden he remembered his own situation. With stale air beginning to bum in his chest, he dropped the gold sword-hilt. Such a personal memento would hardly be cherished, in any case; it would only rouse superstitious fears among his pirates. Placing his shoulder against the slimy timbers, he tried to force open the planking of the broken deck. But he failed—perhaps because his strength ' was already waning from the lack of breath. Turning back to the downward hatch, he propelled himself toward it. But once through, he became tangled with one of the divers exploring below—a female, who kicked sharply clear of him in the gloom.

Their brief struggle made loose debris swirl up in Conan’s vision, blinding him momentarily. Once he found his bearings, the way to the hull-breach was farther than he remembered. By the time he fought clear of the shattered timbers, worthless air bubbled up in ragged gouts from his convulsing throat. He espied the air-bell ahead, impossibly far away. He swam a few strokes wildly, spasmodically; then, striking the guide-rope, he dragged himself hand over hand, praying to Crom only that he might die on dry land.

With flickering vision, he saw one of the bell-tenders speeding toward him, slim and lithe, swimming straight into his arms. Embracing him fiercely, she clamped her small, girlish mouth on his lips, and as his last shreds of air bubbled forth, blew her life-giving breath into him.

He pressed his mouth against hers, inhaling greedily, choking and writhing, but not kicking free. As he forced himself to relax his bruising grip on her shoulders, she turned aside—making way for a second Khawar maid. She did the same, letting him first spew forth spent air and then breathe deep from her lips.

The third and last swimmer to come to him was Philiope, radiant and full-chested. Of the three, her kiss lingered the longest, until she turned and led him to the air-bell.

The sea-nymphs resumed their work outside, not troubling to hear his thanks. But then, while he rested with Philiope in the bell and replenished himself, excited divers surfaced beside them to report that treasure had been found.

Ducking down past the rim of the air-chamber, Conan and Philiope could see the eager flurry of limbs and sand below the wreck. Kobold’s hoard had evidently fallen through the bottom planks and settled into the muck. Now, digging under the hulk with clamshells and pry bars sent down from above, the youths were busy unearthing gold and gems. Baskets had been called down from the ship, along with tools and tackle for possible heavy lifting.

The two swam over for a closer look, but with so many divers at work, there was little for them to do. The youths toiled energetically, not seeming to care how small their eventual share might be. Likely, Conan thought, they had harbour-urchins’ clever ways of stealing more than their share. Some now cast aside the pouchfuls of stones they had used to ballast themselves, weighting their slender bodies instead with bright chains, bracelets, and belts of heavy, hinged clasps.

Gold and jewels blazed forth from the trove, their pure and obdurate substance protected by the sand and unmarred by coral and barnacle. Silver turned up green, in great flat salvers and bars, while other chunks were dragged forth weedy and shapeless with barnacle, concealing treasures yet unguessed.

Into the afternoon the work progressed. Air-buckets rose and descended steadily; sieve-baskets were laden with treasure and hauled aloft, while divers circled to and from the bell like swirling schools of pale fish. Conan’s strength proved useful once or twice in shifting half-buried objects. Yet his skill and nimbleness at underwater tasks were limited, and his head was beginning to throb. So he and Philiope returned to the galley’s deck and donned their clothes.

Aboard the ships there was an equal frenzy of hauling and winching, with squeaking tackle, petty-officers’ curses, and the fiercely solicitous and jealous sorting and cleaning of the loot on the carrack’s main deck. Theft was rampant, Conan could see, and fights came near to causing murder. He resolved that when the salvage was ended, there would be a search of both ships from stem to stem, followed by the securing of all treasure under lock and key until a fair division could be made. For now, overseen by Ivanos, Hrandulf, and Drissa, the work progressed vigorously; gold-lust energized the crew and made their talk lively.

“Here are ruby diadems, a priestly sceptre encrusted with sapphires, and... what have you there, Lavrus, a war helmet? White gold, is it? Scrape off the barnacles, and see if any gems of worth are set into it.”

“What lies inside it, then? More coins, faugh! We should throw the coins overside. They will leave us no room to carry home the real treasures!”

“Watch your tongue, Orphos, lest you offend the sea-gods in the generosity,” came the reply. “Here is the richest haul I’ve seen in a dozen years of pirating... and taken by us without a drop of blood spilled! Is that an ill omen, do you think?”

“All I know is, ’tis a city’s ransom,” the one-eyed Lavrus grinned, scraping at the golden helmet with his dagger. “Enough to make us all lordlings for life... assuming old Kobold’s spirit will let us keep it.”

“And why would he not?” the pirate Orphos countered. “Red Kobold was of our Brotherhood, and he has no more use for it. He rests now with Lord Dagon.” The speaker, a Sea-Tribesman, genuflected superstitiously, making the sign of the sea-god’s crest.

Conan, hearing the drift of their banter, gave thanks that these surface-lubbers could not see the drowned ruins that lay beneath their feet. The looming, ill-favoured. statue was menacing enough. Most of these rogues could not swim, much less dive; just as well, if such nether scenes would frighten them and rouse their fear of the supernatural. Even as things stood, word of the eerie world beneath would likely spread from the divers. Between fear and greed, there would be murmurs and alarms aplenty this night.

“A rich haul, all that you promised and more.” Moving up beside Crotalus where he stood in the bows, Conan addressed the Keshan. “At this rate, it cannot take many days to clear out the wreck.”

“Aye, so my divers tell me,” the wizard replied. “Barring accidents and deep-sickness, that is... if the weather holds, and the sun returns on the morrow.”

“And if the sharks do not find us.” Conan gave a grim nod. “Yet it seems to me, Crotalus, that the Kraken's loot may be but the smallest part of the wealth at our feet. Have you not thought that if indeed this port city was drowned in a single day... rich as it surely was, there must be gold and imperishable gems more than enough to ballast any ship?” He thumped the rail beside him. “Why, a place like this could be mined by divers for a year and more. The plunder might be used to rebuild lost Sarpedon’s glories in some new harbour. town on the surface—including this green-bearded warrior-god here!” He waved a hand at the looming half-face of the titan statue, which glared over the decks as if disapproving of mere mortal doings.

“Nay, Conan—or Amra, as you prefer to style yourself.” Crotalus flashed him the wryest, briefest of smiles. “Keep in mind that the wealth of a city lies scattered, and often as not, concealed... since in this case, it has not been hunted out for us by a band of helpful pirates. If these ancients hoarded and buried their trinkets as carefully as the modem people of Aghrapur do, why—” he shook his bald head dismissively—“it would be worth the lives of a hundred divers to recover but a single coffer-full. Given the risks and difficulty of the work, the danger of storms, and of pirate raiders even you cannot command— why, no, Captain Amra, I would not waste my time on such notions.”

“Nonsense, man. I have been down there! There are temples, palaces, manor houses, all of which must have treasures on display as well as tucked away in vaults.” Conan scowled belligerently at the wizard. “Before we leave here, I mean to have some of the divers help me explore the most promising sites. I’ll do it in any case; yet I still might be persuaded to cut you in on the proceeds. What I want from you is a map, the best you can make, based on all your archaic lore______”

Though Conan’s enthusiasm had been muted to avoid eavesdropping by the crew, Santhindrissa and the other officers standing nearby were privy to it. Now the tall captainess moved to Conan’s side and interrupted; for once, she played the conciliator.

“Captain, what I hear from you and the others about this undersea city stirs my interest. I am a passable swimmer, and though I never dived into the black depths, I would like to accompany you. If we can explore these ancient castles and bring some treasures back to the surface, it would surely persuade our business partner here—” she nodded curtly toward Crotalus—“of your plan’s merit.”

The she-pirate paused almost meekly. “I would prefer to go now, before the day’s light and my courage wane.”

And so they went. Santhindrissa, following the common example, strode to the rail and laid bare her thin, wire-tough body. Most of her leather-and-brass harness fell away clinking to the deck, except for a thinly strapped girdle, with dagger-sheath and a purseful of gold to weight her down. Eyes found their way irresistibly to her slim body, most of them half-wincing in fear lest she return the gaze. But she looked haughty and uncaring as, following Conan, she sprang up onto the rail and dove overside.

In subsequent days, Conan, Philiope, and Drissa dove together often. They breathed from the bell or, later, from a second pair of inverted and weighted rendering-kettles that were raised and lowered alternately by pirates working under Ferdinald in the carrack’s launch.

Fleet and pale in the depths, the three, sometimes accompanied by one of the harbour-waifs as their instructor, flitted in and out through archways and windows in the sunken city. The greatest danger was from mists of blinding silt, stones slumping down from the well-fitted but ancient masonry, and the eels, snakes, and octopi that were the last loiterers in drowned alleyways.

They recovered considerable booty, though not as much or as reliably as the Kraken's excavators. Plate-ware and raw diamond chandeliers came from terraced apartments overlooking the harbour; a jewelled bowl and sacrificial knife were found beneath the arches of a temple pavilion; and gold wafers lay loose in broken jars, amid scattered rubble lying along an avenue. Other objects were too heavy to raise: gilded statuary, in main part, and similar relics large enough to stand out amid the sludge and corruption of centuries. To find smaller trinkets or vast hidden hoards would have required some source of light they could have carried deep within the halls and vaults. Their usual method, that of reflecting the dim daylight from polished golden salvers inward through the accessible doors and windows, was hardly thorough enough.

Lack of air remained a problem as time went on. The plunderers learned to parcel out their treasures, sending but a few objects to the surface at intervals, thus spurring the pirates in the boat to continue their exertions and keep them breathing. Then Conan discovered a spired cupola atop a broad structure that was undoubtedly a royal palace. The dome’s masonry and mosaic lining were nearly airtight; by repositioning the row boat above and lowering air-kettles to empty underneath it, Conan filled the roof with an air supply that seeped back to the surface only in a slow, bubbling stream. The spire’s interior was fully as spacious as the bronze bell; it enabled them to rest periodically and focus their explorations on the dead shell of the palace.

On the surface, meanwhile, a strained peacefulness prevailed. The pirates, accustomed by their labour in the oar-banks to toil and rough cooperation, were able to continue the work of air-lowering and treasure-raising without serious mishap. It was only during the evenings and nights, when they were idle—when the calm seas around the ships were unstirred by their efforts, and the moon rose into the sky—that they felt vexed almost to mutiny.

As luck would have it, the expedition had been cursed with a near-full moon; not bright enough to allow work underwater, it yet served to flood the decks with light, to frustrate sleep, and to cast eerie, wavering reflections on the still sea. Under the moon, the pirates murmured in growing fear of the deep, the grisly over-looming statue, the dead city unseen below, and the sunken galley whose secrets they were violating. They, most of all the Sea-Tribesmen under Hrandulf, lived in superstitious fear of their dead comrades, their innumerable old enemies and victims—lost souls who slumbered beneath the waves in Dagon’s realm, craving gruesome vengeance, or at least the companionship of the living.

The divers, boys and girls valued alike for their essential work, remained unmolested, locked securely in the treasure-hold each night. But the booty, which rapidly replaced the ballast-stones in Conan’s carrack and made both ships float heavier in the water, was both balm and irritant.

Toiling in the expectation of vast riches, none of the crew could reasonably complain or wish they were elsewhere. Yet the prospect of lordly wealth, like any great change, was a frightening one to weak and untutored minds. Gambling with dice and wooden tiles went on night-long, with some pirates already in debt beyond the limit of their probable future earnings. Pilfering, even though senseless in the ship’s narrow confines, occurred compulsively. In an extreme case, one Zamoran knave turned blue and perished in a furtive attempt to swallow a ruby-crusted silver brooch.

Luckily, the effort was unsuccessful; the man did not have to be cut open to retrieve the trinket. Meanwhile, two other rogues disappeared outright, likely the result of thefts or rivalry—nothing unusual in a pirate port or anchorage, but muttered-over here by idle crew as a further source of dread.

Conan, relieved of routine command by the abundance of captains and lieutenants on the voyage, busied himself with diving and recovering treasures. He kept his eye on Crotalus, both in person and through his officers, because of his lively and well-learned mistrust of wizards in general. Even though the Keshan seemed satisfied enough with their success thus far, and had promised to draw a map, he took but slight interest in the treasure and its value.

Furthermore, he showed no normal anxiety or belligerence about the division of the spoils. Day-long he lingered on the foredeck, as if keeping watch to hold bad weather at bay, just as the priests of Tarim sometimes did. His one routine act was to speak quietly with the chief diver Keltras, ostensibly about the progress of the work and the conditions below. But once, Conan learned, the wizard had been seen handing the youth a bright metal object, possibly a weapon or a sorcerous implement.

And yet, on a naked diver, no such object could be concealed. The lad was no sorcerer, and given the knives and pry bars the Khawars used daily and expertly, a hand weapon was hardly an added threat. In any case, it was pointless trying to keep watch on Keltras underwater; in the shifting green light, one pale swimmer looked much the same as any other.

One event nevertheless lingered in Conan’s mind. He had stayed alone underwater in the failing afternoon light, long after Philiope and Santhindrissa wearied and returned together to the surface. He was working at a door in the base of the palace, a great double-valved portal; somehow it had resisted the city’s final cataclysm and now was jammed, or barred, shut. Its wooden inner structure was long since dissolved; the tough bronze sheathing was all that held it in place. He hoped it would give him easy access to the innermost heart of the building, where treasures might lie to be gathered up like seashells.

It was a long, difficult labour, digging and prying at the rotten joinings and corroded jams. He was able to carry on in the waning light between trips to the cupola two levels above, where the air remained fresh enough to sustain a single diver for some time. And, at length, the door gave way, toppling slowly outward in the gloom and whirling him around with the force of the chill, debris-laden water it set in motion. He was able to venture inside the vast gallery it opened on, and to recover treasure from within the next day. But what made the keenest impression on him was what he saw when he first swam through the yawning archway—far away at the back, down a remote inner corridor that could scarcely have been penetrated by the hardiest diver.

It was a light. It shone like a torch, brighter even, glaring like a speck of noon sun and gouting golden-hued bubbles upward. Yet it was no enchanted flame, burning eternal at some subterranean altar. It moved through the ancient halls, borne swiftly out of sight in a hand that was undeniably human—gliding along before a pale, naked diver who had found some way to light the sea’s brooding, mysterious depths.

VI

The Harp of Dagon

The final morning dawned gusty and clear—a relief, since the sea’s grey sluggishness had continued to trouble the pirates. During the night, a Zamoran gambler, relieving himself overside, had glanced down to see Red Kobold and his pirate crew creeping up the wall of the galley, their fish-eaten faces leering evilly by the moon’s gloating light.

At his frenzied shouts and stampings, the ship’s entire complement gathered on deck, to find that the alarm had been caused by a single and only recently dead body. One of the missing pirates, after two or three days’ sojourn in the depths, had evidently floated to the surface. His aspect was horrific, true enough, but his corpse was not too far gone for a cursory inspection to show that his death was caused by a simple knife-slash to the neck.

Since there was nothing to identify his slayer, the body was weighted with stones and sent once again to its resting place. The incident might possibly have resulted in gibes, laughter, and the relief of tension if not for its nagging unknown cause. As it was, the pirates returned sullenly to sleep and carousal, their fears and suspicions only deepened.

By morning’s light, Conan approached Crotalus on the Raven’s gently swaying foredeck. He spoke to the wizard about the state of the expedition, questioning him frankly about the eerie light he had seen beneath the waves. But the Keshan’s composure was impenetrable; his sleek brown features only wrinkled in mild amusement.

“You saw a torch, you say, Captain? Likely it was just a mirage of the deep, born of over-long immersion. The weight of the water does things to men’s brains, I am told. I’d guess it had no more reality than the legion of ghosts that awakened your crew and yourself last night. But then again, there are fish and eels that give off flashes and flickers in the deep, like the torch-bugs that light Turanian meadows.” The wizard turned away. “What can it matter anyway, since our ships are nearly full?” He gestured from the carrack to the galley, whose hull rocked low and heavy in the gentle waves lapping the nose of the looming statue. “Our mission, and your own watery labours, must soon come to an end.”

Conan did not dispute the matter further. Seldom had he been in partnership with sorcerers, and their glib wiles made him uneasy. He left Crotalus toying with a relic that had been brought up by one of the divers. It was a harp, made of gold-ornamented bronze. Its unbroken silver strings, once the sea-encrustations had been scraped away, still yielded strangely resonant notes.

Well, even a wizard must grow bored of his schemings and seek harmless diversions; so Conan was satisfied to conclude. Leaving the Keshan’s idle, inexpert strummings behind him, he went to join Philiope and Santhindrissa for a dive.

Below, things were in an uneasy state. The wealth of the pirate hulk was all but exhausted, with the last scatterings buried deep under the hull, hard to reach and concealed by small, continual cave-ins. Sharks, moreover, had finally closed in, probably lured by the savour of decomposing pirates. The formerly rare visitors now hovered near the workings. Nosing in threateningly, they disrupted the Khawar youths’ routine.

Conan, after filling his lungs from the bell, confronted one large tiger-striped specimen as it menaced the bell-tenders. He did not use his knife, lest the scent of blood bring on the sort of feeding-frenzy that was all too familiar to him from the harbour. at Djafur. Instead, he swam straight at the brute and smote it on the nose repeatedly with fist and elbow. It lunged half-heartedly but was turned aside with more blows, and a hard kick from Drissa, who closed in abeam. Conan let the beast circle away, hoping its fear might scent the water and discourage its smaller cousins as well.

The balance of the morning was spent clearing the doorway Conan had broken open, and plundering the royal gallery within. The loot was considerable; some treasures were too large to be dragged out by Conan and the two females working in concert—and, very likely, too heavy to be shipped safely aboard the overloaded vessels above. Nevertheless, with Philiope holding the mirror and flashing its rays in through the broad archway, Conan and Drissa were able to flush out bejewelled pitchers and flagons, bowls cut from ruby and lapis lazuli, and jade inlays from a long-vanished tabletop. Brought forth into the light, a white-gold candelabrum shone near as brightly in the murky depths as it had once blazed with tapers in the ornate feast-room.

Of the mysterious water-torch and its bearer, Conan saw no further sign. He explored the palace’s inner levels as far as he dared; then, inverting a heavy faïence punch-bowl beneath his air-cupola and filling it, he carried it partway with him in order to venture even deeper. He got as far as a narrow inner doorway, through which the doubly reflected beams of the sun-mirrors he had wedged in place faded to mere shafts of sparkling sea-dust. In the beams’ remotest glimmers, opposite the door, he saw, or imagined he saw, the face of a seated idol, gill-throated and fish-crested: Dagon, the ageless sea-god. By the time he had sucked his last breath out of the punch-bowl, the air ached lifeless in his lungs and his brain swam with languorous visions. With the help of both women, he made it back to the cupola, taking many minutes to recover.

He then set about raising the remainder of the treasures they had found. But their task was soon complicated; the basket lines jerked and ran haltingly, as did the air-lowering buckets, and after a point, the hauling ceased entirely. The three swam up together to deliver a scolding; but as they came near the surface, the nature of the problem was evident.

Unlike the calm depths, the thin layer of sea that was a mariner’s whole world heaved and tossed in fierce agitation. The small dive-boats were driven violently at anchor, making it impossible for the crews to stand up and hoist properly. The two ships fared little better, with wind lashing their rigging and hurling the wave-tops up over their bows. The boon of good weather had finally departed; lucky that their treasure-quest was near an end. What now seemed uncertain was whether the vessels could hold at anchor or would be forced to run before the wind.

Battling against waves and spray, Conan made the swim upwind to the Raven. He ordered the small boats winched back alongside so that their pirate crews and his two companions might be taken aboard, if not the boats themselves. The main salvage work was already abandoned; Khawar divers crept up the hauling ropes and shivered wetly on deck, frightened at the sudden fury of the surface world. The dive-bell was lowered to the sea-bottom as an anchor, and marked only with a floating keg for its unlikely future use. It was too massive to carry back in any case, added to the weight of the galley’s new cargo.

Both ships, though heavy and stable against the wind, rode low in the water. Wave-tops swept in astern, almost up to the carrack’s high, square poop, dousing the crews as they scurried to secure tackle and hatches against the storm.

The sole exception to all this frantic activity was the wizard Crotalus. He loitered high and relatively dry in the carrack’s bows, still cradling the harp he had been toying with earlier that day. He shouted no orders and displayed no fear, almost seeming to watch the turmoil with amusement.

“Ho, Wizard!” Conan hailed him, steadying himself against the foredeck rail. “This gale blows from north and east. What lies downwind of us, I ask you?. Do we have sea-room to fly before the breeze, or must we stay and be pounded at anchor?”

“A northeaster—the same wind that sank the Basilisk, I would guess.” Crotalus strummed the lyre, whose steely notes were snatched away almost instantly on the gale. “Red Kobold ran before it, so far as the sea-gods would let him.” The Keshan smiled philosophically, lounging against the mast to stay upright. “Downwind of us, as all men know, stretches the Hyrkanian coast.”

“Aye, we are buffeted toward a lee shore, curse the luck!” Conan shook his wet mane in frustration. “But is there nothing before it so far as you know? No reefs, or island chains that might give us shelter?” The mage’s non-committal shrug he accepted as final. “What of ports and bays? Is there no safe water we can try to steer for—if, say, our anchors do not hold? I would rather fight Hyrkanian port guards than breakers and rocks!”

Again the Keshan’s unresponsive smile, accompanied by tuneless strumming on his harp. “I would put small hope in steering, whether by oars or by rudder and sail. Can you not see, these winds grow stronger rather than slacker!” He ended with a harsh stroke to the harp-strings, whose silvery steel tones now seemed to hover and blend with the sighing of wind-demons in the rigging.

“I would be less smug, Crotalus, if I were you. After all, your treasure is at peril along with ours... and your leathery hide as well.” Conan scowled fiercely from his place at the rail, though as usual he mistrusted the sorcerer’s spells too much to menace him directly. “Now is the time to use what wizardly skill you have to control this weather.”

“I assure you, I am doing all that is in my power.” The Keshan’s attitude remained one of studied unconcern as he let the harp beside him hum in the soughing wind. “Your survival, Captain Amra, is in the hands of the gods.”

Disgusted, Conan turned away to aid the crew in battening and belaying. Most of the cumbersome excess rigging for the dive operation had been cut away or secured; the cargo hatches were soon made fast, and the spars and running tackle stowed below. Conan could wish that his Raven was anchored bow-to-windward to reduce the following sea’s impact on her rudder and high, flat stem. While occupied with diving, he had neglected to see to the proper anchoring of a square-rigger. He did not cherish the idea of manoeuvring her now in the rising wind.

Another unlucky aspect of the situation was their mooring; while secure, it felt decidedly unsteady. Of four anchor lines the ships shared, three extended downwind and served only to hold the vessels safely apart. The fourth was a stout hempen cable against which both of the craft strained and surged, hauled up short after each wave like war-dogs on a chain leash.

Their tether was looped around the sword-arm of the titan statue, which had proven a convenient stanchion for warping the ships into position above the wreck. This connection, though very likely unbreakable, stretched only a few dozen fathoms at a flat angle to the water. It did not hang down in calm sea-depths, so it absorbed no shock and lent a jerky, oscillating motion to the impact of the waves, straining both the ship timbers and the titan arm.

The statue, as far as Conan could tell, did not sway or shift under the constant battering and tugging. Its vast, weedy bulk, furthermore, broke and dissipated some of the sea’s relentless impact against the hulls. So he chose not to slip the surface cable and rely on the less sure grip of anchors on the sea-bottom. There would be plenty of time to try that later anyway, as desperation warranted.

Philiope crept to him across the heaving quarterdeck. “How long can this torment last?” she anguished to him over the din, clinging to the taut lashings of the helm. She wore a sailor’s coarse shift and pantaloons that were already soaked through by spray. Just then a new rain-squall commenced; it did her the courtesy of washing the sea-salt out of her raven hair, which clung in loops and curlicues to her wet olive-tan neck.

“We should pray to Tarim and Dagon that it lasts,” Conan grimly answered. “Or rather, that it does not turn into a full Vilayet tempest! But it looks to be worsening. You should go below and comfort the young divers.”

The mid-afternoon about them might as well have been night, with all sight of land and sky wiped out, and all other details obscured by squall and spray. The tenting wave-tops surged and lashed vainly up at an ill-omened ceiling of black cloud. To westward, more clouds scudded in, like the grindstones of a god intent on lathing and polishing the surface of the sea; occasionally they sparked with lightnings from the friction. Waves clawed regularly now over the carrack’s stem rail, jolting the hull and sending briny torrents foaming down the deck.

Santhindrissa had gone aboard the galley, where Hrandulf and the lieutenants had been caught with most of the working crew. The lower-built oarship fared worse before the waves, which at times swept knee-deep along the whole length of her single deck. But she was of a solid design, well-tested in these waters and not overladen with rigging. Conan’s three-master, by contrast, was vexed and torn at by the wind, which shrieked and moaned like a horde of demons as it raced through her tarred rigging.

“The wizard could offer no help?” Philiope called out. She had lingered at Conan’s side, clinging stubbornly to her place against the fury of the storm.

“No, he plucks at his harp and sings us all a dirge.” Conan glared forward at the white-robed figure standing in the bow. “Though with his sorcerous vision, I’ll wager that he could tell us the bearing of every reef, rock, and harbour. in this sea. Crom grant that I may someday fathom the brain-quirks of a cultured man!”

“He may want to wreck us, I fear.” Philiope hauled herself close to Conan’s ear, fighting the wind. “I would not trust him any longer if he does offer us aid.”

“Why not?” Conan frowned in earnest. “It’s his treasure that’s at stake.”

“Exactly. If he sends us all aground and manages to survive, then with his sorcerous skills, he can find it and salvage it again!”

Conan pondered silently, leaning close to furnish a windbreak for the girl. “If we cast off and run before the wind,” he reasoned aloud, “our two ships will be lost to each other in a trice. He will lose half his treasure in any case—I misdoubt that even the Keshan’s powers will let him track two ships in this stormy wrack. And I already promised him half the loot, less his divers’ pay.”

“Aye, but he may not value a pirate’s promise. And why not have it all, with no pay or shares?”

“Crom and Mannanan shrivel all wizards, philosophers, and civilized louts! If they were but half as honest as pirates, I’d gladly ship them as my crewmates!” His wrath was all but drowned out by the storm. “Well, try as he may, Crotalus will not outlast a Cimmerian! Now get below, these waves grow dangerous!”

With the shuddering and heaving of the hull, the groaning of timbers and the lashing and gyrating of the mast-tops, Conan was worried about his craft, most especially his rudder. Though she rode low and heavy in the water, the waves’ heightening reach and their deepening troughs menaced her stability. The slap of a stony buttress of brine against the exposed fluke would surely knock out his helm, which he had hopes of using later. It might be time to undertake a risky and untried bit of seamanship, and swing her at anchor.

His planning was interrupted by a turmoil below as half-naked figures boiled out of the companionway onto the main deck. Divers they were, three or four of them, with Philiope half-emerging and calling after. One, a lithe-limbed boy, fought his way across the flooded deck to the main sheets and, grasping hold of the thick ropes, began shinnying up the mast.

Abandoning the lashed and useless wheel, Conan vaulted the afterdeck rail and sprang to the ratlines. Climbing in the turbulent weather was easier than walking; nimble as a cat, he mounted the webwork. He intercepted his quarry at the maintop, where the boy was making ready to scramble up the next segment of mast. It was Keltras, the chief diver, and he struggled vainly in Conan’s grip.

“What is it, lad!” Conan barked in the youth’s face. “’Tis death to go aloft in such a gale, even for skilled hands. Why not stay below till this storm lifts?”

“... I must get away... ’tis the wrath of Dagon! He seeks me, I have offended him! I will go as high as I can and appeal to mighty Tarim... before the thirsty waters devour me!” His words were accompanied by new spasms of strength as he fought and kicked to free himself and climb the mast.

“What madness is this, a diver who fears the sea?” Clutching the tarred shroud lines, Conan pinned the lad to the narrow, heaving platform at the mast-top. “Why, what have you done that makes you mad? Does not your sea-god love and care for his own?”

“Not one who steals the harp from the lap of the god himself! The hallowed, ancient harp that summons the wind!”

“So that’s it!” Dealing the youth an open-handed blow to the side of the skull, a buffet that made him loll half-senseless, Conan picked the boy up and slung him lightly over one shoulder. Swinging onto the ratlines, he clambered with his unresisting burden back down toward the deck. His movements were skilled and almost automatic, for he did not see the ropes and fastenings he clung to. Through his mind instead flitted thoughts and visions of recent happenings—of the uncanny torch he had seen probing the depths of the undersea palace, of the fish-faced idol sitting almost invisible in the inner gallery, and of his interview with Crotalus. The sorcerer was behind it all, that explained everything.

“Here, Philiope. Take this whelp and have his friends keep him below-deck. Do not bind him, though, in case we all have to swim for it. He is mad. He thinks he is cursed by his god, but mayhap you can talk him out of it. Hold him fast, I have business to attend to!”

Leaving Keltras in the hands of his dive-mates, Conan strode and lurched toward the break of the foredeck. Reaching it, he mounted the companion ladder and bellowed at Crotalus, who stood in the bow clinging to the stays.

“Foul wizard, double-dealing traitor! ’Tis you who conjured up this storm and brought us all to the brink of doom! You sent the boy with a magic torch to find the harp of the sea-god, and had it delivered into your hands. It is the secret of the ancient race, the charm that brought wealth and fame to their city, and probably destroyed it! But why do you want to wreck us now? Has the harp driven you mad too? Do you care nothing for the treasures we have gained, and for your own worthless life?”

Shouting all this, Conan made his way to the foremast. Yet he did not advance on Crotalus, who no longer held the ancient harp. The Keshan answered at leisure, using both hands to keep his place in the heaving bow.

“You are right, Captain Amra, I do not set much store in treasure. Wealth is pleasant to have, but it was not my true object in coming here. I have always sought new power, and the knowledge that lets men command it. The harp is powerful indeed, but difficult to control—alas, even if I tried to stop it now, I do not think I could.”

Raising one hand, he indicated the eldritch instrument. He had contrived to hoist it up on a rope run through the jibstays, out over the bowsprit. The line was not made fast to the rail, but tangled round the bight; its frayed end trailed far out over the sea, lashed relentlessly by wind. It was impossible, Conan saw, for any mortal hand to lower the harp or, in this weather, to climb out on the frail ropes and untangle it. For the time being, there was no way to be rid of the accursed thing.

Furthermore, if the wizard’s strumming and plucking had ever been needed to enact the storm-spell, it no longer was. For the gold harp, twisting aloft, thrummed and chimed now on its own. Each blast of wind that swept the ship caused the taut silver strings to vibrate in a new chord, eerie and dissonant... to which the whole ship’s tortured rigging resonated in turn, like a zither chiming in sympathy to a lyre.

“Devil,” Conan screamed above the cacophony, “you have spawned a tempest fit to kill us all, and likely to drown Djafur and Aghrapur in the bargain! But you forget one thing—if we are all fish-food anyway, then there is nothing to keep me from grasping your scrawny throat in my fists and wringing it apart—”

“But hold, Captain!” Crotalus, as the Cimmerian came for him, did not retreat the final step into the bow chains, but stood boldly. “Is a captain’s first concern not the welfare of his ship? If so, I would give heed. I sense a new peril to this fine carrack of yours, greater than any mere wind.”

Indeed, even as the seer spoke, Conan marked a change in the rolling of the deck underfoot. Turning back from the sorcerer to the foremast, he held himself upright, surveying the sea-spattered decks for the cause. The Raven still floated, with only the odd wave breaking in over her rail. The galley rode trim alongside, barely visible now through flat, driven spray off the wave-tops. The mooring lines held, both astern and abeam, the stem rope sagging out over the waves toward the Cyclopean head and hand where they loomed pale out of the sea, silhouetted by occasional lightning flashes—

The statue, that was it! Striding to the rail and vaulting down from the foredeck, Conan lurched and splashed across the surf-running main deck to the weapons rack. There he snatched up a heavy ax and ran astern with it. He did not stop to pry open the hatchway and warn those below; there was no time, and if he failed, a warning would do no good anyway.

Staggering and sliding up the cant of the tossing stem deck, he came to the hawse-hole and swung his ax. As luck would have it, the mooring cable was looped around stanchions and continued out amidships to the galley—a lubberly, unhandy rig that could not easily be cast off. His first stroke rebounded from the tough, wet fibres. The second blow sheared a few strands, glanced off, and lodged in the deck planks just short of Conan’s bare toes.

Cursing, he gazed astern to confirm what he had glimpsed before. There was no doubt of it. Battered by fierce waves and dragged at by the tethered ships, the giant statue was leaning to leeward. Both the head and the sword-hand tilted up unnaturally in the churning tide, the beard of lashing seaweed visibly askew off the horizontal. The gargantuan was near to toppling—and to sucking the carrack down in its mighty wake as well, or dragging it under at the end of a fixed, unseverable mooring line.

Striking at the cable again and again, Conan chopped through more of the tough strands. One of the triple braids was now better than half severed. The line rolled aside, slack for a moment... then it jerked taut, straining the ship’s timbers underfoot and very likely drawing the leaning titan all the faster to its doom. As the cable pulled tight, the ax bit down again, and finally parted the first of the three entwined ropes.

Conan redoubled his efforts, falling on one knee against the transom and hacking desperately. A second rope frayed, unbraided itself, and parted; the third section, inadequate to hold the ship against the force of the gale, stretched and snapped where Conan’s ax had bruised it.

At once the carrack surged forward before wind and waves. Seizing hold of the rail, Conan gazed up at the titan god astern. It yielded ever faster to the storm, its bearded face half submerged at a crazy angle, with only one eye peering intermittently from the troughs of waves. The weedy sword-arm, by contrast, reared up higher than ever, its sea-gnawed blade looming vertical against the lightning flashes. As Conan watched, the final doom neared; the mighty hand twisted, brandishing the weapon overhead. As the white-browed face sank ponderously out of sight, the sword passed its apex. Then it sliced straight down at the carrack, as if determined to take the pillagers of its native city to a watery death with it.

The ship wallowed helplessly, yawing sidewise to the wind. Then it lifted giddily, on the wave that was hurled violently up where the jagged pillar of bronze and marble crashed into the sea, striking not a dozen paces from the midships rail, its sword-blade shearing through the swells. The Raven lurched and nearly capsized, while its captain was torn from his place astern and washed halfway across the deck. But he recovered his footing and soon made his way back to cast off the helm lashings and take the wheel.

There was no way to warn the galley, which was already lost in the watery chaos and gathering night. The toppling of the giant statue would have been hard for her deck officer—be it Hrandulf, Ivanos, or Santhindrissa—to miss. Conan hoped he or she had cast away the necessary lines and that their anchors would hold. He waited for his own carrack, too, to be hauled up short on its moorings.

But that did not happen. The anchor lines must be severed, perhaps by the statue on its way down.

The occasional frightened faces of crewmen peered at him from the main deck—aware, no doubt, that the Raven was running free before the wind. None of them crept aft to request orders. Discipline was gone by the board; it would take a roaring fit below-decks and a few thumped skulls to restore it, and he could not spare the time just now. Ahead, from moment to moment through the blowing spray, he caught sight of Crotalus still perched on the foredeck. And the infernal thrumming and chiming of the wind-harp seemed to course through the rigging, all the way to the mizzen.

With the statue fallen, Conan reckoned, there was no way to find the sunken city. The ruins lay too deep beneath the waves to be seen. Even if one could return to the general location, random diving would never locate it again or yield a pay-off in treasure. Crotalus might guide them back to the place with his sorcerous talents—yet, by Crom's horny hilt, Conan would rather kill the Keshan rogue than trust him again. Ah well, no matter; there remained adequate treasure in the hold of this carrack. Plus the wealth of the galley, if the vessel stayed afloat. Silently he swore to himself that he would ride this treasure to the bottom ere he’d let the wizard claim it.

The ship raced wild in the gale, with its skull-jack flapping and ragged, half-furled royals lashing for’ard from the mast-tops. Its speed was impossible to guess, and there was no telling which might come first: dawn, a break in the wind, or the Hyrkanian coast. At any moment, their keel might be ripped out by unseen rocks and their lives and treasures scattered to the deep. Yet Conan guessed that the Keshan mage had some degree of control, and that he had some kind of showdown in mind. So he stood firm at the wheel, straining eyes, back, and wits to be ready for it.

In the foaming, heaving darkness, Philiope made her way to his side. “The Khawar divers have quieted Keltras.

They rest below, and have promised to await your word before abandoning ship.”

“Good,” Conan said, taking her inside the shelter of his arms where they braced the wheel. “If any can swim clear of a shipwreck and live by foraging along a beach, they can. What of my pirates?”

“They sit and moan and pray to Bel-Dagoth, god of sea-thieves. There are but thirteen of them, and they have never seen such a storm. They fear to venture out on deck, they fear Crotalus, and most of all, they fear you.”

“Just as well,” Conan growled. “There is nothing they can accomplish here. We are in the grip of the wizard— who may, to his sorrow, be in the grip of something greater.” He pressed the woman’s wet, slim form briefly in the compass of his cradling arms. “And how do you fare?” “Never in all my life have I known such danger.” She turned her eyes aloft at the shredded rigging, at the fierce-lightninged sky, and back to him. “I am glad to face it with you,” she said, embracing him and laying her head on his chest.

Night raced on; the wind kept up its frenzy, driving the square-rigger before it like the raven whose namesake it was. Conan should have thought twice about naming her after a storm-bird. He fought the wheel until his shoulders racked bone-sore; he feared to leave his place lest the heavy-laden ship broach into the wind and capsize or swamp. Had there been time and calm to rig a sea-anchor, he would have tried; but in these wild conditions, with a cowed and unhandy crew, such an attempt could cost lives or tempt disaster. So he stayed on at the helm.

Crotalus, with free run of the fore part of the ship, was not nearly so helpless. Evidently he knew sailcraft, or had watched the drilling of Conan’s crew; evidently, too, he was mad. For by stealing amidships and taking a knife from the skirmish rack, he was able to cut the halyards and drop the yards, unfurling the main- and topsails thunderously before the raging wind. Returning to the foremast, he sawed through more lines and spread its broad hamper as well.

The effect on the Raven was immediate: she doubled her speed before the gale. For some moments Conan was sure the hapless ship would be dismasted or driven straight down into the sea. But her rigging held, with only a clew or two tearing loose to cause loud boomings and flappings aloft. The ship leaped onward toward its doom, the smutty, rainshot darkness hurtling by ever faster on either hand.

All the sooner then, she was in peril, with drumming breaker-sounds and blue-white seethings of phosphorescent surf dimly sensed on either hand. Conan did what little he could to steer her, working blind. He told Philiope, “Now is the time to warn the hands. They should wait astern, for we will ere long be on the rocks.”

Moments later, the crew ventured out onto the spray-drenched deck. The divers crept more surely to the rails than did the terrified pirates, most of whom hated water and could not swim. Philiope, struggling back upwind to Conan’s lee, shouted to him, “When the time comes, will you plunge into the waves at my side?”

He shook his head fiercely. “No, you must go with the others! I have vowed to see this ship and treasure to its last grave. Do you hear that, Crotalus?” He raved abruptly, letting the wind hurl his words for’ard. “When this ship goes aground, I will catch you and bludgeon you to death with her broken timbers!”

If the wizard heard him or made reply, there was no hint of it in the raging darkness. But Philiope edged close behind Conan, twining her arms around his waist. “If you remain aboard,” she called up to him in the gale, “I will too!”

“So be it,” he answered her, standing firm at the wheel. “We live or die together.”

The rush of the storm took on a sinister rhythm ahead, as of a demon’s coarse breathing. A moment later, an exceptionally large three-forked spear of lightning gashed the sky. Its light revealed a long, pale shelf of beach ahead, serrated with black-toothed rocks around which foaming breakers crashed and swirled. Cries of terror arose from the crew, to be lost in the onrushing peals of thunder.

“There is Hyrkania!” Conan shouted over the last angry rumblings. “We are doomed! But it may take the ship some moments to break apart on the rocks. After we strike, I will head for’ard and throttle the sorcerer. Then, with Crom’s blessing, we can leap for it together.”

Already, as Conan spoke, frail, pathetic figures were leaping from the ship’s rails: Khawar divers most of them, jumping in twos and threes. Desperate pirates crept to the rail after them, then baulked, clung, and let go less willingly—many fated to drown before they could even be dashed on the rocks. The shoreline stretched ahead now in a fanged, welcoming smile. Its frothing surf glowed pale without benefit of lightning. The ship’s motion lagged suddenly, then surged giddily upward on shelving waves. Conan heard a hoarse scraping underfoot and clutched Philiope tight against the wheel.

At once, cataclysm erupted. A grating, elephantine peal sounded; the decks shuddered as if trying to strain apart, timber from spiked timber. Conan tumbled backward against the transom, knocked all but senseless, with Philiope collapsing atop him. The ship’s stem heaved up into the air and commenced shivering and jolting with impacts fit to rattle the teeth and spine.

“What in Set’s foul name!” Conan reached down to lift the woman’s head where it thudded involuntarily against the quaking, heeling deck. Once she had her limbs beneath her, he kept her steady with one arm. Meanwhile, he hauled himself up against the rail... to see an impossible sight.

Behind them stretched the rocky beach and the breakers; behind them, wild waves arched up to crash inward over the rocks. Below, beneath the shuddering, square stem, was no water, no wake, no surging sea. Dim shapes rushed past on either hand: trees, sand-streaming dunes, bushes beaten flat by the gale. Ahead, the main- and foresail bellied and strained, driving the ship relentlessly through the night. Around them, the wind roared in a thousand voices, chanting like demons, chiming like a harp. They were ashore, on land, they had sailed up out of the sea.

“Crotalus!” Conan bellowed, shoving himself forward from the rail. “What devil’s spell is this? Are you taking us straight to hell with you?” He staggered ahead but was tumbled to his knees by the jolts and lurches of the demon-driven ship.

Around them, the night was a turmoil of sand, debris, flying sleet, and barbed lightnings. Tossed helpless on the sea of night, they sailed on.

VII

The Nomad City

Night was a lurching, shuddering blackness that bruised the knees and jarred teeth and vertebrae. Night was an abject cowering, too—a cringing inability to move free, lest one be hurled and battered senseless by a land-voyage worse than any sea journey, a storm that outpaced any tempest. It was a defiant, desperate clinging, refusing to jump clear and grovel for shelter on the storm-flayed earth, sworn instead to ride along with the doomed ship that was the only recognizable world, even though a howling demon bestrode its back.

The night stretched long and unnaturally dark, and the storm flew and yammered alongside the night. Straining for a glimpse over the rails during lightning-flares, Conan saw hills hurtling past in the gale. He saw grasslands and thickets waving and writhing like a storm-driven sea, and felt his ship’s keel grate and jolt over the hard, stony earth of the hinterland. He saw wild herds scatter before the broken prow, and watched tornado funnels pace the ship like great whirling, twisting djinni. He saw a village huddled asleep, its cottages shuttered tight against the wind, and felt the Raven’s hull grind through lodges and outbuildings. Thatch and shingle came flying up over the bows, swirling past the upright figure of Crotalus where he stood with hands spread aloft, gripping the forestays.

The deck heeled violently time and again, away to port and back to starboard as a splintering or a wild slewing told of part of the hull being wrenched away. Yet Ferdinald had built the craft strongly to Conan’s order; her sails still stretched taut, still the masts and ribs clung together. Impossibly, the ship sailed on.

The night died choking at last in a storm of whirling dust. Grit and debris filled the sky, scouring and pounding the decks so fiercely that Conan believed they must be in the heart of a cyclone. The wind lashed and abraded him mercilessly, causing him to shelter Philiope’s huddled form beneath his own body and hide his eyes.

When finally the motion and maelstrom subsided, the sky was already pale with dawn. The ship lay still, aground at last, broken on a rock in the bank of a freshet that gurgled and splashed with upstream rains. The rock lay before the wall of a city that stood in the midst of a vast plain.

Brushing aside loose debris, untangling his legs from fallen ropes and spars, Conan stood, raising Philiope up beside him. To feel so chill and cramped, his hair still wet and crusty with brine, seemed uncanny on this fresh inland morning. The wizard Crotalus was gone from the ship’s shattered bow. The city wall before them was actually a many-gated timber stockade; it surrounded a metropolis of numberless and diverse tents, which seemed miraculously to have suffered no damage from the expiring storm.

Conan helped Philiope slide with him down the angle of the quarterdeck. Together they jumped clear of the hull, which was at long last broken and bedded in the stream’s gravel bank. From the Raven’s planking, where it lay worn and pounded open, there cascaded heaps and rivulets of bright gold and gems, some of them still encrusted with coral and barnacle.

There was no guessing how much sea-treasure had been scattered pell-mell down the route of the ship’s mad careening. The plate and bullion that had ballasted the lower hull was likely gone, but here were the finer pieces spilled out of kegs, bins, and jars smashed in the hold. Conan bent and took up an elegantly worked breast-piece inlaid with rubies, which he bestowed on Philiope’s goose-pimpled neck. He found a jewelled silver comb for her damp, sea-smelling hair, then took up rings and bracelets for his and her arms and fingers. There was no sense dying penniless, after all.

Ahead of them, a broad gate in the wooden stockade opened, allowing motley figures to crowd forth from the city. First came gatekeepers armed with long, straight lances, holding back a mob of townsfolk who straggled out on foot and horseback. The main part of the procession consisted of riders in fleece vests and fur-trimmed metal caps, armed with tulwar sabres and horse-bows. They rode forward over a shallow bank and dipped down toward the stream’s edge, their outfits and their bronze-skinned, high-cheekboned faces looking distinctly Hyrkanian.

At the very centre of the group was a vehicle drawn by at least a dozen horses: a broad, high, wagon-like conveyance that rumbled forward on several pairs of large, brass-bound wheels. Its forepart consisted of a spacious porch where three uniformed wagoneers wielded their horsewhips side by side. Above it was a railed, roofed, and minaretted balcony from which two or three persons might survey broad reaches of territory, or exhort and command a throng. At the sides rose smaller defensive turrets that bristled with armed guards; behind the wooden ramparts, doubtless, were accommodations suited to a nomad king.

Indeed, the figure who emerged onto the topmost balcony looked to be the proudest ruler of the broad eastern steppe. He wore a high bronze helmet that was itself minaretted; from its curlicued crests, bright gold pendants dangled and flashed. His face, beardless and elderly, was seamed by hard living in spite of all the ostentatious luxury. A heavy cape of silk-lined sable draped his strong old shoulders. With royal dignity he presided over the charioteers, meanwhile discoursing calmly with a companion who moved up beside him. The passenger, a tall, lean, dark-skinned man in a coarse white robe, was familiar; Conan’s heart sank—it was none other than the wizard Crotalus.

Conan led Philiope forward, not waiting for the others to come near. He went defiantly, striding like a king in his own domain, though he got no more than a dozen paces before halting opposite the spears of the delegation.

The ponderous, wheeled palace rumbled and squeaked to rest in the trampled mud of the stream bank. Lines of foot- and horse-soldiers fanned out smoothly at either side, positioning themselves to guard both the chariot and the treasure-laden wreck. From between the troops, fur-capped town gawkers peered, no doubt fascinated at the spectacle of gaudily dressed and jewelled foreigners, and of a treasure-ship aground countless leagues from the sea.

The voice of the wagon’s owner rang out first in gruff, formal Hyrkanian directed at Conan. “Are you in truth stranded sailors, borne here from the Middle Sea by last night’s fimbul-wind?”

“Aye, ’tis so,” the Cimmerian answered in the same language. “I am Conan, a traveller from far Cimmeria who has learned the ways of the Vilayet.” He laid a sheltering arm around Philiope—neglecting, however, to introduce her. “Where are we, then? And who is it I have the honour of addressing?”

“You entreat the mercy of Antulla, High Chief of the Yak Clan, the mightiest in Hyrkania.” At their leader’s arrogant words, the horse-soldiers murmured and raised their weapons in salute. “The city you see before you is Attar Karapesk, my capital,” Antulla went on after the clatter had died down. “Your ship’s arrival on the hooves of the storm was timely. If not for the rain, we would have struck our tents yesterday and been gone from here.”

“Abandon your capital, you mean?” Conan asked. “The storm was fierce, I know...he trailed off, marvelling once again that any palisade or tent still stood after the gale that had driven him to this place. It proved, yet again, that the wind was sorcerous.

“Not abandon our city,” the king replied, “but move Attar Karapesk to the southern steppe to make ready for the clan-gathering next month. We Hyrkanians are nomads,” he added with a flourish of one silk-sleeved arm. “Sailors of the steppe, you might say, who love the freedom of the open grassland. We would not spend our lives as prisoners of our own filth, squatting in the stone-walled sties of city-dwellers.” As he spoke, the bangles on his spired crown jangled and clashed imperiously.

“Now the damp earth will delay our departure for a day or two,” he added, gesturing to the stream that poured along briskly beyond the wreck of the Raven. “But no matter, water and forage will be more plentiful along the way. And the riches contained in your ship will be most welcome.”

“Why, of course, High Chief,” Conan agreed promptly. “I will be most pleased to offer you a half-share as tribute—out of thanks for your hospitality, to defray any damages, and to pay for the troops and wagons we need to transport ourselves and our property. Our poor vessel has suffered a disastrous voyage. I as its captain wish nothing more than a safe passage homeward.”

His words brought a wry smile to the chieftain’s weather-beaten face. “Captain, I must agree, your ship has seen better days. Your crew seems to have thinned considerably, as well.”

The jest caused harsh laughter among the officers, who eyed Conan and, more particularly, Philiope, from their saddles at either side of the huge, rolling palace.

“As for your generosity,” Antulla went on, “many thanks, but I fear it has already been exceeded.” He extended a hand to indicate the tall, lean figure beside him. “Your former shipmate, who tells me his name is Crotalus, has assured me that the treasure rightfully belongs to him. He offers it all to the Hyrkanian Empire in the keeping of our clan, as a token of friendship.”

At his words, attended closely and silently by the ever-increasing crowd of troops and onlookers, a fresh, clattering salute went up. Conan glanced behind him to see foot- and horse-guards surrounding the ship, a further party of riders cantered back westward, following the ploughed and flattened path its keel had left in the grassy steppe. Doubtless they were patrolling for treasure spilled out of gaps in the hull.

“Did Crotalus also tell you,” Conan asked, turning back boldly to the monarch, “that he is a scheming sorcerer who caused the wreck of our ships, and the death of any number of my crew?”

The chieftain looked down, unmoved. “He told me aught of you, Conan of Cimmeria—or should I say, Captain Amra of the Red Brotherhood? If he drowned your crew, I call it praiseworthy, since such pirate cutthroats cause no end of trouble to our empire’s commerce and borders.”

“Did he further say he caused the hell-wind that blew us here, cutting a swath of destruction across your domain?”

Conan, considering that the clan-chief had not yet ordered him killed outright, determined not to deny his dual identity. He would stand his ground and try to gain the chief’s respect instead.

“Did he tell you, too, that he is a servant and a confidant of the high Turanian court at Aghrapur, who has sailed across the sea to raid the Hyrkanian coast before this?”

“As for the enchanted wind,” Antulla said, addressing the throng of onlookers as well as Conan, “it did no harm to our city, so how can I count its maker an enemy? Know, pirate, this is Hyrkania, the fabled Wolf-Land of demons and sorcerers; here wizardry is not regarded as a vice. Quite the contrary, it merits admiration and respect.” Reaching down beside him, he brought up an object Conan instantly recognized: the Harp of Dagon, which he held up overhead. “Here is the instrument by which Crotalus summoned the wind, so he tells me. He has offered its care and use to us, as a further token of his goodwill.” He lowered the harp out of sight, making no effort to strum it or play it for the crowd.

“As regards our guest’s past association with Aghrapur,” the chief went on, “is it any closer than your pirate Brotherhood’s, whose ships attack our ports and commerce under the Turanian flag? The most recent news I have tells me that your home port is a foreign enclave, ruled by a Turanian Imperial governor.”

“That is all in the past,” Conan put in quickly. “Since Captain Knulf’s death, we of the Brotherhood raid impartially again—that is to say, we guard and protect foreign shipping in an even-handed way, to promote trade all across the Vilayet.”

“So you are back to wanton piracy,” the high chief answered. “This Knulf is dead, you say... but has it occurred to you, Captain Amra, that you too may already be dead?” He smiled down unpleasantly as his horsemen edged in on either side. “I have heard from you a round of mealy-mouthed pirate duplicity, as I was told I would.” He nodded to his companion. “If I were you, I would be silent now, as befits a dead man repenting his misspent life.” While Chief Antulla spoke, several horse-officers had been clambering aboard the wrecked ship and examining its interior. Now they walked back, noticeably bow-legged when out of the saddle. Faces solemn with amazement, they gave the report to their chief. He bent down from the rail to hear them, then smiled broadly and addressed those nearby.

“It would appear to be a rich day indeed for Hyrkania, and for our clan. I command all but my picked warriors to stay clear henceforth of the wreck and its furrowed wake, on pain of being dragged behind wild horses. Now then, let us return to the city, where we can all celebrate and make our dispositions accordingly.”

Turning to Crotalus in the relative privacy of his balcony, Chief Antulla addressed him in broad accents. “You pledge to me, O Wizard of Kesh, that you will forsake all our enemies, Turanians and pirates alike, and bend your efforts to the greater glory of Hyrkania?”

“I do so pledge,” Crotalus affirmed, scarcely inclining his neck and bald head to the chieftain. “For you know, O Antulla, I weary of city intrigues and the scheming arrogance of power-hungry Turanians. In your country I find a purer, more vital strain of fellowship, much like the roving jungle and grassland tribes of my homeland. Yours as a rugged land that breeds strong leaders and powerful sorcerers, Chief. Unlike your enemies, who possess decadent luxuries from their foreign depredations, you have the chance to grow and build wisely. I undertake to help you with it, especially if you want to throw off the yoke of oppression that vexes you from across the sea.”

“Indeed,” Antulla replied, “you understand us well. ’Tis mere days since our emissary, Adi Bulbul of the Ostrich Clan, returned from Aghrapur telling of brazen insults and attempts on his life. The king and prince of Turan are arrogant liars who push for war, so he says. They mean to press us all the harder in the south, and use the full, infernal weight of their naval superiority in the Vilayet.” “Hyrkania has a navy and plenty of ports,” Crotalus pointed out. “Should it not be possible to fight them on the open sea?”

“Our clans’ best strength has always been on land, using the speed and daring of our cavalry.” Antulla raised a hand, pointing outside to the horse-troops sitting straight in their saddles. ‘The Vilayet has ever been a stumbling-block to our horse campaigns,” he added more confidingly. ‘The colonies we planted westward learned its ways better, and now use those same skills against us. The galleys of our sea-clans are old and ill-equipped. It would take a new navy to defeat our rebellious cousins.”

“Why then, what better use for this bounty I have brought you than to build a navy? There is vast wealth aboard yon hulk, as you will see.”

“That may be. But in addition, these steppe-lands of ours suffer from a timber shortage. The best hardwoods must be carried from southern realms like Colchia, past Turanian blockades. In addition to money, it takes planning and time.”

“In respect of time, my mystical talents may be able to help you.” Crotalus now spoke with the chief in an earnest, subdued tone, so that none but Antulla could hear. “I am skilled at aiding and accelerating the growth of living things, plants and animals alike. It may be that I can remedy your timber problems. If so, you might challenge Turan on the open sea sooner than you think possible.” “Excellent!” Antulla said. “I can raise your idea at the clan meeting that is soon to come. Meanwhile, I will assemble a conclave of our finest native sorcerers to judge your powers and techniques. Perhaps you will want to share your skills and secrets with them. I have the feeling, Crotalus, that your alliance with our empire will prove invaluable to both sides.”

On Antulla’s command, Conan and Philiope found themselves instantly surrounded by foot-guards with spears levelled at close-port. The pair did not try to resist, but waited behind the many-wheeled palace as it turned in a broad circle and lumbered back toward the palisade gate. The bare earth of the stream bank. was already churned and muddy, and no one offered them clogs or boots, so they squelched along bare-toed. It felt decidedly strange to wade through mud and horse-flops after the cant of a rolling deck.

The wooden wall, so it appeared, was more a corral to hold in yaks and horses than a city defence. The wood stakes were thin and wide-spaced, encompassing broad areas of trampled pasture around the edges of the settlement. The way led Conan and Philiope through lanes and clusters of pyramid-shaped tents, evidently pitched in large, clan-sized groupings. The inhabitants were nearly all fur-hatted—men, women, and children, who sank to their knees at the passing of their clan chief, then stood up to gawk and point at the captives who trudged in his wake. Horses stared likewise, standing hobbled and chewing on the broken grass near the tents. Small children peered excitedly from under the raised front canopies, where yak-chip fires smouldered and smoked.

The procession passed the heart of the city, which— presumably only since the rain—was a slimy, aromatic mire of mud and waste. Instead of heading for the very centre, it was evident to Conan that they angled away toward the southern edge of the settlement. Aside, down a broad avenue of tents and railed corrals, he glimpsed a many-chambered pavilion adorned with horsetails and scalloped fur fringes, probably the abode of the chieftain’s high court.

But the party went on by. They wound further through mud alleys and pastures, to arrive at a remote and unpopulated section of city perimeter, marked only by taller and sturdier tent canopies and palisades.

But not, evidently, devoid of popular interest. Glancing behind him, Conan found that a sizeable mob, consisting quite possibly of all the tent-dwellers who had seen him trudge past their homes, followed along afterward. They maintained silent decorum amid Antulla’s mounted troops, evidently expecting something.

Ahead of them, the palace wagon finally turned and lumbered to a halt, settling into the damp turf. Its horse-teams were unhitched and led aside to leave a clear space before it. Conan and Philiope were brought around to face the chieftain. He had exchanged his jingling crown for a high-peaked fur cap, but he again stood with Crotalus on the balcony.

The crowd before the chariot now included a good many silver-helmeted, crested, and expensively furred individuals. Both mounted and afoot, these obviously were senior officers and clan leaders. Standing for the most part on the cropped grass, they assembled in a circle before their chief; others began to climb up onto the palisade, which here was built with a timber parapet running just below the crest of whittled stakes.

Antulla, addressing the courtly mob, kept Crotalus close at his side as if to show him off. On his other hand stood a slim, pretty maiden of the Yak Clan, clad in fur boots and a plain woven shift. She was further adorned with some choice treasures taken from the carrack, in the form of chaplet, diadems, anklets, bracelets, and a girdle of jewelled links. Evidently Antulla’s horsemen had wasted no time in rifling through the wreck and bringing loot back to him.

“It is a signal day for Hyrkania,” he began. “We have gained a fabulous treasure, as you can see, and the allegiance of a foreign wizard whose aid may prove an even greater asset to our clan and nation. Furthermore, we have captured a once-dreaded enemy, Amra the Lion, long the scourge of our sea coast.” He raised both hands heavenward in silent thanks.

“Now, I say, the time has come for hospitality and celebration! What better festivity, I ask you, than to show off the pet and prize of our own native wizards, the legendary sasarysk of the northern hills!” Chief Antulla’s face, though hard with kingship and nomadic wandering, now seemed to break into genuinely childish delight. “It is a magical monstrosity, to be sure, a being compounded of nature, myth, and spell, and long cherished in our folklore. Few of you have had the chance to see it, for this fine specimen was only recently captured and carried here under the guidance of skilled sorcerers. But now is a fit time to view the dreaded creature in all its ferocity. Our guest Crotalus will surely find it enlightening—our far-famed captive will too, when he meets it face-to-face!” Around the margins of the pasture, drink was being dispensed from clay carboys into the courtiers’ leathern cups. Yak-chip fires had been kindled, above which chunks of meat were being set out on swords and skewers for roasting. But this hospitality was not, evidently, meant for Conan. Abruptly the crowd of guardsmen moved in, separating him at spear point from Philiope and herding him back toward the palisade. A door had been opened in its base—a small one, obviously not a gate to the city—and he was being prodded toward it.

“Conan! Amra, my love!” Philiope called to him as she was dragged away. “Do not let them kill you!”

“Live, girl, and prosper!” he shouted back to her, while measuring his chances against the spear blades. The chief had not threatened Philiope, so her hope of survival seemed good. His own, he judged, might be better against the wild thing on the other side of the wall than here against the multitude.

“Disarm him,” came Antulla’s command from the rostrum. “We want a fair fight. And remove his jewels, the sasarysk might break its teeth on them!”

The guards, pressing Conan up against the stake wall, were able to jolt his arm with leather-clad bodies and spear butts and wrest the cutlass out of his grip. But when they reached in close to strip him of his gold, he was able to lash back. His hands clenched powerfully, snapping wrists and fingerbones in a flurry of motion. Howls of pain and anger sounded; before the surge of angry bodies, Conan was driven back through the half-open log door, which thudded shut in his face.

On the other side lay close, near-blind confinement: a labyrinth of taut canvas sheets. The ones hanging before him were fastened to ropes strung high out of his reach, and the tent fabric looked too tough and rigid to tear through or climb bare-handed. The bottoms of the partitions were staked down to the earth, which was soft mud, rain-puddled, with a few grass blades sprouting out of it. Conan knelt and tugged at one of the square-headed wooden stakes, but in vain. He did not see a way to lift the base of the cloth or to try to slither underneath. So he stood up, alert.

A sly trick of the gods: his seamanship should have equipped him to deal with ropes and canvas, yet he was powerless in this carnival-show prison. He stepped forward into the maze.

Above him, shouts and acclaim rang down from the watching faces. Retainers and officers of the Yak Clan lined the parapet. Helmeted men and fur-capped, pigtailed women alike cheered his progress, gazing from two or three man-lengths above. Guards there were too, with spears and bows. Their taunts were raucous; fortunately, most of the insults were hurled in a steppe-dialect that he could not well understand. Once, he reached down and slung a handful of mud up at his detractors, who laughed gaily and ducked below the palings. Realizing that he was only soiling himself, he resolved to ignore them.

The maze was rectilinear, at least this comer of it was, strung from criss-crossing ropes looped around the wood palings. It should be possible to locate himself with reference to the high walls; so the labyrinth could hardly be meant to lose him hopelessly. Likely it was only intended to confuse him and trap him before the pursuing beast... this sasarysk, whatever it might be. Better to avoid the miserable thing. But then, he never was one to wait meekly and let death come seeking him. Rounding the first comer, he strode forward.

He came to an exposed vertical edge of canvas and paused to examine it. Then, grasping the thick-sewn hem in his hard, callused fists, he began hauling himself up hand over hand. But he was not near the overhead ropes when thumps sounded near his head—slung stones struck the canvas, and a short, feathered shaft transfixed the tough fabric just out of his reach. Heeding the warning, he dropped back down to earth amid delighted cheers.

The maze deepened. It led him inward from the door and into sight of a side-wall crowded with watchers, who greeted him frenziedly. Coming then to the first branching, a triple one, he chose a path and followed it around several comers to a dead end, a wooden palisade crowned with screeching fools. The timbers would not be impossible to climb, he guessed; but to do so would be pointless if he was to be driven back down at once with spears, missiles, and offal. Turning, he ventured back along the corridor. In his belly, he experienced the first faint dread of meeting something nameless.

The second-most-likely path took him deeper into the maze. He was near the centre... for at intervals amid the turnings, he could be glimpsed from the tops of three different walls. The sound rang down on him in waves now, bursting over him unexpectedly, deadened selectively by the canvas partitions. If there was a wild animal in this enclosure, magical or not, it would be goaded and angered by this tumult, if not warned of his whereabouts. Intent on moving silently, he inwardly cursed the idiots and wished they would shut up.

A new, straighter corridor unfolded ahead... and beyond it, the fourth palisade, this one topped by a broader, canopied parapet. Did the beast crouch in its lair just under this privileged viewing-place?

There beneath the awning was Clan Chief Antulla, settling into a seat and beaming with anticipation. On his left was Crotalus; at Antulla’s right, instead of the jewel-decked nomad girl, stood Philiope, in the grip of two female servants. She made no gesture to Conan, and he did not acknowledge her, moving around a comer out of sight instead. He was determined not to be distracted, not even by her anxious face, if he was to be slaughtered under her eyes, then so be it.

Here was the first real evidence of a baneful presence in the maze. The soft earth was marred and tom up in places, as if by heavy feet with long, clawed talons. There were smudges on the canvas wall too, deposits of mud and blood mingled in a fly-baiting compost. In several spots, the dense fabric was frayed and snagged, though not tom deeply or conveniently enough to provide a peep-hole. The biggest rent, disturbingly, was high overhead in the canvas: a fang or claw-mark that Conan could not even reach.

With the discovery of the spoor, a feral carrion-scent prickled in Conan’s nostrils. It seemed almost familiar, in a way... but the heavy, rotten stench that swarmed in to overlay every other nuance soon made it difficult to define.

The foulness was explained moments later by the carcass he found at the end of a blind corridor. It was a gutted horse, torn nearly in two and half-eaten, amid a fly-swarming welter of blood-spatters and gnawed fragments. The black flies’ sudden, angry buzzing unnerved him, obscuring as it did any other furtive sounds he might need to hear. Even the watchers on this part of the wall looked subdued as he retreated from the gruesome spectacle.

Working his way by trial and error toward the Yak chieftain’s viewing box, he came at last to an open expanse—almost directly under the royal vantage and walled in on three sides by palisades. Here was the sasarysk’s principal stamping-ground; the murmur of mounting excitement from the walls above seemed to confirm this. Tom and furrowed, the rectangular space was strewn with bones... none of which looked particularly useful as a weapon. With canvas and wooden walls spattered with mud, blood, and dung, the lair was unmistakable, but empty. Gazing around, peering into the stark midday shadows, Conan saw no sign of any mythical monster.

Then suddenly, with enraged screams and a spattering of talons in the mud, it overtook him. He turned to see it charging down a well-trodden alley of the maze: a hellishly fanged, clawed creature with red eyes bulging, its crimson demon mane and tail flaring fiercely behind.

It was a horse, in most aspects, bloody-bay in colour., taller and less shaggy than the favoured mounts of the eastern steppe. But its shrieking, slavering jaws were stuffed with dagger-like fangs, and its fore and hind legs terminated in sheaves of flexing, razor-sharp talons that slashed the earth as it hurled itself toward him with a frenzy of a springing tiger.

Diving and rolling clear of the monster’s rush, Conan came up against the staked canopy of one of the maze walls and scrambled to his feet. The beast overshot him— but not by much, for it wheeled and redirected its momentum with a wild bull’s fierce agility. As Conan loped clear into the arena, the thing darted after him, whinnying out its devil-scream and spattering mud behind.

From above, ecstatic cries rang out. “Look, children! It is the sasarysk, the cannibal-horse of the northern steppe! Look at those fangs, those raking claws! No horseman can hunt it down—nor escape it, for it will devour steed and rider alike!”

Conan, meanwhile, took a swift, desperate turn in the trampled arena. He found it futile; the beast was too quick in the open, and there was no way to trip it or tire it out. Eventually he himself must be downed or cornered in this killing-ground. He had no thought for those above, or for the countless taunts and jeering suggestions that were hurled down at him. The maze, with its square angles and cruelly deceptive dead ends, was his only refuge.

He sprinted back the way he had come, feeling hot breath and spittle on the shanks of his racing legs where the beast pursued. Each sharp angle bought him an eye blink of time, as the creature took longer to turn its hurtling bulk. As he came to branchings, he sorted through them in his mind—which ones had been tried out, which were known death traps. He knew that very likely there was no safe loop, no circuit through the maze that he could keep following indefinitely. His one hope now was to draw out of sight of the sasarysk... dart down a side-path, and confuse the beast momentarily.

Then a blast of cheering smote him. Dead ahead was the palisade; he was almost back at the start. Here both routes were known cul-de-sacs, and the beast wheezed and stamped not ten paces behind him, slathering for the kill. Crouching, he sprang for the bunched edge of canvas and hauled himself up hand over hand.

Hoots and disapproving shouts sounded from above. Stones pelted down, bruising Conan’s back, and arrows hissed but went wide, skating off the canvas. The archers must be afraid to hit the sasarysk, he realized, for it now scuffed and snorted directly beneath him, making ready to rear up and claw him down.

With a square-sailer’s agility, he levered himself out from the canvas sheet. Swinging wide, he let go, dropping himself straight down atop his pursuer. He landed on the monster’s back, sprawling half off it, clenching his knees desperately for purchase. Wrapping both his fists deep in the animal’s red, ropey mane, he added his horseman’s skills to those of a sailor.

The sasarysk screamed terribly and reared up, lashing out and fraying the canvas with its fore-claws. Like a true horse, Conan saw, it could not reach its back with its extremities, though it tried mightily. The monster ducked low, then bolted madly, plunging and veering left and right to scrape and buffet its tormentor off against the canvas.

Conan hugged and clung, finding the bareback ride harder than the taming of a wild Zamoran stallion. With its long claws, the beast loped in a sinuous, uneven motion. Maddened as it was, it caromed and half-climbed the canvas walls of the maze, flinging its rider from side to side as he fought to keep hold.

Wheeling and pivoting in the maze, the sasarysk brought its hideous head around and rolled a bloodshot eye at Conan; its fangs foamed red, their razor edges lacerating its blue-black lips as it gnashed and struggled.

An eye-to-eye confrontation, almost an impasse. But then, after all, Conan was not in this to tame the hideous creature. Lunging forward, he sank his teeth into the monster’s hairy ear.

The screech of the sasarysk was deafening. With a tumultuous motion, the beast wrenched itself free of its tormentor’s teeth and sprang forward. Hurtling headlong, it snagged into one of the canvas partitions with all its four sets of claws. The fabric buckled before its weight, causing the supporting rope to sag. A rending crack sounded, and the timber to which the rope was lashed toppled forward, carrying with it a section of palisade.

Screams rang out piteously from above. Some of the watchers fell forward, clinging desperately or plunging head-first into the maze. The sasarysk, ensnared momentarily in rope and fabric, bucked and thrashed in wild turbulence. At length it struggled clear and drove its weight into the next canvas wall, which only hastened the collapse of the sagging parapet. There came a mighty thud and a fresh tumult of screaming as, suddenly, a broad gateway opened to the world beyond the maze.

The sasarysk, a frenzied bundle of hair and sinew between Conan’s knees, charged. Slathering and whinnying, it clawed its way bloodily through the pathetic line of stragglers from the fallen wall. Beyond them grazed a loosely tethered crowd of horses; in seconds the cannibal-horse was among them, flailing and darting, its claws hooking streamers of bright blood against the sky, its hellish shrieks mocking and echoing those of its prey.

With terrified saddle-horses rearing and bolting all around him, Conan leaped free of the accursed monster’s back. He chose a sturdy roan mare that shied and whickered; as yet unscathed, it bore a bow, quiver, and full saddlebags lashed behind its saddle. Jerking loose the tether, he flung himself up into the seat and reined the animal away from the spreading carnage.

Crouching low in case of arrow-flights, digging his heels into the mare’s ribs, he goaded her at a run toward the back of the palisade. There in the throng scattering from the unstable walls, momentarily unprotected by guards, Clan Chief Antulla dragged Philiope by one hand.

Conan eased down in the saddle, leaning out to one side as he had learned among the wild Kozaki of the western desert. Extending an arm at hip-height, he swept the girl abruptly out of the chieftain’s grip. Dragging her up by the rump, he laid her facedown across his jolting saddlebow.

The horse galloped smoothly on, targeted not by arrows but by intense stares from the unmounted horsemen of the Yak Clan.

“You do that far too well!” Philiope called up to him from her inverted position across his lap. “Have you had much practice, stealing other women before me?”

“Oh, aye. A skilled rider can do many things at a gallop,” Conan assured her. “Eat and drink, and sleep in the saddle—you would be surprised.”

Another horse ran free across the pasture, a richly saddled gelding fleeing the shouts and death-shrieks that still rose behind them. Overtaking the animal, Conan grabbed its reins and slowed it to a halt. “I don’t suppose you have ever ridden a horse? Never mind, there will be time to teach you later. For now, swing around behind me and sit astraddle. We must get through yon gate before they think to close it.”

Leading the second mount behind him, with Philiope’s hands crossed on his chest, he galloped for the outer wall, where a row of tents marked the entry-road. The foot-guards, standing befuddled by the shrill chaos at the nearby enclosure, shouted uneasy questions but made no move to stop them. Moments later, the thick turf of the steppe drummed beneath their animals’ hooves.

Yet pursuit was not long in coming: no mounted horde, but three riders, the centre-most one on a white-faced steed. Emerging tardily from the city gate, they galloped after with consummate skill and ease. Conan kept up a hard, steady pace, but the three closed in swiftly.

Seeing that there were no others coming, Conan left Philiope sitting astride the winded mare. Mounting the gelding, he drew and brandished the war-ax that hung from its saddle. “Hold her reined in if you can,” he told the woman, “while I finish with these three. If I am cut down, you can gallop for the coast.”

The three riders drew near but did not fan out in a threatening array. The central one, holding back the others with a restraining arm from astride his piebald stallion, was Antulla, crowned now in a pointed fur cap. As he cantered up, he raised a hand in respectful greeting.

“Amra of the Middle Sea,” he called out, “I heard you were a great rogue and a fierce fighter, but never a horseman! Seldom in all my travels have I seen such a show of riding—mounting the devil-horse, lashing the mad brute to freedom, and then snatching your woman from our very midst. We of the Yak Clan esteem such feats more than lightly!” He glanced aside to his two lieutenants, who frowned guarded approval. “We owe you hospitality, and an apology....” He smiled magnanimously. “Perhaps, after all, our empire can find common cause with such a resourceful leader as yourself. I beg you, return to Attar Karapesk with me, for the night at least!”

Eyeing the chieftain, Conan let his mount sidle nervously beneath him. “Would all in your court find it easy to forgive and welcome us, I wonder?” He shook his head. “No thanks, Clan Chief, I would not want to burden your hospitality, and I rest uneasy in the presence of conniving wizards.” He nodded meaningfully in the direction of the distant city, from whence more horsemen now emerged through the gate.

“I understand your reluctance to try my welcome again,” the chieftain said. “But you are far from the sea, here in a strange country. Truly, let me persuade you—” “Keep the treasure, and the ruined ship that was once ours,” Conan told him, knowing he had but little choice in the matter. “What trinkets we have left will see us through to the coast. Our needs are slight—” he glanced at the trappings of Antulla’s two companions—“boots, fur cloaks, spare provisions, and mounts. Furnish us that much and consider it fair. Then, if you want to parley, you might send an envoy to my home port at Djafur.”

“You will also require safe passage to the coast.” Detaching a signet ring from his finger, Antulla tossed it to the Cimmerian. “Trade this for a ship of adequate size at one of the seaports.”

In mere moments, the exchange was accomplished. Smiling from the saddle beside his two barefoot, unmounted lieutenants, the clan chief watched Conan and Philiope ride away westward.

VIII

Red Brotherhood

A fortnight later, a light, trim-sailed dhow blew into Djafur harbour. on the morning breeze. Early risers from the Red Hand Inn slouched down the beach to see if they could dispossess the owners. But on finding the occupants to be none other than Philiope and her protector, Amra the Lion, they raised a cheer lusty enough to jar groggy heads all along the waterfront.

After helping drag the ship onto shore, they lifted their captain and his fair crew mate up on their shoulders. They bore the two back to the inn, signalling an early start to the day’s roistering, with a few sad words for the ship, the crew, and—most of all—for the treasure that had been lost.

Santhindrissa and Hrandulf, as it happened, had found their way back to Djafur only a few days before, rowing the crippled and overweighted galley. Their half-share of the treasure, still vast beyond understanding, had been secreted against sea-raiders and sneak-thieves in the basement of Conan’s partly built castle. The modest portion that had been paid out to the surviving crew was already in circulation, enlivening the nights, inflating the prices of grog and girls, and rapidly finding its way into the pouches of the new merchant class of gamblers, loot-brokers, and panderers who had taken root like weeds in the growing port.

The only dark side of all this prosperity was a sullen theme of whispering that had sprung up. It was said, mainly among those jealous pirates who had received no share of the loot, that the loss of Amra’s Raven had been a revenge of the sea-gods. And only a partial one at that... since, presumably, Dagon frowned on the looting of his drowned city, and the spirits of Red Kobold’s band did not wish to be dispossessed of the treasure they had traded their lives for. In consequence, so the argument went, there was likely to be further death and devastation. It would be visited on those who had gained from defiling the ancient undersea tombs, most particularly on Amra himself.

Such rumours did not trouble Conan, who had just survived worse perils than any of the whisperers could imagine. After gossip and refreshment, he sat down with the other captains to work out a split of the remaining booty. He doggedly pressed his claim for one-half of it, since his ship and his captured prize had performed the salvage. His comrades, however, were minded first to charge him with the half-share of the loot stolen by Crotalus, and so allow him only a half-third at best. Yet to the credit of all, the day-long session was fairly peaceful, with no daggers drawn until the end of the dispute, and then only to sketch out divisions and fractions on the hard oaken plank of the inn table.

With this graven record in place, the Sea Tribesmen who guarded the hillside, along with Santhindrissa’s pirate bitches who controlled the castle gate, at last allowed Conan to re-enter his realm and see to the choosing. Each of them by turns—Drissa, Hrandulf, Conan, and then Philiope on Conan’s behalf—selected the costliest pieces, roving through heaps and mounds of wealth by the light of blazing torches, whose smoke blackened the stone vaultings of the new donjon.

The objects chosen-were taken to separate rooms, to be stored for the nonce and secured to the owner’s satisfaction with stout chains, padlocks, and trusted pirates to watch the locks. The coarser wealth and coin was raked together into piles and separated on the “You divide, I choose” principle. Heaps were split first between Conan and the other two, then between Hrandulf and Drissa. The whole process, conducted in good spirits and well-lubricated by grog, lasted through the small hours. The captains were surprised when they emerged from the crypt to find it the brightest of noons outside.

In the ensuing months, a new frenzy of commerce swept the port. More artisans were brought in to do the fine, finished stonework of the castle bastions; and there were joiners and furnishers to dress the interior, all good crafts-folk hired or kidnapped at considerable cost from the mainland. Santhindrissa laid the keel of a new pirate ship, while Hrandulf contented himself and his many cousins with a rebuilt fleet of small, fast lateeners.

Trading and raiding expeditions were mounted, and a sturdy net of semi-independent corsairs was flung across the Vilayet, affording Ivanos and Ferdinald their first commands of any length. Even the huge hulk of the captured dromon Remorseless, still fresh from the shipways of the Imperial Navy Yard at Aghrapur, was run out into the bay and manned, with an eye to sacking a Turanian island stronghold in the Southern Vilayet.

In all, the new wealth was invested such that it increased itself, placing Djafur at the hub of an ever-growing web of thievery and commerce. But the grandest recognition came with the visit of Adi Bulbul, Military Attaché of the Hyrkanian Empire.

The voyage was arranged through channels the Red Brotherhood had but recently established. Hyrkanian officials, communicating with certain worthies in the dockyard tavern of a port town, agreed to pay a protection fee: one-tenth of the cargo and, on the return voyage, one-tenth of the proceeds—which, in this case of a diplomatic mission, were slight. The pirates agreed for their part not to despoil the ship, and to provide an escort through sea-lanes to ward off freelancing pirates. Further, they gave out recognition symbols: a gruesome flag, its pale figure resembling a skull-jack, but on a background painted one of several colours. The flag should ensure safety from freelance pirates, but only for a limited time, until the Brotherhood’s designated colour. should change to a new and as yet unguessed hue.

With these safeguards in place-—in main part a formality and precedent for this light, fast galley crewed by marines and naval officers—the envoy’s ship made its way to a southern channel of the Aetolian Isles. There, meeting one of the Sea Tribes’ dhows and taking aboard a pilot from the fiercely independent islanders, it was guided in through maelstroms and tortuous channels to the safety of Djafur harbour.

Adi Bulbul was welcomed ashore with all the pomp and pageantry the thieves could muster on short notice. Some of the motley crowd of pirates lining the harbour-front stared in open resentment or ill-concealed fear at the sight of uniformed Hyrkanians striding Djafur’s pier, while others could not prevent their eyes and fingers from twitching toward those belongings of the visitors that looked worth owning. In spite of all this, the envoy of the eastern clans soon declared to Conan that he felt more at home here among pirates than he had felt in the splendour of Imperial Aghrapur.

“Those sleek and padded asses of the western court lack the essential stuff of manhood,” he confided across a silk-draped trestle at the Red Hand Inn. “Never have they suffered themselves to sit upon a hard horsehair cushion, let alone the back of a spirited dispatch-horse.” He raised his flagon to Conan. “You, on the other hand, have be-straddled far more than a horse! You bested my cousin Antulla in his capital, and you made your way ably with the little maid here—” he bestowed a wholly approving smile upon Philiope— “across my home steppe to the coast. I have a feeling that I can reach a horse-buyer’s understanding with you, and look for your cooperation in the coming war.”

“It will be war, then?” Conan regarded the pigtailed old Kozak frankly. “With Turan? What of their power in the Vilayet, and your clan-brethren’s scant, ageing fleet?”

Adi Bulbul smiled, twirling the end of one stray pigtail between hard brown fingers. “The wizard you brought has promised us much, and seems well on his way to achieving it. His spells have been notably effective at speeding the growth of scrub oaks and pines in our inland hills. All those Keshan gestures and mutterings—along with certain blood rituals he has taught our native magicians to perform in the groves—seem to be bringing the trees up rapidly to a suitable size for ship-laying.

“Crotalus learned new principles of ship design during his stay in Turan, which he now teaches our shipbuilders. He claims to control the wind. And further, he promises to guide our fleet magically through storm and fog, shoal and battle smoke, when the time comes.” He paused pensively. “If his methods all come to fruit, using the full warlike energy of my people and the treasure you left us, we will have a fleet armed and ready before the year is out.”

“What, I might ask, is his price for all this aid to your country?” Conan frowned over his ale. “Is Crotalus merely eager to try out his spells? In my experience, such fellows always have a secret plan up their wizardly sleeves.”

The envoy shrugged again. “He has asked and been granted access to the inner circles of Hyrkanian mysticism—though our native wizard-lore can hardly be more powerful than what he brings to us. He is also a close friend and advisor of Antulla, who was named war-chief of all the clans last month at Karapesk in the southern steppe.” Adi Bulbul smiled confidingly to Conan. “In truth, he did not welcome the notion of an alliance with you. Yet Chief Antulla insisted, and sent me here. That should prove his independence of any Keshan wizard.”

“And what does Crotalus say of monster ships, roofed-over galleys that hide vast demons inside them? He was involved with suchlike not long ago, as part of his dealings with Turan. He is not building up your Hyrkanian fleet just to feed to his demogorgons, is he?”

Adi Bulbul, easy in his role as negotiator, waved away his host’s doubts. “Believe me, O Amra, my trust in a foreign mage is no greater than yours. But I myself have heard the plans that are afoot; I have seen scores of keels laid, and the first of the new ships that are already off the ways, being fitted out in secret upriver. They are large and well-armed galleys built to hold, not dragons, but free Hyrkanian oarsmen and fighters—and swift warhorses too, suspended in hempen slings below decks. They and their riders will figure in vast cavalry actions across the western plains.

“For we do not plan only to brush the sea clear of Turanian gadflies. We will conquer the land too, and regain the unruly colony our forefathers rightly had claim to. We speak of nothing less here than the destruction of mighty Turan—that is the project we seek your Red Brotherhood’s aid in.”

So went the negotiations over a course of days, with Conan representing the pirates’ side. Only occasionally did Santhindrissa or one of the other pirate captains approach them with a stipulation or demand. Hrandulf and his fellow chiefs of the Sea Tribes did not put in more than a ceremonial appearance. His islanders, rebels in their own right, were too closely related to the mainland clans to get along cordially with them. Yet it was understood that the Sea Tribes would be included in any deal with the pirate Brotherhood, and would retain their independence.

Conan sought nothing less than full nationhood; he pressed for unrestricted trading and raiding rights on neutrals, freedom of ports, a mutual defence pact, and possibly even acknowledgement of his pirate cruisers as independent units of the Imperial Hyrkanian Navy. Adi Bulbul, like the horse-trader he was, baulked cannily at each point.

From the hold of his galley, the Hyrkanian produced mounts, rugged steppe-ponies on which he and his host could vie in skill and daring, galloping around the cliffs and orcharded hillsides of the island. Sometime later, Conan coaxed his visitor aboard a skiff, a fast two-man sailer, for a tour of the island’s rocky coast. But Adi Bulbul felt less at ease in a small boat than he did in the saddle, turning pale and uneasy soon after they met the choppy waves of the open strait. It took Conan a lengthy series of tacks to beat his way back into the harbour.; fortunately, the time was by no means wasted. Along the way, dealing with the green and bilious envoy, he was able to gain concessions on a number of issues that had so far been unresolved.

So at length Adi Bulbul’s diplomatic mission ended; he gave Conan a parting embrace and took ship, bearing back a lengthy scroll listing the points of agreement in crabbed Hyrkanian, which Conan could not have read in any case. It remained for the companions of the Red Brotherhood to bide their time, enlarge and strengthen their fleet and defences., and wait for the summons to war against Turan.

Restless in the scorching sun, Garfalk of Yaralet goaded his crew to greater efforts. “Row, sons of scorpions!” he encouraged them from astern, where he sat with one hand resting on the steering oar. “Old Elma the beachcomber told us she saw a sail, and that one eye of hers is keener than any three of yours! So pull lively, you pirate rogues!”

The low galliot glided between coastal islets, its two-score rowers putting forth their minimum effort in smooth, practised unison. “If you want us to row, then feed us!” a voice called back from the bows. “Food is running scarce in that camp of ours!”

“Aye,” another said. “Since the ale has been gone, one is apt to crave food!”

“It is hard even to find a wild pig and roast it,” a third pointed out. “And water is a nuisance to fetch.”

“Soon it will be long-pigs we skewer and roast!” The stroke oarsman, a wizened oldster, followed up his remark with a cackling laugh.

“If you want food, drink, and wealth,” Garfalk pointed out crossly, “then row! Is that not why we parch ourselves on these sea islets, to be ready when a likely ship passes? But say, look there now, beyond the sandspit—’tis a mast, well enough indeed!”

The rowers craned their necks, following the captain’s out-thrust finger. There, clear enough beyond the brush-topped rim of the white-sand promontory, a single tall mast glided against the hazy blue sky. On the still air drifted to them the faint, steady throbbing of a hortator’s drum. There was no sail—the wind had died in any case, so the vessel must needs move by the stroke of oars. A single-master, not a large ship—and carrying a smaller crew, very likely, than Garfalk’s mastless galliot. Lowering his voice, the captain addressed his men.

“There, you see, was I not right? Now, pull forward slow and steady-like, and we’ll meet her just where this sand island runs out. We could not have wished for better, lads... an easy pull, and no way she can outrun us. Steady now, make no noises to warn her off.”

Garfalk felt a glow of elation in his chest. For the first time in months, so it seemed, he was on the scent of a prize. Five years and more agone, he had been forced to leave his native desert far to westward, and to forsake his chosen profession of raiding caravans bound through Yaralet, because of the growing efficiency of the Turanian border patrols. Finding his way here, to this eastern sea that so resembled a desert, bullying these ill-assorted idlers, castaways, and fisher-folk into a force of buccaneers, he had found his new livelihood. The pickings had been good at first, leading to his captaincy. But recent seasons had been lean ones; it would take a good haul to hold his dwindling crew together.

Watching the progress of- the mast, he moved the tiller to guide the galliot smoothly between lapping waves and sand shallows. The mast grew taller and nearer, converging toward them beyond the tapering spit. Then a curving prow emerged above the dwindling brush, and Garfalk’s voice barked out harshly.

“Pull hard now, fellows! Run in fast and close for boarding! She will not know where we came from, and she can scarcely offer a fight. But say, what is that—?” The ship, which proved to be a fair-sized galley, was lined with the brown, staring faces of oarsmen. Now a scrap of linen fluttered to the masthead: a pirate jack, the lurid skull-symbol of the Red Brotherhood.

“Avast rowing!” Garfalk’s face would have shown disappointment had he not felt a twinge of fear. “Let up, lads,” he called to his rowers. “We have fallen on brother pirates, well-armed cruisers at that.” He added in a lower tone, “Even if they have a cargo, they are far too many for us to grapple with.”

“What of us?’ one of the rowers asked. “Will they ram us or try to hook aboard?”

“They must be able to see that we are penniless coasters,” Garfalk declared reasonably. “Even so, we should steer clear, in case a fighting fancy takes them. Make ready to back starboard oars; turn between yonder islets on my order—”

Just then a hail in gruff Hyrkanian came from the cruiser. “Ahoy the galliot!” A stout but nimble figure climbed up into the stays; cupping one hand to his mouth, he shouted, “Brother pirates, do you chase the same merchant we do?”

“What?” Garfalk muttered, half to himself. He shaded his eyes and squinted out toward the hazy sea-rim. There ahead, almost out of sight around the loom of larger tree-and-rock-girt islands lying to northward, was the slack sail of another, larger ship.

“Oh, aye, we do!” he managed a moment later in a hoarse helmsman’s bellow. “They weather north around the island, seeking to escape!”

“So it would seem,” the voice replied. The man hanging in the galley’s waist shaded his eyes toward the rocky promontory where the ship was now disappearing. “Even so, she looks to be a round-bellied tub, large and heavy-laden. In these calm airs, even with her crew toiling at sweeps, she cannot make good speed.”

“You want to chase her too, then?” Garfalk asked with a broad wink to his stroke-oar. The two ships had matched speeds, the drumbeat of the galley serving for both. “I wonder,” the buccaneer questioned aloud, “will there be loot enough for the both of us? We saw her first, after all,” he finished self-righteously.

“Aye,” the galley captain allowed. “But you could use another ship in the fight, as could we. Such a big trader is likely to be well-crewed, and is best taken from two sides at once. If we loot her together, I will allow you one share for every two of ours, for your smaller crew. I am Ferdinald, second lieutenant of Black Amra the Corsair.” The two ships, still under oars, glided ahead and converged, making the shouted conversation easier. Now the only impediment was the steady churning of the two sets of oars, lashing smoothly in unison just out of reach of each other.

“I am Garfalk, late of Yaralet. I command these hearties here, and another lot ashore.” He added the lie judiciously. “Myself, I own no master. Even so, we are all brothers in the pirate trade.” He stood in the stem, endeavouring to smile broadly enough so that the other captain could see. “Equal shares of the loot would be fairer, I would say— for, though your ship is larger, the prize rightly is ours, and these our waters.”

“Aye, you have a point there,” the galley captain Ferdinald conceded. “Very well then, even shares for both, with best pick to the first crew aboard. Forward, then, for the glory of the Red Brotherhood! We will hound her down in no time!” He urged his rowers to a faster tempo, his ship pulling slightly ahead.

“Forward, for the grand brotherhood of all pirates,” Garfalk cried, following suit. His crew responded with a spirited yell. Their ship, somewhat smaller, momentarily passed the other, though it rolled more deeply in the mild swells of the open Vilayet. In all, it was a close race, with both crews toiling briskly and Garfalk’s men murmuring a spirited chant.

When they rounded the headland, the merchant was not in sight. Her best course was north-east, but the wind was still too slack to have carried her that way. She must have spied her pursuers and dashed for shelter. Garfalk steered a course around the island, waving for the Red Brothers to follow.

At length they found her. She lay hidden behind a steep, craggy outrider of the rocky shore, but now rowed forth to regain sea-room. Her decks were crowded with men pacing at the long oar-sweeps; the fight promised to be brisk. Garfalk glanced back to make sure his allies followed close behind.

They were there, but in an unexpected position. They had increased their stroke without any drumbeat, altered course, and now bore in from seaward close on his port bow.

“Avast there, the galley!” Garfalk called out sharply. “Do not crowd us so!” He adjusted his tiller to sheer away slightly as his rowers faltered in their stroke. “Fan out to seaward, and we’ll take the merchant from both sides!”

But the galley, with dour-faced Ferdinald standing at the helm, bore in even closer. At his shouted order, a drumbeat commenced—faster than before, thudding imperatively to ram-speed.

“Back oars!” Garfalk shouted to his crew, leaning on his tiller. “Check our speed and reverse us out of here!” He glanced at the tall merchant craft closing in from landward. Spying the grim pennant hanging limp from the mast, he cried out, “We are betrayed!”

It was too late; the impact came amidships. The galley’s ram tore in under the benches, sending oars and broken planks spinning free, fountaining crew and seawater straight upward. The ship pitched sidewise, knocking rowers flat with the impact of their oar-helves. After the first instant of stunned silence, attackers came swarming in over the breach in the hull.

“Up and at them!” Garfalk cried, snatching a boarding-ax from beneath his bench. “Fight past them and seize their ship, so we can pull clear! They are false scoundrels, traitors of the worst stripe!”

But the attackers held the initiative. The coasters fell back before their onslaught, crowding into the bow and stem if they could. The galliot’s waist now rang with screams, the desperate scraping of steel edges, and chunking blows of ax and cutlass striking into wood and flesh. Soon the foundering hull underfoot foamed red with blood.

Garfalk, pushing his way to the front of the skirmishing, found himself opposite the rascal Ferdinald. “Lying wretch!” he cried out, striking with his ax at the weaving, dodging figure. “What of our agreement? What of all your talk of pirate brotherhood?”

“There is no brotherhood among thieves but a red one,” Ferdinald spat back, “stained so with the blood of dupes and rivals!” He dodged ably, fending away the ax with sweeps of his cutlass. “Here, Rondo,” he called to one of his crew. “In and behind him! He can’t fight us both with that hatchet of his!”

Turning belatedly to meet the threat from the second attacker, Garfalk felt a steel point stab into his leg. He gasped and stumbled over a bench; lashing out wildly, he lost his ax. Pirate and captain moved in, their faces twisted in grimaces, respectively, of pleasure and distaste at the work to be done. Under a fury of jabbing blades that pierced and tore mercilessly, Garfalk’s life ended.

The fight was interrupted then by the merchant ship, which thudded up against the hull, splintering loose oars before its keel. Armed men dropped down from the deck, the foremost among them a brawny, black-maned pirate, Amra of the Western Sea.

“Ferdinald,” he addressed his lieutenant sternly, “I see I am late for the battle! The plan, you may recall, was to lure the coasters to attack my ship. You and your crew were to follow, and fall on them from behind.” He glanced around the charnel deck, awash now in sea and blood. “Yet you took on this lot without waiting for me.” He looked his subordinate up and down sternly; then, raising a callused hand, he smote him on the shoulder. “Good work, old friend! You have the enterprise and initiative to make a true pirate captain!”

He looked up and down the deck, where the killing had slowed and become half-hearted. “Enough, now!” he called out to the victors. “Set the rest of these shore-poachers loose to bear witness to Amra’s and the Red Brotherhood’s resolve: we will scour any pirate from the sea who trespasses on our hunting rights, or raids ships under our protection. Our pirate guild rules supreme in these waters; let all others hunt at their peril.”

“Who are you, Amra,” a sullen voice called out from the galliot’s bow, “to try and claim the sea, as a land baron owns his horse-pasture? Be you a free pirate or an arrogant Turanian admiral?”

Conan rounded on the man. “I will do anything,” he declared harshly, “to keep my order on the Vilayet!” He glared fore and aft, waiting for more protests, receiving none. “And mark me, I will deal with the Turanians too! But today I feel merciful. You survivors, I offer you a choice. You may stay unharmed aboard your ship, any who wish to, and try to paddle it back to shore. Or, if some of you want to try your hand at real pirating, you can enlist with the Red Brotherhood! I have oar-benches open aboard my ships; make your decision now.”

The defeated pirates looked around their broken galliot, which floated sunk to the gunnel’s between reefs and a rocky shore. Some few had struck out swimming on their own and were already creeping up on the slate beach. Others, with families ashore, now elected to stay and make their way home. But most of the survivors raised sun-brown hands or stepped forward to join their vanquishers.

When they had gone aboard the galley and helped back its ram clear of the floating hulk, a ragged cheer went up to the blue sky. Then the two ships fell into line and rowed away.

IX

Friends and Betrayers

Returning under fair winds, Conan’s ship hove into Djafur and disgorged men and goods. His castle now stood rebuilt on the heights, a proud, twin-towered sentinel overlooking islands, straits, and far to westward, an unsullied patch of blue Vilayet. Its presence had a sobering effect on the older pirates, bringing back whispers of ancient days and moving some to sentimental and drunken tears.

No living man, though, could say how the castle had looked before, or how long ago it had been destroyed. Very likely it had been reduced by pirate raiders when first they seized this island outpost, before the ascendancy of Imperial Turan, even before the advent of the Sea Tribes.

Most of the foreign craftsmen and designers had been paid off and had taken passage home. Yet some elected to stay, for the port still seethed with wealth, commerce, and the construction of lesser defensive works. A number of ships, among them the Tormentress, Santhindrissa’s notorious galley, were in port. The inn thronged with Drissa’s female pirates and her newly freed male oar-slaves, busy rediscovering the age-old enchantment of grog. Their tall, hawk-faced captainess, however was not in sight.

Conan paid off his crew, arranging meanwhile for various spoils and purchases to be carried to the castle or to dockside storehouses. Then he strode up the hill alone, heading homeward to his fair Philiope. The town soon dwindled back from the rutted lane, giving place to orchard and rocky pasture; above loomed his castle, steep and bright with new-cut masonry on its sheer stone outcrop.

Atop the stone-built causeway, the drawbridge was down. Conan waited while joking sea-thieves, left there under Ivanos’s command, raised the cullis for him. If he was to go off voyaging, he had to trust someone with his woman and his treasures; Ivanos seemed loyal and unimaginative enough for the job. He would learn soon enough, in any case.

Passing through the courtyard and into the keep, across the vaulted banquet hall and up the curving stair, Conan met neither Philiope nor the tall Corinthian pirate. A dubious circumstance; but then, everything within the castle looked secure. He strode straight along the windowed front corridor, then up the spiral stairwell in the north tower. The first bedchamber was theirs, a narrow, lofty one whose crenelated balcony overlooked harbour. and town.

Standing on the wedge-shaped landing outside the door was a pair of boots. They were not the delicate sort of footwear Philiope favoured; sea-boots these were, scarcely worn at heel and toe but smeared now with the mud of the hillside. And were those not sabre-nicks on the doubled knee-flaps? Indeed, he saw in spite of himself that the black-dyed leather was as notched and battered as the ears of a quarrelsome old tomcat!

Placing his arm against the stout panel and wrenching the silver handle, Conan burst inside. The door thudded back against the wall, revealing the dusky, shaded room to him... and confirming his worst fear. There on the curtained bed, two bodies lay at rest, entwined. Across the foot of the silk coverlet lay a discarded dress, disreputable black breeches, and a leather vest supporting a veritable weapon-rack of cutlass, knout, and matched daggers. Drawing his own work-worn blade from his sash, Conan advanced on the bed.

“Awaken, rogue—whatever sneaking skulkard you may be! To steal a man’s woman, his bed, and his castle all at once, while he toils far off at sea... What else have you stolen, by Ashtoreth and all the nether fiends? And tell me then... is it worth your life?”

Conan’s cutlass-point, poking and prodding at the filmy curtain and the loose bed cover, was engaged suddenly with a ringing scrape and swept aside. Another blade opposed it, a tapering poniard fully two hand spans in length... still more cutlery, and worn under the blankets! What stripe of murderous knave did Philiope bed with?

“You are sore jealous of your property, Amra of the Western Sea.” The voice that issued from behind the curtain was rough and husky, lacking any discernible warmth. “Does that mean you are less a man without it?” The blade parted the bed curtains lightly as its wielder pressed forward, unafraid. “Or do you simply fear that another will prove a better man than you?” The dimly seen figure emerged, with weapon poised, into the room’s new-found daylight.

“I fear no man, Santhindrissa,” Conan told the barely dressed captainess who confronted him. “Nor a woman who usurps the place of a man.” Watching her poniard-point, he kept his blade ready between himself and the tall, rangy pirate, who wore only a scant silk shift above bare, half-crouched legs and wide-stanced feet. “Yet I’ll avow, it amazes me to find you here! Of all the comrades I might imagine ravishing my mate during all those womanless nights at sea, you were the last I would have suspected.”

“Drissa did not ravish me,” Philiope said sleepily, half-arising behind the she-captain and shaking raven tresses out of her eyes. “Rather the reverse, I would say.” She pushed down the bed-silks, exposing much of her bare, unblemished body. “Truly, Conan, I am sorry to surprise you like this—but you were away so long, I had no idea when you might return.”

“I heard you hailed through the castle gate moments ago,” Santhindrissa announced, standing proud. “But I did not see fit to bestir myself or awaken your mistress.”

“So slight was your regard for me,” Conan said gruffly. His gaze flashed in troubled unease from Drissa’s defiant face to Philiope’s wantonness, then back again.

Santhindrissa coldly returned his look. “I cannot see what your concern is—I have not got her with child, I promise you!” She shrugged cavalierly, letting her knife point down. “Dalliances between idle females are nothing new. Every harem-maid along this coast does the same with her harem-sisters while their pasha courts some other wife.”

“Harem-wives, indeed!” Philiope broke in angrily, sitting upright on the bed and laying a hand on Santhindrissa’s shoulder. “What about sailor-wives? I would rather compete with a whole bevy of young concubines than with a single fast ship and its crew of layabouts!” Defiantly caressing her lover’s proud neck and shaggy dark hair, she frowned at Conan. “If you neglect me, you must not dictate what I do in your absence.” Conan, baffled and still angry, searched for a reply. “I would not—I do not fault your fleshly cravings. How can I, when I share them myself?” His gaze was tom again agonizingly from one woman to the other. “But you, Drissa, you have been a shipmate to me! A fellow captain, and a rival, too. It does not seem right somehow—”

“Nor am I any stranger to your bed,” the she-pirate spat back. “Your sea-cot, at least!” She glanced behind her at Philiope, as if to see how her lover took this; at her words, the undraped woman’s hand did not pull away. “And on my own Tormentress, amid my followers,” Santhindrissa added acidly, pointing at Conan with her poniard. “Let us have it out, then—why would you embrace me on the waves, yet spurn me here?”

“But, Drissa,” he protested, “most every meeting of ours was a blood fight, a public combat often as not! Would I want that here, in the closeness of my own apartment...?”

“Want it or not,” the captainess hissed back, “you may yet have it!” Bolting from the bed, she lunged a half-step forward, menacing him with her blade. “Enough drivelling, I know your game! You want to keep your women sorted out and under your control. Divide and rule, you men are all so neat! But those days are past!” She jabbed at him again, thrusting herself forward in careless defiance of his heavier and slower blade.

“No, Santhindrissa, don’t you see, he’s just jealous.” Philiope, sliding from the bed, came forward and twined restraining hands around her lover’s shoulder. “In his muddled male way, he honours you, by equating you with a man.” She edged around the piratess, extending a fair white palm in warning toward Conan. “And yet it seems, you have been woman to him—”

“Man, woman, what is the thrice-cursed difference anyway?” With a convulsive shrug, Santhindrissa freed herself of Philiope, shoving the unclad girl aside. “He is jealous, the poor fool. Am I not supposed to be jealous of him? Or of you? After sailing with you in the Northern Sea, diving into the deep, and lying together below-decks in the long, cool afternoons?”

Standing back from them, with eyes wild and aquiline features red-flushed, it was unclear whom she spoke to. “I have played lover to you both, and stranger as well, for your convenience! To please you, I freed my male slaves... now they sit idle, drinking and scheming, dividing up my women! Can you imagine... some of them, some of my fiercest she-cats, now talk of marrying and living ashore.” She gave a bitter shake of her head. “But none of them, man or woman, dares to wed me!”

“Drissa,” Conan began, “I did not mean—”

“You did not mean, you did not think!” she spat angrily. “Of anyone but yourself, that is! You, with your ships, castles, and lofty ambitions, you destroy our peaceful pirate way of life! What has become of our Sisterhood—” “Here, now, Drissa.” Conan moved forward, letting his cutlass-point sag to the floor. “If you are troubled, you can still look on me as a friend...

“A friend, never!” the piratess shrieked at him, slashing her blade at his throat. “My slayer, perhaps, or my sword mate—with me or against me, how little it matters! My lover, my prisoner, my conqueror and ravisher, as you have been before this!” Weaving and lunging recklessly around the blade that Conan raised in defence, she kept him off balance in the confined space. “But far better a gutted, stinking corpse than ever a friend—back off, harlot, or die!” Philiope, acting at personal hazard, had grabbed hold of her female lover’s wrist and momentarily diverted her wrath. Conan, quick to seize the chance, brought his blade up against Drissa’s in a sweeping parry that sent both weapons spinning and clattering away across the room. The struggle turned then into a fistfight and tavern-grapple, with wild blows and curses, hoarse panting, and the scuffing of booted and bare soles against the flagstones. The naked girl, at risk of bruises and battering between the two fighting captains, helped Conan drag Santhindrissa back onto the bed, where her struggles were smothered effectively in blankets and cushions.

Her frenzy transformed itself then—not to carnal lust, but to bitter, uncaptainly tears. It took the others’ long, patient attentiveness, lasting into evening and night, to soothe and quiet her.

The Red Hand Inn at Djafur festered and seethed with the vilest, scabbiest pirate dregs of two-score Vilayet ports.

Songs, curses, and jovial strife resounded through the new and old common-rooms built off the steaming, smoking, fish-reeking kitchen and larder at the level of the dock. Below, in the dank under-story whose ancient stone walls fronted the tideless beach, smaller rooms had been opened for private parties. Stale, dingy cells, former storerooms and donjons, these were available to those lodgers whose vices throve better in cramped darkness.

In one such, Rondo the Turanian sat at the head of a battered table thumbing a deck of grimy pasteboard tiles. His round, pockmarked face leered in the smoky, tallowy light of the tapers as he greeted new arrivals.

“Atrox, welcome! Did you bring your money? Good fellow. “Here, take a seat! The rest will be here soon, so let us start the jug before they come.” So saying, he poured out nogginsful of raw, reeking arrak. “Here, let us toast some past hero together, whom shall it be? Aha, I know—to Knulf Shipbreaker, your former captain! I knew him not, but he is legended to have been a most distinguished pirate. A great chief of the Red Brotherhood, two years and more agone—may his bones rest cosy at the harbour-bottom, where our current leader put him.” Rondo turned to the door.

“But ho, Rufias, step in! You are behind already in the guzzling. Here, have a sup! We first toasted Captain Knulf, but your arrival brings to mind an even more nostalgic salute—to Sergius, your own former chief. Slain by Amra, as all men know, but a formidable legend in his days above the sea! There now, just the mention of him has brought a tear to your eye, I see... or is it this unripe grog here? Ah, well, how soon men forget. Ivanos would recollect Captain Sergius too, I am sure, if he were not so busy serving his new chief. But then, he has risen in the world.

“Juwala, welcome! A man of learning, the foremost scribe and lawgiver of our band. A lucky hand at cards too, as I recall. We were just talking of the great past chiefs of Djafur, fierce men who ruled the pirates in the great old times. Those were the days, were they not? When pirate brothers were free to rove the Vilayet, pick off the best cargoes, and bum any ship they pleased... before we were fettered down with treaties and alliances, shepherding more merchant tubs than we sink. Ah, for the good old days! Doubtless you could spin us many tales— “But ahoy, Diccolo, you too have found us! We did not start our game yet, so polish your breeches on yonder bench and wet your gullet with this. But give us none of your biting wit, please! I have oft admired your sharp tongue and your readiness to use it on behalf of our fellow pirates. Even sea-lord Amra shivers in his boots when you pipe up, so I am told.”

“I have a certain fame for speaking my thoughts,” Diccolo admitted, unsmiling. “I am ready to challenge Amra forthrightly, ’tis true—or any lout who presumes to put himself in authority over other men. All my shipmates know this, as do all the captains.”

“And the wise ones value it,” put in Juwala.

“Aye, some of them do,” Rondo answered agreeably. “Well now, at last we have eight, enough for a game. You others, Hermius and Zephat, squeeze yourselves onto the bench and pour some grog. This cell is damnably cramped, more so than the one I last broke out of at Aghrapur! But we can play in peace here, untroubled by bullying officers, with light, grog, and real gold piastres—though Tarim knows, I have few of them left since my last pay-off.” “Aye, that is so,” Rufias said heartily. “My purse is near flat.”

“I am here to make up some of what I lost this past fortnight,” Juwala put in. “I crave to feel rich again.”

“Alas, brother,” Rondo commiserated, “1 fear you will never get rich off us, your crewmates. Most of the gold of honest pirates has long since fallen into the clutch of the gamblers, and merchants who now swarm and fatten in Djafur under the new way of things.”

“Aye,” Atrox said in a deep, mournful voice. “All my sea-gold is gone—all but this!” He dangled a limp, clanking purse from a grimy drawstring.

“Might be what they say is true,” Rondo solemnly offered, “that Kobold’s treasure was accursed. Be-like our gold is headed back where it came from, to the sea-bottom. Never should Amra and that sorcerer have raised it from the deeps, at the cost of our shipmates’ lives.” He frowned, sober-faced—if such were possible given the grog he had consumed.

“You two men are new; mayhap you do not know the story,” Rondo amended then, turning to Zephat and Hermius as he dealt out the cards. “You came from Garfalk’s band, did you not? He who lately was slain at Amra’s order? Here, then, is the tale: a shipful of pirates, top-heavy with captains and lieutenants, went on a pleasure cruise in Amra’s ill-fated Raven. Along the way, they caught a galley with a sorcerer aboard and, instead of killing him, joined with him on a treasure-quest. They sailed far north, into dark, haunted seas full of ill omens and warnings, and by sorcery found the wreck of a sunken treasure-ship, Red Kobold’s galley of time-lost legend.

“Using the wizard’s slaves, defying the will of god and ghost, they raised the treasure up from the sea-bottom. But the angry sea-gods sent a storm that blew the Raven to its doom; some say a giant sword in the hand of a god fell from heaven and stove the ship in two. It was lost with all hands—Amra, his woman, and his sorcerer included. The prize galley found its way to Djafur with some of the treasure, and a paltry distribution was made among the survivors. But then here comes Amra back with his lady, by Erlik-knows-what necromancy or deviltry—to claim a lion’s share of the loot, rear up his castle, bargain with the Hyrkanians, and what-all else. He sits there like a prince with his wealth and his women, oppressing his former cronies and sweeping true pirates from the sea! The latest word is that he will have us all in a war under his command, fighting and dying for the Hyrkanian Empire.”

The reaction of the pirates to these words was grim, consisting of frowns and murmurs as they played their hands. Insofar as their card-playing faces would allow, they scowled commiseration against these wrongs—all except Diccolo, who spoke up sharply amid the mutterings.

“Well, Rondo, you give a grisly account of things!” The little Kothian gave his shipmates a wry smile. “Amra never was one to steer shy of trouble. Tarim knows, I never was either, nor yet acted the fawning lap-dog to our cap’n. I’ve taken my share of raps on the skull from those Cimmerian ham-fists of his, and from oar-butts and knife-hilts as well. Yet it seems to me that Conan always was true to those who cast in their lot with him. Never has he let one of us go down without a fight, even while he wrestled grim-faced death himself.”

The scrawny pirate doffed his drink lightly as he spoke. “And, having sailed in these waters long before his time, I see no cause to be-mourn the good old days.” He waved a hand at their cramped, smoke-filled environs. “Looking around me now, I never recall seeing such wealth and comfort in Djafur, nor a safer haven here for honest pirates.”

At his words, the murmurs in the room changed in timbre to sour, grudging half-agreement, accented by the clink and scrape of gold coins on the table planks. But it was not long before Rondo spoke again, his jail keep's voice holding forth in gritty, grinding good-fellowship.

“I can agree with you in one wise, Diccolo—that in your time, you have taken too many raps on that head of yours!” He waited for the others’ rough barks of laughter to subside. “Not that I would seek to discredit you, nor your well-loved captain neither. For I would not brand him as any more self-seeking and tyrannical—or one jot more murderous, for that matter—than most all the other self-made pirate lords in our Brotherhood’s history.”

Smirking in moon-faced conciliation while shuffling and dealing his cards, the Ilbarsi belaboured his point. “No indeed, I’d have to give Amra credit—for rising higher than some, for building a castle to shelter himself in, and for amassing more ships and wealth than most others manage, once they leave their common roots behind them. Fame and wealth have turned other heads before this. I cannot fault him for keeping his gold, nor for being willing to sell his old comrades to a foreign throne—not when the same has been done oft enough before, and doubtless will be done by others after.”

“What others, and how soon after?” Diccolo, driven to anger by his host’s unctuousness, lashed out spitefully. “Who will take Amra’s place? Do you mean for us to put you, an Ilbarsi river-pirate, in his place?” He looked fiercely around the group, singling out those who had survived the raid on Aghrapur. “How can you say that Conan sells us to foreigners, when he held out against Turan and slew Knulf for doing so? Can you not see, the castle he built is meant to keep foreigners from ruling Djafur!”

“Is it, now?” Rondo interjected with a grin. “I thought it was rather to keep his gold and his women safe from us, his brother-pirates!”

Diccolo’s sly, sharp gadfly tongue for once seemed to have failed him, or to have thickened to a blunt instrument in his head. Over the card-players’ laughter, he turned once again on the grinning river-pirate. “I see the way things go here, Rondo, and I warn you, do not count on my backing. I will not help you topple Amra so you can clamber up on the wreckage.”

So saying, he arose from the table, threw down his pasteboards and left the room. While the others looked sceptically after him, Rondo drew Atrox to his side and whispered in his ear.

Diccolo went up the stair to the common-room, troubled and indignant over what he had heard. Complaints and mutinous schemings were nothing unusual among the pirates, of course; but this knave Rondo had a plan in view, and seemed more than sly enough to foist it on the others. Doubtless it would have been wiser to sit in feigned agreement and hear it out, but ever had his tongue gotten him into trouble. How ironic that this time it was for defending Conan, rather than for mocking and challenging the bellicose, bull-headed captain!

He needed a confidant, someone to mull things over with. As he scanned the teeming gallery, the first to meet his eye was Old Yorkin, the pirate priest and poem-chanting skald. A well-loved codger he was, and a paragon of practical wisdom, as evidenced by the fact that he had shrunk into age and near toothlessness in a profession where lifespans were fleetingly short.

Yorkin sat on a keg near the pantry, drinking from a wooden pitcher of ale that had been set on an upended barrel before him. When Diccolo approached and drew up an empty keg, he turned and greeted the younger man with a smile that displayed many portholes and few hatches. “Ahoy, young’un, what tack make ye in th’ sou’west-erly?”

“Well and good, Old Yorkin... though I be mightily queased at what I hear below, from moon-faced Rondo and his gambling-dupes.” Unhooking his wooden noggin from his belt, Diccolo thumped it on the barrel head before him until an arrak-maiden appeared with a sloshing urn. Both men sat silent while she leaned forward to fill his cup, scraped up his silver piece, and hurried away. “They spring the timbers of Captain Amra,” Diccolo resumed in pirate-pidgin. “Shear his oars and unstep his mast-tree, they would! Saying how he’s toffed up and things have changed.”

“Aye enough,” the old one said. “There be many a reef and shoal in th’ Southern Strait, and many a false channel!

A sounding, if she be true, must snub th’ bottom.” Yorkin smiled amiably as he spoke, his watery old gaze returning frequently to the bustle of the nearby taproom and pantry.

“Indeed, old fellow.” Diccolo sipped his palm wine a moment, preoccupied. “I, for one, do not harken lightly to their bilge-blather. I see our guild as being stronger not far hence, with greater spoils in the offing.”

“Aye,” Yorkin said. “A wise helmsman nods to th’ skipper, as do th’ mast-monkeys.” Raising his pitcher, he gulped ale. “In a southerly blow, better a triple reef than no sail.”

Diccolo had identified the focus of the old man’s interest. The keg room, little more than a small, barred, fortified alcove to keep the patrons away from the grog, stood open before them. As Philiope’s wenches in their scanty dress hurried in and out carrying pitchers, they raised up on tiptoe to turn the taps of the racked ale-kegs, or else stooped low to pour arrak out of earthen jars. As Yorkin sat by the doorway, it was this varied activity that kept him nodding and smiling attentively between swills from his pitcher.

“Many thanks, Old Yorkin,” Diccolo said, arising from his seat. Feeling a sudden urge to leave the inn, he headed out the landward door, across the lamp-lit, thronging lane. The night, beyond the smoky and fishy reek of the harbour-front, was clear and fragrant. He left the crowds of loiterers behind him and strode uphill with a growing sense of purpose.

The road diminished from cobbles to hard-packed dirt, but remained firm and smooth underfoot in the darkness. The cottages on either hand thinned, retreating from the lane to hide among stands of orchard trees. Far ahead and above, twin castle turrets jutted into the glowing horizon of stars.

Footsteps sounded behind him—two pairs, hurrying to catch up. Diccolo darted aside into an orchard; but he blundered against a tree limb, bruising his cheekbone. As he recovered himself, he felt rough hands grip his shoulders. A deep voice, Atrox’s, sounded in his ear.

“Hold up, there!”

“Wait, Diccolo. Are you lost?” A medium-pitched voice, that of Rufias, joined in. “You wander far from the sea, lad! There’s nothing up here for you—nothing but the castle of a rich captain, who doesn’t care for our sort any more.”

“He’s lost,” Atrox rumbled in delight, clutching Diccolo’s neck.

“But maybe he’s looking for his old cap’n, to share a tale or two with ’im. That could be, couldn’t it? But it wouldn’t be smart.”

“No, Diccolo. Not smart,” Atrox warned, enfolding him in his clutch.

“No, not for a sharp-tongued boy like Diccolo. A sharp, wagging tongue can be a danger. But I know a way to fix it.” A dagger gleamed in Rufias’s hand as he moved closer.

X

War Moves

“We must invade Hyrkania without delay! The future of our Turanian State depends upon it!”

Prince Yezdigerd’s words rang out sharply under the domed roof of the indoor palace arena. They did not, however, interrupt the program of female acrobats performing below; nor did they elicit much response from Emperor Yildiz where he sat attended by his two serving-maids.

“Most esteemed Father,” the prince essayed again in a more moderate voice. “Our spies tell us the easterners are already mounting an invasion. Our best hope now, so my sources tell me, is to beat them to the attack.” Drawing a mildly distracted glance from the emperor, he moved closer to press his point home. “We must send troops ashore and bum their new galleys in the shipways before they can launch them. It is our best chance for a decisive victory.”

“Yes, yes, perhaps—but have a care, my son, for my painful condition!” Yildiz, resting in his padded seat with bandaged feet propped straight out in front of him, waved a hand to keep his young heir at bay. “This gout is no easy thing, as you may yet learn. Can you not sit still with the others and enjoy the show?”

“Sit and idle away the hours while our enemies arm and equip against us? To my way of thinking, such delays smack of high treason!” Yezdigerd glanced witheringly around at the other high officials present, who nodded politely but continued watching the acrobatic contortions going on below. Nearly all the arena seats were empty, for this was a private spectacle. A dozen or so privy councillors, including Grand Vizier Nephet Ali, Finance Minister Ninshub, High Admiral Quub, and the lately returned General Artaban, sat in various degrees of relaxation on cushions laid along the stone ledges.

“Come now, my boy, be not so glum and serious! And sit down. Your hovering vexes my dropsical toes.” Yildiz, looking fairly alert in spite of his swollen nether limbs and an overall pallor, waved his tall, vulpine son back to an uneasy perch on the edge of one of the polished stone benches. “These fine young women exert themselves valiantly to amuse us; you may also find their efforts instructive.”

The performers the emperor referred to were female acrobats, six lithe southerners who vied at somersaulting from springboards, hurling and catching one another in mid-air, and leaping and pirouetting atop taut wires and balance-beams. The women, high-cheekboned Zaporoskans by their look, had uniformly brown tresses tied back in dark ropes. Their trim bodies were shown off to good advantage by spangled-silk costumes; these clung tightly around their torsos and limbs, doubtless to improve the grip of their sister-acrobats during the more precarious stunts. As ever, the display enraptured the courtiers and tautened the frown on Yezdigerd’s face.

“There, now, you see,” Yildiz proclaimed as the women paused to rest. “Does not the sight of feminine prowess and beauty soothe away some of the tension of state affairs?” As the invalid ruler spoke, he reached over and pinched the ample flank of the concubine who was fanning him, eliciting from her a full-throated squeal. “As for your notion of invading Hyrkania early, I consider it rash and ill-advised.”

“But, Father, how better to break the sword of the invading force? Such an expedition would lead to glory, given the superior number and training of our naval units—”

“That is exactly the reason to hold back and defeat them later—but, oh, by Erlik! Let us try to keep our composure if we can.” The emperor winced in pain and eased himself upright in his seat, having stirred carelessly in his chair and jostled his swollen, tender feet. His handmaids were quick to bend over him in solicitude, stroking his brow and plumping his pillows around him gingerly. “Anyway, my lad,” he resumed after a few moments, “I doubt that you or any other Turanian could bring such an invasion off, even with the help of that fickle wizard of yours... whatever is his name?”

“Crotalus, Father,” Yezdigerd of a sudden spoke less stridently, forced back onto uncomfortable ground. “Our latest spy-reports confirm that just as I feared, he was driven ashore and captured by our Hyrkanian enemies. That is one more reason for my desire to move quickly—”

“Captured or enlisted, what is the difference?” the emperor asked carelessly. “The version of this recent intelligence that I was given suggests that he and his spells have been of vital help to our enemies in this naval build-up you refer to.” Yildiz shrugged carefully. “That is the problem with trying out such new weaponry; very soon you find yourself on the razor-end of it!” He looked around to his other advisors. “What of these demon-galleys Crotalus developed for us, at considerable cost? Do we still dare to use them, or will they turn on our own vessels once out at sea?”

Admiral Quub, a small, wizened man in an oversized and heavily plumed velvet turban, turned to his emperor and volunteered an answer. “Your Supremacy, my trainers assure me that these ships will be safely in their control from the foredeck, regardless of anything the renegade sorcerer may do. The oar-beasts, I am told, are wholly obedient. Furthermore, they are kept blind below-decks, and are too unintelligent to sense their former master’s defection.” The little man smiled primly. “For safety’s sake, even so, I might suggest their deployment in separate formations apart from our manned fleet.”

“Something to consider,” Yildiz said. “Along with their quick expenditure in battle. At the very least, our wizard is likely to know how to defeat them in swift order. We have that factor to deal with, and his very formidable skill at navigation, not to mention his rumoured second-sight.” Yezdigerd interrupted, standing up again to press home his point. “Whether he could be induced to use those powers on behalf of our enemies, I sincerely doubt. A prompt rescue, relieving us of these concerns, is one of the principal benefits of my plan—”

“If I were you, Yezdigerd,” the emperor said airily, “I would give your Crotalus up for lost. A wizard is not bound by common loyalties and friendships, nor even by greed for wealth and power as we know it. The power wizards lust after is often of a sublimer sort, esoteric and ever-retreating; often as not, their quest leads them onward into the hoary, forgotten past. Your mage very likely grew bored with us here, having mined our Court of Seers of all its secrets. It will not be in your power to force him back, if he does not wish it.”

“Even so, Noble Sire,” Yezdigerd insisted, “the virtue of an immediate strike against Turan is undeniable. Such a thing could be accomplished by a younger leader, one more vigorous and... less ailing than yourself. It would establish new leadership, invigorate our troops and subjects for the campaigns to follow—”

“Enough, Yezdigerd! You will recall that I am still emperor!” Yildiz shifted his propped-up legs carefully in the momentary silence that followed. “Yet, since I presently lack strength to argue, yon females can perhaps teach you. Ready, there!”

Clapping his hands sharply, Yildiz caught the attention of the servants who had been clearing out the arena, readying it for the next act. At his command, they hastened their tidying and scurried out of the way. Bronze doors were opened at the far side of the circle, and out trotted six horses in distinctive hues, finely groomed, muscular beasts of a compact size suited to the proportions of the women.

“Hiyee! Ya, Zubbadiyah!” With brisk shouts and commands, the acrobats marshalled the horses into a swiftly trotting circle, then vaulted up onto their backs. Seizing hold of harness-straps and firmly clenching the glossy hides between taut thighs, the women began an agile display of bareback riding. Pirouettes, handstands, underbelly-passes dangerously near the lethal hooves, and deftly coordinated leaps from horse to horse—all caught the half-willing attention of the watchers, including that of the haughty Yezdigerd.

For even after the recent show of dexterity between woman and woman, there was something unique about this act. The combination of lithe feminine toughness with the drumming, masculine power of the steeds, spiced by the display of thinly veiled skin against supple horseflesh, was somehow elemental. The women seemed to feel it too, vaulting with wild shouts and ululations from one steed to the next in their exuberant finale.

“There, now,” exclaimed Emperor Yildiz when the last bareback rider had left the arena. “There at last was a fit entertainment for our late and unlamented emissary, Adi Bulbul. A fine show, indeed.” He half-turned in his place to his son, who was arising impatiently from the bench. “Well, lad, what does that tell you?”

The dour young prince shrugged carelessly. “What could it tell me, Esteemed Father? That female followers of the old god Erlik are more wanton and shameless than daughters of Tarim? Yet I doubt that such was meant to be your point. What more, Sire, can it possibly teach me?”

“What more indeed, to one of your precocious wisdom?” The emperor smiled slyly. “You are right, though Yezdigerd, in surmising that those women harken from the remoter districts, where the old ways are still followed. They are, in point of fact, Zaporoskans, shipped here with their mounts from one of our disputed trans-Vilayet holdings. They are simple yak-herders, daughters of one of the local clans, who worked together and perfected their travelling show as an extension of time-honoured tradition— though I will admit that our palace costumers outfitted them specially for this engagement.

“What I would call your attention to is this: they are peasant riders, common nomad girls who, from the age of weaning, spent more time in the saddle than out of it. Their feats, astonishing to us westerners, are nothing unusual in the district they hie from—a southern extension of the country we soon may be at war with.” Pausing meaningfully, Yildiz glanced aside to his military advisors. “General Artaban, I grow weary. Pray continue, if you would.”

“Thank you, Supremacy. I understand your meaning.” Artaban, the model of a fit and handsome Turanian officer, bowed to his emperor and turned smoothly to Yezdigerd.

“My humble pardon, O Prince... but the males of Hyrkania and the other steppe districts spend, on the whole, even more time on horseback than do the women.” He nodded a concise, apologetic bow to his stem-faced listener. “They practice and polish, not showy, acrobatic tricks, but ruthless battle tactics. Over so many centuries of herding, hunting, racing, and raiding in the saddle, they have bred warriors and steeds that can outpace any others in the world. We in Turan boast a fine cavalry, the best among all the Hyborian nations. But even so, Prince, we or any other civilized land would be foolish to go up against the Hyrkanian steppe-riders on their terms, on any soil, least of all in the vast emptiness of their homeland.

“Therefore, if I rightly apprehend your father—” a glance to Yildiz brought a patient smile— “the likely outcome of a too-swift, too successful naval invasion would be just what we must avoid—a land war against a superior and well-equipped Hyrkanian cavalry force. Even under the best and boldest of leaders—” he nodded in forced deference to the young prince— “such an attack would never stand a chance.”

“Quite right, My Prince, very true indeed,” Admiral Quub piped up from behind Artaban. Rising to his feet, and after a questioning glance to Yildiz, he went on. “The alternative relies on Turan’s own greatest strength. It is the course our emperor has proposed—simply to wait for our enemy’s planned invasion, and then destroy their force at sea. The Hyrkanians, however excellent a fleet they may build, and in spite of any sorcery on their side, are poor sailors. The same national passion that makes them so formidable in the saddle all but guarantees their inferiority on water.”

“True enough,” Artaban put in. “On the other hand, if they were to come at us overland around the Southern Vilayet, there would be a long campaign, with many mountains, rivers, and fortresses to weaken their army, and plenty of time for us to prepare.”

“Precisely,” the admiral resumed, eager to conclude. “To achieve a timely result, they must come by sea. But they can hardly surprise us—and after so many years of Turanian dominance in the Vilayet, the Hyrkanians lack the skill to command a victorious navy. With proper naval readiness, we can safely stake everything on a battle, or a series of battles, in the Vilayet.”

“Oh, really?” Yezdigerd asked, still sceptical. “What about the pirates? The Hyrkanians have made common cause with any number of island principalities and fiefdoms, including the outlaw Red Brotherhood and the Sea Tribes. In the past, they have shown great cunning at sea. That is one main virtue of striking first, to keep them from joining forces with outlaws and brigands.”

“Nay, son,” Yildiz declared from his seat, “better to let them join together, and defeat them all at once. Our Imperial Navy can surpass them all. Anyway, allies at sea are a weakness rather than a strength. I currently have a plan afoot to split the sea-thieves off from the Hyrkanian alliance, or perhaps to even arrange a betrayal. You must never discount the value of diplomacy.”

“You tried such a thing before, as I recall,” Yezdigerd said. ‘There was betrayal aplenty, followed by a public humiliation of our navy. That was when the thieving wretch Amra first rose to ascendancy. Since then, his pirates have plagued our waters ever more—seizing ships and cargoes, extorting tariffs, raiding our outposts, even declaring themselves a sort of petty empire! A greater nuisance can hardly be imagined.”

“Indeed it can,” Yildiz said wearily. “But you must understand, my boy, that for now, Amra is lodged securely in his Aetolian stronghold. A minor figure like that, whether he is wholly in our control or not, is yet a pawn to be played. Therefore, I will rely on my diplomatic efforts. As for the likely war, we shall stand ready and gather our naval forces for a sea engagement. Since you are so hot for action, when the time comes, you may direct the fleet under Admiral Quub’s command.”

“A thousands thanks, Imperial Father.” Nodding a curt bow, Yezdigerd turned and mounted the steps, departing.

After several moments’ silence, General Artaban ventured to speak. “The lad is impetuous, Your Supremacy, but an eager fighter. With proper teaching and counsel, he can bring victories to Turan.

Yildiz, turning from the steaming demitasse his concubine held to his lips, smiled sourly. “Of late, I fear, he is more intent on victory over his father than over the Hyrkanians.” The emperor shrugged. “Be that as it may, I will tutor him and hold him in check while I live. Every child essaying to manhood, even a prince, must first learn to bow to the will of his parent.”

On leaving the arena, Prince Yezdigerd found a tall, dark-moustached aristocrat standing before the mute Keshan door-guards in the marbled corridor.

“Khalid Abdal.” The prince nodded as the man fell into step beside him. “You did well to await me.”

“At your service, My Prince,” the moustached man said. “Though I am not exactly of a lowly rank, I would never seek to interrupt you in so lofty a council.”

“’Tis well. I would prefer that our dealings are not marked or repeated.”

“As ever before, O Prince.” Khalid Abdal paced swiftly and surely beside the restless sub-monarch along the gleaming, echoing corridors, effectively frustrating any attempt at eavesdropping. “I know from long experience that there are many channels of influence at court, and that true power does not always emanate from the top.”

“Thanks be to Tarim, or our empire would be in a sorry state,” Yezdigerd agreed with a note of bitterness. “Do I understand that you have emplaced an agent near this Amra, or Conan, or whatever he is called? Is your man a capable assassin?”

“Very much so, Your Ascendancy. He is a good man, a former trusty-jailer in our naval garrison who was liberated wholesale by Conan along with the rest of the pirate rabble. His career as a felon was never wholehearted, for he was an admiralty informant years before, among the river-pirates.” Khalid Abdal spoke low-voiced as they went, falling silent whenever they passed a cringing servant or an open doorway. “Besides being quicker than most with a blade, he is an able procurer and inciter of men. A sizeable conspiracy will likely be required—since, aside from the usual locks and guards, this Amra can be counted on to fight like a crazed cliff-bear when trapped. It could take a dozen or more slayers to bring him down.” “Good, then, whatever is required.” Yezdigerd turned abruptly through a sun-gleaming, lapis-lazuli archway, leading his companion out onto a balcony that overlooked the palace wharves and blue estuary. The fringe of city roofs along the river was hazy with smoke and dust, but a fresh breeze wafted in over the water. Here they could stand motionless without fear of being overheard.

“Just remember,” the prince said, “I want no trifling with capture, torture, or interrogation. 1 am paying this fellow generously enough to be sure the job is done, and that no one else outbids me. Just see that this pirate is killed. And send me proof!”

“Without fail, Your Ascendancy. I sail tomorrow on my family’s business to the Eastern Vilayet; there I can make one final contact with the assassin and pay him the second instalment. I will give your mission my closest attention.” “It is a personal matter for you too, is it not?” The prince, evidently regarding Khalid Abdal as almost noble-blooded enough to confide in, met his gaze briefly. “I understand the scoundrel wronged your family?”

The nobleman frowned in distasteful memory. “A cousin of mine, a frail, innocent bride taking passage across the Vilayet, died as the result of his piracy. It was not by his hand, so they tell me, but it was in the toils of his devilish captivity.” Khalid Abdal lowered his voice. “And worse, he held my chief wife Olivia as his personal captive until I liberated her. He mistreated her. I can see it in her eyes, though she will say little of it. I expect his death to make things... easier between us.”

“Indeed,” Yezdigerd said solemnly. “Well, do not let your personal hatred impair your judgement. in the matter, or lead you to some indiscretion. There are many who have reason to despise this Amra, with all the manifold indignities he has heaped on our noble realm—” He paused, frowning. “But the essential thing now is that he be slain with dispatch. Serve me well in this, Khalid Abdal, and I may soon have greater duties for you, with commensurately greater rewards.”

He turned then and fixed the nobleman with a cold-glinting gaze. “For you know, there may be more formidable enemies than Amra to be dealt with—” His eyes roved back toward the towering bulk of the Imperial Palace behind them. “Harebrained fools and scheming traitors indeed may fall, before things are set aright in Aghrapur!”

XI

High Crimes and Rewards

The harbour. at Khorusun gleamed silver-blue in the morning light. Ships rested in the gently lapping water, moored alongside the low stone quay or lying at anchor in the open bay. Some of them were new-styled cogs and tall sailers, too large and heavy-keeled to be hauled routinely ashore. Others were oar-driven merchants that would not be unloading their cargoes or staying long enough to quit the water. Above them, along the city’s seafront, stretched the rows of smaller beached galleys and upturned fishing boats.

Beyond the sea, the port of Khorusun rose in a patchwork of trees, gardens, and tiled roofs pierced by minarets, slender palms, temple domes, and battlemented merchants’ villas. A low but jagged-crested range of hills swept around the south fringe of the city, terminating in the rocky cape that formed the bay and sheltered the anchorage from south-westerly storms. The hills, along with the well-built curtain wall to northward, preserved Khorusun from storms on land as well, by barring attacks from roving cavalry. The seaport’s sheltered position gave it a fairly stable political life, independent of the ebb and flow of conquest across the tirelessly disputed eastern steppes.

Olivia, reclining in the bow of the launch, regarded the prosperous merchant town with admiration and doubt. She was uncertain why her husband Khalid Abdal had journeyed here. It seemed a risky and unneeded trading voyage for him to make... especially now, with murmurings of war threatening to set the Vilayet ablaze like a puddle of spilt lamp-oil. But she thought she knew his true purpose; the stakes and perils of the matter set her heart uneasily astir inside her ample silk-bound breast. If she was right.

It was far better to come with him than to wait at home, man-less, in idle suspense. Khalid had tried to dissuade her at first. What of the danger of war, he protested, or of pirates? At the recollection, her lush, berry-stained lips twisted in a wry smile—as if she had anything left to fear from pirates! Anyway, she had her own secrets to play out.

The sea-voyage had conjured for her the sounds and smells and languor of the old days. She heard her husband complain bitterly to his hireling captain about the Djafur pirates. When he bemoaned their recent demands for merchant tariffs and port rights, she knew he was lying. Khalid was not one to complain, but to act. They anchored in Khorusun at evening, and by dawn, he had rowed ashore—to pay his protection money, he said. Blood money, more likely.

Then, in the morning light, she saw the pirate galley. Across the harbour. it lay, anchored apart from the rest like a low slim wolf eyeing a sheepfold. Its skull-jack flew boldly now, crimson instead of black, the bright, shameless banner of a new Vilayet empire. Who might be aboard, she wondered. Someone, certainly, who could get word to Conan.

It was not long before a launch came alongside, hawking vegetables. A golden guilder to the steersman, a word to her servants, and she was away, being rowed across the harbour.

Olivia spread the folds of her silken dress and her long-flowing veil, making sure they protected her fair, bare neck and limbs from the burning sun. She was no longer the sun-scorched pirate wench. Idly, she dipped her hand in the cool wavelets rolling past the boat’s bow. The rowers, hunched in grimy shirts and turbans, did not look around, and the skipper in the stem did not leer at her too openly. He looked more worried about their destination, which loomed ever closer ahead.

There came no hail from the pirate’s deck. Most of the crew caroused ashore, no doubt enjoying their newly won freedom of the port. The rowers shipped oars, gliding up unseen; as the bow snubbed the galley’s stem quarter, Olivia stood and grabbed a trailing rope with unladylike dexterity.

Looking to the steersman, she flipped him another guilder still warm from her bodice. “Wait here to row me back and you will have five more of these.” The man nodded, slack-jawed, at the madness of such a woman, to go alone among the pirate devils.

Turning from him, casting off her veil and kicking loose her slippers, Olivia seized the rope in both hands and climbed barefoot onto the galley’s rail.

As she hauled herself over, a pair of pirates came sauntering to meet her. “Why, Ferdinald,” she said, addressing the stockier and more heavily armed one. “Have they made you a captain, then? Who is Amra’s chief officer aboard?”

“Olivia—” Taking in her formidable beauty with a wary nod, the Zingaran turned aside and waved his gaping helper toward the stem cabin. The woman followed, with Ferdinald taking the rear. When the door opened to the crewman’s pounding, there stood Conan, half-dressed in breeches and open silk shirt, holding his boots ready for donning.

He was as rugged and sun-scorched as ever. His massive bronze chest swelled under his shirt, making her wonder as always about the size of the heart within. She felt her own heart stutter as his eyes swept over her.

“Olivia, girl, is it you?” He tossed his boots aside and moved forward, placing his big hands on her arms and shoulders, fondling her hair. “I had thought never to see you again! Come inside, let us talk.” Separating her from the others, he ushered her in and closed the portal behind them. The cabin was low-ceilinged and garishly furnished, blue-lit by sun reflecting upward through the narrow side windows. The room’s trappings looked rough and masculine.

“Take a seat—there, on the bed. ’Tis a costly piece, too soft for my liking, looted from the Turanian governor’s manse in Subarak. We had to pry up the deck planks to get it in!” He thumped the wood of the low ceiling with one fist. “Here, will you have some wine? It is Kothian, a rare vintage brought over on a trading-ship out of Akif.”

Beaming down at her, he brought two golden goblets and settled his weight on the mattress beside her. “We generally accept a share of the cargo on outbound ships, in lieu of payment in gold. It is the reasonable thing.” He smiled at her, then raised his goblet and drained it in a series of gulps.

“You certainly have prospered since my time with you.” Olivia sipped from her wine cup, meanwhile stroking the velvety polish of the lotus carvings on the bed’s foot board.

“Oh, aye. I sometimes regret that.” Leaning back, Conan tossed his empty cup aside on the bed. “In your days with me you gnawed all the gristle, so to speak, and tasted none of the tenderloin. But that was ever the way of pirating.”

Regarding her, he shrugged—always an impressive sight, given the girth of his shoulders. Idly, he reached a hand to her hair where it hung loose along her neck. “Anyway, by all accounts, you are well-fixed. Likely you are safer and less harried among your courtly pirates than amidst my sea-roving ones.” Reaching forward with his other hand, he brushed the side of her chin and tilted her face up toward his. “And yet... here you are.”

“Here I am,” she breathed, relaxing a little under his touch.

Easing forward, he pressed kisses on her lips, chin, and neck. His hands kneaded her shoulders with impetuous force. She felt herself overwhelmed, giving in to him in the old way, melting. Breath quickened in her chest, and she squirmed and gasped—yet this time it was not in passion, but in struggle and resistance. Panting, she shoved him away and averted her face. “No, stop it, I can’t! Not now! Not... yet.”

“No?” he growled, baffled. “Maybe later, then...” He stared quizzically at her for a moment, then exhaled an easy laugh. “So, tell me,” he ventured at last, “if it is not an attack of the old love-lust, then what brings you back here to my side?”

“Oh, very little, really.” Leaning back from him, straightening her hair, she managed a smile. “A trading voyage with my husband, and all the memories of life on the sea. I saw your pirate ship from across the bay—”

“I saw Khalid Abdal’s ship, too, though I did not know you were aboard.” Conan’s hand lingered heavy on her shoulder for a moment, then withdrew. “Do you mean to tell me, Olivia, that you were not afraid I would steal you away and never return you to your noble husband? Or that my men might bundle you off to me?”

“To Djafur, you mean, and your new castle? The seat of your sea-empire?” Olivia shook her head in mild amusement. “No, Conan, I know you well enough not to fear you so much. And I fear your crew even less, knowing how much they fear you.”

“Why, then, did you come? To plead for your husband’s trade rights?”

She frowned and shook her head. “No, Khalid can handle his own business affairs, and a good deal more than that.” She straightened the silk wrap of her bodice, which had slipped during her recent struggles. “You can imagine, there is much talk of you at court. They say you will take the side of the Hyrkanians in the coming war. But would it really be in your interest if they ruled the Vilayet? They are, after all, the nearest great empire to your islands.” Looking at her with new respect, Conan rumbled a laugh. “They speak very much to the point in the Aghrapur Court, I would say. Well you know, I am no slave of the Hyrkanians. My notion is more to play off one side against the other—”

“And increase your own share, is that right?” Olivia smiled understanding^. “I guessed as much myself. As bitterly as the pirates hate Yildiz, you have been his lieutenant, and have served him in other ways. You would not be moved by blind hatred of Turan.”

“Hardly. Not against Yildiz, the lecherous old fool. I once rescued his favourite wife from the crazed worshippers of a Karpashian spider-god—and more, as well.” He shook his head grimly. “If the nobles and eunuchs at court were less set against a foreigner like myself, lacking high birth and a scheming turn of mind, I might be Yildiz’s chief general by now.”

“You might be surprised to learn that all the interests at the Imperial Court are not necessarily in accord. For instance, they do not all seek to crush the Vilayet pirates, not even now.”

“These friends of yours at court have acted kindly on my behalf before this, methinks... as you yourself have.”

Olivia did not answer his speculations. “They would be inclined even more strongly in your favour if you would undertake to help Turan in the coming war.”

“Aha, Olivia! There it is at last.” Conan grinned at her. “While your husband does his business ashore, you do yours in the harbour. The pirate court at Djafur could use a negotiator like you!” He slapped his knee in admiration. “But you must know that I will not be Turan’s cats paw, any more than I will be Hyrkania’s. Besides, I have entered into solemn commitments that, as a sovereign sea-king, I must not betray.”

“If I know you, Captain Amra, you have not overcommitted yourself.” Olivia eyed him demurely. “Surely there is some leeway in your oaths and treaties. A full guarantee is not required.”

“You mean, some faction at court may want to ensure, as I myself do, that the victory on either side of this war is not too total.” He stroked his chin. “Courtiers ever were fond of preserving the balance of things. Hmm... if this has to do with the rivalry between Yildiz and his overweening son Yezdigerd, I would not be too surprised.”

“’Tis better not to know too much about the schemes of the mighty,” Olivia pointed out. “I prefer safe ignorance.”

“True enough. But if I get your meaning aright—then, yes, I am willing to hedge my support of your country’s enemies. I will press for a Hyrkanian victory, but if it comes, I will honour my oaths and no more. An Hyrkanian tyranny is as much to be feared as a Turanian one, after all.”

“Good, then,” Olivia said, reaching forward and clasping his hand in agreement. “I will tell my friends at court. In return, there is certain information that may be useful to you....”

“You do not want to seal our bargain with a kiss?” He followed the question with the deed, this time meeting only momentary resistance. The two of them were, after all, familiar lovers. Her response to him flamed quick and ardent as of old.

In any case, she told herself, things had changed. He was now a prosperous captain, the admiral of his own fleet, practically a king. The cramped, squalid living of their former days, the shame and insecurity of huddling in small, leaky boats with turbulent pirate rogues, all of that could well be past. He had built his castle... presumably to protect those things and persons he cherished most. It must be lavish, and savagely picturesque; she could almost imagine living there as the favourite wife of Amra the Sea King, taking her fore-destined place as Pirate Queen of the Vilayet.

The vividness of the fantasy bore her off in rapturous transports. But in time, troublous reality came creeping back. In the ebbing of their passion, she shifted in her lover’s embrace to murmur urgently in his ear.

“Conan, there is something I must tell you: I may not be the only Turanian agent in Khorusun. My husband went ashore at first light this morning. I would not have you or your henchmen do him any harm. Still, I suspect he may set in motion a plan—”

Just then, the latch of the cabin door scraped. The portal swung wide, letting in a blazing swath of daylight. Through the hatchway stepped a dark figure, tall and lean, a female by her shape. Letting the door swing shut, she peeled from her bare, athletic body a damp silk robe and let it fall to the floor.

“Instead of rowing ashore,” the soft, husky voice announced, “I had a dip in the sea. It was pleasant, the sharks are not bad this morning. I’m glad you are still here, Conan—” She halted in mid-stride as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. “But I see you have a visitor!” “Santhindrissa, is it?” Olivia asked, disengaging abruptly from Conan. “I remember you—pirate slut of the inland sea, the bloodiest bitch south of Sultanapur! Do you, with all the rest, share noble Amra’s bed?”

Springing up abruptly from the mattress, she flung herself at the female pirate and seized her by her damp rope of hair. Drissa, bare and weaponless, fought back vigorously. But the two were roughly matched in size, and Olivia, still clothed, had the initiative. Snarling and spitting curses, she smote her opponent with balled fists, forced her down onto the floor, and kicked and stamped savagely at her with bare, flailing feet.

“Olivia!” Conan rasped, seizing the frenzied woman’s shoulders from behind. “Have a care, this is her cabin too!” But the wild-eyed Ophirean tore free of him, flew to the unlatched door, and stalked out on deck, straightening her clothing as she went. Santhindrissa meanwhile dove for the weapons locker and tore into its contents, dragging her long iron tulwar from its sheath.

As she turned toward the hatchway, stark-naked and bearing the gleaming steel, Conan laid restraining hands on her. “Let Olivia go,” he persuaded her. “She but came here to parley. She always was unreasonably jealous... of Philiope too, long before you.”

At Conan’s well-intentioned words, the captainess turned back and vented her womanly fury on him. He was hard put to avoid the twisting blade, knock it out of her grasp, and force its wielder down onto the mattress. To the sound of thumps, muffled exclamations, and the longboat’s oars churning away at double speed over the water, the two of them fought savagely on the disarranged bed.

Tackle squeaked in the blocks overhead, and deckhands cursed and strained at the ropes as the Nemesis’s black-striped mainsail was hoisted aloft. Bellying under the crimson skull-jack, which flapped to northward in the new breeze, the sail promptly filled and changed the roll of the deck underfoot. The ship leaned forward without need for oars, which were then drawn in and laid to rest alongside the benches.

“There now,” First Lieutenant Jalaf Shah remarked loudly to Oar master Rondo. “I told your pestilent rogues that if they rowed clear of land, a southerly breeze would find us and relieve us of toil! That was the reason for Ferdinald’s order, which I conveyed to them. Why they would grumble and baulk at obeying their good captain, I cannot understand.”

“Nay, indeed,” Rondo answered, a broad grin showing off the gaps in his teeth. “Now that we have some idle time, one of them should be chosen at random for punishment—there, what about that dog Efrahim? Seize him, fellows, and bring him to the mast!”

With rare eagerness to obey, several pirates laid hold of the unlucky Shemite and dragged him kicking and struggling from the oar-benches. Producing a thong from his belt, Rondo deftly bound the complaining man’s wrists around the base of the mast; then he scurried back to his hortator’s bench astern. After rummaging beneath it, he returned bearing one of the barbed, five-tailed whips known in sailor’s parlance as the Hand of Tarim.

“Now then, you rebellious knave,” Rondo began, lashing the whip in the air before Jalaf Shah’s approving gaze.

“Hold off, there, Oar master!”

Behind Rondo, Captain Ferdinald had come hurrying from the steering-deck; behind him loomed the taller figure of Amra, Chief of the Brotherhood and self-proclaimed Lord of Djafur. Now Ferdinald, asserting his traditional authority under the eyes of his pirate-chief, questioned his subordinates.

“What is the offence here, Lieutenant?” he asked, turning to Jalaf Shah. “Did this man draw a blade on one of my officers?”

“Nay, Captain. He instigated disobedience during the pull here from shore.” The turbaned lieutenant gestured back toward the coast, which amounted now to a low pile of clouds and cliffs all but invisible in the sea-haze.

“So what difficulty, then? The oar-pull is accomplished and ended.”

“He baulked, Sire, and fomented the others.” Jalaf Shah shrugged. “The whole pack was unruly, so we chose this one as an example to the rest.”

“He is the ringleader, then,” Ferdinald said, nodding and turning away.

“Wait, now!” Conan, who had hovered in the background, stepped forward. “Captain Ferdinald, I would not dispute your authority here on board the Nemesis. But I am no lover of whips, and this Efrahim is my crewman of old. He is a good sea-thief, loyal to Amra and the Brotherhood..Conan scanned the sullen faces on the oar deck... “as much as any crewman here,” he finished charitably.

“Well, then, perhaps no punishment is in order for now,” Ferdinald said, wheeling back to the masthead. “A stern warning and a close watch henceforth may keep these rascals in line. Or mayhap just a lash or two, for the sake of fairness....”

“Lord Amra, I must submit to your will.” Rondo, grimacing in his smug, officious way, doubled the five-tailed whip in his hand and turned on Ferdinald, his arms spread wide in reasonableness. “As oar master, I frankly find it hard to drive these rogues with my fists and tongue alone. A pirate-ship needs its discipline as much as any merchant galley or Imperial dromon. This is the first I’ve heard of your fastidiousness regarding whips, Milord Amra—” he moved toward Conan, holding the coiled lash—“but if you would ban its use, then here, have it.”

Something in the oar master’s approach set Conan on guard; then he spied the dagger hidden in the whip’s coils. As the keen point drove at his midsection, his darting hand cuffed the assassin’s away. In the same motion, he lunged forward and seized Rondo’s shoulders, hands clutching for the thick neck. But simultaneously with his movement, a cry went up, and bodies rushed forward from all sides.

Conan felt hands clapping onto him and dragging him backward. His smirking quarry twisted free; shouts from the deck echoed aloft, and the striped sail came billowing down. Conan fell to his knees, smothered in multiple layers of canvas, struggling amid a swarm of pirates who kicked and smote at him from all sides.

In moments he was caught, strapped around with ropes gripped in a dozen knotty, oar-tough hands. His captors drew him taut against the mast, some clutching his bonds, others his wrists, hair, and throat. Before him Ferdinald was given the same treatment, pinned down struggling to a bench. The pirate Efrahim was kicked and beaten senseless, then tossed into the bilge; of the other crewmen, none was ready to take his part.

Jalaf Shah, strutting before the onlookers, addressed him. “Brother Amra, we respect you. We did our best to spare you this indignity by means of a quick knife-stroke. But you were stubborn, as always. We have no further choice but lawful mutiny and trial under the authority of the Red Brotherhood.”

As the lieutenant spoke, Rondo carried forward the copper drum he used as hortator. He set it on a bench, and Juwala, the pirate arbiter and historian, took his place behind it. As hoots and cheers sounded on all sides, the lean black man thumped his dagger-hilt on the drum and spoke.

“Having mutinied as specified under Brotherhood law, the crew now righteously wishes to charge and execute their former commander. What are the charges?”

Jalaf Shah straightened his turban and stepped before the masthead. “We charge the pirate Amra with multiple high crimes, five in number—” he held up his open hand before him, ticking off fingers as he spoke—“to wit: Arrogance, Legality, Unjustified Murder, Dealing with Enemies, and the Suppression of Free Piracy.”

“The defendant may plead if he so wishes.” A thump on the drumhead accompanied Juwala’s words. “What is your plea to the high crime of Arrogance?”

Conan, pinned to the mast, jerked his head left and right to loosen some of the constriction around his throat. “If by Arrogance, you dogs mean pride and contempt for others—why, no, you yapping pack of misbegotten hyena curs! I never placed myself above my fellow pirates, nor looked down on the lowliest wharf-snipe! Any man who says I did is a yellow-livered rat-eater!”

Jalaf Shah’s nod of acknowledgement was courteous. “You deny, then, that you hoarded ships and women, declared yourself Lord of the Pirates in your representations to foreign powers, and built a castle on the heights above Djafur?”

Conan snarled, straining against the arms and ropes that held him. “That castle is my gift to the Brotherhood, not otherwise. What do you think, that I mean to take it with me when I die? Everything I do is aimed at building the power of Djafur and you pirate knaves’ welfare, and at bringing us all easy wealth!”

“He presumes to dictate what is best for us!” Jalaf Shah cried.

“That is Arrogance if ever I heard it,” Rondo pointed out.

“Very well, the defendant confesses his guilt—” the drum thumped under Juwala’s knife-hilt—“no great dishonour to a pirate. What do you plead to the crime of Legality?”

“What do you mean by it?” Conan snapped back. “Men have accused me of many things before, but never that.”

The traitor Rondo stepped forward beside Jalaf Shah. “By Legality is meant the levying of burdensome laws, such as your Djafur village curfew and your ban on coastal raiding.”

Conan shrugged as best he could in his bonds. “You scurvy dogs have no better sense than to get your rum-money by robbing and murdering Djafur’s islanders and war-allies. Somebody had to haul your chain up short, for the good of the Brotherhood!”

“Your guilty plea is acknowledged.” A thump on the drumhead. “What of the third charge...” Juwala paused, counting off fingers with his knife-point. “What was it again, Jalaf Shah?”

“Unjustified Murder. To wit, the slaying of Diccolo, our beloved brother pirate.”

“Crom blight the pack of you rogues! May Erlik’s hounds worry your private parts, and eight-armed Suddah whet her many knives on your gizzards!”

Restrained by rope, sailcloth, and cable-taut thews, Conan struggled and cursed in grim futility. On the scarred, unshaven faces of the watching pirates he read no sign of loyalty or fellow-feeling. If only he had noticed earlier how Ferdinald’s mutinous officers had stacked the crew against him—if only Santhindrissa had not gone off in a sulk aboard Brylith’s galley. If only he could lay hold of his cutlass, which stood driven into the deck a few paces away.

“A thousand scorpions sting your lying tongue, Jalaf Shah,” Conan raged. “How dast you lay poor Diccolo’s death at my door? He was one of my stoutest pirates—a blasted nuisance, to be sure, a pestering gadfly! But he looted bravely at my side; together we reaped the plunder of a dozen ships and half as many ports. I did not cross him, but rather, turned Djafur upside down to find his slayer!”

“A clever ruse, to be sure,” Rondo sneered, “and a further excuse to bully and intimidate your fellows in the Brotherhood. Yet Diccolo was slain far from the waterfront, before the gate of your castle. Who but you and your richly paid guards would have done it?”

“Aye, infamy,” Jalaf Shah added. “Unwarranted murder to rid yourself of a petty nuisance. Diccolo, though a boon pirate, never would bow passively to your tyrannous whims—so he had to be silenced.”

“I see it now.” Conan stood suddenly calm amid his captors, his eyes blazing blue bale-fire. “You and your mutineers were the ones who wished to silence him. He crept to my castle, no doubt to warn me of your treachery, but your slinking cutthroats overtook him by night. Your words are a freight of lies, like every slander hurled against me here!” Straining one arm against bonds, he raised it high enough to point a finger. “You, Jalaf Shah, were Knulf’s man-of-all-work! Now you have a hankering to take my place, as I took his. And mealy-mouthed Rondo here, a prison crimp, is also a spy and an assassin in foreign pay! The rest of you lads were chosen for your irks and grudges against me—but if you are wise, you will stand for me now, and welcome my tyranny above theirs. This whole trial is a farce—”

“Guilty!” Juwala decreed loudly, thumping his knife-hilt. “Jalaf Shah, is there any need to hear his plea on the other two charges?”

“Nay,” the lieutenant growled. “But add a sixth, that of disrespecting the Brotherhood’s high court.”

“Well enough, then,” the magistrate said. “Six capital counts. Now for a verdict. All those who affirm Amra’s death sentence, say aye—”

The proceedings were momentarily interrupted, however. The abused Efrahim, picking himself up from the deck, began beating and tugging at some of the guards holding Ferdinald. The Zingaran, aided by the distraction, twisted free of his captors and dragged a sabre from the waistband of one of the pirates. Wheeling on Rondo, he ran him through the breastbone with it.

The oar master, clutching feebly at the hilt that stood out from his chest, staggered backward and toppled over the galley’s rail, causing great consternation among the pirates.

Conan, meanwhile, summoned an elephantine surge of strength. Dragging a clot of men and cordage with him, he lunged forward from the mast. Lashing out at Jalaf Shah, who had turned to watch the slaying of his henchmen, he smote the lieutenant with a balled fist on his bearded jaw. After that one blow, the hounds were upon Conan again, hauling him backward to the mast.

“He has struck our new captain, a gross misdemeanour!” they cried. “A double death for the outlaw. Disembowel him first, then drag him astern for the sharks! Captain, what other torments would you suggest?”

But Jalaf Shah, who had dropped like a stunned ox at the blow, answered not. Shaking and lifting him, they found that his jaw sagged broken. Furthermore, blood dripped from one ear, and his head lolled back at an unnatural angle.

On seeing this, the pirates who had restrained Conan grew less wholehearted. Some of his captors, indeed, shrank back from him with alacrity. The rest soon followed, leaving him free to shake off his ropes in the middle of the deck. When he snatched up his cutlass and strode toward Ferdinald, the men who fenced and struggled around the Zingaran fell away, too. The pair of captains stood facing the circle of mutineers unchallenged; those few onlookers who held cutlasses let them fall to the deck with a clatter.

“There, dogs,” Conan declared. “Now you see the folly of mutineering! Your rabble-rousers are dead. Juwala, you should be ashamed of yourself! You will spend the rest of this voyage on the masthead. Let hard crusts and water sop your bellyaches! You others, mayhap it will be enough for you to renew your oaths to Amra, and to honest Ferdinald, here and now!” He raised his cutlass on high, clutching it one-handed by the curvature of the blade. “Avast cringing, you pirate rogues, and swear by the hilt!”

The cry that went up was more heartfelt, and indeed more desperate, than any that had been offered up to Conan before. He surveyed the faces, finding no emotion there but frenzied acclaim. Ferdinald, at his side, paid less attention. He designated two men to hurl the lifeless Jalaf Shah overboard.

“Enough, then!” Conan bellowed. “Now get this sail back up the mast, and get under way! The wind is still fair for home.” He turned to Ferdinald and spoke to him in a grim undertone. “Once that is done, but before this ship touches Djafur, we shall learn more about the murder of Diccolo!”

XII

Dangerous Allies

Attar Karapesk, the grand metropolis of Hyrkania, spread in a vast array of domed and peaked roofs, high-vaulted galleries, frescoed palaces, and straight-walled barracks. Down its broad, muddy avenues, troops of fur-hatted cavalry spurred their mounts along to bypass rattling hay carts drawn by horse, ox, and ostrich. Nearby, in the grass-lined parks and corrals that lined the city, herds of woolly yaks and wild steppe-ponies grazed.

That all the buildings of Attar Karapesk were tents, sewn from horse- and yak-hide and stretched over slender poles cut from riverside willows, hardly affected the city’s grandeur. It was a great Imperial town nevertheless, bringing together a wide assortment of races and tribes. In its temple pavilions and torch-lit bazaars, the true hawk-nosed Hyrkanians bartered and gambled with tall, lean Sogdian mercenaries, moustached and slant-eyed mandarins of Loulan, and squat, flat-faced Zaporoskans. From up- and downriver, in towed barges and canoes, came even more diverse travellers from all lands in reach of the Vilayet.

For this year, Attar Karapesk, the nomad tent-capital, was also a seaport—war preparations having drawn the attention of the empire westward to the Vilayet. The clans, acting in rare agreement, had thrown up their tents and pavilions amid low coastal hills, where one of the great inland rivers cut through to the sea.

The actual focus of war readiness lay a little farther inland, where the river’s channel wound past ancient wooded slopes. Here and along a score of other navigable streams and rivers, in shipyards up and down the Hyrkanian coast, a mighty fleet neared completion. Cradles and shipways on this muddy beach alone held a dozen new galleys ready for launching. To commemorate the event, no less a personage than Antulla, War Chief of all the clans, had ridden out from the city. He made a splendid figure in his fur-trimmed riding suit, tall-peaked fur cap, and fur boots with gold spur-barbs on the heels. Showing him about the place was the distinguished foreign wizard Crotalus, who had directed the naval effort.

“This wood is strong and pliant.” Antulla’s booted heels thumped resoundingly on the deck of the new flagship, a triple-banked dromon. “Your aid to our silviculture seems to have been a success.”

The white-robed sorcerer smiled, nodding his shaven brown head in a polite bow. “The greatest need for my art was in growing thick, strong beams for keels and rams, and curving compass-timbers as well.” He waved a hand ahead to where the ship’s massive prow swept upward; it terminated in an ornamental seahorse-head, with webbed ears and finned mane. “By instructing the High Priesthood of Erlik in my methods, and allowing them to spread my teachings to their lesser wizards and acolytes, we were able to speed the growth of several thousand trees.” Crotalus led the high-chieftain forward, pointing to where the stout arching beam of the forestem broke through pale deck-planking. “The affected wood takes on a reddish hue, as you can see,” he said, kneeling down and stroking the smooth-adzed finish. “The growth spell is a blood rite. Fortunately, your clans held enough Zaporoskan war captives to serve.”

“Aye.” The war-chief nodded solemnly, running his hand down the red-tinged curvature of the foremast. “I rode through the forest last season and saw them dying, staked to the roots of the great trees.” He shook his head. “It was a sorry thing in a way, expending so many serviceable rowers and sail-weavers. But then, many more Hyrkanians will sacrifice their lives in the coming war.” “For a noble cause, to be sure.” Crotalus nodded in understanding. “Your soldiers are ready, then, for a timely embarkation?”

“In Attar Karapesk and a score of port cities along the coast, the troops, horses, and sailors now assemble. They bring ample stores and weapons for a prompt invasion. The season grows late, I know. But can you still guarantee that the crossing will be swift and smooth enough for the horses?”

Reaching to his side, Crotalus brought forward the woven carrying-bag he wore slung over his shoulder. The triangular object inside, visible where the loose pouch sagged away, was the lyre—the fabled harp of Dagon—the wizard had retrieved from the depths of the Northern Vilayet. Holding it under his arm, he resembled a wandering bard or minstrel; but he did not draw the instrument from the bag or strike a note from its silver strings.

“Do not fear the elements, whatever season it may be,” he assured Antulla. “With this charm and my arcane skills, I can ensure your force a direct passage westward across the broadest reach of the Vilayet. All that remains is for us to gather the fleet, and then elude the enemy, or destroy them.”

“You are sailing with us, then?” Antulla gazed earnestly into the black seer’s glittering eyes. “I did not ask before, in view of all you have done for us, but I assumed you would want to.”

“Most certainly I do,” Crotalus affirmed with a nod. “It will be fitting and satisfying to return to petty Aghrapur’s jealous, contentious circle of nobles as a conqueror, and to assume my place with you at their head.”

This said, the wizard returned the harp to its place at his side. He beckoned his guest forward, down one of the hinged ramps that had been installed at either side of the bow. The gangplanks, made for disembarking troops on Turanian beaches, could be raised and lowered by chains yoked to the mast and neck of the wooden horse on the forestem.

“Our captains are already en route to their ships,” Antulla said, stepping down onto the riverbank. “They have been told to assemble off the Cape of Furies. Thereafter, the pirate fleet will join us south of the Aetolians.” “Ah, the notorious Amra and his pirates,” Crotalus said, striding toward sheds set back from the riverbank. “But can they be depended on to appear in good order, and not betray you to your enemies?” The sorcerer turned a thoughtful look on the war-chief. “Might it not be better to destroy the whole lot of them outright, as a prelude to your greater triumph... rather than risk having them shirk battle, or turn against your fleet in the midst of it?”

“I take your meaning.” The fur-capped warlord, keeping pace with his advisor, smiled. “In point of fact, pirates are always dubious allies. Our envoy Adi Bulbul is convinced that Amra will abide at least by the letter of his agreements. And I personally know the pirate-chief to be a fearless and resourceful man.”

“I know him personally to be a sly, violent knave,” Crotalus observed.

“Equally true, doubtless,” Antulla said. “And there remains the question: can the pirate captains and crews, however bold their chief, be counted on to fight honestly and not violate their leader’s pledges?” He shook his head in mild perplexity. “I myself fear that Adi Bulbul’s concessions were too generous. I dread the day, once we achieve our great victory and rule the Vilayet, that our strengthened pirate allies will be a sharper thorn in our side than ever they were to Imperial Turan.”

“Rest easy, I have already foreseen your misgivings,” Crotalus announced. Smiling blandly, he led the way up to the door of one of the sheds. “I have certain weapons that will avail against the pirates, once the scoundrels have served their purpose and become an annoyance.”

“We have weapons aplenty already,” Antulla said. “Death-implements that will kill pirate and Imperial alike. Rams, catapults, fire-potions, razor-keen arrows and blades. What new terror are you going to reveal to me, I wonder.” The war-chief slowed in mock reluctance before the closed door. “Is it some new product of your necromantic sciences?”

Crotalus paused and turned, taking time to indulge his guest’s inquiry. “Pirates are a special sort. They are not disciplined troops or loyal subjects, neither fighters nor sailors nor tillers of the earth. They worship their own gods, and they live under their own special obligations, dispensations, and dreads. Far greater than their belief in any god is their superstition.” He smiled. “When the time comes, I am prepared to destroy them more efficiently and terribly than any sword or ram could do. The prime weapon I have at my command is this.”

Reaching one-handed into his shoulder-bag, Crotalus drew out something, unwrapped linen from it, and held it out at arm’s length. The object’s evil aspect stopped the seasoned war-chief in his steps, almost making him step back, for it was a human, or semi-human, skull, white and hideous-looking. One eye socket was split and crushed, he noticed at once, by an old wound that appeared to have knit and healed over in life.

The bone was lightly encrusted with barnacles. That, on closer inspection, was what gave it such a monstrous appearance; pitted, cratered, and crested over with sharp, jagged projections. Before Antulla could offer any comment, the wizard had wrapped it up again and thrust it back into his bag.

“It is a powerful token,” he avowed, grasping the shed door. “Such a charm is far more dangerous to pirates than to any honest soldier or sailor. And that is only a small part of my arsenal. Here you will see more of it.”

Throwing open the door of the long shed, Crotalus beckoned his employer forward. Inside, among the windowless shadows, stirring and groping though the dimness and looking up startled at the sudden light, were... women. Barefoot workers they were, dressed in coarse but well-stitched shifts. They moved around broad, level weaving-frames, squinting at the figures who stepped within. They eyed Antulla in awed respect, noting the tall, pointed cap of a chieftain. They also cast nervous glances overhead, toward the dark upper reaches of the shed.

Following their frightened looks, Antulla saw large, pale bundles suspended from the rafters. Caterpillars they were, giant grubs as broad and tall as men, squirming and writhing many-legged in thin, near-transparent cocoons. From spinnerets in their blindly oscillating heads, long strands of silk trailed down, to be caught on wooden reels and fed into the looms. Therein, under the skilled hands of the women, the threads were being woven into a thin, sheer cloth of silvery hue.

“They are common silkworms,” Antulla exclaimed, “but enlarged even more than your enchanted trees. Surely your sorcerous power knows no limit!”

Crotalus folded his nut-brown hands and bowed his head in modesty. “The process is no more or less difficult for animals than it is for plants.” He leaned close to the chief, speaking confidentially. “The blood offerings needed for the spell are fortunately shed early, when the worms are first hatched, so these skilled weavers need not have undue worries or fears distracting them from their labour.”

“The cloth is most luxuriant,” the chieftain said, moving close to the spill of one of the looms and fingering the fine stuff. “Is it not too sheer and delicate for sails?”

“Such fabric would be more than strong enough to speed your largest dromon,” Crotalus assured him. “However, that is not the use I have in mind for it. Canvas and coarse rope are adequate for driving warships—these looms weave death for our foes in a more direct way, one that I would not venture to explain to you now.” The wizard smiled. “I fear that even after what you have seen of my spells, you would find it too fantastic for belief. But I can promise you, in combination with my meteorological skills, this new weapon will make Hyrkania’s victory all the more total.”

“Come forth, men of the Red Brotherhood! Muster together, all my pirate brethren! Rouse yourselves up, for the sun has nearly crested above the eastern isles, and a day of challenge and glory awaits us!”

Standing in the eagle-headed prow of the huge warship Remorseless, where it rested on dry-dock rails opposite Djafur’s seawall, Conan tirelessly repeated his call. Before him, on the sloping beach and along the dusky harbour-front lane atop the low wall, his followers gradually assembled. Some few restless ones, happening by chance to be awake at such an early hour, made their own way out of idle curiosity. The rest, weary and besotted from another night’s debauchery, came grumbling forth from inns, alleyways, and brothel cribs, herded shoreward by teams of crimps and petty-officers experienced at scouring the town. The murky hour of dawning was the best time to gather them, Conan knew. Any later, they would be more spirited and resourceful in their resistance.

“This,” Conan intoned, “is a glorious day for Djafur and the Brotherhood. It is more, far more, than just the rousting-out for another pirate voyage. Hear the great news: war is declared!” He spread both arms extravagantly, doing all he could to hold the pirates’ bleary-eyed attention. “With war comes the clash of mighty fleets and armies, and the shattering of empires! And when empires are shattered, things spill out... loot, treasure, booty! Brothers in arms, I invite you to nothing less than the sack of mighty Aghrapur herself, the plunder of an empire!” With his words came a stirring in the crowd, a rumbling of muddled recognition that almost amounted to interest. Some of the pirates perked up visibly and jostled inward; others did so numbly, compliant to the urgings of the press officers, whose clubs and knouts rose and fell at the rear edges of the mob.

“I, Amra of the Western Sea, ruling as war-captain of the Red Brotherhood, will lead you forth in the ramship Remorseless, nabbed from under the catapults of Emperor Yildiz himself.” Stepping up onto the great ship’s rail, he laid a hand familiarly on the gilded neck-plumage of its eagle figurehead. “We go as a fleet, ready to claim our rightful share in the conquest. Djafur’s best ships and captains are already at sea, armed and equipped—Hrandulf and his brother captains of the Sea Tribes, Santhindrissa and Brylith with their fierce sea-vixens and free male fighters. My own officers Ivanos and Ferdinald, aboard the Kitehawk and Nemesis, have also sailed. Remorseless will command them, going forth as the flagship of a mighty pirate fleet. The wealth and fame we gamer will enrich every hand of the Brotherhood and make our island port of Djafur the jewel of the Vilayet.”

“Nay, we will all die,” a faceless voice cried from the throng. “We are pirates, not warriors!”

“Brothers, do not fear the tides of war unduly!” Conan spoke out spiritedly, even as angry-faced crimps worked their way through the crowd to silence the pacifist. “It is the Hyrkanians, not ourselves, who will land the troops and fight the bloody battles ashore. We are not committed to go down with either navy in defeat. Even in the event of an undecided battle, we can benefit greatly. Chief Antulla, warlord of the Hyrkanian clans, has by treaty promised us a bounty: ten talents of gold for every Turanian ship we sink, bum, or put out of action against their invasion fleet. All such profits will be shared out among the crews of the responsible ships, according to the standards of our Brotherhood.”

At these words came a definite mutter of applause, as much as could be expected from such a debauched and dissipated lot. The pirates had noted the cudgels poised in their midst, and no more protests were raised. “We are enlisted on the side of the Hyrkanians,” Conan said. “But Remorseless and our other ships will remain under my command, not theirs. Believe me, I would never allow this war to destroy what I have built up for our Brotherhood! Follow me to wealth and glory, as you have done so many times before!”

A ragged chant of “Amra! Amra!” went up. At first it sounded mainly in the voices of the officers driving the pirate mob forward on the cobbled lane and the beach, but soon it was carried on other lips. Meanwhile, gangplanks were run out from the ship, sloping forward from the bows to the rim of the seawall and down aforeships onto the beach. As pirates began shuffling forward, none too steady on the broad planks, Conan reached out welcoming hands to his recruits. Standing astride the neck of the figurehead with a foot on either rail, he helped the drunken ones aright themselves and hauled any with last-minute doubts briskly abroad.

Soon the rowers were seating themselves by the dozen on the waiting oar-benches. The dwindling crowd ashore seemed to be well under the control of the narrowing circle of crimps, so Conan made his way to the stem deck, where Philiope waited. Agile in her cut-down courtly gown and long, raven tresses, she rushed forward to embrace him.

“Conan,” she breathed, “you have done it! It is so hard to believe that this whole great ship will be filled up with pirates and sailors, a thousand and more of them. How can any foe stand against us?”

“How indeed?” Conan asked. He turned back with a distant look in his eye, watching the throng milling along the upper deck. “Yet our enemies have ships this large, and larger ones too.”

“Will you really loot and bum Aghrapur?” she asked. “Is it so necessary? I have no love of the Turanian emperor, but the capital is a great city, full of innocent common-folk....”

“If Turan were to fall, I could not prevent the city’s destruction,” Conan told her frankly. “But I do not think it will come to that. A glorious victory on either side is unlikely.”

Philiope looked up at him in surprise. “But you told the pirates—”

“I told them what was necessary to get them to fight,” he interrupted her. “But in fact, Djafur’s best interest is to let these two great tyrants whittle each other down. I will honour the terms of our treaties, and there will be plenty of spoils and bounties for us in any case. But I will not drive home a victory for one side or the other. It is better in the long run if no single empire rules the Vilayet.” He held her close and pressed a kiss on her lips. “Never fear, I will come home to you.”

“I do not want you to come home to me,” she said, twisting in his embrace. “I want to sail with you!” “Philiope,” he reasoned, keeping her in his grasp, “a war can be a fearsome thing! I could never ensure your safety—”

“Can you ensure it here, in Djafur,” she challenged him, “with the town and the castle guarded by a skeleton force?” She pulled away from him, frowning. “Santhindrissa will sail along with you and fight at your side. Is that why you don’t need me?”

“Drissa is my toughest captain,” he began. “She’ll have her hands full in getting her crew to fight the enemy....” Then, seeing his mistress’s indignation, he gave in with a laugh. “Very well then, you can come. But you will have to do your share of the rowing.” He slapped her on the rump, directing her toward the benches.”

Within minutes, the crew was in place, including even some of the crimps. At Conan’s command, relayed by the bench captains, the oars were lifted from the deck and run out halfway. Meanwhile, those remaining on shore loosened the props and chocks that held the ship on the ways. Conan’s voice barked an order from the port helm, and hammer-blows thudded home. There was a deep, thunderous grinding and shuddering below-decks, and a giddy angling of the deck. Slowly, the great ship gathered way and slid stem-first into the waves of Djafur harbour.

XIII

War Winds

For ten days and nights, a hot wind of fear blew over Aghrapur.

Out of the east it blew... not gently, like the mid-afternoon zephyrs that would ordinarily waft the coolness and fresh scent of the sea westward over the capital. This was a steady, vexing wind, a stifling, insistent gale that coaxed up dust-djinni and wilted crops in the fields. Somehow it crossed the whole broad Vilayet without taking on any vaporous, soothing marine essence. Instead of sea-fragrance, these harsh gusts murmured of the Hyrkanian steppes, of dry bracken, sun-scorched grass, and the ashes of burnt homesteads.

Worse, this was a supernatural breeze, so the people in the streets whispered—a war-wind conjured up to carry Hyrkanian invaders straight to the shores of Turan.

During the time of the wind, tensions drew spring-taut and tempers flared. The air itself played assassin; stray, malicious gusts darted down chimneys and through open windows, scattering kitchen embers and teasing curtains into lamp-flames. When the resulting fires raged out of control in the tinder-dry city, sending clouds of smoke rolling downwind, the citizens would sniff the air and cry, “They are here at last! Flee, the Hyrkanians have landed, they are burning the capital!” Rumour and riot flourished, and a sense of inevitable doom hung over all.

In the war-room of the naval garrison, the high officers of the admiralty did not doubt that the wind was sorcerous in nature. “It is Crotalus, the traitorous devil!” Admiral Quub declared. “I laughed when the spies told me the Keshan had found a way to command the sea-gods, but now I believe it! Would that our Court of Seers had made him more welcome here.”

“He was too deeply enmeshed in court politics, so I hear.” General Artaban spoke in a whisper. “And on the wrong side.” He fell silent then as Prince Yezdigerd turned from a wall-map of the Vilayet and moved closer.

“When they come,” the prince observed, “they will certainly land south of the city. The Marshes of Mehar and the river shallows make it too hard to utilize cavalry to northward. Our enemy can be expected to know that.” “Undoubtedly, My Prince,” Admiral Quub said with a curt bow. “If indeed they can keep their ships together and choose their landfall, a southerly landing would also make it easier for them to strike at Aghrapur.”

“Somewhere between here and the north end of the Colchian Mountains,” Yezdigerd said with assurance. “In the open coastal lands, they can easily overrun our infantry.” “If they make landfall farther south, they might still try to follow the coast northward,” Quub pointed out.

“If we have warning, our ships bearing south from the capital could then force them to land,” Yezdigerd said. “A constricted position because of the mountains.”

“Yes, Sire,” Artaban the general agreed. “But the mountains will hamper our cavalry as much as theirs. And their force is likely to concentrate faster.”

“Send an infantry army to the North Colchians, then,” Yezdigerd rapped out. “They can begin building a defence line from the mountains to the sea. Hold back the bulk of the cavalry to repel the invaders should they reach the plains or cross over the mountains.”

“A viable strategy,” Admiral Quub said, taking notes with a stylus on a wax tablet. “Our best hope, of course, will be to prevent a landing. Our Imperial Navy is still a match for theirs.”

“The problem lies in finding them,” Artaban pointed out. “If we throw a long cordon of ships out into the Vilayet, they will gain an immediate local advantage with their massed fleet.”

“If we can engage them strongly, we can hold them,” Yezdigerd said. “Our naval engineers are busy installing new weapons that will guarantee that.”

“Tarim grant that we can,” Quub said. The admiral swore by the new god out of consideration for his prince. “In any event, once they get near the coast, there is no way we can prevent them from landing. They will drag their ships ashore and turn it into a land fight. We have no choice but to intercept them as far offshore as possible, delay them once we find them, and try to mass our ships between them and the coast.”

“Aye,” Artaban agreed. “Turn them back, or at least drive them southward.”

“Once we find them,” Quub added, “there are sailor’s tricks we can use to gather the fleet.”

“A screen, then,” Yezdigerd dictated. Tall and haughty before his officers, the young prince obviously took his nominal command of the defence force seriously. “A single-ship cordon, concentrating in the south with our largest vessels, all moving steadily eastward. A red-ball insignia will be the sign that the enemy has been sighted.

Once it is relayed up and down the line, the ships must converge as swiftly as possible.”

“It will be hard sailing into the teeth of the gale.” Screening his face, Artaban moved to the window and glanced outside, where the flags of the garrison were blown straight back toward the upper battlements.

“Our oarships will be little hampered by wind if we unstep the masts,” Quub observed, having finished writing. “The slower sailships will have to stay back and guard the coast. But for communication and filling gaps, small, fast feluccas can run up and down the line with the wind abeam. Once the enemy is sighted, they can carry word to the homeland.”

Artaban peered eastward. “If the Hyrkanians got under way on the first day of this blow, they could be more than halfway here.”

“Yes,” Quub said, “but I would presume they had to assemble their fleet offshore. So we may have more time. Their allies, too, may cause delays.” The admiral, diminutive and bald-headed under his cocked naval cap, shrugged. “It matters little—we have just one opportunity to turn them back. Whether the battle is engaged near their coast or ours, we must put our main strength into this attempt. Whatever gets past our capital ships, it will be the job of the coastal forces to deal with.”

Beckoning to one of the adjutants waiting near the door, Admiral Quub let the man approach and handed him a wax tablet. “These orders go to the emperor’s staff at the palace. These others—” he handed him a second waxed pad sketched with naval signals— “are to be run up the masts outside. And send copies by horse-courier to the naval garrisons at Sultanapur and Khawarism, for immediate confirmation. The fleets must be aweigh by dawn!”

By some miracle of the pirate-gods and captains, all but one or two ships of Amra’s fleet made the rendezvous off the southern Aetolians. Falling into an uneven line behind the flagship Remorseless, they proceeded southward down the Hyrkanian coast, a difficult pull because of the steady offshore wind. The captains soon found that if they tried to raise a scrap of sail in the side-wind, the steeper cant of their ships raised the windward oar ports too high out of the water for rowing, and threatened to flood the loo’ard ones. So progress was made with oars only, through a difficult cross-sea that taxed rowers and sometimes broke inexpertly handled oars.

In consequence of all this, when a mass of sail crested the horizon to the southward, Conan did not steer to meet it at once; instead, he turned west on a near-parallel course. That way, with wind and sea following astern, his ships were able to combine sail and oar-power and match the Hyrkanians’ speed with little effort.

“We will be within signalling distance before dark,” Conan told Philiope. Leaning on the helve of his massive steering oar, he watched the bold spread of a dozen square sails and foaming ship-beaks scattered behind him, against the dust-clouded Hyrkanian horizon. “We can converge with them sometime tomorrow, or stand off if we wish.” He paused, listening to the chant of the rowers as they worked in patient time with the thumping kettledrum. “Our crews will be at least as fit as theirs, and battle-ready.”

“If this wind holds steady, you mean.” The woman, weary from unaccustomed toil at oars, rested against the gold-feathered base of the arching stempost. “Though, now that we are running before the gale, I can barely feel it.”

Conan sniffed the dry land breeze. “It is Crotalus’s work, no doubt of it. Unsavoury, to my way of thinking— but it will probably blow us westward all night. There could be no better omen for the Hyrkanian invaders.”

“At least this time, the ill wind is on our side,” Philiope said.

“For the time being,” was Conan’s answer.

* * *

Near dusk, signals were exchanged by means of large ensigns flown forward from the flagships’ mainmasts. The Hyrkanian fleet made a splendid sight abeam, with sails stained red in sunset’s furnace-glare. A hundred or more ships, too unevenly in motion to count, they blanketed the sea like wild ducks settling on a Cimmerian lake. Or a Hyrkanian one... which, as Conan reflected, the Vilayet Sea might soon become.

The wind held past sunset, but both fleets reduced sail to mere scraps atop the foremast, the bare minimum needed to maintain station and direction in the breeze. Scattering was now a greater threat to the invasion plan than slowness. Even so, it was ordered that no lights be shown by night, in hopes of drifting past the defenders’ scout ships unseen. Multiple watches were posted to forestall collisions and sneak attacks.

As night closed in black and moonless, the crews slept, scarcely noticing the hardness of the decks and benches they bedded on. Ordinarily these pirates and coasters would have felt uneasy at sleeping on the open sea, far out of sight of land, rather than a sandy beach beneath the hull of their craft. But after their day of labour, there was little strength left for superstition.

By dawn’s first radiance, the two fleets, predictably, had spread. Yet they retained their relative positions, with Conan’s red-ensigned ships scattered somewhat to northward of the main yellow-flagged group. He ordered a signal displayed to close up in formation, and he saw the Hyrkanians set about doing likewise. Watching the distant bobbing craft raise sail, he could not tell which one, if any, the master navigator Crotalus rode aboard. He assumed it was a large, reddish-hued oarship just astern of the centre, since the rest seemed to gauge their positions more by it than by the flagship.

Still the wind blew hot and harsh as ever. Gnawing his breakfast biscuit, Conan thought it strange and unnatural to stand far out at sea and feel his throat parched with dryness. In the rigging of his drifting vessel, the breeze hummed, sounding to his ears like the faint, faraway strumming of a harp.

Sails were raised and oar-labour resumed, though the steady downwind motion of the ship called for short, neat oar-strokes that were none too taxing on the crew. Conan kept his fleet a little apart from the main one, letting his captains fall into two rough lines abreast. He stationed his flagship at the port end of the stemmost line, so that he could take in his small fleet and the forward horizon in a single sweeping glance.

They then passed hours in the grip of the unnatural east wind. Their steady forward motion made the air seem oddly still. Wind-driven waves overtook the ship at easy intervals, running listless from stem to bow without troubling the rowers. Dust from the eastern steppe lent the sky a yellow tinge, melding with the shimmer of heat and the fierce sea-glare to make it seem as if the Remorseless sailed the sea inside a bottle moulded of greenish glass.

Conan divided his labour between the steering-sweeps and the upper stemmost oar. He rowed beside Philiope, doing his best to keep the fair young landlubber from weakening herself with over-exertion. Noon rations were dealt out in shifts, with water portions trebled by Conan’s order; this helped relieve the sweating pirates and silence their demands for grog.

Then, in the afternoon, a cry came down from the mast-top. Low-lying galleys, difficult to see because of the absence of sails and masts, had slipped over the western horizon.

Standing in the bow of the Hyrkanian flagship Fearnought, the war-chief Antulla squinted. Shading his eyes, he peered westward. This sea-spying was irksome, more painful than watching enemies deploy over the boundless grasses of the steppe. With the sun’s brightness thrown up into his face by the waves, it was more like tracking white tigers across northern snowfields on a sun-bright day.

There, in any case, were the enemy ships, creeping like insects over the far rim of the world. The faint, rhythmic flash of their oars was the only thing that made their existence seem certain. There were not many—just three, widely spaced, and perhaps, there, a fourth. Was that a sail scraping the horizon? The pale speck flickered in and out of view, possibly changing tack; in any event, it could hardly be considered important.

Maintain course due west, that was Antulla’s unspoken order to the fleet. This sorcerous wind should bear them straight to Aghrapur, so he had been assured. Drive forward swiftly and crush the enemy line, if a line it truly was....

The warlord glanced back thoughtfully toward Crotalus’s ship, which lumbered along after his in unbroken formation. The wizard had so far given him no reason to doubt his prognostications; evidently the mage had a form of mystic vision that told him his own position at sea and those of other ships, even in night and fog.

Straight on, then. They clearly could overwhelm these few enemies, along with any other stragglers that hove into view. But preferably that task would fall to Amra’s pirates, whom he had providently offered a ship-bounty. They were sea-harriers, after all, not land fighters, and would be of little use in the actual invasion. With any luck, they might be substantially whittled down by the Turanians in the course of a naval action.

If, indeed, it came to that. The wizard had lately intimated to him that with the aid of new sorcerous weapons, he might destroy enemy ships without even stopping to ram or grapple them. Such a boon, if it spared him from scattering his ships and slowing the whole fleet’s westward rush, would be Erlik-sent.

“This is like a massed charge against Yuetshi skirmishers—except that our steeds are made of timber instead of horse-flesh.” Adi Bulbul, stepping forward from the line of Antulla’s staff officers, took his place beside the war-chief in the Fearnought's bow. “To think of so few ships trying to oppose our combined fleet,” he said, thumping his fist against one of the raised gangplanks. “They would do better to turn and flee.”

“If they could outrun us without sails,” the war-chief said. “It may be too late even for that.”

The fleet surged forward, maintaining a short, brisk stroke of the oars that was proportionate to their wind-borne speed. The pirate-fleet kept their station to starboard, pulling a little ahead as Antulla had hoped. Before them, the enemy ships drew steadily nearer, increasing in number to seven. Others closed in at long intervals from the north and south, while small, fast sailers raced over the horizon bearing messages. It was evident that their foe was scattered, and now strained to close ranks and oppose their progress. The ships, fair-sized galleys, merged in a line before them, rowing spiritedly upwind to meet an almost certain doom.

“Crotalus’s barge hauls forward after us and to port,” Adi Bulbul observed, gazing astern at the increased oar-stroking of the great ship. “He said he would need sea-room for his tricks.”

“Aye,” Antulla said, “and our captains have been warned to stay out of his way. But what is that rising from his deck, another sail?”

Before his eyes and those of the watching fleet, a strange emergence was taking place on the mastless foredeck of the wizard’s dromon. Up from the circle of busy priestlings and acolytes, issuing perhaps from below-decks, a shapeless, silvery-white bubble rose and strained forward in the wind. The oblong mass shimmered and billowed with a skin finer than any sailcloth, thrusting upward like a mushroom-cup bursting from the damp earth. The priestly toilers stepped back from it, and it lifted free, a giant, arching sack or canopy. From its base there blossomed bright flame and gouts of oily-looking smoke. “They are afire!” Adi Bulbul gasped.

“No, it is the silk,” the war-chief exclaimed, “the spinnings of the giant worms the wizard showed me in his shipyards! Somehow it lives and flies of its own will, like the moths that gave it birth!”

“It bears a vat of fire beneath it,” Adi Bulbul pointed out. “Look, they are sending it toward the enemy ships!” The little cavalryman spoke true. The great bag of silk, full and billowing now with smoky vapours rising from the fire-pan below, lifted out over the ship’s bow and sailed away downwind. Long lines ran from the open bottom of the high-domed canopy to the flaming metal cauldron beneath; these supports must have been of finely worked chain, for they did not bum through in the seething flames, nor did they carry fire upward to the silk. More lines depended beneath the fire-bucket, trailing down to the surface of the sea. These evidently served as weights, keeping the fire sack’s course flat and steady as it bore toward the massing enemy.

“It will fly straight upon them!” Adi Bulbul declared in glee. “And look, the priests are launching another!”

In truth, a second fire-canopy was already billowing up from the deck of the dromon. Soon it too flew out over the sea, swaying sedately as it went, and dripping liquid fire onto the waves. Some moments later, a third, and then a fourth were launched, each one hailed by cheers and the thumping of oars from the watching fleet.

The confusion the fire-canopies caused among the foe-men was instantaneous. The endmost ships of the enemy line commenced outward turns immediately, and thereby succeeded in making themselves broader targets. The centre ships slowed and fell back before the looming menace, quickly losing steerage-way. When, some moments later, they reversed oars and began backing so as to regain the ability to steer, it appeared to the watchers that at least two of them collided and wallowed helpless.

Meanwhile the fire-canopies bore down inexorably on them. Because of irregularities in the wind, or the launching ship’s sideward motion, they spread to encompass the whole of the enemy line. The first one came abreast of a turning galley, its oars still churning in a desperate effort to escape. There must have been grapnel hooks on the lines that trailed in the water, because the flying weapon caught and settled directly over the luckless ship. Its fire-um tipped beneath it, pouring hot oil into the hull. Flames rose up immediately, amid an ant-like flailing and splashing as men leaped overboard. The blaze at length set fire to the fouled canopy, which flared bright in the sky; then it settled over the doomed vessel like a glowing, ashen shroud.

A second ship, one of those rowing fastest to escape, was then fouled and set afire by another of the drifting canopies. The third canopy passed through the enemy line—-harmlessly, except that it caused a tangle of oars between two ships as they veered aside—while the fourth snagged on an already burning ship. A moment after the collision, it exploded, sending a pillar of fire and smoke heavenward and raining flaming bits over the surrounding water.

“Erlik bear witness to the Keshan’s sorcery,” Antulla murmured at the sight. “He is a formidable ally!”

“They are scattered! Their line is broken!” Adi Bulbul waxed jubilant, capering excitedly before the bow-rail. “May they boil in a scalding sea, the faithless Turanian goats! Our way is now clear to Aghrapur!”

“Nay, those burning hulks are still a hazard.” Chief Antulla turned on his heel, heading astern. “Those others may try to run us afoul of them, or pin us with rams as we steer past. I do not intend to lose a single ship to those swine! We’ll signal the entire fleet to bear southward, clear of the danger.”

“That may slow us somewhat, My Chief,” Adi Bulbul said, trailing after him. “But mayhap it is best. What of the pirates, will they keep station?”

“They can pass to the north of the fires and rejoin us later,” Antulla said. “Or stay and fight the Turanian Navy, if they wish. Little matters it to me!”

Aboard the Remorseless, Conan and Philiope watched the devastation wrought by the floating fire-canopies and the play of signals aboard the Hyrkanian flagship.

“What are those horse-happy fools doing now?” Conan wondered aloud as the whole huge fleet commenced a manoeuvre southward by westward.

“They fear the sorcerous fires,” Philiope suggested, pointing to the drifting hulks that poured smoke over the water.

“As I do,” Conan avowed. “I will not steer into them, as our allies would have us do. But I would not have circled around them, either.” He kept his massive steering oar steady, issuing no command to the rowers to change course.

“We few pirates may have to face alone the bulk of the Turanians,” Philiope said. She pointed a finger ahead to the enemy ships, who were manoeuvring beyond the smoke-plumes.

“Good, then,” Conan replied. “We will win more prizes and bounties.”

Of the ten remaining galleys in the Turanian formation, six veered southward to head off the main body of Hyrkanians. The four nearer ones chose to engage the smaller pirate force, surging forward out of the smoke at ramming speed. To their number were added two more ships that bore in from the north, closing with a good chance of joining in before the fight was resolved. All were ships of the Imperial line—to Conan’s estimation, dromons as much as two-thirds the size of his own flagship, and so potentially a match for his larger, ill-assorted fleet.

His captains followed the battle-plan he had given them, trending in a double rank toward the enemies—but without quite turning head-on, still offering their port bows as potential targets. Conan followed their lead, steering ahead and keeping his rowers toiling at a moderate pace. If any of his front rank should be holed with a ram, he and the other ships in the rear should be able to pin the enemy in place and overwhelm him by boarding, two or more ships against one. A costly and time-consuming tactic, but an effective trap for an unwary foe.

Still, the best hope was to avoid a ram. The Turanian crews, already weary from their long upwind pull, were now pressed to their limit at maximum speed, while the pirates still had strength to manoeuvre. As the two rows of ships raced ahead, Conan waited to see if his captains would remember his instructions.

The day was brilliant. The wicked prongs of the enemy rams seethed and foamed below the blue-green waves, occasionally breaking the surface with a flash of chisel-edged bronze. The feverish thumping of the enemy hortators fought its way upwind, intruding over the more measured pace of the pirates’ own drums. The crews of both squadrons strained together in long, straight rows of bobbing black heads, intent on their labour.

Then at once orders rang out, the first shout recognizable in Santhindrissa’s high, harsh voice. Beginning just ahead of the flagship with her crack ship Tormentress, proceeding in near-perfect order, the front rank of ships made a turn, port oars backing and starboard crews toiling at double speed. Instead of baulking or racing ahead to evade the Turanian rams, the four galleys turned short; paralleling their attackers, they matched them almost ram-to-ram. Oars churned and splashed, with thumps and yells resounding as some oar-blades failed to bite the turgid water. Then more commands were bellowed and shrieked.

Oar-crews, after lathering the sea to a pale foam, hauled in their blades with a great thumping and scraping, and with a rumble of curses from those who got in the way of oar-butts.

The Turanians, facing rearward in their benches, might have heard their doom approaching; in any event they were too weak to avoid it. With a rough, harsh clattering, it began... a sound that soon redoubled itself into a fearsome grating and rending. Then it became a splintering, shrieking cacophony of timber and bellowing lungs, as four heavy prows raked the length of the Turanian hulls, snapping and splintering oar-shafts before them, driving the helves into the chests and bellies of helpless rowers. The front rank of ships raked three enemies to port, one to starboard. Leaving their victims heeling in the water, they ran out their oars once again and stroked onward.

The terror was not ended, though; now the crippled Turanians faced the second rank of pirates. It was Conan’s turn to bellow orders, and his crew’s to back-water and double-stroke. Then oars were hauled in swiftly, starboard side only. The victims, spun in place by the splintering impact of the rams, now presented their undamaged oar-banks to be sheared away in a hellish repetition of the same splintering chaos.

Conan’s Remorseless, being larger and heavier, did not wholly clear the enemy’s hull. After smashing through the oars, his ram bit in astern, tearing loose planking and benches to yield up a different texture of rending scream. The great ship’s momentum, aided by the wind and the port oars, was enough to run in over the keel of the galley.

Conan, staring grim-faced overside, saw the smaller warship’s sternpost cut away. It carried the steersmen and helmeted captain down with it into blue depths, to be rolled immediately under the foam of churning oars.

“Oh, Mitra! How horrible it is!” Philiope, gazing past his shoulder, turned and staggered away inboard to be ill. Conan only watched, grim-faced.

The flagship drove on, its triple-banked oars barely stumbling over the wreckage. A moment later, at Conan’s order, the starboard oars were run out again. Alongside them, the rear rank of pirates stretched intact, its rowers gazing back at their handiwork with spirited shouts. Astern were left four oarless ships full of crippled, gasping oarsmen, one of the vessels a mere broken hull foundering in the waves.

Ahead, the nearest of the two relieving ships bore in steadily. It was a long, low, roofed-over galley, with only a few dozen marine troops and officers, including a catapult crew, visible on its upper deck. Below them, its single bank of oars stroked vigorously, moving with unnatural speed and certainty. The raking manoeuvre had stretched the pirate fleet into a staggered line, with the flagship now near the centre. This enemy seemed intent on ramming or throwing fire into some of the smaller ships at the head of the line.

“I have seen that kind of craft before,” Conan told his fellow steersmen. Summoning an oar-captain to take his place at the helm, he strode forward toward the bows, to the war-engines that had been readied when the enemy first hove into sight. One of them, a giant crossbow, had been specially constructed to Conan’s order. Steel-bladed arrows taller than a man, with wrist-thick iron shafts fletched in copper plate, stood in a rack before the mast.

“Rufias, help me bring her to bear.” Manhandling the weapon around on its pivot, Conan let the pirate-officer lock in the bearing and elevation with wedges. There was no roll to speak of, only the surge of the oar-strokes, and the wind was still favourable, so Conan trained her low. “Ready, stand clear!” Pulling the lanyard, he watched the bow release with a creak of flexing timbers and a twanging of the horse-hide cable.

“A true flight, Cap’n,” Rufias ventured.

“No, high,” Conan said, gauging the missile’s trajectory. “Jack her down three or four notches.”

Almost making him into a liar, the arrow struck the ship’s covered stem—but high, sending some wood splinters flying and probably glancing off on the other side. It did no visible damage, because no steering oars were in evidence. The men on the upper deck paused only briefly at the impact, likely impressed by the shaft’s long range; then they turned back to their own weapons.

“See, Cap’n,” Rufias complained. “A missile like that is scarcely worth hurling at ’em! It cannot start a leak in their hull, as I told you. For that, you need a plunging shot. At best, this skewer may empty an oar-bench, but only temporarily....”

Nevertheless, the bellyaching pirate obeyed Conan’s order and adjusted the wedges. By that time, a score of men conscripted from the oar-benches were already dragging back ropes tailed to the heavy bowstring. When the pawl caught, Conan and Rufias lifted and slotted another heavy arrow into place.

“Ready, stand clear!” Conan waited for the roll of the hull, watching the sinister vessel’s course converge with his own. It was plain to him at this range how sinuously the oars moved, each stroke rippling down the vessel’s length in uncanny coordination. Feeling a thrill of revulsion, he jerked the lanyard.

This second flight went low, raising spray from the wave-tops halfway to the target. But, by the goodness of Crom, the arrow skipped off the water and arched up once again. Speeding in under the oars, it punched a hole amidships, near the waterline.

The effect was instantaneous, with oar-blades flailing and splashing down the whole length of the galley. The ship lost way and skewed in the water, the men on deck staggering to their knees with the course change. Then a fierce, clearly audible thumping and crashing commenced. Before the eyes Of Conan’s sail hands and his neck-craning oarsmen, the vessel’s timber deck was smashed and battered, buckling upward from some straining bulk below. The demon broke through first near the bow; it was a jointed, mandibled, many-legged insect-thing that writhed and struggled like a worm pinned to a blotter. In its throes of rage and agony, the titanic centipede ceased rowing and set about demolishing its own ship, splintering timbers fore and aft. The human crew had no escape but to throw themselves overboard and tread water, clinging to cast-off oars.

“See there, Rufias!” Conan told his artillery officer, smiting the astonished man on the shoulder. “One rower, one missile!” As the hellishly thrashing wreckage fell away astern, he added, “Here now, see that this arrow-thrower is charged and ready. Crotalus certainly gave the Turanians more than one of those monstrous things.”

Standing in the bows of the Fearnought, Chief Antulla and his retinue were in a position to note the havoc wrought by Amra and his pirates. They saw three enemy ships left helpless in the running fight, and watched a fourth dromon stand off and engage the flotilla at long range, trading catapult rounds in an attempt to sink the smaller galleys. The Hyrkanian vantage was from somewhat astern, however; the main fleet had been slowed considerably by its turning manoeuvre, and by the harrying of the remaining four attackers.

“The pirate blackguards are faring better than we are,” Antulla complained. “Would that they had kept their rightful place beside us and taken on the rest of the Hyrkanians.”

“Well,” Adi Bulbul said, “we have lost but one ship so far, to our attacker’s five.” He glanced back to a new smoke-plume that marked a blazing Hyrkanian galley beyond the forest of masts and sails. “That, and a half-dozen' ships detained temporarily while subduing the ones we rammed and grappled. Once their officers are put to the sword and the rowers sworn to Hyrkania, we may end this voyage with more hulls than we started with.”

“I would rather keep the fleet together,” the war-chief said. “These harrying tactics, feinting at our outlying ships and throwing fire into the rigging, have kept the enemy clear of Crotalus’s fire-canopies.” He gestured to the wizard’s ship, which had fallen back astern. “They disrupt the whole formation. We are forced to straggle out into a vulnerable line, while ever more enemy dromons haul up from the south.” Pacing angrily, he drew his cavalry crop and lashed at the rail. “Erlik!” he muttered. “I would feel more at ease now if I had a strong, fast pony between my legs, bearing me straight to my enemy! It is this waiting, this eternal musing and pondering, that makes a naval fight so hard!”

“Turan waits in worse suspense than we do, My Chief.” Adi Bulbul pointed ahead toward the misty west. “Is this so different from a headlong charge across the shallows of the Zaporozhets? There we let the dead fall where they might.”

“Nay, Adi Bulbul,” the war-chief said. “Every galley of ours contains a whole company of troops and cavalry.” He turned his idle steps back toward the mainmast. “Come, let us signal the fleet to close up ranks.”

As the commander moved aft, a sudden shattering noise sounded nearby, followed by shrieks of pain and terror from the oar-banks. Shards of pottery skittered across the deck, along with lurid and sinuous shapes. One of the cavalry-booted mates burst out in violent curses, stamping at something that slithered away under a bench. Meanwhile, both oar-banks broke out in turmoil.

“Curse those devils, they have thrown a jarful of snakes aboard!” Adi Bulbul pointed wrathfully at one of the Turanian catapult-frigates. It had succeeded in dashing up opposite the flagship, and now sheered off amid splashing projectiles and veering rams.

Below-decks, the benches boiled with half-clad, bare- foot rowers recoiling from asps, adders, and vipers that had flopped and slithered down among them. Some men writhed in pain from deadly bites, while others frothed and jabbered in their places, unharmed but seized by uncontrollable fear. Oars dragged and skipped in the waves, causing countless thumps and fractures, while the great vessel faltered and lost way. The panic spread even to the hold, where the screams and stampings of tethered horses added to the chaos.

“Blast you, keep on rowing!” Antulla added his horsewhip to those of the other officers, who savagely belaboured the cringing oarsmen. “Every ship in the fleet is watching us! The damned snakes can poison only so many, then they’ll run dry!”

But restoring order to the panicked rowers was nigh impossible. The ship continued wallowing forward under sail as volunteers were sent below with swords, clubs, and torches, on a reptile hunt. Meanwhile, the fleet bunched and broke formation, some ships slowing, others turning to pursue the harrying Turanians. Crotalus’s ship backed oars and stood off upwind, keeping astern of the flagship.

After many minutes of confusion and delay, a few dead reptiles were cast overside, along with the bodies of bitten and trampled crewmen. The remaining rowers were coaxed back into their benches, the oars untangled, and a signal raised to the fleet to resume formation. Then, as oar-stroking commenced, a message came down from the mast-top.

“More enemy ships have been sighted, Sire. A score or more of them converge at fair speed, mainly from the south.” As he relayed the message to his war-chief, Adi Bulbul shaded his eyes against the mid-afternoon glare. But with the sails of the bunched fleet crowding near, it was impossible to see any horizon clearly.

“Well, then, we have another sea-fight ahead of us. For now, steer due westward.” Antulla beckoned a hand on high, calling down godly blessings. “Erlik willing, we will smite our tormentors from the face of the sea!”

“Must these Hyrkanian louts run their invasion like a cavalry dress-parade?”

Conan, driving his flagship westward under sail, gazed astern at the welter of ships and smoke marking the main fleet.

“We broke the Turanian line for them, and cleared their way to Aghrapur! Had they but held their course and cut down a few miserable galleys, victory would be theirs!”

“Now enemy ships gather like vultures,” Philiope said, waving at the straggling masses of sails and galleys to northward and southward. “Soon their way will be closed.”

“Look there, the Turanians have yoked their sailships to the oared dromons.” Santhindrissa, who had come visiting aboard the Remorseless by way of her launch, pointed afar to a broad three-master heeling sharply under sail. Close behind it stroked a mastless heavy galley, able to follow under oar-power without swamping in the east wind. “With sails towing their ramships, they reinforce their line at double speed.”

“All the more trouble for us.” Conan, looking back to the lagging Hyrkanians, scowled in annoyance. “The question is whether or not to turn back and help them out of this fish-broil!”

“We cannot well invade Turan by ourselves,” Philiope pointed out.

“Horse-lubbers or not, they are our allies,” Drissa said. “If we turn and flee after so little fighting, it will be a stain on our pirate honour.”

“Aye,” Conan granted sourly. “We want to keep Antulla in business long enough to pay off our ship bounties, at least. Likely we can earn some more as well.” He shook his black mane dubiously. “But I like not the way this battle is shaping up.”

In the end, they put the issue before the flagship’s crew, along with a ration of grog. The pirates, inflamed by their triumphs so far and spurred by the promise of close action and battle-plunder, assented with a cheer. Their acclamation resounded across the water, quickly spreading to the other ships in the flotilla. The cry was, “For Amra and Victory!”

XIV

Battle Smoke

Turning his ship before the wind and dropping sail, Conan ordered the decks cleared for close action. This meant, among other things, unstepping the oar-benches and laying them flat on deck. Thus the rowers were freed for fending, backing off, turning in place, and the other extravagant motions called for in a ramming duel.

While having the sails and rigging stowed below-deck, he ordered the masts left in place. The giant flagship was unlikely to be jolted or stopped abruptly enough, after all, to bring the massive timbers crashing down on the crew’s heads.

As the pirate fleet turned, many of the Hyrkanian captains made similar preparations, though most of their ships remained under sail. Their formation had grown close and cramped, Conan saw, particularly for such large and heavy-laden craft. He determined to relieve this by an attack on the string of smaller galleys that hedged them in and vexed them with fire-missiles and ram attempts.

The Turanians were slow to see the pirates rounding on them; once they did, they found they lacked the strength and speed to escape through the narrowing breach. In consequence, they were caught turning belatedly to face the new threat, without enough forward momentum to steer effectively for a ram.

The pirates’ previous front rank was now their rear one. The flagship, stationed southernmost, was first to close. Conan selected the largest enemy, a long, low two-decker midway in the Turanian squadron. Ordering his port oars double-stroked and his starboard oars run in, he then toiled briskly alongside his steersmen. Sculling the helves of the long sweeps overhead, they helped to drive the great ship’s stem around to port.

Slowly, ponderously, the bow swung starboard. Turning with deliberate speed, it bore down on the target, driving its ram in under oars that flailed vainly to escape.

A smashing, shouting tumult arose. The stricken Imperial heeled over in the water, its bow slewing back before the impact. Men were flung overside by the force, the sea rising up in a greedy curtain to receive them. Some oars were snapped clean off, others drove inboard like deadly missiles. Meanwhile, the flagship’s ram tore in deep and twisted sideways. It crushed through decking, benches, and mortised hull timbers, along with any flesh and bone that came in its path. The tumult aboard the stricken ship crescendoed in a howling orchestra of offended wood, water, and humanity; soon again it died to a chorus of shrieks, pleadings, and mournful curses from the shipful of survivors.

Then at once, it all was repeated—as, intentionally or not, one of the dromon’s Hyrkanian pursuers overtook its abruptly halted quarry. Lumbering straight on with unopposable speed, it drove its ram in astern on the holed ship’s far side.

Conan felt the shuddering through the deck planks under his feet as the stricken hull strained and twisted, torn cruelly between the two rams. The howling and wailing from alongside suggested that the pitiful ship had been all but destroyed. The toll among the enemy crew, both on board and in the water, must have been immense. But even so, the threat of boarding by the Turanians suddenly increased. Conan was also concerned about the effect on his own ship of the jagged, broken enemy hull twisting and settling over his ram.

“Back oars, both banks! Forward section, fend away to port! Helm, row starboard! We don’t want to be caught against this swamped hulk, with Turanians creeping aboard us to dry off! Back away, double speed now, stroke, and stroke!”

Philiope, gradually becoming resigned to the horrors of war, had taken up a wooden clapper. She plied it sharply now, adding emphasis to the hortator’s thumps, which at times could scarcely be heard over the noise of battle and the stamp of bare feet on the deck. The oarsmen’s pace continued for some moments, yet no shifting of the deck could be felt.

“Enough. Rest yourselves,” Conan growled at last. “We are keel-bound! Work-crews forward... pry us off their hull, or climb down and chop us free if you must. Send archers into the bows to cover our men. We cannot sit out the war here!”

The delay provided a chance to look up and down the battle line, which now appeared to be mainly a row of swamped and burning Turanian ships. Other pirate captains had driven home successful rams, including Drissa and Ferdinald, who had chosen the same fair-sized dromon as their target. Cutlass-blades rang and glinted from the deck of the Turanian ship; the fight, Conan judged, would not last long in view of the odds.

Of the other pirates, one or two were already backing off from holed enemies. It was hard to see from the quarterdeck if any were trapped like him, or had themselves been rammed or boarded. Hulls and masts merged into confusion at a distance, with Hyrkanians steering in between the pirates to open up their formation. The smoke of burning ships, too, spread thicker across the brassy sky, in gathering plumes the wind could not dispel.

The wind—glancing up at the sails of the Hyrkanian ship opposite, he saw them flapping listlessly. “Philiope, look! The day falls calm.”

“Perhaps Crotalus stopped the wind, to keep the Turanians from closing any faster,” the woman said at his shoulder.

“If so, he waited too long.”

Conan pointed westward. Turanian ramships, unaided now by sailing ships, were converging in a new line from north and south. The Hyrkanian fleet, momentarily freed from skirmishers, rowed westward in a spreading mass to meet them.

A message came from the masthead lookout. “Cap’n, the pirates look to be in good order. Five enemies destroyed, two boarded and captured. Brylith’s ship was afire, but the flames are out.”

“Good! Signal the fleet to re-form westward.” Conan gazed down over the rail at the holed, half-swamped bireme, whose surviving oar-crew huddled sullenly amidships. He regarded the allied ship, which was likewise still caught on the far side of the victim and had not bothered to send boarders down on the wreck. “Blast those Hyrkanians for running that hulk afoul of our ram! Now they’ll probably want to give us only a half-bounty for the ship.”

He cursed the sudden lack of wind and waves, too, which might have helped them break free. But now the Hyrkanian crew began rowing in good earnest to haul their ram free, and Conan resolved to try again. “All of you men,” he commanded, “inboard to your oar stations! Ready now and back oars, double speed! Pull, you dogs, before enemy dromons catch us helpless here!”

Under the combined efforts of both ships’ oar-crews, the enemy hulk groaned and twisted in the water. There came a sudden, welcome lifting of the flagship’s deck as the ram pulled free; meanwhile, from the survivors, a moan of dread sounded as their crippled hull dipped and tilted into the sea. The wreck would float by itself, Conan guessed, but little more than rails and keel posts would remain above water. It seemed certain that the great rents in the hull would never be patched.

Conan did not wait to see if the Hyrkanian vessel would also break loose. After plying his sweeps briskly to make his ship’s stem swing port-wise, he ordered a steady forward stroke. The Remorseless fell in with the other pirates where they straggled in a scattering line through the northern flank of the invasion fleet.

The smoke of battle seemed to follow the fleet, staining the afternoon sun and obscuring details at any distance. The pirate flagship now rowed amid a throng of vessels, most of them unnamed Hyrkanians just off the shipways. Their deck crews nevertheless hailed and saluted the Remorseless, comforted by the nearness of a stout three-decker. Conan returned their greetings, though privately he wondered how reliable these new commanders would be in battle.

A little farther off, beyond the masts and flashing oars of his nearest neighbours, he could see the looming hull of Crotalus’s large vessel. Though it had shown itself to be deadly in launching the wind-borne fires, he did not relish its presence.

Somewhere ahead, beyond smoke and obscuring hulls, there arose a familiar din: the crashings, splinterings, and cries of alarm chorused from the throats of massed rowers. The battle was properly joined, then.

Tugging at Conan’s arm, Philiope pointed out fire soaring high above the masts. Black smoke-trails arched across the sky where catapults unleashed their flaming burdens. Their own ship was in artillery range, had Conan been able to see the enemy. Belatedly, he ordered, the ship’s war-engines manned.

The pall of smoke thickened abruptly, from a nearby source. A Hyrkanian two-decker was afire, yellow flames and black, oily smoke pouring up from its stem. Some of the deck crew could be seen bailing water up from the sea onto the blaze, without much success. Near-naked rowers, crowding forward into the bows, were already leaping or being jostled overboard. Soon there would be no place left for them to stand.

It had always amazed Conan how fiercely a ship, even a swamped derelict, would bum. All that the water did not take, the fire would.

“Port side, ship oars!” he called out. “Starboard side, half-stroke, until we snub into this hulk and take on rowers! We can use the extra hands to haul oars. Stand by to fend off, and watch out for those fires!”

The refugees swarmed eagerly aboard, leaping across from the smaller ship’s rail or hauling themselves up from the water. Consisting mostly of small-sized Zaporoskans, spry, naked toilers rather than fighters, they would enable Conan to man his long upper oarshafts from both sides, eight or ten men to an oar. Likely, though, none had ever served on a triple-decker; it would be up to the captain of each individual oar-team to make sure they understood orders and worked efficiently.

As the Remorseless shoved itself clear, smoke from burning vessels gathered in a pall overhead. It turned the narrow seaway into a dim tunnel between rowing and drifting ships, a murky gallery of dangers. The pirate fleet was still roughly in line; Hrandulf’s bireme rowed past while Conan took on men, but it soon was lost to sight in drifting smoke. There astern rowed the pirate-maid Brylith’s scorched galley, but then a larger Hyrkanian vessel hauled in between, searching for the enemy.

The Turanians could hardly be far away. Oar-churnings and the thudding of drums echoed repeatedly through drifting smoke ahead or away to starboard, followed by screams and shuddering crashes. Then arose anguished shouts and the furious clangour of weapons as victors or victims swarmed aboard their rivals. The smoke curtain lifted once, exposing two hulls drifting together with oars dragging and fighters striving on deck. Neither was a pirate; beyond that, it was impossible to tell which side was which, or which vessel might prevail. Moments later, a Hyrkanian ship hove up alongside the two, commands echoing sharply from the quarterdeck. Conan assumed that the fight would be decided favourably and did not alter course to join in.

Then, just ahead, a ship’s bow came in view through the scattering smoke. It was a Turanian, Conan could tell by the gold-work above the ram—a three-decker like his own, possibly a sister-ship.

“Drop our ensign!” was his instant command, sending Philiope running to the mainmast to obey. “Oars forward, full speed!” If he found this ship-maze confusing, his enemy would find it doubly so.

“Port oars, half-speed!” The Turanian vessel had crossed his bow, its long broadside of churning oars taking considerable time to clear. He steered short to follow her, passing inside a drifting curtain of smoke to avoid being too visible. Some officer or lookout aboard the three-decker must have glimpsed his ship by now; conceivably they might even recognize him, and begin hunting him. “All oars half-speed! Lookouts, sing out your sightings!” Straightening his helm, steering blind through the smoke, he hoped that his pirates in the bow would see any obstacle long before he could.

“All clear ahead,” the cry came back moments later. “Enemy ship ahead, but she’s pulling out to ram!”

With the words came tell-tale sounds: the rapid pulse of drumbeats and the slapping of oars, the noise receding rather than drawing near. If he wanted to catch her, he had best quicken his own pace. “All forward, ram speed!” he called to his oarsmen, still blind, trusting to his pirates.

Their forward rush carried them out of the smoke, and the enemy loomed up at once on the starboard bow. The big ship was gathering speed to ram another pirate— Hrandulf, whose ship was caught helplessly backing off, having itself just rammed a Turanian. The sea-chief’s crew hauled their oars inboard in time, averting some damage; but they could not stop the giant ship’s double ram from punching into them amidships, driving them up hard against the flank of the galley they had holed.

As the Remorseless bore in, the three-decker’s oars already thrashed to reverse its motion. They must have thought Conan an ally speeding to help; otherwise, they might not have left themselves so vulnerable. Warning shouts and astonished looks came from the quarterdeck as the captured Turanian three-decker chained at them. Then chaos, as the pirate flagship drove into their stem quarter with devastating speed, rocking and shattering the hull with its double ram.

“Now take her!” Conan shouted before the tumult had died. “Pick your drunken selves up from the deck, and to arms! Let’s teach these worthless Imperials some tricks with the cutlass, how to slash and thrust neatly! Forward, for the aid of Hrandulf and our Brotherhood!”

In moments, the pirates seized weapons and swarmed up over the bows, bounding and clambering onto the stem deck of the galley with blood-chilling cries. The officers and guards there, taken by surprise, were soon overcome. By the time Conan came running from astern, leaping the rail, the deck was littered with bodies already being stripped of their costly Turanian naval regalia and weaponry. He pushed through the milling throng of pirates to the fight amidships, where a phalanx of marines still resisted the boarders.

The Turanians fought doggedly and efficiently. They kept their flanks tight against the side-rails and replaced those who died with fresh, ready reserves. But they were embattled from both sides—for Hrandulf’s crew, outraged at being pinned on the Turanian’s ram, had come swarming up over the bows and captured the forepart of the ship. Likely the Imperials had not wanted a boarding action, wishing instead to ram and disable as many invaders as they could. Though skilled fighters, they were checked by the pirates’ ferocity, able to do little more than defend. Furthermore, their rowers huddled below-decks, unready to fight, while every man and woman of the pirate crews took up sword, ax, or dagger and came howling after blood and loot.

“Enough of this fencing!” Conan raged at last, losing patience with the deadlock. “Are we to dance forever with these Imperials, pretty as they are in their purple capes?” Springing to the mizzenmast that towered over the defenders’ line, he climbed partway up. He hacked loose one of the rope stays crossing from the maintop, doubled the cut end around his arm, and swung down into the enemy’s midst. Landing in a tumble of marines, he rolled to his feet instantly, cutlass flashing.

The fight was swift and furious. Conan thrust and slashed, his bright blade licking out to paint limbs, bellies, and throats with its red-dripping stain. Nearly naked in flimsy pantaloons and sea-boots, the pirate-chief wove and darted agilely between sabre-cuts; charging and tripping up enemies, he shoved them, often as not, into the path of their comrades’ ill-aimed strokes. Where his foes struck at him, he was no more, anticipating their moves with the primal cunning and agility of a forest cat. To strike at Amra the Lion was to prod death with a silver goad; around him, men toppled like grain-sheaves caught in a harvest.

Meanwhile, with a howling clamour, his pirates swarmed in fore and aft, hacking and dragging down beleaguered marines. A frenzy of slaughter swept across the deck, resounding with shrieks, mad curses, and the horrid, insistent chop of blades rising and falling. Then there was breathless silence, followed by wild yelps and howls of pirate victory.

The deck was theirs. Rowers still hid below, and possibly some fighters as well; Conan’s men would find out as they searched the foundering vessel for booty. Hrandulf’s men had begun pillaging the forepart; but now Conan heard the sea-chief call them back, most likely to help with the second melee that still raged between his bireme and the Turanians he had rammed.

Conan resolved to offer him help, if needed. This damaged three-decker was no great prize, since he already owned one. But very likely Hrandulf’s galley could be patched and rowed away, so long as it was preserved from fire and enemy boarders.

This Hyrkanian ship had not filled and settled much, doubtless because it was still hooked on Conan’s ram. Feeling a shifting in the deck, he looked back to his own vessel grappled astern.

To his horror, he saw yet another giant ship gliding silently toward him out of the battle smoke: a Turanian, oars indrawn for the sake of stealth. As he watched, the dromon’s bow snubbed against the Remorseless's stem quarter, its ram scraping his hull with a shuddering groan.

High up in the enemy’s bows was rigged a sort of war-crane, a broad boom with a gang-ramp atop it. Supported by ropes from the foremast, it was tipped with a heavy bronze hook, or spike, resembling a crow’s beak—a corvus, Conan had heard such a thing called. Helplessly watching the ships grind together, he saw this tackle suddenly released. It sent the boom toppling outboard with a crash, spiking deeply into his flagship’s deck.

Here, then, was a tactic the Turanians were relying on to stop the invasion fleet. If you could not hole or bum or capture the enemy, then pin him in place, so their thinking went, and fight a boarding action with massed marines.

A daring plan, but Conan could not let it succeed. The Remorseless was his by right of theft; he had left Philiope in the bows, and he could not let his crew be stranded on these sinking hulks. As Imperial troops charged across the spiked gangway, he started forward, bellowing.

“Pirates, rally to your chief! Our flagship is under attack—our shelter, and our means of escape! Drop your loot and defend your ship! Come, dogs, and slay fiercely, for Amra and the Red Brotherhood!”

Moments later, his cries were drowned out in sword-clashes as pirates met their attackers on the embattled deck. This new horde of Imperial marines was primed for conquest, but Conan’s men were frenzied and desperate. So the tumult raged on as day dwindled into a red, bloody welter of sunset.

XV

Wizard’s Moon

“Tell me, cousin... is that the sunset away to westward, or is it the flame of our enemies’ fleet burning?”

War Chief Antulla’s voice rose weakly from where he reclined against the mainmast, his chest pierced by an enemy marksman’s arrow. The flagship, though fouled and rammed afore and astern, was still under Hyrkanian command, with invasion troops holding the enemy at bay.

“’Tis both, Milord,” Adi Bulbul answered judiciously. Amid the circle of officers, he alone knelt at his dying chieftain’s side, seeking to comfort him. “We shall doubtless win a great victory for Hyrkania this night! Those enemy ships that are not aflame are mostly holed and grappled, or else beset by boarding parties.”

“As are our own ships,” Antulla said with a knowing look at his envoy. “Do not try to mislead me, old friend! In truth, our invasion has been stopped here, far from land. There cannot be enough ships left sailing free to storm the coast of Turan.”

“Nay, Sire. Our fleet hangs together in the face of this attack.” The little cavalry officer looked abeam at the smoky, twilit tangle of fouled, swamped, and burning ships. Crazily interspersed, they spread away out of sight on either side of the flagship. “If only we could break this deadlock...The bitterness rose up in his throat, cloying his speech.

“Our Hyrkanian troops are the best fighters in the world,” the war-chief reminded him.

“Yes, in truth, our marines, our cavalry! And what of the magical protections the wizard Crotalus was to lend us?” Adi Bulbul gazed astern across a man-made lagoon of ships to the sorcerer’s galley, where it lay similarly enmeshed. The vessel’s deck was all but empty, its troops engaged in fighting aboard neighbouring ships. “The Keshan’s mystical wind that bore us toward Turan has died out. His floating djinni worked destruction among the enemy, but he has not launched any new spells since then.”

“Perhaps the wizard waits for nightfall to perform his greatest magic,” Antulla muttered weakly, slipping further toward death. “Have faith, Adi Bulbul. We can prevail.”

“Yes, truly, Sire,” the steppe-rider said, supporting his chief’s shoulders. “We have the finest ships, men, and horses, all of them craving victory! There must be some way....

As night settled in, Conan crouched behind the rail, awaiting the next attack. Leading his pirates in a battle-frenzy, he had driven the Turanians off his flagship, with Philiope howling and flailing her cutlass beside him as fiercely as any man of his crew.

Flushed with victory, they swarmed across the boarding ramp and cleared the deck of the enemy ship as well—not once but twice, only to be driven back both times by equally fierce counter-attacks. A holed, foundering Turanian galley had grappled on at the far side of the first. Its flooding decks were a seemingly limitless reservoir of fresh fighters to take the place of the Turanian dead, who lay now in windrows across the enemy deck.

“I don’t know what can be worse than this futile, endless fighting,” Philiope sobbed at Conan’s shoulder, preparing herself for the next skirmish. “We try to kill them, and they try to kill us, all in this hellish desert of burning ships—but what is the purpose?”

Comforting her, Conan felt his own faith in war sorely shaken. The afternoon’s splendid sea-fight had degenerated into a benighted melee; the two proud navies were locked in a bloody stalemate, each ship battling for survival by the fitful light of burning vessels. The fleets drifted in a mad entanglement, half of the ships caught up in melee, half of the crews huddling in fear below-decks or striving to plug holes. It was nearly impossible even to see the stricken hulks or the creeping enemy, for the scattered fires scarcely reflected off the rolling billows of smoke, while the flames themselves burned greedy-bright, stabbing the eye painfully if one looked too close. There was no moon in the sky, and no hope of any appearing later tonight. That had been planned well in advance to aid the success of the invasion.

Knowing this, Conan felt an uncanny prickle of his neck-hairs at seeing a full moon in the east, rising above the fleet.

A strange, jaundiced moon it was, wavering shapeless as it floated up among the masts and the angling smoke-plumes. It had the full, gloating size of a new-risen moon, but too much colour for its height in the sky, hovering yellow and lurid in the black, amorphous night.

Conan was not the only one to see it.

“There is the worst omen I have ever seen,” a voice remarked from nearby.

“A witch’s moon! But how can there be any moon, when there is so much smoke?”

“Enough, dogs! It is a fraud, a mere magician’s trick!”

Conan, worried about the unmanageable superstitions of his pirates, spoke up harshly to silence them. “See there, it floats above Crotalus’s barge! He is raising up another of his fire-bags, and the light from the blazing urn beneath it shines up through the fabric. ’Tis no sending from the gods!”

“A false moon,” the voices murmured in troubled awe. “What does the wizard hope to conjure with it, then?” “Likely just enough light for us to cut and thrust by.” Addressing their fears, Conan managed to sound mildly reasonable. “Crotalus is our ally now, remember.”

“Nay enough, Cap’n,” Old Yorkin’s voice piped up sharply from the mizzen. “That warlock is no friend of our Brotherhood’s, so they tell me! An’ this conjure-moon of his, I like it not. ’Twill draw up the spirits, I’d warrant—” “Nonsense, you old blatherer!” Conan did not enjoy berating the venerable pirate-priest, but he saw an immediate need to control his men. “If you really think undead spirits will come flocking up out of the sea to that floating gasbag, you are more addle-brained than ever!”

“Here now, Cap’n! Show some respect for an elder sage—”

The pirates’ protests were cut short by the thudding of feet on the gang-ramp as a new wave of Turanians came swarming overside. Conan sprang up onto the ramp, while his crew rushed to meet the boarders along its sides and at the rail.

The fight raged fierce and deadly, but the new light of the hovering ersatz moon gave the defenders an advantage. Beating back their attackers, they were able to pursue them pell-mell through the heaps of bodies on the Turanian deck. The momentum of their charge carried them clear across the attacker’s decks and down to the broken deck of the farther Turanian dromon. It lolled there in deeper shadow, moored half-sunk beside its luckier neighbour.

Where their surviving enemies had fled to in the dimness was uncertain. Two more rammed, fouled galleys loomed adjacent, in easy leaping and clambering range. One or both of them must be in Turanian hands, now if not before; it was hard to tell in this floating graveyard of ships.

“No sense chasing them farther,” Conan said, turning to those hardiest half-dozen who had followed him this far. “We might be cut off from our own ship.” He scraped the tip of his cutlass against the deck underfoot. “We should untie this scow and let it founder. That might keep them from creeping back.”

“It would float, sure,” Hrandulf said, surveying the sloping deck. “There is no way to scuttle it without ballast.” “Even so,” Conan said, “it would be a start at unfouling the Remorseless and our prize, here.” He indicated the Turanian ship alongside. From the oarports, frightened faces could be seen peering out; the scuppers, he noticed, dripped red with congealing blood. “Come along, let’s haul out some of these craven rowers and tell them they’re pirates now! They can begin the untangling.”

“Cap’n, I saw some-aught!”

One of Conan’s pirates backed away gingerly from the waterline at the low side of the deck. He spoke in a high tremor, a contagion of fear. Philiope clutched at Conan’s arm, but he shook her off and rounded on the man, bluff and hearty. “Nonsense, Ogdus, what could you see that’d be any worse than the work of your own hand this night? Come along now, and we’ll be about our business.”

“Nay, Cap’n, it was a face! I saw it glaring’ up at me out of the sea, calm an’ sporty-like under there, such as no mortal human ought to be!”

“What? ’Twas your own reflection, that’s all!” In a calculated display of fearlessness, Conan strode down to the waterside. “That, or a floating body. Erlik knows, there’re more of them than the sharks can eat in a day!” He eyed the calm, man-made lagoon, fringed with charred timbers and bloody foam. It was no pleasant sight, particularly where the yellow-smudged reflection of Crotalus’s mock-moon shone up from the wavelets.

“’Twas no reflection, Cap’n!” the man whined. “I recognized his face. It was Zagar, who I owed gambling’ money to when he passed on. An’ he had his head back... it was stuck-on, like!”

The pirate fingered and plucked nervously at his own throat, obviously on the verge of gibbering panic. His reference to the Shemite pirate, beheaded long ago by a catapult, had plainly shaken the others as well. The strain of a pitched battle, new to these impulsive sea-thieves, was taking its toll. And the loom of a sorcerous moon did little to allay the rising dread.

“Here now, Ogdus,” Conan chided. “Come back with us and have a tot of rum. That will rinse these false visions from your brain.”

Taking upon themselves the task of undoing the tow-ropes from the stanchions aboard the seaworthy Turanian vessel, they stood on deck and watched the derelict scrape and settle to a low, ghostly outline in the water. Then they made their way forward toward the flagship, over deck planks slimy and treacherous with bodies and blood.

“If we re-rig the mast to that infernal boarding-plank, likely we can haul it free of our deck—or else unlimber it from this end and cast it overside. But say, what’s that?” Conan halted aback at a dark shape that rose up near the rail. “I thought we sent the wounded below—”

“The wounded, aye,” a thick, glottal voice replied, “and the dead as well. You have sent many men below, O Amra of the Bloody Coast!”

“Who be you then, that knows my name?” Stepping forward, Conan challenged the unseen figure. “Another Imperial spy?”

He squinted in the half-light from the bloated moon-lamp astern and made out a pudgy, scar-faced ruffian whose hair and loose clothing ran with water, as if he had just clambered overside. “Do I know your face from somewhere?”

“You may not know it, though yet you murdered it!” the thick, wet voice replied. “I be Garfalk of Yaralet, a pirate captain like yourself... until your mealy-mouthed assassin stuck his dagger into me!” Stepping forth into the light, the intruder drew wide his dripping vest and shirt. His gesture revealed, above the hilts of dagger and cutlass thrust through his knotted sash, a pale-lipped stab wound clean under the heart.

Conan felt hairs prickle at the back of his neck. “You be phantom, then,” he said. “Bodiless ghost, or teasing devil!” Drawing his own cutlass, he held it up before him. “But I warn you, spectre—fly back to your sea-bottom and haunt me not, for I have never yet seen shade or supernatural monster that will not part before the swipe of steel!” “Mortal flesh will part too,” the resurrected Garfalk answered. Drawing his cutlass, he hacked it against the rail so as to lever out a long, pale sliver. “It slices a cursed bit faster and more painfully when alive, I’d add, though the result be no more permanent than my own death.”

“Nor mine,” croaked another dripping figure, hauling itself up over the rail and menacing Hrandulf. “So fear not death, Hrandulf Brotherslayer, Chief of the Sea Traitors!” “Nor mine, vile looter of the dead!” A third sodden corpse rose up gurgling before Ogdus, where he stood stricken and quivering. It was in truth Zagar the Shemite, and his head was indeed somewhat askew.

“Die again then, if you must!” Before any more zombies could appear, Conan lashed out at Garfalk, aiming for the wound that was already open in the dead pirate’s chest. His blade struck home, but sluggishly, lagging in flesh and bone that felt sodden and leathery. The delay almost cost him a sword-hand as the pirate’s blade came slashing down before his riven chest; it glanced ringingly off Conan’s steel as it pulled free. The chiming clash was echoed on two sides as Hrandulf and, belatedly, Ogdus, drew steel and met their ghostly foes.

“There, you see, fighting against Garfalk of Yaralet in good earnest is riskier than sending a sneaking assassin in your place!” The undead captain slashed and thrust smoothly, seeming to have lost little dexterity though waterlogged. “I could have beaten you when I was alive, too! But I fight better dead, untroubled by wounds.”

The truth of his words was shown that same instant: flicking sidewards in a slash, Conan’s blade hacked through his wrist like a cleaver halving a mackerel. Hand and sword clattered to the deck; but Garfalk, unfazed, dipped low and snatched up his sword-hilt in his other hand.

“Back to the grave, restless spirit,” Conan sought to abjure him. “You have no natural place in this world. Your presence here is an abomination.”

“Do not fear, your guilt will be atoned soon.” Shaking his sword casually free of the clutch of his severed fingers, Garfalk let the hand flop again to the deck. “You, too, will welcome death, knowing that such a trifle as this can be repaired later....”

But the words were scarcely out of Garfalk’s mouth before Conan, taking advantage of the zombie’s momentary distraction, ducked under the half-extended sword. Striking again at the twice-wounded, bloodlessly gaping chest, he drove the point of his cutlass in and through the spine beyond. Straight back the blade went, into the ship’s oaken rail, where it lodged solidly.

Then—while the thing called Garfalk flopped and lunged vainly against the heavy brass ring-hilt, its voice reduced to a wheezing croak by the blade transfixing its chest—Conan snatched the sword out of the pirate’s hand and turned to aid his friends. Zagar’s head he struck from his shoulders once again, deftly kicking it overside as it bounced off the deck. Hrandulf’s nameless foe he disabled by chopping a knee out from under him, and then foot for good measure as the being crept and writhed across the deck.

“Come,” Conan commanded, drawing the quaking Philiope to his side. “Let us depart this cursed death-ship! We’ll bum her to the waterline if need be, to rid us of these monsters... though we must get unfouled of her first.”

Leading the way, he sprinted across the boarding-ramp to his own ship... and into a nightmare of charnel, unimaginable horror. On all sides, by the yellow light of the leering witch-moon, his crew stood embattled—fencing, smiting, and struggling against hideous undead pirates who heaved themselves up over the flagship’s rails and came slouching across the deck.

Ranting zombies they were, hideously decayed and mutilated, stalking relentlessly forward while babbling the crimes and omissions of their slayers and imagined enemies. Mere skeletons, some were, or far, far less... just agglomerations of a few bones and organs that looked to be bound together by old ropes, sea-vines, and writhing eels. But all were armed with sharp-edged swords, and all came lurching or creeping on a tireless quest for vengeance.

“By Crom and all his grey-cloaked Fates!” Conan swore from the quarterdeck. “This is Crotalus’s doing, and I will have his shaven sorcerous head for it!”

“I doubt as much,” a voice rasped near at hand, “for he is a great wizard, Captain Amra, and you but a pirate. And pirates may wreak their revenge only on other pirates, once they have been banished below to Dagon’s watery realm.”

“Back, foul shade! Who be you! Knulf, by Set’s serpent-tongue!” Drawing steel, Conan crossed swords angrily with his dead rival, who bellowed and smote back just as fiercely as he had in life. He was in fair shape, having taken only a dagger-thrust in the back; except for a greenish pallor and a blubbery look about the lips, he seemed his old self.

“Rotten cadaver, how many times do I have to kill you?” Slashing and parrying with all his might, Conan nevertheless found himself forced back by his reckless, supernaturally skilled foe.

“Never have you killed me yet, Cimmerian! That was the work of your pretty mistress there, and she no pirate when I had her! But after today’s bloody doings, she may qualify for my attentions, once I finish with you—”

“Die, corpse!” Driving in savagely at his attacker, Conan battered him in the chest, forcing him back down against the stem quarter-rail and knocking the sabre out of his waterlogged grip.

Then, reaching overhead, Conan hauled the steering oar down level and shoved its thick shaft under Knulf’s bloated neck. Sprawling forward along the rail, he found the steering-tackles, looped them over the oar-helve, and drew them tight by means of the pulleys and a few quick seaman’s lashings. Knulf, his head wedged firmly in place against the rail, could only flop and flounder helplessly against the deck.

“I’ll leave it for others to nail you to the planks,” Conan proclaimed. “Meanwhile, I have business—”

“Aye, you do,” a voice gargled forth behind him. “Older and more urgent business than with that upstart Knulf!” “Can it be—Sergius!” Turning to gape in disbelief, Conan regarded the grisly, decomposing corpse in weed-slimed pirate finery as it inched toward him across the deck.

“Aye, and if he doesn’t finish you, others here can help!” From behind the shambling monstrosity stepped a fresher but no more prepossessing corpse, bearing a stiletto and a broad grin.

“Rondo! Still faithful to your employer’s commission. And who is that? Jalaf Shah?” Seeing the turbaned, broken-necked figure closing in from the side, Conan whirled his cutlass aloft and sprang into action.

The fight was a weary torment, merging soon into the general melee of duels and affrays that raged the whole length of the flagship’s deck. Amid the grisly turmoil, limbs and heads were lopped off like bloated fruit and bodies trundled overboard like leaky kegs. But the Red Brotherhood’s stock of vengeful foes and rivals was boundless; nothing seemed to stem the arrival of new undead enemies swimming up from the black depths, clapping hold of the ship’s oars and sidewales, and heaving themselves up onto the deck.

Nor was that the worst of it. Glancing overside, some pirates noticed a more extensive stirring in the dark, polluted waters near the ship. They heard a gurgling and saw an oily, black up-welling; then, rising from the water, a hair-raising spectre of jagged, broken masts and weed-clumped decks. Before the pirates’ shocked stares, by the light of the gleaming false moon, there emerged from the sea a shattered, dripping hulk, a rotting, age-old wreck. Conan instantly recognized it as the scuttled Basilisk, the thrice-doomed treasure-galley commanded by the legendary pirate Kobold the Red.

“Avast there, mates! Yonder be the sorry sculpen who stole our treasure! Heave alongside, hearties, and stand ready to board!”

The oozing skeleton astride the quarterdeck, from whose clacking skull the voice rasped, was instantly recognizable by its one shattered eye socket as Red Kobold himself. At his command, and at the flourish of his decaying sword, a whole swarm of bony tatterdemalions scurried across the decks to obey. Roiling with the stench of the deep, the dead ship thumped alongside and rusty grapples whirled aloft.

This abhorrent vision turned the undead battle into a rout. Pirates shrieked and scattered, or fell jabbering to the deck; the overwhelming trend was away, back, over the decks of adjacent ships, or overside into the haunted sea itself.

Conan toiled onward in a hacking, hewing frenzy, dragging Philiope across the holed Turanian vessel to the relative peace of Hrandulf’s deck. His motive was not fear, but smouldering rage. He now sought the shortest route to Crotalus’s wizard-ship.

Unfortunately, the way was blocked by a Turanian two-decker, whose crew had so far held out defiant against the Hyrkanian galleys fouled at either end. Striding into the bows of the nearest ally, Conan berated the demoralized attackers.

“Come, dogs, are you invaders or not? Will you shirk King Yildiz’s wooden walls and never even live to see his stone ones? Up, Hyrkanians, and fight!” So saying, he slashed the ropes that held in check the broad boarding-ramps suspended over the bows. They crashed down across the enemy’s stem rail, and the troops rose up shouting. They swarmed across onto the enemy deck with Conan and Philiope in their midst.

Still the defenders rallied strongly, turning their quarterdeck into a killing ground. Conan fought and slew in weary determination.

But suddenly to his ears came a strange sound, drifting hauntingly across the tangle of ships. It repeated itself, echoed from another side, and drew nearer: a lilting, shrilling train of musical notes, the trumpets of a cavalry host.

Then, near at hand, he heard a familiar but impossible thumping and drumming on wooden decks: hoofbeats, urged on by eager yells. Across the ships’ interlocked hulls, leaping and thundering over the rails and down the boarding-ramps, fur-hatted Hyrkanian riders came whirling sabres and shouting war-cries. Their horses trampled and flailed, scattering the enemy before them and opening the way for the Hyrkanian marines to swarm in on either flank.

The cavalry wheeled and jostled on the stem deck, gathering for another charge; then it was that Conan spied their commander and called out to him.

“Adi Bulbul! You muster out the horse-troops early, I see, and fight a land campaign at sea!”

“Someone must break this deadlock,” the plucky horse-officer said, whirling his tulwar overhead. “If any can do it, we cavalry can. Now form up, troopers, and charge!” Conan heard the ensuing trumpet-blare repeated on all sides; gazing around at the stalled fleet, he could see other bodies of horsemen racing across nearby ships, spreading in what might be an unbroken wave from the Hyrkanian centre. It was a wild, impressive sight; the fierce riders plunged their sturdy, compact steeds across ramps or leaped them fearlessly from deck to deck, streaming heroically through the lurid night. Some mounts stumbled, lost their riders, or missed their footing outright and plummeted into the sea. Yet others charged onward, sweeping all resistance before them. A mad, desperate ploy it was, but it might save the battle.

Conan’s own goal was near at hand. As the last horsemen galloped past, he led Philiope forward toward the glowering mock-moon, which now drifted high above the tangled hulls and forest of masts. Only a few more galleys lay in a cluster between him and the wizard’s ship, their decks vacant and bypassed by the cavalry charge. One of them, alas, was of a sort he recognized by its long, sinister shed-roof, which now lay ruptured and partly ruined. From within it there issued restless, intermittent stirrings and clattering noises.

“You would be fools to go near that demon-thing,” a voice warned from the darkness.

Turning aside, Conan saw oarsmen under the command of a marine, furtively bailing out the captured Turanian vessel and toiling to cut loose its boarding-ramp.

“What, is the centipede still dangerous?” Conan asked. “Wasn’t it rammed to death?”

“No,” the trooper said. “And now the infernal cavalry have stirred it up again.” He glanced nervously overside. “I would speak quietly if I were you. Those things move fast.”

“My way lies past it,” Conan told him, turning away. “I have business to settle.”

He released Philiope’s hand, but she continued wordlessly after him. Climbing stealthily, the two made their way down to the stem of a swamped galley that could serve as a bridge past the shedded ship. Stepping up onto its farther rail, walking on the narrow ledge above the dark, lapping water, they skirted the thrashing, uneasy derelict as silently as possible.

Very likely the demon’s sense of smell was as keen as its hearing. All at once the thrashings took on purpose and direction, as timbers stirred and broken oars rattled overside. Terrifyingly, a monstrously mandibled insect-head reared up opposite them on the roofed ship’s bow.

“Run,” Conan urged Philiope. “You can make it!” The shifting of such a vast weight abeam caused the hull to rock underfoot, forcing him to leap down into the flooded oar-section. But the agile girl regained her balance and ran along the rail—not back, but straight forward to the bow of the Turanian dromon lying one ship away from Crotalus's. Climbing up the looped anchor-chain, she hauled herself aboard.

Conan, meanwhile, splashed backward between submerged bench-rows, holding up his wisp of cutlass to ward off the massive demon. In a trice, the monster slithered down into the water. Creeping and swimming simultaneously in its many-legged fashion, it threatened-to overrun him. Frantic cuts at its armoured fore-segments did nothing; the steel blade rang on its head and breast as on a brass um. It lunged onto him and rolled him underwater with its sheer bulk. Luckily, the giant mandibles were too large and clumsy to find him at once. Instead they plucked and tore up benches in their vain search.

Swimming forward under the benches, Conan made his way as far as he could. Then he surfaced, gasping for breath. Instantly the bug-eyes found him and the thing surged forward again, pushing a bow-wave before it. As water drained from his ears, Conan heard shrill cries nearby and looked up, trying to comprehend.

“Aside! Move aside!” Philiope was screaming at him.

As he dove for the rail, she fumbled with a rope fastened to the arching bow of the ship. A squealing and a heavy trundling sounded; then the dromon’s great boarding-ramp came crashing down. Perfectly aimed, its heavy-weighted bronze hook embedded itself in one of the body segments directly behind the giant centipede’s head.

The behemoth writhed and splashed under the blow, commencing instantly to destroy the deck it was pinned to. Conan, moving fast, scrambled forward up the forechains of the dromon.

“That should hold it for a while,” his mistress told him, greeting him with an appreciative hug. Turning, they moved astern toward their goal.

The moon hovered brightest here, moored by a rope to the sailless mainmast of the sinister red-tinted galley. The vessel looked intact, its ram undoubtedly lodged in the stem of the ship they had crossed to reach it. The decks were clear of troops and rowers, except for a few dark-cloaked priests of Erlik who toiled around the false moon’s mooring, under the direction of a figure in a white robe.

Philiope, at Conan’s urging, remained behind when he climbed up onto the higher ship’s foredeck. Striding forward across the planks, cutlass in hand, he raised his voice in a challenge.

“Crotalus, you wizardly knave! Undo the treacherous spell you cast on my crew!”

The Keshan, turning from his acolytes, smiled to see Conan advancing. “So, mighty Amra, still you survive! I had doubted even your fabled luck in this great and ill-arrayed sea-battle, struggling to prevail amid so many enemies.”

“Enemies enough, indeed,” Conan said, “without you and your decaying sea-denizens in the fight. Know you, Crotalus, I enlisted in this war to battle Turanians, not rotting, ancient ghosts summoned by you!” He continued forward, pointing overhead with his cutlass. “Now, deflate that sorcerous moon of yours, and do whatever else it will take to free my men from your sea-bottom ghosts!” “Really, Amra,” the Keshan said, unconcerned, “is it my fault if you pirates betray and murder so many that the whole Vilayet cannot hold their vengeance? Your pirates’ doom falls according to their own sacred beliefs, after all. Can you blame me if the dead have learned to swim?” While the mage temporized, the acolytes finished their job of rigging something—a platform or a basket, so it appeared—to the false moon’s mooring-rope. Then they arose, turned, and spread themselves around their chief as if to defend him.

“Enough of your mealy-mouthed taunts,” Conan growled, coming up opposite the wizard. “I remind you, Crotalus, we are allies in this fight. Any devious spell you cast against me and my men is rank treachery, and I mean to take it out of your hide! Why you would weaken your own cause, I don’t know, when all hangs in the balance—” “In the balance? I think not. The fleet is largely in our control—” the sorcerer waved a careless hand to indicate the vast disorder of ships visible from his main deck— “swept over now by Hyrkanian invasion troops, under the ingenious lead of Antulla’s cavalry. In every ship, you may imagine, frightened oarsmen are working to patch holes, put out fires, and cut loose all these many fouls and grapples.” He smiled in grim satisfaction. “They work to save their paltry lives, so let us hope they achieve some result.

“Assuming they do, with Hyrkanians commanding the decks, the fleet will be arrayed even vaster than before. Tomorrow it sails onward, unopposable... with myself as its commander now that Antulla is dead. I will command from high above, in my eagle’s nest—” he pointed to the shallow basket moored to the moon-rope—“so none will doubt my authority or shirk my commands. With favourable winds and expert navigation, my victory over the greatest empire on earth is assured. So you see, Captain Amra, there will be no more need for you or your pirates, or for shallow, self-seeking alliances.”

“Knave! Necromancing assassin!” Starting forward, Conan met the four acolytes first as they moved to screen their master. He did not bother to sword them. Moving amid the flurry of their robes with a brisk series of blows, kicks, and raps from his cutlass-hilt, he scattered them to the deck, where they lay moaning and gasping like broken birds.

“Wretch,” he told Crotalus. “I will have your gizzard yet!” Coming up behind the mage where he stepped calmly into his basket, Conan paused, demanding, “Where is your good sense, man? Have you no weapon? Do you not fear me?”

“Fear you?” Crotalus asked, incredulous. “The thought never occurred to me.” Turning in his place, the seer laid a hand on the rope leading up to the hovering moon-lamp. At the same instant, a rope sprang up from the deck, throwing its coils over the pirate-chieftain.

“What—? By Crom, a pox on all wizards!” Struggling in the sudden snare, Conan tried to slash at the rope with his sword; but the thick coils promptly looped themselves around the cutlass-blade, rendering it useless.

“A simple but fitting end for Amra’s notorious career,” Crotalus said, watching idly. “Is it not the traditional fate of pirates to hang from a yardarm?”

No sooner had the wizard spoken than Conan felt the coils tighten around his neck, looping and twisting into a self-made noose. Bights of living rope constrained his ankles and one hand, from which the cutlass was now slowly wrung and strangled loose, to clatter on the deck. With his free hand, he clawed at the ever-tightening neck-loop, scrabbling at the rock-hard coils. Impervious, they bit in deeper... purpling his vision, thickening his tongue in his throat.

“No, never!” The thump of bare feet across the deck came dimly to his ears; only faintly did he see Philiope swing her cutlass, severing the rope—not where it coiled around his neck, but where it looped across the stanchion on the mast, arching up from the deck toward Crotalus’s sorcerous moon.

As soon as the line was cut, the devilish coils fell slack. It had taken Philiope, watching from afar, to see that the rope in the wizard’s hand was the same one that sprang up from the planks, animated by his touch. Now, as a further consequence of her action, the vast, hovering air-canopy drifted free, drawing with it the woven platform where Crotalus stood. A faint breeze from the west seemed to be impelling it.

“Arrh,” Conan said, trying to recover his breath. “Again thanks, Philiope.” Shaking himself free of coils and loops with the woman’s help, he turned to see his nemesis skated away across the deck and lifted skyward.

“Hold, stenchard!” Bellowing, Conan sprang after Crotalus. He lunged for the severed end of rope where it trailed up over the ship’s rail, barely missing it as it fled overside. Only Philiope’s grip on his shoulder kept him from diving overboard in pursuit. He stood there in impotent fury, smiting a balled fist against the rail.

Aboard the elevated basket, Crotalus still clutched the rope. As he swept out over the sea, raised by the lightness of his counterfeit moon, he looked down somewhat uncertainly at the retreating ship.

Then, fumbling in the bag slung over his shoulder, he drew forth the Harp of Dagon, the charm reputed to control the wind. Seating himself carefully cross-legged in the basket, he took the instrument into the crook of his arm to be strummed.

But the glowing moon-sphere, wafting eastward, drifted afoul of the nearest tangle of ships, whose sails stirred fitfully in the gathering breeze. The trailing rope must have caught in the rigging of one of them, jarring both basket and canopy. From the lamp-basin above, liquid fire rained down and set the vessel ablaze.

Mere moments later a train of fire raced upward, engulfing sails, rope, basket, and the false moon itself. In blossoming brightness as the great silk canopy exploded, Conan saw Crotalus flung out of his perch—a blazing, flailing figure plummeting out of sight.

Just as swiftly then, the red-glowing canopy settled into the sea, its light dwindling to a mere crackling bonfire of masts and spars. Over the fleet there prevailed a sudden, dreamlike silence, a cessation of even the more distant shouts and battle-sounds.

“Does this mean the fighting will end?” Philiope wistfully asked.

“No,” Conan said, turning. “But that does.” Placing an arm on her shoulders as they stood at the rail, he directed her gaze westward to a faint, eerie light that played around the base of distant clouds.

Moments later, it came to their ears: the rumble of thunder, heralding a storm.

Epilogue

The pirate flagship Remorseless cut a broad, foaming wake through the Aetolian channel, oars flashing and churning in the choppy blue sea. Overhead, the freshening breeze scattered stray tufts of cloud, last remnants of the recent deluge.

Before and behind the flagship, a line of twenty or more ships traced the narrow channels between island cliffs. Battered and battle-stained they were, with patched hulls and jury-rigged sails; but they rowed on in good order, bright in the radiant morning.

“We fared the best of all the fleets,” Conan said, regaling his assembled captains on the quarterdeck. “Coming away with as many ships as we wanted, all overmanned with eager refugees and stuffed with battle-plunder... aye, we’ll live a good long time on this war’s proceeds.” Drawing Philiope onto his lap where he sat on the gilded base of the mainstem, he regarded the others’ faces solemnly. “True, we lost some good pirates—more to the clutches of Crotalus’s dead fiends than to any mortal enemy! But now that the wizard’s schemings are ended, we can pray that the Vilayet will hold onto its ghosts. To his, most of all.” He drained his cup in salute.

“The Turanian Navy will take years to recover,” Hrandulf observed, refilling his own cup from the wine-butt lashed to the mizzen. “Broken and mastless they were, far from any anchor-ground. Swept away from Turan by an offshore tempest, any ships that find their way home will be lucky.”

“Aye, the Turanians are a broken reed,” Santhindrissa said. “But the storm served our allies little better. The wind and waves that blew us homeward swamped most of their overladen galleys and drowned the survivors. Few of their troops will return... and none of their horses, I’d wager.”

“Such is the fate of fleets at war,” Conan said. “Sometimes the sea-gods favour one side or another, sometimes neither. I cannot gainsay them. We pirates served out our alliance faithfully, until our cause was stolen by a wizard mad to destroy us. But now, a toast.” Philiope having made a trip to the wine cask, Conan accepted the cup she offered him and raised it before the company.

“To naval peace, and to the prosperity it brings!” Conan gulped from his flagon, pausing then to let the others do likewise.

“To the equality of all kingdoms sharing the Vilayet!” This was Hrandulf’s cry, and he led the second round of drinking.

“Aye,” Conan took up the toast. “And to the gods who rule the sea, and to the dead who rest beneath it.” This last was a libation; to make it, Conan flung his golden cup overside, trailing red droplets in the wind.

While the other captains hesitated to duplicate his act, Drissa sang out spiritedly. “Save your cups, brothers and sisters, and fill them yet again! Another toast is in order. To Santhindrissa, Queen of the Red Sisterhood, and to her new husband, Ferdinald!” So saying, she placed an arm around the swart, stocky captain, who nodded his bashful assent to the group.

“When did this happen?” the others buzzed in surprise. “Was it a shipboard romance? A sea-engagement?” “Early in the battle,” Santhindrissa explained, “we hauled aboard the same enemy galley and fought side by side. Later, we grappled together—our ships, that is—for mutual support. He is dependable in a close fight,” she said proudly, “a strong sword at my back.”

Enfolding her sweetheart in two arms and a leather-gartered leg, to cheers and applause from the onlookers, she gave a brief display of her passion.

“Well, then,” Conan told the pirate and his maid, “may the sea-gods bless both of you. As captain of this galley, I am empowered to wed you, if such is your will. In any event, it calls for a celebration once we get to port!”

To the sound of fluting and merriment, the flagship Remorseless rolled on toward Djafur harbour and the castle that rose on its heights.

Table of Contents

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VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

Epilogue