Conan: Cult of the Obsidian Moon E-Book

James Lovegrove

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 406

Beschreibung

A new chapter of the Titan comics & Heroic Signatures massive narrative event: The Battle of the Black Stone. A thrilling story about Conan the Barbarian facing incomprehensible Lovecraftian horrors written by New York Times Bestselling author James Lovegrove. A NEW CHAPTER OF THE TITAN COMICS & HEROIC SIGNATURES MASSIVE NARRATIVE EVENT: THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK STONE. Still mourning Bêlit, Conan attempts to drink away his sorrows. In his tavern-hopping journey he meets and befriends married couple Hunwulf and Gudrun and their son, Bjørn. A decade ago, Hunwulf eloped with Gudrun after killing her betrothed, they live on the run from her tribe, who are desperate for revenge. Bjørn has the makings of a shaman, while Hunwulf is prone to having strange fits which bring him visions of past and future lives. When a descendant warns Hunwulf of imminent danger, he and his wife ride out to ambush the tribe, leaving Bjørn with Conan, who vows to protect the boy with his life. Unfortunately, Conan is betrayed by a former accomplice, and Bjørn is kidnapped by the tribe. Conan and Bjørn's vengeful parents search for the lad. They catch up to the tribe, only to find Bjørn has been taken by murderous bat-winged figures, who fought with talon and sword. The boy, and other "gifted" children have been taken to the Rotlands, a place plagued by a contaminating supernatural force that warps all who go there. To save Bjørn, the trio must go to the heart of the Rotlands, where strange, horrifying fates await at every turn.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also Available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Map

1Thieves of Eruk

2The Difference Between Wench and Woman

3Talk of Winged Monsters and Man-eating Plants

4An Adventurer-in-Waiting

5Fortune’s Precipice

6Hunwulf’s Myriad of Different Lives

7Derketa Dust

8A Valiant Sacrifice

9That Rare Thing, a Law-Abiding Law Enforcer

10The Tongue of Set

11Kidnapping From Kidnappers

12A Fixed Heading After Months Adrift

13A Leprosy of Terrain

14The Odor of Things That Had Seen Better Days

15Relaxed and Sedentary

16A Ghostly Echo of Magnificence

17The Genesis of Metamorphosis

18The Song of Whirring Steel

19A Shattered Gem

20The Granite Orrery

21Providential Newcomer

22Night of the Obsidian Moon

23Questions of Faith and Fealty

24The Meaninglessness of Things

25The Poisoned Well

26That Dreadful Calculation

Afterword

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also available from Titan Books

Conan: Blood of the Serpent

Conan the Barbarian: The Official Motion Picture Adaptation

Conan: City of the Dead

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CONAN: Cult of the Obsidian Moon

Print edition ISBN: 9781835411674

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835411896

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: November 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2024 Conan Properties International (“CPI”). CONAN, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, CONAN THE CIMMERIAN, HYBORIA, THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN and related logos, names and character likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of CPI. ROBERT E. HOWARD is a trademark or registered trademark of Robert E. Howard Properties LLC. Heroic Signatures is a trademark of Cabinet Licensing LLC.

James Lovegrove asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover illustration: Jeffrey Alan Love

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This book is dedicated to the memory of

Robert Ervin Howard

who dreamed up whole worldsand peopled them with heroes

James AllisonLost Knob, Texas

August 1935

Halston Knox

Anomalous Adventures

Chicago, Illinois

Dear Mr. Knox,

Enclosed is my latest submission to Anomalous Adventures, for your kind attention. I trust you will, upon reading it, find it suitable for inclusion in “The Monthly Cornucopia of Weirdery and Wonder,” to use your magazine’s very own slogan.

You’ll note that the manuscript, entitled Cultof the Obsidian Moon, is of some considerable size. Indeed, it runs to the length of a novel, and I am well aware that your guidelines stipulate stories should be no more than 20,000 words. Might I suggest you could break the text down into three or four sections and publish it across that many issues in serialized format. There are several places where partitions may be safely made at a chapter’s end, in each instance presenting readers with a moment of excitement and uncertainty that will encourage them to come back next month for more.

From my own perspective, this tale feels very… how shall I put it? “Personal” seems too weak a word. There are stories which stem only from the mind, feats of mere imagination reinforced by the thrill of creation and the satisfaction of a work well wrought. I do not denigrate those. Rather, they are the bread and butter of any self-respecting author, including me. But then there are stories which emerge from the heart, the gut, the very essence of oneself. They feel torn from one’s own lifestuff, brought out into the world bawling and blood-covered like a newborn baby.

I have, as you know, previously written short tales based on adventures experienced by my past incarnations, which you have been good enough to publish in your periodical. “The Valley of the Worm” is one such, another being “Marchers of Valhalla.”

You may be minded to think that claiming these tales are no mere fictions, as I do, is sheer delusion, perhaps even madness. After all, what sane man reckons he has lived other lives and can recall them as though they were his own memories? (Or I should say what sane Western man, for a belief in reincarnation is common among certain peoples of the near and far Orient.)

Yet I am firmly convinced that I have walked in other ages, in different guises, throughout history, going back to the earliest days of human civilization, when our race was still in its brutal infancy and the world was a crude, primordial seed of that which it has blossomed into. I have been Hialmar, flaxen-haired denizen of an antediluvian era known to scholars as the Hyborian Age. I have been a Viking, name of Niord Worm’s-Bane. I have similarly been a Roman legionary, a Visigoth, an Ancient Briton, a Crusader, a Tatar, a samurai, and more besides, every time a warrior or wild man of some description. I have dreamed of these bygone existences both while asleep and in intense, dazzling visions that visit me during my waking hours and leave me enervated and reeling, and I do not for one moment doubt them to be true.

Cult of the Obsidian Moon takes place in the aforementioned Hyborian Age and features that past self of mine called Hunwulf, about whom I hitherto wrote in a story called “The Garden of Fear.”

This Hunwulf, sometimes styling himself “the Wanderer,” belongs to a race of hardy Nordic types, the Æsir. Looming in the foreground in Cult of the Obsidian Moon, too, and indeed occupying greater narrative significance, is a barbarian of remarkable vigor and splendor, namely Conan of Cimmeria, who shares in Hunwulf’s escapades.

Both figures, and the deeds they undertake and the challenges they face, came to me during one of those trance states I have referred to. The vision struck me as violently as a hammer blow. In intense, concentrated form, I saw it all unfurl through Hunwulf’s eyes, felt everything he felt, suffered everything he suffered. His triumphs were mine, and his agonies likewise. I, as it were, remembered the whole account from beginning to end, as I might remember an episode from my youth or young manhood; and no sooner had the vision abated and my mind was once more my own than I sat down at my trusty No. 5 Underwood and began setting events down on paper.

I wrote in a fury of activity, churning out the pages as fast as I could type, all but bruising my fingertips on the keys. I scarcely paused, other than to eat, drink and take snatches of sleep, for ten days straight. This story, Mr. Knox, is without question the most vivid of any I have produced, and at the same time feels the most freighted with significance, although somehow I cannot quite fathom why. Maybe in due course the answer will come to me.

At any rate, I have prattled on long enough, and doubtless tried your patience. Please let me know at the earliest opportunity whether this offering of mine passes muster and will see print in the hallowed pages of Anomalous Adventures. I eagerly await your response.

Yours faithfully,James Allison

Thieves of Eruk

Night fell fast in Eruk, dusk drawing its purple shadows swiftly over the domed roofs and spire-capped minarets of that Shemitish desert city and bringing some relief from the stifling heat of daytime. A bright crescent moon rose, beaming down from the star-flecked heavens, but in the mazy streets below, despite the onset of darkness, the bustling flow of people barely subsided.

Eruk, standing at the confluence of several major trading routes, with Koth and Khoraja just to the north, Argos due east and Stygia not far south, welcomed in countless visitors to swell the ranks of its full-time residents. Caravans halted outside its walls, and their drivers, merchants, guards, and sundry dependents and hangers-on found refuge within, to replenish their stocks of food and water and patronize the many taverns, brothels and other sources of comfort and entertainment on offer. Desert nomads called by, seeking respite from their wearying, footsore travels, and itinerants in need of casual employment haunted its marketplaces, touting for work.

It was a city perpetually in flux, the composition of its inhabitants changing from day to day but always a polyglot mix of all races and types; and as torches were lit in its busier quarters and lamps flickered into life in many a window, the widespread urban hubbub persisted. Peace, even at nighttime, was hard to come by in Eruk.

Yet there were certain parts where the streets were less frequented and a relative hush held sway, and one of these was the residential area known locally and colloquially as the Golden Arbor.

The Golden Arbor earned this nickname by simple virtue of playing host to the city’s wealthier denizens and being blessed throughout with an abundance of trees, shrubbery and other foliage. Its houses stood spaced well apart from one another, rather than neighbor crowding against neighbor as elsewhere, and were famed for their size and grandeur, the majority arranged in squares around central courtyards whose colonnaded cloisters and splashing marble fountains afforded coolness and shade all day long.

At one of these noble, luxurious residences, two men stood stationary in the spacious, palm-fringed garden.

One of them was a wiry little Nemedian, clad in the fashion of his people: a toga fastened at the waist with a belt of rope, and knee-high leather boots.

The other, a whole head taller than his companion and twice as broad in the chest, had his origins in the far north, in the bleak, mountainous land of Cimmeria. Jerkin, girdle, loincloth and sandals were his attire, all of which items of apparel were somewhat worn and tattered, betokening a certain impoverishment or else a lack of regard for appearance, perhaps both.

The sword he brandished, however, was a long-bladed weapon of fearsome sharpness and gleaming brightness, suggesting great care went into its honing and upkeep. The Nemedian’s shorter sword, though no less well-maintained, seemed a paltry thing indeed by comparison.

The twain were rooted to the spot side by side, both staring ahead with wide-eyed fixity at the beast stalking towards them across the garden’s lush, shadow-dappled lawn, its footsteps unhurried, its demeanor that of a predator utterly assured of its own powerfulness and its superiority to the humans before it.

The animal was a big cat, but of a kind rarely seen outside its natural habitat, which was the forests of the Pictish Wilderness and the benighted jungles of the Black Kingdoms far to the south. It was, in fact, a species widely believed extinct and considered the stuff of legend, a sabretooth tiger.

Higher at the shoulder and stockier in frame than a common tiger, the sabretooth had a pelt that was a uniform russet-brown rather than striped like its cousin’s, while the elongated twin fangs that earned it its name extended a full handspan downwards either side of its bewhiskered maw, culminating in a pair of wickedly sharp points which shone white in the moonlight.

Lambent amber eyes studied the two men as it approached them, assessing just how much of a threat they posed, or by its lights how little. Everything about the sabretooth suggested it was confident it could easily dispose of them—and, for that matter, would relish doing so.

“Drusus,” growled the Cimmerian softly to the man beside him, “you never said anything about a tiger. Let alone a sabretooth.”

“I… I heard they might keep a guard dog in the grounds of the house,” the Nemedian falteringly replied. “But since there was no clamor of barking when we climbed over the wall, I presumed it merely a rumor.”

“You could still have mentioned it.”

“Forgive me, Conan,” said Drusus, with a twinge of chagrin and more than a little timorousness. “If we get out of this alive, I will offer you a fulsome apology and buy you several drinks to make up for my oversight.”

“If we get out of this alive…” Conan drawled, his gaze never deviating from the sabretooth tiger, which was now only a few yards away, easy leaping distance for a feline of such proportions.

His muscles tensed, rippling beneath sun-seared, scar-crossed skin. He was gauging when and how the animal would attack. Would it rush them at a sprint, or would it pounce?

He spied a thick leather collar around its neck fitted with a horseshoe-shaped staple, and took this to indicate that the tiger was trained, if not domesticated. The staple allowed the creature to be fastened by a chain during those times it wasn’t roaming loose in the garden. It had been taught to deal with unwanted interlopers, and doubtless was given free rein to indulge in its primal hunting instincts when doing so.

The beast came to a halt, setting four huge paws square on the ground.

Conan, who had drawn his sword the moment he espied the tiger emerging from the shadows of a nearby bower, inspiring Drusus to follow suit, readied the weapon. When the sabretooth moved again, he knew he would have but a split second to respond. A fraction too slow, and he would meet a grisly end.

“Drusus,” he said under his breath as an idea came to him, “you must edge slowly to the left.”

The Nemedian answered in a similar low tone. “Why?”

“Do as I say. I shall edge to the right. But keep your movements steady and even. No sudden lurches.”

“We split up,” said Drusus, “and then the tiger will have to choose which one of us to attack, thus giving the other the opportunity to get away. Is that your plan? One dies so that the other might live, and it is the tiger’s decision which.”

“No,” Conan replied, although he could not deny that such a prospect had crossed his mind, nor that it was undesirable. Better a fifty-fifty chance at survival than none at all. “Close together as we are, we are a single target. Separated, we are two, and this may give it pause—a pause we can use to our advantage.”

“Very well.” Drusus did as bidden, tiptoeing carefully sideways, while Conan mirrored him in the opposite direction.

The sabretooth cast its gaze one way then the other, and its expression evinced a certain quizzicality. Its intended prey were behaving curiously. It clearly had expected them to run away, as humans were wont to upon encountering it, not creep apart. It swayed its shaggy, bearlike head towards Conan, then towards Drusus, and back again, weighing its options. Which to kill now, and which later?

Finally the tiger made its pick. Conan saw the sabretooth set its eyes resolutely on Drusus. “Stop!” he hissed to his companion. “Stand your ground. This is our chance.”

Drusus shot a panicked look Conan’s way. “Stop?”

“Trust me. Face the beast, keep still, and hold its attention.”

“While you turn tail and flee?”

“Do as I say, if you would live.”

The Nemedian remained unconvinced but obeyed Conan anyway. He froze, his sword held tremblingly forwards. His lip quivered and his face was a mask of abject dread, save for the faint, wavering glint of hope in his eyes, born from a fervent desire to believe the Cimmerian would be as good as his word and serve as savior.

The tiger settled back on its haunches, its claws digging into the lawn for purchase, its whole body coiling like a spring.

Conan took three swift steps until he was alongside the animal’s flank. He knew he must time his assault to perfection. If he went too soon, the tiger would round on him instead of going for Drusus.

“Steady,” he cautioned the Nemedian. “Steady. Hold.”

Drusus offered a clipped nod in return. The tremors of fear that were visibly passing through him, however, were growing more violent, as though he were in the grip of the palsy. His eyes began to dart this way and that, as a desperate man’s will when he is seeking an escape route from a dire quandary.

“I said hold,” Conan urged, but even as he uttered the words, Drusus’s nerve broke. He flung his sword aside, spun on his heel and began to run.

The sabretooth did not hesitate. It launched itself after the Nemedian, hurtling through the air like a bolt loosed from a ballista.

At the same time Conan lunged, darting across the gap between him and the tiger, broadsword lancing forward. With fighting reflexes developed in the harsh terrain of Cimmeria and honed thereafter in innumerable battles, he was as quick off the mark as anyone could be.

Yet Drusus had bolted just when he should not have, and the tiger was no longer where it had been. Conan’s blade missed by a hair’s breadth.

Next thing he knew, there were frantic screams and the wet, awful sound of flesh being torn.

He pivoted towards the tiger, which now straddled the prone, hapless Drusus, weighing him down with its rear paws and rending his back with its front claws. Drusus writhed and yelled in agony as the beast gouged bloody strips of meat off him.

“Ho, foul thing!” Conan cried, throwing himself at the sabretooth.

His cry drew its notice, as he meant it to, and the tiger abandoned the mauling of Drusus and about-faced to meet the Cimmerian.

Conan’s sword thrust was augmented by the speed of his attack, and the blade sank deep into the tiger’s breast.

It should have been an instant deathblow, but the sabretooth was evidently hard to kill, for it let out a yowl of distress but at the same time retaliated with a forepaw swipe that caught Conan on the arm and raked a row of parallel slashes across his biceps.

“Crom damn you!” Conan cursed, yanking his sword out of the creature and plunging it in again.

This time he went for the throat, skewering the tiger just below the points of its wickedly curved fangs. As the sword came out, blood jetted from a severed artery, and the sabretooth staggered and went rigid. It drew back its upper lip, its mouth adopting a queer, sneering look, then shook its head, as though, arrogant to the last, it refused to believe that a mere human could have delivered a mortal wound such as this.

Then the beast sagged to the ground, blood spurting from the gash in its neck. The light in its eyes dwindled, and with a series of convulsive spasms the tiger died.

Conan, crimsoned sword in hand, hastened over to Drusus.

The Nemedian lay moaning and shuddering, his entire back a gory, shredded mess. Conan had seen enough injuries in his time to know there was no hope for the fellow. It would be only a matter of moments before he expired.

Sure enough, Drusus fell silent and his pain-wracked body ceased its shaking. A sigh escaped him, which to Conan spoke of soul departing mortal shell. There was nothing more that could be done for him other than to offer up a brief prayer to whichever gods Drusus believed in, entrusting his spirit into their care.

Conan cleaned his sword on the grass, sheathed it in its shagreen scabbard, and took stock. A dead man, a dead guard animal, a nasty set of cuts on his own arm—and naught else to show for the night’s handiwork.

With a grimace and a disgruntled oath, he made for the spot on the garden wall where hung the rope Drusus had used to clamber up it on one side and lower himself down on the other. Conan eschewed this as he had before, instead ascending using hands and feet only in the manner of a hillman born and bred, fingers and toes finding holds in the tiniest crevices in the stonework. He climbed down the other side similarly, dropping into the deserted street.

The whole affair had been a waste of time, and for that Drusus bore the bulk—if not the whole—of the responsibility.

The Nemedian had approached Conan the previous day with a proposal which seemed too good to be true and would, as it turned out, be exactly that. Drusus had said he knew of an empty house, home of a very rich merchant, filled to the brim with gold, jewels and other treasures, all ripe for the taking. The merchant, one Sakhimael, routinely decamped to the hills outside Eruk at the height of summer, taking family, servants and slaves with him. He had a villa there, up where the air was fresher and the heat less stifling, with a vineyard and farmland attached, and would stay for at least a month. He had left just last week, and his city home was simply begging to be plundered.

“You are Conan of Cimmeria, lately a pirate of the Black Coast going by the name of Amra,” Drusus had said. “I know of your reputation, and I know that you have fallen on lean times. Why not join me in this endeavor? I could do with the assistance of a strong, experienced hand. Sakhimael’s house promises more loot than one man alone may carry, and from a couple of hours’ work we could find ourselves sitting very pretty indeed. What say you?”

Conan had assented to Drusus’s suggestion, not because he felt any great urge to participate in larceny just then, but mainly because he had been looking for something interesting to do, and raiding a rich man’s home seemed as good a solution as any to that problem. His life in recent weeks had been directionless, lacking meaning and purpose, a drift from tavern to tavern and lackluster, low-paying job to lackluster, low-paying job.

And his purse was getting perilously empty.

There had been no sign of the sabretooth as he and Drusus, having surmounted the wall, crossed the garden lawn the first time. The great feline must have been loitering somewhere in the dark, biding its time, waiting for the intruders to return so that it could confront them at its leisure.

Entering the house itself had likewise posed no challenge, for the back door was unsecured.

Conan’s suspicion that the whole thing was proving a little too straightforward was confirmed as he and Drusus went from room to room inside the property. The place had been cleared out. Furniture remained, and a few personal belongings, but otherwise it was bereft of objects, and certainly of treasure.

“This Sakhimael,” Conan said, after they had fruitlessly inspected the house from top to bottom, “does he take all his valuables with him when he goes to his place in the country?”

“I don’t know,” Drusus admitted. “He goes with a large wagon train, that is for sure, but I assumed it was for people and supplies only.”

“Yet here is a shelf where ornaments once were on display. See the marks in the dust? The ornaments have been removed. Same with that alcove, where some form of statuary lay. And unless I am wrong, a strongbox was stored in the cupboard we found upstairs and is there no more. Aye, Sakhimael is a canny sort. He leaves his house in the city unlocked and unprotected when he stays in the country, and that is because he leaves nothing worth stealing on the premises. You have led me on a wild goose chase, Drusus. I am not happy.”

“I had no idea,” Drusus said. “I assumed—”

Conan cut him off abruptly. “Again that word ‘assumed!’ A good thief does not assume. A good thief does his homework and makes sure of his information. By Crom, I should have known better than to throw in my lot with you. I’ve a good mind to bury my poniard in your gut.”

Drusus, eyeing the burly barbarian and seeing the grim expression on his face, blanched. “I’d rather you did not.”

Conan shrugged. “Why waste the effort? Besides, I am in part to blame, putting my faith in the claims of a stranger. I once met another Nemedian thief, Taurus by name. He was a master of his art. I made the mistake of thinking you, his fellow countryman, were as talented as he. I regret that now. Well, the night is young. There is still time to find a tavern where I can spend my last few coins, drinking to forget our paths ever crossed.”

Sullenly Conan exited the house, with Drusus traipsing disconsolately behind.

They had gone no more than a dozen paces when they found themselves confronted by the sabretooth tiger, with the results already recounted.

Now Conan, not one jot richer and minus some blood from the lacerations in his arm, wended his way out of the Golden Arbor, firmly resolved not to set foot in that enclave of the well-to-do ever again.

The Difference Between Wench and Woman

The tavern Conan repaired to, the Oasis in a Sandstorm, was one he had taken to frequenting since his arrival in Eruk two months earlier.

It was far from being the city’s best-appointed watering hole, and moreover was situated in one of Eruk’s shadiest, seediest districts; but the ale was cheap, the atmosphere raucous, and one could reliably depend on a fight breaking out at some stage during the course of the evening. Watching a drunken bar brawl and, should he feel so inclined, joining in, was, in Conan’s view, perhaps life’s most pleasurable recreation. Unless you counted instigating such a brawl oneself.

In a gloom-hung, musty corner of the tavern, elbows on the table, foaming flagon before him, Conan brooded.

Great were the Cimmerian’s moods, whether high or low. When joyous, he was hearty, ribald company, ever ready with a back-slap and a bawdy quip. When melancholy, as now, he cut a glum figure, a human thundercloud, best left alone.

Beneath his square-cut fringe, his piercing, glacially blue eyes stared into the distance. He was musing mournfully on events just gone by: the bootless burglary, Drusus’s demise, the altercation with the sabretooth. The wound the tiger had inflicted on his arm, now swathed in a linen bandage, smarted terribly, but this did not bother him overmuch; soon it would heal and become just a few more scars on a body already liberally garlanded with them.

What did bother him was the circumstances he found himself in and how they had come about.

His mind could not help straying back to Bêlit. She of the flashing eyes, richly black hair and slender yet voluptuous figure. She who robbed without compunction, slew without mercy and boasted the fearsome, imperious bearing of a true-born queen. And a queen Bêlit had surely been, if only of her pirate band. A ruler, too, of Conan’s heart, in that she had stirred passions within him as torrential as a tempest, as mighty and irresistible as an erupting volcano, before which he could do nothing but submit.

The time he had spent crewing with Bêlit and her brigands aboard the Tigress, and serving as her consort and second-in-command, was among the happiest he had known. Life had been plain and untroubled, as suited the deepest needs of a Cimmerian’s elemental nature. The future was narrowed down to the ocean horizon, the next raiding party, that night’s fierce, fervent lovemaking—these things and naught else.

He had hoped it might last forever, and perhaps it would have, but for the ill-fated expedition up the River Zarkheba, which culminated in destruction and slaughter, not least the death of Bêlit herself, hanged from her own ship’s yardarm by a devilish winged monstrosity.

Bêlit came from Shem, and so it was to Shem that Conan took himself in the wake of her death, a kind of pilgrimage to the land of her birth, a way of obliquely honoring his lost love. Here, he thought, among her people, he might perhaps catch glimpses of her, recapturing her through the faces, complexions and accents of her race, and thereby mitigate his grief.

But the opposite, alas, proved the case, and the longer he spent among Shemites, the more he was reminded of Bêlit and the more painful his memories of her became.

He wandered to and fro between the nation’s towns and cities, from Asgalun to Akkharia, Shumir to Sabatea, in the forlorn hope that this wretched state of affairs might change and he might achieve some form of ease and contentment. Eventually he fetched up in Eruk, where, increasingly, he had been coming to the conclusion that his time in Shem was at an end and he should move on, journeying to some other land, any, to start anew.

Tonight had done nothing but reaffirm this conviction.

The Oasis in a Sandstorm was full, throbbing with clientele and noise. In one corner a pair of mustachioed Zingarans were arm-wrestling, with various onlookers cheering them on and betting upon the outcome of the contest. In another, some Aquilonians were warbling a filthy drinking song. In yet another, a quartet of very inebriated Turanians—tawny-eyed and goateed to a man—flirted aggressively with a barmaid, who had to slap away their groping paws as she laid their drinks in front of them. An Afghuli and a Kothian were arguing over something, probably a deal, although neither was well-versed in the other’s language, so that the dispute was conducted largely by means of angry hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. A Corinthian lutanist was employed by the tavernkeeper to provide background music and thereby bring an element of sophistication to the place; it was a vain struggle. He plucked the strings of his instrument listlessly, playing some slow, sweetly plaintive melody that was probably lovely but had not a hope of being heard above the din of voices.

Conan observed the proceedings with detachment, finding little in this cacophonous mundane tumult to lift him from his despondency. He was about to order a fresh flagon of ale with the very last of the copper coins in his possession, when all at once his gaze was caught by a tall and exceedingly lovely woman.

She was Æsir, if he did not miss his guess, blue-eyed and snowy-skinned, of statuesque build, her long golden hair bound in a complicated braid, her features fine and sharp. She strode across the tavern with confident grace, a short leather skirt revealing lean, shapely, well-muscled legs shod in fur boots.

Here, at last, was something to rouse Conan’s interest, for not only was the woman remarkably alluring but the presence of an Æsir this far south, even in so cosmopolitan a city as Eruk, was a curiosity. He wondered what had brought her hither from the icy climes of Nordheim. He wondered, too, whether he should attract her attention somehow and invite her to accompany him at his table.

There had been women in his life since Bêlit: a dancing girl here, a courtesan there, on one occasion an actress from a troupe of traveling players; nothing long-lasting. A night’s tumble followed by a hasty goodbye, with no regrets on either side.

The Æsir woman, however, seemed an entirely different prospect. She held herself with clear self-possession and intelligence, qualities Conan prized highly in the opposite sex, higher even than a fulsome bosom and curvaceous hips. A fine feminine figure was all very well, but better still when complemented with brains. That was the difference, in his opinion, between wench and woman.

Just as he was about to rise and approach her, the Æsir woman came to the notice of the four Turanians.

As one, the swarthy-complexioned men’s heads turned, tracking her progress. As one, their lips drew back in lustful grins. A couple of them nudged each other. Meanwhile the barmaid they had been harassing took advantage of their distraction and skipped smartly away from their table.

“Hey!” one of the Turanians yelled at the Æsir woman in guttural tones. “Northwoman! Over here.”

The Æsir woman turned in his direction. “Me?” she said, hand flying to breastbone as though in modest disbelief.

“Yes, you, my pretty! I am Yahsun, and I invite you to come sit with me and my friends.”

The other Turanians gave tongue to leering agreement. One gesticulated in an obscene manner.

“Thank you, but no,” the Æsir woman said, with an affectation of great politeness. “I appreciate the offer, but apart from anything else there are four of you and I see only four chairs at your table. Where am I to sit?”

Yahsun patted his lap. “Here would be a good place, my blonde beauty. A fine and bountiful place indeed.”

The Æsir woman looked puzzled. “I am not small in frame, and you are not large. Would that be comfortable for you?”

“Oh, very much! And for you too, let me assure you. I could make you very comfortable.”

Conan could tell that the woman was toying with these four sots, even if they themselves couldn’t see it. Yahsun stood and made a grab for the Æsir woman’s arm. She snatched it out of his reach, but he, undeterred, lurched towards her with a view to taking hold of her and making her do forcibly that which she would not voluntarily.

This time the Æsir woman allowed him to lay a hand upon her. She peered down at the hairy-backed extremity now clutching her elbow, her face showing as much revulsion as though it had been a crawling tarantula.

“Let go of me,” she said coolly to Yahsun. Gone was any playfulness from her tone and expression, replaced by disdain and a thinly disguised anger.

Yahsun did not let go. On the contrary, he firmed his grip. “Sit with us,” he hissed, “or by Tarim and Erlik, I swear I shall mar that perfect face of yours so that no man will ever look favoringly upon you again.”

“No.”

“I am Yahsun, son of Arrakhan, a noble of Sultanapur on the shores of the Vilayet Sea—and no one refuses me.”

Conan half-rose from his seat.

That was when a hand came to rest on his shoulder and a voice whispered in his ear, “No need, my friend.” The accent, with its slurred sibilants and rolled R’s, was Æsir, and the pressure of the hand was firm enough to restrain but not threaten. “Gudrun can more than take care of herself.”

Conan glanced at the man who had appeared beside him.

The fellow was a match for the woman in looks, being no less pale of skin and flaxen of hair. A broad smile peeked through his beard, which was so long and luxuriant he was able to tie plaits in it. Intricate blue tattoos adorned one cheek, curling up around the eye.

“It would be safer, frankly,” the Æsir man continued, “to stay out of her way.”

Turning back, Conan saw the Æsir woman—Gudrun—staring down Yahsun, son of Arrakhan, whose hand remained clasped about her elbow.

“Listen to me well, sir,” said she. “I shall say this only once. Remove your hand, or lose the use of it, perhaps permanently.”

Yahsun, chortling, replied, “For a woman from a cold country, you have plenty of fire. I like that.”

“I warned you,” Gudrun said, and next instant, Yahsun was on his knees, cradling his wrist and howling in agony.

Conan had scarcely seen her move. In the blink of an eye, and with strength to match that tremendous speed, she had managed to twist the Turanian’s hand round through almost a full rotation, practically snapping it off his forearm. It hung limp and useless, and Yahsun’s face had gone sallow from shock and pain.

The other three Turanians shot to their feet, making furious remonstrations. One threw himself at the Æsir woman. She ducked under his outstretched arms and sent a solid punch into his midriff. As the breath whooshed out of him, she struck a sidelong hammering blow to his temple, and down he went like a felled oak.

The two remaining Turanians exchanged looks. Then, by mutual accord, each drew a crescent-bladed dagger from beneath his cloak. It seemed the woman must pay with her life for defending herself from their compatriots.

Conan looked again at the Æsir man, seeking his assurance that still no intervention was required. The other nodded comfortingly.

“Why should Gudrun Ingensdóttir be scared of two ale-sodden louts with knives?” said he, as if the notion was too absurd to contemplate.

For certain, Gudrun Ingensdóttir did not look scared. Deftly she snatched up one of the flagons on the Turanians’ table and, just as deftly, she cracked it over the head of the nearer of the two assailants. Blood and ale flowed freely as the man’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and he sagged to the floor, the dagger slipping from nerveless fingers.

The other knife-wielding Turanian swung his weapon in a sweeping arc that would have slit open Gudrun’s throat, had she not leaned nimbly back outside his range.

Before he could bring the dagger round to strike again, she seized his arm double-handed and wrenched it downward and round as though breaking a branch off a tree. The Turanian looked down to find his own dagger sunk deep into his groin, all the way to the hilt. He gasped in dismay as blood gushed out, darkening the front of his silken breeks, and try though he might to stem the flow with both hands, it was hopeless.

He slumped into the nearest chair and began to weep as his life ebbed away before his very eyes. His head nodded forwards, chin settling on collarbone, and soon his face slackened, his mouth fell open and his eyelids closed, and he was gone.

In all, the fight had lasted less than a minute, and Gudrun, having rendered the four Turanians either unconscious, incapacitated or dead, was hardly even out of breath. Around her, the Oasis in a Sandstorm had fallen quiet, all eyes fixed on the scene of violence and its aftermath.

During this lull the Corinthian lutanist spied his opportunity and struck up a new tune, with the thought that now at least his audience might hear his efforts. He managed only a few notes when, unfortunately for him, a great gale of laughter broke out among the customers as they showed their unanimous, full-throated appreciation for the manner in which Gudrun had dealt with the Turanians. Huzzahs and cheers resounded deafeningly to the roof beams, for if there was anything the clientele of this particular tavern enjoyed, it was a fight well conducted and convincingly won.

Gudrun offered her congratulators a wry curtsey, and it was at that moment that Yahsun slipped his good hand inside his cloak and out came another of those crescent-bladed daggers.

The act was unseen by all—all save Conan, whose keen eyes spied the glint of lamplight reflecting off the blade and the surreptitious raising of the weapon by the crippled but still physically capable Turanian.

He did not pause. His poniard whipped from his girdle and flashed across the room like a silver dart. Even as the still-kneeling Yahsun brought his dagger up to stab Gudrun in the thigh, the Cimmerian’s overarm pitch found its mark, his knife embedding itself hilt-deep in the other man’s eye. Yahsun’s other eye registered astonishment, and then he pitched sideways, dying with a long, dwindling gurgle.

There was a moment of startled hush, and then applause erupted again, this time directed at the Cimmerian.

Ignoring the acclaim, Conan went to retrieve his poniard, which he wiped clean on the late Yahsun’s cloak, removing all traces of blood, eye jelly and brain matter.

Gudrun favored him with a look of gratitude and followed him as he returned to his table. The Æsir man was waiting for him there, and he, too, looked grateful.

“An amazing throw, by Ymir,” he declared, grasping Conan’s hand and shaking it hard. “You have my admiration as well as my thanks. I did not even notice the Turanian going for his blade. The sneaky dog! Well, he got what he deserved. And you, Gudrun.” He addressed the woman, his voice turning tender. “Let me look at you. You are safe and unhurt?”

“Of course, Hunwulf,” she answered with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Don’t make a fuss.”

“Can I help it? I was not at all concerned during the fight, but after… To think, that cowardly Turanian cur might have laid open your flesh, might even have killed you, were it not for the quick actions of this fellow here.”

“I did only what any man might,” Conan said. Already, the tavernkeeper was arranging for the spilled blood to be swabbed from the floor and the four Turanians, dead and insensate alike, to be dragged from the premises and dumped outside.

“Please, don’t be so modest,” said the Æsir man, Hunwulf. “You may very well have just saved my wife’s life.”

“Your wife.” Conan nodded to himself. It made sense that the two Æsir were married. They were of the same age as each other—just shy of their thirtieth year if he didn’t miss his guess, the age he himself was—and moreover, it would be a strange coincidence for a man and a woman hailing from the same distant country to be here in Eruk together if they were not kindred in some way. He had entertained the vague notion that they might be brother and sister, meaning Gudrun was free to be courted. He now acknowledged, with some sorrow, that that was not on the cards.

“And the absolute least I can do in return,” Hunwulf continued, “is buy you a drink. Nay, several drinks.”

“That is something,” Conan averred, “that only a fool would refuse.”

Talk of Winged Monsters and Man-eating Plants

In Hunwulf Ivarson and Gudrun Ingensdóttir, Conan found a pair of doughty drinking companions. Hours passed with the three of them quaffing flagon after flagon together and swapping anecdotes and tales of their exploits.

They compared their experiences as northerners in Shem: how one had to adjust to the relentless searing heat, the dust, and the aridity; how the country’s desert vistas and bare rose-red mountains, though beautiful, seemed also the most inhospitable terrain one could imagine, utterly inimical to life; how, above all else, Shem was a far cry from the damp, chilly, often fog-shrouded landscapes that were a northerner’s birthright.

The Æsir couple, it transpired, were strangers to their own motherland, having never set foot in snowy Asgard, but rather having been born into a nomadic tribe that had abandoned Nordheim years earlier for the more temperate and fertile regions just to the south in Brythunia and the Border Kingdom.

Conan, in turn, spoke with little nostalgia about rugged, barren Cimmeria, all drab gray skies, rocky hillsides and rain-sodden pine forests, a place he felt little affection for and even less inclination to return to.

“Why are you not with your tribesmen anymore?” he asked the couple at one point in the evening, to which query Hunwulf responded with a wary grimace, as of a man loath to admit a guilty truth.

“I suppose it can do no harm to tell you, Conan,” Gudrun said eventually. “You seem trustworthy, and I feel you and we share a kinship as displaced people of the north—not forgetting, too, that I am greatly in your debt. It would be safe to say that Hunwulf and I did not leave our tribe so much as flee. We had no choice. To stay would have been to die.”

“How so?”

Husband and wife shared a look, one that contained evident mutual love but also a certain furtiveness. A brief, unvoiced discussion was had in that glance, and an agreement reached.

They then began relating their history, dividing the narration between them, with each occasionally correcting the other on some point of detail or elaborating where elaboration seemed called for.

*   *   *

Although Hunwulf and Gudrun had grown up together, she was actually the daughter of another tribe. She had been found as a lost waif, barely older than a babe, starving and alone in a dark forest, having either wandered away from her own people or been the sole survivor of some massacre about which she had no recollection; Hunwulf’s tribe, recognizing that she was of the same race as they, had taken her to their bosom and adopted her as their own. Not knowing who the foundling’s father was, they gave her the patronymic Ingensdóttir, “Nobody’s Daughter.”

She and Hunwulf had grown close in their youth and a flame of ardor had been kindled between them.

However, once Gudrun achieved full womanhood she was promised to another man, Heimdul Leifson, for he, known to all as Heimdul the Strong, was the tribe’s mightiest hunter and so deserved to take as his wife her who was by far the most beautiful, bold and accomplished among her peers.

But the burning love Hunwulf harbored for Gudrun—and she for him—could not be snuffed out as easily as that, and one night Hunwulf, overcome by jealous madness and seeing no other solution to their quandary, crept into Heimdul’s horse-hide tent as he slept and slew him with his axe.

That same night, Hunwulf and Gudrun stole away under cover of darkness, forsaking the security of tribal life for the unknown. They took flight into the wilderness, and the rest of their people were soon hot on their heels, full of rage and seeking vengeance for Hunwulf’s brutal act of murder.

For a day and a night the eloping couple stayed one step ahead of their pursuers, but the chase was hard and fraught, and in the end they escaped capture only by dint of entering a rising river and swimming across.

It was a desperate and dangerous measure, as they could easily have been swept away to their deaths by the torrent; but then that was the depth of their passion, that was the recklessness their love engendered in them, so great they would risk drowning rather than be denied a life together.

Nor were their travails over when they gained the safety of the opposite bank, for although their fellow tribesmen did not dare cross the river and gave up the pursuit, Hunwulf and Gudrun had to endure endless hardship and deprivation over the next few weeks as they roamed the unfamiliar territory they found themselves in. They were assailed by tigers, leopards and giant condors, and traversed a mountain range of surpassing precipitousness.

By luck, they came upon a village of mud huts nestled among the crags, where they were greeted warmly by the inhabitants, a peaceful lot who took pity on the tired, bedraggled pair and fed them meat, barley-bread and fermented milk.

Although these people did not speak the Æsir language, nor could Hunwulf and Gudrun understand them, it was made clear that the couple were welcome to stay.

There was an accompanying warning, however, imparted through the violent beating of tom-toms and much extravagant shaking of heads and miming. Some menace lay not far from the village, that was the clear import of all this dumbshow, and the Æsir guests must heed it and be on their guard.

Dusk fell. As Hunwulf was doing his best to comprehend what the supposed menace might be, there came a sudden beating of wings and a large, silhouetted shape swooped out of the twilight. He took a heavy blow to the head and was sent sprawling, and next instant heard Gudrun scream.