Title: Queen Of The Black Coast

Author: Robert E. Howard

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QUEEN OF THE BACK COAST







1 Conan Joins the Pirates



Believe green buds awaken in the spring,

  That autumn paints the leaves with somber fire;

Believe I held my heart inviolate

  To lavish on one man my hot desire.



                        The Song of Belit



Hoofs drummed down the street that sloped to the wharfs. The folk that

yelled and scattered had only a fleeting glimpse of a mailed figure on

a black stallion, a wide scarlet cloak flowing out on the wind. Far up

the street came the shout and clatter of pursuit, but the horseman did

not look back. He swept out onto the wharfs and jerked the plunging

stallion back on its haunches at the very lip of the pier. Seamen

gaped up at him, as they stood to the sweep and striped sail of a

high-prowed, broadwaisted galley. The master, sturdy and black-

bearded, stood in the bows, easing her away from the piles with a

boat-hook. He yelled angrily as the horseman sprang from the saddle

and with a long leap landed squarely on the mid-deck.



"Who invited you aboard?"



"Get under way!" roared the intruder with a fierce gesture that

spattered red drops from his broadsword.



"But we're bound for the coasts of Kush!" expostulated the master.



"Then I'm for Kush! Push off, I tell you!" The other cast a quick

glance up the street, along which a squad of horsemen were galloping;

far behind them toiled a group of archers, crossbows on their

shoulders.



"Can you pay for your passage?" demanded the master.



"I pay my way with steel!" roared the man in armor, brandishing the

great sword that glittered bluely in the sun. "By Crom, yin, if you

don't get under way, I'll drench this galley in the 'blood of its

crew!"



The shipmaster was a good judge of men. One glance at the irk scarred

face of the swordsman, hardened with passion, and he shouted a quick

order, thrusting strongly against the piles. The galley wallowed out

into clear water, the oars began to clack rhythmically; then a puff of

wind filled the shimmering sail, the light ship heeled to the gust,

then took her course like a swan, gathering headway as she skimmed

along.



On the wharfs the riders were shaking their swords and shouting

threats and commands that the ship put about, and yelling for the

bowmen to hasten before the craft was out of arbalest range.



"Let them rave," grinned the swordsman hardily. "Do you keep her on

her course, master steersman."



The master descended from the small deck between the bows, made his

way between the rows of oarsmen, and mounted the mid-deck. The

stranger stood there with his back to the mast, eyes narrowed alertly,

sword ready. The shipman eyed him steadily, careful not to make any

move toward the long knife in his belt. He saw a tall powerfully built

figure in a black scalemail hauberk, burnished greaves and a blue-

steel helmet from which jutted bull's horns highly polished. From the

mailed shoulders fell the scarlet cloak, blowing in the sea-wind. A

broad shagreen belt with a golden buckle held the scabbard of the

broadsword he bore. Under the horned helmet a square-cut black mane

contrasted with smoldering blue eyes.



"If we must travel together," said the master, "we may as well be at

peace with each other. My name is Tito, licensed mastershipman of the

ports of Argos. I am bound for Kush, to trade beads and silks and

sugar and brass-hilted swords to the black kings for ivory, copra,

copper ore, slaves and pearls."



The swordsman glanced back at the rapidly receding docks, where the

figures still gesticulated helplessly, evidently having trouble in

finding a boat swift enough to overhaul the fast-sailing galley.



"I am Conan, a Cimmerian," he answered. "I came into Argos seeking

employment, but with no wars forward, there was nothing to which I

might turn my hand."



"Why do the guardsman pursue you?" asked Tito. "Not that it's any of

my business, but I thought perhaps-"



"I've nothing to conceal," replied the Cimmerian. "By Crom, though

I've spent considerable time among you civilized peoples, your ways

are still beyond my comprehension.



"Well, last night in a tavern, a captain in the king's guard offered

violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier, who naturally ran him

through. But it seems there is some cursed law against killing

guardsmen, and the boy and his girl fled away. It was bruited about

that I was seen with them, and so today I was haled into court, and a

judge asked me where the lad had gone. I replied that since he was a

friend of mine, I could not betray him. Then the court waxed wrath,

and the judge talked a great deal about my duty to the state, and

society, and other things I did not understand, and bade me tell where

my friend had flown. By this time I was becoming wrathful myself, for

I had explained my position.



"But I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I

had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a

dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then, seeing they were

all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge's skull; then I cut my

way out of the court, and seeing the high constable's stallion tied

near by, I rode for the wharfs, where I thought to find a ship bound

for foreign parts."



"Well," said Tito hardily, "the courts have fleeced me too often in

suits with rich merchants for me to owe them any love. I'll have

questions to answer if I ever anchor in that port again, but I can

prove I acted under compulsion. You may as well put up your sword.

We're peaceable sailors, and have nothing against you. Besides, it's

as well to have a fighting-man like yourself on board. Come up to the

poop-deck and we'll have a tankard of ale."



"Good enough," readily responded the Cimmerian, sheathing his sword.



The Argus was a small sturdy ship, typical of those trading-craft

which ply between the ports of Zingara and Argos and the southern

coasts, hugging the shoreline and seldom venturing far into the open

ocean. It was high of stern, with a tall curving prow; broad in the

waist, sloping beautifully to stem and stern. It was guided by the

long sweep from the poop, and propulsion was furnished mainly by the

broad striped silk sail, aided by a jibsail. The oars were for use in

tacking out of creeks and bays, and during calms. There were ten to

the side, five fore and five aft of the small mid-deck. The most

precious part of the cargo was lashed under this deck, and under the

fore-deck. The men slept on deck or between the rowers' benches,

protected in bad weather by canopies. With twenty men at the oars,

three at the sweep, and the shipmaster, the crew was complete.



So the Argus pushed steadily southward, with consistently fair

weather. The sun beat down from day to day with fiercer heat, and the

canopies were run up--striped silken cloths that matched the

shimmering sail and the shining goldwork on the prow and along the

gunwales.



They sighted the coast of Shem--long rolling meadowlands with the

white crowns of the towers of cities in the distance, and horsemen

with blue-black beards and hooked noses, who sat their steeds along

the shore and eyed the galley with suspicion. She did not put in;

there was scant profit in trade with the sons of Shem.



Nor did master Tito pull into the broad bay where the Styx river

emptied its gigantic flood into the ocean, and the massive black

castles of Khemi loomed over the blue waters. Ships did not put

unasked into this port, where dusky sorcerers wove awful spells in the

murk of sacrificial smoke mounting eternally from blood-stained altars

where naked women screamed, and where Set, the Old Serpent, arch-demon

of the Hyborians but god of the Stygians, was said to writhe his

shining coils among his worshippers.



Master Tito gave that dreamy glass-floored bay a wide berth, even when

a serpent-prowed gondola shot from behind a castellated point of land,

and naked dusky women, with great red blossoms in their hair, stood

and called to his sailors, and posed and postured brazenly.



Now no more shining towers rose inland. They had passed the southern

borders of Stygia and were cruising along the coasts of Kush. The sea

and the ways of the sea were neverending mysteries to Conan, whose

homeland was among the high hills of the northern uplands. The

wanderer was no less of interest to the sturdy seamen, few of whom had

ever seen one of his race.



They were characteristic Argosean sailors, short and stockily built.

Conan towered above them, and no two of them could match his strength.

They were hardy and robust, but his was the endurance and vitality of

a wolf, his thews steeled and his nerves whetted by the hardness of

his life in the world's wastelands. He was quick to laugh, quick and

terrible in his wrath. He was a valiant trencherman, and strong drink

was a passion and a weakness with him. Naive as a child in many ways,

unfamiliar with the sophistry of civilization, he was naturally

intelligent, jealous of his rights, and dangerous as a hungry tiger.

Young in years, he was hardened in warfare and wandering, and his

sojourns in many lands were evident in his apparel. His horned helmet

was such as was worn by the golden-haired AEsir of Nordheim; his

hauberk and greaves were of the finest workmanship of Koth; the fine

ring-mail which sheathed his arms and legs was of Nemedia; the blade

at his girdle was a great Aquilonian broadsword; and his gorgeous

scarlet cloak could have been spun nowhere but in Ophir.



So they beat southward, and master Tito began to look for the high-

walled villages of the black people. But they found only smoking ruins

on the shore of a bay, littered with naked black bodies. Tito swore.



"I had good trade here, aforetime. This is the work of pirates."



"And if we meet them?" Conan loosened his great blade in its scabbard.



"Mine is no warship. We run, not fight. Yet if it came to a pinch, we

have beaten off reavers before, and might do it again; unless it were

Belit's Tigress."



"Who is Belit?"



"The wildest she-devil unhanged. Unless I read the signs awrong, it

was her butchers who destroyed that village on the bay. May I some day

see her dangling from the yard-arm! She is called the queen of the

black coast. She is a Shemite woman, who leads black raiders. They

harry the shipping and have sent many a good tradesman to the bottom."



From under the poop-deck Tito brought out quilted jerkins, steel caps,

bows and arrows.



"Little use to resist if we're run down," he grunted. "But it rasps

the soul to give up life without a struggle."



It was just at sunrise when the lookout shouted a warning. Around the

long point of an island off the starboard bow glided a long lethal

shape, a slender serpentine galley, with a raised deck that ran from

stem to stern. Forty oars on each side drove her swiftly through the

water, and the low rail swarmed with naked blacks that chanted and

clashed spears on oval shields. From the masthead floated a long

crimson pennon.



"Belit!" yelled Tito, paling. "Yare! Put her about! Into that creek-

mouth! If we can beach her before they run us down, we have a chance

to escape with our lives!"



So, veering sharply, the Argus ran for the line of surf that boomed

along the palm-fringed shore, Tito striding back and forth, exhorting

the panting rowers to greater efforts. The master's black beard

bristled, his eyes glared.



"Give me a bow," requested Conan. "It's not my idea of a manly weapon,

but I learned archery among the Hyrkanians, and it will go hard if I

can't feather a man or so on yonder deck."



Standing on the poop, he watched the serpent-like ship skimming

lightly over the waters, and landsman though he was, it was evident to

him that the Argus would never win that race. Already arrows, arching

from the pirate's deck, were falling with a hiss into the sea, not

twenty paces astern.



"We'd best stand to it," growled the Cimmerian; "else we'll all die

with shafts in our backs, and not a blow dealt."



"Bend to it, dogs!" roared Tito with a passionate gesture of his

brawny fist. The bearded rowers grunted, heaved at the oars, while

their muscles coiled and knotted, and sweat started out on their

hides. The timbers of the stout little galley creaked and groaned as

the men fairly ripped her through the water. The wind had fallen; the

sail hung limp. Nearer crept the inexorable raiders, and they were

still a good mile from the surf when one of the steersmen fell gagging

across a sweep, a long arrow through his neck. Tito sprang to take his

place, and Conan, bracing his feet wide on the heaving poop-deck,

lifted his bow. He could see the details of the pirate plainly now.

The rowers were protected by a line of raised mantelets along the

sides, but the warriors dancing on the narrow deck were in full view.

These were painted and plumed, and mostly naked, brandishing spears

and spotted shields.



On the raised platform in the bows stood a slim figure whose white

skin glistened in dazzling contrast to the glossy ebon hides about it.

Belit, without a doubt. Conan drew the shaft to his ear--then some

whim or qualm stayed his hand and sent the arrow through the body of a

tall plumed spearman beside her.



Hand over hand the pirate galley was overhauling the lighter ship.

Arrows fell in a rain about the Argus, and men cried out. All the

steersmen were down, pincushioned, and Tito was handling the massive

sweep alone, gasping black curses, his braced legs knots of straining

thews. Then with a sob he sank down, a long shaft quivering in his

sturdy heart. The Argus lost headway and rolled in the swell. The men

shouted in confusion, and Conan took command in characteristic

fashion.



"Up, lads!" he roared, loosing with a vicious twang of cord. "Grab

your steel and give these dogs a few knocks before they cut our

throats! Useless to bend your backs any more: they'll board us ere we

can row another fifty paces!"



In desperation the sailors abandoned their oars and snatched up their

weapons. It was valiant, but useless. They had time for one flight of

arrows before the pirate was upon them. With no one at the sweep, the

Argus rolled broadside, and the steel-baked prow of the raider crashed

into her amidships. Grappling-irons crunched into the side. From the

lofty gunwales, the black pirates drove down a volley of shafts that

tore through the quilted jackets of the doomed sailormen, then sprang

down spear in hand to complete the slaughter. On the deck of the

pirate lay half a dozen bodies, an earnest of Conan's archery.



The fight on the Argus was short and bloody. The stocky sailors, no

match for the tall barbarians, were cut down to a man. Elsewhere the

battle had taken a peculiar turn. Conan, on the high-pitched poop, was

on a level with the pirate's deck. As the steel prow slashed into the

Argus, he braced himself and kept his feet under the shock, casting

away his bow. A tall corsair, bounding over the rail, was met in

midair by the Cimmerian's great sword, which sheared him cleanly

through the torso, so that his body fell one way and his legs another.

Then, with a burst of fury that left a heap of mangled corpses along

the gunwales, Conan was over the rail and on the deck of the Tigress.



In an instant he was the center of a hurricane of stabbing spears and

lashing clubs. But he moved in a blinding blur of steel. Spears bent

on his armor or swished empty air, and his sword sang its death-song.

The fighting-madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of

unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls,

smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the

deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood.



Invulnerable in his armor, his back against the mast, he heaped

mangled corpses at his feet until his enemies gave back panting in

rage and fear. Then as they lifted their spears to cast them, and he

tensed himself to leap and die in the midst of them, a shrill cry

froze the lifted arms. They stood like statues, the black giants

poised for the spearcasts, the mailed swordsman with his dripping

blade.



Befit sprang before the blacks, beating down their spears. She turned

toward Conan, her bosom heaving, her eyes flashing. Fierce fingers of

wonder caught at his heart. She was slender, yet formed like a

goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad

silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her

breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Cimmerian's pulse,

even in the panting fury of battle. Her rich black hair, black as a

Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters down her supple

back. Her dark eyes burned on the Cimmerian.



She was untamed as a desert wind, supple and dangerous as a she-

panther. She came close to him, heedless of his great blade, dripping

with blood of her warriors. Her supple thigh brushed against it, so

close she came to the tall warrior. Her red lips parted as she stared

up into his somber menacing eyes.



"Who are you?" she demanded. "By Ishtar, I have never seen your like,

though I have ranged the sea from the coasts of Zingara to the fires

of the ultimate south. Whence come you?"



"From Argos," he answered shortly, alert for treachery. Let her slim

hand move toward the jeweled dagger in her girdle, and a buffet of his

open hand would stretch her senseless on the deck. Yet in his heart he

did not fear; he had held too many women, civilized or barbaric, in

his iron-Chewed arms, not to recognize the light that burned in the

eyes of this one.



"You are no soft Hyborian!" she exclaimed. "You are fierce and hard as

a gray wolf. Those eyes were never dimmed by city lights; those thews

were never softened by life amid marble walls."



"I am Conan, a Cimmerian," he answered.



To the people of the exotic climes, the north was a mazy half-mythical

realm, peopled with ferocious blue-eyed giants who occasionally

descended from their icy fastnesses with torch and sword. Their raids

had never taken them as far south as Shem, and this daughter of Shem

made no distinction between AEsir, Vanir or Cimmerian. With the

unerring instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found

her lover, and his race meant naught, save as it invested him with the

glamor of far lands.



"And I am Belit," she cried, as one might say, "I am queen."



"Look at me, Conan!" She threw wide her arms. "I am Belit, queen of

the black coast. Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy

mountains which bred you. Take me and crush me with your fierce love!

Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea! I am a

queen by fire and steel and slaughter--be thou my king!"



His eyes swept the blood-stained ranks, seeking expressions of wrath

or jealousy. He saw none. The fury was gone from the ebon faces. He

realized that to these men Belit was more than a woman: a goddess

whose will was unquestioned. He glanced at the Argus, wallowing in the

crimson sea-wash, heeling far over, her decks awash, held up by the

grappling-irons. He glanced at the blue-fringed shore, at the far

green hazes of the ocean, at the vibrant figure which stood before

him; and his barbaric soul stirred within him. To quest these shining

blue realms with that white-skinned young tiger-cat--to love, laugh,

wander and pillage--"I'll sail with you," he grunted, shaking the red

drops from his blade.



"Ho, N'Yaga!" her voice twanged like a bowstring. "Fetch herbs and

dress your master's wounds! The rest of you bring aboard the plunder

and cast off."



As Conan sat with his back against the poop-rail, while the old shaman

attended to the cuts on his hands and limbs, the cargo of the ill-

fated Argus was quickly shifted aboard the Tigress and stored in small

cabins below deck. Bodies of the crew and of fallen pirates were cast

overboard to the swarming sharks, while wounded blacks were laid in

the waist to be bandaged. Then the grappling-irons were cast off, and

as the Argus sank silently into the blood-flecked waters, the Tigress

moved off southward to the rhythmic clack of the oars.



As they moved out over the glassy blue deep, Belit came to the poop.

Her eyes were burning like those of a she-panther in the dark as she

tore off her ornaments, her sandals and her silken girdle and cast

them at his feet. Rising on tiptoe, arms stretched upward, a quivering

line of naked white, she cried to the desperate horde: "Wolves of the

blue sea, behold ye now the dance--the mating-dance of Belit, whose

fathers were kings of Askalon!"



And she danced, like the spin of a desert whirlwind, like the leaping

of a quenchless flame, like the urge of creation and the urge of

death. Her white feet spurned the blood-stained deck and dying men

forgot death as they gazed frozen at her. Then, as the white stars

glimmered through the blue velvet dusk, making her whirling body a

blur of ivory fire, with a wild cry she threw herself at Conan's feet,

and the blind flood of the Cimmerian's desire swept all else away as

he crushed her panting form against the black plates of his corseleted

breast.







2 The Black Lotus



In that dead citadel of crumbling stone.

 Her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen,

And curious madness took me by the throat,

 As of a rival lover thrust between.



                 The Song of Belit



The Tigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered. Tomtoms

beat in the night, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found

a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion. And

survivors of butchered Stygian ships named Belit with curses, and a

white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes remembered

this man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore

crimson fruit in the years to come.



But heedless as a vagrant wind, the Tigress cruised the southern

coasts, until she anchored at the mouth of a broad sullen river, whose

banks were jungle-clouded walls of mystery.



"This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death," said Belit. "Its waters

are poisonous. See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptiles

live in that river. The black people shun it. Once a Stygian galley,

fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished. I anchored in this

very spot, and days later, the galley came floating down the dark

waters, its decks blood-stained and deserted. Only one man was on

board, and he was mad and died gibbering. The cargo was intact, but

the crew had vanished into silence and mystery.



"My lover, I believe there is a city somewhere on that river. I have

heard tales of giant towers and walls glimpsed afar off by sailors who

dared go part-way up the river. We fear nothing: Conan, let us go and

sack that city."



Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that

directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It

mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long

as they sailed and fought. He found the life good.



Battle and raid had thinned their crew; only some eighty spear-men

remained, scarcely enough to work the long galley. But Beliit would

not take the time to make the long cruise southward to the island

kingdoms where she recruited her buccaneers. She was afire with

eagerness for her latest venture; so the Tigress swung into the river

mouth, the oarsmen pulling strongly as she breasted the broad current.



They rounded the mysterious bend that shut out the sight of the sea,

and sunset found them forging steadily against the sluggish flow,

avoiding sandbars where strange reptiles coiled. Not even a crocodile

did they see, nor any fourlegged beast or winged bird coming down to

the water's edge to drink. On through the blackness that preceded

moonrise they drove, between banks that were solid palisades of

darkness, whence came mysterious rustlings and stealthy footfalls, and

the gleam of grim eyes. And once an inhuman voice was lifted in awful

mockery the cry of an ape, Belit said, adding that the souls of evil

men were imprisoned in these man-like animals as punishment for past

crimes. But Conan doubted, for once, in a gold-barred cage in an

Hyrkanian city, he had seen an abysmal sad-eyed beast which men told

him was an ape, and there had been about it naught of the demoniac

malevolence which vibrated in the shrieking laughter that echoed from

the black jungle.



Then the moon rose, a splash of blood, ebony-barred, and the jungle

awoke in horrific bedlam to greet it. Roars and howls and yells set

the black warriors to trembling, but all this noise, Conan noted, came

from farther back in the jungle, as if the beasts no less than men

shunned the black waters of Zarkheba.



Rising above the black denseness of the trees and above the waving

fronds, the moon silvered the river, and their wake became a rippling

scintillation of phosphorescent bubbles that widened like a shining

road of bursting jewels. The oars dipped into the shining water and

came up sheathed in frosty silver. The plumes on the warrior's head-

piece nodded in the wind, and the gems on sword-hilts and harness

sparkled frostily.



The cold light struck icy fire from the jewels in Wit's clustered

black locks as she stretched her lithe figure on a leopardskin thrown

on the deck. Supported on her elbows, her chin resting on her slim

hands, she gazed up into the face of Conan, who lounged beside her,

his black mane stirring in the faint breeze. Belit's eyes were dark

jewels burning in the moonlight.



"Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm

of horror and death," she said. "Are you afraid?"



A shrug of his mailed shoulders was his only answer.



"I am not afraid either," she said meditatively. "I was never afraid.

I have looked into the naked fangs of Death too often. Conan, do you

fear the gods?"



"I would not tread on their shadow," answered the barbarian

conservatively. "Some gods are strong to harm, others, to aid; at

least so say their priests. Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong

god, because his people have builded their cities over the world. But

even the Hyborians fear Set. And Bel, god of thieves, is a good god.

When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him."



"What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them."



"Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call

on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than

to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He

is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and

slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?"



"But what of the worlds beyond the river of death?" she persisted.



"There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people,"

answered Conan. "In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding

pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls

enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander

cheerlessly throughout eternity."



Belit shuddered. "Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny.

What do you believe, Conan?"



He shrugged his shoulders. "I have known many gods. He who denies them

is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death.

It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's

realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the

Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep

while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging

wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation

of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content.

Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of

reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no

less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live,

I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."



"But the gods are real," she said, pursuing her own line of thought.

"And above all are the gods of the Shemites--Ishtar and Ashtoreth and

Derketo and Adonis. Bel, too, is Shemitish, for he was born in ancient

Shumir, long, long ago and went forth laughing, with curled beard and

impish wise eyes, to steal the gems of the kings of old times."



"There is life beyond death, I know, and I know this, too, Conan of

Cimmeria--" she rose lithely to her knees and caught him in a

pantherish embrace--"my love is stronger than any death! I have lain

in your arms, panting with the violence of our love; you have held and

crushed and conquered me, drawing my soul to your lips with the

fierceness of your bruising kisses. My heart is welded to your heart,

my soul is part of your soul! Were I still in death and you fighting

for life, I would come back from the abyss to aid you--aye, whether my

spirit floated with the purple sails on the crystal sea of paradise,

or writhed in the molten flames of hell! I am yours, and all the gods

and all their eternities shall not sever us!"



A scream rang from the lookout in the bows. Thrusting Belit aside,

Conan bounded up, his sword a long silver glitter in the moonlight,

his hair bristling at what he saw. The black warrior dangled above the

deck, supported by what seemed a dark pliant tree trunk arching over

the rail. Then he realized that it was a gigantic serpent which had

writhed its glistening length up the side of the bow and gripped the

luckless warrior in its jaws. Its dripping scales shone leprously in

the moonlight as it reared its form high above the deck, while the

stricken man screamed and writhed like a mouse in the fangs of a

python. Conan rushed into the bows, and swinging his great sword,

hewed nearly through the giant trunk, which was thicker than a man's

body. Blood drenched the rails as the dying monster swayed far out,

still gripping its victim, and sank into the river, coil by coil,

lashing the water to bloody foam, in which man and reptile vanished

together.



Thereafter Conan kept the lookout watch himself, but no other horror

came crawling up from the murky depths, and as dawn whitened over the

jungle, he sighted the black fangs of towers jutting up among the

trees. He called Belit, who slept on the deck, wrapped in his scarlet

cloak; and she sprang to his side, eyes blazing. Her lips were parted

to call orders to her warriors to take up bow and spears; then her

lovely eyes widened.



It was but the ghost of a city on which they looked when they cleared

a jutting jungle-clad point and swung in toward the incurving shore.

Weeds and rank river grass grew between the stones of broken piers and

shattered paves that had once been streets anal spacious plazas and

broad courts. From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle

crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous

green. Here and there buckling towers reeled drunkenly against the

morning sky, and broken pillars jutted up among the decaying walls. In

the center space a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column, and on

its pinnacle sat or squatted something that Conan supposed to be an

image until his keen eyes detected life in it.



"It is a great bird," said one of the warriors, standing in the bows.



"It is a monster bat," insisted another.



"It is an ape," said Belit.



Just then the creature spread broad wings and flapped off into the

jungle.



"A winged ape," said old N'Yaga uneasily. "Better we had cut our

throats than come to this place. It is haunted."



Belit mocked at his superstitions and ordered the galley run inshore

and tied to the crumbling wharfs. She was the first to spring ashore,

closely followed by Conan, and after them trooped the ebon-skinned

pirates, white plumes waving in the morning wind, spears ready, eyes

rolling dubiously at the surrounding jungle.



Over all brooded a silence as sinister as that of a sleeping serpent.

Belit posed picturesquely among the ruins, the vibrant life in her

lithe figure contrasting strangely with the desolation and decay about

her. The sun flamed up slowly, sullenly, above the jungle, flooding

the towers with a dull gold that left shadows lurking beneath the

tottering walls. Belit pointed to a slim round tower that reeled on

its rotting base. A broad expanse of cracked, grass-grown slabs led up

to it, flanked by fallen columns, and before it stood a massive altar.

Belit went swiftly along the ancient floor and stood before it.



"This was the temple of the old ones," she said. "Look--you can see

the channels for the blood along the sides of the altar, and the rains

of ten thousand years have not washed the dark stains from them. The

walls have all fallen away, but this stone block defies time and the

elements."



"But who were these old ones?" demanded Conan.



She spread her slim hands helplessly. "Not even in legendary is this

city mentioned. But look at the handholes at either end of the altar!

Priests often conceal their treasures beneath their altars. Four of

you lay hold and see if you can lift it."



She stepped back to make room for them, glancing up at the tower which

loomed drunkenly above them. Three of the strongest blacks had gripped

the handholes cut into the stone curiously unsuited to human hands--

when Belit sprang back with a sharp cry. They froze in their places,

and Conan, bending to aid them, wheeled with a startled curse.



"A snake in the grass," she said, backing away. "Come and slay it; the

rest of you bend your backs to the stone."



Conan came quickly toward her, another taking his place. As he

impatiently scanned the grass for the reptile, the giant blacks braced

their feet, grunted and heaved with their huge muscles coiling and

straining under their ebon skin. The altar did not come off the

ground, but it revolved suddenly on its side. And simultaneously there

was a grinding rumble above and the tower came crashing down, covering

the four black men with broken masonry.



A cry of horror rose from their comrades. Belit's slim fingers dug

into Conan's arm-muscles. "There was no serpent," she whispered. "It

was but a ruse to call you away. I feared; the old ones guarded their

treasure well. Let us clear away the stones."



With herculean labor they did so, and lifted out the mangled bodies of

the four men. And under them, stained with their blood, the pirates

found a crypt carved in the solid stone. The altar, hinged curiously

with stone rods and sockets on one side, had served as its lid. And at

first glance the crypt seemed brimming with liquid fire, catching the

early light with a million blazing facets. Undreamable wealth lay

before the eyes of the gaping pirates; diamonds, rubies, bloodstones,

sapphires, turquoises, moonstones, opals, emeralds, amethysts, unknown

gems that shone like the eyes of evil women. The crypt was filled to

the brim with bright stones that the morning sun struck into lambent

flame.



With a cry Wit dropped to her knees among the bloodstained rubble on

the brink and thrust her white arms shoulder-deep into that pool of

splendor. She withdrew them, clutching something that brought another

cry to her lips--a long string of crimson stones that were like clots

of frozen blood strung on a thick gold wire. In their glow the golden

sunlight changed to bloody haze.



Belit's eyes were like a woman's in a trance. The Shemite soul finds a

bright drunkenness in riches and material splendor, and the sight of

this treasure might have shaken the soul of a sated emperor of

Shushan.



"Take up the jewels, dogs!" her voice was shrill with her emotions.



"Look!" a muscular black arm stabbed toward the Tigress, and Belit

wheeled, her crimson lips a-snarl, as if she expected to see a rival

corsair sweeping in to despoil her of her plunder. But from the

gunwales of the ship a dark shape rose, soaring away over the jungle.



"The devil-ape has been investigating the ship," muttered the blacks

uneasily.



"What matter?" cried Belit with a curse, raking back a rebellious lock

with an impatient hand. "Make a litter of spears and mantles to bear

these jewels--where the devil are you going?"



"To look to the galley," grunted Conan. "That bat-thing might have

knocked a hole in the bottom, for all we know."



He ran swiftly down the cracked wharf and sprang aboard. A moment's

swift examination below decks, and he swore heartily, casting a

clouded glance in the direction the bat-being had vanished. He

returned hastily to Belit, superintending the plundering of the crypt.

She had looped the necklace about her neck, and on her naked white

bosom the red clots glimmered darkly. A huge naked black stood crotch-

deep in the jewel-brimming crypt, scooping up great handfuls of

splendor to pass them to eager hands above. Strings of frozen

iridescence hung between his dusky fingers; drops of red fire dripped

from his hands, piled high with starlight and rainbow. It was as if a

black titan stood straddle-legged in the bright pits of hell, his

lifted hands full of stars.



"That flying devil has staved in the water-casks," said Conan. "If we

hadn't been so dazed by these stones we'd have heard the noise. We

were fools not to have left a man on guard. We can't drink this river

water. I'll take twenty men and search for fresh water in the jungle."



She looked at him vaguely, in her eyes the blank blaze of her strange

passion, her fingers working at the gems on her breast.



"Very well," she said absently, hardly heeding him. "I'll get the loot

aboard."



The jungle closed quickly about them, changing the light from gold to

gray. From the arching green branches creepers dangled like pythons.

The warriors fell into single file, creeping through the primordial

twilights like black phantoms following a white ghost.



Underbrush was not so thick as Conan had anticipated. The ground was

spongy but not slushy. Away from the river, it sloped gradually

upward. Deeper and deeper they plunged into the green waving depths,

and still there was no sign of water, either running stream or

stagnant pool. Conan halted suddenly, his warriors freezing into

basaltic statues. In the tense silence that followed, the Cimmerian

shook his head irritably.



"Go ahead," he grunted to a sub-chief, N'Gora. "March straight on

until you can no longer see me; then stop and wait for me. I believe

we're being followed. I heard something."



The blacks shuffled their feet uneasily, but did as they were told. As

they swung onward, Conan stepped quickly behind a great tree, glaring

back along the way they had come. From that leafy fastness anything

might emerge. Nothing occurred; the faint sounds of the marching

spearmen faded in the distance. Conan suddenly realized that the air

was impregnated with an alien and exotic scent. Something gently

brushed his temple. He turned quickly. From a cluster of green,

curiously leafed stalks, great black blossoms nodded at him. One of

these had touched him. They seemed to beckon him, to arch their pliant

stems toward him. They spread and rustled, though no wind blew.



He recoiled, recognizing the black lotus, whose juice was death, and

whose scent brought dream-haunted slumber. But already he felt a

subtle lethargy stealing over him. He sought to lift his sword, to hew

down the serpentine stalks, but his arm hung lifeless at his side. He

opened his mouth to shout to his warriors, but only a faint rattle

issued. The next instant, with appalling suddenness, the jungle waved

and dimmed out before his eyes; he did not hear the screams that burst

out awfully not far away, as his knees collapsed, letting him pitch

limply to the earth. Above his prostrate form the great black blossoms

nodded in the windless air.







3 The Horror in the Jungle



Was it a dream the nighted lotus brought?

  Then curst the dream that bought my sluggish life;

And curst each laggard hour that does not see

  Hot blood drip blackly from the crimsoned knife.



                            The Song of Belit



First there was the blackness of an utter void, with the cold winds of

cosmic space blowing through it. Then shapes, vague, monstrous and

evanescent, rolled in dim panorama through the expanse of nothingness,

as if the darkness were taking material form. The winds blew and a

vortex formed, a whirling pyramid of roaring blackness. From it grew

Shape and Dimension; then suddenly, like clouds dispersing, the

darkness rolled away on either hand and a huge city of dark green

stone rose on the bank of a wide river, flowing through an illimitable

plain. Through this city moved beings of alien configuration.



Cast in the mold of humanity, they were distinctly not men. They were

winged and of heroic proportions; not a branch on the mysterious stalk

of evolution that culminated in man, but the ripe blossom on an alien

tree, separate and apart from that stalk. Aside from their wings, in

physical appearance they resembled man only as man in his highest form

resembles the great apes. In spiritual, esthetic and intellectual

development they were superior to man as man is superior to the

gorilla. But when they reared their colossal city, man's primal

ancestors had not yet risen from the slime of the primordial seas.



These beings were mortal, as are all things built of flesh and blood.

They lived, loved and died, though the individual span of life was

enormous. Then, after uncounted millions of years, the Change began.

The vista shimmered and wavered, like a picture thrown on a windblown

curtain. Over the city and the land the ages flowed as waves flow over

a beach, and each wave brought alterations. Somewhere on the planet

the magnetic centers were shifting; the great glaciers and ice-fields

were withdrawing toward the new poles.



The littoral of the great river altered. Plains turned into swamps

that stank with reptilian life. Where fertile meadows had rolled,

forests reared up, growing into dank jungles. The changing ages

wrought on the inhabitants of the city as well. They did not migrate

to fresher lands. Reasons inexplicable to humanity held them to the

ancient city and their doom. And as that once rich and mighty land

sank deeper and deeper into the black mire of the sunless jungle, so

into the chaos of squalling jungle life sank the people of the city.

Terrific convulsions shook the earth; the nights were lurid with

spouting volcanoes that fringed the dark horizons with red pillars.



After an earthquake that shook down the outer walls and highest towers

of the city, and caused the river to run black for days with some

lethal substance spewed up from the subterranean depths, a frightful

chemical change became apparent in the waters the folk had drunk for

millenniums uncountable.



Many died who drank of it; and in those who lived, the drinking

wrought change, subtle, gradual and grisly. In adapting themselves to

the changing conditions, they had sunk far below their original level.

But the lethal waters altered them even more horribly, from generation

to more bestial generation. They who had been winged gods became

pinioned demons, with all that remained of their ancestors' vast

knowledge distorted and perverted and twisted into ghastly paths. As

they had risen higher than mankind might dream, so they sank lower

than man's maddest nightmares reach. They died fast, by cannibalism,

and horrible feuds fought out in the murk of the midnight jungle. And

at last among the lichen-grown ruins of their city only a single shape

lurked, a stunted abhorrent perversion of nature.



Then for the first time humans appeared: dark-skinned, hawkfaced men

in copper and leather harness, bearing bows--the warriors of pre-

historic Stygia. There were only fifty of them, and they were haggard

and gaunt with starvation and prolonged effort, stained and scratched

with jungle-wandering, with bloodcrusted bandages that told of fierce

fighting. In their minds was a tale of warfare and defeat, and flight

before a stronger tribe which drove them ever southward, until they

lost themselves in the green ocean of jungle and river.



Exhausted they lay down among the ruins where red blossoms that bloom

but once in a century waved in the full moon, and sleep fell upon

them. And as they slept, a hideous shape crept red-eyed from the

shadows and performed weird and awful rites about and above each

sleeper. The moon hung in the shadowy sky, painting the jungle red and

black; above the sleepers glimmered the crimson blossoms, like

splashes of blood. Then the moon went down and the eyes of the

necromancer were red jewels set in the ebony of night.



When dawn spread its white veil over the river, there were no men to

be seen: only a hairy winged horror that squatted in the center of a

ring of fifty great spotted hyenas that pointed quivering muzzles to

the ghastly sky and howled like souls in hell.



Then scene followed scene so swiftly that each tripped over the heels

of its predecessor. There was a confusion of movement, a writhing and

melting of lights and shadows, against a background of black jungle,

green stone ruins and murky river. Black men came up the river in long

boats with skulls grinning on the prows, or stole stooping through the

trees, spear in hand. They fled screaming through the dark from red

eyes and slavering fangs. Howls of dying men shook the shadows;

stealthy feet padded through the gloom, vampire eyes blazed redly.

There were grisly feasts beneath the moon, across whose red disk a

batlike shadow incessantly swept.



Then abruptly, etched clearly in contrast to these impressionistic

glimpses, around the jungled point in the whitening dawn swept a long

galley, thronged with shining ebon figures, and in the bows stood a

white-skinned ghost in blue steel.



It was at this point that Conan first realized that he was dreaming.

Until that instant he had had no consciousness of individual

existence. But as he saw himself treading the boards of the Tigress,

he recognized both the existence and the dream, although he did not

awaken.



Even as he wondered, the scene shifted abruptly to a jungle glade

where N'Gora and nineteen black spearmen stood, as if awaiting

someone. Even as he realized that it was he for whom they waited, a

horror swooped down from the skies and their stolidity was broken by

yells of fear. Like men maddened by terror, they threw away their

weapons and raced wildly through the jungle, pressed close by the

slavering monstrosity that flapped its wings above them.



Chaos and confusion followed this vision, during which Conan feebly

struggled to awake. Dimly he seemed to see himself lying under a

nodding cluster of black blossoms, while from the bushes a hideous

shape crept toward him. With a savage effort he broke the unseen bonds

which held him to his dreams, and started upright.



Bewilderment was in the glare he cast about him. Near him swayed the

dusky lotus, and he hastened to draw away from it.



In the spongy soil near by there was a track as if an animal had put

out a foot, preparatory to emerging from the bushes, then had

withdrawn it. It looked like the spoor of an unbelievably large hyena.



He yelled for N'Gora. Primordial silence brooded over the jungle, in

which his yells sounded brittle and hollow as mockery. He could not

see the sun, but his wilderness-trained instinct told him the day was

near its end. A panic rose in him at the thought that he had lain

senseless for hours. He hastily followed the tracks of the spearmen,

which lay plain in the damp loam before him. They ran in single file,

and he soon emerged into a glade--to stop short, the skin crawling

between his shoulders as he recognized it as the glade he had seen in

his lotus-drugged dream. Shields and spears lay scattered about as if

dropped in headlong flight.



And from the tracks which led out of the glade and deeper into the

fastnesses, Conan knew that the spearmen had fled, wildly. The

footprints overlay one another; they weaved blindly among the trees.

And with startling suddenness the hastening Cimmerian came out of the

jungle onto a hill-like rock which sloped steeply, to break off

abruptly in a sheer precipice forty feet high. And something crouched

on the brink.



At first Conan thought it to be a great black gorilla. Then he saw

that it was a giant black man that crouched ape-like, long arms

dangling, froth dripping from the loose lips. It was not until, with a

sobbing cry, the creature lifted huge hands and rushed towards him,

that Conan recognized N'Gora. The black man gave no heed to Conan's

shout as he charged, eyes rolled up to display the whites, teeth

gleaming, face an inhuman mask.



With his skin crawling with the horror that madness always instils in

the sane, Conan passed his sword through the black man's body; then,

avoiding the hooked hands that clawed at him as N'Gora sank down, he

strode to the edge of the cliff.



For an instant he stood looking down into the jagged rocks below,

where lay N'Gora's spearmen, in limp, distorted attitudes that told of

crushed limbs and splintered bones. Not one moved. A cloud of huge

black flies buzzed loudly above the bloods-plashed stones; the ants

had already begun to gnaw at the corpses. On the trees about sat birds

of prey, and a jackal, looking up and seeing the man on the cliff,

slunk furtively away.



For a little space Conan stood motionless. Then he wheeled and ran

back the way he had come, flinging himself with reckless haste through

the tall grass and bushes, hurdling creepers that sprawled snake-like

across his path. His sword swung low in his right hand, and an

unaccustomed pallor tinged his dark face.



The silence that reigned in the jungle was not broken. The sun had set

and great shadows rushed upward from the slime of the black earth.

Through the gigantic shades of lurking death and grim desolation Conan

was a speeding glimmer of scarlet and blue steel. No sound in all the

solitude was heard except his own quick panting as he burst from the

shadows into the dim twilight of the river-shore.



He saw the galley shouldering the rotten wharf, the ruins reeling

drunkenly in the gray half-light.



And here and there among the stones were spots of raw bright color, as

if a careless hand had splashed with a crimson brush.



Again Conan looked on death and destruction. Before him lay his

spearmen, nor did they rise to salute him. From the jungle edge to the

riverbank, among the rotting pillars and along the broken piers they

lay, torn and mangled and half devoured, chewed travesties of men.



All about the bodies and pieces of bodies were swarms of huge

footprints, like those of hyenas.



Conan came silently upon the pier, approaching the galley above whose

deck was suspended something that glimmered ivory-white in the faint

twilight. Speechless, the Cimmerian looked on the Queen of the Black

Coast as she hung from the yard-arm of her own galley. Between the

yard and her white throat stretched a line of crimson clots that shone

like blood in the gray light.







4 The Attack from the Air



The shadows were black around him,

 The dripping jaws gaped wide,

Thicker than rain the red drops fell;

But my love was fiercer than Death's black spell,

Nor all the iron walls of hell

  Could keep me from his side.



                   The Song of Belit



The jungle was a black colossus that locked the ruin-littered glade in

ebon arms. The moon had not risen; the stars were flecks of hot amber

in a breathless sky that reeked of death. On the pyramid among the

fallen towers sat Conan the Cimmerian like an iron statue, chin

propped on massive fists. Out in the black shadows stealthy feet

padded and red eyes glimmered. The dead lay as they had fallen. But on

the deck of the Tigress, on a pyre of broken benches, spear-shafts and

leopardskins, lay the Queen of the Black Coast in her last sleep,

wrapped in Conan's scarlet cloak. Like a true queen she lay, with her

plunder heaped high about her: silks, cloth-of-gold, silver braid,

casks of gems and golden coins, silver ingots, jeweled daggers and

teocallis of gold wedges.



But of the plunder of the accursed city, only the sullen waters of

Zarkheba could tell where Conan had thrown it with a heathen curse.

Now he sat grimly on the pyramid, waiting for his unseen foes. The

black fury in his soul drove out all fear. What shapes would emerge

from the blackness he knew not, nor did he care.



He no longer doubted the visions of the black lotus. He understood

that while waiting for him in the glade, N'Gora and his comrades had

been terror-stricken by the winged monster swooping upon them from the

sky, and fleeing in blind panic, had fallen over the cliff, all except

their chief, who had somehow escaped their fate, though not madness.

Meanwhile, or immediately after, or perhaps before, the destruction of

those on the riverbank had been accomplished. Conan did not doubt that

the slaughter along the river had been massacre rather than battle.

Already unmanned by their superstitious fears, the blacks might well

have died without striking a blow in their own defense when attacked

by their inhuman foes.



Why he had been spared so long, he did not understand, unless the

malign entity which ruled the river meant to keep him alive to torture

him with grief and fear. All pointed to a human or superhuman

intelligence--the breaking of the watercasks to divide the forces, the

driving of the blacks over the cliff, and last and greatest, the grim

jest of the crimson necklace knotted like a hangman's noose about

Belit's white neck.



Having apparently saved the Cimmerian for the choicest victim, and

extracted the last ounce of exquisite mental torture, it was likely

that the unknown enemy would conclude the drama by sending him after

the other victims. No smile bent Conan's grim lips at the thought, but

his eyes were lit with iron laughter.



The moon rose, striking fire from the Cimmerian's horned helmet. No

call awoke the echoes; yet suddenly the night grew tense and the

jungle held its breath. Instinctively Conan loosened the great sword

in its sheath. The pyramid on which he rested was four-sided, one--the

side toward the jungle carved in broad steps. In his hand was a

Shemite bow, such as Belit had taught her pirates to use. A heap of

arrows lay at his feet, feathered ends towards him, as he rested on

one knee.



Something moved in the blackness under the trees. Etched abruptly in

the rising moon, Conan saw a darkly blocked-out head and shoulders,

brutish in outline. And now from the shadows dark shapes came

silently, swiftly, running low--twenty great spotted hyenas. Their

slavering fangs flashed in the moonlight, their eyes blazed as no true

beast's eyes ever blazed.



Twenty: then the spears of the pirates had taken toll of the pack,

after all. Even as he thought this, Conan drew nock to ear, and at the

twang of the string a flame-eyed shadow bounded high and fell

writhing. The rest did not falter; on they came, and like a rain of

death among them fell the arrows of the Cimmerian, driven with all the

force and accuracy of steely thews backed by a hate hot as the slag-

heaps of hell.



In his berserk fury he did not miss; the air was filled with feathered

destruction. The havoc wrought among the onrushing pack was

breathtaking. Less than half of them reached the foot of the pyramid.

Others dropped upon the broad steps. Glaring down into the blazing

eyes, Conan knew these creatures were not beasts; it was not merely in

their unnatural size that he sensed a blasphemous difference. They

exuded an aura tangible as the black mist rising from a corpse-

littered swamp. By what godless alchemy these beings had been brought

into existence, he could not guess; but he knew he faced diabolism

blacker than the Well of Skelos.



Springing to his feet, he bent his bow powerfully and drove his last

shaft point blank at a great hairy shape that soared up at his throat.

The arrow was a flying beam of moonlight that flashed onward with but

a blur in its course, but the were-beast plunged convulsively in

midair and crashed headlong, shot through and through.



Then the rest were on him, in a nightmare rush of blazing eyes and

dripping fangs. His fiercely driven sword shore the first asunder;

then the desperate impact of the others bore him down. He crushed a

narrow skull with the pommel of his hilt, feeling the bone splinter

and blood and brains gush over his hand; then, dropping the sword,

useless at such deadly close quarters, he caught at the throats of the

two horrors which were ripping and tearing at him in silent fury. A

foul acrid scent almost stifled him, his own sweat blinded him. Only

his mail saved him from being ripped to ribbons in an instant. The

next, his naked right hand locked on a hairy throat and tore it open.

His left hand, missing the throat of the other beast, caught and broke

its foreleg. A short yelp, the only cry in that grim battle, and

hideously human-like, burst from the maimed beast. At the sick horror

of that cry from a bestial throat, Conan involuntarily relaxed his

grip.



One, blood gushing from its torn jugular, lunged at him in a last

spasm of ferocity, and fastened its fangs on his throat--to fall back

dead, even as Conan felt the tearing agony of its grip.



The other, springing forward on three legs, was slashing at his belly

as a wolf slashes, actually rending the links of his mail. Flinging

aside the dying beast, Conan grappled the crippled horror and, with a

muscular effort that brought a groan from his blood-flecked lips, he

heaved upright, gripping the struggling, bearing fiend in his arms. An

instant he reeled off balance, its fetid breath hot on his nostrils;

its jaws snapping at his neck; then he hurled it from him, to crash

with bone-splintering force down the marble steps.



As he reeled on wide-braced legs, sobbing for breath, the jungle and

the moon swimming bloodily to his sight, the thrash of bat-wings was

loud in his ears. Stooping, he groped for his sword, and swaying

upright, braced his feet drunkenly and heaved the great blade above

his head with both hands, shaking the blood from his eyes as he sought

the air above him for his foe.



Instead of attack from the air, the pyramid staggered suddenly and

awfully beneath his feet. He heard a rumbling crackle and saw the tall

column above him wave like a wand. Stung to galvanized life, he

bounded far out; his feet hit a step, halfway down, which rocked

beneath him, and his next desperate leap carried him clear. But even

as his heels hit the earth, with a shattering crash like a breaking

mountain the pyramid crumpled, the column came thundering down in

bursting fragments. For a blind cataclysmic instant the sky seemed to

rain shards of marble. Then a rubble of shattered stone lay whitely

under the moon.



Conan stirred, throwing off the splinters that half covered him. A

glancing blow had knocked off his helmet and momentarily stunned him.

Across his legs lay a great piece of the column, pinning him down. He

was not sure that his legs were unbroken. His black locks were

plastered with sweat; blood trickled from the wounds in his throat and

hands. He hitched up on one arm, struggling with the debris that

prisoned him.



Then something swept down across the stars and struck the sward near

him. Twisting about, he saw it--the winged one!



With fearful speed it was rushing upon him, and in that instant Conan

had only a confused impression of a gigantic manlike shape hurtling

along on bowed and stunted legs; of huge hairy arms outstretching

misshapen black-nailed paws; of a malformed head, in whose broad face

the only features recognizable as such were a pair of blood-red eyes.

It was a thing neither man, beast, nor devil, imbued with

characteristics subhuman as well as characteristics superhuman.



But Conan had no time for conscious consecutive thought. He threw

himself toward his fallen sword, and his clawing fingers missed it by

inches. Desperately he grasped the shard which pinned his legs, and

the veins swelled in his temples as he strove to thrust it off him. It

gave slowly, but he knew that before he could free himself the monster

would be upon him, and he knew that those black-taloned hands were

death.



The headlong rush of the winged one had not wavered. It towered over

the prostrate Cimmerian like a black shadow, arms thrown wide--a

glimmer of white flashed between it and its victim.



In one mad instant she was there--a tense white shape, vibrant with

love fierce as a she-panther's. The dazed Cimmerian saw between him

and the onrushing death, her lithe figure, shimmering like ivory

beneath the moon; he saw the blaze of her dark eyes, the thick cluster

of her burnished hair; her bosom heaved, her red lips were parted, she

cried out sharp and ringing at the ring of steel as she thrust at the

winged monster's breast.



"Belit!" screamed Conan. She flashed a quick glance at him, and in her

dark eyes he saw her love flaming, a naked elemental thing of raw fire

and molten lava. Then she was gone, and the Cimmerian saw only the

winged fiend which had staggered back in unwonted fear, arms lifted as

if to fend off attack. And he knew that Belit in truth lay on her pyre

on the Tigress's deck. In his ears rang her passionate cry: "Were I

still in death and you fighting for life I would come back from the

abyss--"



With a terrible cry he heaved upward hurling the stone aside. The

winged one came on again, and Conan sprang to meet it, his veins on

fire with madness. The thews started out like cords on his forearms as

he swung his great sword, pivoting on his heel with the force of the

sweeping arc. Just above the hips it caught the hurtling shape, and

the knotted legs fell one way, the torso another as the blade sheared

clear through its hairy body.



Conan stood in the moonlit silence, the dripping sword sagging in his

hand, staring down at the remnants of his enemy. The red eyes glared

up at him with awful life, then glazed and set; the great hands

knotted spasmodically and stiffened. And the oldest race in the world

was extinct.



Conan lifted his head, mechanically searching for the beast-things

that had been its slaves and executioners. None met his gaze. The

bodies he saw littering the moon-splashed grass were of men, not

beasts: hawk-faced, dark skinned men, naked, transfixed by arrows or

mangled by sword-strokes. And they were crumbling into dust before his

eyes.



Why had not the winged master come to the aid of its slaves when he

struggled with them? Had it feared to come within reach of fangs that

might turn and rend it? Craft and caution had lurked in that misshapen

skull, but had not availed in the end.



Turning on his heel, the Cimmerian strode down the rotting wharfs and

stepped aboard the galley. A few strokes of his sword cut her adrift,

and he went to the sweep-head. The Tigress rocked slowly in the sullen

water, sliding out sluggishly toward the middle of the river, until

the broad current caught her. Conan leaned on the sweep, his somber

gaze fixed on the cloak-wrapped shape that lay in state on the pyre

the richness of which was equal to the ransom of an empress.







5 The Funeral Pyre



Now we are done with roaming, evermore;

  No more the oars, the windy harp's refrain;

Nor crimson pennon frights the dusky shore;

  Blue girdle of the world, receive again

Her whom thou gavest me.



                   The Song of Belit



Again dawn tinged the ocean. A redder glow lit the river-mouth. Conan

of Cimmeria leaned on his great sword upon the white beach, watching

the Tigress swinging out on her last voyage. There was no light in his

eyes that contemplated the glassy swells. Out of the rolling blue

wastes all glory and wonder had gone. A fierce revulsion shook him as

he gazed at the green surges that deepened into purple hazes of

mystery.



Belit had been of the sea; she had lent it splendor and allure.

Without her it rolled a barren, dreary and desolate waste from pole to

pole. She belonged to the sea; to its everlasting mystery he returned

her. He could do no more. For himself, its glittering blue splendor

was more repellent than the leafy fronds which rustled and whispered

behind him of vast mysterious wilds beyond them, and into which he

must plunge.



No hand was at the sweep of the Tigress, no oars drove her through the

green water. But a clean tanging wind bellied her silken sail, and as

a wild swan cleaves the sky to her nest, she sped seaward, flames

mounting higher and higher from her deck to lick at the mast and

envelop the figure that lay lapped in scarlet on the shining pyre.



So passed the Queen of the Black Coast, and leaning on his red-stained

sword, Conan stood silently until the red glow had faded far out in

the blue hazes and dawn splashed its rose and gold over the ocean.







THE END