Title: Black Colossus

Author: Robert E. Howard

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BLACK COLOSSUS

By Robert E. Howard



"The Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the

world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite-"

E. Hoffman Price: The Girl From Samarkand







1



Only the age-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of

Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in the mind of Shevatas,

the thief, driving his breath quick and sharp against his clenched

teeth.



He stood, the one atom of life amidst the colossal monuments of

desolation and decay. Not even a vulture hung like a black dot in the

vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat. On every

hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken

pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long

wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen cyclopean blocks of stone;

shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and

dust-storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life:

only the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the

wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the midst of that

vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up

like broken masts of sunken ships--all dominated by the towering ivory

dome before which Shevatas stood trembling.



The base of this dome was a gigantic pedestal of marble rising from

what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of the ancient

river. Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in the dome, which

rested on its base like the half of some titanic egg. The dome itself

was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknown hands kept it polished.

Likewise shone the spired gold cap of the pinnacle, and the

inscription which sprawled about the curve of the dome in golden

hieroglyphics yards long. No man on earth could read those characters,

but Shevatas shuddered at the dim conjectures they raised. For he came

of a very old race, whose myths ran back to shapes undreamed of by

contemporary tribes.



Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became a master-thief of Zamora. His

small round head was shaven, his only garment a loin-cloth of scarlet

silk. Like all his race, he was very dark, his narrow vulture-like

face set off by his keen black eyes. His long, slender and tapering

fingers were quick and nervous as the wings of a moth. From a gold-

scaled girdle hung a short, narrow, jewel-hilted sword in a sheath of

ornamented leather. Shevatas handled the weapon with apparently

exaggerated care. He even seemed to flinch away from the contact of

the sheath with his naked thigh. Nor was his care without reason.



This was Shevatas, a thief among thieves, whose name was spoken with

awe in the dives of the Maul and the dim shadowy recesses beneath the

temples of Bel, and who lived in songs and myths for a thousand years.

Yet fear ate at the heart of Shevatas as he stood before the ivory

dome of Kuthchemes. Any fool could see there was something unnatural

about the structure; the winds and suns of three thousand years had

lashed it, yet its gold and ivory rose bright and glistening as the

day it was reared by nameless hands on the bank of the nameless river.



This unnaturalness was in keeping with the general aura of these

devil-haunted ruins. This desert was the mysterious expanse lying

southeast of the lands of Shem. A few days' ride on camel-back to the

southwest, as Shevatas knew, would bring the traveller within sight of

the great river Styx at the point where it turned at right angles with

its former course, and flowed westward to empty at last into the

distant sea. At the point of its bend began the land of Stygia, the

dark-bosomed mistress of the south, whose domains, watered by the

great river, rose sheer out of the surrounding desert.



Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert shaded into steppes stretching to

the Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, rising in barbaric splendor on the

shores of the great inland sea. A week's ride northward the desert ran

into a tangle of barren hills, beyond which lay the fertile uplands of

Koth, the southernmost realm of the Hyborian races. Westward the

desert merged into the meadowlands of Shem, which stretched away to

the ocean.



All this Shevatas knew without being particularly conscious of the

knowledge, as a man knows the streets of his town. He was a far

traveller and had looted the treasures of many kingdoms. But now he

hesitated and shuddered before the highest adventure and the mightiest

treasure of all.



In that ivory dome lay the bones of Thugra Khotan, the dark sorcerer

who had reigned in Kuthchemes three thousand years ago, when the

kingdoms of Stygia stretched far northward of the great river, over

the meadows of Shem, and into the uplands. Then the great drift of the

Hyborians swept southward from the cradle-land of their race near the

northern pole. It was a titanic drift, extending over centuries and

ages. But in the reign of Thugra Khotan, the last magician of

Kuthchemes, gray-eyed, tawny-haired barbarians in wolfskins and scale-

mail had ridden from the north into the rich uplands to carve out the

kingdom of Koth with their iron swords. They had stormed over

Kuthchemes like a tidal wave, washing the marble towers in blood, and

the northern Stygian kingdom had gone down in fire and ruin.



But while they were shattering the streets of his city and cutting

down his archers like ripe corn, Thugra Khotan had swallowed a strange

terrible poison, and his masked priests had locked him into the tomb

he himself had prepared. His devotees died about that tomb in a

crimson holocaust, but the barbarians could not burst the door, nor

ever mar the structure by maul or fire. So they rode away, leaving the

great city in ruins, and in his ivory-domed sepulcher great Thugra

Khotan slept unmolested, while the lizards of desolation gnawed at the

crumbling pillars, and the very river that watered his land in old

times sank into the sands and ran dry.



Many a thief sought to gain the treasure which fables said lay heaped

about the moldering bones inside the dome. And many a thief died at

the door of the tomb, and many another was harried by monstrous dreams

to die at last with the froth of madness on his lips.



So Shevatas shuddered as he faced the tomb, nor was his shudder

altogether occasioned by the legend of the serpent said to guard the

sorcerer's bones. Over all myths of Thugra Khotan hung horror and

death like a pall. From where the thief stood he could see the ruins

of the great hall wherein chained captives had knelt by the hundreds

during festivals to have their heads hacked off by the priest-king in

honor of Set, the Serpent-god of Stygia. Somewhere near by had been

the pit, dark and awful, wherein screaming victims were fed to a

nameless amorphic monstrosity which came up out of a deeper, more

hellish cavern. Legend made Thugra Khotan more than human; his worship

yet lingered in a mongrel degraded cult, whose votaries stamped his

likeness on coins to pay the way of their dead over the great river of

darkness of which the Styx was but the material shadow. Shevatas had

seen this likeness, on coins stolen from under the tongues of the

dead, and its image was etched indelibly in his brain.



But he put aside his fears and mounted to the bronze door, whose

smooth surface offered no bolt or catch. Not for naught had he gained

access into darksome cults, had harkened to the grisly whispers of the

votaries of Skelos under midnight trees, and read the forbidden iron-

bound books of Vathelos the Blind.



Kneeling before the portal, he searched the sill with nimble fingers;

their sensitive tips found projections too small for the eye to

detect, or for less-skilled fingers to discover. These he pressed

carefully and according to a peculiar system, muttering a long-

forgotten incantation as he did so. As he pressed the last projection,

he sprang up with frantic haste and struck the exact center of the

door a quick sharp blow with his open hand.



There was no rasp of spring or hinge, but the door retreated inward,

and the breath hissed explosively from Shevatas's clenched teeth. A

short narrow corridor was disclosed. Down this the door had slid, and

was now in place at the other end. The floor, ceiling and sides of the

tunnel-like aperture were of ivory, and now from an opening on one

side came a silent writhing horror that reared up and glared on the

intruder with awful luminous eyes; a serpent twenty feet long, with

shimmering, iridescent scales.



The thief did not waste time in conjecturing what night-black pits

lying below the dome had given sustenance to the monster. Gingerly he

drew the sword, and from it dripped a greenish liquid exactly like

that which slavered from the scimitar-fangs of the reptile. The blade

was steeped in the poison of the snake's own kind, and the obtaining

of that venom from the fiend-haunted swamps of Zingara would have made

a saga in itself.



Shevatas advanced warily on the balls of his feet, knees bent

slightly, ready to spring either way like a flash of light. And he

needed all his co-ordinate speed when the snake arched its neck and

struck, shooting out its full length like a stroke of lightning. For

all his quickness of nerve and eye, Shevatas had died then but for

chance. His well-laid plans of leaping aside and striking down on the

outstretched neck were put at naught by the blinding speed of the

reptile's attack. The thief had but time to extend the sword in front

of him, involuntarily closing his eyes and crying out. Then the sword

was wrenched from his hand and the corridor was filled with a horrible

thrashing and lashing.



Opening his eyes, amazed to find himself still alive, Shevatas saw the

monster heaving and twisting its slimy form in fantastic contortions,

the sword transfixing its giant jaws. Sheer chance had hurled it full

against the point he had held out blindly. A few moments later the

serpent sank into shining, scarcely quivering coils, as the poison on

the blade struck home.



Gingerly stepping over it, the thief thrust against the door, which

this time slid aside, revealing the interior of the dome. Shevatas

cried out; instead of utter darkness he had come into a crimson light

that throbbed and pulsed almost beyond the endurance of mortal eyes.

It came from a gigantic red jewel high up in the vaulted arch of the

dome. Shevatas gaped, inured though he was to the sight of riches. The

treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion--piles of diamonds,

sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; zikkurats of jade, jet

and lapis lazuli; pyramids of gold wedges; toecallis of silver ingots;

jewel-hilted swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with

colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plumes; silver scaled

corselets; gem-crusted harness worn by warrior-kings three thousand

years in their tombs; goblets carven of single jewels; skulls plated

with gold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with

jewels. The ivory floor was covered inches deep with gold dust that

sparkled and shimmered under the crimson glow with a million

scintillant lights. The thief stood in a wonderland of magic and

splendor, treading stars under his sandalled feet.



But his eyes were focussed on the dais of crystal which rose in the

midst of the shimmering array, directly under the red jewel, and on

which should be lying the moldering bones, turning to dust with the

crawling of the centuries. And as Shevatas looked, the blood drained

from his dark features; his marrow turned to ice, and the skin of his

back crawled and wrinkled with horror, while his lips worked

soundlessly. But suddenly he found his voice in one awful scream that

rang hideously under the arching dome. Then again the silence of the

ages lay among the ruins of mysterious Kuthchemes.







2



Rumors drifted up through the meadowlands, into the cities of the

Hyborians. The word ran along the caravans, the long camel-trains

plodding through the sands, herded by lean, hawkeyed men in white

kaftans. It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsmen of the

grasslands, from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat

stone cities where kings with curled blueblack beards worshipped

round-bellied gods with curious rites. The word passed up through the

fringe of hills where gaunt tribesmen took toll of the caravans. The

rumors came into the fertile uplands where stately cities rose above

blue lakes and rivers: the rumors marched along the broad white roads

thronged with ox-wains, with lowing herds, with rich merchants,

knights in steel, archers and priests.



They were rumors from the desert that lies east of Stygia, far south

of the Kothian hills. A new prophet had risen among the nomads. Men

spoke of tribal war, of a gathering of vultures in the southeast, and

a terrible leader who led his swiftly increasing hordes to victory.

The Stygians, ever a menace to the northern nations, were apparently

not connected with this movement; for they were massing armies on

their eastern borders and their priests were making magic to fight

that of the desert sorcerer, whom men called Natohk, the Veiled One;

for his features were always masked.



But the tide swept northwestward, and the blue-bearded kings died

before the altars of their pot-bellied gods, and their squat-walled

cities were drenched in blood. Men said that the uplands of the

Hyborians were the goal of Natohk and his chanting votaries.



Raids from the desert were not uncommon, but this latest movement

seemed to promise more than a raid. Rumor said Natohk had welded

thirty nomadic tribes and fifteen cities into his following, and that

a rebellious Stygian prince had joined him. This latter lent the

affair an aspect of real war.



Characteristically, most of the Hyborian nations were prone to ignore

the growing menace. But in Khoraja, carved out of Shemite lands by the

swords of Kothic adventurers, heed was given. Lying southeast of Koth,

it would bear the brunt of the invasion. And its young king was

captive to the treacherous king of Ophir, who hesitated between

restoring him for a huge ransom, or handing him over to his enemy, the

penurious king of Koth, who offered no gold, but an advantageous

treaty. Meanwhile, the rule of the struggling kingdom was in the white

hands of young princess Yasmela, the king's sister.



Minstrels sang her beauty throughout the western world, and the pride

of a kingly dynasty was hers. But on that night her pride was dropped

from her like a cloak. In her chamber whose ceiling was a lapis lazuli

dome, whose marble floor was littered with rare furs, and whose walls

were lavish with golden friezework, ten girls, daughters of nobles,

their slender limbs weighted with gem-crusted armlets and anklets,

slumbered on velvet couches about the royal bed with its golden dais

and silken canopy. But princess Yasmela lolled not on that silken bed.

She lay naked on her supple belly upon the bare marble like the most

abased suppliant, her dark hair streaming over her white shoulders,

her slender fingers intertwined. She lay and writhed in pure horror

that froze the blood in her lithe limbs and dilated her beautiful

eyes, that pricked the roots of her dark hair and made goose-flesh

rise along her supple spine.



Above her, in the darkest corner of the marble chamber, lurked a vast

shapeless shadow. It was no living thing of form or flesh and blood.

It was a clot of darkness, a blur in the sight, a monstrous night-born

incubus that might have been deemed a figment of a sleep-drugged

brain, but for the points of blazing yellow fire that glimmered like

two eyes from the blackness.



Moreover, a voice issued from it--a low subtle inhuman sibilance that

was more like the soft abominable hissing of a serpent than anything

else, and that apparently could not emanate from anything with human

lips. Its sound as well as its import filled Yasmela with a shuddering

horror so intolerable that she writhed and twisted her slender body as

if beneath a lash, as though to rid her mind of its insinuating

vileness by physical contortion.



"You are marked for mine, princess," came the gloating whisper.

"Before I wakened from the long sleep I had marked you, and yearned

for you, but I was held fast by the ancient spell by which I escaped

mine enemies. I am the soul of Natohk, the Veiled One! Look well upon

me, princess! Soon you shall behold me in my bodily guise, and shall

love me!"



The ghostly hissing dwindled off in lustful titterings, and Yasmela

moaned and beat the marble tiles with her small fists in her ecstasy

of terror.



"I sleep in the palace chamber of Akbatana," the sibilances continued.

"There my body lies in its frame of bones and flesh. But it is but an

empty shell from which the spirit has flown for a brief space. Could

you gaze from that palace casement you would realize the futility of

resistance. The desert is a rose garden beneath the moon, where

blossom the fires of a hundred thousand warriors. As an avalanche

sweeps onward, gathering bulk and momentum, I will sweep into the

lands of mine ancient enemies. Their kings shall furnish me skulls for

goblets, their women and children shall be slaves of my slaves'

slaves. I have grown strong in the long years of dreaming . . .



"But thou shalt be my queen, oh princess! I will teach thee the

ancient forgotten ways of pleasure. We-" Before the stream of cosmic

obscenity which poured from the shadowy colossus, Yasmela cringed and

writhed as if from a whip that flayed her dainty bare flesh.



"Remember!" whispered the horror. "The days will not be many before I

come to claim mine own!"



Yasmela, pressing her face against the tiles and stopping her pink

ears with her dainty fingers, yet seemed to hear a strange sweeping

noise, like the beat of bat wings. Then, looking fearfully up, she saw

only the moon that shone through the window with a beam that rested

like a silver sword across the spot where the phantom had lurked.

Trembling in every limb, she rose and staggered to a satin couch,

where she threw herself down, weeping hysterically. The girls slept

on, but one, who roused, yawned, stretched her slender figure and

blinked about. Instantly she was on her knees beside the couch, her

arms about Yasmela's supple waist.



"Was it--was it-?" Her dark eyes were wide with fright. Yasmela caught

her in a convulsive grasp.



"Oh, Vateesa. It came again! I saw It--heard It speak! It spoke Its

name--Natohk! It is Natohk! It is not a nightmare--it towered over me

while the girls slept like drugged ones. What oh, what shall I do?"



Vateesa twisted a golden bracelet about her rounded arm in meditation.



"Oh, princess," she said, "it is evident that no mortal power can deal

with It, and the charm is useless that the priests of Ishtar gave you.

Therefore seek you the forgotten oracle of Mitra."



In spite of her recent fright, Yasmela shuddered. The gods of

yesterday become the devils of tomorrow. The Kothians had long since

abandoned the worship of Mitra, forgetting the attributes of the

universal Hyborian god. Yasmela had a vague idea that, being very

ancient, it followed that the deity was very terrible. Ishtar was much

to be feared, and all the gods of Koth. Kothian culture and religion

had suffered from a subtle admix ture of Shemite and Stygian strains.

The simple ways of the Hyborians had become modified to a large extent

by the sensual, luxurious, yet despotic habits of the East.



"Will Mitra aid me?" Yasmela caught Vateesa's wrist in her eagerness.

"We have worshipped Ishtar so long-"



"To be sure he will!" Vateesa was the daughter of an Ophirean priest

who had brought his customs with him when he fled from political

enemies to Khoraja. "Seek the shrine! I will go with you."



"I will!" Yasmela rose, but objected when Vateesa prepared to dress

her. "It is not fitting that I come before the shrine clad in silk. I

will go naked, on my knees, as befits a suppliant, lest Mitra deem I

lack humility."



"Nonsense!" Vateesa had scant respect for the ways of what she deemed

a false cult. "Mitra would have folks stand upright before him--not

crawling on their bellies like worms, or spilling blood of animals all

over his altars."



Thus objurgated, Yasmela allowed the girl to garb her in the light

sleeveless silk shirt, over which was slipped a silken tunic, bound at

the waist by a wide velvet girdle. Satin slippers were put upon her

slender feet, and a few deft touches of Vateesa's pink fingers

arranged her dark wavy tresses. Then the princess followed the girl,

who drew aside a heavy gilt-worked tapestry and threw the golden bolt

of the door it concealed. This let into a narrow winding corridor, and

down this the two girls went swiftly, through another door and into a

broad hallway. Here stood a guardsman in crested gilt helmet, silvered

cuirass and gold-chased greaves, with a long-shafted battle-ax in his

hands.



A motion from Yasmela checked his exclamation and, saluting, he took

his stand again beside the doorway, motionless as a brazen image. The

girls traversed the hallway, which seemed immense and eery in the

light of the cressets along the lofty walls, and went down a stairway

where Yasmela shivered at the blots of shadows which hung in the

angles of the walls. Three levels down they halted at last in a narrow

corridor whose arched ceiling was crusted with jewels, whose floor was

set with blocks of crystal, and whose walls were decorated with golden

friezework. Down this shining way they stole, holding each other's

hands, to a wide portal of gilt.



Vateesa thrust open the door, revealing a shrine long forgotten except

by a faithful few, and royal visitors to Khoraja's court, mainly for

whose benefit the fane was maintained. Yasmela had never entered it

before, though she was born in the palace. Plain and unadorned in

comparison to the lavish display of Ishtar's shrines, there was about

it a simplicity of dignity and beauty characteristic of the Mitran

religion.



The ceiling was lofty, but it was not domed, and was of plain white

marble, as were the walls and floor, the former with a narrow gold

frieze running about them. Behind an altar of clear green jade,

unstained with sacrifice, stood the pedestal whereon sat the material

manifestation of the deity. Yasmela looked in awe at the sweep of the

magnificent shoulders, the clear-cut features--the wide straight eyes,

the patriarchal beard, the thick curls of the hair, confined by a

simple band about the temples. This, though she did not know it, was

art in its highest form the free, uncramped artistic expression of a

highly esthetic race, unhampered by conventional symbolism.



She fell on her knees and thence prostrate, regardless of Vateesa's

admonition, and Vateesa, to be on the safe side, followed her example;

for after all, she was only a girl, and it was very awesome in Mitra's

shrine. But even so she could not refrain from whispering in Yasmela's

ear.



"This is but the emblem of the god. None pretends to know what Mitra

looks like. This but represents him in idealized human form, as near

perfection as the human mind can conceive. He does not inhabit this

cold stone, as your priests tell you Ishtar does. He is everywhere--

above us, and about us, and he dreams betimes in the high places among

the stars. But here his being focusses. Therefore call upon him."



"What shall I say?" whispered Yasmela in stammering terror.



"Before you can speak, Mitra knows the contents of your mind-" began

Vateesa. Then both girls started violently as a voice began in the air

above them. The deep, calm, bell-like tones emanated no more from the

image than from anywhere else in the chamber. Again Yasmela trembled

before a bodiless voice speaking to her, but this time it was not from

horror or repulsion.



"Speak not, my daughter, for I know your need," came the intonations

like deep musical waves beating rhythmically along a golden beach. "In

one manner may you save your kingdom, and saving it, save all the

world from the fangs of the serpent which has crawled up out of the

darkness of the ages. Go forth upon the streets alone, and place your

kingdom in the hands of the first man you meet there."



The unechoing tones ceased, and the girls stared at each other. Then,

rising, they stole forth, nor did they speak until they stood once

more in Yasmela's chamber. The princess stared out of the gold-barred

windows. The moon had set. It was long past midnight. Sounds of

revelry had died away in the gardens and on the roofs of the city.

Khoraja slumbered beneath the stars, which seemed to be reflected in

the cressets that twinkled among the gardens and along the streets and

on the flat roofs of houses where folk slept.



"What will you do?" whispered Vateesa, all a-tremble.



"Give me my cloak," answered Yasmela, setting her teeth.



"But alone, in the streets, at this hour!" expostulated Vateesa.



"Mitra has spoken," replied the princess. "It might have been the

voice of the god, or a trick of a priest. No matter. I will go!"



Wrapping a voluminous silken cloak about her lithe figure and donning

a velvet cap from which depended a filmy veil, she passed hurriedly

through the corridors and approached a bronze door where a dozen

spearmen gaped at her as she passed through. This was in a wing of the

palace which let directly onto the street; on all other sides it was

surrounded by broad gardens, bordered by a high wall. She emerged into

the street, lighted by cressets placed at regular intervals.



She hesitated; then, before her resolution could falter, she closed

the door behind her. A slight shudder shook her as she glanced up and

down the street, which lay silent and bare. This daughter of

aristocrats had never before ventured unattended outside her ancestral

palace. Then, steeling herself, she went swiftly up the street. Her

satin-slippered feet fell lightly on the pave, but their soft sound

brought her heart into her throat. She imagined their fall echoing

thunderously through the cavernous city, rousing ragged rat-eyed

figures in hidden lairs among the sewers. Every shadow seemed to hide

a lurking assassin, every blank doorway to mask the slinking hounds of

darkness.



Then she started violently. Ahead of her a figure appeared on the eery

street. She drew quickly into a clump of shadows, which now seemed

like a haven of refuge, her pulse pounding. The approaching figure

went not furtively, like a thief, or timidly, like a fearful

traveller. He strode down the nighted street as one who has no need or

desire to walk softly. An unconscious swagger was in his stride, and

his footfalls resounded on the pave. As he passed near a cresset she

saw him plainly--a tall man, in the chain-mail hauberk of a mercenary.

She braced herself, then darted from the shadow, holding her cloak

close about her.



"Sa-ha!" his sword flashed half out of his sheath. It halted when he

saw it was only a woman that stood before him, but his quick glance

went over her head, seeking the shadows for possible confederates.



He stood facing her, his hand on the long hilt that jutted forward

from beneath the scarlet cloak which flowed carelessly from his mailed

shoulders. The torchlight glinted dully on the polished blue steel of

his greaves and basinet. A more baleful fire glittered bluely in his

eyes. At first glance she saw he was no Kothian; when he spoke she

knew he was no Hyborian. He was clad like a captain of the

mercenaries, and in that desperate command there were men of many

lands, barbarians as well as civilized foreigners. There was a

wolfishness about this warrior that marked the barbarian. The eyes of

no civilized man, however wild or criminal, ever blazed with such a

fire. Wine scented his breath, but he neither staggered nor stammered.



"Have they shut you into the street?" he asked in barbarous Kothic,

reaching for her. His fingers closed lightly about her rounded wrist,

but she felt that he could splinter its bones without effort. "I've

but come from the last wine-shop open Ishtar's curse on these white-

livered reformers who close the grog-houses! 'Let men sleep rather

than guzzle," they say--aye, so they can work and fight better for

their masters! Soft-gutted eunuchs, I call them. When I served with

the mercenaries of Corinthia we swilled and wenched all night and

fought all day aye, blood ran down the channels of our swords. But

what of you, my girl? Take off that cursed mask-"



She avoided his clutch with a lithe twist of her body, trying not to

appear to repulse him. She realized her danger, alone with a drunken

barbarian. If she revealed her identity, he might laugh at her, or

take himself off. She was not sure he would not cut her throat.

Barbaric men did strange inexplicable things. She fought a rising

fear.



"Not here," she laughed. "Come with me-"



"Where?" His wild blood was up, but he was wary as a wolf. "Are you

taking me to some den of robbers?"



"No, no, I swear it!" She was hard put to avoid the hand which was

again fumbling at her veil.



"Devil bite you, hussy!" he growled disgustedly. "You're as bad as a

Hyrkanian woman, with your damnable veil. Here--let me look at your

figure, anyway."



Before she could prevent it, he wrenched the cloak from her, and she

heard his breath hiss between his teeth. He stood holding the cloak,

eyeing her as if the sight of her rich garments had somewhat sobered

him. She saw suspicion flicker sullenly in his eyes.



"Who the devil are you?" he muttered. "You're no street-waif--unless

your leman robbed the king's seraglio for your clothes."



"Never mind." She dared to lay her white hand on his massive iron-clad

arm. "Come with me off the street."



He hesitated, then shrugged his mighty shoulders. She saw that he half

believed her to be some noble lady, who, weary of polite lovers, was

taking this means of amusing herself. He allowed her to don the cloak

again, and followed her. From the corner of her eye she watched him as

they went down the street together. His mail could not conceal his

hard lines of tigerish strength. Everything about him was tigerish,

elemental, untamed. He was alien as the jungle to her in his

difference from the debonair courtiers to whom she was accustomed. She

feared him, told herself she loathed his raw brute strength and

unashamed barbarism, yet something breathless and perilous inside her

leaned toward him; the hidden primitive chord that lurks in every

woman's soul was sounded and responded. She had felt his hardened hand

on her arm, and something deep in her tingled to the memory of that

contact. Many men had knelt before Yasmela. Here was one she felt had

never knelt before any one. Her sensations were those of one leading

an unchained tiger; she was frightened, and fascinated by her fright.



She halted at the palace door and thrust lightly against it. Furtively

watching her companion, she saw no suspicion in his eyes.



"Palace, eh?" he rumbled. "So you're a maid-in-waiting?"



She found herself wondering, with a strange jealousy, if any of her

maids had ever led this war-eagle into her palace. The guards made no

sign as she led him between them, but he eyed them as a fierce dog

might eye a strange pack. She led him through a curtained doorway into

an inner chamber, where he stood, naively scanning the tapestries,

until he saw a crystal jar of wine on an ebony table. This he took up

with a gratified sigh, tilting it toward his lips. Vateesa ran from an

inner room, crying breathlessly, "Oh my princess-"



"Princess!"



The wine-jar crashed to the floor. With a motion too quick for sight

to follow, the mercenary snatched off Yasmela's veil, glaring. He

recoiled with a curse, his sword leaping into his hand with a broad

shimmer of blue steel. His eyes blazed like a trapped tiger's. The air

was supercharged with tension that was like the pause before the

bursting of a storm. Vateesa sank to the floor, speechless with

terror, but Yasmela faced the infuriated barbarian without flinching.

She realized her very life hung in the balance: maddened with

suspicion and unreasoning panic, he was ready to deal death at the

slightest provocation. But she experienced a certain breathless

exhilaration in the crisis.



"Do not be afraid," she said. "I am Yasmela, but there is no reason to

fear me."



"Why did you lead me here?" he snarled, his blazing eyes darting all

about the chamber. "What manner of trap is this?"



"There is no trickery," she answered. "I brought you here because you

can aid me. I called on the gods--on Mitra--and he bade me go into the

streets and ask aid of the first man I met."



This was something he could understand. The barbarians had their

oracles. He lowered his sword, though he did not sheathe it.



"Well, if you're Yasmela, you need aid," he grunted. "Your kingdom's

in a devil of a mess. But how can I aid you? If you want a throat cut,

of course-"



"Sit down," she requested. "Vateesa, bring him wine."



He complied, taking care, she noticed, to sit with his back against a

solid wall, where he could watch the whole chamber. He laid his naked

sword across his mail-sheathed knees. She glanced at it in

fascination. Its dull blue glimmer seemed to reflect tales of

bloodshed and rapine; she doubted her ability to lift it, yet she knew

that the mercenary could wield it with one hand as lightly as she

could wield a riding-whip. She noted the breadth and power of his

hands; they were not the stubby undeveloped paws of a troglodyte. With

a guilty start she found herself imagining those strong fingers locked

in her dark hair.



He seemed reassured when she deposited herself on a satin divan

opposite him. He lifted off his basinet and laid it on the table, and

drew back his coif, letting the mail folds fall upon his massive

shoulders. She saw more fully now his unlikeness to the Hyborian

races. In his dark, scarred face there was a suggestion of moodiness;

and without being marked by depravity, or definitely evil, there was

more than a suggestion of the sinister about his features, set off by

his smoldering blue eyes. A low broad forehead was topped by a square-

cut tousled mane as black as a raven's wing.



"Who are you?" she asked abruptly.



"Conan, a captain of the mercenary spearmen," he answered, emptying

the wine-cup at a gulp and holding it out for more. "I was born in

Cimmeria."



The name meant little to her. She only knew vaguely that it was a wild

grim hill-country which lay far to the north, beyond the last outposts

of the Hyborian nations, and was peopled by a fierce moody race. She

had never before seen one of them.



Resting her chin on her hands, she gazed at him with the deep dark

eyes that had enslaved many a heart.



"Conan of Cimmeria," she said, "you said I needed aid. Why?"



"Well," he answered, "any man can see that. Here is the king your

brother in an Ophirean prison; here is Koth plotting to enslave you;

here is this sorcerer screaming hell-fire and destruction down in

Shem--and what's worse, here are your soldiers deserting every day."



She did not at once reply; it was a new experience for a man to speak

so forthrightly to her, his words not couched in courtier phrases.



"Why are my soldiers deserting, Conan?" she asked.



"Some are being hired away by Koth," he replied, pulling at the wine-

jar with relish. "Many think Khoraja is doomed as an independent

state. Many are frightened by tales of this dog Natohk."



"Will the mercenaries stand?" she asked anxiously.



"As long as you pay us well," he answered frankly. "Your politics are

nothing to us. You can trust Amalric, our general, but the rest of us

are only common men who love loot. If you pay the ransom Ophir asks,

men say you'll be unable to pay us. In that case we might go over to

the king of Koth, though that cursed miser is no friend of mine. Or we

might loot this city. In a civil war the plunder is always plentiful."



"Why would you not go over to Natohk?" she inquired.



"What could he pay us?" he snorted. "With fat-bellied brass idols he

looted from the Shemite cities? As long as you're fighting Natohk, you

may trust us."



"Would your comrades follow you?" she asked abruptly.



"What do you mean?"



"I mean," she answered deliberately, "that I am going to make you

commander of the armies of Khoraja!"



He stopped short, the goblet at his lips, which curved in a broad

grin. His eyes blazed with a new light.



"Commander? Crom! But what will your perfumed nobles say?"



"They will obey me!" She clasped her hands to summon a slave, who

entered, bowing deeply. "Have Count Thespides come to me at once, and

the chancellor Taurus, lord Amalric, and the Agha Shupras.



"I place my trust in Mitra," she said, bending her gaze on Conan, who

was now devouring the food placed before him by the trembling Vateesa.

"You have seen much war?"



"I was born in the midst of a battle," he answered, tearing a chunk of

meat from a huge joint with his strong teeth. "The first sound my ears

heard was the clang of swords and the yells of the slaying. I have

fought in blood-feuds, tribal wars, and imperial campaigns."



"But can you lead men and arrange battle-lines?"



"Well, I can try," he returned imperturbably. "It's no more than

sword-play on a larger scale. You draw his guard, then stab, slash!

And either his head is off, or yours."



The slave entered again, announcing the arrival of the men sent for,

and Yasmela went into the outer chamber, drawing the velvet curtains

behind her. The nobles bent the knee, in evident surprize at her

summons at such an hour.



"I have summoned you to tell you of my decision," said Yasmela. "The

kingdom is in peril-"



"Right enough, my princess." It was Count Thespides who spoke--a tall

man, whose black locks were curled and scented. With one white hand he

smoothed his pointed mustache, and with the other he held a velvet

chaperon with a scarlet feather fastened by a golden clasp. His

pointed shoes were satin, his cote-hardie of gold-broidered velvet.

His manner was slightly affected, but the thews under his silks were

steely. "It were well to offer Ophir more gold for your royal

brother's release."



"I strongly disagree," broke in Taurus the chancellor, an elderly man

in an ermine-fringed robe, whose features were lined with the cares of

his long service. "We have already offered what will beggar the

kingdom to pay. To offer more would further excite Ophir's cupidity.

My princess, I say as I have said before: Ophir will not move until we

have met this invading horde. If we lose, he will give king Khossus to

Koth; if we win, he will doubtless restore his majesty to us on

payment of the ransom."



"And in the meantime," broke in Amalric, "the soldiers desert daily,

and the mercenaries are restless to know why we dally." He was a

Nemedian, a large man with a lion-like yellow mane. "We must move

swiftly, if at all-"



"Tomorrow we march southward," she answered. "And there is the man who

shall lead you!"



Jerking aside the velvet curtains she dramatically indicated the



Cimmerian. It was perhaps not an entirely happy moment for the

disclosure. Conan was sprawled in his chair, his feet propped on the

ebony table, busily engaged in gnawing a beef-bone which he gripped

firmly in both hands. He glanced casually at the astounded nobles,

grinned faintly at Amalric, and went on munching with undisguised

relish.



"Mitra protect us!" exploded Amalric. "That's Conan the northron, the

most turbulent of all my rogues! I'd have hanged him long ago, were he

not the best swordsman that ever donned hauberk-"



"Your highness is pleased to jest!" cried Thespides, his aristocratic

features darkening. "This man is a savage--a fellow of no culture or

breeding! It is an insult to ask gentlemen to serve under him! I-"



"Count Thespides," said Yasmela, "you have my glove under your

baldric. Please give it to me, and then go."



"Go?" he cried, starting. "Go where?"



"To Koth or to Hades!" she answered. "If you will not serve me as I

wish, you shall not serve me at all."



"You wrong me, princess," he answered, bowing low, deeply hurt. "I

would not forsake you. For your sake I will even put my sword at the

disposal of this savage."



"And you, my lord Amalric?"



Amalric swore beneath his breath, then grinned. True soldier of

fortune, no shift of fortune, however outrageous, surprized him much.



"I'll serve under him. A short life and a merry one, say I--and with

Conan the Throat-slitter in command, life is likely to be both merry

and short. Mitra! If the dog ever commanded more than a company of

cut-throats before, I'll eat him, harness and all!"



"And you, my Agha?" she turned to Shupras.



He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. He was typical of the race

evolved along Koth's southern borders--tall and gaunt, with features

leaner and more hawk-like than his purer-blooded desert kin.



"Ishtar gives, princess." The fatalism of his ancestors spoke for him.



"Wait here," she commanded, and while Thespides fumed and gnawed his

velvet cap, Taurus muttered wearily under his breath, and Amalric

strode back and forth, tugging at his yellow beard and grinning like a

hungry lion, Yasmela disappeared again through the curtains and

clapped her hands for her slaves.



At her command they brought harness to replace Conan's chain-mail--

gorget, sollerets, cuirass, pauldrons, jambes, cuisses and sallet.

When Yasmela again drew the curtains, a Conan in burnished steel stood

before his audience. Clad in the platearmor, vizor lifted and dark

face shadowed by the black plumes that nodded above his helmet, there

was a grim impressiveness about him that even Thespides grudgingly

noted. A jest died suddenly on Amalric's lips.



"By Mitra," said he slowly, "I never expected to see you cased in

coat-armor, but you do not put it to shame. By my fingerbones, Conan,

I have seen kings who wore their harness less regally than you!"



Conan was silent. A vague shadow crossed his mind like a prophecy. In

years to come he was to remember Amalric's words, when the dream

became the reality.







3



In the early haze of dawn the streets of Khoraja were thronged by

crowds of people who watched the hosts riding from the southern gate.

The army was on the move at last. There were the knights, gleaming in

richly wrought plate-armor, colored plumes waving above their

burnished sallets. Their steeds, caparisoned with silk, lacquered

leather and gold buckles, caracoled and curvetted as their riders put

them through their paces. The early light struck glints from

lancepoints that rose like a forest above the array, their pennons

flowing in the breeze. Each knight wore a lady's token, a glove, scarf

or rose, bound to his helmet or fastened to his sword-belt. They were

the chivalry of Khoraja, five hundred strong, led by Count

Thespides, who, men said, aspired to the hand of Yasmela herself.



They were followed by the light cavalry on rangy steeds. The riders

were typical hillmen, lean and hawk-faced; peaked steel caps were on

their heads and chain-mail glinted under their flowing kaftans. Their

main weapon was the terrible Shemitish bow, which could send a shaft

five hundred paces. There were five thousand of these, and Shupras

rode at their head, his lean face moody beneath his spired helmet.



Close on their heels marched the Khoraja spearmen, always

comparatively few in any Hyborian state, where men thought cavalry the

only honorable branch of service. These, like the knights, were of

ancient Kothic blood--sons of ruined families, broken men, penniless

youths, who could not afford horses and plate-armor, five hundred of

them.



The mercenaries brought up the rear, a thousand horsemen, two thousand

spearmen. The tall horses of the cavalry seemed hard and savage as

their riders; they made no curvets or gambades. There was a grimly

business-like aspect to these professional killers, veterans of bloody

campaigns. Clad from head to foot in chain-mail, they wore their

vizorless head-pieces over linked coifs. Their shields were unadorned,

their long lances without guidons. At their saddle-bows hung battle-

axes or steel maces, and each man wore at his hip a long broadsword.

The spearmen were armed in much the same manner, though they bore

pikes instead of cavalry lances.



They were men of many races and many crimes. There were tall

Hyperboreans, gaunt, big-boned, of slow speech and violent natures;

tawny-haired Gundermen from the hills of the northwest; swaggering

Corinthian renegades; swarthy Zingarians, with bristling black

mustaches and fiery tempers; Aquilonians from the distant west. But

all, except the Zingarians, were Hyborians.



Behind all came a camel in rich housings, led by a knight on a great

war-horse, and surrounded by a clump of picked fighters from the royal

house-troops. Its rider, under the silken canopy of the seat, was a

slim, silk-clad figure, at the sight of which the populace, always

mindful of royalty, threw up its leather cap and cheered wildly.



Conan the Cimmerian, restless in his plate-armor, stared at the

bedecked camel with no great approval, and spoke to Amalric, who rode

beside him, resplendent in chain-mail threaded with gold, golden

breastplate and helmet with flowing horsehair crest.



"The princess would go with us. She's supple, but too soft for this

work. Anyway, she'll have to get out of these robes."



Amalric twisted his yellow mustache to hide a grin. Evidently Conan

supposed Yasmela intended to strap on a sword and take part in the

actual fighting, as the barbarian women often fought.



"The women of the Hyborians do not fight like your Cimmerian women,

Conan," he said. "Yasmela rides with us to watch the battle. Anyway,"

he shifted in his saddle and lowered his voice, "between you and me, I

have an idea that the princess dares not remain behind. She fears

something-"



"An uprising? Maybe we'd better hang a few citizens before we start-"



"No. One of her maids talked--babbled about Something that came into

the palace by night and frightened Yasmela half out of her wits. It's

some of Natohk's deviltry, I doubt not. Conan, it's more than flesh

and blood we fight!"



"Well," grunted the Cimmerian, "it's better to go meet an enemy than

to wait for him."



He glanced at the long line of wagons and camp-followers, gathered the

reins in his mailed hand, and spoke from habit the phrase of the

marching mercenaries, "Hell or plunder, comrades--march!"



Behind the long train the ponderous gates of Khoraja closed. Eager

heads lined the battlements. The citizens well knew they were watching

life or death go forth. If the host was overthrown, the future of

Khoraja would be written in blood. In the hordes swarming up from the

savage south, mercy was a quality unknown.



All day the columns marched, through grassy rolling meadowlands, cut

by small rivers, the terrain gradually beginning to slope upward.

Ahead of them lay a range of low hills, sweeping in an unbroken

rampart from east to west. They camped that night on the northern

slopes of those hills, and hook-nosed, fiery-eyed men of the hill

tribes came in scores to squat about the fires and repeat news that

had come up out of the mysterious desert. Through their tales ran the

name of Natohk like a crawling serpent. At his bidding the demons of

the air brought thunder and wind and fog, the fiends of the underworld

shook the earth with awful roaring. He brought fire out of the air and

consumed the gates of walled cities, and burnt armored men to bits of

charred bone. His warriors covered the desert with their numbers, and

he had five thousand Stygian troops in warchariots under the rebel

prince Kutamun.



Conan listened unperturbed. War was his trade. Life was a continual

battle, or series of battles, since his birth. Death had been a

constant companion. It stalked horrifically at his side; stood at his

shoulder beside the gaming-tables; its bony fingers rattled the wine-

cups. It loomed above him, a hooded and monstrous shadow, when he lay

down to sleep. He minded its presence no more than a king minds the

presence of his cupbearer. Some day its bony grasp would close; that

was all. It was enough that he lived through the present.



However, others were less careless of fear than he. Striding back from

the sentry lines, Conan halted as a slender cloaked figure stayed him

with an outstretched hand.



"Princess! You should be in your tent."



"I could not sleep." Her dark eyes were haunted in the shadow. "Conan,

I am afraid!"



"Are there men in the host you fear?" His hand locked on his hilt.



"No man," she shuddered. "Conan, is there anything you fear?"



He considered, tugging at his chin. "Aye," he admitted at last, "the

curse of the gods."



Again she shuddered. "I am cursed. A fiend from the abysses has set

his mark upon me. Night after night he lurks in the shadows,

whispering awful secrets to me. He will drag me down to be his queen

in hell. I dare not sleep--he will come to me in my pavilion as he

came in the palace. Conan, you are strong keep me with you! I am

afraid!"



She was no longer a princess, but only a terrified girl. Her pride had

fallen from her, leaving her unashamed in her nakedness. In her

frantic fear she had come to him who seemed strongest. The ruthless

power that had repelled her, drew her now.



For answer he drew off his scarlet cloak and wrapped it about her,

roughly, as if tenderness of any kind were impossible to him. His iron

hand rested for an instant on her slender shoulder, and she shivered

again, but not with fear. Like an electric shock a surge of animal

vitality swept over her at his mere touch, as if some of his

superabundant strength had been imparted to her.



"Lie here." He indicated a clean-swept space close to a small

flickering fire. He saw no incongruity in a princess lying down on the

naked ground beside a campfire, wrapped in a warrior's cloak. But she

obeyed without question.



He seated himself near her on a boulder, his broadsword across his

knees. With the firelight glinting from his blue steel armor, he

seemed like an image of steel--dynamic power for the moment quiescent;

not resting, but motionless for the instant, awaiting the signal to

plunge again into terrific action. The firelight played on his

features, making them seem as if carved out of substance shadowy yet

hard as steel. They were immobile, but his eyes smoldered with fierce

life. He was not merely a wild man; he was part of the wild, one with

the untameable elements of life; in his veins ran the blood of the

wolf-pack; in his brain lurked the brooding depths of the northern

night; his heart throbbed with the fire of blazing forests.



So, half meditating, half dreaming, Yasmela dropped off to sleep,

wrapped in a sense of delicious security. Somehow she knew that no

flame-eyed shadow would bend over her in the darkness, with this grim

figure from the outlands standing guard above her. Yet once again she

wakened, to shudder in cosmic fear, though not because of anything she

saw.



It was a low mutter of voices that roused her. Opening her eyes, she

saw that the fire was burning low. A feeling of dawn was in the air.

She could dimly see that Conan still sat on the boulder; she glimpsed

the long blue glimmer of his blade. Close beside him crouched another

figure, on which the dying fire cast a faint glow. Yasmela drowsily

made out a hooked beak of a nose, a glittering bead of an eye, under a

white turban. The man was speaking rapidly in a Shemite dialect she

found hard to understand.



"Let Bel wither my arm! I speak truth! By Derketo, Conan, I am a

prince of liars, but I do not lie to an old comrade. I swear by the

days when we were thieves together in the land of Zamora, before you

donned hauberk!



"I saw Natohk; with the others I knelt before him when he made

incantations to Set. But I did not thrust my nose in the sand as the

rest did. I am a thief of Shumir, and my sight is keener than a

weasel's. I squinted up and saw his veil blowing in the wind. It blew

aside, and I saw--I saw--Bel aid me, Conan, I say I saw! My blood

froze in my veins and my hair stood up. What I had seen burned my soul

like a red-hot iron. I could not rest until I had made sure.



"I journeyed to the ruins of Kuthchemes. The door of the ivory dome

stood open; in the doorway lay a great serpent, transfixed by a sword.

Within the dome lay the body of a man, so shrivelled and distorted I

could scarce make it out at first--it was Shevatas, the Zamorian, the

only thief in the world I acknowledged as my superior. The treasure

was untouched; it lay in shimmering heaps about the corpse. That was

all."



"There were no bones-" began Conan.



"There was nothing!" broke in the Shemite passionately. "Nothing! Only

the one corpse!"



Silence reigned an instant, and Yasmela shrank with a crawling

nameless horror.



"Whence came Natohk?" rose the Shemite's vibrant whisper. "Out of the

desert on a night when the world was blind and wild with mad clouds

driven in frenzied flight across the shuddering stars, and the howling

of the wind was mingled with the shrieking of the spirits of the

wastes. Vampires were abroad that night, witches rode naked on the

wind, and werewolves howled across the wilderness. On a black camel he

came, riding like the wind, and an unholy fire played about him; the

cloven tracks of the camel glowed in the darkness. When Natohk

dismounted before Set's shrine by the oasis of Aphaka, the beast swept

into the night and vanished. And I have talked with tribesmen who

swore that it suddenly spread gigantic wings and rushed upwards into

the clouds, leaving a trail of fire behind it. No man has seen that

camel since that night, but a black brutish manlike shape shambles to

Natohk's tent and gibbers to him in the blackness before dawn. I will

tell you, Conan, Natohk is--look, I will show you an image of what I

saw that day by Shushan when the wind blew aside his veil!"



Yasmela saw the glint of gold in the Shemite's hand, as the men bent

closely over something. She heard Conan grunt; and suddenly blackness

rolled over her. For the first time in her life, princess Yasmela had

fainted.







4



Dawn was still a hint of whiteness in the east when the army was again

on the march. Tribesmen had raced into camp, their steeds reeling from

the long ride, to report the desert horde encamped at the Well of

Altaku. So through the hills the soldiers pushed hastily, leaving the

wagon trains to follow. Yasmela rode with them; her eyes were haunted.

The nameless horror had been taking even more awful shape, since she

had recognized the coin in the Shemite's hand the night before--one of

those secretly molded by the degraded Zugite cult, bearing the

features of a man dead three thousand years.



The way wound between ragged cliffs and gaunt crags towering over

narrow valleys. Here and there villages perched, huddles of stone

huts, plastered with mud. The tribesmen swarmed out to join their kin,

so that before they had traversed the hills, the host had been swelled

by some three thousand wild archers.



Abruptly they came out of the hills and caught their breath at the

vast expanse that swept away to the south. On the southern side the

hills fell away sheerly, marking a distinct geographical division

between the Kothian uplands and the southern desert. The hills were

the rim of the uplands, stretching in an almost unbroken wall. Here

they were bare and desolate, inhabited only by the Zaheemi clan, whose

duty it was to guard the caravan road. Beyond the hills the desert

stretched bare, dusty, lifeless. Yet beyond its horizon lay the Well

of Altaku, and the horde of Natohk.



The army looked down on the Pass of Shamla, through which flowed the

wealth of the north and the south, and through which had marched the

armies of Koth, Khoraja, Shem, Turan and Stygia. Here the sheer wall

of the rampart was broken. Promontories ran out into the desert,

forming barren valleys, all but one of which were closed on the

northern extremity by rugged cliffs. This one was the Pass. It was

much like a great hand extended from the hills; two fingers, parted,

formed a fanshaped valley. The fingers were represented by a broad

ridge on either hand, the outer sides sheer, the inner, steep slopes.

The vale pitched upward as it narrowed, to come out on a plateau,

flanked by gully-torn slopes. A well was there, and a cluster of stone

towers, occupied by the Zaheemis.



There Conan halted, swinging off his horse. He had discarded the

plate-armor for the more familiar chain-mail. Thespides reined in and

demanded, "Why do you halt?"



"We'll await them here," answered Conan.



"T'were more knightly to ride out and meet them," snapped the count.



"They'd smother us with numbers," answered the Cimmerian. "Besides,

there's no water out there. We'll camp on the plateau-"



"My knights and I camp in the valley," retorted Thespides angrily. "We

are the vanguard, and we, at least, do not fear a ragged desert

swarm."



Conan shrugged his shoulders and the angry nobleman rode away. Amalric

halted in his bellowing order, to watch the glittering company riding

down the slope into the valley.



"The fools! Their canteens will soon be empty, and they'll have to

ride back up to the well to water their horses."



"Let them be," replied Conan. "It goes hard for them to take orders

from me. Tell the dog-brothers to ease their harness and rest. We've

marched hard and fast. Water the horses and let the men munch."



No need to send out scouts. The desert lay bare to the gaze, though

just now this view was limited by low-lying clouds which rested in

whitish masses on the southern horizon. The monotony was broken only

by a jutting tangle of stone ruins, some miles out on the desert,

reputedly the remnants of an ancient Stygian temple. Conan dismounted

the archers and ranged them along the ridges, with the wild tribesmen.

He stationed the mercenaries and the Khoraji spearmen on the plateau

about the well. Farther back, in the angle where the hill road

debouched on the plateau, was pitched Yasmela's pavilion.



With no enemy in sight, the warriors relaxed. Basinets were doffed,

coifs thrown back on mailed shoulders, belts let out. Rude jests flew

back and forth as the fighting-men gnawed beef and thrust their

muzzles deep into ale-jugs. Along the slopes the hillmen made

themselves at ease, nibbling dates and olives. Amalric strode up to

where Conan sat bareheaded on a boulder.



"Conan, have you heard what the tribesmen say about Natohk? They say--

Mitra, it's too mad even to repeat. What do you think?"



"Seeds rest in the ground for centuries without rotting, sometimes,"

answered Conan. "But surely Natohk is a man."



"I am not sure," grunted Amalric. "At any rate, you've arranged your

lines as well as a seasoned general could have done. It's certain

Natohk's devils can't fall on us unawares. Mitra, what a fog!"



"I thought it was clouds at first," answered Conan. "See how it

rolls!"



What had seemed clouds was a thick mist moving northward like a great

unstable ocean, rapidly hiding the desert from view. Soon it engulfed

the Stygian ruins, and still it rolled onward. The army watched in

amazement. It was a thing unprecedented--unnatural and inexplicable.



"No use sending out scouts," said Amalric disgustedly. "They couldn't

see anything. Its edges are near the outer flanges of the ridges. Soon

the whole Pass and these hills will be masked-"



Conan, who had been watching the rolling mist with growing

nervousness, bent suddenly and laid his ear to the earth. He sprang up

with frantic haste, swearing.



"Horses and chariots, thousands of them! The ground vibrates to their

tread! Ho, there!" His voice thundered out across the valley to

electrify the lounging men. "Burganets and pikes, you dogs! Stand to

your ranks!"



At that, as the warriors scrambled into their lines, hastily donning

head-pieces and thrusting arms through shield-straps, the mist rolled

away, as something no longer useful. It did not slowly lift and fade

like a natural fog; it simply vanished, like a blown-out flame. One

moment the whole desert was hidden with the rolling fleecy billows,

piled mountainously, stratum above stratum; the next, the sun shone

from a cloudless sky on a naked desert--no longer empty, but thronged

with the living pageantry of war. A great shout shook the hills.



At first glance the amazed watchers seemed to be looking down upon a

glittering sparkling sea of bronze and gold, where steel points

twinkled like a myriad stars. With the lifting of the fog the invaders

had halted as if frozen, in long serried lines, flaming in the sun.



First was a long line of chariots, drawn by the great fierce horses of

Stygia, with plumes on their heads--snorting and rearing as each naked

driver leaned back, bracing his powerful legs, his dusky arms knotted

with muscles. The fighting-men in the chariots were tall figures,

their hawk-like faces set off by bronze helmets crested with a

crescent supporting a golden ball. Heavy bows were in their hands. No

common archers these, but nobles of the South, bred to war and the

hunt, who were accustomed to bringing down lions with their arrows.



Behind these came a motley array of wild men on half-wild horses--the

warriors of Kush, the first of the great black kingdoms of the

grasslands south of Stygia. They were shining ebony, supple and lithe,

riding stark naked and without saddle or bridle.



After these rolled a horde that seemed to encompass all the desert.

Thousands on thousands of the war-like Sons of Shem: ranks of horsemen

in scale-mail corselets and cylindrical helmets--the asshuri of Nippr,

Shumir and Eruk and their sister cities; wild white-robed hordes--the

nomad clans.



Now the ranks began to mill and eddy. The chariots drew off to one

side while the main host came uncertainly onward.



Down in the valley the knights had mounted, and now Count Thespides

galloped up the slope to where Conan stood. He did not deign to

dismount but spoke abruptly from the saddle.



"The lifting of the mist has confused them! Now is the time to charge!

The Kushites have no bows and they mask the whole advance. A charge of

my knights will crush them back into the ranks of the Shemites,

disrupting their formation. Follow me! We will win this battle with

one stroke!"



Conan shook his head. "Were we fighting a natural foe, I would agree.

But this confusion is more feigned than real, as if to draw us into a

charge. I fear a trap."



"Then you refuse to move?" cried Thespides, his face dark with

passion.



"Be reasonable," expostulated Conan. "We have the advantage of

position-"



With a furious oath Thespides wheeled and galloped back down the

valley where his knights waited impatiently.



Amalric shook his head. "You should not have let him return, Conan.

I--look there!"



Conan sprang up with a curse. Thespides had swept in beside his men.

They could hear his impassioned voice faintly, but his gesture toward

the approaching horde was significant enough. In another instant five

hundred lances dipped and the steel-clad company was thundering down

the valley.



A young page came running from Yasmela's pavilion, crying to Conan in

a shrill, eager voice. "My Lord, the princess asks why you do not

follow and support Count Thespides?"



"Because I am not so great a fool as he," grunted Conan, reseating

himself on the boulder and beginning to gnaw a huge beef-bone.



"You grow sober with authority," quoth Amalric. "Such madness as that

was always your particular joy."



"Aye, when I had only my own life to consider," answered Conan. "Now--

what in hell-"



The horde had halted. From the extreme wing rushed a chariot, the

naked charioteer lashing the steeds like a madman; the other occupant

was a tall figure whose robe floated spectrally on the wind. He held

in his arms a great vessel of gold and from it poured a thin stream

that sparkled in the sunlight. Across the whole front of the desert

horde the chariot swept, and behind its thundering wheels was left,

like the wake behind a ship, a long thin powdery line that glittered

in the sands like the phosphorescent track of a serpent.



"That's Natohk!" swore Amalric. "What hellish seed is he sowing?"



The charging knights had not checked their headlong pace. Another

fifty paces and they would crash into the uneven Kushite ranks, which

stood motionless, spears lifted. Now the foremost knights had reached

the thin line that glittered across the sands. They did not heed that

crawling menace. But as the steel-shod hoofs of the horses struck it,

it was as when steel strikes flint--but with more terrible result. A

terrific explosion rocked the desert, which seemed to split apart

along the strewn line with an awful burst of white flame.



In that instant the whole foremost line of the knights was seen

enveloped in that flame, horses and steel-clad riders withering in the

glare like insects in an open blaze. The next instant the rear ranks

were piling up on their charred bodies. Unable to check their headlong

velocity, rank after rank crashed into the ruins. With appalling

suddenness the charge had turned into a shambles where armored figures

died amid screaming, mangled horses.



Now the illusion of confusion vanished as the horde settled into

orderly lines. The wild Kushites rushed into the shambles, spearing

the wounded, bursting the helmets of the knights with stones and iron

hammers. It was all over so quickly that the watchers on the slopes

stood dazed; and again the horde moved forward, splitting to avoid the

charred waste of corpses. From the hills went up a cry: "We fight not

men but devils!"



On either ridge the hillmen wavered. One rushed toward the plateau,

froth dripping from his beard.



"Flee, flee!" he slobbered. "Who can fight Natohk's magic?"



With a snarl Conan bounded from his boulder and smote him with the

beef-bone; he dropped, blood starting from nose and mouth. Conan drew

his sword, his eyes slits of blue bale-fire.



"Back to your posts!" he yelled. "Let another take a backward step and

I'll shear off his head! Fight, damn you!"



The rout halted as quickly as it had begun. Conan's fierce personality

was like a dash of ice-water in their whirling blaze of terror.



"Take your places," he directed quickly. "And stand to it! Neither man

nor devil comes up Shamla Pass this day!"



Where the plateau rim broke to the valley slope the mercenaries braced

their belts and gripped their spears. Behind them the lancers sat

their steeds, and to one side were stationed the Khoraja spearmen as

reserves. To Yasmela, standing white and speechless at the door of her

tent, the host seemed a pitiful handful in comparison to the thronging

desert horde.



Conan stood among the spearmen. He knew the invaders would not try to

drive a chariot charge up the Pass in the teeth of the archers, but he

grunted with surprize to see the riders dismounting. These wild men

had no supply trains. Canteens and pouches hung at their saddle-peaks.

Now they drank the last of their water and threw the canteens away.



"This is the death-grip," he muttered as the lines formed on foot.

"I'd rather have had a cavalry charge; wounded horses bolt and ruin

formations."



The horde had formed into a huge wedge, of which the tip was the

Stygians and the body, the mailed asshuri, flanked by the nomads. In

close formation, shields lifted, they rolled onward, while behind them

a tall figure in a motionless chariot lifted wide-robed arms in grisly

invocation.



As the horde entered the wide valley mouth the hillmen loosed their

shafts. In spite of the protective formation, men dropped by dozens.

The Stygians had discarded their bows; helmeted heads bent to the

blast, dark eyes glaring over the rims of their shields, they came on

in an inexorable surge, striding over their fallen comrades. But the

Shemites gave back the fire, and the clouds of arrows darkened the

skies. Conan gazed over the billowing waves of spears and wondered

what new horror the sorcerer would invoke. Somehow he felt that

Natohk, like all his kind, was more terrible in defense than in

attack; to take the offensive against him invited disaster.



But surely it was magic that drove the horde on in the teeth of death.

Conan caught his breath at the havoc wrought in the onsweeping ranks.

The edges of the wedge seemed to be melting away, and already the

valley was strewn with dead men. Yet the survivors came on like madmen

unaware of death. By the very numbers of their bows, they began to

swamp the archers on the cliffs. Clouds of shafts sped upward, driving

the hillmen to cover. Panic struck at their hearts at that unwavering

advance, and they plied their bows madly, eyes glaring like trapped

wolves.



As the horde neared the narrower neck of the Pass, boulders thundered

down, crushing men by the scores, but the charge did not waver.

Conan's wolves braced themselves for the inevitable concussion. In

their close formation and superior armor, they took little hurt from

the arrows. It was the impact of the charge Conan feared, when the

huge wedge should crash against his thin ranks. And he realized now

there was no breaking of that onslaught. He gripped the shoulder of a

Zaheemi who stood near.



"Is there any way by which mounted men can get down into the blind

valley beyond that western ridge?"



"Aye, a steep, perilous path, secret and eternally guarded. But-"



Conan was dragging him along to where Amalric sat his great war-horse.



"Amalric!" he snapped. "Follow this man! He'll lead you into yon outer

valley. Ride down it, circle the end of the ridge, and strike the

horde from the rear. Speak not, but go! I know it's madness, but we're

doomed anyway; we'll do all the damage we can before we die! Haste!"



Amalric's mustache bristled in a fierce grin, and a few moments later

his lancers were following the guide into a tangle of gorges leading

off from the plateau. Conan ran back to the pikemen, sword in hand.



He was not too soon. On either ridge Shupras's hillmen, mad with

anticipation of defeat, rained down their shafts desperately. Men died

like flies in the valley and along the slopes--and with a roar and an

irresistible upward surge the Stygians crashed against the

mercenaries.



In a hurricane of thundering steel, the lines twisted and swayed. It

was war-bred noble against professional soldier.



Shields crashed against shields, and between them spears drove in and

blood spurted.



Conan saw the mighty form of prince Kutamun across the sea of swords,

but the press held him hard, breast to breast with dark shapes that

gasped and slashed. Behind the Stygians the asshuri were surging and

yelling.



On either hand the nomads climbed the cliffs and came to hand-grips

with their mountain kin. All along the crests of the ridges the combat

raged in blind, gasping ferocity. Tooth and nail, frothing mad with

fanaticism and ancient feuds, the tribesmen rent and slew and died.

Wild hair flying, the naked Kushites ran howling into the fray.



It seemed to Conan that his sweat-blinded eyes looked down into a

rising ocean of steel that seethed and eddied, filling the valley from

ridge to ridge. The fight was at a bloody deadlock. The hillmen held

the ridges, and the mercenaries, gripping their dipping pikes, bracing

their feet in the bloody earth, held the Pass. Superior position and

armor for a space balanced the advantage of overwhelming numbers. But

it could not endure. Wave after wave of glaring faces and flashing

spears surged up the slope, the asshuri filling the gaps in the

Stygian ranks.



Conan looked to see Amalric's lancers rounding the western ridge, but

they did not come, and the pikemen began to reel back under the

shocks. And Conan abandoned all hope of victory and of life. Yelling a

command to his gasping captains, he broke away and raced across the

plateau to the Khoraja reserves who stood trembling with eagerness. He

did not glance toward Yasmela's pavilion. He had forgotten the

princess; his one thought was the wild beast instinct to slay before

he died.



"This day you become knights!" he laughed fiercely, pointing with his

dripping sword toward the hillmen's horses, herded nearby. "Mount and

follow me to hell!"



The hill steed reared wildly under the unfamiliar clash of the Kothic

armor, and Conan's gusty laugh rose above the din as he led them to

where the eastern ridge branched away from the plateau. Five hundred

footmen--pauper patricians, younger sons, black sheep--on half-wild

Shemite horses, charging an army, down a slope where no cavalry had

ever dared charge before!



Past the battle-choked mouth of the Pass they thundered, out onto the

corpse-littered ridge. Down the steep slope they rushed, and a score

lost their footing and rolled under the hoofs of their comrades. Below

them men screamed and threw up their arms--and the thundering charge

ripped through them as an avalanche cuts through a forest of saplings.

On through the close-packed throngs the Khorajis hurtled, leaving a

crushed-down carpet of dead.



And then, as the horde writhed and coiled upon itself, Amalric's

lancers, having cut through a cordon of horsemen encountered in the

outer valley, swept around the extremity of the western ridge and

smote the host in a steel-tipped wedge, splitting it asunder. His

attack carried all the dazing demoralization of a surprize on the

rear. Thinking themselves flanked by a superior force and frenzied at

the fear of being cut off from the desert, swarms of nomads broke and

stampeded, working havoc in the ranks of their more steadfast

comrades. These staggered and the horsemen rode through them. Up on

the ridges the desert fighters wavered, and the hillmen fell on them

with renewed fury, driving them down the slopes.



Stunned by surprize, the horde broke before they had time to see it

was but a handful which assailed them. And once broken, not even a

magician could weld such a horde again. Across the sea of heads and

spears Conan's madmen saw Amalric's riders forging steadily through

the rout, to the rise and fall of axes and maces, and a mad joy of

victory exalted each man's heart and made his arm steel.



Bracing their feet in the wallowing sea of blood whose crimson waves

lapped about their ankles, the pikemen in the Pass mouth drove

forward, crushing strongly against the milling ranks before them. The

Stygians held, but behind them the press of the asshuri melted; and

over the bodies of the nobles of the South who died in their tracks to

a man, the mercenaries rolled, to split and crumple the wavering mass

behind.



Up on the cliffs old Shupras lay with an arrow through his heart;

Amalric was down, swearing like a pirate, a spear through his mailed

thigh. Of Conan's mounted infantry, scarce a hundred and fifty

remained in the saddle. But the horde was shattered. Nomads and mailed

spearmen broke away, fleeing to their camp where their horses were,

and the hillmen swarmed down the slopes, stabbing the fugitives in the

back, cutting the throats of the wounded.



In the swirling red chaos a terrible apparition suddenly appeared

before Conan's rearing steed. It was prince Kutamun, naked but for a

loin-cloth, his harness hacked away, his crested helmet dented, his

limbs splashed with blood. With a terrible shout he hurled his broken

hilt full into Conan's face, and leaping, seized the stallion's

bridle. The Cimmerian reeled in his saddle, half stunned, and with

awful strength the dark-skinned giant forced the screaming steed

upward and backward, until it lost its footing and crashed into the

muck of bloody sand and writhing bodies.



Conan sprang clear as the horse fell, and with a roar Kutamun was on

him. In that mad nightmare of battle, the barbarian never exactly knew

how he killed his man. He only knew that a stone in the Stygian's hand

crashed again and again on his basinet, filling his sight with

flashing sparks, as Conan drove his dagger again and again into his

foe's body, without apparent effect on the prince's terrible vitality.

The world was swimming to Conan's sight, when with a convulsive

shudder the frame that strained against his stiffened and then went

limp.



Reeling up, blood streaming down his face from under his dented

helmet, Conan glared dizzily at the profusion of destruction which

spread before him. From crest to crest the dead lay strewn, a red

carpet that choked the valley. It was like a red sea, with each wave a

straggling line of corpses. They choked the neck of the Pass, they

littered the slopes. And down in the desert the slaughter continued,

where the survivors of the horde had reached their horses and streamed

out across the waste, pursued by the weary victors--and Conan stood

appalled as he noted how few of these were left to pursue.



Then an awful scream rent the clamor. Up the valley a chariot came

flying, making nothing of the heaped corpses. No horses drew it, but a

great black creature that was like a camel. In the chariot stood

Natohk, his robes flying; and gripping the reins and lashing like mad,

crouched a black anthropomorphic being that might have been a monster

ape.



With a rush of burning wind the chariot swept up the corpse-littered

slope, straight toward the pavilion where Yasmela stood alone,

deserted by her guards in the frenzy of pursuit. Conan, standing

frozen, heard her frenzied scream as Natohk's long arm swept her up

into the chariot. Then the grisly steed wheeled and came racing back

down the valley, and no man dared speed arrow or spear lest he strike

Yasmela, who writhed in Natohk's arms.



With an inhuman cry Conan caught up his fallen sword and leaped into

the path of the hurtling horror. But even as his sword went up, the

forefeet of the black beast smote him like a thunderbolt and sent him

hurtling a score feet away, dazed and bruised. Yasmela's cry came

hauntingly to his stunned ears as the chariot roared by.



A yell that had nothing of the human in its timbre rang from his lips

as Conan rebounded from the bloody earth and seized the rein of a

riderless horse that raced past him, throwing himself into the saddle

without bringing the charger to a halt. With mad abandon he raced

after the rapidly receding chariot. He struck the levels flying, and

passed like a whirlwind through the Shemite camp. Into the desert he

fled, passing clumps of his own riders, and hard-spurring desert

horsemen.



On flew the chariot, and on raced Conan, though his horse began to

reel beneath him. Now the open desert lay all about them, bathed in

the lurid desolate splendor of sunset. Before him rose up the ancient

ruins, and with a shriek that froze the blood in Conan's veins, the

unhuman charioteer cast Natohk and the girl from him. They rolled on

the sand, and to Conan's dazed gaze, the chariot and its steed altered

awfully. Great wings spread from a black horror that in no way

resembled a camel, and it rushed upward into the sky, bearing in its

wake a shape of blinding flame, in which a black man-like shape

gibbered in ghastly triumph. So quickly it passed, that it was like

the rush of a nightmare through a horror-haunted dream.



Natohk sprang up, cast a swift look at his grim pursuer, who had not

halted but came riding hard, with sword swinging low and spattering

red drops; and the sorcerer caught up the fainting girl and ran with

her into the ruins.



Conan leaped from his horse and plunged after them. He came into a

room that glowed with unholy radiance, though outside the dusk was

falling swiftly. On a black jade altar lay Yasmela, her naked body

gleaming like ivory in the weird light. Her garments lay strewn on the

floor, as if ripped from her in brutal haste. Natohk faced the

Cimmerian--inhumanly tall and lean, clad in shimmering green silk. He

tossed back his veil, and Conan looked into the features he had seen

depicted on the Zugite coin.



"Aye, blench, dog!" The voice was like the hiss of a giant serpent. "I

am Thugra Khotan! Long I lay in my tomb, awaiting the day of awakening

and release. The arts which saved me from the barbarians long ago

likewise imprisoned me, but I knew one would come in time--and he

came, to fulfill his destiny, and to die as no man has died in three

thousand years!



"Fool, do you think you have conquered because my people are

scattered? Because I have been betrayed and deserted by the demon I

enslaved? I am Thugra Khotan, who shall rule the world despite your

paltry gods! The desert is filled with my people; the demons of the

earth shall do my bidding, as the reptiles of the earth obey me. Lust

for a woman weakened my sorcery. Now the woman is mine, and feasting

on her soul, I shall be unconquerable! Back, fool! You have not

conquered Thugra Khotan!"



He cast his staff and it fell at the feet of Conan, who recoiled with

an involuntary cry. For as it fell it altered horribly; its outline

melted and writhed, and a hooded cobra reared up hissing before the

horrified Cimmerian. With a furious oath Conan struck, and his sword

sheared the horrid shape in half. And there at his feet lay only the

two pieces of a severed ebon staff. Thugra Khotan laughed awfully, and

wheeling, caught up something that crawled loathsomely in the dust of

the floor.



In his extended hand something alive writhed and slavered. No tricks

of shadows this time. In his naked hand Thugra Khotan gripped a black

scorpion, more than a foot in length, the deadliest creature of the

desert, the stroke of whose spiked tail was instant death. Thugra

Khotan's skull-like countenance split in a mummy-like grin. Conan

hesitated; then without warning he threw his sword.



Caught off guard, Thugra Khotan had no time to avoid the cast. The

point struck beneath his heart and stood out a foot behind his

shoulders. He went down, crushing the poisonous monster in his grasp

as he fell.



Conan strode to the altar, lifting Yasmela in his blood-stained arms.

She threw her white arms convulsively about his mailed neck, sobbing

hysterically, and would not let him go.



"Crom's devils, girl!" he grunted. "Loose me! Fifty thousand men have

perished today, and there is work for me to do-"



"No!" she gasped, clinging with convulsive strength, as barbaric for

the instant as he in her fear and passion. "I will not let you go! I

am yours, by fire and steel and blood! You are mine! Back there, I

belong to others--here I am mine--and yours! You shall not go!"



He hesitated, his own brain reeling with the fierce upsurging of his

violent passions. The lurid unearthly glow still hovered in the

shadowy chamber, lighting ghostlily the dead face of Thugra Khotan,

which seemed to grin mirthlessly and cavernously at them. Out on the

desert, in the hills among the oceans of dead, men were dying, were

howling with wounds and thirst and madness, and kingdoms were

staggering. Then all was swept away by the crimson tide that rode

madly in Conan's soul, as he crushed fiercely in his iron arms the

slim white body that shimmered like a witch-fire of madness before

him.







THE END