The Hour of the Dragon Page 15

  15

  The Return of the Corsair

  Conan's first sensation of returning consciousness was that of motion;under him was no solidity, but a ceaseless heaving and plunging. Then heheard wind humming through cords and spars, and knew he was aboard aship even before his blurred sight cleared. He heard a mutter of voicesand then a dash of water deluged him, jerking him sharply into fullanimation. He heaved up with a sulphurous curse, braced his legs andglared about him, with a burst of coarse guffaws in his ears and thereek of unwashed bodies in his nostrils.

  He was standing on the poopdeck of a long galley which was runningbefore the wind that whipped down from the north, her striped sailbellying against the taut sheets. The sun was just rising, in a dazzlingblaze of gold and blue and green. To the left of the shoreline was a dimpurple shadow. To the right stretched the open ocean. This much Conansaw at a glance that likewise included the ship itself.

  It was long and narrow, a typical trading-ship of the southern coasts,high of poop and stern, with cabins at either extremity. Conan lookeddown into the open waist, whence wafted that sickening abominable odor.He knew it of old. It was the body-scent of the oarsmen, chained totheir benches. They were all negroes, forty men to each side, eachconfined by a chain locked about his waist, with the other end welded toa heavy ring set deep in the solid runway beam that ran between thebenches from stem to stern. The life of a slave aboard an Argosseangalley was a hell unfathomable. Most of these were Kushites, but somethirty of the blacks who now rested on their idle oars and stared up atthe stranger with dull curiosity were from the far southern isles, thehomelands of the corsairs. Conan recognized them by their straighterfeatures and hair, their rangier, cleaner-limbed build. And he saw amongthem men who had followed him of old.

  But all this he saw and recognized in one swift, all-embracing glance ashe rose, before he turned his attention to the figures about him.Reeling momentarily on braced legs, his fists clenched wrathfully, heglared at the figures clustered about him. The sailor who had drenchedhim stood grinning, the empty bucket still poised in his hand, and Conancursed him with venom, instinctively reaching for his hilt. Then hediscovered that he was weaponless and naked except for his short leatherbreeks.

  'What lousy tub is this?' he roared. 'How did I come aboard here?'

  The sailors laughed jeeringly--stocky, bearded Argosseans to a man--andone, whose richer dress and air of command proclaimed him captain,folded his arms and said domineeringly: 'We found you lying on thesands. Somebody had rapped you on the pate and taken your clothes.Needing an extra man, we brought you aboard.'

  'What ship is this?' Conan demanded.

  'The _Venturer_, out of Messantia, with a cargo of mirrors, scarlet silkcloaks, shields, gilded helmets and swords to trade to the Shemites forcopper and gold ore. I am Demetrio, captain of this vessel and yourmaster henceforward.'

  'Then I'm headed in the direction I wanted to go, after all,' mutteredConan, heedless of that last remark. They were racing southeastward,following the long curve of the Argossean coast. These trading-shipsnever ventured far from the shoreline. Somewhere ahead of him he knewthat low dark Stygian galley was speeding southward.

  'Have you sighted a Stygian galley--' began Conan, but the beard of theburly, brutal-faced captain bristled. He was not in the least interestedin any question his prisoner might wish to ask, and felt it high time hereduced this independent wastrel to his proper place.

  'Get for'ard!' he roared. 'I've wasted time enough with you! I've doneyou the honor of having you brought to the poop to be revived, andanswered enough of your infernal questions. Get off this poop! You'llwork your way aboard this galley--'

  'I'll buy your ship--' began Conan, before he remembered that he was apenniless wanderer.

  A roar of rough mirth greeted these words, and the captain turnedpurple, thinking he sensed ridicule.

  'You mutinous swine!' he bellowed, taking a threatening step forward,while his hand closed on the knife at his belt. 'Get for'ard before Ihave you flogged! You'll keep a civil tongue in your jaws, or by Mitra,I'll have you chained among the blacks to tug an oar!'

  Conan's volcanic temper, never long at best, burst into explosion. Notin years, even before he was king, had a man spoken to him thus andlived.

  'Don't lift your voice to me, you tar-breeched dog!' he roared in avoice as gusty as the sea-wind, while the sailors gaped dumfounded.'Draw that toy and I'll feed you to the fishes!'

  'Who do you think you are?' gasped the captain.

  'I'll show you!' roared the maddened Cimmerian, and he wheeled andbounded toward the rail, where weapons hung in their brackets.

  The captain drew his knife and ran at him bellowing, but before he couldstrike, Conan gripped his wrist with a wrench that tore the arm cleanout of the socket. The captain bellowed like an ox in agony, and thenrolled clear across the deck as he was hurled contemptuously from hisattacker. Conan ripped a heavy ax from the rail and wheeled cat-like tomeet the rush of the sailors. They ran in, giving tongue like hounds,clumsy-footed and awkward in comparison to the pantherish Cimmerian.Before they could reach him with their knives he sprang among them,striking right and left too quickly for the eye to follow, and blood andbrains spattered as two corpses struck the deck.

  Knives flailed the air wildly as Conan broke through the stumbling,gasping mob and bounded to the narrow bridge that spanned the waist frompoop to forecastle, just out of reach of the slaves below. Behind himthe handful of sailors on the poop were floundering after him, dauntedby the destruction of their fellows, and the rest of the crew--somethirty in all--came running across the bridge toward him, with weaponsin their hands.

  Conan bounded out on the bridge and stood poised above the upturnedblack faces, ax lifted, black mane blown in the wind.

  'Who am I?' he yelled. 'Look, you dogs! Look, Ajonga, Yasunga, Laranga!_Who am I?_'

  And from the waist rose a shout that swelled to a mighty roar: 'Amra! Itis Amra! The Lion has returned!'

  The sailors who caught and understood the burden of that awesome shoutpaled and shrank back, staring in sudden fear at the wild figure on thebridge. Was this in truth that blood-thirsty ogre of the southern seaswho had so mysteriously vanished years ago, but who still lived in gorylegends? The blacks were frothing crazy now, shaking and tearing attheir chains and shrieking the name of Amra like an invocation. Kushiteswho had never seen Conan before took up the yell. The slaves in the penunder the after-cabin began to batter at the walls, shrieking like thedamned.

  Demetrio, hitching himself along the deck on one hand and his knees,livid with the agony of his dislocated arm, screamed: 'In and kill him,dogs, before the slaves break loose!'

  Fired to desperation by that word, the most dread to all galleymen, thesailors charged on to the bridge from both ends. But with a lion-likebound Conan left the bridge and hit like a cat on his feet on the runwaybetween the benches.

  'Death to the masters!' he thundered, and his ax rose and fellcrashingly full on a shackle-chain, severing it like matchwood. In aninstant a shrieking slave was free, splintering his oar for a bludgeon.Men were racing frantically along the bridge above, and all hell andbedlam broke loose on the _Venturer_. Conan's ax rose and fell withoutpause, and with every stroke a frothing, screaming black giant brokefree, mad with hate and the fury of freedom and vengeance.

  Sailors leaping down into the waist to grapple or smite at the nakedwhite giant hewing like one possessed at the shackles, found themselvesdragged down by the hands of slaves yet unfreed, while others, theirbroken chains whipping and snapping about their limbs, came up out ofthe waist like a blind, black torrent, screaming like fiends, smitingwith broken oars and pieces of iron, tearing and rending with talons andteeth. In the midst of the melee the slaves in the pen broke down thewalls and came surging up on the decks, and with fifty blacks freed oftheir benches Conan abandoned his iron-hewing and bounded up on thebridge to add his notched ax to the bludgeons of his partisans.

  Then it was massacre. Th
e Argosseans were strong, sturdy, fearless likeall their race, trained in the brutal school of the sea. But they couldnot stand against these maddened giants, led by the tigerish barbarian.Blows and abuse and hellish suffering were avenged in one red gust offury that raged like a typhoon from one end of the ship to the other,and when it had blown itself out, but one white man lived aboard the_Venturer_, and that was the blood-stained giant about whom the chantingblacks thronged to cast themselves prostrate on the bloody deck and beattheir heads against the boards in an ecstasy of hero-worship.

  Conan, his mighty chest heaving and glistening with sweat, the red axgripped in his blood-smeared hand, glared about him as the first chiefof men might have glared in some primordial dawn, and shook back hisblack mane. In that moment he was not king of Aquilonia; he was againlord of the black corsairs, who had hacked his way to lordship throughflame and blood.

  'Amra! Amra!' chanted the delirious blacks, those who were left tochant. 'The Lion has returned! Now will the Stygians howl like dogs inthe night, and the black dogs of Kush will howl! Now will villages burstin flames and ships founder! Aie, there will be wailing of women and thethunder of the spears!'

  'Cease this yammering, dogs!' Conan roared in a voice that drowned theclap of the sail in the wind. 'Ten of you go below and free the oarsmenwho are yet chained. The rest of you man the sweeps and bend to oars andhalyards. Crom's devils, don't you see we've drifted inshore during thefight? Do you want to run aground and be retaken by the Argosseans?Throw these carcasses overboard. Jump to it, you rogues, or I'll notchyour hides for you!'

  With shouts and laughter and wild singing they leaped to do hiscommands. The corpses, white and black, were hurled overboard, wheretriangular fins were already cutting the water.

  Conan stood on the poop, frowning down at the black men who watched himexpectantly. His heavy brown arms were folded, his black hair, grownlong in his wanderings, blew in the wind. A wilder and more barbaricfigure never trod the bridge of a ship, and in this ferocious corsairfew of the courtiers of Aquilonia would have recognized their king.

  'There's food in the hold!' he roared. 'Weapons in plenty for you, forthis ship carried blades and harness to the Shemites who dwell along thecoast. There are enough of us to work ship, aye, and to fight! You rowedin chains for the Argossean dogs: will you row as free men for Amra?'

  '_Aye!_' they roared. 'We are thy children! Lead us where you will!'

  'Then fall to and clean out that waist,' he commanded. 'Free men don'tlabor in such filth. Three of you come with me and break out food fromthe after-cabin. By Crom, I'll pad out your ribs before this cruise isdone.'

  Another yell of approbation answered him, as the half-starved blacksscurried to do his bidding. The sail bellied as the wind swept over thewaves with renewed force, and the white crests danced along the sweep ofthe wind. Conan planted his feet to the heave of the deck, breathed deepand spread his mighty arms. King of Aquilonia he might no longer be;king of the blue ocean he was still.