The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2 Read online

  The girl cried out in sudden terror, slipping to her knees before him: “Oh, sire, sire, have mercy! I did not know – you are the king!”

  “Don’t be afraid.” Kull knelt beside her again and put an arm about her, feeling her trembling from head to foot. “You said I was kind –”

  “And so you are, sire,” she whispered weakly. “I – I thought you were a human tiger, from what men said, but you are kind and tender – b-but – you are k-king and I –”

  Suddenly in a very agony of confusion and embarrassment, she sprang up and fled, vanishing instantly. The overcoming realization that the king, whom she had only dreamed of seeing at a distance some day, was actually the man to whom she had told her pitiful woes, overcame her and filled her with an abasement and embarrassment which was an almost physical terror.

  Kull sighed and rose. The affairs of the palace were calling him back and he must return and wrestle with problems concerning the nature of which he had only the vaguest idea and concerning the solving of which he had no idea at all.

  IV

  “WHO DIES FIRST?”

  Through the utter silence which shrouded the corridors and halls of the palace, fourteen figures stole. Their stealthy feet, cased in soft leather shoes, made no sound either on thick carpet or bare marble tile. The torches which stood in niches along the halls gleamed redly on bared dagger, broad sword blade and keen edged axe.

  “Easy, easy all!” hissed Ascalante, halting for a moment to glance back at his followers. “Stop that cursed loud breathing, whoever it is! The officer of the night guard has removed all the guards from these halls, either by direct order or by making them drunk, but we must be careful. Lucky it is for us that those cursed Picts – the lean wolves – are either revelling at the consulate or riding to Grondar. Hist! back – here come the guard!”

  They crowded back behind a huge pillar which might have hidden a whole regiment of men, and waited. Almost immediately ten men swung by; tall brawny men, in red armor, who looked like iron statues. They were heavily armed and the faces of some showed a slight uncertainty. The officer who led them was rather pale. His face was set in hard lines and he lifted a hand to wipe sweat from his brow as the guard passed the pillar where the assassins hid. He was young and this betraying of a king came not easy to him.

  They clanked by and passed on up the corridor.

  “Good!” chuckled Ascalante. “He did as I bid; Kull sleeps unguarded! Haste, we have work to do! If they catch us killing him, we are undone, but a dead king is easy to make a mere memory. Haste!”

  “Aye haste!” cried Ridondo.

  They hurried down the corridor with reckless speed and stopped before a door.

  “Here!” snapped Ascalante. “Gromel – break me open this door!”

  The giant launched his mighty weight against the panel. Again – this time there was a rending of bolts, a crash of wood and the door staggered and burst inward.

  “In!” shouted Ascalante, on fire with the spirit of murder.

  “In!” roared Ridondo. “Death to the tyrant –”

  They halted short – Kull faced them – not a naked Kull, roused out of deep sleep, mazed and unarmed to be butchered like a sheep, but a Kull wakeful and ferocious, partly clad in the armor of a Red Slayer, with a long sword in his hand.

  Kull had risen quietly a few minutes before, unable to sleep. He had intended to ask the officer of the guard into his room to converse with him awhile, but on looking through the spy-hole of the door, had seen him leading his men off. To the suspicious brain of the barbarian king had leaped the assumption that he was being betrayed. He never thought of calling the men back, because they were supposedly in the plot too. There was no good reason for this desertion. So Kull had quietly and quickly donned the armor he kept at hand, nor had he completed this act when Gromel first hurtled against the door.

  For a moment the tableau held – the four rebel noblemen at the door and the ten wild desperate outlaws crowding close behind them – held at bay by the terrible-eyed silent giant who stood in the middle of the royal bedroom, sword at the ready.

  Then Ascalante shouted: “In! And slay him! He is one to fourteen and he has no helmet!”

  True; there had been lack of time to put on the helmet, nor was there now time to snatch the great shield from where it hung on the wall. Be that as it may, Kull was better protected than any of the assassins except Gromel and Volmana who were in full armor, with their vizors closed.

  With a yell that rang to the roof, the killers flooded into the room. First of all was Gromel. He came in like a charging bull, head down, sword low for the disembowelling thrust. And Kull sprang to meet him like a tiger charging a bull, and all the king’s weight and mighty strength went into the arm that swung the sword. In a whistling arc the great blade flashed through the air to crash down on the commander’s helmet. Blade and helmet clashed and flew to pieces together and Gromel rolled lifeless on the floor, while Kull bounded back, gripping the bladeless hilt.

  “Gromel!” he snarled as the shattered helmet disclosed the shattered head, then the rest of the pack were upon him. He felt a dagger point rake along his ribs and flung the wielder aside with a swing of his great left arm. He smashed his broken hilt square between another’s eyes and dropped him senseless and bleeding to the floor.

  “Watch the door, four of you!” screamed Ascalante, dancing about the edge of that whirlpool of singing steel, for he feared Kull, with his great weight and speed, might smash through their midst and escape. Four rogues drew back and ranged themselves before the single door. And in that instant Kull leaped to the wall and tore therefrom an ancient battle axe which had hung there for possibly a hundred years.

  Back to the wall he faced them for a moment, then leaped among them. No defensive fighter was Kull! He always carried the fight to the enemy. A sweep of the axe dropped an outlaw to the floor with a severed shoulder – the terrible back-hand stroke crushed the skull of another. A sword shattered against his breast-plate – else he had died. His concern was to protect his uncovered head and the spaces between breast plate and back plate – for Valusian armor was intricate and he had had no time to fully arm himself. Already he was bleeding from wounds on the cheek and the arms and legs, but so swift and deadly he was, and so much the fighter that even with the odds so greatly on their side, the assassins hesitated to leave an opening. Moreover their own numbers hampered them.

  For one moment they crowded him savagely, raining blows, then they gave back and ringed him, thrusting and parrying – a couple of corpses on the floor gave mute evidence of the unwisdom of their first plan.

  “Knaves!” screamed Ridondo in a rage, flinging off his slouch cap, his wild eyes glaring. “Do ye shrink from the combat? Shall the despot live? Out on it!”

  He rushed in, thrusting viciously; but Kull, recognizing him, shattered his sword with a tremendous short chop and, with a push, sent him reeling back to sprawl on the floor. The king took in his left arm the sword of Ascalante and the outlaw only saved his life by ducking Kull’s axe and bounding backward. One of the hairy bandits dived at Kull’s legs hoping to bring him down in that manner, but after wrestling for a brief instant at what seemed a solid iron tower, he glanced up just in time to see the axe falling, but not in time to avoid it. In the interim one of his comrades had lifted a sword with both hands and hewed downward with such downright sincerity that he cut through Kull’s shoulder plate on the left side, and wounded the shoulder beneath. In an instant the king’s breast plate was full of blood.

  Volmana, flinging the attackers to right and left in his savage impatience, came ploughing through and hacked savagely at Kull’s unprotected head. Kull ducked and the sword whistled above, shaving off a lock of hair – ducking the blows of a dwarf like Volmana is difficult for a man of Kull’s height.

  Kull pivoted on his heel and struck from the side, as a wolf might leap, in a wide level arc – Volmana dropped with his whole left side caved in and the lungs gushing
forth.

  “Volmana!” Kull spoke the word rather breathlessly. “I’d know that dwarf in Hell –”

  He straightened to defend himself from the maddened rush of Ridondo who charged in wild and wide open, armed only with a dagger. Kull leaped back, axe high.

  “Ridondo!” his voice rang sharply. “Back! I would not harm you –”

  “Die, tyrant!” screamed the mad minstrel, hurling himself headlong on the king. Kull delayed the blow he was loath to deliver until it was too late. Only when he felt the bite of steel in his unprotected side did he strike, in a frenzy of blind desperation.

  Ridondo dropped with a shattered skull and Kull reeled back against the wall, blood spurting through the fingers which gripped his wounded side.

  “In, now, and get him!” yelled Ascalante, preparing to lead the attack.

  Kull placed his back to the wall and lifted his axe. He made a terrible and primordial picture. Legs braced far apart, head thrust forward, one red hand clutching at the wall for support, the other gripping the axe on high, while the ferocious features were frozen in a death snarl of hate, and the icy eyes blazed through the mist of blood which veiled them. The men hesitated; the tiger might be dying but he was still capable of dealing death.

  “Who dies first?” snarled Kull through smashed and bloody lips.

  Ascalante leaped as a wolf leaps – halted almost in mid-air with the unbelievable speed which characterized him, and fell prostrate to avoid the death that was hissing toward him in the form of a red axe. He frantically whirled his feet out of the way and rolled clear just as Kull recovered from his missed blow and struck again – this time the axe sank four inches into the polished wood floor close to Ascalante’s revolving legs.

  Another desperado rushed at this instant, followed half heartedly by his fellows. The first villain had figured on reaching Kull and killing him before he could get his axe out of the floor, but he miscalculated the king’s speed, or else he started his rush a second too late. At any rate the axe lurched up and crashed down and the rush halted abruptly as a reddened caricature of a man was catapulted back against their legs.

  At that moment a hurried clanking of feet sounded down the hall and the rogues in the door raised a shout: “Soldiers coming!”

  Ascalante cursed and his men deserted him like rats leaving a sinking ship. They rushed out into the hall – or limped, splattering blood – and down the corridor a hue and cry was raised, and pursuit started.

  Save for the dead and dying men on the floor, Kull and Ascalante stood alone in the royal bed room. Kull’s knees were buckling and he leaned heavily against the wall, watching the outlaw with the eyes of a dying wolf.

  “All seems to be lost, particularly honor,” he murmured. “However the king is dying on his feet – and –” whatever other cogitation might have passed through his mind is not known for at that moment he ran lightly at Kull just as the king was employing his axe arm to wipe the blood from his half blind eyes. A man with a sword at the ready can thrust quicker than a wounded man out of position can strike with an axe that weighs his weary arm like lead.

  But even as Ascalante began his thrust, Seno val Dor appeared at the door and flung something through the air which glittered, sang and ended its flight in Ascalante’s throat. The outlaw staggered, dropped his sword and sank to the floor at Kull’s feet, flooding them with the flow of a severed jugular – mute witness that Seno’s war-skill included knife throwing as well. Kull looked down bewilderedly at the dead outlaw and Ascalante’s dead eyes stared back in seeming mockery, as if the owner still maintained the futility of kings and outlaws, of plots and counter-plots.

  Then Seno was supporting the king, the room was flooded with men-at-arms in the uniform of the great val Dor family and Kull realized that a little slave girl was holding his other arm.

  “Kull, Kull, are you dead?” val Dor’s face was very white.

  “Not yet,” the king spoke huskily. “Staunch this wound in my left side – if I die ‘twill be from it; ‘tis deep but the rest are not mortal – Ridondo wrote me a deathly song there! Cram stuff into it for the present – I have work to do.”

  They obeyed wonderingly and as the flow of blood ceased, Kull though literally bled white already, felt some slight access of strength. The palace was fully aroused now. Court ladies, lords, men-at-arms, councillors, all swarmed about the place babbling. The Red Slayers were gathering, wild with rage, ready for anything, jealous of the fact that others had aided their king. Of the young officer who had commanded the door guard, he had slipped away in the darkness and neither then nor later was he in evidence, though earnestly sought after.

  Kull, still keeping stubbornly to his feet, grasping his bloody axe with one hand and Seno’s shoulder with another singled out Tu, who stood wringing his hands and ordered: “Bring me the tablet whereon is engraved the law concerning slaves.”

  “But lord king –”

  “Do as I say!” howled Kull, lifting the axe and Tu scurried to obey.

  As he waited and the court women flocked about him, dressing his wounds and trying gently but vainly to pry his iron fingers from about the bloody axe handle, Kull heard Seno’s breathless tale.

  “–Ala heard Kaanuub and Volmana plotting – she had stolen into a little nook to cry over her – our troubles, and Kaanuub came, on his way to his country estate. He was shaking with terror for fear plans might go awry and he made Volmana go over the plot with him again before he left, so he might know there was no flaw in it.

  “He did not leave until it was late, and then Ala stole away and came to me. But it is a long way from Volmana’s city house to the house of val Dor, a long way for a little girl to walk, and though I gathered my men and came instantly, we almost arrived too late.”

  Kull gripped his shoulder.

  “I will not forget.”

  Tu entered with the law tablet, laying it reverently on the table.

  Kull shouldered aside all who stood near him and stood up alone.

  “Hear, people of Valusia,” he exclaimed, upheld by the wild beast vitality which was his, fired from within by a strength which was more than physical. “I stand here – the king. I am wounded almost unto death, but I have survived mass wounds.

  “Hear you! I am weary of this business! I am no king but a slave! I am hemmed in by laws, laws, laws! I cannot punish malefactors nor reward my friends because of law – custom – tradition! By Valka, I will be king in fact as well as in name!

  “Here stand the two who have saved my life! Henceforward they are free to marry, to do as they like!”

  Seno and Ala rushed into each other’s arms with a glad cry.

  “But the law!” screamed Tu.

  “I am the law!” roared Kull, swinging up his axe; it flashed downward and the stone tablet flew into a hundred pieces. The people clenched their hands in horror, waiting dumbly for the sky to fall.

  Kull reeled back, eyes blazing. The room whirled to his dizzy gaze.

  “I am king, state and law!” he roared, and seizing the wand-like sceptre which lay near, he broke it in two and flung it from him. “This shall be my sceptre!” The red axe was brandished aloft, splashing the pallid nobles with drops of blood. Kull gripped the slender crown with his left hand and placed his back against the wall. Only that support kept him from falling but in his arms was still the strength of lions.

  “I am either king or corpse!” he roared, his corded muscles bulging, his terrible eyes blazing. “If you like not my kingship – come and take this crown!”

  The corded left arm held out the crown, the right gripping the menacing axe above it.

  “By this axe I rule! This is my sceptre! I have struggled and sweated to be the puppet king you wished me to be – to king it your way. Now I use mine own way! If you will not fight, you shall obey! Laws that are just shall stand; laws that have outlived their times I shall shatter as I shattered that one! I am king!”

  Slowly the pale faced noblemen and frightened wom
en knelt, bowing in fear and reverence to the blood stained giant who towered above them with his eyes ablaze.

  “I am king!”

  The King and the Oak

  Before the shadows slew the sun the kites were soaring free,

  And Kull rode down the forest road, his red sword at his knee;

  And winds were whispering round the world: “King Kull rides to the sea.”

  The sun died crimson in the sea, the long grey shadows fell;

  The moon rose like a silver skull that wrought a demon’s spell,

  For in its light great trees stood up like specters out of Hell.

  In spectral light the trees stood up, inhuman monsters dim;

  Kull thought each trunk a living shape, each branch a knotted limb,

  And strange unmortal evil eyes flamed horribly at him.

  The branches writhed like knotted snakes, they beat against the night,

  And one great oak with swayings stiff, horrific in his sight,

  Tore up its roots and blocked his way, grim in the ghostly light.

  They grappled in the forest way, the king and grisly oak;

  Its great limbs bent him in their grip, but never a word was spoke;

  And futile in his iron hand, the stabbing dagger broke.

  And through the tossing, monstrous trees there sang a dim refrain

  Fraught deep with twice a million years of evil, hate and pain:

  “We were the lords ere man had come, and shall be lords again.”

  Kull sensed an empire strange and old that bowed to man’s advance

  As kingdoms of the grassblades bow before the marching ants,

  And horror gripped him; in the dawn like someone in a trance

  He strove with bloody hands against a still and silent tree;

  As from a nightmare dream he woke; a wind blew down the lea