Conan and the Shaman's Curse (29 page)

Wrinkling his brow, Jukona gawked at the faint scribblings. Conan’s curt manner, however, put off any further questions he might have phrased.

Indeed, throughout the village, the only conversations that seemed to continue were those of the elders. A web of tension seemed to have entrapped the Ganaks in its invisible bonds. On everyone’s mind was Y’Taba’s mysterious absence, the imminent Kezati threat, the strangeness of Ngomba, or any combination of all three.

Conan dropped the fourth book in annoyance, its contents as undecipherable as the previous one. Age, heat, and humidity had combined to render these tomes into pulpy masses of stained, crumbling parchment. Some of them practically disintegrated at his touch, though the first and second volumes had contained informative if unexciting scrawlings.

A shout of excitement from Makiela turned heads throughout the throng. At first, Conan could not see it, but moments later the speck on the horizon became distinguishable as a swiftly flying stalker. It sped through the sky above the jungle, bearing its riders to the place of gathering. Ganaks everywhere dropped what they were doing and flocked toward the mound upon which Dawakuba set down. Even Ngomba trailed behind the others. Conan noted that he brought the atnalga with him.

Y’Taba climbed off, somewhat shakily, his usual confident demeanour returning when his feet touched the soil. Nyona remained upon her immense winged mount, peering back toward the sky above the jungle. The stalker’s eyes swivelled in that direction as well, antennae twitching like windblown reeds.

Darkness ringed the spirit-leader’s drooping eyes, marking a sleepless night. But if he were weary, his manner did not show it. He raised a hand to still the murmuring. “Forgive me for departing in the night,” he began. “Nyona Ranioba and I had much to discuss; we tarried longer than planned.” He surveyed the villagers with a reassuring smile before adopting his usual sombre expression. “Of what we spoke, there is no time to relate. Our enemies of old approach even now. Our day of victory is at hand!” Gasps rippled through the gathering, though some of the villagers accepted the news with stoic silence.

“Nyona Ranioba saw the Kezati coming from afar as we flew over the Deadlands. Even in the distance, the sky was thick with them, but do not despair. Though we do not have the atnalga, the mighty Asusa and Muhingo War God have bestowed upon us the means to defeat the children of

Ezat. Conan, Ngomba, Nyona, and Dawakuba...”

“Y’Taba,” Jukona interjected, “perhaps we do have the atnalga."

The spirit-leader paused, face clouding. “How, Jukona? Hasten your tongue!”

Jukona pointed to Ngomba, shrugging. “He fought Conan and nearly slew him with the atnalga, but the spirits within it stayed his hand, and then Conan spared his life. Ngomba said the spirits will not serve him, for his heart is impure, but they suffer him to bear the blade. He is the chosen one after all!”

Y’Taba’s eyes narrowed, his gaze burning into Ngomba’s strangely transformed eyes. “What say you, Ngomba?”

“I have failed, spirit-leader. I shall wield the atnalga against the Kezati, but the spirits who empower it have become silent. They spoke to me once, commanding me to yield and calling me unworthy. Perhaps they have fled.” Conan noticed that Nyona looked upon Ngomba with affection that seemed unwonted between two strangers. But words she had uttered before, words he thought had been a slip of her tongue, tickled in his ears. He rubbed his chin contemplatively, recent events taking on new meanings. An intriguing notion had arisen, but it was too outrageous for him to vouch. Besides, he had other matters to concern him. With an inward groan, he realized that Y’Taba’s fulfilment of their bargain would be postponed until the battle was done.

“We shall soon see, Ngomba.” Y’Taba’s tone seemed to soften for a moment, his expression unreadable as he regarded the young warrior. “The women and children must seek safety with the elders. Sajara, prepare your huntresses. Hasten! The Kezati will strike as before, I do not doubt. We must ready our spirits also. Nyona, who accompanies you astride the back of the mzuri vugunda?" “Alone we shall fly,” she smiled, “as one we fight, and swifter with no burden of two.”

Y’Taba nodded. “Conan, I am sorry. If you wish, we shall go now to my hut, where I can command the spirits. You have kept your vow to me and I am bound by words of promise. What say you?”

“I fight first,” Conan set his jaw grimly, gripping the hilt of his sword.

“Side by side, once again,” Jukona nodded, lifting a sharpened oar from the pile near the benches.

“We are ready, Y’Taba,” Sajara added. She and the others, each toting several extra spears, dashed into the tall reeds near the place of gathering. Conan divined their tactics at once and approved. He had seen the accuracy and force with which they hurled those spears. They would throw their weapons from the cover of the marsh, accounting for perhaps a few score Kezati before resorting to knife-work.

“I do not deserve the honour, Conan of Cimmeria,” Ngomba implored, “but I would beg of you and Jukona that we fight as three, back to back. The children of Ezat will drop like a rain of blood before us, while we three falter not.” A wisp of the old Ngomba reappeared, and Conan mulled it over for a moment. “Fight where you will. I care not, so long as you hew only Kezati necks with that blade.” Conan briefly regretted that he and Ngomba were by necessity at odds. There had been no time to teach the lad proper swordsmanship.

“Four will stand upon the mount,” Y’Taba intoned, hefting a spear. Four against hundreds, he thought resignedly.

Nyona smiled momentarily at Y’Taba, glancing at him over her shoulder as she blew into the shell and Dawakuba took to the air. She, like the others, would hide away and emerge when the Kezati approached. Conan grinned at this, knowing from experience that the stalkers were masters of the ambush. He wondered how many Kezati heads would roll before the vultures could muster a counter-attack against Dawakuba. An Aquilonian general would trade a legion of footmen—even a score of mounted knights—for such a formidable ally.

Makiela alone did not seek cover with the rest; she had climbed partway up a tree near the clearing, scanning the horizon whence the last attack had come. Conan, knowing her keen eyes would see the Kezati long before even his, waited upon the mound with the others. Back to back, the four silent warriors held their ground, forming a square as they listened for the signal that would warn them of the winged army’s approach.

Y’Taba stood at Conan’s right, Jukona at his left. Ngomba waited directly behind, his back to the Cimmerian’s. An absolute silence settled over the village. In the mild, still air of late morning, not even a breeze stirred the leaves, no bird chirped, no insects buzzed. Conan watched a bead of sweat trickle from Jukona’s nearly bare scalp to join others that glistened on the huge warrior’s burly shoulders.

After an unbearable eternity, Makiela whistled, jabbing her spear into the sky. She darted into the reeds to join Sajara and the others, vanishing in the thicket as the Kezati horde appeared.

“Crom,” Conan muttered under his breath. He would have thought it a storm cloud descending, so dark and expansive was the approaching menace. The Kezati easily numbered twice that which they had fought on the shore of skulls... if not thrice. And many more Ganaks had stood against the Kezati then. But Conan felt no fear at their approach. No man could live forever, by Crom, and it were better to die on the field of battle than on a sickbed of straw!

His heart pounded, blood singing in his veins. The thrill of battle was upon him; his aches, his grudge with Ngomba, his dread of the curse, fell from him like melting icicles, evaporated by the fire that burned in his breast. Legs braced in a wide stance, gleaming blade upraised, Conan uttered the fierce, eerie cry that was a Cimmerian’s call to battle.

Swooping toward the mound, the Kezati fanned out, moving in unison like a well-drilled legion. A crescent formation encircled the four men, its curving points soaring ahead of the others as if to close like mandibles about their prey.

At the rear of the airborne mass, Conan glimpsed a spreading shape that looked like three or four Kezati interlocked, wings beating in unison. But that brief sight was instantly obscured by the diving assault of the foremost vultures. Talons extended, beaks snapping menacingly, they hurled themselves like bolts of feathered lightning. A deafening din of shrill, predatory cries shattered the silence as man met beast in a frenzied melee.

A hail of spears showered the Kezati as they dived, impaling a dozen or more. Several others plunged to the ground, flapping weakly; some died in mid-air. Squawks burst out from the centre of the crescent as Dawakuba flew into the thick of the horde, wreaking havoc. Savage green jaws beheaded one Kezati in an effortless snap as spiny forelegs grasped another and crumpled it. A flurry of blood-slicked feathers dropped in the stalker’s wake.

Undaunted, the airborne beasts plunged downward, some twenty stabbing beaks converging on the defending foursome. Kezati bodies met spears and swords raised against their charge.

Conan’s blade flickered twice, lopping a leathery head from its plummeting body and gutting another Kezati who flopped to the ground, twitching. Jukona’s spear-point skewered a ferocious face even as he whipped the oar blade around, smashing it into another beast. Y’Taba impaled one through the belly, but the screeching beast slid down the shaft, its talons and beak furrowing the Ganak’s chest before it succumbed to its wound.

As five of the winged devils neared Ngomba, he lifted the atnalga and prepared to strike. As he did so, a madness overcame the five attackers, their piercing stridulations rising to an unbearable pitch. They wheeled desperately as if to avoid the weapon, whose blade suddenly flickered a silvery blue. Crackling strands—like miniature bolts of lightning—shot from the tip of the blade, forking as they arced through the air toward the twisting Kezati. Five feathered corpses thumped to the ground as wisps of smoke rising from their unmoving bodies filled the air with the stench of scorched flesh.

Ngomba’s knees buckled; he slumped forward, gasping. The bolts had travelled from blade to hilt, stabbing at his flesh like lances of cold fire. Groaning in pain, he lurched to his feet, his arm shaking as he once again lifted his blade.

Unimpeded, four vultures ploughed into Y’Taba, knocking him to the ground. Conan spun, his blade striking like a steel cobra. Blood jetted from the stump of a Kezati neck. Then three of the beasts overwhelmed the Cimmerian, one fleshing its talons into his unprotected back while the others flayed his exposed head and side, their beaks burrowing into muscle. Bellowing in rage, Conan laid about him with his blade. His vehement sword-stroke sheared through a midsection, momentum carrying the blade into the body of another attacker. Wrenching loose the dripping steel with a howl of fury, Conan reached behind his head, seized a scrawny neck in a massive fist and snapped it with a single powerful twist of his arm.

He turned again to the band that tore at Y’Taba, clubbing one Kezati with a vulture’s body while sweeping his sword back to strike another lethal blow. Jukona, unfazed by the beasts surrounding him, dropped his spear and pummelled his enemies with powerful blows, cracking ribs and crushing a skull. Beaks and talons ripped at his flesh, but he seemed oblivious to the blood that dripped from his wounds as he battered feathery bodies with sledge-like fists.

Y’Taba strangled the last Kezati. He pushed its hooked beak away from his throat and standing, kicked away the corpse. Flaps of tom flesh hung from his head and chest, blood seeping from punctures where beaks had gored him. He grabbed his spear and set it just in time to meet the rush of a fresh swarm of vultures.

The new wave of Kezati struck like a storm of demons. They screeched in fury at the deaths of their kin as they pressed upon the badly outnumbered defenders. Again Ngomba lifted the atnalga, whose uncanny power felled three vultures before he reeled back on his haunches, stunned by the very force that slew his enemies.

Conan met head on the diving attack of six feathered devils, his blade weaving a wall of razor-sharp steel before him. His eyes blazing with blue fire, his thin lips asnarl, the Cimmerian fought like a cornered wildcat. Kezati fell like ripe grain in a ghastly harvest of blood, none passing through Conan’s whirling gauntlet of death. Chest heaving, he stepped back from the knee-high mound of bodies, wiped blood from his eyes and glanced upward with a dark smile.

At last, the winged host had begun to thin.

Nearby, Dawakuba dispatched several more Kezati. Nyona clung to his neck with her legs, fending off the vultures who made repeated dives for the stalker’s eyes. She bled from a score of wounds but bravely fought on without faltering. Directly below her, the frenzied knife-strokes of Sajara and her hunters dispatched several Kezati. The vultures had taken their toll, however; Avrana lay motionless amid a heap of slain Kezati.

Determined to end the battle, Conan halved one foe at the waist, grunting as others ripped at his flesh. Crimson flecks flew from his steel as he hacked his way free of them, a giant beak nearly ripping out his throat.

“Crom!” he roared, as the thing’s head fell upon the carrion-mound at his feet with a wet plop. He had not expected this sort of close in-fighting from the Kezati, who on the shore of bone had dived upon them and retreated upward before striking again. What had driven them to sacrifice themselves so recklessly? Now was not the time to ponder! Lashing out with his sword, Conan clove the breastbone of the diving, wailing vulture. Pivoting to face the expected attack from behind, he blinked in surprise.

A single speck hovered high in the air above them, but the sky was otherwise clear. The Kezati were beaten.

Sajara limped toward the mound, supporting Makiela and Kanitra, who looked half-dead. A handful of other hunters, injured too severely to walk, waited beside the reeds. Several Ganak bodies lay motionless around them.

Jukona extricated himself from a mound of crumpled bodies and rose unsteadily to his feet with a deep grunt of pain. Ngomba lay beside the deepest pile of the dead, breath wheezing from his bloody lips in ragged gasps. His hand still clasped the atnalga's hilt.