Conan and the Shaman's Curse (4 page)

The full moon hung in the night sky like a giant, dull pearl, dimly illuminating dense jungle trees and casting pale light onto the damp, leaf-covered floor. Droplets from recent rainfall shimmered on the dark green foliage.

Conan’s sense of smell, which had always been keen, seemed particularly sharp tonight, and his nostrils twitched at musty odours, seeking traces of animal scents.

He moved silently through the trees. There was no path through this primitive landscape, but Conan somehow knew his way through its savage depths. Countless times before, he had tracked quarry through his territory. The sounds, smells, and shapes guided him toward his destination, toward his prey. His belly rumbled, and he craved raw, warm meat, fresh hot blood. The air tingled with the scent of fat, four-legged animals. They had passed recently, leaving their spoor behind them.

A nagging tickle in his brain told him that something was wrong. He was no primitive predator, to track wild game and rend it with his teeth; strange urges filled him. What was he doing in this jungle, naked, without even his sword?

But these thoughts quickly vanished from his brain, and he was again wholly intent on the hunt. His dry throat craved red, rich juices; he longed to sink his sharp teeth into the vitals of a soft animal and tear strips of meat from its corpse. His mind had room for naught else but these bestial cravings. He lived for the hunt... all creatures in his leafy realm feared him and his brutish, voracious appetite.

And he relished their fear. Nothing enraged him as much as the rare beast who would fight him, instead of quivering in terror when facing him.

As he crept through the underbrush, his stinking breath rose from his open mouth, filling his nostrils with the stale stench of past feasts. He licked at the comers of his lips, savouring the faint taste of blood from the boar he had slain at midday. He often slept at night, but tonight the full moon filled him with the longing to feed until his bloated belly could hold no more. Even then he would stalk and slay, until that baleful ivory orb sank from the sky.

Ahead lay a clearing in the trees, and the smell of his quarry wafted through the air toward him. Drooling, he smacked his lips and crouched, bending his ears attentively. He sensed the presence of the herd directly ahead. He would spring through the brush and be upon the sleeping animals before they could bolt.

From the crouch, he tensed his powerful leg muscles and leapt through the wall of leaves and moss, extending his hairy, black-nailed hands and baring his crooked yellow fangs. An involuntary growl ripped its way out of his throat, shattering the jungle’s silence. He landed atop a sleeping beast that stirred too late to avoid him. His fangs tore through its tough black-and-white striped hide.

Blood jetted from the animal’s tom throat; its hooves twitched feebly before it died. The rest of the herd had sprung up, blinking, the moon reflected in a dozen pairs of eyes. They turned to flee.

The sight drove him into a red frenzy. Spraying blood from his mouth, he howled with such savage fury that the herd froze in terror. He slaughtered three more as they cowered and bleated, slashing their throats with his vicious fangs. Then the beasts shook off the paralysing trance of his cry, and bounded away from him.

He gave chase, filled with the madness that drove him to kill, to spill the blood of anything that breathed. Snarling and panting, he caught up with the herd and dragged down the rearmost beast, rending its hide, ripping its vitals as its still-beating heart pumped gouts of thick, hot blood from its ghastly wound.

Conan’s mouth foamed at the sight. Slavering, he stripped hunks of dripping red flesh from the dying beast and crammed them into his mouth, gulping them down without even chewing, tearing meat from the twitching carcass in a gluttonous orgy of frenzied feeding. He lifted his blood-smeared face to the sky, staring at the moon.

It stared back, suddenly taking on the aspect of that Kaklani shaman’s wrinkled, tattooed face. The lips were twisted in a mockery of a smile, and the mouth opened, filling the night sky with hollow, diabolical laughter.

Conan woke to the sound of his own shout, instinctively reaching for a sword that was no longer at his side. Perspiration dripped from his every pore. He recalled every detail of the nightmare with hair-raising clarity. His body was damp, but not only from sweat; the coarse ropes had cut into him while he tossed and turned, and blood now spotted them. Pain rose in throbbing waves from the cuts in his face; they itched, but he could not raise a hand to scratch at them. His calf was sore and swollen where the helmsman’s knife had pierced it. Conan lay atop the wooden crate, clenching his fists in helpless rage, staring at the ceiling of the cargo hold.

It was night still—he could see the dark sky through the iron gate overhead. The ship’s gentle, rolling motion did little to calm him. He seethed, filling his muscles with the strength of rage, and threw his might into one terrific push against the thick ropes.

But the sinews of ten stout men would have failed to break those bonds. Conan relaxed his straining thews and exhaled, groaning exhaustedly. Blood streamed anew from his jaw and rope-cuts, and he gritted his teeth, staring upward through the ceiling grate. Sleep offered him no comfort, for he had no wish to endure another of the strange dreams that had plagued him since the night of the battle.

The night of the red mist.

The dying shaman had summoned some demon to plague his dreams, perhaps to drive him to madness. A hundred haunting tales sprang into his mind, stories of slain men whose spirits rose to seek vengeance. A shiver lifted the damp, short hairs on the back of Conan’s neck. His deeply rooted dread of magic and the supernatural whispered dark suggestions to him as he lay in the ship’s makeshift brig, gazing at the ceiling.

Then he drew in a sharp breath. Through the grate, the moon rose into view, freezing the blood in his veins. Unable to close his reddened eyes, he stared upward at it. It was but a tiny sliver away from waxing full. The carnage from his dream filled his mind’s eye, and he wondered what unspeakable fate a full moon might portend.

Conan turned his head sideways, refusing to let these omens daunt him. What he needed was a plan to escape the hold. If he could but retrieve his blade, he would teach that Stygian dog Khertet a hard lesson about vengeance.

He strained to hear the sounds around him, and the murmuring of voices filtered down. The cloth bandage and the clots of blood muffled some sounds, but he could still hear the creak of the ship’s timbers and the gentle slap of waves against her hull. The night watch above-decks presumably consisted of two men; he could hear two distinct voices, but their exact words were unclear. From outside the door to the cargo hold, he heard a strange, wheezing rasp, which he listened to for a while before realizing that the guard posted there was snoring.

Conan thought about escape—the prospects were not encouraging.

Khertet apparently had no intention of ever loosening the ropes. Conan would lie here, trapped for months, wasting away. The Cimmerian knew the limits of his endurance—with scant rations and a dipperful of water every day, his strength would ebb in less than a week. On many past occasions—during arduous desert treks and other hard times—he had lasted longer, but he could feel that his loss of blood had already drained precious vitality.

The Stygian ex-admiral wanted to keep him alive and deliver him as a prize to the serpent-worshipping scum in Luxur; Crom knew what horrors awaited him in the snake pits of that accursed city. Conan would have to find a way out soon. Once weakened from starvation, he would truly be at Khertet’s mercy.

He berated himself again for the ill decision that had involved him in the war between the Kaklanis and Zariris. Mercenary service could be lucrative, but choosing the wrong employer could prove fatal... as it had for Conan’s men. The Cimmerian should not have accepted the Zariri sheikh’s offer at face value. In the future—if he indeed had much of a future left—he vowed to be wiser in weighing risk against reward. Conan’s recent experiences as a soldier of fortune had yielded meagre profits. He had too often left the battlefield with more scars on his body than gold in his coin purse.

A faint but noticeable brightening of the cargo hold’s interior alerted Conan to the approach of dawn. Then he heard a rustle that seemed to come from somewhere directly beside his head. He craned his neck to see what it was and felt a sharp, fresh burst of pain from his left ear.

Conan heard the sound of tearing cloth and again felt a sharp twinge. Turning, he saw a long, thick, pink tail lying on the crate next to his head. A plump grey-brown rat was attached to the tail. From its sharpened teeth dangled a fleshy strip from Conan’s earlobe. Flecks of blood—-his own—stained its crooked snout, and lumpy grey lesions spotted its sickly fur. Its tiny red eyes regarded the barbarian with indifference as it boldly munched on its early morning meal.

Conan growled.

The huge, repulsive rodent ignored him.

Enraged by its effrontery, Conan bared his teeth and lunged for its finger-thick outstretched tail. Seizing it between his teeth, the Cimmerian whipped his head around, smashing the surprised rat against the crate’s hard wood slats. It struggled, clawing at his face, scratching and biting at an open wound.

Conan’s teeth dug in, almost severing the rat’s tail.

After a few more blows, the rat ceased its struggles and lay still. Conan released his grip on its tail, at the same time releasing his worries about his imprisonment and the shaman’s insidious curse. Injured and bound he might be, but while he lived he was not beaten. Small as it was, his victory over the scrounging rat had lifted his spirits. Whatever fate awaited him, he would meet it face-to-face and fight back with the gifts that his god Crom gave all Cimmerians—the will and the strength to strive and to slay.

Grinning, Conan spat a scrap of tail out at the rat and looked up at the grate in the ceiling. He racked his brain for a plan of escape as the morning sun’s rays filled the cramped cargo hold with warm, golden light.

Although he could not be certain, Conan believed that midday had arrived. The sun was not yet in view, but the ship’s sail might be blocking it. A gentle breeze sifted through the overhead grate, growing into a full-fledged wind—enough to fill the sail.

Conan heard Khertet’s voice booming orders to hoist the sail. Judging from the sounds of the wind and the wave, the ship was making reasonable headway.

A pleasant breeze reached into the hold, flushing out the stench of bilge water and rat filth that permeated the stale air. The door to the hold remained shut until well after the raising of the sails, when three armed men brought food and water to the Cimmerian.

He gulped it down, a few pitiful swallows, but he had expected no more. Jhatil replaced the stained, crusty bandage with a fresh strip of cloth, wiping matted blood from the rat’s bite. The old Vendhyan took away the vermin corpse, glancing at the Cimmerian curiously and shaking his head. He left without uttering even one word.

Later, Khertet peered down through the grate and hurled a few insults at the surly Cimmerian, who responded in kind. Conan heard little else from above until late that afternoon.

Recognizing the helmsman’s voice and Khertet’s, the Cimmerian strained to hear their conversation. They obligingly raised their voices, apparently arguing.

“I command this ship, Chadim. You would dare question my change of course?” The insulting tone was unmistakably Khertet’s.

“No, honourable one! I—I realize your need for haste, and the heading you order would indeed save many weeks. But most merchants now avoid the course you suggest.” Chadim spoke defensively, and a tremor in his voice suggested nervousness.

“I am not like most merchants. I do not fear such superstitious tales. I have heard the rumours, but they are only the lies of drunken fools, spoken to gullible slack-wits like you to procure free ale. You spend too much time in lowly wharf taverns. Hah! I have heard a thousand similar yams, and they impress only weaklings and cowards.”

Chadim paused before responding. “Of course you are right, Admiral.”

“Enough of this—man your tiller and round to. We shall pass through Nehebku’s Noose before sunrise tomorrow.” The thump of Khertet’s boots faded aft-ward.

Chadim exchanged a few words with the crew, but the Cimmerian could not make these out. He lay upon the uncomfortable wood of the crate, wondering about the “Noose” that Khertet had mentioned. Unlike Khertet, Conan believed most sailor’s tales of sea dangers. He had found elements of truth in most more often than not. It was tales of treasure that he doubted.

While he pondered this mystery, the setting sun withdrew its light from the cargo hold. Conan tried to stay alert but found himself drifting in and out of a light doze. The constant, pounding throb from his ears and wounded calf finally wore him down. Eventually, his head drooped back against the top of the crate and his leaden eyelids closed. Moments later, he was snoring noisily, too tired to care about Khertet’s “Noose” or the violent jungle dreams.

When he woke up, the hold was as dirk as a Stygian tomb. He peered through the grate, squinting, but he could see only the inky blackness of a cloudy night sky. Above decks, footfalls thudded against thick planking. The night watchmen were faithfully making their rounds.

Conan’s head ached miserably, and he could not concentrate through the fog of pain that seemed to enfold his whole body. He shivered in spite of the muggy heat that permeated the hold, and thick beads of sweat ran from his brow, soaking the rags around his head and stinging his wounds. He recognized the signs of fever and knew he was in for a long, restless night. At least no other rats had troubled him thus far.

Warm wind circulated through the grate, providing breathable air but doing little to ease his fever. The Mistress was again moving swiftly, if the rapidly slapping waves and creaking timbers were any indication. Little wonder that Khertet had insisted on this change of course. As a former admiral, he must have accumulated a wealth of information about the winds and currents of the waters near to his native Stygia.