Conan the Marauder (20 page)

"They did," he assured her. "While the nomads have little liking for manual labour, they are capable of prodigies to do honour to their dead chiefs. When one of the greatest of them dies, they will import many slaves to do most of the work. Last night I communed with the spirits of this place and learned much of its history. The City of Mounds is old, even more ancient than the Ashkuz themselves dream."

He gestured broadly, taking in the whole of the necropolis. "What we see here are the most recent tombs, most of them less than two thousand years old. But mounds far more ancient once stood here, only to subside back into the earth in the fullness of time. This place is richly imbued with magical force. It is a nexus of powers that no ordinary human can feel, but one readily detectable by a sorcerer of high ability."

She shivered, but not because of the cutting steppe wind. "I have no love for such things."

"When last the tribe rebuilt the rampart," he went on as if she had not spoken, "its people raided the border towns for months, taking all the slaves they could catch. That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. They gathered more than twenty thousand and began driving them here. More than half of them died of hunger and thirst on the trek. Many died in rebuilding the earthen wall with only the crudest of tools. When the work was done, all of the survivors were slain as a sacrifice and to preserve the secret of this place."

"I can believe it," she said. "The savages are inhuman to all who do not belong to their nation."

He smiled thinly. "They are no more merciful toward themselves." He pointed to a mound a hundred paces distant. It was three times the height of a tall man. "That is the resting place of a mighty Kagan. When he was slain in a far war, his body was preserved with herbs and embalming and brought to this place, along with tribesmen and slaves to do the labour. The mound was raised and consecrated, and the Kagan's body laid therein. When the obsequies were over, his wives and concubines were strangled and placed in the mound with him, along with fifty of his horses.

"Last of all came fifty young warriors, all of them volunteers. A framework was built for each man and his horse. The horse was slain and then transfixed through the body from tail to neck with a wooden stake. This stake was placed across the framework so that the horse's hooves dangled a few inches from the ground. Then the youth was strangled and likewise impaled, the stake holding him upright and its lower end fitted into a socket in the stake running lengthwise through the horse. Then horse and man were harnessed and armed to stand guard for eternity. This was done to fifty young men of good family. Is this not the mark of a mighty race of conquerors?"

"I think you admire them, wizard!" she said scornfully.

"Indeed I do," he said. "Once my people, the Turanians, were such a race, savage and ruthless, holding only contempt for lesser breeds. In time, though, they became weak, absorbed by the softness of the civilizations they conquered. Yes, these Hyrkanians are crude, but they have the virtues of the uncivilized. They respect only strength: the power of arms and the power of magic. Their way with enemies is to crush them utterly. They honour their dead with blood sacrifice and think nothing of slaying other peoples by the thousands, simply to be rid of them. Such a people, with proper leadership, can shake the earth."

"Then let us hope," said Ishkala, "that they never have that leadership."

That night Ishkala grew restless. There were faint sounds from the camp around her. The nearby Sogarian Red Eagles were subdued, conversing in quiet voices by their small fires. Their spirits were oppressed by the eerie surroundings, the ghastly mounted skeletons, and the brooding mounds of the Kagans.

Somewhat louder were the villainous Turanians, encamping by themselves in a different sector of the City of Mounds. More adventurous or merely more irreverent, they did not seem to be so suggestible. A few of the hardier souls had had a go at breaking into some of the mounds in search of rich funeral goods, but soon gave up after a few hours of unaccustomed manual labour.

Ishkala rose from her pallet and dressed in her darkest robes, with a black veil wound about her head and face. She knew not what she sought, but she did not want to attract attention to herself. She extinguished her candle and pushed aside the curtain that served her for a door. The Sogarians did not look up from their fires or their conversations, and she slipped silently from their midst.

She was not certain why, but she wanted to find out what the Turanians were up to. Since leaving the city, nothing that had happened to her had made any sense. Why did the mage need her here for his magic-making? Why had they been joined by a thousand Turanian rogues?

Carefully she picked her way around the countless human bones that gleamed white in the moonlight. They were merely dry bones, she knew, but she avoided them as if they bore some defilement. She walked around the looming mounds and shuddered at their tall, skeletal standards. Her imagination peopled the uncanny scene with a ghostly horde of horsemen, Kagans and their hideous retinues of strangled concubines and their impaled horses and guards.

Preoccupied with her hyper-imaginative thoughts, Ishkala collided with a wooden framework and set a skeletal horse swaying as if with unnatural life. She barely suppressed a scream as the beast's skull shook at her, and she looked up to see a human skull leering from beneath a wide-spreading helmet of antique design.

She hurried past the dead sentry and circled the titanic mound he guarded, the final resting place of an Ushi-Kagan of generations past. Ahead she heard the raucous sounds of the Turanian encampment. Everywhere there flickered fires of brushwood and dried dung, gathered from the steppe. She had heard Jeku complain that at this rate, the Turanians would exhaust all the available fuel within a few days.

She skirted the Turanian camp, listening to the rough songs and brawling voices. Once she stumbled over something lying on the ground and found that it was a corpse. The dead man wore Turanian garb, and there was a gaping wound in his flank. A trail of blood glistened in the moonlight, revealing that he had been dragged thither and left. Evidently the Turanians did not consider their late companion worth the trouble of burial.

Somewhere in the sprawling camp she hoped to find the command group. Perhaps she might overhear something of use. She had little faith in Khondemir's powers of magic and hoped that she might find evidence to persuade Jeku to abandon this mad venture and return to the city.

She saw a large and ornate tent a little apart from the others. Next to its entrance was a small shrine of Mitra, a lump of gummy incense smoking in its brass bowl. Before it burned a fire, and in the light of the fire sat a circle of men. All were Turanian, but these had the dress and aspect of high-born men, unlike the bulk of the force. Even so, they bore a general brutality of look and manner, suggesting that they were embittered exiles, or disinherited sons of the aristocracy.

"It will not be long now, my friends," said one. Ishkala recognized him as Bulamb, the leader who had greeted Khondemir when the two columns had met. "Soon the weary years of exile will be over and we will be great lords again, as is our right."

"I wish I had your sanguine confidence in the mage," said another. His beard was dyed crimson in the fashion of an obscure Mitran sect from northern Turan.

"Have you no faith, Rumal?" Bulamb asked him.

"I believe in Lord Mitra and in my right to the lordship of Sultanapur. The wizard showed signs of great power when first he raised his rebellion against the usurper, Yezdigerd." At mention of the hated name, all spat upon the ground. "But two years ago the insurrection failed and we fled to such refuge as we could find. I follow him because we have no other claimant to the throne, but I cannot share your confidence."

"You should show more spirit," Bulamb admonished. "Two years ago we were forced to act before we were ready. The revelations of a turncoat betrayed us, and Khondemir's carefully prepared spells came to naught. Great wizardry is as much a matter of timing as is that of a military campaign. Even so, the spell of pestilence by which he prevented the royal army from pursuing us saved our lives. Do any here deny that?" He glared about fiercely.

"It is true," said a greying man in splendid armour. "They would have had us between the mountains of Jebail and the Lake of Tears had it not been for the foul-breathed spirit the mage sent among the cavalry as they slept in camp. Not a man fit to ride by morning, and two thousand of them dead within ten days. It was a fell working of magic, but it bought us time to get away with our lives."

"And a starveling life as bandits ever since," said the red-bearded Rumal.

"That is now almost over," promised Bulamb. "Here, la this place of ghosts and powerful spirits, our lord shall work such a spell as no wizard has performed in a thousand years. With the powers he shall summon and the reinforcements he shall procure for us, we will ride into Aghrapur in triumph!" His black eyes burned with fanaticism combined with a near-maniacal greed. "We shall seize back the purple towers and fertile lands of our nation from those who reviled us and cast us out. Oar Lord Khondemir shall deliver into our hands those who mocked us and drove us from our rightful inheritance, that we may slay them, or torture them, or put them to use as chained slaves, whatever our pleasure may be!"

Ferocious cheers greeted Bulamb's tirade, and even the most downcast of the group seemed to take renewed spirit. A slave went among them, refilling their jewelled cups with rich Turanian wine. While they were preoccupied with their talk of greed and vengeance, Ishkala slipped away.

Now she had something to take to Captain Jeku. Somehow, she had no idea of just how, Khondemir planned to seize the throne of Turan. What all this could have to do with the siege of Sogaria she could not guess, but she was certain that her father wished to maintain peaceful relations with King Yezdigerd. The mad schemes of Khondemir must be abandoned.

"Where are you going, my pretty?" Her heart rose into her throat as someone grasped her arm. She was whirled around to face an ugly, pockmarked Turanian, reeking of wine. He favoured her with a spittle-laden grin as he jerked away her veil. His squinting eyes widened at the beauty thus revealed. "I thought to find some spy sneaking about our camp. I never thought to § catch such a prize."

The man dragged her within the light of the nearest fire. The others looked up in wonder and drunken stupefaction. "Look," crowed her captor, "at what I, Hazbal, have taken captive." He ripped away her dark robe, revealing her pale limbs for all to appreciate. She wore only the brief tunic of sheer fabric that she had donned for bed.

"Let me go, you Turanian swine!" she said. "I am the royal Princess Ishkala, and the Red Eagles will flay you to the bone for this!"

The man threw back his head for a great gap-toothed laugh in which the others joined. "Princess, is it? Think you that your father's rank means aught to us? Not a. man here can keep count of his death sentences. We'll' hang no higher and burn no longer for having a bit of sport with a princess!" He grasped her tunic and ripped it from neck to waist.

"That's too fine a prize for the likes of you, Hazbal," said a huge man as he leaped to his feet. The speaker was shaven-headed and bare to the sash around his thick waist. Great muscles bulged beneath his fat, and scars laced his face and torso. "I claim her," the man grinned, "by right of rank."

"Say you so, Kamchak?" jeered Hazbal. "You think because I ride in your squadron that you may claim my booty? Well, have her you shall, when I have finished! with her but not before, by Mitra!"

The shaven-headed man flushed scarlet. "You would defy me, you petty, crawling carrion worm? I will not endure this!"

Hazbal shoved Ishkala, causing her to fall in a sprawl I of shapely limbs amid the pack of grinning bandits. In an instant her wrists and ankles were pinioned.

"Hold the stakes while this game is settled," cried Hazbal. From his sash he drew a short, curved dagger, shaving-keen on both edges and tapering to a needle point.

"Yes," said Kamchak, "let us dance together, my friend. A little exercise sharpens the appetite for finer things." He drew a similar dagger and advanced on Hazbal, crouched low and balancing on the balls of his bare feet.

"Save your breath for you will not draw many more of them, you great tub of pig's offal," Hazbal warned. The smaller man darted in, his dagger sweeping up to gut his opponent. But Kamchak, despite his bulk, was nimble, and he easily evaded the attack by springing back.

As the dagger passed by his belly, Kamchak whipped his blade sideways, missing Hazbal's throat but taking a tiny piece from his earlobe. Kamchak smiled broadly as the blood flowed from the trifling wound. "First blood to me!" he taunted.

"It will be last blood for me," said Hazbal with an equally wide smile. His blade described a swift, broad X in the light of the fire, a double feint that caused Kamchak to draw back slightly. As the bulky torso withdrew, Hazbal's dagger plunged downward to slice at the advanced thigh.

Kamchak's trouser leg parted and blood flowed, but the huge man paid it no heed. As Hazbal's blow carried him forward, his shoulder was exposed for an instant, and Kamchak's blade drew a scarlet line from the tip of the shoulder to the elbow.

Both men sprang apart to take stock of their wounds and to plan their next attack. The spectators cheered their delight in the blood and the excitement, in the glorious spectacle of two men fighting to the death to be first with the beautiful captive.

The smiles were gone now and the combatants snarled as they slowly circled one another, crouched like beasts, arms spread with knives ready to cut and stab. They had forgotten the woman and wanted only to kill. Hazbal slid forward and stabbed toward Kamchak's belly. As the bigger man brought his left hand down to block the blow, Hazbal's dagger flicked up and over the blocking arm to lance toward Kamchak's neck.

Kamchak had not been deceived by the feint at his belly. As Hazbal's knife darted toward his throat, he leaned far to the right and grasped his opponent's sash. Jerking Hazbal forward, the shaven-headed man buried his dagger to the haft in the smaller man's belly, twisting the blade in the wound to thoroughly eviscerate his opponent. As Hazbal fell with a ghastly grimace, Kamchak jerked his knife loose with a sickening sound and laid the edge beneath the other man's ear. With a powerful slash, he severed jugular and windpipe, sending a fountain of blood arcing into the fire, where it burst into a cloud of foul-smelling steam.