Part 4 (2/2)
VOYAGE ON AN UNKNOWN SEA.
Our sails are full and straining tight, Our prow is riding high; We're out in search of gold tonight Beneath a starlit sky.
- Sea-Chanty of the Baracha Isles
And so it came to pa.s.s that the Red Lion set forth into the storm-tossed, monster-haunted wastes of the Western Ocean, on the strangest of quests. The only guideposts to show her people the way were the sun by day and the stars by night, for the compa.s.s was unknown to the mariners of the Hyborian Aage, between the foundering of Atlantis and the rise of Sumeria and Egypt. But, with the chart from the casket of orichalc.u.m as their guide, they sailed deeper and deeper into the unknown.
Some balked at this fantastic venture, until Conan pointed out two good reasons for their consenting to this quest: first, that they sailed for adventure, glory, and loot, and would doubtless find all three in plenty in the Seven Isles of Antillia, amidst the age-old ruins of the last Atlan-tean cities; second, that he would personally pitch any grumblers over the side for the krakens to devour. Reasoning of this kind proved remarkably persuasive.
Still, the farther they got from the coasts they knew, the greater grew their superst.i.tious terrors. They remembered old tales, wherein the world was said to end just beyond the horizon. There, the earth fell away in a mighty cliff., over which the oceans poured in an endless flood, down and down to thunder at last against the very foundations of Eternity. According to the tales, any s.h.i.+p that sailed beyond the visible horizon would soon find itself caught in an irresistible current, which would soon carry its helpless, screaming crew right over the world's edge.
Conan squelched this by cracking a few heads together and by pointing out, with una.s.sailable logic, that, with every league west they sailed, the horizon visibly retreated to a corresponding distance.
They sailed on, with full sails straining in the steady blast of the northeast trades. Ahead lay an unknown world; all about was a mysterious waste of wind-torn waves, wherein might lurk fearful denizens of the deep. Conan had little fear of sea monsters. He had faced warriors, wizards, monsters, demons, and even G.o.ds. All had proved vulnerable to sharp steel in .the final test. But, just to be on the safe side, he had the s.h.i.+p's carpenter rig a.catapult and mold some gummy spheres of black tar into whose center he poured lamp oil, with pitchy wicks of old cloth.
As day followed day across the endless waste of waters, Conan came almost to long for some desperate action to break the eternal monotony. But alas, if sea monsters there were, they gave the Red Lion a wide berth. To keep his s.h.i.+pload of b.l.o.o.d.y-handed rogues from getting restless with the inactivity, he kept them busy swabbing the decks, fletching new arrows to replace those expended in the brief battle with the green galley, and toiling at a mult.i.tude of other make-work tasks. As an old Hyborian saying had it, Nergal finds work for idle hands.
From time to time, the old Cimmerian found himself wondering what was happening in far-off Aquilonia. He thought of his stalwart son and wondered how the young buck liked the weight of a crown-on his pate. He thought of his old friends at court, what few of them still lived. Conan thought, too, of the palace where he had spent so many happy years with his dead wife, Zen.o.bia. She had been a slave in Nemedia, but he had made her sole queen over the green hills and golden fields of sunny Aquilonia. While she lived, he had - save for a few lapses while traveling afar - been faithful to her, no small feat for a rough, red-blooded warrior of Cimmerian lineage.
Since she had died in childbirth, he had resumed the habits of his days as a bachelor king, by keeping a harem of shapely concubines. The acquisition of these presented no difficulty. Conan's peculiar, highly individualistic sense of honor had kept him from ever in his life compelling a woman to submit to his embraces. On the other hand, there had always been plenty who were willing and eager to encounter this fate. But he had wedded no more wives; no woman had taken Zen.o.bia's place.
Now that she was gone, he found himself often thinking of her, in moods of black depression that were unlike him. While she lived, he had taken her devotion as his due and thought little of it, as is the way of the barbarian. Now he regretted the words he had not said to her and the favors he had not done for her.
He found himself, too, thinking of old times and old friends. Faces out of the past thronged his mind: Belit, the pantherine, languorous pirate queen of the Black Coast, his first great love ... Taurus of Nemedia, the fat old thief with whom he had sought to plunder the fabulous Tower of the Elephant... the enigmatic Stygian sorcerer, Thoth-Amon, whose trail had crossed his so often before that final, fatal confrontation ... loyal, grinning Juba, the giant black from Kush with whom he had fought the men of the lost valley of Mem in the distant East. . . Count Trocero of Poitain, the shrewd banker Publius, the gallant soldiers Prospero and Pallantides - all friends who had come to his aid when the jealousy of King Numedides of Aquilonia had driven Conan into exile, and who had rallied to him when he led a revolt against the degenerate monarch ...
Thus the faces of friends, lovers, comrades, and foes of his long past, which he would never look upon in this life, crowded upon him. The memories came back to him with increasingly poignant intensity, now that the bold, bright days of his reckless youth were long since over and gone and the Long Night was fast approaching. Well, he mused, age comes to every man if he lives long enough. And, by Crom, Conan would see one last sunset go down on a field of b.l.o.o.d.y corpses before the final hour of his life came upon him!
'Land ho!'
Sunk deep in melancholy, Conan had been leaning moodily against the rail of the p.o.o.p deck, watching the morning sun climb out of the ocean through the eastern cloud banks. This cry brought him about, with the blood leaping in his veins.
'Whither away?' he thundered.
Three points off the starboard bow, Captain! ' replied the lookout from the foretop.
Conan clambered the shrouds to the maintop and searched the horizon ahead of the Red Lion with a fierce hawk's gaze. The West was still dark; but beneath the bands of cloud, to the right of the bow, a strip of more solid darkness lay along the horizon. Land. Pirates crowded the forecastle rail below, pointing and exclaiming as the shadowy bulk of hills loomed out of the morning mist. As Conan returned to the p.o.o.p deck, Sigurd stamped up to join him.
'What is it, mate?' said the Vanr. 'The Antilles at last? By the sun disc of Shamash and the silver crescent of Demetrial! Action at last! Gold and loot for all, and hot blood for sauce, by all the G.o.ds! '
Conan grinned. 'Aye. Two moons aboard this craft, with naught but sea and sky around, seems like two centuries. But the voyage is over!'
Then came a wild cry from the lookout: 'Dragon off the starboard bow! Coming toward us!'
Dragon? Conan felt a chill at the word. Then he froze, staring ahead to starboard.
Out of the unknown West it came, its spread wings and lofty curve of neck glittering with golden flame in the ruddy morning light, its mighty breast cleaving the smooth, oily swells. Eyes blazing with white fire and black smoke boiling from its flaring nostrils, it came across the waves at them out of the dim foggy ma.s.s of the islands -a t.i.tanic winged serpent, mailed in gleaming scales, with eyes like globes of fire.
CHAPTER TEN.
DRAGON FIRE.
Submerged in red, tenebrous haze, where suns in sanguine splendor set, Forgotten empires linger yet, like phantoms of forgotten days.
- The Visions of Epemitreus
'All hands on deck, with arms!' Conan's bellow, like the crack of doom, snapped his crew out of its wide-eyed trance, as the men watched the monster approach. 'Archers to the forecastle! Yakov, signal when it's in range! Milo, man the catapult, with your squad! Aim it four points off the starboard bow. Steersmen, two points to port! Sigurd, shake out the mizzen; we may have to dance this s.h.i.+p around like a drunken Kothian peasant. Marco, fetch my helm and corselet to the p.o.o.p!'
Then men scurried to obey with a clatter of weapons, sometimes punctuated by the clang of a dropped sword or pike. Up forward, the burly boatswain and his squad grunted and sweated as they levered the ponderous throwing engine into position, and others brought the tarry missiles up from the hold.
The Red Lion heeled and swung to port to bring the monster in line with the catapult, since the engine was not pivoted and therefore had to be aimed by aiming the s.h.i.+p. The eyes of the monster, glaring like meteors, came closer and seemed to climb higher.
As soon as the thing came within bowshot, Yakov's squad sent a storm of arrows arching across the intervening water. Some stuck fast in the scaly hide; others glanced off the golden scales. But the monster seemed not to feel the hissing shafts. The clawed feet, on the ends of long, slender, birdlike forelegs, rising from the sides of its breast., did not twitch. The arched, swanlike neck did not writhe, nor did the snarling visage change expression. The golden mask came on, all glaring eyes and grimacing visage,, filled with bristling tusks.
Then the sun, which had been hidden behind the eastern clouds, climbed out and shone upon the scene in its full glory. And Conan gave a shout: 'That's not alive., men; 'tis a s.h.i.+p - a machine! Ready the catapult!'
For the sudden increase in illumination had shown Conan the truth. The 'dragon' was a galley, like that which they had overcome in mid-ocean, but with its bow built up to resemble the front of a monster. The 'wings' were two tall, narrow triangular sails, stiffened by bamboo battens like the sails of the s.h.i.+ps of Khitai. These sails rose from a pair of masts in the waist, side by side instead of fore and aft as in most sailing vessels. Now the sails were trimmed to point straight aft, since the galley was rowing directly into the wind. Hence they contributed nothing to the s.h.i.+p's progress, albeit they did fortify the illusion of a winged sea monster.
A second volley of arrows rattled harmlessly against the bow of the dragon-s.h.i.+p. Conan saw that the 'forelegs' were a pair of grappling devices, held up by cables over the water in front of the bow. When the vessel got close enough, these twin booms would be allowed to fall, and the 'claws' would be driven into the woodwork of the Red Lion to hold her fast.
'Milo! Shoot one!'yelled Conan. The boatswain signaled to the steersmen to bring the bow a little to starboard, so that this engine would bear. With a loud thump, the catapult released. The first of the b.a.l.l.s of tar, trailing black smoke from its wick, arched across the water, glanced from the monster's neck, and fell into the sea.
Now the galley was a mere javelin-throw away. The curved breast of the dragon opened. A pair of doors swung wide, and a boarding plank extended itself out over the water. Inside the vessel, mustered at the base of the boarding plank, stood a fantastically garbed boarding party, bristling with weapons.
The ratchet of the catapult rattled as the crew desperately heaved on the windla.s.s to rec.o.c.k the weapon. Then, thump! A second smoke-trailing ball flew over the water -right into the opening where the boarding party was mustered.
There was a burst of smoke, and a lurid light illumined the interior of the vessel. The boarding party milled in confusion; a couple of men fell or were pushed off into.the sea, where the weight of their armor quickly dragged them under.
Smoke spurted from the hull of the dragon s.h.i.+p in a hundred places. The fire seemed to spread with preternatural speed. Faintly, Conan could hear the cries of trapped men. There was an impression of desperate efforts, half-seen through the breast-opening, to fight the fire. But soon flame spurted from the dragon's neck; then the wing-sails caught fire and blazed up...
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