Part 7 (2/2)

So Conan ran as he had never run in all his life - even on that unforgotten day and night nearly fifty years before, when he had escaped from the Hyperborean slave pen, after battling his way to freedom with a length of broken chain, and had fled through rain and snow with a pack of famished wolves at his heels.

Now the breath seared his lungs with every gulp of air, as if he inhaled the breath of a furnace. His heart pounded against his ribs. His laboring legs seemed weighted with lead; his muscles ached as if devils were piercing them with fiery needles. But still he reeled and staggered on. The wind of his motion bent back the little flame of the lamp until it was in danger of being blown out altogether.

Behind him the rats scuttled and bounded and galloped, keeping pace with him. From time to time one of the foremost would jostle or tread upon another, and there would be a brief exchange of squeals and bites. But the rest of the horde flowed on, little delayed by these brief eddies in its course.

Then Conan's eyes caught a faint glimmer ahead; and the murmur of running water told him that he neared a river. As he approached, he saw that it was a rus.h.i.+ng torrent of black water. For an instant he hoped that it would prove narrow enough to leap and thus form a barrier between himself and the pursuing horde. But then he saw that, at least right here, it was over twenty feet wide - too great a distance for him to leap. Long ago in his l.u.s.ty youth, if not exhausted by running and not burdened by weapons and armor, he could easily have made such a jump. But now . ..

With widespread legs, Conan faced the furry onslaught. His chest heaved and his panting lungs drew in the cold, dank air, now fetid with the stench of the horde of rats. The headlong race through the black caverns had set his heart to pounding furiously and the blood to coursing madly through his veins. While the blood still roared in his ears, he drew his broadsword for one last, great fight. For nothing that lived could survive close combat with this horde of blood-mad, rustling rodents. All his life, Conan had only asked for a fighting chance, and now he did not have even that. But, if he had only moments left to live, he would live those moments to the full and go down fighting. For all his years, he was still in splendid condition and could have broken the backs of men half his age. And if no mortal eye should witness the last stand of Conan the Cimmerian, at least the G.o.ds would relish the spectacle - if indeed the G.o.ds looked down upon men and watched over them, as those lying priests maintained.

Conan stood on a roughly triangular ledge of rock that jutted out into the underground river, like a miniature cape or peninsula. Hence the rats could not come at him from the sides or rear, although they could still attack him on a broad front.

The giant rats poured out of the mouth of the tunnel like a river of black-and-gray fur, their eyes twinkling redly in the lamplight like the stars of some infernal dimension. Their squeaking chatter rose above the murmur of the river, and the rasp of their claws on the stone was like the hiss of dry, dead leaves whirled by an autumn gale.

Conan stooped to set down the little lantern behind his feet and gripped his sword in both hands. He raised his voice in a booming battle song of his barbarous people, and then the rats were upon him.

As the first one came within reach, a slash sent it flying in two halves over the heads of its comrades. Then, for long minutes, the heavy broadsword whirled like the vanes of a windmill as Conan struck right and left in a deadly figure-eight pattern, his point just clearing the ground with each stroke. And with each stroke, one or more rats went flying - sometimes whole, sometimes as separated heads, bodies, limbs, and entrails. Blood splashed Conan's arms and legs. Now and then he miscalculated so that his point touched the stone in its sweep, striking sparks.

But on pressed the horde, as those behind pushed those before them into the whirling blade. Now the press loosened somewhat, for some of the rats turned from the attack to feast upon the mutilated remains of their dead brethren. And still Conan swung and sent rat corpses flying by the score. His blade was now red halfway to the hilt, and the stone underfoot became sticky and slippery with blood. With each stroke, his sword threw off a spray of red droplets.

Now they pressed upon him again, and for all the slaughter he wrought upon them he could not hold them back. Some dug their chisel-teeth into the tough leather of his boots. Furiously, Conan kicked and stamped, crunching the life out of those that swarmed around his feet; but others quickly took their place.

A rat scrambled up to the top of Conan's boot and bit through the cloth of his breeches at the knee, inflicting a flesh wound. A quick slash sent the rat spinning away in two halves. Others gained his waist and breast, but their attempts to bite were foiled by the mail s.h.i.+rt. One made a great leap from the ground, landing on Conan's chest, and scrambled on up towards his throat. Conan s.n.a.t.c.hed it away just as its whiskered muzzle touched his flesh. He grabbed at those swarming up his body, hurling them against the tunnel walls or into the river behind him.

But they were gaining upon him. Rat corpses lay in heaps about him, and he stood on an uncertain footing of mangled, furry bodies, spilt entrails, and rodent gore. Although his boots and mail had so far protected him from all but a few minor bites, both knees bled from nips, and the left hand with which he seized rats that climbed his body streamed blood from several gashes.

Then the rats gave back for an instant. Panting, Conan glared around. In his desperation, he saw something that he would have noted sooner, had he not been so closely pressed. A bowshot downstream from where he stood, a natural bridge of stone spanned the rus.h.i.+ng black water. Instantly he realized that, if he could gain this arch, the rats could come at him only two or three at a time. On such a narrow way, he could hold out against the horde indefinitely.

To think was to act. With a surge of power, he rushed towards the bridge, wading through swirling ma.s.ses of rats and crus.h.i.+ng the life from one with every bound. Others leaped upon him to scramble and bite, until his knees streamed blood and his breeches hung about them in tatters. But such was his impetus that he reached the bridge before the rats could pull him down.

Gasping for breath, he staggered out upon the arch of stone and took his stand in the middle, where the footway narrowed. He regretted that in his haste he had not taken time to fetch the little lantern with him; but its fuel must be nearly exhausted anyway. From a distance it still shed a faint, pulsating light upon the scene.

It took the rats only a few heartbeats to perceive him, but the pause enabled him to catch his breath and clear his head. He felt his age in laboring lungs, aching thews, and pounding heart.

Now they came on again. As they flowed up the slope of the arch, Conan confronted them, crouching with his sword in both hands. As they came nearer, he began methodically slas.h.i.+ng, right-left-right-left, each blow hurling rats off the narrow way. They died by scores and hundreds. Those that were merely knocked off fell splas.h.i.+ng into the stream below, which swiftly bore them away into the darkness. Small, furry heads bobbed in the flood, circling to get their bearings and then striking out for the nearest sh.o.r.e until the darkness swallowed them up.

Never in all his years of war and slaughter had his sword taken so many lives. If the rats had been men, Conan's stand upon the underground river would have depopulated a whole nation. Like a tireless machine, he fought on ...

The end came quickly. A huge black rat with bristling whiskers - a grandfather of all rats, weighing over ten pounds - came bounding from the squealing pack to leap at Conan's gasping throat. Conan was long past feeling. His arms were numb and as heavy as lead, and the pillars of his spread legs seemed like cold columns of iron. With his left hand he s.n.a.t.c.hed at the furry body as the rat dug its sharp claws into the links of his mail and lunged for his jugular vein. But strength was draining from Conan's limbs; he seemed unable to tear the creature loose, even when its sharp chisel-teeth gashed the skin beneath his beard.

As another rat attacked his boot, he kicked out at it, missed., and staggered back, followed by a worrying ma.s.s of rodents. As he brought his heels down heavily to keep him falling off the arch, the natural bridge broke beneath the weight and the pounding. With a loud crack, the whole center section on which Conan stood fell straight down into the flood with tremendous splash.

Conan found himself under water, carried down by the weight of his mail. The gigantic rat that had been worrying his throat was gone, but Conan now faced the prospect of ending his last stand by drowning.

With a thrust of his legs against the bottom, he fought his way up to the surface and gasped a lungful of air before the weight dragged him down again. The swift current b.u.mped and banged him against the irregularities of the bottom, rolling him over and over. Once more he fought his way to the surface. He had always been a splendid swimmer; but now the mails.h.i.+rt, which he had retained through such peril and which had protected his torso from scores of bites, was dragging him down to his doom.

Once more he fought up to the surface. Once more he took in a straining lungful of air. And once more the weight drew him inexorably under. His consciousness was slipping away, as though he were falling into a deep, dreamless slumber.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

DUNGEON OF DESPAIR.

In vain the Lion fought and fell - His crew already gazed on h.e.l.l..

. -- The Voyage of Amra Sigurd of Vanaheim was disgusted. When the stout old Vanr, like the rest of the Red Lion's crew, had succ.u.mbed to the narcotic vapor released by the men of the Antillian dragon-s.h.i.+p, he hardly expected ever to see daylight again. But Death had withdrawn its black claws from the fallen warrior. Not this time had Sigurd met his bane.

Instead, dazed and confused, the old pirate had awakened with sharp, aromatic fumes in his nostrils. He found himself in the capacious hold of the Antillian vessel, amid his Barachan s.h.i.+pmates^ who were also returning to consciousness. They were surrounded by small., brown, grinning warriors in weird gla.s.s armor.

As Sigurd slowly recovered his wits, he saw that the dragon-s.h.i.+p was not really built from gold or some other yellow metal, but was just thinly plated with it. The planking under his feet was of good, solid wood, seemingly as hard as oak and of a darker color. Wooden bulkheads and hull planking surrounded him. To his ears came the m.u.f.fled thunder of waves breaking against the curved hull, and Sigurd knew what must have happened.

His eyes searched the faces of his crew. They were battered and b.l.o.o.d.y, and a couple bore bad wounds. But nearly all of them seemed to be present and alive, even if prisoners in the hands of the Antillians.

A pang went through the old freebooter's heart. Anxiously he searched the faces of his men again - but where was Conan? The familiar scarred, frowning face under the iron-gray mane was not to be seen.

Sigurd's heart sank as a doleful expression clouded his ruddy features. He well knew the iron courage of the old Cimmerian; few men during Conan's long life, could boast of having taken him alive. Fiercely attached to his freedom, the old gray wolf might well have preferred to go down fighting rather than to be taken prisoner by these doll-like little brown men. And, if Conan were indeed among the slain, then upon Sigurd's bowed head devolved the awesome responsibility of command.

'Courage, my hearties!' he rumbled. 'Belike we be free men no more, but we still live. And whilst we draw breath, sink me for a lubber, but there's always a chance of fighting our way to freedom!'

Goram Singh probed him with large, somber black eyes. 'Where is the lord Amra, O Sigurd? Why is he not amongst us?' the Vendhyan demanded.

Sigurd slowly wagged his graying red beard. 'By Shai-tan's tail and the star of Ningal, comrade, I know not. Mayhap he is in another part of this cursed galley ...'

The Vendhyan silently nodded, but he bowed his tur-baned head and avoided Sigurd's eye. He knew as well as the Vanr that Conan would probably not have been chained apart from the rest. More likely, the mighty Cimmerian had gone down to the cold halls of the restless dead with an Antillian gla.s.s sword in his vitals.

The voyage to the harbor of Ptahuacan took them nearly an hour, what with the extra weight of half a hundred burly pirates in the hold. Sigurd blinked in the sunlight as they were led out of the gold-sheathed dragons.h.i.+p in heavy gla.s.s chains. Curiously, he peered at the vista of the ancient city of weathered stone and gaudily painted stucco, rising tier upon tier up the slope of the mountain. Never in all his days had Sigurd of Vanaheim seen so strange a metropolis, whose every building was covered with sculptured friezes of monster-headed G.o.ds and animal-headed men, with monolithic gateways of solid stone and strange pylons climbing into the bright morning sky. Over all, the cryptic and ominous shadow of the vast, black-and-crimson pyramid shed a pall of gloom. Rising from the temple on its top, a perpetual plume of smoke streamed from the structure as from a man-made volcano.

The pirates, however, caught only a brief glimpse of the ancient Atlantean city. Their guards led them briskly through the city streets, up the stupendous ramps from tier to tier, and through the bronze gates of the gray citadel adjoining the square of the great pyramid. When those mighty gates clanged to behind their backs, the pirates saw their last of open air and blue skies for many a long day.

Guards herded them down endless stone stairs, which coiled deeply into the bowels of the mountain on .whose side Ptahuacan was built. When their knees, aching from the interminable descent, seemed ready to collapse under them, they came at length into a tremendous chamber cut from the solid stone. Here their shackles were unlocked while they stood, guarded by alert wardens with leveled., gla.s.s-headed pikes.

Next, their ankles were secured to a long chain of gla.s.s, which ran through looped rings set into the stone wall. Although they had a little slack - enough to move about and lie down - for practical purposes they were confined to an area extending a few feet from the wall.

Then the guards filed out, and the captives were left in solitude.

In this huge room, vast stone columns, like the trunks of gigantic trees, rose to support the roof. They seemed to be part of the natural rock and to have been left standing when the rest of the chamber was excavated, to provide support for the roof.

Far above their heads, plates of s.h.i.+ny metal were set in the ceiling. By some forgotten Atlantean science or wizardry, these plates glowed with a soft, ruddy light, shedding a wan illumination upon the chamber beneath. Sigurd wondered for an instant whether these plates were made of the rumored Atlantean metal, orichalc.u.m, but he had too many other things of more urgency to spend much time with this surmise.

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