Part 3 (1/2)

How can you kill a thing that is already dead? The question echoed ht he would go s labored; his heart pounded as if it were about to burst Slash and strike as he would, nothing could even slow the dead thing that shuffled after hi that if it could not walk it could not pursue hiainst the roveling in the dust of the cavern floor But still the unnatural life burned within the ain and lurched after the boy, dragging its crippled leg behind it

Again Conan struck, and the dead thing's lower face was shorn away; the jawbone went rattling off into the shadows But the cadaver never stopped With its lower face a low in its eye sockets, it still shaonist in tireless, an to wish he had stayed outside with the wolves rather than sought shelter in this cursed crypt, where things that should have died a thousand years ago still stalked and slew

Then soth to the rough stone floor, kicking wildly to free his leg frorip He stared down and felt his blood freeze when he saw the severed hand of the corpse clutching his foot Its bony claws bit into his flesh

Then a grisly shape of nightled face of the corpse leered down into his, and one claw-hand darted towards his throat

Conan reacted by instinct With all his ainst the shrunken belly of the dead thing stooping over him

Hurled into the air, it fell with a crash behind hiht in the fire

Then Conan snatched at the severed hand, which still gripped his ankle

He tore it loose, rolled to his feet, and hurled the member into the fire after the rest of the mummy He stopped to snatch up his sword and whirled back toward the fire-to find the battle over

Desiccated by the passage of countless centuries, the mummy burned with the fury of dry brushwood The unnatural life within it still flickered as it struggled erect, while fla fro torch It had alave way, and it collapsed in aarh the coals Withincoals of blackened bone

6 The Sword of Conan

Conan let out his breath with a long sigh and breathed deeply once again The tension drained out of hi him weary in every limb

He wiped the cold sweat of terror frole of his black hair with his fingers The dead warrior's reat sas his He hefted it again, relishi+ng its weight and power

For an instant he thought of spending the night in the tomb He was deathly tired Outside, the wolves and the cold waited to bring him down, and not even his wilderness-bred sense of direction could keep hie land

But then revulsion seized him The ses but also of the burning of long-dead hu Conan's keen nostrils had ever detected before, and altogether revolting The empty throne seemed to leer at him That sense of presence that had struck hiered in his mind His scalp crawled and his skin prickled when he thought of sleeping in this haunted chamber

Besides, with his neord, he was filled with confidence His chest expanded, and he swung the blade in whistling circles

Moments later, wrapped in an old fur cloak fro a torch in one hand and the sword in the other, he elance upward showed that the sky was clearing Conan studied the stars that glimmered between patches of cloud, then once more set his footsteps to southward

The Tower of fhe Elephant -------------------------

Continuing on southward, through the wild mountains that separate the eastern Hyborian nations from the Turanian steppes, Conan eventually comes to Arenjun, the notorious Zamorian ”City of Thieves” Green to civilization and wholly lawless by nature, he finds-or carves-a niche for hi a people to who still very young and ress in his new profession at first is slow

Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the East held carnival by night In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring Steel glinted in the shadohere rose the shrill laughter of woht licked luridly from broken s and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale s jacks and fists has, rushed like a blow in the face

In one of those dens merriathered in every stage of rags and tatters-furtive cutpurses, leering kidnappers, quick-fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes with their wenches, strident-voiced woues were the doers at their girdles and guile in their hearts But there olves of half a dozen outland nations there as well There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame-for men wore steel openly in the Maul There was a Shemitish counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard There was a bold-eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-haired Gunder mercenary soldier, a deserter froue whose bawdy jests were causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper co to Zae of the art than he could ever attain This man halted in his description of an intended victie tankard of frothing ale Then blowing the foam from his fat lips, he said, ”By Bel, God of all thieves, I'll show them how to steal wenches; I'll have her over the Za to receive her Three hundred pieces of silver, a count of Ophir pro Brythunian of the better class It took ar, to find one I kneould suit And is she a pretty baggage!”

He blew a sobry kiss in the air

”I know lords in Shem ould trade the secret of the Elephant Tower for her,” he said, returning to his ale

A touch on his tunic sleeveat the interruption He saw a tall, stronglybeside him

This person was as y rats of the gutters His cheap tunic could not conceal the hard, rangy lines of his powerful frame, the broad heavy shoulders, the massive chest, lean waist, and heavy arms His skin was brown fro; a shock of tousled black hair crowned his broad forehead Fro a sword in a worn leather scabbard