Part 10 (1/2)
On the raised platforlistened in dazzling contrast to the glossy ebon hides about it
Belit, without a doubt Conan drew the shaft to his ear-then soh the body of a tall plualley was overhauling the lighter shi+p
Arrows fell in a rain about the Argus, and men cried out All the steers the s knots of straining thews Then with a sob he sank down, a long shaft quivering in his sturdy heart The Argus lost headway and rolled in the swell The men shouted in confusion, and Conan took command in characteristic fashi+on
”Up, lads!” he roared, loosing with a vicious twang of cord ”Grab your steel and give these dogs a few knocks before they cut our throats!
Useless to bend your backs any more: they'll board us ere we can row another fifty paces!”
In desperation the sailors abandoned their oars and snatched up their weapons It was valiant, but useless They had tiht of arrows before the pirate was upon theus rolled broadside, and the steel-beaked prow of the raider crashed into her a irons crunched into the side Frounwales, the black pirates drove down a volley of shafts that tore through the quilted jackets of the doo down spear in hand to cohter On the deck of the pirate lay half a dozen bodies, an earnest of Conan's archery
The fight on the Argus was short and bloody The stocky sailors, no match for the tall barbarians, were cut down to a man Elsewhere the battle had taken a peculiar turn Conan, on the high-pitched poop, was on a level with the pirate's deck As the steel prow slashed into the Argus, he braced hi away his bow A tall corsair, bounding over the rail, was reat sword, which sheared hih the torso, so that his body fell one way and his legs another Then, with a burst of fury that left a heap of unwales, Conan was over the rail and on the deck of the Tigress
In an instant he was the center of a hurricane of stabbing spears and lashi+ng clubs But heblur of steel Spears bent on his ar The fighting madness of his race was upon hi before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shahastly harvest of brains and blood
Invulnerable in his arled corpses at his feet until his enee and fear Then as they lifted their spears to cast them, and he tensed himself to leap and die in the midst of them, a shrill cry froze the lifted ariants poised for the spear casts, thebefore the blacks, beating down their spears She turned toward Conan, her bosoers of wonder caught at his heart She was slender, yet forarirdle Her white ivory lilobes of her breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Ci fury of battle Her rich black hair, black as a Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters down her supple back Her dark eyes burned on the Cimmerian
She was untaerous as a she-panther She ca with the blood of her warriors Her supple thigh brushed against it, so close she came to the tall warrior Her red lips parted as she stared up into his so eyes
”Who are you?” she deh I have ranged the sea froara to the fires of the ultios,” he answered shortly, alert for treachery Let her sliirdle, and a buffet of his open hand would stretch her senseless on the deck Yet in his heart he did not fear; he had held too many women, civilized or barbarian, in his iron-thewed arht that burned in the eyes of this one
”You are no soft Hyborian!” she exclairay wolf Those eyes were never dihts; those theere never softened by life amid marble walls”
”I am Conan, a Cimmerian,” he answered
To the people of the exotic climes, the North was a iants who occasionally descended from their icy fastnesses with torch and sword Their raids had never taken thehter of She AEsir, Vanir, or Ci instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found her lover, and his race lamor of far lands
”And I aht say, ”I am queen!”
”Look at me, Conan!” She threide her arer of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you Take me and crush me with your fierce love! Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea! I a!”
His eyes swept the bloodstained ranks, seeking expressions of wrath or jealousy He saw none The fury was gone from the ebon faces He realized that to these men Belit was more than a wolanced at the Argus, ing in the cri far over, her decks awash, held up by the grappling irons He glanced at the blue-fringed shore, at the far green hazes of the ocean, at the vibrant figure which stood before him; and his barbaric soul stirred within hi blue realh, wander, and pillage-
”I'll sail with you,” he grunted, shaking the red drops froed like a bowstring ”Fetch herbs and dress youraboard the plunder and cast off”
As Conan sat with his back against the poop rail, while the old shao of the ill-fated Argus was quickly shi+fted aboard the Tigress and stored in small cabins below deck Bodies of the crew and of fallen pirates were cast overboard to the swar sharks, while wounded blacks were laid in the waist to be bandaged Then the grappling irons were cast off; and, as the Argus sank silently into the blood-flecked waters, the Tigress moved off southward to the rhythlassy blue deep, Belit ca like those of a she-panther in the dark as she tore off her ornairdle and cast the on tiptoe, ar line of naked white, she cried to the desperate horde: ”Wolves of the blue sea, behold ye now the dance-the alun!”
And she danced, like the spin of a desert ind, like the leaping of a quenchless flae of death
Her white feet spurned the bloodstained deck, and dying azed frozen at her Then, as the white stars gli body a blur of ivory fire, with a wild cry she threw herself at Conan's feet, and the blind flood of the Ci forainst the black plates of his corseleted breast
2 The Black Lotus
In that Dead citadel of cru stone Her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen, And curious madness took me by the throat, As of a rival lover thrust between