Part 7 (2/2)

'I a e to which I uardsman pursue you?' asked tito 'Not that it's any ofto conceal,' replied the Ci you civilized peoples, your ways are still beyond ht in a tavern, a captain in the king's guard offered violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier, who naturally ran hiainst killing guardsirl fled away It was bruited about that I was seen with thee asked one I replied that since he was a friend of mine, I could not betray hireat deal about s I did not understand, and badewrathful myself, for I had explained my position

'But I choked e squalled that I had shown conteeon to rot until I betrayedthey were all e's skull; then I cut h constable's stallion tied near by, I rode for the wharfs, where I thought to find a shi+p bound for foreign parts'

'Well,' said tito hardily, 'the courts have fleeced me too often in suits with rich merchants for me to owe them any love I'll have questions to answer if I ever anchor in that port again, but I can prove I acted under compulsion You may as well put up your sword We're peaceable sailors, and have nothing against you Besides, it's as well to have a fighting-man like yourself on board Come up to the poop-deck and we'll have a tankard of ale'

'Good enough,' readily responded the Cius was a s craft which ply between the ports of Zingara and Argos and the southern coasts, hugging the shoreline and seldoh of stern, with a tall curving prow; broad in the waist, sloping beautifully to ste sweep from the poop, and propulsion was furnished mainly by the broad striped silk sail, aided by a jibsail The oars were for use in tacking out of creeks and bays, and during calms There were ten to the side, five fore and five aft of the so was lashed under this deck, and under the fore-deck The men slept on deck or between the rowers' benches, protected in bad weather by canopies With twenty men at the oars, three at the sweep, and the shi+pus pushed steadily southward, with consistently fair weather The sun beat down from day to day with fiercer heat, and the canopies were run up - striped silken cloths that oldwork on the prow and along the gunwales

They sighted the coast of She meadowlands with the white crowns of the towers of cities in the distance, and horsemen with blue-black beards and hooked noses, who sat their steeds along the shore and eyed the galley with suspicion She did not put in; there was scant profit in trade with the sons of Shem

Nor did master tito pull into the broad bay where the Styx river eantic flood into the ocean, and the massive black castles of Khemi loomed over the blue waters shi+ps did not put unasked into this port, where dusky sorcerers wove awful spells in theeternally from blood-stained altars where naked women screamed, and where Set, the Old Serpent, arch-deians, was said to writhe his shi+ning coils aave that drealass-floored bay a wide berth, even when a serpent-prowed gondola shot from behind a castellated point of land, and naked dusky woreat red blossoms in their hair, stood and called to his sailors, and posed and postured brazenly

Now notowers rose inland They had passed the southern borders of Stygia and were cruising along the coasts of Kush The sea and the ways of the sea were never-ending h hills of the northern uplands The wanderer was no less of interest to the sturdy seamen, fehom had ever seen one of his race

They were characteristic Argosean sailors, short and stockily built Conan towered above theth They were hardy and robust, but his was the endurance and vitality of a wolf, his thews steeled and his nerves whetted by the hardness of his life in the world's wastelands He was quick to laugh, quick and terrible in his wrath He was a valiant trencher drink was a passion and a weakness with him Naive as a child in many ways, unfamiliar with the sophistry of civilization, he was naturally intelligent, jealous of his rights, and dangerous as a hungry tiger Young in years, he was hardened in warfare and wandering, and his sojourns in many lands were evident in his apparel His horned helolden-haired JEsir of Nordheireaves were of the finest work-s was of Nereat Aquilonian broadsword; and his gorgeous scarlet cloak could have been spun nowhere but in Ophir

So they beat southward, and es of the black people But they found only s ruins on the shore of a bay, littered with naked black bodies tito swore

'I had good trade here, aforetime This is the work of pirates' 'And if we reat blade in its scabbard

'Mine is no warshi+p We run, not fight Yet if it caht do it again; unless it were Belit's Tigress'

'Who is Belit?'

'The wildest she-devil unhanged Unless I read the signs a-wrong, it was her butchers who destroyed that village on the bay May I so from the yard-arm! She is called the queen of the black coast She is a Shemite wo and have sent ood tradesman to the bottoht out quilted jerkins, steel caps, bows and arrows

'Little use to resist if we're run down,' he grunted 'But it rasps the soul to give up life without a struggle'

It was just at sunrise when the lookout shouted a warning Around the long point of an island off the starboard bow glided a long lethal shape, a slender serpentine galley, with a raised deck that ran from steh the water, and the low rail swarmed with naked blacks that chanted and clashed spears on oval shi+elds Fro cri Tare! Put her about! Into that creek-moudi! If we can beach her before they run us doe have a chance to escape with our lives!'

So, veering sharply, the Argus ran for the line of surf that boo back and forth, exhorting the panting rowers to greater efforts The lared

'Give me a bow,' requested Conan 'It's notthe Hyrkanians, and it will go hard if I can't feather aon the poop, he watched the serpent-like shi+p skih he was, it was evident to hius would never win that race Already arrows, arching fro with a hiss into the sea, not twenty paces astern

'We'd best stand to it,' growled the Cimmerian; 'else we'll all die with shafts in our backs, and not a blow dealt'

'Bend to it, dogs!' roared tito with a passionate gesture of his brawny fist The bearded rowers grunted, heaved at the oars, while their muscles coiled and knotted, and sweat started out on their hides The tiroaned as the h the water The wind had fallen; the sail hung limp Nearer crept the inexorable raiders, and they were still a goodacross a sweep, a long arrow through his neck tito sprang to take his place, and Conan, bracing his feet wide on the heaving poop-deck, lifted his bow He could see the details of the pirate plainly now The roere protected by a line of raisedon the narrow deck were in full view These were painted and plu spears and spotted shi+elds

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-baked 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 batde 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 Uttered 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 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 barbaric, 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 Shem made no distinction between ysir, Vanir or Ci instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found her lover, and his race laht 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 blood-stained 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 s of Askalon!'

And she danced, like the spin of a desert ind, like the leaping of a quenchless flae of death Her white feet spurned the blood-stained 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

The Song of Belit The Tigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered Toht, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion And survivors of butchered Stygian shi+ps named Belit with curses, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes re, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore crirant wind, the Tigress cruised the southern coasts, until she anchored at the le-clouded walls of mystery

'This is the river Zarkheba, which is Death,' said Belit 'Its waters are poisonous See how dark and murky they run? Only venomous reptiles live in that river The black people shun it Once a Stygian galley, fleeing from me, fled up the river and vanished I anchored in this very spot, and days later, the galley ca down the dark waters, its decks blood-stained and deserted Only one o was intact, but the crew had vanished into silence and mystery

'My lover, I believe there is a city soiant towers and walls glio part-way up the river We fear nothing: Conan, let us go and sack that city!'

Conan agreed He generally agreed to her plans Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas It ht, so long as they sailed and fought He found the life good