Part 36 (2/2)

Conan lifted his sword, took a step toward the coil and release of steelarers over the projection Instantly there was a rending crash and the jutting ledge gave way, precipitating the pirate back into the court

He hit on his back, which for all its springy sineould have broken but for the cushi+oning of the sward, and rebounding like a great cat, he faced his foes The dancing recklessness was gone from his eyes They blazed like blue bale-fire; his mane bristled, his thin lips snarled In an instant the affair had changed froae nature responded with all the fury of the wild

The blacks, halted an instant by the swiftness of the episode, nowhim down But in that instant a shout broke the stillness Wheeling, the giants saw a disreputable throng crowding the arch The buccaneers weaved drunkenly, they swore incoherently; they were addled and bewildered, but they grasped their swords and advanced with a ferocity not dihtest by the fact that they did not understand what it was all about

As the blacks glared in amazeed thunderbolt They fell like ripe grains beneath his blade, and the Zingarans, shouting with ily across the court and fell on their gigantic foes with bloodthirsty zeal They were still dazed; eed slu theuely heard her urging them to some sort of action They had not understood all she said, but the sight of strangers, and blood streah for theround which soon researans weaved and rocked on their feet, but they wielded their swords with power and effect, swearing prodigiously, and quite oblivious to all wounds except those instantly fatal They far outnuonists Towering above their assailants, the giants wrought havoc with talons and teeth, tearing outbloith clenched fists that crushed in skulls Mixed and led in that ility to the best advantage, and ed sleep to avoid blows aiht with a blind wild-beast ferocity, too intent on dealing death to evade it The sound of the hacking swords was like that of butchers' cleavers, and the shrieks, yells and curses were appalling

Sancha, shrinking in the archas stunned by the noise and fury; she got a dazed i chaos in which steel flashed and hacked, ar bodies collided, rebounded, locked and led in a devil's dance of s on a background of blood She saw a Zingaran sailor, blinded by a great flap of scalp torn loose and hanging over his eyes, brace his straddling legs and drive his sword to the hilt in a black belly She distinctly heard the buccaneer grunt as he struck, and saw the victiushed out over the driven blade The dying black caught the blade with his naked hands, and the sailor tugged blindly and stupidly; then a black araran's head, a black knee was planted with cruel force in the le, and so of a thick branch The conqueror dashed his victi like a beaht flashed across his shoulders froered, his head toppled forward on his breast, and thence, hideously, to the earth

Sancha turned sick She gagged and wished to vomit She made abortive efforts to turn and flee fros would not work Nor could she close her eyes In fact, she opened them wider Revolted, repelled, nauseated, yet she felt the awful fascination she had always experienced at sight of blood Yet this battle transcended anything she had ever seen fought out between hus in port raids or sea battles Then she saw Conan

Separated from his mates by the whole mass of the enemy, Conan had been enveloped in a black wave of ared down Then they would quickly have stamped the life out of him, but he had pulled down one of them with him, and the black's body protected that of the pirate beneath hied at their writhing comrade, but Conan's teeth were set desperately in his throat, and the pirate clung tenaciously to his dying shi+eld

An onslaught of Zingarans caused a slackening of the press, and Conan threw aside the corpse and rose, blood-sreat black shadows, clutching, buffeting the air with terrible blows But he was as hard to hit or grapple as a blood-mad panther, and at every turn or flash of his blade, blood jetted He had already taken punishh to kill three ordinary men, but his bull-like vitality was undiminished

His war cry rose above the arans took fresh heart and redoubled their strokes, until the rending of flesh and the crunching of bone beneath the swords almost drowned the howls of pain and wrath

The blacks wavered, and broke for the gate, and Sancha squealed at their co and scurried out of the way They jaarans stabbed and hacked at their straining backs with strident yelps of glee The gate was a shah and scattered, each for hirassy courts, up shi+ roofs of fantastic towers, even along the broad coping of the walls, the giants fled, dripping blood at each step, harried by their merciless pursuers as by wolves Cornered, some of them turned at bay and led black body twitching on the sward, or hurled writhing and twisting froe in the court of the pool, where she crouched, shaking with terror Outside rose a fierce yelling, feet pounded the sward, and through the arch burst a black, red-stained figure It was the giant ore the gemmed headband A squat pursuer was close behind, and the black turned, at the very brink of the pool In his extre sailor, and as the Zingaran rushed recklessly at him, he struck with the unfamiliar weapon The buccaneer dropped with his skull crushed, but so aardly the bloas dealt, the blade shi+vered in the giant's hand

He hurled the hilt at the figures which thronged the arch, and bounded toward the pool, his face a convulsed ate, and his feet spurned the sward in his headlong charge

But the giant threw his great ar an inhuht It screa froarans faltered and hesitated But Conan did not pause Silently and ure poised on the brink of the pool

But even as his dripping sword gleah For a flash of an instant they saw hi roar, the green waters rose and rushed up to reen volcano

Conan checked his headlong rush just in ti back, thrusting his reen pool was like a geyser now, the noise rising to deafening volu at the crest with a great crown of foa the them with the flat of his sword; the roar of the water-spout see Sancha standing paralyzed, staring ide-eyed terror at the seething pillar, he accosted her with a bellow that cut through the thunder of the water and made her jump out of her daze She ran to hiht her up under one arm and raced out of the court

In the court which opened on the outer world, the survivors had gathered, weary, tattered, wounded and blood-stained, and stood gaping dureat unstable pillar that towered reen trunk was laced hite; its foa croas thrice the circumference of its base Mo torrent, yet it continued to jet skyward

Conan's eyes swept the bloody, naked group, and he cursed to see only a score In the stress of the rasped a corsair by the neck and shook him so violently that blood from the man's wounds spattered all near them

'Where are the rest?' he bellowed in his victim's ear

'That's all!' the other yelled back, above the roar of the geyser

others were all killed by those black - ' 'Well, get out of here!' roared Conan, giving hi toward the outer archway 'That fountain is going to burst in a moment - '

'We'll all be drowned!' squawked a Freebooter, li toward the arch

'Drowned, hell!' yelled Conan 'We'll be turned to pieces of petrified bone! Get out, blast you!'

He ran to the outer archway, one eye on the green roaring tower that loolers Dazed with blood-lust, fighting, and the thunderous noise, soarans moved like men in a trance Conan hurried therasped loiterers by the scruff of the neck, iate, added is for haste with pungent comments on the victim's ancestry Sancha showed an inclination to re ar luridly, and accelerated her movements with a tre across the plateau

Conan did not leave the gate until he was sure all his men who yet lived were out of the castle and started across the level ainst the sky, dwarfing the towers, and he too fled that castle of naarans had already crossed the ri down the slopes Sancha waited for him at the crest of the first slope beyond the rim, and there he paused for an instant to look back at the castle It was as if a gigantic green-stemmed and white-blossomed floayed above the towers; the roar filled the sky Then the jade-green and snowy pillar broke with a noise like the rending of the skies, and walls and toere blotted out in a thunderous torrent

Conan caught the girl's hand, and fled Slope after slope rose and fell before thelance over his straining shoulder showed a broad green ribbon rising and falling as it swept over the slopes The torrent had not spread out and dissipated; like a giant serpent it flowed over the depressions and the rounded crests It held a consistent course - it was following thereater pitch of endurance Sancha stu cry of despair and exhaustion Catching her up, Conan tossed her over his giant shoulder and ran on His breast heaved, his knees treh his teeth He reeled in his gait Ahead of hiripped them

The ocean burst suddenly on his view, and in his swiaze floated the Wastrel, unharmed Men tumbled into the boats helter-skelter Sancha fell into the bottoh the blood thundered in his ears and the world swa sailors

With hearts ready to burst froreen river burst through the fringe of trees Those trees fell as if their stems had been cut away, and as they sank into the jade-colored flood, they vanished The tide flowed out over the beach, lapped at the ocean, and the waves turned a deeper, , instinctive fear held the buccaneers, reater effort; what they feared they knew not, but they did know that in that aboreen ribbon was a menace to body and to soul Conan knew, and as he saw the broad line slip into the waves and strea its shape or course, he called up his last ounce of reserve strength so fiercely that the oar snapped in his hands

But their prows buered up the chains, leaving the boats to drift as they would Sancha went up on Conan's broad shoulder, hanging limp as a corpse, to be dumped uncereasping orders to his skeleton of a crew Throughout the affair, he had taken the lead without question, and they had instinctively followed hi mechanically at ropes and braces The anchor chain, unshackled, splashed into the water, the sails unfurled and bellied in a rising wind The Wastrel quivered and shook herself, and swung ue of emerald flath from the Wastrel's keel It advanced no further Froaze followed an unbroken streareen, across the white beach, and over the slopes, until it faded in the blue distance

The Barachan, regaining his wind, grinned at the panting crew Sancha was standing near hi down her cheeks Conan's breeks hung in blood-stained tatters; his girdle and sheath were gone, his sword, driven upright into the deck beside him, was notched and crusted with red Blood thickly clotted his black mane, and one ear had been half torn fros, breast and shoulders were bitten and clawed as if by panthers But he grinned as he braced his powerful legs, and swung on the wheel in sheer exuberance of irl

'The plunder of the seas!' he laughed 'A paltry crew, and that chewed and clawed to pieces, but they can work the shi+p, and crews can always be found Coive me a kiss'

'A kiss?' she cried hysterically 'You think of kisses at a tihter booht her up off her feet in the crook of onerelish

'I think of Life!' he roared 'The dead are dead, and what has passed is done! I have a shi+p and a fighting crew and a girl with lips like wine, and that's all I ever asked Lick your wounds, bullies, and break out a cask of ale You're going to work shi+p as she never orked before Dance and sing while you buckle to it, damn you! To the devil with empty seas! We're bound for waters where the seaports are fat, and the merchant shi+ps are crammed with plunder!'

AFTERWORD:

Robert E Howard and Conan: The Early Years By Stephen Jones Robert Ervin Hoas born in the fading ex-con of Peaster, Texas, about forty-five miles west of Forth Worth, on January 22, 1906 He was the only son of Dr Isaac Mordecai Howard and Hester Jane (Ervin) Howard The couplein Mineral Wells, in Palo Pinto County, and were randfather, Robert Ervin, Howard later revealed in a 1931 biographical sketch: 'I come of old pioneer American stock By nationality I alish name - solish, Highland Scotch (sic), and DanishPractically all my life has been spent in the country and small towns, outside of a few brief sojourns in New Orleans and so around the state and living briefly in a number of different locales, in September 1919 the family finally settled in the small oil-boom town of Cross Plains, in Callahan County, Texas Hoould live there for the rest of his life

'As my father had his practise and did not attee country kid,' Howard later recalled 'I lived pretty e life of the time and place Then (as now) I had more enemies than friends, but I did not lack coames popular in those parts then, wrestled, hunted a little, fished a little, trapped a little, stole water and spentabout over the countryside on foot or on horseback'

Suffering from poor health (probably rheumatic fever) as a child, he once told his father, 'Dad, when I was in school, I had to take a lot because I was alone and no one to take my part, so I intend to build my body until when anyone crosses me up, I can with my bare hands tear him to pieces, double hih he started attending school when he was eight, Hoasin one letter: 'Incould have halted'the clock-like regularity' of school, in 1923 he graduated at the age of seventeen froe, attended the Coe in Broood, where he studied non-credit courses in shorthand, typing, book-keeping and commercial law

In her 1986 memoir about Howard, One Who Walked Alone, forh-school teacher Novalyne Price Ellis described her firstof 1933: 'He was not dressed as I thought a writer should dress His cap was pulled do on his forehead He had on a dingy white shi+rt and so brown pants that only cah-buttoned shoes He took off his cap and I saw that his hair was dark brown, short, almost clipped He ran his hand over his head'