The Hour of the Dragon - Robert E. Howard (great reads .TXT) 📗

Wolves bound together only

by fear of Valbroso, they owed no allegiance to the castle or to each

other.

 

Swords began to clash in the courtyard, and women screamed. And in the

midst of it all, none noticed Conan as he shot through the postem gate

and thundered down the hill. The wide plain spread before him, and

beyond the hill the caravan road divided: one branch ran south, the

other east. And on the eastern road he saw another rider, bending low

and spurring hard. The plain swam to Conan’s gaze, the sunlight was a

thick red haze and he reeled in his saddle, grasping the flowing mane

with his hand. Blood rained on his mail, but grimly he urged the

stallion on.

 

Behind him smoke began to pour out of the castle on the hill where the

count’s body lay forgotten and unheeded beside that of his prisoner.

The sun was setting; against a lurid red sky the two black figures

fled. The stallion was not fresh, but neither was the horse ridden by

Beloso. But the great beast responded mightily, calling on deep

reservoirs of reserve vitality.

 

Why the Zingaran fled from one pursuer Conan did not tax his bruised

brain to guess. Perhaps unreasoning panic rode Beloso, born of the

madness that lurked in that blazing jewel. The sun was gone; the white

road was a dim glimmer through a ghostly twilight fading into purple

gloom far ahead of him. The stallion panted, laboring hard. The

country was changing, in the gathering dusk. Bare pains gave way to

clumps of oaks and alders. Low hills mounted up in the distance. Stars

began to blink out. The stallion gasped and reeled in his course. But

ahead rose a dense wood that stretched to the hills on the horizon,

and between it and himself Conan glimpsed the dim form of the

fugitive. He urged on the distressed stallion, for he saw that he was

overtaking his prey, yard by yard. Above the pound of the hoofs a

strange cry rose from the shadows, but neither pursuer nor pursued

gave heed.

 

As they swept in under the branches that overhung the road, they were

almost side by side. A fierce cry rose from Conan’s lips as his sword

went up; a pale oval of a face was turned toward him, a sword gleamed

in a half-seen hand, and Beloso echoed the cry-and then the weary

stallion, with a lurch and a groan, missed his footing in the shadows

and went heels over head, hurling his dazed rider from the saddle.

Conan’s throbbing head crashed against a stone, and the stars were

blotted out in a thicker night.

 

How long Conan lay senseless he never knew. His first sensation of

returning consciousness was that of being dragged by one arm over

rough and stony ground, and through dense underbrush. Then he was

thrown carelessly down, and perhaps the jolt brought back his senses.

 

His helmet was gone, his head ached abominably, he felt a qualm of

nausea, and blood was clotted thickly among his black locks. But with

the vitality of a wild thing life and consciousness surged back into

him, and he became aware of his surroundings.

 

A broad red moon was shining through the trees, by which he knew that

it was long after midnight. He had lain senseless for hours, long

enough to have recovered from that terrible blow Beloso had dealt him,

as well as the fall which had rendered him senseless. His brain felt

clearer than it had felt during that mad ride after the fugitive.

 

He was not lying beside the white road, he noticed with a start of

surprize, as his surroundings began to record themselves on his

perceptions. The road was nowhere in sight. He lay on the grassy

earth, in a small glade hemmed in by a black wall of tree stems and

tangled branches. His face and hands were scratched and lacerated as

if he had been dragged through brambles. Shifting his body he looked

about him. And then he started violently-something was squatting over

him.

 

At first Conan doubted his consciousness, thought it was but a figment

of delirium. Surely it could not be real, that strange, motionless

gray being that squatted on its haunches and stared down at him with

unblinking soulless eyes.

 

Conan lay and stared, half expecting it to vanish like a figure of a

dream, and then a chill of recollection crept along his spine. Half-forgotten memories surged back, of grisly tales whispered of the

shapes that haunted these uninhabited forests at the foot of the hills

that mark the Zingaran-Argossean border. Ghouls, man called them,

eaters of human flesh, spawn of darkness, children of unholy matings

of a lost and forgotten race with the demons of the underworld.

Somewhere in these primitive forests were the ruins of an ancient,

accursed city, men whispered, and among its tombs slunk gray,

anthropomorphic shadows-Conan shuddered strongly.

 

He lay staring at the malformed head that rose dimly above him, and

cautiously he extended a hand toward the sword at his hip. With a

horrible cry that the man involuntarily echoed, the monster was at his

throat.

 

Conan threw up his right arm, and the dog-like jaws closed on it,

driving the mail links into the hard flesh. The misshapen yet man-like

hands clutched for his throat, but he evaded them with a heave and

roll of his whole body, at the same time drawing his dagger with his

left hand.

 

They tumbled over and over on the grass, smiting and tearing. The

muscles coiling under that gray corpse-like skin were stringy and hard

as steel wires, exceeding the strength of a man. But Conan’s thews

were iron too, and his mail saved him from the gnashing fangs and

ripping claws long enough for him to drive home his dagger, again and

again and again. The horrible vitality of the semi-human monstrosity

seemed inexhaustible, and the king’s skin crawled at the feel of that

slick, clammy flesh. He put all his loathing and savage revulsion

behind the plunging blade, and suddenly the monster heaved up

convulsively beneath him as the point found its grisly heart, and then

lay still.

 

Conan rose, shaken with nausea. He stood in the center of the glade

uncertainly, sword in one hand and dagger in the other. He had not

lost his instinctive sense of direction, as far as the points of the

compass were concerned, but he did not know in which direction the

road lay. He had no way of knowing in which direction the ghoul had

dragged him. Conan glared at the silent, black, moon-dappled woods

which ringed him, and felt cold moisture bead his flesh. He was

without a horse and lost in these haunted woods, and that staring,

deformed thing at his feet was a mute evidence of the horrors that

lurked in the forest. He stood almost holding his breath in his

painful intensity, straining his ears for some crack of twig or rustle

of grass.

 

When a sound did come he started violently. Suddenly out on the night

air broke the scream of a terrified horse. His stallion! There were

panthers in the wood-or-ghouls ate beasts as well as men.

 

He broke savagely through the brush in the direction of the sound,

whistling shrilly as he ran, his fear drowned in berserk rage. If his

horse was killed, their went his last chance of following Beloso and

recovering the jewel. Again the stallion screamed with fear and fury,

somewhere nearer. There was a sound of lashing heels, and something

that was struck heavily and gave way.

 

Conan burst out into the wide white road without warning, and saw the

stallion plunging and rearing in the moonlight, his ears laid back,

his eyes and teeth flashing wickedly. He lashed out with his heels at

a slinking shadow that ducked and bobbed about him—and then about

Conan other shadows moved: gray, furtive shadows that closed in on all

sides. A hideous charnel-house scent reeked up in the night air.

 

With a curse the king hewed right and left with his broadsword, thrust

and ripped with his dagger. Dripping fangs flashed in the moonlight,

foul paws caught at him, but he hacked his way through to the

stallion, caught the rein, leaped into the saddle. His sword rose and

fell, a frosty arc in the moon, showering blood as it split misshapen

heads, clove shambling bodies. The stallion reared, biting and

kicking. They burst through and thundered down the road. On either

hand, for a short space, flitted gray abhorrent shadows. Then these

fell behind, and Conan, topping a wooded crest, saw a vast expanse of

bare slopes sweeping up and away before him.

 

Chapter 13: “A Ghost Out of the Past”

 

SOON AFTER SUNRISE Conan crossed the Argossean border. Of Beloso he

had seen no trace. Either the captain had made good his escape while

the king lay senseless, or had fallen prey to the grim man-eaters of

the Zingaran forest. But Conan had seen no signs to indicate the

latter possibility. The fact that he had lain unmolested for so long

seemed to indicate that the monsters had been engrossed in futile

pursuit of the captain. And if the man lived, Conan felt certain that

he was riding along the road somewhere ahead of him. Unless he had

intended going into Argos he would never have taken the eastward road

in the first place.

 

The helmeted guards at the frontier did not question the Cimmerian. A

single wandering mercenary required no passport nor safe-conduct,

especially when his unadorned mail showed him to be in the service of

no lord. Through the low, grassy hills where streams murmured and oak

groves dappled the sward with lights and shadows he rode, following

the long road that rose and fell away ahead of him over dales and

rises in the blue distance. It was an old, old road, this highway from

Poitain to the sea.

 

Argos was at peace; laden ox-wains rumbled along the road, and men

with bare, brown, brawny arms toiled in orchards and fields that

smiled away under the branches of the roadside trees. Old men on

settles before inns under spreading oak branches called greetings to

the wayfarer.

 

From the men that worked the fields, from the garrulous old men in the

inns where he slaked his thirst with great leathern jacks of foaming

ale, from the sharp-eyed silk-clad merchants he met upon the road,

Conan sought for news of Beloso.

 

Stories were conflicting, but this much Conan learned: that a lean,

wiry Zingaran with the dangerous black eyes and mustaches of the

western folk was somewhere on the road ahead of him, and apparently

making for Messantia. It was a logical destination; all the seaports

of Argos were cosmopolitan, in strong contrast with the inland

provinces, and Messantia was the most polyglot of all. Craft of all

the maritime nations rode in its harbor, and refugees and fugitives

from many lands gathered there. Laws were lax; for Messantia thrived

on the trade of the sea, and her citizens found it profitable to be

somewhat blind in their dealings with seamen. It was not only

legitimate trade that flowed into Messantia; smugglers and buccaneers

played their part. All this Conan knew well, for had he not, in the

days of old when he was a Barachan pirate, sailed by night into the

harbor of Messantia to discharge strange cargoes? Most of the pirates

of the Barachan Isles-small islands on the southwestern coast of

Zingara-were Argossean sailors, and as long as they confined their

attentions to the shipping of other nations, the authorities of Argos

were not too strict in their interpretation of sea-laws.

 

But Conan had not limited his activities to those