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

his belt. “Get for’ard before I have

you flogged! You’ll keep a civil tongue in your jaws, or by Mitra,

I’ll have you chained among the blacks to tug an oar!”

 

Conan’s volcanic temper, never long at best, burst into explosion. Not

in years, even before he was king, had a man spoken to him thus and

lived.

 

“Don’t lift your voice to me, you tar-breeched dog!” he roared in a

voice as gusty as the sea-wind, while the sailors gaped dum-founded.

“Draw that toy and I’ll feed you to the fishes!”

 

“Who do you think you are?” gasped the captain.

 

“Ill show you!” roared the maddened Cimmerian, and he wheeled and

bounded toward the rail, where weapons hung in their brackets.

 

The captain drew his knife and ran at him bellowing, but before he

could strike, Conan gripped his wrist with a wrench that tore the arm

clean out of the socket. The captain bellowed like an ox in agony, and

then rolled clear across the deck as he was hurled contemptuously from

his attacker. Conan ripped a heavy ax from the rail and wheeled cat-like to meet the rush of the sailors. They ran in, giving tongue like

hounds, clumsy-footed and awkward in comparison to the pantherish

Cimmerian. Before they could reach him with their knives he sprang

among them, striking right and left too quickly for the eye to follow,

and blood and brains spattered as two corpses struck the deck.

 

Knives flailed the air wildly as Conan broke through the stumbling,

gasping mob and bounded to the narrow bridge that spanned the waist

from poop to forecastle, just out of reach of the slaves below. Behind

him the handful of sailors on the poop were floundering after him,

daunted by the destruction of their fellows, and the rest of the crew-some thirty in all-came running across the bridge toward him, with

weapons in their hands.

 

Conan bounded out on the bridge and stood poised above the upturned

black faces, ax lifted, black mane blown in the wind.

 

“Who am I?” he yelled. “Look, you dogs! Look, Ajonga, Yasunga,

Laranga! Who am I?”

 

And from the waist rose a shout that swelled to a mighty roar:

 

“Amra! It is Amra! The Lion has returned!”

 

The sailors who caught and understood the burden of that awesome shout

paled and shrank back, staring in sudden fear at the wild figure on

the bridge. Was this in truth that bloodthirsty ogre of the southern

seas who had so mysteriously vanished years ago, but who still lived

in gory legends? The blacks were frothing crazy now, shaking and

tearing at their chains and shrieking the name of Amra like an

invocation. Kushites who had never seen Conan before took up the yell.

The slaves in the pen under the after-cabin began to batter at the

walls, shrieking like the damned.

 

Demetrio, hitching himself along the deck on one hand and his knees,

livid with the agony of his dislocated arm, screamed: “In and kill

him, dogs, before the slaves break loose!”

 

Fired to desperation by that word, the most dread to all galleymen,

the sailors charged on to the bridge from both ends. But with a lion-like bound Conan left the bridge and hit like a cat on his feet on the

runway between the benches.

 

“Death to the masters!” he thundered, and his ax rose and fell

crashingly full on a shackle-chain, severing it like matchwood. In an

instant a shrieking slave was free, splintering his oar for a

bludgeon. Men were racing frantically along the bridge above, and all

hell and bedlam broke loose on the Venturer. Conan’s ax rose and fell

without pause, and with every stroke a frothing, screaming black giant

broke free, mad with hate and the fury of freedom and vengeance.

 

Sailors leaping down into the waist to grapple or smite at the naked

white giant hewing like one possessed at the shackles, found

themselves dragged down by hands of slaves yet unfreed, while others,

their broken chains whipping and snapping about their limbs, came up

out of the waist like a blind, black torrent, screaming like fiends,

smiting with broken oars and pieces of iron, tearing and rending with

talons and teeth. In the midst of the melee the slaves in the pen

broke down the walls and came surging up on the decks, and with fifty

blacks freed of their benches Conan abandoned his iron-hewing and

bounded up on the bridge to add his notched ax to the bludgeons of his

partizans.

 

Then it was massacre. The Argosseans were strong, sturdy, fearless

like all their race, trained in the brutal school of the sea. But they

could not stand against these maddened giants, led by the tigerish

barbarian. Blows and abuse and hellish suffering were avenged in one

red gust of fury that raged like a typhoon from one end of the ship to

the other, and when it had blown itself out, but one white man lived

aboard the Venturer, and that was the bloodstained giant about whom

the chanting blacks thronged to cast themselves prostrate on the

bloody deck and beat their heads against the boards in an ecstasy of

hero-worship.

 

Conan, his mighty chest heaving and glistening with sweat, the red ax

gripped in his blood-smeared hand, glared about him as the first of

men might have glared in some primordial dawn, and shook back his

black mane. In that moment he was not king of Aquilonia; he was again

lord of the black corsairs, who had hacked his way to lordship through

flame and blood.

 

“Amra! Amra!” chanted the delirious blacks, those who were left to

chant. “The Lion has returned! Now will the Stygians howl like dogs in

the night, and the black dogs of Kush will howl! Now will villages

burst in flames and ships founder! Aie, there will be wailing of women

and the thunder of the spears!”

 

“Cease this yammering, dogs!” Conan roared in a voice that drowned the

clap of the sail in the wind. “Ten of you go below and free the

oarsmen who are yet chained. The rest of you man the sweeps and bend

to oars and halyards. Crom’s devils, don’t you see we’ve drifted

inshore during the fight? Do you want to run aground and be retaken by

the Argosseans? Throw these carcasses overboard. Jump to it, you

rogues, or I’ll notch your hides for you!”

 

With shouts and laughter and wild singing they leaped to do his

commands. The corpses, white and black, were hurled overboard, where

triangular fins were already cutting the water.

 

Conan stood on the poop, frowning down at the black men who watched

him expectantly. His heavy brown arms were folded, his black hair,

grown long in his wanderings, blew in the wind. A wilder and more

barbaric figure never trod the bridge of a ship, and in this ferocious

corsair few of the courtiers of Aquilonia would have recognized their

king.

 

“There’s food in the hold!” he roared. “Weapons in plenty for you, for

this ship carried blades and harness to the Shemites who dwell along

the coast. There are enough of us to work ship, aye, and to fight! You

rowed in chains for the Argossean dogs: will you row as free men for

Amra?”

 

“Aye!” they roared. “We are thy children! Lead us where you will!”

 

“Then fall to and clean out that waist,” he commanded. “Free men don’t

labor in such fifth. Three of you come with me and break out food from

the after-cabin. By Crom, I’ll pad out your ribs before this cruise is

done!”

 

Another yell of approbation answered him, as the half-starved blacks

scurried to do his bidding. The sail bellied as the wind swept over

the waves with renewed force, and the white crests danced along the

sweep of the wind. Conan planted his feet to the heave of the deck,

breathed deep and spread his mighty arms.

 

King of Aquilonia he might no longer be; king of the blue ocean he was

still.