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

swear by

Mitra! I stole the keys from the black jailers. They are the keepers

of the pits, and each bears a key which will open only one set of

locks. I made them drunk. The one whose head you broke was carried

away to a leech, and I could not get his key. But the others I stole.

Oh, please do not loiter! Beyond these dungeons lie the pits which are

the doors to hell.”

 

Somewhat impressed, Conan tried the keys dubiously, expecting to meet

only failure and a burst of mocking laughter. But he was galvanized to

discover that one, indeed, loosed him of his shackles, fitting not

only the lock that held them to the ring, but the locks on his limbs

as well. A few seconds later he stood upright, exulting fiercely in

his comparative freedom. A quick stride carried him to the grille, and

his fingers closed about a bar and the slender wrist that was pressed

against it, imprisoning the owner, who lifted her face bravely to his

fierce gaze.

 

“Who are you, girl?” he demanded. “Why do you do this?”

 

“I am only Zenobia,” she murmured, with a catch of breathlessness, as

if in fright; “only a girl of the king’s seraglio.”

 

“Unless this is some cursed trick,” muttered Conan, “I cannot see why

you bring me these keys.”

 

She bowed her dark head, and then lifted it and looked full into his

suspicious eyes. Tears sparkled like jewels on her long dark lashes.

 

“I am only a girl of the king’s seraglio,” she said, with a certain

humility. “He has never glanced at me, and probably never will. I am

less than one of the dogs that gnaw the bones in his banquet hall.

 

“But I am no painted toy; I am of flesh and blood. I breathe, hate,

fear, rejoice and love. And I have loved you. King Conan, ever since I

saw you riding at the head of your knights along the streets of

Belverus when you visited King Nimed, years ago. My heart tugged at

its strings to leap from my bosom and fall in the dust of the street

under your horse’s hoofs.”

 

Color flooded her countenance as she spoke, but her dark eyes did not

waver. Conan did not at once reply; wild and passionate and untamed he

was, yet any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a

certain awe or wonder at the baring of a woman’s naked soul.

 

She bent her head then, and pressed her red lips to the fingers that

imprisoned her slim wrist. Then she flung up her head as if in sudden

recollection of their position, and terror flared in her dark eyes.

“Haste!” she whispered urgently. “It is past midnight. You must be

gone.”

 

“But won’t they skin you alive for stealing these keys?”

 

“They’ll never know. If the black men remember in the morning who gave

them the wine, they will not dare admit the keys were stolen from them

while they were drunk. The key that I could not obtain is the one that

unlocks this door. You must make your way to freedom through the pits.

What awful perils lurk beyond that door I cannot even guess. But

greater danger lurks for you if you remain in this cell.

 

“King Tarascus has returned—”

 

“What? Tarascus?”

 

“Aye! He has returned, in great secrecy, and not long ago he descended

into the pits and then came out again, pale and shaking, like a man

who had dared a great hazard. I heard him whisper to his squire,

Arideus, that despite Xaltotun you should die.”

 

“What of Xaltotun?” murmured Conan. He felt her shudder.

 

“Do not speak of him!” she whispered. “Demons are often summoned by

the sound of their names. The slaves say that he lies in his chamber,

behind a bolted door, dreaming the dreams of the black lotus. I

believe that even Tarascus secretly fears him, or he would slay you

openly. But he has been in the pits tonight, and what he did here,

only Mitra knows.”

 

“I wonder if that could have been Tarascus who fumbled at my cell door

awhile ago?” muttered Conan.

 

“Here is a dagger!” she whispered, pressing something through the

bars. His eager fingers closed on an object familiar to their touch.

“Go quickly through yonder door, turn to the left and make your way

along the cells until you come to a stone stair. On your life do not

stray from the line of the cells! Climb the stair and open the door at

the top; one of the keys will fit it. If it be the will of Mitra, I

will await you there.” Then she was gone, with a patter of light

slippered feet.

 

Conan shrugged his shoulders, and turned toward the farther grille.

This might be some diabolical trap planned by Tarascus, but plunging

headlong into a snare was less abhorrent to Conan’s temperament than

sitting meekly to await his doom. He inspected the weapon the girl had

given him, and smiled grimly. Whatever else she might be, she was

proven by that dagger to be a person of practical intelligence. It was

no slender stiletto, selected because of a jeweled hilt or gold guard,

fitted only for dainty murder in milady’s boudoir; it was a forthright

poniard, a warrior’s weapon, broad-bladed, fifteen inches in length,

tapering to a diamond-sharp point.

 

He grunted with satisfaction. The feel of the hilt cheered him and

gave him a glow of confidence. Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn

about him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared him, this knife

was real. The great muscles of his right arm swelled in anticipation

of murderous blows.

 

He tried the farther door, rumbling with the keys as he did so. It was

not locked. Yet he remembered the black man locking it. That furtive,

bent figure, then, had been no jailer seeing that the bolts were in

place. He had unlocked the door, instead. There was a sinister

suggestion about that unlocked door. But Conan did not hesitate. He

pushed open the grille and stepped from the dungeon into the outer

darkness.

 

As he had thought, the door did not open into another corridor. The

flagged floor stretched away under his feet, and the line of cells ran

away to right and left behind him, but he could not make out the other

limits of the place into which he had come. He could see neither the

roof nor any other wall. The moonlight filtered into that vastness

only through the grilles of the cells, and was almost lost in the

darkness. Less keen eyes than his could scarcely have discerned the

dim gray patches that floated before each cell door.

 

Turning to the left, he moved swiftly and noiselessly along the line

of dungeons, his bare feet making no sound on the flags. He glanced

briefly into each dungeon as he passed it. They were all empty, but

locked. In some he caught the glimmer of naked white bones. These pits

were a relic of a grimmer age, constructed long ago when Belverus was

a fortress rather than a city. But evidently their more recent use had

been more extensive than the world guessed.

 

Ahead of him, presently, he saw the dim outline of a stair sloping

sharply upward, and knew it must be the stair he sought. Then he

whirled suddenly, crouching in the deep shadows at its foot.

 

Somewhere behind him something was moving-something bulky and stealthy

that padded on feet which were not human feet. He was looking down the

long row of cells, before each one of which lay a square of dim gray

light that was little more than a patch of less dense darkness. But he

saw something moving along these squares. What it was he could not

tell, but it was heavy and huge, and yet it moved with more than human

ease and swiftness. He glimpsed it as it moved across the squares of

gray, then lost it as it merged in the expanses of shadow between. It

was uncanny, in its stealthy advance, appearing and disappearing like

a blur of the vision.

 

He heard the bars rattle as it tried each door in turn. Now it had

reached the cell he had so recently quitted, and the door swung open

as it tugged. He saw a great bulky shape limned faintly and briefly in

the gray doorway, and then the thing had vanished into the dungeon.

Sweat beaded Conan’s face and hands. Now he knew why Tarascus had come

so subtly to his door, and later had fled so swiftly. The king had

unlocked his door, and, somewhere in these hellish pits, had opened a

cell or cage that held some grim monstrosity.

 

Now the thing was emerging from the cell and was again advancing up

the corridor, its misshapen head close to the ground. It paid no more

heed to the locked doors. It was smelling out his trail. He saw it

more plainly now; the gray light limned a giant anthropomorphic body,

but vaster of bulk and girth than any man. It went on two legs, though

it stooped forward, and it was grayish and shaggy, its thick coat shot

with silver. Its head was a grisly travesty of the human, its long

arms hung nearly to the ground.

 

Conan knew it at last-understood the meaning of those crushed and

broken bones in the dungeon, and recognized the haunter of the pits.

It was a gray ape, one of the grisly man-eaters from the forests that

wave on the mountainous eastern shores of the Sea of Vilayet. Half

mythical and altogether horrible, these apes were the goblins of

Hyborian legendry, and were in reality ogres of the natural world,

cannibals and murderers of the nighted forests.

 

He knew it scented his presence, for it was coming swiftly now,

rolling its barrel-like body rapidly along on its short, mighty bowed

legs. He cast a quick glance up the long stair, but knew that the

thing would be on his back before he could mount to the distant door.

He chose to meet it face to face.

 

Conan stepped out into the nearest square of moonlight, so as to have

all the advantage of illumination that he could; for the beast, he

knew, could see better than himself in the dark. Instantly the brute

saw him; its great yellow tusks gleamed in the shadows, but it made no

sound. Creatures of night and the silence, the gray apes of Vilayet

were voiceless. But in its dim, hideous features, which were a bestial

travesty of a human face, showed ghastly exultation.

 

Conan stood poised, watching the oncoming monster without a quiver. He

knew he must stake his life on one thrust; there would be no chance

for another; nor would there be time to strike and spring away. The

first blow must kill, and kill instantly, if he hoped to survive that

awful grapple. He swept his gaze over the short, squat throat, the

hairy swagbelly, and the mighty breast, swelling in giant arches like

twin shields. It must be the heart; better to risk the blade being

deflected by the heavy ribs than to strike in where a stroke was not

instantly fatal. With full realization of the odds, Conan matched his

speed of eye and hand and his muscular power against the brute might

and ferocity of the man-eater. He must meet the brute breast to

breast, strike a deathblow, and then trust to the ruggedness of his

frame to survive the instant of manhandling that was certain to be

his.

 

As the ape came rolling in on him, swinging wide its terrible arms, he

plunged in