Next morning Conan rode out alongside his skirmishers. He made a hand sign to Zarkabaal, and led them as they all fanned out ahead… including Valeria, who cast a meaningful look over her shoulder at him as she legged her horse up to a trot.
He smiled wryly to himself.
Would that look was for me, and not the gold!
Conan turned his horse east, away from the rest. There was higher ground that way, and riding into the sun meant it would be harder for anyone else to see where he was going. Now and then he’d take shelter, usually behind a big thick-trunked baobab tree with its puffy writhing branches that always made him think the plant had caught leprosy. A swift climb and a long look assured him he wasn’t being followed.
By anything human, at least, he thought.
That thought gained meaning when several lions got to their feet and watched him pass. As he looked over his shoulder, one of them licked its chops with a large red tongue. It stared at him and his horse, sighed, and slumped down in the shade of a termite mound where it rolled on its back for a nap, great paws in the air. More often they hunted in the dusk and dawn. Vultures squabbling over bones not far away were probably cleaning up the remains of the morning’s repast.
It seems unnatural, big cats hunting in packs like wolves, he thought. Well, this isn’t Cimmeria.
As he rode further, his horse snorted a warning—not frightened but alert. He came over a rise and saw a stretch of marsh where run-off from the hills to the east left a big pond edged by reeds. Two elephants were wading through the wetland, using trunks to gather up water-growth and stuff it into their mouths, flapping their huge fan-shaped ears against the clouds of biting insects they stirred up.
A hippo floated in the pond, eyes and swiveling ears showing on its massive square head like those of a gigantic frog. It snorted a spray of breath from its nostrils. Along the shore various antelope bent their heads to the water; they moved aside as he rode down through the thickening belt of trees and brush.
Conan hefted his bow, kept an arrow on the string, and his eyes roving as his mount bent its head and slurped up the muddy liquid. He didn’t stay longer than he had to. Nor did any of the game animals, except the ones like the elephant and hippo and some of the massive black buffalo standing contentedly up to their bellies in the marsh.
They don’t have to worry about lurking predators—the reverse, if anything.
It would be scant consolation that a beast wasn’t going to eat you after it gored you full of holes, bit you in half, or squashed you to a pulp underfoot.
“Sets us in our place, eh, Caithaona?” he said, using the Cimmerian name he’d bestowed on his mount. It meant “Steed of Battle,” and he slapped its neck.
* * *
A half hour had passed and he was considerably higher—high enough that the air had gone from very hot to simply hot. Large bare rocks blocked his view at times, and below him the rolling tawny-green, tree-speckled plain stretched to the limit of sight, with an occasional glint of water or a trailing dust-cloud from a moving herd.
No human settlements were in sight. War had passed over these territories long ago, when the Stygians came south of the deserts to found Sukhmet. Ever since, their hand had lain heavily on the land, with a general policy of reducing the population back down to helpless harmlessness whenever it showed signs of growing. They maintained control by enslaving and exporting, or slaughtering in the name of Set, or some combination of the two.
Sometimes very convenient plagues broke out, too, which mysteriously bypassed the Stygians. They hadn’t done that recently, though, because after the first few times counter-plagues had launched right back at them. Proof that the magicians and deities of the surrounding black kingdoms were not to be ignored, either.
Sometimes hillocks of bare rocks balanced on each other in unearthly looking columns of weathered granite, or heaped up like a pile of monstrous gravel. Whenever there was any soil a dense tree cover grew, laced together with vines. Conan’s target was a trident of stone that had been visible for miles, and whose rocks were a distinctive blushing pink.
Reaching the formation, he tied his horse to a convenient bush close to a trickle of water, but not too tightly lest some lion or leopard happen by. Then he slung bow and quiver over his shoulder by their belts, with the arrows and the bow pointing to the right, and threw the saddlebags over his left shoulder. Then he began to climb.
He grinned as he felt the weight in the bags, sixty or seventy pounds and enough to make him grunt a little. Gold wasn’t bulky, but it was heavy, heavier than lead. It was probably imagination that made this weight feel fraught with possibilities, rather than just burdensome. Sweat was… different, somehow, when he shed it carrying a treasure won at the sword’s edge, to a hiding-place only he would know.
Conan took the slope carefully—he wasn’t trying to reach the top, just to find a good spot while memorizing the way he came. That part wasn’t difficult. He’d always had a good eye for ground. The footing beneath him was harder; he’d rarely met this sort of bare rock-on-rock country before, even in Cimmeria’s stony hills. He tested each footfall before transferring his weight. At last he came to a ledge with a sheer eight-foot inner edge, and another narrow shelf above that.
Further up…
“Lir and Manannán mac Lir!” he swore in delight.
Above him two titanic slabs rested against each other. Where they met was a lopsided triangle of blackness, twenty paces wide at the base and half that tall. It looked to go back some distance into the hillside, which was perfect.
Backing off to the outer edge of the ledge, Conan cautiously tossed the saddlebags up onto the next surface. The bags were tough, thick leather of some sort, which treated differently would have made a good shield. They landed up above with a dull thud, well to one side. That way he wouldn’t unintentionally grab for a handhold, and get the bags instead.
There was only room for four paces between him and the near-vertical eight-foot rise, and he considered the rock carefully—he was familiar with this sort of terrain. Taking two quick strides, he sank down into a crouch and leapt. His foot landed on a faint ridge four feet up, and his hands slapped down on the sloping edge, where the rock was granite-slick but rippled by wear. He didn’t push much on the foot, but it steadied him while he clamped his fingers on the rock and did a quick heave.
That left him crouching before the entrance to the…
Cave! he thought exultantly. That was perfect. It is a cave.
The saddlebags weren’t entirely full of gold. He pulled a torch out of one, a length of ironwood with a splintered end bound in cord soaked in the black liquid that seeped out of the ground around here—he’d seen it in the east, too, around the Sea of Vilayet. Sometimes seepages like that caught fire, and burned eternally.
Checking the saddlebag, he confirmed that he had a second torch, as well. Pulling flint, steel, and a pinch of dried moss from the little pouch at his belt, he used them and blew cautiously. The moss caught, and he moved the first torch closer, moving the tarred, frayed edges of the cord into the small flame. It wavered as he breathed on it and caught, blue flames spreading over the surface of the soaked rope, and then adding yellow and red as it caught in earnest.
With a grunt of satisfaction he slipped the flint and steel back into their pouch and pulled his belt around so that his sword hung in its usual place. Lighting a fire this way was a skill his father the blacksmith had taught him. More often than not, Conan’s mother had to come and get a coal from the forge and carry it to the hearth. Valeria was the same. She couldn’t light a campfire even with a bucket of charcoal already blazing.
That was less of a disadvantage on shipboard.
I can’t seem to stop thinking about her, Conan mused. Damned inconvenient. He shook his head to clear it. Now to work. Taking the blazing torch in his left hand, he drew his sword with his right. It wasn’t impossible that men might use this cave, and was fairly likely that something else—perhaps even more dangerous—was lairing-up in there.
The ruddy light cast flickering shadows above and around him as he warily followed the downward-sloping tunnel. There was soot on the rock overhead, but it was faded and ancient. The air was dry and there was no water seepage that he could see. That meant an age and more. Humans—or something that needed fire for light—had come this way, but not for a very long time.
Better and better, he thought. Not hard to reach, but long odds that anyone will stumble across it.
Sunlight faded away behind him, particularly after he went through a narrow spot that bent sharply rightward. Then the floor sloped up again, into the rocky mass of the hill, and for a stretch of yards he had to bend nearly double before things opened out again.
After a while he noticed something on the walls, and halted with a grunt of interest, raising the torch.
There were paintings, ones that skillfully used the colors and natural ridges and bulges of the stone, yet in no style or manner that he’d seen in all his travels. Scenes of the hunt: tiny stick-figures with bows and javelins hunting antelope, or lions, or once an elephant with upreared trunk in a swamp. Various animals, including black-and-white spotted cattle shown with loving care.
There were depictions of war and ceremony; battles where short red-colored bowmen fought taller, darker figures with almond-shaped hide shields and broad-bladed spears and axes. Or the bowmen and spearmen together battling monsters—chimeras of man and beast, or men with the heads of cobras. Those might be symbolic representations of Stygians, or they might be the actual serpent-men told of in the oldest tales, from the nightmare times before the oceans drank Atlantis and the dreaming cities.
These gave way to scenes of dance, or of sacrifice, offerings to the gods of cattle and goats and sheep, or massed ranks raising spears in tribute to a larger, more elaborately decorated figure standing above them on a rock. That might be a general, or some great king… or a god, or a combination of those.
All of it looked very old, even older than the last of the torch-soot.
The tunnel didn’t branch, though he could see no signs of tool-marks on the walls. At last it opened out into a cavern, smoothly floored in sand. Conan lifted the torch high—it was still burning well, though he’d light the second for the return journey. He realized that for once since landing on the coast of Shem, he was decently cool. There was a springlike temperature that spoke of the bones of Earth, far from the blazing sun above.
Metal glinted ahead, across the cavern. He stiffened and his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword, but the glint was unmoving. Conan moved closer in a wary crouch, sword ready; then he straightened as the circle of torchlight brought what backed against that wall clearer and clearer.
This wasn’t just a cave: it was a tomb.
A king’s tomb, at that, he thought.
The throne was a massive affair of carved ivory and ebony, backed by two crossed tusks larger than any he’d ever seen before. The figure seated there was desiccated, but naturally so, not the elaborate mummification the Stygians practiced. It was near-naked, so the great wound in the torso that had killed him still showed. The body must have been near-empty of blood even before it was brought here to its final resting-place.
Across the dead king’s thighs rested a spear with an ironwood haft that even Conan would have found as heavy as he could handle. The bowed head bore something that was not quite a crown such as he’d seen northern kings wear. More of a golden diadem, studded with polished, uncut gems in barbaric abundance, and the remains of tall bird plumes. Before his feet were scattered treasures—rusted weapons, tattered shields, more ivory, jewels, a heaped dusty store combined with things that might have been cloth or ordinary wood before they decayed to dust.
Nothing had been attacked by animals or birds or insects.
The throne was a massive affair of carved ivory and ebony.
That is not natural, he thought with a prickle along his spine.
The tall surface behind the throne bore more of the vivid ancient tales of battle and wild faring, and at their center a massive picture of what he was certain was the dead king himself, spear and shield held aloft over his head. The air bore no scent of decay, only a quiet scent of…
Ancientness, he thought.
As he drew nearer, Conan felt a pressure—not a hostile one, but an alien and uncompromising soul-voice.
Leave, it said. Touch nothing, and leave.
The Cimmerian drew himself up, and raised his sword in salute.
“Great King, sovereign and warrior, I will touch nothing of yours. I hail you, for I too am a warrior, and I offer this tribute, for your leave and protection.” He went to one knee and laid down the saddlebags. From within he pulled one of the palm-sized gold ingots and placed it among the other treasures.
There was a moment of echoing quiet.
Then the feeling returned, redoubled—that he should go—but this time it was a warning, like a battle-comrade’s shout.
Behind you!
There were things it was folly to ignore.
He inclined his head again and turned to retrace his steps, dropping the saddlebags just outside the entranceway to the cavern chamber. From this side he could see something over the natural arch he hadn’t noted before: a huge painted hand, raised palm-out.
Conan paused only to pull out and light the second torch, and then retraced his steps, this time faster than he’d come.
