Conan the Hunter Part 6

The Lurker Below ----------------.

Conan grunted in disgust as he stepped on something wet, slimy, and hairy wriggling out from underneath his sandaled foot. He had been trudging for hours in the tunnels of the city's ancient sewer and was growing weary of wallowing knee-deep in the endless pools of reeking, filth-ridden ooze. He nearly gagged as a new, particularly vile odor a.s.saulted his nostrils, rising from the syrupy sludge he waded through.

He had thought his sense of smell had mercifully deserted him a few hours ago, but apparently it had not. Fortunately, the sewer system was either forgotten or simply unused in many areas, or his journey would have been even more unpleasant.

He looked along the ceiling of the tunnel he was in, hoping to catch sight of the faint ray of light he had seen toward the tunnel's end. A growing feeling that he had lost his way had begun gnawing at him. He had not seen light from the street's sewer grates for several hours, but he was certain that he had gone in the general direction of the palace.

At a juncture of three tunnels he had pa.s.sed over an hour ago, he had been unable to decide which branch to take. The one leading toward the palace had a very slight downward bend to it, which he found disturbing. Nevertheless, he had taken it, not being one to shy from the dark like a frightened child. As he followed the pa.s.sage, the almost nonexistent light had diminished to an inky blackness that even his keen eyes, adapted to the dark, could scarcely penetrate. He paused, realizing that the light he thought he had seen was actually some stone or rubble protruding from the wall, lighter in color than the others. By Crom, he had had enough of this! Turning around, he decided to go back to the juncture and take a different path.

Moving his hand along the wall for guidance, he began to retrace his steps. His fingers glided along some oddly shaped stonework. Curious, he probed the wall and was surprised when a piece of it came off easily in his hand. The fragment had rounded k.n.o.bs at one end, was jagged at the other, and was about as long and thick as... a man's forearm. He dropped the object in disgust, discovering that it was indeed an old arm-bone. Hastening, he continued to feel along the wall to find his way back up the pa.s.sage.

The hairs on the back of Conan's neck raised as a sickening revelation dawned on him: the whole wall was composed of the tightly packed bones of men and animals. Throwing caution aside, he rushed up the pa.s.sage, hindered slightly by thick muck sucking greedily at his feet. Now he knew also what he had smelled: the odor of fetid decay, the rotting stench of the dead. He was in a vast corridor of death.

As this realization dawned on him, he tripped over something damp and hairy and fell face-first into a stinking pool of sc.u.m. Spluttering, he stood up and regained his balance, wiping the sludge from his face. He heard a wet, sucking noise, and an unnatural, bubbling squeal sent a chill down his spine. He readied his sword just in time to make out a form of nightmarish horror rising from the ooze.

The beast was huge; its heaving, slime-coated bulk filled the entire tunnel. s...o...b..ring and squealing obscenely, it splashed toward Conan.

He moved back, trying to stay out of its reach. He could get only a vague idea of its form: a lumpy, mushroom-shaped body and a dozen or so long tentacles, each one hairy on top but covered with spongy, octopus-like suckers on its underside. Without warning, one of the tentacles lashed out like a whip. Conan avoided its sweep by leaping straight into the air. Unfortunately, he had misjudged the height of the tunnel, and his head smashed forcefully into the ceiling, bringing chunks of rock and bone down on top of him. Momentarily stunned, he stood motionless in the tunnel while a few more of the writhing tentacles coiled tightly around him, seizing his leg and waist in a viselike grip.

Meanwhile, the unstable ceiling had continued collapsing around him, cras.h.i.+ng down in an avalanche of stones and skeletal remains. Out of the corner of his eye, Conan saw a thin ray of light from above piercing the darkness that surrounded him. Evidently he was closer to the surface than he thought, for the cave-in had actually exposed the tunnel to the sun from above, albeit only faintly.

The ray of light served to illuminate the corridor enough for Conan to see the freakish monstrosity holding him in its deadly grip. Clumps of matted hair, in various sickly hues of ochre, thatched its mottled hide, covering wrinkled, pebbly, pinkish-white skin. Revolting growths of green mold sprouted from its skin, like noxious boils. The noisome creature's central toothless maw, wide enough to swallow a man whole, made obscene s...o...b..ring noises and drooled an unspeakably putrescent sludge.

The bristly tentacle around Conan's waist flexed, abruptly squeezing him with crus.h.i.+ng force. The constriction shoved the breath out of his lungs, and spongy suckers on the tentacle's underside slurped at his skin like hundreds of greedy, round leeches. The circulation in his left leg was fading quickly as the tentacle continued to clench with increasing pressure. Conan's head cleared slightly from the beating taken by the crumbling ceiling above, and with his sword, he chopped viciously at the tentacle encircling his waist. The blade bit deep, nearly shearing through. Howling, the beast withdrew the injured member and yanked unexpectedly at Conan's leg.

Pulled off balance, the Cimmerian went down again, striking the back of his head solidly on the hard stone floor. Had his bull neck not craned forward at the last instant, his skull would have been crushed like an eggsh.e.l.l against the solid rock. His sword was jarred from his grasp; he groped for it in the dim light while thras.h.i.+ng and kicking at the tentacle pulverizing his leg.

The beast still did not release him, but instead began dragging him to its greedily awaiting mouth. Stringy droplets of black ichor fell from its partially open maw, sizzling and smoking where they struck the floor. As it maneuvered Conan nearer, heavy folds of skin in the center of its body rolled back, revealing a single malevolent dark-red eye, larger than Conan's head. The glistening orb bulged grotesquely as its slitted black pupil stared at the Cimmerian, reflecting some demonic intelligence.

Conan groped desperately for his sword but it lay just beyond his fingertips. Bracing himself against the wall with his free leg, he tried futilely to prevent the beast from dragging him further toward its slavering orifice. He groped on the floor for fingerholds, but his hands found only the loose stones and debris that had fallen from the ceiling. Desperate, he seized a larger stone with both hands and heaved it at the beast's exposed eye, his thickly muscled arms exerting all the force that he could bring to bear. The missile struck the great eye with a sickening wet splat, punching into the creature's soft innards.

Mortally wounded, it began convulsing, its limbs flailing as it writhed in throes of agony.

However, it did not release Conan's trapped leg, but rather, increased the awesome pressure until he felt his bones being ground to powder. It raised Conan up and slammed him into the wall of the tunnel, then pounded him against the floor until the very ground around the barbarian was shaking with the beast's violent, dying spasms. More of the ceiling came loose, and tons of dirt, rock, and bones dumped onto the beast until it moved no more. The limb pinning Conan's leg relaxed, its deadly coils loosened.

Breathing raggedly, Conan dragged himself away from the dead, grisly brute that had nearly slain him. His leg was miraculously unbroken; he could feel the painful tingle of its returning circulation. The last cave-in had permitted more light to s.h.i.+ne into the tunnel. He could see hundreds of oozing, red rings around his waist and leg, where the suckers had been leeching his blood. Ugly burns from the tentacles'

abrasive bristles had raised up all over his flesh, and his waist ached where he had nearly been squeezed in half. A torturer's rack would have been kinder to his body than the sewer's unnatural man-eater. Every inch of him felt bruised and wracked by the severe beating he had taken, the pounding against the tunnel walls as if he were a human bludgeon.

Conan retrieved his sword and got slowly to his feet, limping. Peering upward, he could see that a shaft had been opened by the collapsing ceiling, wide enough for him to climb to the surface. Miraculously, the roof had not caved in completely, entombing him in these reeking sewers with the lurking horror he had just escaped. The original foundation of the sewers had held fast. Conan estimated that the climb up was at least eighty or ninety feet, but for a Cimmerian hill-man, such an ascent would be leisurely. In his youth, he had climbed steeper mountains with fewer footholds.

Moving cautiously to avoid pulling down more of the roof, Conan ascended, trusting to his questionable luck that there would be no guards standing by at the surface. The battle had raised enough of a commotion for someone above to have heard it. His battered body was in poor shape to get involved in a pitched battle, but his animal-like-vitality was already preparing him for whatever would happen next. Conan was rapidly recovering from an experience that would have rendered most men dead, mad, or in shock for days.

The climb took longer than he had antic.i.p.ated. His progress was impeded by the rocks' instability, and several times he had slipped backward a few feet before regaining a hold. His tortured body was slow to respond to the further demands he was making of it. At last his perseverance was rewarded and he reached the safe ground of the surface. He immediately noticed that the sun was much lower in the sky than he would have believed. His sense of time had somehow failed him in the sewer tunnels; wandering through them must have taken nearly half the day. His sense of direction had served him better; the palace was only a few hundred paces away. He had managed to surface in one of the many expansive gardens that surrounded the palace. Although the palace gates were heavily guarded, and the entrance to the palace barred, no guards patrolled the gardens. Fate had treated him kindly on his latest roll of the dice.

Instinctively, he left the newly made crater now marking the garden he was in and moved into a nearby thicket of carefully trimmed needle-trees. His probing eyes searched the area from his new vantage point, seeking any sign that his unexpected appearance had been discovered. All was quiet; no hordes of guards came rus.h.i.+ng out into the palace grounds. Far away, he could see a few guards milling around the palace's bronze front door.

Several hundred paces in the opposite direction were the outer palace walls, immense stone bulwarks wide enough for two men to walk on side by side, and easily thrice Conan's height. Set into the walls, stout, crudely constructed iron gates hung on ma.s.sive hinges, flanked by b.u.t.tresses of stone for reinforcement. The walls and gates had been built generations ago, beyond the memory of any loremaster or dusty history book. Many a battering ram had splintered like a twig against this impressive portal. The walls were made of a curious stone that had resisted the bombardment of countless missiles, launched by the ballista of would-be conquerors.

Conan scowled with the realization that he was trapped behind the walls. He must find a place to conceal himself until nightfall, when he could slip over them unseen. His body was still covered with the drying dirt and muck from the sewer below, effectively camouflaging him.

Although he longed to rinse the slime off himself, he would wait for a more opportune time.

His eyes continued their surveillance of the palace grounds, until he saw his chance for concealment. A huge cart stood unattended not fifty paces from the thicket he was crouching in. The cart was loaded with hay, no doubt destined for the royal stables. He could slip into it, lodge beneath the cover of the hay, and peer out between the wooden slats of the cart's walls, where he would have a perfect view of the palace's front door. The cart was sitting less than five feet from the path, affording a perfect view of anyone who might come along. Conan would watch from here. Maybe Ha.s.sem had not yet arrived to collect his reward. Now he was even angrier than before with the Zamoran sc.u.m, who was indirectly responsible for his many recent brushes with death.

With as much stealth as he could muster, Conan darted for the cart, hunching low to avoid being noticed by the guards at the palace door.

He made a dive and quickly burrowed into the straw, making certain it covered him completely. Grateful for the opportunity to rest, he began his silent vigil of the palace doors.

Moments after he settled in, the outer iron gates swung open to admit a patrol of city guardsmen, followed by several richly garbed priests of Mitra. The strange party moved with haste along the path to the palace doors, where they were admitted immediately. A messenger mounted on a fleet-footed Aquilonian steed galloped out of the doors on some urgent errand. Conan sensed that something was afoot in the palace; he had never seen priests in such a hurry.

As if confirming his conjecture, another pair of priests in strange, dark green robes, adorned with symbols that Conan did not recognize, came bustling out of the palace, speaking to each other with excited gesturing. As they neared the outer gates, they were nearly trampled by a regally attired lone man riding a tall black horse. His deep red cape flapped in his wake like a banner in a strong breeze. He wore a polished breastplate with chain mail sleeves, and dark leather breeches. Polished metal studded his boots, and he gripped the horse's reins firmly in his mailed hands. At his side was a thin, long-bladed sword with an elaborate hilt. He wore no helm, and his hair was streaked with gray and white. The crest on his breastplate was identical to the crest painted on the city guards' s.h.i.+elds.

The mailed rider shoved the priests aside rudely and trotted along the path toward the palace doors. Conan took an instant dislike to this man, though he had never met him face-to-face. After the haughty warrior had ridden inside, Conan continued monitoring the gates. For the next few hours, traffic moved along the path, but nothing of any importance as far as he could tell. Daylight was waning, and the sky was beginning to darken as dusk approached.

Just as Conan began to think that Ha.s.sem would not show, he looked along the path for one last time, and drew in a sharp breath. Marching through the gates was a procession of guards, led by none other than Captain Salvorus. Next to Salvorus walked the object of Conan's hunt, the treacherous Ha.s.sem. His sword-arm itched to bury a few feet of steel in the worm's guts, but he was in no position to take on the whole patrol right in front of the palace. He had waited this long; he was certain that Ha.s.sem would have to leave soon, and when he did, Conan would follow him.

Then a new idea struck Conan. If he wore the helmeted costume of a city guard, he could pa.s.s freely through the gates and follow Ha.s.sem without being noticed or stopped. The only problem would lie in obtaining a uniform large enough to fit him properly. The sky had begun to darken, casting shadows over the gardens. Conan slid carefully out of the cart and crawled underneath it, crouching behind the wheel closest to the path. After a brief wait, a small patrol came through the gates, but the guard at the rear was too short.

Conan continued to wait, hoping that a taller guard would pa.s.s by. He was startled by a movement out of the corner of his eye. A man leading a horse was approaching the cart. From the look of his mud-stained clothes, Conan guessed that he was a gardener, or a grounds keeper of some kind. The man was tall and strongly built, much like the Cimmerian. He wore a hillman's simple cloth headdress, designed to block the sun's sweltering rays. Grinning, Conan altered his plan.

After his messy trip through the sewers, he looked more like a gardener than a guard, anyway.

After the gardener reached the cart, he began to fasten the horse's harness to the crossbar. His back was to the crouching barbarian, who remained unseen in the encroaching darkness of evening. Conan stepped quietly out from underneath the cart and grabbed the hapless man from behind, clamping one hand over the fellow's mouth to stifle any cries that would alert the palace guards. Conan bore him down to the ground, intending to knock him senseless, but the gardener twisted nimbly aside, and it was Conan's head that crashed into the dirt, face first.

The gardener jumped up and began yelling loudly and frantically to the guards who stood by the palace doors.

"Crom!" Conan cursed, sputtering through a mouthful of turf. He spat, then hooked an arm around the screaming man's leg, pulling him heavily to the ground. The gardener's jaw struck the crossbar of the cart as he fell, stunned. So much for stealth, Conan thought, as he got to his feet and readied his blade for the charge of the palace guards who hastened toward him. The horse, bound to the cart's crossbar, bolted in sudden terror straight for the guards. A corner of the cart caught Conan painfully on his shoulder, jarring his sword out of his hand and nearly knocking him down again. The Cimmerian's weight stopped the cart as the horse's harness-strap slid off the crossbar.

Reaching for his fallen sword, Conan accidentally placed his foot in one of the harness's loops. The slack in the strap was taken up instantly by the bolting horse, tightening the loop around Conan's ankle and pulling him unceremoniously off his feet. "Belial blast you, beast!" he cursed, just before the wind was knocked out of him by his sudden impact with the turf. Giving up hope of retrieving his sword, he bent all his strength to the seemingly hopeless task of freeing his ankle from the strap and the fleeing horse.

As the animal gained speed, it dragged the barbarian through a punis.h.i.+ng gauntlet of b.u.mps, rocks, and bushes, galloping madly all the while through the palace gardens. Conan's ankle was twisted brutally; he felt as if his foot was about to be torn from his leg. The Cimmerian knew that even he could not take this kind of abuse for long. He groped frantically for the strap while trying desperately to find a way out of his predicament. Directly ahead, he saw a row of widely s.p.a.ced trees.

Instead of veering off, the charging stallion plunged right through one of the gaps.

Twisting violently, Conan extended his arms and locked them in a death grip around the trunk of a tree, bracing himself for the shock. The horse came to a sudden stop, causing every joint in the Cimmerian's body to scream at once as his sinews and bones were pitted against those of the horse in a hopelessly unbalanced contest. Conan would have been torn to pieces by the horse's momentum had the frayed leather strap not snapped first.

Conan slumped to the ground, exhausted. His arms were still locked around the tree trunk; he could not loosen his grip. Summoning his last reserves of strength, he let go and raised himself unsteadily to his feet, staggering and limping on his twisted ankle, which refused to support his full weight. Weaving dizzily, he tried to move back to the cart, where his sword still lay. His vision swam in a blurring red haze, which he dimly realized was blood streaming down into his eyes from his torn scalp.

Wiping at his face, he cleared his sight just in time to see the enraged gardener move menacingly toward him with clenched fists. Conan put an arm up to ward off the attack, but his limbs felt heavier than blocks of granite, and his reflexes were too slow. The gardener raised a mallet-like fist and hammered it squarely into Conan's face. Conan felt his jaws slam shut and his neck snap back as his head rocked from the incredible force of the blow. He fell sprawling onto the hard ground, his thoughts fading away into darkness.

Six.

Treason and Poison ------------------.

In Valtresca's antechamber at the palace, Ha.s.sem sat next to a heavy wooden door, in an elaborately carved chair. He sweated nervously while Valtresca paced before him, red-faced with anger, ranting.

"Ha.s.sem, you greedy fool! I told you to peddle those trinkets in Shadizar, where they could not be traced-not in this city! Instead, you sell one of the bracelets to this barbarian, and try to collect the reward without my finding out about it. You told me you would leave the city two nights ago. I know how treacherous you thieving Zamorans can be, but I did not expect your greed to overcome your intelligence."

"Honored General, you misinterpret my motives," Ha.s.sem began, having just hatched a plan to get himself out of his current predicament. He had planned to leave last night for Zamora, but unforeseen, the city gates had been closed to trap the Cimmerian, and he had been told by Salvorus to collect his reward the next day, at the palace. Clearing his throat, he steadied his voice. "I have provided you with a scapegoat-the foreigner Conan. Everyone believes he is guilty, even your stalwart do-gooder, Captain Salvorus. The barbarian has no alibi; I have already made certain that he would be the perfect one to blame for the crime. Without him, the death of the princess would remain unsolved; a stain on your spotless record, a debt to Eldran that you could never truly repay. Surely the reward money is the least you would give me for this service before I return to Shadizar. You are right, of course. I am not foolish enough to try to trick you. I thought you would appreciate this final brush stroke on the plan you have painted so masterfully."

Valtresca's frown disappeared, and he began to chuckle. "Ha.s.sem, you are amusing, even when you lie. I admire your resourcefulness, but I caution you to be more careful of what you do in the future, without first consulting your betters-you will live longer."

The General ceased chuckling, walked over to a tall oak cabinet with crystal doors, and removed a dusty bottle of wine and two ornately embellished silver wine goblets. From a chest next to the cabinet, he took a small pouch. "We need discuss this no further. I am satisfied.

Let us enjoy a goblet of the finest wine of Kyros and raise a toast to the death of this Cimmerian rogue. You have done the city a great service, and the king would express his grat.i.tude personally were he in better spirits today." Eyes glinting cruelly with sarcasm, he poured the wine sparingly into each goblet, handing one to Ha.s.sem.