The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗
- Author: Robert E. Howard
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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
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