The crowd hung breathlessly on the ringing play of shimmering steel. Gradually they came to sense the same fact. Yasunga, the giant Kushite who had known Amra long before, started a chant, which soon rose from hundreds of throats, until it seemed to the gasping, sweating Alvaro that the square shook with its throbbing thunder:
'Am-ral Am-ra, Am-ral'
The pulsing cry rose and rose until it boomed like the pounding of the waves. The driving rhythm shook the little Zingaran's normally icy nerve. With one hand, Alvaro fumbled behind him, beneath his short mantle of black velvet. There, thrust through his girdle, a slim, wavy-bladed Shemite dagger was thrust for use on such occasions as this. His fingers drew the blade from its slender scabbard and palmed the hilt, so that the wary blade lay against his forearm.
Then he disengaged and sprang back several paces. He stood panting and disheveled, while Conan's flashing blade slowed to a halt.
'Had enough, black swine of Zingara?’ the old wolf growled.
The dirk flashed in the torchlight as it whirled through the dark air toward Conan's bare throat. Without appearance of haste, Conan's left hand reached up and caught the dagger by its hilt, snatching it out of the air as it flew.
This amazing feat brought a roar from the throng. They had heard that the hillmen of fabulous eastern lands played the deadly game of plucking flying knives from the air, but never had they seen it done. None knew of the long years Conan had spent on the bleak steppes of Hyr-kania, and amidst the coasts and isles of the Vilayet Sea, and in the towering Himelian Mountains, as nomad chief, pirate on an inland sea, and mercenary warrior. In those years he had mastered the use of the deadly Hyrkanian bow, the keen Zuagir tulwar, the dismembering Zhaibar knife, and other Eastern weaponry.
The shock of the deed glazed Alvaro's eyes with horror. The air seemed to stifle him. He tore open the lace collar above his cuirass and stood uncertainly, as if he knew not what to do next. Tension grew taut as a bowstring.
Then - Conan gave him back his knife. It flashed through the air and sank to the hilt in Alvaro's bare throat. For a moment the Zingaran stood on wavering legs, with his face as pale as a dish of curds and blood trickling down over his gleaming cuirass. Then he fell with a clang to the cobbles.
Conan tossed his great sword up, caught it again, and sheathed it. The crowd went wild with a thunderous cry:
'Am-ra! Am-ra! Am-ra!'
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BLACK KRAKEN
The Kraken lives, that anciently arose
from seething primal slime,
In lands long since submerged by time,
Beneath the gray, endragoned sea.
— The Visions of Epemitreus
The Red Lion was three days out from the Barachan Isles when her people sighted the green galley.
It was dawn of the third day. Naked to the waist, with his heavy broadsword hanging at his side, Conan stood on the poop deck drinking deep of the clean salt wind. Spray had stiffened his mane and beard with salt. A sunrise of golden flame drenched the east with light and set the long, thin clouds afire. The brisk northeasterly trade wind sang in the carack's rigging and bellied out the broad sails above.
'Ho, Amra! Up with the dawn, eh?' boomed a deep voice. Conan turned to see Sigurd standing spraddle-legged at the rail, roaring with good humor. The wind ruffled his naming bush of beard and stung his apple-red cheeks to an even ruddier hue. It spread the wings of his billowing crimson cloak, which had once adorned the back of a pompous Zingaran admiral.
Conan grinned at the spectacle the bluff old Northman made. The golden thread that covered his cloak with embroidered arabesques was worn and tarnished, and several of the big, ornate ivory buttons were missing. A sash of many dashing colors, which bristled with the usual half -dozen jeweled dirks, bludgeons, and a huge scimitar with a notched blade, girdled Sigurd's massive belly. Under the vast cloak, the old Vanr wore a patched, torn white blouse, spotted with wine stains and gravy. It was open to the navel, and through the opening bristled the silver-shot red fur that thatched the Northman's chest. A gaudy scarlet kerchief was wound about his bald head, and glittering hoops of gold wobbled from each ear.
'Hah! By HeimdaTs horn and Tanifs veil, 'tis a morning for the very gods, eh, Lion?' he said.' 'Tis like wine to me thirsty guts to be at sea again with a good deck under me heels and a crew of rascally cutthroats ready at call to fill the nine seas with blood!'
'Aye,' growled Conan. 'It is a stout ship the king of Argos' gems got us, and as staunch a crew of rogues as ever I shipped with in the old days.'
He peered down into the waist, where the crew scrubbed the deck and performed other sailorly chores. The legends that burned with lurid light around the name of Amra the Lion had brought a full complement of seasoned sea-thieves, eager to share the glory and loot of Amra's venture into the dim West. They were a motley lot, the throng of men that milled and toiled in the waist with half-naked brown bodies, smelling of tar and sour wine, but the very cream of the pirates of the Barachas.
The largest group was composed of Argosseans, men of medium height and sturdy build, with brown or tawny hair. Mixed with these were a number of olive-skinned, black-browed Zingaran renegades. There were men of Ophir and Koth. There were a few swarthy, hook-nosed Shemites with blue-black hair and beards, and even a huge, brown-skinned, hawk-faced Stygian or two. There was a stocky, fair-haired Zaporoskan - Yakov, the bow-master. There was a black giant from jungled Kush, with the sunlight gleaming on his glossy hide - Yasunga, the navigator. There was a powerful, brown-skinned man with a curly black beard - Goram Singh of Vendhya, a land so far to the east and so little known that many Westerners thought it a mere fable. But, white or brown or black, they were veteran seamen all.
Sigurd fixed Conan with a keen blue eye. 'Now, what's the plan, mate? Fine words and resounding promises of glittering loot, but what is it we look for in the Western Ocean, and whither are we bound? So far we've seen naught but a few whales.'
Conan shrugged. 'Crom knows, not I! But I’ve heard men talk of lost continents and fabulous isles beyond the sunset. And from the hints the shade of Epemitreus let fall, and the counsels of King Ariostro's pack of glib-tongued star-watchers, I gather we just keep on the westward and watch for anything unlikely and odd. Devil take me, Northman, I hope we find the source of the Terror soon! This taste of sea life makes me hungry for a trifle of action. Peace is beautiful, but . . .' Conan eased his broadsword out of its scabbard and cut the air with a swish that could be heard above the sough of the wind.
Redbeard laughed with a deep chuckle that shook his paunch. He cocked a tufted eyebrow at the glowering Cimmerian.
'Ho ho, mate!' he snorted. 'So that's the way the wind lies, is it? Ye're still the cunning, black-hearted rascal I knew of old. When we've fought this shadowy foe, as we promised, shall we turn about for a bit of honest roguery? There were fat merchantmen tied up in Messantia's harbor, and 'twould be a fine joke to loot Argos's ships with the very ship their king furnished, would it not?'
Conan smiled a grim, cynical smile and clapped Sigurd on the shoulder. 'Same thieving old walrus, you are! No, I like not the taste of that.'
'Don't tell me that, after all these years, ye've turned honest!'