A roar of excitement roused the buccaneer from his somber thought: "By Frigga's teats and Shaitan's fiery member!"
Conan grinned, knowing the voice of Sigurd the Vanir. An instant later, a red-bearded face, flushed with excitement, thrust into his doorway. Before either could speak, Conan knew the cause without words. The boom of taut canvas and the song of wind in the rigging came to his ears, and the cabin tilted as the ship heeled. The wind had come at last.
And what a wind! For two days and a night the Wastrel, stripped to a storm foresail, rode the scudding waves, driven by one of the lusty simooms that caused the mariners of the Hyborian Age to avoid these uncharted seas.
When the wind fell, the Wastrel dropped anchor in a cove on the coast of the main continent. Just where on that coast, Conan did not know, because a heavy overcast had hidden the sun and the stars during this leg of their voyage. Conan knew that they had sailed in a generally easterly direction. From the jungled appearance of the coast, he knew that they were south of the meadowlands of Shem; but whether they had made a landfall in Stygia, or in the kingdom of Kush, or in the little-known black countries still further south, remained to be seen.
"A chancy-looking place, my Captain," grumbled Zeltran the mate. "Where is it we might be?"
"The devil knows and the devil cares," grunted Conan. "The main thing is to find water; the butts are nigh empty and full of slime. Pick me a landing party, and let's be out with barrels. Jump to it!"
Zeltran scurried to the main deck to summon all hands. As the party assembled and swung down on lines to the longboat, Sigurd cast a frowning glance at the shoreline and grumbled one of his cosmopolitan curses. The Vanir had belted a huge leathern baldric across his matted chest.
"What's that, man?" demanded Conan.
Sigurd shrugged. "Maybe naught, shipmate; but this land looks uncommon like the coasts or Kush."
"Well, what of it? We were bound to hit Kush if we kept on to eastward."
"If so it be, these lands are no safe haven for honest mariners. The black devils would as lief eat a man as give him the time of day. And there's tales of a nation of warrior women in the interior, fiercer fighters than the men even."
Conan stared across the water to where the longboat labored shoreward. "Maybe so, but water we must have, and our victuals are none too ample. When our stores are full, well steer north for Kordava again."
Chapter Ten: THE BLACK COAST
The harbor into which they had sailed lay at the mouth of a small, sluggish river, whose banks were thickly grown with tall, slender palms and heavy underbrush. The longboat slowed in the shallows, and several buccaneers clambered overboard to drag it to safety higher up on the beach. Then, while archers mounted guard, the party trooped up to the beach to river mouth with empty casks. They continued on up the banks of the river, out of sight, stopping betimes to taste the water to see if they had reached the place where it was no longer brackish.
Conan, who had come ashore with the second boatload, stood frowning on the beach with mighty arms folded on his bare chest. The configuration of the river mouth seemed naggingly familiar, and the name of the Zikamba River came unbidden to his mind. Either he had once seen this stretch of coast depicted on a chart, or he had actually touched here during his voyages with Belit, years before. The expression on Conan's grim, scarred features softened as he thought of his years with Belit at his side and a horde of howling black corsairs at his back. Belit … languorous, tawny panther of a woman … Belit whose eyes were like dark stars … his first and greatest love…
With the swiftness of a tropical storm, a screaming mob of naked blacks burst from the underbrush, their ebony bodies gleaming through beads, plumes, and war paint. Scraps of wild-animal skin girded their loins, and their hands brandished feather-tufted spears.
With a startled oath, Conan sprang from his resting place, whipping out his cutlass with a rasp of steel on leather and bellowing:
"To me, you buccaneer dogs! To arms! To me, and yard!"
The leader of the black warriors was a giant, muscled like a statue of a gladiator hewn from gleaming black marble. Like the rest, he was naked but for a leopard-skin loincloth and a few beads and bangles. A crown of aigrettes nodded above his head. Intelligent black eyes looked out of a clean-lined face of majestic dignity.
In fact, to Conan's hasty glance, he looked oddly familiar. But Conan was too busy to search his memory. He sprinted up the slope of the beach, the sun flashing on the blade of his cutlass, to stand before his swiftly gathering crew and face the pelting charge of the black warriors.
Suddenly the plumed warrior in the lead halted, threw out his long, powerful arms, and bellowed: "Simamani, wote!"
This command brought the charging mob to a halt … all but one man, who lunged past the leader, whipped back his arm, and started to hurl a keen-bladed assegai at Conan. His arm had started to lash forward when, moving with the speed of a striking adder, the leader brought his hardwood kirri smashing down on the warrior's head. The victim sprawled on the yellow sand, out cold.
Conan shouted to his men to hold their attack. For a long moment the two groups of armed men confronted each other, with javelins poised and arrows knocked.
Conan and the black giant stood panting, face to face in taut silence. Then the black war chiefs white teeth flashed in a grin.
"Conan!" he said in the Hyrkanian tongue, "Have you forgotten an old comrade?"
As the other spoke, Conan's memory awoke. "Juma! By Crom and Mitra, Juma!" he roared.
Dropping his cutlass, he sprang forward to hug the laughing black in his powerful arms. The buccaneers looked on in amazement as the two giants stood toe to toe, thwacking each other on the back and arms and shoulders with affectionate slaps and punches.
Years before, Conan had served in the legions of King Yildiz of Turan, far to the east. Juma the Kushite had been a fellow-mercenary. They had served together on an ill-fated expedition to farther Hyrkania, as escort for one of King Yildiz's daughters on her way to wed a nomad princeling of the steppes.
"Do you remember that fight in the snows of the Talakmas?" demanded Juma. "And that ugly little god-king, what was his name? Jalung Thongpa or something."
"Aye! And the way that ugly green idol of the demon-king Yama, as tall as a house, came to life and squashed his only begotten son like a bug!" Conan replied with gusto. "Crom, those were good days! But what in the name of nine scarlet hells are you doing here? And how did you become leader of these warriors?"
Juma laughed. "Where should a black warrior be, if not on the Black Coast? And where should a born Kushite go home to, if not to Kush? But I could ask the same of you, Conan. Since when did you become a pirate?"
Conan shrugged. "A man must live. Besides, I am no pirate, but a lawful privateer with letters of marque from the crown of Zingara. Not that … ahem … there's much difference between the two, come to think of it. But tell me of your adventures. How came you to leave Turan?"
"I am used to savanna and jungle, Conan; no native of the frozen North like you. Among other things, I got tired of freezing off my privates every Turanian winter. Besides, once you had drifted west, there were no more adventures. I had a hankering to see a palm tree once again and to tumble a plump black wench under the hibiscus bushes. So I resigned my commission, drifted south to the black kingdoms, and became a king myself!"
"King, eh?" grunted Conan. "King of what? I didn't know there was anything down here but bands of bare-arsed savages."