A mischievous grin lighted Juma's ebony features.
"That's what they are … or, at least, that's what they were before Juma came to teach them the arts of civilized war." Juma turned his head and spoke to his men, who were fidgeting behind him as their leader conversed with the strange chief in a language they did not understand. "Rahisil"
The Blacks relaxed and sat down on the sand where they stood. Behind Conan, the buccaneers sat down likewise, though keeping a wary eye on the blacks. Juma resumed:
"I found my birth-tribe engaged in an old feud with a neighboring tribe. We conquered the other tribe and absorbed it, and I became war chief. Then we conquered two other tribes, and I became war prince. Now I am ruler of all this coast for fifty leagues, and we are on the way to becoming a nation. I even plan to build a proper capital city, when I get around to it."
"Hell's blood!" said Conan. "You've learned more from this so-called civilization than ever have I. At least, you've risen further in the world. Good luck to you! When your bully-boys came charging out of the brush, I thought the gods had tired of playing with us and were going to sweep us off the board to lay down a new set of pieces. We landed here for water, as we have just lain becalmed off a damned island full of ghost snakes and walking statues."
"You shall have enough water to float your ship in," Juma promised, "and once you have taken aboard all you need, you shall all be my guests at my village this night. Well have a feast that will leave you staggering. I have a new crop of banana wine that ought to satisfy even your thirst!"
That night, most of Conan's crew sprawled on rattan mats in Juma's village of Kulalo, leaving a skeleton crew aboard the Wastrel. Kulalo —actually a sizable town— was a triple ring of conical huts of bamboo and thatch, sheltered behind a tall palisade and a thorn-bush boma.
A huge pit was dug in the open space at the heart of the town. This pit was filled with firewood and bracketed with huge spits, on which beeves, pigs, and antelope turned sizzling. Carved wooden bowls of sweetish, deceptively bland-tasting banana wine were passed from hand to hand. While black musicians beat drums in complex rhythms, fingered flutes, and plucked native lyres, young black women, clad only in a few beads and bangles, danced before the orange flames, clapping hands and shouting in chorus as they performed elaborate evolutions that would not have disgraced an emperor's troupe of dancing girls.
The sailors gorged on wild pig, millet cakes sweetened with sorghum syrup, and mountains of lush ripe fruit.
Sigurd's men joined Conan's party at the feast. The hearty, noisy scene fascinated the Argosseans. For once, the Argosseans and the Zingarans were too thankful for the food, drink, and entertainment to snarl at each other. More than one plump, saucy-eyed ebony temptress caught the fancy of a sailor and was chased squealing into the shadows of a nearby hut, to emerge a half-hour later, flushed, rumpled, and heartily appeased.
Conan had feared trouble from such things. His buccaneers had seen no women for weeks. To his pleased surprise, however, King Juma's black warriors did not seem to mind. In fact, they seemed to take it as a compliment when their women were borrowed … albeit, after a buccaneer had had his will of a woman, he was likely to be confronted afterwards by her grinning mate with his hand out for a present.
Relieved that there would be no woman trouble, Conan reflected that there was much to be said for savagery as a way of life.
The princess Chabela, however, found such bestial behavior obnoxious and said so. She sat between Conan and Juma. While Conan and Juma talked over her head, recalling adventures that each had had since they parted in Turan long ago, Conan was amused by the stiff expression on the princess's face as she looked with a cold eye on the tumbling figures in the shadows.
Conan half feared that Juma might expect, as a return for his hospitality, the loan of Chabela to his black embrace. Among the Kushites, this would have been merely good manners. While Conan fuzzily tried to think his way out of this predicament, Juma indicated that he knew enough of the ways of civilized men to realize that different codes obtained there and that the princess was safe from him.
Conan belched. "Crom's guts, comrade, but this is the life! I couldn't read the damned stars to see where we were, and the Wastrel lacked charts for this far south. Didn't know but what we were in the fabled Amazon country." He gulped down another cup of plantain wine.
Juma sobered. "As a matter of fact, you are … in a manner of speaking. At least, the warrior women of Gamburu —their main city— claim this coast as their territory. But they lack means to enforce their claim, as other tribes lie between my land and theirs."
"So? Tough bitches to fight, I've heard. Glad I need not find out, as fighting against women goes athwart my grain. Have you had any trouble with the Amazons?"
"A bit, in the beginning. I'm trying to train my boys to shoot like Turanians."
Juma sorrowfully shook his head. "But it's hard. There's no decent bow wood around here, and my bucks don't even feather their arrows. Then they get mulish and say, this is how it's been done ever since Damballah created the world, so this must be the right way. Sometimes I think it would be easier to teach a zebra to play the zither. But in spite of all, I now have the best-trained archers in Kush. The last time the Amazons tried to crack our borders, we stuck a few of them as full of quills as a porcupine."
Conan laughed but then put a hand to his throbbing brow. The plantain wine had a deceptively bland, sweet taste, which concealed a powerful kick. Mumbling an apology, Conan rose, staggering a little, and retired behind the nearest hut to relieve himself. Then he decided to call it a night. Returning to the king's couch of mats, he gathered up the bundle that he had brought ashore. The sack contained the Cobra Crown, wrapped in a blanket. He had not left it aboard the Wastrel, because the fortune in gems might tempt even the most trustworthy of his men. As he had become fond of them, he preferred to keep them from temptation rather than to have to hang any from the yardarm.
Mumbling his good-nights to Sigurd, Zeltran, Juma, and the prim-faced princess, he staggered off to the hut that Juma had reserved for him. Soon he was snoring like distant thunder.
Befuddled, Conan had not observed the ugly look on the face of one of Juma's warriors, a surly fellow named Bwatu. This was the man who had almost cast an assegai at Conan on the beach and whom Juma had struck down. That blow had rankled. A warrior high in Juma's councils, Bwatu fancied himself insulted by being felled like any common lout. Throughout the feast, his somber eye had returned again and again to the bundle at Conan's feet. The care that the buccaneer captain took of it suggested that it contained something of value.
Bwatu carefully noted which hut Conan had retired to. As the feast roared on under the glory of the tropical moon, he rose to his own feet, stumbled as if drunken —albeit he was practically sober— and wandered off into the shadows. As soon as he was out of sight, he doubled back through the inky alleyways between the huts. A vagrant ray of moonlight flashed on the keen blade of his dagger … a dagger he had just received from a sailor for the use of one of his women.
Far to the north, in the Oasis of Khajar in Stygia, Thoth-Amon had for hours searched the astral plane for some token of the whereabouts of the precious relic of the serpent-men of ago-lost Valusia. While Menkara and Zarono slept in alcoves beyond the sanctum of his private laboratorium, the mighty Stygian at length perceived the hopelessness of his task. He sat motionless, his cold black gaze brooding on nothingness.
Shadows flowed and flickered within the great orb of crystal, which invisible hands had placed before his seat of power. Dim, wavering radiance, cast by moving figures within the crystal, sent shadows rippling across the sculptured walls of the chamber.