They came stamping in, cursing and bellowing and shaking the water from their cloaks. In a trice, the gloomy silence of the ruin was broken with a clamor of noise. Brushwood and dead leaves were gathered; flint and steel were struck. Soon a smoking, sputtering fire leaped up in the midst of the cracked marble floor, to paint the sculptured walls with rich orange.
The men flung down their saddlebags, stripped off wet burnooses, and spread them to dry. They struggled out of their coats of mail and set to rubbing the moisture from them with oily rags. They opened their saddlebags
and sank strong white teeth into round loaves of hard, stale bread.
Outside, the storm bellowed and flashed. Streams of rainwater, like little waterfalls, poured through gaps in the masonry. But the Stygians heeded them not.
On the balcony above, Conan stood silently, awake but trembling with shudders that wracked his powerful body.
With the cloudburst, the spell that held him captive had broken. Starting up, he glared about for the shadowy conclave of ghosts that he had seen form in his dream.
When the lightning flashed, he thought he glimpsed a dark, amorphous form at the far end of the balcony, but he did not care to go closer to investigate.
While he pondered the problem of how to quit the balcony without coming in reach of the Thing, the Stygians came stamping and roaring in. They were hardly an improvement on the ghosts. Given half a chance, they would be delighted to capture him for their slave gang. For all his immense strength and skill at arms, Conan knew that no man can fight forty well-armed foes at once. Unless he instantly cut his way out and escaped, they would bring him down. He faced either a swift death or / a bitter life of groaning drudgery in a Stygian slave pen. He was not sure which he preferred.
If the Stygians distracted Conan’s attention from the phantoms, they likewise distracted the attention of the phantoms from Conan. In their mindless hunger, the shadow-things ignored the Cimmerian in favor of the forty Stygians encamped below. Here was living flesh and vital force enough to glut their phantasmal lusts thrice over. Like autumn leaves, they drifted over the balustrade and down from the balcony into the hall below.
The Stygians sprawled around their fire, passing a bottle of wine from hand to hand and talking in their guttural tongue.
Although Conan knew only a few words of Stygian, from the intonations and gestures he could follow the course of the argument The leadera clean-shaven giant, as tall as the Cimmerianswore that he would not venture into the downpour on such a night They would await the dawn in this crumbling ruin. At least, the roof seemed to be still sound in places, and a man could here out of the drip.
When several more bottles had been emptied, the Stygians, now warm and dry, composed themselves for sleep. The fire burned low, for the brushwood with which they fed it could not long sustain a strong blaze. The leader pointed to one of his men and spoke a harsh sentence. The man protested, but after some argument he heaved himself up with a groan and pulled on his coat of mail. He, Conan realized, had been chosen to stand the first watch. |
Presently, with sword in hand and shield on arm, the sentry was standing in the shadows at the margin of the light of the dying fire. From time to time he walked slowly up and down the length of the hall, pausing to peer into the winding corridors or out through the front doors, where the storm was in retreat.
While the sentry stood in the main doorway with his back to his comrades, a grim shape formed among the snoring band of slavers. It grew slowly out of wavering clouds of insubstantial shadows. The compound creature that gradually took shape was made up of the vital force of thousands of dead beings. It became a ghastly forma huge bulk that sprouted countless malformed limbs and appendages. A dozen squat legs supported its monstrous weight. From its top, like grisly fruit, sprouted scores of heads: some lifelike, with shaggy hair and brows; others mere lumps in which eyes, ears, mouths, and nostrils were arranged at random.
The sight of the hundred-headed monster in that dimly firelit ball was enough to freeze the blood of the stoutest with terror. Conan felt his nape hairs rise and his skin crawl with revulsion as he stared down upon the scene.
The thing lurched across the floor. Leaning unsteadily down, it clutched one of the Stygians with half a dozen grasping claws. As the man awoke with a scream, the nightmare Thing tore its victim apart, spattering his sleeping comrades with gory, dripping fragments of the man.
7. Flight from Nightmare
In an instant, the Stygians were on their feet. Hardbitten ravagers though they were, the sight was frightful enough to wring yells of terror from some. Wheeling at the first scream, the sentry rushed back into the hall to hack at the monster with his sword. Bellowing commands, the leader snatched up the nearest weapon and fell to. The rest, although unarmored, disheveled, and confused, seized sword and spear to defend themselves against the shape that shambled and slew among them.
Swords hacked into misshapen thighs; spears plunged into the swollen, swaying belly. Clutching hands and arms were hacked away to thud, jerking and grasping, to the floor. But, seeming to reel no pain, the monster snatched up man after man. Some Stygians had their heads twisted off by strangling hands. Others were seized by the feet and battered to gory remnants against the pillars.
As the Cimmerian watched from above, a dozen Stygians were battered or torn to death. The ghastly wounds inflicted on the monster by the weapons of the Stygians instantly closed up and healed. Severed heads and arms were replaced by new members, which sprouted from the bulbous body.
Seeing that the Stygians had no chance against the monster, Conan resolved to take his leave while the Thing was still occupied with the slavers and before it turned its attention to him. Thinking it unwise to enter the hall, he sought a more direct exit He cimbed out through a window. This let on to a roof terrace of broken tiles, where a false step could drop him through a gap in the pavement to ground level.
The rain had slackened to a drizzle. The moon, now nearly overhead, showed intermittent beams again. Looking down from the parapet that bounded the terrace, Conan found a place where the exterior carvings, together with climbing vines, provided means of descent. With the lithe grace of an ape, he lowered himself hand over hand down the weirdly carven facade.
Now the moon glazed out in full glory, lighting the courtyard below where the Stygians horses stood tethered, moving and whinnying uneasily at the sounds of mortal combat that came from the great hall. Over the roar of battle sounded screams of agony as man after man was torn limb from limb.
Conan dropped, landing lightly on the earth of the courtyard. He sprinted for the great black mare that had belonged to the leader of the slavers. He would have liked to linger to loot the bodies, for he needed their armor and other supplies. The mail shirt he had worn as Belits piratical partner had long since succumbed to wear and rust, and his flight from Bamula had been too hasty to allow him to equip himself more completely. But no force on earth could have drawn him into that ”hall, where a horror of living death still stalked and slew.
As the young Cimmerian untethered the horse he had chosen, a screaming figure burst from the entrance and came pelting across the courtyard toward him. Conan saw that it was the man who had stood the first sentry-go. The Stygian’s helmet and mail shirt had protected him just enough to enable him to survive the massacre of his comrades.
Conan opened his mouth to speak. There was no love lost between him and the Stygian people; nevertheless, if this Stygian were the only survivor of his party, Conan would have been willing to form a rogues alliance with him, however temporary, until they could reach more settled country.