2 The Tree of Death
The young soldier's hose and shirt were smeared with dried blood, wetwith sweat and gray with dust. Blood oozed from the deep gash in histhigh, from the cuts on his breast and shoulder. Perspiration glistenedon his livid face and his fingers were knotted in the cover of the divanon which he lay. Yet his words reflected mental suffering thatoutweighed physical pain.
'She must be mad!' he repeated again and again, like one still stunnedby some monstrous and incredible happening. 'It's like a nightmare!Taramis, whom all Khauran loves, betraying her people to that devil fromKoth! Oh, Ishtar, why was I not slain? Better die than live to see ourqueen turn traitor and harlot!'
'Lie still, Valerius,' begged the girl who was washing and bandaging hiswounds with trembling hands. 'Oh, please lie still, darling! You willmake your wounds worse. I dared not summon a leech--'
'No,' muttered the wounded youth. 'Constantius's blue-bearded devilswill be searching the quarters for wounded Khaurani; they'll hang everyman who has wounds to show he fought against them. Oh, Taramis, howcould you betray the people who worshipped you?' In his fierce agony hewrithed, weeping in rage and shame, and the terrified girl caught him inher arms, straining his tossing head against her bosom, imploring him tobe quiet.
'Better death than the black shame that has come upon Khauran this day,'he groaned. 'Did you see it, Ivga?'
'No, Valerius.' Her soft, nimble fingers were again at work, gentlycleansing and closing the gaping edges of his raw wounds. 'I wasawakened by the noise of fighting in the streets--I looked out acasement and saw the Shemites cutting down people; then presently Iheard you calling me faintly from the alley door.'
'I had reached the limits of my strength,' he muttered. 'I fell in thealley and could not rise. I knew they'd find me soon if I lay there--Ikilled three of the blue-bearded beasts, by Ishtar! They'll neverswagger through Khauran's streets, by the gods! The fiends are tearingtheir hearts in hell!'
The trembling girl crooned soothingly to him, as to a wounded child, andclosed his panting lips with her own cool sweet mouth. But the fire thatraged in his soul would not allow him to lie silent.
'I was not on the wall when the Shemites entered,' he burst out. 'I wasasleep in the barracks, with the others not on duty. It was just beforedawn when our captain entered, and his face was pale under his helmet."The Shemites are in the city," he said. "The queen came to the southerngate and gave orders that they should be admitted. She made the men comedown from the walls, where they've been on guard since Constantiusentered the kingdom. I don't understand it, and neither does anyoneelse, but I heard her give the order, and we obeyed as we always do. Weare ordered to assemble in the square before the palace. Form ranksoutside the barracks and march--leave your arms and armor here. Ishtarknows what this means, but it is the queen's order."
'Well, when we came to the square the Shemites were drawn up on footopposite the palace, ten thousand of the blue-bearded devils, fullyarmed, and people's heads were thrust out of every window and door onthe square. The streets leading into the square were thronged bybewildered folk. Taramis was standing on the steps of the palace, aloneexcept for Constantius, who stood stroking his mustache like a greatlean cat who has just devoured a sparrow. But fifty Shemites with bowsin their hands were ranged below them.
'That's where the queen's guard should have been, but they were drawnup at the foot of the palace stair, as puzzled as we, though they hadcome fully armed, in spite of the queen's order.
'Taramis spoke to us then, and told us that she had reconsidered theproposal made her by Constantius--why, only yesterday she threw it inhis teeth in open court--and that she had decided to make him her royalconsort. She did not explain why she had brought the Shemites into thecity so treacherously. But she said that, as Constantius had control ofa body of professional fighting-men, the army of Khauran would no longerbe needed, and therefore she disbanded it, and ordered us to go quietlyto our homes.
'Why, obedience to our queen is second nature to us, but we were struckdumb and found no word to answer. We broke ranks almost before we knewwhat we were doing, like men in a daze.
'But when the palace guard was ordered to disarm likewise and disband,the captain of the guard, Conan, interrupted. Men said he was off dutythe night before, and drunk. But he was wide awake now. He shouted tothe guardsmen to stand as they were until they received an order fromhim--and such is his dominance of his men, that they obeyed in spite ofthe queen. He strode up to the palace steps and glared at Taramis--andthen he roared: '"This is not the queen! This isn't Taramis! It's somedevil in masquerade!"
'Then hell was to pay! I don't know just what happened. I think aShemite struck Conan, and Conan killed him. The next instant the squarewas a battleground. The Shemites fell on the guardsmen, and their spearsand arrows struck down many soldiers who had already disbanded.
'Some of us grabbed up such weapons as we could and fought back. Wehardly knew what we were fighting for, but it was against Constantiusand his devils--not against Taramis, I swear it! Constantius shouted tocut the traitors down. We were not traitors!' Despair and bewildermentshook his voice. The girl murmured pityingly, not understanding it all,but aching in sympathy with her lover's suffering.
'The people did not know which side to take. It was a madhouse ofconfusion and bewilderment. We who fought didn't have a chance, in noformation, without armor and only half armed. The guards were fullyarmed and drawn up in a square, but there were only five hundred ofthem. They took a heavy toll before they were cut down, but there couldbe only one conclusion to such a battle. And while her people were beingslaughtered before her, Taramis stood on the palace steps, withConstantius's arm about her waist, and laughed like a heartless,beautiful fiend! Gods, it's all mad--mad!
'I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to thecourtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men werestrewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down,a hundred against one. When I saw him fall I dragged myself away feelingas if the world had burst under my very fingers. I heard Constantiuscall to his dogs to take the captain alive--stroking his mustache, withthat hateful smile on his lips!'
* * * * *
That smile was on the lips of Constantius at that very moment. He sathis horse among a cluster of his men--thick-bodied Shemites with curledblue-black beards and hooked noses; the low-swinging sun struck glintsfrom their peaked helmets and the silvered scales of their corselets.Nearly a mile behind, the walls and towers of Khauran rose sheer out ofthe meadowlands.
By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and onthis grim tree a man hung, nailed there by iron spikes through his handsand feet. Naked but for a loin-cloth, the man was almost a giant instature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs andbody, which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of agonybeaded his face and his mighty breast, but from under the tangled blackmane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue eyes blazed withan unquenched fire. Blood oozed sluggishly from the lacerations in hishands and feet.
Constantius saluted him mockingly.
'I am sorry, captain,' he said, 'that I cannot remain to ease your lasthours, but I have duties to perform in yonder city--I must not keep yourdelicious queen waiting!' He laughed softly. 'So I leave you to your owndevices--and those beauties!' He pointed meaningly at the black shadowswhich swept incessantly back and forth, high above.
'Were it not for them, I imagine that a powerful brute like yourselfshould live on the cross for days. Do not cherish any illusions ofrescue because I am leaving you unguarded. I have had it proclaimed thatanyone seeking to take your body, living or dead, from the cross, willbe flayed alive together with all the members of his family, in thepublic square. I am so firmly established in Khauran that my order is asgood as a regiment of guardsmen. I am leaving no guard, because thevultures will not approach as long as anyone is near, and I do not wishthem to feel any constra
int. That is also why I brought you so far fromthe city. These desert vultures approach the walls no closer than thisspot.
'And so, brave captain, farewell! I will remember you when, in an hour,Taramis lies in my arms.'
Blood started afresh from the pierced palms as the victim's mallet-likefists clenched convulsively on the spike-heads. Knots and bunches ofmuscle started out of the massive arms, and Conan beat his head forwardand spat savagely at Constantius's face. The _voivode_ laughed coolly,wiped the saliva from his gorget and reined his horse about.
'Remember me when the vultures are tearing at your living flesh,' hecalled mockingly. 'The desert scavengers are a particularly voraciousbreed. I have seen men hang for hours on a cross, eyeless, earless, andscalpless, before the sharp beaks had eaten their way into theirvitals.'
Without a backward glance he rode toward the city, a supple, erectfigure, gleaming in his burnished armor, his stolid, bearded henchmenjogging beside him. A faint rising of dust from the worn trail markedtheir passing.
The man hanging on the cross was the one touch of sentient life in alandscape that seemed desolate and deserted in the late evening.Khauran, less than a mile away, might have been on the other side of theworld, and existing in another age.
Shaking the sweat out of his eyes, Conan stared blankly at the familiarterrain. On either side of the city, and beyond it, stretched thefertile meadowlands, with cattle browsing in the distance where fieldsand vineyards checkered the plain. The western and northern horizonswere dotted with villages, miniature in the distance. A lesser distanceto the southeast a silvery gleam marked the course of a river, andbeyond that river sandy desert began abruptly to stretch away and awaybeyond the horizon. Conan stared at that expanse of empty wasteshimmering tawnily in the late sunlight as a trapped hawk stares at theopen sky. A revulsion shook him when he glanced at the gleaming towersof Khauran. The city had betrayed him--trapped him into circumstancesthat left him hanging to a wooden cross like a hare nailed to a tree.
A red lust for vengeance swept away the thought. Curses ebbed fitfullyfrom the man's lips. All his universe contracted, focused, becameincorporated in the four iron spikes that held him from life andfreedom. His great muscles quivered, knotting like iron cables. With thesweat starting out on his graying skin, he sought to gain leverage, totear the nails from the wood. It was useless. They had been driven deep.Then he tried to tear his hands off the spikes, and it was not theknifing, abysmal agony that finally caused him to cease his efforts, butthe futility of it. The spike-heads were broad and heavy; he could notdrag them through the wounds. A surge of helplessness shook the giant,for the first time in his life. He hung motionless, his head resting onhis breast, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of the sun.
A beat of wings caused him to look, just as a feathered shadow shot downout of the sky. A keen beak, stabbing at his eyes, cut his cheek, and hejerked his head aside, shutting his eyes involuntarily. He shouted, acroaking, desperate shout of menace, and the vultures swerved away andretreated, frightened by the sound. They resumed their wary circlingabove his head. Blood trickled over Conan's mouth, and he licked hislips involuntarily, spat at the salty taste.
Thirst assailed him savagely. He had drunk deeply of wine the nightbefore, and no water had touched his lips since before the battle in thesquare, that dawn. And killing was thirsty, salt-sweaty work. He glaredat the distant river as a man in hell glares through the opened grille.He thought of gushing freshets of white water he had breasted, laved tothe shoulders in liquid jade. He remembered great horns of foaming ale,jacks of sparkling wine gulped carelessly or spilled on the tavernfloor. He bit his lip to keep from bellowing in intolerable anguish as atortured animal bellows.
The sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood. Against a crimsonrampart that banded the horizon the towers of the city floated unreal asa dream. The very sky was tinged with blood to his misted glare. Helicked his blackened lips and stared with bloodshot eyes at the distantriver. It too seemed crimson with blood, and the shadows crawling upfrom the east seemed black as ebony.
In his dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings. Lifting his head hewatched with the burning glare of a wolf the shadows wheeling above him.He knew that his shouts would frighten them away no longer. Onedipped--dipped--lower and lower. Conan drew his head back as far as hecould, waiting with terrible patience. The vulture swept in with a swiftroar of wings. Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conan's chinas he jerked his head aside; then before the bird could flash away,Conan's head lunged forward on his mighty neck muscles, and his teeth,snapping like those of a wolf, locked on the bare, wattled neck.
Instantly the vulture exploded into squawking, flapping hysteria. Itsthrashing wings blinded the man, and its talons ripped his chest. Butgrimly he hung on, the muscles starting out in lumps on his jaws. Andthe scavenger's neck-bones crunched between those powerful teeth. With aspasmodic flutter the bird hung limp. Conan let go, spat blood from hismouth. The other vultures, terrified by the fate of their companion,were in full flight to a distant tree, where they perched like blackdemons in conclave.
Ferocious triumph surged through Conan's numbed brain. Life beatstrongly and savagely through his veins. He could still deal death; hestill lived. Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation ofdeath.
'By Mitra!' Either a voice spoke, or he suffered from hallucination. 'Inall my life I have never seen such a thing!'
Shaking the sweat and blood from his eyes, Conan saw four horsemensitting their steeds in the twilight and staring up at him. Three werelean, white-robed hawks, Zuagir tribesmen without a doubt, nomads frombeyond the river. The other was dressed like them in a white, girdled_khalat_ and a flowing head-dress which, banded about the temples with atriple circlet of braided camel-hair, fell to his shoulders. But he wasnot a Shemite. The dust was not so thick, nor Conan's hawk-like sight soclouded, that he could not perceive the man's facial characteristics.
He was as tall as Conan, though not so heavy-limbed. His shoulders werebroad and his supple figure was hard as steel and whalebone. A shortblack beard did not altogether mask the aggressive jut of his lean jaw,and gray eyes cold and piercing as a sword gleamed from the shadow ofthe _kafieh_. Quieting his restless steed with a quick, sure hand, thisman spoke: 'By Mitra, I should know this man!'
'Aye!' It was the guttural accents of a Zuagir. 'It is the Cimmerian whowas captain of the queen's guard!'
'She must be casting off all her old favorites,' muttered the rider.'Who'd have ever thought it of Queen Taramis? I'd rather have had along, bloody war. It would have given us desert folk a chance toplunder. As it is we've come this close to the walls and found only thisnag'--he glanced at a fine gelding led by one of the nomads--'and thisdying dog.'
Conan lifted his bloody head.
'If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you,you Zaporoskan thief!' he rasped through blackened lips.
'Mitra, the knave knows me!' exclaimed the other. 'How, knave, do youknow me?'
'There's only one of your breed in these parts,' muttered Conan. 'Youare Olgerd Vladislav, the outlaw chief.'
'Aye! and once a hetman of the _kozaki_ of the Zaporoskan River, as youhave guessed. Would you like to live?'
'Only a fool would ask that question,' panted Conan.
'I am a hard man,' said Olgerd, 'and toughness is the only quality Irespect in a man. I shall judge if you are a man, or only a dog afterall, fit only to lie here and die.'
'If we cut him down we may be seen from the walls,' objected one of thenomads.
Olgerd shook his head.
'The dusk is deep. Here, take this ax, Djebal, and cut down the cross atthe base.'
'If it falls forward it will crush him,' objected Djebal. 'I can cut itso it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack hisskull and tear loose all his entrails.'
'If he's worthy to ride with me he'll survive it,' answered Olgerdimperturbably. 'If not, then he doesn't deserve to live
. Cut!'
The first impact of the battle-ax against the wood and its accompanyingvibrations sent lances of agony through Conan's swollen feet and hands.Again and again the blade fell, and each stroke reverberated on hisbruised brain, setting his tortured nerves aquiver. But he set his teethand made no sound. The ax cut through, the cross reeled on itssplintered base and toppled backward. Conan made his whole body a solidknot of iron-hard muscle, jammed his head back hard against the wood andheld it rigid there. The beam struck the ground heavily and reboundedslightly. The impact tore his wounds and dazed him for an instant. Hefought the rushing tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but realized thatthe iron muscles that sheathed his vitals had saved him from permanentinjury.
And he had made no sound, though blood oozed from his nostrils and hisbelly-muscles quivered with nausea. With a grunt of approval Djebal bentover him with a pair of pincers used to draw horse-shoe nails, andgripped the head of the spike in Conan's right hand, tearing the skin toget a grip on the deeply embedded head. The pincers were small for thatwork. Djebal sweated and tugged, swearing and wrestling with thestubborn iron, working it back and forth--in swollen flesh as well as inwood. Blood started, oozing over the Cimmerian's fingers. He lay sostill he might have been dead, except for the spasmodic rise and fall ofhis great chest. The spike gave way, and Djebal held up theblood-stained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away andbent over the other.
The process was repeated, and then Djebal turned his attention toConan's skewered feet. But the Cimmerian, struggling up to a sittingposture, wrenched the pincers from his fingers and sent him staggeringbackward with a violent shove. Conan's hands were swollen to almosttwice their normal size. His fingers felt like misshapen thumbs, andclosing his hands was an agony that brought blood streaming from underhis grinding teeth. But somehow, clutching the pincers clumsily withboth hands, he managed to wrench out first one spike and then the other.They were not driven so deeply into the wood as the others had been.
He rose stiffly and stood upright on his swollen, lacerated feet,swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from his face and body. Crampsassailed him and he clamped his jaws against the desire to retch.
Olgerd, watching him impersonally, motioned him toward the stolen horse.Conan stumbled toward it, and every step was a stabbing, throbbing hellthat flecked his lips with bloody foam. One misshapen, groping hand fellclumsily on the saddle-bow, a bloody foot somehow found the stirrup.Setting his teeth, he swung up, and he almost fainted in midair; but hecame down in the saddle--and as he did so, Olgerd struck the horsesharply with his whip. The startled beast reared, and the man in thesaddle swayed and slumped like a sack of sand, almost unseated. Conanhad wrapped a rein about each hand, holding it in place with a clampingthumb. Drunkenly he exerted the strength of his knotted biceps,wrenching the horse down; it screamed, its jaw almost dislocated.
One of the Shemites lifted a water-flask questioningly.
Olgerd shook his head.
'Let him wait until we get to camp. It's only ten miles. If he's fit tolive in the desert he'll live that long without a drink.'
The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; among them Conanswayed like a drunken man in the saddle, bloodshot eyes glazed, foamdrying on his blackened lips.