“Brothers!” cried the girl, dancing between them. “Look who follows! I have brought you a man to slay! Take his heart that we may lay it smoking on our father’s board!”
The giants answered with roars like the grinding of ice-bergs on a frozen shore and heaved up their shining axes as the maddened Cimmerian hurled himself upon them. A frosty blade flashed before his eyes, blinding him with its brightness, and he gave back a terrible stroke that sheared through his foe’s thigh. With a groan the victim fell, and at the instant Conan was dashed into the snow, his left shoulder numb from the blow of the survivor, from which the Cimmerian’s mail had barely saved his life. Conan saw the remaining giant looming high above him like a colossus carved of ice, etched against the cold glowing sky. The axe fell, to sink through the snow and deep into the frozen earth as Conan hurled himself aside and leaped to his feet. The giant roared and wrenched his axe free, but even as he did, Conan’s sword sang down. The giant’s knees bent and he sank slowly into the snow, which turned crimson with the blood that gushed from his half-severed neck.
Conan wheeled, to see the girl standing a short distance away, staring at him in wide-eyed horror, all the mockery gone from her face. He cried out fiercely and the blood-drops flew from his sword as his hand shook in the intensity of his passion.
“Call the rest of your brothers!” he cried. “I’ll give their hearts to the wolves! You can not escape me –”
With a cry of fright she turned and ran fleetly. She did not laugh now, nor mock him over her white shoulder. She ran as for her life, and though he strained every nerve and thew, until his temples were like to burst and the snow swam red to his gaze, she drew away from him, dwindling in the witch-fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child, then a dancing white flame on the snow, then a dim blur in the distance. But grinding his teeth until the blood started from his gums, he reeled on, and he saw the blur grow to a dancing white flame, and the flame to a figure big as a child; and then she was running less than a hundred paces ahead of him, and slowly the space narrowed, foot by foot.
She was running with effort now, her golden locks blowing free; he heard the quick panting of her breath, and saw a flash of fear in the look she cast over her white shoulder. The grim endurance of the barbarian had served him well. The speed ebbed from her flashing white legs; she reeled in her gait. In his untamed soul leaped up the fires of hell she had fanned so well. With an inhuman roar he closed in on her, just as she wheeled with a haunting cry and flung out her arms to fend him off.
His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her lithe body bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. Her golden hair blew about his face, blinding him with its sheen; the feel of her slender body twisting in his mailed arms drove him to blinder madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth flesh; and that flesh was cold as ice. It was as if he embraced not a woman of human flesh and blood, but a woman of flaming ice. She writhed her golden head aside, striving to avoid the fierce kisses that bruised her red lips.
“You are cold as the snows,” he mumbled dazedly. “I will warm you with the fire in my own blood –”
With a scream and a desperate wrench she slipped from his arms, leaving her single gossamer garment in his grasp. She sprang back and faced him, her golden locks in wild disarray, her white bosom heaving, her beautiful eyes blazing with terror. For an instant he stood frozen, awed by her terrible beauty as she posed naked against the snows.
And in that instant she flung her arms toward the lights that glowed in the skies above her and cried out in a voice that rang in Conan’s ears for ever after: “Ymir! Oh, my father, save me!”
Conan was leaping forward, arms spread to seize her, when with a crack like the breaking of an ice mountain, the whole skies leaped into icy fire. The girl’s ivory body was suddenly enveloped in a cold blue flame so blinding that the Cimmerian threw up his hands to shield his eyes from the intolerable blaze. A fleeting instant, skies and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson fires. Then Conan staggered and cried out. The girl was gone. The glowing snow lay empty and bare; high above his head the witch-lights flashed and played in a frosty sky gone mad, and among the distant blue mountains there sounded a rolling thunder as of a gigantic war-chariot rushing behind steeds whose frantic hoofs struck lightning from the snows and echoes from the skies.
Then suddenly the borealis, the snow-clad hills and the blazing heavens reeled drunkenly to Conan’s sight; thousands of fire-balls burst with showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel which rained stars as it spun. Under his feet the snowy hills heaved up like a wave, and the Cimmerian crumpled into the snows to lie motionless.
In a cold dark universe, whose sun was extinguished eons ago, Conan felt the movement of life, alien and unguessed. An earthquake had him in its grip and was shaking him to and fro, at the same time chafing his hands and feet until he yelled in pain and fury and groped for his sword.
“He’s coming to, Horsa,” said a voice. “Haste – we must rub the frost out of his limbs, if he’s ever to wield sword again.”
“He won’t open his left hand,” growled another. “He’s clutching something –”
Conan opened his eyes and stared into the bearded faces that bent over him. He was surrounded by tall golden-haired warriors in mail and furs.
“Conan! You live!”
“By Crom, Niord,” gasped the Cimmerian. “Am I alive, or are we all dead and in Valhalla?”
“We live,” grunted the AEsir, busy over Conan’s half-frozen feet. “We had to fight our way through an ambush, or we had come up with you before the battle was joined. The corpses were scarce cold when we came upon the field. We did not find you among the dead, so we followed your spoor. In Ymir’s name, Conan, why did you wander off into the wastes of the north? We have followed your tracks in the snow for hours. Had a blizzard come up and hidden them, we had never found you, by Ymir!”
“Swear not so often by Ymir,” uneasily muttered a warrior, glancing at the distant mountains. “This is his land and the god bides among yonder mountains, the legends say.”
“I saw a woman,” Conan answered hazily. “We met Bragi’s men in the plains. I know not how long we fought. I alone lived. I was dizzy and faint. The land lay like a dream before me. Only now do all things seem natural and familiar. The woman came and taunted me. She was beautiful as a frozen flame from hell. A strange madness fell upon me when I looked at her, so I forgot all else in the world. I followed her. Did you not find her tracks? Or the giants in icy mail I slew?”
Niord shook his head.
“We found only your tracks in the snow, Conan.”
“Then it may be I am mad,” said Conan dazedly. “Yet you yourself are no more real to me than was the golden-locked witch who fled naked across the snows before me. Yet from under my very hands she vanished in icy flame.”
“He is delirious,” whispered a warrior.
“Not so!” cried an older man, whose eyes were wild and weird. “It was Atali, the daughter of Ymir, the frost-giant! To fields of the dead she comes, and shows herself to the dying! Myself when a boy I saw her, when I lay half-slain on the bloody field of Wolraven. I saw her walk among the dead in the snows, her naked body gleaming like ivory and her golden hair unbearably bright in the moonlight. I lay and howled like a dying dog because I could not crawl after her. She lures men from stricken fields into the wastelands to be slain by her brothers, the ice-giants, who lay men’s red hearts smoking on Ymir’s board. The Cimmerian has seen Atali, the frost-giant’s daughter!”
“Bah!” grunted Horsa. “Old Gorm’s mind was touched in his youth by a sword cut on the head. Conan was delirious from the fury of battle – look how his helmet is dinted. Any of those blows might have addled his brain. It was an hallucination he followed into the wastes. He is from the south; what does he know of Atali?”
“You speak truth, per
haps,” muttered Conan. “It was all strange and weird – by Crom!”
He broke off, glaring at the object that still dangled from his clenched left fist; the others gaped silently at the veil he held up – a wisp of gossamer that was never spun by human distaff.
The God in the Bowl
The God in the Bowl
Arus the watchman grasped his crossbow with shaky hands, and he felt beads of clammy perspiration on his skin as he stared at the unlovely corpse sprawling on the polished floor before him. It is not pleasant to come upon Death in a lonely place at midnight.
Arus stood in a vast corridor, lighted by huge candles in niches along the walls. These walls were hung with black velvet tapestries, and between the tapestries hung shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there too, stood figures of curious gods – images carved of stone or rare wood, or cast of bronze, iron or silver – dimly reflected in the gleaming black mahogany floor.
Arus shuddered; he had never become used to the place, although he had worked there as watchman for some months. It was a fantastic establishment, the great museum and antique house which men called Kallian Publico’s Temple, with its rarities from all over the world – and now, in the lonesomeness of midnight, Arus stood in the great silent hall and stared at the sprawling corpse that had been the rich and powerful owner of the Temple.
It entered even the dull brain of the watchman that the man looked strangely different now, than when he rode along the Palian Way in his golden chariot, arrogant and dominant, with his dark eyes glinting with magnetic vitality. Men who had hated and feared Kallian Publico would scarcely have recognized him now as he lay like a disintegrated tun of fat, his rich robe half torn from him, and his purple tunic awry. His face was blackened, his eyes almost starting from his head, and his tongue lolled blackly from his gaping mouth. His fat hands were thrown out as in a gesture of curious futility. On the thick fingers gems glittered.
“Why didn’t they take his rings?” muttered the watchman uneasily, then he started and glared, the short hairs prickling at the nape of his neck. Through the dark silken hangings that masked one of the many doorways opening into the hallway, came a figure.
Arus saw a tall powerfully built youth, naked but for a loin-cloth, and sandals strapped high about his ankles. His skin was burned brown as by the suns of the wastelands, and Arus glanced nervously at his broad shoulders, massive chest and heavy arms. A single look at the moody, broad-browed features told the watchman that the man was no Nemedian. From under a mop of unruly black hair smoldered a pair of dangerous blue eyes. A long sword hung in a leather scabbard at his girdle.
Arus felt his skin crawl, and he fingered his crossbow tensely, of half a mind to drive a bolt through the stranger’s body without parley, yet fearful of what might happen if he failed to inflict death at the first shot.
The stranger looked at the body on the floor more in curiosity than surprize.
“Why did you kill him?” asked Arus nervously.
The other shook his tousled head.
“I didn’t kill him,” he answered, speaking Nemedian with a barbaric accent. “Who is he?”
“Kallian Publico,” replied Arus, edging back.
A flicker of interest showed in the moody blue eyes.
“The owner of the house?”
“Aye.” Arus had edged his way to the wall, and now he took hold of a thick velvet rope which swung there, and jerked it violently. From the street outside sounded the strident clang of the bell that hung before all shops and establishments to summon the watch.
The stranger started.
“Why did you do that?” he asked. “It will fetch the watchman.”
“I am the watchman, knave,” answered Arus, bracing his rocking courage. “Stand where you are; don’t move or I’ll loose a bolt through you.”
His finger was on the trigger of his arbalest, the wicked square head of the quarrel leveled full on the other’s broad breast. The stranger scowled and his dark face was lowering. He showed no fear, but seemed to be hesitating in his mind as to whether he should obey the command or chance a sudden break of some kind. Arus licked his lips and his blood turned cold as he plainly saw indecision struggle with a murderous intent in the foreigner’s cloudy eyes.
Then he heard a door crash open, and a medley of voices, and he drew a deep breath of amazed thankfulness. The stranger tensed and glared worriedly, like a startled hunting beast, as half a dozen men entered the hall. All but one wore the scarlet tunic of the Numalian police, were girt with stabbing swords and carried bills – long shafted weapons, half pike, half axe.
“What devil’s work is this?” exclaimed the foremost man, whose cold grey eyes and lean keen features, no less than his civilian garments, set him apart from his burly companions.
“By Mitra, Demetrio!” exclaimed Arus thankfully. “Fortune is assuredly with me tonight. I had no hope that the watch would answer the summons so swiftly – or that you would be with them!”
“I was making the rounds with Dionus,” answered Demetrio. “We were just passing the Temple when the watch-bell clanged. But who is this? Mitra! The master of the Temple himself!”
“No other,” replied Arus, “and foully murdered. It is my duty to walk about the building steadily all night, because, as you know, there is an immense amount of wealth stored here. Kallian Publico had rich patrons – scholars, princes and wealthy collectors of rarities. Well, only a few minutes ago I tried the door which opens on the portico, and found it to be only bolted. The door is provided with a bolt, which works both from within or without, and a great lock which can be worked only from without. Only Kallian Publico had a key to that, the key which you see now hanging at his girdle.
“Naturally my suspicions were roused, for Kallian Publico always locks the door with the great lock when he closes the Temple; and I had not seen him return since he left earlier in the evening for his villa in the eastern suburbs of the city. I have a key that works the bolt; I entered and found the body lying as you see. I have not touched it.”
“So,” Demetrio’s keen eyes swept the sombre stranger. “And who is this?”
“The murderer, without doubt!” cried Arus. “He came from that door yonder. He is a northern barbarian of some sort – a Hyperborean or a Bossonian, perhaps.”
“Who are you?” asked Demetrio.
“I am Conan,” answered the barbarian. “I am a Cimmerian.”
“Did you kill this man?”
The Cimmerian shook his head.
“Answer me!” snapped the questioner.
An angry glint rose in the moody blue eyes.
“I am no dog,” he replied resentfully.
“Oh, an insolent fellow!” sneered Demetrio’s companion, a big man wearing the insignia of prefect of police. “An independent cur! One of these citizens with rights, eh? I’ll soon knock it out of him! Here, you! Come clean! Why did you murder –”
“Just a moment, Dionus,” ordered Demetrio curtly. “Fellow, I am chief of the Inquisitorial Council of the city of Numalia. You had best tell me why you are here, and if you are not the murderer, prove it.”
The Cimmerian hesitated. He was not afraid, but slightly bewildered, as a barbarian always is when confronted by the evidence of civilized networks and systems, the workings of which are so baffling and mysterious to him.
“While he’s thinking it over,” rapped Demetrio, turning to Arus, “tell me – did you see Kallian Publico leave the Temple this evening?”
“No, he’s usually gone when I arrive to begin my sentry-go. But the great door was bolted and locked.”
“Could he have entered the building again without your having seen him?”
“Why, it’s possible, but hardly probable. The Temple is large, and I walk clear around it in a few minutes. If he had returned from his villa, he would of course have come in his chariot, for it is a long way – and who ever heard of Kallian Publico travelling otherwise? Even if I had been on the other side of
the Temple, I’d have heard the wheels of the chariot on the cobblestones. And I’ve heard no such thing, nor seen any chariots, except those which always pass along the streets just at dusk.”
“And the door was locked earlier in the night?”
“I’ll swear to it. I try all doors several times during the night. The door was locked on the outside until perhaps half an hour ago – that was the last time I tried it, until I found it unlocked.”
“You heard no cries or struggles?”
“No. But that’s not strange. The walls of the Temple are so thick, they’re practically sound-proof – an effect increased by the heavy hangings.”
“Why go to all this trouble of questions and speculations?” complained the burly prefect. “It’s much easier to beat a confession out of a suspect. Here’s our man, no doubt about it. Let’s take him to the Court of Justice – I’ll get a statement if I have to smash his bones to a pulp.”
Demetrio looked at the barbarian.
“You understand what he said?” asked the Inquisitor. “What have you to say?”
“That any man who touches me will quickly be greeting his ancestors in hell,” the Cimmerian ground between his powerful teeth, his eyes glinting quick flames of dangerous anger.
“Why did you come here, if not to kill this man?” pursued Demetrio.
“I came to steal,” sullenly answered the other.
“To steal what?” rapped the Inquisitor.
“Food,” the reply came after an instant’s hesitation.
“That’s a lie!” snapped Demetrio. “You knew there was no food here. Don’t lie to me. Tell me the truth or –”
The Cimmerian laid his hand on his sword hilt, and the gesture was as fraught with menace as the lifting of a tiger’s lip to bare his fangs.
“Save your bullying for the fools who fear you,” he growled, blue fires smoldering in his eyes. “I’m no city-bred Nemedian to cringe before your hired dogs. I’ve killed better men than you for less than this.”