Roland Green - Conan and the Gods of the Mountains

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2024-12-20 0 0 2.51MB 257 页 5.9玖币

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CONAN AND THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN

Prologue

The hunter was of the Leopard Clan of the Kwanyi. He had been born with eyes and

ears almost as keen as those of the clan totem. He had sharpened both further by

many years spent in the forests between the Gao River to the west and the

forbidden city of Xuchotl to the east.

Neither eyes nor ears now told of any menace close to him. Nor was it likely

that this stretch of the forest held any. It was near the foot of Thunder

Mountain itself. The hunter had learned its paths and streams, its drinking

holes and fallen trees, even before his manhood ceremony.

Yet the hunter fled as though all the kin of the dragon he had found in the

forest near Xuchotl were ravening on his trail.

He had kept up this pace every waking moment for three days now. He had run

until he could neither run, walk, nor stand, only fall senseless to the ground

and sleep like a serpent with a pig in its belly. Then he would wake, to drink

of the nearest clean water and run once more.

The pace had taken its toll. His dark skin was so caked with dirt that the

hunter's tattoo of a leopard's paw on his right shoulder and the warrior's

tattoo of a spear on his breast had all but vanished. Only the clan

scarifications on both heels remained visible, to mark him and his footprints as

of the Kwanyi.

His breath came in rasping sobs. His eyes stared ahead, next to blind, so that

from time to time, a dangling vine slapped his skin. Once a stub of branch tore

away his loinguard, leaving him to run on naked save for anklets of sodden

feathers and the spear in his hand.

He could have run faster without the spear, for it was the stout weapon of the

Kwanyi, a man's length of ironwood sapling with a triangular iron head as broad

as a man's hand. Yet that thought never entered his mind. While he bore the

spear, no warrior of the Kwanyi could doubt his courage.

The end of the hunter's run came suddenly, in the form of a jutting root. It

caught his ankle, and even above the rasp of his tortured lungs, he heard bone

snap. Then pain struck him twice, once as his head knocked against a rotten

stump and once in the ankle as sundered bones cried out.

The hunter lay still until the pains eased and he knew that he would not at once

become senseless. That would be death. This part of the forest held few dangers

for a healthy hunter with both wits and weapons. It was otherwise for a man

lying unaware of his surroundings.

When he dared move his head, the hunter rolled over and looked at his ankle. It

was already swelling, and the pain was a spear of fire thrust up his leg. He

would not be walking on that ankle again before the rains came—or ever if the

God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not give him their healing. Poultices, purges,

and the hands of village wise-women could do little against such ruin to bone

and muscle.

In the next moment, the hunter began to doubt that he would even live to be

spurned by the God-Men. Where he had seen only vines and thick-trunked trees,

four men now stood. Each carried a spear; one carried a bow as well. Their

loinguards, headbands, anklets, and tattoos alike named them warriors of the

Monkey Clan.

This did nothing to raise the hunter's spirits. Chabano, Paramount Chief of the

Kwanyi, was himself of the Monkey Clan. He would not have been chief for twelve

years had he allowed his clansmen to feud at will with the Leopards, the

Spiders, or the Cobras. Yet he had been known to turn a blind eye when those

clans suffered some small hurt—such as the disappearance of a hunter whose fate

neither gods nor men could learn.

The hunter twisted himself about again, ignoring the pain in his head and ankle

as he drew up his legs and raised his spear.

"Ha, what have we here?" the tallest of the four Monkeys said. "One of the

Little Cats, it seems."

The hunter bit back a reply of equal sharpness, on the order of "Speak for

yourself, Gelded Baboon." It would be time to seek an honorable death when he

had told the four warriors where he had been and what he had seen there.

"Brothers—" the hunter began.

Spear-butts thudded on mossy ground. "No brother to you," one of the

spear-wielders growled.

"Chabano says otherwise," the hunter replied, then started his story before

anyone else could find insults. He began with finding the dead dragon outside

Xuchotl, slain by no cause the hunter could discover.

That gained him the tallest Monkey's attention. "There have been tales of a

dragon in that part of the forest. Yet there are more tales that say nothing can

kill a dragon. Perhaps the cause you could not discover was old age, or a

bellyache!"

"Listen to the rest of what I have to say, then think that if you wish," the

hunter said. "I will say only what I saw, and that as swiftly as I can."

The hint for silence was not lost on the Monkey leader. The next time one of his

warriors tried to interrupt the hunter, a spear-butt came down sharply on the

man's toes. A glare cut short his muttered ill wishes, and allowed the hunter to

continue.

He told of wondering if accursed Xuchotl might be safe to approach, with its

guardian dragon dead. All life seemed to have fled the city—human life, at

least. He spoke of an open gate through which the jungle was already creeping,

to claim Xuchotl the Accursed for its own.

"How far did you go?" the leader asked.

"Not as far as I wished," the hunter admitted. "I, too, had heard the tales of

the fire-stones within the city. I sought them and found—" He swallowed. "—I

found that Xuchotl's curse had at last destroyed its own people."

He spoke of the bodies of men and women slain no more than a handful of days

before. Some bore the wounds of human weapons, swords and spears and knives, or

even of teeth and nails. Others seemed to have been struck by lightning, and

this in an underground chamber where no lightning could reach save by sorcery.

"It was then that I knew Xuchotl was still accursed, and that I might join the

dead if I stayed longer within its walls," the hunter concluded. "I ran from the

chamber and from the city. Yet as I ran, I saw that others had come forth by the

same gate not long before."

"The slayers of the folk of Xuchotl?" It was the man who had been silenced who

spoke. Now his tone held respect and curiosity, as well as more than a little

fear. The hunter's pleasure at having won over his listeners almost made him

forget the pain in his ankle.

"That I do not know. I can only say that one was a giant, another as large as a

common warrior of the Kwanyi. Both seemed well-laden, and both wore boots."

The Monkey warriors stared at one another, then at the jungle around them. It

seemed to the hunter that he could see into their very thoughts as he spoke.

"I think that is why the talking drums have not spoken of this. The sorcerers

who ruined Xuchotl might have other enemies in our land. Warned that they were

discovered…"

The leader nodded. The hunter wondered if he, too, had a throat too dry to let

words pass. One of the other Monkeys loosened his drinking gourd from his belt

and passed it to the hunter.

The hunter poured the ritual drops into his palm and scattered them to the

earth, then drank. When his throat was fit for speaking again, he handed the

gourd back.

"Brother, I hear truth in your words," the Monkey leader said to the hunter. He

turned to his companions.

"Make a litter. We bear him to the God-Men. If the drums have not spoken, he

must do their work, with our help."

"If the God-Men are as they say—" began a warrior.

"Guard your tongue, lest it wag you into the Cave of the Living Wind," the

leader snarled.

"If the God-Men are as they say," the man persisted, "they likely enough know

already."

"Then we can do no harm," the leader said. "Perhaps even a little good, by

showing that we common warriors understand the evil that magic may do."

"And if—" the man began again.

"Then they have need of our help against sorcerers who can slay dragons and

scour life from Xuchotl the Accursed."

This thought silenced the warrior, but did not seem to please him or his

comrades. Thinking briefly upon the matter, the hunter decided that this was no

shame to the Monkey warriors. The notion of sorcerers more powerful than the

God-Men of Thunder Mountain did not please him either.

ONE

In the forest between dead Xuchotl and the foot of Thunder Mountain, the

boot-wearers whose tracks the hunter had seen followed a game trail.

One was a woman, and no southern hills or forests had ever been birthplace to

one so fair of skin and hair. She wore a shirt and trousers of silk that had

once been whole and white, but were now neither. Rents in both displayed the

fairness of her skin; and a rag of red silk bound up her hair. The garb, though

tattered, still fitted snugly enough to display the splendor of her breasts and

hips.

Her boots had the look of the sea about them. They were of supple leather, with

wide-flaring tops, easily kicked off if one found one's self in the water. That

they were not made for tramping game trails in the Black Kingdoms was evident by

how often the woman gritted her teeth.

About her slender waist a silken sash upheld a well-used sword and two knives.

One knife was a seaman's dirk, the other a keen-edged dagger whose hilt writhed

with creatures out of nightmare.

The woman was tall and robustly formed, yet her companion overtopped her by more

than a head, and his muscles told of a giant's strength to go with that stature.

He was similarly clad, with the difference that his sword was stouter and hung

from a broad leather belt, along with three knives. His hair was black, flowing

freely across his broad shoulders, and his eyes were of an icy blue, with the

look of the north to them.

Those eyes had been the last sight of more than a few men over the years. The

tall man was Conan the Cimmerian, his companion Valeria of the Red Brotherhood.

They owed their garb to having once been pirates in Baracha, and their

companionship to many curious circumstances.

Most important of those was the battle they had fought for their lives within

the walls of Xuchotl. It was waged against enemies both animal and human, armed

with both steel and spells. In the end, it had cleansed the accursed city of the

very last of its bloody, unnatural life.

It had also given each of them a dagger. Nothing else would they take from

Xuchotl, knowing too many of the city's secrets to trust loot removed from its

halls. Those halls reeked of blood shed and spells cast over many centuries, and

terror that would echo in their green-lit vastness when the bones of the dead

were dust on the floors of polished stone.

Conan had traveled in the Black Kingdoms before, if not in this jungle, then in

others hardly less friendly. He feared neither man nor beast. Yet had the Kwanyi

hunter seen the wanderer of Cimmeria, he would have laughed… for Conan also

threw more than a few glances over his shoulder to see what remnant of Xuchotl's

evil might be on his trail.

It was taboo among the Kwanyi to leave the dead in the place where they died, no

matter how great the burden of removing the body. Left where the spirit departed

from it, the body might be found again by that same spirit and become a yaquele,

one of the "walking dead."

So from the time they could bear a burden, the folk of the Kwanyi learned to

make litters of whatever came ready to hand. Saplings, vines, even the leaves of

the smokebush, had their uses.

A litter able to bear the dead was also fit for the living who could not walk.

The hunter was moving again in less time than it would have taken him to empty a

gourd of beer. Two of the Monkey hunters bore him on level ground, trailed by

the third, while the leader strode on ahead.

The hunter noted that the leader bore his spear in both hands, held across his

chest ready to either throw or thrust. This was a hunting party, so the men bore

no shields, but it seemed that the leader did not expect their visit to Thunder

Mountain to be entirely peaceful.

It further seemed that he wanted their presence to be unnoticed. Twice he raised

hand and spear to halt all movement. Once he used the hunters' hand signals to

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摘要：

CONANANDTHEGODSOFTHEMOUNTAINPrologueThehunterwasoftheLeopardClanoftheKwanyi.Hehadbeenbornwitheyesandearsalmostaskeenasthoseoftheclantotem.HehadsharpenedbothfurtherbymanyyearsspentintheforestsbetweentheGaoRivertothewestandtheforbiddencityofXuchotltotheeast.Neithereyesnorearsnowtoldofanymenaceclosetoh...

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Roland Green - Conan and the Gods of the Mountains

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