Howard, Robert E - Conan - The Devil in Iron

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THE DEVIL IN IRON

A Conan Story

by Robert E. Howard

originally published 1934

The fisherman loosened his knife in its scabbard. The gesture was instinctive, for what he

feared was nothing a knife could slay, not even the saw-edged crescent blade of the Yuetshi that

could disembowel a man with an upward stroke. Neither man nor beast threatened him in the solitude

which brooded over the castellated isle of Xapur.

He had climbed the cliffs, passed through the jungle that bordered them, and now stood

surrounded by evidences of a vanished state. Broken columns glimmered among the trees, the

straggling lines of crumbling walls meandered off into the shadows, and under his feet were broad

paves, cracked and bowed by roots growing beneath.

The fisherman was typical of his race, that strange people whose origin is lost in the gray

dawn of the past, and who have dwelt in their rude fishing huts along the southern shore of the

Sea of Vilayet since time immemorial. He was broadly built, with long, apish arms and a mighty

chest, but with lean loins and thin, bandy legs. His face was broad, his forehead low and

retreating, his hair thick and tangled. A belt for a knife and a rag for a loin cloth were all he

wore in the way of clothing.

That he was where he was proved that he was less dully incurious than most of his people. Men

seldom visited Xapur. It was uninhabited, all but forgotten, merely one among the myriad isles

which dotted the great inland sea. Men called it Xapur, the Fortified, because of its ruins,

remnants of some prehistoric kingdom, lost and forgotten before the conquering Hyborians had

ridden southward. None knew who reared those stones, though dim legends lingered amond the Yuetshi

which half intelligibly suggested a connection of immeasurable antiquity between the fishers and

the unknown island kingdom.

But it had been a thousand years since any Yuetshi had understood the import of these tales;

they repeated them now as a meaningless formula, a gibberish framed to their lips by custom. No

Yuetshi had come to Xapur for a century. The adjacent coast of the mainland was uninhabited, a

reedy marsh given over to the grim beasts that haunted it. The fisher's village lay some distance

to the south, on the mainland. A storm had blown his frail fishing craft far from his accustomed

haunts and wrecked it in a night of flaring lightning and roaring waters on the towering cliffs of

the isle. Now, in the dawn, the sky shone blue and clear; the rising sun made jewels of the

dripping leaves. He had climbed the cliffs to which he had clung through the night because, in the

midst of the storm, he had seen an appalling lance of lightning fork out of the black heavens, and

the concussion of its stroke, which had shaken the whole island, had been accompanied by a

cataclysmic crash that he doubted could have resulted from a riven tree.

A dull curiosity had caused him to investigate; and now he had found what he sought, and an

animal-like uneasiness possessed him, a sense of lurking peril.

Among the trees reared a broken domelike structure, built of gigantic blocks of the peculiar

ironlike green stone found only on the islands of Vilayet. It seemed incredible that human hands

could have shaped and placed them, and certainly it was beyond human power to have overthrown the

structure they formed. But the thunderbolt had splintered the ton-heavy blocks like so much glass,

reduced others to green dust, and ripped away the whole arch of the dome.

The fisherman climbed over the debris and peered in, and what he saw brought a grunt from

him. Within the ruined dome, surrounded by stone dust and bits of broken masonry, lay a man on a

golden block. He was clad in a sort of skirt and a shagreen girdle. His black hair, which fell in

a square mane to his massive shoulders, was confined about his temples by a narrow gold band. On

his bare, muscular breast lay a curious dagger with a jeweled pommel, a shagreen-bound hilt, and a

broad, crescent blade. It was much like the knife the fisherman wore at his hip, but it lacked the

serrated edge and was made with infinitely greater skill.

The fisherman lusted for the weapon. The man, of course, was dead; had been dead for many

centuries. This dome was his tomb. The fisherman did not wonder by what art the ancients had

preserved the body in such a vivid likeness of life, which kept the muscular limbs full and

unshrunken, the dark flesh vital. The dull brain of the Yuetshi had room only for his desire for

the knife with its delicate, waving lines along the dully gleaming blade.

Scrambling down into the dome, he lifted the weapon from the man's breast. As he did so, a

strange and terrible thing came to pass. The muscular, dark hands knotted convulsively, the lids

flared open, revealing great, dark, magnetic eyes, whose stare struck the startled fisherman like

a physical blow. He recoiled, dropping the jeweled dagger in his peturbation. The man on the dais

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heaved up to a sitting position, and the fisherman gaped at the full extent of his size, thus

revealed. His narrowed eyes held the Yuetshi, and in those slitted orbs he read neither

friendliness nor gratitude; he saw only a fire as alien and hostile as that which burns in the

eyes of a tiger.

Suddenly the man rose and towered above him, menace in his every aspect. There was no room in

the fisherman's dull brain for fear, at least for such fear as might grip a man who has just seen

the fundamental laws of nature defied. As the great hands fell to his shoulders, he drew his saw-

edged knife and struck upward with the same motion. The blade splintered against the stranger's

corded belly as against a steel column, and then the fisherman's thick neck broke like a rotten

twig in the giant hands.

Jehungir Agha, lord of Khawarizm and keeper of the costal border, scanned once more the

ornate parchment scroll with its peacock seal and laughed shortly and sardonically.

"Well?" bluntly demanded his counsellor Ghaznavi.

Jehungir shrugged his shoulders. He was a handsome man, with the merciless pride of birth and

accomplishment.

"The king grows short of patience," he said. "In his own hand he complains bitterly of what

he calls my failure to guard the frontier. By Tarim, if I cannot deal a blow to these robbers from

the steppes, Khawarizm may own a new lord."

Ghaznavi tugged his gray-shot beard in meditation. Yezdigerd, king of Turan, was the

mightiest monarch in the world. In his palace in the great port city of Aghrapur was heaped the

plunder of empires. His fleets of purple-sailed war galleys had made Vilayet an Hyrkanian lake.

The dark-skinned people of Zamora paid him tribute, as did the eastern provinces of Koth. The

Shemites bowed to his rule as far west as Shushan. His armies ravaged the borders of Stygia in the

south and the snowy lands of the Hyperboreans in the north. His riders bore torch and sword

westward into Brythunia and Ophir and Corinthia, even to the borders of Nemedia. His gilt-helmeted

swordsmen had trampled hosts under their horses' hoofs, and walled cities went up in flames at his

command. In the glutted slave markets of Aghrapur, Sultanapur, Khawarizm, Shahpur, and Khorusun,

women were sold for three small silver coins -- blonde Brythunians, tawny Stygians, dark-haired

Zamorians, ebon Kushites, olive-skinned Shemites.

Yet, while his swift horsemen overthrew armies far from his frontiers, at his very borders an

audacious foe plucked his beard with a red-dripping and smoke-stained hand.

On the broad steppes between the Sea of Vilayet and the borders of the easternmost Hyborian

kingdoms, a new race had sprung up in the past half-century, formed originally of fleeing

criminals, broken men, escaped slaves, and deserting soldiers. They were men of many crimes and

countries, some born on the steppes, some fleeing from the kingdoms in the West. They were called

_kozak_, which means wastrel.

Dwelling on the wild, open steppes, owning no law but their own peculiar code, they had

become a people capable even of defying the Grand Monarch. Ceaselessly they raided the Turanian

frontier, retiring in the steppes when defeated; with the pirates of Vilayet, men of much the same

breed, they harried the coast, preying off the merchant ships which plied between the Hyrkanian

ports.

"How am I to crush these wolves?" demanded Jehungir. "If I follow them into the steppes, I

run the risk either of being cut off and destroyed, or of having them elude me entirely and burn

the city in my absence. Of late they have been more daring than ever."

"That is because of the new chief who has risen among them," answered Ghaznavi. "You know

whom I mean."

"Aye!" replied Jehungir feelingly. "It is that devil Conan; he is even wilder than the

_kozaks_, yet he is crafty as a mountain lion."

"It is more through wild animal instinct than through intelligence," answered Ghaznavi. "The

other _kozaks_ are at least descendants of civilized men. He is a barbarian. But to dispose of him

would be to deal them a crippling blow."

"But how?" demanded Jehungir. "He has repeatedly cut his way out of spots that seemed certain

death for him. And, instinct or cunning, he has avoided or escaped every trap set for him."

"For every beast and for every man there is a trap he will not escape," quoth Ghaznavi. "When

we have parleyed with the _kozaks_ for the ransom of captives, I have observed this man Conan. He

has a keen relish for women and strong drink. Have your captive Octavia fetched here."

Jehungir clapped his hands, and an impressive Kushite eunuch, an image of shining ebony in

silken pantaloons, bowed before him and went to do his bidding. Presently he returned, leading by

the wrist a tall, handsome girl, whose yellow hair, clear eyes, and fair skin identified her as a

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pure-blooded member of her race. Her scanty silk tunic, girded at the waist, displayed the

marvelous contours of her magnificent figure. Her fine eyes flashed with resentment and her red

lips were sulky, but submission had been taught her during her captivity. She stood with hanging

head before her master until he motioned her to a seat on the divan beside him. Then he looked

inquiringly at Ghaznavi.

"We must lure Conan away from the _kozaks_," said the counsellor abruptly. "Their war camp is

at present pitched somewhere on the lower reaches of the Zaporoska River -- which, as you well

know, is a wilderness of reeds, a swampy jungle in which our last expedition was cut to pieces by

those masterless devils."

"I am not likely to forget that," said Jehungir wryly.

"There is an uninhabited island near the mainland," said Ghaznavi, "known as Xapur, the

Fortified, because of some ancient ruins upon it. There is a peculiarity about it which makes it

perfect for our purpose. It has no shoreline but rises sheer out of the sea in cliffs a hundred

and fifty feet tall. Not even an ape could negotiate them. The only place where a man can go up or

down is a narrow path on the western side that has the appearance of a worn stair, carved into the

solid rock of the cliffs.

"If we could trap Conan on that island, alone, we could hunt him down at our leisure, with

bows, as men hunt a lion."

"As well wish for the moon," said Jehungir impatiently. "Shall we send him a messenger,

bidding him climb the cliffs and await our coming?"

"In effect, yes!" Seeing Jehungir's look of amazement, Ghaznavi continued: "We will ask for a

parley with the _kozaks_ in regard to prisoners, at the edge of the steppes by Fort Ghori. As

usual, we will go with a force and encamp outside the castle. They will come, with an equal force,

and the parley will go forward with the usual distrust and suspicion. But this time we will take

with us, as if by casual chance, your beautiful captive." Octavia changed color and listened with

intensified interest as the counsellor nodded toward her. "She will use all her wiles to attract

Conan's attention. That should not be difficult. To that wild reaver, she should appear a dazzling

vision of loveliness. Her vitality and substantial figure should appeal to him more vividly than

would one of the doll-like beauties of your seraglio."

Octavia sprang up, her white fists clenched, her eyes blazing and her figure quivering with

outraged anger.

"You would force me to play the trollop with this barbarian?" she exclaimed. "I will not! I

am no market-block slut to smirk and ogle at a steppes robber. I am the daughter of a Nemedian

lord--"

"You were of the Nemedian nobility before my riders carried you off," returned Jehungir

cynically. "Now you are merely a slave who will do as she is bid."

"I will not!" she raged.

"On the contrary," rejoined Jehungir with studied cruelty, "you will. I like Ghaznavi's plan.

Continue, prince among counsellors."

"Conan will probably wish to buy her. You will refuse to sell her, of course, or to exchange

her for Hyrkanian prisoners. He may then try to steal her, or take her by force -- though I do not

think even he would break the parley truce. Anyway, we must be prepared for whatever he might

attempt.

"Then, shortly after the parley, before he has time to forget all about her, we will send a

messenger to him, under a flag of truce, accusing him of stealing the girl and demanding her

return. He may kill the messenger, but at least he will think that she has escaped.

"Then we will send a spy -- a Yuetishi fisherman will do -- to the _kozak_ camp, who will

tell Conan that Octavia is hiding on Xapur. If I know my man, he will go straight to that place."

"But we do not know that he will go alone," Jehungir argued.

"Does a man take a band of warriors with him, when going to a rendezvous with a woman he

desires?" retorted Ghaznavi. "The chances are all that he _will_ go alone. But we will take care

of the other alternative. We will not await him on the island, where we might be trapped

ourselves, but among the reeds of a marshy point, which juts out to within a thousand yards of

Xapur. If he brings a large force, we'll beat a retreat and think up another plot. If he comes

alone or with a small party, we will have him. Depend upon it, he will come, remembering your

charming slave's smiles and meaning glances."

"I will never descend to such shame!" Octavia was wild with fury and humiliation. "I will die

first!"

"You will not die, my rebellious beauty," said Jehungir, "but you will be subjected to a very

painful and humiliating experience."

He clapped his hands, and Octavia palled. This time it was not the Kushite who entered, but a

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Shemite, a heavily muscled man of medium height with a short, curled, blue-black beard.

"Here is work for you, Gilzan," said Jehungir. "Take this fool, and play with her awhile. Yet

be careful not to spoil her beauty."

With an inarticulate grunt the Shemite seized Octavia's wrist, and at the grasp of his iron

fingers, all the defiance went out of her. With a piteous cry she tore away and threw herself on

her knees before her implacable master, sobbing incoherently for mercy.

Jehungir dismissed the disappointed torturer with a gesture, and said to Ghaznavi: "If your

plan succeeds, I will fill your lap with gold."

In the darkness before dawn, an unaccustomed sound disturbed the solitude that slumbered over

the reedy marshes and the misty waters of the coast. It was not a drowsy waterfowl nor a waking

beast. It was a human who struggled through the thick reeds, which were taller than a man's head.

It was a woman, had there been anyone to see, tall, and yellow-haired, her splendid limbs

molded by her draggled tunic. Octavia had escaped in good earnest, every outraged fiber of her

still tingling from her experience in a captivity that had become unendurable.

Jehungir's mastery of her had been bad enough; but with deliberate fiendishness Jehungir had

given her to a nobleman whose name was a byword for degeneracy even in Khawarizm.

Octavia's resilient flesh crawled and quivered at her memories. Desperation had nerved her

climb from Jelal Khan's castle on a rope made of strips from torn tapestries, and chance had led

her to a picketed horse. She had ridden all night, and dawn found her with a foundered steed on

the swampy shores of the sea. Quivering with the abhorence of being dragged back to the revolting

destiny planned for her by Jelal Khan, she plunged into the morass, seeking a hiding place from

the pursuit she expected. When the reeds grew thinner around her and the water rose about her

thighs, she saw the dim gloom of an island ahead of her. A broad span of water lay between, but

she did not hesitate. She waded out until the low waves were lapping about her waist; then she

struck out strongly, swimming with a vigor that promised unusual endurance.

As she neared the island, she saw that it rose sheer from the water in castlelike cliffs. She

reached them at last but found neither ledge to stand on below the water, nor to cling to above.

She swam on, following the curve of the cliffs, the strain of her long flight beginning to weight

her limbs. Her hands fluttered along the sheer stone, and suddenly they found a depression. With a

sobbing gasp of relief, she pulled herself out of the water and clung there, a dripping white

goddess in the dim starlight.

She had come upon what seemed to be steps carved in the cliff. Up them she went, flattening

herself against the stone as she caught a faint clack of muffled oars. She strained her eyes and

thought she made out a vague bulk moving toward the reedy point she had just quitted. But it was

too far away for her to be sure in the darkness, and presently the faint sound ceased and she

continued her climb. If it were her pursuers, she knew of no better course than to hide on the

island. She knew that most of the islands off that marshy coast were uninhabited. This might be a

pirate's lair, but even pirates would be preferable to the beast she had escaped.

A vagrant thought crossed her mind as she climbed, in which she mentally compared her former

master with the _kozak_ chief with whom -- by compulsion -- she had shamefully flirted in the

pavillions of the camp by Fort Ghori, where the Hyrkanian lords had parleyed with the warriors of

the steppes. His burning gaze had frightened and humiliated her, but his cleanly elemental

fierceness set him above Jelal Khan, a monster such as only an overly opulent civilization can

produce.

She scrambled up over the cliff edge and looked timidly at the dense shadows which confronted

her. The trees grew close to the cliffs, presenting a solid mass of blackness. Something whirred

above her head and she cowered, even though realizing it was only a bat.

She did not like the looks of those ebony shadows, but she set her teeth and went toward

them, trying not to think of snakes. Her bare feet made no sound in the spongy loam under the

trees.

Once among them, the darkness closed frighteningly about her. She had not taken a dozen steps

when she was no longer able to look back and see the cliffs and the sea beyond. A few steps more

and she became hopelessly confused and lost her sense of direction. Through the tangled branches

not even a star peered. She groped and floundered on, blindly, and then came to a sudden halt.

Somewhere ahead there began the rhythmical booming of a drum. It was not such a sound as she

would have expected to hear in that time and place. Then she forgot it as she was aware of a

presence near her. She could not see, but she knew that something was standing beside her in the

darkness.

With a stifled cry she shrank back, and as she did so, something that even in her panic she

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recognized as a human arm curved about her waist. She screamed and threw all her supple young

strength into a wild lunge for freedom, but her captor caught her up like a child, crushing her

frantic resistance with ease. The silence with which her frenzied pleas and protests were received

added to her terror as she felt herself being carried through the darkness toward the distant

drum, which still pulsed and muttered.

As the first tinge of dawn reddened the sea, a small boat with a solitary occupant approached

the cliffs. The man in the boat was a picturesque figure. A crimson scarf was knotted about his

head; his wide silk breeches, of flaming hue, were upheld by a broad sash, which likewise

supported a scimitar in a shagreen scabbard. His gilt-worked leather boots suggested the horseman

rather than the seaman, but he handled his boat with skill. Through his widely open white silk

shirt showed his broad, muscular breast, burned brown by the sun.

The muscles of his heavy, bronzed arms rippled as he pulled the oars with an almost feline

ease of motion. A fierce vitality that was evident in each feature and motion set him apart from

the common men; yet his expression was neither savage nor somber, though the smoldering blue eyes

hinted at ferocity easily wakened. This was Conan, who had wandered into the armed camps of the

_kozaks_ with no other possession than his wits and his sword, and who had carved his way to

leadership among them.

He paddled to the carven stair as one familiar with his environs and moored the boat to a

projection of the rock. Then he went up the worn steps without hesitation. He was keenly alert,

not because he consciously suspected hidden danger, but because alertness was a part of him,

whetted by the wild existence he followed.

What Ghaznavi had considered animal intuition or some sixth sense was merely the razor-edged

faculties and savage wit of the barbarian. Conan had no instinct to tell him that men were

watching him from a covert among the reeds of the mainland.

As he climbed the cliff, one of these men breathed deeply and stealthily lifted a bow.

Jehungir caught his wrist and hisssed an oath into his ear. "Fool! Will you betray us? Don't you

realize he is out of range? Let him get upon the island. He will go looking for the girl. We will

stay here awhile. He _may_ have sensed our presence or guessed our plot. He may have warriors

hidden somewhere. We will wait. In an hour, if nothing suspicious occurs, we'll row up to the foot

of the stair and wait him there. If he does not return in a reasonable time, some of us will go

upon the island and hunt him down. But I do not wish to do that if it can be helped. Some of us

are sure to die if we have to go into the bush after him. I had rather catch him with arrows from

a safe distance."

Meanwhile, the unsuspecting _kozak_ had plunged into a forest. He went silently in his soft

leather boots, his gaze sifting every shadow in eagerness to catch sight of the splendid, tawny-

haired beauty of whom he had dreamed ever since he had seen her in the pavilion of Jehungir Agha

by Fort Ghori. He would have desired her even if she had displayed repugnance toward him. But her

cryptic smiles and glances had fired his blood, and with all the lawless violence which was his

heritage he desired that white-skinned, golden-haired woman of civilization.

He had been on Xapur before. Less than a month ago, he had held a secret conclave here with a

pirate crew. He knew that he was approaching a point where he could see the mysterious ruins which

gave the island its name, and he wondered if he could find the girl hiding among them. Even with

the thought, he stopped as though struck dead.

Ahead of him, among the trees, rose something that his reason told him was not possible. _It

was a great dark green wall, with towers rearing beyond the battlements._

Conan stood paralyzed in the disruption of the faculties which demoralizes anyone who is

confronted by an impossible negation of sanity. He doubted neither his sight nor his reason, but

something was monstrously out of joint. Less than a month ago, only broken ruins had showed among

the trees. What human hands could rear such a mammoth pile as now met his eyes, in the few weeks

which had elapsed? Besides, the buccaneers who roamed Vilyet ceaselessly would have learned of any

work going on on such stupendous scale and would have informed the _kozaks_.

There was no explaining this thing, but it was so. he was on Xapur, and that fantastic heap

of towering masonry was on Xapur, and all was madness and paradox; yet it was all true.

He wheeled to race back through the jungle, down the carven stair and across the blue waters

to the distant camp at the mouth of the Zaporoska. In that moment of unreasoning panic, even the

thought of halting so near the inland sea was repugnant. He would leave it behind him, would quit

the armed camps and the steppes and put a thousand miles between him and the blue, mysterious East

where the most basic laws of nature could be set at naught, by what diabolism he could not guess.

For an instant, the future fate of kingdoms that hinged on this gay-clad barbarian hung in

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Howard, Robert E - Conan - The Devil in Iron

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