L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

Choosing the simplest way of escape, Conan sprang upwards to get above the octopus. He hoped to circumvent it entirely and reach the upper slope beyond the cave before it sensed his location.

But Conan forgot that he was now clearly silhouetted as a black, moving object against the rippling, silvery plane of the sunlit surface above. Even as he swam above the brute, two questing tentacles reared up and closed crushingly about him - one about his waist and the other about his left foot. In that viselike grip he was helpless. In a few heartbeats, the tentacles would draw him down to the clashing beak...

Again Conan thrust the point of his blade against the thick, rubbery skin of a tentacle and pierced it. But the monster was not very sensitive to pain. Such was its vitality that he could have hacked through half its tentacles before seriously weakening it, and then it would have merely withdrawn to regrow its mutilated Umbs. Conan felt the surge of titanic muscles in the crushing grip that held him helpless as, with inexorable force, the kraken drew him down toward its beaked mouth ...

Then a bolt of black lightning struck and snapped through one of the tentacles holding him.

The dark shape had flashed out of dimness like a vast projectile. One snap of the triple rows of teeth had chopped a foot-long section out of one of the tentacles. The severed end uncoiled from Conan's midsection and drifted down to the ocean floor, flopping and writhing like a bisected worm.

The new arrival was a colossal shark, with a thick, tapering body over thirty feet in length. Dark slate-gray above, creamy white below, it banked and curved at the end of its lunge. For an instant it hung poised in the green waters. Then, with an arch of its supple spine, it curved about and came eeling back for another attack. Its small, yellow eyes, glassy with mindless hunger, glared into Conan's.

The Cimmerian was now held by a single tentacle, looped about his foot. Urgency lent extraordinary strength to his arms. Swung in both knobby hands, the broadsword sheared through the slender terminal portion of the tentacle., and Conan was free.

Not pausing to sheathe his blade, Conan swam furiously off at a tangent., striving to avoid the meteoric rush of the shark. The sword in his hand encumbered him and weighed him down on the right side, so that he slewed about in a wide half-circle. That was just enough to take him out of the path of the onrushing shark, whose triangular fins cut through the green-lit waters like plowshares.

It shot past him., its tooth-lined maw snapping shut on empty water. It missed him so narrowly that he could see the individual small, pebbly scales that crusted its rough, white underbelly as it raced by in front of his face. The displacement of the water tossed him about like a straw in the wind.

Then the shark turned and poised again at the end of its lunge. This time, Conan knew, he could not dodge. As the shark writhed toward him, three black tentacles flailed up past the Cimmerian and lashed about its bulky barrel, ensnaring the monster, The kraken's arms writhed like a nest of enraged serpents. The shark doubled, snapping furiously. Another tentacle was bitten in two, and the severed end sank writhing to the sand below.

But more tentacles whipped around the shark's body. Conan, holding his sword in his teeth to free both arms for swimming, saw what was happening as he stroked himself swiftly away from the combat. The octopus had thrown five of its eight arms - including even those that had had their tips severed - about the forward part of the shark's body and its head, covering its gills and its eyes.

No matter how the shark blindly writhed and snapped, it could not bring its terrible jaws to bear upon its rubbery antagonist.

Meanwhile, the octopus had anchored itself to the rocks below by means of the suckers on its remaining three tentacles, to keep from being carried away bodily by the struggles of the shark. Sand, stirred up in clouds by the combat, obscured the spectacle. And then the water around the battle was plunged into darkness as a vast cloud of ink, ejected by the octopus, billowed up and out in all directions.

Conan was happy at this outcome. Engaged in fighting each other, neither the kraken nor the giant shark had time for him. He seized the opportunity to sheathe his sword and swim away from the scene of conflict. Before long, it vanished behind him in the dimness of the deeps, a cloud of deeper darkness against the gloom of the watery world. He never learned whether the octopus succeeded in smothering and destroying the shark, or whether the cloud of ink meant that the shark was winning and the octopus was seeking to cover its flight.

As he settled to the ocean floor a few hundred yards further to continue his progress on foot, Conan was just as glad not to know the outcome of the battle behind him. Ahead, up the slope, the bottom brightened as it rose to meet the surface of the Western Ocean. Conan plodded steadily forward, resolutely ignoring the pressure on his chest and the ache in his legs that came from the effort of dragging them forward against the resistance of the water. He still had a good part of a mile to go - perhaps even more - and he was eager to get out into clean, fresh air again.

He plodded slowly on through the dim waters, a weird, fantastical shape crowned with a glistening crystal helm, like some eerie god of the deeps.

CHAPTER TWELVE

LOST CITY

Submerged in deep, red, mystic haze,

where suns in sanguine splendor set,

Forgotten empires linger yet,

like phantoms of primeval days.

- The Visions of Epemitreus

Conan heaved himself out of the waves and on to the lowest of the stone steps that led up to the sea gate, now closed for the night. From where he crouched, the setting sun had disappeared behind the crenelations of the towering sea wall.

Wearily, he pulled off the crystal helmet and its breathing tubes, whose supply of air was now exhausted, and laid the apparatus on the stone beside him. Then he tagged off his boots and poured the water out of them. For a while he sat hunched on the stone, glaring warily about him and breathing heavily. The task of hiking three miles over the bottom of the shallow, shark-infested sea, and then another mile along the shore to the city, had gravely sapped the old warrior's strength.

When he had reached the city in midafternoon, he had slipped back into the water. He waited, almost submerged, until all the small craft had tied up for the night, the sailors had gone in through the gate, and the gate had closed, before daring to come closer.

Up and down the long, stone quays, which stretched north and south from the gate, several larger vessels were moored. Others rode at anchor in the harbor, but no life appeared on their decks. The crews either were below at their evening repast or had gone ashore. These Antillians, thought Conan, must either be careless or confident in their own strength, to post no watches on their walls and their ships at all times. Among the Antillian ships, the fire-blackened hull of the Red Lion lay half-submerged in shallow water.

Conan was not only tired after his day-long exertions but also ravenously hungry. As he sat under the darkening sky, he thought out his next step. Whatever it was, he had better be about it before some watchman stumbled across him.

His best chance, he thought, would be to get into the city. This would place him in a fearfully dangerous position. Not only would he be alone and friendless; but also he could not hope to pass unnoticed, because his height, color, and features distinguished him at the slightest glance from the small, brown Antillians.

Added to this was the problem of language. Back in his own world, he had a rough-and-ready command of a dozen tongues, albeit he had never lost the barbarous Cimmerian accent with which he spoke them. But the Antillians would use some speech of remotely Atlantean origin, long forgotten in Conan's world and changed in the course of eight thousand years out of all resemblance to any languages Conan knew.