L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

Nonetheless, he could not lie here by the water's edge forever. Perhaps this evening hour, when the people were at their meals, would offer the best chance he could look for.

He rose and ran a hand along the stone of the forty-foot sea wall. The wall was made of huge, well-shaped blocks, worn by the salt spray of centuries. Between the blocks, the mortar had softened and crumbled out, leaving gaps into which fingers and toes could be thrust between the courses of stone.

As a youth, Conan would have faced the climb of such a wall without trepidation. Scaling sheer cliffs was a normal accomplishment of a Cimmerian clansman. But he had not had occasion to make such a climb in many years, and his grasp was not so strong, nor his movements so sure as formerly.

He pulled himself together, kicked the helmet and its breathing apparatus into the water, and tucked his boots through his belt. He was tempted to leave his mailshirt but decided to keep it after all. Doffing one's armor in the face of peril, merely to rid oneself of its irksome weight, was the act of a rash and foolish youth - not of crafty old Conan.

Then, digging fingers and toes into the cracks between the courses, he began to climb. Slowly, like some great tail-less lizard, he crept up the wall. More than once he felt a finger or a toe slip and almost resigned himself to a bone-breaking fall. But his grip held, and presently he squeezed through one of the embrasures of the battlement and dropped to the broad, level top of the wall.

On the other side of the wall, towards the city, a low parapet without crenelations ran along the edge. Crouching, Conan slunk across the wall to the inner side and peered over the parapet. The city lay spread out before him.

Near the wall, fishermen's hovels and sheds stood in the red glow of the sunset. Smoke from cookfires rose from the huts, and here and there fishermen were stretching out their nets to dry. Now and then a naked brown child ran on an evening errand. Beyond lay cobbled streets and a vista of stone nouses, great and small.

The city was built on the sloping side of a hill. From where Conan crouched., he could see streets and squares, rising in tiers to the heights. The larger buildings were designed in a curious monolithic style, with thick, squat, tapering columns supporting heavy lintels and wedge-shaped corbelled arches. Walls of massive stone were dressed with stucco and plaster, either whitewashed or colored a violent crimson, a tawny cream, a bold canary, an emerald green, or a brilliant blue. The styling, although faintly reminiscent of nighted Khem or of the mysterious walled cities - some living, some ruined - that he had glimpsed years before in the deserts and jungles of the South, was strange to Conan's eye. It baffled him, as though built in accordance with an alien canon of aesthetics.

Higher on the slope rose stately edifices which were probably palaces, mansions, or temples. They had roofs of red tile or green copper and squat, five-sided towers with pyramidal tops. Conan saw imposing pylons, towering obelisks, and spacious gateways. Some avenues were lined with fantastic stone monsters.

Wall, cornice, doorway, architrave, and column capital were covered with leering, bug-eyed faces. Parrot-beaked, winged, or multilimbed beings of myth and legend sprawled in low, chiseled relief over gateways and walls. On some of the nearer walls, he could just make out rows of curious picture-writing. Composed of little squares containing weird faces and other elements, this form of writing was entirely new to him.

In the center of the city, amid a spacious square of level stone paving, rose a titanic pyramid with sloping sides, built of alternate blocks of block basalt and red sandstone. A lazy plume of smoke ascended from the topmost level, where Conan could faintly make out the outlines of a huge, flat altar. Flights of stone steps, guarded by stone monsters, rose up the side of the pyramid.

This structure exuded a sinister, disturbing aura of menace and terror, as if the mingled emotions of sacrificed thousands radiated from every stone. As he gazed at the accursed thing, Conan felt his skin roughen and suppressed a growl of hostility deep in his chest.

Few people moved in the darkening streets, increasingly drowned in purple night shadow. A few beggars slept in doorways. Here and there a yawning, sleepy-faced slave shuffled along on some errand for his master.

Conan waited until these few pedestrians were no longer to be seen. Then he took off his mail, made a bundle of it and his sword, and dropped the bundle to the ground below. The drop was considerably less than that on the seaward side of the wall. Then he swung himself over the parapet and began to descend, as he had ascended on the seaward side. Halfway down his grip slipped, and he kicked himself away from the wall as he fell, to land in a crouch on the turf fifteen feet below, jarred but unhurt.

A hasty glance revealed no sign that he had been 'seen, so he quickly donned boots, mail shirt, and sword. His only weapons were the broadsword and a broad-bladed dirk whose sheath was thrust through a slit in his girdle. These were not much with which to tackle a city full of implacable foes. But, with luck, daring, and the caution beaten into him by half a century of desperate adventure, he might have a fighting chance. And that was all he had ever asked of the gods.

Like a bronze shadow, he slipped between the hovels and across the first street into the shadows of an arcade. No eye marked his progress as he moved from column to gate, from doorway to pylon. In the daytime, the streets would be alive with a milling throng; now they were almost deserted.

In his shadowy progress through this silent city of gaudily-painted stucco over massive stone, Conan chose dark alleys and winding ways rather than the broad streets and wide ramps that climbed from level to level. He wondered where Sigurd and the pirates were - if they were still alive. Probably they would be immured near the Antil-lian equivalent of a slave market. In a strange city filled with enemies, where no man spoke a language he could understand,, he had little chance of finding and freeing them; but he meant to try. Even in the lawless days of his early career, he had been noted for his fierce loyalty to his comrades.

Besides, if one man had no hope of prevailing against a city of twenty or thirty thousand, with sixty hardened fighters behind him the mathematics became a little better - not much, true, but sixty-odd men still have a better chance of winning out of a tight spot than one, even if that one be Conan the Cimmerian.

Conan's first problem, however, was to find a safe haven, a place of concealment. Where, in a city full of unintelligible foes, could he find an ally ?

Then it would seem that he could count upon the favor of his barbaric gods, after all. He was slinking down a narrow street, lined with mean little one-room houses, when he heard a sharp hiss. As he looked around for the source, hand on hilt, the hiss was repeated from other directions. The faces of several women, dim in the dusk, had appeared in the doorways, and their hands beckoned to him.

In a flash, he realized that he had strayed into the Street of Harlots. He picked one door at random and strode to it. There was no time to examine the women closely in order to choose the most comely.

The harlot pulled Conan into her room. The cubicle was dimly lit by a bundle of rushes dipped in grease, set alight, and clamped in a wall bracket. She spoke to him in a stream of meaningless syllables, but the hand that she held out, palm up, was eloquent enough.

Conan pulled a small purse out of his girdle, took out a silver coin, and placed it on the outstretched palm. The woman held the coin to the rushlight, then squeaked with delight and threw herself upon Conan. She was plump, not unattractive, and clad in a simple cotton dress.