L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

'Naught, naught! But a man must needs respect the way ye spring your comrades out of a tight spot - if ye have to lay half the city in ruins to do it.'

Conan laughed harshly. 'Aye! And I'd gladly lay the other half in ruins to have an old walrus like you beside me.'

Sigurd sighed. ' 'Tis good of ye to say so, Amra. Me, I'm no longer so limber as once I was.' He glanced at the peaks of Antillia, rising out of the mist. 'We might have done worse than take up Metemphoc's offer, to let him hire us as his mercenary army.'

Conan grinned and shook his head. 'We former kings get proud as the devil. We won't serve other men when we can be masters ourselves.'

The sun was up, filling the sky with brightness. White gulls circled, squealing, and blue waves slapped the newly tarred and painted hull of the Winged Dragon. Conan took another deep breath. Beside him, Sigurd squinted against the brightness of dawn and glanced at his scared, gray-bearded comrade.

'Whither now, Lion?' he queried. 'Back to the Bara-chas, or to harry the coasts of Stygia and Shem?'

Conan shook his head. 'This ship is not made to cross the great gap of ocean. With all these rowers to feed and water, we'd never make it.'

'That green galley we first met did.'

'Aye, but I'm no sorcerer, to summon up a crew of spirits to ply the oars.'

Conan pondered. Old Metemphoc had told him much. Even farther west, at the very rim of the world, the old thief had confided, lay a vast new continent. Mayapan, the Atlanteans and their Antillian descendants had called it. They raided its coasts for gold, emeralds, and virgin copper; for red-skinned slaves and curious birds with gorgeous plumage; for tiger-like cats whose pelts were marked with black rosettes on tawny gold. Here, too, were barbarian states founded by renegades from Atlantis and Antillia, where the cults of the Giant Serpent and of the Saber-toothed Tiger carried on their ferocious rivalry in a welter of human sacrifice and abominable worship.

A new world, he thought; a world of trackless jungles and spacious plains, of towering mountains and hidden lakes, where immense rivers writhed like serpents of molten silver through depths of emerald jungle, where unknown peoples worshiped strange and fearsome gods . ..

What sights and adventures might not await him in the remotenesses of Mayapan? Conan wondered. Metemphoc had called him 'Kukulcan,' but whether this was a sobriquet in the Antillian tongue, or a corruption of 'Conan Cimmerian' or some such phrase, Conan never knew. If he went to this new world, where people had never seen bearded men with weapons of steel and glass - why, he mieht conauer another vast empire, be worshiped as a god, bring bits of civilization of the old world to the new, and become the hero of legends that would endure ten thousand years...

'Crom knows!' he snorted. 'Let's break our fast and talk on this matter. Saving the world surely gives one an appetite! ‘

They went below. A few hours later, the great ship, which the folk of Mayapan were to call Quetzdcoatl -meaning 'winged (or feathered) serpent' in their uncouth tongue - lifted anchor. She sailed south and then, skirting the Antillian Isles, into the unknown West.

But whither, the ancient chronicle, which endeth here., sayeth not.