Conan the Barbarian

What he saw made his gorge rise, but he kept the vomit down.

Corin stood within a circle of the enemy, his shoulders slumped with weariness. His father’s clothes were soaked in blood. A black-shaft arrow had pierced the right shoulder. One of the archers, regal in her leather armor, smiled grimly, leading Conan to believe that her bow had sped that arrow. For that I will kill you.

The others gathered there likewise appeared to be leaders of the various contingents that still swarmed over the village. A corpulent Aquilonian general with unkempt hair and armor remarkably clean of blood watched Corin with piggish eyes. Another man, even larger and clearly sharing bloodlines with the heavy cavalry, had supplemented his armor with a sheaf of chains. The Kushite chieftain carried a massive war club festooned with metal shards and sharpened bones. The last man bore facial tattoos that Conan could not recognize, yet would never forget, and studied Corin the way a cat studies a dying mouse.

And there, standing tall among them, was the man who had ridden through the Aquilonian ranks. Corin evinced no fear of him, but the others did. Conan smiled with pride for his father, but his blue eyes glittered with cold contempt for the others.

The leader, hand resting on the hilt of what appeared to be a double-bladed scimitar, paraded before Conan’s father with the air of prince. “There is no shame in kneeling before Khalar Zym. All these fighters have surrendered, left their lands, and sworn their allegiance to me.” The man inspected his fingernails, then picked up the Cimmerian great sword. “They’ve done so because they know I will one day be a god.”

Corin’s eyes narrowed. “God or not, one day you will fall.”

The leader rolled his eyes, then with a wave of his hand summoned forth a robed figure from the shadows. The acolyte bore a mask that looked exactly like the crest on the invaders’ shields, save that it was missing a piece. The brown-gold of aged bone, covered in a scaly flesh, the mask appeared unspeakably ancient and evil. Conan stared at it, entranced and revolted at the same time.

The bandit leader glanced at the mask, then smiled at its reflection on the sword’s blade. “You know, of course, what this is. The Mask of Acheron. One piece is yet missing. You have it here.”

Corin’s face betrayed nothing to the outsiders, but Conan could read his expression well enough to know that the bandit spoke the truth. This sent a jolt through him, for he knew of no mask, knew of no secret. Perhaps it was something known only to warriors, and so his father had not yet told him. That had to be it; there could be no other explanation. It is the responsibility of which he spoke.

The bandit chuckled. “I do have an appreciation for bravery, Cimmerian, but I have a great need for the last piece. You can give it to me now . . . or die, and I shall find it myself.”

Corin smiled, his expression coming as much with ease as it did with defiance. “I prefer death.”

The bandit leader nodded. “I thought you might. Lucius, to you goes this honor.”

The Aquilonian general drew his short sword and approached, raising it to behead the smiling Cimmerian.

CHAPTER 8

CONAN BURST FROM the woodshed. The short sword came up in a sharp, vicious arc. It lopped Lucius’s nose off. The Aquilonian stumbled back, hand rising to stem the bleeding.

Before the nose could hit the ground, Conan twisted and drove straight at Khalar Zym. The bandit leader whirled. The great sword came up, deflecting Conan’s strike. Khalar Zym kicked the boy in the chest, sending him back into the arms of the bandit’s Kushite confederate. Corin took a step toward Zym, but the large man in chains smashed him to his knees with a forearm shiver across the shoulder blades.

Khalar Zym turned away, his left hand coming up to his right ear. His fingers came away bloody. His eyes widened with shock, then he smiled. “Is that your son? He must be your son. I like him.”

Conan snarled and almost pulled free. The tattooed man grabbed him as well.

“Much fire in that one, Cimmerian. You’re clearly proud of him, as any father should be of a dutiful child.”

Corin said nothing, and Conan followed his father’s example.

“Alas, a child can sometimes be as much a heartache as a delight. Or a weakness.”

Khalar Zym barked an order in a tongue Conan did not recognize, but that rasped like a file over his brain. The Aquilonian and the chained man wrestled Corin over to the forge and there bound him with chains. The larger man walked out into the village and returned with a bucket-size steel helmet, which he filled with scraps of iron. He looped chains around it and fastened another chain to Corin. He arced another chain over a rafter and prepared to hoist the helmet into air above Corin.

Khalar Zym waved the acolyte forward. The sorcerer reached out and traced a finger over a patch of helmet. A gold sigil writhed there for a moment, then died, but a glow grew from within the helmet itself. Conan watched aghast as with that simple gesture all the nightmare stories whispered around fires about magick became real.

The large bandit hoisted the helmet clumsily as the acolyte withdrew. A golden droplet of molten steel splashed down to burn Corin’s thigh. The smith grit his teeth. The flesh tightened around his eyes, but he did not struggle or shift from beneath the helmet.

Khalar Zym shrugged. “You can cry out. I shall think no less of you.”

Corin said nothing.

“As a smith, I thought you might appreciate what can be done with a whisper and magick. For you to make metal fluid, it would be hours with the bellows. For him, a caress. Just think of the power I would share with you when I become a god.”

Corin snorted. “Cimmerians have no use for sorcery.”

“Pity. You would profit by it.” Khalar Zym frowned and looked at his subordinates. “Well? Find it!”

Lucius bowed his head. “Exalted one, it is not like finding the other shards. There is no temple, no sanctuary.”

“Fool.” Khalar Zym pointed around him with the great sword. “Cimmerians do not pray. They have neither priests nor preachers. This, here, this place of fire and steel, this is what matters to them. This is their church. It will be here.”

Khalar Zym’s subordinates, save for the Kushite who knelt on Conan to restrain him, searched the smithy. Though not terribly active in their search, they checked all the places where one could expect to find something that, if Conan figured correctly, could have fit easily inside his clenched fist. Father hid it well. They will never find it, and he will never reveal its location.

Father and son looked at each other in that moment, in silent agreement. They were Cimmerians. No matter the pain, no matter the torture, they would say nothing. Khalar Zym would never let them live, and a life granted because of surrender to a tyrant would not have been worth living. Conan could not give the secret up, and with a nod he let his father know he would happily die beside him to protect it.

The tattooed man sank on bended knee before Khalar Zym. “The bone shard is not here.”

“Can you do nothing right?” Khalar Zym inspected his ear again. The bleeding had stopped and he nodded. He turned to Corin. “Your son has courage and talent. He is so like my daughter.”

The bandit looked toward the smithy’s corner. “Marique, I have need of you.”

A small slender girl in a long, shimmering purple cloak of fine fabric emerged from the shadowed corner where she had waited, silent and unseen. Because her father had likened them one to the other, Conan stared at her. A shiver ran down his spine. Though she appeared to be only a year or two older than he, her eyes stared off into the distance as if she were remembering, or seeing, an entirely different scene than the one that was happening around her. Her hair had been gathered into a mass of dark braids, save for bangs that barely hid her forehead. Her flesh had a corpselike pallor. It surprised Conan that she did not stink of the grave.

“Yes, Father?”

Khalar Zym smiled. “These fools tell me the shard is not here.”

“They just don’t know how to look.”