Shadows in Zamboula
bushy beard from the inner doorway.
Conan grunted and tossed his naked broadsword on the couch.
'Your bolts and bars are strong; but I always sleep with steel by my
side.'
Aram made no reply; he stood fingering his thick beard for a moment as
he stared at the grim weapon. Then silently he withdrew, closing the
door behind him. Conan shot the bolt into place, crossed the room,
opened the opposite door and looked out. The room was on the side of the
house that faced the road running west from the city. The door opened
into a small court that was enclosed by a wall of its own. The
end-walls, which shut it off from the rest of the tavern compound, were
high and without entrances; but the wall that flanked the road was low,
and there was no lock on the gate.
Conan stood for a moment in the door, the glow of the bronze lamp behind
him, looking down the road to where it vanished among the dense palms.
Their leaves rustled together in the faint breeze; beyond them lay the
naked desert. Far up the street, in the other direction, lights gleamed
and the noises of the city came faintly to him. Here was only starlight,
the whispering of the palm leaves, and beyond that low wall, the dust of
the road and the deserted huts thrusting their flat roofs against the
low stars. Somewhere beyond the palm groves a drum began.
The garbled warnings of the Zuagir returned to him, seeming somehow less
fantastic than they had seemed in the crowded, sunlit streets. He
wondered again at the riddle of those empty huts. Why did the beggars
shun them? He turned back into the chamber, shut the door and bolted it.
The light began to flicker, and he investigated, swearing when he found
the palm oil in the lamp was almost exhausted. He started to shout for
Aram, then shrugged his shoulders and blew out the light. In the soft
darkness he stretched himself fully clad on the couch, his sinewy hand
by instinct searching for and closing on the hilt of his broadsword.
Glancing idly at the stars framed in the barred windows, with the murmur
of the breeze through the palms in his ears, he sank into slumber with a
vague consciousness of the muttering drum, out on the desert--the low
rumble and mutter of a leather-covered drum, beaten with soft, rhythmic
strokes of an open black hand....
2 The Night Skulkers
It was the stealthy opening of a door which awakened the Cimmerian. He
did not awake as civilized men do, drowsy and drugged and stupid. He
awoke instantly, with a clear mind, recognizing the sound that had
interrupted his sleep. Lying there tensely in the dark he saw the outer
door slowly open. In a widening crack of starlit sky he saw framed a
great black bulk, broad, stooping shoulders and a misshapen head blocked
out against the stars.
Conan felt the skin crawl between his shoulders. He had bolted that door
securely. How could it be opening now, save by supernatural agency? And
how could a human being possess a head like that outlined against the
stars? All the tales he had heard in the Zuagir tents of devils and
goblins came back to bead his flesh with clammy sweat. Now the monster
slid noiselessly into the room, with a crouching posture and a shambling
gait; and a familiar scent assailed the Cimmerian's nostrils, but did
not reassure him, since Zuagir legendry represented demons as smelling
like that.
Noiselessly Conan coiled his long legs under him; his naked sword was in
his right hand, and when he struck it was as suddenly and murderously as
a tiger lunging out of the dark. Not even a demon could have avoided
that catapulting charge. His sword met and clove through flesh and bone,
and something went heavily to the floor with a strangling cry. Conan
crouched in the dark above it, sword dripping in his hand. Devil or
beast or man, the thing was dead there on the floor. He sensed death as
any wild thing senses it. He glared through the half-open door into the
starlit court beyond. The gate stood open, but the court was empty.
Conan shut the door but did not bolt it. Groping in the darkness he
found the lamp and lighted it. There was enough oil in it to burn for a
minute or so. An instant later he was bending over the figure that
sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.
It was a gigantic black man, naked but for a loin-cloth. One hand still
grasped a knotty-headed bludgeon. The fellow's kinky wool was built up
into horn-like spindles with twigs and dried mud. This barbaric coiffure
had given the head its misshapen appearance in the starlight. Provided
with a clue to the riddle, Conan pushed back the thick red lips, and
grunted as he stared down at teeth filed to points.
He understood now the mystery of the strangers who had disappeared from
the house of Aram Baksh; the riddle of the black drum thrumming out
there beyond the palm groves, and of that pit of charred bones--that pit
where strange meat might be roasted under the stars, while black beasts
squatted about to glut a hideous hunger. The man on the floor was a
cannibal slave from Darfar.
There were many of his kind in the city. Cannibalism was not tolerated
openly in Zamboula. But Conan knew now why people locked themselves in
so securely at night, and why even beggars shunned the open alleys and
doorless ruins. He grunted in disgust as he visualized brutish black
shadows skulking up and down the nighted streets, seeking human
prey--and such men as Aram Baksh to open the doors to them. The
innkeeper was not a demon; he was worse. The slaves from Darfar were
notorious thieves; there was no doubt that some of their pilfered loot
found its way into the hands of Aram Baksh. And in return he sold them
human flesh.
Conan blew out the light, stepped to the door and opened it, and ran his
hand over the ornaments on the outer side. One of them was movable and
worked the bolt inside. The room was a trap to catch human prey like
rabbits. But this time instead of a rabbit it had caught a saber-toothed
tiger.
Conan returned to the other door, lifted the bolt and pressed against
it. It was immovable and he remembered the bolt on the other side. Aram
was taking no chances either with his victims or the men with whom he
dealt. Buckling on his sword-belt, the Cimmerian strode out into the
court, closing the door behind him. He had no intention of delaying the
settlement of his reckoning with Aram Baksh. He wondered how many poor
devils had been bludgeoned in their sleep and dragged out of that room
and down the road that ran through the shadowed palm groves to the
roasting-pit.
He halted in the court. The drum was still muttering, and he caught the
reflection of a leaping red glare through the groves. Cannibalism was
more than a perverted appetite with the black men of Darfar; it was an
integral element of their ghastly cult. The black vultures were already
in conclave. But whatever flesh filled their bellies that night, it
would not be his.
To reach Aram Baksh he must climb one of the walls which separated the
small enclosure from the main compound. They were high, meant to keep
out the man-eaters; but Conan was no swamp-bred black man; his thews had
been steeled in boyhood on the sheer cliffs of his native hills. He was
standing at the foot of the nearer wall when a cry echoed under the
trees.
In an instant Conan was crouching at the gate, glaring down the road.
The sound had come from the shadows of the huts across the road. He
heard a frantic choking and gurgling such as might result from a
desperate attempt to shriek, with a black hand fastened over the
victim's mouth. A close-knit clump of figures emerged from the shadows
beyond the huts, and started down the road--three huge black men
carrying a slender, struggling figure between them. Conan caught the
glimmer of pale limbs writhing in the starlight, even as, with a
convulsive wrench, the captive slipped from the grasp of the brutal
fingers and came flying up the road, a supple young woman, naked as the
day she was born. Conan saw her plainly before she ran out of the road
and into the shadows between the huts. The blacks were at her heels, and
back in the shadows the figures merged and an intolerable scream of
anguish and horror rang out.
Stirred to red rage by the ghoulishness of the episode, Conan raced
across the road.
Neither victim nor abductors were aware of his presence until the soft
swish of the dust about his feet brought them about, and then he was
almost upon them, coming with the gusty fury of a hill wind. Two of the
blacks turned to meet him, lifting their bludgeons. But they failed to
estimate properly the speed at which he was coming. One of them was
down, disemboweled, before he could strike, and wheeling cat-like, Conan
evaded the stroke of the other's cudgel and lashed in a whistling
counter-cut. The black's head flew into the air; the headless body took
three staggering steps, spurting blood and clawing horribly at the air
with groping hands, and then slumped to the dust.
The remaining cannibal gave back with a strangled yell, hurling his
captive from him. She tripped and rolled in the dust, and the black fled
in blind panic toward the city. Conan was at his heels. Fear winged the
black feet, but before they reached the easternmost hut, he sensed death
at his back, and bellowed like an ox in the slaughter-yards.
'Black dog of hell!' Conan drove his sword between the dusky shoulders
with such vengeful fury that the broad blade stood out half its length
from the black breast. With a choking cry the black stumbled headlong,
and Conan braced his feet and dragged out his sword as his victim fell.
Only the breeze disturbed the leaves. Conan shook his head as a lion
shakes its mane and growled his unsatiated blood-lust. But no more
shapes slunk from the shadows, and before the huts the starlit road
stretched empty. He whirled at the quick patter of feet behind him, but
it was only the girl, rushing to throw herself on him and clasp his neck
in a desperate grasp, frantic from terror of the abominable fate she had
just escaped.
'Easy, girl,' he grunted. 'You're all right. How did they catch you?'
She sobbed something unintelligible. He forgot all about Aram Baksh as
he scrutinized her by the light of the stars. She was white, though a
very definite brunette, obviously one of Zamboula's many mixed breeds.
She was tall, with a slender, supple form, as he was in a good position
to observe. Admiration burned in his fierce eyes as he looked down on
her splendid bosom and her lithe limbs, which still quivered from fright
and exertion. He passed an arm around her flexible waist and said,
reassuringly: 'Stop shaking, wench; you're safe enough.'
His touch seemed to restore her shaken sanity. She tossed back her
thick, glossy locks and cast a fearful glance over her shoulder, while
she pressed closer to the Cimmerian as if seeking security in the
contact.
'They caught me in the streets,' she muttered, shuddering. 'Lying in
wait, beneath a dark arch--black men, like great, hulking apes! Set have
mercy on me! I shall dream of it!'
'What were you doing out on the streets this time of night?' he
inquired, fascinated by the satiny feel of her sleek skin under his
questing fingers.
She raked back her hair and stared blankly up into his face. She did not
seem aware of his caresses.
'My lover,' she said. 'My lover drove me into the streets. He went mad
and tried to kill me. As I fled from him I was seized by those beasts.'
'Beauty like yours might drive a man mad,' quoth Conan, running his
fingers experimentally through her glossy tresses.
She shook her head, like one emerging from a daze. She no longer
trembled, and her voice was steady.
'It was the spite of a priest--of Totrasmek, the high priest of Hanuman,
who desires me for himself--the dog!'