The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1 (33 page)

Gulping deep of the refreshing air, he dived again, and again his quest was fruitless. A third time he sought the depth, and this time his groping hands met a familiar object in the silt of the bottom. Grasping it, he swam up to the surface.

The Stone was not particularly bulky, but it was heavy. He swam leisurely, and suddenly was aware of a curious stir in the waters about him which was not caused by his own exertions. Thrusting his face below the surface, he tried to pierce the blue depths with his eyes and thought to see a dim gigantic shadow hovering there.

He swam faster, not frightened, but wary. His feet struck the shallows and he waded up on the shelving shore. Looking back he saw the waters swirl and subside. He shook his head, swearing. He had discounted the ancient legend which made Dagon’s Mere the lair of a nameless water-monster, but now he had a feeling as if his escape had been narrow. The time-worn myths of the ancient land were taking form and coming to life before his eyes. What primeval shape lurked below the surface of that treacherous mere, Bran could not guess, but he felt that the fenmen had good reason for shunning the spot, after all.

Bran donned his garments, mounted the black stallion and rode across the fens in the desolate crimson of the sunset’s afterglow, with the Black Stone wrapped in his cloak. He rode, not to his hut, but to the west, in the direction of the Tower of Trajan and the Ring of Dagon. As he covered the miles that lay between, the red stars winked out. Midnight passed him in the moonless night and still Bran rode on. His heart was hot for his meeting with Titus Sulla. Atla had gloated over the anticipation of watching the Roman writhe under torture, but no such thought was in the Pict’s mind. The governor should have his chance with weapons–with Bran’s own sword he should face the Pictish king’s dirk, and live or die according to his prowess. And though Sulla was famed throughout the provinces as a swordsman, Bran felt no doubt as to the outcome.

Dagon’s Ring lay some distance from the Tower–a sullen circle of tall gaunt stones planted upright, with a rough-hewn stone altar in the center. The Romans looked on these menhirs with aversion; they thought the Druids had reared them; but the Celts supposed Bran’s people, the Picts, had planted them–and Bran well knew what hands reared those grim monoliths in lost ages, though for what reasons, he but dimly guessed.

The king did not ride straight to the Ring. He was consumed with curiosity as to how his grim allies intended carrying out their promise. That They could snatch Titus Sulla from the very midst of his men, he felt sure, and he believed he knew how They would do it. He felt the gnawings of a strange misgiving, as if he had tampered with powers of unknown breadth and depth, and had loosed forces which he could not control. Each time he remembered that reptilian murmur, those slanted eyes of the night before, a cold breath passed over him. They had been abhorrent enough when his people drove Them into the caverns under the hills, ages ago; what had long centuries of retrogression made of them? In their nighted, subterranean life, had They retained any of the attributes of humanity at all?

Some instinct prompted him to ride toward the Tower. He knew he was near; but for the thick darkness he could have plainly seen its stark outline tusking the horizon. Even now he should be able to make it out dimly. An obscure, shuddersome premonition shook him and he spurred the stallion into swift canter.

And suddenly Bran staggered in his saddle as from a physical impact, so stunning was the surprize of what met his gaze. The impregnable Tower of Trajan was no more! Bran’s astounded gaze rested on a gigantic pile of ruins–of shattered stone and crumbled granite, from which jutted the jagged and splintered ends of broken beams. At one corner of the tumbled heap one tower rose out of the waste of crumpled masonry, and it leaned drunkenly as if its foundations had been half cut away.

Bran dismounted and walked forward, dazed by bewilderment. The moat was filled in places by fallen stones and broken pieces of mortared wall. He crossed over and came among the ruins. Where, he knew, only a few hours before the flags had resounded to the martial tramp of iron-clad feet, and the walls had echoed to the clang of shields and the blast of the loud-throated trumpets, a horrific silence reigned.

Almost under Bran’s feet, a broken shape writhed and groaned. The king bent down to the legionary who lay in a sticky red pool of his own blood. A single glance showed the Pict that the man, horribly crushed and shattered, was dying.

Lifting the bloody head, Bran placed his flask to the pulped lips and the Roman instinctively drank deep, gulping through splintered teeth. In the dim starlight Bran saw his glazed eyes roll.

“The walls fell,” muttered the dying man. “They crashed down like the skies falling on the day of doom. Ah Jove, the skies rained shards of granite and hailstones of marble!”

“I have felt no earthquake shock,” Bran scowled, puzzled.

“It was no earthquake,” muttered the Roman. “Before last dawn it began, the faint dim scratching and clawing far below the earth. We of the guard heard it–like rats burrowing, or like worms hollowing out the earth. Titus laughed at us, but all day long we heard it. Then at midnight the Tower quivered and seemed to settle–as if the foundations were being dug away–”

A shudder shook Bran Mak Morn. The worms of the earth! Thousands of vermin digging like moles far below the castle, burrowing away the foundations–gods, the land must be honeycombed with tunnels and caverns–these creatures were even less human than he had thought–what ghastly shapes of darkness had he invoked to his aid?

“What of Titus Sulla?” he asked, again holding the flask to the legionary’s lips; in that moment the dying Roman seemed to him almost like a brother.

“Even as the Tower shuddered we heard a fearful scream from the governor’s chamber,” muttered the soldier. “We rushed there–as we broke down the door we heard his shrieks–they seemed to recede–
into the bowels of the earth!
We rushed in; the chamber was empty. His blood-stained sword lay on the floor; in the stone flags of the floor a black hole gaped. Then–the–towers–reeled–the–roof–broke;–through–a–storm–of–crashing–walls–I–crawled–”

A strong convulsion shook the broken figure.

“Lay me down, friend,” whispered the Roman. “I die.”

He had ceased to breathe before Bran could comply. The Pict rose, mechanically cleansing his hands. He hastened from the spot, and as he galloped over the darkened fens, the weight of the accursed Black Stone under his cloak was as the weight of a foul nightmare on a mortal breast.

As he approached the Ring, he saw an eery glow within, so that the gaunt stones stood etched like the ribs of a skeleton in which a witch-fire burns. The stallion snorted and reared as Bran tied him to one of the menhirs. Carrying the Stone he strode into the grisly circle and saw Atla standing beside the altar, one hand on her hip, her sinuous body swaying in a serpentine manner. The altar glowed all over with ghastly light and Bran knew some one, probably Atla, had rubbed it with phosphorus from some dank swamp or quagmire.

He strode forward and whipping his cloak from about the Stone, flung the accursed thing on to the altar.

“I have fulfilled my part of the contract,” he growled.

“And They, theirs,” she retorted. “Look!–they come!”

He wheeled, his hand instinctively dropping to his sword. Outside the Ring the great stallion screamed savagely and reared against his tether. The night wind moaned through the waving grass and an abhorrent soft hissing mingled with it. Between the menhirs flowed a dark tide of shadows, unstable and chaotic. The Ring filled with glittering eyes which hovered beyond the dim illusive circle of illumination cast by the phosphorescent altar. Somewhere in the darkness a human voice tittered and gibbered idiotically. Bran stiffened, the shadows of a horror clawing at his soul.

He strained his eyes, trying to make out the shapes of those who ringed him. But he glimpsed only billowing masses of shadow which heaved and writhed and squirmed with almost fluid consistency.

“Let them make good their bargain!” he exclaimed angrily.

“Then see, oh king!” cried Atla in a voice of piercing mockery.

There was a stir, a seething in the writhing shadows, and from the darkness crept, like a four-legged animal, a human shape that fell down and groveled at Bran’s feet and writhed and mowed, and lifting a death’s-head, howled like a dying dog. In the ghastly light, Bran, soul-shaken, saw the blank glassy eyes, the bloodless features, the loose, writhing, froth-covered lips of sheer lunacy–gods, was this Titus Sulla, the proud lord of life and death in Eboracum’s proud city?

Bran bared his sword.

“I had thought to give this stroke in vengeance,” he said somberly. “I give it in mercy–
Vale Caesar
!”

The steel flashed in the eery light and Sulla’s head rolled to the foot of the glowing altar, where it lay staring up at the shadowed sky.

“They harmed him not!” Atla’s hateful laugh slashed the sick silence. “It was what he saw and came to know that broke his brain! Like all his heavy-footed race, he knew nothing of the secrets of this ancient land. This night he has been dragged through the deepest pits of Hell, where even you might have blenched!”

“Well for the Romans that they know not the secrets of this accursed land!” Bran roared, maddened, “with its monster-haunted meres, its foul witch-women, and its lost caverns and subterranean realms where spawn in the darkness shapes of Hell!”

“Are they more foul than a mortal who seeks their aid?” cried Atla with a shriek of fearful mirth. “Give them their Black Stone!”

A cataclysmic loathing shook Bran’s soul with red fury.

“Aye, take your cursed Stone!” he roared, snatching it from the altar and dashing it among the shadows with such savagery that bones snapped under its impact. A hurried babel of grisly tongues rose and the shadows heaved in turmoil. One segment of the mass detached itself for an instant and Bran cried out in fierce revulsion, though he caught only a fleeting glimpse of the thing, had only a brief impression of a broad strangely flattened head, pendulous writhing lips that bared curved pointed fangs, and a hideously misshapen, dwarfish body that seemed
mottled
–all set off by those unwinking reptilian eyes. Gods!–the myths had prepared him for horror in human aspect, horror induced by bestial visage and stunted deformity–but this was the horror of nightmare and the night.

“Go back to Hell and take your idol with you!” he yelled, brandishing his clenched fists to the skies, as the thick shadows receded, flowing back and away from him like the foul waters of some black flood. “Your ancestors were men, though strange and monstrous–but gods, ye have become in ghastly fact what my people called ye in scorn! Worms of the earth, back into your holes and burrows! Ye foul the air and leave on the clean earth the slime of the serpents ye have become! Gonar was right–there are shapes too foul to use even against Rome!”

He sprang from the Ring as a man flees the touch of a coiling snake, and tore the stallion free. At his elbow Atla was shrieking with fearful laughter, all human attributes dropped from her like a cloak in the night.

“King of Pictland!” she cried, “King of fools! Do you blench at so small a thing? Stay and let me show you real fruits of the pits! Ha! ha! ha! Run, fool, run! But you are stained with the taint–you have called them forth and they will remember! And in their own time they will come to you again!”

He yelled a wordless curse and struck her savagely in the mouth with his open hand. She staggered, blood starting from her lips, but her fiendish laughter only rose higher.

Bran leaped into the saddle, wild for the clean heather and the cold blue hills of the north where he could plunge his sword into clean slaughter and his sickened soul into the red maelstrom of battle, and forget the horror which lurked below the fens of the west. He gave the frantic stallion the rein, and rode through the night like a hunted ghost, until the hellish laughter of the howling were-woman died out in the darkness behind.

An Echo from the Iron Harp

Shadows and echoes haunt my dreams

with dim and subtle pain,

With the faded fire of a lost desire,

like a ghost on a moonlit plain.

In the pallid mist of death-like sleep

she comes again to me:

I see the gleam of her golden hair

and her eyes like the deep grey sea.

We came from the North as the spume is blown

when the blue tide billows down;

The kings of the South were overthrown

in ruin of camp and town.

Shrine and temple we dashed to dust,

and roared in the dead gods’ ears;

We saw the fall of the kings of Gaul,

and shattered the Belgae spears.

And South we rolled like a drifting cloud,

like a wind that bends the grass,

But we smote in vain on the gates of Spain

for our own kin held the Pass.

Then again we turned where the watch-fires burned

to mark the lines of Rome,

And fire and tower and standard sank

as ships that die in foam.

The legions came, hard hawk-eyed men,

war-wise in march and fray,

But we rushed like a whirlwind on their lines

and swept their ranks away.

Army and consul we overthrew,

staining the trampled loam;

Horror and fear like a lifted spear

lay hard on the walls of Rome.

Our mad desire was a flying fire

that should burn the Appian Gate–

But our day of doom lay hard on us,

at a toss of the dice of Fate.

There rose a man in the ranks of Rome–

ill fall the cursed day!–

Our German allies bit the dust

and we turned hard at bay.

And the raven came and the lean grey wolf,

to follow the sword’s red play.

Over the land like a ghostly hand

the mists of morning lay,

We smote their horsemen in the fog

and hacked a bloody way.

We smote their horsemen in the cloud

and as the mists were cleared

Right through the legion massed behind

our headlong squadron sheared.

Saddle to saddle we chained our ranks

for naught of war we knew

But to charge in the wild old Celtic way–

and die or slash straight through.

We left red ruin in our wake,

dead men in ghastly ranks–

When fresh unwearied Roman arms

smote hard upon our flanks.

Baffled and weary, red with wounds,

leaguered on every side,

Chained to our doom we smote in vain,

slaughtered and sank and died.

Writhing among the horses’ hoofs,

torn and slashed and gored,

Gripping still with a bloody hand,

a notched and broken sword,

I heard the war-cry growing faint,

drowned by the trumpet’s call,

And the roar of “Marius! Marius!”

triumphant over all.

Through the bloody dust and the swirling fog

as I strove in vain to rise

I saw the last of the warriors fall,

and swift as a falcon flies

The Romans rush to the barricades

where the women watched the fight–

I heard the screams and I saw steel flash

and naked arms toss white.

The ravisher died as he gripped his prey,

by the dagger fiercely driven–

By the next stroke with her own hand

the heart of the girl was riven.

Brown fingers grasped white wrists in vain–

blood flecked the gasping loam–

The Cimbri yield no virgin-slaves

to glut the gods of Rome!

And I saw as I crawled like a crippled snake

to slay before I died,

Unruly golden hair that tossed

in wild and untamed pride.

Her slim foot pressed a dead man’s breast,

her proud head back was thrown,

Matching the steel she held on high,

her eyes in glory shone.

I saw the gleam of her golden hair

and her eyes like the deep grey sea–

And the love in the gaze that sought me out,

barbaric, fierce and free–

The the dagger fell

and the skies fell and the mists closed over me.

Like phantoms into the ages lost

has the Cimbrian nation passed;

Destiny shifts like summer clouds

on Grecian hill-tops massed.

Untold centuries glide away,

Marius long is dust;

Even eternal Rome has passed

in days of decay and rust.

But memories live in the ghosts of dreams,

and dreams still come to me,

And I see the gleam of her golden hair

and her eyes like the deep grey sea.