The sword did not move. Akter Khan’s hands gripped the lion-carved arms of his great chair and his knuckles were white while he swiveled to stare at the sword.
“Slay him!
Slay
HIM!”
“Drop the bar, Isparana.”
The bar thumped back into place. Khan stared at challenger. Sword hung on wall.
“Akter Khan: Zafra’s own sword obeyed him but not me.” Sweat ran into Conan’s eyes and squeezed them shut and jerked his head. He wished he could sit down. He felt a chill. The tension was leaving; the sweat was evaporating. “Either the spell ended with his death, or…”
“That treacherous
dog
!”
A nervous female laugh rippled. “Lord Khan? Does it occur to you that your judgment is excellent, but that you learn too slowly? You could have trusted us. Rewarded, we were happy and loyal. You could
not
trust Zafra!”
In the pit… when he had called Baltaj up to his side, Akter remembered… and directed the sword at that Aquilonian girl, Mitralia. Zafra had stepped back, beside but behind him. Akter had thought he heard a swift sibilance from the man, but then the marvelous sword had leapt down into the pit to carry out his bidding—so he thought—and he had paid no heed to aught else, in his delight and his elation. His bidding? No! What he must have heard was Zafra, quietly saying “Slay her”—or “him.”
Now he stared at the two invaders of his throne-room, the two he had caused to be left alone with him, the two he in his confidence and dependence on the Sword of Skelos had suffered even to lock the doors, and suddenly he was very alone on his throne, and he seemed to shrink within his robes.
“Do not call out to your men, Akter Khan,” Conan said, the while he approached the throne. “You will be strangled and decomposing by the time they give up trying to chop through the doors with their swords and send for ram or axes. And to what avail, for you?”
Conan paced toward the khan on his dais, and at that moment sounds rose on the other side of the huge barred doors: the shouts and clangor of combat.
XXI
THE THRONE OF ZAMBOULA
The distance of twice his body’s length from the dais on which rested the throne of Zamboula, Conan paused. He stared at the great doors, as did Isparana and Akter Khan. Outside in the corridor, men shouted curses and warnings and challenges. Men screamed and groaned loudly as they received woundy blows. Armor jingled and clashed. Sharp blades rang off helms and armor and other sharp blades. One struck the door with a chunking thump; someone had aimed a mighty blow and its intended recipient had ducked. Conan’s experience told him that the wood of this door held the blade, and he assumed that the man who had struck that misfortunate blow was dead or wounded, for in combat a few seconds of helplessness were enough. The shouts and steely clangor continued. Now the Cimmerian was sure there were fewer shouts, fewer cries of pain or anguish, and aye, fewer blades striking.
And then there were fewer still. Someone fell back against the door. Conan knew the sound he heard next: a lifeless body sliding slowly down the portal to the floor. And then there was silence.
Conan glanced at Isparana, and saw that she was staring at him.
“Balad,” he muttered.
A fist—no, a sword hilt, definitely—banged on the door—which hardly took note in its strength and height and thickness. The great bar did not so much as rattle.
“AKTER!” a voice bawled, and Conan knew it. “Your guards are slain or surrendered. The Khan-Khilayim are no more. Hamer lies badly wounded. Jhabiz has long since surrendered and asked to join and serve me! It is Balad, Akter; remember me, your old friend? The palace is ours. OPEN THE DOORS, Akterrrr!”
For a long while Akter, once khan, sat frozen, staring at the carven doors.
Conan ambled past him, took the sword easily off the wall, and started to hitch the sheath to his belt. He paused, frowning, Then he hurled the sheathed Sword of Skelos to clatter and skid along the pink and red tiles. It came to a stop a few feet from the barred entry-way.
Akter had never glanced at him. He stared at the doors, where again a swordhilt rapped.
At last, very quietly, Akter said, “Unbar the doors.”
Not so quietly, Isparana said, “I won’t.” And she paced away from the tall portals and the sword lying sheathed before them.
Akter stared at her. Then he turned his dark eyes and wan face on Conan. The Cimmerian stood gazing equably at him, arms folded.
“Conan…”
“No, Akter K—Akter. You lift the bar. Wronging the Shanki child was your great mistake. Wronging Isparana and me was your next to last. Placing all your hopes and trust in that ensorcelled sword was your last. I’ve no notion how many others you wronged, how many in addition to the Shanki girl you murdered, or ruined. But… it has come time for you
to
make payment. You have ceased being satrap, Akter, and you have ceased to be khan, and to rule.
You
open the door to those who represent the people you have spat and trodden upon.”
For a long while Akter continued to stare at Conan. No hatred glowed in those dark eyes, or anger; they seemed to plead. Slowly the crowned head turned again to face the portals of wood that separated him from those who had toppled him. More long seconds crept like snails while he gazed at the doors and thought the thoughts of defeat. And remorse? Conan doubted it.
Akter rose, thrusting himself heavily up with both hands on the arms of his chair of state. He descended the dais steps to the tiled floor. Automatically catching up a few folds of his robe in his left hand, he paced, seeming to glide, those fifty feet. After the hesitation of but a few moments, he lifted the small lever that in turn caused the huge bar to rise from across the doors. He turned, glanced at Conan and at Isparana and at the sword lying nearby on the floor, and he walked back to his throne. Conan watched him ascend the steps in the manner of a weary old man, and turn. Akter sank back down on his high seat. After another moment, he set his feet together, rested a hand on each of the chair’s arms, and sat erect.
Conan was impressed with the man’s bravery, and his dignity.
It’s true I’d have taken up that sword and met them as a warrior to go down fighting
, the Cimmerian thought.
But then I am neither satrap nor king, and I have no royal blood. Akter has
—
and dignity
. The Cimmerian was not delighted to be impressed with this man, with such a man, but he was constituted that he could have no other feeling.
Akter Khan gave his last order. “Enter.”
Both those tall doors were hurled wide by armed men in mail. They did not boil into the hall of the throne; they stood in the doorway, and in their center was Balad, mailed. His head was bare but the wet strands of his hair showed that he had only just removed the helmet he had worn to battle.
Into the throneroom was flung a slim female body in tatters of silk. It landed with a soft thump, and the neck swung loosely, and the eyes of Chia the Tigress seemed to stare at her master.
Balad lifted his hand; he held a bow, arrow to string. He lifted his other hand, sighted briefly—and sent an arrow into the man on the throne. Akter grunted as he was slammed back in his great chair; then, fingers clawing at its arms, he rose. Balad loosed again. Behind him, his followers muttered and the faces of some showed horror. The second arrow had driven into Akter with a wet thump. Two slender wands tipped with gray-white feathers stood from his abdomen.
“Balad!” Conan roared. “He opened the doors to you—he sat with the dignity of a king! He is not even armed! This is no fight—this is
butchery!”
He glared, and Isparana saw nothing handsome in his face. “You men! Will you
continue
to follow a murderous khan? Who swears fealty to one who gains your throne and slays its occupant not by trial, or by combat, but by murder—from a distance?”
And men muttered. And Balad turned a bright-eyed gaze on the Cimmerian, who stood very alone.
Isparana, alarmed, spoke warningly: “
Co
nan …”
Balad and Conan glared at each other while Akter sank and rolled down the steps of the dais and lay still on the tiles.
“Conan? I am
khan
, now! Khan of Zamboula!” Balad threw high his hands, one of which held the murderous bow. “You are due to be
rewarded
, man!”
“Akter,” Conan said, “ruled like a beast, but he was ruler and he showed it just now. He sat like a king to accept his deposing—and was slain like a criminal, by a man who used the distance weapon of a coward or the lowliest hunter!”
Balad strode a few paces forward, possessively walking into the throneroom he claimed. He set a foot carelessly on the tip of the sheath of the ensorcled sword. He looked at Conan, and he spoke in a voice made the more deadly by its being so quiet.
“Speak not so to me, Conan. This monster deserved only death, and we have no time for trials! There is too much to do, for Zamboula! As to you, Conan, foreigner but loyal aide—how does the post of personal bodyguard to the Khan sound to your ears?”
Isparana gazed on Conan, and chewed her lip. Balad gazed on him, and waited, and on him already was the cool imperiousness of rule. Conan stared darkly back at him. Armed and mailed, blooded men waited in the broad doorway.
At last Conan said, “I’d not guard your body, Balad. You met me by lying, fearful even to let me know it was you I met, not one Jelal. Because of me and Hajimen and his camel warriors, you have gained the palace. When I want a throne I will slay for it, too—but only if the ruler has a blade in his hand. I joined you to oppose an unjust murderer—and I will not turn then to
guard
a murderer!”
Again tension hung like laden clouds in the great hall, and silence.
Then Balad, the muscles of his face working tightly, reached over his shoulder for another arrow.
He was drawing it from its quiver when his eyes swerved from Conan to stare at something behind him. Conan turned to glance, and tarried to stare. A door swung open. A hand appeared, on the floor. Into the throneroom, dragging himself by his right arm, crawled a bloody Zafra. Conan’s eyes were huge and round and intensely blue and he felt the hairs rise on his nape. Slowly he stepped away, so that he could see both Zafra and Balad without turning more than his head.
Zafra’s voice was low, and halting, and scratchy. It came and went, in lurching spurts between throbs of pain. His left hand as he lay on his side was clutched to his bloody chest.
“One so… steeped in… wizard-ry as I… is… is not so—so eeeasy to slaaaay, Cimm-erian. We sh-should have been allies-s-s… Balad, is it?” Even a sprawled, bleeding, surely dying man could sneer. “Only a spell… set long a-go-o-o’… keeps me alive to… to see you, Bal-aad. Balad, on this-s-s throne? Even… that dog Ak… were better!
Sslay
… him.”
Out in the hall, a soldier with a trophy screamed and the cry ended in a horrid gurgle as Zafra’s sword unerringly found his heart. At the same time, the sword on the floor backed from the sheath on which rested Balad’s foot. He had not moved, poised in the act of drawing another arrow to end Conan’s life and tongue. Now it was Balad who went still forever, for the sword’s prey was
to
hand and it had no decision to make; it rose, and leveled in air, and drove like an expertly thrown spear into the breast of the nearest man.
Conan had erred in one surmise, he saw; having slain, each sword went quiescent until commanded again. Zafra lay gasping on the floor; Balad lay still with the Sword of Skelos standing above him.
Amid a ghastly silence, the Cimmerian strode across the broad hall to the stricken clot of men at the door. They had slain a king; the man with whom they would have replaced him had survived him only by minutes.
“Here, give me that,” Conan said, and twisted a sword from the limp fingers of a Balad partisan ere the man could come awake.
Conan did not stride back; he ran to the slumped form of Zafra, and now all watched as the northish barbarian swung his borrowed sword on high. Zafra stared up at him.
“Ss-lay—” Zafra gasped, and Conan did.
He had to strike twice, and the second time the sword clanged and struck sparks off the floor. The head of the Wizard of Zamboula had not stopped its grisly spinning on the floor when Conan whirled and spoke.
“I suggest you burn this,” Conan said. “One can never be too sure, with sorcerers.”
After another long moment, he spoke again. “I dislike your city, and will leave it and will swear never to have heard of it. Well—what’s wrong with all of you brave partisans of Zamboula? Three villains lie dead, and justly so, and Zamboula and all the world are far better off without them all three! Cannot any of you think to say…
long live Jungir Khan!”
After a moment Isparana cried out the same words, and then someone in the corridor—it was the vizir, Hafar—and then others took up the shout, and soon it was a chorus that echoed throughout the city while Hafar and Isparana went to find the boy who had become Khan of Zamboula. Along the way they agreed; neither told him, ever, how a foreigner had made him king and satrap of Empire.
A big young man sat a horse to whose saddle were attached the leads of five laden pack animals. Men mounted on camels surrounded him, and all wore white kaffias and robes over red leggings, and all gazed down upon the woman who came to the horseman. “What’s on the pack horses, Conan?” The Cimmerian smiled and looked around at the animals. “Hello, Ispa. Water to get me to Zamora or that what’s-it-called oasis, I hope. And… a few trinkets I… picked up. I feared Jungir Khan might forget to reward me for my service to his father, in returning that amulet! We were promised rewards, you know.”
She flashed him a wan smile. Then, “He is taking his father’s death well. He assures Hafar and me that he will forgive the plotters, if they swear fealty. I fear we have convinced him that Balad was a sorcerer who had them in thrall… and none has mentioned a certain Cimmerian to him.”
“He and I have never seen each other. I hope we never do. I don’t like his rotten city and its rotten plotting people and I’m sure I could not like any son of Akter Khan’s, even with you and Hafar to guide him. As to his forgiving everyone and never taking sanctions… I’d believe that when I saw it,” Conan said, for he had aged a bit more, and had met more kings and would-be kings, and was a bit wiser. “Best they saddled horses and rode and rode.” Rather self-consciously he tugged at the lead reins, and his sumpter beasts stirred. He watched the shifting of their packs, narrow-eyed. “Hate to have those slip off. Hajimen and I are leaving, ‘sparana. I may tarry a day or two with them. The Shanki are the best people I’ve met this year, and I have met too many. No one is minding the stables, you know. There are lots of fine animals in there. I am taking only six, and Hajimen insists that I’ll have a camel or two forced on me. Shall we saddle another horse for you?”