Conan Of The Isles

Redbeard laughed with a deep chuckle that shook his paunch. He cocked a tufted eyebrow at the glowering Cimmerian.

'Ho ho, mate!' he snorted. 'So that's the way the wind lies, is it? Ye're still the cunning, black-hearted rascal I knew of old. When we've fought this shadowy foe, as we promised, shall we turn about for a bit of honest roguery? There were fat merchantmen tied up in Messantia's harbor, and 'twould be a fine joke to loot Argos's ships with the very ship their king furnished, would it not?'

Conan smiled a grim, cynical smile and clapped Sigurd on the shoulder. 'Same thieving old walrus, you are! No, I like not the taste of that.'

'Don't tell me that, after all these years, ye've turned honest!'

Conan uttered a bark of laughter. 'Not I! But being a king does spoil a man's taste for the pettier forms of thievery. Besides., Ariostro has never given me trouble, so why should I trouble him? Conn will have enough problems, guarding his frontiers against the neighboring kingdoms, without my stirring them up.'

'Then - do ye mean to take a crack at the Stygians, as I was for doing when we met in Messantia? They're a fell and hardy lot; but with this crew we might just—’

Conan shook his head. 'Not that, even. After all, I've been a pirate captain, and a bloody successful one, several times over. Why should I climb that same ladder once more?'

'Well, then,' growled Sigurd impatiently, 'what in all the flaming hells is it ye mean? Out with it, man!'

Conan flung out a long arm, and a gnarled forefinger stabbed toward the bow. ‘Away to westward, mate, there's something we know naught about. The Red Shadows are pan of it, too.' A deep laugh rumbled in Oman's chest. 'You can't imagine me as a scholar, now can you?’

'It were easier to think of one of Ariostro's pretty little dancing girls as a bloody-handed pirate.'

'Well, I can read a few different scripts. And in the royal library at Tarantia I found tales of the Cataclysm, when the ocean gulped down Atlantis, eight thousand years ago. They tell, these tales, how thousands of Atlan-teans fled to the Mainland - or Thuria, as they used to call it. And in the iron-bound Book of Skelos it said: "Others fled from sinking Atlantis to westward, and it is said that thither they came upon another continent, over against the Thurian continent and bounding the Western Ocean on the farther side. But what befell these refugees I know not, for with the destruction of Atlantis the track-less ocean became too wide for the ships of those days to maintain a regular commerce betwixt the lands we know and the unknown western land." That is all, but it may very well be connected with our present mission.’ 'Well?' said Sigurd. 'I've heard tales like that, too.' 'Well, if there be a land of mighty sorcery ahead of us, it will also be a land of wealth and power, ripe for enterprising rascals like us to pluck. Why fool around with the loot of a few ships when, with some luck and some guts, we can take an empire!’

Sigurd sighed and wiped his eyes with the backs of his hairy hands. "Ah, Amra, I might have knowed ye'd have some scheme in your thick skull, madder and wilder than anything any ordinary man could think up! 'Tis a fine old wolf ye are, my word upon it! Though they feed us to dragons when we get there, I'll ship with you as far as the sunset itself, by all the gods!'

He broke off to peer suspiciously at the sun. With a snort of anger, he waddled to the nearer of the quarter rudders, where a one-eyed Shemitish ruffian stood to the watch.

'Avast, ye hooknosed dogl Be ye blind or stinking drunk?' he roared, cuffing the startled seaman aside and seizing the tiller in capable paws. 'We're riding half a point off the course ye set last night, Amra! Curse and rot these lazy pigs - the scum of the Barachas,, by the bowels of Ahriman and the breasts of Ishtar!' He squinted ferociously at the sun and thrust the tiller over with a practiced heave. The Red Lion heeled slightly, responding like a well-trained steed.

Then a cry came ringing down from above. 'Sail ho!' Conan sprang to the rail and raked the gray, misty seas with keen eyes. But he could see nothing.

'Whither away?’ he boomed through cupped hands.

The reply floated down from the lookout at the foretop: 'Point and a half off the port bow!'

'I see her!' The old Northman was again at Conan's side, puffing like an asthmatic walrus having shoved the one-eyed sailor back to the tiller. There she be - and by all the gods, she looks like a galley!'

Conan shaded his eyes with one hand and followed Sigurd's pointing finger. There, looming out of the coiling morning haze, were two slender, bare masts. When the Red Lion rose on the long swell, those on her poop deck could glimpse the long, low hull of a galley beneath this rigging.