Conan Of The Isles

'Grab these weapons!' yelled Conan. 'Then to the harbor!'

Far above, the gods of light and darkness were locked in battle. Fiery blasts of lightning crackled from the whirling, starry form of light, about which tentacles of dark smoke also writhed and clutched.

The earth quivered underfoot. Across the square, the huge gray Vestibule of the Gods came crashing down in a slow landslide of rubble, soon hidden from sight in a vast cloud of dust. Like a giant tree felled by a woodman, a tall, tapering tower leaned, buckled, and slammed to earth, making the ground beneath the pirates' feet jump.

Conan led his men on a jog-trot through the streets of Ptahuacan, paying no heed to the few Antillians they passed. The latter, in a frenzy of terror, likewise ignored the escaping captives in their own frantic efforts to save themselves.

'This way!' roared Conan. "To the harbor, before the whole damned city falls on us! ‘

Behind them, the shadows of afternoon lengthened in the pyramid square, now and then lit by a blaze of brilliance brighter than the noonday sun. The sounds of the supernatural combat crackled, boomed, roared, growled, and thundered. Before shafts of intolerable light, the black cloud seemed to fold in upon itself. It shrank, dissipated - and died.

The tension of supernatural forces that held it together was released. As these forces failed, the city shook like the head of a beaten drum, and more buildings crumbled. The square of the pyramid vanished. In its place, a ball of fire, many times brighter than the sun, blazed for an instant and was gone with a thunderclap that temporarily deafened every human being within the city.

A stupendous column of thick, black smoke arose over the broken city, mushrooming upward. The starry lightnings of the god of light played for an instant about its top like a supernal crown. Then these, too faded, and the smoky column began to disperse, mingling with the gray cloud of dust that hung over the city. Here and there> darker smoke rose from a burning house.

Little by little, Ptahuacan crept back to life. Its people trickled back from the countryside. But, on their return, they found a surprise.

Most of the priesthood had either been killed in the fall of the temples or had fled out of the city. Within Ptahuacan, during the night and day following the catastrophe, only one man remained at the head of any strong grouping. This was Metemphoc, the master thief.

While the city was nearly empty, his well-disciplined corps of thieves seized the remaining large buildings and the stores of arms. The few priests they found, they slew. The dungeons were thrown open, releasing not only convicted felons of Metemphoc's band but also hundreds of ordinary Antillians who, on one pretext or another, had been jailed to await sacrifice to Xotli. Many of these allied themselves with Metemphoc, although others refused for fear of the priests and their god, or preferred to wait to see which side would prove the stronger.

The priests who had fled the city gathered a small force of warriors still faithful to them and tried to fight their way back into the metropolis. But Conan's band, now fully armed, took them in the rear and sent then fleeing again.

So, under the leadership of fat, crafty old Metemphoc, Ptahuacan settled down to its huge task of repair and rebuilding. The master thief might not prove an ideal ruler; but he could hardly do worse than the priesthood that had held the land in its fearsome grip for so many centuries. And so to this last, lone outpost of the great civilization of old Atlantis, some little time of peace and quiet came.

And perhaps from some unknown realm beyond the stars, the ghosts of those old gods who had reigned in the skies above Atlantis in ages gone, and who had turned upon the island continent at last and plunged Her into the depths of the great, green sea when her children abandoned them to worship dark Xotli - perhaps those dead gods saw, and smiled, and - with what little power that remained to them - blessed.

Crom, but it felt good to have a solid deck underfoot again - even a cursed strange deck like this one! After the fall of Ptahuacan, a month and a half before, Conan had eaten and drunk deep. Worn to exhaustion by his struggles through the underworld of Ptahuacan and then in the city itself, he had slept a whole day and two nights through. But in the days that followed, as he loafed and lazed, swapping yarns with his men and eating and drinking enough for three, his old strength crept back.

Now, as dawn painted the East with strokes of crimson and gold, he strode the gilded planking of the dragon ship and drank deeply of the clear, cold, salt breeze, which lifted the gray fog from the green face of the Western Main. He felt a vast contentment. Ha! Old, was he? Time to creep beneath the covers and let mumbling physickers take over, to glide him painlessly into the afterworld?