Conan: Songs of the Slain E-Book

Tim Lebbon

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 426

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

When an old friend is attacked, Conan the Barbarian, now King of Aquilonia, picks up his sword again in search of vengeance. However, mysterious enemies assail the Cimmerian in this action-packed tale by New York Times Bestselling author Tim Lebbon. When Conan of Cimmeria was a prisoner of war on the verge of death, he made a promise to a fellow prisoner, Baht Tann. Conan would grant a favor, wherever and whenever Tann called it in, in return for Tann's meagre water ration. The men escaped, parted ways and the rest is history. After a life filled with violence and tumult, Conan met his destiny and became King of Aquilonia. Married with a child and presiding over a period of peace and stability, the legendary barbarian's sword has been sheathed for too long. When Baht Tann arrives in Aquilonia, he is wounded, his wife has been murdered and his two children kidnapped. He asks Conan to save his children and avenge his wife. It will be a perilous journey, chasing men with no honour. Conan leaves without hesitation. Disguised as a scruffy wanderer and armed with a broadsword, Conan ventures into hostile lands in pursuit of Tann's assailants. He is soon beset by assassins and learns there is a price on his head. Unknown to Conan, for reasons of honour, revenge and glory, powerful warriors want him dead. Violence and vengeance ensue as Conan takes on his mysterious foes and attempts to fulfil his promise.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also Available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Map

1. A Promise in Death

2. A Mistaken Face

3. A Ghost From The Past

4. A King Alone

5. A Tale of Grake

6. His Face Tells Stories

7. The Last Song

8. A Tale of Mylera

9. A New Song to Sing

10. Not My Face

11. A Tale of Krow Danaz

12. A Second Chance

13. A Song Too Soon

14. Forked Tongues of Truth

15. Three Become One

16. Between The Living And The Dead

17. All But Conan

18. The Devious Dead

19. The Triptych Awaits

20. Killing Conan

21. A Song of Conan

About the Author

ALSO AVAILABLEFROM TITAN BOOKS

Conan: Blood of the Serpent

Conan the Barbarian: The Official Motion Picture Adaptation

Conan: City of the Dead

Conan: Cult of the Obsidian Moon

Illustrated by Juan Alberto Hernández

TIM LEBBON

TITAN BOOKS

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CONAN: SONGS OF THE SLAIN

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781803365015

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803365022

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: July 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2025 Conan Properties International (“CPI”). CONAN, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, CONAN THE CIMMERIAN, HYBORIA, THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN and related logos, names and character likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of CPI. ROBERT E. HOWARD is a trademark or registered trademark of Robert E. Howard Properties LLC. Heroic Signatures is a trademark of Cabinet Licensing LLC.

Interior illustrations by Juan Alberto Hernández.

Tim Lebbon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY.

1A Promise in Death

Conan knew that he was about to die. As his breath stuttered and weakened and his body spasmed, he observed the approach of his enemies and prepared for his final act of furious defiance.

He squinted through the agonies wracking his body and skeins of bloody mist that still drifted across the battlefield, even though this battle was lost. Past the pain, beyond the mists, he glimpsed the victories, triumphs, and accolades he had once imagined his future might bring, and saw them fading away into stories untold. Barely twenty years old, he was not sad, but he did feel anger and frustration at himself for the mistakes that had brought him to here and now, readying to die in the blood-thickened slurry of a battlefield that few would ever remember.

Even as he’d marched on the wicked city of Shadizar with four thousand other sellswords, he’d harbored doubts about those who commanded the force and drove their plans. He should have listened to his instincts and done whatever he could to change their foolish tactics. Once engaged in battle, a slip here and a clumsy parry there had brought him his first injury, and he should have treated and bound the gash in his shoulder before continuing the fight. More wounds came, until the one that put him down.

His own foolish mistakes had allowed the blades and pikes of the enemy to make him just another dead man waiting to greet whatever the afterlife might bring.

I had so much more to do, Conan thought, berating himself even as his end stalked closer. The stench of death smothered him. The wretched cries of the wounded being finished by a Zamoran pike to the chest or an ax to the head proved a sad final song to sing him away from this world. Should have been wiser, should have been stronger. And by Crom, if I’m granted one last chance, I’ll strive for more wisdom and strength!

But he felt no benevolent gaze upon him from any gods, known or unknown. They had passed him by, leaving him to a lonely death at the hands of the two Zamoran soldiers coming to a halt beside him.

“What about him?” one of them asked. He was a small bald man, but broad and strong—a familiar Zamoran trait. He held a barbed pike whose shaft was darkened with gore.

“He’s almost dead already,” the other soldier said through a beard clotted with blood. Was it his own, or did it belong to those he had killed? A tall man, he bore a cruel battle-ax propped on one shoulder, and his chest armor was scratched and dented from the battle. “One more head will give my ax a nice round count of twenty today.”

“But he’s strong,” Bald Man said with a note of admiration. “And big, even lying down in the shite and blood. Take a look at those muscles.”

“And take a look at the wounds venting his life-blood into the mud,” Beard said. “I’ll help him on his way. Twenty.” He shrugged a shoulder and grabbed the ax shaft in both hands.

“He’s got countless old scars beneath those new cuts,” Bald Man said. “Got stories to tell, eh, you Cimmerian dog?”

Conan tried to growl, but it turned into a cough. He spat blood. Gripped his sword in one hand. He’d not be put down like a hobbled beast. This might be his time to die, but he’d do his best to take at least one of these gloating bastards with him. He tensed, but his muscles did not comply. His hand holding the sword scraped barely six inches across the wet ground.

“We can sell a big one like him to the salt mines,” Bald Man continued. “If he dies, he dies. But let’s drag him to one of the carts and send him there, at least.”

Beard chuckled. He had other ideas. He hefted the ax and swung it out and to the right, bringing it up over his head for a furious killing blow.

Conan struggled and strained but his body was weak, his wounds draining his energy and strength, now soaking into ground already saturated with blood.

He growled and stared at Beard, refusing to look away or close his eyes in his final moment.

Beard grunted in surprise as the metal ax head snapped away from the splintered handle and struck his shoulder. It scraped a shallow cut as it tumbled to the ground.

Bald Man laughed, and it was a strange sound, high and unfettered.

“You see?” he said. “Cool fate and Zath have decided. It’s the salt mines for this one. You grab one leg, I’ll get the other.”

“That was a good ax,” Beard muttered, rubbing blood from the fresh injury on his shoulder.

“You can buy yourself another,” Bald Man said. “There’ll be loot from all these dead invaders. Now, one, two, three, pull!”

Conan gritted his teeth and squirmed, but his body gave him nothing back. The sword slipped from his hand, and he could do nothing to prevent himself from being dragged through the guts and gore of his defeated brethren toward whatever wretched future awaited him.

* * *

The sword sliced across his upper stomach and chest again and again, and pain surged in waves, striking deep into his core and climbing his spine to explode in his brain. He was shaking so much that his body rose and slammed into the ground, once, twice, a dozen times. His head thudded down and he expected his skull to crack and his tortured brains to leak out and seep into the death-soaked soils of Zamora forever.

At least then this damned pain would end, Conan thought, and he opened his eyes to glaring sun. A shadow was crouched over him, and at first he thought it was the soldier who had sliced him, repeating the execution of that injury forever like some awful purgatory. Conan had often thought about what came after life had ended. Death was his trade, so such thoughts were common. He supposed that this torture might be his eternal fate. If so, he would accept it, and fight it as hard as he could forever.

Then the shadow leaned in closer, and a face appeared.

“Try and be still,” the man said, his voice strangely distorted. “I’m stuffing your wounds.” He took something from his mouth and pressed it into the injury across Conan’s torso, and Conan flinched back. “I said still! I’m trying to make it better, not worse.”

Conan turned his head to the side and looked around. They were on the back of a large cart with several other captured sells-words, all of them injured in one way or another. One woman glared at Conan through her good eye, the other a bloody wet hole buzzed by flies. A man sat against the low side of the cart with his eyes closed and arms resting on his crossed legs, one hand and forearm crushed and smashed to a gory pulp. Conan looked back to the man aiding him.

“What’s your name? Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“My name is Baht Tann,” the man said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. And I’m doing this because of all the injured fighters in this cursed cart, you appear to be the biggest and strongest. And where we’re going, I fear I’m going to need a big, strong friend.”

“You’re trying to save me for your own benefit.”

Baht Tann shrugged, pulled more stuff from his mouth, and pressed it into Conan’s wound.

“Fair and honest,” Conan said. “My gratitude.”

“Thank me later,” Tann said. “For now, try and stay still. Almost done.”

Conan lay back and let Tann do his work. Already the pain from his wound was fading from agony to an uncomfortable numbness. He smelled horses and blood and shit, heard the cheerful banter from Zamoran warriors as they walked beside the cart and the buzzing of filthy flies around the wounded, and at last he remembered what Bald Man had said before Beard tried to part his head from his body.

“Salt mines,” Conan said, looking up at Tann.

“Aye, the worst. They say a person’s lucky if they survive one moon digging the salt.” Tann finished his work and eased himself down beside Conan, and Conan had a chance to look him over. Another sellsword for sure, though he didn’t recognize him. He had the look of someone from the west, Zingara perhaps, and at first he saw no obvious injuries. Then Tann tilted his head forward and gingerly pressed his hand to the back of his neck, and it came away clotted with blood and hair.

“I will survive,” Conan said. “I dreamed I was dying again and again. When I woke, you were there. My ghostly guardian.”

Tann laughed, loud and heartfelt, and in return one of the Zamoran guards threatened him with a pike to the gut. He quietened but remained smiling.

“Maybe fate brought us together, friend,” Tann said. “Though I am no ghost. So what’s your name? You know, just in case I have to save you again.”

“Conan.”

“Conan. A strong name.”

“It will be known across these lands,” Conan said.

“It’s a name that will be swallowed and melted by the salt mines of Tangara until it’s forgotten even by its mother,” Tann said. “Meanwhile, it’s two days’ hard travel to get there, and I doubt these bastards will spare us any food or water.”

Conan struggled to sit up, shrugging Tann’s restraining hand from his shoulder. He looked down at the ugly wound across his midriff, now stuffed with a wet, chewed mixture of capot leaves and spit. The edges of the wound pouted, and Conan knew it needed stitches to draw it closed, but the hardening capot held its edges together.

The two men leaned against the side of the shaking cart. The sun blazed down on them, dust from the road coated their skin and entered their mouths, and the four huge horses pulling the wagon filled the air with their rancid farts.

“I will survive,” Conan said again.

“You do sound determined. In that case, I’ll do best to stay by your side.” Tann looked him up and down. “You’re even bigger than you looked lying down.”

* * *

The Tangara salt mine sat at the foot of a high hill on the edge of the great desert, a giant hole in the ground two miles across and a thousand feet deep. A rough road spiraled down around the hole’s sloping outer edge, hacked into the ground and retained by huge cages of rocks and massive timbers hauled down from the surrounding hillsides. Lines of slaves trudged up this road bearing heavy hessian bags of salt. They were pushed and whipped close to the road’s inner edge so that they did not fall from the edge and spill their precious load. Once they reached the surface and disgorged their cargo into vast wooden storage tanks built on the surface, they slung the sacks across their shoulders and heads—the only precious respite they had from the cruel and relentless sun—and started back down.

Their return journey was close to the precarious road’s edge, keeping out of the way of fellow workers on their loaded upward journey. Some slipped on the loose gravelly edge and fell. The lucky ones were able to scurry or slide down the slope to the next road level. The less fortunate plummeted over a steeper section, and their fall could result in a broken limb or worse. Some died on impact. Those badly injured by their fall but still alive were usually dispatched by the guards, because the Zamorans running the mine had no use for a slave with a broken arm or leg. Most of the guards saw this as a necessary duty and expended as little energy as possible in doing so—a simple pike stab to the face or a slit throat would finish the wounded slave—but there were a few guards who enjoyed the sadistic distraction from the long, hot day.

The strongest slaves were all kept down below at the terrible quarry’s base, working on the three current salt pits being mined, and they were never given the opportunity to climb back up to the surface. They worked and slept down there, and occasionally were offered rank water and stale or rotten food. Yet even these strongest of the prisoners fell in their dozens. Those who collapsed at the salt face, exhausted or dead, were carried to a redundant pit and thrown in, the dead and the barely living lying in the humid shadows and merging together in rot. The stench of decay from this pit was sickening. The clouds of flies, scampering rats, and carrion lizards made the rank hole appear alive, and from a distance it might have been a giant living thing squirming and pulsing, moist and writhing, as if yearning escape.

The heavily armed Zamoran guards across the mine’s floor were also the strongest. They wore loose silk clothing to keep cool and masks soaked in honeyspit to keep the endless stink at bay. Sometimes even they succumbed to the terrible conditions, and there was no ceremony in death—it was the pit for them, too.

Even bearing his injury, Conan was judged one of the strongest slaves, and he worked in one of the salt pits alongside his new friend Baht Tann. Tann was an enigma to him. Older than Conan, with the lean, powerful body of a farmer rather than a muscled warrior, still he carried scars and stories from a lifetime of selling his sword. He was convinced that they would never escape the salt mine and their Zamoran guards, yet he did not show despair. I live for now, and now, and now, Tann said, and a minute from now can go eat itself. That’s how I stay strong. Conan asked if he had learned this measured and calm outlook from the mythical Red Monks of Vendhya, who followed Asura and took the scorpion’s sting to spend years in contemplative and silent meditation at the top of the highest mountains. Baht Tann replied, No, my grandmother.

They had been in the quarry for ten days now, maybe even twelve, and despite the conditions Conan’s wound was healing well. In the brief reprieve the slaves were granted when the night was at its darkest—three hours, four if they were lucky—Tann tended the wound and used maggots harvested from the grave pit at great risk to eat away at any infection. One evening while he was doing this, Tann said, “I saw you fighting, you know. Across the battlefield of thousands, you stood out with your strength and cunning. You’re a good warrior. It’s a shame you won’t live to become great.”

“I will find a way to escape,” Conan said.

Night after night, Tann dropped more maggots, cleaning Conan’s wound and allowing his body to heal itself. The intimate feel of the maggots squirming in his bad flesh kept Conan awake, even during those precious few hours when they were afforded time to sleep.

But he did not waste that time simply lying awake while his fellow slaves slept, snored, and nightmared themselves toward another long, dreadful day digging salt. Instead, he watched the guards and came to know them all, the strong ones and the weaker. He started to observe a pattern in how they changed shifts while the slaves slept, groups of guards marching up the curving road after others had come down. He spotted some that might perhaps be bribed, if he had the means to do so. He also picked out those he knew he could kill with one hand while fighting with the other—again, if he had the means to do so.

Conan’s mind was most at peace when he was digging and packing salt, and enjoying brief moments of rest while one filled bag was carried away by a wretched slave and an empty one dropped by another. This was when he assessed his nightly observations, creating schemes and plans and readying his escape.

But after another dozen days in the horrendous quarry, even Conan was beginning to fear that his only chance at leaving that place would be death. He never saw a good escape opportunity. The guards were many, most of them experienced warriors, and Conan was still suffering from his injury. The slaves were never given enough food or water. He felt his strength failing day after day, his body giving what energy it could spare to heal his wounds.

And so came the day when Conan knew he had to make his move or take his place in the pit of the dead.

* * *

It was the hottest day yet. Though deep, the quarry was also wide, and the blazing sun scorched its way across the quarry’s base well into the afternoon. There was no breeze. Humidity hung heavy, and the stink of the pit of the dead was like a viscous grease in the dank air.

Conan had seen five captives tumbling from the road and being put out of their misery already that morning, and he himself had been forced to throw three dead salt-diggers into the pit. The resultant cloud of a billion flies sweeping up and around him in endless waves had been grotesque, and yet almost beautiful in the way they weaved and waved through the air before landing once again in their stew of death.

After his last visit to the death pit, when he was back at the salt seam with Tann, Conan said, “I will make my move today.”

“Then you’ll die today.”

“Don’t you want to go with me?”

“Of course.”

“Then follow my lead.”

They worked through the day, sweating, vision blurring, while the Zamoran guards drank water brought down by other guards from above. The few drops they spared were poured into a large clay urn to share among the slaves when they paused for a short midday break. It was just enough to keep them alive and digging, not enough to maintain their health and lust for life.

There were always more slaves.

When evening came and the slaves sat in rows so that the guards could dish out their meager food rations, Conan leaned in close to Tann.

“I need your food and water,” he said. “I’m weaker than I should be. If we’re to have even the slightest chance, I need my strength. A scrape of dried meat and half a cup of dirty water aren’t enough.”

Tann chuckled, but not too loud. If slaves were found conversing during this short break, the guards would kick or whip them into silence.

“Conan, my friend, we’re not getting out of here. Death stalks us, closer and closer. Last night I dreamed I was in the pit, looking up at the indifferent stars and sinking down into that mess of death.”

“Then you won’t mind giving me your rations.”

“Huh.” Tann fell silent as a guard came by and dropped a twist of dried meat into his outstretched hands, and poured brown water into his mug. When the guard moved on he said to Conan, “It’s all I have for today. I’m thirsty. And hungry. And I’ve helped you so much already.”

“Because you know I’m your only chance,” Conan said.

“Partly that, yes,” Tann admitted. “But I’ve also helped because I think we’re friends. And besides, you know there is no chance.”

“There’s always a chance. I’m taking mine today.”

They sat in silence for a while. Conan chewed on his own scant rations, trying to draw as much flavor from the tough meat as he could. He drank his dirty water. When he glanced sidelong at Tann, his friend had not started eating or drinking.

“Very well, Conan. But you’ll owe me. If we get out of here, you’ll owe me…” He looked up at the dusky sky above, eyes squinted almost shut. “A favor. Anything I ask, whenever I ask it of you. A favor for the friend you’ll die with soon.”

“Agreed,” Conan said. It was small price to pay, to help a friend. And in truth he had no real confidence that his scheme to escape would work.

Checking that no guards were watching, Tann handed over his rations. Conan ate the meat, drank the water. Then they stood to work again.

An hour later, Conan clutched at his wound, staggered away from the vein of salt he had been excavating, and dropped down dead.

* * *

Eyes closed, body loose and slack, breath as shallow and slow as he could make it, Conan tried not to flinch as he was half carried, half dragged across the floor of the mine. He knew what was coming, yet he could not truly be prepared.

The stink grew. The buzz of flies first tickled at his ears then rose into a roar, and he could already feel them skittering across his body as they explored this fresh new meat in which to lay their eggs.

“Damn flies!” someone said, and Conan’s left leg was dropped to the ground. He did not make a sound.

“Pick him up!” Baht Tann said. He was holding Conan’s right arm. “Give him some dignity. He deserves that, at least.”

Spitting flies away from their mouths, even four men struggled to carry Conan to the edge of the pit. Though his eyes were still closed as he feigned death, he could smell and hear where he was. His skin felt dirty and slimy with the anticipation of what was about to happen.

“Rest easy,” someone said.

“Go to Crom, Conan, and may your god guide your way,” Tann said. “One, two, three…”

They heaved him into the pit.

For a couple of heartbeats, Conan was weightless and he allowed his limbs and body to relax, enjoying the most comfort and respite he’d had since being injured, captured, and dragged here to work himself to death. I live for now, and now, and now, Tann had said, and for an instant Conan too embraced that way.

And then death welcomed him down.

He struck the surface layer of corpses, and they were soft, almost fluid. The stink was more rancid and overwhelming than he could have possibly imagined, and as he came to rest it took every ounce of self-control to prevent himself from turning onto his side and puking.

Just a few moments more, he thought, because a guard always accompanied those carrying corpses to the pit, and he or she might still be looking down. Just a few moments…

Something gave way beneath him, a swollen body bursting from his weight, and his lower torso and legs sank deeper. The buzz of flies filled his ears, and he felt carrion lizards scampering across his chest. When he could no longer hold still, he opened his eyes a crack, and through a haze of busy flies he saw only the pit’s edge and the first stars appearing in the evening sky above.

Conan knocked the lizards from his torso and rolled onto his side, somehow avoiding puking. He looked around, trying to make out the thing he sought across this lake of rotting flesh, stiffened limbs, and bird-pecked eye sockets. At last he saw it, and slowly, slowly, he made his way toward it, keeping himself as low and flat as possible so as to spread his weight across a wider surface area. If he propped himself on hands and knees, he might break through bloated skin and softening flesh.

It was disgusting. Conan had seen and done many things, wallowed in blood and death many times, yet this was beyond nightmare. But he kept going, knowing that there was no way back now. If he failed, if he was caught, if his scheme did not succeed, he would be back in this pit of the dead by dawn, this time with his throat cut. He could brave it now because he had no wish to add to it. His utter determination to escape kept him moving forward, and the thought of all the stories he had yet to tell shoved the prospect of failure far from his mind.

That, and the sight of the dead guard propped at the pit’s far end.

* * *

The dead guard’s dirty silken robe was tight around Conan’s big body, but it still covered him well enough. The mask, though now smelling of the death-stew instead of honeyspit, concealed his features. Best of all, the man had been heaved into the pit with a curved blade still strapped to his thigh beneath his robes. Conan now bore the knife up his sleeve, and holding a weapon gave him a sense of confidence that his situation in truth did not warrant.

It was growing dark, and he knew that the slaves would soon be allowed to rest for two or three hours. This was a time when the guards were sleepy, more at ease, and also when they changed shifts. It would give him a short time to act before his escape window slammed shut in his face.

He stalked across the quarry floor as if he owned the place, exuding arrogance, trying not to wave too much at the flies that still bothered him. They’d followed him from the pit as if angry that he was trying to leave them behind, and he knew that they, and the stinking filth upon him, would soon give him away. But he didn’t need to fool the Zamoran guards for long. Just long enough.

The slaves were brought up out of the salt pits and made to settle in lines, the guards ensuring that there was space between them. They allowed no fraternizing and no physical contact. Any muttered conversation was soon put down by a guard’s boot or the threat of a blade. Conan watched, waited, and focused. He knew which guard he sought; the man rarely stayed for long, needing to slink away to drain his bladder. Perhaps he drank too much water meant for the slaves. If so, his greed would be his downfall.

Conan moved close to the edges of the mine, silent and swift as a panther despite his size. He felt nowhere near as strong as he was used to, and his injury still niggled, but thanks to Baht Tann’s rations as well as his own that day, he thought he was strong enough.

The sound of pissing guided him in behind the shelter of a pile of tumbled rocks, and when the urinating guard smelled him he turned and his eyes opened wide.

“By the great spider-god Zath! Khartaggan, back from the dead!” the guard croaked.

“And I come bearing you a gift,” Conan said. He flicked the blade down into his hand and swept it around in an arc, burying it to the haft in the Zamoran’s left ear. He grabbed the man as he slumped and held him upright, twisting and turning the knife to mangle his brains. Life left his eyes, and Conan eased him to the ground and stripped him.

He left the silken robes wrapped around the man’s weapons in the shadow of a pile of salt bags, then hefted the corpse and wedged it out of sight between two rocks. He was sweating now, and his own unwashed body odor merged with the deathly aroma that hung around him.

Some of the flies left him for the fresh corpse, at least.

With the blade returned up his sleeve, he marched out toward the resting slaves. This was when he would be taking the greatest risk. He could easily walk from the quarry on his own, up the curving track that climbed the walls toward freedom above, and if he encountered any troublesome guards he could kill them and run.

But he had promised Baht Tann his freedom, and Tann had given his rations willingly. Conan could not countenance fleeing without his friend. Besides, stripped down to his bare bones, hacked with a blade, and put to work for a bunch of brutal slavers, revenge was all he had left.

That, and the hunger to find the great and grand tales of his future.

A few guards glanced his way, but they were resting as well, and in the darkness they missed the dried, bloodied filth caked on his robes. Maybe if he approached closer they’d have smelled him, but most of the slaves stank of death anyway.

Without hesitating, Conan approached the first line of slaves.

“You. With me.” He kicked Tann hard, eliciting an angry rebuke. “Keep your mouth shut!” He grabbed Tann and hauled him upright, dragging him back toward the shadows.

There were a few mutters among the other slaves, and some glowering looks that said, Rather him than me. Some guards took slaves away in the night, men or women, and if they ever returned few spoke of the degradations to which they had been subjected.

As they came to the place where Conan had killed the guard, he let Tann go.

“You didn’t have to kick quite so hard,” Tann whispered, rubbing his leg. “And by the way, you stink.”

“You’re no perfumed delight either,” Conan said. “And ‘thank you’ would be good.”

“I’ll reserve that for when we’re away.”

Conan plucked out the robes and weapon and threw them at Tann. He dressed quickly, then paused, offering the sword to Conan.

“I have a blade,” Conan said. “You keep that. If we need to fight, our chances are slimmer than none.”

“Then let’s go,” Tann said. “We’ve already gotten further toward freedom than I believed possible.”

They crept through the shadows behind the fallen rocks and then emerged into moonlight, walking with confidence and an air of entitlement as they headed for the wide area where the road up out of the deep quarry began. They started up, and soon the exertion began to tell. The climb was steep and long, and Conan felt thirst burning his throat and shriveling his muscles. But the higher they went, the more moonlight touched them, the fresher the air became, and the closer he tasted freedom.

A group of four guards approached, coming downhill, and Conan tensed his arm with the blade hidden up his sleeve. They passed them by, and a woman raised a hand and muttered something he did not hear. Conan grunted and made eye contact from behind his mask. She looked away and continued downward with her companions.

When they finally reached the surface, where huge storage compounds of salt awaited loading and transporting back across Zamora and beyond, they heard the first shouts from the guards below as the slaves were sent back to work. They had walked this far in silence, and Conan knew what Tann was going to say even as he paused to speak.

“I wish we could do something for them.”

“We can,” Conan said. “Look, over there.”

“What is it?”

“A well, where guards draw water for themselves.” Conan approached the well, stripping off his silken robes as he went. At last, wearing only the dirty loincloth that had been the sum of his clothing for the many days since he had been injured and caught, he stood beside the well.

“I brought them some treats from the pit of death,” he said. Tucked into the robe’s inner folds were handfuls of rancid, rotting flesh, a-crawl with corruption and sure to sicken.

He dropped it all into the well.

“Tomorrow, they drink. The next day, they puke and shit and fall.”

“Our friends will take their chance,” Tann said. “By Ishtar, I hope they make every bastard slaver suffer!”

Conan and Baht Tann left together, heading west back across Zamora. Just before dawn they encountered a group of six warriors riding east to replace some of the guards. They ambushed them, relishing the fight, and Conan enjoyed every moment of slicing, stabbing, and goring. It was a weak reprisal for all that he’d been subjected to, but in the desperate eyes of each Zamoran he killed he saw the faces of those brutal guards. As revenge, it would have to do.

They set four horses free and took the other two for themselves.

That night, they ate proper food and drank clean fresh water, and Conan, once little more than a dead man in a pit of corruption, felt the wide-open landscape of a mighty future laid out before him. He was eager to ride hard and fast toward whatever stories and legends his future held.

2A Mistaken Face

Why is it always the most dangerous places that offer the greatest chance at wealth?” he said as he tested the rope and leaned out over the edge of the cliff.

“Anything worth finding in easy places has likely already been found,” his dear wife, Larria, said. Then, from behind her, he heard the voices of their young twin sons, Davin and Korum.

“We’re only young but we’ve seen enough to know…” Davin said.

“…that the world is too large to ever be known,” Korum finished.

Just where do they get their wise minds from? he wondered for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, a small voice spoke in his brain and said, Larria. He knew that was true. Baht Tann had spent the first half of his life as a sellsword, and countless deaths were carried as scars on his imagination. Sometimes he dreamed of the warriors he had killed, and their faces mocked him silently, but he lived for the moment and harbored no regrets. He was happy with the life he had grown into and the man he had become, and Larria was the main source of that happiness. Meeting her later in life had been a blessing, and her persuading him to leave violence behind continued to be a balm for his soul.

“Ease out a bit more,” Larria called from above.

“I am easing,” he said. “You know I don’t like heights.”

“That’s because they’re there to kill you,” she said with a chuckle.

He glanced up, his feet braced against the cliff, into her smiling face. “Thank you,” he said.

“Anyway, there’s a river down there! All you’ll get if you fall is wet.”

“It’s a five-hundred-foot drop! And even if I survive it, the river’s fast and violent, and it’ll carry me all the way south to the Styx.”

Tann concentrated on what he was doing, edging further and further down, keeping a good grip of the rope passing through the hoop on his belt while also looking for the telltale gleam of the heartgems they had all come here to seek. Perhaps it’s being so rare and inaccessible that gives them their value, he thought. But there was more to it. Heartgems were more than just shiny, glittery stones harder than anything else in the land. They were filled with depths that could hypnotize a person if they looked into one for too long. Tann had heard it said that if you stared into a heartgem for hours, you could see your own future. If you looked for days, you might perceive the route to your own death. There was a story of a monk in Stygia who had been looking into a gem for his whole life since he had turned seven, and he had the haunted countenance of a man who had seen the end of time.

The problem was, no one knew where they came from, only where they were taken to. Many had set out to seek the source of the precious stones, heading north or south, east or west, or sometimes down, down into the darkest depths of the land. None were ever seen again.

Scarhawks knew. The birds were prevalent all across the land, and they harvested these mysterious gems from wherever they grew or were formed and brought them to their nests.

A scarhawk knew to build its nest in the most inaccessible, remote places there were. Mountaintops on the western shores of the Vilayet Sea. Deep caves on the Baracha Islands off the coast of Zingara. On the swaying tops of the highest trees in the forests of the border kingdoms. And here, on the sheer cliffs of Khoraja that dropped eventually into the Great Eastern Desert.

Tann looked left and right at his fellow prospectors. There were forty in this camp, parents and children, all of them experienced gem hunters. They had worked together as a group for over four years, some family units leaving, others joining. In that time they’d found at least a few gems each, and what they searched for as a group they all benefited from. Finds were gathered together, and once every couple of months several members made the long trip to the markets of Khemi or the coastal ports of Argos to sell them. It made trust one of the prime factors in the hard life they led, and that trust bound them together like family.

He nodded to three others hanging on ropes from the face of the sheer cliff. They nodded back, then focused on their own situations. This was serious business, and dangerous. It required concentration and confidence, and Tann liked to think he had both.

He eased himself down the rope, aware of Larria still up above watching him go. The rope was secured around a big rock on the clifftop, but she kept an eye on him all the same, ready to scamper down if he hurt himself or encountered any difficulties. They took turns—sometimes it was her on the cliff, sometimes him.

Today it was him. And thus Baht Tann’s fate was sealed.

As he slowly lowered himself down, he searched for telltale signs of a scarhawk nest. They usually took up residence in deep cracks in the rock face, and these cliffs were full of them. In his right hand was a small, narrow blade, the handle strapped around his palm so that he could hold on to both it and the rope at the same time. He used the blade to push overhanging plants aside and peer into cavities in the rock, and it was also there for defense. Despite their fearsome appearance, nine times out of ten a startled scarhawk would fly away, but that one time it might attack—especially if disturbed while brooding on an egg—could prove fatal. Tann was a man made of older scars, but one of his more recent was a cut across the bridge of his nose put there by an angry scarhawk’s beak.

He heard a commotion to the right, and across the cliff a woman kicked back on her rope as something burst from the rock face. She landed back on braced feet, her own blade ready, but it was merely a couple of pigeons. They flapped away, leaving her wiping spattered pigeon excrement from her forearm.

Tann laughed and eased himself down another few feet. He braced, then frowned, and something—a feeling, a change, a silence—made him look up.

Larria was gone. He looked back and forth along the cliff edge thirty feet above, and he couldn’t see any of the other prospectors’ partners. That was strange. He listened, head tilted, but the warm desert breeze blowing dust in from the east hushed against the cliff face, and he could hear nothing else.

“Larria?” he called, and the alarm in his voice caused the others to look up as well.

“Where are they?” the pigeon-spattered woman asked, and then her rope went slack and she fell away from the cliff.

“No!” Tann gasped, vainly reaching for her, as if that could do any good. The untethered rope flicked and twisted in the air like a snake as she fell and hauled it down with her, her arms and legs grasping at the air. Her right foot struck a protruding ledge and she spun out into space, the trailing rope twisting around her.

The river, Tann thought. She’ll hit the water and—

The woman slammed down onto the river’s rocky bank far below, the impact throwing up dust and blood.

After a moment of stunned shock, Tann started climbing. To his left another rope let go, and the man screamed as he fell. Tann did not watch. He concentrated on pulling himself up his rope, alert for any change in its tension, more aware of the blade strapped to his hand than usual. One snapped rope was a terrible accident.

Two was intentional.

Larria, Davin, Korum! he thought, and as he climbed he felt himself changing. He’d spent decades putting his violent past behind him, settling his rage and trauma in Larria’s gentle hands, but it sprang back to him now. When he blinked, he saw visions of blood, and all of it was flowing across images of his dear, beautiful family. Each handhold he took to haul himself up the rope, he felt his muscles tensing, his awareness expanding, senses opening up in readiness for a fight.

Climbing that cliff, he left Baht Tann the prospector behind.

“No no no no no!” he heard from his right, and another rope-end fell out into space. The woman scrabbled at the cliff face, and for a moment Tann thought she had a grip. Then the falling coiled rope struck her and she fell.

He had moments to act.

Gripping a handhold, feeling for a small ridge with his toe, he unhooked the rope from his belt hoop and stepped to one side. Seconds later, his own rope slackened and fell, and he held on tightly to the cliff, looking up to see if anyone was checking to see if he was gone.

It was silent up there, and no one was in sight.

He checked to his left and right. He was alone. They were all gone. He did not look down, because they were likely all spattered and broken and dead, and all that mattered to him was up there above: his wife, his children, his whole world.

Tann started to climb. Even when he was a sellsword he’d been thin and wiry rather than bulked out with muscle and mass, and he’d only become stronger in his time as a gem prospector. Using fingertip holds and feeling with his booted feet, he scaled the sheer cliff like a spider, focused but fast. In moments, he was close to the clifftop and could see where his rope had rubbed away at the soil and grass growing right to the edge.

He was terrified at what he might see when he raised himself up to look, so he paused for a moment, and that was when he heard the sounds that haunted his nightmares of the past.

The clash of metal on metal, the schwick! of blades slicing flesh, the screams of the dying, and the wretched begging of those about to die.

The cruel laughter of brutal people.

Baht Tann changed then, from a mild family man into a demon filled with potential rage, and as he hauled himself up over cliff edge he flipped his hand so that the blade’s handle lay flat and gripped in his palm.

He crouched there panting, trying to process the scene quickly so that he did not waste the precious time he had. No one was looking his way, because they thought that everyone working the cliff was dead. Tann used his advantage wisely to assess the situation.

Fifteen heavily armed men and women, maybe more, brutal brigands and cutthroats standing in a wide circle around their temporary encampment. Nine bodies rent asunder and awash with blood and gore—friends he’d valued, people he’d traveled and worked with, and though not fighters, they had done their best and fought back. He could do nothing for them.

Hunkered down close to the central firepit of their temporary encampment were the survivors—twenty or more men and women and children, terrified and wide-eyed. Some of them were pleading, hands held up in supplication. A few still appeared ready to fight.

Among the latter were Larria and their two sons. Even as he watched, he saw her hand creeping toward the previous evening’s fire for a heavy stick that still glowed hot at one end.

It was Larria who saw him first, and Tann shook his head. No, don’t fight them, and don’t give me away. But she had thought him fallen from the cliff and dead, and her eyes went wide. Three of the cutthroats turned to see what she had seen. One of them—the biggest, the brashest, and obviously their leader—laughed out loud.

And Tann caught his breath as shock hammered in his chest.

“Conan!” he said. “Conan, my old friend!” He was even bigger than Tann remembered him, broader across the shoulders, his huge leather jerkin tied with metal clasps, his long black hair hanging in braids. His intelligent eyes sparkled with cruel humor, and his heavily muscled arms and legs were crisscrossed with the scars of a long life of combat and killing.

Conan’s laughter faded and he tilted his head to one side. He nodded at two of his bandits, and they came toward Tann.

Tann crouched, brandishing the blade. It looked pitiful against the heavy broadsword the man carried and the multi-bladed whip wielded by the woman. Their weapons glittered with blood, like the alluring red glimmer of heartgems.

“Conan,” the big man said, as if tasting the name, and then his voice broke high and loud with the name. “Ah, Conan! You recognize me, stranger.”

“I’m no stranger!” Tann said. He eyed the approaching barbarians, and perhaps they saw an echo of his past life in his eyes because their easy smiles dropped and they paused a dozen feet from him. The man glanced down at the blade in his hand. The woman lifted her whip in readiness to strike.

“Hold,” Conan said.

“You remember me!” Tann said. “The salt mines of Tangara? The promise you made me?”

“A promise,” Conan said. He seemed intrigued, and Tann hoped against hope that whatever long life of fighting and butchery he had fallen into had not slashed away his sense of loyalty.

“I gave you my rations for the day, and you promised to grant me a favor, wherever and whenever I called it in.”

Conan frowned, and then laughed. And as he turned his head to look at the captured prospectors, Tann thought, Oh, by all the gods that are and ever were, I think my old man’s eyesight has betrayed me. Because this man was not Conan—he saw that now. The huge barbarian was far too young for a start, and the way he eyed his captives, the brutality and relish in what he had done, the murder of innocents… No, Tann did not think anything would have reduced Conan to this.

Among the corpses on the ground were women and children.

Tann closed his eyes and readied himself, because he knew that whatever he did next—however hard he fought for the freedom of Larria and their boys, and however determinedly they battled with him—he was about to die.

“A promise,” the barbarian said. “A favor. You know Conan.”

Tann did not reply.

“I said, you know Conan!” the man shouted, and the transformation from casual laughter to furious roar was shocking. He was a beast now, hulking and glaring, veins protruding from his forehead and across his wide, muscled neck.

Rusty though he was in the ways of combat, Tann knew that one of the best weapons was surprise. He went for the bandit to his left, jabbing with the blade, feinting, ducking down beneath the answering whip-swing that whistled above his head, and then slashed the woman’s thigh. She cried out as blood spurted from her severed artery, and Tann rolled to his left as the other man’s broadsword shaved the hairs from his leg and stuck in the ground.

Tann stood, wiping sprayed blood from his face, and he and Larria locked eyes.