Conan the Buccaneer

Chapter Sixteen: THE DEVOURING TREE

Conan blinked, squinting against the slanting rays of the rising sun as it soared above the treetops of the distant jungle. He stared about him curiously.

The Amazons had dragged the Zingaran girl and himself into the central square of Gamburu. To one side rose the royal palace, with the two age-worn, cryptic statues flanking its gate. Conan lay in the broad, shallow pit in the center of the square, on the sandy surface that formed its floor. When he had glimpsed this feature on his first arrival in Gamburu, Conan had noted the resemblance of this depression to an arena, like that which he had seen in his mercenary days in Argossean Messantia. But the Messantian arena had included pit doors whereby gladiators or wild beasts could be loosed into the arena to work upon each other or their victims. This arena had no such portals.

Another odd thing was the clump of trees in the center of the sandy floor. These must be the kulamtu trees of which Queen Nzinga had spoken. He looked the nearest one over and found it unlike any tree he had ever seen, although it had some faint resemblance to a banana tree. The trunk had a spongy, fibrous look; but, instead of tapering to a point, it ended at the top in a round, wet-looking orifice, like a mouth. Below this orifice grew a circle of huge leaves, each one as large as a man … long, broad, and thick, with their upper surfaces covered with hairlike projections a finger's breadth in length.

Amazons, resplendent in leopard skins, nodding plumes, and jingling barbaric jewelry, were slowly filling the rising tiers of stone seats that ringed the arena. Among these were many notables known to Conan from their mutual attendance at Nzinga's feasts.

Surreptitiously, he tested his bonds. Ropes of muscle stood out boldly along his bronzed arms; his brows contorted with effort. But the woven ropes resisted his best efforts … yielding a little but retaining their implacable grip on his arms and legs, which were also bound together by a rope around the ankles. How ironic, he thought, that he who had in his time broken chains of iron should now be defeated by cords of woven grass! Those who had bound his arms and legs, however, had known their business.

The benches were now nearly full. At a shout from Queen Nzinga, who sat amongst her grandees, the guards dragged Conan and Chabela close to the clump of strange-looking trees. Then they hastily retreated, leaving the two captives lying helplessly in the sand.

All around the pit, the Amazons kept up a rising spate of talk. Now they were pointing, jabbering, shouting, laughing, and generally carrying on.

Chabela screamed. At the same time, Conan felt a touch on his foot and looked to see the cause. "Crom!" he burst out.

One of the huge leaves of the kulamtu tree had reached down and was curling slowly around his ankle. Chabela screamed again, and Conan looked to see her limbs enfolded in the frond of another tree.

Conan set his jaw. This part of Kush was unfamiliar to him. But years before, when he had ravaged the Black Coast with Belit, he had heard tales of horrors of the inner jungles from her black crew. These rumors had included a story of a man-eating tree; but Conan had put this down to one more tall tale of superstitious barbarians.

Now he paled beneath his swarthy tan, for he understood the litter of dry, white human bones about the bases of these trees. The sticky fronds would curl slowly about his body, jerkily lift him up to that obscene-looking orifice, and pop him in. The devil-tree would swallow him alive. The acids secreted by the inner tissues would dissolve his flesh, and the tree would finally regurgitate his bare bones.

Three of the big fronds had curled about his body now, despite his thrashings and efforts to roll away. Slowly, they heaved him upright. Every one of the hairlike projections on the leaves stung like a hornet's sting where it touched him. Terror and revulsion lent new strength to his powerful muscles.

Then, beneath the shrill shouting from the benches, Conan heard a faint sound that lent new vigor to his thews. This sound was the snap of one of the grass cords as it parted. Then another one gave.

In a flash, Conan realized that the leaves, too, secreted a corrosive fluid, and that this fluid was dissolving and weakening the grass cords. He strained frantically, and more of the cords gave. An arm came free, and with his liberated hand he tore away a leaf that was starting to wrap itself about his head. He broke more cords, tore at the clinging, sticky leaves … and fell with a thump to the sand. His limbs, where the leaves had been in contact with them, were covered with itching red spots.

From the roar that exploded from the benches of the arena, Conan surmised that this had never happened before. Doubtless the Amazons had hitherto been prudent enough to feed their man-eating trees only victims weakened by torture or imprisonment. They had never offered to their vegetable executioners a man of unusual size and strength, in full possession of his powers. Ripping the last clinging leaf away, Conan grimly resolved to make the most of their error.

Chabela, now swathed like a mummy from head to foot in thick leaves, was halfway to the mouth of her tree when Conan got to her. He sprang up, caught the fronds that were lifting her, and clung. His added weight was too much for the leaves.

They broke, some tearing in half and some pulling loose from the trunk altogether. Conan fell sprawling on the hot sands, holding the girl in his arms.

Quickly he stripped away the leaves that enshrouded her, which, as he tore at them, slowly writhed as if in pain. Like his own skin, hers was red-dotted where the leaves had caressed it. Then he tugged at the grass cords that bound her.

These, like his own, had been largely eaten through, so that it took no great effort to break them and set the girl free.

The Amazons were now in an uproar. A number of guardswomen had leaped down into the arena and were thudding toward him, the sun flashing on the bronze of their harness and weapons. Conan ripped away the last leaf from Chabela's face, so that she could breathe, and sprang to meet these human adversaries.

They did not, as he expected, pour down at him with spear and sword and club.

Instead, halted a few yards away, brandishing their weapons and yelling threats and epithets. Then he realized that it was not merely Conan, standing before them bare-handed and naked but for a loincloth, of whom they were wary, but the trees behind him. Their hesitancy might stem from simple fear of the loathsome man-eating plants, or the trees might be regarded as gods. Whatever the reason, their hesitancy gave him an idea.

Turning, he set his shoulder against the tree that had attempted to make a morsel of him. This tree was now writhing and flopping its broken fronds as if in pain, making no more effort to seize Conan. The trunk had a flimsy, fibrous look and perhaps was no stronger than the stem of a plantain tree, which it resembled.

Conan hurled his weight against the trunk and felt it give slightly, with a ripping sound. Another heave, and the trunk tore out of the ground, the loose-packed sand of which gave little purchase to the network of white tendrils that served the cannibal tree as roots.

A howl of unholy outrage roared from the stands as Conan broke down the tree. He hefted it under his arm like a battering ram. It was about ten feet long from roots to mouth, a foot or so thick, and surprisingly light for so bulky an object.

Conan charged the women warriors, using the tree as a ram. They broke and fled squealing from his advance. He laughed exultantly. The Amazons evidently had a horror of their own sacred tree and sought to escape its proximity. He spun about, knocking down two of the guards with a swing of the trunk. The others fled back to the stands.

Now javelins began to fall about him in a deadly rain. One went thunk into the trunk a hand's breadth from his arm. Several angular throwing-knives whirled past his head like boomerangs.

"Chabela!'' he roared. "Grab one of those spears and follow me!"

The pair of them ran to the stands, Conan in the lead. A knot of Amazons in front of him broke and scattered as he swung the upper end of the tree among them, spattering drops of corrosive sap. The two climbed nimbly up the benches to the level of the square and loped for the street leading to the West Gate.

When he emerged from the pit, Conan fully expected to see half the female army of Gamburu assembled to attack him. Instead, a strangely different vista met his eyes as he clambered out of the arena. Fire arrows flickered through the air; nearby roofs blazed. A dozen corpses sprawled in puddles of gore, with shafts protruding from their bodies. A chorus of booming war cries rang through the air. The city of the Amazons was under attack.

A mass of black warriors, indisputably male, had poured out of the street to the West Gate. They formed disciplined ranks and advanced smartly, shooting sheets of arrows and cutting down the clusters of Amazons who charged their line.

Over the heads of the archers, Conan sighted his old comrade Juma and yelled his name. Juma saw him, grinned, and roared a command in the tongue of his own people. The ranks broke, and the archers rushed to surround and shelter Conan, who cast aside his tree, and the Zingaran girl. Then the force began to defile back out of the square the way they had come, fighting a cool rear-guard action.

Conan laughed and clouted Juma on the shoulder. "I wondered if you were coming," he said. "You got here just in time!"

Juma laughed and caught an Amazonian arrow on his long shield of tough rhinoceros hide. "I don't know, Conan; you seemed to be doing all right."

As they worked their way back to the West Gate, Juma explained that his men had finally tracked the slavers here to Gamburu.

Then he had assembled a levy of his black warriors and marched on the Amazonian capital.

"I feared we should never find you alive," he concluded. "I ought to have realized that, being Conan, you'd be found in the midst of a fight as usual and taking on the whole Amazon city single-handed."

As they reached the gate, Conan sighted the red-gold beard and blue eyes of Sigurd, who had been left there with a squad of armed sailors to keep the black army's line or retreat open. Conan and Sigurd shouted and waved but had no time for explanations.

Emerging from the gate, Conan smiled, happy to see the last of Queen Nzinga's city. The queen was a magnificent woman and had been a spectacular bedmate, but Conan was never one to be satisfied with the role of "Mister Queen," and he suspected that more than one former lover of the black queen had preceded him into the maws of the man-eating trees whenever the fickle and headstrong Nzinga had tired of their embraces.

"I see what you mean about training your archers in Turanian style," he said to Juma. A rabble of Amazons rushed out of the gate in pursuit; but Juma's men deployed, closed ranks, and sent volleys of arrows into the throng until the survivors broke and fled back into their city.

Soon they reached the shelter of the trees. Then, while the force paused for breath, Conan and Sigurd greeted each other lustily. Sigurd cast an eye on Chabela and dropped to one knee.

"Princess!'' he said in a scandalized voice. "By Ishtar's teats and Moloch's fiery belly, you should ought to get some clothes on! What would your royal sire think? Here, take this!"

The Vanir stripped off his shirt and pressed it upon the girl, who put it on and rolled up the sleeves. Because of Sigurd's great size, the shirt was long enough to cover Chabela's well-rounded body.

"My thanks, Master Sigurd," said she. "You are right, of course; but I have been compelled to go naked among naked folk for so long that I had become used to it."

"Whither now, Conan?" said Sigurd. "I know not about you, but I've had enough of this sweltering jungle land. If the mosquitoes and leeches don't eat you alive, the lions are happy to finish what's left."

"Back to Kulalo," said Conan, "and then aboard the Wastrel without delay. If the men left behind have sailed off and left us, I'll skin them alive."

"Surely you will share our victory feast!" protested Juma. "Now that my warriors have bested the Amazons of Gamburu, my empire is certain to dominate all this land. My men are eager to drink themselves into a stupor on good banana wine…"

Conan shook his head. "I thank you, but I fear we cannot spare the time, old friend. We have our work cut out for us back in Zingara. There's some plot against the Princess Chabela's sire, King Ferdrugo, and we must get her home at once. It seems that half the magicians of Stygia are joined in the scheme, so the victory feast will have to wait. Our victory, you see, has yet to be won."