The Flame Knife

ONE: Knives in the Dark

The scuff of swift and stealthy feet in the darkened doorway warned the giant Cimmerian. He wheeled to see a tall figure lunging at him from the black arch.

It was dark in the alley, but Conan glimpsed a fierce, bearded face and the gleam of steel in a lifted hand, even as he avoided the blow with a twist of his body. The knife ripped his tunic and glanced along the shirt of light chain mail he wore beneath it. Before the assassin could recover his balance, the Cimmerian caught his arm and brought his massive fist down like a sledge hammer on the back of the fellow's neck. The man crumpled to earth without a sound.

Conan stood over him, listening with tense expectancy. Up the street, around the next comer, he caught the shuffle of sandaled feet, the muffled clink of steel.

These sinister sounds told him the nighted streets of Anshan were a deathtrap.

He hesitated, half-drew the scimitar at his side, then shrugged and hurried down the street. He swerved wide of the dark arches that gaped in the walls that lined it.

He turned into a wider street and a few moments later rapped softly on a door, above which burned a bronze lantern. The door opened almost instantly. Conan stepped inside, snapping:

"Lock the door!"

The massive Shemite who had admitted the Cimmerian shot home the heavy bolt and turned, tugging his curled blue-black beard as he inspected his commander.

"Your shirt is gashed, Conan!" he rumbled.

"A man tried to knife me," answered Conan. "Others followed."

The Shemite's black eyes blazed as he laid a broad, hairy hand on the three-foot Ilbarsi knife that jutted from his hip. "Let us sally forth and slay the dogs!" he urged.

Conan shook his head. He was a huge man, much taller than the Shemite, but for all his size he moved with the lightness of a cat. His thick chest, corded neck, and square shoulders spoke of primordial strength, speed, and endurance.

"Other things come first" he said. "They're enemies of Balash, who knew I quarreled with the king tonight."

"You did!" cried the Shemite. "This is dark news indeed. What said the king?"

Conan picked up a flagon of wine and gulped down half of it. "Oh, Kobad Shah is mad with suspicion," he said. "Now it's our friend Balash. The chiefs enemies have poisoned the king against him; but then, Balash is stubborn. He won't come in and surrender as Kobad demands, saying Kobad means to stick his head on a pike. So Kobad ordered me to take the kozaki into the Ilbars Mountains and bring back Balash … all of him if possible, but his head in any case."

"And?"

"I refused."

"You did?" said the Shemite in an awed whisper.

"Of course! What do you think I am? I told Kobad Shah how Balash and his tribe saved us when we got lost in the Ilbars in the middle of winter, on our ride south from the Vilayet Sea. Most hillmen would have wiped us out. But the fool wouldn't listen. He began shouting about his divine right and the insolence of low-born barbarians and such stuff. One more word and I'd have stuffed his imperial turban down his throat."

"You did not strike the king?" said the Shemite.

"Nay, though I felt like it Crom! I can't understand the way you civilized men crawl on your bellies before any copper-riveted ass who happens to sit on a jeweled chair with a bauble on his head."

"Because these asses can have us flayed or impaled at a nod. Now, we must flee from Iranistan to escape the king's wrath."

Conan finished the wine and smacked his lips. "I think not; he'll get over it. He knows his army is not what it was in his grandsire's time, and we're the only light horse he can count on. But that still leaves our friend Balash. I'm tempted to ride north to warn him."

"Alone, Conan?"

"Why not? You can give it out that I'm sleeping off a debauch for a few days until …"

A light knock on the door made Conan cut off his sentence. He glanced at the Shemite, stepped to the door, and growled:

"Who's there?"

"It is I, Nanaia," said a woman's voice.

Conan stared at his companion. "Do you know any Nanaia, Tubal?"

"Not I. It must be some trick."

"Let me in," said the voice.

"We shall see," muttered Conan, his eyes blazing a volcanic blue in the lamplight. He drew his scimitar and laid a hand on the bolt, while Tubal, knife drawn, took his place on the other side of the door.

Conan snapped the bolt and whipped open the door. A veiled figure stepped across the threshold, then gave a little shriek and shrank back at the sight of the gleaming blades poised on muscular arms.

Conan's blade darted out so that its tip touched the back of the visitor.

"Enter, my lady," he rambled in barbarously accented Iranistani.

The woman stepped forward. Conan slammed the door and shot home the bolt "Is anybody with you?"

"N-nay, I came alone…"

Conan's left arm shot out with the speed of a serpent's strike and ripped the veil from the woman's face. She was tall, lithe, young, and dark, with black hair and finely-chiseled features.

"Now, Nanaia, what is this all about?" he said.

"I am a girl from the king's seraglio …"

Tubal gave a long whistle. "Now we are in for it."

"Go on, Nanaia," said Conan.

"Well, I have often seen you through the lattice behind the throne, when you were closeted with Kobad. It is the king's pleasure to let his women watch him at his royal business. We are supposed to be shut out of this gallery when weighty matters are discussed, but tonight Xathrita the eunuch was drunk and failed to lock the door between the gallery and the women's apartments. I stole back and heard your bitter speech with the king. When you had gone, Kobad was very angry. He called in Hakhamani the informer and bade him quietly murder you. Hakhamani was to make it look like an accident."

"If I catch Hakhamani, I'll make him look like an accident," gritted Conan. "But why all this delicacy? Kobad is no more backward than most kings about shortening or lengthening the necks of people he likes not."

"Because the king wants to keep the services of your kozaks, and if they knew he had slain you they would revolt or ride away."

"And why did you bring me this news?"

She looked at him from large dark melting eyes. "I perish in the harem from boredom. With hundreds of women, the king has no time for me. I have admired you through the screen ever since you took service here and hope you will take me with you. Anything is better than the suffocating monotony of this gilded prison, with its everlasting gossip and intrigue. I am the daughter of Kujala, chief of the Gwadiri. We are a tribe of fishermen and mariners, far to the south among the Islands of Pearl. I have steered my own ship through a typhoon, and such indolence drives me mad."

"How did you get out of the palace?"

"A rope and an unguarded old window with the bars broken away… But that is not important. Will you take me?"

"Send her back," said Tubal in the lingua franca of the kozaki: a mixture of Zaporoskan, Hyrkanian, and other tongues. "Or better yet, cut her throat and bury her in the garden. He might let us go unharmed, but he'd never let us get away with the wench. Let him find that you have run off with one of his concubines and he'll overturn every stone in Iranistan to find you."

The girl evidently did not understand the words but quailed at the menace of the tone.

Conan grinned wolfishly. "On the contrary. The thought of slinking out of the country with my tail between my legs makes my guts ache. But if I can take something like this along for a trophy … well, so long as we must leave anyway…"

He turned to Nanaia. "You understand that the pace will be fast, the going rough, and the company not so polite as you're used to?"

"I understand."

"And furthermore," he said with narrowed eyes, "that I command absolutely?"

"Aye."

"Good. Wake the dog-brothers, Tubal; we ride as soon as they can stow their gear and saddle up."

Muttering his forebodings, the Shemite strode into an inner chamber and shook a man sleeping on a heap of carpets. "Awaken, son of a long line of thieves. We ride northward."

Hattusas, a slight, dark Zamorian, sat up yawning. "Whither?"

"To Kushaf in the Ilbars Mountains, where we wintered, and where the rebel dog Balash will doubtless cut all our throats," growled Tubal.

Hattusas grinned as he rose. "You have no love for the Kushafi, but he is Conan's sworn friend."

Tubal scowled as he stalked out into the courtyard and through the door that led to the adjacent barrack. Groans and curses came from the barrack as the men were shaken awake.

Two hours later, the shadowy figures that lurked about Conan's house shrank back into the shadows as the gate of the stable yard swung open and the three hundred Free Companions clattered out in double file, leading pack mules and spare horses. They were men of all nations, the remnants of the band of kozaki whom Conan had led south from the steppes around the Vilayet Sea when King Yezdigerd of Turan had gathered a mighty army and broken the outlaw confederacy in an all-day battle. They had arrived in Anshan ragged and half-starved. Now they were gaudy in silken pantaloons and spired helmets of Iranistani pattern, and loaded down with weapons.

Meanwhile in the palace, the king of Iranistan brooded on his throne. Suspicion had eaten into his troubled soul until he saw enemies everywhere, within and without. For a time he had counted on the support of Conan, the leader of the squadron of mercenary light horse. The northern savage might lack the suave manners of the cultivated Iranistani court, but he did seem to have his own barbarian code of honor. Now, however, he had flatly refused to carry out Kobad Shah's order to seize the traitor Balash…

The king glanced at the curtain masking an alcove, absently reflecting that the wind must be rising, since the tapestry swayed a little. His eyes swept the gold-barred window and he went cold. The light curtains there hung motionless.

Yet the hangings over the alcove had stirred…

Though short and fat, Kobad Shah did not lack personal courage. As he sprang, seized the tapestries, and tore them apart, a dagger in a dark hand licked from between them and smote him full in the breast. He cried out as he went down, dragging his assailant with him. The man snarled like a wild beast his dilated eyes glaring madly. His dagger ribboned the king's robe, revealing the mail shirt that stopped his first thrust.

Outside, a deep shout echoed the king's shrill yells for help. Booted feet pounded in the corridor. The king had grasped his attacker by throat and knife wrist but the man's stringy muscles were like knotted steel cords. As they rolled on the floor, the dagger, glancing from the links of the mail shirt, fleshed itself in arm, thigh, and hand.

Then, as the bravo heaved the weakening ruler under him, grasped his throat and lifted the knife again, something flashed in the lamplight like a jet of blue lightning. The murderer collapsed, his head split to the teeth.

"Your majesty! Sire!" It was Gotarza, the towering captain of the royal guard, pale under his long black beard. As Kobad Shah sank down on a divan, Gotarza began ripping strips from the hangings to bind his wounds.

"Look!" gasped the king, pointing. His face was livid; his hand shook. "The knife! By Asura, the knife!"

It lay glinting by the dead man's hand … a curious weapon with a wavy blade shaped like a flame. Gotarza started and swore under his breath.

"The flame knife!" panted Kobad Shah. "The same weapon that struck at the King of Vendhya and the King of Turan!"

"The mark of the Hidden Ones," muttered Gotarza, uneasily eyeing the ominous symbol of the terrible cult.

The noise had roused the palace. Men were running down the corridors, shouting to know what had happened.

"Shut the door!" exclaimed the king. "Admit no one but the majordomo of the palace!"

"But we must have a physician, your majesty," protested the officer. "These wounds will not slay of themselves, but the dagger might have been poisoned."

"No, fetch no one! Whoever he is, he might be in the service of my foes. Asura! The Yezmites have marked me for doom!" The experience had shaken the king's courage. "Who can fight the dagger in the dark, the serpent underfoot, the poison in the wine cup? There is that western barbarian, Conan … but no, not even he is to be trusted, now that he has defied my commands… Let the majordomo in, Gotarza." When the officer admitted the stout official, the king asked: "What news, Bardiya?"

"Oh, sire, what has happened? It is …"

"Never mind what has happened to me. I see by your eyes you have news. What know you?"

"The kozaki have ridden forth from the city with Conan, who told the guard at the North Gate they were on their way to take Balash as you commanded."

"Good. Perhaps the fellow has repented his insolence. What else?"

"Hakhamani the informer caught Conan on his way home, but Conan slew one of his men and escaped."

"That is just as well. Call off Hakhamani until we know what Conan intends by this foray. Anything more?"

"One of your women, Nanaia the daughter of Kujala, has fled the palace. We found the rope by which she escaped."

Kobad Shah gave a roar. "She must have gone with Conan! It is too much to have been pure chance! And he must be connected with the Hidden Ones too! Else why should they strike at me just after I have quarreled with him? He must have gone straight from my presence to send the Yezmite to slay me. Gotarza, turn out the royal guard. Ride after the kozaki and bring me Conan's head, or your own shall answer for it! Take at least five hundred men, for the barbarian is fierce and crafty and not to be trifled with."

As Gotarza hurried from the chamber, the long groaned: "Now, Bardiya, fetch a leech. My veins are afire. Gotarza was right; the dagger must have been envenomed."

Three days after his hurried departure from Anshan, Conan sat cross-legged in the trail where it looped over the rock ridge to follow the slope down to the village of Kushaf.

"I would stand between you and death," he said to the man who sat opposite him, "as you did for me when your hillwolves would have massacred us."

The man tugged his purple-stained beard reflectively. He was broad and powerful, with gray-flecked hair and a broad belt bristling with knife and dagger hilts.

He was Balash, chief of the Kushafi tribesmen and overlord of Kushaf and its neighboring villages. But he spoke modestly:

"The gods favor you! Yet what man can pass the spot of his death?"

"A man can either fight or flee, and not sit in a rock like an apple in a tree, waiting to be picked. If you want to take a long chance of making your peace with the king, you can go to Anshan …"

"I have too many enemies at court. In Anshan, the king would listen to their lies and hang me up in an iron cage for the kites to eat Nay, I will not go!"

"Then take your people and find another abode. There are places in these hills where not even the king could follow you."

Balash glanced down the rocky slope to the cluster of mud-and-stone towers that rose above the encircling wall. His thin nostrils expanded, and into his eyes came a dark flame like that of an eagle surveying its eyrie.

"Nay, by Asura! My clan has held Kushaf since the days of Bahram. Let the king rule in Anshan; this is mine!"

"Hie king will likewise rule in Kushaf'' grunted Tubal, squatting behind Conan with Hattusas the Zamorian.

Balash glanced in the other direction where the trail disappeared to the east between jutting crags. On these crags, bits of white cloth were blown out by the wind, which the watchers knew were the garments of archers and javelin men who guarded the pass day and night.

"Let him come," said Balash. "We hold the passes."

"He'll bring ten thousand men, in heavy armor, with catapults and other siege gear," said Conan. "He'll burn Kushaf and take your head back to Anshan."

"That will happen which will happen," said Balash.

Conan fought down a rising anger at the fatalism of these people. Every instinct of his strenuous nature was a negation of this inert philosophy. But, as they seemed to be deadlocked, he said nothing but sat staring at the western crags where the sun hung, a ball of fire in the sharp, windy blue.

Balash dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand and said: "Conan, there is something I would show you. Down in yonder ruined hut outside the wall lies a dead man, whose like was never seen in Kushaf. Even in death, he is strange and evil. I think he is no natural man at all, but a demon. Come."

He led the way down the slope to the hovel, explaining: "My warriors came upon him lying at the base of a cliff, as if he had fallen or been thrown from the top. I made them bring him here, but he died on the way, babbling in a strange tongue. They deem him a demon, with good cause. A long day's journey southward, among mountains so wild and barren not even a goat could dwell among them, lies the country we call Drujistan."

"Drujistan!" echoed Conan. "Land of demons, eh?"

"Aye! An evil region of black crags and wild gorges, shunned by wise men. It seems uninhabited, yet men dwell there … men or devils. Sometimes a man is slain or a child or woman stolen from a lonely trail, and we know it is their work. We have followed and glimpsed shadowy figures moving through the night, but always the trail ends against a blank cliff, through which only a demon could pass. Sometimes we hear drums echoing among the crags, or the roaring of the fiends. It is a sound to turn men's hearts to ice. The old legends say that among these mountains, thousands of years ago, the ghoul-king Ura built the magical city of Yanaidar, and that the deadly ghosts of Ura and his hideous subjects still haunt the ruins. Another legend tells how, a thousand years ago, a chief of the Ilbarsi hillmen settled in the ruins and began to repair them and make the city his stronghold; but in one night he and his followers vanished, nor were they ever seen again."

They reached the ruined hut, and Balash pulled open the sagging door. A moment later, the five men were bending over a figure sprawled on the dirt floor.

It was a figure alien and incongruous: that of a stocky man with broad, square, flat features, colored like dark copper, and narrow, slanting eyes … an unmistakable son of Khitai. Blood clotted the coarse black hair on the back of his head, and the unnatural position of his body told of shattered bones.

"Has he not the look of an evil spirit?" asked Balash.

"He's no demon, whether he was a wizard in life or not," answered Conan. "He's a Khitan, from a country far to the east of Hyrkania, beyond mountains and deserts and jungles so vast you could lose a dozen Iranistans in them. I rode through that land when I soldiered for the king of Turan. But what this fellow is doing here I cannot say …"

Suddenly his blue eyes blazed and he tore the bloodstained tunic away from the squat throat. A stained woolen shirt came into view, and Tubal, looking over Conan's shoulder, grunted explosively. On the shirt, worked in thread so crimson it might at first glance have been mistaken for a splash of blood, appeared a curious emblem: a human fist grasping a hilt from which jutted a knife with a wavy blade.

''The flame knife!" whispered Balash, recoiling from that symbol of death and destruction.

All looked at Conan, who stared down at the sinister emblem, trying to recapture a vague train of associations it roused … dim memories of an ancient and evil cult, which used that symbol. Finally he said to Hattusas:

"When I was a thief in Zamora, I heard rumors of a cult called the Yezmites that used such a symbol. You're a Zamorian; what know you of this?"

Hattusas shrugged. "There are many cults whose roots go back to the beginnings of time, to the days before the Cataclysm. Often rulers have thought they had stamped them out, and often they have come to life again. The Hidden Ones or Sons of Yezm are one of these, but more I cannot tell you. I meddle not in such matters."

Conan spoke to Balash: "Can your men guide me to where you found this man?"

"Aye. But it is an evil place, in the Gorge of Ghosts, on the borders of Drujistan, and …"

"Good. Everybody get some sleep. We ride at dawn."

"To Anshan?" asked Balash.

"No. To Drujistan."

"Then you think …?"

"I think nothing … yet."

"Will the squadron ride with us?" asked Tubal. "The horses are badly worn."

"No, let the men and horses rest. You and Hattusas shall go with me, together with one of Balash's Kushafis for a guide. Codrus commands in my absence, and if there's any trouble as a result of my dogs' laying hands on the Kushafi women, tell him he is to knock their heads in."