Conan - Conan 106 by Conan the Avenger # L. Sprague De Camp

Author:Conan the Avenger # L. Sprague De Camp [ed]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5: The Sea of Blood

The wind blew hard. Salt spray was tossed from the waves by the howling gusts. Conan the Cimmerian expanded his mighty chest in deep, joyous breaths, relishing the feel of freedom. Many memories crowded his mind from the earlier days when he, as chief of the pirates of Vilayet, had swept the sea with dripping sword blades and laid the Turanian seaports in smoking ruins.

Vilayet was still a Hyrkanian sea, dominated by the Turanian navy’s swift war galleys. Trade was carried on to some extent by daring merchants from the smaller countries on the northeastern shore, but a merchantman’s way across the turbulent waves was fraught with peril. No state of war was needed for a Turanian captain to board, plunder, and scuttle a foreign vessel if it pleased him. The excuse was simply “infringement upon the interests of the lord of the Turanian Empire.”

Besides the greedy Turanian navy, there lurked another danger as great: the pirates!

A motley horde of escaped slaves, criminals, freebooters, and wandering adventurers, all with a common lust for gold and a common disregard for human life, infested the waters of this huge inland sea, making even Turanian shipping a hazardous venture. In the mazes of islands to the south and east lay their secret harbors.

Internal strife often crippled their power, to the satisfaction of the king of Turan, until there came among them a strange barbarian from the West, with blue eyes and raven hair. Conan swept aside their quarreling captains and took the reins of leadership in his own hands. He united the pirates and forged them into a fearsome weapon aimed at the heart of Turan. Conan smiled in recollection of those days, when his name was a curse in Vilayet harbors, and prayers and incantations were chanted against him in the temples of the seaports.

The sloop was a trim and well-built craft. Her sharp bow cut the water like a scimitar, and her single sail billowed tautly before the wind.

Aghrapur had been astern for nearly twenty hours. Conan guessed their speed to be greater than that of Turanian warships. Should the breeze die, however, they would have a problem. They could never hope to equal the speed of a galley, propelled by hard-driven slave rowers, by means of their own puny sweeps. But the wind showed no sign of slackening, and Rolfs capable hand guided the small vessel before it so as to extract the last ounce of sailpower from it.

Rolf was telling the long tale of the wanderings and adventures that had led him to Aghrapur. “…so here I am, a fugitive from my native Asgard and from Turan both.”

“Why did you join me?” asked Conan. “You were comfortably off at the Turanian court.”

Rolf looked offended. “Did you think I had forgotten the time you saved my life, in that battle with the Hyperboreans in the Graaskal Mountains?”

Conan grinned. “So I did, didn’t I? After so many battles, I had forgotten myself.” He shaded his eyes and looked at the unbroken blue line of the horizon.

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