Conan the Warlord

Chapter 1 The Dance of the Clubs The dungeon was rank with the smells of human misery. Its fetid gloom made a tangible fog of despair that somehow was only deepened by the single source of light: a thin, dusty ray falling from a window grating high overhead. Where it struck the water puddled together with rotting hay on the floor, wisps of steam arose. A score or more of the room's prisoners lounged or squatted in the shadows around its rough stone walls. Some of them were Nemedian serfs, swarthy-faced men clad in coarse, knee-length shirts corded at the waist with frayed rope. Others had more exotic rags and a more foreign look: jaunty street-thieves of Dinander, or wealthless travelers run afoul of municipal authority. The inmates varied widely in their physical health also, from the robust toughs loitering in choice positions near the cell door, to peasant wretches broken by torture, moaning in the darkest corners. Least fortunate of all was the one who sprawled facedown in the center of the wet floor, his limbs twisted under him and one dirty, sandaled ankle protruding into the barred patch of daylight. It was his plight that seemed to concern his fellows the most, and they called attention to it in loud voices. "Jailer! Poor Stolpa's dead! Come haul him away!" "Yes, come and get him. He's starting to stink!" A stout, full-bearded prisoner ambled to the wooden door and gave it three hard kicks that failed even to rattle its heavy timbers. He leaned down and shouted through the peephole: "Warden! Come along here! The fellow's been dead half the morning. He's going to sprout maggots!" "Get rid of him! Get him out!" A chorus of yells and hoots built to a raucous crescendo. All the able men contributed lustily, with one exception. He was a northern barbariana tall, well-muscled youth of perhaps eighteen seasons, with shaggy black hair and the faintest shadow of a beard. His ill-fitting townsman's shirt and trousers made a parody of his hulking size; yet as he lounged against the wall near the cell door, his catlike ease belied the ungainliness of his garb. He kept his eyes steadily on the doorway, whispering at intervals to the man beside him, a broken-nosed ruffian who now and again added a jeer to the general outcry. "They are coming!" The crook-nosed man's battered face suddenly grew serious. "Just look to your own part, Conan! The others will do theirs." "Aye, Rudo. May Crom favor us!" A loud thump sounded at the door. The youth eased himself upright as his cellmates' shouts died away. "You scum!" a gravelly voice racketed through the peephole. "Let's have some order in there, or I'll shoot quarrels into the lot of you!" The bearded door-kicker took a step forward in front of the spyhole, spreading his hands amicably, and pointed to the motionless one in the center of the floor. "Your Honor, Stolpa's been dead for hours, and the cell's crowded as it is. We'd like to have him out of here, please." "Dead, eh?" the unseen warder rasped. "And which of you miscreants throttled him?" The spokesman nervously clasped his hands. "No one, sir. He's been ailing for some time, as you know." "Well then, let his ailing carcass rot. And yours with it, Falmar!" The voice murmured irritably aside for a moment, then came back to the eyehole. "How do I know it's not a trick?" A stir of displeasure sounded among the prisoners, and crook-nosed Rudo stepped quickly from his placeCarpenter, Leonard is the author of 'Conan the Warlord' with ISBN 9780812542684 and ISBN 0812542681.