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The Floating Press - E. Howard Robert

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68 pages

English

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Can't get enough of Conan the Barbarian? Fans rank the tale Red Nails as one of the best stories in the series that ultimately inspired Arnold Schwarzenegger's star turn in the famed 1982 action-adventure classic. This tale unfolds deep in the jungles of what is now Mexico or South America, where Conan has traveled in pursuit of his love interest, the brave and beautiful Valeria.

Sujets

Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)

Fantasy

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775457428
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

RED NAILS
* * *
ROBERT E. HOWARD

*
Red Nails First published in 1936 ISBN 978-1-77545-742-8 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Introduction 1 - The Skull on the Crag 2 - By the Blaze of the Fire-Jewels 3 - The People of the Feud 4 - Scent of Black Lotus 5 - Twenty Red Nails 6 - The Eyes of Tascela 7 - He Comes from the Dark
Introduction
*
One of the strangest stories ever written—the tale of a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird roofed city inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned
WEIRD TALES published a story called "The Phoenix on the Sword," built around a barbarian adventurer named Conan, who had become king of a country by sheer force of valor and brute strength. The author of that story was Robert E. Howard, who was already a favorite with the readers of this magazine for his stories of Solomon Kane, the dour English Puritan and redresser of wrongs. The stories about Conan were speedily acclaimed by our readers, and the barbarian's weird adventures became immensely popular. The story presented herewith is one of the most powerful and eery weird tales yet written about Conan. We commend this story to you, for we know you will enjoy it through and through.
1 - The Skull on the Crag
*
The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legswide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of thegold-tasseled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a bootedfoot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-workedsaddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turnedabout, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.
They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where herhorse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision thatquested under the somber twilight of the lofty arches formed byintertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of hermagnificent shoulders, and then cursed.
She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Herwhole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from thefemininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearingand her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her presentenvirons. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches,which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by awide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leathercame almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleevedsilk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straightdouble-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly goldenhair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimsonsatin.
Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with anunconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should havebeen posed against a background of sea-clouds, painted masts andwheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. Andthat was as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the RedBrotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad whereverseafarers gather.
She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches andsee the sky which presumably lay about it, but presently gave it up witha muttered oath.
Leaving her horse tied she strode off toward the east, glancing backtoward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in her mind.The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the loftyboughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of anysmall animals. For leagues she had traveled in a realm of broodingstillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.
She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but she felt the gnawings ofhunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she hadsustained herself since exhausting the food she had brought in hersaddle-bags.
Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping of dark, flint-like rockthat sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among thetrees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves.Perhaps its peak rose above the tree-tops, and from it she could seewhat lay beyond—if, indeed, anything lay beyond but more of thisapparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so manydays.
A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of thecrag. After she had ascended some fifty feet she came to the belt ofleaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowdclose to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended aboutit, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, notable to see either above or below her; but presently she glimpsed bluesky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw theforest roof stretching away under her feet.
She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with thetree-tops, and from it rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peakof the crag she had climbed. But something else caught her attention atthe moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of blown deadleaves which carpeted the shelf. She kicked them aside and looked downon the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleachedframe, but saw no broken bones nor any sign of violence. The man musthave died a natural death; though why he should have climbed a tall cragto die she could not imagine.
*
She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward thehorizons. The forest roof—which looked like a floor from hervantage-point—was just as impenetrable as from below. She could noteven see the pool by which she had left her horse. She glancednorthward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only therolling green ocean stretching away and away, with only a vague blueline in the distance to hint of the hill-range she had crossed daysbefore, to plunge into this leafy waste.
West and east the view was the same; though the blue hill-line waslacking in those directions. But when she turned her eyes southward shestiffened and caught her breath. A mile away in that direction theforest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dottedplain. And in the midst of that plain rose the walls and towers of acity. Valeria swore in amazement. This passed belief. She would not havebeen surprised to sight human habitations of another sort—thebeehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff-dwellings of themysterious brown race which legends declared inhabited some country ofthis unexplored region. But it was a startling experience to come upon awalled city here so many long weeks' march from the nearest outposts ofany sort of civilization.
Her hands tiring from clinging to the spire-like pinnacle, she letherself down on the shelf, frowning in indecision. She had comefar—from the camp of the mercenaries by the border town of Sukhmetamidst the level grasslands, where desperate adventurers of many racesguard the Stygian frontier against the raids that come up like a redwave from Darfar. Her flight had been blind, into a country of which shewas wholly ignorant. And now she wavered between an urge to ridedirectly to that city in the plain, and the instinct of caution whichprompted her to skirt it widely and continue her solitary flight.
Her thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below her. Shewheeled cat-like, snatched at her sword; and then she froze motionless,staring wide-eyed at the man before her.
He was almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under hisskin which the sun had burned brown. His garb was similar to hers,except that he wore a broad leather belt instead of a girdle. Broadswordand poniard hung from this belt.
"Conan, the Cimmerian!" ejaculated the woman. "What are you doing onmy trail?"
He grinned hardly, and his fierce blue eyes burned with a light anywoman could understand as they ran over her magnificent figure,lingering on the swell of her splendid breasts beneath the light shirt,and the clear white flesh displayed between breeches and boot-tops.
"Don't you know?" he laughed. "Haven't I made my admiration for youplain ever since I first saw you?"
"A stallion could have made it no plainer," she answered disdainfully."But I never expected to encounter you so far from the ale-barrels andmeat-pots of Sukhmet. Did you really follow me from Zarallo's camp, orwere you whipped forth for a rogue?"
He laughed at her insolence and flexed his mighty biceps.
"You know Zarallo didn't have enough knaves to whip me out of camp," hegrinned. "Of course I followed you. Lucky thing for you, too, wench!When you knifed that Stygian officer, you forfeited Zarallo's favor andprotection, and you outlawed yourself with the Stygians."
"I know it," she replied sullenly. "But what else could I do? You knowwhat my provocation was."
"Sure," he agreed. "If I'd been there, I'd have knifed him myself. Butif a woman must live in the war-camps of men, she can expect suchthings."
Valeria stamped her booted foot and swore.
"Why won't men let me live a man's life?"
"That's obvious!" Again his eager eyes devoured her. "But you were wiseto run away. The Stygians would have had you skinned. That officer'sbrother followed you; faster than you thought, I don't doubt. He wasn'tfar behind you when I caught up with him. His horse was bett