Conan and the Shaman's Curse by Sean A. Moore Read Free Book Online

from above mingled with the rasp of drawn swords and the thump of booted feet, running toward the hold. Conan’s predatory instincts registered all these noises, and he let the guard’s gutted carcass plop to the deck. Leaping straight for the hold’s doorway, he rushed toward those sounds, knowing that it was more of the weak, pink-skinned beasts that were coming. He would kill them all and grind their bones between his teeth.
    He stopped at the stairs leading up to the deck. Bending his knees, he flexed calf muscles that were as thick as a strong man’s thighs. Before the sailors reached the top of the short staircase, Conan sprang upward, landing upon the deck with a thump that made the planks shudder under his weight.
    A searing light stabbed through his eyes, piercing his brain like a spear. Conan looked up into the black-blue night sky and saw the cause of his pain, the orb that burned him with pale fire. He would quench the flames of his agony with blood from the bodies of these puny, soft creatures who approached him. There were many of them, enough to drench that orb’s baleful glow in a river of blood.
    Five rowers brandished their blades, surrounding him. Their arms rippled with muscle from years of hard labour at the bench. Vendhyans did not use slaves for rowing; only staunch, robust men with combat skills that had ended many a pirate’s career. But even a hardened rogue would have trembled at the sight of the blood-besmeared ape who towered before them. Only their numbers lent them courage, and they struck as one.
    Cutlasses whistled through empty air. Conan bounded backward with catlike agility, confounding his would-be slayers. His elongated arms outreached their blades, and he seized the closest rower by his sword arm, wrenching the limb from its socket and hurling the still-twitching appendage into the sea. The dismembered man fell forward, toward Conan, clutching at the spewing socket and screaming like a doomed soul in Hell.
    Paling at the grisly ferocity of the ape’s attack, the others nonetheless surged forward, trying to drive Conan into the Mistress’s narrow bow. Wrapping his claws around the prone rower’s ankles, Conan lifted the screeching man and swung him in an arc before the others could stay their sword cuts.
    Conan’s human shield absorbed the rowers’ blows, and the force of his swing knocked two onto the deck while stripping the others’ weapons from their hands. Roaring, Conan bludgeoned a prone man with the flopping, blood-spewing corpse, and charged between the two unarmed men.
    Other rowers were arriving, pouring from the forecastle, while behind them, the hatch to the officer’s quarters banged open. Conan would have recognized the men who dashed out as Jhatil, Chadim, and Khertet—but to the ape they were all naught but fodder. Khertet shouted orders, but all Conan heard were a jumble of sounds, strange mouthings with less meaning than the squawking of birds or the chattering of monkeys.
    The disarmed rowers scrambled for their blades, but Conan tore one apart before the man could retrieve his fallen cutlass. The other managed to jab his point into Conan’s side before he, too, was held fast in the ape’s lethal grip. His arms were pulled from his body, their ragged stumps jetting blood.
    The foremost rank of rowers stepped forward, jamming the ship’s deck from starboard to port. Eager to strike a blow for their fallen fellows, they swallowed their fear and shock, following Khertet’s shouted commands, trying to keep to the rail and looking for an opening. These men fought more shrewdly, aiming cuts and slashes at Conan’s flailing arms. But again the cunning ape used the bodies of the fallen, this time as gory missiles.
    The deck afforded the rowers no easy means to duck the hail of severed limbs and mangled torsos that Conan was hurling. But from the safety of the poop deck, Chadim tossed knives at the hairy, blood-smeared juggernaut. With each throw, a hilt