Conan the Barbarian by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter Page B

in leather so rotted that patches of iron beneath the hide were visible. The hilt and pommel of corroded bronze crawled with cryptic characters, wrought by a master’s hand.
    Conan took up the sword. At the touch of his fingers, the scabbard crumbled into dust and thin fragments of bronze fell to the floor with the ghost of a tinkle. The blade, now fully exposed, proved to be a huge length of dull iron, spotted with patches of corrosion; but rust had not bitten it deeply enough to affect its strength. Th6 edge, when Conan thumbed it, was still sharp.
    Conan’s eyes clouded with painful memories as he caressed the perfect planes of the blade and the exquisite workmanship of the hilt. He recalled the making of the great steel sword that was his father’s masterpiece. Shrugging the memory away, Conan hefted the ancient weapon. Heavy as it was, he found the balance so perfect that it seemed made for his arm alone. He raised the sword above his head, and felt his thews swell with power and his heart beat faster with the pride of possession. With such a blade, no destiny would be too high for a warrior to aspire to! With such a blade, even a barbarian slave, a Pit fighter scorned and marked for death, might hack his way to an honoured place among the rulers of the earth.
    Exhilarated by the dreams that the splendid weapon aroused in his barbarian breast, Conan feinted and cut the air with wild abandon; and as the keen sword sliced through the stale air of the death chamber, he uttered the venerable war cry of the Cimmerians. Loud and clear he shouted it; and the cry reverberated around the chamber, disturbing ancient shadows and age-old dust. In his exuberance, the young barbarian never paused to think that such a challenge, wide-flung in such a place, might rouse thoughts and feelings that had slumbered there for countless centuries among the bones of those whose thoughts they were.
    Suddenly, Conan heard an answering war cry. It seemed to come from a great distance, carried on the wind. But there was no wind. Conan paused, his sword arm still upraised. Was it perhaps the wolves that howled? Again the mad cry rose, so near now that it beat against his ears and deafened him. Conan wheeled. He felt the hair lift from his scalp and his blood congeal to ice. For the dead man lived and moved.
    Slowly, the skeleton rose from the marble throne, glaring at the Cimmerian youth from the deep pits now filled, it seemed, with demonic fire. Bone rubbed against bone, like tree branches brushing together in a storm, as the terrible grinning skull approached on funereal feet. Conan, his arm still raised, stood frozen by horror into immobility.
    Suddenly a bony claw shot out, to snatch the sword from Conan’s hand. Numb with terror, Conan retreated step by step. Only the Cimmerian’s laboured breath and the clicking of bones against the stone floor of the chamber broke the silence.
    Now the dead thing had Conan backed against a wall. Pit fighter though he was, ready to do battle with man or beast and fearing neither pain nor mortal foes, he was still a barbarian and like all barbarians he feared the terrors of the grave and the monstrous beings that inhabit the dark world and the hells beneath hells. The small torch burned low as he stood paralysed by fear. Then a wolf howled.
    Galvanized into action by that familiar sound, Conan’s terror melted like the snow in spring. He brought the sword down with a chopping blow that lopped off the clutching bony claw. He swivelled to the side and, in the sputtering light, searched vainly for the stairs down which he had come. Relentlessly, the helmeted skull strode forward. With swift, powerful strokes Conan defended himself. At last he found the narrow stairs, and backing up a single step, he drove his weapon through the rusted armour, through the bare rib cage, into the area where a living heart would beat.
    With a sigh like sedge blown by an autumn wind, the walking skeleton paused in mid-step. The