Conan the Barbarian: The Stories That Inspired the Movie by Robert E. Howard

finished when he heard something drop softly onto the parapet adjacent to the window. He looked up to see a figure loom briefly against the stars, and then a man dropped lightly into the room. The light glinted on a long sheen of steel in his hand.
    “Shhhh!” he warned. “Don’t make a noise, you bastard, or I’ll send the devil a henchman!”
    The governor checked his motion toward the sword on the table. He was within reach of the yard-long Zhaibar knife that glittered in the intruder’s fist, and he knew the desperate quickness of a hillman.
    The invader was a tall man, at once strong and supple. He was dressed like a hillman, but his dark features and blazing blue eyes did not match his garb. Chunder Shan had never seen a man like him; he was not an Easterner, but some barbarian from the West. But his aspect was as untamed and formidable as any of the hairy tribesmen who haunt the hills of Ghulistan.
    “You come like a thief in the night,” commented the governor, recovering some of his composure, although he remembered that there was no guard within call. Still, the hillman could not know that.
    “I climbed a bastion,” snarled the intruder. “A guard thrust his head over the battlement in time for me to rap it with my knife hilt.”
    “You are Conan?”
    “Who else? You sent word into the hills that you wished for me to come and parley with you. Well, by Crom, I’ve come! Keep away from that table or I’ll gut you.
    “I merely wish to seat myself,” answered the governor, carefully sinking into the ivory chair, which he wheeled away from the table. Conan moved restlessly before him, glancing suspiciously at the door, thumbing the razor edge of his three-foot knife. He did not walk like an Afghuli, and was bluntly direct where the East is subtle.
    “You have seven of my men,” he said abruptly. “You refused the ransom I offered. What the devil do you want?”
    “Let us discuss terms,” answered Chunder Shan cautiously.
    “Terms?” There was a timbre of dangerous anger in his voice. “What do you mean? Haven’t I offered you gold?”
    Chunder Shan laughed.
    “Gold? There is more gold in Peshkhauri than you ever saw.”
    “You’re a liar,” retorted Conan. “I’ve seen the
suk
of the goldsmiths in Khurusun.”
    “Well – more than any Afghuli ever saw,” amended Chunder Shan. “And it is but a drop of all the treasure of Vendhya. Why should we desire gold? It would be more to our advantage to hang these seven thieves.”
    Conan ripped out a sulphurous oath and the long blade quivered in his grip as the muscles rose in ridges on his brown arm.
    “I’ll split your head like a ripe melon!”
    A wild blue flame flickered in the hillman’s eyes, but Chunder Shan shrugged his shoulders, though keeping an eye on the keen steel.
    “You can kill me easily, and probably escape over the wall afterwards. But that would not save the seven tribesmen. They would surely hang them. And these men are headmen among the Afghulis.”
    “I know it,” snarled Conan. “The tribe is baying like wolves at my heels because I have not secured their release. Tell me in plain words what you want, because by Crom, if there’s no other way, I’ll raise a horde and lead it to the very gates of Peshkhauri!”
    Looking at the man as he stood squarely, knife in fist and eyes glaring, Chunder Shan did not doubt that he was capable of it. The governor did not believe any hill-horde could take Peshkhauri, but he did not wish a devastated countryside.
    “There is a mission you must perform,” he said, choosing his words with as much care as if they had been razors. “There –”
    Conan had sprung back, wheeling to face the door at the same instant, lips asnarl. His barbarian ears had caught the sound noiseless to Chunder Shan – the quick tread of soft slippers outside the door. The next instant the door was thrown open and aslim, silk-robed form entered hastily, pulling the door shut – then stopping short at