The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1 by Robert E. Howard Page B

Yet had Kull died there but for the man who crouched at his side, parrying and thrusting. For the king was clear berserk, fighting in the terrible Atlantean way, that seeks death to deal death; he made no effort to avoid thrusts and slashes, standing straight up and ever plunging forward, no thought in his frenzied mind but to slay. Not often did Kull forget his fighting craft in his primitive fury, but now some chain had broken in his soul, flooding his mind with a red wave of slaughter-lust. He slew a foe at each blow, but they surged about him, and time and again Brule turned a thrust that would have slain, as he crouched beside Kull, parrying and warding with cold skill, slaying not as Kull slew with long slashes and plunges, but with short overhand blows and upward thrusts.
    Kull laughed, a laugh of insanity. The frightful faces swirled about him in a scarlet blaze. He felt steel sink into his arm and dropped his sword in a flashing arc that cleft his foe to the breast-bone. Then the mists faded and the king saw that he and Brule stood alone above a sprawl of hideous crimson figures who lay still upon the floor.
    “Valka! what a killing!” said Brule, shaking the blood from his eyes. “Kull, had these been warriors who knew how to use the steel, we had died here. These serpent priests know naught of swordcraft and die easier than any men I ever slew. Yet had there been a few more, I think the matter had ended otherwise.”
    Kull nodded. The wild berserker blaze had passed, leaving a mazed feeling of great weariness. Blood seeped from wounds on breast, shoulder, arm and leg. Brule, himself bleeding from a score of flesh wounds, glanced at him in some concern.
    “Lord Kull, let us hasten to have your wounds dressed by the women.”
    Kull thrust him aside with a drunken sweep of his mighty arm.
    “Nay, we’ll see this through ere we cease. Go you, though, and have your wounds seen to–I command it.”
    The Pict laughed grimly. “Your wounds are more than mine, lord king–” he began, then stopped as a sudden thought struck him. “By Valka, Kull, this is not the council room!”
    Kull looked about and suddenly other fogs seemed to fade. “Nay, this is the room where Eallal died a thousand years ago–since unused and named ‘Accursed.’”
    “Then by the gods, they tricked us after all!” exclaimed Brule in a fury, kicking the corpses at their feet. “They caused us to walk like fools into their ambush! By their magic they changed the appearance of all–”
    “Then there is further deviltry afoot,” said Kull, “for if there be true men in the councils of Valusia they should be in the real council room now. Come swiftly.”
    And leaving the room with its ghastly keepers they hastened through halls that seemed deserted until they came to the real council room. Then Kull halted with a ghastly shudder.
From the council room sounded a voice speaking, and the voice was his!

    With a hand that shook he parted the tapestries and gazed into the room. There sat the councilors, counterparts of the men he and Brule had just slain, and upon the dais stood Kull, king of Valusia.
    He stepped back, his mind reeling.
    “This is insanity!” he whispered. “Am I Kull? Do I stand here or is that Kull yonder in very truth and am I but a shadow, a figment of thought?”
    Brule’s hand clutching his shoulder, shaking him fiercely, brought him to his senses.
    “Valka’s name, be not a fool! Can you yet be astounded after all we have seen? See you not that those are true men bewitched by a snake-man who has taken your form, as those others took their forms? By now you should have been slain and yon monster reigning in your stead, unknown by those who bowed to you. Leap and slay swiftly or else we are undone. The Red Slayers, true men, stand close on each hand and none but you can reach and slay him. Be swift!”
    Kull shook off the onrushing dizziness, flung back his head in the old, defiant gesture. He took a long, deep