The wolf pit was an ancient penalty indeed, and had, in fact, not been imposed since the time of Bragorus, nine centuries earlier. Nor had any come to this portion of the Palace at all in several centuries, to judge by its appearance. The halls showed signs of hasty cleaning, here a torn cobweb hanging from the ceiling, there dust left heaped against the wall. Conan wondered why Albanus had gone to all this trouble after replacing Garian with the imposter. And then they entered the circular chamber of the pit.
Though of the same rough stone, it was yet as marvelously wrought as any of the great alabaster rooms in the Palace. Like half of a sphere, its walls rose to a towering height unsupported by column or buttress. Below, a broad walk spotted with huge tripod lamps twice as tall as a man was crowded with the nobility of Nemedia, laughing gaily as men and women at a circus, pressing close about the waist-high stone wall that encircled the great pit.
A path to that wall cleared at their entrance, and the soldiers escorted Conan to it. Not waiting to be told, the Cimmerian leaped to the top of the wall and stood surveying those who had assembled to watch him die. Beneath his icy blue gaze they slowly fell silent, as they sensed that here was a man contemptuous of their titles and lineages. They were peacocks; he was an eagle.
Directly across the stone-floored pit from him stood the imposter King, Albanus to one side in robes of midnight blue, to the other Vegentius, his face still showing bruises beneath his red-crested helmet. Sularia was there as well, in scarlet silk and rubies, and Conan wondered why he had thought she would not attend.
Below the imposter was the man-high gate through which the wolves would be let into the pit. Conan saw no eager muzzles pressed between the bars of the gate, heard no hungry whines and growls. A complicated system of iron chains served to draw the gate aside. Perhaps he need not die.
Albanus touched the arm of the man wearing the Dragon Crown, and he began to speak. “We have gathered you—”
Conan’s wild war cry rang from the rocky dome; shouts and screams ran through the nobles as, massive arms raised above his head, the Cimmerian hurled himself into the pit. Soldiers forced their way through the nobles to the wall; the crossbowmen took aim. About the straw-strewn pit Conan strode with all the cocky arrogance of youth that had never met defeat in equal combat, and in few unequal. Albanus motioned, and the guards moved back.
“Fools!” Conan taunted the assemblage. “You who have not a man among you have come to see a man die. Well, must I be talked to death by that buffoon in the crown? Get on wi
th it, unless your livers have shriveled and you have no stomach for killing.” Angry cries answered him.
Albanus whispered to the imposter, who in turn said, “As he is so eager to die, loose the wolves.”
“Loose the wolves,” someone else shouted, relaying the command. “Hurry!” The gate slid smoothly back.
Conan did not wait for the first wolf to emerge. Before the astonished eyes of the court the Cimmerian ran into the tunnel, roaring his battle cry. Behind, in the pit, yelling nobles dropped over the wall to seize and slay the escaping barbarian who had denied their manhood.
In the dark of the tunnel Conan found himself suddenly in the midst of the snarling wolfpack. Razor teeth ripped at him. He matched them snarl for snarl, his fists hammers that broke bones and knocked beasts the size of a man sprawling. Seizing a growling throat in his hands he dashed the wolf’s brains out against the low stone roof.
In the hellish cauldron of that tunnel, the wolves knew the kindred ferocity of the young giant who faced them. As Conan fought his way deeper into their pack, they began to slip past toward the pit, seeking easier meat. The noble lords’ angry yells turned to screams as bloody wolves raced among them to slay.
Ahead of him Conan saw a light.
“Accursed wolves,” a voice snarled from that direction. “You’re to kill some fool barbar, not each—”
The man who spoke faltered as he saw Conan coming toward him. He stood with the iron-barred gate at his end of the tunnel half open, a spear in his hand. Instead of stepping back and slamming the gate shut, he thrust at the Cimmerian.
Conan grasped the spear with both hands and easily wretched it from the other’s grasp. Before the man could do more than gape the butt of his own spear smashed into his chest, hurling him back through the gate, Conan following close behind. The wolf-keeper scrambled to his feet, a curved blade the length of his forearm protruding from his fist, and lunged.
The spear reversed smoothly in the Cimmerian’s big hands. He had not so much to thrust as to let the man run onto the point, spitting himself so that the whole blade of the spear stood out from his back. A cry of both pain and horrified disbelief wrenched from the wolf-keeper’s throat.
“Your wolves will not kill this barbar,” Conan growled, then realized that his words had been spoken to a dead man.
Letting spear and transfixed man fall, he closed the gate, thrust the heavy iron bar that fastened it into its brackets and shoved the latch pins home. It would take time to get that open from the other side, time for him to escape. Though, from the screams and snarls that yet echoed down the tunnel, it might be some while before the soldiers dealt with wolves and panicked nobles and reached that gate.
Little there was in that chamber to be of use to him. Crude rush torches guttered in rusty iron sconces on the walls, illuminating six large, iron-barred cages mounted on wheels. No weapons were in evidence excepting only the long, curved dagger, which Conan retrieved, and the spear. He left that lodged in the wolf-keeper’s body; its length would make it a cumbersome weapon in the narrow confines of the old stone corridors. There was not even cloth to bind his gashes unless he tore from his own breechclout or from the filthy, and now blood-soaked, tunic on the corpse.
The wolf-keeper had, however, brought a clay jug of wine and a large spiced sausage on which to sup while his charges did their bloody work. On these Conan fell eagerly, ripping the sausage apart with his teeth and washing it down with long gulps of sour wine. He had had no food or drink since before his imprisonment. No doubt his jailors had deemed it a waste to feed one who was to die soon. Tossing the empty jug aside and popping the last bit of sausage into his mouth, the Cimmerian took one of the rush torches and set about finding his way out of the Palace.
It did not take him long to discover that those ancient corridors were a labyrinth, never straight, crossing and recrossing themselves and each other. He had no wonder in him that the secret passages beneath the Palace had been lost; it would be all men could do to keep track of these.
Suddenly, in crossing another pitch-dark hall, he realized that his footprints had mingled with others. Other fresh prints. He bent to examine them, and straightened with a curse. Both sets were his own. He had doubled back on himself, and could continue to do so until he starved.
Face grimly determined, he followed his own prints until he came to a forking of the passage. The trail in the dust went left. He went right. A short time later he found himself again staring at his own backtrail, but this time he did not pause to curse. Hurrying on to the next turning, he again took the opposite way to that he had taken before. And the next time. And the next.
Now the passages seemed to slope downward, but Conan pressed on regardless, even when he found himself burning a way through halls choked with cobwebs that crisped drily at the touch of the flame. Turning back held no more assurance of escape than going forward, only a greater chance of encountering the Golden Leopards.
Coming to a fork, the Cimmerian turned automatically right—he had taken the left at the last —and stopped. Far ahead of him was a dim glow, but it was no opening to the outside. Bobbing slightly, it was coming closer.
Hurriedly he turned back, ducked into the other side of the fork. On silent feet he ran twenty paces and hurled the torch ahead of him as far as it would go. The flames flared, fanned by the wind of the torch’s flight, then winked out, leaving him in blackness.
Conan crouched, facing the direction of the fork, curved dagger at the ready. If those who approached went on, he would be without light but alive. If not … .