Lebbon Conan: Songs of the Slain

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80336-502-2
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

When an old friend is attacked, Conan the Barbarian, now King of Aquilonia, picks up his sword again in search of vengeance. However, mysterious enemies assail the Cimmerian in this action-packed tale by New York Times Bestselling author Tim Lebbon. When Conan of Cimmeria was a prisoner of war on the verge of death, he made a promise to a fellow prisoner, Baht Tann. Conan would grant a favor, wherever and whenever Tann called it in, in return for Tann's meagre water ration. The men escaped, parted ways and the rest is history. After a life filled with violence and tumult, Conan met his destiny and became King of Aquilonia. Married with a child and presiding over a period of peace and stability, the legendary barbarian's sword has been sheathed for too long. When Baht Tann arrives in Aquilonia, he is wounded, his wife has been murdered and his two children kidnapped. He asks Conan to save his children and avenge his wife. It will be a perilous journey, chasing men with no honour. Conan leaves without hesitation. Disguised as a scruffy wanderer and armed with a broadsword, Conan ventures into hostile lands in pursuit of Tann's assailants. He is soon beset by assassins and learns there is a price on his head. Unknown to Conan, for reasons of honour, revenge and glory, powerful warriors want him dead. Violence and vengeance ensue as Conan takes on his mysterious foes and attempts to fulfil his promise.

Tim Lebbon is the New York Times bestselling author of Eden, Coldbrook, The Silence, and the Relics trilogy. He has also written many successful movie novelizations and tie-ins for Alien and Firefly. Tim has won a World Fantasy Award, four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, a Tombstone and been a finalist for the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards. The Silence is now a gripping Netflix movie starring Stanley Tucci and Kiernan Shipka.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lebbon, Tim

Leseproben

A Promise in Death

Conan knew that he was about to die. As his breath stuttered and weakened and his body spasmed, he observed the approach of his enemies and prepared for his final act of furious defiance.

He squinted through the agonies wracking his body and skeins of bloody mist that still drifted across the battlefield, even though this battle was lost. Past the pain, beyond the mists, he glimpsed the victories, triumphs, and accolades he had once imagined his future might bring, and saw them fading away into stories untold. Barely twenty years old, he was not sad, but he did feel anger and frustration at himself for the mistakes that had brought him to here and now, readying to die in the blood-thickened slurry of a battlefield that few would ever remember.

Even as he’d marched on the wicked city of Shadizar with four thousand other sellswords, he’d harbored doubts about those who commanded the force and drove their plans. He should have listened to his instincts and done whatever he could to change their foolish tactics. Once engaged in battle, a slip here and a clumsy parry there had brought him his first injury, and he should have treated and bound the gash in his shoulder before continuing the fight. More wounds came, until the one that put him down.

His own foolish mistakes had allowed the blades and pikes of the enemy to make him just another dead man waiting to greet whatever the afterlife might bring.

I had so much more to do, Conan thought, berating himself even as his end stalked closer. The stench of death smothered him. The wretched cries of the wounded being finished by a Zamoran pike to the chest or an ax to the head proved a sad final song to sing him away from this world. Should have been wiser, should have been stronger. And by Crom, if I’m granted one last chance, I’ll strive for more wisdom and strength!

But he felt no benevolent gaze upon him from any gods, known or unknown. They had passed him by, leaving him to a lonely death at the hands of the two Zamoran soldiers coming to a halt beside him.

“What about him?” one of them asked. He was a small bald man, but broad and strong—a familiar Zamoran trait. He held a barbed pike whose shaft was darkened with gore.

“He’s almost dead already,” the other soldier said through a beard clotted with blood. Was it his own, or did it belong to those he had killed? A tall man, he bore a cruel battle-ax propped on one shoulder, and his chest armor was scratched and dented from the battle. “One more head will give my ax a nice round count of twenty today.”

“But he’s strong,” Bald Man said with a note of admiration. “And big, even lying down in the shite and blood. Take a look at those muscles.”

“And take a look at the wounds venting his life-blood into the mud,” Beard said. “I’ll help him on his way. Twenty.” He shrugged a shoulder and grabbed the ax shaft in both hands.

“He’s got countless old scars beneath those new cuts,” Bald Man said. “Got stories to tell, eh, you Cimmerian dog?”

Conan tried to growl, but it turned into a cough. He spat blood. Gripped his sword in one hand. He’d not be put down like a hobbled beast. This might be his time to die, but he’d do his best to take at least one of these gloating bastards with him. He tensed, but his muscles did not comply. His hand holding the sword scraped barely six inches across the wet ground.

“We can sell a big one like him to the salt mines,” Bald Man continued. “If he dies, he dies. But let’s drag him to one of the carts and send him there, at least.”

Beard chuckled. He had other ideas. He hefted the ax and swung it out and to the right, bringing it up over his head for a furious killing blow.

Conan struggled and strained but his body was weak, his wounds draining his energy and strength, now soaking into ground already saturated with blood.

He growled and stared at Beard, refusing to look away or close his eyes in his final moment.

Beard grunted in surprise as the metal ax head snapped away from the splintered handle and struck his shoulder. It scraped a shallow cut as it tumbled to the ground.

Bald Man laughed, and it was a strange sound, high and unfettered.

“You see?” he said. “Cool fate and Zath have decided. It’s the salt mines for this one. You grab one leg, I’ll get the other.”

“That was a good ax,” Beard muttered, rubbing blood from the fresh injury on his shoulder.

“You can buy yourself another,” Bald Man said. “There’ll be loot from all these dead invaders. Now, one, two, three, pull!”

Conan gritted his teeth and squirmed, but his body gave him nothing back. The sword slipped from his hand, and he could do nothing to prevent himself from being dragged through the guts and gore of his defeated brethren toward whatever wretched future awaited him.

* * *

The sword sliced across his upper stomach and chest again and again, and pain surged in waves, striking deep into his core and climbing his spine to explode in his brain. He was shaking so much that his body rose and slammed into the ground, once, twice, a dozen times. His head thudded down and he expected his skull to crack and his tortured brains to leak out and seep into the death-soaked soils of Zamora forever.

At least then this damned pain would end, Conan thought, and he opened his eyes to glaring sun. A shadow was crouched over him, and at first he thought it was the soldier who had sliced him, repeating the execution of that injury forever like some awful purgatory. Conan had often thought about what came after life had ended. Death was his trade, so such thoughts were common. He supposed that this torture might be his eternal fate. If so, he would accept it, and fight it as hard as he could forever.

Then the shadow leaned in closer, and a face appeared.

“Try and be still,” the man said, his voice strangely distorted. “I’m stuffing your wounds.” He took something from his mouth and pressed it into the injury across Conan’s torso, and Conan flinched back. “I said still! I’m trying to make it better, not worse.”

Conan turned his head to the side and looked around. They were on the back of a large cart with several other captured sells-words, all of them injured in one way or another. One woman glared at Conan through her good eye, the other a bloody wet hole buzzed by flies. A man sat against the low side of the cart with his eyes closed and arms resting on his crossed legs, one hand and forearm crushed and smashed to a gory pulp. Conan looked back to the man aiding him.

“What’s your name? Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“My name is Baht Tann,” the man said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. And I’m doing this because of all the injured fighters in this cursed cart, you appear to be the biggest and strongest. And where we’re going, I fear I’m going to need a big, strong friend.”

“You’re trying to save me for your own benefit.”

Baht Tann shrugged, pulled more stuff from his mouth, and pressed it into Conan’s wound.

“Fair and honest,” Conan said. “My gratitude.”

“Thank me later,” Tann said. “For now, try and stay still. Almost done.”

Conan lay back and let Tann do his work. Already the pain from his wound was fading from agony to an uncomfortable numbness. He smelled horses and blood and shit, heard the cheerful banter from Zamoran warriors as they walked beside the cart and the buzzing of filthy flies around the wounded, and at last he remembered what Bald Man had said before Beard tried to part his head from his body.

“Salt mines,” Conan said, looking up at Tann.

“Aye, the worst. They say a person’s lucky if they survive one moon digging the salt.” Tann finished his work and eased himself down beside Conan, and Conan had a chance to look him over. Another sellsword for sure, though he didn’t recognize him. He had the look of someone from the west, Zingara perhaps, and at first he saw no obvious injuries. Then Tann tilted his head forward and gingerly pressed his hand to the back of his neck, and it came away clotted with blood and hair.

“I will survive,” Conan said. “I dreamed I was dying again and again. When I woke, you were there. My ghostly guardian.”

Tann laughed, loud and heartfelt, and in return one of the Zamoran guards threatened him with a pike to the gut. He quietened but remained smiling.

“Maybe fate brought us together, friend,” Tann said. “Though I am no ghost. So what’s your name? You know, just in case I have to save you again.”

“Conan.”

“Conan. A strong name.”

“It will be known across these lands,” Conan said.

“It’s a name that will be swallowed and melted by the salt mines of Tangara until it’s forgotten even by its mother,” Tann said. “Meanwhile, it’s two days’ hard travel to get there, and I doubt these bastards will spare us any food or water.”

Conan struggled to sit up, shrugging Tann’s restraining hand from his shoulder. He looked down at the ugly wound across his midriff, now stuffed with a wet, chewed mixture of capot leaves and spit. The edges of the wound pouted, and Conan knew it needed stitches to draw it closed, but the hardening capot held its edges together.

The two men leaned against the side of the shaking cart. The sun blazed down on them, dust from the road coated their skin and entered their mouths, and the four huge horses pulling the wagon filled the air with their rancid farts.

“I will survive,” Conan said...