A little while ago, we shared an excerpt from the first new Conan the Barbarian novel published by Titan Books — City of the Dead by John C. Hocking. Today, we’re sharing another Conan excerpt, this time from the Cimmerian’s next, action-packed adventure: James Lovegrove‘s Cult of the Obsidian Moon. Before we get to the excerpt, here’s the synopsis:

Still mourning Bêlit, Conan attempts to drink away his sorrows. In his tavern-hopping journey he meets and befriends married couple Hunwulf and Gudrun and their son, Bjørn. A decade ago, Hunwulf eloped with Gudrun after killing her betrothed, they live on the run from her tribe, who are desperate for revenge.

Bjørn has the makings of a shaman, while Hunwulf is prone to having strange fits which bring him visions of past and future lives. When a descendant warns Hunwulf of imminent danger, he and his wife ride out to ambush the tribe, leaving Bjørn with Conan, who vows to protect the boy with his life.

Unfortunately, Conan is betrayed by a former accomplice, and Bjørn is kidnapped by the tribe. Conan and Bjørn’s vengeful parents search for the lad. They catch up to the tribe, only to find Bjørn has been taken by murderous bat-winged figures, who fought with talon and sword. The boy, and other “gifted” children have been taken to the Rotlands, a place plagued by a contaminating supernatural force that warps all who go there. To save Bjørn, the trio must go to the heart of the Rotlands, where strange, horrifying fates await at every turn.

*

Thieves of Eruk

Night fell fast in Eruk, dusk drawing its purple shadows swiftly over the domed roofs and spire-capped minarets of that Shemitish desert city and bringing some relief from the stifling heat of daytime. A bright crescent moon rose, beaming down from the star-flecked heavens, but in the mazy streets below, despite the onset of darkness, the bustling flow of people barely subsided.

Eruk, standing at the confluence of several major trading routes, with Koth and Khoraja just to the north, Argos due east and Stygia not far south, welcomed in countless visitors to swell the ranks of its full-time residents. Caravans halted outside its walls, and their drivers, merchants, guards, and sundry dependents and hangers-on found refuge within, to replenish their stocks of food and water and patronize the many taverns, brothels and other sources of comfort and entertainment on offer. Desert nomads called by, seeking respite from their wearying, footsore travels, and itinerants in need of casual employment haunted its marketplaces, touting for work.

It was a city perpetually in flux, the composition of its inhabitants changing from day to day butalways a polyglot mix of all races and types; and as torches were lit in its busier quarters and lampsflickered into life in many a window, the widespread urban hubbub persisted. Peace, even at nighttime, was hard to come by in Eruk.

Yet there were certain parts where the streets were less frequented and a relative hush held sway, and oneof these was the residential area known locally and colloquially as the Golden Arbor.

The Golden Arbor earned this nickname by simple virtue of playing host to the city’s wealthier denizens and being blessed throughout with an abundance of trees, shrubbery and other foliage. Its houses stood spaced well apart from one another, rather than neighbor crowding against neighbor as elsewhere, and were famed for their size and grandeur, the majority arranged in squares around central courtyards whose colonnaded cloisters and splashing marble fountains afforded coolness and shade all day long.

At one of these noble, luxurious residences, two men stood stationary in the spacious, palm-fringed garden.

One of them was a wiry little Nemedian, clad in the fashion of his people: a toga fastened at the waist with a belt of rope, and knee-high leather boots.

The other, a whole head taller than his companion and twice as broad in the chest, had his origins in the far north, in the bleak, mountainous land of Cimmeria. Jerkin, girdle, loincloth and sandals were his attire, all of which items of apparel were somewhat worn and tattered, betokening a certain impoverishment or else a lack of regard for appearance, perhaps both.

The sword he brandished, however, was a long-bladed weapon of fearsome sharpness and gleaming brightness, suggesting great care went into its honing and upkeep. The Nemedian’s shorter sword, though no less well-maintained, seemed a paltry thing indeed by comparison.

The twain were rooted to the spot side by side, both staring ahead with wide-eyed fixity at the beast stalking towards them across the garden’s lush, shadow-dappled lawn, its footsteps unhurried, its demeanor that of a predator utterly assured of its own powerfulness and its superiority to the humans before it.

The animal was a big cat, but of a kind rarely seen outside its natural habitat, which was the forests of the Pictish Wilderness and the benighted jungles of the Black Kingdoms far to the south. It was, in fact, a species widely believed extinct and considered the stuff of legend, a sabretooth tiger.

Higher at the shoulder and stockier in frame than a common tiger, the sabretooth had a pelt that was a uniform russet-brown rather than striped like its cousin’s, while the elongated twin fangs that earned it its name extended a full handspan downwards either side of its bewhiskered maw, culminating in a pair of wickedly sharp points which shone white in the moonlight.

Lambent amber eyes studied the two men as it approached them, assessing just how much of a threat they posed, or by its lights how little. Everything about the sabretooth suggested it was confident it could easily dispose of them—and, for that matter, would relish doing so.

“Drusus,” growled the Cimmerian softly to the man beside him, “you never said anything about atiger. Let alone a sabretooth.” “I… I heard they might keep a guard dog in the grounds of the house,” the Nemedian falteringly replied. “But since there was no clamor of barking when we climbed over the wall, I presumed it merely a rumor.”

“You could still have mentioned it.”

“Forgive me, Conan,” said Drusus, with a twinge of chagrin and more than a little timorousness. “If we get out of this alive, I will offer you a fulsome apology and buy you several drinks to make up for my oversight.”

“If we get out of this alive…” Conan drawled, his gaze never deviating from the sabretooth tiger, which was now only a few yards away, easy leaping distance for a feline of such proportions. His muscles tensed, rippling beneath sun-seared, scar-crossed skin. He was gauging when and how the animal would attack.

Would it rush them at a sprint, or would it pounce?

He spied a thick leather collar around its neck fitted with a horseshoe-shaped staple, and took this to indicate that the tiger was trained, if not domesticated. The staple allowed the creature to be fastened by a chain during those times it wasn’t roaming loose in the garden. It had been taught to deal with unwanted interlopers, and doubtless was given free rein to indulge in its primal hunting instincts when doing so.

The beast came to a halt, setting four huge paws square on the ground.

Conan, who had drawn his sword the moment he espied the tiger emerging from the shadows of a nearby bower, inspiring Drusus to follow suit, readied the weapon. When the sabretooth moved again, he knew he would have but a split second to respond. A fraction too slow, and he would meet a grisly end.

“Drusus,” he said under his breath as an idea came to him, “you must edge slowly to the left.”

The Nemedian answered in a similar low tone. “Why?”

“Do as I say. I shall edge to the right. But keep your movements steady and even. No sudden lurches.”

“We split up,” said Drusus, “and then the tiger will have to choose which one of us to attack, thus giving the other the opportunity to get away. Is that your plan? One dies so that the other might live, and it is the tiger’s decision which.”

“No,” Conan replied, although he could not deny that such a prospect had crossed his mind, nor that it was undesirable. Better a fifty-fifty chance at survival than none at all. “Close together as we are, we are a single target. Separated, we are two, and this may give it pause—a pause we can use to our advantage.”

“Very well.” Drusus did as bidden, tiptoeing carefully sideways, while Conan mirrored him in theopposite direction.

The sabretooth cast its gaze one way then the other, and its expression evinced a certain quizzicality. Its intended prey were behaving curiously. It clearly had expected them to run away, as humans were wont to upon encountering it, not creep apart. It swayed its shaggy, bearlike head towards Conan, then towards Drusus, and back again, weighing its options. Which to kill now, and which later?

Finally the tiger made its pick. Conan saw the sabretooth set its eyes resolutely on Drusus. “Stop!” he hissed to his companion. “Stand your ground. This is our chance.”

Drusus shot a panicked look Conan’s way. “Stop?”

“Trust me. Face the beast, keep still, and hold its attention.” “While you turn tail and flee?”

“Do as I say, if you would live.”

The Nemedian remained unconvinced but obeyed Conan anyway. He froze, his sword held tremblingly forwards. His lip quivered and his face was a mask of abject dread, save for the faint, wavering glint of hope in his eyes, born from a fervent desire to believe the Cimmerian would be as goodas his word and serve as savior.

The tiger settled back on its haunches, its claws digging into the lawn for purchase, its whole body coiling like a spring.

Conan took three swift steps until he was alongside the animal’s flank. He knew he must time his assault to perfection. If he went too soon, the tiger would round on him instead of going for Drusus.

“Steady,” he cautioned the Nemedian. “Steady. Hold.”

Drusus offered a clipped nod in return. The tremors of fear that were visibly passing through him, however, were growing moreviolent, as though he were in the grip of the palsy. His eyes began to dart this way and that, as a desperate man’s will when he is seeking an escape route from a dire quandary.

“I said hold,” Conan urged, but even as he uttered the words, Drusus’s nerve broke. He flung his sword aside, spun on his heel and began to run.

The sabretooth did not hesitate. It launched itself after the Nemedian, hurtling through the air like abolt loosed from a ballista. At the same time Conan lunged, darting across the gap between him and the tiger, broadsword lancing forward. With fighting reflexes developed in the harsh terrain of Cimmeria and honed thereafter in innumerable battles, he was as quick off the mark as anyone could be.

Yet Drusus had bolted just when he should not have, and the tiger was no longer where it had been. Conan’s blade missed by a hair’s breadth.

Next thing he knew, there were frantic screams and the wet, awful sound of flesh being torn.

He pivoted towards the tiger, which now straddled the prone, hapless Drusus, weighing him down with its rear paws and rending his back with its front claws. Drusus writhed and yelled in agony as the beast gouged bloody strips of meat off him.

“Ho, foul thing!” Conan cried, throwing himself at the sabretooth.

His cry drew its notice, as he meant it to, and the tiger abandoned the mauling of Drusus and about-faced to meet the Cimmerian.

Conan’s sword thrust was augmented by the speed of his attack, and the blade sank deep into the tiger’s breast.

It should have been an instant deathblow, but the sabretooth was evidently hard to kill, for it let out a yowl of distress but at the same time retaliated with a forepaw swipe that caught Conan on the arm and raked a row of parallel slashes across his biceps.

“Crom damn you!” Conan cursed, yanking his sword out of the creature and plunging it in again.

This time he went for the throat, skewering the tiger just below the points of its wickedly curved fangs. As the sword came out, blood jetted from a severed artery, and the sabretooth staggered and went rigid. It drew back its upper lip, its mouth adopting a queer, sneering look, then shook its head, as though, arrogant to the last, it refused to believe that a mere human could have delivered a mortal wound such as this.

Then the beast sagged to the ground, blood spurting from the gash in its neck. The light in its eyes dwindled, and with a series of convulsive spasms the tiger died.

Conan, crimsoned sword in hand, hastened over to Drusus.

The Nemedian lay moaning and shuddering, his entire back a gory, shredded mess. Conan had seen enough injuries in his time to know there was no hope for the fellow. It would be only a matter of moments before he expired.

Sure enough, Drusus fell silent and his pain-wracked body ceased its shaking. A sigh escaped him, which to Conan spoke of soul departing mortal shell. There was nothing more that could be done for him other than to offer up a brief prayer to whichever gods Drusus believed in, entrusting his spirit into their care.

Conan cleaned his sword on the grass, sheathed it in its shagreen scabbard, and took stock. A dead man, a dead guard animal, a nasty set of cuts on his own arm—and naught else to show for the night’s handiwork.

With a grimace and a disgruntled oath, he made for the spot on the garden wall where hung the rope Drusus had used to clamber up it on one side and lower himself down on the other. Conan eschewed this as he had before, instead ascending using hands and feet only in the manner of a hillman born and bred, fingers and toes finding holds in the tiniest crevices in the stonework. He climbed down the other side similarly, dropping into the deserted street.

The whole affair had been a waste of time, and for that Drusus bore the bulk—if not the whole—ofthe responsibility.

The Nemedian had approached Conan the previous day with a proposal which seemed too good to be true and would, as it turned out, be exactly that. Drusus had said he knew of an empty house, home of avery rich merchant, filled to the brim with gold, jewels and other treasures, all ripe for the taking. The merchant, one Sakhimael, routinely decamped to the hills outside Eruk at the height of summer, taking family, servants and slaves with him. He had a villa there, up where the air was fresher and the heat less stifling, with a vineyard and farmland attached, and would stay for at least a month. He had left just last week, and his city home was simply begging to be plundered.

“You are Conan of Cimmeria, lately a pirate of the Black Coast going by the name of Amra,” Drusus had said. “I know of your reputation, and I know that you have fallen on lean times. Why not join me inthis endeavor? I could do with the assistance of a strong, experienced hand. Sakhimael’s house promises more loot than one man alone may carry, and from a couple of hours’ work we could find ourselves sitting very pretty indeed. What say you?”

Conan had assented to Drusus’s suggestion, not because he felt any great urge to participate in larceny just then, but mainly because he had been looking for something interesting to do, and raiding a rich man’s home seemed as good a solution as any to that problem. His life in recent weeks had been directionless, lacking meaning and purpose, a drift from tavern to tavern and lackluster, low-paying job to lackluster, low-paying job.

And his purse was getting perilously empty.

There had been no sign of the sabretooth as he and Drusus, having surmounted the wall, crossed the garden lawn the first time. The great feline must have been loitering somewhere in the dark, biding its time, waiting for the intruders to return so that it could confront them at its leisure.

Entering the house itself had likewise posed no challenge, for the back door was unsecured.

Conan’s suspicion that the whole thing was proving a little too straightforward was confirmed as heand Drusus went from room to room inside the property. The place had been cleared out. Furniture remained, and a few personal belongings, but otherwise it was bereft of objects, and certainly of treasure.

“This Sakhimael,” Conan said, after they had fruitlessly inspected the house from top to bottom, “does he take all his valuables with him when he goes to his place in the country?”

“I don’t know,” Drusus admitted. “He goes with a large wagon train, that is for sure, but I assumed it was for people and supplies only.”

“Yet here is a shelf where ornaments once were on display. See the marks in the dust? The ornaments have been removed. Same with that alcove, where some form of statuary lay. And unless I am wrong, a strongbox was stored in the cupboard we found upstairs and is there no more. Aye, Sakhimael is a canny sort. He leaves his house in the city unlocked and unprotected when he stays in the country, and that is because he leaves nothing worth stealing on the premises. You have led me on a wild goose chase, Drusus. I am not happy.”

“I had no idea,” Drusus said. “I assumed—”

Conan cut him off abruptly. “Again that word ‘assumed!’ A good thief does not assume. A good thief does his homework and makes sure of his information. By Crom, I should have known better than tothrow in my lot with you. I’ve a good mind to bury my poniard in your gut.”

Drusus, eyeing the burly barbarian and seeing the grim expression on his face, blanched. “I’d rather you did not.”

Conan shrugged. “Why waste the effort? Besides, I am in part to blame, putting my faith in the claims of a stranger. I once met another Nemedian thief, Taurus by name. He was a master of his art. I made the mistake of thinking you, his fellow countryman, were as talented as he. I regret that now. Well, the night is young. There is still time to find a tavern where I can spend my last few coins, drinking to forget our paths ever crossed.”

Sullenly Conan exited the house, with Drusus traipsing disconsolately behind.

They had gone no more than a dozen paces when they found themselves confronted by the sabretooth tiger, with the results already recounted.

Now Conan, not one jot richer and minus some blood from the lacerations in his arm, wended his way out of the Golden Arbor, firmly resolved not to set foot in that enclave of the well-to-do ever again.

*

James Lovegrove’s Conan: Cult of the Obsidian Moon is due to be published by Titan Books in North America and in the UK, on November 18th.

Also on CR: Excerpt from James Hocking’s Conan: City of the Dead; Interviews with James Lovegrove — 2012 and 2016; Guest Posts on “And Now For Something a Little Different…” and “Pantheon Inspirations”; Excerpt from Age of Shiva

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