As promised, here’s the next chapter in the fanfiction I set in the world of Conan the Barbarian!
In case you missed it, here’s a link to the first chapter!
And now, on to Chapter Nine!
“It is time to drop your bravado, Abdibaal!” Shiruk said to his employer. “The pit is lost!”
Snapping back at Shiruk, Abdibaal said, “And you lost it!”
The pit’s owner moved his hand to the scimitar at his side, but Shiruk stayed his hand.
“Remove that hand or lose it!” Abdibaal warned.
“These women are on their last legs! I have more men standing by in the tents. I will call them, and we will crush them. Then slaughter the slaves. By the time you return to Koshemish, we will have new slaves in the pit and press them to double production!”
“I suppose you expect me to use that travel time to form an excuse as to why there is a slowdown in production.”
Shiruk shrugged. “This is why you run the contacts of the pit, and I merely watch the slaves.”
Abdibaal glared at Shiruk but found sense in the man’s plan.
Releasing his scimitar, Abdibaal looked to the women and their struggle against the mercenaries. They’d dispatched most of them, some in respectably brutal fashion. Three more remained.
He had no doubt they would soon fall to the slave girls’ chains and brutality.
That is, if his pet, the mighty A’ghama, didn’t kill all of them first.
One of the girls (Hyrkanian, judging by the savage ways she dispatched enemies) had leaped upon his pet. She thrust the chain holding her manacles into the creature’s maw, pulling its upper head backward, overextending it.
The beast moved dangerously close to the edge of the pit.
The cost of capturing the A’ghama weighed heavily on Abdibaal, more so than the financial loss he would take for however long the Red Pit would be down.
However, as Shiruk insisted, he needed to survive this day and rebuild rather than die at the hands of a slave girl.
No matter how alluring or capable she was in combat.
Asthara used her spear to impale another of the Pelishtim archers. Runi ran around her and swung her chain at another archer, knocking him off the ground level.
Unlike the other man, he hit the Eunuch’s Ear but slid off, falling further into the pit and to a crippling landing.
“Go! Go!”
The instruction came from the man standing with the effete swordsman. This second man wore the turban popular with the Pelishtim and baggy red pants that exposed his calves.
He avoided the usual full Kothan beard, opting for a bushy mustache covering his upper lip and running to his jawline.
The effete man followed the instruction, racing away toward the tent village where slaves and mercenaries spent the evenings. Asthara and Runi saw four more mercenaries approaching from that direction.
The turbaned man reached to his feet and picked up a shield that protected his upper body. He drew a scimitar from a broad sash about his waist.
“You women have had it far too easy,” he taunted.
Asthara and Runi looked at one another, then down at their wounds.
“I’m going to cut off your balls just for saying that,” Asthara said.
Meanwhile, Kesisa pulled hard on the chain, cutting into the top of the giant lizard’s cavernous maw.
But then the creature beneath her bucked against her. She went headfirst over the beast, angling toward the fall into the pit.
Fortunately, the chain caught in the beast’s mouth, saving her from the fall to her death.
Dangling over the pit at the whim of the beast proved only marginally better.
Asthara raised her spear. The turban-wearing slaver raised his shield to defend against what he anticipated would be her next move.
Asthara reveled in his surprise as she shifted her aim from him to the effete swordsman who thought he could easily escape the evil he had orchestrated.
The spear slashed the man’s side, cutting through his mail and stopping him in his tracks. He whirled about to confront Asthara.
“You dare, slave?” he shouted at her.
His minion in the turban moved in front of Asthara, blocking the other man’s line of sight. “Go! This slave is beneath the use of your steel!”
“Are you going to use your steel?” Runi asked. “I assure you I’ll use it once it’s in my hands.”
The turban man shook his head, then moved to attack Runi. She swung her chain at him, but the man sidestepped it. His scimitar viciously cut across her arm. Runi couldn’t hold back a scream of pain.
Kesisa dangled over the pit at the giant lizard’s whim. Luckily for her, the creature threw its head to the side and opened its mouth. Kesisa swung back toward the ground level, landing with a thud several feet away from the lizard.
Via a glance, she saw Runi and Asthara confronting a man in a turban, presumably the leader of the Pelishtim mercenaries. The other mercenaries lay dead at their feet. Kesisa had other worries.
The lizard turned its bulky form toward her.
That’s it for this chapter of Conan the Barbarian fanfiction!
To tide you over until the next chapter, check out some of my other fanfiction.
Or swing over to the Buy Stuff page. Catch the sale of Two Sisters, the first eBook in the new launch of my “Shadowdance” action/ urban fantasy saga, or get a free eBook from the saga.
Until next time!
