Aram had lighted a bronze lamp, and he now called Conan’s attention to
the two doors. Both were provided with heavy bolts.

‘You may sleep safely tonight, Cimmerian,’ said Aram, blinking over his
bushy beard from the inner doorway.

Conan grunted and tossed his naked broadsword on the couch.

‘Your bolts and bars are strong; but I always sleep with steel by my
side.’

Aram made no reply; he stood fingering his thick beard for a moment as
he stared at the grim weapon. Then silently he withdrew, closing the
door behind him. Conan shot the bolt into place, crossed the room,
opened the opposite door and looked out. The room was on the side of the
house that faced the road running west from the city. The door opened
into a small court that was enclosed by a wall of its own. The
end-walls, which shut it off from the rest of the tavern compound, were
high and without entrances; but the wall that flanked the road was low,
and there was no lock on the gate.

Conan stood for a moment in the door, the glow of the bronze lamp behind
him, looking down the road to where it vanished among the dense palms.
Their leaves rustled together in the faint breeze; beyond them lay the
naked desert. Far up the street, in the other direction, lights gleamed
and the noises of the city came faintly to him. Here was only starlight,
the whispering of the palm leaves, and beyond that low wall, the dust of
the road and the deserted huts thrusting their flat roofs against the
low stars. Somewhere beyond the palm groves a drum began.

The garbled warnings of the Zuagir returned to him, seeming somehow less
fantastic than they had seemed in the crowded, sunlit streets. He
wondered again at the riddle of those empty huts. Why did the beggars
shun them? He turned back into the chamber, shut the door and bolted it.

The light began to flicker, and he investigated, swearing when he found
the palm oil in the lamp was almost exhausted. He started to shout for
Aram, then shrugged his shoulders and blew out the light. In the soft
darkness he stretched himself fully clad on the couch, his sinewy hand
by instinct searching for and closing on the hilt of his broadsword.
Glancing idly at the stars framed in the barred windows, with the murmur
of the breeze through the palms in his ears, he sank into slumber with a
vague consciousness of the muttering drum, out on the desert–the low
rumble and mutter of a leather-covered drum, beaten with soft, rhythmic
strokes of an open black hand….

2 The Night Skulkers

It was the stealthy opening of a door which awakened the Cimmerian. He
did not awake as civilized men do, drowsy and drugged and stupid. He
awoke instantly, with a clear mind, recognizing the sound that had
interrupted his sleep. Lying there tensely in the dark he saw the outer
door slowly open. In a widening crack of starlit sky he saw framed a
great black bulk, broad, stooping shoulders and a misshapen head blocked
out against the stars.

Conan felt the skin crawl between his shoulders. He had bolted that door
securely. How could it be opening now, save by supernatural agency? And
how could a human being possess a head like that outlined against the
stars? All the tales he had heard in the Zuagir tents of devils and
goblins came back to bead his flesh with clammy sweat. Now the monster
slid noiselessly into the room, with a crouching posture and a shambling
gait; and a familiar scent assailed the Cimmerian’s nostrils, but did
not reassure him, since Zuagir legendry represented demons as smelling
like that.

Noiselessly Conan coiled his long legs under him; his naked sword was in
his right hand, and when he struck it was as suddenly and murderously as
a tiger lunging out of the dark. Not even a demon could have avoided
that catapulting charge. His sword met and clove through flesh and bone,
and something went heavily to the floor with a strangling cry. Conan
crouched in the dark above it, sword dripping in his hand. Devil or
beast or man, the thing was dead there on the floor. He sensed death as
any wild thing senses it. He glared through the half-open door into the
starlit court beyond. The gate stood open, but the court was empty.

Conan shut the door but did not bolt it. Groping in the darkness he
found the lamp and lighted it. There was enough oil in it to burn for a
minute or so. An instant later he was bending over the figure that
sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.

It was a gigantic black man, naked but for a loin-cloth. One hand still
grasped a knotty-headed bludgeon. The fellow’s kinky wool was built up
into horn-like spindles with twigs and dried mud. This barbaric coiffure
had given the head its misshapen appearance in the starlight. Provided
with a clue to the riddle, Conan pushed back the thick red lips, and
grunted as he stared down at teeth filed to points.

He understood now the mystery of the strangers who had disappeared from
the house of Aram Baksh; the riddle of the black drum thrumming out
there beyond the palm groves, and of that pit of charred bones–that pit
where strange meat might be roasted under the stars, while black beasts
squatted about to glut a hideous hunger. The man on the floor was a
cannibal slave from Darfar.

There were many of his kind in the city. Cannibalism was not tolerated
openly in Zamboula. But Conan knew now why people locked themselves in
so securely at night, and why even beggars shunned the open alleys and
doorless ruins. He grunted in disgust as he visualized brutish black
shadows skulking up and down the nighted streets, seeking human
prey–and such men as Aram Baksh to open the doors to them. The
innkeeper was not a demon; he was worse. The slaves from Darfar were
notorious thieves; there was no doubt that some of their pilfered loot
found its way into the hands of Aram Baksh. And in return he sold them
human flesh.