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Red Nails

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Title: Red Nails

Author: Robert E. Howard

 
Release date: June 9, 2010 [eBook #32759]
 Most recently updated: July 21, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32759

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED NAILS ***

 Red Nails

 By ROBERT E. HOWARD

 _One of the strangest stories ever written--the tale of a barbarian
 adventurer, a woman pirate, and a weird roofed city inhabited by the
 most peculiar race of men ever spawned_

 Nearly four years ago, WEIRD TALES published a story called "The
 Phoenix on the Sword," built around a barbarian adventurer named
 Conan, who had become king of a country by sheer force of valor and
 brute strength. The author of that story was Robert E. Howard, who
 was already a favorite with the readers of this magazine for his
 stories of Solomon Kane, the dour English Puritan and redresser of
 wrongs. The stories about Conan were speedily acclaimed by our
 readers, and the barbarian's weird adventures became immensely
 popular. The story presented herewith is one of the most powerful
 and eery weird tales yet written about Conan. We commend this story
 to you, for we know you will enjoy it through and through.

_1. The Skull on the Crag_

The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs
wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the
gold-tasseled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a booted
foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-worked
saddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned
about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.

They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her
horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that
quested under the somber twilight of the lofty arches formed by
intertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of her
magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.

She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her
whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the
femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing
and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present
environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches,
which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a
wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather
came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved
silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straight
double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden
hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson
satin.

Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an
unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should have
been posed against a background of sea-clouds, painted masts and
wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And
that was as it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red
Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever
seafarers gather.

[Illustration: "Convinced that his death was upon him, the Cimmerian
acted according to his instinct."]

She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and
see the sky which presumably lay about it, but presently gave it up with
a muttered oath.

Leaving her horse tied she strode off toward the east, glancing back
toward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in her mind.
The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty
boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of any
small animals. For leagues she had traveled in a realm of brooding
stillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.

She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but she felt the gnawings of
hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she had
sustained herself since exhausting the food she had brought in her
saddle-bags.

Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping of dark, flint-like rock
that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among the
trees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves.
Perhaps its peak rose above the tree-tops, and from it she could see
what lay beyond--if, indeed, anything lay beyond but more of this
apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many
days.

A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of the
crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet she came to the belt of
leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd
close to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about
it, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, not
able to see either above or below her; but presently she glimpsed blue
sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw the
forest roof stretching away under her feet.

She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the
tree-tops, and from it rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peak
of the crag she had climbed. But something else caught her attention at
the moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of blown dead
leaves which carpeted the shelf. She kicked them aside and looked down
on the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached
frame, but saw no broken bones nor any sign of violence. The man must
have died a natural death; though why he should have climbed a tall crag
to die she could not imagine.

 * * * * *

She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward the
horizons. The forest roof--which looked like a floor from her
vantage-point--was just as impenetrable as from below. She could not
even see the pool by which she had left her horse. She glanced
northward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the
rolling green ocean stretching away and away, with only a vague blue
line in the distance to hint of the hill-range she had crossed days
before, to plunge into this leafy waste.

West and east the view was the same; though the blue hill-line was
lacking in those directions. But when she turned her eyes southward she
stiffened and caught her breath. A mile away in that direction the
forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dotted
plain

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