




                       The Fire of Asshurbanipal

                          By ROBERT E. HOWARD

                _The tale of a silent dead sea of black
            stone set in the drifting sands of the desert,
               and of a flaming gem clutched in the bony
             fingers of a skeleton on an ancient throne._

    Robert E. Howard is dead, but his genius lives on in his
    fascinating, vivid stories. He had the knack of depicting his
    characters in action so that they stepped out of the printed page
    and gripped the sympathies of the readers--Conan the barbarian
    adventurer--Solomon Kane, the dour Puritan soldier and redresser
    of wrongs--King Kull, the valiant fighter from the shadowy kingdoms
    of the world's dawn--heroes all, and doughty men of might. The
    posthumous weird tale by Mr. Howard presented here, "The Fire of
    Asshurbanipal," is an outre adventure story of much power. We
    commend it to you. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Weird Tales December 1936. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Yar Ali squinted carefully down the blue barrel of his Lee-Enfield,
called devoutly on Allah and sent a bullet through the brain of a
flying rider. "_Allaho akbar!_"

The big Afghan shouted in glee, waving his weapon above his head, "God
is great! By Allah, _sahib_, I have sent another one of the dogs to
Hell!" His companion peered cautiously over the rim of the sand-pit they
had scooped with their hands. He was a lean and wiry American, Steve
Clarney by name. "Good work, old horse," said this person. "Four left. Look--they're
drawing off." The white-robed horsemen were indeed reining away, clustering together
just out of accurate rifle-range, as if in council. There had been
seven when they had first swooped down on the comrades, but the fire
from the two rifles in the sand-pit had been deadly. "Look, _sahib_--they abandon the fray!" Yar Ali stood up boldly and shouted taunts at the departing riders, one
of whom whirled and sent a bullet that kicked up sand thirty feet in
front of the pit. "They shoot like the sons of dogs," said Yar Ali in complacent
self-esteem. "By Allah, did you see that rogue plunge from his saddle
as my lead went home? Up, _sahib_; let us run after them and cut them
down!" Paying no attention to this outrageous proposal--for he knew it was
but one of the gestures Afghan nature continually demands--Steve
rose, dusted off his breeches and gazing after the riders, now white
specks far out on the desert, said musingly: "Those fellows ride as if
they had some set purpose in mind--not a bit like men running from a
licking." "Aye," agreed Yar Ali promptly and seeing nothing inconsistent with his
present attitude and recent bloodthirsty suggestion, "they ride after
more of their kind--they are hawks who give up their prey not quickly. We had best move our position quickly, Steve _sahib_. They will come
back--maybe in a few hours, maybe in a few days--it all depends on
how far away lies the oasis of their tribe. But they will be back. We
have guns and lives--they want both. And behold." The Afghan levered out the empty shell and slipped a single cartridge
into the breech of his rifle. "My last bullet, _sahib_." Steve nodded. "I've got three left." The raiders whom their bullets had knocked from the saddle had been
looted by their own comrades. No use searching the bodies which lay in
the sand for ammunition. Steve lifted his canteen and shook it. Not
much water remained. He knew that Yar Ali had only a little more than
he, though the big Afridi, bred in a barren land, had used and needed
less water than did the American; although the latter, judged from a
white man's standards, was hard and tough as a wolf. As Steve unscrewed
the canteen cap and drank very sparingly, he mentally reviewed the
chain of events that had led them to their present position. Wanderers, soldiers of fortune, thrown together by chance and attracted
to each other by mutual admiration, he and Yar Ali had wandered
from India up through Turkistan and down through Persia, an oddly
assorted but highly capable pair. Driven by the restless urge of
inherent wanderlust, their avowed purpose--which they swore to and
sometimes believed themselves--was the accumulation of some vague and
undiscovered treasure, some pot of gold at the foot of some yet unborn
rainbow. Then in ancient Shiraz they had heard of the Fire of Asshurbanipal. From the lips of an ancient Persian trader, who only half believed what
he repeated to them, they heard the tale that he in turn had heard
from the babbling lips of delirium, in his distant youth. He had been
a member of a caravan, fifty years before, which, wandering far on the
southern shore of the Persian Gulf trading for pearls, had followed the
tale of a rare pearl far into the desert. The pearl, rumored found by a diver and stolen by a shaykh of the
interior, they did not find, but they did pick up a Turk who was dying
of starvation, thirst and a bullet wound in the thigh. As he died in
delirium, he babbled a wild tale of a silent dead city of black stone
set in the drifting sands of the desert far to the westward, and of a
flaming gem clutched in the bony fingers of a skeleton on an ancient
throne. He had not dared bring it away with him, because of an overpowering
brooding horror that haunted the place, and thirst had driven him
into the desert again, where Bedouins had pursued and wounded him. Yet he had escaped, riding hard until his horse fell under him. He
died without telling how he had reached the mythical city in the
first place, but the old trader thought he must have come from the
northwest--a deserter from the Turkish army, making a desperate attempt
to reach the Gulf. The men of the caravan had made no attempt to plunge still further
into the desert in search of the city; for, said the old trader, they
believed it to be the ancient, ancient City of Evil spoken of in the
_Necronomicon_ of the mad Arab Al-hazred--the city of the dead on which
an ancient curse rested. Legends named it vaguely: the Arabs called it
_Beled-el-Djinn_, the City of Devils, and the Turks, _Kara-Shehr_, the
Black City. And the gem was that ancient and accursed jewel belonging
to a king of long ago, whom the Grecians called Sardanapalus and the
Semitic peoples Asshurbanipal. *       *       *       *       *

Steve had been fascinated by the tale. Admitting to himself that it was
doubtless one of the ten thousand cock-and-bull myths mooted about the
East, still there was a possibility that he and Yar Ali had stumbled
onto a trace of that pot of rainbow gold for which they searched.