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did the awful realization strike him—his body was swelling, his limbs distorting and expanding far beyond their normal size and shape.
    His nose twitched uncontrollably at the scent of his own sweat. He detected a hundred other odours in the air, in the hold, and above, through the ceiling grate.
    The scent of prey.
    Conan shivered.
    His hands, which he could bend only at the wrists, seemed to bum as if dipped in oil and set aflame. They had been tied against his hips, and he could feel... and hear... the fingers growing, elongating with a popping and stretching of bones and ligaments. Likewise, his feet began to curl, warping themselves into large, misshapen hands. The toes grew into long fingers with hairy white knuckles.
    Conan opened his mouth to bellow, but all that came out was a rattling gargle. He felt intense pressure against his nose and forehead, as though something swelled inside his skull and sought egress through his face. He ran his tongue across unnaturally sharp teeth, and his jaw thrust itself forward, jutting against the taut skin of his face with a sound like wet leather being stretched and scraped.
    A surge of pain knocked the breath out of him, and he arched his back, watching his already-massive chest enlarge. Invisible hands pulled at his ribs, bending them outward with agonizing slowness, until Conan thought he could bear the torment no longer.
    A tortured howl finally burst out of his throat, his voice more animal than human. Bucking and heaving, Conan strained against his bonds with his furry white limbs, grunting, flexing, until the wood beneath him splintered. The Cimmerian slid from beneath the ropes and rolled onto the floor of the hold, feeling the circulation return to his misshapen, furry limbs.
    He pressed his palms against the sides of his head, lifting his eyes to the glowering yellowish moon, snarling and growling in low, brutish tones.
    His memory seemed strangely distant; he reached deep to recall where he had heard those sounds before. If only he could remember! His mind slipped away, and he fought to hold it, to remember who he was. He pounded his massive fists against a sturdy crate, reducing it to a pile of splinters.
    Finally, he grasped the time and place of his guttural snarls. Years ago, in the dank, primeval jungles of the Black Kingdoms, he had faced a creature who made the same sounds... a hideous grey ape. That carnivorous abomination had tom apart half a dozen sturdy Bamula warriors before Conan and the rest of the Bamula hunting party brought it down. The ape, bleeding and bristling with spears, had wounded three more men before falling.
    Conan felt the memory slip away, like water trickling between his fingers, and it was gone... all the remembrances of his life as the human, Conan, fled from his lumpy, shrunken brain.
    All that remained was raw, unquenched fury.
    He needed to kill, to sink his fangs and claws into soft flesh, to rip and shred limbs of anything living, to crack bones and suck the marrow from their jagged ends.
    He felt no pain from the wounds on the sides of his head or from his punctured leg. His nose twitched, again catching the sweet scent of warm blood nearby. So keen had his senses become that through the thick wood of the cargo hold’s door, he could hear the beating of a heart.
    Prey.
    He charged at the barrier that separated him from his quarry. His burly shoulder crashed into it, cracking the dense boards and wrenching iron nails from the cross-pieces. The door blew off its hinges, slamming the astonished guard against the opposite wall and crushing him like a bug. Conan tossed aside the wooden wreckage and wrapped his hand around the stunned guard’s neck, lifting him into the air and squeezing until the man’s eyes bulged and burst from their sockets.
    Conan casually tore the corpse into two bloody halves, flinging the head and torso away and cramming the man’s soft vitals into his slavering mouth.
    As the grisly feast continued, shouts