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Conan the Freebooter by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague DeCamp
==============================================================

CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION, by L Sprague de Camp . 9

HAWKS OVER SHEM, by Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp…15

BLACK COLOSSUS, by Robert E. Howard . 54

SHADOWS IN THE MOONLIGHT by Robert E. Howard…99

THE ROAD OF THE EAGLES, by Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp…138

A WITCH SHALL BE BORN by Robert E. Howard…172

Pages 6 and 7: A map of the world of Conan in the Hyborian Age, based
upon notes and sketches by Robert E. Howard and upon previous maps by
P. Schuyler Miller, John D. Clark, David Kyle, and L. Sprague de Camp,
with a map of Europe and adjacent regions superimposed for reference.

[IMAGE][IMAGE]


Introduction
------------

Robert E. Howard (1906-36), the creator of Conan, was born in Peaster,
Texas, and spent most of his life in Cross Plains, in the center of
Texas. During his short life (which ended in suicide at the age of
thirty) Howard turned out a large volume of popular fiction: sport,
detective, western, historical, adventure, science-fiction, weird, and
ghost stories, besides his verse and his many fantasies. Of his several
series of heroic fantasies, the most popular have been the Conan
stories. Eighteen of these were published in Howard's lifetime; eight
others, from mere fragments and outlines to complete manuscripts, have
been found among his papers since 1950. The incomplete stories have
been completed by my colleague Lin Carter and myself.

In addition, in the early 1950s, I rewrote four unpublished Howard
manuscripts of oriental adventure, to convert them into Conan stories
by changing names, deleting anachronisms, and introducing a
supernatural element. This was not hard, since Howard's heroes were
pretty much all cut from the same cloth, and the resulting posthumous
collaborations are still about three-quarters or four-fifths Howard.
Two of these converted stories appear in the present volume: "Hawks
over Shem" (originally called "Hawks over Egypt"), a story laid in
eleventh-century Egypt, in the reign of the mad Caliph Hakim; and "The
Road of the Eagles," originally placed in the sixteenth-century Turkish
Empire.

Moreover, my colleagues Lin Carter and Bjorn Nyberg and I have
collaborated on several Conan pastiches, based upon hints in Howard's
notes and letters. All these stories —originals, posthumous
collaborations, and pastiches— either have been or will eventually be
published in Lancer Books' series of Conan paperbacks. Because of legal
complications, it was not possible to issue the volumes in
chronological order. The present volume, the seventh to appear, will be
the third in chronological order, following the previously published
volume Conan and the future volume Conan of Cimmeria. A list of the
volumes so far published, in chronological order, is printed at the
beginning of the present book.

The Conan stories are laid in Howard's fictional Hyborian Age, about
twelve thousand years ago between the sinking of Atlantis and the
beginnings of recorded history. Conan, a gigantic barbarian adventurer
from the backward northern land of Cimmeria, arrived as a youth in the
kingdom of Zamora (see the map) and for several years made a precarious
living there and in neighboring lands as a thief. Then he served as a
mercenary soldier, first in the oriental realm of Turan and then in the
Hyborian kingdoms.

Forced to flee from Argos, Conan became a pirate along the coasts of
Kush, in partnership with a Shemitish she-pirate, Belit, with a crew of
black corsairs. After Belit's death and some hairsbreadth adventures
among the black tribes, he returned to the trade of mercenary in Shem.
Here the present volume begins.

Nearly twenty years ago, my old friend John D. Clark, a chemist and a
Conan buff long before I was, edited the then-known Conan stories for
the volumes published by Gnome Press. He wrote an eloquent introduction
to the first volume of this series to be issued, Conan the Conqueror.
This essay gives a free-swinging impression of Howard's fiction in
general and the Conan stories in particular. Dr. Clark has allowed me
to quote it here:

It was almost seventeen years ago when I collided with the Hyborian
Age. It was a notable collision, occurring when I was caught by the
somewhat juicy cover on the September 1933 Weird Tales, read "The
Slithering Shadow," and met Conan for the first time. It was an
introduction that stuck, and from then on I followed the adventures of
that slightly unconventional character with more than casual interest.
A little later (1935 or so) Schuyler Miller and I decided to make a try
at plotting out Conan's world. It turned out to be ridiculously easy.
The countries flopped out on the paper, squirmed about a bit, and
clicked together into an indubitable and obviously authentic map. We
wrote to Howard then and found that his own map was practically
identical with ours; his biography of Conan was also identical in all
important respects with the one Miller and I had concocted from the
internal evidence in the stories. As I remember, the most important
point of disagreement was a two years' difference in Conan's age at one
point in the stories.

We knew then that we had a story-teller on our hands who knew his
business. And when we read the manuscript of "The Hyborian Age," some
time before it was first published, we were sure of it.

Anyhow, in the next few years I managed to pick up the rest of Howard's
fantasies, including King Kull and all the rest. It was obvious, of
course, that although some of them had apparently been written before
that gorgeous concept filtered into his mind, they might be fitted into
the pattern with a little stretching…

Among the Conan stories are fragments of the biography of that
remarkable character, as deduced by Miller and myself, accounting for
most of Conan's travels and adventures that are not recounted in the
tales themselves. They do not, however, explain how he managed to get
rid of the woman of which he was usually possessed by the end of a
story in time for him to acquire another in the next. I might, by the
way, recommend that question as a subject for literary research to some
budding Ph.D. in English. The results of the inquiry might be at least
as useful as a publication purporting finally to decide whether Francis
Bacon or the Earl of Oxford really wrote the works of the alleged W.
Shakespeare…

I do not intend to write about Robert E. Howard himself. I never knew
him personally and those who did can do a better job than I. I knew him
only as the writer of some incredibly good fantasy. The parts of a
writer that body are his stories—and Howard's yarns are not going to
die among those who frankly and whole-heartedly like adventure on the
grand scale. You are probably one of those readers or you wouldn't have
bought this book in the first place.

Howard was a first-rate teller of tales, with a remarkable technical
command of his tools and with a complete lack of inhibitions. With a
fine and free hand he took what he liked from the more spectacular
aspects of all ages and climes: proper names of every conceivable
linguistic derivation, weapons from everywhere and everywhen under the
sun, customs and classes from the whole ancient and medieval world, and
fitted the whole together into a coherent and self-consistent cosmos
without a visible joint. Then he added a king-sized portion of the
supernatural to add zest to the whole, and the result was a purple and
golden and crimson universe where anything can happen—except the
tedious.

His heroes are never profound—but they are never dull. Kull, Solomon
Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Conan himself, walk and talk and are alive and of
one piece. They may not be exactly the types of persons whom we would
bring to a polite party, but they're not exactly the sort of persons
whom we would forget if they came anyway. Conan, the hero of all
Howard's heroes, is the armored swashbuckler, indestructible and
irresistible, that we've all wanted to be at one time or another; the
women, in appearance, manner, and costume (or lack of it) are the
inmates of the sort of harem that harems ought to be but aren't (and
isn't it a shame, and wouldn't it be nice, if they were commoner?); the
villains are villainous as only perfect villains can be; the sorcerers
are sorcerers in spades; and the apparitions they conjure up, or who
appear under their own power, are (thank God!) out of this world.

And above all Howard was a story-teller. The story came first, last,
and in between. Something is always happening, and the flow of action
never hesitates from beginning to end, as one incident flows smoothly
and inevitably into the next with never a pause for the reader to take
breath. Don't look for hidden philosophical meanings or intellectual
puzzles in the yarns—they aren't there. Howard was a story-teller. The
tales are the sword-and-cloaker carried to the ultimate limit and a
little beyond, with enough extra sex to keep the results off the more
tedious library shelves.

So here is the book. If you have read of Conan before, you know what to
expect. If you haven't, and are addicted to fantastic adventure, you
can repair the omission and sit down now and read of the gods and
demons and of the warriors and their women and of their adventures in a
world that never was but should have been. If the history propounded
doesn't agree with what you know of history—if the ethnology is
remarkable and the geology more so—don't let it worry you. Howard was
writing of another Earth than this one—one painted in brighter colors
and on a grander scale.

If, on the other hand, you insist on realism in your reading—if you
must have novels about introverts suffering in a brutal world—if your
meat is something "close to the soil" or concerned with psychopathology
or the state of the world, then, my friend, this book is not for you.
You'd better find yourself a hole and read Crime and Punishment. But I
won't be there with you—I have an engagement in the Hyborian Age, and
will be busy all evening.

John D. Clark, PhD.

New York City
April 5, 1950.

For further information on and opinions about Howard, the Conan
stories, and heroic fantasy in general, see the other volumes of this
series (listed in chronological order on the page before the title
page—see especially my introduction to Conan); two periodicals: Amra,
the organ of the Hyborian Legion (an informal group of admirers of
heroic fantasy and of Conan in particular) published by George H.
Scithers, Box 9120, Chicago, Illinois, 60690, and The Howard Collector,
published by Glenn Lord (literary agent for the estate of Robert E.
Howard), Box 775, Pasadena, Texas, 77501; and also one book, The Conan
Reader, by the present author, published by Jack L. Chalker, 5111
Liberty Heights Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland, 20207.

L. Sprague de Camp


Hawks over Shem
---------------

Following the events of the story The Snout in the Dark, Conan,
dissatisfied with his accomplishments in the black countries, wanders
northward across the deserts of Stygia to the meadowlands of Shem.
During this trek, his reputation stands him in good stead. He presently
finds himself in the army of King Sumuabi of Akkharia, one of the
southerly Shemitish city-states. Through the treachery of one Othbaal,
cousin of the mad King Akhirom of Pelishtia, the Akkharian forces are
ambushed and wiped out—all but Conan, who survives to track the
renegade to Asgalun, the Pelishti capital.

The tall figure in the white cloak wheeled, cursing softly, hand at
scimitar hilt. Not lightly did men walk the nighted streets of Asgalun,
capital of Shemitish Pelishtia. In this dark, winding alley of the
unsavory river quarter, anything might happen.

"Why do you follow me, dog?" The voice was harsh, slurring the Shemitic
gutturals with the accents of Hyrkania.

Another tall figure emerged from the shadows, clad, like the first, in
a cloak of white silk but lacking the other's spired helmet.

"Did you say, "dog"?" The accent differed from the Hyrkanian's.

"Aye, dog. I have been followed—"

Before the Hyrkanian could get further, the other rushed with the
sudden blinding speed of a pouncing tiger. The Hyrkanian snatched at
his sword. Before the blade cleared the scabbard, a huge fist smote the
side of his head. But for the Hyrkanian's powerful build and the
protection of the camail of ring mail that hung down from his helmet,
his neck might have been broken. As it was, he was hurled sprawling to
the pavement, his sword clattering out of his grasp.

As the Hyrkanian shook his head and groped back to consciousness, he
saw the other standing over him with drawn saber. The stranger rumbled:
"I follow nobody, and I let nobody call me dog! Do you understand that;
dog?"

The Hyrkanian glanced about for his sword and saw that the other had
already kicked it out of reach. Thinking to gain time until he could
spring for his weapon, he said: "Your pardon if I wronged you, but I
have been followed since nightfall. I heard stealthy footsteps along
the dark alleys. Then you came unexpectedly into view, in a place most
suited for murder."

"Ishtar confound you! Why should I follow you? I have lost my way. I've
never seen you before, and I hope never to—"

A stealthy pad of feet brought the stranger round, springing back and
wheeling to keep both the Hyrkanian and the newcomers before him.

Four huge figures loomed menacingly in the shadows, the dim starlight
glinting on curved blades. There was also a glimmer of white teeth and
eyeballs against dark skins.

For an instant there was tense stillness. Then one muttered in the
liquid accepts of the black kingdoms: "Which is our dog? Here be two
clad alike, and the darkness makes them twins."

"Cut down both," replied another, who towered half a head above his
tall companions. "We shall then make no mistake and leave no witness."

So saying, the four Negroes came on in deadly silence.

The stranger took two long strides to where the Hyrkanian's sword lay.
With a growl of "Here! he kicked the weapon at the Hyrkanian, who
snatched it up; then rushed upon the advancing blacks with a snarling
oath.

The giant Kushite and one other closed with the stranger while the
other two ran at the Hyrkanian. The stranger, with that same feline
speed he had shown earlier, leaped in without awaiting attack. A quick
feint, a clang of steel, and a lightning slash sheared the head of the
smaller black from his shoulders. As the stranger struck, so did the
giant, with a long forehand sweep that should have cut the stranger in
two at the waist.

But, despite his size, the stranger moved even faster than the blade as
it hissed through the night air. He dropped to the ground in a crouch
so that the scimitar passed over him. As he squatted in front of his
antagonist, he struck at the black's legs. The blade bit into muscle
and bone. As the black reeled on his wounded leg and swung his sword up
for another slash, the stranger sprang up and in, under the lifted arm,
and drove his blade to the hilt in the Negro's chest. Blood spurted
along the stranger's wrist. The scimitar fell waveringly, to cut
through the silken kaffia and glance from the steel cap beneath. The
giant sank down dying.

The stranger tore out his blade and whirled. The Hyrkanian had met the
attack of his two Negroes coolly, retreating slowly to keep them in
front of him. He suddenly slashed one across the chest and shoulder so
that he dropped his sword and fell to his knees with a moan. As he fell
he gripped his foe's knees and hung on like a leech. The Hyrkanian
kicked and struggled in vain. Those black arms, bulging with iron
muscles, held him fast, while the remaining Negro redoubled the fury of
his strokes.

Even as the Kushite swordsman drew breath for a stroke that the
hampered Hyrkanian could not have parried, he heard the rush of feet
behind him. Before he could turn, the stranger's saber drove through
him with such fury that the blade sprang half its length out of his
chest, while the hilt smote him fiercely between the shoulders. Life
went out of him with a cry.

The Hyrkanian caved in the skull of his other antagonist with his hilt
and shook himself free of the corpse. He turned to the stranger, who
was pulling his saber out of the body it transfixed.

"Why did you come to my aid after nearly knocking my head off?" he
asked.

The other shrugged. "We were two men beset by rogues. Fate made us
allies. Now, if you like, we'll take up our quarrel again. You said I
spied upon you."

"I see my mistake and crave your pardon," answered the Hyrkanian
promptly. "I know now who has been skulking after me."

He wiped and sheathed his scimitar and bent over each corpse in turn.
When he came to the body of the giant, he paused and murmured:

"Soho! Keluka the Sworder! Of high rank the archer whose shaft is
paneled with pearls!" He wrenched from the limp black finger a heavy,
ornate ring, slipped the ring into his sash, and laid hold of the
garments of the dead man. "Help me to dispose of this carrion, brother,
so that no questions shall be asked."

Tlie stranger grasped a bloodstained jacket in each hand and dragged
the bodies after the Hyrkanian down a reeking black alley, in which
rose the broken curb of a ruined and forgotten well. The corpses
plunged into the abyss and struck far below with sullen splashes. With
a light laugh the Hyrkanian turned.

"The gods have made us allies," he said. "I owe you a debt."

"You owe me naught," answered the other in a surly tone.

"Words cannot level a mountain. I am Farouz, an archer of Mazdak's
Hyrkanian horse. Come with me to a more seemly spot, where we can
converse in comfort. I hold no grudge for the buffet you dealt me,
though, by Tarim! my head still rings from it"

The stranger grudgingly sheathed his saber and followed the Hyrkanian.
Their way led through the gloom of reeking alleys and along narrow,
winding streets. Asgalun was a contrast of splendor and decay, where
opulent palaces rose among the smoke-stained ruins of buildings of
forgotten ages. A swarm of suburbs clustered about the walls of the
forbidden inner city where dwelt King Akhirom and his nobles.

The two men came to a newer and more respectable quarter, where the
latticed windows of overhanging balconies almost touched one another
across the street.

"All the shops are dark," grunted the stranger. "A few days ago the
city was lighted like day, from dusk to sunrise."

"One of Akhirom's whims. Now he has another, that no lights shall burn
in Asgalun. What his mood will be tomorrow, Pteor only knows."

They halted before an iron-bound door in a heavy stone arch, and the
Hyrkanian rapped cautiously. A voice challenged from within and was
answered by a password. The door opened, and the Hyrkanian pushed into
thick darkness, drawing his companion with him. The door closed behind
them. A heavy leather curtain was pulled back, revealing a lamplit
corridor and a scarred old Shemite.

"An old soldier turned to wine-selling," said the Hyrkanian. "Lead us
to a chamber where we can be alone, Khannon."

"Most of the chambers are empty," grumbled Khannon, limping before
them. "I'm a ruined man. Men fear to touch the cup, since the king
banned wine. Pteor smite him with gout!"

The stranger glanced curiously into the larger chambers that they
passed, where men sat at food and drink. Most of Khannon's customers
were typical Pelishtim: stocky, swarthy men with hooked noses and curly
blue-black beards. Occasionally one saw men of the more slender type
that roamed the deserts of eastern Shem, or Hyrkanians or black
Kushites from the mercenary army of Pelishtda.

Khannon bowed the two men into a small room, where he spread mats for
them. He set before them a great dish of fruits and nuts, poured wine
from a bulging skin, and limped away muttering.

"Pelishtia has come upon evil days, brother," drawled the Hyrkanian,
quaffing the wine of Kyros. He was a tall man, leanly but strong built.
Keen black eyes, slightly aslant, danced restlessly in a face with a
yellowish tinge. His hawk nose overhung a thin, black, drooping
mustache. His plain cloak was of costly fabric, his spired helmet was
chased with silver, and jewels glittered in the hilt of his scimitar.

He looked at a man as tall as himself, but who contrasted with him in
many ways. The other had thicker limbs and greater depth of chest: the
build of a mountaineer. Under his white kaffia his broad brown face,
youthful but already seamed with the scars of brawls and battles,
showed smooth-shaven. His natural complexion was lighter than that of
the Hyrkanian, the darkness of his features being more of the sun than
of nature. A hint of stormy fires smoldered in his cold blue eyes. He
gulped his wine and smacked his lips.

Farouz grinned and refilled his goblet. "You fight well, brother. If
Mazdak's Hyrkanians were not so infernally jealous of outsiders, you'd
make a good trooper."

The other merely grunted.

"Who arc you, anyway?" persisted Farouz. "I've told you who I am."

"I am Ishbak, a Zuagir from the eastern deserts."

The Hyrkanian threw back his head and laughed loudly, bringing a scowl
to the face of the other, who said: "What's so funny?"

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"Do you say I lie?" snarled the stranger.

Farouz grinned. "No Zuagir ever spoke Pelishtic with an accent like
yours, for the Zuagir tongue is but a dialect of Shemitish. Moreover,
during our fight with the Kushites, you called upon strange gods—Crom
and Manannan—whose names I have heard before from barbarians of the far
North. Fear not; I am in your debt and can keep a secret."

The stranger half started up, grasping his hilt. Farouz merely took a
sip of wine. After an instant of tension the stranger sank back. With
an air of discomfiture he said:

"Very well. I am Conan, a Cimmerian, late of the army of King Sumuabi
of Akkharia."

The Hyrkanian grinned and stuffed grapes into his mouth. Between chews
he said: "You could never be a spy, friend Conan. You are too quick and
open in your anger. What brings you to Asgalun?"

"A little matter of revenge."

"Who is your enemy?"

"An Anaki named Othbaal, may the dogs gnaw his bones!"

Farouz whistled. "By Pteor, you aim at a lofty target! Know you that
this man is the general of all King Akhirom's Anakian troops?"

"Crom! It matters as little to me as if he were a collector of offal."

"What has Othbaal done to you?"

Conan said: "The people of Anakia revolted against their king, who's an
even bigger fool than Akhirom. They asked help of Akkharia. Sumuabi
hoped they would succeed and choose a friendlier king than the one in
power, so he called for volunteers. Five hundred of us marched to help
the Anakim. But this damned Othbaal had been playing both sides. He led
the revolt to encourage the king's enemies to come out into the open,
and then betrayed the rebels into the arms of this king, who butchered
the lot.

"Othbaal also knew we were coming, so he set a trap for us. Not knowing
what had happened, we fell into it. Only I escaped with my life, and
that by shamming death. The rest of us either fell on the field or were
put to death with the fanciest tortures the king's Sabatean torturer
could devise." The moody blue eyes narrowed. "I've fought men before
this and thought no more of them afterwards, but in this case I swore
I'd pay back Othbaal for some of my dead friends. When I got back to
Akkharia I learned that Othbaal had fled from Anakia for fear of the
people and had come here. How has he risen so high so fast?"

"He's a cousin of King Akhirom," said Farouz. "Akhirom, though a
Pelishti, is also a cousin of the king of Anakia and was reared at that
court. The kings of these little Shemitish city-states are all more or
less related, which makes their wars all quarrels within the family and
all the bitterer in consequence. How long have you been in Asgalun?"

"Only a few days. Long enough to learn that the king is mad. No wine
indeed!" Conan spat.

"There is more to learn. Akhirom is indeed mad, and the people murmur
under his heel. He holds his power by means of three bodies of
mercenary troops, with whose aid he overthrew and slew his brother, the
previous king. First, the Anakim, whom he recruited while an exile at
the court of Anakia. Secondly, the black Kushites, who under their
general, Imbalayo, yearly gain more power. And thirdly, the Hyrkanian
horse, like myself. Their general is Mazdak, and among him and Imbalayo
and Othbaal there is enough hatred and jealousy to have started a dozen
wars. You saw some of it in this evening's encounter.

"Othbaal came here last year as a penniless adventurer. He has risen
partly by his relationship to Akhirom, and partly by the intrigues of
an Ophirean slave-woman named Rufia, whom he won at gaming from Mazdak
and then refused to return when the Hyrkanian had sobered up. That's
another reason for there being little love between them. There is a
woman behind Akhirom, too: Zeriti the Stygian, a witch. Men say she has
driven him mad by the potions she has fed him to keep him under her
government. If that's true, then she defeated her own ends, for now
nobody can control him."

Conan set down his goblet and looked straight at Farouz. "Well, what
now? Will you betray me, or did you speak truth when you said you would
not?"

Turning in his fingers the ring he had taken from Keluka, Farouz mused.
"Your secret is safe with me. For one reason, I too owe Othbaal a heavy
debt. If you succeed in your quest ere I find means to discharge it, I
shall bear the loss with serenity."

Conan started forward, his iron fingers gripping the Hyrkanian's
shoulder. "Do you speak truth?"

"May these potbellied Shemitish gods smite me with boils if I lie!"

"Then let me aid you in your vengeance!"

"You? An outsider, who knows nought of the secret ways of Asgalun?"

"Of course! So much the better; having no local ties, I can be trusted.
Come on; let's make a plan. Where is the swine and how do we get to
him?"

Farouz, though no weakling, recoiled a little before the primitive
elemental force that blazed in the eyes and showed in the manner of the
other. "Let me think," he said. "There is a way, if one is swift and
daring…"

Later, two hooded figures halted in a group of palms among the ruins of
nighted Asgalun. Before them lay the waters of a canal, and beyond it,
rising from its bank, the great bastioned wall of sun-dried brick which
encircled the inner city. The inner city was really a gigantic
fortress, sheltering the king and his trusted nobles and mercenary
troops, forbidden to common men without a pass.

"We could climb the wall," muttered Conan.

"And find ourselves no nearer our foe," answered Farouz, groping in the
shadows. "Here!"

Conan saw the Hyrkanian fumble at a shapeless heap of marble. "An
ancient ruined shrine,"' grumbled Farouz. "But—ah!"

He lifted a broad slab, revealing steps leading down into darkness.
Conan frowned suspiciously.

Farouz explained: "This tunnel leads under the wall and up into the
house of Othbaal, which stands just beyond."

"Under the canal?"

"Aye. Once Othbaal's house was the pleasure-house of King Uriaz, who
slept on a down-cushion floating on a pool of quicksilver, guarded by
tame lions—yet fell before the avenger's dagger in spite of all. He
prepared secret exits from all parts of his houses. Before Othbaal took
the house, it belonged to his rival Mazdak. The Anaki knows nothing of
this secret, so come!"

Swords drawn, they groped down a flight of stone steps and advanced
along a level tunnel in blackness. Conan's groping fingers told him
that the walls, floor, and ceiling were composed of huge blocks of
stone. As they advanced, the stones became slippery and the air grew
dank. Drops of water fell on Conan's neck, making him shiver and swear.
They were passing under the canal. Later, this dampness abated. Farouz
hissed a warning, and they mounted another flight of stairs.

At the top, the Hyrkanian fumbled with a catch. A panel slid aside, and
a soft light streamed in. Farouz slipped through the opening and, after
Conan had followed, closed it behind them. It became one of the inlaid
panels of the wall, not differing to the sight from the other panels.
They stood in a vaulted corridor, while Farouz pulled his kaffia around
to hide his face and motioned Conan to do likewise. Farouz then led the
way down the corridor without hesitation. The Cimmerian followed, sword
in hand, glancing to right and left.

They passed through a curtain of dark velvet and came upon an arched
doorway of gold-inlaid ebony. A brawny black, naked but for a silken
loincloth, started up from his doze, sprang to his feet, and swung a
great scimitar. But he did not cry out; his open mouth revealed the
cavernous emptiness of the mouth of a mute.

"Quietly!" snapped Farouz, avoiding the sweep of the mute's sword. As
the Negro stumbled from his wasted effort, Conan tripped him. He fell
sprawling, and Farouz passed his sword through the dark body.

"That was quick and silent enough!" breathed Farouz with a grin. "Now
for the real prey!"

Cautiously he tried the door, while the giant Cimmerian crouched at his
shoulder, eyes burning like those of a hunting tiger. The door gave
inward, and they sprang into the chamber. Farouz closed the door behind
them and set his back to it, laughing at the man who leaped up from his
divan with a startled oath. Beside him, a woman half-rose from the
cushions and screamed. Farouz said:

"We've run the buck to cover, brother!"

For a fraction of a second, Conan took in the spectacle. Othbaal was a
tall, lusty man, his thick black hair gathered in a knot at his nape
and his black beard oiled, curled, and precisely trimmed. Late as the
hour was, he was fully clad in silken kilt and velvet vest, under which
gleamed the links of a mail shirt. He dove for a scabbarded sword that
lay on the floor beside the couch.

As for the woman, she was not conventionally pretty but still good to
look at: red-haired, with a broad, slightly freckled face, and brown
eyes sparkling with intelligence.

She was rather broadly built, with shoulders wider than the average, a
big bust, and full hips. She gave the impression of great physical
vigor.

"Help!" shouted Othbaal, rising to meet the Cimmerian's rush. "I am
beset!"

Farouz started across the wide floor not more than a step behind Conan,
but then leaped back to the door through which they had come. With half
an ear, Conan was aware of a commotion in the corridor and heard the
thump of some heavy object rammed against the door. Then his blade
crossed that of the Anaki. The swords clanged in mid-air, showering
sparks, flashing and flickering in the lamplight.

Both men attacked, smiting furiously, each too intent on the life of
the other to give much thought to showy swordplay. Each stroke had full
weight and murderous will behind it. They fought in silence. As they
circled, Conan saw, over Othbaal's shoulder, that Farouz had braced his
shoulder against the door. From the other side came increasingly heavy
blows, which had already torn loose the bolt. The woman had vanished.

"Can you deal with him?" said Farouz. "If I let this door go, his
slaves will pour in."

"All right so far," grunted Conan, parrying a ferocious slash.

"Hasten, then, for I cannot hold them much longer."

Conan plunged in with fresh ferocity. Now it was the Anaki whose
attention was devoted to parrying the Cimmerian's sword, which beat on
his blade like a hammer on an anvil. The sheer strength and fury of the
barbarian began to tell. Othbaal paled under his swarthy skin. His
breath came in gasps as he gave ground. Blood streamed from gashes on
arms, thigh, and neck. Conan bled, too, but there was no slackening in
the headlong fury of his attack.

Othbaal was close to the tapestried wall when suddenly he sprang aside
as Conan lunged. Carried off-balance by his wasted thrust, the
Cimmerian plunged forward and his sword point clashed against the stone
beneath the tapestries. At the same instant, Othbaal slashed at his
foe's head with all his waning power.

But Conan's sword of Stygian steel, instead of snapping like a lesser
blade, bent and sprang straight again. The falling scimitar bit through
Conan's helmet into the scalp beneath. Before Othbaal could recover his
balance, Conan's heavy blade sheared upward through steel links and hip
bone to grate into the spinal column.

The Anaki reeled and fell with a choking cry, his entrails spilling out
on the floor. His fingers clawed briefly at the nap of the heavy
carpet, then went limp.

Conan, blind with blood and sweat, was driving his sword in silent
frenzy again and again into the form at his feet, too drunken with fury
to realize that his antagonist was dead, until Fafouz called:

"Cease, Conan! They've stopped their attack to bring up a heavier ram,
and we can run for it."

"How?" said Conan, dazedly raking the blood from his eyes, for he was
still dizzy from the stroke that had cloven his helmet. He tore off the
riven, blood-filled headpiece and threw it aside, exposing his
square-cut black mane. A crimson torrent descended into his face,
blinding him anew. He stooped and tore a strip from Othbaal's kilt to
bind up his head.

"That door!" said Farouz, pointing. "Rufia fled that way, the slut! If
you're ready, we'll run."

Conan saw an inconspicuous little door to one side of the couch. It had
been concealed by draperies, but Rufia in her flight had disarranged
these and left the door open behind her.

The Hyrkanian took from his girdle the ring that he had pulled from the
finger of the black slayer, Keluka. He ran across the floor, dropped
the ring near Othbaal's body, and continued on toward the small door.
Conan followed him, though he had to crouch and almost turn sideways to
get through the door.

They emerged into another corridor. Farouz led Conan by a roundabout
route, turning and twisting through a maze of passages, until Conan was
hopelessly lost. By this means they avoided the main body of household
retainers, gathered in the corridor outside the principal entrance to
the room where they had slain Othbaal. Once they aroused feminine
screams from a room they passed, but Farouz kept on. Presently they
reached the secret panel, entered it, and groped in darkness until they
emerged once more into the silent grove.

Conan stopped to get his breath and retie his bandage. Farouz said:
"How is your wound, brother?"

"A scratch only. Why did you drop that ring?"

"To blind the avengers of blood. Tarim! All that trouble, and the
strumpet got away."

Conan grinned wryly in the darkness. Rufia evidently did not regard
Farouz as a rescuer. The brief picture that Conan had obtained, in the
second before he closed with Othbaal, stuck in his mind. Such a woman,
he thought, would suit him very well.

Within the massive wall of the inner city, a stupendous event was
coming to pass. Under the shadows of the balconies stole a veiled and
hooded figure. For the first time in three years, a woman was walking
the streets of Asgalun.

Knowing her peril, she trembled with fear not wholly inspired by the
lurking shadows. The stones hurt her feet in her tattered velvet
slippers; for three years the cobblers of Asgalun had been forbidden to
make street shoes for women. King Akhlrom had decreed that the women of
Pelishtia should be shut up like reptiles in cages.

Rufia, the red-haired Ophirean, favorite of Othbaal, had wielded more
power than any woman in Pelishtia save Zeriti, the king's
witch-mistress. And now, as she stole through the night, an outcast,
the thought that burned her like a white-hot brand was the realization
that the fruits of all her scheming had been spilt in a second by the
sword of one of Othbaal's enemies.

Rufia came of a race of women accustomed to swaying thrones with their
beauty and wit. She scarcely remembered her native Ophir from which she
had been stolen by Kothian slavers. The Argossean magnate who had
bought her and raised her for his household had fallen in battle with
the Shemites, and as a supple girl of fourteen Rufia had passed into
the hands of a prince of Stygia, a languorous, effeminate youth whom
she came to twist around her pink fingers. Then, after some years, had
come the raid of a band of wandering freebooters from the half-mythical
lands beyond the Sea of Vilayet, upon the prince's pleasure island on
the upper Styx, with slaughter, fire, and plunder, crashing walls and
shrieks of death, and a red-haired girl screaming in the arms of a tall
Hyrkanian chieftain.

Because she came of a race whose women were rulers of men, Rufia
neither perished nor became a whimpering toy. When Mazdak enlisted his
band under Akhirom in Anakia, as part of Akhirom's plan to seize
Pelishtia from his hated brother, Rufia had gone along.

She had not liked Mazdak. The sardonic adventurer was coldly masterful
in his relations with women, keeping a large harem and letting none
command or persuade him in the slightest. Because Rufia could endure no
rival, she had not been displeased when Mazdak had gambled her away to
his rival Othbaal.

The Anaki was more to her taste. Despite a streak of cruelty and
treachery, the man was strong, vital, and intelligent. Best of all, he
could be managed. He only needed a spur to his ambition, and Rufia
supplied that. She had started him up the shining rungs of the
ladder—and now he had been slain by a pair of masked murderers who had
sprung from nowhere.

Engrossed in her bitter thoughts, she looked up with a start as a tall,
hooded figure stepped from the shadows of an overhanging balcony and
confronted her. Only his eyes burned at her, almost luminous in the
starlight. She cowered back with a low cry.

"A woman on the streets of Asgalun!" The voice was hollow and ghostly.
"Is this not against the king's commands?"

"I walk not the streets by choice, lord," she answered. "My master has
been slain, and I fled from his murderers."

The stranger bent his hooded head and stood statue-like. Rufia watched
him nervously. There was something gloomy and portentous about him. He
seemed less like a man pondering the tale of a chance-met slave-girl
than a somber prophet weighing the doom of a sinful people. At last he
lifted his head.

"Come," said he. "I will find a place for you."

Without pausing to see if she obeyed, he stalked away up the street.
Rufia hurried after him. She could not walk the streets all night, for
any officer of the king would strike off her head for violating the
edict of King Akhirom. This stranger might be leading her into worse
slavery, but she had no choice.

Several times she tried to speak, but his grim silence struck her
silent in turn. His unnatural aloofness frightened her. Once she was
startled to see furtive forms stealing after them.

"Men follow us!" she exclaimed.

"Heed them not," answered the man in his weird voice.

Nothing was said until they reached a small arched gate in a lofty
wall. The stranger halted and called out. He was answered from within.
The gate opened, revealing a black mute holding a torch. In its light,
the height of the robed stranger was inhumanly exaggerated.

"But this—this is a gate of the Great Palace!" stammered Rufia.

For answer, the man threw back his hood, revealing a long pale oval of
a face, in which burned those strange, luminous eyes.

Rufia screamed and fell to her knees. "King Akhirom!"

"Aye, King Akhirom, O faithless and sinful one!" The hollow voice
rolled out like a bell. "Vain and foolish woman, who ignores the
command of the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of the World,
which is the word of the gods! Who treads the street in sin, and sets
aside the mandates of the Good King! Seize her!"

The following shadows closed in, becoming a squad of Negro mutes. As
their fingers seized her flesh, Rufia fainted.

The Ophirean regained consciousness in a windowless chamber whose
arched doors were bolted with bars of gold. She stared wildly about for
her captor and shrank down to see him standing above her, stroking his
pointed, graying beard while his terrible eyes burned into her soul.

"O Lion of Shem!" she gasped, struggling to her knees. "Mercy!"

As she spoke, she knew the futility of the plea. She was crouching
before the man whose name was a curse in the mouths of the Pelishtim;
who, claiming divine guidance, had ordered all dogs killed, all vines
cut down, all grapes and honey dumped into the river; who had banned
all wine, beer, and games of chance; who believed that to disobey his
most trivial command was the blackest sin conceivable. He roamed the
streets at night in disguise to see that his orders were obeyed.
Rufia's flesh crawled as he stared at her with unblinking eyes.

"Blasphemer!" he whispered. "Daughter of evil! O Pteor!" he cried,
flinging up his arms. "What punishment shall be devised for this demon?
What agony terrible enough, what degradation vile enough to render
justice? The gods grant me wisdom!"

Rufia rose to her knees and pointed at Akhirom's face. "Why call on the
gods?" she shrieked. "Call on Akhirom! You are a god!"

He stopped, reeled, and cried out incoherently. Then he straightened
and looked down at her. Her face was white, her eyes staring. To her
natural acting ability was added the terror of her position.

"What do you see, woman?" he asked.

"A god has revealed himself to me! In your face, shining like the sun!
I burn, I die in the blaze of thy glory!"

She sank her face in her hands and crouched trembling. Akhirom passed a
shaking hand over his brow and bald pate.

"Aye," he whispered. "I am a god! I have guessed it; I have dreamed it.
I alone possess the wisdom of the infinite. Now a mortal has seen it
also. I see the truth at last—no mere mouthpiece and servant of the
gods, but the God of gods himself! Akhirom is the god of Pelishtia; of
the earth. The false demon Pteor shall be cast down from his place and
his statues melted up…"

Bending his gaze downward, he ordered: "Rise, woman, and look upon thy
god!"

She did so, shrinking before his awful gaze. A change clouded Akhirom's
eyes as he seemed to see her clearly for the first time.

"Your sin is pardoned," he intoned. "Because you were the first to hail
your god, you shall henceforth serve me in honor and splendor."

She prostrated herself, kissing the carpet before his feet. He clapped
his hands. A eunuch entered and bowed.

"Go quickly to the house of Abdashtarth, the high priest of Pteor," he
said, looking over the servant's head. "Say to him: This is the word of
Akhirom, who is the one true god of the Pelishtim, and shall soon be
the of all the peoples of the earth: that on the morrow shall be the
beginning of beginnings. The idols of the false Pteor shall be
destroyed, and statues of the true god shall be erected in their stead.
The true religion shall be proclaimed, and a sacrifice of one hundred
of the noblest children of the Pelishtim shall celebrate it…' "

Before the temple of Pteor stood Mattenbaal, the first assistant to
Abdashtarth. The venerable Abdashtarth, his hands tied, stood quietly
in the grip of a pair of brawny Anaki soldiers. His long white beard
moved as he prayed. Behind him, other soldiers stoked the fire in the
base of the huge, bull-headed idol of Pteor, with his obscenely
exaggerated male characteristics. In the background towered the great
seven-storied zikkurat of Asgalun, from which the priests read the will
of the gods in the stars.

When the brazen sides of the idol glowed with the heat within,
Mattenbaal stepped forward, raised a piece of papyrus, and read:

"For that your divine king, Akhirom, is of the seed of Yakin-Ya, who
was descended from the gods when they walked the earth, so is a god
this day among ye! And now I command ye, all loyal Pelishtim, to
recognize and bow down to and worship the greatest of all gods, the God
of gods, the Creator of the Universe, the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom,
the king of gods, who is Akhirom the son of Azumelek, king of
Pelishtia! And inasmuch as the wicked and perverse Abdashtarth, in the
hardness of his heart, has rejected this revelation and has refused to
bow down before his true god, let him be cast into the fire of the idol
of the false Pteor!"

A soldier tugged open the brazen door in the belly of the statue.
Abdashtarth cried:

"He lies! This king is no god, but a mortal madman! Slay the
blasphemers against the true god of the Pelishtim, the mighty Pteor,
lest the all-wise one turn his back upon his people—"

At this point, four Anakim picked up Abdashtarth as if he had been a
log of wood and hurled him feet-first through the opening. His shriek
was cut off by the clang of the closing door, through which these same
soldiers had, in times past, tossed hundreds of the children of the
Pelishtim in times of crisis under the direction of this same
Abdashtarth. Smoke poured from the vents in the statue's ears, while a
look of smug satisfaction spread over the face of Mattenbaal.

A great shudder rippled across the throng. Then a frenzied yell broke
the stillness. A wild-haired figure ran forward, a half-naked shepherd.
With a shriek of "Blasphemer!" he hurled a stone. The missile struck
the new high priest in the mouth, breaking his teeth. Mattenbaal
staggered, blood streaming down his beard. With a roar, the mob surged
forward. High taxes, starvation, tyranny, rapine, and massacre—all
these the Pelishtim had endured from their mad king, but this tampering
with their religion was the last straw. Staid merchants became madmen;
cringing beggars turned into hot-eyed fiends.

Stones flew like hail, and louder rose the roar of the mob. Hands were
clutching at the garments of the dazed Mattenbaal when the armored
Anakim closed in around him, beat the mob back with bowstaves and spear
shafts, and hustled the priest away.

With a clanking of weapons and a jingling of bridle chains, a troop of
Kushite horse, resplendent in headdresses of ostrich feathers and
lions' manes and corselets of silvered scales, galloped out of one of
the streets leading into the great Square of Pteor. Their white teeth
shone in their dark faces. The stones of the mob bounced off their
bucklers of rhinoceros hide. They urged their horses into the press,
slashing with curved blades and thrusting long lances through the
bodies of the Asgalunim. Men rolled howling under the stamping hooves.
The rioters gave way, fleeing wildly into shops and alleys, leaving the
square littered with writhing bodies.

The black riders leaped from their saddles and began crashing in the
doors of shops and dwellings and heaping their arms with plunder.
Screams of women sounded from within the houses. A crash of
latticework, and a white-clad body struck the street with bone-crushing
impact. Another horseman, laughing, passed his lance through the body
as it lay.

The giant Imbalayo, in flaming silk and polished steel, rode roaring
among his men, beating them into order with a heavy leaded ship. They
mounted and swung into line behind him. In a canter they swept off down
the street, gory human heads bobbing on their lances as an object
lesson to the maddened Asgalunim who crouched in their coverts, panting
with hate.

The breathless eunuch who brought news of the uprising to King Akhirom
was swiftly followed by another, who prostrated himself and cried: "O
divine king, the general Othbaal is dead! His servants found him
murdered in his palace, and beside him the ring of Keluka the Sworder.
Wherefore the Anakim cry out that he was murdered by the order of the
general Imbalayo. They search for Keluka in the Kushites' quarter and
fight with the Kushites!"

Rufia, listening behind a curtain, stifled a cry. Akhirom's faraway
gaze did not alter. Wrapped in aloofness he replied:

"Let the Hyrkanians separate them. Shall private quarrels interfere
with the destiny of a god? Othbaal is dead, but Akhirom lives forever.
Another man shall lead my Anakim. Let the Kushites handle the mob until
they realize the sin of their atheism. My destiny is to reveal myself
to the world in blood and fire, until all the tribes of the earth know
me and bow down before me! You may go."

Night was falling on a tense city as Conan, his head wound now healed,
strode through the streets adjoining the quarter of the Kushites. In
that section, occupied mostly by soldiers, lights shone and stalls were
open by tacit agreement. All day, revolt had rumbled in the quarters.
The mob was like a thousand-headed serpent; stamp it out here and it
broke out there. The hooves of the Kushites had clattered from one end
of the city to the other, spattering blood.

Only armed men now traversed the streets. The great iron-bound wooden
gates of the quarters were locked as in times of civil war. Through the
lowering arch of the great gate of Simura cantered troops of black
horsemen, the torchlight crimsoning their naked scimitars. Their silken
cloaks flowed in the wind, and their black arms gleamed like polished
ebony.

Conan entered a cookshop where girdled warriors gorged and secretly
guzzled forbidden wine. Instead of taking the first place open he
stood, head up, his smoldering eyes roaming the place. His gaze came to
rest on a far corner where a plainly-dressed man with a kaffia pulled
well down over his face sat cross-legged on the floor in a dim alcove.
A low table of food stood on the floor in front of the man.

Conan strode across, swerving around the other tables. He kicked a
cushion into the alcove opposite the seated man and dropped down upon
it.

"Greetings, Farouz!" he rumbled. "Or should I say General Mazdak?"

The Hyrkanian started. "What's that?"

Conan grinned wolfishly. "I knew you when we entered the house of
Othbaal. No one but the master of the house could know its secrets so
well, and that house had once belonged to Mazdak the Hyrkanian."

"Not so loud, friend! How did you pick me out when my own men don't
know me in this Zuagir's headcloth?"

"I used my eyes. Well, now that our first venture has paid us so well,
what shall we do next?"

"I know not. I should be able to do something with one of your brawn
and force. But you know how it is with the dog-brothers."

"Aye," snarled Conan. "I tried to get mercenary service, but your three
rival armies hate each other so and strive so fiercely for the rule of
the state that none will have me. Each thinks I'm a spy for one of the
other two." He paused to order a joint of beef.

"What a restless dog you are!" said Mazdak. "Will you then go back to
Akkharia?"

Conan spat. "Nay. It's small, even for one of these little Shemitish
fly-specks of a state, and has no great wealth. And the people are as
crazily touchy about their racial and national pride as you all are
here, so I couldn't hope to rise very high. Perhaps I'd do better under
one of the Hyborian rulers to the north, if I could find one who'd pick
men for fighting ability only. But look you, Mazdak, why don't you
seize the rule of this nation for yourself? Now that Othbaal's gone,
you have only to find an excuse for putting a blade into Imbalayo's
guts, and…"

"Tarim! I'm as ambitious as the next man, but not so headlong as that!
Know that Imbalayo, having gotten the confidence of our mad monarch,
dwells in the Great Palace, surrounded by his black swordsmen. Not that
one could not kill him by a sudden stab during some public function—if
one did not mind being cut to bits instantly afterward. And then
where's ambition?"

"We should be able to think up something," said Conan, eyes narrowed.

"We, eh? I suppose you'd expect a reward for your part?"

"Of course. What sort of fool do you think me?"

"No more foolish than the next. I see no immediate prospect of such an
enterprise, but I'll bear your words in mind. And fear not but that
you'd be well repaid. Now fare you well, for I must go back into the
toils of politics."

Conan's joint arrived as Mazdak left. Conan dug his teeth into the meat
with even more than his usual gusto, for the success of his vengeance
had made his spirits soar. While devouring a mass that would have
satisfied a lion, he listened to the talk around him.

"Where are the Anakim?" demanded a mustached Hyrkanian, cramming his
jaws with almond cakes.

"They sulk in their quarter," answered another. "They swear the
Kushites slew Othbaal and show Keluka's ring to prove it. Keluka has
disappeared, and Imbalayo swears he knows naught of it. But there's the
ring, and a dozen had been slain in brawls when the king ordered us to
beat them apart. By Asura, this has been a day of days!"

"Akhirom's madness brought it on," declared another in a lowered voice.
"How soon before this lunatic dooms us all by some crazy antic?"

"Careful," cautioned his mate. "Our swords are his as long as Mazdak
orders. But if revolt breaks out again, the Anakim are more likely to
fight against the Kushites than with them. Men say Akhirom has taken
Othbaal's concubine Rufia into his harem. That angers the Anakim the
more, for they suspect that Othbaal was slain by the king's orders, or
at least with his consent. But their anger is naught beside that of
Zeriti, whom the king has put aside. The rage of the witch, they say,
makes the sandstorm of the desert seem like a spring breeze."

Conan's moody blue eyes blazed as he digested this news. The memory of
the red-haired wench had stuck in his mind during the last few days.
The thought of stealing her out from under the nose of the mad king,
and keeping her out of sight of her former owner Mazdak, gave spice to
life. And, if he had to leave Asgalun, she would make a pleasant
companion on the long road to Koth. In Asgalun there was one person who
could best help him in this enterprise: Zeriti the Stygian, and if he
could guess human motives she would be glad to do so.

He left the shop and headed towards the wall of the inner city.
Zeriti's house, he knew, was in this part of Asgalun. To get to it he
would have to pass the great wall, and the only way he knew of doing
this without discovery was through the tunnel that Mazdak had shown
him.

Accordingly, he approached the canal and made his way to the grove of
palms near the shore. Groping in the darkness among the marble ruins,
he found and lifted the slab. Again he advanced through blackness and
dripping water, stumbled on the other stair, and mounted it. He found
the catch and emerged into the corridor, now dark. The house was
silent, but the reflection of lights elsewhere showed that it was still
occupied, doubtless by the slain general's servants and women.

Uncertain as to which way led to the outer stair, he set off at random,
passed through a curtained archway—and confronted six black slaves who
sprang up glaring. Before he could retreat, he heard a shout and a rush
of feet behind him. Cursing his luck, he ran straight at the blacks. A
whirl of steel and he was through, leaving a writhing form on the floor
behind him, and dashed through a doorway on the other side of the room.
Curved blades sought his back as he slammed the door behind him. Steel
rang on the wood and guttering points showed through the panels. He
shot the bolt and whirled, glaring about for an exit. His gaze found a
gold-barred window.

With a headlong rush, he launched himself full at the window. The soft
bars tore out with a crash, taking half the casement with them, before
the impact of his hurtling body. He shot through space as the door
crashed inward and howling figures flooded into the room.

In the Great East Palace, where slave-girls and eunuchs glided on bare
feet, no echo reverberated of the hell that seethed outside the walls.
In a chamber whose dome was of gold-filagreed ivory, King Akhirom, clad
in a white silken robe that made him look even more ghostly, sat
cross-legged on a couch of gemmed ivory and stared at Rufia kneeling
before him.

Rufia wore a robe of crimson silk and a girdle of satin sewn with
pearls. But amidst all this splendor, the Ophirean's eyes were
shadowed. She had inspired Akhirom's latest madness, but she had not
mastered him. Now he seemed withdrawn, with an expression in his cold
eyes that made her shudder. Abruptly he spoke:

"It is not meet for a god to mate with mortals."

Rufia started, opened her mouth, then feared to speak.

"Love is a human weakness," he continued. "I will cast it from me. Gods
are beyond love. Weakness assails me when I lie in your arms."

"What do you mean, my lord?" she ventured.

"Even the gods must sacrifice, and therefore I give you up, lest my
divinity weaken." He clapped his hands, and a eunuch entered on all
fours. "Send in the general Imbalayo," ordered Akhirom, and the eunuch
banged his head against the floor and crawled out backwards. These were
the most recently instituted customs of the court.

"No!" Rufia sprang up. "You cannot give me to that beast—" She fell to
her knees, catching at his robe, which he drew back from her.

"Woman!" he thundered. "Are you mad? Would you assail a god?"

Imbalayo entered uncertainly. A warrior of barbaric Darfar, he had
risen to his present high estate by wild fighting and crafty intrigue.
But shrewd, brawny, and fearless though the Negro was, he could not be
sure of the mad Akhirom's intentions from moment to moment.

The king pointed to the woman cowering at his feet. "Take her!"

Imbalayo grinned and caught up Rufia, who writhed and screamed in his
grasp. She stretched her arms towards Akhirom as Imbalayo bore her from
the chamber. But Akhirom answered not, sitting with hands folded and
gaze detached.

Another heard. Crouching in an alcove, a slim brown-skinned girl
watched the grinning Kushite carry his captive up the hall. Scarcely
had he vanished when she fled in another direction.

Imbalayo, the favored of the king, alone of the generals dwelt in the
Great Palace. This was really an aggregation of buildings united into
one great structure and housing the three thousand servants of Akhirom.
Following winding corridors, crossing an occasional court paved with
mosaics, he came to his own dwelling in the southern wing. But even as
he came in sight of the door of teak, banded with arabesques of copper,
a supple form barred his way.

"Zeriti!" Imbalayo recoiled in awe. The hands of the handsome,
brown-skinned woman clenched and unclenched in controlled passion.

"A servant brought me word that Akhirom has discarded the red-haired
slut," said the Stygian. "Sell her to me! I owe her a debt that I would
pay."

"Why should I?" said the Kushite, fidgeting impatiently. "The king has
given her to me. Stand aside, lest I hurt you."

"Have you heard what the Anakim shout in the streets?"'

"What is that to me?"

"They howl for the head of Imbalayo, because of the murder of Othbaal.
What if I told them their suspicions were true?"

"I had naught to do with it!" he shouted.

"I can produce men to swear they saw you help Keluka cut him down."

"I'll kill you, witch!"

She laughed. "You dare not! Now will you sell me the red-haired jade,
or will you fight the Anakim?"

Imbalayo let Rufia slip to the floor. "Take her and begone!" he
snarled.

"Take your pay!" she retorted and hurled a handful of coins into his
face. Imbalayo's eyes burned red and his hands opened and closed with
suppressed blood-lust.

Ignoring him, Zeriti bent over Rufia, who crouched, dazed with the
hopeless realization that against this new possessor the wiles she
played against men were useless. Zeriti gathered the Ophirean's red
locks in her fingers and forced her head back, to stare fiercely into
her eyes. Then she clapped her hands. Four eunuchs entered.

"Take her to my house," Zeriti ordered, and they bore the shrinking
Rufia away. Zeriti followed, breathing softly between her teeth.

When Conan plunged through the window, he had no idea of what lay in
the darkness ahead of him. Shrubs broke his crashing fall. Springing
up, he saw his pursuers crowding through the window he had just
shattered. He was in a garden, a great shadowy place of trees and
ghostly blossoms. His hunters blundered among the trees while he
reached the wall unopposed. He sprang high, caught the coping with one
hand, and heaved himself up and over.

He halted to locate himself. Though he had never been in the inner
city, he had heard it described often enough so that he carried a
mental map of it. He was in the Quarter of the Officials. Ahead of him,
over the flat roofs, loomed a structure that must be the Lesser West
Palace, a great pleasure house giving into the famous Garden of
Abibaal. Sure of his ground, he hurried along the street into which he
had dropped and soon emerged on the broad thoroughfare that traversed
the inner city from north to south.

Late as it was, there was much stirring abroad. Armed Hyrkanians strode
past. In the great square between the two palaces, Conan heard the
jingle of reins on restive horses and saw a squadron of Kushite
troopers sitting their steeds under the torchlight. There was reason
for their alertness. Far away he heard tom-toms drumming sullenly among
the quarters. The wind brought snatches of wild song and distant yells.

With his soldierly swagger, Conan passed unnoticed among the mailed
figures. When he plucked the sleeve of a Hyrkanian to ask the way to
Zeriti's house, the man readily gave him the information. Conan, like
everyone else in Asgalun, knew that however much the Stygian regarded
Akhirom as her personal property, she by no means considered herself
his exclusive possession in return. There were mercenary captains as
familiar with her chambers as was the king of Pelishtia.

Zeriti's house adjoined a court of the East Palace, to whose gardens it
was connected so that Zeriti, in the days of her favor, could pass from
her house to the palace without violating the king's order for the
seclusion of women. Zeriti, the daughter of a free chieftain, had been
Akhirom's mistress but not his slave.

Conan did not expect difficulty in gaining entrance to her house. She
pulled hidden strings of intrigue and politics, and men of all races
and conditions were admitted to her audience chamber, where dancing
girls and the fumes of the black lotus offered entertainment That night
there were no dancing girls or guests, but a villainous-looking Zuagir
opened the arched door under a burning cresset and admitted Conan
without question. He showed Conan across a small court, up an outer
stair, down a corridor, and into a broad chamber bordered by fretted
arches hung with curtains of crimson velvet.

The softly lit room was empty, but somewhere sounded the scream of a
woman in pain. Then came a peal of musical laughter, also feminine,
indescribably vindictive and malicious.

Conan jerked his head to catch the direction of the sounds. Then he
began examining the drapes behind the arches to see which of them
concealed doors.

Zeriti straightened up from her task and dropped the heavy whip. The
naked figure bound to the divan was crossed by red weals from neck to
ankles. This, however, was but a prelude to a more ghastly fate.

The witch took from a cabinet a piece of charcoal, with which she drew
a complex figure on the floor, adding words in the mysterious glyphs of
the serpent-folk who ruled Stygia before the Cataclysm. She set a small
golden lamp at each of the five corners of the figure and tossed into
the flame of each a pinch of the pollen of the purple lotus, which
grows in the swamps of southern Stygia, A strange smell, sickeningly
sweet, pervaded the chamber. Then she began to incant in a language
that was old before purple-towered Python rose in the lost empire of
Acheron, over three thousand years before.

Slowly a dark something took form. To Rufia, half dead with pain and
fright, it seemed like a pillar of cloud. High up in the amorphous mass
appeared a pair of glowing points that might have been eyes. Rufia felt
an all-pervading cold, as if the thing were drawing all the heat out of
her body by its mere presence. The cloud gave the impression of being
black without much density. Rufia could see the wall behind it through
the shapeless mass, which slowly thickened.

Zeriti bent and snuffed out the lamps—one, two, three, four. The room,
lit by the remaining lamp, was now dim. The pillar of smoke was hardly
discernible except for the glowing eyes.

A sound made Zeriti turn: a distant, muffled roar, faint and far-off
but of vast volume. It was the bestial howling of many men.

Zeriti resumed her incantation, but there came another interruption:
angry words and the voice of the Zuagir, a cry, the crunch of a savage
blow, and the thud of a body. Imbalayo burst in, a wild-looking figure
with his eyeballs and teeth gleaming in the light of the single lamp
and blood dripping from his scimitar.

"Dog!" exclaimed the Stygian, drawing herself up like a serpent from
its coil. "What do you here?"

The woman you took from me!" roared Imbalayo. "The city has risen and
all Hell is loose! Give me the woman before I kill you!"

Zeriti glanced at her rival and drew a jeweled dagger, crying: "Hotep!
Khafra! Help me!"

With a roar, the black general lunged. The Stygian's supple quickness
was futile; the broad blade plunged through her body, standing out a
foot between her shoulders. With a choking cry she stumbled, and the
Kushite wrenched his scimitar free as she fell. At that instant Conan
appeared at the door, sword in hand.

Evidently taking the Cimmerian for one of the witch's servants, the
Kushite bounded across the floor, his saber whistling in a fearful
slash. Conan leaped back; the sword missed his throat by a finger's
breadth and nicked the doorframe. As he leaped, Conan struck backhanded
in return. It was incredible that the black giant should recover from
his missed cut in time to parry, but Imbalayo somehow twisted his body,
arm, and blade all at once to catch a blow that would have felled a
lesser man by sheer impact.

Back and forth they surged, swords clanging. Then recognition dawned in
Imbalayo's features. He fell back with a cry of "Amra!"

Now Conan knew that he must kill this man. Though he did not remember
ever seeing him before, the Kushite had recognized him as the leader of
a crew of black corsairs who, under the name of Amra, the Lion, had
plundered the coasts of Kush and Stygia and Shem. If Imbalayo revealed
Conan's identity to the Pelishtim, the vengeful Shemites would tear
Conan apart with their bare hands if need be. Bitterly though the
Shemites fought among themselves, they would unite to destroy the
red-handed barbarian who had raided their coast.

Conan lunged and drove Imbalayo back a step, feinted, and struck at the
Kushite's head. The force of the blow beat down Imbalayo's scimitar and
came down stunningly on the bronze helmet—and Conan's sword, weakened
by deep notches in the blade, broke off short.

For the space of two heartbeats, the two barbarian-warriors confronted
each other. Imbalayo's bloodshot eyes sought a vulnerable spot on
Conan's form; his muscles tensed for a final, fatal spring and slash.

Conan hurled his hilt at Imbalayo's head. As the Kushite ducked the
missile, Conan whirled his cloak around his left forearm and snatched
out his poniard with his right hand. He had no illusions about his
chances with Imbalayo in this Zingaran-style fighting. The Kushite, now
stalking forward on the balls of his feet like a cat, was no
slow-moving mountain of muscle like Keluka, but a superbly-thewed
fighting machine almost as lightning-fast as Conan himself. The
scimitar whipped up…

And a shapeless mass of cloudy something, hitherto unnoticed in the
gloom, swept forward and fastened itself on Imbalayo's back. Imbalayo
screamed like a man being roasted alive. He kicked and squirmed and
tried to reach back with his sword. But the luminous eyes glowed over
his shoulder and the smoky substance lapped around him, drawing him
slowly backwards.

Conan reeled back from the sight, his barbarian's fears of the
supernatural rising like a choking lump in his throat.

Imbalayo's shrieks ceased. The black body slid to the ground with a
soft, squashy sound. The cloudy thing was gone.

Conan advanced cautiously. Imbalayo's body had a curiously pallid,
collapsed appearance, as if the demon had extracted all the bones and
blood, leaving only a man-shaped bag of skin with a few organs inside
it. The Cimmerian shuddered.

A sob from the divan called his attention to Rufia. With two strides he
reached her and cut her bonds. She sat up, weeping silently, when a
voice shouted:

"Imbalayo! In the name of all the fiends, where are you? It's time to
mount and ride! I saw you run in here!"

A mailed and helmeted figure dashed into the chamber. Mazdak recoiled
at the sight of the bodies and cried: "Oh, you cursed savage, why must
you slay Imbalayo at this time? The city has risen. The Anakim are
fighting the Kushites, who had their hands full already. I ride with my
men to aid the Kushites. As for you—I still owe you my life, but
there's a limit to all things! Get out of this city and never let me
see you again!"

Conan grinned. "It wasn't I who killed him, but one of Zeriti's demons
after he slew the witch. Look at his body if you don't believe me." As
Mazdak bent to see, Conan added: "And have you no greeting for your old
friend Rufia?"

Rufia had been cowering behind Conan. Mazdak plucked at his mustache.
"Good. I'll take her back to my house; we have—"

The distant roaring of the mob became louder.

"No," said Mazdak distractedly. "I must go to put down the sedition.
But how can I leave her to wander the streets naked?"

Conan said: "Why not throw in your lot with the Anakim, who will be as
glad to get rid of this mad king as are the Asgalunim? With Imbalayo
and Othbaal dead, you're the only general alive in Asgalun. Become
leader of the revolt, put down the crazy Akhirom, and set some feeble
cousin or nephew in his place. Then you'll be the real ruler of
Pelishtia!"

Mazdak, listening like a man in a dream, gave a sudden shout of
laughter. "Done!" he cried. "To horse! Take Rufia to my house, then
join the Hyrkanians in battle. Tomorrow I shall rule Pelishtia, and you
may ask of me what you will. Farewell for now!"

Off went the Hyrkanian with a swirl of his cloak. Conan turned to
Rufia. "Get some clothes, wench."

"Who are you? I heard Imbalayo call you Amra…"

"Don't say that name in Shem! I am Conan, a Cimmerian."

"Conan? I heard you spoken of when I was intimate with the king. Do not
take me to Mazdak's house!"

"Why not? He'll be the real ruler of Pelishtia."

"I know that cold snake too well. Take me with you instead! Let's loot
this house and flee the city. With all this uproar, nobody will stop
us."

Conan grinned. "You tempt me, Rufia, but it's worth too much to me
right now to keep on Mazdak's good side. Besides, I told him I would
deliver you, and I like to keep my word. Now get into a garment or I'll
drag you as you are."

"Well," said Rufia in a temporizing tone, but then stopped.

A gurgling sound came from the sprawled body of Zeriti. As Conan
watched with his hair standing up in horror, the witch slowly rose to a
sitting position, despite a wound that any fighter would have said
would be instantly fatal. She struggled to her feet and stood, swaying,
regarding Conan and Rufia. A little blood ran down from the wounds in
her back and chest. When she spoke, it was in a voice choked with
blood.

"It takes—more than—a sword-thrust—to kill—a daughter of Set." She
reeled towards the door. In the doorway she turned back to gasp: "The
Asgalunim—will be interested to know—that Amra and his woman—are in
their city."

Conan stood irresolutely, knowing that for his own safety he ought to
rush upon the witch and hew her in pieces, but restrained by his rude
barbarian's chivalry from attacking a woman.

"Why bother us?" he burst out. "You can have your mad king back!"

Zeriti shook her head. "I know—what Mazdak plans. And ere I quit this
body—for good—I will have—my revenge—on this drab."

"Then—" growled Conan, snatching up Imbalayo's scimitar and starting
towards the witch. But Zeriti made a gesture and spoke a word. A line
of flame appeared across the floor between Conan and the doorway,
extending from wall to wall. Conan recoiled, throwing up a hand to
shade his face from the fierce heat. Then Zeriti was gone.

"After her!" cried Rufia. "The fire is but one of her illusions."

"But if she can't be killed—"

"Nevertheless, heads do not tell secrets when sundered from their
bodies."

Grimly, Conan rushed for the exit, leaping across the line of flame.
There was an instant of heat, and then the flames vanished as he passed
through them.

"Wait here!" he barked at Rufia, and ran after Zeriti.

But when he reached the street, there was no witch to be seen. He ran
to the nearest alley and looked up it, then to the alley in the
opposite direction. Still there was no sign of her.

In seconds he was back in Zeriti's house. "You were right the first
time," he grunted at Rufia. "Let's grab what we can and go."

In the great Square of Adonis, the tossing torches blazed on a swirl of
straining figures, screaming horses, and lashing blades. Men fought
hand-to-hand: Kushites and Shemites, gasping, cursing, and dying. Like
madmen the Asgalunim grappled the black warriors, dragging them from
their saddles, slashing the girths of the frenzied horses. Rusty pikes
clanged against lances. Fire burst out here and there, mounting into
the skies until the shepherds on the Libnun Hills gaped in wonder. From
the suburbs poured a torrent of figures converging on the great square.
Hundreds of still shapes, in mail or striped robes, lay under the
trampling hooves, and over them the living screamed and hacked.

The square lay in the Kushite quarter, into which the Anakim had come
ravening while the bulk of the Negroes had been fighting the mob
elsewhere. Now withdrawn in haste to their own quarter, the ebony
swordsmen were overwhelming the Anakian infantry by sheer numbers,
while the mob threatened to engulf both bodies. Under their captain,
Bombaata, the Kushites retained a semblance of order that gave them an
advantage over the unorganized Anakim and the leaderless mob. Their
squadrons clattered back and forth across the square, charging to keep
a space clear in the midst of he swarming thousands, so that they could
use their horses to advantage.

Meanwhile the maddened Asgalunim were smashing and plundering the
houses of the blacks, dragging forth howling women. The blaze of
burning buildings made the square swim in an ocean of fire, while the
shrieks of their women and children as they were torn to pieces by the
Shemites made the Negroes fight with even more than their usual
ferocity.

Somewhere arose the whir of Hyrkanian kettledrums above the throb of
many hooves.

"The Hyrkanians at last!" panted Bombaata. "They've loitered long
enough. And where in Derketa's name is Imbalayo?"

Into the square raced a frantic horse, foam flying from its bit rings.
The rider, reeling in the saddle, screamed: "Bombaata! Bombaata!" as he
clung to the mane with bloody hands.

"Here, fool!" roared the Kushite, catching the other's bridle.

"Imbalayo is dead!" shrieked the man above the roar of the flames and
the rising thunder of the kettledrums. "The Hyrkanians have turned
against us! They have slain our brothers in the palaces! Here they
come!"

With a deafening thunder of hooves and drums, the squadrons of mailed
lancers burst upon the square, riding down friend and foe. Bombaata saw
the lean, exultant face of Mazdak beneath the blazing arc of his
scimitar, and then a sword fell and the Kushite with it.

On the rocky spurs of Libnun the herdsmen watched and shivered, and the
clangor of swords was heard miles up the river, where pallid nobles
trembled in their gardens. Hemmed in by mailed Hyrkanians, furious
Anakim, and shrieking Asgalunim, the Kushites died fighting to a man.

It was the mob that first turned its attention to Akhirom. They rushed
through the unguarded gates into the inner city, and through the great
bronze doors of the East Palace. Ragged hordes streamed yelling down
the corridors through the Golden Gates into the great Golden Hall,
tearing aside the curtain of cloth-of-gold to reveal an empty throne.
Silken tapestries were ripped from the walls by grimed and bloody
fingers. Sardonyx tables were overthrown with a clatter of golden
vessels. Eunuchs in crimson robes fled squeaking, and slave-girls
shrieked in the hands of ravishers.

In the Great Emerald Hall, King Akhlrom stood like a statue on a
fur-strewn dais, his white hands twitching. At the entrance to the hall
clustered a handful of his faithful servants, beating back the mob with
swords. A band of Anakim plowed through the throng and burst the
barrier of black slaves. As the wedge of swarthy Shemitish soldiers
clattered forward, Akhirom seemed to come to himself. He dashed to an
exit in the rear. Anakim and Pelishtim, mingling as they ran, chased
the fleeing king. After them came a band of Hyrkanians with the
blood-splashed Mazdak at their head.

Akhirom ran down a corridor, then turned aside to dash up a winding
stair. The stair curled up and up until it came out on the roof of the
palace. But it did not stop there; it continued on up into the slender
spire that rose from the roof, from which Akhlrom's father, King
Azumelek, had observed the stars.

Up went Akhlrom, and after him came the pursuers, until the stair
became so narrow that only one man could negotiate it, and the pursuit
slowed for lack of breath.

King Akhirom came out on the small circular platform at the top of the
tower, surrounded by a low wall. He slammed down the stone trapdoor and
bolted it. Then he leaned over the wall. Men swarmed on the roof, and
below them others gazed up from the main courtyard.

"Sinful mortals!" screeched Akhirom. "You do not believe I am a god! I
will show you! I am not bound to the surface of the earth as worms like
you are, but can soar through the heavens like a bird! You shall see,
and then you will bow down and worship me as you ought! Here I go!"

Akhirom climbed to the top of the wall, balanced an instant, and dove
off, spreading his arms like wings. His body described a long, steep
parabola downward, missing the edge of the roof and plunging on down,
the wind whistling in his garments, until he struck the stones of the
courtyard below with the sound of a melon hit by a sledgehammer.

Not even the extermination of the Kushites and the death of Akhirom
brought peace to troubled Asgalun. Other mobs roamed the city, incited
by a mysterious rumor that Amra, the pirate chief of the black
corsairs, was there, and that the Ophirean woman Rufia was with him.
The rumors grew and changed with each retelling until men said that
Amra had sent Rufia to Asgalun as a spy for the pirates, and that a
pirate navy was waiting off the coast for word from Amra to march
overland against the city. But, though they combed the whole town over,
no sign did the searchers find of Amra and his doxy.

North from Asgalun, through the meadowlands of western Shem, ran the
long road to Koth. Along this road, as the sun rose, Conan and Rufia
rode at a canter. Conan bestrode his own horse; the Ophirean woman, a
riderless horse which Conan had caught on the streets of Asgalun that
night. She wore clothes from the chests of Zeriti— tight for her full
figure, but adequate.

Rufia said: "If you had stayed in Asgalun, Conan, you could have risen
high under Mazdak."

"And who begged me not to turn her back to him?"

"I know. He was a cold, unfeeling master. But…"

"Besides, I rather liked the fellow. If I had stayed there, sooner or
later one of us would have had to kill the other over you." The
Cimmerian chuckled and slapped the bag of loot from Zeriti's house, so
that the coins and ornaments jingled. "I shall do as well in the North.
Come on there, beat some speed out of that nag!"

"But I'm still sore where she beat me—"

"If you don't hurry, I'll see that you get even sorer. Do you want
Mazdak's Hyrkanians to catch us before we've even had breakfast?"


Black Colossus
--------------

Rufia's interest seems to have lasted no longer than the loot that
Conan brought from Asgalun, or he may have traded her for a better
horse before taking service under Amalric of Nemedia, mercenary general
of Queen-Regent Yasmela of the little border kingdom of Khoraja, Here
he soon works his way up to the rank of captain. Yasmela's brother, the
king of Khoraja, is a prisoner in Ophir, and her borders are assailed
by nomadic forces gathered by a mysterious veiled sorcerer, Natohk.

"The Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the
world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite—"

—E. Hoffmann Price, The Girl from Samarcand

Chapter One

Only the age-old silence brooded over the mysterious ruins of
Kuthchemes, but Fear was there; Fear quivered in the mind of Shevatas,
the thief, driving his breath quick and sharp against his clenched
teeth.

He stood, the one atom of life admidst the colossal monuments of
desolation and decay. Not even a vulture hung like a black dot in the
vast blue vault of the sky that the sun glazed with its heat. On every
hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken
pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long,
wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen cyclopean blocks of stone;
shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust
storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life: only
the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the
wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the midst of that
vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up
like broken masts of sunken ships—all dominated by the towering ivory
dome before which Shevatas stood trembling.

The base of this dome was a gigantic pedestal of marble, rising from
what had once been a terraced eminence on the banks of the ancient
river. Broad steps led up to a great bronze door in the dome, which
rested on its base like the half of some titanic egg. The dome itself
was of pure ivory, which shone as if unknown hands kept it polished.
Likewise shone the spired gold cap of the pinnacle, and the inscription
which sprawled about the curve of the dome in golden hieroglyphics
yards long. No man on earth could read those characters, but Shevatas
shuddered at the dim conjectures they raised. For he came of a very old
race, whose myths ran back to shapes undreamed of by contemporary
tribes.

Shevatas was wiry and lithe, as became a master thief of Zamora. His
small, round head was shaven, his only garment a loincloth of scarlet
silk. Like all his race, he was very dark, his narrow vulture-like face
set off by his keen black eyes. His long, slender, and tapering fingers
were quick and nervous as the wings of a moth. From a gold-scaled
girdle hung a short, narrow, jewel-hilted sword in a sheath of
ornamented leather. Shevatas handled the weapon with apparently
exaggerated care. He even seemed to flinch away from the contact of the
sheath with his naked thigh. Nor was his care without reason.

This was Shevatas, a thief among thieves, whose name was spoken with
awe in the dives of the Maul and the dim shadowy recesses beneath the
temples of Bel, and who lived in songs and myths for a thousand years.
Yet fear ate at the heart of Shevatas as he stood before the ivory dome
of Kuthchemes. Any fool could see there was something unnatural about
the structure; the winds and suns of three thousand years had lashed
it, yet its gold and ivory rose bright and glistening as the day it was
reared by nameless hands on the bank of the nameless river.

This unnaturalness was in keeping with the general aura of these
devil-haunted ruins. This desert was the mysterious expanse lying
southeast of the lands of Shem. A few days' ride on camel back to the
southwest, as Shevatas knew, would bring the traveler within sight of
the great river Styx at the point where it turned at right angles with
its former course and flowed westward to empty at last into the distant
sea. At the point of its bend began the land of Stygia, the
dark-bosomed mistress of the South, whose domains, watered by the great
river, rose sheer out of the surrounding desert.

Eastward, Shevatas knew, the desert shaded into steppes stretching to
the Hyrkanian kingdom of Turan, rising in barbaric splendor on the
shores of the great inland sea. A week's ride northward, the desert ran
into a tangle of barren hills, beyond which lay the fertile uplands of
Koth, the southernmost realm of the Hyborian races. Westward the desert
merged into the meadowlands of Shem, which stretched away to the ocean.

All this Shevatas knew without being particularly conscious of the
knowledge, as a man knows the streets of his town. He was a far
traveler and had looted the treasures of many kingdoms. But now he
hesitated and shuddered before the highest adventure and the mightiest
treasure of all.

In that ivory dome lay the bones of Thugra Khotan, the dark sorcerer
who had reigned in Kuthchemes three thousand years ago, when the
kingdoms of Stygia and Acheron stretched far northward of the great
river, over the meadows of Shem, and into the uplands. Then the great
drift of the Hyborians swept southward from the cradleland of their
race near the northern pole. It was a titanic drift, extending over
centuries and ages. But in the reign of Thugra Khotan, the last
magician of Kuthchemes, gray-eyed, tawny-haired barbarians in wolfskins
and scale mail had ridden from the North into the rich uplands to carve
out the kingdom of Koth with their iron swords. They had stormed-over
Kuthchemes like a tidal wave, washing the marble towers in blood, and
the kingdom of Acheron had gone down in fire and ruin.

But while they were shattering the streets of this city and cutting
down his archers like ripe corn, Thugra Khotan had swallowed a strange
terrible poison, and his masked priests had locked him into the tomb he
himself had prepared. His devotees died about that tomb in a crimson
holocaust, but the barbarians could not burst the door, nor ever mar
the structure by maul or fire. So they rode away, leaving the great
city in ruins, and in his ivory-domed sepulcher great Thugra Khotan
slept unmolested, while the lizards of desolation gnawed at the
crumbling pillars, and the very river that watered his land in old
times sank into the sands and ran dry.

Many a thief sought to gain the treasure which fables said lay heaped
about the moldering bones inside the dome. And many a thief died at the
door of the tomb, and many another was harried by monstrous dreams to
die at last with the froth of madness on his lips.

So Shevatas shuddered as he faced the tomb, nor was his shudder
altogether occasioned by the legend of the serpent said to guard the
sorcerer's bones. Over all myths of Thugra Khotan hung horror and death
like a pall. From where the thief stood he could see the ruins of the
great hall wherein chained captives had knelt by the hundreds during
festivals to have their heads hacked off by the priest-king in honor of
Set, the Serpent god of Stygia. Somewhere near by had been the pit,
dark and awful, wherein screaming victims were fed to a nameless
amorphic monstrosity, which came up out of a deeper, more hellish
cavern. Legend made Thugra Khotan more than human; his worship yet
lingered in a mongrel degraded cult, whose votaries stamped his
likeness on coins to pay the way of their dead over the great river of
darkness of which the Styx was but the material shadow. Shevatas had
seen this likeness, on coins stolen from under the tongues of the dead,
and its image was etched indelibly in his brain.

But he put aside his fears and mounted to the bronze door, whose smooth
surface offered no bolt or catch. Not for naught had he gained access
into darksome cults, had barkened to the grisly whispers of the
votaries of Skelos under midnight trees, and read the forbidden
iron-bound books of Vathelos the Blind.

Kneeling before the portal, he searched the sill with nimble fingers;
their sensitive tips found projections too small for the eye to detect
or for less-skilled fingers to discover. These he pressed carefully and
according to a peculiar system, muttering a long-forgotten incantation
as he did so. As he pressed the last projection, he sprang up with
frantic haste and struck the exact center of the door a quick sharp
blow with his open hand.

There was no rasp of spring or hinge, but the door retreated inward,
and the breath hissed explosively from Shevatas' clenched teeth. A
short, narrow corridor was disclosed. Down this the door had slid and
was now in place at the other end. The floor, ceiling, and sides of the
tunnel-like aperture were of ivory, and now from an opening on one side
came a silent writhing horror that reared up and glared on the intruder
with awful luminous eyes: a serpent twenty feet long, with shimmering,
iridescent scales.

The thief did not waste time in conjecturing what night-black pits
lying below the dome had given sustenance to the monster. Gingerly he
drew the sword, and from it dripped a greenish liquid exactly like that
which slavered from the scimitar-fangs of the reptile. The blade was
steeped in the poison of the snake's own land, and the obtaining of
that venom from the fiend-haunted swamps of Zingara would have made a
saga in itself.

Shevatas advanced warily on the balls of his feet, knees bent slightly,
ready to spring either way like a flash of light. And he needed all his
coordinate speed when the snake arched its neck and struck, shooting
out its full length like a stroke of lightning. For all his quickness
of nerve and eye, Shevatas had died then but for chance. His well-laid
plans of leaping aside and striking down on the outstretched neck were
put at naught by the blinding speed of the reptile's attack. The thief
had but time to extend the sword in front of him, involuntarily closing
his eyes and crying out. Then the sword was wrenched from his hand and
the corridor was filled with a horrible thrashing and lashing.

Opening his eyes, amazed to find himself still alive, Shevatas saw the
monster heaving and twisting its slimy form in fantastic contortions,
the sword transfixing its giant jaws. Sheer chance had hurled it full
against the point he had held out blindly. A few moments later the
serpent sank into shining, scarcely quivering coils, as the poison on
the blade struck home.

Gingerly stepping over it, the thief thrust against the door, which
this time slid aside, revealing the interior of the dome. Shevatas
cried out; instead of utter darkness he had come into a crimson light
that throbbed and pulsed almost beyond the endurance of mortal eyes. It
came from a gigantic red jewel high up in the vaulted arch of the dome.
Shevatas gaped, inured though he was to the sight of riches. The
treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion—piles of diamonds,
sapphires, rabies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; zikkurats of jade, jet,
and lapis lazuli; pyramids of gold wedges; teocallis of silver ingots;
jewel-hilted swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with
colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plumes; silver-scaled
corselets; gem-crusted harness worn by warrior-kings three thousand
years in their tombs; goblets carven of single jewels; skulls plated
with gold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with
jewels. The ivory floor was covered inches deep with gold dust that
sparkled and shimmered under the crimson glow with a million
scintillant lights. The thief stood in a wonderland of magic and
splendor, treading stars under his sandaled feet.

But his eyes were focused on the dais of crystal which rose in the
midst of the shimmering array, directly under the red jewel, and on
which should be lying the moldering bones, turning to dust with the
crawling of the centuries. And as Shevatas looked, the blood drained
from his dark features; his marrow turned to ice, and the skin of his
back crawled and wrinkled with horror, while his lips worked
soundlessly. But suddenly he found his voice in one awful scream that
rang hideously under the arching dome. Then again the silence of the
ages lay among the ruins of mysterious Kuthchemes.

Chapter Two

Rumors drifted up through the meadowlands, into the cities of the
Hyborians. The word ran along the caravans, the long camel trains
plodding through the sands, herded by lean, hawk-eyed men in white
kaftans. It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsmen of the grasslands,
from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat stone cities,
where kings with curled blue-black beards worshipped round-bellied gods
with curious rites. The word passed up through the fringe of hills,
where gaunt tribesmen took toll of the caravans. The rumors came into
the fertile uplands, where stately cities rose above blue lakes and
rivers: the rumors marched along the broad white roads thronged with
ox-wains, with lowing herds, with rich merchants, knights in steel,
archers, and priests.

They were rumors from the desert that lies east of Stygia, far south of
the Kothian hills. A new prophet had risen among the nomads. Men spoke
of tribal war, of a gathering of vultures in the southeast, and a
terrible leader who led his swiftly increasing hordes to victory. The
Stygians, ever a menace to the northern nations, were apparently not
connected with this movement; for they were massing armies on their
eastern borders and their priests were making magic to fight that of
the desert sorcerer, whom men called Natohk, the Veiled One; for his
features were always masked.

But the tide swept northwestward, and the blue-bearded kings died
before the altars of their potbellied gods, and their squat-walled
cities were drenched in blood. Men said that the uplands of the
Hyborians were the goal of Natohk and his chanting votaries.

Raids from the desert were not uncommon, but this latest movement
seemed to promise more than a raid. Rumor said Natohk had welded thirty
nomadic tribes and fifteen cities into his following, and that a
rebellious Stygian prince had joined him. This latter lent the affair
an aspect of real war.

Characteristically, most of the Hyborian nations were prone to ignore
the growing menace. But in Khoraja, carved out of Shemite lands by the
swords of Kothic adventurers, heed was given. Lying southeast of Koth,
it would bear the brunt of the invasion. And its young king was captive
to the treacherous king of Ophir, who hesitated between restoring him
for a huge ransom, or handing him over to his enemy, the penurious king
of Koth, who offered no gold, but an advantageous treaty. Meanwhile,
the rule of the struggling kingdom was in the white hands of young
princess Yasmela, the king's sister.

Minstrels sang her beauty throughout the western world, and the pride
of a kingly dynasty was hers. But on that night her pride was dropped
from her like a cloak. In her chamber whose ceiling was a lapis lazuli
dome, whose marble floor was littered with rare furs, and whose walls
were lavish with golden frieze work, ten girls, daughters of nobles,
their slender limbs weighted with gem-crusted armlets and anklets,
slumbered on velvet couches about the royal bed with its golden dais
and silken canopy. But princess Yasmela lolled not on that silken bed.
She lay naked on her supple belly upon the bare marble like the most
abased suppliant, her dark hair streaming over her white shoulders, her
slender fingers intertwined. She lay and writhed in pure horror that
froze the blood in her lithe limbs and dilated her beautiful eyes, that
pricked the roots of her dark hair and made goose-flesh rise along her
supple spine.

Above her, in the darkest corner of the marble chamber, lurked a vast,
shapeless shadow. It was no living thing of form or flesh and blood. It
was a clot of darkness, a blur in the sight, a monstrous night-born
incubus that might have been deemed a figment of a sleep-drugged brain
but for the points of blazing yellow fire that glimmered like two eyes
from the blackness.

Moreover, a voice issued from it—a low, subtle, inhuman sibilance that
was more like the soft, abominable hissing of a serpent than anything
else, and that apparently could not emanate from anything with human
lips. Its sound as well as its import filled Yasmela with a shuddering
horror so intolerable that she writhed and twisted her slender body as
if beneath a lash, as though to rid her mind of its insinuating
vileness by physical contortion.

"You are marked for mine, princess," came the gloating whisper. "Before
I wakened from the long sleep I had marked you and yearned for you, but
I was held fast by the ancient spell by which I escaped mine enemies. I
am the soul of Natohk, the Veiled One! Look well upon me, princess!
Soon you shall behold me in my bodily guise and shall love me!"

The ghostly hissing dwindled off in lustful titterings, and Yasmela
moaned and beat the marble tiles with her small fists in her ecstasy of
terror.

"I sleep in the palace chamber of Akbitana," the sibilances continued.
"There my body lies in its frame of bones and flesh. Yet it is but an
empty shell from which the spirit has flown for a brief space. Could
you gaze from that palace casement, you would realize the futility of
resistance. The desert is a rose garden beneath the moon, where blossom
the fires of a hundred thousand warriors. As an avalanche sweeps
onward, gathering bulk and momentum, I will sweep into the lands of
mine ancient enemies. Their kings shall furnish me skulls for goblets,
their women and children shall be slaves of my slaves' slaves. I have
grown strong in the long years of dreaming…

"But thou shalt be my queen, O princess! I will teach thee the ancient
forgotten ways of pleasure. We———" Before the stream of cosmic
obscenity which poured from the shadowy colossus, Yasmela cringed and
writhed as if from a whip that flayed her dainty bare flesh.

"Remember!" whispered the horror. "The days will not be many before I
come to claim mine own!"

Yasmela, pressing her face against the tiles and stopping her pink ears
with her dainty fingers, yet seemed to hear a strange sweeping noise,
like the beat of batwings. Then, looking fearfully up, she saw only the
moon that shone through the window with a beam that rested like a
silver sword across the spot where the phantom had lurked. Trembling in
every limb, she rose and staggered to a satin couch, where she threw
herself down, weeping hysterically. The girls slept on; but one, who
roused, yawned, stretched her slender figure, and blinked about.
Instantly she was on her knees beside the couch, her arms about
Yasmela's supple waist.

"Was it—was it———?" her dark eyes were wide with fright. Yasmela caught
her in a convulsive grasp.

"Oh, Valeesa, It came again! I saw It—heard It speak! It spoke Its
name—Natohk! It is Natohk! It is not a nightmare—it towered over me
while the girls slept like drugged ones. What—oh, what shall I do?"

Vateesa twisted a golden bracelet about her rounded arm, in meditation.

"O Princess," she said, "it is evident that no mortal power can deal
with It; and the charm is useless that the priests of Ishtar gave you.
Therefore seek you the forgotten oracle of Mitra."

In spite of her recent fright, Yasmela shuddered. The gods of yesterday
become the devils of tomorrow. The Kothians had long since abandoned
the worship of Mitra, forgetting the attributes of the universal
Hyborian god. Yasmela had a vague idea that, being very ancient, it
followed that the deity was very terrible. Ishtar was much to be
feared, and all the gods of Koth. Kothian culture and religion had
suffered from a subtle admixture of Shemite and Stygian strains. The
simple ways of the Hyborians had become modified to a large extent by
the sensual, luxurious, yet despotic habits of the East.

"Will Mitra aid me?" Yasmela caught Vateesa's wrist in her eagerness.
"We have worshipped Ishtar so long———

"To be sure he will!" Vateesa was the daughter of an Ophirean priest
who had brought his customs with him when he fled from political
enemies to Khoraja. "Seek the shrine! I will go with you."

"I will!" Yasmela rose, but objected when Vateesa prepared to dress
her. "It is not fitting that I come before the shrine clad in silk. I
will go naked, on my knees, as befits a suppliant, lest Mitra deem I
lack humility."

"Nonsense!" Vateesa had scant respect for the ways of what she deemed a
false cult. "Mitra would have folks stand upright before him—not
crawling on their bellies like worms, or spilling blood of animals all
over his altars."

Thus objurgated, Yasmela allowed the girl to garb her in the light,
sleeveless silk shirt, over which was slipped a silken tunic, bound at
the waist by a wide velvet girdle.

Satin slippers were put upon her slender feet, and a few deft touches
of Vateesa's pink fingers arranged her dark, wavy tresses. Then the
princess followed the girl, who drew aside a heavy, gilt-worked
tapestry and threw the golden bolt of the door it concealed. This let
into a narrow winding corridor, and down this the two girls went
swiftly, through another door and into a broad hallway. Here stood a
guardsman in crested gilt helmet, silvered cuirass, and gold-chased
greaves, with a long-shafted battle-ax in his hands.

A motion from Yasmela checked his exclamation, and saluting, he took
his stand again beside the doorway, motionless as a brazen image. The
girls traversed the hallway, which seemed immense and eery in the light
of the cressets along the lofty walls and went down a stairway where
Yasmela shivered at the blots of shadows which hung in the angles of
the walls. Three levels down, they halted at last in a narrow corridor
whose arched ceiling was crusted with jewels, whose floor was set with
blocks of crystal, and whose walls were decorated with golden frieze
work. Down this shining way they stole, holding hands, to a wide portal
of gilt.

Vateesa thrust open the door, revealing a shrine long forgotten except
by a faithful few, and royal visitors to Khoraja's court, mainly for
whose benefit the fane was maintained. Yasmela had never entered it
before, though she was bora in the palace. Plain and unadorned in
comparison to the lavish display of Ishtar's shrines, there was about
it a simplicity of dignity and beauty characteristic of the Mitran
religion.

The ceiling was lofty, but it was not domed and was of plain white
marble, as were the walls and floor, the former with a narrow gold
frieze running about them. Behind an altar of clear green jade,
unstained with sacrifice, stood the pedestal whereon sat the material
manifestation of the deity. Yasmela looked in awe at the sweep of the
magnificent shoulders, the clear-cut features—the wide straight eyes,
the patriarchal beard, the thick curls of the hair, confined by a
simple band about the temples. This, though she did not know it, was
art in its highest form—the free, uncramped artistic expression of a
highly aesthetic race, unhampered by conventional symbolism.

She fell on her knees and thence prostrate, regardless of Vateesa's
admonition, and Vateesa, to be on the safe side, followed her example;
for after all, she was only a girl, and it was very awesome in Mitra's
shrine. But even so she could not refrain from whispering in Yasmela's
ear.

"This is but the emblem of the god. None pretends to know what Mitra
looks like. This but represents him in idealized human form, as near
perfection as the human mind can conceive. He does not inhabit this
cold stone, as your priests tell you Ishtar does. He is everywhere—
above us, and about us, and he dreams betimes in the high places among
the stars. But here his being focuses. Therefore call upon him."

"What shall I say?" whispered Yasmela in stammering terror.

"Before you can speak, Mitra knows the contents of your mind———" began
Vateesa. Then both girls started violently as a voice began in the air
above them. The deep, calm, bell-like tones emanated no more from the
image than from anywhere else in the chamber. Again Yasmela trembled
before a bodiless voice speaking to her, but this time it was not from
horror or repulsion.

"Speak not, my daughter, for I know your need," came the intonations
like deep musical waves beating rhythmically along a golden beach. "In
one manner may you save your kingdom and, saving it, save all the world
from the fangs of the serpent which has crawled up out of the darkness
of the ages. Go forth upon the streets alone, and place your kingdom in
the hands of the first man you meet there."

The unechoing tones ceased, and the girls stared at each other. Then,
rising, they stole forth, nor did they speak until they stood once more
in Yasmela's chamber. The princess stared out of the gold-barred
windows. The moon had set. It was long past midnight. Sounds of revelry
had died away in the gardens and on the roofs of the city. Khoraja
slumbered beneath the stars, which seemed to be reflected in the
cressets that twinkled among the gardens and along the streets and on
the flat roofs of houses where folk slept.

"What will you do?" whispered Vateesa, all a-tremble.

"Give me my cloak," answered Yasmela, setting her teeth.

"But alone, in the streets, at this hour!" expostulated Vateesa.

"Mitra has spoken," replied the princess. "It might have been the voice
of the god, or a trick of a priest. No matter. I will go!"

Wrapping a voluminous silken cloak about her lithe figure and donning a
velvet cap from which depended a filmy veil, she passed hurriedly
through the corridors and approached a bronze door, where a dozen
spearmen gaped at her as she passed through. This was in a wing of the
palace which let directly onto the street; on all other sides it was
surrounded by broad gardens, bordered by a high wall. She emerged into
the street, lighted by cressets placed at regular intervals.

She hesitated; then, before her resolution could falter, she closed the
door behind her. A slight shudder shook her as she glanced up and down
the street, which lay silent and bare. This daughter of aristocrats had
never before ventured, unattended, outside her ancestral palace. Then,
steeling herself, she went swiftly up the street. Her satin-slippered
feet fell lightly on the pave, but their soft sound brought her heart
into her throat. She imagined their fall echoing thunderously through
the cavernous city, rousing ragged, rat-eyed figures in hidden lairs
among the sewers. Every shadow seemed to hide a lurking assassin, every
blank doorway to mask the slinking hounds of darkness.

Then she started violently. Ahead of her a figure appeared on the eery
street. She drew quickly into a clump of shadows, which now seemed like
a haven of refuge, her pulse pounding. The approaching figure went not
furtively, like a thief, or timidly, like a fearful traveler. He strode
down the nighted street as one who has no need or desire to walk
softly. An unconscious swagger was in his stride, and his footfalls
resounded on the pave. As he passed near a cresset she saw him
plainly—a tall man, in the chain-mail hauberk of a mercenary. She
braced herself, then darted from the shadow, holding her cloak close
about her.

"Sa-ha!" His sword flashed half out of his sheath. It halted when he
saw it was only a woman that stood before him, but his quick glance
went over her head, seeking the shadows for possible confederates.

He stood facing her, his hand on the long hilt that jutted forward from
beneath the scarlet cloak which flowed carelessly from his mailed
shoulders. The torchlight glinted dully on the polished blue steel of
his greaves and basinet. A more baleful fire glittered bluely in his
eyes. At first glance she saw he was no Kothian; when he spoke she knew
he was no Hyborian. He was clad like a captain of the mercenaries, and
in that desperate command there were men of many lands, barbarians as
well as civilized foreigners. There was a wolfishness about this
warrior that marked the barbarian. The eyes of no civilized man,
however wild or criminal, ever blazed with such a fire. Wine scented
his breath, but he neither staggered nor stammered.

"Have they shut you into the street?" he asked in barbarous Kothic,
reaching for her. His fingers closed lightly about her rouned wrist,
but she felt that he could splinter its bones without effort. "I've but
come from the last wineshop open—Ishtar's curse on these white-livered
reformers who close the grog-houses! 'Let men sleep rather than
guzzle,' they say—aye, so they can work and fight better for their
masters! Soft-gutted eunuchs, I call them. When I served with the
mercenaries of Corinthia, we swilled and wenched all night and fought
all day—aye, blood ran down the channels of our swords. But what of
you, my girl? Take off that cursed mask———"

She avoided his clutch with a lithe twist of her body, trying not to
appear to repulse him. She realized her danger, alone with a drunken
barbarian. If she revealed her identity, he might laugh at her, or take
himself off. She was not sure he would not cut her throat. Barbaric men
did strange inexplicable things. She fought a rising fear.

"Not here," she laughed. "Come with me———"

"Where?" His wild blood was up, but he was wary as a wolf. "Are you
taking me to some den of robbers?"

"No, no, I swear it!" She was hard put to avoid the hand which was
again fumbling at her veil.

"Devil bite you, hussy!" he growled disgustedly. "You're as bad as a
Hyrkanian woman, with your damnable veil. Here—let me look at your
figure, anyway!"

Before she could prevent it, he wrenched the cloak from her, and she
heard his breath hiss between his teeth. He stood holding the cloak,
eyeing her as if the sight of her rich garments had somewhat sobered
him. She saw suspicion flicker sullenly in his eyes.

"Who the devil are you?" he muttered. "You're no street waif—unless
your leman robbed the king's seraglio for your clothes."

"Never mind." She dared to lay her white hand on his massive ironclad
arm. "Come with me off the street."

He hesitated, then shrugged his mighty shoulders. She saw that he half
believed her to be some noble lady, who, weary of polite lovers, was
taking this means of amusing herself. He allowed her to don the cloak
again, and followed her. From the corner of her eye she watched him as
they went down the street together. His mail could not conceal his hard
lines of tigerish strength. Everything about him was tigerish,
elemental, untamed. He was alien as the jungle to her in his difference
from the debonair courtiers to whom she was accustomed. She feared him,
told herself she loathed his raw brute strength and unashamed
barbarism, yet something breathless and perilous inside her leaned
toward him; the hidden primitive chord that lurks in every woman's soul
was sounded and responded. She had felt his hardened hand on her arm,
and something deep in her tingled to the memory of that contact. Many
men had knelt before Yasmela. Here was one she felt had never knelt
before any one. Her sensations were those of one leading an unchained
tiger; she. was frightened, and fascinated by her fright.

She halted at the palace door and thrust lightly against it. Furtively
watching her companion, she saw no suspicion in his eyes.

"Palace, eh?" he rumbled. "So you're a maid-in-waiting?"

She found herself wondering, with a strange jealousy, if any of her
maids had ever led this war eagle into her palace. The guards made no
sign as she led him between them, but he eyed them as a fierce dog
might eye a strange pack. She led him through a curtained doorway into
an inner chamber, where he stood, naively scanning the tapestries,
until he saw a crystal jar of wine on an ebony table. This he took up
with a gratified sigh, tilting it toward his lips. Vateesa ran from an
inner room, crying breathlessly, "Oh, my princess———"

"Princess!"

The wine jar crashed to the floor. With a motion too quick for sight to
follow, the mercenary snatched off Yasmela's veil, glaring. He recoiled
with a curse, his sword leaping into his hand with a broad shimmer of
blue steel. His eyes blazed like a trapped tiger's. The air was
supercharged with tension that was like the pause before the bursting
of a storm. Vateesa sank to the floor, speechless with terror, but
Yasmela faced the infuriated barbarian without flinching. She realized
her very life hung in the balance: maddened with suspicion and
unreasoning panic, he was ready to deal death at the slightest
provocation. But she experienced a certain breathless exhilaration in
the crisis.

"Do not be afraid," she said. "I am Yasmela, but there is no reason to
fear me."

"Why did you lead me here?" he snarled, his blazing eyes darting all
about the chamber. "What manner of trap is this?"

"There is no trickery," she answered. "I brought you here because you
can aid me. I called on the gods—on Mitra—and he bade me go into the
streets and ask aid of the first man I met."

This was something he could understand. The barbarians had their
oracles. He lowered his sword, though he did not sheathe it.

"Well, if you're Yasmela, you need aid," he grunted. "Your kingdom's in
a devil of a mess. But how can I aid you? If you want a throat cut, of
course———"

"Sit down," she requested. "Vateesa, bring him wine."

He complied, taking care, she noticed, to sit with his back against a
solid wall, where he could watch the whole chamber. He laid his naked
sword across his mail-sheathed knees. She glanced at it in fascination.
Its dull blue glimmer seemed to reflect tales of bloodshed and rapine;
she doubted her ability to lift it, yet she knew that the mercenary
could wield it with one hand as lightly as she could wield a riding
whip. She noted the breadth and power of his hands; they were not the
stubby undeveloped paws of a troglodyte. With a guilty start she found
herself imagining those strong fingers locked in her dark hair.

He seemed reassured when she deposited herself on a divan opposite him.
He lifted off his basinet and laid it on the table, and drew back his
coif, letting the mail folds fall upon his massive shoulders. She saw
more fully now his unlikeness to the Hyborian races. In his dark,
scarred face there was a suggestion of moodiness; and without being
marked by depravity, or definitely evil, there was more than a
suggestion of the sinister about his features, set off by his
smoldering blue eyes. A low, broad forehead was topped by a square-cut,
tousled mane as black as a raven's wing.

"Who are you?" she asked abruptly.

"Conan, a captain of the mercenary spearmen," he answered, emptying the
wine cup at a gulp and holding it out for more. "I was born in
Cimmeria."

The name meant little to her. She only knew vaguely that it was a wild,
grim hill country, which lay far to the North, beyond the last outposts
of the Hyborian nations, and was peopled by a fierce, moody race. She
had never before seen one of them.

Resting her chin on her hands, she gazed at him with the deep, dark
eyes that had enslaved many a heart.

"Conan of Cimmeria," she said, "you said I needed aid. Why?"

"Well," he answered, "any man can see that. Here is the king your
brother in an Ophirean prison; here is Koth plotting to enslave you;
here is this sorcerer screaming hell-fire and destruction down in
Shem—and what's worse, here are your soldiers deserting every day."

She did not at once reply; it was a new experience for a man to speak
so forthrightly to her, his words not couched in courtier phrases.

"Why are my soldiers deserting, Conan?" she asked.

"Some are being hired away by Koth," he replied, pulling at the wine
jar with relish. "Many think Khoraja is doomed as an independent state.
Many are frightened by tales of this dog Natohk."

"Will the mercenaries stand?" she asked anxiously.

"As long as you pay us well," he answered frankly. "Your politics are
nothing to us. You can trust Amalric, our general, but the rest of us
are only common men who love loot. If you pay the ransom Ophir asks,
men say you'll be unable to pay us. In that case we might go over to
the king of Koth, though that cursed miser is no friend of mine. Or we
might loot this city. In a civil war the plunder is always plentiful."

"Why would you not go over to Natohk?" she inquired.

"What could he pay us?" he snorted. "With fat-bellied brass idols he
looted from the Shemite cities? As long as you're fighting Natohk, you
may trust us."

"Would your comrades follow you?" she asked abruptly.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she answered deliberately, "that I am going to make you
commander of the armies of Khoraja!"

He stopped short, the goblet at his lips, which curved in a broad grin.
His eyes blazed with a new light.

"Commander? Crom! But what will your perfumed nobles say?"

"They will obey me!" She clapped her hands to summon a slave, who
entered, bowing deeply. "Have Count Thespides come to me at once, and
the chancellor Taurus, lord Amalric, and the Agha Shupras.

"I place my trust in Mitra," she said bending her gaze on Conan, who
was now devouring the food placed before him by the trembling Vateesa.
"You have seen much war?"

"I was born in the midst of a battle," he answered, tearing a chunk of
meat from a huge joint with his strong teeth. "The first sound my ears
heard was the clang of swords and the yells of the slaying. I have
fought in blood feuds, tribal wars, and imperial campaigns."

"But can you lead men and arrange battle lines?"

"Well, I can try," he returned imperturbably. "It's no more than
swordplay on a larger scale. You draw his guard, then—stab, slash! And
either his head is off, or yours."

The slave entered again, announcing the arrival of the men sent for,
and Yasmela went into the outer chamber, drawing the velvet curtains
behind her. The nobles bent the knee, in evident surprise at her
summons at such an hour.

"I have summoned you to tell you of my decision," said Yasmela. "The
kingdom is in peril———"

"Right enough, my princess." It was Count Thespides who spoke—a tall
man, whose black locks were curled and scented. With one white hand he
smoothed his pointed mustache, and with the other he held a velvet
chaperon with a scarlet feather fastened by a golden clasp. His pointed
shoes were satin, his cote-hardie of gold-broidered velvet. His manner
was slightly affected, but the thews under his silks were steely. "It
were well to offer Ophir more gold for your royal brother's release."

"I strongly disagree," broke in Taurus the chancellor, an elderly man
in an ermine-fringed robe, whose features were lined with the cares of
his long service. "We have already offered what will beggar the kingdom
to pay. To offer more would further excite Ophir's cupidity. My
princess, I say as I have said before: Ophir will not move until we
have met this invading horde. If we lose, he will give King Khossus to
Koth; if we win, he will doubtless restore his majesty to us on payment
of the ransom."

"And in the meantime," broke in Amalric, "The soldiers desert daily,
and the mercenaries are restless to know why we dally." He was a
Nemedian, a large man with a lion-like yellow mane. "We must move
swiftly, if at all———"

"Tomorrow we march southward," she answered. "And there is the man who
shall lead you!"

Jerking aside the velvet curtains, she dramatically indicated the
Cimmerian. It was perhaps not an entirely happy moment for the
disclosure. Conan was sprawled in his chair, his feet propped on the
ebony table, busily engaged in gnawing a beef bone which he gripped
firmly in both hands. He glanced casually at the astounded nobles,
grinned faintly at Amalric, and went on munching with undisguised
relish.

"Mitra protect us!" exploded Amalric. "That's Conan the northron, the
most turbulent of all my rogues! I'd have hanged him long ago, were he
not the best swordsman that ever donned hauberk———"

"Your highness is pleased to jest!" cried Thespides, his aristocratic
features darkening. "This man is a savage —a fellow of no culture or
breeding! It is an insult to ask gentlemen to serve under him! I———"

"Count Thespides," said Yasmela, "you have my glove under your baldric.
Please give it to me, and then go."

"Go?" he cried, starting. "Go where?"

"To Koth or to Hades!" she answered. "If you will not serve me as I
wish, you shall not serve me at all."

"You wrong me, princess," he answered, bowing low, deeply hurt. "I
would not forsake you. For your sake I will even put my sword at the
disposal of this savage."

"And you, my lord Amalric?"

Amalric swore beneath his breath, then grinned. A true soldier of
fortune, no shift of fortune, however outrageous, surprised him much.

"I'll serve under him. A short life and a merry one, say I—and with
Conan the Throat-slitter in command, life is likely to be both merry
and short. Mitra! If the dog ever commanded more than a company of
cutthroats before, I'll eat him, harness and all!"

"And you, my Agha?" She turned to Shupras.

He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. He was typical of the race
evolved along Koth's southern borders—tall and gaunt, with features
leaner and more hawklike than his purer-blooded desert kin.

"Ishtar gives, princess." The fatalism of his ancestors spoke for him.

"Wait here," she commanded, and while Thespides fumed and gnawed his
velvet cap, Taurus muttered wearily under his breath, and Amalric
strode back and forth, tugging at his yellow beard and grinning like a
hungry lion, Yasmela disappeared again through the curtains and clapped
her hands for her slaves.

At her command they brought harness to replace Conan's chain
mail—gorget, sollerets, cuirass, pauldrons, jambes, cuisses, and
sallet. When Yasmela again drew the curtains, a Conan in burnished
steel stood before his audience. Clad in the plate armor, vizor lifted
and dark face shadowed by the black plumes that nodded above his
helmet, there was a grim impressiveness about him that even Thespides
grudgingly noted. A jest died suddenly on Amalric's lips.

"By Mitra," said he slowly, "I never expected to see you cased in coat
armor, but you do not put it to shame. By my finger bones, Conan, I
have seen kings who wore their harness less regally than you!"

Conan was silent. A vague shadow crossed his mind like a prophecy. In
years to come he was to remember Amalric's words, when the dream became
the reality.

Chapter Three

In the early haze of dawn, the streets of Khoraja were thronged by
crowds of people who watched the hosts riding from the southern gate.
The army was on the move at last. There were the knights, gleaming in
richly wrought plate armor, colored plumes waving above their burnished
sallets. Their steeds, caparisoned with silk, lacquered leather, and
gold buckles, caracoled and curvetted as their riders put them through
their paces. The early light struck glints from lance points that rose
like a forest above the array, their pennons flowing in the breeze.
Each knight wore a lady's token, a glove, scarf, or rose, bound to his
helmet or fastened to his sword belt. They were the chivalry of
Khoraja, five hundred strong, led by Count Thespides, who, men said,
aspired to the hand of Yasmela herself.

They were followed by the light cavalry on rangy steeds. The riders
were typical hillmen, lean and hawk-faced; peaked steel caps were on
their heads and chain mail glinted under their flowing kaftans. Their
main weapon was the terrible Shemitish bow, which could send a shaft
five hundred paces. There were five thousand of these, and Shupras rode
at their head, his lean face moody beneath his spired helmet.

Close on their heels marched the Khoraja spearmen, always comparatively
few in any Hyborian state, where men thought cavalry the only honorable
branch of service. These, like the knights, were of ancient Kothic
blood —sons of ruined families, broken men, penniless youths who could
not afford horses and plate armor; five hundred of them.

The mercenaries brought up the rear, a thousand horsemen, two thousand
spearmen. The tall horses of the cavalry seemed hard and savage as
their riders; they made no curvets or gambades. There was a grimly
businesslike aspect to these professional killers, veterans of bloody
campaigns. Clad from head to foot in chain mail, they wore their
vizorless headpieces over linked coifs. Their shields were unadorned,
their long lances without guidons. At their saddlebows hung battle axes
or steel maces, and each man wore at his hip a long broadsword; The
spearmen were armed in much the same manner, though they bore pikes
instead of cavalry lances.

They were men of many races and many crimes. There were tall
Hyperboreans, gaunt, big-boned, of slow speech and violent natures;
tawny-haired Gundermen from the hills of the northwest; swaggering
Corinthian renegades; swarthy Zingarans, with bristling black mustaches
and fiery tempers; Aquilonians from the distant west. But all, except
the Zingarans, were Hyborians.

Behind all came a camel in rich housings, led by a knight on a great
war-horse and surrounded by a clump of picked fighters from the royal
house-troops. Its rider, under the silken canopy of the seat, was a
slim, silk-clad figure, at the sight of which the populace, always
mindful of royalty, threw up its leather cap and cheered wildly.

Conan the Cimmerian, restless in his plate armor, stared at the
bedecked camel with no great approval and spoke to Amalric, who rode
beside him, resplendent in chain mail threaded with gold, golden
breastplate, and helmet with flowing horsehair crest.

"The princess would go with us. She's supple but too soft for this
work. Anyway, she'll have to get out of these robes."

Amalric twisted his yellow mustache to hide a grin. Evidently Conan
supposed Yasmela intended to strap on a sword and take part in the
actual fighting, as the barbarian women often fought.

"The women of the Hyborians do not fight like your Cimmerian women,
Conan," he said. "Yasmela rides with us to watch the battle. Anyway,"
he shifted in his saddle and lowered his voice, "between you and me, I
have an idea that the princess dares not remain behind. She fears
something———"

"An uprising? Maybe we'd better hang a few citizens before we start———"

"No. One of her maids talked—babbled about Something that came into the
palace by night and frightened Yasmela half out of her wits. It's some
of Natohk's deviltry, I doubt not. Conan, it's more than flesh and
blood we fight!"

"Well," grunted the Cimmerian, "it's better to go meet an enemy than to
wait for him."

He glanced at the long line of wagons and camp-followers, gathered the
reins in his mailed hand, and spoke from habit the phrase of the
marching mercenaries, "Hell or plunder, comrades—march!"

Behind the long train, the ponderous gates of Khoraja closed. Eager
heads lined the battlements. The citizens well knew they were watching
life or death go forth. If the host was overthrown, the future of
Khoraja would be written in blood. In the hordes swarming up from the
savage south, mercy was a quality unknown.

All day the columns marched, through grassy rolling meadowlands, cut by
small rivers, the terrain gradually beginning to slope upward. Ahead of
them lay a range of low hills, sweeping in an unbroken rampart from
east to west. They camped that night on the northern slopes of those
hills, and hook-nosed, fiery-eyed men of the hill tribes came in scores
to squat about the fires and repeat news that had come up out of the
mysterious desert. Through their tales ran the name of Natohk like a
crawling serpent. At his bidding the demons of the air brought thunder
and wind and fog, the fiends of the underworld shook the earth with
awful roaring. He brought fire out of the air and consumed the gates of
walled cities, and burnt armored men to bits of charred bone. His
warriors covered the desert with their numbers, and he had five
thousand Stygian troops in war chariots under the rebel prince Kutamun.

Conan listened unperturbed. War was his trade. Life was a continual
battle, or series of battles; since his birth Death had been a constant
companion. It stalked horrifically at his side; stood at his shoulder
beside the gaming tables; its bony fingers rattled the wine cups. It
loomed above him, a hooded and monstrous shadow, when he lay down to
sleep. He minded its presence no more than a king minds the presence of
his cupbearer. Some day its bony grasp would close; that was all. It
was enough that he lived through the present.

However, others were less careless of fear than he. Striding back from
the sentry lines, Conan halted as a slender, cloaked figure stayed him
with an outstretched hand.

"Princess! You should be in your tent."

"I could not sleep." Her dark eyes were haunted in the shadow. "Conan,
I am afraid!"

"Are there men in the host you fear?" His hand locked on his hilt.

"No man," she shuddered. "Conan, is there anything you fear?"

He considered, tugging at his chin. "Aye," he admitted at last, "the
curse of the gods."

Again she shuddered. "I am cursed. A fiend from the abysses has set his
mark upon me. Night after night he lurks in the shadows, whispering
awful secrets to me. He will drag me down to be his queen in hell. I
dare not sleep—he will come to me in my pavilion as he came in the
palace. Conan, you are strong—keep me with you! I am afraid!"

She was no longer a princess, but only a terrified girl. Her pride had
fallen from her, leaving her unashamed in her nakedness. In her frantic
fear she had come to him who seemed strongest. The ruthless power that
had repelled her, drew her now.

For answer he drew off his scarlet cloak and wrapped it about her,
roughly, as if tenderness of any kind were impossible to him. His iron
hand rested for an instant on her slender shoulder, and she shivered
again, but not with fear. Like an electric shock a surge of animal
vitality swept over her at his mere touch, as if some of his
superabundant strength had been imparted to her.

"Lie here." He indicated a clean-swept space close to a small
flickering fire. He saw no incongruity in a princess lying down on the
naked ground beside a camp-fire, wrapped in a warrior's cloak. But she
obeyed without question.

He seated himself near her on a boulder, his broadsword across his
knees. With the firelight glinting from his blue steel armor, he seemed
like an image of steel— dynamic power for the moment quiescent; not
resting, but motionless for the instant, awaiting the signal to plunge
again into terrific action. The firelight played on his features,
making them seem as if carved out of substance shadowy yet hard as
steel. They were immobile, but his eyes smoldered with fierce life. He
was not merely a wild man; he was part of the wild, one with the
untamable elements of life; in his veins ran the blood of the wolf
pack; in his brain lurked the brooding depths of the northern night;
his heart throbbed with the fire of blazing forests.

So, half meditating, half dreaming, Yasmela dropped off to sleep,
wrapped in a sense of delicious security. Somehow she knew that no
flame-eyed shadow would bend over her in the darkness, with this grim
figure from the outlands standing guard above her. Yet once again she
wakened, to shudder in cosmic fear, though not because of anything she
saw.

It was a low mutter of voices that roused her. Oldening her eyes, she
saw that the fire was burning low. A feeling of dawn was in the air.
She could dimly see that Conan still sat on the boulder; she glimpsed
the long blue glimmer of his blade. Close beside him crouched another
figure, on which the dying fire cast a faint glow. Yasmela drowsily
made out a hooked beak of a nose, a glittering bead of an eye, under a
white turban. The man was speaking rapidly in a Shemite dialect she
found hard to understand.

"Let Bel wither my arm! I speak truth! By Derketo, Conan, I am a prince
of liars, but I do not lie to an old comrade. I swear by the days when
we were thieves together in the land of Zamora, before you donned
hauberk!

"I saw Natohk; with the others I knelt before him when he made
incantations to Set. But I did not thrust my nose in the sand as the
rest did. I am a thief of Shumir, and my sight is keener than a
weasel's. I squinted up and saw his veil blowing in the wind. It blew
aside, and I saw —I saw—Bel aid me, Conan, I say I sawl My blood froze
in my veins and my hair stood up. What I had seen burned my soul like a
red-hot iron. I could not rest until I had made sure.

"I journeyed to the ruins of Kuthchemes. The door of the ivory dome
stood open; in the doorway lay a great serpent, transfixed by a sword.
Within the dome lay the body of a man, so shriveled and distorted I
could scarce make it out at first—it was Shevatas, the Zamorian, the
only thief in the world I acknowledged as my superior. The treasure was
untouched; it lay in shimmering heaps about the corpse. That was all."

"There were no bones——-" began Conan.

"There was nothing!" broke in the Shemite passionately. "Nothing! Only
the one corpse!"

Silence reigned an instant, and Yasmela shrank with a crawling nameless
horror.

"'Whence came Natohk?" rose the Shemite's vibrant whisper. "Out of the
desert on a night when the world was blind and wild with mad clouds
driven in frenzied flight across the shuddering stars, and the howling
of the wind was mingled with the shrieking of the spirits of the
wastes. Vampires were abroad that night, witches rode naked on the
wind, and werewolves howled across the wilderness. On a black camel he
came, riding like the wind, and an unholy fire played about him, the
cloven tracks of the camel glowed in the darkness. When Natohk
dismounted before Set's shrine by the oasis of Aphaka, the beast swept
into the night and vanished. And I have talked with tribesmen who swore
that it suddenly spread gigantic wings and rushed upward into the
clouds, leaving a trail of fire behind it. No man has seen that camel
since that night, but a black, brutish, manlike shape shambles to
Natohk's tent and gibbers to him in the blackness before dawn. I will
tell you, Conan, Natohk is —look, I will show you an image of what I
saw that day by Shushan when the wind blew aside his veil!"

Yasmela saw the glint of gold in the Shemite's hand, as the men bent
closely over something. She heard Conan grunt; and suddenly blackness
rolled over her. For the first time in her life, princess Yasmela had
fainted.

Chapter Four

Dawn was still a hint of whiteness in the east when the army was again
on the march. Tribesmen had raced into camp, their steeds reeling from
the long ride, to report the desert horde encamped at the Well of
Altaku. So through the hills the soldiers pushed hastily, leaving the
wagon trains to follow. Yasmela rode with them; her eyes were haunted.
The nameless horror had been taking even more awful shape, since she
had recognized the coin in the Shemite's hand the night before—one of
those secretly molded by the degraded Zugite cult, bearing the features
of a man dead three thousand years.

The way wound between ragged cliffs and gaunt crags towering over
narrow valleys. Here and there villages perched, huddles of stone huts,
plastered with mud. The tribesmen swarmed out to join their kin, so
that before they had traversed the hills, the host had been swelled by
some three thousand wild archers.

Abruptly they came out of the hills and caught their breath at the vast
expanse that swept away to the south. On the southern side the hills
fell away sheerly, marking a distinct geographical division between the
Kothian uplands and the southern desert. The hills were the rim of the
uplands, stretching in an almost unbroken wall. Here they were bare and
desolate, inhabited only by the Zaheemi clan, whose duty it was to
guard the caravan road. Beyond the hills the desert stretched bare,
dusty, lifeless. Yet beyond its horizon lay the Well of Altaku, and the
horde of Natohk.

The army looked down on the Pass of Shamla, through which flowed the
wealth of the north and the south, and through which had marched the
armies of Koth, Khoraja, Shem, Turan, and Stygia. Here the sheer wall
of the rampart was broken. Promontories ran out into the desert,
forming barren valleys, all but one of which were closed on the
northern extremity by rugged cliffs. This one was the pass. It was much
like a great hand extended from the hills; two fingers, parted, formed
a fan-shaped valley. The fingers were represented by a broad ridge on
either hand, the outer sides sheer, the inner, steep slopes. The vale
pitched upward as it narrowed, to come out on a plateau, flanked by
gully-torn slopes. A well was there, and a cluster of stone towers,
occupied by the Zaheemis.

There Conan halted, swinging off his horse. He had discarded the plate
armor for the more familiar chain mail. Thespides reined in and
demanded, "Why do you halt?"

"We'll await them here," answered Conan.

" Twere more knightly to ride out and meet them," snapped the count.

"They'd smother us with numbers," answered the Cimmerian. "Besides,
there's no water out there. We'll camp on the plateau——-"

"My knights and I camp in the valley," retorted Thespides angrily. "We
are the vanguard, and we, at least, do not fear a ragged desert swarm."

Conan shrugged his shoulders, and the angry nobleman rode away. Amalric
halted in his bellowing order, to watch the glittering company riding
down the slope into the valley.

"The fools! Their canteens will soon be empty, and they'll have to ride
back up to the well to water their horses."

"Let them be," replied Conan. "It goes hard for them to take orders
from me. Tell the dog-brothers to ease their harness and rest. We've
marched hard and fast Water the horses and let the men munch."

No need to send out scouts. The desert lay bare to the gaze, though
just now this view was limited by low-lying clouds which rested in
whitish masses on the southern horizon. The monotony was broken only by
a jutting tangle of stone ruins, some miles out on the desert,
reputedly the remnants of an ancient Stygian temple. Conan dismounted
the archers and ranged them along the ridges, with the wild tribesmen.
He stationed the mercenaries and the Khoraji spearmen on the plateau
about the well. Farther back, in the angle where the hill road
debouched on the plateau, was pitched Yasmela's pavilion.

With no enemy in sight, the warriors relaxed. Basinets were doffed,
coifs thrown back on mailed shoulders, belts let out. Rude jests flew
back and forth as the fighting men gnawed beef and thrust their muzzles
deep into ale jugs. Along the slopes the hillmen made themselves at
ease, nibbling dates and olives. Amalric strode up to where Conan sat
bareheaded on a boulder.

"Conan, have you heard what the tribesmen say about Natohk? They
say—Mitra, it's too mad even to repeat. What do you think?"

"Seeds rest in the ground for centuries without rotting, sometimes,"
answered Conan. "But surely Natohk is a man."

"I am not sure," grunted Amalric. "At any rate, you've arranged your
lines as well as a seasoned general could have done. It's certain
Natohk's devils can't fall on us unawares. Mitra, what a fog!"

"I thought it was clouds at first," answered Conan. "See how it rolls!"

What had seemed clouds was a thick mist moving northward like a great
unstable ocean, rapidly hiding the desert from view. Soon it engulfed
the Stygian ruins, and still it rolled onward. The army watched in
amazement. It was a thing unprecedented—unnatural and inexplicable.

"No use sending out scouts," said Amalric disgustedly. "They couldn't
see anything. Its edges are near the outer flanges of the ridges. Soon
the whole pass and these hills will be masked———"

Conan, who had been watching the rolling mist with growing nervousness,
bent suddenly and laid his ear to the earth. He sprang up with frantic
haste, swearing.

"Horses and chariots, thousands of them! The ground vibrates to their
tread! Ho, there!" his voice thundered out across the valley to
electrify the lounging men. "Burganets and pikes, you dogs! Stand to
your ranks!"

At that, as the warriors scrambled into their lines, hastily donning
headpieces and thrusting arms through shield straps, the mist rolled
away, as something no longer useful. It did not slowly lift and fade
like a natural fog; it simply vanished, like a blown-out flame. One
moment the whole desert was hidden with the rolling fleecy billows,
piled mountainously, stratum above stratum; the next, the sun shone
from a cloudless sky on a naked desert—no longer empty, but thronged
with the living pageantry of war. A great shout shook the hills.

At first glance the amazed watchers seemed to be looking down upon a
glittering, sparkling sea of bronze and gold, where steel points
twinkled like a myriad of stars. With the lifting of the fog, the
invaders had halted as if frozen, in long serried lines, flaming in the
sun.

First was a long line of chariots, drawn by the great fierce horses of
Stygia, with plumes on their heads— snorting and rearing as each naked
driver leaned back, bracing his powerful legs, his dusky arms knotted
with muscles. The fighting men in the chariots were tall figures, their
hawklike faces set off by bronze helmets crested with a crescent
supporting a golden ball. Heavy bows were in their hands. No common
archers, these, but nobles of the South, bred to war and the hunt, who
were accustomed to bringing down lions with their arrows.

Behind these came a motley array of wild men on half-wild horses—the
warriors of Kush, the first of the great black kingdoms of the
grasslands south of Stygia. They were shining ebony, supple and lithe,
riding stark naked and without saddle or bridle.

After these rolled a horde that seemed to encompass all the desert.
Thousands on thousands of the warlike sons of Shem: ranks of horsemen
in scale-mail corselets and cylindrical helmets—the asshuri of Nippr,
Shumir, and Eruk and their sister cities; wild white-robed hordes —the
nomad clans.

Now the ranks began to mill and eddy. The chariots drew off to one side
while the main host came uncertainly onward. Down in the valley the
knights had mounted, and now Count Thespides galloped up the slope to
where Conan stood. He did not deign to dismount but spoke abruptly from
the saddle.

"The lifting of the mist has confused them! Now is the time to charge!
The Kushites have no bows and they mask the whole advance. A charge of
my knights will crush them back into the ranks of the Shemites,
disrupting their formation. Follow me! We will win this battle with one
stroke!"

Conan shook his head. "Were we fighting a natural foe, I would agree.
But this confusion is more feigned than real, as if to draw us into a
charge. I fear a trap."

"Then you refuse to move?" cried Thespides, his face dark with passion.

"Be reasonable," expostulated Conan. "We have the advantage of
position———"

With a furious oath Thespides wheeled and galloped back down the valley
where his knights waited impatiently.

Amalric shook his head. "You should not have let him return, Conan.
I—look there!"

Conan sprang up with a curse. Thespides had swept in beside his men.
They could hear his impassioned voice faintly, but his gesture toward
the approaching horde was significant enough. In another instant five
hundred lances dipped and the steel-clad company was thundering down
the valley.

A young page came running from Yasmela's pavilion, crying to Conan in a
shrill, eager voice, "My Lord, the princess asks why you do not follow
and support Count Thespides?"

"Because I am not so great a fool as he," grunted Conan, reseating
himself on the boulder and beginning to gnaw a huge beef bone.

"You grow sober with authority," quoth Amalric. "Such madness as that
was always your particular joy."

"Aye, when I had only my own life to consider," answered Conan.
"Now—what in Hell——-"

The horde had halted. From the extreme wing rushed a chariot, the naked
charioteer lashing the steed like a madman; the other occupant was a
tall figure whose robe floated spectrally on the wind. He held in his
arms a great vessel of gold and from it poured a thin stream that
sparkled in the sunlight. Across the whole front of the desert horde
the chariot swept, and behind its thundering wheels was left, like the
wake behind a ship, a long thin powdery line that glittered in the
sands like the phosphorescent track of a serpent.

"That's Natohk!" swore Amalric. "What hellish seed is he sowing?"

The charging knights had not checked their headlong pace. Another fifty
paces and they would crash into the uneven Kushite ranks, which stood
motionless, spears lifted. Now the foremost knights had reached the
thin line that glitered across the sands. They did not heed that
crawling menace. But as the steel-shod hoofs of the horses struck it,
it was as when steel strikes flint—but with more terrible result A
terrific explosion rocked the desert, which seemed to split apart along
the strewn line with an awful burst of white flame.

In that instant the whole foremost line of the knights was seen
enveloped in that flame, horses and steel-clad riders withering in the
glare like insects in an open blaze. The next instant, the rear ranks
were piling up on their charred bodies. Unable to check their headlong
velocity, rank after rank crashed into the ruins. With appalling
suddenness the charge had turned into a shambles where armored figures
died amid screaming mangled horses.

Now the illusion of confusion vanished as the horde settled into
orderly lines. The wild Kushites rushed into the shambles, spearing the
wounded, bursting the helmets of the knights with stones and iron
hammers. It was all over so quickly that the watchers on the slopes
stood dazed; and again the horde moved forward, splitting to avoid the
charred waste of corpses. From the hills went up a cry: "We fight not
men but devils!"

On either ridge the hillmen wavered. One rushed toward the plateau,
froth dripping from his beard.

"Flee, flee!" he slobbered. "Who can fight Natohk's magic?"

With a snarl Conan bounded from his boulder and smote him with the beef
bone; he dropped, blood starting from nose and mouth. Conan drew his
sword, his eyes slits of blue balefire.

"Back to your posts!" he yelled. "Let another take a backward step and
I'll shear off his head! Fight, damn you!"

The rout halted as quickly as it had begun. Conan's fierce personality
was like a dash of ice water in their whirling blaze of terror.

"Take your places," he directed quickly. "And stand to it! Neither man
nor devil comes up Shamla Pass this day!"

Where the plateau rim broke to the valley slope, the mercenaries braced
their belts and gripped their spears. Behind them the lancers sat their
steeds, and to one side were stationed the Khoraja spearmen as
reserves. To Yasmela, standing white and speechless at the door of her
tent, the host seemed a pitiful handful in comparison to the thronging
desert horde.

Conan stood among the spearmen. He knew the invaders would not try to
drive a chariot charge up the pass in the teeth of the archers, but he
grunted with surprise to see the riders dismounting. These wild men had
no supply trains. Canteens and pouches hung at their saddle peaks. Now
they drank the last of their water and threw the canteens away.

"This is the death grip," he muttered as the lines formed on foot. "I'd
rather have had a cavalry charge; wounded horses bolt and ruin
formations."

The horde had formed into a huge wedge, of which the tip was the
Stygians and the body, the mailed asshuri, flanked by the nomads. In
close formation, shields lifted, they rolled onward, while behind them
a tall figure in a motionless chariot lifted wide-robed arms in grisly
invocation.

As the horde entered the wide valley mouth, the hill-men loosed their
shafts. In spite of the protective formation, men dropped by dozens.
The Stygians had discarded their bows; helmeted heads bent to the
blast, dark eyes glaring over the rims of their shields, they came on
in an inexorable surge, striding over their fallen comrades. But the
Shemites gave back the fire, and the clouds of arrows darkened the
skies. Conan gazed over the billowing waves of spears and wondered what
new horror the sorcerer would invoke. Somehow he felt that Natohk, like
all his kind, was more terrible in defense than in attack; to take the
offensive against him invited disaster.

But surely it was magic that drove the horde on in the teeth of death.
Conan caught his breath at the havoc wrought in the onsweeping ranks.
The edges of the wedge seemed melting away, and already the valley was
strewn with dead men. Yet the survivors came on like madmen unaware of
death. By the very numbers of their bows, they began to swamp the
archers on the cliffs. Clouds of shafts sped upward, driving the
hillmen to cover. Panic struck at their hearts at that unwavering
advance, and they plied their bows madly, eyes glaring like trapped
wolves.

As the horde neared the narrower neck of the Pass, boulders thundered
down, crushed men by the scores, but the charge did not waver. Conan's
wolves braced themselves for the inevitable concussion. In their close
formation and superior armor, they took little hurt from the arrows. It
was the impact of the charge Conan feared, when the huge wedge should
crash against his thin ranks. And he realized now there was no breaking
of that onslaught. He gripped the shoulder of a Zaheemi who stood near.

"Is there any way by which mounted men can get down into the blind
valley beyond that western ridge?"

"Aye, a steep, perilous path, secret and eternally guarded. But——-"

Conan was dragging him along to where Amalric sat his great war-horse.

"Amalric!" he snapped. "Follow this man! He'll lead you into yon outer
valley. Ride down it, circle the end of the ridge, and strike the horde
from the rear. Speak not, but go! I know it's madness, but we're doomed
anyway; we'll do all the damage we can before we die! Haste!"

Amalric's mustache bristled in a fierce grin, and a few moments later
his lancers were following the guide into a tangle of gorges leading
off from the plateau. Conan ran back to the pikemen, sword in hand.

He was not too soon. On either ridge Shupras' hill-men, mad with
anticipation of defeat, rained down their shafts desperately. Men died
like flies in the valley and along the slopes—and with a roar and an
irresistible upward surge the Stygians crashed against the mercenaries.

In a hurricane of thundering steel, the lines twisted and swayed. It
was war-bred noble against professional soldier.

Shields crashed against shields, and between them spears drove in and
blood spurted.

Conan saw the mighty form of Prince Kutamun across the sea of swords,
but the press held him hard, breast to breast with dark shapes that
gasped and slashed. Behind the Stygians the asshuri were surging and
yelling.

On either hand the nomads climbed the cliffs and came to hand-grips
with their mountain kin. All along the crests of the ridges the combat
raged in blind, gasping ferocity. Tooth and nail, frothing mad with
fanaticism and ancient feuds, the tribesmen rent and slew and died.
Wild hair flying, the naked Kushites ran howhng into the fray.

It seemed to Conan that his sweat-blinded eyes looked down into a
rising ocean of steel that seethed and eddied, filling the valley from
ridge to ridge. The fight was at a bloody deadlock. The hillmen held
the ridges, and the mercenaries, gripping their dripping pikes, bracing
their feet in the bloody earth, held the pass. Superior position and
armor for a space balanced the advantage of overwhelming numbers. But
it could not endure. Wave after wave of glaring faces and flashing
spears surged up the slope, the asshuri filling the gaps in the Stygian
ranks.

Conan looked to see Amalric's lances rounding the western ridge, but
they did not come, and the pikemen began to reel back under the shocks.
And Conan abandoned all hope of victory and of life. Yelling a command
to his gasping captains, he broke away and raced across the plateau to
the Khoraja reserves who stood trembling with eagerness. He did not
glance toward Yasmela's pavilion. He had forgotten the princess; his
one thought was the wild beast instinct to slay before he died.

"This day you become knights!" he laughed fiercely, pointing with his
dripping sword toward the hillmen horses, herded near by. "Mount and
follow me to Hell!"

The hill steed reared wildly under the unfamiliar clash of the Kothic
armor, and Conan's gusty laugh rose above the din as he led them to
where the eastern ridge branched away from the plateau. Five hundred
footmen —pauper patricians, younger sons, black sheep—on half-wild
Shemite horses, charging an army, down a slope where no cavalry had
ever dared charge before!

Past the battle-choked mouth of the pass they thundered, out onto the
corpse-littered ridge. Down the steep slope they rushed, and a score
lost their footing and rolled under the hoofs of their comrades. Below
them men screamed and threw up their arms—and the thundering charge
ripped through them as an avalanche cuts through a forest of saplings.
On through the close-packed throngs the Khorajis hurtled, leaving a
crushed-down carpet of dead.

And then, as the horde writhed and coiled upon itself, Amalric's
lancers, having cut through a cordon of horsemen encountered in the
outer valley, swept around the extremity of the western ridge and smote
the host in a steel-tipped wedge, splitting it asunder. His attack
carried all the dazing demoralization of a surprise on the rear.
Thinking themselves flanked by a superior force and frenzied at the
fear of being cut off from the desert, swarms of nomads broke and
stampeded, working havoc in the ranks of their more steadfast comrades.
These staggered and the horsemen rode through them. Upon the ridges the
desert fighters wavered, and the hillmen fell on them with renewed
fury, driving them down the slopes.

Stunned by surprise, the horde broke before they had time to see it was
but a handful which assailed them. And once broken, not even a magician
could weld such a horde again. Across the sea of heads and spears
Conan's madmen saw Amalric's riders forging steadily through the rout,
to the rise and fall of axes and maces, and a mad joy of victory
exalted each man's heart and made his arm steel.

Bracing their feet in the wallowing sea of blood whose crimson waves
lapped about their ankles, the pikemen in the pass mouth drove forward,
crushing strongly against the milling ranks before them. The Stygians
held, but behind them the pass of the asshuri melted; and over the
bodies of the nobles of the south who died in their tracks to a man,
the mercenaries rolled, to split and crumple the wavering mass behind.

Up on the cliffs old Shupras lay with an arrow through his heart;
Amalric was down, swearing like a pirate, a spear through his mailed
thigh. Of Conan's mounted infantry, scarce a hundred and fifty remained
in the saddle. But the horde was shattered. Nomads and mailed spearmen
broke away, fleeing to their camp where their horses were, and the
hillmen swarmed down the slopes, stabbing the fugitives in the back,
cutting the throats of the wounded.

In he swirling red chaos, a terrible apparition suddenly appeared
before Conan's rearing steed. It was Prince Kutamun, naked but for a
loinclout, his harness hacked away, his crested helmet dented, his
limbs splashed with blood. With a terrible shout he hurled his broken
hilt full into Conan's face, and leaping, seized the stallion's bridle.
The Cimmerian reeled in his saddle, half stunned, and with awful
strength the dark-skinned giant forced the screaming steed upward and
backward, until it lost its footing and crashed into the muck of bloody
sand and writhing bodies.

Conan sprang clear as the horse fell, and with a roar Kutamun was on
him. In that mad nightmare of battle, the barbarian never exactly knew
how he killed his man. He only knew that a stone in the Stygian's hand
crashed again and again on his basinet, filling his sight with flashing
sparks, as Conan drove his dagger again and again into his foe's body,
without apparent effect on the prince's terrible vitality. The world
was swimming to Conan's sight, when with a convulsive shudder the frame
that strained against his stiffened and then went limp.

Reeling up, blood streaming down his face from under his dented helmet,
Conan glared dizzily at the profusion of destruction which spread
before him. From crest to crest the dead lay strewn, a red carpet that
choked the valley. It was like a red sea, with each wave a straggling
line of corpses. They choked the neck of the pass, they littered the
slopes. And down in the desert the slaughter continued, where the
survivors of the horde had reached their horses and streamed out across
the waste, pursued by the weary victors—and Conan stood appalled as he
noted how few of these were left to pursue.

Then an awful scream rent the clamor. Up the valley a chariot came
flying, making nothing of the heaped corpses. No horses drew it, but a
great black creature that was like a camel. In the chariot stood
Natohk, his robes flying; and gripping the reins and lashing like mad,
crouched a black anthropomorphic being that might have been a monster
ape.

With a rush of burning wind the chariot swept up the corpse-littered
slope, straight toward the pavilion where Yasmela stood alone, deserted
by her guards in the frenzy of pursuit. Conan, standing frozen, heard
her frenzied scream as Natohk's long arm swept her up into the chariot.
Then the grisly steed wheeled and came racing back down the valley, and
no man dared speed arrow or spear lest he strike Yasmela, who writhed
in Natohk's arms.

With an inhuman cry Conan caught up his fallen sword and leaped into
the path of the hurtling horror. But even as his sword went up, the
forefeet of the black beast smote him like a thunderbolt and sent him
hurtling a score of feet away, dazed and bruised. Yasmela's cry came
hauntingly to his stunned ears as the chariot roared by.

A yell that had nothing of the human in its timbre rang from his lips
as Conan rebounded from the bloody earth and seized the rein of a
riderless horse that raced past him, throwing himself into the saddle
without bringing the charger to a halt. With mad abandon he raced after
the rapidly receding chariot. He struck the levels flying, and passed
like a whirlwind through the Shemite camp. Into the desert he fled,
passing clumps of his own riders, and hard-spurring desert horsemen.

On flew the chariot, and on raced Conan, though his horse began to reel
beneath him. Now the open desert lay all about them, bathed in the
lurid desolate splendor of sunset. Before him rose up the ancient
ruins, and with a shriek that froze the blood in Conan's veins, the
un-human charioteer cast Natohk and the girl from him. They rolled on
the sand and, to Conan's dazed gaze, the chariot and its steed altered
awfully. Great wings spread from a black horror that in no way
resembled a camel, and it rushed upward into the sky, bearing in its
wake a shape of blinding flame, in which a black man-like shape
gibbered in ghastly triumph. So quickly it passed, that it was like the
rush of a nightmare through a horror-haunted dream.

Natohk sprang up, cast a swift look at his grim pursuer, who had not
halted but came riding hard, with sword swinging low and spattering red
drops; and the sorcerer caught up the fainting girl and ran with her
into the ruins.

Conan leaped from his horse and plunged after them. He came into a room
that glowed with unholy radiance, though outside dusk was falling
swiftly. On a black jade altar lay Yasmela, her naked body gleaming
like ivory in the weird light. Her garments lay strewn on the floor, as
if ripped from her in brutal haste. Natohk faced the
Cimmerian—inhumanly tall and lean, clad in shimmering green silk. He
tossed back his veil, and Conan looked into the features he had seen
depicted on the Zugite coin. "Aye, blench, dog!" the voice was like the
hiss of a giant serpent. "I am Thugra Khotan! Long I lay in my tomb,
awaiting the day of awakening and release. The arts which saved me from
the barbarians long ago likewise imprisoned me, but I knew one would
come in time— and he came, to fulfill his destiny, and to die as no man
has died in three thousand years!

"Fool, do you think you have conquered because my people are scattered?
Because I have been betrayed and deserted by the demon I enslaved? I am
Thugra Khotan, who shall rule the world despite your paltry gods! The
desert is filled with my people; the demons of the earth shall do my
bidding, as the reptiles of the earth obey me. Lust for a woman
weakened my sorcery. Now the woman is mine and, feasting on her soul, I
shall be unconquerable! Back, fool! You have not conquered Thugra
Khotan!"

He cast his staff and it fell at the feet of Conan, who recoiled with
an involuntary cry. For as it fell it altered horribly; its outline
melted and writhed, and a hooded cobra reared up hissing before the
horrified Cimmerian. With a furious oath Conan struck, and his sword
sheared the horrid shape in half. And there at his feet lay only the
two pieces of a severed ebon staff. Thugra Khotan laughed awfully, and,
wheeling, caught up something that crawled loathsomely in the dust of
the floor.

In his extended hand something alive writhed and slavered. No tricks of
shadows this time. In his naked hand Thugra Khotan gripped a black
scorpion, more than a foot in length, the deadliest creature of the
desert, the stroke of whose spiked tail was instant death. Thugra
Khotan's skull-like countenance split in a mummylike grin. Conan
hesitated; then without warning he threw his sword.

Caught off guard, Thugra Khotan had no time to avoid the cast. The
point struck beneath his heart and stood out a foot behind his
shoulders. He went down, crushing the poisonous monster in his grasp as
he fell.

Conan strode to the altar, lifting Yasmela in his bloodstained arms.
She threw her white arms convulsively about his mailed neck, sobbing
hysterically, and would not let him go.

"Crom's devils, girl!" he grunted. "Loose me! Fifty thousand men have
perished today, and there is work for me to do———"

"No!" she gasped, clinging with convulsive strength, as barbaric for
the instant as he in her fear and passion. "I will not let you go! I am
yours, by fire and steel and blood! You are mine! Back there, I belong
to others— here I am mine—and yours! You shall not go!"

He hesitated, his own brain reeling with the fierce upsurging of his
violent passions. The lurid, unearthly glow still hovered in the
shadowy chamber, lighting ghostily the dead face of Thugra Khotan,
which seemed to grin mirthlessly and cavernously at them. Out on the
desert, in the hills among the oceans of dead, men were dying, were
howling with wounds and thirst and madness, and kingdoms were
staggering. Then all was swept away by the crimson tide that rode madly
in Conan's soul, as he crushed fiercely in his iron arms the slim white
body that shimmered like a witch fire of madness before him.


Shadows in the Moonlight
------------------------

Conan's pride will not let him be "Mr. Queen" to any woman, no matter
how beautiful or ardent. After a time, Conan slips away to revisit his
Cimmerian homeland and avenge himself on his old enemies, the
Hyperboreans.

Conan is now nearly thirty. His blood brothers among the Cimmerians and
the AEsir have won wives and sired sons, some of them as old and almost
as big as Conan had been when he first ventured into the rat-infested
slums of Zamora. His experiences as a corsair and a mercenary have
stirred the spirit of battle and plunder too strongly in his blood for
him to follow their example. When traders bring word of new wars in the
South, Conan rides back to the Hyborian kingdoms.

A rebel prince of Koth is fighting to overthrow Strabonus, penurious
king of that far-stretched nation, and Conan finds himself among old
companions in the princelings army. Unfortunately, the prince makes
peace with his king, and his mercenary force becomes unemployed. Its
members, Conan among them, form an outlaw band, the Free Companions,
who harry the borders of Koth, Zamora, and Turan impartially. They
finally gravitate to the steppes west of the Sea of Vilayet, where they
join the ruffian horde known as kozaki.

Conan soon fights his way to the leadership of this lawless crew and
ravages the western borders of the Turanian Empire, until his old
employer, King Yildiz, adopts a policy of massive retaliation. A force
under Shah Amurath lures the kozaki deep into Turanian territory and
cuts them down in a bloody battle by the river Ilbars.

Chapter One

A swift crashing of horses through the tall reeds; a heavy fall, a
despairing cry. From the dying steed there staggered up its rider, a
slender girl in sandals and girdled tunic. Her dark hair fell over her
white shoulders; her eyes were those of a trapped animal. She did not
look at the jungle of reeds that hemmed in the little clearing, nor at
the blue waters that lapped the low shore behind her. Her wide-eyed
gaze was fixed in agonized intensity on the horseman who pushed through
the reedy screen and dismounted before her.

He was a tall man, slender, but hard as steel. From head to heel he was
clad in light, silvered mesh mail that fitted his supple form like a
glove. From under the dome-shaped, gold-chased helmet his brown eyes
regarded her mockingly.

"Stand back!" her voice shrilled with terror. "Touch me not, Shah
Amurath, or I will throw myself into the water and drown!"

He laughed, and his laughter was like the purr of a sword sliding from
a silken sheath.

"No, you will not drown, Olivia, daughter of confusion, for the marge
is too shallow, and I can catch you before you can reach the deeps. You
gave me a merry chase, by the gods, and all my men are far behind us.
But there is no horse west of Vilayet that can distance Irem for long."
He nodded at the tall, slender-legged desert stallion behind him.

"Let me go!" begged the girl, tears of despair staining her face. "Have
I not suffered enough? Is there any humiliation, pain, or degradation
you have not heaped on me? How long must my torment last?"

"As long as I find pleasure in your whimperings, your pleas, tears, and
writhings," he answered with a smile that would have seemed gentle to a
stranger. "You are strangely virile, Olivia. I wonder if I shall ever
weary of you, as I have always wearied of women before. You are ever
fresh and unsullied, in spite of me. Each new day with you brings a new
delight.

"But come—let us return to Akif, where the people are still feting the
conqueror of the miserable kozaki; while he, the conqueror, is engaged
in recapturing a wretched fugitive, a foolish, lovely, idiotic
runaway!"

"No!" She recoiled, turning toward the waters lapping bluely among the
reeds.

"Yes!" His flash of open anger was like a spark struck from flint. With
a quickness her tender limbs could not approximate, he caught her
wrist, twisting it in pure wanton cruelty until she screamed and sank
to her knees.

"Slut! I should drag you back to Akif at my horse's tail, but I will be
merciful and carry you on my saddlebow, for which favor you shall
humbly thank me, while———"

He released her with a startled oath and sprang back, his saber
flashing out, as a terrible apparition burst from the reedy jungle,
sounding an inarticulate cry of hate.

Olivia, staring up from the ground, saw what she took to be either a
savage or a madman advancing on Shah Amurath in an attitude of deadly
menace. He was powerfully built, naked but for a girdled loincloth
which was stained with blood and crusted with dried mire. His black
mane was matted with mud and clotted blood; there were streaks of dried
blood on his chest and limbs, dried blood on the long straight sword he
gripped in his right hand. From under the tangle of his locks,
bloodshot eyes glared like coals of blue fire.

"You Hyrkanian dog!" mouthed this apparition in a barbarous accent "The
devils of vengeance have brought you here!"

"Kozak! ejaculated Shah Amurath, recoiling. "I did not know a dog of
you escaped! I thought you all lay stiff in the steepe, by Ilbars
River."

"All but me, damn you!" cried the other. "Oh, I've dreamed of such a
meeting as this, while I crawled on my belly through the brambles, or
lay under rocks while the ants gnawed my flesh, or crouched in the mire
up to my mouth—I dreamed, but never hoped it would come to pass. Oh,
gods of Hell, how I have yearned for this!"

The stranger's bloodthirsty joy was terrible to behold. His jaws
champed spasmodically, froth appeared on his blackened lips.

"Keep back!" ordered Shah Amurath, watching him narrowly.

"Ha!" It was like the bark of a timber wolf. "Shah Amurath, the great
lord of Akif! Oh, damn you, how I love the sight of you—you, who fed my
comrades to the vultures, who tore them between wild horses, blinded
and maimed and mutilated them—ai, you dog, you filthy dog!" His voice
rose to a maddened scream, and he charged.

In spite of the terror of his wild appearance, Olivia looked to see him
fall at the first crossing of the blades. Madman or savage, what could
he do, naked, against the mailed chief of Akif?

There was an instant when the blades flamed and licked, seeming barely
to touch each other and leap apart; then the broadsword flashed past
the saber and descended terrifically on Shah Amurath's shoulder. Olivia
cried out at the fury of that stroke. Above the crunch of the rending
mail, she distinctly heard the snap of the shoulder bone. The Hyrkanian
reeled back, suddenly ashen, blood spurting over the links of his
hauberk; his saber slipped from his nerveless fingers.

"Quarter!" he gasped.

"Quarter?" There was a quiver of frenzy in the stranger's voice.
"Quarter such as you gave us, you swine!"

Olivia closed her eyes. This was no longer battle, but butchery,
frantic, bloody, impelled by an hysteria of fury and hate, in which
culminated the sufferings of battle, massacre, torture, and
fear-ridden, thirst-maddened, hunger-haunted flight. Though Olivia knew
that Shah Amurath deserved no mercy or pity from any living creature,
yet she closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her ears, to shut
out the sight of that dripping sword that rose and fell with the sound
of a butcher's cleaver, and the gurgling cries that dwindled away and
ceased.

She opened her eyes, to see the stranger turning away from a gory
travesty that only vaguely resembled a human being. The man's breast
heaved with exhaustion or passion; his brow was beaded with sweat; his
right hand was splashed with blood.

He did not speak to her, or even glance toward her. She saw him stride
through the reeds that grew at the water's edge, stoop, and tug at
something. A boat wallowed out of its hiding place among the stalks.
Then she divined his intention and was galvanized into action.

"Oh, wait!" she wailed, staggering up and running toward him. "Do not
leave me! Take me with you!"

He wheeled and stared at her. There was a difference in his bearing.
His bloodshot eyes were sane. It was as if the blood he had just shed
had quenched the fire of his frenzy.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"I am called Olivia. I was his captive. I ran away. He followed me.
That's why he came here. Oh, do not leave me here! His warriors are not
far behind him. They will find his corpse—they will find me near
it—oh!" She moaned in her terror and wrung her white hands.

He stared at her in perplexity.

"Would you be better off with me?" he demanded. "I am a barbarian, and
I know from your looks that you fear me."

"Yes, I fear you," she replied, too distracted to dissemble. "My flesh
crawls at the horror of your aspect. But I fear the Hyrkanians more.
Oh, let me go with you! They will put me to the torture if they find me
beside their dead lord."

"Come, then." He drew aside, and she stepped quickly into the boat,
shrinking from contact with him. She seated herself in the bow, and he
stepped into the boat, pushed off with an oar and, using it as a
paddle, worked his way tortuously among the tall stalks until they
glided out into open water. Then he set to work with both oars, rowing
with great, smooth, even strokes, the heavy muscles of arms and
shoulders and back rippling in rhythm to his exertions.

There was silence for some time, the girl crouching in the bows, the
man tugging at the oars. She watched him with timorous fascination. It
was evident that he was not an Hyrkanian, and he did not resemble the
Hyborian races. There was a wolfish hardness about him that marked the
barbarian. His features, allowing for the strains and stains of battle
and his hiding in the marshes, reflected that same untamed wildness,
but they were neither evil nor degenerate.

"Who are you?" she asked. "Shah Amurath called you a kozak; were you of
that band?"

"I am Conan, of Cimmeria," he grunted. "I was with the kozaki, as the
Hyrkanian dogs called us."

She knew vaguely that the land he named lay far to the northwest,
beyond the farthest boundaries of the different kingdoms of her race.

"I am a daughter of the king of Ophir," she said. "My father sold me to
a Shemite chief, because I would not many a prince of Koth."

The Cimmerian grunted in surprise.

Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. "Aye, civilized men sell their
children as slaves to savages, sometimes. They call your race barbaric,
Conan of Cimmeria."

"We do not sell our children," he growled, his chin jutting
truculently.

"Well—I was sold. But the desert man did not misuse me. He wished to
buy the good will of Shah Amurath, and I was among the gifts he brought
to Akif of the purple gardens. Then———" She shuddered and hid her face
in her hands.

"I should be lost to all shame," she said presently. "Yet each memory
stings me like a slaver's whip. I abode in Shah Amurath's palace, until
some weeks agone he rode out with his hosts to do battle with a band of
invaders who were ravaging the borders of Turan. Yesterday he returned
in triumph, and a great fete was made to honor him. In the drunkenness
and rejoicing, I found an opportunity to steal out of the city on a
stolen horse. I had thought to escape—but he followed and about midday
came up with me. I outran his vassals, but him I could not escape. Then
you came."

"I was lying hid in the reeds," grunted the barbarian. "I was one of
those dissolute rogues, the Free Companions, who burned and looted
along the borders. There were five thousand of us, from a score of
races and tribes. We had been serving as mercenaries for a rebel prince
in eastern Koth, most of us, and when he made peace with his cursed
sovereign, we were out of employment; so we took to plundering the
outlying dominions of Koth, Zamora and Turan impartially. A week ago,
Shah Amurath trapped us near the banks of the Ilbars with fifteen
thousand men. Mitra! The skies were black with vultures. When the lines
broke, after a whole day of fighting, some tried to break through to
the north, some to the west. I doubt if any escaped. The steppes were
covered with horsemen riding down the fugitives. I broke for the east
and finally reached the edge of the marshes that border this part of
Vilayet.

"I've been hiding in the morasses ever since. Only the day before
yesterday the riders ceased beating up the reed brakes, searching for
just such fugitives as I. I've squirmed and burrowed and hidden like a
snake, feasting on musk-rats I caught and ate raw, for lack of fire to
cook them. This dawn I found this boat hidden among the reeds. I hadn't
intended going out on the sea until night, but after I killed Shah
Amurath, I knew his mailed dogs would be close at hand."

"And what now?"

"We shall doubtless be pursued. If they fail to see the marks left by
the boat, which I covered as well as I could, they'll guess anyway that
we took to sea, after they fail to find us among the marshes. But we
have a start, and I'm going to haul at these oars until we reach a safe
place."

"Where shall we find that?" she asked hopelessly. "Vilayet is an
Hyrkanian pond."

"Some folk don't think so," grinned Conan grimly; "notably the slaves
that have escaped from galleys and become pirates."

"But what are your plans?"

"The southwestern shore is held by the Hyrkanians for hundreds of
miles. We still have a long way to go before we pass beyond their
northern boundaries. I intend to go northward, until I think we have
passed them. Then we'll turn westward, and try to land on the shore
bordered by the uninhabited steppes."

"Suppose we meet pirates, or a storm?" she asked. "And we shall starve
on the steppes."

"Well," he reminded her, "I didn't ask you to come with me."

"I am sorry." She bowed her shapely dark head. "Pirates, storms,
starvation—they are all kinder than the people of Turan."

"Aye." His dark face grew somber. "I haven't done with them yet. Be at
ease, girl. Storms are rare on Vilayet at this time of the year. If we
make the steppes, we shall not starve. I was reared in a naked land. It
was those cursed marshes, with their stench and stinging flies, that
nigh unmanned me. I am at home in the high lands. As for pirates-—" He
grinned enigmatically and bent to the oars.

The sun sank like a dull-glowing copper ball into a lake of fire. The
blue of the sea merged with the blue of the sky, and both turned to
soft dark velvet, clustered with stars and the mirrors of stars. Olivia
reclined in the bows of the gently rocking boat, in a state dreamy and
unreal. She experienced an illusion that she was floating in midair,
stars beneath her as well as above. Her silent companion was etched
vaguely against the softer darkness. There was no break or falter in
the rhythm of his oars; he might have been a fantasmal oarsman, rowing
her across the dark lake of Death. But the edge of her fear was dulled,
and, lulled by the monotony of motion, she passed into a quiet slumber.

Dawn was in her eyes when she awakened, aware of a ravenous hunger. It
was a change in the morion of the boat that had roused her; Conan was
resting on his oars, gazing beyond her. She realized that he had rowed
all night without pause, and marveled at his iron endurance. She
twisted about to follow his stare and saw a green wall of trees and
shrubbery rising from the water's edge and sweeping away in a wide
curve, enclosing a small bay whose waters lay still as blue glass.

"This is one of the many islands that dot this inland sea," said Conan.
"They are supposed to be uninhabited. I've heard the Hyrkanians seldom
visit them. Besides, they generally hug the shores in their galleys,
and we have come a long way. Before sunset we were out of sight of the
mainland."

With a few strokes, he brought the boat in to shore and made the
painter fast to the arching root of a tree, which rose from the water's
edge. Stepping ashore, he reached out a hand to help Olivia. She took
it, wincing slightly at the bloodstains upon it, feeling a hint of the
dynamic strength that lurked in the barbarian's thews.

A dreamy quiet lay over the woods that bordered the blue bay. Then
somewhere, far back among the trees, a bird lifted its morning song. A
breeze whispered through the leaves and set them to murmuring. Olivia
found herself listening intently for something, she knew not what. What
might be lurking amid those nameless woodlands?

As she peered timidly into the shadows between the trees, something
swept into the sunlight with a swift whirl of wings: a great parrot,
which dropped onto a leafy branch and swayed there, a gleaming image of
jade and crimson. It turned its crested head sidewise and regarded the
invaders with glittering eyes of jet.

"Crom!" muttered the Cimmerian. "Here is the grandfather of all
parrots. He must be a thousand years old! Look at the evil wisdom of
his eyes. What mysteries do you guard, Wise Devil?"

Abruptly the bird spread its flaming wings and, soaring from its perch,
cried out harshly: "Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!" and, with a wild
screech of horribly human laughter, rushed away through the trees to
vanish in the opalescent shadows.

Olivia stared after it, feeling the cold hand of nameless foreboding
touch her supple spine.

"What did it say?" she whispered.

"Human words, I'll swear," answered Conan; "but in what tongue I can't
say."

"Nor I," returned the girl. "Yet it must have learned them from human
lips. Human, or———" she gazed into the leafy fastnesses and shuddered
slightly, without knowing why.

"Crom, I'm hungry!" grunted the Cimmerian. "I could eat a whole
buffalo. We'll look for fruit; but first I'm going to cleanse myself of
this dried mud and blood. Hiding in marshes is foul business."

So saying, he laid aside his sword and, wading out shoulder-deep into
the blue water, went about his ablutions. When he emerged, his
clean-cut bronze limbs shone; his streaming black mane was no longer
matted. His blue eyes, though they smoldered with unquenchable fire,
were no longer murky or bloodshot. But the tigerish suppleness of limb
and the dangerous aspect of feature were not altered.

Strapping on his sword once more, he motioned the girl to follow him,
and they left the shore, passing under the leafy arches of the great
branches. Underfoot lay a short green sward, which cushioned their
tread. Between the trunks of the trees they caught glimpses of
faery-like vistas.

Presently Conan grunted in pleasure at the sight of golden and russet
globes hanging in clusters among the leaves. Indicating that the girl
should seat herself on a fallen tree, he filled her lap with the exotic
delicacies, and then himself fell to with unconcealed gusto.

"Ishtar!" said he, between mouthfuls. "Since Ilbars I have lived on
rats, and roots I dug out of the stinking mud. This is sweet to the
palate, though not very filling. Still, it will serve if we eat
enough."

Olivia was too busy to reply. The sharp edge of the Cimmerian's hunger
blunted, he began to gaze at his fair companion with more interest than
previously, noting the lustrous clusters of her dark hair, the
peach-bloom tints of her dainty skin, and the rounded contours of her
lithe figure which the scanty silk tunic displayed to full advantage.

Finishing her meal, the object of his scrutiny looked up, and meeting
his burning, slit-eyed gaze, she changed color and the remnants of the
fruit slipped from her fingers.

Without comment, he indicated with a gesture that they should continue
their explorations, and rising, she followed him out of the trees and
into a glade, the farther end of which was bounded by a dense thicket.
As they stepped into the open there was a ripping crash in the thicket,
and Conan, bounding aside and carrying the girl with him, narrowly
saved them from something that rushed through the air and struck a tree
trunk with a thunderous impact.

Whipping out his sword, Conan bounded across the glade and plunged into
the thicket. Silence ensued, while Olivia crouched on the sward,
terrified and bewildered. Presently, Conan emerged, a puzzled scowl on
his face.

"Nothing in that thicket," he growled. "But there was something——-"

He studied the missile that had so narrowly missed them and grunted
incredulously, as if unable to credit his own senses. It was a huge
block of greenish stone, which lay on the sward at the foot of the
tree, whose wood its impact had splintered.

"A strange stone to find on an uninhabited island," growled Conan.

Olivia's lovely eyes dilated in wonder. The stone was a symmetrical
block, indisputably cut and shaped by human hands. And it was
astonishingly massive. The Cimmerian grasped it with both hands, and
with legs braced and the muscles standing out on his arms and back in
straining knots, he heaved it above his head and cast it from him,
exerting every ounce of nerve and sinew. It fell a few feet in front of
him. Conan swore.

"No man living could throw that rock across this glade. It's a task for
siege engines. Yet here there are no mangonels or ballistas."

"Perhaps it was thrown by some such engine from afar," she suggested.

He shook his head. "It didn't fall from above. It came from yonder
thicket. See how the twigs are broken? It was thrown as a man might
throw a pebble. But who? What? Come!"

She hesitantly followed him into the thicket. Inside the outer ring of
leafy brush, the undergrowth was less dense. Utter silence brooded over
all. The springy sward gave no sign of footprints. Yet from this
mysterious thicket had hurtled that boulder, swift and deadly. Conan
bent closer to the sward, where the grass was crushed down here and
there. He shook his head angrily. Even to his keen eyes it gave no clue
as to what had stood or trodden there. His gaze roved to the green roof
above their heads, a solid ceiling of thick leaves and interwoven
arches. And he froze suddenly.

Then rising, sword in hand, he began to back away, thrusting Olivia
behind him.

"Out of here, quick!" he urged in a whisper that congealed the girl's
blood.

"What is it? What do you see?"

"Nothing," he answered guardedly, not halting his wary retreat.

"But what is it, then? What lurks in this thicket?"

"Death!" he answered, his gaze still fixed on the brooding jade arches
that shut out the sky.

Once out of the thicket, he took her hand and led her swiftly through
the thinning trees, until they mounted a grassy slope, sparsely treed,
and emerged upon a low plateau, where the grass grew taller and the
trees were few and scattered. And in the midst of that plateau rose a
long broad structure of crumbling greenish stone.

They gazed in wonder. No legends named such a building on any island of
Vilayet. They approached it warily, seeing that moss and lichen crawted
over the stones, and the broken roof gaped to the sky. On all sides lay
bits and shards of masonry, half hidden in the waving grass, giving the
impression that once many buildings rose there, perhaps a whole town.
But now only the long hall-like structure rose against the sky, and its
walls leaned drunkenly among the crawling vines.

Whatever doors had once guarded its portals had long rotted away. Conan
and his companion stood in the broad entrance and stared inside.
Sunlight streamed in through gaps in the walls and roof, making the
interior a dim weave of light and shadow. Grasping his sword firmly,
Conan entered, with the slouching gait of a hunting panther, sunken
head and noiseless feet. Olivia tiptoed after him.

Once within, Conan grunted in surprise, and Olivia stifled a scream.

"Look!Oh, look!"

"I see," he answered. "Nothing to fear. They are statues."

"But how lifelike—and how evil!" she whispered, drawing close to him.

They stood in a great hall, whose floor was of polished stone, littered
with dust and broken stones, which had fallen from the ceiling. Vines,
growing between the stones, masked the apertures. The lofty roof, flat
and un-domed, was upheld by thick columns, marching in rows down the
sides of the walls. And in each space between these columns stood a
strange figure.

They were statues, apparently of iron, black and shining as if
continually polished. They were life-sized, depicting tall, lithely
powerful men, with cruel, hawklike faces. They were naked, and every
swell, depression and contour of joint and sinew was represented with
incredible realism. But the most lifelike feature was their proud,
intolerant faces. These features were not cast in the same mold. Each
face possessed its own individual characteristics, though there was a
tribal likeness between them all. There was none of the monotonous
uniformity of decorative art, in the faces at least.

"They seem to be listening—and waiting!" whispered the girl uneasily.

Conan rang his hilt against one of the images.

"Iron," he pronounced. "But Croml in what molds were they cast?"

He shook his head and shrugged his massive shoulders in puzzlement.

Olivia glanced timidly about the great silent hall. Only the ivy-grown
stones, the tendril-clasped pillars, with the dark figures brooding
between them, met her gaze. She shifted uneasily and wished to be gone,
but the images held a strange fascination for her companion. He
examined them in detail and, barbarian-like, tried to break off their
limbs. But their material resisted his best efforts. He could neither
disfigure nor dislodge from its niche a single image. At last he
desisted, swearing in his wonder.

"What manner of men were these copied from?" he inquired of the world
at large. "These figures are black, yet they are not like Negroes. I
have never seen their like."

"Let us go into the sunlight," urged Olivia, and he nodded, with a
baffled glance at the brooding shapes along the walls.

So they passed out of the dusky hall into the clear blaze of the summer
sun. She was surprised to note its position in the sky; they had spent
more time in the ruins than she had guessed.

"Let us take to the boat again," she suggested. "I am afraid here. It
is a strange, evil place. We do not know when we may be attacked by
whatever cast the rock."

"I think we're safe as long as we're not under the trees," he answered.
"Come."

The plateau, whose sides fell away toward the wooded shores on the
east, west, and south, sloped upward toward the north to abut on a
tangle of rocky cliffs, the highest point of the island. Thither Conan
took his way, suiting his long stride to his companion's gait. From
time to time his glance rested inscrutably upon her, and she was aware
of it.

They reached the northern extremity of the plateau and stood gazing up
the steep pitch of the cliffs. Trees grew thickly along the rim of the
plateau east and west of the cliffs, and clung to the precipitous
incline. Conan glanced at these trees suspiciously, but he began the
ascent, helping his companion on the climb. The slope was not sheer and
was broken by ledges and boulders. The Cimmerian, born in a hill
country, could have run up it like a cat, but Olivia found the going
difficult. Again and again she felt herself lifted lightly off her feet
and over some obstacle that would have taxed her strength to surmount,
and her wonder grew at the sheer physical power of the man. She no
longer found his touch repugnant. There was a promise of protection in
his iron clasp.

At last they stood on the ultimate pinnacle, their hair stirring in the
sea wind. From their feet, the cliffs fell away sheerly three or four
hundred feet to a narrow tangle of woodlands bordering the beach.
Looking southward, they saw the whole island lying like a great oval
mirror, its bevelled edges sloping down swiftly into a rim of green,
except where it broke in the pitch of the cliffs. As far as they could
see, on all sides stretched the blue waters, still, placid, fading into
dreamy hazes of distance.

"The sea is still," sighed Olivia. "Why should we not take up our
journey again?"

Conan, poised like a bronze statue on the cliffs, pointed northward.
Straining her eyes, Olivia saw a white fleck that seemed to hang
suspended in the aching haze.

"What is it?"

"A sail."

"Hyrkanians?"

"Who can tell, at this distance?"

"They will anchor here—search the island for us!" she cried in quick
panic.

"I doubt it. They come from the north, so they cannot be searching for
us. They may stop for some other reason, in which case we'll have to
hide as best we can. But I believe it's either a pirate or an Hyrkanian
galley returning from some northern raid. In the latter case they are
not likely to anchor here. But we can't put to sea until they've gone
out of sight, for they're coming from the direction in which we must
go. Doubtless they'll pass the island tonight, and at dawn we can go on
our way."

"Then we must spend the night here?" She shivered.

"It's safest."

"Then let us sleep here, on the crags," she urged.

He shook his head, glancing at the stunted trees, at the marching woods
below, a green mass which seemed to send out tendrils straggling up the
sides of the cliffs.

"There are too many trees. We'll sleep in the ruins."

She cried out in protest.

"Nothing will harm you there," he soothed. "Whatever threw the stone at
us did not follow us out of the woods. There was nothing to show that
any wild thing lairs in the ruins. Besides, you are soft-skinned, and
used to shelter and dainties. I could sleep naked in the snow and feel
no discomfort, but the dew would give you cramps, were we to sleep in
the open."

Olivia helplessly acquiesced, and they descended the cliffs, crossed
the plateau, and once more approached the gloomy, age-haunted rains. By
this time the sun was sinking below the plateau rim. They had found
fruit in the trees near the cliffs, and these formed their supper, both
food and drink.

The southern night swept down quickly, littering the dark blue sky with
great white stars, and Conan entered the shadowy ruins, drawing the
reluctant Olivia after him. She shivered at the sight of those tense
black shadows in their niches along the walls. In the darkness that the
starlight only faintly touched, she could not make out their outlines;
she could only sense their attitude of waiting— waiting as they had
waited for untold centuries.

Conan had brought a great armful of tender branches, well-leafed. These
he heaped to make a couch for her, and she lay upon it, with a curious
sensation as of one lying down to sleep in a serpent's lair.

Whatever her forebodings, Conan did not share them. The Cimmerian sat
down near her, his back against a pillar, his sword across his knees.
His eyes gleamed like a panther's in the dusk.

"Sleep, girl," said he. "My slumber is light as a wolf's. Nothing can
enter this hall without awaking me."

Olivia did not reply. From her bed of leaves she watched the immobile
figure, indistinct in the soft darkness. How strange, to move in
fellowship with a barbarian, to be cared for and protected by one of a
race, tales of which had frightened her as a child! He came of a people
bloody, grim and ferocious. His kinship to the wild was apparent in his
every action; it burned in his smoldering eyes. Yet he had not harmed
her, and her worst oppressor had been a man the world called civilized.
As a delicious languor stole over her relaxing limbs and she sank into
foamy billows of slumber, her last waking thought was a drowsy
recollection of the firm touch of Conan's fingers on her soft flesh.

Chapter Two

Olivia dreamed, and through her dreams crawled a suggestion of lurking
evil, like a black serpent writhing through flower gardens. Her dreams
were fragmentary and colorful, exotic shards of a broken, unknown
pattern, until they crystallized into a scene of horror and madness,
etched against a background of cyclopean stones and pillars.

She saw a great hall, whose lofty ceiling was upheld by stone columns
marching in even rows along the massive walls. Among these pillars
fluttered great green and scarlet parrots, and the hall was thronged
with black-skinned, hawk-faced warriors. They were not Negroes. Neither
they nor their garments nor weapons resembled anything of the world the
dreamer knew.

They were pressing about one bound to a pillar: a slender,
white-skinned youth, with a cluster of golden curls about his alabaster
brow. His beauty was not altogether human—like the dream of a god,
chiseled out of living marble.

The black warriors laughed at him, jeered and taunted in a strange
tongue. The lithe, naked form writhed beneath their cruel hands. Blood
trickled down the ivory thighs to spatter on the polished floor. The
screams of the victim echoed through the hall; then lifting his head
toward the ceiling and the skies beyond, he cried out a name in an
awful voice. A dagger in an ebon hand cut short his cry, and the golden
head rolled on the ivory breast.

As if in answer to that desperate cry, there was a rolling thunder as
of celestial chariot-wheels, and a figure stood before the slayers, as
if materialized out of empty air. The form was of a man, but no mortal
man ever wore such an aspect of inhuman beauty. There was an
unmistakable resemblance between him and the youth who drooped lifeless
in his chains, but the alloy of humanity that softened the godliness of
the youth was lacking in the features of the stranger, awful and
immobile in their beauty.

The blacks shrank back before him, their eyes slits of fire. Lifting a
hand, he spoke, and his tones echoed through the silent halls in deep,
rich waves of sound. Like men in a trance, the black warriors fell back
until they were ranged along the walls in regular lines. Then from the
stranger's chiseled lips rang a terrible invocation and command: "Yagkoolan
yok tha, xuthalla!"

At the blast of that awful cry, the black figures stiffened and froze.
Over their limbs crept a curious rigidity, an unnatural petrification.
The stranger touched the limp body of the youth, and the chains fell
away from it. He lifted the corpse in his arms; then ere he turned
away, his tranquil gaze swept again over the silent rows of ebony
figures, and he pointed to the moon, which gleamed in through the
casements. And they understood, those tense, waiting statues that had
been men…

Olivia awoke, starting up on her couch of branches, a cold sweat
beading her skin. Her heart pounded loud in the silence. She glanced
wildly about. Conan slept against his pillar, his head fallen upon his
massive breast. The silvery radiance of the late moon crept through the
gaping roof, throwing long white lines along the dusty floor. She could
see the images dimly, black, tense—waiting. Fighting down a rising
hysteria, she saw the moonbeams rest lightly on the pillars and the
shapes between.

What was that? A tremor among the shadows where the moonlight fell. A
paralysis of horror gripped her, for where there should have been the
immobility of death, there was movement: a slow twitching, a flexing
and writhing of ebon limbs—an awful scream burst from her lips as she
broke the bonds that held her mute and motionless. At her shriek Conan
shot erect, teeth gleaming, sword lifted.

"The statues! The statues!—Oh my God, the statues are coming to life!"

And with the cry she sprang through a crevice in the wall, burst madly
through the hindering vines, and ran, ran, ran—blind, screaming,
witless—until a grasp on her arm brought her up short and she shrieked
and fought against the arms that caught her, until a familiar voice
penetrated the mists of her terror, and she saw Conan's face, a mask of
bewilderment in the moonlight.

"What in Crom's name, girl? Did you have a nightmare?" His voice
sounded strange and far away. With a sobbing gasp she threw her arms
about his thick neck and clung to him convulsively, crying in panting
catches.

"Where are they? Did they follow us?"

"Nobody followed us," he answered.

She sat up, still clinging to him, and looked fearfully about. Her
blind flight had carried her to the southern edge of the plateau. Just
below them was the slope, its foot masked in the thick shadows of the
woods. Behind them she saw the ruins looming in the high-swinging moon.

"Did you not see them?—the statues, moving, lifting their hands, their
eyes glaring in the shadows?"

"I saw nothing," answered the barbarian uneasily. "I slept more soundly
than usual, because it has been so long since I have slumbered the
night through; yet I don't think anything could have entered the hall
without waking me."

"Nothing entered." A laugh of hysteria escaped her. "It was something
there already. Ah, Mitra, we lay down to sleep among them, like sheep
making their bed in the shambles!"

"What are you talking about?" he demanded. "I woke at your cry, but
before I had time to look about me, I saw you rush out through the
crack in the wall. I pursued you, lest you come to harm. I thought you
had a nightmare."

"So I did!" She shivered. "But the reality was more grisly than the
dream. ListenI" And she narrated all that she had dreamed and thought
to see.

Conan listened attentively. The natural skepticism of the sophisticated
man was not his. His mythology contained ghouls, goblins, and
necromancers. After she had finished, he sat silent, absently toying
with his sword.

"The youth they tortured was like the tall man who came?" he asked at
last.

"As like as son to father," she answered, and hesitantly: "If the mind
could conceive of the offspring of a union of divinity with humanity,
it would picture that youth. The gods of old times mated sometimes with
mortal women, our legends tell us."

"What gods?" he muttered.

"The nameless, forgotten ones. Who knows? They have gone back into the
still waters of the lakes, the quiet hearts of the hills, the gulfs
beyond the stars. Gods are no more stable than men."

"But if these shapes were men, blasted into iron images by some god or
devil, how can they come to life?"

"There is witchcraft in the moon," she shuddered. "He pointed at the
moon; while the moon shines on them, they live. So I believe."

"But we were not pursued," muttered Conan, glancing toward the brooding
ruins. "You might have dreamed they moved. I am of a mind to return and
see."

"No, no!" she cried, clutching him desperately. "Perhaps the spell upon
them holds them in the hall. Do not go back! They will rend you limb
from limb! Oh, Conan, let us go into our boat and flee this awful
island! Surely the Hyrkanian ship has passed us now! Let us go!"

So frantic was her pleading that Conan was impressed. His curiosity in
regard to the images was balanced by his superstition. Foes of flesh
and blood he did not fear, however great the odds, but any hint of the
supernatural roused all the dim monstrous instincts of fear that are
the heritage of the barbarian.

He took the girl's hand, and they went down the slope and plunged into
the dense woods, where the leaves whispered and nameless night birds
murmured drowsily. Under the trees the shadows clustered thick, and
Conan swerved to avoid the denser patches. His eyes roved continuously
from side to side, and often flitted into the branches above them. He
went quickly yet warily, his arm girdling the girl's waist so strongly
that she felt as if she were being carried rather than guided. Neither
spoke. The only sound was the girl's quick nervous panting, the rustle
of her small feet in the grass. So they came through the trees to the
edge of the water, shimmering like molten silver in the moonlight.

"We should have brought fruit for food," muttered Conan; "but doubtless
we'll find other islands. As well leave now as later; it's but a few
hours till dawn———"

His voice trailed away. The painter was still made fast to the looping
root. But at the other end was only a smashed and shattered ruin, half
submerged in the shallow water.

A stifled cry escaped Olivia. Conan wheeled and faced the dense
shadows, a crouching image of menace. The noise of the night birds was
suddenly silent. A brooding stillness reigned over the woods. No breeze
moved the branches, yet somewhere the leaves stirred faintly.

Quick as a great cat, Conan caught up Olivia and ran. Through the
shadows he raced like a phantom, while somewhere above and behind them
sounded a curious rushing among the leaves, that implacably drew closer
and closer. Then the moonlight burst full upon their faces, and they
were speeding up the slope of the plateau.

At the crest Conan laid Olivia down, and turned to glare back at the
gulf of shadows they had just quitted. The leaves shook in a sudden
breeze; that was all. He shook his mane with an angry growl. Olivia
crept to his feet like a frightened child. Her eyes looked up at him,
dark wells of horror.

"What are we to do, Conan?" she whispered.

He looked at the ruins, stared again into the woods below.

"We'll go to the cliffs," he declared, lifting her to her feet.
"Tomorrow I'll make a raft, and we'll trust our luck to the sea again."

"It was not—not they that destroyed our boat?" It was half question,
half assertion.

He shook his head, grimly taciturn.

Every step of the way across that moon-haunted plateau was a sweating
terror for Olivia, but no black shapes stole subtly from the looming
ruins, and at last they reached the foot of the crags, which rose stark
and gloomily majestic above them. There Conan halted in some
uncertainty, at last selecting a place sheltered by a broad ledge,
nowhere near any trees.

"Lie down and sleep if you can, Olivia," he said. "I'll keep watch."

But no sleep came to Olivia, and she lay watching the distant ruins and
the wooded rim until the stars paled, the east whitened, and dawn in
rose and gold struck fire from the dew on the grass blades.

She rose stiffly, her mind reverting to all the happenings of the
night. In the morning light, some of its terrors seemed like figments
of an overwrought imagination. Conan strode over to her, and his words
electrified her.

"Just before dawn I heard the creak of timbers and the rasp and clack
of cordage and oars. A ship has put in and anchored at the beach not
far away—probably the ship whose sail we saw yesterday. We'll go up the
cliffs and spy on her."

Up they went and, lying on their bellies among the boulders, saw a
painted mast jutting up beyond the trees to the west.

"An Hyrkanian craft, from the cut of her rigging," muttered Conan. "I
wonder if the crew———"

A distant medley of voices reached their ears; and, creeping to the
southern edge of the cliffs, they saw a motley horde emerge from the
fringe of trees along the western rim of the plateau and stand there a
space in debate. There was much flourishing of arms, brandishing of
swords, and loud rough argument. Then the whole band started across the
plateau toward the ruins, at a slant that would take them close by the
foot of the cliffs.

"Pirates!" whispered Conan, a grim smile on his thin lips. "It's an
Hyrkanian galley they've captured. Here— crawl among these rocks.

"Don't show yourself unless I call to you," he instructed, having
secreted her to his satisfaction among a tangle of boulders along the
crest of the cliffs. "I'm going to meet these dogs. If I succeed in my
plan, all will be well, and we'll sail away with them. If I don't
succeed— well, hide yourself in the rocks until they're gone, for no
devils on this island are as cruel as these sea-wolves."

And tearing himself from her reluctant grasp, he swung quickly down the
cliffs.

Looking fearfully from her eyrie, Olivia saw the band had neared the
foot of the cliffs. Even as she looked, Conan stepped out from among
the boulders and faced them, sword in hand. They gave back with yells
of menace and surprise; then halted uncertainly to glare at this figure
which had appeared so suddenly from the rocks. There were some seventy
of them, a wild horde made up of men from many nations: Kothians,
Zamorians, Brythunians, Corinthians, Shemites. Their features reflected
the wildness of their natures. Many bore the scars of the lash or the
branding iron. There were cropped ears, slit noses, gaping eye sockets,
stumps of wrists—marks of the hangman as well as scars of battle. Most
of them were half naked, but the garments they wore were fine:
gold-braided jackets, satin girdles, silken breeches, tattered, stained
with tar and blood, vied with pieces of silver-chased armor. Jewels
glittered in nose rings and earrings, and in the hilts of their
daggers.

Over against this bizarre mob stood the tall Cimmerian in strong
contrast with his hard, bronzed limbs and clean-cut, vital features.

"Who are you?" they roared.

"Conan the Cimmerian!" His voice was like the deep challenge of a lion.
"One of the Free Companions. I mean to try my luck with the Red
Brotherhood. Who's your chief?"

"I, by Ishtar!" bellowed a bull-like voice, as a huge figure swaggered
forward: a giant, naked to the waist, where his capacious belly was
girdled by a wide sash that upheld voluminous silken pantaloons. His
head was shaven except for a scalp-lock, his mustaches drooped over a
rat-trap mouth. Green Shemitish suppers with upturned toes were on his
feet, a long straight sword in his hand.

Conan stared and glared.

"Sergius of Khrosha, by Crom!"

"Aye, by Ishtar!" boomed the giant, his small black eyes glittering
with hate. "Did you think I had forgot? Ha! Sergius never forgets an
enemy. Now I'll hang you up by the heels and skin you alive. At him,
lads!"

"Aye, send your dogs at me, big-belly," sneered Conan with bitter
scorn. "You were always a coward, you Kothic cur."

"Coward! To me?" The broad face turned black with passion. "On guard,
you northern dog! I'll cut out your heart!"

In an instant the pirates had formed a circle about the rivals, their
eyes blazing, their breath sucking between their teeth in bloodthirsty
enjoyment. High up among the crags Olivia watched, sinking her nails
into her palms in her painful excitement.

Without formality the combatants engaged, Sergius coming in with a
rush, quick on his feet as a giant cat, for all his bulk. Curses hissed
between his clenched teeth as he lustily swung and parried. Conan
fought in silence, his eyes slits of blue balefire.

The Kothian ceased his oaths to save his breath. The only sounds were
the quick scuff of feet on the sward, the panting of the pirate, the
ring and clash of steel. The swords flashed like white fire in the
early sun, wheeling and circling. They seemed to recoil from each
other's contact, then leap together again instantly. Sergius was giving
back; only his superlative skill had saved him thus far from the
blinding speed of the Cimmerian's onslaught. A louder clash of steel, a
sliding rasp, a choking cry—from the pirate horde a fierce yell split
the morning as Conan's sword plunged through their captain's massive
body. The point quivered an instant from between Sergius' shoulders, a
hand's breadth of white fire in the sunlight; then the Cimmerian
wrenched back his steel and the pirate chief fell heavily, face down,
and lay in a widening pool of blood, his broad hands twitching for an
instant Conan wheeled toward the gaping corsairs.

"Well, you dogs I" he roared, "I've sent your chief to Hell—what says
the law of the Red Brotherhood?"

Before any could answer, a rat-faced Brythunian, standing behind his
fellows, whirled a sling swiftly and deadly. Straight as an arrow sped
the stone to its mark, and Conan reeled and fell as a tall tree falls
to the woodsman's ax. Up on the cliff Olivia caught at the boulders for
support. The scene swam dizzily before her eyes; all she could see was
the Cimmerian lying limply on the sward, blood oozing from his head.

The rat-faced one yelped in triumph and ran to stab the prostrate man,
but a lean Corinthian thrust him back.

"What, Aratus, would you break the law of the Brotherhood, you dog?"

"No law is broken," snarled the Brythunian.

"No law? Why, you dog, this man you have just struck down is by just
rights our captain!"

"Nay!" shouted Aratus. "He was not of our band, but an outsider. He had
not been admitted to fellowship. Slaying Sergius does not make him
captain, as would have been the case had one of us killed him."

"But he wished to join us," retorted the Corinthian. "He said so."

At that a great clamor arose, some siding with Aratus, some with the
Corinthian, whom they called Ivanos. Oaths flew thick, challenges were
passed, hands fumbled at sword hilts.

At last a Shemite spoke up above the clamor: "Why do you argue over a
dead man?"

"He's not dead," answered the Corinthian, rising from beside the
prostrate Cimmerian. "It was a glancing blow; he's only stunned."

At that the clamor rose anew, Aratus trying to get at the senseless man
and Ivanos finally bestriding him, sword in hand, and defying all and
sundry. Olivia sensed that it was not so much in defense of Conan that
the Corinthian took his stand, but in opposition to Aratus. Evidently
these men had been Sergius' lieutenants, and there was no love lost
between them. After more arguments, it was decided to bind Conan and
take him along with them, his fate to be voted on later.

The Cimmerian, who was beginning to regain consciousness, was bound
with leather girdles, and then four pirates lifted him and, with many
complaints and curses, carried him along with the band, which took up
its journey across the plateau once more. The body of Sergius was left
where it had fallen, a sprawling, unlovely shape on the sun-washed
sward.

Up among the rocks, Olivia lay stunned by the disaster. She was
incapable of speech or action and could only lie there and stare with
horrified eyes as the brutal horde dragged her protector away.

How long she lay there, she did not know. Across the plateau she saw
the pirates reach the ruins and enter, dragging their captive. She saw
them swarming in and out of the doors and crevices, prodding into the
heaps of debris, and clambering about the walls. After awhile a score
of them came back across the plateau and vanished among the trees on
the western rim, dragging the body of Sergius after them, presumably to
cast into the sea. About the ruins the others were cutting down trees
and securing material for a fire. Olivia heard their shouts,
unintelligible in the distance, and she heard the voices of those who
had gone into the woods, echoing among the trees. Presently they came
back into sight, bearing casks of liquor and leathern sacks of food.
They headed for the ruins, cursing lustily under their burdens.

Of all this Olivia was but mechanically cognizant. Her overwrought
brain was almost ready to collapse. Left alone and unprotected, she
realized how much the protection of the Cimmerian had meant to her.
There intruded vaguely a wonderment at the mad pranks of Fate, that
could make the daughter of a king the companion of a red-handed
barbarian. With it came a revulsion toward her own kind. Her father,
and Shah Amurath, they were civilized men. And from them she had had
only suffering. She had never encountered any civilized man who treated
her with kindness unless there was an ulterior motive behind his
actions. Conan had shielded her, protected her, and—so far—demanded
nothing in return. Laying her head in her rounded arms she wept, until
distant shouts of ribald revelry roused her to her own danger.

She glanced from the dark ruins about which the fantastic figures,
small in the distance, weaved and staggered, to the dusky depths of the
green forest. Even if her terrors in the ruins the night before had
been only dreams, the menace that lurked in those green, leafy depths
below was no figment of nightmare. Were Conan slain or carried away
captive, her only choice would lie between giving herself up to the
human wolves of the sea, or remaining alone on that devil-haunted
island.

As the full horror of her situation swept over her, she fell forward in
a swoon.

Chapter Three

The sun was hanging low when Olivia regained her senses. A faint wind
wafted to her ears distant shouts and snatches of ribald song. Rising
cautiously, she looked out across the plateau. She saw the pirates
clustered about a great fire outside the ruins, and her heart leaped as
a group emerged from the interior dragging some object she knew was
Conan. They propped him against the wall, still evidently bound fast,
and there ensued a long discussion, with much brandishing of weapons.
At last they dragged him back into the hall, and took up anew the
business of ale-guzzling. Olivia sighed; at least she knew that the
Cimmerian still lived. Fresh determination steeled her. As soon as
night fell, she would steal to those grim ruins and free him or be
taken herself in the attempt. And she knew it was not selfish interest
alone which prompted her decision.

With this in mind, she ventured to creep from her refuge to pluck and
eat nuts which grew sparsely near at hand. She had not eaten since the
day before. It was while so occupied that she was troubled by a
sensation of being watched. She scanned the rocks nervously, then, with
a shuddering suspicion, crept to the north edge of the cliff and gazed
down into the waving green mass below; already dusky with the sunset.
She saw nothing; it was impossible that she could be seen, when not on
the cliff's edge, by anything lurking in those woods. Yet she
distinctly felt the glare of hidden eyes and felt that something
animate and sentient was aware of her presence and her hiding place.

Stealing back to her rocky eyrie, she lay watching the distant ruins
until the dusk of night masked them, and she marked their position by
the flickering flames about which black figures leaped and cavorted
groggily.

Then she rose. It was time to make her attempt But first she stole back
to the northern edge of the cliffs, and looked down into the woods that
bordered the beach. And as she strained her eyes in the dim starlight,
she stiffened, and an icy hand touched her heart.

Far below her something moved. It was as if a black shadow detached
itself from the gulf of shadows below her. It moved slowly up the sheer
face of the cliff— a vague bulk, shapeless in the semidarkness. Panic
caught Olivia by the throat, and she struggled with the scream that
tugged at her lips. Turning, she fled down the southern slope.

That flight down the shadowed cliffs was a nightmare in which she slid
and scrambled, catching at jagged rocks with cold fingers. As she tore
her tender skin and bruised her soft limbs on the rugged boulders over
which Conan had so lightly lifted her, she realized again her
dependence on the iron-thewed barbarian. But this thought was but one
in a fluttering maelstrom of dizzy fright.

The descent seemed endless, but at last her feet struck the grassy
levels, and in a very frenzy of eagerness she sped away toward the fire
that burned like the red heart of night. Behind her, as she fled, she
heard a shower of stones rattle down the steep slope, and the sound
lent wings to her heels. What grisly climber dislodged those stones she
dared not try to think.

Strenuous physical action dissipated her blind terror somewhat, and
before she had reached the rains, her mind was clear, her reasoning
faculties alert, though her limbs trembled from her efforts.

She dropped to the sward and wriggled along on her belly until, from
behind a small tree that had escaped the axes of the pirates, she
watched her enemies. They had completed their supper but were still
drinking, dipping pewter mugs or jeweled goblets into the broken heads
of the wine-casks. Some were already snoring drunkenly on the grass,
while others had staggered into the ruins. Of Conan she saw nothing.
She lay there, while the dew formed on the grass about her and the
leaves overhead, and the men about the fire cursed, gambled, and
argued. There were only a few about the fire; most of them had gone
into the ruins to sleep.

She lay watching them, her nerves taut with the strain of waiting, the
flesh crawling between her shoulders at the thought of what might be
watching her in turn—of what might be stealing up behind her. Time
dragged on leaden feet. One by one the revelers sank down in drunken
slumber, until all were stretched senseless beside the dying fire.

Olivia hesitated—then was galvanized by a distant glow rising through
the trees. The moon was rising!

With a gasp she rose and hurried toward the ruins. Her flesh crawled as
she tiptoed among the drunken shapes that sprawled beside the gaping
portal. Inside were many more; they shifted and mumbled in their
besotted dreams, but none awakened as she glided among them. A sob of
joy rose to her lips as she saw Conan. The Cimmerian was wide awake,
bound upright to a pillar, his eyes gleaming in the faint reflection of
the waning fire outside.

Picking her way among the sleepers, she approached him. Lightly as she
had come, he had heard her; had seen her when first framed in the
portal. A faint grin touched his hard lips.

She reached him and clung to him an instant. He felt the quick beating
of her heart against his breast. Through a broad crevice in the wall
stole a beam of moonlight, and the air was instantly supercharged with
subtle tension. Conan felt it and stiffened. Olivia felt it and gasped.
The sleepers snored on. Bending quickly, she drew a dagger from its
senseless owner's belt, and set to work on Conan's bonds. They were
sail cords, thick and heavy, and tied with the craft of a sailor. She
toiled desperately, while the tide of moonlight crept slowly across the
floor toward the feet of the crouching black figures between the
pillars.

Her breath came in gasps; Conan's wrists were free, but his elbows and
legs were still bound fast. She glanced fleeting at the figures along
the walls—waiting, waiting. They seemed to watch her with the awful
patience of the undead. The drunkards beneath her feet began to stir
and groan in their sleep. The moonlight crept down the hall, touching
the black feet. The cords fell from Conan's arms, and, taking the
dagger from her, he ripped the bonds from his legs with a single quick
slash. He stepped out from the pillar, flexing his limbs, stoically
enduring the agony of returning circulation. Olivia crouched against
him, shaking like a leaf. Was it some trick of the moonlight that
touched the eyes of the black figures with fire, so that they glimmered
redly in the shadows?

Conan moved with the abruptness of a jungle cat. Catching up his sword
from where it lay in a stack of weapons near by, he lifted Olivia
lightly from her feet and glided through an opening that gaped in the
ivy-grown wall.

No word passed between them. Lifting her in his arms he set off swiftly
across the moon-bathed sward. Her arms about his iron neck, the
Ophirean closed her eyes, cradling her dark curly head against his
massive shoulder. A delicious sense of security stole over her.

In spite of his burden, the Cimmerian crossed the plateau swiftly, and
Olivia, opening her eyes, saw that they were passing under the shadow
of the cliffs.

"Something climbed the cliffs," she whispered. "I heard it scrambling
behind me as I came down."

"We'll have to chance it," he grunted.

"I am not afraid—now," she sighed.

"You were not afraid when you came to free me, either," he answered.
"Crom, what a day it has been! Such haggling and wrangling I never
heard. I'm nearly deaf. Aratus wished to cut out my heart, and Ivanos
refused, to spite Aratus, whom he hates. All day long they snarled and
spat at one another, and the crew quickly grew too drunk to vote either
way—"

He halted suddenly, an image of bronze in the moonlight. With a quick
gesture he tossed the girl lightly to one side and behind him. Rising
to her knees on the soft sward, she screamed at what she saw.

Out of the shadows of the cliffs moved a monstrous shambling bulk—an
anthropomorphic horror, a grotesque travesty of creation.

In general outline it was not unlike a man. But its face, limned in the
bright moonlight, was bestial, with close-set ears, flaring nostrils,
and a great flabby-lipped mouth in which gleamed white tusklike fangs.
It was covered with shaggy grayish hair shot with silver, which shone
in the moonlight, and its great misshapen paws hung nearly to the
earth. Its bulk was tremendous; as it stood on its short, bowed legs,
its bullet-head rose above that of the man who faced it; the sweep of
the hairy breast and giant shoulders was breathtaking; the huge arms
were like knotted trees.

The moonlight scene swam, to Olivia's sight. This, then, was the end of
the trail—for what human being could withstand the fury of that hairy
mountain of thews and ferocity? Yet as she stared in wide-eyed horror
at the bronzed figure facing the monster, she sensed a kinship in the
antagonists that was almost appalling. This was less a struggle between
man and beast than a conflict between two creatures of the wild,
equally merciless and ferocious. With a flash of white tusks, the
monster charged.

The mighty arms spread wide as the beast plunged, stupefyingly quick
for all his vast bulk and stunted legs.

Conan's action was a blur of speed Olivia's eye could not follow. She
only saw that he evaded that deadly grasp, and his sword, flashing like
a jet of white lightning, sheared through one of those massive arms
between shoulder and elbow. A great spout of blood deluged the sward as
the severed member fell, twitching horribly, but even as the sword bit
through, the other malformed hand locked in Conan's black mane.

Only the iron neck-muscles of the Cimmerian saved him from a broken
neck at that instant. His left hand darted out to clamp on the beast's
squat throat, his left knee was jammed hard against the brute's hairy
belly. Then began a terriflc struggle, which lasted only seconds, but
which seemed like ages to the paralyzed girl.

The ape maintained his grasp in Conan's hair, dragging him toward the
tusks that glistened in the moonlight. The Cimmerian resisted this
effort, with his left arm rigid as iron, while the sword in his right
hand, wielded like a butcher-knife, sank again and again into the
groin, breast, and belly of his captor. The beast took its punishment
in awful silence, apparently unweakened by the blood that gushed from
its ghastly wounds. Swiftly the teirible strength of the anthropoid
overcame the leverage of braced arm and knee. Inexorably Conan's arm
bent under the strain; nearer and nearer he was drawn to the slavering
jaws that gaped for his life. Now the blazing eyes of the barbarian
glared into the bloodshot eyes of the ape. But as Conan tugged vainly
at his sword, wedged deep in the hairy body, the frothing jaws snapped
spasmodically shut, an inch from the Cimmerian's face, and he was
hurled to the sward by the dying convulsions of the monster.

Olivia, half fainting, saw the ape heaving, thrashing, and writhing,
gripping, manlike, the hilt that jutted from its body. A sickening
instant of this, then the great bulk quivered and lay still.

Conan rose and limped over to the corpse. The Cimmerian breathed
heavily, and walked like a man whose joints and muscles have been
wrenched and twisted almost to their limit of endurance. He felt his
bloody scalp and swore at the sight of the long, black, red-stained
strands still grasped in the monster's shaggy hand.

"Crom!" he panted. "I feel as if I'd been racked! I'd rather fight a
dozen men. Another instant and he'd have bitten off my head. Blast him,
he's torn a handful of my hair out by the roots."

Gripping his hilt with both hands he tugged and worked it free. Olivia
stole close to clasp his arm and stare down wide-eyed at the sprawling
monster.

"What—what is it?" she whispered.

"A gray man-ape," he grunted. "Dumb, and man-eating. They dwell in the
hills that border the eastern shore of this sea. How this one got to
this island, I can't say. Maybe he floated here on dnftwood, blown out
from the mainland in a storm."

"And it was he that threw the stone?"

"Yes; I suspected what it was when we stood in the thicket and I saw
the boughs bending over our heads. These creatures always lurk in the
deepest woods they can find and seldom emerge. What brought him into
the open, I can't say, but it was lucky for us; I'd have had no chance
with him among the trees."

"It followed me," she shivered. "I saw it climbing the cliffs."

"And following his instinct, he lurked in the shadow of the cliff,
instead of following you out across the plateau. His kind are creatures
of darkness and the silent places, haters of the sun and moon."

"Do you suppose there are others?"

"No, else the pirates had been attacked when they went through the
woods. The gray ape is wary, for all his strength, as shown by his
hesitancy in falling upon us in the thicket. His lust for you must have
been great, to have driven him to attack us finally in the open.
What———"

He started and wheeled back toward the way they had come. The night had
been split by an awful scream. It came from the ruins.

Instantly there followed a mad medley of yells, shrieks, and cries of
blasphemous agony. Though accompanied by a ringing of steel, the sounds
were of massacre rather than battle.

Conan stood frozen, the girl clinging to him in a frenzy of terror. The
clamor rose to a crescendo of madness, and then the Cimmerian turned
and went swiftly toward the rim of the plateau, with its fringe of
moon-limned trees. Olivia's legs were trembling so that she could not
walk; so he carried her, and her heart calmed its frantic pounding as
she nestled into his cradling arms.

They passed under the shadowy forest, but the clusters of blackness
held no terrors, the rifts of silver discovered no grisly shape. Night
birds murmured slumberously. The yells of slaughter dwindled behind
them, masked in the distance to a confused jumble of sound. Somewhere a
parrot called, like an eery echo: "Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!" So
they came to the tree-fringed water's edge and saw the galley lying at
anchor, her sail shining white in the moonlight. Already the stars were
paling for dawn.

Chapter Four

In the ghastly whiteness of dawn a handful of tattered, bloodstained
figures staggered through the trees and out on to the narrow beach.
There were forty-four of them, and they were a cowed and demoralized
band. With panting haste they plunged into the water and began to wade
toward the galley, when a stern challenge brought them up standing.

Etched against the whitening sky they saw Conan the Cimmerian standing
in the bows, sword in hand, his black mane tossing in the dawn wind.

"Stand!" he ordered. "Come no nearer. What would you have, dogs?"

"Let us come aboard!" croaked a hairy rogue, fingering a bloody stump
of ear. "We'd be gone from this devil's island."

"The first man who tries to climb over the side, I'll split his skull,"
promised Conan.

They were forty-four to one, but he held the whip-hand. The fight had
been hammered out of them.

"Let us come aboard, good Conan," whined a red-sashed Zamorian,
glancing fearfully over his shoulder at the silent woods. "We have been
so mauled, bitten, scratched, and rended, and are so weary from
fighting and running, that not one of us can lift a sword."

"Where is that dog Aratus?" demanded Conan.

"Dead, with the others! It was devils fell upon us! They were rending
us to pieces before we could awake—a dozen good rovers died in their
sleep. The ruins were full of flame-eyed shadows, with tearing fangs
and sharp talons."

"Aye!" put in another corsair. "They were the demons of the isle, which
took the forms of molten images, to befool us. Ishtar! we lay down to
sleep among them. We are no cowards. We fought them as long as mortal
man may strive against the powers of darkness. Then we broke away and
left them tearing at the corpses like jackals. But surely they'll
pursue us."

"Aye, let us come aboard!" clamored a lean Shemite. "Let us come in
peace, or we must come sword in hand, and though we be so weary you
will doubtless slay many of us, yet you cannot prevail gainst us all."

"Then I'll knock a hole in the planks and sink her," answered Conan
grimly. A frantic chorus of expostulation rose, which Conan silenced
with a lionlike roar.

"Dogs! Must I aid my enemies? Shall I let you come aboard and cut out
my heart?"

"Nay, nay!" they cried eagerly. "Friends—friends, Conan. We are thy
comrades, lad! We be all lusty rogues together. We hate the king of
Turan, not each other."

Their gaze hung on his brown, frowning face.

"Then if I am one of the Brotherhood," he grunted, "the laws of the
Trade apply to me; and since I killed your chief in fair fight, then I
am your captain!"

There was no dissent. The pirates were too cowed and battered to have
any thought except a desire to get away from that island of fear.
Conan's gaze sought out the bloodstained figure of the Corinthian.

"How, Ivanos!" he challenged. "You took my part once. Will you uphold
my claims again?"

"Aye, by Mitra!" The pirate, sensing the trend of feeling, was eager to
ingratiate himself with the Cimmerian. "He is right, lads; he is our
lawful captain!"

A medley of acquiescence rose, lacking enthusiasm perhaps, but with
sincerity accentuated by the feel of the silent woods behind them which
might mask creeping ebony devils with red eyes and dripping talons.

"Swear by the hilt," Conan demanded.

Forty-four swords hilts were lifted toward him, and forty-four voices
blended in the corsair's oath of allegiance.

Conan grinned and sheathed his sword. "Come aboard, my bold
swashbucklers, and take the oars."

He turned and lifted Olivia to her feet, from where she had crouched
shielded by the gunwales.

"And what of me, sir?" she asked.

"What would you?" he countered, watching her narrowly.

"To go with you, wherever your path may lie!" she cried, throwing her
white arms about his bronzed neck.

The pirates, clambering over the rail, gasped in amazement.

"To sail a road of blood and slaughter?" he questioned. "This keel will
stain the blue waves crimson wherever it flows."

"Aye, to sail with you on blue seas or red," she answered passionately.
"You are a barbarian, and I am an outcast, denied by my people. We are
both pariahs, wanderers of the earth. Oh, take me with you!"

With a gusty laugh he lifted her to his fierce lips.

"I'll make you Queen of the Blue Sea! Cast off there, dogs! We'll
scorch King Yildiz's pantaloons yet, by Crom!"


The Road of the Eagles
----------------------

As chieftain of this mongrel Red Brotherhood, Conan is more than ever a
thorn in King Yildiz's sensitive flesh. That henpecked monarch, instead
of strangling his brother Teyaspa in the approved Turanian manner, has
been prevailed upon to keep him cooped up in a castle deep in the
Colchian Mountains, southeast of Vilayet, as a prisoner of the
Zaporoskan brigand Gleg. To rid himself of another embarrassment,
Yildiz sends one of Teyaspa's strongest partisans, General Artaban, to
destroy the pirate stronghold at the mouth of the Zaporoska River. This
he does, but he becomes the harried instead of the harrier.

The loser of the sea fight wallowed in the crimson wash. Just out of
bow-shot, the winner limped away toward the rugged hills that overhung
the blue water. It was a scene common enough on the Sea of Vilayet in
the reign of King Yildiz of Turan.

The ship heeling drunkenly in the blue waste was a high-beaked Turanian
war galley, a sister to the other. On the loser, death had reaped a
plentiful harvest. Dead men sprawled on the high poop; they hung
loosely over the scarred rail; they slumped along the runway that
bridged the waist, where the mangled oarsmen lay among their broken
benches.

Clustered on the poop stood the survivors, thirty men, many dripping
blood. They were men of many nations: Kothians, Zamorians, Brythunians,
Corinthians, Shemites, Zaporoskans. Their features were those of wild
men, and many bore the scars of lash or branding iron. Many were half
naked, but the motley clothes they wore were often of good quality,
though now stained with tar and blood. Some were bareheaded, while
others wore steel caps, fur caps, or strips of cloth wound turbanwise
about their heads. Some wore shirts of chain mail; others were naked to
their sash-girt waists, their muscular arms and shoulders burnt almost
black. Jewels glittered in earrings and the hilts of daggers. Naked
swords were in their hands. Their dark eyes were restless.

They stood about a man bigger than any of them, almost a giant, with
thickly corded muscles. A square-cut mane of black hair surmounted his
broad, low forehead, and the eyes that blazed in his dark, scarred face
were a volcanic blue.

These eyes now stared at the shore. No town or harbor was visible along
this stretch of lonely coast between Khawarism, the southernmost
outpost of the Turanian kingdom, and its capital of Aghrapur. From the
shoreline rose tree-covered hills, climbing swiftly to the snow-tipped
peaks of the Colchians in the distance, on which the sinking sun shone
red.

The big man glared at the slowly receding galley. Its crew had been
glad to break away from the death grapple, and it crawled toward a
creek that wound out of the hills between high cliffs. On the poop, the
pirate captain could still make out a tall figure on whose helmet the
low sun sparkled. He remembered the features under that helmet,
glimpsed in the frenzy of battle: hawk-nosed, black-bearded, with
slanting black eyes. That was Artaban of Shahpur, until recently the
scourge of the Sea of Vilayet.

A lean Corinthian spoke: "We almost had the devil. What shall we do
now, Conan?"

The gigantic Cimmerian went to one of the steering-sweeps. "Ivanos," he
addressed the one who had spoken, "you and Hermio take the other sweep.
Medius, pick three besides yourself and start bailing. The rest of you
dog-souls tie up your cuts and then go down into the waist and bend
your backs on the oars. Throw as many stiffs overboard as you need to
make room."

"Are you going to follow the other galley to the creek-mouth?" asked
Ivanos.

"Nay. We're too waterlogged from the holing their ram gave us to risk
another grapple. But if we pull hard, we can beach her on that
headland."

Laboriously they worked the galley inshore. The sun set; a haze like
soft blue smoke hovered over the dusky water. Their late antagonist
vanished into the creek. The starboard rail was almost awash when the
bottom of the pirates' galley grounded on the sand and gravel of the
headland.

The Akrim River, which wound through patches of meadow and farmland,
was tinged red, and the mountains that rose on either side of the
valley looked down on a scene only less old than they. Horror had come
upon the peaceful valley dwellers, in the shape of wolfish riders from
the outlands. They did not turn their gaze toward the castle that hung
on the sheer slope of the mountains, for there too lurked oppressors.

The clan of Kurush Khan, a subchief of one of the more barbarous
Hyrkanian tribes from east of the Sea of Vilayet, had been driven
westward out of its native steppes by a tribal feud. Now it was taking
toll of the Yuetshi villages in the valley of Akrim. Though this was
mainly a simple raid for cattle, slaves, and plunder, Kurush Khan had
wider ambitions. Kingdoms had been carved out of these hills before.

However, just now, like his warriors, Kurush Khan was drunk with
slaughter. The huts of the Yuetshi lay in smoking ruins. The barns had
been spared because they contained fodder, as well as the ricks. Up and
down the valley the lean riders raced, stabbing and loosing their
barbed arrows. Men howled as the steel drove home; women screamed as
they were jerked naked across the raiders' saddle bows.

Horsemen in sheepskins and high fur caps swarmed in the streets of the
largest village—a squalid cluster of huts, half mud, half stone. Routed
out of their pitiful hiding places, the villagers knelt, vainly
imploring mercy, or as vainly fled, to be ridden down as they ran. The
yataghans whistled, ending in the zhukk of cloven flesh and bone.

A fugitive turned with a wild cry as Kurush Khan swooped down on him
with his cloak spreading out in the wind like the wings of a hawk. In
that instant the eyes of the Yuetshi saw, as in a dream, the bearded
face with its thin, down-curving nose, the wide sleeve falling away
from the arm that rose grasping a curving glitter of steel. The Yuetshi
carried one of the few effective weapons in the valley: a heavy hunting
bow with a single arrow. With a screech of desperation he nocked the
arrow, drew, and loosed, just as the Hyrkanian struck at him in
passing. The arrow thudded home and Kurush Khan tumbled out of the
saddle, instantly dead from a cloven heart.

As the riderless horse raced away, one of the two figures drew itself
up on one elbow. It was the Yuetshi, whose life was welling fast from a
ghastly cut across neck and shoulder. Gasping, he looked at the other
form. Kurush Khan's beard jutted upwards as if in comic surprise. The
Yuetshi's arm gave way and his face fell into the dirt, filling his
mouth with dust. He spat red, gave a ghastly laugh from frothy lips,
and fell back. When the Hyrkanians reached the spot, he, too, was dead.

The Hyrkanians squatted like vultures about a dead sheep and conversed
over the body of their khan. When they rose, the doom had been sealed
of every Yuetshi in the valley of Akrim.

Granaries, ricks, and stables, spared by Kurush Khan, went up in
flames. All prisoners were slain, infants tossed living into the
flames, young girls ripped up and flung into the bloody streets. Beside
the khan's corpse grew a heap of severed heads. Riders galloped up,
swinging tliese trophies by the hair, to toss them on the grim pyramid.
Every place that might hide a shuddering wretch was ripped apart.

One tribesman, prodding into a stack of hay, discerned a movement in
the straw. With a wolfish yell, he pounced upon the stack and dragged
his victim to light. It was a girl, and no dumpy, apelike Yuetshi woman
either. Tearing off her cloak, the Hyrkanian feasted his eyes on her
scantily covered beauty.

The girl struggled silently in his grip. He dragged her toward his
horse. Then, quick and deadly as a cobra, she snatched a dagger from
his girdle and sank it under his heart. With a groan he crumpled, and
she sprang like a she-leopard to his horse. The steed neighed and
reared, and she wrenched it about and raced up the valley. Behind her
the pack gave tongue and streamed out in pursuit. Arrows whistled about
her head.

She guided the horse straight at the mountain wall on the south of the
valley, where a narrow canyon opened out. Here the going was perilous,
and the Hyrkanians reined to a less headlong pace among the stones and
boulders. But the girl rode like a windblown leaf and was leading them
by several hundred paces, when she came to a low wall or barrier across
the mouth of the canyon, as if at some time somebody had rolled
boulders together to make a crude defense. Feathery tamarisks grew out
of the ridge, and a small stream cut through a narrow notch in the
center. Men were there.

She saw them among the rocks, and they shouted to her to halt. At first
she thought them more Hyrkanians and then saw otherwise. They were tall
and strongly built, chain mail glinting under their cloaks, and spired
steel caps on their heads. She made up her mind instantly. Throwing
herself from her steed, she ran up to the rocks and fell on her knees,
crying: "Aid, in the name of Ishtar the merciful!"

A man emerged, at the sight of whom she cried out: "General Artaban!"
She clasped his knees. "Save me from those wolves that follow!"

"Why should I risk my life for you?" he asked indifferently.

"I knew you at the court of the king at Aghrapur! I danced before you.
I am Roxana, the Zamorian."

"Many women have danced before me."

"Then I will give you a password," said she in desperation. "Listen!"

As she whispered a name in his ear, he started as if stung. He stared
piercingly at her. Then, clambering upon a great boulder, he faced the
oncoming riders with lifted hand.

"Go your way in peace, in the name of King Yildiz of Turan!"

His answer was a whistle of arrows about his ears. He sprang down and
waved. Bows twanged all along the barrier and arrows sheeted out among
the Hyrkanians. Men rolled from their saddles; horses screamed and
bucked. The other riders fell back, yelling in dismay. They wheeled and
raced back down the valley.

Artaban turned to Roxana: a tall man in a cloak of crimson silk and a
chain-mail corselet threaded with gold. Water and blood had stained his
apparel, yet its richness was still notable. His men gathered about
him, forty stalwart Turanian mariners, bristling with weapons. A
miserable-looking Yuetshi stood by with his hands bound.

"My daughter," said Artaban, "I have made enemies in this remote land
on your behalf because of a name whispered in my ear. I believed you—"

"If I lied, may my skin be stripped from me."

"It will be," he promised gently. "I will see to it personally. You
named Prince Teyaspa. What do you know of him?"

"For three years I have shared his exile."

"Where is he?"

She pointed down the valley to where the turrets of the castle were
just visible among the crags. "In yonder stronghold of Gleg the
Zaporoskan."

"It would be hard to take," mused Artaban.

"Send for the rest of your sea hawks! I know a way to bring you to the
heart of that keep!"

He shook his head. "These you see are all my band." Seeing her
incredulity he added: "I am not surprised that you wonder. I will tell
you…"

With the frankness that his fellow Turanians found so disconcerting,
Artaban sketched his fall. He did not tell her of his triumphs, which
were too well-known to need repetition. He was famous as a general for
his swift raids into far countries—Brythunia, Zamora, Koth, and Shem
—when five years before, the pirates of the Sea of Vilayet, working in
league with the outlaw kozaki of the adjoining steppes, had become a
formidable menace to that westernmost Hyrkanian kingdom, and King
Yildiz had called upon Artaban to redress the situation. By vigorous
action Artaban had put down the pirates, or at least driven them away
from the western shores of the sea.

But Artaban, a passionate gambler, had gotten deeply in debt. To
discharge his debts he had, while on a lone patrol with his flagship,
seized a legitimate merchantman out of Khorusun, put all her people to
the sword, and taken her cargo back to his base to sell secretly. But,
though his crew was sworn to secrecy, somebody blabbed. Artaban had
kept his head only at the price of a command from King Yildiz that
almost amounted to suicide: to sail across the Sea of Vilayet to the
mouth of the Zaporoska River and destroy the encampments of the
pirates. Only two ships happened to be available for this enterprise.

Artaban had found the fortified camp of the Vilayet pirates and had
taken it by storm, because only a few of the pirates were in it at the
time. The rest had gone up the river to fight a band of wandering
Hyrkanians, similar to Kurush Khan's band, that had attacked the native
Zaporoskans along the river, with whom the pirates were on friendly
terms. Artaban destroyed several pirate ships in their docks and
captured a number of old or sick pirates.

To cow the absent pirates, Artaban had ordered that those taken alive
should be impaled, burned by slow fires, and flayed alive all at once.
This sentence was in the midst of being executed when the main body of
the pirates had returned. Artaban had fled, leaving one of his ships in
their hands. Knowing the penalty for failure, he had struck out for the
wild stretch along the southwestern shore of Vilayet Sea where the
Colchian Mountains came down to the water. He was soon pursued by the
pirates in the captured ship and overtaken when the western shore was
already in sight The resulting battle had raged over the decks of both
ships until dead and wounded lay everywhere. The greater numbers and
superior equipment of the Turanians, together with Artaban's adroit use
of his ram, had barely given them a defensive, indecisive victory.

"So we ran the galley ashore in the creek. We might have repaired it,
but the king's fleet rules all of Vilayet Sea, and he will have a
bowstring ready for me when he knows I've failed. We struck into the
mountains, seeking we know not what—a way out of Turanian dominions or
a new kingdom to rule."

Roxana listened and then without comment began her tale. As Artaban
well knew, it was the custom of the kings of Turan, upon coming to the
throne, to kill their brothers and their brothers' children in order to
eliminate the chance of a civil war. Moreover it was the custom, when
the king died, for the nobles and generals to acclaim as king the first
of his sons to reach the capital after the event.

Even with this advantage, the weak Yildiz could not have conquered his
aggressive brother Teyaspa had it not been for his mother, a Kothian
woman named Khushia. This formidable old dame, the real ruler of Turan,
preferred Yildiz because he was more docile, and Teyaspa was driven
into exile. He sought refuge in Iranistan but discovered that the king
of that land was corresponding with Yildiz in regard to poisoning him.
In an attempt to reach Vendhya, he was captured by a nomadic Hyrkanian
tribe, who recognized him and sold him to the Turanians. Teyaspa
thought his fate was sealed, but his mother intervened and stopped
Yildiz from having his brother strangled."

Instead, Teyaspa was confined in the castle of Gleg the Zaporoskan, a
fierce semibandit chief who had come into the valley of the Akrim many
years before and set himself up as a feudal lord over the primitive
Yuetshi, preying on them but not protecting them. Teyaspa was furnished
with all luxuries and forms of dissipation calculated to soften his
fiber.

Roxana explained that she was one of the dancing girls sent to
entertain him. She had fallen violently in love with the handsome
prince and, instead of seeking to ruin him, had striven to lift him
back to manhood.

"But," she concluded, "Prince Teyaspa has sunk into apathy. One would
not know him for the young eagle who led his horsemen into the teeth of
the Brythunian knights and the Shemitic asshuri. Imprisonment and wine
and the juice of the black lotus have drugged his senses. He sits
entranced on his cushions, rousing only when I sing or dance for him.
But he has the blood of conquerors in him. He is a lion who but sleeps.

"When the Hyrkahians rode into the valley, I slipped out of the castle
and went looking for Kurush Khan, in hope of finding a man bold enough
to aid Teyaspa. But I saw Kurush Khan slain, and then the Hyrkanians
became like mad dogs. I hid from them, but they dragged me out. O my
lord, help us! What if you have but a handful? Kingdoms have been built
on less! When it is known that the prince is free, men will flock to
us! Yildiz is a fumbling mediocrity, and the people fear his son
Yezdigerd, a fierce, cruel, and gloomy youth.

"The nearest Turanian garrison is three days' ride from here. Akrim is
isolated, known to few but wandering nomads and the wretched Yuetshi.
Here an empire can be plotted unmolested. You too are an outlaw; let us
band together to free Teyaspa and place him on his throne! If he were
king, all wealth and honor were yours, while Yildiz offers you naught
but a bowstring!"

She was on her knees, gripping his cloak, her dark eyes ablaze with
passion. Artaban stood silently, then suddenly laughed a gusty laugh.

"We shall need the Hyrkanians," he said, and the girl clapped her hands
with a cry of joy.

"Hold up!" Conan the Cimmerian halted and glanced about, craning his
massive neck. Behind him, his comrades shifted with a clank of weapons.
They were in a narrow canyon, flanked on either hand by steep slopes
grown with stunted firs. Before them, a small spring welled up among
straggling trees and trickled away down a moss-green channel.

"Water here at least," granted Conan. "Drink!" The previous evening, a
quick march had brought them to Artaban's ship in its hiding place in
the creek before dark. Conan had left four of his most seriously
wounded men here, to work at patching up the vessel, while he pushed on
with the rest. Believing that the Turanians were only a short distance
ahead, Conan had pressed recklessly on in hope of coming up with them
and avenging the massacre on the Zaporoska. But then, with the setting
of the young moon, they had lost the trail in a maze of gullies and
wandered blindly. Now at dawn they had found water but were lost and
worn out The only sign of human life they had seen since leaving the
coast was a huddle of huts among the crags, housing nondescript
skin-clad creatures who fled howling at their approach. Somewhere in
the hills a lion roared.

Of the twenty-six, Conan was the only one whose muscles retained their
spring. "Get some sleep," he growled. "Ivanos, pick two men to take the
first watch with you. When the sun's over that fir, wake three others.
I'm going to scout up this gorge."

He strode up the canyon and was soon lost among the straggling growth.
The slopes changed to towering cliffs that rose sheer from the sloping,
rock-littered floor. Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, a wild,
shaggy figure sprang up from a tangle of bushes and confronted the
pirate. Conan's breath hissed through his teeth as his sword flashed.
Then he checked the stroke, seeing that the apparition was weaponless.

It was a Yuetshi: a wizened, gnomelike man in sheepskins, with long
arms, short legs, and a flat, yellow, slant-eyed face seamed with many
small wrinkles.

"Khosatral!" exclaimed the vagabond. "What does one of the Free
Brotherhood in this Hyrkanian-haunted land?" The man spoke the Turanian
dialect of Hyrkanian, but with a strong accent.

"Who are you?" grunted Conan.

"I was a chief of the Yuetshi," answered the other with a wild laugh.
"I was called Vinashko. What do you here?"

"What lies beyond this canyon?" Conan countered.

"Over yonder ridge lies a tangle of gullies and crags. If you thread
your way among them, you will come out overlooking the broad valley of
the Akrim, which until yesterday was the home of my tribe, and which
today holds their charred bones."

"Is there food there?"

"Aye—and death. A horde of Hyrkanian nomads holds the valley."

As Conan ruminated this, a step brought him about, to see Ivanos
approaching.

"Hah!" Conan scowled. "I told you to watch while the men slept!"

"They are too hungry to sleep," retorted the Corinthian, suspiciously
eyeing the Yuetshi.

"Crom!" growled the Cimmerian. "I cannot conjure food out of the air.
They must gnaw their thumbs until we find a village to loot—"

"I can lead you to enough food to feed an army," interrupted Vinashko.

Conan said, his voice heavy with menace: "Don't mock me, my friend! You
just said the Hyrkanians—"

"Nay! There's a place near here, unknown to them, where we stored food.
I was going thither when I saw you."

Conan hefted his sword, a broad, straight, double-edged blade over four
feet long, in a land where curved blades were more the rule. "Then lead
on, Yuetshi, but at the first false move, off goes your head!"

Again the Yuetshi laughed that wild, scornful laugh, and motioned them
to follow. He made for the nearer cliff, groped among the brittle
bushes, and disclosed a crack in the wall. Beckoning, he bent and
crawled inside.

"Into that wolf's den?" said Ivanos.

"What are you afraid of?" said Conan. "Mice?"

He bent and squeezed through the opening, and the other followed him.
Conan found himself, not in a cave, but in a narrow cleft of the cliff.
Overhead a narrow, crooked ribbon of blue morning sky appeared between
the steep walls, which got higher with every step. They advanced
through the gloom for a hundred paces and came out into a wide circular
space surrounded by towering walls of what looked at first glance like
a monstrous honeycomb. A low roaring came from the center of the space,
where a small circular curbing surrounded a hole in the floor, from
which issued a pallid flame as tall as a man, casting a wan
illumination about the cavity.

Conan looked curiously about him. It was like being at the bottom of a
gigantic well. The floor was of solid rock, worn smooth as if by the
feet of ten thousand generations. The walls, too regularly circular to
be altogether natural, were pierced by hundreds of black square
depressions a hand's breadth deep and arranged in regular rows and
tiers. The wall rose stupendously, ending in a small circle of blue
sky, where a vulture hung like a dot A spiral stairway cut in the black
rock started up from ground level, made half a complete circle as it
rose, and ended with a platform in front of a larger black hole in the
wall, the entrance to a tunnel.

Vinashko explained: "Those holes are the tombs of an ancient people who
lived here even before my ancestors came to the Sea of Vilayet There
are a few dim legends about these people; it is said they were not
human, but preyed upon my ancestors until a priest of the Yuetshi by a
great spell confined them to their holes in the wall and lit that fire
to hold them there. No doubt their bones have all long since crumbled
to dust. A few of my people have tried to chip away the slabs of stone
that block these tombs, but the rock defied their efforts." He pointed
to heaps of stuff at one side of the amphitheater. "My people stored
food here against times of famine. Take your fill; there are no more
Yuetshi to eat it."

Conan repressed a shudder of superstitious fear. "Your people should
have dwelt in these caves. One man could hold that outer cleft against
a horde."

The Yuetshi shrugged. "Here there is no water. Besides, when the
Hyrkanians swooped down there was no time. My people were not warlike;
they only wished to till the soil."

Conan shook his head, unable to understand such natures. Vinashko was
pulling out leather bags of grain, rice, moldy cheese, and dried meat,
and skins of sour wine.

"Go bring some of the men to help carry the stuff, Ivanos," said Conan,
staring upward. "I'll stay here."

As Ivanos swaggered off, Vinashko tugged at Conan's arm. "Now do you
believe I'm honest?"

"Aye, by Crom," answered Conan, gnawing a handful of dried figs. "Any
man that leads me to food must be a friend. But how did you and your
tribe get here from the valley of the Akrim? It must be a long steep
road."

Vinashko's eyes gleamed like those of a hungry wolf. "That is our
secret. I will show you, if you trust me."

"When my belly's full," said Conan with his mouth full of figs. "We're
following that black devil, Artaban of Shahpur, who is somewhere in
these mountains."

"He is your enemy?"

"Enemy! If I catch him, I'll make a pair of boots of his hide."

"Artaban of Shahpur is but three hours' ride from here."

"Ha!" Conan started up, feeling for his sword, his blue eyes ablaze.
"Lead me to him!"

"Take care!" cried Vinashko. "He has forty armored Turanians and has
been joined by Dayuki and a hundred and fifty Hyrkanians. How many
warriors have you, lord?"

Conan munched silently, scowling. With such a disparity of numbers, he
could not afford to give Artaban any advantages. In the months since he
had become a pirate captain, he had beaten and bullied his crew into an
effective force, but it was still an instrument that had to be used
with care. By themselves they were reckless and improvident; well led,
they could do much, but without wise leadership they would throw away
their lives on a whim.

Vinashko said: "If you will come with me, kozak, I will show you what
no man save a Yuetshi has seen for a thousand years!"

"Whaf's that?"

"A road of death for our enemies!"

Conan took a step, then halted. "Wait; here come the red brothers. Hear
the dogs swear!"

"Send them back with the food," whispered Vinashko as half a dozen
pirates swaggered out of the cleft to gape at the cavern. Conan faced
them with a grand gesture.

"Lug this stuff back to the spring," he said. "I told you I should find
food."

"And what of you?" demanded Ivanos.

"Don't fret about me! I have words with Vinashko. Go back to camp and
gorge yourselves, may the fiends bite you!"

As the pirates' footsteps faded away down the cleft, Conan gave
Vinashko a clap on the back that staggered him. "Let's go," he said.

The Yuetshi led the way up the circular stairway carved in the rock
wall. Above the last tier of tombs, it ended at the tunnel's mouth.
Conan found that he could stand upright in the tunnel.

"If you follow this tunnel," said Vinashko, "you will come out behind
the castle of the Zaporoskan, Gleg, that overlooks Akrim."

"What good will that do?" grunted Conan, feeling his way behind the
Yuetshi.

"Testerday when the slaying began, I strove for a while against the
Hyrkanian dogs. When my comrades had all been cut down I fled the
valley, running up to the Gorge of Diva. I had run into the gorge when
I found myself among strange warriors, who knocked me down and bound
me, wishing to ask me what went on in the valley. They were sailors of
the king's Vilayet squadron and called their leader Artaban.

"While they questioned me, a girl came riding like mad with the
Hyrkanians after her. When she sprang from her horse and begged aid of
Artaban, I recognized her as the Zamorian dancing girl who dwells in
Gleg's castle. A volley of arrows scattered the Hyrkanians, and then
Artaban talked with the girl, forgetting about me. For three years Gleg
has held a captive. I know, because I have taken grain and sheep to the
castle, to be paid in the Zaporoskan fashion, with curses and blows.
Kozak, the prisoner is Teyaspa, brother of King Yildiz!"

Conan grunted in surprise.

"The girl, Roxana, disclosed this to Artaban, and he swore to aid her
in freeing the prince. As they talked, the Hyrkanians returned and
halted at a distance, vengeful but cautious. Artaban hailed them and
had speech with Dayuki, the new chief since Kumsh Khan was slain. At
last the Hyrkanian came over the wall of rocks and shared bread and
salt with Artaban. And the three plotted to rescue Prince Teyaspa and
put him on the throne.

"Roxana had discovered the secret way to the castle. Today, just before
sunset, the Hyrkanians are to attack the castle from the front. While
they thus attract the attention of the Zaporoskans, Artaban and his men
are to come to the castle by a secret way. Roxana will open the door
for them, and they will take the prince and flee into the hills to
recruit warriors. As they talked, night fell, and I gnawed through my
cords and slipped away.

"You wish vengeance. I'll show you how to trap Artaban. Slay the
lot—all but Teyaspa. You can either extort a mighty price from Khushia
for her son, or from Yildiz for killing him, or if you prefer you can
try to be kingmaker yourself."

"Show me," said Conan, eyes agleam with eagerness.

The smooth floor of the tunnel, in which three horses might have been
ridden abreast, slanted downward. From time to time short flights of
steps gave on to lower levels. For a while Conan could not see anything
in the darkness. Then a faint glow ahead relieved it. The glow became a
silvery sheen, and the sound of falling water filled the tunnel.

They stood in the mouth of the tunnel, which was masked by a sheet of
water rushing over the cliff above. From the pool that foamed at the
foot of the falls, a narrow stream raced away down the gorge. Vinashko
pointed out a ledge that ran from the cavern mouth, skirting the pool.
Conan followed him. Plunging through the thin edge of the falls, he
found himself in a gorge like a knife cut through the hills. Nowhere
was it more than fifty paces wide, with sheer cliffs on both sides. No
vegetation grew anywhere except for a fringe along the stream. The
stream meandered down the canyon floor to plunge through a narrow crack
in the opposite cliff.

Conan followed Vinashko up the twisting gorge. Within three hundred
paces, they lost sight of the waterfall. The floor slanted upward.
Shortly the Yuetshi drew back, clutching his companion's arm. A stunted
tree grew at an angle in the rock wall, and behind this Vinashko
crouched, pointing.

Beyond the angle, the gorge ran on for eighty paces and ended in an
impasse. On their left the cliff seemed curiously altered, and Conan
stared for an instant before he realized that he was looking at a
man-made wall. They were almost behind a castle built in a notch in the
cliffs. Its wall rose sheer from the edge of a deep crevice. No bridge
spanned this chasm, and the only apparent entrance in the wall was a
heavy, iron-braced door halfway up the wall. Opposite to it, a narrow
ledge ran along the opposite side of the gorge, and this had been
improved so that it could be reached on foot from where they stood.

"By this path the girl Roxana escaped," said Vinashko. "This gorge runs
almost parallel to the Akrim. It narrows to the west and finally comes
into the valley through a narrow notch, where the stream flows through.
The Zaporoskans have blocked the entrance with stones so that the path
cannot be seen from the outer valley unless one knows of it. They
seldom use this road and know nothing of the tunnel behind the
waterfall."

Conan rubbed his shaven chin. He yearned to loot the castle himself but
saw no way to come to it. "By Crom, Vinashko, I should like to look on
this noted valley."

The Yuetshi glanced at Conan's bulk and shook his head. "There is a way
we call the Eagle's Road, but it is not for such as you."

"Ymir! Is a skin-clad savage a better climber than a Cimmerian hillman?
Lead on!"

Vinashko shrugged and led the way back down the gorge until, within
sight of the waterfall, he stopped at what looked like a shallow groove
corroded in the higher cliff-wall. Looking closely, Conan saw a series
of shallow handholds notched into the solid rock.

"I'd have deepened these pockmarks," grumbled Conan, but started up
nevertheless after Vinashko, clinging to the shallow pits by toes and
fingers. At last they reached the top of the ridge forming the southern
side of the gorge and sat down with their feet hanging over the edge.

The gorge twisted like a snake's track beneath them. Conan looked out
over the opposite and lower wall of the gorge into the valley of the
Akrim.

On his right, the morning sun stood high over the glittering Sea of
Vilayet; on his left rose the white-hooded peaks of the Colchians.
Behind him he could see down into the tangle of gorges among which he
knew his crew to be encamped.

Smoke still floated lazily up from the blackened patches that had been
villages. Down the valley, on the left bank of the river, were pitched
a number of tents of hide. Conan saw men swarming like ants around
these tents. These were the Hyrkanians, Vinashko said, and pointed up
the valley to the mouth of a narrow canyon where the Turanians were
encamped. But the castle drew Conan's interest.

It was solidly set in a notch in the cliffs between the gorge beneath
them and the valley beyond. The castle faced the valley, entirely
surrounded by a massive twenty-foot wall. A ponderous gate flanked by
towers pierced with slits for arrows commanded the outer slope. This
slope was not too steep to be climbed or even ridden up, but afforded
no cover.

"It would take a devil to storm that castle," growled Conan. "How are
we to come at the king's brother in that pile of rock? Lead us to
Artaban, so I can take his head back to the Zaporoska."

"Be wary if you wish to wear your own," answered Vinashko. "What do you
see in the gorge?"

"A lot of bare stone with a fringe of green along the stream."

The Yuetshi grinned wolflike. "And do you notice that the fringe is
denser on the right bank, where it is also higher? Listen! From behind
the waterfall we can watch until the Turanians come up the gorge. Then,
while they are busy at Cleg's castle, we'll hide among the bushes along
the stream and waylay them as they return. We'll kill all but Teyaspa,
whom we will take captive. Then we'll go back through the tunnel. Have
you a ship to escape in?"

"Aye," said Conan, rising and stretching. "Vinashko, is there any way
down from this knife edge you have us balanced on except that shaft we
came up by?"

"There is a trail that leads east along the ridge and then down into
those gullies where your men camp. Let me show you. Do you see that
rock that looks like an old woman? Well, you turn right there…"

Conan listened attentively to the directions, but the substance of them
was that this perilous path, more suitable for ibex or chamois than for
men, did not provide access to the gorge beneath them.

In the midst of his explanation, Vinashko turned and stiffened. "What's
this?" he said.

Men were galloping out of the distant Hyrkanian camp and lashing their
horses across the shallow river.

The sun struck glints from lance points. On the castle walls helmets
began to sparkle.

"The attack!" cried Vinashko. "Khosatral Khel! They've changed their
plans; they were not going to attack until evening! Quickly! We must
get down before the Turanians arrive!"

They levered their bodies into the shallow groove and crept down, step
by step.

At last they stood in the gorge and hastened toward the waterfall. They
reached the pool, crossed the ledge, and plunged through the fall. As
they came into the dimness beyond, Vinashko gripped Conan's mailed arm.
Above the rush of water the Cimmerian heard the clink of steel on rock.
He looked out through the silver-shimmering screen that made everything
ghostly and unreal, but which hid them from the eyes of anyone outside.
They had not gained their refuge any too soon.

A band of men was coming along the gorge—tall men in mail hauberks and
turban-bound helmets. At their head strode one taller than the rest,
with black-bearded, hawklike features. Conan sighed and gripped his
sword hilt, moving forward a trifle, but Vinashko caught him.

"In the gods' names, kozak," he whispered frantically "don't throw away
our lives! We have them trapped, but if you rush out now—"

"Don't worry, little man," said Conan with a somber grin. "I am not so
simple as to spoil a good vengeance by a thoughtless impulse."

The Turanians were crossing the narrow stream. On the farther bank they
halted in an attitude of listening. Presently, above the rush of the
waters, the men in the cave-mouth heard the distant shouting of many
men.

"The attack!" whispered Vinashko.

As if it were a signal, the Turanians started swiftly up the gorge.
Vinashko touched the Cimmerian's arm.

"Bide here and watch. I'll hasten back and bring your pirates."

"Hurry, then," said Conan. "It will be touch and go if you can get them
here in time." And Vinashko slipped away like a shadow.

In a broad chamber luxuriant with gold-worked tapestries, silken
divans, and velvet cushions, the prince Teyaspa reclined. He seemed the
picture of voluptuous idleness as he lounged in silks and satins, a
crystal jar of wine at his elbow. His dark eyes were those of a dreamer
whose dreams are tinted with wine and drugs. His gaze rested on Roxana,
who tensely gripped the bars of a casement, peering out, but his
expression was placid and faraway. He seemed unaware of the yells and
clamor that raged without.

Roxana moved restlessly, glancing at the prince over her slim shoulder.
She had fought like a tigress to keep Teyaspa from falling into the
gulf of degeneracy and resignation that his captors had prepared.
Roxana, no fatalist, had stung him into life and ambition.

"It is time," she breathed, turning. "The sun hangs at the zenith. The
Hyrkanians ride up the slope, lashing their steeds and loosing their
arrows vainly against the walls. The Zaporoskans pour arrows and stones
down upon them, until bodies litter the slope, but they come on again
like madmen. I must hasten. You shall yet sit on the golden throne, my
lover!"

She prostrated herself and kissed his slippers in an ecstasy of
adoration, then rose and hurried out of the room, through another where
ten great black mutes kept guard night and day. She traversed a
corridor to the outer court that lay between the castle and the postern
wall. Though Teyaspa was not allowed unguarded out of his chamber, she
was free to come and go as she liked.

Crossing the court, she approached the door that led into the gorge.
One warrior leaned there, disgruntled because he could not take part in
the fighting. Though the rear of the castle seemed invulnerable, the
cautious Gleg had posted a sentry there anyway. The man on guard was a
Sogdian, his felt cap perched on the side of his head. He leaned on a
pike, scowling, as Roxana approached him. "What do you here, woman?"

"I am afraid. The cries and shouts frighten me, lord. The prince is
drugged with lotus juice, and there is none to soothe my fears."

She would have fired the heart of a corpse as she stood in an attitude
of fear and supplication. The Sogdian plucked his thick beard.

"Nay, fear not, little gazelle," he said. "I'll soothe you." He laid a
black-nailed hand on her shoulder and drew her close. "None shall touch
a lock of your hair. I—ahhh!"

Snuggling in his arms, Roxana had slipped a dagger from her sash and
thrust it through his thick throat. One of the Sogdian's hands clutched
at his beard while the other fumbled for the hilt in his girdle. He
reeled and fell heavily. Roxana snatched a bunch of keys from his
girdle and ran to the door. She swung it open and gave a low cry of joy
at the sight of Artaban and his Turanians on the ledge across the
chasm.

A heavy plank, used as a bridge, lay inside the gate, but it was far
too heavy for her to handle. Chance had enabled her to use it for her
previous escape, when rare carelessness had left it in place across the
chasm and unguarded for a few minutes. Artaban tossed her the end of a
rope, which she made fast to the hinges of the door. The other end was
gripped by half a dozen strong men, and three Turanians crossed the
crevice, swinging hand over hand. They spanned the chasm with the plank
for the rest to cross.

"Twenty men guard the bridge," snapped Artaban. "The rest follow me."

The sea wolves drew their steel and followed their chief. Artaban led
them swiftly after the light-footed girl. As they entered the castle, a
servitor sprang up and gaped at them. Before he could cry out, Dayuki's
razor-edged yataghan sliced through his throat, and the band rushed
into the chamber where the ten mutes sprang up, gripping scimitars.
There was a flurry of fierce, silent fighting, noiseless except for the
hiss and rasp of steel and the gasps of the wounded. Three Turanians
died, and the rest strode into the inner chamber over the mangled
bodies of the blacks.

Teyaspa rose, his quiet eyes gleaming with old fire, as Artaban
dramatically knelt before him and lifted the hilt of his bloody
scimitar.

"These are the warriors who shall set you on your throne!" cried
Roxana.

"Let us go quickly, before the Zaporoskan dogs are aware of us," said
Artaban.

He drew up his men in a clump around Teyaspa.

Swiftly they traversed the chambers, crossed the court, and approached
the gate. But the clang of steel had been heard. Even as the raiders
were crossing the bridge, savage yells rose behind them. Across the
courtyard rushed a stocky, powerful figure in silk and steely followed
by fifty helmeted archers and swordsmen.

"Gleg!" screamed Roxana.

"Cast down the plank!" roared Artaban, springing to the bridgehead.

On each side of the chasm bows twanged until the air over the plank was
clouded with shafts whistling in both directions. Several Zaporoskans
fell, but so did the two Turanians who stooped to lift the plank, and
across the bridge rushed Gleg, his cold gray eyes blazing under his
spired helmet. Artaban met him breast to breast. In a glittering whirl
of steel the Turanian's scimitar grated around Gleg's blade, and the
keen edge cut through the camail and the thick muscles of the
Zaporoskan's neck. Gleg staggered and, with a wild cry, pitched off
into the chasm.

In an instant the Turanians had cast the bridge after him. On the far
side, the Zaporoskans halted with furious yells and began shooting
their thick horn bows as fast as they could draw and nock. Before the
Turanians, running down the ledge, could get out of range, three more
had been brought down and a couple of others had received minor wounds
from the vicious arrow storm. Artaban cursed at his losses.

"All but six of you go forward to see that the way is clear," he
ordered. "I follow with the prince. My lord, I could not bring a horse
up this defile, but I will have the dogs make you a litter of spears—"

"The gods forbid that I ride on my deliverers' shoulders!" cried
Teyaspa. "Again I am a man! I shall never forget this day!"

"The gods be praised!" whispered Roxana.

They came within sight of the waterfall. All but the small group in the
rear had crossed the stream and were straggling down the left bank,
when there came a multiple snap of bowstrings, as though a hand had
swept across the strings of a muted harp. A sheet of arrows hissed
across the stream into their ranks, and then another and another. The
foremost Turanians went down like wheat under the scythe and the rest
gave back, shouting alarm.

"Dog!" shouted Artaban, turning on Dayuki. "This is your work."

"Do I order my men to shoot at me?" squalled the Hyrkanian, his dark
face pale. "This is some new enemy!"

Artaban ran down the gorge toward his demoralized men, cursing. He knew
that the Zaporoskans would rig up some sort of bridge across the chasm
and pursue him, catching him between two forces. Who his assailants
were he had no idea. From the castle he heard the shouts of battle, and
then a great rumble of hooves and shouting and clang of steel seemed to
come from the outer valley. But, pent in that narrow gorge, which
muffled sound, he could not be sure.

The Turanians continued to fall before the storm of arrows from their
invisible opponents. Some loosed blindly into the bushes. Artaban
knocked their bows aside, shouting:

"Fools!" Why waste arrows on shadows? Draw steel and follow me!"

With a fury of desperation, the remaining Turanians charged the ambush,
cloaks flowing and eyes blazing. Arrows brought down some, but the rest
leaped into the water and splashed across. From the bushes on the
farther bank rose wild figures, mail-clad or half-naked, swords in
hands. "Up and at them!" bellowed a great voice. "Cut and thrust!"

A yell of amazement rose from the Turanians at the sight of the Vilayet
pirates. Then they closed with a roar. The rasp and clangor of steel
echoed from the cliffs. The first Turanians to spring up the higher
bank fell back into the stream with heads split Then the pirates leaped
down the bank to meet their foes hand-to-hand, thigh-deep in water that
soon swirled crimson. Pirate and Turanian slashed and slew in a blind
frenzy, sweat and blood running into their eyes.

Dayuki ran into the melee, glaring. His double-curved blade split a
pirate's head. Then Vinashko leaped upon him barehanded and screaming.

The Hyrkanian recoiled from the mad ferocity in the Yuetshi's features,
but Vinashko caught Dayuki around the neck and sank his teeth in the
man's throat He hung on, chewing deeper and deeper, heedless of the
dagger that Dayuki drove again and again into his side. Blood spurted
around his jaws until both lost their footing and fell into the stream.
Still tearing and rending, they were washed down with the current, now
one face showing above water, now another, until both vanished forever.

The Turanians were driven back up the left bank, where they made a
brief, bloody stand. Then they broke and fled toward the place where
Prince Teyaspa stared entranced in the shadow of the cliff, with the
small knot of warriors whom Artaban had detailed to guard him.

Thrice he moved as though to draw his sword and cast himself into the
fray, but Roxana, clinging to his knees, stopped him.

Artaban, breaking away from the battle, hastened to Teyaspa. The
admiral's sword was red to the hilt, his mail was hacked, and blood
dripped from beneath his helmet After him through the melee came Conan,
brandishing his great sword in his sledgelike fist. He beat down his
foes with strokes that shattered bucklers, caved in helmets, and clove
through mail, flesh, and bone.

"Ho, you rascals!" he roared in his barbarous Hyrkanian. "I want your
head, Artaban, and the fellow beside you there—Teyaspa. Fear not, my
pretty prince; I'll not hurt you."

Artaban, looking about for an avenue of escape, saw the groove leading
up the cliff and divined its purpose.

"Quick, my lord!" he whispered. "Up the cliff! I'll hold off the
barbarian while you climb!"

"Aye, hasten!" urged Roxana. "I'll follow!"

But the fatalistic mask had descended again on Prince Teyaspa. He
shrugged. "Nay, the gods do not will that I should press the throne.
Who can escape his destiny?"

Roxana clutched her hair with a look of horror. Artaban sheathed his
sword, sprang for the groove, and started up with the agility of a
sailor. But Conan, coming up behind him at a run, reached up, caught
his ankle, and plucked him out of his cranny like a fowler catching a
bird by the leg. Artaban struck the ground with a clang. As he tried to
roll over to wrench loose, the Cimmerian drove his sword into the
Turanian's body, crunching through mail links, and into the ground
beneath.

Pirates approached with dripping blades. Teyaspa spread his hands,
saying: "Take me if you will. I am Teyaspa."

Roxana swayed, her hands over her eyes. Then like a flash she thrust
her dagger through Teyaspa's heart, and he died on his feet As he fell,
she drove the point into her own breast and sank down beside her lover.
Moaning, she cradled his head in her arms, while the pirates stood
about, awed and incomprehending.

A sound up the gorge made them lift their heads. They were but a
handful, weary and dazed with battle, their garments soaked with blood
and water.

Conan said: "Men are coming down the gorge. Get back into the tunnel."

They obeyed, but slowly, as if they only half understood him. Before
the last of them had ducked under the waterfall, a stream of men poured
down the path from the castle. Conan, cursing and beating his rearmost
men to make them hurry, looked around to see the gorge thronged with
armed figures. He recognized the fur caps of the Zaporoskans and with
them the white turbans of the Imperial Guards from Aghrapur. One of
these wore a spray of bird-of-paradise feathers in his turban, and
Conan stared to recognize, from these and other indications, the
general of the Imperial Guards, the third man of the Turanian Empire.

The general saw Conan and the tail of his procession too and shouted an
order. As Conan, the last in line, plunged through the waterfall, a
body of Turanians detached themselves from the rest and ran to the
pool.

Conan yelled to his men to run, then turned and faced the sheet of
water from the inner side, holding up a buckler from a dead Turanian
and his great sword.

Presently a guardsman came through the sheet of water. He started to
yell, but the sound was cut off by a meaty chunk as Conan's sword
sheared through his neck. His head and body tumbled separately off the
ledge into the pool. The second guard had time to strike at the dim
figure that towered over him, but his sword rebounded from the
Cimmerian's buckler. The next instant he in turn fell back into the
pool with a cloven skull.

There were shouts, partly muffled by the sound of the water. Conan
flattened himself against the side of the tunnel, and a storm of arrows
whipped through the sheet of water, bringing little splashes of
droplets with them and rebounding with a clatter from the walls and
floor of the tunnel.

A glance back showed Conan that his men had vanished into the gloom of
the tunnel. He ran after them, so that when, a few moments later, the
guardsmen again burst through the waterfall, they found nobody in front
of them.

Meanwhile in the gorge, voices filled with horror rose as the newcomers
halted among the corpses. The general knelt beside the dead prince and
the dying girl.

"It is Prince Teyaspa!" he cried.

"He is beyond your power," murmured Roxana. "I would have made him
king, but you robbed him of his manhood… so I killed him…"

"But I bring him the crown of Turan!" cried the general. "Yildiz is
dead, and the people will rise against his son Yezdigerd if they have
anyone else to follow—"

"Too late!" whispered Roxana, and her dark head sank on her arm.

Conan ran up the tunnel with the feet of the pursuing Turanians echoing
after him. Where the tunnel opened into the great natural chimney lined
with the tombs of the forgotten race, he saw his men grouped
uncertainly on the floor of the pit below him, some looking at the
hissing flame and some up at the stair down which they had come.

"Go on to the ship!" he bellowed through cupped hands. The words
rattled back from the black cylindrical walls.

The men ran out into the cleft that led to the outer world. Conan
turned again and leaned against the side of the chimney just alongside
the tunnel entrance. He waited as the footsteps grew louder.

An Imperial Guard popped out of the tunnel. Again Conan's sword swished
and struck, biting into the man's back through mail and skin and spine.
With a shriek the guard pitched head-first off the platform. His
momentum carried him out from the spiral stair toward the middle of the
floor below. His body plunged into the hole in the rocky floor from
which issued the flame and wedged there like a cork in a bottle. The
flame went out with a pop, plunging the chamber into gloom only faintly
relieved by the opening to the sky far above.

Conan did not see the body strike the floor, for he was watching the
tunnel opening for his next foe. The next guard looked out but leaped
back as Conan struck at him with a ferocious backhand. There came a
jabber of voices; an arrow whizzed out of the tunnel past Conan's face,
to strike the far side of the chamber and shatter against the black
rock.

Conan turned and started down the stone steps, taking three at a time.
As he reached the bottom, he saw Ivanos herding the last of the pirates
into the cleft across the floor, perhaps ten strides away. To the left
of the cleft, five times Conan's height from the floor, the Turanian
guards boiled out of the tunnel and clattered down the stairs. A couple
loosed arrows at the Cimmerian as they ran, but between the speed of
his motion and the dimness of the light their shots missed.

But, as Conan reached the bottom steps, another group of beings
appeared. With a grinding sound, the slabs of stone blocking the ends
of the tomb cavities swung inward, first a few, then by scores. Like a
swarm of larvae issuing from their cells, the inhabitants of the tombs
came forth. Conan had not taken three strides toward the cleft when he
found the way blocked by a dozen of the things.

They were of vaguely human form, but white and hairless, lean and
stringy as if from a long fast. Their toes and fingers ended in great,
hooked claws. They had large, staring eyes set in faces that looked
more like those of bats than of human beings, with great, flaring ears,
little snub noses, and wide mouths that opened to show needle-pointed
fangs.

The first to reach the floor were those who crawled out of the bottom
tiers of cells. But the upper tiers were opening too and the creatures
were spelling out of them by hundreds, climbing swiftly down the pitted
walls of the chamber by their hooked claws. Those that reached the
floor first glimpsed the last pirates as they entered the cleft. With a
pointing of clawed fingers and a shrill twittering, those nearest the
cleft rushed toward and into it.

Conan, the hairs of his neck prickling with a barbarian's horror of
supernatural menaces, recognized the newcomers as the dreaded brylukas
of Zaporoskan legend— creatures neither man nor beast nor demon, but a
little of all three. Their near-human intelligence served their bestial
lust for human blood, while their supernatural powers enabled them to
survive even though entombed for centuries. Creatures of darkness, they
had been held at bay by the light of the flame. When this was put out
they emerged, as ferocious as ever and even more avid for blood.

Those that struck the floor near Conan rushed upon him, claws
outstretched. With an inarticulate roar he whirled, making wide sweeps
with his great sword to keep them from piling on his back. The blade
sheared off a head here, an arm there, and cut one bryluka in half.
Still they clustered, twittering, while from the spiral staircase rose
the shrieks of the leading Turanians as brylukas leaped upon them from
above and climbed up from below to fasten their claws and fangs in
their bodies.

The stair was clustered with writhing, battling figures as the
Turanians hacked madly at the things crowding upon them. A cluster
consisting of one guard with several brylukas clinging to him rolled
off the stair to strike the floor. The entrance to the cleft was
solidly jammed with twittering brylukas trying to force their way in to
chase Conan's pirates. In the seconds before they overwhelmed him too,
Conan saw that neither way out would serve him. With a bellow of fury
he ran across the floor, but not in the direction the brylukas
expected. Weaving and zigzagging, his sword a whirling glimmer in the
gloom, he reached the wall directly below the platform that formed the
top of the stair and the entrance to the tunnel, leaving a trail of
still or writhing figures behind him. Hooked claws snatched at him as
he ran, glancing off his mail, tearing his clothes to ribbons, and
drawing blood from deep scratches on his arms and legs.

As he reached the wall, Conan dropped his buckler, took his sword in
his teeth, sprang high in the air, and caught the lower sill of one of
the cells in the third tier above the floor, a cell that had already
discharged its occupant. With simian agility the Cimmerian mountaineer
went up the wall, using the cell openings as hand and foot-holds. Once,
as his face came opposite a cell opening, a hideous batlike visage
looked into his as the bryluka started to emerge. Conan's fist lashed
out and struck the grinning face with a crunch of bone; then, without
waiting to see what execution he had done, he swarmed on up.

Below him, other brylukas climbed the wall in pursuit. Then with a
heave and a grunt he was on the platform. Those guards who had been
behind the ones who first started down the stair, seeing what was
happening in the chamber, had turned and raced back through the tunnel.
A few brylukas crowded into the tunnel in pursuit just as Conan reached
the platform.

Even as they turned toward him he was among them like a whirlwind.
Bodies, whole or dismembered, spilled off the platform as his sword
sheared through white, unnatural flesh. For an instant the platform was
cleared of the gibbering horrors. Conan plunged into the tunnel and ran
with all his might.

Ahead of him ran a few of the vampires, and ahead of them the guards
who had been coming along the tunnel. Conan, coming to the brylukas
from behind, struck down one, then another, then another, until they
were all writhing in their blood behind him. He kept on until he came
to the end of the tunnel, where the last of the guards had just ducked
through the waterfall.

A glance back showed Conan another swarm of brylukas rushing upon him
with outstretched claws. Conan bolted through the sheet of water in his
turn and found himself looking down upon the scene of the recent battle
with the Turanians. The general and the rest of his escort were
standing about, shouting and gesticulating as their fellows emerged
from the water and ran down the ledge to the ground. When Conan
appeared right after the last of these, the yammer continued without a
break until a louder shout from the general cut through it:

"It is one of the pirates! Shoot!"

Conan, running down the ledge, was already halfway to the ladder shaft.
Those in front of him, who had just reached the floor of the gorge,
turned to stare as he raced past them with such tremendous strides that
the archers, misjudging his speed, sent a flight of arrows clattering
against the rocks behind him. Before they had nocked their second
arrows, he had reached the vertical groove in the cliff face.

The Cimmerian slipped into the shaft, whose concavity protected him
momentarily from the arrows of the Turanians standing near the general.
He caught at the indentations with hands and toes and went up like a
monkey. By the time the Turanians had recovered their wits enough to
run up the gorge to a position in front of the groove, where they could
see him to shoot at, Conan was fifteen paces up and rising fast.

Another storm of arrows whistled about him, clattering as they glanced
from the rock. A couple struck his body but were prevented from
piercing his flesh by his mail shirt. A couple of others struck his
clothing and caught in the cloth. One hit his right arm, the point
passing shallowly under the skin and then out again.

With a fearful oath Conan tore the arrow out of the wound point-first,
threw it from him, and continued his climb. Blood from the flesh wound
soaked up his arm and down his body. By the next volley, he was so high
that the arrows had little force left when they reached him. One struck
his boot but failed to penetrate.

Up and up he went, the Turanians becoming small beneath him. When their
arrows no longer reached him, they ceased shooting. Snatches of
argument floated up. The general wanted his men to climb the shaft
after Conan, and the men protested that this would be futile, as he
would simply wait at the top of the cliff and cut their heads off one
by one as they emerged. Conan smiled grimly.

Then he reached the top. He sat gasping on the edge with his feet
hanging down into the shaft while he bandaged his wounds with strips
torn from his clothing, meantime looking about him. Glancing ahead over
the rock wall into the valley of the Akrim, he saw sheepskin-clad
Hyrkanians riding hard for the hills, pursued by horsemen in glittering
mail—Turanian soldiers. Below him, the Turanians and Zaporoskans milled
around like ants and finally set off up the gorge to the castle,
leaving a few of their number on watch in case Conan should come back
down the groove.

Some time later Conan rose, stretched his great muscles, and turned to
look eastward toward the Sea of Vilayet. He started as his keen vision
picked up a ship, and shading his eyes with his hand he made out a
galley of the Turanian navy crawling away from the mouth of the creek
where Artaban had left his ship.

"Crom!" he muttered. "So the cowards piled aboard and pulled out
without waiting!"

He struck his palm with his fist, growling deep in his throat like an
angry bear. Then he relaxed and laughed shortly. It was no more than he
should have expected. Anyway, he was getting tired of the Hyrkanian
lands, and there were still many countries in the West that he had
never visited.

He started to hunt for the precarious route down from the ridge that
Vinashko had shown him.


A Witch Shall Be Born
---------------------

Conan appropriates a stallion abandoned by one of the Hyrkanian
soldiers and heads back by land to the steppes of his kozak friends.
But he finds the kozaki still scattered. Yezdigerd, now on the throne
of Turan, is already proving himself a far more astute and energetic
ruler than his late sire. He is submerging the fortunes and energies of
would-be rivals in a program of imperialism, which will eventually make
him master of the greatest empire of the Hyborian Age.

After some narrow escapes from the far-ranging Turanians, Conan reaches
the small border kingdom of Khauran, between the eastern tip of Koth
and the steppes and deserts over which the Turanians are methodically
extending their control. Soon, Conan wins himself the command of the
royal guard of Queen Taramis of Khauran.

1. The Blood-Red Crescent

Taramis, Queen of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a
silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than
the normal quiet of a sleeping palace. She lay staring into the
darkness, wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone
out. A flecking of stars marked a gold-barred casement that lent no
illumination to the interior of the chamber. But, as Taramis lay there,
she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before
her.

She watched, puzzled. It grew, and its intensity deepened as it
expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark
velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath,
starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that
circle of light— a human head.

In a sudden panic the queen opened her lips to cry out for her maids;
then she checked herself. The glow was more lurid, the head more
vividly limned. It was a woman's head, small, delicately molded,
superbly poised, with a high-piled mass of lustrous black hair. The
face grew distinct as she stared—and it was the sight of this face
which froze the cry in Taramis' throat. The features were her own! She
might have been looking into a mirror which subtly altered her
reflection, lending it a tigerish gleam of eye, a vindictive curl of
lip.

"Ishtar!" gasped Taramis. "I am bewitched!"

Appallingly, the apparition spoke, and its voice was like honeyed
venom.

"Bewitched? No, sweet sister! Here is no sorcery."

"Sister?" stammered the bewildered girl. "I have no sister."

"You never had a sister?" came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice.
"Never a twin sister whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or
hurt?"

"Why, once I had a sister," answered Taramis, still convinced that she
was in the grip of some sort of nightmare. "But she died."

The beautiful face in the disk was convulsed with the aspect of a fury;
so hellish became its expression that Taramis, cowering back, half
expected to see snaky locks writhe hissing about the ivory brow.

"You lie!" The accusation was spat from between the snarling red lips.
"She did not die! Fool! Oh, enough of this mummery! Look—and let your
sight be blasted!"

Light ran suddenly along the hangings like flaming serpents, and
incredibly the candles in the golden sticks flared up again. Taramis
crouched on her velvet couch, her lithe legs flexed beneath her,
staring wide-eyed at the pantherish flgure which posed mockingly before
her. It was as if she gazed upon another Taramis, identical with
herself in every contour of feature and limb, yet animated by an alien
and evil personality. The face of this stranger waif reflected the
opposite of every characteristic the countenance of the queen denoted.
Lust and mystery sparkled in her scintillant eyes, cruelty lurked in
the curl of her full red lips. Each movement of her supple body was
subtly suggestive. Her coiffure imitated that of the queen's, on her
feet were gilded sandals such as Taramis wore in her boudoir. The
sleeveless, low-necked silk tunic, girdled at the waist with a
cloth-of-gold cincture, was a duplicate of the queen's night-garment.

"Who are you?" gasped Taramis, an icy chill she could not explain
creeping along her spine. "Explain your presence before I call my
ladies-in-waiting to summon the guard!"

"Scream until the roof beams crack," callously answered the stranger.
"Your sluts will not wake till dawn, though the palace spring into
flames about them. Your guardsmen will not hear your squeals; they have
been sent out of this wing of the palace."

"What!" exclaimed Taramis, stiffening with outraged majesty. "Who dared
give my guardsmen such a command?"

"I did, sweet sister," sneered the other girl. "A little while ago,
before I entered. They thought it was their darling adored queen. Ha!
How beautifully I acted the part! With what imperious dignity, softened
by womanly sweetness, did I address the great louts who knelt in their
armor and plumed helmets!"

Taramis felt as if a stifling net of bewilderment was being drawn about
her.

"Who are you?" she cried desperately. "What madness is this? Why do you
come here?"

"Who am I?" There was the spite of a she-cobra's hiss in the soft
response. The girl stepped to the edge of the couch, grasped the
queen's white shoulders with fierce fingers, and bent to glare full
into the startled eyes of Taramis. And under the spell of that hypnotic
glare, the queen forgot to resent the unprecedented outrage of violent
hands laid on regal flesh.

"Fool!" gritted the girl between her teeth. "Can you ask? Can you
wonder? I am Salome!"

"Salome!" Taramis breathed the word, and the hairs prickled on her
scalp as she realized the incredible, numbing truth of the statement.
"I thought you died within the hour of your birth," she said feebly.

"So thought many," answered the woman who called herself Salome. "They
carried me into the desert to die, damn them! I, a mewing, puling babe
whose life was so young it was scarcely the flicker of a candle. And do
you know why they bore me forth to die?"

"I—I have heard the story———" faltered Taramis.

Salome laughed fiercely, and slapped her bosom. The low-necked tunic
left the upper parts of her firm breasts bare, and between them there
shone a curious mark— a crescent, red as blood.

"The mark of the witch!" cried Taramis, recoiling.

"Aye!" Salome's laughter was dagger-edged with hate. "The curse of the
kings of Khauran! Aye, they tell the tale in the marketplaces, with
wagging beards and rolling eyes, the pious fools! They tell how the
first queen of our line had traffic with a fiend of darkness and bore
him a daughter who lives in foul legendry to this day. And thereafter,
in each century, a girl baby was born into the Askhaurian dynasty, with
a scarlet half-moon between her breasts, that signified her destiny.

" 'Every century a witch shall be born." So ran the ancient curse. And
so it has come to pass. Some were slain at birth, as they sought to
slay me. Some walked the earth as witches, proud daughters of Khauran,
with the moon of hell burning upon their ivory bosoms. Each was named
Salome. I, too, am Salome. It was always Salome, the witch. It will
always be Salome, the witch, even when the mountains of ice have roared
down from the pole and ground the civilizations to rain, and a new
world has risen from the ashes and dust—even then there shall be
Salomes to walk the earth, to trap men's hearts by their sorcery, to
dance before the kings of the world, and see the heads of the wise men
fall at their pleasure."

"But—but you———" stammered Taramis.

"I?" The scintillant eyes burned like dark fires of mystery. "They
carried me into the desert far from the city, and laid me naked on the
hot sand, under the flaming sun. And then they rode away and left me
for the jackals and the vultures and the desert wolves.

"But the life in me was stronger than the life in common folk, for it
partakes of the essence of the forces that seethe in the black gulfs
beyond mortal ken. The hours passed, and the sun slashed down like the
molten flames of Hell, but I did not die—aye, something of that torment
I remember, faintly and far away, as one remembers a dim, formless
dream. Then there were camels, and yellow-skinned men who wore silk
robes and spoke in a weird tongue. Strayed from the caravan road, they
passed close by, and their leader saw me, and recognized the scarlet
crescent on my bosom. He took me up and gave me life.

"He was a magician from far Khitai, returning to his native kingdom
after a journey to Stygia. He took me with him to purple-towered
Paikang, its minarets rising amid the vine-festooned jungles of bamboo,
and there I grew to womanhood under his teaching. Age had steeped him
deep in black wisdom, not weakened his powers of evil. Many things he
taught me———"

She paused, smiling enigmatically, with wicked mystery gleaming in her
dark eyes. Then she tossed her head.

"He drove me from him at last, saying that I was but a common witch in
spite of his teachings, and not fit to command the mighty sorcery he
would have taught me. He would have made me queen of the world and
ruled the nations through me, he said, but I was only a harlot of
darkness. But what of it? I could never endure to seclude myself in a
golden tower, and spend the long hours staring into a crystal globe,
mumbling over incantations written on serpent's skin in the blood of
virgins, poring over musty volumes in forgotten languages.

"He said I was but an earthly sprite, knowing naught of the deeper
gulfs of cosmic sorcery. Well, this world contains all I desire—power,
and pomp, and glittering pageantry, handsome men and soft women for my
paramours and my slaves. He had told me who I was, of the curse and my
heritage. I have returned to take that to which I have as much right as
you. Now it is mine by right of possession."

"What do you mean?" Taramis sprang up and faced her sister, stung out
of her bewilderment and fright. "Do you imagine that by drugging a few
of my maids and tricking a few of my guardsmen you have established a
claim to the throne of Khauran? Do not forget that I am queen of
Khauran! I shall give you a place of honor, as my sister, but———"

Salome laughed hatefully.

"How generous of you, dear, sweet sister! But before you begin putting
me in my place—perhaps you will tell me whose soldiers camp in the
plain outside the city walls?"

"They are the Shemitish mercenaries of Constantius, the Kothic voivode
of the Free Companies."

"And what do they in Khauran?" cooed Salome.

Taramis felt that she was being subtly mocked, but she answered with an
assumption of dignity which she scarcely felt.

"Constantius asked permission to pass along the borders of Khauran on
his way to Turan. He himself is hostage for their good behavior as long
as they are within my domains."

"And Constantius," pursued Salome. "Did he not ask your hand today?"

Taramis shot her a clouded glance of suspicion.

"How did you know that?"

An insolent shrug of the slim, naked shoulders was the only reply.

"You refused, dear sister?"

"Certainly I refused!" exclaimed Taramis angrily. "Do you, an
Askhaurian princess yourself, suppose that the queen of Khauran could
treat such a proposal with anything but disdain? Wed a bloody-handed
adventurer, a man exiled from his own kingdom because of his crimes,
and the leader of organized plunderers and hired murderers?

"I should never have allowed him to bring his black-bearded slayers
into Khauran. But he is virtually a prisoner in the south tower,
guarded by my solders. Tomorrow I shall bid him order his troops to
leave the kingdom. He himself shall be kept captive until they are over
the border. Meantime, my soldiers man the walls of the city, and I have
warned him that he will answer for any outrages perpetrated on the
villagers or shepherds by his mercenaries."

"He is confined in the south tower?" asked Salome.

"That is what I said. Why do you ask?"

For answer Salome clapped her hands, and lifting her voice, with a
gurgle of cruel mirth in it, called: "The queen grants you an audience,
Falcon!"

A gold-arabesqued door opened and a tall figure entered the chamber, at
the sight of which Taramis cried out in amazement and anger.

"Constantius! You dare enter my chamber!"

"As you see, Your Majesty!" He bent his dark, hawklike head in mock
humility.

Constantius, whom men called Falcon, was tall, broad-shouldered,
slim-waisted, lithe and strong as pliant steel. He was handsome in an
aquiline, ruthless way. His face was burnt dark by the sun, and his
hair, which grew far back from his high, narrow forehead, was black as
a raven. His dark eyes were penetrating and alert, the hardness of his
thin lips not softened by his thin black mustache. His boots were of
Kordavan leather, his hose and doublet of plain, dark silk, tarnished
with the wear of the camps and the stains of armor rust.

Twisting his mustache, he let his gaze travel up and down the shrinking
queen with an effrontery that made her wince.

"By Ishtar, Taramis," he said silkily, "I find you more alluring in
your night-tunic than in your queenly robes. Truly, this is an
auspicious night!"

Fear grew in the queen's dark eyes. She was no fool; she knew that
Constantius would never dare this outrage unless he was sure of
himself.

"You are mad!" she said. "If I am in your power in this chamber, you
are no less in the power of my subjects, who will rend you to pieces if
you touch me. Go at once, if you would live."

Both laughed mockingly, and Salome made an impatient gesture.

"Enough of this farce; let us on to the next act in the comedy. Listen,
dear sister: it was I who sent Constantius here. When I decided to take
the throne of Khauran, I cast about for a man to aid me, and chose the
Falcon, because of his utter lack of all characteristics men call
good."

"I am overwhelmed, princess," murmured Constantius sardonically, with a
profound bow.

"I sent him to Khauran and, once his men were camped in the plain
outside and he was in the palace, I entered the city by that small gate
in the west wall—the fools guarding it thought it was you returning
from some nocturnal adventure———"

"You hell-cat!" Taramis' cheeks flamed and her resentment got the
better of her regal reserve.

Salome smiled hardly.

"They were properly surprised and shocked, but admitted me without
question. I entered the palace the same way and gave the order to the
surprised guards that sent them marching away, as well as the men who
guarded Constantius in the south tower. Then I came here, attending to
the ladies-in-waiting on the way."

Taramis' fingers clenched and she paled.

"Well, what next?" she asked in a shaky voice.

"Listen!" Salome inclined her head. Faintly through the casement there
came the clank of marching men in armor; gruff voices shouted in an
alien tongue, and cries of alarm mingled with the shouts.

"The people awaken and grow fearful," said Constantius sardonically.
"You had better go and reassure them, Salome!"

"Call me Taramis," answered Salome. "We must become accustomed to it."

"What have you done?" cried Taramis. "What have you done?"

"I have gone to the gates and ordered the soldiers to open them,"
answered Salome. "They were astounded, but they obeyed. That is the
Falcon's army you hear, marching into the city."

"You devil!" cried Taramis. "You have betrayed my people, in my guise!
You have made me seem a traitor! Oh, I shall go to them——-"

With a cruel laugh Salome caught her wrist and jerked her back. The
magnificent suppleness of the queen was helpless against the vindictive
strength that steeled Salome's slender limbs.

"You know how to reach the dungeons from the palace, Constantius?" said
the witch-girl. "Good. Take this spitfire and lock her into the
strongest cell. The jailers are all sound in dragged sleep. I saw to
that. Send a man to cut their throats before they can awaken. None must
ever know what has occurred tonight. Henceforward I am Taramis, and
Taramis is a nameless prisoner in an unknown dungeon."

Constantius smiled with a glint of strong white teeth under his thin
mustache.

"Very good; but you would not deny me a little—ah— amusement first?"

"Not I! Tame the scornful hussy as you will." With a wicked laugh
Salome flung her sister into the Kothian's arms, and turned away
through the door that opened into the outer corridor.

Fright widened Taramis' lovely eyes, her supple figure rigid and
straining against Constantius' embrace. She forgot the men marching in
the streets, forgot the outrage to her queenship, in the face of the
menace to her womanhood. She forgot all sensations but terror and shame
as she faced the complete cynicism of Constantius' burning, mocking
eyes, felt his hard arms crushing her writhing body.

Salome, hurrying along the corridor outside, smiled spitefully as a
scream of despair and agony rang shuddering through the palace.

2. The Tree of Death

The young soldier's hose and shirt were smeared with dried blood, wet
with sweat and gray with dust. Blood oozed from the deep gash in his
thigh, from the cuts on his breast and shoulder. Perspiration glistened
on his livid face and his fingers were knotted in the cover of the
divan on which he lay. Yet his words reflected mental suffering that
outweighed physical pain.

"She must be mad!" he repeated again and again, like one still stunned
by some monstrous and incredible happening. "It's like a nightmare!
Taramis, whom all Khauran loves, betraying her people to that devil
from Koth!

Oh, Ishtar, why was I not slain? Better die than live to see our queen
turn traitor and harlot!"

"Lie still, Valerius," begged the girl who was washing and bandaging
his wounds with trembling hands. "Oh, please lie still, darling! You
will make your wounds worse. I dared not summon a leech——-"

"No," muttered the wounded youth. "Constantius' blue-bearded devils
will be searching the quarters for wounded Khauranis; they'll hang
every man who has wounds to show he fought against them. Oh, Taramis,
how could you betray the people who worshipped you?" In his fierce
agony he writhed, weeping in rage and shame, and the terrified girl
caught him in her arms, straining his tossing head against her bosom,
imploring him to be quiet.

"Better death than the black shame that has come upon Khauran this
day," he groaned. "Did you see it, Ivga?"

"No, Valerius." Her soft, nimble fingers were again at work, gently
cleansing and closing the gaping edges of his raw wounds. "I was
awakened by the noise of fighting in the streets—I looked out a
casement and saw the Shemites cutting down people; then presently I
heard you calling me faintly from the alley door."

"I had reached the limits of my strength," he muttered. "I fell in the
alley and could not rise. I knew they'd find me soon if I lay there—I
killed three of the blue-bearded beasts, by Ishtar! They'll never
swagger through Khauran's streets, by the gods! The fiends are tearing
their hearts in Hell!"

The trembling girl crooned soothingly to him, as to a wounded child,
and closed his panting lips with her own cool sweet mouth. But the fire
that raged in his soul would not allow him to lie silent.

"I was not on the wall when the Shemites entered," he burst out "I was
asleep in the barracks, with the others not on duty. It was just before
dawn when our captain entered, and his face was pale under his helmet.
"The Shemites are in the city," he said. "The queen came to the
southern gate and gave orders that they should be admitted. She made
the men come down from the walls, where they've been on guard since
Constantius entered the kingdom. I don't understand it, and neither
does anyone else, but I heard her give the order, and we obeyed as we
always do. We are ordered to assemble in the square before the palace.
Form ranks outside the barracks and march—leave your arms and armor
here. Ishtar knows what this means, but it is the queen's order."

"Well, when we came to the square the Shemites were drawn up on foot
opposite the palace, ten thousand of the blue-bearded devils, fully
armed, and people's heads were thrust out of every window and door on
the square. The streets leading into the square were thronged by
bewildered folk. Taramis was standing on the steps of the palace, alone
except for Constantius, who stood stroking his mustache like a great
lean cat who has just devoured a sparrow. But fifty Shemites with bows
in their hands were ranged below them.

"That's where the queen's guard should have been, but they were drawn
up at the foot of the palace stair, as puzzled as we, though they had
come fully armed, in spite of the queen's order.

"Taramis spoke to us then, and told us that she had reconsidered the
proposal made her by Constantius— why, only yesterday she threw it in
his teeth in open court!—and that she had decided to make him her royal
consort. She did not explain why she had brought the Shemites into the
city so treacherously. But she said that, as Constantius had control of
a body of professional fighting-men, the army of Khauran would no
longer be needed, and therefore she disbanded it, and ordered us to go
quietly to our homes.

"Why, obedience to our queen is second nature to us, but we were struck
dumb and found no word to answer. We broke ranks almost before we knew
what we were doing, like men in a daze.

"But, when the palace guard was ordered to disarm likewise and disband,
the captain of the guard, Conan, interrupted. Men said he was off duty
the night before, and drunk But he was wide awake now. He shouted to
the guardsmen to stand as they were until they received an order from
him—and such is his dominance of his men, that they obeyed in spite of
the queen. He strode up to the palace steps and glared at Taramis—and
then he roared: 'This is not the queen! This isn't Taramis! It's some
devil in masqueradel'

"Then Hell was to pay! I don't know just what happened. I think a
Shemite struck Conan, and Conan killed him. The next instant the square
was a battleground. The Shemites fell on the guardsmen, and their
spears and arrows struck down many soldiers who had already disbanded.

"Some of us grabbed up such weapons as we could and fought back. We
hardly knew what we were fighting for, but it was against Constantius
and his devils—not against Taramis, I swear it! Constantius shouted to
cut the traitors down. We were not traitors!" Despair and bewilderment
shook his voice. The girl murmured pityingly, not understanding it all,
but aching in sympathy with her lover's suffering.

"The people did not know which side to take. It was a madhouse of
confusion and bewilderment. We who fought didn't have a chance, in no
formation, without armor and only half armed. The guards were fully
armed and drawn up in a square, but there were only five hundred of
them. They took a heavy toll before they were cut down, but there could
be only one conclusion to such a battle. And while her people were
being slaughtered before her, Taramis stood on the palace steps, with
Constantius' arm about her waist, and laughed like a heartless,
beautiful fiend! Gods, it's all mad—mad!

"I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the
courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were
strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him
down, a hundred against one. When I saw him fall I dragged myself away,
feeling as if the world had burst under my very fingers. I heard
Constantius call to his dogs to take the captain alive—stroking his
mustache, with that hateful smile on his lips!"

That smile was on the lips of Constantius at that very moment. He sat
his horse among a cluster of his men— thick-bodied Shemites with curled
blue-black beards and hooked noses; the low-swinging sun struck glints
from their peaked helmets and the silvered scales of their corselets.
Nearly a mile behind, the walls and towers of Khauran rose sheer out of
the meadowlands.

By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on
this grim tree a man hung, nailed there by iron spikes through his
hands and feet. Naked but for a loincloth, the man was almost a giant
in stature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs
and body, which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of
agony beaded his face and his mighty breast, but from under the tangled
black mane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue eyes blazed
with an unquenched fire. Blood oozed sluggishly from the lacerations in
his hands and feet.

Constantius saluted him mockingly.

"I am sorry, captain," he said, "that I can not remain to ease your
last hours, but I have duties to perform in yonder city—I must not keep
our delicious queen waiting!" He laughed softly. "So I leave you to
your own devices—and those beauties!" He pointed meaningly at the black
shadows which swept incessantly back and forth, high above.

"Were it not for them, I imagine that a powerful brute like yourself
should live on the cross for days. Do not cherish any illusions of
rescue because I am leaving you unguarded. I have had it proclaimed
that anyone seeking to take your body, living or dead, from the cross,
will be flayed alive, together with all the members of his family, in
the public square. I am so firmly established in Khauran that my order
is as good as a regiment of guardsmen. I am leaving no guard, because
the vultures will not approach as long as anyone is near, and I do not
wish them to feel any constraint. That is also why I brought you so far
from the city. These desert vultures approach the walls no closer than
this spot.

"And so, brave captain, farewell! I will remember you when, in an hour,
Taramis lies in my arms."

Blood started afresh from the pierced palms as the victim's mallet-like
fists clenched convulsively on the spike-heads. Knots and bunches of
muscle started out on the massive arms, and Conan bent his head forward
and spat savagely at Constantius' face. The voivode laughed coolly,
wiped the saliva from his gorget and reined his horse about.

"Remember me when the vultures are tearing at your living flesh," he
called mockingly. "The desert scavengers are a particularly voracious
breed. I have seen men hang for hours on a cross, eyeless, earless, and
scalpless, before the sharp beaks had eaten their way into his vitals."

Without a backward glance he rode toward the city, a supple, erect
figure, gleaming in his burnished armor, his stolid, bearded henchmen
jogging beside him. A faint rising of dust from the worn trail marked
their passing.

The man hanging on the cross was the one touch of sentient life in a
landscape that seemed desolate and deserted in the late evening.
Khauran, less than a mile away, might have been on the other side of
the world, and existing in another age.

Shaking the sweat out of his eyes, Conan stared blankly at the familiar
terrain. On either side of the city, and beyond it, stretched the
fertile meadowlands, with cattle browsing in the distance where fields
and vineyards checkered the plain. The western and northern horizons
were dotted with villages, miniature in the distance. A lesser distance
to the southeast, a silvery gleam marked the course of a river, and
beyond that river, sandy desert began abruptly, to stretch away and
away beyond the horizon. Conan stared at that expanse of empty waste,
shimmering tawnily in the late sunlight, as a trapped hawk stares at
the open sky. A revulsion shook him when he glanced at the gleaming
towers of Khauran. The city had betrayed him—trapped him into
circumstances that left him hanging to a wooden cross like a hare
nailed to a tree.

A red lust for vengeance swept away the thought. Curses ebbed fitfully
from the man's lips. All his universe contracted, focused, became
incorporated in the four iron spikes that held him from life and
freedom. His great muscles quivered, knotting like iron cables. With
the sweat starting out on his graying skin, he sought to gain leverage,
to tear the nails from the wood. It was useless. They had been driven
deep. Then he tried to tear his hands off the spikes, and it was not
the knifing abysmal agony that finally caused him to cease his efforts,
but the futility of it. The spike heads were broad and heavy; he could
not drag them through the wounds. A surge of helplessness shook the
giant for the first time in his life. He hung motionless, his head
resting on his breast, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of
the sun.

A beat of wings caused him to look up, just as a feathered shadow shot
down out of the sky. A keen beak, stabbing at his eyes, cut his cheek,
and he jerked his head aside, shutting his eyes involuntarily. He
shouted, a croaking, desperate shout of menace, and the vultures
swerved away and retreated, frightened by the sound. They resumed their
wary circling above his head. Blood trickled over Conan's mouth, and he
licked his lips involuntarily, spat at the salty taste.

Thirst assailed him savagely. He had drunk deeply of wine the night
before, and no water had touched his lips since before the battle in
the square, that dawn. And killing was thirsty, salt-sweaty work. He
glared at the distant river as a man in Hell glares through the opened
grille. He thought of gushing freshets of white water he had breasted,
laved to the shoulders in liquid jade. He remembered great horns of
foaming ale, jacks of sparkling wine gulped carelessly or spilled on
the tavern floor. He bit his lip to keep from bellowing in intolerable
anguish as a tortured animal bellows.

The sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood. Against a crimson
rampart that banded the horizon, the towers of the city floated unreal
as a dream. The very sky was tinged with blood to his misted glare. He
licked his blackened lips and stared with bloodshot eyes at the distant
river. It, too, seemed crimson like blood, and the shadows crawling up
from the east seemed black as ebony.

In his dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings. Lifting his head
he watched with the burning glare of a wolf the shadows wheeling above
him. He knew that his shouts would frighten them away no longer. One
dipped —dipped—lower and lower. Conan drew his head back as far as he
could, waiting with terrible patience. The vulture swept in with a
swift roar of wings. Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conan's
chin as he jerked his head aside; then, before the bird could flash
away, Conan's head lunged forward on his mighty neck muscles, and his
teeth, snapping like those of a wolf, locked on the bare, wattled neck.

Instantly, the vulture exploded into squawking, flapping hysteria. Its
thrashing wings blinded the man, and its talons ripped his chest. But
grimly he hung on, the muscles starting out in lumps on his jaws. And
the scavenger's neck-bones crunched between those powerful teeth. With
a spasmodic flutter the bird hung limp. Conan let go, spat blood from
his mouth. The other vultures, terrified by the fate of their
companion, were in full flight to a distant tree, where they perched
like black demons in conclave.

Ferocious triumph surged through Conan's numbed brain. Life beat
strongly and savagely through his veins. He could still deal death; he
still lived. Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation
of death.

"By Mitra!" Either a voice spoke, or he suffered from hallucination.
"In all my life I have never seen such a thing!"

Shaking the sweat and blood from his eyes, Conan saw four horsemen
sitting their steeds in the twilight and staring up at him. Three were
lean, white-robed hawks, Zuagir tribesmen without a doubt, nomads from
beyond the river. The other was dressed like them in a white, girdled
khalat and a flowing headdress which, banded about the temples with a
triple circlet of braided camel-hair, fell to his shoulders. But he was
not a Shemite. The dusk was not so thick, nor Conan's hawklike sight so
clouded, that he could not perceive the man's facial characteristics.

He was as tall as Conan, though not so heavy-limbed. His shoulders were
broad, and his supple figure was hard as steel and whalebone. A short
black beard did not altogether mask the aggressive jut of his lean jaw,
and gray eyes cold and piercing as a sword gleamed from the shadow of
the kaffia. Quieting his restless steed with a quick, sure hand, this
man spoke: "By Mitra, I should know this man!"

"Aye!" It was the guttural accents of a Zuagir. "It is the Cimmerian
who was captain of the queen's guard!"

"She must be casting off all her old favorites" muttered the rider.
"Who'd have ever thought it of Queen Taramis? I'd rather have had a
long, bloody war. It would have given us desert folk a chance to
plunder. As it is, we've come this close to the walls and found only
this nag"—he glanced at a fine gelding led by one of the nomads—"and
this dying dog."

Conan lifted his bloody head.

"If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you,
you Zaporoskan thief!" he rasped through blackened lips.

"Mitra, the knave knows me!" exclaimed the other. "How, knave, do you
know me?"

"There's only one of your breed in these parts," muttered Conan. "You
are Olgerd Vladislav, the outlaw chief."

"Aye! and once a hetman of the kozaki of the Zaporoskan River, as you
have guessed. Would you like to live?"

"Only a fool would ask that question," panted Conan.

"I am a hard man," said Olgerd, "and toughness is the only quality I
respect in a man. I shall judge if you are a man, or only a dog after
all, fit only to lie here and die."

"If we cut him down we may be seen from the walls," objected one of the
nomads.

Olgerd shook his head.

"The dusk is too deep. Here, take this ax, Djebal, and cut down the
cross at the base."

"If it falls forward it will crush him," objected Djebal. "I can cut it
so it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack his
skull and tear loose all his entrails."

"If he's worthy to ride with me he'll survive it," answered Olgerd
imperturbably. "If not, then he doesn't deserve to live. Cut!"

The first impact of the battle-ax against the wood and its accompanying
vibrations sent lances of agony through Conan's swollen feet and hands.
Again and again the blade fell, and each stroke reverberated on his
bruised brain, setting his tortured nerves aquiver. But he set his
teeth and made no sound. The ax cut through, the cross reeled on its
splintered base and toppled backward. Conan made his whole body a solid
knot of iron-hard muscle, jammed his head back hard against the wood
and held it rigid there. The beam struck the ground heavily and
rebounded slightly. The impact tore his wounds and dazed him for an
instant He fought the rushing tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but
realized that the iron muscles that sheathed his vitals had saved him
from permanent injury.

And he had made no sound, though blood oozed from his nostrils and his
belly muscles quivered with nausea. With a grunt of approval, Djebal
bent over him with a pair of pincers used to draw horsehoe nails and
gripped the head of the spike in Conan's right hand, tearing the skin
to get a grip on the deeply embedded head. The pincers were small for
that work. Djebal sweated and tugged, swearing and wrestling with the
stubborn iron, working it back and forth—in swollen flesh as well as in
wood. Blood started, oozing over the Cimmerian's fingers. He lay so
still he might have been dead, except for the spasmodic rise and fall
of his great chest. The spike gave way, and Djebal held up the
bloodstained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away and
bent over the other.

The process was repeated, and then Djebal turned his attention to
Conan's skewered feet. But the Cimmerian, struggling up to a sitting
posture, wrenched the pincers from his fingers and sent him staggering
backward with a violent shove. Conan's hands were swollen to almost
twice their normal size. His fingers felt like misshapen thumbs, and
closing his hands was an agony that brought blood streaming from under
his grinding teeth. But somehow, clutching the pincers clumsily with
both hands, he managed to wrench out first one spike and then the
other.

They were not driven so deeply into the wood as the others had been.

He rose stiffly and stood upright on his swollen, lacerated feet,
swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from his face and body.
Cramps assailed him, and he clamped his jaws against the desire to
retch.

Olgerd, watching him impersonally, motioned him toward the stolen
horse. Conan stumbled toward it, and every step was a stabbing,
throbbing hell that flecked his lips with bloody foam. One misshapen,
groping hand fell clumsily on the saddle bow, a bloody foot somehow
found the stirrup. Setting his teeth, he swung up, and he almost
fainted in midair; but he came down in the saddle— and as he did so,
Olgerd struck the horse sharply with his whip. The startled beast
reared, and the man in the saddle swayed and slumped like a sack of
sand, almost unseated. Conan had wrapped a rein about each hand,
holding it in place with a clamping thumb. Drunkenly he exerted the
strength of his knotted biceps, wrenching the horse down; it screamed,
its jaw almost dislocated.

One of the Shemites lifted a water flask questioningly.

Olgerd shook his head.

"Let him wait until we get to camp. It's only ten miles. If he's fit to
live in the desert, he'll live that long without a drink."

The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; among them Conan
swayed like a drunken man in the saddle, bloodshot eyes glazed, foam
drying on his blackened lips.

3. A Letter to Nemedia

The savant Astreas, traveling in the East in his never-tiring search
for knowledge, wrote a letter to his friend and fellow philosopher
Alcemides, in his native Nemedia, which constitutes the entire
knowledge of the Western nations concerning the events of that period
in the East, always a hazy, half-mythical region in the minds of the
Western folk.

Astreas wrote, in part: "You can scarcely conceive, my dear old friend,
of the conditions now existing in this tiny kingdom since Queen Taramis
admitted Constantius and his mercenaries, an event which I briefly
described in my last, hurried letter. Seven months have passed since
then, during which time it seems as though the Devil himself had been
loosed in this unfortunate realm. Taramis seems to have gone quite mad;
whereas formerly she was famed for her virtue, justice, and
tranquility, she is now notorious for qualities precisely opposite to
those just enumerated. Her private life is a scandal—or perhaps
'private' is not the correct term, since the queen makes no attempt to
conceal the debauchery of her court. She constantly indulges in the
most infamous revelries, in which the unfortunate ladies of the court
are forced to join, young married women as well as virgins.

"She herself has not bothered to marry her paramour, Constantius, who
sits on the throne beside her and reigns as her royal consort, and his
officers follow his example and do not hesitate to debauch any woman
they desire, regardless of her rank or station. The wretched kingdom
groans under exorbitant taxation, the farms are stripped to the bone,
and the merchants go in rags, which are all that is left them by the
tax gatherers. Nay, they are lucky if they escape with a whole skin.

"I sense your incredulity, good Alcemides; you will fear that I
exaggerate conditions in Khauran. Such conditions would be unthinkable
in any of the Western countries, admittedly. But you must realize the
vast difference that exists between West and East, especially this part
of the East. In the first place, Khauran is a kingdom of no great size,
one of the many principalities which at one time formed the eastern
part of the empire of Koth, and which later regained the independence
which was theirs at a still earlier age. This part of the world is made
up of these tiny realms, diminutive in comparison with the great
kingdoms of the West, or the great sultanates of the farther East, but
important in their control of the caravan routes and in the wealth
concentrated in them.

"Khauran is the most southeasterly of these principalities, bordering
on the very deserts of eastern Shem. The city of Khauran is the only
city of any magnitude in the realm and stands within sight of the river
which separates the grasslands from the sandy desert, like a
watch-tower to guard the fertile meadows behind it. The land is so rich
that it yields three and four crops a year, and the plains north and
west of the city are dotted with villages. To one accustomed to the
great plantations and stock farms of the West, it is strange to see
these tiny fields and vineyards; yet wealth in grain and fruit pours
from them as from a horn of plenty. The villagers are agriculturists,
nothing else. Of a mixed, aboriginal race, they are unwar-like, unable
to protect themselves, and forbidden the possession of arms. Dependent
wholly upon the soldiers of the city for protection, they are helpless
under the present conditions. So the savage revolt of the rural
sections, which would be a certainty in any Western nation, is here
impossible.

"They toil supinely under the iron hand of Constantius, and his
black-bearded Shemites ride incessantly through the fields with whips
in their hands like the slave drivers of the black serfs who toil in
the plantations of southern Zingara.

"Nor do the people of the city fare any better. Their wealth is
stripped from them, their fairest daughters taken to glut the
insatiable lust of Constantius and his mercenaries. These men are
utterly without mercy or compassion, possessed of all the
characteristics our armies learned to abhor in our wars against the
Shemitish allies of Argos—inhuman cruelty, lust, and wild-beast
ferocity.

"The people of the city are Khauran's ruling caste, predominantly
Hyborian, and valorous and warlike. But the treachery of their queen
delivered them into the hands of their oppressors. The Shemites are the
only armed force in Khauran, and the most hellish punishment is
inflicted on any Khauran found possessing weapons. A systematic
persecution to destroy the young Khaurani men able to bear arms has
been savagely pursued. Many have ruthlessly been slaughtered, others
sold as slaves to the Turanians. Thousands have fled the kingdom and
either entered the service of other rulers, or become outlaws, lurking
in numerous bands along the borders.

"At present there is some possibility of invasion from the desert,
which is inhabited by tribes of Shemitish nomads. The mercenaries of
Constantius are men from the Shemitish cities of the west, Pelishtim,
Anakim, Akkharim, and are ardently hated by the Zuagirs and other
wandering tribes. As you know, good Alcemides, the countries of these
barbarians are divided into the western meadowlands which stretch to
the distant ocean, and in which rise the cities of the town-dwellers,
and the eastern deserts, where the lean nomads hold sway; there is
incessant warfare between the dwellers of the cities and the dwellers
of the desert.

"The Zuagirs have fought with and raided Khauran for centuries without
success, but they resent its conquest by their western kin. It is
rumored that their natural antagonism is being fomented by the man who
was formerly the captain of the queen's guard, and who, somehow
escaping the hate of Constantius, who actually had him upon the cross,
fled to the nomads. He is called Conan, and is himself a barbarian, one
of those gloomy Cimmerians whose ferocity our soldiers have more than
once learned to their bitter cost It is rumored that he has become the
right-hand man of Olgerd Vladislav, the kozak adventurer who wandered
down from the northern steppes and made himself chief of a band of
Zuagirs.

"There are also rumors that this band has increased vastly in the last
few months, and that Olgerd, incited no doubt by this Cimmerian, is
even considering a raid on Khauran.

"It cannot be anything more than a raid, as the Zuagirs are without
siege machines or the knowledge of investing a city, and it has been
proven repeatedly in the past that the nomads in their loose formation,
or rather lack of formation, are no match in hand-to-hand fighting for
the well-disciplined, fully-armed warriors of the Shemitish cities. The
natives of Khauran would perhaps welcome this conquest, since the
nomads could deal with them no more harshly than their present masters,
and even total extermination would be preferable to the suffering they
have to endure. But they are so cowed and helpless that they could give
no aid to the invaders.

"Their plight is most wretched. Taramis, apparently possessed of a
demon, stops at nothing. She has abolished the worship of Ishtar and
turned the temple into a shrine of idolatry. She has destroyed the
ivory image of the goddess which these eastern Hyborians worship (and
which, inferior as it is to the true religion of Mitra which we Western
nations recognize, is still superior to the devil worship of the
Shemites) and filled the temple of Ishtar with obscene images of every
imaginable sort—gods and goddesses of the night, portrayed in all the
salacious and perverse poses and with all the revolting characteristics
that a degenerate brain could conceive. Many of these images are to be
identified as foul deities of the Shemites, the Turanians, the
Vendhyans, and the Khitans, but others are reminiscent of a hideous and
half-remembered antiquity, vile shapes forgotten except in the most
obscure legends. Where the queen gained the knowledge of them I dare
not even hazard a guess.

"She has instituted human sacrifice, and since her mating with
Constantius, no less than five hundred men, women, and children have
been immolated. Some of these have died on the altar she has set up in
the temple, herself wielding the sacrificial dagger, but most have met
a more horrible doom.

"Taramis has placed some sort of monster in a crypt in the temple. What
it is, and whence it came, none knows. But shortly after she had
crushed the desperate revolt of her soldiers against Constantius, she
spent a night alone in the desecrated temple, alone except for a dozen
bound captives, and the shuddering people saw thick, foul-smelling
smoke curling up from the dome, heard all night the frenetic chanting
of the queen, and the agonized cries of her tortured captives; and
toward dawn another voice mingled with these sounds—a strident, inhuman
croaking that froze the blood of all who heard.

"In the full dawn, Taramis reeled drunkenly from the temple, her eyes
blazing with demoniac triumph. The captives were never seen again, nor
the croaking voice heard. But there is a room in the temple into which
none ever goes but the queen, driving a human sacrifice before her. And
this victim is never seen again. All know that in that grim chamber
lurks some monster from the black night of ages, which devours the
shrieking humans Taramis delivers up to it.

"I can no longer think of her as a mortal woman, but as a rabid
she-fiend, crouching in her blood-fouled lair amongst the bones and
fragments of her victims, with taloned, crimsoned fingers. That the
gods allow her to pursue her awful course unchecked almost shakes my
faith in divine justice.

"When I compare her present conduct with her deportment when first I
came to Khauran, seven months ago, I am confused with bewilderment, and
almost inclined to the belief held by many of the people—-that a demon
has possessed the body of Taramis. A young soldier, Valerius, had
another belief. He believed that a witch had assumed a form identical
with that of Khauran's adored ruler. He believed that Taramis had been
spirited away in the night and confined in some dungeon, and that this
being ruling in her place was but a female sorcerer. He swore that he
would find the real queen, if she still lived, but I greatly fear that
he himself has fallen victim to the cruelty of Constantius. He was
implicated in the revolt of the palace guards, escaped, and remained in
hiding for some time, stubbornly refusing to seek safety abroad, and it
was during this time that I encountered him and he told me his beliefs.

"But he has disappeared, as so many have, whose fate one dares not
conjecture, and I fear he has been apprehended by the spies of
Constantius.

"But I must conclude this letter and slip it out of the city by means
of a swift carrier pigeon, which will carry it to the post whence I
purchased it, on the borders of Koth. By rider and camel train it will
eventually come to you. I must haste, before dawn. It is late, and the
stars gleam whitely on the gardened roofs of Khauran. A shuddering
silence envelops the city, in which I hear the throb of a sullen drum
from the distant temple. I doubt not that Taramis is there, concocting
more deviltry."

But the savant was incorrect in his conjecture concerning the
whereabouts of the woman he called Taramis. The girl whom the world
knew as queen of Khauran stood in a dungeon, lighted only by a
flickering torch which played on her features, etching the diabolical
cruelty of her beautiful countenance.

On the bare stone floor before her crouched a figure whose nakedness
was scarcely covered with tattered rags.

This figure Salome touched contemptuously with the upturned toe of her
gilded sandal, and smiled vindictively as her victim shrank away.

"You do not love my caresses, sweet sister?"

Taramis was still beautiful, in spite of her rags and the imprisonment
and abuse of seven weary months. She did not reply to her sister's
taunts, but bent her head as one grown accustomed to mockery.

This resignation did not please Salome. She bit her red lip, and stood
tapping the toe of her shoe against the flags as she frowned down at
the passive figure. Salome was clad in the barbaric splendor of a woman
of Shushan. Jewels glittered in the torchlight on her gilded sandals,
on her gold breast-plates and the slender chains that held them in
place. Gold anklets clashed as she moved, jeweled bracelets weighted
her bare arms. Her tall coiffure was that of a Shemitish woman, and
jade pendants hung from gold hoops in her ears, flashing and sparkling
with each impatient movement of her haughty head. A gem-crusted girdle
supported a silk skirt so transparent that it was in the nature of a
cynical mockery of convention.

Suspended from her shoulders and trailing down her back hung a darkly
scarlet cloak, and this was thrown carelessly over the crook of one arm
and the bundle that arm supported.

Salome stooped suddenly and with her free hand grasped her sister's
disheveled hair and forced back the girl's head to stare into her eyes.
Taramis met that tigerish glare without flinching.

"You are not so ready with your tears as formerly, sweet sister,"
muttered the witch-girl.

"You shall wring no more tears from me," answered Taramis. "Too often
you have reveled in the spectacle of the queen of Khauran sobbing for
mercy on her knees. I know that you have spared me only to torment me;
that is why you have limited your tortures to such torments as neither
slay nor permanently disfigure. But I fear you no longer; you have
strained out the last vestige of hope, fright, and shame from me. Slay
me and be done with it, for I have shed my last tear for your
enjoyment, you she-devil from Hell!"

"You flatter yourself, my dear sister," purred Salome. "So far it is
only your handsome body that I have caused to suffer, only your pride
and self-esteem that I have crushed. You forget that; unlike myself,
you are capable of mental torment. I have observed this when I have
regaled you with narratives concerning the comedies I have enacted with
some of your stupid subjects. But this time I have brought more vivid
proof of these farces. Did you know that Krallides, your faithful
councillor, had come sulking back from Turan and been captured?"

Taramis turned pale.

"What—what have you done to him?"

For answer Salome drew the mysterious bundle from under her cloak. She
shook off the silken swathings and held it up—the head of a young man,
the features frozen in a convulsion as if death had come in the midst
of inhuman agony.

Taramis cried out as if a blade had pierced her heart.

"Oh, Ishtar! Krallides!"

"Aye! He was seeking to stir up the people against me, poor fool,
telling them that Conan spoke the truth when he said I was not Taramis.
How would the people rise against the Falcon's Shemites? With sticks
and pebbles? Bah! Dogs are eating his headless body in the marketplace,
and this foul carrion shall be cast into the sewer to rot.

"How, sister!" She paused, smiling down at her victim. "Have you
discovered that you still have unshed tears? Good! I reserved the
mental torment for the last. Hereafter I shall show you many such
sights as—this!"

Standing there in the torchlight with the severed head in her hand she
did not look like anything ever born of a human woman, in spite of her
awful beauty. Taramis did not look up. She lay face down on the slimy
floor, her slim body shaken in sobs of agony, beating her clenched
hands against the stones. Salome sauntered toward the door, her anklets
clashing at each step, her ear pendants winking in the torch-glare.

A few moments later, she emerged from a door under a sullen arch that
let into a court, which in turn opened upon a winding alley. A man
standing there turned toward her—a giant Shemite, with somber eyes and
shoulders like a bull, his great black beard falling over his mighty,
silver-mailed breast.

"She wept?" His rumble was like that of a bull, deep, low-pitched, and
stormy. He was the general of the mercenaries, one of the few even of
Constantius' associates who knew the secret of the queen of Khauran.

"Aye, Khumbanigash. There are whole sections of her sensibilities that
I have not touched. When one sense is dulled by continual laceration, I
will discover a newer, more poignant pang.—Here, dog!" A trembling,
shambling figure in rags, filth, and matted hair approached, one of the
beggars that slept in the alleys and open courts. Salome tossed the
head to him. "Here, deaf one; cast that in the nearest sewer.—Make the
sign with your hands, Khumbanigash. He cannot hear."

The general complied, and the tousled head bobbed, as the man turned
painfully away.

"Why do you keep up this farce?" rumbled Khumbanigash. "You are so
firmly established on the throne that nothing can unseat you. What if
the Khaurani fools learn the truth? They can do nothing. Proclaim
yourself in your true identity! Show them their beloved ex-queen—and
cut off her head in the public square!"

"Not yet, good Khumbanigash——-"

The arched door slammed on the hard accents of Salome, the stormy
reverberations of Khumbanigash. The mute beggar crouched in the
courtyard, and there was none to see that the hands which held the
severed head were quivering strongly—brown, sinewy hands, strangely
incongruous with the bent body and filthy tatters.

"I knew it!" It was a fierce, vibrant whisper, scarcely audible. "She
lives! Oh, Krallides, your martyrdom was not in vain! They have her
locked in that dungeon! Oh, Ishtar, if you love true men, aid me now!"

4. Wolves of the Desert

Olgerd Vladislav filled his jeweled goblet with crimson wine from a
golden jug and thrust the vessel across the ebony table to Conan the
Cimmerian. Olgerd's apparel would have satisfied the vanity of any
Zaporoskan hetman.

His khalat was of white silk, with pearls sewn on the bosom. Girdled at
the waist with a Bakhauriot belt, its skirts were drawn back to reveal
his wide silken breeches, tucked into short boots of soft green
leather, adorned with gold thread. On his head was a green silk turban,
wound about a spired helmet chased with gold. His only weapon was a
broad curved Cherkees knife in an ivory sheath girdled high on his left
hip, kozak fashion. Throwing himself back in his gilded chair with its
carven eagles, Olgerd spread his booted legs before him and gulped down
the sparkling wine noisily.

To his splendor the huge Cimmerian opposite him offered a strong
contrast, with his square-cut black mane, brown, scarred countenance
and burning blue eyes. He was clad in black mesh mail, and the only
glitter about him was the broad gold buckle of the belt which supported
his sword in its worn leather scabbard.

They were alone in the silk-walled tent, which was hung with
gild-worked tapestries and littered with rich carpets and velvet
cushions, the loot of the caravans. From outside came a low, incessant
murmur, the sound that always accompanies a great throng of men, in
camp or otherwise. An occasional gust of desert wind rattled the palm
leaves. "Today in the shadow, tomorrow in the sun," quoth Olgerd,
loosening his crimson girdle a trifle and reaching again for the wine
jug. "That's the way of life. Once I was a hetman on the Zaporoska; now
I'm a desert chief. Seven months ago you were hanging on a cross
outside Khauran. Now you're lieutenant to the most powerful raider
between Turan and the western meadows. You should be thankful to me!"

"For recognizing my usefulness?" Conan laughed and lifted the jug.
"When you allow the elevation of a man, one can be sure that you'll
profit by his advancement. I've earned everything I've won, with my
blood and sweat" He glanced at the scars on the insides of his palms.
There were scars, too, on his body, scars that had not been there seven
months ago.

"You fight like a regiment of devils," conceded Olgerd. "But don't get
to thinking that you've had anything to do with the recruits who've
swarmed in to join us. It was our success at raiding, guided by my wit,
that brought them in. These nomads are always looking for a successful
leader to follow, and they have more faith in a foreigner than in one
of their own race.

"There's no limit to what we may accomplish! We have eleven thousand
men now. In another year we may have three times that number. We've
contented ourselves, so far, with raids on the Turanian outposts and
the city-states to the west. With thirty or forty thousand men we'll
raid no longer. We'll invade and conquer and establish ourselves as
rulers. I'll be emporor of all Shem yet, and you'll be my vizier, so
long as you carry out my orders unquestioningly. In the meantime, I
think we'll ride eastward and storm that Turanian outpost at Vezek,
where the caravans pay toll."

Conan shook his head. "I think not."

Olgerd glared, his quick temper irritated.

"What do you mean, you think not? I do the thinking for this army!"

"There are enough men in this band now for my purpose," answered the
Cimmerian. "I'm sick of waiting. I have a score to settle."

"Oh!" Olgerd scowled, and gulped wine, then grinned. "Still thinking of
that cross, eh? Well, I like a good hater. But that can wait."

"You told me once you'd aid me in taking Khauran," said Conan.

"Yes, but that was before I began to see the full possibilities of our
power," answered Olgerd. "I was only thinking of the loot in the city.
I don't want to waste our strength unprofitably. Khauran is too strong
a nut for us to crack now. Maybe in a year——-"

"Within the week,"' answered Conan, and the kozak stared at the
certainty in his voice.

"Listen," said Olgerd, "even if I were willing to throw away men on
such a harebrained attempt—what could you expect, Do you think these
wolves could besiege and take a city like Khauran?"

"There'll be no siege," answered the Cimmerian. "I know how to draw
Constantius out into the plain."

"And what then?" cried Olgerd with an oath. "In the arrow play our
horsemen would have the worst of it, for the armor of the asshuri is
the better, and when it came to sword strokes their close-marshaled
ranks of trained swordsmen would cleave through our loose lines and
scatter our men like chaff before the wind."

"Not if there were three thousand desperate Hyborian horsemen fighting
in a solid wedge such as I could teach them," answered Conan.

"And where would you secure three thousand Hyborians?" asked Olgerd
with vast sarcasm. "Will you conjure them out of the air?"

"I have them," answered the Cimmerian imperturbably. "Three thousand
men of Khauran camp at the oasis of Akrel, awaiting my orders."

"What?" Olgerd glared like a startled wolf.

"Aye. Men who had fled from the tyranny of Constantius. Most of them
have been living the lives of outlaws in the deserts east of Khauran
and are gaunt and hard and desperate as man-eating tigers. One of them
will be a match for any three squat mercenaries. It takes oppression
and hardship to stiffen men's guts and put the fire of Hell into their
thews. They were broken up into small bands; all they needed was a
leader. They believed the word I sent them by my riders, and assembled
at the oasis and put themselves at my disposal."

"All this without my knowledge?" A feral light began to gleam in
Olgerd's eyes. He hitched at his weapon-girdle.

"It was I they wished to follow, not you."

"And what did you tell these outcasts to gain their allegiance?" There
was a dangerous ring in Olgerd's voice.

"I told them that I'd use this horde of desert wolves to help them
destroy Constantius and give Khauran back into the hands of its
citizens."

"You fool!" whispered Olgerd. "Do you deem yourself chief already?"

The men were on their feet, facing each other across the ebony board,
devil-lights dancing in Olgerd's cold gray eyes, a grim smile on the
Cimmerian's hard lips.

"I'll have you torn between four palm trees," said the kozak calmly.

"Call the men and bid them do it!" challenged Conan. "See if they obey
you!"

Baring his teeth in a snarl, Olgerd lifted his hand— then paused. There
was something about the confidence in the Cimmerian's dark face that
shook him. His eyes began to burn like those of a wolf.

"You scum of the western hills," he muttered, "have you dared to seek
to undermine my power?"

"I didn't have to," answered Conan. "You lied when you said I had
nothing to do with bringing in the new recruits. I had everything to do
with it. They took your orders, but they fought for me. There is not
room for two chiefs of the Zuagirs. They know I am the stronger man. I
understand them better than you, and they, me; because I am a barbarian
too."

"And what will they say when you ask them to fight for the Khauranis?"
asked Olgerd sardonically.

"They'll follow me. I'll promise them a camel train of gold from the
palace. Khauran will be willing to pay that as a guerdon for getting
rid of Constantius. After that, I'll lead them against the Turanians as
you have planned. They want loot, and they'd as soon fight Constantius
for it as anybody."

In Olgerd's eyes grew a recognition of defeat. In his red dreams of
empire he had missed what was going on about him. Happenings and events
that had seemed meaningless before now flashed into his mind, with
their true significance, bringing a realization that Conan spoke no
idle boast. The giant black-mailed figure before him was the real chief
of the Zuagirs.

"Not if you die!" muttered Olgerd, and his hand flickered toward his
hilt. But quick as the stroke of a great cat Conan's arm shot across
the table and his fingers locked on Olgerd's forearm. There was a snap
of breaking bones, and for a tense instant the scene held: the men
facing each other as motionless as images, perspiration starting out on
Olgerd's forehead. Conan laughed, never easing his grip on the broken
arm.

"Are you fit to live, Olgerd?"

His smile did not alter as the corded muscles rippled in knotting
ridges along his forearm and his fingers ground into the kozak's
quivering flesh. There was the sound of broken bones grating together
and Olgerd's face turned the color of ashes; blood oozed from his lip
where his teeth sank, but he uttered no sound.

With a laugh Conan released him and drew back, and the kozak swayed,
caught the table edge with his good hand to steady himself.

"I give you life, Olgerd, as you gave it to me," said Conan tranquilly,
"though it was for your own ends that you took me down from the cross.
It was a bitter test you gave me then; you couldn't have endured it;
neither could anyone but a western barbarian.

"Take your horse and go. It's tied behind the tent, and food and water
are in the saddlebags. None will see your going, but go quickly.
There's no room for a fallen chief on the desert. If the warriors see
you, maimed and deposed, they'll never let you leave the camp alive."

Olgerd did not reply. Slowly, without a word, he turned and stalked
across the tent, through the flapped opening. Unspeaking he climbed
into the saddle of the great white stallion that stood tethered there
in the shade of a spreading palm tree; and unspeaking, with his broken
arm thrust in the bosom of his khalat, he reined the steed about and
rode eastward into the open desert, out of the life of the people of
the Zuagir.

Inside the tent Conan emptied the wine jug and smacked his lips with
relish. Tossing the empty vessel into a corner, he braced his belt and
strode out through the front opening, halting for a moment to let his
gaze sweep over the lines of camel-hair tents that stretched before
him, and the white-robed figures that moved among them, arguing,
singing, mending bridles, or whetting tulwars.

He lifted his voice in a thunder that carried to the farthest confines
of the encampment: "Aie, you dogs, sharpen your ears and listen! Gather
around here. I have a tale to tell you."

5. The Voice from the Crystal

In a chamber in a tower near the city wall, a group of men listened
attentively to the words of one of their number. They were young men,
but hard and sinewy, with the bearing that comes only to men rendered
desperate by adversity. They were clad in mail shirts and worn leather;
swords hung at their girdles.

"I knew that Conan spoke the truth when he said it was not Taramis!"
the speaker exclaimed. "For months I have haunted the outskirts of the
palace, playing the part of a deaf beggar. At last I learned what I had
believed— that our queen was a prisoner in the dungeons that adjoin the
palace. I watched my opportunity and captured a Shemitish
jailer—knocked him senseless as he left the courtyard late one
night—dragged him into a cellar nearby and questioned him. Before he
died, he told me what I have just told you, and what we have suspected
all along —that the woman ruling Khauran is a witch: Salome. Taramis,
he said, is imprisoned in the lowest dungeon.

"This invasion of the Zuagirs gives us the opportunity we sought. What
Conan means to do, I cannot say. Perhaps he merely wishes vengeance on
Constantius. Perhaps he intends sacking the city and destroying it. He
is a barbarian, and no one can understand their minds.

"But this is what we must do: rescue Taramis while the battle rages!
Constantius will march out into the plain to give battle. Even now his
men are mounting. He will do this because there is not sufficient food
in the city to stand a siege. Conan burst out of the desert so suddenly
that there was no time to bring in supplies. And the Cimmerian is
equipped for a siege. Scouts have reported that the Zuagirs have siege
engines, built, undoubtedly, according to the instructions of Conan,
who learned all the arts of war among the Western nations.

"Constantius does not desire a long siege; so he will march with his
warriors into the plain, where he expects to scatter Conan's forces at
one stroke. He will leave only a few hundred men in the city, and they
will be on the walls and in the towers commanding the gates.

"The prison will be left all but unguarded. When we have freed Taramis,
our next actions will depend upon circumstances. If Conan wins, we must
show Taramis to the people and bid them rise—they will! Oh, they will!
With their bare hands they are enough to overpower the Shemites left in
the city and close the gates against both the mercenaries and the
nomads. Neither must get within the walls! Then we will parley with
Conan. He was always loyal to Taramis. If he knows the truth, and she
appeals to him, I believe he will spare the city. If, which is more
probable, Constantius prevails, and Conan is routed, we must steal out
of the city with the queen and seek safety in flight.

"Is all clear?"

They replied with one voice.

"Then let us loosen our blades in our scabbards, commend our souls to
Ishtar, and start for the prison, for the mercenaries are already
marching through the southern gate."

This was true. The dawnlight glinted on peaked helmets pouring in a
steady stream through the broad arch, on the bright housings of the
chargers. This would be a battle of horsemen, such as is possible only
in the lands of the East. The riders flowed through the gates like a
river of steel—somber figures in black and silver mail, with their
curled beards and hooked noses, and their inexorable eyes in which
glimmered the fatality of their race —the utter lack of doubt or of
mercy.

The streets and the walls were lined with throngs of people who watched
silently these warriors of an alien race riding forth to defend their
native city. There was no sound; dully, expressionlessly they watched,
those gaunt people in shabby garments, their caps in their hands.

In a tower that overlooked the broad street that led to the southern
gate, Salome lolled on a velvet couch, cynically watching Constantius
as he settled his broad sword belt about his lean hips and drew on his
gauntlets. They were alone in the chamber. Outside, the rhythmical
clank of harness and shuffle of horses' hooves welled up through the
gold-barred casements.

"Before nightfall," quoth Constantius, giving a twirl to his thin
mustache, "you'll have some captives to feed to your temple devil. Does
it not grow weary of soft, city-bred flesh? Perhaps it would relish the
harder thews of a desert man."

"Take care you do not fall prey to a fiercer beast than Thaug," warned
the girl. "Do not forget who it is that leads these desert animals."

"I am not likely to forget," he answered. "That is one reason why I am
advancing to meet him. The dog has fought in the West and knows the art
of siege. My scouts had some trouble in approaching his columns, for
his outriders have eyes like hawks; but they did get close enough to
see the engines he is dragging on oxcart wheels drawn by
camels—catapults, rams, ballistas, mangonels—by Ishtar! he must have
had ten thousand men working day and night for a month. Where he got
the material for their construction is more than I can understand.
Perhaps he has a treaty with the Turanians and gets supplies from them.

"Anyway, they won't do him any good. I've fought these desert wolves
before—an exchange of arrows for a while, in which the armor of my
warriors protects them— then a charge and my squadrons sweep through
the loose swarms of the nomads, wheel and sweep back through,
scattering them to the four winds. I'll ride back through the south
gate before sunset, with hundreds of naked captives staggering at my
horse's tail. We'll hold a fete tonight, in the great square. My
soldiers delight in flaying their enemies alive—we will have a
wholesale skinning, and make these weak-kneed townsfolk watch. As for
Conan, it will afford me intense pleasure, if we can take him alive, to
impale him on the palace steps."

"Skin as many as you like," answered Salome indifferently. "I would
like a dress made of human hide. But at least a hundred captives you
must give to me—for the altar, and for Thaug."

"It shall be done," answered Constantius, with his gauntleted hand
brushing back the thin hair from his high, bald forehead, burned dark
by the sun. "For victory and the fair honor of Taramis!" he said
sardonically, and, taking his vizored helmet under his arm, he lifted a
hand in salute and strode clanking from the chamber. His voice drifted
back, harshly lifted in orders to his officers.

Salome leaned back on the couch, yawned, stretched herself like a
great, supple cat, and called: "Zang!"

A cat-footed priest, with features like yellowed parchment stretched
over a skull, entered noiselessly.

Salome turned to an ivory pedestal on which stood two crystal globes
and, taking from it the smaller, she handed the glistening sphere to
the priest.

"Ride with Constantius," she said. "Give me the news of the battle.
Go!"

The skull-faced man bowed low and, hiding the globe under his dark
mantle, hurried from the chamber.

Outside in the city there was no sound, except the clank of hoofs and
after a while the clang of a closing gate, Salome mounted a wide marble
stair that led to the flat, canopied, marble-battlemented roof. She was
above all other buildings of the city. The streets were deserted, the
great square in front of the palace was empty. In normal times folk
shunned the grim temple which rose on the opposite side of that square,
but now the town looked like a dead city. Only on the southern wall and
the roofs that overlooked it was there any sign of life. There the
people massed thickly. They made no demonstration, did not know whether
to hope for the victory or defeat of Constantius. Victory meant further
misery under his intolerable rule; defeat probably meant the sack of
the city and red massacre. No word had come from Conan. They did not
know what to expect at his hands. They remembered that he was a
barbarian.

The squadrons of the mercenaries were moving out into the plain. In the
distance, just this side of the river, other dark masses were moving,
barely recognizable as men on horses. Objects dotted the farther bank;
Conan had not brought his siege engines across the river, apparently
fearing an attack in the midst of the crossing. But he had crossed with
his full force of horsemen. The sun rose and struck glints of fire from
the dark multitudes. The squadrons from the city broke into a gallop; a
deep roar reached the ears of the people on the wall.

The rolling masses merged, intermingled; at that distance it was a
tangled confusion in which no details stood out. Charge and
countercharge were not to be identified. Clouds of dust rose from the
plains, under the stamping hoofs, veiling the action. Through these
swirling clouds masses of riders loomed, appearing and disappearing,
and spears flashed.

Salome shrugged her shoulders and descended the stair. The palace lay
silent. All the slaves were on the wall, gazing vainly southward with
the citizens.

She entered the chamber where she had talked with Constantius and
approached the pedestal, noting that the crystal globe was clouded,
shot with bloody streaks of crimson. She bent over the ball, swearing
under her breath.

"Zang!" she called. "Zang?"

Mists swirled in the sphere, resolving themselves into billowing dust
clouds through which black figures rushed unrecognizably; steel glinted
like lightning in the murk. Then the face of Zang leaped into startling
distinctness; it was as if the wide eyes gazed up at Salome. Blood
trickled from a gash in the skull-like head, the skin was gray with
sweat-runneled dust. The lips parted, writhing; to other ears than
Salome's it would have seemed that the face in the crystal contorted
silently. But sound to her came as plainly from those ashen lips as if
the priest had been in the same room with her, instead of miles away,
shouting into the smaller crystal. Only the gods of darkness knew what
unseen, magic filaments linked together those shimmering spheres.

"Salome!" shrieked the bloody head. "Salome!

"I hear!" she cried. "Speak! How goes the battle?"

"Doom is upon us!" screamed the skull-like apparition. "Khauran is
lost! Aie, my horse is down and I cannot win clear! Men are falling
around me! They are dying like flies, in their silvered mail!"

"Stop yammering and tell me what happened!" she cried harshly.

"We rode at the desert dogs, and they came on to meet us!" yowled the
priest. "Arrows flew in clouds between the hosts, and the nomads
wavered. Constantius ordered the charge. In even ranks we thundered
upon them.

"Then the masses of their horde opened to right and left, and through
the cleft rushed three thousand Hyborian horsemen whose presence we had
not even suspected. Men of Khauran, mad with hate! Big men in full
armor on massive horses! In a solid wedge of steel they smote us like a
thunderbolt. They split our ranks asunder before we knew what was upon
us, and then the desert men swarmed on us from either flank.

"They have ripped our ranks apart, broken and scattered us! It is a
trick of that devil Conan! The siege engines are false—mere frames of
palm trunks and painted silk, that fooled our scouts who saw them from
afar. A trick to draw us out to our doom! Our warriors flee!
Khumbanigash is down—Conan slew him. I do not see Constantius. The
Khauranis rage through our milling masses like blood-mad lions, and the
desert men feather us with arrows. I—ahhh!"

There was a flicker as of lightning, or trenchant steel, a burst of
bright blood—then abruptly the image vanished, like a bursting bubble,
and Salome was staring into an empty crystal ball that mirrored only
her own furious features.

She stood perfectly still for a few moments, erect and staring into
space. Then she clapped her hands and another skull-like priest
entered, as silent and immobile as the first.

"Constantius is beaten," she said swiftly. "We are doomed. Conan will
be crashing at our gates within the hour. If he catches me, I have no
illusions as to what I can expect. But first I am going to make sure
that my cursed sister never ascends the throne again. Follow me! Come
what may, we shall give Thaug a feast."

As she descended the stairs and galleries of the palace, she heard a
faint, rising echo from the distant walk. The people there had begun to
realize that the battle was going against Constantius. Through the dust
clouds masses of horsemen were visible, racing toward the city.

Palace and prison were connected by a long closed gallery, whose
vaulted roof rose on gloomy arches. Hurrying along this, the false
queen and her slave passed through a heavy door at the other end that
let them into the dim-lit recesses of the prison. They had emerged into
a wide, arched corridor at a point near where a stone stair descended
into the darkness. Salome recoiled suddenly, swearing. In the gloom of
the hall lay a motionless form —a Shemitish jailer, his short beard
tilted toward the roof as his head hung on a half-severed neck. As
panting voices from below reached the girl's ears, she shrank back into
the black shadow of an arch, pushing the priest behind her, her hand
groping in her girdle.

6. The Vulture's Wings

It was the smoky light of a torch which roused Taramis, queen of
Khauran, from the slumber in which she sought forgetfulness. Lifting
herself on her hand, she raked back her tangled hair and blinked up,
expecting to meet the mocking countenance of Salome, malign with new
torments. Instead a cry of pity and horror reached her ears.

"Taramis! Oh, my queen!"

The sound was so strange to her ears that she thought she was still
dreaming. Behind the torch she could make out figures now, the glint of
steel, then five countenances bent toward her, not swarthy and
hook-nosed, but lean, aquiline faces, browned by the sun. She crouched
in her tatters, staring wildly.

One of the figures sprang forward and fell on one knee before her, arms
stretched appealingly toward her.

"Oh, Taramis! Thank Ishtar we have found you! Do you not remember me,
Valerius? Once with your own lips you praised me, after the battle of
Korveka!"

"Valerius!" she stammered. Suddenly tears welled into her eyes. "Oh, I
dream! It is some magic of Salome's, to torment me!"

"No!" The cry rang with exultation. "It is your own true vassals come
to rescue you! Yet we must hasten. Constantius fights in the plain
against Conan, who has brought the Zuagirs across the river, but three
hundred Shemites yet hold the city. We slew the jailer and took his
keys, and have seen no other guards. But we must be gone. Come!"

The queen's legs gave way, not from weakness but from the reaction.
Valerius lifted her like a child, and with the torchbearer hurrying
before them, they left the dungeon and went up a slimy stone stair. It
seemed to mount endlessly, but presently they emerged into a corridor.

They were passing a dark arch when the torch was suddenly struck out,
and the bearer cried out in fierce, brief agony. A burst of blue fire
glared in the dark corridor, in which the furious face of Salome was
limned momentarily, with a beastlike figure crouching beside her—then
the eyes of the watchers were blinded by that blaze.

Valerius tried to stagger along the corridor with the queen; dazedly he
heard the sound of murderous blows driven deep in flesh, accompanied by
gasps of death and a bestial grunting. Then the queen was torn brutally
from his arms, and a savage blow on his helmet dashed him to the floor.

Grimly he crawled to his feet, shaking his head in an effort to rid
himself of the blue flame, which seemed still to dance devilishly
before him. When his blinded sight cleared, he found himself alone in
the corridor—alone except for the dead. His four companions lay in
their blood, heads and bosoms cleft and gashed. Blinded and dazed in
that hell-born glare, they had died without an opportunity of defending
themselves. The queen was gone.

With a bitter curse Valerius caught up his sword, tearing his cleft
helmet from his head to clatter on the flags; blood ran down his cheek
from a cut in his scalp.

Reeling, frantic with indecision, he heard a voice calling his name in
desperate urgency: "Valerius! Valerius!"

He staggered in the direction of the voice, and rounded a corner just
in time to have his arms filled with a soft, supple figure which flung
itself frantically at him.

"Ivga! Are you mad!"

"I had to come!" she sobbed. "I followed you—hid in an arch of the
outer court. A moment ago I saw her emerge with a brute who carried a
woman in his arms. I knew it was Taramis, and that you had failed! Oh,
you are hurt!"

"A scratch!" He put aside her clinging hands. "Quick, Ivga, tell me
which way they went!"

"They fled across the square toward the temple."

He paled. "Ishtar! Oh, the fiend! She means to give Taramis to the
devil she worships! Quick, Ivga! Run to the south wall where the people
watch the battle! Tell them that their real queen has been found—that
the imposter has dragged her to the temple! Go!"

Sobbing, the girl sped away, her light sandals pattering across the
court, plunged into the street, dashed into the square upon which it
debouched, and raced for the great structure that rose on the opposite
side.

His own flying feet spurned the marble as he darted up the broad stair
and through the pillared portico. Evidently their prisoner had given
them some trouble. Taramis, sensing the doom intended for her, was
fighting against it with all the strength of her splendid young body.
Once she had broken away from the brutish priest, only to be dragged
down again.

The group was half way down the broad nave, at the other end of which
stood the grim altar and beyond that the great metal door, obscenely
carven, through which many had gone but from which only Salome had ever
emerged. Taramis' breath came in panting gasps; her tattered garment
had been torn from her in the struggle. She writhed in the grasp of her
apish captor like a white, naked nymph in the arms of a satyr. Salome
watched cynically, though impatiently, moving toward the carven door;
and from the dusk that lurked along the lofty walls the obscene gods
and gargoyles leered down, as if imbued with salacious life.

Choking with fury, Valerius rushed down the great hall, sword in hand.
At a sharp cry from Salome, the skull-faced priest looked up, then
released Taramis, drew a heavy knife, already smeared with blood, and
ran at the oncoming Khaurani.

But cutting down men blinded by the devil's flame loosed by Salome was
different from fighting a wiry young Hyborian afire with hate and rage.

Up went the dripping knife, but before it could fall Valerius' keen
narrow blade slashed through the air, and the fist that held the knife
jumped from its wrist in a shower of blood. Valerius, berserk, slashed
again and yet again before the crumpling figure could fall. The blade
licked through flesh and bone. The skull-like head fell one way, the
half-sundered torso the other.

Valerius whirled on his toes, quick and fierce as a jungle cat, glaring
about for Salome. She must have exhausted her fire dust in the prison.
She was bending over Taramis, grasping her sister's black locks in one
hand, in the other lifting a dagger. Then with a fierce cry, Valerius'
sword was sheathed in her breast with such fury that the point sprang
out between her shoulders. With an awful shriek the witch sank down,
writhing in convulsions, grasping at the naked blade as it was
withdrawn, smoking and dripping. Her eyes were unhuman; with a more
than human vitality she clung to the life that ebbed through the wound
that split the crimson crescent on her ivory bosom. She groveled on the
floor, clawing and biting at the naked stones in her agony.

Sickened at the sight, Valerius stooped and lifted the half-fainting
queen. Turning his back on the twisting figure upon the floor, he ran
toward the door, stumbling in his haste. He staggered out upon the
portico, halted at the head of the steps. The square thronged with
people. Some had come at Ivga's incoherent cries; others had deserted
the walls in fear of the onsweeping hordes out of the desert, fleeing
unreasoningly toward the center of the city. Dumb resignation had
vanished. The throng seethed and milled, yelling and screaming. About
the road there sounded somewhere the splintering of stone and timbers.

A band of grim Shemites cleft the crowd—the guards of the northern
gates, hurrying toward the south gate to reinforce their comrades
there. They reined up short at sight of the youth on the steps, holding
the limp, naked figure in his arms. The heads of the throng turned
toward the temple; the crowd gaped, a new bewilderment added to their
swirling confusion.

"Here is your queen!" yelled Valerius, straining to make himself
understood above the clamor. The people gave back a bewildered roar.
They did not understand, and Valerius sought in vain to lift his voice
above their bedlam. The Shemites rode toward the temple steps, beating
a way through the crowd with their spears.

Then a new, grisly element introduced itself into the frenzy. Out of
the gloom of the temple behind Valerius wavered a slim white figure,
laced with crimson. The people screamed; there in the arms of Valerius
hung the woman they thought their queen; yet there in the temple door
staggered another figure, like a reflection of the other. Their brains
reeled. Valerius felt his blood congeal as he stared at the swaying
witch-girl. His sword had transfixed her, sundered her heart She should
be dead; by all laws of nature she should be dead. Yet there she
swayed, on her feet, clinging horribly to life.

"Thaug!" she screamed, reeling in the doorway. "Thaug!" As in answer to
that frightful invocation there boomed a thunderous croaking from
within the temple, the snapping of wood and metal.

"That is the queen!" roared the captain of the Shemites, lifting his
bow. "Shoot down the man and the other woman!"

But the roar of a roused hunting pack rose from the people; they had
guessed the truth at last, understood Valerius' frenzied appeals, knew
that the girl who hung limply in his arms was their true queen. With a
soul-shaking yell they surged on the Shemites, tearing and smiting with
tooth and nail and naked hands, with the desperation of hard-pent fury
loosed at last. Above them Salome swayed and tumbled down the marble
stair, dead at last.

Arrows flickered about him as Valerius ran back between the pillars of
the portico, shielding the body of the queen with his own. Shooting and
slashing ruthlessly, the mounted Shemites were holding their own with
the maddened crowd. Valerius darted to the temple door—with one foot on
the threshold he recoiled, crying out in horror and despair.

Out of the gloom at the other end of the great hall, a vast dark form
heaved up—came rushing toward him in gigantic froglike hops. He saw the
gleam of great unearthly eyes, the shimmer of fangs or talons. He fell
back from the door, and then the whir of a shaft past his ear warned
him that death was also behind him. He wheeled desperately. Four or
five Shemites had cut their way through the throng and were spurring
their horses up the steps, their bows lifted to shoot him down. He
sprang behind a pillar, on which the arrows splintered. Taramis had
fainted. She hung like a dead woman in his arms.

Before the Shemites could loose again, the doorway was blocked by a
gigantic shape. With affrighted yells the mercenaries wheeled and began
beating a frantic way through the throng, which crushed back in sudden,
galvanized horror, trampling one another in their stampede.

But the monster seemed to be watching Valerius and the girl. Squeezing
its vast, unstable bulk through the door, it bounded toward him, as he
ran down the steps. He felt it looming behind him, a giant shadowy
thing, like a travesty of nature cut out of the heart of night, a black
shapelessness in which only the staring eyes and gleaming fangs were
distinct.

There came a sudden thunder of hoofs; a rout of Shemites, bloody and
battered, streamed across the square from the south, plowing blindly
through the packed throng. Behind them swept a horde of horsemen
yelling in a familiar tongue, waving red swords—the exiles, returned!
With them rode fifty black-bearded desert riders, and at their head a
giant figure in black mail.

"Conan!" shrieked Valerius. "Conan!"

The giant yelled a command. Without checking their headlong pace, the
desert men lifted their bows, drew and loosed. A cloud of arrows sang
across the square, over the seething heads of the multitudes, and sank
feather-deep in the black monster. It halted, wavered, reared, a black
blot against the marble pillars. Again the sharp cloud sang, and yet
again, and the horror collapsed and rolled down the steps, as dead as
the witch who had summoned it out of the night of ages.

Conan drew rein beside the portico, leaped off. Valerius had laid the
queen on the marble, sinking beside her in utter exhaustion. The people
surged about, crowding in. The Cimmerian cursed them back, lifted her
dark head, pillowed it against his mailed shoulder.

"By Crom, what is this? The real Taramis! But who is that yonder?"

"The demon who wore her shape," panted Valerius.

Conan swore heartily. Ripping a cloak from the shoulders of a soldier,
he wrapped it about the naked queen. Her long dark lashes quivered on
her cheeks; her eyes opened, stared up unbelievingly into the
Cimmerian's scarred face.

"Conan!" Her soft fingers caught at him. "Do I dream? She told me you
were dead——-"

"Scarcely!" He grinned hardly. "You do not dream. You are queen of
Khauran again. I broke Constantius, out there by the river. Most of his
dogs never lived to reach the walls, for I gave orders that no
prisoners be taken—except Constantius. The city guard closed the gate
in our faces, but we burst it in with rams swung from our saddles. I
left all my wolves outside, except this fifty. I didn't trust them in
here, and these Khaurani lads were enough for the gate guards."

"It has been a nightmare!" she whimpered. "Oh, my poor people! You must
help me try to repay them for all they have suffered, Conan, henceforth
councilor as well as captain!"

Conan laughed, but shook his head. Rising, he set the queen upon her
feet, and beckoned to a number of his Khaurani horsemen who had not
continued the pursuit of the fleeing Shemites. They sprang from their
horses, eager to do the bidding of their new-found queen.

"No, lass, that's over with. I'm chief of the Zuagirs now and must lead
them to plunder the Turanians, as I promised. This lad, Valerius, will
make you a better captain than I. I wasn't made to dwell among marble
walls, anyway. But I must leave you now and complete what I've begun.
Shemites still live in Khauran."

As Valerius started to follow Taramis across the square toward the
palace, through a lane opened by the wildly cheering multitude, he felt
a soft hand slipped timidly into his sinewy fingers and turned to
receive the slender body of Ivga in his arms. He crushed her to him and
drank her kisses with the gratitude of a weary fighter who has attained
rest at last through tribulation and storm. But not all men seek rest
and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood,
restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path…

The sun was rising. The ancient caravan road was thronged with
white-robed horsemen, in a wavering line that stretched from the walls
of Khauran to a spot far out in the plain. Conan the Cimmerian sat at
the head of that column, near the jagged end of a wooden beam that
stuck up out of the ground. Near that stump rose a heavy cross, and on
that cross a man hung by spikes through his hands and feet.

"Seven months ago, Constantius," said Conan, "it was I who hung there,
and you who sat here."

Constantius did not reply; he licked his gray lips and his eyes were
glassy with pain and fear. Muscles writhed like cords along his lean
body.

You are more fit to inflict torture than to endure it," said Conan
tranquilly. "I hung there on a cross as you are hanging, and I lived,
thanks to circumstances and a stamina peculiar to barbarians. But you
civilized men are soft; your lives are not nailed to your spines as are
ours. Your fortitude consists mainly in inflicting torment, not in
enduring it. You will be dead before sundown. And so, Falcon of the
desert, I leave you to the companionship of another bird of the
desert."

He gestured toward the vultures whose shadows swept across the sands as
they wheeled overhead. From the lips of Constantius came an inhuman cry
of despair and horror.

Conan lifted his reins and rode toward the river that shone like silver
in the morning sun. Behind him the white-clad riders struck into a
trot; the gaze of each, as he passed a certain spot, turned
impersonally and with the desert man's lack of compassion, toward the
cross and the gaunt figure that hung there, black against the sunrise.
Their horses' hooves beat out a knell in the dust Lower and lower swept
the wings of the hungry vultures.