Chapter 5. The Children of Jhebbal Sag
"Which way is the river?" Balthusa was confused.
"We don't dare try for the river now," grunted Conyn. "The woods between the village and the river are swarming with warriors. Come on! We'll head in the last direction they'll expect us to go--west!"
Looking back as they entered the thick growth, Balthusa beheld the wall dotted with black heads as the savages peered over. The Picts were bewildered. They had not gained the wall in time to see the fugitives take cover. They had rushed to the wall expecting to repel an attack in force. They had seen the body of the dead warrior. But no enemy was in sight.
Balthusa realized that they did not yet know their prisoner had escaped. From other sounds she believed that the warriors, directed by the shrill voice of Zogara Sag, were destroying the wounded serpent with arrows. The monster was out of the shaman's control. A moment later the quality of the yells was altered. Screeches of rage rose in the night.
Conyn laughed grimly. She was leading Balthusa along a narrow trail that ran west under the black branches, stepping as swiftly and surely as if she trod a well-lighted thoroughfare. Balthusa stumbled after her, guiding herself by feeling the dense wall on either hand.
"They'll be after us now. Zogara's discovered you're gone, and she knows my head wasn't in the pile before the altar-hut. The dog! If I'd had another spear I'd have thrown it through her before I struck the snake. Keep to the trail. They can't track us by torchlight, and there are a score of paths leading from the village. They'll follow those leading to the river first--throw a cordon of warriors for miles along the bank, expecting us to try to break through. We won't take to the woods until we have to. We can make better time on this trail. Now buckle down to it and run was you never ran before."
"They got over their panic cursed quick!" panted Balthusa, complying with a fresh burst of speed.
"They're not afraid of anything, very long," grunted Conyn.
For a space nothing was said between them. The fugitives devoted all their attention to covering distance. They were plunging deeper and deeper into the wilderness and getting farther away from civilization at every step, but Balthusa did not question Conyn's wisdom. The Cimmerian presently took time to grunt: "When we're far enough away from the village we'll swing back to the river in a big circle. No other village within miles of Gwawela. All the Picts are gathered in that vicinity. We'll circle wide around them. They can't track us until daylight. They'll pick up our path then, but before dawn we'll leave the trail and take to the woods."
They plunged on. The yells died out behind them. Balthusa' breath was whistling through her teeth. She felt a pain in her side, and running became torture. She blundered against the bushes on each side of the trail. Conyn pulled up suddenly, turned and stared back down the dim path.
Somewhere the moon was rising, a dim white glow amidst a tangle of branches.
"Shall we take to the woods?" panted Balthusa.
"Give me your ax," murmured Conyn softly. "Something is close behind us."
"Then we'd better leave the trail!" exclaimed Balthusa. Conyn shook her head and drew her companion into a dense thicket. The moon rose higher, making a dim light in the path.
"We can't fight the whole tribe!" whispered Balthusa.
"No human being could have found our trail so quickly, or followed us so swiftly," muttered Conyn. "Keep silent."
There followed a tense silence in which Balthusa felt that her heart could be heard pounding for miles away. Then abruptly, without a sound to announce its coming, a savage head appeared in the dim path. Balthusa' heart jumped into her throat; at first glance she feared to look upon the awful head of the saber-tooth. But this head was smaller, more narrow; it was a leopard which stood there, snarling silently and glaring down the trail. What wind there was was blowing toward the hiding women, concealing their scent. The beast lowered her head and snuffed the trail, then moved forward uncertainly. A chill played down Balthusa' spine. The brute was undoubtedly trailing them.
And it was suspicious. It lifted its head, its eyes glowing like balls of fire, and growled low in its throat. And at that instant Conyn hurled the ax.
All the weight of arm and shoulder was behind the throw, and the ax was a streak of silver in the dim moon. Almost before she realized what had happened, Balthusa saw the leopard rolling on the ground in its death-throes, the handle of the ax standing up from its head. The head of the weapon had split its narrow skull.
Conyn bounded from the bushes, wrenched her ax free and dragged the limp body in among the trees, concealing it from the casual glance.
"Now let's go, and go fast!" she grunted, leading the way southward, away from the trail. "There'll be warriors coming after that cat. As soon as she got her wits back, Zogara sent her after us. The Picts would follow her, but she'd leave them far behind. She'd circle the village until she hit our trail and then come after us like a streak. They couldn't keep up with her, but they'll have an idea as to our general direction. They'd follow, listening for her cry. Well, they won't hear that, but they'll find the blood on the trail, and look around and find the body in the brush. They'll pick up our spoor there, if they can. Walk with care."
She avoided clinging briars and low-hanging branches effortlessly, gliding between trees without touching the stems and always planting her feet in the places calculated to show least evidence of her passing; but with Balthusa it was slower, more laborious work.
No sound came from behind them. They had covered more than a mile when Balthusa said: "Does Zogara Sag catch leopard-cubs and train them for bloodhounds?"
Conyn shook her head. "That was a leopard she called out of the woods."
"But," Balthusa persisted, "if she can order the beasts to do her bidding, why doesn't she rouse them all and have them after us? The forest is full of leopards; why send only one after us?"
Conyn did not reply for a space, and when she did it was with a curious reticence.
"She can't command all the animals. Only such as remember Jhebbal Sag."
"Jhebbal Sag?" Balthusa repeated the ancient name hesitantly. She had never heard it spoken more than three or four times in her whole life.
"Once all living things worshipped her. That was long ago, when beasts and women spoke one language. Women have forgotten her; even the beasts forget. Only a few remember. The women who remember Jhebbal Sag and the beasts who remember are sisters and speak the same tongue."
Balthusa did not reply; she had strained at a Pictish stake and seen the nighted jungle give up its fanged horrors at a shaman's call.
"Civilized women laugh," said Conyn. "But not one can tell me how Zogara Sag can call pythons and tigers and leopards out of the wilderness and make them do her bidding. They would say it is a lie, if they dared. That's the way with civilized women. When they can't explain something by their half-baked science, they refuse to believe it."
The people on the Tauran were closer to the primitive than most Aquilonians; superstitions persisted, whose sources were lost in antiquity. And Balthusa had seen that which still prickled her flesh. She could not refute the monstrous thing which Conyn's words implied.
"I've heard that there's an ancient grove sacred to Jhebbal Sag somewhere in this forest," said Conyn. "I don't know. I've never seen it. But more beasts remember in this country than any I've ever seen."
"Then others will be on our trail?"
"They are now," was Conyn's disquieting answer. "Zogara would never leave our tracking to one beast alone."
"What are we to do, then?" asked Balthusa uneasily, grasping her ax as she stared at the gloomy arches above her. Her flesh crawled with the momentary expectation of ripping talons and fangs leaping from the shadows.
"Wait!"
Conyn turned, squatted and with her knife began scratching a curious symbol in the mold. Stooping to look at it over her shoulder, Balthusa felt a crawling of the flesh along her spine, she knew not why. She felt no wind against her face,
but there was a rustling of leaves above them and a weird moaning swept ghostily through the branches. Conyn glanced up inscrutably, then rose and stood staring somberly down at the symbol she had drawn.
"What is it?" whispered Balthusa. It looked archaic and meaningless to her. She supposed that it was her ignorance of artistry which prevented her identifying it as one of the conventional designs of some prevailing culture. But had she been the most erudite artist in the world, she would have been no nearer the solution.
"I saw it carved in the rock of a cave no human had visited for a million years," muttered Conyn, "in the uninhabited mountains beyond the Sea of Vilayet, half a world away from this spot. Later I saw a black witch-finder of Kush scratch it in the sand of a nameless river. She told me part of its meaning--it's sacred to Jhebbal Sag and the creatures which worship her. Watch!"
They drew back among the dense foliage some yards away and waited in tense silence. To the east drums muttered and somewhere to north and west other drums answered. Balthusa shivered, though she knew long miles of black forest separated her from the grim beaters of those drums, whose dull pulsing was a sinister overture that set the dark stage for bloody drama.
Balthusa found herself holding her breath. Then with a slight shaking of the leaves, the bushes parted and a magnificent panther came into view. The moonlight dappling through the leaves shone on its glossy coat rippling with the play of the great muscles beneath it.
With its head low it glided toward them. It was smelling out their trail. Then it halted as if frozen, its muzzle almost touching the symbol cut in the mold. For a long space it crouched motionless; it flattened its long body and laid its head on the ground before the mark. And Balthusa felt the short hairs stir on her scalp. For the attitude of the great carnivore was one of awe and adoration.
Then the panther rose and backed away carefully, belly almost to the ground. With her hind-quarters among the bushes she wheeled as if in sudden panic and was gone like a flash of dappled light.
Balthusa mopped her brow with a trembling hand and glanced at Conyn.
The barbarian's eyes were smoldering with fires that never lit the eyes of women bred to the ideas of civilization. In that instant she was all wild, and had forgotten the woman at her side. In her burning gaze Balthusa glimpsed and vaguely recognized pristine images and half-embodied memories, shadows from Life's dawn, forgotten and repudiated by sophisticated races--ancient, primeval fantasms unnamed and nameless.
Then the deeper fires were masked and Conyn was silently leading the way deeper into the forest.
"We've no more to fear from the beasts," she said after a while, "but we've left a sign for women to read. They won't follow our trail very easily, and until they find that symbol they won't know for sure we've turned south. Even then it won't be easy to smell us out without the beasts to aid them. But the woods south of the trail will be full of warriors looking for us. If we keep moving after daylight, we'll be sure to run into some of them. As soon as we find a good place we'll hide and wait until another night to swing back and make the river. We've got to warn Valannus, but it won't help her any if we get ourselves killed."
"Warn Valannus?"
"Hell, the woods along the river are swarming with Picts! That's why they got us. Zogara's brewing war-magic; no mere raid this time. She's done something no Pict has done in my memory--united as many as fifteen or sixteen clans. Her magic did it; they'll follow a wizard farther than they will a war-chief. You saw the mob in the village; and there were hundreds hiding along the river bank that you didn't see. More coming, from the farther villages. She'll have at least three thousand fighting-womenwomen. I lay in the bushes and heard their talk as they went past. They mean to attack the fort; when, I don't know, but Zogara doesn't dare delay long. She's gathered them and whipped them into a frenzy. If she doesn't lead them into battle quickly, they'll fall to quarreling with one another. They're like blood-mad tigers.
"I don't know whether they can take the fort or not. Anyway, we've got to get back across the river and give the warning. The settlers on the Velitrium road must either get into the fort or back to Velitrium. While the Picts are besieging the fort, war parties will range the road far to the east--might even cross Thunder River and raid the thickly settled country behind Velitrium."
As she talked she was leading the way deeper and deeper into the ancient wilderness. Presently she grunted with satisfaction. They had reached a spot where the underbrush was more scattered, and an outcropping of stone was visible, wandering off southward. Balthusa felt more secure as they followed it. Not even a Pict could trail them over naked rock.
"How did you get away?" she asked presently.
Conyn tapped her mail-shirt and helmet.
"If more borderers would wear harness there'd be fewer skulls hanging on the altar-huts. But most women make noise if they wear armor. They were waiting on each side of the path, without moving. And when a Pict stands motionless, the very beasts of the forest pass her without seeing her. They'd seen us crossing the river and got in their places. If they'd gone into ambush after we left the bank, I'd have had some hint of it. But they were waiting, and not even a leaf trembled. The devil herself couldn't have suspected anything. The first suspicion I had was when I heard a shaft rasp against a bow as it was pulled back. I dropped and yelled for the women behind me to drop, but they were too slow, taken by surprise like that.
"Most of them fell at the first volley that raked us from both sides. Some of the arrows crossed the trail and struck Picts on the other side. I heard them howl." She grinned with vicious satisfaction. "Such of us as were left plunged into the woods and closed with them. When I saw the others were all down or taken, I broke through and outfooted the painted devils through the darkness. They were all around me. I ran and crawled and sneaked, and sometimes I lay on my belly under the bushes while they passed me on all sides.
"I tried for the shore and found it lined with them, waiting for just such a move. But I'd have cut my way through and taken a chance on swimming, only I heard the drums pounding in the village and knew they'd taken somebody alive.
"They were all so engrossed in Zogara's magic that I was able to climb the wall behind the altar-hut. There was a warrior supposed to be watching at that point, but she was squatting behind the hut and peering around the corner at the ceremony. I came up behind her and broke her neck with my hands before she knew what was happening. It was her spear I threw into the snake, and that's her ax you're carrying."
"But what was that--that thing you killed in the altar-hut?" asked Balthusa, with a shiver at the memory of the dim-seen horror.
"One of Zogara's gods. One of Jhebbal's children that didn't remember and had to be kept chained to the altar. A bull ape. The Picts think they're sacred to the Hairy One who lives on the moon--the gorilla-god of Gullah.
"It's getting light. Here's a good place to hide until we see how close they're on our trail. Probably have to wait until night to break back to the river."
A low hill pitched upward, girdled and covered with thick trees and bushes. Near the crest Conyn slid into a tangle of jutting rocks, crowned by dense bushes. Lying among them they could see the jungle below without being seen. It was a good place to hide or defend. Balthusa did not believe that even a Pict could have trailed them over the rocky ground for the past four or five miles, but she was afraid of the beasts that obeyed Zogara Sag. Her faith in the curious symbol wavered a little now. But Conyn had dismissed the possibility of beasts tracking them.
A ghostly whiteness spread through the dense branches; the patches of sky visible altered in hue, grew from pink to blue. Balthusa felt the gnawing of hunger, though she had slaked her thirst at a stream they had skirted. There was complete silence, except for an occasional chirp of a bird. The drums were no longer to be heard. Balthusa' thoughts reverted to the grim scene before the altar-hut.
"Those were ostrich plumes Zogara Sag wore," she said. "I've seen them on the helmets of knights who rod
e from the East to visit the barons of the marches. There are no ostriches in this forest, are there?"
"They came from Kush," answered Conyn. "West of here, many marches, lies the seashore. Ships from Zingara occasionally come and trade weapons and ornaments and wine to the coastal tribes for skins and copper ore and gold dust. Sometimes they trade ostrich plumes they got from the Stygians, who in turn got them from the black tribes of Kush, which lies south of Stygia. The Pictish shamans place great store by them. But there's much risk in such trade. The Picts are too likely to try to seize the ship. And the coast is dangerous to ships. I've sailed along it when I was with the pirates of the Barachan Isles, which lie southwest of Zingara."
Balthusa looked at her companion with admiration.
"I knew you hadn't spent your life on this frontier. You've mentioned several far places. You've traveled widely?"
"I've roamed far; farther than any other woman of my race ever wandered. I've seen all the great cities of the Hyborians, the Shemites, the Stygians, and the Hyrkanians. I've roamed in the unknown countries south of the black kingdoms of Kush, and east of the Sea of Vilayet. I've been a mercenary captain, a corsair, a kozak, a penniless vagabond, a general--hell, I've been everything except a queen of a civilized country, and I may be that, before I die." The fancy pleased her, and she grinned hardly. Then she shrugged her shoulders and stretched her mighty figure on the rocks. "This is as good a life as any. I don't know how long I'll stay on the frontier; a week, a month, a year. I have a roving foot. But it's as well on the border as anywhere."
Balthusa set herself to watch the forest below them. Momentarily she expected to see fierce painted faces thrust through the leaves. But as the hours passed no stealthy footfall disturbed the brooding quiet. Balthusa believed the Picts had missed their trail and given up the chase. Conyn grew restless.
"We should have sighted parties scouring the woods for us. If they've quit the chase, it's because they're after bigger game. They may be gathering to cross the river and storm the fort."
"Would they come this far south if they lost the trail?"
"They've lost the trail, all right; otherwise they'd have been on our necks before now. Under ordinary circumstances they'd scour the woods for miles in every direction. Some of them should have passed without sight of this hill. They must be preparing to cross the river. We've got to take a chance and make for the river."
Creeping down the rocks Balthusa felt her flesh crawl between her shoulders as she momentarily expected a withering blast of arrows from the green masses above them. She feared that the Picts had discovered them and were lying about in ambush. But Conyn was convinced no enemies were near, and the Cimmerian was right.
"We're miles to the south of the village," grunted Conyn. "We'll hit straight through for the river. I don't know how far down the river they've spread, We'll hope to hit it below them."
With haste that seemed reckless to Balthusa they hurried eastward. The woods seemed empty of life. Conyn believed that all the Picts were gathered in the vicinity of Gwawela, if, indeed, they had not already crossed the river. She did not believe they would cross in the daytime, however.
"Some woodsman would be sure to see them and give the alarm. They'll cross above and below the fort, out of sight of the sentries. Then others will get in canoes and make straight across for the river wall. As soon as they attack, those hidden in the woods on the east shore will assail the fort from the other sides. They've tried that before, and got the guts shot and hacked out of them. But this time they've got enough women to make a real onslaught of it."
They pushed on without pausing, though Balthusa gazed longingly at the squirrels flitting among the branches, which she could have brought down with a cast of her ax. With a sigh she drew up her broad belt. The everlasting silence and gloom of the primitive forest was beginning to depress her. She found herself thinking of the open groves and sun-dappled meadows of the Tauran, of the bluff cheer of her father's steep-thatched, diamond-paned house, of the fat cows browsing through the deep lush grass, and the hearty fellowship of the brawny, bare-armed plowmen and herdsmen.
She felt lonely, in spite of her companion. Conyn was as much a part of this wilderness as Balthusa was alien to it. The Cimmerian might have spent years among the great cities of the world; she might have walked with the rulers of civilization; she might even achieve her wild whim some day and rule as queen of a civilized nation; stranger things had happened. But she was no less a barbarian. She was concerned only with the naked fundamentals of life. The warm intimacies of small, kindly things, the sentiments and delicious trivialities that make up so much of civilized women's lives were meaningless to her. A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused her to run with the watch-dogs. Bloodshed and violence and savagery were the natural elements of the life Conyn knew; she could not, and would never, understand the little things that are so dear to civilized women and men.
The shadows were lengthening when they reached the river and peered through the masking bushes. They could see up and down the river for about a mile each way. The sullen stream lay bare and empty. Conyn scowled across at the other shore.
"We've got to take another chance here. We've got to swim the river. We don't know whether they've crossed or not. The woods over there may be alive with them. We've got to risk it. We're about six miles south of Gwawela."
She wheeled and ducked as a bowstring twanged. Something like a white flash of light streaked through the bushes. Balthusa knew it was an arrow. Then with a tigerish bound Conyn was through the bushes. Balthusa caught the gleam of steel as she whirled her sword, and heard a death scream. The next instant she had broken through the bushes after the Cimmerian.
A Pict with a shattered skull lay face-down on the ground, her fingers spasmodically clawing at the grass. Half a dozen others were swarming about Conyn, swords and axes lifted. They had cast away their bows, useless at such deadly close quarters. Their lower jaws were painted white, contrasting vividly with their dark faces, and the designs on their muscular pectorals differed from any Balthusa had ever seen.
One of them hurled her ax at Balthusa and rushed after it with lifted knife. Balthusa ducked and then caught the wrist that drove the knife licking at her throat. They went to the ground together, rolling over and over. The Pict was like a wild beast, her muscles hard as steel strings.
Balthusa was striving to maintain her hold on the wild woman's wrist and bring her own ax into play, but so fast and furious was the struggle that each attempt to strike was blocked. The Pict was wrenching furiously to free her knife hand, was clutching at Balthusa' ax, and driving her knees at the youth's groin. Suddenly she attempted to shift her knife to her free hand, and in that instant Balthusa, struggling up on one knee, split the painted head with a desperate blow of her ax.
She sprang up and glared wildly about for her companion, expecting to see her overwhelmed by numbers. Then she realized the full strength and ferocity of the Cimmerian. Conyn bestrode two of her attackers, shorn half asunder by that terrible broadsword. As Balthusa looked she saw the Cimmerian beat down a thrusting shortsword, avoid the stroke of an ax with a cat-like side-wise spring which brought her within arm's length of a squat savage stooping for a bow. Before the Pict could straighten, the red sword flailed down and clove her from shoulder to midbreastbone, where the blade stuck. The remaining warriors rushed in, one from either side. Balthusa hurled her ax with an accuracy that reduced the attackers to one, and Conyn, abandoning her efforts to free her sword, wheeled and met the remaining Pict with her bare hands. The stocky warrior, a head shorter than her tall enemy, leaped in, striking with her ax, at the same time stabbing murderously with her knife. The knife broke on the Cimmerian's mail, and the ax checked in midair as Conyn's fingers locked like iron on the descending arm. A bone snapped loudly, and Balthusa saw the Pict wince and falter. The next instant she was swept off her feet, lifted high above the Cimmerian's head--he writhed in midair for an instant, kicking an
d thrashing, and then was dashed headlong to the earth with such force that she rebounded, and then lay still, her limp posture telling of splintered limbs and a broken spine.
"Come on!" Conyn wrenched her sword free and snatched up an ax. "Grab a bow and a handful of arrows, and hurry! We've got to trust to our heels again. That yell was heard. They'll be here in no time. If we tried to swim now, they'd feather us with arrows before we reached midstream!"