An assault from hillmen might come at any time, from any quarter save the cliff that backed Jondra’s tent. Even if the first thrust were beaten off, they could not afford to be there when daylight came, pinned like bugs beneath a butcher bird’s claws. They would attempt to retreat after an attack, or during, if it could not be driven back. And if they were on the point of being overwhelmed, every man would have to see to his own survival as best he could.
Worst of all would be an attack by the beast. As he moved through the darkening twilight from man to man, Conan left each with same final words. “Do not try to fight the beast. If it comes, run, and hope your gods feel kindly toward you.”
Not far from Jondra’s tent Conan settled into a flat-footed squat. Did the worst come, the others had only themselves to think of. He would need to be close to the women if he was to get them away.
A crunch of stone underfoot announced Tamira’s approach, and he shifted his pair of spears to make a space for her.
“She’s asleep,” the slender woman sighed as she dropped to the ground beside him. “She wore herself out with tears. And who’s to question it, after what she saw?”
“It happened by her command,” Conan said quietly, “and for her pride. That Brythunian told her of the beast, and I told her what I had discovered of it.”
“You are a hard man, Cimmerian. As hard as these mountains.”
“I am a man,” he told her simply.
For a time Tamira was silent. Finally she said, “Jondra says you are returning to Shadizar with her.”
Conan gave a sour grunt. “It seems she talked a lot for a woman on the point of exhaustion.”
“She plans to have apartments constructed for you in her palace.”
“Ridiculous.”
“She intends to dress you all in silk, with wristlets and armbands of gold to show off your muscles.”
“What?” He thought he heard a giggle beside him in the deepening dark, and glared at her. “Enjoy your jokes, girl,” he growled. “I, myself, do not find them funny.”
“You were her first man, too, Conan. You cannot know what that means to a woman, but I do. She cares for you. Or perhaps it is for the image of you that she cares. She asked me if there were other men like you. She even compared you with Eldran, that Brythunian. She pretended not to remember his name, but she did.”
Something in her voice struck him. “Mitra blind me if you don’t pity her.” His tone was incredulous.
“She knows less of men than I,” the slender thief replied defensively. “It is a hard thing to be a woman in a world with men.”
“It would be harder in a world without them,” he said drily, and she fisted him in the ribs.
“I don’t find your jokes,” she began, but his hand closed over her mouth.
Intently he listened for the sound he was sure he had heard before. There. The scrape of a hoof—an unshod hoof—on stone.
‘‘Go to the tent,” he whispered, giving her a push in the right direction.”Rouse her, and be ready to flee. Hurry!”
At that instant a cry broke the night. “By the will of the true gods!” And hordes of hillmen swarmed through the camp on shaggy mountain horses, curved tulwar blades gleaming in the pale moonlight as they rose and fell.
Conan hefted a spear and threw at the nearest target. A turbanned rider, transfixed, screamed and toppled from his galloping horse. Another hillman, calling loudly on his gods, closed with raised steel. There was no chance for the Cimmerian to throw his second spear. He dropped flat and swung it like a club at the legs of the charging animal. With a sharp crack the haft of the spear struck; horse and rider somersaulted. Before the hillman could rise, Conan put a forearm’s length of spear through his chest.
All about the Cimmerian steel clanged against steel. Men shouted battle cries, shouted death rattles. In that deadly, bloody tempest an ingrained barbarian sense gave Conan warning. Pulling the spear free, he whirled in time to block a slashing tulwar. Deftly he rotated his spear point against the curved blade, thrust over it into his bearded attacker’s throat. Dying, the hillman clutched the weapon that killed him with both hands. His horse ran out from under him, and as he fell he wrenched the spear from Conan’s grip.
“Conan!” Tamira’s shriek cut through the din to the Cimmerian’s ears. “Conan!”
Desperately the Cimmerian’s eyes sought for the slender woman … and found her, lifted to a hillman’s saddle by a fist in her hair. Grinning broadly through his beard, the tribesman tauntingly lowered his blade toward her throat. With one hand she frantically attempted to fend off the razor edge, while the other clutched at his robes.
Conan’s broadsword came into his hand. Two bounds took him to Tamira’s side; the hillman’s head went back, and his mouth fell open as the Cimmerian’s steel slid smoothly between his ribs. Lifeless fingers loosened in Tamira’s hair, and Conan caught her as she fell. Trembling arms snaked round his neck; she sobbed limply against his chest.
With a corpse on its back the horse galloped on, and in the space of a breath Conan had taken in the situation in the camp. The fight went badly. Had gone badly, for there was little of it left. Few of the turbanned warriors remained in the camp, and they were occupied with mutilating the dead. Murderous cries from the dark told of hillmen spreading in pursuit of hunters. Jondra’s tent was in flames.
A chill went through the big Cimmerian. As he watched, the last of the tent collapsed, sending a shower of sparks into the night. If Jondra was in that, there was no hope for her. He hoped that she had gotten out, but he could not help her now. He had a woman to care for, and no time to spare for another.
Bending to catch Tamira behind the knees, he heaved her onto his shoulder like a sack. A halfformed protest came through her weeping, but the flow of tears did not slow. None of the tribesmen slashing at corpses noticed the muscular youth or his well-curved burden as he faded into the night.
Like a spirit Conan moved from shadow to shadow. Darkness alone, however, was no shield, he knew. From the clouded velvet sky a nacreous moon shed little light, but enough to make movement plain to a discerning eye, and Tamira’s short, white robe made matters no better. The night-clad rocks were filled with the clatter of galloping hooves on stone, the shouts of hunting hillmen. They hunted, and, given time, they would find.
The Cimmerian kept moving, always away from the noise of the hillmen, and his eyes searched for a hiding place. A line of deeper blackness within the dark caught his gaze. He made his way to it and found a horizontal fracture in the face of a cliff. It was wide enough to hold Tamira, deep enough for her to remain hidden from all but someone sticking an arm into it.
Lowering the girl from his shoulder, he thrust her into the crack. “Stay quiet,” he told her in low tones, “and do not move. I’ll be back as quickly as I can. Listen to me, woman!”
‘‘He … he was going to kill me,” she sobbed.”He was I-laughing.” She clutched at him, but he gently removed her hands from his shoulders.
“’Tis over, now. You are safe, Tamira.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I must find Jondra. Remain here till I return, and I will get the three of us out of these mountains.” He had thought his voice full of confidence—certainly more confidence than he felt, at the moment—but she drew back from him into the crack in the cliff.
“Go then,” she said sullenly. He could not see her, but her tears seemed to dry up suddenly. “Well? Go, if you want to.”
He hesitated, but Jondra was still to be found, and whether alive or dead he did not know. Tamira would be safe here until he could return. “I will come back quickly,” he said, and slipped away into the night.
Tamira peered from the crevice, but though her night vision was like that of a cat, she could see nothing. Conan had disappeared. She settled back sulkily.
She had nearly been killed, had been taunted with her own death, and he went after her when it should have been clear even to a blind man that she needed the
comfort of his arms. But then, were not all men blind? It was not fair that he could affect her so much, while he cared so little. Once she had been able to think calmly and logically about any man. Once—it seemed a hundred years ago—before she allowed the young Cimmerian giant to … . Even alone in the dark she blushed at the thought.
She would not think of him any more, she decided. Drawing herself to the front of the crack, she tried once more to pierce the darkness. It was futile, like attempting to peer through a raven’s wing. A chill wind whined through the mountains, and she pulled her knees up, huddling, painfully aware of how little warmth was to be had from her short tunic.
Where had he gone? To look for Jondra, he claimed, but how did he intend to find her in the night? Was the noblewoman even alive? The tent had been aflame, Tamira remembered. Nothing could have survived in that. Except … the iron chests containing Jondra’s jewels.
Tamira’s eyes gleamed with delight, and she bit her lip to suppress a giggle. “Let him search for Jondra,” she whispered. “He’ll return to find me gone. Gone from the mountains, and the rubies with me.”
With the suppleness of a cat she rolled from the crevice, came to her feet in the night. The cold breeze ruffled her white tunic about her thighs. For an instant she considered the problem of that garment’s paleness.
“Well, I cannot go naked,” she said finally, then clamped her teeth shut. She could not afford to make a sound, now.
Silently she glided into the dark, moving with all the stealthy skill she possessed. No matter what was said in Shadizar, in the taverns of the Desert, concerning Conan, she was the best thief in the city.
A sound halted her, a grating as of boots on rock, and she wished she had her daggers. Whoever it was, she thought contemptuously, he was clumsy. Noiselessly she moved away from he-who-stepped-on-rocks … and was buried beneath a rush of smelly robes and unwashed flesh.
She kicked at the cursing men who swarmed over her, struck at them until her wrists were caught in a grip like a vise. Hands fumbled at her body. She saw a bearded face, merciless and hard, and a curved dagger raised high. A scream choked in her throat. So many men to kill one woman. It was unfair, she thought dully. Her tunic was grasped at the neck and ripped open to the waist.
“See!” a voice said hoarsely. “It is as I said. A woman, and young.”
The hard face did not change. “A lowland woman! A vessel of lust and corruption!”
“Even so,” a third man said, “remember the Imalla’s commands. And remember Walid’s fate before you think to disobey.” The hard-faced man blinked at that, and frowned.
“Take me to the Imalla,” Tamira gasped. She knew that Imallas were holy men among the hill tribes. Surely a holy man would protect her.
The hard face split in an evil grin. “Let it be as the wench wishes. Mayhap she will come to regret not choosing my blade.” And he began to laugh.
Chapter 18
In the canescent pre-dawn light Conan flattened himself on a narrow granite ledge as a file of hillmen rode by on a narrow path below, between steep walls. Their numbers had thinned as the night waned, but there were still too many of the bearded men to suit him. As the last of the horsemen disappeared up the twisting track, the big Cimmerian scrambled from fingerhold to fingerhold, down from the ledge, and set off at a trot in the opposite direction, toward the campsite that had become a bloody shambles so short a time before, toward Tamira’s hiding place.
Two hundred paces down the trail he passed the remains of one of the Zamoran hunters. He could not tell which. The headless body, covered with blackened blood and bright green flies, lay with limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Conan gave the corpse not a glance as he went by. He had found too many others during the night, some worse than this, and at each one he had only been grateful it was not Jondra. Now worry for Tamira filled his mind. He was sure she was safe—even in daylight that crack would not be easily noticed—but she had been alone for the entire night, a night filled with hillmen and the memories of murder.
Along the slope of a mountain he trotted, eyes ever watchful. Dropping to his belly, he crawled to the top of a rough stone outcropping. Below him lay the camp, blackened ground and ash where Jondra’s tent had stood against the cliff. Half a score bodies, many in more than one piece, were scattered among the stunted trees—Zamoran bodies only, for the hillmen had carried their own dead away. There was no sound but the somber droning of flies.
Conan took a deep breath and went over the ridgetop, half sliding down the other side on loose rocks and shale. The dead he let lie, for he had no time to waste on burials or funeral rites. Instead he concentrated on what might be of use to the living. A spear, whole and overlooked by the hillmen. A waterbag unslashed and bulging damply. A pouch of dried meat.
The tribesmen had been thorough in their looting, however, and there was little to find. Broken spearpoints, the cook’s pots, even the rope used for picketing horses had been taken, and the ashes of Jondra’s tent had been sifted for anything not consumed by the flames. He did find his black Khauranian cloak, tucked where he had left it beneath the edge of a boulder. He added it to the pitiful pile.
“So you are a thief, a looter!”
At the hoarse words Conan grabbed up the spear and whirled. Arvaneus shuffled toward him, black eyes glittering, knuckles white on his spear haft. The huntsman’s head was bare; dust covered him, and his baggy white breeches were torn.
“It is good to see another of Jondra’s party alive,” Conan said. “All thought you were slain by the beast.”
The huntsman’s eyes slid off to the side, skipped from body to body. “The beast,” he whispered. “Mortal men could not face it. Any fool could see that. That cry … .” He shivered. “They should have fled,” he went on plaintively. “That was the only thing to do. To try to fight it, to stay even a moment … .” His gaze fell on the pile Conan had made, and he tilted his head to look sidelong at the big Cimmerian. “So you are a thief, stealing from the Lady Jondra.”
Hair stirred on the back of Conan’s neck. Madness was not something he had encountered frequently, especially in one he had known when sane. “These supplies may save Jondra’s life,” he said, “when I find her. She is lost, Arvaneus. I must find her quickly if she is to get out of these mountains alive.”
“So pretty,” Arvaneus said softly, “with her long legs, and those round breasts meant to pillow a man’s head. So pretty, my Lady Jondra.”
“I am going now,” Conan said, stretching out one hand to pick up his cloak. He was careful not to take his eyes from Arvaneus, for the other man still gripped his spear as if ready to use it.
“I watched her,” the swarthy huntsman went on. The mad light in his eyes deepened. “Watched her run from the camp. Watched her hide from the hillmen. She did not see me. No. But I will go to her, and she will be grateful. She will know me for the man I am, not just as her chief huntsman.”
Conan froze when he realized what Arvaneus was saying. The Cimmerian let out a long breath, and chose his words carefully. “Let us go to Jondra together. We can take her back to Shadizar, Arvaneus. She will be very grateful to you.”
“You lie!” The huntsman’s face twisted as if he was on the point of tears; his hands flexed on his spear haft. “You want her for yourself! You are not good enough to lick her sandals!”
“Arvaneus, I—”
Conan cut his words short as the huntsman thrust at him. Whipping his cloak up, the Cimmerian entangled the other man’s spear point, but Arvaneus ripped his weapon free, and Conan was forced to leap back as gleaming steel lanced toward him once more. Warily, the two men circled, weapons at the ready.
“Arvaneus,” Conan said, “there is no need for this.” He did not want to kill the man. He needed to know where Jondra was.
“There is need for you to die,” the hawkfaced man panted. Their spearpoints clattered as he felt for weakness and Conan deflected his probes.
“We have enemies enough around us,
” Conan told him. “We should not do their killing for them.”
“Die!” Arvaneus screamed, rushing forward, spear outthrust.
Conan parried the thrust, but the huntsman did not draw back. He came on, straight onto the Cimmerian’s spearpoint. Arvaneus’ weapon dropped to the ground, but he took yet another step forward, clawed hands reached for Conan, impaling himself further. Surprise flooded his face; jerkily he looked down at the thick wooden shaft standing out from his chest.
The big Cimmerian caught Arvaneus as he collapsed, eased him to the stony ground. ‘‘Where is she?” Conan demanded.”Erlik blast you, where is Jondra?”
Laughter wracked the huntsman. “Die, barbar,” he rasped. “Die.” Blood welled up in his mouth, and he sagged, eyes glazing.
With a muttered curse Conan got to his feet. At least she was alive, he thought. If it was not all a fantasy constructed by a man mind. Gathering up his supplies, he set out for Tamira’s hiding place.
From the shaded shelter of huge stone slabs, split from the cliff behind her by an earthquake centuries gone, Jondra stared longingly at the tiny pool of water far below and licked her lips. Had she known it was there while dark still covered the Kezankians, she would not have thought twice before assuaging her thirst. But now … . She peered to the east, to a sun still half-hidden by the jagged peaks. It was full enough light to expose her clearly to the eyes of any watchers.
And expose, the voluptuous noblewoman thought wryly, was exactly the right word. Save for the dust of flight on her legs, she was quite naked.
“Not the proper dress for a noble Zamoran woman while hunting,” she whispered to herself. But then, Zamoran nobles were seldom roused from their slumber by murderous hillmen or tents burning around them. Nor did they take part in the hunt as the prey.
She turned once more to study the pool, and licked lips that were dry again in moments. To reach it she would have to traverse a steep, rocky slope with not so much as a blade of grass for cover. At the bottom of the slope was a drop; she could not be sure how far from this angle, but it did not look enough to cause difficulty. The pool itself beckoned her enticingly. A patch of water she could doubtless wade in three strides without sinking to her knees, with three stunted trees on its edge, and at that moment it seemed more inviting than her palace gardens.