They met neither friend nor foe for about as long as it took a skilled dancer in a good tavern to divest herself of her garments. During that time, they reached a part of the village”or perhaps it was another village”where the huts thrust themselves deep into dense second-growth jungle. Or perhaps it was the jungle growing back among the houses.
However it came about, the few huts were low and rude, almost lost in walls of stunted trees and lank vines. The fields seemed to cower before the onset of the jungle. Only the cattle-pens and the fowl-runs rose stout and well-made, everywhere set about with thorns.
Conan had seen such care taken in other lands, where beasts of prey roamed close to human habitation. A babe or child, even a servant or lesser wife, taken by the leopards was of small moment. Loss of a cow, or even a calf, spelled disaster.
That at least was not the Cimmerian way. For a moment, Conan looked back across the years, as he might have looked down a well, to consider his involuntary leave-taking from his homeland. On the times he had returned, he had found nothing to make him less a wanderer. When he had found Belit, he had thought it might be a good sign that the gods blessed those wanderings.
Now she was gone, and again he wandered alone. He hardly cared where those wanderings ended, or when. But he had more than enough pride, to be sure that neither an oaf like Idosso or a schemer like Kubwande would make an end of him without a fight that storytellers would still remember when the world was old.
Conan shortened his stride until he was level with Kubwande, then a trifle ahead. He had no need to be at Kubwande's back, and indeed that might give offense without cause and bring a quarrel without purpose.
Neither would he give Kubwande a clear look at his back. Enough that the women were a long way behind him, tending the baggage and no doubt well-guarded”as long as Idosso wished them so.
The ground began to slope down, and through leather-tough soles Conan sensed dampness underfoot. They passed a fish-trap that had once been very like the Cimmerians, and was now rent savagely apart, as his had been, by the ice bear. Then the ground dropped away, and they stared down a path that broke the wall of vines, giving passage onto a shingle beach, and beyond the beach, a view of a muddy stream.
The stream was hardly more than thirty paces wide, but judged by the current in the middle, it was too deep to wade. Also, as with most streams in the Black Forest, it was doubtless home to crocodiles and river-horses.
Conan slung his shield and spear to free both hands, then leapt down the last few paces of path to the beach. Gravel hurled by his landing raised spray from the river and sent a swirling rainbow of fish darting for safety.
"What are you doing?" Kubwande sounded truly concerned for the Cimmerians safety.
"Looking for boats. If anyone has gone on from here, they're in a boat.
It may have left traces."
Kubwande's face hinted that searching for anything short of a pile of gold this close to the river was less than wise. Conan kept on with his search, kneeling at times to examine the gravel, being careful to turn his back neither on the water nor on Kubwande.
At last he rose and stared downstream. "Two boats were here, I think.
Both are long gone. All the footprints look to be the villagers'. No signs of crocodiles or river-horses."
"What about the lizard-apes?"
"I'd not wager on recognizing their prints. But do you see signs of any kind of fight?"
Kubwande studied the beach and the path, then the masses of vegetation.
He was plainly determined to prove as skilled a tracker as the Cimmerian, but also unwilling to pretend to see what was not there. An honest streak, or only enemies whom he feared might make common cause with the Cimmerian?
Conan laughed. Honesty in such as Kubwande was as rare as chastity in tavern wenches, whether they were white, black, yellow, purple, or green. The iqako had also mistaken his man if he thought Conan would stoop to making common cause with one set of intriguers against another. If matters came to that pass, he'd shake the mud of the Bamula lands from his feet and fight his battles elsewhere.
"What is the jest, Amra?"
It tempted the Cimmerian to give Kubwande a truthful answer. He might even have yielded had he thought for a moment the man would believe him.
"A thought came to me. Have the villagers fled the lizard-apes only to fall prey to river-horses?"
"Only the river-spirits know, and they seem slow to speak today."
Kubwande shrugged and turned his back on both the Cimmerian and the river as he climbed the bank.
He had just reached the level ground when the vegetation rustled, tore, and disgorged a half-score village warriors. Some of the men of the village had survived demonsent lizard-apes, fear, and any perils of the river, to seek vengeance with spear and shield.
There could be no doubt, either, about the object of their vengeance.
"Slay the demon-master!" one screamed, and flung his spear straight at Conan. The Cimmerians shield leapt up, catching the spear in midflight and knocking it into a wild arc. It soared high over all heads and vanished in the mud-hued river.
The next spear Conan met more boldly. He snatched it from the air, whirled like an Iranistani dervish, and flung the spear butt-first the way it had come. Also butt-first, it struck a warrior, just above his loinguard. He doubled over, dropping shield and remaining weapons, then sat down abruptly, gasping, groaning, and spewing all at the same time.
Three more spears followed, but Conan's feat had dazzled eyes and slowed arms. All three spears sank deep into the thick leather and tough wood of his shield; none of them came anywhere near his flesh.
"I am no demon-lover!" Conan shouted. "Kubwande, you speak their tongue. Tell them that. Tell them that I can give their spears back butt-first, so they can use them against the demons. Or I can return them point-foremost, if they try to kill me."
Kubwande shouted. It slowed a few of the villagers but stopped none.
Four of them half-slid, half-fell, down the bank and came at Conan with spears held low or clubs brandished high. If they could not slay the demon's master from a distance, they were ready to fight, kill, or die at close quarters.
Fighting men who were determined to kill, without shedding their own blood, was the most demanding sort of fighting. It was also an art in which the Cimmerian was not as skilled as he now wished. For most of his years, his battles had been against those who sought his life, and there was no reason not to take theirs.
Matters were otherwise now. The villagers had lost scores of people to the lizard-apes' teeth and claws, and they would lose more to the perils of jungle and river before all the fugitives returned. Conan had no wish to weaken them further, or to make them enemies, when their strength and friendship might help solve the mystery of the demon's gate.
So he wielded shield and spear as he might have done in a tavern brawl, where honor rather than life was at stake. As he had the advantage of reach on all of the warriors, this went well at first.
Conan rammed the shield up under the jaw of one man, while thrusting with the spear-butt into the thigh of another. Both men went down. Then he swung the spear clubwise to the temple of a third man. The man's headdress, shield, and war club toppled, and a moment later he measured his length on the beach among them.
That reduced the number of opponents on their feet, and the ardor of those left standing. Conan saw Kubwande driving two others back up the path, shield and spear dancing almost too fast for the eye to follow.
He hoped the Bamula would have the wits to end the fight without ending his opponents' lives.
Then three more villagers leapt down onto the beach. That restored the enemy's strength, and they began spreading out to either side, seemingly to trap the Cimmerian with his back to the stream. One of the newcomers was young, hardly more than a boy, and with the rash courage of youth, he ran into the water, hoping to outflank the Cimmerian.
Conan was trying to look in all directions at on
ce, when the splashing of the boy ended in a louder splash. The horror in the villagers' eyes told him what made the second splash, even before he heard the bellow of a river-horse.
The Cimmerian whirled and leapt in a single motion, landing clear of the circle of warriors. One obstinate villager thrust at him. Conan's spear danced and came down across the mans wrist. He yelped like a kicked dog and stumbled out of range, cradling his wounded hand in his sound one.
The river-horse had the lad gripped in its massive jaws now. But Conan saw that by some god's whim, the boy was held in a gap between the beasts teeth. None of the tushes, long as a short-sword and razor-edged, had pierced his flesh.
Water fountained as the Cimmerian leapt into the river. His club blurred in an overhand stroke that could have taken a bird on the wing.
Instead, it took the river-horse squarely across the nose. The beast reared back, jaws gaping.
Even Conan's thews protested as he lunged with one arm to grip the boy by the loinguard and snatch him from the jaws. With the other arm, he drove his spear deep into the roof of the beasts mouth.
The river-horse bellowed like a dragon and churned the river like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy. It tried to snap at the boy, then at Conan, but the firmly embedded spear kept it from closing its mouth.
The Cimmerian held the boy at arm's length, examining him for wounds as he waded to the bank. "Here," he said, setting the boy on his feet.
"Find a wise-woman for him and he'll do well enough. Better than you will the next time I find you naming me demon-master!"
The villager gaped. Then one of them ran forward and embraced the boy, which was all that kept the lad on his feet. Conan saw that the man's hair and beard showed gray, and judged he was the lad's father.
Meanwhile, the river-horse was thrashing about in the shallows, trying to be rid of the spear. Conan had thrust it in too deep for easy dislodging, but not deep enough to reach the beast's brain.
Maddened with pain like this, the creature might roam the river for days slaying many, before death came. Conan knelt to replenish his stock of spears, then turned and waded back into the river.
As the water reached his knees, he heard a mighty shout and a fierce splashing. Before he could turn, a rush of village warriors nearly knocked him off his feet. He had barely regained his balance before the villagers surrounded the river-horse, thrusting with spears, slashing and stabbing with daggers, even pounding on the tough hide with clubs as they might have pounded on signal drums.
The death-cries of the river-horse might have been heard as far as any drum, too. At last they ended, and the beast floated dead in bloody water. It took the united strength of all together, Conan included, to drag the river-horse out of reach of the current.
"Not out of reach of the crocodiles, though," Conan said. "Best we go back to the village and bring up a few more spearmen, and all the women to cut the carcase apart. I didn't wrestle that beast to give the crocodiles a banquet, by Crom!"
He had to speak three times before Kubwande seemed to understand. Even then, the warrior was slow to retrace his steps. The Cimmerian had time to receive the barely coherent thanks of the man whose son he had saved. The man was named Bessu, a lesser chief; his son was Govindue.
Conan hoped both would speak for him in Dead Elephant Valley. There was precious little he could do in their land if he had to fear demons before and spears behind.
Conan also had time to prowl the bushes where the villagers had hidden.
He found little that he had not expected, and only one thing that gave him any unease.
It was footprints leading to and then from the bushes. No villager's footprints, either, from the way the toes stood together. On a bush not far in from the bank was a blue feather. The villagers wore few feathers, and none blue that Conan had seen.
It was a rare Bamula warrior, on the other hand, who did not sport more blue feathers than any other color in the headdresses all were wearing today.
Conan's face was sober as he retraced his steps to the village, but all took it for the look of any man who has just escaped a death-grapple with a river-horse. None asked questions he could not readily answer, and soon the meat from the river-horse was roasting over cookfires and boiling in pots, sending more wholesome odors to war with the carrion stench.
Six
Conan climbed a hand'sbreadth higher on the branch, the height of a temple tower above the jungle floor. The branch swayed and creaked softly.
He climbed another hand'sbreadth. The branch sagged, and now the creaking held a sinister note, like the creaking of the ungreased hinges of a tomb door in the least-frequented part of a graveyard.
Conan considered that from where he was, he could see little. He considered that after a fall to the jungle floor, he would see even less, if he saw anything at all with living eyes.
Belit would not welcome him with open arms if he perished through a boy's folly. And speaking of boys”
"Govindue!"
"Here, Conan!"
"Where is here?"
"On the largest branch on”I think on the far side of the tree, from you."
It sounded to Conan rather as if the boy was in the next tribe's land, but the tree they had climbed was large. Also, the Cimmerian's ears had been accustomed to wide spaces, by land or sea. The jungle had a wizard's power to twist a foot snapping a twig, or even the fall of a drop of water, into something that sounded unnatural, whose distance one could not judge easily or sometimes at all. This made Conan no fonder of the jungle than before, but it was not beyond his power to learn the art of judging the distances in this land.
"Do you see clearly?"
"Yes."
"What do you see?"
"The tops of all the trees in the world, a sky that promises rain, and many birds."
"Any strange ones?"
Conan could almost hear the boy shrug as he replied. "There are many I do not know. But some are so far off that no one could make out their breed. Also, I do not know all the birds of the jungle."
"You see a trifle more clearly than some warriors twice your age, Govindue. You know what you do not know."
"Is this important?"
"Only if you want to live to twice your age, lad."
It sounded almost as if Govindue was laughing. Then Conan heard: "Are you coming higher to join me, Conan?"
"If I do, the next you'll be hearing of me is when I hit the ground and spatter like a ripe melon."
"Tell me when you fall, Conan. I want to watch."
"Your father said I might regret saving you. I begin to see that your father is a wise man."
From safely on his side of the tree, Govindue made a rude noise. Then he laughed, and the Cimmerian judged that the lad was resuming his watch over the roof of the jungle.
***
Conan and Govindue were not the only hunters for the demon's gate who were perched in tall trees, gazing out over sunlit treetops. Many other warriors, Greater and Lesser Bamulas alike, were aloft, not altogether certain of what they looked for but praying that nothing unusual would escape their eyes between dawn and dusk.
When all who sought the demon's gate had taken counsel together and all had spoken and been heard, it became clear that the demon's gate was not open at all times. When it was open, however, it had come to open very nearly the same place each time.
The first task, therefore, was to find this place. And the first suggestion Conan made was to begin the search from the high ground.
"There is no high ground in the jungle," a Bamula of Idosso's faction reminded them all.
"A watcher can do as well from atop a tree as from a cliff or the crest of a hill," Conan replied. "All he needs are sharp eyes and keen wits, which makes me doubt you could do much if we hung you by the heels from a cloud."
All laughed, even the man himself. Conan judged that a good sign. It was not within him to curry favor by meekness.
In Nemedia or Aquilonia (or so Conan had heard), a
band of warriors such as the demon-hunters would note each coming of the demon-spawn on a map. The Bamulas knew nothing of maps, however. Conan had used maps in Turan and afterward as a mercenary, and charts while aboard Tigress, but he was not equal to teaching the art of the map to the Bamulas.
What the Bamulas did know was the jungle they had roamed since they were boys, and how to give Conan at least some of that knowledge. It was not hard to make in their minds a picture of a great circle, formed by the appearances of the demon-spawn.
A child could then understand that the gate must open and close somewhere within that circle. All that remained was to watch the circle.
Some of the Bamulas, currying favor with Idosso, and some of the villagers, bent on vengeance, wished to watch from the ground. To hide in trees like a monkey, they said, was for women, and for men with milk instead of blood in their veins. Some were bold enough to look at the pale-skinned Cimmerian as they said that.
Kubwande heaped scorn on those men like coals on a roasting fowl. "The jungle hides so much that all the tribes of the land together could not watch such a circle. Also, the demon-spawn are best not watched far from the ground."
"The ghosts of our kin will haunt us if we flee battle!" a villager snarled.
"If you watch from the ground, you will join your kin without a chance to avenge them!" Conan said. "None of these demon-spawn are fit prey for a single warrior. Face them alone, and you will prove yourself a brave fool. Face them with your comrades, and you will go to your kin with the foes' blood on your spears!"
He looked at the village chief. "Is not that the truth of it, Bessu?
Did you not slay the lizard-ape while working together, after those who sought to be heroes were all dead?"
Govindue's father nodded. "Amra has seen the truth. By the spirit of my daughter, I swear it. These spawn must be fought by many against one.
The many can come together only if they are warned. Only from the high places can the warning come swiftly."
So the watchers climbed aloft, the drummers settled down where they could hear the watchers and speak with their drums, and the warriors waited to hear the summons of both watchers and drums. All that remained was for the gate to again open itself, so that the watchers might see.
The Conan Compendium Page 407