crawling up from the east seemed black as ebony.
In her dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings. Lifting her head she watched with the burning glare of a wolf the shadows wheeling above her. She knew that her shouts would frighten them away no longer. One dipped--dipped--lower and lower. Conyn drew her head back as far as she could, waiting with terrible patience. The vulture swept in with a swift roar of wings. Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conyn's chin as she jerked her head aside; then before the bird could flash away, Conyn's head lunged forward on her mighty neck muscles, and her 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 woman, and its talons ripped her bosom . But grimly she hung on, the muscles starting out in lumps on her jaws. And the scavenger's neck bones crunched between those powerful teeth. With a spasmodic flutter the bird hung limp. Conyn let go, spat blood from her 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 Conyn's numbed brain. Life beat strongly and savagely through her veins. She could still deal death; she still lived. Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.
'By Mitra!' Either a voice spoke, or she suffered from hallucination. 'In all my life I have never seen such a thing!'
Shaking the sweat and blood from her eyes, Conyn saw four horsewomen sitting their steeds in the twilight and staring up at her. Three were lean, white-robed hawks, Zuagir tribeswomen without a doubt, nomads from beyond the river. The others was dressed like them in a white, girdled khalat and a flowing head-dress which, banded about the temples with a triple circlet of braided camelhair, fell to her shoulders. But she was not a Shemite. The dust was not so thick, nor Conyn's hawk-like sight so clouded, that she could not perceive the woman's facial characteristics.
She was as tall as Conyn, though not so heavy-limbed. Her shoulders were broad and her supple figure was hard as steel and whalebone. A short black locks did not altogether mask the aggressive jut of her lean jaw, and gray eyes cold and piercing as a sword gleamed from the shadow of the kafieh. Quieting her restless steed with a quick, sure hand, this woman spoke: 'By Mitra, I should know this woman!'
'Aye!' It was the guttural accents of a Zuagir. 'It is the Cimmerian who was captain of the king's guard!'
'He must be casting off all his old favorites,' muttered the rider. 'Who'd have ever thought it of King Taramin? 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.'
Conyn lifted her bloody head.
'If I could come down from this beam I'd make a dying dog out of you, you Zaporoskan thief!' she 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 Conyn. 'You are Olgerda 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 Conyn.
'I am a hard woman,' said Olgerda, 'and toughness is the only quality I respect in a woman. I shall judge if you are a woman, or only a dog after all, fit only to lie here and die.'
'If we cut her down we may be seen from the walls,' objected one of the nomads.
Olgerda shook her head.
'The dusk is deep. Here, take this ax, Djebala, and cut down the cross at the base.'
'If it falls forward it will crush her,' objected Djebala. 'I can cut it so it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack her skull and tear loose all her entrails.'
'If she's worthy to ride with me she'll survive it,' answered Olgerda imperturbably. 'If not, then she 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 Conyn's swollen feet and hands. Again and again the blade fell, and each stroke reverberated on her bruised brain, setting her tortured nerves aquiver. But she set her teeth and made no sound. The ax cut through, the cross reeled on its splintered base and toppled backward. Conyn made her whole body a solid knot of iron-hard muscle, jammed her head back hard against the wood and held it rigid there. The beam struck the ground heavily and rebounded slightly. The impact tore her wounds and dazed her for an instant. She fought the rushing tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but realized that the iron muscles that sheathed her vitals had saved her from permanent injury.
And she had made no sound, though blood oozed from her nostrils and her belly-muscles quivered with nausea. With a grunt of approval Djebala bent over her with a pair of pincers used to draw horse-shoe nails, and gripped the head of the spike in Conyn's right hand, tearing the skin to get a grip on the deeply embedded head. The pincers were small for that work. Djebala 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. She lay so still she might have been dead, except for the spasmodic rise and fall of her great bosom . The spike gave way, and Djebala held up the blood-stained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away and bent over the other.
The process was repeated, and then Djebala turned her attention to Conyn's skewered feet. But the Cimmerian, struggling up to a sitting posture, wrenched the pincers from her fingers and sent her staggering backward with a violent shove. Conyn's hands were swollen to almost twice their normal size. Her fingers felt like misshapen thumbs, and closing her hands was an agony that brought blood streaming from under her grinding teeth. But somehow, clutching the pincers clumsily with both hands, she 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.
She rose stiffly and stood upright on her swollen, lacerated feet, swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from her face and body. Cramps assailed her and she clamped her jaws against the desire to retch.
Olgerda, watching her impersonally, motioned her toward the stolen horse. Conyn stumbled toward it, and every step was a stabbing, throbbing hell that flecked her lips with bloody foam. One misshapen, groping hand fell clumsily on the saddle-bow, a bloody foot somehow found the stirrup. Setting her teeth, she swung up, and she almost fainted in midair; but she came down in the saddle--and as she did so, Olgerda struck the horse sharply with her whip. The startled beast reared, and the woman in the saddle swayed and slumped like a sack of sand, almost unseated. Conyn had wrapped a rein about each hand, holding it in place with a clamping thumb. Drunkenly she exerted the strength of her knotted biceps, wrenching the horse down; it screamed, its jaw almost dislocated.
One of the Shemites lifted a water flask questioningly.
Olgerda shook her head.
'Let her wait until we get to camp. It's only ten miles. If she's fit to live in the desert she'll live that long without a drink.'
The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; among them Conyn swayed like a drunken woman in the saddle, bloodshot eyes glazed, foam drying on her blackened lips.
3 A Letter to Nemedia
The savant Astreasia, traveling in the East in her never-tiring search for knowledge, wrote a letter to her friend and fellow philosopher Alcemidesia, in her 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.
Astreasia wrote, in part: 'You can scarcely conceive, my dear old friend, of the conditions now existing in this tiny kingdom since King Taramin admitted Constantia and her mercenaries, an event which I briefly described in my last, hurried letter. Seven months h
ave passed since then, during which time it seems as though the devil herself had been loosed in this unfortunate realm. Taramin seems to have gone quite mad; whereas formerly he was famed for his virtue, justice and tranquility, he is now notorious for qualities precisely opposite to those just enumerated. His private life is a scandal--or perhaps 'private' is not the correct term, since the king makes no attempt to conceal the debauchery of his court. He constantly indulges in the most infamous revelries, in which the unfortunate ladies of the court are forced to join, young married men as well as virgins.'
'He himself has not bothered to marry his paramour, Constantia, who sits on the throne beside his and reigns as his royal consort, and her officers follow her example, and do not hesitate to debauch any man they desire, regardless of his 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 Alcemidesia; 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
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