riding forth to defend their native city. There was no sound; dully, expressionless 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, Salom lolled on a velvet couch cynically watching Constantia as she settled her broad sword-belt about her lean hips and drew on her gauntlets. They were alone in the chamber. Outside, the rhythmical clank of harness and shuffle of horses' hoofs welled up through the gold-barred casements.
'Before nightfall,' quoth Constantia, giving a twirl to her 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 woman.'
'Take care you do not fall prey to a fiercer beast than Thaug,' warned the boy. 'Do not forget who it is that leads these desert animals.'
'I am not likely to forget,' she answered. 'That is one reason why I am advancing to meet her. The dog has fought in the West and knows the art of siege. My scouts had some trouble in approaching her columns, for her outriders have eyes like hawks; but they did get close enough to see the engines she is dragging on ox-cart wheels drawn by camels--catapults, rams, ballistas, mangonels--by Ishtar! she must have had ten thousand women working day and night for a month. Where she got the material for their construction is more than I can understand. Perhaps she has a treaty with the Turanians, and gets supplies from them.
'Anyway, they won't do her any good. I've fought these desert wolves before--an exchange of arrows for awhile, 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 Conyn, it will afford me intense pleasure, if we take her alive, to impale her on the palace steps.'
'Skin as many as you like,' answered Salom 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 Constantia, with her gauntleted hand brushing back the thin hair from her high, bald forehead, burned dark by the sun. 'For victory and the fair honor of Taramin!' she said sardonically, and, taking her vizored helmet under her arm, she lifted a hand in salute, and strode clanking from the chamber. Her voice drifted back, harshly lifted in orders to her officers.
Salom leaned back on the couch, yawned, stretched himself like a great supple cat, and called: 'Zang!'
A cat-footed priestess, with features like yellowed parchment stretched over a skull, entered noiselessly.
Salom turned to an ivory pedestal on which stood two crystal globes, and taking from it the smaller, he handed the glistening sphere to the priestess.
'Ride with Constantia,' he said. 'Give me the news of the battle. Go!'
The skull-faced woman bowed low, and hiding the globe under her 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. Salom mounted a wide marble stair that led to the flat, canopied, marble-battlemented roof. He was above all other buildings in 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 Constantia. Victory meant further misery under her intolerable rule; defeat probably meant the sack of the city and red massacre. No word had come from Conyn. They did not know what to expect at her hands. They remembered that she 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 women on horses. Objects dotted the farther bank; Conyn had not brought her siege engines across the river, apparently fearing an attack in the midst of the crossing. But she had crossed with her full force of horsewomen. 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.
Salom shrugged his shoulders and descended the stair. The palace lay silent. All the slaves were on the wall, gazing vainly southward with the citizens.
He entered the chamber where he had talked with Constantia, and approached the pedestal, noting that the crystal globe was clouded, shot with bloody streaks of crimson. He bent over the ball, swearing under his breath.
'Zang!' he 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 Salom. 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 Salom's it would have seemed that the face in the crystal contorted silently. But sound to his came as plainly from those ashen lips as if the priestess had been in the same room with him, instead of miles away, shouting into the smaller crystal. Only the gods of darkness knew what unseen, magic filaments linked together those shimmering spheres.
'Salom!' shrieked the bloody head. 'Salom!'
'I hear!' he 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 can not win clear! Women are falling around me! They are dying like flies, in their silvered mail!'
'Stop yammering and tell me what happened!' he cried harshly.
'We rode at the desert-dogs and they came on to meet us!' yowled the priestess. 'Arrows flew in clouds between the hosts, and the nomads wavered. Constantia 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 horsewomen whose presence we had not even suspected. Women of Khauran, mad with hate! Big women 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 Conyn! 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--Conyn slew her. I do not see Constantia. The Khaurani rage through our milling masses like blood-mad lions, and the desert-men feather us with arrows. I--ahh!'
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 Salom was staring into an empty crystal ball that mirrored only his own furious features.
He stood perfectly still for a few moments, erect and staring into space. Then he clapped his hands and another skull-like priestess entered, as silent and immobile as the first.
'Constantia is beaten,' he said swiftly. 'We are doomed.'
'Conyn will be crashing at our gates within the hour. If she catches me, I have no illusions as to what I can expect. But first I am going to make sure that my cursed b
rother never ascends the throne again. Follow me! Come what may, we shall give Thaug a feast.'
As he descended the stairs and galleries of the palace, he heard a faint rising echo from the distant walls. The people there had begun to realize that the battle was going against Constantia. Through the dust clouds masses of horsewomen 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 king and his 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. Salom recoiled suddenly, swearing. In the gloom of the hall lay a motionless form--a Shemitish jailer, her short locks tilted toward the roof as her head hung on a half-severed neck. As panting voices from below reached the boy's ears, he shrank back into the black shadow of an arch, pushing the priestess behind him, his hand groping in his girdle.
6 The Vulture's Wings
It was the smoky light of a torch which roused Taramin, King of Khauran, from the slumber in which he sought forgetfulness. Lifting himself on his hand he raked back his tangled hair and blinked up, expecting to meet the mocking countenance of Salom, malign
A Witch Shall Be Born Once More Page 8