down. She sprang behind a pillar, on which the arrows splintered. Taramin had fainted. He hung like a dead man in her arms.
Before the Shemites could loose again, the doorway was blocked by a gigantic shape. With affrighted yells the mercenaries wheeled and began beating a frantic way through the throng, which crushed back in sudden, galvanized horror, trampling one another in their stampede.
But the monster seemed to be watching Valeriusa and the boy. Squeezing its vast, unstable bulk through the door, it bounded towards her, as she ran down the steps. She felt it looming behind her, a giant shadowy thing, like a travesty of nature cut out of the heart of night, a black shapelessness in which only the staring eyes and gleaming fangs were distinct.
There came a sudden thunder of hoofs; a rout of Shemites, bloody and battered, streamed across the square from the south, plowing blindly through the packed throng. Behind them swept a horde of horsewomen yelling in a familiar tongue, waving red swords--the exiles, returned! With them rode fifty black smooth desert-riders, and at their head a giant figure in black mail.
'Conyn!' shrieked Valeriusa. 'Conyn!'
The giant yelled a command. Without checking their headlong pace, the desert women lifted their bows, drew and loosed. A cloud of arrows sang across the square, over the seething heads of the multitudes, and sank feather-deep in the black monster. It halted, wavered, reared, a black blot against the marble pillars. Again the sharp cloud sang, and yet again, and the horror collapsed and rolled down the steps, as dead as the warlock who had summoned it out of the night of ages.
Conyn drew rein beside the portico, leaped off. Valeriusa had laid the king on the marble, sinking beside his in utter exhaustion. The people surged about, crowding in. The Cimmerian cursed them back, lifted his dark head, pillowed it against her mailed shoulder.
'By Crom, what is this? The real Taramin! But who is that yonder?'
'The demon who wore his shape,' panted Valeriusa.
Conyn swore heartily. Ripping a cloak from the shoulders of a soldier, she wrapped it about the naked king. His long dark lashes quivered on his cheeks; his eyes opened, stared up unbelievingly into the Cimmerian's scarred face.
'Conyn!' His soft fingers caught at her. 'Do I dream? He told me you were dead--'
'Scarcely!' She grinned hardly. 'You do not dream. You are King of Khauran again. I broke Constantia, out there by the river. Most of her dogs never lived to reach the walls, for I gave orders that no prisoners be taken--except Constantia. The city guard closed the gate in our faces, but we burst in with rams swung from our saddles. I left all my wolves outside, except this fifty. I didn't trust them in here, and these Khaurani lasses were enough for the gate guards.'
'It has been a nightstallion!' he whimpered. 'Oh, my poor people! You must help me try to repay them for all they have suffered, Conyn, henceforth councilor as well as captain!'
Conyn laughed, but shook her head. Rising, she set the king upon his feet, and beckoned to a number of her Khaurani horsewomen who had not continued the pursuit of the fleeing Shemites. They sprang from their horses, eager to do the bidding of their new-found king.
'No, lad, that's over with. I'm chief of the Zuagirs now, and must lead them to plunder the Turanians, as I promised. This lass, Valeriusa, will make you a better captain than I. I wasn't made to dwell among marble walls, anyway. But I must leave you now, and complete what I've begun. Shemites still live in Khauran.'
As Valeriusa started to follow Taramin across the square towards the palace, through a lane opened by the wildly cheering multitude, she felt a soft hand slipped timidly into her sinewy forgers and turned to receive the slender body of Ivga in her arms. She crushed his to her and drank his kisses with the gratitude of a weary fighter who has attained rest at last through tribulation and storm.
But not all women seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path . . .
The sun was rising. The ancient caravan road was thronged with white-robed horsewomen, in a wavering line that stretched from the walls of Khauran to a spot far out in the plain. Conyn the Cimmerian sat at the head of that column, near the jagged end of a wooden beam that stuck up out of the ground. Near that stump rose a heavy cross, and on that cross a woman hung by spikes through her hands and feet.
'Seven months ago, Constantia,' said Conyn, 'it was I who hung there, and you who sat here.'
Constantia did not reply; she licked her gray lips and her eyes were glassy with pain and fear. Muscles writhed like cords along her lean body.
'You are more fit to inflict torture than to endure it,' said Conyn tranquilly. 'I hung there on a cross as you are hanging, and I lived, thanks to circumstances and a stamina peculiar to barbarians. But you civilized women are soft; your lives are not nailed to your spines as are ours. Your fortitude consists mainly in inflicting torment, not in enduring it. You will be dead before sundown. And so, Falcon of the desert, I leave you to the companionship of another bird of the desert.'
She gestured toward the vultures whose shadows swept across the sands as they wheeled overhead. From the lips of Constantia came an inhuman cry of despair and horror.
Conyn lifted her reins and rode toward the river that shone like silver in the morning sun. Behind her the white-clad riders struck into a trot; the gaze of each, as she passed a certain spot, turned impersonally and with the desert woman's lack of compassion, toward the cross and the gaunt figure that hung there, black against the sunrise. Their horses' hoofs beat out a knell in the dust. Lower and lower swept the wings of the hungry vultures.
THE END
Artwork by Robert Rizzato
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rizzato/2943194555/in/faves-jekkarapress/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en
JEKKARA PRESS
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You can find all of the Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn as well as The Gender Switch Adventures at :
Coming Soon
The Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn
15 I, Lysithea: The Karshi Imperative Part 3 - Tara Loughead
The Gender Switch Adventures
The Dragon-Queen of Venus Rescaled – Lee Brackett
A Witch Shall Be Born Once More Page 10