Conan pulled his horse around as soon as the shout rose. There was no need to do more to ensure being followed. "Back," he said, forcing his horse against those of Karela and Hordo. Aberius seemed to have broken free already. "Back, for your lives."
Karela sawed her reins, brought her horse around, and then all three were pounding back the way they had come. Conan kept an eye behind. For the twists of the trail he could see little, but what he saw told him the hillmen had been quicker to horse than he had hoped. The lead horseman, a burly man with his beard parted and curled like horns, flashed into and out of sight as the trail wound round boulders and rock walls. When they reached the soldiers, they must be far enough ahead to distinguish themselves from the fierce tribesmen, though not far enough to allow too many questions.
Conan looked ahead. Karela was stretching her black out as much as the trail would allow, and Hordo rode close behind her, using his quirt to urge greater speed from her mount. If Conan could buy them a tenth of a glass at one of these narrow places .... As the Cimmerian rode between two huge, round boulders, he abruptly pulled his horse around. A quick glance showed that neither of the others had noticed. A few moments, and he would catch up to them.
The fork-bearded hillman galloped between the boulders, raised a wavering battlecry, and Conan's blade clove turban and skull to his shoulders.
Even as the man fell from his saddle-pad, more turbanned warriors were forcing their way into the gap.
Conan's sword rose and fell in murderous butchery, its steel length stained quickly red, blood running onto his arm and spattering across his chest.
Of a sudden he was aware of Karela, sword flashing, trying to force her way in beside him. Her red hair stood about her head like a mane, and battle light shone in her green eyes. Behind, Conan could hear Hordo calling for her to come back. Her curved blade took a hillman's throat, then another's slash cut one of her reins. A lance pinked her mount, and it reared, screaming and twisting, ripping the other rein from her hand.
"Take her, Hordo!" Conan cried. He brought the flat of his blade down across the rump of her great black horse, earning himself a bloody slash across his chest for his inattention to the hillmen. "Take her to safety, Hordo!"
The big, one-eyed brigand gathered in her dangling rein and spurred down the trail, pulling her horse behind. Conan heard her shouts fading. "Stop, Hordo! Derketo shrivel your eye and tongue! Stop this instant, Hordo! I command it! Hordo!"
Conan had no time to watch, though, for he was engaged again even as she shouted. The hillmen tried to force their way through by sheer weight of numbers, but only two men at a time would fit into the gap, and when more tried they fell before Conan's whirlwind blade. There were six men down beneath the prancing hooves, then seven. Eight. A horse stumbled on a body and reared. The savage cut Conan had intended for the hook-nosed rider half-severed the horse's neck. It fell kicking beneath the hooves of the next horse, and that one went down as well, its rider catapulting from the saddle to lose his turbanned head to the mighty Cimmerian's broadsword.
The rest of the swarthy riders fell back from that bloody passage, blocked now with dead to the height of a man. Raised tulwars and shouted threats of what would be done when Conan was taken told him they had not given up, though. He edged his horse back. Once he was gone they would clear away the dead, tumbling men and horses alike by the trail, and follow to avenge their honor. But he had gained the time he needed.
The Cimmerian pulled his horse around and booted it into a gallop. Behind him the blood-curdling cries still rose.
Chapter XIV
By the time Conan rejoined the other two, Karela was controlling her horse awkwardly with the single rein, and Hordo was assiduously avoiding her savage glare.
"Where's Aberius?" Conan said. There had been no sign of the man along the way.
Karela thrust a murderous look at the big Cimmerian, but there was no time to speak, for as he spoke they rounded a bend, and there ahead was the Zamoran cavalry column. The officer in the lead raised his hand to signal a halt as the three reached him. Some of the mailed men eyed Conan's bloody sword and loosened their own in their scabbards.
"Ho, my lord general," Conan said, bowing to the blocky, sunburnt officer. His armor showed more wear than any general's ever had, the Cimmerian thought, but flattery never hurt, and it could never be piled on too deeply. Though perhaps it might go better with the officer who joined them then, slender and handsome even beneath his dirt.
"Captain," the blocky officer said, "not general. Captain Haranides." Conan suddenly hoped the hillmen showed quickly. The dark eyes that regarded him from beneath that russet-crested helm were shrewd.
"Who are you? And what are the lot of you doing in the Kezankians?"
"My name is Crato, noble captain," Conan said, "late guard on a caravan bound from Sultanapur, as was this man, Claudo by name. We had the misfortune to fall among hillmen. The lady is Vanya, daughter of Andiaz, a merchant of Turan who took passage with us. I fear that we three are all who survived. I also fear the hillmen are at our heels, for I looked back not long since and saw them on the trail behind."
"Merchant's daughter!" the young officer crowed. "With those bold eyes? If that wench is a merchant's daughter, I'm King of Turan." The captain's mouth tightened, but he kept silent. Conan could see him watching their reactions. "What say you, Crato? What price for an hour of the jade's time?"
Conan tensed, waiting for her to draw her sword, but she merely pulled herself haughtily erect. "Captain Haranides," she said coldly, "will you allow this man to speak so? My father may be dead, but I yet have relatives who have the ear of Yildiz. And in these months past I hear that your Tiridates wishes to be friends with King Yildiz." The captain still said nothing.
"Your pardon, noble sir," Conan said, "but the hillmen...." Where were they, he wondered.
"I see no hillmen," the young officer said sharply. "And I've heard of no caravans since those seven that disappeared. More likely you're brigands yourselves, who had a falling out with the rest of your band.
Perhaps being put to the question will loosen your tongues. The bastinado-"
"Easily, Aheranates," the captain said. Abruptly he wore a warm smile for the three. "Speak more easily.
I'm sure these unfortunates will tell us all they know, if only..." The smile froze on his face, then melted.
"Sheol!" he thundered. "You've brought them straight to us!"
Conan looked over his shoulder and would have shouted for joy if he dared. The hillmen sat their horses in a startled knot not two hundred paces distant. But already the shock of seeing the soldiers was wearing off, and curved tulwars were being waved above turbanned heads. Ululating cries of defiance floated toward the cavalry.
"Shall we retreat?" Aheranates asked nervously.
"Fool!" the hook-nosed captain spat. "An we turn away, they'll be on our backs like vultures on dead meat. Pass the word-but quietly!-that I'll give no signal, but when I ride forward every man is to charge as if he had a lance up his backside. Move, lieutenant!" The slender officer licked his lips, then started down the column. Haranides turned a gimlet eye on Conan as he eased his sword. "I hope you can use that steel, big man, but in any case, you stay close to me. If we're alive when this is over, there are questions I want to ask."
"Of course, noble captain," Conan said, but Haranides was already spurring forward. Howling, the cavalry column poured after him up the trail. Screaming hillmen charged, and in an instant the two masses of men were locked in a maelstrom of flashing steel and blood.
Karela and Hordo turned away from the battle and rode for a narrow gorge that let off the trail. Conan hesitated, staring at the combat. Haranides might well have tried to kill him, had the captain known who he was, but this leading the man to his death suddenly festered inside the tall Cimmerian.
"Conan," Hordo called over his shoulder, "what are you waiting for? Ride before someone sees us going." The bearded ruffian continued to suit his actio
ns to his words, following close behind his auburn-haired leader.
Reluctantly Conan rode after them. As they made their way up the sheer-walled cut in the dark granite, the sounds of killing seemed to follow them.
For a long time they rode in silence, till the battle noises had long since faded. The narrow passage opened into a canyon that meandered back to the east. Conan and Karela each rode locked in their own sour silence. Hordo looked from one to the other, frowning. Finally he spoke, with false jollity.
"You've a facile tongue, Conan. Why, you near had me believing my name was Claudo, for the bland look in those blue eyes of yours when you said it."
"A thief had best have a facile tongue," Conan grunted. "Or a bandit. And speaking of facile tongues, what happened to that snake Aberius? I have seen him not since before we met the hillmen."
Hordo forced a laugh with a worried glance at Karela, whose face looked like stormclouds on the horizon. "We encountered the craven well down the path. He said he was guarding our backtrail, to keep our retreat open."
Conan growled deep in his throat. "You should have slit the coward's throat."
"Nay. He has too many uses in him for that. I sent him to find the rest of the band, and to tell them to make camp. Can I but puzzle out how these canyons go, we'll be back to them soon."
"This is my band, Conan!" Karela suddenly snapped. "I command here! The Red Hawk!"
"Then if you think Aberius should escape his cowardice," Conan replied gruffly, "let him. But I'll not change my mind on it."
She tried to jerk her horse around to face him, but her single rein made the big black take a dancing sidestep instead. The auburn-haired bandit made a sound that in another woman Conan would have called a sob of frustration. But of course such was unlikely from her.
"You fool barbarian!" she cried. "What right had you to send me-me!-to safety? Giving my reins to this one-eyed buffoon! Whipping my horse as if I were some favored slave girl who must be kept from danger!"
"That's what you're angry about?" Conan said incredulously. "With but one rein left, you were easy meat for the next hillman's blade."
"You made that decision, did you? It was not yours to make. I choose when and where I fight, and how much risk I'll face. I!"
"You're the most ungrateful person at having your life saved that I've ever met," Conan grumbled.
Karela shook her fist at him, and her voice rose to an enraged howl. "I do not need you to save my life! I do not want you to save my life! Of all men, you least! Swear to me you will never again lift a hand to save my life or my freedom. Swear it, Cimmerian!"
"I swear it!" he answered hotly. "By Crom, l swear it!"
Karela nodded shortly and got her horse moving again with violent kicks and much tugging at her one rein. The bare brown rock through which they rode, layered in places with much faded colors, fitted Conan's mood well. Hordo dropped back to ride beside the muscular youth.
"Once I liked you not at all, Conan," the one-eyed man said in a voice that would not carry forward to Karela. "Now, I like you well, but still I say this. Leave us."
Conan cast a sour eye at him. "If there be leaving to do, you do it. And her, with the rest of her band. I have a seeking here, remember?"
"She'll not turn aside, despite hillmen, or soldiers, or demons themselves. That's the trouble, or what comes of it. That, and this oath, and a score of things more. Emotion rules her head, now, and not the other way round, as always before. I fear what this means."
"I did not ask for the oath," Conan replied. "If you think her temper runs away with her, speak to her, not me."
The bearded bandit's hands gripped his reins till his knuckles were white. "I do like you, Conan, but bring you harm to her, and I will carve you as a Kethan carves stone." He booted his horse ahead, and the three traveled once more in heavy silence.
Long shadows stretched across the mountain valleys by the time they found the bandit camp, among huge boulders at the base of a sheer cliff. Despite the crisp coldness of the air, the scattered fires were small, and placed among the boulders so as to lessen the chance of being seen. Karela's red-striped pavilion stood almost against the towering rock wall.
"I'll see you in my tent, Conan," the red-haired woman said. Without waiting for an answer, she galloped to the pavilion, gave her horse into a bandit's care, and disappeared inside.
As Conan dismounted, he found a knot of bandits gathering about Hordo and him. Aberius was among them, though not in the forefront.
"Ho, Aberius," the Cimmerian said. "I'm glad to see you well. I thought you might have been injured in holding the rail open for us." Some of the rough-faced men snickered. Aberius bared his teeth in what might have been meant to be a grin, but his eyes were those of a rat in a box. He said nothing.
"The hillmen are taken care of, then?" a Kothian with one ear asked, "And the soldiers?"
"Slitting each other's weasands," Hordo chuckled. "They're no more concern to us, not in this world."
"And I've no concern for the next," the Kothian laughed. Most of the others joined in. Conan noted Aberius did not.
"On the morrow, Aberius," Conan said, "you'll take up the trail again, and in a day or two we'll have the treasure."
The pinch-faced brigand had started at the sound of his name. Now he licked his lips before answering.
"It cannot be. The trail is lost." He flinched as the other bandits turned to stare at him. "It's lost, I say."
"But only for the moment," Conan said. "Isn't that right? We'll go back to that valley where the hillmen were camped, and you'll pick it up again."
"I tell you it isn't so simple." Aberius shifted his shoulders and tugged nervously at his dented iron breastplate. "While on the trail I can tell a rock disturbed by a horse from one that merely fell. Now I'm away from the trail. If I go back, they'll both look the same."
"Fool!" someone snarled. "You've lost us the treasure."
"All this way for naught," another cried.
"Cut his throat!"
"Slit Aberius' gullet!"
Sweat beaded the man's narrow face. Hordo stepped forward quickly. "Hold, now! Hold! Can you track these men, Talbor? Alvar? Anyone?" Heads were shaken in reluctant denial. "Then open not your mouth against Aberius."
"I still say he is afeared," Talbor muttered. "That is why he cannot find the tracks again."
"I'm not affrighted of any man," Aberius said hotly. He licked his lips once more. "Of any man." There was a peculiar emphasis to the last word.
"Of what then?" Conan said. For a moment he thought Aberius would refuse to answer, then the man spoke in a rush.
"On the mountain slope, after we four rode forward, I saw a... a thing." His voice gained fervency as he spoke. "Like a snake, it was, yet like a man, too. It wore armor, and carried a sword, and flame shot from its mouth twice the length of a sword. As I watched it signaled for more of its kind to come forth.
Had I not ridden to half-kill my horse, I'd be dead at those creatures' hands."
"If it had the flame," Conan muttered, "what need had it for the sword?" Some of the others began to murmur fearfully, though, and even those who were silent had unease on their faces.
"Why did you not speak of this before?" Hordo demanded.
"There was no need," Aberius replied. "I knew we would soon leave, since the tracks are lost. We must leave soon. Besides, I thought you would misbelieve me."
"There are strange things under the sky," Conan said. "I've seen some of them, myself. But I've never seen anything that could not be killed with cold steel." Or at least, very few, he amended to himself.
"How many of these things did you actually see, Aberius?"
"Only the one," Aberius admitted with obvious reluctance. "But it summoned more, and I saw them moving beyond the rocks. There could have been a hundred, a thousand."
"Yet all in all," Hordo said, "you saw but one. There cannot be many of them, else we'd have heard before. A thing like that would be talked of."
"But nothing," Hordo barked. "We'll keep a wary eye for these creatures of yours, but on the morrow we see if you can tell a horse track from horse moss."
"But I told you-"
"Unless you all want to give up the treasure," the one-eyed bandit went on as if the smaller man had not spoken. Loud objections went up on every side. "Then I'll talk to the Red Hawk, and at dawn we'll move. Now go get something into your bellies."
One by one the bandits drifted away to their fires. Aberius went last of all, casting a dark look at Conan as he went.
Chapter XV
While Hordo stumped off to the red-striped pavilion, Conan found a spot where he could sit with his back to a massive boulder and no one could come at him unseen. That look from Aberius had spoken of knives in the back. He got out his honing stone and broadsword and began to smooth the nicks made by hillmen's chainmail. The sky became purple, and lurid red streamers filled the jagged western horizon. He was putting the finishing touches to his blade's edge when the one-eyed brigand stormed out of Karela's tent.
The bearded man stalked to within a few feet of Conan, obviously ill at ease. Hordo rubbed his bulbous nose, muttering under his breath. "A good habit, that," he said finally. "I've seen more than one good man die because an untended notch in his blade left him with a stump the next time it took a good blow"
Conan laid the broadsword across his thighs. "You didn't come to talk of swords. What does she say about tomorrow?"
"She wouldn't even listen to me." Hordo shook his bearded head. "Me, who's been with her from the first day, and she wouldn't listen."
"No matter. On the morrow, you turn back, and I go on. Perhaps she's right not to risk these snakemen on top of all else."
"Mitra! You don't understand. I never got to speak of the creatures, or of Aberius' denial he can find the trail again. She paced like a caged lioness, and would not let me say two words together." He tugged at his beard with both hands. "Too long have I been with her," he muttered, "to be sent on such an errand.
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