'I've seen good woodsmen from the Tauran. But the Bossonians have
sheltered you Aquilonians from the outer wildernesses for too many
centuries. You need hardening.'
That was true; the Bossonian marches, with their fortified villages
filled with determined bowmen, had long served Aquilonia as a buffer
against the outlying barbarians. Now among the settlers beyond Thunder
River there was growing up a breed of forest-men capable of meeting the
barbarians at their own game, but their numbers were still scanty. Most
of the frontiersmen were like Balthus--more of the settler than the
woodsman type.
The sun had not set, but it was no longer in sight, hidden as it was
behind the dense forest wall. The shadows were lengthening, deepening
back in the woods as the companions strode on down the trail.
'It will be dark before we reach the fort,' commented Conan casually;
then: 'Listen!'
He stopped short, half crouching, sword ready, transformed into a savage
figure of suspicion and menace, poised to spring and rend. Balthus had
heard it too--a wild scream that broke at its highest note. It was the
cry of a man in dire fear or agony.
Conan was off in an instant, racing down the trail, each stride widening
the distance between him and his straining companion. Balthus puffed a
curse. Among the settlements of the Tauran he was accounted a good
runner, but Conan was leaving him behind with maddening ease. Then
Balthus forgot his exasperation as his ears were outraged by the most
frightful cry he had ever heard. It was not human, this one; it was a
demoniacal caterwauling of hideous triumph that seemed to exult over
fallen humanity and find echo in black gulfs beyond human ken.
Balthus faltered in his stride, and clammy sweat beaded his flesh. But
Conan did not hesitate; he darted around a bend in the trail and
disappeared, and Balthus, panicky at finding himself alone with that
awful scream still shuddering through the forest in grisly echoes, put
on an extra burst of speed and plunged after him.
The Aquilonian slid to a stumbling halt, almost colliding with the
Cimmerian who stood in the trail over a crumpled body. But Conan was not
looking at the corpse which lay there in the crimson-soaked dust. He was
glaring into the deep woods on either side of the trail.
Balthus muttered a horrified oath. It was the body of a man which lay
there in the trail, a short, fat man, clad in the gilt-worked boots and
(despite the heat) the ermine-trimmed tunic of a wealthy merchant. His
fat, pale face was set in a stare of frozen horror; his thick throat had
been slashed from ear to ear as if by a razor-sharp blade. The short
sword still in its scabbard seemed to indicate that he had been struck
down without a chance to fight for his life.
'A Pict?' Balthus whispered, as he turned to peer into the deepening
shadows of the forest.
Conan shook his head and straightened to scowl down at the dead man.
'A forest devil. This is the fifth, by Crom!'
'What do you mean?'
'Did you ever hear of a Pictish wizard called Zogar Sag?'
Balthus shook his head uneasily.
'He dwells in Gwawela, the nearest village across the river. Three
months ago he hid beside this road and stole a string of pack-mules from
a pack-train bound for the fort--drugged their drivers, somehow. The
mules belonged to this man'--Conan casually indicated the corpse with
his foot--'Tiberias, a merchant of Velitrium. They were loaded with
ale-kegs, and old Zogar stopped to guzzle before he got across the
river. A woodsman named Soractus trailed him, and led Valannus and three
soldiers to where he lay dead drunk in a thicket. At the importunities
of Tiberias, Valannus threw Zogar Sag into a cell, which is the worst
insult you can give a Pict. He managed to kill his guard and escape, and
sent back word that he meant to kill Tiberias and the five men who
captured him in a way that would make Aquilonians shudder for centuries
to come.
'Well, Soractus and the soldiers are dead. Soractus was killed on the
river, the soldiers in the very shadow of the fort. And now Tiberias is
dead. No Pict killed any of them. Each victim--except Tiberias, as you
see--lacked his head--which no doubt is now ornamenting the altar of
Zogar Sag's particular god.'
'How do you know they weren't killed by the Picts?' demanded Balthus.
Conan pointed to the corpse of the merchant.
'You think that was done with a knife or a sword? Look closer and you'll
see that only a talon could have made a gash like that. The flesh is
ripped, not cut.'
'Perhaps a panther----' began Balthus, without conviction.
Conan shook his head impatiently.
'A man from the Tauran couldn't mistake the mark of a panther's claws.
No. It's a forest devil summoned by Zogar Sag to carry out his revenge.
Tiberias was a fool to start for Velitrium alone, and so close to dusk.
But each one of the victims seemed to be smitten with madness just
before doom overtook him. Look here; the signs are plain enough.
Tiberias came riding along the trail on his mule, maybe with a bundle of
choice otter pelts behind his saddle to sell in Velitrium, and the
_thing_ sprang on him from behind that bush. See where the branches are
crushed down.
'Tiberias gave one scream, and then his throat was torn open and he was
selling his otter skins in Hell. The mule ran away into the woods.
Listen! Even now you can hear him thrashing about under the trees. The
demon didn't have time to take Tiberias' head; it took fright as we came
up.'
'As _you_ came up,' amended Balthus. 'It must not be a very terrible
creature if it flees from one armed man. But how do you know it was not
a Pict with some kind of a hook that rips instead of slicing? Did you
see it?'
'Tiberias was an armed man,' grunted Conan. 'If Zogar Sag can bring
demons to aid him, he can tell them which men to kill and which to let
alone. No, I didn't see it. I only saw the bushes shake as it left the
trail. But if you want further proof, look here!'
The slayer had stepped into the pool of blood in which the dead man
sprawled. Under the bushes at the edge of the path there was a
footprint, made in blood on the hard loam.
'Did a man make that?' demanded Conan.
Balthus felt his scalp prickle. Neither man nor any beast that he had
ever seen could have left that strange, monstrous three-toed print, that
was curiously combined of the bird and the reptile, yet a true type of
neither. He spread his fingers above the print, careful not to touch it,
and grunted explosively. He could not span the mark.
'What is it?' he whispered. 'I never saw a beast that left a spoor like
that.'
'Nor any other sane man,' answered Conan grimly. 'It's a swamp
demon--they're thick as bats in the swamps beyond Black River. You can
hear them howling like damned souls when the wind blows strong from the
south on hot nights.'
'What shall we do?' asked the Aquilonian, peering uneasily into the deep
blue shadows. The frozen fear on the dead countenance haunted him. He
wondered what hideous head the wretch had seen thrust grinning from
among the leaves to chill his blood with terror.
'No use to try to follow a demon,' grunted Conan, drawing a short
woodsman's ax from his girdle. 'I tried tracking him after he killed
Soractus. I lost his trail within a dozen steps. He might have grown
himself wings and flown away, or sunk down through the earth to Hell. I
don't know. I'm not going after the mule, either. It'll either wander
back to the fort, or to some settler's cabin.'
As he spoke Conan was busy at the edge of the trail with his ax. With a
few strokes he cut a pair of saplings nine or ten feet long, and denuded
them of their branches. Then he cut a length from a serpent-like vine
that crawled among the bushes near by, and making one end fast to one of
the poles, a couple of feet from the end, whipped the vine over the
other sapling and interlaced it back and forth. In a few moments he had
a crude but strong litter.
'The demon isn't going to get Tiberias' head if I can help it,' he
growled. 'We'll carry the body into the fort. It isn't more than three
miles. I never liked the fat fool, but we can't have Pictish devils
making so cursed free with white men's heads.'
The Picts were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never
spoke of them as such.
Balthus took the rear end of the litter, onto which Conan
unceremoniously dumped the unfortunate merchant, and they moved on down
the trail as swiftly as possible. Conan made no more noise laden with
their grim burden than he had made when unencumbered. He had made a loop
with the merchant's belt at the end of the poles, and was carrying his
share of the load with one hand, while the other gripped his naked
broadsword, and his restless gaze roved the sinister walls about them.
The shadows were thickening. A darkening blue mist blurred the outlines
of the foliage. The forest deepened in the twilight, became a blue haunt
of mystery sheltering unguessed things.
They had covered more than a mile, and the muscles in Balthus' sturdy
arms were beginning to ache a little, when a cry rang shuddering from
the woods whose blue shadows were deepening into purple.
Conan started convulsively, and Balthus almost let go the poles.
'A woman!' cried the younger man. 'Great Mitra, a woman cried out then!'
'A settler's wife straying in the woods,' snarled Conan, setting down
his end of the litter. 'Looking for a cow, probably, and--stay here!'
He dived like a hunting wolf into the leafy wall. Balthus' hair
bristled.
'Stay here alone with this corpse and a devil hiding in the woods?' he
yelped. 'I'm coming with you!'
And suiting action to words, he plunged after the Cimmerian. Conan
glanced back at him, but made no objection, though he did not moderate
his pace to accommodate the shorter legs of his companion. Balthus
wasted his wind in swearing as the Cimmerian drew away from him again,
like a phantom between the trees, and then Conan burst into a dim glade
and halted crouching, lips snarling, sword lifted.
'What are we stopping for?' panted Balthus, dashing the sweat out of his
eyes and gripping his short sword.
'That scream came from this glade, or near by,' answered Conan. 'I don't
mistake the location of sounds, even in the woods. But where----'
Abruptly the sound rang out again--_behind them_; in the direction of
the trail they had just quitted. It rose piercingly and pitifully, the
cry of a woman in frantic terror--and then, shockingly, it changed to a
yell of mocking laughter that might have burst from the lips of a fiend
of lower Hell.
'What in Mitra's name----' Balthus' face was a pale blur in the gloom.
With a scorching oath Conan wheeled and dashed back the way he had come,
and the Aquilonian stumbled bewilderedly after him. He blundered into
the Cimmerian as the latter stopped dead, and rebounded from his brawny
shoulders as though from an iron statue. Gasping from the impact, he
heard Conan's breath hiss through his teeth. The Cimmerian seemed frozen
in his tracks.
Looking over his shoulder, Balthus felt his hair stand up stiffly.
Something was moving through the deep bushes that fringed the
trail--something that neither walked nor flew, but seemed to glide like
a serpent. But it was not a serpent. Its outlines were indistinct, but
it was taller than a man, and not very bulky. It gave off a glimmer of
weird light, like a faint blue flame. Indeed, the eery fire was the only
tangible thing about it. It might have been an embodied flame moving
with reason and purpose through the blackening woods.
Conan snarled a savage curse and hurled his ax with ferocious will. But
the thing glided on without altering its course. Indeed it was only a
few instants' fleeting glimpse they had of it--a tall, shadowy thing of
misty flame floating through the thickets. Then it was gone, and the
forest crouched in breathless stillness.
With a snarl Conan plunged through the intervening foliage and into the
trail. His profanity, as Balthus floundered after him, was lurid and
impassioned. The Cimmerian was standing over the litter on which lay the
body of Tiberias. And that body no longer possessed a head.
'Tricked us with its damnable caterwauling!' raved Conan, swinging his
great sword about his head in his wrath. 'I might have known! I might
have guessed a trick! Now there'll be five heads to decorate Zogar's
altar.'
'But what thing is it that can cry like a woman and laugh like a devil,
and shines like witch-fire as it glides through the trees?' gasped
Balthus, mopping the sweat from his pale face.
'A swamp devil,' responded Conan morosely. 'Grab those poles. We'll take
in the body, anyway. At least our load's a bit lighter.'
With which grim philosophy he gripped the leathery loop and stalked down
the trail.