When Conan turned from the Velitrium road he expected a run of some nine
miles and set himself to the task. But he had not gone four when he
heard the sounds of a party of men ahead of him. From the noise they
were making in their progress he knew they were not Picts. He hailed
them.
'Who's there?' challenged a harsh voice. 'Stand where you are until we
know you, or you'll get an arrow through you.'
'You couldn't hit an elephant in this darkness,' answered Conan
impatiently. 'Come on, fool; it's I--Conan. The Picts are over the
river.'
'We suspected as much,' answered the leader of the men, as they strode
forward--tall, rangy men, stern-faced, with bows in their hands. 'One of
our party wounded an antelope and tracked it nearly to Black River. He
heard them yelling down the river and ran back to our camp. We left the
salt and the wagons, turned the oxen loose and came as swiftly as we
could. If the Picts are besieging the fort, war-parties will be ranging
up the road toward our cabins.'
'Your families are safe,' grunted Conan. 'My companion went ahead to
take them to Velitrium. If we go back to the main road we may run into
the whole horde. We'll strike southeast, through the timber. Go ahead.
I'll scout behind.'
A few moments later the whole band was hurrying southeastward. Conan
followed more slowly, keeping just within ear-shot. He cursed the noise
they were making; that many Picts or Cimmerians would have moved through
the woods with no more noise than the wind makes as it blows through the
black branches.
He had just crossed a small glade when he wheeled answering the
conviction of his primitive instincts that he was being followed.
Standing motionless among the bushes he heard the sounds of the
retreating settlers fade away. Then a voice called faintly back along
the way he had come: 'Conan! Conan! Wait for me, Conan!'
'Balthus!' he swore bewilderedly. Cautiously he called: 'Here I am.'
'Wait for me, Conan!' the voice came more distinctly.
Conan moved out of the shadows, scowling. 'What the devil are you doing
here?--Crom!'
He half crouched, the flesh prickling along his spine. It was not
Balthus who was emerging from the other side of the glade. A weird glow
burned through the trees. It moved toward him, shimmering weirdly--a
green witch-fire that moved with purpose and intent.
It halted some feet away and Conan glared at it, trying to distinguish
its fire-misted outlines. The quivering flame had a solid core; the
flame was but a green garment that masked some animate and evil entity;
but the Cimmerian was unable to make out its shape or likeness. Then,
shockingly, a voice spoke to him from amidst the fiery column.
'Why do you stand like a sheep waiting for the butcher, Conan?'
The voice was human but carried strange vibrations that were not human.
'Sheep?' Conan's wrath got the best of his momentary awe. 'Do you think
I'm afraid of a damned Pictish swamp devil? A friend called me.'
'I called in his voice,' answered the other. 'The men you follow belong
to my brother; I would not rob his knife of their blood. But you are
mine. Oh, fool, you have come from the far gray hills of Cimmeria to
meet your doom in the forests of Conajohara.'
'You've had your chance at me before now,' snorted Conan. 'Why didn't
you kill me then, if you could?'
'My brother had not painted a skull black for you and hurled it into the
fire that burns for ever on Gullah's black altar. He had not whispered
your name to the black ghosts that haunt the uplands of the Dark Land.
But a bat has flown over the Mountains of the Dead and drawn your image
in blood on the white tiger's hide that hangs before the long hut where
sleep the Four Brothers of the Night. The great serpents coil about
their feet and the stars burn like fire-flies in their hair.'
'Why have the gods of darkness doomed me to death?' growled Conan.
Something--a hand, foot or talon, he could not tell which, thrust out
from the fire and marked swiftly on the mold. A symbol blazed there,
marked with fire, and faded, but not before he recognized it.
'You dared make the sign which only a priest of Jhebbal Sag dare make.
Thunder rumbled through the black Mountain of the Dead and the altar-hut
of Gullah was thrown down by a wind from the Gulf of Ghosts. The loon
which is messenger to the Four Brothers of the Night flew swiftly and
whispered your name in my ear. Your head will hang in the altar-hut of
my brother. Your body will be eaten by the black-winged, sharp-beaked
Children of Jhil.'
'Who the devil is your brother?' demanded Conan. His sword was naked in
his hand, and he was subtly loosening the ax in his belt.
'Zogar Sag; a child of Jhebbal Sag who still visits his sacred groves at
times. A woman of Gwawela slept in a grove holy to Jhebbal Sag. Her babe
was Zogar Sag. I too am a son of Jhebbal Sag, out of a fire-being from a
far realm. Zogar Sag summoned me out of the Misty Lands. With
incantations and sorcery and his own blood he materialized me in the
flesh of his own planet. We are one, tied together by invisible threads.
His thoughts are my thoughts; if he is struck, I am bruised. If I am
cut, he bleeds. But I have talked enough. Soon your ghost will talk with
the ghosts of the Dark Land, and they will tell you of the old gods
which are not dead, but sleep in the outer abysses, and from time to
time awake.'
'I'd like to see what you look like,' muttered Conan, working his ax
free, 'you who leave a track like a bird, who burn like a flame and yet
speak with a human voice.'
'You shall see,' answered the voice from the flame, 'see, and carry the
knowledge with you into the Dark Land.'
The flames leaped and sank, dwindling and dimming. A face began to take
shadowy form. At first Conan thought it was Zogar Sag himself who stood
wrapped in green fire. But the face was higher than his own and there
was a demoniac aspect about it--Conan had noted various abnormalities
about Zogar Sag's features--an obliqueness of the eyes, a sharpness of
the ears, a wolfish thinness of the lips; these peculiarities were
exaggerated in the apparition which swayed before him. The eyes were red
as coals of living fire.
More details came into view: a slender torso, covered with snaky scales,
which was yet man-like in shape, with man-like arms, from the waist
upward; below, long crane-like legs ended in splay, three-toed feet like
those of some huge bird. Along the monstrous limbs the blue fire
fluttered and ran. He saw it as through a glistening mist.
Then suddenly it was towering over him, though he had not seen it move
toward him. A long arm, which for the first time he noticed was armed
with curving, sickle-like talons, swung high and swept down at his neck.
With a fierce cry he broke the spell and bounded aside, hurling his ax.
The demon avoided the cast with an unbelievably quick movement of its
narrow head and was on him again with a hissing rush of leaping flames.
But fear had fought for it when it slew its other victims, and Conan was
not afraid. He knew that any being clothed in material flesh can be
slain by material weapons, however grisly its form may be.
One flailing talon-armed limb knocked his helmet from his head. A little
lower and it would have decapitated him. But fierce joy surged through
him as his savagely driven sword sank deep in the monster's groin. He
bounded backward from a flailing stroke, tearing his sword free as he
leaped. The talons raked his breast, ripping through mail-links as if
they had been cloth. But his return spring was like that of a starving
wolf. He was inside the lashing arms and driving his sword deep in the
monster's belly--felt the arms lock about him and the talons ripping the
mail from his back as they sought his vitals--he was lapped and dazzled
by blue flame that was chill as ice--then he had torn fiercely away from
the weakening arms and his sword cut the air in a tremendous swipe.
The demon staggered and fell sprawling sidewise, its head hanging only
by a shred of flesh. The fires that veiled it leaped fiercely upward,
now red as gushing blood, hiding the figure from view. A scent of
burning flesh filled Conan's nostrils. Shaking the blood and sweat from
his eyes, he wheeled and ran staggering through the woods. Blood
trickled down his limbs. Somewhere, miles to the south, he saw the faint
glow of flames that might mark a burning cabin. Behind him, toward the
road, rose a distant howling that spurred him to greater efforts.