The sun was well up when Yasmina awoke. She did not start and stare
blankly, wondering where she was. She awoke with full knowledge of all
that had occurred. Her supple limbs were stiff from her long ride, and
her firm flesh seemed to feel the contact of the muscular arm that had
borne her so far.
She was lying on a sheepskin covering a pallet of leaves on a
hard-beaten dirt floor. A folded sheepskin coat was under her head, and
she was wrapped in a ragged cloak. She was in a large room, the walls of
which were crudely but strongly built of uncut rocks, plastered with
sun-baked mud. Heavy beams supported a roof of the same kind, in which
showed a trap-door up to which led a ladder. There were no windows in
the thick walls, only loop-holes. There was one door, a sturdy bronze
affair that must have been looted from some Vendhyan border tower.
Opposite it was a wide opening in the wall, with no door, but several
strong wooden bars in place. Beyond them Yasmina saw a magnificent black
stallion munching a pile of dried grass. The building was fort,
dwelling-place and stable in one.
At the other end of the room a girl in the vest and baggy trousers of a
hill-woman squatted beside a small fire, cooking strips of meat on an
iron grid laid over blocks of stone. There was a sooty cleft in the wall
a few feet from the floor, and some of the smoke found its way out
there. The rest floated in blue wisps about the room.
The hill-girl glanced at Yasmina over her shoulder, displaying a bold,
handsome face, and then continued her cooking. Voices boomed outside;
then the door was kicked open, and Conan strode in. He looked more
enormous than ever with the morning sunlight behind him, and Yasmina
noted some details that had escaped her the night before. His garments
were clean and not ragged. The broad Bakhariot girdle that supported his
knife in its ornamented scabbard would have matched the robes of a
prince, and there was a glint of fine Turanian mail under his shirt.
'Your captive is awake, Conan,' said the Wazuli girl, and he grunted,
strode up to the fire and swept the strips of mutton off into a stone
dish.
The squatting girl laughed up at him, with some spicy jest, and he
grinned wolfishly, and hooking a toe under her haunches, tumbled her
sprawling onto the floor. She seemed to derive considerable amusement
from this bit of rough horse-play, but Conan paid no more heed to her.
Producing a great hunk of bread from somewhere, with a copper jug of
wine, he carried the lot to Yasmina, who had risen from her pallet and
was regarding him doubtfully.
'Rough fare for a Devi, girl, but our best,' he grunted. 'It will fill
your belly, at least.'
He set the platter on the floor, and she was suddenly aware of a
ravenous hunger. Making no comment, she seated herself cross-legged on
the floor, and taking the dish in her lap, she began to eat, using her
fingers, which were all she had in the way of table utensils. After all,
adaptability is one of the tests of true aristocracy. Conan stood
looking down at her, his thumbs hooked in his girdle. He never sat
cross-legged, after the Eastern fashion.
'Where am I?' she asked abruptly.
'In the hut of Yar Afzal, the chief of the Khurum Wazulis,' he answered.
'Afghulistan lies a good many miles farther on to the west. We'll hide
here awhile. The Kshatriyas are beating up the hills for you--several of
their squads have been cut up by the tribes already.'
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Keep you until Chunder Shan is willing to trade back my seven
cow-thieves,' he grunted. 'Women of the Wazulis are crushing ink out of
_shoki_ leaves, and after a while you can write a letter to the
governor.'
A touch of her old imperious wrath shook her, as she thought how
maddeningly her plans had gone awry, leaving her captive of the very man
she had plotted to get into her power. She flung down the dish, with the
remnants of her meal, and sprang to her feet, tense with anger.
'I will not write a letter! If you do not take me back, they will hang
your seven men, and a thousand more besides!'
The Wazuli girl laughed mockingly, Conan scowled, and then the door
opened and Yar Afzal came swaggering in. The Wazuli chief was as tall as
Conan, and of greater girth, but he looked fat and slow beside the hard
compactness of the Cimmerian. He plucked his red-stained beard and
stared meaningly at the Wazuli girl, and that wench rose and scurried
out without delay. Then Yar Afzal turned to his guest.
'The damnable people murmur, Conan,' quoth he. 'They wish me to murder
you and take the girl to hold for ransom. They say that anyone can tell
by her garments that she is a noble lady. They say why should the
Afghuli dogs profit by her, when it is the people who take the risk of
guarding her?'
'Lend me your horse,' said Conan. 'I'll take her and go.'
'Pish!' boomed Yar Afzal. 'Do you think I can't handle my own people?
I'll have them dancing in their shirts if they cross me! They don't love
you--or any other outlander--but you saved my life once, and I will not
forget. Come out, though, Conan; a scout has returned.'
Conan hitched at his girdle and followed the chief outside. They closed
the door after them, and Yasmina peeped through a loop-hole. She looked
out on a level space before the hut. At the farther end of that space
there was a cluster of mud and stone huts, and she saw naked children
playing among the boulders, and the slim erect women of the hills going
about their tasks.
Directly before the chief's hut a circle of hairy, ragged men squatted,
facing the door. Conan and Yar Afzal stood a few paces before the door,
and between them and the ring of warriors another man sat cross-legged.
This one was addressing his chief in the harsh accents of the Wazuli
which Yasmina could scarcely understand, though as part of her royal
education she had been taught the languages of Iranistan and the kindred
tongues of Ghulistan.
'I talked with a Dagozai who saw the riders last night,' said the scout.
'He was lurking near when they came to the spot where we ambushed the
lord Conan. He overheard their speech. Chunder Shan was with them. They
found the dead horse, and one of the men recognized it as Conan's. Then
they found the man Conan slew, and knew him for a Wazuli. It seemed to
them that Conan had been slain and the girl taken by the Wazuli; so they
turned aside from their purpose of following to Afghulistan. But they
did not know from which village the dead man was come, and we had left
no trail a Kshatriya could follow.
'So they rode to the nearest Wazuli village, which was the village of
Jugra, and burnt it and slew many of the people. But the men of Khojur
came upon them in darkness and slew some of them, and wounded the
governor. So the survivors retired down the Zhaibar in the darkness
before dawn, but they returned with reinforcements before sunrise, and
there has been skirmishing and fighting in the hills all morning. It is
said that a great army is being raised to sweep the hills about the
Zhaibar. The tribes are whetting their knives and laying ambushes in
every pass from here to Gurashah valley. Moreover, Kerim Shah has
returned to the hills.'
A grunt went around the circle, and Yasmina leaned closer to the
loop-hole at the name she had begun to mistrust.
'Where went he?' demanded Yar Afzal.
'The Dagozai did not know; with him were thirty Irakzai of the lower
villages. They rode into the hills and disappeared.'
'These Irakzai are jackals that follow a lion for crumbs,' growled Yar
Afzal. 'They have been lapping up the coins Kerim Shah scatters among
the border tribes to buy men like horses. I like him not, for all he is
our kinsman from Iranistan.'
'He's not even that,' said Conan. 'I know him of old. He's an Hyrkanian,
a spy of Yezdigerd's. If I catch him I'll hang his hide to a tamarisk.'
'But the Kshatriyas!' clamored the men in the semicircle. 'Are we to
squat on our haunches until they smoke us out? They will learn at last
in which Wazuli village the wench is held. We are not loved by the
Zhaibari; they will help the Kshatriyas hunt us out.'
'Let them come,' grunted Yar Afzal. 'We can hold the defiles against a
host.'
One of the men leaped up and shook his fist at Conan.
'Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?' he howled.
'Are we to fight his battles for him?'
With a stride Conan reached him and bent slightly to stare full into his
hairy face. The Cimmerian had not drawn his long knife, but his left
hand grasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward.
'I ask no man to fight my battles,' he said softly. 'Draw your blade if
you dare, you yapping dog!'
The Wazuli started back, snarling like a cat.
'Dare to touch me and here are fifty men to rend you apart!' he
screeched.
'What!' roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling with wrath. His whiskers
bristled, his belly swelled with his rage. 'Are you chief of Khurum? Do
the Wazulis take orders from Yar Afzal, or from a low-bred cur?'
The man cringed before his invincible chief, and Yar Afzal, striding up
to him, seized him by the throat and choked him until his face was
turning black. Then he hurled the man savagely against the ground and
stood over him with his tulwar in his hand.
'Is there any who questions my authority?' he roared, and his warriors
looked down sullenly as his bellicose glare swept their semicircle. Yar
Afzal grunted scornfully and sheathed his weapon with a gesture that was
the apex of insult. Then he kicked the fallen agitator with a
concentrated vindictiveness that brought howls from his victim.
'Get down the valley to the watchers on the heights and bring word if
they have seen anything,' commanded Yar Afzal, and the man went, shaking
with fear and grinding his teeth with fury.
Yar Afzal then seated himself ponderously on a stone, growling in his
beard. Conan stood near him, legs braced apart, thumbs hooked in his
girdle, narrowly watching the assembled warriors. They stared at him
sullenly, not daring to brave Yar Afzal's fury, but hating the foreigner
as only a hillman can hate.
'Now listen to me, you sons of nameless dogs, while I tell you what the
lord Conan and I have planned to fool the Kshatriyas.' The boom of Yar
Afzal's bull-like voice followed the discomfited warrior as he slunk
away from the assembly.
The man passed by the cluster of huts, where women who had seen his
defeat laughed at him and called stinging comments, and hastened on
along the trail that wound among spurs and rocks toward the valley head.
Just as he rounded the first turn that took him out of sight of the
village, he stopped short, gaping stupidly. He had not believed it
possible for a stranger to enter the valley of Khurum without being
detected by the hawk-eyed watchers along the heights; yet a man sat
cross-legged on a low ledge beside the path--a man in a camel-hair robe
and a green turban.
The Wazuli's mouth gaped for a yell, and his hand leaped to his
knife-hilt. But at that instant his eyes met those of the stranger and
the cry died in his throat, his fingers went limp. He stood like a
statue, his own eyes glazed and vacant.
For minutes the scene held motionless; then the man on the ledge drew a
cryptic symbol in the dust on the rock with his forefinger. The Wazuli
did not see him place anything within the compass of that emblem, but
presently something gleamed there--a round, shiny black ball that looked
like polished jade. The man in the green turban took this up and tossed
it to the Wazuli, who mechanically caught it.
'Carry this to Yar Afzal,' he said, and the Wazuli turned like an
automaton and went back along the path, holding the black jade ball in
his outstretched hand. He did not even turn his head to the renewed
jeers of the women as he passed the huts. He did not seem to hear.
The man on the ledge gazed after him with a cryptic smile. A girl's head
rose above the rim of the ledge and she looked at him with admiration
and a touch of fear that had not been present the night before.
'Why did you do that?' she asked.
He ran his fingers through her dark locks caressingly.
'Are you still dizzy from your flight on the horse-of-air, that you
doubt my wisdom?' he laughed. 'As long as Yar Afzal lives, Conan will
bide safe among the Wazuli fighting-men. Their knives are sharp, and
there are many of them. What I plot will be safer, even for me, than to
seek to slay him and take her from among them. It takes no wizard to
predict what the Wazulis will do, and what Conan will do, when my victim
hands the globe of Yezud to the chief of Khurum.'
* * * * *
Back before the hut, Yar Afzal halted in the midst of some tirade,
surprized and displeased to see the man he had sent up the valley,
pushing his way through the throng.
'I bade you go to the watchers!' the chief bellowed. 'You have not had
time to come from them.'
The other did not reply; he stood woodenly, staring vacantly into the
chief's face, his palm outstretched holding the jade ball. Conan,
looking over Yar Afzal's shoulder, murmured something and reached to
touch the chief's arm, but as he did so, Yar Afzal, in a paroxysm of
anger, struck the man with his clenched fist and felled him like an ox.
As he fell, the jade sphere rolled to Yar Afzal's foot, and the chief,
seeming to see it for the first time, bent and picked it up. The men,
staring perplexedly at their senseless comrade, saw their chief bend,
but they did not see what he picked up from the ground.
Yar Afzal straightened, glanced at the jade, and made a motion to thrust
it into his girdle.
'Carry that fool to his hut,' he growled. 'He has the look of a
lotus-eater. He returned me a blank stare. I--_aie!_'
In his right hand, moving toward his girdle, he had suddenly felt
movement where movement should not be. His voice died away as he stood
and glared at nothing; and inside his clenched right hand he felt the
quivering of _change_, of _motion_, of _life_. He no longer held a
smooth shining sphere in his fingers. And he dared not look; his tongue
clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not open his hand. His
astonished warriors saw Yar Afzal's eyes distend, the color ebb from his
face. Then suddenly a bellow of agony burst from his bearded lips; he
swayed and fell as if struck by lightning, his right arm tossed out in
front of him. Face down he lay, and from between his opening fingers
crawled a spider--a hideous, black, hairy-legged monster whose body
shone like black jade. The men yelled and gave back suddenly, and the
creature scuttled into a crevice of the rocks and disappeared.
The warriors started up, glaring wildly, and a voice rose above their
clamor, a far-carrying voice of command which came from none knew where.
Afterward each man there--who still lived--denied that he had shouted,
but all there heard it.
'Yar Afzal is dead! Kill the outlander!'
That shout focused their whirling minds as one. Doubt, bewilderment and
fear vanished in the uproaring surge of the blood-lust. A furious yell
rent the skies as the tribesmen responded instantly to the suggestion.
They came headlong across the open space, cloaks flapping, eyes blazing,
knives lifted.
Conan's action was as quick as theirs. As the voice shouted he sprang
for the hut door. But they were closer to him than he was to the door,
and with one foot on the sill he had to wheel and parry the swipe of a
yard-long blade. He split the man's skull--ducked another swinging knife
and gutted the wielder--felled a man with his left fist and stabbed
another in the belly--and heaved back mightily against the closed door
with his shoulders. Hacking blades were nicking chips out of the jambs
about his ears, but the door flew open under the impact of his
shoulders, and he went stumbling backward into the room. A bearded
tribesman, thrusting with all his fury as Conan sprang back, overreached
and pitched head-first through the doorway. Conan stopped, grasped the
slack of his garments and hauled him clear, and slammed the door in the
faces of the men who came surging into it. Bones snapped under the
impact, and the next instant Conan slammed the bolts into place and
whirled with desperate haste to meet the man who sprang from the floor
and tore into action like a madman.
Yasmina cowered in a corner, staring in horror as the two men fought
back and forth across the room, almost trampling her at times; the flash
and clangor of their blades filled the room, and outside the mob
clamored like a wolf-pack, hacking deafeningly at the bronze door with
their long knives, and dashing huge rocks against it. Somebody fetched a
tree trunk, and the door began to stagger under the thunderous assault.
Yasmina clasped her ears, staring wildly. Violence and fury within,
cataclysmic madness without. The stallion in his stall neighed and
reared, thundering with his heels against the walls. He wheeled and
launched his hoofs through the bars just as the tribesman, backing away
from Conan's murderous swipes, stumbled against them. His spine cracked
in three places like a rotten branch and he was hurled headlong against
the Cimmerian, bearing him backward so that they both crashed to the
beaten floor.
Yasmina cried out and ran forward; to her dazed sight it seemed that
both were slain. She reached them just as Conan threw aside the corpse
and rose. She caught his arm, trembling from head to foot.
'Oh, you live! I thought--I thought you were dead!'
He glanced down at her quickly, into the pale, upturned face and the
wide staring dark eyes.
'Why are you trembling?' he demanded. 'Why should you care if I live or
die?'
A vestige of her poise returned to her, and she drew away, making a
rather pitiful attempt at playing the Devi.
'You are preferable to those wolves howling without,' she answered,
gesturing toward the door, the stone sill of which was beginning to
splinter away.
'That won't hold long,' he muttered, then turned and went swiftly to the
stall of the stallion.
Yasmina clenched her hands and caught her breath as she saw him tear
aside the splintered bars and go into the stall with the maddened beast.
The stallion reared above him, neighing terribly, hoofs lifted, eyes and
teeth flashing and ears laid back, but Conan leaped and caught his mane
with a display of sheer strength that seemed impossible, and dragged the
beast down on his forelegs. The steed snorted and quivered, but stood
still while the man bridled him and clapped on the gold-worked saddle,
with the wide silver stirrups.
Wheeling the beast around in the stall, Conan called quickly to Yasmina,
and the girl came, sidling nervously past the stallion's heels. Conan
was working at the stone wall, talking swiftly as he worked.
'A secret door in the wall here, that not even the Wazuli know about.
Yar Afzal showed it to me once when he was drunk. It opens out into the
mouth of the ravine behind the hut. Ha!'
As he tugged at a projection that seemed casual, a whole section of the
wall slid back on oiled iron runners. Looking through, the girl saw a
narrow defile opening in a sheer stone cliff within a few feet of the
hut's back wall. Then Conan sprang into the saddle and hauled her up
before him. Behind them the great door groaned like a living thing and
crashed in, and a yell rang to the roof as the entrance was instantly
flooded with hairy faces and knives in hairy fists. And then the great
stallion went through the wall like a javelin from a catapult, and
thundered into the defile, running low, foam flying from the bit-rings.
That move came as an absolute surprize to the Wazulis. It was a
surprize, too, to those stealing down the ravine. It happened so
quickly--the hurricane-like charge of the great horse--that a man in a
green turban was unable to get out of the way. He went down under the
frantic hoofs, and a girl screamed. Conan got one glimpse of her as they
thundered by--a slim, dark girl in silk trousers and a jeweled
breast-band, flattening herself against the ravine wall. Then the black
horse and his riders were gone up the gorge like the spume blown before
a storm, and the men who came tumbling through the wall into the defile
after them met that which changed their yells of blood-lust to shrill
screams of fear and death.