“Two to one he fails,” Aberius cried. “Three to one!” Men eyed Conan’s massive chest and shoulders, weighed the odds, and crowded around the weasel-faced man.
Conan squatted low to get his arms below the largest part of the big stone. As his fingers felt for purchase on the rough sphere, he found Sitha’s frowning gaze on him.
With a sudden roar, the big Cimmerian heaved. His mighty thews corded, and his joints popped with the strain. The muscles of his broad back stood out in stark relief, and his massive arms knotted. Slowly he straightened, every fiber quivering as he came fully erect. His eyes met Sitha’s once more, and snarling, the S’tarra took a backward step. With great effort Conan stepped forward, back bowed under the strain. He took another step.
“Conan,” someone said softly, and another voice repeated, louder, “Conan!”
Teeth bared by lips drawn back in a rictus of effort, Conan went forward. Now his eyes were locked on the stone Sitha had carried.
Two more voices took up the cry. “Conan!” Five more. “Conan!” Ten. “Conan!” The shouts were flung back from the mountain slopes as a score of throats hurled forth their chant with his every step. “Conan! Conan! Conan!”
He came level with the other stone, took one step more, and let the great sphere fall with a thunderous thud that every man there felt in his feet. Conan’s shoulder joints creaked as he straightened, looking at Sitha. “Will you try to take my stone back?”
Cheering bandits darted between a glowering Aberius, parting with all his former winnings and more, and Conan, some clasping his hand, others merely wanting to touch his arm. Sitha’s hands twitched in front of its chest as if clutching for the thick haft of a battle-ax.
Of a sudden the bronzen tones of a great gong broke from the fortress and echoed down the valley. Sitha whirled at the first tone and broke into a run for the black keep. The gong pealed forth again, and again, its hollow resonance rolling against the mountains. Atop the ebon ramparts of the keep S’tarra ran.
“An attack?” Hordo said, bewildered. The bandits crowded in close behind the one-eyed man, their exuberance of moments before already dissipated. Some had drawn their swords.
Conan shook his head. “The portcullis is open, and I see no one near the ballistae or catapults. Whatever’s happening, though … .” He let his words trail off as Karela galloped up to face them, one fist on a scarlet thigh-boot.
“Are the lot of you responsible for this?” she demanded. “I heard all of you bellowing like oxen in a mire, then this infernal gong began.” As she spoke the tolling ceased, though the ghost of it seemed yet to hang in the air.
“We know no more than you,” Hordo replied.
“Then I’ll find out what’s happening,” she said.
“Karela,” Conan said, “do you not think it best to wait?”
Her green eyes raked him scornfully, and without a word she spun her horse and galloped toward the fortress. The big black’s hooves rang on the black granite of the ramp, and after a moment’s delay she was admitted.
Minutes later the portcullis opened once more. Sitha’s massive form, helmeted and bearing the great battle-ax, galloped through the gate, followed by paired columns of mounted S’tarra. Conan counted lances as they streamed down the incline and pounded across the valley towards a gorge leading north.
“Three hundred,” the Cimmerian said after the last S’tarra had disappeared. “More wayfarers, do you think?”
“So long as it’s not us,” Hordo replied.
Slowly the bandits returned to the cold ashes of their campfires, breaking into twos and threes to cast lots or dice. Aberius began maneuvering three clay cups and a pebble atop a flat rock, trying to entice back some of the silver he had lost. Conan settled with his back to a tilted needle of stone, where he could watch both the keep and the gorge into which Sitha had led the S’tarra. The day stretched long and flat, and except when Hordo brought him meat and cheese and a leather flagon of thin wine Conan did not change his position.
As the sanguinary sun sank on the western mountain peaks, the S’tarra returned, galloping from the same knife-sharp slash in the valley by which they had left.
“No casualties,” Hordo said, coming up beside Conan as the S’tarra appeared.
Conan, once more counting lances, nodded. “But they took … something.” Twenty riderless horses were roped together in the middle of the column, each bearing a long bundle strapped across it.
A spark of light in the east caught the Cimmerian’s eye, a momentary glitter that flashed against the shadows of mountains already caught in twilight and was gone. It flashed again. Frowning, he studied the slopes around the valley. High above them, to the north, another spark flared and was gone.
“Think you Amanar knows the valley is watched?” Hordo asked.
“You use that eye,” Conan said approvingly. The S’tarra rode up the long incline to the fortress, the portcullis creaking open to let them ride in without slowing. “I worry more about who does the watching.”
The one-eyed brigand let out a long, low whistle between his teeth. “Who? Now that’s a kettle of porridge to set your teeth on edge.”
Conan knew the choices of who it could be—hillmen, the army, Zamoran or Turanian, or Imhep-Aton—but he was not certain which would be worst for him and for the bandits, or even if those two would be the same. Time ran short for him. “I mean to bring Velita out of the keep tonight, Hordo. It may mean trouble for you, but I must do it.”
“I’ve half a memory of you saying as much last night,” Hordo mused. Karela appeared, riding slowly down the ramp from the fortress. “Almost I wish you would, Cimmerian. ’Twould give he excuse to get her away from this place, away from the sorcerer.”
Karela reached the bottom of the ramp and turned her big black toward the camp. She rode with one fist on her hip, her callimastian form swaying with the motion of the horse. The bloody sun was half obscured behind the peaks, now, yet enough remained to bathe her face in a golden glow.
“And if she will not go,” Conan said, “you’ll follow where she leads, be it a hillman’s torture fire or Amanar’s diabolic servitude.”
“No more,” Hordo replied sadly. “My last service to the Red Hawk, and it must be so, will be to tie her to her saddle and take her to safety.” His voice hardened suddenly. “But it will be me, Conan. No other will raise a hand to her while Hordo yet lives. Not even you.”
Conan met the fierce single-eyed gaze levelly. On the one hand, an oath not lift a hand to save her; on the other, how could he stand and watch her die? It was a cleft stick that held his tongue.
Karela reined in before the two men, raising a hand to shield her eyes as she peered at the mountain-shrouded sun. “I had not realized I was so long with Amanar,” she murmured, shifting her green eyes to them. “Why are you two glaring at each other like a pair of badgers? I thought you now were almost fraternal in your amity.”
“We stand in concord, Hordo and I,” Conan said. He stretched up his hand, and the other man grasped it, pulling him to his feet.
“We’ll give them a good turn, eh, Cimmerian,” Hordo said, “before we go under.”
“We’ll drink from golden goblets in Aghrapur yet,” Conan replied soberly.
“What do you two babble about?” Karela demanded. “Gather my hounds, Hordo. I’ll speak to them before that accursed dark comes on us.”
With a quick nod Hordo darted ahead to assemble the bandits. Karela looked at Conan as if she wanted to speak, then the moment passed. There was much to say, he thought, but he would not speak first. He started after Hordo, and moments later heard her horse following slowly. She made no effort to catch up.
XXIII
“Do you want gold?” Karela shouted. “Well, do you?”
She stood atop a boulder as high as a man’s head, crimson-thigh-booted feet well apart, fists on hips, her hair an auburn mane. She was magnificent, Conan thought, from his place at the back of the semicircle of brigands
who listened to her. Just looking at her was still enough to make his mouth grow dry.
“We want gold,” Reza muttered. A few others echoed him. Most watched silently. Aberius had a thoughtful look in his beady eyes, making him look even more sly and malicious than usual. Hordo stood beside the flat-topped boulder, keeping a worried watch on the brigands and Karela both. The fires of the camp surrounded them, holding off the twilight.
“Do you like being chased into hiding by the army?” she cried.
“No!” half a dozen voices growled.
“Do you like spending half a year at guards’ wages?”
“No!” a dozen shouted back at her.
“Well, do you know the caravan route is less than half a day south of here? Do you know that a caravan is coming along that route, bound for Sultanapur? Do you know that in three days time we’ll take that caravan?”
Roars of approval broke from every throat. Except Aberius, Conan noted. While the others waved fists in the air, shouted and pounded each other on the shoulder, Aberius’ look grew more thoughtful, more furtive.
“And the army won’t hound us,” she went on loudly, “because we’ll come back here till they give up. The Zamoran Army are not men enough to follow where we go!”
The cheering went on. The bandits were too caught up in imagining the Zamorans less brave than they to think too closely on how brave they themselves were. Karela raised her hands above her head and basked in their adulation.
Hordo left his place by the boulder and came around to where Conan stood. “Once more, Cimmerian, she has us in the palm of her hand. You don’t suppose this could … .”
Conan shrugged as the one-eyed man trailed off doubtfully. “You must do as you will.” Hordo still looked uncertain. Conan sighed. He would not like seeing the burly bandit dead. Purple twilight was already giving way, night falling as if the inky air had jelled. The bandits around Karela continued their cheering. “I’ll be away, now,” the Cimmerian went on, “before they notice my going.”
“Fare you well,” Hordo said quietly.
Conan slipped into the caliginous night. Scudding clouds obscured the lustrous moon as he hurried along the stony slope. Before the full mantle of night enfolded that tenebrous vale, he wanted to be as close to the walls of the fortress as he could.
Abruptly he stopped, broadsword coming firmly into his hand. No sound had reached his ear, no glimmer of motion caught his eye, but senses he could not describe told him there was something ahead of him.
The darkness ahead seemed suddenly to split, fold and thicken, and there was an elongated shadow where there had been none. “How did you know?” came Imhep-Aton’s low voice. “No matter. Truly now your usefulness is ended. Your pitiful efforts are futile, but as a rat scurrying beneath the feet of warrior in battle may cause him to trip and die, so may you discommode those greater than yourself.”
The darkling shape moved toward Conan. He could see no weapon but an outstretched hand.
Of a sudden rock behind him grated beneath a boot. Conan dropped to a full squat, felt rather than saw a pike thrust pass above his head. Grasping his sword hilt with both hands he pivoted on his left foot, striking for where the pike-wielder must be. He felt the point of his blade bite through chain mail and flesh at the same moment that he saw his attacker’s red eyes glowing in the night. The falling pike struck him on the shoulder, the rubiate glow faded, and he was tugging his sword free of a collapsing body.
Desperately Conan spun back, expecting at any moment to feel the sting of Imhep-Aton’s steel, but before him he saw three shadowy shapes now, locked in combat. A sibilant shriek broke and was cut off, and one of the shadows fell. The other two fought on.
A cascade of small stones skittering down the slope heralded the arrival of more S’tarra. On the fortress walls torches began to move, and the great gong tolled into the dark. The portcullis began to clank noisily open.
Conan could see two pairs of glowing eyes now, approaching him slowly, well separated. Could the beings see in that dark, he wondered. Could they recognize him? He would not take the chance. The shining sanguinary eyes were located thusly, he calculated, so the pikes must be held so.
Silently, with a prayer to Bel, god of thieves, the Cimmerian sprang toward the closer S’tarra, his sword arcking down for where he hoped the pike was. With a solid chunk his blade bit into a wooden pike-haft. He kicked with the ball of his foot, and got a hissing grunt in reply. Reversing the swing of his broadsword, he spun it up and then down for the joining of neck and shoulder. The grunt became a scream.
Conan threw himself to one side as the second pike slashed along his ribs. The dying S‘tarra grappled with him as it fell, pulling him to the ground. The other stood over him, triumph heightening the glow of its eyes. A howl burst from its fanged mouth as the Cimmerian’s steel severed its leg at the knee, and the S’tarra fell beside the first. There was no time for precision. Like a cleaver Conan’s blade split between those red eyes.
From the fortress pounding feet were drawing nearer. Quickly Conan jerked his sword free and ran into the night. The bandit camp had been roused as well. As he ran closer he could see them gathered at the edge of the light from their fires, peering toward the keep, where the gong still sounded. He circled around the camp and, cutting a piece from his breechclout, wiped his sword and sheathed it before striding in.
The brigands’ eyes were all toward the sounds of S’tarra approaching; none but Hordo saw him enter. Conan tossed the scrap of rag, stained with black blood, into a fire and snatched a cloak from his blankets to settle around his shoulders and hide the gash in his side.
“What happened?” Hordo whispered as Conan joined the others. “You’re wounded!”
“I never reached the keep,” Conan replied quietly. “S‘tarra were waiting. And I discovered who watched from the mountain.” He remembered the second light. “As least, I think I did. Later,” he added as the other started to question him further. S’tarra were entering the camp, Sitha at their head.
The bandits backed away, muttering, as the reptilian creatures strode into the firelight. Only Karela stood her ground. Arms crossed beneath her round breasts, the red-haired woman confronted the massive bulk of Sitha. “Why do you come here?” she demanded.
“S’tarra have been slain this night,” Sitha replied. Its crimson eyes ran arrogantly from her ankles to her face. “I will search your camp and question your men to see if any were involved.” The bandits’ muttering became angry; sword hilts were grasped.
“You may die trying,” Karela said coldly. “I’ll not have my camp searched by such as you. And if your master has questions, I’ll answer them of him, but not of his cattle.” She spat the last word, and Sitha quivered, claw-tipped hands working convulsively on the haft of the huge battle-ax.
“You may find,” Sitha hissed malevolently, “that answering questions for my master is even less pleasant than answering them for me.” It spun abruptly on its heel and stalked from the circle of light, followed by the rest of the S’tarra.
When the last of them disappeared into the dark, Karela turned to face the bandits. “If any of you were involved in this,” she said sharply, “I’ll have your ears.” Without another word she strode through them and disappeared into her striped pavilion.
Hordo let out a long breath and pulled Conan aside. “Now what happened out there?” The brigands were breaking up into small knots, discussing the night’s events in low voices. Aberius stood alone, watching Conan and Hordo.
“I slew three S’tarra,” Conan said, “and Imhep-Aton slew two. Or was perhaps himself slain, but I don’t believe that.”
Hordo grunted. “He who sent the man Crato against you? A second sorcerer in this Mitraforsaken valley is ill news indeed. I must tell her.”
Conan grabbed the one-eyed man’s arm. “Don’t. She may well tell Amanar, and I do not think these two have any good will towards each other. Whatever comes between them may give you the chance to get
her away from here.”
“As with the hillmen and the soldiers,” Hordo said slowly, “you will bring the two to combat while we slip away. But I think me being caught between two sorcerers may be worse than being caught between the others.” He barked a short laugh. “I tell you again, Cimmerian, if you live, you’ll be a general. Mayhap even a king. Men have risen from lower stations to become such.”
“I have no desire to be a king,” Conan laughed. “I’m a thief. And Imhep-Aton, at least, has no animosity toward you or Karela.” Though the same, he reflected, could hardly be said of himself. “The keep is too much stirred for me to enter this night. I fear Velita must bear another day of Amanar. Come, let us find a bandage for my side and a flagon of wine.”
Speaking quietly together the two men walked deeper into the bandit camp. Aberius watched them go, tugging at his lower lip in deep thought. Finally he nodded to himself and darted into the night.
XXIV
The sun, Conan estimated, stood well past the zenith. It was the day after his fight with the S‘tarra, and Karela was once more closeted with Amanar for the entire morning. The bandits slept or drank or gambled, forgetting the ill of the night in the light of the sun. Conan sat cross-legged on the ground, honing his blade as he watched the black keep. To conceal his bandaged wound, he had donned a black tunic that covered him to below the hips. He lay the blade across his knees as a S’tarra approached.
“You are called Conan of Cimmeria?” the creature hissed.
“I am,” Conan replied.
“She who is called Karela asks that you come to her.”
There had been no further attempt to question the bandits about the occurrences in the night. Conan could not see how he might be connected with them now. He rose and sheathed his sword.
“Lead,” he commanded.
The big Cimmerian tensed while passing through the gate, but the guards gave him no more than a flicker of their lifeless red eyes. In the donjon the S‘tarra led him a way he did not know, to huge doors that Conan realized to his shock were of burnished gold. A great reptilian head was worked in each, surrounded by what appeared to be rays of light. The S’tarra struck a small silver gong hanging from the wall. Conan’s neckhairs stirred at the great doors swung open with no human agency that he could see. The S’tarra gestured for him to enter.