Conan the Avenger Part 15

She shook her raven tresses and turned her dark, liquid eyes on the inscrutable face of the Cimmerian. "I know now that I need a consort.

Rule Vendhya with me, Conan! Tomorrow we'll announce our betrothal; within a month there will be nuptial feasts and ceremonies such as have not taken place in Vendhya for a hundred years! I love you, my chieftain!"

She embraced him hotly, straining with her vigorous, slim young body against his, covering his lips with kisses, until his senses swam. But he shook his head and thrust her gently from him. He held her at arm's length.

"Crom knows, la.s.s, that you make a tempting offer," he rumbled. "Few women have I seen so beautiful as you, nor so wise. Any man blessed with your hand in marriage would count himself the favorite of a hundred G.o.ds. Ten years ago, when I was a wandering soldier of fortune, I would perhaps have accepted. Now I cannot. I have my own kingdom now, Aquilonia in the West, the mightiest realm in the world. But my queen has been stolen from me by an evil magician in Khitai, and I have sworn an oath to get her back. I should not be a man if I did not keep my vow. Marry one of your own people. They would rather be ruled by a king of their own blood. Tomorrow I ride for the Himelians."

There was misty tenderness and vast love in the deep, br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes of Yasmina as she regarded him. "The G.o.ds give happiness only to s.n.a.t.c.h it away. Mayhap that is as well, or life would be nothing but happiness, and we should lack the contrasts to know what real happiness means."

Her eyes cleared, and a queer, half-whimsical smile played upon her lips. "You will go tomorrow. But there are several hours left until dawn. Let us spend them in a more profitable way than talking!"

They locked again in a fierce embrace, while the stars shone coldly upon the dead, gla.s.sy-eyed faces of the foiled a.s.sa.s.sins.

7. The Demon of the Snows -------------------------.

The man slunk silently along the snow-covered trail. His body was bent forward; his eyes scanned the ground, and his nostrils widened like those of a hound on the scent. No man had ever before been where he now stalked; at least, none had been there and returned to tell about it.

Mist-veiled and mysterious were the icy upper wastes of the mighty Himelian mountains.

Zelvar Af had been hunting alone when he happened upon the odd tracks in the snow. Wide, splayed footprints were pressed deeply down at distances of at least four feet denoting the size of the creature that made them. Zelvar Af had never seen anything like them; but his memory stirred with the recollection of ghastly legends told in the thatched huts of the hill villages by white-bearded old men.

With primitive recklessness, Zelvar Af shrugged off the glimmerings of fear. True, he was alone and several days' journey from home. But was he not the foremost hunter of the Wamadzi? The double curve of his powerful Hyrkanian bow brought rea.s.surance as he clutched it with his eyes searching. He moved cat-footed on the trail.

It was no manifestation of sound or sight that made him stop. The white slopes stretched upward before him in snowy magnificence. Other mighty ranges could be seen far off in jagged silhouette. No sign of life showed anywhere. But an icy, creeping feeling suddenly filled his mind-the feeling that something arisen from dreadful tales of horrible beings from dark borderlands. He wheeled in a flash, his brown hand whipping out his heavy Zhaibar knife.

His blood froze in his veins. His eyes opened in awful terror at the sight of the giant white shape that glided toward him over the snow. No features could be discerned in the white face of the horribly manlike figure, but its swift glide brought it straight to its petrified victim. With a scream of terror, Zelvar swung his blade. Then the icy embrace of the smothering white arms swept around him. Silence reigned again in the vast white reaches.

"By thunder, it is good to be among hillmen again!"

The words were stressed by a bang on the rough wooden table with a half-gnawed beef bone. A score of men were gathered in the big hut of the chief of the Khirgulis: chiefs from neighboring villages and the foremost men of the Khirguli tribe. Wild and fierce they were. Clothed in st.u.r.dy hillman's sheepskin tunics and boots, they had doffed the huge fur coats worn against the cold of the upper ranges, displaying the barbaric splendor of Bakhariot belts and ivory-and-gold tulwar hilts.

The commanding figure was, however, none of these fierce mountaineers.

Conan the Cimmerian, in the place of honor, was the center of their attention. Long and varied was the tale he had told, for it was over a decade since his feet had last trod the winding paths of the Himelian crags.

"Yes, I think you will be little bothered by Turanians henceforth."

Flashes coruscated in the blue depths of Conan's eyes as he told his recent experiences. "I slew Yezdigerd on the deck of his flags.h.i.+p, as the blood of his men gushed round my ankles. His vast empire will be sundered and split by the feuds of Shahs and Aghas, as there is no successor to the throne."

The gray-bearded chief sighed. "We have seen little of the Turanians since the day you with your Afghulis and the Devi Yasmina with her Kshatriyas defeated their host in Femesh Valley. Nor have the riders of Vendhya bothered us; we keep a silent agreement of truce since that day, even refraining from raiding their caverns and outposts. I almost long for the old days of battle, when we rained stones upon their spired helmets and ambushed their mailed lancers from every cranny."

Conan smiled in reminiscence. But his thoughts dwelt on his recent visit to Vendhya. It was hard to push the picture of a slim, black-haired, tear-eyed woman out of his mind, as he remembered her standing on the palace wall, waving her silken veil as he thundered away toward the hazy mountains.

A portly, bearded chief cleared his throat. "We understand that you are on a pressing errand, Conan," he said. "But take our advice and go around the Talakman region. Strange and terrible things happen there, and it is whispered that the snow demons of the old myths are abroad again."

"What are these snow demons, that they send fear into the stout hearts of the men of Ghulistan?"

The chief bent lower and answered with a quaver in his voice. "Devils out of the nighted gulfs of the black abyss haunt the snowy reaches of Talakma. Men have been found with their bodies broken and mangled by something of terrible strength and ferocity. But the most horrible thing of all is that every corpse, no matter how recent, was frozen stiff to the core! Fingers and limbs are so brittle that they break of like icicles!"

"I thank you for the warning." Conan's voice was somber. "But I cannot pa.s.s around the Talakmas. It would cost me two months, and I must travel by the straightest path. My time is short."

Clamoring, they tried to dissuade him, but in vain. His stentorian voice beat upwards to tones of command, whereupon they all fell silent.

He rose heavily and went into the inner room to a bed covered with thick furs, while his companions lingered, shaking their heads and muttering in fearful tones.

The wind howled sadly as Conan made his way across the snowy vastness.

Gusts flung biting snow into his weather-beaten face, and the icy blasts pierced his thick fur coat. Slung from his shoulders was his pack, crammed with supplies for the long trek over the cold wastes, dried meat and coa.r.s.e bread. His breath stood out in a long plume from his nostrils.

For days he had been upon his way, traversing the snows with the easy, long-limbed hillman's stride that eats up the mountainous miles. At night he had slept in primitive snow caves, dug with the crude, broad-bladed shovel carried for the purpose, and at daybreak he hurried on again. Chasms gaped across his path. .Sometimes his muscular legs took them in a running broad jump. Sometimes he had to make a wide detour around the end of the chasm, or lower himself into the deeps with his climbing rope and scramble up the other side.

The snows were unbroken and almost deserted by living things. Once a hungry snow leopard charged him, but he broke the carnivore's attack with a ripping thrust of his Zhaibar knife. The animal tumbled to the ground, choking out its life in convulsions. He left it there to lie forever in the eternal cold.

As die snow-laden wind lessened, he wiped the icy particles from his brows, paused, and looked about him. Behind stretched the interminable plains of snow, broken by yawning abysses and jutting peaks, which lost themselves in the distance. Far in front, he dimly discerned the beginning of the downward slope of the mountains and the promise of an end to this grueling leg of his journey.

Then his sharp blue eyes espied something else. With sudden curiosity, Conan moved forward to investigate. He paused, looking down at the odd footprints that had caught his attention. Unlike any spoor he had ever seen, they looked a little like the tracks of a bear. But no bear ever left footprints so large, without claw marks and with those curiously splayed toes. They must have been made recently, for the drifting snow had only partly filled them. They led close by a towering, mountainous ma.s.s of ice. Conan followed the trail, alert as a stalking panther.

Even the Cimmerian's lightning quickness failed to avoid the monstrous white form that suddenly hurtled upon him from above. He had a glimpse of shapeless limbs and horribly featureless head. Then he was flung to the ground with such violence that the breath was knocked out of his lungs.

Because of his quick reaction, the snaky arms had not wholly enveloped him. His body had half-twisted out of their descending grip, though they grabbed him in a viselike clutch back and front.

He struggled madly to free his right hand and slash at his foe with the naked knife in his fist, but even his giant strength seemed like a babe's to the demoniac power of the monster. And then a horrible, featureless face bent forward, as if to stare straight into his eyes.

An abysmal chill began to envelop his body, and he felt a deadly tugging at the borders of his mind. In that amorphous terror he saw mirrored the abysmal evil of the darker gulfs where slavering things dwell, preying on human souls. Forces tore at the roots of his reason; icy drops of sweat sprang out on his forehead.

A weaker man would have succ.u.mbed to the evil of this unknown and overwhelming power, but the civilized layer was only a thin coating over Oman's barbarian reflexes. His animal instincts rushed to the fore of his mind. The urge to self-preservation made his muscles contract in one mighty effort. With a tearing of fur and clothing, he ripped his left hand free of the constraining whiteness and smashed into the blank visage facing him.

At the first blow, the monster uttered a shrill, ululating cry and slackened its grip.

The ring!

The ring of Rakhamon, the gift of Pelias, with unknown powers of magic and sorcery, that Conan carried! A deadly weapon against this waif of the icy darkness, that tore men's souls from their bodies to eternal d.a.m.nation and left them broken and frozen on the snows!

Conan struck again, and now the ululation changed to a shrill shriek as the white horror flung itself backward to escape the terror of the ring. With savage glee, Conan lunged after it. Now he was the attacker!

Using the sharp rhomboid points of the ring as a weapon, he ripped savagely into the white form.

There was a shrill bellow from the facial region of the creature. It fled over the snow, white ichor dripping from its wounds, while Conan pursued it like an avenging spirit.

Its steps carried it to the brink of an icy chasm, where it paused, at bay, tottering and trembling. Mercilessly, Conan slashed with his ringed fist at its body. With a weird shriek it staggered backward. For a moment it fought for balance on the edge; then the icy crust gave way. With a long-drawn wail it hurtled downwards into the darkness of the abyss.

Conan shook himself like a wolf-dog after the hunt. "Pelias gave me a powerful bauble indeed," he mumbled. "A pox on these snow demons! That one has been cast back to its h.e.l.lish haunts, anyway. Now I'd better hurry, if I am to reach the downward slopes tomorrow."

8. The Dragon of Khitai -----------------------.

It was the twenty-fifth day since he had crossed the Khitan border.

The arid, sandy lands bordering the vast Wuhuan Desert, unpeopled save for straggling bands of weather-beaten nomads, had been relieved by vast bogs and marshes. Waterfowl whirred up in clouds from pools of stagnant water. Red-eyed, ill-tempered marsh buffalo splashed and snorted in die tall reeds. Swarms of biting insects hummed; tigers on the hunt uttered coughing roars. Conan needed all his swamp-craft, acquired in the Kus.h.i.+te jungles and the marshes fringing the Sea of Vilayet, to cross these inhospitable reaches, with the help of handmade swamp shoes and improvised bamboo rafts.

When the fens ended, thick jungle began. This was not much easier to penetrate. Conan's heavy Zhaibar knife was at constant work cutting through dense undergrowth, but the iron muscles and dogged determination of the giant Cimmerian never flagged. These parts had once been rich and civilized, long ago when Western civilization was barely in its morning glow. In many places Conan found crumbling ruins of temples, palaces, and whole dries, dead and forgotten for thousands of years. Their empty window-holes stared blackly like the eye sockets of skulls in somber forgetfulness. Vines draped the worn and pitted statues of weird, pre-human G.o.ds. Chattering apes shrieked their displeasure at his intrusion into their green-mantled walls.

The jungle melted into rolling plains, where saffron-skinned herdsmen watched their flocks. Straight across this part of the land, across hills and valleys alike, ran the Great Wall of Khitai. Conan surveyed it grimly. With a thousand stout Aquilonian warriors, equipped with rams and catapults, he would soon breach this vast but static defense, by a lightning thrust ere help could come from other sections of the wall.

But he had no thousand soldiers with siege engines, and cross the Great Wall he must. One dark night, when the moon was veiled, he stole over by means of a rope, leaving a guardsman stunned by a blow on the helm.

The gra.s.sy fields were traversed in the tireless, mile-devouring barbarian jog-trot, which enabled him to cover vast distances between rests.