Part 6 (2/2)

”Sneaked up in the water and cut the other fellow's throat,” groaned Balthus ”We never heard the move so silently?”

”They're devils,”us from the time we left mid-strea into us before we knew it Most of us dropped the first fire Three or four broke through the bushes and caotten away I haven't seen his head Been better for you and ht I can't blae without being discovered They don't keep spies on the river bank as far down as we landed Weup the river from the south Some devilment is up Too many Picts here These aren't all Geli; men from the western tribes here and from up and down the river”

Balthus stared at the ferocious shapes Little as he knew of Pictish ways, he are that the number of men clustered about thee There were not enough huts to have accommodated them all Then he noticed that there was a difference in the barbaric tribal designs painted on their faces and breasts

”Soht have gathered here to watch Zogar's ic with our carcasses Well, a border- one out along with the rest”

The wolfish howling of the Picts rose in voluer surging and crowding, Balthus deduced that so his head about he saw that the stakes were set before a long building, larger than the other huts, decorated by huh the door of that structure now danced a fantastic figure

”Zogar!” muttered the woodsman, his bloody countenance set in wolfish lines as he unconsciously strained at his cords Balthus saw a lean figure of ht, almost hidden in ostrich plumes set on a harness of leather and copper From amidst the plumes peered a hideous and malevolent face The plumes puzzled Balthus He knew their source lay half the width of a world to the south They fluttered and rustled evilly as the shaman leaped and cavorted

With fantastic bounds and prancings he entered the ring and whirled before his bound and silent captives With another65

lessly in a whirl of feathers But that ferocious face glaring out fronificance No man with a face like that could see except the devil he was

Suddenly he froze to statuesque stillness; the plu warriors fell silent Zogar Sag stood erect and row and expand Balthus experienced the illusion that the Pict was towering above hih he knew the shaman was not as tall as himself He shook off the illusion with difficulty

The shauttural intonation that yet carried the hiss of a cobra

He thrust his head on his long neck toward the wounded ht For answer the frontiersar bounded convulsively into the air, and the warriors gave tongue to a yell that shuddered up to the stars that peered over the tops of the great trees girdling the village They rushed toward the man on the stake, but the sha to the gate They hurled it open, turned and raced back to the circle The ring of ht and left Balthus saw the wo to the huts They peeked out of doors and s A broad lane was left to the open gate beyond which loo, unlighted by the fires

A tense silence reigned as Zogar Sag turned toward the forest, raised on his tip-toes and sent a weird inhuht Somewhere, far out in the black forest, a deeper cry answered him Balthus shuddered From the timbre of that cry he knew it never came from a huar boasted that he could su The woodsman was livid beneath his mask of blood He licked his lips spas stood still as a statue, his pluate was no longer ee andeach other between the huts Balthus felt the short hair stir on his scalp The creature that stood in the gate was like the eend Its color was of a curious pale quality which ht But there was nothing unreal about the low- hung savage head, and the great curved fangs that glistened in the firelight On noiseless padded feet it approached like a phantoe, the ogre of er No Hyborian hunter had looked upon one of those primordial brutes for centuries Immemorial myths lent the creatures a supernatural quality, induced by their ghostly color and their fiendish ferocity

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The beast that glided toward the er and heavier than a coer, als were so ive it a curiously top-heavy look, though its hind-quarters were more powerful than those of a lion Its jaere massive, but its head was brutishly shaped Its brain capacity was small It had room for no instincts except those of destruction It was a freak of carnivorous develops and talons

This was thehad suer doubted the actuality of the shaic Only the black arts could establish a dohtily-thewed monster Like a whisper at the back of his consciousness rose the vague memory of the name of an ancient, ancient God of darkness and primordial fear, to whom once both men and beasts bowed and whose children men whispered still lurked in dark corners of the world New horror tinged the glare he fixed on Zogar Sag

The ory heads without appearing to notice the, in a life dedicated solely to slaughter An awful hunger burned greenly in the wide, unwinking eyes; the hunger not alone of belly-e jaws slavered The shaman stepped back; his hand waved toward the woodsreat cat sank into a crouch and Balthus nu ferocity: of hoould spring upon an elephant and drive its sword-like fangs so deeply into the titan's skull that they could never be withdrawn, but would keep it nailed to its victim, to die by starvation The sha roar the

Balthus had never drea of incarnated destruction e talons Full on the woodsman's breast it struck, and the stake splintered and snapped at the base, crashi+ng to the earth under the iate, half dragging, half carrying a hideous crilared al to credit what his eyes had seen

In that leap the great beast had not only broken off the stake, it had ripped the led body of its victie talons in that instant of contact had diseiant fangs had torn away the whole top of his head, shearing through the skull as easily as through flesh Stout rawhide thongs had given way like paper; where the thongs had held, flesh and bones had not Balthus retched suddenly He had hunted bears and panthers, but he had never dreamed the beast lived which could make such a red ruin of a human frame in the flicker of an instant

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The saber-tooth vanished through the gate and a fewin the distance But the Picts still shrank back against the huts, and the sha to let in the night

Cold sweat burst suddenly out on Balthus' skin What new horror would coate to make carrion-meat of his body? Sick panic assailed hiht pressed in very black and horrible outside the firelight The fires thelowed lurid as the fires of hell He felt the eyes of the Picts upon hiry, cruel eyes that reflected the lust of souls utterly without huer seele, as inhu pluar sent another call shuddering through the night, and it was utterly unlike the first cry

There was a hideous sibilance in it Balthus turned cold at the implication If a serpent could hiss that loud, it would make just such a sound

This time there was no answer only a period of breathless silence in which the pound of Balthus' heart strangled hiate, a dry rustling that sent chills down Balthus' spine Again the fire-lit gate held a hideous occupant

Again Balthus recognized the ends He saw and knew the ancient and evil serpent which swayed there, its wedge-shaped head, huge as that of a horse, as high as a tallout behind it A forked tongue darted in and out, and the firelight glittered on bared fangs

Balthus became incapable of emotion The horror of his fate paralyzed him That was the reptile that the ancients called Ghost Snake, the pale, aboht to devour whole families Like the python it crushed its victis bore veno been considered extinct But Valannus had spoken truly No white reat forests beyond Black River

It caround, its hideous head on the sahtly for the stroke Balthus gazed with glazed, hypnotized stare into that loathsoulfed, and he are of no sensation except a vague nausea

And then soht streaked froreat reptile whipped about and went into instant convulsions As in a dreahty neck, just below the gaping jaws; the shaft protruded from one side, the steel head fro hideously, the maddened reptile rolled into the circle of men who strove back from him The spear had not severed its spine, but reat necktail mowed down a dozenothers with veno, frantic, they scattered before it, knocking each other down in their flight, traiant snake rolled into a fire, scattering sparks and brands, and the pain lashed it to more frenzied efforts A hut wall buckled under the ra people

Men staht and left The flahted that nightiant reptile whipped and rolled and ht

Balthus felt so jerk at his wrists and then, ed him behind the post Dazedly he saw Conan, felt the forest rip on his arm

There was blood on the Ciht hand; he looht

”Coet over their panic!”

Balthus felt the haft of an axe shoved into his hand Zogar Sag had disappeared Conan dragged Balthus after hian to move of their own accord Then Conan released hi Balthus followed hihted by the glow outside; five hurisly familiarity about the features of the freshest; it was the head of the merchant Tiberias Behind the altar was an idol, diuely man-like in outline Then fresh horror choked Balthus as the shape heaved up suddenly with a rattle of chains, lifting long looh flesh and bone, and then the Ci Balthus around the altar, past a huddled shaggy bulk on the floor, to a door at the back of the long hut Through this they burst, out into the enclosure again But a few yards beyond them loomed the stockade

It was dark behind the altar-hut The mad stampede of the Picts had not carried theripped Balthus and heaved hiht have lifted a child Balthus grasped the points of the upright logs set in the sun- driedthe havoc done his skin He lowered a hand to the Ci a fleeing Pict He halted short, glilow of the fires Conan hurled his axe with deadly 69

aim, but the warrior'sloud above the din, cut short as he dropped with a shattered skull

Blind terrors had not subrained instincts As that wild yell rose above the clamor, there was an instant's lull, and then a hundred throats bayed ferocious answer and warriors ca

Conan leaped high, caught, not Balthus' hand but his ar hiainst the strain, and then the Ciitives dropped down on the other side

V