Part 9 (2/2)
He had just crossed a s the conviction of his prithe 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”What the devil are you doing here Cro his spine It was not Balthus as elow burned through the trees It reen witch-fire that moved with purpose and intent
It halted souish its fire- flaarment that masked some animate and evil entity; but the Cimmerian was unable to ly, a voice spoke to him from amidst the fiery colu for the butcher, Conan?”
The voice was hue vibrations that were not huot 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 ”Theto my brother; I would not rob his knife of their blood But you are rey 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 nahosts that haunt the uplands of the Dark Land But a bat has flown over the Mountains of the Dead and drawn your is 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 doo 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, nized it
”You dareddare h the black Mountains of the Dead and the altar-hut of Gullah was thron by a wind froer to the Four Brothers of the Night fleiftly and whispered your name in my ear Your race is run You are a deadin the altar-hut of ed, sharp-beaked Children of Jhil”
”Who the devil is your brother?” demanded Conan His sas naked in his hand, and he was subtly loosening the axe in his belt
”Zogar Sag; a child of Jhebbal Sag who still visits his sacred groves at ti Her babe was Zogar Sag I too a of a far real summoned me out of the Misty Lands With incantations and sorcery and his own blood he materialized me in the flesh of his 91
own planet We are one, tied together by invisible threads His thoughts are hts; if he is struck, I ah 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,”his axe 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 froe with you into the Dark Land”
The flaan to take shadowy for hiher than his own, and there was a demoniac aspect about it Conan had noted various abnor's features an obliqueness of the eyes, a sharpness of the ears, a wolfish thinness of the lips in the apparition which swayed before hi fire
More details came into view: a slender torso, covered with snaky scales, which was yet manlike in shape, withcrane-like legs ended in splay, three-toed feet like those of soreen fire fluttered and ran He saw it as through a glistening h he had not seen itar, sickle-like talons, swung high and swept down at his neck With a fierce cry he broke the spell and bounded aside, hurling his axe The demon avoided the cast with an unbelievably quick ain with a hissing rush of leaping flaht for it when it slew its other victi clothed in risly its for talon-armed limb knocked his helmet from his head A little lower and it would have decapitated hiely driven sword sank deep in thestroke, tearing his sword free as he leaped The talons raked his breast, ripping throughwas like that of a starving wolf He was inside the lashi+ng ar his sword deep in the monster's belly felt the ar the ht his vitals he was lapped and dazzled by blue flame that was chill as ice then he had torn fiercely away fro arms and his sword cut the air in a treered and fell sprawling sidewise, its head hanging only by a shred of flesh
The fires that veiled it leaped fiercely upward, now red as gushi+ng blood, hiding the figure fro flesh filled Conan's nostrils Shaking the blood and sweat froh the woods Blood trickled down his lilow of fla cabin Behind hi that spurred hireater efforts
VIII
CONAJOHARA NO MORE
There had been fighting on Thunder River; fierce fighting before the walls of Velitrium; axe and torch had been plied up and down the bank, and many a settler's cabin lay in ashes before the painted horde was rolled back
A strange quiet followed the storathered and talked in hushed voices, and es drank their ale silently in the taverns along the river bank
There, to Conan the Ciaunt forester with a bandage about his head and his ar He was the one survivor of Fort Tuscelan
”You ith the soldiers to the ruins of the fort?”
Conan nodded
”I wasn't able,” ?”
”The Picts had fallen back across Black River Soh only the Devil who lanced at his bandaged arhed
”They say there were no bodies worth disposing of”
Conan shook his head ”Ashes The Picts had piled them in the fort and set fire to the fort before they crossed the river Their own dead and thethe last in the hand-to-hand fighting when they broke the barriers They tried to take him alive, but he made them kill him They took ten of the rest of us prisoners ere so weak froht no more They butchered nine of 93
us then and there It hen Zogar Sag died that I got 's dead?” ejaculated Conan
”Aye I saw hiainst Velitriue He took no wounds in battle He was dancing a an axe hich he'd just brained the last oflike a wolf and then he staggered and dropped the axe, and began to reel in a circle screa as I never heard a man or beast scream before He fell betweenat the id and the Picts shouted that he was dead It was during the confusion that I slipped my cords and ran for the woods”
He hesitated, leaned closer to Conan and lowered his voice