Part 16 (1/2)
”You will,” he responded gloohtest touch of syleah a”I must have dropped it on the sand,” he muttered ”He has been that near on the beach ”
”You did not drop it on the strand,” said Belesa, in a voice as devoid of mercy as his own; her soul seemed turned to stone ”You tore it froht in this hall, when you flogged Tina I saw it glea on the floor before I left the hall”
He looked up, his face grey with a terrible fear
She laughed bitterly, sensing the mute question in his dilated eyes
”Yes! The black man! He was here! In this hall! He uardsht I saw hi the upper hallway”
For an instant she thought he would drop dead of sheer terror He sank back in his chair, the 143
chain slipping fro on the table
”In the uards could keep hiainst hiht overwhelmed hi at the lace upon his collar as though it strangled hi inaboveabout his horned head! Why ”
The paroxys
”I understand!” he panted ”He is playing with ht in my chamber were too easy, too ht have escaped him, and he slew that wretched Pict and left ht believe I had slain him they have seen that chain upon my neck many a time
”But why? What subtle deviltry has he in rasp or understand?”
”Who is this blackher spine
”A dehout eternity!” he whispered He spread his long thin fingers on the table before him, and stared at her with holloeirdly- luminous eyes that seeh her and far beyond to some dim doom
”Inmore to himself than to her ”A powerful man who stood between ht aid froician, who, at ulfs of existence and clothed it in the forreat and wealthy and none could stand before ht to cheat my fiend of the price a
”By his griician tricked the soulless waif of darkness and bound him in hell where he howled in vain I supposed for eternity But because the sorcerer had given the fiend the form of a man, he could never break the link that bound it to the material world, never coained access to this planet
”A year ago in Kordava word caician, now an ancient ers on his throat Then I knew that the black one had escaped froician had bound hieance uponat me from the shadows in my castle hall ”It was not his ue me his spirit which could not follow me over the windy waters Before he could reach Kordava in the flesh, I sailed to put broad seas between me and him He has his limitations To follow me across the seas he must remain in his man-like body of flesh But that flesh is not huician, having raised him up, was powerless to slay him such are the limits set upon the powers of sorcerers
”But the black one is too crafty to be trapped or slain When he hides hih the night, uardsmen with sleep He can raise storms and coht I hoped to drownwastes but he has tracked riazed beyond the tapestried walls to far, invisible horizons
”I'll trick hiht daill find ain I will cast an ocean between eance”
”hell'S fire!”
Conan stopped short, glaring upward Behind him the seamen halted two compact clumps of them, bows in their hands, and suspicion in their attitude They were following an old path h they had progressed only soer visible
”What is it?” de for?”
”Are you blind? Look there!”
Frorinned down at them a dark painted face, framed in thick black hair, in which a toucan feather drooped over the left ear
”I took that head down and hid it in the bushes,” growled Conan, scanning the woods about them narrowly ”What fool could have stuck it back up there? It looks as if so the Picts down on the settlelanced at each other darkly, a new ele caldron
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Conan climbed the tree, secured the head and carried it into the bushes where he tossed it into a stream and saw it sink
”The Picts whose tracks are about this tree weren't Toucans,” he growled, returning through the thicket ”I've sailed these coasts enough to know so about the sea-land tribes If I read the prints of theira ith the Toucans If they're at peace, they'll head straight for the Toucan village, and there'll be hell to pay I don't kno far away that village is but as soon as they learn of thiswolves That's the worst insult possible to a Pict kill a man not in war-paint and stick his head up in a tree for the vultures to eat da this coast But that's always the hen civilized men come into the wilderness They're all crazy as hell Come on”
Men loosened blades in their scabbards and shafts in their quivers as they strode deeper into the forest Men of the sea, accustorey water, they were ill at ease with the greenthem in The path wound and twisted until most of them quickly lost their sense of direction, and did not even knohich direction the beach lay
Conan was uneasy for another reason He kept scanning the trail and finally grunted: ”So here recently not more than an hour ahead of us Somebody in boots, with no woods-craft Was he the fool who found that Pict's head and stuck it back up in that tree? No, it couldn't have been him I didn't find his tracks under the tree But as it?
I didn't find any tracks there, except those of the Picts I'd seen already And who's this fellow hurrying ahead of us? Did either of you bastards send a man ahead of us for any reason?”
Both Stro at each other with ns Conan pointed out; the faint prints which he saw on the grassless, hard-beaten trail were invisible to their untrained eyes
Conan quickened his pace and they hurried after hi fire of distrust Presently the path veered northward, and Conan left it, and began threading his way through the dense trees in a southeasterly direction Stroe in their plans Within a few hundred feet from the trail both were hopelessly lost, and convinced of their inability to find their way back to the path They were shaken by the fear that, after all, the Ci therew as they advanced, and had aled fro that jutted up fro out of the woods fro a cluster of boulders 146
and wound up the crag on a ladder of stony shelves to a flat ledge near the suure in his piratical finery
”That trail is the one I followed, running frole-Picts,” he said ”It leads up to a cave behind that ledge In that cave are the bodies of Tranicos and his captains, and the treasure he plundered froo up after it: if you kill me here, you'll never find your way back to the trail we followed fro men
You're helpless in the deep woods Of course the beach lies due west, but if you have to led woods, burdened with the plunder, it'll take you not hours, but days And I don't think these woods will be very safe for white hed at the ghastly, nition of their intentions regarding hi in the mind of each: let the barbarian secure the loot for them, and lead them back to the beach-trail before they killed him
”All of you stay here except Stroh to pack the treasure down frorinned mirthlessly
”Go up there alone with you and Zarono? Do you take nated his boatswain, a brawny, hard-faced giant, naked to his broad leather belt, with gold hoops in his ears, and a crimson scarf knotted about his head
”And rowled Zarono He beckoned to a lean sea-thief with a face like a parchment-covered skull, who carried a two-handed scied his shoulders ”Very well Follow me”
They were close on his heels as he strode up the winding path and e They crowded hih the cleft in the wall behind it, and their breath sucked greedily between their teeth as he called their attention to the iron-bound chests on either side of the short tunnel-like cavern
”A rich cargo there,” he said carelessly ”Silks, laces, garments, ornaments, weapons the loot of the southern seas But the real treasure lies beyond that door”