Part 23 (1/2)
Conan spoke imperturbably He was a barbarian, and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children was as es He could endure a situation like this with a coolness iet into the trees and get away, traveling like apes through the branches?” she asked desperately
He shook his head ”I thought of that The branches that touch the crag down there are too light They'd break with our weight Besides, I have an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots”
”Well, are we going to sit here on our ru the skull clattering across the ledge ”I won't do it! I'll go down there and cut his damned head off ”
Conan had seated himself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire He looked up with a glint of adure, but, realizing that she was in just the mood for any madness, he let none of his adrunted, catching her by her wrist and pulling her down on his knee She was too surprized to resist as he took her sword from her hand and shoved it back in its sheath ”Sit still and calobble you up at one gulp, or set out of this ja chewed up and sed”
She made no reply, nor did she seek to repulse his arhtened, and the sensation was new to Valeria of the Red Brotherhood So she sat on her companion's or captor's knee with a docility that would have amazed Zarallo, who had anathelio
Conan played idly with her curly yellow locks, seely intent only upon his conquest
Neither the skeleton at his feet nor the e of his interest
The girl's restless eyes, roving the leaves below thereen It was fruit, large, darkly crihs of a tree whose broad leaves were a peculiarly rich and vivid green She becah thirst had not assailed her until she knew she could not descend fro to find food and water
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”We need not starve,” she said ”There is fruit we can reach”
Conan glanced where she pointed
”If we ate that ouldn't need the bite of a dragon,” he grunted ”That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa Derketa is the Queen of the Dead Drink a little of the juice, or spill it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tu”
”Oh!”
She lapsed into dismayed silence There seeloomily She saay of escape, and Conan seemed to be concerned only with her supple waist and curly tresses If he was trying to formulate a plan of escape he did not show it
”If you'll take your hands off h to cli that will surprize you”
He cast her a questioning glance, then obeyed with a shrug of histo the spire-like pinnacle, he stared out over the forest roof
HE STOOD a long moment in silence, posed like a bronze statue on the rock
”It's a walled city, right enough,” he , when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?”
”I saw it before you ca of it when I left Sukhht to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians ever penetrated this far
Could black people build a city like that? I see no herds on the plain, no signs of cultivation, or peopleabout”
”How could you hope to see all that, at this distance?” she deed his shoulders and dropped down on the shelf
”Well, the folk of the city can't help us just now And they ht not, if they could The people of the Black Countries are generally hostile to strangers Probably stick us full of spears ”
He stopped short and stood silent, as if he had forgotten what he was saying, frowning down at the cri the leaves
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”Spears!” he ht of that before! That shohat a pretty wo about?” she inquired
Without answering her question, he descended to the belt of leaves and looked down through the with the frightful patience of the reptile folk So lodyte ancestors, treed on a high-flung rock, in the di branches, reaching out and severing theitation of the leaves made the monster restless He rose fro off saplings as if they had been toothpicks Conan watched him warily froon was about to hurl hiain, the Cie with the branches he had cut
There were three of these, slender shafts about seven feet long, but not larger than his thuh, thin vine
”Branches too light for spear-hafts, and creepers no thicker than cords,” he re ”It won't hold our weight but there's strength in union
That's what the Aquilonian renegades used to tell us Cimmerians when they came into the hills to raise an arht by clans and tribes”
”What the devil has that got to do with those sticks?” she de the sticks in a coed his poniard hilt between theether, and when he had coth, with a sturdy shaft seven feet in length
”What good will that do?” she demanded ”You told me that a blade couldn't pierce his scales ”
”He hasn't got scales all over hi a panther”
Moving down to the edge of the leaves, he reached the spear up and carefully thrust the blade through one of the Apples of Derketa, drawing aside to avoid the darkly purple drops that dripped from the pierced fruit Presently he withdrew the blade and showed her the blue steel stained a dull purplish crimson
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”I don't knohether it will do the job or not,” quoth he ”There's enough poison there to kill an elephant, but well, we'll see”
VALERIA was close behind hi the poisoned pike away froh the branches and addressed thedown there for, youof questionable parents?”
was one of his ain, you long-necked brute or do you want itimate spine?”
There was more of it some of it couched in eloquence thatthe seafarers And it had its effect on theworries and enrages more constitutionally silent animals, so the clamorous voice of a e in others
Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the ated its neck and body in a furious effort to reach this vociferous pig the pried his distance with precision Sohty head crashed terribly but futilely through the leaves And as the reat snake, Conan drove his spear into the red angle of the jaw-bone hinge He struck doith all the strength of both ar poniard blade to the hilt in flesh, sinew and bone
Instantly the jaws clashed convulsively together, severing the triple-pieced shaft and al Conan froirl behind hirasp He clutched at a rocky projection, and grinned his thanks back at her
Down on the ground thewith pepper in its eyes He shook his head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened his ot a huge front foot on the stued to tear the blade out
Then he threw up his head, jaide and spouting blood, and glared up at the crag with such concentrated and intelligent fury that Valeria tre his back and flanks turned from rusty brown to a dull lurid red Most horribly the monster's silence was broken The sounds that issued fro that could have been produced by an earthly creation