Part 16 (1/2)
The jungle soon began anew. Here, however, were signs of the pa.s.sing of man^ lacking in the other forests through which he had hewn a laborious way. Narrow paths were beaten through the undergrowth, though it ma.s.sed as thickly as ever among the cl.u.s.tered bamboo stems on the sides. Vines festooned the trees; gay-feathered birds twittered. From far away came the snarl of a hunting leopard.
Conan slunk along the path like an animal born to jungle life. From the information he had gleaned from the Khitan slave freed after the sea fight on the Vilayet Sea, he deduced that he was now in the jungle bordering the city-state of Paikang. The Khitan had told him that it took eight days to cross this belt of forest. Conan counted on making it in four. Drawing upon his immense barbarian resources of vitality, he could undergo exertions unthinkable to other men.
Now his goal was to reach some settlement. The tale was that the forest folk lived in dread of Pai-kang's cruel ruler. Therefore Conan counted on finding friends who could furnish him with directions for reaching the city.
The eerie atmosphere of the bamboo jungle pressed down upon him with almost physical force. Unbroken and unexplored for thousands of years, save for narrow paths and small clearings, it seemed to hold the answers to the mysteries of aeons. An enigmatic aura of brooding enveloped the glossy, naked stems of the bamboo, which rose on every hand in jutting profusion. The esoteric traditions of this land reached back before the first fire was lit in the West. Vast and ancient was the knowledge h.o.a.rded by its philosophers, artisans, and sorcerers.
Conan shrugged off the depressing influence and gripped the hilt of his tulwar more firmly. His feet trod silently on the matting of moldering leaves. His faculties were sharpened and alert, like those of a wolf raiding into the lands of a foreign pack. There was a rustle among the half-rotten leaves. A great snake, slate-gray with a flaming red zigzag along its back, reared its head from its hiding place. It struck viciously, with bared and dripping fangs. At that instant, the steel in Conan's hand flashed. The tulwar's keen edge severed the head of the reptile, which writhed and twisted in its death throes. Conan grimly cleaned his blade and pressed on.
Then he halted. Stock-still he stood, ears sharpened to the utmost, nostrils widened to catch the faintest scent. He had heard the clank of metal and now could catch the sound of voices.
Swiftly but cautiously he advanced. The path made a sudden turn a hundred paces further on. At this corner his sharp eyes sought the cause of the disturbance.
In a small clearing, two powerful yellow-skinned Khitans were trussing a saffron-hued girl to a tree. Unlike most of the Far Eastern folk, these men were tall and powerful. Their lacquered, laminated armor and flaring helmets gave them a sinister, exotic look. At their sides hung broad, curved swords in lacquered wooden scabbards. Cruelty and brutality were stamped on their features.
The girl twisted in their grip, uttering frantic pleas in the singsong, liquid Khitan tongue. Having learned more than a smattering of it in his youth, when he had served the king of Turan as a mercenary, Conan found he could understand the words. The captive's slant-eyed face was of a startling oriental beauty.
Her pleading had no effect on her merciless captors, who continued their work. Conan felt his rage mounting. This was one of those cruel human sacrifices which he had tried to stamp out in the western world but which were still common in the East. His blood boiled at the sight of this manhandling of a defenseless girl. He broke from cover with a bull-like rush, sword out.
The crackling of the underbrush beneath the Cimmerian's feet reached the ears of the Khitan soldiers. They swung round towards the sound, and their eyes widened with unfeigned surprise. Both whipped out their swords and prepared to meet the barbarian's attack with arrogant confidence. They spoke no word, but the girl cried out:
”Flee! Do not try to save me! These are the best swordsmen in Khitai!
They belong to the bodyguard of Yah Chieng!”
The name of his foe brought a greater fury to Conan's heart. With slitted eyes, he struck the Khitans like a charging lion.
Unequalled as swordsmen in Khitai they may have been, but before the wrath of Conan they were like straws in the wind. The barbarian's blade whirled in a flas.h.i.+ng dance of death before their astonished eyes. He feinted and struck, crus.h.i.+ng armor and shoulder bone beneath the keen edge of his hard-driven tulwar. The first yellow man sank down, dying.
The other, hissing like a snake, exploded into a fierce attack. Neither fighter would give way. Their blades crashed ringingly together. Then the inferior steel of Khitai broke before the supple strength of the tulwar, forged from matchless Himelian ore by a Khirguli smith. Conan's blade ripped through the armor plate into the Khitan's heart.
With muted fear, the captive girl had followed the fight with widened eyes. When Conan broke from cover, she thought him one of her friends or relatives, bent upon a mad attempt to rescue her.
Now she saw that he was a cheng-li, a white-skinned foreigner from the legendary lands west of the Great Wall and the Wuhuan Desert. Would he devour her alive, as legends averred? Or would he drag her back to his homeland as slave, to work chained in a filthy dungeon the rest of her life?
Her fears were soon allayed by Conan's friendly grin as he swiftly cut her bonds. His appreciative glance ran over her limbs, not with the air of a captor sizing up the value of a captive, but with the glance of a free man looking upon a free woman. Her cheeks were suffused with blood before his frank admiration.
”By Macha” he said, ”I did not know they bred women this beautiful in the yellow lands! It seems I should have visited these parts long ago!”
His accent was far from perfect, but she had no difficulty in following the words.
”Seldom do white strangers come to Khitai,” she answered. ”Your arrival and victory were timed by the G.o.ds. But for you, those two” (she indicated the corpses) ”would have left me helpless prey to the terror Yah Chieng has let loose in the jungle.”
”I have sworn to settle my debt with that scoundrel,” growled Conan.
”It seems I have to settle yours at the same time. What is this jungle terror you speak of?”
”None has met it and lived to tell. Men say the arch wizard has conjured up a monster out of forgotten ages, when fire-breathing beasts walked the earth and the crust shook with earthquakes and eruptions. He holds the land in abject terror of it, and human sacrifices are often demanded. The fairest women and ablest men are taken by his soldiers to feed the maw of the beast of terror.”
”Meseems this is no healthy neighborhood,” said Conan. ”Though I fear not this monster of yours, I'd as lief not be hindered by it on my way to Paikang. Is your village far?”
Before she could answer, there was a heavy cras.h.i.+ng in the undergrowth.