Part 16 (2/2)
The bamboo stems shook and swayed, and a hoa.r.s.e bellow reached their startled ears. Conan gripped his hilt, a grim smile on his lips. The girl shrank behind his mighty frame. Tense as a tiger, the Cimmerian waited.
With a croaking growl, a giant, scaly form crashed through the undergrowth at the fringe of the clearing. Dimly seen in the darkness of the forest, the sunlight of the glade revealed its terrible form in full. Forty feet it measured from snout to spiked tail. Its short, bowed legs were armed with sharp, curved claws. Its jaws were gigantic, set with teeth beside which a sabertooth's fangs were puny. Mighty swellings at the sides of its head told of the great muscles that worked this awful engine of destruction. Its scaly hide was of a repellant leaden hue, and its fetid breath stank of moldering corpses.
It stopped for a moment in the sunlight, blinking. Conan used the time for swift action.
”Climb that tree! He can't reach you there!” he thundered to the terror-frozen girl.
Stung to action, the girl followed his command, while the Cimmerian's attention was again engaged by the giant lizard. This was one of the most formidable antagonists he had ever faced. Armored knights, sword-swinging warriors, blood thirsty carnivores, and skulking poisoners-all were dwarfed by the menace of this giant engine of destruction rus.h.i.+ng upon him.
But the foremost hunter of the Cimmerian hills, the jungles of Kush, and the Turanian steppes was not to be taken in one gulp. Conan stood his ground, lest, if he fled or climbed a tree, the dragon should turn its attention to the girl. Then, an instant before the mighty jaws would have closed about him, he sprang to one side. The impetus of the dragon's charge carried it cras.h.i.+ng into the undergrowth, while Conan ran to a clump of bamboos.
More quickly than he expected, the monster, roaring and cras.h.i.+ng, untangled itself from the thickets and returned to the attack. Conan saw that he could not hope to reach the tree in which the girl had taken refuge in time to escape those frightful jaws. The glossy tubes of the bamboo afforded no holds for climbing, and their stems would be snapped by a jerk of the monster's head. No safety lay that way.
Whipping out his Zhaibar knife, Conan chopped through the base of a slim stem of bamboo. Another cut, slantwise, sheared off its crown of leaves and left a gla.s.sy-sharp rounded point. With this improvised ten-foot lance, Conan charged his oncoming adversary.
He rammed the point between the gaping jaws and down the darkness of the gullet. With a mighty heave of his straining muscles, Conan drove the bamboo deeper and deeper into the soft internal tissues of the dragon. Then the jaws slammed shut, biting off the shaft a foot from Oman's hand, and a sidewise lunge of the head hurled Conan into a thicket twenty feet away.
The grisly reptile writhed in agony, uttering shrieks of pain. Conan dragged himself to his feet, feeling as if every muscle in his body had been torn loose from its moorings. His arm ached as he drew his tulwar, yet by sheer will power he forced his battered body into service. He stumbled forward, half-blinded by dust, but avoiding the thras.h.i.+ng tail and snapping jaws.
Grimly, he put his whole strength into one desperate lunge for the monster's eye. The blade went in like a knife through b.u.t.ter. The hilt was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his grasp by the last convulsions of the dying beast.
Again he was thrown to the ground, but with a final tremor, the hulk of his terrible foe subsided.
Conan gasped the dust-laden air, picked himself up, and limped toward the tree where huddled the girl.
”I must be growing old,” he muttered between gasps ”A little fight like that wouldn't have bothered me at all in the old days.”
This was but the barbarian's naive way of belittling his feat. He knew that no other man could have done what he had just accomplished; nor could he have succeeded but for luck and the ways of fate. He roared hoa.r.s.ely:
”Come down, la.s.s! The dragon ate more bamboo than was good for him. Now lead me to your village. I shall need help from you in return.”
9. The Dance of the Lions -------------------------.
Smoke of the yellow lotus spiraled wispily upward in the dim-lit bamboo hut. Like clutching tentacles, it writhed in fragrant streamers toward the chimney-hole in the ceiling, curling from the mouthpiece of carven jade ending the silken hose of the elaborate, gold-bowled water-pipe on the floor and from the pursed and wrinkled lips of an old Khitan, sitting cross-legged on a reed mat.
His face was like yellowed parchment. Nearly fourscore years must have weighed upon his shoulders. Yet there was an air of youthful energy and command about him, coupled with calm and serenity of thought. He held the mouthpiece in his left hand, puffing slowly in sybaritic enjoyment of the narcotic fumes. Meanwhile, his sharp black eyes studied the big, black-haired, white-skinned man in front of him, who sat upon a low stool and wolfed down the s.h.i.+-la rice stew placed before him by the girl he had saved.
She was now clad in a chastely high-necked jacket and embroidered trousers, which set off her golden complexion and large, deep, slanted eyes to advantage. With her l.u.s.trous hair combed into a complex coiffure, it was a startling transformation from the tousle-headed, half-naked, frightened girl whom he had rescued from men and monster.
But he recalled the clasp of her hot arms during an hour of rest in the jungle, when she had given him a woman's reward, freely and willingly, in a burst of Oriental pa.s.sion that needed no torch to inflame his desires.
One day and one night they had journeyed, resting only when the girl needed it. When she was utterly spent, he flung her across his broad shoulders, while his untiring legs pounded along. At last the path widened into a clearing. A dozen bamboo huts with s.h.i.+ngled roofs were grouped near a brook, where fish splashed in silvery abundance.
Wooden-featured, yellow-skinned men emerged with swords and bows at the intrusion, only to utter cries of Joy and shouts of welcome to this savior of a daughter of their village.
For it seemed that these people were outcasts of n.o.ble blood, who had fled from the tyranny of Yah Chieng the Terrible. Now they dwelt on the edge of life, fearing every moment to be wiped out by a cohort of the sorcerer's dreaded swordsmen.
Wiping his mouth with the appearance of surfeit and taking a last draft from the bowl of yellow rice wine, Conan listened to the words of his host.
”Aye, mighty was the clan of Kang, of which I, Kang Hsiu, am the head,”
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