Part 23 (1/2)

And frolade and deeper into the fastnesses, Conan knew that the spearmen had fled, wildly The footprints overlay one another; they weaved blindly a Cile onto a hill-like rock which sloped steeply, to break off abruptly in a sheer precipice forty feet high

And soht it to be a great black gorilla Then he saw that it was a giant blackfro cry, the creature lifted huge hands and rushed toward hiave no heed to Conan's shout as he charged, eyes rolled up to display the whites, teeth glea with the horror that madness always instils in the sane, Conan passed his sword through the blackthe hooked hands that clawed at hie of the cliff

For an instant he stood looking down into the jagged rocks belohere lay N'Gora's spearmen, in limp, distorted attitudes that told of crushed lie black flies buzzed loudly above the blood-splashed stones; the ants had already begun to gnaw at the corpses On the trees about sat birds of prey, and a jackal, looking up and seeing the man on the cliff, slunk furtively away

For a little space Conan stood motionless Then he wheeled and ran back the way he had corass and bushes, hurdling creepers that sprawled snake-like across his path His sword swung low in his right hand, and an unaccustoned in the jungle was not broken The sun had set and great shadows rushed upward froantic shades of lurking death and grilimmer of scarlet and blue steel No sound in all the solitude was heard except his own quick panting as he burst froht of the river-shore

He saw the galley shouldering the rotten wharf, the ruins reeling drunkenly in the gray half- light

And here and there aht color, as if a careless hand had splashed with a criain Conan looked on death and destruction Before him lay his speare to the river-bank, a the broken piers they lay, torn and led and half-devoured, chewed travesties of men

All about the bodies and pieces of bodies were sware footprints, like those of hyenas

Conan caalley above whose deck was suspended soht Speechless the Ci froalley Between the yard and her white throat stretched a line of criht

THE ATTACK FROM THE AIR

The shadoere black around hiaped wide,Thicker than rain the red drops fell; But my love was fiercer than Death's black spell,Nor all the iron walls of hell Could keep le was a black colossus that locked the ruin-littered glade in ebon arms The moon had not risen; the stars were flecks of hot amber in a breathless sky that reeked of death On the pyra the fallen towers sat Conan the Cimmerian like an iron statue, chin propped on massive fists Out in the black shadows stealthy feet padded and red eyes glimmered The dead lay as they had fallen But on the deck of the Tigress, on a pyre of broken benches, spear-shafts

140and leopardskins, lay the Queen of the Black Coast in her last sleep, wrapped in Conan's scarlet cloak Like a true queen she lay, with her plunder heaped high about her: silks, cloth-ofgold, silver braid, casks of geers, and teocallis of gold wedges

But of the plunder of the accursed city, only the sullen waters of Zarkheba could tell, where Conan had thrown it with a heathen curse Now he sat gri for his unseen foes The black fury in his soul drove out all fear What shapes would ee froer doubted the visions of the black lotus He understood that while waiting for hilade, N'Gora and his co upon the in blind panic, had fallen over the cliff; all except their chief, who had soh not madness Meanwhile, or immediately after, or perhaps before, the destruction of those on the river-bank had been acco the river had been massacre rather than battle Already unht well have died without striking a blow in their own defense when attacked by their inhu, he did not understand, unless the n entity which ruled the river rief and fear All pointed to a hu of the water-casks to divide the forces, the driving of the blacks over the cliff, and last and greatest, the gri apparently saved the Cimmerian for the choicest victim, and extracted the last ounce of exquisite mental torture, it was likely that the unknown ene hirihter

Thefire from the Cimmerian's horned helrew tense and the jungle held its breath Instinctively Conan loosened the great sword in its sheath The pyramid on which he rested was four-sided, one the side toward the jungle carved in broad steps In his hand was a Sheht her pirates to use A heap of arrows lay at his feet, feathered ends toward hi moved in the blackness under the trees Etched abruptly in the rising moon, Conan saw a darkly blocked-out head and shoulders, brutish in outline And now fro loenty great spotted hyenas Their slavering fangs flashed in the ht, their eyes blazed as no true beast's eyes ever blazed

141

Twenty: then the spears of the pirates had taken toll of the pack, after all Even as he thought this, Conan drew nock to ear, and at the twang of the string a fla The rest did not falter; on they ca them fell the arrows of the Cimmerian, driven with all the force and accuracy of steely thews backed by a hate hot as the slag-heaps of hell

In his berserk fury he did not miss; the air was filled with feathered destruction The havoc wrought a Less than half of them reached the foot of the pyra down into the blazing eyes, Conan knew these creatures were not beasts; it was not merely in their unnatural size that he sensed a blaspheible as the blackfrom a corpse-littered swaht into existence, he could not guess; but he knew he faced diabolis to his feet, he bent his boerfully and drove his last shaft point-blank at a great hairy shape that soared up at his throat The arroas a flying beaht that flashed onith but a blur in its course, but the were-beast plunged convulsively in h

Then the rest were on his His fiercely driven sword shore the first asunder; then the desperate impact of the others bore him down He crushed a narrow skull with the po the bone splinter and blood and brains gush over his hand; then, dropping the sword, useless at such deadly-close quarters, he caught at the throats of the two horrors which were ripping and tearing at him in silent fury A foul acrid scent almost stifled him, his oeat blinded hi ripped to ribbons in an instant The next, his naked right hand locked on a hairy throat and tore it open His left hand, ht and broke its foreleg A short yelp, the only cry in that grim battle, and hideously human-like, burst from the maimed beast At the sick horror of that cry frorip

One, blood gushi+ng froed at his on his throat to fall back dead, even as Conan felt the tearing agony of its grip