Part 45 (1/2)

A quick bound carried hi aside the clustering i and a scra over it It was an outer wall; he was looking into the green rassy level a giant black was striding, carrying a squirht carry a rebellious child It was Sancha, her black hair falling in disheveled rippling waves, her olive skin contrasting abruptly with the glossy ebony of her captor He gave no heed to her wrigglings and cries as he made for the outer archway

As he vanished within, Conan sprang recklessly down the wall and glided into the arch that opened into the further court Crouching there, he saw the giant enter the court of the pool, carrying his writhing captive Noas able to make out the creature's details

The superb sye Under the ebon skin long, rounded muscles rippled, and Conan did not doubt that the monster could rend an ordinary ers provided further weapons, for they were grown like the talons of a wild beast The face was a carven ebony littered But the face was inhuman; each line, each feature was sta thewas not a hurowth of Life from the pits of blasphemous creation a perversion of evolutionary developiant cast Sancha down on the sward, where she grovelled, crying with pain and terror He cast a glance about as if uncertain, and his tawny eyes narrowed as they rested on the irasped his captive by her neck and crotch, and strode purposefully toward the green pool And Conan glided from his archway, and raced like a wind of death across the sward

The giant wheeled, and his eyes flared as he saw the bronzed avenger rushi+ng toward hirip relaxed and Sancha wriggled frorass The taloned hands spread and clutched, but Conan ducked beneath their swoop and drove his sword through the giant's groin The black went down like a felled tree, gushi+ng blood, and the next instant Conan was seized in a frantic grasp as Sancha sprang up and threw her arms around him in a frenzy of terror and hysterical relief

He cursed as he disengaged hilazed, the long ebony limbs had ceased to twitch

251

”Oh, Conan,” Sancha was sobbing, clinging tenaciously to him, ”ill become of us?

What are these monsters? Oh, surely this is hell and that was the devil ”

”Then hell needs a new devil,” the Barachan grinned fiercely ”But how did he get hold of you?

Have they taken the shi+p?”

”I don't know” She tried to wipe away her tears, fumbled for her skirt, and then remembered that she wore none ”I came ashore I saw you follow Zaporavo, and I followed you both I found Zaporavo as it you who ”

”Who else?” he grunted ”What then?”

”I saw a ht it was you I called then I saw that

that black thing squatting like an ape ahtmare; I couldn't run All I could do was squeal Then it dropped from the tree and seized me oh, oh, oh!” She hid her face in her hands, and was shaken anew at the et out of here,” he growled, catching her wrist ”Coet to the crew ”

”Most of them were asleep on the beach as I entered the woods,” she said

”Asleep?” he exclaimed profanely ”What in the seven devils of hell's fire and dae of fright

”I heard it!” he snapped ”A ain, and glaring over the wall, sith a concentrated fury that , but they came not alone or empty- handed Each bore a limp human form; so slackly in their captors' ar, Conan would have believed them dead They had been disarmed but not stripped; one of the blacks bore their sheathed swords, a great ar steel Froue cry, like a drunkard calling out in sottish sleep

Like a trapped wolf Conan glared about hih the eastern arch the blacks had left the court, and through it they would presumably return He had entered by the southern arch In the western arch he had hidden, and had not had tinorance of the plan of the castle, he was

252forced todown the wall, he replaced the ied the corpse of his victim to the pool and cast it in It sank instantly, and as he looked, he distinctly saw an appalling contraction a shrinking, a hardening He hastily turned away, shuddering Then he seized his companion's arm and led her hastily toward the southern archhile she begged to be told as happening

”They've bagged the crew,” he answered hastily ”I haven't any plan, but we'll hide somewhere and watch If they don't look in the pool, they may not suspect our presence”

”But they'll see the blood on the grass!”

”Maybe they'll think one of their own devils spilled it,” he answered ”Anye'll have to take the chance”