Part 53 (2/2)

No Yuetshi+ had come to Xapur for a century The adjacent coast of the rie lay some distance to the south, on the -craft far fro lightning and roaring waters on the towering cliffs of the isle Now in the dawn the sky shone blue and clear, the rising sunleaves He had cliht because, in the htning fork

297out of the black heavens, and the concussion of its stroke, which had shaken the whole island, had been accompanied by a cataclysmic crash that he doubted could have resulted from a riven tree

A dull curiosity had caused hiht and an ani peril

Aigantic blocks of the peculiar iron-like green stone found only on the islands of Vilayet It seemed incredible that human hands could have shaped and placed them, and certainly it was beyond human power to have overthrown the structure they formed But the thunderbolt had splintered the ton-heavy blocks like so reen dust, and ripped away the whole arch of the dome

The fisherman cliht a grunt from him Within the ruined dome, surrounded by stone-dust and bits of broken olden block He was clad in a sort of skirt and a shagreen girdle His black hair, which fell in a square mane to his massive shoulders, was confined about his teold band On his bare, er with a jeweled poreenbound hilt, and a broad crescent blade It was much like the knife the fishere, and was reater skill

The fisherman lusted for the weapon The man, of course, was dead; had been dead for many centuries This dome was his tomb The fisherman did not wonder by what art the ancients had preserved the body in such a vivid likeness of life, which kept the muscular limbs full and unshrunken, the dark flesh vital The dull brain of the Yuetshi+ had roo lines along the dully glea down into the dome, he lifted the weapon froe and terrible thing came to pass The muscular dark hands knotted convulsively, the lids flared open, revealing great dark netic eyes whose stare struck the startled fisher the jeweled dagger in his perturbation Theposition, and the fisheraped at the full extent of his size, thus revealed His narrowed eyes held the Yuetshi+ and in those slitted orbs he read neither friendliness nor gratitude; he saw only a fire as alien and hostile as that which burns in the eyes of a tiger

Suddenly the man rose and towered above him, menace in his every aspect There was no room in the fisherrip a man who has just seen the fundareat hands fell to his shoulders, he drew his saw-edged knife and struck upith the saer's corded belly as against a steel column, and then the fisheriant hands

298

Jehungir Agha, lord of Khawarizm and keeper of the coastal border, scanned once more the ornate parchhed shortly and sardonically

”Well?” bluntly deed his shoulders He was a handsome man, with the rows short of patience,” said he ”In his own hand he couard the frontier By Tarim, if I can not deal a blow to these robbers of the steppes, Khawarizray-shot beard in htiest reat port city of Aghrapur was heaped the plunder of ealleys had made Vilayet an Hyrkanian lake The dark-skinned people of Zamora paid him tribute, as did the eastern provinces of Koth The Shemites bowed to his rule as far west as Shushan His aria in the south and the snowy lands of the Hyperboreans in the north His riders bore torch and sard into Brythunia and Ophir and Corinthia, even to the borders of Neilt-helmeted swordsmen had trampled hosts under their horses' hoofs, and walled cities went up in flahrapur, Sultanapur, Khawarizm, Shahpur, and Khorusun, women were sold for three sians, dark-haired Zamorians, ebon Kushi+tes, olive-skinned Shemites

Yet, while his swift horsemen overthrew armies far from his frontiers, at his very borders an audacious foe plucked his beard with a red-dripping and smoke-stained hand

On the broad steppes between the Sea of Vilayet and the borders of the eastern up in the past half-century, for cri soldiers They were men of many cri frodoms in the west They were called kozak, whichon the wild, open steppes, owning no law but their own peculiar code, they had beco the Grand Monarch Ceaselessly they raided the Turanian frontier, retiring in the steppes when defeated; with the pirates of Vilayet,off the merchant shi+ps which plied

299between the Hyrkanian ports

”How air ”If I follow the cut off and destroyed, or having them elude me entirely and burn the city inthan ever”

”That is because of the new chief who has risen a them,” answered Ghaznavi ”You knoholy ”It is that devil Conan; he is even wilder than the kozaks, yet he is crafty as a h wild anience,” answered Ghaznavi ”The other kozaks are at least descendants of civilized men He is a barbarian But to dispose of hi blow”

”But how?” deir ”He has repeatedly cut his way out of spots that see, he has avoided or escaped every trap set for him”

”For every beast and for every man there is a trap he will not escape,” quoth Ghaznavi ”When we have parleyed with the kozaks for the ransom of captives, I have observed thisdrink Have your captive Octavia fetched here”

Jehungir clapped his hands, and an i ebony in silken pantaloons, bowed before hi by the wrist a tall handsoirl, whose yellow hair, clear eyes and fair skin identified her as a pure-blooded irded at the waist, displayed the ure Her fine eyes flashed with resentht her during her captivity She stood with hanging head before her master until he motioned her to a seat on the divan beside hily at Ghaznavi

”We must lure Conan away from the kozaks,” said the counsellor abruptly ”Their war camp is at present pitched somewhere on the lower reaches of the Zaporoska River which, as you well know, is a wilderness of reeds, a swale in which our last expedition was cut to pieces by those et that,” said Jehungir wryly

”There is an uninhabited island near the mainland,” said Ghaznavi, ”known as Xapur, the