Part 62 (1/2)
Ascalante did not look toward the door; he had eyes only for the wounded king He supposed that the noise of the fray had at last roused the palace, and that the loyal guards were upon hie that his hardened rogues should screaht Conan did not look toward the door because he atching the outlaith the burning eyes of a dying wolf In this extremity Ascalante's cynical philosophy did not desert him
”All seems to be lost, particularly honor,” heon his feet and ” Whatever other cogitation h histhe sentence uncohtly at Conan just as the Ci his ax-arm to wipe the blood froe, there was a strange rushi+ng in the air and a heavy weight struck terrifically between his shoulders He was dashed headlong and great talons sank agonizingly in his flesh Writhing desperately beneath his attacker, he twisted his head about and stared into the face of Night which he kneas born in no sane or hus were near his throat and the glare of its yellow eyes shrivelled his li corn
The hideousness of its face transcended ht have been the face of an
343ancient, evil mummy, quickened with demoniac life In those abhorrent features the outlaw's dilated eyes seemed to see, like a shadow in the madness that enveloped him, a faint and terrible resemblance to the slave Thoth-amon Then Ascalante's cynical and all-sufficient philosophy deserted hihost before those slavering fangs touched hi the blood-drops froreat black hound which stood above Ascalante's distorted body; then as his sight cleared he saw that it was neither a hound nor a baboon
With a cry that was like an echo of Ascalante's death-shriek, he reeled away fro horror with a cast of his ax that had behind it all the desperate power of his electrified nerves The flying weapon glanced singing fro was hurled half-way across the cha jaws closed on the aruard his throat, but the led ar's eyes, in which there began to be mirrored a likeness of the horror which stared from the dead eyes of Ascalante Conan felt his soul shrivel and begin to be drawn out of his body, to drown in the yelloells of cosli about hirew and becalimpsed the reality of all the abysmal and blasphemous horrors that lurk in the outer darkness of forulfs He opened his bloody lips to shriek his hate and loathing, but only a dry rattle burst from his throat
But the horror that paralyzed and destroyed Ascalante roused in the Cimmerian a frenzied fury akin to ed backward, heedless of the agony of his torn ar hand struck sonized as the hilt of his broken sword Instinctively he gripped it and struck with all the power of nerve and thew, as a er The broken blade sank deep and Conan's arony The king was hurled violently aside, and lifting himself on one hand he saw, as one mazed, the terrible convulsions of the reat wound his broken blade had torn And as he watched, its struggles ceased and it lay jerking spasrisly dead eyes Conan blinked and shook the blood fro and disintegrating into a slimy unstable mass
Then a ed with the finally roused people of the court knights, peers, ladies,in one another's way The Black Dragons were on hand, ith rage, swearing and ruffling, with their hands on their hilts and foreign oaths in their teeth Of the
344young officer of the door-guard nothing was seen, nor was he found then or later, though earnestly sought after
”Groh councillor, wringing his fat hands a the corpses ”Black treachery! Souard is here, you old fool!” cavalierly snapped Pallantides, co Publius' rank in the stress of theand aid us to bind the king's wounds He's like to bleed to death”
”Yes, yes!” cried Publius, as a man of plans rather than action ”We must bind his wounds Send for every leech of the court! Oh, my lord, what a black shaasped the king frooblet to his bloody lips and he drank like aback ”Slaying is cursed dry work”
They had stanched the flow of blood, and the innate vitality of the barbarian was asserting itself
”See first to the dagger-wound in my side,” he bade the court physicians ”Rinaldo wrotethere, and keen was the stylus”
”We should have hanged hiood can come of poets who is this?”
He nervously touched Ascalante's body with his sandalled toe
”By Mitra!” ejaculated the commander ”It is Ascalante, once count of Thune! What devil's work brought him up from his desert haunts?”
”But why does he stare so?” whispered Publius, drawing away, his own eyes wide and a peculiar prickling a the short hairs at the back of his fat neck The others fell silent as they gazed at the dead outlaw
”Had you seen what he and I saw,” growled the king, sitting up despite the protests of the leeches, ”you had not wondered Blast your own gaze by looking at ” He stopped short, hisfruitlessly Where the monster had died, only the bare floor 'sis delirious,” whispered a noble Conan heard and sith barbaric oaths
”By Badb, Morrigan, Macha and Nemain!” he concluded wrathfully ”I aian h the door, and Ascalante's rogues fled before it It slew Ascalante, as about to run h Then it calanced froe Epemitreus had a hand in it ”
”Hark how he names Epemitreus, dead for fifteen hundred years!” they whispered to each other
”By Yht I talked with Epemitreus! He called to me in my dreams, and I walked down a black stone corridor carved with old Gods, to a stone stair on the steps of which were the outlines of Set, until I came to a crypt, and a tomb with a phoenix carved on it ”