Part 24 (1/2)
Returning in triumph to the glittering Turanian capital of Aghrapur, Conan received, as a reward, a place in this honor guard. At first he had had to endure the gibes of his fellow troopers at his clumsy horsemans.h.i.+p and indifferent skill with the bow. But the gibes soon died away as the other guardsmen learned to avoid provoking a swing of Conan's sledgehammer fists, and as his skill in riding and shooting improved with practice.
Now, Conan was beginning to wonder if this expedition could truly be called a reward. The light, leathern s.h.i.+eld on his left arm was hacked into a shapeless ruin; he cast it aside. An arrow struck his horse's rump. With a scream, the beast brought its head down and bucked, las.h.i.+ng out with its heels. Conan went flying over its head; the horse bolted and disappeared.
Shaken and battered, the Cimmerian scrambled to his feet and fought on afoot. The scimitars of his foes slashed away his cloak and opened rents in his hauberk of chain mail. They slit the leathern jerkin beneath, until Conan bled from a dozen little superficial wounds.
But he fought on, teeth bared in a mirthless grin and eyes blazing a volcanic blue in a flushed, congested face framed by a square-cut black mane. One by one his fellows were cut down, until only he and the gigantic black, Juma, stood back to back. The Kus.h.i.+te howled wordlessly as he swung the b.u.t.t of his broken lance like a club.
Then it seemed as if a hammer came up out of the red mist of berserk fury that clouded Conan's brain, as a heavy mace crashed against the side of his head, denting and cracking the spiked helm and driving the metal against his temple. His knees buckled and gave. The last thing he heard was the sharp, despairing cry of the princess as squat, grinning warriors tore her from the veiled palanquin down to the red snow that splotched the slope. Then, as he fell face down, he knew nothing.
2. The Cup of the G.o.ds
A thousand red devils were beating against Conan's skull with red-hot hammers, and his cranium rang like a smitten anvil with every motion.
As he slowly clambered out of black insensibility, Conan found himself dangling over one mighty shoulder of his comrade Juma, who grinned to see him awaken and helped him to stand. Although his head hurt abominably, Conan found he was strong enough to stay on his feet.
Wondering, he looked about him.
Only he, Juma, and the girl Zosara had survived. The rest of the party-including Zosara's maid, slain by an arrow-were food for the gaunt, gray wolves of the Hyrkanian steppe. They stood on the northern slopes of the Talakmas, several miles south of the site of the battle.
Stocky brown warriors in lacquered leather, many with bandaged wounds, surrounded them. Conan found that his wrists were stoutly manacled, and that ma.s.sive iron chains linked the manacles. The princess, in silken coat and trousers, was also fettered; but her chains and fetters were much lighter and seemed to be made of solid silver.
Juma was also chained, upon him most of the attention of their captors was focused. They crowded around the Kus.h.i.+te, feeling his skin and then glancing at their fingers to see if his color had come off. One even moistened a piece of cloth in a patch of snow and then rubbed it against the back of Juma's hand. Juma grinned broadly and chuckled.
”It must be they've never seen a man like me,” he said to Conan.
The officer in command of the victors snapped a command. His men swung into their saddles. The princess was bundled back into her horse litter. To Conan and Juma the commander said, in broken Hyrkanian: ”You two! You walk.”
And walk they did, with the spears of the Azweri, as their captors were called, nudging them with frequent p.r.i.c.ks between their shoulders. The litter of the princess swayed between its two horses in the middle of the column. Conan noted that the commander of the Azweri troop treated Zosara with respect; she did not appear to have been physically harmed.
This chieftain did not seem to bear any grudge against Conan and Juma for the havoc they had wrought among his men, the death and wounds they had dealt.
”You d.a.m.n good fighters!” he said with a grin. On the other hand, he took no chances of letting his prisoners escape, or of letting them slow down the progress of his company by lagging. They were made to walk at a brisk pace from before dawn to after sunset, and any pause was countered by a prod with a lance. Conan set his jaw and obeyed for the moment.
For two days they wended over a devious trail through the heart of the mountain range. They crossed pa.s.ses where they had to plow through deep snow, still unmelted from the previous winter. Here the breath came short from the alt.i.tude, and sudden storms whipped their ragged garments and drove stinging particles of snow and hail against their faces. Juma's teeth chattered. The black man found the cold much harder to endure than Conan, who had been reared in a northerly clime.
They came forth on the southern slopes of the Talakmas at last, to look upon a fantastic sight-a vast, green valley that sloped down and away before them. It was as if they stood on the lip of a stupendous dish.
Below them, little clouds crept over leagues of dense, green jungle. In the midst of this jungle, a great lake or inland sea reflected the azure of the clear, bright sky.
Beyond this body of water, the green continued on until it was lost in a distant purple haze. And above the haze, jagged and white, standing out sharply against the blue, rose the peaks of the mighty Himelias, hundreds of miles further south. The Himelias formed the other lip of the dish, which was encircled by the vast crescent of the Talakmas to the north and the Himelias to the south.
Conan spoke to the officer: ”What valley is this?”
”Meru,” said the chief. ”Men call it, Cup of G.o.ds.”
”Are we going down there?”
”Aye. You go to great city, Shamballah.”
”Then what?”
”That for rimpoche-for G.o.d-king to decide.”
”Who's he?”