Part 3 (2/2)

”Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?” he howled ”Are we to fight his battles for hihtly to stare full into his hairy face The Cirasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward

”I ask no ht my battles,” he said softly ”Draw your blade if you dare, you yapping dog!”

The Wazuli started back, snarling like a cat

”Dare to touch me and here are fifty men to rend you apart!” he screeched

”What!” roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling rath His whiskers bristled, his belly swelled with his rage ”Are you chief of Khurum? Do the Wazulis take orders froed before his invincible chief, and Yar Afzal, striding up to him, seized hi black Then he hurled the round and stood over him with his tulwar in his hand

”Is there any who questions my authority?” he roared, and his warriors looked down sullenly as his bellicose glare swept their serunted scornfully and sheathed his weapon with a gesture that was the apex of insult Then he kicked the fallen agitator with a concentrated vindictiveness that brought howls from his victihts and bring word if they have seen anything,” corinding his teeth with fury

Yar Afzal then seated hi in his beard Conan stood near hiirdle, narroatching the asse to brave Yar Afzal's fury, but hating the foreigner as only a hillman can hate

”Now listen to s, while I tell you what the lord Conan and I have planned to fool the Kshatriyas ” the boom of Yar Afzal's bull-like voice followed the discomfited warrior as he slunk away from the assembly

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The man passed by the cluster of huts, where wo co spurs and rocks toward the valley head

Just as he rounded the first turn that took hi stupidly He had not believed it possible for a stranger to enter the valley of Khuru the heights, yet a e beside the path a reen turban

The Wazuli's aped for a yell, and his hand leaped to his knife hilt But at that instant his eyes er and the cry died in his throat, his fingers went lilazed and vacant

For e drew a cryptic syer The Wazuli did not see hi within the coleamed there a round, shi+ny black ball that looked like polished jade The reen turban took this up and tossed it to the Wazuli who ht it

”Carry this to Yar Afzal,” he said, and the Wazuli turned like an auto the black jade ball in his outstretched hand He did not even turn his head to the renewed jeers of the women as he passed the huts He did not seeazed after hiirl's head rose above the rie and she looked at him with adht before

”Why did you do that?” she asked

He ran his fingers through her dark locks caressingly

”Are you still dizzy froht on the horse-of-air that you doubtas Yar Afzal lives, Conan will bide safe a-men It would be easier, even for irl, than to seek to slay hi them It takes no wizard to predict what the Wazulis will do, and what Conan will do, when lobe of Yezud to the chief of Khurum”

Back before the hut, Yar Afzal halted in the midst of some tirade, surprized and displeased to see the h the throng

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”I bade you go to the watchers!” the chief bellowed ”You have not had time to come from the vacantly into the chief's face, his pal over Yar Afzal's shoulder,and reached to touch the chief's arer, struck the man with his clenched fist and felled him like an ox As he fell the jade sphere rolled to Yar Afzal's foot and the chief, see to see it for the first ti perplexedly at their senseless comrade, saw their chief bend, but they did not see what he picked up frolanced at the jade, and irdle

”Carry that fool to his hut,” he growled ”He has the look of a lotus-eater He returnedtoward his girdle, he had suddenly felt movement where lared at nothing; and inside his clenched right hand he felt the quivering of change, ofsphere in his fingers And he dared not look; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not open his hand His astonished warriors saw Yar Afzal's eyes distend, the color ebb froony burst frohtning, his right arm tossed out in front of hiers crawled a spider a hideous, black, hairy-legged ave back suddenly, and the creature scuttled into a crevice of the rocks and disappeared

The warriors started up, glaring wildly, and a voice rose above their cla voice of command which came from none knehere Afterwards each man there who still lived denied that he had shouted, but all there heard it

”Yar Afzal is dead! Kill the outlander!”

That shout focussed their whirling minds as one Doubt, bewildere of the blood-lust A furious yell rent the skies as the tribes across the open space, cloaks flapping, eyes blazing, knives lifted

Conan's action was as quick as theirs As the voice shouted he sprang for the hut door But they were closer to him than he was to the door, and with one foot on the sill he had to wheel and parry the swipe of a yard-long blade He split the utted the wielder felled a man with his left fist and stabbed another in the belly and heaved backblades were nicking chips out of the jambs about his ears, but the door flew open under the i backward into the roo with all his fury as Conan sprang back, over-reached and pitched head-first through the doorway

Conan stooped, grasped the slack of his garments and hauled him clear, and sla into it Bones snapped under the impact, and the next instant Conan slammed the bolts into place and whirled with desperate haste tofrom the floor and tore into action like ain horror as the twoher at tior of their blades filled the roo deafeningly at the bronze door with their long knives, and dashi+ng huge rocks against it Soer under the thunderous assault Yas wildly

Violence and fury within, cataclyshed and reared, thundering with his heels against the walls He wheeled and launched his hoofs through the bars just as the tribesainst them His spine cracked in three places like a rotten branch and he was hurled headlong against the Ci him backward so they both crashed to the beaten floor Yasht it seemed that both were slain She reached theht his arht I thought you were dead!”

He glanced down at her quickly, into the pale, upturned face and the wide staring dark eyes

”Why are you tre?” he dee of her poise returned to her, and she dreay,the Devi

”You are preferable to those wolves howling without,” she answered, gesturing toward the door, the stone sill of which was beginning to splinter away

”That won't hold long,” he muttered, then turned and went swiftly to the stall of the stallion

Yasht her breath as she saw hio into the stall with theterribly, hoofs lifted, eyes and teeth flashi+ng and ears laid back, but Conan leaped and caught his th that sees The steed snorted and quivered, but stood still while the old-worked saddle, with the wide silver stirrups

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Wheeling the beast around in the stall, Conan called quickly to Yas nervously past the stallion's heels Conan orking at the stone wall, talking swiftly as he worked

”A secret door in the wall here, that not even the Wazuli know about Yar Afzal showed it to me once when he was drunk It opens out into the ed at a projection that seemed casual, a whole section of the wall slid back on oiled iron runners Looking through, the girl saw a narrow defile opening in a sheer stone ithin a few feet of the hut's back wall Then Conan sprang into the saddle and hauled her up before hi and crashed in and a yell rang to the roof as the entrance was instantly flooded with hairy faces and knives in hairy fists And then the great stallion went through the wall like a javelin fro low, foas

That move came as an absolute surprize to the Wazulis It was a surprize, too, to those stealing down the ravine It happened so quickly the hurricane-like charge of the great horse that a et out of the way He went down under the frantic hoofs, and a girl screaliirl in silk trousers and a jeweled breast-band, flattening herself against the ravine wall Then the black horse and his riders were gone up the gorge like the spuh the wall into the defile after theed their yells of blood-lust to shrill screams of fear and death