Part 14 (2/2)

Zenobia had chosen well in selecting the white horse His speed, toughness and endurance were obvious The girl kneeapons and horses, and, Conan reflected with soait that ate up the h which he rode, past grove-sheltered villages and white-walled villas arew sparser as he fared ard As the villages thinned, the land grew ed, and the keeps that frowned from eminences told of centuries of border war But none rode down froe or halt hi the banner of Amalric; the pennons that ont to wave over these toere now floating over the Aquilonian plains

When the last huddled village fell behind hi to bend toward the northwest, toward the distant passes To keep to the road would arrisoned with armed men ould not allow him to pass unquestioned He knew there would be no patrols riding the border marches on either side, as in ordinary times, but there were those towers, and with dawn there would probably be cavalcades of returning soldiers ounded men in ox-carts

This road from Belverus was the only road that crossed the border for fifty miles froh the hills, and on either hand lay a wide expanse of 125

wild, sparsely inhabitedto cross the border deep in the wilds of the hills that lay to the south of the passes It was a shorter route, itive One man on a horse could traverse country an army would find impassable

But at dawn he had not reached the hills; they were a long, low, blue ra the horizon ahead of hies, no white-walled villas loo trees The daind stirred the tall stiff grass, and there was nothing but the long rolling swells of brown earth, covered with dry grass, and in the distance the gaunt walls of a stronghold on a low hill Too many Aquilonian raiders had crossed the mountains in not too-distant days for the countryside to be thickly settled as it was farther to the east

Dawn ran like a prairie fire across the grasslands, and high overhead sounded a weird crying as a straggling wedge of wild geese winged swiftly southward In a grassy swale Conan halted and unsaddled his , its coat plastered with sweat He had pushed it unh the hours before dawn

While it rass and rolled, he lay at the crest of the low slope, staring eastward Far away to the northward he could see the road he had left, strea like a white ribbon over a distant rise No black dots n about the castle in the distance to indicate that the keepers had noticed the lone wayfarer

An hour later the land still stretched bare The only sign of life was a glint of steel on the far- off battlements, a raven in the sky that wheeled backward and forth, dipping and rising as if seeking soait

As he topped the farther crest of the slope, a raucous screa up, he saw the raven flapping high above hi incessantly As he rode on, it followed hi hideous with its strident cries, heedless of his efforts to drive it away

This kept up for hours, until Conan's teeth were on edge, and he felt that he would give half his kingdo that black neck

”Devils of hell!” he roared in futile rage, shaking his mailed fist at the frantic bird ”Why do you harry one, you black spawn of perdition, and peck for wheat in the far the first pitch of the hills, and he seemed to hear an echo of the bird's cla in his saddle, he presentlyin the 126

blue Beyond that again he caught the glint of the afternoon sun on steel That couldthe beaten road, which was out of his sight beyond the horizon They were following hihtly as he stared at the raven that wheeled high above him

”So it is more than the whim of a brainless beast?” he muttered ”Those riders cannot see you, spawn of hell; but the other bird can see you, and they can see him You follow me, he follows you, and they follow him Are you only a craftily trained feathered creature, or some devil in the form of a bird? Did Xaltotun set you on my trail? Are you Xaltotun?”

Only a strident screech answered hi with harsh mockery

Conan wasted no more breath on his dusky betrayer Grirind of the hills He dared not push the horse too hard; the rest he had allowed it had not been enough to freshen it He was still far ahead of his pursuers, but they would cut down that lead steadily It was almost a certainty that their horses were fresher than his, for they had undoubtedly changed rew rougher, the sceneryup to densely tiht elude his hunters, but for that hellish bird that squalled incessantly above hier see them in this broken country, but he was certain that they still followed hily by their feathered allies That black shape becah measureless hells The stones he hurled with a curse ide or fell har

The horse was tiring fast Conan recognized the gri fate behind all this He could not escape He was as much a captive as he had been in the pits of Belverus But he was no son of the Orient to yield passively to what seemed inevitable If he could not escape, he would at least take some of his foes into eternity with him He turned into a wide thicket of larches thatfor a place to turn at bay

Then ahead of hie, shrill scream, huh a screen of branches, and saw the source of that eldritch cry In a slade below hi a noose about the neck of a gaunt old woots, bound with cord on the ground near by, shohat her occupation had been when surprized by these stragglers

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Conan felt slow fury swell his heart as he looked silently down and saw the ruffians dragging her toward a tree whose low-spreading branches were obviously intended to act as a gibbet He had crossed the frontier an hour ago He was standing on his own soil, watching the ling with surprizing strength and energy, and as he watched, she lifted her head and voiced again the strange, weird, far-carrying call he had heard before It was echoed as if inabove the trees The soldiers laughed roughly, and one struck her in thefrom his weary steed and dropped down the face of the rocks, landing with a clang of rass The fourat the hed harshly His eyes were bleak as flint

”Dogs!” he said without passion and without mercy ”Do Ne my subjects at will? First youyour lordly pleasure!”

The soldiers stared at him uncertainly as he strode toward therowled a bearded ruffian ”He wears Nemedian mail, but speaks with an Aquilonian accent”

”Nothe old hag”

And so saying he ran at Conan, lifting his sword But before he could strike, the king's great blade lashed down, splitting helmet and skull The ave tongue like wolves and surged about the lone figure in the gray mail, and the cla raven

Conan did not shout His eyes coals of blue fire and his lips sht and left with his two-handed sword For all his size he was quick as a cat on his feet, and he was constantly in s cut empty air oftener than not Yet when he struck he was perfectly balanced, and his blows fell with devastating power Three of the four were down, dying in their own blood, and the fourth was bleeding fro retreat as he parried frantically, when Conan's spur caught in the surcoat of one of the fallenstumbled, and before he could catch himself the Neely that Conan staggered and fell sprawling over the corpse

The Nereat sith both hands 128

over his right shoulder, as he braced his legs wide for the stroke and then, over the prostrate king, soe and hairy shot like a thunderbolt full on the soldier's breast, and his yelp of triu up, saw the ray wolf stood over hirass

The king turned as the old woht and tall before hiarb, her features, clear-cut and aquiline, and her keen black eyes, were not those of a common peasant woman She called to the wolf and it trotted to her side like a great dog and rubbed its giant shoulder against her knee, while it gazed at Conan with great green lahty neck, and so the two stood regarding the king of Aquilonia He found their steady gaze disquieting, though there was no hostility in it

”Men say King Conan died beneath the stones and dirt when the cliffs cru, resonant voice

”So they say,” he growled He was in no ht of those ar nearer every moment The raven above hirinding his teeth in a spase the white horse stood with drooping head The old woman looked at it, and then at the raven; and then she lifted a strange weird cry as she had before As if recognizing the call, the raven wheeled, suddenly ht, the shadow of le of trees, and rising above it, swooped and struck the black er to the earth The strident voice of betrayal was stilled for ever

”Croician, too?”

”I am Zelata,” she said ”The people of the valleys callarmed men on your trail?”

”Aye” She did not seem to think the answer fantastic ”They cannot be far behindConan,” she said briefly

Without colade by a circuitous path As he ca lazily down fro its great wings lightly so as not to crush her with 129

its weight

Without a word she led the way, the great wolf trotting at her side, the eagle soaring above her

Through deep thickets and along tortuous ledges poised over deep ravines she led hied path to a curious dwelling of stone, half hut, half cavern, beneath a cliff hidden ale flew to the pinnacle of this cliff, and perched there like a motionless sentinel

Still silent, Zelata stabled the horse in a near-by cave, with leaves and grass piled high for provender, and a tiny spring bubbling in the di on a rude, hide-covered bench, and she herself sat upon a low stool before the tiny fireplace, while she althe fire, his huge head sunk on his paws, his ears twitching in his dreams

”You do not fear to sit in the hut of a witch?” she asked, breaking her silence at last

An iuest's only reply She gave into his hands a wooden dish heaped with dried fruits, cheese and barley bread, and a great pot of the heady upland beer, brewed froh valleys

”I have found the brooding silence of the glensthan the babble of city streets,”

she said ”The children of the wild are kinder than the children ofwolf ”My children were afar fro They were co at my call”