Part 20 (1/2)

They all wheeled, stared So, carved !” shrieked Zorathus ”Steeped in the venoian scorpion!

Fool, fool to open the box of Zorathus with your naked hand! Death! You are a dead man now!”

And with bloody foam on his lips he died

Valbroso staggered, crying out ”Ah, Mitra, I burn!” he shrieked ”My veins race with liquid fire! My joints are bursting asunder! Death! Death!” And he reeled and crashed headlong

There was an instant of awful convulsions, in which the limbs were twisted into hideous and unnatural positions, and then in that posture the htlessly upward, his lips drawn back fro to pick up the jehere it rolled on the floor fro pool of sunset fire

”Dead!” muttered Beloso, with ht off guard, his eyes dazzled, his brain dazed by the blaze of the great ge crashed with terrible force upon his hellow of the jeas splashed with redder flame, and he went to his knees under the blow

He heard a rush of feet, a bellow of ox-like agony He was stunned but not wholly senseless, and realized that Beloso had caught up the iron box and crashed it down on his head as he stooped Only his basinet had saved his skull He staggered up, drawing his sword, trying to shake the diaze But the door was open and fleet footsteps were dwindling down the winding stair On the floor the brutish torturer was gasping out his life with a great gash under his breast And the Heart of Ahrione

Conan reeled out of the cha down his face fro a clang of steel in the courtyard below, shouts, then the frantic dru into the bailey he saw theabout confusedly, while woate stood open and a soldier lay across his pike with his head split Horses, still bridled and saddled, ran neighing about the court, Conan's black stallion a her hands as she rushed brainlessly about ”He caht and left! Beloso's o?” roared Conan

All turned and stared at the stranger's blood-stained face and naked sword

172

”Through the postern!” shrilled a woue?”

”Beloso has killed Valbroso!” yelled Conan, leaping and seizing the stallion's mane, as the men-at-arms advanced uncertainly on him A wild outcry burst forth at his news, but their reaction was exactly as he had anticipated Instead of closing the gates to take hie their lord, they were thrown into even greater confusion by his words Wolves bound together only by fear of Valbroso, they owed no allegiance to the castle or to each other

Swords began to clash in the courtyard, and women screamed And in the h the postern gate and thundered down the hill The wide plain spread before him, and beyond the hill the caravan road divided: one branch ran south, the other east And on the eastern road he saw another rider, bending low and spurring hard The plain swaht was a thick red haze and he reeled in his saddle, grasping the flowing rian to pour out of the castle on the hill where the count's body lay forgotten and unheeded beside that of his prisoner The sun was setting; against a lurid red sky the two black figures fled

The stallion was not fresh, but neither was the horse ridden by Beloso But the great beast respondedon deep reservoirs of reserve vitality Why the Zingaran fled frouess Perhaps unreasoning panic rode Beloso, born of the one; the white road was a diloo hard The country was changing, in the gathering dusk Bare plains gave way to clumps of oaks and alders Low hills an to blink out The stallion gasped and reeled in his course But ahead rose a dense wood that stretched to the hills on the horizon, and between it and hied on the distressed stallion, for he saw that he was overtaking his prey, yard by yard Above the pound of the hoofs a strange cry rose froave heed

As they swept in under the branches that overhung the road, they were almost side by side A fierce cry rose from Conan's lips as his sent up; a pale oval of a face was turned toward hileamed in a half-seen hand, and Beloso echoed the cry and then the weary stallion, with a lurch and a groan,in the shadows and went heels over head, hurling his dazed rider froainst a stone, and 173

the stars were blotted out in a thicker night

How long Conan lay senseless he never knew His first sensation of returning consciousness was that of being dragged by one arh dense underbrush Then he was thrown carelessly down, and perhaps the jolt brought back his senses

His helone, his head ached abominably, he felt a qual his black locks But with the vitality of a wild thing life and consciousness surged back into his

A broad red h the trees, by which he knew that it was long after h to have recovered from that terrible blow Beloso had dealt him, as well as the fall which had rendered hi thatbeside the white road, he noticed with a start of surprize, as his surroundings began to record theht He lay on the grassy earth, in a sled branches

His face and hands were scratched and lacerated as if he had been dragged through bra his body he looked about hi over hiht it was but a fige,that squatted on its haunches and stared down at hi soulless eyes

Conan lay and stared, half expecting it to vanish like a figure of a drea his spine Half-forgotten risly tales whispered of the shapes that haunted these uninhabited forests at the foot of the hills that ossean border Ghouls, men called them, eaters of hus of a lost and forgotten race with the demons of the underworld Somewhere in these primitive forests were the ruins of an ancient, accursed city, ray, anthropo at the malformed head that rose dimly above him, and cautiously he extended a hand toward the sword at his hip With a horrible cry that the man involuntarily echoed, the ht ar the mail links into the hard flesh The misshapen yet man-like hands clutched for his throat, but he evaded them with 174

a heave and roll of his whole body, at the saer with his left hand

They tu The y and hard as steel wires, exceeding the strength of a man But Conan's theere iron too, and hisclaws long enough for hiain The horrible vitality of the se's skin crawled at the feel of that slick, clae revulsion behind the plunging blade, and suddenly the monster heaved up convulsively beneath hirisly heart, and then lay still

Conan rose, shaken with nausea He stood in the center of the glade uncertainly, sword in one hand and dagger in the other He had not lost his instinctive sense of direction, as far as the points of the compass were concerned, but he did not knohich direction the road lay He had no way of knowing in which direction the ghoul had dragged hilared at the silent, black, ed him, and felt cold moisture bead his flesh He ithout a horse and lost in these haunted woods, and that staring, defor at his feet was a mute evidence of the horrors that lurked in the forest He stood al his ears for sorass

When a sound did coht air broke the scream of a terrified horse His stallion! There were panthers in the wood or ghouls ate beasts as well as h the brush in the direction of the sound, whistling shrilly as he ran, his fear drowned in berserk rage If his horse was killed, there went his last chance of following Beloso and recovering the jewel Again the stallion screamed with fear and fury, so heels, and soave way

Conan burst out into the hite road without warning, and saw the stallion plunging and rearing in thewickedly He lashed out with his heels at a slinking shadow that ducked and bobbed about hiray, furtive shadows that closed in on all sides A hideous charnel- house scent reeked up in the night air

With a curse the king hewed right and left with his broadsword, thrust and ripped with his dagger Dripping fangs flashed in the ht at hiht the rein, leaped into the saddle His sword rose and fell, a frosty arc in theblood as it splitbodies

The stallion reared, biting and kicking They burst through and thundered down the road On either hand, for a short space, flitted gray abhorrent shadows Then these fell behind, and 175

Conan, topping a wooded crest, saw a vast expanse of bare slopes sweeping up and away before him

XIII

”A GHOST OUT OF THE PAST”

Soon after sunrise Conan crossed the Argossean border Of Beloso he had seen no trace Either the captain hadlay senseless, or had fallen prey to the grins to indicate the latter possibility The fact that he had lain un seerossed in futile pursuit of the captain And if thethe road soos he would never have taken the eastward road in the first place

The heluards at the frontier did not question the Ci mercenary required no passport nor safe-conduct, especially when his unadorned h the low, grassy hills where streahts and shadows he rode, following the long road that rose and fell away ahead of him over dales and rises in the blue distance It was an old, old road, this highway froos was at peace; laden ox-wains ru the road, and men with bare, brown, brawny arms toiled in orchards and fields that smiled away under the branches of the roadside trees Oldoak branches called greetings to the wayfarer

Froarrulous old reat leathern jacks of foa ale, from the sharp-eyed silk-clad ht for news of Beloso

Stories were conflicting, but this erous black eyes and mustaches of the western folk was so for Messantia It was a logical destination; all the sea-ports of Argos were cos contrast with the inland provinces, and Messantia was the lot of all Craft of all the itives froathered there Laere lax; for Messantia thrived on the trade of the sea, and her citizens found it profitable to be sos with seaitilers and buccaneers played their part All this Conan kneell, for had he not, in the days of old when he was a Barachan pirate, sailed by night into the harbor of Messantia to discharge strange cargoes? Most of the pirates of the Barachan Isles sara were 176

Argossean sailors, and as long as they confined their attentions to the shi+pping of other nations, the authorities of Argos were not too strict in their interpretation of sea-laws

But Conan had not limited his activities to those of the Barachans He had also sailed with the Zingaran buccaneers, and even with those wild black corsairs that swept up from the far south to harry the northern coasts, and this put hinized in any of the ports of Argos it would cost him his head But without hesitation he rode on to Messantia, halting day or night only to rest the stallion and to snatch a feinks of sleep for hi his that poured continually in and out of this great commercial center No walls surrounded Messantia The sea and the shi+ps of the sea guarded the great southern trading city