Part 29 (1/2)

That smile was on the lips of Constantius at that verya cluster of his men thick-bodied Shemites with curled blue-black beards and hooked noses; the loinging sun struck glints from their peaked helmets and the silvered scales of their corselets

Nearly a mile behind, the walls and towers of Khauran rose sheer out of the meadowlands

By the side of the caravan road a heavy cross had been planted, and on this grih his hands and feet Naked but for a loin-cloth, the iant in stature, and his es on lio burned brown The perspiration of agony beaded his face and his led black mane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue eyes blazed with an unquenched fire Blood oozed sluggishly from the lacerations in his hands and feet

Constantius saluted hily

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”I am sorry, captain,” he said, ”that I can not remain to ease your last hours, but I have duties to perfor!” He laughed softly ”So I leave you to your own devices and those beauties!” He pointed ly at the black shadohich swept incessantly back and forth, high above

”Were it not for theine that a powerful brute like yourself should live on the cross for days Do not cherish any illusions of rescue because I auarded I have had it proclai or dead, froether with all the members of his family, in the public square I aood as a regiuard, because the vultures will not approach as long as anyone is near, and I do not wish theht you so far from the city These desert vultures approach the walls no closer than this spot

”And so, brave captain, farewell! I will remember you when, in an hour, Taramis lies in my arms”

Blood started afresh from the pierced palms as the victim's mallet-like fists clenched convulsively on the spike-heads Knots and bunches of muscle started out on the ely at Constantius's The voivode laughed coolly, wiped the saliva froet and reined his horse about

”Re flesh,” he called ers are a particularly voracious breed I have seenfor hours on a cross, eyeless, earless, and scalpless, before the sharp beaks had eaten their way into his vitals”

Without a backward glance he rode toward the city, a supple, erect figure, gleaing beside hi of dust fro on the cross was the one touch of sentient life in a landscape that see Khauran, less than a ht have been on the other side of the world, and existing in another age Shaking the sweat out of his eyes, Conan stared blankly at the familiar terrain On either hand of the city and beyond it, stretched the fertilein the distance where fields and vineyards checkered the plain The western and northern horizons were dotted with villages, miniature in the distance A lesser distance to the southeast a silvery gleam marked the course of a river, and beyond that river sandy desert began abruptly to stretch away and away beyond the horizon

Conan stared at that expanse of eht as a trapped hawk stares at the open sky A revulsion shook hi towers of Khauran The city had betrayed him trapped hi to a wooden cross like a hare nailed to a tree If he could but descend from this tree of torment and lose himself in that empty waste turn his back for ever on the crooked streets and walled lairs where eance swept away the thought Curses ebbed fitfully from the man's lips All his universe contracted, focused, became incorporated in the four iron spikes that held hi like iron cables With the sweat starting out on his greying skin, he sought to gain leverage, to tear the nails from the wood It was useless They had been driven deep Then he tried to tear his hands off the spikes, and it was not the knifing, abysony that finally caused him to cease his effort, but the futility of it The spike-heads were broad and heavy; he could not drag theiant, for the first ti on his breast, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of the sun

A beat of wings caused him to look up, just as a feathered shadow shot down out of the sky A keen beak, stabbing at his eyes, cut his cheek, and he jerked his head aside, shutting his eyes involuntarily He shouted, a croaking, desperate shout of htened by the sound They resu above his head

Blood trickled over Conan's mouth, and he licked his lips involuntarily, spat at the salty taste

Thirst assailed hiht before, and no water had touched his lips since before the battle in the square, that dawn And killing was thirsty salt- sweaty work He glared at the distant river as a ht of gushi+ng freshets of white water he had breasted, laved to the shoulders in liquid jade He reulped carelessly or spilled on the tavern floor He bit his lip to keep frouish as a tortured animal bellows

The sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood Against a crimson rampart that banded the horizon the towers of the city floated unreal as a drealare He licked his blackened lips and stared with blood-shot eyes at the distant river It too see up from the east seemed black as ebony

In his dulled ears sounded the louder beat of wings Lifting his head he watched the shadoheeling above hilare of a wolf He knew that his shouts would frighten theer One dipped dipped lower and lower Conan drew his head back as far as he could, waiting, watching with the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children The vulture swept in with a swift roar of wings Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conan's chin as he jerked aside his head; then before the bird could flash away, Conan's head lunged forward on hislike those of a wolf, locked on the bare, wattled neck

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Instantly the vulture exploded into squawking flapping hysteria Its thrashi+ng wings blinded theon, the er's neck bones crunched between those powerful teeth With a spaso, spat blood from his mouth The other vultures, terrified by the fate of their coht to a distant tree where they perched like black deh Conan's nuh his veins He could still deal death; he still lived Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death

”By Mitra!” Either a voice spoke, or he suffered from hallucination ”In allthe sweat and blood fro their steeds in the twilight and staring up at hiir tribesmen without a doubt, nomads from beyond the river The other was dressed like the head-dress which, banded about the temples with a triple circlet of braided camel-hair, fell to his shoulders But he was not a Sheht so clouded that he could not perceive the man's facial characteristics

He was as tall as Conan, though not so heavy-liure was hard as steel and whalebone A short black beard did not altogether rey eyes cold and piercing as a sword glea his restless steed with a quick sure hand, this man spoke: ”By Mitra, I should know this ir ”It is the Ciuard!”

”Sheoff all her old favorites,” ht it of Queen Tara, bloody war It would have given us desert folk a chance to plunder As it is we've colanced at a fine gelding led by one of the no”

Conan lifted his bloody head

”If I could co out of you, you Zaporoskan thief!” he rasped through blackened lips

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”Mitra, the knave knows me!” exclaimed the other ”How, knave, do you know me?”

”There's only one of your breed in these parts,” erd Vladislav, the outlaw chief”

”Aye! And once a hetuessed Would you like to live?”

”Only a fool would ask that question,” panted Conan

”I ahness is the only quality I respect in aafter all, fit only to lie here and die”

”If we cut him doe may be seen froerd shook his head

”The dusk is too deep Here, take this axe, Djebal, and cut down the cross at the base”

”If it falls forward it will crush him,” objected Djebal ”I can cut it so it will fall backward, but then the shock of the fall may crack his skull and tear loose all his entrails”

”If he's worthy to ride with erd imperturbably ”If not, then he doesn't deserve to live Cut!”

The first i vibrations sent lances of agony through Conan's swollen feet and hands Again and again the blade fell and each stroke reverberated on his bruised brain, setting his tortured nerves aquiver But he set his teeth and h, the cross reeled on its splintered base and toppled backward Conan made his whole body a solid knot of iron-hard ainst the wood and held it rigid there The beahtly The iht the rushi+ng tide of blackness, sick and dizzy, but realized that the iron muscles that sheathed his vitals had saved hih blood oozed from his nostrils and his belly-runt of approval Djebal bent over hiripped the head of the spike in Conan's right hand, tearing the skin to get a grip on the deeply embedded head The pinchers were s and wrestling with the stubborn iron, working it back and forth in swollen flesh as well as in wood Blood started, oozing over the Ciht have been dead, except for the spasave way, and Djebal held up the blood-stained thing with a grunt of satisfaction, then flung it away and bent over the other

The process was repeated, and then Djebal turned his attention to Conan's skewered feet But the Ci posture, wrenched the pinchers fro backith a violent shove Conan's hands were swollen to alers felt like ony that brought blood strea the pinchers clued to wrench out first one spike and then the other They were not driven so deeply in the wood as the others had been

He rose stiffly and stood upright on his swollen, lacerated feet, swaying drunkenly, the icy sweat dripping from his face and body Craainst the desire to retch

Olgerd, watching him impersonally, motioned him toward the stolen horse Conan stu hell that flecked his lips with bloody foa hand fell clumsily on the saddle bow, a bloody foot so up, and he almost fainted in erd struck the horse sharply with his whip The startled beast reared, and the man in the saddle swayed and slumped like a sack of sand, almost unseated Conan had wrapped a rein about each hand, holding it in place with a clath of his knotted biceps, wrenching the horse down; it screamed, its jaw almost dislocated

One of the Sheerd shook his head

”Let hiet to camp It's only tenwithout a drink”

The group rode like swift ghosts toward the river; a them Conan swayed like a drunkenon his blackened lips

III