Part 8 (1/2)
The admission was unfortunate. A yell of hate and accusation split the skies.
”Aye! You went to him alone! To betray us! It is no lie. The Wazuli escaped through the doors the wizard burst in his entry, and told the tale to our scouts whom he met in the Zhaibtr. They had been sent forth to search for you, when you did not return. When they heard the Wazuli's tale, they returned with all haste to Ghor, and we saddled our steeds and girt our swords!”
”And what do you fools mean to do?” demanded the Cimmerian.
”To avenge our brothers!” they howled. ”Death to the Kshatriyas! Slay him, brothers, he is a traitor!”
Arrows began to rattle around him. Conan rose in his stirrups, striving to make himself heard above the tumult, and then, with a roar of mingled rage, defiance, and disgust, he wheeled and galloped back up the trail. Behind him and below him the Afghulis came pelting, mouthing their rage, too furious even to remember that the only way they could reach the height whereon he rode was to traverse the river-bed in the other direction, make the broad bend, and follow the twisting trail up over the ridge. When they did remember this, and turned back, their repudiated chief had almost reached the point where the ridge joined the escarpment.
At the cliff he did not take the trail by which he had descended, but turned off on another, a mere trace along a rock-fault, where the stallion scrambled for footing. He had not ridden far when the stallion snorted and s.h.i.+ed back from something lying in the trail. Conan stared down on the travesty of a man, a broken, shredded, b.l.o.o.d.y heap that gibbered and gnashed splintered teeth.
Only the dark G.o.ds that rule over the grim destinies of wizards know how Khemsa dragged his shattered body from beneath that awful cairn of fallen rocks and up the steep slope to the trail.
Impelled by some obscure reason, Conan dismounted and stood looking down at the ghastly shape, knowing that he was witness of a thing miraculous and opposed to nature. The Rakhsha lifted his gory head, and his strange eyes, glazed with agony and approaching death, rested on Conan with recognition.
”Where are they?” It was a racking croak not even remotely resembling a human voice.
”Gone back to their d.a.m.nable castle on Yimsha,” grunted Conan. ”They took the Devi with them.”
”I will go!' muttered the man. ”I will follow them! They killed Gitara; I will kill them-the acolytes, the Four of the Black Circle, the Master himself! Kill-kill them all!” He strove to drag his mutilated frame along the rock, but not even his indomitable will could animate that gory ma.s.s longer, where the splintered bones hung together only by torn tissue and ruptured fiber.
”Follow them!” raved Khemsa, drooling a b.l.o.o.d.y slaver. ”Follow!”
”I'm going to,” growled Conan. ”I went to fetch my Afghulis, but they've turned on me. I'm going on to Yimsha alone. I'll have the Devi back if I have to tear down that d.a.m.ned mountain with my bare hands. I didn't think the governor would dare kill my headmen, when I had the Devi, but it seems he did. I'll have his head for that. She's no use to me now as a hostage, but---”
”The curse of Yizil on them!” gasped Khemsa. ”Go! I -Khemsa-am dying.
Wait-take my girdle.”
He tried to fumble with a mangled hand at his tatters, and Conan, understanding what he sought to convey, bent and drew from about his gory waist a girdle of curious aspect.
”Follow the golden vein through the abyss,” muttered Khemsa. ”Wear the girdle. I had it from a Stygian priest It will aid you, though it failed me at last. Break the crystal globe with the four golden pomegranates. Beware of the Master's trans.m.u.tations-I am going to Citara-she is waiting for me in h.e.l.l-aie, ya Shelos yar!” And so he died.
Conan stared down at the girdle. Hie hair of which it was woven was not horsehair. He was convinced that it was woven of the thick black tresses of a woman. Set in the thick mesh were tiny jewels such as he had never seen before. The buckle was strangely made, in the form of a golden serpent head, flat, wedge-shaped, and scaled with curious art A strong shudder shook Conan as he handled it, and he turned as though to cast it over the precipice; then he hesitated, and finally buckled it about his waist, under the Bakhariot girdle. Then he mounted and pushed on.
The sun had sunk behind the crags. He climbed the trail in the vast shadow of the cliffs that was thrown out like a dark blue mantle over valleys and ridges far below. He was not far from the crest when, edging around the shoulder of a jutting crag, he heard the clink of shod hoofs ahead of him. He did not rum back. Indeed, so narrow was the path that the stallion could not have wheeled his great body upon it He rounded the jut of the rock and came upon a portion of the path that broadened somewhat A chorus of threatening yells broke on his ear, but his stallion pinned a terrified horse hard against the rock, and Conan caught the arm of the rider in an iron grip, checking the lifted sword in midair.
”Kerim Shah I” muttered Conan, red glints smoldering luridly in his eyes. The Turanian did not struggle; they sat their horses almost breast to breast, Conan's fingers locking the other's sword arm. Behind Kerim Shah filed a group of lean Irakzai on gaunt horses. They glared like wolves, fingering bows and knives, but rendered uncertain because of the narrowness of the path and the perilous proximity of the abyss that yawned beneath them.
”Where is the Devi?” demanded Kerim Shah.
”What's it to you, you Hyrkanian spy?” snarled Conan.
”I know you have her,” answered Kerim Shah. ”I was on my way northward with some tribesmen when we were ambushed by enemies in Shalizah Pa.s.s.
Many of my men were slain, and the rest of us harried through the hills like jackals. When we had beaten off our pursuers, we turned westward, toward Amir Jehun Pa.s.s, and this morning we came upon a Wazuli wandering through the hills. He was quite mad, but I learned much from his incoherent gibberings before he died. I learned that he was the sole survivor of a band which followed a chief of the Afghulis and a captive Kshatriya woman into a gorge behind Khurum village. He babbled much of a man in a green turban whom the Afghuli rode down, but who, when attacked by the Wazulis who pursued, smote them with a nameless doom what wiped them out as a gust of wind-driven fire wipes out a cl.u.s.ter of locusts.
”How that one man escaped, I do not know, nor did he; but I knew from his maunderings that Conan of Ghor had been in Khunim with his royal captive. And as we made our way through the hills, we overtook a naked Golzai girl bearing a gourd of water, who told us a tale of having been stripped and ravished by a giant foreigner in the garb of an Afghuli chief, who, she said, gave her garments to a Vendhyan woman who accompanied him. She said you rode westward.”
Kerim Shah did not consider it necessary to explain that he had been on his way to keep his rendezvous with the expected troops from Secunderam when he found his way barred by hostile tribesmen. The road to Gurashah valley through Shalizah Pa.s.s was longer than the road that wound through Amir Jehun Pa.s.s, but the latter traversed part of the Afghuli country, which Kerim Shah had been anxious to avoid until he came with an army. Barred from the Shalizah road, however, he had turned to the forbidden route, until news that Conan had not yet reached Afghulistan with his captive had caused him to turn southward and push on recklessly in the hope of overtaking the Cimmerian in the hills.
”So you had better tell me where the Devi is,” suggested Kerim Shah.
”We outnumber you-”