Part 22 (1/2)

”Show me,” said Conan, eyes agleam with eagerness.

The smooth floor of the tunnel, in which three horses might have been ridden abreast, slanted downward. From time to time short flights of steps gave on to lower levels. For a while Conan could not see anything in the darkness. Then a faint glow ahead relieved it. The glow became a silvery sheen, and the sound of falling water filled the tunnel.

They stood in the mouth of the tunnel, which was masked by a sheet of water rus.h.i.+ng over the cliff above. From the pool that foamed at the foot of the falls, a narrow stream raced away down the gorge. Vinashko pointed out a ledge that ran from the cavern mouth, skirting the pool.

Conan followed him. Plunging through the thin edge of the falls, he found himself in a gorge like a knife cut through the hills. Nowhere was it more than fifty paces wide, with sheer cliffs on both sides. No vegetation grew anywhere except for a fringe along the stream. The stream meandered down the canyon floor to plunge through a narrow crack in the opposite cliff.

Conan followed Vinashko up the twisting gorge. Within three hundred paces, they lost sight of the waterfall. The floor slanted upward.

Shortly the Yuets.h.i.+ drew back, clutching his companion's arm. A stunted tree grew at an angle in the rock wall, and behind this Vinashko crouched, pointing.

Beyond the angle, the gorge ran on for eighty paces and ended in an impa.s.se. On their left the cliff seemed curiously altered, and Conan stared for an instant before he realized that he was looking at a man-made wall. They were almost behind a castle built in a notch in the cliffs. Its wall rose sheer from the edge of a deep crevice. No bridge spanned this chasm, and the only apparent entrance in the wall was a heavy, iron-braced door halfway up the wall. Opposite to it, a narrow ledge ran along the opposite side of the gorge, and this had been improved so that it could be reached on foot from where they stood.

”By this path the girl Roxana escaped,” said Vinashko. ”This gorge runs almost parallel to the Akrim. It narrows to the west and finally comes into the valley through a narrow notch, where the stream flows through.

The Zaporoskans have blocked the entrance with stones so that the path cannot be seen from the outer valley unless one knows of it. They seldom use this road and know nothing of the tunnel behind the waterfall.”

Conan rubbed his shaven chin. He yearned to loot the castle himself but saw no way to come to it. ”By Crom, Vinashko, I should like to look on this noted valley.”

The Yuets.h.i.+ glanced at Conan's bulk and shook his head. ”There is a way we call the Eagle's Road, but it is not for such as you.”

”Ymir! Is a skin-clad savage a better climber than a Cimmerian hillman?

Lead on!”

Vinashko shrugged and led the way back down the gorge until, within sight of the waterfall, he stopped at what looked like a shallow groove corroded in the higher cliff-wall. Looking closely, Conan saw a series of shallow handholds notched into the solid rock.

”I'd have deepened these pockmarks,” grumbled Conan, but started up nevertheless after Vinashko, clinging to the shallow pits by toes and fingers. At last they reached the top of the ridge forming the southern side of the gorge and sat down with their feet hanging over the edge.

The gorge twisted like a snake's track beneath them. Conan looked out over the opposite and lower wall of the gorge into the valley of the Akrim.

On his right, the morning sun stood high over the glittering Sea of Vilayet; on his left rose the white-hooded peaks of the Colchians.

Behind him he could see down into the tangle of gorges among which he knew his crew to be encamped.

Smoke still floated lazily up from the blackened patches that had been villages. Down the valley, on the left bank of the river, were pitched a number of tents of hide. Conan saw men swarming like ants around these tents. These were the Hyrkanians, Vinashko said, and pointed up the valley to the mouth of a narrow canyon where the Turanians were encamped. But the castle drew Conan's interest.

It was solidly set in a notch in the cliffs between the gorge beneath them and the valley beyond. The castle faced the valley, entirely surrounded by a ma.s.sive twenty-foot wall. A ponderous gate flanked by towers pierced with slits for arrows commanded the outer slope. This slope was not too steep to be climbed or even ridden up, but afforded no cover.

”It would take a devil to storm that castle,” growled Conan. ”How are we to come at the king's brother in that pile of rock? Lead us to Artaban, so I can take his head back to the Zaporoska.”

”Be wary if you wish to wear your own,” answered Vinashko. ”What do you see in the gorge?”

”A lot of bare stone with a fringe of green along the stream.”

The Yuets.h.i.+ grinned wolflike. ”And do you notice that the fringe is denser on the right bank, where it is also higher? Listen! From behind the waterfall we can watch until the Turanians come up the gorge. Then, while they are busy at Cleg's castle, we'll hide among the bushes along the stream and waylay them as they return. We'll kill all but Teyaspa, whom we will take captive. Then we'll go back through the tunnel. Have you a s.h.i.+p to escape in?”

”Aye,” said Conan, rising and stretching. ”Vinashko, is there any way down from this knife edge you have us balanced on except that shaft we came up by?”

”There is a trail that leads east along the ridge and then down into those gullies where your men camp. Let me show you. Do you see that rock that looks like an old woman? Well, you turn right there...”

Conan listened attentively to the directions, but the substance of them was that this perilous path, more suitable for ibex or chamois than for men, did not provide access to the gorge beneath them.

In the midst of his explanation, Vinashko turned and stiffened. ”What's this?” he said.

Men were galloping out of the distant Hyrkanian camp and las.h.i.+ng their horses across the shallow river.