Part 24 (2/2)

He caught at the indentations with hands and toes and went up like a monkey. By the time the Turanians had recovered their wits enough to run up the gorge to a position in front of the groove, where they could see him to shoot at, Conan was fifteen paces up and rising fast.

Another storm of arrows whistled about him, clattering as they glanced from the rock. A couple struck his body but were prevented from piercing his flesh by his mail s.h.i.+rt. A couple of others struck his clothing and caught in the cloth. One hit his right arm, the point pa.s.sing shallowly under the skin and then out again.

With a fearful oath Conan tore the arrow out of the wound point-first, threw it from him, and continued his climb. Blood from the flesh wound soaked up his arm and down his body. By the next volley, he was so high that the arrows had little force left when they reached him. One struck his boot but failed to penetrate.

Up and up he went, the Turanians becoming small beneath him. When their arrows no longer reached him, they ceased shooting. s.n.a.t.c.hes of argument floated up. The general wanted his men to climb the shaft after Conan, and the men protested that this would be futile, as he would simply wait at the top of the cliff and cut their heads off one by one as they emerged. Conan smiled grimly.

Then he reached the top. He sat gasping on the edge with his feet hanging down into the shaft while he bandaged his wounds with strips torn from his clothing, meantime looking about him. Glancing ahead over the rock wall into the valley of the Akrim, he saw sheepskin-clad Hyrkanians riding hard for the hills, pursued by hors.e.m.e.n in glittering mail-Turanian soldiers. Below him, the Turanians and Zaporoskans milled around like ants and finally set off up the gorge to the castle, leaving a few of their number on watch in case Conan should come back down the groove.

Some time later Conan rose, stretched his great muscles, and turned to look eastward toward the Sea of Vilayet. He started as his keen vision picked up a s.h.i.+p, and shading his eyes with his hand he made out a galley of the Turanian navy crawling away from the mouth of the creek where Artaban had left his s.h.i.+p.

”Crom!” he muttered. ”So the cowards piled aboard and pulled out without waiting!”

He struck his palm with his fist, growling deep in his throat like an angry bear. Then he relaxed and laughed shortly. It was no more than he should have expected. Anyway, he was getting tired of the Hyrkanian lands, and there were still many countries in the West that he had never visited.

He started to hunt for the precarious route down from the ridge that Vinashko had shown him.

A Witch Shall Be Born ---------------------.

Conan appropriates a stallion abandoned by one of the Hyrkanian soldiers and heads back by land to the steppes of his kozak friends.

But he finds the kozaki still scattered. Yezdigerd, now on the throne of Turan, is already proving himself a far more astute and energetic ruler than his late sire. He is submerging the fortunes and energies of would-be rivals in a program of imperialism, which will eventually make him master of the greatest empire of the Hyborian Age.

After some narrow escapes from the far-ranging Turanians, Conan reaches the small border kingdom of Khauran, between the eastern tip of Koth and the steppes and deserts over which the Turanians are methodically extending their control. Soon, Conan wins himself the command of the royal guard of Queen Taramis of Khauran.

1. The Blood-Red Crescent

Taramis, Queen of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than the normal quiet of a sleeping palace. She lay staring into the darkness, wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone out. A flecking of stars marked a gold-barred cas.e.m.e.nt that lent no illumination to the interior of the chamber. But, as Taramis lay there, she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before her.

She watched, puzzled. It grew, and its intensity deepened as it expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath, starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that circle of light- a human head.

In a sudden panic the queen opened her lips to cry out for her maids; then she checked herself. The glow was more lurid, the head more vividly limned. It was a woman's head, small, delicately molded, superbly poised, with a high-piled ma.s.s of l.u.s.trous black hair. The face grew distinct as she stared-and it was the sight of this face which froze the cry in Taramis' throat. The features were her own! She might have been looking into a mirror which subtly altered her reflection, lending it a tigerish gleam of eye, a vindictive curl of lip.

”Ishtar!” gasped Taramis. ”I am bewitched!”

Appallingly, the apparition spoke, and its voice was like honeyed venom.

”Bewitched? No, sweet sister! Here is no sorcery.”

”Sister?” stammered the bewildered girl. ”I have no sister.”

”You never had a sister?” came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice.

”Never a twin sister whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or hurt?”

”Why, once I had a sister,” answered Taramis, still convinced that she was in the grip of some sort of nightmare. ”But she died.”

The beautiful face in the disk was convulsed with the aspect of a fury; so h.e.l.lish became its expression that Taramis, cowering back, half expected to see snaky locks writhe hissing about the ivory brow.

”You lie!” The accusation was spat from between the snarling red lips.

”She did not die! Fool! Oh, enough of this mummery! Look-and let your sight be blasted!”

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