Part 6 (1/2)
A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight slowly cleared He looked up; there was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not place or define-an unfa of this Before hi in the wind, stood a woman To his dazed eyes her body was like ivory, and, save for a light veil of gossamer, she was naked as the day Her slender feet hiter than the snow they spurned She laughed down at the bewildered warrior with a laughter that eeter than the rippling of silvery fountains and poisonous with cruel mockery ”Who are you?” asked the Cimmerian ”Whence come you?”
”What ed harp, but edged with cruelty
”Call up your th fail me, yet they shall not take me alive I see that you are of the Vanir”
”Have I said so?”
His gaze went again to her unruly locks, which at first glance he had thought to be red Now he saw that they were neither red nor yellow but a glorious coazed spellbound Her hair was like elfin gold; the sun struck it so dazzlingly that he could scarcely bear to look upon it Her eyes were likewise neither wholly blue nor wholly gray, but of shi+fting colors and dancing lights and clouds of colors he could not have named Her full red lips s crown of her billowy hair, her ivory body was as perfect as the dream of a God Conan's pulse hammered in his temples
”I cannot tell,” said he,”whether you are of Vanaheiard and my friend Far have I wandered, but a woman like you I have never seen Your locks blind htness Never have I seen such hair, not even ahters of the AEsir By Ymir-”
”Who are you to swear by Ymir?” she mocked ”What know you of the Gods of ice and snow, you who have co an alien people?”
”By the dark Gods of olden-haired AEsir, none has been more forward in swordplay!
This day I have seen fourscore men fall, and I alone have survived the field where Wulfhere's reavers i Tell me, woman, have you seen the flash ofupon the ice?”
”I have seen the hoarfrost glittering in the sun,” she answered ”I have heard the hispering across the everlasting snows”
He shook his head with a sigh ”Niord should have cohting men have been aht there was no village within ues of this spot, for the war carried us far; but you cannot have coreat distance over these snows, naked as you are Lead ard, for I am faint with blows and the weariness of strife”
”My village is further than you can walk, Conan of Ci her ar sensuously and her scintillant eyes half shadowed beneath their long silken lashes ”A naked on the snows,” helike those of a wolf
”Then why do you not rise and followwarrior who falls down beforemockery ”Lie down and die in the snoith the other fools, Conan of the black hair You cannot follohere I would lead”
With an oath, the Ci, his dark, scarred face contorted Rage shook his soul, but desire for the taunting figure before him hah his veins Passion fierce as physical agony flooded his whole being, so that earth and sky swaaze In the madness that swept upon him, weariness and faintness were swept away
He spoke no word as he sheathed his bloody sword and drove at her, fingers spread to grip her soft flesh With a shriek of laughter she leaped back and ran, laughing at hirowl, Conan followed He had forgotten the fight, forgotten the otten Niord and the reavers who failed to reach the battle He thought only of the slender white shape, which seemed to float rather than run before hi-white plain the chase led The traht behind him, but still Conan kept on with the silent tenacity of his race His h the frozen crust; he sank deep in the drifts and forged through theirl danced across the snow, light as a feather floating on a pool; her naked feet barely left their imprint on the hoarfrost that overlaid the crust Despite the fire in his veins, the cold bit through the warrior's ossah the palardens of Poitain
On and on she led, and Conan followed Black curses drooled through the Cireat veins in his tenashed
”You cannot escape me!” he roared ”Lead me into a trap and I'll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet! Hide from me and I'll tear the mountains apart to find you! I'll follow you to hell itself!”
Foahter floated back to him Farther and farther into the wastes she led hi slant to the horizon, the land changed; the wide plains gave way to low hills, ht a gli mountains, their eternal snows blue with distance and pink in the rays of the blood-red setting sun In the darkling sides above the rays of the aurora They spread fanwise into the sky-frosty blades of cold, fla
Above hileams
The snow shone weirdly: now frosty blue, now icy cri, icy realedly onward, in a crystallineacross the glittering snow beyond his reach-ever beyond his reach
He did not wonder at the strangeness of it all-not even when two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way The scales of their mail hite with hoarfrost; their helmets and axes were covered with ice
Snow sprinkled their locks, in their beards were spikes of icicles, and their eyes were as cold as the lights that strea between theht you aon our father's board!”