Part 7 (2/2)
Chapter Two
Conan knew that the only way to deal with such a nue of the , so as never to let them cluster around him For while his mail would protect his own body from most of their blows, even their crude weapons could quickly bring down hishis horse a little to the left
As the iron lance crushed through bone and hairy flesh, the mountain man screamed, dropped his oeapon, and tried to clutch at the shaft of Conan's spear The thrust of the horse's motion hurled the sub-man to earth The lance head went down and the butt rose As he cantered through the scattered band, Conan dragged his lance free
Behind him, the mountain men broke into a chorus of yells and screa a dozen contradictory coht circle and galloped back through the throng A thrown spear glanced froash in his horse's flank But he drove his lance into another , thrashi+ng body to spatter the snoith scarlet
At his third charge, thethe lance shaft As he rode clear, Conan threay the stu from his saddle As he rode into them once more, he leaned frolow as the ax described a huge figure-eight, with one loop to the right and one to the left On each side, a mountain man fell into the snoith a cloven skull Crimson drops spattered the snow A third h, was knocked down and trampled by Conan's horse
With a wail of terror, the tra In an instant, the other six had joined hilacier Conan drew rein to watch their shaggy figures dwindle- and then had to leap clear of the saddle as his horse shuddered and fell A flint-headed spear had been driven deep into the anilance showed Conan that the beast was dead
”Crorowled to himself Horses were scarce and costly in the northlands He had ridden this steed all the way froh the long winter He had left it behind when he joined the AEsir in their raid, knowing that deep snow and treacherous ice would rob it of most of its usefulness He had counted upon the faithful beast to get him back to the warm lands, and now it lay dead, all because he had i the mountain folk that was none of his affair
As his panting breath slowed and the red mist of battle fury faded out of his eyes, he turned toward the girl for who at hirunted ”Did the brutes hurt you? Have no fear; I'm not a foe I am Conan, a Cimmerian”
Her reply came in a dialect he had never heard before It seemed to be a forues-sonize He found it hard to gather ht-like a God,” she panted ”I thought-you Ya”
As she calmed, he drew the story froa of the Vininian people, a branch of the Hyperboreans who had strayed into the Border Kingdom Her folk lived in perpetual ith the hairy cannibals elt in caves ale for survival in this barren realm was desperate; she would have been eaten by her captors had not Conan rescued her
Two days before, she explained, she had set out with a small party of Virunians to cross the pass above Snow Devil Glacier Thence they planned to journey several days' ride northeast to Sigtona, the nearest of the Hyperborean strongholds There they had kins fair There Ilga's uncle, who accoood husband for her But they had been aa had survived the terrible battle on the slippery slopes Her uncle's last command to her, before he fell with his skull cleft by a flint ax, had been to ride like the wind for hoht of the mountainShe had thrown herself clear and, though bruised, had fled afoot The hairy ones, however, had seen the fall, and a party of thelacier to seize her For hours, it seeht up with her and ringed her round, as Conan had seen
Conan grunted his sympathy; his profound dislike of Hyperboreans, based upon his sojourn in a Hyperborean slave pen, did not extend to their women It was a hard tale, but life in the bleak northlands was grim
He had often heard the like
Noever, another probleht had fallen, and neither had a horse The as rising, and they would have little chance of surviving through the night on the surface of the glacier They must find shelter and make a fire, or Snow Devil Glacier would add two more victiht, Conan fell asleep They had found a hollow beneath an overhang of rock on the side of the glacier, where the ice had h to let theranite surface of the cliff, deeply scored and striated by the rubbing of the glacier, they had room to stretch out In front of the hollow rose the flank of the glacier-clear, translucent ice, fissured by cavernous crevasses and tunnels Although the chill of the ice struck through to their bones, they were still warmer than they would have been on the surface above, where a howling as now driving dense clouds of snow before it
Ilga had been reluctant to accoh he ed away fro out an unfath, losing patience, he had given her a mild cuff on the side of the head and carried her unconscious to the dank haven of the cave
Then he had gone out to recover his bearskin cloak and the gear and supplies tied to his saddle Frolacier, he had gathered a double ars, leaves, and wood, which he had carried to the cave There, with flint and steel, he had coaxed a save more the illusion of ware lest it lacier and flood theleams of the fire shone deeply into the fissures and tunnels that ran back into the body of the glacier until their windings and branchings were lost in the di water came to Conan's ears, now and then punctuated by the creak and crack of slowlywind, to hack fro body of his horse soht back to the cave to roast on the ends of pointed sticks The horse steaks, together with slabs of black bread froardian beer fro repast
Ilga seeht she was still angry with hiradually borne upon him that her mind was not on this incident at all She was, instead, in the grip of stark terror It was not the nory brutes that had pursued her, but a deep, superstitious dread solacier When he tried to question her, she could do nothing but whisper the strange word, ”Yakhmar! Yakhmarr while her lovely face took on a pale, drawn look of terror When he tried to get the estures, which conveyed nothing to hiether in his bearskin cloak Her nearness brought to Conan's ht calm her mind for sleep His first tentative caresses found her not at all unwilling Nor was she unresponsive to his youthful ardor; as he soon discovered, she was not new to this gaasping and crying out in her passion Afterwards, thinking her now relaxed, the Cimmerian rolled over and slept like a dead man