Part 8 (2/2)

It would be irapple with the ice ith naked hands

The very touch of the creature meant frozen death Even his sword and his ax were of doubtful effectiveness The extreht run up their hafts and freeze the hand that wielded therim smile played over Conan's lips- perhaps he could turn the ice worainst itself

Silently and swiftly he elid ould doubtless sluht hours But Conan did not kno long it would take hiale ht wipe out its serpentine track

Chapter Six

As it turned out, it took Conan littlesun had ascended only a little way above the eastern peaks of the Eiglophians,the snow fields sparkle like pavements of crushed diamonds, when he stood at last before thesnow track led hilacier, a tributary of the Snow Devil From his elevation, Conan could look back down the slope to where this lacier curved to join the main one, like the affluent of a river

Conan entered the opening The light of the rising sun glanced and flashed fro up into rainbow patterns and polychroical elacier, the darkness congealed around hi onward He raised the collar of his bearskin cloak to protect his face fro his eyeballs ache and forcing hi frosted Crystals of ice formed like a delicate mask upon his face, to shatter with each movement and as quickly to refor that which he carried so gingerly inside his cloak

Then in the glooreen eyes, which stared into the roots of his soul These luht of their own By their faint, fungoid phosphorescence, he could see that there the cavern ended in a round well, which was the ice worth was curled in the hollow of its nest Its boneless form was covered with the silken nap of thick white fur Its , now puckered and closed Above the leamed out of a smooth, rounded, featureless, eel-like head

Replete, the ice wor the countless eons that the thing of the snows had dwelt in the cold silences of Snow Devil Glacier, no puny ed it in the frozen depths of its nest Now its weird, trilling,over hi, narcotic waves

But it was too late Conan threw back his cloak to expose his burden

This was his heavy steel horned Asgardian hel coals of his fire, and in which the head of his ax also lay buried, held in place by a loop of the chin strap around the handle A rein from his horse's harness was looped around the ax helve and the chin strap

Holding the end of the rein in one hand, Conan whirled the wholea sling The rush of air fanned the faintly glowing coals to red, then to yellow, then to white A stench of burning hel arose

The ice worm raised its blunt head Its circularof srew to an intolerable pitch and the black circle of mouth moved toward him, Conan stopped the whirl of the hel He snatched out the ax, whose helve was charred, s ax head A quick cast sent the incandescent weapon looping into the cavernousthe hel coals after the ax Then he turned and ran

Chapter Seven

Conan never quite kne he reached the exit The writhing agony frolacier Ice cracked thunderously all around hier wafted out of the tunnel; instead, a blinding, swirling fog of stea on the slick, uneven surface of the ice, banging into one side wall of the tunnel and then the other, Conan at last reached the outer air The glacier trembled beneath his feet with the titanic convulsions of the dying monster within Plumes of steam wafted from a score of crevasses and caverns on either side of Conan, who, slipping and skidding, ran down the snowy slope He angled off to one side to get free of the ice But, before he reached the solid ground of the ed boulders and stunted trees, the glacier exploded When the white-hot steel of the ax head ive way

With a crashi+ng roar, the ice quivered, broke up, hurled glassy fragments into the air, and collapsed into a chaoticwater, soon hidden by a vast cloud of vapor Conan lost his footing, fell, tuainst a boulder on the edge of the ice flow Snow stuffed hispiece of ice up-ended toppled, and struck his boulder, nearly burying hied hih cautiousof his lih bruises to have been in a battle Above hi ice crystals whirled upward froments of ice and slush poured into this crater frolacier in the area had sunk

Little by little the scene returned to nor mountain breeze bleay the clouds of vapor The water frolacier returned to its usual near-immobility

Battered and weary, Conan limped down into the pass

Lamed as he was, he must noalk all the way to far Ne, borrow, or steal another horse But he ith a high heart, turning his bruised face southward-to the golden South, where shi+ning cities lifted tall towers to a bale and luck could win gold, wine, and soft, full-breasted women