Part 12 (2/2)

And here and there aht color, as if a careless hand had splashed with a criain Conan looked on death and destruction Before him lay his speare to the riverbank, a the broken piers they lay, torn and led and half-devoured, chewed travesties of men

All about the bodies and pieces of bodies were sware footprints, like those of hyenas

Conan caalley above whose deck was suspended soht Speechless, the Ci froalley Between the yard and her throat stretched a line of criht

4 The Attack from the Air

The shadoere black around hiaped wide, Thicker than rain the red drops fell; But my love was fiercer than Death's black spell, Nor all the iron walls of hell Could keep le was a black colossus that locked the ruin-littered glade in ebon arms The moon had not risen; the stars were flecks of hot amber in a breathless sky that reeked of death On the pyra the fallen towers sat Conan the Cimmerian like an iron statue, chin propped on massive fists Out in the black shadows, stealthy feet padded and red eyes glimmered The dead lay as they had fallen But on the deck of the Tigress, on a pyre of broken benches, spear shafts, and leopard skins, lay the queen of the Black Coast in her last sleep, wrapped in Conan's scarlet cloak Like a true queen she lay, with her plunder heaped high about her: silks, cloth-of-gold, silver braid, casks of geers, and teocallis of gold wedges

But of the plunder of the accursed city, only the sullen waters of Zarkheba could tell where Conan had thrown it with a heathen curse Now he sat gri for his unseen foes The black fury in his soul drove out all fear What shapes would ee froer doubted the visions of the black lotus He understood that, while waiting for hilade, N'Gora and his co upon the in blind panic, had fallen over the cliff; all except their chief, who had soh not madness

Meanwhile, or immediately after, or perhaps before, the destruction of those on the riverbank had been acco the river had been massacre rather than battle

Already unht well have died without striking a blow in their own defense when attacked by their inhu, he did not understand, unless the n entity which ruled the river rief and fear All pointed to a hu of the water casks to divide the forces, the driving of the blacks over the cliff, and last and greatest, the gri apparently saved the Cimmerian for the choicest victim and extracted the last ounce of exquisite mental torture, it was likely that the unknown ene hirihter

Thefire from the Cimmerian's horned helrew tense and the jungle held its breath Instinctively Conan loosened the great sword in its sheath The pyramid on which he rested was four-sided, one-the side toward the jungle-carved in broad steps In his hand was a Sheht her pirates to use A heap of arrows lay at his feet, feathered ends toward hi moved in the blackness under the trees Etched abruptly in the rising moon, Conan saw a darkly blocked-out head and shoulders, brutish in outline And now fro loenty great spotted hyenas Their slavering fangs flashed in the ht, their eyes blazed as no true beast's eyes ever blazed

Twenty: then the spears of the pirates had taken toll of the pack, after all Even as he thought this, Conan drew nock to ear, and at the twang of the string a fla

The rest did not falter, on they ca them fell the arrows of the Cimmerian, driven with all the force and accuracy of steely thews backed by a hate hot as the slag heaps of hell

In his berserk fury he did not miss; the air was filled with feathered destruction The havoc wrought a Less than half of them reached the foot of the pyra down into the blazing eyes, Conan knew these creatures were not beasts; it was not merely in their unnatural size that he sensed a blaspheible as the blackfrom a corpse-littered swaht into existence, he could not guess; but he knew he faced diabolis to his feet, he bent his boerfully and drove his last shaft point-blank at a great hairy shape that soared up at his throat

The arroas a flying beaht that flashed onith but a blur in its course, but the were-beast plunged convulsively in h

Then the rest were on his His fiercely driven sword shore the first asunder; then the desperate impact of the others bore him down He crushed a narrow skull with the po the bone splinter and blood and brains gush over his hand; then, dropping the sword, useless at such deadly close quarters, he caught at the throats of the two horrors which were ripping and tearing at him in silent fury A foul acrid scent almost stifled him, his oeat blinded hi ripped to ribbons in an instant The next, his naked right hand locked on a hairy throat and tore it open His left hand, ht and broke its foreleg A short yelp, the only cry in that grim battle, and hideously manlike, burst from the maimed beast At the sick horror of that cry frorip

One, blood gushi+ng froed at his on his throat-to fall back dead, even as Conan felt the tearing agony of its grip

The other, springing forward on three legs, was slashi+ng at his belly as a wolf slashes, actually rending the links of his rappled the crippled horror and, with a roan fro the struggling, tearing fiend in his arms An instant he reeled off balance, its fetid breath hot on his nostrils, its jaws snapping at his neck; then he hurled it fro force down thefor breath, the jungle and the s was loud in his ears Stooping, he groped for his sword and, swaying upright, braced his feet drunkenly and heaved the great blade above his head with both hands, shaking the blood froht the air above him for his foe

Instead of attack froered suddenly and awfully beneath his feet He heard a ru crackle and saw the tall colualvanized life, he bounded far out; his feet hit a step, half-way dohich rocked beneath him, and his next desperate leap carried him clear But even as his heels hit the earth, with a shattering crash like a breakingdown in bursting fragments For a blind cataclysmic instant the sky seemed to rain shards of marble Then a rubble of shattered stone lay whitely under theoff the splinters that half covered hi blow had knocked off his helreat piece of the colus were unbroken His black locks were plastered with sweat; blood trickled from the wounds in his throat and hands He hitched up on one ar with the debris that prisoned hi swept down across the stars and struck the sward near hied one!

With fearful speed it was rushi+ng upon him, and in that instant Conan had only a confused i on bowed and stunted legs; of huge, hairy ar misshapen, black-nailed paws; of a nizable as such were a pair of blood-red eyes