Part 13 (1/2)

It was a thing neither man, beast, nor devil, imbued with characteristics subhuman as well as characteristics superhuman

But Conan had no tiht He threw hiers rasped the shard which pinned his legs, and the veins swelled in his teave slowly, but he knew that before he could free himself the monster would be upon him, and he knew that those black-taloned hands were death

The headlong rush of the winged one had not wavered It towered over the prostrate Cilimmer of white flashed between it and its victim

In one mad instant she was there-a tense white shape, vibrant with love fierce as a she-panther's The dazed Ci death, her lithe figure, shi+ like ivory beneath the moon; he saw the blaze of her dark eyes, the thick cluster of her burnished hair; her bosom heaved, her red lips were parted, she cried out sharp and ringing as the ring of steel as she thrust at the winged monster's breast

”Belit!” screalance toward hi, a naked eleone, and the Ciered back in unwonted fear, arms lifted as if to fend off attack And he knew that Belit in truth lay on her pyre on the Tigress' deck In his ears rang her passionate cry: ”Were I still in death and you fighting for life I would come back from the abyss-”

With a terrible cry he heaved upward, hurling the stone aside The winged one ca to meet it, his veins on fire with madness The thews started out like cords on his forear on his heel with the force of the sweeping arc Just above the hips it caught the hurtling shape, and the knotted legs fell one way, the torso another as the blade sheared clear through its hairy body

Conan stood in thein his hand, staring down at the relared up at hireat hands knotted spasmodically and stiffened And the oldest race in the world was extinct

Conan lifted his head, s that had been its slaves and executioners None rass were of men, not beasts: hawk-faced, dark-skinned led by swordstrokes And they were crued led with theht turn and rend it? Craft and caution had lurked in thaton his heel, the Ci wharfs and stepped aboard the galley A few strokes of his sword cut her adrift, and he went to the sweep-head The Tigress rocked slowly in the sullen water, sliding out sluggishly toward the ht her Conan leaned on the sweep, his soaze fixed on the cloak-wrapped shape that lay in state on the pyre the richness of which was equal to the ransom of an empress

5 The Funeral Pyre

Noe are done with roa, evermore; No more the oars, the windy harp's refrain; Nor criirdle of the world, receive again Her whoain dawn tinged the ocean A redder glow lit the river reat sword upon the white beach, watching the Tigress swinging out on her last voyage There was no light in his eyes that conte blue wastes all glory and wonder had gone A fierce revulsion shook hies that deepened into purple hazes of mystery Belit had been of the sea; she had lent it splendor and allure Without her it rolled a barren, dreary, and desolate waste fro mystery he returned her He could do noblue splendor was more repellent than the leafy fronds which rustled and whispered behind him of vast e

No hand was at the sweep of the Tigress, no oars drove her through the green water But a clean tanging wind bellied her silken sail, and as a wild swan cleaves the sky to her nest, she sped seaward, flaher froure that lay lapped in scarlet on the shi+ning pyre

So passed the queen of the Black Coast, and leaning on his red-stained sword, Conan stood silently until the red glow had faded far out in the blue hazes and dawn splashed its rose and gold over the ocean

The Vale of Lost Wo his partnershi+p with Belit that Conan gains the name Amra, the Lion, which will follow hireat love of his life, and after her death he will not follow the sea again for several years Instead, he plunges inland and joins the first black tribe that offers hiht and intrigued his way to the position of war chief of the Barows rapidly under his leadershi+p

Chapter One

The thunder of the dra, but in Livia's ears the cla, dull and far away As she lay on the angareb in the great hut, her state bordered between delirium and semi-unconsciousness

Outward sounds and ed upon her senses Her whole h dazed and chaotic, was yet centered with hideous certitude on the naked, writhing figure of her brother, blood strearound of dusky interweaving shapes and shadows, that white form was lined in merciless and awful clarity The air seeled and interwoven obscenely with a rustle of fiendish laughter

She was not conscious of sensation as an individual, separate and distinct froulf of pain-was herself but pain crystallized and ht or motion, while outside the drums bellowed, the horns cla ti the hard earth and open palh her frozen an to seep A dull wonder that she was still bodily unharmed first iving

Theareb and stared dully about her Her extre to blindly awakening nerve centers Her naked feet scruffed nervously at the hard-beaten dirt floor Her fingers twitched convulsively at the skirt of the scanty under-tunic which constituted her only gar, long ago, rude hands had torn her other garht and sha should have caused her so nity was only relative, after all, like everything else

The hut door opened, and a woleamed like polished ebony, adorned only by a wisp of silk twisted about her strutting loins The whites of her eyeballs reflected the firelight outside, as she rolled the

She bore a ba ots of native bread -and a vessel of haold, filled with yarati beer These she set down on the angareb, but Livia paid no heed; she sat staring dully at the opposite wall, hung with hed, with a flash of dark eyes and white teeth; and, with a hiss of spiteful obscenity and a e, she turned and swaggered out of the hut, expressinginsolence with the motions of her hips than any civilized woman could with spoken insults

Neither the wench's words nor her actions had stirred the surface of Livia's consciousness All her sensations were still turned inward