Part 15 (1/2)
”Conan!” The cry broke involuntarily from her lips With a fierce inarticulate yell, the barbarian sprang into the air, lashi+ng upith his sword that flas rose and fell Livia, dumb with horror, saw the Ci over hily; his feet sta the white blosso iht He was hurled back and forth like a rat in the grip of a hound; blood splashed thickly on the sward,with the white petals that lay strewn like a carpet
And then the girl, watching that devilish battle as in a nighter in s, and the le and vanish aered dizzily, sword poised, legs wide-braced, staring upward stupidly, ahastly battle
An instant later Conan approached the altar, panting, dripping blood at every step Hiswith perspiration
Blood ran down his arms in streams from his neck and shoulders As he touched her, the spell on the girl was broken and she scra fro down at her, where she cowered at his feet
”Men saw you ride out of the village,” he said ”I followed as soon as I could and picked up your track, though it was no easy task following it by torchlight I tracked you to the place where your horse threw you, and though the torches were exhausted by then, and I could not find the prints of your bare feet on the sward, I felt sure you had descended into the valley My men would not follow me, so I came alone on foot What vale of devils is this? What was that thing?”
”A God,” she whispered ”The black people spoke of it -a God froo!”
”A devil fro uncoht which surrounds this world I've heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them
Some find their way to earth, but when they do they have to take on some earthly form and flesh of some sort A man like s and talons, infernal or terrestrial Coe of the valley”
She crouched motionless, unable to find words, while he frowned down at her Then she spoke: ”I ran away fro to keep ain we made, but I would have escaped from you if I could Punish me as you will”
He shook the sweat and blood frorunted ”It was a foul bargain IBajujh, but you are no wench to be bought and sold The ways of men vary in different lands, but a ht awhile, I saw that to hold you to your bargain would be the sah for this land You are a child of cities and books and civilized hich isn't your fault, but you'd die quickly following the life I thrive on A dead woian borders The Stygians will send you home to Ophir”
She stared up at hiht ”Home?” she repeated mechanically ”Home? Ophir? My people? Cities, towers, peace,to her knees, she erunted Conan, e you a favor by kicking you out of this country Haven't I explained that you're not the proper woman for the war chief of the Bamulas?”
The Castle of Terror --------------------
Before he can bring off his plans for building a black empire with himself at its heady Conan is thwarted by a succession of natural catastrophes and the intrigues of his ene the Bamulas, many of whoner Forced to flee, he heads north through the equatorial jungle and across the grassy veldt toward the se Eyes
Beyond the trackless deserts of Stygia lay the vast grasslands of Kush
For over a hundred leagues, there was naught but endless stretches of thick grass Here and there a solitary tree rose to break the gently rolling on trees, ees
Now and then a rare strea rise to a narrow gallery forest along its banks Herds of zebra, antelope, buffalo, and other denizens of the savanna drifted athwart the veldt, grazing as they went
The grasses whispered and nodded in the wandering winds beneath skies of deep cobalt in which a fierce tropical sun blazed blindingly Now and then clouds boiled up; a brief thunderstorm roared and blazed with catastrophic fury, only to die and clear as quickly as it had arisen
Across this lied It was a young giant, strongly built, with gliding thews that swelled under a sun-bronzed hide scored with the white traces of old wounds Deep of chest and broad of shoulder and long of limb was he; his scanty costunificent physique His chest, shoulders, and back were burnt nearly as black as the natives of this land
The tangled locks of an unkeri black brows, fierce eyes of burning blue roamed restlessly from side to side as he marched with a liaze pierced the thick, shadowy grasses on either side, reddened by the angry criht would co wings, danger and death would prowl the waste
Yet the lone traveler, Conan of Cimmeria, was not afraid A barbarian of barbarians, bred on the bleak hills of distant Cimmeria, the iron endurance and fierce vitality of the ere his, granting hih more learned, more courteous, and more sophisticated than he, would one afoot for eight days, with no food save the ga across his back, the hty barbarian had nowhere nearly approached the li had Conan been accustoh he had tasted the languid luxuries of civilized life in half the walled, glittering cities of the world, he missed them not He plodded on toward the distant horizon, now obscured by a les of the black lands beyond Kush, where fantastic orchids blazed areen, where fierce black tribes hacked a precarious living out of the s bush, and where the silence of the dank, shadowed jungle pathas broken only by the coughing snarl of the hunting leopard, the grunt of the wild pig, the brassy truered ape For over a year, Conan had dwelt there as the war chief of the powerful Bath the crafty black priests, jealous of his rise to power and resentful of his undisguised conteuinary rites, had poisoned the ainst their white-skinned leader