Part 9 (2/2)

'How can you stand there like a duhastly whisper 'Are you but a beast like these others? Ah, Mitra, once I thought there was honor in men Now I know each has his price You - what do you know of honor - or of mercy or decency? You are a barbarian like these others - only your skin is white; your soul is black as theirs You care naught that a man of your own colour has been foully done to death by these black dogs - that a white woman is their slave! Very well'

She fell back froive you a price,' she raved, tearing away her tunic from her ivory breasts 'Am I not fair? Am I not more desirable than these soot-coloured wenches? A? Is not a fair-skinned virgin a price worth slaying for?

'Kill that black dog Bajujh! Let me see his cursed head roll in the bloody dust! Kill hiony of her intensity 'Then take me and do as you ith me I will be your slave!'

He did not speak for an instant, but stood like a giant brooding figure of slaughter and destruction, fingering his hilt

'You speak as if you were free to give yourself at your pleasure,' he said, 'as if the gift of your body had power to swing kingdoms Why should I kill Bajujh to obtain you? Woness or unwillingness hly If I wanted you, I wouldn't have to fight Bajujh to take you He would rather give you to asped All the fire went out of her, the hut reeled dizzily before her eyes She staggered and sank in a cruareb Dazed bitterness crushed her soul as the realization of her utter helplessness was thrust brutally upon her The hus unconsciously to fas and conditions alien and unrelated to those environs to which such values and ideas are adapted In spite of all Livia had experienced, she had still instinctively supposed a woame as she proposed to play She was stunned by the realization that nothing hinged upon her at all She could not ame; she herself was the helpless pawn

'I see the absurdity of supposing that anyto rules and customs existent in another corner of the planet,' she , which was indeed only the vocal fraht which overcame her Stunned by that newest twist of fate, she lay ers closed on her shoulder and lifted her again to her feet

'You said I was a barbarian,' he said harshly, 'and that is true, Cro you instead of soft gutted civilized weaklings, you would not be the slave of a black pig this night I ae But I a as to leave a white woh your kind call ainst her consent Custoh, he can enforce a few of his native custo!

'If you were old and ugly as the devil's pet vulture, I'd take you away from Bajujh, si and beautiful, and I have looked at black sluts until I aame your way, simply because some of your instincts correspond with some of mine Get back to your hut, Bajujh's too drunk to coht, and I'll see that he's occupied toht it will be Conan's bed you'll warm, not Bajujh's'

'Hoill it be accoled eh,' he grunted 'Bamulas, every one of them, and suckled at the teats of war I came here at Bajujh's request He wants ht we feasted Toh with hi council in hell'

'You will break the truce?'

'Truces in this land are rimly 'He would break his truce with Jihiji And after we'd looted the town together, he'd wipe uard What would be blackest treachery in another land, is wisdoht my way alone to the position of war-chief of the Ba all the lessons the black country teaches Now go back to your hut and sleep, knowing that it is not for Bajujh but for Conan that you preserve your beauty!'

Through the crack in the ba All day, since their late waking, bleary and sodden froht before, the black people had prepared the feast for the coht All day Conan the Cimmerian had sat in the hut of Bajujh, and what had passed between theht to hide her excitement froirl who brought her food and drink But that ribald wench had been too groggy froe in her captive's dehted the village, and once 's hut and squatted down in the open space between the huts to feast and hold a final, cere Livia noticed the Ba toward the circle where sat the chiefopposite hi with the giant Aja, Bajujh's war-chief

The Cireat beef-bone, and as she watched, she saw hinal for which they had been waiting, the Baaze toward their chief Conan rose, still s pot; then quick as a cat he struck Aja a terrible bloith the heavy bone The Bakalah war-chief sluhtful yell rent the skies as the Ba pots overturned, scalding the squatting wo bodies, screaht, and over all rose the exultant 'Yee! yee! yee? of maddened Balow

Bakalah was a madhouse that reddened into a shambles The action of the invaders paralyzed the luckless villagers by its unexpected suddenness No thought of attack by their guests had ever entered their woolly pates Most of the spears were stacked in the huts, many of the warriors already half drunk The fall of Aja was a signal that plunged the glea bodies; after that it was massacre

At her peep-hole Livia stood frozen, white as a statue, her golden locks drawn back and grasped in a knotted cluster with both hands at her teid The yells of pain and fury s, slashi+ng for distinctness She saw spears sink into writhing black bodies, spilling red She saw clubs swing and descend with brutal force on kinky heads Brands were kicked out of the fires, scattering sparks; hut-thatches suish cut through the cries, as living victi structures The scent of scorched flesh began to sicken the air, already rank with reeking sweat and fresh blood

Livia's overwrought nerves gave way She cried out again and again, shrill screahter She beat her te her cries to ht to keep before her the fact that it was her ene thus horribly - that this was as she had hastly sacrifice was a just repays done her and hers Frantic terror held her in its unreasoning grasp

She are of no pity for the victi spears Her only e fear She saw Conan, his white for with the blacks She saw his sword flash, andknot swept around a fire, and she glihed through and was hidden froures Fro rose unbearably The press split for an instant, and she had one awful gli blood Then the throng crowded in again, and steel flashed in the h the dusk

A beast-like baying rose, terrifying in its prih thetoward the hut where the girl cowered, and in his hand he bore a ghastly relic - the firelight glealassy now instead of vital, rolled up, revealing only the whites; the jaw hung slack as if in a grin of idiocy; red drops showered thickly along the ground

Livia gave back with ato clairasp her with his hot bloody fingers, crush her lips with ht came delirium

With a screaainst the door in the back wall It fell open, and she darted across the open space, a flitting white ghost in a realm of black shadows and red flame

Some obscure instinct led her to the pen where the horses were kept A warrior was just taking down the bars that separated the horse-pen from the main boma, and he yelled in amazement as she darted past him A dusky hand clutched at her, closed on the neck of her tunic With a frantic jerk she tore away leaving the garment in his hand The horses snorted and sta the black warrior in the dust - lean, wiry steeds of the Kushi+te breed, already frantic with the fire and the scent of blood

Blindly she caught at a flying ain on her toes, sprang high, pulled and scra back Mad with fear the herd plunged through the fires, their s shower The startled black people had a wild gli naked to the mane of a beast that raced like the wind that streaht for the boly into the air, and was gone into the night

Livia could uide her steed, nor did she feel any need of so doing The yells and the glow of the fires were fading out behind her; the wind tossed her hair and caressed her naked li mane and ride, ride, ride over the ririef and horror

And for hours the wiry steed raced, until, topping a starlit crest, he stu

She struck on soft cushi+oning sward, and lay for an instant half stunned, diered up, the first thing that i - soft, darkly velvet - after the incessant blare of barbaric horns and drureat white stars clustered thickly in the dark blue sky There was no h illusively, with unexpected clusterings of shadow She stood on a swarded eently ht Far away in one direction she discerned a dense dark line of trees which ht and trance-like stillness and a faint breeze blowing through the stars

The land see The warm caress of the breeze led uneasily, spreading her hands over her body Then she felt the loneliness of the night, and the unbrokenness of the solitude She was alone; she stood naked on the suht and the whispering wind

She was suddenly glad of the night and the loneliness There was none to threaten her, or to seize her with rude violent hands She looked before her and saw the slope falling away into a broad valley; there fronds waved thickly and the starlight reflected whitely on ht they were great white blossoht of a valley of which the blacks had spoken with fear; a valley to which had fled the young woe brown-skinned race which had inhabited the land before the co of the ancestors of the Bakalahs There, men said, they had turned into white flowers, had been transformed by the old Gods to escape their ravishers There no black o She would go down those grassy slopes which were like velvet under her tender feet; she would dwell there a white blossoms and no man would ever come to lay hot, rude hands on her Conan had said that pacts were made to be broken; she would break her pact with hio into the vale of the lost women; she would lose herself in solitude and stillnesseven as these dreah her consciousness, she was descending the gentle slopes, and the tiers of the valley walls were rising higher on each hand

But so gentle were their slopes that when she stood on the valley floor she did not have the feeling of being ied walls All about her floated seas of shadow, and great white blossoms nodded and whispered to her She wandered at rando to the whisper of the wind through the leaves, finding a childish pleasure in the gurgling of an unseen streae unreality One thought reiterated itself continually: there she was safe from the brutality of th upon the sward and clutched the soft grass as if she would crush her new-found refuge to her breast and hold it there forever

She plucked the petals of the blossoolden hair Their perfus in the valley, drealade in the reat stone, hewn as if by human hands, and adorned with ferns and blosso at it, and then there wasfrom the denser shadows - slender brooht-black hair Like creatures of a dream they came about her, and they did not speak But suddenly terror seized her as she looked into their eyes Those eyes were luminous, radiant in the starshi+ne, but they were not hue change had been wrought; a change reflected in their glowing eyes Fear descended on Livia in a wave The serpent reared its grisly head in her new-found Paradise

But she could not flee The lithe broomen were all about her One, lovelier than the rest, cairl, and enfolded her with supple brown arms Her breath was scented with the same perfume that stole from the white blossoms that waved in the starshi+ne Her lips pressed Livia's in a long terrible kiss The Ophirean felt coldness, running through her veins; her limbs turned brittle; like a white statue of marble she lay in the arms of her captress, incapable of speech or movement

Quick soft hands lifted her and laid her on the altar-stone a and e dark measure Never the sun or the rehiter and gloith a ht as if its dark witchery struck response in things cosmic and elemental

And a low chant arose, that was less hu of the distant streareat white blossoms that waved beneath the stars Livia lay, conscious but without power of moveht not to reason or analyze; she was and these strange beings dancing about her were; a dunition of the actuality of night up at the star-clustered sky, whence, she so would coo to s they noere

First, high above her, she saw a black dot arew and expanded; it neared her; it swelled to a bat; and still it grew, though its shape did not alter further to any great extent It hovered over her in the stars, dropping plus spread over her; she lay in its tenebrous shadow And all about her the chant rose higher, to a soft paean of soulless joy, a welcome to the God which came to claim a fresh sacrifice, fresh and rose-pink as a flower in the dew of dawn

Now it hung directly over her, and her soul shriveled and grew chill and ss were bat-like; but its body and the di of sea or earth or air; she knew she looked upon ultiulfs beyond the reach of athe unseen bonds that held her dumb, she screa shout She heard the pounding of rushi+ng feet; all about her there was a swirl as of saters; the white blossoone Over her hovered the great black shadow, and she saw a tall white figure, with plu toward her

'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?'