Part 12 (1/2)

They were followed by the light cavalry on rangy steeds The riders were typical hillmen, lean and hawk-faced; peaked steel caps were on their heads and chain- kaftans Their main weapon was the terrible Shemitish bohich could send a shaft five hundred paces There were five thousand of these, and Shupras rode at their head, his lean face moody beneath his spired helmet

Close on their heels marched the Khoraja spearmen, always coht cavalry the only honorable branch of service These, like the knights, were of ancient Kothic blood - sons of ruined families, broken men, penniless youths, who could not afford horses and plate-arht up the rear, a thousand horsemen, two thousand speare as their riders; they rimly business-like aspect to these professional killers, veterans of bloody cans Clad from head to foot in chain-mail, they wore their vizorless head-pieces over linked coifs Their shi+elds were unadorned, their long lances without guidons At their saddle-bows hung battle-axes or steelbroadsword The spearh they bore pikes instead of cavalry lances

They were men of aunt, big-boned, of slow speech and violent natures; tawny-haired Gunder Corinthian renegades; swarthy Zingarians, with bristling black mustaches and fiery tempers; Aquilonians froarians, were Hyborians

Behind all careat war-horse, and surrounded by a cluhters from the royal house-troops Its rider, under the silken canopy of the seat, was a sliht of which the populace, always mindful of royalty, threw up its leather cap and cheered wildly

Conan the Cimmerian, restless in his plate-arreat approval, and spoke to Amalric, who rode beside hiolden breastplate and helo with us She's supple, but too soft for this work Anyway, she'll have to get out of these robes'

Arin Evidently Conan supposed Yasmela intended to strap on a sword and take part in the actual fighting, as the barbarian woht like your Cimmerian women, Conan,' he said 'Yasmela rides with us to watch the battle Anyway,' he shi+fted in his saddle and lowered his voice, 'between you and me, I have an idea that the princess dares not re? Maybe we'd better hang a few citizens before we start-'

'No One of herthat cahtened Yasmela half out of her wits It's some of Natohk's deviltry, I doubt not Conan, it's runted the Cio lanced at the long line of wagons and caathered the reins in hismercenaries, 'hell or plunder, coates of Khoraja closed Eager heads lined the battle life or death go forth If the host was overthrown, the future of Khoraja would be written in blood In the hordes sware south, mercy was a quality unknown

All day the colu inning to slope upward Ahead of the in an unbroken raht on the northern slopes of those hills, and hook-nosed, fiery-eyed men of the hill tribes came in scores to squat about the fires and repeat news that had coh their tales ran the na the de, the fiends of the underworld shook the earth with awful roaring He brought fire out of the air and consuates of walled cities, and burnt armored men to bits of charred bone His warriors covered the desert with their nuian troops in war-chariots under the rebel prince Kutamun

Conan listened unperturbed War was his trade Life was a continual battle, or series of battles, since his birth Death had been a constant companion It stalked horrifically at his side; stood at his shoulder beside the gaers rattled the wine-cups It loomed above him, a hooded and monstrous shadohen he lay down to sleep Herasp would close; that was all It was enough that he lived through the present

However, others were less careless of fear than he Striding back froure stayed him with an outstretched hand

'Princess! You should be in your tent'

'I could not sleep' Her dark eyes were haunted in the shadow 'Conan, I am afraid!'

'Are there men in the host you fear?' His hand locked on his hilt

'Noyou fear?'

He considered, tugging at his chin 'Aye,' he adain she shuddered 'I am cursed A fiend froht he lurks in the shadohispering awful secrets tome down to be his queen in hell I dare not sleep - he will come to me in-keep er a princess, but only a terrified girl Her pride had fallen fro her unashamed in her nakedness In her frantic fear she had coest The ruthless power that had repelled her, drew her now

For answer he drew off his scarlet cloak and wrapped it about her, roughly, as if tenderness of any kind were impossible to him His iron hand rested for an instant on her slender shoulder, and she shi+vered again, but not with fear Like an electric shock a surge of animal vitality swept over her at his th had been imparted to her

'Lie here' He indicated a clean-swept space close to a sruity in a princess lying down on the naked ground beside a campfire, wrapped in a warrior's cloak But she obeyed without question

He seated himself near her on a boulder, his broadsword across his knees With the firelight glinting froe of steel - dyna, but ain into terrific action The firelight played on his features,them seem as if carved out of substance shadowy yet hard as steel They were immobile, but his eyes smoldered with fierce life He was not merely a wild man; he was part of the wild, one with the untameable elements of life; in his veins ran the blood of the wolf-pack; in his brain lurked the brooding depths of the northern night; his heart throbbed with the fire of blazing forests

So, half , Yasmela dropped off to sleep, wrapped in a sense of delicious security Somehow she knew that no flame-eyed shadoould bend over her in the darkness, with this griuard above her Yet once again she wakened, to shudder in cos she saw

It was a lowher eyes, she saw that the fire was burning low A feeling of daas in the air She could dililiure, on which the dying fire cast a faint glow Yas bead of an eye, under a white turban Therapidly in a Shemite dialect she found hard to understand

'Let Bel wither my arm! I speak truth! By Derketo, Conan, I am a prince of liars, but I do not lie to an old coether in the land of Zamora, before you donned hauberk!

'I saw Natohk; with the others I knelt before him when he made incantations to Set But I did not thrust my nose in the sand as the rest did I aht is keener than a weasel's I squinted up and saw his veil blowing in the wind It blew aside, and I saw - I saw - Bel aid me, Conan, I say I saw My blood froze in my veins and my hair stood up What I had seen burned my soul like a red-hot iron I could not rest until I had made sure

'I journeyed to the ruins of Kuthchemes The door of the ivory doreat serpent, transfixed by a sword Within the dome lay the body of a man, so shrivelled and distorted I could scarce make it out at first - it was Shevatas, the Zaed as my superior The treasure was untouched; it lay in shi+ heaps about the corpse That was all'

'There were no bones-' began Conan

'There was nothing!' broke in the She! Only the one corpse!'

Silence reigned an instant, and Yas nameless horror

'Whence came Natohk?' rose the Sheht when the world was blind and ithstars, and the howling of the asof the spirits of the wastes Vaht, witches rode naked on the wind, and olves howled across the wilderness On a black ca like the wind, and an unholy fire played about hilowed in the darkness When Natohk dismounted before Set's shrine by the oasis of Aphaka, the beast swept into the night and vanished And I have talked with tribess and rushed upwards into the clouds, leaving a trail of fire behind it No ht, but a black brutish ibbers to him in the blackness before dawn I will tell you, Conan, Natohk is - look, I will show you an ie of what I saw that day by Shushan when the wind blew aside his veil!'

Yasold in the She She heard Conan grunt; and suddenly blackness rolled over her For the first time in her life, princess Yasmela had fainted

Daas still a hint of whiteness in the east when the arain on thefro ride, to report the desert horde encah the hills the soldiers pushed hastily, leaving the wagon trains to follow Yasmela rode with the even nized the coin in the Sheht before - one of those secretlythe features of a ged cliffs and gaunt crags towering over narrow valleys Here and there villages perched, huddles of stone huts, plastered with mud The tribesmen swarmed out to join their Ion, so that before they had traversed the hills, the host had been swelled by some three thousand wild archers

Abruptly they caht their breath at the vast expanse that swept away to the south On the southern side the hills fell away sheerly, raphical division between the Kothian uplands and the southern desert The hills were the ri in an almost unbroken wall Here they were bare and desolate, inhabited only by the Zaheeuard the caravan road Beyond the hills the desert stretched bare, dusty, lifeless Yet beyond its horizon lay the Well of Altaku, and the horde of Natohk

The arh which flowed the wealth of the north and the south, and through which had ia Here the sheer wall of the rampart was broken Pro barren valleys, all but one of which were closed on the northern extreed cliffs This one was the Pass It was ers, parted, forers were represented by a broad ridge on either hand, the outer sides sheer, the inner, steep slopes The vale pitched upward as it narrowed, to coully-torn slopes A as there, and a cluster of stone towers, occupied by the Zahee off his horse He had discarded the plate-armor for the more familiar chain-mail Thespides reined in and demanded, 'Why do you halt?'

'We'll await thehtly to ride out and meet them,' snapped the count

'They'd smother us with numbers,' answered the Cimmerian 'Besides, there's no water out there We'll cahts and I carily 'We are the vanguard, and we, at least, do not fear a ragged desert swarry noble order, to watch the glittering co down the slope into the valley

'The fools! Their canteens will soon be empty, and they'll have to ride back up to the well to water their horses'

'Let theoes hard for the-brothers to ease their harness and rest We've marched hard and fast Water the horses and let the men munch'

No need to send out scouts The desert lay bare to the gaze, though just now this vieas li clouds which rested in whitish masses on the southern horizon The le of stone ruins, some miles out on the desert, reputedly the reian te the ridges, with the wild tribesmen He stationed the mercenaries and the Khoraji spearle where the hill road debouched on the plateau, was pitched Yasmela's pavilion