Part 26 (2/2)

One of the men leaped up and shook his fist at Conan 'Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?' he howled 'Are we to fight his battles for him?'

With a stride Conan reached hihtly to stare full into his hairy face The Cirasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward

'I ask no ht my battles,' he said softly 'Draw your blade if you dare, you yapping dog!' The Wazuli started back, snarling like a cat 'Dare to touch me and here are fifty men to rend you apart!' he screeched

'What!' roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling rath His whiskers bristled, his belly swelled with his rage 'Are you chief of Khurum? Do the Wazulis take orders froed before his invincible chief, and Yar Afzal, striding up to him, seized hi black Then he hurled the round and stood over him with his tulwar in his hand

'Is there any who questions my authority?' he roared, and his warriors looked down sullenly as his bellicose glare swept their serunted scornfully and sheathed his weapon with a gesture that was the apex of insult Then he kicked the fallen agitator with a concentrated vindictiveness that brought howls from his victihts and bring word if they have seen anything,' corinding his teeth with fury

Yar Afzal then seated hi in his beard Conan stood near hiirdle, narroatching the asse to brave Yar Afzal's fury, but hating the foreigner as only a hills, while I tell you what the lord Conan and I have planned to fool the Kshatriyas' The boom of Yar Afzal's bull-like voice followed the discomfited warrior as he slunk away from the assembly

The man passed by the cluster of huts, where wo co spurs and rocks toward the valley head

Just as he rounded the first turn that took hi stupidly He had not believed it possible for a stranger to enter the valley of Khuru the heights; yet a e oeside the path - a reen turban

The Wazuli's aped for a yell, and his hand leaped to his knife-hilt But at that instant his eyes er and the cry died in his throat, his fingers went lilazed and vacant

For e drew a cryptic syer The Wazuli did not see hi within the coleamed there - a round, shi+ny black ball that looked like polished jade The reen turban took this up and tossed it to the Wazuli, who ht it

'Carry this to Yar Afzal,' he said, and the Wazuli turned like an auto the black jade ball in his outstretched hand He did not even turn his head to the renewed jeers of the women as he passed the huts He did not seeazed after hiirl's head rose above the rie and she looked at him with adht before

'Why did you do that?' she asked

He ran his fingers through her dark locks caressingly

'Are you still dizzy froht on the horse-of-air, that you doubtas Yar Afzal lives, Conan will bide safe a-men Their knives are sharp, and there are many of them What I plot will be safer, even forthem It takes no wizard to predict what the Wazulis will do, and what Conan will do, when lobe of Yezud to the chief of Khurum'

Back before the hut, Yar Afzal halted in the midst of some tirade, surprized and displeased to see the h the throng

'I bade you go to the watchers!' the chief bellowed 'You have not had time to come from the vacantly into the chiefs face, his pal over Yar Afzal's shoulder,and reached to touch the chiefs arer, struck the man with his clenched fist and felled him like an ox As he fell, the jade sphere rolled to Yar AfzaPs foot, and the chief, see to see it for the first ti perplexedly at their senseless comrade, saw their chief bend, but they did not see what he picked up frolanced at the jade, and irdle

'Carry that fool to his hut,' he growled 'He has the look of a lotus-eater He returnedtoward his girdle, he had suddenly felt movement where lared at nothing; and inside his clenched right hand he felt the quivering of change, ofsphere in his fingers And he dared not look; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not open his hand His astonished warriors saw Yar Afzal's eyes distend, the color ebb froony burst frohtning, his right arm tossed out in front of hiers crawled a spider - a hideous, black, hairy-legged ave back suddenly, and the creature scuttled into a crevice of the rocks and disappeared

The warriors started up, glaring wildly, and a voice rose above their cla voice of command which came from none knehere Afterward each man there - who still lived -denied that he had shouted, but all there heard it

'Yar Afzal is dead! Kill the outlander!'

That shout focused their whirling minds as one Doubt, bewildere of the blood-lust A furious yell rent the skies as the tribes across the open space, cloaks flapping, eyes blazing, knives lifted

Conan's action was as quick as theirs As the voice shouted he sprang for the hut door But they were closer to him than he was to the door, and with one foot on the sill he had to wheel and parry the swipe of a yard-long blade He split the utted the wielder -felled a man with his left fist and stabbed another in the belly -and heaved backblades were nicking chips out of the jambs about his ears, but the door flew open under the i backward into the roo with all his fury as Conan sprang back, overreached and pitched head-first through the doorway Conan stopped, grasped the slack of his garments and hauled him clear, and sla into it Bones snapped under the impact, and the next instant Conan slammed the bolts into place and whirled with desperate haste tofrom the floor and tore into action like ain horror as the twoher at tior of their blades filled the roo deafen-ingly at the bronze door with their long knives, and dashi+ng huge rocks against it Soer under the thunderous assault Yas wildly Violence and fury within, cataclyshed and reared, thundering with his heels against the walls He wheeled and launched his hoofs through the bars just as the tribesainst them His spine cracked in three places like a rotten branch and he was hurled headlong against the Ci him backward so that they both crashed to the beaten floor

Yasht it seemed that both were slain She reached theht his arht -I thought you were dead!' He glanced down at her quickly, into the pale, upturned face and the wide staring dark eyes 'Why are you tre?” he dee of her poise returned to her, and she dreay, naking a rather pitiful atte the Devi 'You are preferable to those wolves howling without,' she iswered, gesturing toward the door, the stone sill of which was beginning to splinter away

'That won't hold long,' he muttered, then turned and went viftly to the stall of the stallion Yasht her breath as she saw liio into the stall with the Tiaddened beast The stallion reared above hi terribly, hoofs lifted, eyes and teeth flashi+ng and ears laid back, but Conan leaped and caught his th that sees The steed snorted and quivered, but stood still while the old-worked saddle, with the wide silver stirrups

Wheeling the beast around in the stall, Conan called quickly to Yas nervously past the stallion's heels Conan orking at the stone wall, talking swiftly as he worked

'A secret door in the wall here, that not even the Wazuli know about Yar Afzal showed it to me once when he was drunk It opens out into the ed at a projection that seemed casual, a whole section of the wall slid back on oiled iron runners Looking through, the girl saw a narrow defile opening in a sheer stone cliff within a few feet of the hut's back wall Then Conan sprang into the saddle and hauled her up before hi and crashed in, and a yell rang to the roof as the entrance was instantly flooded with hairy faces and knives in hairy fists And then the great stallion went through the wall like a javelin fro low, foas

That move came as an absolute surprize to the Wazulis It was a surprize, too, to those stealing down the ravine It happened so quickly - the hurricane-like charge of the great horse - that a et out of the way He went down under the frantic hoofs, and a girl screaliirl in silk trousers and a jeweled breast-band, flattening herself against the ravine wall Then the black horse and his riders were gone up the gorge like the spuh the wall into the defile after theed their yells of blood-lust to shrill screams of fear and death

6 THE MOUNTAIN OF THE BLACK SEERS

'Where now?' Yas saddle-bow, clutching her captor She was conscious of a recognition of shame that she should not find unpleasant the feel of his hulistan,' he answered 'It's a perilous road, but the stallion will carry us easily, unless we fall in with some of your friends, or my tribal enemies Now that Yar Afzal is dead, those damned Wazulis will be on our heels I'hted them behind us already'

'Who was that man you rode down?' she asked

'I don't know I never saw him before He's no Ghuli, that's certain What the devil he was doing there is irl with hiaze was shadowed 'I can not understand that That girl wasto aid me? That the man was a friend? If so, the Wazulis have captured the we can do If we go back, they'll skin us both I can't understand how a girl like that could get this far into the mountains with only one man - and he a robed scholar, for that's what he looked like There's so infernally queer in all this That fellow Yar Afzal beat and sent away - hein his sleep I've seen the priests of Zamora perform their abominable rituals in their forbidden temples, and their victims had a stare like that man The priests looked into their eyes anddeadas they were ordered

'And then I sahat the fellow had in his hand, which Yar Afzal picked up It was like a big black jade bead, such as the teirls of Yezud hen they dance before the black stone spider which is their God Yar Afzal held it in his hand, and he didn't pick up anything else Yet when he fell dead, a spider, like the God at Yezud, only sers

And then, when the Wazulis stood uncertain there, a voice cried out for them to kill me, and I know that voice didn't come from any of the warriors, nor from the women atched by the huts It seelanced at the stark outlines of the mountains all about theaunt brutality This was a grie-old traditions invested it with shuddery horror for anyone born in the hot, luxuriant southern plains

The sun was high, beating doith fierce heat, yet the wind that blew in fitful gusts seee rushi+ng above them that was not the sweep of the wind, and from the way Conan looked up, she kneas not a coht that a strip of the cold blue sky was momentarily blurred, as if some all but invisible object had swept between it and herself, but she could not be sure Neither made any comment, but Conan loosened his knife in his scabbard

They were following a faintlydown into ravines so deep the sun never struck botto up steep slopes where loose shale threatened to slide froes witrt-hlue-hazed echoing depths on either hand

The sun had passed its zenith when they crossed a narrow trail winding as Conan reined the horse aside and followed it southward, going alles to their former course