Conan and the Gods of the Mountain Part 6

With no voice of his own left, he spoke in the spirit-tongue, which Seyganko did not yet understand. Whatever the spirits were saying had Dobanpu's face twisting in horror, for all that he fought for self-command. Emwaya's eyes were wide, and her hand on her father's shoulder gripped so tight that her nails scored his flesh and her knuckles were pallid.

Thunder came again, this time a distant rumble. Seyganko gazed up at the ceiling of the cave because he could no longer bear to look at the captive. He saw a drop of water fall, to raise a puff of dust from the cave floor. Another drop followed it, then several more, then a steady stream.

No spirits were in that thunder. It was not the rainy season, but seldom did more than two or three nights pa.s.s about the Lake of Death without rain. Seyganko resisted the urge to leap forward and stand in the rain streaming down through the smoke hole.

It was as well that he did. Dobanpu's work was not done yet. Indeed, Seyganko could have stalked and slain a wild pig in the time the Spirit-Speaker needed to finish with the captive.

The warrior knew when the end came, though. The captive turned slowly toward Dobanpu. He took a single faltering step forward, then two surer ones before leaping at Dobanpu as would a leopard on its prey.

He never completed the leap. Dobanpu stood like the doorpole of a lodge, but Emwaya flung herself before her father. She moved so swiftly that Seyganko was barely on his feet before she and the dying, vengeance-driven Kwanyi grappled.

It was a short grapple, for all that the Kwanyi had in life been half again Emwaya's size and strength. He could not feel pain, but he could be knocked down. Emwaya sent him sprawling, then gripped one arm. He reached over with the other, groping for a handhold in her hair, meeting only the headdress.

He was still groping when Seyganko brought his club down on the Kwanyi's already battered head. The last spirit-given life fled, and the spirits followed. Thunder rolled again as they leaped from the body and fled up the smoke hole, defying the rain.

Seyganko saw what might have been a bird with four wings and the head of a snake, or something even more unnatural. Then he saw Emwaya turn, eyes widening-and was just in time to help her catch her father as he fell, to all appearances as lifeless as the Kwanyi.

They laid Dobanpu on a bed of rushes; a raised part of the cave floor kept him safe from the growing puddle of rainwater. Emwaya drew a bark-cloth blanket over her father and signed to Seyganko that he should leave them.

Seyganko desperately wished to ask why, but the answer came in the same moment as the question. In the Kwanyi warrior, there had been no common magic. Only arts that Seyganko did not yet have might heal Dobanpu and save his knowledge for his people. Seyganko's duties now lay among the warriors, to lead them if need be, or at least to keep them silent until Dobanpu spoke again.

Seyganko turned back to make sure that the Kwanyi warrior was dead, or to bind him if life was still in him. Then he fought the urge to make gestures of aversion, or even to flee wildly to the open air.

The Kwanyi warrior was gone. Only the outline of his body in the muddy dust remained. No footprints showed his pa.s.sing; it was as if he had become dust himself.

Seyganko looked at Emwaya, and she glanced up from her father long enough to shrug. When I know, I will tell you was in that shrug, and also the pride he knew so well.

I will come when I am needed, Seyganko replied.

He thought he saw her smile as he backed out of the cave. He would rather not have gone at all. Leaving Emwaya there with what had stolen away the Kwanyi's body was harder than leaving her in the face of a hungry leopard.

He also knew that a warrior who courts a Spirit-Speaker's daughter must learn more than most men about the arts of keeping peace with his woman.

Conan awoke to find a sharp root jabbing him in the ribs. He thought he must have rolled over in the night.

Then he reached full wakefulness and knew that the root was warm, and not as sharp as he had thought. He shifted and looked up... from the strong, shapely ankle beside him all the way along the finely turned leg, to the shirt bound as a loincloth about well-rounded hips, and onward to the rest of Valeria.

She left off prodding him with a bare toe and seemed about to smile, Then she shrugged.

"If you think I woke you up for-"

Conan was tempted to grip that ankle and see if Valeria's loincloth survived a tumble to the ground. He set the temptation aside. Valeria had belted on both sword and dagger over her new garb and looked as ready as ever to repay such a rough jest with steel.

Now and for some days to come, Conan had more need of a trustworthy comrade at his back than a woman in his arms. "You woke me because it's dawn and time we were on the march. True?"

A jerk of the head might have been a nod.

"Any visitors?"

"None I could not face myself, Cimmerian."

"Ah, so you did not slay the seven warriors. You only drained them of their power with a woman's-"

The toe jabbed hard into his ribs, and for a moment, Conan was ready to roll clear of a downward slash of her sword. Then the hand left the sword-hilt, her mouth twisted, and a giggle escaped before turning into a laugh. She sat down and began combing leaves and the odd twig from her hair.

"I've killed men for lesser jests, Conan. Remember that."

"Oh, I shall. But if you kill men for small jests, then I may as well die for the bull as for the calf."

She made a small-girl's face at him and went on combing. In a few more moments, she had done as much as anyone could without a comb, or without hacking her hair off short at the neck.

"As you say, best we were on the march." She licked her lips. "Although I would not refuse some water-"

"We'll stop at the first clear stream we find and drink our fill. If there are gourds to be had, we can hollow out a few and fill them, too.

But for now, we'd do better away from here."

"You think we're being followed?"

"I've no way to know, but why make ourselves easy prey? The jungle's much like the sea-he lives longest who's not to be found where his enemies expect him."

"So wise in war, Cimmerian?"

Conan was about to make some gruff reply when he realized that there had been less than the usual mockery in Valeria's voice. He looked at her; she flushed all the way to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then began muttering curses at the lack-witted, effete fools of Xuchotl, who kept jewels and finery in plenty but not a single decent water bottle!

THREE.

"Ge-qah!"

Seyganko cried the Ichiribu ritual word for death and flung his trident. It pierced the morning air, then the blue-green water of the Lake of Death.

The vine rope tying it to Seyganko's waist had run out perhaps twice a man's length when the trident also pierced the lionfish below the canoe. Instantly, ripples spread about the canoe; then bubbles and blood joined the ripples.

The lionfish rose, as long and thick as the canoe, with jaws that could, and sometimes did, swallow a child. Blood and body juices the hue of old gold gushed from the trident wound.

Those ma.s.sive jaws still snapped, and teeth as long as a man's finger clanged together with a noise like a Kwanyi spear on a wooden shield.

The scaly neck plates-with the look of a lion's mane, which gave the fish its name-flapped, as did the gills.

Seyganko waited until the fish's instinct to attack the first thing it saw was aroused. That first thing was the canoe, and the long teeth sank into the hard wood of the dugout. They so nearly met that the warrior knew the canoe would need patching after this day's work.

The wildly thrashing fish jerked at the rope and sent the trident handle whipping about. Seyganko ignored bruises as he raised his club, tossed it, caught it in both hands, and brought it down hard between the two plates over the fish's left eye.

"Ge-qah!"

He spoke the truth. The blow to its most vulnerable spot was death for the lionfish. A shudder went through it from teeth to tail, and its jaws let go their grip on the canoe. Had Seyganko been fool enough to pull the trident loose, it might have slipped away into the depths of the lake and been lost.

As it was, he would have a fine trophy, and a score of the Ichiribu would feast. Any lionfish this large was not the best delicacy, but it was a menace to men; eating it would bring some of its strength and fierceness to those who ate, and avenge any it had slain.