Conan the Invincible Part 22

"You know it, don't you?" the captain said quietly.

The hillman nodded reluctantly. His eyes were still murderous on Haranides. "It is called a S'tarra." His mouth twisted around the word, and he spat for punctuation. "Many of these thrice-accursed dung-eaters serve the evil one who dwells in the dark fortress to the south. Many men, and even women and children, disappear within those lightforsaken stone walls, and none are seen again. Not even their bodies to be borne away for the proper rites. Such abominations are not to be endured. So did we gather-" The thin-upped mouth snapped shut; the tribesman resumed his glare.

"You lie," Haranides sneered. "You know not the truth, as your mother knew not your father. Hill dogs do not attack fortresses. You cower in fear of your women, and you would sell your children for a copper."

The dark face had become engorged with rage as Haranides spoke. "Loose me!" the tribesman howled. "Loose me, drinker of jackal's urine, and I will carve your manhood to prove mine!"

The captain laughed contemptuously. "With such numbers as you had, you could not have taken a mud but held by an old woman and her granddaughter."

"Our strength was as the strength of thousands for the righteousness of our cause!" the dark man spat. "Each of us would have killed a score of the diseased demon-sp.a.w.n!"

Haranides studied the hillman's anger-suffused eyes, and nodded to himself. That was as close as he was likely to get to confirmation that there were no more hillmen out. "You say they take people," he said finally. "Do valuables attract them? Gold? Gems?"

"No!" Aheranates burst out. Haranides rounded on him angrily, but the slender man babbled on. "We cannot pursue these... these monsters!

Mitre! 'Twas the Red Hawk we were sent for, and if these creatures kill her, good and well enough!"

"Erlik take you, Aheranates!" the captain grated.

The hillman broke in. "I will guide you. And you ride to slay the scaled filth," he spat, "I will guide you faithfully." Anger had been washed from his face by some other emotion, but what emotion was impossible to say.

"By the Black Throne of Erlik!" Haranides growled. Seizing Aheranates'

arm he pulled the young lieutenant away from the prying eyes of the men, behind a ma.s.sive boulder. The captain glanced around to make certain none of the others had followed. When he spoke his voice was low and forceful. "I've put up with your insolence, with foolishness, slyness, and pettiness enough for ten girls in a zenana, but I'll not put up with cowardice. Especially not in front of the Men."

"Cowardice!" Aheranates slender frame quivered. "My father is Manerxes, who is friend to-"

"I care not if your father is Mitra! Hannuman's stones, man! Your fear is so strong it can be felt at ten paces. We were sent to return with the Red Hawk, not with a rumor that she might possibly be dead somewhere in the mountains."

"You mean to go on?"

Haranides gritted his teeth. The fool could make trouble for him once they returned to Shadizar. "For a time, lieutenant. We may overtake the bandits. And if they have been captured by these S'tarra, well the hilltribes may consider their keep a fortress, but if they thought to take it with fewer than ten score, it's possible eighty real soldiers can do the task. In any event, I won't turn back until I'm sure the Red Hawk and the king's playthings are beyond my grasp."

"You've gone mad." Aheranates' voice was cold and calm, his eyes glazed and half-focused. "I have no other choice. You cannot be allowed to kill us all." His hand darted for his sword.

In his shock Haranides was barely able to throw himself back away from the lieutenant's vicious slash. Aheranates' eyes were fixed; his breath came in pants. Haranides rolled aside, and the other's blade bit into the stony ground where his head had been. But now the captain had his own sword out. He lunged up from the ground, driving it under the younger man's ribs to thrust out behind his shoulder.

Aheranates stared down incredulously at the steel that transfixed him.

"My father is Manerxes," he whispered. "He...." A bubble of blood formed on his lips. As it broke, he fell.

Haranides got to his feet, cursing under his breath, and tugged his sword free of the body. He started at a footstep grating on the rock behind him. Resaro stepped up to look down at Aheranates' body.

"The fool," Haranides began, but Resaro cut him off.

"Your pardon for interrupting, sir, but I can see as you're distraught over the lieutenant's death, and I wouldn't want you to say something, in anguish, so to speak, that I shouldn't ought to hear."

"What are you saying?" the hook-nosed captain asked slowly.

Resaro's dark eyes met his levelly. "The lieutenant was a brave man, sir. Hid the terrible wounds he took against the hillmen till it was too late for him, but I expect he saved us all. His father will be proud of him." He fumbled a rag from beneath his tunic. "You'd best wipe your sword, sir. You must have dropped it and got some of the lieutenant's blood on it."

Haranides hesitated before accepting the cloth. "When we get back to Shadizar, come see me. I'll need a good sergeant in my next posting.

Now get the hillman on a horse, and we'll see if we can find the Red Hawk."

"Yes, sir. And thank you, sir."

Resaro knuckled his forehead and disappeared, but Haranides stood looking at the lieutenant's corpse. Whatever slight chance he might have had of surviving a return to Shadizar without the Red Hawk and the Tiridates' trinkets had died with that foppish young idiot. With a muttered oath he went to join his men.

Chapter XVIII.

Conan's keen eyes swept the ridges as the bandit column wound its way along the floor of the narrow, twisting valley. Hordo was by his side, muttering unintelligibly beneath his breath, while Karela maintained her usual place ahead of them all. Her emerald cape was thrown back, and she rode with one fist planted jauntily on her hip. With the need for tracking past, Aberius was back with the rest of the brigands, riding strung out behind.

"She acts as if this is a parade," Hordo growled.

"It may be," Conan replied. He eased his broadsword in its worn s.h.a.green sheath. His gaze still traversed the ridgelines, never stopping in any one place for long. "We have watchers, at least."

Hordo tensed, but he was too long in the trade of banditry to look around suddenly. He loosened his own blade. "Where are they?" he asked quietly.

"Both sides of the valley. I don't know how many."

"It won't take many in here," Hordo grumbled, eyeing the steep slopes.

"I'll warn her."

"We both go," Conan said quickly. "Slowly, as if we're just riding forward to have a casual word." The one-eyed man nodded, and they kicked their mounts to a faster walk.

Karela looked around in surprise and irritation as they rode up on either side of her. Her mouth opened angrily.

"We're being followed," Hordo said before she could speak. "Along the ridges."

She glanced at Conan, then turned back to Hordo. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," Conan said. Her back stiffened, and she faced forward again without speaking. He went on. "Half a gla.s.s past, I saw movement on the east ridge. I thought it was an animal, but now there are two to the east and three to the west, and they move together."

"Hannuman's stones," she muttered, still not looking at him. They rounded a bend in the trail, and whatever else she had to say was lost in a gasp.

In the center of the trail, only twenty paces from them, stood eight reptilian warriors like those they had killed, in chain mail and ridged helmets, bearing on their shoulders the four crossed poles of a bier.

Atop the bier was a tall throne of intricately carved ivory, in which sat a man robed in scarlet. A white streak serpentined through his black hair. He held a long golden staff across his chest and bowed slightly without rising.

"I am called Amanar." His voice rang loudly against the precipitous slopes. "I welcome you, wayfarers."

Conan found he had his broadsword in hand, and noted from the corner of his eye that Karela and Hordo had their blades out as well. Amanar wore a smile, though it did not reach his strange, red-flecked black eyes, but the Cimmerian sensed evil there, evil beyond the scaled creatures that served him. There was nothing rational in his perception. It was a primitive intuition that came from bone and blood, and he trusted it all the more for that.

"Be not affrighted," Amanar intoned.

The sounds of sliding rock and gravel jerked Conan's gaze away from the man on the bier-he was shocked to realize the other had held his eyes thus-to find the abrupt rises to either side of the trail swarming with hundreds of the snakemen, many with javelins or crossbows. There were shouts from the bandits behind as they realized they were as good as surrounded.

"Rats in a barrel," Hordo growled. "Take a pull on the h.e.l.lhorn for me, Conan, if you get to Gehanna first."

"What mean you by this?" Karela demanded loudly. "If you think to buy our lives cheaply-"