The People of the Black Circle

by Robert E. Howard

  7 On to Yimsha

  As mists vanish before a strong wind, the cobwebs vanished from Conan'sbrain. With a searing curse he leaped into the saddle and the stallionreared neighing beneath him. He glared up the slopes, hesitated, andthen turned down the trail in the direction he had been going whenhalted by Khemsa's trickery. But now he did not ride at a measured gait.He shook loose the reins and the stallion went like a thunderbolt, as iffrantic to lose hysteria in violent physical exertion. Across the ledgeand around the crag and down the narrow trail threading the great steepthey plunged at breakneck speed. The path followed a fold of rock,winding interminably down from tier to tier of striated escarpment, andonce, far below, Conan got a glimpse of the ruin that had fallen--amighty pile of broken stone and boulders at the foot of a giganticcliff.

  The valley floor was still far below him when he reached a long andlofty ridge that led out from the slope like a natural causeway. Outupon this he rode, with an almost sheer drop on either hand. He couldtrace ahead of him the trail and made a great horseshoe back into theriver-bed at his left hand. He cursed the necessity of traversing thosemiles, but it was the only way. To try to descend to the lower lap ofthe trail here would be to attempt the impossible. Only a bird could getto the river-bed with a whole neck.

  So he urged on the wearying stallion, until a clink of hoofs reached hisears, welling up from below. Pulling up short and reining to the lip ofthe cliff, he stared down into the dry river-bed that wound along thefoot of the ridge. Along that gorge rode a motley throng--bearded men onhalf-wild horses, five hundred strong, bristling with weapons. And Conanshouted suddenly, leaning over the edge of the cliff, three hundred feetabove them.

  At his shout they reined back, and five hundred bearded faces weretilted up towards him; a deep, clamorous roar filled the canyon. Conandid not waste words.

  'I was riding for Ghor!' he roared. 'I had not hoped to meet you dogs onthe trail. Follow me as fast as your nags can push! I'm going to Yimsha,and--'

  'Traitor!' The howl was like a dash of ice-water in his face.

  'What?' He glared down at them, jolted speechless. He saw wild eyesblazing up at him, faces contorted with fury, fists brandishing blades.

  'Traitor!' they roared back, wholeheartedly. 'Where are the seven chiefsheld captive in Peshkhauri?'

  'Why, in the governor's prison, I suppose,' he answered.

  A bloodthirsty yell from a hundred throats answered him, with such awaving of weapons and a clamor that he could not understand what theywere saying. He beat down the din with a bull-like roar, and bellowed:'What devil's play is this? Let one of you speak, so I can understandwhat you mean!'

  A gaunt old chief elected himself to this position, shook his tulwar atConan as a preamble, and shouted accusingly: 'You would not let us goraiding Peshkhauri to rescue our brothers!'

  'No, you fools!' roared the exasperated Cimmerian. 'Even if you'dbreached the wall, which is unlikely, they'd have hanged the prisonersbefore you could reach them.'

  'And you went alone to traffic with the governor!' yelled the Afghuli,working himself into a frothing frenzy.

  'Well?'

  'Where are the seven chiefs?' howled the old chief, making his tulwarinto a glimmering wheel of steel about his head. 'Where are they? Dead!'

  'What!' Conan nearly fell off his horse in his surprize.

  'Aye, dead!' five hundred bloodthirsty voices assured him.

  The old chief brandished his arms and got the floor again. 'They werenot hanged!' he screeched. 'A Wazuli in another cell saw them die! Thegovernor sent a wizard to slay them by craft!'

  'That must be a lie,' said Conan. 'The governor would not dare. Lastnight I talked with him--'

  The admission was unfortunate. A yell of hate and accusation split theskies.

  'Aye! You went to him alone! To betray us! It is no lie. The Wazuliescaped through the doors the wizard burst in his entry, and told thetale to our scouts whom he met in Zhaibar. They had been sent forth tosearch for you, when you did not return. When they heard the Wazuli'stale, they returned with all haste to Ghor, and we saddled our steedsand girt our swords!'

  'And what do you fools mean to do?' demanded the Cimmerian.

  'To avenge our brothers!' they howled. 'Death to the Kshatriyas! Slayhim, brothers, he is a traitor!'

  Arrows began to rattle around him. Conan rose in his stirrups, strivingto make himself heard above the tumult, and then, with a roar of mingledrage, defiance and disgust, he wheeled and galloped back up the trail.Behind him and below him the Afghulis came pelting, mouthing their rage,too furious even to remember that the only way they could reach theheight whereon he rode was to traverse the river-bed in the otherdirection, make the broad bend and follow the twisting trail up over theridge. When they did remember this, and turned back, their repudiatedchief had almost reached the point where the ridge joined theescarpment.

  At the cliff he did not take the trail by which he had descended, butturned off on another, a mere trace along a rock-fault, where thestallion scrambled for footing. He had not ridden far when the stallionsnorted and shied back from something lying in the trail. Conan stareddown on the travesty of a man, a broken, shredded, bloody heap thatgibbered and gnashed splintered teeth.

  Impelled by some obscure reason, Conan dismounted and stood looking downat the ghastly shape, knowing that he was witness of a thing miraculousand opposed to nature. The Rakhsha lifted his gory head, and his strangeeyes, glazed with agony and approaching death, rested on Conan withrecognition.

  'Where are they?' It was a racking croak not even remotely resembling ahuman voice.

  'Gone back to their damnable castle on Yimsha,' grunted Conan. 'Theytook the Devi with them.'

  'I will go!' muttered the man. 'I will follow them! They killed Gitara;I will kill them--the acolytes, the Four of the Black Circle, the Masterhimself! Kill--kill them all!' He strove to drag his mutilated framealong the rock, but not even his indomitable will could animate thatgory mass longer, where the splintered bones hung together only by torntissue and ruptured fibre.

  'Follow them!' raved Khemsa, drooling a bloody slaver. 'Follow!'

  'I'm going to,' growled Conan. 'I went to fetch my Afghulis, but they'veturned on me. I'm going on to Yimsha alone. I'll have the Devi back if Ihave to tear down that damned mountain with my bare hands. I didn'tthink the governor would dare kill my headmen, when I had the Devi, butit seems he did. I'll have his head for that. She's no use to me now asa hostage, but--'

  'The curse of Yizil on them!' gasped Khemsa. 'Go! I am dying. Wait--takemy girdle.'

  He tried to fumble with a mangled hand at his tatters, and Conan,understanding what he sought to convey, bent and drew from about hisgory waist a girdle of curious aspect.

  'Follow the golden vein through the abyss,' muttered Khemsa. 'Wear thegirdle. I had it from a Stygian priest. It will aid you, though itfailed me at last. Break the crystal globe with the four goldenpomegranates. Beware of the Master's transmutations--I am going toGitara--she is waiting for me in hell--_aie, ya Skelos yar!_' And so hedied.

  Conan stared down at the girdle. The hair of which it was woven was nothorsehair. He was convinced that it was woven of the thick black tressesof a woman. Set in the thick mesh were tiny jewels such as he had neverseen before. The buckle was strangely made, in the form of a goldenserpent-head, flat, wedge-shaped and scaled with curious art. A strongshudder shook Conan as he handled it, and he turned as though to cast itover the precipice; then he hesitated, and finally buckled it about hiswaist, under the Bakhariot girdle. Then he mounted and pushed on.

  The sun had sunk behind the crags. He climbed the trail in the vastshadow of the cliffs that was thrown out like a dark blue mantle overvalleys and ridges far below. He was not far from the crest when, edgingaround the shoulder of a jutting crag, he heard the clink of shod hoofsahead of him. He did not turn back. Indeed, so narrow was the path thatthe stallion could not have wheeled his great body upon it. He roundedthe jut of the rock and came upon a
portion of the path that broadenedsomewhat. A chorus of threatening yells broke on his ear, but hisstallion pinned a terrified horse hard against the rock, and Conancaught the arm of the rider in an iron grip, checking the lifted swordin midair.

  'Kerim Shah!' muttered Conan, red glints smoldering luridly in his eyes.The Turanian did not struggle; they sat their horses almost breast tobreast, Conan's fingers locking the other's sword-arm. Behind Kerim Shahfiled a group of lean Irakzai on gaunt horses. They glared like wolves,fingering bows and knives, but rendered uncertain because of thenarrowness of the path and the perilous proximity of the abyss thatyawned beneath them.

  'Where is the Devi?' demanded Kerim Shah.

  'What's it to you, you Hyrkanian spy?' snarled Conan.

  'I know you have her,' answered Kerim Shah. 'I was on my way northwardwith some tribesmen when we were ambushed by enemies in Shalizah Pass.Many of my men were slain, and the rest of us harried through the hillslike jackals. When we had beaten off our pursuers, we turned westward,toward Amir Jehun Pass, and this morning we came upon a Wazuli wanderingthrough the hills. He was quite mad, but I learned much from hisincoherent gibberings before he died. I learned that he was the solesurvivor of a band which followed a chief of the Afghulis and a captiveKshatriya woman into a gorge behind Khurum village. He babbled much of aman in a green turban whom the Afghuli rode down, but who, when attackedby the Wazulis who pursued, smote them with a nameless doom that wipedthem out as a gust of wind-driven fire wipes out a cluster of locusts.

  'How that one man escaped, I do not know, nor did he; but I knew fromhis maunderings that Conan of Ghor had been in Khurum with his royalcaptive. And as we made our way through the hills, we overtook a nakedGalzai girl bearing a gourd of water, who told us a tale of having beenstripped and ravished by a giant foreigner in the garb of an Afghulichief, who, she said, gave her garments to a Vendhyan woman whoaccompanied him. She said you rode westward.'

  Kerim Shah did not consider it necessary to explain that he had been onhis way to keep his rendezvous with the expected troops from Secunderamwhen he found his way barred by hostile tribesmen. The road to Gurashahvalley through Shalizah Pass was longer than the road that wound throughAmir Jehun Pass, but the latter traversed part of the Afghuli country,which Kerim Shah had been anxious to avoid until he came with an army.Barred from the Shalizah road, however, he had turned to the forbiddenroute, until news that Conan had not yet reached Afghulistan with hiscaptive had caused him to turn southward and push on recklessly in thehope of overtaking the Cimmerian in the hills.

  'So you had better tell me where the Devi is,' suggested Kerim Shah. 'Weoutnumber you--'

  'Let one of your dogs nock a shaft and I'll throw you over the cliff,'Conan promised. 'It wouldn't do you any good to kill me, anyhow. Fivehundred Afghulis are on my trail, and if they find you've cheated them,they'll flay you alive. Anyway, I haven't got the Devi. She's in thehands of the Black Seers of Yimsha.'

  '_Tarim!_' swore Kerim Shah softly, shaken out of his poise for thefirst time. 'Khemsa--'

  'Khemsa's dead,' grunted Conan. 'His masters sent him to hell on alandslide. And now get out of my way. I'd be glad to kill you if I hadthe time, but I'm on my way to Yimsha.'

  'I'll go with you,' said the Turanian abruptly.

  Conan laughed at him. 'Do you think I'd trust you, you Hyrkanian dog?'

  'I don't ask you to,' returned Kerim Shah. 'We both want the Devi. Youknow my reason; King Yezdigerd desires to add her kingdom to his empire,and herself in his seraglio. And I knew you, in the days when you were ahetman of the _kozak_ steppes; so I know your ambition is wholesaleplunder. You want to loot Vendhya, and to twist out a huge ransom forYasmina. Well, let us for the time being, without any illusion abouteach other, unite our forces, and try to rescue the Devi from the Seers.If we succeed, and live, we can fight it out to see who keeps her.'

  Conan narrowly scrutinized the other for a moment, and then nodded,releasing the Turanian's arm. 'Agreed; what about your men?'

  Kerim Shah turned to the silent Irakzai and spoke briefly: 'This chiefand I are going to Yimsha to fight the wizards. Will you go with us, orstay here to be flayed by the Afghulis who are following this man?'

  They looked at him with eyes grimly fatalistic. They were doomed andthey knew it--had known it ever since the singing arrows of the ambushedDagozai had driven them back from the pass of Shalizah. The men of thelower Zhaibar had too many reeking bloodfeuds among the crag-dwellers.They were too small a band to fight their way back through the hills tothe villages of the border, without the guidance of the crafty Turanian.They counted themselves as dead already, so they made the reply thatonly dead men would make: 'We will go with thee and die on Yimsha.'

  'Then in Crom's name let us be gone,' grunted Conan, fidgeting withimpatience as he started into the blue gulfs of the deepening twilight.'My wolves were hours behind me, but we've lost a devilish lot of time.'

  Kerim Shah backed his steed from between the black stallion and thecliff, sheathed his sword and cautiously turned the horse. Presently theband was filing up the path as swiftly as they dared. They came out uponthe crest nearly a mile east of the spot where Khemsa had halted theCimmerian and the Devi. The path they had traversed was a perilous one,even for hill-men, and for that reason Conan had avoided it that daywhen carrying Yasmina, though Kerim Shah, following him, had taken itsupposing the Cimmerian had done likewise. Even Conan sighed with reliefwhen the horses scrambled up over the last rim. They moved like phantomriders through an enchanted realm of shadows. The soft creak of leather,the clink of steel marked their passing, then again the dark mountainslopes lay naked and silent in the starlight.