They stood, sorceress and mercenary, staring at one another across a patch of cooling lava no wider than a footstool but seemingly as wide as the valley itself for all that either could cross it. The silence around them seemed as solid as bronze or stone, encasing their limbs so firmly that the mere thought of movement seemed futile.
Only the rise and fall of the Lady's breasts told Muhbaras that she yet lived. He could not have told why he knew that he lived, yet he did”and as the moments flowed one into another, he began to wonder if he might go on living.
Do not hope. Death that snatches away hope is the harshest.
That was an old lesson, in books any boy born to be a soldier knew almost as soon as he could mount a horse. Muhbaras clung to it, but he also clung to the thought that he had done something the Lady of the Mists could not have expected, and did not know what to make of it.
As long as she doubted, Muhbaras might live.
It did not occur to him to try to escape while the Lady stood bemused and doubting, perhaps for the first time since she bent the valley to her will. Had he been able to form the reason for this completely, it would have been that any movement by him would break this fragile truce, and make the Lady lash out wildly.
His own death was certain, a death he had faced to end Danar's torment.
He would not bring death to the Maidens if he could contrive otherwise.
A sound broke the silence”the clang of steel on stone. Muhbaras still did not move. He did not need to. Without so much as moving his eyes, he saw his sword lying on the stone between him and the Lady.
He had expected the sword to be a blackened, twisted relic of itself.
Instead it gleamed as if the finest armorer in the world had lavished entire days bringing out the luster in the steel. Jewels winked in the hilt where only a few disks of silver had shone before”but they did not make the weapon useless.
"Take it up," the Lady said. At least that was what Muhbaras thought he heard, although he could not have sworn the words were not coming from the air. He did know, however, that it would be ill done to make the Lady repeat herself.
He squatted, and without taking his eyes from the Lady's face, lifted his sword. It felt lighter than before, yet as well balanced as ever.
One heard about such swords, in old tales of heroes who had died when the waves still rolled over the fresh grave of Atlantis. One did not imagine seeing one's own blade transformed into such a weapon.
"Cut off a lock of your hair with your blade, honored captain," the Lady said. This time Muhbaras knew that it was she who spoke. He also knew that disobeying was impossible. Never mind the possible consequences”disobeying was a thought that did not enter his mind.
He had cut a lock of hair, the edge of his sword shearing through it effortlessly, when he remembered another bit of witch lore.
Give a witch anything of yours, particularly part of your body, and she can conjure potent spells against you, or at least to serve herself.
Muhbaras allowed this thought to linger in his mind. Then he deliberately thought of refusing.
Instead of blasting him to ashes on the spot, the Lady of the Mists smiled. It was the smile of one to whose face such an expression is newly come and not altogether welcome. It seemed as if she was trying to put herself as well as him at ease.
This seemed improbable to the last degree. Had the Lady any vestige of conscience, she would not have done as she had to Danar. If she felt remorse, it was too late for a good soldier.
But her face was shaping itself into a smile, and after a moment, Muhbaras returned it. After another moment he stepped forward, but he did not hold out the lock of hair, nor put from his mind the thought of refusing it.
"You have nothing to fear from the gift of your substance, honored captain," the Lady said. She looked him up and down with those golden cat's eyes. Muhbaras could not escape the thought that here was a woman considering him as a man. There had been”not tenderness”but what might be called warmth in her eyes.
That thought also provoked no death-dealing spells.
Muhbaras took another step forward, and this time the Lady also moved.
Cool fingers touched his, reaching as high as his wrist, briefly gripping it, then withdrawing with the lock of hair clasped between thumb and forefinger.
As the Lady of the Mists withdrew her hand, Muhbaras noted that her fingernails were a muted shade of the same gold as her eyes.
Then he noticed nothing more, until he found himself standing amid a rising wind, with light almost gone from the sky and eight Maidens standing around him in a circle.
It did not surprise him that the Maidens now looked like impatient women rather than daughters of a warrior goddess. It did not even surprise him that some of them were shivering noticeably in the onrushing chill of the evening.
His voice came out strongly when he spoke, what he hoped would be the last surprise of the evening.
"All of you need not come, unless our Lady commands it. I only need guides to the mouth of the valley."
"Our Lady commands all," one of the Maidens said, in a voice almost as flat as before.
It seemed they had not unbent enough to follow his suggestions rather than their Lady's command.
Conan had not found a good shooting spot when the primal chaos seemed to descend on the hillside. Dust rose like a young sandstorm, and out of the brown cloud warriors rolled, fell, leaped, and ran.
In spite of the dust, Conan could tell that some were tribal warriors”no doubt the Girumgi, although he did not remember the pattern of their headdress. The rest were Turanian Greencloaks. Clearly Khezal's roving band had scented trouble in time to ride to Conan's rescue.
The arrival of friends did not, however, ensure Conan's victory or even his survival. Desperate tribesmen were swarming downhill, and they outnumbered the Cimmerian's band two or three to one. Also, the tribesmen could shoot both uphill and down with small risk of striking friends. The Turanians both above and below were not so fortunate.
Best hold with steel, Conan thought, then shouted that aloud.
One Afghuli archer protested; Farad made to snatch his bow and looked ready to break it. The archer slung his bow and drew a long knife, which to Conan looked much the best weapon for close-quarters work.
Then the Girumgi came down upon them. Conan spared one glance to the left flank, where nobody seemed to be either shouting or shooting now.
Then his world shrank to the rocks on either side and the dust-caked, wild-eyed opponent in front of him.
He swung hard from the right at one tribesman's rib cage and caught the man's left arm as it swung down. The man's forearm and tulwar fell to the ground; he howled and tried to push his spouting stump in the Cimmerian's face. Conan's blade ended that dying effort, shearing deep into the man's torso and reaching his heart.
He fell in a narrow passage between two rocks, partly blocking it.
Conan half-turned, snatched up a rock, and flung it left-handed at the next man to appear in the passage. It turned his face to bloody jam as he stumbled forward on the point of Conan's newly drawn dagger and fell atop his comrade.
An arrow whssshed close to the Cimmerian's ear, from the right. He faced that way, snatching up another rock and leaping forward as well.
The tribesman who'd shot was too close for a throw, so close he ought not to have been able to miss. But panic or even haste will make the best warrior hardly more than a child”certainly much less than a Conan.
The Cimmerian struck the archer with his stone-weighted left hand, while thrusting over the man's shoulder with his sword. The first man's head snapped back hard enough to break his neck, and he crashed into the man behind at the same moment Conan's steel entered the second one's throat. Again two tribesmen fell, almost atop one another.
But Conan now stood in an open space, with rocks all around that might hide archers and two entrances that might let tribesmen outflank him.
He gave ground, drifting to the le
ft. Along that way lay a single narrow passage with both flanks secure and only room for one man to come at him.
Conan had to kill but one tribesman on the way to that narrow passage.
From the shouting and screaming to either side of him, not to say the clang of steel, he judged his comrades were having better fortune.
He hoped so. They had to beat down the fleeing tribesmen before their comrades below realized what was going on. If they came up to help, they could still catch Conan's men between two fires.
It was the fleeing tribesmen who were overwhelmed in the next few moments. Each of Conan's men fought like two, and although there were more tribesmen than the Cimmerian had reckoned, in the end that made no difference.
Conan had just found a moment to catch his breath and roughly clean his blades when more shouting broke out below. Mingled with the human cries were the frightened neighs and agonized death-screams of horses.
Again, some of those war cries were Turanian.
Conan had just time to think that this battle was growing mysteries when more fleeing tribesmen came in sight. These appeared to come from the valley below, and they seemed as eager to climb the hill as their comrades had been to descend.
Like their comrades, they outnumbered Conan's band even had it been at full strength. As Conan had seen at least one Afghuli lying dead or gravely hurt, that strength had to be less full than a captain could wish.
"Crom!" the Cimmerian swore. "These tribal lice won't let a man even stop to clean his sword."
Then he strode forward to strike the new foes, but leaped backward as arrows hailed about him, and one tore at his left forearm. The wound would slow him by nightfall, but the battle would not last that long, and he had fought all day with half a dozen such wounds.
The arrow did the Cimmerian no great hurt. What nearly ended his career was a dying Girumgi who had been lying directly behind the Cimmerian.
As Conan retreated, he grabbed Conan's ankles and jerked. Most men might as well have tried to shift the Kezankian Mountains, but the tribesman was a large man with the strength of the dying, and he caught Conan off balance.
Conan toppled, lashing out as he did. His fist grazed the man's jaw, but his head did not graze a protruding rock. A skull less thick than the Cimmerian's would have cracked open. Even the Cimmerian saw flame-shot darkness”and then the dying Girumgi rolling on top of him, dagger thrusting for his throat.
It never reached its goal. Suddenly a slight figure stood behind the tribesman, and a gold-hilted sword descended like the wrath of Crom.
The tribesman's skull split apart, and his dagger thudded harmlessly on Conan's chest.
By now the Cimmerian could focus his eyes well enough to recognize the swordsman.
"Khezal. By Erlik's helm, you are timely come!"
"You must be seriously hurt, my friend. Such courtly speech from you goes against nature."
"Would you like me to rise up and strangle you to prove otherwise?"
"Hardly. I might ask for some of those jewels
"From my share, perhaps. If you take any from the Afghulis' portion, I will drop you headfirst down a dry well and then bury you in camel dung!"
Khezal pretended to cringe, then turned his head to listen to a distant sound beyond the reach of Conan's ears. (They were still ringing, and his stomach was grateful for being nearly empty.)
"That's the sergeant who was besieging your runaway Afghulis," Khezal said.
"What is he doing here?"
"When I learn, you will be the first to know. But he just told me that he and his men have driven off the horses of the tribesmen in the valley, and are pursuing the fugitives on foot."
"Better them than me," Conan said. He tried to sit up, and the ground swayed only moderately.
"Ho, a litter for Captain Conan!" Khezal shouted.
"I've had worse hurts falling out of my cradle," the Cimmerian grumbled.
"That was not so far to fall as it will be now with you full-grown,"
Khezal said. He pushed the Cimmerian back down. The fact that the Turanian could do it and that Conan did not care to resist proved to Conan that perhaps he should leave the rest of the battle in Khezal's hands.
It was, after all, thoroughly won, even if it would be a while before he knew exactly how, What would take longer to discover, he feared, was whether this was the last battle of the quest into the Kezankian
Mountains”or, as he very much suspected, only the first of many.
That was too sobering a thought for a man with an aching head, so Conan found a comfortable position and waited for the litter.
Captain Muhbaras rode down the path from the gate to the Valley toward his quarters. He normally walked, the path being rather too steep for horses, and a warrior's dignity prohibited an ass.
Tonight, however, he would lose even more dignity by falling on his nose and perhaps rolling down the hill than he would be riding an ass.
His legs had not felt so weak since the first time he did a dawn-to-sunset march with a full pack.
The Lady of the Mists had been appraising him as a man. This he now could no longer doubt. She had also been doing it in full view of Maidens who might be neither loyal nor discreet. Thus whatever was in the Lady's thoughts might already be no secret.
Having a sorceress contemplating one in such a manner could hardly end happily, even if one had no thought for one's personal honor. The tales were many and various about the fate of a witch's lover, but none of them held much hope of avoiding a harsh fate.
However, offending the Lady of the Mists held out no hope of safety for Muhbaras's men. He had risked them to save his honor once, and by a miracle or the whims of a sorceress who was yet a woman, he and they alike had escaped. This good fortune would not come a second time.
Muhbaras bore that thought as one might bear a wounded comrade at the end of a long day's battle, as he rode down the trail into shadows little relieved by the lanterns at the door of his quarters.
"So the Girumgi are at least toying with rebellion?" Conan asked.
"So it would seem," Khezal replied.
"One mystery solved," Conan grunted, and poured more wine into his cup.
"Are you sure”?" Khezal began.
"I am sure you did not learn war from Khadjar and your father to serve as my nurse," the Cimmerian growled. "My head barely aches. I see only what is held up in front of me. I have not spewed or fallen asleep."
"Which proves that Cimmerian heads really are harder than stone," Farad put in.
Conan threw up his hands in mock disgust. "Since my head is fit to hold thoughts, shall we think what to do next?"
The prisoner Conan had taken was from the Stone Clan of the Ekinari.
The son of the chief of the Ekinari was sworn blood-brother to the chief of the Girumgi. This explained why Ekinari rode with Girumgi, but not altogether why they had not fought side by side.
"Even had you known the tribal speech, you could not have got from that man answers he did not know himself," Khezal went on. "Nor did it help matters that the rest of the Stone Clan or whoever were his comrades ran off as it fifty demons were at their heels."
"Demons, or perhaps all the surviving Girumgi," Farad said.
"Few enough of those, by Mitra's favor," Khezal said.
Being overconfident had brought better captains than Khezal to lonely graves, but Conan thought in this case the Turanian had the right of it. It seemed that Khezal was not the only one to march to the sound of Oman's battle.
The Greencloaks had been industriously besieging the fugitive Afghulis when the battle sounds rose. Convinced that the battle had to involve Conan coming to rescue them, the leader of the Afghulis called for a parley and offered truce terms.
The Afghulis would release all their hostages without ransom and return their weapons. In return, the Greencloaks would swear not to harm the Afghulis until they had fought and won against the common foe who was surely not far away.
The Greencl
oaks accepted this offer, and the truce was sworn to last until both sides were released from it by their respective captains. It seemed that the Greencloaks were as sure of Khezal's coming as the Afghulis were of Conan's, and also wished to join in battle under their beloved captain.
So Afghuli and Turanian rode out together, and made havoc in the rear of the tribesmen in the valley. They had a good plunder of weapons, horses, and baggage, and the bodies of some fifty tribesmen were feeding the vultures. The new allies had lost no more than seven, and Conan could see the stone cairn where they lay in the light of a dung fire.
Khezal was still a man to ride with, more so than ever now that the wisdom of years and the experience of many battles had joined his native wits. It was as well to have such a comrade on a quest, particularly one that showed every sign of sprouting new mysteries as fast as the old ones were answered.
Conan had sworn to ride north to aid Khezal in the Kezankian Mountains, and he would not break that oath if all the tribes of the desert and all their intriguing chiefs and chiefs' sons stood in his path. But he would not expect to come back alive, either.
-
Ten
They were four days' ride north of the battle against the Girumgi. The Kezankian Mountains were peering over the northern horizon, with the eternal snowcaps of the higher peaks glinting pink at dawn and sunset.
The breeze told of a world beyond the desert, at which Conan and the Afghulis rejoiced.
Khezal was less joyful, and thought he had cause, for all the Cimmerian's rough jests.
"Here we are, not far from the caravan routes," Conan said. "Yet you complain. There are wells for water, trees for shade, and even refuges for any of our men who fall ill or are taken by the sun. What do you want”dragons to fly us to the Kezankians in a trice?"
"I would rather bind them to seek out the mysteries in the mountains and bring us back word of what they learn," Khezal replied.
The Conan Compendium Page 555
