Y’Taba nodded. “Conan, I am sorry. If you wish, we shall go now to my hut, where I can command the spirits. You have kept your vow to me and I am bound by words of promise. What say you?”
“I fight first,” Conan set his jaw grimly, gripping the hilt of his sword.
“Side by side, once again,” Jukona nodded, lifting a sharpened oar from the pile near the benches.
“We are ready, Y’Taba,” Sajara added. She and the others, each toting several extra spears, dashed into the tall reeds near the place of gathering. Conan divined their tactics at once and approved. He had seen the accuracy and force with which they hurled those spears. They would throw their weapons from the cover of the marsh, accounting for perhaps a few score Kezati before resorting to knife-work.
“I do not deserve the honour, Conan of Cimmeria,” Ngomba implored, “but I would beg of you and Jukona that we fight as three, back to back. The children of Ezat will drop like a rain of blood before us, while we three falter not.” A wisp of the old Ngomba reappeared, and Conan mulled it over for a moment. “Fight where you will. I care not, so long as you hew only Kezati necks with that blade.” Conan briefly regretted that he and Ngomba were by necessity at odds. There had been no time to teach the lad proper swordsmanship.
“Four will stand upon the mount,” Y’Taba intoned, hefting a spear. Four against hundreds, he thought resignedly.
Nyona smiled momentarily at Y’Taba, glancing at him over her shoulder as she blew into the shell and Dawakuba took to the air. She, like the others, would hide away and emerge when the Kezati approached. Conan grinned at this, knowing from experience that the stalkers were masters of the ambush. He wondered how many Kezati heads would roll before the vultures could muster a counter-attack against Dawakuba. An Aquilonian general would trade a legion of footmen—even a score of mounted knights—for such a formidable ally.
Makiela alone did not seek cover with the rest; she had climbed partway up a tree near the clearing, scanning the horizon whence the last attack had come. Conan, knowing her keen eyes would see the Kezati long before even his, waited upon the mound with the others. Back to back, the four silent warriors held their ground, forming a square as they listened for the signal that would warn them of the winged army’s approach.
Y’Taba stood at Conan’s right, Jukona at his left. Ngomba waited directly behind, his back to the Cimmerian’s. An absolute silence settled over the village. In the mild, still air of late morning, not even a breeze stirred the leaves, no bird chirped, no insects buzzed. Conan watched a bead of sweat trickle from Jukona’s nearly bare scalp to join others that glistened on the huge warrior’s burly shoulders.
After an unbearable eternity, Makiela whistled, jabbing her spear into the sky. She darted into the reeds to join Sajara and the others, vanishing in the thicket as the Kezati horde appeared.
“Crom,” Conan muttered under his breath. He would have thought it a storm cloud descending, so dark and expansive was the approaching menace. The Kezati easily numbered twice that which they had fought on the shore of skulls... if not thrice. And many more Ganaks had stood against the Kezati then. But Conan felt no fear at their approach. No man could live forever, by Crom, and it were better to die on the field of battle than on a sickbed of straw!
His heart pounded, blood singing in his veins. The thrill of battle was upon him; his aches, his grudge with Ngomba, his dread of the curse, fell from him like melting icicles, evaporated by the fire that burned in his breast. Legs braced in a wide stance, gleaming blade upraised, Conan uttered the fierce, eerie cry that was a Cimmerian’s call to battle.
Swooping toward the mound, the Kezati fanned out, moving in unison like a well-drilled legion. A crescent formation encircled the four men, its curving points soaring ahead of the others as if to close like mandibles about their prey.
At the rear of the airborne mass, Conan glimpsed a spreading shape that looked like three or four Kezati interlocked, wings beating in unison. But that brief sight was instantly obscured by the diving assault of the foremost vultures. Talons extended, beaks snapping menacingly, they hurled themselves like bolts of feathered lightning. A deafening din of shrill, predatory cries shattered the silence as man met beast in a frenzied melee.
A hail of spears showered the Kezati as they dived, impaling a dozen or more. Several others plunged to the ground, flapping weakly; some died in mid-air. Squawks burst out from the centre of the crescent as Dawakuba flew into the thick of the horde, wreaking havoc. Savage green jaws beheaded one Kezati in an effortless snap as spiny forelegs grasped another and crumpled it. A flurry of blood-slicked feathers dropped in the stalker’s wake.
Undaunted, the airborne beasts plunged downward, some twenty stabbing beaks converging on the defending foursome. Kezati bodies met spears and swords raised against their charge.
Conan’s blade flickered twice, lopping a leathery head from its plummeting body and gutting another Kezati who flopped to the ground, twitching. Jukona’s spear-point skewered a ferocious face even as he whipped the oar blade around, smashing it into another beast. Y’Taba impaled one through the belly, but the screeching beast slid down the shaft, its talons and beak furrowing the Ganak’s chest before it succumbed to its wound.
As five of the winged devils neared Ngomba, he lifted the atnalga and prepared to strike. As he did so, a madness overcame the five attackers, their piercing stridulations rising to an unbearable pitch. They wheeled desperately as if to avoid the weapon, whose blade suddenly flickered a silvery blue. Crackling strands—like miniature bolts of lightning—shot from the tip of the blade, forking as they arced through the air toward the twisting Kezati. Five feathered corpses thumped to the ground as wisps of smoke rising from their unmoving bodies filled the air with the stench of scorched flesh.
Ngomba’s knees buckled; he slumped forward, gasping. The bolts had travelled from blade to hilt, stabbing at his flesh like lances of cold fire. Groaning in pain, he lurched to his feet, his arm shaking as he once again lifted his blade.
Unimpeded, four vultures ploughed into Y’Taba, knocking him to the ground. Conan spun, his blade striking like a steel cobra. Blood jetted from the stump of a Kezati neck. Then three of the beasts overwhelmed the Cimmerian, one fleshing its talons into his unprotected back while the others flayed his exposed head and side, their beaks burrowing into muscle. Bellowing in rage, Conan laid about him with his blade. His vehement sword-stroke sheared through a midsection, momentum carrying the blade into the body of another attacker. Wrenching loose the dripping steel with a howl of fury, Conan reached behind his head, seized a scrawny neck in a massive fist and snapped it with a single powerful twist of his arm.
He turned again to the band that tore at Y’Taba, clubbing one Kezati with a vulture’s body while sweeping his sword back to strike another lethal blow. Jukona, unfazed by the beasts surrounding him, dropped his spear and pummelled his enemies with powerful blows, cracking ribs and crushing a skull. Beaks and talons ripped at his flesh, but he seemed oblivious to the blood that dripped from his wounds as he battered feathery bodies with sledge-like fists.
Y’Taba strangled the last Kezati. He pushed its hooked beak away from his throat and standing, kicked away the corpse. Flaps of tom flesh hung from his head and chest, blood seeping from punctures where beaks had gored him. He grabbed his spear and set it just in time to meet the rush of a fresh swarm of vultures.
The new wave of Kezati struck like a storm of demons. They screeched in fury at the deaths of their kin as they pressed upon the badly outnumbered defenders. Again Ngomba lifted the atnalga, whose uncanny power felled three vultures before he reeled back on his haunches, stunned by the very force that slew his enemies.
Conan met head on the diving attack of six feathered devils, his blade weaving a wall of razor-sharp steel before him. His eyes blazing with blue fire, his thin lips asnarl, the Cimmerian fought like a cornered wildcat. Kezati fell like ripe grain in a ghastly harvest of blood, none passing through Conan�
�s whirling gauntlet of death. Chest heaving, he stepped back from the knee-high mound of bodies, wiped blood from his eyes and glanced upward with a dark smile.
At last, the winged host had begun to thin.
Nearby, Dawakuba dispatched several more Kezati. Nyona clung to his neck with her legs, fending off the vultures who made repeated dives for the stalker’s eyes. She bled from a score of wounds but bravely fought on without faltering. Directly below her, the frenzied knife-strokes of Sajara and her hunters dispatched several Kezati. The vultures had taken their toll, however; Avrana lay motionless amid a heap of slain Kezati.
Determined to end the battle, Conan halved one foe at the waist, grunting as others ripped at his flesh. Crimson flecks flew from his steel as he hacked his way free of them, a giant beak nearly ripping out his throat.
“Crom!” he roared, as the thing’s head fell upon the carrion-mound at his feet with a wet plop. He had not expected this sort of close in-fighting from the Kezati, who on the shore of bone had dived upon them and retreated upward before striking again. What had driven them to sacrifice themselves so recklessly? Now was not the time to ponder! Lashing out with his sword, Conan clove the breastbone of the diving, wailing vulture. Pivoting to face the expected attack from behind, he blinked in surprise.
A single speck hovered high in the air above them, but the sky was otherwise clear. The Kezati were beaten.
Sajara limped toward the mound, supporting Makiela and Kanitra, who looked half-dead. A handful of other hunters, injured too severely to walk, waited beside the reeds. Several Ganak bodies lay motionless around them.
Jukona extricated himself from a mound of crumpled bodies and rose unsteadily to his feet with a deep grunt of pain. Ngomba lay beside the deepest pile of the dead, breath wheezing from his bloody lips in ragged gasps. His hand still clasped the atnalga's hilt.
Y’Taba propped up the young warrior’s head, whispering into his ear. Ngomba’s eyes widened in surprise. He sat up, coughing fitfully before lapsing back to the ground. The spirit-leader stood, facing Conan and the others. Though he smiled, the Cimmerian could see the pain in his eyes. Behind him, with a rustle of wings, Dawakuba set down gently.
“One Kezati yet lives,” Nyona cautioned, pointing upward. “It soars well beyond the reach of Dawakuba, whose wings took hurt in the battle. But something about it is different; it keeps at a distance, as if to avoid being seen.”
Y’Taba shrugged. “One enemy against many Ganaks is but a single cloud in a sky of victory. There can be no more of them, at least for another generation. By then, our young will be grown. Then we shall seek them out as they sought us and make certain they never trouble the sons of our sons. Never again!” The old Ganak, in spite of his numerous wounds, stood proudly atop the mound, his presence as commanding as ever. “And now, Conan of Cimmeria, shall I honour my promise to you.” He brushed the crusted blood from his necklace of shells, lifting it in his hand.
A flickering shadow passed over the mound, moving so swiftly that had Conan blinked, he would have missed it. A rush of air swept past him, stirring his hair. Sajara shouted a cry of warning, and Jukona raised his fists defiantly. Nyona gasped, lifting the shell pipe to her lips.
It plunged from nowhere, or so it seemed. The Kezati that had been a speck rushed past them with blinding speed. Conan’s flesh crawled at the sight of the winged monstrosity thrice the size of its kin. It occurred to him that he had doubtless seen it briefly at the onset of battle, mistaking it for a cluster of Kezati. Its talons and beak were terrifying at those gigantic proportions. Its belly bulged with a strange roundness, and Conan was sickened by a sudden revelation—this Kezati was a pregnant female... perhaps their queen.
Soundlessly she attacked Y’Taba from behind, before he was even aware of the approaching menace.
Galvanized, Conan sprang toward her, sword in hand. But he might as well have tried to catch an archer’s bolt in flight. Seizing Y’Taba’s arms with enormous talons, the she-devil soared upward. The Ganak’s yell of mingled pain and astonishment faded as the Kezati’s wings carried Y’Taba away. But burdened by Y’Taba, the monster flew less swiftly.
“Conan, Sajara—quickly!” Nyona called frantically. “We must try to catch them!”
“What about me?” Jukona shouted.
“These two will slow us down enough, but they are the lightest burden and the only ones fit for more fighting,” Nyona snapped, blowing into the shell almost before Conan and Sajara had secured themselves on the strip of bark.
“Is Dawakuba not injured, then?” Sajara asked.
“She fed,” Nyona answered. “She may tire ere we catch Y’Taba, but we must try.”
Wings flexing powerfully, the stalker took off in pursuit of the fleeing Kezati while Jukona stared upward, jaw hanging open in shocked silence.
XX
The Kezati Queen
“Ishtar and Pteor!” Conan swore, watching helplessly as the Kezati slowly increased its lead. “Can this infernal beast go no faster?” Y’Taba was vanishing from sight, and with him was vanishing the Cimmerian’s hope for eradicating the shaman’s curse.
“Perhaps, if you jumped off,” Nyona shot back. “Look,” Sajara interrupted, pointing down. “Conan, is that the shore of skulls?”
He recognized the crescent-shaped isle at once, the ivory piles of bones prominent on one end. “Aye,” he said, nodding. Dawakuba was moving more swiftly than he had thought; they had not been at the chase for very long.
Fascinated, Sajara watched the island shrink behind them. “No huntress ever left Ganaku—until today, that is.” “Why?” Conan asked, his eyes still locked onto the distant form of Y’Taba, which now looked ant-sized.
“There is no time for it,” Sajara answered regretfully. “The hunting of food, the making of spears and shell-spikes, the constant laying of nets to snare fish, the seeking of vanukla fruit and plants for Y’Taba, and the training and practising of our skills, these occupy our days.” She sighed. “But the ways of the past may change, for now we must be warriors, too.”
Conan shrugged. “For the women of Cimmeria—aye, for the men also—it is much the same. Seldom do my people travel beyond the borders of their tribe’s land, unless a blood feud is afoot or the bloody spear calls forth our tribes to battle a common enemy.”
“Someday, when the village is restored to order, I would like to see the lands of which you speak,” Sajara said.
Conan nodded sympathetically. Any place he stayed in for too long took on the feel of a dungeon, prompting him to move on. Admittedly, he often exited with the local soldiery at his heels, but when one intended to leave anyway, why not add some profit—or at the very least some excitement—to that departure?
The stalker began to lose speed, earning a frown from Nyona. The elderly Ranioba blew into her small shell, fingers gliding along its notched holes. Her silent ministrations went unrewarded; the stalker was now losing not just velocity but altitude as well.
“Dawakuba is exhausted,” Nyona said, her shoulders sagging. “We have lost Y’Taba.”
“Not yet,” said Conan. “There the Kezati descends, upon yon rock. By Crom, if I have to swim there, so be it.”
Sajara and Nyona saw it, too. From afar it looked no larger than a fist-sized stone, but as they approached, its true size became evident. Perhaps only a quarter of the Ganak island’s size, their lair of the Kezati was naught but a sheer-walled islet, rising from the sea like a craggy fortress.
Behind them, faltering wings ceased beating without warning. Conan had time to draw in a lungful of air before the stalker and its wide-eyed riders splashed into the shimmering water. Before he plunged below the surface, Conan caught a glimpse of the hulking Kezati setting down atop the isle, Y’Taba still clutched in her talons. The Cimmerian prayed fervently that the spirit-leader still lived.
Swimming as if pursued by every shark in the sea, Conan propelled himself toward the islet. Sajara followed closely, though she could not match the Cim
merian’s frenzied pace. Nyona remained with Dawakuba. The stalker was clearly out of its element, floundering to keep itself above water. Nyona treaded water beside the terrified creature, blowing into the shell in an effort to keep the stalker afloat.
The Cimmerian emerged dripping from the ocean at the edge of the rocky islet, sword clenched in his scarred fist. The sting of salt water in his wounds had subsided, and though he had endured a battle and a swim that would have exhausted the sturdiest of men, weariness clung to him no longer than did the seawater. Nimble as a mountain goat, Conan clambered up the rough face of the cliff that rose above him. He was halfway up before Sajara reached the shore below.
She eyed the daunting slant of stone before her and began working her way up. Her ascent was not nearly so rapid or smooth as Conan’s, but few people in the world possessed his honed talents or experience. Furthermore, his reckless pace was driven by urgency. A moment’s dalliance, and he might confront the Kezati only to find her feasting upon Y’Taba’s innards.
A final stretch brought him to the top of the cliff. With a grunt he hauled himself up to peer over the top. The sheer walls of the islet tapered near the top, and weathering had smoothed it like a plate. So small was its diameter that Conan could easily hurl a stone clear across it. A pit gaped near the edge to which Conan clung.
A few spatters of blood stained the rock near the mouth of that pit. Y’Taba’s necklace of black shells rested on the rock, just beyond his reach. Swinging a leg over the cliff, he grabbed the necklace and tied it about his neck. Then he crawled toward the hole for a closer look. A shriek from below turned his head. He reversed his direction and looked down to see if Sajara had fallen.
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