“They must run from yonder hedges,” one onlooker said, pointing to a dusky-green thicket that stood nearby.
“Aye.” Another man bent and picked up fragments of roots as they were cast out of the hole. “They are thick and tough—but moist, see?”
“Here is gravel,” a voice from below called. “And damp sand—no, water! The hole begins to fill!”
Moments later, bright silver droplets glinted high in the sunlight, dashed up out of the pit by joyous hands. Village folk around the well began to laugh and frolic, crowding up close to splatter one another and taste the droplets. At length the diggers emerged, their robes sodden to the waist.
“Wonderful,” the cottage owner exulted. “My well is brimming over! I will make it open to all, for hardly any fee!”
“The witch Tamsin has succeeded where the others failed!” a villager cried. “She must indeed be blessed of Amalias!”
“Nay, she is a sorceress of great power,” others said, “greater even than the priests, who could not help us at
all.”
“Tamsin, may I commend our deepest thanks to you, and to your idol,” the burgomaster proclaimed with a courtly smile and a flourish, though he refrained from embracing the maid and her peculiar doll. “May I offer you both the very gracious hospitality of my own villa. Come, stay with us tonight, Tamsin, I beg you! Then in a day or so, assuming this well maintains its excellent flow and purity, we will reward you richly in gold drachms and grain.” He paused, with a quick glance to his fellow councillors that presaged bargaining. “The amount we had settled on was, ah, fifty drachms, I believe, and a thousand bushels of groats.”
“Nay, burgomaster,” Tamsin replied. “We do not wish your gold and grain.”
“Oh, no?” The elder spoke cautiously, with another glance to his fellows. “You do not have to accept the grain, of course. But we are not wealthy here in Phalander, not any longer, and so we had determined to pay you mainly in barter.”
“That is very good,” the girl declared, “for Ninga and I wish to deal in barter too... in a way. Do we not, Ninga?” She addressed her doll in a girlish, confiding fashion, pausing as if waiting for an answer; then she looked back to the councillors. “In return for finding this well, we ask only your loyalty.”
“Loyalty?” To the old politician, the word was evidently suspect. “What exactly do you mean?”
“In payment for this fountain, for as long as it shall flow, you must put aside the worship of Amalias and declare homage to a new patron-god of Phalander.”
“A new god?” the elder said in genuine, baffled surprise. “What are you suggesting? Yourself, you mean?” “No.” Clutching her doll, Tamsin held it up before her. “Ninga shall be worshipped as Phalander-town’s supreme goddess.”
“What? You mean that doll?” The burgomaster halted in consternation, amid the muttering of the elders and others who had overheard. “Can you possibly be serious? But no, of course not.”
“And why not?” Tamsin asked directly and reasonably. “Amalias and his priests failed you, but I, calling on Ninga, succeeded. Why should you continue to worship a spent god who lacks power?”
“Amalias is still a great lord,” the elder said nervously. “More important, he has a powerful priesthood, one that stands closely allied with King Typhas and his earthly armies.”
“Aye, my child,” the fat old shire-reeve said, coming to his burgomaster’s assistance. “Even if the High God cannot strike us from his unseen heaven, that does not make it wise to blaspheme against the church establishment.”
“In truth, we might be judged apostate,” the town treasurer added, shaking his balding head. “Why, it could cause us no end of trouble!”
“And what of the water Ninga and I found for you?” Tamsin asked. She gestured to the well that was now overflowing, making a small marsh of the neighbouring pasture, where adults stooped to draw water in buckets and children splashed and played. “Does a well not spare you no end of trouble?”
“Surely you cannot, would not, take it away from us, would you?” The burgomaster hovered over Tamsin uneasily. “Look here, my girl, let us be reasonable! I can see that your doll—Ninga, is that her name?—likes necklaces and pretty things. Let her accept this medallion, my official emblem of rank, as a token of our town’s good faith.” He lifted the ribbon from over his head, shortened it by knotting it in the middle, and looped the disk of golden metal onto the doll. “This way she will understand that even if we cannot exalt her as a goddess, we respect her greatly. Is that all right, my child?”
Accepting the gift without acknowledgement, Tamsin turned to the shire-reeve. “And you, Sheriff, what think you of the fountain?”
“Well, of course it is very fine,” the fat man assured her, smiling nervously. “We all thank you most sincerely for it.”
Tamsin turned once again where she stood. “And you, Treasurer?”
“Why, it is wonderful... pure and plentiful, as far as I can see. Of course—” he then added, plainly not wanting to seem too beholden “—if the well sprang from higher up the hill, the water could be channelled straight to our homes. Drawing water from the foot of the town will involve much carrying, quite an expense of vessels and servants, to be sure. And there may be problems in keeping the source clean, here among the hovels.” He glanced at the pig pen and the surrounding cottages, wrinkling his nose. “But then, even a miracle-worker cannot accomplish everything, I suppose—” Looking into Tamsin’s face, he broke off, suddenly uneasy. “I...1 certainly did not mean to complain, or to question your doll’s power as a god.”
The young maid glared around at the three town elders and at the surprised villagers who stood watching.
“How many wells will you have, then?”
Taking up the divining-stick from where she had tucked it into her sash, she held it out once again—yet this time she managed things differently, holding her doll Ninga out before her, with the effigy’s small, sewn mittens pressed onto the shanks of the stick beneath her own hands. Humming and striding then, as if both of them were drawn forward by the urgent, irresistible force of the wand, she started back through the hovels. Word spread quickly among the villagers, who hastened to follow.
Back along the dusty road she led them, uphill to the paved roadway, passing between huddled tenements and shop stalls. She did not pause when she came to the archway and the dying fountain, but hastened on farther, proceeding between the blank stone walls and trellised thresholds of the town gentry. As she strode onward, the rabble capered around her, and the councillors strove to keep up, carrying on a whispered debate as to whether they should offer the witch some token homage as a demigoddess, or find some other way to buy her off if she found them more water.
Soon the pavement ended, giving way to the rocky earth of the hillside; still Tamsin strode on. At last she stood at the top of an open, rocky yard that served as a cart turnaround, lying between the walled, stone-faced edifices of the burgomaster’s palatial home and the shire-reeve’s. Above them lay only the dark basalt ridge of the hilltop; below stretched a panorama of town and parched, grassless valley. Tamsin, drawn by the mystic power of the witching-wand, with her doll-fetish propped between her wrists, began wandering in circles as before. Meanwhile, the rich old burghers beamed at one another, rubbing their hands in anticipation.
This time, without preamble, the divining rod touched stony earth at the base of a half-buried boulder, one that looked even redder and darker than the witch-girl’s auburn tresses. Bending, she dug at the soil with the pointed end of the stick, then arose and kicked at it with the toe of her sandal. From one side, a peasant with a mattock came running, eager to commence the digging. The tool point, swung high over his head, struck the earth one ringing blow. At that, its wielder gave a low outcry, and others crowded around to look.
Where the pick dug in, the boulder had chipped away, and from a tiny fissure beneath it, there hissed a draft of hot and sulphurous-smelling gas. As the villagers bent near, ro
ck dust and cinders were blown out of the hole, stinging the eyes of the curious.
Then, with a deeper, fracturing noise, the embedded stone split open. The whistling gust of vapour became an outpouring, a hot, dizzying exhalation that sent the townspeople staggering back from the crevice. Barefoot children began to yelp and dance, leaping to escape the sudden heat they felt in die ground beneath them.
Then came a faint tremor underfoot, and the broken segment of the boulder fell aside, opening the cleft wider. Before it there began to form a lip of ash and stony soot, blown up out of some dreadfully hot place in the earth’s innards.
“What is it?” the townsfolk cried. “Uriauf,” they demanded of the peasant, “what hast thou struck thy pick into?”
“That is no water-well, but a gaping mouth of hell!”
“Witch Tamsin, do something, please!” the burgomaster entreated. “We meant you no disrespect!”
But the girl had turned from them and did not look back. Her divining rod, which she had thrown down by the new well-mouth, now curled and wilted in the heat blasting from the earth. By the time the forked stick burst into brief, lambent flame, she was gone.
Striding off downhill, proud Tamsin gave no sign of hearing, even as behind her, with a series of sullen roars, the vent exploded, bowling over townsfolk as they tried to flee and sending pillars of smoke and soot billowing heavenward. Amid the stentorian bellow of the escaping gases— more than loud enough to drown out the thin, faint screams of villagers—chunks of flaming stone shot high in the air and struck the nearby dwellings, setting ablaze the homes and orchards of the wealthy.
In later days—so the half-mad survivors said—nothing remained on the heights of Phalander but a jagged cone of scorching-hot cinders, raised up around a seething hell-pit that belched forth fire and poison, while Tamsin, the enchantress known to have caused it all, travelled home to her village to brew more spells.
VI
Stalkers of the Hills
The gazelle raised its pronged head, ears a-prick for danger, and surveyed the dewy meadow. On all sides spread wild flowers, grass tufts, a few solitary clumps of shrub and weed. There was no motion or change, except for the occasional flicker of birds and insects, and the slow amble of other animals grazing in the middle distance. Resolutely, the deer lowered its head and resumed cropping grass.
As it did so, one of the low, motionless clumps changed shape and glided forward. It was a man, sun-bronzed, with fern fronds tied about his brow to obscure his crouching shape. His motion was noiseless, as smooth and minimal as the shiver of an airy draft over the soft grass. Yet it brought him near his unwary prey and left him poised, a crude spear braced level in his muscle-corded arm.
The animal must have sensed something—the glint of sunlight perhaps, on a facet of the chipped-stone spear-point—for it raised its slim, tapering head in alarm. Its ears flexed as it gathered to spring. At that instant, a similar tautness coiled in the limbs of the hunter, and the makeshift hood of foliage fell away from his slate-black mane.
The motions of man and deer were one. As the gazelle catapulted into the air, the stalker’s body lashed mightily, launching his spear to intercept the flying form. Aloft, the two missiles met, combining their momentum into a flailing, tumbling roll across the meadow grass. Before the thrashing animal regained its feet, the man darted forward; snatching a heavy tomahawk from the girdle of skins about his waist, he struck with it once, twice, savagely, until the prey lay motionless before him.
Bending warily, Conan tugged his spear out of the animal’s vitals. The weapon was undamaged. Both spear and ax must wait to be washed clean at the nearest stream; for the moment, the blood was left to congeal in their crudely shaped, hide-lashed crevices. Reaching to his waist, he drew forth the long obsidian shard that would serve as a gutting knife. His awkwardly tied girdle of rabbit skins enabled him to carry weapons at least, and to keep his hands free, though it scarcely afforded him the luxury of modesty. He should be able to do better with the hide of this good-sized animal, not to mention the valuable horn, bones, and savoury meat thus provided.
He gutted the kill quickly and cleanly, without troubling to bury the blood and offal. He would have eaten the liver for a quick snack had he not feared worms or, worse, ill dreams from the dead doe’s lingering spirit. The carcass was small enough to be carried; it made far more sense to bear it away to his lair than to skin it here and risk interruption by meddlesome and dangerous scavengers.
With a thrill of superstitious dread, he thought of the unseen thing that had stolen his first and more formidable quarry some days before. He was now better prepared to face any animal, large or small. Even so, there was no sense in squandering his strength or taking needless risks, not when his survival was at issue.
That first buck had been too large for him, a target of rash desperation. He would scarce have been able to lift its whole skin and antlers, or to consume an entire haunch of its meat before it spoiled. The gazelle, by contrast, hefted comfortably across his shoulders. It rode there solidly as he retraced his course—by an alternate route so as not to confront any predators stalking his upward trail—back toward the river.
His present camp was conveniently located and fairly well protected. It lay on a narrow islet, reachable in this season by a brisk wade through twining, waist-deep river currents. Rocks of all kinds were plentiful in the river’s bed and banks, as were both driftwood and standing wood, and his now-dreary staple breakfast, trout. At the forest island’s upstream end a stony outcrop rose into a sort of bastion, one that promised him a safe retreat once he had explored and fitted it out properly.
For now, his lair was in the lowest cleft of the rock castle, at the head of a sun-pierced grove from whence he could view anything that might approach from either flank of the islet. Returning in late morning, wet from having bathed himself and his gory kill in the river, he hung the gazelle over the lowest limb of an oak and bound it there with stiff cords of rabbit skin.
Kneeling then in a natural fireplace near the base of an overhanging rock where his tinder and kindling were stored, he set about making fire. Laying out a long, crudely shaped plank with a notched indentation at one edge, he knelt on it and bunched soft tinder under the notch. He took up his drill—a shaved, pointed stick of finger-thick wood—and the fire-bow, a long, pliant stick bent taut by a length of rawhide. This cord he tightened further by looping it twice around the shaft of the drill. Inserting the drill point into the notched hole in the plank, he used a fourth piece—a smooth, shallowly indented stone—as a socket with which to steady the butt end of the drill and force its point into the notch. With steady sawing motions of the bow, well-practiced in recent days, he made the drill twirl rapidly in the board, its point digging into the notched hole.
In a short time, smoke began to curl from the hole; he could feel the stone socket heating in his palm from the friction of his efforts. After some moments, a glowing stream of sawdust began to sprinkle through the notch into the nest of tinder. When smoke rose abundantly, Conan laid aside the socket and bow. Cupping his hands around the smouldering heap, he blew on it ever so gently. Once a clear flame sprang into existence, he was ready with dry twigs and shavings to nurture it into a healthy, hungry fire.
Banking the blaze with hard, dry, broken limbs, he turned back to his kill. He worked at the carcass with a keen shard of rock glass. Difficult though it was to grip the tool in blood-slimed fingers, he gradually stripped away the tough skin and laid it aside. Then he set to work dismembering the game, cutting apart its flesh and bones with his various-shaped stone blades and choppers. One whole haunch he roasted over the fire. Spitting its length on a supple green stick raised between two forked poles, he tried to remember to turn it frequently over the blaze, which gradually burned down to glowing, low-flaming chunks.
The rest of the meat he cut into long strips and set out on stones and wooden racks—either close beside the fire to dry and smoke rapidly, or on the rocks abov
e to cure more gradually in the bright sunlight. This food would be his hedge against famine. It might in the coming days enable him to rove farther afield and explore his surroundings without having to worry about day-to-day sustenance.
This land, to be sure, was bountiful, with plenteous and varied animal life as well as countless other sources of food and material. A man alone could live richly here, more so than in the sparse, craggy highlands of northern Cimmeria. Yet inevitably these pristine valleys, for their very richness, must also hold danger. Whether it was in the form of mere animal predators, or mayhap human foragers, like the wild Picts of the Western Sea—or some supernatural influence, which Conan had already half-sensed in the breathy stillnesses of dusk and midnight—he thought it best to broaden his knowledge and be prepared for any threat.
Also, if he was going to make his way here, there was the question of long-term survival. Though lush now in early summer, the country might grow barren later. Just how fiercely snow or drought could smite these rugged lands was hard to guess, since he had no fixed notion of his whereabouts. From experience, he knew that a seeming abundance of wild game and food could vanish practically overnight. Whether he ought to build and provision a winter lodge in which to sit out the snows, or mayhap follow the game downstream to some milder pasture, remained an issue. It would require sound thought and intuition, now that he was on the way to lording it comfortably over the wilderness.
Of one thing he felt certain. However prosperous he became—well-armed, well-provisioned, and free to explore the limits of the land—he would never feel obliged to skulk back to the haunts and hovels of civilized Hyborians. Their power and grandeur, as often as not, he had found a hateful thing: a compact of mutual slavery, glorying in insatiable excesses, and exalting the ruthless few over the nameless many.
He was born a savage, after all. He had been taught the code of a wild hill tribesman, along with the skills that served him now; and, while dragged or hounded through half a hundred great cities, he had clung to those native values as his steadfast virtues. Now, returned here to a feral paradise by the will of Crom—and granted the boon of ignorance as a defence against any feeble claims his past might lay on him—he resolved to yearn no more for the gleam of decadent capitals, or for the perfume of soft, sybaritic pleasure. He could take civilization or leave it, he swore; given his way, he would never tread its paved, soiled byways again.
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