by Roland Green
The nomads wore no armor. In this land, armored riders were most likely Turanians. Conan looked westward, studying the ground with a practiced eye. He had fought in every kind of land from glacier to jungle, and knew what each offered to a hunted band.
To the west, the desert rolled away under the sun, offering little but sand and scrub. Anywhere in that emptiness, Conan's band would stand out like a pea on a platter. Once in bowshot, the enemy would have easy prey, unless night came—and it was only early afternoon.
To the north, however, a sprawling gray mass thrust its rocky head above the sand. Any who reached this ridge might lurk in its cracks and crevices until nightfall dimmed the enemy's sight, then slip away. At worst, it offered shelter for archery and ambushes, likewise high ground for a last stand if the odds against escape grew too long.
Conan grinned at the prospect of giving King Yezdigerd a few more widows' pensions to pay. This was the kind of fight that made his blood sing and that had made his name in all Hyborian lands and more than a few others. Long odds, a need for both cunning and strength, and stout brothers-in-arms to tell the tales afterward or keep him company in death if that was his fate.
No one worthy of the name of warrior could complain about the battle Conan faced.
His only remaining problem was to be sure that the battle would be on his chosen ground, not that of the
Turanians. A good deal of open desert lay between Conan's men and the ridge, bare of cover but likely full of holes and cracks that could catch a horse's leg and doom its rider.
Conan had read a few books on the art of war, and thought most of them tried to make into wizardry something that was for the most part common sense. In none of them had he found one maxim he knew to be true: The horse that has never stumbled before will stumble when you are riding for your life.
He waved toward the ridge, while turning in the saddle to shout at the Afghulis. "We'll perch there until nightfall. Archers, to the rear, but I'll gut the man who wastes arrows." The Afghulis were mostly not the finished horse-archers of Turan, among the best in the world; but their pursuers would make a large target.
The archers reined in a trifle, the rest dug in spurs, and dust swirled around Conan's band as it re-formed for its last ride. Dust also swirled, higher and thicker than before, to their rear. Conan cast a final look behind him, thought he recognized Turanian banners, then put his head down and his heels in to ride for his life.
In a bare rock chamber in the wall of the Valley of the Mists, a woman sat cross-legged and alone on a bearskin thrown across a Turanian rug. Before her stood a tall wine cup of gilded bronze, with four handles and a broad base displaying archaic, even ancient runes known only among sorcerers and talked of in whispers even among them.
The Lady was as bare as the chamber, save for a necklace, bracelets, and coronet of fresh mountain creeper. A Maiden had plucked it in the night and brought it to the chamber before dawn, where it had remained in cool shadows. It was still so fresh that the last drops of dew trickled from the crinkled gray-green leaves down between the Lady's breasts.
The Lady of the Mists—she did not choose to remember any other name—reached under the bearskin and drew out a heavy disk of age-blackened bronze. One could barely make out under the patina of centuries the sigil of Kull of Atlantis.
The Lady knew not whether some potent Atlantean spell still lurked in the bronze. She only knew that nothing else that had come into her hands so readily let her work her own.
That was as well. Workers in magic did best and lived longest (if they cared for that, as the Lady did) if they worked most with the magic they knew and commanded—as well as any mortal could command power from the realms of night.
She shifted her position with the languid grace of a cat half-roused from sleep, until she could reach the cup. She set the bronze disk atop the cup, so that it rested a hairsbreadth below the rim, completely covering the cup.
The movement sent more dew trickling between her breasts. No living man would have gazed on those breasts unstirred, nor did the rest of the Lady's form repel the eye any more than her breasts. She could have filled her bed more readily than most women, had she sought that—or had her eyes been other than they were.
They were of human size and shape, but of a golden hue seen in no race of men. She also had the vertical pupils of a cat, and these were a nightmare black against the yellow.
Any man seeing the Lady's form would have judged her human, and judged truly. Then, coming closer, a glimpse of her eyes would have changed his mind and likely sent him fleeing, faster than anything but the Lady's laughter could pursue. Or, if she took offense, the Lady's magic.
The Lady pressed a finger to the cup, moving it to see if its bronze seal was well in place. No rattle greeted her. She smiled, and her eyes narrowed, like those of a cat looking, as they so often do, into a world beyond human knowledge.
Then she rested both hands lightly on the bronze and began to sing. The cup quivered at first, then steadied, but around cup and Lady alike a crimson light began to spread.
Conan was now as careful not to look to his rear as any Aquilonian knight leading a charge. He did not do it for the knight's reasons of not wishing to show doubt that those sworn to him would follow steadfastedly in his wake.
The Cimmerian kept his eyes to the front or the side because there lay the ridge that offered the only hope of safety, as well as any number of hidden dangers. The holes of burrowing rodents to snap a horse's leg like a rotten twig, soft sand to bring horse and man down together, nests of asps to give a lingering death if disturbed—these could end the race as thoroughly as being overtaken by the Turanians.
So could nomads or Turanians lying in ambush.
The nomads held no love for the Turanians, and even less now in the face of Yezdigerd's growing strength. That would not stay their hands for a moment if they thought they could buy a Turanian captain's goodwill with the heads of the Cimmerian and his following.
This was no land for any man who cared to live without eyes in the back of his head and his hand close to the hilt of his sword. Conan had lived no other way for more years than he had fingers, and in their feud-ridden land the Afghulis sucked in wariness with their mothers' milk.
"Conan!" The call rose above the thunder of hooves. "The Turanians send a band ahead, faster than the rest!"
Conan recognized the voice. It was Farad, first man among the Afghulis. He shouted back, without turning his head.
"They think to wolf-pack us. Time for the archers to make them think again."
"Or stop thinking at all!" Farad shouted back, battle-joy in his cry.
"Wolf-packing" was a pursuer's sending one band after another to force the pursued to a pace their mounts could not sustain. In time the pursued would have stumbling, foaming, dying mounts, at the mercy of the last fresh riders of the pursuer.
It suggested that the Turanians were regularly sworn horsemen of the host, or at worst the better sort of irregular, such as Conan himself had led during his service in Turan. Neither was often found this far into the desert—or rather, had not been found here before Yezdigerd took the throne of Turan, with ambitions to take everything else he could lay his hands on.
The ground began to rise before Conan's eyes. He studied it. Was there a ravine off to the right that led to the base of the ridge and offered shelter from arrows? The Cimmerian slowed to a trot, patting the neck of his foam-flecked horse reassuringly.
"Not much farther, lady," he muttered to the horse. Not much farther to at least brief safety or a swift death. They would find nothing else under this desert sun.
The ravine was narrow and its floor studded with rocks thrusting up wildly, as if flung down by a mad giant. No passage there, at least no swift one—and while the Afghulis were threading their way through the rocks, the Turanians could seize one side of the ravine and send down a hail of arrows.
Conan's men would reach the rocks in the open or not at all.
The Cimmerian's spurs went in again. The mare whickered in protest, blew foam from her mouth, and gathered her legs under her.
"Come on, you sons of dogs!" Conan roared. "Or are you going to lie down for Turanians, of all the pox-ridden folk on earth!"
On staggering horses, some leaving trails of blood, the Afghulis followed. Conan risked a look behind and saw that the first band of the wolf pack had fallen back. Fallen back, moreover, onto ground already well adorned with fallen men and horses. Some still struggled, as the rest of the Turanians rode on past or sometimes over them.
The ridge loomed ahead. Conan drove spurs deeper. The mare responded with what had to be the last of her strength. Gravel and sand flew up about her hooves, like foam from the ram of a war galley.
Another look back. The center of the Turanians was advancing in a solid mass, but on either flank bands were breaking off.
So they were going to surround the ridge, were they? No one but a fool would fail to do that, and fools did not command Turanian horsemen all that often. More than one captain and more than one book on war had told Conan what his own sense said: Never trust your enemy to be a witling.
The thud of the mare's hooves on the ground changed pitch. The ground was harder now, with rock just under the sand and gravel. The other riders reached the hard ground, and half a hundred hooves drummed their way toward the rough ground.
Behind, the Turanian horns gave tongue again, and this time a drum joined them. Conan spat from a desert-dry and dust-filled mouth. The drum was no good news; often as not, the Turanians used it to summon up reinforcements.
Let them summon all the host of Turan. We can still give them a battle those who survive it will not forget.
The vanguard of the Turanians breasted the slope, and sunlight flamed on mail sleeves as half a score of archers nocked and drew as one man.
The crimson glow spread from the cup until, to one looking into the chamber, the Lady might have seemed embedded in the heart of a gigantic ruby. Only her lips moved with the murmuring of her spell, and her breast with her shallow breathing. A keen eye might have seen a tremor in a finger or the muscle of one bare and supple thigh, but otherwise the Lady might have been the image of a sorceress at her magic, carved by a master sculptor.
A low-pitched thrumming began, at first seeming remote, then drawing closer, as if men bore toward the cave a great drum on which they were beating softly. The sound swelled until one would have said there was more than one drum.
Then came soft footsteps and what might have been a muffled cough. Two of the Maidens entered, leading between them one of the captives. The captive was a man of middle years, a hard-faced peasant with the hooked nose of the Kezankian hill folk and little hair on his parchment-hued scalp.
The captive's hands were bound behind his back with a rough but stout cord of marsh grass. Otherwise he wore nothing—not even the aspect of one awake and aware. His eyes were as vacant as a newborn babe's, shifted about altogether at random, and showed no animation even when their gaze fell upon the splendid form of the Lady of the Mist.
The Maidens themselves had now cast off their warriors' garb and wore only white silk loin-guards and, draped over one shoulder, long cords of the same marsh grass. Woven among the grass were amber-hued vines and woolen thread in all the colors ever imagined in the rainbow, let alone seen.
The Lady of the Mists now flung up both hands. A waterfall of sparks poured from her fingertips, silver blazing amidst the crimson. The sigil of Kull on the lid of the cup drew the sparks as a lodestone draws iron. They poured down upon it and vanished into it.
Another gesture by long-fingered, slender hands. The lid rose from the cup. Within lay fire of a crimson yet brighter than the glow filling the chamber. It might have been a blacksmith's forge heated to the utmost, yet neither smoke, heat, nor flame rose from the cup.
The Maidens saw the cup's fire with waking eyes, and blinked. The captive saw nothing, and only the gods knew what passed through as much of a mind as the potion had left him.
If, that is, the gods had not altogether forsaken this cave, its invoking of ancient powers, and its tampering with the laws of both gods and men.
The sigil-marked lid rose higher, wafting toward the ceiling of the chamber as light as thistledown on the breeze, for all that it weighed more than a steel battle helm. A beckoning gesture from the Lady, and the captive took a step forward. Another gesture, another step.
Now he stood almost above the cup. The fire within it tinted his skin until he seemed a bronze statue. A third gesture, and the bindings unknotted themselves and fell to the floor. One of the Maidens stopped to pick them up.
As she straightened, the Lady made a final gesture. The captive bent over, and thrust both hands straight into the crimson fire blazing within the cup.
Still no smoke, still no flame, not the slightest reek of burning flesh. Yet the man stiffened as if he had been turned to stone. His eyes and mouth opened— and both blazed with the same crimson fire. His scant remaining hair rose on his scalp.
The Lady stood in glory and grace and rested both hands lightly on the captive's forehead. He shivered, as if responding to this last human touch—and then between one breath and the next, he was no more. For the space of another breath, a column of silver dust in the shape of a man stood before the Lady.
Then she flung her hands downward, fingers pointing at the cup. The dust leaped, losing human semblance. It rose to the ceiling, then poured down into the cup. The crimson fire within flickered briefly, seemed about to change color, then steadied at a gesture and two soft words from the Lady of the Mists.
The Lady resumed her seat, casting only a brief glance at the lid floating above, a briefer glance at the two Maidens. Her hands and lips moved briefly, in a silence wherein one might have imagined unwholesome beings from beyond the world listening— listening for the sound of prey, or the Lady's bidding.
If the Lady had ever held discourse with such, she did not do so now. Instead her bidding was to the Maidens. They knelt briefly before her, and she rested a hand on each smooth, youthful brow. Each woman shivered as with a light fever at her mistress's touch, then each rose with almost as much grace as hers and stepped backward out of the chamber.
The Lady took a deep breath, and this time her words were five, none of them soft. They were a command, in the language of Shem, a command to the Maidens waiting outside the chamber's door.
"Bring in the next sacrifice!" was the command of the Lady of the Mists.
Two
Conan's band had borne a charmed life until now. But as the Afghulis breasted the slope, the first man went down. His name was Rastam, and he was old enough to have a son who had ridden beside him on a raid.
That was all the Cimmerian knew about the man, but it was enough that he would not die faceless and nameless among strangers. "Not even an enemy deserves such a fate, and ten times over not a man who has followed you," was a motto of Khadjar, once captain of Turanian irregular horse and giver of much wisdom to a certain young Cimmerian then new to the Turanian service.
Rastam's horse was dead, but the man himself only wounded. Through the dust Conan saw him roll clear of his stricken mount, leaving a trail of blood in the sand. Then he rose, casting aside a broken bow and drawing his tulwar.
The dust blinded the leading Turanian riders more than it did Conan, let alone Rastam. They were hard upon him before they saw him. A horse screamed and bucked convulsively as the Afghuli hamstrung it with the tulwar, then neatly slashed the falling rider's head from his shoulders.
A second Turanian rode up; Rastam leaped and dragged him from the saddle, and both men fell. Both stood, but Rastam had one arm around the other's neck and was holding him as a shield against Turanian arrows.
He cut two more foes out of the saddle and mutilated three horses before someone finally worked around behind him and put arrows into his back. Even then he had the strength to cut his living shield's throat before he died.
; To the left Conan now saw a high but narrow gap in the rocks. The Afghulis had seen it, too, and were swerving hard in its direction. One mount lost its footing on a patch of loose stones. Its rider went down with it and did not move again after his mount lurched to its feet and hobbled off with its comrades.
Conan cursed in a fury at many things, not least of all himself. Had he parted with some of his jewels to buy camels for his band, they could have crossed the desert far to the south, well away from Turanian patrols.
But what might have been could never now be. Conan had learned that early and often, so it was not in him to spend much time repining over mistakes. Besides, showing some of the jewels could well have made more than camel dealers profoundly curious about the northern giant's wealth. Also, the desert might hold no Turanians, but it still held more than a few nomads, unless one ventured so far south beyond the last oases that one had to cross the Devil's Anvil or other places where more travelers left their bones than reached their destinations.
The Cimmerian kept the mare moving while his eyes searched the rocks for a better refuge than the cleft. Behind those eyes was a hillman's blood and a seasoned warrior's experience, but they did not find what they sought.
"Dismount!" Conan shouted. He used a dialect of Afghuli that all of his band understood but few Turanians were likely to know. The pursuing foe was reining in and holding their distance, but they were still within hearing.
"Dismount!" he repeated, and gestured at the cleft. "Drive your horses within, then climb to where you overlook them. Archers, on guard."
Nods said that some understood the Cimmerian's plan. If the horses could not be taken to safety, then their next best use was as bait. Seeking to drive away their prey's mounts, the Turanians would be forced to come at them either up the steep slope or through the mouth of the cleft. If the first, then archers could play with them. If the second, then one man might bar the passage of a score.
Conan also knew who that one man must be. He flung himself out of the saddle, drawing his broadsword as he did. He snatched a short-handled axe from the saddle as he landed, then slapped the mare on the rump. She trotted off after the other horses.
