The demon-hunters had been watching and waiting now for ten days.
***
Conan had no intention of climbing down the tree and leaving Govindue to watch alone. Instead, he sought a more secure perch that would still let him see something besides a curtain of leaves.
He had just reached a point some five spears' length below Govindue when the boy cried aloud, surprise mingled with fear in his voice.
Conan unslung his spear and gripped a stout branch with one iron-thewed arm. With the other hand, he used the spear to push the leaves aside.
It might have been a small bird close at hand. A hunter's instinct had told the boy, and now told the Cimmerian, that it was a giant far off.
How far, Conan could not judge.
Plain to anyone's eyes, beyond the bird was an unearthly shimmering in the air above the jungle roof. It seemed a waterfall, all but solid with golden-scaled fish”which was impossible.
If this was not the demon's gate, then there were two creations of wizardry abroad in the jungle. Conan stared at the shimmering, squinting against the sun. He gave it his whole attention, trying to fix its position in relation to other visible objects.
It did not help that all those visible objects were the tops of trees.
Conan's jungle lore grew daily, but he was not yet master of the art of telling trees apart at a glance.
He had just noted that one tree had a jutting three-sided crest, when Govindue shouted again. The branches quivered as the boy slid down to dangle beside him.
Conan now saw it also. The bird was sweeping toward them, as if it scented either prey or enemies. Conan had no intention of being the first, nor was he well-equipped to be the second, with only a spear and a dagger.
The bird turned in the air, seeming to stand on one wing. Each wing was the size of a ship's foresail. Turning, the bird revealed a repulsive belly the hue of dried blood, half-bare and surrounded by molting feathers of sickly gray and the green of swamp scum.
It's beak was the hooked weapon of a predator, and if that had not made it's diet plain, a carrion reek wafted over Conan and his companion as the bird flew by.
Govindue lowered himself onto Conan's branch, which creaked but did not sway. With one hand, he gripped a light branch, with the other, he raised his spear.
Conan put a hand on the boy's shoulder and shook his head. "We will never have a better chance," Govindue said. "Warriors do not skulk."
"We are warriors with other tasks than fighting," Conan said. It went against every instinct hammered into him in his years of war to say this, but truth was as plain as the stink of the bird. As long as the bird lived, it might fly back to where it had come from: the shimmer, which might be the demon's gate, or whatever other place unnaturally linked this jungle with the bird's home.
Which "others," the Cimmerian wondered. He had never heard of the jungles of Vendhya harboring birds the size of a war chariot, but even Vendhyans did not know all the denizens of their forests. Vendhya held wide expanses of rank forest where no man ventured lightly, and few of those who ventured at all ever returned.
As the bird flew past for a second time, Conan saw that the neck was even barer than the belly, and scaled as much like a serpent's as like a bird's. The eyes glared a venomous yellow and seemed to drip a pallid ichor.
Then the bird was coming for a third time, and it did not turn.
Instead, it spread its wings wide with a thunder of air and a viler reek than before, and halted itself in midair. Long, claw-tipped toes, four on each foot, reached out for Govindue.
They never touched their goal. Warriors' instincts commanded both Conan and the boy. Each launched his spear simultaneously. A heavier weapon driven by a stouter arm, Conan's spear thrust deep into the bird's reeking breast. Govindue's flew straight to a more vulnerable target, one glaring eye.
Carrion breath nearly stifled the warriors, and the bird's shrieks of rage and pain almost deafened them. They clung like apes to the branches as the great wings thrashed wildly. Leaves, twigs, birds'
nests, and the odd monkey showered down around them.
The bird plummeted away and out of sight, then reappeared farther off, climbing slowly. Blood oozed from one eye and added further hues to its breast. All but holding his breath, as patient as a great cat eyeing its prey, the Cimmerian waited. Waited for the bird to either flee toward that distant shimmering or return to the attack.
It did neither. Instead, it folded its wings and plummeted down into the jungle. Branches crackled and splintered. Then came a mighty blow, making Conan's tree shiver like a fence post struck with an axe.
Smoke poured up through the branches, greasy dark fumes that reeked of burning flesh. Conan drew a scrap of bark cloth from his loinguard and clapped it over his nose. At last the unnatural stench faded. Govindue was trying to look in all directions at once, as if he expected another bird to fling itself at the tree. He gave little care to a secure perch or grip, and Conan made ready to catch him if he slipped.
Then the tree shivered again, worse than before. The shivering passed briefly, only to return. This time it continued.
Suddenly Conan saw the horizon tilting, and heard sharp cracks as wood fibers thicker than a man's arm tore like threads. Somehow severed by the bird's funeral pyre, the tree was toppling.
Conan reached up and grabbed Govindue. "Hold tight, lad. There's no riding this one down. We'll have to leap for it."
Govindue was silent. Limber and agile as he was, he knew his master. He threw his arms around the Cimmerian's massive torso as Conan flexed his legs, stretched out his arms, and leapt.
As their first tree fell away from them, they plunged across open air and landed in a second tree. A branch caught the Cimmerian across the chest, knocking the wind from him and bruising Govindue's hands. The boy used his feet to keep himself from plummeting to the forest floor, then hooked one arm painfully over a branch. The tree under the two swayed and creaked as its falling neighbor tore vines, splintered branches, and crushed everything beneath it into the forest floor.
Smoke and dust streamed up through the gap in the forest roof, as if the bird's funeral pyre had reignited.
Conan and Govindue stared down at the corpse of the tree, seeking some traces of the corpse of the bird.
They saw nothing, save on either side of the severed trunk, a patch of ashes that might have come from wood, flesh, or leaf. Even the smell had vanished with what seemed miraculous speed.
No, with sorcerous speed. The demon's gate was letting greater and viler magick into the jungles each time it opened. This latest trespasser had immolated itself without harming more than trees. The next one might be as deadly as the snowbear, and as tenacious of life as a great serpent.
As Conan clambered down the tree, it struck him that learning where the demon's gate was might not be so great a victory by itself. Not if the gate was defended by creatures such as had come through it thus far, or even by more formidable ones.
There would indeed be grief among the kin of the hunters for the demon's gate before the hunt was done and the gate closed.
***
That night Lycenius cursed softly and fell asleep in his northern cave long before his daughter Scyra.
When she at last also slept, she knew still more about the world-walker, and much of the new knowledge gave her sinister dreams.
The gate was transforming creatures that passed through it, a little more each time. Never in nature would that bird have burst into flames as it had.
Her father had never been fully master of the world-walker's powers.
Now those powers were growing in ways that it was not meant for mortals to understand. It seemed that her father had tried to link the world-walker with the Pictish Wilderness instead of with Vendhya, and then close it. The link was uncertain, but there could be no doubt that the world-walker remained open. Was it to remain thus until it had sown chaos in whatever lands it might link?
Scyra slept then, and dream
ed of the gate twisting so that it linked the Black Kingdoms and the Pictish Wilderness. She dreamed of warriors leaping”unchanged, by some sorcerous logic”through the gate and striding up the hill, led by one gigantic in stature, if blurred in features. A broadsword swung at his hip, she knew, and long black hair flowed from a nobly held head.
If he was coming for her, at least he was no Pict. Indeed, he looked fit to fight the warriors of any three tribes of that ill-natured race.
Seven
Conan and Govindue were not the only gate-hunters to see the shimmer above the treetops. Indeed, other watchers had studied it longer, not having to contend with giant birds. (One man was bitten by a tree adder and died of it, but this was an uncommon fate for those who searched the jungle, nor did it smell of sorcery.)
Each of the climbing watchers described what they had seen, some with more care than others. Kubwande listened to all alike with great attention, and beside him sat Idosso, seeming to listen as intently.
Conan also listened, and was pleased to recognize a fair number of places where he had wandered before the demon's gate opened. It was good to know that he had not lost his power to swiftly learn the lay of a battlefield.
Of course, he had intended the jungles to be a refuge from the sea and all the bitter memories it held. It was distant and malignant sorcery that had turned the land into a battlefield, and the demon's gate that held the key to defeating that sorcery.
Now it seemed that the warriors held the key to finding the demon's gate. Or so Kubwande said.
"We should watch the slope dawnwards of River-Horse Crossing on the Afui," he said. "Some should watch aloft, some from the ground. All will need their finest weapons, and hearts girded with courage."
"Then we are ready for the hunt," Idosso said. "All are armed and brave, and let no one doubt it."
Conan could have laughed at Kubwande's face, which was a study in hiding his anger at being chided by his friend. It would have been unwise, however. Plainly, the two chiefs were rapidly becoming as much rivals as allies in the quest for the demon's gate. The honor of closing it would be a warriors dream, and past friendships would be of little account.
Such rivalries were nothing new to the Cimmerian. In many lands over many years, he had snatched everything from pearls to chieftainships.
One day he might snatch a throne, although that was not something he valued as much as some did. A king was not nearly as much his own master as folk thought, and he was a fixed target for his enemies.
What prize Conan might find in the Black Kingdoms he hardly knew and did not much care, as long as it made him no more enemies than those with whom he could contend. That would be more than he had so far, of a certainty.
The Black Kingdoms bred stout warriors. Cimmeria bred still stouter ones.
***
They marched to the banks of the Afui in a dawn that hinted of rain not far distant. Mist rose from the trails and spiraled upward, to veil saffron-hued flowers and clusters of drumfruit, a deep, glossy purple worthy of a royal robe. Insects chirred and whined high and low.
Conan marched in the vanguard with the arms. He had not seen the two women since the night before last, but they had showed no hurt then.
They might have grown a trifle thin-flanked, carrying waterskins and mealie sacks, but their bruises had healed and their eyes rested approvingly on the big Cimmerian.
The party split to move along three trails as it approached the Afui.
Conan judged that this might take the men on each trail out of reach of help from the others. It would also bring more warriors up to the river at one time. Time and the gods would tell which was the greater risk.
Idosso seemed in rare good spirits this morning. He even tried to sing, until Kubwande gently urged him to silence. Conan knew the lesser chiefs prompting was due to the nearness of wild animals, but doubted that was the only reason. The Cimmerian had no great ear for music, but even to his ear, Idosso bellowed as loudly and harshly as a rutting bull.
The ground sloped for the last few hundred paces, the paths winding down toward the riverbank. At last Conan led his warriors out into the open ground, where once there had been a sizable village, but long before the demon's gate opened, a tribal war took it. Now the jungle was taking back even the ruins.
There were plenty of hiding places, but few of the men chose to use them. Most stood on the bank, staring across. Ripples in the water hinted of river-horses, crocodiles, and carnivorous fish lurking in the sluggish depths.
Beyond the water lay a circle of clear ground. Something like the foot of a beast still more gigantic than an elephant had stamped it out, crushing small trees, bushes, flowers, ferns, and vines into an ill-smelling paste.
Conan studied the clearing from the near bank. It was not pressed into the earth at all. Only the vegetation had suffered”and, Conan saw, nearby trees. More than a few of them showed signs of branches lopped and bark peeled with unnatural precision. A great fungus, an unwholesome white”blotched still more unwholesomely with umber and black patches”stood half-whole, half-crushed, with crawling insects further blackening the crushed portion.
When Conan saw the other parties appear in the open, he began studying the bank, looking for a way across. He had no intention of swimming that river, nor of examining the mysterious circle without a line for swift retreat. If that circle was not the demon's gate, it was still something with no rightful place in the jungle.
The Cimmerian cupped his hands. "Ho!" he snouted. "Bearers with axes forward." The heads of Bamula axes were of an iron too easily dulled for Conan's taste, but there were many of them, and the Bamulas were skilled in all manner of woodscrafting. It would not take long to fell a few small trees and bind them with vines into a light bridge.
Not long, after the axes came up¦ so where were they? Conan cupped his hands to shout again; then his hands fell to his waist, clenching into fists as they did.
The axes were coming, bound across the backs of the two women. One of the wenches limped, the other had one eye swollen almost closed.
"Crom!"
Conan's gaze swept the riverbank as he turned in a full circle. His hands remained clenched, but he kept them away from his broadsword. Too many spearmen stood about him, ready to throw before he could reach them.
Idosso met the chill rage in the northerners eyes with a set jaw and level stare of his own. He also kept his hands from his weapons, but challenge was in every muscle and in every feather of his ornate headdress.
Conan knew that Idosso (urged on by Kubwande?) had set him a direct challenge. Moreover, it was one that he would find it hard to meet either way. Fight Idosso and even if he won, the band would be divided and forced to accept a stranger for leader on the eve of battle. (If challenging the demon's gate was not a battle, Conan wished some kindly god would tell him what it was!)
Refuse, and Idosso would preen himself as one whom even mighty Amra dared not challenge. Also, the lot of the women would be even more wretched, and this latest beating far from the last or the worst.
Conan understood that Idosso was the kind of man who needed a firm hand the moment he challenged you. There had been some like him aboard Tigress, until Conan and the mates reduced them to order. Others too, many others, stretching back to Cimmerian villages¦
He should have met Idosso's challenge the first time it was offered and laid him out next to the dead Vendhyan! But”better late than never.
Conan unbuckled his sword-belt and let it fall. A gesture brought the women over, one to pick up the fallen weapon, the other to hand the Cimmerian one of the axes.
Idosso looked bewildered. Good. Kubwande was not whispering in his ear.
Or perhaps this challenge really was no idea of the iqako's?
"I am Amra. I'll not take the advantage of a sword against a spear."
"Ha!" Idosso sneered. "You'll take the edge of my spear, and when you do, no woman will look at you again."
Conan shrugged. "Better than y
ou. No women ever looked at you, save as one who sees a snake in her bed."
Idosso's mouth opened, but no sound came out.
The silence told Conan that work on the bridge had also ceased. He rounded on the wide-eyed men by the stream. "Keep at work instead of gaping, you mud-grubbers! Or I'll be after you when I'm done with this overgrown lout!"
Silence replied. Fearing treachery in the silence, Conan turned. His eyes widened. He also found his tongue frozen, and a bitterly cold sense of the presence of ancient evil crept along his backbone.
A golden shimmering was growing in the air over the cleared ground.
Already it was higher than most of the trees, and climbing higher still, in utter silence. The golden light dappled leaves and struck sparks on even the murky water of the Afui.
Conan detected a spiral motion beginning in the golden shimmer, but heard no thunder, and indeed, not the slightest sound. He saw Bamula warriors performing rites of aversion and young Govindue staring, his jaw sagging halfway to his chest. But the lad had his spear raised in one hand and his shield advanced on his other arm. Whatever ancient horrors might be rising along this river, he would meet them like a warrior.
For a moment, Govindue made Conan feel ancient. The Cimmerian himself had been no older than the boy when he first knew war. He wished for Govindue at least as many years and as much luck as he had enjoyed, and shifted his stance. He would not willingly take his eyes off either the apparition across the river or Idosso on the near bank.
The huge Bamula stood with his spear trailing on the ground and his shield halfway down his arm. Either he did not fear treachery from Conan or he was too bemused to think of his weapons.
A moment later, however, everyone had cause to think of their weapons.
Not all had time to use them before death struck.
Death burst from the trees in the form of the most gigantic of all lizard-apes. Its glaring red eyes could have stared into those of an elephant, and its claws and teeth torn out a bull's throat.
The Conan Compendium Page 408
