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"The demons struck again," the newcomer gasped. "In Dead Elephant Valley, they have taken a village." "Taken?" Conan exclaimed. "Carried off, you mean?" Either the man did not understand him or did not recognize him as one with the right to an answer. Only when Kubwande (again!) signaled did the man begin to speak. Conan listened to a tale of a village assaulted by beasts out of a nightmare. They had the forms of apes but the scales and sharp teeth of gigantic lizards, as well as the ravenous appetite of starving lions. A score of the villagers were dead, as many more hurt, huts, grain stores, and livestock ruined, and altogether as much harm done as a band of hostile warriors could have contrived. He also saw the eyes of warriors searching him for some sign of foreknowledge. It seemed that the Fish-Eaters were not the only ones who suspected him of being such an utter fool as to deal with demons! Conan muttered curses under his breath, wishing himself and the women a long way from the land of the Bamulas. But wishes were not fishes, nor even Fish-Eaters in strength enough to protect the women should he return them to their kin and tribe. The Cimmerian added curses on the whole race of women, except one whose spirit now walked with the spirits of other valiant warriors. Without the two wenches, there'd be no cause for him to quarrel with Idosso. It would be his choice, to stay among the Bamulas or to set his feet to the nearest trail and blink the smoke of their huts from his eyes for all time. "Idosso, my friend," Conan said. "It is too great an honor, these two fine women. I must do something more to earn it before I can take them with a good heart." "So?" Idosso's growl was still that of a bear's, but one disturbed from sleep rather than enraged or hungry. "So I think we'd best all be on our way to Dead Elephant Valley and see this demon's work," Conan went on. "If I help the Bamulas fight these demon-spawn, then I will take the women for my household. But by Crom, I will earn that household before I take any women to it! Conan of Cimmeria accepts nothing like a bone thrown to a dog, and the Bamulas had best remember that!" It took much less than Conan's knowledge of men's eyes to read those of the Bamulas. Surely this quest will prove Amra either a great warrior or a friend of demons, all the eyes said. Only Kubwande's were unreadable. Conan measured the lesser chief, wondering if his life among the Bamulas might be easier if the man was not quick enough to escape one of these demon-spawned lizard-apes. But to every man his fate. Conan would accept his when Crom sent it, and not push another into death's path when that other had as yet done him no harm. Then he looked down at the women. Their eyes were even easier to read than those of the warriors. The women's eyes held a wish that Conan be found worthy of some rank that would allow him to protect them. A short while at Idosso's mercy seemed to have left them indifferent to whether he was black or white, brown or purple, yellow like the folk of Khitai or spotted like the Dog Men of old tales, if only he could stand between them and the Bamula chief. Conan drew the women to their feet and rested one brawny arm lightly across each set of slender shoulders. "Well," he growled to the assembled warriors. "What say the Bamulas? Or are they going to stand gawping, until I have to find my own spears and mealies and make the journey with only these wenches for help?" After that, it seemed that the Bamulas could not swear to the bargain fast enough. *** In the Pictish lands of the north, Lysenius had exhausted his curses. This was as well, as he had likewise exhausted his daughter Scyra's patience. She had even ventured to speak sharply to him about wasting his strength and frightening those Picts within hearing. "Any Picts that close are weaklings!" was his reply. "Best I frighten them to death, before they breed weakling sons!" "Some of them are sure to do so," Scyra said, smiling. "How many of them can marry me?" Then her smile faded as her father cuffed her, not angrily but not lightly either. "No jesting, girl. There're ten clans that would follow us if their chiefs had hopes of getting sons from you." She held the shadow of the smile on her face until her father turned away. Even then she did not ease her stance or lower her head until she heard his footsteps passing out of the chamber, down the passage& Down the passage to the other chamber, where he would wrestle with his Stygian scrolls. Wrestle not altogether in vain, and always with great earnestness, as he sought true mastery of the spell of the world-walker. He wished not to merely use the spell about the world at random, but to master it so that he could pluck anything (or anyone) he wished from one chosen place and send it to another. The girl shivered from more than the chill of the cave. She had heard in her father's nighttime mutterings hints that blood-sacrifices might help one master this and other spells. The blood of near-kin, by preference and she was the only kin her father had yet living in all the world, let alone in this cold land to which she had followed him because she would have been doomed as he in the land where they were born. The blood of near-kin or the blood of many victims. Would she have to choose between being the sacrifice herself or being wed to some bandy-legged Pictish chief so as to buy the blood of a score of his warriors, wives, and slaves? The shivering passed. Now what the girl felt was an inner queasiness. Also, deeper within, a firmer resolve than before to increase her knowledge of her fathers wizardry. He had said little enough, one way or the other, about her learning magick. What she had learned, she had learned carefully, because even before the quest for the demon's gate began, she knew that magick gone awry was an unforgivable crime. That care took its price, though. She had to snatch her time with the scrolls and phials from her other work, work that was entirely hers from the time her mother died. Years before the yeomen of the land came with bows and ropes in search of her father's life, no servant would spend a night under the Cave Wizard's roof. She cooked and cleaned, washed and mended, and by candlelight after all was done, scraped up knowledge of a few lesser spells. That knowledge would no longer be enough. Use those lesser spells to heat the soup or to lure birds into the snares? Why not? Every moment, every drop of sweat, saved from her work meant freedom to spend increasing her own knowledge. Her father would not notice how she did the work. He would notice only if she failed, as had been his way even before her mother died. Mother, you could have saved both me and Father, by not dying. He might not have heeded you, but alive, you would not need the vengeance that has consumed him. But that was a foolish girl's wish, and her time for being either a girl or foolish was rapidly nearing its end. Every day brought her closer to the time when she would be either woman-wise or dead& or wishing that she were. *** Somehow, Kubwande was not surprised when the man who answered to both "Conan" and "Amra" brought the two Fish-Eater wenches with him on the trek to Dead Elephant Valley. Anyone who would risk a quarrel with Idosso over such women was hardly a man to leave them in the very village where Idosso had a dozen sworn friends who would avenge the slight to his honor by killing the women. Of course, such friends would not have won through. It would have been their blood trailed on the dirt of the village paths, and their hyena-gnawed bodies found on the edge of the forest in the morning. Some of those Idosso thought were his friends were sworn to Kubwande by still more potent oaths (and many good cows had it cost Kubwande to purchase the binding of those oaths from the wizards [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |