Title: Beyond the Black River
Author: Howard, Robert E., 1906-1936
Language: English
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                       BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER

                        By Robert E. Howard

    [Transcriber's Note: This etext was first published in Weird Tales
    May and June 1935. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
    that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]



1 Conan Loses His Ax


The stillness of the forest trail was so primeval that the tread of a
soft-booted foot was a startling disturbance. At least it seemed so to
the ears of the wayfarer, though he was moving along the path with the
caution that must be practised by any man who ventures beyond Thunder
River. He was a young man of medium height, with an open countenance and
a mop of tousled tawny hair unconfined by cap or helmet. His garb was
common enough for that country--a coarse tunic, belted at the waist,
short leather breeches beneath, and soft buckskin boots that came short
of the knee. A knife-hilt jutted from one boot-top. The broad leather
belt supported a short, heavy sword and a buckskin pouch. There was no
perturbation in the wide eyes that scanned the green walls which fringed
the trail. Though not tall, he was well built, and the arms that the
short wide sleeves of the tunic left bare were thick with corded muscle.

He tramped imperturbably along, although the last settler's cabin lay
miles behind him, and each step was carrying him nearer the grim peril
that hung like a brooding shadow over the ancient forest.

He was not making as much noise as it seemed to him, though he well knew
that the faint tread of his booted feet would be like a tocsin of alarm
to the fierce ears that might be lurking in the treacherous green
fastness. His careless attitude was not genuine; his eyes and ears were
keenly alert, especially his ears, for no gaze could penetrate the leafy
tangle for more than a few feet in either direction.

But it was instinct more than any warning by the external senses which
brought him up suddenly, his hand on his hilt. He stood stock-still in
the middle of the trail, unconsciously holding his breath, wondering
what he had heard, and wondering if indeed he had heard anything. The
silence seemed absolute. Not a squirrel chattered or bird chirped. Then
his gaze fixed itself on a mass of bushes beside the trail a few yards
ahead of him. There was no breeze, yet he had seen a branch quiver. The
short hairs on his scalp prickled, and he stood for an instant
undecided, certain that a move in either direction would bring death
streaking at him from the bushes.

A heavy chopping crunch sounded behind the leaves. The bushes were
shaken violently, and simultaneously with the sound, an arrow arched
erratically from among them and vanished among the trees along the
trail. The wayfarer glimpsed its flight as he sprang frantically to
cover.

Crouching behind a thick stem, his sword quivering in his fingers, he
saw the bushes part, and a tall figure stepped leisurely into the trail.
The traveler stared in surprise. The stranger was clad like himself in
regard to boots and breeks, though the latter were of silk instead of
leather. But he wore a sleeveless hauberk of dark mesh-mail in place of
a tunic, and a helmet perched on his black mane. That helmet held the
other's gaze; it was without a crest, but adorned by short bull's horns.
No civilized hand ever forged that head-piece. Nor was the face below it
that of a civilized man: dark, scarred, with smoldering blue eyes, it
was a face untamed as the primordial forest which formed its background.
The man held a broadsword in his right hand, and the edge was smeared
with crimson.

'Come on out,' he called, in an accent unfamiliar to the wayfarer.
'All's safe now. There was only one of the dogs. Come on out.'

The other emerged dubiously and stared at the stranger. He felt
curiously helpless and futile as he gazed on the proportions of the
forest man--the massive iron-clad breast, and the arm that bore the
reddened sword, burned dark by the sun and ridged and corded with
muscles. He moved with the dangerous ease of a panther; he was too
fiercely supple to be a product of civilization, even of that fringe of
civilization which composed the outer frontiers.

Turning, he stepped back to the bushes and pulled them apart. Still not
certain just what had happened, the wayfarer from the east advanced and
stared down into the bushes. A man lay there, a short, dark,
thickly-muscled man, naked except for a loin-cloth, a necklace of human
teeth and a brass armlet. A short sword was thrust into the girdle of
the loin-cloth, and one hand still gripped a heavy black bow. The man
had long black hair; that was about all the wayfarer could tell about
his head, for his features were a mask of blood and brains. His skull
had been split to the teeth.

'A Pict, by the gods!' exclaimed the wayfarer.

The burning blue eyes turned upon him.

'Are you surprised?'

'Why, they told me at Velitrium and again at the settlers' cabins along
the road, that these devils sometimes sneaked across the border, but I
didn't expect to meet one this far in the interior.'

'You're only four miles east of Black River,' the stranger informed him.
'They've been shot within a mile of Velitrium. No settler between
Thunder River and Fort Tuscelan is really safe. I picked up this dog's
trail three miles south of the fort this morning, and I've been
following him ever since. I came up behind him just as he was drawing an
arrow on you. Another instant and there'd have been a stranger in Hell.
But I spoiled his aim for him.'

The wayfarer was staring wide-eyed at the larger man, dumfounded by the
realization that the man had actually tracked down one of the
forest-devils and slain him unsuspected. That implied woodsmanship of a
quality undreamed, even for Conajohara.

'You are one of the fort's garrison?' he asked.

'I'm no soldier. I draw the pay and rations of an officer of the line,
but I do my work in the woods. Valannus knows I'm of more use ranging
along the river than cooped up in the fort.'

Casually the slayer shoved the body deeper into the thickets with his
foot, pulled the bushes together and turned away down the trail. The
other followed him.

'My name is Balthus,' he offered. 'I was at Velitrium last night. I
haven't decided whether I'll take up a hide of land, or enter
fort-service.'

'The best land near Thunder River is already taken,' grunted the slayer.
'Plenty of good land between Scalp Creek--you crossed it a few miles
back--and the fort, but that's getting too devilish close to the river.
The Picts steal over to burn and murder--as that one did. They don't
always come singly. Some day they'll try to sweep the settlers out of
Conajohara. And they may succeed--probably will succeed. This
colonization business is mad, anyway. There's plenty of good land east
of the Bossonian marches. If the Aquilonians would cut up some of the
big estates of their barons, and plant wheat where now only deer are
hunted, they wouldn't have to cross the border and take the land of the
Picts away from them.'

'That's queer talk from a man in the service of the Governor of
Conajohara,' objected Balthus.

'It's nothing to me,' the other retorted. 'I'm a mercenary. I sell my
sword to the highest bidder. I never planted wheat and never will, so
long as there are other harvests to be reaped with the sword. But you
Hyborians have expanded as far as you'll be allowed to expand. You've
crossed the marches, burned a few villages, exterminated a few clans
and pushed back the frontier to Black River; but I doubt if you'll even
be able to hold what you've conquered, and you'll never push the
frontier any further westward. Your idiotic king doesn't understand
conditions here. He won't send you enough reinforcements, and there are
not enough settlers to withstand the shock of a concerted attack from
across the river.'

'But the Picts are divided into small clans,' persisted Balthus.
'they'll never unite. We can whip any single clan.'

'Or any three or four clans,' admitted the slayer. 'But some day a man
will rise and unite thirty or forty clans, just as was done among the
Cimmerians, when the Gundermen tried to push the border northward, years
ago. They tried to colonize the southern marches of Cimmeria: destroyed
a few small clans, built a fort-town, Venarium--you've heard the tale.'

'So I have indeed,' replied Balthus, wincing. The memory of that red
disaster was a black blot in the chronicles of a proud and war-like
people. 'My uncle was at Venarium when the Cimmerians swarmed over the
walls. He was one of the few who escaped that slaughter. I've heard him
tell the tale, many a time. The barbarians swept out of the hills in a
ravening horde, without warning, and stormed Venarium with such fury
none could stand before them. Men, women and children were butchered.
Venarium was reduced to a mass of charred ruins, as it is to this day.
The Aquilonians were driven back across the marches, and have never
since tried to colonize the Cimmerian country. But you speak of Venarium
familiarly. Perhaps you were there?'

'I was,' grunted the other. 'I was one of the horde that swarmed over
the hills. I hadn't yet seen fifteen snows, but already my name was
repeated about the council fires.'

Balthus involuntarily recoiled, staring. It seemed incredible that the
man walking tranquilly at his side should have been one of those
screeching, blood-mad devils that had poured over the walls of Venarium
on that long-gone day to make her streets run crimson.

'Then you, too, are a barbarian!' he exclaimed involuntarily.

The other nodded, without taking offence.

'I am Conan, a Cimmerian.'

'I've heard of you.' Fresh interest quickened Balthus' gaze. No wonder
the Pict had fallen victim to his own sort of subtlety. The Cimmerians
were barbarians as ferocious as the Picts, and much more intelligent.
Evidently Conan had spent much time among civilized men, though that
contact had obviously not softened him, nor weakened any of his
primitive instincts. Balthus' apprehension turned to admiration as he
marked the easy cat-like stride, the effortless silence with which the
Cimmerian moved along the trail. The oiled links of his armor did not
clink, and Balthus knew Conan could glide through the deepest thicket or
most tangled copse as noiselessly as any naked Pict that ever lived.

'You're not a Gunderman?' It was more assertion than question.

Balthus shook his head. 'I'm from the Tauran.'

'I've seen good woodsmen from the Tauran. But the Bossonians have
sheltered you Aquilonians from the outer wildernesses for too many
centuries. You need hardening.'

That was true; the Bossonian marches, with their fortified villages
filled with determined bowmen, had long served Aquilonia as a buffer
against the outlying barbarians. Now among the settlers beyond Thunder
River there was growing up a breed of forest-men capable of meeting the
barbarians at their own game, but their numbers were still scanty. Most
of the frontiersmen were like Balthus--more of the settler than the
woodsman type.

The sun had not set, but it was no longer in sight, hidden as it was
behind the dense forest wall. The shadows were lengthening, deepening
back in the woods as the companions strode on down the trail.

'It will be dark before we reach the fort,' commented Conan casually;
then: 'Listen!'

He stopped short, half crouching, sword ready, transformed into a savage
figure of suspicion and menace, poised to spring and rend. Balthus had
heard it too--a wild scream that broke at its highest note. It was the
cry of a man in dire fear or agony.

Conan was off in an instant, racing down the trail, each stride widening
the distance between him and his straining companion. Balthus puffed a
curse. Among the settlements of the Tauran he was accounted a good
runner, but Conan was leaving him behind with maddening ease. Then
Balthus forgot his exasperation as his ears were outraged by the most
frightful cry he had ever heard. It was not human, this one; it was a
demoniacal caterwauling of hideous triumph that seemed to exult over
fallen humanity and find echo in black gulfs beyond human ken.

Balthus faltered in his stride, and clammy sweat beaded his flesh. But
Conan did not hesitate; he darted around a bend in the trail and
disappeared, and Balthus, panicky at finding himself alone with that
awful scream still shuddering through the forest in grisly echoes, put
on an extra burst of speed and plunged after him.

The Aquilonian slid to a stumbling halt, almost colliding with the
Cimmerian who stood in the trail over a crumpled body. But Conan was not
looking at the corpse which lay there in the crimson-soaked dust. He was
glaring into the deep woods on either side of the trail.

Balthus muttered a horrified oath. It was the body of a man which lay
there in the trail, a short, fat man, clad in the gilt-worked boots and
(despite the heat) the ermine-trimmed tunic of a wealthy merchant. His
fat, pale face was set in a stare of frozen horror; his thick throat had
been slashed from ear to ear as if by a razor-sharp blade. The short
sword still in its scabbard seemed to indicate that he had been struck
down without a chance to fight for his life.

'A Pict?' Balthus whispered, as he turned to peer into the deepening
shadows of the forest.

Conan shook his head and straightened to scowl down at the dead man.

'A forest devil. This is the fifth, by Crom!'

'What do you mean?'

'Did you ever hear of a Pictish wizard called Zogar Sag?'

Balthus shook his head uneasily.

'He dwells in Gwawela, the nearest village across the river. Three
months ago he hid beside this road and stole a string of pack-mules from
a pack-train bound for the fort--drugged their drivers, somehow. The
mules belonged to this man'--Conan casually indicated the corpse with
his foot--'Tiberias, a merchant of Velitrium. They were loaded with
ale-kegs, and old Zogar stopped to guzzle before he got across the
river. A woodsman named Soractus trailed him, and led Valannus and three
soldiers to where he lay dead drunk in a thicket. At the importunities
of Tiberias, Valannus threw Zogar Sag into a cell, which is the worst
insult you can give a Pict. He managed to kill his guard and escape, and
sent back word that he meant to kill Tiberias and the five men who
captured him in a way that would make Aquilonians shudder for centuries
to come.

'Well, Soractus and the soldiers are dead. Soractus was killed on the
river, the soldiers in the very shadow of the fort. And now Tiberias is
dead. No Pict killed any of them. Each victim--except Tiberias, as you
see--lacked his head--which no doubt is now ornamenting the altar of
Zogar Sag's particular god.'

'How do you know they weren't killed by the Picts?' demanded Balthus.

Conan pointed to the corpse of the merchant.

'You think that was done with a knife or a sword? Look closer and you'll
see that only a talon could have made a gash like that. The flesh is
ripped, not cut.'

'Perhaps a panther----' began Balthus, without conviction.

Conan shook his head impatiently.

'A man from the Tauran couldn't mistake the mark of a panther's claws.
No. It's a forest devil summoned by Zogar Sag to carry out his revenge.
Tiberias was a fool to start for Velitrium alone, and so close to dusk.
But each one of the victims seemed to be smitten with madness just
before doom overtook him. Look here; the signs are plain enough.
Tiberias came riding along the trail on his mule, maybe with a bundle of
choice otter pelts behind his saddle to sell in Velitrium, and the
_thing_ sprang on him from behind that bush. See where the branches are
crushed down.

'Tiberias gave one scream, and then his throat was torn open and he was
selling his otter skins in Hell. The mule ran away into the woods.
Listen! Even now you can hear him thrashing about under the trees. The
demon didn't have time to take Tiberias' head; it took fright as we came
up.'

'As _you_ came up,' amended Balthus. 'It must not be a very terrible
creature if it flees from one armed man. But how do you know it was not
a Pict with some kind of a hook that rips instead of slicing? Did you
see it?'

'Tiberias was an armed man,' grunted Conan. 'If Zogar Sag can bring
demons to aid him, he can tell them which men to kill and which to let
alone. No, I didn't see it. I only saw the bushes shake as it left the
trail. But if you want further proof, look here!'

The slayer had stepped into the pool of blood in which the dead man
sprawled. Under the bushes at the edge of the path there was a
footprint, made in blood on the hard loam.

'Did a man make that?' demanded Conan.

Balthus felt his scalp prickle. Neither man nor any beast that he had
ever seen could have left that strange, monstrous three-toed print, that
was curiously combined of the bird and the reptile, yet a true type of
neither. He spread his fingers above the print, careful not to touch it,
and grunted explosively. He could not span the mark.

'What is it?' he whispered. 'I never saw a beast that left a spoor like
that.'

'Nor any other sane man,' answered Conan grimly. 'It's a swamp
demon--they're thick as bats in the swamps beyond Black River. You can
hear them howling like damned souls when the wind blows strong from the
south on hot nights.'

'What shall we do?' asked the Aquilonian, peering uneasily into the deep
blue shadows. The frozen fear on the dead countenance haunted him. He
wondered what hideous head the wretch had seen thrust grinning from
among the leaves to chill his blood with terror.

'No use to try to follow a demon,' grunted Conan, drawing a short
woodsman's ax from his girdle. 'I tried tracking him after he killed
Soractus. I lost his trail within a dozen steps. He might have grown
himself wings and flown away, or sunk down through the earth to Hell. I
don't know. I'm not going after the mule, either. It'll either wander
back to the fort, or to some settler's cabin.'

As he spoke Conan was busy at the edge of the trail with his ax. With a
few strokes he cut a pair of saplings nine or ten feet long, and denuded
them of their branches. Then he cut a length from a serpent-like vine
that crawled among the bushes near by, and making one end fast to one of
the poles, a couple of feet from the end, whipped the vine over the
other sapling and interlaced it back and forth. In a few moments he had
a crude but strong litter.

'The demon isn't going to get Tiberias' head if I can help it,' he
growled. 'We'll carry the body into the fort. It isn't more than three
miles. I never liked the fat fool, but we can't have Pictish devils
making so cursed free with white men's heads.'

The Picts were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never
spoke of them as such.

Balthus took the rear end of the litter, onto which Conan
unceremoniously dumped the unfortunate merchant, and they moved on down
the trail as swiftly as possible. Conan made no more noise laden with
their grim burden than he had made when unencumbered. He had made a loop
with the merchant's belt at the end of the poles, and was carrying his
share of the load with one hand, while the other gripped his naked
broadsword, and his restless gaze roved the sinister walls about them.
The shadows were thickening. A darkening blue mist blurred the outlines
of the foliage. The forest deepened in the twilight, became a blue haunt
of mystery sheltering unguessed things.

They had covered more than a mile, and the muscles in Balthus' sturdy
arms were beginning to ache a little, when a cry rang shuddering from
the woods whose blue shadows were deepening into purple.

Conan started convulsively, and Balthus almost let go the poles.

'A woman!' cried the younger man. 'Great Mitra, a woman cried out then!'

'A settler's wife straying in the woods,' snarled Conan, setting down
his end of the litter. 'Looking for a cow, probably, and--stay here!'

He dived like a hunting wolf into the leafy wall. Balthus' hair
bristled.

'Stay here alone with this corpse and a devil hiding in the woods?' he
yelped. 'I'm coming with you!'

And suiting action to words, he plunged after the Cimmerian. Conan
glanced back at him, but made no objection, though he did not moderate
his pace to accommodate the shorter legs of his companion. Balthus
wasted his wind in swearing as the Cimmerian drew away from him again,
like a phantom between the trees, and then Conan burst into a dim glade
and halted crouching, lips snarling, sword lifted.

'What are we stopping for?' panted Balthus, dashing the sweat out of his
eyes and gripping his short sword.

'That scream came from this glade, or near by,' answered Conan. 'I don't
mistake the location of sounds, even in the woods. But where----'

Abruptly the sound rang out again--_behind them_; in the direction of
the trail they had just quitted. It rose piercingly and pitifully, the
cry of a woman in frantic terror--and then, shockingly, it changed to a
yell of mocking laughter that might have burst from the lips of a fiend
of lower Hell.

'What in Mitra's name----' Balthus' face was a pale blur in the gloom.

With a scorching oath Conan wheeled and dashed back the way he had come,
and the Aquilonian stumbled bewilderedly after him. He blundered into
the Cimmerian as the latter stopped dead, and rebounded from his brawny
shoulders as though from an iron statue. Gasping from the impact, he
heard Conan's breath hiss through his teeth. The Cimmerian seemed frozen
in his tracks.

Looking over his shoulder, Balthus felt his hair stand up stiffly.
Something was moving through the deep bushes that fringed the
trail--something that neither walked nor flew, but seemed to glide like
a serpent. But it was not a serpent. Its outlines were indistinct, but
it was taller than a man, and not very bulky. It gave off a glimmer of
weird light, like a faint blue flame. Indeed, the eery fire was the only
tangible thing about it. It might have been an embodied flame moving
with reason and purpose through the blackening woods.

Conan snarled a savage curse and hurled his ax with ferocious will. But
the thing glided on without altering its course. Indeed it was only a
few instants' fleeting glimpse they had of it--a tall, shadowy thing of
misty flame floating through the thickets. Then it was gone, and the
forest crouched in breathless stillness.

With a snarl Conan plunged through the intervening foliage and into the
trail. His profanity, as Balthus floundered after him, was lurid and
impassioned. The Cimmerian was standing over the litter on which lay the
body of Tiberias. And that body no longer possessed a head.

'Tricked us with its damnable caterwauling!' raved Conan, swinging his
great sword about his head in his wrath. 'I might have known! I might
have guessed a trick! Now there'll be five heads to decorate Zogar's
altar.'

'But what thing is it that can cry like a woman and laugh like a devil,
and shines like witch-fire as it glides through the trees?' gasped
Balthus, mopping the sweat from his pale face.

'A swamp devil,' responded Conan morosely. 'Grab those poles. We'll take
in the body, anyway. At least our load's a bit lighter.'

With which grim philosophy he gripped the leathery loop and stalked down
the trail.



2 The Wizard of Gwawela


Fort Tuscelan stood on the eastern bank of Black River, the tides of
which washed the foot of the stockade. The latter was of logs, as were
all the buildings within, including the donjon (to dignify it by that
appellation), in which were the governor's quarters, overlooking the
stockade and the sullen river. Beyond that river lay a huge forest,
which approached jungle-like density along the spongy shores. Men paced
the runways along the log parapet day and night, watching that dense
green wall. Seldom a menacing figure appeared, but the sentries knew
that they too were watched, fiercely, hungrily, with the mercilessness
of ancient hate. The forest beyond the river might seem desolate and
vacant of life to the ignorant eye, but life teemed there, not alone of
bird and beast and reptile, but also of men, the fiercest of all the
hunting beasts.

There, at the fort, civilization ended. Fort Tuscelan was the last
outpost of a civilized world; it represented the westernmost thrust of
the dominant Hyborian races. Beyond the river the primitive still
reigned in shadowy forests, brush-thatched huts where hung the grinning
skulls of men, and mud-walled enclosures where fires flickered and drums
rumbled, and spears were whetted in the hands of dark, silent men with
tangled black hair and the eyes of serpents. Those eyes often glared
through the bushes at the fort across the river. Once dark-skinned men
had built their huts where that fort stood; yes, and their huts had
risen where now stood the fields and log cabins of fair-haired settlers,
back beyond Velitrium, that raw, turbulent frontier town on the banks of
Thunder River, to the shores of that other river that bounds the
Bossonian marches. Traders had come, and priests of Mitra who walked
with bare feet and empty hands, and died horribly, most of them; but
soldiers had followed, and men with axes in their hands and women and
children in ox-drawn wains. Back to Thunder River, and still back,
beyond Black River the aborigines had been pushed, with slaughter and
massacre. But the dark-skinned people did not forget that once
Conajohara had been theirs.

The guard inside the eastern gate bawled a challenge. Through a barred
aperture torchlight flickered, glinting on a steel head-piece and
suspicious eyes beneath it.

'Open the gate,' snorted Conan. 'You see it's I, don't you?'

Military discipline put his teeth on edge.

The gate swung inward and Conan and his companion passed through.
Balthus noted that the gate was flanked by a tower on each side, the
summits of which rose above the stockade. He saw loopholes for arrows.

The guardsmen grunted as they saw the burden borne between the men.
Their pikes jangled against each other as they thrust shut the gate,
chin on shoulder, and Conan asked testily: 'Have you never seen a
headless body before?'

The face of the soldiers were pallid in the torchlight.

'That's Tiberias,' blurted one. 'I recognize that fur-trimmed tunic.
Valerius here owes me five lunas. I told him Tiberias had heard the loon
call when he rode through the gate on his mule, with his glassy stare. I
wagered he'd come back without his head.'

Conan grunted enigmatically, motioned Balthus to ease the litter to the
ground, and then strode off toward the governor's quarters, with the
Aquilonian at his heels. The tousle-headed youth stared about him
eagerly and curiously, noting the rows of barracks along the walls, the
stables, the tiny merchants' stalls, the towering blockhouse, and the
other buildings, with the open square in the middle where the soldiers
drilled, and where, now, fires danced and men off duty lounged. These
were now hurrying to join the morbid crowd gathered about the litter at
the gate. The rangy figures of Aquilonian pikemen and forest runners
mingled with the shorter, stockier forms of Bossonian archers.

He was not greatly surprised that the governor received them himself.
Autocratic society with its rigid caste laws lay east of the marches.
Valannus was still a young man, well knit, with a finely chiseled
countenance already carved into sober cast by toil and responsibility.

'You left the fort before daybreak, I was told,' he said to Conan. 'I
had begun to fear that the Picts had caught you at last.'

'When they smoke my head the whole river will know it,' grunted Conan.
'They'll hear Pictish women wailing their dead as far as Velitrium--I
was on a lone scout. I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing drums talking
across the river.'

'They talk each night,' reminded the governor, his fine eyes shadowed,
as he stared closely at Conan. He had learned the unwisdom of
discounting wild men's instincts.

'There was a difference last night,' growled Conan. 'There has been ever
since Zogar Sag got back across the river.'

'We should either have given him presents and sent him home, or else
hanged him,' sighed the governor. 'You advised that, but----'

'But it's hard for you Hyborians to learn the ways of the outlands,'
said Conan. 'Well, it can't be helped now, but there'll be no peace on
the border so long as Zogar lives and remembers the cell he sweated in.
I was following a warrior who slipped over to put a few white notches on
his bow. After I split his head I fell in with this lad whose name is
Balthus and who's come from the Tauran to help hold the frontier.'

Valannus approvingly eyed the young man's frank countenance and
strongly-knit frame.

'I am glad to welcome you, young sir. I wish more of your people would
come. We need men used to forest life. Many of our soldiers and some of
our settlers are from the eastern provinces and know nothing of
woodcraft, or even of agricultural life.'

'Not many of that breed this side of Velitrium,' grunted Conan. 'That
town's full of them, though. But listen, Valannus, we found Tiberias
dead on the trail.' And in a few words he related the grisly affair.

Valannus paled. 'I did not know he had left the fort. He must have been
mad!'

'He was,' answered Conan. 'Like the other four; each one, when his time
came, went mad and rushed into the woods to meet his death like a hare
running down the throat of a python. _Something_ called to them from the
deeps of the forest, something the men call a loon, for lack of a better
name, but only the doomed ones could hear it. Zogar Sag has made a magic
that Aquilonian civilization can't overcome.'

To this thrust Valannus made no reply; he wiped his brow with a shaky
hand.

'Do the soldiers know of this?'

'We left the body by the eastern gate.'

'You should have concealed the fact, hidden the corpse somewhere in the
woods. The soldiers are nervous enough already.'

'They'd have found it out some way. If I'd hidden the body, it would
have been returned to the fort as the corpse of Soractus was--tied up
outside the gate for the men to find in the morning.'

Valannus shuddered. Turning, he walked to a casement and stared silently
out over the river, black and shiny under the glint of the stars. Beyond
the river the jungle rose like an ebony wall. The distant screech of a
panther broke the stillness. The night pressed in, blurring the sounds
of the soldiers outside the blockhouse, dimming the fires. A wind
whispered through the black branches, rippling the dusky water. On its
wings came a low, rhythmic pulsing, sinister as the pad of a leopard's
foot.

'After all,' said Valannus, as if speaking his thoughts aloud, 'what do
we know--what does anyone know--of the things that jungle may hide? We
have dim rumors of great swamps and rivers, and a forest that stretches
on and on over everlasting plains and hills to end at last on the shores
of the western ocean. But what things lie between this river and that
ocean we dare not even guess. No white man has ever plunged deep into
that fastness and returned alive to tell us what he found. We are wise
in our civilized knowledge, but our knowledge extends just so far--to
the western bank of that ancient river! Who knows what shapes earthly
and unearthly may lurk beyond the dim circle of light our knowledge has
cast?

'Who knows what gods are worshipped under the shadows of that heathen
forest, or what devils crawl out of the black ooze of the swamps? Who
can be sure that all the inhabitants of that black country are natural?
Zogar Sag--a sage of the eastern cities would sneer at his primitive
magic-making as the mummery of a fakir; yet he has driven mad and killed
five men in a manner no man can explain. I wonder if he himself is
wholly human.'

'If I can get within ax-throwing distance of him I'll settle that
question,' growled Conan, helping himself to the governor's wine and
pushing a glass toward Balthus, who took it hesitatingly, and with an
uncertain glance toward Valannus.

The governor turned toward Conan and stared at him thoughtfully.

'The soldiers, who do not believe in ghosts or devils,' he said, 'are
almost in a panic of fear. You, who believe in ghosts, ghouls, goblins,
and all manner of uncanny things, do not seem to fear any of the things
in which you believe.'

'There's nothing in the universe cold steel won't cut,' answered Conan.
'I threw my ax at the demon, and he took no hurt, but I might have
missed, in the dusk, or a branch deflected its flight. I'm not going out
of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn't step out of my path to let
one go by.'

Valannus lifted his head and met Conan's gaze squarely.

'Conan, more depends on you than you realize. You know the weakness of
this province--a slender wedge thrust into the untamed wilderness. You
know that the lives of all the people west of the marches depend on this
fort. Were it to fall, red axes would be splintering the gates of
Velitrium before a horseman could cross the marches. His majesty, or his
majesty's advisers, have ignored my plea that more troops be sent to
hold the frontier. They know nothing of border conditions, and are
averse to expending any more money in this direction. The fate of the
frontier depends upon the men who now hold it.

'You know that most of the army which conquered Conajohara has been
withdrawn. You know the force left me is inadequate, especially since
that devil Zogar Sag managed to poison our water supply, and forty men
died in one day. Many of the others are sick, or have been bitten by
serpents or mauled by wild beasts which seem to swarm in increasing
numbers in the vicinity of the fort. The soldiers believe Zogar's boast
that he could summon the forest beasts to slay his enemies.

'I have three hundred pikemen, four hundred Bossonian archers, and
perhaps fifty men who, like yourself, are skilled in woodcraft. They are
worth ten times their number of soldiers, but there are so few of them.
Frankly, Conan, my situation is becoming precarious. The soldiers
whisper of desertion; they are low-spirited, believing Zogar Sag has
loosed devils on us. They fear the black plague with which he threatened
us--the terrible black death of the swamplands. When I see a sick
soldier I sweat with fear of seeing him turn black and shrivel and die
before my eyes.

'Conan, if the plague is loosed upon us, the soldiers will desert in a
body! The border will be left unguarded and nothing will check the sweep
of the dark-skinned hordes to the very gates of Velitrium--maybe beyond!
If we can not hold the fort, how can they hold the town?

'Conan, Zogar Sag must die, if we are to hold Conajohara. You have
penetrated the unknown deeper than any other man in the fort; you know
where Gwawela stands, and something of the forest trails across the
river. Will you take a band of men tonight and endeavour to kill or
capture him? Oh, I know it's mad. There isn't more than one chance in a
thousand that any of you will come back alive. But if we don't get him,
it's death for us all. You can take as many men as you wish.'

'A dozen men are better for a job like that than a regiment,' answered
Conan. 'Five hundred men couldn't fight their way to Gwawela and back,
but a dozen might slip in and out again. Let me pick my men. I don't
want any soldiers.'

'Let me go!' eagerly exclaimed Balthus. 'I've hunted deer all my life on
the Tauran.'

'All right. Valannus, we'll eat at the stall where the foresters gather,
and I'll pick my men. We'll start within an hour, drop down the river in
a boat to a point below the village and then steal upon it through the
woods. If we live, we should be back by daybreak.'



3 The Crawlers in the Dark


The river was a vague trace between walls of ebony. The paddles that
propelled the long boat creeping along in the dense shadow of the
eastern bank dipped softly into the water, making no more noise than the
beak of a heron. The broad shoulders of the man in front of Balthus were
a blur in the dense gloom. He knew that not even the keen eyes of the
man who knelt in the prow would discern anything more than a few feet
ahead of them. Conan was feeling his way by instinct and an intensive
familiarity with the river.

No one spoke. Balthus had had a good look at his companions in the fort
before they slipped out of the stockade and down the bank into the
waiting canoe. They were of a new breed growing up in the world on the
raw edge of the frontier--men whom grim necessity had taught woodcraft.
Aquilonians of the western provinces to a man, they had many points in
common. They dressed alike--in buckskin boots, leathern breeks and
deerskin shirts, with broad girdles that held axes and short swords; and
they were all gaunt and scarred and hard-eyed; sinewy and taciturn.

They were wild men, of a sort, yet there was still a wide gulf between
them and the Cimmerian. They were sons of civilization, reverted to a
semi-barbarism. He was a barbarian of a thousand generations of
barbarians. They had acquired stealth and craft, but he had been born to
these things. He excelled them even in lithe economy of motion. They
were wolves, but he was a tiger.

Balthus admired them and their leader and felt a pulse of pride that he
was admitted into their company. He was proud that his paddle made no
more noise than did theirs. In that respect at least he was their equal,
though woodcraft learned in hunts on the Tauran could never equal that
ground into the souls of men on the savage border.

Below the fort the river made a wide bend. The lights of the outpost
were quickly lost, but the canoe held on its way for nearly a mile,
avoiding snags and floating logs with almost uncanny precision.

Then a low grunt from their leader, and they swung its head about and
glided toward the opposite shore. Emerging from the black shadows of the
brush that fringed the bank and coming into the open of the midstream
created a peculiar illusion of rash exposure. But the stars gave little
light, and Balthus knew that unless one were watching for it, it would
be all but impossible for the keenest eye to make out the shadowy shape
of the canoe crossing the river.

They swung in under the overhanging bushes of the western shore and
Balthus groped for and found a projecting root which he grasped. No word
was spoken. All instructions had been given before the scouting-party
left the fort. As silently as a great panther Conan slid over the side
and vanished in the bushes. Equally noiseless, nine men followed him. To
Balthus, grasping the root with his paddle across his knee, it seemed
incredible that ten men should thus fade into the tangled forest without
a sound.

He settled himself to wait. No word passed between him and the other man
who had been left with him. Somewhere, a mile or so to the northwest,
Zogar Sag's village stood girdled with thick woods. Balthus understood
his orders; he and his companion were to wait for the return of the
raiding-party. If Conan and his men had not returned by the first tinge
of dawn, they were to race back up the river to the fort and report that
the forest had again taken its immemorial toll of the invading race. The
silence was oppressive. No sound came from the black woods, invisible
beyond the ebony masses that were the overhanging bushes. Balthus no
longer heard the drums. They had been silent for hours. He kept
blinking, unconsciously trying to see through the deep gloom. The dank
night-smells of the river and the damp forest oppressed him. Somewhere,
near by, there was a sound as if a big fish had flopped and splashed the
water. Balthus thought it must have leaped so close to the canoe that it
had struck the side, for a slight quiver vibrated the craft. The boat's
stern began to swing, slightly away from the shore. The man behind him
must have let go of the projection he was gripping. Balthus twisted his
head to hiss a warning, and could just make out the figure of his
companion, a slightly blacker bulk in the blackness.

The man did not reply. Wondering if he had fallen asleep, Balthus
reached out and grasped his shoulder. To his amazement, the man crumpled
under his touch and slumped down in the canoe. Twisting his body half
about, Balthus groped for him, his heart shooting into his throat. His
fumbling fingers slid over the man's throat--only the youth's convulsive
clenching of his jaws choked back the cry that rose to his lips. His
fingers encountered a gaping, oozing wound--his companion's throat had
been cut from ear to ear.

In that instant of horror and panic Balthus started up--and then a
muscular arm out of the darkness locked fiercely about his throat,
strangling his yell. The canoe rocked wildly. Balthus' knife was in his
hand, though he did not remember jerking it out of his boot, and he
stabbed fiercely and blindly. He felt the blade sink deep, and a
fiendish yell rang in his ear, a yell that was horribly answered. The
darkness seemed to come to life about him. A bestial clamor rose on all
sides, and other arms grappled him. Borne under a mass of hurtling
bodies the canoe rolled sidewise, but before he went under with it,
something cracked against Balthus' head and the night was briefly
illuminated by a blinding burst of fire before it gave way to a
blackness where not even stars shone.



4 The Beasts of Zogar Sag


Fires dazzled Balthus again as he slowly recovered his senses. He
blinked, shook his head. Their glare hurt his eyes. A confused medley of
sound rose about him, growing more distinct as his senses cleared. He
lifted his head and stared stupidly about him. Black figures hemmed him
in, etched against crimson tongues of flame.

Memory and understanding came in a rush. He was bound upright to a post
in an open space, ringed by fierce and terrible figures. Beyond that
ring fires burned, tended by naked, dark-skinned women. Beyond the fires
he saw huts of mud and wattle, thatched with brush. Beyond the huts
there was a stockade with a broad gate. But he saw these things only
incidentally. Even the cryptic dark women with their curious coiffures
were noted by him only absently. His full attention was fixed in awful
fascination on the men who stood glaring at him.

Short men, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped, they were naked
except for scanty loin-clouts. The firelight brought out the play of
their swelling muscles in bold relief. Their dark faces were immobile,
but their narrow eyes glittered with the fire that burns in the eyes of
a stalking tiger. Their tangled manes were bound back with bands of
copper. Swords and axes were in their hands. Crude bandages banded the
limbs of some, and smears of blood were dried on their dark skins. There
had been fighting, recent and deadly.

His eyes wavered away from the steady glare of his captors, and he
repressed a cry of horror. A few feet away there rose a low, hideous
pyramid: it was built of gory human heads. Dead eyes glared glassily up
at the black sky. Numbly he recognized the countenances which were
turned toward him. They were the heads of the men who had followed Conan
into the forest. He could not tell if the Cimmerian's head were among
them. Only a few faces were visible to him. It looked to him as if there
must be ten or eleven heads at least. A deadly sickness assailed him. He
fought a desire to retch. Beyond the heads lay the bodies of half a
dozen Picts, and he was aware of a fierce exultation at the sight. The
forest runners had taken toll, at least.

Twisting his head away from the ghastly spectacle, he became aware that
another post stood near him--a stake painted black as was the one to
which he was bound. A man sagged in his bonds there, naked except for
his leathern breeks, whom Balthus recognized as one of Conan's woodsmen.
Blood trickled from his mouth, oozed sluggishly from a gash in his side.
Lifting his head as he licked his livid lips, he muttered, making
himself heard with difficulty above the fiendish clamor of the Picts:
'So they got you, too!'

'Sneaked up in the water and cut the other fellow's throat,' groaned
Balthus. 'We never heard them till they were on us. Mitra, how can
anything move so silently?'

'They're devils,' mumbled the frontiersman. 'They must have been
watching us from the time we left midstream. We walked into a trap.
Arrows from all sides were ripping into us before we knew it. Most of us
dropped at the first fire. Three or four broke through the bushes and
came to hand-grips. But there were too many. Conan might have gotten
away. I haven't seen his head. Been better for you and me if they'd
killed us outright. I can't blame Conan. Ordinarily we'd have gotten to
the village without being discovered. They don't keep spies on the river
bank as far down as we landed. We must have stumbled into a big party
coming up the river from the south. Some devilment is up. Too many Picts
here. These aren't all Gwaweli; men from the western tribes here and
from up and down the river.'

Balthus stared at the ferocious shapes. Little as he knew of Pictish
ways, he was aware that the number of men clustered about them was out
of proportion to the size of the village. There were not enough huts to
have accommodated them all. Then he noticed that there was a difference
in the barbaric tribal designs painted on their faces and breasts.

'Some kind of devilment,' muttered the forest runner. 'They might have
gathered here to watch Zogar's magic-making. He'll make some rare magic
with our carcasses. Well, a border-man doesn't expect to die in bed. But
I wish we'd gone out along with the rest.'

The wolfish howling of the Picts rose in volume and exultation, and from
a movement in their ranks, an eager surging and crowding, Balthus
deduced that someone of importance was coming. Twisting his head about,
he saw that the stakes were set before a long building, larger than the
other huts, decorated by human skulls dangling from the eaves. Through
the door of that structure now danced a fantastic figure.

'Zogar!' muttered the woodsman, his bloody countenance set in wolfish
lines as he unconsciously strained at his cords. Balthus saw a lean
figure of middle height, almost hidden in ostrich plumes set on a
harness of leather and copper. From amidst the plumes peered a hideous
and malevolent face. The plumes puzzled Balthus. He knew their source
lay half the width of a world to the south. They fluttered and rustled
evilly as the shaman leaped and cavorted.

With fantastic bounds and prancings he entered the ring and whirled
before his bound and silent captives. With another man it would have
seemed ridiculous--a foolish savage prancing meaninglessly in a whirl of
feathers. But that ferocious face glaring out from the billowing mass
gave the scene a grim significance. No man with a face like that could
seem ridiculous or like anything except the devil he was.

Suddenly he froze to statuesque stillness; the plumes rippled once and
sank about him. The howling warriors fell silent. Zogar Sag stood erect
and motionless, and he seemed to increase in height--to grow and expand.
Balthus experienced the illusion that the Pict was towering above him,
staring contemptuously down from a great height, though he knew the
shaman was not as tall as himself. He shook off the illusion with
difficulty.

The shaman was talking now, a harsh, guttural intonation that yet
carried the hiss of a cobra. He thrust his head on his long neck toward
the wounded man on the stake; his eyes shone red as blood in the
firelight. The frontiersman spat full in his face.

With a fiendish howl Zogar bounded convulsively into the air, and the
warriors gave tongue to a yell that shuddered up to the stars. They
rushed toward the man on the stake, but the shaman beat them back. A
snarled command sent men running to the gate. They hurled it open,
turned and raced back to the circle. The ring of men split, divided with
desperate haste to right and left. Balthus saw the women and naked
children scurrying to the huts. They peeked out of doors and windows. A
broad lane was left to the open gate, beyond which loomed the black
forest, crowding sullenly in upon the clearing, unlighted by the fires.

A tense silence reigned as Zogar Sag turned toward the forest, raised on
his tiptoes and sent a weird inhuman call shuddering out into the night.
Somewhere, far out in the black forest, a deeper cry answered him.
Balthus shuddered. From the timbre of that cry he knew it never came
from a human throat. He remembered what Valannus had said--that Zogar
boasted that he could summon wild beasts to do his bidding. The woodsman
was livid beneath his mask of blood. He licked his lips spasmodically.

The village held its breath. Zogar Sag stood still as a statue, his
plumes trembling faintly about him. But suddenly the gate was no longer
empty.

A shuddering gasp swept over the village and men crowded hastily back,
jamming one another between the huts. Balthus felt the short hair stir
on his scalp. The creature that stood in the gate was like the
embodiment of nightmare legend. Its color was of a curious pale quality
which made it seem ghostly and unreal in the dim light. But there was
nothing unreal about the low-hung savage head, and the great curved
fangs that glistened in the firelight. On noiseless padded feet it
approached like a phantom out of the past. It was a survival of an
older, grimmer age, the ogre of many an ancient legend--a saber-tooth
tiger. No Hyborian hunter had looked upon one of those primordial brutes
for centuries. Immemorial myths lent the creatures a supernatural
quality, induced by their ghostly color and their fiendish ferocity.

The beast that glided toward the men on the stakes was longer and
heavier than a common, striped tiger, almost as bulky as a bear. Its
shoulders and forelegs were so massive and mightily muscled as to give
it a curiously top-heavy look, though its hind-quarters were more
powerful than that of a lion. Its jaws were massive, but its head was
brutishly shaped. Its brain capacity was small. It had room for no
instincts except those of destruction. It was a freak of carnivorous
development, evolution run amuck in a horror of fangs and talons.

This was the monstrosity Zogar Sag had summoned out of the forest.
Balthus no longer doubted the actuality of the shaman's magic. Only the
black arts could establish a domination over that tiny-brained,
mighty-thewed monster. Like a whisper at the back of his consciousness
rose the vague memory of the name of an ancient god of darkness and
primordial fear, to whom once both men and beasts bowed and whose
children--men whispered--still lurked in dark corners of the world. New
horror tinged the glare he fixed on Zogar Sag.

The monster moved past the heap of bodies and the pile of gory heads
without appearing to notice them. He was no scavenger. He hunted only
the living, in a life dedicated solely to slaughter. An awful hunger
burned greenly in the wide, unwinking eyes; the hunger not alone of
belly-emptiness, but the lust of death-dealing. His gaping jaws
slavered. The shaman stepped back; his hand waved toward the woodsman.

The great cat sank into a crouch, and Balthus numbly remembered tales of
its appalling ferocity: of how it would spring upon an elephant and
drive its sword-like fangs so deeply into the titan's skull that they
could never be withdrawn, but would keep it nailed to its victim, to die
by starvation. The shaman cried out shrilly, and with an ear-shattering
roar the monster sprang.

Balthus had never dreamed of such a spring, such a hurtling of
incarnated destruction embodied in that giant bulk of iron thews and
ripping talons. Full on the woodsman's breast it struck, and the stake
splintered and snapped at the base, crashing to the earth under the
impact. Then the saber-tooth was gliding toward the gate, half dragging,
half carrying a hideous crimson hulk that only faintly resembled a man.
Balthus glared almost paralysed, his brain refusing to credit what his
eyes had seen.

In that leap the great beast had not only broken off the stake, it had
ripped the mangled body of its victim from the post to which it was
bound. The huge talons in that instant of contact had disemboweled and
partially dismembered the man, and the giant fangs had torn away the
whole top of his head, shearing through the skull as easily as through
flesh. Stout rawhide thongs had given way like paper; where the thongs
had held, flesh and bones had not. Balthus retched suddenly. He had
hunted bears and panthers, but he had never dreamed the beast lived
which could make such a red ruin of a human frame in the flicker of an
instant.

The saber-tooth vanished through the gate, and a few moments later a
deep roar sounded through the forest, receding in the distance. But the
Picts still shrank back against the huts, and the shaman still stood
facing the gate that was like a black opening to let in the night.

Cold sweat burst suddenly out on Balthus' skin. What new horror would
come through that gate to make carrion-meat of his body? Sick panic
assailed him and he strained futilely at his thongs. The night pressed
in very black and horrible outside the firelight. The fires themselves
glowed lurid as the fires of hell. He felt the eyes of the Picts upon
him--hundreds of hungry, cruel eyes that reflected the lust of souls
utterly without humanity as he knew it. They no longer seemed men; they
were devils of this black jungle, as inhuman as the creatures to which
the fiend in the nodding plumes screamed through the darkness.

Zogar sent another call shuddering through the night, and it was utterly
unlike the first cry. There was a hideous sibilance in it--Balthus
turned cold at the implication. If a serpent could hiss that loud, it
would make just such a sound.

This time there was no answer--only a period of breathless silence in
which the pound of Balthus' heart strangled him; and then there sounded
a swishing outside the gate, a dry rustling that sent chills down
Balthus' spine. Again the firelit gate held a hideous occupant.

Again Balthus recognized the monster from ancient legends. He saw and
knew the ancient and evil serpent which swayed there, its wedge-shaped
head, huge as that of a horse, as high as a tall man's head, and its
palely gleaming barrel rippling out behind it. A forked tongue darted in
and out, and the firelight glittered on bared fangs.

Balthus became incapable of emotion. The horror of his fate paralysed
him. That was the reptile that the ancients called Ghost Snake, the
pale, abominable terror that of old glided into huts by night to devour
whole families. Like the python it crushed its victim, but unlike other
constrictors its fangs bore venom that carried madness and death. It too
had long been considered extinct. But Valannus had spoken truly. No
white man knew what shapes haunted the great forests beyond Black River.

It came on silently rippling over the ground, its hideous head on the
same level, its neck curving back slightly for the stroke. Balthus gazed
with glazed, hypnotized stare into that loathesome gullet down which he
would soon be engulfed, and he was aware of no sensation except a vague
nausea.

And then something that glinted in the firelight streaked from the
shadows of the huts, and the great reptile whipped about and went into
instant convulsions. As in a dream Balthus saw a short throwing-spear
transfixing the mighty neck, just below the gaping jaws; the shaft
protruded from one side, the steel head from the other.

Knotting and looping hideously, the maddened reptile rolled into the
circle of men who strove back from him. The spear had not severed its
spine, but merely transfixed its great neck muscles. Its furiously
lashing tail mowed down a dozen men and its jaws snapped convulsively,
splashing others with venom that burned like liquid fire. Howling,
cursing, screaming, frantic, they scattered before it, knocking each
other down in their flight, trampling the fallen, bursting through the
huts. The giant snake rolled into a fire, scattering sparks and brands,
and the pain lashed it to more frenzied efforts. A hut wall buckled
under the ram-like impact of its flailing tail, disgorging howling
people.

Men stampeded through the fires, knocking the logs right and left. The
flames sprang up, then sank. A reddish dim glow was all that lighted
that nightmare scene where the giant reptile whipped and rolled, and men
clawed and shrieked in frantic flight.

Balthus felt something jerk at his wrists, and then, miraculously, he
was free, and a strong hand dragged him behind the post. Dazedly he saw
Conan, felt the forest man's iron grip on his arm.

There was blood on the Cimmerian's mail, dried blood on the sword in his
right hand; he loomed dim and gigantic in the shadowy light.

'Come on! Before they get over their panic!'

Balthus felt the haft of an ax shoved into his hand. Zogar Sag had
disappeared. Conan dragged Balthus after him until the youth's numb
brain awoke, and his legs began to move of their own accord. Then Conan
released him and ran into the building where the skulls hung. Balthus
followed him. He got a glimpse of a grim stone altar, faintly lighted by
the glow outside; five human heads grinned on that altar, and there was
a grisly familiarity about the features of the freshest; it was the head
of the merchant Tiberias. Behind the altar was an idol, dim, indistinct,
bestial, yet vaguely man-like in outline. Then fresh horror choked
Balthus as the shape heaved up suddenly with a rattle of chains, lifting
long misshapen arms in the gloom.

Conan's sword flailed down, crunching through flesh and bone, and then
the Cimmerian was dragging Balthus around the altar, past a huddled
shaggy bulk on the floor, to a door at the back of the long hut. Through
this they burst, out into the enclosure again. But a few yards beyond
them loomed the stockade.

It was dark behind the altar-hut. The mad stampede of the Picts had not
carried them in that direction. At the wall Conan halted, gripped
Balthus and heaved him at arm's length into the air as he might have
lifted a child. Balthus grasped the points of the upright logs set in
the sun-dried mud and scrambled up on them, ignoring the havoc done his
skin. He lowered a hand to the Cimmerian, when around a corner of the
altar-hut sprang a fleeing Pict. He halted short, glimpsing the man on
the wall in the faint glow of the fires. Conan hurled his ax with deadly
aim, but the warrior's mouth was already open for a yell of warning, and
it rang loud above the din, cut short as he dropped with a shattered
skull.

Blinding terror had not submerged all ingrained instincts. As that wild
yell rose above the clamor, there was an instant's lull, and then a
hundred throats bayed ferocious answer and warriors came leaping to
repel the attack presaged by the warning.

Conan leaped high, caught, not Balthus' hand but his arm near the
shoulder, and swung himself up. Balthus set his teeth against the
strain, and then the Cimmerian was on the wall beside him, and the
fugitives dropped down on the other side.



5 The Children of Jhebbal Sag


'Which way is the river?' Balthus was confused.

'We don't dare try for the river now,' grunted Conan. 'The woods between
the village and the river are swarming with warriors. Come on! We'll
head in the last direction they'll expect us to go--west!'

Looking back as they entered the thick growth, Balthus beheld the wall
dotted with black heads as the savages peered over. The Picts were
bewildered. They had not gained the wall in time to see the fugitives
take cover. They had rushed to the wall expecting to repel an attack in
force. They had seen the body of the dead warrior. But no enemy was in
sight.

Balthus realized that they did not yet know their prisoner had escaped.
From other sounds he believed that the warriors, directed by the shrill
voice of Zogar Sag, were destroying the wounded serpent with arrows. The
monster was out of the shaman's control. A moment later the quality of
the yells was altered. Screeches of rage rose in the night.

Conan laughed grimly. He was leading Balthus along a narrow trail that
ran west under the black branches, stepping as swiftly and surely as if
he trod a well-lighted thoroughfare. Balthus stumbled after him, guiding
himself by feeling the dense wall on either hand.

'They'll be after us now. Zogar's discovered you're gone, and he knows
my head wasn't in the pile before the altar-hut. The dog! If I'd had
another spear I'd have thrown it through him before I struck the snake.
Keep to the trail. They can't track us by torchlight, and there are a
score of paths leading from the village. They'll follow those leading to
the river first--throw a cordon of warriors for miles along the bank,
expecting us to try to break through. We won't take to the woods until
we have to. We can make better time on this trail. Now buckle down to it
and run as you never ran before.'

'They got over their panic cursed quick!' panted Balthus, complying with
a fresh burst of speed.

'They're not afraid of anything, very long,' grunted Conan.

For a space nothing was said between them. The fugitives devoted all
their attention to covering distance. They were plunging deeper and
deeper into the wilderness and getting farther away from civilization at
every step, but Balthus did not question Conan's wisdom. The Cimmerian
presently took time to grunt: 'When we're far enough away from the
village we'll swing back to the river in a big circle. No other village
within miles of Gwawela. All the Picts are gathered in that vicinity.
We'll circle wide around them. They can't track us until daylight.
They'll pick up our path then, but before dawn we'll leave the trail and
take to the woods.'

They plunged on. The yells died out behind them. Balthus' breath was
whistling through his teeth. He felt a pain in his side, and running
became torture. He blundered against the bushes on each side of the
trail. Conan pulled up suddenly, turned and stared back down the dim
path.

Somewhere the moon was rising, a dim white glow amidst a tangle of
branches.

'Shall we take to the woods?' panted Balthus.

'Give me your ax,' murmured Conan softly. 'Something is close behind
us.'

'Then we'd better leave the trail!' exclaimed Balthus.

Conan shook his head and drew his companion into a dense thicket. The
moon rose higher, making a dim light in the path.

'We can't fight the whole tribe!' whispered Balthus.

'No human being could have found our trail so quickly, or followed us so
swiftly,' muttered Conan. 'Keep silent.'

There followed a tense silence in which Balthus felt that his heart
could be heard pounding for miles away. Then abruptly, without a sound
to announce its coming, a savage head appeared in the dim path. Balthus'
heart jumped into his throat; at first glance he feared to look upon the
awful head of the saber-tooth. But this head was smaller, more narrow;
it was a leopard which stood there, snarling silently and glaring down
the trail. What wind there was was blowing toward the hiding men,
concealing their scent. The beast lowered his head and snuffed the
trail, then moved forward uncertainly. A chill played down Balthus'
spine. The brute was undoubtedly trailing them.

And it was suspicious. It lifted its head, its eyes glowing like balls
of fire, and growled low in its throat. And at that instant Conan hurled
the ax.

All the weight of arm and shoulder was behind the throw, and the ax was
a streak of silver in the dim moon. Almost before he realized what had
happened, Balthus saw the leopard rolling on the ground in its
death-throes, the handle of the ax standing up from its head. The head
of the weapon had split its narrow skull.

Conan bounded from the bushes, wrenched his ax free and dragged the limp
body in among the trees, concealing it from the casual glance.

'Now let's go, and go fast!' he grunted, leading the way southward, away
from the trail. 'There'll be warriors coming after that cat. As soon as
he got his wits back Zogar sent him after us. The Picts would follow
him, but he'd leave them far behind. He'd circle the village until he
hit our trail and then come after us like a streak. They couldn't keep
up with him, but they'll have an idea as to our general direction.
They'd follow, listening for his cry. Well, they won't hear that, but
they'll find the blood on the trail, and look around and find the body
in the brush. They'll pick up our spoor there, if they can. Walk with
care.'

He avoided clinging briars and low-hanging branches effortlessly,
gliding between trees without touching the stems and always planting his
feet in the places calculated to show least evidence of his passing; but
with Balthus it was slower, more laborious work.

No sound came from behind them. They had covered more than a mile when
Balthus said: 'Does Zogar Sag catch leopard-cubs and train them for
bloodhounds?'

Conan shook his head. 'That was a leopard he called out of the woods.'

'But,' Balthus persisted, 'if he can order the beasts to do his bidding,
why doesn't he rouse them all and have them after us? The forest is full
of leopards; why send only one after us?'

Conan did not reply for a space, and when he did it was with a curious
reticence.

'He can't command all the animals. Only such as remember Jhebbal Sag.'

'Jhebbal Sag?' Balthus repeated the ancient name hesitantly. He had
never heard it spoken more than three or four times in his whole life.

'Once all living things worshipped him. That was long ago, when beasts
and men spoke one language. Men have forgotten him; even the beasts
forget. Only a few remember. The men who remember Jhebbal Sag and the
beasts who remember are brothers and speak the same tongue.'

Balthus did not reply; he had strained at a Pictish stake and seen the
nighted jungle give up its fanged horrors at a shaman's call.

'Civilized men laugh,' said Conan. 'But not one can tell me how Zogar
Sag can call pythons and tigers and leopards out of the wilderness and
make them do his bidding. They would say it is a lie, if they dared.
That's the way with civilized men. When they can't explain something by
their half-baked science, they refuse to believe it.'

The people on the Tauran were closer to the primitive than most
Aquilonians; superstitions persisted, whose sources were lost in
antiquity. And Balthus had seen that which still prickled his flesh. He
could not refute the monstrous thing which Conan's words implied.

'I've heard that there's an ancient grove sacred to Jhebbal Sag
somewhere in this forest,' said Conan. 'I don't know. I've never seen
it. But more beasts _remember_ in this country than any I've ever seen.'

'Then others will be on our trail?'

'They are now,' was Conan's disquieting answer. 'Zogar would never leave
our tracking to one beast alone.'

'What are we to do, then?' asked Balthus uneasily, grasping his ax as he
stared at the gloomy arches above him. His flesh crawled with the
momentary expectation of ripping talons and fangs leaping from the
shadows.

'Wait!'

Conan turned, squatted and with his knife began scratching a curious
symbol in the mold. Stooping to look at it over his shoulder, Balthus
felt a crawling of the flesh along his spine, he knew not why. He felt
no wind against his face, but there was a rustling of leaves above them
and a weird moaning swept ghostily through the branches. Conan glanced
up inscrutably, then rose and stood staring somberly down at the symbol
he had drawn.

'What is it?' whispered Balthus. It looked archaic and meaningless to
him. He supposed that it was his ignorance of artistry which prevented
his identifying it as one of the conventional designs of some prevailing
culture. But had he been the most erudite artist in the world, he would
have been no nearer the solution.

'I saw it carved in the rock of a cave no human had visited for a
million years,' muttered Conan, 'in the uninhabited mountains beyond the
Sea of Vilayet, half a world away from this spot. Later I saw a black
witch-finder of Kush scratch it in the sand of a nameless river. He told
me part of its meaning--it's sacred to Jhebbal Sag and the creatures
which worship him. Watch!'

They drew back among the dense foliage some yards away and waited in
tense silence. To the east drums muttered and somewhere to north and
west other drums answered. Balthus shivered, though he knew long miles
of black forest separated him from the grim beaters of those drums whose
dull pulsing was a sinister overture that set the dark stage for bloody
drama.

Balthus found himself holding his breath. Then with a slight shaking of
the leaves, the bushes parted and a magnificent panther came into view.
The moonlight dappling through the leaves shone on its glossy coat
rippling with the play of the great muscles beneath it.

With its head held low it glided toward them. It was smelling out their
trail. Then it halted as if frozen, its muzzle almost touching the
symbol cut in the mold. For a long space it crouched motionless; it
flattened its long body and laid its head on the ground before the mark.
And Balthus felt the short hairs stir on his scalp. For the attitude of
the great carnivore was one of awe and adoration.

Then the panther rose and backed away carefully, belly almost to the
ground. With his hind-quarters among the bushes he wheeled as if in
sudden panic and was gone like a flash of dappled light.

Balthus mopped his brow with a trembling hand and glanced at Conan.

The barbarian's eyes were smoldering with fires that never lit the eyes
of men bred to the ideas of civilization. In that instant he was all
wild, and had forgotten the man at his side. In his burning gaze Balthus
glimpsed and vaguely recognized pristine images and half-embodied
memories, shadows from Life's dawn, forgotten and repudiated by
sophisticated races--ancient, primeval fantasms unnamed and nameless.

Then the deeper fires were masked and Conan was silently leading the way
deeper into the forest.

'We've no more to fear from the beasts,' he said after a while, 'but
we've left a sign for men to read. They won't follow our trail very
easily, and until they find that symbol they won't know for sure we've
turned south. Even then it won't be easy to smell us out without the
beasts to aid them. But the woods south of the trail will be full of
warriors looking for us. If we keep moving after daylight, we'll be sure
to run into some of them. As soon as we find a good place we'll hide and
wait until another night to swing back and make the river. We've got to
warn Valannus, but it won't help him any if we get ourselves killed.'

'Warn Valannus?'

'Hell, the woods along the river are swarming with Picts! That's why
they got us. Zogar's brewing war-magic; no mere raid this time. He's
done something no Pict has done in my memory--united as many as fifteen
or sixteen clans. His magic did it; they'll follow a wizard farther than
they will a war-chief. You saw the mob in the village; and there were
hundreds hiding along the river bank that you didn't see. More coming,
from the farther villages. He'll have at least three thousand
fighting-men. I lay in the bushes and heard their talk as they went
past. They mean to attack the fort; when, I don't know, but Zogar
doesn't dare delay long. He's gathered them and whipped them into a
frenzy. If he doesn't lead them into battle quickly, they'll fall to
quarreling with one another. They're like blood-mad tigers.

'I don't know whether they can take the fort or not. Anyway, we've got
to get back across the river and give the warning. The settlers on the
Velitrium road must either get into the fort or back to Velitrium. While
the Picts are besieging the fort, war-parties will range the road far to
the east--might even cross Thunder River and raid the thickly settled
country behind Velitrium.'

As he talked he was leading the way deeper and deeper into the ancient
wilderness. Presently he grunted with satisfaction. They had reached a
spot where the underbrush was more scattered, and an outcropping of
stone was visible, wandering off southward. Balthus felt more secure as
they followed it. Not even a Pict could trail them over naked rock.

'How did you get away?' he asked presently.

Conan tapped his mail-shirt and helmet.

'If more borderers would wear harness there'd be fewer skulls hanging on
the altar-huts. But most men make noise if they wear armor. They were
waiting on each side of the path, without moving. And when a Pict stands
motionless, the very beasts of the forest pass him without seeing him.
They'd seen us crossing the river and got in their places. If they'd
gone into ambush after we left the bank, I'd have had some hint of it.
But they were waiting, and not even a leaf trembled. The devil himself
couldn't have suspected anything. The first suspicion I had was when I
heard a shaft rasp against a bow as it was pulled back. I dropped and
yelled for the men behind me to drop, but they were too slow, taken by
surprise like that.

'Most of them fell at the first volley that raked us from both sides.
Some of the arrows crossed the trail and struck Picts on the other side.
I heard them howl.' He grinned with vicious satisfaction. 'Such of us as
were left plunged into the woods and closed with them. When I saw the
others were all down or taken, I broke through and outfooted the painted
devils through the darkness. They were all around me. I ran and crawled
and sneaked, and sometimes I lay on my belly under the bushes while they
passed me on all sides.

'I tried for the shore and found it lined with them, waiting for just
such a move. But I'd have cut my way through and taken a chance on
swimming, only I heard the drums pounding in the village and knew they'd
taken somebody alive.

'They were all so engrossed in Zogar's magic that I was able to climb
the wall behind the altar-hut. There was a warrior supposed to be
watching at that point, but he was squatting behind the hut and peering
around the corner at the ceremony. I came up behind him and broke his
neck with my hands before he knew what was happening. It was his spear I
threw into the snake, and that's his ax you're carrying.'

'But what was that--that thing you killed in the altar-hut?' asked
Balthus, with a shiver at the memory of the dim-seen horror.

'One of Zogar's gods. One of Jhebbal's children that didn't remember and
had to be kept chained to the altar. A bull ape. The Picts think they're
sacred to the Hairy One who lives on the moon--the gorilla-god of
Gullah.

'It's getting light. Here's a good place to hide until we see how close
they're on our trail. Probably have to wait until night to break back to
the river.'

A low hill pitched upward, girdled and covered with thick trees and
bushes. Near the crest Conan slid into a tangle of jutting rocks,
crowned by dense bushes. Lying among them they could see the jungle
below without being seen. It was a good place to hide or defend. Balthus
did not believe that even a Pict could have trailed them over the rocky
ground for the past four or five miles, but he was afraid of the beasts
that obeyed Zogar Sag. His faith in the curious symbol wavered a little
now. But Conan had dismissed the possibility of beasts tracking them.

A ghostly whiteness spread through the dense branches; the patches of
sky visible altered in hue, grew from pink to blue. Balthus felt the
gnawing of hunger, though he had slaked his thirst at a stream they had
skirted. There was complete silence, except for an occasional chirp of a
bird. The drums were no longer to be heard. Balthus' thoughts reverted
to the grim scene before the altar-hut.

'Those were ostrich plumes Zogar Sag wore,' he said. 'I've seen them on
the helmets of knights who rode from the East to visit the barons of the
marches. There are no ostriches in this forest, are there?'

'They came from Kush,' answered Conan. 'West of here, many marches, lies
the seashore. Ships from Zingara occasionally come and trade weapons and
ornaments and wine to the coastal tribes for skins and copper ore and
gold dust. Sometimes they trade ostrich plumes they got from the
Stygians, who in turn got them from the black tribes of Kush, which lies
south of Stygia. The Pictish shamans place great store by them. But
there's much risk in such trade. The Picts are too likely to try to
seize the ship. And the coast is dangerous to ships. I've sailed along
it when I was with the pirates of the Barachan Isles, which lie
southwest of Zingara.'

Balthus looked at his companion with admiration.

'I knew you hadn't spent your life on this frontier. You've mentioned
several far places. You've traveled widely?'

'I've roamed far; farther than any other man of my race ever wandered.
I've seen all the great cities of the Hyborians, the Shemites, the
Stygians and the Hyrkanians. I've roamed in the unknown countries south
of the black kingdoms of Kush, and east of the Sea of Vilayet. I've been
a mercenary captain, a corsair, a _kozak_, a penniless vagabond, a
general--hell, I've been everything except a king, and I may be that,
before I die.' The fancy pleased him, and he grinned hardly. Then he
shrugged his shoulders and stretched his mighty figure on the rocks.
'This is as good life as any. I don't know how long I'll stay on the
frontier; a week, a month, a year. I have a roving foot. But it's as
well on the border as anywhere.'

Balthus set himself to watch the forest below them. Momentarily he
expected to see fierce painted faces thrust through the leaves. But as
the hours passed no stealthy footfall disturbed the brooding quiet.
Balthus believed the Picts had missed their trail and given up the
chase. Conan grew restless.

'We should have sighted parties scouring the woods for us. If they've
quit the chase, it's because they're after bigger game. They may be
gathering to cross the river and storm the fort.'

'Would they come this far south if they lost the trail?'

'They've lost the trail, all right; otherwise they'd have been on our
necks before now. Under ordinary circumstances they'd scour the woods
for miles in every direction. Some of them should have passed within
sight of this hill. They must be preparing to cross the river. We've got
to take a chance and make for the river.'

Creeping down the rocks Balthus felt his flesh crawl between his
shoulders as he momentarily expected a withering blast of arrows from
the green masses about them. He feared that the Picts had discovered
them and were lying about in ambush. But Conan was convinced no enemies
were near, and the Cimmerian was right.

'We're miles to the south of the village,' grunted Conan. 'We'll hit
straight through for the river. I don't know how far down the river
they've spread. We'll hope to hit it below them.'

With haste that seemed reckless to Balthus they hurried eastward. The
woods seemed empty of life. Conan believed that all the Picts were
gathered in the vicinity of Gwawela, if indeed, they had not already
crossed the river. He did not believe they would cross in the daytime,
however.

'Some woodsman would be sure to see them and give the alarm. They'll
cross above and below the fort, out of sight of the sentries. Then
others will get in canoes and make straight across for the river wall.
As soon as they attack, those hidden in the woods on the east shore will
assail the fort from the other sides. They've tried that before, and got
the guts shot and hacked out of them. But this time they've got enough
men to make a real onslaught of it.'

They pushed on without pausing, though Balthus gazed longingly at the
squirrels flitting among the branches, which he could have brought down
with a cast of his ax. With a sigh he drew up his broad belt. The
everlasting silence and gloom of the primitive forest was beginning to
depress him. He found himself thinking of the open groves and
sun-dappled meadows of the Tauran, of the bluff cheer of his father's
steep-thatched, diamond-paned house, of the fat cows browsing through
the deep, lush grass, and the hearty fellowship of the brawny,
bare-armed plowmen and herdsmen.

He felt lonely, in spite of his companion. Conan was as much a part of
this wilderness as Balthus was alien to it. The Cimmerian might have
spent years among the great cities of the world; he might have walked
with the rulers of civilization; he might even achieve his wild whim
some day and rule as king of a civilized nation; stranger things had
happened. But he was no less a barbarian. He was concerned only with the
naked fundamentals of life. The warm intimacies of small, kindly things,
the sentiments and delicious trivialities that make up so much of
civilized men's lives were meaningless to him. A wolf was no less a wolf
because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watchdogs. Bloodshed
and violence and savagery were the natural elements of the life Conan
knew; he could not, and would never, understand the little things that
are so dear to civilized men and women.

The shadows were lengthening when they reached the river and peered
through the masking bushes. They could see up and down the river for
about a mile each way. The sullen stream lay bare and empty. Conan
scowled across at the other shore.

'We've got to take another chance here. We've got to swim the river. We
don't know whether they've crossed or not. The woods over there may be
alive with them. We've got to risk it. We're about six miles south of
Gwawela.'

He wheeled and ducked as a bow-string twanged. Something like a white
flash of light streaked through the bushes. Balthus knew it was an
arrow. Then with a tigerish bound Conan was through the bushes. Balthus
caught the gleam of steel as he whirled his sword, and heard a death
scream. The next instant he had broken through the bushes after the
Cimmerian.

A Pict with a shattered skull lay face-down on the ground, his fingers
spasmodically clawing at the grass. Half a dozen others were swarming
about Conan, swords and axes lifted. They had cast away their bows,
useless at such deadly close quarters. Their lower jaws were painted
white, contrasting vividly with their dark faces, and the designs on
their muscular breasts differed from any Balthus had ever seen.

One of them hurled his ax at Balthus and rushed after it with lifted
knife. Balthus ducked and then caught the wrist that drove the knife
licking at his throat. They went to the ground together, rolling over
and over. The Pict was like a wild beast, his muscles hard as steel
strings.

Balthus was striving to maintain his hold on the wild man's wrist and
bring his own ax into play, but so fast and furious was the struggle
that each attempt to strike was blocked. The Pict was wrenching
furiously to free his knife hand, was clutching at Balthus' ax, and
driving his knees at the youth's groin. Suddenly he attempted to shift
his knife to his free hand, and in that instant Balthus, struggling up
on one knee, split the painted head with a desperate blow of his ax.

He sprang up and glared wildly about for his companion, expecting to see
him overwhelmed by numbers. Then he realized the full strength and
ferocity of the Cimmerian. Conan bestrode two of his attackers, shorn
half asunder by that terrible broadsword. As Balthus looked he saw the
Cimmerian beat down a thrusting shortsword, avoid the stroke of an ax
with a cat-like sidewise spring which brought him within arm's length of
a squat savage stooping for a bow. Before the Pict could straighten, the
red sword flailed down and clove him from shoulder to mid-breastbone,
where the blade stuck. The remaining warriors rushed in, one from either
side. Balthus hurled his ax with an accuracy that reduced the attackers
to one, and Conan, abandoning his efforts to free his sword, wheeled and
met the remaining Pict with his bare hands. The stocky warrior, a head
shorter than his tall enemy, leaped in, striking with his ax, at the
same time stabbing murderously with his knife. The knife broke on the
Cimmerian's mail, and the ax checked in midair as Conan's fingers locked
like iron on the descending arm. A bone snapped loudly, and Balthus saw
the Pict wince and falter. The next instant he was swept off his feet,
lifted high above the Cimmerian's head--he writhed in midair for an
instant, kicking and thrashing, and then was dashed headlong to the
earth with such force that he rebounded, and then lay still, his limp
posture telling of splintered limbs and a broken spine.

'Come on!' Conan wrenched his sword free and snatched up an ax. 'Grab a
bow and a handful of arrows, and hurry! We've got to trust to our heels
again. That yell was heard. They'll be here in no time. If we tried to
swim now, they'd feather us with arrows before we reached midstream!'



6 Red Axes of the Border


Conan did not plunge deeply into the forest. A few hundred yards from
the river, he altered his slanting course and ran parallel with it.
Balthus recognized a grim determination not to be hunted away from the
river which they must cross if they were to warn the men in the fort.
Behind them rose more loudly the yells of the forest men. Balthus
believed the Picts had reached the glade where the bodies of the slain
men lay. Then further yells seemed to indicate that the savages were
streaming into the woods in pursuit. They had left a trail any Pict
could follow.

Conan increased his speed, and Balthus grimly set his teeth and kept on
his heels, though he felt he might collapse any time. It seemed
centuries since he had eaten last. He kept going more by an effort of
will than anything else. His blood was pounding so furiously in his
eardrums that he was not aware when the yells died out behind them.

Conan halted suddenly. Balthus leaned against a tree and panted.

'They've quit!' grunted the Cimmerian, scowling.

'Sneaking--up--on--us!' gasped Balthus.

Conan shook his head.

'A short chase like this they'd yell every step of the way. No. They've
gone back. I thought I heard somebody yelling behind them a few seconds
before the noise began to get dimmer. They've been recalled. And that's
good for us, but damned bad for the men in the fort. It means the
warriors are being summoned out of the woods for the attack. These men
we ran into were warriors from a tribe down the river. They were
undoubtedly headed for Gwawela to join in the assault on the fort. Damn
it, we're farther away than ever, now. We've got to get across the
river.'

Turning east he hurried through the thickets with no attempt at
concealment. Balthus followed him, for the first time feeling the sting
of lacerations on his breast and shoulder where the Pict's savage teeth
had scored him. He was pushing through the thick bushes that fringed the
bank when Conan pulled him back. Then he heard a rhythmic splashing, and
peering through the leaves, saw a dugout canoe coming up the river, its
single occupant paddling hard against the current. He was a strongly
built Pict with a white heron feather thrust in a copper band that
confined his square-cut mane.

'That's a Gwawela man,' muttered Conan. 'Emissary from Zogar. White
plume shows that. He's carried a peace talk to the tribes down the river
and now he's trying to get back and take a hand in the slaughter.'

The lone ambassador was now almost even with their hiding-place, and
suddenly Balthus almost jumped out of his skin. At his very ear had
sounded the harsh gutturals of a Pict. Then he realized that Conan had
called to the paddler in his own tongue. The man started, scanned the
bushes and called back something, then cast a startled glance across the
river, bent low and sent the canoe shooting in toward the western bank.
Not understanding, Balthus saw Conan take from his hand the bow he had
picked up in the glade, and notch an arrow.

The Pict had run his canoe in close to the shore, and staring up into
the bushes, called out something. His answer came in the twang of the
bow-string, the streaking flight of the arrow that sank to the feathers
in his broad breast. With a choking gasp he slumped sidewise and rolled
into the shallow water. In an instant Conan was down the bank and wading
into the water to grasp the drifting canoe. Balthus stumbled after him
and somewhat dazedly crawled into the canoe. Conan scrambled in, seized
the paddle and sent the craft shooting toward the eastern shore. Balthus
noted with envious admiration the play of the great muscles beneath the
sun-burnt skin. The Cimmerian seemed an iron man, who never knew
fatigue.

'What did you say to the Pict?' asked Balthus.

'Told him to pull into shore; said there was a white forest runner on
the bank who was trying to get a shot at him.'

'That doesn't seem fair,' Balthus objected. 'He thought a friend was
speaking to him. You mimicked a Pict perfectly--'

'We needed his boat,' grunted Conan, not pausing in his exertions. 'Only
way to lure him to the bank. Which is worse--to betray a Pict who'd
enjoy skinning us both alive, or betray the men across the river whose
lives depend on our getting over?'

Balthus mulled over this delicate ethical question for a moment, then
shrugged his shoulder and asked: 'How far are we from the fort?'

Conan pointed to a creek which flowed into Black River from the east, a
few hundred yards below them.

'That's South Creek; it's ten miles from its mouth to the fort. It's the
southern boundary of Conajohara. Marshes miles wide south of it. No
danger of a raid from across them. Nine miles above the fort North Creek
forms the other boundary. Marshes beyond that, too. That's why an attack
must come from the west, across Black River. Conajohara's just like a
spear, with a point nineteen miles wide, thrust into the Pictish
wilderness.'

'Why don't we keep to the canoe and make the trip by water?'

'Because, considering the current we've got to brace, and the bends in
the river, we can go faster afoot. Besides, remember Gwawela is south
of the fort; if the Picts are crossing the river we'd run right into
them.'

       *       *       *       *       *

Dusk was gathering as they stepped upon the eastern bank. Without pause
Conan pushed on northward, at a pace that made Balthus' sturdy legs
ache.

'Valannus wanted a fort built at the mouths of North and South Creeks,'
grunted the Cimmerian. 'Then the river could be patrolled constantly.
But the Government wouldn't do it.

'Soft-bellied fools sitting on velvet cushions with naked girls offering
them iced wine on their knees--I know the breed. They can't see any
farther than their palace wall. Diplomacy--hell! They'd fight Picts with
theories of territorial expansion. Valannus and men like him have to
obey the orders of a set of damned fools. They'll never grab any more
Pictish land, any more than they'll ever rebuild Venarium. The time may
come when they'll see the barbarians swarming over the walls of the
Eastern cities!'

A week before, Balthus would have laughed at any such preposterous
suggestion. Now he made no reply. He had seen the unconquerable ferocity
of the men who dwelt beyond the frontiers.

He shivered, casting glances at the sullen river, just visible through
the bushes, at the arches of the trees which crowded close to its banks.
He kept remembering that the Picts might have crossed the river and be
lying in ambush between them and the fort. It was fast growing dark.

A slight sound ahead of them jumped his heart into his throat, and
Conan's sword gleamed in the air. He lowered it when a dog, a great,
gaunt, scarred beast, slunk out of the bushes and stood staring at them.

'That dog belonged to a settler who tried to build his cabin on the bank
of the river a few miles south of the fort,' grunted Conan. 'The Picts
slipped over and killed him, of course, and burned his cabin. We found
him dead among the embers, and the dog lying senseless among three Picts
he'd killed. He was almost cut to pieces. We took him to the fort and
dressed his wounds, but after he recovered he took to the woods and
turned wild--What now, Slasher, are you hunting the men who killed your
master?'

The massive head swung from side to side and the eyes glowed greenly. He
did not growl or bark. Silently as a phantom he slid in behind them.

'Let him come,' muttered Conan. 'He can smell the devils before we can
see them.'

Balthus smiled and laid his hand caressingly on the dog's head. The
lips involuntarily writhed back to display the gleaming fangs; then the
great beast bent his head sheepishly, and his tail moved with jerky
uncertainty, as if the owner had almost forgotten the emotions of
friendliness. Balthus mentally compared the great gaunt hard body with
the fat sleek hounds tumbling vociferously over one another in his
father's kennel yard. He sighed. The frontier was no less hard for
beasts than for men. This dog had almost forgotten the meaning of
kindness and friendliness.

Slasher glided ahead, and Conan let him take the lead. The last tinge of
dusk faded into stark darkness. The miles fell away under their steady
feet. Slasher seemed voiceless. Suddenly he halted, tense, ears lifted.
An instant later the men heard it--a demoniac yelling up the river ahead
of them, faint as a whisper.

Conan swore like a madman.

'They've attacked the fort! We're too late! Come on!'

He increased his pace, trusting to the dog to smell out ambushes ahead.
In a flood of tense excitement Balthus forgot his hunger and weariness.
The yells grew louder as they advanced, and above the devilish screaming
they could hear the deep shouts of the soldiers. Just as Balthus began
to fear they would run into the savages who seemed to be howling just
ahead of them, Conan swung away from the river in a wide semicircle that
carried them to a low rise from which they could look over the forest.
They saw the fort, lighted with torches thrust over the parapets on long
poles. These cast a flickering, uncertain light over the clearing, and
in that light they saw throngs of naked, painted figures along the
fringe of the clearing. The river swarmed with canoes. The Picts had the
fort completely surrounded.

An incessant hail of arrows rained against the stockade from the woods
and the river. The deep twanging of the bow-strings rose above the
howling. Yelling like wolves, several hundred naked warriors with axes
in their hands ran from under the trees and raced toward the eastern
gate. They were within a hundred and fifty yards of their objective when
a withering blast of arrows from the wall littered the ground with
corpses and sent the survivors fleeing back to the trees. The men in the
canoes rushed their boats toward the river-wall, and were met by another
shower of clothyard shafts and a volley from the small ballistas mounted
on towers on that side of the stockade. Stones and logs whirled through
the air and splintered and sank half a dozen canoes, killing their
occupants, and the other boats drew back out of range. A deep roar of
triumph rose from the walls of the fort, answered by bestial howling
from all quarters.

'Shall we try to break through?' asked Balthus, trembling with
eagerness.

Conan shook his head. He stood with his arms folded, his head slightly
bent, a somber and brooding figure.

'The fort's doomed. The Picts are blood-mad, and won't stop until
they're all killed. And there are too many of them for the men in the
fort to kill. We couldn't break through, and if we did, we could do
nothing but die with Valannus.'

'There's nothing we can do but save our own hides, then?'

'Yes. We've got to warn the settlers. Do you know why the Picts are not
trying to burn the fort with fire-arrows? Because they don't want a
flame that might warn the people to the east. They plan to stamp out the
fort, and then sweep east before anyone knows of its fall. They may
cross Thunder River and take Velitrium before the people know what's
happened. At least they'll destroy every living thing between the fort
and Thunder River.

'We've failed to warn the fort, and I see now it would have done no good
if we had succeeded. The fort's too poorly manned. A few more charges
and the Picts will be over the walls and breaking down the gates. But we
can start the settlers toward Velitrium. Come on! We're outside the
circle the Picts have thrown around the fort. We'll keep clear of it.'

They swung out in a wide arc, hearing the rising and falling of the
volume of the yells, marking each charge and repulse. The men in the
fort were holding their own; but the shrieks of the Picts did not
diminish in savagery. They vibrated with a timbre that held assurance of
ultimate victory.

Before Balthus realized they were close to it, they broke into the road
leading east.

'Now run!' grunted Conan. Balthus set his teeth. It was nineteen miles
to Velitrium, a good five to Scalp Creek beyond which began the
settlements. It seemed to the Aquilonian that they had been fighting and
running for centuries. But the nervous excitement that rioted through
his blood stimulated him to Herculean efforts.

Slasher ran ahead of them, his head to the ground, snarling low, the
first sound they had heard from him.

'Picts ahead of us!' snarled Conan, dropping to one knee and scanning
the ground in the starlight. He shook his head, baffled. 'I can't tell
how many. Probably only a small party. Some that couldn't wait to take
the fort. They've gone ahead to butcher the settlers in their beds! Come
on!'

Ahead of them presently they saw a small blaze through the trees, and
heard a wild and ferocious chanting. The trail bent there, and leaving
it, they cut across the bend, through the thickets. A few moments later
they were looking on a hideous sight. An ox-wain stood in the road
piled with meager household furnishings; it was burning; the oxen lay
near with their throats cut. A man and a woman lay in the road, stripped
and mutilated. Five Picts were dancing about them with fantastic leaps
and bounds, waving bloody axes; one of them brandished the woman's
red-smeared gown.

At the sight a red haze swam before Balthus. Lifting his bow he lined
the prancing figure, black against the fire, and loosed. The slayer
leaped convulsively and fell dead with the arrow through his heart. Then
the two white men and the dog were upon the startled survivors. Conan
was animated merely by his fighting spirit and an old, old racial hate,
but Balthus was afire with wrath.

He met the first Pict to oppose him with a ferocious swipe that split
the painted skull, and sprang over his falling body to grapple with the
others. But Conan had already killed one of the two he had chosen, and
the leap of the Aquilonian was a second late. The warrior was down with
the long sword through him even as Balthus' ax was lifted. Turning
toward the remaining Pict, Balthus saw Slasher rise from his victim, his
great jaws dripping blood.

Balthus said nothing as he looked down at the pitiful forms in the road
beside the burning wain. Both were young, the woman little more than a
girl. By some whim of chance the Picts had left her face unmarred, and
even in the agonies of an awful death it was beautiful. But her soft
young body had been hideously slashed with many knives--a mist clouded
Balthus' eyes and he swallowed chokingly. The tragedy momentarily
overcame him. He felt like falling upon the ground and weeping and
biting the earth.

'Some young couple just hitting out on their own,' Conan was saying as
he wiped his sword unemotionally. 'On their way to the fort when the
Picts met them. Maybe the boy was going to enter the service; maybe take
up land on the river. Well, that's what will happen to every man, woman
and child this side of Thunder River if we don't get them into Velitrium
in a hurry.'

Balthus' knees trembled as he followed Conan. But there was no hint of
weakness in the long easy stride of the Cimmerian. There was a kinship
between him and the great gaunt brute that glided beside him. Slasher no
longer growled with his head to the trail. The way was clear before
them. The yelling on the river came faintly to them, but Balthus
believed the fort was still holding. Conan halted suddenly, with an
oath.

He showed Balthus a trail that led north from the road. It was an old
trail, partly grown with new young growth, and this growth had recently
been broken down. Balthus realized this fact more by feel than sight,
though Conan seemed to see like a cat in the dark. The Cimmerian showed
him where broad wagon tracks turned off the main trail, deeply indented
in the forest mold.

'Settlers going to the licks after salt,' he grunted. 'They're at the
edges of the marsh, about nine miles from here. Blast it! They'll be cut
off and butchered to a man! Listen! One man can warn the people on the
road. Go ahead and wake them up and herd them into Velitrium. I'll go
and get the men gathering the salt. They'll be camped by the licks. We
won't come back to the road. We'll head straight through the woods.'

With no further comment Conan turned off the trail and hurried down the
dim path, and Balthus, after staring after him for a few moments, set
out along the road. The dog had remained with him, and glided softly at
his heels. When Balthus had gone a few rods he heard the animal growl.
Whirling, he glared back the way he had come, and was startled to see a
vague ghostly glow vanishing into the forest in the direction Conan had
taken. Slasher rumbled deep in his throat, his hackles stiff and his
eyes balls of green fire. Balthus remembered the grim apparition that
had taken the head of the merchant Tiberias not far from that spot, and
he hesitated. The thing must be following Conan. But the giant Cimmerian
had repeatedly demonstrated his ability to take care of himself, and
Balthus felt his duty lay toward the helpless settlers who slumbered in
the path of the red hurricane. The horror of the fiery phantom was
overshadowed by the horror of those limp, violated bodies beside the
burning ox-wain.

He hurried down the road, crossed Scalp Creek and came in sight of the
first settler's cabin--a long, low structure of ax-hewn logs. In an
instant he was pounding on the door. A sleepy voice inquired his
pleasure.

'Get up! The Picts are over the river!'

That brought instant response. A low cry echoed his words and then the
door was thrown open by a woman in a scanty shift. Her hair hung over
her bare shoulders in disorder; she held a candle in one hand and an ax
in the other. Her face was colorless, her eyes wide with terror.

'Come in!' she begged. 'We'll hold the cabin.'

'No. We must make for Velitrium. The fort can't hold them back. It may
have fallen already. Don't stop to dress. Get your children and come
on.'

'But my man's gone with the others after salt!' she wailed, wringing her
hands. Behind her peered three tousled youngsters, blinking and
bewildered.

'Conan's gone after them. He'll fetch them through safe. We must hurry
up the road to warn the other cabins.'

Relief flooded her countenance.

'Mitra be thanked!' she cried. 'If the Cimmerian's gone after them,
they're safe if mortal man can save them!'

In a whirlwind of activity she snatched up the smallest child and herded
the others through the door ahead of her. Balthus took the candle and
ground it out under his heel. He listened an instant. No sound came up
the dark road.

'Have you got a horse?'

'In the stable,' she groaned. 'Oh, hurry!'

He pushed her aside as she fumbled with shaking hands at the bars. He
led the horse out and lifted the children on its back, telling them to
hold to its mane and to one another. They stared at him seriously,
making no outcry. The woman took the horse's halter and set out up the
road. She still gripped her ax and Balthus knew that if cornered she
would fight with the desperate courage of a she-panther.

He held behind, listening. He was oppressed by the belief that the fort
had been stormed and taken; that the dark-skinned hordes were already
streaming up the road toward Velitrium, drunken on slaughter and mad for
blood. They would come with the speed of starving wolves.

Presently they saw another cabin looming ahead. The woman started to
shriek a warning, but Balthus stopped her. He hurried to the door and
knocked. A woman's voice answered him. He repeated his warning, and soon
the cabin disgorged its occupants--an old woman, two young women and
four children. Like the other woman's husband, their men had gone to the
salt licks the day before, unsuspecting of any danger. One of the young
women seemed dazed, the other prone to hysteria. But the old woman, a
stern old veteran of the frontier, quieted them harshly; she helped
Balthus get out the two horses that were stabled in a pen behind the
cabin and put the children on them. Balthus urged that she herself mount
with them, but she shook her head and made one of the younger women
ride.

'She's with child,' grunted the old woman. 'I can walk--and fight, too,
if it comes to that.'

As they set out, one of the women said: 'A young couple passed along the
road about dusk; we advised them to spend the night at our cabin, but
they were anxious to make the fort tonight. Did--did--'.

'They met the Picts,' answered Balthus briefly, and the woman sobbed in
horror.

They were scarcely out of sight of the cabin when some distance behind
them quavered a long high-pitched yell.

'A wolf!' exclaimed one of the women.

'A painted wolf with an ax in his hand,' muttered Balthus. 'Go! Rouse
the other settlers along the road and take them with you. I'll scout
along behind.'

Without a word the old woman herded her charges ahead of her. As they
faded into the darkness, Balthus could see the pale ovals that were the
faces of the children twisted back over their shoulders to stare toward
him. He remembered his own people on the Tauran and a moment's giddy
sickness swam over him. With momentary weakness he groaned and sank down
in the road; his muscular arm fell over Slasher's massive neck and he
felt the dog's warm moist tongue touch his face.

He lifted his head and grinned with a painful effort.

'Come on, boy,' he mumbled, rising. 'We've got work to do.'

A red glow suddenly became evident through the trees. The Picts had
fired the last hut. He grinned. How Zogar Sag would froth if he knew his
warriors had let their destructive natures get the better of them. The
fire would warn the people farther up the road. They would be awake and
alert when the fugitives reached them. But his face grew grim. The women
were traveling slowly, on foot and on the overloaded horses. The
swift-footed Picts would run them down within a mile, unless--he took
his position behind a tangle of fallen logs beside the trail. The road
west of him was lighted by the burning cabin, and when the Picts came he
saw them first--black furtive figures etched against the distant glare.

Drawing a shaft to the head, he loosed and one of the figures crumpled.
The rest melted into the woods on either side of the road. Slasher
whimpered with the killing lust beside him. Suddenly a figure appeared
on the fringe of the trail, under the trees, and began gliding toward
the fallen timbers. Balthus' bow-string twanged and the Pict yelped,
staggered and fell into the shadows with the arrow through his thigh.
Slasher cleared the timbers with a bound and leaped into the bushes.
They were violently shaken and then the dog slunk back to Balthus' side,
his jaws crimson.

No more appeared in the trail; Balthus began to fear they were stealing
past his position through the woods, and when he heard a faint sound to
his left he loosed blindly. He cursed as he heard the shaft splinter
against a tree, but Slasher glided away as silently as a phantom, and
presently Balthus heard a thrashing and a gurgling; then Slasher came
like a ghost through the bushes, snuggling his great, crimson-stained
head against Balthus' arm. Blood oozed from a gash in his shoulder, but
the sounds in the wood had ceased for ever.

The men lurking on the edges of the road evidently sensed the fate of
their companion, and decided that an open charge was preferable to being
dragged down in the dark by a devil-beast they could neither see nor
hear. Perhaps they realized that only one man lay behind the logs. They
came with a sudden rush, breaking cover from both sides of the trail.
Three dropped with arrows through them--and the remaining pair
hesitated. One turned and ran back down the road, but the other lunged
over the breastwork, his eyes and teeth gleaming in the dim light, his
ax lifted. Balthus' foot slipped as he sprang up, but the slip saved his
life. The descending ax shaved a lock of hair from his head, and the
Pict rolled down the logs from the force of his wasted blow. Before he
could regain his feet Slasher tore his throat out.

Then followed a tense period of waiting, in which time Balthus wondered
if the man who had fled had been the only survivor of the party.
Obviously it had been a small band that had either left the fighting at
the fort, or was scouting ahead of the main body. Each moment that
passed increased the chances for safety of the women and children
hurrying toward Velitrium.

Then without warning a shower of arrows whistled over his retreat. A
wild howling rose from the woods along the trail. Either the survivor
had gone after aid, or another party had joined the first. The burning
cabin still smoldered, lending a little light. Then they were after him,
gliding through the trees beside the trail. He shot three arrows and
threw the bow away. As if sensing his plight, they came on, not yelling
now, but in deadly silence except for a swift pad of many feet.

He fiercely hugged the head of the great dog growling at his side,
muttered: 'All right, boy, give 'em hell!' and sprang to his feet,
drawing his ax. Then the dark figures flooded over the breastworks and
closed in a storm of flailing axes, stabbing knives and ripping fangs.



7 The Devil in the Fire


When Conan turned from the Velitrium road he expected a run of some nine
miles and set himself to the task. But he had not gone four when he
heard the sounds of a party of men ahead of him. From the noise they
were making in their progress he knew they were not Picts. He hailed
them.

'Who's there?' challenged a harsh voice. 'Stand where you are until we
know you, or you'll get an arrow through you.'

'You couldn't hit an elephant in this darkness,' answered Conan
impatiently. 'Come on, fool; it's I--Conan. The Picts are over the
river.'

'We suspected as much,' answered the leader of the men, as they strode
forward--tall, rangy men, stern-faced, with bows in their hands. 'One of
our party wounded an antelope and tracked it nearly to Black River. He
heard them yelling down the river and ran back to our camp. We left the
salt and the wagons, turned the oxen loose and came as swiftly as we
could. If the Picts are besieging the fort, war-parties will be ranging
up the road toward our cabins.'

'Your families are safe,' grunted Conan. 'My companion went ahead to
take them to Velitrium. If we go back to the main road we may run into
the whole horde. We'll strike southeast, through the timber. Go ahead.
I'll scout behind.'

A few moments later the whole band was hurrying southeastward. Conan
followed more slowly, keeping just within ear-shot. He cursed the noise
they were making; that many Picts or Cimmerians would have moved through
the woods with no more noise than the wind makes as it blows through the
black branches.

He had just crossed a small glade when he wheeled answering the
conviction of his primitive instincts that he was being followed.
Standing motionless among the bushes he heard the sounds of the
retreating settlers fade away. Then a voice called faintly back along
the way he had come: 'Conan! Conan! Wait for me, Conan!'

'Balthus!' he swore bewilderedly. Cautiously he called: 'Here I am.'

'Wait for me, Conan!' the voice came more distinctly.

Conan moved out of the shadows, scowling. 'What the devil are you doing
here?--Crom!'

He half crouched, the flesh prickling along his spine. It was not
Balthus who was emerging from the other side of the glade. A weird glow
burned through the trees. It moved toward him, shimmering weirdly--a
green witch-fire that moved with purpose and intent.

It halted some feet away and Conan glared at it, trying to distinguish
its fire-misted outlines. The quivering flame had a solid core; the
flame was but a green garment that masked some animate and evil entity;
but the Cimmerian was unable to make out its shape or likeness. Then,
shockingly, a voice spoke to him from amidst the fiery column.

'Why do you stand like a sheep waiting for the butcher, Conan?'

The voice was human but carried strange vibrations that were not human.

'Sheep?' Conan's wrath got the best of his momentary awe. 'Do you think
I'm afraid of a damned Pictish swamp devil? A friend called me.'

'I called in his voice,' answered the other. 'The men you follow belong
to my brother; I would not rob his knife of their blood. But you are
mine. Oh, fool, you have come from the far gray hills of Cimmeria to
meet your doom in the forests of Conajohara.'

'You've had your chance at me before now,' snorted Conan. 'Why didn't
you kill me then, if you could?'

'My brother had not painted a skull black for you and hurled it into the
fire that burns for ever on Gullah's black altar. He had not whispered
your name to the black ghosts that haunt the uplands of the Dark Land.
But a bat has flown over the Mountains of the Dead and drawn your image
in blood on the white tiger's hide that hangs before the long hut where
sleep the Four Brothers of the Night. The great serpents coil about
their feet and the stars burn like fire-flies in their hair.'

'Why have the gods of darkness doomed me to death?' growled Conan.

Something--a hand, foot or talon, he could not tell which, thrust out
from the fire and marked swiftly on the mold. A symbol blazed there,
marked with fire, and faded, but not before he recognized it.

'You dared make the sign which only a priest of Jhebbal Sag dare make.
Thunder rumbled through the black Mountain of the Dead and the altar-hut
of Gullah was thrown down by a wind from the Gulf of Ghosts. The loon
which is messenger to the Four Brothers of the Night flew swiftly and
whispered your name in my ear. Your head will hang in the altar-hut of
my brother. Your body will be eaten by the black-winged, sharp-beaked
Children of Jhil.'

'Who the devil is your brother?' demanded Conan. His sword was naked in
his hand, and he was subtly loosening the ax in his belt.

'Zogar Sag; a child of Jhebbal Sag who still visits his sacred groves at
times. A woman of Gwawela slept in a grove holy to Jhebbal Sag. Her babe
was Zogar Sag. I too am a son of Jhebbal Sag, out of a fire-being from a
far realm. Zogar Sag summoned me out of the Misty Lands. With
incantations and sorcery and his own blood he materialized me in the
flesh of his own planet. We are one, tied together by invisible threads.
His thoughts are my thoughts; if he is struck, I am bruised. If I am
cut, he bleeds. But I have talked enough. Soon your ghost will talk with
the ghosts of the Dark Land, and they will tell you of the old gods
which are not dead, but sleep in the outer abysses, and from time to
time awake.'

'I'd like to see what you look like,' muttered Conan, working his ax
free, 'you who leave a track like a bird, who burn like a flame and yet
speak with a human voice.'

'You shall see,' answered the voice from the flame, 'see, and carry the
knowledge with you into the Dark Land.'

The flames leaped and sank, dwindling and dimming. A face began to take
shadowy form. At first Conan thought it was Zogar Sag himself who stood
wrapped in green fire. But the face was higher than his own and there
was a demoniac aspect about it--Conan had noted various abnormalities
about Zogar Sag's features--an obliqueness of the eyes, a sharpness of
the ears, a wolfish thinness of the lips; these peculiarities were
exaggerated in the apparition which swayed before him. The eyes were red
as coals of living fire.

More details came into view: a slender torso, covered with snaky scales,
which was yet man-like in shape, with man-like arms, from the waist
upward; below, long crane-like legs ended in splay, three-toed feet like
those of some huge bird. Along the monstrous limbs the blue fire
fluttered and ran. He saw it as through a glistening mist.

Then suddenly it was towering over him, though he had not seen it move
toward him. A long arm, which for the first time he noticed was armed
with curving, sickle-like talons, swung high and swept down at his neck.
With a fierce cry he broke the spell and bounded aside, hurling his ax.
The demon avoided the cast with an unbelievably quick movement of its
narrow head and was on him again with a hissing rush of leaping flames.

But fear had fought for it when it slew its other victims, and Conan was
not afraid. He knew that any being clothed in material flesh can be
slain by material weapons, however grisly its form may be.

One flailing talon-armed limb knocked his helmet from his head. A little
lower and it would have decapitated him. But fierce joy surged through
him as his savagely driven sword sank deep in the monster's groin. He
bounded backward from a flailing stroke, tearing his sword free as he
leaped. The talons raked his breast, ripping through mail-links as if
they had been cloth. But his return spring was like that of a starving
wolf. He was inside the lashing arms and driving his sword deep in the
monster's belly--felt the arms lock about him and the talons ripping the
mail from his back as they sought his vitals--he was lapped and dazzled
by blue flame that was chill as ice--then he had torn fiercely away from
the weakening arms and his sword cut the air in a tremendous swipe.

The demon staggered and fell sprawling sidewise, its head hanging only
by a shred of flesh. The fires that veiled it leaped fiercely upward,
now red as gushing blood, hiding the figure from view. A scent of
burning flesh filled Conan's nostrils. Shaking the blood and sweat from
his eyes, he wheeled and ran staggering through the woods. Blood
trickled down his limbs. Somewhere, miles to the south, he saw the faint
glow of flames that might mark a burning cabin. Behind him, toward the
road, rose a distant howling that spurred him to greater efforts.



8 Conajohara No More


There had been fighting on Thunder River; fierce fighting before the
walls of Velitrium; ax and torch had been piled up and down the bank,
and many a settler's cabin lay in ashes before the painted horde was
rolled back.

A strange quiet followed the storm, in which people gathered and talked
in hushed voices, and men with red-stained bandages drank their ale
silently in the taverns along the river bank.

There, to Conan the Cimmerian, moodily quaffing from a great wine-glass,
came a gaunt forester with a bandage about his head and his arm in a
sling. He was the one survivor of Fort Tuscelan.

'You went with the soldiers to the ruins of the fort?'

Conan nodded.

'I wasn't able,' murmured the other. 'There was no fighting?'

'The Picts had fallen back across the Black River. Something must have
broken their nerve, though only the devil who made them knows what.'

The woodsman glanced at his bandaged arm and sighed.

'They say there were no bodies worth disposing of.'

Conan shook his head. 'Ashes. The Picts had piled them in the fort and
set fire to the fort before they crossed the river. Their own dead and
the men of Valannus.'

'Valannus was killed among the last--in the hand-to-hand fighting when
they broke the barriers. They tried to take him alive, but he made them
kill him. They took ten of the rest of us prisoners when we were so weak
from fighting we could fight no more. They butchered nine of us then and
there. It was when Zogar Sag died that I got my chance to break free and
run for it.'

'Zogar Sag's dead?' ejaculated Conan.

'Aye. I saw him die. That's why the Picts didn't press the fight against
Velitrium as fiercely as they did against the fort. It was strange. He
took no wounds in battle. He was dancing among the slain, waving an ax
with which he'd just brained the last of my comrades. He came at me,
howling like a wolf--and then he staggered and dropped the ax, and began
to reel in a circle screaming as I never heard a man or beast scream
before. He fell between me and the fire they'd built to roast me,
gagging and frothing at the mouth, and all at once he went rigid and the
Picts shouted that he was dead. It was during the confusion that I
slipped my cords and ran for the woods.

'I saw him lying in the firelight. No weapon had touched him. Yet there
were red marks like the wounds of a sword in the groin, belly and
neck--the last as if his head had been almost severed from his body.
What do you make of that?'

Conan made no reply, and the forester, aware of the reticence of
barbarians on certain matters, continued: 'He lived by magic, and
somehow, he died by magic. It was the mystery of his death that took the
heart out of the Picts. Not a man who saw it was in the fighting before
Velitrium. They hurried back across Black River. Those that struck
Thunder River were warriors who had come on before Zogar Sag died. They
were not enough to take the city by themselves.

'I came along the road, behind their main force, and I know none
followed me from the fort. I sneaked through their lines and got into
the town. You brought the settlers through all right, but their women
and children got into Velitrium just ahead of those painted devils. If
the youth Balthus and old Slasher hadn't held them up awhile, they'd
have butchered every woman and child in Conajohara. I passed the place
where Balthus and the dog made their last stand. They were lying amid a
heap of dead Picts--I counted seven, brained by his ax, or disemboweled
by the dog's fangs, and there were others in the road with arrows
sticking in them. Gods, what a fight that must have been!'

'He was a man,' said Conan. 'I drink to his shade, and to the shade of
the dog, who knew no fear.' He quaffed part of the wine, then emptied
the rest upon the floor, with a curious heathen gesture, and smashed the
goblet. 'The heads of ten Picts shall pay for his, and seven heads for
the dog, who was a better warrior than many a man.'

And the forester, staring into the moody, smoldering blue eyes, knew the
barbaric oath would be kept.

'They'll not rebuild the fort?'

'No; Conajohara is lost to Aquilonia. The frontier has been pushed back.
Thunder River will be the new border.'

The woodsman sighed and stared at his calloused hand, worn from contact
with ax-haft and sword-hilt. Conan reached his long arm for the
wine-jug. The forester stared at him, comparing him with the men about
them, the men who had died along the lost river, comparing him with
those other wild men over that river. Conan did not seem aware of his
gaze.

'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still
staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a
whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Beyond the Black River" ***

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