Conan and The Mists of Doom

CONAN AND THE MISTS OF DOOM

by

Roland Green

DUST TO DUST!

The Lady stood in glory and grace and rested both hands lightly on the captive's forehead. He shivered, as if responding to this last human touch—and then between one breath and the next, he was no more. For the space of another breath, a column of silver dust in the shape of a man stood before the Lady.

Then she flung her hands downward, fingers pointing at the cup. The dust leaped, losing human semblance. It rose to the ceiling, then poured down into the cup. The crimson fire within flickered briefly, seemed about to change color, then steadied at a gesture and two soft words from the Lady of the Mists.

Conan Adventures by Tor Books

Conan the Invincible by Robert Jordan

Conan the Defender by Robert Jordan

Conan the Unconquered by Robert Jordan

Conan the Triumphant by Robert Jordan

Conan the Magnificent by Robert Jordan

Conan the Victorious by Robert Jordan

Conan the Destroyer by Robert Jordan

Conan the Valorous by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Fearless by Steve Perry

Conan the Renegade by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Raider by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Champion by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Defiant by Steve Perry

Conan the Warlord by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Marauder by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Valiant by Roland Green

Conan the Hero by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Bold by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Indomitable by Steve Perry

Conan the Free Lance by Steve Perry

Conan the Great by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Guardian by Roland Green

Conan the Formidable by Steve Perry

Conan the Outcast by Leonard Carpenter

Conan the Relentless by Roland Green

Conan the Rogue by John Maddox Roberts

Conan the Savage by Leonard Carpenter

Conan of the Red Brotherhood by Leonard Carpenter

Conan and the Gods of the Mountain by Roland Green

Conan and the Treasure of Python by John Maddox Roberts

Conan, Scourge of the Bloody Coast by Leonard Carpenter

Conan and the Manhunters by John Maddox Roberts

Conan at the Demon's Gate by Roland Green

Conan the Gladiator by Leonard Carpenter

Conan and the Amazon by John Maddox Roberts

Conan and the Mists of Doom by Roland Green

Conan the Hunter by Sean A. Moore

Prologue

The valley slashed into the flank of the Kezankian Mountains like a sword cut. The entrance deceived the casual eye, being but a narrow cleft in a spur of Mount Goadel. The mist often swirling about the heights aided the deception, giving the cleft the air of a place uncanny and unwholesome, where things a sane man would shun might lurk in wait.

Often the wind rose, driving away the mist, but raising a howling as of demons and lost souls as it whipped around the rocks. The wind-cry likewise kept travelers from being too curious about the valley.

It had been many years since travelers had allowed themselves to be curious about the valley, or anything else in this part of the Kezankian range. It was far from any place that concerned civilized folk, and too plainly a good home for bandits, outlaws, and still more debased forms of humanity. There were even tales of tribes of ape-men, kin to those of the Himelian peaks in Vendhya, dwelling above the snow line.

The man who led the column of soldiers up the slope toward the cleft knew more than most of the truth about the valley. It had indeed been home to bandits and outlaws. Some of these now followed him, won to obedience—if not loyalty—by gold in one hand and a whip in the other. Others, he and his company had slain with their own hands. Still others had fled, to become bleaching bones when the vultures were done with them.

About ape-men, Captain Muhbaras knew little and cared less. If they did not trouble him, he would leave them in whatever peace their lofty homes might afford them. He personally doubted that any creature dwelling among eternal snow and ice could have the wits of a louse, but then he had grown to manhood among the gurgling wells and trees sagging with ripe fruit of a Khorajan nobleman's estate.

Long-legged and unburdened save for a shirt of fine Vendhyan mail and an open-faced helm of Nemedian style, Muhbaras had reached the cleft well ahead of his column. Now he turned back to watch it mount the slope, and to count heads for straggling or desertion. Small fear of the latter, when all went in fear of the Lady of the Mists, who could see to the edge of the world, but there were always fools in any company.

One could hardly tell bandits from Khorajans or nomads; all wore the same robes and headdress, sand-hued or dirty white, with boots and belts of camel's hide and a curved sword and dagger thrust into the belts. Some among each folk carried bows and quivers, but a keen-eyed man would have quickly seen that the bows were unstrung and the quivers bound tightly shut with leather thongs.

No man approached the entrance to the Valley of the Mists with ready arrows or strung bow. Not without the Lady's consent, and thus far that consent had not been forthcoming.

What had been forthcoming were harsh punishments for those who flouted the Lady's will. Punishments so dire, indeed, that those who had suffered them might have gladly changed places with the captives in the middle of the column. Their death would have been no less unclean, under the Lady's magic, but it would have been swifter and far less painful.

There were ten of the captives, bound into a single file by stout thongs about their waists. Their hands and feet were free, which meant vigilance by their guards, as the Lady misliked pursuing escapers with her spells, lest this endanger her secrets. There was hardly any choice, however, as no man with hands bound could mount the slopes here. Nor could a band of this size carry many helpless burdens over the rocks and along the ravines.

Escapes were few enough in truth, thanks to the potion the Lady's apothecary doled out to each band of raiders. If one could get enough of it down a captive's gullet, the man, woman, or child would be as docile as a sheep for up to three days. Muhbaras had scented some familiar herbs in the potion, and others he could not name; he suspected that the real secret of the potion was not knowable by common men.

The captives were seven men, if you counted one youth barely old enough to show a beard, and three women. Two with grave wounds and one who had fought to the last against swallowing the potion were vultures' fodder, as well as a warning to anyone who would pursue the raiders.

Muhbaras counted the captives twice, although there was no escape this far into the mountains for anyone who could neither fly like a bird nor sink into solid rock like a spirit. He made a gesture of aversion at that last thought; some of the tribes hereabouts commanded potent magic. It would not be well done to capture one of their shamans or the man's kin.

Then he turned toward the cleft in the rock, drew his sword (Nemedian work like his helm), and raised it hilt-first. He saw no one and heard nothing save the whisper of the wind on distant slopes, but he knew that keen eyes watched for still keener minds.

Crimson light darted from the cleft, striking a jewel in the sword's hilt. The jewel glowed like an oil lamp, but no oil lamp ever gave out such hues, not only a half-score different shades of crimson but hints of azure, emerald, amber—

"We have returned," the captain said. "We have ten. In the service of the Lady, we ask blessing."

The light darted out again. This time the crimson glow danced along the ground until it drew a complete circle around the column. Muhbaras tried not to think how much it resembled a noose, ready to be drawn tight. He told himself that he and his men had survived this rite a score of times without so much as a singed hair.

Reason and memory were of small use against the dark fear of old magic, coiling through a man's guts and gnawing at his will like a rat at a corpse. The captain felt a cold sweat creep across his skin under the mail and padding.

"In the service of the Lady, the blessing is given," the voice said. The captain tried for the tenth time to find something in the voice by which he might recognize the speaker. It would be of little value if he did, save for proving that not all the Lady's secrets were impenetrable.

The men behind him were looking at him, and he remembered that the next part of the rite was his.

"In the service of the Lady, we beg entrance to the Valley of the Mists."

The captain wondered, not quite idly, what might happen if he used some word less abject than "beg." So far he had lacked the courage to find out—as much for the sake of those who had followed him from Khoraja as for his own sake. He wondered if those who survived would receive their promised gold and estates, but doubting the word of Khoraja's rulers did not make him ready to throw away the lives of his men. He had held his duty as a captain near to his heart, long before he heard of the Lady of the Mists or laid eyes on the Kezankian Mountains.

"In the service of the Lady, entrance to the Valley of the Mists is granted."

He heard light footsteps, quickly lost in the grind and growl of stones shifting, which always sounded to him like the bowels of the mountains themselves rumbling. The stone-noise ended, the light of torches glowed from the cleft, and two figures stepped swiftly into view.

One was tall and dark, the other shorter and fair, and both were women. They wore silvered helmets, displaying on either side a golden ornament in the form of a scorpion's tail, brown leather corselets reinforced with iron plates, loose breeches in the Turanian style, of heavy silk in a green so dark it was almost black, and boots whose style the captain did not recognize.

Each had a sword and dagger, and each carried a Turanian recurved bow and quiver of well-made arrows. Their faces under the helmets and bodies under the armor were good to look at. The sure grace of their movements and the stillness in their eyes made it clear no man but a fool would hope for more, and fools would meet weapons the women knew well how to use.

Northern folk had tales of shield-maidens, daughters of the gods, who roamed the earth seeking the souls of dead warriors, or so the captain had heard. He had thought them barbarians' fancies once; now he was not so sure. All of the Lady's Maidens had the same look, of being able to see into a man's soul and judge him.

It was that look, as much as their weapons and armor, that had kept the Maidens untouched. That, and knowing that what the Lady had done to disobedient archers would be as a child's tantrum to what she would do in defense of her Maidens.

"Any children?" the dark Maiden said.

"None."

"As well. Strong spirits are needed to feed the Mist."

"The strongest spirit, we freed back near the village. We could not force the potion down him without risking hurt to our people, and pursuit seemed closer than usual."

Why was he explaining himself to this madwoman, servant of a greater madwoman? Perhaps because he had seen her on guard more often than any other, and she looked less grim than most. The fair one, now—a man's hand would freeze on touching her, long before his manhood was anywhere near her.

'This is not well."

"It did not seem my decision, to sacrifice the Lady's servants."

"That is wisdom."

They continued to speak as the raiders filed past. Some of the prisoners had enough awareness to open their eyes and look about them, but the point of a sword in the back was enough to discourage laggards. At last the tail of the column vanished among the rocks, and Muhbaras was alone on the mountainside with the Maidens.

"You are well, I trust?" the fair one said. Not for the first time, she made a question about the captain's health sound like a death sentence.

"I am well, and fit to come within," he replied, returning to ritual phrases.

Which I would not do if I did not think your mistress needed my men more than they need her!

One

The desert lay north of Zamboula, south of Khauran, west of the mighty realm of Turan, now burgeoning in its strength under the lash of its bold new King Yezdigerd. It belonged to none of these.

Indeed, the land belonged to no one. Even names on it were few, and those mostly oases. The nomads were divided among a score of tribes, seldom at peace with one another; each tribe had its own names for the wadis, the depressions, the dunes.

The harsh sky and its blazing sun might have leached all the color from the land. The sand lay pale ochre and umber, the rocks seemed baked white as bones, and even the sparse vegetation was pallid and dusty.

Well off to the north, dust trails crept above the horizon. Still farther, barely visible, rose patches of deeper green. Together they told of caravan routes and cultivated lands. Only in the crystalline air of the desert would they have been visible at all, for they were a good day's ride on a stout horse.

Nearer at hand, a man standing on a well-placed dune might have seen another dust cloud rising to the sky. Before long, he would have seen the dark shapes of more than a dozen riders at the base of the cloud, growing even as he watched.

Remaining beyond bowshot, he would have taken them for a band of nomad warriors. Their garb was certainly that of the nomads, or of any man who braves a forge-hot desert journey—loose, flowing robes from crown to toe. All were well armed, mostly with long, curved swords or bows.

Closer up, a man who knew the tribes of the East might have doubted that these men were native to the desert. One saw silver on the hilts of some weapons, tattoos on bronzed cheeks, and subtle differences in the tooled leather of the saddles and bridles. Yet most of the men and their mounts could have ridden into a nomad camp without drawing a second glance.

All except one, the leader. Few deserts ever spawned a man so gigantic, who needed a horse larger than any nomad ever bestrode to carry him even at a trot. Nor did those ice-blue eyes first open under any desert sun, and the blade that rode at the man's hip was as straight as his broad back.

Conan of Cimmeria was riding for Koth, with fourteen loyal Afghulis sworn to see him safely to that destination. Perhaps also they had hopes of plucking loot from the war in Koth.

The man on the dune might have stood watching until not only Conan but the rearmost of the riders was out of sight. Had he done so, however, he would shortly have seen a new dust cloud sprout on the horizon, moving swiftly on the trail of Conan's band. The Cimmerian and his Afghulis were not alone in the desert.

In the forefront of the band, Conan was not the first to see the riders behind. That modest honor went to a rider named Farad, of the Batari tribe. He spurred his mount up beside the Cimmerian's and shouted into the northerner's ear.

"We are followed. Many more than we are, from the dust they make."

Conan turned to look eastward. Farad's eyes were keen and his judgment sound. The riders behind had to be at least fifty, though probably not more than a hundred—which hardly mattered, as even fifty was four times the strength of Conan's band.

Nor did it matter much who they were, unless by some improbable chance they were a caravan gone astray or Zamboulans. Neither was likely to be found in this stretch of desert; more likely by far were nomads or Turanians, and neither would meet Conan and his men as friends.

In some nomad dialects the word "stranger" was also the word for "enemy." Among every nomad tribe, anyone who had wealth to take and no kin to avenge their death was fair game. The horses and weapons of Conan's band would be enough to sign their death warrant with any nomads numerous enough to take them, to say nothing of what Conan bore in a small pouch next to his skin.

That small sack of jewels was all his profit from two years among the Afghulis. That and a whole skin, which he supposed was more than many kept who went among the Afghulis in their native mountains.

Binding the scattered, brawling tribes of the Afghulis into a single host had at first seemed like a good idea. Conan knew his own skill and the prowess of the Afghuli warriors, likewise the weaknesses of every neighboring realm. A united Afghuli people could take their pick.

The Afghulis did not seem to care overmuch for this bright vision. If it meant fighting beside a man whose great-grandfather had insulted theirs, they would rather fight the man (or perhaps the towering foreigner who suggested that they forgive the insult).

It was Conan's luck, not to mention ready blade and stout thews, that kept his hide intact. With little but what he had on his person and no friends but those who owed him blood-debts, he had fled the mountains. Fighting their way through bandits and bears alike, they came to hear rumors of war in Koth.

Westward they rode, the Afghulis as eager as Conan to try their hand at winning loot and glory from the troubles of Koth. They had to ride well clear of the borders of Turan, however, for in that realm there was a price on Conan's head. Under King Yildiz's mild reign, few Turanians would have cared to gamble their lives on taking Conan's. Yezdigerd was not his father, and knew how to use both fear and greed to make men bold, even foolhardy.

Conan looked eastward again. He thought he saw a second dust cloud on the horizon, but after a mo-ment knew it was only a dust devil, a creature of the wind. But the first cloud had grown larger, and now he thought he saw the glint of sunlight on steel.

The nomads wore no armor. In this land, armored riders were most likely Turanians. Conan looked westward, studying the ground with a practiced eye. He had fought in every kind of land from glacier to jungle, and knew what each offered to a hunted band.

To the west, the desert rolled away under the sun, offering little but sand and scrub. Anywhere in that emptiness, Conan's band would stand out like a pea on a platter. Once in bowshot, the enemy would have easy prey, unless night came—and it was only early afternoon.

To the north, however, a sprawling gray mass thrust its rocky head above the sand. Any who reached this ridge might lurk in its cracks and crevices until nightfall dimmed the enemy's sight, then slip away. At worst, it offered shelter for archery and ambushes, likewise high ground for a last stand if the odds against escape grew too long.

Conan grinned at the prospect of giving King Yezdigerd a few more widows' pensions to pay. This was the kind of fight that made his blood sing and that had made his name in all Hyborian lands and more than a few others. Long odds, a need for both cunning and strength, and stout brothers-in-arms to tell the tales afterward or keep him company in death if that was his fate.

No one worthy of the name of warrior could complain about the battle Conan faced.

His only remaining problem was to be sure that the battle would be on his chosen ground, not that of the

Turanians. A good deal of open desert lay between Conan's men and the ridge, bare of cover but likely full of holes and cracks that could catch a horse's leg and doom its rider.

Conan had read a few books on the art of war, and thought most of them tried to make into wizardry something that was for the most part common sense. In none of them had he found one maxim he knew to be true: The horse that has never stumbled before will stumble when you are riding for your life.

He waved toward the ridge, while turning in the saddle to shout at the Afghulis. "We'll perch there until nightfall. Archers, to the rear, but I'll gut the man who wastes arrows." The Afghulis were mostly not the finished horse-archers of Turan, among the best in the world; but their pursuers would make a large target.

The archers reined in a trifle, the rest dug in spurs, and dust swirled around Conan's band as it re-formed for its last ride. Dust also swirled, higher and thicker than before, to their rear. Conan cast a final look behind him, thought he recognized Turanian banners, then put his head down and his heels in to ride for his life.

In a bare rock chamber in the wall of the Valley of the Mists, a woman sat cross-legged and alone on a bearskin thrown across a Turanian rug. Before her stood a tall wine cup of gilded bronze, with four handles and a broad base displaying archaic, even ancient runes known only among sorcerers and talked of in whispers even among them.

The Lady was as bare as the chamber, save for a necklace, bracelets, and coronet of fresh mountain creeper. A Maiden had plucked it in the night and brought it to the chamber before dawn, where it had remained in cool shadows. It was still so fresh that the last drops of dew trickled from the crinkled gray-green leaves down between the Lady's breasts.

The Lady of the Mists—she did not choose to remember any other name—reached under the bearskin and drew out a heavy disk of age-blackened bronze. One could barely make out under the patina of centuries the sigil of Kull of Atlantis.

The Lady knew not whether some potent Atlantean spell still lurked in the bronze. She only knew that nothing else that had come into her hands so readily let her work her own.

That was as well. Workers in magic did best and lived longest (if they cared for that, as the Lady did) if they worked most with the magic they knew and commanded—as well as any mortal could command power from the realms of night.

She shifted her position with the languid grace of a cat half-roused from sleep, until she could reach the cup. She set the bronze disk atop the cup, so that it rested a hairsbreadth below the rim, completely covering the cup.

The movement sent more dew trickling between her breasts. No living man would have gazed on those breasts unstirred, nor did the rest of the Lady's form repel the eye any more than her breasts. She could have filled her bed more readily than most women, had she sought that—or had her eyes been other than they were.

They were of human size and shape, but of a golden hue seen in no race of men. She also had the vertical pupils of a cat, and these were a nightmare black against the yellow.

Any man seeing the Lady's form would have judged her human, and judged truly. Then, coming closer, a glimpse of her eyes would have changed his mind and likely sent him fleeing, faster than anything but the Lady's laughter could pursue. Or, if she took offense, the Lady's magic.

The Lady pressed a finger to the cup, moving it to see if its bronze seal was well in place. No rattle greeted her. She smiled, and her eyes narrowed, like those of a cat looking, as they so often do, into a world beyond human knowledge.

Then she rested both hands lightly on the bronze and began to sing. The cup quivered at first, then steadied, but around cup and Lady alike a crimson light began to spread.

Conan was now as careful not to look to his rear as any Aquilonian knight leading a charge. He did not do it for the knight's reasons of not wishing to show doubt that those sworn to him would follow steadfastedly in his wake.

The Cimmerian kept his eyes to the front or the side because there lay the ridge that offered the only hope of safety, as well as any number of hidden dangers. The holes of burrowing rodents to snap a horse's leg like a rotten twig, soft sand to bring horse and man down together, nests of asps to give a lingering death if disturbed—these could end the race as thoroughly as being overtaken by the Turanians.

So could nomads or Turanians lying in ambush.

The nomads held no love for the Turanians, and even less now in the face of Yezdigerd's growing strength. That would not stay their hands for a moment if they thought they could buy a Turanian captain's goodwill with the heads of the Cimmerian and his following.

This was no land for any man who cared to live without eyes in the back of his head and his hand close to the hilt of his sword. Conan had lived no other way for more years than he had fingers, and in their feud-ridden land the Afghulis sucked in wariness with their mothers' milk.

"Conan!" The call rose above the thunder of hooves. "The Turanians send a band ahead, faster than the rest!"

Conan recognized the voice. It was Farad, first man among the Afghulis. He shouted back, without turning his head.

"They think to wolf-pack us. Time for the archers to make them think again."

"Or stop thinking at all!" Farad shouted back, battle-joy in his cry.

"Wolf-packing" was a pursuer's sending one band after another to force the pursued to a pace their mounts could not sustain. In time the pursued would have stumbling, foaming, dying mounts, at the mercy of the last fresh riders of the pursuer.

It suggested that the Turanians were regularly sworn horsemen of the host, or at worst the better sort of irregular, such as Conan himself had led during his service in Turan. Neither was often found this far into the desert—or rather, had not been found here before Yezdigerd took the throne of Turan, with ambitions to take everything else he could lay his hands on.

The ground began to rise before Conan's eyes. He studied it. Was there a ravine off to the right that led to the base of the ridge and offered shelter from arrows? The Cimmerian slowed to a trot, patting the neck of his foam-flecked horse reassuringly.

"Not much farther, lady," he muttered to the horse. Not much farther to at least brief safety or a swift death. They would find nothing else under this desert sun.

The ravine was narrow and its floor studded with rocks thrusting up wildly, as if flung down by a mad giant. No passage there, at least no swift one—and while the Afghulis were threading their way through the rocks, the Turanians could seize one side of the ravine and send down a hail of arrows.

Conan's men would reach the rocks in the open or not at all.

The Cimmerian's spurs went in again. The mare whickered in protest, blew foam from her mouth, and gathered her legs under her.

"Come on, you sons of dogs!" Conan roared. "Or are you going to lie down for Turanians, of all the pox-ridden folk on earth!"

On staggering horses, some leaving trails of blood, the Afghulis followed. Conan risked a look behind and saw that the first band of the wolf pack had fallen back. Fallen back, moreover, onto ground already well adorned with fallen men and horses. Some still struggled, as the rest of the Turanians rode on past or sometimes over them.

The ridge loomed ahead. Conan drove spurs deeper. The mare responded with what had to be the last of her strength. Gravel and sand flew up about her hooves, like foam from the ram of a war galley.

Another look back. The center of the Turanians was advancing in a solid mass, but on either flank bands were breaking off.

So they were going to surround the ridge, were they? No one but a fool would fail to do that, and fools did not command Turanian horsemen all that often. More than one captain and more than one book on war had told Conan what his own sense said: Never trust your enemy to be a witling.

The thud of the mare's hooves on the ground changed pitch. The ground was harder now, with rock just under the sand and gravel. The other riders reached the hard ground, and half a hundred hooves drummed their way toward the rough ground.

Behind, the Turanian horns gave tongue again, and this time a drum joined them. Conan spat from a desert-dry and dust-filled mouth. The drum was no good news; often as not, the Turanians used it to summon up reinforcements.

Let them summon all the host of Turan. We can still give them a battle those who survive it will not forget.

The vanguard of the Turanians breasted the slope, and sunlight flamed on mail sleeves as half a score of archers nocked and drew as one man.

The crimson glow spread from the cup until, to one looking into the chamber, the Lady might have seemed embedded in the heart of a gigantic ruby. Only her lips moved with the murmuring of her spell, and her breast with her shallow breathing. A keen eye might have seen a tremor in a finger or the muscle of one bare and supple thigh, but otherwise the Lady might have been the image of a sorceress at her magic, carved by a master sculptor.

A low-pitched thrumming began, at first seeming remote, then drawing closer, as if men bore toward the cave a great drum on which they were beating softly. The sound swelled until one would have said there was more than one drum.

Then came soft footsteps and what might have been a muffled cough. Two of the Maidens entered, leading between them one of the captives. The captive was a man of middle years, a hard-faced peasant with the hooked nose of the Kezankian hill folk and little hair on his parchment-hued scalp.

The captive's hands were bound behind his back with a rough but stout cord of marsh grass. Otherwise he wore nothing—not even the aspect of one awake and aware. His eyes were as vacant as a newborn babe's, shifted about altogether at random, and showed no animation even when their gaze fell upon the splendid form of the Lady of the Mist.

The Maidens themselves had now cast off their warriors' garb and wore only white silk loin-guards and, draped over one shoulder, long cords of the same marsh grass. Woven among the grass were amber-hued vines and woolen thread in all the colors ever imagined in the rainbow, let alone seen.

The Lady of the Mists now flung up both hands. A waterfall of sparks poured from her fingertips, silver blazing amidst the crimson. The sigil of Kull on the lid of the cup drew the sparks as a lodestone draws iron. They poured down upon it and vanished into it.

Another gesture by long-fingered, slender hands. The lid rose from the cup. Within lay fire of a crimson yet brighter than the glow filling the chamber. It might have been a blacksmith's forge heated to the utmost, yet neither smoke, heat, nor flame rose from the cup.

The Maidens saw the cup's fire with waking eyes, and blinked. The captive saw nothing, and only the gods knew what passed through as much of a mind as the potion had left him.

If, that is, the gods had not altogether forsaken this cave, its invoking of ancient powers, and its tampering with the laws of both gods and men.

The sigil-marked lid rose higher, wafting toward the ceiling of the chamber as light as thistledown on the breeze, for all that it weighed more than a steel battle helm. A beckoning gesture from the Lady, and the captive took a step forward. Another gesture, another step.

Now he stood almost above the cup. The fire within it tinted his skin until he seemed a bronze statue. A third gesture, and the bindings unknotted themselves and fell to the floor. One of the Maidens stopped to pick them up.

As she straightened, the Lady made a final gesture. The captive bent over, and thrust both hands straight into the crimson fire blazing within the cup.

Still no smoke, still no flame, not the slightest reek of burning flesh. Yet the man stiffened as if he had been turned to stone. His eyes and mouth opened— and both blazed with the same crimson fire. His scant remaining hair rose on his scalp.

The Lady stood in glory and grace and rested both hands lightly on the captive's forehead. He shivered, as if responding to this last human touch—and then between one breath and the next, he was no more. For the space of another breath, a column of silver dust in the shape of a man stood before the Lady.

Then she flung her hands downward, fingers pointing at the cup. The dust leaped, losing human semblance. It rose to the ceiling, then poured down into the cup. The crimson fire within flickered briefly, seemed about to change color, then steadied at a gesture and two soft words from the Lady of the Mists.

The Lady resumed her seat, casting only a brief glance at the lid floating above, a briefer glance at the two Maidens. Her hands and lips moved briefly, in a silence wherein one might have imagined unwholesome beings from beyond the world listening— listening for the sound of prey, or the Lady's bidding.

If the Lady had ever held discourse with such, she did not do so now. Instead her bidding was to the Maidens. They knelt briefly before her, and she rested a hand on each smooth, youthful brow. Each woman shivered as with a light fever at her mistress's touch, then each rose with almost as much grace as hers and stepped backward out of the chamber.

The Lady took a deep breath, and this time her words were five, none of them soft. They were a command, in the language of Shem, a command to the Maidens waiting outside the chamber's door.

"Bring in the next sacrifice!" was the command of the Lady of the Mists.

Two

Conan's band had borne a charmed life until now. But as the Afghulis breasted the slope, the first man went down. His name was Rastam, and he was old enough to have a son who had ridden beside him on a raid.

That was all the Cimmerian knew about the man, but it was enough that he would not die faceless and nameless among strangers. "Not even an enemy deserves such a fate, and ten times over not a man who has followed you," was a motto of Khadjar, once captain of Turanian irregular horse and giver of much wisdom to a certain young Cimmerian then new to the Turanian service.

Rastam's horse was dead, but the man himself only wounded. Through the dust Conan saw him roll clear of his stricken mount, leaving a trail of blood in the sand. Then he rose, casting aside a broken bow and drawing his tulwar.

The dust blinded the leading Turanian riders more than it did Conan, let alone Rastam. They were hard upon him before they saw him. A horse screamed and bucked convulsively as the Afghuli hamstrung it with the tulwar, then neatly slashed the falling rider's head from his shoulders.

A second Turanian rode up; Rastam leaped and dragged him from the saddle, and both men fell. Both stood, but Rastam had one arm around the other's neck and was holding him as a shield against Turanian arrows.

He cut two more foes out of the saddle and mutilated three horses before someone finally worked around behind him and put arrows into his back. Even then he had the strength to cut his living shield's throat before he died.

To the left Conan now saw a high but narrow gap in the rocks. The Afghulis had seen it, too, and were swerving hard in its direction. One mount lost its footing on a patch of loose stones. Its rider went down with it and did not move again after his mount lurched to its feet and hobbled off with its comrades.

Conan cursed in a fury at many things, not least of all himself. Had he parted with some of his jewels to buy camels for his band, they could have crossed the desert far to the south, well away from Turanian patrols.

But what might have been could never now be. Conan had learned that early and often, so it was not in him to spend much time repining over mistakes. Besides, showing some of the jewels could well have made more than camel dealers profoundly curious about the northern giant's wealth. Also, the desert might hold no Turanians, but it still held more than a few nomads, unless one ventured so far south beyond the last oases that one had to cross the Devil's Anvil or other places where more travelers left their bones than reached their destinations.

The Cimmerian kept the mare moving while his eyes searched the rocks for a better refuge than the cleft. Behind those eyes was a hillman's blood and a seasoned warrior's experience, but they did not find what they sought.

"Dismount!" Conan shouted. He used a dialect of Afghuli that all of his band understood but few Turanians were likely to know. The pursuing foe was reining in and holding their distance, but they were still within hearing.

"Dismount!" he repeated, and gestured at the cleft. "Drive your horses within, then climb to where you overlook them. Archers, on guard."

Nods said that some understood the Cimmerian's plan. If the horses could not be taken to safety, then their next best use was as bait. Seeking to drive away their prey's mounts, the Turanians would be forced to come at them either up the steep slope or through the mouth of the cleft. If the first, then archers could play with them. If the second, then one man might bar the passage of a score.

Conan also knew who that one man must be. He flung himself out of the saddle, drawing his broadsword as he did. He snatched a short-handled axe from the saddle as he landed, then slapped the mare on the rump. She trotted off after the other horses.

A fool or two were still mounted, gaping about them so that Conan expected to see an arrow sprout from their throats at any moment. He opened his mouth to curse them, but Farad spoke first.

Or rather, he roared like an angry lion. "Sons of hornless rams and bald ewes, dismount and climb! We draw the Turanians in to their deaths. They are near-women, weaned on the vomit of diseased dogs. A few more dead and they will turn tail!"

Conan scarcely believed that himself and doubted that Farad did either. But the words made the last Afghulis dismount and begin to climb. As they did, a bold Turanian rode toward the cleft—then pitched out of the saddle, dead before he struck the ground. A second arrow took his mount in the throat, and horse and would-be hero mingled their blood on the rocks.

At least one Afghuli archer had found a secure vantage and was using the height to give his shafts useful additional range. Conan saw the advancing Turanian line waver, then halt as if a ditch yawned fathoms deep before them. None wished to be the next to die; none doubted that there were enough archers ahead to bring death wherever they wished.

Perhaps the Turanians could be pricked by enough arrows into acting like the low creatures Farad had named them.

And perhaps whales might grow feathers.

More likely, the Turanians would surround the rocks at a safe distance and send messengers for aid. If they did not close in before the aid arrived—

Conan put the "ifs" firmly out of his mind as a score of Turanians dismounted and began to climb the slope on foot. Others shot from their saddles, aiming at the climbing Afghulis. Many arrows cracked and sparked on rocks. No Afghulis fell, and one man snatched up a double handful of arrows, then made a vulgar gesture with them at the archers below.

Sword in hand, Conan raced for the entrance to the cleft. Arrows now rose from the Turanian ranks, to whistle about his ears. None struck the swift-moving Cimmerian, and the arrows ended abruptly when two came down in the ranks of the Turanian foot. Curses now filled the air instead of arrows; and for a moment Conan dared hope that the Turanians would make war on one another.

The hope faded a moment later, but before it vanished, Conan had reached the mouth of the cleft and counted the horses within. Some bore wounds and all would need rest and, if possible, water before they could move on, but all lived. Then, moving swiftly, he sought a place to wait for the Turanians.

Conan did not have to wait for long.

The Lady of the Mists stared at the cup before her. It could only be a fanciful notion, or perhaps a sending of some hostile magic, that the cup was staring back at her.

Ten captives—ten vessels of the life essence was a better name for them here and now—had stood before the Lady. All ten had given their life essence into what lay within the cup—and even the Lady did not care to search too hard for a name for that.

In magic, a true name commonly gave one power over him whose name one knew. With what lay within the cup, the Lady judged—nay, to be truthful, feared—that knowing its name would give it power, to reach out and command her.

What might come of that, she did not know, nor did she have the slightest wish to find out.

The Lady knelt, bowed her head, twined her fingers across her breasts, and touched the sigil-bearing cup lid with her thoughts. It wavered, then floated, still lightly as thistledown, to resume its place atop the cup. No sound came, not even the faintest rattle.

A bubbling sigh, as of some vast and unwholesome creature in its last moment of life, loud enough to raise echoes although there were none to give ear to them. Then the last of the crimson glow seemed to drain into the stone floor of the chamber, as if a cup of wine had been flung down upon sand.

The chamber returned to its natural colors, but the mind of the Lady of the Mists did not return to the natural world. She could not allow that until the ritual was altogether complete.

As the Mist took life essences into itself, it gained more and more awareness. Soon it would be able to touch the Lady's mind, or at least seek to do so. She knew quite well what could happen if it succeeded, and had therefore no intention of allowing this to happen. She might in time bind the Mist so that a linking of flesh-mind and Mist-mind would be prudent, but that time was far away.

The Lady rose and held both hands before her in a beckoning gesture. The two Maidens who had brought the cup entered the chamber, followed by two more, similarly clad.

The two newcomers brought long shoulder poles, from which hung a stout harness of leather that might have seemed gilded to an unknowing eye. The "gilding" was in truth the trace of a spell so old that no one could say what folk had first cast it. It bound what lay within the cup, and likewise the life essences, so that they might travel safely through the natural world outside the chamber to their destination.

The Maidens stood, two before and two behind, resting the poles on their shoulders. Then they closed their eyes, as the Lady of the Mists raised her hands again, and this time chanted softly.

The cup lurched into the air, not light as thistledown now but more like a gorged vulture trying to find safety in the air as the hyenas approach. It lurched and wobbled from side to side as the Lady's magic commanded it across the spear's length of rock floor that separated it from the harness.

"Huk!" the Lady said. It was neither word, nor spell. It sounded more like the spitting of the king of all asps. The cup wavered once more, then settled into place in the harness.

Without anyone raising a hand, let alone setting it upon the leather, the harness wound itself tightly about the cup. In moments the contents could not have spilled had it been full to the brim with the finest Poitanian vintages.

There was no other way to deal with the cup when the life essences seethed within it. The Lady remembered one foolish Maiden, it seemed years ago, who had tried to steady the cup with her bare hand.

She drew back naught but a charred stump; and when she held the ruined limb close to her eyes, they smouldered and charred in their sockets too. She did not, however, die. There were in the end uses for her, even though she could not surrender her life essence to the Mist.

Her injuries had too greatly wounded her life essence, but she still had her life. Before it left her, many of the soldiers without had sated themselves so thoroughly that the mere thought of a woman was unknown to them for some days.

The four Maidens now bearing the cup seemed to have profited by their sister's fate. They stood as might temple images, waiting to come to life at a magical command.

The command came—once again, at the raised hand of the Lady of the Mists. The little procession strode out of the cave, the Maids falling swiftly into step as precisely as any soldiers, then turned right. Before them lay the path along the side of the valley, to the cave known as the Eye of the Mist.

Arrows cracked on the rocks at the entrance to the cleft as Conan shifted his position. He sought a place where he could see and strike without being seen or attacked, and so far, none had come to hand.

Meanwhile, arrows continued to fly. Those he could reach without exposing himself, the Cimmerian gathered up. He and his Afghulis had begun this race for life with full quivers. They had reached the rocks with half-empty ones.

The Afghulis were returning the Turanian complements in kind. Some men and rather more horses fell on the slope. Riderless mounts careered about, tangling the ranks of those still mounted. The Afghulis might not be archers equal to the horsemen of Turan, but they held high ground that hid them while they shot down on men in the open.

No command made the Turanians withdraw, only the common consent of those at the forefront that they had fought enough for one day. The horsemen backed down the slope, like the tide ebbing from the harbor of Argos. They had the courage to keep their faces to the invisible enemy, for all that they left behind another half-score of comrades.

Some of the bolder spirits, who dismounted and took cover behind dead horses, paid for their courage within moments. Three died in the space of as many breaths, and Conan recognized the wild cry of triumph from above as issuing from Farad's throat.

The Turanian tide receded somewhat farther, not quite out of bowshot but far enough so that the archers above ceased shooting. Conan considered using some of his captured arrows to urge the enemy back even farther, then decided that wisdom lay elsewhere.

Sooner or later the Turanians would see the horses and nerve themselves to strike for them. Their hope would be to snatch the beasts and hold their enemies in place while reinforcements arrived.

Their fate would be to run the gauntlet of more arrows from on high, then to face a surprise encounter with the Cimmerian on ground of his own choosing. There would be fewer and more cautious Turanians after such an affray.

Conan set a dozen arrows within easy reach, then removed his boots for more silent movement. On the bare rock outside it was hot enough to bake bread or even burn his leather-tough feet, but here in the cleft, shadows made the rock bearable. He drew a whetstone and a wad of moss soaked in oil from a pouch on his belt and honed from the blade of his broadsword a few nicks that none but a seasoned warrior who was also the son of a blacksmith could have seen.

He was wary of turning his gaze from the Turanians, but thought the risk worth running. The Afghulis higher up the rocks would give sufficient warning of any attack for the Cimmerian to make ready for it.

His weapons prepared, Conan crept to a spot between two boulders and crouched there, as silent as a leopard watching a baboon's water hole and as ready to strike. He saw the Turanians spreading out. He stood or squatted within bowshot, but behind such rocks and stunted trees as offered shelter.

The rest had drawn well back into the open. From the way they signaled by blasts of trumpets and wav-ings of banner, Conan judged that a good part of the band was out of sight, throwing a ring around the rocks—a ring their captain no doubt intended to hold the Afghulis as tightly as an iron collar held a slave.

With the back of his hand, Conan wiped sweat and dust from a scarred, muscle-corded neck that had in its time known a slave's collar as well as silken robes and the golden chains of honor. If fresh horsemen came up to replace the score or more dead or past fighting, the Turanians might do as they intended.

How best to draw them into an attack that would reduce their numbers and courage further? Conan examined the rocks at the mouth of the cleft with as much care as he would have considered the body of a woman waiting in his bed. Perhaps more—the rocks would not grow impatient if he looked too long without acting.

He counted the rocks that were loose, counted others that were small enough to lift or even throw, found some that were both. He turned his gaze to the slope. Then he lay on his back behind a rock that a battering ram could not have moved, cupped his hands about his mouth, and called to Farad.

"How fare you?" He spoke in a tongue of northern Vendhya not unknown to Farad or many other Afghulis, but rarely spoken in Turan.

"Well enough, Conan. We are only short of Turanian dogs we can kill easily."

There spoke the Afghuli warrior who would die rather than admit a weakness—one of many reasons why the Cimmerian found the Afghulis kindred spirits. The rocks aloft had to be hotter still than the slope, and the Afghulis had only a single water bottle apiece. Conan vowed that once the Turanians had been further bloodied enough to learn caution, he would search the cleft for some trace of a spring.

"I hope to do something about that before any of us are much older. How many do they have on the far side of the rocks?"

The sun was a trifle lower in the sky before Farad answered. It appeared that no one had thought to count the enemy behind. Conan hoped that the men above had at least a sentry or two watching their rear. One fault the Afghulis had, and one reason they did not rule in Vendhya and Iranistan at least, was despising anyone not a hillman. They would not readily be-lieve a Turanian could climb rocks, until he did so and opened their throats with a keen blade.

From Farad's answer, it seemed likely that the Turanians had lost one in three of their number in the chase, to say nothing of foundered horses and men bearing wounds that would drain strength if not life. If they lost as many again, their captain (if he lived) might not be able to hold them here long enough for help to arrive.

Even if they held, they would be spread thin. Too thin, the Cimmerian suspected, to resist a stealthy attack at night by men who were masters of fighting in the dark more than almost any other form of war.

Conan waited, as motionless and patient as if he had been one of the rocks himself. He wanted sun, thirst, wounds, and fear to play on the Turanians until their wits and limbs alike were less sound than before.

The sun had sunk beyond the crest of the rocks before Conan judged that the enemy was ready for his bait. Sheathing his sword and dagger but leaving bow and quiver, he crept farther into the cleft, close to the horses.

Even without water, the shade had done them some good. They stood quietly, staring at the Cimmerian. His mare raised her head with an all but human look of curiosity and boredom.

'Time to sing," Conan said. He raised his voice in a sharp, wordless command that any horse bred in these lands could understand. The mare tossed her head, dried foam flew, and she let out a sharp neigh.

By twos and threes, the other mounts joined in.

Conan bared his teeth, white in his dust-caked face, and scrambled back to his watching post.

The grin widened as he saw the Turanians coming to life, some of them leaping up as if they'd lain on ants' nests. The Afghulis above held their fire.

The Turanians knew where the bait was. Now, to get them to take it.

Three

The four Maidens bearing the wine cup marched in step ahead of the Lady of the Mists. This was not easy, as their feet were as bare as the rest of them, but they neither stumbled nor missed a step.

The punishments for Maidens who transgressed were not as grave as those for common folk. The Lady knew that she needed the Maidens' wits and steel alike on guard against her enemies. The Maidens knew that the Lady valued them, and they in turn valued her rewards even more than they feared her punishments.

The peace between the Lady of the Mists and those who served her was uneasy, as often as not. But its uneasiness had not ruined it in three years. No one expected a civil brawl in the valley now, when rumor had it that the Lady's dreams were close to fruition.

Dreams that would make all her friends powerful, even wealthy beyond mortal dreams, and her enemies tormented, shrieking souls beyond all mortal fears.

The Lady walked behind the Maidens, her hands clasped before her slim waist. She was clad as she had been while she drew the life essence of the captives into the cup. She walked with a dignity that seemed to dare the rocks to bruise her bare feet, or the breeze that crept into the valley with the lengthening shadows to chill her bare skin.

She and the Maidens alike walked as if the presence or absence of clothing was beneath their notice and should be likewise beneath the notice of any who saw the women pass. Once only had some foolish soldier ventured a bawdy remark at this procession of well-formed women. His tongue had quite literally cleaved to the roof of his mouth, and only when it was black and stinking did the spell binding it break.

By then, of course, the festering in his mouth had reached his brain. He died raving, and those who heard him lived on with a new respect for the sorcerous power and woman's willfulness of the Lady of the Mists.

The path from the cave ran straight back along the north wall of the valley for some seven furlongs. In places it ran along a ledge carved from the living rock of the Kezankian Mountains. In other places the ledge was built up upon the rock. Sometimes it was built of stones as large as a shepherd's hut, holding together without mortar. In other places curiously thin bricks rose, layer upon layer.

One did not need to count the patches of lichen and hardy vine, silver-shot moss and ancient trees, dwarfed by wind and cold and gnarled by poor soil, to tell that the path was ancient work. An outsider who entered the valley and lived to study it might have offered many different notions about the builders of the path. All would have been partly right, all likewise partly wrong.

At the far end of the path, a flight of wooden steps led down a near-vertical slope, some eighty paces high. Beside the steps a stout wooden beam with a pulley and ropes dangling from it projected out over the drop. The Maidens tied the wine cup, poles, netting, and all, to the pulley, then two of them descended the steps. Their mistress followed, then the cup, lowered on the pulley, and at last the two remaining Maidens, after they had wound in the rope.

All five women ignored the images carved on a smooth rock face just above the wooden beam. All had seen them a score of times, and the Maidens were ignorant of their meaning.

The Lady of the Mists was not ignorant. She knew the marks of the long-dead Empire of Acheron, whose magic yet lived in barbaric corners of the world or in the hands and spells of the mad and the unlawful. She did not care to dwell too long on what these Acheronian carvings might mean.

The Lady of the Mists had many vices, but she was not so foolish as to cast spells with a mind unsettled by shadows of ancient evil.

The women gathered at the bottom of the steps. From where they stood, a path of gravel bordered by more of the curiously thin bricks led off along the floor of the valley. The Maidens lifted the cup and fell into step, while the Lady cast a quick glance into a narrow cleft in the rock at the foot of the stairs.

In that cleft night held sway at all times, but enough light crept in to show the whiteness of bleached bones within. Even without the bones, the distant but unmistakable reek of rotting flesh made nostrils wrinkle and told anyone passing by what lay within.

What came of the life essence of those whose remains lay within, the Lady trusted that she knew. There could be none other within the valley save the Mist itself, or there would be a battle from which the stars and the gods might shrink in dismay.

As to the fate of a mortal, even a sorceress, caught in such a battle, it was better not to think of such things if one needed sharp wits and untroubled sleep.

For the first few hundred paces, the path ran through stony but well-wooded land. Closely set young pines mingled their acrid scent with the softer aroma wafting from a few colossal cedars, each of which might have yielded timber enough to build an entire temple. They reared above the pines like stags above a pack of wolves, and no one who saw them needed to be told that they had stood far longer.

Beyond the trees the path wound back and forth along the floor of the valley, between terraced fields mingled with huts and more stands of timber. Twilight had already come to the valley; it was hard to make out clearly the forms of those who worked in the fields or chopped wood in the shadow of the trees.

Nor would anyone have been the worse for not seeing clearly those who served in the Valley of the

Mists. Their human semblance did not survive a close look.

At last the path began to rise, past a walled collection of thatched stone huts that almost deserved the name of a village. Here the sentries on the wall had the shape of true men, and hailed the Lady of the Mists with gestures that had been old when the priests of Stygia first tamed their sacred serpents.

Beyond the village the path became a flight of stone steps. As the crests of the mountains to the north began to show the ruddy hues of late afternoon, the five women reached a boulder, tall as two men. On the boulder was daubed, in rough vegetable colors, a crimson eye surrounded by blue swirls.

Beyond the boulder the mouth of yet another cave yawned. Within lay the Eye of the Mist.

Conan did not doubt that if waiting alone was needed, he and his Afghulis had the advantage today. The Turanians lay or stood under the desert sun, baking like flatbread on a griddle, unable to move a finger without being observed. Conan and the Afghulis had concealment, and some at least had shade.

The besiegers might have more water than the besieged; but in this desert, waterskins swiftly ran dry even among the finest regular soldiers. Irregulars would be dry-throated before dawn, with no recourse but to send out a watering party and divide their strength, or else lift the siege.

But the outcome of this siege did not depend on who could squat the longest on hot rock or yet hotter sand. It would depend on whether Conan's band could win free before the Turanians brought up new strength. Then they could hold the Afghulis besieged for weeks or overwhelm them in a single desperate assault, spending lives to save time.

Conan did not think much of the sort of captain who tossed away the lives of his men like a drunkard pissing in the streets. But he also knew far too well that the gods did not always reward virtue, whether in war, love, or thievery.

The Turanians had to be drawn into an attack.

Conan uncoiled, as stealthily as any prowling serpent of the priests of Set. He flattened himself against the side of the cleft and gripped a well-shaped stone the size of a swan's egg.

"Ho, Turanian dogs!" he shouted. "Have any of you the courage to face men? Or did your weaning on vulture's spew take away your manhood?"

Conan went on in similar vein, until among the Turanians heads bobbed up from behind bushes or turned toward the rocks. A sergeant cursed those who had let themselves be baited, and advanced to push them down again.

From aloft, an arrow whistled down, taking the sergeant in the throat. He clawed at the jutting shaft, gobblings turning into chokings as the blood welled up in his throat, then fell backward to kick briefly before life departed.

That was one less leader to force wisdom down the dry throats of foolish Turanians. Soon there might be none to hold back the besiegers from a desperate attack, or rally them when the Afghulis repelled that attack.

Curses and a few arrows replied to the sergeant's death. One Turanian showed folly at once, leaping up to aim his shaft. Conan's heavy-thewed right arm flashed around like the lash of a drover's whip. The stone flew, not as straight as it might have from a sling, but straight enough to strike the Turanian's chest.

Also hard enough to shatter his ribs and drive their jagged ends into his heart. He took longer to die than the sergeant, but his life had just as thoroughly departed when a comrade rushed out to drag the body to shelter.

Loyalty bought only death. Three Afghulis shot together, two hit, and the loyal comrade was dead before he had stretched his length on the sand beside his friend.

From high above, Farad's voice chanted an old Afghuli verse, in honor to a worthy foe. Conan wished Mitra's favor for the dead Turanian—if Mitra or any other god cared much about how men died or had aught to do with their fate once dead.

He also wished the Turanians would either charge or flee. This endless waiting was no pleasure to him either. The sooner this came to strokes at close quarters, the better.

Conan squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand against the glare of the sun. He was seeking the captain, to see how much command he had over his men.

He found the captain swiftly, but for a long time after that, the captain showed all the animation of a temple image. At least it seemed a long time. Flies drawn by the sweat on the Cimmerian's scarred torso buzzed and stung, but he dared not slap at them, for fear the movement might draw a wild shot.

Then movement rippled along the Turanian lines, both the outer one in the distance and the hidden men closer to hand. From the outer line a drum thudded. Another drum replied, not an echo. For a moment Conan feared that the Turanian reinforcements had already arrived.

Then, from the same direction as the second drum, Turanian war cries rose into the sky. The drum redoubled its beat; a horn joined it. From above, Farad's voice howled defiance, wordless but eloquent.

Conan cursed, dry-mouthed. That Turanian captain had more wits than the Cimmerian had thought. He was launching one attack to draw the archers above. Next had to come an attack against Conan himself.

So be it. Even without the bows playing on them from above, the Turanians were about to learn more than was likely to please them about the perils of fighting desperate men.

No steps or path led to the cave of the Eye. Only bare ground lay beneath the women's feet, but ground beaten almost as hard as rock by many feet over the past three years (also, the Lady did not doubt, by feet past counting over years equally beyond her power to number).

The wide mouth of the cave narrowed swiftly to a passage so low that two of the Maidens' hair brushed the ceiling. Rock dust powdered their tresses, and small stones and the bones of bats and other dwellers in darkness crunched underfoot.

No light reached the tunnel once they were beyond the light from the cave mouth. Nor did they light torches. They had been this way many times, the Lady and her Maidens, and the path to the Eye held no surprises. Nor could it grow any, with the Lady's magic searching ahead.

Only the eye of the Lady's memory saw the carvings on the walls. To an uninitiated eye and mind, they might have appeared natural formations, eroded into their bizarre and twisted shapes by water over the aeons. To the Lady's eye, which had looked upon them in full light only once, they spoke of the work of hands so ancient that they might not have been altogether human.

Men—no, beings—with minds and skilled hands had dwelled in this and other caves in the Kezankian Mountains when other men were laying the foundations of Atlantis. "Kull of Atlantis" was a name that conjured up vistas of unbelievable antiquity, but when these carvings took shape, Kull's most remote ancestor had yet to see the light of day.

The chill breath of the cave wafting from the bowels of the mountains had no power against the Lady, for all that she remained as bare as ever. The thought of the weight of years pressing down upon her did give her a chill, the kind of chill to the heart and soul that neither hearth-fire nor posset cup can ease.

None of this showed in her steady pace or her straight back. She might have been a figure of ivory or alabaster in some buried temple.

Then the five women came out of the darkness into the light—the light of the Eye. It was a crimson light, subtly different from the light within the cup, as two rubies may differ one from the other. It flowed upward as if it had been a liquid from a hole in the floor of a rock chamber some thirty paces wide.

The hole was half a man's height in width, and the rock around its rim was worn away to glassy smoothness that made for treacherous footing. This did not halt or even slow the steady pace of the five women. They marched straight up to the rim. The Lady raised a hand, and the Maidens halted, then turned to stand two on each side of the hole.

Now the cup hung suspended over the hole—and was the lid rattling faintly, like distant bones tossed by the wind? Did what lay within the Eye call to what lay within the cup? The Lady knew that in this place it was both easy and perilous to imagine sounds beyond the ear and sights beyond the eye.

Another gesture seemed to turn the Maidens to statues. Only the slightest rise and fall of their breasts said that they yet lived. A third gesture, and the cup lifted from the leather net and rose into the air.

It had barely risen above the Maidens' heads when they came to life, drawing aside and back with more haste than dignity. No command reached them; none was needed. They had not been among those who saw the fate of a Maiden who was a laggard in drawing away from the Eye, but all of the Maidens had heard the tale.

They had heard how the Mist rose from the Eye before the Maiden was beyond its reach. They had heard of how obscenely it dealt with her, as though it had the mind of a mad executioner. They had, above all, heard how she screamed as she died.

The Maidens withdrew all the way to the mouth of the tunnel, leaving the Lady alone with the cup and the crimson incandescence from the Eye. She sat down, cross-legged, as ever insensible of cold stone against her flesh, and raised both hands. She also closed her eyes. Even guarded by sorcery, mortal eyes were not meant to see what came next.

The crimson light grew stronger. Now it gave a demonic hue to the flesh of the Lady and her Maidens. There were no words in lawful tongues to describe what it did to the cup and above all to the sigil-bearing lid.

The light also drove every vestige of darkness from the chamber. In that hellish illumination, one might have seen that the walls of the chamber were as bare as the Lady, but too smooth to be the work of nature. Here again was the work of races long dead, and perhaps leaving the world the better for their passing.

The light began to dance, and at the same time turn color. The crimson faded, and an unwholesome shade of purple took its place. Then the purple faded to a livid blue that might have seemed natural had it not swirled and danced like a mist being blown away by a strong wind. The Mist rose the height of two men from the Eye, but did not reach a finger's breadth over the edge of the hole.

The Mist might have been held within a bottle of marvelously clear glass, except that nothing confined it save the Lady's magic—and perhaps the will of the Mist of Doom.

The Lady was now as devoid of the power to move or speak as the Maidens were. In this moment her magic passed directly from her mind to the Mist, or not at all. With arts learned long ago and in great suffering, she drove down to the lowest levels of her mind any fear of what might happen if the Mist did not respond as it had in the past.

In the next moment, the Lady's fear and the cup alike were gone. The Mist whirled until it seemed only a column of blue light rising from the Eye. Then it shot up until it reached the ceiling and sprayed across it, more like a jet of water than something as intangible as mist.

The cup burst aloft with the rising Mist. It was still beyond the Lady to move, but she turned the focus of her mind from the Mist to the cup. She shaped her will into invisible fingers, slid them under the cup, and held it as the Mist drew back into the Eye.

Only then was the bond broken, and the Lady able to use her body, limbs and mouth alike, to conjure the cup to a gentle landing. It was some while before the Maidens came out to pick it up, because they had to wait until the Lady herself ceased trembling.

When they had the cup safely within the net again, they gathered around their mistress. They did not need to speak, only lift her gently and guide her back to the tunnel. Perhaps one of them might have looked at the rock pressing down overhead and uttered a short prayer to her patron gods that they all live to stand under the open sky again.

If they did, it did not concern the Mist of Doom.

Enough time for a hasty meal had already crawled by, the slower for the sun. Soon it would be long enough for a banquet since the Turanians at Conan's rear had attacked, and still those before him remained low or out of bowshot.

Conan wondered if some cunning climber among the Turanians had found a way up the far side of the rocks and led his comrades into a battle at close quarters. Or at least high enough to lie in wait, ready to swarm forward when their comrades attacked from the south.

They would learn a harsh lesson about attacking hillmen among rocks if they had been so bold. But teaching that lesson might well keep the Afghulis too busy to help Conan.

He was about to call up to Farad, to bid him scout the north face of the rocks, when a trumpet sounded far to the Turanian right, out of Conan's sight. A brazen reply floated on the breeze from the left, the trumpeter as invisible as his comrade.

Plain to anyone but a blind man was a score or more of Turanians gathering themselves to plunge forward in a desperate attack. Conan had barely finished counting them when he saw a half-score of horsemen caracoling just outside bowshot. At first he thought the reinforcements had arrived. Then he recognized some of the Turanians' headdresses.

The mounted men, it seemed, were a second wave, to follow on the heels of the first one. Conan's respect for the enemy captain rose higher. A good plan—if the first wave could ever be persuaded to move forward.

Then in the next moment that work of persuasion was done, and the Turanians leaped from cover and ran toward the rocks. Conan nocked an arrow, shot, nocked another, shot it, and was nocking a third when arrows from above tumbled two more Turanians in the sand.

That made one in five down before they even reached close quarters, but no more arrows came from above and the Turanians came on as if a purse of gold lay ahead or demons snapped at their heels. Conan continued shooting. The Turanians were coming as straight toward him as if the rocks were glass or a tavern dancer's veils, covering all, concealing nothing.

One more Turanian fell, but to no mortal hurt; he unslung his bow and began scattering arrows about the rocks above Conan's head. His comrades ran on—and now from above, Conan heard familiar Turanian war cries, Afghuli curses, and oaths in the tongues of more than a few other folk.

The Turanian host was like the gallows—it refused no man who came to it. Conan owed his own career in Turan to that habit.

Only moments after battle was joined above, it was joined below. The remaining Turanians crossed to the foot of the rocks unmolested from above. Now even an Afghuli with no foes closer to hand could hardly strike at them, or they at him.

The bow had not, however, made other and more ancient weapons harmless. How many rocks the Afghulis had piled ready, Conan did not know, but they seemed to rain from the sky. Three Turanians went down, two rose again, and one of these died as Conan flung a smaller stone to crack his skull.

Now the Cimmerian's long legs drove his feet against one of the boulders placed ready. It squealed like a slaughtered pig as it rubbed past another rock, then reached the open slope and began to roll.

Before it was well launched, Conan threw his feet against a second boulder. Then a third, and on to a fourth that needed one foot and both arms. Even the Cimmerian's thews strained at the last rock, fresh sweat made slime of the dust on his forehead, and for a dreadful moment it seemed that the boulder would be his match.

Then it followed the others. Conan leaped back as arrows whistled through the space he had occupied. He had just time to see half the Turanians scattering before the onslaught of the boulders, before the vanguard of the other half reached him.

Now it was the deadliest kind of close-quarters fighting, with all the art of a tavern brawl but much more steel and therefore far more bloodshed. Conan had two aims: to kill as many Turanians as he could, and to keep the fight so tangled that no Turanian with a bow could end the fight with a single arrow.

Conan had not despised bowmen as cowards even before he learned the art of the bow, for the art of the sling was well-known in his native land. But no one could doubt that a well-aimed shaft had brought many a fine swordsman to an untimely end.

Conan would accept his end when the gods called him to it. But their call would reach him among the ranks of his enemies, sword in hand.

The Cimmerian had a head's advantage in height and two spans in reach over the stoutest of his opponents. Add that his broadsword was better fitted for this battle than the tulwars of Turan, and ten-to-one odds were not so long as they might have seemed.

Conan hewed the sword arm from his first opponent and sundered the skull of the second. Both fell so as to block the narrow passage to the Cimmerian for those behind. The first one to hesitate did so within reach of the Cimmerian's sword, and died of that mistake. Two others leaped free with only minor wounds, but barred a clear shot to archers behind.

Conan feared that this good fortune would not last; now more than ever he would not assume his foes were witlings. So he took the fight to the enemy, closing the distance to the two nearest in a single leap.

He struck them with as much force as a boulder. One man toppled against the rock wall, hard enough to knock himself senseless. Conan kicked the other, hard enough to double him over. A tulwar fell from one hand, a dagger from the other, and the man himself fell on top of them when the Cimmerian split his skull with a down-cut.

Another Turanian leaped up to contest the rock with Conan. Now blood from the already fallen flowed over it, making it slick. The Cimmerian was a hillman of the breed of whom it is said they have eyes in their feet. He knew how to keep his footing on slippery rock, and make an opponent lose his.

The Turanian tried to grapple, praying aloud, clearly hoping to take Conan down with him. Conan slapped the man across the temple with the flat of his sword, weakening his grip. That weakened grip let the Cimmerian draw his dagger and thrust fiercely upward. The Turanian howled and flew backward from the rock, propelled by a kick that added further ruin to his belly and groin.

He struck a comrade, again with the force of a boulder, and both men went down. Conan reached them before the unwounded Turanian could rise, stamped on his chest hard enough to shatter ribs, then fended off two and killed one enemy seeking to drag the fallen clear.

Arrows again whistled and clattered. One ripped the skin over his ribs, deep enough that blood flowed freely over the dust and the scars. The wound would hardly slow him and might not even add a fresh scar, but he was reminded that he now stood in the open. He had routed or slain all the Turanians who shielded him from their comrades' arrows. Now he had to either push forward to bring the fight back to close quarters, or withdraw.

A look down the slope told him the wisdom of withdrawing. The first wave of Turanians was out of the fight, and the survivors of the second showed no disposition to close. Three of them had fallen to the boulders, which had also crushed the life out of the archer the Afghulis had wounded. The others retained some cunning with the bow but no heart for pushing the fight to swords' reach of the Cimmerian.

Another arrow nicked Conan's left calf as he returned to his refuge. He had taken worse hurts in a friendly wrestling bout, but they reminded him that the Afghulis above might not have fared as well. That no arrows had come down from above during his own grapple with the Turanians might mean sundry things, but none of them good.

"Ho!" he called, in the same dialect he had used before. "How are matters with you?"

"Assad is dead and Kurim is hurt past fighting. None of us are whole. Those Turanian dogs climbed the rocks as if they were men, but we taught them otherwise."

"How many learned the lesson?"

"A few short of fifty."

"I didn't know you could count that high, O brother of a camel!"

Silence, then Farad said, "More than ten, for we have counted that many bodies and some rolled back down."

On the Cimmerian's reckoning, the Turanians had lost another third of their strength. Ride out now, while the Turanians were shaken and weak, or wait until night, when darkness would hide tracks and coolness ease the horses?

"Can the hurt ride now?"

"Best wait for dark. I will leave none save Assad, and not even he if we can. Rastam and Jobir are already down among those dogs, prey to their godless rites."

Conan knew the sound of an Afghuli who would not be moved from his decision. To his mind, riding out now made better sense, giving the Turanians no chance to bring up reinforcements.

Out of care for his men, Farad clearly thought otherwise. Question the Afghuli further, and the Cimmerian might have to leave this loyal band to keep Farad's knife out of his back some night farther on the road to Koth. One could ask only so much of any Afghuli if one was not of his tribe.

So be it. They would all ride that road together, or remain here on the rocks with a good guard of Turanians to help them greet the vultures.

Four

The western horizon swallowed the sun. Swiftly the last light of day drained from the sky. The peaks of the Kezankian Mountains turned purple, then gray under the starlight.

A natural mist veiled the entrance to the Lady's valley as Muhbaras walked down to his tent. Or at least it was a mist that he could persuade himself was work of the mountain night and not of the Lady's magic.

Reason warred and would continue to war against ancient tales of the mighty magic lurking in these mountains—magic of which the Lady might have a sadly imperfect command. The captain had first heard those tales from his nursemaid, but later years had brought to his ears other versions of them, so that he doubted they were altogether an old woman's fancies.

Meanwhile, he had been given orders and men with which to carry them out, as an alternative to a more permanent exile or some harsher fate. He doubted that he himself would ever see Khoraja again, but he could not throw away his men out of his own despair.

So he would do his duty of the night, and sleep, to make ready for whatever might be the duties of the day.

The rocks returned the heat of day to the night sky arching above them. Within the ravine the horses stirred uneasily. A pebble fell from high above, followed by two more. Then one by one, the last four Afghulis scrambled down the rocks.

One of them had a dead comrade's headdress wrapped around his arm as a bandage. He also showed dark beads of blood on his lower lip, where he had bitten it to stifle a cry of pain.

The Afghulis gathered around Conan, eyes gleaming in their dark faces. They had braided their beards and tied them roughly with scraps of cloth, then drawn scarves over their necks and chins. That was the Afghuli mark of having sworn to conquer or to die.

Conan had sworn no such oath. Indeed, he had seldom fought any other way, and it was not in him to do so tonight. The greatest kindness the Turanians might show him was a quick death, and that, he could always procure for himself.

"Anyone who has water, give it to your horse."

Conan said. "Archers, don't shoot unless you have a good mark, and take a horse before you take a rider."

The Afghulis nodded. Conan hardly doubted that he was telling them what they already knew, and that they needed no reassurance, he knew as well. But a chief among the Afghulis always spoke to his assembled men before the battle, if only to prove that fear had not dried his tongue past speaking.

"If we are divided, the meeting place is at the Virgin's Oasis." He gave distances and landmarks, then asked, "Questions?"

Farad spoke up. "Yes. Whenever did the gods allow a woman to come into this desert and remain a virgin?"

"A long time ago, or so I've heard," the Cimmerian replied. "Men were less than they are today, in that time, and of course, none of them were Afghulis."

Bawdy laughter all but raised echoes, so that Conan held a finger to his lips. "The Turanians are not all asleep, and not all who wake are fools. Speed and silence now, or we'll keep our lost comrades company."

In silence the Afghulis bowed, then turned to tend their horses.

Only the dead remained high on the ridge, hands stiffening over the hilts of daggers thrust between their ribs according to the Afghuli custom. Thus the harsh gods of that still harsher land would know that a friend's steel had pierced their hearts, and that their ghosts would be friends to the living, even watchful on their behalf.

If the ghosts of the Afghulis' dead watched this night, they saw nothing, or at least sent no word to their living friends. Below on the desert, neither Afghuli nor Cimmerian saw shadows creep across a distant sand dune, then sink silently to rest. They did not see a messenger slipping away from the outer line of the watching Turanians, also creeping shadowlike until he was beyond seeing from the rocks.

Far out beyond the crests, only ghosts might have seen him mount a horse held ready by four riders who bore the lances and shields of Turanian regular cavalry and the colors of the crack Greencloaks. Only ghosts might have seen him ride off into the night, until he met a slim, youthful-looking Turanian captain not far from where the shadows had come to rest.

And only ghosts might have heard his message to the captain, or noted the captain's thin face split briefly in a wry grin.

Three Afghuli archers climbed on the highest boulders remaining after the battle. They were fewer in number and with less command of the slope below than Conan could have wished. But he now led fewer than he had at dawn, and of those, not all were fighting-fit. Warriors did the best they could with what they had, and if the end came sooner because what they had was not enough—

Conan asked two Afghulis to repeat the directions to the Virgin's Oasis. They both knew the way. Then he scrambled onto the boulders with the archers, as Farad led the others out into the open.

Neither drums, trumpets, showers, nor even the mating-cat squall of a frightened sentry greeted the Afghulis' appearance. It began to seem that they would either enjoy good luck or face a trap.

Conan swallowed a Cimmerian war cry. Glad to defy alert opponents, he refused to alert sleeping ones. Instead he slapped Farad's mount on the rump and swung into his own saddle. He raised one hand in a cheerfully obscene Afghuli gesture, waited until the three archers scrambled down and mounted, then spurred his horse forward.

The riders streamed down the slope at a brisk trot, raising a ghostly cloud of dust. In the chill of the desert night, the breath of men and horses added will-o'-the-wisps of vapor to the dust.

They passed dead men lying stiff and silent, doomed men still moaning against their coming death, and a few who Conan thought might have been shamming. There was no time to send those last to join their comrades, for all that this would leave them alive in the riders' rear. This was a ride for life. If it became a battle, it would most likely be one lost because it took place at all!

Once they were clear of the shadow of the rocks, the moon gave enough light to permit avoiding holes and cracks in the ground. They held their speed down to a trot. The horses might not be able to keep up a canter. If they could, best to save it for when the Turanians sighted them. The Turanians could not have drawn back so far that even by night the escape would remain forever invisible.

Or could they? As one rise gave way to another without an attack or even a warning cry, Conan began to wonder. His band had punished the Turanians soundly in today's fighting. Had they drawn off to lick their wounds while they waited for reinforcements?

A trap still seemed more likely, but there seemed no need to warn his men. The Afghulis appeared more alert than ever, riding with bows strung or tulwars drawn, eyes ceaselessly roaming the night, heads turning at any slight sound heard above the thud of the horses' hooves.

They had been moving now for long enough to empty a jug of wine worth savoring. Conan felt a familiar itch between his shoulder blades that hinted of danger close in time and space. He raised a hand, and the Afghulis reined in and gathered around him.

Night-keen eyes roamed again, studying every hillock and the mouth of every ravine for signs of lurking danger. Only a dry wash was too deep in shadow to spy out. Conan studied it until he was sure that he saw something move within the shadows, and was equally sure that it was only his imagination. He had stood sentry too often not to know that the night will listen to a man's fears and, if he stares into it long enough, show his what is not there.

Conan pointed toward the north, away from the wash. "I want to ride well clear of that. Men on that flank, grow some more eyes if you can. Otherwise you may never see the Virgin's Oasis, let alone a living virgin!"

Low chuckles rose into the night along with the steam from the horses, and the band moved off again.

The young captain cursed softly at the noise the sentries made sending the message. Their quarry might not be as desert-wise as Turanian veterans, but they were seasoned warriors and no fools in any kind of land.

Then he cursed again at the message. The Afghulis were indeed no fools, and they had a very watchful and longheaded warrior leading them, even if he were not the man the captain thought he was. Two of the three bands the captain had placed ready would now find it hard to come up with the Afghulis.

The captain was not much of a one for prayer, as few gods promised much (their priests promised more, but who could trust a priest?), and fewer still kept their promises. However, he did briefly ask Mitra to consider his probable fate if tonight more of his men died trying to take alive the wrong man.

The Afghulis' leader certainly seemed to be the one the captain sought. But the captain had not been able to get a true and complete description of the leader. Part was because few of the men who had a close look at him yet lived. Part was not wishing to raise suspicions of the leader's identity in the minds of the captain's own men.

It would not matter that the reason for which the captain wished the man taken alive served Turan. Accusations of treason floated about freely now in the kingdom, like rotten lilies in the scum atop a stagnant pond. Even if the charge stopped short of treason— popular, because it carried the death penalty, and the captain had enemies who would not sleep easy as long as he lived—it could mean demotion.

That in turn could mean a choice between returning to his family's estates, and living there until some further intrigue snatched him away, or a post counting horseshoes and saddle blankets so far to the south that the nomads spoke Iranistani. Here was a post of honor, more honorable still in that he commanded Greencloaks and had won their respect. He would not part with it alive.

The desert breeze did blow through the captain's mind one final thought. If the man leading the Afghulis was the one the captain sought, the matter of life or death might not be altogether the captain's choice. He had seen the man fight years ago, and by all reports, he was as hardy as ever and seasoned by many more battles and journeys during those years.

The captain put an end to his fretting and raised his lance. Beside him a sergeant raised his lance, with a small one-eye lantern dangling from the tip like a pennon.

Three hills away, a similar lantern glimmered against the stars, then faded as its bearer turned away, to pass the signal on. The captain waited until the soft jingle of harness and taut, shallow breaths around him told of veterans ready to ride out.

Then the captain drove in his spurs, and his horse surged down the wash as clouds drifted toward the moon.

Conan cursed briefly, but this time not softly, as the riders swarmed out of the wash. It was no comfort to have been right when it was too late for being right to matter.

He would have cursed again, but he had better uses for his breath at this moment, and besides, he feared to dishearten the Afghulis. Stout warriors as they were, they were also at the end of their endurance. What small hope they had of winning free now depended on every man fighting so that the first few enemies to come within his reach died swiftly and bloodily.

After that, the new Turanians might be as disheartened as the old ones.

And elephants might turn purple—in the daylight, in the sight of sober men.

Conan pulled the mare's head toward the left. The right of a line might be the post of honor in civilized hosts, but here was neither civilization nor host. The post of honor was that closest to danger, and to enemies who would feel the Cimmerian's steel before either he or they died.

"Spurs in, swords out, and heads down!" he called, as he drew up in the leftmost place.

"What—?" someone began. Someone else snarled in wordless fury, at the folly of not seeing that the time for arguing was past.

The first speaker fell silent. Then there was no human sound from Conan's band, or at least none heard over the thud of the hooves, the panting of the horses through flared nostrils, and the rising thunder of the pursuing Turanians.

It was a long bowshot even for the best archer, and night shooting was a chancy business when arrows were scant. Before long the clouds reaching out for the moon blotted out the silver-sheened disk and a deeper darkness fell over the desert. Now the race for life was up to the horses.

No Afghuli horses had fallen, but half were staggering and foam-flecked, when Conan heard a war trumpet cry out to the stars from behind his band. Then the desert night grew colder, a coldness that thrust into his bowels like an enemy's spear, when he heard the trumpet answered ahead.

It was some distance off, as far as the Cimmerian's keen and seasoned ears could judge, but it surely lay across the Afghulis' path to whatever safety the open desert might offer tonight. Now the Turanians would not even have to wolf-pack their prey. They could close and crush by sheer weight of numbers, once they had blocked the path.

Conan's eyes searched the shadows, looking for even a few scattered rocks that might help in a last stand. They faced nothing better, but it mattered to him how many foes he took with him, and the Afghulis were warriors of the same stamp.

Nothing but sand and gravel revealed itself, dunes swelling and sinking down to washes and ravines too shallow to hide a mounted man. The clouds held their veil over the moon; everything beyond half-bowshot vanished in the shadows even to Conan's keen night-sight.

Both horns sounded again, and both now closer. Conan listened, trying to judge if the Turanians ahead were drawing across his path, or were still off to one flank. If they were on one flank, and either good going for the horses or cover for the men lay on the other—

Conan's ears searched the night, and he realized that he had clutched his sword hilt so tightly that his nails dinted the shagreen grip. Then he laughed, and no sane man would have heard that laugh without fear colder than the night, for it held a Cimmerian's battle rage.

The Turanians ahead were still some ways to the left of the path of Conan's band. In the darkness, they might not realize this until it was too late. The trap had been well set and now was truly sprung, but might it not be too weak to hold such formidable prey?

This might be whistling into the desert wind, but Conan held that thought in his mind as a starving wildcat grips a squirrel. He had led too often to doubt that in such moments the men of a war band could all but read their leader's thoughts. They had best read hope and courage there, or the battle was lost before it was fairly joined.

The ground to the right did lie open, but it also rose steeply between two shallow ridges. Conan's eyes raked the ridge crests, found nothing up there, but then saw an Afghuli's mount stumble. The rider bent over to whisper encouragement and at the same time apply the spur, but the horse was spent. It went down, flinging its rider clear. The horseman leapt to his feet, darted for one of the spare mounts, gripped the saddle, and swung himself into it without the fresh horse missing a step.

"Ya-haaaaa!" Conan shouted. With such men under him, the Turanians would have another battle to remember before they shoveled him under the sand or left him for the vultures. They might even win free, if they reached the top of the slope and found no enemies there.

The Afghulis reached the top of the slope, but in no way fit to flee beyond it. The climb had been too much for their horses, one of whom flung its rider off at once. Conan heard the deadly thud of a skull striking rock, and saw that the man did not move after he fell.

"Ya-haaaa!" Conan shouted again, and wheeled his mount. Beyond the ridges to either side lay darkness and perhaps ground fit to conceal a man on foot. This was no desert for a man on foot, unless he was as hardy as an Afghuli and as ready to make those pursuing him wary of closing.

But there was only one way to buy time for the Afghulis, and only one man fit to pay the price. Conan's horse staggered as he brutally jerked her head around, until she was facing down the slope. Then he drove in his spurs.

As his charge gathered way, he heard a voice rise above the hoof thunder of the onrushing Turanians. Half-lost in the blare of trumpets, it seemed from all sides, it yet sounded curiously familiar. But the man whose name the voice conjured up would never have given such a mad order as the one Conan heard now.

"Take the big one alive, at all costs!"

Someone cared little for the lives of his men tonight or their obedience tomorrow, if he thought that would be an easy task against the Cimmerian.

In the next moment the night seemed to turn solid with the onrushing shapes of mounted men. They bore lances, and crouched in the saddle both to pro-tect themselves and to thrust low. They did not succeed in doing the first. Conan cut five men out of the saddle as his mount crashed through their line.

But three lances and a sword left a cruel mark on Conan's mare. She screamed like a damned soul and had the strength to rear so violently that the Cimmerian lost his seat. He slid backward, landing spring-legged as his horse fell, blood flowing from her mouth as well as her wounds. His drawn sword hissed in a deadly arc before him and to either side, and the screams of Turanian horses drowned out the mare's death rattle.

Then the butt of a lance came down on his shoulder. It jarred even Conan's muscle-armored limb to the bone, and his sword turned in his hand as he slashed at the lance-bearer. The barbarian opened the man's chest, even through a coat of good Turanian mail, but Conan's sword stuck for a moment.

Another lance thrust forward, ripping across Conan's forearm. The shock, more than the pain or the damage, forced open his hand. His sword fell. Conan drew his dagger and leapt for the first horseman he could see—which left him open to three on his left and rear whom he could not.

All struck with lance-butts, and the darkness of the desert night poured into Conan's brain and swallowed up his being.

The young captain reined in just outside sword's reach from the circle of men around the fallen Afghuli leader. He did not doubt the obedience of his men, even though his orders had doubtless cost some their lives and more blood and pain. He did doubt that after such a fight in such darkness, all saw clearly.

"Who passes there?"

Good, it was Sergeant Barak. He was as hard to excite as a sand dune, and nearly as hard to move.

"The scarred captain." Why did he name himself so? The man on the ground might be the wrong one, and if he was the right one, he was still most likely as senseless as a prayer carpet.

No matter. It had been an impulse, of the sort the captain had learned to trust over many years. Trusting them was one of the things that had guarded his back from his enemies and his king alike—if in fact these were different.

"Make way for the captain," Barak called, pitching his voice to carry without raising it to his normal bull's roar. The captain dismounted as the circle of men opened, and stepped forward to see what lay on the ground within it.

It was the man the captain had been seeking. He was breathing and looked to be intact as to limb and vital organs. If this was so, even if the blood that covered him was partly his, he would heal swiftly and be fit to fight soon enough for the captain's plans. The best part of ten years had not taken much from the man's colossal vitality, unless all the tales of him that had reached the captain's ears were lies.

"How many of our comrades are dead?"

Muttered answers said little, until the sergeant called for silence and asked a few sharp questions.

"Nine, lord, and five more gravely hurt."

"I will reward the kin of all who died here tonight, and the living who are past service will likewise be free of want."

Whether shaken, respectful, or merely prudent when no one knew who spied where, the men were silent. None asked, "With what?" which would have been a more than reasonable question to anyone who did not know the captain's hidden resources.

Not even their being hidden could save a single brass piece, however, if this plan miscarried. The captain misliked hiding even part of the truth, but he had to admit that this was no time to pour out all of it, like flinging the contents of a chamber pot from an attic window.

"How many men had he with him?" was the captain's next question.

"We slew or took seven," the sergeant said. "Most likely there was a handful more, from the horses. But they've run off the gods alone know where."

The sergeant, like the wise of his kind, knew how to tell an officer distasteful truths without putting them into words. The man's tone and, even in the darkness, his stance told him that the men would not readily charge off into the desert night, seeking the last Afghulis.

Nor was there any need for them to do so. Those who fled were of small concern. The captives, on the other hand—

"How many taken?"

"Two who will live, and one who will not see dawn."

"Cut his throat and say proper rites over him. Bind the others' wounds, likewise this one's, and prepare horse litters for them. We ride for the Virgin's Oasis when this is done."

Barak was not the only one to bow his head and say, "As you command, my lord." He also was not the only one whose face showed doubt as to the cause of this—if it had any cause but their captain's sudden madness!

Five

Conan awoke in a tent. This was no surprise. Nor was it any surprise that his feet were chained to a stout stake driven into the ground in the middle of the tent. Wrist irons connected by another length of chain restrained his hands, but left him free to reach a jug of water and a plate of flat Turanian bread on the ground beside him.

The real surprise was his being awake and alive at all. The captain clearly had more than common control over his men, that they obeyed his orders to capture the Cimmerian alive after such a bloodbath as the final fight. Conan felt bruises, grazes, and one or two gashes, but none were more than he had expected, and all seemed to have been cleaned, poulticed, and even dressed.

Somebody—call him the captain—wanted Conan alive. For what purpose, the Cimmerian could only guess. He vowed to ask the first man who came in, and if the answer was not to his liking—well, there was enough scope in the chains that he could strangle at least one man. And if he could break the chains, as he had broken chains at least as stout when he was younger and had nothing but bull-strength—a broken chain made a weapon wise men feared.

Conan sat up, thirst crackling in his mouth and throat and thunder rumbling in his head. Awkwardly, he lifted the jug and emptied it in a few swallows. He was reaching for the bread when he saw movement behind one flap of the tent door.

"Call this food!" he shouted. "Bring me some meat fit for a man, or send your captain and I'll devour him!"

The tent flap shook violently as the Cimmerian's wrath propelled the unseen listener out into the open, then fell still. Conan's laughter sent bread sliding off the plate. Then he was too busy making the bread disappear to care further about the fugitive.

The bread had been coarse when fresh and was now stale as well, but food meant strength for the next fight. There would be such a fight, too. Even had Conan been disposed to submit meekly to whatever death the Turanians intended for him, there were a dozen sworn comrades to properly avenge.

There were two death sentences in force in this Turanian camp this day. The first was that which the Turanians had passed on Conan. The second was the one that Conan had passed on the men who tried to carry out the first.

By the time he had taken that resolve, Conan had emptied the plate as well as the jug. He belched in satisfaction, then cautiously tested the strength of his chains.

The test pleased him. The chains were heavy enough, but the rivets holding them to the rings were another matter. Even on that first cautious test, Conan had sensed weakness there that pleased him—and also offended him.

His father would never have taken a king's silver for such shoddy work!

The captain had awakened from a dream of breaking his fast on perfumed wine, honey cakes, and fresh fruit, in a bed furnished with silk sheets and shared with a comely lady now some years dead.

His actual fast-breaker was water, bread, and a slab of sausage. He could not recognize what meat had gone into the sausage; after three bites he decided he did not wish to know. Appetite, however, kept him eating until the sausage was down and settling, however uneasily, in his stomach.

He was trimming his mustache with his dagger when Sergeant Barak entered.

"The big prisoner is awake."

"How does he fare?"

"Healthy enough to curse the guards into fits, or so I've heard."

"A good sign. What of the others?"

"The Afghulis?"

"Is that what they are? A long way from home, I should say."

That bordered on lying. It was hardly a surprise that the man would have sworn Aghuli guards, if the tales from Afghulistan these two years past held even a kernel of truth.

It was also a near-lie in a good cause. The captain wished to know how many of his men might have some chance of recognizing the captive. The fewer, the better, at least until he and the man had sat down together and felt each other out.

"I am going to visit the captive. Have wine and sausage brought to the tent when I am there. Treat the Afghulis as common prisoners, but do not allow anyone to harm them or them to harm themselves."

"As the captain wills," Barak said. Again the captain knew he was being politely reproached.

"Are the men unhappy?"

"Not so's you'd notice, even the ones who lost friends. But they're all curious."

And unsatisfied curiosity could turn into discontent and mutiny faster than the desert wind could blow down an ill-secured tent. The captain had survived one such affray when he was barely fledged, and had no wish to face a second.

"I must speak with our captive to satisfy my own curiosity," the captain said. "But when I have satisfied mine, I will do the same for all the men."

The sergeant bowed. He seemed more resigned than happy, but that was the common view of sergeants toward superiors and superiors' plans they could not understand.

The captain finished trimming his mustache, cleaned his teeth, then garbed himself properly, including mail under his tunic, both shirt and loin-guard, and a steel cap under his headdress. Of weapons openly displayed, he bore only a dagger.

If he could make his peace with the captive, he would need no weapon at all. If not, neither sword, axe, nor bow would be sufficient.

Conan had just decided that he was unobserved and that it was time to begin loosening rivets when the tent flap shivered. Then a Turanian captain walked in, wearing silk from headdress to boot-top and a jeweled dagger in his sash.

Another of Yezdigerd's well-born lapdogs, was the Cimmerian's first thought.

Then he noticed that the silk was heavy enough to wear well, and stained and patched from much hard service. The sash had the subtle bulges of one weighted to serve as a weapon, and the steel of the dagger probably cost as much as the jewels. Nor did the man move like a courtier, more like a young wolf for all that he was at least a head shorter than the Cimmerian.

"Well, Captain Conan. I will not now say well met, but I will ask if you remember me."

Conan knew the Turanian tongue well enough that he could have composed verse in it had he ever felt the desire to compose verse at all. The captain's accent was that of the very highest nobility—so wellborn, he was, if no lapdog.

The Cimmerian studied his visitor, whom he began to think he had indeed seen before. He thought the man had been thinner and the beard not so faded by years of desert sun, but above the beard—

"Crom!"

"Not I, Conan. I would not sit on a throne of ice in a cold wasteland, glowering at all men who dare ask me for the smallest favor. Or is that some other Cimmerian god?"

"That is close enough, Khezal son of Ahlbros. Or Khezal's twin brother, if ever he had such."

"There is only one and he stands before you."

"Well, sit, then. It will never be said that I made an old comrade stand in my presence, even when I'm not at my best for giving hospitality."

Something Conan could not readily name passed over Khezal's face at the words "old comrade." So the man put some value on that, did he? Enough, maybe, to explain what he planned and what part the Cimmerian had in those plans?

Khezal sat down. He seemed to move a trifle more stiffly now.

"New wounds, Khezal? Or the old ones bothering you more with the passing years?"

"Conan, I'm three years younger than you, which hardly makes me a stiffening dotard drowsing by the fireside. Can you shape your tongue to questions that are neither impertinent nor insulting?"

If Conan had held any doubt of Khezal's identity, it was fast fading. The wry speech was that of the young captain, hardly more than a boy, who had fought beside Conan against the beasts created by the Jewels of Kurag. The best part of ten years had made the manner sit better on him, like a masterpiece of a saddle on a horse, but had not changed it past recognition.

"If this question is either, may Erlik's hounds bite off your stones. What of my men?"

"We have given rites to three, and hold two honorably captive. The others have fled."

"May I see them?"

"When we have—"

"Now."

"Conan, you are hardly in the best position to make conditions."

"On the contrary, I'm in a fine position. You want something from me. As long as I refuse it, you are worse off than I."

"Your position could be made worse."

"How, without risking my death? Dead men help no living man's schemes, as I'm sure I need not tell you."

Khezal muttered something that invoked unlawful parts of a number of still less lawful gods. Conan laughed.

"I'm not meaning to begin our new friendship with a quarrel. Not if there's to be a friendship, which I imagine there is, or I'd have awakened with my throat cut. But a quarrel, there'll be, if I can't see my men."

"Conan, by Erlik, Mitra, Vashti, and Crom, by the blood we have shed in each other's company, by Dessa's lively legs, and by Pylia's fine breasts, I swear that your men have come to no harm."

The Cimmerian laughed. "I can almost believe that oath. How fare the ladies?"

Khezal's face turned sober. "Pylia is dead. The story goes that she challenged some younger rival to see who could wear out the most men in a single night. She won, but died of her victory."

"Remembering Pylia, I can believe that. And Dessa?"

"She keeps her own tavern, after years as Pylia's most trusted girl. Still comely, the last time I saw her, and as we thought she might, thriving as she never would have wed to some dull clerk."

"A wench after my own heart—"

"And other parts? Never mind, you are right. We are neither of us made to be clerks, either."

"No, but I am made so that I will see those men of mine, whether you help or hinder."

"Conan, were I my own master—"

"The son of one of the Seventeen Attendants, not his own master? Tell me that shrimp sing bawdy ballads, and I will believe this more easily."

Khezal's face went taut and dark, and Conan instantly realized that he had struck too deep, even in jest. He had indeed heard much of the affairs of Turan since Yezdigerd ascended the throne, to make him believe that even a man like Khezal could fall from favor. After all, why otherwise would the man be prowling the desert with Turanian cavalry patrols, instead of governing a whole province?

"I ask your pardon, Khezal. I spoke too hastily. But those men are sworn to me, and I to them."

"I doubt it not. And I am sworn to defend Turan against all its enemies, among whom you are numbered. If I am to be forsworn, the fewer who know about it, the better for us all. Informers are always cheap, and there is more than enough silver to buy them. The less you are seen until after we march, the better."

Conan had also heard that Turan now swarmed with spies as an ill-kept kitchen with vermin. If Khezal risked more than his authority over his men— risked his own life, indeed—he deserved a hearing.

He also was a battle comrade, and it was not in Conan to forget the debt he owed to such.

"Let it be as you wish, Khezal. Tell me what you want of me, and I will trust you for what comes next."

"You almost said that without smiling, Conan."

"Did I? Perhaps I'd best become a player in temple pageants, to command my face better."

"I remember seeing you draw—what was his name? Kilar?—anyway, the one with the loaded dice—into cheating you before a half-score of witnesses. One would have taken you for a temple image, not a temple player!"

"I'll thank you more for the flattery when I've heard you out. Or do the tent walls have ears?"

Khezal shrugged, then sat down cross-legged and began to speak.

Khezal had more trouble than expected, finding words to make the situation in the Kezankian Mountains clear to the Cimmerian. It was not that he distrusted Conan's wits—nobody but a fool thought the Cimmerian an overmuscled oaf, and not a few of such fools had over the years died from their mistake.

It was that, put into plain Turanian words, the menace of the Valley of the Mists seemed an old peasant wife's tale, mumbled about the fire late at night to frighten the children and the young maids into staying close to home. Time after time, Khezal heard in his mind gusty Cimmerian laughter, and hesitated before adding some detail he knew to be the truth or at least had heard from someone he trusted.

In the end, it was the Cimmerian who reduced

Khezal's words to a few brisk statements. He leaned back, managing in spite of the chains to appear as relaxed as a cream-filled cat. (It was only when the Cimmerian was half-done that Khezal noticed there was play in the rivets linking chains to wrist and leg irons that had not been there last night.)

"Something in the Kezankian Mountains is sending out raiders to snatch villagers. The tale goes that they are taken to a place called the Valley of the Mists and there sacrificed to demons."

"Some name it the Mist of Doom—" Khezal began, but Conan held up a hand with such regal dignity that the listener forgot that the hands were chained and the man himself sat upon a rough pallet, not a throne.

"If we quibble over every small detail, spies will have time to ride from Aghrapur to skulk outside the tent. If we would sound each other out on this, best we do it quickly."

With that, Khezal could hardly disagree. The Cimmerian continued.

"The demon of the mist or whatever draws on old magic is strong in the Kezankians. Fear and grief make the villagers there uneasy, also the nomad tribes between the mountains and the Turanian border. Or does Yezdigerd now claim all the land for the Kezankians and even beyond?"

"Not openly, but those with an ear for the king's true thoughts say so."

Conan snorted like a balky horse. "Trust that to set the Khorajans' teeth on edge. They've learned to live in the shadow of Turan, they and the folk of Khauran. They'll mislike having Yezdigerd's garri-sons peering over their garden walls from the slopes of the mountains."

Khezal said nothing, as there was no reply he cared to make to plain truth plainly stated. Rumors had run that Conan was developing a taste for statecraft, or at least the art of reading kings' intentions. (Not unlikely, this last—any mercenary captain who wanted to stay alive past his first employment needed that art, though not all had it.)

"Is this whole tale of demons in the mountains perhaps put about by the Khorajans?" the Cimmerian insisted.

"Folk are vanishing, certainly," Khezal replied. "Those who fight the raiders too fiercely die by human weapons. The raiders at least are human, though none can say of what folk or race."

"Probably of every folk and race in the world, if I know the kind of mercenary who hires out for this sort of dirty work," Conan said. "But no matter. The question I put to you is, why does this concern you?"

"Because my family's estates lie hard against the mountains," Khezal said. "An inheritance from my mother, and not a great one even before half went to dower my sister. But the villagers and their lands are mine."

Conan snorted again. "From what you said, I doubted that you had any lands left."

"I can tell all the sorry tales some other time and place, Conan. Here I only say that stripping me of my lands would have raised tempers, even swords, against Yezdigerd. Sending me and my Greencloaks far afield while royal agents bribe my stewards to send the revenues to Aghrapur rather than to me— that is too subtle for anyone to notice."

Conan muttered something that no listening ears could have understood but that sounded to Khezal very much like a wish that King Yezdigerd would find his manhood failing him at an awkward moment. Then he shrugged.

"I don't doubt your loyalty to your folk. You always seemed like that sort. But what will the king say? Will he say you do a lord's duty, or will someone whisper in his ear that you seek to win your people over to rebellion?"

"You've grown longheaded with the years, Conan."

"Long or short, it's the only head I have, and of more use on my shoulders than on a spike outside some Turanian prison. Which is where it's likely to end up if Yezdigerd calls this whole matter a plot against him."

Khezal took a deep breath, then let it out. It had been on the tip of his tongue to question the Cimmerian's courage. But that would have been at one and the same time foolish, perilous, and without reason.

"If he learns about it before we're done, perhaps. If we winkle the secret out of the mountains soon enough, however—"

"I'll take my reward in a safe passage out of Turanian lands, at the very least."

"Then you'll ride with us?"

"For whatever good I can do, yes. I haven't fought nearly as many demons as the tales run, though. Remember that."

"Not as many demons, but I'd wager even more men, and here you are, and where are they? Names carved on family tombs, if that much."

"Perhaps," Conan said. "I can't bind my men, however. They didn't swear to follow me against demons. If they wish to leave, they have a safe conduct good from this day forth."

Khezal did not need to ask what the price of his refusal would be. But he had to make one more effort, for the honor of his own men whose blood the Afghulis had shed.

"If they ride with you, I return—a certain bag— that was taken from you."

"With what was in it?"

Khezal smiled thinly. Perhaps the Cimmerian could be bought after all.

"Of course."

Conan sat up, so abruptly that Khezal drew back a pace. It was as well that he did. The Cimmerian flung his massive arms apart, the chain snapped free of one wrist iron, and another cat-quick movement sent the end of the chain whipping through the space Khezal had just departed.

Khezal's hand went as far as the hilt of his dagger before his wits regained command of the member.

"I think you have made your point," he said, after he had also regained command of his voice. "So I will not draw mine. One condition: I bring your men to you, unless you wish to wait for night."

"I suppose no one will suspect plots over a couple of Afghuli captives," Conan said. "As you wish. But bring some decent food for all of us when you do."

"You have had the best there is in the camp."

"What? No private stores for feasting in your tent?"

"None."

"I think I believe you, friend. Very well. More food, then, if not better. And the best doctor for their wounds, if he has not already seen them."

"He has, but he can come again."

"See that he does," the Cimmerian said. His tone was such that Khezal felt an absurd wish to make the formal bow due to a governor or leader of a host.

Instead he rose and walked out, erect but not turning his back on the Cimmerian.

Six

After winning the temporary allegiance of Conan, Khezal's dearest wish was to be gone on the quest for the Valley of the Mists as soon as possible. He would gladly have ridden out that very night, with his hundred best Greencloaks.

Indeed, he would have mortgaged a small estate, or even a large one, to pay a friendly wizard to turn all his men's cloaks into wings, that they might fly on the wind to the Kezankian Mountains. Thus might they outspeed the tales of their coming, surprising the demons and their human servants. Thus might they also settle the matter of the mountains' demons before word of Conan's presence reached unfriendly ears in Aghrapur.

However, Khezal was of much the same mind as Conan—the words "friendly" and "wizard" did not belong in the same sentence. Both would also have doubted that even a wizard who professed friendship would keep a bargain, rather than taking his gold and fleeing at once for the land of the Hyperboreans.

In any case, the lack of magical assistance for the journey north was only the first and least of Khezal's frustrations. The next was Conan's insistence on waiting until the two Afghulis who were riding north were fit to travel.

"Do you doubt my word, that they will be safe here among the Greencloak garrison of the Virgin's Oasis?" Khezal asked, laughing to cover his fury.

Conan, wholly sober, shook his head. "I doubt not your word, not even your command over your men as long as your eye is on them. But your eye will be on the slopes of the Kezankians, and your men here. That's another matter, and the name for the matter would be 'blood feud' if anything happened to the Afghulis."

Khezal considered this. Neither he nor any Turanian had much love for the Afghulis, but they were not among the realm's leading foes. The Iranistanis were otherwise—and the Afghulis were even less friendly to Iranistan than to Turan. There would hardly be gratitude toward a man who made blood foes of Turan among the Afghulis.

More important than any lack of gratitude in court circles would be the enmity of proven captains in war. Khezal would have endangered their men, and imperiled their victories. Lack of gratitude among courtiers, Khezal could endure. Knives in the dark, wielded on the orders of men whom he had trusted to guard his back from Yezdigerd, would make life sin-gularly futile for the short time it might last.

"As you wish. I trust that your friends are as hardy as the tale-tellers have them, though. We do not want one of my enemies ambushing us with half a regiment as we cross the caravan route, because a spy has told a tale in the palace!"

"Khezal, I am no more a lover of palaces and what goes on in them than you are. Trust me for that, and my Afghulis for swift healing."

To Khezal's relief, the Afghulis were standing within a day and riding within two. They moved stiffly at first, but that they were fighting-fit was proved on the third day.

A groom boy, so green that he had hardly wiped his mother's milk from his lips, grew curious about Farad's dagger. He reached out to touch it—and found himself on his back some paces away, lip split and several teeth scattered about on the sand.

"The lad should call himself lucky," was all Khezal could get out of Conan. "And you should call your chief groom a fool, for letting into the field a witling who'll touch another's steel without asking."

"That won't heal the boy."

Conan shrugged, then dipped into his belt pouch. An Iranistani silver prince-piece came out. The Cimmerian tossed it high, then slapped it out of the air with one hand, into the palm of another.

"Here. Even a fool deserves a trifle of poppy syrup to soothe his hurts."

"Perhaps I should hold on to those jewels after all. We may need them to silence the angry and heal the hurt, if we have many more of these exchanges."

"At your pleasure, my friend. But I will talk to Farad and Sorbim, if you will talk to your people."

"I will, and pray to Mitra that all listen!"

"Halt! Who seeks to pass?"

Captain Muhbaras's mind had lurched up out of sleep before his body was ready to follow. That sentry had to be one of the new recruits, a "settled" nomad. How settled any of the tribesmen could become was a matter of some debate. It was evident that he had not learned sentry drill as thoroughly as could be wished.

The reply came in a woman's voice, which finished the work of awakening the captain's body. He could make out no words, but there was no need for that. The only women out and about here by night were the Maidens of the Mist, and the most likely reason they would be here was something either dire, urgent, or both.

Across the single room in the hut, blankets roiled and heaved like water in a millrace. A round face with a crinkly black chin beard rose above the blankets, like an otter surfacing from a dive.

"A woman?" the face said. The mouth was a thin gash, unwholesomely out of proportion to the rest of the face. It always seemed a marvel to the captain that Ermik's tongue was not forked, like that of a serpent.

"A Maiden."

"Ah. No doubt seeking to end that—"

In a moment the captain was out of his blankets and off his pallet. In another moment he had taken two strides and was standing over the other. His hand was on the hilt of his sword. His gaze was fixed on the wall of the hut.

If he allowed his gaze to drift downward, he knew he might draw the sword and thrust it into the thick neck below the round face. That would silence the greasy voice, but raise a howling and a shrieking back in Khoraja that would not end until he himself was dead, and likely many of his men dead with him. Men he had sworn to lead out of these Hell-cursed mountains, as he had sworn to lead them in.

"You may think that, if you wish, and risk both body and soul if the Lady of the Mist hears your thoughts. Do not ever let them pass your lips. Not where a Maiden can hear them. Not where I can hear them. Not where a hawk, a mouse, or a beetle can hear them!

"Do you understand?"

The small dark eyes above the blankets resembled a pig's eyes, but they were as unblinking as a serpent's.

"Do you?" the captain repeated.

"I do."

"Then hold your tongue and go back to sleep."

"I must visit the—"

"After I am done with the Maiden."

The other's mouth opened again, and the captain's hand tightened on the age-darkened leather of the sword's grip. Even one bawdy word from the other might send him over the brink—and perhaps he could buy his life and his men's by saying that the Maidens would have slain Ermik, the Grand Council's spy, had the captain not done so.

The Maidens—or their mistress. It would sound dreadful enough to persuade the Council.

Indeed, it might even be the truth.

"Do not be long."

The other could foul his blankets for all that the captain cared, save that the hut reeked enough as it was.

"I shall be no longer than the Maiden detains me. How long that will be depends on her errand, and I offer you another piece of wisdom."

"Will you have any wisdom left if you keep offering me pieces of it?"

The captain ignored the pert reply as he would have the yelping of a cur in the streets. "The shorter the time I am gone, the worse the news the Maiden bears."

That opened Ermik's eyes agreeably wide. They stared after the captain as he strode out into the night.

Conan was seated cross-legged on a carpet in the Afghulis' tent, watching the surgeon's Vendhyan slave tend Farad's wounds. Before him on the rug stood a jug of wine. A small bribe had procured it from the surgeon's stores, and after a cup of it, Conan felt a trifle more reconciled to the world as it was.

The slave jerked a dressing from Farad's ribs, taking a scab with it. Blood trickled, Farad glared, the slave cringed and muttered something under his breath. It was probably not a curse, although, like most Vendhyans, the slave could hardly be overly fond of Afghulis. Centuries of border raids, burned villages, and looted caravans had seen to that.

However, Conan understood several of the Ven-dhyan dialects, and the first time the slave ill-wished the Afghulis, he said as much. He added that if the slave could not keep his tongue between his teeth by the power of his will, either his tongue or his teeth might be removed, or perhaps his lips sewn shut. Mutes were not always the best slaves, but if muting them improved their manners—

The slave could hardly have abased himself more, or more swiftly promised good behavior in the future.

The Vendhyan was quickly but deftly putting a fresh dressing on Farad's battered ribs when tramping feet thudded outside the tent. Before anyone could give warning, Captain Khezal pushed his way into the tent.

Neither his sudden coming nor the look on his face made Khezal seem the bearer of good news. When with one look he sent the slave fleeing as if scorpions were nesting in his breeches, he made Conan certain of this.

He did not even venture to guess what the bad news might be; Khezal's scheme was one likely to go awry at half a dozen points before they even sighted the peaks of the Kezankians. Nor was the Cimmerian's knowledge of Turan's intrigues or the nomads' feuds what it had been. The bad news might be something altogether unconnected with the quest for the Valley of the Mists.

At least Conan thought he could trust Khezal to tell him all of the truth that any man not of Turan could be trusted to know. That was more than could be said of more than a few leaders Conan had followed.

"We have found the remaining Afghulis," Khezal said.

"Rejoice," Farad replied. Conan trusted that Khezal did not hear the ironic note in the Afghuli's voice.

"Or rather, they have found those who sought them," Khezal went on. "They laid an ambush even more cunning than I had expected from such skilled warriors."

"Flattery may raise hearts," Conan said. "It also uses time, of which I suspect we have but little, unless there is no more to your tale."

"Forgive me, Conan. I forgot that you were never a courtier."

"Improve your memory, then, my friend. Nor will I become a courtier soon enough to let you babble to no purpose."

Khezal took a deep breath. "It is to some purpose to know that the Afghulis who fled are unharmed. They unhorsed a half-score Greencloaks and took three as hostages to a cave. They have threatened the hostages with gelding and other harsh fates if Conan and any living Afghulis in Turanian hands are not freed at once."

Farad saved Conan the trouble of a swift reply by bursting into laughter that could doubtless be heard all over the camp. Khezal's face colored, and he looked at the ceiling of the tent, as if he wished the sky would fall on the Afghulis or him or both, to end this shameful moment.

At last both Farad and Khezal gained command of themselves, and into the silence Conan thrust a few words. "Then we must ride out at once, to prove that we are alive and free before they begin working on your men."

"What if I refuse to let you go?" Khezal asked. His eyes searched Conan's face, rather as if he were judging the temper of a horse he wished to buy. "This could be a scheme to escape. The nomads would doubtless pay you much for your knowledge of our camp."

"The nomads would pay us in slit throats after torturing the knowledge out of us, unless we contrived to die fighting them," Conan snapped. "Do not waste time or breath by testing me, Khezal. Not if you wish to keep your men whole."

"One must admit that there are fewer posts for eunuchs than there once were," Khezal said. He might almost have been meditating. Conan had to respect the inward courage that let the captain command himself in matters like this.

"So I will trust you and your Afghuli comrades to make no attempt to escape," the captain continued. "And I will also trust you to contrive the return of my men, whole and fit to fight. Otherwise we have no agreement, and I will look under every rock and grain of sand in this desert to find you."

Conan knew when a man accustomed to commanding his temper was about to lose it. He made no protest at Khezal's terms, but began gathering his weapons and harness.

Captain Muhbaras's notion that he would hear bad news swiftly did not last long. He began to wish he had used some more prudent words to silence the spy. As it was, the man would either suspect a lie or fret himself into folly well before the captain returned.

There was, however, not one thing under the gods' sky that the captain could do about this problem, without paying the mortal price of offending the Lady of the Mists.

Nor would giving such offense please the spy. He had made it plainer than a fruit-seller in the bazaar crying his wares; his purpose here was to speed the work of the alliance with the Lady of the Mists to the peril of Turan and the profit of Khoraja.

It was therefore just barely possible that the spy needed the captain more than the captain needed him. The captain resolved to remember that as he followed his escort of Maidens into the valley.

Escort or guard? One walked ahead, and one on either side save where the path was too narrow for more than one pair of feet. Then the flankers stepped forward to join the leader.

No less than four Maidens walked behind the captain. He turned twice to stare at them, and each time their leader gave him a look that would have frozen the manhood of a god. The others lightly brushed their hands to the hilts of their swords.

After that the captain was entirely certain that he was going either to his own death or to something that he would doubtless protest almost as violently. It was some small consolation to know that the Lady thought she might need steel as well as spells to ward him off. Entering the Valley of the Mists, the captain did not feel nearly that formidable.

He felt still less so as they passed within the cleft, through the two great gates, and on to a trail that climbed the cliff to the left of the entrance. The trail was wide enough for two abreast, but it climbed so steeply that in places the rock was shaped into steps. In the twilight, and taking care not to stumble, the captain could not be sure what shapes were carved into those steps. He doubted that the knowledge was either necessary or wholesome.

In the twilight, the valley itself did nothing to ease a man's mind. Two walls of mountain stretched away into shadows whose blue and purple hues seemed against nature. Overhead the stars were coming out with a savage brightness, even as the last light drained from the western sky. Mist gathered here, there, and everywhere, according to no pattern the captain recognized, gray tendrils rising to dance and swirl with the sinuosity of living beings.

The captain had the sense of entering a vast temple, so long ruined that it was roofless and naked to the stars, but whose walls and altars of sacrifice were yet intact. Intact, and bound by great and dreadful magic to remain that way until some nameless purpose was fulfilled.

He shivered from more than the chill of the night air, and was glad when the trail turned into a cave and the cave into a tunnel carved from the wall of the valley. Torches lit the party's way, and twice they surprised the misshapen half-human slaves of the valley tending to the lights.

Again the captain rejoiced that the light was too dim to let him see every unwholesome detail of the half-men. Or women—he was sure that one of them was a woman, barely past girlhood, and he fought back the urge to spew or perform rites of aversion.

Neither was acceptable to the Lady.

Muhbaras's modest pleasure lasted only until his guards led him into a small, almost intimate chamber. Its rock walls hid behind tapestries woven with archaic figures of dragons and giant birds, and a brazier glowing in the middle of it further warmed the air beyond what the captain had expected.

There was, however, no warmth in the Lady's face as she sat in her habitual cross-legged position on a silk cushion, the cushion in turn elevated on a stool carved from a single piece of Vendhyan teak. To show that he was not afraid, the captain sought to make out the figures carved in the stool, but ended being more unsettled than before as he failed to make sense of the carvings.

They were animals, birds, and things that had the shape of men but also subtle differences. They were nothing as simple as the Serpent Men of Valusia, who would have been almost a relief.

Muhbaras knew that custom required him to wait for the Lady to speak, as if she were a queen or near-kin to one. He also knew that this custom allowed the Lady to sit and study those who came before her for as long as it pleased her, rather like a serpent studying a particularly succulent bird.

By sheer force of will, Muhbaras had not grown uneasy and was standing as still as the seven Maidens when the Lady at last spoke.

"One of your warriors has looked upon a Maiden with the desire of a man for a woman."

The captain inclined his head, as graciously as he could contrive. Unless the Lady was altogether a raving madwoman, there had to be more to the matter. And as he was not a raving madman, he would let her reveal that "more" before he opened his own mouth.

It seemed that half the night crawled by, in a silence rivaling that of the graveyard. The captain began to suspect that the Lady was testing his courage, and vowed to pass any test she might set him.

At last the Lady sighed. She was garbed in a robe made of a single thickness of silk, so thin that Muhbaras could see her breasts lift under it with the sigh. He cast his eyes and thoughts elsewhere, and inclined his head again.

"Do you not wish to know more, Khorajan?" the Lady asked. Her voice had the quality of a fine steel blade slicing equally fine silk. In another it might have seemed intended to arouse desire. In the Lady it seemed only intended to arouse slavish obedience.

"I wish to know all that my Lady of the Mists sees fit to tell me. I do venture to add that the more she tells me, the more likely we are to resolve this matter peaceably."

"Peace requires the death of the soldier who offended. Anything less will mean no peace."

The captain waited, until he realized that he was expected to reply to those bald words, as naked of mercy as the rocks of the mountains or the vultures circling above them. Common sense told him that negotiation was futile. Honor bound him to try.

"A lesser penalty will still suffice to keep the man—"

"No lesser penalty will suffice in any way, in the eyes of the gods."

Which gods? the captain wondered, not quite reverently. Although the Lady might be unwilling or unable to answer, having confused her own will with that of the gods—a vice not unknown among less powerful mortals, or the captain would not have been here in honorable if perilous exile from his native city.

"Honor to the gods and to you, my Lady," the captain said. "But if no deed of desire has been done—"

"The eyes give passage to the soul. Your soldier's soul has touched the Maiden."

Muhbaras had not heard that from any priest, but had long since ceased to expect the Lady to be bound by any common notions of priestcraft. He would have liked to know what did bind her, and still hoped to learn something of that, but did not expect that this night would be the time.

The Lady's wrath in the face of disobedience would doubtless be tempered by her need for himself and his men. Yet even her tempered wrath could leave him unfit for duty for some time, which Ermik could put to use to usurp the captain's authority.

Moreover, the Lady (who was seldom ill informed) might know of the spy's coming and his favor in Khoraja. She might think that he could be put into the captain's place as a more pliant tool.

That would be folly in the Lady. But the captain had never heard that witches were less foolish than common folk.

"Give me the name of the man, then, and I will have him straitly confined, questioned, and brought before you."

"His name is Danar son of Araubas, and he has already been confined by my Maidens and their servants. His guilt is proven beyond need for further questioning. I summoned you here out of courtesy, that you might not wonder what had become of him. I only ask you: Do you wish to witness his passing or not?"

The moment the captain heard the name of the condemned man, he knew at least some truth without needing to ask questions the Lady would not answer. Danar was youthful, courteous, and by all reports, most pleasing to a woman's eye. If he had looked with desire on any woman, Maiden, crone, or a very goddess, it was because she had so looked upon him first!

That truth would not save Danar, however. It would most likely condemn the Maiden as well as Danar—and whatever hope the Maidens' womanliness might give to the captain would be flung off the cliff along with Danar.

That would be the method of execution—that or some other passing fit for a soldier. No more blackened and reeking tongues dealing a death that even the most hardened Stygian torturer would call harsh. The captain would save his man's soul, if he could not save his body.

"Very well. I will consent to all that you have asked, on one condition. I will speak alone with Danar son of Araubas, and bear any last wishes to his kin. Otherwise I will make no promises whatever in this matter."

Muhbaras ventured to look the Lady squarely in the eyes. He saw for the first time flecks of brown in their blazing gold, and faint shadows on the eyelids below the finely plucked eyebrows.

In another woman, he would have said those eyes would look very well widening on a pillow as she gave and took pleasure. With the Lady of the Mists, that was a thought to drive from one's mind as one drove a mad dog from the nursery.

"By my honor and my bond with the Mists, I pledge to grant you that, if the man be living when you come to him."

That left an opening for treachery through which one could have driven the elephants of the royal menagerie, but Muhbaras judged it wise to make no further argument. He bowed his head and made the ritual Khorajan gestures of binding himself with blood and steel to fulfill a vow.

Then he straightened. "The man is more likely to be living if I go straight to him. Is that permitted?"

The Lady nodded. Silently she raised a hand, and the Maidens gathered about the captain to lead him out of the chamber.

Conan rode north in the vanguard of fifty Green-cloaks. Farad and Sorbim rode beside him, their gazes making a complete circle around their chief every few moments.

Ten paces to the Cimmerian's right, Khezal rode with three picked Greencloaks. They kept a similar watch out for his safety.

"Conan," Khezal called, across the gap. "What would you have done if I had refused to let you ride north?"

"I remember a wise captain who said that 'if is a word for priests and scribes, not fighting men."

"I remember that when the wise captain said that, he was teaching a young Cimmerian who has since become a wise captain in his own right."

"Indeed, I would have owed the other captain an answer to such a question," the Cimmerian said, in a dangerously level voice. "Do I owe you as much?"

"He taught me also, and there is another reason for you to think carefully before you refuse. I do not teach. I lead men, who, like me, must know how far we can trust you."

Conan muttered a few oaths, but within he was rallying his thoughts. Indeed, Khezal was in a position wherein the trust of his men was life or death. Anything that could help strengthen that trust, and would not weaken Conan, was Khezal's right.

"So be it," Conan said. "Had you refused, I would still have gone north, with Farad and Sorbim. No Greencloak would have suffered, save those foolish enough to stand in our path. We might even have saved the captives."

"And if you could not?" one Greencloak said. Khezal shot the man a barbed look, but Conan held up a hand.

"No, the answer's his right as well as yours. If they had to die, they would have died as whole men, or at least not without rites."

The Greencloak looked more content than his captain. Conan spat into the sand. Khezal was wiser than the Cimmerian intended to tell him for some while, but there was much he needed to learn about Afghulis and those the tribesmen called chief.

Seven

Conan rode well to the fore, flanked by Farad and Sorbim. They were careful to keep their distance from the Greencloaks, without moving out of bowshot. That would smell of an attempt to escape, and no goodwill that Khezal bore the Cimmerian would stay the captain's command to his archers to shoot.

There also might be other men of warlike disposition roaming this patch of desert, besides Turanians and Afghulis. Among them, the three riders left no part of the horizon unwatched, nor the ranks of Turanian riders behind them.

Khezal had said the place where peacemaking was direly needed might be two hours away at a fast pace, as much as three at one that spared the horses. Conan stood silent as to which pace they should use, but gave the world a dusty grin as he saw the Turanians settle down to a pace that their mounts could keep up all day.

This was much as he had expected, Khezal being no fool. However, even wise men had been known to hasten unwisely, if they thought this would show loyalty and help keep their heads on their shoulders.

Conan had no quarrel with any such desire in Khezal. He only insisted that Khezal's head not survive at the price of his and his Afghulis'.

Everyone's head remained not only on his shoulders but clear and alert during that first hour. They were riding out from a well-supplied, well-watered camp, and even the newest to the ranks of the Greencloaks was a veteran of at least five years' service.

Watching the ranks of desert-wise riders behind him and remembering their gallant fight at the rocks, Conan felt a twinge of regret at his flight from Turanian service. The officer whose mistress he had "stolen" (a word he always resented, considering how willingly the lady had come to him) had been a friend of then-Prince Yezdigerd. Even if others had been able to patch up a truce between Conan and the officer, the lady would surely have suffered. The truce would also have ended the moment Yezdigerd felt himself secure enough on the throne to do such minor favors for his friends as handing them a Cimmerian's head…

No, it was as well to be out of Turanian service. It would have been better to be out of Turanian reach altogether, but Conan had small choice if he was to do his duty by the Afghulis who had exiled themselves out of loyalty to him. He could trust Khezal for everything the nobleman could control, and as for the rest, the Cimmerian trusted to his sword arm and steel—which had kept him above ground for a good many years and had not grown slack or dull in Afghulistan.

They were halfway through the second hour of their journey when Conan saw the horseman on a distant ridge to the north.

Danar son of Araubas looked rather better than his captain had expected when the two Khorajans met in the low rocky chamber where the younger man was confined awaiting execution. A second look told Muhbaras that the walls had once been bricked, more centuries ago than he cared to think about.

What he faced now was quite sufficiently disagreeable—and as nothing compared to what Danar might face if his luck were out.

Four Maidens had escorted the captain to the entrance of the chamber, so low that he had to stoop to enter—and he was not tall for a Khorajan. Four other Maidens were already on guard, which seemed none too few when the captain saw that the door itself was only a woven screen of rushes. A child with a toy dagger could have cut his way through that to a brief freedom, before the guards cut him down.

But none of the Maidens approached it, and on the floor the captain saw a dead mouse and more than a few dead insects. When a Maiden did open the screen, she did it with the bronze point of a spear whose shaft was carved into unpleasantly familiar if still incomprehensible runes. She also wore an amulet of feathers and small rose- and amethyst-hued stone beads, and moved as cautiously as if the floor might open up and swallow her at a misstep.

The captain had seldom moved with such exquisite care as when he stooped and entered Danar's chamber. He would have gone down on his hands and knees to avoid touching the screen if it had been necessary.

To his mild surprise, the Maiden with the spear raised the screen high enough to spare him that humiliation. He said his thanks to her in his heart, knowing that even if she would keep the secret, her comrades would not. The Lady of the Mists kept her Maidens, if not at one another's throats, at least looking over one another's shoulders.

Doubtless the Lady knew that this could do harm in a battle against a serious foe. Comrades who had to fear one another's tongues as much as they did the enemy's steel could hardly be called comrades at all.

Just as certainly, the Lady was more concerned about keeping the Maidens loyal to her. A serious foe, she no doubt thought, would not enter the Valley of the Mists before her work was done.

It was no pleasure to Muhbaras to realize that the Lady of the Mists was quite probably right.

Even Conan's hawk-keen sight could make out little about the rider, other than that he rode a horse and wore dark robes.

"Which is the garb of half the tribes in this land," Khezal said when he rode up to move level with the Cimmerian. Otherwise they made no change of pace or formation, so that from a distance the watcher might think they had not seen him.

"Yes, and no doubt the garb of the other half when they go long enough without washing," Farad said.

"Speak for yourself, rock-crawler," Sergeant Barak muttered, before a glare from both Conan and Khezal silenced their followers.

The watcher seemed to have chosen a good post, overlooking the easiest march route but not actually on it. As they drew closer, the watcher drew back, and Conan saw that he was retreating toward a nightmarish tangle of ravines and rocks. A band half again the size of the Turanians could hide in that land, and seeking one man in it would take the rest of the day before they had to admit failure.

A few hundred paces farther on, the ground before the Turanians also grew rough. They could slow to a trot that made for easy conversation without revealing anything to the watcher.

The conversation was brief.

"The tribes could not have sent too many men into this area," Khezal said. "Otherwise the patrol's messenger could not have returned to camp to warn us."

"Unless they let the messenger through with the purpose of drawing us out into an ambush," Conan added.

"We have still done more than before, in keeping the large bands to the south and west," Khezal insisted. "One doubts that our number of Greencloaks has much to fear from any number of tribesmen who may lie ahead."

It would be unwise to dispute with Khezal before his own men, and Conan had little wish to do so. The Turanian captain might even be right. Still…

"Far be it from me to speak against your men," the

Cimmerian said. "But what of your men and my Afghulis? I wager that the tribesmen consider all alike lawful prey. If the tribesman have surrounded them since last night—"

"You see clearly. Yet only a large tribal band could maintain such a siege and still mount an ambush against us."

Conan had paid with his own blood and seen comrades pay with theirs for a captain's saying that "the enemy could not do so-and-so." Prophecy was a matter for sorcerers and the less honest sort of priest (which to the Cimmerian's mind was most of the breed).

Once again, the Cimmerian would not undermine Khezal's authority or flaunt his doubts of the prowess of the hosts of Turan (which, if half the tales he had heard were true, had indeed notably increased under Yezdigerd the Ambitious). This left him with few choices.

"I think we still need to fear an ambush. Is there another route to our destination, besides the shortest one? You know this land better than I."

"Indeed, and most of my men, better than I. There is such a way, longer and rougher."

"Does it offer more or less to ambushers?"

"Less, if my memory serves."

"It had better still serve for more than remembering which wench is willing, my friend. I suggest that you send six of your Greencloaks with me and my Afghulis, and we ride the main route. Those waiting will have to strike at us, or let us strike their comrades from the rear. Meanwhile, you take the rest of your men by the longer route."

Khezal looked at his men and then at the desert ahead. He nodded.

"I mislike the danger to you, but it's no worse than you have survived. Just bring my Greencloaks back safe, or at least give proof of their honorable passing."

"If they pass any other way, I shall go with them," Conan said.

"Do not be too eager to go where there is neither wine, women, nor good battles," Khezal said with a grin. "We shall never be able to properly celebrate our victories on this quest, I fear. I still do not wish to turn down cups to absent comrades!"

"How fare you, Captain?" Danar asked, when the dim oil lamp allowed him to recognize his superior.

Muhbaras started. He had expected Danar to be physically and mentally a ruin, already halfway to death. He had not expected the young soldier to be concerned about his captain's health!

The younger man grinned. "I have not been mistreated, save for eating bread that is mostly husks and shells. I think it is what they feed to those half-men in the fields."

"No doubt," the captain said. He gazed at the walls and the ensorceled rush screen with what he hoped was an eloquent glance.

Danar shrugged. "I know the walls have ears and probably eyes. If you have any last gift for me, it is that you do not think me a fool."

Muhbaras assured Danar that he thought no such thing. He wished he could assure himself that there was some way of giving Danar a lawful or even easy death, and that he could communicate it to the man. Without some preparation, it would be hard to do anything swiftly enough to avoid the notice and wrath of the Lady of the Mists.

The captain knew he could not face that peril. He did not care what happened to him, save that his death would doubtless put Ermik in command of the mission to the valley. Then every sort of dire fate would loom over the men.

It was possible that Danar might have to face a hard death, for the sake of his comrades. How to tell him that, and how to sleep at night after it happened?

I grow too old for intrigues, Muhbaras decided. Give me a last battle against a worthy foe, and I will not care if I survive it.

"Do you know if the Lady seeks your—'life essence' or whatever they call it in their priest-talk?" the captain asked.

Danar shrugged again. "Perhaps, hence the good treatment. Perhaps not, also, if they think it has been corrupted by unlawful lust."

"Knowing that a woman like one of the Maidens is fair is never unlawful," Muhbaras snapped. "Only a blind man could avoid doing so, and I am sure the Lady does not wish to be served by blind men or eunuchs."

It was Danar's turn to look meaningfully at the walls. "No," he said, but he did not meet the captain's eyes. Also, there was something in his voice, even in that single word…

I will not even think the question, "Did anything happen between you and the Maiden, more than glances?"

Wrapped in a kerchief in his belt pouch, Muhbaras had a small bronze knife, suitable to rest under a lady's pillow but capable of letting out life if applied in the right place. Now he pulled out the kerchief and bent over Danar, seemingly to wipe sweat or perhaps dew from the soldier's forehead.

Before he could touch Danar, the younger man's hand seemed to float up and grip the captain's wrist. It was a grip that would have looked gentle from a few paces away, but was actually as unbreakable as an iron shackle without more effort than the captain cared to make.

With his mouth only a hand's breadth from his captain's ear, Danar whispered, "Guard yourself for my comrades, and do not worry about me. I have other friends."

The words left as much mystery behind as ever, but the tone was that of a man walking to meet his fate with firm step and open eyes.

May I do as well as Danar, if my time comes while I am within reach of the Lady of the Mists.

After that there was nothing to say but formal words that would make easy hearing for listening ears, a final grip of forearms, and the captain's departure. He even deferred his prayers of thanks to Mitra until he was not only outside the chamber but out of sight and hearing of the Maidens on guard.

Even farther along the path, he wondered if the madness was spreading. And if so, was this the Lady's ultimate prize—or did she have something still worse in hand for the Valley of the Mists and all within it?

Khezal added one stratagem to the plan he and Conan had conceived. He detached a dozen or so Greencloaks to remain behind both of the other bands, to ride in circles and raise a prodigious cloud of dust.

"Even the most desert-wise tribesman will think that the more dust, the more men," Khezal said. "More unfriendly eyes will be on them, fewer on the rest of us as we slip off about our lawful occasions."

Conan made a Cimmerian gesture of aversion. Khezal nodded. "That is not all they will do, either. Once they have thrown dust in our enemies' eyes, they will follow us by yet a third route. Slowest of all, it will still let them come to the aid of either of the other bands. They may even be able to slip behind an ambush and turn it against those who laid it."

Conan grinned, and this time made an Afghuli gesture for hailing an honored chief. There was not much he could teach Khezal about arraying men for battle, and he would waste no more time trying.

Instead he signaled to his men, as one of Khezal's sergeants rode out with the dozen dust-raisers. The two Afghulis cantered up and drew rein, the Green-cloaks assembled under the watchful eye of Sergeant Barak and their captain, and the dust rose high.

It also rose thick, thanks to the dropping of the wind. Thus Conan led his men off down the dry wash that opened their chosen route with little fear of unfriendly eyes counting them, let alone seeing them. He still kept his eyes searching the rocks and ridges to the left, while Farad searched to the right, and Sobrim studied their Greencloak comrades.

Conan did not think that cold-blooded treachery was in the Greencloaks. But no discipline could keep from a soldier's mind the thought of avenging a comrade or kin, and men with such losses might well be riding at Conan's back. It was a circumstance he had survived more than a few times, but only by taking nothing for granted.

Then the dry wash gave on a real valley, with rocky slopes rising, it seemed, halfway to the sky on either side. The floor of the valley was level, fit for quick movement if one cared little for the endurance of one's horses.

Conan held the pace to a trot while he studied the slopes. The rocks could hide a small army of ambushers, but there were broad stretches of ground where a dog could not hide and a surefooted horse could descend at a good pace.

So far, Khezal had not sent them into any place where aid could not reach them—if aid were sent.

Farad seemed to read the Cimmerian's thoughts.

"So far, that Khezal lad seems well enough to obey."

"The 'lad' is only a trifle younger than you are, Farad."

"In years only, or in battles?"

"Talk to him sometime, when our comradeship is a trifle farther along—"

"I will be too old to do more than croak like a marsh frog if I wait that long."

"Did anyone ever tell you that interrupting your captain is ill done?"

"You are my chief, not my captain. The ways of lowland armies, fit only to fight women, are not for the Afghulis."

"The way of Cimmerians with those whose tongues wag to no purpose is to knock them about the head until the tongues are still."

Farad and Sorbim exchanged glances, and Conan could see them reaching the conclusion that their "chief was not speaking entirely in jest. Farad muttered something that Conan chose to take as an apology, and they rode on in silence.

Eight

In the outer world (which now seemed to Captain Muhbaras a distant memory, except as a place to seek captives for the Lady's sacrifices) it would still be full daylight. But the sun was already behind the walls of the Valley of the Mists, and purple shadows were swallowing the valley floor.

They were also creeping up the walls. The captain hoped this business would be done before they reached the cave mouth where he stood, watched or perhaps guarded by eight of the Maidens. He supposed it was an honor that he was considered so worthy of either respect or fear that he had so many Maidens assigned entirely to him.

He knew it was an honor he would cease to appreciate if he was not on his way back to his quarters before darkness filled the valley. He had never been so far into the valley this late in the day, but apparently there was some mystical reason (or at least excuse) for putting an end to Danar's life at this particular time.

There was nothing in sight in the valley that Muhbaras had not seen before. Nor did he care to look at the Maidens. With his graying hair and display of scars, he might be considered too old to be looking at them with lust. With his weapons he might be suspected of planning to rescue his man, which could bring an even swifter and hardly less dire fate.

Having decided, reluctantly, not to sacrifice his life to speed the ending of Danar's, the captain refused to contemplate perishing as a result of a mistake (although that was the fate of most soldiers, even if the mistake might be a healer's instead of a captain's).

He could still study the Maidens as a visitor might study the guards of a prince's palace, judging their fitness for battle and other matters of interest to soldiers. If the Lady argued that point, he would have to discuss with her certain things that his duties to her required, however much she might despise soldiers, men, outsiders, or whatever it was that made those cat's eyes sometimes flare with a killing rage.

The eight Maidens here now were mostly above average height, although only two were taller than Muhbaras. None had the eye-catching northern fairness, but none had the round features and close-curled hair that in some Maidens hinted of Black Kingdoms blood.

Indeed, the Lady of the Mists seemed to have recruited her Maidens (or accepted those who offered themselves) from every known land save Khitai and perhaps Vendhya. (And there were Maidens who seemed to bear a trace of Vendhyan blood; perhaps full Vendhyan women were too slight for the burdens of war?)

Few (here, only one of the eight) could be called truly beautiful. But all of them had grace, strength, suppleness, and knowledge of their weapons. There was not one the captain had seen whom he would have cast out from a war band—or refused in his bed.

Perhaps the Lady of the Mists knew more about the art of war than he suspected. She seemed to have picked warriors to guard her, at any rate, and the captain had known lords descended from long lines of soldiers whose household troops would not meet that test. Those fat sots at Lord Cleakas's—they would be mice facing cats if the Maidens ever came over the walls—

A measured, distant drumbeat stole on Muhbaras's ears. He looked about, saw nothing, but heard the drumbeat swelling. Now he heard two drums, not quite together, the shuffle of feet, and the faintest chinking of armor.

Danar son of Araubas was coming up to his last moments of life.

The captain took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, and with it a prayer to as many gods as he could name with that much breath.

Defend Danar's honor, all you who honor courage.

Before Conan's little band was done with the second hour of its journey, the Cimmerian's war-trained blue eyes had picked twenty spots where they could have been ambushed. Perhaps ten against a larger band, but no fewer than twenty against the handful he led, and perhaps more.

He decided that he could well have taken his own advice to Khezal, and not thought the enemy's chief less wise than he appeared to be. Conan's band was too small to do much harm to the chief's plans even if it reached its destination intact. It could be ignored while the tribesmen assembled against Khezal.

Or perhaps the chief had divided his band in turn, and would engage the Cimmerian at the last moment with a handful of men, too few to be sent far from their main body. If Conan overcame the ambush, he would only be set upon by superior strength when he had exhausted his.

The Cimmerian gave a mirthless chuckle. The chief knew neither Cimmerians, Afghulis, nor (to do them justice) the picked desert riders of Yezdigerd's host if he thought them easy to weary. His men would pay in blood for that mistake.

One thing Conan knew: The watcher on the ridge was no trick of the eyes or the heat of the desert. So battle, there would be, and before nightfall.

That time was not so far away as it had been. The shadows were longer, even if the heat was hardly less. Above distant hilltops, carrion birds that had sought their nests during the worst of the day now circled, black specks against harsh blue. They would not watch for fresh meat in vain.

Two more good ambush spots came and went. Conan's neck was beginning to stiffen from trying to look in all directions at once. He twisted his head back and forth to loosen the muscles. A moment's slowness in seeing or striking a foe had turned good warriors into vulture's fodder.

Now they were entering another dry wash, with the steep right side gouged and furrowed by flash floods since the time of Atlantis, the other side a slope almost gentle enough for a pasture. At the very top of the leftward slope the ground leapt up in a wall of rock, with a few gaps in it. From where Conan sat his saddle, he thought a mouse might have squeezed through those gaps, if it fasted for a week and then oiled its fur—

Dust boiled up from the foot of the wall, and in the dust Conan saw two-legged shapes much larger than mice. The dust rose, but the shapes turned into men, running down the slope toward the valley floor, leaping over boulders and dips in the ground with the antelope-grace of the desert tribesmen.

To Conan, this seemed a poorly laid ambush in an ill-chosen spot. The running men would be good archery targets the moment Conan's men had the shelter of the rocks to their right. But men died at the hands of bungling foes as well as of wise ones. Conan would give the tribesmen no unnecessary advantage.

He wheeled his horse, guiding it with his knees as he raised both hands over his head. He held his sword crosswise in those hands, and the men behind him took the signal. They in turn wheeled their horses, then swung about in their saddles. All had bows and full quivers, all had arrows nocked by the time their horses' heads were turned, and all shot before they entered the shadow of the rocks.

The range was easy for Turanian or even Afghuli bows against man-sized targets, even when the bowmen were shooting in haste. More tribesmen went down than arrows flew out, as some of the un-wounded runners flung themselves down, out of fear or perhaps to succor the wounded.

This gave Conan more hope for victory or at least seeing the day out. The enemy did not seem to understand that if they had few archers, they had to close quickly against Conan's band or risk being too weak to win the final grapple.

Meanwhile, Conan's men were disappearing into the rugged ground to the right. He heard human curses and equine protests as the men urged their mounts up slopes more suited for goats than horses. He also heard the whine of more arrows flying. At least one tribesman regained his courage, leapt to his feet, and promptly dropped again with an arrow through his throat.

Then human screams joined the horses' neighings from among the rocks. Conan leapt from the saddle, slapped his mare on the rump to send her uphill, and scrambled for the top of the nearest rock. If he had to make a target of himself to see what was going on, that was part of a captain's work.

Conan was not yet halfway up the rock when his questions were answered. He heard Farad shouting, "They've more in the rocks! Rally, rally, rally!" and hoped that the Turanians understood Afghuli.

Then he heard war cries from the running men in the open, sending echoes bouncing off the rocks. No, not echoes. Living throats were blaring those cries, the living throats of new enemies waiting among the rocks for Conan's men to be driven into their hands like sheep into the wolves' jaws.

Conan supposed that he could take some consolation in the skill of the chief who would be able to boast of ending the Cimmerian's career. He was not sure what else the situation had to commend it.

Other, that is, than the certainty of dying with sword in hand and comrades round about, if he didn't sit on this rock gawking like a herdboy at a country fair until the enemy found an archer who could see his hand in front of his face.

"Crom!"

It was not an appeal to the cold god of Cimmeria, for he did not listen to such appeals. It was more in the nature of a reminder, that here a Cimmerian warrior was about to die, and the manner of his death should be properly noted.

The god's name echoed around the rocks, drowning out all other cries human and animal, and left a brief, stunned silence in its wake. In the midst of that silence, Conan gathered himself, then leapt down from the rock, sword in hand.

The procession came up the path toward Captain Muhbaras, eight Maidens before Danar and eight behind. At the very rear walked a figure robed and hooded so thoroughly that she might have been a priestess passing through the marketplace, vowed to shield herself from profane eyes.

Under that hood, though, gleamed the golden cat's eyes, and the flowing, supple gait would have revealed the figure's identity even without the eyes.

The Lady of the Mists was coming as she had promised, to deal death for unlawful desire.

It would be a hard death, too. Danar was bound with thongs holding his hands behind his back and a short length of chain linking his ankles, barely long enough to allow him a shuffling, hobbled gait. His eyes were wide open and alert, although several welts on face and neck showed where he'd learned the unwisdom of looking about him.

Neither drugged nor wounded, he would see his death coming and feel it for as long as the Lady wished him to—which might be hours if she wished to set an example. Muhbaras hardened his heart all over again and wished that he could briefly stop his ears and blind his eyes.

The Maidens guarding the captain drew back, to allow their sisters room to file onto the level rock. By the time all were present, they needed to stand practically shoulder to shoulder around the rim of the platform to leave an open space in the middle.

Into that space Danar marched, as steadily as if he were reporting for roll call. Only the sheen of sweat on his bronzed face betrayed unease of mind.

Muhbaras forced a smile. It was not much of a final gift to a good man. He wanted to cry to the mountains and the skies as well as these accursed women:

"See how a soldier of Khoraja dies, and learn from his death the kind of enemies you make by this madness!"

But the mountains and the skies would not answer; any reply would come from the magic of the Lady of the Mists or the spears and swords of the Maidens.

Conan hoped to land among the ranks of his enemies, like a boulder plunging from a cliff. That could confuse stouter warriors than the tribesmen, and confused opponents did not last long against the Cimmerian.

But either the second part of the ambush had miscarried, or else Conan's men were holding their own for the moment. Neither seemed impossible; rough ground with an enemy lurking around a corner every five paces served both sides equally ill. It reminded Conan of fighting house to house, something he had done often enough to know that he would gladly never do it again.

It was only three paces before he faced opponents, two of them already engaged with a Greencloak. The Greencloak was at a further disadvantage through being pinned by the leg under his dying horse, but he was defending himself with desperate vigor. All his opponents' attention was on him, and they had none to spare for the Cimmerian when he came upon them.

With surprise and an edge in reach, Conan made easy prey of the first tribesman. He fell with his skull split from crown to the bridge of his nose, brains and blood spurting over the dead horse and the fallen Greencloak. His scimitar fell with a clang, in easy reach of the Greencloak, who snatched it up.

For a moment more blades were in action than there was space for their wielding. The Greencloak slashed wildly at his opponent with the scimitar in one hand and his own tulwar in the other. The tribesman tried to parry Conan's broadsword with his own scimitar, while at the same time drawing a dagger for use on the Greencloak.

The clanging as wildly swinging steel collided was worthy of a blacksmith shop. The Greencloak only nicked the tribesman's knee, but the collision of tribal scimitar and Cimmerian broadsword halted both strokes. It also broke the tribesman's grip on his weapon.

It clattered on the rocks, and the tribesman had only time to fling his dagger before Conan closed the distance. Nothing met the broadsword's second swing, until it opened the tribesman's throat and windpipe, nearly taking his head from his shoulders. More blood flowed over the dead horse as the second tribesman collapsed on top of the first.

Conan did not notice where the flung dagger had gone until the Greencloak cried out at the Cimmerian's grip on his shoulder. Then Conan saw the dagger thrust three fingers into the man's left shoulder. He plucked it out, wiped it on his breeches, thrust it into his belt, and finished dragging the Greencloak out from under the horse.

"Best pack that with something," Conan said, pointing at the bleeding shoulder. "Or can you fight left-handed?"

The man nodded.

"Better a right-handed fighter than a left-handed corpse," Conan said. "Now stay close by me, while we find our comrades."

"Ah—eh—if they're dead—?"

"If they were dead," Conan growled, "we wouldn't be hearing any fighting upslope. If they are dead, they may have killed enough foes to let us escape.

And if you don't follow me up the hill, the folk from across the valley will surely kill you if I don't do it first."

He did not quite prod the Greencloak in the small of the back with the point of his broadsword. He did not need to. The soldier lunged up the slope as if he were an unwounded runner on level ground, shouting the motto of the Greencloaks as he went.

"Our blood is our honor!"

The Lady of the Mists stepped into the center of the circle. Muhbaras noted that she was carrying a long staff, taller than she was, in the form of a serpent—the giant asp of the jungles east of Vendhya, to be precise. It had one ruby eye and one emerald eye, and down its length flowed, instead of scales, those unnameable runes that the captain had seen far too often since he came to the Valley of the Mists.

The Lady stopped just behind Danar, and thrust the staff down to the rock three times. Each time the rock boomed under the blow like a giant's drum. Muhbaras was uneasily conscious of how ancient the stonework of this balcony was, and how far it jutted out over a drop clear to the bottom of the valley. He even thought he saw the Maidens betray some unease, by the lift of a shoulder or the flicker of an eye, but for the most part they were doing their usual imitation of statues.

The Lady struck a fourth time—and this time no drum-thunder rolled out across the Valley. In silence the staff seemed to sink into the rock and stand there as if it had grown there. It did not so much as quiver—although Muhbaras thought that he saw a glow in the ruby eye, and perhaps also in the emerald one.

The Lady made a commanding gesture with her left hand, and eight Maidens marched forward from their places around the platform, until they made a tight circle around Danar and the staff. One unlocked the chains from his ankles.

Now an equally commanding gesture of the Lady's right hand set the Maidens to lifting Danar bodily, as if he were a barrel of wine or a sheep's carcass. For a moment Muhbaras thought that Danar's fate was to be impalement, and wondered at the Lady's lack of imagination if she could contrive no worse end for him.

Then the captain saw that they were lifting Danar so that the staff would rise up between his back and his bound hands. He would be as helpless as if he had actually been bound to it, and there would be no need to unbind his hands at any point.

Danar rose, then descended until only the top of his head was visible among the gleaming hair of the Maidens. For a long moment that, too, disappeared— then in the next moment Maidens were flung in all directions like sheep charged by a lion.

Danar burst out of the circle of Maidens with both hands free. His bonds dangled from his wrists, and in his right hand was a small dagger. He leapt over a Maiden who had gone sprawling and dashed for the edge of the platform, where a gap showed between two other Maidens.

"Your pardon, ladies," Danar said, as the women raised spears and moved to close the gap. At least that was what it sounded like to Muhbaras.

What he did know to his dying day was that Danar spoke to the Maidens preparing to kill him as courteously as he might have to a highborn woman with her daughter who found themselves in the path of his war chariot.

The tone had its effect. Or perhaps it was the dagger in Danar's hand. He feinted with it at the right-hand maiden, lashed out at her sister with the end of the thongs on his left wrist, and made the gap anew.

It was more than wide enough to let him reach the edge of the platform and, without breaking stride, leap into space.

Conan followed the Greencloak up the slope at a less frantic pace. Once again he was trying to look in every direction at once, for all that in some directions his eyes met solid rock just beyond the end of his nose.

He still saw too many men coming across the valley, and fewer but still uncomfortably many atop the ridge on this side. He and his comrades were boxed in as thoroughly as if they had been in a dungeon, and stone walls would have been only a trifle harder to break through than such a horde of tribesmen.

Then he noticed that the battle din from up the slope was dying away, faster than it should. Either his men had been overrun, or they had beaten off at least one attack, which ought to be impossible—

His eagerness to solve the mystery nearly ended Conan's life. He came around a rock into full view of archers higher up, and they promptly put a dozen arrows through the space where he had been standing. Nothing but a hillman's speed held his wounds to scratches. That same preternatural speed let him scoop up a handful of usable arrows before he leapt again.

This time he landed on something alive and foul-smelling, which swore Afghuli oaths fit to crack rocks or cause landslides.

"Farad, I heard you shouting. How fare we?"

Farad coughed so long and loud that Conan suspected sarcasm. "The men fare well, save for one dead and another fallen under his horse—or is that the one who dashed past me as if his breeches were aflame?"

"The same. I had some trouble bringing him up. Now that you've your breath back and your ribs intact, I repeat my question."

"We've beaten off one attack, on our right." Farad waved an arm in that general direction. "Nobody came down against our left, for which the gods be praised as that would have been the end of us."

"Are their men not yet in position on our left?" If so, then Conan's men had received only a stay of execution, not a full pardon.

"Oh, they hold the heights all across our front, Conan. But they've no manhood, the ones on our left. They hardly put a head up; when they do, they seldom shoot; and when they shoot, it's not to hit. If those weaklings had all the arrows in the world—"

Conan held up a hand. Battle-honed instincts made him see possibilities in this situation that had escaped Farad. It would be best not to get anyone's hopes up, however.

"My thanks. While there's a lull, I'm going up to scout on the left."

Had Danar's leap been a spell to turn all who saw it into stone, there could not have been more silence or less movement on the balcony. Muhbaras alone contained himself out of fear. The rest seemed unable to believe that what their eyes had seen was really what had happened.

To suspect one's eyes of so misleading one would unsettle anyone, Muhbaras suspected. At least he had no doubts—and indeed, he was already composing the tribute to Danar he would send to the soldier's kin, if he had any and if Muhbaras himself lived to set pen to parchment again—

The Maidens ceased to be statues. So did the Lady of the Mists. With hands raised, she advanced on the eight Maidens standing about the staff. A crimson nimbus sprang into existence around her right hand; a fainter golden light seemed to drip like water from her left hand.

The two colors cascaded down to the stone, splashed upward like water, and merged. They formed a sphere the size of a large melon, mostly crimson, shot with gold, and throwing off sparks. The sphere began to rotate—as it seemed to Muhbaras, in three different directions as once.

He would have called that impossible—except that since he came to the Valley of the Mists, Muhbaras had purged that word from his lips. It could only make one apt to be surprised—and the Lady and her Maidens held enough surprises for a soldier who kept his wits.

The sphere now floated upward, still spinning, with sparks of both colors cascading down so thickly that one could not see anyone through it. It rose higher and seemed to be moving toward the ring of Maidens.

It darted forward, until it was over the place where Danar had leapt.

Then Muhbaras clapped his hands over his ears, and before he squeezed his eyes shut, saw others doing the same. All seemed to be hearing the scream of one being flayed alive, a scream that told all who heard that it would go on until the end of time and perhaps beyond it until the gods themselves brought an end to it—

He kept his feet, and so did most of the Maidens. Some of them staggered, however, and a handful went to their knees.

Only the Lady of the Mists stood unaffected, her hands still raised, her breasts rising and falling a trifle more than usual under the robe as if she was breathing hard. Her eyes contrived to both glow and be utterly blank at the same time, while her lips were even paler than usual.

Then she gripped the staff with both hands, and it came free of the rock as easily as a weed from sodden ground. She tossed it with one hand and caught it with the other, whirled it, and seemed almost ready to break into a dance.

Dancing was the last thing Muhbaras felt like doing. His highest hope was that his legs and stomach would not betray him until he was safely beyond the Gate of the valley.

He had not believed that the Lady could conjure more horrors. The next moment proved him wrong. Danar, or at least a human figure more like him than not, floated up from the valley. It was as though an invisible hand had caught him before he found the merciful death he sought, and raised him to be prey to the Lady's torments.

For very surely the screams came from the human figure held there in the air before Muhbaras's horror-struck eyes.

Nine

Conan reined in his urge to rush upslope as he would have reined in a pair of fractious chariot horses. Haste on broken ground leads more often to falls than to safe arrival, even for a surefooted hillman.

It also draws an enemy's attention, which Conan wished to avoid as long as possible. His comrades below lacked the numbers to force the enemy's archers to keep their heads down or even to spoil their shooting, if they chose to rejoin the fray.

So Conan moved with the stealth of a leopard, finding cover in cracks and hiding in pools of shadow that a watcher would have thought too small for a man his size. He also moved with the silence of a cobra, testing each handhold and footrest before putting weight on it. Little dust rose to mark his passage, and only the smallest pebbles rolled silently downhill.

As he climbed, the rocks grew smaller but the ground grew otherwise more rugged. At times the only route that offered concealment also required him to call on his mountaineering skills. Fortunately these were fresh in his memory, as much of Afghulistan reared itself up into slopes that challenged even its own goat-footed tribesfolk or even Cimmerians.

Conan finished climbing a short rock chimney with his feet against one side and his back against another. The ground at the upper end offered just enough hiding places to let him stop, catch his breath, spit dust from his mouth (although he still did not care to have his teeth touch one another), and listen to the progress of the battle.

Or rather, listen for the progress of the battle, without hearing it. Both above and below, the enemy seemed to have sat down to wait, not even hurling the occasional arrow or slingstone at a venture into the rocks where Conan's band lay hidden. Conan listened for war cries and curses, but heard only coughs and sneezes, and beyond that the crack of rocks breaking in the heat, the sigh of the wind, and distant birdcalls from high above.

Of course, such a silence had in Conan's experience also meant the enemy slipping into his comrades' position and cutting their throats. But he did not believe that the Turanian had yet been born who could do that to one Afghuli tribesman, let alone half a dozen—unless he was of Afghuli blood himself…

A sound from above cut short the Cimmerian's brief speculations. It was the sound of a man crawling, trying to be silent but having rather less than complete success at it.

Then other sounds joined the first one. Somebody was calling out, trying to be heard close by but not at any great distance. The call abruptly cut off, and Conan heard what sounded remarkably like a struggle. Meanwhile, the crawling man was drawing closer. Conan judged that the man would be close enough to spit on if he continued downhill for as long as it might take to empty a mug of good ale.

Then from above someone cried out in rage, someone else in agony. Neither seemed concerned about being overheard at a distance; indeed both shouted loud enough to be heard in Aghrapur. A frantic scrabbling told of the crawling man increasing his pace.

Then a bearded, wild-eyed head peered over a rock just beyond Conan's reach. Instantly shouts rose from all around the rim, and the Cimmerian heard the whistle of arrows. Whether this man was friend or foe, Conan judged that he must know something that it would be well to learn. Turned into a pincushion by archers, he would die without speaking.

Conan lunged out of cover and grabbed a handful of greasy black hair with one hand, the neck of a patched and weather-faded robe with the other. Then he heaved backward. The man flew over the Cimmerian's head, screaming in panic as he saw himself about to plunge headfirst down the chimney.

He did not do so, because Conan twisted with the agility of an eel, shifting his grip as he did so. His hands closed around the man's ankles. But he was off balance for a moment—the moment in which all the weight of the man came on his wrists.

Conan dug in his feet, but an arrow creased the back of his knees. The sudden sting made him start, and that broke the grip of his toes. At the same moment the man squalled as if he were being impaled, which drew more arrows, and struggled wildly.

The Cimmerian felt himself sliding. Both his own honor and the need to keep the prisoner alive barred him from just letting go. Instead he tried to turn the slide into a leap, but he had no time. He was still turning, trying to get his feet under him to land softly, when he slid over the edge of the chimney and plunged down.

The Lady of the Mists let out a screech like a mating wildcat. The sphere of fire instantly swelled to three times its previous size and leaped toward Danar's suspended form.

Colors that Muhbaras would not have believed possible in Hell blazed in the Lady's eyes. They were mirrored in the sphere. It lost its spherical shape and licked out now more like the tongue of an immense serpent.

Its flame-shot core drove between two Maidens, so close that its fringes touched them. Each fell backward as if kicked by a horse, sprawling on the stone with clatters of armor. Some of their comrades hesitated, but others sprang forward to drag them to safety.

Muhbaras gave scant attention to what was happening on the platform. Instead he stared at what was happening to Danar. He hung in midair like a soap bubble as a web of fire wove itself around him, forming now obscene figures, now gouts of flame in sap-phire and emerald hues, at once dazzling and unwholesome.

Each time the Lady of the Mists raised her hands, the web grew tighter. Each time Muhbaras caught a glimpse of Danar, he bore more signs of torment. His mouth was open in a soundless scream and his back arched until his spine had to be ready to snap.

Then the fire closed around what had been a living man, but his being gone from sight did not mean the end of the torment. Instead the Lady allowed Danar's scream out of the fire—and Muhbaras had never heard a viler sound in all his years of warfare.

Then Muhbaras shut his ears and strode forward with his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other. Before anyone, Lady or Maiden, could move spell or steel to halt him, he tossed the dagger, caught it by the point, then flung it into the sphere of fire.

It was long range for anyone who had not learned the art of the throwing knife at ten and won prizes in the bazaar at twelve (and been beaten by his father for dealing with such lowborn folk). Also, Muhbaras had spent little time at practice of late.

His hand and eye still marched together. The dagger vanished into the fire. As it did, Muhbaras saw the Lady turn toward him—and raised his sword until its point thrust into the tongue of fire streaming from the Lady.

Mitra be my witness and guard my men, I cannot do otherwise.

Good fortune was with the Cimmerian and his prisoner in their fall. They landed on sand, with the prisoner uppermost, and Conan's ribs were sheathed in iron-hard muscle. He also had skill in jumping and falling that a carnival tumbler might have envied.

The fall still knocked the breath out of him, and he was slow to rise. Fortunately his captive was as breathless from fear as the Cimmerian was from the fall. The man only attempted his escape after Conan was fit to prevent it, with a large hand clamped firmly around the handiest ankle.

The man cursed and opened his mouth to scream, then appeared to see Conan clearly for the first time. His mouth stayed open, until he croaked words that sounded like:

"You—no—Girumgi man?"

The tongue was Turanian, but such a thick dialect that Conan was not sure what was being said.

"I am not Girumgi," Conan said, in Turanian, as if he were speaking to a child. "I mean you no harm, nor do any of my friends. Come with me."

The words seemed to escape the man's understanding, but the tone and the gestures carried enough meaning. Also, the man was short and lean even for a desert tribesman. The Cimmerian could have carried a man of that size under each arm, and the man seemed to prefer using his own feet to such a fate.

They made a good pace back to shelter. The enemy above seemed to be wholly lost in their shouting contest. Conan prefered to rejoin his comrades before the shouting turned back to shooting. As for the men below, the ground was against them, but numbers were for them. Their not coming on was another mystery, and two mysteries on the same battlefield were two more than the Cimmerian enjoyed facing.

Battles were confusing enough when everybody did what he was supposed to. When he did not, only a god could see some pattern in the chaos of a battle.