The Sword of Skelos (11 page)

He clenched his fists, wondering if she mocked him, or feared him and was covering—or was serious. “Ah!” he burst out exasperatedly. “And pain… suppose I give you pain so that you beg for surcease and to hear my commands?”

She bared her bosom and ran her tongue over her lips, slowly. “Would you like to give me pain and see me writhe, my sorcerous lover? Beat me!”

“Chia.”

Zafra’s eyes had gone flat and serpentish; his voice was as fiat, and laden now with warning behind which there was menace. She knew he’d had enough of her teasing. She spoke softly and sweetly.

“My love?”

“I must go and tell the Khan that his agent Isparana wends toward Zamboula, in company with him who has the Eye that our besotted lord so desperately wants. I shall suggest that he consider dispatching a… honor guard, to meet and escort them to us.”

“How fortunate he is to have you, ever looking out for him! Why do you not remove Balad for him?”

“I have told him that I am at work on it, and that Balad is protected by great spells. Now—you must be still, Chia, and quiet, Chia, while I pass through that door. For if you do not, you ruin us both.”

“I shall be as quiet as a little naked mouse,” she said, and stripped with only a few swift movements, and lay on the floor in a pose of wanton abandon. Strung on a tiny chain of gold, a tiger-eye winked on her belly.

Grinding his teeth, Zafra went to the tall paneled door, to report to his khan.
What a magnificent animal
, the mage thought, his face composed and his eyes flat and hard.
How long, I wonder, before I have to rid this world of her
?

There were six of the green-robed men with the darker scarves across their lower faces, and their leader fastened the gaze of burning eyes on Conan’s and told him that all they wanted was Isparana.

“I do not understand,” Conan said, while he decided what to do. “My sister is not for sale.”

“We do not want to
buy
her, mule-brain!” the man in the green robe said, and two of his comrades laughed.

“Oh,” Conan said. “Isparana, these men want to use you a bit. You do not mind, do you? Also, you had best slip the lead of the pack-horses off your saddle.” He hoped that she would assume the unspoken words:
and be ready to ride fast and unencumbered
.

The eyes above the dark green scarf shifted their glance to the woman. Conan’s right arm whipped across his middle. His fingers closed on the hilt of his sword and, reversing the same motion so that it became all one flowing act, he whipped his arm back to the right. His point destroyed the staring fiery eyes.

At the same time he kicked his horse with both heels, and held them clamped.

The accoster screamed, lifting both hands uselessly to his bloody sockets. Two of his companions loosed shouts while another cursed. A third, just bringing his sword up, was struck so hard by the shoulder of Conan’s horse that he was knocked from his saddle. His scimitar went flying. Others scraped from their sheaths while Isparana freed herself of the pack horses.

Whirling his sword high to gain force, Conan drove for the green-robed man who was a little apart from the others. That would-be rapist proved to be strong of thews within his loose desert robes; with a frightful scraping clangor his blade met and stayed Conan’s.

Behind the Cimmerian, a fourth of the
jazikhim
or nomadic raiders reined in close, and his sword swept up above Conan’s broad back. Conan was blocking a cut, kicking his opponent’s horse hard enough to hurt his own booted toes, and slashing the man’s sword arm just at the wrist. At a strange gurgling sound behind him, Conan clapped heels and bent low. Chestnut leaped forward and his rider, hanging on with both legs, looked back.

It was easy to understand that a man had been about to strike him from behind, and would have succeeded but for interference; the interference took the form of a little seven-inch dagger. Isparana had hurled it strongly enough to pierce his left upper arm. With the light hilt and half the blade standing from the flesh between tricep and bicep, the man forgot Conan and kicked his horse around to make for the woman.

“THANKS, ‘sparana,” Conan shouted; “RIDE, ‘sparana!”

Three men came at him from two directions, though one had a wounded sword arm. Conan bullied his horse into driving between them, dodging the slash of the nearest while being unable to strike back. He saw that Isparana had eluded the man she had wounded and was riding south, at speed.

As none of the desert men bore a bow and thus could only pursue, Conan yanked Chestnut about and raced after her.

Behind him, no less than six men screamed their rage and frustration. Two were wounded; three were not. Howling their rage, those five gave chase. The sixth, their blinded leader, floundered about, calling after them. His horse whickered, and hurried after the others.

Eight horses galloped southward on the desert, in a long line.

The four pack horses stared after the others. One whickered and pawed the sand. The second lunged forward. The first allowed himself to be led from behind. The four broke into a trot along the wake of the other eight.

The blinded man, staggering and stumbling, crying out, blundered into their path. The first pack horse swung around him. The second and third trampled him. The four sumpter beasts of Conan and Isparana trotted after them, and twelve horses hurried south on the desert, strung out in a line nearly a league long. The blinded man had ceased crying put.

Ironhead and Chestnut ran well. Both horses had spent much time on the desert, and were accustomed to such strange terrain that yielded beneath every hoof-fall. Conan glanced back to see the howling
jazikhi
pursuers. They sped with green robes flapping and their whirling swords flashing in the sunlight. Leaning over his mount’s neck to distribute his weight and lessen the wind resistance of his massive frame, the Cimmerian called after the Zamboulan, again and again.

Stupid to expect her to slow and let him catch up, Conan thought, since her horse had a lead and bore less weight. Yet he wished she were armed. He wished he could pass her the long blade slung behind his saddle; the mountain-man’s knife that had been Khassek’s.

Still, she had contrived to cling to a dagger and conceal it—and with it, to save his life when she could have fled, armed. Perhaps she had another, Conan mused. He realized that he had never checked her boots for concealed sheaths. No other part of her clothing or body was unknown to him.

“Here, stop that!” he objected, when Chestnut lightly leaped a long ridge of blown sand, to come down with a jolt that made his rider’s teeth clack.

The horse’s tail streamed behind like a tawny banner and his blowing mane snapped at Conan’s face, stinging. His garments blew and fluttered. He did not glance back. There was no reason to believe the pursuers could catch up. All he had to do was keep galloping…

Forever?

Hardly. Perhaps for hours, perhaps not so long. Eventually Ironhead and Chestnut must slow. They were surely less fresh than the mounts of the green-robes, who must dwell or have their tents pitched nearby. Then Conan and Isparana must face their enemies, or be carved from behind. It would be nice to come upon a jumble of rocks or one huge, scalable one, from which he could fight off more even than five attackers.

Biting his lip, Conan lifted his head enough to send his squinting gaze this way and that. He saw only rolling sand, and the long, tall acclivities were only sand, or perhaps sand drifted against stone hills worn smooth beneath.

Chestnut floundered up one such long slope now. Conan glanced back as Chestnut topped the slope. The pursuing quintet had not quite reached its base. Conan saw that one was unsteady in his saddle. The wight whose right arm he had chopped, the Cimmerian assumed, was weakening from loss of blood.

Over the sandy slope Chestnut kicked and dragged himself. Below and ahead, Isparana was galloping to a far higher dune or hill, not yet worn down by gritty, ever-shifting sand. She was guiding Ironhead so as to make the descent at a slant, to save the horse. Conan made a barbarian’s decision, just as he had when he had attacked the leader of six men who had every reason to believe him easy prey.

His chestnut mount grunted when his master’s left fist tightened and pulled the gathered reins. Descending, the horse was not happy to swerve leftward. It did, hooves slipping. Conan hung on, trying to lean leftward, uphill, while he continued to drag the rein in that direction; More than reluctant, fighting, Chestnut was now re-ascending the hill. Conan nearly lost his seat and his calves bunched to cling to the horse. They would quiver for an hour, later.

Now—

Now Chestnut again topped the summit and without a sound Conan loosed his two-legged grip, kicked with both heels, and clung again.

After emitting a grunt of outrage, Chestnut plunged down the incline a few ells to the left of the tracks of his assent.

Flee and be overtaken
, Conan had thought. Turn while his pursuers couldn’t see, and plunge down upon them while they were put at disadvantage by their assent, and he could surely reduce the odds with a totally unexpected attack. Once he had plunged past them it was up to the
jazikhim
whether to pursue, or be pursued, or give it up.

One man plunged down the slope to attack five.

“Haragh!” one of them bawled, or something like; perhaps it was “by Yog!” He had seen their quarry plunging down at them with the momentum of an avalanche. There could be no mistaking his grim purpose, however lunatic. His fellows looked up. Eyes and mouths went agape.

About all they were able to do was halt their mounts. One turned aside at an angle; though the down-rushing attacker was but one, the green-robed wight instinctively sought escape.

Leaping, slipping, sliding and lunging again, Chestnut kept his feet only by rushing with his own increasing momentum. The horse hurtled down like a diving eagle that had spotted its prey. Conan manhandled him into the narrow gap between the bunched quartet and the single
jazikh
who was turning from them. That man was to Conan’s right.

The Cimmerian felt a sword’s tip rake his cheek while he chopped across his body, into the leg of the man on his left. At the same time, he yanked Chestnut’s rein—to the left, again.

As he had expected, the horse’s hindquarters slewed and slammed rightward. The impact of his right flank with the other man’s horse was as if the
jazikh’s
mount had been struck by a boulder. The beast slid several feet on his hind legs, sought his balance, failed to find it, and fell. Its rider, wearing a dagger in his shoulder, fell with the beast. That his leg was doubtless broken in more than one place was of little import, for the horse rolled completely over him.

Chestnut somehow maintained his footing while maintaining his mad downhill rush. Conan’s left arm continued tense, dragging the beast ever leftward in a long hillside turn. He felt no sympathy for an animal that was by now surely developing a sore in one side of his mouth. His slobber streamed back over Conan’s leg.

Only when the grunting, panting animal was again ascending did Conan glance over to see what his mad surprise attack had wrought.

Squealing, a riderless horse was slipping and sliding, on its haunches, down the slope. Another was lunging up the incline. Two men were down; one moved. And three, shocked into silence, stared at the Cimmerian. Their leader had been slashed blind in an instant; another had taken a hurled dagger in the shoulder and had now been crushed beneath his own rolling horse; a third lay downslope, clutching with both hands at his deeply chopped thigh. Six had sought to rob and rape a woman with one man; three survived on their horses, and one of them was wounded in the sword arm. Indeed he was reeling in his saddle and his robe’s skirt was covered with blood.

“Come, jackals!” Conan bellowed. “Meet me atop this rise, and I’ll lay you low as the curs you are! Already your number is halved, and I’m not scratched!”

Blood trickled down his cheek and dripped on his jallaba even as he challenged so loudly, but Conan did not consider that scratch to be a scratch. And his chestnut horse, blowing, its sides heaving, pawed itself upward.

The three
jazikhim
exchanged looks, glanced over at their dead comrade and the wounded one, and at Conan, and back at each other.

“Vengeance!” one bawled, and waving his sword he booted his mount up the slope. His green robes flapped and fluttered about him and his curved blade flashed sunfire.

Damn
, Conan thought,
they might have given it up but for that bigmouth
.

Now Isparana had gained a good lead while he reduced the number of their pursuers—while considerably reducing his mount’s strength. And three enemies rode up the slope on a course parallel to his, seemingly undaunted. He decided to take the horse down, start up the second hill, and then wheel for another attack from above.

Just as he started to turn Chestnut’s head, loud shouts attracted his and his pursuers’ attention. All looked back the way they’d come—to see a clot of seven horsemen coming along their trail at the gallop… and all wore dark green scarves and lighter robes of the same color.