Red Nails
Draft

The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tasseled, red leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gold-worked saddle. She made the reins fast to a tree fork, and turned, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.

They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the sombre twilight of the lofty arches formed by intertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.

She was tall, full-bosomed and large-limbed, with compact shoulders that denoted an unusual strength without detracting anything from the femininity of her appearance. In spite of her garb and bearing, she was all woman. Her garments were incongruous, in view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which stopped a hand’s breadth short of her knees and were upheld by a wide sash worn as a girdle. Flaring topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees. A low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. On one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden hair, cut even with her shoulders, was confined by a cloth-of-gold band.

Against the background of sombre, primitive forest she posed with unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should have had a background of sea-clouds, masts, and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And there should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are retold in song and ballad wherever sea-farers gather.

She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and see the sky which presumably lay above, but presently gave it up with a muttered oath.

Leaving her horse where he stood she strode off in an eastward direction, glancing back toward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in her mind. The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor did any rustling in the underbrush indicate the presence of any small animals. She remembered that this silence had endured for many miles. For nearly a whole day she had travelled in a realm of absolute silence, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.

Ahead of her she saw an outcropping of dark, flint-like rock that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among the trees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves. Perhaps its peak rose above the trees, and from it she could see what lay beyond – if indeed, anything lay beyond but this apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many days.

A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led upward. After she had ascended some fifty feet she could no longer see the ground because of the intervening leaves. The trunks of the trees did not crowd close to the crag, but their smaller branches extended about it, veiling it with their foliage. She climbed on awhile in leafy obscurity, neither able to see above or below her, but presently the leaves thinned, and she came out on a flat shelf-like summit and saw the forest roof stretching away under her feet. That roof – which looked like a floor from her vantage-point – was as impenetrable from above as from below. She glanced westward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the rolling green ocean stretching away and away, with only a vague blue line in the distance to hint of the hill-range she had crossed days before, to plunge into this leafy waste.

North and south the view was the same, though the blue hill-line was lacking in those direction. She looked eastward, and stiffened suddenly, as her foot struck something in the litter of fallen leaves which carpeted the low shelf. She kicked some of the leaves aside and looked down on the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached frame, but saw no broken bones or any sign of violence. The man seemed to have died a natural death, though why he should have climbed to this difficult pinnacle to die, she could not imagine.

She mounted to the peak and looked eastward. She stiffened. Off to the east, within a few miles, the forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a bare plain, where only a few stunted trees grew. And in the midst of that plain rose the walls and towers of a man-made city. The girl swore in amazement. This passed belief. She would not have been surprized to have sighted human habitations of another sort – the beehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff-dwellings of the mysterious brown race which legend declared inhabited some country of this unexplored region. But it was a startling surprize to see a walled city here so many long weeks marches from the nearest outposts of any sort of civilization.

Her thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below her. She wheeled like a cat, catching at her hilt; and then she froze motionless, staring wide-eyed at the man before her.

He was a tall, powerfully-built man, almost a giant in size. His garb was similar to hers, except that he wore a broad leather belt instead of a girdle. Broadsword and poniard hung from this belt.

“Conan, the Cimmerian!” ejaculated the woman. “What are you doing on my trail?”

He grinned hardly, and his fierce blue eyes burned with a light any woman could understand as they ran over her magnificent figure, lingering on the swell of her splendid breasts beneath the light shirt, and the clear white flesh displayed between breeches and boot-tops.

“Why, hell, girl,” he laughed, “don’t you know? Haven’t I made my admiration for you clear ever since I first saw you?”

“A stallion could have made it no clearer,” she answered disdainfully. “But I never expected to encounter you so far from the ale-barrels and meat pots. Did you really follow me from Zarallo’s camp, or were you whipped forth?”

He laughed at her scorn and flexed his mighty biceps.

“You know Zarallo didn’t have enough knaves to whip me out of camp,” he grinned. “Of course I followed you. Lucky thing for you, too, wench! When you knifed that fellow, you lost Zarallo’s friendship, and you earned his brother’s hatred.”

“I know it,” she replied sullenly. “But what else could I do? You know what my provocation was.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “If I’d been there, I’d have knifed him myself. But if a woman must live a man’s life, she must expect such things.”

Valeria stamped her booted foot and swore.

“Why will not men let me live a man’s life?”

Again Conan’s eager eyes roved her.

“Hell, girl, that’s obvious! But you were wise to flee the camp. Zarallo would have had you skinned. The fellow’s brother followed you; faster than you thought. He was not far behind you when I caught up with him. His horse was better than yours. He’d have caught you and cut your throat within a few more miles.”

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well what?” he seemed puzzled.

“What of him?”

“Why, what do you suppose?” he demanded. “I killed him, of course, and left his carcass for the vultures. That delayed me, though, and I almost lost your trail when you crossed the rocky spurs of the hills. Otherwise I’d have caught up with you long ago.”

“And now you think you’ll drag me back to Zarallo’s camp?” she sneered.

“You know better than that,” he retorted. “Come, girl, don’t be such a spitfire. I’m not like that fellow you knifed, and you know it.”

“A penniless vagabond,” she taunted.

He laughed at her.

“What are you? You haven’t enough money to buy a new seat for your breeches. You’re not fooling me with your disdain. You know my reputation. You know I’ve commanded bigger ships and more men than you ever did. As for being penniless – hell, what rover isn’t at times? I’ve been rich a thousand times in my life, and I’ll roll in plunder again. I’ve squandered enough gold in the sea-ports of the world to fill a galleon. You know that, too.”

“Where are the fine ships and the bold lads you commanded, now?” she sneered.

“At the bottom of the sea, and in hell, mostly,” he replied cheerfully. “The Zingaran royal squadron sank my last ship off Toragis – I burned the town of Valadelad, but they caught me before I could reach the Barachas. I was the only man on board who escaped with his life. That’s why I joined Zarallo’s Free Companions. But the gold is scanty and the wine is poor – and I don’t like black women. And that’s all who came to our camp on the Darfar border – rings in their ears and their teeth filed – bah!

“Why did you join Zarallo?”

“Red Ortho killed the captain I was sailing with, and took our ship,” she answered sullenly. “The dog wanted me for his mistress. I jumped overboard one night and swam ashore when we were anchored off the Kushite coast. Off Zabhela it was. There I met a Shemite trader who was also a recruiting agent for Zarallo. He told me that Zarallo had brought his Free Companies south to guard the Darfar border for the Stygians. I joined an east-bound caravan and eventually came to the camp.”

“And now we’ve both left Zarallo to shift for himself,” commented Conan. “It was madness to plunge into the south as you did – but wise, too, for Zarallo’s patrols never thought to look for you in this direction. Only the brother of the man you killed came this way, and struck your trail.”

“And now what do you intend doing?” she demanded.

“Turn west through the forest,” he answered. “I’ve been this far south, but not this far east. Many days’ travelling to the west will bring us to the open savannahs, where the black tribes live. I have friends among them. We’ll get to the coast and find a ship. I’m sick of the jungle myself.”

“Then be on your way,” she advised. “I have other plans.”

“Don’t be a fool,” he answered, showing irritation for the first time. “You can’t survive in this forest.”

“I have – for more than a week.”

“But what do you intend doing?”

“That’s none of your affair,” she snapped.

“Yes, it is,” he answered calmly. “I’ve followed you this far, do you think I’ll turn around and ride back empty handed? Be sensible, wench; I’m not going to harm you.”

He stepped toward her, and she sprang back, whipping out her sword.

“Keep back, you barbarian dog! I’ll spit you like a roast pig!”

He halted, reluctantly.

“Do you want me to take that toy away from you and spank you with it?” he demanded.

“Words!” she mocked, lights like the sun on blue water dancing in her reckless eyes, and he knew it was the truth. No living man could disarm Valeria of the Brotherhood with his bare hands. He scowled; his feelings were a chaotic mixture of conflicting emotions. He was angry, yet he was amused and full of admiration. He was itching with eagerness to seize that splendid figure and crush it in his iron arms, yet he greatly desired not to hurt the girl. He was torn between a desire to shake her, and a desire to caress her. He knew if he came nearer her sword would be sheathed in his heart. He had seen Valeria kill too many men to have any illusions about her. He knew she was as quick and ferocious in attack as a she-tiger. He could draw his broadsword and disarm her, beat the blade out of her hand, but the thought of drawing a sword on a woman, even without intent of injury, was extremely repugnant to him.

“Blast your soul, you hussy,” he exclaimed in exasperation. “I’m going to take your –” He started toward her, his anger making him reckless, and she poised herself for a thrust when a startling interruption came.

“What’s that?”

Both of them started, and Conan wheeled like a cat, his great sword flashing into his hand. Valeria recoiled, even as she poised for her thrust. Back in the forest had risen a hideous medley of screams – the screams of terrified or agonized horses. Mingled plainly with their screams came the snap of breaking bones.

“Lions are slaying the horses!” cried Valeria.

“Lions, hell!” snorted Conan, his eyes blazing. “Did you hear a lion roar? Neither did I! Listen at those bones snap – not even a lion could make that much noise killing a horse. Follow me – but keep behind me.”

He hurried down the natural ramp and she followed, their personal feud forgotten in the code of the adventurers, the instinct to unite against common peril.

They descended into the screen of leaves and worked their way downward through the green veil. Silence had fallen again over the forest.

“I found your horse tied by the pool back there,” he muttered, treading so noiselessly that she no longer wondered how he had surprized her on the crag. “I tied mine beside it and followed the tracks of your boots. Watch, now!”

They had emerged from the belt of leaves and stared down into the lower reaches of the forest. Above them the green roof spread its dusky canopy. Below them the sunlight filtered in just enough to make a grey twilight. The giant trunks of trees less than a hundred yards away looked dim and ghostly.

“The horses should be beyond that thicket,” whispered Conan, making no more sound than a breeze moving through the branches. “Listen!”

Valeria had already heard, and a chill crept through her veins so she unconsciously laid her white hand on her companion’s muscular brown arm. From beyond that thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the loud rending of flesh.

“Lions wouldn’t make that noise,” whispered Conan. “Something’s eating our horses, but it’s not a lion – look there!”

The noise stopped suddenly, and Conan swore softly. A suddenly risen breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the unknown monster was hidden.

The thicket was suddenly agitated and Valeria clutched Conan’s arm hard. Ignorant of jungle-lore, she yet knew that no animal she had ever seen could have shaken the thicket like that.

“An elephant wouldn’t make that much disturbance,” muttered Conan, echoing her thought. “What the devil –” his voice trailed away in the stunned silence of incredulous amazement.

Through the thicket was thrust the head of nightmare and horror. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a cobra a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth. The head was farther extended, on a long, scaled neck, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled a titan’s body, a gigantic reptilian torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tip-toe. A dragon-like tail trailed out behind the monstrosity.

“Back up the crag, quick!” snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him. “That devil can’t climb, I hope, but he can stand on his hind-legs and reach us –”

With a snapping and crashing of underbrush and small trees the dragon charging and even as Conan predicted, reared up fearsomely on his short, massive hinder legs to fall with his front feet on the crag with a violence that made the rock vibrate. Hardly had the fugitives passed through the leafy screen than the huge head was darted through, and the mighty jaws snapped with a resounding clash of giant fangs. But they were out of its reach, and they stared down at the nightmare visage framed among the green leaves. Then the head was withdrawn, and a moment later, peering down through the branches that scraped against the rock, they saw it squatting on its haunches, staring unblinkingly up at them.

Valeria shuddered, unnerved.

“How long do you suppose he’ll squat there?”

Conan kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf.

“This fellow must have climbed up here to escape him, or one like him. He died here of starvation. That thing never will leave here until we’re both dead. I’ve heard legends of these things from the black people, but I never believed them before.”

Valeria looked at him blankly, her resentment forgotten. She fought down a surge of panic. She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of war-ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the trampled sandy beaches where the desperate men of the Red Brotherhood bathed their knives in each other’s blood in their struggles for supremacy. She had not faltered in her long flight southward from the camp on the Darfar border, over the rolling grasslands and through the hostile forests. But the prospect now confronting her congealed her blood. A cutlass stroke in the heat of battle was nothing; but to sit idle and helpless on a bare rock until starvation slew her, besieged by a monstrous survival of an elder age – the thought sent panic throbbing through her brain.

“He must leave to eat and drink,” she said helplessly.

“He won’t have to go far to do either,” Conan pointed out. “He can run like a deer; besides, he’s just gorged on our horses, and like a real snake, he can go for a long time without eating or drinking. But he doesn’t sleep like a real snake.”

Conan spoke imperturbably. He was a barbarian and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children was a part of his soul. He could endure a situation like this as no civilized person could endure it.

“Can’t we get into the trees and get away, travelling through the branches?” she asked desperately.

He shook his head. “I thought of that. The branches scrape the crag down there, but they’re too light. Branches too light for spear handles and vines no thicker than cords. They’d break with our weight. Besides, I’ve got an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots.”

“Well, are we to sit here on our rumps until we starve?” she cried furiously. “I won’t do it! I’ll go down there and cut his damned head off –”

Conan had seated himself tranquilly on a rocky projection. He looked up admiringly at her blazing eyes and tense, quivering figure, but realizing that she was in just the mood for any madness, he let none of his admiration sound in his voice.

“Sit down,” he grunted, catching her by her wrist and pulling her down on his knee. Without meeting any resistance he took her sword away from her and shoved it back in its sheath. “Sit still and calm down. You’d only break your steel on his scales. We’ll get out of this jam some way. But we won’t do it by getting chewed up and swallowed.”

She made no reply, nor did she offer any resistance to his arm about her waist. She was frightened, and the sensation was new to Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. So she sat on her companion – or captor’s – knee with a docility that would have amazed Count Zarallo who had atrophised her as a she-devil out of hell’s seraglio.

Conan played idly with her curly yellow locks, seemingly intent only upon his conquest. Neither the skeleton at his feet nor the monster crouching below him disturbed his mind in the slightest.

The girl’s restless eyes, roving the leaves below them, rested on the darkly crimson fruit she had noticed when she first climbed the crag. They were similar to fruit she had found in the forest and eaten during her flight from Zarallo’s camp. She was aware of both thirst and hunger, though neither had bothered her until she knew she could not descend from the crag to find food and water.

“We need not starve,” she said. “There is fruit.”

Conan glanced where she pointed.

“If we ate that we wouldn’t need the bite of a dragon,” he grunted. “That’s what the black people of Kush call The Apples of Derketa. Derketa is the Queen of the Dead. Drink a little of the juice, or spill it on your flesh, and you’d be dead before you could climb to the foot of this crag.”

“Oh!” She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their predicament. She thought of something and called Conan’s attention to the view eastward. He stood on the pinnacle and stared out over the forest roof.

“That’s a city, right enough,” he muttered. “Was that where you were going, when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?”

She nodded.

“Well, who’d have thought to find a city here? So far as I know the Stygians never penetrated this far. Could it be black people? I see no herds on the plain, no sign of cultivation, or people moving about.”

“How could you hope to see all that, at that distance?” she demanded.

He shrugged his shoulders and stepped down from the pinnacle. Suddenly he swore. “Why in Crom’s name didn’t I think of it before?”

Without answering her question, he descended to the belt of leaves and stared down through them. The great brute squatted below, watching the the crag with the frightful patience of the reptile folk. Conan spat a curse at him, and then began cutting branches. Presently he had three long slender shafts, about seven feet long, but each no larger than his thumb.

“Branches too light for spear handles, and creepers no thicker than cords,” he repeated a previous statement. “But there’s strength in union – that’s what the Aquilonian renegades used to tell us Cimmerians when they came into the hills to raise an army to invade their own country. But we fight by clans and tribes.”

“What the devil has that got to do with those sticks?” she demanded.

“You wait and see.” Cutting lengths of vines he placed the sticks together, and drawing his poniard, wedged the hilt between them at one end. Then with the vines he bound them into a compact bundle, and when he had completed, he had a spear of no small strength, with a sturdy haft seven in length.

“What good will that do?” she demanded. “You told me that a blade couldn’t pierce his scales –”

“He doesn’t have scales all over him,” answered Conan. “There’s more than one way of skinning a panther.”

Moving down to the edge of the leafy belt he reached the spear up and carefully thrust it through one of the Apples of Derketa, drawing carefully aside to avoid the darkly purple drops that dripped from the pierced fruit. Presently he withdrew the blade and showed her the blue steel stained a dull purplish crimson.

“I don’t know whether it will do the job or not,” quoth he. “There’s enough poison there to kill an elephant almost instantly but – well, we’ll see.”

Valeria was close behind him as he let himself down among the leaves. Cautiously holding the poisoned pike away from him, he thrust his head through the leaves and addressed the monster.

“What are you waiting down there for, you misbegotten offspring of a parent of questionable morals?” was one of his more printable inquiries. “Stick your ugly head up here again, you long-necked bastard – or do you want me to come down there and kick you loose from your illegitimate spine?”

There was more of it – some of it couched in eloquence that made Valeria stare, in spite of her profane education among the sea-farers. And it had its effect on the monster. Just as the incessant yapping of a dog worries and enrages more constitutionally silent animals, so the clamorous voice of a man rouses fear in some bestial bosoms and insane rage in others. Suddenly, and with appalling quickness the mastodonic brute reared itself on its mighty hind legs and elongated its neck and body in an effort to reach this vociferous pigmy whose clamor was disturbing the primeval silence of its horrible realm.

But Conan had judged his distance precisely. Some five feet below Conan the mighty head crashed terribly but futiley through the leaves. And as the monstrous mouth gaped like that of a great snake, Conan drove his spear into the red angle of the hinge of the jawbone. He struck down ward with all the strength of both arms, driving the long poniard blade deep into flesh bone and muscle.

Instantly the jaws clashed together, severing the triple-woven shaft and almost precipitating Conan from his perch. In fact he would have fallen but for the girl behind him, who caught his sword-belt in a desperate grasp. He clutched at a rocky projection and grinned his thanks back at her.

Down on the ground the monster was wallowing like a dog with pepper in its eyes. He shook his head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened his mouth to its fullest extent, again and again. Presently he got a huge front foot on the stump of the shaft, and managed to tear the blade out. Realizing who was the author of his annoyance, he threw up his head, jaws wide and spouting blood and glared up at the crag with such concentrated and intelligent fury that Valeria trembled and drew her sword.

With harsh grating roars, the monster hurled himself at the crag that was the citadel of his enemies. Again and again his mighty head crashed upward through the leaves, snapping vainly on empty air. He hurled his full weight again and again against the rock, until it vibrated from base to crest. And rearing upright he gripped it with his front legs like a man and tried the impossible feat of tearing it from the ground bodily.

This exhibition of primordial fury chilled the blood in Valeria’s veins, but Conan was too close to the primitive himself to feel anything but a fascinated interest. To the barbarian, no such gulf existed between himself and other men, and the animals, as existed in the conception of Valeria. The monster below them, to Conan, was merely a form of life differing from himself mainly in shape. He attributed to it characteristics similar to his own, and believed its roars and bellowings were merely counterparts of the curses he had bestowed upon it. Feeling a kinship with all wild things, even dragons, it was impossible for him to experience the sick horror that assailed Valeria at the sight of the monster’s wrath.

He watched it tranquilly and pointed out the various changes that were taking place in its voice and its actions.

“The poison’s taking hold,” he said with conviction.

“I don’t believe it.” To Valeria it seemed preposterous to suppose that any lethal thing could have any effect on that mountain of muscle and ferocity.

“There’s pain in his voice,” declared Conan. “First he was merely angry because of the stinging in his jaw. Now he feels the bite of the poison. Look! He’s staggering! He’ll be blind in a few more minutes. What did I tell you?”

For suddenly the dragon had lurched about and went crashing off through the underbrush.

“Is he running away?” inquired Valeria uneasily.

“He’s making for the pool. The poison makes him thirsty. Come on! He’ll be blind when he gets back, if he does get back. But if he can make his way back to the foot of the crag, and smell us, he’ll sit there until he dies, and others of his kind may come at his cries. Let’s go!”

“Down there?” Valeria was aghast.

“Sure! We’ll make for the city! We may run into a thousand of the brutes, but it’s sure death to stay here. Down with you, in a hurry! Follow me!”

He went down swiftly, like an ape, pausing only to aid his slower companion, who, until she saw the Cimmerian climb, had fancied herself the equal of any man in the rigging of a ship, or on the sheer of a cliff.

They slid silently to the ground, though Valeria felt as if the beating of her heart must surely be heard for miles. No sound came from the forest, except the gurgling and lapping that indicated that the dragon was drinking at the spring.

“As soon as his belly is full he’ll be back,” muttered Conan. “It may take hours for the poison to work.”

Somewhere beyond the forest the sun was sinking to the horizon. The forest was a misty twilight place of black shadows and dim vistas. Conan gripped Valeria’s wrist and glided away from the crag’s foot. He made less noise than a breeze blowing among the tree-trunks, but Valeria felt as if her soft boots spoke of their flight to all the forest.

“I don’t think he can follow a trail,” muttered Conan. “No wind blowing. He could get our body-scent if it blew toward him.”

“Mitra grant that the wind blow not,” she breathed. She gripped her sword in her free hand, but the feel of the shagreen-bound hilt inspired only a feeling of helplessnes in her.

It was little over a mile to the edge of the forest. They had covered most of the distance when they heard a snapping and crashing behind them. Valeria bit her lip to check a cry.

“He’s on our trail!” she whispered fiercely, galvanized.

Conan shook his head.

“He didn’t smell us at the rock, and he’s blundering about through the forest, trying to pick up our scent. Come on! There’s no safety for us in this forest. He could tear down any tree we’d climb. Make for the plain! If he doesn’t catch our scent, we’ll make it! The city is our only chance!”

They stole on until the trees began to thin out. Behind them the forest was a black impenetrable ocean of shadows. The ominous crackling still sounded behind them, as the dragon blundered in his erratic course.

“There’s the plain ahead,” breathed Valeria. “A little more and we’ll –”

“Crom!” swore Conan.

“Mitra!” whispered Valeria.

Out of the east a wind had sprung up. It blew over them directly into the black forest behind them. Instantly a horrible roar shook the woods. The aimless snapping and crackling of the bushes changed to a purposeful crashing as the dragon came like a hurricane straight toward the spot from which the scent wafted.

“Run!” snarled Conan, his eyes blazing like those of a trapped wolf. “It’s all we can do!”

Sailors’ boots are not made for sprinting, and the life of a pirate does not train one for a runner. Within fifty yards Valeria was panting and reeling in her gait and behind them the crashing gave way to a rolling thunder as the monster broke out of the thickets and into the clearer country.

Conan’s iron arm about the woman’s waist half lifted her; her feet scarcely touched the earth as she was borne along at a speed she could have attained herself. A quick glance over his shoulder showed Conan that the monster was almost upon them, coming a war-galley in front of a hurricane. He thrust Valeria from him with a force that sent her staggering a dozen feet to fall in a crumpled heap at the foot of the nearest tree, and wheeled in the path of the thundering titan.

Convinced that his death was upon him, the Cimmerian acted according to his instinct, and hurled himself full at the awful face that was bearing down on him. He leaped, striking and slashing like a wildcat, felt his sword cut deep into the scales that sheathed the mighty snout – and then a terrific impact knocked him rolling and tumbling for fifty feet with all the wind and half the life battered out of him.

How the stunned Cimmerian regained his feet, not even he could ever have told. But he thought only for the girl lying dazed almost within the path of the hurtling fiend, and before the breath came whistling back into his gullet he was standing over her with his sword in his hand.

She lay where he had thrown her, but she was struggling to a sitting posture. The dragon had not touched her, neither with tearing tusks or trampling feet. It had been a shoulder or front leg that struck Conan; and the blind monster rushed on, forgetting the victims it had scented in the sudden agony of its death throes. Headlong on its course it thundered until its low-hung head crashed into a gigantic tree in its path. The impact tore the tree up by the roots and must have dashed the brains from the misshapen skull. Tree and monster fell together, and the dazed humans saw the branches and leaves contorted and shaken by the convulsions of the creature they hid – and then grow quiet.

Conan lifted Valeria to her feet and together they started eastward at a reeling run. A few moments later they emerged into the still twilight of the treeless plain.

Conan paused an instant, and glanced back at the black forest behind him. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird chirped. It stood as silent as it must have stood before animal life was created.

“Come on,” muttered Conan, taking his companion’s hand. “The woods may be full of those devils. We’ll try that city out there on the plain.”

With every step they took away from the black woods Valeria drew a breath of relief. Each moment she expected to hear the crashing of the bushes and see another giant nightmare bearing down upon them. But nothing disturbed the silence of the forest.

With the first mile between them and the woods, Valeria breathed easy. The sun had set and darkness was gathering over the plain, lightened a little by the stars that made stunted ghosts out of the mimosa shrubs.

“No cattle, no ploughed fields,” muttered Conan. “How do these people live?”

“Perhaps the fields and grazing lands are on the other side of the city,” suggested Valeria.

“Maybe,” he grunted. “I didn’t see any from the crag, though.”

The moon came up behind the city, etching walls and towers blackly in the yellow glow. Valeria shivered. Black against the moon the strange city had a sombre, sinister look.

Perhaps something of the same feeling occurred to Conan, for he stopped, glanced about him, and grunted: “We stop here. No use arriving at their gates in the night. They probably wouldn’t let us in. Besides, we’re tired, and we don’t know how they’ll receive us. A few hours rest will put us in better shape to fight or run.”

He led the way to a bed of cactus which grew in a circle – a phenomenon common to the southern desert. With his sword he chopped an opening, and motioned Valeria to enter.

“We’ll be safe from snakes here, anyhow.”

She glanced fearfully back toward the black line that indicated the forest, some six miles away.

“Suppose a dragon comes out of the woods?”

“We’ll keep watch,” he answered, though he made no suggestion as to what they would do in such an event. “Lie down and sleep. I’ll keep the first watch.”

She hesitated, but he sat down cross-legged in the opening, facing toward the plain, his sword across his knees, his back to her. Without further comment she lay down on the sand inside the spiky circle.

“Wake me when the moon is at its zenith,” she directed. He did not reply nor look toward her. Her last impression, as she sank into slumber was of his motionless figure, immobile as a statue hewn out of bronze, outlined against the low-hanging stars.

CHAPTER

Valeria awoke with a start, to the realization that a grey dawn was stealing over the desert.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Conan was squatting beside the cactus, cutting off the thick pears and dexterously twitching out the spikes.

“You didn’t awake me,” she accused. “You let me sleep all night!”

“You were tired,” he answered. “Your posterior must have been sore, after that long ride. You pirates aren’t used to horseback.”

“What about yourself?” she retorted.

“I was a kozak before I was a pirate,” he answered. “They live in the saddle. I snatch naps like a panther watching beside the trail for a deer to come by. My ears stay awake while my eyes sleep.”

And indeed the giant Cimmerian seemed as much refreshed as if he had slept the whole night on a gold bed. Having removed the thorns, and peeled off the tough skin, Conan handed the girl a thick, juicy cactus leaf.

“Eat that pear. It’s food and drink to a desert man. I was a chief of the Zuagirs once – desert men who live by plundering the caravans.”

“Is there anything you haven’t been?” inquired the girl, half in derision, half in fascination.

“I’ve never been king of an Hyborian kingdom,” he grinned, taking an enormous mouthful of cactus. “But I’ve dreamed of being even that. I may be too, some day. Why shouldn’t I?”

She shook her head in wonder and fell to devouring her pear. She found it not unpleasing to the palate, and full of a cool and thirst-satisfying juice. Finishing his meal, Conan wiped his hands in the sand, rose, ran his fingers through his thick black mane, hitched at his sword-belt and said: “Well, let’s go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats they may as well do it now, before the heat of the day begins.”

His grim humor was unconscious, but Valeria reflected that it might be prophetic. She touched her sword-hilt as she rose. Her terrors of the night were past. The roaring dragons of the distant forest were like a dim dream. There was a swagger in her bearing as she moved off beside her companion. Whatever perils lay ahead of them, their foes would be men. And Valeria of the Red Brethren had never seen the face of the man she feared.

Conan glanced down at her as she strode along beside him with her easy swinging stride that matched his own.

“You walk more like a hillman than a sailor,” he said. “You must be an Aquilonian. The suns of Darfar never burnt your white skin brown.”

“I am from Aquilonia,” she replied. His compliments no longer antagonized her. His evident admiration pleased her. After all, the desire of Conan the Cimmerian was an honor to any woman, even to Valeria of the Red Brotherhood.

The sun rose behind the city, turning the towers to a sinister crimson.

“Black last night against the moon,” grunted Conan, his eyes clouding with the abysmal superstition of the barbarian. “Blood-red against the sun this dawn. I like not that city.”

But they went on, and as they went Conan pointed out the fact that no road ran to the city from the west.

“No cattle have trampled the plain on this side of the village,” said he. “No plough has touched the earth for years – maybe centuries. No track shows in the dust. But look – once this plain was cultivated.”

Valeria saw the ancient irrigation ditches and the long dried stream-bed. On each side of the city the plain stretched to the forest edge that marched in a vast, dim ring. Vision did not extend beyond that ring.

The sun was high in the eastern sky when they stood before the great gate in the western wall, in the shadow of the lofty rampart. The city lay silent as the forest they had escaped. Rust flecked the iron bracings of the heavy bronze gate. Spider webs glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel.

“It has not been opened for years,” exclaimed Valeria, awed by the brooding silence of the place.

“A dead city,” grunted Conan. “That’s why the ditches were broken and the plain untouched.”

“But who built it? Who dwelt here? Where did they go? Why did they abandon it?”

“Who can say? There are deserted, mysterious cities scattered about in desert spots of the world. Maybe a roving tribe of Stygians built it long ago. Maybe not. It doesn’t look like Stygian architecture much. Maybe they were wiped out by enemies, or a plague exterminated them.”

“In that case their treasures may still be gathering dust and cobwebs there,” suggested Valeria, the acquisitive instincts of her profession waking her, prodded too by feminine curiosity. “Can we open that gate? Let’s go in and explore a bit.”

Conan eyed the heavy portal dubiously, but placed his massive shoulder against it and thrust with all the power of his muscular calves and thighs. With a rasping screech of rusty hinges the gate moved inward and Conan instinctively drew his sword and peered in. Valeria crowded him to stare over his shoulder. They both expressed surprize.

They were not looking into an open street or court as one would have expected. The opened gate gave directly into a long, broad hall that ran away and away until its vista was rendered indistinct by distance. It must have been a hundred and fifty feet broad, and from floor to ceiling it was a greater distance. The floor was of a curious dull red stone that seemed to smolder as if with the reflection of flames. The walls were of a curious semi-translucent green substance.

“Jade, or I’m a Shemite!” swore Conan.

“Not in such quantities!” protested Valeria.

“I’ve looted enough from the Khitan caravans to know what I’m talking about,” he asserted.

The ceiling was vaulted and of some substance like lapis lazuli, adorned with great green stones that shone with a poisonous radiance.

“Green fire stones,” growled Conan. “That’s what the people of Punt call them. They’re supposed to be the petrified eyes of the Golden Serpents. They glow like a cat’s eyes in the dark. This hall would be lighted by them at night, but it would be a devilish ghostly illumination. Let’s look about. We may find a cache of jewels.”

They entered, leaving the door ajar. Valeria wondered how many centuries had passed since the light of outer day had filtered into that great hall.

But light was coming in somewhere, and she saw its source. It came through some of the doors along the side walls which stood open. In the splotches of shadow between, the green jewels winked like the eyes of angry cats. Beneath their feet the lurid floor smoldered with changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of hell with evil stars blinking overhead.

“I believe this hallway goes clean through the city to the eastern gate,” grunted Conan. “I seem to glimpse a gate at the other end.”

Valeria shrugged her white shoulders.

“Your eyes are better than mine, though I’m accounted sharp-eyed among the sea-rovers.”

They turned into an open door at random, and traversed a series of empty chambers, floored like the hall, with the same green jade walls or walls of marble or ivory. Bronze or gold or silver freize-work adorned the walls. In some of the ceilings the green-fire stones were set; in some they were lacking. Tables and seats of marble, jade or lapis lazuli were plentiful throughout the chambers, but nowhere did they find any windows, or doors that opened into streets or courts. Each door merely opened into another chamber or hall. Some of the chambers were lighter than others, through a system of skylights in the ceilings – opaque but translucent sheets of some crystalline substance.

“Why don’t we come to a street?” grumbled Valeria. “This palace or whatever we’re in must be as big as the palace of the king of Turan.”

“They must not have perished of plague,” said Conan, meditating upon the mystery of the empty city. “Otherwise we’d find skeletons. Maybe the city became haunted and everybody got up and left. Maybe –”

“Maybe, hell!” broke in Valeria. “We’ll never know. Look at these freizes. They portray men.”

Conan scanned them and shook his head.

“I never saw people like them. But there’s the smack of the East about them – Vendhya, maybe, or Kosala.”

“Were you a king in Kosala?” she asked, masking her keen interest in derision.

“No. But I was a war-chief of the Afghulis who dwell in the Himelian mountains above the borders of Vendhya. These people might have been Kosalans. But why the hell should Kosalans be building a city this far to the West?”

The freizes portrayed slender, dark-skinned men and women, with finely-chiseled features. They wore long robes and many jeweled ornaments. Their complection, cleverly reproduced, was olive.

“Easterners, all right,” grunted Conan. “But from where I don’t know. Let’s climb that stair.”

The stair he mentioned was an ivory spiral that wound up from the chamber they were traversing. They mounted and came into a larger chamber, which also was without windows. A greenish skylight let in a vague radiance.

“Hell!” Valeria sat down disgustedly on a jade bench. “The people who lived in this city must have taken all their treasures with them. I’m getting tired of wandering around here at random.”

“Let’s have a look through that door over there,” suggested Conan.

“You have a look,” advised Valeria. “I’m going to sit here and rest my feet.”

Conan disappeared through the door, and Valeria leaned back with her hands clasped behind her head, and thrust her booted legs out in front of her. These rooms and silent halls with their gleaming green clusters of ornaments and smoldering crimson floors were beginning to depress her. She wished they could find their way out of the maze into which they had wandered and emerge into a street. She idly wondered how many furtive, dark feet had rustled over those flaming floors in past centuries, how many deeds of cruelty and mystery those flaming ceiling-gems had looked down upon.

It was a faint noise that brought her out of her reflections. She was on her feet with her sword in her hand before she realized what it was that had disturbed her. Conan had not returned, and she knew it was not him she had heard.

The sound had come from somewhere beyond a door that stood opposite from the one by which the Cimmerian gone. Soundlessly on her soft leather footgear she glided to the door and looked through. It opened on a gallery that ran along a wall above a hall. She crept to the heavy balustrades and peered between them.

A man was stealing along the hall.

The unexpected shock of seeing a stranger in a deserted city almost brought a startled oath to Valeria’s lips. Crouching down behind the stone balustrades, with every nerve tingling, she glared at the stealthy figure.

The man in no way resembled the figures depicted on the freize. He was slightly above middle height, very dark skinned, though not negroid. He was naked but for a scanty loin-cloth that only partially covered his muscular hips, and a broad leather girdle about his lean waist. His long black hair hung in lank strands about his shoulders. He was gaunt, but knots and cords of muscles stood out on his arms and legs. There was no symmetry of contour; he was built with an economy that was almost repellant.

Yet it was not so much his physical appearance that impressed the woman who watched him, as his attitude. He slunk along the hall in a semi-crouch, darting glances to right and left. She saw the cruel curved blade in his right hand shake with the intensity of whatever emotion it was that made him tremble as he stole along. He was afraid – was shaking in the grip of some frightful terror. That he feared some imminent peril was evident. When he turned his head she caught the blaze of wild eyes among the lank hair. On his tiptoes he glided across the hall and vanished through an open door, first halting and casting a fiercely questioning look about him. A moment she heard a choking cry and then silence again.

Who was the fellow? What did he fear in this empty city? Plagued by these and similar questions, Valeria acted on impulse. She glided along the gallery until she came to a door which she believed opened into a room over the one in which the dark-skinned stranger had vanished. To her pleasure she came upon a gallery similar to the one she had just quitted, and a stair led down into the chamber.

This chamber was not as well lighted as some of the others. A trick of the skylight above caused a corner of the chamber to remain in shadow. Valeria’s eyes widened. The man she had seen was still in the chamber.

He lay face down on a dark crimson carpet on the floor. His body was limp, his arms spread wide. His wide-tipped sword lay near his hand.

She wondered why he should lie there so motionless. Then her eyes narrowed as she stared down at the rug on which he lay. Beneath and about him the carpet showed a slightly different color – a deeper, brighter crimson –

Shivering slightly she crouched down closer behind the balustrade. Suddenly another figure entered the silent play. He was a man similar to the first, and he came in by a door opposite that through which the other had entered. His eyes widened at the sight of the man on the floor, and he spoke something in a staccato voice. The other did not move.

The man stepped quickly across the floor, gripped the shoulder of the prostrate figure and turned him over. A choking cry escaped him as the head fell back limply, disclosing a throat that had been severed from ear to ear.

The man let the corpse fall back into the puddle of blood on the carpet, and sprang to his feet, shaking like a leaf. His face was a mask of fear. But before he could move, he halted, frozen.

Over in the shadowy corner a ghostly light began to glow and grow. Valeria felt her hair stir as she watched it. For dimly visible in its glow there floated a human skull – a skull with blazing green eyes. It hung there like a disembodied head, growing more and more distinct.

The man stood like an image, staring fixedly at the apparition. The thing moved out from the wall and as it emerged from the shadows it became visible as a man-like figure whose torso and limbs, stark naked, shone whitely, like the hue of bleached skulls. The bare skull on its shoulders still glowed with the lurid light, and the man confronting it seemed unable to take his eyes from it. He stood motionless, his sword dangling from his fingers, on his face an expression like that on the face of a man in a mesmeristic trance.

The horror moved toward him, and suddenly he dropped his sword and fell on his knees, covering his eyes with his hands, dumbly awaiting the stroke of the blade that now gleamed in the apparition’s hand, as it reared above him like Death triumphant over mankind.

Valeria acted according to her wayward impulse. With one lithe movement she was over the balustrade and dropped to the floor behind the figure. It wheeled like a cat at the pad of her soft boot on the floor, and even as it turned her keen blade lashed down, severing shoulder and breast bone. The apparition cried out gurglingly and went down, and as it fell, the phosphorescent skull rolled clear revealing a lank-haired head and a dark face now contorted in the convulsion of death. Beneath the horrific masquerade there was a human being, a man similar to the one kneeling supinely on the floor.

The latter looked up at the sound of the blow and cry, and now he glared in wild-eyed amazement at the white-skinned woman who stood over the corpse with a dripping sword in her hand.

He staggered up, yammering as if the surprize had almost unseated his reason. She was amazed to realize that she understood him. He was gibbering in the Stygian tongue, though in a dialect unfamiliar to her.

“Who are you? Whence do you come? What do you in Xuchotl?” Then rushing on, without waiting for her to reply. “But you are a friend – a friend or a goddess! Goddess or devil, it makes no difference! You have slain the Living Skull! It was but a man after all! We thought it was a demon they conjured out of the catacombs below the city! Listen!”

He stiffened again, straining his ears with painful intensity; the girl heard nothing.

“We must hasten,” he whispered. “They are all around us here. Perhaps even now we may be surrounded by them. They may be creeping upon us even now!”

He seized her wrist in a convulsive grasp she found it hard to break.

“Who do you mean by ‘they’?” she demanded.

He stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, as a man stares when confronted in a stranger by ignorance of something common-place to himself.

“They?” he repeated vaguely. “Why, the people of Xecalanc! The folk of the man you killed! They who dwell by the northern gate.”

“You mean to say men live in this city?” she exclaimed, dumfounded.

“Aye! Aye!” he was writhing in the impatience of apprehension. “Come! Come quick! We must return to Tecuhltli!”

“Where the hell is that?” she demanded bewilderedly.

“The region by the south gate!” He had her wrist again and was urging her to follow him. Great beads of perspiration dripped from his dark forehead. His eyes blazed with pure terror.

“Wait a minute,” she growled, flinging off his hands. “Keep your fingers off me, or I’ll split your skull! What’s all this about? Who are you are? Where would you take me?”

He shuddered, casting glances to all sides, and speaking so fast and in such fear that his words were jerky and all but incoherent.

“My name is Techotl. I am of the Tecuhltli. This man who lies with his throat cut and I came into the Disputed Region to try and ambush some of the Xecalanc. But we became separated and I returned here to find him with his gullet slit. The dog who wore the skull must have done it. But perhaps he was not alone. Others may be stealing from Xecalanc! The gods themselves shudder when they hear what these demons have done to captives!”

He shook as with an ague, and his dark skin grew ashy at the thought. Valeria stared at him with a frown of bewilderment. She sensed intelligence behind this rigamarole, but it was meaningless to her.

“Come!” he begged, reaching for her hand and then recoiling as he remembered her warning. “You are a stranger. How you came here I do not know, but if you were a goddess come to aid us of Tecuhltli you would know all that transpires in Xuchotl. You must be from beyond the great forest. But you are our friend, or you would not have slain the dog who wore the glowing skull. Come quickly, before the Xecalanc fall on us and slay us!”

“But I can’t go,” she answered. “I have a friend somewhere nearby –”

The flaring of his eyes cut her short as he stared past her with a ghastly expression. She wheeled just as four men rushed through the doors of the chamber, converging on the pair in the center of the room.

They were like the others she had seen – the same knotted muscles standing out on otherwise gaunt limbs, the same lank blue black hair, the same mad glare in the staring eyes. They were armed and clad like the man who called himself Techotl, but on the breast of each was painted a white skull.

There were no challenges or war-cries. Like blood-mad tigers the men of Xecalanc sprang at the throats of their enemies. Techotl met them with the fury of desperation, parried the stroke of a curved blade and grappling with the wielder, bore him to the floor where they rolled and wrestled in murderous silence.

The other three swarmed on Valeria, their weird eyes red with the murder-lust.

She killed the first who came in reach, her long straight blade beating down his curved sword and splitting his skull. She stepped aside to avoid the stroke of another, even as she turned the blade of the third with her sword. Her eyes danced and her lips smiled without mercy. Again she was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood and the hum of her steel was like a bridal song in her ears.

Her sword darted past a blade that sought to parry and sheathed six inches of its point in a leather-guarded midriff. The man gasped and went to his knees. His mate lunged in in ferocious silence, his eyes like a mad dog’s. He rained blow on blow in a whirlwind of steel, so furiously Valeria had no opportunity to strike back. She fell back coolly, parrying the wild blows, and watching her opportunity. He could not long keep up that whirlwind of flailing strokes. He would tire, would weaken and hesitate – and then her blade would slide smoothly into his heart. A side-long glance showed her Techotl crouching on the breast of his prostrate enemy, and striving to break the other’s hold on his wrist and drive home a dagger.

Sweat beaded the forehead of the man facing her and his eyes were red as coals. Smite as he would he could not break past or beat down her guard. She stepped back to draw him out – and felt her thighs locked in an iron grip. She had forgotten the wounded man on the floor.

Crouching on his knees he held her in an unbreakable grasp and his mate croaked in triumph and began working his way around to come at her from the left side. Valeria wrenched and tore savagely, but in vain. She could free herself of this clinging menace with a downward flick of her sword, but in that instant the curved blade of the taller man would crash through her skull. The wounded man hung on and began to worry at her thigh with his teeth like a beast.

She reached down with her left hand and gripped his long hair, forcing his head back so his white teeth and rolling eyes gleamed up at her. The tall Xecalanc cried out fiercely and leaped in, smiting hard. Awkwardly she parried the stroke, and it beat the flat of her blade down on her head so she saw sparks flash before her eyes, and staggered. Up went the sword again, with a low, beast-like cry of triumph – and then a giant form loomed behind the Xecalanc and steel flashed like an arc of blue lightning. The cry of the Xecalanc broke short and he went down like an ox beneath the pole-axe, his brains gushing from his skull that had been split to the throat.

“Conan!” gasped Valeria. In a gust of passion she turned on the Xecalanc who still grasped her, and whose long hair she still held in her left hand. “Dog of hell!” Her blade swished as it cut the air, and completed the upswinging arc with only a blur in the middle. The body slumped, spurting blood and she hurled the severed head across the room.

“What the devil’s going on here?” Conan bestrode the corpse of the man he had killed, broadsword in hand, glaring about him in amazement. Techotl was rising from the still figure of the last Xecalanc, shaking red drops from his dagger. The Tecuhltli was bleeding from a stab deep in the thigh.

He stared wildly at Conan, his eyes dilated.

“What is all this?” Conan demanded again. He had not yet recovered from his surprize at finding a savage battle going on in the midst of a city he had thought empty and uninhabited. Returning from an aimless exploration of the upper chambers, he had found Valeria gone, and had followed the unexpected sounds of strife. Coming into the room he had been astounded to see the girl engaging in a furious tussle with these strange and alien figures.

“Five dead Xecalanc!” exclaimed Techotl, his dilated eyes reflecting a ghastly joy. “Five dead! The gods be thanked!” He lifted quivering hands on high and then, with a fiendish convulsing of his dark features he spat on the corpses and kicked them, dancing in his ghoulish glee. His recent allies eyed him in amazement, and Conan asked, in Aquilonian: “Who is this madman?”

Valeria shrugged her shoulders.

“He says his name’s Techotl. From his babblings I gather that his people live at one end of this crazy city, and these others at the other end. Maybe we’d better go with him. He seems friendly.”

Techotl had ceased his dancing and he turned to them, triumph struggling with fear in his repellant countenance.

“Come away, now!” he chattered. “Come on! Come with me! My people will welcome you! Five dead dogs! Not in years have we slain so many of the devils at one time, without losing a man – nay, one man we lost, but we slew five! My people will honor you! But come! It is far to Techulthli. At any moment the Xecalancs may come on us in numbers too great even for your swords!”

“All right,” grunted Conan. “Lead the way.”

Techotl turned instantly and made off across the chamber, beckoning them to follow, which they did, having to move swiftly to keep on his heels.

“What sort of a place can this be?” muttered Valeria under her breath.

“Crom knows,” answered Conan. “I’ve seen his kind before, though. There’s a tribe of them living on the shores of Lake Zuad, near the Kushite border. They’re a sort of mongrel Stygians, mixed with another race that wandered into Stygia from the east some centuries ago, and were absorbed by them. They’re called Tlazetlans. I’m willing to bet they didn’t build this city, though.”

They were traversing a series of chambers and halls and Techotl’s fear did not seem to diminish. He kept twisting his head on his shoulder to stare back fearfully and strain his ears for sounds of pursuit.

“They may have prepared an ambush for us!” he whispered.

“Why don’t we get out of this infernal palace, and take to the streets?” demanded Valeria.

“There are no streets in Xuchotl,” he answered. “No squares or open courts. All the buildings are connected; rather, all are under one great roof. The only doors opening into the outer world are the city-gates through which no one has passed for fifty years.”

“How long have you dwelt here?” asked Conan.

“I was born in Tecuhltli, and I am thirty-five years old. For the love of the gods, let us be silent! These halls may be full of lurking devils. Olmec shall tell you all when we reach Tecuhltli.”

They moved on with the green fire stones blinking overhead and the flaming floors crackling under their feet, and it seemed to Valeria as if they fled through hell, guided by a lank-haired goblin.

Through dim-lit chambers and winding corridors they moved swift and silent, until Conan halted them.

“You think some of your enemies may be ahead of us, intending to ambush us?” he said.

“They prowl through these halls at all hours,” answered Techotl. “As do we. The chambers and corridors between Techuhltli and Xecalanc are a hunting ground owned by no man. Why do you ask?”

“Because men are in the chambers ahead of us,” answered Conan. “I heard steel clink against stone.”

Again a shaking seized Techotl and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Perhaps they are your friends,” suggested Valeria.

“We can not chance it,” he answered, and moved with frenzied activity. He wheeled aside and led them down a winding stair to a dark corridor. Into it he plunged recklessly.

“It may be a trick to draw us into it,” he hissed, great beads of perspiration standing out on his brow. “But we must chance it that they have laid their ambush in the rooms above! Come swiftly, now!”

They groped their way along the black corridor and were presently galvanized by the sound of a door opening softly behind them. Men had come into the corridor behind them.

“Swiftly!” panted Techotl, a note of hysteria in his voice, and fled away down the corridor. Conan and Valeria followed him, Conan keeping to the rear, while the swift patter of flying feet drew closer and closer. Their pursuers knew the corridor better than he did. He wheeled suddenly and smote savagely in the dark, felt his blade jar home and heard some thing groan and fall. The next instant the corridor was flooded with light as Techotl threw open a door. Conan followed the Tecuhltli and the girl through the door, and Techotl slammed it and shot a bolt across it – the first Conan had seen on any door.

Then he turned and ran across the chamber, while behind them the door groaned and strained inward under heavy pressure violently applied. Conan and Valeria followed their guide through a series of well-lighted chambers, and up a winding stair and along a broad hall. They paused at a powerful bronze door, and Techotl said: “This is Tecuhltli!”

CHAPTER

He knocked cautiously and then stepped back and waited. Conan decided that the people on the other side of the door had some way of seeing whoever stood before it. Presently the door swung noiselessly back, revealing a heavy chain across the entrance. Spear heads bristled and a fierce countenance regarded them suspiciously before the chain was removed.

Techotl led the way in and as soon as Conan and Valeria were inside, the door was closed, heavy bolts drawn, and the chain locked into place. Four men stood there, of the same lank-haired, dark-skinned breed as Techotl, with spears in their hands and swords at their hips. They regarded the strangers with amazement, but asked no questions.

They had come into a square chamber that opened into a broad hall. One of the four guards opened the door and they entered the hall which, like the guard-chamber, was lighted from above with a narrow slot-like skylight on each side of which winked the green fire-gems.

“I will take you to Olmec, who is prince of Tecuhltli,” said Techotl, and straightaway led them down the hall and into a broad chamber where some thirty men and women lounged on satin-covered couches. These sat up and stared in wonder. The men were of the same type as Techotl, all except one, and the women were equally dark and strange-eyed, but were not unbeautiful in a weird dark way. They wore sandals, gold breast-plates, and scanty silk skirts supported by gem-crusted girdles, and their black manes, cut square at their shoulders, were confined by silver circlets.

On a wide ivory seat on a jade dais sat a man and a woman who differed subtly from the others. He was a giant – as tall as the Cimmerian and heavier, with an enormous sweep of breast and the shoulders of a bull. Unlike the others he was bearded, with a thick, blue-black beard which fell almost to his broad girdle. He wore a robe of purple silk which reflected sheens of changing color with his every motion, and one wide sleeve, drawn back to his elbow, revealed a forearm massive with corded muscles. The band which confined his thick black locks was set with sparkling jewels.

The woman, who sprang to her feet with a startled exclamation at the sight of Valeria, was tall and lithe, by far the most beautiful woman in the room. She was clad evenly more scantily than the others, for instead of a skirt, she wore merely a broad strip of gilt-worked cloth fastened to the middle of her girdle, which fell below her knees. Another at the back of her girdle completed that part of her costume. Her breast-plates and the circlet about her temples were adorned with jewels.

She sprang to her feet as the strangers entered. Her eyes, passing over Conan, fixed themselves with burning intensity on Valeria. The people in the chamber rose and stared. There were youngsters among them, but the strangers saw no children.

“Prince Olmec,” spoke Techotl, bowing low, with arms outspread and palms turned upward, “I bring allies from the outer world. In the Hall of Tezcoti the Living Skull slew Chicmec, my companion –”

“The Living Skull!” the people breathed fearfully.

“Aye! Then came I, and found Chicmec lying with his throat cut. Before I could flee the Living Skull came upon me and when I met the glare of his eyes I became as one paralyzed. I could not move. I could only await the stroke. Then came this white-skinned woman and struck him down, and lo, it was only a dog of Xecalanc with white paint upon his skin and a masque upon his head! We have trembled in fear of him, deeming him a fiend the magic of the Xecalancas had invoked from the catacombs. But he was only a man, and now he is a dead man!”

An indescribably fierce exultation edged the last sentence, and was echoed in the low, savage exclamations from the crowding people.

“But wait!” exclaimed Techotl. “There is more! While I talked with the woman, four Xecalancas came upon us – one I slew – there is a stab in my thigh to prove how desperate was the fight. Two the woman killed. But we were hard pressed when this man came into the fray and split the skull of the fourth! Aye! Five crimson nails there are to be driven into the pillar of vengeance!”

He pointed to a black column of ebony which stood behind the dais. Hundreds of red dots showed there – the bright scarlet heads of heavy nails driven into the black wood.

“One red nail for a Xecalanc life!” exulted Techotl, and the faces of the listeners were contorted with horrible exultation.

“Who are these people?” asked Olmec, and his voice was like the deep, low rumble of a bull. None of the people of Xuchotl spoke loudly. It was as if they had taken into their souls the silence of the empty halls and deserted chambers.

“I am Conan, a Cimmerian,” answered the barbarian briefly. “This woman is Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. We deserted from an army on the Darfar border, far to the north, and are trying to reach the coast.”

The woman on the dais spoke hastily; her burning eyes had never left Valeria’s face.

“You can never reach the coast! You must spend the rest of your lives in Xuchotl! There is no escape!”

“What do you mean?” growled Conan, clapping his hand to his hilt and stepping about so as to face both dais and the rest of the room at the same time. “Are you saying that we’re prisoners?”

“She did not mean that,” interposed Olmec. “We are your friends. We would not restrain you against your will. But I fear other circumstances will make it impossible for you to leave Xuchotl.” His eyes also rested on Valeria, and he lowered them quickly.

“This woman is Tascela,” he said. “She is princess of Tecuhltli. But let food and drink be brought our guests. Doubtless they are hungry and weary from travel.”

He indicated the ivory table, and Conan and Valeria seated themselves, while Techotl placed himself on hand to attend them. He seemed to consider it a privilege and honor to see after their needs. The other men and women hastened to bring food and drink in gold vessels and dishes, and Olmec sat in silence on his ivory seat, watching them from under his broad black brows. Tascela sat beside him, chin cupped in her hands and her elbows resting on her knees. Her dark, enigmatic eyes, burning with a cryptic light, did not leave the supple figure of Valeria.

The food was unfamiliar to the wanderers, some sort of fruit but palatable, and the drink was a light crimson wine that had a heady tang.

“How you won through the forest is a wonder to me,” quoth Olmec. “In bygone days a thousand fighting men were not too many to carve a way through its perils.”

“We encountered a bench-legged monstrosity about the size of a mastodon,” said Conan carelessly, holding out his wine goblet which Techotl filled with evident pleasure. “But when we’d killed it we had no farther trouble.”

The wine vessel slipped from Techotl’s hand to crash on the floor. His dusky skin went ashy. Olmec started to his feet, an image of dumbfounded amazement, and from the others breathed up a low gasp of awe or terror. Conan glared about him in bewilderment.

“What’s the matter? What are you all gaping about?”

“You – slew the dragon?” stammered Olmec.

“Why not? It was trying to eat us. There’s no law against killing a dragon, is there?”

“But dragons are immortal!” exclaimed Olmec. “No man ever killed a dragon! No man ever could! The thousand fighting men of our ancestors who fought their way to Xuchotl could not prevail against them! Their swords broke like twigs against their scales!”

“If your ancestors had thought to dip their spears in the poisonous juice of Derketa’s Apples,” quoth Conan, with his mouthful, “and jab them in the eyes or the mouth or somewhere like that, they’d have seen that dragons are no more immortal than anything else. The carcass lies at the edge of the trees, east of the city. If you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself.”

Olmec shook his head, hardly seeming able to credit his own ears.

“It was because of the dragons that our ancestors took refuge in Xuchotl,” said he. “They dared not plunge into the forest again. Scores of them were slain and devoured by the monsters before they could reach the city?”

“Then your ancestors did not build Xuchotl?” asked Valeria.

“It was ancient when they first came into the land. How long it had stood here, not even its degenerate inhabitants knew.”

“Your people came from Lake Zuad?” questioned Conan.

“Aye. Half a century ago part of the tribe of Tlazitlans rebelled against the Stygian kings and being defeated in battle, fled southward. For many weeks they wandered over desert, grasslands and hills, and at last came into the great forest, a thousand fighting men with their women and children.

“It was in the forest that the dragons fell upon them and slew and devoured many, so the people fled in a frenzy of fear before them, and at last came into the plain and saw the city of Xuchotl in the midst of it.

“They camped before the city, not daring to plunge into the forest beyond, for the night was made hideous with the noise of the battling monsters who made war upon each other incessantly. But they remained in the forest.

“The people of the city shut the gates and shot arrows at them from the walls. The Tlazitlans were imprisoned on the plain, as if the ring of forest had been a great wall. For to venture into the woods would have been suicide.

“Then there came secretly to their camp one of their own blood, who, with a band of exploring soldiers had wandered into the forest long before when he was a young man. The dragons had slain all but him, and he had been admitted into the city. His name was Tolkemec –” a flame lighted the dark eyes at the mention of the name, and some of the people muttered under their breath and spat. “He agreed to open the gates to the warriors. He asked but that all captives taken be delivered into his hands.

“That night he opened the gates. The warriors swarmed in and the halls of Xuchotl ran red. Only a few hundred folk dwelt here, decaying remnants of a once great race. Tolkemec said they came from the east, from Old Kosala, when the ancestors of the Kosalans came up from the south and drove them out. They came westward and built a city here in the plain. Then after centuries, the climate changed, a forest grew where grasslands had rolled, and the dragons came in bellowing herds up from the southern swamps to hem the people of the city in the ring of open plain, even as we are now hemmed.

“Well, our fathers slew the people of Xuchotl, all except a hundred which were given living into the hands of Tolkemec, who had been a slave among them, and for many days and nights the halls re-echoed to their screams under the agony of his torturing.

“So our fathers dwelt here, for awhile in peace. Tolkemec took a girl of the tribe to wife, and, because he had opened the gates, and because he knew the art of making the Xuchotl wine, and of cultivating the fruit they ate – fruit which obtains its nourishment out of the air and is not planted in soil – he shared the rule of the tribe with the brothers who led the rebellion and the flight – Xotalanc and Tecuhltli.

“For a few years they dwelt in peace within the city. Then –” Olmec’s eyes rested briefly on the silent woman at his side – “Tecuhltli took a woman to wife. Xotalanc desired her, and Tolkemec, who hated Xotalanc, aided Tecuhltli to steal her. Aye, she came willingly enough. Xotalanc demanded her back, and the council of the tribe decided that the matter should be left to the woman. She chose to remain with Tecuhltli. But Xotalanc was not satisfied. There was fighting, and gradually the tribe broke up into three factions – the people of Teculhtli and the people of Xotalanc. Already they had divided the city between them. Tecuhltli had the southern part of the city, Xotalanc the northern part, and Tolkemec dwelt with his family by the western gate.

“The factions fought bitterly, and Tolkemec aided first one side and then the other, betraying each faction as it pleased him. At last each faction retired to a place it could defend well. The people of Tecuhltli who had their dwellings in the chambers and halls in the southern end of the city, blocked up all doors except one on each tier, which could be easily defended. Xotalanc did the same, and so likewise did Tolkemec. But we of Tecuhltli fell on Tolkemec one night and butchered all his clan. Tolkemec we tortured for many days, and finally cast him into a dungeon to die. Somehow he managed to escape, and drag himself into the catacombs which lie beneath the city, and where lie the bodies of all the people, Xuchotlan or Tlazitlan, who ever died in the city. There without doubt, he died, and the superstitious among us swear that his ghost haunts the catacombs to this day, wailing among the bones of the dead.

“Fifty years ago the feud began. I was born in it. All in this chamber, except Tascela, were born in it. Most have died in it. We are a perishing race. There were hundreds in each faction when it began. Now we number but some forty men and women. How many Xotalancas there are we do not know, but I doubt if they are more numerous than we. For fifteen years no children have been born to us, and since we have slain no children among the Xotalancas, I think it is the same with them.

“We are dying, but before we die, we hope to finish the ancient feud, and to wipe out the remnants of our enemies.”

And with his weird eyes blazing, Olmec told the story of that grisly feud, fought out in silent chambers and dim halls under the gleam of green fire-jewels, on floors smoldering with the flames of hell. Xotalanc was dead long ago, slain in a grim battle on an ivory stair. Tecuhltli was dead, flayed alive by the maddened Xotalancas who had captured him.

Olmec told of horrible battles fought in black corridors, of bloody fights waged under the gleam of the fire-jewels, of ambushes, treachery, cruelties, of tortures inflicted by both factions on helpless captives, men and women, tortures so ghastly that even the barbarous Cimmerian shrugged his shoulders. No wonder Techotl had trembled with the terror of capture.

Valeria listened spell-bound, to the tale of that hideous feud. The people of Xuchotl were obsessed with it. It was their only reason for existence. It filled their whole lives. Each expected to die in it. They remained within their barricaded quarter, occasionally stealing forth into the disputed land of empty corridors and chambers that lay between the opposite ends of the city. Sometimes they returned with frantic captives, or with grim tokens of victory in fight. Or perhaps they did not return at all, or returned only as severed heads cast down before the bolted bronze doors. It was particularly ghastly, these people, shut off from the rest of the world, caught together like rabid rats in a trap, butchering each other through the years, crouching and creeping through the sunless corridors to maim and murder.

And while Olmec talked Valeria felt the blazing eyes of the woman Tascela fixed for ever upon her.

“And we can never leave the city,” said Olmec. “For fifty years no one has stepped outside the gate, except the victims bound and thrown forth for the dragon. And of late years even that has been discontinued. Once the dragon came from the forest to bellow about the wall. We who were born and raised here would fear to leave it, even were the dragon not there.”

“Well,” grunted Conan, “with your leave, we’ll take our chance with the dragons. This feud is none of our business, and we don’t care to get mixed up in it. If you’ll show us the south gate, we’ll be on our way.”

Tascela’s hands clenched and she started to speak, but Olmec interrupted her: “It is nearly nightfall. Wait at least until morning. If you wander forth into the plain tonight, you will certainly fall prey to the dragons.”

“We crossed it last night without seeing any,” answered Conan. “But perhaps it would be better to wait until morning. But no later than that. We wish to reach the west coast, and it’s a march of many weeks, even if we had horses.”

“We have jewels,” offered Olmec.

“Well, listen,” said Conan. “Suppose we do this: we’ll help you clean out those Xotalancas, and then we’ll all see what we can do about wiping out the dragons in the forest.”

They were showed into ornate chambers, lighted by the slot-like skylights.

“Why don’t the Xotalancas come over the roofs and shatter the glass?” Conan demanded.

“It can not be broken,” answered Techotl, who had accompanied him into his chamber. “Besides the roofs would be hard to clamber over. They are mostly spires and domes and steep ridges.”

“Who is this Tascela?” Conan asked. “Olmec’s wife?”

Techotl shuddered and glanced about him before answering.

“No. She is – Tascela! She was the wife of Xotalanc – the woman about which the feud began.”

“What are you saying?” demanded Conan. “That woman is young and beautiful. Are you trying to tell me that she was a wife fifty years ago?”

“Aye! She was a full-grown woman when the Tlazitlans journeyed from Lake Zuad. She is a witch, who possesses the knowledge of perpetual youth – but a grisly knowledge it is. I dare not say more.”

And with his finger at his lips, he glided from the chamber.

Valeria awoke suddenly on her couch. There were no fire-gems in the room, but illumination was supplied by a jewel. In the weird dusky glow of the fire-gems she saw a shadowy figure bending over her. She was aware of a delicious, sensuous langour stealing over her that was not like natural sleep. Something had touched her face, awakening her.

The sight of the dim figure roused her instantly. Even as she recognized the figure as the sullen Yasala, Tascela’s maid, she was on her feet. Yasala whirled lithely, but before she could run, Valeria caught her wrist and wrenched her around to face.

“What the devil were you doing bending over me? What’s that in your hand?”

The woman made no reply, but sought to cast the object away. Valeria twisted her arm in front of her and the thing fell to the floor – a great black exotic blossom on a jade green stem.

“The black lotus!” said Valeria between her teeth. “You were trying to drug me – if you hadn’t accidentally awkened me by touching my face with that blossom – why did you do it? What’s your game?”

Yasala maintained a sulky silence, and with an oath Valeria whirled her around, forced her to her knees and twisted her arm up behind her back.

“Tell me, or I’ll tear your arm out of the socket.”

Yasala squirmed in anguish as her arm was forced excruiatingly up between her shoulder blades, but a violent shaking of her head was the only answer she made.

“Slut!” Valeria cast her from her to sprawl on the floor. The pirate bent over her prostrate figure, her eyes blazing. Fear and the memory of Tascela’s burning eyes stirred in her, rousing all her ruthless anger and tigerish instinct of self-preservation. The chambers were as silent as if Xuchotl were in reality a deserted city. A thrill of panic throbbed through Valeria, rendering her merciless.

“You came here for no good reason,” she muttered, her eyes smoldering as it rested on the sullen figure with its lowered head. “There’s some foul mystery here – treason or intrigue. Did Tascela send you? Does Olmec know you came?”

No answer. Valeria cursed venomously and slapped the woman first on one side and then the other. The blows resounded in the room.

Valeria turned and tore a handful of cords from a nearby hanging.

“You stubborn bitch!” she said between her teeth. “I’m going to strip you naked and tie you across that couch, and whip you with my sword-belt until you tell me what you were doing here.”

“Why don’t you scream?” she asked sardonically. “Who do you fear? Tascela or Olmec, or Conan?”

“Mercy,” whispered the woman presently. “I will tell.”

Valeria released her. Yasala was quivering, her limbs and body.

“Wine,” she begged, indicating the vessel on the ivory table with a trembling hand. “Let me drink – then I will tell you.” She rose unsteadily as Valeria picked up the vessel. She took it, raised it to her lips – and then dashed the contents full into the Aquilonian’s face. Valeria reeled backward, shaking and clawing the stinging liquid out of her eyes, and her misty sight cleared enough to let her see Yasala dart across the room, fling back a bolt, throw open the door and run down the hall. The pirate was after her instantly, sword out and murder in her heart.

The woman turned a corner in the corridor and when Valeria reached it, she only an empty hall, and an open door that gaped blackly. A damp moldy scent reeked up from it, and Valeria shivered. That must be the door that led to the catacombs. Yasala had taken refuge there.

Valeria advanced to the door and looked down the flight of steps that vanished quickly into utter blackness. She shivered slightly at the thought of the thousands of corpses lying in their stone nitches down there, wrapped in their moldering cloths. She had no intention of groping her way down. Yasala doubtless knew every turn and twist of the subterranean passages. Valeria was drawing back, baffled, when a sobbing cry welled up from the blackness. Faintly human words were distinguishable, and the voice was that of a woman: “Oh, help! Help, in Set’s name! Ahhh!” It trailed away and Valeria thought she heard the echo of a fiendish tittering.

Valeria felt her skin crawl. What had happened to Yasala down there in the thick blackness? That it had been she who cried out, the pirate did not doubt. But what peril could have befallen her? Was one of the Xotalancas lurking down there? Olmec had assured them that the south end of the catacombs were walled off from the rest, too securely for their enemies to break through from that direction. Besides that tittering had not sounded like a human being at all – Valeria closed the door and hurried back down the corridor. She regained her chamber and shot the bolt behind her. She was determined to make her way to Conan’s room, and urge him to join her in an attempt to fight their way out of that city of devils. But even as she reached the door, a long-drawn scream of agony rang through the halls.

CHAPTER

It was the yelling of men and the clang of steel that brought Conan bounding from his couch, broadsword in hand and wide awake. In an instant he had reached the door and flung it open, even as Techotl rushed in, eyes blazing, sword dripping and blood streaming from a gash in the neck.

“The Yotalancas!” he croaked, his voice hardly human. “They are within the doors!”

Conan thrust past him and ran down the narrow corridors, even as Valeria emerged from her chamber.

“What the devil is it?” she called.

“Techotl says the Xotalancas are in,” he answered hurriedly. “That racket sounds like it.”

They ran into the throne-room and burst upon a wild scene of blood. Some twenty men and women, their black hair streaming, and the white skulls gleaming on their breasts, were locked in combat with a somewhat larger number of Tecuhltli. The women on both sides fought as madly as the men. Already the room was strewn with corpses, the greater number of which were Tecuhltli.

Olmec, without his robe and naked but for a breech-clout, was fighting before his throne, and as Conan and Valeria entered, Tascela ran from an inner chamber, with a sword in her hand.

The rest was a whirling nightmare of steel. The feud came to a bloody end there. The losses of the Xotalancas had been greater, their position more desperate than the Tecuhltli had realized. Driven to frenzy by the word, gasped by a dying man, that mysterious white-skinned allies had joined their enemies, they had cast all in one furious onslaught. Though how they gained entrance into Tecuhltli remained a mystery until after the battle.

It was long and savage. The surprize had aided the Xotalancas and seven of the Tecuhltli were down before they knew their foes were on them. But still they outnumbered the Xotalancas, and they too were fired by the realization that it was the death-grip at last, and heartened by the presence of their allies.

In a melee of this sort no three Tlazitlans were a match for Conan. Taller, stronger and quicker than they, he moved through the whirling mass with the surety and devastating force of a hurricane. Valeria was as strong as a man, and her quickness and ferocity outmatched any that opposed her.

Only five women were with the Xotalancas and they were down and their throats cut before Conan and Valeria reached the fighting. And presently only Tecuhltli and their allies lived in the great throne room, and the staggering, blood-stained living set up a mad howling of triumph.

“How came they in Tecuhltli?” roared Olmec, brandishing his sword.

“It was Xatmec,” stammered a warrior, wiping blood from a great gash across his shoulder. “He heard a noise and placed his ear against the door while I went to the mirrors to look. I saw the Xotalancas outside the door and one played on a pipe – Xatmec leaned frozen against the door, as if paralyzed by the strains of music that whispered through the panels.

“Then suddenly the music changed to a shrill keening and Xatmec screamed like one in agony and like a madman he tore opened the door and rushed out, with his sword lifted. A dozen blades struck him down and over his body the Xotalancas surged into the guard-room.”

“The pipes of madness,” muttered Olmec. “They were hidden in the city – old Tolkemec used to speak of them. The dogs found them, somehow. There is great magic hidden in this city – if we could only find it.”

“Are these all of them?” demanded Conan.

Olmec shrugged his shoulders. Only thirty of his people were left. Men were driving twenty new crimson nails into the ebony column.

“I do not know.”

“I’ll go to Xotalanc and see,” said Conan. “No, you won’t, either,” his to Valeria. “You’ve got a stab in your leg. You’ll stay here and get it bandaged. Shut up, will you? Who’ll go and guide me?”

Techotl limped out.

“I’ll go!”

“No, you won’t. You’re wounded.”

A man volunteered and Olmec ordered another to go with the Cimmerian. Their names were Yanath and Topal. They led Conan through silent chambers and halls until they came to the bronze door that marked the boundary of Xotalanc. They tried it gingerly and it opened under their fingers. Awedly they stared into the green-lit chambers. For fifty years no man of Teculhtli had entered those halls save as a prisoner going to a hideous doom.

Conan strode in and they followed. They found no living men, but they found evidences of the feud.

In a chamber there stood rows of glass-like cases. And in these cases were human heads, perfectly preserved – scores of them.

Yanath stood staring at them, a wild light in his wild eyes.

“There is my brother’s head,” he murmured. “And my sister’s son, and my father’s brother!”

Suddenly he went mad. The sanity of all the Tlazitlans hung on a hair trigger. Howling and frothing he turned and drove his sword to the hilt in Topal’s body. Topal went down and Yanath turned on Conan. The Cimmerian saw the man was hopelessly mad so he side-stepped and as the maniac went past, he swung a cut that severed shoulder bone and breast, and dropped the man dead beside his dying victim.

Conan knelt beside Topal and then caught the man’s wrist as, with a dying effort, he drove a dagger at the Cimmerian’s breast.

“Crom!” swore Conan. “Are you mad, too?”

“Olmec ordered it,” gasped the dying man. “He bade me slay you while returning to Tecuhltli –” and with the name of his clan on his lips, Topal died.

Conan rose, scowling. Then he turned and hurried back through the halls and chambers, toward Tecuhltli. His primitive sense of direction led him unerringly back the way they had come.

And as he approached Tecuhltli he was aware of someone ahead of him – someone who gasped and panted and advanced with a floundering noise. Conan sprang forward and saw Techotl crawling toward him. The man was bleeding from a deep gash in his breast.

“Conan!” he cried. “Olmec has taken the yellow-haired woman! I sought to stay him, but he struck me down. He thought he had slain me! Slay Olmec, take her and go! He lied to you! There was but one dragon in all the forest, and if you slew it, there is no fear but you can win through to the coast! For many years we worshipped it as a god, and offered up victims to it! Haste! Olmec has taken her to the –”

His head slumped down and he died.

Conan sprang up, his eyes like live coals. So that was why Olmec gave orders to Topal that he should be slain! He might have known what was going on in that black-bearded degenerate’s mind. He raced recklessly, counting his opponents in his mind. There could not be more than fourteen or fifteen of them. In his rage he felt able to account for the whole clan single-handed.

But craft conquered, or rather controlled, his berserk rage. He would not attack through the door by which the Xotalancas had come. He would strike from a higher or a lower level. Doubtless half a century of habit would cause all the doors to be locked and bolted, anyway. When Topal and Yanath did not return, it might rouse fears that some of the Xotalancas still survived.

He went down a winding stair, and heard a low groan ahead of him. Entering cautiously he saw a giant figure strapped to a rack-like frame. A heavy iron ball was poised over his breast. His head rested on a bed of iron spikes. When this became unbearable the wretch lifted his head – and a strap fastened to his head worked the iron ball. Each time he lifted his head, the ball descended a few inches toward his hairy breast. Eventually it would crush him to a pulp. The man was gagged, but Conan recognized him. It was Olmec, prince of Teculhtli.

When Valeria retired into the chamber indicated by Olmec, a woman followed her and bandaged the stab in the calf of her leg. Silently that woman retired and as a shadow fell across her, Valeria looked up, to see Olmec staring down at her. She had laid her blood-stained sword on the couch.

“She has done a clumsy job,” criticised the prince of Tecuhltli, bending over the bandage. “Let me see –”

With a quickness amazing in one of his bulk, he snatched her sword and threw it across the chamber. His next move was to catch her in his giant arms.

Quick as he was, she almost matched him, for even as he grabbed her her dirk was in her hand and she stabbed murderous at his throat. Somehow he caught her wrist and then began a savage wrestling match, in which his superior strength and weight finally told. She was crushed down on a couch, disarmed and panting, her eyes blazing up at him like the eyes of a trapped tigress.

Though prince of Tecuhltli, Olmec moved in haste and silence. He gagged and bound her and carried her along corridors and hallways to a secret chamber. There, before he could have his will of her, came Tascela. He hid the girl, and he had a clash of wits with Tascela, in which she persuaded him to drink wine with her. He did so and was instantly paralyzed. She dragged him into a torture room and stretched him on the rack where Conan found him.

Then she carried Valeria back to the throne-chamber where the survivors were gathered, after having carried the bodies of the slain into the catcombs. Four had failed to return and men whispered of the ghost of Tolkemec. She prepared to suck the blood from Valeria’s heart to retain her own youth.

Meanwhile Conan had released Olmec, who swore to unite forces with him. Olmec led the way up a winding stair, where he struck Conan from behind. As they rolled down the stair Conan lost his sword, but strangled the prince with his bare hands.

Conan’s leg was broken, but he hobbled to the throne room where he stumbled into a trap set for him. Then from the catacombs came old Tolkemec, who slew all the Tecuhltli with his magic and while he was so

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