Conan the Invincible Part 16

For a long time they rode in silence, till the battle noises had long since faded. The narrow pa.s.sage opened into a canyon that meandered back to the east. Conan and Karela each rode locked in their own sour silence. Hordo looked from one to the other, frowning. Finally he spoke, with false jollity.

"You've a facile tongue, Conan. Why, you near had me believing my name was Claudo, for the bland look in those blue eyes of yours when you said it."

"A thief had best have a facile tongue," Conan grunted. "Or a bandit.

And speaking of facile tongues, what happened to that snake Aberius? I have seen him not since before we met the hillmen."

Hordo forced a laugh with a worried glance at Karela, whose face looked like stormclouds on the horizon. "We encountered the craven well down the path. He said he was guarding our backtrail, to keep our retreat open."

Conan growled deep in his throat. "You should have slit the coward's throat."

"Nay. He has too many uses in him for that. I sent him to find the rest of the band, and to tell them to make camp. Can I but puzzle out how these canyons go, we'll be back to them soon."

"This is my band, Conan!" Karela suddenly snapped. "I command here! The Red Hawk!"

"Then if you think Aberius should escape his cowardice," Conan replied gruffly, "let him. But I'll not change my mind on it."

She tried to jerk her horse around to face him, but her single rein made the big black take a dancing sidestep instead. The auburn-haired bandit made a sound that in another woman Conan would have called a sob of frustration. But of course such was unlikely from her.

"You fool barbarian!" she cried. "What right had you to send me-me!-to safety? Giving my reins to this one-eyed buffoon! Whipping my horse as if I were some favored slave girl who must be kept from danger!"

"That's what you're angry about?" Conan said incredulously. "With but one rein left, you were easy meat for the next hillman's blade."

"You made that decision, did you? It was not yours to make. I choose when and where I fight, and how much risk I'll face. I!"

"You're the most ungrateful person at having your life saved that I've ever met," Conan grumbled.

Karela shook her fist at him, and her voice rose to an enraged howl. "I do not need you to save my life! I do not want you to save my life! Of all men, you least! Swear to me you will never again lift a hand to save my life or my freedom. Swear it, Cimmerian!"

"I swear it!" he answered hotly. "By Crom, l swear it!"

Karela nodded shortly and got her horse moving again with violent kicks and much tugging at her one rein. The bare brown rock through which they rode, layered in places with much faded colors, fitted Conan's mood well. Hordo dropped back to ride beside the muscular youth.

"Once I liked you not at all, Conan," the one-eyed man said in a voice that would not carry forward to Karela. "Now, I like you well, but still I say this. Leave us."

Conan cast a sour eye at him. "If there be leaving to do, you do it.

And her, with the rest of her band. I have a seeking here, remember?"

"She'll not turn aside, despite hillmen, or soldiers, or demons themselves. That's the trouble, or what comes of it. That, and this oath, and a score of things more. Emotion rules her head, now, and not the other way round, as always before. I fear what this means."

"I did not ask for the oath," Conan replied. "If you think her temper runs away with her, speak to her, not me."

The bearded bandit's hands gripped his reins till his knuckles were white. "I do like you, Conan, but bring you harm to her, and I will carve you as a Kethan carves stone." He booted his horse ahead, and the three traveled once more in heavy silence.

Long shadows stretched across the mountain valleys by the time they found the bandit camp, among huge boulders at the base of a sheer cliff. Despite the crisp coldness of the air, the scattered fires were small, and placed among the boulders so as to lessen the chance of being seen. Karela's red-striped pavilion stood almost against the towering rock wall.

"I'll see you in my tent, Conan," the red-haired woman said. Without waiting for an answer, she galloped to the pavilion, gave her horse into a bandit's care, and disappeared inside.

As Conan dismounted, he found a knot of bandits gathering about Hordo and him. Aberius was among them, though not in the forefront.

"Ho, Aberius," the Cimmerian said. "I'm glad to see you well. I thought you might have been injured in holding the rail open for us." Some of the rough-faced men snickered. Aberius bared his teeth in what might have been meant to be a grin, but his eyes were those of a rat in a box. He said nothing.

"The hillmen are taken care of, then?" a Kothian with one ear asked, "And the soldiers?"

"Slitting each other's weasands," Hordo chuckled. "They're no more concern to us, not in this world."

"And I've no concern for the next," the Kothian laughed. Most of the others joined in. Conan noted Aberius did not.

"On the morrow, Aberius," Conan said, "you'll take up the trail again, and in a day or two we'll have the treasure."

The pinch-faced brigand had started at the sound of his name. Now he licked his lips before answering. "It cannot be. The trail is lost." He flinched as the other bandits turned to stare at him. "It's lost, I say."

"But only for the moment," Conan said. "Isn't that right? We'll go back to that valley where the hillmen were camped, and you'll pick it up again."

"I tell you it isn't so simple." Aberius s.h.i.+fted his shoulders and tugged nervously at his dented iron breastplate. "While on the trail I can tell a rock disturbed by a horse from one that merely fell. Now I'm away from the trail. If I go back, they'll both look the same."

"Fool!" someone snarled. "You've lost us the treasure."

"All this way for naught," another cried.

"Cut his throat!"

"Slit Aberius' gullet!"

Sweat beaded the man's narrow face. Hordo stepped forward quickly.

"Hold, now! Hold! Can you track these men, Talbor? Alvar? Anyone?"

Heads were shaken in reluctant denial. "Then open not your mouth against Aberius."

"I still say he is afeared," Talbor muttered. "That is why he cannot find the tracks again."

"I'm not affrighted of any man," Aberius said hotly. He licked his lips once more. "Of any man." There was a peculiar emphasis to the last word.

"Of what then?" Conan said. For a moment he thought Aberius would refuse to answer, then the man spoke in a rush.

"On the mountain slope, after we four rode forward, I saw a... a thing." His voice gained fervency as he spoke. "Like a snake, it was, yet like a man, too. It wore armor, and carried a sword, and flame shot from its mouth twice the length of a sword. As I watched it signaled for more of its kind to come forth. Had I not ridden to half-kill my horse, I'd be dead at those creatures' hands."

"If it had the flame," Conan muttered, "what need had it for the sword?" Some of the others began to murmur fearfully, though, and even those who were silent had unease on their faces.

"Why did you not speak of this before?" Hordo demanded.

"There was no need," Aberius replied. "I knew we would soon leave, since the tracks are lost. We must leave soon. Besides, I thought you would misbelieve me."

"There are strange things under the sky," Conan said. "I've seen some of them, myself. But I've never seen anything that could not be killed with cold steel." Or at least, very few, he amended to himself. "How many of these things did you actually see, Aberius?"

"Only the one," Aberius admitted with obvious reluctance. "But it summoned more, and I saw them moving beyond the rocks. There could have been a hundred, a thousand."

"Yet all in all," Hordo said, "you saw but one. There cannot be many of them, else we'd have heard before. A thing like that would be talked of."

"But," Aberius began.