“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.