Farad seemed to read the Cimmerian's thoughts.

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

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

"In years only, or in battles?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, the Lady of the Mists seemed to have recruited her Maidens (or accepted those who offered themselves) from every known land save Khitai and perhaps Vendhya. (And there were Maidens who seemed to bear a trace of Vendhyan blood; perhaps full Vendhyan women were too slight for the burdens of war?) Few (here, only one of the eight) could be called truly beautiful. But all of them had grace, strength, suppleness, and knowledge of their weapons. There was not one the captain had seen whom he would have cast out from a war band-or refused in his bed.

Perhaps the Lady of the Mists knew more about the art of war than he suspected.

She seemed to have picked warriors to guard her, at any rate, and the captain had known lords descended from long lines of soldiers whose household troops would not meet that test. Those fat sots at Lord Cleakas's-they would be mice facing cats if the Maidens ever came over the walls- A measured, distant drumbeat stole on Muhbaras's ears. He looked about, saw nothing, but heard the drumbeat swelling. Now he heard two drums, not quite together, the shuffle of feet, and the faintest c.h.i.n.king of armor.

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

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

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

Before Conan's little band was done with the second hour of its journey, the Cimmerian's war-trained blue eyes had picked twenty spots where they could have been ambushed. Perhaps ten against a larger band, but no fewer than twenty against the handful he led, and perhaps more. He decided that he could well have taken his own advice to Khezal, and not thought the enemy's chief less wise than he appeared to be. Conan's band was too small to do much harm to the chief's plans even if it reached its destination intact. It could be ignored while the tribesmen a.s.sembled against Khezal.

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

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

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

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

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

Now they were entering another dry wash, with the steep right side gouged and furrowed by flash floods since the time of Atlantis, the other side a slope almost gentle enough for a pasture. At the very top of the leftward slope the ground leapt up in a wall of rock, with a few gaps in it. From where Conan sat his saddle, he thought a mouse might have squeezed through those gaps, if it fasted for a week and then oiled its fur- Dust boiled up from the foot of the wall, and in the dust Conan saw two-legged shapes much larger than mice. The dust rose, but the shapes turned into men, running down the slope toward the valley floor, leaping over boulders and dips in the ground with the antelope-grace of the desert tribesmen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Crom!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Into that s.p.a.ce Danar marched, as steadily as if he were reporting for roll call. Only the sheen of sweat on his bronzed face betrayed unease of mind. Muhbaras forced a smile. It was not much of a final gift to a good man. He wanted to cry to the mountains and the skies as well as these accursed women: "See how a soldier of Khoraja dies, and learn from his death the kind of enemies you make by this madness!"

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

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

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

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

With surprise and an edge in reach, Conan made easy prey of the first tribesman.

He fell with his skull split from crown to the bridge of his nose, brains and blood spurting over the dead horse and the fallen Greencloak. His scimitar fell with a clang, in easy reach of the Greencloak, who s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.

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

The clanging as wildly swinging steel collided was worthy of a blacksmith shop.

The Greencloak only nicked the tribesman's knee, but the collision of tribal scimitar and Cimmerian broadsword halted both strokes. It also broke the tribesman's grip on his weapon.

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

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

"Best pack that with something," Conan said, pointing at the bleeding shoulder.

"Or can you fight left-handed?"

The man nodded.

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

"Ah-eh-if they're dead-?"

"If they were dead," Conan growled, "we wouldn't be hearing any fighting upslope. If they are dead, they may have killed enough foes to let us escape. And if you don't follow me up the hill, the folk from across the valley will surely kill you if I don't do it first."

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

"Our blood is our honor!"

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

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

The Lady struck a fourth time-and this time no drum-thunder rolled out across the Valley. In silence the staff seemed to sink into the rock and stand there as if it had grown there. It did not so much as quiver-although Muhbaras thought that he saw a glow in the ruby eye, and perhaps also in the emerald one. The Lady made a commanding gesture with her left hand, and eight Maidens marched forward from their places around the platform, until they made a tight circle around Danar and the staff. One unlocked the chains from his ankles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he noticed that the battle din from up the slope was dying away, faster than it should. Either his men had been overrun, or they had beaten off at least one attack, which ought to be impossible- His eagerness to solve the mystery nearly ended Conan's life. He came around a rock into full view of archers higher up, and they promptly put a dozen arrows through the s.p.a.ce where he had been standing. Nothing but a hillman's speed held his wounds to scratches. That same preternatural speed let him scoop up a handful of usable arrows before he leapt again.

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

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

Farad coughed so long and loud that Conan suspected sarcasm. "The men fare well, save for one dead and another fallen under his horse-or is that the one who dashed past me as if his breeches were aflame?" "The same. I had some trouble bringing him up. Now that you've your breath back and your ribs intact, I repeat my question."

"We've beaten off one attack, on our right." Farad waved an arm in that general direction. "n.o.body came down against our left, for which the G.o.ds be praised as that would have been the end of us."

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

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

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

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