In any case, I cannot believe in this bazaar rumor of a gathering of the tribes. It goes against all that I know of the hillmen."

Jondra nodded thoughtfully, then asked, "And our injured? How many are they, and how badly hurt?"

"Many nicks and cuts, my lady," Arvaneus told her, "but only fourteen hurt badly enough to be accounted as wounded, and but two of those seriously."

He hesitated. "Eleven are dead, my lady."

"Eleven," she sighed, and her eyes closed.

" 'Twould have been more, my lady, save for Conan," Telades said, and Arvaneus rounded on him.

"Cease your chatter of the barbar, man!"

"Enough!" Jondra barked. Her voice stilled the hunters on the instant.

"I will reach a decision on what is to be done tomorrow. For now the wounded must be tended, and the fires put out. Arvaneus, you will see to it." She paused to take a deep breath, looking at no one. "Conan, come to my tent.

Please?" The last word was forced, and as she said it she turned away quickly, her robe flaring to give a glimpse of bare thighs, and hurried from the circle of men.

Conan's visits to Jondra's tent and sleeping furs had been an open secret, but an unacknowledged one. Studiously the men all avoided looking at Conan, or at each other, for that matter. Arvaneus seemed stunned. Tamira alone met his eyes, and she glared daggers.

With a shake of his head for the vagaries of women, the big Cimmerian sheathed his sword and followed Jondra.

She was waiting for him in her scarlet tent. As he ducked through the tent-flap, she slipped the silk robe from her shoulders, and he found his arms full of sleek bare skin. Full b.r.e.a.s.t.s bored into his ribs as she clutched at him, burying her head against his broad chest.

"I . . .I should not have spoken as I did earlier," she murmured. "I do not doubt what you saw, and I do not want you to stay away from my bed."

"It is well you believe me," he said, smoothing her hair, "for I saw as I said. But now is no time to speak of that." She sighed and snuggled closer, if that was possible. "It is time to speak of turning back. Your hunters have taken grievous hurt from the hillmen, and you are yet a day from the mountains. Do you enter the mountains with carts and oxen, you'll not escape further attention from the tribes. Your men will be slain, and you will find yourself the slave of an unwashed tribesman whose wives will beat you constantly for your beauty. At least, they will until the harsh life and the labor leaches your youth as it does theirs."

Word by word she had stiffened in his arms. Now she pushed herself from him, staring up at him incredulously. "It has been long years," she said in breathless fury, "since I apologized to any man, and never have I be . . .

asked one to my bed before you. Whatever I expected for doing so, it was not to be lectured."

"It must be spoken of." He found it hard to ignore the heavy, round b.r.e.a.s.t.s that confronted him, the tiny waist that flared into generous hips and long legs, but he forced himself to speak as if she were draped in layers of thick wool. "The hillmen are roused. Ants might escape their notice, but not men. And should you find this beast you hunt, remember that it is a hunter as well, and one that kills with fire. How many men will you see roasted alive to put a trophy on your wall?"

"A folk tale," she scoffed. "If hillmen cannot frighten me off, do you think I will run before a myth?"

"Eldran," he began with a patience he no longer felt, but her screech cut him off.

"No! I will not hear of that . . . that Brythunian!" Panting, shestruggled to gain control of herself. At last she drew herself up imperiously.

"I did not summon you here for argument. You will come to my bed and speak only of what we do, or you will leave me."

Conan's anger coiled to within a hair's breadth of erupting, but he managed to keep his reply to a mocking, "As my lady wishes." And he turned his back on her nudity.

Her furious cries followed him into the fading night, echoing across the camp. "Conan! Come back here, Mitra blast you! You cannot leave me like this!

I command you to return, Erlik curse you forever!"

No man looked up from his labor, but it was clear from the intensity with which they minded their work that none was deaf. Those prodding burning bundles from the carts with spears abruptly redoubled their efforts to save what had not already caught fire. The newly set sentries suddenly peered at the failing shadows as if each hid a hillman.

Tamira was pa.s.sing among the wounded, lying in a row on blankets in the middle of the camp, holding a waterskin to each man's mouth. She looked up with a bright smile as he pa.s.sed. "So you'll sleep alone again tonight, Cimmerian," she said sweetly. "A pity." Conan did not look at her, but a scowl darkened his face.

One of the carts had been abandoned to burn, and flaming bundles lay scattered about the others. The fat cook capered among the men, waving a pewter tray over his head and complaining loudly at their use of his implements for shoveling dirt onto the fires. Conan took the tray from the rotund man's hands and bent beside Telades to dig at the rocky soil.

The shaven-headed hunter eyed him sideways for a time, then said carefully, "There are few men would walk out on her without reason."

Instead of answering the unasked question, Conan snarled, "I've half a mind to tie her to her horse so you can lead her back to Shadizar."

"You've half a mind if you think that you could," Telades said, throwing a potful of dirt and small stones on a fiery bale, "or that we would. The Lady Jondra decides where to go, and we follow."

"Into the Kezankians?" Conan said incredulously. "With the tribes stirring? The army didn't come north for the weather."

"I've served the House Perashanid," the other man said slowly, "since I was a boy, and my father before me, and his before him. The Lady Jondra is the house, now, for she is the last. I cannot desert her. But you could, I suppose. In fact, perhaps you should."

"And why would I do that?" Conan asked dryly.

Telades answered as though the question had been serious. "Not all spears are thrown by the enemies you expect, northlander. If you do stay, watch your back."

Conan paused in the act of stooping for more dirt. So the spear that grazed his back had not been cast by a hillman's hand. Arvaneus, no doubt. Or perhaps some other, long in the Perashanid's service, who did not like the last daughter of the house bedding a landless warrior. That was all he needed.

An enemy behind him-at least one-and the hillmen surrounding. Tomorrow, he decided, he would make one last try at convincing Jondra to turn back. And Tamira, as well. There were gems aplenty in Shadizar for her to steal. And if they would not, he would leave them and go back alone. Furiously he scooped dirt onto the tray and hurled it at the flames. He would! Erlik take him if he did not.

In the gray dawn Djinar stared at the pitiful following that remained to him. Five men with shocked eyes and no horses.

"It was the giant," Sharmal muttered. His turban was gone, and his face was streaked with dirt, and dried blood from a scalp wound. His eye focused on something none of the rest could see. "The giant slew who he would. None could face him." No one tried to quiet him, for the mad were touched by the old G.o.ds, and under their protection."Does any man think we can yet take the Eyes of Fire from the Zamoran woman?" Djinar asked tiredly. Blank stares answered him.

"He cut off Farouz's hand," Sharmal said. "The blood spurted from Farouz's arm as he rode into the night to die."

Djinar ignored the youth. "And does any man doubt the price we will pay for failing Basrakan Imalla's command?" Again the four who retained their senses kept silent, but again the answer was in their dark eyes, colored now by a tinge of horror.

Sharmal began to weep. "The giant was a spirit of the earth. We have displeased the true G.o.ds, and they sent him to punish us."

"It is decided, then." Djinar shook his head. He would leave much behind, including his favorite saddle and two young wives, but such could be more easily replaced than blood from a man's veins. "In the south the tribes have not yet heeded Basrakan's call. They care only for raiding the caravans to Sultanapur and Aghrapur. We will go there. Better the risk no one will take us in than the certainty of Basrakan's anger."

He did not see Sharmal move, but suddenly the young man's fist thudded against his chest. He looked down, perplexed that his breath seemed short. The blow had not been that hard. Then he saw the hilt of a dagger in the fist.

When he raised his eyes again, the other four were gone, unwilling to meddle in the affairs of a madman.

"You have been attainted, Djinar," Sharmal said in a tone suitable for instructing a child. "Better this than that you should flee the will of the true G.o.ds. Surely you see that. We must return to Basrakan Imalla, who is a holy man, and tell him of the giant."

He had been right, Djinar thought. Death had been in that camp. He could smell it still. He opened his mouth to laugh, and blood poured out.

Chapter 12.

Amid the lengthening shadows of mid-afternoon, some semblance of normality had returned to the hunter's camp. The fires were out, and those carts that could not be salvaged had been pushed to the bottom of the hill, along with supplies too badly burned for use. Most of the wounded were on their feet, if not ready for another battle, and the rest soon would be. The dead-including now the two most seriously wounded-had been buried in a row on the hillside, with cairns of stones laid atop their graves to keep the wolves from them. Zamoran dead, at least, had been treated so. Vultures and ravens squawked and contended beyond the next hill, where the corpses of hillmen had been dragged.

Sentries were set now not only about the hilltop camp itself, but on the hills surrounding. Those distant watchers, mounted so they could bring an alarm in time to be useful, had been Conan's idea. When he put the notion forward Jondra ignored it, and Arvaneus scorned it, but the sentries were placed, if without acknowledgement to the Cimmerian.

It was not for pique, however, that Conan stalked through the camp with a face like a thunderhead. He cared nothing who got credit for the sentries, so long as they were placed. But all day Jondra had avoided him. She had hurried about checking the wounded, checking the meals the cook prepared, meddling in a score of tasks she would normally have dismissed once she ordered them done. All in the camp save Conan she had kept at the run. And every particle of it, he knew, was to keep from talk with him.

Tamira trotted by in her short white tunic, intently balancing a flagon of wine and a goblet on a tray, and Conan caught her arm. "I can't stop now,"

she said distractedly. "She wants this right away, and the way she's been today I have no wish to be slow." Suddenly the slender thief chuckled.

"Perhaps it would have been better for us all if you hadn't slept alone last night."

"Never mind that," Conan growled. "It's time for leaving, Tamira.Tomorrow will see us in the mountains."

"Is that what you said to Jondra to anger her so?" Her face tightened.

"Did you ask her to go back with you, too?"

"Fool girl, will you listen? A hunting trophy is no reason to risk death at the hands of hillmen, nor are those gems."

"What of Jondra?" she said suspiciously. "She won't turn back."

"If I can't talk her into it, I will go without her. Will you come?"

Tamira bit her full under-lip and studied his face from beneath her lashes. Finally, she nodded. "I will. It must be in the night, though, while she sleeps. She'll not let me leave her service, if she knows of it. What would she do without a handmaiden to shout at? But what of your own interest in the rubies, Cimmerian?"

"I no longer have any interest," he replied.

"No longer have," Tamira began, then broke off with a disbelieving shake of her head. "Oh, you must think I am a fine fool to believe that, Cimmerian.

Or else you're one. Mitra, but I do keep forgetting that men will act like men."

"And what does that mean?" Conan demanded.

"That she's had you to her bed, and now you will not steal from her. And you call yourself a thief!"

"My reasons are no concerns of yours," he told her with more patience than he felt. "No more than the rubies should be. You leave with me tonight, remember?"

"I remember," she said slowly. As her large brown eyes looked up at him, he thought for a moment that she wanted to say something more.

"Lyana!" Jondra's voice cracked in the air like a whip. "Where is my wine?"

"Where is my wine?" Tamira muttered mockingly, but she broke into a run, dodging around Telades, who labored under one end of a weighty bra.s.s-bound chest.

"Mayhap you shouldn't have angered her, Cimmerian," the shaven-headed hunter panted. "Mayhap you could apologize." The man at the other end of the chest nodded weary agreement.

"Crom!" Conan growled. "Is everyone in the camp worrying about whether I. . . ." His words trailed off as one of the sentries galloped his horse up the hill. Unknowingly, easing his broadsword in its scabbard, he strode to where the man was dismounting before Jondra. The hunters left off their tasks to gather around.

"Soldiers, my lady," the sentry said, breathing heavily. "Cavalry. Two, perhaps three hundred of them, coming hard."

Jondra pounded a fist on a rounded thigh. Her salmon silk tunic and riding breeches were dusty and sweat-stained from her day's labors. "Erlik take all soldiers," she said tightly, then took a deep breath that made her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s stir beneath the taut silk of her tunic. "Very well. If they come, I'll receive their commander. Arvaneus! See that any man who's bandaged is out of sight. If the soldiers arrive before I return, be courteous, but tell them nothing. Nothing, understand me! Lyana! Attend me, girl!" Before she finished speaking she was pushing through the a.s.sembled hunters, not waiting for them to move from her path.

The hawk-faced huntsman began shouting commands, and hunters and carters scattered in all directions, hastening to prepare the camp for visitors.

Moving the wounded inside tents was the least of it, for most of them could walk without a.s.sistance, but Jondra's industriousness had left bales and bundles, piles of cooking gear and stacks of spears scattered among the remaining tents till the camp seemed struck by a whirlwind.

Ignoring the bustle behind him, Conan settled into a flat-footed crouch at the edge of the camp, his eyes intent on the direction from which the sentry had come. More than once his hand strayed unconsciously to the worn hilt of his ancient broadsword. He did not doubt that the sentry had seen Zamoran soldiers and not hillmen, but he had as little regard for one as forthe other. Relations between the army and a thief were seldom easy.

A ringing clatter of shod hooves on loose stone heralded the soldiers'

approach well before the mounted column came into sight. In ranks of four, with well-aligned lance-points glittering in the afternoon sun, they wended their way along the small valleys between the hills. A banner led them, such as Zamoran generals were wont to have, of green silk fringed with gold, its surface embroidered in ornate gold script recounting victories. Conan snorted contemptuously at the sight of the honor standard. At that distance he could not read the script, but he could count the number of battles listed.

Considering the number of true battles fought by Zamoran arms in the twenty years past, that banner gave honor to many a border skirmish and brawl with brigands.

At the foot of the hill the column drew up, two files wheeling to face the camp, the other two turning their mounts the other way. The standard bearer and the general, marked by the plume of scarlet horsehair on his golden helmet and the gilding of his mail, picked their way up the hill through the few stunted trees and scattered clumps of waist-high scrub.

At Arvaneus' impatient signal two of the hunters ran forward, one to hold the general's bridle, the other his stirrup, as he dismounted. He was a tall man of darkly handsome face, his upper lip adorned by thin mustaches. His arrogant eye ran over the, camp, pausing at Conan for a raised brow of surprise and a sniff of dismissal before going on. The Cimmerian wondered idly if the man had ever actually had to use the jewel-hilted sword at his side.

"Well," the general said suddenly, "where is your mistress?"

Arvaneus darted forward, his face set for effusive apologies, but Jondra's voice brought him to a skidding halt. "Here I am, Zathanides. And what does Zamora's most ill.u.s.trious general do so far from the palaces of Shadizar?"

She came before the general with a feline stride, and her garb brought gasps even from her hunters. Shimmering scarlet silk, belted with thickly woven gold and pearls, moulded every curve of b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly and thighs, rounded and firm enough to make a eunuch's mouth water.

It was not the raiment that drew Conan's attention, however. On her head rested a diadem of sapphires and black opals, with one great ruby larger than the last joint of a big man's thumb lying above her brows. Between her generous b.r.e.a.s.t.s nestled that ruby's twin, depending from a necklace likewise encrusted with brilliant azure sapphires and opals of deepest ebon. The Cimmerian's gaze sought out Tamira. The young woman thief was demurely presenting to Zathanides a tray bearing a golden goblet and a crystal flagon of wine, with damp, folded cloths beside. She seemed unaware of the gems she had meant to steal.

"You are as lovely as ever, Jondra," the general said as he wiped his hands and tossed the cloths back onto the tray. "But that loveliness might have ended gracing some hillman's hut if I hadn't found this fellow Eldran."

Jondra stiffened visibly. "Eldran?"

"Yes. A Brythunian. Hunter, he said." He took the goblet Tamira, filled for him, gracing her with a momentary smile that touched only his lips. "I wouldn't have believed his tale of a Zamoran n.o.ble-woman in this Mitra-forsaken place if it had not been for his description. A woman as tall as most men, ravingly beautiful of face and figure, a fair shot with a bow.

And your gray eyes, of course. I knew then it could be none but you." He tilted back his head to drink.

"He dared describe me so? A fair shot?" She hissed the words, but it had been "ravingly beautiful" that made her face color, and the mention of her eyes that had clenched her fists. "I hope you have this Eldran well chained.

And his followers. I ... I have reason to believe they are brigands."

Conan grinned openly. She was not a woman to take kindly to being bested.

"I fear not," Zathanides said, tossing the empty goblet back to Tamira.

"He seemed what he called himself, and he was alone, so I sent him on his way.In any case, you should be thankful to him for saving your life, Jondra. The hillmen are giving trouble, and this is no place for one of your little jaunts. I'll send a few men with you to see that you get back to Shadizar safely."

"I am no child to be commanded," Jondra said hotly.

The general's heavy-lidded eyes caressed her form, and his reply came slowly. "You are certainly no child, Jondra. No, indeed. But go you must."