Red Nails, Polished
Roberta E. Howard
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Roberta E. Howard
A Conyn the Barbarian Story
A Gender Switch Adventure
The Skull on the Crag
The man on the horse reined in his weary steed. It stood with its legs wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tassled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The man drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the giltworked saddle. He made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned about, hands on his hips, to survey his surroundings.
They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where his horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the somber twilight of the lofty archs formed by intertwining branches. The man shivered with a twitch of his magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.
He was tall, full-chested, and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. His whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the masculinity of his appearance. He was all man, in spite of his bearing and his garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of his present environs. Instead of a skirt he wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which ceased a hand's breadth short of his knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to his knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed his costume. On one shapely hip he wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. His unruly golden hair, cut square at his shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.
Against the background of somber, primitive forest he posed with an unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. He should have been posed against a background of sea clouds, painted masts, and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in his wide eyes. And that was at it should have been, because this was Valerian of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather.
He strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and see the sky which presumably lay above it, but presently gave it up with a muttered oath.
Leaving his horse tied, he strode off toward the east, glancing back toward the pool from time to time in order to fix his route in his mind. The silence of the forest depressed him. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of small animals. For leagues he had traveled in a realm of brooding stillness, broken only by the sounds of his own flight.
He had slaked his thirst at the pool, but now felt the gnawings of hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which he had sustained himself since exhausting the food originally in his saddlebags.
Ahead of him, presently, he saw an outcropping of dark, flintlike 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 treetops, and from it he could see what lay beyond--if, indeed, anything lay beyond but more of this apparently illimitable forest through which he had ridden for so many days.
A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of the crag. After he had ascended some fifty feet, he came to the belt of leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd close to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about it, veiling it with their foliage. He groped on in leafy obscurity, not able to see either above or below him; but presently he glimpsed blue sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw the forest roof stretching away under his feet.
He was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the treetops, and from it rose a spirelike jut that was the ultimate peak of the crag he had climbed. But something else caught his attention at the moment. His foot had struck something in the litter of blown dead leaves which carpeted the shelf. He kicked them aside and looked down on the skeleton of a woman. He ran an experienced eye over the bleached frame, but saw no broken bones nor any sign of violence. The woman must have died a natural death; though why she should have climbed a tall crag to die he could not imagine.
He scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward the horizons. The forest roof--which looked like a floor from his vantage point--was just as impenetrable as from below. He could not even see the pool by which he had left his horse. He glanced northward, in the direction from which he had come. He saw only the rolling green ocean stretching away and away, with just a vague blue line in the distance to hint of the hill range he had crossed days before, to plunge into this leafy waste.
West and east the view was the same; though the blue hill-line was lacking in those directions. But when he turned his eyes southward he stiffened and caught his breath. A mile away in that direction the forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dotted plain. And in the midst of that plain rose the walls and towers of a city. Valerian swore in amazement. This passed belief. He would not have been surprised to sight human habitations of another sort--the beehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff-dwellings of the mysterious brown race which legends declared inhabited some country of this unexplored region. But it was a startling experience to come upon a walled city here so many long weeks' march from the nearest outposts of any sort of civilization.
His hands tiring from clinging to the spirelike pinnacle, he let himself down on the shelf, frowning in indecision. He had come far-- from the camp of the mercenaries by the border town of Sukhmet amidst the level grasslands, where desperate adventurers of many races guard the Stygian frontier against the raids that come up like a red wave from Darfar. His flight had been blind, into a country of which he was wholly ignorant. And now he wavered between an urge to ride directly to that city in the plain, and the instinct of caution which promped his to skirt it widely and continue his solitary flight.
His thoughts were scattered by the rustling of the leaves below him. He wheeled catlike, snatched at his sword; and then he froze motionless, staring wide-eyed at the woman before him.
She was almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under her skin, which the sun had burned brown. Her garb was similar to his, except that she wore a broad leather belt instead of a girdle. Broadsword and poniard hung from her belt.
"Conyn, the Cimmerian!" ejaculated the man. "What are you doing on my trail?"
She grinned hardly, and her fierce blue eyes burned with a light any man could understand as they ran over him magnificent figure, lingering on the swell of his splendid pectorals beneath the light shirt, and the clear white flesh displayed between breeches and boottops.
"Don't you know?" she laughed. "Haven't I made my admiration for you plain ever since I first saw you?"
"A mare could have made it no plainer," he answered disdainfully. "But I never expected to encounter you so far from the ale barrels and meatpots of Sukhmet. Did you really follow me from Zarallo's camp, or were you whipped forth for a rogue?"
She laughed at his insolence and flexed her mighty biceps.
"You know Zarallo didn't have enough knaves to whip me out of camp," she grinned. "Of course I followed you. Lucky thing for you, too, boy! When you knifed that Stygian officer, you forfeited Zarallo's favor, and protection, and you outlawed yourself with the Stygians."
"I know it," he replied sullenly. "But what else could I do? You know what my provocation was."
"Sure," she agreed. "If I'd been there, I'd have knifed her myself. But if a man must live in the war camps of women, he can expect such things."
Valerian stamped his booted foot and swore.
"Why won't women let me life a woman's life?"
"That's obvious!" Again her eager eyes devoured him. "But you were wise to run away. The Stygians would have had you skinned. That officer's sister followed you; faster than you thought, I don't doubt. She wasn't far behind you when I caught up with her. Her horse was better than yours. She'd have caught you and cut your throat within a few more miles."
"Well?" he demanded.
"Well what?" She seemed puzzled.
"What of the Stygian?"
"Why, what do you suppose?" she returned impatiently. "I killed her, of course, and left her 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?" he sneered.
"Don't talk like a fool," she grunted. "Come, boy, don't be such a spitfire. I'm not like that Stygian you knifed, and you know it."
"A penniless vagabond," he taunted.
She laughed at him.
"What do you call yourself? You haven't enough money to buy a new seat for your breeches. Your disdain doesn't deceive me. You know I've commanded bigger ships and more women than you ever did in your life. As for being penniless--what rover isn't, most of the time? I've squandered enough gold in the seaports of the world to fill a galeon. You know that, too."
"Where are the fine ships and the bold lasses you commanded now?" he sneered.
"At the bottom of the sea, mostly," she replied cheerfully. "The Zingarans sank my last ship off the Shemite shore--that's why I joined Zarallo's Free Companions. But I saw I'd been stung when we marched to the Darfar border. The pay was poor and the wine was sour, and I don't like black men. And that's the only kind that came to our camp at Sukhmet--rings in their noses and their teeth filed--bah! Why did you join Zarallo? Sukhmet's a long way from salt water."
"Red Ortho wanted to make me her master," he answered sullenly. "I jumped overboard one night and swam ashore when we were anchored off the Kushite coast. Off Zabhela, it was. There was a Shemite trader told me that Zarallo had brought her Free Companies south to guard the Darfar border. No better employment offered. I joined an east-bound caravan and eventually came to Sukhmet."
"It was madness to plunge southward as you did," commented Conyn, "but it was wise, too, for Zarallo's patrols never thought to look for you in this direction. Only the sister of the woman you killed happened to strike your trail."
"And now what do you intend doing?" he demanded.
"Turn west," she answered. "I've been this far south, but not this far east. Many days' traveling to the west will bring us to the open savannas, where the black tribes graze their cattle. I have friends among them. We'll get to the coast and find a ship. I'm sick of the jungle."
"Then be on your way," he advised. "I have other plans."
"Don't be a fool!" She showed irratation for the first time. "You can't keep on wandering through this forest."
"I can if I choose."
"But what do you intend doing?"
"That's none of your affair," he snapped.
"Yes, it is," she answered calmly. "Do you think I've followed you this far, to turn around and ride off empty-handed? Be sensible, boy. I'm not going to harm you."
She stepped toward him, and he sprang back, whipping out his sword.
"Keep back, you barbarian dog! I'll spit you like a roast pig!"
She halted, reluctantly, and demanded: "Do you want me to take that toy away from you and spank you with it?"
"Words! Nothing but words!" he mocked, lights like the gleam of the sun on blue water dancing in his reckless eyes.
She knew it was the truth. No living woman could disarm Valerian of the Sisterhood with her bare hands. She scowled, her sensations a tangle of conflicting emotions. She was angry, yet she was amused and filled with admiration for his spirit. She burned with eagerness to seize that splendid figure and crush it in her iron arms, yet she greatly desired not to hurt the boy. She was torn between a desire to shake his soundly, and a desire to caress him. She knew if she came any nearer his sword would be sheathed in her heart. She had seen Valerian kill too many women in border forays and tavern brawls to have any illusions about him. She knew he was as quick and ferocious as a tigress. She could draw her broadsword and disarm him, beat the blade out of his hand, but the thought of drawing a sword on a man, even without intent of injury, was extremely repugnant to her.
"Blast your soul, you hustler!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "I'm going to take off your--"
She started toward him, her angry passion making her reckless, and he poised himself for a deadly thrust. Then came a startling interruption to a scene at once ludicrous and perilous.
"What's that?"
It was Valerian who exclaimed, but they both started violently, and Conyn wheeled like a cat, her great sword flashing into her hand. Back in the forest had burst forth an appalling medly of screams--the screams of horses in terror and agony. Mingled with their screams there came the snap of splintering bones.
"Lions are slaying the horses!" cried Valerian.
"Lions, nothing!" snorted Conyn, her eyes blazing. "Did you hear a lion roar? Neither did I! Listen to those bones snap--not even a lion could make that much noise killing a horse."
She hurried down the natural ramp and he followed, their personal feud forgotten in the adventurers' instinct to unite against common peril. The screams had ceased when they worked their way downward through the green veil of leaves that brushed the rock.
"I found your horse tied by the pool back there," she muttered, treading so noiselessly that he no longer wondered how she had surprised his 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 jade-tinted twilight. The giant trunks of trees less than a hundred yards away looked dim and ghostly.
"The horses should be beyond that thicket, over there," whispered Conyn, and her voice might have been a breeze moving through the branches. "Listen!"
Valerian had already heard, and a chill crept through his veins; so he unconsciously laid his white hand on his companion's muscular brown arm. From beyond the thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the loud rending of flesh, together with the grinding, slobbering sounds of a horrible feast.
"Lions wouldn't make that noise," whispered Conyn. "Something's eating our horses, but it's not a lion--Crom!"
The noise stopped suddenly, and Conyn swore softly. A suddenly risen breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the unseen slayer was hidden.
"Here it comes!" muttered Conyn, half lifting her sword.
The thicket was violently agitated, and Valerian clutched Conyn's arm hard. Ignorant of jungle lore, he yet knew that no animal he had ever seen could have shaken the tall brush like that.
"It must be as big as an elephant," muttered Conyn, echoing his thought. "What the devil--" Her voice trailed away in stunned silence.
Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of drippnig yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.
The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conyn could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.
"Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conyn, thrusting the boy behind him. "I don't think she can climb, but she can stand on her hind legs and reach us--"
With a snapping and rending of bushes and saplings, the monster came hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before her like leaves blown before a wind. As Valerian plunged into the leafy screen a backward glance showed his the titan rearing up fearsomely on her massive hindlegs, even as Conyn had predicted. The sight sent panic racing through him. As she reared, the beast seemed more gigantic than ever; her snouted head towered among the trees. Then Conyn's iron hand closed on his wrist and he was jerked headlong into the blinding welter of the leaves, and out again into the hot sunshine above, just as the monster fell forward with her front feet on the crag with an impact that made the rock vibrate.
Behind the fugitives the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they looked down for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed among the green leaves, eyes flaming, jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks clashed together futilely, and after that the head was withdrawn, vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool.
Peering down through broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it squatting on its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly up at them.
Valerian shuddered.
"How long do you suppose she'll crouch there?"
Conyn kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf.
"That fellow must have climbed up here to escape her, or one like her. She must have died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing must be a dragon, such as the black people speak of in their legends. If so, it won't leave here until we're both dead."
Valerian looked at her blankly, his resentment forgotten. He fought down a surging of panic. He had proved his reckless courage a thousand times in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning war ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the trampled sandy beaches where the desperate women of the Red Sisterhood bathed their knives in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the prospect now confronting his congealed his blood. A cutlass stroke in the heat of battle was nothing; but to sit idle and helpless on a bare rock until he perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous survival of an elder age--the thought sent panic throbbing through his brain.
"She must leave to eat and drink," he said helplessly.
"She won't have to go far to do either," Conyn pointed out. "She's just gorged on horse meat and, like a real snake, she can go for a long time without eating or drinking again. But she doesn't sleep after eating, like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, she can't climb this crag."
Conyn spoke imperturbably. She was a barbarian, and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children was as much a part of her as her lusts and rages. She could endure a situation like this with a coolness impossible to a civilized person.
"Can't we get into the trees and get away, traveling like apes through the branches?" he asked desperately.
She shook her head. "I thought of that. The branches that touch the crag down there are too light. They'd break with our weight. Besides, I have an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots."
"Well, are we going to sit here on our rumps until we starve, like that?" he cried furiously, kicking the skull clattering across the ledge. "I won't do it! I'll go down there and cut her damned head off--"
Conyn had seated herself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire. She looked up with a glint of admiration at his blazing eyes and tense, quivering figure, but, realizing that he was in just the mood for any madness, she let none of her admiration sound in her voice.
"Sit down," she grunted, catching his by his wrist and pulling his down on her knee. He was too surprised to resist as she took his sword from his hand and shoved it back in its sheath. "Sit still and calm down. You'd only break your steel on her scales. She'd gobble you up at one gulp, or smash you like an egg with that spiked tail of hers. We'll get out of this jam some way, but we shan't do it by getting chewed up and swallowed."
He made no reply, nor did he seek to repulse her arm from about his waist. He was frightened, and the sensation was new to Valerian of the Red Sisterhood. So he sat on his companion's--or captor's--knee with a docility that would have amazed Zarallo, who had anathematized his as a he-devil out of Hell's seraglio.
Conyn played idly with his curly yellow locks, seemingly intent only upon her conquest. Neither the skeleton at her feet nor the monster crouching below disturbed her mind or dulled the edge of her interest.
The boy's restless eyes, roving the leaves below them, discovered splashes of color among the green. It was fruit, large, darkly crimson globes suspended from the boughs of a tree whose broad leaves were a peculiarly rich and vivid green. He became aware of both thirst and hunger, though thirst had not assailed his until he knew he could not descend from the crag to find food and water.
"We need not starve," he said. "There is fruit we can reach."
Conyn glanced where he pointed.
"If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite of a dragon," she grunted. "That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa. Derketa is the King of the Dead. Drink a little of that juice, or spill it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot of this crag."
"Oh!"
He lapsed into dismayed slience. There seemed no way out of their predicament, he refleced gloomily. He saw no way of escape, and Conyn seemed to be concerned only with his supple waist and curly tresses. If she was trying to formulate a plan of escape she did not show it.
"If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak," he said presently, "you'll see something that will surprise you."
She cast his a questioning glance, then obeyed with a shrug of her massive shoulders. Clinging to the spirelike pinnacle, she stared out over the forest roof.
She stood a long moment in silence, posed like a bronze statue on the rock.
"It's a walled city, right enough," she muttered presently. "Was that where you were going, when you tried to send me off alone to the coast?"
"I saw it before you came. I knew nothing of it when I left Sukhmet."
"Who'd have thought to find a city here? I don't believe the Stygians ever penetrated this far. Could black people build a city like that? I see no herds on the plain, no signs of cultivation, or people moving about."
"How can you hope to see all that, at this distance?" he demanded.
She shrugged her shoulders and dropped down on the shelf.
"Well, the folk of the city can't help us just now. And they might not, if they could. The people of the Black Countries are generally hostile to strangers. Probably stick us full of spears--"
She stopped short and stood silent, as if she had forgotten what she was saying, frowining down at the crimson spheres gleaming among the leaves.
"Spears!" she muttered. "What a blasted fool I am not to have thought of that before! That shows what a pretty man does to a woman's mind."
"What are you talking about?" he inquired.
Without answering his question, she descended to the belt of leaves and looked down through them. The great brute squatted below, watching the crag with the frightful patience of the reptile folk. So might one of her breed have glared up at their troglodyte ancestors, treed on a high-flung rock, in the dim dawn ages. Conyn cursed her without heat, and began cutting branches, reaching out and severing them as far from the end as she could reach. The agitation of the leaves made the monster restless. She rose from her haunches and lashed her hideous tail, snapping off saplings as if they had been toothpicks. Conyn watched her warily from the corner of her eye, and just as Valerian believed the dragon was about to hurl herself up the crag again, the Cimmerian drew back and climbed up to the ledge with the branches she had cut. There were three of these, slender shafts about seven feet long, but not larger than her thumb. She had also cut several strands of tough, thin vine.
"Branches too light for spear-hafts, and creepers no thicker than cords," she remarked, indicating the foliage about the crag. "It won't hold our weight--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 always fight by clans and tribes."
"What the devil has that got to do with those sticks?" he demanded.
"You wait and see."
Gathering the sticks in a compact bundle, she wedged her poniard hilt between them at one end. Then with the vines she bound them together and, when she had completed her task, she had a spear of no small strength, with a sturdy shaft seven feet in length.
"What good will that do?" he demanded. "You told me that a blade couldn't pierce her scales--"
"She hasn't got scales all over her," answered Conyn. "There's more than one way of skinning a panther."
Moving down to the edge of the leaves, she reached the spear up and carefully thrust the blade through one of the Apples of Derketa, drawing aside to avoid the darkly purple drops that dripped from the pierced fruit. Presently she withdrew the blade and showed his the blue steel stained a dull purplish crimson.
"I don't know whether it will do the job or not," quoth she. "There's enough poison there to kill an elephant, but--well, we'll see."
Valerian was close behind her as she let herself down among the leaves. Cautiously holding the poisoned pike away from her, she thrust her head through the branches and addressed the monster.
"What are you waiting down there for, you misbegotten offspring of questionable parents?" was one of her more printable queries. "Stick your ugly head up here again, you long-necked brute--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 crouched in eloquence that made Valerian stare, in spite of his profane education among the seafarers. 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 woman rouses fear in some bestial chest s and insane rage in others. Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic brute reared up on its mighty hindlegs and elongated its neck and body in a furious effort to reach this vociferous pigmy whose clamor was disturbing the primeval silence of its ancient realm.
But Conyn had judged her distance with precision. Some five feet below him the mighty head crashed terribly but futilely through the leaves. And as the monstrous mouth gaped like that of a great snake, Conyn drove her spear into the red angle of the jawbone hinge. She struck downward with all the strength of both arms, driving the long poniard blade to the hilt in flesh, sinew and bone.
Instantly the jaws clashed convulsively together, severing the triplepieced shaft and almost percipitating Conyn from her perch. She would have fallen but for the boy behind her, who caught her sword-belt in a desperate grasp. She clutched at a rocky projection, and grinned her thanks back at him.
Down on the ground the monster was wallowing like a dog with pepper in its eyes. She shook her head from side to side, pawed at it, and opened her mouth repeatedly to its widest extent. Presently she got a huge front foot on the stump of the shaft and managed to tear the blade out. Then she threw up her head, jaws wide and spouting blood, and glared up at the crag with such concentrated and intelligent fury that Valerian trembled and drew his sword. The scales along her back and flanks turned from rusty brown to a dull lurid red. Most horribly the monster's silence was broken. The sounds that issued from her bloodstreaming jaws did not sound like anything that could have been produced by an earthly creation.
With harsh, grating roars, the dragon hurled herself at the crag that was the citadel of her enemies. Again and again her mighty head crashed upward through the branches, snapping vainly on empty air. She hurled her full ponderous weight against the rock until it vibrated from base to crest. And rearing upright she gripped it with her front legs like a woman and tried to tear it up by the roots, as if it had been a tree.
This exhibition of primordial fury chilled the blood in Valerian's veins, but Conyn was too close to the primitive herself to feel anything but a comprehending interest. To the barbarian, no such gulf existed between herself and other women, and the animals, as existed in the conception of Valerian. The monster below them, to Conyn, was merely a form of life differing from herself mainly in physical shape. She attributed to it characteristics similar to her own, and saw in its wrath a counterpart of her rages, in its roars and bellowings merely reptilian equivalents to the curses she had bestowed upon it. Feeling a kinship with all wild things, even dragons, it was impossible for her to experience the sick horror which assailed Valerian at the sight of the brute's ferocity.
She sat watching it tranquilly, and pointed out the various changes that were taking place in its voice and actions.
"The poison's taking hold," she said with conviction.
"I don't believe it." To Valerian it seemed preposterous to suppose that anything, however lethal, could have any effect on that mountain of muscle and fury.
"There's pain in her voice," declared Conyn. "First she was merely angry because of the stinging in her jaw. Now she feels the bite of the poison. Look! She's staggering. She'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 bushes.
"Is she running away?" inquired Valerian uneasily.
"She's making for the pool!" Conyn sprang up, galvanized into swift activity. "The poison makes her thirsty. Come on! She'll be blind in a few moments, but she can smell her way back to the foot of the crag, and if our scent's here still, she'll sit there until she dies. And others of her kind may come at her cries. Let's go!"
"Down there?" Valerian was aghast.
"Sure! We'll make for the city! They may cut our heads off there, but it's our only chance. We may run into a thousand more dragons on the way, but it's sure death to stay here. If we wait until she dies, we may have a dozen more to deal with. After me, in a hurry!"
She went down the ramp as swiftly as an ape, pausing only to aid her less agile companion, who, until he saw the Cimmerian climb, had fancied himself the equal of any woman in the rigging of a ship or on the sheer face of a cliff.
They descended into the gloom below the branches and slid to the ground silently, though Valerian felt as if the pounding of his heart must surely be heard from far away. A noisy gurgling and lapping beyond the dense thicket indicated that the dragon was drinking at the pool.
"As soon as her belly is full she'll be back," muttered Conyn. "It may take hours for the poison to kill her--if it does at all."
Somewhere beyond the forest the sun was sinking to the horizon. The forest was a misty twilight place of black shadows and dim vistas. Conyn gripped Valerian's wrist and glided away from the foot of the crag. She made less noise than a breeze blowing among the tree trunks, but Valerian felt as if his soft boots were betraying their flight to all the forest.
"I don't think she can follow a trail," muttered Conyn. "But if a wind blew our body scent to her, she could smell us out."
"Mitra, grant that the wind blow not!" Valerian breathed.
His face was a pallid oval in the gloom. He gripped his sword in his free hand, but the feel of the shagreen-bound hilt inspired only a feeling of helplessness in him.
They were still some distance from the edge of the forest when they heard a snapping and crashing behind them. Valerian bit his lip to check a cry.
"She's on our trail!" he whispered fiercely.
Conyn shook her head.
"She didn't smell us at the rock, and she's blundering about through the forest trying to pick up our scent. Come on! It's the city or nothing now! She could tear down any tree we'd climb. If only the wind stays down--"
They stole on until the trees began to thin out ahead of them. Behind them the forest was a black impenetrable ocean of shadows. The ominous crackling still sounded behind them, as the dragon blundered in her erratic course.
"There's the plain ahead," breathed Valerian. "A little more and we'll--"
"Crom!" swore Conyn.
"Mitra!" whispered Valerian.
Out of the south 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 sustained crashing as the dragon came like a hurricane straight toward the spot from which the scent of her enemies was wafted.
"Run!" snarled Conyn, her eyes blazing like those of a trapped wolf. "It's all we can do!"
Sailor's boots are not made for sprinting, and the life of a pirate does not train one for a runner. Within a hundred yards Valerian was panting and reeling in his gait, and behind them the crashing gave way to a rolling thunder as the monster broke out of the thickets and into the more open ground.
Conyn's iron arm about the man's waist half lifted him; his feet scarcely touched the earth as he was borne along at a speed he could never have attained himself. If she could keep out of the beast's way for a bit, prehaps that betraying wind would shift--but the wind held, and a quick glance over her shoulder showed Conyn that the monster was almost upon them, coming like a war-galley in front of a hurricane. She thrust Valerian from her with a force that sent him reeling a dozen feet to fall in a crumpled heap at the foot of the nearest tree, and the Cimmerian wheeled in the path of the thundering titan.
Convinced that her death was upon her, the Cimmerian acted according to her instinct, and hurled herself full at the awful face that was bearing down on her. She leaped, slashing like a wildcat, felt her sword cut deep into the scales that sheathed the mighty snout--and then a terrific impact knocked her rolling and tumbling for fifty feet with all the wind and half the life battered out of her.
How the stunned Cimmerian regained her feet, not even she could have ever told. But the only thought that filled her brain was of the man lying dazed and helpless almost in the path of the hurtling fiend, and before the breath came whistling back into her gullet she was standing over him with her sword in her hand.
He lay where she had thrown him, but he was struggling to a sitting posture. Neither tearing tusks nor trampling feet had touched him. It had been a shoulder or front leg that struck Conyn, and blind monster rushed on, forgettnig the victims whose scent it had been following, 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 shaken by the convulsions of the creature they covered--and then grow quiet.
Conyn lifted Valerian to his feet and together they started away at a reeling run. A few moments later they emerged into the still twilight of the treeless plain.
Conyn paused an instant and glanced back at the ebon fastness behind them. Not a leaf stirred, nor a bird chirped. It stood as silent as it must have stood before Woman was created.
"Come on," muttered Conyn, taking her companion's hand. "It's touch and go now. If more dragons come out of the woods after us--"
She did not have to finish the sentence.
The city looked very far away across the plain, farther than it had looked from the crag. Valerian's heart hammered until he felt as if it would strangle him. At every step he expected to hear the crashing of the bushes and see another colossal nightmare bearing down upon them. But nothing disturbed the silence of the thickets.
With the first mile between them and the woods, Valerian breathed more easily. His buoyant self-confidence began to thaw out again. The sun had set and darkness was gathering over the plain, lightened a little by the stars that made stunted ghosts out of the cactus growths.
"No cattle, no plowed fields," muttered Conyn. "How do these people live?"
"Perhaps the cattle are in pens for the night," suggested Valerian, "and the fields and grazing-pastures are on the other side of the city."
"Maybe," she 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. Valerian shivered. Black against the moon the strange city had a somber, sinister look.
Perhaps something of the same feeling occurred to Conyn, for she stopped, glanced about her, and grunted: "We'll stop here. No use coming to their gates in the night. They probably wouldn't let us in. Besides, we need rest, and we dont know how they'll receive us. A few hours' sleep will put us in better shape to fight or run."
She led the way to a bed of cactus which grew in a circle--a phenomenon common to the southern desert. With her sword she chopped an opening, and motioned Valerian to enter.
"We'll be safe from the snakes here, anyhow."
He 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," she answered, though she made no suggestion as to what they would do in such an event. She was staring at the city, a few miles away. Not a light shone from spire or tower. A great black mass of mystery, it reared cryptically against the moonlit sky.
"Lie down and sleep. I'll keep the first watch."
He hesitated, glancing at her uncertainly, but she sat down crosslegged in the opening, facing toward the plain, her sword across her knees, her back to him. Without further comment he lay down on the sand inside the spiky circle.
"Wake me when the moon is at its zenith," he directed.
She did not reply nor look toward him. His last impression, as he sank into slumber, was of her muscular figure, immobile as a statue hewn out of bronze, outlined against the low-hanging stars.
By the Blaze of the Fire Jewels
Valerian awoke with a start, to the realization that a grey dawn was stealing over the plain.
He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Conyn squatted beside the cactus, cutting off the thick pears and dexterously twitching out the spikes.
"You didn't awake me," he accused. "You let me sleep all night!"
"You were tired," she answered. "Your posterior must have been sore, too, after that long ride. You pirates aren't used to horseback."
"What about yourself?" he retorted.
"I was a kozak before I was a pirate," she answered. "They live in the saddle. I snatch naps like a panther watching beside the trail for a deer to come by. My ears keep watch while my eyes sleep."
And indeed the giant barbarian seemed as much refreshed as if she had slept the whole night on a golden bed. Having removed the thorns, and peeled off the tough skin, she handed the boy a thick, juicy cactus leaf.
"Skin your teeth in that pear. It's food and drink to a desert woman. I was a chief of the Zuagirs once--desert women who live by plundering the caravans."
"Is there anything you haven't done?" inquired the boy, half in derision and half in fascination.
"I've never been queen of an Hyborean kingdom," she 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?"
He shook his head in wonder at her calm audacity, and fell to devouring his pear. He found it not unpleasing to the palate, and full of cool and thirst-satisfying juice. Finishing her meal, Conyn wiped her hands in the sand, rose, ran her fingers through her thick black mane, hitched up her 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."
Her grim humor was unconscious, but Valerian reflected that it might be prophetic. He too hitched his sword belt as he rose. His terrors of the night were past. The roaring dragons of the distant forest were like a dim dream. There was a swagger in his stride as he moved off beside the Cimmerian. Whatever perils lay ahead of them, their foes would be women. And Valerian of the Red Sisterhood had never seen the face of the woman he feared.
Conyn glanced down at his as he strode along beside her with his swinging stride that matched her own.
"You walk more like a hillman than a sailor," she said. "You must be an Aquilonian. The suns of Darfar never burnt your white skin brown. Many a prince would envy you."
"I am from Aquilonia," he replied. Her compliments no longer irritated him. Her evident admiration pleased him. For another woman to have kept his watch while he slept would have angered him; he had always fiercely resented any woman's attempting to shield or protect him because of his sex. But he found a secret pleasure in the fact that this woman had done so. And she had not taken advantage of his fright and the weakness resulting from it. After all, he reflected, his companion was no common woman.
The sun rose up behind the city, turning the towers to a sinister crimson.
"Black last night against the moon," grunted Conyn, her eys clouding with the abysmal superstition of the barbarian. "Blood-red as a threat of blood against the sun this dawn. I do not like this city."
But they went on, and as they went Conyn pointed out the fact that no road ran to the city from the north.
"No cattle have trampled the plain on this side of the city," said she. "No plowshare has touched the earth for years, maybe centuries. But look: once this plain was cultivated."
Valerian saw the ancient irrigation ditches she indicated, half filled in places, and overgrown with cactus. He frowned with perplexity as his eyes swept over the plain that stretched on all sides of the city to the forest edge, which marched in a vast, dim ring. Vision did not extend beyond that ring.
He looked uneasily at the city. No helmets or spearheads gleamed on battlements, no trumpets sounded, no challenge rang from the towers. A silence as absolute as that of the forest brooded over the walls and minarets.
The sun was high above the eastern horizon when they stood before the great gate in the northern wall, in the shadown of the lofty rampart. Rust flecked the iron bracings of the mighty bronze portal. Spiderwebs glistened thickly on hinge and sill and bolted panel.
"It hasn't been opened for years!" exclaimed Valerian.
"A dead city," grunted Conyn. "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? Maybe an exiled clan of Stygians built it. Maybe not. It doesn't look like Stygian architecture. Maybe the people were wiped out by enemies, or a plague exterminated them."
"In that case their treasures may still be gathering dust and cobwebs in there," suggested Valerian, the aquisitive instincts of his profession waking in him; prodded, too, by masculine curiosity. "Can we open the gate? Let's go in and explore a bit."
Conyn eyed the heavy portal dubiously, but placed her massive shoulder against it and thrust with all the power of her muscular calves and thighs. With a rasping screech of rusty hinges the gate moved ponderously inward, and Conyn straightened and drew her sword. Valerian stared over her shoulder, and made a sound indicative of surprise.
They were not looking into an open street or court as one would have expected. The opened gate, or door, gave directly into a long, broad hall which ran away and away until its vista grew indistinct in the distance. It was of heroic proportions, and the floor of a curious red stone, cut in square tiles, that seemed to smolder as if with the reflection of flames. The walls were of a shiny green material.
"Jade, or I'm a Shemite!" swore Conyn.
"Not in such quantity!" protested Valerian.
"I've looted enough from the Khitan caravans to know what I'm talking about," she asserted. "That's jade!"
The vaulted ceiling was of lapis lazuli, adorned with clusters of great green stones that gleamed with a poisonous radiance.
"Green fire-stones," growled Conyn. "That's what the people of Punt call them. They're supposed to be the petrified eyes of those prehistoric snakes the ancients called Golden Serpents. They glow like a cat's eyes in the dark. At night this hall would be lighted by them, but it would be a hellishly weird illumination. Let's look around. We might find a cache of jewels."
"Shut the door," advised Valerian. "I'd hate to have to outrun a dragon down this hall."
Conyn grinned, and replied: "I don't believe the dragons ever leave the forest."
But she complied, and pointed out the broken bolt on the inner side.
"I thought I heard something snap when I shoved against it. That bolt's freshly broken. Rust has eaten nearly through it. If the people ran away, why should it have been bolted on the inside?"
"They undoubtedly left by another door," suggested Valerian.
He wondered how many centuries had passed since the light of outer day had filtered into that great hall through the open door. Sunlight was finding its way somehow into the hall, and they quickly saw the source. High up in the vaulted ceiling skylights were set in slot-like openings--translucent sheets of some crystalline substance. In the splotches of shadow between them, the green jewels winked like the eyes of angry cats. Beneath their feet the dully lurid floor smoldered with changing hues and colors of flame. It was like treading the floors of Hell with evil stars blinking overhead.
Three balustraded galleries ran along on each side of the hall, one above the other.
"A four-storied house," grunted Conyn, "and this hall extends to the roof. It's long as a street. I seem to see a door at the other end."
Valerian shrugged his white shoulders.
"Your eyes are better than mine, then, though I'm accounted sharp-eyed among the sea-rovers."
They turned into an open door at random, and traveresed a series of empty chambers, floored like the hall, and with walls of the same green jade, or of marble or ivory or chalcedony, adorned with friezes of bronze, gold, or silver. In the ceilings the green fire-gems were set, and their light was as ghostly and illusive as Conyn had predicted. Under the witch-fire glow the intruders moved like specters.
Some of the chambers lacked this illumination, and their doorways showed black as the mouth of the Pit. These Conyn and Valerian avoided, keeping always to the lighted chambers.
Cobwebs hung in the corners, but there was no perceptible accumulation of dust on the floor, or on the tables and seats of marble, jade, or carnelian which occupied the chambers. Here and there were rugs of that silk known as Khitan which is practically indestructible. Nowhere did they find any windows, or doors opening into streets or courts. Each door merely opened into another chamber or hall.
"Why don't we come to a street?" grumbled Valerian. "This palace or whatever we're in must be as big as the queen of Turan's seraglio."
"They must not have perished of plague," sad Conyn, meditating upon the mystery of the empty city. "Otherwise we'd find skeletons. Maybe it became haunted, and everybody got up and left. Maybe--"
"Maybe, hell!" broke in Valerian rudely. "We'll never know. Look at these friezes. They portray women. What race do they belong to?"
Conyn scanned them and shook her head.
"I never saw people exactly like them. But there's the smack of the East about them--Vendhya, maybe, or Kosala."
"Were you a queen in Kosala?" he asked, masking his keen curiosity with derision.
"No. But I was a war chief of the Afghulis who live in the Himelian mountains above the borders of Vendhya. These people favor the Kosalans. But why should Kosalans be building a city this far to the west?"
The figures portrayed were those of slender, olive-skinned women and men, with finely chisled, exotic features. They wore filmy robes and many delicate jeweled ornaments, and were depicted mostly in attitudes of feasting, dancing, or lovemaking.
"Easterners, all right," grunted Conyn, "but from where I don't know. They must have lived a disgustingly peaceful life, though, or they'd have scenes of wars and fights. Let's go up those stairs."
It was an ivory spiral that wound up from the chamber in which they were standing. They mounted three flights and came into a broad chamber on the fourth floor, which seemed to be the highest tier in the building. Skylights in the ceiling illuminated the room, in which light the fire-gems winked pallidly. Glancing through the doors they saw, except on one side, a seies of similarly lighted chambers. This other door opened upon a balustraded gallery that overhung a hall much smaller than the one they had recently explored on the lower floor.
"Hell!" Valerian sat down disgustedly on a jade bench. "The people who deserted this city must have taken all their treasures with them. I'm tired of wandering through these bare rooms at random."
"All these upper chambers seem to be lighted," said Conyn. "I wish we could find a window that overlooked the city. Let's have a look through that door over there."
"You have a look," advised Valerian. "I'm gonig to sit here and rest my feet."
Conyn disappeared through the door opposite that one opening upon the gallery, and Valerian leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, and thrust his booted legs out in front of him. These silent rooms and halls with their gleaming green clusters of ornaments and burning crimson floors were beginning to depress him. He wished they could find their way out of the maze into which they had wandered and emerge into a street. He wondered idly what furtive, dark feet had glided over those flaming floors in past centuries, how many deeds of cruelty and mystery those wrinking ceiling-gems had blazed down upon.
It was a faint noise that brought him out of his reflections. He was on his feet with his sword in his hand before he realized what had disturbed him. Conyn had not returned, and he knew it was not she that he had heard.
The sound had come from somewhere beyond the door that opened on to the gallery. Soundlessly in his soft leather boots he glided through it, crept across the balcony and peered down between the heavy balustrades.
A woman was stealing along the hall.
The sight of a human being in this supposedly deserted city was a startling shock. Crouching down behind the stone balusters, with every nerve tingling, Valerian glared down at the stealthy figure.
The woman in no way resembled the figures depicted on the friezes. She was slightly above middle height, very dark, though not Negroid. She was naked but for a scanty silk clout that only partly covered her muscular hips, and a leather girdle, a hand's breadth broad, about her lean waist. Her long black hair hung in lank strands about her shoulders, giving her a wild appearance. She was gaunt, but knots and cords of muscles stood out on her arms and legs, without that fleshy padding that presents a pleasing symmetry of contour. She was built with an economy that was almost repellent.
Yet it was not so much her physical appearance as her attitude that impressed the man who watched her. She slunk along, stooped in a semi-crouch, her head turning from side to side. She grasped a widetipped blade in her right hand and he saw it shake with the intensity of the emotion that gripped her. She was afraid, trembling in the grip of some dire terror. When she turned her head he caught the blaze of wild eyes among the lank strands of black hair.
She did not see him. On tiptoe she glided across the hall and vanished through an open door. A moment later he heard a choking cry, and then silence fell again.
Consumed with curiosity, Valerian glided along the gallery until he came to a door above the one through which the woman had passed. It opened into another, smaller gallery that encircled a large chamber.
This chamber was on the third floor, and its ceiling was not so high as that of the hall. It was lighted only by the fire-stones, and their weird green glow left the spaces under the balcony in shadows.
Valerian's eyes widened. The woman he had seen was still in the chamber.
She lay face down on a dark crimson carpet in the middle of the room. Her body was limp, her arms spread wide. Her curved sword lay near him.
He wondered why she should lie there so motionless. Then his eyes narrowed as he stared down at the rug on which she lay. Beneath and about her the fabric showed a slightly different color, a deeper, brighter crimson.
Shivering slightly, he crouched down closer behind the balustrade, intently scanning the shadows under the overhanging gallery. They gave up no secret.
Suddenly another figure entered the grim drama. She was a woman similar to the first, and she came in by a door opposite that which gave upon the hall.
Her eyes glared at the sight of the woman on the floor, and she spoke something in a staccato voice that sounded like "Chicmec!" The other did not move.
The woman stepped quickly across the floor, bent, gripped the fallen woman's shoulder and turned her over. A choking cry escaped her as the head fell back limply, disclosing a throat that had been severed from ear to ear.
The woman let the corpse fall back upon the blood-stained carpet, and sprang to her feet, shaking like a windblown leaf. Her face was an ashy mask of fear. But with one knee flexed for flight, she froze suddenly, became as immobile as an image, staring across the chamber with dilated eyes.
In the shadows beneath the balcony a ghostly light began to glow and grow, a light that was not part of the fire-stone gleam. Valerian felt his hair stir as he watched it; for, dimly visible in the throbbing radiance, there floated a human skull, and it was from this skull-- human yet appallingly misshapen--that the spectral light seemed to emanate. It hung there like a disembodied head, conjured out of night and the shadows, growing more and more distinct; human, and yet not human as he knew humanity.
The woman stood motionless, an embodiment of paralyzed horror, staring fixedly at the apparition. The thing moved out from the wall and a grotesque shadows moved with it. Slowly the shadow became visible as a man-like figure whose naked torso and limbs shone whitely, with the hue of bleached bones. The bare skull on its shoulders grinned eyelessly, in the midst of its unholy nimbus, and the woman confronting it seemed unable to take her eyes from it. She stood still, her sword dangling from nerveless fingers, on her face the expression of a woman bound by the spells of a mesmerist.
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