Bombatta turned a scowling visage to the Cimmerian. “Well, thief, do you abandon your precious Valeria? Did those Corinthians frighten your manhood from you? Or did you ever have—?”
Conan’s eyes were so cold that the scar-faced warrior cut off his words. Bombatta’s emotions were writ plain on his features, realization of what he had done, anger at having been afrighted even for a moment, rage that the others had seen it. He gripped his tulwar so hard that the hilt creaked, but the big Cimmerian made no move toward his own weapon.
Patience, Conan told himself. In the rugged mountain ranges of Cimmeria a man without patience was a man who was soon dead. There would be time for killing later. When he spoke his voice was icy calm.
“I would not take her where she wants to go without other eyes to watch, and more blades to guard her. We have them, now.” He pulled his horse up beside Bombatta’s. “Let us not delay, Zamoran. We must be back in Shadizar by tomorrow night, and we have matters to settle, you and I, when this is done.”
“I will look forward to it,” Bombatta snarled.
“And I,” Conan said, starting forward again, “will look back upon it.”
xvii
Half a day’s riding it took to reach those broken fingers of stone, and they looked no better to Conan once he was in them than they had from a distance. Quickly the rough gray walls rose around them, and the way narrowed until they were forced to ride in single file. Hundreds of confined passages crossed and re-crossed like miniature canyons, with thick stone separating them. Sometimes half a score choices of direction were presented at once, and each was more cramped and crooked than the one before.
“To the right,” Jehnna said from directly behind him. “The right, I said. No, not that one. That one over there! It’s close, now. Oh, we could move twice as fast if you’d only let me lead.”
“No!” Bombatta shouted.
Conan said nothing, reining in to study the possibilities ahead, three narrow corridors through the stone leading off in different directions. Very narrow corridors. It was not the first time Jehnna had asked to lead the way, and he had long since tired of explaining the dangers to her. Bombatta now refused to leave her side because, he claimed, he did not trust the Cimmerian not to allow her to go ahead of him. After Bombatta’s display at the rejoining, Conan was sure the Zamoran simply did not want to leave her alone with him, but the problem before him left no time to worry about that.
“Why have we stopped?” Jehnna demanded. “That is the way. Right there.” She pointed to the center gap.
“It is too narrow for the horses,” Conan said. With some difficulty, for the gray walls were already close, he swung down from his saddle and moved ahead of his horse. “We will have to leave them.”
He did not like doing it. Hobbled, they would not wander far, but even a short distance could make a difference in this. And without horses there was no hope in Zandru’s Nine Hells of reaching Shadizar in time. The others had dismounted and were fastening hobbles between their mounts’ forelegs, or pushing past the animals to join him.
“Malak,” he said, “best you stay with the horses.”
The small thief started and stared at the stone around them with a sickly look. “Here? Sigyn’s Bowl, Conan, I don’t think we should divide ourselves. Keep our forces together, eh? A man can’t even breath in here.”
About to make a sharp retort, Conan stopped. He himself had been thinking much about how close the stone was, how it seemed almost to cut off the air. But he was not one to be affected by tight passages or close spaces. He studied the others’ faces, trying to see if any of them felt what he did. Jehnna was all impatience, while Zula had the set face of one who expected combat at any moment. Bombatta glowered, as usual, and Akiro appeared thoughtful, also as usual. Perhaps it was all in his imagination. And perhaps not.
“Yes, we’ll stay together,” he said. He drew his sword in one hand, his dagger in the other. “Thus will I mark our way,” with the dagger he scratched an arrow on the stone, pointing toward the horses, “that we can find the horses again. Stay close.”
To Jehnna’s eager urging Conan moved down the rough-walled passage, though not so quickly as she would have liked, and every ten paces he scratched another arrow on the stone. If the worst came, he thought, even Jehnna could find the animals with these. Even alone she might have a chance of escape.
At times they had to turn sideways, stone scraping their chests and backs, for some stretches were so strait not even Zula or Jehnna could walk through them normally. However Conan walked, he kept his sword advanced and his dagger ready for anything that managed to get past the longer blade. As he moved deeper into the maze, his sense of something ill grew. Almost could he put a name now to what seemed to permeate the stone through which they made their way. It was like the remembrance of a memory of the stench of death, so faint the nose could not smell it, so tenuous the mind could not grasp it, yet there to be touched by the most primitive instincts.
He looked back at the others, and this time found his unease mirrored on their faces, all save Jehnna’s.
“Why do we move so slowly?” the slender
girl demanded. Vainly, she tried to push past the big Cimmerian, but there was barely width enough for him to pass alone. “We are almost there.”
“Akiro?” Conan said.
The gray-haired wizard’s face was twisted as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “I have sensed it since we entered these passages, but it grows stronger as we go. It is … a foulness.” He stopped to spit. “But it is old, ancient, and I do not think it threatens us. We are more than a few centuries too late for that.”
Conan nodded, and continued on, but he was not convinced. His own senses might not be magical, but they had kept him alive in many places where he could well have died, and they told him there was danger here. He kept a firm grip on his weapons
With startling suddenness the passage spilled out into a large open area. Here the rock had been cut away, and the stone remaining carved in intricate patterns to floor a great courtyard that fronted a temple hewn from the very side of the mountain. Massive fluted columns ran across the face of the temple, and once a score of obsidian statues, four times the height of a man, had stood between them. Now only one remained, an ebon warrior holding a tall spear, with the features of his face worn away by wind and rain. Of the others only shattered chunks of black stone and the stumps of their legs remained.
Conan sheathed his dagger and grabbed Jehnna’s arm as she tried to run to the temple. “Take care, girl,” he told her. “I’ll risk much here, but you I risk as little as possible.”
Bombatta seized her other arm, and the two men stared coldly at one another above her head. The promise of death was strong between them. It was another reason to wish the journey done, Conan thought. Such promises as that could not remain unfulfilled forever.
“Let me go,” Jehnna said, twisting in their grasp. “I must find the Horn. It is inside there. Let me go!”