Conan stared after her before following, and not for the pleasant rolling motion of her rump. The fool woman had not wanted him behind her. Did she fear he would take her by force? And why had she seemed shaken by fear when she recognized him? Slowly, however, his questions were submerged in the pleasure of watching her make her way over the rolling hills. The silk riding breeches fit her buttocks like skin, and the view as she toiled upslope ahead of him was enough to make any man forget himself.
The sun climbed on, a ball of luteous fire baking the air dry. Shimmers rose from the rocky ground, and boot soles burned as if they rested on coals. Every breath sucked moisture from the lungs, dried the throat. Across the sky marched the sun, to its zenith and beyond, roasting the flesh, baking the brain.
The sun, Conan realized as he labored uphill in Jondra’s wake, had replaced the woman as the center of his thoughts. He tried to calculate the time he had left to find water, the time before the strength of his thews began to fail. The effort of wetting his cracking lips was wasted, for the dampness did not last beyond the doing. He saw no use in offering up prayers. Crom, the Lord of the Mound, the god of his harsh native land, listened to no prayers, accepted no votive offerings. Crom gave a man but two gifts, life and will, and never another. Will would carry him till dark, he decided. Then, having survived a day, he would set about surviving the night, and then the next day, and the next night.
Of the girl he was not so sure. Already she had begun to stagger, tripping over stones she would easily have stepped over when they left the horses. Abruptly a rock smaller than her fist turned under her boot, and she fell heavily. To hands and knees she rose, but no further. Her head hung weakly, and her sides heaved with the effort of drawing a decent breath from the bone-dry air.
Scrambling up beside her, Conan pulled her to her feet. She hung limply from his hands. “Is this the right direction, girl? Is it?”
‘‘How—dare—you,” she managed through cracked lips.
Fiercely he shook her; her head lolled on her neck. “The direction, girl! Tell me!”
Unsteadily she looked around them. “Yes,” she said finally. ‘‘I—think.”
With a sigh, Conan lifted her over his shoulder.
‘‘Not—dignified,” she panted. ‘‘Put—me—down.”
“There’s no one to see,” he told her. And perhaps never would be, he told himself. A well-honed instinct for direction would keep him moving on the path Jondra had set as long as he was able to move; an instinct for survival and an indomitable will would keep him moving long after the limits of ordinary human endurance had been breeched. He would find her camp. If she actually followed the true path. If he had not waited too late to question her. If … .
Putting his doubts and Jondra’s weak struggles alike from his mind, Conan set out slightly to the south of the line the sun had followed in rising. Constantly his eyes searched for signs of water, but in vain. It was too much to hope for palm fronds waving above a spring. Now, however, he could not find even the plants that would show him where to dig for a seep hole. No trace of green met his eyes save the short, wiry grass that could grow where a lizard would die of thirst. The sun blazed its way westward.
Conan’s gaze swept toward the horizon. No smoke marked a campsite, no track disturbed the stony flanks of the hills before him. A steady, ground-eating pace he kept, tirelessly at first, then, as shadows lengthened before him, with an iron determination that denied the possibility of surrender. With water the coming night would have been a haven. Without it, there would be no stopping, for if they stopped they might well never take another step.
Darkness swooped, with no twilight. The stretching shadows seemed to merge and permeate the air in moments. The searing heat dissipated quickly. Stars blinked into being, like flecks of crystal on black velvet, and with them came a chill that struck to the bone as fiercely as had the sun. Jondra stirred on his shoulder and murmured faintly. Conan could not make out what she said, nor waste the energy to wonder what it had been.
He began to stumble, and he knew it was not only the dark. His throat was as dry as the rocks that turned under his feet, and the cold gave little relief to the sun-cracked skin of his face. All he could see were the unwinking stars. Locking his eyes on the horizon, a thin line where sable merged into ebon, he trudged on. Abruptly he realized that three of those stars did seem to shimmer. And they lay below the horizon. Fires.
Forcing his feet to move faster, Conan half-ran toward the camp, for such it must be, whether Jondra’s or another. Whoever’s camp it was, they must go in, for they had to have water. With his free hand he loosened his sword in its scabbard. They needed water, and he meant to have it.
The ‘stars’ clearly became fires built high, surrounded by two-wheeled carts and round tents, with picket lines of animals beyond. Conan stumbled into the firelight; men in short mail tunics and baggy white trousers leaped to their feet. Hands reached for spears and tulwars.
The Cimmerian let Jondra fall and put a hand to his sword hilt. “Water,” he croaked. The one word was all he could manage.
“What have you done?” a tall hawk-faced man demanded. Conan worked for the moisture to ask what the man meant, but the other did not wait. “Kill him!” he snarled.
Conan’s broadsword slid smoothly free, and it was not the only steel bared to gleam in the light of the fires. Some men raised their spears to throw.
“No!” The faint command came in a thirst-hoarsened voice. “No, I say!”
Conan risked a glance from the corner of his eye. One of the mail-shirted men held a water-skin solicitously to Jondra’s lips, and her shoulders were supported by Tamira, in the short, white tunic of a servant.
Not lowering his sword—for few of the others had lowered theirs—Conan began to laugh, a dry, rasping sound of relief. It hurt his throat, but he did not care.
“But, my lady,” the hawk-faced man protested. Conan remembered him, now, at Jondra’s shoulder that day in Shadizar.
“Be silent, Arvaneus,” Jondra barked. She took two more thirsty gulps from the waterskin, then pushed it aside and held out an imperious hand, demanding to be helped to her feet. The man with the waterskin hastened to comply. She stood unsteadily, but pushed him aside when he tried to support her. “This man saved me from wolves, Arvaneus, and carried me when I could not walk. While you huddled by the fires, he saved my life. Give him water. Tend his hurts, and see to his comfort.”
Hesitantly, eying Conan’s bare blade, the man with the waterskin handed it to the big Cimmerian.
Arvaneus spread his hands in supplication. “We searched, my lady. When you did not return, we searched until dark, then built the fires high that you might see them and be guided to the camp. At first light we would have—”
“At first light I would have been dead!” Jondra snapped. “I will retire to my tent now, Arvaneus, and give thanks to Mitra that my survival was not left to you. Attend me, Lyana.” Her rigid-backed departure was spoiled slightly by a stumble, and she muttered a curse as she ducked into her scarlet-walled pavillion.
Conan cast an eye about the encampment—the tulwars and spears were no longer in evidence—and sheathed his own blade. As he was raising the waterskin, he met Arvaneus’ gaze. The huntsman’s black eyes were filled with a hatred rooted in his marrow. And he was not the only one staring at the Cimmerian. Tamira’s glare was one of frustration.
“Lyana!” Jondra called from her tent. “Attend me, girl, or … .” The threat was implicit