“Let us hope this animal is not also searching,” Conan replied. The noblewoman frowned, but before she could speak Arvaneus came to stand at her stirrup.
“Do you wish the trackers out now, my lady?” he asked.
Jondra nodded, and a shiver of excitement produced effects to draw male eyes. “It would be wonderful to get a shot at my quarry on the first day. Yes, Arvaneus. Put out your best trackers.”
She looked expectantly at Conan, but he pretended not to notice. His tracking skill was the equal of any of the hunters’, but he had no interest in finding the creature Jondra sought. He wanted only to see the two women returned to the safety of Shadizar, and he could offer them no protection if he was out tracking.
Jondra’s face fell when Conan did not speak, but the dark-eyed huntsman smiled maliciously. “It takes a great special skill to be a tracker,” he said to no one in particular. “My lady.” He made an elegant bow to Jondra, then backed away, calling as he straightened. “Trackers out! Telades! Zurat! Abu!” His list ran on, and soon he and nine others were trotting out of the camp in ten different directions. They went afoot, for the slight spoor that a tracker must read as a scribe read words on parchment could be missed entirely from the back of a horse.
With the trackers gone, the beauteous noblewoman began ordering the placement of the camp, and Conan found a place to settle with a honing stone, a bit of rag and a vial of olive oil. A sword must be tended to, especially if it would soon find use, and Conan was sure his blade would not be idle long. The mountains seemed to overhang them with a sense of foreboding, and something permeated the very stones that made him uneasy. The honing stone slid along his blade with quiet sussuration. Morning grew into afternoon.
The camp, Conan decided after a time, was placed as well as it could be under the circumstances. The stunted trees that were scattered so sparsely through the Kezankians were in this spot gathered into what might pass for a grove, though an exceedingly thin one. At least they added some modicum to the hiding of the camp.
Jondra’s scarlet tent, which she had never considered leaving behind, stood between two massive granite boulders and was screened from behind by the brown rock of a sheer cliff. No other tents had been brought—for which small favor the Cimmerian was grateful—and the hunters’ blankets were scattered in twos and threes in a score of well-hidden depressions. The horses were picketed in a long, narrow hollow that could be missed even by a man looking for it. To one unfamiliar with the land the encampment would be all but invisible. The trouble, he thought sourly, was that the hillmen were more than familiar with their mountains. There would be trouble.
As though his thought of trouble had been a signal, a sound sliced through the cool mountain air, and Conan’s hand stopped in the act of oiling his sword blade. Through the jagged peaks echoed a shrill, ululating cry, piercing to the bone and the heart. He had never heard the like of that sound, not from the throat of any man or any creature.
The big Cimmerian was not alone in being disturbed by the hunting call—for such he was sure it was. Hunters sat up in their blankets, exchanging worried glances. Some rose to walk a few paces, eyes searching the steep, encircling slopes. Jondra came to the flap of her tent, head tilted questioningly, listening. She wore leather now, jerkin and breeches, as always fitting her curves like a second skin, but plain brown, suitable for the hunt. When the sound was not repeated she retreated inside once more.
“What in Mitra’s thrice-blessed name was that?” Tamira said, dropping into a crouch near Conan. She adjusted her short white robe to provide a modicum of decency, and wrapped slim arms about her knees. “Can it be the creature Jondra hunts?”
“I would not be surprised if it was,” Conan said. He returned to the oiling of his blade. “Little good those rubies will do you if you end in the belly of that beast.”
“You try to talk me into fleeing,” she retorted, “leaving you with a clear path to the gems.”
“I have told you,” he began, but she cut him off.
“A clear path to Jondra’s sleeping furs, then.”
Conan sighed and slid his broadsword into his sheath. “You were in my arms this night past, and she not for two days. And I said that I came into these thrice-accursed mountains for you. Do you now call me liar?”
Her eyes slid away from his, to the rugged spires of granite surrounding them. “Do you think the trackers will find it? This beast, I mean? Perhaps, if they do not, we will leave these mountains. I would as well steal the rubies while returning to Shadizar.”
‘‘I would as soon they found naught but sore feet,” Conan said. He remembered the half-charred fragment of skull and horn.”This beast will not be so easy to slay as Jondra believes, I fear. And you will not steal the rubies.”
‘‘So you do mean to take them yourself.”
‘‘I do not.”
“Then you intend to save them for your paramour. For Jondra.”
“Hannuman’s Stones, woman! Will you give over?”
Tamira eyed him sharply. ‘‘I do not know whether I want you to be lying or not.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked in puzzlement.
“I intend to steal the rubies, you understand, no matter what you say or do.” Her voice tightened. “But if you did not come for the rubies, then you came for me. Or for Jondra. I am uncertain whether I wouldn’t rather have the sure knowledge that all you wanted was the gems.”
Conan leaned back against the boulder behind him and laughed until he wheezed. “So you don’t believe me?” he asked finally.
“I’ve known enough men to doubt anything any of you says.”
“You have?” he exclaimed in feigned surpr
ise. “I would have sworn I was the very first man you’d known.”
Color flooded her cheeks, and she leaped to her feet. “Just you wait until—”