From afar came the sounds of Zamoran drums beating furiously. The clash of steel drifted faintly in the air, and the shouts of fighting men.
“Mayhap we can just stay here till the soldiers come,” Haral said unsteadily.
A ripple ran through the hillmen pressed against the circle’s perimeter.
“Stay back!” the red-robed man cried. “The unbelievers will be dealt with by—”
Screaming at the top of their lungs, a score of turbanned warriors leaped into the circle with steel flashing against the Brythunians. By ones and twos, others joined them. Conan wished he knew what held the rest back, but there was suddenly no time for thought.
The Cimmerian blocked a tulwar slash aimed at his head, booted another attacker full in the belly. The second man fell beneath the feet of a third. The Cimmerian’s steel pivoted around his first opponent’s curved blade to drive through a leather-vested chest. He wanted to spare a glance for Tamira, but more hillmen were pressing on him. A mighty swing of his ancient broadsword sent a turbanned head rolli
ng on the granite blocks, then continued on to rip out a bearded throat in a spray of blood.
Battle rage rose in him, the fiery blood that drowned reason. Hillmen rushed against him, and fell before a whirlwind of murderous steel. His eyes burned like azure flames, and all who looked into them knew they saw their own death. In some small corner of his mind sanity remained, enough to see Eldran, facing three hillmen and pushed almost to the low stone wall, fighting with broadsword in one hand and tulwar in the other. Haral and another Brythunian stood back to back, and a barricade of corpses slowed others who tried to reach them.
Abruptly the hillman who faced Conan backed away, dark eyes going wide with horror as he stared past the Cimmerian’s shoulder. The tribesmen outside the circle were silent, pressing back from the stone columns. Conan risked a backward glance, and clamped his teeth on an oath.
Slowly the iridescent form of the beast of fire moved from the stone tunnel, its great golden eyes coldly surveying the arena filled with men who slowed and ceased their struggles as they became aware of it. One of the leathery bulges on its back had split; the edge of what appeared to be a wing, like that of a great bat, protruded. And almost beneath its feet crouched Tamira and Jondra.
“Behold!” the red-robed mage cried, flinging wide his arms. “The sign of the true gods is with us!”
For an instant there was silence save for the dimly heard sounds of distant battle. Then Eldran shouted. “Cimmerian!” The Brythunian’s arm drew back; the ancient broadsword with its strange, clawed quillons arcked spinning through the air.
Conan shifted his own sword to his left hand, and his right went up to catch the hilt of the thrown blade.
As if his movement, or perhaps the sword, had drawn its eyes, the brightly scaled beast stepped toward the Cimmerian. Memory of their last encounter was strong in Conan, and as the spike-toothed maw opened he threw himself into a rolling tumble. Flame roared. The hillman he had faced screamed as beard, hair and filthy robes blazed.
Conan knew well the quickness of the beast. He came to his feet only to dive in a different direction, one that took him closer. Fire scorched the stone where he had stood. The glittering creature moved with the speed of a leopard, Conan like a hunting lion. With a mutter of hope that Eldran spoke truly about the weapon, the big Cimmerian struck. A shock, as of sparks traveling along his bones, went through him. And the blade sliced through one golden eye, opening a gaping wound down the side of the huge scaled head, a wound that dripped black ichor.
Atop the stone tunnel the red-robed man screamed shrilly and threw his hands to his face. The beast reared back its head and echoed the scream, the two sounds merging, ringing through the mountains.
Conan felt his marrow freezing as the cry lanced into him, turning his muscles to water. Anger flared in him. He would not wait so to die. Fury lent him strength. “Crom!” he roared. Rushing forward, he plunged the ensorceled weapon into the creature’s chest.
With a jerk, the beast’s movement tore the hilt from his hand. Onto its hind legs it rose, towering above them all. If its cry had been one of pain before, now it was a shriek of agony, a scream that made the very stones of the mountains shiver.
The red-robed man was down on his knees, one hand to his face, the other clutching his chest. His black eyes on the scaled form were pools of horror. “No!” he howled. “No!”
Slowly the monstrous shape toppled. The stones of the tunnel cracked at its fall. A damp, leathery wing emerged from the broken bulge on its back, quivered once and was still. From beneath the beast extended a corner of scarlet robe, rivulets of crimson blood and black ichor falling from it.
From the hillmen on the slopes a keening went up, an eery wail of despair. Suddenly the thousands of them broke into fear-ridden flight. Even now they tried to avoid the circle of columns, but their numbers were too great, their panic too strong. Those close to the low stone wall were forced over it, screaming denial, by the press of human flesh. The circle became a maelstrom, hundreds trampling each other in their eagerness to flee.
Like a rock Conan breasted the flood, his eyes searching desperately for Tamira and Jondra. The men streaming around him had no thought left but escape, no desire but to claw through the pack, grinding underfoot anyone who slowed them. No man raised a hand against the Cimmerian except to try to pull him from their path. None touched a weapon, or even seemed to see him with their terrified eyes. They would not stop to harm the women deliberately, but if either woman went down beneath those trampling feet … .
Eldran’s height made him stand out as he waded through the shorter hillmen with Jondra in his arms. The Brythunian scrambled over the low stone wall and disappeared in the wash of dirty turbans.
Then Conan caught sight of the gold-edged black cloak, well beyond the circle, being borne around the mountain by the tide of flight. “Fool woman,” he growled.
The clash of steel was closer, driving fear deeper into the hearts of men still trying to flee. There was no room to draw or swing a sword, but here and there daggers were out now, and hillman spilled hillman’s blood to carve a way through to safety. With hammering fists and swordhilt, Conan hewed his own path through the mob, ruthless in his need to reach Tamira. Screaming men went down before his blows, and those who fell beneath the feet of that frenzied horde did not rise again.
The hillman village came into sight. Around the two-story stone building swarmed a hell of panting, desperate men dragging screaming black-swathed women with squalling babes in their arms and children clutching their long skirts. Here knots of men could break off from the seething mass to seek their camps. Others paused in flight to grab what they could from the stone huts. Bright steel flashed and reddened, and possessions changed hands thrice in the space of a breath.
Conan’s sword and the breadth of his shoulders kept a space clear about him, but he barely even saw the men who slunk away from him like curs. He could no longer find Tamira among the now spreading streams of hillmen.
Abruptly the slender woman thief dashed from the stone structure that towered over the others in the village. She gasped and snugged the gold-edged black cloak tightly about her as Conan grabbed her arm.
“What in Mitra’s name are you doing?” the Cimmerian demanded fiercely.
“My clothes,” she began, and shrieked when he raised his sword.