“Halloo!”
Karela galloped forward without a word.
“I hope he’s lost the track,” Hordo muttered. Conan booted his horse ahead. After a moment the one-eyed man followed.
The red-haired woman turned her horse aside as Conan rode up. He looked at what Aberius had been showing her. The reptilian creature they had been following lay sprawled on its back, dead, in the shadow of the stone spire. Its chain mail had been torn off, and its chest ripped open.
“Scavengers have been at it already,” Hordo muttered. “It’s too bad the other one crawled off somewhere to die.” He did not sound as if he thought it too bad at all.
“No vultures in the sky,” Conan said thoughtfully. “And never have I heard of jackals that rip out a heart and leave the rest.”
Aberius’ horse whinnied as he jerked at the reins. “Mitra! The Cimmerian’s right. Who knows what slew him? Perhaps that foul thing that flew over us and took no mind of crossbow bolts.” His beady eyes darted wildly, as if expecting the apparition to appear again, from behind a rock.
“Be silent, fool!” Karela snapped. “It died of the wounds it took last night, and your approach frightened a badger or some such off its feeding.”
“It makes no matter,” Aberius said slyly. “I can track this carrion no further.”
The woman’s green-eyed gaze was contemptu
ously amused. “Then I’ve no more need of you, have I? I’ll wager I can find where it was going myself.”
“It’s time to leave these accursed mountains.” The pinch-faced man swiveled his head to the other bandits, waiting down the trail. Enough fear of the Red Hawk remained to keep them back from her council.
Karela did not deign to acknowledge his whine. “Since loosing its bonds, the creature has kept a straight line. When the twists of the land took it aside, it found its way back again. We’ll keep the same way.”
“But—” Aberius swallowed the rest of his words as Hordo pushed his horse closer. Karela started ahead, ignoring them.
“An I hear any tales,” the one-eyed man grated, “other than that you frighted some slinking vermin from this corpse, I’ll see you cold carrion beside it.” Conan caught his eye as he turned to follow Karela, and for a moment the bearded bandit looked abashed. “She needs one hound at least to remain faithful, Cimmerian. The way is forward, Aberius. Forward, you worthless rogues!” he bellowed. He met Conan’s eyes again, then kicked his horse into a gallop.
For a time Conan sat his horse, watching the faces of the passing brigands as they came in view of the bloody, scaled corpse. Each recoiled, muttering or with an oath, as he rounded the spire and got a clear look at what lay there, but the greed in their eyes was undiminished. They rode on.
Muttering his own oath, Conan spurred after Karela and Hordo.
XVII
Haranides wearily raised his hand to signal a halt to the bedraggled column behind him. The site among the boulders at the face of the cliff had been a camp. An attempt had been made to hide the face, but a thin tendril of smoke still rose from ashes not covered well enough with dirt.
“Dismount the men, Aheranates,” the captain commanded, wincing as he did so himself. A hillman’s lance had left a gouge along his ribs that would be a long time in healing. “Take a party of ten and see if you can find which way they went without mucking up the tracks too badly.”
The slender lieutenant—Haranides could not help wondering how he had come through the fight without a scratch—touched his forehead stiffly in salute. “Sir.” He sawed at his reins to pull his horse around and began telling off the men.
Haranides sighed. He was not in good odor with the lieutenant, which meant he would not be in good odor with the lieutenant’s father, which meant … . Odor. He fingered the polished stone jar in his pouch. The perfume had seemed familiar to him, but it was not until he was beating aside a hillman’s curved sword that he remembered where he had smelled it before. And knew that the red-haired jade who had come to ‘warn’ him of the tribesmen was the Red Hawk.
The problem was that Aheranates, too, knew that he had had her in his grasp and let her slip away. Once the fighting was done and wounds were tended as well they could be in the field, Haranides had ordered them along the trail of the three.
“Sir?” Haranides looked up from his brown study to find Resaro knuckling his forehead. “The prisoner, sir?”
When the butchery was over, they had found a hillman who had merely been stunned by a blow to the head. Now Haranides had great need to know what had brought such a body of tribesmen together. They normally formed much smaller bands for their raiding. It was necessary to know if he might find himself facing other forces as large. He grimaced in disgust. “Put him to the question, Resaro.”
“Yes, sir. If the captain will pardon me for saying so, sir, that was a fine piece of work back-there. The handful we didn’t slice into dogmeat are likely still running.”
“See to the prisoner,” Haranides sighed. Resaro touched his forehead and went.
The man might think it fine work, the captain thought, and in the ordinary course of events it might have been considered so, but this was no ordinary patrol. Two hundred good cavalrymen had he led through the Gate to the Three Swords. After burying his dead, separating those too badly wounded to go on, and detaching enough healthy men to give the wounded a chance if they were attacked on their way out of the mountains, he had four score and three left. And he had neither the Red Hawk nor Tiridates’ trinkets in hand. In eyes of king and counselor it would be those lacks that damned him.
A choked scream rose from where Resaro had the hillman. “Mitra blast Tiridates and the Red Hawk both,” the captain growled under his breath. He walked into what had been the bandit camp, examining the ground between the looming boulders as much to keep his mind off the hillman’s moans as in hope of finding anything of importance.
Aheranates found him standing where the pavilion had been. “Would I could see what she saw from here,” Haranides said without looking at the slender man. “There is a wrong feel to this place. What happened here?”