Resaro’s dark eyes met his levelly. “The lieutenant was a brave man, sir. Hid the terrible wounds he took againsts the hillmen till it was too late for him, but I expect he saved us all. His father will be proud of him.” He fumbled a rag from beneath his tunic. “You’d best wipe your sword, sir. You must have dropped it and got some of the lieutenant’s blood on it.”
Haranides hesitated before accepting the cloth. “When we get back to Shadizar, come see me. I’ll need a good sergeant in my next posting. Now get the hillman on a horse, and we’ll see if we can find the Red Hawk.”
“Yes, sir. And thank you, sir.”
Resaro knuckled his forehead and disappeared, but Haranides stood looking at the lieutenant’s corpse. Whatever slight chance he might have had of surviving a return to Shadizar without the Red Hawk and the Tiridates’ trinkets had died with that foppish young idiot. With a muttered oath he went to join
his men.
XVIII
Conan’s keen eyes swept the ridges as the bandit column wound its way along the floor of the narrow, twisting valley. Hordo was by his side, muttering unintelligibly beneath his breath, while Karela maintained her usual place ahead of them all. Her emerald cape was thrown back, and she rode with one fist planted jauntily on her hip. With the need for tracking past, Aberius was back with the rest of the brigands, riding strung out behind.
“She acts as if this is a parade,” Hordo growled.
“It may be,” Conan replied. He eased his broadsword in its worn shagreen sheath. His gaze still traversed the ridgelines, never stopping in any one place for long. “We have watchers, at least.”
Hordo tensed, but he was too long in the trade of banditry to look around suddenly. He loosened his own blade. “Where are they?” he asked quietly.
“Both sides of the valley. I don’t know how many.”
“It won’t take many in here,” Hordo grumbled, eying the steep slopes. “I’ll warn her.”
“We both go,” Conan said quickly. “Slowly, as if we’re just riding forward to have a casual word.” The one-eyed man nodded, and they kicked their mounts to a faster walk.
Karela looked around in surprise and irritation as they rode up on either side of her. Her mouth opened angrily.
“We’re being followed,” Hordo said before she could speak. “Along the ridges.”
She glanced at Conan, then turned back to Hordo. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” Conan said. Her back stiffened, and she faced forward again without speaking. He went on. “Half a glass past, I saw movement on the east ridge. I thought it was an animal, but now there are two to the east and three to the west, and they move together.”
“Hannuman’s stones,” she muttered, still not looking at him. They rounded a bend in the trail, and whatever else she had to say was lost in a gasp.
In the center of the trail, only twenty paces from them, stood eight reptilian warriors like those they had killed, in chain mail and ridged helmets, bearing on their shoulders the four crossed poles of a bier. Atop the bier was a tall throne of intricately carved ivory, in which sat a man robed in scarlet. A white streak serpentined through his black hair. He held a long golden staff across his chest and bowed slightly without rising.
“I am called Amanar.” His voice rang loudly against the precipitous slopes. “I welcome you, wayfarers.”
Conan found he had his broadsword in hand, and noted from the corner of his eye that Karela and Hordo had their blades out as well. Amanar wore a smile, though it did not reach his strange, red-flecked black eyes, but the Cimmerian sensed evil there, evil beyond the scaled creatures that served him. There was nothing rational in his perception. It was a primitive intuition that came from bone and blood, and he trusted it all the more for that.
“Be not affrighted,” Amanar intoned.
The sounds of sliding rock and gravel jerked Conan’s gaze away from the man on the bier — he was shocked to realize the other had held his eyes thus—to find the abrupt rises to either side of the trail swarming with hundreds of the snake-men, many with javelins or crossbows. There were shouts from the bandits behind as they realized they were as good as surrounded.
“Rats in a barrel,” Hordo growled. “Take a pull on the hellhorn for me, Conan, if you get to Gehanna first.”
“What mean you by this?” Karela demanded loudly. “If you think to buy our lives cheaply —”
“You do not understand,” the man on the bier interrupted smoothly. Conan thought he detected amusement. “The S’tarra are my servants. I greet what few strangers pass this way as I greet you, but betimes strangers are unscrupulous folk who think to use violence against me for all my friendliness. I find it best to remove all temptation by having my retainers near in sufficient numbers. Not that I suspect you, of course.”
Conan was certain of the sarcasm in that last. “What kind of man is served by minions such as these scaled ones?” He suspected the answer, whether he got it or not, was that he had encountered another magician.
Instead of a reply from Amanar, Karela snapped, “You forget who commands here, Cimmerian!” Her green-eyed glare transferred to the man in the scarlet robes, lessening not a whit in intensity. “Still, Amanar, it is not a question out of place. Be you a sorcerer to be served by these monsters?”
Gasps rose from the bandits, and their mutterings increased. Conan winced, for he knew how dangerous it was to confront a mage too openly. But Amanar smiled as he might at rambunctious children.
“The S’tarra are not monsters,” Amanar said. “They are the last remnants of a race that lived before man, and gentle of nature despite their outward appearances. Before I came the hillmen hunted them like animals, slaughtered them. No, you have naught to fear from them, nor from me, though some bands which do not serve me sometimes fail to distinguish between the hillmen who hate them and others of humankind.”