“Revenge takes a cool head and a cold heart,” Conan replied. “Yours are both filled with heat. Remain, and you will die, and likely never see the man who killed her.”
Akeba twisted to face the Cimmerian, his black eyes coals in a furnace. “I want blood, barbar,” he said hoarsely. “If need be, I will begin with yours.”
“Will you leave Zorelle for the worms and the ravens, then?”
Akeba squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a long, hissing breath. Slowly he returned his blade to its sheath and, stooping, gathered his daughter in his arms. When he straightened his face and voice were without expression. “Let us be gone from this accursed place, Cimmerian.”
A score of saffron-robed men and women appeared out of the dark and fled past as if terror driven. None glanced at the two men, one holding a girl’s body in his arms.
Twice more as they headed for the wall they saw clusters of cult members, running mindlessly. Behind them the shouts and screams had become a solid wave of sound. Two fires now licked at the sky.
They ran into the bushes near where they had crossed the wall, and, like a covey of quail, cult members burst from hiding. Some fled shrieking; others tried to dash past the two men, almost trampling them.
Conan cuffed a pair of shaven-headed men aside and shouted, “Go Akeba! Take her on!” He knocked another man sprawling, seized a woman to toss her aside … and stopped. It was Yasbet.
“You!” she shouted.
Without pausing, Conan threw her over his shoulder and scrambled on, scattering the few who remained to try to hinder him. Yasbet’s feet fluttered in futile kicking, and her small fists pounded at his broad back.
“Let me down!” she screamed. “You have no right! Loose me!” They reached the wall; he let her down. She stared at him with the haughtiness of a dowager queen. “I will forget this if you go now. And for the kindness you did me earlier, I’ll not tell—” She broke off with a shriek as he bent to cut a strip from her robe with his dagger. In a trice her hands were bound behind her, and before she could more than begin another protest he added a gag and a hobble between her ankles.
Akeba had taken care of the grapnels. Two ropes dangled from the top of the wall. “Who is she?” he asked, jerking his head toward Yasbet.
“Another wench who should not be left to this cult,” Conan replied. “Climb up. I’ll attend to your daughter so you can draw her after you.”
The Turanian hesitated, then said, “The live girl first. There may not be time for both.” Without waiting for a reply he scrambled up one of the ropes.
Despite her struggles, Conan fastened the end of the rope about Yasbet beneath her arms. In moments her muffled squeals were rising into the air. Hurriedly he did the same to Zorelle’s body with the other rope. As he was pulled up, he waited, watching and listening for Hyrkanians, for cult members, for almost anything, considering the madness of the night. He listened and waited. And waited. Akeba had to climb down on the outside, he knew, and free one of the girls before he could return atop the wall and lower a rope to Conan, but it seemed to be taking a very long time.
The rope end slapped the wall in front of his face, and he could not stop a sigh of relief. At the top of the wall he found himself face to face with Akeba. “For a time there,” he said, “I almost thought you’d left me.”
“For a time,” Akeba replied flatly, “on the ground outside with my daughter, I almost did.”
Conan nodded, and said only, “Let us go while we can.”
Dropping to the ground they picked up the women—Conan Yasbet and Akeba Zorelle—and ran for Sharak and the horses. The cacophony of conflict still rose within the compound behind them.
VIII
The red glare of fire in the night glinted on Jhandar’s face as he turned from the window. The shouts of initiates carrying water to fight th
e blazes rang through the compound, but one building, at least, was too far gone in flame to be saved.
“Well?” he demanded.
Che Fan and Suitai exchanged glances before the first-named spoke. “They were Hyrkanians, Great Lord.”
The three men stood in the antechamber to Jhandar’s apartments. The austerity of decoration that the necromancer invoked for his garb was continued here. Low, unadorned couches dotted the floor that was, if marble, at least plain and bare of rugs, as the walls were bare of tapestries and hangings.
“I know they were Hyrkanians!” Jhandar snarled. “I could hear them shouting, ‘Death to Baalsham!’ Never did I think to hear that name again.”
“No, Great Lord.”
“How many were there?”
“Two score, Great Lord. Perhaps three.”
“Three score,” Jhandar whispered. “And how many yet live?”