Red Nails
this direction. Only the brother of the man you killed happened to
strike your trail."
"And now what do you intend doing?" she demanded.
"Turn west," he answered. "I've been this far south, but not this far
east. Many days' traveling to the west will bring us to the open
savannas, where the black tribes graze their cattle. I have friends
among them. We'll get to the coast and find a ship. I'm sick of the
jungle."
"Then be on your way," she advised. "I have other plans."
"Don't be a fool!" He showed irritation for the first time. "You can't
keep on wandering through this forest."
"I can if I choose."
"But what do you intend doing?"
"That's none of your affair," she snapped.
"Yes, it is," he answered calmly. "Do you think I've followed you this
far, to turn around and ride off empty-handed? Be sensible, wench. I'm
not going to harm you."
He stepped toward her, and she sprang back, whipping out her sword.
"Keep back, you barbarian dog! I'll spit you like a roast pig!"
He halted, reluctantly, and demanded: "Do you want me to take that toy
away from you and spank you with it?"
"Words! Nothing but words!" she mocked, lights like the gleam of the sun
on blue water dancing in her reckless eyes.
He knew it was the truth. No living man could disarm Valeria of the
Brotherhood with his bare hands. He scowled, his sensations a tangle of
conflicting emotions. He was angry, yet he was amused and filled with
admiration for her spirit. He burned with eagerness to seize that
splendid figure and crush it in his iron arms, yet he greatly desired
not to hurt the girl. He was torn between a desire to shake her soundly,
and a desire to caress her. He knew if he came any nearer her sword
would be sheathed in his heart. He had seen Valeria kill too many men in
border forays and tavern brawls to have any illusions about her. He knew
she was as quick and ferocious as a tigress. He could draw his
broadsword and disarm her, beat the blade out of her hand, but the
thought of drawing a sword on a woman, even without intent of injury,
was extremely repugnant to him.
"Blast your soul, you hussy!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "I'm going
to take off your----"
He started toward her, his angry passion making him reckless, and she
poised herself for a deadly thrust. Then came a startling interruption
to a scene at once ludicrous and perilous.
"_What's that?_"
It was Valeria who exclaimed, but they both started violently, and Conan
wheeled like a cat, his great sword flashing into his hand. Back in the
forest had burst forth an appalling medley of screams--the screams of
horses in terror and agony. Mingled with their screams there came the
snap of splintering bones.
"Lions are slaying the horses!" cried Valeria.
"Lions, nothing!" snorted Conan, his eyes blazing. "Did you hear a lion
roar? Neither did I! Listen at those bones snap--not even a lion could
make that much noise killing a horse."
* * * * *
He hurried down the natural ramp and she followed, their personal feud
forgotten in the adventurers' instinct to unite against common peril.
The screams had ceased when they worked their way downward through the
green veil of leaves that brushed the rock.
"I found your horse tied by the pool back there," he muttered, treading
so noiselessly that she no longer wondered how he had surprised her on
the crag. "I tied mine beside it and followed the tracks of your boots.
Watch, now!"
They had emerged from the belt of leaves, and stared down into the lower
reaches of the forest. Above them the green roof spread its dusky
canopy. Below them the sunlight filtered in just enough to make a
jade-tinted twilight. The giant trunks of trees less than a hundred
yards away looked dim and ghostly.
"The horses should be beyond that thicket, over there," whispered Conan,
and his voice might have been a breeze moving through the branches.
"Listen!"
Valeria had already heard, and a chill crept through her veins; so she
unconsciously laid her white hand on her companion's muscular brown arm.
From beyond the thicket came the noisy crunching of bones and the loud
rending of flesh, together with the grinding, slobbering sounds of a
horrible feast.
"Lions wouldn't make that noise," whispered Conan. "Something's eating
our horses, but it's not a lion--Crom!"
The noise stopped suddenly, and Conan swore softly. A suddenly risen
breeze was blowing from them directly toward the spot where the unseen
slayer was hidden.
"Here it comes!" muttered Conan, half lifting his sword.
The thicket was violently agitated, and Valeria clutched Conan's arm
hard. Ignorant of jungle-lore, she yet knew that no animal she had ever
seen could have shaken the tall brush like that.
"It must be as big as an elephant," muttered Conan, echoing her thought.
"What the devil----" His voice trailed away in stunned silence.
Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning
jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth
wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a
thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans
clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and
dripped from the huge mouth.
The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a
long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after
it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan,
a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish
belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated back-bone rose higher
than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that
of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.
"Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him.
"I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind-legs and reach
us----"
With a snapping and rending of bushes and saplings the monster came
hurtling through the thickets, and they fled up the rock before him like
leaves blown before a wind. As Valeria plunged into the leafy screen a
backward glance showed her the titan rearing up fearsomely on his
massive hind-legs, even as Conan had predicted. The sight sent panic
racing through her. As he reared, the beast seemed more gigantic than
ever; his snouted head towered among the trees. Then Conan's iron hand
closed on her wrist and she was jerked headlong into the blinding welter
of the leaves, and out again into the hot sunshine above, just as the
monster fell forward with his front feet on the crag with an impact that
made the rock vibrate.
* * * * *
Behind the fugitives the huge head crashed through the twigs, and they
looked down for a horrifying instant at the nightmare visage framed
among the green leaves, eyes flaming, jaws gaping. Then the giant tusks
clashed together futilely, and after that the head was withdrawn,
vanishing from their sight as if it had sunk in a pool.
Peering down through broken branches that scraped the rock, they saw it
squatting on its haunches at the foot of the crag, staring unblinkingly
up at them.
Valeria shuddered.
"How long do you suppose he'll crouch there?"
Conan kicked the skull on the leaf-strewn shelf.
"That fellow must have climbed up here to escape him, or one like him.
He must have died of starvation. There are no bones broken. That thing
must be a dragon, such as the black people speak of in their legends. If
so, it won't leave here until we're both dead."
Valeria looked at him blankly, her resentment forgotten. She fought down
a surging of panic. She had proved her reckless courage a thousand times
in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning
war-ships, in the storming of walled cities, and on the trampled sandy
beaches where the desperate men of the Red Brotherhood bathed their
knives in one another's blood in their fights for leadership. But the
prospect now confronting her congealed her blood. A cutlas-stroke in the
heat of battle was nothing; but to sit idle and helpless on a bare rock
until she perished of starvation, besieged by a monstrous survival of an
elder age--the thought sent panic throbbing through her brain.
"He must leave to eat and drink," she said helplessly.
"He won't have to go far to do either," Conan pointed out. "He's just
gorged on horse-meat, and like a real snake, he can go for a long time
without eating or drinking again. But he doesn't sleep after eating,
like a real snake, it seems. Anyway, he can't climb this crag."
Conan spoke imperturbably. He was a barbarian, and the terrible patience
of the wilderness and its children was as much a part of him as his
lusts and rages. He could endure a situation like this with a coolness
impossible to a civilized person.
"Can't we get into the trees and get away, traveling like apes through
the branches?" she asked desperately.
He shook his head. "I thought of that. The branches that touch the crag
down there are too light. They'd break with our weight. Besides, I have
an idea that devil could tear up any tree around here by its roots."
"Well, are we going to sit here on our rumps until we starve, like
that?" she cried furiously, kicking the skull clattering across the
ledge. "I won't do it! I'll go down there and cut his damned head
off----"
Conan had seated himself on a rocky projection at the foot of the spire.
He looked up with a glint of admiration at her blazing eyes and tense,
quivering figure, but, realizing that she was in just the mood for any
madness, he let none of his admiration sound in his voice.
"Sit down," he grunted, catching her by her wrist and pulling her down
on his knee. She was too surprised to resist as he took her sword from
her hand and shoved it back in its sheath. "Sit still and calm down.
You'd only break your steel on his scales. He'd gobble you up at one
gulp, or smash you like an egg with that spiked tail of his. We'll get
out of this jam some way, but we shan't do it by getting chewed up and
swallowed."
She made no reply, nor did she seek to repulse his arm from about her
waist. She was frightened, and the sensation was new to Valeria of the
Red Brotherhood. So she sat on her companion's--or captor's--knee with a
docility that would have amazed Zarallo, who had anathematized her as a
she-devil out of hell's seraglio.
Conan played idly with her curly yellow locks, seemingly intent only
upon his conquest. Neither the skeleton at his feet nor the monster
crouching below disturbed his mind or dulled the edge of his interest.
The girl's restless eyes, roving the leaves below them, discovered
splashes of color among the green. It was fruit, large, darkly crimson
globes suspended from the boughs of a tree whose broad leaves were a
peculiarly rich and vivid green. She became aware of both thirst and
hunger, though thirst had not assailed her until she knew she could not
descend from the crag to find food and water.
"We need not starve," she said. "There is fruit we can reach."
Conan glanced where she pointed.
"If we ate that we wouldn't need the bite of a dragon," he grunted.
"That's what the black people of Kush call the Apples of Derketa.
Derketa is the Queen of the Dead. Drink a little of the juice, or spill
it on your flesh, and you'd be dead before you could tumble to the foot
of this crag."
"Oh!"
She lapsed into dismayed silence. There seemed no way out of their
predicament, she reflected gloomily. She saw no way of escape, and Conan
seemed to be concerned only with her supple waist and curly tresses. If
he was trying to formulate a plan of escape, he did not show it.
"If you'll take your hands off me long enough to climb up on that peak,"