The People of the Black Circle
nowhere else for them to go, and they went reluctantly, in a shower of
arrows and a whirl of swords. The helmeted riders harried them, but did
not press in too rashly. They knew the desperate fury of the hill
tribes, and they knew too that they had their prey in a trap from which
there was no escape. They had recognized the hill-men as Afghulis, and
they wished to hem them in and force a surrender. They needed hostages
for the purpose they had in mind.
Their emir was a man of decision and initiative. When he reached the
Gurashah valley, and found neither guides nor emissary waiting for him,
he pushed on, trusting to his own knowledge of the country. All the way
from Secunderam there had been fighting, and tribesmen were licking
their wounds in many a crag-perched village. He knew there was a good
chance that neither he nor any of his helmeted spearmen would ever ride
through the gates of Secunderam again, for the tribes would all be up
behind him now, but he was determined to carry out his orders--which
were to take Yasmina Devi from the Afghulis at all costs, and to bring
her captive to Secunderam, or if confronted by impossibility, to strike
off her head before he himself died.
Of all this, of course, the watchers on the ridge were not aware. But
Conan fidgeted with nervousness.
'Why the devil did they get themselves trapped?' he demanded of the
universe at large. 'I know what they're doing in these parts--they were
hunting me, the dogs! Poking into every valley--and found themselves
penned in before they knew it. The poor fools! They're making a stand in
the gorge, but they can't hold out for long. When the Turanians have
pushed them back into the bowl, they'll slaughter them at their
leisure.'
The din welling up from below increased in volume and intensity. In the
strait of the narrow gut, the Afghulis, fighting desperately, were for
the time holding their own against the mailed riders, who could not
throw their whole weight against them.
Conan scowled darkly, moved restlessly, fingering his hilt, and finally
spoke bluntly: 'Devi, I must go down to them. I'll find a place for you
to hide until I come back to you. You spoke of your kingdom--well, I
don't pretend to look on those hairy devils as my children, but after
all, such as they are, they're my henchmen. A chief should never desert
his followers, even if they desert him first. They think they were right
in kicking me out--hell, I won't be cast off! I'm still chief of the
Afghulis, and I'll prove it! I can climb down on foot into the gorge.'
'But what of me?' she queried. 'You carried me away forcibly from _my_
people; now will you leave me to die in the hills alone while you go
down and sacrifice yourself uselessly?'
His veins swelled with the conflict of his emotions.
'That's right,' he muttered helplessly. 'Crom knows what I _can_ do.'
She turned her head slightly, a curious expression dawning on her
beautiful face. Then:
'Listen!' she cried. 'Listen!'
A distant fanfare of trumpets was borne faintly to their ears. They
stared into the deep valley on the left, and caught a glint of steel on
the farther side. A long line of lances and polished helmets moved along
the vale, gleaming in the sunlight.
'The riders of Vendhya!' she cried exultingly.
'There are thousands of them!' muttered Conan. 'It has been long since a
Kshatriya host has ridden this far into the hills.'
'They are searching for me!' she exclaimed. 'Give me your horse! I will
ride to my warriors! The ridge is not so precipitous on the left, and I
can reach the valley floor. I will lead my horsemen into the valley at
the upper end and fall upon the Turanians! We will crush them in the
vise! Quick, Conan! Will you sacrifice your men to your own desire?'
The burning hunger of the steppes and the wintry forests glared out of
his eyes, but he shook his head and swung off the stallion, placing the
reins in her hands.
'You win!' he grunted. 'Ride like the devil!'
She wheeled away down the left-hand slope and he ran swiftly along the
ridge until he reached the long ragged cleft that was the defile in
which the fight raged. Down the rugged wall he scrambled like an ape,
clinging to projections and crevices, to fall at last, feet first, into
the mêlée that raged in the mouth of the gorge. Blades were whickering
and clanging about him, horses rearing and stamping, helmet plumes
nodding among turbans that were stained crimson.
As he hit, he yelled like a wolf, caught a gold-worked rein, and dodging
the sweep of a scimitar, drove his long knife upward through the rider's
vitals. In another instant he was in the saddle, yelling ferocious
orders to the Afghulis. They stared at him stupidly for an instant; then
as they saw the havoc his steel was wreaking among their enemies, they
fell to their work again, accepting him without comment. In that inferno
of licking blades and spurting blood there was no time to ask or answer
questions.
The riders in their spired helmets and gold-worked hauberks swarmed
about the gorge mouth, thrusting and slashing, and the narrow defile was
packed and jammed with horses and men, the warriors crushed breast to
breast, stabbing with shortened blades, slashing murderously when there
was an instant's room to swing a sword. When a man went down he did not
get up from beneath the stamping, swirling hoofs. Weight and sheer
strength counted heavily there, and the chief of the Afghulis did the
work of ten. At such times accustomed habits sway men strongly, and the
warriors, who were used to seeing Conan in their vanguard, were
heartened mightily, despite their distrust of him.
But superior numbers counted too. The pressure of the men behind forced
the horsemen of Turan deeper and deeper into the gorge, in the teeth of
the flickering tulwars. Foot by foot the Afghulis were shoved back,
leaving the defile-floor carpeted with dead, on which the riders
trampled. As he hacked and smote like a man possessed, Conan had time
for some chilling doubts--would Yasmina keep her word? She had but to
join her warriors, turn southward and leave him and his band to perish.
But at last, after what seemed centuries of desperate battling, in the
valley outside there rose another sound above the clash of steel and
yells of slaughter. And then with a burst of trumpets that shook the
walls, and rushing thunder of hoofs, five thousand riders of Vendhya
smote the hosts of Secunderam.
That stroke split the Turanian squadrons asunder, shattered, tore and
rent them and scattered their fragments all over the valley. In an
instant the surge had ebbed back out of the gorge; there was a chaotic,
confused swirl of fighting, horsemen wheeling and smiting singly and in
clusters, and then the emir went down with a Kshatriya lance through his
breast, and the riders in their spired helmets turned their horses down
the valley, spurring like mad and seeking to slash a way through the
swarms which had come upon them from the rear. As they scattered in
flight, the conquerors scattered in pursuit, and all across the valley
floor, and up on the slopes near the mouth and over the crests streamed
the fugitives and the pursuers. The Afghulis, those left to ride, rushed
out of the gorge and joined in the harrying of their foes, accepting the
unexpected alliance as unquestioningly as they had accepted the return
of their repudiated chief.
The sun was sinking toward the distant crags when Conan, his garments
hacked to tatters and the mail under them reeking and clotted with
blood, his knife dripping and crusted to the hilt, strode over the
corpses to where Yasmina Devi sat her horse among her nobles on the
crest of the ridge, near a lofty precipice.
'You kept your word, Devi!' he roared. 'By Crom, though, I had some bad
seconds down in that gorge--_look out!_'
Down from the sky swooped a vulture of tremendous size with a thunder of
wings that knocked men sprawling from their horses.
The scimitar-like beak was slashing for the Devi's soft neck, but Conan
was quicker--a short run, a tigerish leap, the savage thrust of a
dripping knife, and the vulture voiced a horribly human cry, pitched
sideways and went tumbling down the cliffs to the rocks and river a
thousand feet below. As it dropped, its black wings thrashing the air,
it took on the semblance, not of a bird, but of a black-robed human body
that fell, arms in wide black sleeves thrown abroad.
Conan turned to Yasmina, his red knife still in his hand, his blue eyes
smoldering, blood oozing from wounds on his thickly muscled arms and
thighs.
'You are the Devi again,' he said, grinning fiercely at the gold-clasped
gossamer robe she had donned over her hill-girl attire, and awed not at
all by the imposing array of chivalry about him. 'I have you to thank
for the lives of some three hundred and fifty of my rogues, who are at
least convinced that I didn't betray them. You have put my hands on the
reins of conquest again.'
'I still owe you my ransom,' she said, her dark eyes glowing as they
swept over him. 'Ten thousand pieces of gold I will pay you--'
He made a savage, impatient gesture, shook the blood from his knife and
thrust it back in its scabbard, wiping his hands on his mail.
'I will collect your ransom in my own way, at my own time,' he said. 'I
will collect it in your palace at Ayodhya, and I will come with fifty
thousand men to see that the scales are fair.'
She laughed, gathering her reins into her hands. 'And I will meet you on
the shores of the Jhumda with a hundred thousand!'
His eyes shone with fierce appreciation and admiration, and stepping
back, he lifted his hand with a gesture that was like the assumption of
kingship, indicating that her road was clear before her.