The People of the Black Circle
left the dead horse and the dead man, which were found less than half an
hour later by the riders from the fortress, who recognized the man as a
Wazuli and drew their own conclusions accordingly.
Yasmina, snuggled warmly in her captor's arms, grew drowsy in spite of
herself. The motion of the horse, though it was uneven, uphill and down,
yet possessed a certain rhythm which combined with weariness and
emotional exhaustion to force sleep upon her. She had lost all sense of
time or direction. They moved in soft thick darkness, in which she
sometimes glimpsed vaguely gigantic walls sweeping up like black
ramparts, or great crags shouldering the stars; at times she sensed
echoing depths beneath them, or felt the wind of dizzy heights blowing
cold about her. Gradually these things faded into a dreamy unwakefulness
in which the clink of hoofs and the creak of saddles were like the
irrelevant sounds in a dream.
She was vaguely aware when the motion ceased and she was lifted down and
carried a few steps. Then she was laid down on something soft and
rustling, and something--a folded coat perhaps--was thrust under her
head, and the cloak in which she was wrapped was carefully tucked about
her. She heard Yar Afzal laugh.
'A rare prize, Conan; fit mate for a chief of the Afghulis.'
'Not for me,' came Conan's answering rumble. 'This wench will buy the
lives of my seven headmen, blast their souls.'
That was the last she heard as she sank into dreamless slumber.
She slept while armed men rode through the dark hills, and the fate of
kingdoms hung in the balance. Through the shadowy gorges and defiles
that night there rang the hoofs of galloping horses, and the starlight
glimmered on helmets and curved blades, until the ghoulish shapes that
haunt the crags stared into the darkness from ravine and boulder and
wondered what things were afoot.
A band of these sat gaunt horses in the black pitmouth of a gorge as the
hurrying hoofs swept past. Their leader, a well-built man in a helmet
and gilt-braided cloak, held up his hand warningly, until the riders had
sped on. Then he laughed softly.
'They must have lost the trail! Or else they have found that Conan has
already reached the Afghuli villages. It will take many riders to smoke
out that hive. There will be squadrons riding up the Zhaibar by dawn.'
'If there is fighting in the hills there will be looting,' muttered a
voice behind him, in the dialect of the Irakzai.
'There will be looting,' answered the man with the helmet. 'But first it
is our business to reach the valley of Gurashah and await the riders
that will be galloping southward from Secunderam before daylight.'
He lifted his reins and rode out of the defile, his men falling in
behind him--thirty ragged phantoms in the starlight.
5 The Black Stallion
The sun was well up when Yasmina awoke. She did not start and stare
blankly, wondering where she was. She awoke with full knowledge of all
that had occurred. Her supple limbs were stiff from her long ride, and
her firm flesh seemed to feel the contact of the muscular arm that had
borne her so far.
She was lying on a sheepskin covering a pallet of leaves on a
hard-beaten dirt floor. A folded sheepskin coat was under her head, and
she was wrapped in a ragged cloak. She was in a large room, the walls of
which were crudely but strongly built of uncut rocks, plastered with
sun-baked mud. Heavy beams supported a roof of the same kind, in which
showed a trap-door up to which led a ladder. There were no windows in
the thick walls, only loop-holes. There was one door, a sturdy bronze
affair that must have been looted from some Vendhyan border tower.
Opposite it was a wide opening in the wall, with no door, but several
strong wooden bars in place. Beyond them Yasmina saw a magnificent black
stallion munching a pile of dried grass. The building was fort,
dwelling-place and stable in one.
At the other end of the room a girl in the vest and baggy trousers of a
hill-woman squatted beside a small fire, cooking strips of meat on an
iron grid laid over blocks of stone. There was a sooty cleft in the wall
a few feet from the floor, and some of the smoke found its way out
there. The rest floated in blue wisps about the room.
The hill-girl glanced at Yasmina over her shoulder, displaying a bold,
handsome face, and then continued her cooking. Voices boomed outside;
then the door was kicked open, and Conan strode in. He looked more
enormous than ever with the morning sunlight behind him, and Yasmina
noted some details that had escaped her the night before. His garments
were clean and not ragged. The broad Bakhariot girdle that supported his
knife in its ornamented scabbard would have matched the robes of a
prince, and there was a glint of fine Turanian mail under his shirt.
'Your captive is awake, Conan,' said the Wazuli girl, and he grunted,
strode up to the fire and swept the strips of mutton off into a stone
dish.
The squatting girl laughed up at him, with some spicy jest, and he
grinned wolfishly, and hooking a toe under her haunches, tumbled her
sprawling onto the floor. She seemed to derive considerable amusement
from this bit of rough horse-play, but Conan paid no more heed to her.
Producing a great hunk of bread from somewhere, with a copper jug of
wine, he carried the lot to Yasmina, who had risen from her pallet and
was regarding him doubtfully.
'Rough fare for a Devi, girl, but our best,' he grunted. 'It will fill
your belly, at least.'
He set the platter on the floor, and she was suddenly aware of a
ravenous hunger. Making no comment, she seated herself cross-legged on
the floor, and taking the dish in her lap, she began to eat, using her
fingers, which were all she had in the way of table utensils. After all,
adaptability is one of the tests of true aristocracy. Conan stood
looking down at her, his thumbs hooked in his girdle. He never sat
cross-legged, after the Eastern fashion.
'Where am I?' she asked abruptly.
'In the hut of Yar Afzal, the chief of the Khurum Wazulis,' he answered.
'Afghulistan lies a good many miles farther on to the west. We'll hide
here awhile. The Kshatriyas are beating up the hills for you--several of
their squads have been cut up by the tribes already.'
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Keep you until Chunder Shan is willing to trade back my seven
cow-thieves,' he grunted. 'Women of the Wazulis are crushing ink out of
_shoki_ leaves, and after a while you can write a letter to the
governor.'
A touch of her old imperious wrath shook her, as she thought how
maddeningly her plans had gone awry, leaving her captive of the very man
she had plotted to get into her power. She flung down the dish, with the
remnants of her meal, and sprang to her feet, tense with anger.
'I will not write a letter! If you do not take me back, they will hang
your seven men, and a thousand more besides!'
The Wazuli girl laughed mockingly, Conan scowled, and then the door
opened and Yar Afzal came swaggering in. The Wazuli chief was as tall as
Conan, and of greater girth, but he looked fat and slow beside the hard
compactness of the Cimmerian. He plucked his red-stained beard and
stared meaningly at the Wazuli girl, and that wench rose and scurried
out without delay. Then Yar Afzal turned to his guest.
'The damnable people murmur, Conan,' quoth he. 'They wish me to murder
you and take the girl to hold for ransom. They say that anyone can tell
by her garments that she is a noble lady. They say why should the
Afghuli dogs profit by her, when it is the people who take the risk of
guarding her?'
'Lend me your horse,' said Conan. 'I'll take her and go.'
'Pish!' boomed Yar Afzal. 'Do you think I can't handle my own people?
I'll have them dancing in their shirts if they cross me! They don't love
you--or any other outlander--but you saved my life once, and I will not
forget. Come out, though, Conan; a scout has returned.'
Conan hitched at his girdle and followed the chief outside. They closed
the door after them, and Yasmina peeped through a loop-hole. She looked
out on a level space before the hut. At the farther end of that space
there was a cluster of mud and stone huts, and she saw naked children
playing among the boulders, and the slim erect women of the hills going
about their tasks.
Directly before the chief's hut a circle of hairy, ragged men squatted,
facing the door. Conan and Yar Afzal stood a few paces before the door,
and between them and the ring of warriors another man sat cross-legged.
This one was addressing his chief in the harsh accents of the Wazuli
which Yasmina could scarcely understand, though as part of her royal
education she had been taught the languages of Iranistan and the kindred
tongues of Ghulistan.
'I talked with a Dagozai who saw the riders last night,' said the scout.
'He was lurking near when they came to the spot where we ambushed the
lord Conan. He overheard their speech. Chunder Shan was with them. They
found the dead horse, and one of the men recognized it as Conan's. Then
they found the man Conan slew, and knew him for a Wazuli. It seemed to
them that Conan had been slain and the girl taken by the Wazuli; so they
turned aside from their purpose of following to Afghulistan. But they
did not know from which village the dead man was come, and we had left
no trail a Kshatriya could follow.
'So they rode to the nearest Wazuli village, which was the village of
Jugra, and burnt it and slew many of the people. But the men of Khojur
came upon them in darkness and slew some of them, and wounded the
governor. So the survivors retired down the Zhaibar in the darkness
before dawn, but they returned with reinforcements before sunrise, and
there has been skirmishing and fighting in the hills all morning. It is
said that a great army is being raised to sweep the hills about the
Zhaibar. The tribes are whetting their knives and laying ambushes in
every pass from here to Gurashah valley. Moreover, Kerim Shah has
returned to the hills.'
A grunt went around the circle, and Yasmina leaned closer to the
loop-hole at the name she had begun to mistrust.
'Where went he?' demanded Yar Afzal.
'The Dagozai did not know; with him were thirty Irakzai of the lower
villages. They rode into the hills and disappeared.'
'These Irakzai are jackals that follow a lion for crumbs,' growled Yar
Afzal. 'They have been lapping up the coins Kerim Shah scatters among
the border tribes to buy men like horses. I like him not, for all he is
our kinsman from Iranistan.'
'He's not even that,' said Conan. 'I know him of old. He's an Hyrkanian,
a spy of Yezdigerd's. If I catch him I'll hang his hide to a tamarisk.'
'But the Kshatriyas!' clamored the men in the semicircle. 'Are we to
squat on our haunches until they smoke us out? They will learn at last
in which Wazuli village the wench is held. We are not loved by the
Zhaibari; they will help the Kshatriyas hunt us out.'
'Let them come,' grunted Yar Afzal. 'We can hold the defiles against a
host.'
One of the men leaped up and shook his fist at Conan.
'Are we to take all the risks while he reaps the rewards?' he howled.
'Are we to fight his battles for him?'
With a stride Conan reached him and bent slightly to stare full into his
hairy face. The Cimmerian had not drawn his long knife, but his left
hand grasped the scabbard, jutting the hilt suggestively forward.
'I ask no man to fight my battles,' he said softly. 'Draw your blade if
you dare, you yapping dog!'
The Wazuli started back, snarling like a cat.
'Dare to touch me and here are fifty men to rend you apart!' he
screeched.
'What!' roared Yar Afzal, his face purpling with wrath. His whiskers
bristled, his belly swelled with his rage. 'Are you chief of Khurum? Do