Part 5 (1/2)

'Who is this blackher spine

'A dehout eternity!' he whispered He spread his long thin fingers on the table before him, and stared at her with holloeirdly luminous eyes that seeh her and far beyond to some dim doom

'Inmore to himself than to her 'A powerful man who stood between ht aid froician, who, at ulfs of existence and clothed it in the forreat and wealthy and none could stand before ht to cheat my fiend of the price a

'By his griician tricked the soulless waif of darkness and bound him in hell where he howled in vain - I supposed for eternity But because the sorcerer had given the fiend the form of a man, he could never break the link that bound it to the material world; never coained access to this planet

'A year ago in Kordava word caician, now an ancient ers on his throat Then I knew that the black one had escaped froician had bound hiht I saw his de at me from the shadows in my castle hall-- 'It was not his ue me - his spirit which could not follow me over the windy waters Before he could reach Kordava in the flesh, I sailed to put broad seas between me and him He has his limitations To follow me across the seas he must remain in his man-like body of flesh But that flesh is not huician, having raised him up, was powerless to slay him - such are the limits set upon the powers of sorcerers

'But the black one is too crafty to be trapped or slain When he hides hih the night, uardsmen with sleep He can raise storms and coht I hoped to drownwastes - but he has tracked riazed beyond the tapestried walls to far, invisible horizons

'I'll trick hiht - daill find ain I will cast an ocean between eance'

'hell's fire!'

Conan stopped short, glaring upward Behind him the seamen halted - two compact clumps of them, bows in their hands, and suspicion in their attitude They were following an old path h they had progressed only soer visible

'What is it?' de for?'

'Are you blind? Look there!'

Frorinned down at them - a dark painted face, framed in thick black hair, in which a toucan feather drooped over the left ear

'I took that head down and hid it in the bushes,' growled Conan, scanning the woods about them narrowly 'What fool could have stuck it back up there? It looks as if so the Picts down on the settlelanced at each other darkly, a new ele caldron

Conan climbed the tree, secured the head and carried it into the bushes, where he tossed it into a stream and saw it sink

'The Picts whose tracks are about this tree weren't Toucans,' he growled, returning through the thicket 'I've sailed these coasts enough to know so about the sea-land tribes If I read the prints of theira ith the Toucans If they're at peace, they'll head straight for the Toucan village, and there'll be hell to pay I don't kno far away that village is - but as soon as they learn of thiswolves That's the worst insult possible to a Pict - kill a man not in war-paint and stick his head up in a tree for the vultures to eat da this coast But that's always the hen civilized men come into the wilderness They're all crazy as hell Come on'

Men loosened blades in their scabbards and shafts in their quivers as they strode deeper into the forest Men of the sea, accustorey water, they were ill at ease with the greenthem in The path wound and twisted until most of them quickly lost their sense of direction, and did not even knohich direction the beach lay

Conan was uneasy for another reason He kept scanning the trail, and finally grunted: 'So here recently - not more than an hour ahead of us Somebody in boots, with no woods-craft Was he the fool who found that Pict's head and stuck it back up in that tree? No, it couldn't have been him I didn't find his tracks under the tree But as it? I didn't find any tracks there, except those of the Picts I'd seen already And who's this fellow hurrying ahead of us? Did either of you bastards send a man ahead of us for any reason?'

Both Stro at each other with ns Conan pointed out; the faint prints which he saw on the grassless, hard-beaten trail were invisible to their untrained eyes

Conan quickened his pace and they hurried after hi fire of distrust Presently the path veered northward, and Conan left it, and began threading his way through the dense trees in a southeasterly direction Stroe in their plans Within a few hundred feet from the trail both were hopelessly lost, and convinced of their inability to find their way back to the path They were shaken by the fear that, after all, the Ci therew as they advanced, and had aled fro that jutted up fro out of the woods fro a cluster of boulders and wound up the crag on a ladder of stony shelves to a flat ledge near the suure in his piratical finery 'That trail is the one I followed, running frole-Picts,' he said 'It leads up to a cave behind that ledge In that cave are the bodies of Tranicos and his captains, and the treasure he plundered froo up after it: if you kill me here, you'll never find your way back to the trail we followed fro men You're helpless in the deep woods Of course the beach lies due west, but if you have to led woods, burdened with the plunder, it'll take you not hours, but days And I don't think these woods will be very safe for white hed at the ghastly, nition of their intentions regarding hi in the mind of each: let the barbarian secure the loot for them, and lead them back to the beach-trail before they killed him

'All of you stay here except Stroh to pack the treasure down frorinned mirthlessly

'Go up there alone with you and Zarono? Do you take nated his boatswain, a brawny, hard-faced giant, naked to his broad leather belt, with gold hoops in his ears, and a crimson scarf knotted about his head

'And rowled Zarono He beckoned to a lean sea-thief with a face like a parchment-covered skull, who carried a two-handed scied his shoulders 'Very well Follow me'

They were close on his heels as he strode up the winding path and e They crowded hih the cleft in the wall behind it, and their breath sucked greedily between their teeth as he called their attention to the iron-bound chests on either side of the short tunnel-like cavern

'A rich cargo there,' he said carelessly 'Silks, laces, garments, ornaments, weapons - the loot of the southern seas But the real treasure lies beyond that door'

The massive door stood partly open Conan frowned He re that door before he left the cavern But he said nothing of the er coh

They looked into a wide cavern, lit by a strange blue glow that glireat ebon table stood in the h back and broad araran baron, sat a giant figure, fabulous and fantastic - there sat bloody Tranicos, his great head sunk on his bosooblet in which wine still sparkled; Tranicos, in his lacquered hat, his gilt-embroidered coat with jeweled buttons that winked in the blue flaold-worked baldric that upheld a jewel-hiked sword in a golden sheath

And ranging the board, each with his chin resting on his lace-bedecked crest, sat the eleven captains The blue fire played weirdly on theiant admiral, as it flowed frolints of frozen fire froems which shone before the place of Tranicos - the plunder of Khereater than the value of all the rest of the knoels in the world put together!

The faces of Zarono and Strolow; over their shoulders their aped stupidly

'Go in and take the aside, and Zarono and Stro one another in their haste Their folloere treading on their heels Zarono kicked the door wide open - and halted with one foot on the threshold at the sight of a figure on the floor, previously hidden from view by the partly-closed door It was a man, prone and contorted, head drawn back between his shoulders, white face twisted in a grin of ers

'Galbro!' ejaculated Zarono 'Dead! What--' With sudden suspicion he thrust his head over the threshold, into the bluish ly: 'There is death in the sainst the four-but not headlong into theat the sight of the dead man and the realization of the trap, and his violent push, while it threw them off their feet, yet failed of the result he desired Strom and Zarono sprawled half over the threshold on their knees, the boatswain tuainst the wall Before Conan could follow up his ruthless intention of kicking the fallen ainst them until the poisonous ainst the frothing onslaught of the executioner as the first to regain his balance and his wits

The buccaneer missed a tremendous sith his headsed against the stone wall, spattering blue sparks The next instant his skull-faced head rolled on the cavern-floor under the bite of Conan's cutlass

In the split seconds this swift action consuained his feet and fell on the Ci bloith a cutlass that would have overwhel of steel that was deafening in the narrow cavern The two captains rolled back across the threshold, gagging and gasping, purple in the face and too near strangled to shout, and Conan redoubled his efforts, in an endeavor to dispose of his antagonist and cut down his rivals before they could recover from the effects of the poison The boatswain dripped blood at each step, as he was driven back before the ferocious onslaught, and he began desperately to bellow for his co stroke the two chiefs, gasping butfor their men

The Cie He felt hih each was a famed swordsman, but he did not wish to be trapped by the crehich would co up the path at the sound of the battle

These were not co with as much celerity as he expected, however They were bewildered at the sounds andfrom the cavern above them but no man dared start up the path for fear of a sword in the back Each band faced the other tensely, grasping their weapons but incapable of decision, and when they saw the Cie, they still hesitated While they stood with their arrows nocked he ran up the ladder of handholds niched in the rock near the cleft, and threw hiht

The captains stor their swords, and theirtheir leaders were not at sword-strokes, ceased !' screamed Zarono 'You planned to poison us! Traitor!'

Conan mocked them from above

'Well, what did you expect? You tere planning to cut ot the plunder for you If it hadn't been for that fool Galbro I'd have trapped the four of you, and explained to your men how you rushed in heedless to your doom'

'And with us both dead, you'd have taken my shi+p, and all the loot too!' frothed Stro to get back on the Main for ood opportunity!

'It was Galbro's foot-prints I saw on the trail I wonder how the fool learned of this cave, or how he expected to lug away the loot by hiht of his body we'd have walked into that death-trap,' muttered Zarono, his swarthy face still ashy 'That blue sto do?' their unseen tormentor yelled sardonically

'What are we to do?' Zarono asked Strom 'The treasure-cavern is filled with that poisonous h for some reason it does not flow across the threshold'

'You can't get the treasure,' Conan assured thele you It nearly got me, when I stepped in there Listen, and I'll tell you a tale the Picts tell in their huts when the fires burn low! Once, long ago, twelve strange old and and jewels; but a Pictish shaic and the earth shook, and sled them where they sat at wine The smoke, which was the smoke of hell's fire, was confined within the cavern by the ic of the wizard The tale was told from tribe to tribe, and all the clans shun the accursed spot