"No, wait, there is something to be said for his idea." Smoothly Sigmarck took up the thread of the argument. "After all, our elite companies can certainly hold formation against an unruly mob, and the offensive will give us commanders a degree of control we would otherwise lack. If we can ready the men and horses with a minimum of noise. . . ." He muttered orders to one of his officers, who nodded an acknowledgment and turned away.

"My salute to you, young warlord!" Ottislav chimed in. "Your plan embodies the best Nemedian virtues: ferocity and resourcefulness! I too will back you!"

And so the nighted camp stirred with furtive activity, firefly wisps of tapers the only light. Conan saw to the hitching of his chariot and the most essential of the supply carts. By the time he was finished, a faint, half-illusory radiance was mounting in the eastern sky.

The silence intensified then, as troopers knelt in readiness about the camp. Token forces were a.s.signed to hold the north, west and south perimeters, but only until a breakthrough was signaled to eastward; then they would move forth, following the wagons through the gap made in the encirclement.

False dawn faded, and the light seemed to take forever to return. The waiting would have been easier, the men thought, if only they had some idea of what lurked beyond the low barricade of shrubs and outward-pointed snags.

Conan stood vigilant in his chariot as the dimness spread and then deepened into a faint, muddy smear low in the sky to eastward. Evadne waited beside him, quietly at work in the ghost light, bending and stringing her long, slim bow and lashing extra quivers of arrows to the chariot rail. The driver they had chosen stood by the horses, murmuring softly to quiet them.

Finally sunrays pried through the dense, stale layers of sky at the earth's rim, Smoke-tinged, the light blossomed brighter and more luridly by the moment, brushing orange highlights across the undersides of hanging clouds. Conan saw reflections playing redly on the metal curves of the horses' harness; he heard low grunts and sc.r.a.pings ahead, as troopers toiled to drag aside movable sections of barricade. He raised his arm high, and his driver swung aboard, taking up the reins; then he lowered his hand, and barked an order. Trumpets shattered the stillness at either side as the chariot leaped forward.

CHAPTER 15.

The Thousand-Tongued Serpent

At first they saw nothing in the dimness but brush-mottled meadowland spreading before the paling smudge of sunrise. Then the riders felt the m.u.f.fled jolting of hooves and chariot-wheels laboring over low, unseen obstacles. At last, arising from the knee-high gra.s.s all around, a few dim shapes appeared, growing to a swarm and then a host as the camp's besiegers broke from concealment on all sides.

In a moment they loomed so thick before the straining chariot-team that they slowed the battle-car's progress. The horses whinnied with rage and fear as they plunged to obey the charioteer's lashing whip. Conan struck out fiercely with a javelin clutched in either hand, stabbing ahead and sideward at the half-seen, converging figures; the attackers pressed so near that there was no need to cast his weapons. Beside him he heard Evadne's bow tw.a.n.ging steadily, plied with desperate swiftness.

From the rear, the thunder of hoofbeats continued as the cavalry erupted out of camp. Screams, curses and the clang of weapons told how quickly it was engaged. Yet those hors.e.m.e.n who galloped in the body-littered wake of the chariot soon overtook it, veering left and right to broaden the attack front.

Conan, straining and striking from his fighting platform, listened behind him with a worried ear. Finally, on hearing a distant, spreading clamor born of a hundred throats, he smiled in grim satisfaction. The infantry were being ordered forward; at last the battle was fully joined. Plying javelins with remorseless vigor, piercing each dim target as it flashed by, he searched ahead in the dawning light for sign of the enemy commanders.

He saw none, but what he did see almost made him, regret looking too closely. Now that the sun's full intensity broke over the plain, spearing it with violet rays and seeming to kindle the easterly gra.s.ses into a band of smoldering orange, it revealed more starkly the nature of the foes he had been striking at. Looming against the sunrise, tall-shadowed in the low, crimson light, these were beings who had long since forsaken their humanity.

He had expected to face gaunt disciples of Set, mad-eyed and tongue-slit like the pitiful youth he had seen in Ulf s tower. But here were veritable demons: hissing, grimacing things leaping at him out of the dawn, knowing no regard for their own lives or those of their comrades. Their picks and scythes were terrible enough, flashing high against the red sky to strike dartingly at men and horses. But many of the attackers also bore snakes as weapons, or wore them as adornment, looped around their necks, writhing in their filthy garments or plaited into their lank, straggling hair.

To compound the menace, the lunges and grimaces of the cultists had a supernaturally fluid, reptilian quality; and Conan swore that some of the wrathful eyes flashing past him bore vertical, slitted pupils, like those of serpents.

But the greatest horror came as one of the reckless attackers transfixed himself on the point of Conan's spear. At the fatal instant, the man's mouth opened in a rage of agony; but instead of a tongue, there darted forth from his lips a green-headed asp, a living snake rooted in the wretch's mouth, striking vainly and repeatedly with its tiny fangs at the shaft of the javelin that transfixed its writhing, gasping host. Conan quickly relinquished the spear and its horrid burden, groping behind him with an unsteady hand for a fresh weapon as more attackers loomed beyond the fallen thing.

Gazing around the wheeling, converging horde of enemies, he glimpsed a new wave of serpent-tongued fighters, and he could tell from Evadne's gasps of consternation that the lurid daylight was revealing hideous sights to her as well. The effect was most telling on the horses, who tended to balk or shy at the sight of snakes. Fortunately, all four of the chariot-team were armor-masked and narrowly blinkered. Herd instinct, or sheer momentum, augmented by their driver's deft handling, kept them moving through the press of battle, if unsteadily. The pa.s.sengers saw several nearby cavalrymen stopped in their tracks, thrown from their saddles or dragged down by mobs of snake-teeming foes.

The Nemedian infantry, slower in overtaking the main attack front, must needs meet the demonic horde face-to-snarling-face; consequently its ranks suffered the worst from the cultists' jabbing blades and fangs. A favorite tactic of the snake-tongued fighters was to parry or clutch their adversary's weapon with one hand, heedless of injury from its edge, while wresting aside the swordsman's shield or buckler with the other hand. Then, leering hideously and pressing intimately close in the thick of battle, they would open their lips in a venomous kiss. The agile tongue-vipers, long and sufficiently slender to penetrate a breathing-slit or an eyehole, found a tightly visored helm no obstacle. Their bite, to all appearances, was agonizingly fatal.

Conan cursed himself for failing in his battle plan to foresee the extent of the enemy's sorcery. Besides enhancing their deadliness and threatening to devastate his side's morale, their utter inhumanity seemed to exempt the snake-worshipers from the ordinary requirements of command. Even now, having broken through the main ring of besiegers circling the camp, he could see no sign of a central leader-or of generals or reserves, or even of petty officers to marshal the attack. The cultists seemed to throw themselves forward, sustaining their effort with a tireless, unquestioning unanimity; possibly they harked to the voice of immortal Set himself, hissing a.s.surances ceaselessly in their ears.

Whatever their mystical unity, it appeared to leave the counterfeit warlord no place wherein to strike a fatal blow. Ordering his charioteer to wheel back through the thinning straggle of enemies, he reconnoitered toward camp. There he saw the escape corridor widened and the supply train and rear guard finally moving forward-an army intact and mobile, but lacking an objective! Rasping with ill temper, he ordered his charioteer to turn eastward again.

"At least we broke free of the camp," Evadne remarked to him. "With these thousands pressing us, it could have been a death-trap." Her archery had long since diminished to occasional stray shots; now she stooped over her bow to fit a new string to it, using a razored arrow-tip to slice away the loops of the old frayed one.

"Aye. 'Tis best to keep our army on the move, if it prevents the bulk of the enemy from converging on us at once." Conan gazed past the wheeling, skirmishing cavalry toward the southern flank of the army, where cultists still threw themselves against the Nemedians' close-knit line. "But we must find a target worth attacking. We spend our strength too freely against these unending hordes." He stepped up onto the grillwork of the chariot, steadying himself by grasping a harness rope as he scanned the field. "Ah, there, driver! Forward quickly, past those stunted trees. I want that man!"

The momentary splendor of sunrise had faded to a smoky radiance in the east, yellow-brown where the orb's light trickled through a dark, formless ceiling of mist and smoke. The sky's sooty translucence made it seem likely that before another hour had pa.s.sed, they would no longer be able to tell direction by means of the sun. Yet the jaundiced day permitted visibility a good way across the plain. By its light to eastward, a crowd of figures could be seen straggling through the tall gra.s.s. The foremost of them, a stout warrior, moved to meet the chariot with the same numb steadiness the other cultists showed, but his silver-bright armor drew attention.

Evadne stared his way, exclaiming to Conan, "Why, that is Ulf, late the squire of Edram Castle! The old scalawag!" Smoothly she nocked a hard-pointed shaft to her bow, sighting on the breastplate of the distant, shambling figure.

"No, feather him not!" Conan clutched her shoulder to spoil her aim. "We need a captive to guide us to these h.e.l.l-fiends' leader. Ulf is a recent convert to their cause, and he may not yet be so far gone as the rest. Swing near him, driver-take care not to trample him." .

The fat warrior, tardy for the camp siege, plodded doggedly forward, dragging his long-bladed sword along the ground: As the chariot bore down on him, he perked up, his gait changing to a lumbering trot, his weapon lifted two-handed in readiness. Then the horses thundered by, blowing the nearby gra.s.s blades flat with the wind of their pa.s.sing. As the chariot followed around on one wheel, Conan launched himself from the platform to strike the man full on, body to body, forearm to throat. The squire's raised sword sailed off into a bush as the two armored bodies rolled on the turf, grunting and clanking.

"Ulf! Yield, old tyrant!" Growling with effort, Conan forced his weight atop the struggling squire. "You are my captive, and we will have speech together if you value your nose!" With a convulsive movement, he drew his dagger and held it poised before the supine man's face.

"Sa setha Efanissa!" Ulf spat out the ritual syllables at Conan, his slitted tongue lashing and sibilating against dry, cracked lips. "Hatha.s.sa fa Sathan!"

"Enough!" Forcing down a spasm of revulsion at the sight, Conan smote the b.u.t.t of his dagger against the temple of his enemy's helm, causing the stubble-jowled head to rattle within. "You are Squire Ulf, late of Edram Castle! You may have been a black-hearted rogue, but you were a man! And a man you still are, or shall be-if I have to sew up that forked tongue of yours myself! Now answer me, who is the leader of the snake-cult?"

"Laa . . . larthhh! Larrrhhhh!" The eyes of the haggard man seemed to focus somewhat, and his struggles ceased, but his tongue had difficulty in forming its accustomed sounds. Occasionally, between his efforts, it escaped his mouth to lash crazily against his bleeding lips. "Larrrhh isss priessssst!"

"Good, man, that's better." Leaning closer, Conan braced his knife-holding fist against his captive's chin. "And where can I find this priest Larth of yours? Which way do I ride?"

"Ea.s.ssstt!" Ulf worked an arm free to wave it behind him, indicating the gra.s.sland. "Larrrrhh is ea.s.sst. Ea.s.ssssttt. . . ahh! Aieee!"

Startled at his prisoner's convulsive shrieks, Conan glanced down to see with a shock that a small purple viper had wormed its way from beneath Ulf's breastplate and was sinking its fangs into the unwilling informant's neck. He reached down to flick the serpent aside with his dagger blade, only to discover a second snake's emerald body threading up out of the gra.s.s. Its fangs went deep into the hapless squire's cheek.

With a spasm of uncontrollable dread, Conan leaped to his feet, spying more serpentine flickers in the gra.s.s all around him. Sheathing his knife, he drew his sword to hack fiercely at those nearest. Then, standing over the gasping, blue-faced Ulf, he raised his weapon high and brought it slashing down. The stroke ended the squire's writhing agonies by severing his head.

"Conan! Beware!" He turned to see an ax-wielding cultist rushing at him through the gra.s.s; but before he could raise his sword to meet the charge, the form staggered two steps and collapsed, an arrow jutting from its armpit.

"Why bother to warn me at all, Evadne, if you insist on taking the mark every time . . . Crom!" His grim good nature turned to alarm as he swung around to see that the chariot moved at a near stop a few dozen paces away, suddenly beset by attackers. The driver lay thrashing helplessly a dozen paces in its wake, his neck seized in the jaws of a large serpent that had been hurled onto him as he drove. The chariot-team was rendered nearly immobile by the loss of the reins, and by a cultist who had thrown himself onto the starboard horse, clambering back along its harness toward the fighting-platform. Evadne was preparing to launch an arrow into him, but even as she raised her bow, three more attackers overtook the slow-moving chariot.

"Mannannan's black blood!" Pelting through the gra.s.s, Conan roared the war-cry to distract the enemy; but the cultists did not trouble to look back. As the arrow-pierced snake-worshiper slipped from the shying horse's trappings to b.u.mp briefly under the chariot's rolling wheel, the foremost of the pursuers vaulted onto the platform. Evadne turned and slashed with her bow to club him off, but he ignored the blow, hacking low and viciously at her with his long-handled scythe.

"Bite steel, dog of Set!" Conan's sword-slash laid open the rearmost harrier's back from nape to kidney, driving him to earth. The Cimmerian trod the writhing corpse underfoot without a glance, dashing for the chariot, where Evadne had no chance to avoid her attacker's sickle-strokes.

"Die, worm-sp.a.w.n!" The second cultist left one arm clutching the chariot-rail, the rest of his body shorn away bleeding as Conan boarded the car. He was too close behind Evadne's attacker to swing his sword. "Wretch! Go find your father in h.e.l.l!" The man was already choking on one of Evadne's arrow stabbed shallowly into his throat; now Conan jabbed it deeper, twisting it cruelly as he hurled the creature away behind.

"Conan . . . please ..." Evadne slumped to the floor, clasping reddened hands beneath her heart. "I am slain."

"No, girl, lie still." Searching in vain for a whip or the reins, he used the flat of his gory sword to slap the horses' skittish rumps into a trot. Once the chariot was trundling faster than the pace of the converging scatter of enemies, he knelt beside Evadne. "Here, let me bind your wound." His throat clenched to see how much blood washed the chariot floor. "I'll take you back-"

"Conan, listen. . . ." The rebel woman's voice was weak, her face waning paler than her blond tresses. "If you survive, you will return to Dinander. Promise me!"

"Yes, Evadne." He reached underneath her to prop her sagging back. "So shall you; we will ride there in triumph. . . ." But it was too late; her head tilted away sightlessly toward the murky sky.

He knelt with her for a long moment, cradling her slack, almost weightless body against the jolting of the cart. Finally he lay her down gently and climbed to his feet, taking up his sword in blood-grimed hands.

He stood numb in the chariot, scarcely aware of the hissing, grimacing snake-worshipers who jogged after him in pursuit. Far to eastward, a column of smoke rose into the murky sky. Glancing back toward the camp, he saw a few cavalry, all of them black-mailed troops of Dinander, riding down stray enemies. Farther beyond, he could hear trumpets skirling, calling ma.s.ses of troops together under the raised banners, hanging slack in the airless morning, of Sigmarck and Ottislav.

How like the swinish barons to stop and look after their own interests at the first opportunity, instead of pressing onward as agreed! Perhaps, had they not lagged so far behind, Evadne might yet be alive; he shook his head bitterly, blaming himself nevertheless for her death. At all events, her dying wish still whispered in his brain. He must now turn back to protect the interests of his troops, lest the warriors of Dinander be callously scattered and sacrificed to the enemy.

But as he turned to the front, his chariot suddenly pitched and stopped short, hurling him sharply against the rail. The horses of the team reared and lunged to both sides at once, terrified by the sight of a naked, dancing warrior decked with living snakes, who had sprung out of the low sedges directly in front of them.

Struggling for footing on the blood-slick, heaving platform, Conan abruptly found his arms pinioned as two of the hissing, chattering pursuers hurled themselves simultaneously atop him. He twisted to break free, but a third snake-eyed attacker leaped aboard to straddle all three, wielding high a stone-headed hammer. It plunged swiftly downward, striking the northerner's helm with an odd, stunning silence. Again, silently, it rose and fell; then again, as if Conan's skull were the head of a spike being patiently driven into the chariot timbers. With the hammer's fourth stroke, the numb silence exploded to engulf everything.

CHAPTER 16.

The Head of the Serpent

Ravening flame consumed all. It spread and flowed like a mighty cataract, writhed as exquisitely as a tortured animal and sent blazing rootlets and blossoms creeping forth with tireless, plantlike energy. From its fury and withering heat, Conan knew that the Set-cult had triumphed. It's unquenchable holocaust had engulfed not only the Nemedian plain, but the entire world of men. Mad, surging flames now danced their ultimate victory; they would continue to do so for all eternity.

And yet, perhaps not everything was destroyed, for deep within the flames there hovered a ghost. Dim and remote, at times distorted or melted entirely by shimmering heat, the face was nonetheless beautiful. Dark-shadowed, gleaming eyes like dusky wells of dream; delicately round, blush-tinted cheeks; lips stained deeply red, as from tasting the juice of pomegranates. The face gazed forth beatifically from the fire, radiating at once the complacency of total knowledge and the pa.s.sion of boundless desire.

Was it lost Evadne? No, this visage was framed by black curls that gloomed as night to her day-bright tresses. Yet it was a familiar face, and a loved one. It smiled serenely from the flames as if witnessing the world's fate and accepting it utterly, blissfully.

Ludya.

The shock of the name brought Conan more fully to consciousness as he lay stuck with congealed blood to the bed of the motionless chariot. He shut his eyes, their pupils scorched dry by the heat of the campfire, and learned that even the least flick of his eyelids sent tremors of discomfort throbbing through his skull. When he tried to raise his head from its lolling, crook-necked posture at the edge of the platform, all the unfelt pain and din of the hard-swung stone sledgehammer caught up with him at once.

He lay still then, trying to fix his aching, echoing brain on one certain fact: across the fire-circle from him sat a painted, smiling girl, and that girl was Ludya.

As his misery gradually diminished, he sensed movements nearby. A languid voice drifted toward him.

"Oh, indeed, this is a fine chariot! Better by far than our rickety old haycart." It was a boyish contralto, speaking guilelessly and sweetly, though at times it cracked with the huskiness of approaching manhood. "At long last I can transport you in the fashion you deserve, Milady! We will pile it thick with cushions and soft tapestries for your comfort."

"That will be fine, Lar." The answering murmur caused Conan to stir again with recognition. Consequently he suffered a new wave of pain, though less intensely than before.

"It will have to be cleansed first," the boyish voice said. "One of its riders, a woman, spilled her life's blood into it, so I am told. A sad waste-now she can never join us." The speaker moved closer to Conan's inert form. "But life still lingers in this man. Even if he fails to recover from his wound, he can be reclaimed to our cause."

Feeling a soft, tentative prod at the unarmored skin of his arm, Conan stirred, or tried to. "Wretched scut. . . I'll drag you . . . screaming to h.e.l.l first!"

His threat was scarcely audible, blurred by his gasps as he slowly heaved himself onto his side. He groped among blinding, pulsating curtains of agony for his dagger. But he found none, and the insolent, piping voice would not retreat. He realized that he was out of doors and that it was day, though the dim lowering of the sky made the fire seem bright.

"For shame, fellow! Your threats do not swerve me. Why must you Hyborians ever practice violence?" Lar shifted impatiently before the flames, his voice cracking as it grew self-righteous. "Your unprovoked attack costs many lives on both sides-taking countless souls who would have rejoiced to serve our cause." He shook his tousled head resignedly. "You will never stop us, of course, but still I mourn the loss. It would be so much easier if you would simply try to understand."

"Understand!" Grasping the chariot rail, Conan dragged himself to a sitting position. "Talking of losses, your host moves through the countryside like a locust swarm-slaying and burning what and whom you do not steal!" He blinked hazily at the frail figure outlined by the licking flames, to see it suddenly joined by the burly silhouettes of two peasant guards.

"A common delusion." Lar cast his voice across the fire to where Ludya sat encushioned as his audience. "Like most people in these decadent times, you overvalue transient, temporal things. You have forgotten the strength of true devotion. Before it, material goods and personal obligations are as nothing."

Conan did not reply. He was occupied in holding himself upright, swallowing the deep draughts of pain that pulsed from his throbbing skull, flexing his fingers and toes to test them for sensation. Then, under the incurious eyes of Lar and his guards, he set about prying the dented, split helmet away from his skull, probing carefully at the broken steel where it was embedded in the clotted mess of hair and scalp. Finally, agonizingly, it came free, and he prodded gingerly above his ear to make certain that his brain did not lie open to the sky.

No, he decided, the wound would heal, if only Crom granted him life for another fortnight. He cast away the shattered husk of helmet and focused his slowly clearing vision on his captors.

The boy had none of the monstrousness that Conan had expected to find in the cult's prophet. He seemed strangely innocent, enough so to disarm the Cimmerian's natural impulse of mayhem toward him. He was, after all, only a child, hovering at the brink of the mystic transformation to manhood. A fine-featured, yellow-haired lad, slightly arrogant perhaps, and looking almost effeminate in his cape of gold-embroidered purple and his heavy gold chaplet. But he moved with a careless lightness of limb that bespoke an easy conscience, boding no conceivable threat to the onlooker. His hulking guardians, one dressed as a smith and the other as a fur-trapper, appeared to be stolid, mindless types. They stood ready to obey, albeit without speed or initiative. Like their leader, they showed none of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l marks of Set, though for all Conan knew, their shut mouths might harbor nimble snake-tongues.

They waited with their young master before the fire, in the meadow in the midst of the trackless plain. Overhead stretched a taciturn sky whose cloudy, smoky expanse betrayed neither time nor direction. The camp's appurtenances were few: a tent painted with serpents and other mystic symbols, a battered ox-cart decked with faded pillows and tapestries, an open chest of food and wine-jugs, and Conan's own chariot.

His weary horses were tethered nearby, grazing with several other mounts along a shallow, meandering stream. Across the brushy gra.s.sland came no sign of the roving cult-hordes, no echo of battle cries or trumpets. The horrors of the morning could have been a dream, except for the blood that caked the Cimmerian's armor and stained the chariot where he sat.

Finally, tardily, Conan shifted his attention to the other person present. He felt a reluctance to turn his gaze on her, greater even than his disinclination to stare into the blinding heart of the fire. This hesitancy, amounting almost to a fear, came not only from her stunning beauty, but from her inexplicable, evil presence here. He met her sloe eyes cautiously and found them staring back at him with some of the same blithe innocence as the young cult-leader's.

Ludya rested on a litter of pillows spread before Lar's cart. She was carefully groomed and painted, dressed in bits of finery well-calculated to accent her womanly charms without concealing them; she looked as pa.s.sionately immodest as any courtesan of the king's chambers in Belverus. Her hips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s were bound in fringed sc.r.a.ps of embroidery, the tapering curves of her legs veiled by gossamer pantaloons, her feet fitted with the frailest of sandals, her ankles, waist and brow circled by glittering gold chains. Her figure was as full and supple as Conan remembered, but daily exposure to the sun had darkened her skin to a tawny color. He Could not see whether the stripes of Favian's lash still marred her back, but her lithe languor made it clear that her body, if not her mind, had recovered from her ordeal in the Manse.

"I see that you appreciate my Ludya's beauty," Lar piped up beside Conan. "She is a cherished companion, my one indulgence. Go sit by her and make her acquaintance. Here, you will be more comfortable lying on these cushions." Striding to his wagon well in advance of his lumbering guards, the youth dragged forth more pillows from it and spread them on the ground beside the reclining girl. Kneeling before her, he said, "Entertain our guest well, my love. Teach him in your gentle way the wisdom of our beliefs, whilst I attend to some small ch.o.r.es."

After addressing his consort, Lar kissed her, administering only a swift, chaste peck to her cheek. Watching the boy's manner with Ludya, Conan realized that he did not use her as a man would. Rather, he primped her appearance and cared for her as a child dressing a toy doll, lavishing some of the doting affection oh her that boys commonly reserve for a mother or an elder sister.

Striding over and tugging at Conan's arm, Lar raised him up, admonishing him, "Come, do not be shy!" Conan shook off the boy's weak grip; nevertheless he followed his lead, remaining just as dumb as the bodyguards who loomed close on either hand.

"Here are fruit and cheese and wine," Lar said, indicating the food chest that stood open nearby. "Satisfy yourselves; I do not feel like eating on this battle-day; my stomach is all astir. Now come along, you two lackeys! Help me drag this chariot down to the stream." As the three turned away, Conan stood mute over Ludya, reeling with his wounds and numb with a vague dread, expecting at any moment to see snakes squirm from the houri's scented hair or a reptile tongue issue from between her pert, painted lips.

"Conan, do not fear. I know it is you. Come sit by me!" Adjusting her veiled limbs with simple grace, Ludya arose to her knees and beckoned with supplicating hands. "When first they brought you here, I thought you were Favian. You seemed to be dead, and I rejoiced at it. When you stirred and answered Lar in those coa.r.s.e Cimmerian accents, I thought my heart would burst from my chest with joy!" Smiling up at him, she pressed her hands to her spa.r.s.ely covered bosom to emphasize her emotion. "But come and rest, my love, and I will tend your wounds. I now see that I have no need of this." Reaching down behind her into a shallow fold of tapestry, she produced a long knife, wickedly curved and razor-tipped. She laid it on the cushion before her.

"Ah, Ludya, more than one wench has carried a sharp dagger for Favian!" Conan could see that his friend was her old self; grating out a painful laugh, he stooped down to seat himself on the velvet beside her. "'Tis no marvel that his life was short."

"What, he is dead? And you have taken his place in Baldomer's affections?" She clutched Conan's shoulder, gazing into his face with eager, mascared eyes while he nearly swooned at the ravishing sight and scent of her.

"Easy, girl, back off and let me breathe!" He pushed her to arm's length, nevertheless keeping a hand on her warm shoulder to steady himself. "The Einharson tyrants are both dead, overthrown by a woman much like you. ..." With frequent halts and backtrackings, and carefully omitting any mention of his tumblings with Calissa, he told Ludya of the events that had unfolded after her exile from the Manse. While he spoke, she fussed over him; though he would not let her probe or bathe his wound, she bound a dry herb compress over it by means of a thong around his head.

". . . and so Evadne died. I could gut those barons for hanging back and not supporting my advance!" He stirred restlessly, drawing her gentle hands away from his brow. "But tell me, what happened after you returned home? How did you fall in with the snakecult?"

"Lar's coach met mine on the road. I never again saw my home or my parents." She shook her head slowly, in uncertain remembrance. "I was half-mad with hatred then, and sick with a brain fever. But Lar did not trouble me with questions or make any demands. He just kept me at his side and cared for me, like a true friend. Our talks are mainly of foolish things-the songs of birds, the waves the wind makes in the gra.s.s of the steppe. These clothes . . ." unblushing, she indicated her scanty array . . . "are treasures his followers bring him."

"But what of the marches and the sieges?" Conan prompted her. "Your young boyfriend is a formidable general!" He looked across the meadow to the bank of the stream, where Lar stood overseeing his helpers as they washed the blood and muck from the chariot in its slow waters. "He has conquered a tenth part of Nemedia; by now he must have the Brythunians worrying, too."

Ludya shrugged, dismissing the matter. "I know nothing of all that. He leaves me in the tent when he tours the front lines. He gives few orders, and has fewer officers with whom to carry them out. People follow him willingly; they would sacrifice their lives for his cause."

"Aye, because of the dark grip of his sorcery." Conan peered gravely into her face. "Do not blind yourself, Ludya; there is something far greater than little Lar at work here-something as ancient and evil as the serpent-G.o.d himself!" He lowered his gaze from hers, frowning in distaste. "His followers become beings less than human, you know. They bear foul stigmata. ..."

"I know something of it." Ludya nodded reluctantly, averting her eyes. "He has strange powers of transformation. Of all his disciples, I think he keeps me mortal only through a whim."

"Likely you are the only one who ever joined him freely, without being converted by a mystic snakebite." Conan searched her face, seeking agreement. "So you see, girl, he is no bright savior. He is evil, a slave-master!"

"Well, and who is not?" Suddenly Ludya flared back at him, her eyes aflame with the consuming wrath Conan had glimpsed once before. "What leader in this great prison-pit of Nemedia does not rule over abject slaves? Or in all Hyboria, for that matter? What husband does not degrade his wife? What squire allows his serfs free will, except in choosing their own slaves?" She shook her dark ringlets, her mouth twisted in a cynical scar of a smile. "What baron, my Lord Conan, does not cozen his subjects by slicing their veins and lopping off limbs?" She clenched her red-nailed fists angrily before her. "At least Lar's followers think they are happy! At least they are beyond having their hopes thwarted, their dignity violated!"

To Conan's surprise, she threw herself on him then, pressing her tear-streaming face against his armored breast, clutching at him with anguished fingers as great heaving sobs coursed through her.

"There, there, girl, it does not have to be that way." He held her close, watching Lar's slim figure where he stood on the stream-bank, apparently unaware of the hotter streams of tears flowing behind him. "Things have changed in Dinander," Conan murmured. "There is a chance, at least, for something better. You can return there with me."

In a few moments her sobs abated and she lifted her smudged, reddened eyes to him. "I do not know if I will go with you. I have found a place with Lar. ..." Then she clutched his arm urgently. "But Conan, beware of him! He can kill with a touch. I have seen other captives brought before him-foul old shamans and witches, mostly. He tosses something into their faces, they tell him things, then they die ... but take care now, here he comes!"